This is just a wonderful little book: a ~20 year epistolary between a New York author in search of rare books from a (very) British bookseller. Reading this almost makes me wish I lived in the time before the internet, when people could actually build relationships through letters, never having met. I encountered this book after I went to London last year after I told my mother that I stumbled across the eponymous road, which happens to be filled with used bookstores. Apparently, it was a favorite of her and my father.

Boomsday

A young woman incites national riots suggesting that the elderly should be given incentives to kill themselves in order to prevent the country from being bankrupted by Medicare and Social Security. The further along I got in this book the less it seemed like satire, and the more I thought that it was a genuinely good idea. After a while, however, the book slows down and I found myself plodding through just to see how it ends, only to be met with one of the lamest endings I’ve read in a while.

Burn after Reading

I loved it, girlfriend hated it (“What was that even about?!”) Classic Cohen brothers flick. It was no “A Serious Man,” but certainly worth watching and very entertaining. I enjoyed the DC shots, of course.

Homage to Catalonia

Orwell makes war sound awesome. He seems to spend most of his time hanging out around his trench, dodging the occasional bullet shot by an inept enemy, and only rarely encounters any real horror. The lengthy discussions about subtle differences between various socialist factions get tedious, but overall this is a wonderful, meandering book that’s easy to pick up here and there for a few pages at a time. I finished this at the very end of the summer at a beach house in Virginia, and it made for excellent lazy afternoon reading.

I am Charlotte Simmons

My first Tom Wolfe novel. He has an incredible eye for detail. The college experience he describes here didn’t remotely resemble my own, but there are so many details—college parties, different cliques, ways of speaking—that he just nails. It’s a long read and rather melodramatic/incredulous at times, but it’s not supposed to be his best work. I’m looking forward to eventually reading Bonfire of the Vanities.

Midnight in Paris

Wonderful Woody Allen flick. It’s no Hannah and her Sisters or Annie Hall, but all of the standard elements of a Woody Allen movie (old music, pompous intellectuals) are there. And unlike “Whatever Works,” (which did not, in fact, work,) this movie felt sufficiently different from his earlier movies to merit a second viewing. I don’t think that people will be talking about this one 30 years from now the same way they talk about his more famous films, and I don’t think it will fall in the “Excellent but underrated” category with such films as Broadway Danny Rose and Curse of the Jade Scorpion. But it’s still a wonderful little movie. It doesn’t feel like he’s just phoning it in.

Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers

Tom Wolfe makes fun of liberal elites (Leonard Bernstein & Co.) for allying themselves with the very people who want to destroy them (Black Panthers) in order to assuage their guilt. A wonderful sociological observation. And who doesn’t like making fun of elitist, guilty, urban liberals?

—

On Saturday I made my way to South Station in Boston in order to catch the Fung Wah bus to NYC, where I would then take the subway uptown and then catch the LIRR home. It’s a trip that I’ve taken countless times and can probably do with my eyes closed.

I arrived at the station early, and managed to catch a bus that left 30 minutes before I planned on leaving. “Smashing!” I thought.

However, there was to be nothing “Smashing” about the trip.

I was initially put off guard when I noticed that the bus lacked the trustworthy (?) Fung Wah logo. Instead, it was an older, unmarked white and yellow vehicle. Given some of my previous dealings with Fung Wah, I was unsure whether this should have inspired confidence or fear. To make matters stranger, the driver was not the familiar Chinese man that I was used to seeing on these trips. Instead, he was a tall, portly, middle-aged man of Eastern European decent. He wore a thin leather vest over his shirt, which struck me as both un-stylish and remarkably impractical.

I made my way towards the back of the bus and took a seat, where I found more trouble. Some sort of liquid was dripping down from the ceiling, with certain seats marked to let people know not to sit there, lest they get wet. “No big deal,” I thought to myself, as I took a seat towards the back, away from the unknown liquid.

At that point, a tall, lanky guy carrying a backpack boarded the bus. He made an announcement as he walked down to take his seat to my right: “Well, we’re going to be together for 380 minutes, ladies and gentlemen–let’s have a pleasant ride!” This was obviously his attempt funny or cute, although he failed on both counts. Rather, the only thing it did was reveal that he was almost certainly crazy. He reminded me of a more harmless version of Gary Busey, and from here on I will refer to him as GB.

GB reached up to put his bag in the overhead compartment, only to be yelled at by a young and rather sketchy gentleman wearing long dreadlocks: “TAKE YOUR BITCH ASS HANDS OFF MY MOTHERFUCKIN’ SEAT,” he exclaimed. Surprisingly enough GB kept his cool, while the sketchy black dude (from here on referred to as SBD) was clearly still very angry. Everyone on the bus was clearly irked by the prospect of spending the next 3.75+ hours locked in a bus with a mentally disturbed guy in dreadlocks and Gary Busey. Should we alert the driver? If so, what would he say? All of the previous Fung Wah drivers didn’t speak a word of English beyond “Sit down,” “We be there soon,” and—upon pulling into a highway rest stop—“Ten minutes.” I suspected the same of our current driver, a Chinese accent replaced with a Russian one.

The driver closed the door and drove off as passengers took their seats. Both SBD and GB calmed down, and we started rolling down the Mass Pike toward Worcester. It finally started to seem like a normal bus ride.

It would not be normal for long.

Not too long into the ride, SBD began rocking back and forth, laying down on both of his seats (hopefully his seats weren’t soaked with the phantom liquid from earlier—more on that later), and making strange grunting noises. Everyone on the bus was noticeably freaked out, much more so than after his initial outburst at GB back in South Station. He went to the bathroom a few times, while GB made various smart-ass comments.

Shortly after, GB rose from his seat and talked to the driver for a good five minutes. Apparently he coordinated with the driver to have SBD removed from the bus, or at least that’s what I inferred from his 911 call when he gave the operator the approximate location of a rest area/Chinese buffet near Hartford that we were pulling into.

As we pulled into the shopping center people milled about smoking and stretching, or going to the nearby Chinese buffet. General Tsao’s chicken at 11 AM? The breakfast of champions, indeed.

Shortly thereafter three Connecticut state troopers rolled up, where they confronted our dreadlocked friend and asked him to sit on a bench as they asked him about the situation. He refused, resisted, and cried racism, which only made the situation worse and resulted the SBD being taken away in the back of a patrol car. GB made it clear that he “hates to have to do that,” and even though I still thought that GB was a bit crazy and that the SBD was treated a bit harshly due to his race, I was reassured knowing that at least one of our two crazy guys was no longer on our bus. I boarded the bus again, happy that that unpleasantness is behind us.

And that’s when things took a turn for the worse.

Between Hartford and New Haven, the bus stalled. The product of a faulty cooling system, GB loudly informed us. Well, that would explain the liquid dripping from the ceiling. After a minute or two of idling, we start up again, on our way. Everything is fine now, right?

No. Over the next hour or two, the bus stalled and needed to pull over the side of the road a few more times. We also moved very slowly, far slower than any other vehicle on the road. GB was apoplectic. He called Fung Wah, commanding them to send another bus to meet us, assuring them that there will be “real big trouble” if they don’t. After 15 minutes of getting nowhere, GB locates a Chinese man on the bus, and asked him talk to the Fung Wah people in NYC over his cell phone. This attempt at making Fung Wah talk to “one of their own” bore no fruit, as we continued on down the highway at 30-40 miles an hour, pulling over and re-starting the bus from time to time.

GB contined to go nuts. He spent the next several hours talking in the phone non stop; to a pastor about bible passages, to the people that he was going to meet, apologizing about being late; yelling at the Fung Wah people some more, and telling us that he “blames himself” for not using his “intuition and experience to know that there was a problem back at South Station when the bus was leaking.” Everyone on the bus was quietly upset. Not GB. He was loud, walking up and down the aisle yelling at the people at Fung Wah over his cell phone some more. I began to wish that the state troopers took this guy away, also.

As for me, I kept my eyes on the road ahead of me, straining to see each green sign that we passed along the Connecticut coast into New York. Westport, Bridgeport, Greenwich, Fairfield, Stamford, Yonkers…we were getting closer and closer [Note: this was in the pre-iPhone, pre internet-on-bus era, so one actually had to check the signs as the bus went along to know where one was].

And that’s when things got worse.

We were near White Plains, NY when the bus stalled and pulled over. But it was not a normal stall. The driver could not re-start the bus. We idled on the side of 95 South, the daylight fading, so close to our destination and at the same time so very far.

GB reached his boiling point as he rambled on to me and the girl next to me. She was one of the few sane people on the bus, and I was very glad to have someone normal to have a conversation with. He informed us that Fung Wah was akin to Soviet Russia, as both were huge bureaucracies that “don’t care about anyone.” I asked him if he thought that it would be fair to characterize Fung Wah as an “evil empire,” which he interpreted as a sign of flippancy. The girl and I stared straight ahead while GB went on.

This madness continued for another hour or so. Shockingly, we had no more breakdowns all the way from White Plains down through the Bronx and over to Queens.

However, things began to get worse while we waited to go over the Manhattan bridge, which is literally right next door to the Fung Wah drop off point. Waiting in the right turning lane, the bus STALLED AGAIN. We waited through two green lights, cars behind us honking and going crazy, because the bus was unable to idle long enough during a red light without stalling. Finally, we started back up again, stalled again over the bridge, and quite literally coasted into the bus’s drop off point on Canal Street.

At this point, I was standing in the aisle, unable to wait to leave. I also noticed that the leaking fluid from before made its way to my section, leaving a residue in its wake. A few drops got on my shoes, hand, sweater, and jacket. I moved into the aisle as the bus is still moved.

Finally, we come to a complete stop. I got out as fast as I could, grabbed my suitcase from the bottom of the bus, and walked over to the Grand Street subway station where I then made my way uptown. I stopped at Ben’s kosher deli to calm down and get a corned beef sandwich before going to Penn Station to board the LIRR during the last leg of my journey home.

The entire thing was like something out of a movie. We had two crazy guys, one of whom was taken away in handcuffs because crazy guy #2 called the cops; a bus that kept breaking down, and fucking cooling fluid on my shoes. Fuck you Fung Wah, I’m taking Greyhound next time [Note: This was not the last time I took Fung Wah. I used at least 3 more times after this misadventure that I can recall].

Is donating to my alama mater a smart, personal financial decision?

I’m paying off student loans and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, so the answer is clearly no. Yes, donating should increase the franchise value of my school by hopefully making a small contribution to increasing its US News ranking, thereby providing me with (hopefully) better future career prospects. But the further removed from college I am, the less the name on my resume matters, and the more interest will accrue to my student loans. It seems odd to donate to my school when I am effectively paying for it every month. The answer to this question is a clear “no.”

Don’t be a selfish bastard! Don’t you want to help students who were in the same position you were a few years ago?

I have a few responses to this.

First, I am still a relatively poor recent graduate. I don’t see why I should be guilted into donating for this reason, especially given my loans.

Second, yes, donating to my college is one way to help current students. Another way is for the school itself to cut spending on shiny new buildings, assistant deans, sundry provosts, and so forth. This is analogous to taxes: I think most people would be happier to pay taxes if they thought their money was being spent efficiently, and not to enrich the lucky, undeserving, and well connected. I don’t think that my school is doing anything nefarious with the money, but the institution is certainly spending money on things that I wouldn’t.

If I may digress, it blows my mind that that a solid, reasonably highly ranked but non-ivy private school, such as Brandeis, Tufts, Rochester, Emory, etc. hasn’t decided to slash spending across the board and instead offer dirt cheap (or free) tuition to everyone. They could undercut their competitor schools and quite possibly steal talent from the Harvards and Yales of the world.

Perhaps you’re not a selfish bastard. But don’t you feel an obligation to help those that are less fortunate than yourself?

Yes, and it’s become increasingly clear that donating to a relatively wealthy, highly ranked private university with a large base of octoogenarian donors does not provide me with the most bang for my charitable buck.

You might say that a college education is necessary to get anywhere in the world, and funding a better than average school such as yours is a matter of “social justice.” True enough, although there are far better schools to donate too if your mission is to advance social justice, and they tend not to be the sorts of schools one would normally think of, as Matt Yglesias pointed out in a recent blog post:

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/05/26/201126/harvard-is-not-a-mechanism-of-social-justice/

Community colleges too would likely be produce more social justice per dollar donated as students their tend to be disproportionably from families with less money and/or social capital.

Up until now I’ve only been thinking about helping students in the U.S. I can likely get even more return for my charitable dollars by donating to organizations in countries that are actually poor, such as Cambodia or Zimbabwe.

In addition, there are other places that I find at least as appealing to donate money to as education. I can help truly poor people on the other side of the world by donating to Oxfam and relatively poor people in my backyard by donating to a DC soup kitchen. I can also donate to places that advance causes I believe in, such as the Cato Institute, Institute for Humane Studies, Kahn Academy, MIT OpenCourseware, or the Seasteading Institute.

Maybe my thoughts will change on this over the next couple of years. For now, though, it seems to me that donating to a highly ranked private school (or a museum, foundation, etc.) is more of a high end consumption good than anything else.

Although this happened in the fall of 2009, I also dealt with getting laid off and finding a new job, which to my great luck is much better than my old job. I’m glad to have had this experience earlier in life rather than later.

I discovered Thai Crossing, Belgian beers, and feel very integrated into DC. The Logan/Dupont/U Street area feels more like home than my hometown currently does, and more than Brandeis ever did.

My major regret is not making better use of my funemployment time last winter. I took a great trip to Amsterdam and London, but if I could do it again I would couch surf through Asia for a month or two.

This year I hope to spend more time doing the things that give me the greatest joy–fly fishing, golfing, reading, and writing. I’ve neglected most of those over the past year due to the rigors of my new job. I don’t have any major travels in the works other than a few trips to NYC, one to Boston, and possibly some time in Chicago. I’m going to need to shore up my personal balance sheet this year if I want to take a big international trip next year.

Here are some new year’s eve 2010 pics:

Times Square, 3pm.

I love Japanese desserts.

Ringing in the New Year at a house party in Bushwick/Ridgewood.

Fireworks in Ridgewood/Bushwick, ~1:00am.

On the westbound hipster express back to Manhattan.

New Year's day, West Village, looking uptown.

This girl took on $85k worth of debt to get an English degree from Brandeis, and didn’t seem to spend much time thinking about how she would set up her post-college life to pay the money back. Her reasons for getting the degree—to become a writer in case her acting career couldn’t get off the ground—don’t seem to conform to the realities in either job market.

I don’t think that this girl’s problems are unique; I’ve noticed that many “intellectual” liberal arts college grads find themselves in similar positions. They major in something that they’re passionate about (often taking out significant loans) and find themselves at the end of four years with limited job prospects. The following all seem to be common traits:

1. Taking a narrow view of their strengths and abilities, and thinking of themselves as intellectuals. This automatically biases them against seeking out more remunerative work in the first place.

2. A desire to work in a very specific field arts/humanities, even though jobs are hard to come by, even for PhDs.

3. An unwillingness to “market” themselves for jobs that are complementary to their strengths.

4. Mistakenly thinking that their professors and administrators will prepare them to get good jobs, even though it’s really not their job to do so, and the career office is useful only for those that really work to take advantage of the resources available.

5. Mistakenly thinking that the problem will “sort itself out,” and that they will eventually get a job easily.

I remember thinking, as a very young kid, that people who went to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale, or Stanford (the only schools I was really aware of) were “set for life.” It’s remarkable how un-true that is, and how little college alone really seems to matter in terms of long term earnings potential.

The kids who get good non-profit/private sector jobs or get into good grad schools are fine, but this girl isn’t one of them, and she’s not alone.

I don’t know exactly how to solve this problem. Kids go are constantly told throughout high school that college is the most important thing to prepare for, and that a more prestigious school is always better than a less prestigious one. What’s missing is any corresponding discussion of how to pay for it, or the likely career prospects from different majors and schools.

The easy availability of student loans is, I think, a big problem. No one in their right mind would loan tens of thousands of dollars to an 18-year-old kid with no income. It’s so common with student loans because the loan companies have been able to successfully lobby for making the debt so tough to get rid of. If the borrowers can’t discharge it in bankruptcy, Sallie Mae is going to get paid no matter what. It’s basically a risk-free return, far above the “real” risk free rate on government debt. I would like to see the loan money dry up and have colleges start to compete on price, but I don’t see that happening in the near future. As long as loans are so easily available, the schools will have an incentive to capture as much of it as possible. I’m not sure what a good intermediate-term solution is, but I suspect we’ll be stuck with what we have for a while.

I spent my first day battling jetlag, walking around, and getting some great Indian food from what I think was a chain restaurant. I slept terribly—the bed was small and the room was hot, indifferent to my changing the thermostat. After waking up at 5am and reading for an hour I decided it wasn’t worth it to attempt to go back to bed.

First impression: London is a deceptively large city. My map made it all look quite walkable, but only because it didn’t bother to label each and every side street, of which there are many. Most of the streets are little more than alleyways, and I doubt one would even be able to print a thoroughly labeled but easily foldable tourist map that included them all. As a result, I often found myself walking down street X expecting to see street Y after the next intersection, as it appeared on the map. Instead, there would be 2-3 smaller streets on the way: a Lexham Gardens, a Cambridge Mews, a Brick Road, and so on. This made even simple excursions feel much longer than they looked to be on paper.

I spent the next day walking from my hotel near the Earl’s Court tube station along Cromwell road to Harrod’s, Picadilly Circus, and the high-end shops along Bond Street. There was a wonderful street near the Charring Cross station with nothing but used book and print stores—I could easily have spent two days there. I rounded out the day by getting dinner at a Korean place in Soho and walking all the way back to the hotel along Cromwell road. I probably should have saved my legs and taken the tube, especially since my exhaustion didn’t even make sleep any easier. I was, however, able to eventually get back to sleep after waking up at 4am this time.

On the next day I made my way over to the British Museum. It’s a massive place, filled with the spoils of the former British Empire. I also finally got some legit fish and chips, which took a surprisingly long time to acquire since the pub that my uncle recommended to me turned out to be out of business. That night my attempt to get an uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep was again foiled when I woke up at 2am due to a malfunctioning fire alarm, forcing me to hang out in the lobby with the other irritated guests.

I had time before my flight on the last day to tour the Cabinet War rooms, the basement nerve center where Churchill and his aides spent most of the war. I never would have known about this had it not been for a friend’s recommendation, and it’s certainly one of the highlights of the trip. I also used my remaining few hours to do the touristy things that I should have done on the first day—seeing Trafalgar Square, St. James Park, Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the art museum. Just as the weather was getting warmer and I started to get my bearings around the city, it was time to leave and fly off to Amsterdam.

My flight came into the Netherlands late. I amused myself by looking through the aisles and trying to figure out which passengers would surely get in a cab to the nearest coffee shop upon landing (my money was on the dreadlocked white guy wearing an MF Doom t-shirt). Too tired to figure out how to navigate the trams, I took a cab to my hotel (which was much nicer than the place in London) located near the art museums.

I enjoyed Amsterdam, it really is just as quaint as it looks. The public transportation was uniformly efficient and, as an added convenience, everyone spoke excellent English; from the waiter at the Indonesian restaurant to the guy that operated the tram. I suppose that they have a much greater incentive to learn English than most other people have to learn Dutch. The Dutch language, I found, sounds quite like gibberish English. Hearing people speak it, I felt like I should be able to know what they’re talking about. I was also able to get an uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep for the first time in 4 nights, which was a welcomed change.

Drugs aside, nightlife in Amsterdam is fantastic. Bars are open until 4am 7 nights a week, though the nightlife seemed mostly contained within the city center/red light district. The red light district wasn’t nearly as seedy as I expected it to be. Sure, there are coffees hops and prostitutes, but both just become part of the local flavor after 20 minutes.

My experience with pot was, to but it mildly, terribly underwhelming.

I got some Indonesian food, which reminded me of very light Indian food crossed with Thai. My meal consisted of many small plates (a drumstick, some spicy veggies, a hard boiled egg and a type of curry) served with white rice. I don’t think it has the variety of Thai or Indian, but I would need to try it some more to say for sure. I also saw the Heineken Brewery and walked past the Anne Frank home, which had a shockingly long line given that she wasn’t even home *rimshot*.

*cough*. Anyway.

I’m normally not a big fan of the “tall, blonde, all-American” type look but I did come to appreciate all of the leggy blonde dames in Amsterdam. Also, everyone dresses much better than in the states. Not necessarily dressier, but fewer t-shirts and jeans, and more casual sport coats. I think we can do worse than to emulate that aspect.

I think that there are higher levels of social trust and cohesion in the Netherlands. On the trams, for example, it would be incredibly easy to use them every day without buying a ticket, as the operator doesn’t check that each passenger scans his card. I didn’t pay for my first trip, and was surprised to see that the driver didn’t seem to care. I saw something similar in the train station, which had a bank of turnstiles that one could simply walk around instead of going through. I really can’t see people abiding by this in the states to the extent that they do in the Netherlands.

I also made it to Brussels for the day to visit an old friend that I interned with a few years ago. A few observations:

1.) The Grand Place (below) is covered in gold. It seemed like Belgium’s way of saying “Sure we’re small, but damn it if we ain’t rich.”

2.) I had white beer, a waffle, mussels with fries, and chocolate. All were unremarkable except for the mussels, which were fatter and juicier than what I was used to. The beer was great, but not very different from the other Belgian whites I’ve had.

3.) The capital of Europe does a much better job of hiding its poor people than the capital of the US. The Brussels train station was in a neighborhood that my friend described as “dodgy” and which seemed to be mostly populated by recent Middle Eastern immigrants. It certainly didn’t feel as dodgy as some comparable DC neighborhoods, and I don’t recall seeing any homeless people and beggars near the EU parliament building, as one sees regularly near the Capitol and the White House.

After Belgium I had a bit more time in Amsterdam before flying back to Dulles via London. A fantastic trip all in all, I only wish I was able to sleep better in London.

I really got a kick out of all the (mis) translations of the propaganda posters. My favorite was this one, encouraging villagers to grow more salt in order to bring glory to their Uncle Ho:

“We Must Increase the Production of Salt to Satisfy the People’s Needs. Mobilize the Workers and Collective Farmers to Use Sun and the Salt Fields Effectively and to Produce in an Organized Fashion with Principle and for High Production.”

Now if that doesn’t motivate you to bring glory to the fatherland, I don’t know what will. Below is one of my favorite images. Fertile young women clutching babies and rifles seemed to be a recurring theme in most of the posters, including one of the ones that I bought:

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Exhibits/Track16/victorious_vn.html

The next day I made my way to the Cu Chi tunnels, on the outskirts of the city. This was my first excursion without Noah, as he had already been there several times before. I was somewhat nervous taking the trip alone, but it wasn’t a big deal at all; I merely boarded a bus with a bunch of other tourists and took the 1-hour trip myself.

Door to one of the tunnels.

Villagers started to build the tunnels in the 1950’s and continued well into the 60’s and 70’s as a way to connect towns, store supplies, and survive heavy US bombing. They were really an engineering marvel—they went upwards of 10 meters underground, had several levels, and numerous trap doors. People would live there for months or years at a time, usually only emerging at night to tend to crops. Some of them even stretched as far as away as the Cambodian border, some 100 km away.

Door to one of the tunnels.

I wasn’t sure how I would feel when I got to Cu Chi, since it was a place where so many Americans and Vietnamese died—they had an American tank that succumbed to a landmine, killing all five inside, as well as a crater from a B-52 bomb. I didn’t feel particularly uncomfortable being there, however, and I don’t think that many Vietnamese did either.

Ouch.

Models of Viet Cong soldiers.

I got to shoot an AK-47!

Another door to the tunnel. I think that I'm a bit bigger than the typical Viet Cong soldier.

Yet another rice paddie.

After getting back to the city proper, I killed time in a local park waiting for Noah where I saw this fantastic sign:

Social evils.

While there a few Vietnamese kids asked if they could practice their English on me. One girl did most of the talking while the others were silent. She asked me where I was from, what I did for a living, whether I liked Vietnam, and so forth. They were all 18-19 years old despite the fact that they appeared to my Western eyes to be closer to 15, and were likewise surprised when I told them that I was a mere 23. I gave them a copy of my (now useless) business card and said that they were welcome to follow up, but I never heard from them. It was nice to feel like a celebrity, if only for a few minutes.

Later that evening I went with Noah to a Rosh Hashanah celebration at the Continental Hotel organized by Chabad. Who knew that Chabad even had an outpost in Vietnam, or that there were enough Jewish tourists and ex-pats to make such a celebration viable? I never would have guessed. Apparently the lack of kosher food forced the main rabbi to purchase and butcher a goat himself a few years ago when the organization was started.

Downtown Ho Chi Minh City.

After getting dinner with a group of Noah’s English teach friends—an international group which included people from Vietnam, Japan, Malayasia, Germany, and a half French/Vietnamese fellow, I made my way to the airport to catch a 12:30 am flight to Seoul. The trip back was pretty easy, and I managed to get some sleep at the transit hotel in Korea during my 9 hour layover.

Dinner, the last day.

Caravelle Hotel and Saigon Sheraton.

Overall, it was a fantastic trip. It certainly made me appreciate the opportunities that I have being born in a western country, and I would definitely like to go back at some point to see more of the region.

Last meal in Asia at Incheon Airport, near Seoul. Six pork/vegetable dumplings, pickled veggies, and soup for only $USD6.50.

Although Cambodia is poorer and less developed than Vietnam, it felt more modern and western in some respects: most people knew at least a few words of English in order to interact with the tourists, and I spotted both a Dairy Queen franchise in the airport as well as a Mexican restaurant in the market area. The latter never made any sense to me.

About to land in Siem Reap.

Downtown Siem Reap.

After landing we met a cab driver, Thi, who agreed to take us to our hotel and offered to drive us to the nearby temples for the following two days. We agreed, and he charged a quite modest fee of only $25 or so per day. Most of the sedans that we saw were Toyota Camrys and Corollas from the early/mid 90’s, and it felt a bit strange to be driving over Cambodia’s dirt roads in the same cars that I grew up riding in.

Shortly after arriving at our hotel we set out to explore the nearby old market area, where we saw numerous people selling books, postcards, and some lovely traditional Cambodian kroma scarves that I bought for my family. I think that the Cambodians were actually much more aggressive than the Vietnamese were in trying to sell us souvenirs—likely due in equal parts to the competition between different sellers and the country’s poverty.

Shrimp flavored chips are all the rage.

The old market area.

Dried fish. It smelled terrible.

After the market we went to the Angkor museum, which was surprisingly modern and large. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many buddhas in my life.

Noah recalled reading a passage from some long forgotten French colonist who said, “in Kampuchea, it is impossible not to bathe at least twice a day.” That adage is just as true now as it was before the days of air conditioning. Although it was the rainy season, we saw very little rain; it was sunny, humid, and in the upper 80’s most days with only a few clouds. Not dissimilar to DC in the summertime. Consequently, I found myself showering every morning and then again before dinner after a trek to the temples. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated air conditioning and clean sheets as much as I did during my time in Cambodia. As much as I appreciated Noah’s and Stefan’s hospitality, their couch in the un-air conditioned back room of the dress shop was not the most comfortable accommodation I’ve ever had.

A tuk-tuk, the favored means of transportation.

View from our tuk-tuk.

Angkor museum.

The next day we woke up early to meet our guide, Sam, who in conjunction with our driver showed us around the different temples. Sam was an impressive fellow: he was pursuing a BA in a local college while working as a tour guide, and also worked to teach English to young people.

After a day of temples Noah and I went back to the market area. It began raining, but we found a theatre that was showing documentaries on both Pol Pot and landmines, as Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. After all, what vacation is complete without films on destructive ordinance and communist genocide? No vacation that I would want to go on, that’s for sure. Despite having a strong interest in Vietnam when I was in middle school it didn’t carry over as I got older, so I was glad to fill in some gaps of my knowledge.

The food was very similar to Thai.

The view from the top of our hotel.

Angkor Wat

During our last full day, we went to yet more temples—by this time I was really getting templed out. But “when in Kampuchea…”, I suppose. There were more really young kids trying to aggressively sell us souvenirs. Noah, hardened after living in Southeast Asia for over a year, managed to resist all their attempts until one enterprising young boy, no more than 7 or 8, came up to us and asked us where we were from. After telling him that we were from the states he proceeded to tell us our capital city, who our president is, the president’s daughters names, and so forth. Once he got to Obama’s dog’s name Noah’s chill finally thawed, and he handed over a dollar for some more postcards that we didn’t actually need.

Khemers and Chinese betting on a cockfight.

Cambodian is a pretty cool script.

Face to face with...someone. Most likely Buddha.

Pretty standard breakfast.

We were solicited for prostitution once more the next evening when walking through the market, this time by a fellow asking us if we want “boom boom lady.” I wonder if they know how ridiculous this sounds in English? Apparently “boom boom” means sex while “yum yum” means oral sex. They really do have a word for everything over there.

Some temple.

Some sort of meat and egg stuffed, dragonfruit colored bun we bought from someone on the side of the road.

Entrance to the landmine museum.

Pretty sure this temple was used in one of the tomb raider movies.

Buddhist shrine. These were all over the temples.

Kids fishing.

"Father King" Sianhouk and one of his wives. Truly an interesting chacarcter. Installed by the French in the early 50's and was eventually exiled at various points to Thailand and China. Helped the Khemer Rouge gain power before they kicked him out. I think he lives in North Korea now.

Cambodian Coke!

Cambodian BBQ. We had snake, beef, chicken, crocodile, squid, and probably a few other critters.

Mini bananas, and Dragonfruit.

They can really pack 'em in.

Goodbye, Cambodia!

The main tourist district is centered on the Continental Hotel along with two other upscale hotels that also appear to be the tallest buildings in the city, the Sheraton and Caravelle. It features a surprisingly Western style mall, numerous restaurants, and upscale Gucci and Cartier boutiques catering to the Vietnamese nouveau riche and wealthy traveler/ex-pat sets. Nearby is another, slightly rougher tourist area dominated by bars and other forms of nightlife—it’s also where I was solicited for both marijuana and prostitution.

More pho.

Near the hotels Noah and I stumbled on a store that specializes in old propaganda posters. Although the proprietor claimed that they were originals, I suspect that they were all just high quality fakes based on original posters. The posters all centered on three basic themes: paying homage to glorious uncle Ho, encouraging the peasants to grow more soybeans/fish/rice for a prosperous fatherland, or take up arms to defend against the American aggressor. The artwork itself was great: healthy young women with babies strapped to their backs and rifles in their hands, farmers toiling in the rice paddies, and Richard Nixon’s face superimposed on bombs falling onto a village.

As good as the artwork was, I liked the poorly translated captions the best. This one, from a poster imploring people to produce more salt, was my personal favorite:

We Must Increase the Production of Salt to Satisfy the People’s Needs. Mobilize the Workers and Collective Farmers to

Use Sun and the Salt Fields Effectively and to Produce in an Organized Fashion with Principle and for High Production.

Despite my distinctly non-communist political leanings, I loved them all and bought two full sized “original” posters and three other much smaller ones. I recall reading somewhere that Grover Norquist has a bust of Lenin in his home, and I once met someone that worked at a Libertarian leaning organization in DC who had several original pieces of Russian propaganda in his office, so perhaps it’s not unusual for libertarian types to fetishize communist propaganda. Libertarians lack good propaganda, after all.

From a Buddhist pagoda.

This doesn't look safe to me.

I soon realized that one hour in Saigon was the equivalent of at least three hours elsewhere. By 1 pm it felt like 4 pm, and I was ready to go to sleep by dinnertime. I think this had to do with some combination of the craziness on the streets, constant heat, and being bombarded with people trying to sell you things. The basic pattern for the rest of my trip was to spend a few hours outside before seeking refuge in a café with a cold drink for at least an hour.

More of the pagoda.

We got dinner one night at Xu, one of the best restaurants in the city. The most expensive entre was still only $25, and most were much less.