dfast

A Short Walk on the Varanasi Ghats

dfast on December 30, 2007

city of light

On the left bank of the Ganges River, the temples, palaces and stone steps (ghats) of Varanasi stretch for some 6 km. We Scindia ghat and leaning temple live at Scindia ghat, which is to the east of center. In front of our window is the leaning tower of a temple too heavy for its foundation, now picturesquely subsiding into the river. From our hotel we walk down a dark flight of steps, and as soon as we set foot on the ghats above the temple someone yells “Hello! Boat?!” It is a greeting we will hear several dozen times a day, touts trying to take us for a ride on the river. A few steps along and we are at the wood piles of Manikarnika Ghat. This is the most auspicious – and expensive – place to be cremated. Big scales weigh up the logs for each fire. We take an archway to the left, and descend almost into the yard where the bodies are burned. There are always five or six pyres on the go. I have seen this scene many hundreds of times, as have most people guru here, and there is very little overwrought emotion on display. All the same it is a peculiar place. Dogs find relief from the cold and their itches by curling up in the warm embers, and sometimes a naked holy man will bathe in the ashes of a dead fire, covering himself from head to toe as a graphic expression of the impremanence of life. We skirt the top of the burning grounds, and return to the river’s edge under the palace where our friend Pappu lives with his family. The palace has been abandonned and unkept for generations, and Pappu, a kind but down-at-the-heel Brahmin I met years ago has as squat inside. Charming as they are, the ghats are filthy and smelly, serving as a toilet for dogs, people, cows, water buffalo, and all the other creatures who have nowhere else to go. A little way along the ghat is wide enough to play cricket on, but I always wonder: who gets to fetch and clean the ball, or do they just keep bowling crap?

All sorts of activity is taking place in the river itself. Prayers are being said and ritual baths are taken, bathing in the river but primarily it is a big laundromat. The water is a turgid brown, and knowing what goes into it I recoil from even getting my sandals wet, but scores, hundreds, thousands of people are scrubbing frothy masses of clothing in the river, and while their knickers are drying they brush their teeth and lather up and kick around for a bit of a swim. Either the hospitals are filled with ulcerous cholera patients, or there is a God.

Just before we get to Dasaswamedh, the main ghat, we cross a modern viewing platform that usually has a herd of buffalo lolling about. Once on the main ghat, the first person to approach you will try to shake your hand. If your reflex is to accept it as a friendly gesture, your hand will be held and kneaded while the pitch is made for a head massage “10 rupees only!” If you accept that, you will be led to a wooden platform, and the massage will proceed to the shoulders, arms, legs…as far and as long as you let it until you think, hmmm, this is a good deal for 10 rupees. And indeed, when the price comes up it is more like 400 rp…

Usually we leave the ghats at this point, and walk up past the barbers, bead sellers and beggars, but today, having finished washing the body before cremation our business, we decide to keep going. Right beside the main ghat, the Dharbhanga and the Maharana have some beautiful palaces, but from there things decend out of the tourist-pretty very quickly. The Harischandra ghat and it’s environs look more like the water buffalo bathing ghat. This is another cremation ground, however, the poor relative of the Manikarnika. There is no fancy temple here, just a mud flat where the bodies are washed and burned surrounded by wallowing livestock. Beside it, the Dandi Ghat has attracted some pretty strange tenants. There are holy men, sadhus, all over the city, and dreadlocks, ashes, face-paint, robes or lack of them, pet snakes, drums, skewered lips, hash-filled chillus don’t usually attract my attention, especially as there is often a pitch for money involved. So walking by the makeshift tent I barely glance in, but Katheryn says: they’ve got a human skull!. I know it’s bad manners, and I don’t usually take pictures of people with human skulls ritual skull without asking, but this time I sneak one, and get out of there quick. This is India, and there are no solitary occurances, and a few yards on the sadhus have FOUR skulls on a mat in front of them. This time I ask for a photo, and the answer is no.

At last we come to Assi Ghat, and the handsome golden sandstone steps we have been following dissolve into mud flats with boat builders and shanties squatting on them. Assi has a little of the feeling of Varanasi 20 years ago, at least from a backpackers’ view. Here, it is the foreigners who have dreadlocks and wear white robes, and when they have the munchies eat pizza at the shady local hangout. We join them for a bit, for a lemon soda, and then go down to the river to negotiate with the first “Hello! Boat?!” that we hear. We give the requisite snort at the first price: No, no, Dasaswamedh, not Delhi! Katheryn then gets a rise out of some kids soaping up in the water. What is your name? they call, and she responds: He’s James Bond! And I add: She’s Karina Kapoor! as some Bollywood music sets Katheryn off miming the dance moves of the popular diva.
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Into India

dfast on December 13, 2007

At the border

This isn’t the Pokhara of the tourist brochures. The central bus stand is a rutted dirt field where old heaps of buses belch and roar. Corrugated shanties surround it so completely that when I came to buy a ticket yesterday, even though I was was standing directly across the street, I could only infer it was there from the racket and hustle that defines such places. Touts pull at us as soon as we step out of the taxi – they think they can cram us into a bus that has already left the station, charge an un-ticketed rate and pocket the difference. If you know the system you can actually get a better price that way, which is why the bus we get on inside the compound is empty. Anyway, playing by the rules secures us the 2 front seats. Pokhara bus stand

Our bus fills quickly outside the station, and we begin a day of hairpin corners on a contour-hugging road out of the front ranges. It’s a spectacular trip, and the average speed of 20 km/hr keeps the tight spots where we meet other vehicles from being too nerve-wracking. As soon as we are spit out onto the plains at Butwal, after a pin-ball journey, the ticket guy tells us there is a mechanical problem, and we can’t make it the next (flat) 35 km to our destination. The follow-up bus attacks the remaining distance with ferocious intent; mercifully, since our new seats leave me groaning every time we hit a bump.

There is still a bit of soupy daylight left when we get off in Saunali. We are about 100 m from India. This is a one-street town, but that street has to absorb virtually all of the chaos that passes between Nepal and its giant nieghbour. The lorry traffic is so heavy and congested that the drivers blast away on their horns as if that alone mght move the deadlock in front of them. The first hotel I try is at least symbolically set back from the road. I think it might offer some barrier to the cacophony. It is full. I ask to see the best rooms in the next two, and the street-facing, grotty corridors, rotting linoleum, mosquito filled horrors are too depressing to even pretend are options. Back on the drag. Dogs sleep on piles of garbage. Every tin-roofed shack is selling smuggled Indian booze. And then I spot it, gleaming like a vision of purity: the Hotel Prakash and Prakash. It is away from the road. The lobby is clean. Do you have a room, I roll my hand in the gesture and use the vernacular, Backside? We have the best room, sir, and I will give you for non-AC price. Even though I know I will take it as soon as I see it, I still knock the price down a bit, and we have ourselves a haven in this horrible little place.

The next morning we leave our soft mattress, and Nepal, with heavy hearts. May good things come to that wonderful land.
. casual customs
Crossing the border into India lacks much of the formality and scrutiny of most international frontiers. Since Nepali and Indian nationals don’t need travel documents, they simply stroll back and forth. For the handful of foreigners there is a small immigration post set in a row of shops and easily missed. After our passports are stamped it is a couple hundred meters to the bus stand, where Katheryn takes up the story.

Oh, Sweet Nothing

It isn’t without trepidation that I leave our sweet mountain ex-kingdom for MutherIndia. Normally I take stock of myself, reviewing a few bits of advice from the past, such as : don’t look at men; don’t talk to men; don’t look at beggars; don’t look at touts; actually by and large keep my head down and elbows at the ready. No one is butting in front of me. Well not as many people.

One of the worst, soul crushing burdens of being in this country is the endurance of the volume of noise. Indians not only seem oblivious to it, they actually seem to like it. Yelling, banging, honking, barking, screeching brakes, kids crying, temple bells, loud speakers, Bollywood music blaring out from stalls… And that’s just in the first 200 m walking to the bus.

Once aboard, I submit to the mp3 generation and plug in. I caution, you cannot do this on the street – to block out all of the audio warnings would be too dangerous. But a long distance bus the tape deck playing at full throttle (if you’re lucky) or a violent video (if you’re not,) is just beyond the endurable exhaustion you suffer on top of the rattling tin box and the blaring horn. So, I plug in for the ride from the border to Gorakhpur. We actually have a decent highway and are making 40-50 km/hr. Naturally it is too good to last. yellow brick road We turn off the highway and find ourselves on an elevated, single lane brick track, more like a drainage dyke than a road, running through the countryside. With rice paddies on each side we bump along in a cloud of dust about 10 feet above the fields. Ironically, the bricks in the road we are following are yellow.
As you could predict, after a time on a single track with no place to turn or pass, something will come towards you. In this case it’s a tractor. We have to back up. David gets out at that point with a few others, and I ride back to the last place we could back off the road. As I alight there is a small crowd of men from the area standing about. It is feasible some of them have not seen a white woman before, or so it seems, for they all hold an intense stare on me. Not giving them the satisfaction of being a talking side-show, I let them stare while I change to my giant sunglasses and replace the headphones in my ears. Lou Reed is singing one of his old classics that goes:

And say a word, say a word for Ginger Brown
Walks with his head down to the ground
Took his shoes right off his feet
Threw the poor boy right out in the street.
And this is what he said,’
Oh sweet nothin’, she ain’t got nothin at all
Oh sweet nothing, she ain’t got nothin’ at all.’

I walk away fron the men and boys to a spot by myself. A tiny woman in a sari comes along, and I put my hands in the prayer postion and greet her with a ‘namaste’. She smiles warmly and returns my greeting in kind. We speak in our own languages , pointing to the bus and tractor, the situtation making our conversation self evident. As she walks away I notice the red painted soles of her feet. She has anklets but that’s all. She wanders down the yellow brick road, in the sun, while Lou croons on, Oh Sweet Nothing. She ain’t got nothing at all.

Tongba, Raw Yak and a ’97 Langdeoc

dfast on December 7, 2007

I am 27,000 ft above the plains of northern India. They couldn’t be flatter. Big rivers meander across them like fat pythons, leaving tracks of sandbars and abandonned ox-bow curves. I can see villages stretched along the banks, and everywhere the geometry of fields. The only places where there aren’t any signs of human impact are the flood plains themselves, reluctantly left alone because of the power of the monsoon. Earlier this year the floods hit hard; the rivers broke their banks and milions of people were displaced.

I’m sure most of the people below me, plowing fields with oxen and hoping for the best from season to season have never seen what I am looking at in the distance: the massive white peaks of the Himalayas. I don’t think that anywhere else in the world are two such different landscapes existing side by side.

Our flight path follows the chain of mountains with the legendary names: Kanchenjunga; Machchapuchare actually Langtang; Everest. Or is that one Everest? Well, it could be- it’s big, white, and in the Himalayas…

It’s only when we turn north on the approach to Kathmandu that there is any break from the relentless human-scape below us. The Indian plains dash up against the first foothills, and forests spill off their flanks. Katheryn and I have crossed this route several times on the ground, taking a day on hairpin curves what we now do in 10 minutes. Kathmandu’s airport is rapidly becoming engulfed by the sprawl of the city, and it looks like we are going to touch down amid the flat-roofed three story concrete buildings as we approach the runway.

Unlike last February, when we were cold, wet and socked in, it is now all sunshine and short-sleeve weather during the day, although it is still cold at night. We soon get down to business with Malik, our Tibetan-Muslim born-in-Nepal jeweler. After a bit of badgering he agrees to take us on a tour of his workshops. The production system here is still very old-fashioned and informal. There are metal-working, silver-working, and stone-setting “castes”. Most are from the villages, and much of the work in done there. Malik takes us to a couple of places in the vicinity of the city, although most of the workers have gone home for a few days since it is a festival time. Production is very small-scale. We go to the work-shop of Kishan, who lives with his family in a farm house outside the city. There they are making some of the beads that we buy – beautiful creations of turquoise and coral and brass. Kishan supervises the operation. In the winter there might be ten men working here. Now there are only two – the rest are back home for the harvest and the festival. They are paid by the piece, and make $200 to $300 /month, about the same as a teacher in the village, and are provided with room and board.

As a small independent business, Malik has his own problems to deal with. Ever since the deposition of the king last year, the Maoists have been flexing their power in the city. Particularly problematic now is the “youth wing”, who have taken to the fund-raising strategy of extortion. Although Malik is reticent to go into detail, it is evident from his response that he is worried. It’s enough, in fact, to make him consider leaving Kathmandu and the business his father established a generation ago. Malik is 55, although with his black hair, smooth skin and perfect teeth he could be 20 years younger. Like most Nepali he views life with acceptance and good humour. He has worked hard to provide an education for his three children, and owns his own home, which he is very proud to take us to. He doesn’t have a car, but in a small city with chronic petrol shortages, he doesn’t consider this a big concern. Malik is determined to provided us with that essential of Tibetan hospitality, yak-butter tea. Several times on the way to his place he asks if we have tried it, as if breaking us in for something. In fact the last time I had it was more than 20 years ago. It was in a shepherd’s hut high in the Himalayas, and the concoction of fermented butter, hot water and salt was so nauseating I haven’t been tempted since. Malik assures me this isn’t the same – it’s made from a package. Malik’s wife greets us, and we are made at home in the family room while she prepares the tea. I think other foreigners have tried and failed this test, as there is a hovering expectancy, a compulsion to preform this ritual even though disappointment is inevitable, as the tea is brought in. It is white and frothy, but doesn’t reek of rancid socks – my visceral memory from the last time. I raise the glass. Silence, tension. I try it. Mmm, that’s good! The relief is palpable. It tastes a bit like salty chicken soup stock, and although I wont, say, switch from coffee any time soon, my reaction was not just being polite. Encouraged by their small success, the next thing to come out are the homemade butter biscuits. No problem there, and even Katheryn, who had not made much headway with her tea beyond smiling at it, is enthusiastic. Now Malik seems prepared to take a gamble. He prefaces it with the story of his wife’s last trip to Lhasa to see her mother. She had brought back something very special, a delicacy you couldn’t get here. Raw dried yak. Sure, I said, is it smoked? No, only dried. Cured with salt? No. Tibet is very dry. And cold. OK, maybe a small piece…

The bowl of raw Yak comes out with the beaming wife. Malik, sensing a crisis, officiously sorts through the scraps. Here, this one. He proffers a piece that looks like a section of leather belt. You see, only meat, no fat. Many of the other pieces have thick gray borders around them. It is tough, like I expected; and then something marvelous happens. It becomes soft, and sweet, and literally melts in my mouth. We hope to go to Tibet next year – can I take orders for anyone?

Thamel, the area of Kathmandu where we live, is a chaotic few blocks of shops, guest houses and restaurants. One of our favorites is a little Tibetan place tucked back behind a row of shops called Gurung. It has the best tongba in town. Almost always there are locals sitting around in the dim light, on their tables flagons with metal straws sticking out of them, and a thermos of boiling water. In the flagons are a couple of cups of fermented millet, like coarse dark sand. Hot water from the thermos is poured on top, and after a few minutes it turns milky. The metal straw is pinched and perforated at one end, so that none of the grain mixture is imbibed when you take a sip. Tongba has a slightly sour, saki-ish taste, but is very mild. Hot water is continually added into the flagon, and after a litre or more, when the flavour starts to diminish, it feels much the same as having drank a beer. But on those cold Kathmandu evenings there is nothing like it. tongba!

For something a little more up-scale we head out of Thamel, to one of the world’s funniest liquor stores. The American embassy is in the kind of compound you would expect, all concrete bunkers and razor wire, across from the deposed king’s royal palace. Set into the embassy wall is a faux-tudor shop front. Inside, if you poke around and wipe the dust off the labels, are bargain treasures of French and Australian wine. Katheryn, of course, is the authority, and since the staff only know two words – “red” and “white”, she takes command, and comes up with $7 bottles of 1993 Austrailian Shiraz, and a sublime 1997 Languadoc. There is no need to suffer, even in a Himalayan ex-Kingdom.
Pokhara Nov.25 The banana trees and bamboo groves are in extreme juxtaposition to the giant craggy snow capped Annapurna range. Machchaputare peak dominates our rooftop gardenias with machchcapuchare view. The fish tail mountain is sacred, and never been summited. Mountaineers can only go within 100 meters of the top. Annapurna II and IV, David guesses, are the two other big boys in our back yard, and measure in at around the 8000 meter mark. We arrived by rather luxurious bus yesterday. Having upped our budget by 50% we can splash out on the $15 ticket. Lots of leg room, decent lunch provided, no music, didn’t take on passengers or let others alight mid-trip – and no chickens, sacks of onions or bundles of steel pipe underfoot.

But a good bus doesn’t mean good road. Our 200 km ride from Kathmandu to Pokhara takes 8 hours. The highway, dramatically cut through the terraced hills, is not too bad, really. Only a few times were we bounced right up off our seats. The roads in the city, however, are as bad as anywhere I have seen, ever. Dust, and potholes, staggering congestion and failing infrastructure; at least an hour and a half of the journey is just trying to leave the city.

As we get further away the capital the villages become more traditional. Stunning stone houses and fences, possibly centuries old hug the hillside. Drying corncobs give a picturesque detail along the glassless window frames. Beautiful as it looks, this is tough living. People eke a livelihood from two-foot-wide rice terrraces carved 1000 feet up the slope, and water has to be carried long distances from gravity fed water taps sticking out of the trees. It would be a real struggle to provide one’s basic needs.

Struggles aren’t uncommon throughout Nepal. The last few dramatic years have led to many changes including the slaughter of the royal family, the uprising when the King’s successor dissolved parliament, the laying down of arms and the official end of the insurgency by the Maoist rebels.

All this progress couldn’t continue withhout as hitch, however. Earlier this year the Moaists, who had been invited to participate in legitiate politics, walked out of parliment refusing to vote for the constistutional assembly until the monarchy was abolished and the rebublic was formed. That’s about where we stand. Jimmy Carter dropped in to see where there could be a meeting made. The Maoists have returned to there extorting ways demanding payent once again from foreign trekkers and from the locals. Though we still believe the future looks brighter, the locals we engaged with would actually go into rants and tirades about the government. One old (and maybe drunk) man in the tiniest tea shop (really, it had a 4.5 foot high ceilng) carried on and on about how communism was the only answer. Our waiter who we’ve gotten to know over the years also went crazy one night raving about the changes needed. He apologized profusley afterwards, but he couldn’t stop himself at the time.

On the day before we leave for India we take a taxi to Sarangkhot, a village on a ridge 2000 feet above lakeside Pokhara. This is where the paragliders launch from, and it provides stunning views all around. We stop at a small shop for breakfast, and have tea with an incredible vista of Machchapuchare and the Annapurnas. I don’t see the need to go the remaining few hundred metres to the top of the hill, but David is keen, so I sit in the sun and talk with the owner. She has problems. During the monsoon in August, a landslide took out the slope in front of us. Then another one directly behind took away her buffalo paddock. There isn’t much land left on the razor’s edge we sit on, which represents her life savings. To stabilize the slope with concrete she estimates will take a year’s income, and even then nothing is gauranteed. She says that there has never been a monsoon as severe as this last one, and is willing to take her chances. It seems to me, though, that she is another casualty of the bigger climate disaster we see everywhere, and more severe conditions are what we can expect.

When David returns, he has another plan: hike down the mountain to Pokhara. It looks to me like it’s a long, long way… With a kind of voodoo instinct he finds a path, and on a rough stone stair through small villages and bamboo forest we begin the big descent to India.
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Your Quick Thai Political Update

dfast on December 4, 2007

The Synopsis:
A year and a half ago the government of Taksin Shinawarta was overthrown by a bloodless military coop while he was out of the country. The military last year appointed a civilian Prime Minister, and promised elections, which didn’t materialize.

The Situation:
Up against increasing public disenchantment, elections are now due on December 23, and campaigning has begun in ernest. The 2 front-running parties are the Democrats, who opposed Taksin and are therefore more closely associated with the miltary, and the PPP. Taksin’s old party, the Thai Rak Thai, has been banned and membership in it is illegal, but the PPP is largely composed of its former officials. The Democrat’s support base is urban and southern, and the PPP’s is north-eastern and rural. Current polls suggest that the PPP is in the lead. So far there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of interest in the election, with voters feeling cynical and disenfranchised about the whole thing. The PPP especially is seen as practicing pork-barrel politics, and vote-buying in the countryside is common and accepted. Reports are that in some of the close ridings the price may be up to 1000B/vote (about $30). There is also talk that even if the PPP wins the election, the military won’t allow it to form a government.

Touchdown in Bangladesh

dfast on November 28, 2007

We left the shady streets by Rambutri Wat,Banglaphu, on the mini bus for the airport at 2 pm. We have a flight to Kathmandu thru Dhaka on GMG airlines, which will require an over night stay in Bangladesh. After last year we decided we preferred this over flying to Calcutta and going overland thru Bihar to Birganj. We all remember what happened in Birganj last time? (check ‘Escape from Birganj’ in the
archives if you missed it). At the airport we’re greeted by the news of a 2 hour delay. The airport is full of pilgrims en route to Mecca for Haj.

We are now at the Zia international airport in Dhaka. The flight briefly touched down in Chittagong where most of our flying companions, predominantly Burmese monks and nuns, alighted. The airport was so small that there wasn’t even a tractor for the luggage trolley. Two men unloaded the bags and pushed it to the terminal by hand. As we took off the flight attendant included Allah among those she wanted to thank for the flight. There was no booze offered and the non-veg meal was mutton. Descending into Dhaka was unlike most capital cities. Hardly any lights, especially compared to the endless sea of lights that is Bangkok.

Our arrival in the airport gave us little to be reassured about. The official sent to collect the transit passengers was confused that we were 9 and not 7 passengers. After a trek across the airport together, he tells me privately that he has to go secure our luggage and we are to sit a and wait for him for about 25 minutes, then he leaves. Apparently it’s my job now to herd these cats into a group. As we wait there is a lot of yelling nearby, airport personnel speaking down to their peons with contempt in their voices. It just a bunch of chest thumping. A cloud of mosquitoes is biting us. We enquire if the wine we bought at Thai duty free can be brought onto the flight tomorrow, as its getting too late to drink tonight. It is in a tamper-proof plastic bag, and our guy assures us it can.

He painstakingly records all our ticket info. It doesn’t feel like there is a system to all this, yet they do this three times a week. There is still no sign we’re going to our hotel, even though it’s 12:30 a.m. already. After more passport stuff at an immigration officer’s desk, we’re finally heading out the door, and a Scottish guy insists he needs his luggage. There’s a negotiation. ‘A half an hour’, our official says! David, speaking the sentiment of the group, says he wants to go to the hotel, and the Scot is overruled..

At long last we are on our way, joining the rusty hulks of buses and wildly decorated transit trucks on the way in from the airport. We end up at the same place as last year. It’s 1:45 a.m. Thai time; twelve hours hotel to hotel for an1.5 hour flight.
The room is actually much better then last year. Not trusting the assurances of our airport facilitator we push in the cork and enjoy the wine. There is a construction site next door and some poor sap is unloading sacks of cement until 3. In the morning we’re rushed thru a cold scramble eggs and cold toast breakfast. The Scot tells me last time he went thru a transit stay with Biman Air it was three days before he could get a flight. That’s why he tried to insist on his bags. The newspaper reports a bad cyclone is expected the next day. Luckily we’re leaving today, not just arriving: a major calamity is about to happen.

At the airport we get our hand luggage scanned, and the security guy thinks he has a bust. Pointing at one of our innocent entourage he shouts”you have a wine bottle! That is not allowed! ” She says she doesn’t even have a water bottle. He was tipped off, but got the wrong guys too late.
The cyclone will turn out to be the worst storm to hit in 20 years. Thousands are killed and thousands more will die from water borne diseases. Millions will lose everything, their houses, their crops all their possessions. They have had half the country flood this year already, twice.

Makes one feel pretty small indeed for whinging at such inconveniences as late flights and poor service.

Bangkok Revisited

dfast on November 16, 2007

The commemorative procession of royal barges was to start at 3:30 on the Chao Phraya River. Tickets for the grandstands were being sold for 800B, but we could view at a nearby park for free. I got a front-row spot by the rail by 3:00, and held it while David sat out of the sun as he didn’t have a hat on and I did. This centuries- old tradition of very long decorated barges takes place only periodically, this being the 16th time in the last 60 years.

There are about 2000 oarsmen on 52 boats (they are like long high-prowed war canoes). Normally the King would officiate from the royal barge, but he is recuperating in the hospital presently. The crown prince took the honour and was greeted by the Prime minister before boarding. Before the crowd got really thick a news crew arrived and the host asked if I was willing to be interviewed for the evening broadcast. Naturally I complied, although I hope that the viewers will be mesmerized by my wit and wardrobe, since I hadn’t done much homework on the reasons for the ceremony, which is what she was asking me about.

As the barges approached the blowing on conch shells, chanting of the rowers and the rhythmic pounding of long decorated staves on the wooden deck could be heard. It
was haunting, beautiful music that evoked an ancient time and place, and transcended the teeming metropolis around us. As the first barge came into our view we could see the oars being raised together symmetrically, almost dance like. They proceeded slowly, often stopping, holding themselves steady in the current. Some were decorated quite simply, others had incredibly gilded and ornate prows, fashioned as nine-headed nagas or mythical swans, standing 15 feet above the water. The whole procession took half an hour to pass us, on the way to the royal palace down river. Then they cross the river to Wat Arun, the Temple of the Dawn, where the Prince presents a robe to the monks. After we left I felt light and giddy, almost…cleansed. The barge procession was a beautiful re-introduction to Bangkok, but we had more earthly matters to attend to.

The following day we made our way to Bumrungrad International Hospital. I had been going through some tests in Canada and couldn’t get the conclusive answers before we left. I booked a CT scan on line. The lobby of the hospital looked like a five star hotel. Soaring ceilings, beautifully decorated, and very comforting. There was even as in-house Starbucks. The first thing that struck me was the high percentage of Muslims. Not Thais, but Arabs, many of them Saudis. Everything I saw gave me confidence about the hospital and my CT scan was done that very day. In the room where I was
observed afterwards, an American living in Moscow told me he choose this hospital to undergo a similar test, prefering to have it here rather than in the USA or Germany. I paid cash for the procedure since I could not get travel insurance after the first tests found something in Canada. With Dr.’s fee, blood test, the scan, the contrast (which I turned out to be allergic to), the medicine for my contrast allergy and the nursing fee came to a grand total of 15,169 baht. At the rate of 36.17 to the C$1 ( the highest we’ve ever seen) it was $418. My Canadian doctor thought if I had stayed in Canada a CT scan could be done in 6 weeks, but considering that she underestimated the schedule for the ultrasound by two thirds, I suspect I would have been looking at more like 2-3 months. The private clinic in Vancouver was closed for the weekend when I had all this news so I never got their price or timetable but I’ve heard it’s about $1000. When my friend Jerry was going thru cancer testing, he got fast service in San Francisco
because he had been a navy man, but when he got back to Calgary where he resided the technician said people waited 6 months for their initial scans and he was possibly
saving his life having the test done for cancer so early.

That evening Boris, our French friend, swung by our hotel to share a bottle of Burgundy especially bought for our reunion. He also considered Bumrungrad as the best hospital in Thailand, and it was nice to toast “a notre sante!”

We are on the bus now going to get the results. Wish me luck.

As we sat in the office, Dr. Chodchoy, who looks and acts a bit like the Dalai Lama, smiled broadly and said,” The news is good!” No stone, no mass, no cyst. All clear, as well as the other organs caught in the scan.”

To celebrate we took a taxi to the GMG airline office in Silom and booked our tickets for Kathmandu. If therehad been a surgery necessary we would have possibly stayed and had it done here, as our schedule in Canada doesn’t give much time for recovery.

All in all we stayed a glorious 10 days in our beloved Bangkok, longer than necessary for the work we got done, but it is such a treat to merely be here. The food is such a big part of our love of Thailand. The spicy curries, pad Thai, green papaya salad, tom yam soup… all were enjoyed within the first couple days then repeated often for good
measure. We relish the idea that ice coffee, salads and half fresh pineapple (pealed, sliced and chilled for $ .27) is all safe to enjoy. This is the only stop on our trip we would trust for such luxuries.
local pirate dvd guy
A number of our regular Bangkok mates, unfortunately, aren’t around right now, although one – Peter from England – is arriving the day we go to Nepal. But our Thai massage ladies, my manicurist, David’s hair dresser, the staff at our hotel, the waiters at the Gecko bar, even our dentist who we see each time through, all made us feel at home. In many ways we do feel like we’ve come home when we get here, considering we spend almost as much time here as in our apartment in Vancouver.

Hong Kong 2007

dfast on November 11, 2007

Hong Kong 10 years on.

After a super hectic but successful sales season, followed by a month wrapping up all the details like our taxes and booking next year’s schedule, David and I jetted off to Hong Kong at 3 am Oct.31. Normally we fly east via Seoul, but since Cathay was the best price to Bangkok via Hong Kong we decided to pop in and see her for a few days.

Ten years ago I started my first Asian trip there with a position at the Hong Kong Film Festival, reviewing films for VIFF. My dear friend Robert was living there and offered to share his 8×10′ room in an office 8 stories up, without a lift, that cost US$1000 at the time. Upon arrival Robert showed me how to use trams, buses the MTR underground and the super sweet Star ferry to all the various theatres around the city then promptly flew to Canada for 2 weeks. On my own in Hong Kong I found the place completely perplexing. It was a not stop construction zone, so many jack hammers I wore ear plugs walking outside. The crowds were so intense you frequently felt someone’s shoe under your heal before you lifted your toe to take a step. There was tremendous difficulties ensuring the food I was ordering would be what I wanted. The pollution made my eyes red and puffy. It was also, in an historical footnote, where I took the by-line “Foreign Devil Correspondent”.

This time around we noticed much less construction noise, had English available in restaurants and couldn’t believe how scrubbed the whole city was, literally nary a scrap of litter. Another great advancement – likely due to the SARS crises – I also noticed not a single occurrence of audible nose or throat clearing, or the deposit of such foul matter onto streets or railings. Phlemishly speaking it was a dream.

Our hotel was secured and we were showered after taking a bus in from Lantau island within three hours of landing. We choose Mongkok in Kowloon, rather then the popular Chung King Mansions or other places in Tsim Sha Tsui. Although only a few blocks north, and perhaps a little pricier, we felt more at home in Mong Kok. For one thing, the closer we got to Chung King, the more the density of Indian touts offering foreigners ‘copy purse, copy watch’ grew. We did check out some rooms in that amazing, laberynthine 16-story building, riding more elevators in a day than I have in the last five years, but choose to stay in our Mong Kok shoe box. I mention the elevators because in a city as densely populated as Hong Kong, people management is quite crucial. Lifts stops at ever other floor, odds or evens. People queue for the appropriate lift, which is tiny and often one opts to take a lift to a floor higher and walk down. A ‘car full’ sign lights up on the descending car to pre-warn that the door will not open at that floor. I heard that on Hong Kong Island there is not enough square footage for everyone to stand outside at the same time, since so much of the population is stacked up into the skyscrapers.

Our guest house had 8 rooms on the sixth floor of Sincere Tower off Argyle St. near Nanthon Rd. It was one of many guest houses in the building. Our room was spectacularly clean with a bathroom and shower, double bed ,TV, Ac unit, bed side table and a fan. It measured 7×8 feet. The bed took half the space, the bathroom another quarter. We had to keep one pack under the bed and only one person at a time could stand in the remaining space. It was $31(HK$250)/ night, or about 50 cents/sq.ft.
Besides our power naps ( which felt like sleeping under a slate slab in an ether filled room) we explored the area’s markets and went into Central and checked the art and antique row up on Hollywood Rd. One destination I wanted to re-visit was Lon Kwai fi, a spot Robert and I frequented where an informal assembly of stools and tables filled a cul-de-sac surrounded by a variety of restaurants. You could grab some roti cannai from the Malaysian place, a pint of ale from the Irish pub, some curry from the Thai stall, etc. When we located it, there was an aggressive rush from touts shoving pricey menus in our faces . It had gone legitimate and turned completely charm free. Another thing charm free was the weather. convention center Rain greeted our arrival, and socked-in dense clouds ruined our skyline photo opportunities. Socklessness was fine but my t-shirt warm wasn’t enough. After a day and a half of our planned 3 day visit we found the Cathy office and bumped our departure up one day. We were burning through $75/day and definitely not living large. That kind of cash in Bangkok would get you luxury, so off we went.

Arriving into Banglamphu at sunset, David does the hotel run while I sat at the Gecko with the bags. Our first choice, not unexpectantly, was full so he cut the chore down by booking us into the practically palatial New Siam 2. Pool, air con, a safe, TV… And the bed by itself was about as big as our entire Hong Kong room. All for $24. We were, after all, saving money by leaving Hong Kong early.

The streets are so familiar; the pups we knew in the spring are now recognizable as full grown dogs; a few businesses have turned over. It was nearly visceral as we counted down the days to get here while we scrubbed our house for our subletter and did all the paperwork and phoning. I could feel the streets, the heat, hear the roosters cockadooldle do-ing, and smell the frangipani and incense
mingled with diesel and sewage. It is almost like returning to a more appropriate gravity. I feel lighter and even thinner in this heat and high pressure. I think our species is meant to live close to the equator.

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