Day 145 Saturday December 25th Xmas Koh Samui island.

We have dinner at a Japanese place with new friends we met here.
The Picture is from Siem Reap's airport a few days before: as we are waiting to leave Cambodia, we are treated to a bunch of Cambodian school-children, all dressed in Christmas Outfits, singing Christmas Carols and we hide a homesick sniffle as best we can.

Day 144 Friday December 24th Xmas Eve with Nordic Transsgenders at Marie’s Place - on the beach at Koh Samui.

Siem Reap, Cambodia to Bangkok, Thailand and on to Koh Samui island off the Sea of Thailand.
US$80/night but we have a 3-bed bungalow on the beach. It’s late when we arrive but it’s Xmas Eve and we want some company and so we take a walk down the beach and Find- “Marie’s- A Bar Sometimes” Luckily it’s a bar right now (Marie, a 50 something Swedish lady in good shape) lives here and she has about a dozen Norwegians and Swedes as guests and she invites us to join them. Everyone is pretty smashed, Xmas lights are strung between two palm trees, there’s a guy wearing not much more than a stuck-on pony tail dancing on the sand with Marie and Marie’s house-companion (“Call me San”) comes over to join Christine, Sarah and me for drinks. She’s Thai and tells us that she lives by impersonating Cher on stage at various clubs. She’s pretty good looking and we all have a good time with good music, plenty of drink and the ocean lapping at the foot of the palm trees.
I go over to try and start a fight between the Norwegians and the Swedish people by innocently asking them which is the best country to live in. (I have never visited either of them). It works and a drink fuelled passionate argument breaks out (the Swedish party and the Norwegian group have never met before tonight), then I go back to Christine, San and Sarah. Then San moves on and Sarah and I enjoy telling an astonished (at first unbelieving) Christine that “San” is really a guy and is a transvestite.

Day 143 Thursday December 23rd Siem Reap, Cambodia

Chai doesn’t want to discuss politics with me since the government forbids anything negative but, on the second day, I sidle up next to him and we both watch contractors at work on his hotel extension. Pretty soon he’s telling me that a visitor may conclude that Cambodia is a pretty nice place to live but that he thinks corruption ruins it. He explains to me that, as a small business owner, people extort bribes/protection money from him all the time. The Firefighters and Police all come demanding money for beer for their parties etc and it all adds up to a lot of money. He tells me that if he didn’t contribute then they would make any small problem that he happened to have into a big problem. Siem Reap seems a pretty clean place but there is no recycling.
We go by boat to visit the villagers that live on the stilt houses/boats on the large lake that form one of the headwaters of the Mekong Delta. They All seem to have cell phones and TV sets (each boat has it’s own generator) and lounge about in hammocks all day and do some occasional fishing.
The people of Siem Reap seem to like the Christian Missionary Churches and Schools because they give to the poor.

Day 142 Wednesday December 22nd Siem Reap, Cambodia

We visit the temples at Angkor Wat and have our feet nibbled by fish in the evening (A Cambodian foot massage), it tickles.

Day 141 Tuesday December 21st Siem Reap, Cambodia. Sarah joins us!

Phoc An Hotel 0510 391 6757. Chai and his family run our hotel and it’s good with a pool and we have a 3 bedroom for Sarah and us for $35/night.
advice on Cambodia from an Englishman’s web site: cambodia-overland-bkksr-self.htm
Sarah flies in to spend her two week Xmas break with us. We miss Julia and Katie but having Sarah with us helps. Xmas makes us feel lonely.

"There is so much weariness and disappointment in travel that people have to open up —in railway trains, over a fire, on the decks of steamers, and in the palm courts of hotels on a rainy day. They have to pass the time somehow, and they can pass it only with themselves. Like the characters in Chekhov, they have no reserves — you learn the most intimate secrets. You get an impression of a world peopled by eccentrics, of odd professions, almost incredible stupidities, and, to balance them, amazing endurances."
Graham Greene

Day 139 Sunday December 19th Ha Noi to Da Nang and then stay at Hoi An. The South China Sea.

We are near the American logistics center during the war with North Vietnam. 550,000 American Troupes here at the peak. One of our guides answers all my usual questions but then tells me that I haven’t asked the most common question that all tourists, regardless of where they are from, ask. He tells me the question and then provides his answer. “What do the Vietnamese think of America and Americans now the war is over?” He tells me that it really depends on the generation of the Vietnamese answering the question. For him (he’s looks about 30) he tells me that they really have no feelings based on the war period but that his parents and particularly his Grandparents still hold the pain of the war. Hardly surprising since the US dropped the equivalent of 550lbs of munitions for every living person in Laos and Vietnam.
Hoi An is a very pleasant place to visit and stay, we rent bicycles and drift around town and through rice paddies to the beaches of the South China Sea. It’s Full Moon and we watch as the townsfolk put candles into small paper boats and set them adrift on the river at night.
I finish reading Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American” but it’s a pirated copy and starts on page 17 even though no pages are missing. Also there seems to be some clumsy attempts at censorship which I will check against my own copy back home.

Day 138 Saturday December 18th Ha Long Bay

We take the 3 hr bus ride down to Ha Long Bay and drift amongst the sandstone formations in a small boat.

Day 137 Friday December 17th

We visit Ho Chi Min memorial in Hanoi and walk the tree lined boulevards.

Day 136 Thursday December 16th. Nimb Bimh

Bus to Ninh Binh. Bicycle along country roads and amongst rice paddies then it's two per boat and our guide paddles Christine and me up the Hoang Long River. He faces forward and rows with his legs, even managing to feather the oar blade on the return stroke with his bare feet. The views from the boat probably haven’t changed for centuries and we look at farmers and their families living amongst the rice paddies.

Day 135 Wednesday December 15th Merry Xmas!

Actually writing this on Xmas Eve since I am still behind posting to the Blog until I have my own computer repaired and back. We are in Cambodia with Sarah, who is visiting us for her two week Xmas break. We leave for Thailand today and, after two flights, we will be on the beach at Koh Samui tonight-hopefully in time for some Xmas Eve dinner.
Merry Xmas!
Photos are from Hanoi where they seem to use the Xmas decorations to generally boost spending.

Day 135 Wednesday December 15th Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh’s memorial. George Orwell lives.

Xin Chao--Hello
Cam on---Txs
Khong co chi---you're welcome
Tam Biet---Good bye
Hen Gap lai---See you later
Xin loi---Excuse me/sorry
Loudspeakers boom at odd hours of each day and broadcast cheery music and inspirational government messages.A couple in another room of our hotel tells us their room radio unexpectedly came to life at 9.30am with the same messaging and music. Not quite under the pillow while you are asleep the way Orwell had imagined it but unsettlingly close to that.
Vietnamese seem eager to talk with you since most are now learning English. (They all went off to learn Russian during the Cold War). 65% of the 85million here are below 30 years old. There are no English street or shop signs here but Vietnamese is written in a Latin based phonetic alphabet (quoc ngu) so at least you can recognize the letters even if you can't say or understand the words. This was introduced by the Portuguese missionary, de Rhodes, in about 1630 as a way of simplifying the language and driving literacy. It worked: today Vietnam has a very high literacy rate. Ho Chi Minh kept this script after the 1975 revolution as a way of reducing the chances of further hegemony from China. (I am told "look at the situation Taiwan faces today"). China invaded and then ruled Vietnam for the first 1,000 years AD and they don't want them back.
Well dressed in Western Clothes and so we miss the color of the Indian clothing. Hanoi has its share of big, expensive designer stores and shopping malls. The Hammer and Sickle are everywhere but Vietnam has only 2m registered communists. 2% Buddhist, 10% Catholic and both are increasing but our guide tells us that he thinks most of the young people are too intent on getting ahead financially and are atheists.

Day 134 Tuesday December 14th Bangkok to Hanoi

Hanoi Old Quarter - Sunshine Palace Hotel. A suite for $40/night includes a shower with 2 nozzles, a steam/sauna option and music with synchopated disco lighting. Newly refurbished hotel includes a computer in every room with Internet access. Laundry is done in 4 hours for $1 a basket. (India was $20 for laundry). So hotel room is 25% of India's prices and at or above US standard.
Dinner at Bar69:
Gin and Tonic is $2.50 (India was $12.50 and so we had beer while there).
Wonton Dumpling soup $1.50
Ha Noi style pork sour soup. $1.50
Vietnam style stir fried beef with celery $4.09
Steamed Duck Breast with O Mai (Dried Apricots and Plums). $4.09
Fried banana and orange sauce.
Total about $20
US$1= 20,000 Dong so when we go to an ATM for cash we have type in 2,000,000 Dong and I am scared of typing so many zeros.
We are all jealous of the cafes of Paris, and the English and the Americans at least don't have that but the Asians live on the street. Food is cooked and eaten on the pavement (ie sidewalk), a pig is being chopped up, live fish are in oxygenated tanks, a chicken in a cage is being fed her breakfast, and the dishes are being washed. Meals are eaten while at children's sized tables and chairs. Usually it's not possible to walk on the pavement for more than a few feet and so you have to walk in the road along with hundreds of mopeds. The Vietnamese will make something edible from any ingredient. Street-side food production is scattered amongst lots of small businesses: keys are cut; hair is cut and styled; pots and pans are being made. An old lady with a staggering amount of wicker baskets full of flowers for sale comes cycling by and the moped riders stop (in the middle of the street) and buy from her before heading off home from work. So the street is an extremely busy and noisy social scene packed with wall to wall people and traffic. In our California town we are proud and thankful for our Starbucks and it's two umbrellas and few chairs for the chance to drink coffee outdoors. Our automatic garage door in California opens and the driver leaves for the shopping mall, probably talks a few words to the check-out person and then drives home and disappears once again behind that garage door. So we speculate that many Asians (Including Indians and Egyptians) would regard our towns as disconcertingly quiet, lifeless, soulless and without color.
Mopeds outnumber cars at least 100 to one. Once again all street rules are ignored. Mopeds are parked nose to tail across the pavements pushing pedestrians into the street. Doesn't matter, any available open pavement (sidewalk) would be used by a moped anyway. Many bikes and cars don't have their lights on at night and I have no idea why. When a lady on an unlit moped surprises me I tap her headlight and she then turns it on.

Day 133. Retrospective on India. We will come back.

We feel a pressure from travel writers to find charm in everything: Lonely Planet on the Jaipur bazaars: "...a sensual overload with a mixture of urine and spices..." well, it's just a giant outdoor Gent's toilet and I’m not going to romanticize things that aren’t romantic. Nevertheless we have tried hard to see past our own cultural prejudices and to view the places we are visiting with an open and sympathetic mind. Christine and I have challenged one another to find fault with our own Western Culture when seen through they eyes of the people of these various countries and it's not easy to do. We speculate that they would find our culture to be boring (at least what they can see). In Egypt, India and SE Asia (I am writing this while already in Cambodia) a great deal of life is played out amongst the crowded social scene at ground level on the street where food is cooked, sold and eaten right on the pavement (sidewalk). Hookah pipes and tea add to the mix and help pass the many hours of each day that everyone spends there amongst their friends.
We had understood that a great many people visiting India struggle to see past the filth and squalor of this greatly overcrowded country and we too have found this hard. But it seems to me that everyone here is working hard and wants to get ahead. Anyway, there is no social net, if you don’t work then you don’t eat. (I asked my Sikh guide how they regard begging (I had just been approached) and he explained to me that they don’t support it (“ïf you can work you should work- you can harm such people with charity, we support only those who cannot work”).
An Australian couple that we met while in Egypt told us that they had inspired three other couples to visit India for a 6 week trip (they themselves had stayed in India 6 months and loved it). They saw their friends on the day of arrival, all excited to head out to dinner and to start their long visit. The next morning all their friends were in the Hotel lobby with bags packed and about to leave the country. They apparently couldn’t take India, had changed their minds and were heading elsewhere.
India can frustrate. Nothing is finished or done right. Hotels charging US$150-$200/night are in need of a good clean and some paint, half the light bulbs in the hotel room are burnt out or deliberately left that way. Hot water is wasted for the want of a new $5 shower head and flow restrictor. A US$200/night Indian hotel doesn’t even come close to the US standard but in Vietnam I can pay US$30 for a hotel that beats a $150/night US hotel and I don’t understand that. Perhaps it’s the corruption in India, which is widespread. India is poor but much more could be done within their current means. I’m not sure that they always see the need of going beyond the current standard but the task of improving the infrastructure and living conditions for so many people must also be daunting. A lot of road construction is taking place but some of it looks as though it’s been going on for years but never completed. The roads are jammed and there are no road rules, or non that are obeyed anyway, but there is no road-rage at all. Two-strokes dominate and the pollution is terrible and backs up the entire continent all the way to the Himalayas. Litter is picked up but never completely so there is not a single moment when any place is clean.
63% vote ("The World's Largest Democracy") but the peasant's votes are often bought by the poor being bused to the vote station and told what symbols to press on the vote machine (they are illiterate), paid 100 rupees and trucked back. They seem somewhat nervous about the 200m or so Muslims in the country and road construction is often, inconveniently, navigated around Muslim areas for fear of upsetting them.
All of that said, India excites wonder like no other place I have visited. It’s an onslaught of noise, color, smells and the sight of a billion people sharing a space too small for them all. It is better than we expected or had come to expect. Even the women road workers carrying buckets of gravel trays on their heads (no wheelbarrows in sight, it’s just as if they hadn’t been invented yet) are wearing bright red, beautiful and clean (how?) Saris. Indians are an Industrious lot: ambitious, and, for the most part, they seem happy. (I was approached several times, occasionally aggressively, by young men wanting me to help them get out of India). There seems to be enough food for most. The North seems more prosperous and cleaner but perhaps that’s just a less dense population. Birth control is encouraged. The business people I have talked to all over India are optimistic of the next ten years.
Religion is everywhere (India is a mystical, superstitious place), and it has a friendly and happy face, anyway Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. Egypt was also mystical and superstitious with their worship of many gods but Islam has wiped that out now with its own rule-book and structures and strictures. India is ready to move on and to take it's religion with it while Egypt is stuck - like all Arab countries.
Well, it takes years to understand another culture, but those are my thoughts after five weeks in India and Christine and I both would like to come back to this magical, frustrating place.

Day 133 Monday December 13th Delhi to Bangkok. Ashamed of the US.

Today we say goodbye to India after 5 weeks here visiting a great deal of the country. We have to fly to Bangkok and stay one night as we journey toward our next country-Vietnam where we will stay for a week.
On the flight I sit next to a very pleasant 54 yr old Indian Lady who I "interviewed". Mrs Ranjeet Arora. She is a Sikh and so I tell her how impressed I am with her religion and share with her my visit to the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar. We talk about Sikhism for a while. Ranjeet expains to me that under Shikhism the men are given the name Singh and the women Kaur ("Kor"). She is a Government employee and so (like men) will receive a pension equal to her final salary at age 60.
In September of this yr she applied to the US consulate for a visitor's visa to visit her brother in New Jersey. The application cost her 7,000 rupees (about US$160 - a lot to her I'm sure) to get all the forms completed, (salary, address, bank balance, health statement etc) and then she took those forms to the American Consular office in New Delhi and was interviwed by an African American woman (I asked) who asked her 4 questions. (Her folder of all the requested information was never opened). Q1: "Why did you visit Dubai?" (her son lives there, I think that this was a terrorism question); Q2: "Are you married?" (her husband passed away 20 yrs ago and she remains a widow and lives by herself); Q3 "what is your job?" (she is in the finance section of a government housing department and has been successfully employed there for many years. She is independent and working.); Q4: "with whom do you live?" (A4 " Alone" Ranjeet and I both agree that this is the killer answer since the US will assume that she secretly wishes to move to the US and that she has no emotional attachments in India). "Sorry, you don't qualify for a visitor's visa". She asked why and was told "we don't explain why, you can re-apply again if you wish". She told me that she wouldn't do that, she was affronted and wouldn't want to spend another 7,000 rps again to have a tourist visit to the US. The consular offical then closed the shutter to her window. Ranjeet has no intention to move to the US, she simply wants to visit her brother for a few weeks.
Just as Ranjeet's interview is ending a lady at the next window starts to cry, she wishes to make a visit to see her son and has been rejected for the 2nd time, she is here to ask why. The white caucasian (Again I ask- I want to see how this works and don't know if the US employs US citizens of Indian background to do this work- they apparently do not) consular official simply states that they don't explain and calls for a security guard and then promptly shutters his window.
I have seen the movie "The Visitor" which portrays the awful treatment that the US apparently gives visitor applicants and discounted that view (as some of the movie reviewers also did) but now I am ashamed and intend to write my congressman with this story. Maybe if we made it easier to visit the US legally we wouldn't have so many illegals. Other people had told me on earlier occasions during our trip that a tourist visit to the US is very difficult but I had ignored that, now it seems to me to be true.

Day 132 Sunday December 12th. Shimla to Kalka toy train of 6 hrs thru 19 tunnels and as many bridges. 4 more hrs to Delhi by normal train

Last night we had dinner at Moti Mahal, founded by Sir Kundan Lal Gujral-Father of Tandoori cuisine.
Yahkni Shorba (Lamb soup simmered with Indian spices and drizzled with lemon juice and fresh mint). US$2.
Sabe Butter Masala (Diced fresh vegetables with ginger and garlic in red and brown gravy with Indian spices). US$4.
Roghan Gosht (Marinated Lamb cooked over a slow fire with Indian spices) US$6.
But now it's Sunday and we have to travel by train back to Delhi. This is the narrow-gauge track laid by the British to connect to their HQ at Shimla and so I suppose that it's the one that Ghandi, Montbatten, Nehru and all the others would have used as well.

Day 131 Saturday December 11th Shimla, visit to Viceroy's castle.

We visit the Viceroy's (Scottish looking)castle, now a postdoctoral research center for Indian Scholars, and are shown the room where Montbatten first showed Nehru the proposed partition of India into Pakistan and India. Montbatten apparently waited until Nehru was about to go to bed and Nehru took the boundary map up with him as bed-time reading. Strange to think that Ghandi, Nehru, Montbatten, Jenna were all here discussing such an important suject. The British cartographer had complained that he didn't have enough time to do a good job of determining the sensible boundary lines. Beginnings of Kashmir I suppose. Much migration and bloodshed followed the Partition. Ghandi had already walked out as a protest against the whole idea of partition. I ask to be shown the "Real-Tennis" court, the only one in all of India and I'm curious as to how it compares to Henry V's court at Hampton Court. The guide (who is a member of the sports club here) explains that they have just received an invitation from the British Real-Tennis club to accept their visit and a challenge match but he explains to me that they have declined the invitation since they use the court to play badminton and that they cannot really play the game of Real-Tennis. I urge him to accept the invitation, I'm sure the British Team were just after the thrill of playing here at the old British Raj Club.

Day 130 Friday December 10th Dharamsala to Shimla. The British Raj HQ

7 hrs by car. and we cross into a new state-Himachal Pradesh. At the state border a large sign declares the state to be litter free and they do seem to have made a good attempt. There are fines for littering and in Shimla the garbage truck moves through the town each evening. It’s cold now, we are up close to the Himalayas at 7,000ft. I have a cold and the hotel brings two hot water bottles, blankets and honey and lemon and hot water-I add the whiskey. $200/night at Clarkes Hotel and it’s very good.

Day 129 Thursday December 9th Dali Lama’s Monks meditate in between cell phone calls

We take a visit to the Dali Lama’s Tibetan Monastery and look at the Buddha statues. Since the monks themselves cannot accept payment people offer food and place various items at the feet of the Buddhas. Enlarge the photo to see the most popular item left (Hob Nobs). We see a Monk meditating but then his cell phone rings and he interrupts his deep meditation to take the call. Other Monks are walking around (we suppose visiting here) with their cameras. We try to learn a little more about Buddhism while we are here but it still seems obscure, more complex and less approachable than Sikhism to many of us on the tour. The tourist (squat) toilets in the Temple complex are almost too filthy to use. I am not impressed with the Temple or the presentation of its religion to the lay public at this site.
The Tibetan Museum here is worth a visit and reminds you of China’s destruction of the culture and people of Tibet.

Day 128 Wednesday December 8th British massacre of Indians at Jallianwalla.

After the Golden Temple visit we go to see the site of the 1919 British massacre of 5,000 unarmed Indians who were peacefully demonstrating against the British imposition of emergency rule. They were trapped in this high walled compound and General Dyer gave the orders to his 150 troops to fire on them killing 400 and wounding 1500 more. The British Raj later denounced the action as excesssive use of force.
Then we travel by car from Amritsar to Dharamsala/ Mcleod Ganj up into the foothills of the Western Himalayas. It's cold but it's a nice town, Christine and I buy Yak Hats from Arif, a young man whose family makes the products in Kashmir.
British Hill Station established by British in 19th century. Home to Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in exile.

Day 128 Wednesday December 8th Golden Temple and a kitchen that serves 60,000 free meals/day.

We go back to visit the Golden Temple and learn more about Sikhism. Hinduism, India's main religion, seems to me to be a much more approachable religion that the Western World's Christianity. As I have witten in the earlier entries, Hinduism seems almost tongue in cheek with it's presentation to the world. (My miniature of the pink, pot-bellied Elephant God Ganesh is looking at me now). But it's a happy accessible, fun and colorful religion and I can't help but compare that to the austere and grey Christian architecture and the corresponding mournful style of that religion. Sikhisms seems to top them all with it's simplistic and pure approach (One God and open to all). Anyone of any faith or non-faith is welcome to visit the Golden temple and everyone is offered a free meal. All the Sikhs that are here are happy and smiling at us and welcoming us. The donation boxes are tucked away and contributions are not solicited. Of course we all then want to, and do, contribute.
The kitchen that serves between 60k and 100k free meals to anyone who wants food every day is simply beyond comprehension in it's simplistic efficiency and success. It is staffed entirely by volunteers and no-one seems to be in charge - but it works. The main room can seat almost 4,000 people (you do have to squat on the floor) and they try and rotate people every hour. Poor people can sleep inside the temple compound and we see plenty of those.
I can't help but muse on what a Western business would do if they were asked to develop the facilities and management structure to serve so many people each day, I can just see armies of middle management, accounting and health and safety people. There are non here-the business schools should come and take a look. All the volunteers seem to be self-managing and just move around making chapatis, tea or preparing and cooking vegetables.