Coming Home

Indochina is clearly different than most places we’ve visited in the world. We’ve been to relatively few places with so much French influence, which lasted here for decades. Frequently English is the third language here, and there are far more French tourists than from any other nation, though that will surely change.

Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia are all Communist countries today, though that certainly worked out differently than Nixon and Kissinger feared. In Vietnam, especially, capitalism is rampant. There remain huge differences between the North and the South (as in America?), but everyone wants to work in the private sector, and the focus is constantly on money. In Vietnam, the guide in the North believed the government is afraid of the people; in the south, our guide believed the people are afraid of the government. (Who do you believe is afraid of whom in the U.S.?)

All these countries have low GDP, low incomes, low education rates, and low standards of living. All are characteristics of Communist / one-party regimes. Yet, in Laos and Cambodia, especially, the people would reelect the current government tomorrow, if they needed to. The devil they know seems less dangerous than the devil they don’t. Besides, the people are far too busy working hard to make money during the day.

These are lands where teachers and physicians each make less than $65 per month, yet breakfast for two in our hotel costs $61. (A restaurant employee had never tasted the food on their fabulous buffet. And at night they give the extra bread (23 different breads on yesterday's breakfast buffet) to the orphanage, but throw away everything else. It doesn't go to the orphanage or the children's hospital or anywhere.) A nominal tip for our driver, for a few hours of work spread over several days, is more money than his father makes in two weeks. (I read that policemen make far less, perhaps $20 per month - plus all they can steal. And were told that we were safe walking at night virtually everywhere. What kind of political system results in an honest population and dishonest policemen?!)

There is also still astounding interest in the United States. In Cambodia, the ATM machine gave me U.S. dollars (!) instead of Cambodian Riels. Dollars are still accepted almost everywhere. And they know our elections - everywhere, in every city and small village, they talked about Obama. Fran tried to buy an Obama T-shirt in a bar in Siem Reap, but the one on exhibit was small and dirty, and all the others were long sold out.

This amazing odyssey is almost at an end. It’s 86 degrees here today, doesn’t seem remotely like December, even though our grand hotel in a very Buddhist country is all decorated for Christmas. Even in this part of the world we can’t avoid politics. We were scheduled to fly home through Bangkok. The Thai government has fallen in the past three days, and the protestors have now left the international airport, but we have already changed our reservations. The good news is that we now go through Singapore – one of my “100 Things To Do” was to fly Business Class on Singapore Airlines, rated the #1 airline in the world every year, which I will now check off my list. And we’ll go into the city, so I can add another country to my life list – I think that makes 54 countries. Still a long ways behind my mother, but impressive, nonetheless!

23 hours of flying time plus 12 time zones tomorrow – 35 hours of travel! All in the same day! We’ll sleep well when we get home!

Faces

Inspired by my good friend, Bob Bein, I tried to take many portraits on this trip. A surprising number of people, young and old, service people, local people, brides on their wedding day, and many others, posed for me. There are now so many dozen portraits that, embarrassingly, I cannot remember the details of them all. But they will make a fabulous gallery. Here are just a few of our favorites.

Why we now look like two Happy Buddhas - Time to come home!

Eating this way every day for a month can pack on the pounds.
Oh well, Indochina today, SouthBeach tomorrow.
It's been worth every pound!
!

The Jungle Temple

We went to the “Jungle Temple” this afternoon. Unattended for hundreds of years, trees were simply allowed to grow. And grow they did – some are more than 200 feet high, growing out of solid rock on the tops of the temple. They’re heavy! And they do lots of damage, especially when they fall. UNESCO is trying to reconstruct this temple, but it seemed hopeless to me. There are already thousands of “stones” (they must weigh 200-500 kilograms (440-1050 lbs) each) lying all over the ground.

After a while it all blurs together. So many gigantic piles of rock. So many carvings. Not things we would recognize as holy. But they clearly meant an awful lot to an awful lot of people.

We went to a dinner show of Khmer dancing tonight, but after all our adventures, this also seemed to blur with others.

Doesn't she look like Rosie Perez? It might be time to come home.

Cambodia, Day 2: Angkor Thom

Thursday (12/4/08) we went to Angkor Thom, and this gets more and more astonishing. Angkor Thom is more than 4 times larger than Angkor Wat. The exterior wall is more than 12 kilometers (7 miles) long. There are dozens of temples inside Angkor Thom – it seems every king built a new one. It’s incomprehensible – millions of man-years of labor to build every temple, and then they barely used them. Where did they get all the people (and the elephants to move all the rock)? How did the society grow while they did nothing but build temples??

The inscription on one said it took 79,000 people just to do the maintenance on the temple every year while the king was alive! All to consolidate and demonstrate his continuing power and domination. And not one of those kings was smart enough to say, “That temple over there is beautiful. I’ll pray there. Let’s take a million man-years of labor and build schools.”

There are both similarities and differences with other churches. Take Europe, for example. Thousands of Catholic churches. Many are elaborately painted – every wall and ceiling, and some contain priceless originals by the greatest masters. But the temples at Siem Reap are carved in stone. Today we saw more murals depicting entire episodes of society and history. Many of these murals are 3 meters (9+ feet) high, and some go for 600 meters (more than a third of a mile) or more. How many thousands of stone carvers? The Buddhist temples have carvings on every wall and every pillar – in solid rock. And what is it about Buddha statues?? They are (only) stone icons, but some temples had more than 1,000 Buddhas. Why?? Why not one big one? Or why not a dozen? Why did they need thousands in the same temple!?? If I understand it correctly, Hindus worship many many gods, but Buddhists, only one.
[ Note: later we went to an artisan center, where they teach young (frequently disabled) people various traditional craft skills. To carve stone today, they use steel rods with diamond tips. What did they use to carve stone 1,000 years ago?? ]





























































Not too subtle, eh?



















Fran practices serenity. Hopefully, it will last long after the vacation is over.












This stone carving depicts a woman in childbirth being helped by a midwife.













I was told that if I stood patiently at this doorway a beautiful princess would appear.






















Does a Puerto Rican Princess count?
In the words of Sarah Palin, "You Betcha!"

Cambodia - Angkor Wat

Wednesday, December 3, 2008: We gave up this afternoon. We can think of no more ways to say “WOW!”

Less than an hour’s flight from Saigon to Siem Reap, but into a whole different world. A town of only 18,000 people claims 10 5-star hotels. And I’ve only seen 4 paved roads. A huge change from Vietnam. But it has Angkor Wat.





The Temples are magnificent. More than 300 of them near this town. Almost 1,000 years old, the exterior wall at Angkor Wat is almost 3 kilometers long, surrounded by lakes. Then an interior wall, and the temples. Everything is solid rock. The tallest temple is 60 meters (~ an 18 story building). The steps to the top are each about 15” high (huge steps), and go up at a 70 degree angle. Around the inner wall, a mural is carved into the rock – it’s about 3 meters high (9+ feet), and more than 600 meters long (6 football fields). A mural carved in rock!


It took tens of thousands of people some 47 years to build the temples. They were originally Hindu temples. As the population was increasingly influenced by India it became Buddhist, and they took over the temples for their use. Today Cambodia is 97% Buddhist. Regardless, as in My Son, they were built only for use by the king and the holiest of monks; these people only visited the temples a few times a year. Which they probably spent some 30 million man-years of labor, to create temples which were used by a handful of people only a few days a year!! They wanted to demonstrate power, which they certainly did. . .
By the way, these temples are not “hollow,” they have no “inside.” They’re piles of earth, surrounded and topped by solid rock. To pray, the king and the holy men climbed to the top (sometimes to stay for several days at a time), and prayed. There’s no sanctuary, and no altar. Simply a Buddha at the top.






Carvings of angels, or Apsaras, appear throughout all of the temples. Fran was absolutely taken with them and plans to print a few for her meditation room






We also viewed Angkor Wat from up in the air. We took a tethered balloon ride at sunset.














Just beautiful!









Our hotel is lovely, our room looks directly across the park to former President Sihanouk’s house, it’s only about 200 meters away, with no forbidding walls or fences. I’ve never been this close to a President’s house, and I’ve never seen one this “accessible” (the sidewalk is only 10 meters (30+ feet) from the house.

(He’s a strange interesting fellow – check him on Wikipedia if you’re interested. He’s been King of Cambodia, President, Prime Minister, several times each, and has had a host of other titles. He’s had at least 7 wives, and at least 14 children, one of whom is now King. He kept Cambodia out of the Vietnam War, but is considered to have led the country into misery, and he made it possible for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to follow him. Two million Cambodians died, and the population today is only 14 million. He is not popular with most Cambodian people today, and he remains in self-imposed exile in China.)

Saigon

Saigon seems to have fewer sights and less history; the history seems largely tied to the American war (note the terminology here). We explored the Reunification Palace and the old American Embassy site, and all their special rooms. The war museum did little more than remind us how truly horrible war is, over and over and over. The photography section was especially devastating.

The city itself is growing explosively. Already with 9 million people, Saigon is projected to reach 16 million in less than 10 years. There are construction cranes everywhere. (Would I invest in Vietnam? Every penny I could. 60% of the population is under 30, they all keep having kids, and everybody works 7 days a week, up to 18 hours a day. Unbelievable productivity.)



The Reunification Palace











The recently renovated Post Office in Saigon. really nice!










A church in Saigon that's (kind of) a replica of Notre Dame in Paris. Only open Sunday mornings. Closed all other times.

The War Remnants Museum, which focused on the "American War." Depressing.










The Opera House in Saigon

The highlights of Saigon were the market and our private concert. The market (one of hundreds here, of course) is as staggering and colorful as the largest in Hanoi, with sights and sounds and smells we could not possibly record. Ridiculous prices – my knock-off (but high quality) Polo shirts were $5 each.

The Food Court at the Saigon Market.
Fran could not get used to the agressiveness of the merchants at the market in Saigon. They kept touching her and insisting that she buy from them. A few times she had to give them the New York attitudinal look when saying "No, Thank You [You touch me again and you'll pull away a stump!"]"

We visited Dinh Linh and his wife, in their home, for a private music session. He’s a most accomplished musician, probably plays more than three dozen instruments well. He and his wife sometimes accompany the President of Vietnam when he travels abroad, to bring Vietnamese culture to the world. He makes his own bamboo flutes, and played about 15 of them, in many keys, for us, as well as about 8 other instruments.

His wife is as accomplished as he, and they are a fabulously talented duo. This instrument is made of rocks, carefully shaped and toned to precise pitches. It has a lovely, mellow sound.

And these hollow tubes play specific notes with echos, when you clap your hands!

This one stringed-instrument sounds like a guitar in the right hands!