Archive for 2010

A subway ride in Beijing

I rode the subway today back to the Westin hotel from Beijing's Capital Museum.  The subway was fairly empty by Beijing standards.  Most seats were taken and some people were standing.  At one stop some seats empty out and a family of four gets on, a grandmother, grandfather, mother, and son.  They head for an empty seat.  The child, a plump five or six year old, plops on the seat ahead of his grandmother.  His mother hurriedly tries to shush him out of the seat.  His grandmother stands closet to the seat, but the child is bewildered.  The mother starts talking sternly to her son.  People are starting to stare.  Such disrespect of one's elders in simply unacceptable here.  Then again, he is only a child, does he know better?  He squirms and pushes back against his mother.  One of the men sitting across from this situation looks up at me.  Sheepishly, he smiles.  The subway car is observing a middle class family losing face, and there is a white man aboard.


The mother, using a combination of stern words and pushing, eventually convinces the son to move.  His grandmother takes his seat.  And just like that, the commotion settles and all returns to normal:  passengers are staring into space, talking to each other, reading.  The child has stopped crying and started gawking at me.  He is their only one.  And unless they pay a hefty penalty, he'll remain the only one.  And his now-flustered grandmother, who probably usually feeds him candy and spoils him to tears, is now thinking, however briefly, that this might be a good thing.

Haggling in developing countries

I am in a developing country and a guy tries to sell me something.  It's usually a drink, a watch, sunglasses, or something similar.  I get quoted an obviously-inflated price.  The guy wants to get as much money from me as possible.  He gauges how much I would spend, based on my skin color, my clothes, the way I handle myself.  


On the one hand, I should bargain him to death.  I should quote some ridiculously low price, then we go back and forth, I pretend to leave, he drop the price further, and finally we agree to the exchange which, as the Lonely Planet suggests, is typically 7-10 times less than the starting price.

On the other hand, I should give him as much money as possible.  This is a developing country, they need money.  So much of American charity goes to developing countries.  But it's usually far away and some of it goes toward administrative costs.  Here is a person in a developing country, so what are you waiting for?  Empty your pockets!

Of course, reality is more complex.  Developing countries don't need money, they need smart investments.  Simply giving away money feeds a cycle of dependency.  Many people paying too much for an item inflates its price for others. Perhaps it distorts market forces by falsely inflating demand; although perhaps not if you planned to buy the item anyway.  And paying an haggled-down price still gets me the money and gets the seller profit -- or else he likely wouldn't sell. 

Maybe the confusion I feel about haggling with a merchant in a developing country can be resolved with a premium I pre-commit to pay for anything I buy.  I would haggle down the price, then pay the agreed price plus the premium.  A guilt premium, perhaps?

Right shoulder up

A great article about Japan.



"Three years ago, I saw a television program about a new breed of youngster: the nonconsumer. Japanese in their late teens and early 20s, it said, did not have cars. They didn't drink alcohol. They didn't spend Christmas Eve with their boyfriends or girlfriends at fancy hotels downtown the way earlier generations did. I have taught many students who fit this mold. They work hard at part-time jobs, spend hours at McDonald's sipping cheap coffee, eat fast food lunches at Yoshinoya. They save their money for the future."

Sun Tzu and a watch

I enjoyed browsing the Beijing Antique Market at Panjiayuan Street today.  I made two great purchases, a knockoff watch and a copy of Sun Tsu's "Art of War" printed on a wooden scroll.


This is the closest approximation of the wooden scroll I bought:  http://yeschinatour.com/china-guides/chinese-culture/art-of-war-sun-tzu/

I cannot find an pictorial approximation of the watch.  The watch face and mechanism are enclosed in a glass orb and bound by a bronze band.  A linked bronze chain is attached to the band on one end; at the other end is a small bell with four small linked chains instead of a bell.  The glass has several scratches; a thumb print is visible on the inside of one of the glass hemispheres.  To change the time, the hemisphere with the mechanism has to be removed.  The face reads:  "Woumei / Made in Swit-zerland 1882." Google in China has not shown me any evidence that this watch is real.  It is probably fake.  The Swiss watchmaker in Harvard Square will know for sure. 

Jakarta

Jakarta appears more developed than Saigon, and certainly more
developed than Thailand and Cambodia. Where Saigon has endless
streams of motorcycles, or motos, floating down its well-paved
streets, cars sit on Jakarta's roads, stuck in an eternal traffic.

Jakarta's malls have both real and knockoff products, which is a
welcome change from Thailand and Cambodia. In those, although real
branded clothes, watches, and electronics exist, they are much harder
to find and most tourists stumble only on the knockoff Gucci, Prada,
and iPhones. The largest and nicest of Jakarta's malls has only real
products, and they are sold for only real prices. In some cases there
is a 10-20% discount off the price I would see in the US. But sales
and discounts seemed rare, or perhaps this was not the season for
sales.

Jakarta has a noticeably smaller contingent of white people -- both
expats and tourists. Every country in the Mekong delta, it seemed,
was swarming with tourists. Additional evidence of this was the
vibrant tourist-based economy that I saw in Thailand, Cambodia, and
Vietnam. In Thailand there is of course the famous red light
district, which serves white tourists and, according to my depressing
book on sex slavery, many Japanese men. In each of those countries,
motos and tuk tuks stood ready to ferry tourists to any location for a
price well above the one they would charge locals. Streets in Phnom
Penh were lined with stalls of food for tourists; further from the
touristy roads, much cheaper noodle stalls catered to locals.

Jakarta is the most Muslim of the countries I have visited on my trip.
Yet this fact is much less apparent than I expected it to be. Every
third woman, it seems, is wearing a head scarf. Every tenth, or maybe
every twentieth, is fully covered with a black head-to-toe burka.
Calls to prayer sound five times a day, mostly annoyingly at 4:00am.
These calls sound different from the ones I heard in coming from the
minarets in Israel. Yet they are also very beautiful. I was woken by
the early call to prayer this morning, and stayed up listening to it
as it faded and was replaced by the rhythmic prayers of the gathered
congregation.

Overall, I really enjoyed my stay in Jakarta. One thing that stands
out, unfortunately, is the amount of time I spent stuck in traffic;
taxis are needed to get everywhere, and traffic often grinds all
movement to full stop. Perhaps I am more sensitive to sitting in
traffic because I grew up in Atlanta, where gridlock is a fact of
life. But in any case, Jakarta seems to struggle with this problem as
do most developed cities.

On the road

(I wrote this on, and immediately following, the bus trip I took from
Phnom Penh to Siem Reap.)

The Mekong Express Limosine Bus ambles down a worn, rocky road
southward toward the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. I am listening
to David Lanz on my iPhone, typing on my Lenovo netbook, chewing a
granola bar. After I finish typing, I return to my copy of "The
Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. I am wearing a polyester shirt
from the Harvard Coop, old shorts from Target, a Swiss Military Hanowa
watch. One hundred dollars rests in my wallet.

A family is riding with me in the back. The father is reading the
Phnom Penh Post, an English paper in the format of a large black and
white magazine. Sometimes he mouths the words; perhaps reading
English does not come easily to him. To his right, next to me, his
seven year old son is asleep, his stomach full of the fried crickets
his mother bought for him on the street market during our last rest
stop. Fried crickets are a Cambodian delicacy, the father tells me,
smiling. (The crickets are collected by securing a blue bug light to
a pole, tying a bag under the pole, and leaving the entire contraption
in the ground overnight. Dozens of blue lights illuminate Cambodian
roads at night. The crickets are then collected from the bags and
fried whole -- head, appendages, body.) A young, trendy-dressed girl
sitting to his left cringes as she sees him put a cricket in his
mouth. Crunchy!

The trendy girl is a sight. She is wearing Gucci glasses, has
straight brown-colored Asian hair. (Our guide near Seam Reap told us
that brown highlights are popular in Asia; even little kids in the
poor floating community I visited earlier dye their hair to make it
look like white people's. Another popular change is calve reduction.)
Her phone is white, slim, stylish. Her orange shirt complements her
hair and her tight brown pants with chaotically-strewn streaks of
white. Her shoes are open-toed in the front, closed, leathery and
high up in the back. This entire attire would cost hundreds of
dollars in the States, perhaps more -- and people would pay it. But
east Asia, knockoff HQ, is swimming in brand-name product that did not
pass factory quality control, or passed QC and made it to the street
vendors due to factory overproduction or theft.

What an unfathomable generational divide separates the two passengers
sitting next to each other on this bus! Years back, as the last
American helicopters were lifting off from the American embassy in
Hanoi, the Cambodian communist resistance was entering Phnom Penh and,
in one of the largest social experiments the world has ever seen,
marched the entire population of the capital into the fields in an
attempt to create an egalitarian socialist community. Religion,
class, elites, status, party were all eliminated -- as where the
people. A quarter of the Cambodian population was slaughtered.

Perhaps this dad's father was there, like many fathers of his
generation -- the reason so few 50, 60, and 70 year old men are found
in Cambodia. Perhaps his father wore glasses or had other apparent
markings of intelligence; if so, he would have been marched to one of
the 350 killing fields. If he lived in a village outside the
capital, he may have survived; Pol Pot's reach extended there slowly
and controlled it briefly. If the father had a simpler life, he may
not have been marked for the killing fields. In either case, his
impact on the upbringing of his son - the man who sits next to me -
was so different from the impact that the father on this bus has on
the child curled up snoozing next to me.

And what contrast the trendy girl presents! So geographically
proximate to, and yet so far removed from, the poverty of the floating
villages that hug the Tonle Sap river. So generationally proximate,
and yet so indifferent to, the near-extermination of her people some
30 years ago. Her clothes, probably bought at 5-10% of their American
price in Cambodian markets, announce, perhaps form, her identity.
Nobody on the bus is dressed like her. The tourists on this bus may
dress with her level of style in New York or London; here, they donned
trekking backpacks and North Face garb.

The trendy girl and the family interact very little. The girl is lost
in the music coming from her music player, perhaps a knockoff iPod.
The father is reading the paper; the mother is fretting about the son,
straightening him each time he threatens to fall off the seat in his
slumber.

I wonder about their son. He sleeps now, his stomach full of bottled
water, crickets, and peanuts. I wonder if he will become a man who
forgets and is forgotten by the communist revolution of the Khmer
Rouge. What will it mean to him when he is 30 years old that his
grandfather's generation was nearly wiped? How will he connect the
now-ruling People's Party in Cambodia to the Pol Pot regime, to the
failed experiment of forced eradication of class? Will he value
intelligence? Books? Democracy?

In Phnom, my hostel buddies and I sip beers at a pub. A young girl
approaches with a cart of books. Can you read, my friend asks. Just
the titles. What about in Khmer? Sort of. Would you like to learn
to read English? Yes! Buy my book, send me to school! This is a
well-rehearsed phrase we've heard from several kids in Cambodia. A
friend buys Chandler's history of Cambodia. The money, the girl says,
will go to her mother. The profit she makes will go toward more
books, toward food for the family. Little will be left -- too little
for schooling. But perhaps not. Perhaps the girl will take interest
in her wares and learn to read them, rather than taking interest in
the knockoff Gucci and DG clothes in the markets. Perhaps the father
on this bus, mouthing English words in the Cambodian newspaper, will
read the paper to his son, teach him to read, send him to one of the
international schools here. Perhaps together they can help undo the
systematic elimination of intelligence that occurred in Cambodia just
three decades ago. I have hope.

Siem Reap

Siem Reap, a Cambodian town just north of the Tonle Sap river that exists only to support tourism to the nearby Angkor Wat, offered me incredible lessons in backpacking. My host, owner of the Two Dragons hostel, is one of the expatriates in Siem Reap, and one of the few Americans expats here. Most other expats are French, a bizarre aftereffect of French colonialism. (Another aftereffect is the delicious butter and lemongrass flavors of French-infused Khmer food.)

The effects of the US recession have been felt strongly here in Siem Reap. American tourism sustains much of the economy of the town and the neighboring Angkor Wat. Decline in this tourism has been only slightly offset by increasing tourism from rapidly developing Asian countries and by tourists from European countries with favorable exchange rates. Most tourists that I have seen came from Korea,
China, Germany, and the UK. Other tourists who I've met were an older couple from Perth in Australia and a Italian girl studying in Cambodia. Hostels run by Cambodians are also owned by them, and have been compensated by putting off repairs and hiring more family members. Foreigners cannot own land in Cambodia, so hostels owned by expats sit on land rented from Cambodians; they have suffered more. Two hostels shut here in the past five months; many others have been strapped for cash.

Hostel rating sites seem to dictate the hostel market here. My hostel owner tells me that "he knows for a fact" that the hostel owner across the street pays an English-speaking person to write favorable reviews of his hostel on Tripadvisor.com. A trend common in Vietnam, he says, is writing bad reviews for competing hostels. Websites like Yelp, Amazon, and eBay have addressed this problem by letting reviewers rate each other, rate other reviews, and promoting frequent and quality reviewers. I guess this trend hasn't caught among websites for hostels.

A floating community


Kampong Phluk, Tonle Sap River, Cambodia, taken August 2010.


As the earth turns closer toward the sun, the ice caps of the Himalayan peaks melt and icy water trickles from the mountains into streams which turn into tributaries to the Mekong River. The meek Mekong awakens, bulges, and its now-mighty current hits the Tonle Sap Lake full force; the lake rises, and with it rise the floating houses, boats, and livelihoods of the Kampong Phluk community.  And the men fish.  And the children swim to class, to meet their friends, and home.  And the women patch the houses.  And the earth turns again.

A documentary on the Khmer Rouge

A new documentary has been made about Pol Pot's communist regime that wiped a quarter of Cambodians, and much Cambodian culture, just 30 years ago.

Enemies of the People. 2010.  Directed and produced by Teth Sambath and Briton Rob Lemkin.

Miranda Leitsinger, "Filmmaker tracks Khmer Rouge killers to learn the truth," CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/07/25/cambodia.khmer.rouge.filmmaker/index.html


Amok in Siem Reap

Amok, Angkor Palm Restaurant, Siem Reap, Cambodia, taken July 2010.

Amok, baked fish in banana leaf, is the most popular dish in this trendy Seam Reap restaurant.  It has been featured on Cambodian TV, lauded in my Lonely Planet guide, and probably reviewed online extensively.  I can't help but feel that Khmer cuisine contains overtones of the French kitchen that was introduced to Cambodia during the 100-year-long French occupation.

Home away from home

Ironically, Backpacker's District on Khao San Road has become one of the top attractions for tourists in Bangkok.  For one, many visitors are likely to stay there.  Khao San has, by my estimate, about 100 hostels.  But these hostels come with the added price premium of being located in the Backpacker's District.  Frugal travelers, travelers "in the know," and worn travelers who scorn touristy areas shun Khao San and stay elsewhere.  Yet nearly all, I am told, venture there at least once during their trip, if only to gape at the bleary-eyed Westerners.


For me, Khao San was an attractive introductory course in Bangkok.  Here, and nowhere else, street foods are occasionally labeled in English, which allowed me to get a sense of what I was ordering -- a sense largely missing from looking at the item's color and shape.  Vendors catering to all Western tastes cram into the short street, and spill over into neighboring streets.  So a short walk introduced me to all kinds of massages, stores, vendors, and, through the travel agencies, events and sights that I later bargained for away from Khao San.

Brits, people speaking German and Americans are the predominant species in Khao San's ecosystem.  Brits are mostly rising college juniors on summer vacation after a nearly ubiquitous junior-year internship.  The German-speakers I saw have always been in families or large groups.  The Americans seem scarce, or at least don't announce themselves the way Americans traveling through Europe do

A bargain

Yesterday at the night market I got a belt in return for $5 USD and my own belt.  I wonder how much that hawker will sell my belt for.  It's worn, and perhaps that gives it the rustic feel some travelers expect in the goods they buy in Thailand.  It's also about to fall apart -- another aspect of wares bought in Thailand that travelers do, or should, expect.  But the belt I bought definitely won't fall apart any time soon.  Definitely.

An interesting scam

Today I encountered one of the more interesting scams that tuk tuk drivers run in Bangkok.  A guy is crossing a street intersection with me as I head to the temple complex across the street.  He asks me if I'm going to the temple.  I confirm.  He tells me that the temple is closed until 3pm because the monks are praying.  So far this is a typical Bangkok scam - he is about to tell me to visit a silk or fabric factory while I wait for the temple to re-open.  He asks to see my map.  Here we go.  But instead, he offers me a 3-point route:  one buddha statue, a silk emporium, another buddha statue, then back to the temple complex area -- all for $2 USD!  The scam works for them because the tuk tuk drivers get commission from the "silk emporium" for bringing foreigners there.  But the scam also works for me, because I am not obligated to stay at the emporium long, and end up paying for about 3 hours of getting driven around for 2 bucks.

Fight to Hong Kong

The American Airlines flight operated by Cathay Pacific from San Francisco to Hong Kong runs on the Boeing 747-400, which I estimate seats 1,000 people.  Most of the passengers are Chinese, given the flights destination. About 1 in 10 is Caucasian.


The best line from my trans-Pacific flight comes from the movie "The Ghost Writer" that I watched on the plane: "I know of a reporter on the Guardian who uses the gym!"  One innovation of their entertainment system I have not seen elsewhere is that this one calculates the duration of the film you're watching and, if it exceeds the amount of time you'll be on the plane, asks you whether you want to proceed.  A small but useful update.

The New York Times special report on Afghanistan

The New York Times released an fascinating and incisive analysis of the myriad pages of classified information that it, along with two other newspapers, was granted access to by the website WikiLeaks.  I think this analysis clearly shows that American involvement in Afghanistan is not going as well as American military and political leadership wishes, and not as well as it portrays those efforts to the American public.  I cannot help but feel that the lack of adequate governance in Afghanistan, especially relative to the presence of strong governance in Iraq, plays a key role in stifling our efforts to rein in corruption, defeat the Taliban, and strengthen Afghani military and political institutions.  Afghanistan has more territory than Iraq, fewer people, is less economically developed; its political institutions are less centralized and more corrupt.  The success of our efforts there, it seems, rests on America's ability to strengthen political institutions so that Afghanis have no need to turn to the Taliban to resolve their political or territorial or other claims, and strengthening military and para-military entities such as the police force so that they can defend their territory against invasion attempts by Taliban troops.  The strengthening of political institutions sounds like a long process that requires financial and military commitment from the United States over a very long period of time.  The Afghanistan war has already taken 10 years.  I have doubts that America can maintain the level of investment needed in Afghanistan to build the political and military institutions in the face of disruptive Taliban forces and the recently-revealed extensive involvement by Pakistani intelligence.  In light of these difficulties, perhaps American goals in Afghanistan should be curtailed to simply be the creation of a central Afghanistan government free of Taliban personnel.  And that increasingly sounds like a government that has cut a deal with the Taliban of some Taliban governance or power in return for non-agression.

The beginning of my trip to Asia

I have decided to blog my trip throughout Asia.  Today is the first leg of that trip.  I am flying from Boston to San Francisco and spending the day seeing friends and finishing last-minute planning.  From there I fly directly to Bangkok, where I will spend three days.

For this trip -- the longest amount of travel I've done -- I started with an exhaustive packing list.  Lonely Planet recommends packing a multi-function knife, bug spray, umbrella.  After some thought and consultation with friends who traveled to the Mekong region, I decided to pack light and buy most supplies after I land and as I travel through Asia.  The one crucial item I chose to buy in the US and bring abroad: duck tape.

The Malachite King


Photo taken by Michael B. in February 2010 at the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City.

This malachite costume of a mask, necklace, arm bands, and rings was created for one of the ancient kings in the area of Mexico.  The king was buried in a sarcophagus, displayed next to this costume, the dimensions of which were so large, and its weight so heavy, that instead of creating the sarcophagus in a workshop and then bringing it into the tomb, craftsmen had to construct the entire thing within the tomb, carving it out of rock they found there. 

Trip to Asia

I have an exciting trip to east Asia planned for this August.  I am flying from Boston to San Francisco to visit friends there, then to Bangkok, Angkor Wat, Phnom Penh, Saigon, Hanoi, Beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai, and finally home to Boston.  Orientation for my graduate school program starts on August 24; my plane lands in Boston at 1:30 pm on Aug. 23.

I plan to spend about two non-travel days in each city in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and then about three or four non-travel days in cities in China.  In Cambodia, I will follow the typical tourist route of visiting the temples at Angkor Wat; in Vietnam, I am deciding between the train from Saigon to Hanoi and the plane.  The plane is pricier and faster, while the train affords better scenery and costs less.

The Docks in Accra


Fishermen leaving the docks in Accra, Ghana. Personal photograph by Michael. 19 May 2008.

The docks were buzzing with activity when we arrived there around six a.m. Fishmongers were readying their tents. Fishermen--all men--were cleaning their boats and pushing them out to sea. Soon they would return and the women would start their work. They would relieve the men of their morning catch and proceed to scale and fry the fish on their charred makeshift grills.

One man stood out in particular. He was taller and larger than the others, and the rest. Perhaps he was a Lord of the Docks, doling out fish and responsibilities. Or perhaps he was a drug dealer. There were several men wandering the docks who offered us to get high.

The entire morning made for a wonderful sociological experience. Somehow, everything seemed to fit -- parts of a complex mechanism that hummed along just fine without anybody's help. The men worked in tandem. The women picked up baskets of fish, balanced them on their heads, and started on their long treks to the villages. The kids would chase stray dogs in and out of rickety huts set up along the shore. Stacks of narrow, charred smoke from the grills wove themselves into the fresh air. It was a sight no picture could fully capture.

Witty Lampposts


Israeli lamppost at Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Personal photograph by Michael. 14 October 2006.

The Israeli sculptor Frank Meisler was commissioned by the Israeli Ambassador to the UK to create the bronze sculptures of Bottom and Topol mounted on the Stratford lamppost pictured above. I remember visiting Meisler's shop-cum-museum off a humble street in Jaffa in Israel. His most ubiquitous work is the Jerusalem Sphere, below.  He gifted a modified version of the sphere to then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.  Meisler turned his incredible imagination toward a craft that has elevated the Polish-born sculptor to the honor of the best Israeli sculptor. I am, frankly, amazed that there is no English Wikipedia page for Meisler. I was able to find one in German and another in Russian. No English page exists. 



Sources
1. Public sculpture of Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull

Stone of the Sun





Mexica Sun Stone at the Museo National de Anthropologia, Mexico City. Personal photograph. 22 November 2009. 

This stone was discovered on December 17, 1790 under the Zocalo, Mexico City's main square, just several miles away from its current residence at the National Anthropology Museum. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the stone weighs 25 tons and spans 12 feet in diameter. The stone was originally believed to be an Aztec calendar because it contains references to dates and seasons. The museum, however, describes the stone as an unfinished sacrificial altar of the Mexicas, the immediate predecessors of modern Mexicans. By that interpretation, the altar, now hung vertically, was intended to lie flat on the ground for sacrifice.