A Teal in Flight

A woman of a certain age and neurosis sets out to travel the world with her husband Sam

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KIWIS IN FLIGHT

When New Zealand separated from Gondwanaland it was submerged under water. So when it finally came up for air, there were no mammals and no snakes. Birds flew in to populate the land and nested on the ground because there weren’t any predators. Over centuries, they grew to be the size of Big Bird and had a lovely life until the first humans arrived and barbecued all of them.

For obvious reasons, I did not take this photo. North Island giant moa. Image 2006-0010-1/17 from the series 'Extinct birds of New Zealand'. Masterton. The first people arrived only about 700 years ago, while Notre Dame was being built and Oxford was entering its third second century. New Zealand is the youngest landmass on earth and just about the last to have humans occupy it. It doesn’t speak well of us, but the lack of humans for such a long time makes it pretty much a paradise.

However, we are an industrious species. Since the arrival of humans, mammals have been introduced.  Prior to us, there were some bats and a few whales off shore. That’s all.  Now there are more possums than people.  Along with the stoats, they feast on bird eggs, having pretty much finished off the ground-dwelling flightless birds.  So now another 70 bird species are extinct.  But none of these mammals, or birds, or reptiles have anything against us. The point is, unlike Australia, there is nothing in New Zealand that wants to kill us. There are a few annoying sand flies, but that’s it. Nothing at all wants to have us for supper. You can camp out naked in its gorgeously dense forests and not worry about a thing. There aren’t even disease-carrying insects. Apparently it’s against the law. So what does a population that has nothing to be afraid of do? They hurl themselves off high buildings attached to large rubber bands. That’s what they do.

This is the tallest building in the southern hemisphere. For $225 you can throw yourself over the side.

Apparently bungy jumping began in the Republic of Vanuatu thousands of years ago, long before the cargo cult. Legend has it that a woman who was consistently abused by her husband dared him to jump off a tall tree if she did so too. To prove that anything she could do, he could do better, he plunged to his death, unaware that she had tied vines to her ankles. The New Zealanders claim to have invented the modern version, which involves the large rubber bands. And if they want to claim that, why would you argue?

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Important Post Script for the last "No Troubles?" blog

My brother Topper wrote me that I was losing my mojo by not sending a picture of my terrifying experience. So here it is.

Twenty bucks and it doesn't cover the olive.

Scary, huh?

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NO WORRIES?

OK. Back to the life expectancy thing in Australia. I’m sure the statistics are correct. They do live longer, but it's because these people have to keep aerobic all day to avoid the deadly snakes and spiders — and the crocodiles and scorpions and Dengue-fever carrying mosquitoes. I read about all the Australian creatures eager to kill you in Bill Bryson’s A Sunburned Country and thought it was hilarious, but not so much, now that I’m here. We were outside Cairns admiring the incredible beaches and wondering why we saw so many Australians in Bali where the beaches were crowded and no more beautiful.

Here's the answer:

Box jellyfish stings can cause death. They are abundant from October to June, though there are netted areas protected from them. “The danger is that we’ve netted some of them into the protected area,” the man at the information booth told me, “but they're only close to shore. No worries if you go out to the reef.” So we took a huge, high-speed boat an hour-and-a-half out on the reef. There, we suited up with wetsuits that covered every inch of our bodies that the masks didn’t cover just in case some jelly fish had not received the memo about staying close to shore.

Before I got in the water I needed to be convinced there was no danger of shark attacks. “That danger is way overrated,” Alyssa, our guide assured me. “There hasn’t been an attack in years.” Here I am in the water when I was still having a good time, and, yes, that is a rubber starfish given to me for the photo op.

In a little while, the guide started waving her hands to get our attention. She took off her mask and shouted “Look we’ve been joined! Look down!” “LOOK DOWN!    RIGHT NOW!  LOOK DOWN!” I looked down. Directly below me was an immense fish. I mean enormous, the size of a coffee table or a cow -- and it was right below me. “This is remarkable!” Alyssa shouted. “You are so lucky. This just doesn’t happen. Look at its mouth. Those teeth are for crushing crustaceans. You see how he has it open all the time ready to get its prey?” Yes. I had noticed that, along with the long pointy teeth. Then, after a pause during which we were all floating motionless in paralytic fear, she said: “DON’T TOUCH THIS FISH. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT TOUCH THIS FISH! DO YOU HEAR ME?” I did. I heard her. “Now look down.” She was looking right at me because I was not looking down. I was looking for an escape route, but not one that would involve an upsetting movement. “Put your mask in the water. AND CALM DOWN! Don’t   excite   the   fish." She spoke loudly with very measured words. "You are having a once-in-a-life-time experience. Relax. You're fine as long as you don’t arouse him.” "Arouse him?" I thought. I don't want to have sex with this fish. I just don't want to be his lunch. I put my mask in the water as told. The fish was about four inches from me. I slowly treaded water, trying not to move. And then it actually bumped into me. I mean it really bumped into me and looked straight into my eyes with its rolling fly like eyes. It just stopped, floating right there, hanging out with me, doing a stare down contest. “This is so exciting,” the instructor shouted. Later, on the boat, when my heart rate had returned to normal and I regained the ability to speak, I told Alyssa I thought it looked like a grouper. “Yeah,” she said, “or maybe a mackerel.” The next morning, I googled sharks and giant fish in Australia. This was the headline that came up first: April 3, 2014: Aussie Woman 'Taken by a Shark' 'COMMUNITY IN SHOCK' AFTER EXPERIENCED SWIMMER KILLED AT POPULAR BEACH And this was the next, from March 18, 2014: Aussie Girl, 10, Survives Shark Attack OR MAYBE A MACKEREL; OFFICIALS AREN'T SURE ABOUT SOURCE OF HAND INJURY That night I sat with a martini, recovering — a twenty dollar martini that hardly covered the olive -- another bit of trouble in paradise.  

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G'Day Mate. No Worries.

I always knew I'd love Australia. It's why we didn't travel here until we were too old to emigrate. Though if I could pick up my family and friends and move them here, I think I would. It’s not overpopulated. It’s clean. You can drink the water. You can breath the air. You can eat salads and sushi without checking for your Lomitil. The food is terrific. It has one of the world’s top ten iconic buildings.

The beaches are magnificent.

The modern art is exceptional. Hobart's MONA is one of the most exciting museums I've ever seen and I can relive the experience because they have sent me my whole virtual visit by email. Unbelievable.

Shorts, cargo pants and flip flops are formal attire.  In Sydney people commute by ferry. How can you not love a city that commutes by ferry? Australians seem genuinely content and happy. I haven’t seen any homeless people. The minimum wage is $14 an hour. The per capita GDP is the same as Canada’s and their life expectancy better than ours, which I feel has a lot to do with the “No Worries”. But the main thing is that the Australians are really, really nice. . . and accommodating. My God are they accommodating. You’re almost afraid to ask directions for fear the person will stop what she’s doing to walk you there. Friends of friends of friends I've hardly known have taken us on four-hour boat rides and invited us to their house for a meal. It's extraordinary. These people are crazy gracious, charming and witty.

This is the Molyneux family, expressing their joy at entertaining unknown Americans. And come on, who among you wouldn’t want this as an address:

But, more later about that life expectancy. . .

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Hiking in Tasmania

This is the photo I sent to our children from Tasmania:

“Look! It’s just like Deer Lake,” I wrote. We have a summer place on Deer Lake near Deer River, MN, a town of 917 people, four-hours from Minneapolis and two hours northwest of Duluth. For those of you who have never been to Duluth, it is known as the San Francisco of the North -- but only to those people in Duluth who have never been to San Francisco. Our daughter Willa wrote back “Dear God, you’ve finally found something even more remote and harder to get to than Deer River.” To prove she was right, the next day Sam and I set off to hike around the area. It was a very steep and rocky eleven miles through rugged and beautiful country.

We walked along deserted beaches and climbed up through boulders in the mountains from which the views were heart-stopping.

Birds, snakes, lizards and even the occasional wallaby joined us but no other people.

The trail in places was marked by only a white spot of paint on some giant moss-covered rock indicating which of the impossible routes was the best one to take.

You could grab a tree limb where trees existed to help you while climbing. That is, you could if you weren’t aware that Australia has the deadliest insects, spiders and snakes in the world. The idea of accidentally encountering one makes you keep your hands in your pockets.

This spider is not poisonous but it is the size of a pot roast, so who cares? And then, of course, there are the actual trees. There are even poisonous trees in Australia. There’s one called Gympie-Gympie that’s a stinging tree which can cause months of excruciating pain for unsuspecting humans. It is said that its sting feels like hot acid. Near the end of the hike, we came across two people, the only two we saw the whole way. The woman was exhausted, lying in what passed for the path, probably trying to stay well away from any advancing trees. "How far to the car park?" She asked with tears in her eyes.  Sam cheerfully told her it was only an hour or so away. We moved past them quickly since I was pretty sure her husband was about to be pushed off the cliff. On arriving back at the Eco lodge safely, we headed right for the bar. Everything in my body had seized up. My back ached and my knees were like small melons. I ordered a Tasmanian wine and the sweetest plumpest mussels I've ever tasted, harvested moments before from right in front of the lodge. "What would happen if someone got really hurt on that hike?" I asked the bartender. "I mean it's so remote, kind of at the edge of the world." "Yeah," he shrugged. "Well, I kinda grew up at the edge of the world, so it doesn't really bother me. I grew up on a lake just outside Deer River, Minnesota."

This is Deer Lake.

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The Yin and Yang of Bali

“Will you be coming back mate?” The Australian immigration officer at the airport asked us as we were leaving Bali for Melbourne. “I’ve been in Ubud 18 years and it’s not the exotic place it used to be. Going home to Tassie (what the Australians call Tasmania) in a couple months and staying there this time.” Bali is a Hindu outpost in the world’s largest majority-Muslim country.  Everywhere you look in Ubud, there is a temple with rich statuary, frequently wrapped in black and white cloth, symbolizing good and bad, yin and yang.  

In every house, every store, every sidewalk there is an offering to some spirit or god. There are four offerings to be made daily if you want good luck; to your house, temple, village and the greater community.

And then there are the celebrations. A temple’s birthday is celebrated every six months and usually for three-full days. Same for birthdays, twice a year. Pregnancy is cause for ceremonial celebrations. A child’s first year of life has several additional birth celebrations, presumably because many did not survive for long.  “Everybody must have a boy,” our guide told us. “I have no boy so I will keep having children until I do. Girls leave when they marry. Boys take care of the parents.”  There will certainly be lots of parents who will need taking care of in this, the world’s fourth most populous country.  As our friend Fred Harris says “When the ship’s leaking, it’s not the time to take on more passengers.” It remains a very sensual place.  The weather, the clothes, the hippyish vibe and the omni-present sexual sculptures all contribute to this. (To see these go to my previous posting of Sensual, Mossy and X-rated Statues of Bali:  http://atealinflight.tumbly.com ) There are wildly-colorful dances in the villages and temples every night, performed mostly by the villagers. Though admission is charged, the dances go on with or without an audience. The monkey chant dance in Jungjungna outside Ubud had fewer than a dozen spectators and about fifty performers. There’s no orchestra. About forty men dressed in traditional lungis called sarongs, act as the backdrop and hum 'chak, chak, chak kechak' throughout the dancing. Since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship there is a wildly corrupt political system with about thirty parties.  This has generated a fabulously rich uber class but most Indonesians live on a few dollars a day.  And, in Ubud, everything is overcrowded. There is also a remaining security concern from the terrorist attack in 2002.  The most up-scale tourist restaurants and hotels perform a check on every arriving car and passenger. For many, this is still paradise. Ubud has survived bombings, volcanoes, earthquakes and colonizers, but I’m not sure it’s surviving the overpopulation and the onslaught of tourists since Eat, Pray, Love. So will I be coming back mate? Not so sure. It’s the old yin and yang problem.

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The Amusing, Mossy, Sensual and Perhaps X-Rated Statues of Bali

And last but God knows not least:

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Pristine Singapore

When you arrive in Singapore, there’s no question you're in Singapore. It’s like seeing a future vision of New York, London and Los Angeles all in one city --  but with a lot more English spoken. What is overwhelming – particularly after Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand is that it is so clean. Uncommonly clean. Spanky clean. It’s as if someone has swept all the cobwebs from your brain and given you a Xanax at the same time. Clean is restful. There’s not doubt about it.  To go from places that make you weep for the earth like this:

To this:

is very comforting. Respect for public property and public space is taken very seriously in Singapore. Vandalism is abhorred. Litter is almost nonexistent. There are rules; lots of rules and most of them seem to be followed. You must not chew or possess gum without a doctor’s prescription. It used to be outlawed altogether, but Wrigley persuaded the government to allow medicinal gum. The result is sidewalks are not pock marked with black and white spots like the ones you see in London and New York. You must not leave a public toilet without flushing. Common sense, right? But here the toilets are checked and fines are imposed on those who forget. I’ve been told that there are urine detection devices in many of the public elevators. Who among us hasn’t wished for that at times? You must not litter. This is a big one. A first time offender can now be fined up to $2,000; $4,000 for a second-time offender with required public service. If you are caught a third time, you are to wear a sign saying “I am a litter lout”. You must not spit or throw cigarette butts in the street. This comes as a huge relief after traveling among throngs of Chinese tourists in Vietnam and Cambodia. This is a photo of mine taken in the Singapore subway.

This is a New York subway car:

I’m not making a statement about wildly rich benign dictatorships here. I’m only reporting what we saw. I’d be very sad if Bansky had never existed. And there are some very bad laws in Singapore. For example, nudity (which includes walking naked in front of your own bedroom window) and gay sex are illegal (though gay friends of ours said that these laws were not enforced). I’m just saying there is something really nice about cleanliness. I grew up in a house where my mother had painted “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” on our laundry room wall. What I think she wanted to write was in this house “cleanliness is next to impossible". She would have loved Singapore.                              

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More Southeast Asian Food -- for Better and Worse

Durian fruit is a delicacy for some and intimidating for others. It not only has a thorny husk, but also a disgusting smell. Below is the fruit and a warning sign concerning it in the Singapore airport:

Embryo eggs netted in the market so the chicks won't escape should they hatch overnight:

Thailand's pink eggs:

Tea being served in Thailand:

Dragon Fruit:

Lotus Flower Rice:

Kampot Pepper from Kep, Cambodia. It is the pepper that used to grace every fine table in Paris before the Khemer Rouge destroyed the Cambodian pepper farms and world market.

And the Kampot pepper crab of Kep:

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A Southeast Asian Food Competition

We are a family of omnivores and when we travel, we pride ourselves in trying everything local. Our son Nicholas ate deep fried spiders when he was in Cambodia. Here is his report: I rarely have a vegetarian's qualms when it comes to seeing a live version of something I plan to eat. Cows and lambs have not developed a very good evolutionary response to slaughter. They are, essentially, walking hamburgers and their cuteness doesn't really stop me from enjoying them. A better strategy might have been for cows to evolve a hairy black eight-legged exterior. I managed to find some fried spiders (they taste like crab) but if they had tasted like filet mignon with mushroom gravy, I still don't think I could bring myself to eat them regularly. As his mother I saw this as a challenge and was determined to meet it. So I thought I’d ask CNN’s Anthony Bourdain for advice when I was having breakfast with him the other day. . . Well, not so much with him, as at a table across from his. My friends and I watched him leave on his motorcycle with another two-person motorbike in front; one of the guys was sitting backwards so Bourdain could be filmed as he rode to his next exotic food adventure. Being bus bound, we were unable to follow.  Actually we didn’t need to follow because we found the following all on our own. (It turns out, it was not entirely on our own. Our guide, the Mighty Quinn, is a partner in this business.)

However banh mi is in big cities all over the states now, so this wasn’t going to compete with fried spider. I considered Snake Whiskey with cobra and scorpion.

But knowing Nicholas, he would have tried every kind of alcohol, so this wasn’t going to make me the front-runner. Our guide in Thailand was a judge on Iron Chef and the competition’s ingredient was bat and dog.  Fortunately I was never offered either. Here he is dressed for the Iron Chef. He does not appear eager for the tasting.

s:

I was getting desperate. Time was running out. Weasel coffee appeared to be the answer. This is coffee made from beans that have gone through a weasel’s digestive system. We have an in-residence weasel in our Minnesota cabin so I thought I might go into business if it turned out to be delicious.

Below is a distressed weasel digesting coffee beans.

Unfortunately weasel coffee is very, very expensive and pretty much unavailable. Fake beans abound. The French introduced coffee to Vietnam, along with baguettes. (That pretty much sums up the good stuff the French did). Vietnamese farmers weren’t allowed to take any of the beans from the plantations so they scavenged for the ones the weasels left behind in their droppings. It turns out weasels select the very best of the beans and these beans have a slight chocolaty taste after going through their systems. The coffee from them is thought to be lip-smacking scrumptious.

This jar contains five years of accumulated digested beans, several thousand dollars worth – or so I was told. However, I was still not getting any closer to winning the competition. I was about to give up. . . and then I discovered this:

Yes. A water bug or water beetle, which looks disturbingly like an enormous cockroach.  An essence is drawn from the waterbug’s head and put in spicy soups. Just a drop will do it, not only because it is crazy expensive, but also because it has a breathtaking odor and tastes like green apple shampoo. So there you go Nicholas. I win! Too bad you didn’t know there was a competition. However, as a potential profit center,  Nicholas has more of these in Harlem than I have weasels in Minnesota. http://atealinflight.tumblr.com

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I meant to write "Casualties" in the last blog -- of course

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Casualties of War

Loud speakers blast out at 5:30 in the morning encouraging people to get up and exercise: “Strong people make a strong country”.  This is Hanoi and this is definitely a communist country.

Vietnam wiring with exhortatory speakers

On the surface it appears to be a capitalist entrepreneurial country. A part-time university teacher told me her students were not interested in any issue. Politics are for others, not an emerging middle class, they would tell her. They just wanted to learn things and make money.

Our guide told us young people might get involved if they feel China is getting to be too much of a threat, but otherwise they have no interest in wars or politics. Of course they weren’t even born during the Vietnam War (or the American War as it is mostly, and not surprisingly, referred to here).

But, if you peel back the veneer. . .

There was never hope for a good outcome from the war.  The victorious North, predictably, took substantial retribution on their countrymen and former enemies in the South, particularly the well-educated and well- traveled.  Spurred on by the then Soviet Union, they instituted a centrally-planned economy that, also predictably, failed.  It wasn’t until doi moi, literally “renovation” in 1986 that some market reforms were instituted within a generally socialist system. 

The result was a rapid increase of agricultural production changing Vietnam from a society dependent on foreign contributions to avoid starvation to one that is a major rice exporter.

It also created the storefront capitalism that is so evident in the cities.

But all is not what it seems.

Vietnam is a poster boy for the World Bank, with rapid growth in income and GDP.  And that growth story is true, partly because Vietnam started from such a low base owing to the destruction from the war and partly because of the mistakes of the Communist Party.  But beneath that surface there is a cancer. 

National GDP in a country of 90 million is about the same as Apple’s available cash, and the per-person GDP about $1500.  But the stores in the large cities include Gucci, Zengara, Vuitton, and Rolex.

Louis Vuitton with early morning Tai Chi.  Not really their customers.

Who’s buying these products? The same guys who are buying the ‘Benzs and Bentleys.  If you’re connected, you’re probably not paying taxes on your imported car and the source of the money is pretty questionable.  If you’re not connected, you’re probably driving a motorbike. 

It appears that only lower-ranking civil servants and foreign corporations, both easy to find, are actually paying taxes.  Unions are effectively outlawed with the justification that the government-sponsored Vietnam General Confederation of Labor represents all workers.  So salaries in the large industries, including textiles, clothing, and shoe manufacturing, remain scandalously low with no one to speak for the workers. Foreign reporters who focus on issues of corruption, inequality and freedom of expression have been expelled. Vietnam ranks between Cuba and China in the Press Freedom Index.  The Communist Party regularly wins reelection, which is not surprising because all other parties are outlawed.  The economy is still more than 40% controlled by State Owned Enterprises, which are notoriously inefficient. When they are privatized, the proceeds somehow find their way, in part, to the bank accounts of the well connected.

Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnam’s genius military strategist, died a few months ago.  He was the last of the aesthetic, plain-living revolutionary leadership.  He had been forced out of the government, essentially by party hacks, many years ago, but was a popular figure who spoke strongly against the arrogance and corruption of the government. 

Vietnam in recent years has made its fair share of mistakes. It is much too facile to blame their current problems entirely on the war and its aftermath.  But the consequences of that war are still evident. Vietnam has struggled with rebuilding from American bombing and with the human and environmental costs of Agent Orange.

Sam and I have been reading Embers of War by Federik Logevall.  It is a stark reminder of how much responsibility lies with the United States.  And that responsibility goes back not just to Dien Bien Phu, but also to a consistently wrong-headed policy starting with Woodrow Wilson at Versailles.  Its aftermath compounds Vietnam’s problems today.

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OUR VIETNAMESE GUIDE

We have had the most wonderful guide in Vietnam. He is the intelligent, creative, capable and highly efficient Quynh.([email protected]). He had his hands full with our little group of friends -- everything from a trip to the hospital to lost iphones.

His father fought in what the Vietnamese call the American War while he stayed home and tended rice fields.  Years later Quynh guided an American who had flown bomber missions in that war.

The following is a segment about Quynh's visiting the Vietnam Memorial and his new friend visiting his father.  It is interesting and heartwarming.

http://www.myfoxdc.com/video?clipId=7130257&autostart=true#axzz2uoy0aHLc

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TRAFFiC US HUMMING IN HANOI

Motorcycles start revving up early in the morning, like a restless hive of angry black wasps. And once they’re awake you don’t want to cross them, or in our case, cross in front of them. The sidewalks, where they exist at all, are parking lots for the bikes.

Even the markets are not out-of-bounds.

Becoming an adroit pedestrian requires Olympian skills and reactions. Pedestrians are at the bottom of the traffic food chain. Crossing the street takes nerves of steel and intense concentration – as if you could be thinking about anything other than survival with a swarm of black wasps targeting you. This is not an activity for sissies. Traffic lights -- where they exist -- are only cautionary. Drivers use horns rather than brakes.  You gird your loins, and move forward slowly, never changing your pace lest the biker -- who has mapped his course around you without diminishing his speed -- be thrown off his mark. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t and you have to start over. But no one makes it to the finals without constant practice.

Midday Traffic

5:30am Before Traffic                    

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John Steinbeck and The Coconut Monk

John Steinbeck IV was first in Saigon in 1965.  He served as a war correspondent for the US military after being drafted.  It was not really his choice.  His father, a great supporter of the war who had recently been in Vietnam on a fact-finding trip at the request of LBJ, essentially bullied his son into serving rather than resisting the draft.  After his discharge, young Steinbeck returned to Vietnam in 1968 and founded Dispatch News Service with Sean Flynn (yes, Errol’s son) and others.  They broke Sy Hersh’s Mi Lai story and won a Pulitzer for it.  Sean Flynn was killed while on a photo shoot in Cambodia. Sam met John in 1970 on his own fact-finding trip.

A Richard Avedon Photo of John Steinbeck

John was a serious Buddhist and took Sam to visit his teacher, the Coconut Monk, at his floating pagoda in the Mekong Delta.  They rode through rice fields on a motorbike driven by John, his orange monk’s robes flying in the wind.  At one point, they heard rifle and heavy arms fire.  Sam leaned forward and shouted in John’s ear, “Who is shooting at us?” to which John turned his head and replied, “Don’t know.  Could be them. Could be us.”   John was also a serious drinker and seemed to know every bar and opium den in Saigon. Here is the Coconut monk. And really, who wouldn’t have him as a mentor?

The coconut monk’s pagoda was decorated with Christian, Buddhist and miscellaneous other religious symbols reflecting his eclectic approach.

Eventually the waters nearby became home to many draft dodgers/AWOL soldiers and others seeking refuge from the war.  At one point, the monk became a peace candidate for President of Vietnam (meaning for him at the time, South Vietnam). His candidacy was hardly noticed. And, of course, he lived entirely on coconuts --  as you would. After the war, his followers were declared to be a cult and his religion abolished by the government. I met John when he moved to Boulder after the war to study with Trungpa Rinpoche (and Alan Ginsberg and the young William Burroughs). He was struggling with drug and alcohol addition.  It was a struggle he ultimately won, but he died at 44 from complications of a simple operation. This picture of John with the Coconut Monk was taken, probably in 1969, by Sean Flynn.

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THE PUMMELING JOY OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN MASSAGE

 “What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger,” said our friend David Hawk when encouraging us to take advantage of Thai massages.

Our first massage in Thailand was in a room packed with beds pushed side by side. You lay right next to complete strangers – all fully clothed. The kneading of all those bodies made me thing we were all loaves of bread being prepared for baking.

These are not your feel-good messages. They are deep muscle probes done with thumbs that could slaughter. They bring tears to your eyes. Below are two Thai gentlemen having a great belly-laugh as Sam cries out in pain.

Later we had massages in the privacy of our rooms where two young, muscled women climbed on top of us in our beds – again fully clothed (both the masseuses and us). Sam, who has never had a massage in his life, was not sure that something entirely different was about to happen. In Cambodia and Vietnam, I had a private room where I was given paper underwear or gauzy cotton drawstring pants. The only thing all the massages have had in common is that they have been totally respectable (though alternatives are available), occasionally quite painful and very cheap. Really, really cheap. One full-body message was thirty-five dollars including tip for a ninety-minute session. A $5 manicure came with a heavenly arm, neck and shoulder rub. And they all come with tea. The bottom line is the massages are effective. We are walking around like loose noodles with the flexibility of nine-year-olds. For sure we are converts. Except maybe for this one where fish bite the dead skin off your feet. (The fish are larger than those pictured.) You are encouraged to have a beer or two while having the treatment. Duh…

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GOOD MORNING VIETMAN!

My husband Sam’s last and only other trip to Vietnam was in 1970.  He came with a delegation from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; the Fellowship of Reconciliation; church leaders and one student, his friend, Charlie Palmer.  The purpose of the trip was to meet with the so-called Third Way — Buddhist monks and students who generally favored a peaceful settlement to the war.  It had about as much chance as the many previous incarnations of the same idea between 1945 and 1970 -- which is to say none.  There was simply no compromise for either the Viet Minh in Hanoi nor for the U.S.-installed government in Saigon.  The North could not compromise on their 25-year struggle for an independent Vietnam.  The U.S. still held, at least publicly, in the second year of the Nixon Administration, to the illusion that victory was possible.  So, although peace talks were being conducted in Paris, the war was unabated.  

To hear Sam tell it, Saigon was an island, the most secure place in Vietnam but dreadfully unsafe.  And, although the daily illusion of control was repeated at press briefings (the Five O'clock Follies), no one in the press gave any credit to what they were told.  There was a 9:00 curfew, strictly enforced, so wherever you were at 9:00 PM, you would have to spend the night.  And the motorbike riders with their attractive women on the back circling the Continental were happy to suggest a comfortable place to do just that.  Meanwhile, the bars there, at the Metropolitan and the Rex did a land office business on the expense accounts of every media outlet in the world.  Many of the reporters were very intrepid about covering the news and some paid for it with their lives.  Sean Flynn from Time and Dana Stone from CBS had disappeared just weeks earlier, as had five other CBS staff members. But nothing kept reporters from regularly placing themselves in harm’s way.  In the evening they often ended up in one of the Saigon bars sharing their disdain for the military leadership; their nearly-universal admiration for the soldiers who fought, and their disgust for the political leaders who had sent them there. 

On Saturday there was an anti-war demonstration by monks and students at the U.S. Embassy.  Sam was present, along with Paul Moore, then the Episcopal Bishop in Washington and others from the delegation.  It was dispersed by police using tear gas.  Sam was somewhere near the front of the crowd, but it is clear from the picture below (look just to Bishop Moore’s right) that he was moving at high speed to get out of harm’s way.

The following morning the Vietnamese police showed up at his hotel room offering him a deal:  he could be on the afternoon Pan Am flight to Guam or he could be in a Vietnamese jail.  It was a pleasant flight.

The old hotels are still there and the bars are just as well-stocked.  In the city there is little sign of the war or its Agent Orange casualties.  We were told today by our friend Christine Doudna that Brennan Jones,  the producer of Hearts and Minds, the Academy Award winning documentary about Vietnam, died recently of cancer due to massive exposure to Agent Orange from his service as an aid worker in Vietnam with the Council of Churches.  

Here, there are evident victims commonly in the countryside.  In the City there is evident wealth, in the countryside, while people appear to be well fed, most are poor.  But, most remarkably, we have experienced no anti-American sentiment.  It was thought by the French from 1945 to Dien Bien Phu in 1954 that they could hold onto their colony. They did not want the United States to be in charge of military strategy for fear that Viet Nam would become “Americanized” and the French relegated to second class status. They were also afraid we would, at least on paper, free Vietnam from its colonial status -- though that wasn't going to happen as long as they remained communist. Of course it turned out that neither France nor the United States could control the political destiny of Viet Nam by war.  But, what the U.S. could not win by war, we have won by other means.  The alternative currency, readily accepted, is the U.S. dollar.  The street corner music is American -- mostly from the 60s and 70s.  American movies dominate the satellite and cable movie channels, at least in the cities.  American fast food is creeping into the country.  English is clearly and predominately the second language.  

Without Roosevelt’s untimely death; Eisenhower’s obsession with the domino theory; Kennedy’s untimely death; Johnson’s unwise deference to military and diplomatic advisors, largely inherited from Kennedy; and, Nixon’s duplicitous nature and slavish devotion to Henry Kissinger’s criminal escalation, we might have saved millions of lives while still ending up more or less where we are now.

The thing that strikes me most powerfully is how foreign this country remains.  I cannot imagine how totally frightening it must have been for kids from small towns in the Midwest and south to find themselves in a land of rugged terrain in a sea of hostile forces not knowing what would lie around the next corner.  I thought then and think now that the soldiers were themselves victims, more to be understood and forgiven, while the guilty parties were our political leaders who sent them off to die for no reason.  

It seems a simple enough lesson, which makes it remarkable that we have to relearn it every few years.