aboard the Reunification Express

Let me introduce three people: 

1) Dong, the night clerk at the Hanoi Asia Star Hotel in Hanoi,

2) Ed, a fellow vacationer in Vietnam, and 

3) Mary, his girlfriend. 

That's a needless miniaturization of the actual characters involved, but what the hell. You get the idea. 

Dong—the clerk, the gallant host, the standard-bearer for Vietnamese hospitality, the All-Accommodating One. 

I was in a tricky position, you see. I'd paid for one night at the hotel, but I technically needed to store my luggage longer than the 12:00 p.m. checkout time, since I'd be taking the 11:00 p.m. Reunification Express to Saigon on the evening of July 14th. Dong, however, had me covered. On the morning of the 14th, he magnanimously offered to let me—and Ed and Mary, as it happened, 'cause we were all taking the same train. What a guy. We thanked him profusely, went about our separate tours of Hanoi, and thought no more about it.

...until we got back to the hotel that evening and Dong said we had to fork over another night's fee. 

I guess Ed, Mary and I somehow misunderstood that we could keep our stuff in our rooms past checkout time for a price. Twenty-six U.S. dollars, to be exact. 

Oh well. At least Dong was kind enough to call us a cab to the Hanoi Railway Station. 

Ed was extraordinarily tall and mildly tanned, with dirty-blonde hair and stubble that were refreshingly short. Mary was petite and blonde and fair-skinned. They were both from England. Like me, they'd come to Vietnam from China, having just finished a year of teaching in a remote mountain town in the vicinity of Kunming. All three of us were suffering from the climate. Lathered with sweat, we heaved our ponderous packs out of the green-and-white Hanoi cab and through the damp air into the beat-up station. The structure as a whole was built in 1902, but the central hall had been bombed flat in the war and rebuilt in a more modern style, leaving the station a grotesque Frankenstein of architectural styles, with French colonial wings and a lobby right out of the tacky 1970s:

We'd arrived in good time. Our train was idling on the track, but boarding wouldn't begin for another 30 minutes. The three of us had plenty of time to buy cookies, snack mix, and bottles of water at the shop. We wouldn't reach HCMC for two nights and a day, and though the Reunification Express had meal service, there were no vending machines or restaurant cars or snack bars. We wanted to be prepared. 

The waiting room's high ceiling and garish incandescent lights gave it the look of an ancient high school gymnasium, complete with the smells of sweaty bodies and cigarette smoke. Ed, Mary and I sat and talked as we waited for boarding to begin. They were only going as far as Da Nang, about two-thirds of the way down the country, and catching a bus thence to their final destination, Hoi An. I didn't know much it, but Ed and Mary described it as a "beachy, coupley sort of place."  They'd had their fill of Chinese bureaucracy and scholastic callousness in their mountain eyrie near Kunming, and were long due for an idyllic vacation. I hastened to assure them that matters weren't much better in Korea, depending on which school employed you. I detected something of the Geordie twang in Mary's accent, and I found that she had a paternal grandfather from Newcastle. Hanging out with all these English people seems to be paying dividends for this kid from California.

When the boarding call went out at 10:15, we said our goodbyes: Ed and Mary were in Car 10, and I in Car 11. I stowed my stuff on a convenient shelf above the door of my four-person berth while peppy, fatuous V-pop piped over the PA system. I was supposed to have the lower bunk, but my berth-mates were a young woman with a baby, another young woman I took to be her sister or close friend, and an old woman so shriveled and tiny that she looked like a sun-dried tomato animated by some kindly wizard and sent to wander the earth. Obviously it was down to me and the sister/friend to take the upper berths. 

Oh well. I didn't mind at first. I like to be up above things. It's why I'm a pilot. 

The train slid into motion at eleven o'clock on the nose, and I went to sleep soon after. There were a couple of foreigners in the berth next door and they were being noisy as hell, cooing and speaking baby-talk to two hyperactive Vietnamese toddlers. Thank goodness for earplugs. 

I slept passably well, though I woke up a few times, including our 4:00 a.m. stop at Vinh. I remember stumbling down the hall to the can at 5:30, misty jungle-clad hills rolling by the windows and startled water buffalo cantering away from the tracks. 

I got up for good at seven o'clock and ate some junk food until the breakfast cart arrived. The scenery was fantastic: the sun had burned off the mist and there were cloud-wreathed hills, sheer rock cliffs, and a muddy brown river winding by outside: 

I cracked a window in the companionway and did my best to get pictures, but the train was so well air-conditioned and the weather outside so damn muggy that the camera lenses fogged up something fierce. Sorry.

The breakfast cart came by at eight o'clock. I bought two hard-boiled eggs and something which looked and tasted like chicken inside a ball of sticky rice wrapped up in a lotus leaf, which I later discovered was called lo mai gai, a southern Chinese dish. (The whole meal was just 20,000 VND, less than a dollar at the time of this writing!) Wherever lo mai gai was from, it was superb, the most satisfying breakfast imaginable. Imagine, if you can, your humble correspondent sitting on the end of the old Vietnamese lady's bed (at her kindly insistence), mowing down on this sumptuous goodness, staring out of the berth's open door, across the narrow companionway, and into the languorous blue-and-green haze of the Vietnamese countryside.

After breakfast I went to the tenth car and peeked into Ed and Mary's compartment. They were still sound asleep, so I found a folding metal chair in the companionway and plunked myself down upon it to get some more pictures. I'm reasonably certain that I got a good shot of the Perfume River as we were rolling into Hue: 

By and by Ed and Mary woke up and came to the rear of the car for their morning ablutions, and we chatted some more. We happened to bump into some other foreigners from South Africa and bent their ears as well. We spent much of the day in this fashion, alternately talking, taking pictures, relaxing in our berths, reading (I was tearing up The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger), or staring outside at the rolling countryside, which was alternately sunny and monsoon-wracked. 

Then, not long after the rain clouds cleared, I looked out of the companionway windows and saw the South China Sea!

We were approaching Da Nang. I was desperately hungry and longing to sample some station food. I'd always read in Paul Theroux books about the enticing goodies you can find at stalls at train stations throughout Asia, and I'd heard that Vietnam possessed several rice dishes with interchangeable toppings. I thereupon hatched a daring plot to leap off the train at Da Nang (the city visible in the third-to-last photo above) and nab me some eats. 

And I done it. As the train squeaked to a halt at the platform, I bid a hasty goodbye to Ed and Mary—their bags on their backs, their hats on their heads, and smiles on their faces. Then I sprinted to the nearest stall, well hidden from the blasting tropical sun under the station's broad eaves, and cast an appraising eye over the goods. There were prawns, chicken, pan-seared fish, marinated beef strips, fried eggs, Chinese sausage, and the standard assortment of scallions and cabbage on the side. With frantic urgency I ordered a Styrofoam container of broken rice (cơm tấm) with prawns and fried eggs. The bearded gentleman behind the counter, his high and liver-spotted forehead wrinkled with gaiety, understood my hurry. He bid his slender, harried-looking female assistant (his daughter or niece, I'm guessing) to serve me up. As a final gesture of accommodation he hurriedly threw some chopsticks into the plastic bag and bid me bon voyage. I dashed back aboard the train well before it pulled away. I sat on my folding chair in the companionway and happily munched on my well-earned and delectable lunch as we left Da Nang, immune to the envious stares of my fellow travelers. 

And so the Reunification Express thundered southward in the golden evening light, away from the South China Sea and onto the southern flatland with its innumerable rice paddies and wallowing water buffaloes, under a balmy blue-and-orange sky dotted with cotton-ball clouds: 

The second night was rougher than the first. The baby was fussing and crying and whimpering for hours. The sister/friend buried herself in a complex routine, wherein she would dial a number on her cell phone, yell and scream and holler and harangue the person at the other end for some ten minutes at a stretch, hang up, kvetch to her sister on the bunk below her, and then repeat the process. The old lady below me, having spent most of the day rocking back and forth with her legs crossed and her gnarled hands and fingers in the lotus position, repeating mantras printed on a laminated card, was out like a light. I lay there and tried to block out the noise of the rattling train, the yammering sister/friend and the crying child, which somehow penetrated the inch of noise-deadening foam I'd crammed into my ears. 

Nonetheless, I was sound asleep when the announcement came over the PA system at 5:45 that we were pulling into Ho Chi Minh City...well past our scheduled arrival time of 3:00 a.m. 

But that means we've reached my first day in Saigon, and that's a story for another day.  

territoriality: a discussion

It's high time I did some more sententious vaunting. This here's one of my rare opinion posts. Let's begin with a definition:

territoriality

ter·ri·to·ri·al·i·ty [ter-i-tawr-ee-al-i-tee, -tohr-]

noun

1. territorial quality, condition, or status.

2. the behavior of an animal in defining and defending its territory.

3. attachment to or protection of a territory or domain.

And let's follow that up with a basic truth: the concept of territoriality applies to human interaction as well. We build fences around our houses, put up NO TRESPASSING signs, and feel more at home in our native towns, counties, states, provinces, and (naturally) territories than anywhere else.

It's that specific aspect of territoriality I want to discuss, actually.

Traveling and living in foreign countries is a growing experience. It's a baptism by fire, a crash course in open-mindedness, cultural exposure, language barriers, communication disasters, culinary misadventures and homesickness. You feel it the moment you step off the plane. Everything's new, and it's scary. People are talking in tongues you can't understand. The signs are unreadable. Often the people themselves look completely alien to you, and it's a lead-pipe cinch that they'll think and act in different ways. This makes travelers apprehensive and twitchy and throws us all off our chumps. Eventually, with successive jaunts and expeditions, we get used to the otherness and can relax and enjoy our trips with relative ease.

But one fear never goes away.

In addition to the surface nervousness that traveling engenders within us, there is also something more primordial: a creeping, furtive sort of nervousness, an ever-present low-key fear. It's not just the unfamiliarity of our surroundings. It's the simple fact that we're off our home range. We're on someone else's turf, so to speak. We're in a foreign land, with different laws, mindsets, philosophies, mores, and etiquette. We're in someone else's backyard, and they know it like the back of their hand, and we don't. We, the interlopers, won't be torn limb from limb if discovered by the natives, as happens to wild animals who stray too far from their territory. But the inchoate threat of such still lingers in the reptilian parts of the human brain, and we feel that fear whenever a foreign shore heaves into sight on the  distant horizon.

Even after living in South Korea for something like three nonconsecutive years, I still get the willies on occasion. If I could speak the language better, I wouldn't have 'em so often. But even if I was a whiz at Hangul, that primordial fear would still be there. I'm in Asia, where the rules of the game are elementally different from what I know. The sun still rises and sets, and the tides go in and out, but those are the only similarities. The Koreans have their own ideas about commerce, social relations, gratitude, etiquette, politeness, interpersonal nuance, humor, entertainment, morality, fine dining, hard work and whatnot. Furthermore, the Korean civilization is thousands of years old, far outstripping my own country's paltry history. The enormity of those ages weighs upon my shoulders like a millstone at times.

I feel the opposite effect whenever I return home to the States. I exhale literally and metaphorically. Everything makes sense again, imperfect as it may be. The signs are legible. People's slang terms are comforting. That sense of oneness with my surroundings comes flooding back to me. I feel ready to turn and do battle with whatever extraterritorial threats hounded me home. Your turn, you bastards. You're on my block now.

And you know what? I think that's a good thing.

Culture shock, homesickness, and otherness are shoots which spring from the same seed: territoriality. The feelings of attachment or protectiveness we harbor for the land of our birth. It exerts a powerful, formative influence upon us, and rightly so. The stark reality of it is impossible to deny, deeply biological as it is. Americans have their territory, Koreans have theirs. I'm intruding, plain and simple. Never mind that the immigration office stamps my passport and lets me live and work here for a year at a time. I'm an alien freak. I have the children's stares to prove it.

Of course, there are other, darker shoots of that same territorial seed. Things like bigotry, prejudice, and racism are also tendrils of territoriality. But there are positive effects as well: patriotism and nationalism, for example.

Many will disagree with me on this. Some of you may be shaking your heads right now. In your minds, the argument is coalescing: "Some of the most horrendous atrocities have been committed in the names of patriotism and nationalism!"

They have, no doubt. But I still say that devotion to, fondness for and belief in one's country and culture are healthy things for an upstanding, free-minded individual to have. I think that notion of otherness isn't a stumbling block, but rather a step stool. It's a platform with a telescope, a hill to climb, steep and rocky perhaps but a great place to pause and peruse the sunlit uplands beyond.

I believe (especially as an American) that we're sort of shamed into forsaking our nationalities when we're out on the road. We're encouraged to forget who we are and where we came from, and be totally open-minded as we view other countries, cultures and customs. Viewing anything through the lens of the culture we were born into is frowned upon. Bigotry, it's called. Prejudice. Willful ignorance.

I disagree.

I think you have to judge the entire world from the perspective of your own tiny slice of it, because you'd have to be a robot to do otherwise. Only a mindless automaton is capable of ignoring its own heritage and upbringing and judge something with perfect objectivity. As G.K. Chesterton warned, "Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out." Stay judgmental. Be biased. Cultivate prejudice. You need a basis, a foundation upon which to judge what you see, and your background is well-suited to it. As long as you're a righteous human being (and I already know that you are), then you won't fall into the bottomless pits of prejudice or racism or ethnocentrism. You'll be fine. Rock on. You need that cultural context of yours to form sound opinions of what you see and hear abroad.

D'you see what I'm saying, here?

I'm starting to think I'm the last person on the planet who feels that way. The paradigm is shifting. The world shrinks, technology advances, airplanes and boats and cars and trains move faster and with less energy, and the information superhighway reaches ever deeper into our lives. As the lines between cultures and continents begin to blur, the zeitgeist has changed. In talks with many of my more liberal friends, they have expressed nothing but disdain for the concepts of patriotism and nationalism. They shake their heads and say things like, "Murrica! F*** yeah!" in satirical tones. Some of the more extreme among them have expressed outright approval for a sort of "world culture," in which national boundaries are swept aside, the myriad cultures of the globes are integrated and amalgamated, and a sort of homogeneous global culture ensues, freeing humanity forever from the damnable vices of bigotry and racism.

Phooey to that, I say.

I don't know about you, but the whole notion of a "world culture," gives me the heebie-jeebies. You should take pride in your homeland. You should have some prejudice in its favor. You should be leery of the way other people do things. You should believe your country's the best in the world simply because you were born in it, as George Bernard Shaw once so scathingly wrote.

"Why?" I hear you ask. "Aren't you being an arrogant, ethnocentric pig? Won't people hate you for thinking that way? Aren't you being close-minded? Shouldn't you travel with an open mind?"

To which my answers are: No, yes, no, and yes.

Being territorial—feeling uncomfortable in another country and safe and secure in your own, cleaving to an intrinsic, instinctive, subconscious kind of nationalism—isn't arrogance. It's only natural to believe that your country's the best. You did grow up in it, after all. But it's not just natural—it's evolutionary. This is your territory. It's your home, and it's a part of you, from the tip of your hairs to the marrow of your bones. You were fed on it, suckled by it,  knocked about by it in your youth. You've breathed it, swam in it, tasted it and slept in it your whole life. It knows you and you know it, and you have each other's backs. You should love it to death. Stepping out of your territory is frightening, strange and potentially life-threatening. That makes the challenge—and rewards—all the greater.

People will hate you for feeling that way. They'll call you a racist pig, a jingoistic idiot, an ignorant, short-sighted, narrow-minded fool. Don't listen to 'em. You know in your heart that you're not a racist. You know people are people, no matter where they're from. You know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and you don't attribute either of those things to a human individual just 'cause they're from a particular place. And as long as you know it, no one can touch you or make you feel like you're a bad person.

You're not being close-minded. You're open to new experiences. In fact, that is the whole point of traveling: to get out of your comfort zone. To leave your territory, those familiar shores and welcoming skyline, and venture into the unknown. There's the rub. Be territorial. Love your homeland, be wary or even leery of other people's, but don't let that stop you from going. Go there and find out how it really is. Then you can decide whether or not your preconceptions were accurate. What you're doing, if you're doing it right, is giving other people's cultures and societies the respect they deserve without fawning over them, worshiping them, or paying them lip service for political correctness's sake. By the Great Green Arkleseizure, folks, you're allowed to have an opinion. Just make sure it's founded on your own experience and a thorough knowledge of circumstance, not sweeping generalizations or assumptions. Just look at Paul Theroux. That's precisely how he writes his travel books. He's judgmental as hell. He'll lampoon anybody, be they an individual or a government, foreign or American. The point is to go and see, and then judge harshly...based on what you know is right.

That, my dears, is how you travel with an open mind. You have a context to work with: your culture. Hold that culture close to yourself, cherish it, be proud of it, but keep your heart and mind open. Let the ambient weirdness trickle in. You'll learn some startling things. Some of them will be as stupid or wrong or yucky as you always suspected. Many of them, however, won't be as bad as you thought—and more than a few will be the exact opposite. You'll see sights you never dreamed existed, taste the milk of human kindness, add more capital to the bank of experience than you ever thought possible. But don't forget where you started. Don't lord it over anybody, don't put anyone else down, but for Pete's sake, don't be afraid to flaunt it. You are who you are. Be proud. Don't skulk about. Tell people. Everyone's just as curious about you as you are about them, or ought to be. They're all nationalists at heart, too. They may dislike you just because of the color of your passport. But you can forgive them for that, 'cause deep down you're judging the hell out of their clothes, their dirty fingernails and their country's cockeyed ways, and you can laugh inside at the crazy two-way nature of the universe. 

But how would this priceless sensation, this ability to learn about others, to understand how things are done on the far side of the world, down in the dust or up in the snow, on top of the mountains and in the deepest valleys and over the silvery lakes—how would it be possible if we had one world culture? Where would your identity come from? What would you take pride in? How would you build that base, that context, from which to travel and peer into other people's lives? How could you judge their shortcomings—and their wonders? What use would travel be if everyone else thought and slept and breathed and loved the same way that you do? 

It wouldn't, and that's the truth. It wouldn't be any use at all.  

I don't want a world that's all the same. I don't want a world where I never feel ill at ease or out of place. I want a world full of mystery and weirdness and otherness to explore. And I want a patch of dirt that I can come back to and feel at home in, unconditionally—but with a host of foreign friends and experiences rattling around in my head, heart and soul. I think it's grand that we're all different from each other, and that we have a little fear and perhaps aversion to one another (and our respective nations). Just because we travel and learn about the world doesn't mean we should lose faith in who we are and where we came from, or our belief in our own greatness. I think that sort of national pride fosters healthy competition, self-confidence, cultural self-esteem, and most importantly, our curiosity about each other. It makes the sun brighter, the water clearer, the air fresher and our friendships warmer. 

But maybe that's just me.

Patriotic enough for ya?

the Tumblr Accent Challenge

Have you heard about this? I saw it on YouTube a while ago—people putting up videos of themselves saying a list of words and answering questions. I thought it sounded fun, so I did it (without joining Tumblr). Watch and enjoy.

If you feel like doing this yourself, here are the rules. No cheating (though if you find a way to cheat, go ahead).

Arashiyama and Togetsukyo Bridge

Day Two of Kyoto:

No links this time, I promise. I'll explain stuff properly, and we'll all be on the same page. Literally. Same webpage, that is. Yeah.

Here's the thing: Kyoto is a lot smaller than Tokyo. The great metropolitan area of Japan's capital has 35 million people, making it the largest city in the world. Kyoto has a mere 1.5 million. That's still a respectable number, mind. It makes Kyoto about as big, population-wise, as Philadelphia or Vienna.

But it's an old city. Ancient. It was the capital of Japan—just the capital, mind—for a thousand years. Whereas Tokyo was built on the swampy delta of the Sumida River, Kyoto is nestled into a valley east of the mountainous Tamba highlands, right smack dab in the middle of Honshu. Green hills surround it. It seems somehow cut off from the rest of the island. It's got its own vibe. Somehow it felt even more laid-back than Busan. Again, I got the sense that the Japanese were a lot more secure, more relaxed, more genuine in their habits and mannerisms. Compared to Japan, everybody in Korea seems to have an ax to grind and a chip on their shoulder. The people in Kyoto just are. Things happen at their own pace here, and if they don't, nobody gives a flip. The city seems simultaneously proud of its status as the former capital and glad to be well shut of the business.

Nowhere is this more apparent than Arashiyama, a neighborhood on the western outskirts of Kyoto. The district is named for the mountain that broods over it from across the river. Upon the slopes of this mountain, and at its feet, were some uniquely Kyoto-ish things that I've wanted to do for ages.

But we'll get to that later. Getting to Arashiyama turned out to be almost as fun and whimsical as the place itself.

I had three options. Well, four, if you count taxicabs. But I avoided taking cabs as much as I could in Japan, since it was seven hundred yen (about $7) to drop a flag in Tokyo, and about $6.40 everywhere else I went. So I decided that it would be trains. There were three lines to choose from:

From japan-guide.com

The JR Sagano line would have necessitated going down to Kyoto Station. The Keifuku Arashiyama Line didn't stop anywhere near Shijo Station (the one nearest my hotel in the center of town). However, by taking the Hankyu Katsura Line west from Shijo Station and then switching to the Hankyu Arashiyama Line, I could get myself to that little stop at the bottom of the map above, south of the Katsura River.

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: You might notice that the river in the map above has two names. I was mighty confused about that for a while. Wikipedia labels the river the Ōi, while this map says it's the Katsura River below the Togetsukyo Bridge and the Hozu River above it. As near as I can figure out, the Hozu River is the one flowing along the valley between the mountains, while the Ōi trickles out of those mountains to join the Hozu and flow beneath Togetsukyo. After that, the two rivers combined become the Katsura. Sort of like the Power Rangers, if there were only two Rangers and they were both wet and green and full of duck poop. All clear now?)

I got on the Hankyu Katsura Line at Shijo Station a hop, skip and a jump from the Karasuma Kyoto Hotel. The train was spacious and clean and very comfortable, and the morning bright and promising.

Kyoto's Hankyu subway service has got its act together.

I rode a few stops to Katsura Station and then switched to this charming little tram going toward Arashiyama.

 

Then all I had to do was sit back and watch western Kyoto, with its tile-roofed houses and tiny backyards, roll by my window:

I didn't even realize that there was a torii (sacred Shinto gate) in this picture until I looked at it later in playback mode on the my camera's pop-out screen. Talk about serendipity!

Don't that beat all? I was starting to like Kyoto. Quaint's the word, but without the creeping weirdness that the term implies. Just sort of old-fashioned and slow and enchanting, you know?

So, the Hankyu Arashiyama Line terminated at (you guessed it) Arashiyama Station, just south of the Katsura River, and all of us schmucks who were going to Arashiyama and its environs disembarked.

I love trains. And somehow they look even cooler with Japanese or Chinese characters on them.

The view after exiting the station.

The view looking back at the station.

After a couple of minutes walking along narrow one-lane roads...

...I found myself on the shores of the Katsura River!

I immediately set about taking a panoramic shot, of which the previous three photos are the first 75%. Then I looked to my left and...lo and behold! It was the Togetsukyo ("Moon-Crossing") Bridge!

Arashiyama proper was just across the river.

Arashiyama, by the way, means "Storm Mountain." The Japanese have such awesome names for things. Yes, I mean "awesome" literally, Louis C.K.

That's the same bridge that I've seen so many anime characters walk/run across. Creepy.

This gentleman was net-fishing. Didn't even have a reel on his pole. He just hauled back and skillfully sent the fish winging right into the net in his left hand.

So now that I'm taking pictures of the river west of the bridge, it's the Hozu, not the Katsura. Don't you forget it.

Just lovely, isn't it? The water, the reeds, the town, the hills, and the clouds and mist in the background. Dang, I'm good. (Either that or my Canon T3i does all the work for me.) Looking back, I think it was Arashiyama, and particularly this scene, that made me really, really start to like Japan.

Undaunted by the blasting heat, the cloying damp, or the thundering entomological chorus, I walked down along the riverbank, snapping picture after picture, trying to get the bridge from all angles, feeling like some East Asian version of Clint Eastwood in The Bridges of Madison County.

And then, abruptly, I was on the bridge itself. To my left was a tributary of the river, and a little dock with small pleasure boats moored alongside...

...plus souvenir shops and cafes and tea houses, and a rickshaw stop.

No, seriously! Rickshaws, dude! Ferrying people across the Moon-Crossing Bridge and into the low-slung bosom of Arashiyama beyond! No taxicabs here, this is Kyoto!

But I wasn't going across the bridge just yet. My destination was left, right and then left: straight up Storm Mountain.

Tomorrow: IWATAYAMA MONKEY PARK. I feed a macaque. No joke. There's video.

Stay tuned...