Fetch-a-Phrase

Kiffa, Mauritania to Kayes, Mali

2007-03-20T21:04:00.000-07:00

The BOFs had been assured by their acquaintances at the Nouakchott chapter of the Rotary Club that the road from Kiffa to Kayes, the western most city in Mali, was easily negotiable with two wheel drives. If they ever come across those individuals again I hope they give them a good slapping.

The condition of the road from Kiffa began to deteriorate the moment we left town and became a one lane, rutted track with a high central ridge that often defied the best efforts of our low slung vehicles. Often we had to navigate it with the set of wheels on one side of the car skirting the furthest edge of the track while the other set ran along the ridge. Deviations from this routine risked ploughing the underbody of the respective cars into the sand, effectively bringing the vehicle to a complete stand still. Once the Volvo became so badly stuck we had to dig back thirty feet in order to reverse the car on to solid ground before attempting an alternative route. At the frequent wadis progress came to a temporary halt while the terrain was surveyed for the most likely path through then, one by one, each vehicle would make its mad dash across the soft sand, the passage emphasized by wild fishtails and sprays of dust. Any loss of power or hesitation on the part of the driver unfailingly meant getting stuck. Eventually we had to abandon the track entirely and weave along beside it, all the while hoping there weren't any appreciable holes hidden by the tall yellow grasses and that the thorns for the ubiquitous acacia trees wouldn't puncture our tires.

The BOFs, who'd been leading the way, stopped at a rise in the land. Roger and John had a GPS and for the last twenty kilometers had been worried that we been going the wrong way as the coordinates exhibited by their machine didn't match those attested by the Bamako Run Road Book. I thought the best way to find out was to simply ask a local. The question was who? This region of the world was very sparsely populated. We'd passed a goatherd about a kilometer back so I turned tail and went in search of him. I found him wher standing atop a small hill surrounded by his flock. Fully aware that being questioned by a white foreigner wouldn't be among the usual litany of his daily events, I approached him wearing the best disarming smile I could muster and waving familiarly. His eyes widened perceptibly but he stood his ground. He was younger than I'd supposed; barely a teenager.
"As-salaam aleikum," I said, hailing him with the most widely accepted Arabic salutation. He didn't respond.
"Ca va?" I tried again, this time in French. Again he said nothing and eyed me with such incredulity you'd have thought I had horns growing out of my head. I generally rely heavily on my linguistic abilities when traveling; usually I'm able to find some common language even if it's just a greeting or a few odd words. This time I was stumped. It was a testament to how far off the beaten track we'd placed ourselves. Falling back on the clumsiness of sign language and place names, I cleared a small patch of ground and drew a map with a stick. It was all to no avail, I may as well have been trying to theorize about black holes with a tree. He listened politely to my gibberish and offered a few soothing murmurs. It was pointless. I thanked him profusely for his pains then gave him a couple of cigarettes; probably not the best gift for a pre-teen but it was all that I had.

We decided that continuing onwards was the best idea and eventually our decision proved to be the correct one. A quartet of battered trucks was laboriously coming the opposite way. We ran into them on a crest where the track had become nothing more than deep sandy grooves that were a struggle even for their immense wheels. The driver of the lead truck, a jovial fellow who delighted in seeing our motley convoy, affirmed that we were indeed on the route to Koudoudjel, one of the few villages named on the Michelin map. Making a wide and difficult sweep away from the impossible track we drove on, more relaxed now, knowing that if nothing else we were at least going the right way.

Koudoudjel was a haphazard place of mud compounds sitting amidst strands of dried out foliage. As soon as our vehicles came into view, the village bounded into life. Crying "Donne-moi un stylo" (give me a pen), and "cadeau, cadeau", children raced toward us like a mob converging on enticing products at a post Christmas sale. Their imminent arrival presented a problem; desert driving demanded we go as fast as humanly possible in order to skim over the ankle deep, sandy thoroughfare through the village but the risk of running over a gift obsessed child ruled that out. One by one ours wheels dug in and the vehicles came to a defeated halt. The cars were immediately surrounded by eager, smiling faces and outstretched hands. While Trygve sat in the driver's seat with pursed lips, I waded through the mob to the back of the car to retrieve the sand ladders. A collection of the more helpful children helped me dig out the wheels and place the sand ladders. Once that was done, I turned to the sea of expectant faces and announced that now it was time to to give me a cadeau. As though playing a thrilling new game, we all leaned into the car and with a mighty push set it in motion. Slowly it gathered enough speed then ponderously made its way to solid ground under its own steam.

Whether traveling through villages or crossing wadis we used our sand ladders extensively. Unfortunately their inherent usefulness does come with a down side as, under certain circumstances, they have a propensity for flying out at odd angles. Glenn was hit first. As the car we'd been pushing struggled away, he stood rooted to the spot, teeth clenched and staring straight ahead as though transfixed by a hallucination of a giant serpent. He hobbled off to one side and pulled up his pant leg. The skin on his shin had been smartly split with an angry flash of red defining its limits. It was my turn next. I wasn't nearly so stoic. The ladder came flying out at a peculiar angle, smacking into me just above the left knee. Casper, who'd been driving, thought I'd been shot. Despite my dramatic fall, the skin wasn't broken but I ended up with a nasty, thick welt that had me limping the rest of the day.

When the day began, we'd been optimistic about reaching the border with Mali. Now all we aimed for was the village of Konkassa, only one hundred paltry kilometers from Kiffa. As evening drew near we finally reached its outskirts. Despite our best efforts there didn't appear to be any way around the village so in grand style we ploughed along the main street with the cars becoming stuck with merciless regularity. Finally the track hardened and we arrived in the center. As the inevitable crowd gathered, several of our group nipped into a shabby, little store in search bread and bottled water. I went to join them while Trygve stayed in the car surrounded by a growing mob of curious children. Then it happened; while her attention was diverted by one child, a couple more reached in through the passenger window and stole my sunglasses and a pair of binoculars from the dashboard. Theft is severely looked down upon in the Arabic countries and the air around the car automatically became electric as people milled around in shocked expectancy. Some children ran up to me, beckoning. Excitedly they told me to follow them into a compound. I did so, surrounding myself with gravity I didn't really feel. A worried boy came around the side of a building and shakily handed me the binoculars. I don't know if he was the one who took them, nevertheless I was very surprised to get them back. Back in the street the adults in their authoritative blue and white robes had gathered. They made a circle around me and fired off questions trying to figure out which child took the sunglasses. Despite what had happened, I found their concern admirable. They recommended I go to the police. I told them there was no time; the sun was sinking and I explained that we needed to find a camping spot for the night. Strangely enough, I'm certain that if I'd stayed in Konkassa, my sunglasses would have been returned and the child roundly punished.

After bogging down several more times on the southern edge of Konkassa, we finally found the stretch of land that another group of Bamako Runners had selected for their night's stay. Collectively they'd developed a different attitude to Africa than we had and had encircled their vehicles in a tight laager then blocked the gaps with lengths of caution tape and rope in an attempt to keep the gathering of curious villagers at bay. In the center, an enormous campfire was roasting the night air. Our own group parked close by but without defenses and certainly not in a circle. In dribs and drabs the Mauritanians came over from the laager to inspect us until eventually a sizable crowd had gathered. They meticulously studied our every movement, passing whispered comments as they did so. It was like being an animal in a zoo. Georgina made a move and said she love it if she could use some of the scant excess water to wash off the day's dust. That gave me an idea.
"Does anybody here speak French?" I asked in that language. A fellow in the midst of the crowd put up his hand.
Aware of the Arabic ideas of modesty, I told him that one of our women would like to wash herself and would it be okay if everyone left for a while? It was like Moses at the Red Sea. Within half a minute we were alone, and all felt that a small miracle had just happened. After Georgina had sponged herself partially clean, the villagers slowly filtered back. This time I went over and got into conversation with them, explaining the hows, whys and wherefores of our being in their village. Later, when the time for bed had arrived, Trygve urged me to make an attempt at repeating the miracle.
"Excuse me," I said raising my voice, "My friends and I are going to bed now. Would it be okay if everyone left?"
After handshakes all around we were left to ourselves once again.
From the laager we could hear irritated English accents telling their unwanted guests to "bugger off".

The laager uncircled itself early the following morning and drove south, leaving behind a still smoldering fire and copious scraps of trash.

It was a further 50km to the Malian border. Although the track wasn't much better south of Konkassa, there were far fewer snags and, for the most part, the area on either side route was easier to navigate. Terry had already proven himself a desert driver and I found that following along in his wake, though at an appreciable distance because of the dust, almost guaranteed a through path. Only once did he falter. I have visions of him still, jacking up the front wheel of their red station wagon to put the sand ladder under it while muttering swear words at himself for having been caught in a "badger" hole. Despite trying to follow the coordinates on the GPS, we still managed to lose the way. By the time the error had been recognized, we had already gone ten kilometers down the wrong track. A pair of charitable villagers put us right and with out too much fanfare we arrived in Hamid, the last sizable habitation before the border. Like all the villages we'd passed through, it was a squat, mud brick affair that blended perfectly into the sepia tones of the dried out, tree strewn landscape surrounding it. The one difference was that it had a innocuous building at the far end of town with a ragged, green Mauritanian flag flying above it. This was the border post. A trio of Mauritanians greeted our convoy when we arrived. One of them, the governor of the province as it turned out, told us that the gentleman who stamped the passports was in Konkassa and that we should just continue on. We didn't need telling twice. Somewhere in the undefined landscape we crossed the border. The only indication that we were in a different country was that the road improved imperceptibly until we found we could actually drive on it.

In the early afternoon we stopped in a clearing to have a cup of tea and a bite to eat. As so often happens in the Sahel, a couple of blue robed, tuareg shepherds soon discovered us. While we stood greeting them, a gang of children, entralled at the idea of foreigners being in their midst came to examine us. For once they didn't ask for cadeau but stood around ogling us and chattering excitedly. Trying to put things in context, Georgina assumed that the two blue clad adults were teachers taking their pupils on a nature walk. I looked at her quizzically. There were no houses nearby let along a school. When the two adults left, the children remained. Georgina was confused. "They're leaving their class behind", she said aghast at such breach in student/teacher relations. Big hearted Terry and John couldn't resist handing out gifts to the children. They gathered around him in an excited mob with outstretched hands and amazed expressions; another group of "cadeau kids" had just been created.

For the rest of the afternoon we drove on stopping only to reconnoiter rut strewn wadis before attempting the uncertain crossings. It was proof of our newly acquired abilities that we were able to traverse them at all. Prior to this journey, I would have taken one look and declared half of them impossible and turned around to find another route. When the sun's rays began diminishing we still hadn't reached Kayes and camped for the night beside the road once more, though this time far from any habitation.

The following day we were driving an ever improving road when we suddenly came across a white Volvo sedan that belonged to the other Bamako Run group. It was parked in the middle of the road and was surrounded by ominous scatterings of rubbish. There was no one around and all the baggage had been removed. Our first thought was that they'd been victims of foul play but as we found no trails of blood nor bodies in the undergrowth, we assumed the vehicle had broken down and that the people who owned it would return later. We were told the real story later that day. Desperately trying to reach Kayes, the group had driven into the night - not the wisest idea in this part of Africa. As they'd been hurrying along one behind the another with visibility cut to a minimum because of the excess of dust, the Volvo had run straight into a tree stump that then pushed the gearbox into the heart of the cab. The vehicle was a write-off and had been abandoned. The following morning the driver and his companion had given the keys to a local telling him the car was his

As the road continued to improve significantly, I took the lead and went zipping along far ahead of the others enjoying the rediscovered joy of speed. During this section, we came across our first Baobab trees, the unofficial emblem of sub-Saharan Africa. With their overly fat trunks and wizened demeanors, each one is a personality unto itself. I never tired their company. They accompanied us down the road and into Kayes, where on the outskirts of town we were immediately pulled over by a pair of moped cops. They incongruously asked for nothing and instead made a special point of leading us to the main road into town where we once again joined legitimate tarmac. It was like waking from a rough night's sleep and finding yourself in paradise.

Nouakchott to Kiffa

2007-03-03T04:29:00.000-08:00

We stayed in Nouakchott for a single day and a night which gave us just enough time to accomplish all the chores that traveling through the desert demands: repairing cars, buying provisions, washing clothes and changing money. It was a shame not to spend longer, Nouakchott's seedy, dilapidated atmosphere of trash strewn streets, decrepit buildings and its vibrant, if basic, market cried out for more careful attention. It was like being given a broken, rusted clock and not being allowed to take it apart.

The following day we drove out of the capital, passed the final band of plastic bag strewn scrubland that demarcated the its boundary and arrived once more in the pristine terrain of the desert. On all sides golden sand dunes undulated toward the horizon like great ocean waves frozen in time, camel herds snorted and swayed by the roadside and herds of innocent goats wandered blithely into the path of oncoming traffic. Towns became a rarity. For long stretches the only forms of human habitation were the elegant, white tents of the nomads and the aesthetically challenged mud hamlets of the more permanent residents. In its march to modernity, Mauritania finally got around to abolishing slavery in the 1980s and it was highly likely that the denizens of the hamlets still remained there under indefinite servitude to their tented masters. Heading eastward drew us inexorably deeper into Africa and gave us our last, long glimpse of the vast expanse of the Sahara. Our aim for the day was the southern town of Kiffa, some 600 kilometers distant and fortunately reachable by a tarmac road. The only hinderance, according to the Michelin map, was the possibility of blowing sand.

At the extremity of the sand sea we entered Aleg, our first Sahelian town. It was a dismal affair of colorless, one storey, cinder block buildings that housed the most basic needs of life. Stopping for gas in the center of town brought a plague of "cadeau" enthusiasts upon us. They gathered around the cars like locusts and demanded gifts as they eyed the contents of our vehicles with ill disguised avarice. I almost felt that if I'd stumbled and fallen while being surrounded by them, they'd have descended on me leaving nothing afterwards but a red stain on the desert floor.

After Aleg we drifted back and forth between desert and sahel. The latter was a land of cattle and goat herding. For both creatures and their compatriots, the ubiquitous and hardy, grey donkeys, this section of road had proved to be a death trap. Large road kill became so common that Trygve and I started playing a morbid game in which a dead goat earned one point, a cow two, a camel three and a donkey four. We stopped playing when we passed the first massacre; over half a dozen lifeless goats lay by the roadside, their bellies already starting to bloat. A short while later we passed a small herd of dead cows; a person's livelihood gone in a second. On that one section of road, I witnessed more large road kill than I've collectively seen the rest of my life. We could only conclude that it was caused by pumped up truck drivers racing through the night. The members of our group discussed the subject later and were at a loss to understand why it was that the animals were simply left where they died and not butchered and eaten. The only rational explanation was that, having been killed by a wehicle, the meat was not halal and therefore it was a sin to eat it. That still didn't explain why they didn't skin the animals for their valuable hides.

Low slung, scruffy and crowded with both horse drawn and motorized traffic, Kiffa was a quintessential Mauritanian town. Before going to investigate the heart of of it for hotels, we made a pit stop at a tire repair stall. The Freewheelers needed a dent hammered out of a wheel rim and the tire filled with air. After finishing this meager piece of work, the repairman demanded the equivalent of twenty-five dollars. Mauritanians have one of the world's lowest living standards, generally make about a dollar a day, as such foreigners are seen as a quick and lucrative way to make money. Terry was stunned by the price but as he hadn't settled it beforehand it looked as though he was going to get stung. As the argument heated up, a crowd began to gather. Unable to resist a good battle, I joined the fray. Using rhetoric as a weapon, I appealed to the repairman's good nature by explaining the charitable nature of our mission then added that my client would be happy to pay twice the local rate, as it was understood that foreigners should always pay more and said I thought a more realistic price for the work would be 400 Ouagiya (about a dollar fifty). I could feel the crowd around me murmuring in agreement. A cloud of conscience passed over the repairman's features and the price started dropping. Grabbing the advantage, I pressed my case by theatrically turning to address the crowd, who were evidently reveling in the evening's entertainment, and asked them to judge. They mumbled and shuffled their feet, caught between the need for justice and fairness and a desire to support their countryman. The repairman offered an even lower price. I was trying to pull it down to five or six hundred ouagiya when Terry suddenly caved in on a thousand. A generous soul by nature, he passed over the cash then reached into the recesses of his car, pulled out a football jersey and gave it to the repairman. The last shred of tension evaporated and we left the stall surrounded by a sea of smiles and well wishes.

After questioning several locals, we managed to track down an auberge at the edge of town. A gaggle of small boys heralded our arrival with excited screams then gathered around the cars menacingly. Leaving a sentry, we went to examine the place. The center of the auberge was dominated by a large, open walled structure comfortably laid out with mats and cushions. Terry and Georgina immediately began enthusing about it. For my part, I felt uneasy sensing something amiss. The robed owner came out of a door and measured us up with a critical eye. I asked if there were rooms.
"Yes," he answered, "But they are all occupied."
I scanned the compound taking in the closed doors on all the cubicle sized buildings forming a "u" around the central structure. It was odd that at this time of day and especially in a town like this that all the rooms were taken.
"You can sleep under this," he suggested swiveling his head around toward the structure. "It is only 4000 ougiya per person." It was excessively expensive but it didn't matter, I'd already decided I didn't want to stay.
"This place is a brothel," I hissed to my friends.
Terry and Georgina looked askance at me then a willowy, young woman in shape enhancing brown outfit leisurely sauntered into the compound.
"I think I'll trust Jon's judgement here," said Terry eyeing the girl with interest.
On the way out, one the owner's friends asked how many hours we were planning on staying, effectively putting an end to any further debate. Along with the rest of the Bamako Runners, we ended up sleeping in walled in camping ground on the other side of town.

Through the Desert to Nouakchott

2007-02-17T03:21:00.000-08:00

With the ice cream cone flashing orange and Lara's theme trickling from the BOFs speakers, we set off once more into the desert. Our coastal destination was about four hours away across an undulating beige landscape dotted with hardy vegetation whose primary source of defense was the mighty thorn. With the previous day's experience under our belts, we shot off like seasoned pros, skimming the surface of the sand fields as though skiing through them. As the route was demarcated by the tracks of earlier vehicles, Trygve, who was driving the Volvo at the time and quiet Casper in The Rat, began racing each other leaving the more sedate BOFs along with Moulay, our guide, far behind. The exhilaration that comes with bouncing over sparse desert at full speed and in complete control is like closing in a mountain peak. Each in their turn overtook the other. leaving the laggard in a proverbial cloud of dust as both cars skipped across the desert like two playful puppies chasing each other. Then the Volvo died. Ever since we'd had to switch to leaded gasoline in Dakhla, the car had started acting a little strange. We'd been assured that the change would simply blow out the catalytic converter and that the car would run essentially as it had before. There had been warning signs the day before, when at certain moments the engine couldn't push out its maximum power but even then we thought we'd make it through. Impotence could well be defined as having a dead engine in the middle of a desert. With tools in hand, John the Yorkshireman and Roger of the BOFs twiddled with pipes and filters as they tried to diagnose the malady. I'd was seriously beginning to wonder if we'd have to leave the car in the desert when Yorkshire John pulled off the plug that regulated the air flow into the engine. The car started. It didn't sound good. The engine stammered consistantly like a stuck record but it ran and that was of the most important thing. By the time we reached the sea, it was obvious that John and Roger would need to do a little more fine tuning.

Trygve is apt to say that Mauritanians don't do towns well and should stick to living in the desert. That may well be said of villages too. Approaching the coast, a collection of cargo containers turned out to be a mean, little fishing hamlet. We continued on past it over a hump of sand to discover a encampment of graceful desert tents, where we'd be spending the night. Centuries of experience have taught the desert dwelling denizens how to live in it with relative ease and protection. The four sided tents are invariably white on the outside and outrageously colorful on the inside with the roof being held up by a single pole, though for larger ones a second may be added. For added comfort, the floors are covered by large, woven, plastic mats with mingling geometric designs. It's possible to tell which way the prevailing wind comes from by noting the direction of the doorway; it always faces leeward.

After paying the park and accommodation fees, a murmur that all was not right with the following day's itinerary began growing louder. The idea was to drive 140km south along an ill defined track then coast down the beach at low tide all the way to Nouakchott. We'd looked over the tidal charts that came with the information package for the Challenge and found that the difference between the low and high tides was minimal at best. According to Moulay, it meant that the ground would not be hard enough for long enough to keep the vehicles from sinking in. That in turn would mean lost time which could then result in the tide coming in before we reached Nouakchott, thus losing most the vehicles to the sea.

Another group of Bamako Runners was also staying on the beach. I'd met their guide, Dahid, the day before. He was a lithe, smooth skinned man in his late twenties who exuded intelligence and confidence as his birth right. After questioning both guides to the best of my ability, I found a bone of contention between them. Dahid, who was as concerned about the beach route as Moulay, planned to continue down the coast until his convoy reached the beach. If the tide looked bad they'd double back for 40km then take a piste across to the new tarmac road to Nouakchott. Moulay counseled our team not to take the same route to the road.
"It is very bad," he cautioned, "You must go fast and cannot stop. Otherwise you get stuck. It is difficult to come back to help." He was certain the beach wouldn't be possible and recommended we take a 40km track directly to the road from our present location. The condition of our vehicles was the main cause for concern. It was unlikely that the lumbering ice cream van and our sickly Volvo would be able to conquer more difficult tracks now.

I passed the evening with the two guides in one of the capacious tents drinking small glasses of sweetened tea and listening to them as they stealthily attacked each others abilities. Privately Moulay suggested that Dahid was intentionally setting up the other group for catastrophe as, by the unwritten law of the desert, the keys to any stranded vehicle are handed over to the guide. "He has taken hundreds of vehicles," whispered Moulay conspiratorially, "I am honest. Always I want all the cars to leave the desert. I want everyone to have a good experience." Over the last couple of days the vehicles in our group had bogged down in the desert sands with alarming frequency. "In my group only one car got stuck yesterday and only one today," boasted Dahid. With knowing assurance he said he knew the how to navigate the difficult route to the highway. Moulay looked away with derision clouding his face.

In the early morning Dahid's team fired up their engines and one by one disappeared over the rise. We followed suit a couple of hours but made directly for the tarmac. Once we'd reached the road the two 4x4s left immediately. They arrived in Bamako six days before us with the one team flying back to England as soon as humanly possible.

Our objective for the day was a patch of coastline 85km north of Nouakchott where'd we'd spend the night in relative comfort while still being in the wilds of the desert. It turned out to be two plastic bags short of a garbage dump with a nomad tent balanced in the middle of it and odd jackals appearing amongst tufts of rubbish strewn dunes. Moulay had been reassuring himself and us of what a good and honest guide he was. Using his cellphone he called up Dahid to find out how the other group was getting on. As expected they'd been unable to take the beach route and, to Moulay's evident glee, were bogged down in the bad track to the tarmac. Apparently their one 4x4 was busy burning out its clutch as it pulled vehicle after vehicle out of sand traps. It looked as though we'd made the right decision. At ten in the evening Dahid's group arrived in Nouakchott with all the vehicles mostly intact and Moulay never mentioned Dahid's name again.

We drove the final 85km to Nouakchott the following morning along the goudron and spent the remainder of the day running around town fixing vehicles and gathering supplies.

Into the Desert

2007-02-08T16:42:00.000-08:00

The entire aspect of a journey changes when you travel in a group.

We hooked up with a collection of Bamako Runners for the Mauritanian portion of the adventure after chatting with them at the roof top bar of the Sahara Regency Hotel in Dakhla. To make sure we'd be able to cross the border into Mauritania before the customs guards began their lengthy siesta, we all assembled for an early breakfast in the hotel's restaurant then set off in convoy with the remnants of the night still enshrouding us. Roger and John from Carlisle in Northern England, whose self-assigned handle was the BOFs (Boring Old Farts), lead the way. They'd outfitted their bright pink vehicle to make it look like a neighborhood ice cream van by liberally pasting the outside with popsicle and ice cream stickers. A large, plastic ice cream cone was bolted to the front of the van and flashed orange when the occasion demanded. To add authenticity, the BOFs had attached a pair of speakers to the exterior that produced a tinkly version of Lara's theme from Doctor Zhivago. This became our rallying cry. Hidden deep inside the van was a freezer packed with homemade ice cream and hidden deeper still was a collection of alcohol they were planning on smuggling into teetotaling Mauritania in order to help them celebrate January 25th, the birthday of the Scottish poet Robert Burns.

Second place was taken by the boys in The Rat, Glenn and Casper, two drinking buddies from the south of England. The two of them had theatrically painted their black Volvo sedan with whooshes of flames then super glued a giant, rubber rodent to the hood.

The third and fourth place in the queue was filled by either our blue Volvo with its Fishbon logo design or by Terry and John from Yorkshire in a red VW station wagon. John had joined the challenge courtesy of Terry and initially thought it was just another one of the latter's nutty plans that would never come to fruition. But as the date of departure neared so had the momentum. Now the car was packed with hundreds of donated football shirts and dozens of footballs and the outside had become a riot of sponsors' names. Terry, a joiner by trade, had bolted a wooden roof rack to the top of the car then lashed a portable camp toilet, or "commode" as they called it in their broad accents, to the rear of it. From this perch, he intended to do some filming in relative comfort. Before we left Dakhla the two of them convinced us to put some of the football gear in the back of our car to make way for Georgina, a reporter hitchhiking down with the Bamako Run.

The final two places were taken by two Landrover 4 x 4s. We'd briefly met the occupants two days earlier on the way to Dakhla after they'd pulled over to the side of the road for a coffee break. On seeing the Bamako Run stickers we'd made a U turn and gone up to meet them. They'd seemed distant and suspicious. I think if I hadn't eventually held my hand out they would never have thought of offering their own. They kept up this distance from us and everyone else for the duration of our time together. Apparently one pair, Andy and his companion, who's name I never did catch, had bitten off more than they could chew. At times it was a wonder they didn't just turn tail to race back to the comfort of tepid beer in a creaky English pub to pretend they'd never left home. The other pair of four wheel drivers, Chris and Lowell, got themselves caught up in this psyche and inadvertently found themselves in Bamako with much of the journey having been nothing more than a collection of dusty vistas flashing by the window.

Despite a coastal fog, the last thing I expected to encounter in the Sahara, and taking the wrong track in the heavily mined no man's land between the Moroccan and Mauritanian frontiers, we crossed into Mauritania in good time. Mauritania is one the world's poorest countries and according to members of the Peace Corps, I'd met several years before, was the worst posting in all of Africa. It is a country drowned in desert that apparently produces very little of anything. Nouadibou, the first town on the other side of the border, was low slung and so shabby and run down an interior designer would have run away shrieking. Despite the poverty, a motley collection of cars constantly plied the streets. Many were incongruously shiny Mercedes, probably the results of the town's prolific, cross-border smuggling trade. Almost every other vehicle was so battered and ancient it was a small miracle they managed to keep them running at all. It was like watching a vehicular "Dawn of the Dead". Grace was added to the scene by the elegant, flowing blue and white robes of the men. Their clothing is the quintessential desert gear that allows for ventilation while keeping the occupant warm or cool depending upon the time of day and the season. When one of the Mauritanians stands atop a sand dune and the wind billows through his robes, it's almost impossible not to think of Lawrence of Arabia.

We stopped at an auberge near the center of town to set up camp for the night. As we did so, individual Mauritanians and Senegalese edged their way toward us in the hopes of making a sale, changing money or, at the very least, being given a "cadeau" - a gift. This raised Trygve's hackles - wasn't paying for a night to stay in the compound supposed to protect us from all this, she asked irritably. The other predators making the rounds were the guides; the next stage of the journey involved going down the coastal route over ill defined and at times non-existent tracks before finally hitting the coast to take the beach route to the capital. In reality, a brand new macadam road now joined Nouadibou to Nouakchott but taking it would have destroyed our growing sense of adventure. Moulay the guide smoothed his way into our campsite with a smile, a greeting and a handshake then produced a pair of crinkled letters that immediately made me suspicious of him; both referred to him as a replacement guide and were written before the actual desert crossing had taken place. It didn't help that he also looked like a squattier, gap toothed version of Geraldo. While I was away changing money, the rest of our group hired him.

The following day we filled our gas tanks and jerry cans and made a right turn off the goudron to join the piste. The paramount question at the back of everyone's mind was "Who will get stuck first?" Desert driving in a car totally unsuited for it has a very high learning curve. It has to. The first part was easy, the ground was hard and all the sand was piled in graceful, wind sculptured dunes off to the side. When we encountered our first wadi (dry stream bed), Moulay had us all stop on the solid ground in front of it then dutifully deflated all the necessary tires to the right pressure. The wadi was filled with loose sand that only had echoes of tread marks running through it, a sure sign of potential difficulty. The trick is to rev the car on the solid ground, then shift it into second gear or higher by the time you hit the sand. Once going, you don't break for anything until you reach a hard patch on the other side. If you do it right you skim over the sand if not... The first time we used the sand ladders was to rescue The Rat. For the rest of the day intermittent and unavoidable fields of sand threatened to block our advance. It was the BOFs turn to bog down next. As they were leading the way and had loaded the vehicle with all manner of items they were planning on giving as gifts to the Malian people - ten bulky sewing machines for example - this was hardly surprising. But Roger and John had brought a secret weapon with them. They'd managed to get their hands on a pair of silver, roll up sand mats used by the British Army, apparently the very latest in desert tech. Having used them for the exact purpose intended, we can only conclude that there are a lot of infuriated British soldiers stranded somewhere in the desert. Terry the Yorkshireman, and a very practical fellow by nature, turned out the best desert driver. At one particular snag that had bogged down both The Rat and the BOFs, he surveyed the ground and seeing that tufts of grass were blotting a shallow plain on the left side of the track opted to take that route instead. He sailed across it barely leaving a mark. From that and other trials we learned that taking the well rutted track is not always the best idea and also that taking the windward side is often the better course as the ground is more densely packed.

The end of the the day found us at the base of a gently curving dune setting up camp while the setting sun gently broadened the sand shadows on the faces of the surrounding dunes. The quiet camaraderie of having worked together to surmount obstacles had worked itself into all of us along with the whisper of knowledge that comes when using new tools and techniques for the first time.

When night had eventually smothered day, Roger called us all toward the ice cream van for an evening of Scottish heritage. The Robbie Burn's birthday bash started with a poem eulogizing "The chiefdon o' the pudding race", i.e., the haggis that John and Roger had brought with them. It was read aloud by Terry using his thick Yorkshire accent while wearing the green kilt and accompanying sporran he'd brought with him to honor his Irish and Scottish ancestors. Coached on by John and Roger, he stabbed the honored haggis during the appropriate line of verse. Then we were all urged to come forward to fill our bellies with that bloated sausage, tatties (potatoes) and neeps (turnips). Afterwards whiskey glasses were raised in memory of the great man and another of his poems read out loud. It was my turn next. Cloaked in my best Scottish accent, I stood before the assembled crowd and rolled "My love is like a red, red rose..." off my tongue before finishing off with a toast "ta th' wee lassies here among us". For final entertainment, Glenn donned a piece of kilt-like cloth and stumbled over a pair of crossed shovels in a riotous imitation of a traditional Scottish sword dance.

The Road South

2007-01-26T11:12:00.000-08:00

The foothills of the Anti-Atlas finally leveled out south of Sidi Ifni. From that point on the scenery becomes as flat as a plate with only the suggestion of mesas darkening the eastern horizon. On our right was the coastline of the Atlantic, an end-of-the-world place where the sparse, even earth ended abruptly in death defying cliffs that jutted out over a crashing, scooped out shoreline that has become the final resting place for many an ill fated ship.

The road was asphalt and just wide enough for two lanes of traffic if blowing sand hadn't nibbled away at one of the margins. It was much busier than I thought it would be. Many of the vehicles were trucks bringing supplies south to the desert towns of Layoune, Dakhla and the few spartan hamlets in between. A good proportion of the others were the drab green Landrovers and troop carriers of the Moroccan army who continue to make their presence felt in a newly conquered land. And then there were the Trans-Saharan Brigade, amongst whom we count ourselves. So many people make Morocco/Mauritania journey these days that every second car was a four wheel drive plastered with stickers and weighed down by sand ladders and spare tires. Even more off putting were the grey haired retirees sedately driving their RVs deeper into Africa. Somehow their presence struck a death blow to any thoughts of exploring unknown territory.

For comic relief, intermittent, triangular road signs warned us that itinerant camels might saunter across the road at any moment, while on a slightly more serious note we found ourselves being flagged to a halt with alarming frequency at one of Western Sahara's ubiquitous road blocks. Here we were asked to produce our "fiche", a piece of paper documenting all our particulars from nationality to mother's name. The grey uniformed police were invariably polite and professional, though I did start to wonder what offense they must have committed elsewhere to land them in such isolated, barren surrounds. Shortly afterwards we'd be back up to speed and surrounded once again by the unrelenting desert landscape. Sometimes the monotonous horizon was mercifully broken by the familiar form of a single sand dune. For some inexplicable reason it had decided to park itself on that particular spot, though any other would have worked equally well. Other dunes had decided that clustering together was a better idea and, as a unit, created enormous undulating, golden fields that ended as mysteriously as they'd started. For companionship, an endless convoy of electricity pylons journeyed through the desert along side us, its head and tail forming vanishing points at the boundaries of the horizon. Kilometer after kilometer, hour after hour it went on and on.

Three hundred and forty kilometers from the southern extremity of Western Sahara the road split in two. We took the right fork to the peninsula town of Dakhla and, after passing the final road block, suspended our southern passage for a couple of days rest and recuperation.

Dakhla is the final meeting point for groups going south into Mauritania and taking the coastal route. We've lagged so far behind our own group that we now threaten to be lapped by the one coming after us. They're on the so-called Bamako Run and will be taking a left turn at some point and heading toward Mali. We've now hooked up with them for tomorrow's border crossing and beach route. Our story may change once we arrive in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania and start gathering information. As the car is now properly equipped, we're considering joining the Bamako Run then turning tail at its completion and heading westward toward the Senegalese border. If possible we'll then go on to Gambia then link up with group 4, who'll be coming out of the Sahara around that time then auction off the car in Banjul along with them. This is, of course, assuming that the Volvo will be able to make it that far and that the border regions of Mali aren't bristling with bandits.

Anti-Atlas

2007-01-25T19:07:00.000-08:00

Driving through the Anti-Atlas in southern Morocco gave us our first peripheral glimpse of the Sahara. Continuously tortured by the elements and almost stripped of vegetation, the landscape retains a stark beauty that left me speechless. As words simply cannot express the intensity of this desolated region, I've decided to let it speak for itself through images, even though they are at best a very poor recreation.

Zagora to Foum Zguid

2007-01-19T02:44:00.000-08:00

I got it wrong. The town of Tazenakht was not on the way to M'hamid, the last town before the Algerian border. It was, in fact, in another part of Morocco entirely. This put a serious cramp in our plans as the road we we'd planning on taking to Foum Z'guid was supposed to be "goudron" or asphalt. I studied the map quickly and discovered an alternative route. It ran west from Zagora, the market town we'd just left, and was "piste" (a dirt road) for the first twenty kilometers or so.Then there'd be a fork in the road where we'd go right and immediately join goudron. The left fork promised only piste that, according to a French Internet forum I'd been perusing the previous evening, was only suitable for four wheel drives. We'd rejected the latter out of hand the previous evening but as the former now seemed like a viable alternative, we doubled back to hunt down the initial turning off the main road.

To be certain we were going the right way, we stopped at a nearby tour guide office. There was a large hand drawn map of the region on the wall and using it as a reference, Mustapha, the capable manager, outlined the best route to take. He assured us that the direct piste we'd dismissed the day before, was the best option as the road to the right, that looked so good on the map, was in fact much worse.
"Will our car be able to make it?" I enquired tentatively, pointing through doorway at our Volvo.
"No problem. Go at only ten kilometers per hour. You will be fine," he assured us. "Just be sure you stay between the mountains and always go straight. Don't go left or right, just go straight and always stay between the mountains," he emphasized.
We thanked him profusely and set off.

We got lost almost immediately when the piste broke itself into several rutted tracks within a kilometer of our starting point. As we sat trying to figure out which route to take, a crammed white van passed us, its roof liberally carpeted with passengers. They appeared to be taking a path that would go "between the mountains" so we decided it best to follow them. Just to be on the safe side we also stopped a passing motorcyclist to ask if it was indeed the right route. It was.

The road was at best a collection of earthen, ruts and tire tracks. We bounced along it like two sailors in a storm. It was amazing that the passengers on top of the van weren't continuously tumbling off. We tailed their dusty wake for several kilometers until the track branched into three distinct directions. The van took the right fork toward some distant adobe buildings; after some deliberation we decided that going straight was best. All on our own now, we sallied forth continuously adjusting to the terrain's shallow rises and falls. The going wasn't bad but it was confusing when the route would periodically double itself in an amoeba-like fashion. More often than not these diverging paths would come together again. Obviously drivers before us had been testing out different routes.

It was late afternoon by this time and the drooping sun was etching the landscape with shadow. Although this was our first time we were actually entering into the Sahara with our car it wasn't as forbidding as I dared think. On both sides rose the blackened mountains of the Anti-Atlas; completely devoid of vegetation and as abrupt and harsh as a Martian landscape. They gave way to the very gently undulating valley we were now driving across. In all directs sturdy acacia trees had put deep roots in the rock strewn soil, each at an appreciative distance from its neighbor. And as always, whenever I thought about these hardy trees, I was reminded of a salient piece of advice I'd picked up from a book about driving in the Sahara - "Don't park under an acacia tree. They drop large, menacing thorns on the ground that will almost certainly give you a puncture."

The sun dropped further and beamed in through the window shield with the force of an invading army. We were almost ready to call it quits and find a camping spot when we suddenly came upon a village in the midst of that desolated landscape. Half the houses had been abandoned, their adobe walls slowly dissolving back into the earth, the other half, evidently, were home to the tilling farmers we now found ourselves waving to. Channels had been cut in their fields to aid irrigation but try as I might I couldn't see where they found their water. On the other side of the village we entered another stretch of desert and stopped for the night.

As we started setting up, a farmer and his wife went zipping by on their moped. Seeing us they doubled back. Trygve raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. "Don't invite them to stay, whatever you do," she warned. While his wife stood at a distance, her husband came over to exchange greetings. He was excited to meet us and smiled deeply, displaying a full set of tea and tobacco stained teeth. Although he spoke no French beyond "ca va" he made us understand that he lived nearby and asked if we'd like to spend the night at his place instead. I was looking forward to spending the night under the stars, so I declined by thanking him profusely in Arabic, then said "Bghrit nshuf hada" - "I want to see this" and with a grandiose gesture raised my arms to heavens. He understood immediately, smiled his stained smile and bid me farewell, much to the obvious relief of his wife.

The stars were immaculate.

Mustapha had given us the idea that the piste was better after passing the village. Instead it got worse. I, of course, had been airily throwing around my opinion over supper; "Those people with their 4 x 4's," I'd sneered, "if a road's a little rough they always think it's only possible for them." They may well have been right this time. Trygve, who had been reluctant to take any piste in the first place, sat fuming in the passenger seat as our slow and unwieldy progress occasionally brought great thuds to the bottom of the chassis from rocks I'd unintentionally disturbed. Each bang brought to mind a vision of our horribly exposed gas tank. Eventually the way became so bad I had to periodically ask Trgve to walk ahead and clear the path of snags. I sneaked a short video of her doing it; she's dressed in bright red and orange clothing that would be better suited to an Indian wedding but still works well in a desolate Saharan landscape; each time she bends down to pick up a rock and toss it aside is like watching a New Yorker flip off a errant cab driver. I exchanged places with her shortly after that.

We came across occasional habitations of mean tents whose denizens came running out toward us to beg for gifts. One girl ran along beside our slow, bouncing vehicle screaming for chocolate. When she gave up the chase she let out a piercing scream that raised the hair on the backs of our necks.

To speed up our painfully slow progress, I adopted a new method for dealing with the snags by seating myself on the hood of the car with my feet firmly planted on the bumper. In this way i had a much better view of the road ahead and didn't have to get out of the car every time a rock needed to be move or the precipitous path through a wadi evened out.

A white van suddenly appeared on the road behind us. We let it catch up and introduced ourselves to the French couple in the cab. They said they'd come from Foum Z'guid and had tried to drive to Zagora along the same piste we'd just taken but had decided it prudent to turn back. I wondered why we hadn't seen them earlier in the day. We let them go ahead of us and stood watching as they slowly and unevenly disappeared into the distance. Shortly afterwards I started discovering rocks with spots of fresh black, liquid on them. The van must have taken a hard hit at some point.

Like a mirage a herd of heavily laden camels appeared over a rise. I motioned for Trygve to stop and reached inside to grab my camera. I tried taking a short video as we lumbered along. The results are like the ships of the desert during a particularly bad storm at sea. The leader of the camel train deliberately ambled toward the edge of the piste. He wore a white burnoose that framed a face as deeply wrinkled as the surrounding mountains. Instead of greeting us he thrust his hand toward his mouth and growled "khoobs", the Arabic word for bread. I said we didn't have any - which was a lie. He put his finger and thumb together and again made a motion like eating but this time he said "floos" - now he wanted money.
"Well you did take pictures of his camels", I heard Trygve insinuating.
He was obviously a very tough man who led a life so different from mine that we had nothing in common. He fixed me with eyes that were as foreign and forbidding as those of a shark. I showed him my camera and took his picture. I don't know if he even understood what I was doing. He couldn't have cared less anyway. He wanted something from us and would be damned if wasn't going to get it . I grabbed four dirhams from inside the car and gave them to him. He spat out a harsh, guttural cascade of words.
"What d'ye think he's saying?" I shot at Trygve.
"That you're a cheap bastard and that he should be given more," she said leaning toward him and putting another coin in his claw of a hand.

After several more arduous kilometers, we finally closed in on the far end of the mountains and like a miracle the stones and sand suddenly leveled out to become smooth, two lane dirt road.

Ait Ben Haddou

2007-01-19T02:41:00.000-08:00

One of the joys of having a car is being able to change your route at whim. It was in this manner that we arrived at the village of Ait Ben Haddou. Noted for its ancient adobe casbah, it has become not only a UNESCO protected site but has also the backdrop for many a Hollywood movie.

Surrounded by a profusion of oasis greenery, the casbah rises like a natural outcrop that erosion has formed into softened, straight lines, crenellations and incised geometric patterns. Behind carefully kept up towers and walls, the casbah's buildings crowd as though seeking comfort from one another. Their shared walls create a befuddling maze of intermittently roofed passageways that eventually lead to ruins at the top of the hill. These once formed the last line of defense against marauders. Along the way artifacts from the non-too-distant old days have been unartistically laid out to help give the masses of tourists passing through a sense of antiquity. Deeper into the casbah the buildings have been taken over by the commerce of tourism complete with predatory salesmen lingering out front with all the languages of the world falling from their lips. One was dressed in the blue truban of the Tuareg and said he rode his camel into the desert to pick up "the beautiful things" he had hanging from the walls and covering the floor. If anyone believed that line - there's a bridge in Brooklyn...

The view from the ruins was awe inspiring. On one side a barren desert of veined foothills slowly lumbered across the landscape; on the opposite side a wide stream flowed, bringing with it a lengthy, ribbon of foliage. Huddled adobe buildings edged the fields and trees, eventually giving way once more to the rich sienna and umber tones of the desert. Along the horizon, the snow capped peaks of the High Atlas dominated all below them like a purpled, elongated crown.

Marrakesh

2007-01-11T12:12:00.000-08:00

Examining a map of Marrakesh quickly becomes an exercise in socio-political cliches; the western side of the city is dominated by rectilinear boulevards and avenues that are obviously based on a large scale, pre-arranged plan. The eastern side, by contrast, is a living organism of tangled alleyways and ill-defined streets that haphazardly lead to plazas or simply become dead ends. In search of a hotel, we drove into the latter at night with its famous square, the Jamaa il Fna, in full swing. It was like waltzing into a bee hive. Knots of robed pedestrians unceasingly spilled around our moving car as we vied for limited space amidst a chaos of donkey carts, taxis and itinerant vendors. At times the idea of individual sides of the road became wishful thinking. Navigating our lengthy Volvo further into the Medina only made it worse. Even in first gear we were afraid we might run someone over or destroy their sidewalk stall. After winding through several claustrophobic alleyways and arriving at one of the Medina's ubiquitous cul-de-sacs, we wisely decided to beat a retreat and head back to the modern quarter.

As we still needed to provision ourselves for the journey ahead and buy some useful equipment for the desert, such as water containers, another spare wheel and sand ladders, we decided to devote the following day to these ventures. The obvious place to start was in the enormous market behind the Jamaa il Fna. Arabic souqs (markets) are always interesting places but the one in Marrakesh is supreme. Its narrow lanes and pint -sized stalls boast a cornucopia of everything that Morocco produces from filigreed wooden furniture to musical instruments to carpets. It was in the realm of scents, perfumes and incense that we lost our way. Trygve is a dedicated scent junkie who has wisely turned her addiction into a successful business in New York. Being with her is like having a dog's nose for a companion. All thought of trying to achieve our initial aims vanished the moment she saw the first perfume shop. At first the dealers assume she's just another tourist without a clue and pull out the cheap oils, then little by little come to realize they are talking to an expert. Then the good stuff comes out. For my own part, I'm not a big fan of scents and spent most of my time trying to absorb the swirling ambience of the souq while being intermittently swabbed with perfumed concoctions or having jars of dried flowers thrust beneath my nose.

Despite the all consuming hubbub, the Medina is calmer than it used to be, at least for foreigners. The last time I was here, fifteen years ago, wandering through the souq meant stepping from one hassle into the next one. Trying to extricate yourself from a carpet shop without buying anything was an exercise in both patience and perseverance. We've been told there's been a big crack down by the authorities and that the touts who used to make life hell for the tourists now receive healthy fines and/or prison terms. I suppose we should be grateful.

That being said, exploring the Medina was a delightful adventure with every turning offering something entirely different. On one street your nose suddenly alerts you to the subtle, green smell of cedar wood. Following the scent trail, you discover a small workshop where planks are being made. Around the next corner a long table is laden with mounds of patisseries swarming with bees. Neither the people working there nor the those buying their goods seem to pay the insects the slightest attention. The touts come up to be sure. "Monsieur, you want to see the tannery? Come. I show you," but then leave as easily as they came. For me the weirdest experience was to be taken into a carpet shop for a cup of mint tea, getting engrossed in conversation with the owner and then leaving without having been shown a single piece of merchandise. By the end of the day the only piece of equipment we'd bought for the journey ahead was a single forty liter water container. There's always tomorrow.

Casablanca

2007-01-09T02:59:00.000-08:00

It took thirty-five minutes to cross the Straits of Gibraltor from Tarifa to Tanger and arrive in a colliding world of casbahs and apartment building, the call to prayer and pop music. With customs cleared and money changed we immediately left Tanger and headed south on Morocco's only toll freeway; destination - Casablanca. Thanks to the eponymous movie, the city's name conjures up images of exotic locals in which suave characters delve into intrigue over mixed drinks. Modern Casablanca is noted for its ugliness and pollution. We arrived in the city with a map that proved to be almost useless and with the glare of the setting sun cutting through the windshield like a knife. Invariably we found ourselves utterly lost in the city's mad rush hour with pedestrians flooding continuously around the car like a lapping tide. Trygve rapidly modified her driving habits to fit in with the maelstrom while trying to follow my blind directions to turn left or right or go straight ahead. We didn't have the faintest idea where to find a hotel and, with mounting stress, almost abandoned the city. Whether we could have found the way out at that point is debatable. Finally we settled on trying to find the Place Mohammed V, a large green area in the center of the city, according to the map. This seemed to be the only way we'd be able to get any bearings. Directions elicited from passersby began with concerned grimaces followed by labyrinthine explanations involving splits in the road and remembering to turn at certain neon signs. Eventually we succumbed to the classic stop-at-a-gas-station-to-find-the-way scenario. By the time we had parked the car and got a hotel room, Trygve looked like she was in a state of shock.

The Chatham to Tarifa Challenge

2007-01-07T23:48:00.000-08:00

When thinking about the Plymouth-Banjul Challenge back in Santa Barbara I always thought about the African portion of it, forgetting all the while that we'd have to drive down through France and Spain to get there.

The trip itself began under auspices that boded well. The rainy weather had broken and picking up the car had proved to be as simple as using an ATM card. When we saw the blue Volvo with its cheeky California license plates at Chatham Freight Yard it was like opening a Christmas present. Now it's four days later; I'm tired and bedraggled and haven't made it out of Europe.

Leaving England was easy: two roundabouts, turn south, keep going till you pick up the M2, then follow it to Dover - lots of lovely signs in English saying "Ferry this", "Ferry that" and off we went to France.

Northern France, as seen from the Peage (their pay-as-you-go freeways), is as interesting as a drive through the San Fernando valley on the 101. All the on ramps lead to slab roofed, brightly lit gas stations complete with mini-marts offering plastic wrapped sandwiches, candy bars, ice creams and large, throwaway cups for sodas or instant lattes. Many of the same chain stores illuminate their road side existence with identical signs to those found in America, "Toys R Us", "Ikea", the golden arches of McDo (pronounced McDough), perhaps the most popular restaurant in modern France. It is disturbing to see the country becoming a Franco-American mass market culture, though perhaps it is just the culture of all expressways.

At Limoges, we left the Peage to join Route Nacional 21 toward Perigueux. It was a welcome relief from the faceless, homogeneity of the freeway: small towns replete with the essence of France: "tabac" signs, boulangeries and boucheries. Parts of the road were so straight I could hear my mother's voice saying, "Oh! This must be a Roman road." This was the region where the French still hunt for elusive truffles with trained pigs and force feed their geese to the hilts in order to create the richest foie gras. The landscape was as rich and subtle as a well crafted cheese.

At the Spanish border and we made a decision to stay in Donastia, a Basque town I'd stayed in some years earlier. There's a big difference between arriving in a town afoot and quite another by car. Apparently the city's cacophonous labyrinth of streets was exclusively designed for miniature horse and carriage teams that seldom made left turns. Once we found a hotel, and the irritation of navigating the city streets had subsided, we strolled to the center of town in search of bars. Donatia's bars are, as far as I'm concerned, it's crowning glory - not because of the drinks, as they're quotidian to say the least, rather because of the tapas. They line the bars on little plates and each of them is a gourmet's delight. One of our delicacies was an eggplant/anchovie combo that would have had even the most picky connesieur lipping his lips.

It was the Epiphany the following day and Catolico Spain was on holiday. With everyone huddled in their houses with friends and family the going south was made easier, even in traffic mad Madrid we traveled straight through with the smoothness of a goodbye handshake. It helped alot. The two previous nights had been difficult. Trygve was still nursing a hacking cold she'd picked up in New York and netiher of us had had much sleep. The stress of constantly driving and then finding our way around clogged cities in search of elusive hotels was taking its toll. Several times the journey erupted into button pushing arguments based on trivial matters. With superhuman effort we smoothed out the wrinkles crossed the
Spanish plain, then the Sierra Nevada by night and finally made the Costa del Sol and its inelegant profusion of overabundant tourism.

Now we are at Tarifa, the southern most Spanish city with tickets for tomorrow's ferry to Morocco and the start of our African adventure.

Leaving Shanghai By Boat

2006-11-12T23:06:00.000-08:00

I've always been told that the best way to arrive inor depart from Shanghai is by boat.

The ship blasted its horn and slowly shuddered toward the center of the Huanpu River; the feted moment had arrived. Knots of passengers, myself amongst them, held on to the viewing deck railings and feasted in the exhilaration of departure. The engine eased into cruising mode and with deliberate certainty downtown Shanghai began slipping away.

From the clear vantage of the river the skyline formed an endless collection of enormous, concrete fingers below which is was difficult to imagine a street life of humans and vehicles. Slowly the edges of downtown dissolved into a thin veil of brown smog but the city didn't let up for an instant and with steel determination become ever more industrial. Along came the dockyards, mile upon mile upon concrete mile: unending battalions of cranes swinging through their 180 degree arcs to create or dismantle city blocks worth for shipping crates. Yawning dry docks held iceberg sized ships clear of the water, their great hulls being worked on by microscopic humans. In others, new ships were taking form and demanding such prodigious amounts of iron that I began to wonder where it could all have possibly come from. To port and starboard the river traffic was unrelenting and even when we entered the estuary of the Huanpu vast sihouettes of ships rose and fell on the tide on all sides of us.

The high season for the Shanghai-Osaka ferry company hadn't yet arrived, as a result there were literally more crew than passengers on the boat. My friend Mark, who'd done the crossing the year before, had suggested I forego a cabin and instead pay for a space in the tatami matted communal rooms. "You'll spend all your time talking to the people there anyway", he'd added. Instead I'd opted for a four bearth cabin with the hopes of being alone. I intended to write the rough copy of Japanese version of the Phrasemaker series during the forty-eight hour crossing making peace and quiet was an absolute must. Despite the sparcity of passengers I was bunked with two middle-aged Japanese gentlemen. A quick enquiry showed me they spoke little intelligible English and even less Chinese. I decided a move was necessary and hurried down to the purser's office where with a smile, a wink and an extra twenty dollars I was given a luxury bearth all to myself on the upper deck, private bathroom included.

Japanese is a beast of a language. At first glance, when looking at it under the magnifying glass of the latin alphabet, it seems quite simple: the pronunciation is easy and the structure appears straightforward. From that point on it grows ever more complicated. The Japanese seem to have a distinct knack for breaking the world up into such intricate detail that, by comparison, English appears blunt and even quite brutish. I struggled to find the words that translated best and in many cases simply had to hope for the best. When it came to numbers, I discovered that Japanese had practically gone into the realm of absurdity. They make use of two systems, one set when talking of unclassified items up to ten with a entirely unrelated set being used in most other circumstances. And when it came to concocting the words for "one day", as in "I've been in Japan for one day" - it made no sense at all. I can only conclude that, as the Japanese term excludes both the words "one" and "day", it must be some form of idiom. Fortunately I managed to find a deinite pattern to slip it into. With perseverance the Japanese language finally acquiesced and began falling into an identifiable and useful formula.

Just before sunset on the second day we sailed under the bridge linking the islands of Honshu and Kyushu and entered Japan's Inland Sea. The female half of a sarong clad Japanese couple beamed with delight. "We have been away from Japan for six month", she informed me in choppy English. " I am so happy I see my country. Tomorrow I go home". On both sides of the ferry verdant hills drifted up from the shoreline with neat and orderly towns hugging their lower aprons and spreading out at the water's edge into ports and dockyards. Then, in a nod to incongruity, a scale replica of St. Mark's Square, Venice, appeared on the starboard side only to drift away again like a mirage. As sunset slipped into night, the surrounding landscape slowly dissolved into myriad constellations of light and I returned to my cabin to finish up the Japanese Phrasemaker.

At nine the following morning we arrived in Osaka.

Shanghai - The Showroom of China

2006-09-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

Two hours by train from Shanghai, the landscape becomes as flat as a table top and buildings unceasingly dominate the horizon. In waves the houses gather and close in toward the track to form villages and towns then break away again allowing the rice paddies to intervene . Then Shanghai begins in earnest. The outskirts of the city quickly become forest thick, high rise apartment blocks that increase in size and opulence as downtown Shanghai comes into focus. It is the showroom of China, a place of sleek, modern skyscrapers that turn into 21st century light displays at night. Below them, state-of-the-art pedestrian precincts are bursting with shoppers examining displays of latest fashions and midst it all are oases of squeaky clean, artistic parks that become temporary refuges for the citizenry both during the day and the night. A spaghetti bowl of neon-lit above ground highways and an expanding subway system tie the vast metropolis together with the current jewel in Shanghai's transportation crown - the Magnetic Levitation train that connects downtown to the international airport at a top speed of 431KM per hour. The Bund, one side of Shanghai's prestigious waterfront, has become an eight lane highway with a lengthy viewing deck running along its length. It's still fronted by colonial buildings of yesteryear, each sporting red Communist era flags and all in desperate need of a thorough cleaning. They appear small and insignificant in comparison with their new surroundings. Across the Huanpu River they face a growing, new skyline dominated by a rocket ship-like viewing tower of vast concrete tubes connected by great metal balls. Shanghai is booming and is not afraid to show it.

The pace of growth is astounding. The lethargy of the communist years is gone and in its place freewheeling capitalism has planted firm roots. But elements of the past still linger. Down the back streets the washing still hangs from lines strung between two buildings and the noodle shops for the workers are still crude and plentiful. The rapidity of the outward change still hasn't quite sunk in and many of the Chinese still have a difficult time accepting their new surroundings. It is rather like being in a city where half the people have won the lottery and still haven't had the time to adapt to the change in their circumstances.

I spent two days wandering the streets, my mouth agape.

The Journey Continues...Wulingyuan

2006-08-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

I've been back home for two months and all that time the urge to complete my travel blog has has consumed me. Now the time has arrived to finish it off.

I set out in April 2006 with a mission to travel from Cambodia to Japan via Vietnam and China, with the aim of speaking the language in each of the countries. To do this I used my Fetch-a-Phrase D.I.Y. Phrasemakers, each of which gave me the ability to create thousands of basic sentences in each of the languages en route. It worked amazingly well, particularly the Japanese version as it was written during a two day boat trip from Shanghai to Osaka and was ill-formed. More about that as I finish off this blog but suffice to say it was a very successful journey

I left off in the middle of China and now it's time to return there...

Wulingyuan National Park

By Chinese standards, Wulingyuan National Park was heinously expensive. For the equivalent of $30, half a month's wages for many the average Chinese worker, we were given a credit card-like ticket and electronically finger printed before being allowed in. On the other side of the turnstile a convoy of shiny, new purple buses sat waiting to take the visitors deeper into the park.

As in American National Parks, the majority of the people preferred to stick to the main routes and viewing areas. On the map these were highlighted in bold red. I decided to strike off on one of the lesser blue trails. I asked a nearby Chinese tourist if I was at the correct trail head, pointing at my map as I did so. Full of concern, he suggested I not take this particular route, "There will be no people," he warned, as if being alone were a horrific idea. "It will take five hours!" he continued, his eyes growing wide.
I thanked him profusely and set off . He was right, during the entire five hours I saw no one except a few people doing maintenance.

The views were astounding. Millions of years of erosion had separated skyscraper-sized spires of rock from the main body of the surrounding hills. Enormous and independent, they rose from the valley floor like a collection of phenomenal phalluses, each wearing a bonnet of rain forest with tufts of foliage clinging precipitously to crannies down the length. The faraway canyon floor was a sea of Jurrasic green that created a landscape so primitive and forbidding it was easy to imagine having to duck in order to avoid the talons of a pteradactyl.

Dropping to the valley floor, I joined the 'Highlighted Tourist Route" where hoards of Chinese and Koreans were standing in front of strategic sculptures posing for pictures or examining the trinkets they'd bought at the souvenir stalls. At first I pitied them missing the magnificence I'd just seen, then I followed the path they'd just taken. It followed an ancient stream bed that was lined on both sides by great monoliths of rock that stretched so far upwards, they gave the illusion of bending outwards over my head. It was like walking down a serpentine avenue of rounded off, clay skyscrapers.

For two days I wandered the park, trying to make sense of the scenery. Stripped of its vegetation, it would have been indistinguishable from parts of southern Utah and, like the national parks there, consistently challenged my eyes to accept what was being shown to them.

Fen Huang and the Doctor

2006-06-17T08:19:00.000-07:00

I met the Doctor at the old Miao theater in Fen Huang. He'd been running around the decrepit, old complex snapping digital images of the empty buildings and antique woodwork. With infectious enthusiasm, he tried to explain to me what everything was and how it used to function. I barely understood a word as he delivered his lecture in a cascade of incomprehensible, academic Chinese. Fortunately he'd interject a few heavily accented English words once in a while to help clarify a point. I'd grasp at them like a starving man being thrown grains of rice. Unusually for a Chinese, he was traveling by himself and had come to north-eastern Hunan Province driven by a passion for the local Miao culture. He later told me that he'd spent ten years in the region.

The Doctor was a short man with even grey hair and a pair of thick spectacles that he took off whenever he read something. It was inconceivable to him that I was incapable of understanding Chinese characters as for centuries they have been the lingua franca that have allowed Chinese people with wildly different dialects to communicate. Every time he wanted to be sure I understood exactly what he was saying, he'd use a finger to systematically slash out complicated ideograms on his raised palm. Never once did he seem to fathom I couldn't make head or tail of a single a stroke. He'd spent four years studying medicine in Japan and spoke fluent Japanese. When I told him I was in the process of putting together a system for speaking Japanese quickly, he started peppering his sentences with smatterings of Japanese words and phrases, which only helped to confuse the issue further. Together we wandered around Fen Huang all afternoon, exchanging comments and finding out personal histories in a mixture of three languages.

The town has become a hot spot for Chinese tourists as the center of town managed to survive the scourge of all of China's twentieth century upheavals virtually unscathed. Twenty-first century tourism has, however, seriously rearranged the place. The ancient streets and stilted, wooden waterfront buildings have all been turned into souvenir shops, bars, restaurants, hotels and travel agencies. In a flurry to look quaint, new old-style buildings have shot up, the wood still a honey yellow. Women in ethnic costumes ply the tourist trade, posing for pictures and selling mass produced handicrafts. The covered bridge over the river has become a seething market of knick-knacks with an elongated teashop filling the second story. An armada of specially crafted, wooden tourist boats continually passes below it. When they arrive on the other side, a singing, costumed woman on a raft greets them with a bright Miao song that invariably ends in a jaunty "woo-hoo, wheeee!" that the boat passengers can't help but emulate. Fen Huang also boasts an old walled city, with several pagoda'd gates leading into it. These streets too have been taken over by stalls with a repetitious touristic theme of hand-painted t-shirt shops, pseudo-ethnic costumes, silversmiths, Chinese style wine shops, and places selling thick chunks of blackened, dried meat, one of the local delicacies.

Part of our wanderings brought us to his hotel, where we used my computer to look at his woefully amateurish photographs and videos of Miao villages. He'd paid ten yuan for his tiny, threadbare room and the way he'd been careful not to buy anything told me that he'd budgeted his money very carefully in order to make this journey. Both of us had skipped lunch so I invited him to have supper with me and said I'd pay.

At a restaurant by the bridge, the Doctor removed his glasses and examined the menu. He asked the owners a barrage of rapid questions and decided it would be better to eat elsewhere.
"Too expensive," he explained.
On the opposite side of the street, a macabre selection of dried animal and bird parts was hanging from hooks at the front of a food stall. They looked like the leftovers from a mummy unwrapping and, trying to keep any hint of revulsion from my voice, asked the Doctor if he'd ever tried that type of food. He said is was known as "la rou". He said he'd eaten it many times and that it was delicious. My curiosity was piqued and I suggested we give it try. The Doctor fancied himself a bit of an expert on the subject of Miao delicacies and immediately rejected the meat we were looking at. Good la rou, he said, should be black on the outside. After a short search we found a place exhibiting meat with just the right hue. Once again the Doctor scrutinized the menu and cross examined the staff. To be certain their la rou met his high standards, he asked to see their secret stash then had them dissect a couple of pieces so he could sniff the insides. After inspecting all the vegetables and apparently finding them adequate, he disappeared in to the back the restaurant, presumably making sure it was acceptably clean. Meanwhile, I sat nursing a beer, wondering if I was about to find myself the victim of a culinary ordeal I couldn't extricate myself from.

The la rou was delicious. It turned out to be the Chinese version of Spanish Jamon and cooked together with greens and chiles set my taste buds singing. I'd asked if they had any mushrooms. After their thorough inspection and subsequent cooking they also appeared on the table transformed into a exquisite dish of subtle flavors. The dishes kept on coming, an entire platter of stir-fried greens in a gente, garlic sauce and a great bowl of chopped up, seasoned roots. Together we worked our way through the food, passing comments on how good everything was, with special credit given to the la rou. My stomach was almost at capacity when a large bowl of steamed rice was added to the table followed by even bigger bowl full of egg and tomato soup. It would have been rude not to eat some of it so I continued snapping away with my chopsticks until I finally had to announce that I couldn't eat another bite. For some inexplicable reason this made the Doctor unhappy. He soldiered on until almost all the food was gone.

I was getting ready to order the bill when the woman of the establishment came over and handed the Doctor a few bank notes. I suddenly realized he'd paid for it all beforehand while at the back of the restaurant. Following the Chinese face saving custom, he was treating the foreigner and picking up the substantial tab. He couldn't afford it but I knew there was no way he was going to let me repay even a little bit.
I sputtered out a defeated, "But I wanted to pay."
"You pay next time," he said with a sour grin.
As we walked back toward the covered bridge I insisted I at least buy him a drink somewhere and he kept stringing me along until we arrived at the street leading to his hotel.
"How about we meet tomorrow for breakfast? Please, let me buy that for you."
I knew it was pointless. He made some excuse about always getting up late, which was obviously untrue, then he bade a hasty farewell and hurried off to his shabby room.

Traveling Hard Seat in China

2006-06-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Train 2205, carriage 9, hard seat 41. Even with all the windows open and a faint waft emanating from a series of rotating ceiling fans, the heavy, hot air was as still as a dead body. Every seat in the carriage was taken with the excess passengers standing in the aisle. A couple of people sat above everyone else on the seat backs, absentmindedly fanning themselves with newspapers.

Sweat was dribbling out from every one of my pores and I repeatedly my examined pocket alarm clock wishing the ordeal would get underway. I was in a sour mood. I'd asked the conductors when I boarded the train if there was a chance of obtaining an upgrade. They'd babbled something in Chinese that offered a glint of hope but nothing had materialized. Traveling overnight by hard seat is possibly one of the worst ways of getting anywhere. I'd experienced it fourteen years previously and swore I'd never do it again. I ended up buying the ticket because everything else had been sold out. It didn't stop me from going back to the ticket office on several occasions but each time I'd been met by the infamous "Mei you" - "Don't have". As time ran out, I held on to the last straw hope that perhaps the Chinese Railway had modernized along with much of the rest of the country. The moment I caught sight of the train, I knew it hadn't.

Seat number 41 was an aisle seat. Between me and the window were two other people with three more sitting facing us. The seats were the same type I'd known and hated. They had padding, which was nice, the main problem was the angle of the seat back; no matter which way you sat, it didn't line up with your back and neck thereby ensuring that, whichever way you positioned yourself, only part you would be touching it. The seats themselves were not quite wide enough and were positioned just close enough to the facing passengers to make sure you were doomed to sitting like a naughty schoolboy who has to sit up straight at his desk with his feet firmly planted on the floor. A sliver of a table extended out from the carriage wall with just enough space so that the people by the window could fold their arms on it and put their heads down. Those in the middle seats could do likewise but each only owned about a 10th of the table top. Seat 41 and its opposite didn't even have that luxury. As the booby prize, the passengers on the edge got a hefty belt from the legs and baggage of everyone struggling up and down the aisle.

The train shuddered into motion and by the time we'd reached cruising speed the air had calmed down a little. My fellow passengers and the staff had already taken some interest in the grouchy foreigner amongst them. One of the conductors saw me board on the train and had made it his personal mission to track me down and eke out a free English lesson. He said his name was Shaolin, like the famous Kung Fu temple somewhere north of us. At the time I secretly wished he'd do what the students at his namesake do and take a flying leap. But I figured it would kill a some time and that was exactly what I wanted to do. We ran through the usual banalities, "Where are you from?", "Are you married?" etcetera, before hitting hot topics such as "how long had he been a train conductor" and "what had he done before?" His vocabulary proved to be quite extensive but his grammar followed patterns that defied logic. Pronunciation, he admitted, was one of his biggest failings. I could only agree. Whenever I asked him a question, he'd ask me to repeat it then, in a desperate attempt to understand the second time, he'd shut his eyes and screw up his face so tightly it's a wonder smoke didn't come billowing out of his ears. Whenever the train pulled into a station, we'd have recess as Shaolin hurtled down the corridor to unlock the doors to let more passengers on.

With cunning born of desperation, I started twisting the English lesson towards the question of ticket upgrades. He earnestly replied that regulations forebade him from issuing bearths to passengers. I seemed like a good opportunity to teach him the saying "rules were made to be broken". Eventually I had to write it down to make sure he understood. When he did, his eyes suddenly grew large and he literally took a step backwards. Was I actually suggesting I thwart The Regulations!?
"Oh! No!" I assured him, secretly hoping for just such an event, I was merely teaching him some useful English.

In a last desperate bid to tilt the odds in my favor I asked him if he'd like to have a book in English, namely the now pointless Vietnamese guidebook I'd seriously considered leaving behind in the hotel room that morning. Regulations, he assured me, also forbid him from accepting gifts from passengers. That didn't stop me. I ferreted around in my bag, pulled out the book and generously gave it to him in full view of the entire carriage. He couldn't refuse as it would have caused me a loss of face in front of the whole audience. Instead he perused it studiously, making murmurings of appreciation and kept it. I figured I'd gone as far as I dared, if he couldn't get me a sleeper now then there simply wasn't one to be had. Desiring a little breathing room and also wanting to give him some time to find me the coveted berth, I said was going to the dining car for a beer. I never saw him again.

Although the railway's superstructure had remained virtually the same, some changes had taken place in new China. Smoking in the seating area of carriages had been banned and, except for those few who felt that rules should indeed be broken, everyone complied. Another big change was that people generally refrained from using the floor as a trash can. In old China, the conductors used to sweep it every few hours or the gathering piles would have eventually taken over.

I tried all the positions I'd attempted fourteen years before to try and get some sleep: legs crossed and wedged below the seat, head lolling forward; body sideways with knees in the aisle, head flat against the seat back; head back, spine arched, feet flat on the floor. It was no use. When my body did eventually give out and sleep overtake me, my torso would begin falling toward the floor and I'd awake with a sickening start. I closed my eyes and tried to concoct intricate memories of past journeys to help the seconds inch by and every hour on the hour I'd make the trek to the space between the carriages to light a cigarette and stare out the window into the all consuming darkness. I smoked slowly and deliberately making sure each one lasted as long as humanly possible. When I returned to my seat, one of the standees would have invariably taken it for a momentary reprieve. I'd unceremoniously turf him out of it then go back to the next installment of serial memories.

As we approached stations in the early hours of the morning, the passengers would liven up. Those who were staying would examine the people across the aisle to see if they were making any move to collect their baggage. If they were, a hurried interrogation would take place and a frantic scramble across the aisle take place, the coveted seat by the window being the prize. I missed out on all occasions and stayed propped up in seat 41. Finally the sky started to lighten and one of the conductors came by to tell me we'd be arriving at Huai Hua in half an hour.

Changes in China

2006-06-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

I've been in China for two whole days now and all I can say is that it's knocking me for a loop. I came to here fourteen years ago and spent four months criss-crossing the country until finally exiting via the Khunjerab Pass into Pakistan. China in those days was not exactly foreigner friendly. We had a special currency all of our own called the Foreign Exchange Certificate (FEC) to pay for the few overpriced hotels we could stay at, exorbitantly expensive train tickets and foreigner price entrance tickets to all the country's major and minor attractions. It was officially illegal for us to possess the local currency, renminbi, but it was impossible to exist without it as most Chinese people had never heard of FEC and refused to accept them. The trick was to change dollars for FEC then sell them on the black market for a slight profit. With the government officially ripping us off, the local people couldn't resist getting in on the act; we invariably paid ten to twenty times the local rate for just about everything.

Just getting from the border to Nanning was an exercise in how China had changed. I used to figure how long a bus journey would take by dividing the distance by 25 kilometers per hour and was generally very accurate. The buses were wheezing, overcrowded antiques and the roads questionable at best. This time I was whisked to the bus station by a three wheeled motorcycle taxi to board a luxury air-conditioned bus that left within three minutes of my arrival. It wasn't even close to full. As we pulled out of the station, a hostess in a purple and white uniform with a red satin sash came down the aisle and offered us each a complimentary bottle of mineral water. Once we hit the highway, she made the circuit once again, this time making sure we all had a seat belts securely fastened. Seat belts on a half-empty bus in China?! It was as incongruous as an picture of Mao Tse Tung in a three piece suit and tie. Even the road was a surprise; a smooth four lane highway that began and ended at a toll booth and came complete with sparklingly new crash barriers. There was hardly any traffic but even that drove sedately, making sure it stayed in its lane and obeyed the speed limit. Outside the sealed window a fog enshrouded scenery of karst hills and delicate linear fields whipped by the window. On the bus's television set a Chinese woman belted out songs in English then Mr. Bean fumbled with office equipment. It was all so startling prosaic. It took only two hours to cover the 200 kilometers to Nanning's southern bus station which, like the journey itself, was as modern and efficient as a digital watch.

Eschewing a taxi, I decided to ask at the information booth where I could find a bus to the train station in the center of town and was told by a giggling girl in a uniform to take bus number 213. The bus was like any found in America or Japan: hard plastic seats, a bar down the center with hand grips and a succession of quick halts at glass covered shelters. Anyone examining my face would probably have mistaken me for a rube from the country the way I gawped at the modern high rises and ample, well laid out open spaces. Above all it was the cleanliness that amazed me. There were trash cans on the street! And people were using them!! I felt like I'd arrived in the wrong country.

I still expected the hotel arrangements to echo the past but even that proved false. I spotted a hotel offering rooms for 80 yuan a night as we neared the station . "Right," I thought, "I'll try that one. They'll probably turn me away, telling me it's only for Chinese people, but there's no harm in trying." I got the place; a single room with a bathroom and a view across to a housing complex. I found out later that within the last year almost all hotels have been opened to foreigners.

A walk around downtown Nanning was equally as startling. The central district is dominated by a crisp, clean, modern shopping plaza that hosts so many McDonald's restaurants I'm beginning to wonder if I should eat at one to make sure my experience in China is complete. What is most amazing of all is that I haven't been ripped off once. To my great surprise the prices, even for a pack of cigarettes, are marked and even if they aren't I'm charged the same price as everyone else: a corn cob from a street vendor costs one yuan for me (about 12 cents) as it does for everyone else, an ice cream cost half that.

I'm slowly coming to the realization that China has become rich, not per se in the international sense but as more of an internal idea. By European or American standards these people are not making much money, but that seems to be offset by the amount of merchandise they can buy that is now made in China. In the shopping plaza a well heeled clothing store is selling a decent shirt for 15 yuan (a little under two bucks), a high end place is selling a better variety for 90 yuan. Because of the relatively low costs of manufacturing within China itself and the fact that it's enormous population makes it a world unto itself, the Chinese feel they have become well off by local standards. I'm also starting to wonder if there has been a government program to change the actual character or the people. I have a television in my room with all of the 45 channels broadcasting in Chinese. Intermittently I catch a public service message that is an indication of the direction this country is taking. In one of them, a handsome, well built man is jogging through the center of a city. Suddenly he spots a piece of trash on the ground. With an appreciative audience looking on, he flips up the can with his feet, in the style of world class soccer players, and propels it towards a trash can. It enters one opening but with reckless abandon exits through another. Enter: a sporty Chinese lass in form fitting sweats. She slows to a trot, bends down to pick up the can and puts it where it belongs, in the trash; just like everyone else should do. The gathered crowd smiles approvingly, then the two goodlooking atheletes exchange knowing looks and jog off camera.

It would be absurd for me to judge modern China by one bus ride and a single city. All I've read of China lately has suggested that the countryside is not doing quite so well. Even in Nanning a suggestion of the old ways lurks behind every modern building in the guise of decaying housing projects and hand to mouth existences. An older profession is also making a comeback. On the road leading from my hotel to the train station, ladies in painted faces and skimpy dresses call out to all male pedestrians, inviting them to step inside their grungy, open front boudoirs for some momentary pleasures.

Hanoi, The Vietnamese Language and Heading North to the Border

2006-06-03T15:27:00.000-07:00

My friend, Bradford, described Hanoi as being a Graham Greene city. It's a place where East has met West and left behind a mixture of decaying, French colonial buildings, concrete monoliths, courtesy of its fling with Communism, and more recently ultra-modern mini-skyscrapers. To provide protection from the sun and rain many of the city streets are lined with sinewy, tropical trees that provide a canopy for the swirling street life below. In the old quarter each area has its speciality. Near my hotel was the discordant tinsmiths' street where each small place acted as both a workshop and store front. Around the corner was the place dedicated to selling traditional musical instruments. And so it went, street by street, each geared up for one type of business. As the modern world sneaks in, holes are forming. CD stores are intermitently sprinkled throughout the old quarter, as are bright new clothing stores and tourist style restaurants. The march to modernity is relentless. Every day, I was told, another delapidated and shuttered colonial building disappears to be replaced the gaudy new standard.

Wandering around Hanoi is always an adventure. The traffic is a constant and abundant buzz of mopeds with horns blasting every few seconds. The Hanoians have a habit of parking their "Honda Dream Excesses" and "Dylans" crosswise on the sidewalk so what few pedestrians there are must walk in the street to make any headway. Like all big cities, Hanoi hides little nooks of delight. One was a cafe that Bradford showed me. I would never have found it otherwise. It was down an innocuous corridor with only a rough sign to announce its presence. After climbing four flights of stairs we eventually arrived at a table and chair strewn balcony boasting a magnificent view across one to the treelined lakes that dot the city. I'd walked around this particular one earlier on in the day. It was edged by a well-designed, manicured park of curving walkways and strategic benches and provided a welcome respite from the ever shifting energy of the surrounding city. My walks around the city invariably took pause at one of Hanoi's numerous coffee shops. They can be found just about everywhere and come in a wild variety of styles, from shabby holes in the wall decorated by a curling picture or two, to state of the art glass and steel establishments where the staff wear uniforms and the prices keep out the riff-raff.

When I wasn't sipping coffee or getting lost in the warren of streets, I had to work. I needed to finish of the process of correcting and revising the Vietnamese Phrasemaker. The person I found to help me was Mr. Duc, the manager of a tour company that operated out of an office at the back of my hotel. He wasn't the perfect man for the job as his English was somewhat feeble but as time was running out, I needed to use whatever resources I could. Like all residents of Hanoi, Mr. Duc hid himself behind a mask of reserve and never once offered information about himself that didn't first require an inescapably probing question. During one smoke break, I pried it out of him that he was fluent in Russian. He'd learned it at school and had then lived in Volgograd for a year. He said that Russia had seemed like a paradise at the time, compared to the relative poverty of post war Vietnam. Using this theme as a spring board, he gracefully switched the subject to talk of more impersonal matters.

As usual the process of revamping the Phrasemaker led to some interesting snippets regarding the language and the culture. Like Khmer, Vietnamese has enormous range of pronouns to refer to people based upon their sex, age, relationship and number of people. One of the more interesting ones is the word "chung-no". It translates as "they" or "them" when speaking of small children, objects and animals and was term used during the war when speaking of the American forces. Mr. Duc showed how easily Vietnamese can change it's meaning with a simple omission of a tone. The phrase "an buoi", with a diacritic over the "o" that looks like a question mark, means, "eat for a little while", without the mark it becomes "eat cock".

Once the Vietnamese portion of the project had been finished I told the hotel staff I would be leaving for China the following day. One of them urged me to buy a $21 ticket for the tourist bus to Nanning, the first big city across the Chinese border. His description of the journey made it sound very comfortable and convenient; a mini-bus would pick me up from the hotel at 7:30AM and whisk me and other foreigners out to the edge of the city where we'd board a luxury A/C bus. By 4:30PM we'd arrive safe and sound in Nanning. No hassles, no danger, nothing unexpected. It sounded as adventurous as a can of chicken noodle soup. I deliberately got up late the next morning and after a lingering breakfast caught a motorcycle taxi to the train station to see if anything was going north that day. What I really wanted was a last opportunity to use the Vietnamese I'd learned over the past three weeks. In Hanoi so many people had spoken passable English that it made it difficult at times to make any progress. In Vietnamese I bought my ticket to Dong Dang, the last town before China then constructed the sentence to find out at what time the train was expected to arrive. It turned out the border would be closed by the time I got there. I'd have to spend one more night in Vietnam.

The journey north was slow and pleasant. I traded snippets of conversation with my fellow passengers, who were delighted at having a foreigner on board, and spent languorous hours studying the scenery from the only area on the train open to the elements. The staff warned me repeatedly not to stand there as young boys were apt to throw stones at the passing train. I couldn't resist staying where I was; the view was extraordinary. It was dominated by a long, snaggle toothed range of karst hills that presented great sheets of brittle, discolored rock face and crests of stone so rough and uneven they looked like saw blades. A dense mane of foliage clung to every horizontal surface and draping it all was a foreboding mist that suggested this was not a place to go for a Sunday walk.

In Dong Dang, to my great relief, not a soul spoke English and just as I'd hoped, I managed to accomplish all the necessary tasks in basic Vietnamese: transport into town, haggling the price of a hotel room, supper and a bottle of water. I was surprised at how easily it came to me and it was with a tinge of regret that I realized the following day I would be leaving it behind like a piece of discarded luggage and in its place start picking up Mandarin Chinese

Around the DMZ

2006-05-27T20:19:00.000-07:00

A friend recommended I visit the former Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that used to separate North and South Vietnam. The DMZ extended out 5 kilometers on either side of the Ben Hai River and ironically became one of the most heavily armed and bombed places during the course of war. To get there I hired 46 year Gwang to act as my guide and moped driver.

Much of the south-eastern land leading up to the DMZ has become a government sponsored rubber plantation. It wasn't the latex secreting trees that were the focus of our attention though. What Gwang wanted to show me was a sizable crater left by a bomb from B52. I'd seen many bomb craters before, in particular when I'd visited Laos the previous year. With exaggerated solemnity I told Gwang what I'd learned; courtesy of the Ho Chi Minh Trail's diversions through Laos, the American Air Force dropped the equivalent 2 tons of bombs for every man woman and child living in the country at the time. He wasn't impressed and in a spurt of patriotic one-upmanship countered by saying that 15 tons had been dropped for each Vietnamese person living in the DMZ at the time.

We crossed a new concrete bridge over the Ben Hai River and I stepped on North Vietnamese soil for the first time. By the side of the road, a sign ostentatiously announced that this had also been the beginning of one of the arms of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It generally only operated at night when American air superiority was less effective. Gwang motioned me to follow him toward a bend in the river where the remains of a blown up iron bridge still formed a shallow vee in the water,a testament to the accuracy of the daylight raids. The Viet Cong had rapidly built the bridge to ferry supplies south. It had been destroyed almost as quickly. As we stood examining the wrist thick suspension cables and misshapen girders that once supported it, a yellow mini-bus made a pit stop at the middle of the new bridge and a platoon of Viet Cong veterans in olive green uniforms stepped out to peer over the parapet. It is always an odd moment when you see the "other side" for the first time. I remember being in Eastern Europe many years ago when the iron curtain was still a reality. A friend I were hitchhiking by the side of the road when a Soviet helicopter flew by. A bright red star was painted on the side of its obese, unfamiliar body and the mingling of the chopping rotors and grinding Russian engine sounded like a foreign language. It was then that I realized just how indoctrinated I'd become in the "us and them" mentality. All the films and documentaries I'd seen about the "War in Vietnam" had dealt almost exclusively with the experiences of the Americans. On the bridge "the other side" filed back into their van and left.

I wanted to visit Truong Song National Cemetery, the last resting place of some 16,000 Viet Cong soldiers. Smaller military cemeteries, dating from the end of the war, can be found in most towns and honor only the soldiers who fought and died for the North, Truong Song was no exception. Those who fought and died for the South have never been honored and have no memorials.

Before entering the cemetery, Gwang and I stopped for a drink at a diner near the main gates. The yellow mini-bus had parked on the other side of the road and it's former occupants were perusing a display of cheap souvenirs. Feeding my curiosity, I sauntered toward them armed with a digital camera but was uncertain of the reception I'd receive. What would a white face mean to a group of people who'd spent their youth trying to kill an enemy that looked just like me? Coupled with that was the fact that they were about to pay their respects to comrades who had been killed by American bombs and ammunition. We eyed each other guardedly, trading occasional nods of recognition but not otherwise making real contact. I felt awkward. Back across the road a trio of veterans had taken up residence at the same table that Gwang and I had originally occupied. I wandered back for a chance to get up closer and more personal. After offering a hearty hello, and shaking hands all around, we ordered some beers and drank together. One of the veterans was a dapper fellow with a collection of prestigious medals pinned above his breast pockets. I wanted to ask him some searching questions but as my basic Vietnamese wasn't up to the task I thought about using Gwang as an translator. He was sitting between a couple of the veterans and obviously feeling very uncomfortable. Earlier he'd told me that his father had been a soldier for the South and after the war had spent two years in prison. I could tell he didn't want that coming out. Fortunately the veterans were in a hurry, they finished their glasses of beer in one gulp and left. About ten minutes later we saw them again. This time they were standing to attention in front of the Tomb of Unknown Soldier while one of their number laid a wreath. As we watched, they briskly made a final salute and then broke ranks to head back to the mini-bus.

I have always found the serried and standardized rows of military cemeteries disturbing; they are parade grounds in which all personality has been removed except for a few engraved lines detailing birth, death, name and rank. All of Truong Song's tombs were made of indentical orange and blue plinths with a stone at the head and a blue and white porcelain incense holder at the feet. The cemetery had been broken into different segments with each one being assigned the dead of a particular province. The exception was the one area dedicated to those who could not be identified. Their tombstones all read "chua biet ten" - "not yet know name". At one known grave site a couple of family members had come to pay their respects. They'd placed oranges, cigarettes and bundles of fake money on the slab then lit incense which they clamped between their palms as they knelt and offered prayers. With touching solemnity, one of them also added a burning stick of incense to all the surrounding graves.

The land around the Ben Hai River has now reverted to field and farm but even now the inhabitants live in continual danger of accidentally unearthing potentially fatal, unexploded ordnance. For some of them this ordnance provides supplemental income. The metal the Americans used to make their bombs was of a very high grade and empty casings fetch a seductively high price on the scrap metal market. During the periods between rice harvests, when the farmers are generally idle, the more daring of them venture out with metal detectors. Most of the time they'll just turn up shards of shrapnel but once in a while they'll find a good sized bomb. Some types of bomb are too risky to touch, especially those that contain white phosphorus, other types, bombs dropped by B52s, are considered the best. To render them safe and re-saleable they must screw off the nose and tail, remove the detonator and cut the right wires. Suffice to say, it's a risky venture. Should they succeed in not blowing themselves to bits, they also acquire the bomb's explosives which they can then use to dynamite fish.

Gwang took me to a scrap metal merchant's shop on the periphery of a village. In the middle of the main storeroom a green scale sat ready and waiting to weigh in the next treasure trove. Around it, hillocks of rusting shrapnel vied for space with piles of twisted iron. The split casing of a cluster bomb unit sat prominently displayed on one of them and, propped up against one wall, a half pyramid of defused bombs attested to the success of a few foolhardy individuals. I poked through the scrap trying to find the most interesting items. I found them sitting on the floor by the door, a pair of dirt brown mortar shells. Judging by their flattened noses they had been duds but it was obvious that no one had bothered trying to defuse them. It seemed a bit rash leaving them sitting by the entryway where anyone could stumble on them.

Our last port of call was going to be the Vinh Moc tunnel complex. To get there meant crossing the Ben Hai River again. This time we would cross at the point where the only bridge connecting North and South Vietnam used to be. The story goes that it was painted two colors; the Southern half being yellow and the Northern half Communist red. Like all bridges it had been destroyed during the hostilities and a new one built on the same spot once peace arrived. Splitting the country in two had had the undesired effect of dividing families. To show the pain it had caused, a large concrete statue of a distraught woman stood on the southern bank and looked with yearning toward the North.

The Vinh Moc Tunnels comprise two different systems, one for the military and other for civilians. They were dug over a period of two years along with an extensive warren of trenches as a defense against the severe American bombardment of the area. In two side by side pictures in the small museum, the "after image" showed the village of Vinh Moc with one single shell of a house left standing.

Flashlight in hand, we first descended into the military tunnel complex. From the entryway the tunnel descended rapidly and had been retrofitted with newer wood to keep it from collapsing in on itself. The wood ended abruptly to be replaced by earth walls, some of which had been coated with a stabilizing layer of concrete. Most of the tunnels tapered slightly toward the ceiling and were just high enough for a short man to stand up in. Moving deeper into the darkness the heat became oppressive and suffused with a cloying, earthy dampness. With quick steps Gwang lead me along the main passage, stopping now and then to point out the different branches and shine his light into niches where the soldiers had slept. The twists and turns had been so thoroughly disorienting that when we eventually rose to the surface again at the far end, I didn't have a clue where the original point of entry had been.

The civilian tunnels were much more extensive as they'd been designed to shelter upwards of 700 people. There were three levels, the lowest of which acted as a bomb shelter. Elongated holes had been burrowed into the earth along the length of the tunnels, each was only about a meter high by two or three meters deep and was meant to house an entire family. For effect, a quartet of plaster mannequins had been positioned in one of them: a mother, father and their two small child huddling together on their bamboo bed. The complex had been a virtual subterranean village, complete with a meeting area that doubled as a class room, wells, bathrooms, a maternity ward and a hospital. For the better part of four years the villagers had lived underground. It was too dangerous to farm the fields; instead supplies were secretly shipped in from the North. For light they used oil lamps whose acrid smoke can only have added to the discomfort. Air shafts and hidden doorways on to the sea gave the complex a limited form of ventilation but the long term deprivations had obviously been severe. The idea of spending four years living in these conditions made my skin crawl, especially when the beam of Gwang's flashlight happened upon a multi-legged creepy crawly the size of a Mars bar.

Ho Chi Minh's House

2006-05-27T20:03:00.000-07:00

Vinh is about three quarters of the way up Vietnam. It is a city made in the true communist mould: wide boulevards as straight as rulers, aesthetically challenged housing complexes and intermittent billboards exhorting the workers to follow the party line. Now it is all just a substrate, fifteen years of capitalism have done their work in transforming the city center into a hustling, free-wheeling market place. The only reason to come to Vinh in the first place is to visit the nearby village of Kim Lien, the birth place of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam's beloved father figure. To the Vietnamese he's known as Uncle Ho, or Bac Ho, which does sound a lot like "backhoe". I'm still trying to figure out whether or not the cross-cultural allusion works. Under his aegis the French were defeated and a communist state installed in North Vietnam. Afterwards, until his death in 1969, he lead the fight to reunify the country and rid it of all the troublesome foreigners.

To get to Kim Lien I hired a xe om, a motor-cycle taxi. It was a short and, at times, death defying ride through a landscape flattened by paddy fields and bordered by attractive low hills. The village, squat and forgettable, would be just another rice town were it not for its remarkable son.

Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890. The houses in his compound were certainly much younger than that. In the tropical heat the thatched roofs, woven walls and wooden rafters and supports would have rotted away years ago. I got the impression of it being very much like the paradox of "My Grandfather's Axe" in which the speaker states that his father replaced the handle and he replaced the head, but that it is still his "grandfather's axe". There were a few potentially, authentic knick-knacks knocking around, some fossilized books and an ink dish or two, all lovingly preserved in glass cases. All the other furnishings, mat covered wooden beds, a loom and some tables and chairs, were newer and probably made especially for the exhibit. It was difficult to tell as all the information was written exclusively in Vietnamese. A woman asked me in broken English if there was anything I'd like to know about the place. I asked her in which of the houses Ho Chi Minh was born.
"Yes," she answered definitively.

The compound was filled with people eagerly craning their necks to peer into the various rooms. Many of them were children who sported red scarves in the style of the "Young Pioneers". Women tour guides equipped with megaphones and dressed in knee length shirts and baggy pants, the traditional garb for Vietnamese women, herded them from place to place trying to instill in them the magnitude of their present location. By and large the children found the big nosed foreigner infinitely more interesting. Even the adults couldn't resist nudging one another and pointing in my direction. At the flower strewn altar to Bac Ho, one of them insisted on having his picture taken with me.

The square outside the compound, where the tour buses park, is bordered by souvenir shops. Here the faithful can buy all the Bac Ho paraphernalia their wallets can afford, from slim volumes of his works to green plastic busts that probably glow in the dark. My personal favorite was the Bac Ho clock with a halo of lights forever jetting out of his whispy, bearded head.

The Train to Hue

2006-05-21T17:59:00.000-07:00

Doing their utmost not to lose a moment of valuable English learning time, Van and Hien accompanied me to the railway station. I didn't feel up to the task of playing teacher as I'd just finished a grueling day going over the Vietnamese Phrasemaker with Mr. Quang. He is both an English language teacher and a linguist, two assets that made him the perfect person for the job. It was intensely interesting but after the fifth hour of constant listening and directing, my mental faculties were worn out. I sat with Van and Hien listening to their badly mangled English, making corrections as necessary and wishing the time would pass a little quicker. They resolutely hung on till the very last moment then we loaded my luggage on to Hien's moped to ride the last 200 metres across the compound to the railway station's main entrance. I had suggested we just walk there but since the mass introduction of mopeds into Vietnam going anywhere by foot has become an aberration.

With the exception of one lithe middle-aged woman, all my companions in the six-bunk, air-con cabin were pensioners. The oldest, a tiny, fedora wearing man with few remaining granite colored teeth, beamed with joy when realized he'd be sharing the space with a genuine foreigner. No one spoke English but through a rapid succession of signs I was shown where to stow my bag and then asked to exchange my middle bunk for a top one so one of the old ladies wouldn't have to make the dangerous assent.

At exactly 7pm the train pulled out.

The first person I fell into conversation with was Mr. Doan, a former high school teacher. He is now retired and, like everyone I met on the train, was going to visit relatives. When we got to the subject of age he asked me to try and guess his. If my recent experiences are anything to go by, this parlor game has become something of a national obsession. Despite the fact that age plays an important part in which honorific you apply to someone, the Vietnamese are highly desirous of appearing younger than their years. While doing the preparation for this journey I learned I should always use the youth invoking pronoun "cª", when addressing a woman of a certain age as it makes them sound more maidenly. Now I was about to learn that it's more polite to guess that someone looks younger than they actually are. I'd taken Mr. Doan's wrinkles and retirement into account and pronounced him 65 or 66. His features momentarily sagged. He was only 61. In retaliation he added five years to my age when I asked him to guess mine.

I hadn't brought any food for the journey. Providence came to the rescue in the form of a wood paneled dining car at the far end of the train. Supper was a thin soup of noodles and beef, known as pho (sounds like "fur"), in a translucent, plastic bowl that gave it the uncanny appearance of having gone off. Like all train food everywhere, it was barely palatable and I did wonder if I'd be up half the night getting rid of it. Along with supper came the now familiar linguistic interaction; first the staff is almost surly, then I eject a few words of Vietnamese. A smile breaks across the interlocutor's face and my comestibles are delivered with further grins and words of encouragement. Eventually I end up telling them that I've been learning to speak Vietnamese for x amount of days and eyes become wide in wonder. It's a real ego-stroker until they discover just how little I really can understand.

I was exhausted and clambered up to my bunk with the idea of doing a little writing then going straight to sleep. Quy, the lithe middle-aged woman in the opposite bunk, had other ideas. She was intrigued at having a foreigner in such close proximity and couldn't resist assuaging her curiosity. When I began writing, she poked her head across the gap and indicated she'd like to have a look. I surrendered. Using my Phrasemaker and a very poor dictionary we made conversation. My Vietnamese must have sounded very stllted and at times idiotic but her mountain of patience saw us through. Whenever I gave up and started babbling away in English, she'd smile back and say the one word she knew in my language, "no" and shake her head vigorously. It became a running joke especially when I started using it in defense against her sudden flurries of hardcore Vietnamese. Quy told me she loved music and was both a singer and musician in a five piece, traditional orchestra. In return I told her that I used to play in a seven man, gamelan band but had to leave because I was too busy with other projects. I shook my head sadly at the end of my soliloquy to let her know that I regretted my decision. We traded addresses but I doubt I'll ever see her again. In the middle of the night she and her aging mother, the woman occupying my original bunk, got off in the seaside, resort town of Nha Trang.
At seven in the morning Mr. Doan decided I'd slept long enough and poked me in the ass as a wake up call. To make up for it he bought me breakfast; sticky rice in a plastic box, to which he added a dried peanut condiment he'd brought with him. It was actually quite good. The old man and his wife then insisted on adding to the feast by buying me a polystyrene packaged ready-meal of noodles and beef. My real desire was for a hot cup of coffee. At that moment, one of the ubiquitous, blue shirted staff came by pushing an ancient trolley with drinks on it. To my great relief they had coffee. Mr. Doan wrinkled up his nose when he tasted his. "Not good!" he spat out. My taste buds must be less educated or my addiction stronger; it tasted fine to me.

Outside the window the bottom half of Central Vietnam was rolling by the window in a symphony of green. The rice growing season was in full tilt and the shoots were so high and plentiful that each paddy field gave the impression of being an oversized lawn. Across the landscape hunched figures in conical straw hats diligently attended to the crop. The train slipped in and out of the lush countryside to chug noisily through farming towns and hamlets. Each one supplied a vision of the country's backyards, an impression that always reminds me of seeing someone in their underwear. As if bent on proving my point, one man nonchalantly pulled his pants down and squatting there, in full view of the train, did his morning evacuation. He seemed completely unembarrassed by it.

After taking a nap I woke to a different landscape. A little further north the first cycle of the rice harvesting was over. The fields sat brown, stubbly and unmanaged. I was surprised as I'd expected to see a repetition of green paddies all the way through Vietnam and into China. It prompted me to ask Mr. Doan how long the country was from end to end.
"About 2500km. Vietnam is very long and skinny", he added, as if making up for its length.
I asked him what the northern region was like.
"There a four seasons up there," he said in his best schoolmasterly manner. "In the south there only two: the wet season and the dry season."
We looked over the map of Vietnam together and he pointed out the northern town of Sapa which he proclaimed to be the most beautiful place in all of Vietnam. It was close to the border with China's Yunnan Province. If I decided to go to Sapa, it would probably mean continuing on to Kunming, a lengthy detour from the nebulous route I'd initially planned.

While having a cigarette in the noisy, designated smoking area between the carriages, I got to talking with another older gentleman. Using the rattling of the train as a cover, he told me of his distaste for all things relating to the Vietnamese
government and social system. He had reason to be upset. After the American Army left the Vietnam in 1975 he was accused of being a collaborator and served five years in prison. He told of horrific conditions with barely enough to eat, grueling hours of hard labor and dozens of fellow prisoners succumbing to disease and beatings. When he was let out he was unable to get a job and lived in constant fear of being arrested again by the police. At that moment a couple of men slowly walked into the corridor. He whispered to me that they might be police and quickly disappeared. I ran into him a little while later and he continued his tale. He'd finally created his own job as a watch repairer but the pay had been bad and for years he had lived from hand to mouth. Now he was sixty-two and retired. The state was providing him no pension so he was living out his waning years on the largesse of his two daughters. "Sixty dollars a month," he grumbled. As we conversed in hushed tones, a young man came over and stood suspiciously close, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. The old man threw me a knowing look and disappeared once again. Politics is a dodgy topic in Vietnam. I'd learned the day before that speaking ill of the country and its leaders can be a criminal offense but, to a man, everyone has been critical of the government, particularly in regard to the mass corruption inflicting the country. Most people see it as the biggest problem hampering the countries leap into the First World of technology and opulence. One day I hope to meet a corrupt official to see how he translates the issue.
At lunchtime we were each issued a tray with four plastic containers and a pair of chopsticks. The largest of the containers was predictably filled with rice. Peeling back the lids of the other three I discovered a meal designed to repel the taste buds: tasteless mushrooms in brine, questionable lumps of greying sausage and vile greens with slivers of gristle and meat. I was hungry and did my best to soldier through but eventually gave up in disgust. The three older people all finished theirs. When times have been exceptionally tough you learn to eat whatever is set before you.

The train was now wending its way through a series of coastal hills. I quickly looked up the word for "beautiful" - "dep" and added the Vietnamese equivalent of "very" to it. We were passing a small peninsula replete with a hook of sandy beach. Set back from it rural houses peeped out from beneath palm trees that quickly gave way to a mosaic of crafted paddy fields. The next carriage down had corridor windows facing the sea. I excused myself from the cabin, found a window, yanked it open and settled in for the remainder of the journey. The spectacular viewing continued broken only by occasional tunnels through the mountains. Tunnels have always held a special delight for me; I know that when I emerge at the far end I'll be entering a entirely different realm of landscape. The shifting terrain brought us endlessly toward the sea. Below, waves crashed against forbidding rocks hemmed in by a thick cover of jungle green then around the next bend a sharp valley would slowly reveal its interior contours before finishing off with a graceful sweep of unmolested beach.

From my vantage I could make out both ends of the train when it navigated around a tight curve. We had an engine at both ends now, the rear one helping push us up and over the hills. Then I noticed a hunched figure gripping on to the outside of the train. Then another. Two other people suddenly sprang up from a space between the carriages and to sit on the roof. Stowaways! Perhaps it is not the most fetching simile but the way they clung on to the enormous body of the train reminded me of parasites. The train slowly came to a halt at siding to let a south bound express come through. The stowaways let go of their host and with bags in hand walked the length of the train holding up shards of dried fish for sale.

The old man with the fedora appeared. I bade him come over to the window and join me. For the length of a cigarette he stayed there gazing out and nodding to me once in awhile to assure me that, yes, it certainly was "dep".

Before arriving at major destinations along the line, a tannoy distorted voice would burst into action announcing not only our arrival but also to give us a short lecture on why the city was worth visiting. This included a short history that tried its best to be objective and failed miserably. I was eager to hear what they would say about Hue, especially considering its successful take over and subsequent loss by the Viet Cong and the wholescale devastation visited upon it as a result, but the excited chatter of the arriving passengers and the hub-bub of departure drowned it all out.

Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City?

2006-05-12T22:06:00.000-07:00

Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City, HCMC, whatever you want to call it, the big, bad southern city is a maelstrom of activity. Last night, my first day in Vietnam, I sat at a street corner mesmorized by the non-stop chaos of motor-scooter traffic. Like Cambodia the only rule seems to be "stay on the right side of the road most of the time". Several roundabouts dot the city center, each time I've passed through one on the back of a motorcycle taxi or "xe om" (seh-om) I can't believe we make it to the other side. It is anarchy in motion; rather like being in a sea of fish that refuse to school but dart around in whichever direction takes their fancy. As if by a miracle, they hardly ever crash into one another. Making a simple turn requires a faith in the driver bordering on religion. Trying his best not to slow down he cuts maniacally across the opposing lane of traffic with mere inches to spare then revs the motor to race down the next narrow street at break neck speed. If taking a xe om borders on lunacy, crossing the street is tantamount to suicide. Imagine stepping into the path of a raging herd of buffalo and you have the idea.

Burgeoning commerce and free enterprise have once again become a part of the city's psyche. Restaurants, hotels and shops have burst on to the scene in a way that only capitalist countries have managed in the past. Incongruously, amidst the glitz and glamour a red flag with the a golden hammer and sickle suddenly appears or a blocky, fifties-style bill board promoting the ascendency of the manual laborer. You wonder how the powers-that-be can hold on to their socialist ideals against such a blatantly money-making backdrop.

Daring the rampaging buffalo traffic, I went for a long walk. Generally I have a very good sense of direction but this once I surrendered myself to getting lost in the warren of streets and boulevards. It didn't matter. I was armed with the business card from my hotel; a manic xe om driver could help me find my way back if necessary. HCMC is a jungle of concrete and store fronts with many of the buildings several stories high and only one room wide. Most of the time I had to walk in the road as lines of motor scooters blocked most sidewalks. In back alleys I stumbled across low slung apartment complexes sporting forests of television antennas or hunched markets with refuse and pools of water littering the ground. And always, wherever I went, I heard the mating call of the xe om driver, "Hello! Motorbike? Motorbike?"
"Toi muon di bo," I'd reply, "I want to walk." That seemed to do the trick, they'd break into a broad smile and let me go on my way in peace and quiet.

Amongst all the varieties of establishments I discovered, the most interesting was a corner shop selling dead snakes and insects in bottles of alcohol. The owner assured me it was for medicinal purposes by pointing at various body parts and agreeing with me when I looked up the word for pain. Giant, black scorpions ruled one shelf but the crowning glory was the display of adult cobras, each menacingly rearing its head with another species of snake clamped between its jaws. It rather puts to shame the idea of eating the worm in a tequila bottle.

When I found myself having accidently come full circle, I decided it was time to make a catch a taxi to explore other regions of the city. Like every foreign visitor I pointed myself toward the War Remnants Museum. Originally it was known as "The Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes" but in a show of politeness was changed to fit Vietnam's new political face. Even so, America is still the prime villain. The courtyard bristles with different forms of US military hardware from the war years, each with a white on blue sign in Vietnamese and English explaining its speed and fire power with a few editorials telling how many thousands of people may have been killed by that particular type. Inside the halls it was no holds barred. Sections showed the ruthless efficiency of war and the pathetic aftereffects: Agent Orange Victims, people disfigured by napalm and phosphorus bombs, images of the My Lai Massacre, Viet Cong being tortured by American advisors. In a side gallery was a recreation of a prison from the era with plaster mannequins forever living out the conditions that the people in the photographs had to endure in real life. The final hall was dedicated to the people around the world who protested the war, from Americans to Japanese to Germans to Congolese and many more. It is a saving grace that many Americans did raise their voices as it is not lost on the Vietnamese people.

Outside the museum I met Van, a budding English language student. I'd been warned to expect such an encounter. The Vietnamese are mad about learning English, seeing it as a gateway to a better life. In general it's usually a one way affair with the student getting him or herself a free lesson. In my case, desirous of learning Vietnamese, the tide was turned and I got as good as I gave.

I've always known that during this journey the Vietnamese language was going to be the toughest nut to crack due to it's difficult system of pronunciation and accompanying tones. I was told by an American friend that it needs to be spoken correctly at all times as people might get upset at hearing it being mangled. As usual the reverse is true. I'm getting encouragement galore and great smiles of appreciation. After one day I've got down a few of the basics and been able to create quite a few phrases, but I'm quickly discovering that the local pronunciation makes it very easy to create nothing more than well-intensioned gobbledy-gook. Tomorrow I have an appointment at 1pm with Mr. Guang, an English teacher with a Saigon accent. With his help I'll start the refining process of the Vietnamese Phrasemaker.

Demons and Aaps

2006-05-07T07:27:00.000-07:00

On the way to Phnom Penh, I noticed that Mouly had a green, woollen band tied around his wrist.
"Why are you wearing that?" I asked. I'd seen many people sporting something similar during a bus ride in Laos the previous year and had been told it was to help ward off travel sickness and expected to hear a similar answer.
Mouly chuckled and said it was supposed to help protect him from demons. He'd gone to the pagoda at his wife's insistence and for five thousand rials, about a day's wages, he and the band had been blessed as a form of travel insurance.
"What do demons do?"
"They give you bad luck. Maybe they cause an accident."
"Where are they then?"
"Maybe they are up in the trees."
"Can you see them?"
Mouly said that normal people couldn't see them, only the most powerful monks and even then only once in a great while.
Demons, are apparently everywhere and always intent on creating mischief. Prayer flags flutter at the highest point of many a house. From there, in a nod to gravity, the protective magic flows downwards thereby shielding the whole building from nefarious demonic influences. But, even then, demons can still sneak in and create havoc. In such an event, a monk must be called in. Using special incantations the soul of the demon can be coaxed into a glass bottle which is then immediately stoppered and a magic, woollen string wrapped around the top. The demon-filled bottle is then brought into a pagoda and stored there.
"Can you pick-up the bottle?" I asked.
"No! No!" Mouly warned. Merely touching it can bring on a bout of bad luck.
"What happens if the bottle breaks?"
"Then the demon will escape and create bad luck again."
He added that even if it did manage to escape the bottle, it would still be trapped inside the pagoda until one of the doors or windows was opened.
Mouly had nominally converted to Protestant Christianity some years previously but I'd always sensed he only half accepted it; the hold of his native Buddhism and the powerful folklore of Cambodia are still very much a part of him.
"Do you believe in demons?" I asked, stressing the "you".
He laughed nervously. "In the countryside many people believe. In the city, not so many," he said, avoiding a straight answer.
"Are there other types of demons? "Ghouls. Or something like that?" After describing what a ghoul was, Mouly introduced us to the aap.
Aaps look just like human beings during the daylight hours but when night descends a dramatic transformation takes places. The aap's head and vital organs detach themselves from the body then fly around looking for filth to eat.
"You mean garbage?" I asked while looking out the window at one of the ubiquitous piles of trash littering the side of the road.
"Yes. They eat that," he said excitedly.
"I think I see a business opportunity here," I joked.
It's debatable what aaps do actually eat. Perhaps there are several varieties as I was told later by Jasmine that some have a taste for human blood.
No one Mouly knew had seen an aap but if someone did, and had their wits about them, sticking a thorn through the vital organs and pinning them to the ground can be very beneficial for the perpetrator. An aap needs to reattach itself to its body before the dreaded light of dawn. Fearing for its life, it will reveal where a piece or two of gold has been hidden.
"Is it possible to tell if someone is an aap?
Apperently It is. They have a thin red scar going all around the base of their neck.
Just then we drove by a movie theater. On the billboard a grisly head with organs attached was flying across a bright red background. I'm told horror movies are very popular in Cambodia.

Back in Phnom Penh

2006-05-03T19:54:00.000-07:00

After two and half weeks in Kampot, I'm now back in the capital, Phnom Penh, though still in the company of Mark and Jasmine. I'd figured I was almost at the end of revamping of the Khmer Phrasemaker then last night I sat down with Jasmine and went over the nouns with her. She is a very exacting and insists upon me using the politer versions of the language. It seems that much of what I gleaned from Mouly may now have to be changed. It is a daunting prospect that may well see me having to retrace my steps to Kampot in order to get this finished. On the bright side I can most certainly get by in Khmer now and have quite a formidable array of words and phrases at my disposal.

A few days ago I went up Bokor Mountain with an older couple from England, Norman and Viviane. They'd hired a car and driver to go there and after an elongated conversation with them, they invited me along. It was rough going; the road up is a shambles of ruts, rocks and potholes. At times we all wondered whether the aging Toyota Camry would be able to make it.

The attraction of Bokor Mountain is primarily the view. From the top it's possible to see across to Vietnam on the one side and all the way to Sihanoukville on the other. The lay of the land is surprisingly similar to that of Santa Barbara; the mountains are almost the same height and drop to a short flattish coastal plain with a succession of islands breaking the horizon. Of course the details in a Cambodian landscape are decidedly different to those of California. The flat lands are broken into squares of paddy fields edged by suggestions of villages and there is no beaches. In their place mangrove swamps hold domination. The vegetation on the mountain is wildly different; in place of chapparal is a dense carpet of jungle complete with hanging vines, raucous birds and the delicious fear that somewhere amongst it all there may be tigers. The French made the top Bokor Mountain into a retreat from the daily blast of Cambodia's heat. They started building in the twenties, put in view pointing restaurants, made a church and of course constructed a capacious, elegant hotel to service them. It all stopped working at the beginning of the seventies and eventually wound up as one of the last bastions of the Khmer Rouge who finally surrendered the place in the early nineties. Poverty and nature have taken their course. All the buildings have been stripped of whatever fixtures they possessed, down to the very wiring of the electrical systems and, for her part, Nature, has struck with a vengeance mottling the outsides with the patina of decay then coating the surfaces with a beautiful orange mould or lichen that brings a shock color to what would otherwise be a dismal affair. Wandering around the old hotel, through the once elegant rooms whose only remaining decorations are the beautifully tiled floors, the weight of history is palpable and as though trying to humanize the place once again scores of latter day tourists have etched their names and messages into the walls. All it does in the end is add to the melancholy.

Viviane had been given a the flower of an insect eating plant as a joke gift. It had the exact shape and dimension of a prodigious penis with a green hue that would have made even the most ardent prostitute back away in horror. It's difficult to be refined and graceful when snapping pictures of a floral dildo but she pulled it off. I am very impressed by the couple. They love to travel and have a preference for creating their own experiences rather that relying on a tour company to do it for them. Their attitude toward Cambodia was refreshing after all the negativity of the Kampot expat community. They always tried to find the best in everything and were more than willing to accept the limitations of a developing nation. Even so the return journey down the broken road started to play on their nerves and it was with a mighty sigh of relief that we arrived back on the main road.

I had been given the seat next to the driver, and budding Khmer speaker that I am, couldn't resist attempting conversation. It worked its magic. I sensed that if I hadn't talked to Dtay he would have remained a silent, unknown entity. Instead he blossomed into a personality and made a special effort to help us enjoy the outing; he picked exotic berries for us to try, gave us all expertly delivered back massages at one rest stop and became my smoking companion when ever we stopped for a pee break. Toward the end of the expedition Dtay suggested we all go for a swim at a well-known spot near Kampot. With a long face I explained to him that we didn't have the gear for it with us. "At bun-ya-haa!" - no problem - he assured us and went on to explain that it was possible to rent shorts and towels at the swimming hole. I was elated, not because I'd be able to go for a dip but because I understood him; understanding what is said in response to my numerous questions has always been a bit of an issue.

The swimming hole was a refreshing cool delight and was situated next to a set of rapids that exuberant boys leapt into accompanied by tire inner tubes and howls of pleasure. It was a perfect end to a good day. Just as we were leaving a couple of four wheel drives pulled up and disgorged their cargo of westerners. We'd seen them earlier on in the day up on Bokor Mountain; apparently going for a paddle is the culmination of every tour.

Of Hierarchy and Pronouns

2006-05-03T19:51:00.000-07:00

Just as eyes are said to be the window to the soul, language is the window into a culture.

Today I tried to figure out the Khmer system of pronouns. This is possibly the most complicated aspect of the language and shines a light on how people in Cambodia actually perceive one another. In short, the Khmer culture is extremely hierarchical.
In English we enjoy the luxury of having one single word for addressing other people in the second person, singular or plural, namely "you". By contraset Khmer has a wild assortment based upon age, sex and social standing that must all be reconfigured each time you talk to different person. Eric is slightly younger than Mouly's but he is Mouly's boss and he is wealthy and therefore a powerful man. So Mouly, when talking to Eric addresses him as lowk (rhymes with "folk"), which loosely translates as "Your lordship". Eric, if he spoke Khmer, should address Mouly as nii-ahk (rhymes with "fiat"). This is a term used with "common people" and thus puts Mouly in a lowly position.

If Mouly were taking to a Khmer man or woman of high status he would further have to alter his vocabulary to make sure he was stressing that persons position in relation to his own. This would mean changing the words for "eat", "restaurant", "movie theater" and a slew of others. If he didn't the great personage would feel he or she was being subject to disrespect by an inferior and would thus endeavor to make Mouly's life hell. We, the foreigners, can get away with it, for the most part. Just the fact that we're trying to speak Khmer is respect enough. Even so, we would be wise to interject a few honorific words to show that we at least understand the concept.

In relations with Khmer people I've become acquainted with, a more equilateral system exists based largely upon the idea of us all being one big family. Tula, the bartender at Bokor Mountain Lodge, calls me "Bawng Jon" or "Big Brother Jon". In turn I call him "Own Tula" - "Little Sibling Tula". Dtii-up, who is older than me and female, I call "Bawng-s'rey Dtii-up" - "Older Sister Dtii-up". To confuse the issue further I can also refer to them all simply by their names in place of "you" i.e., "Does Tula want a beer?" When I do this I'm not talking to someone else about Tula, but to Tula directly. I can also refer to myself as "Jon" in place of "K'nyowm", the Khmer equivalent of "I". If it all sounds confusing that's because it is. Fortunately the experience will not be lost once I go to Vietnam; they exactly the same system over there.