Jacque Cousteau-ing in Thailand, part 1

 

So, I made it out of Hanoi, and into Bangkok, then took a flight down the Trang Province in southwestern Thailand. In all my travels, this is absolutely one of the most beautiful places one earth. Or, I should say, one of the most beautiful beaches on earth. Beaches and deserts are my two most favorite places on earth. The desert in the Northwest of the US is amazing in its pristine solitude, rugged landscape, and breathtaking colors. The beaches of the Andaman Sea, which is the area between Burma, western Thailand, and western Malaysia are stunning. The water is amazing. Even in the “winter” its 84F, and crystal clear. I've seen my fair share of tropical beaches, and let me tell you so far, this takes the cake. And the crème de la crème are the islands off the coast. When swimming you can see clearly down to fifty to sixty feet below. The sea life is stunning in it's variety of colors and forms. Every single creature you see is a shade of neon. I really didn't think it was possible that these colors existed outside of bad fashion. I did my best to get some underwater footage of this actually.

How you ask? Did I spend $500 for an underwater camera? NO! I spent $15 on a camera dry bag (basically a glorified ziploc bag) designed to keep cameras waterproof up to ten meters (30 ft). I also don't have a camera, so as usual as I use my cellphone for my camera/computer/email/texts/maps/gps/video/everything. Let me tell you, smartphones are probably the coolest invention since the computer itself, especially if you are always traveling or live out of a suitcase, as I do. The footage is pretty clear, but lets say my underwater filming skills need to be improved. I'll post the edited version on YouTube, so stay tuned.

So, I arrived in Trang Province, a little known tourist destination (a thing that is becoming very rare in Thailand, there's few places you can go in this country where there isn't a flood of Russian and Australian tourists) and hopped a boat to the island of Koh Mok, about 2 miles off the mainland. This was ok, the lodging was cheap ($13/night for a clean room with a fan no AC) I found a real basic room with an outside bathroom -no hot water, but you don't really need it when the weather is a constant 85F, and it's a two minute walk through the jungle to the beach.

I decided to go here to do some diving, as this area is world renowned for it's diving. There's few places in the world where you can see for about 60ft in any direction underwater. And the coral life is amazing. Also, on the way to the beach, you are likely to run into the pack of wild monkeys which roam the islands, as I did one day. I scared them as much as they scared me. A word about monkeys. Monkeys are really cute. And they are really human like in their ways. But just like humans, they can be dangerous and unpredictable. Most monkeys are tiny, and if worse came to worse, you could fight one off depending on how good of a fighter you are. But these monkeys were pretty big. The biggest was about the size of a full grown rottweiler. Like most wild animals, they'll leave you alone, unless you present them with food, then they can become a bit aggressive. I was going to toss one a banana I found, but as it rose up and approached me fearlessly, I decided to just toss the banana a safe distance away. He took it, gave me a weird little eye shrug, then followed his troops back into the trees.

I spent a few days on the slightly touristy island of Ko Muk. But honestly, as I'm traveling along, and still dealing with some heartache, the last thing I wanted to be surrounded by was a bunch of happy in love, beautiful and rich tourists. I almost always prefer wilderness or small local communities to the touristy places, but when I'm feeling lonely, especially so.

So, I hooked up with a dive company here, and we went out to the island of Koh Rok, I'll be posting pictures on my picassa account soon. It's breathtaking. But it's very isolated. Once you get there (a two hour boat ride), you're on your own to get back, as boats don't come by too often. Well, they do, but they are tourist day trip boats that only stay for two hours, and if you wanted a ride back with them, they charge an arm and a leg, as you are literally a captive audience. The island is national park, and there is no development allowed, which is a godsend. The only lodging available are tents that you can rent from the park for $10 a night. However, for tent camping, it's pretty luxurious. There are bathrooms with showers and toilets (no hot water of course), and a small restaurant which serves up mediocre, but expensive due to transportation costs, Thai food.

But the place is truly like paradise lost. Thailand as a nation, has their tourism run like clockwork. There is literally no place in Thailand, where you can't find someone who speaks English and is willing to help you, at most for a small fee. In Vietnam, you're on your own, so you better be prepared for anything. But traveling Thailand is easy. There's never any 'roughing' by real traveler standards involved. Thailand is where you should go if you want to visit S.E. Asia, but don't want to end up in the 'crazy Asia' situations I end up in.

I spent the first day diving in the most beautiful water I have ever seen. On the day I saw two of the most amazing sea creatures, a six foot long manta ray, and a hawkbill sea turtle, that we swam with for a while. Sea turtles are one of the most peaceful creatures I have ever seen. They swim very slowly and gracefully, they literally look like a slow moving, gigantic bird. The Ray that we saw was amazing too. They move in such graceful, and yet spooky ways. They literally look like a ghost floating through the sea. Their big black eyes keep an eye on you, and it's a special feeling as you meet their alien eyes. You can see they mean you no harm, and in fact, you get the feeling they see you as something below their concern. They acknowledge you, then write you off as no threat and continue their slow, graceful glide. They're two of the most interesting creatures I've seen in my life, in land and out of land.

We also saw plenty of moray eels too. They look frightening though. They are constantly opening their fang lined mouths and scanning their area, waiting to snatch anything that comes to close. But even they are not aggressive. Morays don't really move. They stay in their little nook, with only their head sticking out. You can go fairly near them, and they won't attack. In fact, they tend to avoid you. The only people who get bit by a moray are the ones who accidentally poke their hands into a dark crevasse, and the eel, feeling attacked, defends itself with a bite. As long as you don't poke them, they won't do anything to you.

But this is the way of aquatic life. If you are not the specific animal the creature hunts, they will almost never make an aggressive action toward you, always preferring retreat. My theory is that since the creatures of the ocean have around 1 billion years to evolve their various defense systems longer than we land animals have, every single creature in the ocean has a highly sophisticated system of attack and defense/camouflage. The most insane types of camouflage are underwater, with creatures that look like either nothing, or something completely different than what they are.

Anyway, sea creatures operate upon the same psychological principals of nations with nuclear weapons. Everyone involved knows they are a badass, and they also know their enemies are as badass as they are, so much of the ocean life is at an uneasy truce. A shark doesn't want to fuck with an eel, a school of smaller fish isn't too worried about a shark because due to their group camouflage and distraction techniques, they know that only 1% of their school will end up as a victim to the shark. As such, the odds are very good that the little fish will live. Two dead out of 300 is a pretty small sacrifice in any battle, land or sea. This is because as land animals, especially mammals have only had a few millions years to develop defenses and attacks, sea creatures have had BILLIONS of years to perfect the art of offense and defense.

With evolution, I don't see the need for any grand creator. Life abhors a vacuum. If there is some small opening in the food chain, it will be filled almost instantly by another creature whose unique abilities happen to provide a perfect match for the situation. If you create poison to kill every single type of bacteria, by the random combination of genetic traits, there will always be one or two of the bacteria that is resistant, then once 99.9% of the competitors disappear, that .01% has free range over all the other resources which have been freed by the death of their competition.

I know this might sound freaky or dangerous to those who haven't dove before but the biggest misconception about the ocean life is that it's out to get you. Now, all my life, I have had a huge phobia about sea creatures, because they look scary, and they all have ways of seriously injuring or killing you. Both things are true, however, what you don't realize until you're underwater with them is they have no intention to bother you. If you approach 99% of sea creatures, their first action is to move away from you. Unless you are their prey animal, they want absolutely nothing to do with you. Even sharks.

The only time sharks attack people is when they confuse surf boards for seals, or flapping feet for an injured fish. Scuba divers, rarely, maybe never, get attacked, because underwater, you move and look like a fish, a big frigging fish. So they generally scatter when you show up. The only really dangerous animals are the ones that are slow moving and that you step on or bump into. They're not aggressive at all, but by their nature, are extremely defensive. Things like spiky sea urchins, rock fish, jellyfish, sting rays, coral snakes, and stone fish. None of these creatures will ever attack you. The only way people get hurt is when you literally step on them or bump into them, and they are too slow moving to avoid you. As long as you are aware of your surroundings thoughs, these dangers are easily avoided.

As a side note, I did almost fall victim to two of these creatures, within a period of 15 minutes. I was snorkeling back to the beach, and was in quite shallow water, maybe one foot deep. I could have walked, but honestly, I am very afraid of stepping on these creatures. Maybe even phobic. So, I was floating with my mask on to the beach, to get as close to the clear sand as I could before putting my feet down. Right before I did, I saw a rock that looked just a little different. I stopped to get a better look. And the rock had eyes. This is a stonefish. A stonefish is one of the WORST things to step on in the ocean.

My friend Dave stepped on one, and had to be hospitalized for two days. Stonefish are really slow and awkward, so their only defense against being eaten is to sit and look like a rock, but be covered in poisoned spines for anything that tries to eat it. I missed stepping on it be about 7 niches. Also, there is a chance you can die immediately from their sting if you are allergic. Most don't though, you just suffer excruciating pain for a about a week until the poison wares off. Thats assuming you are on an island that has some rudimentary medical care. This island did not, it was a 5 hour boat ride to the next place that did. However, I was safe, so I sat observing this amazing yet deadly creature. And it is truly a marvel of evolution. It was evolved to perfectly look like a moss covered rock. Literally the only way you can tell is by noticing, as I had, that some spots on it didn't match the surrounding rock.

So, I gave the beast a wide berth, and continued to the shore. Thinking I was safe, I stood up and began wading in. A moment later, a juvenile sting ray burst out of the sand away from me, less than two feet away. Rays are not aggressive at all, but they aren't very aware of their surroundings, so they are easily surprised. And if they sting you, there's little chance of death, again, unless you're allergic, but it will hurt like hell for while. The Crocodile Hunter guy just got really unlucky, as the sting that hit him pierced his heart. Nothing to be done about that. Anywhere else, he would have just been hurt but fine overall. The good news is that these creatures only inhabit warm waters, and the more good news is that if you are wearing water sandals or scuba booties, you will be mostly safe from their stings. As such, my next purchase is aqua booties.

International Man of History in the Lost Temples of Cambodia!

 

So, this holiday season, I decided to go have a Holiday in Cambodia ('where the people dress in black', thanks Dead Kennedys). I hadn't been to Cambodia before, and heard it was nice and cheap, so off I go for my two week holiday break. I flew from Hanoi to Bangkok, spent a night there, then took the morning train to the Cambodian border. For some reason, flying into Cambodia is more than twice as expensive as flying to Bangkok, although it's closer. You can get from Bangkok to Siam Reap in Cambodia, but it takes a full day of travel by public transit.

So, I took the train to the border, and while on train, I met some young twenty two year old backpackers (this seems to be the only type of backpackers unfortunately), and we crossed the border together. The border used to be pretty strict between the two countries, but not so much right now. During the Khmer Rouge era, Cambodia had some border wars with Thailand, which are mostly cooled off now, except in the northern provinces, where there's still an occasional shot fired back and forth. We split a minibus ride from the border to Siam Reap, as Cambodia has no functioning railway. In fact, there's a lot of things that Cambodia has non-functioning.

A little background on Cambodia: in the 70's a guy named Pol Pot had the great idea to overthrow the Western friendly government by starting another Glorious Revolution, of the naïve and bloody type that South East Asia is so famous for. His idea was to get rid of all the Western educated elite of Cambodian society and bring everything back to an idealized agrarian farming society, where everyone is equal and no one is taken advantage of by the spoiled, unproductive elite class of society. Well, as you probably heard, that didn't work out so well. Take this as a warning next time some hippy is trying to convince you we should all go back being anarchist organic farmers. They tried it here, and it left them dirt poor, corrupt, and in chaos.

Basically, they rounded up anyone who wasn't a farmer or worker and massacred them. This lasted a few years until their neighbor, Vietnam, got worried about the unrest spreading into their own country, and worried about the ethnic Vietnamese that were still stuck there. So, just a few years after fighting off the Americans, the Viets attacked Cambodia to get rid of Khmer Rouge. They did, very quickly and successfully, as the Vietnamese army was far superior to the rag-tag Khmer Rouge, and they were quite adept at jungle warfare. Only a few months after they attacked, the Vietnamese captured the capital city of Phnom Phen, and cleared the Khmer Rouge out. They set up a new government that was friendly to Vietnam, then left. The end.

Except that it wasn't. The Khmer Rouge just fled into the jungles where they kept waging a guerrilla war for the next 20 years, until due to shrinking numbers and support, they surrendered in 1998. When I was there, they were just beginning the trials of the Khmer Rouge, 15 years later. The current government is a 'democracy', but is in reality the standard Southeast Asia crony capitalist state, with a minority of extremely wealthy buying and selling the country as they see fit, and the average farmer has no land rights if a resort developer wants his land, including even building resorts of 'protected' wilderness reserves.

Twenty years of civil war left Cambodia as one of the poorest Southeast Asian nations, with basically no infrastructure. Until recently the roads in the country were little more than bombed out tracks, and still, many thousand land mines lay active and waiting for some poor villager to stumble upon them. Not to mention our great 'diplomat' and war criminal Henry Kissinger and his secret bombing campaign of Cambodia dropped more bombs there and in Laos than were dropped in the total of World War II. Lots of them are still unexploded, and there are plenty of signs warning you to stay on the trail for fear of mines. You see a lot of amputees in Cambodia.

Cambodia itself is like a more scenic, less developed and drier version of Vietnam. The air is far less humid, and they actually have sunshine there, whereas Vietnam skies are permanently gray, save a few rare days. The land in Vietnam is strange, basically every inch of land that can be farmed, is. Rice paddies cover EVERYTHING, and what is not a rice paddy is an impassable limestone mountain that juts vertically up. Cambodia seemed a lot more like a savannah, a lot of tall grass fields with some lovely trees reaching into the sky, and mountain forests. Most of the land in Cambodia is undeveloped.

Anyway, we arrived in Siam Reap, home of the ancient Angkor culture, famous for their massive city-temples which lay hidden in the jungles until the late 1800's, when the French stumbled upon them. The Angkor culture flourished from around 800AD to around 1200AD, then they collapsed into jungle covered obscurity. The reasons for their collapse were unknown for a long time. Archaeologists recently figured it out though. Like almost every other civilization collapse, this one was caused by environmental ruin. Americans, take no notice of the following, because of course, it couldn't happen to America, God loves us too much to allow our glorious empire to collapse for the same reason every other one collapsed.

The story goes like this: building a glorious empire requires a LOT of resources. For us, it's been cheap gas and land, for the Angkorians, it was cheap labor and an abundant agricultural land. The Angkorian kings got to the point where labor was specialized enough that not everyone had to be a farmer. So after conquering a bunch of land, they decided to build monuments to their own glory. Totally unlike our McMansions and SUVs. In fact, they convinced the locals that they weren't just kings, they were god-kings. And if you were a farmer living in a bamboo hut, when you saw one of their enormous stone temples that dwarfed everything you had ever seen in your life, it was pretty easy to believe. Then the next god king, after the original one, had to prove himself to be an even more powerful god-king by building an even bigger and more impressive temple to himself. And so on, and so on, until about 400 years later, when the area for hundreds of miles around was deforested, due to using the trees for building the temples, housing the workers, growing crops, and fuel. Bah, not a big deal, only stupid tree huggers should care about trees anyway, right? Wrong, forests main benefit to humans is that they provide a natural filtration system for water before it reaches rivers and lakes. So, the workers have to expend more and more energy to get the wood and stone which were so vital to their culture, unlike our billion dollar a day wars to extract a diminishing return of petrol, of course.

Quickly, their drinking and fishing water became too polluted with mud and silt. So drinking water becomes more scarce, fishing is finished, and there's no more forest to hunt animals, and the top soil in which crops grow has been washed away by the rains, as there's no tree roots to keep it in place and renew it. Then, collapse, the god-kings are finished, the jungle reclaims it's place, and the Cambodians go back to being simple farmers.

Siam Reap the city isn't much to write about, just your typical shambling, developing world collection of grand hotels and shanties. The first day we took a Cambodian tuk-tuk, which is different than a Thai tuk-tuk. A Thai one is a purpose built three wheeled pickup truck/motorcycle thing than runs on propane. The Cambodian version is much more ghetto. It's just a 110cc motorbike with a two wheeled carriage hitched to it. Anyway, we (I had buddied up with a young French guy) spent 4 days exploring the monumental ruins of the Angkor civilization, the most famous of which is Angkor Wat. I'll be posting photos of all the ruins shortly, but let me just say, they are absolutely the coolest thing I have seen in Asia. The temple civilization covers around 100 sq. miles and contains about 25 temple complexes. Angkor Wat while the most famous, is actually the least impressive of them all. The far more beautiful and interesting ones were Angkor Thom and Beng Melea.

Angkor Thom is basically a collection of massive pyramids (photos coming soon), dedicated to mostly Hindu dieties, although several god-kings switched back and forth between Hinduism and Buddhism, Buddhism is the current religion, but in the Angkor period, they were mostly Hindus. I was really surprised that Indian civilization had spread all the to even Vietnam. In the south of 'Nam, they also had a stint of Hindu culture called the Chams. The temples do have a decent amount of tourists (I was there probably in the most peak season, Christmas time), but less then most famous places in Europe by far, so the crowds didn't detract much from the awe and mystery. The absolute best thing I saw was Beng Melea though.

To get to the Beng Melea temple, you have to take a two hour ride by tuk-tuk (about 40 miles away), which eliminates the majority of tourists. When we entered, there was probably less the 24 tourists. The great thing about Beng Melea though is that they have a nice little walkway you can tour the temple on, but you are also free to wander off, and start climbing and exploring amongst the ruins. That was actually one of the coolest things I have done in my life, and I think that's saying a lot for a guy like me. While most of the other temples have been somewhat restored, Beng Melea was left to the jungle and ruin. Few buildings remain completely standing, most of the walls have toppled down over the years, and the jungle has grown over the whole thing. It felt like I was living an Indiana Jones movie, crawling through abandoned passageways and up massive temples walls with huge blocks of stone strewn everywhere. The whole time we were exploring, we saw not a single other person. It was great. Very much like the movie/game Tomb Raider, unfortunately minus Angelina Jolie.

Techno, Loin cloth, Fire, and a 12 foot Python; Or Why Our Moon Festival Kicked Ass

Ok, well, it’s been a while. The new school year is in full swing, and it began with a bang. One of the first events of the year was our Moon Festival at the school. The Chinese calendar is based upon lunar cycles, and at the start of September is typically when the farmers begin to harvest their rice. They celebrate the end of the harvest with the Moon Festival, like a non-scary version of our Halloween. Kids dress up, families are visited, moon cakes are consumed (moon cakes are weird rice flour cakes that are very dense and salty/sweet. An acquired taste for sure. I can only get through about half or a quarter of one, even though they are only about 3 ½ inches in diameter), and in general, it’s a family holiday. Last year our school had a traditional dragon dance to celebrate. Dragon dancers are the guys you see in Chinatowns that form sort of a human dragon made out of paper mache and dance around to the rhythm of loud drums. It was pretty cool.

This year, the school tried something different, and hired three performers. A snake handler, a magician, and two jugglers.  The snake handler came out to pumping techno music, a Vietnamese guy wearing nothing but bulging muscles and a loin cloth.  Around the room, jaws dropped.  He starts gyrating around the room in his loin cloth, and it looked like a scene from a bachelorette party, but instead of horny bridesmaids, it was junior high school students. Then he breaks out the snake, a 12 foot long python weighing 175 pounds!  He dances around the rooms wrapping the snake around him, and then for the finale gets some kids to stand up, close their eyes, then proceeds to wrap the giant snake around their terrified, squealing bodies, letting it coil up around them, then pulling it off them. I’m pretty sure in the States, that would get your school shut down, but here, it was all in good fun. The kids loved it, and the staff was alternately gasping in horror, and laughing in surprise that we could actually get away with this.

Next act was a magician, who pulled a lot of doves out of things. Pretty standard, until he poured gasoline all over a box and lit it on fire. In our meeting room, with the flames reaching up to our drop ceiling, just next to the sprinkler system. Same reaction of horror/amusement from the staff, same reaction of awe from the kids. Again, I’m not sure you could get away with a guy almost lighting your school on fire as part of his act, but hey, we’re in the Wild, Wild East.

Luckily the school wasn’t burnt down, and we went to the third and final act, jugglers. Jugglers, bah, what risk or adult themes could this bring? None. Unless…He misses one of the bowling pins he’s juggling and almost knocks a student out with it, and then they begin to strip down to nothing but their boxers as they’re juggling and then juggle their clothing back and forth as they put their clothing back on. Oh Asia! So unintentionally adult themed and dangerous! 

 I have to admit though, I do kind of appreciate the fact that there is no “culture of safety” like we have in the West. I mean, some basic level of safety preparedness is good, about at the level that we thirty-somethings had when we were kids. You could still trick-or-treat at night without parents tagging lamely along, and playgrounds had monkey bars and climbing obstacles higher than 3 feet. Yeah, you could get hurt, but that’s life, most kids don’t, a few do, they heal, and life goes on. Now, it’s Litigation Nation, and Always Someone Else’s Fault. But not over here. Of course, here there’s still no sidewalks and random bottomless holes in the middle of the roadway, so there’s a happy balance to be had somewhere.

Englishisms, Part 1

So it's been a while.  I got back to Hanoi about a month ago after spending a great summer in back in the States with my friends.  But now it's back to the Wild, Wild East, and the frontier style teaching that comes with it.  Textbooks?  Library?  Computer Lab?  Bah, who needs them new fangled edu-macation things?  Students and teachers, one could argue, but they're not an option here, so I continue Little House on the Red River style.


Anyway, one of the more painful things I have to do is teach kids how to write research papers.  Research papers are something they've only had to do if they are in Western schools, and that very rarely.  Vietnamese education tends to rely exclusively on memorizing and testing, rather than understanding.  So, they don't really get the idea.  But that's my job, to teach them how to write, and not just copy and paste an article from Wikipedia, as they are so prone to do.  I doubt that's just an Asian problem though, I'm pretty sure that's an Internet Generation problem, but I wouldn't really know, as I don't teach in the West.  Anyway, here's some pretty good Englishisms I've had so far, all unintentionally hilariously created by my kids in various papers I've had them write.

"The most techonoligcal nation is Finland, althuogh this country was exposed to industrialisation only in the 1050's."

Question, Who in the planet uses the most water?  "In conclusion, people use the water most."

When discussing clean water and poor countries "Firstly, they are still retardation countries, so they don't have ebnough money to buy water."

When discussing special ed.  "In Korea, they have some special schools for Autism, aspergers, handicapped people, and retards."

When discussing soil pollution, "The reason  is soot of cars and factories, chemicultivation, shampoo, and so on."

About Climate Change  "I think we are trying to make the world worse if we don't know how to contribute to climate change."

About Asian diet  "Nevertheless, we are Asians, our father's like dog meats, that's disgusting to me, but some of my friends like it."


About the Vietnamese culture (written by a Viet student):  "But Vietnamese are very lazy, and don't try to learn about new things.  When we go to foreign cultures, people think we rude because Vietnamese people so loud all the time.  And Vietnamese so greedy, they rather live like rats than to spend a little money on nice things".

A Farewell to Kings?

So, on a non-Vietnamese note, I just finished watching the movie, "The King's Speech", and while it was a good film, it got me thinking about how stupid people are.  Most things probably do get me thinking about that eventually.  But a thought I couldn't help thinking throughout the movie was, 'Why does anyone give a shit about the king?'  Now, that's probably just my American upbringing, combined with a healthy dislike of authority, but really, what's the deal with kings?  I mean, it was one thing 400 years ago when you didn't have much of a choice because we are all dirt farming peasants under the control of some guy who controled a lot of bloodthirsty goons in armor, but today?  Still? 

I know, I know, 'But it's a national symbol, etc' but haven't we outgrown all that?  Hell, the bald eagle is a  national symbol of the USA, and our patriots shot the damn thing to near extinction.  Yeah, we're done with our kings, but we've replaced them with our Hiltons and Oprahs.  Which makes me think, it must be something attached to the human condition to make us worship people we don't know.  Kings and celebrities could never exist unless we wanted them to exist.  Unless we make them real, they don't exist.  And why do we need them?  Do we need to always gaze at someone or something we imagine better than ourselves?  A king, a rock star, a religious icon, a sports figure, they're all versions of the same thing.  And chances are, if we knew them personally, without all the bullshit cult of personality stuff, we most likely wouldn't think they're that great.  Not anymore than you idolize your neighbor or coworker.  Not bad people by most accounts, but worthy of a poster with their smiling face in our bedrooms?  Not likely.

So, why do we put up with that from others?  Is it because everyone else worships them, and like insanity, it's amplified by a crowd?  I've met a few minor celebrities who I didn't even really care about, but when I met them, I even felt that "wow, I can't believe I'm talking to X", like a kid.  Is it because we think we're not as good as them?  That they possess some special magic that apparently everyone else has given them, so we should too?  It must be something pretty deep in us as a breed.  Maybe some mass-cultural desire for a Great Father or Mother figure, some figure of overwhelming wisdom and perfection.

There's been social movements and even other Great Father figures who've encouraged us to smash our Great Fathers.  Most of them started in a bloodbath of anger and revenge for duping ourselves.  The French filled the streets of Paris with their royal blood, the Russians, Chinese, Americans, and Vietnamese amongst countless others have all seen it fit at one time or another to murder their Great Ones, and within a few years, return apologetically with our hats in our hands, asking for their forgiveness.  The King is dead, long live the King.  Replace one with another.

So, will this combination of idolation of strangers and loathing of ourselves and our neighbors be an eternal cycle repeated throughoutt history, or will there come a time when we finally get tired of paying attention to the lives of others, and start focusing on our own lives?  Will there come a time when when we look to ourselves for the answers to the questions only we can answer?  Maybe, but probably not for a long time if even a cynical bastard like myself can get star struck... 

Why Vietnamese suck at driving, according to the World Health Organization

 So, at the start of my time here, I marveled at how few accidents there are, and how the traffic seems to work out pretty well, in spite of the sheer chaos of it all.  Well folks, research and experience has proven me wrong.  In fact, the World Health Organization noted that 36% of all deaths in Vietnam, between the ages of 15-29, are accidents.  And that is significant, as something like 80% of the country is under 30.  As a whole, 25% of all deaths here are accidents, in any age range.  For comparison, about 4% of all deaths in the US are accidents (including firearms deaths).  So basically, Vietnamese die like flies.  Imagine all the people you know who have died, and now imagine 1 out of 4 died through an accident.  Most of these are traffic accidents, with drowning followed second (Almost no Viets know how to swim, there are a lot of water bodies here, but most are too polluted or gross to swim in, and it floods all the time here).

Morning rush hour is crazy.  If you don't like the way we drive in Hanoi, stay off the sidewalks...For real.  Sidewalks, if they exist, and are not blocked with parked motorbikes or squatter cafes are a legitimate driving zone here, but with the parked bikes and "cafes", that's only about 5 meters on a hundred meter "sidewalk".    No one knows how to drive here, cars or motorbikes, but the car drivers and bus drivers, due to their sheer size, are the worst.  They are all first generation drivers, so people apply the same rules they do to walking or bicycling to driving a car or motorbike, like blowing red lights, driving on the sidewalk, driving in the wrong lane, and all sorts of madness.  An excerpt from UNICEF's website about traffic deaths in Vietnam sums it nicely (with parenthesis by me) :

- Limited awareness of road safety and its high death toll in Viet Nam  (there is no concerted government effort educate people about driving safety, at all, but plenty of propaganda about the glory of living in the Worker's Paradise, after all they have to have their priorities straight)


- Limited knowledge of traffic rules (the driving test here is this :  Can you drive a figure eight?  Yes?  You pass, that's all.  I'm not joking.  And that's if you actually go through the hassle to apply for a legal permit, as opposed to simply bribing the appropriate person to get a license.  I assume that's the most popular method with the rich car owners.  Although, many of the nouveau riche types in Hanoi can't drive, and instead, have their own drivers)


- Limited knowledge about safe driving behaviour (A very smart thing here is that people drive on whichever side of the road is most convenient at the time.  Head on collisions are the most common accident death here.  People will also pass someone, who is passing someone, who is passing someone, so essentially, the road goes from being a two lane to a single one-way in the course of two seconds.  Not to mention, cars rarely stay in a lane, they prefer to drive down the center stripe, in order to try and pass the motorbikes-even though they are immediately then passed once the whole road slows down because of people practicing the same behavior, but more on Asia's "Me First!" attitude later.  And last but not least, we have the Vietnamese "No Look Merge".  The proper way to merge into traffic here is just to barrel into traffic without actually looking at the traffic first, with the expectation that the people approaching will stop for you.  Sometimes they do, and sometimes that causes accidents, sometimes they don't, and the merger gets run over.)


- Fatalistic view about traffic accidents. Many people do not understand that these injuries are preventable. (This is also very Asian.  They believe strongly in Luck and Fortune.  If your baby got sick, you obviously did not burn enough spirit money to please the ancestors-it has nothing to do with the fact that no one washes their hands.  If you get sick, it's because the weather "changed" by 10 degrees, not because the meat you eat was kept on a hot sidewalk, inches from the sewage filled gutter, all day long.  Not making that one up either, most raw ingredients are sold on the street, and animals tend to be butchered on the street, or in the back yard rather than a proper slaughterhouse, but that's another article.  Anyway,  everything here is "lucky".  There is little sense that you can change your destiny, because in reality, you rarely can in such a stratified society where people die everyday due to "accidents".  Everything seems like an act of the gods, from your economic position to traffic accidents)


- Unsafe traffic environment and poor road infrastructure. For example, traffic warning signs are rare and no safe areas for pedestrians.  (You'll be driving down the road, and SURPRISE theres a gaping hole in the road, umarked by any signage.  You either notice it and don't die, or don't notice, and die/get injured.  And I'm not talking a "pot hole", I'm talking like open manhole covers, etc.  If you're lucky, someone has stuck a tree branch down there, so people will notice and avoid.  Oh, and also, street signs don't exist either.  Also, there are no sidewalks here, so you are forced to walk in the middle of the road as a pedestrian, competing with speeding buses, cars and motorbikes.)


- Use of motorcycle helmets is extremely low in spite of good quality, locally produced helmets.  (The reason for this is obvious for a Vietnamese.  A helmet will restrict growth of a child's brain and neck, and for adults, it will mess their hair up.  I'm not kidding, these are the actual quoted reasons why parents won't let their children wear helmets.  Because traumatic brain injury will only help a child's brain grow, i guess.  Although helmet use has improved here due to crack downs, most of the helmets would make NO difference in a crash, they are basically baseball helmets, ill-fitting with no padding.)


- Poor enforcement of traffic rules.  (Occasionally, I see people pulled over by the cops here, and i wonder, HOW BAD DO YOU HAVE TO DRIVE TO GET PULLED OVER!?  Seriously, do you have to be going the wrong direction, through a red light, weaving, with 7 people on the scooter, while talking on a cellphone  and not wearing a helmet?!)

And I'll just add in one last thing, the honking.  People honk their horns all the time here, it's just non-stop honking, all the time.  This isn't deadly, but it is annoying.  I'm not exaggerating this, wherever there are vehicles here, people are honking just as a way of driving.  Instead of turn signal, honk, instead of looking where you're driving, honk, in a traffic jam, honk, to pass someone, honk, while being passed by someone, honk, if someone in front of you is driving slower than you want them to, honk.   Especially the car drivers, who drive around just holding their hands on the horn, blaring so that all the motorbikes in front of them get out of their way, although the motorbikes outnumber the cars 100 to 1 and are almost always traveling faster because they are more maneuverable through the traffic here. 
But the person in the car is rich, and so, the inferiors on their bikes should move.  And they do, because it's a society of inferiors and superiors, masters and servants.  To illustrate this, ambulances here are completely pointless, as no one moves for them, or if they do, it's to chase ahead of them, or behind them, while if there is a government official, or a VIP in traffic, they get a motorcade with cops  on motorcycles using batons to beat anyone that does not move out of the way quick enough so they can whip through town. Seriously.  It will be an amazing testament to my self control if I make it through two years here without pulling a driver out of his car and curb-stomping him, for holding his horn down as he drives behind me.  I just hope it's not a VIP.

Back Alley Slaughterhouses and Bear Paw Booze

So, I've decided to create a blog for more short posts, just general, every day weird stuff I see over in the Wild Wild East.  I'm aided in this by one of the world's most entertaining newspapers, the Vietnam News.  This is the official English newspaper of Vietnam.   EVERYTHING here goes through the censors first, website, newspapers, magazines (if it's an international magazine, and it has something unpleasant about the Worker's Paradise, they will simply have someone black out the text with a sharpie, FOR EVERY SINGLE MAGAZINE THAT ENTERS THE COUNTRY!  Seriously, that is a whole department of the government here, guys with Sharpies who cross stuff out of foreign magazines), and art too.  All the art galleries must have their exhibits pass the censor's muster before they are allowed to hang anything. 

Anyway, the Vietnam news is great.  Even with the censor's heavy hand, they have some of the most bizarre stories around.   Most of the news is good (they, like media outlets all over the world, are great at lying by omission, they don't make up stories, they just don't tell you the WHOLE story).  But also there are these other true articles which mention horrific things happening here.  Like the percentage of food found to have e.coli bacteria on it (30%!!!) here.  So, without further ado, here are some great headlines from the Vietnam News!

"Shoppers happy to pay for clean meat. July 6 2011"
"Dinh Tu Cau, who resides on Tran Duy Hung Street, decided she had seen enough slaughtered pigs as "pillion passengers" on motorbikes and even dragged along the street without any protection....It's impossible to buy hygienically slaughtered meat in markets, which is the most popular place to shop for food. It can only be found at a small number of supermarkets or food chains scattered around town...Ha Noi's five qualified slaughtering centres can currently only meet about 1 per cent of demand for pork and about 7 per cent for poultry...."
--So, yeah.  You wonder why I get sick all the time?  Even when I eat at western-style restaurants?  That's the reason.  If I had a nickel for every street butcher's wares displayed on the sidewalk, inches from the sewage filled gutter, which in turn, is inches from the motorbike filled, exhaust choked streets, I'd be a rich, bacteria-filled, man.

--Speaking of meat, here's some more disturbing news I have first-hand experience in.  Keep in mind, most of these animals are endangered.
"Wildlife consumption rampant in HCM City May 25, '11"
"Well educated, middle-aged people and public employees tend to consume wild animal products more frequently than their less educated brethren as well as people of other age groups, a survey has found.  Nearly 51 per cent of 4,062 local residents polled said they have used wild animal products, consuming them as food, drink and health supplements, or using them for ornamental purposes.  Wild animal health products such as bear bile and tiger bone gelatine were taken by 7.5 per cent of people, while 1.5 per cent had used fashion and ornamental products made from wild animals.  Nearly 3 per cent have kept them as pets.  Snakes, wild boars, stags, deer, wild chicken, spot-billed duck, lesser coucal, porcupine, bear, civet, weasel, fresh water turtle, python, and monitor lizard are among wild animal species that are most widely consumed.... The consumption of wild animal products is also related to social pressure, curiosity and emerging habits and tastes.  Others said they brought business partners as a prestige symbol."
--Yeah, that's the way to impress people here in Asia.  The more endangered the better!  And by the way, a lot of this stuff is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine.  I bet they don't teach that at the yoga center TCM classes in Portland.  I got to experience a little Taste Of Endangered when my new landlord, a real nice old Vietnamese grandpa who speaks no English, invited me and my friend in for a drink as I was moving in.  He comes in waving a severed bear paw (Asian black bear, endangered due to the magical TCM properties of their stomach bile) which had been soaking in a jug of rice liquor.  He puts two large teacups full of the stuff in front of us, waves the severed paw (tendons and all) at us, and with the little VNese I understand, I gather him saying that "It makes you strong, good for the man!"  Well, I wasn't too excited about this, but to refuse his hospitality, especially on the day I am moving in, I thought would be rude of me.  So, we drank the teacup of Bear Paw Booze (with little bits of hair and bear parts floating around, yum).

It wasn't horrible tasting, but a double shot of it was more than enough.  Immediately after finishing it, he refilled out cups.  Ugh.  My buddy gave me "please, help me" look, and I felt obliged, since he was helping me move, so when my landlord wasn't looking, I gulped down my teacup (by this point the 'uniqueness' of the taste had worn off, and it was now plain vile), and quickly dumped his into mine.  As for the "makes you strong like bear" part of it, not so much.  I still had 3 trips up 4 flights of stairs, and was ready to puke by the second trip.  A few days later, my landlord kindly gave me a bottle fillled with the stuff (minus any large bear parts), wishing me much good fortune in the new house.  Being a good traveler can be hard on the stomach.  That was the second most disgusting thing I have consumed in Asia so far (the first was raw duck blood and guts soup).