Last night a man barged into our conversation as we drank spiced milk at a corner stand. No "Hello", no "Excuse me" - he jumped straight to, "Which country?" (as in..."are you from?") Sometimes it's tough to maintain patience. Sometimes simple courtesy can be a stretch. Reflexively, the corners of my mouth stretched back into a tight grin and my eyes rolled. Guys like this seek any engagement they can scrounge to use as an "in" to sell you something. Usually, the less they have to offer, the more willing they are for any entree. They often sidle in close, ignoring boundaries of personal space that Americans take so much for granted that you don't even know where they lie...until someone crosses them. My hand instinctively goes for my money pocket when I sense it. This guy had stepped over the line. Before I had a chance to think about what was coming out of my mouth, he was backpedaling, "Why you is angry with me?" Tami and I both hesitated and she opened with an explanation of the protocol of public interaction.
He had us.
So...instead of him working through the usual litany of, "How long you are in India?"...."What is your profession?"..."What is your good name?"....etc; he was perfectly happy to learn about how Americans don't like to be rudely interrupted mid-conversation. He knew that was just a different path to get to his (and our) inevitable destination: he had a rickshaw and wanted to know if he could drive us around the following day.
A blind person could see it coming. As I did, I could only shake my head with the same tight grin and endeavor to conclude our discourse. Still sticking to the standard script, he tried to salvage some dignity by thrusting his hand toward my stomach. (Indian men, for whatever reason, feel compelled to want to shake the hands of foreign visitors. A day rarely passes where a hand doesn't unexpectedly jab out at me as I walk down the street. After you've spent enough time here, you'll understand why I always try to avoid the handshake. Sometimes, though, that hand comes in close enough that you reach out purely out of self-defense.) That's pretty much where I was with our friend on the milk corner. So I grasped his hand....and I noticed two things one right after the other. His hand was unnaturally soft, like a woman's. I quickly glanced down and saw not one but two small thumbs resting on the back of my hand right at the base of my index finger. Amazingly, both nails were filed into the typical, long, rounded "v" common to male Indian digits. With that, he turned and disappeared into the crowds and traffic, no rickshaw to be seen.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Back In India
We've been back in India for about ten days. For this being my third visit, I'm flabbergasted by how tough it is to get accustomed to being here yet again. The stenches are impossible to ignore. I keep finding myself getting angry about open sewers or curbs that reek of urine. The Indians have had years...decades, if not centuries now to deal with the filth. But it doesn't seem to change. I can only speak from the experience of my past visits - the first just over fourteen years ago. It has not gotten any better. As other countries "progress" economically, they build better things. For better or worse, China scraps out old, barely functional neighborhoods or roads or buildings and they replace them with cleaner, more comfortable, higher capacity upgrades. As the Indian economy grows, they just build more and more of the same ill conceived junk. Yes...the odd corporation builds a modern, high-tech campus on a remote greenfield site; the few wealthy families build extravagant, walled villas on farmland outside the cities or they stuff more and more brand new, big SUV's . . . on the same crumbling and constricted roads. Otherwise, the whole place is just as annoying and difficult to negotiate as ever. Either they don't want day to day life to get any easier or they just don't know that it can be better. It certainly is hard to believe anyone would choose to live this way.
Last night, we moved into a guest house and the sheets were so dirty we washed them ourselves. (Not the first time.) That was a perfect capper to our day-long odyssey from Chidambarum. Our departure from there began with the obese, toothless, domineering manager screaming at me to wait until his irritating boy flunky inspected our grimy, mosquito-ridden room to see of we'd harmed anything. Yeah, right....
His controlling pushiness was in keeping with his behavior when we checked in the prior afternoon. Then, he asked if I had any pens like the one he'd given me to sign the register with. It wasn't enough that he'd pointed to one of our small bags, was told it contained food then allowed his flunky to hector us mercilessly for part of our lunch. Now he wanted pens from me? He and the boy were so spookily persistent that Tami and I went to unprecedented lengths to try to protect our belongings while we were away from the room. In two (+) years on the road, I don't remember taking such measures to make theft difficult for potential pilferers. I lifted the backpacks onto a high concrete ledge on one side of the room then tied them in a web of cord. Before we left, we took a photo with a digicam as a reference to see if they had been tampered with. Traveling with peace of mind, eh?
So, as I tossed the room key on his counter and turned to walk down the stairs, his protestations grew from his customary bark to a literal scream. I thought, "what the hell???" Yeah...we scratched paint on his precious, rickety chair or left (yet one more) stain on his sickening walls. "Bye, bye loser." Moments such as this can constitute the occasional satisfying triumph of traveling in India. He and his staff had done plenty to bully us and, for whatever reason, he felt he had to push us around one last time before we left. (Yes, we could have not checked in at all but the psycho behavior didn't start until after we handed over our cash.) Situations like this are exactly what is meant when people say traveling in India is tough. Being here can feel like a never-ending battle not to get screwed or belittled.
All the way to the train station I kept glancing over my shoulder to see if any of his minions were following in pursuit. We submerged into the hubbub of the bus station and I celebrated with a tea. Several buses a day supposedly run the 70 kilometers (42mi) from Chidambarum to Pondicherry so we thought our transit was simply a matter of getting on, turning on our IPods and enjoying the ride. Not hardly.
Although there were many buses, almost none had their destinations written in English. (Tamil script looks like elf writing to our eyes.) We had to ask repeatedly, "Pondicherry?" This being India, whenever a bus pulled into the lot, its doors were immediately mobbed with scores of riders fighting to board. With our 50(+) lb. packs, we never stood a chance. Even more disheartening, the couple times we were able to get on a bus we thought was going our way, the driver or conducter would shoo us back off - ostensibly either because the bus was not in fact going to Pondicherry or because it wasn't leaving for a long time - both lies. One time I asked a driver if the bus was going to Madurai. He said, "No, Pondicherry." I told him that was great, we were going to Pondi. He immediately backtracked and said I couldn't board because the bus wasn't leaving until 12:30 and waved me off to find a different one. A short while later I noticed people boarding the same bus and taking seats. We got on but the conductor this time blocked the way and said the bus wasn't going until 1:00. I said I didn't care but he still wouldn't let us on. The real reason for that was our big backpacks. Every single bus gets absolutely stuffed with humans and our packs represent one more headache for workers whose jobs, from all appearances, offer litter more than an unmitigated stream of headaches.
That's their problem, though. Our problem was to get the hell out of Chidambarum. After a solid hour and a half and scores of buses coming and going, we were finally guided onto a coach by two students. Before the conductor saw us, we wedged our packs and ourselves into a back bench (there are no luggage areas on these buses). As we paid (for three seats) we were informed that the bus was turning west 20km short of Pondi in the junction town of Cuddalore. We'd have to undertake this process again there. Awesome.
Luckily, Cuddalore has many more buses continuing to Pondi so the crush of humanity was more manageable. We quickly found a bus and seats ... then we waited for the bus to fill. For a good 45 minutes in the midday heat we waited until every square inch of standing room was packed. You can learn new meanings to words like thirst and claustrophobia traveling in India.
Without any further complications, we arrived in Pondicherry and prepared to exit the bus....or so we supposed. Because we had our packs, we thought it was best to wait until the other passengers fought their ways out the doors. Our hesitation backfired, though. Before we could step down, the throngs below were heaving to get on so they could get a seat. It was ridiculous. Even though it was obvious that we needed to get off, no one would stop pushing us. I had no choice but to push back...and gravity was on my side. I'm describing human interaction that is void of all courtesy - just a notch below being dangerous. It was like this during my first visit to India and it's still like that today.
If that wasn't bad enough, the next instant gifted us with another of India's charms. I heard Tami yell and turned in time to see her whack a man with one of her small bags. I didn't have to guess why. As soon as she told me he groped her, I gave him a solid stiff-arm in the back. That, or nothing I yelled could get him to turn around. He obviously knew exactly what he did and was too embarrassed to face confrontation in front of dozens of Indian men and women.
With our adrenaline high, we set out looking for a room. It's festival (holiday) time in the state of Tamil Nadu right now and rooms can be hard to come by. At the best of times getting a passable room in India can be frustrating but right now it can make your hair a shade grayer. We dropped the packs in front of a restaurant and Tami waited while I went looking. Out of fifteen guest houses I saw two rooms that would make a prisoner of war cringe and one that just might have been preferable to sleeping on the filthy sidewalk. Everything else was full. We finally gave up and took a rickshaw into the center of town to search there. After a few more strikeouts we found the place where we are now. It ain't great but at least the sheets are clean.
More later.
Last night, we moved into a guest house and the sheets were so dirty we washed them ourselves. (Not the first time.) That was a perfect capper to our day-long odyssey from Chidambarum. Our departure from there began with the obese, toothless, domineering manager screaming at me to wait until his irritating boy flunky inspected our grimy, mosquito-ridden room to see of we'd harmed anything. Yeah, right....
His controlling pushiness was in keeping with his behavior when we checked in the prior afternoon. Then, he asked if I had any pens like the one he'd given me to sign the register with. It wasn't enough that he'd pointed to one of our small bags, was told it contained food then allowed his flunky to hector us mercilessly for part of our lunch. Now he wanted pens from me? He and the boy were so spookily persistent that Tami and I went to unprecedented lengths to try to protect our belongings while we were away from the room. In two (+) years on the road, I don't remember taking such measures to make theft difficult for potential pilferers. I lifted the backpacks onto a high concrete ledge on one side of the room then tied them in a web of cord. Before we left, we took a photo with a digicam as a reference to see if they had been tampered with. Traveling with peace of mind, eh?
So, as I tossed the room key on his counter and turned to walk down the stairs, his protestations grew from his customary bark to a literal scream. I thought, "what the hell???" Yeah...we scratched paint on his precious, rickety chair or left (yet one more) stain on his sickening walls. "Bye, bye loser." Moments such as this can constitute the occasional satisfying triumph of traveling in India. He and his staff had done plenty to bully us and, for whatever reason, he felt he had to push us around one last time before we left. (Yes, we could have not checked in at all but the psycho behavior didn't start until after we handed over our cash.) Situations like this are exactly what is meant when people say traveling in India is tough. Being here can feel like a never-ending battle not to get screwed or belittled.
All the way to the train station I kept glancing over my shoulder to see if any of his minions were following in pursuit. We submerged into the hubbub of the bus station and I celebrated with a tea. Several buses a day supposedly run the 70 kilometers (42mi) from Chidambarum to Pondicherry so we thought our transit was simply a matter of getting on, turning on our IPods and enjoying the ride. Not hardly.
Although there were many buses, almost none had their destinations written in English. (Tamil script looks like elf writing to our eyes.) We had to ask repeatedly, "Pondicherry?" This being India, whenever a bus pulled into the lot, its doors were immediately mobbed with scores of riders fighting to board. With our 50(+) lb. packs, we never stood a chance. Even more disheartening, the couple times we were able to get on a bus we thought was going our way, the driver or conducter would shoo us back off - ostensibly either because the bus was not in fact going to Pondicherry or because it wasn't leaving for a long time - both lies. One time I asked a driver if the bus was going to Madurai. He said, "No, Pondicherry." I told him that was great, we were going to Pondi. He immediately backtracked and said I couldn't board because the bus wasn't leaving until 12:30 and waved me off to find a different one. A short while later I noticed people boarding the same bus and taking seats. We got on but the conductor this time blocked the way and said the bus wasn't going until 1:00. I said I didn't care but he still wouldn't let us on. The real reason for that was our big backpacks. Every single bus gets absolutely stuffed with humans and our packs represent one more headache for workers whose jobs, from all appearances, offer litter more than an unmitigated stream of headaches.
That's their problem, though. Our problem was to get the hell out of Chidambarum. After a solid hour and a half and scores of buses coming and going, we were finally guided onto a coach by two students. Before the conductor saw us, we wedged our packs and ourselves into a back bench (there are no luggage areas on these buses). As we paid (for three seats) we were informed that the bus was turning west 20km short of Pondi in the junction town of Cuddalore. We'd have to undertake this process again there. Awesome.
Luckily, Cuddalore has many more buses continuing to Pondi so the crush of humanity was more manageable. We quickly found a bus and seats ... then we waited for the bus to fill. For a good 45 minutes in the midday heat we waited until every square inch of standing room was packed. You can learn new meanings to words like thirst and claustrophobia traveling in India.
Without any further complications, we arrived in Pondicherry and prepared to exit the bus....or so we supposed. Because we had our packs, we thought it was best to wait until the other passengers fought their ways out the doors. Our hesitation backfired, though. Before we could step down, the throngs below were heaving to get on so they could get a seat. It was ridiculous. Even though it was obvious that we needed to get off, no one would stop pushing us. I had no choice but to push back...and gravity was on my side. I'm describing human interaction that is void of all courtesy - just a notch below being dangerous. It was like this during my first visit to India and it's still like that today.
If that wasn't bad enough, the next instant gifted us with another of India's charms. I heard Tami yell and turned in time to see her whack a man with one of her small bags. I didn't have to guess why. As soon as she told me he groped her, I gave him a solid stiff-arm in the back. That, or nothing I yelled could get him to turn around. He obviously knew exactly what he did and was too embarrassed to face confrontation in front of dozens of Indian men and women.
With our adrenaline high, we set out looking for a room. It's festival (holiday) time in the state of Tamil Nadu right now and rooms can be hard to come by. At the best of times getting a passable room in India can be frustrating but right now it can make your hair a shade grayer. We dropped the packs in front of a restaurant and Tami waited while I went looking. Out of fifteen guest houses I saw two rooms that would make a prisoner of war cringe and one that just might have been preferable to sleeping on the filthy sidewalk. Everything else was full. We finally gave up and took a rickshaw into the center of town to search there. After a few more strikeouts we found the place where we are now. It ain't great but at least the sheets are clean.
More later.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
'Bye 'Bye Cambodia! So Long Southeast Asia!
Two lovely sisters and one long-armed photographer in Angkor Borei, CambodiaA while back, a friend e-mailed that it seemed we'd really "gotten rooted" in this part of the world. It's true, we've been in the countries of what is referred to as SE Asia since late December 2006 - over a year. My friend sent that e-mail back in June. At the time and after, I worried that we may have stayed in this area too long. We should have been out covering more diverse ground. We should have picked a less developed region. Yada, yada, yada... Now that our time here is coming to an end, though, I'm very happy we landed where we did.
I think we've gone slowly enough and stayed long enough to say we got a fair taste of SE Asia. And on reflection, if you're going to get rooted someplace on this planet, SE Asia isn't a bad place at all to have that happen. My biggest worry was that this area has seen budget travelers for over thirty years - lots of travelers. Even so, we still found plenty of interesting and inspiring things to do.
I never doubted that lingering somewhere was going to get into my heart. I just had no clear preconception of how that would manifest itself in my feelings. Now, during the last days in this region, feelings of sadness and satisfaction come strongly. We could have landed anywhere. For a number of reasons, we could easily have not stopped. We did, though, and Southeast Asia has, despite my initial misgivings, turned out to have been an excellent choice.
See for yourself...
Adaptation on the streets of Bangkok
Curious beetle buyers in Mae Sot, Thailand
Mobile brush and broom vendor in Bangkok
Me posing for scale at the base of the second level of Angkor Wat in Cambodia
A victorious (and very happy) duck owner after a prolonged and successful pursuit - Hue, Vietnam
Filtered light at the pagoda of the Emerald Buddha, Saigon
An almost empty beach on Quan Lan Island - Bai Tu Long Bay, Vietnam
Tami entwined in the roots of an ancient tree and an ancient temple - Preah Khan (Angkor)
Tami above Bai Tu Long Bay - Vietnam
Tami at a cool waterfall - Bac Ma Nat. Park Vietnam
Salt harvesting in Doc Let Vietnam
Some tough local girls in Don Det, Laos
Saigon traffic!
A family that rides together.... - outside Phnom Penh
Pigs in a basket - Near Ninh Binh, Vietnam
This noodle-laden bike couldn't quite make it - Cu Da, Vietnam
The fleet and the morning haul - Mui Ne, Vietnam
Monsoon dog wash in Phnom Penh
Huge, boom fishing contraption - Tonle Sap, Cambodia
Banana-laden bike - outside Phnom PenhIn twelve hours, we'll be back in India. What a ride that's going to be. What a ride this has been.
Home can be where you make it
As Tami and I planned our break from the career/life path that we'd been on, we discussed a ton of different reasons why wanted to leave our home in San Francisco. It didn't take long for a short list to develop. I don't know if I've gone back and articulated those objectives but, now that I look back, we've been able to "check" many off the to-do list.We wanted to enjoy some warm weather. Check.
Night market scene near our house
We wanted to get out of a 9-5...or, more accurately...an 8-6 schedule. Instead of clocks and calendars dictating how we used our time, we wanted the rising and setting sun or the seasons to dictate. Check.
We wanted to see if we could let go of some of the stress we were feeling. Check.
We wanted to spend time outdoors. Check.
We wanted to use our bodies i.e. trekking, riding bikes, swimming, etc. Check.
We wanted to share some of our experiences on the road with friends from home. Check.
We wanted to try different foods and cuisines. Check.
I'd traveled outside the US a fair amount before this trip and enjoyed all the above experiences to one degree or another. There was one thing I'd never done before, though, and that goal topped my list. I wanted to live somewhere for awhile - call some foreign city or town or village, "home". As we prepare to depart Southeast Asia, I am happy to say that we have been able to enjoy a brief version of that experience now, as well.
Neon sign for the market where we shopped in Phnom Penh.Our goal in "living" someplace, meant that we wanted to get to know it better than you would if you were just passing through. We wanted to work. Originally, we had hopes of opening a restaurant or some other business. For a variety of reasons, we got cold feet on that one. The next logical step was to try to contribute something helpful to the place where we settled. On that note, we got extremely lucky with our positions with Kiva and Maxima. Not only did we find work, but the work was fascinating and the people we worked with were so gracious and professional that I'll do well to try to match their examples. I feel very fortunate that I leave Cambodia calling many of them friends.
Some of the Maxima staff at the wedding of one of their colleagues.
Wedding procession at the same wedding.We wanted to live someplace other than a hotel. In this case, we were also very lucky. We looked at several places but fell in love with a third-floor flat in a family's house. We had a big, tiled terrace in front, a great roof deck...and the thing we wanted most - a kitchen. Tami and I will be working off the extra pounds for a few months. :)
Thanksgiving crew on our roof at sundown.
We hoped get to know people - locals and/or expatriates. Cambodia is a great place for both. I sound like a broken record going on about how nice the Cambodians are but that's the reality. Come and check it out for yourself. Lots of interesting non-Cambodians have settled there, as well. One nice ending story is that, Bari (second from right in the above photo) took over our apartment. We had some very good times with him and were super-happy to pass on such a groovy pad to someone we knew. Funny footnote: Bari's originally a Michigander and was one of the founders of a vegetarian restaurant I worked at in Ann Arbor back in the late '80's. Now he's making a home in Phnom Penh working with local folks out on Koh Dach, a nearby island in the Mekong River.
So, now we move on - sad to go but very happy we had this opportunity. If you're curious at all if you can do it, have no fear. It's a great experience. Somehow I don't think this is our last time, either.
Fruit shake vendor at the night market near Orussey
Monday, January 07, 2008
Rough (In)Justice
The former main entrance to Sihanoukville's market - Psar LeuA few days ago we were in the town of Sihanoukville on the southern coast of Cambodia. In the middle of one night I woke up to sirens, an uncommon sound I recalled hearing only a couple times during our months in the country. The next morning our French host told us that the city's market had burned, "Zayr iss no moah mahket."
When we went by to take a look, we were speechless. We'd shopped at this market before and complained that it was scruffy, even by Cambodian standards. It was where the city shopped, though. All over Southeast Asia, people buy almost all of their food from central or district markets - sprawling covered warrens filled with stalls of produce, meat, fish, dry goods, clothes....you name it. Each stall is owned by a family and, at least in Cambodia, that stall provides the main or sole income supporting a LOT of people.
Piles of clothes smolder It's no wonder that people pored through every scrap of their burned belongings trying to salvage anything of value. I saw one woman carrying the melted remains of a fan. I assume she was going to try to pull the copper out of the motor to sell it for scrap. Very few Cambodians can afford to waste anything.
Over the subsequent few days, we heard from several different people that the local government had tried to "influence" the vendors at the market to move to a new facility. The land where the existing market stood in the center of downtown Sihanoukville had been sold for another purpose. Most of the vendors chose not to move because rents at the new market were too high. Then, after functioning in the same place for decades, the market burned entirely a few nights ago.
Not one person we talked to was surprised that the market burned. They weren't happy, but they seemed resigned because they knew they have little or no recourse. This type of eviction happens with sad regularity in Cambodia. As cities become crowded and the economy slowly grows, land formerly deemed not worth much can, over time, become coveted. Squatters, small-business people, anyone not connected to the powers-that-be are forced to move, often to places distant from their former locations.
And no, you can count insurance among the many things that these people do not have.
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