A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
After two months in Thailand (where did the time go? I really only intended to spend a few weeks here) I'm heading to Rangoon, Burma (or Yangon, Myanmar as they now call it) tomorrow. Since I won't have any internet access there, I won't be back here until then end of August, so check in then!
posted by Katy at 12:08 AM

 
Tham Lot, Thailand

I will never be a birdwatcher.

Let me be clear that this implies no criticism of birdwatchers. I admire their zeal, patience and general eccentricity, character traits I admire no matter what the obsession. In my case, although I posess zeal and eccentricity in some abundance, it's patience that I utterly lack. This was made glaringly clear as I visited Tham Lot Cave, a place where there are (reportedly) seriously impressive bird-related sights for the patient watcher.

There are actually three things that draw tourists to Tham Lot. That's not to say that there are alot of tourists there -- it's not exactly in the itinerary of most visitors to Thailand, and while it's not remote, exactly, it's also not the simplest place to get to, located as it is 7 miles up a windy disintegrating mountain road from a fairly minor village along the northern highway. Once you get there, you have a choice of two guesthouses and there's really no other accomodation or indeed restaurant options unless you head back to the highway. Fortunately the guesthouses that do exist are delightful.

But I digress. The three tourist draws are the birds (of which there were 187 listed on a series of posters at Cave Lodge, including the Red Whiskered Bulbul, the Chestnut-headed Bee-eater, and the White-rumped Sharma); the scenery and villages to which you can hike; and Tham Lot itself. "Tham" in Thai means "cave", and if there's any accuracy to Thai nomenclature, "Lot" ought to mean "humongous and unbearably stinky".

A visit to the Tham Lot cave takes over an hour and requires a guide with a very powerful lantern. This place was big, confusing, and had caverns on multiple levels reached by climbing alarmingly steep wooden staircases. And did I mention the river? You can actually raft or kayak through the whole thing. We walked through the first couple of caverns then hopped on a bamboo raft to get the full effect, with the poor driver actually pushing the raft from behind and helpfully pointing his flashlight at the ceiling whenever there was a particularly large bat community gathered. My verdict -- bats make annoying squeaky noises and they don't exactly smell like a flower garden.

You may think that I have once again digressed from my original point (birdwatching, in case you've forgotten), but in fact I have not, I am right on top of things here. Because we cleverly timed our little trip to the cave to coincide with another major tourist attraction -- the nightly return of thousands of swifts to this very cave. As our bamboo raft approached the downstream exit of Tham Lot, it became increasingly obvious that while the bat-only sections of the cave were no walk in a perfume factory, they were a veritable paradise compared to the caverns in which the swifts nested. Holy mother of pearl, was it awful. Seriously, the stench was so powerful in some places we began to debate the necessity of breathing. The distasteful aspects of this were compounded as we began exploring this final cavern with our guide, and realized that despite the uneven ground we could touch absolutely nothing. Every surface, including the stairs and their potentially life-saving railings, were encased in a toxic paste made of guano and feathers. After an interesting, if icky, tour of nearby caves in which the coffins of ancient civilizations remain, we returned to the cave opening for 10 minutes of deep breathing and yet another personal vow to avoid all caves, no matter how impressive. Unless gas masks and tanks of lilac-scented oxygen are distributed at the entrance.

OK, you've been very patient, and this is where I explain why I could never be a birdwatcher. We were told (misinformed) by our guide that the swifts would be flying in at 6 pm, which would translate into a perfectly doable 15 minutes wait. Thirty minutes later and there were still only a couple hundred swifts flying around and cruelly teasing us by having one or two peel off and jet into the cave every so often. A multi-family group of Dutch tourists arrived and reported that the real swift ETA was 6:30. So we waited. Mind you, I had no book with me due to my previous sodden experience with bamboo rafts. I suppose it's conceivable that I could be a birdwatcher if I could spend the majority of the downtime with a good book, but I'm thinking that birdwatching most likely requires "watching". By 6:30 I was pretty board with staring at the sky.

At 6:35 we started to get some real action. Hundreds of birds swirled and darted around in the darkening sky outside the cave entrance It was controlled chaos, as if they were preparing to form into a "he went thataway" arrow to tip off Elmer Fudd as to Bugs Bunny's whereabouts. Soon groups started swooping into the cave, and let me just say that these birds are well named. They're amazing flyers, are extremely quick and can practically make 90 degree turns. It really was fun to watch.

AS entertaining as it was, after 15 minutes of staring I felt I had the gist of it and was quite ready to head back to Cave Lodge for dinner and a big icy Beer Chang. We had been standing in the opening of this stinky cave for over an hour, and apparently the American couple I went with shared my attention span issues. As we approached the end of the path to the parking lot we crossed a bridge from which we could see our original upstream cave entrance, and were informed by more lounging Dutchmen that at any moment thousands more birds would arrive from their workday in Burma and simultaneously go home to roost with National Geographic quality precision and scope. So we sat down again to wait.

At this point, a true birdwatcher would have had no problem waiting for the Burmese contingent. After all, this is probably a pretty impressive bird sight, and the description of it sounds pretty cool for sure. I, on the other hand, was very figety, and had a great deal of trouble keeping my mind off my impending sweat-and-guano-removing shower and chicken coconut curry. So we left. Yes, we left with perhaps only minutes to wait for the amazing onslaught of Burmese swifts.

I am a bad tourist, and a worse birdwatcher, but the curry was fantastic, and the Beer Chang really hit the spot.


Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 1:16 AM

 
Mae Hong Son, Thailand

One thing I did not do while in Mae Hong Son was to visit the "Long-Neck Villages", villages of Karen Paduang refugees from burma who, as you may have seen in National Geographic or the like, wear gold rings (or actually one very long coil) around their necks. In actuality their necks do not lengthen, but since the rings depress their shoulders, collarbone and ribcage it looks that way.

Though these villages are quite a tourist attraction around here for both foreigners and Thais, I avoided it. The long-neck tradition was one which, no doubt thankfully for the health and daily comfort of these women, was dying out somewhat during the 20th century. It has been revived for tourism purposes and these villages come across as human zoos -- there are large walls surrounding them, you pay your $8 (foreigners pay only) to enter, and you can take photos of any and all exhibits, AKA women.

The issue is not black and white, of course. While in Thailand I read an article in the Bangkok Post in which some of these women convincingly assert that their life is better than when they were poor farmers fighting against the Burmese government. Getting your picture taken and selling souvenirs all day is certainly a less strenuous life than working in the rice paddies. On the other hand, there have been cases of Thais entering Burma to kidnap long-neck women from the interior in order to showcase them here in the border villages. For me, the whole thing just drew a big red line under my qualms about tribal tourism, and I don't need to promote this most egregious example.

Hmm, I see that I just wrote three paragraphs on something I didn't see while traveling in Asia. Really, I probably could have written a whole travel book from the comfort of my apartment in Seattle.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 10:18 PM

 
Mae Hong Son, Thailand

Mae Hong Son, the capital of Thailand's northwesternmost (is that a word?) province of the same name, has more tourists than Mae Sariang, but it's still very quiet in the off-season. It's in a typically lovely mountain valley with a wat up on a hill to which you can climb. I did, sweating off two pounds in the process, and the views were spectacular.

In order to see a bit of the countryside around Mae Hong Son, I rented a motorbike. Using the feeble photocopied hand-drawn map given to me upon arrival at the bus station on my first day, my aim was to visit Mae Aw, a Kuomintang village atop a mountain not far from the Burmese border.

Now, I'm embarassed to admit that I don't know thing one about the KMT, and my visit to the village did nothing to correct my ignorance. After a couple hours of gorgeous scenery and nervewrackingly steep uphill driving (made challenging by the crappy powerless motorbike I rented), I arrived in a village with practically no people. Sure there was the usual complement of kids playing in the roadand women observing from their porches. But sadly, during my brief visit I witnessed no aging revolutionaries drinking Thai whisky and reminiscing over the glory days of their misspent youth. Today Mae Aw (whose Thai name, Ban _____, amusingly means \'Thai Lovers Village') is pretty much the same as all other fairly prosperous Northern Thai mountain villages -- lots of young families, wooden houses and farmers.

On my way up to Mae Aw I visited another impressive waterfall, Pha Sua. Happily, I made it up and down this trail without encasing myself in mud. My way back down the mountain was decidely wet, so I detoured onto a side road in the hopes of finding a shelter from the deluge. After waiting out the worst of the flood I found myself at some sort of botanical gardents. According to my makeshift map I was at some sort of Summer Palace, but as there were no signs in English, no tourists, no English speakers and no palace in sight, I can't be sure that was my actual location. What it looked like was a beautifully manicured park, with gazebos and meeting areas, large greenhouses full of flowers and plants, and a rose garden atop a hill. I wandered in solitude for a while, responding to workiers who would call out "Hello Foreigner" in Thai, then headed back to the motorbike.

My final stop of the day was Tham Pla National Park, more commonly known as Fish Cave. This was not a cave I had to walk into, thankfully, but a truly weird cave into which hundreds of giant carp faught to enter. The streeam ran out of the cave, and in a couple of spots there were holes in the rock where you could look down and see the carp struggling upstream into the dark, ten deep as they struggled for position. Tourists, or rather "tourist", since I was the only one there, drop in bags of fruit and seeds and watch the fish go insane.

Well that's it for Mae Hong Son. A bit boring in the telling, I realize, but I can't always have exciting adventures.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 9:59 PM

 
Mae Sariang, Thailand

Apart from being robbed of virtually everything of value, I very much enjoyed Mae Sariang. I had two excellent companions for the first two days, the Canadian father/son duo, and was staying in a rather off-beat guesthouse with a real character of a proprietor. If I had to describe Aekkasan, I think maybe Chinese/Thai Hippie Used Car Salesman would come closest to conveying his appearance and personality.

His guesthouse, the See View, reflected his weird exuberance. Instead of the more traditional icons used to describe tourist destinations -- knife and fork, bed, picnic table -- the signs for the See View sported a bungalow, a fork-and-spoon (they don't really use knives in Thailand), a beer bottle and wine glass, and a long haired, elaborately mustached cowboy. Yes, a cowboy, and not a Thai one either.

The restaurant at the guesthouse was in Aekkasan-filtered old west style, with such decorative touches as animal heads and snakeskins on the walls, wagon wheels, and large posters of famous movie cowboys and indians, including Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not really a cowboy, but he did have a nice whip and a leather hat. During the high season the owner plays "Thai country" music on his guitar and harmonica, and we were treated to a concert featuring a combination of Thai and foreign songs of the Bob Dylan/Eric Clapton/Neil Young variety. Imagine, if you will, three foreigners sitting on stools made of tree stumps drinking beer with ice and listening to a ponytailed Thai-Chinese man with a slight lisp: "De antha ma frenn, ees blowin een da ween, de antha ess blowin een da ween".

Despite the questionable musical talent, Aekkasan convinced us to take is one-day 4X4/Boat Border River Tour. The border between Thailand and Myanmar/Burma is mountainous and lush, with the brown and very deep Salawin River between them. Crossing is difficult without a boat -- dangerous currents and whirlpools are constant. On the Thai side there are scattered small fishing villages, a day's walk from each other. On the Myanmar side the only signs of life are the military outposts, each set up directly opposite a Thai village. We were warned not to take pictures of these huts and watchtowers, which meant I had to valiantly supress my contrary desire to take some, regardless of how dull they might be. I was successful -- it was good practice for my trip to the rest of Myanmar in a couple of weeks.

Though I still have qualms about the hill-tribe trekking concept (see my No Akha entry of early May) the Mae Sariange experience did make me rethink somewhat. The villagers wer friendly, relatively prosperous, and I didn't feel like they were on parade for us. This may have been because these were more worldly villagers with more access to the outside world, as well as the fact that we weren't spending the night there. I was able to approach it more like a scenery trek than a tribe trek, as the setting was lovely and I didn't feel like we were intruding much, even thugh we did have a delightful village to the school during lunchtime. I took pictures and teased the children, J.R. (a Canadian school principal) chatted up the head teacher, and JR's 14 year old son stood uncomfortably nearby in a futile attempt to convey the idea that he was not with us and thus our embarassing antics should not reflect upon him.

After a boat ride back to civilization, we took a meandering tour of the agricultural Mae Sariang valley, watching the farmers and laborers at work with the rice, corn and fruit trees, then headed back to the See View for a well-earned Beer Chang.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 8:35 PM

 
Mae Sot to Mae Sariang, Thailand

With all this civilized aircon bus and night train travel in Thailand I had managed to forget the dubious joys of the sawngthaew, or covered pickup truck, as a mode of long distance transportation. The six hour mountainous journey from Mae Sot to Mae Sariang along the border with Burma brought those nightmares roaring back to life.

There were only a few of us in the vehicle at the outset -- me, a father/son Canadian duo, and a Thai man, so we really felt like we were due for a luxurious ride, as sawngthaews go. Since my experience has been of thse things packed to the roof with humans, animals and cargo, I was basking in the leg room and absence of livestock.

That kind of comfort level couldn't be sustained, of course -- I could never be that lucky. An hour into our trip we hit a series of military checkpoints and a massive refugee camp with thousands of leaf-covered stilt huts housing Karen and Shan families and fighters fleeing Burma. Apparently their movements within Thailand aren't completely circumscribed -- 17 piled into the pickup with us, including one soon-to-be-sick toddler, a man with malformed stumps for legs, and a woman who looked like she could give birth at any second. Thankfully they were also carrying a couple of chickens. I wouldn't want a journey to pass without chickens.

Despite the discomfort (not so bad for me but the father/son were wedged in fetal position against the cab among bags and a large spare tire) in retrospect this could be considered the most entertaining and safe part of the ride. As long as the truck was crammed full of people, our smiley nutcase of a driver kept the speed down for fear that small children would go flying out the back. I was free to catch glimpses of the amazing views to Burma while hopelessly coveting the gorgeous bone structure of the Karen refugees.

Normally these pickups stop only to drop off and pick up passengers, but this one was on a different kind of schedule. While we naturally made these usual stops,we ended up spending more time on other matters. Our driver was a favorite with all along the route, so every ID checkpoint was a bit of a social occasion and we stopped several times for him to bargain for freshly caught fish or other dinner-related items. Once the refutees had reached their destinations, he felt free to pick up the speed to make up for the time losts in the periodic stops for beer, shots of whiskey, simple social interaction, or to pick up massive amounts of cargo, upon which we rested our extended legs.

Now after all this time travelling in Asia on various types of transportation I like to cultivate an air of insouciance and imperviousness to the petty fears of a neophyte tourist. My two companions had adopted a similar demeanor, and for a while we were all busily attempting to convey how tedious and old hat this particular journey was to us seasoned travellers. I broke first -- careening down this snakelike mountain road with a giggling semi-drunken driver at grand prix speeds in the back of a pickup truck while sitting atop bales of bamboo was damned dangerous. We were clearly risking our lives, and I wasn't too sophisticated to say so. Turns out we were all in agreement on that point. After two hair-raising, white-knuckled hours of this, we all staggered dazedly out, kneeled to the ground and lifted our arms to the heavens in thanks for our deliverance. Well, maybe it didn't happen exactly like that, but I did arrive in one (albeit shaky) piece and I lived to write about it.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 2:07 AM

 
Mae Sot, Thailand

In Mae Sot I decided that the best way to see the sights was by motorbike. I'd already determined on my first day that the town itself didn't have a whole lot to offer, and it has developed a rather violent reputation lately as a place where young racist Thai gangs beat and kill innocent Burmese walking along the street at night, not to mention the Burmese women who get sold into domestic or sexual slavery. Though on the surface it seemed peaceful and dull, I was ready to get out of town.

The morning was uneventful, with a leisurely ride out to some hot springs (lame) and a cave (skipped it). In the afternoon I headed south to Pha Charoen waterfall. This destination was chosen mostly because I couldn't find the first waterfall I aimed for -- either Lonely Planet needs to improve their directions or the Thais need to invest in more English language signage. Pha Charoen was well worth it, an incredible 90 levels of water cascading down a tropical mountain. It almost looked fake, it was so beautiful and perfect.

As this is the rainy season in northern Thailand, the path to the top was quite slippery, and I managed to fall on my ass in the mud on two separate occasions. I was an alarming sight to the Thai tourists at the bottom when I emerged from the forest like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, dripping and muddy, with a broken motorbike helmet visor to show for my efforts.

Three Thai drivnig hazards emerged durng my day on the motorbike, not including the usual terrors of cars, trucks, road construction, and driving on the left. The two morning hazards were both animal in nature. The first wasn't so unfamiliar -- a herd of cattle crossing the road in front of me at an inopportune moment. Not that every moment isn't inopportune when crossing in front of a person of limited driving skills. The second could definitely be described as a first for me -- a caravan of elephants with various agricultural products, tools, and Thai handlers on top, lumbering and swaying hugely down the narrow road, dropping monstrous amouns of dung behind them and hogging the shoulder and most of my lane. Fortunately were were not exactly on a busy highway at that point -- I was able to pass without any tragic vehicle/elephant carnage.

The third driving hazard was far more nervewracking, though it sounds innocent -- it rained. Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm not the greatest driver in the world. It's not for nothing that during one dark summer I was known as "Crash" to my friends and family, though I continue to maintain that I was only responsible for a couple of those accidents. I also don't have much experience on a motorbike, so I operate in constant fear that I will hit something slippery or solid and go careening off the road or into an elephant or something.


As a result of all this, when the deluge began I immediately pulled into a closed storefront, got my book out and started snacking on the remainder of my fruit, figuring that even if I had to sit there for half an hour it would still be light enough to find the guesthouse since I was already on the outskirts of town. Forty-five minutes later, with no discernable change in the torrent, I began to have my doubts. Rain like this is rarely seen outside the pages of Genesis.

Since it seemed unwise to wait until I had to brave the storm in the pitch darkness, I donned my rain poncho and set off, splashing through 8 inch puddles at speeds reaching 7 mph. Remember how I broke the visor on the helmet earlier in the day? Its consequent absence meant I could either ride blnid with fogged and rainy glasses or ride blinder with no glasses at all.

Things managed to get worse, as I got hopelessly lost in the darkening deluge, unable to read any of the signs in Thai. When the situation get absolutely impossible, I took a break at some sort of army outpost, where 20 friendly men in fatigues were happy to offer me food and a chair, and helpfully turned their TV to the National Geographic Channel, the only one they got in English. Twenty minutes of sodden driving and two stops for directions later, I made it back to the guesthouse where I pushed the motorbike through the newly created 10" moat (formerly called "the patio") to the front door. You will understand why I decided to "eat in" that night.


Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 8:30 PM

 
Kamphaeng Phet, Thailand

I was able to experience the remarkable ease of travelling in Thailand upon my departure from Kanchanaburi. My objective was to head north and avoid Bangkok, and I figured I'd just keep catching buses and get as far as I could toward Kamphaeng Phet before dark. And though I did have some mild trepidation about this plan, since I was heading through areas that aren't even mentioned iin the guidebooks (adn thus are unlikely to boast many English speakers) it turned out to be a walk in the park. I'd pick a likely bus hub on the map, point to it and vocally massacre the name in Thai, and would be directed to a bus almost immediately.

Due to the high mobility of the Thais (ths must come with improvement in the economic situation -- there sure weren't many buses to choose from in Laos or Cambodia) I never had to wait longer than 30 minutes for my next connecting bus. Even though I didn't drag myself out of town in the morning until 10am, I made it to Kamphaeng Phet by six in the evening, a very successful day from a transportation standpoint. I also had the opportunity to experience Thai local buses, rather than the deluxe air-con versions I had taken thus far. Though no chickens were in evidence, they did represent a substantial drop in comfort level -- five seats across, tiny aisle, no aircon, no reclining, and of course they stop for anyone who hails from the side of the road. And since they are basically the form of public transit in many of these places, these buses serve commuters and schoolchildren and an get incredibly crowded. It's critical to get a window seat.

In contrast with the ease of the journey, my arrival in Kamphaeng Phet was rather more challenging than usual. It seems I happened upon a town where tourists never go, though I'm not quite sure why. The resulting equation would be -- No Tourists = No English = No Cheap Hotels = No Readable Menus = No Convenient Transportation.

I was quite fortunate in one way when I arrived -- another adventurous farang (foreigner) had washed ashore in the Kamphaeng Phet bus station. Marine, a French college student, had already worked out that there was only one way into town (the Thais like to site official bus stations somewhat out of town, I suspect in an attempt to provide full emloyment to taxi, motorbike and sawnthaew drivers), a sawnthaew driver to whom took an immediate dislike, as she refused to take us to any hotel other than the one she recommended. My dislike was reinforced when upon arrival at said hotel (which apeared to have a nightclub attached -- not my cup of tea) she tried to charge us four times the going rate, which I unequivocally refused to allow. It's safe to say that she didn't like me any more than I liked her, since I wouldn't let Marine overpay either.

Afer determining by phone that all the affordable guesthouses listed in our guidebooks were no longer in existence, we ended up at a Chinese hotel nearby that would have been fine if it hadn't already been so full. Our room, the only remaining double, was an interior room, whose large windows offered a lovely view of an adjacent hallway containing a large number of people who stayed up late, rose early, and liked to keep their TV's on loud enough for the Burmese to follow the action. It was also very hot, as without an exterior window, the ceiling fan was of limited use. They did provide towels and soap, which was nice, but the toilet didn't flush consistently, which was not. All this luxury for $7.50. Needless to say, I decided almost immediately to spend no more than one night in Kamphaeng Phet -- I was willing to take a bus in almost any direction.

The perfect way to get around Kamphaeng Phet, which was a major outpost during the Sukhothai period, would be by bicycle. The traffic isn't too bad and the ruins are a bit spread out and some distance from the new part of town. At some point since the publication of teh guidebook, however, Kamphaeng Phet gave up on the whole "catering to tourists" concept. All guesthouses closed, no restaurants with English menus remained, no taxis available, and no bicycles or motorbike rentals to be found. So we walked.

It really was a lovely place, despite the challenges. A couple of ruined temples within the walled, moated city drew wandering Thai famiies and reportedly joggers, though these were understandably absent during our visit, during which we easily sweated off two liters of water in the sweltering humidity. Another slew of ruins required a hike outside the city to a forested National Historical Park. It is quite possible that I have set back US-France relations by my ill-conceived suggestion of a "short cut" back to town which proved to be an hour long sweaty jungle route during which we saw just three other humans, two of them children, and ended up right back at the park entrance. I like to pretend I have a good sense of direction, but then again self-delusion is one of my real talents.

Our nature walk completed, we headed back to the bus station. Next stop: Mae Sot.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 2:36 AM

 
Chiang Mai, Thailand

It's a bad, bad day here in Thailand. Yesterday in Mae Sariang, a (formerly) charming little town in northwestern Thailand, I discovered that I had been robbed. And not just a little bit -- I was well and truly taken.

So I have learned the following lessons:

1. Do not carry over $1200 in cash
2. Do not keep it all in the same place.
3. Money belts are meant to be worn around the waist, not in bags where they can be removed silently by evil theives.
4. Do not get robbed on the Friday before a 3-day bank holiday in a town with only one bank and no Western Union.

There are some more positive points to the story. First and foremost, by some fluke I had stuck my passport in a different place this week, so I still have that. Lord knows I wouldn't be nearly so philosophical if I'd lost that -- I'm not so very upset about the money (though it would, of course, have been useful), but losing the passport would have put a severe crimp in my travelling plans.

Since I was in the back of beyond when all this happened, I was in a bit of a fix, not having paid for my food, lodging, or tour costs for 3 days at the place I was staying, and having only a few dollars in my possession. This was where my overwhelming air of Trustworthiness and Harmlessness came in useful. Though in the past it's been a bit of a pain that people (meaning weirdos) feel so comfortable talking to me, in Mae Sariang it inspired a bank teller to give me a personal loan so I could take the bus to Chiang Mai, stay in a hotel here, and get my replacement travellers checks before coming back to Mae Sariang to pay my bills.

So all is relatively well. I have some money in hand (not enough for my liking -- I really should have been spending through that cash instead of the checks), I have my long-suffering sister working on getting me a new ATM card out here ASAP, and I have enough money in the bank to keep travelling. And while Dad suggests that this is God's way of telling me to come home, I figure it's His way of telling me to cut back on the expensive ice cream cones and start staying in rattier motels.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 12:28 AM

 
More Kanchanaburi, Thailand

One of the more interesting and disturbing things to do in Kanchanaburi is visit war museums. It's a small town, but there's no shortage of these -- I went to two of the four. Both featured the same basic informatin and identical photos, paintings, drawings and clippings, but the Kanchanaburi WWI Museum made and extra-special effort with life-sized diorama displays of starving and injured men, POW's under torture, and the aftermath of the prisoners getting bombed off the bridge by Allied planes. Nice.

Apart from these grisly displays, the most interesting offering was the parade of WWII notables -- statues of the 10 men deemed most critical to the war, along with some decidedly offbeat descriptions of each painted on the wall behind them. Sadly, FDR did not make the cut, though Harry Truman did, described as "a nice, simple, modest man who was full of wisdom and ideas." Perhaps understandably, given their lack of direct interest in the European theater, Roosevelt's spot was ably held by Albert Einstein, who received sole credit for the invention of the atomic bomb. The Thais apparently have no revisionist qualms about the morality of bombing Japan -- according to the version at the Kanchanaburi WWII Museum, "The first atomic bomb weighing only 1400kg was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 7, 1945. Almost the entire city was destroyed in a jiffy." McArthur also came in for high praise, though his brief bio spent more space discussing the fact that he married a woman 40 years his junior than on any war-related exploits.

All in all, it was a much more entertaining museum than I expected, though I must admit a bit of alarm to have read that "up to now no one knows if Hitler is really dead". Do you?

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 8:19 PM

 
Kanchanaburi, Thailand

The physical setting of Kanchanaburi is lovely and serene, with winding rivers, thriving rice, sugar cane, tapioca and banana farms, and several impressive national parks nearby featuring the usual combination of waterfalls, caves, and mountains. For the lucky visitor, there are also views of animals including macaques (saw them), porcupines, slow loris (whatever that is), wild elephants, barking deer, hog-nosed miniature bats (also unfortunately saw them) and, according to our guide, tigers.

In rather frightening contrast to all this natural beauty are the numerous historical sites in the area which graphically illustrate man's inhumanity to man. More specifically in this case, the Japanese military's inhumanity to Allied POW's and impressed Asian laborers. Kanchanaburi is the site of the Bridge on the River Kwai, which was a small part of the huge Burma-Thai Railway project executed by forced laborers and their brutal captors between 1942 and 1944. For tragically obvious reasons, this project is commonly known as the "Death Railway" today.

A little background is probably in order at this point. In 1942 the Japanese, currently having already plowed through Malaya, Singapore, and in control of Thailand, conceived a plan to build a railway from Bampong in Thailand to Thanbyuzayat in Burma. The sea-lanes between Singapore and Rangoon were patrolled by allied warships, and a more secure supply was required in order to gain full control of Burma and ultimately India as well. The Japanese didn't give a hoot about pesky international agreements precluding countries from allowing POW's to provide direct assistance to the enemy, or indeed be housed next to military targets.

An early Japanese surveyor estimated that construction of the railway, which stretched some 260 miles through extraordinarily inhospitable jungle, mountains, and solid rock, would take about five years. Using primitive tools, suffering from malaria, dysentery, beri beri, cholera, ulcerated limbs, malnutrition and torture by guards, the 60,000 POW's and 200,000 civilian Asians completed the project in 16 months. During those 16 months over 16,000 POW's and nearly 190,000 civilian laborers died.

The WWII tour of Kanchanaburi province basically consists of a visit to the Bridge on the River Kwai, a train trip along part of the remaining 82 miles of the Death Railway itself, and a trek to an area (and associated museum) dubbed "Hellfire Pass" by POW's.

Apart from the Allied War Cemetary, which holds the remains of over 6000 English, Dutch and Austrailian soldiers, Hellfire Pass was perhaps the most moving site, as it was all too easy to envision the horrific circumstances surrounding the construction there. In the section of rail known as the "Konyu Cutting" to the Japanese, workers with little more than shovels, picks and metal taps with sledge hammers creating holes for explosives, cut through a stretch of solid stone 110 meters long and 10 meters high. Workers were criminally underfed, often shoeless and wearing only a loincloth, and suffered from a wide variety of injuries and illnesses. They worked 16-18 hour shifts at Konyu Cutting for 12 weeks, carrying away all the debris in baskets and working while being beaten with bamboo sticks. This misery combined with the look of the huge trench lit by torches during the many hours of darkness made "Hellfire Pass" an appropriate name. By the end of the 12 weeks, 70% of the 1000-man POW crew working there had been buried at Konyu cemetary. The Japanese military have a lot to answer for.

As a visitor to Hellfire Pass, the scene is quite serene 60 years later. The jungle is dense in these mountains, and hte periodic views of the valley as you walk along the abandoned rail line are lovely. But signs of the efforts of 1943 are everywhere. A few remaining railroad ties remain, fashioned by prisoners out of teak logged from the surrounding forest. All along the rock face of the mountainside you can see the marks of the hand tools and explosives used to remove part of the mountain and create a level path for the military trains. The Hellfire Pass Museum nearby features horrifying photographs and contemporary drawings of the prisoners at work and getting what inadequate medical care was available. One particularly awful bit of film featured showless, loinclothed and emaciated POW's strutting in front of the camera in some sort of drill. It gave the sense of a very twisted fashion show.

Not far from Hellfire Pass we caught the train itself. Now admittedly it is a bit unsettling to board something called the "Death Railway", particularly since it looked like the train had been around a mighty long time, clanking and screeching and rattling over some of the elaborate wooden trestles still remaining from the WWII construction. Presumably, however, Thai engineers have checked to make sure it's all safe. Since we came directly from an exhibit about ways the POW's would suruptitiously sabotage the railway (using weak logs, filling holes with leaves, planting termite nests under bridges), a little reassurance would not have been unwelcome. After 2 hours of fairly pedestrian train travel (on superlatively uncomfortable wooden seats) with nice views and a load of schoolchildren taking their daily ride home, we de-trained at the Bridge on the River Kwai itself.

The bridge looks ordinary, your standard black iron bridge on huge concrete footings. As I haven't seen the film, I hear from dad that the bridge in the movie may have been made of wood. It seems there were actually two Bridges on the River Kwai, just a few meters from each other, both built by POW's in early 1943. In February 1943 a wooden bridge was completed over the Kwai Yai, then just two months later the iron version went up, shipped in pieces from Java. The bridge was used for only 20 months before Allied bombing began in 1945. The middle section of the bridge was destroyed, but most of the original construction (iron version) remains and despite the fact that I've never seen the movie I found myself involuntarily whistling its famous theme song as I walked across. Now 4 days later I still can't get the tune out of my head. Damn, it's catchy.


Copyright 2003 Katy Warren






posted by Katy at 7:52 PM

 
Bangkok, Thailand

In the end, I only spent one night in Bangkok this time. First of all, I was unable to get into the Atlanta (great weird place I'll write about later), then my second choice, the D & D (soulless hotel but with beautiful rooftop pool) was full up as well. So rather than brave Khao San Road to find a cheap place, I went to a clean little guesthouse (with aircon -- my concession to sanity preservation in Bangkok) near Siam Square.

Siam Square looked a lot nicer from teh window of the Sky Train than it did on the ground. Lots of urban malls and teenagers, and it was all kind of grimy. Since my only real objective was to watch movies in airconditioned comfort for the day, the quality of Siam Square didn't really bother me.

Unfortunately, I waited a bit too long for Movie Day. Instead of the Mindless Hollywood Blockbuster CGI-Fests that I wanted to see (Matrix Reloaded, X-Men 2) I was forced to settle for a lesser pair of Mindless Hollywood Blockbuster CGI-Fests: The Hulk and Charlie's Angels Full Throttle. Here are my reviews:

The Hulk: **1/2
Boring and utterly humorless apart from the laughably fakey monsters. Nice retro split-screen/wipe techniques, but they should have but some of that graphics money into a decent writer.

Charlie's Angels Full Throttle: *1/2
Stupid, but what can you expect? I suspect I would have enjoyed it more if I were either male or gay, as the principal objective of the film appeared to be to get the Angels into skanky outfits.

Bangkok Theater: ****
Wow! Assigned seating, wide plush chairs, carpeted floors, big screens, friendly ushers with flashlights, and staff who speak English. For an extra dollar or two you can even upgrade to the Super Gold Club seating, which appeared to consist of oversized padded leather lazy-boys with extending footrests and full reclining. Next time I can't find a hotel I'm just going to join the Super Gold Club and go to consecutive movies through the night.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 6:27 AM