Bali Hai

We're actually on our way out after one wonderful week on the island of Bali. We scheduled this from our free stopover on Singapore Air at Singapore. Got a cheap flight to Denpasar from SIN and then stayed at a resort we got on the internet for relatively cheap. While the food was nothing to write home about, the people and island life was amazing! Here Scuppy gives me her monkey face while one of the many primates hanging at Uluwatu Temple scope out sunglasses and watches ripe for the plucking. Uluwatu is one of the sacred points on the island, its southernmost point. Thus its also an incredible spot for waves, throwing up one of the world's best lefts. Pictured below is the new swell that just started coming in here yesterday and is ramping up today as we get on the plane to go home.

Thanks especially for Jaya, Puji and Kai for showing us a great time this week in Bali! Jaya (Randall) is an American who has been living here for 10+ years. Jaya is an old surf buddy of (weathered) Alex (with Hanoi Hanh), and he took me out to a few spots with good faces on Wednesday and Thursday. This beach is Sanur and the sand is black from the volcanic runoff. In the distance is the little island of Lembongan. I'm happy to say I was inspired by the waves in Bali, though the fast tubular faces were a little much for my novice surfing self. Needless to say, I'm inspired to hit more waves in Cali upon our return and come back to Bali when I'm ready for some big barrels.

So, as the sun sets on Uluwatu, it also sets on our journey. We head back to Singapore then return to California tomorrow (Monday). Imagine our jet taking off across the seas to the sounds of gamelans and ukeleles...

Happy Anniversary Hong Anh!!!

Friday marked our fifth wedding anniversary. Thank you, Hong Anh, for joining me in what has been a wild, wacky and wonderful ride!

P-p-p-p-p-hnom Penh

After Hanoi, things got a little bit rough photography-wise as I lost our work-horse camera somewhere in a taxi or along Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi. The other reason for no posts is that our trip is winding down and how many more pictures and accounts of hotel rooms, airport lounges, and duty free shops can one person see? Well, the good news is that we have purchased a spiffier, newer model of the old Canon called an S80 for about the same price as its offered online but the Japanesew instead of the American model. Also, with more airport shots, I had to get this one in of a Fokker 70, haven't seen one of these planes in the US for maybe 15 years, but don't worry, they are still flying the 30 minute puddle jump from Saigon to Phnom Penh.

Which brings me to our latest adventure, Phnom Penh. Both p's are aspirated, by the way. We were pleasantly surprised by the wonderfully kind people and the delicious food in this re-emerging capital city. Travel just one hour and you are in what the old colonial scholars called Farther India. More curries, elephants, and sarongs. Here we are getting fanned with our friends Ms. Dany and Mr. Piset. Dany is interested in doing a PhD in History at UCR and Piset is her hometown boyfriend, now working with the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. They grew up in Banteay Chmeas, a town on the other side of the country near Thailand. Piset picked us up in his government issue 4x4 and we drove out to this mountain with some stupas (Buddha relic shrines) on the top. It was the 22nd day of the 7th lunar month and Piset was bringing food for his ancestors, a traditional Buddhist practice that also coincided with the death anniversary for both of his parents who were murdered by the Khmer Rouge on the same day. Piset and Dany along with every other person we met in Cambodia, taxi drivers included, were mellow, reserved, generous, and just exceedingly kind. The little boys fanning us were trying to make a little extra change before they go back to school in two more weeks. They followed us up the 1-km trek of stairs, giving us fan-power, though after the first thirty minutes, they too got pooped out.

So, what is there for a wife and almost-2-yr-old to do in P-p-phnom Penh for a week while I go to the archives, which were by the way fabulous by local standards. None of the red tape and hassle as encountered here in Saigon or Hanoi. There's the hodge podge of temples and gold leaf at the Royal Palace, a complex left mostly vacant since the old king still keeps his other residence in Paris. But I imagine as Cambodia's economy picks up, and there are signs this is happening, we'll see the palace get the same sort of workover royal palaces the world over get. Anyways, it was a lovely day for birdwatching, especially these pidgeons perched up on one of the roofs.






And like all good palaces, this one had ice cream carts to keep kiddoes happy. Here Scuppy shares her ice cream sandwich with one of her many monkey friends, who has a place in his hand also for holding the occassional ice cream sandwich. Nice monkey...













The other thing to do in Phnom Penh is to eat! This town has amazing foreign restaurants decked out in amazing gardens and attended by the large community of foreigners working here in NGO's and embassies. However, because many ingredients are imported, you pay top dollar. Lunch here will set you back $20, and everything is paid for in US dollars. There's something unsettling about paying for everything in another country's currency. They don't even give you the Cambodian Real equivalent in most cases. Anyways, this restaurant featured an outdoor fountain garden and here Xuan Anh and Hongie play with the flowers put in the hands of this hybridization of a Buddha and King Jayavarman VII, one of the great kings of Angkor in the 13th Century.




I leave you with yet another in our Towel line of haut couteaur. Scuppy's taken on this new look too, very charming.

Hanoi Oi!

On the road again! Here we are visiting Hong-Anh's old Hanoi buddy Saeko with her two sons Kai (4 yrs.,right) and Jinto (10 mos., left). Saeko still lives in Hanoi and now runs a lovely laquer - painting studio and cafe restaurant where we ate on Tuesday. Her husband Mark was out of town, so we didn't see him; but Scuppy enjoyed his handiwork. Horsey, anyone?






Saeko sent us to a not-too-expensive (everything is expensive in Hanoi!) Japanese restaurant where I got great sushi for 15$. My old UW buddy Hanh and her friend Alex joined us for dinner. Alex is looking "weathered" according to Hanh's Vietnamese friends because he's spending almost every day out surfing in Japan as part of his research - making a documentary film about surf culture.





Did I mention how expensive Hanoi has gotten? Narrow houses in suburban neighborhoods now go for California prices - 500k to 1m in dollars or gold. That means everything else has gone up, too, from flowers to gas to noodles to straw hats! Hanoi real estate is now the most expensive for any city int he world per square meter! The trials and tribulations of a boomtown...

Farewell Parties Sept 1-3

"Let me get this straight. We're going to a party tonight, a party tomorrow, and more parties on Sunday? OK, then I better get a milk break!"

Fri Sept 1 - Student Farewell Party (ao dai's)
Sat Sept 2 - Family Farewell Pary (Bac Huyen/O Suong's)
Sun Sept 3 - Teacher Get-Together











"Why can't we dress like this every day? Purple, green, blue, pink, white, flowers, and red!"













Aunties, BS Que, Teacher Phuong



























"Ice anyone? I think I've got this squatting thing down!"

Towel Couteur

Bath game #14: use drying off as a pretext for modeling the latest in terrycloth fashions! This is one I started to help her enjoy the drying off process. Now, she's so into it, she requires that I produce some kind of towel hat to go with her outfits.

Kites

We stopped in this morning at the kitemaker's shop to pick up my one souveneir of the summer, a 100-piece, 100-ft-long dragon kite along with some smaller butterflies and peacocks. Here the kitemaker Mr. Cu was preparing a load of butterflies, phoenixes and dragons for the journey to France where he goes each year for a kiteflying festival and to sell a load of his kites.

Thanks Thim Lac

We really could not have enjoyed Hue as much as we did without the constant attention given to us by Thim Lac. Thanks Thim! Every day she made us lunch at her place, entertained Scuppy with toys and games, and was an all around awesome and kind person. Here she is pictured with us going out visiting relatives. She's wearing the happy green Riverside shirt and white floppy hat that Hong Anh brought.

Week Five - Thom Lam!

The course is almost over, and we are getting ready for the next step in our travels, short stops to Hanoi and Saigon before we mosey on to Cambdia and Bali and then home. Here Scuppy follows my lead and smells this most unusual flower, saying "thom lam" every few moments to emphasize how wonderful it smells.

The students are wrapping up their projects and I'm done teaching for a while. See http://ucrss.blogspot.com

Khe Sanh and Lao Border

On Saturday we re-boarded our tour bus and headed inland to visit the scene of a famous battle in 1968 at Khe Sanh were People's Army troops laid seige to a US Marine base for six months before giving up. The US subsequently abandoned the place. But before we reached this spot, we stopped in for lunch at a local restaurant not far from the Lao border. Here we saw one of the biggest dragonfruit cactuses ever! It has grown over a tree and stands about 25' high. The staff cut down some fresh fruits to feed us for dessert. We have one much smaller one growing in our backyard, not nearly as large as this.







What trip would not be complete without a cute baby pose? Here she is, wearing her dad's straw hat.
















One of the interesting things about this old airstrip at Khe Sanh is that beginning about two years ago, local farmers persuaded the government to let them grow coffee plants on the very valuable acreage left open by the old base. So now, unless you have a tour guide, there is no real indication that there was ever any airstrip here, except for the few remnants maintained around a small historical museum.





Here Scuppy hides out with the other Marines in one of the bases bunkers.













Here is what the bunker looked like in 1968.












We ended our weekend trip with a stop in a thoroughly boring little village that Vietnamtourism had decided we needed to see as some symbol of "traditional Vietnamese culture" complete with approximately 100 people who live here year-round and make a few crafts related to the tourist industry in Hue. Anyways, Scuppy and I got some energy out walking on the little lanes, flapping our hands like birds, and playing with many bamboo sticks.

Weekend Trip to DMZ and Lao Border

This weekend we traveled with the students to the former border region between North and South Vietnam during the war and some other war-related sites in the area. The countryside up here in Quang Tri Province is beautiful, and one it is difficult now to recognize that this was one of the most heavily bombed regions of Vietnam during the whole war. One estimate says that about 3 times the total bombs dropped in Europe in WWII were dropped in Vietnam.

The reconstructed 19th century citadel at Quang Tri was the site in 1972 for a 3-month long battle for opposing sides during North Vietnam's Easer Offensive. As a result of this fighting, some 30,000 people died and North Vietnam took all of Quang Tri's territory for the duration of the war. Today there is a museum and a shrine for the unknown thousands (over one half of the total US casualties in the war) who died here in the ruins. More history pics from our trip can be seen at http://ucrss.blogspot.com.

After sightseeing around war relics, we headed to the beach for the night. The group enjoyed a very relaxing dinner at one of several shacks put up on the beach for summertime restaurants. Each shack includes a number of hammocks where patrons can swing to their heart's content. Here Scuppy enjoys here first hammock ride with her Ba.

Scuppy Shots Week Four

For those most interested in the goings on of Team Scuppy's main player, here you go. One of the ways I get Scuppy to enjoy drying off after her bath is to turn the towel into a towel dress and hat. Hong Anh has also picked up the habit.

Here she is practicing her runway moves at a park near Thim Lac and Chu Nghien's house.

Chu Nghien Heads South

Chu Nghien feted us on Thursday night with one last big party celebration before he heads south for a month to visit friends and stay with his daughter and her family there. The meal included a roasted suckling pig as well as plenty of Hennessy and Bia Festival. Chu Nghien bought a case of it on the event of my coming, so every day at lunch I've had a beer which makes me very sleepy in the afternoon - naptime with Scuppy. The Hue music performers, particularly Ai Hoa, also attended, so we went through some rounds of music before breaking up.

Week Four: The Home Stretch

Here Xuan Anh dances in her Mekong Delta outfit "ao ba ba" while the students had a birthday party for Amy who just turned 19. So young!!! The end is in sight, even though in "The Vietnam Wars" we have not yet gotten to the Marines landing in Danang in 1965 or the Tet Offensive much less visited some of the war-related sites north of here.

This morning I ate pho with an American who works with local authorities in clearing UXO, unexploded ordinance, from the countryside in this region. He told me the worst kind of weapon used was the cluster bomb, what Vietnamese call "baby bombs," because a single payload from one B52 might contain over 500,000 fist-sized bombs and each one is capable of killing and injuring several people. He told me how when he and his team still discover many such bombs, especially in Quang Tri Province, and he is often surprised at how little they have aged in the past 40 years after being buried in the ground so long. Some still look factory fresh. This weekend we'll explore some of the war's legacy in central Vietnam as we head out on our final tour from Hue to Quang Tri, the former DMZ, Khe Sanh Battlefield, and some clinics and facilities for those affected by dioxin from Agent Orange. Quang Tri also has a really pretty citadel and there are some nice beaches to visit in the area.

History Nerds on Tour

Ed Miller, an old friend from the Saigon Archives who now teaches at Dartmouth, came up to Hue last night for a weekend visit. Ed's writing a book on Ngo Dinh Diem and I think its going to be a hell of a history about an individual we still know relatively little about in the US, much less Vietnam where he is still considered by the current government as an American puppet (r. 1954-1963). Hong-Anh gave me leave this morning and we headed out via motorbike, just like the moto-taxi drivers and their Australian quarry in this picture at the hotel, for a morning of extreme tourism. Only, unlike these heavy-set oz-land burger munchers, we were heading far beyond the usual array of king's tombs and UNESCO world heritage sites to see some lesser known, unmarked monuments to the memory of the Ngo family who were originally from Hue. Diem's father, Ngo Dinh Kha, was actually the Chamberlain (prime minister) under the rebellious king Thanh Tai in the 1910's and he resigned his position in the Court of Hue after the French Resident Superior had the king deported for supposed crimes of perversion. Kha nevertheless was instrumental in establishing the famous National Academy highschool in Hue and his sons attended there in the 1920's.

Our first stop took us to a cathedral on a hill outside the downtown, the site for one of the first Catholic churches built in Hue after the French conquest of Indochina began - it was founded by a French priest in 1862. The old church was torn down in 1963 to make way for this huge, new modern one designed by a famous Vietnamese architect and then overseen by the Bishop of central Vietnam at the time, Diem's older brother Ngo Dinh Thuc. Thuc fled after Diem and his other brother Nhu's assassination in 1963 and lived in Rome for a while before he passed on.

Besides learning a bit more about the church and Thuc, we got one of the kids at the church, a boy who hopes to become a priest when he is older, to guide us over to the tomb Ngo Dinh Diem had erected for his father after becoming President in 1955. Today, there is no sign for the tomb and the front gardens of this rather large tomb area are occupied by a steelworks yard in what seems to be a very carefully planned nod to Socialist realism. Still, nobody even questioned the two goofy foreigners waltzing past the reinforced steel rods and crawling over a delapidated fence to get a closer glimpse of father Kha's tomb. Curiously, after 1975 the graves of Kha's other son Ngo Dinh Can and a female relative were later exhumed and removed to Saigon next to NDD and NDN's graves in a more anonymous cemetary. We guess this is because NDK can still be seen as a kind fo influential patriot even in a history centered around the revolution.

From the relatively serene heights of this hill, we descended down a long slope towards the Tu Dam Pagoda where Ed took copious pictures of the large bodhi tree planted in the front yard in 1939. The tree had been brought here from India...nothing really tipped me off that this was significant until Ed explained that the Buddhist groups in Vietnam had lobbied for a long time under colonial rule to establish a national Buddhist church, and the French only relented in the 1940's as the Japanese invaded. Tu Dam Pagoda, the first center for the National Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam, then became a center for anti-Diem activity during the 1960's.

Following Tu Dam, we continued down the road a long ways until we got thoroughly lost in an area of hills south of town covered in cemetaries. This city of the dead was where all of the lesser types and their families were buried, the real people of Hue. It also happened to be where one of Diem's brothers lived, Ngo Dinh Can, a man who in the 1950's ran a kind of Abu Graib interrogation prison here. Imagine the effect riding past several kilometers of headstones would have on a prisoner... In 1940, the French anticipated a Japanese invasion of Indochina, so they built bunkers for storing weapons, including a network of them on a hill in this cemetary area. Can used these for his shady activities in the 1950's. Somewhat suspecting the locals here to be a little wary of dredging up these memories, we were a little bit cautious asking where the famous 9 bunkers (chin ham) were. However, every local, young and old seemed to know exactly where it was "just a little further!"

With a few more stops, we finally came to a fork where government-installed roadside historical markers - the history nerd's homing beacons in stormy weather - appeared and guided us the last few kilometers down a muddy track.

After that, we found very little left of the actual bunkers, certainly nothing compared to WWII era bunkers one can crawl around in California or even Europe. My guess is that after 1968 or 69, this area was pretty solidly controlled by NLF guerillas and the US Airforce probably carpet-bombed the area as well as defoliating the hill with the bunkers.

The reason, however, that so many people knew where the place was is that sometime a year or two ago, the government erected a massive memorial to the several hundred people who died in Can's interrogation/torture bunkers. It looks as if most of the bodies have been exhumed and then relocated across the way to this large temple. I actually find the socialist realist style stone carvings here to be quite tasteful, and the artistic representation of the bunker carvedinto the stele quite appropriate, minus the 6'5" white guy.








Did someone say tasteful socialist realist art? We briefly stopped after a delicious lunch with the Missus and Scuppy at the former house of Phan Boi Chau so Ed could take a picture of the ginormous bronze head representing the nation's historical marker to Phan Boi Chau. I think the idea is that Phan Boi Chau contributed some great ideas to Ho Chi Minh and especially Ngo Dinh Diem who hung out with Chau in the 1930's. Thank you, Chau, for your abnormally large brain. Why couldn't he also get a buff bod like so many other heroes? And why do there have to be so many faces and people trapped on the sides of your head like so many conjoined twins?

Lazy Friday Eating and Shopping

Today is the first of three days off in the middle of the program. A kind of Hue vacation. We decided to lie low and not travel this weekend, so in the morning we headed out to Hue's first franchise, the Pho 24 noodle shop, an airconditioned shop that is super-clean with California-style pho soup and really delicious coffee. The meal was good, despite the completely empty restaurant. Locals say its outrageously expensive at 24,000 vnd per bowl. Thats more Saigon prices than Hue where a bowl of the local noodle specialty in the very best place is 10,000 vnd. But for aircon, super clean counters and plastic fruit, there is that extra markup.






Scuppy decided to be outrageously cute after our very relaxing and totally delicious, expensive bowl of noodles (about 1.50 usd). These two shots are my favorite from her Pho 24 photo shoot.














Upon returning to the hotel, Scuppy met one of the guys working in the office at the gate of the hotel with a lizard he'd caught just before. Scuppy petted it while the guy held its head between his fingers ina way that didn't hurt the lizard but kept it very still - the way a farmer with experience catching and killing chickens might hold an animal. Like me, Scuppy was very impressed with his skill. Another day filled with new wonders.




I tell my students not to waste a lot of money on cheap souveneirs in Vietnam but to wait until they see something really cool that will retain its meaning for them for years to come. A well-placed purchase of $100 for a piece of art or other item is much more interesting than so many straw hats, wood statues, and ho chi minh t-shirts. Well, today we finally found our special item for the summer. We are getting kites! We stopped in to visit an older man who makes kites only to find that he passed away 5 yrs ago and now his nephew continues the tradition in a house next door. Hue has always been famous for kite-flying and kite-flying has for centuries been a favorite past-time in Asia. Besides beautiful hand-assembled kites such as this phoenix kite, the kite-maker also has produced a dragon kite that includes over 100 pieces and is over 70 meters long. I decided to purchase one of these kites and hope that with a good 30-knot wind I might be able to start some ridiculous new fatherly tradition with Xuan Anh and others that involves trying to get a 120 foot-long kite to fly. From what I have seen it involves a Dad or kid holding the string, a smaller kid in the middle, and a Dad or kid in the back keeping everything stretched out. We've also purchased smaller butterfly and peacock kites for our arsenal of low-wind flyers.

Ai an gioi? Do tay len!

Scuppy is asleep for the night and David, the more regular contributor to this blog, handed me the computer and asked me to write the blog for today.

"Who is a good eater? Raise your hand!" is being demonstrated here - a rather patriotic looking move that could easily go with the local phrase, "Chao, Dong Chi!" or "Hello, Comrade!" This has become Scuppy's favorite game at our daily lunch spot at Thim Lac and Chu Nghien's house - taught to her by her great-auntie "Ba Thim".

This photo was taken this morning over a banana breakfast in the hotel garden. Mama had Bun Bo Hue, her favorite soup, and Ba was already teaching in the classroom by then.

Vietnamese onlookers still marvel everywhere we go at Scuppy's highchair, her ability to sit still in it and to feed herself . Local children are carried while being fed until they are 3 or 4 years old, if not being chased around with food or as we see at the local kiddie park, being fed while riding coin-operated horses or swans. Scuppy is considered skinny, especially because a plump fat baby or child is still the ideal here. From what I've witnessed, local children are force fed "chao" a rice porridge all day long, even when they are not hungry. My guess is that they are so distracted during these "chay dut" or "running feeding" sessions that they do not protest. Scuppy and I are both admired for our wily Western know-how - she for being able to self-feed and chew solid food - and me for not playing maid servant to my daughter and being able to eat at the same time.

Scuppy is thriving here and has settled into a good routine. Her activities include admiring snails in the garden, collecting what she calls heart leaves to drop in the pond, going on bike rides with Mama, feeding raisins to the imaginary monkeys around the corner, and making the housekeeping staff laugh with her various funny faces. Today she played with a 5 year old boy named Samuel from Italy at the pool and had pizza, her favorite exotic food, for dinner at a local backpacker restaurant called Little Italy. There, she ate a whole slice all to herself, while commenting to the curious waitstaff, "Delicious. Ngon lam."