Durga Puja 2010

15-17 October, 2010

The car drives past just one Durga Puja site along the road on the way to the airport. It looks like any wedding or "function" site, slightly decorated and full of placid, orderly people. I have the faintest twinge of regret that I will not be able to see the puja firsthand, but it is fleeting. It would have been nice to tell my father that I'd seen a Durga Puja in India, if nothing else. But I would much rather be in Mumbai than in dusty old Tamil Nadu. The the cab speeds towards the airport.

Coimbatore's new terminal is not changed enough that I really notice the renovations, but I am still not used Mumbai's new terminals. They are such an improvement that they seem almost unreal; they might any moment melt away, leaving the old, dingy rooms built of yellow linoleum and stained walls behind. Outside the airport, though, Mumbai is smelly and grubby and humid, just as it has been for the last 25 years, 250 years, 2500 years. I take deep breaths of city air and am glad.

But tonight Mumbai is different. There are lights, and a golden yellow gateway with an image of Durga on it. I peer down the alley as best I can, catching a glimpse of crowds and flowers, but not the idol. Too bad. I am far from my hotel. There can be no coming back to see the celebration. But we drive past another awning, and another. Fairy lights are everywhere. Occasionally I hear drums. There are pujas on every street, down every alley. At one intersection, there are lights all around, a dizzying golden circle more reminiscent of Vegas than anywhere in India. As the cab approaches Colaba, the tiny lights dwindle and fade away. The streets are too narrow, the real estate is too expensive. Publicly making room for Durga is not the province of the wealthy.

The next day I find a puja site, though, just north of Colaba, near the fishing village slum. It is not so very far from where I'm staying, but it still doesn't seem likely that I'll get to go. After all, I'm traveling with someone who has gotten tickets to the first ever Mumbai Oktoberfest. The German wheat-idol and the Bengali overcomer of obstacles seem hardly likely to meet.

But fate smiles, if only for a moment. Hunting for an after hours bar after the Oktoberfest closes (not my idea), we come upon a festival. There's music, and at one end of a cement yard surrounded by a very low wall sits a large, vaguely Asian-looking idol. With her pink skin and averted eyes, and she looks more like Mary than Durga to me. Still, she is beautiful. We have stumbled into a slum, though I suppose one of Mumbai's better slums. The people live in little box apartments in buildings somewhere between doll house and house of cards. The front of each building is completely open, so there is no privacy at all. It looks as if the two-story constructions could cave in on themselves at any moment. But they don't. Old people perch at the appartments' edges, cuddling their grandchildren and watching the dancing. Mostly young people dance, and there are plently of children making the rounds. The outer circle of dancers goes clockwise, the inner counterclockwise. A dancer meets her partner, taps his stick with hers right, left, taps her own together once, one more right tap, and on to the next partner. (I say her and his, but it's completely mixed.) They go round and round, sweating and mostly smiling. Everyone wears bright new clothes, but the two girls scheduled for marriage this year are immediately visible. Some expense has been taken to dress them. Both wear red and green skirts and tops decorated with plenty of gold foil and rhinestone jewelry. But one is much prettier than the other, and they both know it. The wide-faced, doe-eyed beauty laughs and smiles as she whirls round and round, carefree youth incarnate. The other does not smile once. Does she know the boy she's in love with is promised to her rival?

It is easier to watch the much younger girl in a black dress trimmed with silver foil. She is thin, nearly scrawny, with a long, narrow face, and might never grow into a beauty. Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling better when I look at her. She dances with attack and abandon, every ballet teacher's dream. Surely such energy and determination can only meet with success. And who could resist the two young teenage girls, dressed in their best but not overdone, giggling at the private jokes they exchange with their eyes. A single word from one to the other produces gales of laughter, but they never miss a step. A much older woman dressed in a rust chiffon and gold foil sari dances past. Surely she is a chaperone, but she looks as happy as the kids. Joy makes their lives beautiful if only for a night or two.

All are not so joyful, though. A tall, thin young family appears. The woman holds her baby in her arms, her husband follows behind. They join the dancing but are are grim, tapping their sticks listlessly, never giving a hint of a smile. They make two or three rounds and retreat to an apartment to watch the dancing in silence. Even the baby is solemn and quiet.

My companion and I lean on the wall around the compound. About twenty young men keep us company. After a few minutes, we are invited to join the dancing. I would love to, but I don't know the rules and fear of showing disrespect holds me back. They are still dancing when we leave. Probably they go on all night.

The party isn't over even then. The next night on the road between the domestic and the international aiport, the streets are blocked with trucks carrying young men and Durga idols. Boys throw fireworks and shout. The driver, a Muslim, gazes grimly around him, inching forward against all odds. My progress is so slow that I fear I might miss my flight. The driver is determined, though. We gradually leave the joyful noise behind.

No matter how well you plan...

...you can't plan for everything.

I have a lovely, quiet morning at the Queen's Gallery and Loha Prasat, and exactly the lunch that I want at the cute Chinese chain restaurant on the corner. It is passion fruit juice, pork roasted, fried and in sausage with cucumbers and plenty of chilies, plus coconut ice cream. The flecks of coconut are dyed pink and pale green for gaiety, but the flavor is rich, slightly smoky, and sublime.

But success like that can only breed arrogance, I guess. I think I'll finally see the Grand Palace, and perhaps take a look at Wat Phra Kaew along the way. Even the Wat defeats me. I pause outside to pull on my little nylon shrug, a gesture of politeness, I think, to cover my almost bare shoulders. A man on his way out gestures at me impatiently with his stick of meatballs, an early afternoon snack. "Go in," he urges. "It's free!" (In retrospect I am sure he meant well.) My heart sinks. I trot forward, still struggling with my jacket. A little further on I pause to adjust a sleeve. A man sitting near pipes up. "Go in, go in! To your left! It's free!" He is an older man, a little plump and quite contented-looking. He shows no sign of wishing to get up. But I scurry away, hoping to escape. Foolish. A bright-eyed woman in front of me turns and waves. All Thailand can't be focused on luring me into one temple, can they? But the lady is. She insists that I follow her, does not allow me to hang back, and demands to know where I am going next, right where we are, plopped down at the feet of the Buddha in the temple. She scolds me for booking tours through my hotel, points out the cheaper tourist office on my map, and then derides my plan to go to the Grand Palace. I will wait for a ticket for at least an hour, and then have no time to see anything. Bad idea! Have I seen the standing Buddha?

Yes, I say lamely, unfolding the map further to show her where. No, no. That isn't the right one. She points out a Wat near Dusit, shows me her holy card of the place, and then points out two others. One, the Golden Mount, I saw years ago, the victim of a convincing tout. It is next door to the places I had visited early in the day, but I had skipped it. Why relive bad memories?

I thank her as graciously as I can, but deflect her questions about where I might go next. After a moment she turns to say her prayers, and I run.

I run out a different door than the one we came in. I turn left, taking a path through an amulet market, skipping over dogs and sucking in my breath to get around monks, who must not be touched, however accidentally. I dodge soldiers with equal care. All hard eyes and hard abs, they should be the opposite of the monks, but are not. Untouchables, all. Or I am, at any rate.

At last, the amulets are behind me. It is no less crowded. Flowers to one side, food to the other. But I can't stop here. I slip through an opening, hoping to look at my map and come up with a plan, but it's impossible. A tuk-tuk driver with a fake American accent rushes to my side. Probably a foreign woman alone is an easy mark. Most days, that is. Not today. He outlines the same program as the lady in the temple, failing to mention the craft shop he will insist that I visit along the way.

I thank him sweetly and assure him that I now know where I am--he has pulled out his own map, as mine is sadly tattered--and re-enter the market the way I came.

Before me sits a man stringing those little white flowers into tiny garlands. I don't know what the flowers are. They are not jasmine, and have an odd shape. I have never seen them in India, but in Southeast Asia they are auspicious, and form the standard collar for a bottle of Fanta offered at a little spirit house. But they are not what stop me. Before him sits a bucket of plastic-wrapped bouquets of gardenias. Only one flower shows on many a bunch, and some look a bit brown. But others do not. The gentleman names his price, 20 baht for one bunch, in a disapproving tone that tells me this is high. Not to me! I gesture at a bunch that has a fresh flower facing upwards, and pay. I run to the pier, half intending to get the boat to pier 15 and walk to the temple where everyone seems to want me to go today. But as I dig for change, I see the cross-river ferry pull up, and remember the pretty white Wat and the coffee shop across the way. I toss three baht at the fare collector and run to the boat. She pays no attention, does not mind what the stupid foreigner does. In this case it's what all the Thais do, so why bother?

Now I've made the right decision. I loosen my bouquet as we float across and see more than three fresh flowers. (In the end there are more than six. My room smells like heaven!)

On the other side, I skip over sandbags, trying to keep my toes dry. A beautiful Thai woman sells me an iced coffee, and I join the drinking, snacking throngs going about their business. The temple is full. The moment to make merit is at hand. In the two foreshrines, people are gilding the Buddahs and offering orchids and marigolds. I would buy a leaf of gold if I could figure out how, but I can't. And I daren't offer a gardenia. I have never seen it done, and my flowers may be inauspicious. (White!)

So I catch the ferry up with all my flowers. I have decided to go to the big Buddha, if I can. He is not all that easy to find. But I do it, passing two disgruntled Russians on the way. They have ditched their cheating tuk-tuk driver at the temple and are arguing about whose fault it was they got swindled. I don't understand a word, but I know that's what they're saying. There is no other reason for a foreigner, a tourist, to be walking on this particularly grey Bangkok street. And I've done the same myself, after all.

As I find the temple a tuk-tuk passes me. The couple inside looks grim. On the way in, they whisper together, arguing about what they ought to do. I hang back, and wait for them to move on. I edge up to the shoe-leaving area, drop my sandals, and move forward. I edge back and forth, hoping to see the spot for my flower. Two Korean boys come forward, equally frightened of being disrespectful. But they take photos, and I watch a cat claw the rug near Buddha's left toe. When the boys are done, I slide down to the left side, and kneel. I salute the cat, place my freshest gardenia in the most humble place, between the Buddha's smallest left toes, and brush my fingertips on his little toe.

The Korean boys have been watching. They comment on what I have done before they go, but I cannot measure what they say. I stand, and look back uncertainly. I have seen people photographing the leaf of gold or offering they gave. But a voice says leave it, let it go. So I do. I look back and see my gardenia, beautiful against the gold. And then I go on. It's finished.

Eggs really do grow on trees

Bangkok, 22 October 2010, somewhere between Hua Lamphong station and the foot of Yaowarat road.

Bayern, somewhere near the Czech border, Easter 2010.

Topslip

October 2-3, 2010
Most tourists pass through Coimbatore on the train, or perhaps get off to only change trains and while away a few hours at the KR Bakes across the street from the station. Though it's among Tamil Nadu's largest cities, it's just a mill town. There's not much to see. Coimbatore is, however, a good starting point for a trip to a nature reserve. So we set off, more than 10 ill-assorted foreigners crammed into three cars. Our goal is Topslip in the Anamalai mountains, 800 feet above sea level and a self-proclaimed biodiversity hotspot.

The drive from Coimbatore to Pollachi is not particularly scenic, and the drive through Pollachi is nightmarish. The driver tries different streets in vain. All are blocked, and we end up stuck in a banana market, hemmed in by autorickshaws and mini trucks, waiting for a truck somewhere in front of us to be loaded with bananas. On the other side of the town, things improve. Plantations and forests line the road, so that the car drives under a green canopy.

The dining area at Cotsvilla.

We arrive at our hotel, Cotsvilla, which turns out to be at the foot of the mountains and not in them. It is lunchtime. We lounge over our meal even though it is just adequate. Rice, biriyani, rasam, fried chicken, some sliced tomatoes and carrots, and a banana for dessert are perfectly fine but neither enough nor good enough to justify the 250 INR per head price tag.

A spider on the wall in the outdoor restaurant.

By the time we're done, it's too late to drive up to the Topslip preserve, so we're sent towards Valparai. At first, the drive is scenic. We pass a cocoa plantation and a pond of pink lotuses. A goatherd with a bushy white beard drives his flock along the roadside. Later, we catch a glimpse of two giant stone horses painted ice blue, village guardians according the slender young guide the hotel sent with us.

An hour later, we come to the Sholaiyar dam. The guide would like us to join the throngs of tourists in the park and on the dam, but we decline and drive on to Monkey Falls. Monkey Falls has a pond for swimming, but this is no secluded nook. Throngs of tourists wade in the water or stand under the falls. The water, we learn from more than one fellow tourist, has ayurvedic properties, so dousing yourself here is supposed to promote general heath and well-being. There is no changing area, though. Most people go in fully dressed and drip in the car on the way home.

Across from the entrance to the waterfall is a path that leads to a wildlife sanctuary, but come early if you'd like to go for a walk in the forest. The guard only lets a certain number of people enter each day, and we are far too late to be allowed in.
Frustrated, we tell the guide we will stop at the dam on the way back after all. The sky is dark, but our legs are cramped. For four rupees plus a little more for a camera--bringing a video camera in runs 200 INR but a still camera was only 10 or 20--we are allowed in the park. I don't count the steps up, but there are many. The reservoir is surrounded by hills and quite pretty, especially once the pouring rain has chased the rest of the tourists away.

The park below the reservoir.

Soaked, we buy peanuts and cookies from the vendors that line the road back to where we parked and climb into our cars. The way back to the hotel in the rain and dark is no joke, but we make it to Cotsvilla alive.
Unfortunately, the roof to one of the cottages has leaked all over part of our group's luggage and the hotel can't offer them another room. The rest of us accommodate the unfortunate ones in our rooms, and no one receives a discount for the inconvenience. The waiters do, however, agree to bring our dinner to the shared living room. This means they are trudging through the pouring rain and mud, not us. They do bring it, a little at a time. Fried chicken is the starter. It's more bones than chicken, and most of us give up after pricking our tongues on shards of chopped-up bone. Chapatis, flat, whole-wheat bread, and a rich chicken curry with clove-scented sauce appear. Sadly, it is also bristling with bones. Curd rice, yogurt mixed with rice and a few mild spices, the standard finish to any South Indian meal, shows up before the fried cauliflower, which really ought to have been a starter. A bucket of soupy vegetarian sauce and more bananas finish the meal. The bucket is the same as the ones from which waiters in busy meals-ready restaurants serve vegetables, but sitting on the dinner table it's unappealing enough that even our token vegetarian ignores it. It's Gandhi's birthday, a dry day, so we don't get to test Cotsvilla's bar. The young waiters were good enough to store the beer we brought with us in the kitchen fridge when we arrived, and they bring it at the beginning of the meal.
The next morning dawns clear and sunny, though those of us used to hill stations know better than to trust the weather. We should get straight into our cars and drive up to Topslip, but instead we hang around drinking thimblefuls of coffee and hoping for breakfast, lingering over appams and vegetable curry, and waiting yet longer for omelets.
The ride up the winding road to Topslip is scenic, but not recommended for those prone to car sickness. At the first barrier, buy entry tickets and check them carefully. It's 30 INR for two people, more for each camera and car. The ticket office is another stretch of long, winding road away from the reception area, and no tickets are sold at the entry point. Those whose tickets and parties don't match are sent down the hill to rectify the situation.
Buses leave the entry point periodically, taking visitors around the park and to the elephant riding trek. But we've just missed a bus and cannot wait for the next one; evening flights out of Coimbatore can't be missed.

One of many monkeys at the entrance to the preserve.

Some lengthy discussion later, we learn that we can hire guides to take us into the park on foot. One guide is 500 INR for two hours and can accompany up to five people. The guides are slim, dark youths with scant English and no park ranger uniforms. One has a machete, used for hacking through brush, not fending off tigers, even though the board in the reception office shows that the last tiger sighting in the reserve was yesterday. Nevertheless, tigers are unlikely to be interested in our large, noisy group. It's elephants we should worry about.
Actually we are not particularly worried about elephants, either. We anticipate an Indian walk over pavement and through aisles of snack and souvenir shops, not an actual trek. It doesn't even occur to us to be worried about sandals on slippery ground.

But we are wrong. A little ways into the park, we slip and slide over a little stream, up a hill, through the forest and up another hill to an elevated, grassy clearing. “Shhhh....” whispers the guide. “Elephant!” He points to a spot on the hillside opposite us.
We are silent. I hear crunching and rustling, and after a moment an elephant's trunk pops up above a clump of bushes to pull leaves from a tree. A loud rustling in some trees far to our right distracts the guide. “Nilgiri langur!” he announces. Perhaps. I see the branches moving violently as something swings through the trees, but the monkey is too clever to be seen. I turn back to the elephant, which is still throwing its trunk above the bushes to pick leaves. It is wonderful to see, but I can't possibly get a photo at this distance. One of the guides watches me zip my camera back into its bag.
He hushes us and leads the way towards the trees where the monkeys are playing. We follow as he hacks through the brush, then slide after him down one horribly muddy hill and up another. He hushes us again and gestures us to stay back while he tiptoes on. After a minute, he waves us forward and, also with gestures, asks for my camera. I inch up until I see what he sees. We're on the other side of the elephants we saw earlier, but are now much nearer, probably closer to the creatures than is really advisable. The guide takes my camera closer yet, and snaps pictures until he gets one of its face.

The women in the group hang back and whisper about the French tourist who was killed by an elephant last year. Apparently elephants cannot bear a camera's flash. The men move forward, anxious to show that they're brave and to get the most out of the experience, but none moves as close as the guide. After a few more minutes, the guides hurry us away.
We move further up the hill, but that is a mistake. It starts to rain, and quickly to pour. We huddle under a tree and drip. One guide tries to tell us about a guesthouse further up the hill, but we cannot all agree to move until the rain abates, and by then it is too late to go further. We slide down the hill, stepping over elephant scat all the way. The paved road is in sight when we hear rustling overhead. It is a Malabar squirrel, the guide informs us. It is huge, like a monkey-squirrel hybrid, and it leaps from branch to branch high above us with casual grace, ignoring the intruders on the ground.
At the pavement's edge, we stop to pick leeches off our feet. We all have at least three, and those wearing shoes and socks are not spared.
Soaked and muddy, we slog back to our cars and make our long, wet way back to Coimbatore in time for the plane out.

Ho Chi Minh City

October 2005

Our expectations are almost nonexistent, which is part of the reason Vietnam seems attractive. My companion wants to eat. I am just curious.

Driving in from the airport, Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon, is of course not nearly as glossy and well-ordered as Singapore, but looks cleaner than India. Traffic is very heavy, and like India there are coutless two-wheelers, mostly motorbikes or scooters, and plenty of bicycles. The Spring Hotel (44 le Thanh Ton, Q.1, Ho Chi Minh City, VIET NAM, tel 848 - 8297362, Fax: 848 - 8221383, Email: springhotel@hcm.vnn.vn, www.vietnamonline.com/spring) picked with great trepidation and minimal help from guidebooks, turns out to be absolutely adorable. It is clean and comfortable, with lots of art nouveau style plaster decorations on the pillars, and a terrific, central location on a relatively quiet street.

Time for lunch at a much-recommended restaurant. It's supposed to serve local specialties in a first-world-friendly environment. We walk from the hotel. There are few traffic lights. As a pedestrian, you pick your moment. This will not be a moment when the street is clear of traffic, but one when you see a reasonable number of spaces in the wall of oncoming motorcycles. The trot across the street at an even pace while the two-wheelers whiz in front of you and behind you.

The restaurant is a huge building painted a warm golden-yellow color. It is on a street with some other big restaurants, but this one is by far the most attractive. Inside, it is all dark wood. We take a seat in the corner under a fan. Through the window, we have a view of some of the food prep area, which is set up in a ring all around the building. We order a number of things including soup with morning glory in it, fried eel, Vietnamese coffee, and green mango juice. Green mango juice, by the way, is delicious and has a flavor reminiscent of Granny Smith apples. The eel comes with lots of fresh greens and a little dish of an unidentified evil-smelling black condiment, which I do not have the courage to try.

Halfway through the meal, a drop of water lands on the table. The roof is leaking, I complain aloud, moving dishes around so that they are clear of the water. Another drop falls on the table. More water spatters me, and suddenly people at the next table start squealing. I look up, and realize the fan we are sitting under is designed to shoot jets of water periodically, presumably to cool the customers in a pleasant way. Unfortunately, none of us are enjoying it. A waiter runs over and switches off the water, allowing us to finish our meals in peace.

Back outside, the sidewalks are even and there's not an open sewer in sight. It's so different from India. The shops sell cute lace blouses and beaded sandals, or replicas of old political posters. Across a major boulevard is a harbor. We go across to look, because even though the waterfront is devoted to heavy commerce, the Mekong can't help being lovely at twilight. But crossing the boulevard a second time proves nearly impossible. The gap in traffic which allowed us to cross in the first place is not going to be repeated. We stand, foolishly edging forward and back and wondering when rush hour would end. We might indeed have waited that long, but instead a surprising thing happened. A young woman came towards us, crossing the boulevard in the other direction. We couldn't help but look at her admiringly as she strode calmly towards us, traffic swirling all around her. When she reached the curb where we are standing, she said, "Come on," turned around and began to cross back. We didn't wait--we followed her without hesitation, miraculously weaving through traffic unharmed. As we reached the other side, she went her own way without a word or a backward glance. It is an act of pure kindness.

Later, walking from the Czech brew pub to the Japanese restaurant we pass innumerable little steamtable cafes which set plastic tables and chairs (sometimes doll-sized, sometimes bigger) out on the sidewalk for their customers. We skirt the bounds of the tourist district. A martial arts class practices in the twilight. We pass cinemas, mourning because the French-language film festival is scheduled to begin a week after our departure. The markets are busy, even in the dark.

In the morning, I am fine but my companion is not. He blames the black condiment that came with the eel yesterday. I blame the basil leaves, which I had noticed were wet. I had assumed that a tourist spot would be using filtered water, but perhaps not. At any rate, he is in no condition to go out. I fill him with Cipro and ginger syrup and go down to breakfast.

The complimentary continental breakfast is not a dry roll and coffee. There is coffee, of course, delicious Vietnamese coffee that has a slight caramel taste even when unsweetened. Breakfast comes with a platter of cut fresh fruit, including half a passionfruit, papaya, something that may be persimmon and something completely unknown that has a sweet, cinnamon flavor. I wonder if it is dragonfruit. (It isn't. Much later, I learn that dragonfruit is white with little black seeds and a clean, refreshing flavor. It's common throughout Southeast Asia. Dragonfruit are immediately noticeable in markets, because they look like large, pear-shaped kholarabi that have been carelessly sprayed with hot pink paint. It something of a symbol of Vietnam, where you see dragonfruits on all sorts of tourist gimcrack as well as in all the markets.) There is also a choice of omelet, which comes with bread and jam, or noodle soup in various flavors.

I take my time. Back upstairs, the invalid has decided he is ready to go out. I have my doubts. We haven't gone far before the heat becomes too much for him. I take him into one of the cafes near the restaurant where we had the fateful meal to get him a drink. It is a huge courtyard. Although it isn't a mealtime, a few groups of non-tourists are scattered around. All of them have washtubs full of ice and beer bottles next to their tables (it is eleven in the morning), and all are eating and seem to be continually ordering more food. Companion drinks his Coke and flees back to the hotel, leaving me alone with my pineapple juice and a plate of steamed tofu. The waiter kindly removes the little dish of black condiment (it seems to be a close relative to the kind that came with yesterday's eel, and what on earth IS it, anyway?) and gives me some spicy soy sauce instead.

I later continue my lunch at a French ice cream parlor with a scoop of ginger ice cream and another of caramel. The idea of staying there all day and working my way through all the flavors, which include light chocolate, dark chocolate, and a whole range of tropical fruits as well as the usual suspects, is extremely tempting, but I manage to tear myself away.

At the political poster store again, the three ladies who work there are sitting in the back of the shop making little green bows and eating some kind of fruit from an enormous bowl. Their posters are priced at USD25, reasonable enough considering that you wouldn't find anything like them elsewhere, but just a bit steep for something so delicate. I buy two placemats instead, with the plan that I will get them framed in India. Although everything is priced in dollars, they are happy to convert the total to dong for me. (This never happened in the India of twenty years ago, when it was common to make tourists pay in dollars, or even in Russia fourteen years ago. When they quoted a price in dollars, they meant it. Vietnam is much more nicer.) One of the ladies wraps my placemats in beautiful red-flowered paper and attaches one of the little green bows she just made.

I don't buy anything at the huge Tax Department Store or the smaller but much more terrifying Ben Than market.

The Ho Chi Minh museum is devoted to the man, not the city. Everyone visiting the museum is Vietnamese, and most of the people seem to be high school or college students busily taking notes. The exhibits include newspaper clippings, posters, and other ephemera, but are mostly photos from Ho Chi Minh's life. There are captions in English, but these are not particularly informative, at least not to me. "Ho Chi Minh greeting students, 1954," for example. Clearly that is what he is doing, but it seems like there is probably some more interesting information that could have been provided. I realize that although a lot of the events photographed took place during my lifetime, I have no idea what I am looking at. I remember hearing words like Khmer Rouge, Saigon, and Ho Chi Minh on the evening news that my family watched during dinner, but I wasn't a clever enough child to listen and try to put the pieces together. In 1975, Saigon fell, but to whom or what? That spring I was much more interested in my first airplane trip to see my grandparents on my own.

Without any knowledge of Vietnamese, it's not possible to piece together much history out of the Ho Chi Minh museum. But the place serves its purpose. The many photos certainly make Ho Chi Minh seem human and real, more so than any exhibit on a single person I've ever seen.

The Ho Chi Minh City museum offers a more transparent history lesson, but it is getting late, and the exhibits nearly empty except for the bridal couple getting their photo taken in the foyer. The exhibits of the costumes and tools of early Vietnamese people are interesting and clear enough, but then there is the section about the Vietnam war. I am almost grateful when the guard comes in and starts turning off lights.

Dinner at the Binh Soup Shop. It is an unassuming place. Got beef soup, the server informs us. And that's all. It was once the secret headquarters of the Viet Cong, and the current owner--the son of the man who owned the place back then--has an impressive stack of scrapbooks and photo albums that he plunks down in front of foreigners when they order their soup. It is good soup and the books are interesting, but at the end of my bowl I am still hungry.

I wander through the neighborhood, taking several wrong turns, and enjoying the scenery, I think, this is the real city, far off the tourist path. Little shops sell fruit, soup, and clothes, but these are for the Vietnamese. The streets are amazingly clean, especially considering all the traffic and commerce. While I stand on a relatively quiet corner staring at the map, wondering where I took a wrong turn, a police truck comes driving down the street. Officers hop out and address the owner of a nearby cafe. Immediately, everyone in the cafe next door leaps to their feet and begins hauling tables and chairs, and there are a fair number of them, off the sidewalk and into the restaurant. The first man can't produce whatever documentation the police ask for, and his tables and chairs are loaded into the police van to be taken away. By the time the police are through with him, the place next door had all their tables inside. Apparently, the little steamtable restaurants need some kind of license to put tables on the street, but there are so many of these little cafes that some of them (maybe most of them?) feel able to take the risk of setting out tables without all their paperwork in place. And it seems that if the police don't actually catch you red-handed, they can't enforce the rule.

Time to hail a cab. I finished my dinner at a Thai restaurant near the hotel, where I had the best green curry and sticky rice I'd ever tasted. (This is before I ever went to Thailand.) Not only that, I got a small complimentary dessert. It came in a little square dish made of banana leaf, was white on top and greenish on the bottom, and was absolutely delicious. I have no idea what it was. Maybe it was some slightly sweetened nut puree, or maybe aloe jelly. In a way, it is more fun not to know.

Next morning, Reunification Palace, which would have been a better place to start sightseeing. The main floor was devoted to exhibits about the Vietnam war, mainly a very clear and reasonable explanation of the history of Vietnam that led up to the war as well as the war itself. Upstairs are huge, formal rooms for impressing dignitaries, decorated in shades of rust and gold. The furniture is a combination of the hippest late-sixties fashion and Asian silken elegance. Not only that, the building is well-designed in that it has great ventilation and natural light, but keeps the harshest of the sun's rays from heating the building.

Ben Than market is dreadful, even though it is an old-fashioned market building, and apparently is something of a symbol of Saigon. One end starts with flowers, moves on to fresh foods, then dining kiosks, and then all the cheek-by-jowl booths selling clothes, costume jewelry, sparkly shoes, athletic gear, and a dozen other things. The aisles are very narrow. Keeping a disinterested distance from the vendors is impossible. You have to look them in the face, whether you're planning to buy something or not. They pluck at shoppers' sleeves and are very aggressive. One woman is selling undergarments, pollution masks, and a strange assortment of gloves. Vietnamese ladies wear gloves, and it doesn't seem to be a fashion statement. A few women wear pyjama suits and peaked hats, but the majority of Vietnamese women seem to wear girl-cut T-shirts and skirts or pants, always with cute high heels. The gloves, when they appear, look more like a necessity than part of the outfit, but are they are for sun protection, cleanliness, or what? No time to find out, only a quick meal of rice and tofu flavored with shallot and lemon grass before it's time to catch the plane back to Singapore. On the way out to the airport, the cab driver, who speaks minimal English, suddenly points. A bicycle is moving through traffic, a mesh-sided crate strapped to the rear of his cycle. In it, two snakes move about restlessly.

I am a little in love with Saigon.

Bet you didn't know that Asterix speaks Tamil!

Pigs on Motorcycles
Christmas 2008

After only a few days in India, my head muzzy with jetlag, still nauseous from the smell and the newness of the country, I learned that a motorcycle is just as good as an SUV and that a two-stroke scooter makes a perfectly good pickup truck.

I saw a woman riding a motorcycle with her three children. The eldest, probably about to be a teenager, sat at the back holding his barely-school-age brother in place behind their mother. In front of the woman sat her daughter, a girl of seven or eight, who I suppose was best trusted not to wiggle or obscure her mother’s vision. Not one wore a helmet, and they were all laughing as hard as they could. You’d never see anything like that in America, and in a way it was stranger, more foreign, than all the Ganeshes and saris and dosas in India. It woke me just a little from my culture-shocked haze, and I began to keep track of all the things I saw on two-wheelers.

Animals are common. If I go out a couple times a week, it’s almost guaranteed that I’ll see a couple of chickens hanging upside down like reluctant bats, one on each side of a two-stroke’s wheel. Once I saw a dog sitting on the front of a motorcycle. He was a clean, fluffy, gold and white dog, and someone had marked his forehead with a vermillion tika. He sat in front of his master looking proud and serene the prow of a ship, whizzing through traffic as if it were nothing at all for him. Less confident was the tiny calf, draped over the saddle between two men. It probably was not bound for slaughter, but its face had the blank expression of a creature that can understand absolutely nothing that it sees.

Stalks of bananas and bunches of coconuts are such common cargo that I barely notice them anymore. I need a foreign visitor to come to to town and seize my arm, shrieking, “oh look!” before I notice a two-stroke sputtering past, its hindquarters completely obscured by green fruit.

I still notice the gas tanks, though. I’m used to the national disregard for public safety, but I can’t get used to the sight of a cyclist weaving through traffic with cars and buses skimming by those tanks, missing them by bare inches on either side.

Of course, there have been plenty of other interesting things: a motorcycle whose passenger was carrying a plate of glass as wide and tall as his arm span; another passenger carrying a section of pipe at least three times longer than the motorcycle; a driver uneasily cuddling a case of water in his lap, while his passenger clung to a stack of three behind him; a passenger, this time on a scooter, who held a rainbow-colored umbrella over himself and the driver as they puttered past.

The mail-woman rides a regular bicycle, panniers of letters on each side, and the tea woman makes her rounds of the local offices with a hot urn mysteriously but securely fixed to the back of her bike. She’s not the only one to have a shop on wheels. Some men sell greens from paniers or baskets that they carry on their bikes, and other sell plastic buckets and water jugs. Like the coconut men, the back part of their bike or scooter remains invisible, but theirs is cloaked under an oddly-shaped stack of bright red, green, and blue.

India is not the only country in the world whose citizens take a pragmatic view of what a two-wheeler can carry, though I think that here in rural Tamil Nadu we get the most variety. In Vietnam, where two-wheelers are the vehicle of choice, I saw plenty of things being carried. My favorite was a cage full of black snakes strapped to the back of a motorcycle, whose driver barreled along in front of the taxi that was taking me to the airport. I watched the snakes weave back and forth until I was practically hypnotized, and felt glad that I wasn’t driving.

I’m a little frightened to name the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen on a two-wheeler. Every time I think I’ve seen it, something stranger floats into view. But there was the case of the Cambodian pig, which I cannot get out of my mind.

It was Christmas day, 2008, late in the morning. I was awfully tired from getting up early to watch the sun rise at Angkor. Nevertheless, I was not dreaming when a motorcycle whizzed past my tuk-tuk, carrying on the back of it a pig. It was no piglet, but a grown-up healthy pig. It lay on its back, feet in the air, and I saw that it was tied to two narrow boards that kept it from flopping limply in an arc over the saddle. It was perpendicular to the motorcycle, so I had a good view of the whole pig, which lay perfectly still. I decided that it was dead, and that I had become an unwilling participant in a pig funeral cortege. I stared at it, fascinated, wondering who had figured out how to tie such a big pig safely onto a motorcycle, and how many people it had taken to lift the poor creature onto the vehicle.

Later, napping in my room, I realized that the big had had no visible wounds. Maybe it had been alive? But that presented another question, namely how do you catch a pig and hold it down while tying it securely to the back of a motorcycle?

I went out again that afternoon. I visited “the silk farm,” a place where beautiful ladies sat on the floor with strands of silk flowing through their fingers, moving bobbins back and forth to weave ikat patterns in the fabric they wove, and receiving the extra silkworms to eat with their lunches as a perk of the job. On the way back, a motorcycle whizzed past my tuk-tuk, carrying on the back of it a pig. It was another grown-up healthy pig, possibly a sibling of the one I had seen earlier, as it seemed about the same shape and size. Certainly it was tied to the motorcycle in exactly the same way, feet in the air, supported by two boards. I had not ceased marveling when another pig-carrying motorcycle sped past, and then another. The last one slowed a bit as it overtook the tuk-tuk and I saw the animal wiggle one of its legs just the smallest bit. The pigs were alive!

I felt grateful for that, even though I knew that it might not be for long. It is far nicer to remember fat, living pigs darting past, living dangerously on their motorcycles.

But I’m still left with the burning question: How do you tie a pig to a motorcycle? I can imagine looping rope through coconut stems or banana stalks, around buckets or baskets, wrapping and tightening and knotting until my hands hurt but I am satisfied that my things are safe. I can even imagine, when I force myself, flying along behind a driver I don’t quite trust, clinging for dear life to a child or a windowpane or a section of pipe. But I still cannot imagine, really cannot picture how those pigs made their ascent to the backs of their motorcycles.

Roses

There's a bus stop down the street and around the corner. It's in front of the kidney center, which is surrounded by a moat of raw sewage. I wait there about once a week for the bus to the main bus stand, holding my breath and hoping to see the number five speed into view.
Last week when I stepped out onto the main street, I saw confetti in the road. There's no sidewalk, just a paved road for the cars and a smelly, dusty shoulder for anyone unfortunate enough to be walking. And that day, the road was covered with bright pinky-red and white confetti. No, the red was rose petals. I peered down at my feet as I trotted along. The white bits were long and thin, and for a moment I thought they might be jasmine petals. But they were puffed rice. I looked up. The street was still covered with rose petals and puffed rice, and a few whole roses lay in the road as well. I pictured a wedding car strewing flowers and rice as it passed. It didn't seem likely, though. Weddings are so common, and I've never seen such a thing before.
I remembered seeing a funeral procession long ago, my first year in India. The man pushing the wheeled bier kept reaching up to the garlands that hung just above his forehead to pull off a few petals and drop them along his path. But those were marigolds. Today's carpet of flowers was not for a funeral.
As I turned the corner, I smelled roses over the ordinary myriad of odors. Perhaps they had poured out rose water as well. How else could the fragrance of roses compete with reek of an open drain? But the road was strewn with petals far as the eye could see. I remembered the Ganesh temple down the way just out of sight, and imagined an open cart with a silver statue of the god inside. Perhaps it had moved slowly up the street as priests and devotees showered the god with roses and rice.
Who knew? Probably everyone else in town, but not I. I was just grateful as I waited for the bus and smelled the flowers.