uncommon travel

Oops, There Went The Scenery

2011-12-22T11:53:00.000-08:00

The ground roars and trembles, tipping the surging crowd down the narrow escalators. The train to Guangzhou rumbles into Hong Kong station. We obstinately hold our ground and move steadily towards our cabin. The uniformed woman gestures irritably. ‘Upstairs’, she says.

I, personally, am anything but irritable. Upstairs. And facing forward. We’ve expressly requested that we face in the direction the train is going so China won’t go backwards.

We sit down victorious and look across the table that’s more like a railing to the two empty seats facing us. What poor sods will be staring at us while they reverse into China we wonder.

As if summonsed, here he comes, the first one; a massive Norseman in a lightweight grey suit with long wispy grey hair tied back, an enormous swaying girth and pale giant’s feet clad in Teva-type open sandals – a modern take on Viking footwear.

“I can’t believe zey have zis upstairs ,” he breathes precariously, all his weight and substance struggling to lose momentum.
“I haven’t seen one of zees before”. His ‘zees’ randomly remind me of California, Schwarzenegger , and Scandinavia in general. He has a giant chiseled face you could clamber over and large pooling eyes that look out of his face like a trapped child. They are kind eyes, kind and mildly astonished, like he’s been let out of school early and told to go play.

Seat number two arrives, a dapper, only slightly portly Irish man, pink around the edges. He navigates past the Norseman squeezing himself down for a heartbeat before attempting a wild-eyed escape.
‘I think I’ll, uhh, I think I’ll just sit down over here until someone comes’ he says, barreling across the aisle and collapsing into a single renegade seat I am sure has a rightful owner.

Two minutes later the escapee is back in the fold, a Starbucks coffee in his hand.
‘ I veesh I could get one of zose’ the Norseman annunciates soulfully staring at the Starbucks coffee cup as though it were a miracle.
‘There’s one downstairs where you walk in’ the Irish man says, marginally irritable, still struggling with the space allocation.

The Norseman beams or rather radiates, rearranging the chiseled landscape of his vast and beautiful face. His stomach lies on his lap like an anesthetized animal, large but no longer posing a threat. Could he be a lecturer at some university? He looks like an academic. His suit is light and ironic, not a businessman’s suit.
The Irishman has adjusted. He unzips his brown leather jacket and pulls a spiral bound notebook out of his briefcase. The notebook says Calessa.

“I work in textiles. I sell women’s clothing. “
Michel and I close our kindle apps on our iphones and settle down. This could get interesting.

I’m Patrick he says. I’m Christian says the Norseman. I’m Gail, I say. This is Michel.
The train chugs and takes off.
I forget to look at the scenery.

Do you do this trip often then? Do you live in China?

“Aw no. This,” gestures disparagingly out the window with his thumb.
“THIS is work! Hong Kong? Now that’s home.”
Sits back. Leans forward. Carries on.
“ See I was born in Ireland. Went to school there, then with unemployment at 25% I came over to the United States. Lived in New York City for 15 years. Met a girl there. Filipino. Married her.

“I’m 42, but I look 52. She’s 32. We were OK in NY but here in Hong Kong, everyone has something to say. I look” he glances around for comic effect, “I look just like one of those old guys who come over and get themselves a local girl half their age. She could be my Filipino maid! My wife’s American. Makes her crazy”

“I can see you travel all over ze world,” The norseman offers sagely, “ but vere” he brings two giant pale hands together in an oddly feminine gesture, “ does your heart live?’ He holds his palms against his huge pillowy chest where his heart most likely is. He twists in his seat and surveys his neighbor with sad damp eyes. Is he a priest, I wonder? Is he a man of the cloth?

Patrick turns down the corners of his mouth but his eyes are laughing. He is bubbly, loquacious, is our pinkish Irishman. Loves to talk.

“So I worked in Manhattan. Women’s clothing, design you know. Multimillion dollar company. Right hand man to this crazy rich guy. Been going to China now for twenty something years.”

“Last three years, my own company. Clothing. Doing pretty well, I have to say… Prett-ty well.”

“So what ez it like – you know, working with the Chinese? How ez it? You have been doing zis for zo many years what is zis experience like?” Perhaps he is a researcher, an anthropologist…a philanthropist? An ist.

“I can’t tell you. Have you read this book Mr China?

“I’m looking at this book and I’m turning the pages and I’m doing, “ he nods his head over and over.
“I’m going like, yeah.”
Nods the head
“Yeah”
Nods head
“Yeaah”
“I could have written this!”

“I tell you they will cheat. They will lie. You can’t turn away for a minute.”
He’s whispering now. Fiercely. He’s looking around. We all are.

“I’m an Irishman. I come from Ireland. We’re the most un-PC country in the world. We know what our shortcomings are. We know how to laugh. These people!” Throws up his hands. Smile never leaves his face but now his eyes are two fierce buttons.

“They just…I ...they’re bloody impossible,” Falls back, exhausted.

“But what can you do? You have to play the game. You just can’t be straight. They say one thing they do another you say one thing you do another…it’s what you have to do to survive.”

“Do you ever go back to Ireland?” The Norseman asks.

“Ireland. Awww…” He softens up again.

“At least five times a year. I have to go and see my customers in New York. I do everything you see. I’m the salesman, the accountant. I do my own sourcing. I go to NY then I come home via Ireland. I’m a bit of history buff you know. World war II especially, for some reason. I collect things. I have this collection and I keep it in this, this facility up in the mountains in county Wicklow. I like to go and visit it.” Beaming now.

A collection. A collection of what?

“What sort of things do you collect?”

“See this, you see this.” Thrusts a cell phone at us with a photograph of an army vehicle.
“This is a kubelwagen!”

Huh.

“The real thing. I collect them. I do ‘em up. Keep them in this warehouse – temperature controlled. There’re 43 so far, all circa 1940’s, forms of transport, tanks, guns.”

He goes pink, pinker, right to the rim of his hair, lifts his hand scratches his head. Is embarrassed. Is in love.

“What can I do? My wife knows I’m crazy, she knows it’s my thing.

“When I go to Ireland I phone my brother, I have five brothers. I tell him, y’know…” he giggles.
“I say, ‘Come, we’ll take the tank out’.”

“I’m busy building this bunker thing. This great big facility right into the side of the mountain – it’s an army thing…” The blush continues. We are all of us delightfully aghast.

I turn to Christian who has been interrupting sagely but inappropriately all the way through. What kind of gigantic academic can be this socially obtuse I think.

“So Christian, what do you do? What brings you here to Hong Kong?” I am certain he has a story.

“Well I’ve been out of ze world for two years.” There is a long, rather odd pause while we all digest this.

“Out of the world?” I ask.

Again a pause.

“Well it’s like India.” And I know this can’t be the answer.

“You went to India?”

“I liked it zere. I am going to move zere.” Uncomfortable pause full of something like gravitas.

“ Norway -- my country.” He makes a sweeping gesture of disgust.
“It can go to Hell.” His eyes look mildly surprised as though they are watching from the sidelines and can’t quite believe themselves.

“Yes, but what brings you here?”

“My vader.”

“Your father?”

“My vader is somezing of a historian and, well, China is ze oldest civilization in ze world,” he says, hands up, protesting the banality of such a persistent need for explanation.

He leans forward, elbows planted on the geography of his considerable knees. His rhythm is just out, so you can’t read it.

“I have zis psychiatric problem, you see.” He nods, looks me straight in the eye.
“My government doesn’t vant me here. They don’t vant me out of ze country.” He looks away.

“Zay tried to stop me…zay didn’t vant me to get out…but I did. I am not supposed to be here.”

“Oh well,” another dismayed gesture.

“When I was there zay, the government, zay were a trouble for me. Zay were a trouble for me, and I… I, was a trouble for zem. The last time I was zere… I burnt my house down. “ This time the gesture is nonchalant; what to do? What to do?

“But, you see, in India – I like it zere -- I take my medication, and if I can stay away from alcohol I can be okay. I can be okay. Ze mania is not so bad.”

The train slows down.
Is this our stop?

We shake hands. Have a nice life. The Irishman moves quickly and away. He comes back

“In all the excitement, I forgot this,” he says, waving his briefcase.

I turn to the enormous Norseman, standing now.
“Enjoy your adventure”, I say, retrieving my tiny hand from his.

I look into his eyes, I still see the child trapped there, adrift in an unruly tumble of dreams.

Scotland: Whisky... With A Dash Of Water

2011-03-15T20:08:00.000-07:00

There are things you should do in Oban; drink whisky is one of them. Local whisky, single malt, conceived hundreds of years ago and matured in American bourbon barrels(!) for twelve reverent years.

The distillery is just there, off the main street, right in the centre of this picturesque little harbour town.

I woke early that day, sunrise it would have been, if the sky had not been leaden with clouds plotting their downpour and my imminent downfall. Visions of fish and chips floated through my prone, early morning mind. Fish and chips followed by my hips, all of them stodgy. I could have, should have, stopped then but the vision called up action.

I made myself upright and in the considerate dark of the bedroom -- not wanting to wake my slumbering husband -- I fumbled for my dormant active wear. Minutes later I was out the door of the dear little stone cottage and gazing, dazed, around me at the slick-wet cobbled street leading down to the harbour. The air was wet but I chose to read it as damp, just a little.

I set off, and because the first part was dramatically downhill, I felt brave and exuberant. The fish and the chips were separating from my hips. I ran on, almost like a runner, past closed corner stores and sleepy terrace houses. Down, down, down to the deserted waterfront.

The air was wetter. I saw the glorious dazzle of a white swan floating among the fishing boats in the dingy morning light. The waterfront curved and I ran around it, now just a little bit damp, like the air. Ahead of me the path swept away towards a misty, distant headland. Fabulous mansions turned bed and breakfasts, reared up on my right. A lanky boy, singular and sullen in a dark hoodie sloshed past me, head down. I smiled broadly.

That was the way there.

On the way back the rain that had been drenching the oblivious back of me addressed itself to my face and the more wide awake front of me. Delighted with the vulnerability of its quarry it proceeded to pelt down. I wore a jacket with feathers in it, a bit like the swan but with black nylon. It was not waterproof, not even water repellant. We, my jacket and I, were officially water absorbent and the running, which turned to walking often, felt more like swimming. I started thinking of what the downhill would be like going up. I looked around for a cab. There wasn’t one. Just as well, I had no money on me, so lighthearted and carefree had been my departure earlier.

When finally I stepped into the civilized quiet of The Manor House I left a damp trail behind me on the thick blonde carpet. My hair and jacket feathers were wringing wet, my face red and glistening. I was as victorious as one ought to be, surprised by the miracle of home and dryness.

The whisky happened later that day, bless its little heart. We did a one hour tour of the centuries old Oban distillery culminating in a sacred sipping. It was fascinating and dry and smelled of magic that takes infinite patience and care to conjure. I limped a bit, in fact I limped a lot, and for three weeks after. The rain, the distance, my lack of runninghood had done something odd to my right knee that it wasn’t going to forget for some time.

Fish and chips and whisky can’t be avoided in Scotland, shouldn’t be, if you really want to experience the place, but the run? I’d go ahead and give that one a miss.

Sleep Overs: Cologne And The Schloss Effect

2011-03-04T08:29:00.000-08:00

A schloss -- a german castle -- is not necessarily all it’s made out to be. This one seemed to gobble up guests. I couldn’t find anyone else staying there. At times I couldn’t even find myself.

In the end, we ran away from the schloss the next day, canceling our second night. The getaway cab cost us 35 euros, the necessary price to get back into the center of Cologne. The schloss wasn’t really close to anything but the schloss itself and, of course, rumours of other guests. But there were some good things...

Here are some good things:

The stone walls must have been more than two feet thick.
It was a real schloss even though it seemed pristine enough to have been built yesterday. It was built way back in the 1700’s a gift from a very rich man to his, hopefully, appreciative wife.

Despite it’s 'castleyness' the room still managed to be small, warm and cosy.
The restaurant we had to eat in, as we arrived late and were close only to the schloss, was Italian and full of all the missing people. Not what you’d expect given the enormous architectural assertions of the schloss itself. The restaurant was a surprise buried down a long imposing hallway. It was warm, intimate, low ceilinged with lots of wood accents, walls of wine bottles and of course some expensive but delicious food. We ate in a pub the next night to balance the budget.

Here are some bad things:

The schloss ate the guests.
Marooned in the schloss the next morning, far from everywhere but the schloss, I tried having a breakfast that would not cost an arm and a leg. I wanted a pastry and a coffee. Apparently no-one had ever wanted anything but the full breakfast before. I ended up in the deserted foyer that should have displayed telltale signs of life. No such thing. Just me and a barman and incredulity that I should be wanting a simple coffee and a pastry. I had wanted to be inconspicuous but this wasn’t possible. I was the only visible human that was not employed.
That thing you get from expensive establishments where collective aloofness, arising from the monumental architecture and its dazed human counterparts, results in an uncanny but profound separation from life itself.
Vast, echoing, staircases that would have seemed more appropriate in opera houses, although I have reason to believe that castles made this error repeatedly.

Here's the link: Grandhotel Schloss Bensberg

When In Hong Kong -- Get Out!

2010-11-29T18:49:00.000-08:00

Well, what can you do with an island? It just floats there wanting nothing much from you. It’s possible it doesn’t even need you, that’s how unequal the relationship is. If it shrugged you’d fall in the sea. But if it’s a small one, like Cheung Chau, there are edges everywhere and you can walk right around it, circumvent it, tickle the edges so to speak. In the end you’d be back where you started and that’s not easy on one of those continent things.

And Hong Kong’s deadly crowded. There are people down the front of your shirt, in your nose, tucked behind your ears. Escape is necessary. You’ll need a ferry to get off the bigger, taller, more vertical island, away from the masses. Unfortunately a large percentage of the masses have their fashionable young heads filled with the very same idea. You start to get that feeling at Central ferry station. Well, at first there are just a few of you, a couple of plastic moulded seats and some giant antiquated looking fans aggressively attempting to make tiny dents in the heavy, wet heat while simultaneously blowing the hair off your head.

Then the city takes a ragged smoggy breath in and as it exhales a multitude of daytrippers tumble past the blow of the fans to join you as you wait weakly imagining your escape, toying with the idea of making something else the object of the exercise. There is the mere seed of an idea that maybe something else needs to be the object, as getting away from it all is starting to look like going towards it.

The ferry arrives and an impossible number of us pile on as though there’s a war and we’re evacuating. We bob and weave our way to a place at the window. Fifty five minutes pass, fifty five minutes of deep blue South China Sea, the strewness of hundreds of little land masses and the sheer fabulousness of being passed by the more expensive ferry, the faster one that flies by on a cushion of nothing. If you were on it, I tell myself smugly, you’d not know just how fantastic you were.

Less than an hour from the bustling verticality of Hong Kong we’re back in China how she used to be. Not a highrise in sight, flocks of old fishing boats, serious ones, the kind that really catch fish and are not just for show. It’s only as we pull into the dock that we notice that the surface of the little island, with it’s quaint settlements along the waters edge, is moving like ants on a muffin crumb, crawling with merry making tourists.

Cheung Chau is known for two distressingly disparate things: suicide and buns, an almost mystical association beyond the grasp of the ordinary mind. The first half of the last decade saw an alarming spate of macabre ‘charcoal burning’ suicides in vacation rentals on the island; death by carbon monoxide poisoning.

And then there’s the contrasting conviviality of the annual Bun Festival. My companion for the day assures me that then there are real crowds… and 60 feet high towers of buns. At this point I begin to feel a little like I do about Christmas trees and easter bunnies; murkily mystified and just a little roughed up. The place is alive and positively festive, I can’t imagine what it would really be like when it comes alive during the bun festival, I can’t imagine it as a suicide destination either for that matter.

We dodge through the weekend crowds and head out on the path along the water past the long, low profiles of the resting dragon boats. We join the people attacking the walk with gusto. Occasionally we wind off the path and curve up into the hills, through the suburbs, along roads so narrow the main modes of transport are feet or bicycles. Up here its another world, quiet and lost, a little like we become, even with our Hong Kong born guide. We try this road then that, not panicking because we can see the edges of the land we just can’t find a road that leads directly down there.

We pass solemn cemeteries and deserted stone benches under glowering banyans. It is impossible to imagine the masses of eating, jostling, laughing escapees down in the village.

But they’re still there even when the sun isn’t any longer and when we finally wend across the last small crescent shaped beach with our flip flops in our hands. And the crowds leaving are much bigger than the crowds were arriving. Fifty five minutes across the dark South China Sea and we’re back home safe and sound in the relentless and familiar chaos of Hong Kong.

Copyright 2010 Gail Walter

Shamian Island: Lost In Time

2010-11-17T16:12:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it’s the absence of direct sunshine, the oblique, halfhearted way the frail light falls that makes this island seem ephemeral as a bubble, seem to float in and out of focus like a mirage on the opaque waters of the vast Pearl River Delta.

You have to cross a bridge to get there, a solid concrete arch over the slow khaki- colored canal separating the island from the ancient, crowded alleys of Guanghzhou alongside it. Many of the city’s over 10 million bustling inhabitants trade in much the same way as their ancestors did centuries before them; dwarfed by shoulder high sacks of dried starfish, seahorses and enormous brown rolls of papery cinnamon thick and long as a man’s arm.

Behind us hawkers on the pedestrian bridge above the sprawling modern day traffic nightmare hunch over their foul-smelling claws, horns, and other gruesome paraphernalia. Ahead an abrupt and astonishing colonial sanctuary of sorts.

Once over the bridge we turn sharp left along a narrow paved road that circumnavigates the entire island. Now the sounds are different. I hear voices in leisurely conversation, sharp heels clicking on pavement, birds singing in the gnarled branches of ancient Banyan trees lining the street, a remarkable slow peace seems to hold the place. It’s uncannily hushed, compared to the chaos across the bridge.

But then, this island has a history of setting itself apart. After the notorious Opium wars in 1859 this sand mass was split in two giving 4/5ths to the British and a mere 1/5^th to the French.

During that colonial period the island cut itself off from the mainland at 10pm sharp every night, a security measure to keep its cluster of European traders safe and separate from the churning masses of the mainland.

Once we deposit our luggage at the Guangdong Victory Hotel – an old colonial-style outpost that has had some glorious ups and sincerely shabby downs -- I waste no time. I’m out on that street, this time on foot in flat sandals. I follow the canal on its way to its final surge into the Pearl River itself.

There are some empty restaurants with empty chairs spilling out onto silent jungle-like gardens hung with rows of red lanterns hinting at busier more festive evenings. Even in China, particularly here on this somewhat un-Chinese outpost, this is the quiet time between meals. It is late afternoon and the blear of sun represents scant opposition to the oncoming night.

My plan is not a plan. I simply weave my way up and down random side streets leading off the river road. In places the quiet is broken by the surprising cacophony of school children at play in a street otherwise deserted.

I round a corner coming to what I imagine is the shady green center of the island; a series of picturesque formal gardens. Things hot up here a bit. People stroll by at an island pace and everywhere I turn brides in white seem to appear. They are posing everywhere, dainty and perfect as china dolls and surrounded by attentive entourages of photographers and family.

Further down the road I come to a major bridal hub, photographers and brides are streaming out of the main door. Through the windows I catch glimpses of serious pre-wedding tête-à-têtes, brides and grooms sitting stiffly across the tables from glamorous young wedding consultants, between them piles of hard covered catalogues. A part of me thinks it wonderfully odd that this tiny island, full of remnants of European colonialism, should be so popular a background for well heeled Chinese bridal couples whose history and traditions could not be more different.

Back on the Pearl River, right up near the White Swan Hotel, famed as the preferred accommodation for Americans adopting Chinese babies, I turn left again and follow the river. Its getting dark and the multi-storied buildings across the water light up in bright ripples of changing color.

I come across one of many recreational areas, cement tiled but broken by the green sweep of some very old trees. I hear music, old fashioned sounding music, loud but distorted. Couples, men and women, women and women, straight-arm formally in the fading light. Red lanterns bob overhead.

Such a strange place Shamian Island, quaint and old fashioned. If it weren’t for the very contemporary animation of the school children I would think it belonged mainly to the couples who earnestly dip and sway on this outdoor dance floor. I try to imagine the couples that must have danced here a hundred years ago. What is the same, what persists and what is different.

Montreal Without Clothes

2010-11-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

I’ve never been to Montreal before. I had planned many things. I had not expected to be worried about basics, Montreal is about so much more than basics. I thought I had those covered. Here we were, touch of France in the north American continent, such a charming juxtaposition, historic hotel, everything perfect, except for those two black things on wheels I get used to traveling with, the ones I take for granted; my luggage i.e. my underwear, my overwear, my toiletries – my life!

And everyone in Montreal wears black in so many edgy, elegant ways. I was wearing a smocky sort of grey flecked thing that was comfortable for traveling and could pass for stylish from a distance on a dark night. I felt incurably like a ‘girl’. Like I wanted to burst into tears at the airport, then later at the hotel, then on a street corner after paying $15 for a single tiny pair of unnecessarily saucy underwear from the only store open when I finally realized my luggage and I would not hook up this particular trip.

Finally I managed to tame my surprisingly adamant emotional response so that at least it looked house trained. I got used to bathing in a cloud of luxurious fragrance thanks to the those little bottles in the hotel, and then putting the same old clothes back on. I tried standing on my toes to look up and over my obstinate drabness, at least catch a glimpse of the glossy charm of the place.

The day we arrived was a perfect early spring day, clothing aside. A perfect spring day that succumbed graciously to a perfect spring evening. I thought I’d wear the speckled grey thing. We wondered where to eat and wandered out into the throngs out celebrating the end of a grim northern winter.

After mingling conspicuously with the fabulously young and glamorous along the winding roads of Old Montreal we ended up doing a T.S. Eliot in Little Gidding and arriving back ‘where we started’. The hotel we were staying at on the St Lawrence river had a lovely, intimate little wood and glass bistro we had noticed on our way out, floor to ceiling windows opening out onto the street. Sheer chance and good luck cleared the perfect table for us at an open window overlooking the passing show on the riverfront.

We shook out our heavy white napkins and I used mine to help minimize the amount of grey-fleckedness visible. They had all the important things you learn to rely on in a French restaurant like escargot drenched in garlic, and everything with frites all served on simple white crockery on the crisp white table cloth. The warm tones of a saxophone played not too far in the background.

Later that night I stretched out on the comfortably deep stone window seat in my room at the hotel. There were things outside there capable of distracting me from the grey flecked thing I was wearing. Below me the cobbled street glistened. I watched as people thronged to eat at the pavement cafes lining the narrow street below and wondered at the stridently festive sound high heels make on cobblestones.

Montreal is a beautiful city that needs more than four days, and one set of clothing. I will definitely go back there but, next time I’ll bring clothes. I’ll take a suitcase small enough to fit above my head in the cabin. Small, yes, but big enough to take a little more than a grey flecked thing and one pair of saucy underwear.

Uncommontravel Tips:

Stay: Auberge du Vieux-Port, 1882 inn on the Old Port, riverfront, Montreal, Quebec.

Eat: Narcisse Bistro-Bar.

Waking Up Santa Fe

2010-10-11T20:25:00.000-07:00

Now you can try the plaza in the midday heat, you and swarms of other tourists, or you can sneak out of your bed at sunrise and catch Santa Fe before she’s quite ready for you.

The slope of Canyon road, the air fresh and light like kisses. Morning yellow bees humming around the purple sage spires, the curved folds of adobe draped across the top of stone walls and everywhere fleeting moments captured in wood, metal and stone.

A bronze horse seems to pause for a moment as you pass by. Wisps of human forms seem momentarily frozen, arms high and wide to the blue of the sky.

The art galleries that line this street look different in the early morning, more contemplative, somehow stripped of their normal self conscious sophistication, reduced, perhaps expanded, to the naked art without the artifice.

Curve all the way down Canyon following the sound of the church bells. Take a right on Paseo De Peralta and then left onto Alameida. Follow the ghost of the Santa Fe River tiptoeing past the quirky wooden angels all the way into downtown. Turn right at Galisteo with the cafe on the corner blasting throaty Sara Bareilles into the still sleepy air. Inside the shadowy staff sway and scrub counters, prepping onions, peppers and mushrooms for the daily omelette special.

Continue on past an Aladdin’s cave bursting with thousands of magical flying carpets. Pause at the doorway of a small, dark restaurant, silent and closed for business even as the morning sun dances on the yellow painted front door. Make a mental note to call later, make reservations.

Turn left on Water, away from the plaza. Right on Sandoval and duck into Burro Alley where there are some signs of movement. Step invisibly round the sleepy staff setting out umbrellas and wiping down bright colored plastic tablecloths. This is the Café Paris where, later in the day, you’ll enjoy the fluffiest French omelette in recent memory and a man in a straw hat and a striped shirt with a large French nose and an accordion will whisper to you that he’s actually from Ohio and you’ll barely believe him. At least he must be Quebecois, surely?

Now turn right past more silent, slumbering stores towards the plaza and the Palace of the Governors, still, as perhaps it was on a morning four hundred years ago.

Along the white Palace wall you notice subdued movement. An orderly line of several people come into focus. Everyone holds a folded cloth or rug waiting as they have been waiting hundreds of years for that same signal to spread their wares and begin the day's trading.

You leave the square and walk up through the dappled shade of the elongated garden next to the St Francis Basilica. Ahead of you, on the grass next to a wooden bench, lies a small splash of color. There, laid out as if on a bed in a morning bedroom is a complete outfit; thin cotton striped shirt; faded blue denims, a pair of shoes where the feet would be. On the bench two balled up socks next to each other.

A middle-aged couple scamper in through the backdoor of the church. On a whim you follow. Inside is Spain. Well, at least, there is Spanish. Everything said, everything sung, a whole community awake and singing. You are in a foreign land. Sit awhile trying to imagine what is being said, or rather intoned. It sounds so rich and full when the content is left to the imagination.

Ten minutes later use the full weight of your body to push the heavy front door open, just enough to squeeze through. Down the steps you go and round towards where you’ve come from. Follow your nose, walking uphill back past the sleeping adobe homes, the rolling foothills in the blue distance.

Walking up Canyon road the galleries still look less sophisticated and more themselves, like someone just woken up before they’ve had time to put on makeup.

Back in the dim interior of the low, sprawling adobe house everyone is still sleeping. Still sleeping! And a whole world has passed by.

Here is more of what you see when you wake up Santa fe.

What You See When You're Lost in NYC

2010-08-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

I’ve done it before, mastered them. I’ve traveled beneath the earth’s surface in Hong Kong, Paris, Rome, other places. Just have to make that clear, you know. Mitigating circumstances for finding myself in NYC for a day and needing to remaster the subway because of my annoying habit of forgetting basic things.

So here I am looking at the hole in the bustling sidewalk like it’s the one Alice fell down. Dare I? I mean, once you step into it can you change your mind, turn around, resurface?

My legs are going there it seems, despite my irrational fears. The three of us, my legs and I, descend into the Middle Earth of Manhattan me telling myself I can always reverse, no matter how silly it looks. I need to cover a lot of ground in one day and this is the only way I can do it.

I manage to get down the stairs and sidle up to the ticket window.

I’d like one ticket to 59^th street, please. The man behind the window snickers insolently. Yes, I realize the tickets cost the same for everywhere. There’s something a little pathetic about my insistence on sharing my destination with him. But there is method in my madness.

“And I’d like to know which one of these”, I mouth at the opaque glass gesturing over my shoulder at the three turnstiles that all seem to say the same thing but in different ways.

“which one of these I need to take to 59^th?”

The man behind the window speaks indistinctly, in a surly West African accent. I in barely disguised, slightly panicked, South African. He is saying something in West African that I can’t understand, something that borders on confrontational, or so it seems. We repeat this a few times. The only thing that becomes bleakly obvious is that he is not going to sell me a ticket. There is a reason why, but my South African brain can’t decipher his West African reason.

I won’t go away, though. I notice this. So does he. I mean where am I going to go? There is no way I can follow his directions, they’re as opaque as the window.

There are absolutely no subway maps on the walls, the way there are supposed to be. A small, slight, dark haired woman wafts by and I fall upon her. She opens her mouth to reply and my worst fears are confirmed. We can’t understand each other either. Melting pot becomes Tower of Babel.

I turn back to the window filled with a subterranean desperation: “So you’re not going to sell me a ticket then!” I shout at the sullen shadow, attempting to somehow bully it into saying something I can comprehend.

He lilts something at me defiantly. It sounds final. I glare at the window. We‘re having some sort of face off, I gather. It feels oddly intimate.

Nonplussed I turn to the machines against the wall, they seem almost sympathetic by comparison. Standing there in front of them, no shadow of an irascible fellow foreigner lurking, I manage to figure it out, the purchasing part.

Next are the three turnstiles. I pick one. Randomly. I drop further into the bowels of the earth, find a platform, wait on it. My method is not yet foolproof. Lets just say that I overshoot my destination once or twice on this particular day. I sail nonchalantly past my goal more than a couple of times. When I emerge into the sunlight, here and then there, I wonder around brand new in various surprising locations and in various versions of lost. It’s a spontaneous way to see the city.

And, somewhere along the way, I begin to enjoy myself.

You see the NYPD watching over you on Columbus Circle.

You see children doing what children must in Washington Square.

You see adults doing what adults must when temperatures hit 90 degrees.

You see a shocking pink scooter in a french restaurant in the Theater district.

You see a family of five all trying to find themselves on their respective Smart Phones

Singapore: Trying On The Sari Self

2010-08-05T16:57:00.000-07:00

There are two vastly different ways to buy a sari, maybe more, but as foreigners in Singapore, there are two: In a posh store where the silk is diaphanous and the dollars several hundred; or at the covered market where the selection is vast and the prices less voracious.

My daughter and I know exactly where we have to go. We take a short cab ride from our hotel in downtown and jump out at a recently rained on street corner dotted with steamed up bus shelters and general market stalls. The hot, heavy Singapore air is shamelessly leeching liquid from us so we stop briefly to apply chilled coconut juice. From the outside the market looks nondescript, just two long escalators disappearing into a place that spits out people with plastic bags at regular intervals.

We step onto the up one and step off at the top into a riot of rich color, nothing wishy washy here. Except for a very occasional pale blue, pastels are nowhere to be seen. If I wasn’t tumbling towards ecstasy I would have breathed a sigh of relief, I’ve never liked washed out colors, always relished the strong, deep arresting ones. This place looks like Aladdin’s cave.

Bryony and I do what women so often do when faced with inordinate temptation, we dither, get confused. We have to rally and consolidate. From our position on the threshold of sari heaven we can see several competing paths into the cave. Silk shimmers, sequins drip light. We are drunk on reds so rich it is like falling into cabernet, swirling purples, greens, blues, colors we never dared dream of. We mumble about ‘a plan’ then think better of it. We fall upon the line of least resistance and promise faithfully never to leave the other to languish forever in this maze of possibly fatal shopping options.

Buying a sari in a Singapore market is not a private affair. We tell one enquiring attendant that Bryony’s looking for a sari to wear to a friend’s wedding and within moments women in other stalls are looking at us, talking, gesturing, offering helpful advice.

We seem to have fallen into some ancient trading ritual, a shopping womb filled with gracious women eager to nurture us into the perfect purchase. It feels like something safe enough to float on. Favorite aunts, sisters, distant relatives seem to emerge from behind endless racks of flowing feminine garments, steering us gently to the stall that holds Bryony’s sari.

We take our shoes off at the entrance and Bryony strips down to her underwear right there on the raised store floor. Back home this would feel unbearably vulnerable here its what you have to do to be initiated into the art of wearing a sari. A fan blows desperately at the stubborn air, music blasts, and everyone who walks by has an opinion they express without an ounce of self consciousness, just the way a maiden aunt would.

When we leave with all our parcels we have to pass more flowing skirts, tapered tunics, more saturated color, delicate prints, textures so fine you can barely feel them with your fingertips. I look down at my western woman’s clothing, so restrained, so un-undulating, so lacking in celebration and brazen feminine magic. So careful.

“Why don’t WE dress like this, mom?”

And I simply, for the life of me, cannot think why.

Country Birds Hit Bright Lights Big City

2010-07-15T15:44:00.000-07:00

They were young, flown the coop early. Off to seek their fortune in the big city but the place was a shock, and they were huddled together, frozen with fright, singularly unprepared for high flying Manhattan.

Forgetting their wings they chose to wait for the same bus we were all lined up to catch...

New York State of Writer's Mind

2010-07-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

Mohonk Mountain House looms like something Seussical, a castle birthed by a truly audacious imagination.

I challenge you to break the spell, it says. And you can’t, despite the potentially prim staff at the front desk who teeter precariously on the brink of stuffiness. The eccentricity of the place wins hands down, takes your breath away; the perfect place to topple the mind’s carefully constructed defenses against the fantastical.

Natalie Goldberg called it ‘Wild Mind” and this was the kind of space we were about to enter in this extraordinary otherworldly place. It was perfect. It was also scary, scary because writing anywhere other than alone feels daunting and because writers with considerable word clout were going to be present.

Never mind, I said to myself. It’s the experience itself that matters. No expectations, right? I reached out and took my hand. I’d looked at the link Greg Correll had given us for Kate Hymes who was running the workshop/retreat.

I noted that the writers’ process she taught, allowed you to ‘pass’. What this essentially means is that, as well as writing, you can also not write. I mean you can fail to write even when given the perfectly provocative prompt. You can fail, go blank. No pressure.

This mattered enormously. I had a horrible history of performance anxiety despite my efforts to lecture myself thusly:

“No-one cares that much, really. Not enough to stone you for poor performance, pelt you with rotten fruit. Remember, even. That’s the truth of it.”

This implacable fact should have resulted in a relaxation of the knot in the solar plexus. It did for the morning.

There were three opportunities to write and to read to the group. No criticism was allowed. If all else failed that life saving ‘pass’ could hold me until the trembling stopped.

I made it through two. I failed at the third, but who cares. What happened had nothing to do with the mind’s tendencies to measure and judge. What happened leapt clear over the mind, transcended it. Had we all not been listening to each other so intently, we might have looked up to catch a glimpse of its silver arc.

Yes, there were words, extraordinary words, and voices, images that scooped out our insides and stole our breath away. We sat in a circle, facing each other. As we wrote and we spoke we could watch each other’s faces, see ourselves reflected in what happens when defenses drop and words touch what is inescapable about the human experience.

The day went on and lasted a week, a lifetime and at the end of it we, none of us, wanted to leave. We’d opened up and put that in words and it felt so liberating.

We were drenched in the sheer brilliance of what human beings sound like when they feel safe enough to fly.

There. I didn’t think I could put it into words, this experience, but there it is.

Huge thank you to Greg for setting this up and baby sitting all our writers’ idiosyncrasies and limitless capacities for many inventive versions of dithering.

There was Sunday morning for example. We’re all checked out of the hotel. We’re standing at the entrance attempting to negotiate a feasible exit, the logistics of getting Lea and her husband, Nikki, Greg and I to Poughkeepsie where we’ll join the others and hop on a tugboat to conquer the unsuspecting Hudson.

There are not many of us, not too many variables, you would think, but we manage to dither, quite comically really. Monty Python comes to mind. In the end Lea and I are in full giggle.

“Do call us. Be sure to stay in touch,” we chime as we wave goodbye and head off in separate cars on the very straightforward 30 minute drive to Poughkeepsie, something we’d prepared for as though it were a three week expedition into unexplored regions up the Amazon.

Being with other writers is magical in so many ways. Writers, good writers, take you to places you never even know existed then they help you recognize them. They can make you laugh from your belly, they can reduce you to tears. All of this is amplified when writers feel utterly safe, when you diffuse the anxiety and the competition and allow them to simply play their instruments, sing their songs.

Lastly thank you to Kate for creating a safe birth space with such grace and gentle authority.

Thank you, too, to each and every writer present who, without exception, exposed their brave and brilliant selves with such daring. It was worth the risk. It is always worth the risk.

Stanford, South Africa: Endless Lunch With Our Men In Africa

2010-06-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

We’re talking about writing, old style journalism. I’m sitting with three veterans of African journalism; two ex newspaper editors and one foreign correspondent.

Right now it doesn’t matter what their names are, what matters is that their brand of journalism is little more than a wistful memory for those of us who followed after.

They’re tirelessly exploring yet another unofficial investigation of an old, very gruesome murder, sniffing around like old dogs. The new facts that have recently emerged cannot be divulged here but the FBI, the CIA and the notorious South African security organization BOSS are mentioned.

One of the editors is my father, Rex Gibson seen here with my "man in Africa", Michel Walter

You get the sense that these men have never stopped, that their curiosity and nose for ‘what really happened’ refuses to lie down and take a much earned breather.

They were a close knit, pen-toting band of fearless print warriors in those days, talented people from everywhere landing in darkest Africa to cover the juiciest stories, always exciting, often dangerous, facing impossible odds and deadlines to get information out to the rest of the world.

I sit back in my chair and give the local white in my deep glass a casual swirl watching the way the light refracts, thinking back on the good ol’ days when truth was still a prize worth fighting for.

We’re in the Art Café on the main street of a tiny little town called Stanford nestled in the Cape Overberg mountains a couple of hours from Cape Town.

We’ve done a quick recce, driving up and down the short, narrow streets looking at the beautiful Cape Dutch cottages, many of them lovingly restored, much as they were over a hundred years ago. Harvey Tyson used to be the editor of South Africa’s biggest daily newspaper but now, in the back seat, he’s the self appointed tour guide, sitting forward like a kid, pointing wildly: “Go here. Go here”.

We have the windows down so we can crane our necks and catch glimpses of quiet open doorways and warm wood flooring, curved antique stools and chairs at casual angles on deep stone porches. There’s even a grassy village square, says Harvey, eyes alight with a mixture of pride and wonder. We watch as a dark haired girl in jodhpurs fights to calm a spirited horse. If you look up above the rows of low, white washed houses you see the blue shadow of the looming Overberg.

Peaceful Streets of Stanford, village time forgot, over the mountains from Cape Town

A stone church, hundreds of years old, stands sentry on a street corner, off the square, watching as the years slide by in a slumber and the people come and they go.

A year ago the town was rudely awoken by the crack of gunshots. The low slung Stanford Inn on the main street is open for business again but the proprietor is no longer there. Two gun-slinging robbers took his money and his life and disappeared with them into the night.

People still leave their doors open, unusual in South Africa, even before the murder. They still prop themselves up against the wooden door frames and survey the still air and the very occasional passers by.

Main Street, Stanford just up the road from the inn where the shooting took place.

For a town this size there are several choices for lunch, signs that the murder created only a momentary hiccup in Stanford’s transformation from it’s sleeping self into a modest little center for artists of all kinds.

This is probably why the fabled Peter Younghusband, gravitated here some years back. One day it might become just another self-consciously cool destination but for now it has its understated history set in this quietly magnificent landscape. Part of its attraction is the fact that it’s still a little rough around the edges, still oozing character.

So is Our Man In Africa. When I notice Harvey call him over from his position leaning against the dark wood counter, I’m embarrassed the way I always am when people make overtures I wouldn’t have the courage to make in their position. Maybe he doesn’t want to join us. I mean we’re cool, right, from my perspective, but he looks cooler, a lovingly crafted caricature of the type; literally honed, grooved and shaped by decades spent gathering scoops over drinks at hundreds, maybe thousands, of different watering holes across the continent.

But on the second beckoning he lumbers over, settles his large frame in a chair he pulls up from the empty table behind us.

A deep glass of cabernet for him too, we indicate to the English lass who has also found her way to this unassuming South African hamlet and is waiting on our gathering of ever more exuberant ex-journalists gabbing about old times.

Now its officially entertainment. I can’t sit back further but if I could I would. I’m taking notes, literally. These men have lived. They have done things I don't have the imagination to dream up. I remember, as a child, never wanting to go to bed when they visited, these correspondents. They had opinions on everything, even the few things they knew nothing about, and they’d throw their considerable intellect and unbridled passion behind them. They were born storytellers with a lifetime of material.

Harvey Tyson (right), with Peter Younghusband. Remember when...

In many ways nothing has changed. Decades have passed it is true. They are no longer working for newspapers but the memories transcend time. All of them in their late seventies, early eighties, all still writing, all having published several books between them.

And now my middle aged self can see more clearly than ever that they will never get old, that they’ll die before they do that. Life is still very much alive for them, they’re still prostrate at its feet, still arguing about every aspect, still lighting up with the sheer adventure of it, still drinking a river.

I see what it is I want to be when I grow up. I want this ageless energy, this enthusiasm, intellect and wit that has turned these men into people you just want to hang out with; all afternoon, into the night, drinking and talking and eating and laughing. Discussing, arguing, calling up life so that life cannot resist and meets us right here in this place where time has stopped.

The UK Spectator on Peter Younghusband HERE

Paris: Notes To My Husband On Oblivion

2010-06-07T01:53:00.000-07:00

The restaurant is small, easy to miss, tucked down a side street in the Latin Quarter. It has been 26 years since we were last in the city of lovers and Paris wears the silken sheen of spring rain. It is our last night and we’ve had more than enough time to fall in love with the place again. We are not 23 and we certainly aren’t backpacking this time. We have a room with slim French doors opening on a partial view of the Pantheon in a stylish little place within walking distance of the Sorbonne.

This Thursday night it’s late, even for Paris. My husband has been conferencing with his office in Boulder, Colorado and it is morning for them. Now, as we settle our damp selves into a small table in a back corner of the almost empty restaurant we wonder aloud if we will be dining alone. I make a mental note that the world seems to be going to bed earlier. All this time I had thought it was a life style peculiar to our little mountain town but here we are in this sophisticated city of cities and where is everyone?

The place serves Middle Eastern food and our being here is mildly embarrassing for us – a compromise. Here, in Paris, awash with cassoulet what are we doing eating shish kebab and hummus? Blame the office for that. Blame the office and the relentless nature of it’s needs and long fingered demands reaching us even here on the other side of the globe.

We are eating with our fingers. Some other people have joined us to plump out the place and stop the ochre walls echoing. Eating with your fingers is sensual enough to forget cassoulet. We still can’t understand anyone – Turkish menus in French written in exotic, illegible font.

We are talking about this and that easing into play and out of work. Everyone around us speaks different languages. We are an inconsiderable island of English in a pool of light at the window. Outside the night gleams.

The conversation sashays sultrily off in the direction of opium dens and famous talents we know that have languished there.

“I can see the attraction.” My husband says, “lying back on those beds, eyes closed, inhaling something that carries you away from everything.”

Oblivion. Ah. To forget and to be forgotten. What the romantic poets called transcendence. Who doesn’t feel the need for this these hundreds of years later?

Sophisticated foreign murmuring around us. We lick our fingers and allow ourselves to be carried away by thoughts of oblivion – the opposite of engagement in this world. For a rare moment we are away from the phone, the internet, our cell phones don’t work here. A blessing. Our senses are having a field day. Our eyes cosseted in the carefully orchestrated golden glow, our finger tips moist with flavor, our palates awash with good Turkish wine – it is safe to contemplate the nature of oblivion – “the world is too much with us”.

I look across the table at my husband. He is the same man I backpacked around Europe with, now more distinguished, dark hair flecked with grey. He is tired in a way that makes him soft, receptive. For a moment I see the shadow of oblivion settle on him like a mantle.

When we were in Paris last we ate hurriedly in streets outside delis or sitting cross-legged on the bare wooden table in our room, pale blue paint cracked windows thrown open, looking out across the rooftops. French bread, Brie and creamy fresh milk that was better than the wine we could afford. That was before everything, before work, before children, before education loans and mortgages. Way back when we had energy and less work to do – revving on the starter blocks.

Paris was kind enough to wait for us to come out the other side, a family later, to see another side of this glorious city; to sit in restaurants with posh people and pretend that the Euro is worth less and the dollar more.

Across the table my husband has worked hard to support his family, hard in an old fashioned Protestant way, like a weary bottom on a hard wooden bench. I reach across and touch his hand. I wish him a little oblivion even just on weekends, evenings too. He’s built a business with offices in Hong Kong and Sydney. Now work is awake at all hours. No time is sacred except this.

My beautiful man, who has not slouched once on this journey, I wish for you an oblivion that is not final and is not death. A touch of forgetting in a world that for a moment forgets you – more moments just like this one. Of wondering and simply being. How lucky to be here and touch this place once more.

Johannesburg, Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika and The Westcliff

2010-06-04T04:00:00.000-07:00

Johannesburg is a vibrant sprawling city on a plateau 5,751ft (1753 M) above sea level, way too vivid and alive to be reduced to just a stopover. Unless you have to, like we did. We had a plane to catch the next morning for Cape Town. I don’t want to start a brawl, but the exquisite Mother City, nestling between the mountains and the ocean, now that’s what we’d come to see.

Despite our giving the place a bit of a brush off, Johannesburg insisted on greeting us like a brazen bride promising enough to make us sorry to arrive and then leave in a churlish 24 hours.

Oliver Tambo International Airport Johannesburg all ready for the World Cup soccer.

I grew up in Johannesburg too long ago so the city should have been less of a surprise. Except that the South Africa I grew up in and the country I am now visiting are two different places. Vastly.

The country I called home those decades ago was a place I was deeply ashamed of. Part of the tiny, largely ignored group of English speaking white liberals in Apartheid South Africa, we, along with the much larger even more consummately ignored black population, felt we belonged to a nation that symbolized only injustice and oppression. There was a gaping hole where a sense of national identity should have been. Apartheid policy was ‘Divide and Rule’. We were all fragments.

Why is this important? Because the country I am landing in now is supposed to be my country. The point is now, after all this time, it suddenly is. It suddenly is a place I feel proud to belong to. Myself and hundreds of thousands of others.

All vestiges of the formal system of Apartheid are gone, although there are effects that will take generations to heal. Nothing short of a miracle could have transformed the ugliness into what my country always should have been; a thriving multicultural mecca. So coming home feels like it should have all those years ago. It feels like a homeland I can be proud of. It feels like a nation I can identify with.

These are the earth shattering details that form the emotional backdrop for our whirlwind trip through Johannesburg.

Looking down from the hotel's top level where the pool and restaurants are located.

I was lucky enough to have a reservation at one of the best hotels in town, a gift from the online hotel booking agency we use. The Westcliff is perched high up on, well, a cliff in Old Johannesburg, old, terribly posh Johannesburg, This was the area I’d driven by as a young reporter in my little VW beetle and gazed up at in awe. This is where the rich have always lived. The view is spectacular; the whole of Johannesburg sprawled out beneath you, cascading down in shades of green turning to Jacaranda purple in the summer.

The hotel leads off one of the most prestigious avenues in the city, Jan Smuts. On the one side the legendary Zoo Lake, on the other Johannesburg Zoo, up a little hill and the hotel looms on several levels of deep blush on our right.

The gates are at street level but the rest of the elegant structure climbs the hill, up and up, from reception all the way to the restaurants and pool perched high above.

If you have only 24 hours in the city and a 15 hour flight from New York City behind you, Westcliff gives you a way to survey the city in a way that closely resembles cheating really, in a good way.

We had a very dear old Mauritian uncle to visit first so by the time we reached the hotel it was all we could manage before heading out to the airport for our flight to Cape Town first thing the next morning. Except for the steps, and we later discovered a lift, it was the perfect place to relax.

We knew we were behaving shamelessly; compounding the sin of a mere 24 hour visit by failing to move once we arrived at the hotel. We had had such plans. The city has several outstanding restaurant districts, we heard, such diverse cutting edge stuff to offer, lots of independently run, startlingly good places to go. Ah, but we were so tired. Almost too tired to make it up all the levels to the restaurant in time to watch the sun drop over the horizon, drink an ice cold South African Sauvignon Blanc and munch on a basket of traditional tidbits: samoosas, bobotie spring rolls and boerewors.

Africa sang in the background. Our young waiter enthusiastically volunteered his opinion on xenophobia, echoes of the many ads running in the country encouraging its citizens to welcome the incoming deluge of World Cup visitors with warm, distinctive South African hospitality: ‘invite them to your home, offer them a curry bunny’. We were home, and it was good, it was much, much better than it had ever been.

Johannesburg, we will be back. And next time we’ll not leave you standing.

Wee footnote: Yes, it is weird writing about the exciting transition in South Africa from an elitist, posh hotel like the Westcliff. It was a free night, what can I say...

We Are Everywhere. Come Join Us!

2010-05-07T13:55:00.000-07:00

What could bring together wordy people from around the world? Impossible to organize really, you’d think. I mean some of us are picking up shells on remote islands, some squatting in tents, others hidden from sight in the mazes of the world’s great cities. How could you ferret us out? And then, once you’d located us, how could you set up a conversation that spans the globe, about the globe?

Short answer: Lonely Planet; and the long, infinite tendrils of the internet.

The party only really got going a couple of weeks back. We’d been chatting sporadically across the vast distances that separate us when someone had a mindblowing epiphany: We’re all one – in a strange, transcendent way. We’re all connected and, as one, we’d make a bigger impact then we could as our own little traveling selves with our backpacks and laptops, the whole being more than the sum of its parts. We are an entity!

After that the conversation blew wide open. The subject: world travel in all its guises, from hundreds of unique perspectives. Traveling the world has taken us to far flung places, the distant corners of the world. Lonely Planet may not have planned it but they gave us a way to bring all those places and all those disparate experiences together HERE.

The party continues. If you like the idea of joining us, come on over. Bring your own bottle!

LONELY PLANET ROUND THE WORLD TRAVEL BLOGS.

Floating in Venice

2010-05-03T14:12:00.000-07:00

Liquid, and Venice; a delicate timeless bubble floating on it. Only one way to see it. Floating, too. And not on some tour boat with garish pointing and breathless monologue.

The thing to do is slip onto a waterbus (vaporetti), with the people, early when they’re starting out for jobs on the mainland and the light is still morning on the water and cannot be subdued even by people in suits with black briefcases.

Now is when the city is young and not sinking, boisterous ochre, gold and russet in the fresh of day. Try, but you wont succeed, to hide your camera, to slide your eyes along slit lids to see the view, draped languid against the railing, wind in your hair. Yes, I live here. Yes, I see this everyday.

Get off where? Wherever you want. Buy a day ticket and hop off and on everywhere.

And what’s more fun than the way travel books tell you to ‘do’ Venice? To wander. Allow yourself to do this. Aimlessly. Waterbuses come so often you’ll never need to run for one. Take your time, let Venice steal up on you, seep through your skin into your blood. You can still find deserted alleys, stunned into sun-silence piazzas, nothing but the distant sound of water lapping wood and stone.

Wander past the crowds of people on the Grande Canal, the pavement cafes buzzing with tourists. Slip down a twisted alley. Find a little place on a street corner slow and sleepy and full of locals. Buy something light and flaky draped in chocolate that will destroy your innocence and stain your fingers. Grab a small white cup of sinister coffee to wash it down. Good. That’s breakfast.

Now pause on the apex of an arched footbridge, look down and wonder at the limpid turquoise of the water. Don’t rush. There is nothing better to see. This is it, you’re staring into it; the liquid essence of the city.

Later grab a casual homemade lasagne from another unfamous place. Wet it with a long, chilled beer or some house red. Sit among the regular people. Talk quietly and sparingly so you can hear the music of their conversation.

When your plate is clean hop on the vaporetti again. Repeat all day until the liquid world goes silver with sunset. Now head home somewhere with shutters that open to the terracotta reds of rooftops. Sleep to dream.

Taking The Massage Coach To Malacca

2010-04-14T17:55:00.000-07:00

We’re leaving Singapore this morning. Taking a bus into Malacca, Malaysia, taking a coach rather. Taking a luxury massage coach to be exact. The only way to travel, apparently.

To be honest I have no idea what to expect, no-one in my party does. I mean, a massage coach?

“Yes, very comfortable,” says the generously proportioned agent the steaming night before as we try to choose from a mini mall of coach operators. She has a gleam in her eye, a sense of humor. Right then we’re not sure whether it’s working for or against us but the night is hot and our clothes are slipping off us, or trying to.

“Be here tomorrow, 11am. My sister will be here. She looks just like me.” Another smile, another almost wink. Is there a sister? Is there a coach, a luxury massage coach?

The next morning it’s there, resplendent. On the back in big Vegas-type lettering: First Class Massage Coach. We throw our baggage in below and climb into the bus. We are instantly assailed by its décor, most prominently its upholstery. It seems to have taken a cue primarily from the psychedelic mayhem of cruise ship carpets.

The extraordinary upholstery matters because it’s spread about quite a bit; the seats are weirdly wide and opulent deluxe, if there is such a thing. Once we’re over the shock of the Type A color scheme we settle into the vast chairs. They are clean and comfortable. We can do this, in fact, why aren’t all coaches like this? So mean are they normally, so mean and understated in dimension and color. The air conditioner transports us to cooler climes and we’re off.

Out the large windows, past the frippery of drapes, Singapore changes to Malaysia and I instantly fall in love with it. Good, a coach is so much of a better thing than a plane. You see so much more.

We try the massage feature and feel immediately carsick. Nope, mobile massages are disconcerting, especially if you’re a short person and the neck and shoulders part of the program does funny things to the crown of your head.

Outside green goes past. Green of all kinds, such fanciful trees; some grow like bouquets, some like rattan fans. Palm trees, slim, languid, shimmering green against green, against green.

Apparently we are not like the normal passengers. The normal ones find the trip boring. Screens drop down from the ceiling and Pandora with all it’s frondy exuberance blasts forth. Everyone is instantly drawn into Avatar’s green world with blue people. I put my headphones on to shut out the soundtrack and stare fixedly out the window trying, and succeeding, to keep my jungles separate.

The bus pulls up four hours later at the central bus station in Malacca. The movie continues. Nobody moves. How sweet, how strange, apparently no-one wants to miss the end of the movie. This is Malaysia time. Apparently the driver will wait for the passengers to see what happens in the end.

We decide not to get up and ruin the atmosphere for everyone.

Too slowly it dawns on us. All the other passengers are going on to Kuala Lumpur. Everyone is waiting patiently for us to collect our things and get off the bus.

Hong Kong - As It Happens

2010-04-03T22:03:00.003-07:00

There will be things on the floor in your bathroom, do not be afraid, but be wary. The first thing you’ll connect with, and it will be painful, is the raised threshold; cold, hard slices of merciless marble jutting unreasonably above the otherwise uniform floor – a step that goes up and back down. A surprise and a shock to the tenderness of toes. Remember to step over this carefully, especially in the dead of night, as you feel your way through to the loo.

The next thing will be the scale. Apart from everything else, this is unfair. We are supposed to be getting away from it all. Lose it and use it, but if you’re gaining, steer clear.

The Hong Kong version of the subway, the MTR, will get you places quickly and efficiently, like science fiction. Getting from Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon on the southern tip of the mainland, under the water to Hong Kong island, takes anything from 10 to 15 minutes. Doing the same trip by cab can take up to 30 minutes in traffic, and Hong Kong has serious traffic.

Weather: spring, fall, winter are the only seasons a foreigner can expect to live through. In summer you will melt. Unceremoniously. I have been to HK in June and opted to stay sequestered in the air conditioned hotel room in the interests of survival. You can’t do this if it’s your one opportunity to see the place so consider this when you’re all excited about the low season airfares and hotel prices.

Kowloon: Most tourists head to Kowloon. So do the traders who sell tourists things they expect to buy in the East but for cheaper. If you live in the United States, hesitate. Prices of cameras, computers, all electronic stuff may well be bought back home for cheaper and you’ll get follow up service.

If you want to buy stuff anyway consider the lovely little samples of everything ‘health and beauty’ at all the Sasa stores. There are many dotted all over the city. There are cute, tiny perfumes, tiny face cleansers. You’ll see all the big names but in affordable $10 bite size pieces. They’ll be in bins so be prepared to scramble through them. Also someone will inevitably be attached to your back or elbow, trying to help you when you don’t particularly want it. Smile graciously but try to stay focused.

Hong Kongites love brands and labels so you’ll find all of them here along with the prohibitively high prices we associate with them. Giordano is one of the exceptions, not a huge international presence but stylish and cool and prices that will not close your bank account.

There’s also a chain of women’s clothing that calls itself a range of things, so don’t look for the name. They’re smaller than the other clothing stores and their racks and racks of informal, local designer clothing sells some pure Asian fashion for round $10 a piece. I bought a gorgeous smock top there three years ago, among other things. They wash well and they look quite different, in a good way, to anything you can purchase back home.

Don’t confuse these stores with another kind that operates on a similar principle. The ones I buy from allow you to try on the clothes. The ones I won’t buy from have some equally lovely stuff but you buy it and it’s yours no matter what happens and you can’t try it on.

Watsons is the place you’ll want to go for all the band aids, shampoos, over the counter medications you left behind. Just like the places back home it will make you feel at home when you have that weird stomach ailment, or travelers headache. Watsons are all over the place so don’t panic. Ask and someone will point you to the nearest one.

Las Vegas - As It Happens

2010-04-03T21:27:00.000-07:00

Remember it's a big city, it's a big hotel. It's a big...I've no idea why but everything looks closer than it is so don't set out to walk from your hotel, oh just up the road, to your dinner appointment in 20 minutes. You'll almost surely have to call the restaurant to tell them to hold your booking.
Which brings me to: Have a phone, for goodness sake. With the battery charged. The people around me know I am really speaking to myself. Before you leave your hotel key in the number of the restaurant. No, you don't actually have to call them. Not yet. When you're out there in the Vegas throng, lost in translation and all other ways, you can just press the call number, try to keep the desperation out of your voice and schedule a later time.
See a Cirque de Soleil, even if it breaks your budget. It's impossible to put a price on a miracle. The Cirque will make you believe in them, will conjure them before your eyes. Time, space, all the dimensions will reconfigure before your eyes. My brain never thinks the same way again.
Take flat shoes. Forget about the stilettos. This way you can get from one end of the casino to the other on your feet -- the best way to do it. And yes, you will have to walk through the casino to go everywhere, a ghastly Vegas thing. There is a peculiar expression that goes with short black dress, high heeled shoes. It has to do with silent agony. You don't need to go there. There are probably other places you're aiming for.

Forgiving Las Vegas

2010-03-11T14:08:00.000-08:00

I look out the window onto Tuscan gold stucco smiling blearily at me after an early spring thunderstorm. The sky is water washed blue, the clouds sheepish and dissipating. Around me people swarm, hundreds, thousands of them, here to frolic with their Vegas selves. Never far behind, in front, and beside them are the people that make this hedonism possible.

These are the residents of Las Vegas. They are what ‘stays in Vegas’. They both tirelessly replenish and support the façade that Vegas presents, and dispute it with their unassailable humanity, their essential realness.

Theirs is the flesh and blood that animates this iconic place where people come to forget themselves. While we blow our budgets and behave badly they must make ends meet out of our forgetfulness.

I failed to penetrate the Vegas veil last time I was here. That time I couldn’t get past the faux, the sordid, tawdry, made up face it presents to the world. Perhaps it was different when Sinatra and the gang gave this place cachet, a real reason to dim the lights and lose yourself.

Both times I’ve been here the city has screamed it’s has-beens at me loudly in brash color and lights. This time it is Barry Manilow, Cher and the now middle-aged brother and sister act, Donnie and Marie Osmond. Frank Sinatra was cool in his day. In 2010 the performers sweating under the lights can’t get gigs on the regular circuit.

There are exceptions to all of the above and that is part of the reason why I am here this time; to break through my prejudices, to see past the somewhat congealed patina. I’m having no trouble this time. I can’t seem to stay on the outside of the skin of this creature that is Vegas.

I can’t stay in the congeniality of my expectations. The people keep leaking through.

First of all we’re staying at the Bellagio, a cut above the regular accommodations in this city and reminiscent of Monte Carlo and other less seedy, more sophisticated examples of this genre. So the Vegas of the Bellagio has a touch of redemptive class. Not a little. Our room is impeccable, sprawling. Even the plumbing works in a luxurious way. But, as lovely as it is, it’s just a building.

Around me courses humanity, in all it’s incorrigible shapes and forms. I even find people like me, people you’d never expect to see here in the Vegas of my media fed imagination. To my surprise there is no one particular type dominating here. I see one salon tanned bottle blonde in a tight short black skirt holding a cigarette but next to her, not with her, but sharing her milieu, is a French couple, perfectly Parisian in their understated elegance.

Then there’s the guy, he has to be a guy, he’s not a man, not a boy. He’s trudging round the endless marble malls in his sneakers with a backpack on his back and a computer bag slung over his shoulder.

And the young people, lots of them, not all sorority types either; young, fresh and still susceptible to the allure of so much manufactured glamour. Ironically they and their indomitable youth add sauce and substance to the myth. They flesh it out and give it life.

And there’s plenty of urbanity, lots of understatement, lots of black chic, the kind you associate with the world’s great cities. No-one could claim that Vegas is one of them. It’s a pretender, always has been, nothing organic about it, nothing cosmopolitan, zero heritage.

I don’t know what I expected but I expected it with a kind of non-negotiable gusto that some would call horribly characteristic. I had these ideas, I mean I didn’t study Vegas, read up on it, I had a glancing, passing sense of it and it wasn’t good. Vegas brought out the prude and the snob in me, a formidable combination.

Now, well, I’ll not rush here for a vacation, we’re here on business, but I’m somehow taken with it. Hard to explain, very hard to explain to people like myself, firm and righteous in our repudiation of this place that has been synonymous with the tawdry, commercial underbelly of society. Oh there are many words that I could apply, even now.

Yes, it’s still all here. Plenty of that. But not only that, and if you’re going to be like the me of yesterday, you’ll miss this odd, flamboyant weirdness, a kind of alchemy wherever there are people and hopes and dreams.

I have a very dear friend who painstakingly saved for months to book a vacation of a lifetime. The family would be staying in old villas across Tuscany, cycling from vineyard to vineyard, eating fresh baked, crusty, coarse grain bread, drinking local wines. It was all booked and paid for. Then the snow came, and came and came. The airport here in Denver closed down. For days. They lost their deposits, their dream was snow dumped. They were beyond disappointed.

A week later when the snow had melted some, not much, and the frigid airport opened, the whole family boarded a plane to Vegas for a week at the Venetian, a kind of consolation prize. I didn’t understand it then, how it could console in any way. Now I can.

Its not so much what happens in Vegas that stays in Vegas, its what you let go of when you’re here that allows you to see past the shabby pretence, the garish theme park. In the end, in spite of itself, humanity animates it all, emanating from even the most tawdry confections. At first the architects copy and pretend, then the people arrive and eventually it takes on life and breathes and maybe even gets a soul.

Africa On Safari: Where The Wild Things Are

2010-02-26T15:37:00.000-08:00

When you’re young you’re more immortal right; immortality measured on a continuum from bulletproof to just a tinge.

I thought so when I got the job: get thee on a very exclusive safari for 7 days. Take thee upon thy nubile bosom thou erstwhile husband, with camera, to take the pics.

Sometimes I forget how woefully ill-equipped I am for the outdoors. I have always preferred my outdoors, indoors, in books. I’ve relished those. And, now this. Not only an outdoors, belligerent and unapologetic, but one whose whole meaning was derived from the Big Five, safari parlance for huge animals that like to hunt you down and kill you.

In terms of genes for outdoor adventure I was disadvantaged. I purposefully chose a double supply of genes for indoor stuff. I just knew I’d prefer it. Almost all of it could be done on or around a sofa.

But back to the days of the newsdesk, and me leaning forward across it, facing the news editor, meeting his eye, nodding fiercely. I’d never been outdoors with a notebook, perhaps that was different. And I’d be out of the newsroom for a week. And Michel could come.

But you do understand it’s a private game reserve. That means you’re going to see game, mingle with them. You do know how to handle yourself in the wild don’t you?

Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I thought fleetingly of sitting low in the back seat of the car as we glimpsed generic wild life way in the distance through several layers of thornbrush. Everyone in South Africa went to the Kruger National Park. It was like a giant car park with some animals in it.

I tried not to think of the nights at the camp in the quaint thatched rondavel with the stable door my dad liked to leave half open for fresh air. The way I never slept, just lay rigid waiting to be eaten, waiting for the mangy king of the jungle to vault the lower half of the door and come for me, saliva dripping from his yellow teeth. I conscientiously examined the ceiling, really just the inside of the thatched roof, with its framework of wooden poles. I planned ways to scale the white-washed walls and wrap myself around them. I measured in my mind the distance between my dangling ten-year-old legs and his gaping maw. I knew I’d have to somehow keep all of me tucked on top of the 5inch round pole.

But I was different now. I was married which meant I was a wife, which meant I was no longer a child. I was full of a tenuous arrogance that came from being young, cooking my own food and having sex regularly. I was no longer a ‘cadet’ reporter. I was full fledged. I got bylines regularly in my national Sunday newspaper. I was the ‘shorter reporter’ who’d even modeled fashion for short women and been on the front page looking wooden and petrified. I was a bit of a brand already. Brands had no issue with nature and wild animals. It would probably seem tame.

In those days the safari cost about $1000 a day. As I said it was exclusive. It catered mostly to tourists from Europe who wanted their fix in Africa to be just like the documentaries; riveting, close-up, safe. It was so expensive because the parties were small, 7 people and two guides with guns, one in front, one at the back as you walked straight out into the middle of where the wild things were.

I knew it was private. I knew it was exclusive so I was surprised at how rugged and basic it all was and how rigorous the schedule would be.

On the first night we stayed in our cushiest camp, in khaki, army tents complete with sandy floors and mosquitoes. But we were at the main camp so the canvas between me and the Big Five seemed rugged enough and durable.

I had a chance to meet the rest of the party round the campfire: Mostly leggy Scandinavian single women. Everything seemed stiff and awkward at first. What was unsettling is that everyone on this trip was cooler than I was. This was no favorable context for the shorter reporter. I was at least supposed to measure up. But these people were worldly, well traveled, taller and more bronzed than I was. It was a bit offputting. That and the mosquitoes.

Our main guide was hip and cool and definitely into the ladies. There was only one thing that got him more excited and that was the Big Five. The Scandinavians were giggly and flirtatious. They believed the Big Five were like cuddly toys you could unzip and put your pyjamas in at the end of your bed.

But I was intrepid, apparently, and I was the shorter reporter. I was there with my husband and we were here for free, not a cent. Everyone else was forking out extraordinary amounts of money and I had my reporter’s spiral bound notebook to lean on and even write in. I was cool, not blatantly cool, like the others, but I was cool.

And I didn’t ruin everything until the last night, the night we spent under the stars on the bank of a shallow river, just us, our nylon sleeping bags and grass tall enough to hide elephants in.

By that time we’d daily washed in deadly rivers rife with Africa’s most dangerous predators: the not so comical hippos, their cohorts the irritable buffalo, as well as the resentful crocodiles that lurked in the very same river I washed my hair in.

We’d scaled trees to escape an earthshaking stampede of thirty elephants pounding right past us along a dry riverbed. We’d backed away from a stinking heap of black rhino, the excitable, charging sort, feeling the shift of it’s giant leathery body in the ground beneath our feet and sensing the subtle wind shifts that could give our proximity, our audacious proximity, away and sentence us to certain death at the point of his casually vicious noseware.

In the meanwhile the human animals were enjoying a non-stop intercultural hormone fest. Every single woman wanted a piece of the chunky, devil-may-care guide. And he was not averse to pieces of them. He was like a wild animal himself, sniffing at the women and rampaging after the Big Five with his rifle tossed upside down over his shoulder. We’d have to head after him too afraid to be out in the wilderness alone.

Things were not exactly working out as planned. This safari was no showcase for the shorter reporter, no-one even noticed me as they went about their Amazonian business. We were, quite simply, the only ones not involved in overtly animal behavior.

But back to the long night of my discontent.

“Few people realize just how silent the approach of an elephant can be”

Macho guide, hairy legs stretched out, head thrust back, eyes closed

In this long grass you can’t hear them until they’re on top of you. Keep your eyes peeled. They don’t like surprises. Probably trample us to death.

The light faded. We each took one hour long shifts as look outs. Watch the tall grass for the towering shape of an elephant, watch the veld across the river for anything else.

I was swiveling my head around inhumanly on my shift. 1 am. It was turning chilly. Across the river, in the veld beyond, a lion roared. The sound reverberated all the way through the ground culminating in a slow, vibrating eruption in our chests. Everyone sat up.

Another thundering roar. They were coming closer. The sound of them was inside us. No-one could sleep.

There they are.

We squinted into the darkness. Across the shallow river, staring back at us, thirteen pairs of glowing amber eyes. Everyone jumped up instinctively, clutching sleeping bags, trying not to act like prey. It is impossible to describe the sound lions make in the wild. It gets under your skin, triggers a primordial response that is beyond terror.

Get into the jeep.

It was beginning to rain. We thought he was saving us. This pride could be on our side of the river in seconds. We piled in, wet and shaking. The guide sat inside the cab his rifle on his lap. The rest climbed in the open back. Michel and I were left to share the rain slicked jeep roof, both of us crosslegged , clinging to the frame.

But he wasn’t saving us. He was heading straight towards them. He found a place to drive across the river and suddenly we, in our open jeep, we were in the middle of a glorious pride of thirteen lions. He cut the engine. The creatures circled within six feet of us, growling, twitching. Round and round. There were lionesses with their cubs.

Oh goody, the Scandinavians said in Scandinavian. They pointed at them with their flashlights.

Keep count, the guide shouted from inside the cab. Make sure you can see them all. His rifle was lying forgotten now, on the seat beside him.

The Scandinavians giggled and played their lights straight into the wild amber eyes.

They have no idea, I realized. I was up now on my haunches trying to find a space to slide down and join the others in the open back of the jeep. Trying to get away from being out in the open. One agile leap and they’d have us. Michel and I up there like dinner.

I flattened myself against the back of the cab, trying to melt into the cold metal . The Scandinavians continued playing spot the lion with their roving flashlights. Provoking, provoking. These were mothers with their cubs; the most potentially dangerous group in the African wild.

I lost my intrepidness. I started to cry, whimper. I was out of my body. I was livid, livid that the guide should risk our lives so cavalierly. I could taste myself in the lion’s mouth.

We have to leave. We have to leave. The tears were running down my face. I loved life. I didn’t want it to end now. I could smell the animal smell, wet from the rain, the amber eyes, the slow circling. Round and round. Michel grabbed my hand.

The engine came to life. We were moving. I could feel my legs coming back to me. I was thinking:

Forgive us, forgive us, forgive us. We know not what we do.

I never regained my questionable cachet, certainly not in that group. I think they still thought lions were cute, cuddly little things and that I was simply a crazy woman with zero courage.

It didn’t matter. A week later there we were, front page. The headline said ‘intrepid’, Michel got the photography byline.

Montmartre: Paris At An Angle

2010-02-26T14:31:00.000-08:00

Montmartre has always been a Mont and the streets around it reflect a peculiarly flamboyant disregard for anything straight. Some even seem to have started off higher up and then slid down only to collide, at impossible angles, with the tangle of equally convoluted streets further down.

If one lived in the area one could understand a certain gait developing that had to do with compensating for the lack of flat surfaces and straight lines. It is possible that Picasso, who painted here may have developed his unique style as a direct response to the terrain – everything is off at an angle.

The last time I was here I was 25 years younger. I wore a cheap, backpackers rain mac, little more than a plastic bag really, and a desultory expression that had to do with the pouring rain that ran like whitewater off my nose and the seemingly endless staircase that lay between me and Sacre Coeur. Let’s say that for a moment there I forgot I was young.

This time it was simply a cold, damp, winter's day with the streets of Montmartre seemingly deserted this midweek mid-afternoon. It is a sad fact that most of our sightseeing these days takes place in the latter part of the day. We seem to be slow risers in foreign places. Probably some sort of reaction to be being workaholics on home territory. We come to foreign places to relax and are sometimes quite nonplussed at how brazenly attention-seeking they can be. Take Paris for instance; always nudging and winking at you. Always a little pinch on the bum, a raised eyebrow. Hard to sleep through.

So here we are doing that climb that I thought so heinous in my unabashed youth. Well we weren’t quite at the steps yet. Still sloping up the approach to Sacre Coeur. Even popped into a tacky tourist shop because they had outdoor displays of rows of warm leather gloves, blowing like willow branches in the damp breeze.

My husband’s hands were cold. His gloves were back in Colorado. These pairs looked quite good really. Could it be real leather? Railed in from Florence, maybe? We bought a pair. They didn’t last long. Half way up the stairway to heaven, and the little church God built there, they began unraveling.

This didn’t stop two charming Rastafarian men from catching our naked wrists and winding something intricately around them in bright rasta colors. We felt really cool looking back down the hill at the sprawling, wet shining suburb below. Something to remember this by. Once it was all woven on we said our thanks and attempted to leave. What a nice thing to do. What a lovely gesture. That’ll be 8 euro. Whaaaat?! Here I was thinking it was a sort of brotherhood of man thing. The church up there in the celestial clouds, the ghosts of Monet, Modigliani and the others swirling down below. I was humming “we are the world”, and he wanted eight euro! We paid and soldiered on. I stopped with the humming and the church came into view just before I lost my religion altogether.

It was more exquisite than I remember, like a porcelain jewel box. Porcelain perfection. And from the inside, angel voices. We were drawn inside like there was a current. Again the stark, simple beauty and the voices. Twelve nuns in white like ancient virgins filed in and the walls echoed their timeless chanting. We could not understand the words but the sound was pure heaven. Everyone who comes to Paris comes here but this place repels anything touristy. It emanates an otherworldliness that forms an invisible bubble over this sacred space. If you enter in you must leave your tourism outside.

Outside again we surveyed Paris in the winter mist and it was pastel and ours alone. Spread out before and around us like a lover. We took the stairs slowly coming down and wended through the winding cobbled roads until we discovered a tiny café in a Picasso painting and on an impossibly sharp corner. We found a small round table and tried to sit casually on the quaint metal chairs. Everything was at an angle.

Light was falling and across the street a group of Parisians with wine glasses in hand were beginning to gather around the warmly lit entrance of a small neighborhood art gallery. I watched intently trying to decipher the games people play, but in French. We found a way to steady our wine glasses on the sloping surface of the table, sat back, compensating for the angles by resting more weight on one leg while leaving the other there for show. Sipping chilled white wine In the Parisian twilight, flat surfaces everywhere seemed inelegant, utilitarian and sadly lacking in imagination.

Bangkok: Drenched And Falling

2010-02-22T21:28:00.000-08:00

We were staying at the sumptuous Oriental mostly because of it’s fabulous history, and because we didn’t care about eating in the future – it’s a budget breaker. What we didn’t realize is that, though it may be on the banks of the great brown Chao Praya River, it’s not exactly walking distance to town.

It was late on a hot, clammy day that for us had begun in Kowloon, Hong Kong. We didn’t know yet that we were far away from everything. For some reason we’d had no time, prior to our arrival, to get the lay of the land. We set off, though, gung ho. We thought we’d walk in the direction of the Patpong Night Market, couldn’t be far. We’d see something of the city on the way.

We’d walked about eight blocks when a seemingly random person walked up to us and asked if we were lost. It was a fair question. Our walk so far had yielded very little of interest. The road we were on seemed closed down and the city seemed to get further away, not closer.

Oh no, we had miles to walk to get to anything of interest, the kind man told us. Where did we want to go? We handed him our scribbled list with the night market at the top.

Let me help you. He hailed a tuk-tuk. We climbed in feeling rushed and a bit suspicious but not entirely sure why. It was our first ride in one of these ubiquitous open, auto-rickshaws. Like rumbling, exotic birds of paradise they fly between the lanes of traffic-jammed cars at exhilarating speed, spitting out noxious fumes as they go.

But wait. We came to a sudden halt outside a tailor store with slim, fashionable young men in dark suits and floor to ceiling bolts of cloth. What were we doing here? This isn’t the night market. Our driver answered with hasty gestures that suggested, quite persuasively, that we get off here. He’d wait, he said. Did we want a suit, tailored while you wait? Did we want a ring, real rubies? No, no, no. Take us to the market. Now. Right now.

Back we got into the tuk tuk. The driver looked disappointed, but more than that, he looked disdainful. It was starting to rain, big drops like it does in the tropics. It felt like small swimming pools landing on the parts of us that stuck out beyond the canvas roof.

Then, there it was, the night market. Not too busy yet and getting ready for the real business of the incoming storm. We hopped off, splashed across the steaming puddles collected in the irregular street surface and found what we were looking for. Past the fancy seafood restaurants, there it was; an eating place, strung on a makeshift platform between two trees. Some giant sheets of yellow plastic formed a shelter.

A ramshackle crowd was huddled at colorful plastic chairs and tables. This place had cachet. We grabbed a seat. Our waiters were Thai ‘girly boys’, beautiful and with all the attitude you’d expect from people who’d transcended something as irksome as gender.

We ordered tom yum goong and fried rice noodles with basil, chili, shrimp and chicken. The raindrops ganged up and fell on us, wet as a lake. The yellow plastic started to cave, water cascaded down on some unfortunate diners. Everyone rearranged themselves hastily on the uneven platform, as though they’d done it a thousand times before. We all found sections of the roof that were still holding up and crowded in under them. The food arrived, hot, fresh, perfect. We had a noisy moment to take it all in. Shoulder to shoulder with strangers, protected from the wet heaviness of the pounding rain, and seduced by the traditional red, spicy soup we let go and fell into easy love with this chaotic capital.

Halong Bay: Life That Floats

2010-01-20T17:05:00.000-08:00

It’s impossible to miss the signs of life that belong to this bay. Not the noise and bustle and stench of the junks, but the real inhabitants of this threatened paradise – the people who live here.

The people that know how to live without their feet touching the ground, the surefooted ones that balance on shallow woven rafts no more substantial than the grass basket you pile your fruit in to make it look nice on the table in the livingroom.

These people, whose eyes are more accustomed to the rippled transparency of liquid turquoise and the play of light on water than they are to things solid and less changeable.

On the water there are no roads, no shopping malls, no playing fields, no earthbound notions of society. It is a different world. A world that must create a different way of seeing the world, must forge different connections in the brain.

As I stand on the deck of the Halong Jasmine I try to imagine what that world must be like. I wonder what the bay’s inhabitants share with the aquatic world they intersect with. They see more of the underwater world than they do of the society on the mainland. Water must impinge on their consciousness, their philosophies their dreams and stories.

So many secrets are kept here in the bay. When you research the fishing villages of Halong Bay, there’s not much out there.

You must use your imagination as you gaze at these communities that float alongside unscaleable cliffs. These people must not need land. They are used to living on something not solid, something forever in motion, something you can slip your hand right into without getting your nails dirty.

They have schools and a pub. They have a pub! A most auspicious building in this village gathering. It looks like a long, oblong boathouse with a door you don’t have to stoop to enter. I try to imagine. Is there a pool table inside, a television, a beery bar counter. No-one seems to know. Is there a musician. Do they have singalongs. Do they all get drunk and fall in the water?

If they do who saves them.

The boathouses have no railings. What about the babies. Do they lose them, do they just crawl over the edge and plop quietly into the iridescent water.

Everything is so close together, huddled, and out of the way, in a bay of sorts. It must be for protection when water from the sky is sheeting down and the difference between what is above and below melts together.

Then there are the lone craft on the water, unattached to any waterborne community. Do they live here, alone? Do they venture out from the mainland at dawn to get food from the sea or sell it to other crafts like ourselves. Do they paddle all the way back to the godforsaken little port town of Halong as the sky darkens?

And then of course there is us. Right there, plonk, in the middle of all that is serene and seemingly imperturbable. It is like we have walked into a sacred place, like a church. It is like we are pointing and talking and laughing when all around us people are praying.

Thailand, Place of Poop and Jasmine

2010-01-16T15:03:00.000-08:00

Here’s what I told my daughter about Thailand.

It smells of jasmine, I said. Dreamily.

Mom, she said, three months later when we met at her uncle’s expat compound in Bangkok,

“It smells of poop”.

Thailand: poop and jasmine. It took awhile to process that. I’m embarrassed at how long it took. Then I got it. She was young and backpacking on a budget a tiny almost imperceptible percentage of ours.

She was staying in places that charged $7.50 per night for two with a toilet that didn’t flush unless you convinced it to with a bucket of water swimming with relocated tadpoles. Places so rustic they required hand-to-hand combat to unseat the eight-legged hairy beasts that felt more at home in your bungalow than any transient backpackers ever could.

We were staying at the Mandarin Oriental, and the Shangri La. They smelt of jasmine, yes they did. Jasmine and fresh sliced tropical fruit, and clean too, the light clear smell of spotless.

Mom, the place is pretty decrepit, actually. Lots of poverty, stray dogs, desperate traders and people intent on separating you from your paltry cash.

Really? Where I went everyone wore elegant traditional dress and flowers in their hair. They put their palms together and bowed. They smiled a lot and waited on us. We’d never been so spoilt.

That’s right mom, the whole place feels blasted, spoilt.

Hmmm. A travel commercial flashes before my closed eyes. Welcome to Thailand, place of poop and jasmine.

My daughter stayed in a bungalow on the ocean where inside and outside were not as distinct as you might want in a place that comes alive with bugs that bite come sundown. Approximate walls, approximate floors but a great view of the ocean. They ate from street stalls and couldn’t afford the beer to wash everything into a benign blur to be remembered fondly through space and time.

We ate spectacular fruit cut into a frenzy of creative shapes at tables on the beach with our feet in the warm sand and surrounded by the sweet, limpid smiles of island spirits clad in colorful silk.

It made me think of class distinction in travel, how absolute it is. Twenty years ago we backpacked around Europe, slept on grass mats on the floor of the Venice Central Station. Awoke at dawn to the sharp rap of stilettos as suit-clad women boarded trains for the mainland. Slept in nylon sleeping bags on the cheap, windswept decks of ferries afloat on the deep indigo of the Mediterranean. Slept in third class cabins on overnight trains from Rome to Athens. Ate in markets, corner delis, streets and squares all over the continent. Shared a packet of chips and a beer at a table in a dark, crowded pub on the Thames as a rare, special treat.

We’d never backpacked in Asia. By the time we discovered this vast, comparatively under-explored, region of the globe our backpacking days were pretty much over. Enter jasmine

And now back to my daughter and the prevalence of poop. I’m learning to look enigmatic, to keep my mouth shut. To not even pretend to cross this great, yawning gap between her Thailand and mine. Just to listen to her and nod and know that, sadly, I cannot know what a backpackers Thailand begins to be.

I’ve also lost the haughty, disdainful look that goes with: “what’s the matter with you? Don’t you recognize paradise when you see it?”