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!

Arriving in Siem Reap

Arriving in Siem Reap after a short flight from Bangkok, I was not amused when the motorcycle guy driving me to my hotel kept turning around to show me pictures of his disabled father or grandfather and insisting I hire him as a guide for the next three days because he was so hard done by. Actually, his English was quite good and I would have hired him if he had not been so oppressively’ in my face’ about how hard it was to live in Cambodia. I kept having similar exeriences. Outside of Angkor Wat, I offered a little girl some “coloured" currency because I just finished a coke and she wanted me to buy another one. She refused my charity because she said it was too little. As we drove away, she screamed how mad at me she was! Since when are these little urchins too good to take 25 cents? It was not the fact that I offered charity…it was the fact that I offered too little.

At every tourist stop there had to be dozens of sellers of drinks, postcards (who buys postcards today?), silk ware and T shirts outside of every single temple, and believe me there are lots of temples! Every merchant feels we owe them something because we have a white face. They are the ones with a sense of entitlement, not the old white guys as is the case in North America. They absolutely feel that as a right we owe them money because we are from the west and they have had a terrible quarter century

What about the Vietnamese who lives have been irrevocably change because of the Chinese French and American war? Do they stand at every street corner with their hands out and pick out rich Americans who did so much to destroy their lives? I don’t think so. In fact, they are working so hard it will not surprise me if it is the Americans with their hands out in a generation or two.

And what about the victims of the Holocaust? I cannot recall a single Jewish person who felt the world owed them a living because of what happened between 1942 and 1945. Some, if not all Holocaust survivors were a little to a lot crazy, but just got on with their lives and tried to make the best of it. Why should I give every Cambodian money because their lives were destroyed (by their own people). Admittedly,I do feel sorry for them as I see the maimed with lost legs and arms, deafness, and so on, but I should not feel like I owe them anything. The moral imperative is my own, not theirs!

Having said all that, I just walked into my hotel and a man with his little boy were playing just outside the front portico. When he started talking to me, I said to myself, here we go again and almost ignored him. When he asked where I was from I felt compelled to answer the question and then he replied with and “where are you from?” “Here”, he said,” and thank you so much for visiting my country” he said with heartfelt emotion.

Now, for the stones. They are absolutely either a tribute to man’s highest aspirations or a sign of our colossal egotism and waste. As you can see from the pictures, the temples are magnificent in so many ways, but how many people hours did it take to make these and at what cost? If you look at the iconography on the walls, they are warriors fighting each other with swords and bows and arrows. There are bas reliefs of soldiers offering the heads of the defeated to their king. There are the half naked Aspira dancing ladies, the face of Jayavarman V11 on all entrances showing his making of merit to his Gods ( at the expense) perhaps of thousands of lost lives. His workers literally spent their lives in making these monuments to his greatness.

Again, at least they were involved in productive work, something I am not so sure about when I am harassed at every turn by little girls selling me postcards.

Answer to Ron

Ron asked me how I liked this year compared to last which got me thinking. I guess the most obvious thing is that it is Sunday afternoon and I am not running around some tourist site snapping pictures. In fact, I doubt if I have posted any pictures in ages. When I see things that look like they are noteworthy of a picture, I tend to think I already have one somewhere. I guess, the real reason is I don’t even bother to take my camera with me! When I asked teachers last year what they were doing for the week-end and they kind of shrugged their shoulders as if to say, hanging around the apartment , I was flabbergasted. You mean you live in this interesting city and country and you shrug your shoulders as if there is nothing to do? Now, I guess I am them. I like nothing more than reading the paper or sitting down with a good book than run around the tourist sites, most of which I have probably seen, and more than once. As an aside, it is oppressively hot here and I know I have to go to Myanmar in a week which will be well above forty. You can be sure I am not looking forward to it. Playing golf in the heat is one thing, wearing a tie and sitting in some boring classroom is another.

Having said that, part of this journey is, of course, the people I meet and not the sites I have seen. For example, yesterday, I met a black civil rights lawyer from the United States who was taking a time out in her life and trying to get a job in Asia where she could make a difference, as she said. I met her last November as we were both apartment shopping and then met her again yesterday in a restaurant which provided us an opportunity to talk. There are so many fascinating people I have met who just want to make the world a better place and do not have the typical American attitude that their way is the better way. I offered her a job as our in house counsel in Singapore so it will be interesting if she takes up the offer.Being black in Asia, as she is, is not a help. There is such a colonial mentality throughout Asia that it certainly gives someone like me the upper hand, but we all know how crazy that is.

Which leads me to talk about my job. Last year, as you know, I was the principal of a fairly large international school so my job was easy. I was presented with myriad problems every day and all I had to do was help people solve them. In between, I tried to look ahead and anticipate challenges we were going to have and try to make suggestions to make our school better. The job came to me.

This year my job is somewhat different. I am called the Dean of the Academies and what I do is travel from country to country and school to school to help wherever and however I am needed. I have spoken to parents groups, talked individually with unhappy parents , worked inside classrooms, taught demonstration lessons, written one on-line course with Vicky and some by myself and helped with negotiations when they need an old white guy with grey hair to sit in the same room or play golf with them.

Basically, the job is what I make of it, which, on the one hand, is good, because I can do whatever turns my crank, but bad in that I have to be accountable to myself. I feel guilty if I take a day off. Right now, I am sitting in Bangkok on a beautiful Sunday afternoon as I said, not swimming, not playing golf, not site seeing, but taking a break from arranging interviews for a new school we are opening up in Hanoi ( two in fact). Unlike the principal job where problems just came to me and I had to react, here I have to act and it is the difference between night and day.

The job did give me the opportunity of meeting many wonderful people, I guess a basic theme of this answer to Ron. We have a bunch of Philippinos working at the school and they have to be the most wonderful people on earth. They love music and will at the drop of a hat burst into song. They start every class with a song and there are usually a few more somewhere in between. For some crazy reason, they think I know something and tend to treat me like an educational guru. I guess the colour of my hair, my age and my educational jargon help.

So the theme is, I have even more people this year which is great, I have travelled on the company’s dime to Yangon, Mandalay, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, and Singapore and I feel good about myself. What will it be like, I wonder, when I am no longer working? How will I make myself feel good?

The interview

I have just spent the last week supposedly interviewing over 70 ESL teacher candidates for our two new schools in Hanoi.I say 'supposedly' because we advertised on a Thailand Internet site and initially 30 people were invited to my initial meeting and 10 showed up, despite the fact that they all confirmed they were coming. I set up about 7 interviews every day and typically about 3 people show up. My directions cannot be that bad (or could they?)

Daniel is right when he says any North Americans living in Asia and looking for work must be whacked, including myself, I guess.Two men in their forties came in, telling me, in their own words, their sob stories. One has a dying wife and is desperate to make money and the other has a three thousand pound visa debt. Because I am dealing with visas all the time, I could not believe that any visa could possibly cost 3000 pounds. When he saw the incredulity on my face, he explained it was a VISA credit card bill!

Another man who I just spoke to with a PhD in educational leadership told me that another interviewer berated him for dominating the conversation. This was after 25 minutes of him talking non-stop about his present job, Thai politics, students in general and so on and this was before I asked him one question. It was incredible. I wanted to tell him the other interviewer was absolutely right but I could not get in a word edge wise. Luckily the next appointment came and I pushed him out the door. What a nightmare.

I guess my test of whether or not I want to hire someone is their ‘likeability factor.” Do I enjoy spending time with them listening to their stories and so on and am I disappointed when the hour is over? Perhaps that is not fair, but I presume that is how most interviewers do it. You will not necessarily get the best people for the job this way, I suppose, but at least I will have a dinner companion when I visit Hanoi.

For example, there were two black men who I absolutely loved. One was a former Hollywood producer who was articulate, erudite and fascinating. His latest venture was to run the Bangkok Film Festival and another brilliant black guy who was phenomenal with computers. I am sure they could not only talk education but also deliver, as opposed to the PhD guy who actually sounded quite articulate (although quite boring) and I am confident a very poor teacher.

There are also the Asians and Africans whose working conditions in their own countries are so poor they have to move to Thailand where they barely make a living wage but I guess it is better than where they come from. These are really desperate people who keep writing and phoning begging me for a job the day after the interview. I told one guy that if he even responds to my e mail asking me if he has the job he would be automatically disqualified. I have to keep moving forward looking for the ideal candidate.(s)

Anyway, someone is knocking on the door. Got to go. Hope this interview is better!