The World Tastes Good

Trip to Akatadaibutsu (赤田大仏) and Jizo Forest in Akita-ken (秋田県)

2011-10-10T05:03:00.000-07:00

Well, for the first time in a while I was able to get out of the city to see more of Akita’s countryside. Because I’m leaving at the end of this month, a kind colleague of mine offered to take me to an area I’d previously said I was eager to visit: Yuri-Honjo, home to one of the largest Buddha statues in Japan, as well as blueberry fields and a forest known for its Sentai Jizo (千体地蔵), or 1000 stone Jizo statues.

By car, Yuri-Honjo is only about 30 minutes south of Akita, and the drive there is pretty scenic. Once in Araya, where the zoo is, one passes along the coast before swinging a few kilometers inland.

My colleague somehow figured out which left to take to get to Yuri-Honjo, and then he did well to recall (or made a lucky guess) which back roads to take to get to Chokokuji (長谷寺) Temple, where the Great Buddha of Akata is housed. We parked across the street in front of a tourist area called Tohkoh House, which is set beside a rose garden, playground, and outdoor cooking area, and is surrounded by rice and blueberry fields.

We crossed the street and made our way through a grove of pine trees to the temple area, in front of which were several weathered stone tablets with kanji engravings as well as various Jizo statues.

Some local tourists greeted us at the temple steps and pointed to where we needed to take off our shoes and put on slippers, and encouraged us to take our time inside.

We slid open the heavy wooden door and stepped inside. Directly before us stood a giant wooden Buddha (Daibutsu) in a somewhat narrow room hung with paintings of the Akita countryside and stories, apparently, of the Buddha’s significance to Yuri-Honjo.

The Buddha was flanked on the left and right by bright-blue deities and behind by numerous golden Kan’non Rashiki (bodhisattvas, I believe).

My understanding is that the temple was founded in 1774, and after a devastating fire the Daibutsu one finds here today was installed in 1888. With a height of 9.8 meters, it’s currently the third tallest Buddha statue in Japan, next to the Daibutsu in Kamakura and the Daibutsu in Nara’s Todaiji Temple.

If I’m correct, a Shinto festival dating back more than 200 years also takes place here in September.

Across from Chokokuji Temple are numerous rice fields, which at this time of year have just been harvested.

But recently a few local families have started planting blueberries in the vicinity, and adjacent to the temple entrance is a small shop specializing in homemade blueberry jam and ice cream with blueberry preserves.

Their blueberry field has some 300 blueberry plants, which they’ve been growing for around 15 years.

I bought a small jar of blueberry jam for ¥450 (US$5.86) and an ice cream with blueberry preserves for ¥250 (US$3.26).

From here we continued on to search for a forested area in which 1000 Jizo statues line a walking path. We had a hard time, though, since few of the areas here are marked, and while we never managed to find the specific Jizo area, we did come across numerous Buddha and Jizo statues that were scattered around overgrown paths and small hills. The area is said to have special Shinto significance, and it’s not hard to see signs of its sacredness.

There were a couple of small parks nearby, too, which we walked through, and lookouts with gorgeous views of the valley below us. There were also snakes, huge spiders in webs we nearly walked into several times, and the odd lizard. Oh, and tons of dragonflies.

On our way back we decided to stop in a Yuri-Honjo ramen shop called Oji, which advertises Hokkaido-style ramen.

I ordered a shoyu ramen (¥650, or US$8.47) and split a plate of gyoza (¥300, or US$3.91) with my friend. It was a fairly fancy ramen shop, and it didn’t disappoint.

From there it was mostly a race against time to get back home before the afternoon rain started. We made it back in time, but I did eventually get caught in the rain while shopping in the evening for groceries near my house...

More from my O-Bon Trip to Kyoto

2011-09-17T04:25:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while since my last blog post. I'm only now posting the second part about my O-bon trip to Kyoto and Nara last month. Work has been hectic, to say the least. So much so, in fact, that last night I notified my employer that I would be leaving my job soon. I could stay in Japan and look for similar work elsewhere, but the money I'd lose switching cities and paying key money to landlords is prohibitively expensive, and there's no guarantee that I wouldn't find myself with the same working hours elsewhere. I love being in Japan and exploring its culture, but, as I found out about Hawaii, it's a much better place to visit than to work in. But all of this is boring, isn't it? Let's get back to narrating my week-long trip to Kyoto and Nara. As with the first post about this trip, I'm going to narrate through captions.

Looking out from the steps of Heian Jingu one sees a towering torii of vermilion-painted steel, which is considered the true entrance to the shrine.

Heian Shrine is much younger than it looks. Built in 1895, the shrine complex is modeled after the Kyoto Gosho, the original Kyoto Imperial Palace from 1100 years earlier that has been greatly damaged by fires over the years and remains nearly inaccessible to the public now.

Many shrines have walls of stacked, beautifully designed sake casks, which I believe are used ceremonially.

The shrine precincts, which are spread out beneath a forested slope to the east, are free to enter. The entrance fee to the attached garden (see photos below), however, costs ¥600 per adult.

Every morning, shrine attendants sweep the stony ground of the complex. The entire complex, as you would expect, is kept impeccably clean.

Prayers are written on paper and wooden cards (often with pictures on them) called ema and tied to stands in Shinto shrines.

I've never seen anyone do it, but it seems like these prayers can be read by anyone passing by. Often, the prayers are for success in school exams, or good luck in finding a suitable marriage partner, or, especially now, to wish a speedy recovery for Japan's earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster victims.

I'd love to come back here at night to see these lanterns all lit up. I'm not sure if the lanterns are actually lit at night, though, nor am I sure that the shrine is even open at night. I guess I'd have to hop a fence, which would probably result in my breaking a leg, getting caught and arrested, and then deported.

As you can see, those prayer ribbons look like trees from a distance.

Another angle of the entrance gate, this time looking back on it from inside the shrine.

The garden at Heian Shrine is almost easy to overlook. It's not visible from the shrine complex, though there's a small entrance to the side with a poster of what the garden looks like. The ¥600 (US$7.80) entrance fee is a bit steep, but the garden is worth walking through. You could easily spend an hour here if you're not in a rush.

The garden's design is supposed to reflect Heian-period (794-1185) tastes.

There are small wooden vending boxes, run by the honor system, in which you can buy food to feed the koi and turtles that swim beneath the Chinese-inspired bridge.

The garden ends on the other side of the shrine complex, and then you exit Heian Jingu exactly where you came in.

A bowl of kakiudon served from a noodle shop near Kyoto University.

We got a small bowl of warabi-mochi-adzuki-ice for dessert at the noodle shop, too. Warabi-mochi (those green squares) isn't mochi at all, apparently, but is rather made from bracken starch and sprinkled with sweet toasted soybean flour.

For dinner, back in southern edge of the Higashiyama district, we came across a restaurant called Asuka. The photos of the restaurant's menu out front convinced us to go inside and give the place a shot.

I went with fried sardines, which came with pickled veggies, miso soup and rice. Sardines, or iwashi in Japanese, are one of my favorite fish, and these didn't disappoint. The meal, especially with a cold draft beer, hit the spot. But I was still hungry after polishing this off, so I decided to order...

...nametake oroshi, which is simply nametake mushrooms with grated radish.

Here's a photo of the Japanese breakfast served at the hotel where I stayed: rice, seaweed, miso soup, soft-boiled egg, fish, gobo, rolled omelet, and fish cake.

Another site worthy of a visitor's time in Kyoto is Murin-an, a former statesman's villa dating back to 1896. The villa itself is impressive, especially the tearoom that overlooks a garden with small streams and the mountains behind it.

Fall is undoubtedly the best time to come, as the colors in the garden darken and drop to the ground and give some counterpoint to all the green that's visible in the relentlessly hot summer.

Murin-an is only a two-minute walk from the Kyoto International Community House, and it's open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The entrance fee is ¥350 (US$4.50).

Early the next morning I headed to Kiyomizudera. I'd intended to catch a bus there from the Higashiyama area of Kyoto, but my bus map was hard to read; I got lost; and I ended up walking the entire way. By the time I reached the temple, I was soaked with sweat. At least, once I got nearer the temple, the streets and walking paths became more picturesque.

The streets here were charming, and there moments when it was easy to think this was how parts of Japan might have looked two hundred years ago.

Young women in summer kimono...and a plastic ice cream cone. Can you guess which of the two I was more interested in photographing?

I liked this place along the Kiyomizuderamichi (Kiyomizu Temple path).

This path, called Chawanzaka (Teapot Land) ends at the top of the hill and...

...this is what you find.

This was my third trip to the temple since 1991. On this day, though you couldn't tell from the photos I've selected for this post, the temple was more crowded than I'd experienced before. There's something special about having a beautiful temple nearly all to yourself, and I never had that feeling on this visit.

Potted lotus plants, lined up in parallel rows.

It was breezy here, and ribbon-strung wind chimes spun and tinkled in the air.

This shrine is near Jishu-jinja, where visitors close their eyes and try to walk a straight line between rocks to ensure that they will find love in the future. I'm not sure what the name of this shrine is, but it seems to be devoted to one or more fox spirits.

Kiyomizu Temple was originally built in 794, though what exists now is a reconstruction of the original. What one is able to see now was constructed in 1633.

A small structure full of Jizo statues wearing bibs and hats.

This veranda is part of Kiyomizudera's main hall. As you can see, dozens of wooden pillars undergird the temple, and it was from this veranda that pilgrims used to make a wish and jump. If you survived, and only about 85% of jumpers did, then your wish was supposed to come true.

Kiyomizu means "pure water." Visitors can drink the water here, at the Otowa-no-taki waterfall. The water is purported to have therapeutic properties and can help bring luck as well.

This woman, in her geisha makeup and kimono--an apprentice or training geisha, I'm guessing--turned a lot of heads outside of Kiyomizudera.

There was something funny to me watching her snap photo after photo of herself with her cell phone. I suppose I'd do the same thing if I were dressed like that, but the mix of old and new caught my eye.

Another impressive temple in Kyoto, and considered one of the "Five Great Temples" in the city, is Nanzenji. Construction of this temple, which is located in northern Higashiyama, began in 1264, but because fires destroyed the complex several times in the past, the version of the temple we see today dates to around 1570. San-mon, pictured above, is the entrance to the temple. It is a huge gate, and one can climb to the second floor and from there view the city and its mountains from all sides.

Continuing further into Nanzenji, one comes across Hojo Garden with its famous "dry garden" depicting tigers crossing the water. (Or, if not depicting this, then interpreted later to show this.)

On the left, visitors can be seen sitting on the porch of Seiryoden Hall, viewing the stones and grouped trees of the garden.

Old wooden bridges lead between the dry garden and Hojo Hall, which was originally commissioned by Hideyoshi Toyotomi circa 1585. The buildings here, as well as the sliding door paintings of tigers they contain, are considered national treasures. Photography inside the building is not permitted, and entrance to Hojo Garden and its grounds costs ¥500 (US$6.50).

Okay, I admit it: this place, which was only a few feet from the bus stop closest to my hotel, got my attention because of the giant ice cream cone...

Walking down that narrow corridor, however, brought me to a gorgeous, tucked-away restaurant.

Apparently, the area here used to be part of an old marina or harbor, and the water was much more expansive than this. It was built upon over the years, and while much smaller than previously it still contains a great many fish and turtles. It was very quiet as well, and one could forget the hustle and bustle of Kyoto easily here.

The indoor seating was nice, too, but outside ended up being my choice.

I ended up ordering a "takikomi rice" set, which came with miso soup, pickled veggies, red bean rice, braised eel in a shallow egg-based stew, and a bit of fish and steamed veggies. The price was reasonable, too: ¥1400 (about US$18). The restaurant, it turned out, was part of the Kyoto Hotel Okura, though it's in a separate building.

On the evening of my final day in Kyoto I was invited to attend a rooftop party to view Dainoji -- the burning of a giant 大 pictograph in the northern mountains of Kyoto. The photo above is of the road outside of Kyoto University; the vermilion torii is the entrance to a path that climbs to a small park and residential area.

The party was quite festive and very international. Overall, perhaps 50 people got together on the rooftop for food and drinks.

Not long after nightfall, the mountain began to blaze.

This pictograph as well as other symbols burned on mountains around Kyoto are meant to help the spirits of the dead, which return every year during O-bon, find their way back to the hereafter.

Although the picture quality isn't great, you can still make out the full moon rising directly over the embers of the burned pictograph. Had it risen ten minutes earlier, it would have been spectacular. Even so, it was still pretty awesome to see.

Side Trip to Nara

2011-08-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

I went to Nara last weekend during the summer lantern festival, known in Japanese as Tokae. The O-Bon lanterns are meant to guide the spirits of the deceased, and they are placed at various points throughout the city––around the perimeters of ponds, in open areas of Nara Park, before shrines and temples, and along many streets and sidewalks.

This was my second trip to Nara, and the deer here, though considered sacred by the Japanese, are just as aggressive as they were when I was in Japan as a university student. Walking away does absolutely no good when you've got food in your hands.

The only possible thing that might keep these deer from nosing tourists for food is the need for shuteye. And in the summer heat, which has consistently been around 35 C (95 F) in Nara and Kyoto, it's understandable.

Most deer stay in grassy areas, but others seem to like to express their individuality by lying in gutters alongside busy roads.

The smart ones head for the water. Unfortunately, smart appears to be relative as they pee and poop in the water they drink from and cool down in.

The Nara National Museum I found disappointing. Both buildings were filled with religious art, which is interesting; in these exhibitions, however, they were under-explained, and I thought the exhibitions could have been a bit more diverse.

The cafe at the National Museum specializes in Chinese food. It wasn't anything to write home about...does blogging about it count as the same thing?

If only that deer knew how to work the faucet on that hose...

Nandaimon Gate, which one normally passes through on the way to Todaiji Temple. On each side of the interior passage are two scary-looking Nio guardians from the 13th century, considered by some to be the finest examples in the world of such wood-carving.

Here's one of the Nio guardians. He's so fierce and nasty-looking that they keep him behind a fenced enclosure.

This one, too.

Todaiji-Temple, a World Heritage site and possibly the most popular destination for tourists to Nara. The Daibutsu-den Hall here is the biggest wooden building in the world, and used to be almost 50% larger than it is now.

Check out the height of those doors.

One of the two giant Buddha figures in Daibutsu-den Hall.

The original bronze Buddha was cast in 746, then was re-cast nearly 1000 years later. It's one of the largest bronze figures in the world.

I'm not quite sure what this is meant to be, but lots of people were standing around it and touching the folds of the figure's robe as if that would bring good luck.

Another angle of Todaiji Temple.

Cutting through the park to get to Nigatsu-do Hall, another World Heritage site, one can pass beneath this bright vermilion torii.

That's Todaiji Temple in the background. It's so huge that it ends up being in the background for quite a while after you've left it.

Some stone kami on the side of a walking path, obviously well-tended to.

Some fenced in rice between temples.

A picturesque path on the way to Nigatsu-do Hall.

Japan's temples blend well with nature and vice-versa. I liked how these old tree branches framed the wooden doors of this building at Nigatsu-do.

Of course, no temple in Nara would be complete without a handful of deer munching on grass and pooping in unexpected places.

The temple offers fantastic views of Kyoto and its forested mountains. I wish I'd come here at dusk, actually.

Back in town, after a much-needed shower and replenishing of liquids, we found the city gearing up for the lantern festival.

They poured water in the candle holders and then floated the candles on top.

Many streets here are already picturesque without the lanterns, though the lanterns do give the place an ethereal feel.

Once place we stopped at along Naramachi Road.

Lanterns were placed around the perimeter of Sarusawa-ike Pond, which was full of people well before the sun went down.

One of the nicest things about this setting was the silhouettes of temples and pagodas against the darkening sky.

Here you can see the Five-Story Pagoda all lit up behind a lantern-strewn hillside.

Here are some red lanterns in a bizarre, never-before-seen shape.

Some of the local ryokans even got in on the act. I only wish I'd known beforehand that it wasn't "cool" to do a full-body, rolling, head-first slide through the displays.

It was nearly impossible to find a place to eat that either wasn't packed or didn't have a long wait.

As you can see, the place wasn't crawling with eater. Though it had been about 20 minutes before we decided to enter and order something to eat.

I went with a bowl of chicken oden and two pieces of pressed mackerel sushi wrapped in leaves. Neither was earth-shatteringly good, but the cost was decent––about 900 yen, or under US$12.

Filled up now with food, we headed back to Kofukuji Temple and its neighbor, Five-Story Pagoda, where more lanterns had been placed. Here you can see the kanji for "harmony."

The moon cooperated fairly well most of the night and appeared at convenient times. Here it can be seen between the Five-Story Pagoda and Tokon-do (East Buddha Hall).

Here it is again hovering over the lantern-bright lawn between the Nara National Museum buildings.

More lanterns on the lawn of the Nara National Museum.

More of the same here...

We went from the Nara National Museum to a VERY long walk around what seemed like 80% of Nara Park. Policemen were out in force, for no discernable reason other than to make sure no one veered from the official route, which was seriously like 3 km long without a way back into the park once you'd ventured into it. We finally made it to Sagi-ike Pond, where a number of lantern-lit rowboats plied the water around Ukimido Gazebo.

Young Japanese women in kimono were out in bunches, which gave more of a festive air to the night's events.

Another shot of boats surrounding Ukimido Pavilion.

Ukimido Pavilion from a bit closer-up.

And what festival would be worth its name in Japan without food stalls specializing in yakisoba, takoyaki, shaved ice, etc.?

We got back to Matsumae Ryokan in time for a shower. In addition to a 10:30 p.m. curfew, there was a strict time schedule for taking showers and baths, and check-in and check-out times were an equally inconvenient 3 p.m. and 10 a.m., respectively. That's fairly common in Japan, however.

Breakfast the next morning was thick-cut bread, papaya and hibiscus jam, and what else––Vietnamese coffee. Making breakfast in the room was about 1/3 the cost of what it would have been elsewhere.

All wigged out on caffeine, we scrambled outside into the blazing sun and found this stone-carved boat with what appeared to be jizo figures on it.

The lake that had been decorated with lanterns the previous evening was free of them in the morning, and turtles had replaced them. (Not really, but several were sunning themselves on these half-logs.)

As usual, the deer hordes were out and looking for deer biscuits.

This one had a pretty prime spot. Even if no one has deer biscuits to give you, you might score a half-eaten or dropped ice cream cone. The deer, incidentally, would sometimes make these horrible-sounding neighs. It was almost like a pained mew. I'm pretty sure that if I were to start imitating it (as I'm prone to do with animal noises), whoever I was with wouldn't let me do it more than once before telling me forcefully to shut up.

One often finds stacked sake casks outside of shrines in Japan. Just once I'd like to poke a hole in one and see if sake comes spurting out.

The entrance to Kasuga Taisha Shrine, another World Heritage site.

Also at the shrine is this bronze deer statue. The deer here, as I said above, are considered sacred. They've been living in this park for centuries, and were originally thought to be messengers from the gods.

Kasuga Taisha was founded in 768, back when Nara served as the capital of Japan and was also the center of Buddhism in the country.

There are 3000 of these lanterns inside the Katsuga Taisha compound, which is restored once every 20 years––a tradition dating back to the shrine's origin.

That gorgeous cedar tree is 23 meters tall and more than 1000 years old.

The shrine consists of vermilion pillars as seen here, as well as white-walled buildings and rooftops constructed from cypress-bark. The shrine hasn't changed its appearance since its founding.

Hanging lanterns and vermilion pillars.

From the shrine we continued toward Shiga Naoya's Old Residence, taking Sasayakino-Komichi Path. Along the way I saw this sign. I like to think it explains the "rules of engagement" with the local deer. Kind of like a blood sport perpetrated by aggressive deer against hapless pigtailed girls and old ladies. There's the BITE, the KICK, the BUTT, and the KNOCK DOWN. Watch out!

I'd brought a novel by Shiga Naoya to Nara without realizing that he had a former home here and one could visit it.

The place is very impressive. His success as a writer was apparent, too, in the sheer size of the house and its grounds.

Not a bad place to sit and write one's novel...

He lived here from 1929-1938 and wrote Anya-Koro (A Dark Night's Passing) here. It's a dark story, but it's one of my very favorite Japanese novels.

His dining room was quite spacious, certainly large enough to host his literary friends (such as Junichiro Tanizaki, another Japanese novelist who is definitely worth reading).

His sunroom, too, was amazing. He designed the house himself.

He ended up moving to Tokyo after leaving Nara and died there at 88 years of age in 1971.

We kept walking...and walking...and walking after finishing our tour of Shiga Naoya's house. We passed by Sagi-ike Pond and Ukimido Gazebo again, though this time during the daytime.

There were quite a number of summer flowers in bloom, and one even saw the occasional rickshaw driver. It's hard to believe they survive for long in 35 C heat.

The pond again, with flowering trees in the foreground.

At 2:00 we finally opted for lunch, choosing an okonomiyaki place not far from Matsumae Ryokan.

The A/C was most welcome, as was the pitcher of ice water that we downed in about 5 minutes.

The tomato salad was refreshing...

But the grilled sea scallops were a bit dry...

The okonomiyaki was quite good, though, especially with an Asahi Draft chaser.

Our last stop of the day in Nara (before heading to the train station and promptly getting on the wrong train, which took us to Osaka rather than back to Kyoto––doh!) was yet another World Heritage site: Gangoji Temple.

By the time we got here I'd forgotten the pitcher of water I'd drunk, as well as the draft beer, and wanted to immerse my entire head (with my mouth open) in this water basin.

Gangoji Temple was formerly called Asuka Temple, though before that it was known as Hokoji Temple. It was founded in 588 (and moved to its present location in 710) and was supported to a large extent by the King of Paekche in Korea at the time.

One especially nice thing about this temple is that very few people were here. We didn't have the place to ourselves, but it wasn't overrun by tourists and a feeling of peacefulness prevailed here.

It was a short trip to Nara, but I have to say it was a fairly packed trip, too, especially considering how meltingly hot it was. Nara's an amazing place and I hope I can come back soon.

1st Night in Kyoto During O-Bon Holiday

2011-08-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

Nighttime on the Kamo River in Kyoto. Although cities in Tohoku held their annual Tanabata Festivals earlier this summer, Kyoto is having theirs now.

Sadly, I'm falling behind in adding text to go along with my photos. All I can say is that I will add a narrative to this post in the next day or two, along with a narrative to my previous post. I'll go ahead and type in some photo captions, which will have to suffice until I have a bit more free time and a reliable Internet connection...

This was my brunch after arriving on a JR sleeper train and checking into my hotel. This is proof that fast food doesn't have to be bad for you. It also only cost me ¥430 (US$5.60).

This place was a great deal for dinner. We ordered one draft Sapporo beer, and the four dishes pictured below. The total cost for two people was ¥2290 ($29.89 on an anemic US dollar). That's cheaper than some Japanese restaurants in Hanoi!

Consider yourself lucky that the noise these salarymen produced throughout dinner doesn't translate on the page. These guys need to learn how to control their alcohol. Same for the guy outside -- from a different party -- who was puking into a canal.

I know, I need a better transition from the last caption...but this is the sashimi and seaweed salad we ordered.

Wheat gluten on sticks with miso paste. The yellow one had a ponzu-like taste to it while the red miso one had a mellower sweetness.

Pesto covering the tops of sliced tomatoes and a vinaigrette dressing for all of it to soak in.

Salmon sushi with salmon roe and toasted sesame seeds. Unbelievably tasty.

Approaching the Gion district after dinner. It's nice seeing young people dressed in festival yukatas and kimonos.

A small, quiet alley off of another alley in Kyoto's Gion district.

Trees all decorated and lit up for the Tanabata Festival.

More of the same along the Kamo River.

Inside these straw-woven balls were paper-wrapped candles and written wishes hanging from paper strips.

Another shot of nighttime along the Kamo River.

Kanto Festival Weekend in Akita

2011-08-06T07:14:00.000-07:00

The kind of work schedule I'm keeping doesn't leave me much time to blog these days, unfortunately. I think what I need to do is just upload some photos and then, when I have extra time, add some text to explain them fully. Sorry, it's not ideal, but it's the best I can do for the time being.

These photos are of Akita City, Japan, during the weekend of the Kanto Festival.

More soon, I hope...

First post from Akita

2011-07-18T02:18:00.000-07:00

Not a bad view from up here. All that sweaty hiking was worth it.

I’ve been away from my blog for a while now, but not by choice. After three weeks in Akita, I finally got hooked up to the Internet at home, and virtually every attempt I made to get online elsewhere in Akita, even to check email, was thoroughly thwarted. Why? Who on earth knows. I’m just glad I’ve got home access to the Internet now. It’d be nice to have a phone, too, but I apparently have to wait another month for that, not to mention five more weeks for the sofa I bought yesterday afternoon to be delivered. I guess things here just take a long time…

The second floor apartment is where I now live. It's a far cry from my place on Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi. It's a good place, though.

Sekiya grocery store and these two fruit shops are where I'm doing most of my shopping these days.

The final street I take on my way home from work.

I also managed to break my good camera during my move, so all I’ve got to use now is an old camera whose photos aren’t particularly good. Until I can get the old one fixed or I decide to invest in a new one, I’m going to have to make do with what I have.

I’m not sure where to start regarding my new life in Akita. It’s certainly very different from my life in Hanoi. Mostly, though, I’m working all the time and don’t have the energy once I get home—usually after 9 pm, when most businesses have long closed—to explore my environs. Most of my exploring has been limited to errands I’ve run on a very run-down bicycle, and I’d say that 75% of my meals are coming from convenience stores. Who’s got time to cook, much less shop for appliances and groceries? On Saturday nights, however, throughout the hot summer, there’s a free concert series held near my apartment to benefit people who were displaced by the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami. Last Saturday there was a local Kentucky bluegrass band that played for a couple of hours, and they were very good.

Kentucky bluegrass has found a home in Akita, apparently.

Not to mention quite a following.

In any case, I’m enjoying myself here, though it’s insanely hot and the office where I work is usually 33 C by 10 a.m. and we’re trying not to use air-conditioning. My colleagues and I spend most of the day blotting our sweaty faces with thick face towels and moaning.

Anyway, today I took my first trip outside of Akita and into the countryside. The countryside, or what I saw of it today, was pretty awe-inspiring.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to fill in the names of the places I went to today later, once I can get the information from the colleague who generously invited me to go hiking with him to a couple temples in the Mt. Taihei area northeast of Akita City.

Traveling in style through the Akita countryside...

The path leading to one of the temples we stopped to see on our way to Mt. Taihei.

Akita City doesn’t have many great temples, though there are quite a few small ones that I’ve already bumped into. Apparently there are several important temples and shrines in Akita prefecture, including a giant Buddha statue—the third largest in all of Japan, so I hear—housed in a rural temple surrounded by blueberry fields that I’d love to visit, but since I don’t have a car and these are remote areas we’re talking about, I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get to any of them.

Mt. Taihei, however, is reputed to have a number of temples worth visiting. What's more, these temples are set within a large forested park, and hiking opportunities (discounting bears, snakes, and potentially lethal hornets) abound here. We headed to a small shrine that was a short, but extremely steep, climb from a parking area in what's called Mt. Taihei Resort Park.

One of the various parks in Mt. Taihei.

It didn't take long to reach––maybe 20 or 25 minutes––but by the time we reached the shrine we were soaked in sweat and needed a few minutes to catch our breaths.

An old stone and torii set before the trail leading to a mountain shrine.

Virtually the entire trail was this steep...

The shrine isn't exactly spectacular, but the views from here, as you can see above, are definitely pretty nice.

After descending back down the trail we headed to what was billed as a waterfall area. It was true that there were waterfalls here, though what greets you in the parking area is water falling from squares cut out of a mossy cement wall. It looked nice, and in the heat it was cooling to see.

We decided to leave the Mt. Taihei park at around 1 p.m., but first we needed to refuel with some food. There aren't a lot of choices in the park, but we did find an interesting, and quite tasty, place called Yamanogodai that was open for lunch.

Yamanogodai is a mom-and-pop place with a lot of character. This becomes apparent upon opening the door and seeing the balding bear fur stretched out in the entranceway. After we made it past the fresh veggies and miso paste sold in wooden crates, we plopped ourselves down at a table, were given cold water, and then ordered our lunches.

I went with a heaping bowl of aigakedon, which was basically rice topped with curried beef and pork and kim chee, with generous pinches of grated cabbage and pickled ginger. I was also given miso soup and pickled cucumbers, both of which were surprisingly good.

The meal set me back ¥850 (US $10.75), and I couldn't finish it all. Luckily, my friend helped me out, and when we paid we were given free rice crackers for the drive back to Akita.

I'm not sure where I'll go next weekend, if anywhere, but hopefully I'll find a way out of the city again soon.

Sayonara, Hanoi

2011-06-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

I'll miss these colorful sunsets over Truc Bach Lake and West Lake from my balcony.

For the fifth time in seventeen years, I’m moving from Vietnam to a far-off shore. This time my destination is Akita, Japan, where I have a one-year work contract. The Japanese government has given me a three-year work visa, however, so I may end up in Japan long term.

I’ve been debating whether or not to retire this blog and start a new one, but I’m going to try to keep this one going. Akita, which is about 550 km (330 miles) from Tokyo as the crow flies, isn’t on most travelers’ lists of must-see destinations, but since it’s going to become my home for a while, I’m sure there will be plenty to share about this medium-sized city on the northwestern tip of Honshu, on the sea-edge of the Japanese Alps.

I’ve lately taken to Twitter, too, and like it for all the tailored news feeds I get and for timely updates on local goings-on. For anyone interested in “following” me on Twitter, feel free to do so. My account name is sapuche.

In the meantime, this will be my last blog post from Vietnam. I’m typing this on my flight to Japan, and expect to post it from an airport hotel in Tokyo. Tomorrow I arrive in Akita, and surely I’ll start blogging again soon.

Sayonara, Hanoi. Stay interesting. But please work on solving your traffic problems. And clean up Hoan Kiem Lake so your country’s emblematic turtle can live on for many years to come. I can’t wait to come back one day soon.

Approaching Tokyo by air. Mt. Fuji is rising through the clouds in the distance.

Short Getaway to Phu Quoc Island

2011-06-20T00:52:00.000-07:00

Bai Sao Beach on Phu Quoc Island.

As part of my last trip in Vietnam (“last” is relative; I’ve lived in Vietnam five different times, so this is the fifth “last trip” I’ve made here), I headed south to Vung Tau and Phu Quoc. Much of what I saw and did in Vung Tau I did before on previous trips there, so I won’t post anything new about this pleasant coastal city—though I could mention a great seafood restaurant where I had sea cucumber salad and grilled oysters with cheese, among other memorable dishes. Maybe I'll squeeze that in on a later post...

Phu Quoc has an interesting history. Once belonging to Cambodia, the island has been absorbed into Vietnamese territory for a few centuries. The island served as a penal colony during French colonial times, housed a prison camp during the Vietnam War, gave safe haven to Republic of China soldiers for four years before they continued on to Taiwan, and was briefly taken by Khmer Rouge forces in 1975. Now, however, Phu Quoc is best known for its fish sauce, pepper, and seafood.

Aside from my interest in the island’s history, Phu Quoc has always been my favorite getaway in Vietnam, largely because it has empty, mostly unspoiled beaches, amazing seafood, and because the island is bigger than Singapore (especially outside the island’s main city of Dương Đông) one can spend hours exploring it on motorbike or bicycle. On this trip we opted for a motorbike, which cost under US$8/day to rent, and hit the main market, a fish sauce (nước mắm) factory, a pearl farm, a beachside restaurant, a stunning white-sand beach, and numerous dirt roads that took us through always interesting landscape.

The first time I came to Phu Quoc was in 2004, and in the intervening seven years a fair bit has changed. The downtown area is more crowded, the traffic is worse (but concentrated downtown), and tourism has slowly started to kick into gear. Driving here is fine, but the roads are bad and you have to share them at times with huge transport trucks and tourist buses. I hate to think of what motorbike and bicycle travel will be like in a few more years when road traffic on the island multiplies. The island’s big enough, though, and roads can be widened without displacing local inhabitants, that this hopefully won’t be an island-wide problem for many more years.

One of the more interesting places to visit, in my opinion, is Dương Đông market. Morning is the best time to go, especially to see fresh fish being sold, but it was extremely crowded when I went and whenever I walked on the market road I had to dodge traffic and breathe in noxious exhaust fumes. The fish selection here was possibly more varied than what I saw in Đồng Hơi, though in terms of scale this market was smaller. I was surprised to see the selection of sharks, stingrays, and a large dark green fish called cá bớp in Vietnamese (cobia, or sargeant fish, in English). Following are some photos of the market; as usual, I focused on the fish.

That dark green fish is cá bớp. And it is, I have to say, delicious. I just hope it's not endangered...

Sharks for sale. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how they're used in cooking.

Not far from here, and also downtown, is the Khải Hoàn Fish Sauce Factory—one of several fish sauce factories on Phu Quoc.

It can't be comfortable sitting atop plastic bottles of fish sauce...

They offer brief tours in very limited English, but if you speak Vietnamese you’ll get a much more detailed explanation of how the factory makes its fish sauce. Also, be forewarned that the factory seriously stinks. After twenty minutes here I grew not to mind the smell so much, but in the beginning the stink was hard to deal with. We’re talking air suffused with fish in varying stages of lengthy fermentation.

What kind of fish? Anchovies! They buy tons of anchovies (okay, and apparently other varieties of small fish) from local fisherman, who come right up to the water-side dock of the factory and sell them their catch directly.

In case you're wondering what this gray mass is, it's the fish used to make fish sauce. You wouldn't want to get pushed into this mass, either, as you'd sink to the bottom of a 10-ft-tall barrel and have to swim to the top through 3 tons of fermenting fish.

The fish are then pressed and left to ferment, and the waste product, rather than being thrown away, is sold mainly to local fish farmers who feed it to their own fish stocks. It’s not what I’d call a big operation, but this brand can be bought all over Vietnam.

You can sample and buy the factory's different products. That is, if you can get the workers to stop playing games on their cell phones and not whine like babies when you ask them to help you. I eventually found a nice member of the staff to help me; hopefully you will, too.

Also downtown, and just down the road from several hotels such as Saigon-Phu Quoc Resort, is Cau Dinh Temple. Situated atop a rock jutting out into the Gulf of Thailand, one has a beautiful southward view of the beach as well as a northward view beyond the mouth of the Dương Đông River and the beaches along the shore there. The temple is famous for the whale bones it contains, and attracts seafarers and followers of Vietnam's "whale cult." There’s also a nightmarket within walking distance from Cau Dinh Temple, where you can sample local seafood.

Phu Quoc dogs are famous for the line of raised fur along their backs. And no, it doesn't mean they're angry.

I'm not sure why three of these four kids were fishing with their motorcycle helmets on, but I readily admit I don't understand Vietnamese culture as well as I probably should.

Another place worth going to is Sao Beach, on the southern tip of the island. The beach extends a few kilometers, to Khem Beach, which is also pretty spectacular, but Sao Beach is better set up for tourists to make use of (though it’s not yet what I’d call touristy). There’s an amazing, inexpensive beachside seafood restaurant here, where we ordered cồi biên mai (grilled surf clams, I think) and mực hấp gừng (ginger steamed squid).

Cồi biên mai

Mực hấp gừng

A cute puppy struggling to lick some seafood grease off of a plate. It soon gave up and collapsed on the beer-wet ground and started snoring.

Also, if you drive a motorbike here you can park it in the restaurant’s lot and spend however long you’d like on the beach and in the ocean. The white sand here is powdery soft, there’s no trash, and the water is shallow and clear for dozens of meters out into the bay. We waded into the warm water after lunch, and quite a few tiny green fish approached us and actually nibbled on the skin along our shoulders and back. We didn’t feel them at all, but they weren’t the least bit afraid of us.

During previous visits to Phu Quoc I’ve stayed at Saigon-Phu Quoc Resort and Bo Resort, but this time we opted to stay at Mango Bay (near Bo Resort, on Ong Lang Beach, but separated from it by an unscalable outcrop). Mango Bay is a fairly basic, mostly no-frills eco-resort on a large tract of oceanfront land.

You'll want to keep your eyes peeled for great mounds of cow poop. Or, as the Vietnamese call them, bôm bò (cow bombs).

It’s a popular place for foreigners (and roaming cows), and there were a fair number of Vietnamese who stayed here as well, which was nice to see.

It’s a pleasant place to spend a few relaxing days, but I must say that the food here was expensive (~$10/plate) and not all that good.

I also have to say that the bungalows were overpriced. We paid $54/night for a fancified hut without A/C or Internet access, and more freaky insects and arachnids than you’d ever want to have to deal with on holiday. I even got bit by a hand-sized spider, of which there were many in and around the bungalow, that had somehow found its way inside the mosquito-net-enclosed bed in which I slept. Don’t even ask about the variety of poisonous millipedes crawling all over the floors of the outdoor shower and bungalow’s interior. Of course, the resort can't protect guests against every creepy-crawly thing in a creepy-crawly-filled environment, but at least now you know that you may encounter them here.

The resort's beach is clean and pretty, but only part of it is consistently calm enough for swimming. Ong Lang Beach is great for long walks, too; bring your shoes if you want to climb over the rocks that separate the various stretches of beach.

I feel comfortable recommending Mango Bay, though there are probably better options on Phu Quoc for the price.

Oishi Restaurant (West Lake, Hanoi)

2011-06-18T04:11:00.000-07:00

Well, as my time in Vietnam draws to a close, I’m thinking of retiring this blog to focus on my home-to-be: Japan. In fact, if I have my druthers one day, I’ll find a way to live half the year in Vietnam and half the year in Japan (with a few weeks or months in the U.S. thrown in for good measure). But right now I’m getting ready to move to Akita, Japan, on a one-year contract, and since I don’t expect I’ll be able to travel much outside Japan anytime soon, I think I may concentrate on raising one of the offspring of this blog – Japan Tastes Good. Either that, or I’ll take another break from blogging and concentrate on my immediate concerns of getting adjusted to a new country, culture, and language, as well as a new job.

In the meantime, and with Japan on my brain, I’ve got another Japanese restaurant in Hanoi to recommend highly.

Oishi Restaurant is not easy to find on a first attempt. It’s tucked away at the end of a winding road in West Lake, and sits quietly between several tennis courts, a hotel and pool, and an international school. The location is actually very nice—with all the old, towering trees, it’s bathed in shade during the day and is an oasis of quiet on summer nights when West Lake's cicadas and frogs are at their noisiest.

Walking into the restaurant, you’d be forgiven for imagining that the prices here are going to be high—or at least higher than most Japanese restaurants in Hanoi—but this isn’t the case at all. Oishi has a very polished, modern interior, and manages to function well as a high-quality restaurant with fewer staff than most of its competitors around the city.

The sushi chef, who hails from Osaka, is extremely nice and comes to Oishi with more than twenty years of restaurant experience in Japan. (He's new to making sushi, but he seems to do a good job if it!) He doesn’t speak much English, but if you know some Japanese he’s more than happy to make conversation while he goes about creating your sushi.

I’m including photos of two of the meals I had at Oishi. The first one is admittedly nothing exotic—a tempura lunch set special, which included a potato croquette starter, miso soup, white rice, pickled veggies, green tea, and fruit for dessert—but I have to say it was some of the best tempura I’ve had in Vietnam. And for only $7, it can’t be beat.

The potato croquette starter. This alone satisfied completely.

I’ve had the ramen lunch set here, too, which is fantastic, and I’ve ordered sushi delivered to my home in Truc Bach, which luckily is within their delivery zone, but it’s a particularly nice experience to come here with friends for dinner. The menu is extensive—one friend complained it was too large—but easily navigated. The sushi options are simple but numerous.

We started off with an eel and cucumber salad, thinly sliced grilled pumpkin, and a plate of fried onions and assortment of mushrooms.

After that we went for the sushi. Perhaps it was because of the heat, but amazingly we didn’t come with our normal appetites. Normally we would order four or five types of sushi, but tonight we just went with two: a tuna roll (the pieces of which were large and the portions of tuna more than generous) and an order or pressed mackerel (the best mackerel sushi I’ve had in Vietnam). For four people our bill, including beer and sake, came to $53.

If they had legs, I'd expect them to start kicking them Rockettes-style on their long tray.

One thing that stayed with me about the restaurant was its Japanese graciousness. I was with a party of four one night when suddenly the skies unleashed a downpour. We were the last customers to leave, but we had walked there from a house about one kilometer away. The restaurant called us a taxi, but none came. (It's hard to get taxis in the rain in Hanoi.) Finally, the restaurant gave us four brand new Japanese umbrellas—the price tags were still attached—and told us to take them home. We promised to bring them back the next day, but the sushi chef and his staff waved off this suggestion and said we could keep them. We protested, but they protested more vigorously, and in the end we walked off in the rain with four umbrellas we hadn’t arrived with.

Oishi Restaurant is located at Tô Ngọc Vân, Tây Hồ, Hà Nội. Tel: 04-37186626. Fax: 04-37186616. Web: http://www.oishihanoi.vn. Hours: 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. - 9 p.m. (or later).

A Lazy June Weekend in Hanoi

2011-06-04T09:09:00.000-07:00

Standing on a carpet of flamboyant tree and crepe-myrtle petals, I took this shot looking across the water at Kim Lien Temple.

This weekend has been really hot and humid; typical Hanoi weather for early June. One nice thing to do on days like this is explore West Lake, where ancient temples and walled alleys, and giant crepe-myrtle and flamboyant trees, reflect in the neighborhood's various lakes. There are breezes here and copious shade, not to mention nice little lakeside cafes where you can sit and listen to cicadas buzz. It's the time of year when Hanoi dons its brightest colors.

I thought I'd share a few photos from the Truc Bach area, where I live, and West Lake, which is a stone's throw away. Enjoy!

On Saturday mornings on Tran Vu Street, red-whiskered bulbul (chim chào mào) aficionados gather in sidewalk cafes to let their birds socialize. Later, if they choose, they will pair males with females. It's fun to come here for coffee and enjoy the sight of these excited birds and the sound of them singing to each other.

One of the giant crepe-myrtle trees, or cây bằng lăng, on Truc Bach Lake. Quite a nice spot for a cafe, no?

A small park on Truc Bach Lake full of bright flowers and blooming flamboyant trees (cây phượng).

One of Hanoi's top choices for a sidewalk cafe.

Two men fishing on West Lake. Behind them, as you can see, are the city's ubiquitous, colorful summer trees.

An old alley in West Lake, carpeted in flamboyant tree flowers.

A girl in a white aó dài being photographed beneath a flamboyant tree.

This photo, also along West Lake, I just threw in with the rest. These geese are actually pedal-driven boats, very popular in the summer.

Weekend Escape to Dong Hoi

2011-05-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

The beach in front of Sun Spa Resort in Đồng Hới.

I recently decided that Hanoi was just too hot and that it was time to find a nice, breezy beach along a peaceful stretch of coast. If I’m going to be hot, I’d rather be hot beside the ocean and sand. That’s where the town of Đồng Hới comes in. In Quảng Bình province, only seven hours by train south of Hanoi, one can escape there very easily. In theory, if you leave late at night then you can just fall off to sleep in your cozy compartment and wake up early having arrived at your destination.

The express train we took, which seemed to travel at the speed of an antsy burro, was 40 minutes late leaving Hanoi.

By the time we arrived in Đồng Hới, we’d made up 15 minutes. We got a compartment with six sleeper beds, and the six of us—three Vietnamese, myself, and two Scots—fell asleep pretty quickly. But we were awakened as early as 5 a.m. from the sun stabbing through our windows, foot traffic in the corridor, and cart-pushing vendors loudly rattling off the food and drinks they were selling.

I opted for nothing, but I did get down from my middle bunk, toting my camera, and took some shots of the passing scenery. Quảng Bình province is on the northern fringes of Vietnam’s central coast, lying almost midway between Hanoi and Đà Nẵng. Its biggest claim to fame is probably the Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park, home to one of the most spectacular cave systems in the world. In fact, Sơn Đoòng Cave, discovered in 2009, is the world’s largest cave. Earlier this year, National Geographic published a piece about it here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/largest-cave/peter-photography

As I was saying, the landscape we passed through for the last two or three hours of our trip was gorgeous. Ponds, lakes, and streams were seemingly everywhere, with green rice paddies stretching to distant mountains. It was hard taking decent photos with the reflections (and dead-bug smears) in the windows, but I’ve included a few of my favorites below.

I also met some good people on the train. They were a bit camera shy at first, but by the time we rolled into Đồng Hới they were demanding shots left and right.

They even wanted me to photograph their tonsils, and since I had the camera anyway what could I do but oblige?

I don’t remember the exact time we got into Đồng Hới, but I do remember that I was hungry. So I guess that would have made it breakfast time. We grabbed a taxi into the city, which was about a one-minute drive away, and less than ten minutes later we were checking in to our hotel: Sun Spa Resort.

There’s not much to describe about the hotel’s main wings, though the grounds of the hotel and its beachfront were very nice—a long stretch of grass and coconut palms before the beach, which was empty and full of clean, soft sand. (Walking away from the beach, however, it wasn’t quite as clean.)

The resort had various beach activities, too, but the two pools were what drew the most guests, and for good reason.

The hotel also has a nice gym, though I was only in it long enough to take this picture. That’s because I’m incorrigibly lazy.

Sun Spa Resort has at least two restaurants and an outdoor bar/café, which at night fronts a small stage where a band plays live music. Also, if you’re into paying high prices for fresh seafood, the resort has seating under a beach tent where you can order off the grill just about anything catchable in the near waters.

Early the following morning, following an exhausting day of pool lounging and failed tanning, we were off to the Đồng Hới market, adjacent to the Nhật Lệ River.

I love Vietnamese fish markets, and I have to say that this was easily the best one I’ve yet seen. Not only was there a remarkable diversity of seafood being sold here, but the sheer volume of it was incredible.

It was a busy place, and wet, and fishy-smelling, and crowded, and I loved it. I would have thrown myself onto the pavement and rolled around like an excited, stupid dog if I hadn’t been forcibly stopped.

The following photos will attest to how great a place this was…if you’re into fish markets the way that I am, I mean.

Look at the size of that fish head compared to the woman selling it!

There were baskets and baskets of stingrays, too, which I don't normally see in Vietnamese markets.

There were also all kinds of fresh veggies and fruit.

You could even buy a bucket full of baby pigeons. And why not? Doesn’t KFC sell buckets of chicken? Can’t you buy a 60-piece bucket of chicken thighs in the U.S.? I’ve always thought that making a 60-piece bucket of chicken thighs sound appetizing was ~~a disgusting~~ an incredible feat of fast-food marketing.

Dozing in the warm morning sun beside their friends, shelled baby onions, these little guys have no idea what's in store for them...

We headed inside the central market building and climbed to the second floor. After crossing a bridge (and snapping a photo) that led to another market building, we found ourselves inside a large, if dark and grimy, second-floor eating area.

It smelled good here, especially since I’d not had breakfast yet, but sometimes your body tells you just to move on. I listened to my body this time.

Back on the street, however, and done with the market, we found a quiet side street full of blossoming phoenix trees and sat down for a quick dish of bánh bèo. For 20,000 dong it was a good deal, but it was little more than a snack. After gobbling this down we grabbed a taxi back to the hotel, where a free buffet awaited us.

Bánh bèo topped with dried shrimp, green onions, and pork crackling.

Sun Spa Resort actually consists of two different classes of accommodation. Next to where we stayed is a many-starred (I’m sorry, I don’t know how many stars it rates) resort that’s part of the original resort. It’s sort of like the drop-dead gorgeous younger sister of the merely gorgeous older sister. (Or something like that.) The photos below show the open-but-not-yet-completed second resort. As of this writing they were offering 50% off of all villas and bungalows (a discount of $170 per night). The website for the villas and bungalows is here.

Not a bad price for your own private bungalow hidden by a wooden fence and lush vegetation, and with a private pool overlooking the ocean.

The grounds of the resort are extensive, peaceful, and empty. There’s a nice walking path that winds from the beach all around the Bao Ninh peninsula and along the Nhật Lệ River. Dusk is a great time to explore the area, even if you’re not a guest there.

At night we grabbed a taxi for the ten-minute drive up the coast on the opposite side of the Nhật Lệ river mouth. We were taken quite a ways past our original destination—Biển Đồng restaurant, which had been recommended to us—and dropped off. We explored the numerous local seafood options, many of which were interesting-looking, family-managed areas of plastic chairs and tables by the beach. In the end, though, we decided to return to Biển Đồng, where a rickety wooden bridge led us to this floating restaurant.

The menu at Biển Đồng, not surprisingly, is full of seafood dishes—though you can also order steamed, frien, and hotpot chicken. We skipped the fresh fish, squid, and crab, and went instead for tôm hùm (steamed jumbo shrimp served with pepper and lime juice), điệp nướng (grilled scallops topped with fried onions and bits of red chile—the best I’ve ever had), and a peppery cháo ngao (oyster porridge, which I also loved). The results are below.

Add a beer and some stir-fried veggies, and the total for two people came to…$16!

The walk back into town (but not back to Sun Spa) was nice at night, especially passing by an old lighthouse lit up on its upmost deck and with a full moon hanging over it. Unfortunately all my photos of it turned out blurry, otherwise I’d upload one here.

Anyway, the following day it was time to return to Hanoi. The train arrived in Đồng Hới almost half an hour late. I didn’t mind, as the train was scheduled to arrive in Hanoi at 4:02 a.m. In the middle of the night, what difference does half an hour make?

We entered our compartment, stuffed our things in the luggage area over our door, and settled in for the trip back north. If I were staying longer in Hanoi and needed a break from the city, I’d certainly consider Đồng Hới for any future weekend jaunt.

Bún Bò Nam Bộ

2011-05-25T03:02:00.000-07:00

There's never a long wait for food. Though sometimes it's so busy here that your order may be forgotten.

This will probably be my final post on local eats in Hanoi. Not so much because I’m leaving Hanoi in less than five weeks, but because I have a hard time recommending places that don’t overcharge me for being a Westerner. Many places don’t, but just as many, I find, do. It’s one reason I haven’t updated my blog more recently than this.

In any case, I can recommend Bún Bò Nam Bộ at 67 Hang Dieu Street.

Although they don’t rip off foreigners, they do charge almost twice as much for a bowl of their shop’s specialty than most other bún bò nam bộ places in Hanoi (on Tran Quoc Toan Street, for example, where places charge only 25,000 dong).

It’s almost shocking that they charge 45,000 per bowl. I’ve been coming here since 1997, and while I can’t remember how much a bowl cost then (was it 8000 dong?), back in 2002 I recall it only cost 16,000 dong. I’m amazed that they’ve nearly tripled their prices in less than a decade—one look at either the interior or exterior of their restaurant makes it plain that with whatever profit they’re raking in, not a bit of it goes to making the place look any better.

They have two rooms on the first floor, and one low-ceilinged room on the second floor.

There’s a certain charm, of course, in letting a place age, and I’m as tolerant of grease and grime as 99% of people I know, but seriously…if you’re going to charge twice what your competitors charge, maybe wash the floors once in a while, and maybe dust the walls and ceiling clean of the decade-old cobwebs.

Despite certain unappealing aspects of the restaurant, it’s always packed, which attests to how good the bún bò nam bộ here is. Nam bộ means southern; bún refers to the rice noodles used in the dish; bò means beef. What you get in a bowl, then, is grilled beef, bún noodles, chopped cucumbers and lettuce, sliced green papaya and carrots, crushed peanuts, fried onions, bean sprouts, mint and various other herbs, and a fish sauce-based broth (nước chấm mixed with vinegar and lemon juice) at the bottom. Make sure to mix it up well before digging in.

Don’t expect to order anything here other than bún bò nam bộ. It’s the only thing this restaurant makes, though their menu also includes snacky items such as nem chua (cured, fermented pork) and giò (a kind of Vietnamese sausage). The hours are patron-friendly, too, especially if you’re susceptible to cravings of bún bò nam bộ at odd hours. They’re open from 7 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. and you can order takeaway if you don’t feel like fighting for a seat among the crowds (or skating across the greasy, napkin-strewn floor).

Grab some takeaway and avoid the hassle of parking your motorbike or bicycle.

Another nice thing about this place is that there are various chè shops up and down Hang Dieu Street––a nice way to top off the meal with a sweet, inexpensive dessert.

Good luck crossing the street. But there's chè across the street, and that's worth risking your life on.

Award Airline Travel: Scam or…Scam?

2011-04-24T05:04:00.000-07:00

I’m currently on hour 42 of my “free” flight back to Hanoi. I still have roughly 20 more hours to go until I’m back in my apartment, but only 2 more until I’m in HCMC where I’ll spend the night.

There’s nothing much to say about my 60-hour trip from Honolulu to Hanoi, unless one wants to focus on various frustrations that come from poor service on airlines, at immigration, in airport hotels, etc. I just passed through Hong Kong International Airport, which to me was the worst international airport I passed through on this trip.

Part of this was due to the Regal Airport Hotel where I stayed. It was an enormous hassle to go through customs—imagine how long it takes for a line with 120 people to be served by only 2 customs officers—just so I could take advantage of a day room facility. And the check-in area of the hotel, which was run by what appeared to be a gang of teenagers, was very inefficient—another 10-15 minutes spent waiting for them to confirm my reservation and enter my information on their computer. The room itself was comfortable and spacious, but not at all worth the $156 I spent on it (shockingly, the cheapest option at Hong Kong’s airport, and much more expensive than day rooms in Singapore and Tokyo).

Granted, the room was spacious and comfortable...

And the bathroom was nicely appointed and all shiny and clean...

And the view from the window was quite nice (or would have been if there hadn't been so much haze)...but it really wasn't worth what I paid.

Like at the day room at the airport in Bangkok, I was awakened early (after almost a day and a half without sleep) — this time by a too-eager maid who had no idea I was still in my room and asleep. It would have been nice to log on to the Internet from my room at some point, but that would have cost me an additional $17. To top it off, checking out was just as slow as checking in.

Were my frequent flier miles worth my $1500 ticket savings? Yes and no. I ended up spending quite a bit on airport day rooms and on airport food and drink—including the $5 bottle of tea that I bought at a kiosk right outside my boarding gate in Hong Kong, which was promptly confiscated five minutes later upon boarding. (Seriously, what the hell is up with that?) Also, it’s hard to justify wasting more than 100 hours of my life on a round-trip flight between Hanoi and Honolulu. Somehow, I still have enough miles to take two more free flights between Asia and the U.S. I’m either going to have to find some other way to use those miles, or I’ll have to hope that the airlines will find a much better way to make award travel less of a nightmare.

I do know this: if the only choice I have to use my award miles is to spend 2 1/2 days and pass through five different countries to travel what would take less than 20 hours on a normal ticket, I’m not going to do it. And I would highly recommend that others don’t do what I’ve done, even if the savings are substantial. I’m fairly sure that my expenses just in the airports I passed through on this trip cost upwards of $500. I didn’t have to spend that much on day rooms, of course, but then is going sleepless for two and a half days on a single trip worth it?

My next international trip will be sometime in June, when I move to Japan. I’ll see if I can use my frequent flier miles for the trip. If I can’t get a direct flight from Hanoi to Tokyo with United Airline’s Award Travel program, I won’t use the miles and will make immediate plans to cancel that credit card. The option of “free” flights is obviously nice, but it seems rarely worth it in the end.

Postscript: I can’t even express my relief upon arriving in HCMC. Not only did the city, on the short ride from the airport to my hotel, feel more relaxed (so did the flight from Hong Kong, where suddenly most of the passengers were traveling in bare feet, often propped up on the armrests of the seats in front of them), but interacting with the super friendly taxi driver and hotel staff was a kind of revelation…or a re-run of past revelations. Aside from the terrible traffic, increased population density, and the occasional pushy person, I love HCMC.

I liked Kim Yen a lot and will stay there again if I have an overnight in HCMC.

I stayed the night at Kim Yen Hotel, which is only 4 km from the airport, and after 4 hours of sleep—I had no idea what time it was when I woke up; at 2:15 a.m. I thought I might be late preparing for my late morning checkout—I wandered through the streets of Phu Nhuan looking for morning com va ca phe. I couldn’t find anything to suit my tastes at 6 a.m., so I went with a two egg and mixed-everything-else sandwich (20,000 dong / $0.96) and a coffee (10,000 dong / $0.48) from a small restaurant in front of my hotel. It was heavenly.

Why are you looking at me like that? I just want to show the world what great sandwiches you make...

And why are YOU looking at me like that? Did you see me photographing the sandwich cart guys up the street or something?

Talk about inviting! Look at that beautiful, cheap, oversized glass mug of ca phe sua da.

This might look like a boring place to eat a breakfast sandwich and drink coffee in Saigon, but at 6 in the morning, with the city at its near-quietest and near-coolest, this was a little piece of heaven for me. (By the way, that's not me at the table. I'm behind the camera lens with half a sandwich stuffed in my mouth and the rim of my coffee glass wedged between my lips.)

Kim Yen Hotel is at 126 Nguyen Trong Tuyen Street, 15th Ward, Phu Nhuan District. Tel: (84) 8-3997-7005/6/7/8. Fax: (84) 8-3997-7010. Email: kimyen@kimyenhotel.com.vn. Web: http://kimyenhotel.com.vn/en/

Back at the airport, where I had to deal with all kinds of line-challenged travelers, I got through things easier than expected. I had a suitcase weighing about 20 kilograms more than the allowable limit, and while I was ready to pay as much as $75 (I had to pay that much once before, though for an international flight), they only charged me $36. Good to know. It helped, I think, that I spoke Vietnamese to the airport staff. The women—who delayed my payment by getting the phone number of a German tourist about 65 years old — all said I was handsome, to which I said, "No, I’m ugly, I'm not handsome at all," at which point they cackled together and then wrote down the amount I was to pay. I have no idea if they gave me a flirtation discount, but I certainly tried.

Cincinnati Art Museum

2011-04-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

Part of the museum's renowned Egypt collection.

On the day before I left Cincinnati, my parents and I headed to the Cincinnati Art Museum, located on a tree-lined hill in Eden Park and one of my favorite places to visit in the city.

The Art Museum costs nothing to enter. Thanks to a generous gift from the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Foundation, it’s absolutely free to the public! That’s one of the reasons I love going here. Another is the setting, with its surrounding trees and urban vistas (depending on where you look), which is ideal for a museum like this. Another is the architecture and design. And yet another, of course, is its permanent collection which boasts more than 60,000 works. The national and international exhibitions here tend to be really interesting, too.

The museum was founded in 1881, and its collections go back 6000 years. The museum is divided into some of the following areas: American Painting and Sculpture; European Painting and Sculpture; Classical and Near Eastern Art; Far Eastern Art; Decorative Arts; Fashion Arts and Textiles; Arts of Africa; Art of the America; Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors; Photographs; and Circus Posters.

Some of the bigger draws come from the world’s most celebrated painters, including Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Gauguin, Chagall, Modigliani, Titian, van Dyck, Wyeth, Hopper, and Rothko, among many others. There is also a Cincinnati wing of the museum, with art work depicting the city over the last 200 years.

A new policy at the museum allows visitors to use a camera, but only in specially marked areas. I took advantage of this and snapped some photos of a small portion of the museum we visited.

This is a painting called "Daily News" by the Japanese painter and lithographer Yasuo Kuniyoshi (born in Okayama in 1893), who arrived in the U.S. in his teens.

As you can see in some of the photos, there are red plastic penguins in many rooms. The penguins are there to help bring attention to 21c Museum in Louisville and the designs they have of creating a red penguin sculpture downtown. I like the red penguins. They’re quiet and don’t bother anyone. In my opinion, every museum should have red penguins.

There were several exhibitions on when we visited. Just about every month the museum brings in something new and interesting.

The museum has a pretty excellent and very reasonably priced restaurant, too, called Terrace Cafe. Although my Cincinnati Reuben was hardly mind-blowing, I’ve had good meals here before. Also, the setting is quite interesting. On warm days you can eat outside in the courtyard (it has free wifi) with the scent of blossoming pear trees adding to the atmosphere, or you can sit inside with a view of a very large mural by Joan Miro. Either way, you’ve got good options.

"The Midnight Mass" (1911) by Edward Timothy Hurley. This painting is of the Mt. Adams neighborhood in Cincinnati during winter. One sees the Immaculata church here, covered in snow and masked by haze.

The museum store is excellent. I've even bought dinner plates here by local artists.

The Cincinnati Art Museum is located at 953 Eden Park Drive. Tel: (513) 639-2995. Web: http://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/ Hours: Open Tuesday – Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Closed Mondays and major holidays. Tours are available in English, French, German, or Spanish.

A Glimpse at the Downtown Cincinnati Food Scene: Findlay Market and Emporium Coffee

2011-04-08T14:24:00.000-07:00

I was in my hometown of Cincinnati recently to visit my parents. My parents are always surprised that I don’t come with a list of things I want to do when I’m home, but the truth is I very much enjoy resting. Especially after flying for almost countless hours from Vietnam. Still, near the end of my trip I took advantage of Cincinnati’s decent weather and went downtown on successive days. The places I most like to visit when I’m home are only two or three: Findlay Market, The Cincinnati Art Museum, and the restaurants, shops, and parks around Mt. Adams and the Ohio River.

Findlay Market is near a historic area of Cincinnati called Over-the-Rhine, and is Ohio’s oldest surviving municipal market house. Built originally in 1852, and opened for business three years later, Findlay Market has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places for nearly 40 years. Its most recent renovation, which an included an expansion, was completed in 2003. The names of several shops in the market, and the distinctive architecture in the neighborhood, speaks to the large German and German-American population that settled in Cincinnati in the early- and mid-20th century.

One of the first places in the market that we came to was a long, continuous row of vegetable stands. My mom stopped by here and bought some cucumbers and green beans, while I kept moving along and attracting attention with my camera.

We also stopped in a shop called Eckerlin’s, which specializes in cheeses, meats, breads, and jarred goods such as olives. We took a stab at a new kind of cheese my parents like—white cheddar with horseradish—and they produced a half-wheel of it immediately. We bought a pound for less than $9 and went on our merry way.

The indoor market is surrounded by quite a few specialty shops as well as the occasional restaurant.

There’s also an outdoor seating area with plastic chairs and tables; a nice location in the market, too, since you can get food-to-go from just about anywhere.

You can get all kinds of international products here, from Middle Eastern foods to Italian, French, Greek, Vietnamese, and Mexican, just to name a few. We stopped inside a store called Madison’s, which had too many imported common fruits and vegetables for my taste, and went inside a few more other places as well.

I always like to browse around some of the fishmonger shops, too, but we didn’t have a lot of time today and fish wasn’t on our shopping list anyway.

We headed to the indoor part of the market to seek out lunch. It was pretty busy here, mostly with people buying things to cook in their own kitchens. It’s amazing what one can find here. Virtually any kind of typical meat is here, including Amish poultry if that’s your thing.

There is also a very good selection of fish and seafood, which isn't always easy to find in Cincinnati (from what I remember).

We were after something to eat at the market, though, and it took a while for us to check everything and figure out what we wanted. Somehow we opted for gyros, which I haven’t had in probably two years, at a Greek booth called Areti’s.

The gyros were cheap at $4.75, but they were hard to polish off. To say that the woman who made our food was generous with the lamb pieces would be a major understatement. I could barely get it all down.

Despite feeling full, I couldn’t stop myself from stuffing myself further with a Whoopee, which is basically just two airy chocolate cookies with sweet cream cheese in the middle. I had it cut in two, and my dad and I gorged ourselves.

Walking through Findlay Market, one occasionally comes upon local artwork. In recent years, it seems, the Cincinnati flying pig has become more visible, especially downtown and along the river. Not surprisingly, given how much pork is sold here, there’s a pig statue at one end of the market. There are also murals and even an interesting chair made out of steel, though I don’t think you’re supposed to sit on it.

Findlay Market is on Elder Street between Elm and Race. Hours of operation are Tuesday through Friday from 9 am – 6 pm, Saturday from 8 am – 6 pm, and on Sunday from 10 am – 4 pm. The market is closed on Monday. Tel: (513) 665-4839. Email: info@findlaymarket.org. The Farmers Market is on from April through November on Tuesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. For more information, please see the Findlay Market website: www.findlaymarket.org. There’s all kinds of information here, including seasonal local recipes.

My dad wanted to show me what he promised was a good downtown café, so we left Findlay Market and headed further downtown to a place called Emporium Café. Along the way we passed by quite a few blossoming pear trees (or were they dogwoods? or magnolias?). I took photos from the back seat of the car, which isn't exactly a prime spot. I got a couple serviceable ones, though, as you can see below. These trees are everywhere at this time of year. Most of the other trees in the area have yet to bud.

The cafe didn’t exactly look like much from the sidewalk, though the outdoor seating was a nice touch, but as soon as we stepped inside I was taken aback by how big the place was.

Interestingly, only about a quarter of the space the café occupies is devoted to seating. There’s a big room used to store, grind, and apparently bag coffee, and a sales area between there and the barista counter.

City Beat, the local alternative newspaper, named Emporium the best coffeehouse last year. I can see why. The coffee was pretty tasty, and the café is easily the nicest I’ve been to in Cincinnati.

As you can see below, downtown Cincinnati, which I photographed from the sidewalk outside the cafe, is just a short walk away, and the location of Emporium is really pretty excellent.

I could see myself camping out here on many a weekend…if only Cincinnati were in, say, Asia.

Coffee Emporium is located at 110 East Central Parkway. Tel: (513) 651-5483. Web: www.coffee-emporium.com.

Fated to Be

2011-03-30T06:56:00.000-07:00

I'm now visiting my parents in Cincinnati. Going through some old boxes in their house, I just came across a few baby photos of myself and realized that this blog, which is largely devoted to food, might well have been preordained.

If this were a painting, I'd entitle it "The Rapture of Sapuche..."

The crazy thing is, I really haven't changed much. I have a bit more hair (though not much), have stayed true to the same clothing fashions, still sometimes confuse my nose with my mouth, and still love me some fresh cornbread.

A Trip Home and Some Experiences with Airport Hotels

2011-03-24T09:50:00.000-07:00

My carbon footprint is shamefully large. With all the travel I do, it’s unavoidable—unless I stop traveling, which doesn’t appear to be in the cards for me. But the trip that I’m currently on, and for which I’m using 40,000 United Air Miles to travel for free (taxes and handling fees cost about $80) between HCMC and Honolulu, increases my footprint substantially. The itinerary for my flight home is taking me from Hanoi to HCMC, HCMC to Bangkok, Bangkok to Narita, and Narita to Honolulu. Total travel time including layovers: 35 hours. Countries passed through: 4, counting Vietnam. This is better than my return trip, which will take me more than 50 hours, through 5 countries, to go from Honolulu back to Hanoi. All to save about $1400. Is it worth it? I’m not really sure…

I did get bumped up from economy to business class on my flight to Bangkok, but it was only a 90-minute flight, so the upgrade was over almost as soon as it had begun. It was my first flight with Lufthansa, and I must say I enjoyed it. Especially the massage function in my chair, which felt good on the 2 square inches of my lower back that it worked on. But it was fun pressing the buttons on my console to make my seat wiggle slightly. The hulking German flight attendant was a bit scary and overly serious—I thought flight attendants are supposed to smile—but nonetheless the service was good.

When I got to Bangkok, I was faced with an 8 1/2-hour layover. Thinking that I’d do well to get some sleep—I can never sleep on planes—I decided to look for an airport hotel. That was, if I could get to the transit area through the mass of passengers bottlenecked in front of the only escalator going to the second floor, which was controlled by an airport employee who only allowed maybe 20 passengers to ascend every minute. It took 10 minutes just to get to the second floor, at which point I tried to locate an information booth to inquire where I could find and book a room. I was waved in a vague direction by a group of check-in agents chatting amongst themselves, and after five minutes of looking, I found two women at a tiny information kiosk, but they didn’t really seem to want to be bothered either. I interrupted them after waiting a couple minutes for them to end their conversation, and they, too, waved me lazily down some long corridor, saying the hotel was “at the end.” I walked and I walked, about 4 or 5 minutes total, but found nothing besides what appeared to be two private lounges. The corridor ended at a glass wall. So I turned back, found the information booth empty now, but tracked down the woman who’d misguided me and asked again where to find the hotel. This time she said it was halfway down the same corridor I’d traveled, across from departure gate A3. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” I asked, but she just waved me off again.

(I seem to never have good luck in Thailand. So far: 2 hospital visits, a taxi “kidnapping,” hotels that falsely advertised, a sewage pipe that broke at the very moment I passed under it, an airline that dropped and broke my computer but refused to compensate me for it, riots, etc. So why do I keep going back?)

I found the hotel, but the prices made me think I was the victim of a bad joke. $89 for 4 hours? $130 for six hours? Highway robbery! I’ve stayed at airport hotels in Singapore and Seoul before, and the prices weren’t nearly so exorbitant. I asked if they had any photos of the rooms, but they only shook their heads. Well, what are the rooms like? I was told offhandedly that they were like rooms in any hotel. (Wow, such a helpful description.) Already exhausted from a poor night’s sleep, I decided to splurge for the 6-hour stay. Damnit, I wanted some shut-eye, especially since the next day would amount to 21 hours of sleepless travel. “Can I have a 4:30 wake-up call?” I asked. “Of course,” I was told. When I got to my room, it occurred to me that I didn’t actually see them program the call, so I rang them up to make sure they’d done it. “4:30,” I reminded them. They sighed. “Yes, sir, I’ve already set it up.”

The room was fine. I fell asleep after about half an hour. I was awakened by a call from the front desk staff, which had me leaping out of bed to answer it. When I turned on the light and checked the time, I couldn’t believe it was only 3:30! For $130, I certainly expected better. Especially since I double-checked with them about my wake-up time. When I checked out, I told the woman at the front desk—the same woman who’d checked me in—that she’d woken me up at the wrong time. I got no reply. Wanting a reply, I told her again. “So sorry, sir,” she mumbled, counting through a wad of money to return my $20 cash deposit on the room. The thrill she felt working there was palpable, and I felt it like a kick to my backside. I took my “free light refreshment” card to the second floor to see what I’d get, was asked to choose from among 5 items—juice, mixed fruit, water, tea or coffee, or toast/croissant—and opted for toast/croissant. Five minutes later I found myself being served juice, mixed fruit, water, coffee, and 2 pieces of toast and 2 mini-croissants. I guess it goes to show that not all miscommunications are bad…

By the time I got to Narita, I was already on hour 20-something, and I had another 5 hours to kill before my next flight. I found a day room with shower that was much, much cheaper than what I paid for in Bangkok. I ended up, rather self-indulgently again, paying $39 for three hours in a room with a bed and shower. Unfortunately, shortly after I lay down to sleep, I discovered that the hotel walls were very thin, and multiple guests, apparently, were using it in the fashion of a love hotel.

At least I could take a hot shower ($15 if you only use their shower facilities). They also gave me a bottle of water with the room, which would have otherwise cost me $2. So, I got a $2 water bottle, a $15 shower, and basically a $22 bed for 3 hours. But not really—the fact is it cost me $39.

For more about day rooms and shower facilities at Narita airport, check this URL: http://www.narita-airport.jp/en/guide/service/list/svc_37.html

Japan

2011-03-11T17:40:00.001-08:00

A week ago I was hired to teach English in Akita City, Japan. The headquarters of the school that hired me is located in Sendai, where yesterday's devastating earthquake and tsunami struck. I have no idea what the status is of the headquarters, its schools in northern Japan, or any of the people who work and study there. I emailed the person who hired me, telling them I hoped they were doing okay, but of course I haven't heard back from her.

For anyone who would like to help in the relief and recovery efforts in Japan, please see the following agency and organization websites, which I found online here at Yahoo News. Donations can be made through Network for Food's secure website. I will copy and paste the information below.

AMERICAN RED CROSS: Emergency Operation Centers are opened in the affected areas and staffed by the chapters. This disaster is on a scale larger than the Japanese Red Cross can typically manage. Donations to the American Red Cross can be allocated for the International Disaster Relief Fund, which then deploys to the region to help. Donate here.

GLOBALGIVING: Established a fund to disburse donations to organizations providing relief and emergency services to victims of the earthquake and tsunami. Donate here.

SAVE THE CHILDREN: Mobilizing to provide immediate humanitarian relief in the shape of emergency health care and provision of non-food items and shelter. Donate here.

SALVATION ARMY: The Salvation Army has been in Japan since 1895 and is currently providing emergency assistance to those in need. Donate here.

AMERICARES: Emergency team is on full alert, mobilizing resources and dispatching an emergency response manager to the region. Donate here.

CONVOY OF HOPE: Disaster Response team established connection with in-country partners who have been impacted by the damage and are identifying the needs and areas where Convoy of Hope may be of the greatest assistance. Donate here.

INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS: Putting together relief teams, as well as supplies, and are in contact with partners in Japan and other affected countries to assess needs and coordinate our activities. Donate here.

SHELTER BOX: The first team is mobilizing to head to Japan and begin the response effort. Donate here.

A New Publication

2011-03-11T17:39:00.000-08:00

For anyone interested, Phoebe Journal has just published a piece of creative nonfiction I wrote. The essay, entitled "Birthday Trip to Pere La Chaise," can be found here: http://www.phoebejournal.com/?p=846 http://www.phoebejournal.com/?p=846

In speaking with the editor at Phoebe, we realized something funny about my submission. Although it took them 15 months to respond to it, they weren't even accepting nonfiction submissions back then. I was lucky, obviously, that someone came across this piece when they did and liked it enough to recommend it for publication.

Kratie, Cambodia (Day 3, Part 2)

2011-03-02T07:27:00.000-08:00

Back to Phnom Penh

2011-03-02T01:24:00.000-08:00

I saw this poster near the market in Kratie. Strangely, the place wasn't a restaurant or bar, nor did they have American beer. Which is just as well. Who comes to Kratie for "American Time" (whatever that is) and horrible beer, anyway?

This morning I woke up at 5:30 to catch a tourist van (or “mini-bus”) from Kratie to Phnom Penh. I was told to expect a pick-up at 6 a.m., or maybe 6:30, or possibly 7, or maybe 7:30. I went to have breakfast at 6, was served at around 6:30, and at 7:20 the tourist van rolled in. Five of us found seats, then we were driven up the road about 400 meters and, without any explanation, made to get into another van. This proved to be quite interesting as an observer because some of us were going to Phnom Penh and others to Siem Reap. No one told us that we were all going to the same place initially, at which point we would separate, so there was a lot of disorder, including shouting between tourists (in English) and tourist company staff (in Khmer), and a German woman telling the staff “fuck off, don’t touch me,” and “be careful with my fucking equipment, you’ll break it handling it like that,” and later, in the van, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Slow down! (The driver was barreling through peaceful village roads full of wandering cats, dogs, chickens, and children at about 65 miles per hour.) I’ll fucking kill you if you hit something. I’ll kill you!” She turned out to be very nice, actually, and was in SE Asia to recruit local people to take part in music videos she and her partner were making over the course of their travels. Still, that kind of approach with people in Indochina is seriously counterproductive (as it is in 99% of the world). Cultural sensitivity? It goes both ways, of course, but there are lines you simply don’t cross. In my experience, telling people to fuck off and that you’ll kill them kinda crosses that line…

I ended up in a window seat, squeezed in with three Cambodian men, two pieces of luggage (piled up beneath my feet), and a live, tied-up chicken in a yellow plastic bag. One of the men beside me worked for the tourist company taking us to Phnom Penh. He deduced that I was traveling alone, and with various hand gestures he asked me why I didn’t have a wife with me as the Europeans on board did. I shrugged. Then he seemed to indicate that he and I would make a good pair, ending our exchange with his hands displaying “1” and “5” (or was it “5” and “1”?), whatever that means—I know I had no clue. Shortly after that he began to play with the hair on my arms, then inspected and stroked my fingers, then rubbed and tapped my fingernails, and when we stopped to pick up a Cambodian woman (with a wedding ring on her finger) he tried to introduce her to me. Wisely, she ignored him. I began to ignore him at this time, too, so he turned his attention on the German man with long blond hair sitting in front of us and started doing the same thing to him. About an hour later the man fell asleep with his head on my shoulder, and when I carefully leaned forward he fell bodily behind me and continued to sleep with his face wedged between the seat and my lower back. He was there for a good 30-40 minutes. On the positive side, I guess all of this made the time pass more quickly.

I was sad to leave Kratie, as it’s such a lovely, peaceful, slow-paced town. I was more than happy to leave my guesthouse, though. While the Cambodian staff at The Balcony were very nice, and worked hard in the kitchen to make some very tasty food, the Aussie owner left a lot to be desired. He had little good to say about Cambodian people, was stuffy and self-important, and wasn’t willing to help with the mini-millipede infestation I had in my room (even though he told me that millipede bites can be very dangerous). When I settled my bill at the end, he gave me change in paper bills, two of which had the corners substantially ripped off, and which I haven’t been able to spend anywhere since. I must say, too, that it would have been nice if the guesthouse had cleaned my room once in four days, changed my towel once, and emptied the bathroom wastebasket occasionally since guests are asked to refrain from flushing toilet paper. It would also be nice if they provided soap. Generally, when one arrives after a long journey, one wants to clean up just a little, and it's a bit disappointing to have to walk to the market and buy something so basic. I do not recommend The Balcony (despite the nice local staff), though I do recommend, highly, Oudom Sambath Hotel, whose owner was not only very friendly (and fluent in English), but also eager to help his guests. It’s more expensive than The Balcony (the most expensive room at OSH is $25, the least expensive is $8), but it’s still cheap and the quality of accommodations is much better here. The food is excellent, too. The owner has a harrowing story about growing up during the Cambodian conflict, and the fact that he is where he is today is amazing. If I return to Kratie, I’d want to support his business again, which in turn helps support his family, who were destitute and suffered a great deal not very long ago.

Oudom Sambath Hotel is located at 439 Rue Sumamari (Riverside Street). Tel: 072-971537.

FYI: I took Sorya Bus Lines from Phnom Penh to Kratie. The cost was $5, the bus was clean and comfortable, but the trip took 7.5 hours (not the 5 hours they quote). They stop twice for food/restrooms. For my return to Phnom Penh I booked a seat on a van through my hotel. The cost was $6.50 and the trip took 4.5 hours, with one stop for lunch shortly before arriving in Phnom Penh. The van was a bit cramped, and a bit crazy, but the trip’s shorter duration is worth whatever hassles I had to deal with.

Kratie, Cambodia (Day 4)

2011-02-28T17:48:00.000-08:00

Last night I decided to make another run to Kampi to see the river dolphins. I figured that for only $15 it would be worth it, and I also thought that in the morning the dolphins might be even more active than in the late afternoon. I got up at 5:30 in order to meet a tuk-tuk driver who would take me there, but at 6:00, when I went downstairs, I saw that the guesthouse had forgotten to arrange this. Fifteen minutes later they flagged down a motorcycle taxi driver and he took me there.

I just made it on board before this gang of outlaws caught up to us. Luckily, they didn't have $9 to join us. Otherwise, I'd probably be dead now.

Hello! Actually, it wasn't waving at me (I don't think; I still waved back, though), but slapping the surface of water as if to stun whatever fish might be swimming there.

As you can see, they came pretty close to our boat. They swam right past the side of the boat once, but it was hard to see them.

They're so friendly, waving all the time...

The water was pretty clear, and I'm sure it would have been even clearer had it not been cloudy that morning. I asked the boat driver how deep the water here was, and he said, "Yes." Spreading my hands apart from top to bottom I then asked if it was much deeper than that, to which he replied, "Yes." So there you go.

One of the islands up close.

I'm pretty sure that this was a fish (tilapia, maybe?) the dolphins killed by smacking the water with their fins. I read somewhere how the dolphins were once seen killing a giant catfish (250 kg) with their tails, and then not eating it. The giant fish just floated downriver. No one is sure what their motivation for doing that might have been.

People still fish in the endangered dolphin's habitat. They're no longer allowed to fish with gill nets, as dolphins sometimes get caught in them and drown. I was told, though, that local people can't enforce this easily because their physical safety would be put at risk. The same is true for fishing with electricity, a practice that doesn't discriminate at all over what fish get killed.

The young man who took me out that morning.

I took this photo at the very last second from the back of a motorbike. I just aimed and shot, and this is what I got. This guy is seriously loaded down with baskets, which when stacked together like that are heavy!

When I got back to Kratie, I decided to hit the local tourist information center to get copies of two tourist brochures I saw at my guesthouse that I thought were interesting. Amazingly, they had nothing but 20 copies of a single page out of a brochure—and it was for the town of Stung Treng, not Kratie. They hadn’t had anything in their office for several months, apparently, though the office had at least six people working there, and I suspect there were others in back rooms that I couldn’t see. It was fun talking to one of the workers in English, but otherwise it wasn’t a productive trip.

I came back and fueled up for the day with a hearty little breakfast.

As I continued walking through town, I passed through the market area looking for signs with Vietnamese writing and listening for spoken Vietnamese. I ended up meeting a Chinese-Vietnamese woman across from the Kratie market. She was extremely pleasant to talk to, and equally interesting. Her parents moved to Cambodia shortly after she was born, refugees from the American War. I’m not sure where she settled, but eventually her parents came to Kratie, which had a large Vietnamese military presence from 1979-1990. She was educated in Phnom Penh but has been living and working in Kratie for many years. She speaks fluent English, Vietnamese, Chinese, Khmer, Thai, and a bit of French. She makes her living importing and exporting to countries all around Asia, and travels extensively. In her home in Kratie, the front of which doubles as a family business, she teaches primary and secondary school students computers and English. The English lessons she gives are free, and for computer lessons she only charges her students for electricity. She also just adopted a four-month-old Khmer boy, as his mother was too impoverished to raise him herself. She didn’t know much about the local history, but she did tell me that in the early nineties, when traveling overland to Vietnam, the car she was in was shot at by Khmer Rouge, who then robbed them as they lay dazed in their overturned car. I haven’t talked to a great many people here about their lives here at that time, but those I have done this with have all told me equally harrowing stories. In any event, I hope to visit her again before I leave, though one of her Cambodian staff pressed me to spend time in his village just outside of Kratie, which is nice, I know, but not really what I’m looking for at this stage of my trip here.

In the afternoon I decided to walk to Kratie stadium, which I’d been told is where some UNTAC forces used to stay, in tents, for at least part of their peacekeeping duties in the town. (Later, though, I was told that they were housed in a large, former garage of some kind.) There wasn’t much here other than a small seating box, two net-less goals, brown scrub grass, and an unstable wall surrounding the field.

Next to the stadium was a private high school and language center. I met a 13-year-old female student there, whose English was excellent, and we spoke about her studies for a bit, and I answered her question about why I was photographing her school (I'm sure it seemed strange to her), before I decided to move on.

The last place I visited on my walk was Wat Pachha, a 27-year-old pagoda full of monks in orange robes who were studying for a big exam the next day. A few of them spoke English, and they practiced on me for quite a while.

After half an hour they seemed to have run out of questions for me, so I attempted to leave the pagoda but was stopped again and invited for a chat with the head monk and his assistant, both of whom spoke English pretty well.

As we talked, and I learned that these two monks later wanted to become, respectively, a businessman and an English teacher, and after being surprised to see an older monk smoking cigarettes and then being reminded by a younger monk to remove my hat (I’d completely forgotten I was wearing one), I found myself growing very hot, very thirsty, and very tired.

The head monk’s interest in me soon waned, and then his assistant told me he had a lesson to teach the other monks now, so we said our goodbyes and I continued the rest of my walk home.

Kratie, Cambodia (Day 3, Part 1)

2011-02-27T16:07:00.000-08:00

This morning I made it down to Kratie’s pier at 7 a.m. My plan was to take a ferry to Koh Trong—a gorgeous, fascinating island in the Mekong River…full of dogs—and bike its circumference. I wanted to do this early in the morning so that I wouldn’t get so hot, and partly, too, so that I’d have the rest of the day to explore Kratie’s environs by motorbike.

I was hardly the first one at the pier, and in fact I don’t think I even caught the first, or second, or fifth ferry of the morning. Ferry service between Kratie and Koh Trong is constant, though there doesn’t seem to be a “rush hour” for its services. The cost is a mere 1000 riel ($.25) each way, and it takes about five minutes to chug across the water.

Once on the island, there’s a wide swathe of sand to cross. At the end of the beach, at the top of the short escarpment, there’s a bicycle and motorbike rental shop.

Riding a bike around the entire island takes about two hours, so I’d imagine that using a motorbike would mean taking only 30-45 minutes. The bike costs only $1 for however long you wish to use it. The motorbike, I think, costs $5.

The island certainly ranks as one of the most peaceful habitations I’ve ever visited. The entire time I was on the island, I saw four motorbikes, four horse carts, and perhaps twenty bicycles; no cars are allowed on the island; most people seem to get around by walking.

The only things to watch out for are potholes, children, and very territorial dogs. (Don’t stop to take a photo without first checking to see if you’re about to get attacked.)

See that black dog eyeing me? It came out there from its yard, growling, when it saw me stop in the street to take a photo. It's sitting roughly where I'd stopped. I think he's daring me to come back.

The houses here are small, simple, built of wood, and set on stilts. From what I could see, the vast majority of them lacked electricity or running water, though many had wells.

There’s something beautiful about seeing how people live on the island—I could never manage it myself—and spending just two hours here is bound (I hope) to make visitors consider the complexity of their own lives and what they need materially to survive. I would imagine we’d realize that we have, and consume, far more than we actually need. Traveling here is humbling.

A woman, a baby, and two cows. Hey, isn't that the title of a famous movie?

A girl riding a bike with her little brother.

"Mekong Discovery Trail" posters can be found along different parts of the island. This one explains about the underwater lives of dolphins.

The views from various points around the island are often stunning. (If there are no dogs around, stop and have a look. If not, keep riding and hope you’ll have the next viewpoint to yourself.) At this time of year people like to spend time on the beaches and swimming in the river. Without shade, though, I think I’d only last about three minutes. If you’re lucky, on the western part of the island you might catch a glimpse of a rare Mekong mud turtle.

My bike!

There are two pagodas on the island and one temple (more on that below). The first is Wat Koh Trong, which is one of the first things you’ll see upon arriving at the island. The second is Tybaram Dekbal Pagoda, which is on an old dirt road toward the interior, with its gate apparent from a viewpoint near the northern tip of the island.

Tybaram Dekbal Pagoda.

This pagoda is in very good condition, and when I visited I was the only one there. It’s definitely worth a look around.

There were a couple of times when children rushed out at the sight of me, and they’d often unwittingly block my passage. So I’d stop, let them touch my skin and hair, then I'd take a photo of them and let them see it in the viewfinder.

You don’t need to do much to make kids here laugh, but showing them their own photos is a sure way to hear their laughter.

Pigs, on the other hand…

That looks like an uncomfortable way to sleep. I hope it's okay...

I continued riding my bike toward the northwestern-most part of the island, but then the trail petered out. I turned around when I saw I couldn’t go any further, and about 200 meters from a road that cuts through the island I was followed very closely by what looked like two policemen on a motorbike. They went along behind me at the same speed I was riding, then they stopped and began honking their horn repeatedly. I looked over my shoulder at them but didn’t stop or turn back, but every time I turned to look ahead they honked again. This happened three or four times. All I could see were their sunglasses and what appeared to be expressionless faces. It was odd.

When I got to the crossroad I turned right and made my way slowly east. There were ponds here, apparently stocked with fish (there were boats and fishing nets on it), and plots of vegetables and fruit trees. There were women in the fields working, though by now, at almost 9 a.m., it had gotten uncomfortably hot and I'd nearly sucked my bottle of water dry.

A mother and her daughter working in the fields. Like everyone I saw on the island, they called out "Hello!" to me and waved.

When I got back to the other side of the island, I found myself near my starting point. However, I hadn’t explored the northeastern part of Koh Trong, so I biked in that direction. I was surprised to find a Vietnamese temple here, though later it all made sense to me.

Even the side of a wall of one building was papered with a Vietnamese advertisement.

Adverts for cell phones, free beer, motorbikes, and a picture of a pretty girl. All on the wall of a temple building.

One of the most stunning sights I encountered during my bike ride was a row of floating houses off the western side of the island.

There were over twenty houses here, and each house probably held, on average, more than half a dozen people. All the families here are Vietnamese, and they survive by fishing. They fish on the river, and they raise fish in cages and nets beneath their homes. They’ve been here for many years—at least since the time of the Vietnam War—and they make use of the temple on the island above them as necessary.

Part of me wanted to go down and talk to them, but I didn’t want to cause trouble or make them feel strange. I did wonder, though, what their relationship had been with the Vietnamese forces protecting Kratie from the Khmer Rouge, and whether they’d been safe during that time or if they’d had to abandon the area for a safer place. Apparently they were on the side of the river from which the Khmer Rouge would occasionally fire artillery at Kratie. This would make them sitting ducks, and because they're Vietnamese they'd be an obvious target for the Vietnamese-hating Khmer Rouge.

They’re certainly set off from the rest of the community, which is largely Cambodian, though I’m told that many people in town are of Vietnamese origin, too.

A boy on a horse-drawn cart.

After hanging out at the temple for a while, I returned my bike to its owner and grabbed the ferry back to Kratie.

Koh Trong pagoda.

Bye-bye, kiddies. I'm going back to have breakfast.

I went back to my guesthouse for a “full Mekong breakfast” (a homemade fishcake, fried mushrooms, French fries, cooked tomato, bacon, beans, an omelet, and a baguette).

Good gawd, look at all that food.

I couldn’t finish it, but maybe the resident cat in the photo below could. It was quite the beggar when it wasn’t sleeping or attacking people’s feet.

My Second Day in Kratie, Cambodia

2011-02-26T05:46:00.000-08:00

Today I woke up, of my own volition, at 5:30 to see Kratie Market come to life. I also thought, so early in the morning, I might get an up-close view of the “fish market” on the dirt streets behind the main market building.

Arriving before 6—it was only a three-minute walk from my hotel—I found myself there before most of the market vendors. It was too dark yet to take photos without a flash, so I wandered around the few square blocks that the market occupies (or, rather, spills over into), exchanged smiles and hellos with a number of people and soaked up the local morning culture that presented itself to me.

At about 6:30 the sun was up and brightening, and the fishmongers were fairly well set-up.

The Mekong River used to boast the second most productive fisheries in the world, behind only the Amazon River, but this is starting to change.

Because of unregulated increases in fish catches in the late 1990s and early 2000s—due in part to illegal fishing methods such as dynamiting and electrocuting parts of the river to kill whatever life is caught in its range (including dolphins)—fewer and fewer fish are being seen around Kratie.

I’ve been told of how dolphins and giant catfish (250 kg in some cases) were often seen from the riverbank in Kratie, and how one could throw a net into the river and nearly be guaranteed a minute later to reel in a full catch. Now, there are only 100 dolphins left in all of Cambodia, the giant catfish is on the verge of extinction, and fish catches are much lower now than in the recent past.

Still, the variety of fish available at the market, which is small, impressed me. I’m only including here about half the different kinds of fish I took photos of at the market.

Closer to the main market area, which I was also told is full of Vietnamese vendors (though I only heard Khmer spoken), there are also a number of flower sellers. Below are two women busy folding the petals of bright pink lotus flowers.

It’s almost startling to see how many young people live in Kratie—there’s been a big baby boom since the Cambodian conflict ended—and as I walked through the market I was assailed by shouts of “hello” from quite a few children. However, I also made at least two kids cry when I offered my own hellos and waved at them…

I spent much of the rest of the morning walking through the central part of Kratie and the paved road along the Mekong River. This doesn’t take a long time…unless you stop a lot to take photos.

I circled back to the river road by my hotel and passed by Wat Kratie, which is under construction and seems to have more dogs on the premises than monks or worshippers.

Early in the morning one can see monks, usually in groups of three, walk in a line through the streets begging for alms. As you can see in the photo below, people take off their shoes before offering them food.

The paved road along the river is lined with impressive rows of shade-giving trees. I’m guessing they were planted by the French in colonial times, as they also tower over old French colonial buildings that are now used by the local government and various NGOs.

Other trees are simply impressive, though they don’t look as if they were planted and cared for by people.

It’s amazing to see some of the houses perched on the riverbank. I wouldn’t want to walk to the back of some of these homes, which don’t look as if they can withstand any more weight than they currently hold.

It’s amazing, too, to see how people make use of the river for so many different things. In the photo below, three men are bathing horses.

I passed a few schools in central Kratie, too, and my wanderings were followed by a hundred children’s voices calling out “hello” all at once.

Another striking feature about Kratie is the local architecture.

The homes are almost universally made of wood (which is treated with “swamp water” so that it can withstand the climate’s heat and moisture) and built upon stilts.

The Mekong River usually doesn’t flood in Kratie, though it did, I was told, in 1999, and during heavy rains the water can come up to one’s waist (as it often does in many Hanoi and Saigon streets).

On the way back to my hotel I came across an old tree with a small altar built into its side. For some reason the old milk cans used to hold incense had a picture of a blond boy: My Boy brand sweetened condensed milk. I couldn’t help but take a photo of it.

The day ended, as it always seems to, with an amazing sunset over the Mekong River.