Emerald waters

Vietnam surprised me. My expectations were not all that clear to begin with, but I do know what I did not expect to see. I did not expect to see poured concrete houses with decorative French facades, rising a dozen stories above the street level. I did not expect the spring's perpetually gray sky or lusciously green rice fields. I did not expect the scores of motorbikes dashing between each other on every street amid honking for every pedestrian and fellow biker. Nor did I expect to see small Thai women selling baguettes on every street corner, nor have lunch with a general of the Vietnamese People's Army. But I did see all these things and more.

The real highlight of the trip was Halong Bay. The Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site, consists of hundreds and hundreds of small islands, rising almost vertically out of the water. The walls are sheer and forboding, their tops verdant and tree-covered. We took a boat through the whole long formation to one of the largest islands, Catba, which has a tourist settlement there that looks like, or so I heard at least, Brighton Beach. It's a touristy destination and not one I would have otherwise mentioned were it not for the incredible beauty of the place and everything that people like me aren't really meant to see.

A group of us decided to wake up early and rent kayaks to really explore part of the Bay. The itinerary called for hanging around the city or hiking in the hills, but that's not why Halong Bay is a well-known place. People travel there for what's out on the water. I shared a kayak with Will Cole and we all set off onto the cool emerald water. A significant number of the locals live on floating shacks behind the island, attached with only to some boards standing on blue plastic barrels. As we paddled around and into small lagoons and open water, we spied a cave opening in one of the islands. What better to do than explore it?

We managed to tie our kayaks to the barnacles and make our precarious way up to the cave opening. It was a hollow taller than it was deep and it didn't seem to have been visited in handful of years. Graffiti lined the walls, scrawled in by Vietnamese during the war. The only dates were from '67 to '76. Then we all noticed a small hole in the far side of the cave. No one had a flash light but we did have a camera. The eight of us followed one another down this dark, warm tunnel, led only by the occasional too-bright flash. Fortunately enough none of us knocked ourselves out or got stuck crawling from one space to the other. We realized, in the absolute dark at the end of crawl space, that the world was a different place now than when so many people had last occupied that space.

Onward, out into the light and water of the bay. My favorite part of being in a kayak was feeling close to the water, like I was in the Bay itself, exploring and cruising along. After another hour or two of this, we found an island with a beach and disembarked there. The sand was full of shells and coral. Simply bending down yielded heaping handfuls of colorful shells and faded white sea creatures. The black rocks were worn smooth in some places, barnacled in others, and all over there was peace and solitude. The sea never ceases but in a different way than the incessant noise of the city. It's calm out there...

Adieu, Halong Bay. Ni hao, China...

Thaksin, not Taxi

A guy named Thaksin is the current prime minister of Thailand. A few weeks ago, he authorized the sale of a huge Thai mobile phone company to competitors in Singapore. This was not only unpopular because Thailand lost a large company and all the jobs and money that went with it, but the one person who benefited the most from it was Thaksin himself, who pocketed a clean $2 billion from the deal. He was, even before this happened, the richest man in Thailand. This started a large movement protesting the Prime Minister, telling him to step down from his position and, ideally, having the beloved king name a replacement. The night before we left Thailand for Vietnam, I convinced a tuk-tuk driver to take me and some others to the protests. It took a while to find a willing driver. Most just scoffed at the idea of going out there and drove off without us, but the one I did find was plenty insane. He insisted on doing wheelies with a three-wheeled doom machine on crowded highway streets, but it did get us there, so I'm not complaining. That night was the largest the protests had been yet, some 100,000 plus. As a handful of Westerners, we stood out. Heads would turn in our direction, people would shout out. No one was rude, and most were just curious to see what we were doing there. An upper level employee from Eton PLC (a large Thai power company) nabbed us and gave us flags and head bands to wear. He told us his take on everything, and as we were speaking with him, dozens of people stopped around us to take pictures of our conversation. I was becoming slightly self-conscious with all this undue attention and decided to move on. A block or so down we ran into a gentleman signing autographs at a table. Will Cole was wearing a Carleton shirt, and this man recognized it. "Carleton College?" he asked. Wow. Who knows about Carleton in Thailand? From what I could hear over the din, he used to teach at the University of Chicago and was known as Dr. Woody P(something or other... there is more after the P, but I couldn't tell you what it was). His Thai name was longer than I could hope to remember, but he served as the intellectual behind the movement and was a fascinating character to run into. He took all our headbands, autographed them, and talked to us for a while about the protests, Carleton, and our program. This was incredible. The line of people waiting for him to finish the conversation wasn't all too pleased, but they were probably assumed we were far more important than we were and could be allowed such attention. We continued on. Some guys with video cameras showed up and had us shout "Thaksin get out!" a few times. It was time to get back, so we turned around. The street we needed to find was towards the front of the protests where there was some speaker ranting about this or that. Before too long we ended up picking our way across the front line of this mass of people. Flags were heaving to and fro, people were up and shouting and dancing, there was power, energy, dramatik. As we kept moving through, there was a mass of people tracking us behind the fence near the stage. I turned and looked and was dazed by a dozen flashes. The press had found us and was taking pictures of everything we did. Embarassed and fascinated, we made our way through as quickly as possible. A day later, as we were getting off the bus to our hotel in Vietnam, Roy told us he got an e-mail from our guide, Frank (his name is actually Manop, but if you've ever Father of the Bride, this guy was Frank through and through). Frank had been watching the evening and saw a curious site during the feature on the protests. Some Americans had shown up, wearing Carleton shirts, sure enough. Well, it couldn't have been anyone else, but I wish I had seen it nonetheless. Not that I ever thought I'd be in Thailand, Asia for that matter, but even then, who'd have thought I would make the evening news?

Elephants and Roosters

Chiang Mai, the second largest city in Thailand, is located in the north, nestled at the foot of the hills that eventually lead to Burma and Laos. Every night, at about 6:00 p.m. or so, the Night Market starts to collect itself and open up for the evening. The shops are run mostly by families who have stationed themselves on the sidewalk, street, or parking lot for the evening. There is, as far as I can tell, very little organization to the 3000 estimated shops sprawling through a dozen different streets. Everyone can be found strolling around, Westerners and Thais alike. With enough searching, some incredible antiques and oddities can be found, but lying in between it all is cheaply manufactured tourist goods imported from China. Don't worry, though, because whenever you walk by, someone will assure you that the Rolex is real.

The morning after the night market (which was itself a day after the night train to Chiang Mai--none of the workers on the train spoke English but would periodically force drinks on people playing cards or take drinks from people not drinking enough), half of us headed north on a bus through winding, treacherous roads. Four hours and a few bags of vomit later (not me--W.C. gets motion sickness) we loaded onto some long-tailed speed boats to go up river. The boats left us at a completely tourist oriented village where our elephants were waiting. My elephant in particular was pushy and demanded to be in front of the herd which meant taking some remarkably steep short cuts.

Some time later we arrived at an Ahka village that had decided, at best, to tolerate our presence. I felt unwelcome and colonial and a little dirty of conscience on this well-manicured adventure. Village roosters started crowing and cawing around 4:00 a.m., and we left after breakfast, hiking north, deeper into the hills. It would not be hard for all of these hills to be a dense thicket of vegetation, a jungle once inhabited by elephants, but people have lived here for generations and they are terraced, cleared, and had just finished being burned for the next season's crops. The hike itself was needed and welcome with a short break underneath a waterfall around noon.

The next village we came to was similar to the first in construction. All the houses were bamboo huts with tatched rooftops, dusty trails leading from one to the other. This village spoke a different dialect and shared a different culture than the previous night's. It was also much friendlier, and two dozen kids came out to see us when we showed up. They demanded that I put them on my shoulders, stomp around, swing them, carry them, tickle and play. I was more than happy to oblige and got covered in little kids and little kid dust. One of them even gave me the braclet he was wearing. It's on my wrist now, slowly cutting off circulation to my hand because, well, he was a bit smaller than I was, being a five-year-old. We sung songs, Happy Birthday and Jingle Bells they already knew. I played dead and they jumped on my back and screamed in my ear. Little kids, though, have a limitless energy and I was ready for bed far before they were ready to let me be. I fell asleep anyway, exhausted.

Although they asked if we could stay for two more nights, we couldn't, and headed out the next morning. I should note that a lot of the women in the village tried to sell us things--the same things that came from China found in the Night Market, and in the first village, and along the river, and in every gas station. They all sell the same thing, and I'm sure not a person selling them did anything but them him/herself. The trip back to Chiang Mai was spent mostly on a bus rank with an ill-timed deposit in the bathroom. One more night in Bangkok, the night of the largest protests against the prime minister yet.

Tomorrow, Vietnam.

Oh Dear...

Yesterday was filled with political intrigue in the form of old war stories from Roy Grow. One minute we were talking about homework, the next he was trying not to tell us a really fascinating story about different government agencies without saying any names. Lots of 'maybes' and 'they say he just disappeared' instead of details.

Thais, as a people, are some of the nicest and most hospitable I've met. Almost every time I walk somewhere, someone asks me questions or gives me some place to go that I really must see. The cities (Bangkok and Chiang Mai) are dynamic and bustling and cacophanous, but wholly safe and comfortable (minus the weather that reminds me of Alabama summers).

Yesterday afternoon I saw a hundred people processing thousands and thousands of pineapples on the sidewalk. I'm pretty sure those are the same ones that we buy in grocery stores. What I cannot figure out is how the flow of produce and products works. Everyone is making something, some cheap plastic thing that I'm sure the locals don't buy, but by what odd mechanism do all these private and family vendors ship off this collective junk?

Before I go, an excerpt from the e-mail I received from my penpal at the UIBE, the university we're going to stay at in Beijing...

some days ago i watched the <> i think they are crazy!and its so funny!haha,
i think you have golden hair and your face is so white just like a piece of paper!and pretty tall but not taller than Yao Ming,haha ,am i right? your eyes are blue just like the blue sea and can tell funny stories all the time !!
BEST WISHES! YOURS LAURA

Thai Goodness

Twenty hours later, I made it to Bangkok, Thailand. There is a lot to write and not much time to write it in, but I'm safe and having a blast.

I meant to do this yesterday but got sidetracked by a Thai man I met on the street. He pointed away down an alley and told me to go see the festival there. Why not? While wandering around a Buddhist monastery that was celebrating a holiday, another Thai man came up to me to explain the historical significance of this event. Then he told me of some other places I could go, hired a tuktuk (a three wheeled, open-air contraption that wheels and deals around these crazy streets--you'd think less people would make it back from a trip like that), and off I went around the city.

This afternoon, I leave for northern Thailand to hike up to the Golden Triangle. I'll think of you all from atop my elephant.

Of beginnings, spring, and friends

in Just-
spring       when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame baloonman


whistles       far       and wee


and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring


when the world is puddle-wonderful


the queer
old baloonman whistles
far          and          wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing


from hop-scotch and jump-rope and


it's
spring
and
         the
                 goat-footed


baloonMan       whistles
far
and
wee

e. e. cummings