6 splendiferous books I read in 2014

Jamie Todd Rubin, of whom I am now a steadfast devotee, just did a similar post on his wicked-cool blog, so I thought I'd do one of my own. I didn't read quite as many books as I wanted to in 2014 (between two moves, Miss H going home, two semesters at Sejong University, a train trip through the Japanese Home Islands in February, and an overland transect of Indochina in summer), but at least I made it into the double digits. Some of the titles I picked were real jim-dandies.

Without further ado: 

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
I'd read Heart of Darkness, and appreciated it for all it was by itself. But there was something about Conrad's oeuvre—his flair for painting vivid pictures of the exotic corners of the earth, and the colorful folk who people them (born of his own experience as a sailor)—that captivated me. That same flair wasn't lacking in Lord Jim. Conrad tackles questions of duty, conscience, guilt, penance, and moral courage, all while weaving a colorful tapestry of both human and natural scenery in Indochina and the South Pacific islands. A heck of a good read, and an absolutely flabbergasting ending. It'll either reaffirm or destroy your belief in karma. 

Dune by Frank Herbert
A friend bullied me into reading this. I'd caught snippets of the 2003 TV miniseries with James McAvoy, and heard bits and bobs around the Internet from those teeming millions of slavering fans, but never really considered it to be up my alley. Well, I wasn't wrong; I don't think I'll be continuing with the series. But I can easily see why this book has been called the greatest masterwork of the science fiction genre. Herbert does a spectacular job of world-building, touching on economics, politics, sociology, religion, and biology, while never losing sight of the overarching narrative nor the gigantic cast of characters, giving each one enough limelight as he or she deserves. It was so well done that I didn't even realize it was an allegory about oil politics in the Middle East.

I have to admit, the shai-hulud were pretty freakin' awesome.

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
Don't get me wrong: I absolutely hated this book. But I can hate a book and still acknowledge its intrinsic worth. I'd like to give you a synopsis of this door-stopper, but I'm afraid it's...impossible to describe. Even William Gibson, the noir prophet, the father of cyberpunk, the man who coined the term "cyberspace," the first winner of the science fiction "triple crown" (the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award), and the author of the masterful Sprawl trilogy (which I have yet to read), doesn't quite understand what Dhalgren is about, and admits as much in his foreword. Whoever did the jacket copy couldn't quite verbalize it, either. But therein lies the book's pull: it teases you into believing that you have the story and its deeper meanings pinned down, then erases them and lays something completely different over them, until you wind up with a palimpsest of cultural significance and societal commentary that's impossible to sift into a nugget of moral truth. Even the title's meaning is left up to the imagination. It's a book that reads like a poem (and indeed, Delany was a prolific poet), and is just as enigmatic and florid. I hated it because I wasn't smart enough to figure it out. 

Kowloon Tong by Paul Theroux
I'd read plenty of Theroux's travel writing, but never his fiction. This was my first taste. (I intend to read Saint Jack and perhaps The Lower River at some point in the future.) A chilling tale of Britain's handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, as told from the viewpoint of Bunt, a milquetoast business owner and British citizen born and raised in the city by his domineering mum. The bad guys are sinister, their motives devious, and even the innocent are guilty of something. A book I could hardly put down, thanks to its faithfully-reproduced setting and sizzling characters. 

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux
A bit of a cheat to stick in two books by Theroux, perhaps. But this title is nonfiction, at least. A follow-up to Theroux's epic journey through Asia by train in 1975 (chronicled in The Great Railway Bazaar), Ghost Train is Theroux retracing his former route 33 years later, as an older and wiser but just as curmudgeonly man. So much has changed since he last came this way that he has to change his line of march; chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan force him to deviate through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan instead; Vietnam is no longer divided in two, and he may now travel from Ho Chi Minh City to Kunming, China, in an uninterrupted line; and he stops off at a few disused gulags in Russia, just because he can. He meets old friends and makes new ones along the journey, seeking, as he himself says, trains...and finding passengers. 

The Korean War by Bruce Cumings
I'd wanted a straight, no-nonsense, battle-by-battle account of the war, and I didn't get it. What I got was an examination of the social context, geopolitical causes, and back-room wheeling and dealing surrounding the war, and a scathingly revisionist one at that. Cumings takes the United States sharply to task for, among other things, assisting Syngman Rhee to quell the Yeosu Rebellion and thereby stifling true democracy in the nascent Republic of Korea; committing the No Gun Ri Massacre; and for making no effort to understand or sympathize with thousands of years of established Korean cultural norms and traditions before slashing a line down the 38th Parallel and calling it even. The book was tough to swallow—especially as my grandfather fought in that forgotten war, and almost certainly lost some buddies in the process—but on the whole, I'm glad I read it. If you want an unvarnished account of the political, social, and cultural fronts of the Korean War, this is the quickest and simplest book to read. 

There, that's done! As you can see from my new widget from Goodreads at the bottom right of this page, there, I'm knee-deep in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (fantastic; "Me Imperturbe" is my favorite poem so far) and The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. Miss H and I are reading that one together. She's never read any Vonnegut (gasp!) and I needed to read more, and I figured TSoA was as good a place as any to resume.

One more thing: I don't think I managed to even read 20 books this year. Horrendous ratio, not at all up to my standards in high school. I have some friends on Goodreads who read fifty books this year! It's all because I was bound up in Anna Karenina since October of 2013, and then a coworker gave me Dhalgren. Well, 2015's going to be different. I'm going to do 35 books, or I'll be a Rhode Island Red.

Until next time, fellow bibliophiles...

Hong Kong, day four

We languished in our hotel room until 1:30 p.m. (Tuesday, August 6), waiting for the downpour to clear up. Then we caught the train (HK$27!) to Disneyland and spent four or five hours there. 

It was surprisingly small and easy to navigate. We only did five rides: Space Mountain, the Fantasyland Carousel, the Jungle River Cruise, Mystic Manor, and Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars, plus some obligatory souvenir shopping. The longest we had to wait in line was 50 minutes. The Chinese were loud, rude, and pushy...pretty typical. Nothing like Tokyo Disneyland, let me tell you! 

The biggest enemy was HK's summer heat: hot, still, and humid. We were drenched with sweat within seconds of arriving, and bottles of water cost a whopping HK$25 (around $3.25 US). We splurged and got a big bag of caramel popcorn for HK$38, and that put our spirits to rights. 

We had dinner at Le Souk, a Moroccan-Lebanese-Egyptian restaurant in SoHo. We barely made it up the escalators before more rain came pounding down. We chewed very slowly on our chicken shish kebabs and lamb stew (with Coke and Kronenbourg to wash it down), but we had to order another plate of Lebanese hummus and savor it before the rain truly stopped. 

No sooner had we clambered aboard a streetcar for North Point when MORE rain hit. We were getting pretty lucky today. I was nursing the back of my right ankle. My old Airwalk flip-flops had no tread left after tramping all over Southeast Asia, and stepping on wet granite tiles was like walking on ice. I slipped coming down the stairs from SoHo and gashed my ankle on the cracked, crumbling concrete stair. Back in Room 2504, I washed the wound in the shower and sprayed it with disinfectant while Miss H went for a late-night massage at the parlor on the hotel's second floor. Then we packed up and turned in. 

Our last day in Hong Kong was done. 

Hong Kong, day three

As of Tuesday, August 5, I'd built up an impressive store of alcohol in Room 2504 of the ibis North Point Hotel. I nabbed a small bottle of White Horse blended Scotch the first night, and there was a bottle of Gambler's Gold (the Hong Kong Brewing Company's golden ale) and some Magners cider in our mini-fridge also.

I was sitting pretty.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

We awoke quite late and had a languorous breakfast at the hotel buffet: Danishes, toast, noodles, baked beans, runny scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, sausage, pancakes, bacon, potatoes, fruit, yogurt, congee (rice porridge), cereal, tea, coffee, orange juice...everything but blood pudding. Miss H and I had were pigging out on it every morning. It cost about HK$66 ($8 US), so we had to get our money's worth. 

We were foiled in most our plans today. We wanted to ride the cable car or trolley or whatever up to Victoria Peak, but last night Jeff had warned me that it would be crowded as hell up there, and the lines would be ridiculous. We thought next of taking the open-top bus tour, but upon arriving at the terminus at Central Piers we discovered that it cost HK$400—fifty U.S. dollars a pop. No way, Jose. We briefly considered the Star Ferry harbor tour, but that was eighty-three U.S. dollars. Rather dejected, we went back to the hotel to regroup. I polished off the cider and the Scotch and felt mighty fine.  

We dined at 6:00 p.m. at a marvelous little Sapporo ramen restaurant a couple of doors down from the hotel. For just a couple hundred HK dollars we had dumplings, beef tongue, tonkatsu curry with rice (Miss H), and a big heaping bowl of Hokkaido ramen with pork (me). Great guns—I'd heard Hokkaido ramen and its light brown miso-laden broth was the shiz, but but the reality blew me away. Best ramen these lips have been privileged to taste. Can't wait to get back to Sapporo and have the real deal.  

Not my photo.

To keep the Japanese theme going, Miss H and I boarded the streetcar and rode to Burrows Street to visit the Hokkaido Dairy Farm "Milk Restaurant." Not sure what their gimmick was—I guess all their dairy products came from Hokkaido, and all their food was cooked with it. I'd read that Hokkaido ice cream was a delicacy in Hong Kong, and unlike most "delicacies" which interest me, this was something Miss H could sample too. We had a vanilla sundae with chocolate and adzuki bean sauce—superb. 

For kicks, we stepped across the road and into the Wellcome supermarket to get a look at what Hong Kongers mow down on. There was a staggering array of western foods, including Cadbury's chocolate—nearly impossible to find in other Asian countries and nonexistent in Korea, much to all my English friends' chagrin. I bought one of the Cadbury's bars, a Double Decker bar ('cause I'd never tried one), and a bottle of Laoshan, Tsingtao's upscale brand.

Then we rode the tramway home, dumped everything in our room (and I drank my Gambler's Gold), and went back out and around the corner to a gaming arcade we'd spotted on the second floor of a high-rise. We played at racing games and basketball tosses and a couple of rail shooters, burning through HK$35 in an hour. Then we came home, showered, and collapsed into bed. A fantastic thunderstorm hit just as we turned out the lights, and we laid there, tangled up with each other, watching the flashes and counting the seconds, until we drifted off to sleep.  

Hong Kong, day two

Did I say that we had a fantastic view from Room 2504 of the ibis North Point Hotel? I was whistling Dixie. As we peered outside on the wet morning of Monday, August 4, we saw two rusty brown hawks circling each other as they rode a thermal updraft up the side of the hotel building; barges, junks, yachts, cruise ships, and ferries scudding across the iron waters of Victoria Harbor; rain pounding down in Kowloon; the hoary cloud-swept peak of Tai Mo Shan; and jets descending toward Lantau Island. What a view to wake up to. 

We were lazy most of the day, waiting for the spectacular thunder showers to pass and the heat to subside. In the early evening, we took the tram (the streetcar, not the subway) west to Hong Kong Station.

Then we rode the Star Ferry from Pier 7 across Victoria Harbor to Tsim Sha Tsui.

 

  

There was one thing I knew I HAD to do in HK: the Avenue of the Stars, specifically the Bruce Lee statue. I admired the man's physical prowess and wanted to pay my respects to satisfy my rampant, querulous, needy, domineering inner geek. I also got to mack on some grilled cuttlefish. 

Heather returned to the hotel and I rode one stop north to Jordan to meet Jeff, my old Canuck friend from Geoje, whom I'd last seen in Ho Chi Minh City. He and his fiancée Jenn had taken the Reunification Express in the opposite direction I had—up to Hoi An and the beaches there. He was in Hong Kong on a long layover to Seoul to pick up the wedding ring, and she'd already gone back to England. We thought we'd meet up in Kowloon for dinner and a drink. I nabbed some postcards at the Temple Street Night Market and we located a restaurant. It was down a shifty-looking side-street, swathed in plastic awnings but with plentiful light, electric fans, and TVs showing period dramas. The menu was in English and 640-ml bottles of Tsingtao were only HK$15 apiece. We feasted on fried rice, a satay beef bowl, and fried pork ribs—suspiciously similar in taste and appearance to any Californian Chinese buffet, and therefore likely loaded with MSG. 

For drinks we rode the subway back under the harbor to Hong Kong/Central. We popped out of Exit C, turned left up a hill, went right, traversed a staircase, followed a sinuous skyway for a few hundred yards, and found ourselves in SoHo, a favorite haunt of Jeff's and a great many other hungry, thirsty expats. the place was full to bursting with trendy, overpriced foreign restaurants catering to affluent residents of the Mid-Levels and accessed by a unique system of tiered, slow-moving escalators. One has merely to stand and browse as one is lifted up the steep hill, and disembark at one's leisure. 

Having already stuffed ourselves in Kowloon, Jeff and I were only interested in beverages. We had a nightcap at Yorkshire Pudding, a British pub. We sipped Tetley's beer and Magners cider, watched Australian rugby, overheard rugby-loving Americans nearby exchanging ribald badinage, and eyed the exotic fish darting to and fro in the big aquarium tank behind the booth. 

Then we went home. And that was day two.

Hong Kong, day one

By mutual agreement, Miss H and I decided not to do much today. I was exhausted from my losing battle against Singapore's confounded autocracy, and my other half had just come off a startlingly harsh week at work (and a long flight). So we went to bed early the night of Saturday, August 2, and had a lovely lie-in Sunday morning. 

The weather was a factor as well. I hadn't expected Hong Kong to be the hottest, most humid, most stinkingly sweltering destination on my journey, but that it was. We could hardly breathe. The heat and wet were living things, clawing at your throat, clamping your clothes against your body, blocking your pores like some invisible blob monster. I've always been prone to sweating when the temperature's anywhere above 70 degrees, and whenever the humidity's above 40 percent. You can imagine how I felt in Hong Kong, with the temperature hovering around 85 and the humidity at 81%. Even Miss H was melting. 

Nonetheless, we hadn't come all this way just to sit in our air-conditioned room. We practically sprinted the ten feet between the hotel lobby and the entrance to North Point MTR station, and then we were on our way to Central and the IFC Mall. 

The view from the roof deck. We'd been planning to have cocktails up there, but the prices were exorbitant.

Pepero is the Korean version of Pocky, a Japanese biscuit stick covered with chocolate. So weird seeing it labeled in English in Hong Kong...

We did a bit of shopping (Victoria's Secret, Dymocks Bookstore, Godiva) and ate a hefty lunch of salads, sandwiches, and smoothies. Then we went to see The Guardians of the Galaxy in 3D. It cost about $15 per person—not including the glasses!—but what the hell, it was a date. In Hong Kong. 

Back at our hotel—ibis North Point—we switched rooms. I'd gotten one of the cheapest double rooms, but 1901 was a closet-sized space with a view of the building behind. So we paid an extra hundred HK$ (about $12.89 US) per day and moved our stuff up to 2504, which had a gorgeous view of Victoria Harbor and Kowloon. 

10 things to do in the Hong Kong international transfer terminal

Not my photo.

What to do when you're trapped in an airport for twelve hours? It depends on the airport. Major ones obviously have shops and cafes and even game arcades where you can whittle away your time. But what if you're a lone traveler stuck in the transfer terminal of, say, Hong Kong International Airport while you wait for someone else to show up? 

No cafes, no bookstores, no arcades, and just a single forlorn noodle shop. 

Four power outlets and eight hundred people in line to use them. 

Free wi-fi that keeps resetting itself (and whatever webpage you were visiting). 

The city's too far away to reach quickly or cheaply, and besides—you don't want to head through customs and immigration and wait at the airport entrance for fear of losing your beloved partner in the crowd. 

So you sit around in the lounge for eleven hours, tapping your feet and losing your mind. 

Here are some tips to help close that day-long gap in your sanity: 

1. Leave the airport. No-brainer, this one. I was waiting for Miss H to show up on a late afternoon flight, but you aren't! Get out! Go to Hong Kong! You'll miss all the fun stuff below, but you'll save a lot of time. 

2. Take a walk. Explore! Throw that bag over your shoulder ('cause there aren't any lockers or anything) and walk the whole hundred yards from one end of the terminal to the other. If you get really bored, ride the escalators up and down for two hours. Or take in some sights at the shops...both of them. Don't just sit around; you'll give yourself bedsores. 

3. Get a snack. There's only one noodle joint, but so what? The noodles come in a salty broth and have forlorn little bits of soggy hot dog in them, and that never gets old! No convenience stores either, so that makes your choice real simple!

4. Read a book. I hope to God you brought one! Or five!

5. Surf the Web. You might have to wait around for three or four hours until someone vacates a seat near one of the four power outlet stations. Just don't forget to be polite and kick the old Chinese grandma's luggage off the seat, because goodness knows there aren't people waiting to sit down, Granny! 

6. Update your journal. Lots of exciting things happening in this terminal! Even more exciting than the time you got a dull, rusty spike driven through your head with a mallet!

7. People watch. All sorts of people come through Hong Kong, heading to and coming from every part of the planet: Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, an American in a business suit, Chinese, Chinese, more Chinese, two or three Arabs, Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, a couple of Japanese coeds, Chinese, Chinese, and Chinese. You can also marvel at the aircrews (foreigners and Chinese!) stuffing their faces at that one single noodle shop with the soggy hot dogs. 

8. Meditate. You probably won't feel stressed or antsy at this point, but in case you have accumulated a smidgen of white-hot, misanthropic rage in your belly, curl up on that nice, clean carpet and oohhhmmm it all away! Just don't get run over by anyone's luggage or kicked by any Asiatic who has no sense of personal space. 

9. Shell out for extras. Some of the nicer airports in the developed world have VIP lounges where you can eat a meal, go online, watch a movie, get a haircut, or take a shower or a nap, and Hong Kong International is no exception. It might cost a little extra but it's infinitely more comfortable than crashing on a lounge bench. And by "little extra" I mean about a hundred U.S. dollars an hour. Pocket change, right?

10. Look on the bright side. I mean, eleven hours of your life isn't much, right? That's only as long as it would have taken you to eat three meals, read seven chapters of your book, spend a lovely day together with your significant other, put in a full day's work on your laptop, or basically do anything else remotely useful. No time at all! And when the eleven hours is up, you'll meet the love of your life and the two of you will have a ball in Hong Kong! 

...after you wait in line to get through security, pay one hundred Hong Kong dollars, and spend 40 minutes on the Airport Express to the city, that is.

Hong Kong International Airport, baby! It's all you can stand!

why I hate Singapore

Apart from the stinking heat and humidity, the enforced sterility of the streets, the craven pandering to foreign investors and tourists, the banal plague of trendy Western department stores and fast-food chains, the parsimonious pedagoguery of the government, and the ridiculous expense...

...there were three things about Singapore I truly despised. 

First, this was the name of one of the Chinese restaurants near the check-in counters at Changi Airport:

Second, Changi Airport itself. The first thing that struck me about the place (apart from the above sign) was the lack of a security checkpoint. I obtained my boarding passes, got an exit stamp in my passport, and boom: there I was in the concourse. I turned left and walked to my gate. It was about ten o'clock in the evening and there wasn't much activity in the duty-free shops or coffeehouses. Most folks were curled up in the darkened departure lounges, several of which had fully-reclining seats. Snores, grumbles, and muted conversation permeated the recirculated air, making me feel like I was creeping through a dormitory after lights-out. 

Then I noticed that there were glass walls enclosing each gate, which could only be accessed through thick double doors (also of glass), behind each of which was a miniature security checkpoint. 

Ah, I remember thinking. Now that is nifty. Instead of waiting in an endless queue with everyone else in the damn airport, you'll only be waiting in line with the people aboard your particular flight. 

Then I sat down and tried to access the Internet. 

Now, I know what you're going to say. What a spoiled, privileged little white brat, hung up on his First World problems. No Internet, boo-hoo-hoo. Man up and read a book or something, chickenshit. 

And you'd be justified in saying that. But I'll declare, here and now, that the cussed Internet provided a vital link between me and (a) my lonely fiancée and (b) my terrified parents. Okay, maybe not terrified. But definitely leery of some the places I'd be passing through. I'd agreed, like any good son, to keep in close contact with my folks during my 27-day jaunt through Southeast Asia, e-mailing them whenever I arrived at or departed a new bailiwick. Even Paul Theroux phones home on occasion. Sue me. 

I couldn't access the Internet at Changi Airport. 

Why? 

Because the password could only be found on placards hung upon the wall of the departure gate. On the other side of those locked glass doors. Which wouldn't open until 12:50 a.m., an hour before our departure time. You could have the codes texted to your phone, but I didn't have a phone. 

This was tyranny, plain and simple. In any American or Korean airport you could breeze through security two or three hours beforehand and then laze around the concourse, surfing the Web, drinking coffee, eating unhealthy snacks, and splattering your smelly body, your grubby coat, your crumpled hat, and your electronic gadgetry over an entire row of benches. 

Apparently they frown on that sort of thing in Singapore. 

My American sensibilities were offended on the deepest of levels. Up to that point I had patiently put up with the pettifogging Singaporeans and their absurd laws: the bans against spitting and chewing gum and graffiti and the ridiculous fines for littering and not flushing public toilets. But this was simply too much. The prejudice leveled against some saphead tourist who showed up to Changi Airport with an iPad and no cell phone three hours early for his flight, who just wanted to contact his loved ones and let them know that he wasn't sitting in some whorehouse in Johor Bahru, shooting heroin and contracting all sorts of blood-borne diseases, was outrageous.

When the security agents finally did open up those thick glass doors and started letting us through security, the final nail was driven into Singapore's coffin. I had a grooming kit in my backpack. It wasn't expensive or irreplaceable by any means, but it had been a treasured gift from my parents—a tacit acknowledgement that I was a man, and was capable of looking after myself on my own. In it was a pair of beard-trimming scissors. I had successfully passed through security at Gimpo Airport with those very same scissors. There was no reason whatsoever for the svelte, fruity-voiced Indian lady in the blue button-down shirt and black tie and slacks to pull me out of line. But she did. She ordered me to empty my bag. She confiscated several bottles of suntan lotion which were too large. That was fine by me; I'd plumb forgot they were in there. But then she ordered me to open the grooming kit. I unzipped the small black leather case an opened it like a book, holding it out for her to see. I was writhing with impatience. The entire contents of my pack were scattered across the cold, hard, unfeeling stainless steel of the exam table, and my fellow passengers were scooting impatiently past me to get into the lounge proper. I felt naked, like someone had pantsed me in public. I was anxious to sit down, jack in, and contact home. I was half-crazed with outrage. 

"You cannot take these aboard the plane," said the security agent, her sultry eyes sunk deeply into their sockets, caked with mascara and purple eye shadow beneath plucked eyebrows, snatching the beard-trimming scissors and waggling them under my nose. 

It was then, ladies and gentlemen, that the Vaunter did something he has never, ever done in his entire life. He questioned authority. 

"Why not?" I demanded. "They're mine. They belong to me. I brought them through other airports' security lines just fine." 

"Well, I'm sorry," she said, sounding as sincere as anyone else who has to say "sorry" eighty billion times a day in their line of work. "But I cannot allow you to bring these aboard." 

"Why?" I demanded. I again brought up the other airports which had so freely and eagerly allowed me to pass, beard-trimming scissors in hand. I battled her for five minutes over those beard-trimming scissors. She kept repeating the same dull old lines. No can do. Can't be allowed. Couldn't possibly. She at least had the decency not to claim that the tiny half-inch scissor blades could be used as weapons, perhaps in a desperate bid to take over the plane and crash it into the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Finally, understanding that I was making no headway, and would probably have to take a different flight if I kept this malarkey up, I relented. 

"Well, all right then," I said, grudgingly, sounding exactly like my dad did when I was a kid and I did something idiotic in his presence that he was powerless to halt or avert. 

I began to give the Indian lady my address, so she could mail the scissors to me. She looked confused for a moment, and then she interrupted. 

"No, no, no," she said. "No mail. Confiscation." 

I stood there for a moment, blinking, not comprehending. From way deep down in my brain, there was the sound like a twig snapping in the woods on a dark, frozen, snowy night.

"What?" I asked. "You're confiscating them?"

"Yes," she said, moving away to deposit my things in a bin, but (wisely) not turning her back to me. 

"But they're my scissors."

"We cannot mail them to you. They are being confiscated."

"What's going to happen to them?" 

"I don't know." 

Both of us knew perfectly well. Incineration, probably. Garbage. Waste. Somehow I didn't see Singapore as being the kind of place that would have an Unclaimed Baggage Center. 

"Those are my property, miss," I huffed. I was riding high. The anger endorphins were pulsing through my brain and veins, lifting me higher than the plane I was about to board. I'd never, ever challenged a security agent at an airport, or an authority figure of any kind, really. It was intoxicating. I felt powerful. I felt manly. I felt assertive. And I felt truculent. The more adamant and insurmountable the wall of red tape and bureaucratic posturing erected before me was, the harder I wanted to push against it, headbutt it, knock it down, crumbling and tumbling. 

"Why?" I demanded, my voice calm and clear and cool like a freshwater spring, but with a welter of venomous alkali beneath it. "Why can't you mail them back to me? Why are you confiscating my property?" 

She raised her arms, spread her hands out wide in a full-body shrug. 

"It's Singapore!" she declared, with a faint smile, a pathetic attempt at mollification—or perhaps admission of guilt. It was the sheepish grin of a thief caught red-handed, a shy junior member of a gang of thugs being cross-examined in the dock. 

And in that moment, I saw the futility of my enterprise. The wall was too high and too thick. For the briefest instant I was able to step outside of myself, outside Changi Airport, outside Singapore, and see it as I had from the highest reaches of the Flyer the previous evening—the whole cockamamie place with its dumbass laws and its indentured populace. Poor buggers, I mused. I looked at the Indian woman, her arms outstretched and her shoulders hunched, looking like some stupid scarecrow inexpertly nailed up. 

I said, "Fine." I slapped my lobotomized grooming kit shut and zipped it up. I crammed the disemboweled guts of my pack back inside and lugged the thing off the heavy steel table. I didn't give the security agent another glance. In the time it had taken for us to have our little chinwag, practically every other passenger had gone through, and every seat in the lounge was now taken. I plonked myself on the floor, took out the iPad, checked in with everyone at home, and in twenty minutes it was boarding time. I sat and sulked during the entire four-hour flight to Hong Kong. 

And that, ladies and gents, is why I hate Singapore.

big trouble in little Thailand

Paul Theroux was right. We have a tendency to judge every place we go by whether we could stand living there or not. There are few places on my list, believe it or not. One of them, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is Sapporo, Japan. Fascinating spot. Beautiful in summer (I hear) and absolutely enchanting in winter. I finally found a place that gets the epic, biblical, phantasmagorical amounts of snow that everybody who lives in a wintry place always brags about to newcomers and out-of-towners. Something to do with the moist winds from Siberia meeting the frigid Sea of Okhotsk...or the frigid winds from Siberia meeting the moist Sea of Okhotsk, or something. I dunno. But it's a pretty town in a pretty valley with pretty mountains and pretty dang fun to spend a few days in, the more I think back on it. I sure wish I could live there for a year (at least) and get to the bottom of its charms. 

...not to mention all the world-class sushi, beer, and venison I'd consume, or the skiing I'd do, or the ban'ei events I'd watch, or all the Russia I could see from my house. 

Anyway, I find that Hokkaido and its legendary snows are crossing my mind more and more as the Korean weather heats up. It's getting warm and muggy out there. Every day I step outside my door, give my best Charlton Heston squint, and then walk to the subway through a hot, bright, hazy city that would do the film Soylent Green proud.

I can only imagine how it's going to be in Southeast Asia as I trip through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong during the peak of summer. 

Well...maybe not Thailand. 

Have you been keeping track of what's going on down there? 

Source: The Times. 

That's right, it's a military coup. Another one. Thailand seems to have a yen for coups. The last one was in 2006, I believe. I'll spare you all the details, because that shit is readily available online, including the link under that picture of all them stern-lookin' Thai military dudes up there. You can get the rundown from somebody else. All I want you to do is sit right there in that chair and listen to my First World Problems. 

Did they have to have a bloody coup in Thailand just two months before I'm slated to travel by train through it?  

I think it's about time I shared with you the itinerary for this big Southeast Asia train trip I've been yapping about for weeks. It'll make this bitchfest easier. Plus it'll make my mum quit worrying about exactly when and where I'll be. So here you go:

 Saturday, 7/12: Gimpo to Shanghai by plane (there to spend the night partying)

 Sunday, 7/13: Shanghai - Kunming - Nanning - Hanoi by plane

 Monday, 7/14: explore Hanoi, catch the 11:00 p.m. night train to Ho Chi Minh City

 Tuesday, 7/15: slow train through Vietnam (pass Huế at 10:30 a.m.)

 Wednesday, 7/16: arrive in Ho Chi Minh City at 4:30 p.m. 

 Thursday, 7/17: HCMC

 Friday, 7/18: HCMC

 Saturday, 7/19: HCMC to Phnom Penh by bus

 Sunday, 7/20: Phnom Penh

 Monday, 7/21: Phnom Penh to Siem Reap by speedboat

 Tuesday, 7/22: Angkor Wat

 Wednesday, 7/23: Siem Reap to Paoy Paet by bus (Cambodian-Thai border); Aranyaprathet to Bangkok by train

 Thursday, 7/24: Bangkok 

 Friday, 7/25: Bangkok

 Saturday, 7/26: Bangkok

 Sunday, 7/27: Bangkok to Butterworth by night train

 Monday, 7/28: arrive in Butterworth; ferry to Penang; explore George Town

 Tuesday, 7/29: George Town

 Wednesday, 7/30: Butterworth to Singapore (train departs 8:00 a.m., arrives same day)

 Thursday, 7/31: Singapore

 Friday, 8/1: Singapore 

 Saturday, 8/2: fly to Hong Kong at 1:30 a.m. 

 Saturday, 8/2 - Thursday, 8/7: Hong Kong with Miss H

I planned this minutely. The timing has to be just right. It's a journey of nearly 9,000 kilometers, and I have social engagements in Ho Chi Minh City and Hong Kong which I need to arrive on time for. I haven't reserved my train tickets yet, but a few days ago—before the news of the coup broke, back when this was all just a bunch of Thais in red shirts rioting—I finished booking my hotels. All of them. Even the one in Bangkok. Argh.

I don't know what to do now. Should I cancel my hotel reservation in Bangkok and reserve a flight ticket from Cambodia to Malaysia? Fly from Phnom Penh to Kuala Lumpur, take the train north to Butterworth and do my Penang thang, and then go back down to Singapore by train and meet Miss H in Hong Kong for her week-long summer vacation? Or do I stick with the original plan and hope things cool down in Thailand between now and late July? As I've previously pointed out, coups are nothing new down there. Last week the BBC pointed out that Thailand has seen 12 coups since 1932. I'd venture to suggest that, compared to places like Libya or Somalia, Thailand is remarkably stable despite such frequent upheavals. On the other hand, dire warnings from the U.S. State Department (and, I anticipate, my own parents) will urge me to reconsider my travel plans and skirt the country altogether. 

Grmf. I don't know what to do, and I don't like it. Guess I'll just have to use the Polaroid approach: keep an eye on the situation and see what develops. 

Postie out.