Egypt Air

By the time I arrived in Bangkok, I was all jumbled up in my mind. On the one hand, I was happy to be leaving Pattaya and I was excited to arrive in Barcelona and see my friend Jordi, who I had not seen in a number of years. On the other hand, leaving Thailand meant that the bulk of my traveling, particularly my no-plan-do-whatever-I-want sort of traveling, was pretty much over. It hit me as I ate crappy mandu in the airport that I was leaving Asia. I had been in Asia for over a year, and while I had not been in Thailand for a year, something felt significant about leaving this part of the world. It was bittersweet in that I was excited to see the people who were back home but also it was hard to grasp that it was all coming to an end. How can it really be over, I thought.

Not without a fight.

My luggage was 10 kg beyond the limit for Egyptian Air and the few hundred dollars they were trying to charge me was definitely not going to happen. So, I found a quiet corner of the airport and proceeded to throw away a close to 20 lbs worth of my belongings.

It is amazing what one can part with when faced with a hefty fine.

Basically all of my clothing

Laptop fan tray

Shoes

Ok, it isn’t so much when I put it in list form but remembering that most of the weight I shed was in the form of clothing. I had two rolling pieces of luggage and I left Thailand with one full piece and one totally empty.

The woman at check in laughed and told me that I threw away a few extra pounds and that if I wanted to I could go dig some things out of the trash. I told her that I didn’t care, and further some of the cables and battery packs / chargers I threw away might set off some sort of bomb scare when security found them and I didn’t want to be associated with that particular trash more than I already was.

This flight was the one I was most worried for. I never like flying and this goes beyond the normal phobia. At best I am a nervous wreck and at worst I am all read, sweaty, and having a panic attack while these Final Destination images run through my head. Best case scenario is flying in the day, on a new plane with plenty of room, with the air vent on full blast on my face.

Worst case scenario was basically my flight with Egypt Air. For one, their safety record is about as sucky as it gets before it actually becomes a risky carrier. Upon reading their safety records it seemed they were constantly crashing into sand dunes upon landing and takeoff while they weren’t pulling suicide dives into the ocean off of Massachusetts. The customer reviews were more or less unanimously horrid and my flight path (Bangkok – Cairo – Barcelona) seemed to be the worst. The often cited “run down, old plane that creaks” made me nervous. Further, it was a 9 hour flight in the middle of the night which adds tremendously to my claustrophobia.

Another thing that made me a little more apprehensive had nothing to do with the company but had to do with current events. Osama bin Laden had been killed less than a week before. The news was full of speculation of revenge attacks and the methods they might be carried out. It was just the cherry on top of the shit sundae.

The plane was old, I thought as I sat down, but it wasn’t as cramped as I was expecting. Ok, I can deal with this. I had a window seat in a 3 seat row. Next to me was a woman and her baby which was both a blessing and a curse.

I popped a few Xanax, applied my death grip to the armrests, and waited as the plane made its way to the runway.

I confess to being a giant vagina when it comes to airplanes. I have been in cartel held towns in Mexico, I have seen people crushed in cars and splattered on the street after scaffolding accidents, I have seen a man get out of his car and start shooting at the house in front of me. I was fine through all of these things, but put me on a plane and I almost instantly lose my shit.

The engines charged and soon there was that rumble and we all sank into our seats.

The baby wailed in the dark and soon began to scream. I held on for dear life as the plane groaned and creaked and lifted off. No sand dunes anyway.

The plane began to bank to the right and the baby continued to scream.

A few more minutes, I told myself, and we would level out.

We hit turbulence immediately. It was the sort of stuff that you frequently hit before the plane rises past the weather. It was a little more violent than usual and was a hell of a lot louder to say the least.

For a few moments we bounced and shook and vibrated as we continued on up.

Then we hit some kind of air pocket.

Free-fall while banking to the right and aimed upwards.

It didn’t last more than 1 second but it might have been the single most terrifying event of my life. It wasn’t just me. As my stomach rose in weightlessness I heard other people gasping and screaming. I could see nothing as the plane was pitch black and the windows offered nothing but foggy abyss.

The worst of it was we fell for long enough for me to actually think during it. It felt like that first second of the drop on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. I wondered if we were seriously about to belly-flop in a fiery splash somewhere outside of Bangkok.

All of this happened in no more than a second. The plain caught air again and again we were thrown to and fro in turbulence. Half a minute later and it was over. Soon people were sighing in relief and letting out little chuckles. The pilots probably didn’t even notice it. Meanwhile, I spent the next 9 hours sitting in darkness, popping Xanax, white-knuckled. I felt every minute of that flight.

But, I lived. I landed in Cairo, chain-smoked, and a handful of hours later I was sitting in Europe and Asia and Korea were a long ways away.

Read more...

Pattaya Life

If I am being honest, I did nothing of any significance in Pattaya. This is nothing I feel bad for, as I had sort of planned on using Pattaya as a place to rest and say goodbye to Asia, but it makes for boring blog posts. Basically, every day I did this, or some other variation with remarkable similarity:

10am- Wake up in total darkness courtesy of wooden shutters. Turn on light and remember I am in the shittiest hotel on earth. Listen to maids talking in Thai.

11- Walk outside past the lady who glares at me for not leaving my key with her. Realizing they probably have an extra my money is in the nastiest smelling sock on earth. Camera is behind the fridge covered in boxer shorts.

The walk basically consists of me walking past a few markets, drunks, a million foreigners and Thai on scooters, dillapitated stores and stands selling durian fruit. The heat is strong and the broken assfault magnifies it. There is the occasional palm tree and street side offering shrine with smoking incense and orange Fanta.

When I get to Walking Street, which is parallel and closest to the water things get interesting. Imagine a boardwalk anywhere with restaurants, activities, bars, and men soliciting Jesus or Blink’s Fry Dough. The decorations are loud and tacky and the place is full of trash, and disgarded food. Street food is prevalent.

The difference between Walking Street and, say, the Hampton Beach boardwalk, is that the restaurants are full of prostitutes on break, the activities involve prostitutes and various themes, the bars are basically show rooms for prostitutes, and the solicitors are advertising prostitutes, or at least a bar that has prostitutes.

12pm- Eat lunch at one of the little alcove restaurants. Listen to old American and British men laugh with their Thai “girlfriends.

12:30- Buy a bottle of fresh mandarin juice for maybe 50 cents. They are ice cold and probably one of the best things about Pattaya.

1:30- Rent a chair and umbrella at the beach. Wave away women selling fruit from their head, men selling sunglasses, children selling bracelets, so on and so forth. Go swimming. Catch hepatitis as soon as I go in the water. Apparently there are two beaches in Pattaya and I picked the bad one. Watch as a man from Africa who is sitting next to me has no will power and proceeds to buy EVERYING that is offered to him. At one point he had a few vendors lined up.

4- Walk back to the hotel. Watch the news or advertisements for beer bars and go-go bars. There is a channel dedicated to expats in Pattaya. While most of the expats I have seen in Pattaya creep me out, I am aware that I am in an area that exists basically only for the sex industry and that most of the people I see are NOT actually living here and are a poor representative of the community. The man on the show is interviewing owners of German, Mexican, Indian restaurants. There was some functioning celebrating the royal wedding.

6- Walk back through Walking Street. By now a few girls populate every small bar. Many of these bars are open air. One enormous bar actually spins. There are usually a few ladyboys there. Men are now outside promoting and being obnoxious and aggressive. Walk all the way to the end of the main drag. Be accosted every couple of feet by young guys trying to sell me suits, Zippos, brass knuckles with a taser at the business end, knives, sex, everything. Buy and drink half a dozen orange juices.

7- Eat dinner at a different restaurant than lunch despite that almost every restaurant offers the same fare of Thai / American / British / German / Russian. These same places existed also in Saigon and Cambodia. They are awesome in that they serve a little of everything. Once, I thought “what the hell” and got a burger that ended up being a round piece of meatloaf on soggy bread.

8- Walk along the beach past pimps and girls working solo. The general atmosphere of this place weirds me out. Even if prostitution is legal here these girls sitting under trees make me way more uncomfortable than the ones in the bars. Still, sometimes they call me sexy , even if they look at me funny when I say “why thank you!” and walk on.

10- Walk down Walking Street again and see the last of the few families that made the same mistake as me and thought Pattaya was a “normal” place getting the hell outta dodge. Watch the general fiasco as the giant halls full of small square bars fill up with men and girls and ladyboys. The prostitutes on Main-South in Worcester got nothing on the girls of Pattaya.

11: Walk through the tent markets and eateries around the area near my hotel.

11:30- Get drunk while watching the news.

Read more...

Security Prison 21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

S-21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

After the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek, DJ Camera drove me across the city to an extremely dense section of sprawl. Faded buildings stood looking at the remnants of a school. The school was fenced and largely walled off and topped with razor wire. Care had been taken to provide some division between the school and the houses behind. The compound consisted of five or so buildings that looked like a plain old school because it was once just that. At an opening in the wall, next to another ticket booth, milled the standard group of tuk-tuk drivers and amputees.

Again, I was not bothered. The sun was strong and the shade beneath the fruit trees, while not cool, was a little more bearable. At most, the beggars and drivers made half assed efforts to solicit, but it wasn’t anything more than shallow obligation.

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, formerly called Security Prison 21 (S-21), formerly called Chao Ponhea Yat High School. It marks the decent into madness, panic, hysteria and cruelty. Even in the middle of the day, walking the grounds and the halls of this place makes you feel uneasy; claustrophobia and panic aren’t ever far away.

The history of this place is everywhere. It was once a school. Fruit trees dot the grounds and if it weren’t for the obvious modifications that can turn a school into a place of hell, it simply looks like a school. There weren’t many people there so it was often hard to believe it was even a museum.

Inside a cell.

After the Khmer Rouge took over, the school was turned into a center for imprisonment, interrogation, extreme torture and murder. For a handful of years in the mid to late 1970’s, somewhere around 17,000 people, most innocent, came here to answer for their crimes against Pol Pot’s regime.

The place has this unchanged feeling that makes you uneasy. Rows of connected classrooms now host miniscule holding cells made of decaying brown wood, inches thick. In the middle of the floor there are rusted shackles and stains of a hasty paint job. The paint is red and in whatever light that comes through barred windows makes it look like blood.

To step into one of these cells and close the door is to feel that sense of hopelessness and doom. There is not enough room to move and there is no breeze; humid, oppressive air becomes stagnant and suffocating.

What’s more are little relics of S-21’s past life that weren’t removed seem to serve as a taunt to those who were imprisoned there. At the end of the hall an ancient chalk board still clung to the wall, its faded green contrasting with stone and reinforced wood and metal latches.

A classroom turned cell-block.

The open-air hallway of the second floor of the prison is sealed by a net of barbed wire. This “net” I was told was not so much to keep somebody from escaping, but to keep a person from being able to commit suicide by jumping from the railing.

The whole place was terrible. On the grounds were a handful of graves, whose occupants were so badly decayed and mutilated that their identity is unknown. They were the last to die S-21 before the Vietnamese overtook the Khmer Rouge.

The methods of torture in this place were creative as they were cruel. In an effort to extort a confession or get more names, guards would electrocute, suffocate, drown, half-hang, stab, beat, rape. If names were given, guards would repeat the process on people who probably had no idea what they had done. There are stories of victims who were tortured so badly that they confessed to outlandish things like joining the CIA at the age of 12.

A line of Cells.

Infront of one of the buildings is a set of uneven bars that adorn every playground. Guards punished their victims by tossing a rope over, tying their captives arms behind their back and hoisting them into the air.

Throughout the classrooms that weren’t full of prison cells or methods of torture, there were photographs of mutilated people, some alive and some dead, who had spent time at the prison. Their stories were painful to read as their spirits were as broken as their lives when they left that place, if they lived.

For a time in the beginning, prisoners were executed at the prison and buried nearby, but soon the sheer numbers made that impossible. After a time they were carted over to that other cheery place, Choeung Ek, the Killing Fields, where they were killed with whatever could be found.

After I left, I thanked a still hungover DJ Camera for bringing me to these places, had a drink in my room, woke up and got the hell out of Phnom Penh.

Read more...

The Killing Fields of Cambodia

The next morning when I met DJ Camera in the restaurant downstairs he was not so chipper. He greeted me with a genuine hotel, but his eyes were vacant and he looked uneasy. I thought for a moment and wondered if our destinations for the day had him uneasy and morose.


No.

It was the booze. DJ Camera was royally hungover. I wondered if maybe he was still drunk.

I was greeted by the manager, smiling just as much as the night before.

“Hello, Thomas!” He said. “DJ has lived through the night, I think.”

I ate a quick turkey sandwich and was soon in the back of a silent DJ Camera’s tuk-tuk, flying through the dust of Phnom Penh.

The Memorial Stupa contains thousands
of skulls.

We drove through the cluster of hotels and guest houses that populated the area next to the Chan Chhaya pavilion. I bounced in the back as DJ Camera picked up speed, mumbled something I didn’t catch, and launched us across a couple of lanes and into the frenetic every-way traffic fiasco that is every country in Asia.

Tuk-tuk is a good way to see a country. I used to think buses were the best means of efficient transport to see a country but tuk-tuks have this way of putting you directly into the action. For example, my eyes were constantly watering from the dust that was kicked up by the traffic. Also, as DJ Camera cut-off, squared-off, and otherwise basically played an extended game of Chicken with every driver in Phnom Penh, I felt a very real fear of death; something like a bus might have denied me this great cultural experience.

After a time the traffic thinned and the buildings on either side of the road descended in structural integrity until they were nothing more than shacks made of salvaged aluminum. The presence of shoes became rare.

We passed vehicles full to the tipping point with wood, goods, junk or people. Every so often we would pass green fields marked with giant puddles and the burnt-sienna mud and a cluster of water-buffalo. Kids walked and laughed in groups and bikes whizzed by leaving trails of dust and exhaust.

We crossed a river that was edged on both sides with houses on stilts, made largely of blue tarps and mismatched bits of wood, metal, and cloth. They stood on stilts and resembled tree-houses if you could put extreme poverty out of mind for a while.

--

Mass graves.

Choeung Ek. Outside the ticket booth a handful of amputees begged money or stood in the shade. It was extremely hot so mostly they just hung around in the shade.

At first glance, Choeung Ek doesn’t seem to earn its other names. It feels like you are buying entrance into an old orchard, or a second rate park. Off in the distance stands a Buddhist stupa that reaches to the sky. It looks as though it might be a kind of museum. Signs in Khmer and English dot the trails next to these pool-sized divots that cut into the earth. Grass has grown over these holes so their presence is muted, not shocking but unnatural.

The Killing Fields.

That so much of Cambodia’s tourism, particularly in or around Phnom Penh, is directly related to such a horrible time in the country’s history says something about their willingness to face such a nightmare without balking. The atmosphere at Choeung Ek, the best known of many Killing Fields is subdued, quiet, a bit creepy, and sad but it also has this feeling of “look at this, look at what has happened here, how?”

Victims of the Khmer Rouge.

I walked around Choeung Ek because that is really the only thing you can do there; it isn’t a place you really enjoy or are entertained. Groups of people were doing the same thing as I, some with guides who spoke in whispers.

The stupa was full of skulls. Thousands of skulls. They stare out of a central tower in the center of the structure and from the walls opposite. To walk in the narrow path around the stupa is to be flanked on either side by the faces of horrible deaths.

Estimates say that well over a million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot. Many of those people died in places like this and were buried in mass graves in places like this. Many people died in this place.

The divots in the ground were mass graves. Gnarled trees reach from their sloping edges, their shapes perverted by the uneven ground. Next to the trees are displays of what happened here and what is still happening as a result of rain and earth’s tendency to regurgitate what is put into it.

Remains that came to the surface.

There used to be a chicken coup in my back yard. It was destroyed a long time ago, but still pieces of glass come up through the dirt when it rains. Here, in Choeung Ek, torn strips of faded clothing and bones are still coming to the surface and are laid to the side. The bones at this tree belonged to a child, says the sign.

I walked through the woods for a while. The entire park was silent. At the back side there was a pond and then a barbed wire fence marking the end of the property. Shoeless and shirtless boys begged with their hands reaching through the links. Later I listened as a guide told his charges that he lost his whole family to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in these fields.

“Sad place,” said DJ Camera when I returned to his tuk-tuk. “Now, we go to school.”

Read more...

Phnom Penh, Cambodia: DJ Camera

DJ Camera, my tuk-tuk driver in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, was beginning to creep me out; not majorly, but I was beginning to dread his jolly, round face, and off-centered dirty baseball cap.


He was everywhere.

I arrived, admittedly thanks to DJ Camera, at the Noura Motel unscathed and found that while the $20 rooms were occupied, the manager was willing to let me stay in a $35 room for $25. DJ Camera had something to do with this and I was grateful, but he lingered about the tiny reception desk for too long.

“OK, Thomas,” he said in his over-excited manner of speaking, “go to your room, relax, come down. I wait for you and we make plans for tour tomorrow. We do many things.”

I looked at him and my heart sank a little. His sweaty brown face was staring at me and smiling. He was selling me something. Cabbies, whether in a car, on a bike, or pulling a rickshaw, in this part of the world are always trying to sell you something.

I handed him the few dollars that I owed him and told him that maybe I would see him later, and if I was to take a tour I would go through him.

DJ Camera shook his head in the negative and steamrolled my hesitation and told me that he would take me anywhere. I told him “maybe” a few more times

The Noura Motel has a layout and atmosphere that reminds one of an Old West saloon / hotel. Stairs lead to hallways that branch in many directions, looking over a small bar lit by dim, flickering bulbs. Idle workers stood talking by empty tables that spilled out towards the street. The street was teeming with beggars, tuk-tuks, and the fire of the setting sun.

I was shown to my room on the second floor. I walked through a reading room and down a hallway that led to a wide open balcony. Just across the street stands the royal Chan Chhaya pavilion, a part of the Royal Palace; its green lawns dotted with barefoot kids, sleeping tuk-tuk drivers, and a few soccer balls.

If I didn’t want to sit in the wicker chair and watch the setting sun, then I could have seen it from the massive windows in my room.



Sure enough, when I found my way to the main lobby to leave for dinner, DJ Camera was waiting for me. He sat at a small table just outside of the hotel. As soon as I was close he sprung up and asked where I was headed, if I wanted a ride, and began listing the things we could do the next day.

I cut him off. I told him that I appreciated his effort, but I wasn’t sure if I would be taking a tour tomorrow and that I might just wander around and take photos.

He looked hurt for a moment.

“OK, tomorrow when you want leave,” DJ said, “I will wait you outside hotel.”

He then grabbed my hand, shook it whilst ignoring the growing annoyance on my face, and sat down again.

I understood why DJ Camera was so eager to seal the deal: “maybe,” and “I’ll call you,” generally mean “no” and “fuck off” in his line of work. That has certainly been the underlying meaning when used by myself. What I could not understand was why he didn’t give up and look for business else where. And why was he still outside the motel!?

I walked towards the Meekong and sat down to a traditional Khmer meal of Italian grinder, fries, and alcohol.

I thought of my smiling DJ Camera and of a taxi driver in Mexico.

It was a few years back and I was wandering up the wrong road on the wrong hill. Drug cartels were beginning to take hold of the edge of town and apparently I was walking straight that way. A cabbie came running up, grabbed me and asked me as polite as possible as to where the fuck I was going and if I wanted to die?

I replied no, that I needed a cheap place to sleep.

He drove me for a while until we came to a hotel on the edge of a bay full of dirty water and men in tin boats hawking fresh fish.

This man had the same anxious tone as DJ Camera and wanted me to take a tour with him the next day as well but there seemed to be something more sinister about him. The hotel was on the edge of town and I became paranoid that this cabbie knew where I was and that my door was only a sliding plastic curtain. Friends from Mexico and guidebooks warn of local cabbies aiming for extortion, kidnapping, or worse.

I slept with my bed against the door and when he didn’t come to kill me and I never let him take me for a tour I felt guilt. I was ashamed of my paranoia.

Still, DJ Camera just wanted my money.

DJ Camera asked me how my dinner was when I arrived at the hotel. I shot him a look but there was no reaction..

“Tomorrow…” he went on again.

“MAYBE!” I told him and walked away.

“I will wait you tomorrow.”



After a few power-outages I headed downstairs to use the wi-fi and have a bottle of Angkor beer, the local version of the cheap, flavorless, working class beer of the world.

The two person bar staff talked in a corner and the tables outside the hotel were swarmed. Laughter rose frequently and the slamming of beer glasses and the clink of utensils against glass plates. Khmer filled the air. I half expected DJ Camera to —

“Hello!” said DJ Camera, standing up from his chair outside.

I stared at him in disbelief. Behind him tuk-tuk drivers slept in their vehicles. People walked by on their way to the bars or restaurants of the Phnom Penh night; but here was DJ Camera, still sitting outside my hotel.

I returned the greeting, disregarded whatever else he said and continued to drink my unfinished beer and then a second when I felt somebody staring at me.

I looked out the door and DJ Camera was stooping in, looking uncharacteristically meek. I stared at him for a moment and he spoke quietly.

“Thomas,” his memory was impressive, “please, it is a happy night. You are in Cambodia. Do not sit alone. Sit with me outside and drink.”



Shit.

I had him wrong like I probably had the cabbie in Mexico wrong. I pride myself in adaptability and openness in travel but here, I had it all wrong.

What the fuck?

I smiled, closed my computer and joined a smiling DJ Camera outside.

The table was full of food and pitchers of beer. There were two men at the table with DJ Camera. They smiled at me. A group of extremely beautiful girls laughed at me as I mumbled awkward “hellos“.

The man next to me was another tuk-tuk driver and the man next to DJ Camera was the manager of the lovely Noura Motel, and a close friend of DJ Camera’s.

“We are like family,” said the manager, a squat smiling man with one of the friendliest faces I have ever seen. “We take care of eachother.”

I felt shame.

I looked at the man who I assumed wanted only to take my money.

“Tonight, Thomas,” DJ Camera said, “you are our new friend and we take care of you.”



They did take care of me. There were pitchers of local beer mixed with a beer from Singapore. They pushed a kind of edible rice cloth my way and it tasted like a neutral rice cake on it’s own but it was heaven in the sweet, fishy dipping sauce.

“Traditional Cambodian,” my new friends told me.

There were questions about me, questions about my time in Korea and Vietnam. There were questions about Cambodia, whose answers were to be expected:

“Cambodia is the best!”

The four of us spoke and drank for a time as we descended into the universal language of drunkeness.

“Thomas,” DJ Camera said, eyes glazed over after declaring that he had left school sometime before high school, “you are my friend!”

“Good friends,” I corrected.

“I saw you alone and I take care of you. I take you to my friend’s motel. Tonight you eat and drink with us. We take care of you. Tomorrow I want you to see Cambodia!”

Finally, I agreed.

Jol Moi! We all said as we clinked our glasses and drank.

“Thomas,” said DJ Camera, “Can you understand my English?”

“Nobody can understand your English!” Piped in the other tuk-tuk.

“Thomas, DJ is very drunk. Nobody can understand!” Said the manager of the motel.

DJ began to introduce me to the girls scattered around in the night. The tuk-tuk drivers parked across the street looked over occasionally if they weren’t otherwise occupied by being passed out.

The night wore on for a while until finally the alcohol was gone. I pulled out my wallet but was hissed at by all three of my companions.

“Thomas,” said DJ Camera, “tomorrow I will wait you. Sleep long. I will be here.”

“Maybe you will have no tour tomorrow,” said the manager, “DJ will probably crash into a tree tonight!”

Read more...

Cu Chi -Home of the Viet Cong- Vietnam

A secret entrance to a Viet Cong Tunnel.
Cu Chi, Vietnam.

The next day I signed up for a tour.  Ordinarily I don’t go for too many tours when I travel for the simple reason that I usually travel alone and end up being the guy sitting on the bus who never says anything.  This tour however promised to be an interesting trip to experience a place that was close to Hell for U.S. Soldiers during the war.

After a fresh baguette (with nothing on or in it, though still delicious) I was picked up by a small tour bus.

I sat in a window seat, my legs folded up by my chest courtesy of a protruding wheel well thankful for air conditioning and nice view of the streets of Saigon.  At least I was in little danger of getting run over by 50,000 motorbikes inside of a bus.

For 30 minutes the bus drove about bustling streets, turning here and there, to pick up the other groups that had signed up for the tour.  By the time everyone had boarded and the attendance sheet was passed around I found myself thrown together with 20 or so Australians and a Chinese family. 

Our destination was 2 hours outside of Saigon.  The trip, cramped though it was, was worth the $10 I had paid for it.  We left the frantic streets of downtown, crossed a river and soon found ourselves in the somewhat decaying sprawl of the outer limits of Saigon. 

Everywhere people sought shelter from the heat and the sun in shaded hammocks.  People sat on tiny plastic chairs at the ever-present food stands eating cheap food and drinking Vietnamese ice-coffee. 

Soon, the city gave way to rice patties and the shacks of farming communities.  Even motorbikes became less and less common, replaced with the occasional water buffalo wandering on the side of the road. 

The roads deteriorated quickly.  Pavement ceased after a time and the rock covered road filled with potholes and other bumps.  More than once I found myself flying off my seat.  If this had been an airplane ride I would have been praying. 

Finally we came to our destination.

Cu Chi.

Cu Chi is a district of Saigon.  It was once farmland housing villages of rural Vietnamese.  It still has the appearance of rural farmland and is in fact surrounded by many farms, many of them passed on the way. 

The place is relaxing and at first glance looks like nothing more than a small swatch of forested park.  It looks like any campground in New England sans tents and with staggering temperatures.  This, I suppose, is what makes Cu Chi so contradictory.  It is a place that projects the peacefulness of nature but its reality is one of unimaginable violence and terror. 

Beneath the dirt, grass, gnarled roots, and trees is a series of tunnels, sleeping quarters, strategy rooms, and traps.  Cu Chi is the land of the Viet Cong.  From Cu Chi the Tet Offensive was planned.  From Cu Chi the Viet Cong brought guerilla warfare to an invading army. 

My first inclination that Cu Chi might have been an odd pick for an American was the documentary we were shown in a large canopy with a thatched roof.  The footage was grainy and the audio was horrible.  The only things I could really make out was something about “trained murderers,” “evil,” “barbaric,” Americans.

The forest and vegetation in Cu Chi and the surrounding areas was thicker at one point, but American bombing and carpet bombing campaigns has left the area with permanent scars.  In fact, strewn about the trails of Cu Chi are bomb craters filled in with trees growing at odd angles from the crater walls. 

Cu Chi is protected by the government and has been turned into a kind of open-air museum except that most of it is underground. 

The displays, some authentic and some recreated, generally relate to hiding from or killing American soldiers. 

Trap doors line the area and are so well hidden that when the guides hop down to demonstrate their effectiveness and then close the door above them, they are completely invisible. 

Pits full of sharpened and poisoned stakes are cordoned off. 

There is an entire building dedicated to spiked booby traps designed to maim the unfortunate to such a degree that it is impossible to free one’s self from cris-crossing spikes without removing all of the skin from the bone. 

There is a door that if opened will send barbed spikes swinging crotch level.  Behind each display is a painting of what an American soldier might look like if he was the victim of such devices.

Termite mounds provided air to the subterranean maze and many of these things still exist in Cu Chi. 

What struck me most about this place was that along side with tacky exhibits of poorly made animatronic mannequins demonstrating such things as how to turn an unexploded bomb into a mine was this air of genuineness.  The place is a tourist attraction but the place is also authentic.

Bad things happened in Cu Chi to everybody involved.  People died in this place.  I have been to Gettysburg and I have seen musket ball craters on graves in the Boston Common but it is hard to relate to things that happened so long ago and have been so well ground into us in history classes. 

People died in Cu Chi and it wasn’t so long ago. 

I found myself thinking about the numerous other foreigners I had seen who seemed to be the right age to have been a veteran of this war.  I thought about the men I saw drinking beer in melancholy air in the cheap restaurants.  And further I thought of how many Vietnamese I passed in the street who were also veterans of this war.  For those people who were here during such a violent time, Cu Chi is still a fresh wound.

A destroyed U.S. tank.
Cu Chi, Vietnam.

Towards the end we came to a U.S. tank.  It sat at the edge of an alcove of trees.  Kids climbed over it like it was a jungle gym and people posed for photos at the top.  I don’t know the story of the artillery at the War Remnants Museum but the story of this tank was included in the tour. 

This tank was a casualty of war.  It was the real deal.  It had been occupied and driving along when it hit the trigger of an improvised mine likely made from an American bomb.  The back of the tank is blown out.  Jagged metal protrudes where the explosion hit.  Paint is chipped and faded and bullet holes dimple much of the body.

People died here. 

A lot of people died from both sides.

My guide spoke with pride of the resistance of the Viet Cong.  It really is incredible.  They were farmers drawn into battle, living in horrible conditions fighting a horrible war.  He spoke with pride about how many Americans they killed and the ingenious simple but fatal traps they used to kill them, to kill us. 

It is fascinating to hear the other side of a story but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be difficult too sometimes. 

I thought again of the veterans who make the trip back to Vietnam.  Why do they do it?  Closure?  To see that the place really isn’t the hell that it was during that time?  What must it be like for them to come to Cu Chi and see all of this? 

My guide motions to me and tells me that he will take my picture if I want to hop onto the tank and pose.  An Australian is sitting atop pretending that he is operating the gun.  I decline.  It just feels, I don’t know, wrong for me to do that.

One attraction of Cu Chi is the option to shoot a number of weapons that were used in the war.  It is phenomenally expensive so I didn’t partake, but it adds to the atmosphere of Cu Chi.  The jungle is thick, the heat is oppressive and always there is the sporadic burst of automatic rifle fire and the quick whiff of gun powder. 

There was one thing I was determined to participate in.  The government has maintained some of the Cu Chi tunnels so that they are safe enough for visitors to pass through them.  The path from start to finish is obvious with optional exits every 10 meters or so.  Traps have been removed or cordoned off. 

In Cu Chi you can wander the tunnels and into the rooms where the Viet Cong lived, died, killed, and planned during the Vietnam War.

It is billed as a simple way to get a little closer to history.

The tunnels at Cu Chi are a nightmare.  Some have been widened a touch to make way for western visitors but they are still overwhelmingly claustrophobic.  Their curved ceilings are too low to do anything but stoop and waddle, knees level with your belly.  The air is still, thick with humidity and hot as hell. 

I got the impression that these tunnels would be well lit and a breeze.  I was wrong.  There were low powered bulbs where the tunnel turned 90 degrees but the light was overcome by darkness a few feet later.  To walk in the tunnels is to walk in darkness.

Viet Cong tunnel.
Cu Chi, Vietnam.

Claustrophobia set in pretty instantly.  By the time I bowed over to get into the tunnel I wished that I hadn’t but already there was a line of people behind me.  You can’t turn back in the tunnels.  You can’t go forward either if the line of people in front of you have stopped for god knows why.  So I sat there in pitch black, oppressive heat, unable to fully extend my arms even if my elbows were folded. 

We waddled along a few steps and then stopped again.  This continued until we came to a turn and then a drop into a tunnel further still under ground.  We came to a larger room, something only obvious with the change in the echos and people bunching up and bumping into each other.  It was a nightmare. 

You could hear voices ahead and behind but often you couldn’t see anything in front of you.  Closing your eyes made no difference in visibility.

The tunnels are panic inducing.  Illogical as it was, I developed this nagging fear that some moron at the head had taken a wrong turn and was leading us to hell or some other humid and black tomb.  Certainly we were underground for a hell of a lot longer than I expected and the turns had disoriented us. 

When at last we felt a breeze (still almost 100 degrees, mind you) I had had my fill of the Viet Cong.  When I could finally stand in sunlight I was covered in sweat and dirt.  My knees were scraped from the tunnel floors.  My legs hurt.

An Australian behind me muttered the sentiments of everybody when invited to enter another tunnel.

“Fuck this.”

  The next day I hopped a bus to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Read more...

Saigon Part One

Well, I have been home for a few days now.  It feels very bizarre.  It has taken me a while to get internet in my room (but not so long to buy a giant ass TV and spent a bunch of money) so this is all really late.  I tried really hard to take a lot of notes on my way through SE Asia.  Here it is.  Part one of "What the Crap Was I Thinking?"

Vietnam was my Vietnam. 

Hours earlier I had woken up in familiarity at a little hotel in Seoul.  The sun had risen to what looked to be a nice day on the peninsula.  Now, my plane is bouncing around a runway at night.  Trees that look like palms are silhouetted by the lights of run down and abandoned buildings with a distinctively French architecture that dot the area around the airport. 

I walk off the plane and am blitzkrieged by the heat and humidity of Saigon.  My skin becomes moist and my jeans suffocating.  As I stand on the bus that will take us to the arrival terminal of the airport I am pressed against the window Publish Postby the crowd of people piling in.  It isn’t so bad really.  There is air-conditioning and it I am in little danger of falling given that I can’t move.  And the view is good, so my eyes dart around as my cheek squishes against the window.  Behind a green fence are a couple of old bombers.  Their windows are smashed and the war-green paint is dinged up in a few areas.  Their identifying numbers are barely visible, but they are there.  They look like movie props from every Vietnam flick ever made but they are probably the real deal. 

Welcome to Saigon.

It is a strange transition between Korea and Vietnam.  I think it must be a strange transition for anybody to go from East Asia to Southeast Asia, or the opposite.  My first experience in Saigon, now officially Ho Chi Minh City (but Saigon sounds oh so much cooler), was a pretty good example.

I had become soft in Korea; too trusting.  You could probably leave your wallet in any bar and stand a pretty good chance of it being returned with nothing missing.  I rarely locked my apartment door (until my students started to come around towards the end).  I never thought twice about getting into a cab because they are all the same, and they are all cheap.

I hoped that the airport in Saigon would have a kiosk where you could arrange pick-up to a cheap hotel.  That was my plan after I had my visa processed.  Incheon Airport in Korea has said kiosks every thirty feet.  Saigon had zero. 

It was late.  Everything was closed and besides there wasn’t much to the airport in Saigon.  Just a long corridor with a few little rooms, most of which were abandoned.  I changed some of my Korean Won into Vietnamese Dong and walked out again into the heat.

There was nobody in the airport because everybody was outside.  Hundreds of people were mulling around waiting for arrivals. 

I walked away from the crowd to stand for a moment and formulate a game plan.  This was something I should have probably done before arriving in Vietnam but I was not yet worried.  I had a 3 week jaunt through Southeast Asia and not a single plan.  Immediately I was approached by this rotund guy who spoke pretty decent English. 

While Korea made me soft it did not make me stupid.  In defense of what happened I have to point out that I was exhausted.  I was pulling two big pieces of luggage.  I was wearing jeans and sweating profusely and had taken a decent amount of xanax for the plane ride.

The mind is quick to accept a way out of duress, even if that way is something you would not have gone for under normal circumstances.

The round man was a taxi driver.  He spoke with me for a while and I spoke back.  He seemed to be a genuinely nice guy; a little pushy but nice.  He spoke of Saigon with a lot of pride.  He asked about the handkerchief I had attached to my camera bag and he seemed interested when I told him it had come from Seoraksan in Korea.  Eventually one of his buddies, a thin and loud sort of jerk came over and began chatting too. 

The thin guy grabbed my arm and started running his fingers over the tattoo on my arm and asking me questions, particularly if I was traveling alone and why. 

At this point the first guy started to grab my luggage and walk towards his car.  Given that I had yet to agree to a ride this should have been my key to bail and find an official taxi company as opposed to a couple of goons in the shadows.

I grabbed my bag and asked him where he was going.  He told me he would take me to a cheap hotel near downtown.  I thought on it and decided, against my gut, that I might as well ride with tubby.  I had to get to a hotel and this guy didn’t seem all bad.  Or maybe he did, I didn’t know.  I was exhausted.

I got into his car.  It had no taxi markings on it.  It bothered me a little but not enough to send any sort of alarm. 

I closed the door and the thin guy jumped into the passenger seat up front and said something real quick.  For a moment I thought I was about to get robbed.  I became very self-conscious of having an absurd amount of cash on me.

The thin guy spoke again and then told me I had to pay a fee to him because he was the boss.  I gave him money and he told me that he would keep my change as a present.  He then smiled, jumped out of the car and ran away. 

Shortly after this the cabbie hit me up for the cost of the exit toll (this is pretty standard).  He then took me to a hotel that cost $80 a night in the middle of a colony of homeless families.  The taxi cost almost as much as the hotel.  I didn’t pick up on this until I looked up the exchange rate. 

The next day, after paying for water I drank from the mini-bar and becoming extremely depressed over a rocky start to my trip and losing quite a bit of enthusiasm for the entire thing, I took a reasonably priced cab back to the airport to try again.  My debit card was sitting somewhere in my old apartment in Cheongju so my wad of cash was all I had for the duration. 

$80 hotels were not in my budget. 

The second cab driver looked like a 90 year old mole.  He spoke in this high-pitched whine that reminded me of the old man in the Adam Sandler Chanukah cartoon.  He led me to his car (totally thread bare, by the way), charged me the exit toll, and brought me at last to a cheapish hotel.  He told me he had gotten me a deal because I had been good to him and that he thought I was nice.  I thanked him for finding what looked to be (and actually was) a safe and legit hotel.  He then made a valid effort to scam me out of a lot of money (and was successful to a certain extent) before he drove off.

I was then led upstairs to my tiny $20 a night room.  I moved my luggage into a corner and relaxed for the first time since leaving Korea.    

Read more...