Chucky

We are finally in Cambodia.

The last update was written from Mui Ne, the idyllic tropical paradise heaven of Vietnam. It's probably not worthy of all those adjectives, but pretty close. We stayed a day longer in Mui Ne than we had anticipated, but Mui Ne was nice. The last full day I again rented a wind-surf board, and after getting blown well down the beach my first run and having to haul my equipment back -- carrying the board and sail single-handedly makes me angry -- I managed to windsurf back and forth with varying degrees of success the rest of the hour. I even tacked upwind a few times. I celebrated this accomplishment by laying on the beach-chairs with Vanya for the rest of the day.

Next was Saigon. I really liked Saigon, but I will preface this by saying that I also think I was predisposed to like the city -- Saigon, like Havana, Cuba, is a city that I romanticize: it is a city with (historically) heavy US influence, where sweaty U.S. dollars found their way into the hands of legitimate and illegitimate business owners alike. Something about this intrinsically appeals to me. Actually, something about this appeals to quite a few Americans, I think, as we saw many in Saigon. There were also many French tourists.

My first stop in Saigon was a massage parlor... one of the few, the guidebook claimed, was entirely legitimate. And it was. For $2.50 I received an hour-long massage, a massage I considered necessary preparation for yet another southeast asian mega-city. The massage parlor employs and trains blind Vietnamese as masseuses; it is bad to be blind in the United States, it is worse to be blind in a developing country like Vietnam. The massage was very relaxing, the first of many, I hope. The facility itself, however, was straight out of a bad, 'B' horror movie. It was set in what looked to be an old hospital, steril and linoleum-coated, with too much flourescent lighting. Upon arrival, for the first five, somewhat frantic minutes I could not find the ticket desk (the signs were conflicting), and ended up physically running into blind masseuses who had memorized the narrow corridors and could walk them freely. They were looking at me, but they were not actually looking at me, and this sent conflicting signals to my brain. I ended up backing up against the walls and sucking in my chest so that I would not run into them, or alternatively, they would not run into me. I'm sure they knew I was there -- I know they could hear me -- which made the situation even more uncomfortable.

In Saigon we of course did the "must-sees:" the Reunification Palace and the War Remnants Museum. But also enjoyed the night-life and walked a decent portion of the city. Our first night we shared liters of "Bia Toui,"the Saigon version of "draught beer," with a Vietnamese graphic-designer who seemed to consider beer a fair trade for his ability to practice english. I think he would have had them coming all night had we wanted them to, but we politely ducked out as the evening grew late. As a side note, Vietnam is a country where, especially by comparison to the US, it is considered acceptable to get smashingly drunk and teeter back home. Vietnamese men, particularly those with a slight belly, have an unfortunate tendency to do exactly that, whereupon they will lift their shirts above their gaping bellies and expose them to the fresh, southeast asian air. I am not sure how/where this started, but it is ubiquitous in Vietnam; it is also a trait I would like to bring back to the US. The next evening we had cocktails atop the Rex Hotel, a hotel that the US "Information Service" (a pseudonym?) rented permanently during the Vietnam War. It was followed by a delicious, French dinner, notable only in that it began what I hope to be a long relationship between me and the French soufflet.

We left Saigon after two days. Again, we both really liked the city, but there was more to see and there is never, ever enough time to see it all. Confound it! After our horrendous experience with the Halong Bay "package tour" in north Vietnam (I only briefly insinuated about nature of this trip, but it was a really poor tour), we opted not to do a similar "Mekong Delta" tour which everyone in Saigon seemed to be touting. "You going to Mekong Delta?" we were asked, over and over and over again. It was maddening. We made the right choice in not doing the tour, but were nearly dissuaded. There are a lot of things I like about Vietnam, but Vietnamese business practice -- and more specifically, lack of business ethics -- is not one of them. We were told over and over again that seeing the Mekong Delta without a tour was a bad idea, that we would get lost, spend a lot more money, not see the "sights." This was not the case, but this is what we were presented with over and over again. In fact, no one seemed to want to give us the information we needed so that we could do it on our own. At one point, the Lonely Planet guidebook for Vietnam says the following (or close to it): "You will leave Vietnam loving the Vietnamese, but convinced that they all want to rip you off." This is an accurate assessment. I have never felt more acutely the weight of my "foreigner"status -- my economic status, really -- than in Vietnam.

Our first stop in the Mekong Delta, Vinh Long, allowed us to take a 24 hour boat trip into the canals of a Mekong tributary. Our boat did not leave until 3:30 PM, so after checking out at noon, Vanya and I had some time to kill at a cafe... or so we thought. Caterine, a 75 year-old french-speaking Vietnamese woman, quickly befriended us and shared the next three or so hours with us. Her french, according to Vanya, was very good; she finished learning french in 1954 and taught it for quite a while. She recommended a restaurant for lunch, and then proceeded to lead us halfway across town to it, much further than we had anticipated. The restaurant was nice, although Caterine insisted that she would only eat the fruit she brought with her: a pomegranet and a dragon-fruit, liberal portions of which she gave to Vanya and I. She enjoyed four or five cups of iced tea, but all she seemed to want was some pleasant conversation (in french) and that we take a few photographs with her. I did, and I will send them to her as soon as I develop them. As is typical for her generation, she is a very, very short woman: her head, with large hat on, came to my shoulder. Slowly -- very slowly -- she walked us back to the boat-launch.

Vanya and I were alone with our tour guide, Nam, a 26 year-old who dreams of visiting the United States. Curiously, he really wants to visit Texas. Vinh Long is home to a number of small islands that serve as the tropical fruit-basket for Saigon, so throughout the length of our stay here these fruits were in abundance. Our first stop was a brick and pottery factory, a lesson in my misplaced faith in the mechanization of the world: bricks here are hand-cut, hand-stacked, hand-carted; pottery for potted plants is hand-molded. Little, if anything, is done by machine. Nor did I see a forklift throughout the whole compound. I do not have much work experience, but I have enough to know that forklifts make the world go round, and that to work without them -- particularly in the brick business -- would be miserable. It looked miserable. We saw a few boys working in the factory who could not have been older than 16 or 17, illegal in Vietnam, where the working age is 18. Why the owner would allow us to witness illegal business practices during a public tour is a question that will remain unanswered for me. He was just chilling, reading the paper.

Next we saw a small fruit orchard owned by a man who looks strikingly like Ho Chi Minh, where we ate our fill of starfruit, longan (sp?), rambutan, and jackfruit. He also poured us small saucers of his bootlegged Mekong whiskey, really spicy stuff. I call it "bootlegged" because he makes it himself, but I do not think he would call it "bootlegged"... everyone in the Mekong Delta makes their own whiskey. Anyway, his fruits are loaded by boat and sold at the floating markets that Vanya and I would later visit.

We stayed on one of the islands that evening in a guest-house, where we met Bella and Phillipe a British girl and a Frenchman, respectively. I bring this up only because it was there that a particularly funny (in my opinion) event ocurred. I am sure that this will not come through in writing -- it can't possibly come through in writing -- but I don't care The four of us were talking with our Vietnamese guide, Nam, after dinner, about birth fables in western culture (storks, for example). This segued into Cabbage Patch Dolls, and then, somehow, to the film "Chucky." Nam needed clarification regarding "Chucky," but quickly realized that he had seen the film. Phillipe somehow did not manage to hear that Nam had seen the film. Phillipe then spent the next few minutes explaining to Nam the plot structure of this atrocious movie. Somehow, with a straight face, Phillipe made clear that "Chucky"was a film about a red-haired children's doll that kills without remorse. Phillipe, I must add, is excitable, earnest, and speaks in a stereotypically heavy French accent. Part of the hang-up was on the word "doll." "You do not know what is a doll? You know, what little girls play with!" Phillipe kept asking, perplexed. Nam did not know the word "doll" in english, but this was not really relevant. Nam spent the next two minutes trying to convey that he, did not know what a doll was, but, in fact, had seen "Chucky." But Phillipe, by this point, was misunderstanding him entirely and was not to be stopped -- he knew the "Chucky" series pretty well and wanted it explained to Nam. "Chucky"was not even the point -- he was used as an example to try to explain what a Cabbage Patch Doll was. This would be difficult for two native english speakers. Most appalling about the whole situation, perhaps, was that all five of us had seen the movie. How did this happen? Why was it sent abroad? The "Chucky" series was, and is, a disgrace to film-making in the eighties. Yet somehow "Chucky"was seen in the U.S., Britain, France, and Vietnam.

From Vinh Lan we made a 24 hour stop in Can Tho, enough time to see the floating markets, one of the main attractions of the Mekong Delta. These were a lot of fun to see, our guide was as knowledgable as a guide could possibly be, and the markets were bustling. Our guide commented that she was not sure how long these markets would last -- first they were simple row-boats, now they are motorboats, and in the future more will be drawn to the more efficient street-markets. Later, our small boat was taken through a narrow canal to the house of a very, very impoverished man, whose name we never found out. The man made his money by hand-crafting plain chopsticks and bootlegging rice-wine, the latter being a remarkably simple process. He looked, physically, like he drank a lot of his own rice-wine. His house was constructed of coconut tree leaves, eucalypt trees, and bamboo.

I could write more right now but it will have to wait. We leave for Siem Riep in four minutes.

...Chang-chang-chaaaaaang...

I am writing this update with a heavy stomach. Vanya and I just finished dinner at Lan Tong Quan, a restaurant that has quickly overwhelmed its competitors in its bid to become our favorite restaurant in Mui Ne. It has delivered a stunning defeat: we have eaten at this restaurant four times in the last two days. Tonight it was garlic bread and freshly squeezed juice, split entrees of batter-fried squid and fried lemon red-snapper, a complimentary fried banana for dessert, and finally, a plate of mango for dessert-dessert. All washed down with Saigon Xahn, an obviously local lager. You'll notice that the word "fried" appeared three times in that last sentence, which is why, very shortly after completion of this update, I am going to to lay down.

We are in the small fishing village/beach town of Mui Ne after a truncated visit to Nah Trang, a beach resort town north of here by 5 hours. We arrived in Nah Trang after another 8 hours south-bound on the Reunification Express, a leisurely train ride that, due to a burgeoning cold/sinus infection, was more unpleasant for me than Vanya (obviously it is never nice to be sick, but there is something altogether ungodly about this process when in semi-tropical heat. Things just feel more wrong than normal, fevers are too hot. I am beginning to understand why colonial officials die so often).

Nah Trang was a disappointment. Vanya actually disliked Nah Trang less than I did, but we both were happy to leave earlier than we had planned. In short, it was an ugly beach resort town. In long, it reminded me of the hyper-developed-yet-poorly-planned Mexican tourist enclaves I have visited before, catering to club-goers and serving over-priced drinks. The buildings were mostly cement blocks, there was garbage all over the sidewalks with rats scurrying in and out, crime levels are high relative to the rest of Vietnam, harassment of foreigners is worse, and we had a couple of miserable experiences at local restaurants (Mui Ne, by comparison, has excellent restaurants).

I will relate the worst of our restaurant experiences. Having decided to try a new Vietnamese dish -- bo bun, a beef-noodle soup -- we sat down at a small street stall/cafe that served the dish. After wolfing down most of my dish (it didn't taste bad), Vanya pointed out that, even in the low light, her beef was obviously discolored. It was a two-tone beef, discolored most likely from lack of refrigeration. It was a few minutes after this that we watched a large rat scurry under one of the pantries inside the kitchen. More upsetting, I think, than the rat, itself, was that the woman who owned the small cafe also saw this rat scurry under the pantry and was completely unpreoccupied with it. She looked at me and gave a polite smile, then continued eating her dinner. It was at this point that Vanya and I both decided that, all things considered, we might as well eat the unexpected centerpiece that came floating in the middle of our beef stew and that we had previously ignored: a rectangular block of congealed pigs blood (we asked). At this particular cafe it was similar in size and consistency to an average block of tofu, and grayish-purple. I ate about half of it. At the end of our meal, the woman/owner/chef took our leftover side-dish of bean sprouts and greens dumped them back in with the "fresh" bean sprouts and greens. All in all, this meal was unsatisfactory.

I am aware of the fact that I am painting an altogether nasty picture of Nah Trang. This is unfair to the city, because it's not all bad and I think I was particularly inclined to dislike it: we have a limited time-frame and I hated to waste even a part of it there, I was sick and therefore not in a position to really see the town, our hotel may have been out of the central district, etc. And the city really does have redeeming qualities to it. We spent two full days in Nah Trang and did enjoy parts of it. One full day was spent reclining and reading under palapas on a partially privatized beach-front, sipping fruit juice and eating ice cream. The second day was spent on a snorkeling day-trip to some outlying islands, with visibility of around 50 feet, many fish, and a white and black spotted eel-snake. But, as I have explained, there were reasons that we left the city early.

That said, Mui Ne has redeemed the frustrations of Nah Trang. Mui Ne is not really a city, or even a town for that matter; it is as a 14 mile beach, with small areas of development along with a few undeveloped tracts. The South China Sea is to our east, there is one main road, and to the west the road are miles and miles of sand dunes. Our first day in town, we rented a Honda motor-scooter and made for Fairy Springs, a walkable river (ankle deep) that serves as a trail to hike into the dunes. Our tour guide was an knowledgeable 12 year old Vietnamese boy who spoke english and tracked us down after we incorrectly started up a path that ran alongside the river. "River ok, river ok." I had never seen sand dunes prior to this, and where there are cross-sections cut by the river the stratified sands show a variety of sand-types and colors. The hike ended at a waterfall, which was nice -- it is really, really hot in Mui Ne. Almost too hot. Vanya and I are both taking doxycycline as an anti-malarial drug, which has the unfortunate effect of making us both more sensitive to sunlight. Whereas Vanya has still been tanning nicely, I have been turning into a leopard by applying sunscreen incorrectly.

Anyway, after the hike we hopped back on the motor-scooter and headed about ten miles out of town on a winding, coastal highway that was virtually empty of traffic. There were rolling dunes that gradually changed color throughout the drive -- red to yellow to gray -- and, incongruously, large herds of cows and goats that periodically blocked the road. What are you doing here? I thought to myself. You are in the desert and you are lost... On the way back into town we stopped off at one of the red dunes to try our hand at the much-hyped sand-sledding. It was as fun as sand-sledding could be, but marred by the fact that we were literally attacked by young Vietnamese kids trying to rent us their sleds for prices that we would "decide later, decide later." I chose the sled from the cutest little girl I could find... and then I met Chang. Chang was a young boy who was upset that I had not chosen his sled, and spent the rest of the trip calling me "f***ing stupid" and yelling to me that he was going to make my motor-scooter "dangerous" and that, in a variety of ways, I was "going to die." This continued our entire trip. All the other kids were really, really nice, but Chang has a lot to learn about customer service. At the end of the day, however, I reigned victorious over him. As soon as we arrived back at the rental shop I told on him. He tried to hide behind his friends, but I tracked him down and pointed him out to the owner of the rental shop. Busted.

Today Vanya and I tried wind-surfing for the first time, and we did as first-timers do. We fell a lot, got back up, fell again, were stung by some nasty jelly-fish (as a side note, I detest jelly-fish. They are despicable creatures. I only wish they tasted better, so that they might suffer the same fate as everything else from the sea that tastes good), and toward the end of our lesson, we sort of wind-surfed. Like all board-sports wind-surfing is frustrating and exhausting to learn, with the additional difficulty of having to switch from a normal to "goofy" stance when on different tacks. But it was a lot of fun, and we may do it again. One of the more enjoyable things about Mui Ne is that it is a wind-surfing and kite-surfing mecca of southeast asia. Over the course of the day -- roughly 10 AM to 3 PM -- the wind develops from a light breeze to 20-25 mph. This happens every day, on cue. The kite-surfers are amazing. Over the next five years I will become a kite-surfer, I am resolute about this (as resolute as I can be for a sport that costs a cool couple thousand to break into). The last two evenings we have watched the day turn to dusk while sitting on the beach, cradling Saigon beers, ooh-ing and ahh-ing as the kite-surfers and wind-surfers do spectacular tricks that often result in truly spectacular crashes. This is our routine in Mui Ne.

Next stop is Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and the Mekong Delta.

P.S. As it is late October, there is something that I have had on my mind and for which I would appreciate feedback. The question: what should my costume be for trick-or-treating in Cambodia? Please keep in mind that nobody in Cambodia celebrates Halloween. Nor will anyone understand when I knock on their door with a mask on, yelling "TRICK-OR-TREAT!" and asking for candy. I cannot emphasize enough how scary this will be -- for me, as well as them -- as there are going to be enormous cultural gaps to overcome; Halloween is complicated. And the costume can't be too elaborate, since I'm probably not going to get very much candy, anyway.

Vietnam

The flight to Hanoi was obviously a success, and more or less painless. I really do not think, though, that there are many jobs worse than working as a paper-pushing customs officer -- or any bureaucrat, for that matter -- in The Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It's up there with meat-packing, in my mind.

Having spent four full days in Hanoi, and now well south of the city, I can say objectively that it is the busiest city I have visited (and yes, I have been to Manhattan). Hanoi is an assault on the senses. Saigon, we have heard, is even busier than Hanoi, and Bangkok busier than Saigon, so I suppose Hanoi will hold this title only briefly. There are a lot of factors relating to Hanoi's being busy -- a very healthy street culture is one of them -- but most it is directly related to the moto-scooter. Apparently nobody really had them fifteen years ago, yet they have now become a status symbol; one young Vietnamese boy told a friend of ours that he could not get a girlfriend until he had his 'moto.' For me it was my family's 1992 Chrysler Plymouth Voyager mini-van.

Most of what Vanya and I did in Hanoi can be done and is done by the majority of westerners that travel through: vendor-shopping, Parisian cafes, tourist sites, pho and baguettes. However there is one thing not to be missed by any of you going through Hanoi. Bia Hoi means 'draught beer' in Vietnamese (it is not a brand of beer), and is a locally brewed lager that contains no preservatives and is meant to be consumed very shortly after production. Many cafe/bars will display prominently that they serve Bia Hoi. The clientele will swell throughout the evening to the point that portions of the street are appropriated as the bar expands -- you are actually sitting at a table on the street. Anyway, the beer is .12 cents per glass, and on that night you are my friend. Quite possibly the only thing that keeps anyone from behaving improperly is the 12 AM curfew, followed 6 1/2 hours later by Voice of Vietnam state radio waking up the entire city. It is loud. As an American, I am inclined to think that the government, here, is slightly over-stepping its bounds.

(Speaking of my being American... nobody here cares. Really, they don't. I am "western" or a tourist, for all intents and purposes. The only thing of interest that has come from my being American was from a bicycle-taxi driver, who looked to be around age 40. After I told him we were American, he said "American!?! Boom-boom-boom... IRAQ! Ha ha haaaa!" Vanya and I laughed politely and paid the exorbitant fare. In general Americans have been few and far between in southeast Asia, and in all of Vietnam we have met just one.)

We interrupted our stay in Hanoi with a three-day, two-night package-tour of Halong Bay. Halong Bay is the type of place that makes an amateur photographer feel like a very good photographer. We stayed one night on Cat Ba island (the largest island of the limestone archipelago in Halong Bay), did a day-hike through Cat Ba national park, swam off the side of the boat multiple times, and were allowed fifteen minutes for "kayaking." While the scenery cannot be beat, our trip, itself, definitely could have been beat. Vanya and I paid $39 for the three-day trip Halong Bay, and, well, we most certainly got what we paid for. Very few of the promised excursions actually happened, and there was a feeling of popular discontent -- a few days more and we would have been close to a mutiny -- among everyone we spoke to throughout the trip. We were sheep, our tour guide a dictatorial pastor.

After a 16 hour, overnight train ride south, we have now spent the last two days in Hoi An, a fishing-village-turned-tourist-destination. It has nearly perfected the art of catering to western tourists in a way that is inoffensive and does not feel overly commercialized. There are some amazing restaurants, bars, and cafes, and were they to be transported somehow to the US I would think they would be extremely popular. Hoi An is known worldwide for cheap, hand-made, tailored clothing, which is more important to Vanya than it is to me. Yesterday we took a walking tour of the city's historical district, and later rented a moto (no paperwork required, unbelievably) and headed to the beach 3 miles away. Driving a moto in Vietnam, even rural Vietnam, is a bet sketchy. On the 30 minute taxi-ride into town -- and after a particularly close call with a big truck -- our driver leaned back and asked us all to please buckle our seat belts. Implicit in this statement, I suppose, is that a car crash was an acceptable, if not undesirable, outcome to our taxi ride. I didn't even have a seat belt to put on.

Today we took a half-day cooking course on Vietnamese cuisine, learning to make Vietnamese spring rolls, claypot eggplant, Vietnamese pancakes, and pineapple boat squid-salad. None of the cooking courses offered in the city had dog on the menu, or I would be explaining what to do when you're hungry and your local grocer is just too far. With few exceptions we have been eating very well in Vietnam, with some of the best food coming not from the cafes catering to westerners, but from those catering to the Vietnamese. he street-corner, portable restaurants that serve one or two dishes are also very good, however pre-requisite to eating in these restaurants is an ability to ignore things sanitary.

The uncomfortable disparity in income between tourist and resident in Vietnam is always evident. The average Vietnamese makes $60 per week, and I appear to them as a cheerful idiot, willingly imparting with (to them) small fortunes on a daily basis. Not only that, but I thank them for it. Often, the question, "buy something?" turns into the demand, "buy something!" as we walk past the shops. The "kickback" -- from hotel to taxi driver, from tourist agency to hotel, etc. -- reigns supreme, and has the unfortunate effect of making me suspicious of genuine offers from nice people (on our first night in Hanoi, Vanya and I were intentionally shuttled to the wrong hotel, told it was full before we could ascertain where in Hanoi we were, and then taken to the hotel from which our shuttle-driver received his kickback). Also amazing is the massive, all-encompassing economic powerhouse that is Lonely Planet guidebooks. While most independent, budget travelers like to imagine themselves as, well... independent, we are a mostly self-contained group. We all bury our noses in Lonely Planet, all read the same advice, and inevitably eat and sleep at the same handful of places that are recommended. It is amazing how often we run into people in Vietnam that we met, say, in rural Malaysia. This is particularly true for an area of the world such Asia, where very few of us speak the languages and therefore need guidance; I cannot hop off the train and wing it, here. Vietnamese businesses have responded by actually copying the name and signboard of those businesses recommended by Lonely Planet, further disorienting us. The worst example was a street with three restaurants called "Little Hanoi," each claiming to be the "original Little Hanoi" and "recommended in Lonely Planet."

I would write more, but our taxi is about to pull up. Today we take the train to Nah Trang, eight hours south of here. I will update soon.

Doldrums

We are doing round two of Kuala Lumpur after a relaxing week in the Cameron Highlands. More on the Highlands in a minute.

Kuala Lumpur is a bustling city -- better, Vanya and I have decided, than neighboring Singapore. It is busy, with sidewalks disappearing arbitrarily and choking mouthfuls of diesel, but it is busy in a way that the Taman Negara jungle and the Cameron Highlands certainly were not. We are staying in a bustling Chinatown, overflowing with food, where an extremely large night-market kicks off every evening and hawkers ritually harass us to buy Chinese knock-off goods.

I bring up the Chinatown market not because it is particularly interesting, but because it was here that I had a truly insightful experience with my girlfriend. Having delivered a short lecture to Vanya on the proper way to bargain for goods, Vanya haggled a vendor down for a handbag, but decided to take a look at other stalls before making the purchase. He yelled his final price -- 30 RM (just under $10) -- as we walked away. Later, returning to this same stall, the vendor recognized us and again asked if Vanya wanted the handbag for 30 RM. I walked away for a moment (I should never have done this), and during my brief absence Vanya actually upped the price of the handbag. She countered his offer of 30 RM with an offer of 35 RM. Re-read that last sentence, I encourage you. Her defense, if you asked her, would be that she never heard his offer. Anyway, he accepted; he is a businessman. This surely is not a historical first in the long history of haggling, but it has to be a fourth or a fifth.

Having accomplished what we needed to in Kuala Lumpur -- beginning the week-long process for a Vietnamese Visa -- we caught a bus to the Cameron Highlands. The bus-ride was supposed to take around 3 1/2 hours and instead took 6 1/2, due to a variety of issues. We have had bad luck with buses in Malaysia. The other bad experience I had on a bus had to do with the movie 'Predator,' starring two future governors of US states (the other is Jesse "The Body" Ventura"). This experience was more trivial. I had never seen 'Predator' in full prior to this bus-ride. Anyone who has TBS has seen parts of it, but I had never watched it start to finish, never knew why Predator had such insatiable bloodlust. Anyway, the movie was literally moments from its climax -- Arnold Schwarzenegger is drawing his bow-string for the coup de grace, he is covered in mud, his muscles are gigantic -- when the line of people behind me forced me off the bus. I never saw him release the bowstring. Obviously I know how it ends -- he kills the Predator --but I don't know how it ends. Bad experience number three.


While in the Cameron Highlands, Vanya and I had, for all intents and purposes, left Malaysia. The Highlands do not feel like Malaysia at all. They are the former leisure and recreation resort for British colonial officials, many of whom enjoyed the respite from the intensely un-British weather in lowlands Malaysia. At 4800 feet or so, it is much cooler up in the Highlands than elsewhere in Malaysia; it feels very much like Seattle would feel right now. And, given that it is a former British enclave, what do you guess is grown up there? Tea... lots and lots of delicious tea. It is cheap and abundant. And, given that I am an American, what would you guess that I have been doing with a resource that is cheap and abundant? I have been completely over-consuming it! I'll drink it all, I tell you! In all seriousness, I have been drinking enough tea to disrupt my natural sleep cycle and have been sleeping horribly. But mmm... Consumption!

The Highlands were a really, really nice place, though, to waste away the traveler's doldrums. We ended up stuck with a few extra days in Malaysia as a result of the lengthy Vietnamese visa process... not enough time to go somewhere else, but a few too many days, regardless. As a result, we spent five full days in the Highlands, a very relaxing place to be. Our lunch usually involved a combination of tea and either cream scones or butter cake, followed by multiple games of chess. Our hostel, Father's guesthouse, has a no-shoe policy in most of the building, plays good movies every night, serves tea, and includes a bottle-opener on the keychain. Most of the days are interrupted by a monsoon at around four o'clock. Anywhere the tea is growing is, by default, beautiful.

Nor have we been lazy. We really have not been. We did a little package tour the first day, part of which took us through the plant of the major tea manufacturer here, 'BOH' tea. Our second day was spent on an exhausting 4 hour, round-trip hike that took us to 6666 feet, ominously enough. Day three I went running for the first time in three weeks, and then proceeded to hike another 6 miles with Vanya to a second 'BOH' tea plantation. For no reason at all, apparently, the tea factory happened to be closed, so after a cup of tea and some lemon-butter cake, we were dreading the walk back to town. So we hitch-hiked. Hitch-hiking is common in the Highlands -- our bus picked up some struggling backpackers on the way up and most guidebooks mention hitch-hiking as a mode of transportation -- and our first attempt met with extremely good fortune.

We were picked up by an older Chinese man named Lyn in his pick-up truck, a farmer who had lived in the Highlands for fifteen years. In the truck with him was Nabim, a mustachioed Indian man who is head of tea-processing at this particular tea production facility. Nabim spent a decent portion of the ride explaining to us exactly how to brew the perfect pot of tea (use a porcelain teapot). After dropping us off at a junction where we could catch a bus back to town, Nabim yelled after us to come back, that his friend, John, who had just pulled up, could take us up to town. John drove a nice BMW, and Vanya and I hopped in the back seat with a very elderly Indian woman heading in the same direction. On the ride into town John (an Indian-Malay), informed us that he was the pastor of a Christian church in town, and that, if we would like and weren't doing anything later that evening, we could join him and some church-members for a fellowship dinner. We were to be at a street corner at 5:30 if we decided to come.

We decided, after some deliberation, to go. John picked Vanya and me up in a clunky van, with his daughter Sarah in the back-seat and a bearded, Indian man named Morgan in the passenger seat ("I am like J.P. Morgan, you know?"). We spent part of the ride talking about rich Americans, like Bill Gates and NBA superstars and Paris Hilton (I defended only Gates), with all of them surprisingly well-informed on things American. They were all very easy-going and asked us quite a few questions about life in America.

We did not realize until the van pulled up that dinner was to be held at the 'BOH' tea estate that we had hiked to earlier in the day. Nabim and his family were hosting the Fellowship dinner. In what I can only imagine is a relic of a much older style of land-ownership/labor practices, Nabim's housing is provided by 'BOH' tea and is actually on the estate. 'BOH' Tea has now had just three owners, all family members from the same Scottish family with middle names like "Archibold." Nabim's house was just around the corner from the tea-processing factory and had an amazing view: hill after rolling hill covered in tea plants.

The dinner, we were told, was not a "potluck." Seeing as this was a gathering of Christians, there was no luck involved. This was a "potbless." Vanya and I mingled a bit before eating, speaking on end with Lyn, the Chinese man who had picked us up earlier. As a farmer, he was an endless repository of information regarding agricultural techniques in the Cameron Highlands. He grows cucumber, zucchini, and tomato, some of which he eats, as well as fifteen types of herbs, which he does not eat and instead sells to hotels and cruise-liners. We also spoke for a while with Morgan, who we came to find out was a renowned tour-guide in the Cameron Highlands and speaks five languages. Dinner came and came and came. I started with too much salad, then moved on to generous servings of mee-hoon (a noodle dish), stingray ("vengeance for Steve Irwin!" Morgan exclaimed), small potatoes, garlic bread, a sort of radish paste, barbecued chicken, and many other dishes, all washed down with iced lemon tea. I had eaten to capacity, but went back for another plateful, mostly as a sign of appreciation to our hosts. Having mostly filled my plate (again), one of the women snuck an entire, 12 inch, barbecued mackerel on my plate, doing the same to Vanya. There was an impossible amount of food.

After dinner, Pastor John, Morgan, Nabim, and Lyn sat around the table and talked to Vanya and I while the women and children milled about and watched Mr. Bean on satellite television. Our hosts did most the talking, much of which covered asian politics. John and Lyn were amazingly well-traveled -- John especially -- but both had come to the conclusion (independently) that Malaysia was the best country to live in. "It would shame me if you were hungry and I did not invite you to dinner," John said. "This is Malaysian hospitality." At one point Lyn asked me what Americans thought of Malaysia. I mumbled a reply, saying that most Americans might envision something similar to Vietnam, and that they might know that Malaysia is a Muslim country. Really I had no idea. He laughed and said that, in his opinion, he believed that Americans might think Malaysians still live in the jungle. Still on the subject of America, Pastor John mentioned September 11th. "This is something that Americans do not realize. Their news is world news. We were all watching the television when that happened. And we are in the highlands of Malaysia!"

Later, the group circled around, a couple of songs were performed, John preached , and group-members gave testimonials to Christ. As the group began to filter out the door -- we had been there about four and a half hours -- John, for the first time, asked both Vanya and I where we stood religiously. We both expressed ambivalence regarding this question, the big question. As we were heading out he door, he asked, "I am just curious... what does this mean that you 'don't know?'" I never had time to answer, we were out the door and heading to Lyn's truck. On the way home we listened to FM radio -- "a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh..." -- and Lyn told us about the role that chrysanthemums play in Buddhist ritual. Which I do not yet fully understand.


Anyway, this is enough for now. Tomorrow evening we fly from Kuala Lumpur to Hanoi, Vietnam, where Vanya's french-speaking abilities will be put to the test, and I will work hard to eat as many Vietnamese breakfast doughnuts as possible. If there are terrorists on the flight (or if I spy them anywhere, for that matter), I can tell you all quite frankly that I will fight them to the death.