By the time I got on the plane to leave Bangkok, I was ready to go. Thailand had been getting hot—record-breaking hot—and pollution was starting to sneak back into Bangkok.
And it was the holiday weekend of Songkran, a water festival where spraying anyone and everyone goes. I hadn’t ever been in the country for that before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I was worried about either me or my bags getting soaked on the way out of the country.
In the event, I had little to worry about. My neighborhood, not a touristy area, remained quiet—except that everyone decided to go to the mall on the second day of the holiday. That wouldn’t have affected me at all, except that I met Maxx and Kay for lunch that day, and that’s where we went! Kay drove, but it would have been faster to take BTS (though with more a chance of getting sprayed—not on the train, which doesn’t allow shenanigans like that, but between stations). We probably spent a half hour just finding parking.
But it was a good meal and as an added bonus they ran me all the way out to the airport so I didn’t have to lug my luggage around on the train!
My flight went through Manila, where I had never been before. I didn’t think much about it when making the booking, but as I read up on it afterward, I been to question my decisions. Apparently it regularly tops lists of the worst airport in the world—rife with corruption, poor services, and a confounding structure where there are no connections between terminals. You might, in some cases, literally have to clear customs and take a cab to get a connecting flight!
But in the event, it wasn’t so bad. My flights were all in the same terminal. It was small, disorganized, and crowded, but seemed safe and had plenty of services open at all hours.
I killed some time chatting with a Thai guy who had been in the Philippines for a wedding and was just flying back to Bangkok. He was retired from a position with the Interior Ministry, and now spends his time reforesting the area around his home village. He told me how many trees he had planted and while I don’t recall the number it seemed crazy high to me, based on my limited experience of putting in a hundred or so as a Boy Scout once.
Arriving at Narita, even somewhat late at night, was an entirely different experience from Manila, or in fact any other airport I’ve ever been to. It was very quiet, which seemed odd, but still had a lot of staff on duty. It was the most efficient process I’ve ever been through when clearing into a country… quarantine/vaccine check, immigration, customs, boom, boom, boom. The longest part of it was waiting for a local cab.
I spent the first couple days in a shipping container hotel near the airport. It was inexpensive, though a bit off the beaten path. Mostly I picked it so I could say, hey, I stayed in a shipping container! But the room was actually pretty nice.
I had to get a cab there on the first night, which was expensive—maybe outweighing the cheapness of the hotel. To get to a train station after I checked out, I figured I would take a bus.
That was a challenge. Google and Apple Maps are both excellent at routing for public transportation here, but the signage at the stops is all in Japanese. Translator apps can help a bit, but also introduce confusion. For example, running the bus route through the translator gave me such poetic stop names as “Flying hill,” “mountain of cherry blossoms,” and “south middle.” But those are of little use when looking at a map.
Anyway, after I figured out what side of the stop to stand on, I had a while to contemplate Japanese society. The first thing that leapt out at me was a backpack sitting on the bench at the bus stop. There was no one else there—someone must have forgotten it when they got on an earlier bus.
But from what I have read, the bag would likely remain there, untouched, all day and perhaps more than a day, until the owner returned to collect it. Such random theft as would be commonplace in the US is all but unknown here. And such is the respect for privacy that it’s equally unlikely a good samaritan would rummage the bag and attempt to locate the owner. Instead, it would just sit, perhaps attracting a police officer called by a concerned local if it were there long enough.
I also spent a lot of time watching traffic go by as I waited. It didn’t take long before I realized I had not seen a single vehicle with a dent on it. Nor dirt, for that matter—all were sparkling clean. And this is an industrial area near the airport—so there were vehicles of all sorts going past. Semis, dump trucks, cement mixers, garbage trucks… it didn’t matter. Every single one of them was clean enough to eat off of.
Tomorrow I head north, through the mountains and toward the last limits of the annual sakura blossoms that spray across the country.
I had high hopes when I flew into Hanoi in early March that it would be a good place to hunker down for a bit while the world got the whole coronavirus thing under control. For the most part, my predictions about Vietnam being a safe place to ride out the storm have proven true so far. My ideas about how long that would take may have been wildly off-base, however, as I watch borders close and flights cancel and cities lock down around the world.
So I don’t mean for this to be a travel blog, but I know friends and family on the other side of the world are probably a little curious about how things are going here and I thought I’d fill everyone in at once.
First, I got sick. Not COVID sick, but some shorter, less intense bug that nonetheless managed to worry me quite a bit for a couple of days. I still can’t figure out how I managed to catch anything; I wear a mask outside religiously (initially, because of the terrible air quality; then, because the government made it mandatory), sanitize and wash hands frequently, and avoid touching my face while outside. And, other than going to the grocery store, or going for walks around town (usually combining the two; big grocery stores like you find in the U.S. or Thailand are rare here and none are very close to me, so shopping involves going to half a dozen neighborhood places to see which one is carrying what I want on that particular day) I don’t really go out that frequently anyway. I have no idea how any bug got through that, but it did!
I think I worried my AirBnB host quite a bit when I told him to not send the housekeeper in because I was feeling sick, but he and his father, Mr. Quang (who looks after the place primarily) checked in on me several times a day until I started getting better, which was very nice of them. I even got some authentic Vietnamese medical advice: orange juice and lemonade are apparently the flu supplements of choice here.
Life During Virus
Anyway, I am getting over that, but life here is far from normal. When I landed, there were no active cases of COVID in the country. Three days later, they started arriving from overseas; the first, about a half mile from where I am staying. Out came the roadblocks, soldiers in hazmat suits sluicing down the sidewalks with hundreds of gallons of disinfectant.
There was a little panic buying that first day, but, for better or worse, I had no idea what was going on… it was my first Saturday at any store in Hanoi, and I thought maybe double-lines wrapped around the inside was just a typical shopping day here. I happened to get in line behind a British expat who lives here, however, who clued me in to what was going on.
Long lines and full loads on my first Saturday as the first new coronavirus case was announced.
Things calmed down quickly, however, and there were no shortages of anything that I could tell.
Now, you aren’t allowed in stores without a mask on, and a guard takes your temperature and spritzes your hands with alcohol-based sanitizer before you go in. The country has now effectively stopped all incoming foreigners and strictly limited even Vietnamese nationals returning from overseas. Everyone who arrives goes directly into mandatory two-week quarantine with regular testing. They are also now retroactively testing all arrivals since March 8, tracking people down at hotels and homes to get a swab. Hanoi’s mayor has asked people to self-isolate for the next two weeks, calling it the critical period.
Almost all infections announced over the past couple of weeks have been found among people already in mandatory quarantine–either placed there on arrival from overseas (a two-week quarantine having become required in mid-March, shortly before all foreign arrivals were stopped… Vietnamese citizens are still allowed to return but are also immediately quarantined) or after contact with a previous infectee.
A typical notification alerting people to locations and times where they may have been exposed to a COVID-19 patient.
For those few infections found in the wild, the government performs intensive contact tracing. And in many cases, that information is published for everyone to see, so you get a play-by-play trace of the person’s steps and activities–addresses visited, dates and times–so you can know if you have possibly been exposed and should be tested. Testing and quarantine are paid for by the government, even for foreign citizens, so people are encouraged to come forward. And they have been tracking down every passenger on any flight with an infectee and testing widely.
The quarantine orders have teeth, too: a woman in Hanoi who had been asked to self-quarantine after contact with a patient tried to skip out two days before her two weeks were up to fly out to England. The police hauled her off the plane, stuck her into a government run quarantine facility to start the two week clock over again from scratch, and fined her for leaving the house.
They no longer close down the neighborhood and send the military in when they find a new case, though. The approach has become more surgical in recent days as they’ve narrowed down the infection vectors and traced contacts more closely… only people with direct contact are usually quarantined, while others are just tested.
It’s an approach that many countries are way past being able to implement, but it’s a credit to Vietnam that they instituted border and flight controls early on in order to keep infections at a level where they can be managed without shutting down the entire country. I have every hope and some moderate expectation that within the two week quiet period initiated this week, things may start to return to normal internally.
Over the past couple of days it has gotten noticeably quieter. Many of the little coffee shops that were open are closed, and the clusters of people sitting along the sidewalks and lakeside drinking and talking disappeared with them. What little motorcycle traffic there is seems to be dominated by delivery drivers.
Here and there some small shops are open, but few people are in them, even the little grocery stores, which remain fully stocked. When I went to one today, there were three bored stockboys trailing me around to instantly relieve me of any item I chose to run it up to the cashier… everything was all rung up by the time I arrived. And this is a store with a footprint of about a third the size of your average gas station convenience store in the States.
All of it validates my view of Vietnam as one of the places that is taking the virus seriously and taking the right steps to restrict the spread early.
Ghost-town Hanoi
But it does make the experience significantly different than what you read about in the guidebooks.
Some sort of temple on an even tinier island near me in the West Lake… closed, of course, so I can’t really tell you any more about it.
Before the shut-down order, I got to take some long walks around town. It is less risky now than in normal times because there’s a lot less traffic. There aren’t really sidewalks, per se, so you’re always walking in a flow of cars and (predominantly) scooters. It takes a lot of focus; Vietnamese are just as addicted to their mobile phones as any other global citizen, and it’s typical for them to be cruising along completely focused on the phone, even in crowded conditions.
Social isolation has not stopped the intrepid fishermen of Hồ Tây (West Lake).
The honking here isn’t as bad as I experienced in Da Nang, at least, but it’s still fairly constant on the main roads. Fortunately, my AirBnB is well off the beaten track, on an island in the West Lake, in the middle of a thick block of housing with narrow and unpredictable alleyways intersecting it. It’s not always easy to tell what’s an alley and when you are walking up someone’s front entry. I only have gotten lost a couple times, though. My walk in from the main street:
That’s my gate and a fast pan up to my balcony there at the end. It’s less busy these days than when I took the video.
The West Lake is picturesque and in any other capital city in the world, this little island of calm would be filled with sprawling multi-million dollar mansions.
Fish sorting? Dinner time? Who can say?
Here, for whatever reason, it appears to primarily be the aquarium district. All along my little alleyway are shops selling fish food, fish, glass tanks, filters, and the other necessaries for fish-focused hobbyists. There are no other types of shops. It’s a baffling concentration, and equally baffling how anyone possibly could know where to go to find these places… there are no signs, and it’s often unclear whether you are just walking past a house where people happen to keep a lot of fish, or a fish store where people happen to live in the back. One place I go past has all the tanks and stuff but it looks like someone’s dining room; a big round table inside that is constantly filled with people eating and chatting.
Many neighborhoods around town are like that, particularly near where I am, in the old quarter. Although you risk getting a motorcycle in the back along the way, it’s fascinating to walk along and get little glimpses of daily Hanoian life going on… a woman in a shop talking on the phone while vigorously hula-hooping, two old guys drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, kids playing soccer in a tiny courtyard. It’s a bit like Bangkok in the way that you feel like every little branch off every little alleyway leads to its own hidden and complex world, though it’s on a much smaller and more intimate scale than Bangkok.
A construction site nearby.
One interesting challenge that I had not previously considered was that of construction in such tightly packed neighborhoods. I guess I had assumed that everything was built up from the inside out and then stayed as it was laid until the entire place was razed sometime in the next hundred years (as an aside, I still don’t have any real conception of how private property ownership works here, in a supposedly communist state… how do you get one of these little plots in the first place?) but that’s not the case… there are several active construction projects going in this neighborhood, far from the main streets.
There’s obviously no access for conventional construction equipment, and the potential alternative of erecting an external scaffolding is ruled out by the tightly-packed buildings (another aside: why so narrow and deep? I guess I should look into why shotgun houses came about in the United States, maybe it’s something similar here). But they build them tall–I’m staying in a place that is five stories, and there are buildings the loom over it.
The answer is that it’s all done by hand, apparently, with materials off-loaded out on the main streets and then shuttled in by wheelbarrow or motorcycle. I happened across a little motorcycle dump truck plying its trade one day. They pretty much block the entire alley when they are operating, but no one seems to mind.
There are other ghosts here, too.
On one of my random walks, I happened upon a picturesque little pond in the middle of a clutch of buildings. A chunk of unidentifiable machinery jutted up out of the corner of it; but I knew what it was from various signs I had passed along the way: the B-52 Deli, B-52 Coffee Shop, a mural showing a teacher and some happy children dancing around the wreckage of a B-52 bomber. I’d stumbled upon B-52 Lake.
Just about 24 hours before I was born, on December 27, 1972, during the final phase of Operation Linebacker II, Nixon’s last hurrah at bombing the North Vietnamese into submission, a SAM crew outside what was just a small village on the outskirts of a much smaller Hanoi let off three SA-2 Guideline missiles into what must have seemed like a torrent of bombers coming at the capital.
One of them struck at the starboard wing root of a B-52 with the callsign of Cobalt-01. One crewman was killed in the explosion; another bailed out but apparently did not make it to the ground alive… his body was discovered and returned in 1985. The other four crew ejected successfully and were promptly captured.
Their time in custody was blessedly short compared to many pilots captured in the war; they were released during prisoner exchanges negotiated during the Paris Peace Accords already underway, and back in the United States by March of 1973.
It was the final loss in the Linebacker II campaign and one of the last B-52s lost in the war. But it has been a lasting point of pride for the Vietnamese, as evidenced in all the business names, murals, etc. The larger chunk of the aircraft was eventually pulled out of the lake and serves as the centerpiece of the B-52 Victory Museum a few blocks away (closed, naturally, when I walked by).
An older fellow who happened to be walking by when I was looking at the lake made sure to draw my attention to the plaque about what they call the “Historical Vestige” here now.
The rest of the remains of Cobalt-01, a nearby mural, and the plaque by the lake–blow it up for a fine example of heroic writing.
Apart from that (and a plaque along my typical path around the West Lake, with John McCain’s name leaping out at me from the spray of unfamiliar Vietnamese words, memorializing where he parachuted in from his destroyed fighter jet) the American War (as it’s known here) appears to be far from the minds of today’s Vietnam.
Still, in general the people here aren’t as friendly at Thais–this is definitely not The Land of Smiles. But that’s not to say they are unfriendly… just brusque; businesslike. I’ve had a couple people stop me just to speak a little English, and I haven’t seen any of the hostility that has been reported by some people as foreigners have increasingly become associated with COVID (although I’ve seen a few stores with signs posted in English “No foreigners”… but there are idiots and bigots in every country, ours is only the most famous for it).
On the plus side, I haven’t been pestered by the many hucksters and street vendors that I’ve noticed in more touristy precincts such as Hoi An.
There are some delightful parks and many lakes scattered around, and if the air pollution drops at some point I may spend more time outside. It’s just starting to get a little warm, or at least uncomfortably warm, with the high humidity, but sitting rather than walking should be fine.
I haven’t found much in the way of the excellent French legacy of baked goods that the travel guides talk about. There are many bakeries, but most of them are not even up to par with what I find in Thailand, let alone Western standards. I have found at least one good indoor coffee place, not too far from here, and on the lake, but it looks like it will be a couple weeks before I go back, even if they don’t shut their doors.
Isolation on The Other Side of The World
If I’d been picking a spot in Vietnam to be marooned, however, I’m not sure Hanoi would be it. If I had to pick a place where everything was going to be closed, it would be a spot with a beach (can’t close the ocean!) and much better air quality.
A view from the roof of my building.
Home for the next little while…
My apartment is fine, nothing special, but again, a tiny studio in a nondescript neighborhood with a view consisting of a neighboring balcony about five feet away. I can hike up to a nice little patio on top of the building, with a washer and dryer and much better view, but air quality and work (I need wifi!) typically keep me down below.
Fortunately, work has completely blown up, so that’s mostly what I do most days now.
There is cable TV, with a respectable selection of English-language channels, mostly movies. That’s on a lot. When I’m really looking for entertainment, though, I flip through the Vietnamese channels.
The military remains a big deal here; revered from their success in the American War and recognized as a bulwark against encroaching Chinese interests, they have a more active role in society than what we are used to at home.
View from my balcony… of another balcony.
This has some interesting side effects. One of the more predictable ones is that many news shows are apparently delivered by the military, the anchors, the weatherman, etc all in uniform and presenting the news of the day.
One of the more amusing results is the other types of shows that are also put on by the military: a version of “The Voice” where the audience, judges, and competitors are all in uniform, quiz shows with the host in camouflage and young draftees answering questions.
Although the language sounds very much like Thai to me, it’s not really similar, and I can’t make out any of the words. But I try to keep up my Thai studies a bit, too, so I don’t get completely out of practice.
Assisting me in that effort is Monica’s nephew, Chokdee (his nickname; it means “Lucky”), with whom I play games online most evenings. He’s a little older than Tessa, and far better than I am at the games we play. I listen to him and his friends chattering and catch a word here and there. His English is good enough that he and I can communicate okay. Additionally, when I die before he does (usually!) he yells, “You kill my Scott! Now I kill you!” and hunts down my assailants.
I’m the normal looking one; Chokdee on the left.
I read ebooks, I watch movies, I work, I read probably too much news. It’s a little repetitive, and I’d rather be in Thailand (although Monica is now mostly working from home, too… logistics in her little place could be challenging!) than here right now, but I guess I’ll survive.
What Does The Future Hold?
It seems likely at this point that I’ll have to extend my stay in Hanoi. I was due to head out on April 8, but another week or so beyond that might offer better perspective on the course of the outbreak here. Currently, internal travel is not expressly limited, but you do have to go through health screening and many flights have been canceled. I’m also a little nervous about getting on a packed bus or train just yet, screening or no.
But it does leave me a little marooned; my flight back to Thailand in early April has been canceled already. Even if I could find another one, Thailand has effectively closed off entry to foreigners as its own numbers explode. And even if I got past that to get to Bangkok by mid-May, when my return flight to Seattle is scheduled, that flight passes through Taiwan, which now blocks all foreign nationals, even in transit.
So I will be in Vietnam for the foreseeable future, and perhaps some unforeseeable period even after that.
I’m hoping that, at least internally, Vietnam is able to recover quickly and open up a little more, so I can treat this as more of an unusual, enforced sightseeing experience rather than an interlude in a foreign jail. I could bounce around to see a little more of the country while I’m here if that happens.
But, like the rest of the world, for now I’m just waiting, trying to neither be infected nor to become an infection vector.
My travel insurance is among the few that will cover COVID-19 infections, if I do get something, but it’s unclear how their repatriation components can work when there are simply no available flights. They won’t cover the canceled flights if you are not infected, apparently; in one of those weird insurance policy quirks, my best way to get made whole would be to go out and get sick!
It’s only money, though, and I’m not that worried about it.
Time is something I can’t really recover, but all I can work with is what I have on my hands right now, so I’ll try to make the best of it wherever I am at, for however long that may be.
Hong Kong is the most heavily urbanized place I’ve ever been, and I’m not sure what exactly it is that I mean by that.
Yeah, there are skyscrapers everywhere–353 at least count, a full hundred more than the next most-heavily skyscrapered city in the world, New York. And people… loads of people, 7 million of them jammed into a deceptively large 427 square miles, a ratio that puts the city as the fourth densest in the world. And it is deceptive, because many of those square miles are taken up with unbuildable sheer hillsides (although, Lord knows, they’ve done their best to challenge the meaning of the word “unbuildable”) or vast preserved parklands, havens of green in the gray concrete jungle that must be all that keep the citizenry from sinking into bleak dystopian madness.
But it’s more than just a lot of people or a bunch of really tall buildings. It’s the sense, maybe, that there’s nothing beyond that, that a lifestyle incorporating any kind of escape to suburban or rural outlets is unavailable. As it always has been for Hong Kong… a territory of islands and hills, then a British colony held separate from the mainland after the Opium Wars, and now a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, a stew of East and West that has proven so tasty to modern enterprise that even the new Communist landlords fear adding ingredients to sour the taste.
Morning coffee with the neighbors.
So you wander canyons of concrete and steel and then find yourself looking into a major sports stadium nestled into the middle of the financial district, or watch kids filing in and out of ten-story elementary schools. Humanity, the regular things that people do, is totally adapted to city living.
And it’s small city living. Everyone is on top of each other in some of the most cramped, most expensive real estate in the world. The average Hong Kong resident has about 160 square feet to call home. That’s approaching boat-living standards, so it doesn’t seem utterly outlandish to me, but writ large, it trickles out into a lifestyle that is profoundly different from anything I am used to. The laundry flying from every window wouldn’t be out of place in a marina, but to see it lining every block of a 7-million person megalopolis is utterly foreign.
Our hotel was in the so-called New Territories, in Kowloon on the mainland side. New is a relative term, though; most of the buildings and neighborhoods were older than what we saw on Hong Kong side. It’s a cheaper, denser area with fewer Westerners around; I was often the only white face on the street.
Although it’s Hong Kong-sized, this tiny little shower (I could barely get in, and barely get the door closed when I did) was actually encountered in a London hotel.
It was, predictably, a pretty tiny accommodation… basically the same footprint as the bed with a narrow walkway around it. Big windows made it feel open, though, and the bathroom was a compact but useable scale compared to some places I’ve been.
The windows were the finest feature, however. In residential blocks 30 stories high, on every side, humanity was on full display. Laundry flapping from complex and inventive apparatus reaching from every window, old people doing tai chai on rooftops, a yoga class on the terrace below (complimentary with the hotel stay!), bakers stocking their wares in shops, businessmen hurrying to work… it’s all happening in Hong Kong, any time you feel like looking out the window.
The first day I was feeling human again after the flight from Vancouver (in other words, the second day of the trip), we decided to grab a ferry across the harbour to visit the Alexander Grantham, an old fireboat that has been turned into a museum.
Assembling for a drill or a rescue that didn’t happen, we weren’t sure. Note the tree stumps in the foreground–chopped down after being uprooted in Typhoon Mangkhut.
As we arrived at the Hung Hom ferry landing, we got to see a new fireboat up close. Sirens echoed through the canyons of skyscrapers and slowly converged on the ferry landing as various apparatus pulled up and began disgorging firefighters wearing life vests and helmets. A dive boat was pulled up next to the pier awaiting them, but whether it was a drill or an actual emergency that was called off, they never boarded and the boat was still sitting there when we pulled away on the ferry.
Like pretty much every other mode of transport in Hong Kong, you can pay for the ferry with an Octopus card. The penetration of the transit card is so broad that you can conduct just about every other sort of commerce in the city with it as well, from 7/11 to vending machines to supermarkets. As a tourist, you almost don’t need any cash at all to navigate the city.
Just a typical ferry-board view of the skyline.
I’m going to lobby Washington State Ferries to adopt these dashing sailor uniforms for crew.
As advertised, the ubiquitous ferries offer some of the best views of the city from the water. You don’t even need to take a special sightseeing cruise. Adding to the tourist-attraction aspect, the staff wear some adorable little sailor uniforms.
The Grantham is high and dry these days in a permanent exhibition along the waterfront walkway at Quarry Bay. It’s an easy walk from North Point or even easier MTR ride to Tai Koo station. In the park around the boat are exhibits detailing the history of firefighting throughout the harbor and the buildout and operations of the boat. It was moderately interesting but what really grabbed my attention was the first marine squat head I have ever seen:
You’d want to watch your shoes closely in a seaway…
From the Grantham, we took the so-called ding ding tram back west through the city. It was quite crowded with locals and tourists alike but provided an intimate and easy tour of the city, fresh perspectives on daily life at every stop. We passed skyscrapers with windows blown out by the recent typhoon, bamboo scaffolding going up for the workers to repair them; banks and investing businesses; elementary schools and wet markets; stadiums and shops, both at the high end of Western brands and hole-in-the-wall local apothecaries.
Typhoon cleanup is ongoing.
I was pretty tired long before sunset but managed to stay awake long enough for the nightly light and sound show that lights up many of the skyscrapers on both sides of the harbour. It’s only ten minutes and a little underwhelming, considering what they have to work with. But judging by the crowds along the waterfront, it’s a pretty popular event.
How many lights are from the city and how many are cell phones?
By the next day I was feeling a little more ambitious, so we took the MTR back out to Lantau Island, where the airport is located, to trek to the Big Buddha overlooking the Po Lin Monastery.
You can, and possibly should, actually hike up to the mountain monastery. But what we did was take the cable car that runs over the hiking trail for much of the route. The day was misty and the views were limited, although I could barely make out, off in the distance, the great maw in the Zhujiang River Estuary swallowing the brand new six-lane Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau 4-mile long tunnel leading to the invisible 14 mile viaduct to the mainland.
We could see pretty clearly the more robust hikers on the trail beneath us, taking the hard way to the top.
The walk might actually have been faster than the cable car, though, considering how long you have to stand in line–first, to get the tickets, then, to board the car. It must have taken close to two hours before we worked our way up to the head of the line and actually got on.
The ride proved not to be worth either the wait or the cost, although it might have been better on a clear day.
Getting up to the Buddha, once you arrive at the tiny village near the monastery complex (and I say “village” but don’t let it conjure up idyllic pictures of natives going about their daily lives as they and their forebears have done for hundreds of years… it’s basically just a row of shops designed to capture as many tourist dollars as possible) is absolutely free, however. With a little bit of a climb involved. If I had hiked up the mountain, I might have quit at the last set of stairs up to the Buddha. But, feeling fresh, and refreshed after a stop at the 7/11 in the “village,” we made short work of the stairs, and some other walking paths around the area.
It was all right, for a tourist trap, but I enjoyed the Chi Lin Nunnery and Nan Lian Gardens, a set of attractions slightly further off the beaten path, more. We took the bus and enjoyed the tranquil setting of the monastery courtyard and gardens under the watch of the ubiquitous towering skyscrapers and hills.
Nan Lian Gardens
Monica had a local restaurant that she wanted to try and there happened to be a branch of it near the monastery, so we decided to walk to it for lunch. The weather was very mild and walking was pleasant, at least in comparison to Bangkok this time of year.
It was also an interesting opportunity to get a ground-level view of a very local neighborhood. The place is near the site of the former Kai Tak international airport, which closed in 1998 (the mountainous surroundings and runway extending into the bay made the place famously difficult to land at and resulted in many accidents). The area, then, was primarily an industrial one until quite recently, and retains much of that flavor (although, inevitably, the site is being redeveloped as residential and tourist properties now). We walked past produce warehouses and garages, a printing factory, and a university.
The restaurant turned out to not be that good, although the people watching was terrific. Like a lot of places in Asia, you often end up sharing a table with other random customers; our table mates appeared to be a couple of engineers on lunch break, and their English was good enough that they kindly helped us translate some of our order for the waitress.
All told, I found Hong Kong fascinating and will definitely be back again to check out the many facets of the place that I missed in this brief visit.
You couldn’t tell from the weather on the day I left Seattle, which was sunny and inching toward 70 degrees over brilliantly red and orange trees and the wafting scent of pumpkin spice (pumped out by the metric ton by each of the several hundred Starbucks stores in the city this time of year), but it’s that time again: I hopped on a train to Vancouver and then onto a plane to Taipei and found myself, twenty-some hours later, sitting in a Starbucks (I just can’t quit ’em) in Hong Kong… where it’s raining.
So much for my plan to avoid the rains of the Pacific Northwest by jetting off to Southeast Asia for the winter again.
Apparently, I am staying in the Death District of Kowloon.
It’s a pretty pleasant rain, as far as it goes, though… it’s in the mid-70s here but not through-the-roof humid. It just feels like a regular ol’ Seattle summer rainstorm, apart from the street being covered with umbrellas and me being the only white guy in sight.
They even got the mocha right.
I’m in a fairly good mood because I had a good flight. Maybe the best trans-Pacific flight I’ve ever had, although I would never have guessed it was going to turn out that way at the beginning.
I woke up the morning of my departure feeling nauseous and light-headed. I didn’t know if I had eaten something that disagreed with me, or if it was prelude to the flu, or if something more nefarious was going on. I sure wasn’t looking forward to getting onto a bumpy 777 ride for twelve hours feeling like that, though. It ebbed and flowed through the day before I boarded the flight (at 2 a.m., in Vancouver… another strike).
And I hadn’t been able to get a good seat reserved when I booked, either. For a fairly full flight, mostly what was left was middle seats in three-seat blocks, a recipe for a terrible twelve hours in the air. The flight was with EVA, and since it was going to Taipei, the odds were good my seat mates would be ethnically Chinese, and therefore somewhat smaller than the average American. Still, it’s no fun being the big guy wedged in the middle.
But I checked one last time before check-in, and lo, a window seat had opened up. Seat Guru rated it poorly; it was at the end of a section, up against the heads, and they suggested that reclining would be limited and the incessant bathroom traffic annoying.
I don’t usually recline my seat even when I can, though, if anyone is behind me (and they always are on a full flight) on the general principle that I would prefer the person in front of me not to do so. So non-reclinability was a wash, and I was willing to put up with the bathroom traffic in order to not be in the middle.
In the event, the seat reclined further than I was used to, and my seat mates were two small and elderly Taiwanese, so I had the most comfortable accommodation I have experienced so far. Which meant I actually got some decent sleep this year. By the time I woke up for breakfast over Pusan, I was feeling pretty good again.
What looks like a modern art installation to Western eyes is actually just a fairly typical waiting area at Taoyuan International Airport in Taipei. Yes, those are stuffed dogs in shopping carts. No, I don’t know why.
It’s a short hop to Hong Kong from Taipei and there were no glitches in the transfer. I got on the right bus to get to my hotel’s neighborhood in Kowloon, and got off at the right stop, and when the rain started I ducked into local restaurant and had some pretty decent BBQ pork and rice. I’d been craving noodles all day, but the rain seemed an omen and the restaurant was right there.
So far the food is not up to Bangkok standards, but it’s less expensive than I was led to believe and the portions are much closer to what you’d get in a Western restaurant.
There’s sort of a mythology that has built up around eating Asian food in local restaurants or at street vendors touting the authenticity and exotic flavor of the experience that I find overblown. It’s true that it’s often delicious, but the “authenticity” is hogwash: if you eat at a real local place, you basically get the same kind of stuff I would cook up as a starving college student in Seattle. A case in point is Sun Kee Cheesy Noodles in Tsim She Tsui.
The place is the epitome of the local hole-in-the wall restaurant, but it’s apparently pretty famous… pictures of local celebrities eating cheesy noodles plaster the walls inside.
But the stuff is just Top Ramen with Cheez Whiz and some sausages tossed in, with a poached egg on top if you’re in the mood for it. It’s great, I love that kind of thing, but it’s basically lazy bachelor style cuisine.
I get one night to appreciate that sort of thing and shake off my jet lag, then Monica flies in from Bangkok and there will be sights to be seen. Pictures to follow.
For some reason I can’t quite explain, late last fall I began to very badly want to hike the West Highland Way in Scotland.
So, this spring, I did.
Starting out in the northern suburbs of Glasgow and leading to Fort William at the foot of Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the country, there’s really nothing all that special about the Way. Although it passes many historic places and follows a number of old military and drover’s roads through the hills, it’s not itself a particularly historic route. And although it exposes you to some fairly spectacular scenery along the way, there are many parts of the Highlands where you can view such scenes. I don’t even remember where I first heard of it.
…and less well-maintained elsewhere.
But it stuck in my head and instead of heading directly back to the Pacific Northwest from Bangkok, I booked tickets on Air India to go through Mumbai to London so I could take on the trail this April.
I picked this particular window largely because the Way starts to get overrun around the first week in May. In many places, I’ve been the only guest in the B&B; but I’ve also been told they’re booked solid from the following week until late October.
The down side is that the weather is iffy this early in the season, and I’ve seen both sides of it. Some days have been rainy and windy (well, they’ve all been windy, but you notice it more when it’s driving rain along with it), but most have also had gaps in the clouds and a spray of sunshine blasting down on the stark moors and streams.
Because of a nagging shoulder problem and because I have been fairly firmly committed to a one-bag approach to airline travel, I didn’t want to carry a full set of camping gear with me. Because it’s Europe, this isn’t a problem–you can run the route such that you end up in a cozy hamlet of some sort each evening and spend the night in a B&B or hostel. And because almost 15,000 people of all ages and shapes and interests hike it each year, there are a handful of baggage carrying services that will happily lug your heaviest items in vans between lodgings, leaving you with the modest task of hauling only a day pack with your lunch and a sweater on the trail.
So I pre-booked with a service (Mac’s Adventures) that took care of all the logistics required to put together the lodgings and baggage transport and bought a cheap duffel bag to load my unnecessary kit into for them to haul along.
The first day out of Milngavie (you pronounce that “mul-guy” for some reason; Scots English as incomprehensible as Thai in that way) was easy walking through rolling pasture land and small villages.
A cupcake or your life!
It was riskier than the bucolic surroundings would seem to indicate, however… the threat of highwaymen upon the forest tracks remains all too real in the British Isles, as I found out first hand when I was set upon by a band of ruffians not far outside of Drymen. The thieves, not a one of them older than eight, cornered me and forced me to buy a small, dry, and rather tasteless cupcake for the outrageous sum of one pound. But I was lucky to escape with my life.
I pushed myself a bit on the first day just to reassure myself that I could maintain a decent pace. An upcoming 20 mile section of the hike, the longest day in the itinerary, with a fixed rendezvous at the end, was weighing heavily on my mind. So I got to Drymen far earlier than the check-in time at the B&B I was booked at.
I didn’t have any wish to wait around for three hours in the rain outside, so I consulted a gentleman trying to paint the outside of the B&B about a place to hang out indoors. He pointed me across the street to the Clachan Inn… reputedly the oldest public house in Scotland.
There was a fire going and a few quiet clusters of folks waiting out the rain. Not being a drinker, I’ve never really been a tavern-seeking person, but I could see the appeal of just hanging around the local pub. The staff were friendly and helpful and it felt a bit like someone’s living room.
After a while, the painter came in and sat at the bar near me and we started to chat. Like almost everyone in the area, he spent a lot of weekends and evenings out enjoying the spectacular locale scenery. He gave me a rundown on the trail and a brief geological history of Scotland. I got the idea he was painting houses in a small village rather than running a Fortune 500 company or teaching at a major university because he preferred being outside to driving a desk–a pretty common theme among folks I was to encounter along the Way.
A first view of Loch Lomond from the slopes of Conic Hill.
The trail runs high out of Drymen to overlook Loch Lomond, the largest freshwater lake in the United Kingdom. But the morning I topped the trail at Conic Hill it was misty and the lake and its rocky islands were vague gray shadows below.
The trail along the lake itself was much rougher than I anticipated, just jumbled rocks in places. Rob Roy’s hideout is along the trail and I could see why he picked it–no sensible pursuer would want to hack through such terrain coming after him.
But the weather improved and the views along the lake were fantastic.
Weather clearing over Loch Lomond.
At Ardleish, I had to catch a ferry to get to my lodging for the evening. It’s an old-school setup. There’s just a pole on the shore has a line with an orange float tied to it. You run the float up the mast and the ferryman, seeing this in between sipping at his pint in the warm pub at the inn, comes across to fetch you.
The next few days were a litany of sheep and cattle pastures and rocky and rough trails. It rained, it blew, the sun came out and lit the sparkling, rushing streams that tumble down the sides of the mountains. I got used to a variety of different techniques used for passing through fences. Folks are much more relaxed about private property here; where in the U.S. wandering through a farmer’s pasture would be an invitation to a shotgun blast, here you’re welcome as long as you don’t disturb the animals or leave the gates open.
You can climb the stairs…
…spin around the spiral stack…
…or squeeze through a kissing gate.
The third from the last day was the long day, a 20 miler, and the one I had most worried about. It is a high, remote stretch between Tyndrum and Kingshouse, trekking across the high moors and through forestry blocks on isolated hillsides. The Kingshouse Hotel, the traditional stopping point on this segment, is out of commission on a major remodel right now, however. Instead, my agency booked a cab ride to nearby Glencoe and a room in a hotel there. But this gave me a firm deadline: be in the parking lot of the Glencoe Ski Center by 1700 or sleep in the open.
Things got worse the night before. I pulled off my boots to find my left anterior tibialis tendon blown up like a golfball on the front of my ankle. The constant up-down on loose rocks the day before had aggravated it enormously and made the going painful in such terrain. I lay on the floor and propped my foot on the bed and took ibuprofen and hoped for the best.
I was the only guest in the B&B that night and the owner got up early to get me breakfast and get me on the road. I kept working out the timing in my head obsessively, but I was careful to keep a pace that avoided aggravating the tendon further.
But the going was easy, following old military tracks laid out in the 1700s to suppress the rebellious Highland clans, and the scenery spectacular and uplifting.
And it turned out I needn’t have worried about getting to the car park on time. I was there by 1530, comfortably early, and had a bite to eat in the restaurant while I waited. But 1700 came and went with no cab.
After a series of phone calls (which I felt fortunate to be able to place; Scottish cellular and internet service is as primitive and medieval as the scenery, far worse than Thailand or Vietnam), I finally got hold of the cabbie… there’d been a mix-up with the dates. But he was free and only about 20 minutes away, so I got to the hotel only slightly later than expected.
Waking up at the Clachaig Inn in Glen Coe.
It turns out that Kingshouse being closed offers an unexpected bonus–you get to see the spectacular scenery of Glen Coe that is otherwise bypassed by the main route of the way. I sat up front with Kenny, the cab driver, and marveled at the narrow glen hemmed in by the tall, bald peaks of the Highlands. Lakes nestle in their cupped hands, snow still dusted their tops, and glittering waterfalls laced their stony ramparts. The view from my room at the Clachaig Inn was breathtaking.
The next morning, Kenny was back to take me and another couple that booked with Mac’s back to the trail. Bill and Heather were also Americans, but were living in Edinburgh for six months while Bill, a professor of English, was teaching there. They were also sailors and therefore excellent and amiable folks to amble along the trail with.
It was my first day seeing more than about four people at the same time on the trail, but apparently I had just been out of sync–Bill and Heather had been seeing the same people the whole way, and introduced me to them as we met up with them.
A cold view from the Devil’s Staircase.
These included Karen and Barbara, 73 and 81 respectively, who put us all to shame by not only going faster and with fewer rest stops, but doing so while carrying all their own gear and camping rough along the way. And not only were they walking me into the dust on the fabled Devil’s Staircase, the ascent to the highest point along the Way, but they were only doing it as a warm-up… they planned to tackle a much more intimidating route later in the summer and wanted to be ready for it.
My accommodation that night was a B&B that had, of all things, a wide and deep bathtub. A complementary box of Radox sat alongside. I wasn’t slow to fill the tub with piping hot water and ease into it, wincing as various cuts and bruises felt the heat. But it felt glorious. Out the window, a pair of red deer grazed on the bushes alongside the house.
Trail got a little slippery in places…
The next day, I fell in with some other Americans during the final few miles of the hike. I’d been leapfrogging them for a few days and we’d exchanged a few pleasantries and the sort of trail and weather commentary as is common in these scenarios. But as we shed our rain gear and hit the pavement on the last stretch into Fort William we started comparing notes and I found out that my path wasn’t nearly as unique as I had imagined… Matt and John had also been out kicking around Southeast Asia for much of the winter and had flown here from Singapore just to hike the West Highland Way.
We compared notes on our trips. They were part of a larger, looser group of hikers, and they’d been staying in hostels along the way but were all carrying all their own gear. I was slightly gratified to find that John’s feet were hurting just as much as mine; on the other hand, they both planned to tackle Ben Nevis the day after finishing the WHW, so they couldn’t have been feeling that bad.
Rounding the corner to Ben Nevis.
By the time I limped along the pavement into Fort William, I was feeling pretty beat-up. My left ankle was on fire, both feet were sore, and I’d developed conjunctivitis in one eye that was giving me blurred vision and a splitting headache.
So it was lovely to find that the booking for my final two nights (I tacked on an extra day in Fort William, anticipating the need for some recovery time… boy, did I get that right) was a stately old mansion right along the shore of Loch Linnhe. The room was quiet and opulent, with a view out onto a lush and green side yard glistening with raindrops. I spent most of the day in bed watching Top Gear reruns.
Although I was hurting, I was already thinking ahead. As I’d wandered into Fort William the previous day, squinting and dragging my feet, I’d spotted a sign near the railway station that got my mind working again. The Great Glen Way continues out of Fort William for another 80 miles north to Inverness. It’s not as busy, stays mostly to the glen bottom along the lochs and Caledonian Canal.
Although Bangkok is great, I did want to see more of the country again on this trip, and if you’re going to be in a hot country, the best places to visit are the ones with beaches. So Monica and I headed down to an island in the Andaman Sea called Koh Lanta for a long weekend.
Koh Lanta is just a little south of Krabi/Ao Nang, where I spent a couple weeks last year. But it’s a whole world away in terms of energy and vibe. While Krabi/Ao Nang are packed with tourists and the tourist trades, Lanta is a lot more laid back and normal feeling.
Which isn’t to say it isn’t still dominated by tourism… but it’s a far more relaxed kind of tourist, a sort of lazy rural vibe, than the beaches further north.
The closest major airport is still Krabi. From there, it’s a couple hours south by minivan to where we stayed near the south end of Koh Lanta. There is, as is required of island visits, a brief ferry ride. There is also, as is the case pretty much everywhere in Thailand, a lot of hair-raising, white-knuckle close encounters at freeways speeds with motorbikes, dump trucks, pedestrians, buffalo, etc, etc.
Our trip down from the airport had the added drama of a medical emergency. A quartet of Russian tourists got on just after we left the airport. One of them, an overweight older woman, was obviously not feeling too well when she got in, but I didn’t think much of it–I don’t feel too well after being outside in 100 degree weather very long either, and they’d been sitting out in the open waiting for the bus.
But while I find myself revived by the air conditioning, she just sort of slumped in her seat with her eyes half-closed. I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention until one of her companions, behind me, started trying to get her attention, without success.
Although she was barely responsive (she eventually answered him), there weren’t any other obvious signs of illness. Her breathing seemed normal and she wasn’t sweating a great deal (although that, itself, can be a sign of heat stroke… but usually with increased respiration rate). You can feel pretty terrible without actually being in great danger, of course, or you can be dying without noticing it, but it wasn’t clear what could be done for her other than getting her to professional medical care, which our driver did at great speed.
Everyone else in the van was great about it… the guy sitting behind the woman moved so her seat could be lowered all the way back, and the woman on the other side of her reached out and held her hand for the rest of the trip. The guy behind me, who I took to be her son, was beside himself, but another of the Russians, her nephew (he spoke English on the phone with the clinic) calmly called ahead and arranged for a gurney to be outside when we arrived.
Like most such stories, I don’t know the ending to that one, but it’s just nice to see people trying to take care of one another in whatever ways they can, cultural barriers aside.
The hotel cats are not shy about joining you for breakfast.
The rest of our ride to the hotel was uneventful. It was a place Monica had stayed before so it had the Monica stamp of approval, except for breakfast–“Not so good,” she said–and we got a cottage up on the hill near the infinity pool looking out over Bakantiang Beach. The views were gorgeous… jungle, beach, and ocean, the classic tropical paradise.
The cottage was spacious–a little too spacious, the AC had difficulty keeping up in the hottest parts of the day. But the big windows opened up to let the sea breeze blow through to quickly cool it down later in the day. And if the free breakfast didn’t quite meet the high Monica standards of approval, I thought it was at least serviceable, and the staff warm and friendly.
Bakantiang Beach is at the southern end of the island and relatively quiet even by quiet Koh Lanta standards. From an outsized proportion of farang buzzing through on scooters and motorbikes, I infer that the local roads are not quite as risky as in other parts of the country. There’s a handful of restaurants (one of which, Rock’n’Roll Thai, was excellent) and a coffee shop called Drunken Sailors, which was, naturally, ideal for me.
…and some people aren’t shy about feeding them!
There’s also the ubiquitous 7 Eleven anchoring the community, which is hands-down the busiest place in town, and a couple of beach bars with live music for the younger crowd.
For someone my speed, it’s mostly just swimming and eating and laying around in a hammock reading, which suited me just fine.
But the highlight of the whole weekend was a day-long cruise and snorkeling trip we took to some nearby islands with Club Mermaid Cruises.
The whole Krabi district is festooned with ads for various charter boats taking people among the major destinations and out to the various small karst islands scattered between the mainland and Phuket. Tour booking operators are located about even forty feet along every street in the district, and most hotels will also be happy to set you up with a trip.
The trick is figuring out who to book with and what is the best price to get, and this is where Monica stepped up to work her Monica magic.
She already knew which boat she wanted to go on, and she checked with the hotel when we checked in to see about availability and cost. 2100 baht each, they said, with openings on Friday.
But she thought she might get a better price booking directly with the tour operator, so we wandered down the street to the sleepy little office where a tiny Thai lady with enormously thick glasses was manning a desk and watching Thai soap operas.
Her price was 2200 baht, which Monica relayed to me. I played my part, saying, “Well, we can just get it through the hotel, then,” but the Thai part of the conversation continued, and continued, and continued.
We ended up paying 2000.
Later, it was explained that I was the big hang-up–as is common here, there’s a Thai price and a farang price. It drives Monica nuts, which I guess I understand… if she was in the U.S. and we went to a park or show or something and they wanted to charge her more for being Asian I’d go ballistic.
On the other hand, as I’ve noted before, foreign tourists represent a lot of the traffic here at popular attractions. The costs of upkeep are probably steeper than could be maintained at Thai prices. To charge everyone the true costs, then, would simply price out a lot of the locals, while to charge everyone Thai prices would probably underfund services.
Anyway, I have the money and I’m happy to pay, but if Monica gets that bit in her teeth then heavy negotiations are sure to follow. The conversation was all laughing and smiling and a few phone calls in between but she got what she wanted.
The beach is beautiful but generally too hot to hang out on without shade!
The sole concession required was that we walk down to the beach in the morning instead of taking the free shuttle otherwise offered from the hotel–the lady didn’t want to piss off the hotel people by stealing a sale. But it was a nice walk anyway and we arrived early and hung out at an empty beach bar with some of the crew from the boat who were also waiting.
Monica had taken a tour with the same company a few months back. Single females apparently don’t do a lot of solo vacations in Thailand, and with the famous Thai absence of reticence at asking awkward questions, she’d had to endure all manner of interrogation from almost everyone she encountered on that trip.
As a consequence, however, nearly everyone on the crew remembered her, and we benefited greatly by that prior association.
As the other tourists started showing up, they were packed into a narrow long tail for a trip out to the big tour boat, but the lady with the thick glasses (there ticking off attendance on a clip board) motioned us back… we got shuttled out in the boat’s inflatable dinghy instead.
We grabbed a seat on the upper deck on the starboard side. Most of the seats on the upper deck were already taken but these, in the beating sun, were wide open. But we were swinging at anchor in a light southerly breeze and I knew from the location of the islands that we’d be screened by the superstructure when we got underway for Koh Ha, to the west.
One of the crew, a wiry guy who looked a little older than the average crewman (they were all men on this trip) recognized Monica and stopped to chat. He gestured to the long table that ran down the center of the upper deck and said something in Thai that needed no translation.
We were warned ahead of time by all and sundry that on a boat with Chinese tourists, you’d better be ready to use some elbows and jump fast when the food came out. The crewman was telling us he was getting ready to lay out some snacks and we should get ready.
In the event, it wasn’t that bad. There was plenty of food and drink available all day long and they kept it coming… no stinginess or paucity of supply was in evidence. When things did get crowded, from time to time, the guy with the mustache would take care to fix a separate plate before he laid out the course and deliver it directly to me and Monica. Similarly, when they started handing out fins, snorkels, and masks, the crew didn’t make us sort through the pile but instead brought each of us a set directly.
The weather was beautiful, a light southerly just barely rippling the water and sunshine, sunshine, sunshine, glittering off the wavelets and lighting up the superstructure and casting the islands in a neon shade of green outlined in shocking white beaches. It took about an hour to get to Koh Ha, the first stop. The boat caught a mooring ball just off a sheer cliff on the east side of the island. Beside the cliff, a small cove with a beach had been roped off with floats. A handful of other boats were moored around the periphery but it wasn’t crowded.
There’s not a great deal of organization on Thai-led tours, so there was no announcement or anything, but we shuffled below and onto the after deck with the crowd and put our gear on.
The amazing cove at Koh Ha.
Pushing off the swim step and taking the first plunge into the clear blue water was like being dunked in magic. Right in front of my eyes, schools of colorful fish hovered a few feet below the surface, moving leisurely about their business as if there weren’t a horde of humans dropping through their ceiling. Below, coral heads and unidentified sea plants dotted the white sandy sea floor with spectacularly strange growths in purple and grays and greens.
Larger fish cruised solo through the coral, strolling along through the crowds on a leisurely hunt for lunch. There were creatures on the sand that I didn’t know the name of but if they aren’t called sea slugs there is simply no taxonomical justice in this world. Spiky sea urchins dotted the coral tops. Anemones waved in the light current.
When Monica spotted the clownfish darting in and out of their poisonous tendrils, I could actually hear her squeal underwater.
The water was bathwater warm. The snapping, swishing, and swooshing of fish feeding and living their lives popped all around us. Although other people were snorkeling nearby, it was easy to imagine we were completely alone, the world reduced to the scope of the mask.
I’m not even sure how long we were at Koh Ha, but it was the perfect amount of time. We were headed back to the boat just as they tossed out a buoy on a line (apparently, and also unexplained ahead of time, this was the signal to return), and we beat the rush at the swim step. They had hoses to wash off after getting out, and more food and drink ready and waiting.
A cruising boat anchored at Koh Rok, one of the few we saw there.
Koh Rok was the next stop on the itinerary. About an hour south, it’s a larger spot, actually two islands, with more beaches and fewer cliffs. The snorkeling wasn’t quite as amazing–the depths were such that the interesting stuff was all too deep or too shallow–but the water was just as lovely and we spent some time in the shade on the beach, watching people play.
Koh Rok is actually a national park, and is technically protected from various harmful activities, or at least as protected as you get in Thailand. The mooring balls, for example, were just tied off to coral heads, which I imagine isn’t great for either the coral or the mooring line.
But they do take some things fairly seriously. When we returned to the boat and sat down on the upper deck, I watched Monica’s face fall as she looked at the Chinese family next to us. I turned to see what she was looking at.
A little girl had scooped some sand and a little crab into a plastic bag to take home. The crab scuttled around in the bag as she giggled and watched it. Then she set it down on the deck with the rest of their stuff.
“It’s not right,” Monica said. “She shouldn’t take it.” She got up and walked quickly aft, then reappeared with a crewman, who she knew could speak Chinese. She pointed to the family and said something to him.
Without so much as a word, he walked over, grabbed the bag, and disappeared below, presumably to return the crab to its native habitat. The family was so shocked they didn’t even say anything.
He returned later and had a chat with them, explaining, I imagine, what the rules were, but I was impressed at the immediate and unilateral action. Of course, preserving the tourist destinations is their livelihood, but all too often in Thailand it’s a tragedy of the commons until everything has been ruined.
Sunset at sea is always gorgeous, whether you’re in a tropical paradise or not.
The rest of the trip was just a boat ride, but a lovely one. We cruised around the light house at the southern tip of Koh Lanta just in time for sunset, then back up along the shoreline to Bakantiang Bay.
Along the way, I watched one of the crew, a younger guy who Monica had told me had helped her out on her last trip, flirt with a few of the local girls on board. Just before we got back to Bakantiang, the boat slowed down and he ushered them into the dinghy and headed for shore–presumably dropping them closer to home. Although I couldn’t understand a word of what was said, I could tell the other crewmen were teasing him and laughing amongst themselves and he grinned and kept shaking his head as they yelled across the water to him. Teasing is truly the international language.
A month (actually, nearly three months now… two since I started writing this!) goes by pretty quickly when you’re keeping busy, and I guess I have been. Mostly I just have my head down working, although there have been a few side trips that I will write about when I find the time. But I was wondering if I would find Bangkok more or less distracting this time around, and the answer, it seems, is that it’s pretty much the same as it was before.
I got a condo in the same building I was in last year, so everything is almost freakishly familiar. I hadn’t forgotten much–the lady on the corner with the delicious chicken on a stick, the one-dollar bag of croissants and my favorite Vanilla Cereal at Big C, the way you’re expected to mash the door close button on the elevator incessantly, the way to ask the clerk at the 7-11 to nuke your burger-in-a-bag for you.
Same cats littering the Caturday Cafe.
I even remembered what little of the language I had memorized… yes, no, thank you, sorry, never mind, pork, chicken, etc… although from the giggles I get anytime I say those things near Thai people I infer that my pronunciation is still atrocious.
There’s new things to experience, of course…
New friends to make…
New foods to try…
…like fried bugs.
But my feet find their own way around, to the gym, to the pool, to the BTS station, to the bus stop. I have a new route, down the road to Monica’s new condo, walking past the now fully constructed and functional International School that I watched being built last year. More buildings are going up down that street now, low-rise condos lining the khlong, part of a continuing building boom in the little T77 community here.
I still haven’t found out what T77 means.
I have realized why I like this spot so much, though. It’s not exactly a gated community, nor is it entirely planned–there are little chunks of property in the development that seem to be privately owned, with traditional neighborhood houses or small businesses in them. But the area is slightly segregated, sitting on a peninsula formed between the khlong and an expressway, and vehicle access is limited. That makes it a lot more peaceful than just about anywhere else in Bangkok. The modern Habito mall across the street is full of all the modern shops and conveniences you could ask for. You needn’t ever venture out if you prefer not to.
I ran into an expat at the gym and he had noticed it as well. Outside, the frenetic activity of a global megacity. Inside, a quiet, lush oasis in which to relax and recharge.
But at the same time, half a block away, crossing below the expressway, you’re right in the impenetrable heart of the city, a soi lined with food and mystery (and sometimes mystery foods!). A public washing machine sits in the entry to a massage parlor. A dark hallway disappears into an apparently endless building. Through an open door, you might see a factory floor in full swing or a family sitting down to dinner, all on the same block. There’s the suggestion that every door, every alley, every hallway, holds a microcosm of the human experience that you could spend a lifetime diving into and learning about.
Multiply it all by the nearly 1 million rai that Bangkok covers and it boggles the mind. Still. I noted in my post about Bangkok living last year that the city is “…fascinating, and perhaps endlessly so.”
So far, that’s still proving correct.
I also posted a picture last time highlighting a local neighborhood concern, stray cats:
There’s nothing more Thai than a brazen disregard for posted notices–although the notice is aimed at farang.
The picture was taken at the exit of the Thong Lo BTS station, which isn’t really my neighborhood, but I happened to stop there to go to a specific restaurant last week (Beccofino, which was excellent, if you happen to be in the neighborhood).
As I’m walking down the steps, I see this at the exact same spot:
Bangkok is having a cold snap right about now–lows in the upper sixties, highs around eighty–which make it far more tolerable to explore on foot than usual. Or, as I found Saturday, by bike.
Across the Chao Praya, trapped in a looping bight of the river, a chunk of the city has been preserved, at least in part, as the sort of sparsely inhabited, foliage bedecked marshland that the entire area must have been circa 1782 when King Rama I wandered along and declared it the seat of empire.
It took a more recent king, King Bhumibol, to act to preserve the land. Alongside a city that is permanently under construction and ever-encroaching into the flat, rice-growing farmlands around it, it must have taken a kingly act of willpower and political gravitas to pull it off, but Bhumibol seems to have been just that sort of monarch. In 2016, shortly after his death, the military government announced a plan to safeguard the area, called Bang Krachao or “The Green Lung.”
The Green Lung is an island now, cut across at the narrowest part of its base with a canal (technically five islands–smaller canals chop it apart above the main canal) to shorten the trip upriver for vessels that can navigate it. It’s connected there by bridges to the greater Bangkok regional transit grid, but it is served by only a single main road along the axis and you can tell from the name of that road–Phetchahung Alley–that it’s not exactly a high-capacity thoroughfare.
So ferries serve to carry tourists and locals alike back and forth to Bang Krachao. Because the ferries are small and the roads narrow throughout the peninsula, bikes and motorbikes are the favored means of transportation. Which means that instead of car ferries, there are motorcycle ferries!
My entire luggage allotment for this trip was a 25 liter bag so obviously I don’t have a bike handy, but it’s possible to rent them near the ferry landings. My friend Monica has a fold-away Dahon Mariner that fits neatly into the trunk of her Toyota Vios.
After the usual white-knuckle ride to the ferry terminal (since the ferry terminal has no parking, Monica entered into some impenetrable but apparently commonplace deal with a gentleman standing the parking lot of an adjacent temple, where a funeral was being held and a spare parking space would apparently not be missed) we hopped right on to the ferry… along with twenty or so other passengers and about a half dozen motorcycles, gunned across a sheet metal ramp that is dropped across to the deck from the dock.
Bangkok Treehouse
For both people and motorcycles it’s a quick trip across the river, the ferry pilot playing Frogger with the long barges bringing rice down from the Thai heartland and the pocket-sized LNG freighters ducking in and out of the nearby refinery.
I don’t know if it’s coincidence or a practical outcome of the religion-inducing ferry rides, but there was another temple at the landing on the island when we got off the boat. In the shade of the trees outside the temple, stacks of rusty, dusty, single-speed old bikes stand ready for both locals and tourists to rent out. Each have a handy basket on the front for snacks, drinks, or cell phones.
It’s only 50 baht, or just $1.50, to rent a bike for the afternoon there, but then, the bike is only worth about $0.25. After a moderately reassuring brake check and a few tentative laps I picked out what appeared to be the most robust of the lot, good old number 57. The chain felt like it was going to jump off anytime I put any real kick to the pedals, so I pedaled as gingerly as possible.
Although there aren’t a lot of cars on Bang Krachao, the Thai approach to driving carries over to motorbiking and cycling alike. No helmets are worn, no traffic rules are observed, texting and cellular conversations while driving are encouraged, and speeds are whatever you can muster up along the occasional straightaway.
Surprisingly, I didn’t have any trouble keeping to the left on the narrow roads, maybe because I was on a bike instead of in a car. I followed Monica up the road, a smoothly paved path that was about a car and a half wide, and lined on both sides with the usual assortment of shops, restaurants, cafes, and, of course, more temples.
Too pretty to fight today!
Although Monica had been to Bang Krachao before, her sense of direction makes following her blindly a risky proposition, so I tried to keep track of where we were as we pedaled along. There is some signage in English, at least to indicate the popular tourist destinations, and I stopped every now and again to check my phone. Apple Maps are marginal at best even in the first world and almost utterly useless outside of major Western cities, but the compass feature on my iPhone was helpful when put together with the (also utterly awful but at least including local features) map provided by the bike rental place.
So after not terribly long and without too many wrong turns we found ourselves at the Siamese Fighting Fish Gallery, deep in the heart of the jungle.
There weren’t any actual fights there, which was fine by me, but simply jar after jar of delightfully colorful and oddly proportioned fish. The jars were separated by small slips of cardboard–apparently, the fish get pretty riled up if they can see their neighbor through the glass.
The more interesting thing to me than the actual fish (and there were a lot of fish there) were the grounds on which the gallery resided. Thai property rights and management have always been mysterious to me, but the parcel seemed to be centered around a large, placid lake edged with manicured grass and a handful of outbuildings of various eras and conditions. A rusting backhoe was parked on the lawn, weeds growing up through the machinery.
Is.. is that who I think it is?
The whole place looked like a KOA that wasn’t getting much business (although there were a row of tents pitched toward the back that looked as if they might have been either really cheap AirBnb accommodations or really expensive eco-adventure rentals). A set of changing rooms was marked as being off-limits. Nearby, a stylish, glass-walled pavilion looked like it might have been supposed to be a cafe. Part of it seemed to have once been a Flintstone’s-themed outdoor restaurant. Having once run into a Donald Duck statue in a wat, it wasn’t all that surprising to find Dino hanging out in the jungle, but it made me intensely curious what the story was.
I never found out though, as we hit the road again heading for a park area in the heart of the island called the Sri Nakhon Khuean Khan Park and Botanical Garden.
Although the park isn’t very large, as botanical gardens go, it sort of bleeds over into the otherwise undeveloped area around it and so it seems pretty huge. The trails are more rough but a few lakes make it a lovely stop and a large viewing tower takes you up to the level of the tree canopy to get a closer look at the vegetation and birds.
Honestly, I wish I had more time and had looked around more, but I was distracted by the prospect of my front wheel parting ways with the rest of the bike if I hit a rock in the trail at the wrong angle, so I focused more on the pedaling than my surroundings. We did a circuit of one of the lakes then angled out onto the main road again to loop back toward the ferry landing.
We got jammed up behind another group of cyclists at one point, and Monica, deploying her finely-honed Thai-driving skills, blasted right through them at the first opportunity without incident. With my clunkier machine and frailer nerves, I found myself stuck behind the slowest and clunkiest member of the pack, until we were both several curves behind everyone else. Whereupon the girl, for a girl it was, promptly lost control and steered herself right off the edge of the road.
Some sort of thick grass broke the fall and kept her out of the muck, but the hefty rental bike kept going. She was trying to hold onto it and the edge edge of the road and not having much luck.
I summoned whatever ancient impulses of chivalry were required to suppress my utter certainty that a herd of cobras was surely lounging just past the side of the pavement and reached down to haul her up, then the bike.
“Korp kun ka,” she said, and I offered “Mai Pen Rai” in return and then took advantage of the opportunity to get back on the road ahead of her and make up some time.
Bike parking at the Bangkok Treehouse
Everyone was waiting at the next intersection, and while the girl filled in her companions on the excitement, Monica and I took off up the road at our own pace once again.
We swept through the narrow green isles of musty, tangy jungle, passed by bikers on coughing old scooters and modern Kawasakis, stinking of exhaust. Cyclists meander casually along the edges on antique, rusting bicycles, squeaking and squealing as their GPS-enabled smartphones whisper directions to them from the baskets. We pass ancient homes with solar arrays on the rooftops and nameless shacks sinking slowly into the swampy mire, right next door to sleek modern homes rising on piers from the primordial ooze. Wireless enabled cameras survey the road, relaying crisp HD imagery of sleeping dogs, wandering pigs, and other traffic back to the Ministry of Transport. Monks in bright orange robes perched serenely next to larger-than-life advertisements for high-speed cellular data plans.
This is the future I was promised by Gibson, Sterling, Stephenson. This is the cutting edge put to ancient and tribal purposes, the street finding its own uses for technology. I’m in a cyberpunk novel, on the original set of Blade Runner.
All along the main road, narrow, raised concrete paths lead off into the foliage and swampland. A few of them have some rusty handrails along the sides, but for the most part you are expected to exercise prudence and take some personal responsibility for not plummeting off into the slime ten or twelve feet below.
At one of these intersections, Monica stopped and turned and gave me one of her Monica looks.
I only felt confident taking a photo along a section with rails, but that’s not typical of the raised sidewalks in Bang Krachao.
“Promise me you won’t fall off,” she said, as if I could offer any such assurance even if I’d been on a mechanically-sound bike. But she didn’t wait, but just headed off along the sidewalk, and I was left to follow and hope she knew where she was going.
It was a more peaceful ride than out on the main drag, although negotiating 90 degree corners without plunging over the side required dredging up some long-forgotten biking skills. Passing the occasional local or tourist heading the other direction also required some smiles and balance.
The narrow walkways are the only route to many homes and business in Bang Krachao, though, so from time to time you are bound to encounter folks pulling large carts full of supplies, or pushing wheelbarrows with groceries in them. You slow to their pace for a while until you can convince them to let you inch past or there’s a branch in the trail network.
We finished up the day with a drink at the Bangkok Treehouse, an eco-tourist destination along the shores of the Chao Praya. The lower level is all bike parking; from the rooftop deck, a fine view of the river with a cool glass of crushed ice with mint and lime offers a relaxing perspective on the vessel traffic that you can’t experience on the water itself. Across the river, Bangkok hustles and smokes at its natural pace. But for a while, if you glance behind you into the still-calm forest, you can get a sense of how it all once must have been.
I’m back in the United States but I had some mostly written but un-posted entries left over; I’ll post them now that I have some time to put them together.
I hadn’t gotten all gung-ho about rushing out to see all the tourist sights around Bangkok both because I figured I would have plenty of time to see them and because I have a self-imposed schedule to keep up with; weekdays, I am writing or working on other projects for most of the day.
It turns out to be just as well that I waited, since I’ve gotten to go see them now with a local, which turns the whole experience into something slightly less touristy and more culturally interesting. Not that the various temples, attractions, and neighborhoods are not in themselves interesting and full of the rich history of the region, but with Monica along I get a whole other subtext laid over the experience, the inside baseball perspective on both shrines and tourists that is missing from most of the official tours.
Thai Coast Guard Headquarters? Quite a variety of watercraft!
It’s never a good sign when your boat is met by a guy waiting with a portable bilge pump. Good thing the Coast Guard was nearby!
The best bang for your buck in the sightseeing department is along the big curve of the Chao Phraya river, the Mother Water of Kings that is Bangkok’s reason for being. As a small village controlling the mouth of the main drainage basin of the kingdom, Bangkok was destined for greater things, and as they came to it over the centuries, most of them came along the course of the river.
So the Grand Palace, many important temples, historic customs houses, and ancient neighborhoods continue to dominate the narrow shores of the Chao Phraya. Modern rail transport doesn’t penetrate to those neighborhoods, but the ancient waterway still provides access to anyone daring enough to hop an express boat.
It’s a quick walk from the BTS station at Saphin Taksin to Sathon Central Pier beneath the King Taksin Bridge. Dodge a few hucksters and you can either grab a tour boat or get aboard some variety of water taxi… colorfully delineated with flags marking the route served.
The boat operators move with a purpose and in a cloud of black smoke, you’re churning water heading upriver before you know it. All around are strange and wondrous craft plying their trades–boxy ferries adorned with advertising, flashy neon cruise boats serving hotels and tourists, grimy ferries shepherding barge-trains down to the see, sleek long-tails carrying private passengers along, their helmsmen getting a workout shifting around the whole engine to steer with.
For whatever reason, one of the usual docks was out of service and instead of going directly to Wat Pho, we had to debark on the other side of the river at Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn… although, for much of modern Bangkok, it’s on the side of the sunset as the population has gradually spilled east of the river.
A typical landing point for ferries.
The temple was largely covered in scaffolding and inaccessible, but the intricate detail of the exterior was still on display.
You have to pay to enter Wat Arun and most of the other attractions, and here Monica became incensed, because I had to pay, but she, as a Thai, did not. Whether she was upset because it was a double standard or because it was an OBVIOUS double standard, I’m not sure… the distinction being, I suppose, the potential loss of face being a local representative in the company of one being ripped off when he realizes he is being ripped off.
But, in point of fact, I didn’t feel ripped off and I think the system makes perfect sense. After all, these remain holy sites for most of the local population. Yet the traffic and resulting upkeep requirements cost money. The farangs coming in are creating most of the traffic and have most of the money–it only makes sense to charge them while allowing the locals to make their venerations as they have done for generations.
I suppose this does disservice to those touring Buddhists who get hit with the charges, but it’s a simple system that seems to work.
We grabbed a ferry across to the east side again and entered the labyrinthine precincts of Wat Pho.
The status of Thai Kings as partly divine causes a blending of religious with political history, and Wat Pho was erected by Rama I, whose ashes are still enshrined there. Later kings continued to expand the temple buildings there, causing their own ashes to be entombed there, giving the place a slightly Valley of the Kings feeling, with many similar buildings erected in slightly different styles as were dictated by the era in which they were built.
One of the many Chinese ballast statues.
The many Chinese statues around the various temple complexes come as some surprise, but show the deep influence China has had on the Kingdom down through the centuries. The story behind them, however, is even more surprising: they were brought here originally, according to various tour guides, as ballast aboard Chinese ships.
So, sometime in the earlier 1800s, a bosun’s mate in London is standing on the quay saying, “Eh, Geordie! Chuck another few bits of rock down in the hold, will you? We can still make the morning tide.”
And in Shanghai, the same day: “Jian! We are still light… run over to the honorable Master Li’s shop and commission two more statues! Let’s get a lion and a fierce warrior this time. Hurry! We should be able to sail by the next full moon!”
Which might explain why Western ships reached China first rather than vice versa.
Anyway, Wat Pho was founded as a place of education and remains as one today, teaching practitioners from around the world the arts of Thai traditional medicine and massage. Various inscriptions and illustrations around the grounds illustrate the pressure points used in the techniques.
The reclining Buddha at Wat Pho.
The reputation of the temples as a center for enlightenment and education has rubbed off on the general neighborhood as well, which still includes a well-respected university.
And, continuing the blending of religion and government, Wat Pho is right next to the Grand Palace.
We had to go through a security checkpoint to get anywhere near the Grand Palace, and the streets were utterly empty by Bangkok standards.
“Take a picture,” said Monica. “You’ll never see it like this again.”
The Grand Palace
Which would be fortunate, in fact, because the reason for the security was the presence of the ashes of the late king, ensconced in the Royal Urn for his subjects to pay respect to during the one-year mourning period.
Tourist traffic has been heavily restricted and the palace hours shortened to cope with the Thai mourners. On the north side of the palace, we encountered a stream of them leaving. The lines can last three hours or more, for a brief second or two at the urn. Yet the urge is strong. Monica is waiting for a friend who is coming to town next month and will go then.
Unfortunately, this also means I didn’t ever get in to see the Grand Palace or the fabled Emerald Buddha that resides within. Another time, perhaps.
Instead, we returned to the river and crossed again to a market on the west bank. It was in the middle of shutting down for the evening but there was still food, which we ate on a plaza overlooking the stream and watched the boats going by.
Evening along the Chao Praya.
The river is surprisingly narrow, but teems with boat traffic. Although not quite as chaotic as the streets of Bangkok, it would be enough to give me an ulcer if I were trying to navigate upriver in Zia.
There was a little confusion as to where to catch the ferry back downriver again, so we crossed yet again to the east bank, then had to hustle on foot because the dock we were at was not a stop for the last boat… which we would have to catch.
It turned out that Wat Arun glittered as easily at sunset as at dawn.
At night, the long upstream/downstream ferries (cross-river ferries are short and stubby) don’t have to fight for dock space as much as during the day but they do have another problem–the helmsman at the bow can’t see back to where the gangway is where the docking is happening.
So the deckhand at the stern uses whistle signals to guide them in. Between the signals and judicious use of spring lines, they are as adept at bringing the boats in at night as during the day.
If you are not someone who keeps up with the mysterious and unfathomable trends from the exotic Orient, you may be unfamiliar with the concept of cat cafes.
I know that some readers, Asian cuisine having the reputation that it does in the U.S., will immediately jump to the conclusion that these are establishments which specialize in the preparation and serving of cat. Roast cat, boiled cat, cat fricassee. Cat with noodles and light lemon sauce.
But no; instead, they are places with perfectly ordinary light snack and dessert fare, which are well-stocked with hordes of overfed felines for customers to pet and play with during the course of their meal.
Originating in Taiwan, the trend quickly spread to Japan, where people really dig cats but often live in very small apartments where pets are prohibited. Cat cafes provide an outlet for all the purring and petting they crave even if they aren’t able to own a cat themselves.
In the United States, with all our pesky health and safety regulations, true cat cafes are essentially unknown for reasons of sanitation. Dining and petting areas are separate and there’s often a cover charge to actually touch a cat.
You have to watch where you put your feet, even at the table
In Bangkok, however, the kitties roam freely at the Caturday Cafe, and you are well-advised to guard your plate if you don’t want them snacking off it. And you had better watch your step; cats nap where they choose, and you’re not supposed to disturb them.
I didn’t actually go on a Saturday, but that was probably for the best, as even on Wednesday there were a fair few people there. Even so, we were all outnumbered by the cats. I counted 23 out at once, but they have places they can go in back for privacy and there were a rotating cast of them coming out regularly, so there could have been double that number in the building.
They were all very well-mannered, tolerant even with the kids who came in and tended to be a little rough. And none of them were starved for attention–most seemed most interested in napping, although food or a little chin-scratching was never rejected.
There were toys scattered around but most clearly lost their novelty long ago. The thing that seemed to interest them the most was a video screen, mocked up as a window, which showed animated backgrounds of landscapes with an occasional real-life cat superimposed from time to time.
They also responded well to the regular staff, who seemed to be equally or more involved with cat-wrangling as with customer service. And I don’t mean that in a bad way–the service was great, and the staff were very cool and friendly. But it was obvious they all loved the cats, and the cats loved them. They would clap their hands and a cat would jump up on its back legs, or they would just randomly reach down and tip a cat over as they were walking by, just for fun. Customers aren’t supposed to pick up the cats but the staff would grab them and park them on their shoulders as they went around taking orders.
There were a lot of these munchkin cats with shortened front legs.
It was a really fun atmosphere, particularly if you like cats, as I do. And there was a wide variety of cats; Scottish folds, a Bengal, a couple Norwegian Forest cats, an awful lot of munchkins, and the usual array of shorthairs and Persians.
Oddly, there were no Siamese cats, except for one playing on the loop in the fake window frame. I hadn’t made the obvious association (Siam, of course, being the ancient name for Thailand) so I wasn’t thinking it was particularly odd when I noted this and said, conversationally, “That’s okay. I’ve never liked Siamese cats that much, anyway.”
I might has well have thrown a bucket of ice water across the table.
“Oh, you don’t like Siamese cat? Maybe you don’t like Siamese girl, too? Maybe you only like American?”
In all the guide books you read they carefully instruct you not to say anything derogatory about the king or culture here, as everyone takes such criticisms very seriously. I now have another travel tip to add to the list:
The next few days were a litany of sheep and cattle pastures and rocky and rough trails. It rained, it blew, the sun came out and lit the sparkling, rushing streams that tumble down the sides of the mountains. I got used to a variety of different techniques used for passing through fences. Folks are much more relaxed about private property here; where in the U.S. wandering through a farmer’s pasture would be an invitation to a shotgun blast, here you’re welcome as long as you don’t disturb the animals or leave the gates open.
But the going was easy, following old military tracks laid out in the 1700s to suppress the rebellious Highland clans, and the scenery spectacular and uplifting.
