Palolem, Goa: Beach and Food

Palolem is a little capsule, buffered from the rest of India. Not all Goa is like this. I've been on beaches where wearing a bikini would have been a death wish. Not here, though. The Russian grannies and the French students lie in the sun in their suits. Few look twice—why should they?—except a group of young Indians who have come especially to gawk. They keep their distance, though.

The beach is lined with hotels and restaurants from one edge of the sandy crescent to the other. One hotel is much the same as the other. Cracked tile, a bit of mildew, sandy tiles, some mosquito net. Nothing fancy, but at the beach you don't need much. A roof to keep the sun off and someone to bring cold drinks seems enough.

The restaurants are also much the same. They serve grilled fish, fresh, but a little overcooked, alongside a few Goan dishes. I try ambotik, xacutti, vindaloo, and Goan sausage. They are good enough for me, but a Goan auntie would likely complain.

Each table comes with its own dog to provide company, and, if needed, clean up any scraps that fall. The morning dog rivalry resumes after dark. One evening as we sip aperitif, a smallish white dog comes trotting along, following a plump, unhappy lady. All the dogs around us rise up, barking, even snarling, until the intruder has run away. Our dog for the evening is a female, a mother. She barks briefly, for form's sake, it seems, and then lies down to sleep on our toes. We debate giving her a bit of fish, but fear the consequences of bones. And where are the cats? Surely with this much fish about, cats should be prowling?

Later I find them, skinny and sand-colored, above our heads, living on the roofs. They must jump down once in while to scavenge, but they are very quick. In the week I am there, I never see one on the ground.

Palolem, Goa: Morning

I walk early in the morning, leaving my room just before dawn. By six thirty, the sky is just light and the air is still cool enough that I am glad to be wearing sleeves. The beach is far from empty, though. Hung-over tourists trudge across the sand, regretting the boat trips they booked the day before. Boatmen cast about for more passengers. Women with men's shirts over their saris pick up bottles and smooth the sand in front of their hotels. It's the hour of the dogs, who wake and stretch, greet their favorite friends, and bark at the non grata. Further down the beach, a group of North Indian men do calisthenics in preparation for a football game, enjoying an hour of freedom before their long workday. The waves lap closer, tickling my toes, wetting my cuffs. Everything is covered with sand, and no one seems to mind.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part VII

December 24, 2009

The hotel is really not all that close to the airport. It is even bigger and more impersonal than I was able to imagine. The vast foyer is nearly empty of people, or seems so. I wait behind the family, who are taking their time negotiating something with the checkin clerk. As I wait, a group of men, tall and stout with shaven heads, Germans I guess, strut by, on their way out. I wonder idly why they chose to be here. They are on their way to Soi Cowboy. Silom has so many impersonal hotels, all built with men like these in mind. Why strand themselves all the way out here?

A bellhop seems to suddenly tire of my waiting. He takes my papers, addresses the clerk behind the counter, and receives a key. I follow him as he pulls my suitcase down one hall, and then another. Gradually I begin to doubt that I ever left the airport at all, and then to wonder how I will ever get out of this labyrinth without a guide. One dim, carpeted corridor leads to another. I am lost and dizzy when we stop at a door exactly like all the other doors. I tip the porter, and he goes.

Inside, the room is plush. The windows look in on an atrium, so that people in rooms must keep their curtains drawn if they want any privacy. I close mine. Sitting on the footstool, I think that I want some water, and to shower. I think I ought to eat. Instead, I take out my laptop to check my email. There is no message from Cambodia, so they probably don't know where I am. I send another message, not believing it will ever get to them. And then I realize that no one in the world knows where I am.

The idea is oddly liberating, license, somehow, to be someone I'm not. I order room service, and wine. I shower, then lie on the soft bed, drinking and eating and watching the television. I don't flip my laptop open again to try to work or to listen an educational podcast. I revel in being alone in the world, making up my identity as I go along.

•

The next day goes as it should. I wake and pack, then jog down the long maze of corridors to wait for the shuttle bus in the dark. The flight is on time, uneventful. It's only when I stand alone outside Siem Reap airport that my panic returns. For I am alone. There is no taxi queue. Tourists have all been collected by hotel vehicles, locals by their families. No one is waiting for me. After a time, I look for a phone, but what for? All I have is the name of the hotel, and the non-working email address.

Then a tuk-tuk approaches, a three-wheeled, open-sided vehicle built around a lawn mower motor. This is my only chance, but I already doubt that my absurd struggle is over. I know the hotel is a modest one, so it's unlikely that the driver will be able to identify it by the name alone, and that's all I have. I feel that I haven't the stamina to knock on every hotel door in Siem Reap looking for my family, but I may have no choice.

The tuk-tuk pulls up in front of me, and the passenger steps out. It is my darling son, just sixteen years old, but suddenly grown up enough to come to my rescue. He has been coming to the airport to meet every Bangkok flight since the one I should have been on. We hug in Siem Reap airport, on the morning of Christmas Eve.

Read the beginning.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part VI

December 23, 2009

I love Suvarnabhumi International Airport. It's true! I adore this airport as much as it's possible to like a place. It is clean and orderly, easy to navigate. Staff are polite and helpful. It has shops where people like to shop and food people can enjoy eating. Beyond these practicalities, it's a place full of promise. Arriving, I have always felt joyful. All Bangkok to explore and enjoy — what could be better? But today, I can only repeat the sad marathon I did in India. This baggage claim area is sparkling and insect-free, a sharp contrast to poor dirty dingy Chennai. I wait watchfully by the carousel. I pull my suitcase up as quickly as I can, and run through the building, down long shining halls, down an escalator and up another, to arrive, panting, at the checkin counter. My flight is on Air Bangkok, a no-frills budget brand, chosen for economy. The journey from Bangkok to Siem Reap is short, after all. No need for soft seats, or food. A little empathy might be nice, though I don't expect it. I am informed, brightly and cheerfully, that I have missed my flight by a mere seven minutes, and will have to wait until the next day to fly. Then I am sent to another counter.

I walk slowly. Missed by seven minute. Surely Air India could have done a little better, and shaved seven minutes off a six-hour delay? Or could I have run faster? Couldn't I have avoided this second mass of uncertainty and expense, another day of worrying my family? Tears rise in the back of my throat. I cannot cry here, in the most public of places, in front of hoards of happy tourists. I swallow hard.

The woman at the booking counter accepts my papers and starts to scold me for missing my flight. I have been in Asia long enough to understand this piece of social interaction, and to know how I ought to respond. But today I cannot. The required deflection, the half-apology are not there. The unfairness of delayed flights, the dollars pouring from my never-full pockets, the worry of my still far-away family, the uncertainty that they've received my message, is too much to bear. I try to explain what really happened, knowing the woman behind the counter will not understand, but I am unable to stop myself. She looks at me with disapproval and disbelief, and begins her reproach all over again.

I have no answer. The tears press up and up until they are rolling down my cheeks. Now the woman at the counter regards me with round-eyed horror. So does the woman at the desk to her right, and the man on the other side of her. No one else notices the crazy foreign woman weeping in the airport.

Perhaps Air Bangkok employees are taught a protocol for dealing with distraught passengers, but I doubt it. It is simply that they have failed to stop me from disgracing myself, and now they must mitigate any shame my bad behavior might reflect onto them. Together, they silently decide to get rid of me as quickly as they can. The Air Bangkok woman demands my credit card. The woman next to her announces that I need a hotel room and selects one for me. She goes through the motions of showing me the pictures in her catalog and explaining that it is the best choice, because it is near the airport and has a shuttle that will get me to the airport on time in the morning, and of course she can give me a good discount.

I have never stayed in an airport hotel in any city. In Bangkok, I know some hotels in Chinatown and even in the backpacker district that will cost a fraction of what this room will cost. But there is the expense of the taxis, and with that, the uncertainty of navigating Bangkok traffic well enough to get back here in time. My new flight leaves painfully early in the morning. The calculus of comparing what I would well be able to do on my own with what this woman is offering fails me.

That isn't why I choose to do as she says, though. It is not because I am weak-willed, or cannot do math in my head. I choose the airport hotel, expensive and characterless, because it will not taint my memories of Bangkok. I am assured that I will make my flight. More than that, I am submitting to the impossibility of the situation. The last moment when I truly had a chance to avoid this whole mess was when I pressed the “buy now” button on the SpiceJet web page. Since then, the whole affair has been out of my hands. Let it stay there. There is no need for me to pretend to be responsible for what happens next.

The pain in my stomach subsides a little as I wait for the hotel shuttle bus. I climb in behind an American family. The husband and wife are bickering. She doubts the wisdom of staying at this airport hotel, and would have preferred a place in town. The husband impassively insists that his choice is the better one, but does not elaborate on why. Perhaps he himself is doubtful. Their children, pre-teens, are made querulous by their parents' disagreement, mild as it is, and interject irrelevant little complaints when they can. I endure.

Continued.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part V

December 23, 2009

The departure lounge is not much of an improvement on the holding area. I have a seat, at least, but here the updates on our delay cease, and time stretches on. I begin to feel uneasy about my onward flight from Bangkok, but I am too cold, too tired, too hungry to worry. I realize that I have had nothing to eat for 24 hours and go to the snack bar, but the display case is crawling with roaches, so I return to my seat to shiver and wait.

I start to listen to the announcements. A man's voice, elegantly accented and beautifully clear, announces the departure of a Jet Airways flight. Another, equally lovely, informs us of a Sri Lankan flight, and a woman calls passengers for Singapore. Then there is a harsh squawk from the PA system. It is a man's voice, an irritated, harassed man, and one who did not do well in English class. “Air India” he barks, and … his message is unintelligible. It is not my picky foreign ears. People all over the lounge are looking around, baffled, asking each other what he said, but nobody has caught a word.

The plane takes off eventually, and I am on it, but later I will remember nothing about it. I sleep. My eyes shut the moment I am tucked into my seat, and do not open again until the announcement of our imminent landing.

A flight attendant, hurrying past to check that our seatbelts are fastened, asks me if she can bring me a cup of tea, even though orders to collect all service items have long ago been given. There is concern in her voice, and her eyes. I realize that she had tried to wake me for the meal, and failed. (The directive to make sure all passengers are served is taken quite literally on Air India. Declining a meal is, as a rule, nearly impossible.) I tell her thank you, but no. My next task will be to see if I am too late to get on the flight I booked the night before, nearly at midnight, and at great expense. I know the chances are slim. My stomach feels heavy. It's full of worry and frustration, nothing more nourishing. Tea would stimulate this ache to a full-fledged pain, so no, no tea. The lady leaves me, but not without a reproachful glance over her shoulder. I have failed at being served.

Continued.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part IV

December 23, 2009

It is not. I arrive at the airport and find that my flight is delayed by hours. I am not allowed to check in yet. I must wait in a pen inside the terminal, reserved for people seeing friends and family off and for a few delayed unfortunates like me. I stand and watch as the hours pass, as my flight is delayed and delayed again. A chatty man with a boisterous family tries to talk to me. Where am I going, and why am I waiting here? Why am I all alone? Why do I have a son, and only a son?

“Don't you want one like this?” he asks, picking up his small daughter for me to inspect. She is a slender little brown girl, hair cut in a Clara Bow bob, dressed in pink and purple. Gold earrings adorn her ears, and there are colored rhinestones on her sandals. The child is as adorable as a little girl can be, so I smile, and am gracious to this stranger who is trying to cheer me up. He is seeing a young couple off on their honeymoon, he says, but that is probably just a word he uses to explain that they are newly married. They are on their way to the Gulf, which is a place for work, not romance and leisure.

I wait in the pen another hour, making a total of four, after the happy man leaves with his family.

Continued.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part III

December 22, 2009

I could wheel my suitcase to the woefully inadequate seating area to wait for a place to sit, then camp all night as penitence, but I have to rebook the flight to Siem Reap that I will miss tomorrow and at least try to email the hotel where my family is staying. There is no airport network in Chennai. I need a hotel room.

There is a little wooden kiosk outside the International terminal. A young man sits in it, alone with a telephone, which he uses to call hotels for passengers who were stranded, or have been too nonchalant about their itineraries. I have been his client before. He gets rather good deals and is always polite and helpful. (This story was written years ago. The man and his booth are no longer there. They have been swept away in a modernization campaign. I was sad when they tore his booth down. It was the only useful thing in Chennai airport, and now it's gone.) Today, he is pleased to hear that I need an Internet connection. Most of his clients want the cheapest room they can get, and haggle over the price as long as he lets them. And here I am, sad and cowed and in need of technology. My misfortune brings him a good commission.

•

Internet at the Beverly Hotel means sitting in a tiny cabinet to use the business center computer. The connection is slow, but I book a new flight—I choose the last departure of the day, reasoning that there is no way I can miss it—and try to send an email to Cambodia. A fool's errand if there ever was one, but required. I am not murdered. I have not run away. I have missed a flight, and will be delayed a full day. I am sorry.

I have less than four hours' sleep in my expensive bed. The car has not arrived when I go downstairs to check out. I sit in the dark next to a little artificial Christmas tree, haphazardly decorated and twinkling, and tell myself the worst is over.

Continued.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part II

December 22, 2009

At the baggage claim in Chennai, my suitcase comes off first, as promised. With it, I run outside and along the sidewalk towards the International departures entrance, dodging picnicking families who sit on the pavement, waiting for their loved ones to arrive. It is serious business, for them. Anyone being welcomed by one of these groups is probably the family's main means of support. At minimum he is a joy to them, expensively educated and clever enough to get a foreign job. But I cannot stop to inventory the bright saris and homemade snacks. I push through the crowds saying please, sorry, please, sorry. No one pays attention or really minds. A little pushing in a crowd is just a part of any day in India. I get to the guard at the terminal door. He taps the departure time on my ticket disapprovingly, but lets me in.

Inside the airport, things are no better. The lines are so long and so disorderly that there seems to be a single crowd advancing on the unreinforced checkin counters. I push my way forward, and find an Air India employee. He is impassive, unsympathetic, but waves me towards the end of the counters, around the back to the Air India office. It is a set of three ugly little rooms paneled in red plastic. There are heaps of paper on all surfaces. I am made to sit in the anteroom. My heart sinks. Waiting in a dingy little office is clearly not a step towards being rushed onto the plane.

The officer in charge informs me that the gates have closed and there is nothing he can do. I am ten minutes too late. “You will go tomorrow,” he says, tonelessly. I let loose a flood of words about the flight that will be missed, about my family, unreachable in Cambodia and waiting for me. He is unmoved, and informs me, in his flat way, that it is my own fault. Then he writes out a ticket and tells me to come back tomorrow. He has put me on a morning flight, and I had better arrive early.

I know he is right. SpiceJet cannot help its inefficiency and complete lack of customer service plan. I, on the other hand, could very well have allowed four hours between flights. It is my fault.

Continued.

Ten Minutes Too Late, Part I

December 22, 2009

Picture Coimbatore. It is Tamil Nadu's second city, a cement scar on South India's red dust plains. It is a textile town, fed by the cotton that grows in the state. Increasingly, though, it is also a tech town. Old villas are pounded to dust to make way for cement and plastic office buildings. The sewers have almost all been sunk below ground, and the impromptu garbage dumps that once dotted the city are now regularly toted out to Ukkadam for sweepers' children to scrounge on. Picture Coimbatore Airport. It is nothing but a smallish hangar with 1970s linoleum floors. Two Xray machines sit in the middle of the departure area. The room is ringed with checkin counters, temporary structures that can easily be moved. No one has bothered to put in any paneling. The walls are raw and grey. There is no belt to transport the luggage out to the waiting trucks and planes. Instead, blue-uniformed men move the bags with startling speed and energy. They look too skinny to sling suitcases around so easily, but the constant exercise keeps them strong and thin.

Holidaymakers and honeymooners mill about, dressed in party brights. Among them are politicians, in white from head to toe and wearing their traditional lunghis, long cloths tied around the waist, in lieu of trousers. Businessmen wear shirts and pants, and could go to Munich or Cleveland and fit right in. And me. I'm there too.

I wear an ankle-length linen skirt and a long-sleeved blouse, nothing Indian, but modest. It's a look that says, I'm a lady, leave me alone. Or it would, if I were sitting down reading my book as I ought to be.

Instead, I am pacing. My SpiceJet flight, the one that was supposed to get me from Coimbatore to Chennai, is over two hours late. No one had announced the delay, or offered any excuse. The flight number and departure time stay on the board, unchanging, as the minutes tick by. I ask the man at the checkin desk when my plane will board, and ask again.

“It will come!” is his singularly Indian reply. He offers no details, is baffled by my explanation of why it is important (a connecting flight in Chennai, an international one, for which I need enough time to clear security and immigration), and is increasingly annoyed in the face of my nervousness.

The possible delay of my next flight, an Air India one, is really my only hope. When I made my reservations, I allowed for a possible two-hour delay on my flight to Chennai, but no more than that. Chennai airport is smelly and mosquito-infested, with an appalling lack of facilities. There isn't even a Coffee Day. I did not, and do not, want to spend a long layover there.

Coimbatore airport, much smaller, less odorous, but with more than enough mosquitos, has a Coffee Day. I had a cappuccino there after I checked in and now it has mixed with my unease and is causing me pain. I look at the board, helpless. The expected departure time for my flight is still frozen in the past. People are checking in for the Jet Airways flight to Chennai that I had ruled out as departing too late when making my plans.

At the Jet counter, the kind young woman assures me that the flight is on time, and that they have a seat for me. My plan, newly hatched and ill thought out, is to have a boarding pass for both flights, just in case the original one takes off first. The SpiceJet man is having none of it, though. Affronted at my lack of faith, he rips up my boarding pass and shoves my suitcase at me. It doesn't matter. The Jet flight takes off on time, while the SpiceJet passengers wait.

It is too late, though.

Continued.

Jet Lag

February 4, 2014

Peep-peep-peep-peep, peep-peep-peep-peep. The room is perfectly dark. I wake slowly, then leap from the bed. I have set the time wrong, or neglected to turn off one of my early morning alarms. My head is heavy and stupid with sleep. I press buttons to make the peeping stop, then open timeanddate.com to see what my mistake is. But timeanddate insists that it is 8 am in Mumbai, which seems impossible, given how dark it is. At last I have the wit to pull open the window curtain, and light streams in. From the right angle I can see a sliver of Juhu beach, the waves shining under the harsh Indian sun. But I will not run out to walk on the sand today, nor trot up the street to the Satya Paul to see if I can price one of the outfits I saw the night before. Now I must sleep.

Mumbai Arrival

February 3, 2014

I arrive in Mumbai during a festival, or maybe it's just wedding season. A little ways from the airport strings of lights begin to appear, and as we approach Juhu there are crowds of people dressed in their brightest, gold-decorated clothes. It is nearly midnight. They are on their way home.

Even at the hotel, merrymakers are starting on their way home. I look up from the desk where a clerk is taking as much time as possible to check me in. A group of young women are ambling towards the door, all long hair and bare midriffs. Turquoise and peridot, fuchsia and lime, edged with gold but theirs is a different shade from the tinsel-decorated saris I saw outside. I avert my eyes, a little frightened by their splendor. They reach the doors and exclaim their thanks to the hostess. “Oh, Auntie, what a wonderful party!” and they are gone.

At last the clerk has filled out enough papers. I am sent upstairs with my key, the luggage must follow. Room 214. It is oddly familiar, the way hotel rooms are. Mirror, desk, fridge underneath, two beds. My bags arrive with a bellhop who explains things. I don't know what. I am too exhausted to understand. I nod and nod, wishing him away, finally sending him off with an inadequate tip. Door locked, I bathe and finally sleep.

Getting There

February 3, 2014

Four flights, three layovers to get to my final destination. A long journey by any standards. It's still fun, sometimes. There is the guilty pleasure of the airport meal, so carb-laden, so expensive, and raiding the duty free shop for the best chocolates and champagne. In Brussels airport I order white wine, though it is only 7 am, since it is late enough for a drink where I just came from, but I need justify this extravagance to no one. All around me, Belgian holiday makers sip their beers and laugh.

This entertainment is always a heavy line item in the travel budget, but a worthwhile investment. Without it, the hours in the airport would be dull beyond reason and this trip too long to bear.

Easier always to be alone, and without anyone anxiously waiting. A delayed flight is just that rather than a cascade of problems. I can pace or stand, read or dream uninterrupted. And all goes well.

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.

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.