Tokyo

O.K. I will come clean. The thing that impressed me the most about Japan was the heated toilets with the automatic spray, in three speeds, and your choice of cologne spray!! Why the cologne spray?

This probably epitomizes my thoughts on the city itself. Everything is perfect, as Tokyo fulfills all the stereotypes, at least from what I saw on my one day whirlwind tour. Daniel, I did make my way in from the airport with no sweat ( ok, so I got lucky and got a Japanese guy working for Philips who helped me buy the ticket, find my seat and told me what to see). Since I got off at Tokyo station, I decided to visit the Imperial Palace, just north of Marunouche. Ok, so that is where I ended up but at least I found it. I didn’t even realize Japan had an emperor even though he only has a ceremonial role and the gardens, which were open to the public, were regal as you can see from the pictures. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain on the one day I was in Tokyo but I refused to buy a umbrella for $10 when I could get one for $2 in Bangkok even though I had no hesitation in buying the $3,000 air ticket. I also had no raincoat since my bags were checked through to Canada (or at least LA). Needless to say, I will probably have a cold for the first time in a year, but at least I learned Japan had an emperor, lots of people in Tokyo love to run on the week-ends and the Japanese take a lot of pride in their horticultural and organizational skills. Even though the entrance was free, we still needed to take a plastic ticket and return it when we left. Go figure!

The Japanese are obsessed with cleanliness. The taxi drivers, garage attendants, foremen on construction sites, wore white gloves and were meticulous with their vehicles. I couldn’t believe watching two different taxi drivers wiping down their steering wheels and dashboards. You would never see that in Asia, that is for sure, or at least in the part of Asia I lived in. I had lunch in the Ginza in a diner with about 10 chairs and the woman took pity on me and gave me a spoon. What shocked me was before she handed me the spoon she washed it in hot water…the water was steaming. I haven’t seen that in two years. In Bangkok, there is a red metallic box on the table in ‘diners’ if there was such a thing in Bangkok and you basically use the fork and spoon that have probably never been washed. Even in bakeries they were aghast when I just picked up a loaf of bread with my hands and went to pay for it. When I looked around I saw everyone else had a tray and was carefully picking up their baked goods with tongs. I also handed her the money directly which shocked her. Then I saw other people who put the money on a tray as if the money is never touched by human hands. God forbid dirty hands might touch the bread.

The business district around the palace and the Ginza were very quiet. I was very tired after my overnight flight so I did consider just going back to the airport but decided to see more and broke down and bought an umbrella. The people of Tokyo should thank me because it stopped raining instantly as soon as I passed the woman my money. By the way, when people walk into malls or stores, there is a machine outside that automatically encases the umbrella in plastic. What a waste of plastic I thought, but then I do not even pick up my clothes from the floor or notice it is there!

Having decided to see more of Tokyo with my new unnecessary umbrella, I took a taxi to Rappongi because I love the sound of the name and it appeared in a book I read in Koh Chang. Thankfully it was busy and fun. There was a beautiful art gallery, coffee houses, museums, fancy grocery stores with one orange for about $3.00 and so on. When I figured it was time to go, I saw a distinguished looking westerner having a coffee and reading a book at Starbucks. I asked him where I could find a train to take me back to the airport. He told me he never took a train to the airport, but offered me an alternative and walked me over to the Hyatt hotel where he put me on the hotel bus. When I asked him why he never took the train to the airport, he told me he was always driven and he put his guests on the bus. When I asked him what he did, he told me he was the ambassador from Switzerland!

My Last Class

Last night, just as I was in the business district around Sathorn getting a print out of my air ticket, Yui called and asked me if I could fill in for a language teacher who was sick. The class started in forty-five minutes so thank God for MRT, the subway system. It would have taken me at least two hours to make it on time by car but the subway system is fantastic and I made it just in time for the class. ( with seconds to spare I might add)

In the past, it seems, I always got my ‘next’ job in June, so I never really had the opportunity that Sylvia did in knowing that the class she just taught the last day in June was the last class she could ever call her own. As I told the students last night, they had the privilege or rather I had the privilege of knowing that this was going to be the last class I would ever teach. Unfortunately, they all went to the principal of the school and told him how much they like me and he offered me a job immediately. I gave him my card and told him to write me if he was serious. I also just got an e mail from my “boss” asking me to meet him in Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow but I told him I will either be in Narita or Tokyo. ( Daniel thinks I should go into Tokyo in my eleven hour layover). I am sort of timid about it and think I should probably just take the local bus into Narita ( if there is such a thing) and look at the temples, have lunch, go into a store or two and back to the airport. I am afraid that if I go to Tokyo it will probably be “mi me ben ha”…no sweat but getting back might be sweat!!! Would I ever find the train station again in time to get back?

On another note, Yui told me that in languages, the first thing people acquire is listening and understanding, then speaking, then reading and finally writing. For some reason this never sunk in with me until this last trip to Issan. Instead of trying to figure out intellectually what people were saying to me, I just listened and reacted. I let the sounds wash over me and did not try to decipher what every word or sound meant. I just tried to respond appropriately. For example, people in stores always say ‘dai mai’ which I know means how can I help you but literally means correct? I keep trying to figure out why they are using the words they are using instead of just accepting them, and moving on with my response. It will be kind of interesting when I get back to Canada tomorrow to only hear English or some version of it anyway!

The rice cycle!

It started the way it ended. Remember my first trip to Ayuttaya early last fall when I met that wonderful family. Now fast forward to the last few days when I met another wonderful family in Issan in a town called Roiet ( which literally means eleven gates.) As I was sitting in the park this morning, as usually happens, no always happens, a toothless man starting talking with me, or was I talking to him and before you knew it I was at his house having lunch with his family with me the centre of interest.

As you go down any dirt road in these small towns, I suspect what I discovered is quite typical. Like the Kennedy compound in Hyannis port, the nongchai and piesou etc ( younger brother, older sister etc) live in adjoining houses but I guess this is where the comparison to the Kennedy family ends.

Let me try to describe a typical Thai house in this area, the poorest area in all of Thailand. As you enter the house, and I use enter loosely since there is no door, there are a few low platforms where people are eating, sitting cross-legged or sitting on another platform idly chatting. It seems that all of the extended family is at one house or the other all the time. I was wondering about how they could all be so idle until I started to think about. They plant the rice at Songkran (about a month ago) and then they wait four or five months until they harvest? What do they do in the meantime? Like an anaesthesiologist there are long periods of boredom followed by frantic moments of panic. I suspect with the rice farmers it is not so much panic as hard work getting the rice in before it spoils.

Anyway, back to the house. I guess the two most important parts are at the back where there is the outhouse and elevated seed storage area, always kept under lock and key except when special guests arrive! I did climb up and look in the storage area, but I did not have the heart (or thank God) the need to look at the outhouse. Also near the back could be what is loosely called the kitchen where everything is done in the outdoors and I suspect, for the lady of the house ,are constantly busy preparing the meals .There did not seem to be electricity of any kind or natural gas, except mine perhaps.

The stories that I heard are, unfortunately all too typical. Q, the little boy you see in the pictures lost his parents ( the children of the host) in a motorcycle accident, 2 other children live in Bangkok and the youngest daughter ( who showed me around the farm) lives with the elderly parents to care for them. All of the children ( Daniel and Josh, are you reading this?) support their parents with regular monthly cash deposits.

Each village ( it seems of about 100 houses of extended family) has it’s own wat and crematorium as you see in the picture. Again, as I have asked myself about a million times these past two years, who has got it right? The poor people of Issan who spend the day, cooking, eating, chatting, gossiping, I presume ( about me) or the west where we get up and go and spend our days becoming as alienated as possible from our extended families as we focus on our own families! When I have ever, to speak personally, ever just sat around chatting without an formal invitation of some sort to someone’s house?

On a reflective note, I am also getting to know a little history and culture. You will notice from the pictures that Phimai, also in Issan, looks very much like Angkor Wat even though it predates Angkor by a hundred years. I am beginning to recognize architectural styles and religious iconography. I am also getting to learn a little bit about the history of the region by what I see.

Tomorrow, I am going to try to move my flight date home. One or two more things to do, but they are rather mundane like picking up pants and getting my laundry done, so this will probably be my penultimate blog entry. I do have an eleven hour layover in Japan where I hope to go into the town of Narita ,so as I sit on the plane to LA, I should have some tale or two to tell!

See you all in a few days.

Bay of Pigs-April 1961

Bay of Pigs- April 1961

On the ferry to Koh Larn, I began talking to a guy who told me he was one of 56 soldiers to survive the Bay of Pigs invasion by swimming from Cuba to the United States where the coast guard picked him out of the water near Florida. He told me he was a navy seal who trained to swim long distance and in this case it saved his life. He told me the battalion sat on the runway in Florida for days allowing Kennedy time, he said, to give the exact location to the Cubans on where they were going to land. He said they had no firepower and were supposed to meet up with another battalion bringing the weapons, which, he said, never happened. It was a total slaughter, he said, and needless to say, Kennedy was not his favourite president. From what I know, this story does line up with the reality of the history I have studied.

As I was sitting on the beach, I started talking to a German actress who was doing NGO work in the south of India. She just came to Thailand for the week-end to escape the oppressive poverty she said. As she does these NGO stints, she told me, they all ultimately add to her ability to think introspectively and make her a better actor.

What I am doing in Thailand, you might ask, when I said I was going to the Philippines? The story here is that I went to the Bangkok Post Travel Fair ( largest English language daily in Thailand) thinking I would get some hotels and flights to the Philippines. Instead, I got sucked into going first to Jomtien Beach, where I am now and next to Issan. Why Jomtien Beach? Because the hotel booth said I was getting a penthouse where the shower looked out over the ocean. It was $50 instead of $400 or something like that so I jumped on it. Little did I know that what they meant was that the bathroom simply was glassed in so you could see out and everyone else could see in, but that is not the story. After spending about 15 minutes figuring out how the elevator worked to get to the top floor ( you needed to insert your key into the elevator panel), when I got to my room, I could not open the door. Frustratingly, I went back downstairs and went through the whole process again only to find out the door still would not open. When this happened three times, I asked for my money back. (This always get their attention!) Instead of giving me my money back, they upgraded me to a suite (which, of course, I knew they would). However, the story does not end there. I had a few minor complaints about the suite, so I got a complimentary dinner. At breakfast this morning, the manager personally came up to me and told me he had a sleepless night worrying about the service I was getting.

Now I know why I was woken up at 8 am with 3 people in suits bringing me some fruits and so on compliments of the manager. Why I wondered were they going to such lengths? One of the suits told me he also worked at the Bangkok Post for ten years and asked me if I knew so and so. Because I got my hotel voucher at the Bangkok Post Travel Fair, for some reason they assumed I worked at the Bangkok Post. Having bad publicity is about the last thing a luxury hotel needs at this time in history.

When I got home from the beach today, the suite was covered in real flowers. Frankly, I did not even notice until I read a note explaining they were with the hotel’s compliments. This morning, the general manager told me the hotel car would drive me to the port to get the ferry. Little did I know he would be personally driving it!

Two massages and a business deal!

Before I tell you about the business deal, let me tell you about the fourth sister! Last week in Siam Riep, a fourth sister and assorted nieces and nephews joined us for supper, apparently feeling left out from the night before. The fourth sister was 38 years old, born in 1971. If you know anything about Cambodian history, this was simply the worst time to be born. When I handed her the menu and asked her to pick a dish, she demurely looked down and admitted she could not read, even though she could speak Thai and Japanese, as an aside. She was born when the Khymer Rouge were in power and families were separated, ‘dissendents” sent to S9 and others sent to work at farms outside of cities. Children were separated from parents and often from each other. They worked in the fields all day and were not given any education. She simply never had the opportunity to study.

Now to the business deal. I won’t tell you which country I am in at the moment for reasons which will become obvious, but I am sure this happens in all Asian countries. We made our pitch to representatives from the Ministry of Education and they each took turns reading their prepared comments to our presentation. In fact, they were very insightful and obviously gave a lot of thought to our presentations of a month ago and our written documentation. I saw all of our work for the past number of months simply going up in smoke since they seemed to be so critical. At the end of about two hours of solid critique on their part and no response from us, their chairmen, with a huge mile on his face, told us they were looking forward to working with us. I could believe it. There was simply a cognitive dissonance on my part since I had just heard hours of criticism unanswered. As the meeting adjourned, our country representative got up, shook each bureaucrats hands and offered them an envelope. When I asked my people about it, they told me it was just ‘sop’- standard operating procedure. I am so lucky to be born in Canada!

When I am working in a foreign country, I usually get up at 6, have some kind of meeting at 7 and generally get back to the hotel at around midnight. Asians never seem to stop working….sort of. I am beginning to understand that they waste a lot of time sitting idly, taking massages ( which seem to be part of business) and so on. In fact, they probably do what we describe as ‘work’ in the west for a few hours a day but it takes them 12 hours to do it because of all of the interruptions like eating, talking on the phone, massages and so on. I do realize that they consider this part of work. Maybe we are just too uptight in the west???

My work colleagues took me for a massage in the middle of the day. I thought we were on our way to a meeting and was quite surprised to end up at a massage place instead of the school. It was quite different than Bangkok. In Bangkok, when you go for a massage it is like having a workout but you do not have to do anything. The masseuse does it all as you lay on the table while your limbs are stretched in every imaginable way. Not so in this country.

After paying our 6 dollars at the door, we went upstairs to a public room with about 7 reclining chairs. There were about three guys already there there wearing nothing but the strangest colourful underwear you ever saw and nothing else. I wondered why because in Bangkok, when you go for a foot massage you do sit in one of these chairs but you only get a foot and leg massage so why were they without shirts? I found out.

It was a full massage, but we had to make all kinds of gyrations to make it work. They started on our feet as usual, but then put the chair all the way down for a back massage, then we had to lie the other way for a head massage and s on. Not quite my ideas of relaxation although my colleague fell asleep and snored so loudly they had to shut the door so we did not disturb the next room.

Last night, our Asian partner took me out for supper and, as I guess is customary, took me out for a massage afterwards. This was higher class building with a proper table and private room but instead of cololurful silk underwear we had to wear an adult diaper. A little humiliating to say the least.

Josh, when I get home, you will have to straighten out my body. These massage ladies twist necks ( as I have seen you doing), stick their elbows in groins etc but they did not study chiropractic for four years! Today I can hardly walk and it is a good thing I am taking a plane home. It feels like the same injury I had in hockey a few years ago, if you remember that one.

Next week, I plan to take a little vacation somewhere, either to northern Thailand or Phillipines.. I will let you know and promise pictures.

The tale of the stones

Mysterious, romantic, awesome, compelling are just some of the words I would use to describe the temples in and around Siem Reap. Siem Reap, by the way, means hurray, we beat those damn Thais!

After two days of constant site seeing of every temple and building from sunrise to sunset, I think I have a pretty good idea of the majesty of what I saw and experienced. The driver kept asking me to wake up earlier and stay with him later but I was quite content with what I saw. The towers of Angkor Wat reflected in the basin just in front of the of the western entrance and the apsaras on the wall are, as the master card commercial says, priceless. And who could forget the cluster of face-towers in the corner of the Bayon’s upper terrace…just look at the pictures. As two guys sitting there all day told me, all these people tend to spoil it. Not for me, I’m afraid. Nothing could spoil that very special moment. And who forget the surprise and awe of walking up the stairs of Srah Srang and suddenly seeing the lake in front of you?

Let’s face it, these temples have it all, from the architecture of Angkor Wat itself to Banteay Samre where you almost forget you were in the twenty-first century. The chapels or libraries, as they were called in all of the temples were solitary, quiet and peaceful. If you want to see five hundred year old trees growing out of the ruins look at my pictures of Ta Prohm or Preah Khan. If you want to see an island temple surrounded by water (in the rainy season anyway) look at East or West Mebon pictures.

If you have a religious bent and want to study the iconography from the scenes from Hindu and Buddhist mythology all you have to do is enter any temple and depending on who the king was at the time, you either have the Hindu mythology( if we can use that word) or Buddhist. I tried to take lots of pictures of the lintels and carvings to demonstrate this.

Now the hard question. At what cost were these temples built? Needless to say, it took slaves as well as free men perhaps a lifetime to construct one edifice. Yes, the work was probably meaningful, for the free men anyway, and they could create in all their glory. As for the slaves, not so great, I can’t imagine. I tried pushing some of the fallen stones to see if they would budge, and of course it was impossible. These creations must have been spectacular when they were covered covered in stucco and painted red and white with the diamonds studded throughout.( on the other hand, perhaps they are nicer now in that they look so majestic) .The sandstone left in its pristine form must have been spiritually uplifting and a constant reminder of man’s greatness. The temples were obviously places for meditation, special ceremonies, universities in at least one, an intricate water system in most and a centre of community if not business.

I think, when I see and experience these truly remarkable buildings wonder about what else could have been provided for the common person if the money and effort were put elsewhere such as building of roads or more institutions of learning, or better ways of creating rice planting or how about houses for the farmers??? Of course, I wonder the same things about our arms race in the twentieth century or our monuments to stupidity that only you can judge for yourself.

In this particular case, the king of the day, in making goodness for himself, had these edifices built to gain merit in the afterlife without much thought, I would not think, for the common man. Of course, without these stone temples literally carved out of the jungle where would Hollywood go to make movies like Raiders…What I saw in the last two days absolutely defy imagination…mine or Hollywood’s!

The Three Sisters

Let me try to describe what life is like from a woman’s point of view in a traditional society like Cambodia. Last night, I invited out three sisters who worked in the market just outside of Angkor Wat. They were 29, 27 and 22. They bought one of the stalls just outside of the temple and were selling T shirts, drinks, and whatever else they could get their hands on to sell. Whenever tourists walked by they ran out and attacked like vultures with their hands full of books and scarves. I sat and watched them for quite a while as I drank my coke just inside their stall but out of the way. We got a chance to talk quite a bit because ,frankly, the tourists are way down this year due to the world economy and a variety of other factors and they had time on their hands. In fact, we became quite good friends ( I think) and I took them out for supper. (The bill, Sylvia, for four of us was $8.00)

As we talked, I discovered that there were 10 of them living in one house, the house of the elder sister. In fact, there were mattresses on the floor and often they slept in the same bed. They had two other sisters, a brother and an assortment of nieces. Like my friends in Myanmar who usually take me out on Sundays, we talked about dating, marriage as well as their hopes and dreams. Of course, they all want to get married, but it is not possible, they said, to meet a man because they are too busy working every day from sunrise to sunset (literally because tourists often come to take pictures at both of these times). Where, they said, could we possibly meet a man and since arranged marriages were no longer happening in their family they seemed destined for maidenhood.

If one of the fellow stall owners liked them, they told me, they would never go out on what we call a ‘date’ from the western perspective. That would be unheard of. It would simply not be acceptable, in this small town, as a single woman ,to be seen with a man alone, even in a restaurant. The only thing that made it acceptable last night was that there were three of them and only one of me. They would never be alone with a man until they got married. When I asked them about the subject of kissing, and I mean literally kissing, no hanky panky, they said that would never happen and could never happen. That is something that happens after marriage they told me. Interestingly enough, when I asked them what would happen if things were not satisfactory in the marriage, they said divorce was acceptable in traditional society and is not frowned upon, as kissing would be before marriage.

Women also have to dress very modestly, even to go swimming. I have a beautiful swimming pool at my hotel (sort of) but when it is in the high 30’s any swimming pool is beautiful. When I invited them in swimming after dinner they surprisingly agreed but jumped in with their clothes on. I also saw this the night before when there was some sort of teenage party at the hotel for a birthday or something. The boys were wearing the skimpiest swimming trunks imaginable and the women were fully dressed in all their modesty.

When I discussed this with them, the eldest sister admitted it was quite tough being a woman. She constantly had to worry about what others thought whereas her brother could do whatever he wanted with whomever he wanted. Apparently he drank, played cards and did it all. At the same time, she was paying for his university with the money she made at the stall and like all Asians, giving her parents most of the money to survive as a family. Old age security, in traditional societies ,is having children.

When I asked the older one what her hopes and dreams were, she said buying five hectares of farmland and inviting destitute people to come and work the farm, sell the produce in town and become self-sufficient. She said she had given it a lot of thought and that is exactly what she wanted to do. The elderly on the farm, who could no longer work would be supported by the healthiest and youngest.

Too bad she is not a man…then maybe this dream could become a reality. Now she is just too busy working the stall seven days a week, going home and cooking supper for 10 people, doing the laundry, buying the goods for sale and taking care of her parents…and she is not even the oldest!