Yoido Church
Yoido Christian Church
This morning I was in high-spirits and took to the Yoido Christian Church, a mega-church about the same size as Christian Central in Las Vegas, but supporting far more members—about 830,000! It is the largest Christian Church in the world.
We went to the one o’clock service, and of course, sat in a traffic jam of unflinching church goers before finally arriving at our destination. The church lies between large financial buildings, in the “Wall Street” district of Seoul. The first thing I begin to ask is: What is a Church doing in a large financial district—the largest church in the world, in fact?
We went primarily to see Mr. Cho, David Yonggi Cho, who is the leader of the church, and according to my twin brother, the only decent reverend who doesn’t merely ask for money or misrepresent factually about every historical person he can think of in the thirty minutes he has at the podium. As Mr. Cho began speaking, I began to wonder what the other preachers must have been like, since this Mr. Cho proceeded to do everything I described above, and then astounded the audience with advertisements for his DVDs. Aside from the usual astounding bullshit one casually hears and claps their hands to at a sermon, he actually claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald had no political agendas when he killed Kennedy, but that he did so because he had a fight with his wife and that Kennedy just “happened to be in the neighborhood.” Really? A guy who was so socialist he moved to Russia, a guy who had attempted to kill political leaders before, really had no political leanings to do what he did? It was really because he wasn’t spiritually fulfilled?
What’s more, Mr. Cho went on to say that the richest people in the world, like Rockefeller, were extremely poor until they started giving “thirty, sometimes forty, sometimes fifty percent of everything they earned to the church!” and then proceeded to tell a story about a poor woman who was an alcoholic and never gave money to the church, and how all her generations of sons and daughters were eternally cursed because of what she did, while some other guy (American!) gave tons of money to the church, and all of his sons and daughters were made into lawyers and doctors and were rich. Indeed, it seemed no great coincidence that this church resides in the “Wall Street” of Seoul, and it was almost too predictable when, as soon as the collection bags were passed around, advertisements for Mr. Cho’s DVDs ran on the giant projection screens while the choir sang to the ads, and men in the aisles with DVDs began to tug at the church-goers.
Keeping in mind not only the history of Mr. Cho, but the history of the Yoido Full Gospel Church, the sermon couldn’t be more of a shock. From it’s somewhat mythical beginnings within the houses of devoted protestants, The church was brought to the level it is today by Cho, via political alignments and religious campaigning. I believe with any church this size, any bullshit will remain unquestioned, which is actually why Mr. Cho has been brought out of retirement so many times: infighting among the other reverands. Mr. Cho’s politics are clearly espoused in his sermon: according to Cho, the previous president of Korea “certainly went to hell,” as will “any professors who become political.”
So why this tendency toward totalitarian epithets in a Christian sermon? Cho obviously aligns with the Grand National Party of Korea, the conservative wing that exerts a near total control over the media. Like the U.S. state and PBS, or Henry Kissinger and ABC, the media in Korea is controlled by someone appointed and approved by the executive branch of the government, an occurrence that does not change with the elected leaders. That explains why the last president was cursed to eternal hellfire. As for the professors? There has been an ongoing controversy in Korea concerning Professors who demand a greater democracy, and who are being fired for speaking out (http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/358604.html). According to contracts signed by professors at Seoul National University, Korea’s top University, professors cannot be political, but must protect education from politics by keeping inactive. Obviously, this only means they must only preach the politics of the state, not their own. Because these professors speak out, they are not only fired, but, according to Mr. Cho, cast into an eternal hellfire by the Almighty.
Speaking as an atheist with five preachers in my close family, one of whom had his own radio program and another who has published twelve books dedicated to Christian leadership, I don’t feel very guilty about saying that going to this church was a genuinely horrendous experience, more horrendous perhaps than any church in the States, though they certainly come close to this atrocity. Perhaps the only redeemable point of interest was when the Korean Christians all simultaneously began speaking in tongues. I’m not sure if I am able to talk about this respectfully, so I won’t even talk about it. You can imagine perhaps what a giant auditorium of cacophonic paroxysms might sound like.
Travel 2009
Here, on my fourth extended excursion, the first joys of travel are removed in such a far off distance that their pleasure seems now remote; they are glanced-at provincial gestures that can never be recovered. The ‘innocent abroad’ typical of American travelers has lost its relevance to me, the irony of it turned now into melancholy and irreversible cynicism.
“Traveling makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” —Flaubert
I no longer trust guidebooks beyond the maps that they contain, I find them loathsome youthless instruction manuals unfit for the effusing of the soul that travel exhibits among strangers. Should I bring my collared shirts for summer? How much will this cost? Where are the bars friendly to foreigners? These questions are not that which spur the endless fascination, the love of being acted upon by others, the indulgence of an omnivorous curiosity, of travel.
The eloping couple makes my companions in this realm. The runaways, the derelicts, the outcasts, the beggars, the pimps, the hos, the Johns and the Tricks, the drugged out hippies, the drunkard staggering, the innocents abroad, the lost, those whose homes have been reappropriated by the rich, those who, as I, find everything resembling “home” torn apart by bulldozers to make new hotels for tourists, new shopping districts for the wealthy, new restaurants with over-salted ethnic delicacies. Those without a home join me, those who are welcome no more, those whose home is theirs, not ours. We aim at them anew, the open windows of their limousines are our spittoons from the overpass.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth century traveling was a grand pre-requisite of cultural capital before young bourgeois students (usually men) took to their studious careers. In some ways not much has changed, but travel is now largely democratic, which is why someone like me can spend three months traveling with a salary of about $13,500 a year. The luxury of travel, however, is never lost to an absence of funds. It is given up instead for the ubiquitous photograph, where the only memory recalled is that supplemented by photographic evidence. Travel is stripped away by walking the common path, by finding excuses to learning the local language, by staying in one’s hostel/hotel and tourist neighborhood, never braving the so-called “diseased slums,” the seedy alleyways and bars, the sites that put one face-to-face with the moral and historical questions that once defined what it means to travel.
Already our experiences are commodified, we are already planning how to exaggerate our stories, how to gain a higher chest among our peers, how to return home and eat ethnic foods while declaring “oh, but I’ve had the real thing before, this is only some cheap American rip-off,” how to pronounce names with adequate emphasis on the “correct” syllables. We are already deciding, to put it simply, how to blog this to the world, hot to omit facts, how to make ourselves seem tolerable, kind, and respectful to traditions that we are glad to merely try on, as if window-shopping. Traveling has become all about us.
“Why do you travel?” We are commonly asked. “Why not go home?” when the road becomes scabrous and our feet turn to welts and bites. What makes us unable to sit and be satisfied? I say it is because our hearts leap about in anxiety at home, because we are frustrated, as the many travelers before us, with the gnawing ennui of the homeland, because we seek, as Joyce, to escape the certainty of those with religion, academia or ideology, because we desire, as D.H. Lawrence and Henry James, to discover a place and peoples with some dignity and realistic grasp of the world, and because we need, as Kerouac, to understand desperation, loss—to go without itinerary, plans or certainty. To travel is to be rid of certainty. As Whitman said, “certainty…falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.” We travel to do what we can against those who believe they live in the best of all possible worlds, as a servant might in a household that they have never stepped out of.
As with my travel blogs of the last four years, I excuse politeness and toleration for sincerity and suspicion. I make no claims to be a terribly wise traveler, only a terribly honest one. Traveling is an investment of time, money, and means the risk of disease or having to sleep on a park bench. Many travelers, mindful always of this investment, seek to derive the greatest output from their “adventure,” always “discovering” the “fascinating cultures,” the “memorable people” and the many photo opportunities that await them. After their trip, they then proceed to tell these stores with loathsome insincerity, mentioning always their “fascination,” unaware that they are merely reproducing the catalogs and advertisements of commodified travel that we are already too familiar with. I will have nothing to do with this narrative of fascination.
This summer I will be in Korea for one month and India for two months. I can think of no better way to begin than with Whitman:
“Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, Strong and content I travel the open road.”
Reflections on South-East Asia
While filling out a form today, I had forgotten my address and telephone number in the states. The only thing I can conjure now is my passport number. I just realized I’m going to be flying on September 11th – FOR 26 HOURS STRAIGHT! Dangerous! No wonder these tickets were so cheap…
Here’s where I went–not including the month in Korea, since that’s old news by now:
I visited 11 cities, the rest was horrendous bus rides.
I’m in Thailand again, Bangkok. I don’t care to write about the protests and state of emergency here, since none of my Thai friends give a damn about it and I certainly haven’t seen any political action yet.
I’ll take this last blog to reflect and indulge myself on the time spent on the road. And on race.
Racially, I’m half white, and half “other,” as I like to say. The “other” has given me a brown tint in my skin, which has made traveling in South East Asia an especially revealing experience. Here are the stats:
Pro: Walking into tourist sites without having to pay, since I look kind of like a local.
Con: Being spoken to in the local language, and everyone assuming that I understand it and know what’s about to happen to me.
Pro: Getting to know the locals mush easier than the white people can, and not being seen as “a customer” but as a curious traveler.
Con: Feeling racially alienated by every Australian or Danish person I meet. “He can’t be half white” they say. “He’s lieing” they say.
Pro: Especially at night clubs and bars, the locals don’t notice the brown foreigner has walked in who intends to steal their women.
Con: At times, not getting the extra attention and becoming overwhelmed by a sense of loss.
Pro: attempting the guise of the bourgeois local, who all the locals respect and bow to.
Con: Nobody believes I’m American except Americans and the Brits.
To put it simply, being brown allows me to be more tactful in straddling the line between the foreigner and the local, though I can never fully be either one. Let me present my guises, in the interest of full disclosure:
Meet Nico
Nico the Filipino student. He is poor and lost from his traveling group, but boy wouldn’t it be nice if you bought him a drink? He’ll tell you everything about what it’s like living in Manila and how he feels being in a foreign country for the first time (Even in Cambodia, they think the Philippines is a shit country).
I take the guise of Nico when I don’t want to spend too much money someplace, when I’m being solicited, or when I want a woman to buy me a drink just for the hell of it. “Nico” is of course an Eastern European name, so the fun never ends. My most mad misadventures occur as Nico, since being Filipino automatically shoves him into the “exotic underdog” category. And everyone loves an underdog.
Nico took some time to master. At first I was amazed at how fast people pulled out their wallets for me, or just stopped trying to sell me things on the basis that I’m a poor, lost Filipino student. When I was testing Nico, I was found out a couple of times, but even that I could use to my advantage.
Of course I can’t pull of Nico with Americans or British, they know immediately that I’m full of shit. Aussies and just about any other whites don’t believe me when I tell them I’m half white anyway, so they have no problem seeing me as a Flip and ignoring me from that point forward (or using me as a photo prop). In that sense, I have no ethical dilemmas about using Nico. If you think it’s so unbelievable that I’m American, then screw you, I’m taking all your money, and you’ll find my middle finger up in all your photos of the “exotic SE Asians”.
Wildcard
“Wildcard” is just a nickname for a chameleon guise I inhabit when I meet a local family, or am just out during the day-time trying to meet locals and get in to their parties. The role is that of a prodigal son. Wildcard’s mother belongs to whatever race I’m trying to talk to, but being an innocent American, upon his mother’s death, Wildcard has returned to her natural “people” in order to savor the memory of his mother.
I didn’t fully inhabit Wildcard until Vietnam, since there are so many American-Vietnamese people, it’s a very believable story. There my name was Van Nguyen, and I met many a family, shared many a drink and had many a good mad time with the locals. I can’t begin to emphasize the amount of cultural capital this experiment yielded unto me. I learned so much about Vietnamese culture from families forcing me to try every food and meet every girl and fall in love with their country in every possible way. When a family or local gang meets Wildcard, they see it as a chance to instill a sense of national pride in their own wayward son.
Wildcard knows nothing about your language, your culture, your ways–but he wants to come back to his roots, to discover the “truth” behind his history. Won’t you help out this poor American existentialist?
Adrian the American
Following the same pattern as “Wildcard,” Adrian is a full American visiting his long-lost race, but he’s not interested in the culture or returning to roots. He’s interested in aid, investment and research.
Adrian is an American in study–a master of linguistics, economics, financing, urban development, you name it. He’s here to study the land, the culture, get statistics, all that nonsense. Under Adrian the locals suddenly become different people. They suddenly shout “My God–we are so poor!” or they say things like “They all lie, there is free food in every temple!”
Adrian is not here to travel or mess around. He’s not here to shop, go tubing or do anything fun, because this is not a vacation for him. He’s an American with a pen and a pad, trying to get the truth of your urban environment for investors, politicians and study groups. People are honest with Adrian. They don’t want to sell him things, or show off their country, or get help from him in any immediate way. Adrian serves a higher purpose, he can offer some sanity amidst the rock-and-roll tourist capital that submerges everything.
I’ve had amazing conversations with Korean and Japanese investors to prepare for the roll of Adrian. When investment capitol comes into play, suddenly things get serious, and a local says “you know, we make it seem like X, but really, it’s X.” Being brown only adds to the trust that people place in Adrian, since he is racially “one of them.”
I would say I’m most like Adrian. When I talk to locals under a guise, I’m Adrian about 20% of the time, “Wildcard” about 30% and Nico about 50%. Sometimes I’m just me.
It’s a Race!
I’ll be back in Seattle soon, where race is ridiculously politicized and masked in “safe words” and absurd “toleration training” that forces people to treat each other differently based on gender and race–since someone might get offended! As if Seattle isn’t one of the most segregated places in the States.
Race to me is just my body as it was when I was born, and has nothing to do with who I am except that I’m perceived as “not white”. In America this was never a problem, nobody cared, I was called an “island hopper” just as facetiously as I would call others “chinks” or “Nazis.” In Las Vegas, it’s all in good fun.
But of course, the world is not like where I grew up in Vegas and Portland. Especially outside of America, race is the biggest signifier of one’s identity, and even having “a brown tint” can make the difference in the type of bus I ride on, the treatment I get, the people I meet. Because race is class.
I’m repulsed with the way tourists in these countries view race. Because I’m somewhat brown I get alienated immediately, and many tourists, when I tell them I’m American or “half-white,” think I’m a liar, a local just trying to be “cool.” And they laugh. Isn’t it cute this brown local thinks he’s one of us? He even dresses like us! Hahahaha
I have never and will never make attempts to get back to my “roots”–whether they be white or “other.” I end with Badger Clark’s “The Westerner”:
My fathers sleep on the sunrise plains,
And each one sleeps alone.
Their trails may dim to the grass and rains,
For I choose to make my own.
I lay proud claim to their blood and name,
But I lean on no dead kin;
My name is mine for praise or scorn,
And the world began when I was born
And the world is mine to win.
Siem Reap, Cambodia
I’ve just given up sleeping on the buses here. I get sick, fall over in an old man’s lap (or he falls asleep in mine), and smell vomit throughout every bus ride. I give in to it now. It’s fine.
I met a group of three Germans, each one from a different part of Germany. None of them had ever heard of Hegel or Heideggar. I spelled it out for them. Still nothing. I think I was taught that these philosophers were of epic importance to Germans, but apparently they find it hard to give a shit. I ended by singing a verse from Beethoven’s 9th symphony to placate our cultural wars.
Most travelers I meet can be separated into three groups – sexpats, drugpats, ecopats, and the few people who just criticize all the others. I fall into the latter.
People are extremely nice in Seim Reap. After walking some friend home, I was lost at around 1am last night in my usual “Ï dunno where I am–shit here comes a storm cloud!”-phase. Some Cambodian guy picked me up and drove me around for half an hour looking for my hotel, and never asked for money.
Cambodia has bedbugs. And nude children running around everywhere like in a diaper commercial. It’s hard getting to know Cambodian people when they keep asking you for money. The only ones open to harmless chat seem to be the ladyboys, who just like the attention.
Holiday in Cambodia!
Phnom Penh is a sprawling city, though its urban poor, copious and helpless. There are women sleeping in the streets with their arms around their infants, and herds of hungry children follow me everywhere, rubbing their stomachs and sobbing.
But on the plus side, I got to share an Angkor beer with a monkey! He was just chillin by himself, so I got to chill with him until some tourists came and took so many pictures that he ran off. They chased away my drinking buddy!
I’m currently in the only mall in all of Cambodia. There are “escalator helpers” to make sure people understand how to approach a moving staircase. I can get a pair of pants at the market just outside for about $4, a Versace’ shirt for about $6, and a normal shirt for $2. This is normally considered over-priced, and if I hunt enough I can get all that for about half as much.
The “New Market.”
The backpacker district in the capital is hard as hell to find, but it’s a paradise of extremely cheap food and beer, and hotels overlooking a gorgeous lake where children in rowboats offer rides around the lake for a dollar. The kids here are quite industrial, and unlike their parents, they know how to make a real deal. They follow me everywhere, helping me pick out the cheapest things, perhaps only pretending to be on my side to make more money. Either way the children are some of the best resources in Cambodia for good deals and underground fun (shooting ranges, extremely cheap alcohol).
On that note, child sexual abuse in Cambodia is well-known around the world, and to warn tourists there are gigantic posters and even highway signs that show foreigners going to jail for child sex crimes:
Today I was handed a brochure by a little girl with numbers to call and methods to take to ensure these sex criminals are found out. Then I think about my days in graduate school:
“Don’t brochures like these just reinforce the ideology of arbitrary anti-child sex values, values brought on by the Western hegemonical force of global capital? Shouldn’t we learn to respect–”
I quickly shook such evil from my thought-process, and gave the girl some money to fund her program.
Other terrible things that have happened to this city, beginning with the Khmer regime’s infamous “Year Zero.” One day, a man named Pol Pot decided to go to France, where he was indoctrinated with Marxist agrarian philosophy. Twenty years later, the most horrendous genocide in East Asian history takes place (est 1.7 million people) due to the poilitical actions of a Cambodian named Pol Pot. His main goal was to emulate Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” with the Cambodian “Extreme Leap Forward.” Needless to say it worked. He did exactly what Mao did, only moreso–resulting in hundreds of unmarked mass grave sites, turning the cities into ghost-towns, and displacing an entire population.
The skulls go very far back.
Perhaps because of their familiarity with violence, the Cambodian people don’t stray from a fight. Only after two days here, already I’m used to seeing street fights occur by drunk Cambodians. It’s considered a “rough spot” for travelers, because they get jacked. I met an Aussie who had his wallet and camera stolen. There are pamphlets around that suggest:
“If you are the victim of an armed robbery, do not panic, simply hand over your wallet. Many times the robbers will return your important items to your hotel, so do not resist.”
First of all, money IS an important thing in my wallet, if not the most important thing in there. Second, how the hell is the criminal going to know which hotel I’m staying at, unless it’s an INSIDE JOB? God-damn! I might as well buy a knife!
On an end note, I discovered the next greatest thing about this trip: SE Asian ice cream! For $1 a cone I think I might return to America in my teenage form–that of a FATASS.
Chasing Miss Saigon
This city is ostensibly non-communist. Most of its inhabitants lived in Saigon before it was “liberated” by the North Vietnamese in 1975, but were displaced, forced into the rural countryside by the communist regimes. They snuck back, and though they couldn’t legally own property, they were forced to rent. That’s right, the Communists became the landlords for the capitalist migrant workers! Isn’t that ironic as hell?
By the way, this city is officially called “Ho Chi Minh City,” named for the Communist dictator who didn’t live to see it reunified. Nobody here calls it that. From the Vietnamese I’ve talked to, the government sanctions are far more liberal in the South. People here get to vote. There are private banks on every corner and just about everything is decentralized.
People here wear T-shirts that say: “I love America” and “I want to be Americanized.” What the hell. I was expecting to find the enemy!
At any rate, this city is not too different from cities in Korea. It has advanced extremely quickly, thanks to it’s uber-privatization, its work ethics, and, probably the most helpful, the foreign banks and foreign investment capital. Just the names of some of these banks are astonishing: “The Bank for Investment of Capital in Vietnam,” “InvestCo,” “Saigon Investment” etc. Somebody got extremely smart and began advertising Saigon as a promising enterprise for any foreign banker. Needless to say it worked, the city is quite developed, and hopefully Laos, with the large amount of Japanese, Korean and Chinese investors I met while there, will follow the same path as Vietnam.
So far, this has got to be one of the coolest cities I’ve ever been to. Before I came to Saigon, a traveler told me: “It’s just another big city.” Being an urban traveler, the naetivity in such a statement is insulting to one’s intelligence. Niagra Falls is just a big waterfall. Why be “humbled” under an oversized faucet, when one can be mesmerized and made proud by humanity’s great achievements on display in a city like Saigon, from the Opera houses to the malls, to the gigantic War memorials, to the zoos, to the banks. In the words of Ayn Rand, upon seeing the launch of Apollo 11:
As for the museums and memorials, more emotion, more sentiment. The “War Remnants Museum” is especially horrendous. One is faced with collages of people disfigured, death tolls and photos from both sides of the war, but mostly the atrocity of the B52 carpet bombers and agent orange (and purple). It’s extremely horrendous, and only insulted by the fact that America is still doing the exact same thing to a different type of brown people.
Now that I’ve mentioned it, I’ve already seen dozens, perhaps hundreds of war victims in Vietnam and Laos. They’re all over the place, and the babies who are born disfigured and with brutal malformations (from their parents being exposed to Agent Orange) are especially difficult to walk by without handing the mother some compensation for my country’s bloodthirsty zealots (all those who went along with Johnson).
Just take a look at the My Lai Massacre: An estimated 500 civilians murdered by U.S. soldiers, almost entirely women, children and the elderly.
Anyways, today I went to the Zoo, and they had trained the elephants to dance for visitors, staring at you dumbly and sneezing on you every now and then while waiting for sticks of bamboo to eat. Awesome!
On an ending note, Saigon is the only place I’ve been to where the markets don’t constantly try to screw you over. There are set prices for everything, and I’ve only had entirely ethical transactions–an extreme rarity in SE Asia. Needless to say, it’s time for a shopping spree!
Central Vietnam – the DMZ, Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang
The Vietnamese plant and grow rice.The Cambodians watch the Vietnamese plant and grow rice.The Laotians watch the rice grow after the Vietnamese have planted it.The Thai sell tickets through the rice fields that the Vietnamese planted to unsuspecting tourists.
Nha Trang, where I only spent a couple hours, has architecture akin to a “poor man’s” Vancouver or Victoria. It’s surprisingly modern for being so small, and has classy green emerald designs in the architecture. It seems like a perfect beach town, more for the Vietnamese on vacation rather than for outsider tourists.
Before I forget, last memory of Hanoi:
Going through a “propaganda” museum and seeing thousands of depictions of “evil” Frenchmen using the Vietnamese as their slaves, being fanned, carried about and served hand and foot by their colonial “others”–then me, walking out of the museum only to be harassed endlessly by Vietnamese people trying to fan me, carry me about and serve me hand and foot.
American Traveler
Hanoi, Vietnam
Hanoi, Vietnam
Good Morning! This ain’t Vietnam–oh yes it is!
Hanoi! The commie capital, the heart of “Charlie,” the hive of the Viet Cong, the place of the “POW Hilton”! It’s so good to be here!
Fresh from a 33 hour bus ride from Luang Prabang, then to Vientiane, and finally to Hanoi! Some highlights from the trip:
1. Watching an old Lao man vomit all over a younger Lao guy’s face in the middle of the bus ride.
2. Watching the Lao men trying to “cross streams” while pissing on the side of the road.
3. TWO DAYS WITH NO SLEEP
4. My last memory of Laos, a cute 9 year-old Lao girl selling balloons, who I had taught English too, finding me on the last day, saying: “Hey, you want Pepsi baby?”
Me: “Pepsi baby? What is that? Pepsi…peep…peep show baby?”
girl: “Yes. Peep show. You want peep show baby?”
Me: “Oh. That figures.” I bought a balloon.
But it doesn’t matter, you know, cuz I’m in Hanoi! The place of the communist star, and Ho Chinh Minh (Uncle “Ho”), the “Mao” of Vietnam.
The drive here was gorgeous. Unlike Lao people, the Vietnamese have learned to cut down their jungles. That’s right—SCREW THOSE JUNGLES. Vietnam used to be a place of mass starvation, one of the biggest importers of rice in the world. Now it’s a rising wealthy nation, and one of the biggest EXPORTERS of rice in the world, all because they CUT DOWN THOSE JUNGLES. Oh yes, and because of their repudiation of communist economics.
“The North and South Vietnamese have a history of racism and hatred, but since the fall of the Soviet Union, the North and South have overcome their differences for business and fast-paced construction, and now carry no such enmity.” – Lonely Planet
Is there a more beautiful sentence in the English language? “overcome their differences for business”! Stunning, ethereal–bleed those words! I know I will.
Being in Hanoi, it’s all quite true. Hanoi must be one of the busiest cities in the world, every Vietnamese is always in a rush, and every other store specializes in construction materials. This is a city very much on the rise, though it’s already pretty advanced. It’s very similar to what Korea was like in the 80s, or so people tell me.
Actually, it’s so busy here it’s scary. People will run into you without thinking about it, the motorbikes will line up and completely ignore anyone crossing the street like Roman legions charging at you:
Scariness. Actually, it gets pretty exciting crossing the street at times, the adrenaline hits you like a hammer, and all you can think is “Oh my god I’m going to die”. But you just take it easy, they will navigate against you.
The leitmotif so far has been “Water”. It’s everywhere. In the typhoons, in the thousands of rice fields, and even in Hanoi, every district is circled around a lake, and on almost every street I find myself walking over a bridge, after a block or two. The big traditional show here is “Water puppets,” which is pretty much like it sounds, and even funner when under some influence.
The police smoke marijuana on the streets here. Some friends and I stopped to watch, and they joined in, saying: “There are no cops around, right?”
This place is totally awesome, it’s everything an urban traveler needs–except the curfew. Yes, it’s officially still “conservative,” though it’s changing fast, and the curfew is midnight. Even though I was out until 1am tonight. The more popular dance bars have a lock-in until 5am, which must get pretty exhausting.
Tomorrow I go to see the War Museum, which is full of American stolen goods, as well as dog-tags of the deceased. Pretty disturbing.
Food in Bangkok and Laos
Bangkok food!
Every morning in Bangkok I would wake up and walk to the nearest temple, before 11am. Why? Free food! And lots of it! They had about every mixture of Thai I can think of, and I tried all of it. Funny how only Thailand, the only non-communist country I went to, was the only country where I saw free hand-outs of food.
The Street food in Thailand is something else. After getting food poisoning twice from street food in Korea, I never thought I’d be eating it for every single meal, like in Bangkok.
..
As you can see, there are tanks and bowls of curry everywhere. You basically get a bowl full of rice then point to whatever curry or noodle sauce you so desire. I made it a point to try from every bowl, so I probably ate some dog at some point.
The curry in Thailand and Lao isn’t like the curry in the states. It’s more of a soup here, but still as sweet as ever. All the ingredients are fresh. I have yet to see any frozen foods. They also package them nicely for you, if you’re on the go.
In Chinatown of Bangkok, the food was better than when I was in China.
Pho is the basic poor-man’s dish here, and while a meal of curry runs from sometimes free to about 80 cents, Pho will drain you for a max of fifty-cents, if you buy it on the streets. Street food also depends on where you buy it. If you’re in a Tourist spot, chances are it will be overprices and disgusting.
Laos
Laos food is something of a fusion of Thai and Vietnamese, though there are definately dishes here that are Lao only. The key is resourcefulness. Ever eaten a meal of pure bamboo shoots?
Apparently with a poor country like Laos, they’ve learned to eat everything! I’ve DEFINATELY eaten dog at some point without knowing it.
I don’t know what to call Lao food because there are no Lao restaurants in the states, so think of different variations of Pho, which all taste incredibly different, coming out of giant vats like this:
The best tasting Lao food I’ve had is Lao Beef with noodles (Kao Xio), which tastes almost like chili but with the sweetness of curry.
I haven’t wanted to pray for a long time, but with this bowl of ethereal wonderment, one is suddenly happy to be alive, one feels an exuberant joy at the spiced smell, a befitting grin at the sight of sizzling beef upon a mound of golden streams, the uberyummy taste that bites at you as if from some guilt for an original sin, that demands you put down your chopsticks because you are not worthy! Then you must have the power to say: “No! The world is mine as is this dish! I break free from my culinary Western prison!” etc. and all that.
They also have nice vegetarian buffets for about half a dollar:
Last but not least, is Lao alcohol. The national beer, “Laobeer” is about as crappy as Budweiser, but just as smooth and easy to drink. The horrendous drink is “LaoLao,” the national alcohol, which is like Vodka if Vodka tasted like stomach acid. The Lao people sit in circles and pass this crap around, and boy is it strong! It’s the worst kind of “drunk” one can feel–but it’s also the cheapest alcohol I’ve ever had, at about fifty cents for a bottle (it’s a rice-wine). Now I can see why so many Lao people seem drunk all the time, with such cheap means to do it.
