I have a sex change in Bangkok airport, for free and it is totally painless too.

> Well honestly, I had not intended to change either my sex or name, but it was
> kinda forced upon me ….
>
> I check in for a Gulf Air flight from Bangkok to Bahrein… yes I know that
> you didn’t see this coming, but neither did I til about 2 days beforehand,
> which just shows you never know what will happen next….
>
> I stand at the counter, with my newly issued ticket in hand and pass it and
> my passport over to a young man, whom I soon realised was possibly on his
> first day on the job, as he had a minder with him, a nice looking woman, who
> coached him through the various check in entries required by a computer
> system to generate (= issue) a boarding card. To those of you who are
> innocent of these mysteries, you have to go through a sometimes involved
> pattern just to get a card to shoot out of a hole, and if you dont get it all
> 100% right, then it wont deliver, but the night was young and there was no
> rush, so I smiled nicely and said take your time and his helper helped him,
> while he generally screwed things up and my seat request made for more
> confusion and the fact that I wasn’t checking any baggage and had only a
> small carry-on made for greater inquiries, as he had obviously been warned
> about people turning up with huge amounts of baggage and the problems that
> then came from too many bits of baggage and here was I with NONE.
>
> Anyway after a while, I finally was sent on my way and went off and bought my
> 500 Baht Departure Tax stamp from a
machine. You receive a nice little piece of paper which says Thailand
> Departure Tax on it just to prove it and then you hand it to a girl. Now
> this is the job you will really want … you have a nice uniform and stand outside
> the entry to immigration and when someone thrusts this piece of paper at you,
> you have a two hole punch in your hand and punch a hole – END OF JOB. It
> was kinda difficult to keep a straight face when my hole puncher was wearing
> a badge that said TRAINEE … gimme a break – you punch a hole – that’s IT
> and here she was in Training …. perhaps there are advanced level exams in
> punching holes or it has to be in a certain place, but looking at some
> previous ones I found scrunched up in a pocket, the placing of the hole seems
> to be random.
>
> Anyway I goes through immigration, where your boarding card is stamped all
> over by a severe looking lady and you are technically a non-person – still in
> Thailand but officially elsewhere. G. Orwell would have liked it I’m sure.
>
> So I walks down to the gate and am twiddling my thumbs, watching the planes
> like airline people do and I takes out my boarding card to check the dep time
> and suddenly IT LEAPS OUT AT ME … I am NOT ME any more … I am Mrs
> Amarinda Ghosh. Well, it came as quite a shock I can tell you… In fact,
> Gosh I said… My youth and his minder had between them managed to screw
> things up and misidentify me for someone else and now I am in the eyes of
> Gulf Air Mrs Ghosh.   For a moment I was tempted to let it ride, but I knew
> there would be tears before bedtime (and prolly departure too) if I tried to
> pretend I had joined the Ghosh family and changed sex all at once … one
> thing at a time please.
>
> So I goes up the desk at the gate, with passport in hand as a proof of
> being someone else and show it to the young lad there. He is greatly
> confused. Stares at the boarding card and then the passport and then my
> ticket and then me, in various permutations, not knowing quite who to
> believe.. Has Mrs Ghosh suddenly changed her name and sex and is now Mr
> Gibson ??? It is all immediately getting confusing and we have only just
> started….. He calls on the radio in Thai … and eventuallee two girls
> arrive, one of whom is in the Gulf uniform. I try to explain that I think the
> lad at the counter misidentified me in the system and probably the
> aforementioned Mrs Ghosh may possibly be trying to check in right now and
> they are wondering why she is checking in a second time, when the computer
> system, which cannot be wrong, already says she is here. It was all a bit
> like dealing with a selection of Manuels from Fawlty Towers and if you cudda
> substituted some Thai accents with Spanish, then we wudda been there.   Lots
> of talking on radios and then the phone and more people all staring at me and
> then the boarding card and then the screen and then me again, as if I had
> engineered the whole scenario.   I was beginning to think it would be easier
> just to confess to really being Mrs Ghosh and just slinking away…..In the
> end the penny drops and much bashing around of computer keys and finally I am
> allowed to become moi again.   A close shave.
>
> So I jumps on the Gulf Air Airbus 340 which has come from Hong Kong and will
> continue now to Bahrein. I am of course convinced that I shall be one of
> only a handful of people on the plane and there again, how wrong can you be.
> It is heaving with people, mainly from HK and on their way to Europe, as when
> we get off in BAH 7 hours later, the masses all follow the Connections signs
> and about 10 of us the Bahrein one.
>
> Of course, in flight, I am soon chatting to the multi ethnic crew – nice girls from
> Croatia and New Zealand and Ireland for starters, plus Egyptians and even
> Bahreinis too. I am before long inside the curtains around the galley,
> seated on an upturned barbox and having a good crew chat with them … well
> it makes seven hours go quite fast and we had a good time, specially the
> Croatian one who was very funny and had a fund of stories from her aunt who
> has been flying there for some 35 years and obviously had some pretty hair
> rasing tales to pass along to her niece.
>
> So we lands in BAH and its suddenly the coolest place Ive been in the last 4
> weeks. And there is a man from an hotel with my name on a board and in a
> flash I am off to his pad, all glitter in the lobby and bare in the room and
> fall happily into bed, as the last night had been on a plane from Colombo to
> Bangkok and here I was halfway through the next one and my poor old body was
> beginning to show the cracks.
>
> I’m going to BAH cos I’ve been set up for an interview to have a sort of
> temporary but possibly longer job with DHL, the overnight and mainly
> international package people. It’s all too long and boring to relate here,
> but in a nutshell they have a big Gulf base in BAH and now there’s a war on,
> all those boys at the front are being sent letters and care parcels from the
> rellies back home and the system is getting swamped. Main problem it seems
> is the USPostal Service, which is delaying things and delivering it all late
> to DHL in JFK, who then are getting the blame for slow delivery at the other
> end. So something has to be done and they want a new czar to go in and take
> a look at the situation and an old BCAL friend of mine works for them in LON
> (and was before in BAH) and knew I was walking the streets, so he nominated
> me to the boss in BAH and next mo I’m off to talk to him. We had a nice chat
> and we shall see what transpires. And thus it’s possible I may have yet
> another career… we shall see. The boss is Kiwi, so I’m not dealing
> with an Arab or anything too unusual, just someone who probably lives and
> breathes rugger.   And wudya believe it, it rains in BAH when I’m there and
> this is regarded as something v unusual, so I (and Mrs Ghosh) claim full
> resp. for it.

There is time afterwards for a quick orientation tour of the
> city … my 33 yr old driver is rolly poly and certainly will not be
> appearing soon on the cover of Men’s Health, but nevertheless it appears he
> is a regular Don Juan on the side and unasked for, I hear a litany of his
> female conquests that leaves me quite exhausted. We should be playing
> excerpts from Don Giovanni in the background. Seems Iranian girls are just
> arriving in droves asking for ‘it’ and the Kuwaitis are not far behind and
> the poor man is being run ragged in his attempts to foster good international
> relations. You would never have guessed to look at him and it did make me
> feel those Iranians must be kinda desperate cases !
>
> I liked the big hoarding advertising a watch with the slogan “Time for
> Prayer” – even Dubya the Dim couldn’t have thought that one up. Also a tent
> card on the table where we stop for some food, advertising some high powered
> ‘tonic’ drink has the line “Has positive effects on the powers of alertness
> during nocturnal activities” …. I think my driver may be needing same….
> We do finally manage to stop in a small souk, which is always far more my
> scene and I end up smelling like some all the perfumes of Araby freak, as he
> needed some new cologne, so we spent ages sniffing and testing on exposed
> skin … you wudda thought he was buying a house .. I just ended up very
> fragranced shall we say and was to remain so for the flight back to BKK.
> All I bought was a kinda loofah back scrubber which amused everyone greatly,
> as they felt I should have shall we say a posher souvenir.   So back to the
> airport and again I am regarded as suspicious as I have only a small carry on
> and no monster bedrolls or tin trunks. Just hope Mrs Ghosh isn’t there too…
>
> I jump back on Gulf Air to Abu Dhabi, which v nicely is a plane that has come
> from London and the first thing I see is an pristine copy of The Times and
> then change to the big plane back to BKK . Awful terminal as totally hard
> surfaces and a circular building so all sounds just bouncing off the walls
> and at 0100 it is heaving with people of all sorts of shapes and sizes and
> ethnicities and I would dearly love to go around and ask the old crones in
> total black squatting on the floor just where they came from and where they
> are going and WHY ?   This time a much more Arab crew – all guys in the back
> and they are fast with the meals and feed me some gin, which brings me back
> to life and I am kept awake by a gang of Algerians (!) playing cards behind
> me and then a gang of Chinese seem to be having a shouting competition and we
> whizz through the night and there is BKK again in the steamy morning light.
> That’s twice in 4 days Ive been there for the dawn, and as far as my body is
> concerned, that’s twice too many.
>
> And I fall into bed. Later a walk to get some air (though in the foetid
> steaminess and pollution of Bangkok, that is impossible). And talking about
> walking, Bangkok is without a doubt the winner in the worst sidewalks of the
> world competition – the place is a disaster, being totally broken up and down
> and great yawning chasms where innocent pedestrians tumble and are never seen
> again.    So I take a pew at the Erewan Shrine, which is always good for
> people watching. If you can imagine a golden Buddha parked on a corner of
> Piccadilly Circus or Times Sq, traffic pounding around and then the locals
> dropping in to light some incense and the best thing, the singing dancers,
> all dressed in ancient glitter Thai costume – kinda The King and I, but all
> in VERY slow motion and some painful monotone singing, but I can sit for
> hours and just watch. You can pay to have them sing some religious ditty
> just for you, as scraps of paper were being passed up and then the lead girl
> says the name of the person they were singing for and off they go in their
> hypnotic slow motion girations. It’s all so slow that sometimes they look
> like they might just stop in mid wail, toes and fingers turned up. The band
> is live too, though hardly up to Lawrence Welk, as they play very gently and
> one tiny very whizzened old guy just bangs two mini cymbals together for
> hours on end. I could do that.
>
> I was there for a shift change (honest), so the new afternoon gang was
> sitting around, chatting and eating and talking on their cellphones and all
> dressed up and heavily made up and very surreal it was.   Meanwhile the
> locals are doing their praying oblivious to camera touting tourists and
> draping the shrine with garlands and lighting candles, which you soon realise
> if you watch long enough that the cleaners come along pronto and just toss
> into huge yellow plastic rubbish bins.. your flowers don’t get to last too
> long, while outside the ladies what makes the garlands etc are beavering away
> making more.
>
> And back at the hotel, the newly opened Conrad and all v nice thank you,
> where they have installed me on the Exec Floor, I manage to hit the free
> cocktails and nibbles and meet a luvly French girl called Julie who is
> running the place and we parlez vous and she says nice things about my accent
> and is convulsed when I say that thanks to Mel Gibson, the French can now
> pronounce my name (as before you were always Jeebson) and eat enough fancy
> nibbles and sushi so that I dont need supper and at 8 pm I am out cold.
>
> So that next morning (ie this morning as I type) I can get up at 0400, as the
> UA’s one and only flight ex BKK is at 0700 and they insist they we all get
> there early to go through the security routine, so up and away I am and I
> flies to Tokyo and now on the final stretch home to JFK.
>
> Going back a bit, I have to confess that I was remiss in my Duty Free
> shopping in BAH, which always had a lot and now has even more.   If I cudda
> carried it, I wud have brought you all back something totally unique from a
> Duty Free shop … how about a 5 KILO plastic bag of OMO detergent ????????
> What more joy could this bring???? – certainly more than any amount of
> perfumes or booze…..I asked the young sales guy who buys this and he
> muttered rather darkly “Indians”.   Perhaps the Mrs Ghosh’s of this world
> like to do a bit of in-flight dhobi and what better place than a plane, with
> it’s abundant supplies of water and great drying facilities … just hang yr
> undies from the overhead bins and they will be dry in a flash. And if you
> had bought that iron in the Duty Free shop, well you cudda had them all
> nicely flattened by the time you reach Bombay.   (Great sales hint to Airbus
> here – who needs downstairs lounges etc etc in their projected great big
> plane – what we need is a full scale laundromat… and perhaps dry cleaning
> too for those long sectors.)
>
> All right enough already….
>
> Tim (and of course Mrs. Ghosh likes to be remembered to you all….wherever
> she is….I worry about her sometimes).

Vietnam #4. Ananda meditation, toilet paper, an exciting bus ride and more…

Well, my time at the Ananda Yoga and Meditation Centre was all rather a non-starter. Honestly, can you see me doing yoga ? Well I can’t, even if you are hopeful that I can. And I can meditate quite happily on my own, eyes closed, zero thoughts … it’s not that difficult. Oscar does it all the time.

The main reason for Huy going there was to help out (he has been going a lot and generally getting them organized, as it is a new set up right here) and they were having a 4 week, teach-the-trainer course, with over 100 prospective teachers coming in to be shown how to go forth and do good. The organization already exists in several countries, including the USA, so there were folks coming from all over, but 75% of them were VN.

I was warmly welcomed, which was good, as it was distinctly chilly at 4500 feet and slightly airless when walking uphill, so of course the place was on the side of a hill and there was much walking uphill involved. I had a rather spartan room, with a large bed, a sort of duvet and a nasty polyester ‘blanket’. Bathroom had no less than two solid rolls of tp (without a cardboard tube down the middle… viz

That was my only creature comfort, but I knew that and went prepared. Of course, no TV (no big loss for me) and no alcohol and all vegetarian food, which was served just twice a day at 10am and 6 pm. The dining room was cafeteria style, so you picked up an Indian thali (viz a large metal tray with 6 indentations in it) and voluns served you rice (surprise) and veggies and there was a sort of warm ginger tea to drink. I was supposed to feel better (I think) by this withdrawal from worldy indulgencies, but I thought longingly instead for my pho shop and banh mi’s that would be awaiting me back in the big smoke.

So, I think much to Huy’s disappointment, I withdrew and sat in my room and read and reflected on the higher common thought (which you will only get if you know the old novel old Comfort Farm) and felt generally quite like a fish out of water).

Matters were then complicated by a massive power surge, that ripped through the place the second night. Any light bulb that was on did not just blow but the whole socket exploded too. My bathroom light was my room casualty but also the power cord for my laptop was completely fried, but most fortunately, not the laptop itself. So now I had no power, which has saved you from a minute by minute account of my boredom ! The view of all the fir trees (which seem to live at this altitude globally) became very tedious. Thank goodness I took a book.

Huy had already made a res. for me in downtown Dalat, knowing that 2 nights of such high and pure living would be enough, so we took a taxi for the all of 8 minutes ride in to the city. A happy sight with real food and bars and life as it is lived. I moved in to a lovely USD15 a night hotel, right opposite a palace where I could have spent $150 a night, so felt quite smug. Mamasan took me up the stairs to my room 2, almost by hand and as there were only 5 well numbered rooms on that floor, I could have probably figured it out by myself. This is what it looked like:

We went for a walkabout town, as Huy needed some supplies for the center and we met up with a friend of his at the Bicycle Café, which was filled with a wonderful assortment of ‘stuff’, so not only bicycles on the walls but old musical instruments and piles of ancient books and vintage memorabilia. One of the tables had been a treadle sewing machine. So we had some good VN coffee while I sat and watched the scene. Many domestic tourists as well as round-eyes, as Dalat is known for its scenery and is just a good place to visit. Being high, it was cool, which in itself is a thrill for any lowlander and some looked ready to sign up for an expedition to the North Pole. It is the flower center of VN and exports thousands of stems a day. I spotted (of course) this huge pack of Vietnam Airlines toilet paper on sale .. I suppose it just fell of a plane.

Next morning I was booked on the 10am posh bus, operated by the Than Buoi Bus Line, for the 7 hours downhill ride back to SGN. I went for breakfast in Le Café de la Poste, right opposite. Being Sunday, I thought it might be good to wait until 8am, which turned out to be a good hunch, as it was open and coffee available, but food ‘is coming’. The tiny little waitress, all 75 lbs of her, dressed in a tight black skirt, white shirt and a bowtie, was happy to provide me with a hug proper mug of very hot coffee and hot milk too and I watched the world through the window and saw the food being wheeled over from the posh hotel. I enjoyed watching her, standing in front of a display-case full of macaroons, doing a count of each variety and entering the results on a form… would love to have known how often this counting happens and WHO needs to know ?

So croissanted up, I returned for the shuttle that was coming to take me to the bus station. This even managed to arrive 10 mins early, but I was there and it was already 80% full, as it had been picking up folks all over, but I was the only foreign devil. We made another couple of stops, so by the time we reached the bus station, it was about at 110% capacity… quite cozy.

At the station I showed my hand written ‘ticket’ to a man and he pointed me to ”Reception” and a spotty youth bashed away on his computer and gave me, for want of a better term, a boarding card and then walked me over to the right bus. Probably a good thing as there were 10 identical ones all in a row.

The bus was lovely. Two seats on one side, one on the other, they reclined with leg-rests and there was even a blanket, neatly folded over the back. It had tasteful red pelmets running around each window and the look completed with red tassels. We had a young man who looked after us too, with bottles of icy water and cold towels. Much checking and counting by people with radios before we were allowed to leave. And I had the front row single seat, so while everyone else went in to mega-doze/mouth -open-drool-mode, I was watching the world and its peoples, go by.

Of course, it did give me the instant life recalling moments when drivers just pulled out to overtake on blind corners, as we were slowly spiraling down from 4500 feet, but I kind of got used to the idea that they all knew what they were doing. Well, sort of. There were moments when I was sure all was lost. We came around one, fortunately at a slow speed, to find someone doing a three point turn right there.

Noticed houses on the hillsides with wonderfully Alpine roofs … steeply angled so that the snow, which will never fall, will slide right off them. Went by a dam which was spewing water in an enormous arc. Fields of dragon fruit, one of Asia’s dramatic and pretty looking fruits, but which tastes of nothing. A few water buffalo, standing around the way they do – perhaps they were meditating.
After about two and a half hours, we made our first and major stop (all of 20 mins !) at the company owned rest and food arrangements stop. This line has enough buses going up and down here that they can run their own place and there were always 8 buses nosed in to the building. In VN you can go massive distances in buses and some are the upstairs/downstairs variety, with single window seats and then another single line down the middle … think of a wide-body aircraft with just three seats abreast and two aisles. These seats practically flatten out. As you all take your shoes off on them, the first thing that happens when the door opens is the first office jumps out, opens the front hold and pulls out a huge bin of one size fits all rubber slippers and then folks slide their feet in as they get off:

There is a whole mass catering counter ready for the hungry and ditto junk foods and packages, so everyone noshes like crazy. I saw a banh mi stall at the entrance and patronized that. Tons of packaged foods for snacking and the majority of them returned to the bus with enough to last for days. There was nothing you could not buy foodwise, which for the VN is how it should be.

We passed many Buddha’s of various sizes and quite a few temples and paused to let someone off at the Café My Dung, which I thought was charmingly named. Except Dung is pronounced Zoo-ung, so it loses all in pronunciation. One small town seemed to be massively overtaken by a Christian cemetery with vast marble tombs.

And eventually we ground through SGN suburbia and a whole mass of people got off, almost in the middle of the road, so bikes whizzing around them. I went to the very end (having no clue where I was) and took a taxi, first to a computer supplies store, to find me a new cable. I had Huy write a note for a driver and was convinced he had probably written down “Take this idiot to the street with all the computer stores, which is just along from where my old office used to be” but I recognized where we were and the very first shop had just what I needed and we plugged it all in and all was well. Don’t know who was more pleased, me or the lady.

So…. enough already, as we say in New York.

There will be more. I had returned in time to go the airport that night to go to meet me mate Beth from NY, who was arriving for a 4 night stay. I had her booked at my place, so she will be in the apt. upstairs from me.

Tim

Viet Nam #3. It’s Tet.

OK – to put you out of your misery … how to sit on the sidewalk and not get yr bum or feet dirty. You remove ONE flipflop, which is what you will sit on. You keep the other on the spare foot and sit back, with yr legs crossed at the ankles, with the flip-flopless one in the air. Go on, give it a try. The guy I saw doing this was ancient too. I would love to see just how he lined up bum with the flipflop and on one foot too. HOW do you sit down on something that is half an inch off the ground ?

Tet is over, so this means the return of the rent-a-tree, which is huge business. Those of you with good memories will remember last year, when I was here pre-Tet, I was happily engaged watching the park-full of flowering trees being debated over. Think Christmas tree, except this tree is really living in a huge pot and is a sort of bonsoi-on-steroids. All manicured to perfect shape and ready to burst forth in bright yellow blossom at just the right time. I shall have to ask Huy how they do it, as I doubt if they have acres of climate controlled greenhouses to hold them back until the optimum moment. Well now they are all going home, so there are the scooters with the trees on the back, now flower and leaf-less being returned and I expect you get a deposit back.

At the Café Nhi we have valet parking too. You just abandon your bike any old place outside right on the street and the man in the yellow café t-shirt then moves it to a neat line. Perish the thought that you can have just put it there yourself. Also they are perpetually sweeping up and that includes the sidewalk, so they use a fan shaped soft brush for inside and then outside you get the big bundle of twigs. It’s kind of like the Korean hotel where they provide plastic sandals just inside the room door and of course facing the right way and then inside the bathroom there is yet another pair, just to wear there. I am all in favor of abandoning street shoes at the door and do so at home but the 2^nd pair does seem a little OTT.

Old ladies still sport the traditional conical hat and also the baggy pyjama suit. Cool and comfortable for when things get sticky. And for those of you who remember my immediate locale, the coffin shop did have two empty spaces for full sized adults when I arrived, but next day they had been filed in with a couple of monster boxes which looked like it would take several people to lift. The owner was still stretched out on his lounger, looking dead to the world.

There is always a food cart only feet away … the VN eat all the time.

I have re-established frequent buyer status with the women at the bakery a few doors from my abode. They appear to be open all hours and the business is brisk. I can pop along in the morning for fresh ultra crispy rolls – there is a huge basket of them and u just pick what you want and they proffer the plastic bag. 10 US cents for a mini baguette. They will always make the traditional banh mi, which I can just live on. The woman who is there in the evenings, who is all smiles, knows that I can take the slices of hot pepper (and they are HOT, be clear about that) and I saw that you can buy slabs of crisply roasted pork too, which I may do some dumb show that I would like just a crispy pork sandwich, with the ‘special sauce’ that goes on everything. If that derails I can always just buy it all separately and assemble at home. That’s the good thing about an airbandb accommodation is that you have a kitchen so I can get creative. Just a one burner deal and a water jug heater and lots of equipment so that is all you need. And a good big fridge and freezer.

And the is a lot of having a siesta also

I went to the supermarket to find a few things. Looked like there was some kind of promo going on as a huge amount of bulk buying happening…. that or all the small hotels/guesthouses had decided to go on a mass toilet paper buying spree. You can find everything you need, even if it takes a bit of searching for. I needed salt and the more I looked, all I could find was monosodium glutamate, which is still much used here, esp as a dip for fruit. A little bit of dumb show with a miniscule girl and she got it and showed me where. Same happy looking and plump check out girl as the first day and I got a nice “Thang You’.

From a menu outside a restaurant: “Chopped Beef Fried Wine Burning” …. sounds great. I have also seen “Pork Rids with Nodles/Bones” and “Clay Pot Frog Porridge”.

A woman almost bouncing down the street with two huge baskets of fruit balanced on a piece of split bamboo across her shoulders. Each must have been heavier that I could pick up, but once she gets in to her stride there would be no stopping her. No padding on her shoulders either. Made me wince.

And the projected subway system is still nowhere near finished. Huge chunks of land shut off behind hoardings. Huy says projected date now something like 2020 and he Is not holding his breath. I told him not to give up hope as in NY we have recently had a new piece of subway line opened and that took lobbying for about 50 years and 10 years of work. I can just see the locals here wanting to take their bikes on the trains and there will be a move for impromptu dining on platforms for sure.

I spend more time in Huy’s office, proof-reading brochures. I get there by taxi, as he has moved too far away for walking. Taxis are many and cheap and beautifully air-conditioned. I have my address and his written down and only have to show it to the driver. Don’t even think of trying to pronounce anything, as you will derail for sure. Drivers are all male, well dressed with neatly ironed short-sleeved white shirts and practically the only persons you see wearing ties.

I go out for lunch with some staff and with his manager lady, Tracy, who he freely admits runs the place and who speaks excellent English. She is mid-30’s, pretty and certainly on top of everything. The food looks better than it tastes.

And now I am off to the former French hill-station of Dalat. At 4,500ft above sea-level, it will be a lot cooler and fresher than swampy Saigon. The inestimable Mr Hai come to collect me and we pick up Huy en route. He has several boxes to take up there to the Ananda Retreat, but first we had to stop for food and then we stop at the check in counter where a boy who did not look old enough to be employed, checked them in. Huy declared he needed coffee, so even through the flight was only 50 mins away and the security lines are never short, we still had to go back outside the terminal and visit the Starbucks for his express espresso. Then back upstairs in the terminal, where there was a good conga line and my passport was checked and I set off the bells on the security arch, so the girls there ran her hands up and down me, front and back. They would think men doing men and women doing women as vaguely perverted ! And then the flight was announced for 30 mins delayed. I find a timetable and quiz Huy as to how many flights a day are there on VN Airlines and it’s cheaper offshoot, Jetstar Asia, between Saigon and Hanoi. He guesses 20 – it’s 34 ! And at least half of them on huge fat planes.

So we board our A321, which is about 2/3 full for the all of 35 mins flight. It’s that or a 7 hour road trip, which is how I shall return. Captain Speaking is an Oz. We take off and land in quick succession and boy, it is Fresh ! A taxi is taken and all our many pieces fitted in and it is a 35 min drive to the meditation and yoga retreat that I am being allowed to visit. Huy is much carried away with all this and feels I should see it all, so I already said that two nights would be plenty (it’s usually a three day package for foreign devils) so I am booked for one night in a small hotel in town, which is somewhere over there but not visible. It’s all hills here.

And how I made out will be the start of the next epistle.

Tim

Vietnam #2 Immigration and food and then more food.

So the arrival in Saigon goes without a hitch. I present my copy of the pre-approved visa info to immigration (and of course fill in another form) and sit and wait patiently until my name is yelled. Fortunately the girl used the full name, as the only bit that I understood was “Valentine”. I am reunited with my bag and go to the taxi transfer desk and pay my 22,000 Vietnamese Dong and am sent out in to the humid air to rendezvous with the driver. There only seem to be about 500 people awaiting the arrival of loved ones. It is not as busy as later when many flights arrive and the crowd will be at least 1000.

Saigon is just coming back to life after the Tet holiday. Today is Friday and everyone will be returning from visiting the rellies and by Monday all will be in full swing. I return to my airbandb accommodation and Mamasan and Papasan are there to let me in. Quite like coming home. I lug my bag up four flights of stairs. Enough exercise for one day.

First stop is the supermarket, to stock up on the necessities of life. Always great to push a cart around a place like this and see what is happening. Masses of staff, of course, many standing around just gossiping and some not even managing to do that… they just stand. Foreigners have ceased to be a novelty, so they ignore you. At checkout, the international “I’ve only got one thing, can I go ahead of you ..”? look from a sweet looking grandma with a small girl, so I do and the child is prompted to say thank you and I wish her a Happy New Year and she is overcome. Prolly her first interaction with a foreign devil. The nice lady rings it all up and I hand over the cc with the right hand and have the left limply holding the top of my right wrist. That is VN polite. She does the same when she returns it to me.

Fridge stocked, I even manage to unpack as plenty of places and hangers. I am here for 6 weeks, so I really do move in. Good not to be living out of the proverbial suitcase.

On the Saturday, Huy turns up for breakfast. “Is it too early for a g and t”? he says. I say most definitely. I jump on the back of his motorbike and we cruise the thin Saturday morning traffic and go off to a noodle shop. First plan is to sit outside on one of those dolls house plastic stools. These are the lowest size, literally 8 inches off the ground and having already fallen off one on a previous visit, I nix that and we go inside where there is larger more human sized furniture. We catch up. He has just had his final interview at the US consulate and will be departing for LA with wife and daughters, probably in March. He is almost an American already, as his mother and sister have lived there for years and he has visited often. But it will still be a shock to arrive on a one way ticket. I asked about the final interview, knowing all the dramas that have been going on lately. He said they waited 2 hours after the sked time and then a woman looked through the papers and asked who his sponsor was (his sister-duhrrr) and how long had she been there and having correctly answered she said “Welcome to America” and it was over. Somehow I cannot think it would that easy in Cairo or Islamabad.

Then to his fancy new offices. It’s normal in VN for them to work on Saturday mornings. The lease ran out in the old place, which was in one of those long tall buildings the VN love so they were perpetually running up and down stairs, whereas now all one big open plan offices and no one has a fixed desk either. They all work off laptops and many 4-6 seater tables and all wired for everything. It looks like a mini-Silicon Valley start up to me. Some of the old staff are still there and all happy to see Uncle Tim. I am happy to see them too. A few of them have been there since I first started doing business with his company which was I think in 1997, so we go back !

Before I know it, I am being given many sheets of paper, relating to tourists they have coming in and do some proof reading and editing. And I am awarded several more to work on. Huy says it will be good to do when I cannot sleep, as it will def. make me sleepy. Then we have to go for lunch – (remember I am in the country of ‘we need food every two-three hours’) so we repair to a vegetarian restaurant. Turns out his has gone veggie and is also all into doing yoga etc and he wants to take me off to a retreat he has been helping set up, near Dalat, so who know what I might be transformed in to. Don’t hold your breath (though I know you do a lot of that in yoga !)

It has been raining, which is ALL WRONG. Just more evidence of global warming and we have a short but strong storm that night. Does not stop the folks on their motorbikes of course and they produce brightly colored ponchos and splash along.

On Sunday I am invited to Huy’s house which is about 30 mins outside the city proper, so that I can see the wife and two teen daughters. Mr Hai (pronounced hi) is of course sitting outside my residence at the appointed time and we stop to pick up Huy (who keeps a small pied a terre in town) … he has Beethoven blasting out, so no doubt as to which is apt is his. Over the years he has developed a passion for western classical music, without really knowing too much about it. I brought him some CD’s to add to the collection. I should think the neighbors will be happy when he goes.

So we go home and the girls are happy and even happier when I produce some nice and tarty bright red lipsticks and nail polish. Mimi, his wife, receives a calmer lipstick. I have always noticed here that when they receive a present, there is not a great gushing forth of thanks. They take it politely and say thank you and then put it down or away and that it is. I usually bring stuff for the girls in his office too and no one jumps up and down or gets excited. So if you are expecting a VN to get effusive with thanks, it is not going to happen.

I am back in my SGN street café, the Café Nhi and one of the girls is still there from last year. The effusive (by VN standards) Ms Tan. Her English has improved and no doubt I shall soon be doing impromptu conversational English lessons. My tall glass of Café So Dah is produced and of course the obligatory ditto glass of jasmine tea, which comes whether you want it or not. You are never going to dehydrate around here. New furniture too, with folding canvas chairs for the pavement part and miracle of miracle, padded benches inside, so my poor skinny bum may survive.

All human life is passing by outside. It is a three way intersection so much in the way of crossing each other’s paths and somehow, without the help of lights or people waving batons, they all get to the other side unscathed. It’s amazing just to watch. Majority of the traffic is motorbikes, with anything from 1-5 occupants. One beautifully arranged family formed a perfect wedge as the height decreased from front to back. Then it is taxis and buses and even folks on good old sit-up-and-beg pushbikes – the real old iron monster things and always with a basket on the front. It’s normal for a bike driver to be arched forward over the handlebars, due to the load on the back, just HUGE cartons and boxes that no one in the west would ever think could be carried on a motorbike. A bike was seen with the passenger separated from the driver by an approx. 8 feet mirror, so the passenger had no idea where they were going and it may have caused center of gravity problems for the driver going round bends.

OK… enough for now. Next time, if you are wearing flip flops and want to sit down on the sidewalk and don’t want to get your bum or your feet dirty, what do you do ?

Pictures may be forthcoming. So far, I haven’t taken any.

Tim

Myanmar – The Golden Rock.. it looks like just one push will send this monster down the mountain.

And it has been perched here for ever, defying all the odds

At night, it is surrounded by thousands of candles.

Lots of local snacks are always available

Weddings are always cheerful. My local guide, on the right, was celebrating with his brother. The Golden Rock is an auspicious place for getting married.

You can always be carried around up here.

Going to Viet Nam – Asiana A380…it’s BIG. Geek Talk.

So, here we go again. Nothing like a 13 hours and 45 mins flight to start me off.

I took the subway train to JFK and was prepared with a printed copy of my ticket, as the police had been stopping JFK protesters at the end of the Airtrain, but perhaps Tuesday at 10am is not a big protest moment, as no problems. At check-in, no one in the Biz line and the lovely young thing there of course stood up to greet me and we go into two-handed mode for passing things back and forth. Suddenly just one-handed seems very rude.

Once more into the great big Airbus A380 of Asiana which came from Korea on time and even managed to leave on time. Might well have been because there is only half a load, so not so many seats to clean and generally sort out in JFK. And a brand new plane too, cos I looked it up.

The usual perky, all gracious smiles of slim young ladies, who line up in the cabin and bow low to us at the beginning of the welcome on board p.a. You kinda know straight away that you are not on AA. If they had to do this, many of them would never straighten up again. We leap into the sky with no problem and I watch it all happen via a camera somewhere around the nose wheel, so on the big screen in front of me the tarmac of JFK speeds underneath and then drops away and 1143,000 lbs of metal, stuff and liquids defies everything that is normal and zooms up. (And this fact thanks to the poor chief purser girl who had to make two trips to the flight deck to find out). And for the old load sheet bashers, the max t/o weight for this machine is 1254,417 lbs. Yikes !

Menus and wine lists are distributed and I go for a glass of champagne to keep the spirits up and then the Korean national dish of Bibimbap which a big china bowl full of minced beef and veggies, all artfully displayed and then you chuck in the bowl of rice and sesame seed oil and mix together furiously. I watched the mama-san Korean lady sitting opposite and she went in to mix mode for about 5 mins, just like she was in her kitchen, so I did too. Fortunately it is correct to eat the resulting mush with a spoon, rather than the metal chopsticks also provided. It is delicious.

I loll around in my big space, of course in ‘an attractive attitude’ (which is a quote no one would ever get and comes from C. Dickens Nicholas Nickleby) and decide how to occupy myself for all this time. I cannot look out of the window the whole way, especially in darkness ! Perhaps they have some coloring books, as that is a perfect occupation for planes. They have some old movies, like Dog Day Afternoon, a lovely look back to 1972 Brooklyn and a very bizarre (and true,) bank robbery) that goes monumentally wrong. Ends at JFK with lots of old planes for me to look at and go ahhhhhh. Come back TWA, Eastern and the intended getaway plane is a Convair 800 of Modern Air, which will only mean something to about 3 readers here, but they will be having a very big AHHHHHH MOMENT, so let them have their nostalgia attack please. And it was all on a suitably sweaty August night too. And DW, a UA DC-8-63 taxied past too.

Sadly their music selection has been much truncated since last time I was here and feedback@asiana.com may be hearing from me, as it was so good before and now is a dud. Bummer.

We zoom direct north from JFK and Montreal, 35 minutes later, is somewhere down there and then it is getting dark and the map shows us heading in to the very nowhere land of Hudson Bay and places that you wonder just WHY anyone needs to be there. Last year’s noted settlement of Igloolik has not moved. And I still do not want to visit, either.

One of the best things about being on the upper deck is the toilet at the front of the cabin, on the left hand side, is the one that Airbus designed as a shower. Asiana does not have a shower, so they ended up with the world’s largest flying toilet. For a place to change clothes, it is wonderful. No more hopping around on one foot, with your arms bouncing off the walls.

What bliss to be in a news-free zone. All the current horrors of what is going on in DC are receding fast and I shall not be watching too hard to see what disaster happens next. It may be difficult to stay out of that loop for the whole six weeks I am away, but I shall keep foreign info at a minimum. Unless of course, DT comes wonderfully unstuck and then I shall be watching.

OK … now later and we have flown in to a pink dawn light. It is right ahead and underneath is all completely very deep-frozen and then if I look backwards along the front of the wing, the monster great engines pushing us along are bathed in a translucent pink glow. It’s all very pretty and exceeding unwelcoming and cold-looking below. Must be the western top of Siberia.

And so we land so smoothly in Seoul, where I shall spend the night. Going all the way through is just too tough and standing on the immigration line, I am happy to think a bed will not be too far away. I made a reservation on line and have the print-out to prove it, so having been index-finger ID’d and taken my glasses off for a snap, I feel I am hallway to citizenship. Outside I look for the info desk type of thing and spot the Tourist Police…. usually these are in places like Egypt and employed to keep the touts at bay, so I stopped there and the man was all smiles and looked at my piece of paper and found the tel number on it and called and I was given my rendez-vous spot, two floors up, at number 7. And it worked perfectly, of course.

It was around freezing outside and getting dark, so was happy to see the gold-toothed driver and his minivan and I was whisked about 15 mins away to a ‘new town’ which looked pretty much like any scruffy town around here, full of fast food and mom and pop joints. The Sky Hotel lady only needed my name and I was given a key. Fastest check-in in ever. So I know to put the plastic key fob in the slot on the wall and the entry light came on. I look for the light switches for further illumination and the more I looked, the more they were not there. I have coped with switches behind doors or curtains or at near ground level, but there just was no way of lighting the place up. I refused to give in and be a wimp and go back downstairs for a clue. There MUST be a way. I let my eyes get accustomed to the gloom and ran my hands over every wall and light fitting in the place, but to no avail. I tried talking out loud in case they were voice activated (we are in hi-tech Korea after all…) and then I found a laminated sheet hanging next to the bed which I took back in to the hallway light to read. Bingo .. the lights were all controlled on the TV remote ! Would have been good if she had told me to crash around in a dark room and to find this document next to the bed. Anyway, there was light, but the TV defeated me. Nothing new. I just took everything off and fell in to bed, at all of 6pm and was asleep immediately.

Of course I woke up at 2am, but sleep was what I needed. So I got up and cleaned up. Hot water should have had a warning on it that if you wanted to cook the veg, then just fill a pot, as it was lethal. Eventually I realized I could sleep a tad more but made sure I was downstairs at 6am for the ride back to Incheon. Same driver as yesterday and just me, so it took barely 10 mins to get there. Lines for security were vast and looked unmoving, which was not a good sign. Korean airports have staff in baby blue jackets just standing around to help and I was told immediately not to be here by door 5 but walk to door 2 “which is always empty”. This meant about a 10 min walk from one end of the terminal to the other and by the time I got there, I was joined by everyone else who had been assured this was the way to go. Seemed to be full of giggly teen girls and I was the only round-eye/foreign devil there. Anyway I am secured and pass immigration and still had time to repair to the Asiana Biz lounge (knowing how to find it from last year’s visit) and a fast two cups of coffee and a ham and cheese sandwich on the whitest of pappy white bread. The sort of bread I was given to put on a fish hook when I was 10 years old and went fishing… needed no spit, as it was so damp fingers did the trick. Oodles of salad available… we forget how much the east likes salad for breakfast.

My gate is as close to the lounge as possible so I stop to take a look at the d/f shops (of which there are hundreds). Many posh designer names too and all overstaffed with exquisitely turned out and uniformed young things and all exceedingly chirpy at 7am AND doing business too. The Prada store had women looking at handbags and ditto Louis Vuitton. And I could buy $400 bottles of pure malt too, which lovely it may be to the taste, I don’t think I could ever find the grounds to actually buy one. I was offered a taste of something fine and rare, but even I cannot face booze that early in the day. I was asked by a lovely young thing if I wanted (probably needed) her upmarket facial products, designed to ‘make you youthful’. I asked if it would even work on the likes of me and she was all overcome with the giggles, which I had to interpret as a ’no’. Koreans are hugely in to being beautiful and these shops are stacked with potions designed to keep both males and females forever young. The Asiana inflight sales catalog is 286 pages long and approaching a Sears catalogue in weight and mainly full of making us all attractive. Wrinkles are def. verboten.

So I jump on my A321, which is a narrow bodied plane, 2 x 2 seats in the biz and am joined by a young man who was so lithe that he sat with his legs tucked up under him on his seat. He produces of course some hi-tech gadgets, two of which get plugged in and then immediately we are flying, he puts his seat back, blanket over and is fast asleep. No breakfast, no nothing. I hope is not expecting me to unplug anything when they are done?

Breakfast by the way, was good, though slightly bizarre, as did we really need a pre-plated cheese course or a fancy cake for dessert ? And in 16 full seats, I was the only person drinking coffee. Mind you the Korean dishes on the menu included ‘Braised Chicken Legs’ or perhaps u would fancy ‘Deep-fried Broccoli Shrimp Ball and Seafood’ ? Possibly coffee does not go too well with them?

Captain Speaking has spoken and assures us the 20 minutes ATC delay we had on the ground will be made up and the flight will just be 5 hours and 15 minutes, so we shall soon be in the tropics. Tra la.

I think this had better end here or your eyes will be already glazing. Standby by for the Return to Ho Chi Minh City City, or Saigon as I always call it, story.

Tim