tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47603110240280694942024-03-13T06:38:11.167-07:00Footsteps of PhileasBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.comBlogger77125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-88076792076180921492017-07-30T01:37:00.000-07:002017-07-30T01:37:03.409-07:00Great American Road Trip Part 3: Gateway to the East<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.8px;">Last week we made our way from Oklahoma City to St Louis, working our </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">way backwards through the Route 66 song. While we didn't stay in </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Joplin, MO, we did stop and eat at a Braum's there on Rangeline Rd. My </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Grandma informed me that my Great-great grandparents had a farm on </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Rangeline Rd. in Joplin, MO way back when and that she used to go </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">visit them when she lived in neighboring Kansas. There were no traces </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">of any farms on Rangeline Rd. when we drove through - it has been well </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">incorporated into the town. So we stopped and had our last Braum's ice </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">cream of the trip to commemorate the ancestral link.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.8px;">We did stay in Broken Arrow, OK and Springfield, MO on the way up to </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">St Louis. Broken Arrow, which is a suburb of Tulsa, might sound like </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">an odd choice, but it marked the point where our cross-country trip </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">intersected my cousin Eli's cross-country Drum Corps International (DCI) </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">tour. We had never been to a DCI event and we were blown away. This is </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">as close as it gets to professional marching band. Seven teams each </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">took the field for 10-15 minutes each to do their routine - each with </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">an overwhelming amount of intricacy in music and movement. Imagine if </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Cirque du Soleil did a marching band performance - that's what DCI is. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">At one point, one of the band member was spun around in a wheel around </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">the field, trumpets blared as they rotated back and forth on the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">wheels and Eli's team's performance incorporated a lot of cool snake </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">imagery, the theme to mark the band's 50th anniversary.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyPO45wexUStgG5U9SOYqT0kSJC7c2E2NnDBrqCHu8KRHNdrIDrZ6TT6zUPlI_JrOvCwFZXRHZ6YoF9SakC7cfUSBvGDhzHnKyGspPrMYZ08tlH9sfazv7-v9G2190-iSb48NtSbpLowRX/s1600/image5.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyPO45wexUStgG5U9SOYqT0kSJC7c2E2NnDBrqCHu8KRHNdrIDrZ6TT6zUPlI_JrOvCwFZXRHZ6YoF9SakC7cfUSBvGDhzHnKyGspPrMYZ08tlH9sfazv7-v9G2190-iSb48NtSbpLowRX/s400/image5.JPG" width="400" /></a><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">It was Mae's first experience with a marching band and she seemed into it. She was not a dan of the ear muffs though.</span><br />
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<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0xJqE5NpQ28IaD7YLtTud6kKHRLtRXqYa90zZ1FW4wgSlbuDJcdOyCGzBj-lcL73vQLfHItL1RHSEHAouvDjuVQESil_c9HFuD0-vVrmCRCIY-2AS7_LUi3T93zo_S6av7-mjDxjikRfv/s1600/image4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0xJqE5NpQ28IaD7YLtTud6kKHRLtRXqYa90zZ1FW4wgSlbuDJcdOyCGzBj-lcL73vQLfHItL1RHSEHAouvDjuVQESil_c9HFuD0-vVrmCRCIY-2AS7_LUi3T93zo_S6av7-mjDxjikRfv/s400/image4.JPG" width="400" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">We were amazed by the turnout - there must have been 5000 people there. Eli's band, the Santa Clara Vanguard, will be competing for the grand championship in early August in front of an expected 30,000 people. Bryn was excited to have discovered another sub-culture.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Our next atop after Broken Arrow was Springfield, MO. I was working during the trip so we stayed put in the mornings and then drove in the evenings.this scheduled left little time for exploring our surroundings. But in Springfield, I got to <a href="http://footstepsofphileas.blogspot.com/2017/06/great-american-roadtrip-part-1-southwest.html" target="_blank">relive my days of traveling with Grandma & Grandpa by staying in a Best Western</a>. This wasn't just any BW, though - Elvis had stayed there in 1956. His room had been decked out in chrome Cadillac fenders and went for a significant per night premium, so we opted for a normal room, but Mae and I posed for a picture outside.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBwynBBeg57HTSW8K2mO0iUZ-skk5hVlLPaPRWZGZqmmh4bAJ7mU2a06JrwPo9WWBbDHWO6YjFEjVza2t_z1C8dSwkeZobmpai3Yr8p5QUoHL7GrU0efRaBZsxtH5EUQ7HIVt2s8c2h9wp/s1600/image6.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBwynBBeg57HTSW8K2mO0iUZ-skk5hVlLPaPRWZGZqmmh4bAJ7mU2a06JrwPo9WWBbDHWO6YjFEjVza2t_z1C8dSwkeZobmpai3Yr8p5QUoHL7GrU0efRaBZsxtH5EUQ7HIVt2s8c2h9wp/s400/image6.JPG" width="400" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">She seemed to be pretty into the cultural history significance of the moment.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">This hotel was also cool because 1) they offered s'mores, which we indulged, and 2) the owner of the hotel had kept all of the old signs. The first was the original sign back from the Elvis days. In the tradition of route 66 marketing gimmicks, the hotel's name comes from the split rail fence around it - not it's proximity to any rail station. I wonder how many disappointed travelers the name attracted over the years.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9f7tFKCGYhVjvWWOK6cbjxrhqC6x_zt_irVipMUs9v-G21y0YTw7LI-Sg2ngCpCXQ4AhjqeuTgKoPAlOk14soEuDTkz3EA5XDtpSj-GeHQghfIfpOt3loHSm1xOIwi8I_rrTH9KGI17i-/s1600/image4_1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9f7tFKCGYhVjvWWOK6cbjxrhqC6x_zt_irVipMUs9v-G21y0YTw7LI-Sg2ngCpCXQ4AhjqeuTgKoPAlOk14soEuDTkz3EA5XDtpSj-GeHQghfIfpOt3loHSm1xOIwi8I_rrTH9KGI17i-/s400/image4_1.JPG" width="300" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">At some point in the 70s, it became part of the Best Western chain. As a kid, I remember associating motels that advertised this sign outside as being older, less nice and, most importantly, pool-less.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQLiTrrKHXVUhY5pBIfPX5m0h-7en1fH5lQ3k9yua5woAVBmW0pw7SNkyOO1jRsV5tHzHvPfmFOAruYZ1OD1a9m7ETbWGUXMoi-Dmo3fRp_4GlptrSgZ_5f5vqZAtZE_vITMidJV4UZ5sg/s1600/image1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQLiTrrKHXVUhY5pBIfPX5m0h-7en1fH5lQ3k9yua5woAVBmW0pw7SNkyOO1jRsV5tHzHvPfmFOAruYZ1OD1a9m7ETbWGUXMoi-Dmo3fRp_4GlptrSgZ_5f5vqZAtZE_vITMidJV4UZ5sg/s400/image1.JPG" width="300" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">But if it sported this new, rebranded sign outside, you knew you were in for a much more exclusive hospitality experience.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN4ENFrx_Lsnnj0Fonk8h55phUAX3-NLM5iERS_ve1tK7a6jAhzE3ADBguFh209LXo5J6c93a7iqHrwFRyi2Sn02nvPor_2HHeFU-yawIcz8bvDGKOnUnooyZtspeOjckuAhs3Z2NCv1EC/s1600/image2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN4ENFrx_Lsnnj0Fonk8h55phUAX3-NLM5iERS_ve1tK7a6jAhzE3ADBguFh209LXo5J6c93a7iqHrwFRyi2Sn02nvPor_2HHeFU-yawIcz8bvDGKOnUnooyZtspeOjckuAhs3Z2NCv1EC/s400/image2.JPG" width="300" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">And Best Western has been keeping up with the times, as you can see with this newest branding. I appreciate this new logo's use of the classy "BW" initials. Just a reminder of yet another point that the hotel chain shares in common with me: initials. The marquis board is very effective at advertising the hotel's Elvis heritage.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE5cIyATED5EFs7bdIANv2G35zHU7nE2Z9bnwJA2-YRkdXaMU0e5Ub-Tsg66ewfsAfqyfgcpi4zTOW0gNq_1G75ZLv8FHNvd65P-rSRyIPnPp0wUavXrb0Paw1BSYeFxZS7JvNjQe7yEkN/s1600/image3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE5cIyATED5EFs7bdIANv2G35zHU7nE2Z9bnwJA2-YRkdXaMU0e5Ub-Tsg66ewfsAfqyfgcpi4zTOW0gNq_1G75ZLv8FHNvd65P-rSRyIPnPp0wUavXrb0Paw1BSYeFxZS7JvNjQe7yEkN/s400/image3.JPG" width="300" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Finally, Thursday evening, we made it to St Louis, gateway to the east from our perspective. Similar to Phoenix, our visit to St Louis coincided with a record heat wave. It made doing anything outside kind of miserable, but the neighborhood my aunt and uncle live in has nice trees that provide lots of shade. This was a weekend for hanging out with family, anyways. It was good to have a little reunion in St Louis during our trip.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Mae meeting Uncle Phillip</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvfNla1wiDPa7Do-SozJFd-Tbl8XMBex-uzKtNHQylnK0BVZH-tnhx8U5-T_w89wuuHD31gpKI5lKtdK4lv_p5sfxilfYnY7CDVg6CTNxFyE5mnKDJHZdIrl5_RbZ4dZR-ySyNSmq_SZ7K/s1600/image4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvfNla1wiDPa7Do-SozJFd-Tbl8XMBex-uzKtNHQylnK0BVZH-tnhx8U5-T_w89wuuHD31gpKI5lKtdK4lv_p5sfxilfYnY7CDVg6CTNxFyE5mnKDJHZdIrl5_RbZ4dZR-ySyNSmq_SZ7K/s400/image4.JPG" width="400" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">We still managed some sight-seeing though: this is the old downtown courthouse where the Dred Scott case was heard.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzluLs8LL1tpd35Td2F2mEOVFNimQKFUPPC76_6duao3SFrrQ-oJ6ystwMvW8Zd4viunIpgetELocfV_ghj_pCuo5AkMOK2rI5R1vTgwtlF58LG0blZs8DG51Xn-XOWzGw23Nnh_63UPvG/s1600/image1_1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzluLs8LL1tpd35Td2F2mEOVFNimQKFUPPC76_6duao3SFrrQ-oJ6ystwMvW8Zd4viunIpgetELocfV_ghj_pCuo5AkMOK2rI5R1vTgwtlF58LG0blZs8DG51Xn-XOWzGw23Nnh_63UPvG/s400/image1_1.JPG" width="300" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">And of course, we made it to the arch</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiUlomwoJxdjC2uq626P8RK3qHnZGbTd-GsJ0kVnv4hRJht8YCTUDW7kttrghvJxX7wrIJPY08Rmpr5nU3RLW61-CsTp0Cx3Avey3HV43Hemw0cqMrWaH-gzk30wEESQ2PxhydX7HoTQc2/s1600/image2_1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiUlomwoJxdjC2uq626P8RK3qHnZGbTd-GsJ0kVnv4hRJht8YCTUDW7kttrghvJxX7wrIJPY08Rmpr5nU3RLW61-CsTp0Cx3Avey3HV43Hemw0cqMrWaH-gzk30wEESQ2PxhydX7HoTQc2/s400/image2_1.JPG" width="300" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">And up into the top of the arch. For those who haven't been to the St Louis arch, it's a fun ride up in a little 1960s era, Jetsons style pod train. It wasn't very windy the day we went up, but apparently the arch can start swaying a few inches when the wind picks up. My Uncle Phillip encouraged us to rally all of the other tourists to run back and forth in unison across the viewing platform in an effort to rock the arch like a boat. We didn't do that, though.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvlbBcW9rIE7hMgzKkg15u_pqTy8yR3_jiMPLUx5cGRXHfJRsggstc8yw3zyksjMpr8_mrw4e6-HkIo3W2NYvRe8IZ4ImvMhoyIFdyjmosehk8YT64QNY2-7ucQOxKFrDB7VxWGpcctmq0/s1600/image1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvlbBcW9rIE7hMgzKkg15u_pqTy8yR3_jiMPLUx5cGRXHfJRsggstc8yw3zyksjMpr8_mrw4e6-HkIo3W2NYvRe8IZ4ImvMhoyIFdyjmosehk8YT64QNY2-7ucQOxKFrDB7VxWGpcctmq0/s400/image1.JPG" width="400" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Mae's first trip across the Mississippi river was in St Louis!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5l6pI3TXrWkX_CsKxXBKBYDQ1HIDNeaBnyqNAk9yA4r8ttDMHnBtDJlfodIZ1LAwzTzyf6XG8dSurxDkokTIvxZ2qQ184oIK9N2B9uNsSHAEIlFveuSU9qq8frKZQxKim_Nr3-ICvTIbc/s1600/image3_1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5l6pI3TXrWkX_CsKxXBKBYDQ1HIDNeaBnyqNAk9yA4r8ttDMHnBtDJlfodIZ1LAwzTzyf6XG8dSurxDkokTIvxZ2qQ184oIK9N2B9uNsSHAEIlFveuSU9qq8frKZQxKim_Nr3-ICvTIbc/s400/image3_1.JPG" width="400" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">And, Mae's first independent swing ride was also in St Louis. It was a weekend of many firsts.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE5EUikErz-FZXHbUKCIfiOOpR5wrT6435nAsQrrNGH9hwn1J7l8Je8R2vciMxCRSJ1rzFmXnD4RyKFaS42nJ4caUOYCms07KAfmYfU0NaAkuvvhdnJp6bz8HZ8x91fUgXrbO2BaxWhlq5/s1600/image2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE5EUikErz-FZXHbUKCIfiOOpR5wrT6435nAsQrrNGH9hwn1J7l8Je8R2vciMxCRSJ1rzFmXnD4RyKFaS42nJ4caUOYCms07KAfmYfU0NaAkuvvhdnJp6bz8HZ8x91fUgXrbO2BaxWhlq5/s400/image2.JPG" width="300" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">WHEEEE!!!</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWKoIyms7Q-IPAz2m_4dnzfkVj3ZwR7S3ETNusladZa3jOcpWEVFhz6X1EWVxqHr8Kb4u5P1Q4orTcHHtjPw2zUULsfDinb-3zPXTRrpN97NblXUBKZ8uDMZwwPkEeOIv2VmwEYiP1XJ6j/s1600/image3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWKoIyms7Q-IPAz2m_4dnzfkVj3ZwR7S3ETNusladZa3jOcpWEVFhz6X1EWVxqHr8Kb4u5P1Q4orTcHHtjPw2zUULsfDinb-3zPXTRrpN97NblXUBKZ8uDMZwwPkEeOIv2VmwEYiP1XJ6j/s400/image3.JPG" width="300" /></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /></div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-73516177991886740062017-07-15T19:58:00.000-07:002017-07-15T19:58:54.079-07:00Great American Road Trip Part 2: The Possibilities!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This whole business of driving cross-country got my brain thinking about the ultimate cross-country road trip. Of course, there are many ways to define that. One approach might be to visit every national park in the contiguous United States. Apparently, you can do all 47 over 15,000 miles.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGqSxQjmQ-xzIRE7p-qOm5MulwBJ3rQhTxRREZB0VXF8gAyNBfHusCADzmOzCVOoUlmqFJLv9eg0lzXoiL9vGhCXXu2akg138y6Ow5qxpc6Vglon7gehwp2tWDCn5Y5Xm6fjTqTWgcYnxd/s1600/us-national-parks-optimal-road-trip.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="943" data-original-width="1600" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGqSxQjmQ-xzIRE7p-qOm5MulwBJ3rQhTxRREZB0VXF8gAyNBfHusCADzmOzCVOoUlmqFJLv9eg0lzXoiL9vGhCXXu2akg138y6Ow5qxpc6Vglon7gehwp2tWDCn5Y5Xm6fjTqTWgcYnxd/s400/us-national-parks-optimal-road-trip.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/us-national-parks-optimal-road-trip.png</td></tr>
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But just looking at that map, you can see that only hitting the jewels of America's most beautiful spots leaves out a lot in the center of the country. If you want to take a more democratic approach to touring the country (this is America, after all), you could hit all 48 contiguous states plus DC. Of course someone has already mapped that out for us.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqaeFYMgU7UbpfhM32aBrCdvFIoPoHvMP6h4wM-ngruUUWVEu4Bw1BtxfWmyMR4gMapUg-dlsr1ltaf6GxIXpWSEiThCKU2Jjm27UNWuMVgklW09wCedS2-HlmNbYVJlMyQfunroU57JP8/s1600/Drive-Across-the-Country1-685x349.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="685" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqaeFYMgU7UbpfhM32aBrCdvFIoPoHvMP6h4wM-ngruUUWVEu4Bw1BtxfWmyMR4gMapUg-dlsr1ltaf6GxIXpWSEiThCKU2Jjm27UNWuMVgklW09wCedS2-HlmNbYVJlMyQfunroU57JP8/s400/Drive-Across-the-Country1-685x349.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">http://twentytwowords.com/how-to-drive-through-all-48-of-the-continental-united-states-in-113-hours/</td></tr>
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That trip is more manageable, too, at less than half the mileage of the national parks circuit: 6,872 miles. Of course, adding on Alaska and Hawaii would increase that number dramatically. I guess that's why they're worth their own, separate trips.<br />
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But looking at the route above, I noticed a few things that irked me. First, It's not coast-to-coast. The trip starts in Maine and ends in Montana, never giving a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. I know the oceans aren't states, but they are pretty momentous features defining the United States. If I were to drive nearly 7000 miles to see every state, I'd feel like something were missing if I never saw the Pacific in the process.<br />
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Second, upon close inspection, the route in this map doesn't even actually hit all the 48 contiguous states: Pennsylvania got cut out. Now, you can probably SEE Pennsylvania on this route; IH-68 comes awfully close, but actually stays in Maryland. This omission disqualifies the route entirely. I'll give you the Pacific Ocean since it technically isn't a state, but Pennsylvania definitely is a state. You can't leave that one out.<br />
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Finally, the map above involves several points of back-tracking. Most notably, there's a little spur going east from Chicago to hit Indiana and Michigan. I don't like backtracking. I took a lot of advice from my Grandpa when it comes to living life with honor and integrity and one of those pieces of advice was to not go home the same way you left. There's just too much of the world out there to take the same route twice. The spur to Michigan in the map above may be the most efficient way to see all of the lower 48, but it's not one that I could follow in good conscience.<br />
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Having noticed these flaws, some of which were fatal, I determined to make my own route that would allow me see all 48 contiguous states without 1) omitting a major ocean; 2) omitting Pennsylvania (or any other state) and; 3) backtracking.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKDBLMD800lDP8KcqtOvj2zby8tzKef7Pcc-ccepLWUY7rjBPSfdB-tVGbB6JYJ0lIQqAfBtGT-MPpVlZ8vSdgeQi4HOHZnmkNpI7y2y-UdbXJzWpQSPt8pUTcA0bD1QEWC4BBJNnn_AmH/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-07-15+at+9.37.49+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="372" data-original-width="678" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKDBLMD800lDP8KcqtOvj2zby8tzKef7Pcc-ccepLWUY7rjBPSfdB-tVGbB6JYJ0lIQqAfBtGT-MPpVlZ8vSdgeQi4HOHZnmkNpI7y2y-UdbXJzWpQSPt8pUTcA0bD1QEWC4BBJNnn_AmH/s400/Screen+Shot+2017-07-15+at+9.37.49+PM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aKdcgbVZUmHoM6IY25hnD-62W-Q&usp=sharing" target="_blank">Ben's Version</a></td></tr>
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I know, this route looks pretty similar. It's about 400 miles longer than the first map but much more complete in my mind. For a step by step guide,<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aKdcgbVZUmHoM6IY25hnD-62W-Q&usp=sharing" target="_blank"> here are the route specifics</a>. Another fun fact: if you're looking to drive coast-to-coast and pass through the <b>least states possible</b>, then California to North Carolina via Arkansas and Tennessee is your best bet. The more you know!</div>
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Anyways, these are just fantasy for now. We aren't doing any of these trip this time around. We have prioritized visiting family and friends over states this time around and the past three weeks have been spent seeing my and Bryn's family. We had a week in Austin, a week at a lake house and then the past week has been in Oklahoma City. It seems like a week is just about how long it takes for Mae to get adjusted to a place, so we're keeping up a pace that ensures she's never quite settled in. Poor girl. She's being a trooper though. Even when we dunked her in Barton Springs for her "baptism". </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoRq4vR6BsbOSYIbLQhYBEv-j3teJ50Smq3r8vxz0HUlhXehTJVTzfIuB-yTkLmC3coanEtwahV_SlLwnGJCEf5ZiVsm3_NaQJnxGVaaNhe-rbyIKgiD1xDuT_MQ1wDl1ziUlq_FpRHJaA/s1600/IMG_1589.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1288" data-original-width="966" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoRq4vR6BsbOSYIbLQhYBEv-j3teJ50Smq3r8vxz0HUlhXehTJVTzfIuB-yTkLmC3coanEtwahV_SlLwnGJCEf5ZiVsm3_NaQJnxGVaaNhe-rbyIKgiD1xDuT_MQ1wDl1ziUlq_FpRHJaA/s320/IMG_1589.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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She seemed completely comfortable kicking around in the water. She wasn't so happy about the dunking, but it didn't ruin her day either, so we're considering it a win. </div>
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We continued the water theme in Oklahoma City at a great splash pad that rained, sprayed, waterfalled and misted all the kids running around. Mae enjoyed it too, seeing as how she could keep her feet more on solid ground. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNFCHOTSN32xkiGu40tOIsG1_NdZOi3hIavjtERENM_y3lGPoy9WTOwa3qHMz8sk_F-ZcrcpU6A-aq1zP17GxbyzMz3sbj5m5wtPf7bcB1P_Mkl-198y3ivJVNxsjEVdQKeVs8I3RxZux-/s1600/Image-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNFCHOTSN32xkiGu40tOIsG1_NdZOi3hIavjtERENM_y3lGPoy9WTOwa3qHMz8sk_F-ZcrcpU6A-aq1zP17GxbyzMz3sbj5m5wtPf7bcB1P_Mkl-198y3ivJVNxsjEVdQKeVs8I3RxZux-/s400/Image-1.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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We're doing our best to get her used to the water. </div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-43630145667182953952017-06-25T18:48:00.000-07:002017-06-25T18:48:13.737-07:00Great American Roadtrip Part 1: The Southwest<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Mae delivered on looking pensively over great heights at the Grand Canyon. I'm not sure if she registered that anything was particularly different or unique about the Grand Canyon, but we at least caught her in a few moments where her face was aligned with the panorama. That counts, right?<br />
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And even if it doesn't, we got this great Lion King shot of Mae on our last morning at the Grand Canyon.</div>
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But let's be honest, most of the time Mae was just looking at us, a little bewildered, wondering why nobody was feeding her.<br />
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This was my fourth trip to the Grand Canyon - third that I can remember. Like Mae, I also visited the Grand Canyon on a cross-country trip when I was an infant. The other three times, I had spent most of my time on the North Rim and just briefly stopped along the south rim while we drove through. This trip was my first time actually spending time along the south rim and it was amazing. The park services nearly 40 miles along the south rim, offering dozens of lookouts, trails and rest stops. On previous visits, I had dismissed the lodges and amenities offered along the south rim as too decadent, opting for the purely natural approach on the north rim instead. But the amenities are really well done. We learned about Mary Colter, the architect who designed most of the original tourist accommodations along the south rim. I was impressed by her ability to incorporate the natural surroundings in a way that highlighted them, so that her structures complimented the environment rather than obscured it. Providing a little shade and water also helps. One of my favorite of her features is a fireplace in Bright Angel Lodge made up of the various layers of the Grand Canyon. You can't see that stratification in one frame in the actual Grand Canyon - it's just too big - so scaling it down to a fireplace makes it just a little more comprehensible. I appreciate little touches like that one. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grand Canyon strata fireplace at the Bright Angel Lodge</td></tr>
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On previous trips, I had also dismissed the Desert View tower on the eastern point of the south rim as a tourist trap. How wrong and naive I was back then...</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking up into the Desert View tower</td></tr>
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In a final coup de grace to my old luddite approach to the Grand Canyon, Bryn treated me and her dad to a Father's Day rim-to-tim helicopter ride across the canyon. Not only was this my first aerial view of the Grand Canyon, it was my first ride in a helicopter as well, so my senses were reeling as we crested over the south rim and the bottom fell out from beneath us. It's amazing how quickly the trees pass by underneath as you buzz across the plateau during the approach, but then once you cross over the rim, everything slows down and it feels like you're just suspended there over the canyon. I can't tell if I'm more frustrated or awed that the entire round trip took about 30 minutes. Eleven years ago, I hiked the Grand Canyon from north to south rim. It took us three days and several gallons of sweat. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A tiny sliver of the Colorado River from the helicopter</td></tr>
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Looking west during our return trip from the North Rim</div>
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As we headed east from the Grand Canyon, I found myself reflecting on summer trips with my Grandparents when I was a kid. Every summer, we'd head off to the great American West: Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho, Washington, Oregon. One summer we flirted with the Mississippi River and went as far east as Lake Superior, but always the focus was on the west. Armed with a Rand McNally atlas and a national directory of Best Western hotels, we set off to see the great landscapes that my Grandfather, who grew up in northern Louisiana, had to see to believe. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to go on those trips and am happy that from now on, Great American Road Trips will always evoke memories of my Grandparents.<br />
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Obviously, a lot has changed in the 20+ years since we did those trips. Instead of picking our route based on where the Best Westerns were located (and driving hotel to hotel looking for a room) now we can book a room from our phones as we drive along. We aren't limited to Best Westerns, either. The advent of Air B&B and booking.com puts hundreds of options at our fingertips. One of the things I love most about sites like Air B&B is that they get you off the main drag, where the Best Westerns are, and back into the neighborhoods that tend to get overlooked and passed up. You meet and talk to people that you wouldn't have otherwise. It makes your overnight rest just as much part of the adventure as the daytime explorations. </div>
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Nowhere was this more true than in Alpine, TX, where we stayed on a small ranch on the edge of the mountains and Mae learned about horses. We all fell in love with Alpine during a brief stay there and have vowed to return for a longer sojourn. Grandpa and Grandma would have loved Alpine, but I'm not sure we ever would have made it there during the 1990s - the Best Western there only opened a few years ago.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Meeting Sonny in Alpine, TX</td></tr>
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<br />Of course, the internet doesn't only help with overnight accommodations. We've been on all sorts of backroad adventures that I doubt would have been possible without google. In Deming, New Mexico, Yelp told us about Tacos Mirasol, a colorful little shop where the AC was out but we didn't mind. I had my first tacos al pastor and Mexican coke in months there and that's all that mattered. Mae loved getting to watch a few minutes of Telemundo and Bryn savored her Chile Relleno. We stopped at a weird time - around 3pm - so there was only one other patron there at the time, a middle aged and friendly guy who worked night shifts at Mizkan, the chile canning facility in town. I put it together then that whenever you buy a can of Hatch green chiles, you'll see Deming, New Mexico on the label. He was the guy responsible for putting those chiles in the can. I acquired my love of New Mexican green chiles from my Uncle Robert and wished he could have been there at that moment. He probably could have had a more informed conversation with our fellow diner than I did. </div>
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We also got off the beaten path just outside El Paso, TX, where we went to visit International Boundary Marker Number 1. This white obelisk marks the beginning of the US-Mexico land border in New Mexico. From there to to the Gulf of Mexico, the border is marked by the Rio Grande but from this point west, to the Pacific Ocean, it's just desert, fence and a few dozen more of these white obelisks. I point out that this really is the border. In the picture below, the tree just behind the obelisk is Mexico. We could have easily walked Mae over there and logged her third country. However, there was a Border Patrol agent in a truck just off camera keeping an eye on things so we stayed well on the US side of the marker. We waved at a few tourists parked on the other side, in Mexico. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">International Boundary Marker Numero Uno</td></tr>
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The last story I want to share from this whirlwind of a week was our stop at McDonald observatory just outside Fort Davis, Texas. Perched on a hilltop over 6000 feet above sea level, this cluster of telescopes has put Texas on the astronomical map since the 1930s. Back then, they trucked a (relatively small) 82" diameter telescope up the dirt slope in the bed of an old Ford. Now, they still have state-of-the art telescopes that are among the biggest in the world. We went during the day, so weren't able to do any star gazing, but the views were amazing and seeing the telescopes close up was even more impressive. I can only hope that some of that knowledge got stored away in the back of Mae's brain and sparks the flame of science. But who am I kidding - she slept through most of the tour and ate from the bottle for the rest. She had no idea what was going on. I guess that just means we'll have to keep trying. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">107' Harlan Smith Telescope</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Outside the 360" Hobby-Eberly Telescope</td></tr>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-70060579590968446332017-06-18T05:58:00.002-07:002017-06-18T06:03:18.802-07:00Goodbye Saigon, Hello Flagstaff!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Happy Father's Day everyone!<br />
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I'm taking the opportunity of my first Father's Day to reflect back on the past six months of Mae. She was born last December and everyday since that one has been an introduction to fatherhood. Bryn and I are taking it all in pretty well, but really because Mae has spoiled us with (mostly) quiet nights and a warm friendliness that I can only attribute to Vietnam. We do our best to keep her happy, and she is doing the same. We feel incredibly fortunate to have fallen in so well with her. Of course, this probably means that she'll go through an especially horrific vampire stage in her early teens (or whatever the equivalent will be in 2030) but at least we'll have started off on a positive note, right?<br />
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Later today we're heading to the Grand Canyon, which is a pretty epic way to ring in my first Father's Day. Mae and I have been practicing looking out pensively over wide expanses from our balcony in Saigon. I think she's about got it down now, but the Grand Canyon will require more pensiveness from her than she may be ready for. We'll see how it goes. I'll definitely provide updates.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Mae practicing for the Grand Canyon in Saigon back in April</td></tr>
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We left Saigon for good this past week, saying goodbye to all of the friends that made our first post so amazing. As we were flying back, I recounted how I was not all that excited to be going back to Vietnam in February. We were still interpreting Mae's operating instructions and had quickly adjusted back to life in Austin. Why uproot all of that and fly 24 hours across the Pacific Ocean just to finish out the four months left on our tour? It seemed masochistic. Maybe it was, a bit, but it's amazing how significant four months can be. During that time, Mae went from a cute but minimally interactive newborn to a playful little rugrat. Four years after our initial trip to Vietnam, I was able to convince Bryn to go back to Hue for a weekend; we saw firsthand how the common trait of having an infant can seal bonds of friendship faster than I ever thought possible. Mae became best friends with our nanny, Thuy, who loved her as much as we do but had the baby experience and knowledge to back that love up with competent child raising. We will miss them all. We will also get back to Southeast Asia sometime - but hopefully after Mae is able to rush her own backpack up and down stairs across an airport terminal to make a tight connection. <br />
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The Grand Canyon is the second stop on our 2017 Great American Road Trip. We are making the most of our 2.5 month layover in the United States before making our way to our next post in September: Belize! That will have to wait for a whole other post, but for now, we are in the American southwest, reacquainting ourselves with phenomena such as low humidity, stillness and twilights that last longer than 5 minutes. Other than the heat, Phoenix was about the most opposite place I can imagine to Saigon. The sparseness of the landscape there is an aesthetic completely foreign to Vietnam, where at least 20 varieties of plants and insect inhabit every square foot of the country. Vietnam is a riot of life. The humans there are just emulating their own natural environment: nature there long ago concocted a medley of fruit trees, creepy crawly critters and landscapes that change every 20 miles and now humans do their best to copy it with tightly packed bodies, motorbikes and neon signs. The humans haven't quite accomplished the same elegance as nature has, but they're still working on it. Vietnam is a feast for the senses, always providing stimulation wherever you are, but also making it difficult to notice anything beyond a three foot radius that is your bubble.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">A little creek bottom down the hill from our place in Flagstaff</td></tr>
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But here, in the foothills outside of Flagstaff, I can actually walk around the street and soak in my surroundings. I can look 100, 200 feet off into the pines to notice squirrels chasing each other up a tree, or stop to hear a woodpecker doing his work 100 yards off. Outside of the Saigon Zoo, these experiences are virtually impossible to recreate in Vietnam. There is nature there, for sure, but the jungle is like the city in that you are never really sure what's happening more than three feet away from you in any direction. The ferns and palm fronds and banyan tree roots trap you in and demand your immediate attention in the wilds of Vietnam just like motorbikes, banh mi stalls and broken sidewalks do the same in the cities.<br />
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Flagstaff, Arizona has been a great kind of decompression tank for us in between chapters of exhilaration. Saying goodbye to Saigon was emotionally draining and the Grand Canyon (along with the rest of the American southwest) demands a sense of awe that I'm not quite sure we're ready for yet. Flagstaff, and the peaceful pines surrounding our little mountain getaway, serve as the perfect interruption between the two, allowing us to find our sleep rhythms again and take a few breaths of thin, mountain air before we go on to the next, utterly amazing slice of earth.<br />
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0Forest Service Rd 762L, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA35.093851846643574 -111.6581684550781134.989971846643577 -111.81952995507811 35.19773184664357 -111.49680695507811tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-17695483722811686392016-10-16T06:32:00.000-07:002016-10-16T06:36:49.465-07:00Transformation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For the past two months, basically since my last post, the room pictured below was the temporary resting place of many a visitor. For those of you who are familiar with the room, this was our smaller guest room. Now, as you can see, it has been taken over by baby. My daddy app calendar had been telling me to prepare the nursery for the past month, but it all pretty much got done in a 24 hour period. The daddy app should be content now.<br />
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Thank you to everyone who contributed to the nursery! As you can see, it's not quite finished yet, but we feel better knowing that, if a baby were to drop from the skies tomorrow, we'd more or less be ready for it. That is a relief. There are still plenty of items still up for grabs if anyone is itching to buy some baby stuff. You can <a href="https://www.amazon.com/registry/baby/14M6C9Y7N0U27/ref=br_app_share" target="_blank">check out our registry here</a>.<br />
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<img alt="Displaying IMG_0552.JPG" aria-hidden="true" class="aLF-aPX-J1-J3 aLF-aPX-aLK-ayr-auR" height="144" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=aa5aff19a4&view=fimg&th=157cd9e943e9d4da&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&attbid=ANGjdJ-GWl7BgRJo9CTnUioDEvpEgBeZCCLFTk938P7MrrHElx32WOtEtJuCR9GKqK-gUz-8NMlIYdUEMvJi8tqc9XXkPaWqG2nMi2WKpp68UpMEeg_ERcrVzXjXW4g&ats=1476623562578&rm=157cd9e943e9d4da&zw&sz=w1184-h551" width="640" /><br />
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It's also been great to spend time with all of the visitors who passed through this room (back when it had a normal sized bed) over the past few months. Thank you for making it interesting!<br />
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From hiking through the jungles of Penang with Liz...<img alt="Displaying IMG_0416.JPG" aria-hidden="true" class="aLF-aPX-J1-J3 aLF-aPX-aLK-ayr-auR" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=aa5aff19a4&view=fimg&th=157cda6358b37466&attid=0.5&disp=inline&safe=1&attbid=ANGjdJ9qDZLLXb5j_iwnIuoVnTnF9xCsaL8GwRNsGxY8ey0QvMKuokAQ0g1HeKpGU0y-Awk7XCbfsIuoggLMvj-iqfn2vBpq18B2wDcJ2ZQTus-BS0tW0sz_BeobfEA&ats=1476624036457&rm=157cda6358b37466&zw&sz=w1184-h551" /><br />
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To exploring Vietnam's highlands (and high buildings) with Mike and Sammy...<br />
<img alt="Displaying IMG_0457.JPG" aria-hidden="true" class="aLF-aPX-J1-J3 aLF-aPX-aLK-ayr-auR" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=aa5aff19a4&view=fimg&th=157cda6358b37466&attid=0.9&disp=inline&safe=1&attbid=ANGjdJ9_IeSkKjvvGaJjhpiJXrk-0xkouBMVVtRaUmFei8HeRsmAikr5LUBBxMrqgFFA76Gml5wf9PyFTM-uoZpPe3LS3rg-uAZrGr3bEwz53bR1zKEjz-aKGyCgEcg&ats=1476624036457&rm=157cda6358b37466&zw&sz=w1184-h551" /><br />
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To running through mountains with Jim - he wasn't a guest, but he helped me finish my first half marathon through the mountains around Sa Pa...<br />
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<img alt="Displaying IMG_0487.JPG" aria-hidden="true" class="aLF-aPX-J1-J3 aLF-aPX-aLK-ayr-auR" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=aa5aff19a4&view=fimg&th=157cda6358b37466&attid=0.11&disp=inline&safe=1&attbid=ANGjdJ_zU5rKP_a-ItHyR0I4cebQzpdAUOKZMSlBVyiBDc0CtGVoatoTsSUA80lpcY1h0Mnf8VTGWBzZB-zDE0mfLFpR9lQMoBfNNsnIp1cVQ0pJVmJvg9q5VaIjjpI&ats=1476624036458&rm=157cda6358b37466&zw&sz=w1184-h551" /><br />
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To waiting out the floods in Nha Trang with Bryn's State Department training class.<br />
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This was the view inside...<br />
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<img alt="Displaying IMG_0512.JPG" aria-hidden="true" class="aLF-aPX-J1-J3 aLF-aPX-aLK-ayr-auR" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=aa5aff19a4&view=fimg&th=157cdaac4c40ba51&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&attbid=ANGjdJ98oNH3Dhg5VjH2SUFKggHuvY9bMt7IHzogLQWJwXH-Xr840wsziolgODwrNo-BtH_gLdsxxXDGx_SKWASpip45MXDvMiACMr21sGzlAuV8DzZla1nNUF93Nlo&ats=1476624307573&rm=157cdaac4c40ba51&zw&sz=w1184-h551" /><br />
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While the conditions outside had devolved to carrying wives through the streets.<br />
<img alt="Displaying IMG_0513.JPG" aria-hidden="true" class="aLF-aPX-J1-J3 aLF-aPX-aLK-ayr-auR" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=aa5aff19a4&view=fimg&th=157cda6358b37466&attid=0.13&disp=inline&safe=1&attbid=ANGjdJ87yE4bef36r9NFgypaOVG86lzvRGBAKMVA6P5efBsNM2sBiQQCAcV3RmNc0bVHg2yL2TLrXoMmkA0H_ZrPfmcTUDh-maK8y7uKsoGH7w8tF33YBgY5S1rh9_Y&ats=1476624036458&rm=157cda6358b37466&zw&sz=w1184-h551" /><br />
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Thank you to everyone who came and visited and thank you to everyone who has helped with baby stuff. We really appreciate it!<br />
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-42990282456731227472016-08-14T05:51:00.000-07:002016-08-14T05:51:23.599-07:00Birthday Week<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's K-pop hour on the music video channel here, which makes for surprisingly good blog writing background music.<br />
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Once the dust settled from the big news last Friday, we celebrated Bryn's birthday the very next day in Singapore. Her birthday cake was delicious, but there was just waaaay too much cake left on the platter afterwards. Bryn was nice enough to let me take care of that.<br />
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Later that day, we went to a Chinatown hawker center to check out <a href="http://hongkong.coconuts.co/2016/08/05/singapores-hong-kong-soya-sauce-chicken-rice-noodle-one-two-hawker-stalls-given-michelin" target="_blank">the first Michelin starred food stall</a>. At $3.00 a serving of chicken & rice, it's probably the cheapest Michelin starred meal out there, but the law of supply and demand got in our way. Basically the entire hawker center had turned into a big line for this one stall. Since we haven't yet met a meal in Singapore that we didn't like, we opted for a laksa stall instead. Just as cheap and just as delicious as we had bargained for but a considerably shorter wait time. </div>
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Anyone who is lucky enough to fly through Singapore anytime soon, Changi airport has to be the best airport I've ever been to. Below is a shot of the BUTTERFLY GARDEN in terminal three. They also orchid gardens, a sunflower garden and several free movie theaters scattered throughout. Great place to spend a couple of hours waiting for a flight.</div>
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Finally, thank you to everyone who has pitched in on baby gear from the registry so far, we really appreciate it! We also appreciate any used baby stuff you might have laying around or stored in boxes. </div>
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We have a room here set aside to be the nursery come February. For the next few months, it will have to serve as a guest room, but as of October, the adult bed is out and the crib is in. As things come in, we've been storing them in that room. Apologies in advance to any guests who stay with us over the next few months and are bombarded with baby stuff, but it's pretty darn cute. </div>
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Happy Sunday everyone!</div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-8534206661791672462016-08-05T03:00:00.001-07:002016-08-05T03:00:41.277-07:0099.9% chance of GIRL!!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We're in Singapore for the 20 week check-up. Ostensibly, we're here to make sure the baby's healthy and learn the gender, but also, Singapore is a great place to celebrate the pregnancy half-way point and Bryn's birthday! </div>
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So, 1) the baby is healthy and 2) the baby is almost definitely a girl! Last time we were here, for the 13 week check up, the doctor gave us an 80% confidence that our baby was a girl. Now he told us with 99.9% confidence- it's a GIRL! He showed us the labia, which I will not post on the blog out of respect for our daughter's decency. We've both been mentally expecting a girl, so it's nice to stay on track with that. I will have SO much to learn. I mean, I had a lot to learn regardless, but raising a little girl will give me an opportunity to tap into some new skill sets, for sure. </div>
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Step one, don't post pictures of her labia online. Instead, here are some nice profile shots!</div>
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We've been curating a carefully selected registry. <span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Our registry is a bit unconventional because we will make four international moves in the first nine months we have the hippo. If you want to buy something for us, we would love it! We've made notes on a few items to have them sent directly to Vietnam. If you see this note, please send that item to the DPO address in Virginia - that's our Vietnam address. It's confusing. If there's no note about sending to Vietnam, then please send it to the default address which is in Austin. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/baby-reg/bryn-west-benjamin-west-december-2016-austin?ie=UTF8&lid=14M6C9Y7N0U27" target="_blank">Click here for the Registry!</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">We know the temptation to buy pink stuff will be huge - unbearable even. But, I've been informed that step two of my raising-a-daughter learning process is to make sure we don't inundate her with frilly pink stuff. So, please, go easy on the pink. There's a whole rainbow of colors out there and we want to make sure she's familiar with all of them. And actually, pink isn't on the rainbow, so there. Primary colors are preferred. </span></span><br />
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We have also prioritized some items as more important. To see those items, click "list actions," choose "sort" and choose "priority (high to low)." If you have any questions, please ask- we know it's confusing. And thank you for helping us out with baby gear! </div>
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<u>The Hippo</u></h3>
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Once we got into the second trimester, we decided that we needed a name for the baby - gender neutral, preferably, in order to avoid making any premature distinctions. We settled on naming our baby "The Hippo". We chose the Hippo for a few reasons. First, Hungry Hungry Hippo just makes sense for a hungry pregnant woman. Second, the Saigon zoo just had a new baby hippo, so there's a definite link between babies and hippopotamuses. Third, since the due date is around Christmas, it fit so well with our favorite Christmas song: </span><a href="https://www.google.com.sg/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwiBxqKM_KnOAhXLqY8KHea4CVoQ3ywIHjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D2Dec9Jb_Ac4&usg=AFQjCNFDPp9NtUPNc6hCpS80H59VKpbxdQ" style="font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank">I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas</a><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">. That might be somewhat of a theme song this year!</span></div>
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Anyways, that's all to explain why this was one of the first baby gifts we received. A friend of ours here knitted it herself and we're pretty excited to have it. It even matches my Grandma's quilt, which will definitely feature in the new tyke's life.<br />
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I'll be using this blog to do updates on pregnancy, delivery and other baby-related news, so keep checking in. We're really excited to start this new adventure and feel very fortunate to have such a supportive group of people behind us along the way. We love you all!</div>
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Ben & Bryn </div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-73954193990620423802015-09-23T20:13:00.001-07:002015-09-23T20:13:11.481-07:00The Land of the Three Waters<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I remember back in the early days of messing around on Google Earth (before <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/18/seven-wonders-of-the-world-google-street-view" target="_blank">Streetview</a> took all the glory) I discovered what the word <a href="http://www.findlatitudeandlongitude.com/antipode-map/#.VgJZk2Sqqkp" target="_blank">"antipode"</a> means and that, by inverting the coordinates of any given location, I could find its exact opposite side of the globe. It was on this day that I realized how foolish I was for thinking that if I dug deep enough in my elementary school's sandbox, eventually I'd make it to China. In reality, I would have come out somewhere in the Indian Ocean - onto some God-forsaken, middle-of-nowhere ocean floor somewhere equally far from Madagascar, Western Australia and the southern tip of India. My closest hope of salvation would have been the French Southern and Antarctic Lands several hundred miles to my south. Unless I was digging in my winter (their summer), the several dozen scientists that live on the island would have probably all gone home. In the end, it was a good thing that I never made it all the way through. It probably would not have ended well for me. <div>
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This is all to just set the scene for my visit to Kanyakumari, India's southernmost tip and dubbed "The Land of the Three Waters". It is here that the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal all meet after the Indian sub-continent finally ends its 1000 mile separation of the three. As I stood out on the point, dipping my toes into the water, I imagined my desolate antipode resting under the water somewhere thousands of miles in front of me. There was no land between my big toe and the Antarctic. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dipping my toe into the southern tip of India</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Waves crashing into the southern tip of India</td></tr>
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The Antarctic is a pretty abstract concept when you're in southern India. The heavy heat either bakes you dry on the east side of the peninsula in Tamil Nadu, or steam cooks you on the west side in tropical Kerala. A narrow mountain range divides the two and, driving, you cross from West Texas to Bali in a matter of minutes. The contrast is jarring and spectacular and the only thing that seems to hold the two separate universes together is a little two lane road that we whizzed along to and fro across the southern tip of India. </div>
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I had the good fortune of getting to tag along with my aunt and her colleague, Christine, in southern India while they were visiting a factory to set up some purchases. (Thanks again you two for having me along!) We spent a day in Tirunelveli going over designs of dried botanical arrangements and then took off for a few days of adventure while the artists created samples back in the factory. We visited the beach town of Kovalam, saw an old wooden palace and visited a few temples. It was a great little tour of India's southern tip and I can heartily recommend it to others looking for a good corner of India to explore. </div>
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I could write about a lot of experiences I had in India over just a few days, but I think the experience(s) that struck me the most were the temples. Maybe I wasn't going to the right temples when I visited Northern India back in 2011, but the southern temples just seem to have so much more character. Sensuous is the way that I would describe them if I only had one word. Given my rambling so far, that might be the only word of mine you read about South Indian temples, but if you'll indulge me for a few more paragraphs, I have additional observations on the subject. </div>
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It wasn't until I was back on the plane returning to Saigon that I finally arrived at the apt metaphor to describe South Indian temples: they're like a good, cured cast iron skillet that has been passed down from your great-grandmother. This metaphor may seem strange, but let me lay it out for you.</div>
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I think the piece that finally did it for me was a bas-relief of the monkey god within Meenakshi temple in Madurai. After making my way from the imposing gate through the dark layers of the temple lined with sculptures of Hindu gods and warriors, I made it into one of the central altars buried deep inside. If I hadn't had a guide, I would have been completely lost at this point. He directed me to the monkey god altar and I noticed it was very shiny for a stone sculpture, with globs of white and yellow smeared all over it. My guide told me that it was butter and lard - that people worshipped this altar by smearing cooking fats over it and then draping it in floral strands. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Altar to the Monkey God at Meenakshi Temple</td></tr>
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This was the literal parallel that got me onto the cast iron skillet metaphor, but the connection goes deeper than just a shared surface for butter. Worshippers at these temples offered all sorts of organic materials in these temples. Flowers were probably the most common, followed by bananas, coconuts and other fruits. I only saw the butter used once, but oils are smeared all over worshippers' bodies and burned in tiny lamps all over the temples. Priests bless worshippers with the ash from burnt wood and you'll notice little pots of ash at other stations around temples used to worship at altars. Colorful inks make worshippers and altars standout in the darkness. Most of the inks are plant based and are gone within a few days, so it's a safe bet that anything that is colorful has to be tended to on a daily basis. Some of the inks are made from spices, which provide a powerful scent that corresponds to the vibrancy. Then there is the largest mass of organic material of all - the temple elephant. Larger temples have a resident elephant that will bless you in exchange for monetary or edible donations. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Elephant blessing at the temple</td></tr>
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All these oils, ashes and inks blend together and layer over each other to create a truly sensuous environment that would be lost if someone went through with a sponge and bucket of soap. The character of these places is caked into the walls over centuries of worship. The altars are enclosed in layers of inner chambers and low corridors that make it difficult for any essence to escape into the outside world. It's like these temples are designed to trap the fumes and textures of all that enters and this accumulation makes these temples so special. Like an old, well cured cast iron skillet that has cooked thousands of servings of biscuits, gravies and caramelized onions, its flavor develops and matures over the generations. If you scrub it too well in the wash, you sterilize it and strip out all of those flavors. The sandstone walls of those South Indian temples are the spiritual equivalent of Grandma's cast iron skillet. </div>
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And trust me, once you've walked around a temple for an hour, it stays on you. I left the Meenakshi temple in Madurai and got straight on a plane to begin my trip back to Saigon. As I sat in my seat, I could feel the oils between my toes and smell the spices on my shirt. My skin was greasy and fingers were sticky, no matter how many times I washed them. At Christian church, I approach the whole experience with scrubbed skin and crisp, pressed shirts. The whole affair is pretty clean and sterile in comparison to South Indian temples. It felt different, and even uncomfortable, to have all of these residues all over me after visiting the temple, but isn't that the whole point? What better way to remember and hold onto an experience than to feel it slide between your toes or smell it on your shirt a few hours later. I know that to some of you that might seem disgusting and, full disclosure, I showered aggressively once I finally got home, but I can appreciate the sensuality of old time religion. In the end, it worked. I can't wait to go back and experience all that again. </div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-63122250848995395242015-09-12T03:03:00.000-07:002015-09-12T03:03:06.221-07:00Labuan Bajo, Indonesia: Sea Below, Stars Above<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I can't remember the last time that I was able to see the Milky Way. Saigon just has way too many lights and hazy skies to ever have a chance at seeing anything less bright than a half-moon. It's a sad indication of how urban my life has become.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Waves crashing on Devil's Tear near Dream Beach (Lembongan)</td></tr>
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Ten days on the Sea of Flores in Indonesia fixed that, though. The town of Labuan Bajo is located a few islands further east from the more popular Bali. It is isolated by the fact that you have to take an extra 1.5 hour flight from Bali, which seems to discourage most travelers from making it out there. However, the extra trip over stunning islands and pristine seas shimmering every shade of blue imaginable is well worth the effort.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our final and best snorkeling sight. There's a cuttlefish down there somewhere</td></tr>
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Those beautiful, clear, clean seas offer an abundance of marine life and diving opportunities. Bryn and I SCUBA dived six times over two days and had a blast. We swam with a pair of Manta Rays, saw countless Sea Turtles, a few reef sharks and, after numerous failed attempts to find a cuttlefish during our dives, we finally spotted one flitting alongside a sea turtle while we were snorkeling on our last day. The coral is still extremely healthy, but there is already evidence of its destruction. Like in Vietnam, it appears that the marine park charged with protecting the area is more interested in collecting revenue than protecting the park. Very few dive spots had mooring lines and a lot of boats just dropped anchor over coral beds. It was painful to watch. Like with <a href="http://footstepsofphileas.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-pilgrimage-to-con-dao.html" target="_blank">Con Dao</a>, it seems that the strongest force for preservation, for now, is Labuan Bajo's isolation. The sheer fact that not many people go out there means that the coral stays in tact. Who knows how long that will hold true, though.<br />
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Labuan Bajo's biggest celebrities are its <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/05/the-dragon-autopsy/393890/" target="_blank">Komodo Dragons</a>. Two islands off the coast of Labuan Bajo (Komodo and Rinca) make up the only wild Komodo Dragon habitat in the world. And the 5,000+ dragons roaming those islands are out in full force. We hiked on both islands and saw dozens of dragons lounging in the sun, hanging around the kitchen hoping for handouts or females guarding their nests buried in earthen mounds. Although they're quite dangerous (our guide briefed us on all of the Komodo Dragon related injuries and deaths over the years) they're also pretty docile animals. As long as you keep your distance from them, you're fine. It's when you start posing a threat to the nest or if you come across a hungry, hunting dragon that things get dicey. On our second day in the park we spent a few morning hours walking around Komodo Island and I think it was my favorite. Climbing to a hilltop to enjoy the view, we found that a dragon had beat us up there and occupied the best spot. Cockatoos squawked in the valley below us and flew from tree to tree and a little further out, you could see the coral under the waves of the bay rolling out to the sea. He was a smart dragon.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Smart Dragon</td></tr>
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Logistically, you're going to have to spend a lot of time on boats while you're in Labuan Bajo if you want to get the most of it. The town itself doesn't offer much more than dive shops, restaurants and hotels. There are some cool excursions inland, but the mountainous roads are slow going, so you have to set aside a lot of extra time for overland travel. As for us, we spent every day we were there on a boat. We spent the first two days on a dive boat exploring the reefs and marine life and the next two days on a private boat touring around Komodo Island National Park. We constantly passed much larger, live-aboard ships that offered 5 or 6 days of diving much further out at sea where the day-trippers couldn't reach. I was only little jealous of them. Honestly, I probably don't appreciate diving enough to get the full benefit of a live-aboard. Two days of diving and two days of snorkeling/hiking with dragons was a good amount for us. But more is always possible.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A boat similar to ours waiting for the nightly bat evacuation from the mangroves. </td></tr>
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One of my favorite moments of the trip was our night out at sea in between Komodo and Rinca islands in the national park. We had anchored next to a mangrove forest to watch giant fruit bats come out for their nightly feeding. As the migration of bats dwindled, the stars began to come out. The moon was waning so we had a few hours of good darkness after the sun went down. All four days we were out there, there was never a single cloud above us - they always lurked behind mountain ridges on the horizon, but never got close to us - so the sky was clear. And to make it perfect, the closest human settlement was nearly 20 miles away behind a mountain, so light pollution was at a minimum. The only manmade light source came from a few fishing boats out on the horizon. The conditions were perfect for an amazing star show, made more amazing by the fact that it's been so long since I've seen one. The Milky Way smeared across the sky above us as we lay out on the roof of our little boat.<br />
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The coolest thing was that I had gone to Labuan Bajo anticipating amazing experiences in and under the water - and it fully delivered on those expectations. The star show was unexpected, though, and those surprises are the ones that really grab you. <br />
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0Labuan Bajo, Komodo, West Manggarai Regency, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia-8.4538484000000018 119.87284210000007-8.5794989000000026 119.71148060000007 -8.328197900000001 120.03420360000007tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-48609201581258374852015-08-24T21:53:00.000-07:002015-09-07T19:35:52.287-07:00Diversifying<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I haven't traveled much in the past month. My aggressive tour of Vietnam's National Parks in July kind of wiped me out and spending August in one place sounded very appealing to me. The advantage of sticking around in one place is that you start to create routines and build on projects or relationships. The constant making and breaking of ephemeral contact while you travel can make one feel lonely. Staying in Saigon for just a month has been good for my soul.<br />
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First, I resumed Vietnamese class earlier this month. When I first got to Saigon, I was doing 20 hours a week. I've cut back to 12 and am enjoying it a little more. I've hit the point in my language studies where I'm starting to learn special vocabulary. This past week, I learned how to talk about a trip to the doctor's office and explain what hurt. This is great stuff to learn, but I won't use it everyday (hopefully) and so I won't have many opportunities to reinforce it. It's helpful that I now know how to say "I have a cough", but by the time I have a cough and need to say it, I will have surely forgotten it. Regardless, just applying myself to Vietnamese several hours a day helps keep up what I have learned and do use everyday. My latest project is to learn the lyrics to a Vietnamese pop song. My teacher suggested <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZw1_6IB7c4" target="_blank">this one</a> by who seems to be the Vietnamese equivalent of Jack Johnson. I can sing the first two verses so far, which has come in handy a few times. </div>
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One of the times I used my limited Vietnamese singing ability was during a presentation I recently gave at the American Center. The American cultural center here hosts all sorts of English speaking events and I've been pretty active there recently. During a series they did on American states, I presented Texas, naturally. In an attempt to make the presentation a little more interactive, I included a little segment where we all learned and sang the first verse of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGF4ibgcHQE" target="_blank">"Deep In the Heart of Texas"</a>. The audience was a little shy about singing at first, though, so I was able to loosen them up with my own rendition of the first verse of the Vietnamese Jack Johnson song. It was enough to make everyone laugh and break up the ice a bit. After that, they were much more enthusiastic with the singing and clapping. You have to give a little to get what you want and me singing a Vietnamese pop song seems to be good collateral when asking others to embarrass themselves. </div>
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I've also been spending my Monday nights in August at the American Center leading a Massive Open Online Class, or MOOC. The class watches the lecture video online over the weekend and then we all get together on Monday evening to answer questions, go over examples and just talk about the topic of Problem Solving and Decision Making. Granted, it's a pretty broad subject, but I've had a lot of fun doing it. I hadn't ever really taken a MOOC before I led the discussion for this one and, I have to say, I'm a fan. I think learning at your own speed and doing it on your own time can really serve students better than the traditional, rigid class schedule. One of my favorite moments from the MOOC was during the class on group decision making. We had a hypothetical situation in which someone walked through the door and offered the class $10 million if they could make a unanimous decision on what to do with that money. The class was split between investing it, creating a scholarship fund and donating it to charity. They all presented their cases, debated the points and even were able to convince a few people to change sides, but in the end, we didn't reach a consensus and so the fictitious benefactor had to leave us and find another group to donate his money to. It was fun to watch them engage with each other and all make really valid arguments. </div>
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For those keeping count, I'm now on the fourth activity that has been keeping me busy in general. Earlier in the month, I started a little chess club that meets up every Wednesday at a local university. I've never really been part of a chess club, so it's cool to be able to play people face-to-face. Vietnamese people in general are not comfortable with direct confrontation, so it's been interesting to watch them deal with chess, which doesn't have any pretext of passive aggressiveness - it's all out there on the wide open board. In one game in particular, once things started getting heated, the guy I was playing started making small talk, as if to reaffirm our mutual humanity while we slay each other mercilessly on the chess board. At least, I assume he was trying to diffuse the tension. Maybe he was trying to appeal to my humanist side in an effort to get me to cut him some slack. He ended up winning, so maybe he's playing a more conniving game than I gave him credit for... Anyways, a couple of kids have been in regular attendance and they don't seem to have any pretensions about being "nice" on the chess board. I've played the ten year old twice and both times just barely escaped with a win, only because he's made crucial mistakes in the end game. All the extra play seems to be paying off. I've been playing chess with my uncle on a regular basis since 2007 and of the hundreds of games we've played over all of those years, I've managed to win maybe 10 times. However, just last week, I managed to beat him three times in a row - an unprecedented feat in my budding chess career. I'm not necessarily ready to take on the Russians yet, but at least I have evidence that my game is improving. </div>
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On the more social, less confrontational side of things, we've found a good swing dance community here and have really been getting involved with that. Bryn and I have even taken it to the next level and taught a few classes. The scene in Saigon is pretty small and mostly beginners, but that just means that Bryn and I can actually make a difference here. I'm hoping to get even more involved and maybe start teaching a regular beginner's class. This sounds ridiculous to me, because in Austin or DC, I'm not nearly good enough to consider teaching, but since the scene is so young here, even if I can just teach people the basic step and a few simple moves, we will have made a big improvement. The perks associated with teaching swing dance have already started trickling down, too. Just last night I was invited to teach a class up on the 43rd floor of the highest building in town! I could barely even recognize the city from way up there. Swing dance has opened so many doors for me all around the world and I'm sure it will continue to create opportunities for me here in Saigon. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibak1T2RFk-Hi9SSHTjpbXMJKygT5_RWclCj1IxfIuhghhtFszkw8lbJVm3CxTCSiyyUf-uC-4RGDd_LK3CfRo_nJlf_aPYgzYfWcjgcWgrkj5OTe2t5qaMnoDB3cbt2Ju5zTxcThMl497/s1600/9ece0c3b8f91894bceecac93aebf5a99.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibak1T2RFk-Hi9SSHTjpbXMJKygT5_RWclCj1IxfIuhghhtFszkw8lbJVm3CxTCSiyyUf-uC-4RGDd_LK3CfRo_nJlf_aPYgzYfWcjgcWgrkj5OTe2t5qaMnoDB3cbt2Ju5zTxcThMl497/s320/9ece0c3b8f91894bceecac93aebf5a99.jpg" width="240" /></a>Sixth, and finally, is my solo project that I started when I first got to Vietnam. This one doesn't actually require me to be in Saigon to keep up, but I don't know when I'll ever get another chance to write about my rubber band ball. I know, this may not seem exciting, but ever since the days of Pee Wee Herman's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9N6JI9kkbs" target="_blank">gigantic ball of aluminum foil</a>, I've had a dream of making ridiculously large balls out of a household commodity. Vietnam is a great place to start a rubber band ball because I swear this country is actually held together by rubber bands. They're everywhere. Any food you order take-away involves at least four rubber bands and the ubiquitous, disposable rain ponchos use rubber bands to seal at the wrists and waist. Just walking down the street, you see them all over the place. Although I'm tempted to pick them up off the sidewalk, I've made a rule for myself to only pick them up off of the ground if I find them in my building (which I do all the time) since the ones on the street probably aren't hygienic. Considering that I've only been collecting since May, I think I'll be able to grow this ball pretty large by the time we leave. </div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-8706109683050692552015-08-11T06:44:00.000-07:002015-09-22T01:57:18.208-07:00Endangered Architecture in Saigon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A few weeks ago, I was writing to a friend about to come visit advising not to spend too much time in Saigon; the real treasures of Vietnam were outside the city in the countryside. That opinion has changed dramatically over the past few weeks, mostly thanks to a book that I found recently. "Exploring Ho Chi Minh City" by Tim Doling offers 23 walking tours around Saigon and surrounding areas. So far, I've only done two, but those two tours have easily doubled my knowledge of Saigon. The short story is that if you come visit, you should plan on doing one of these walking tours with me.<br />
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This book has confirmed what I already suspected about Saigon: this isn't a city that parades its best sites in broad daylight. I've tried a few times to just go on walks around Saigon and see what happens and usually that results in coming back home a few hours later hot, exhausted and convinced that all there is in Saigon are motorbikes and banh mi stands. The best of Saigon is hidden down inconspicuous alleyways, behind walls or locked up in controversial stories that aren't immediately apparent. After comparing a few walking tours from the book with a few walking tours without the book, the book definitely wins. </div>
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A few weeks ago, nerding out on Saigon's history, I visited <a href="http://www.historicvietnam.com/" target="_blank">Tim Doling's blog</a> and read a series he did on buildings around the city set to be torn down. They are all French colonial buildings between 80 and 150 years old. They are also mostly in district one; the center of the city where property is the most valuable and the most development is taking place. The series of blog posts is called "Date with the Wrecking Ball" and, while many of the buildings make an appearance in Tim's tour book, there isn't a specific tour dedicated to visiting the sites of Saigon with the shortest expiration date. Overcome with a sense of urgency, I plotted out a route on google maps and created a little tour based on Tim's blog posts that would show you most of the old French colonial buildings destined for the wrecking ball. </div>
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<a href="https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zq0gJPCB0MTA.k8gYvvZ9v9Ag" target="_blank">Saigon: "Date With the Wrecking Ball" Tour</a></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Started as the equivalent of a French VFA and ended up as the <br />
Vietnamese lottery commission before it was shuttered last<br />
year <span style="font-size: 12.8px;">and </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">now serves as a moped parking lot</span></td></tr>
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A few days later, we walked the tour ourselves to make sure we saw these little gems before they got knocked down. Some were more impressive than others, but all of them had a unique story that told the story of Saigon's turbulent 20th century. Most buildings started out as French administrative offices but shifted to more of a social purpose as French influence waned towards the middle of the century. Then they were taken over by the South Vietnamese or Americans until 1975, when the North came in and needed their own office spaces. As the southern economy liberalized in the 1980s and 1990s, the old buildings transitioned from government to commercial purpose - although many of them still house state offices. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the 1975 evacuation points</td></tr>
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There are plenty of poignant landmarks, too. The old Pittman apartment building that served as the stage for one of the <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/95/Saigon-hubert-van-es.jpg" target="_blank">most memorable images of the Vietnam war </a>is on the route (that building will be knocked down any day now). There's also the old French police station and jail right next to the cathedral along with an old printing press that published some of the first romanized Vietnamese newspapers. An old factory on colonial Saigon's main avenue has been converted into an upmarket cafe and clothing store. However, I think the building that most struck me was the Grand Magazin Charner: the first shopping mall in Indochina. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A visit to the old staircase of the first shopping mall in Indochina</td></tr>
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The Grand Magazin Charner was most recently used as a grocery store, but its doors were shuttered last year in preparation for demolition. The building itself is beautiful and certainly historical, but it has been remodeled so many times that it's hard to recognize the old French colonial architecture. What is impossible to miss, though, is the <a href="http://saigoneer.com/saigon-buildings/4875-the-saigon-tax-trade-centre-mosaic-staircase-a-forgotten-moroccan-masterpiece" target="_blank">grand mosaic staircase</a> parading down to the ground floor. I had read so much about this staircase and looked at so many <a href="http://commerces-immarcescibles.blogspot.com/2010/02/grands-magasins-charner-saigon-4.html" target="_blank">pictures of it</a>, but with the clear understanding that the building was now closed and inaccessible. Allegedly, a local architecture student broke into the building late last year to take the final pictures of the staircase. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find one of the doors to the condemned building wide open and a friendly guard named Cu let us in to get our own glimpse of the lobby and staircase. It made our day to be able to see perhaps the most endangered piece of art in Saigon. There is talk of saving, or at least preserving, the staircase, but its fate is in jeopardy right now. I'm amazed that, given its artistic and historical value, a museum hasn't tried to acquire it. If there are any multi-millionaires out there looking for a nice mosaic staircase, you might be able to get what you need here in Saigon.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Detail of the mosaic</td></tr>
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In return for showing us the staircase, Cu only asked for a picture of us in return. When we tried to send it to him, we found out that he doesn't have email. So, we went to a photocopy shop across the street and framed a print of our photo for just $2. I'm not sure he appreciated it all that much, but if you want to see the staircase for yourself, you might try offering Cu a framed picture documenting your visit with him.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our friendly security guard, Cu</td></tr>
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After our little tour, I reflected on the idea of all of these buildings being wiped off the map in the coming year. What affected me most was a little anecdote about the Catinat building, another one of those structures that had seen a dozen tenets over the past century and held books worth of stories about Saigon's struggles through the 20th century. When the French were building it in the 1920s, excavators discovered the foundation of Saigon's old city wall. Did this stop the developers? No. They went on with their construction project and buried the evidence of Saigon's pre-colonial past under an office building. I'm not saying that the Vietnamese should knock the Catinat building down out of spite for building over their old city wall, but in the midst of debate over preserving these old French buildings, I think it is important to remember that the French developed over an existing city. You don't see many structures in Saigon that pre-date the French colonial era. I certainly don't think that the Vietnamese have any moral obligation to preserve these old buildings and it makes sense to me that the Vietnamese would want to build a city for themselves. </div>
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There's also the simple value of these properties. These old French buildings are at most five stories high and yet they are surrounded by modern skyscrapers 30-40 stories high. The opportunity cost of keeping these French colonial structures is high and, in a developing country like Vietnam, they don't necessarily have the luxury of sacrificing millions of dollars in development projects for cultural heritage - especially when the cultural heritage in question is of colonial dubiousness. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A modernist mosaic beneath L'Usine cafe. I'm thinking that it<br />
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However, I still certainly hope that the city will figure out a way to preserve these buildings and I do think that there is commercial, as well as cultural, value in doing so. There is talk of incorporating the old facades into new developments or, in the case of the Grand Magazin Charner, incorporating the staircase into the new building built in its place. Southeast Asian cities have developed extremely rapidly and many have done so at the cost of developing a city character. Saigon might aspire to one day be as new and shiny as Singapore or Bangkok, but one of these days, Saigon will eventually be trying to set itself apart from Singapore and Bangkok. One way it can do that (architecturally, at least) is by preserving its unique French flair. I assume that Singapore and Bangkok don't have 19th century Moroccan staircases in their shopping malls or early 20th century factories converted into chic, downtown coffee shops. One of these days, in the not so distant future, these retro-buildings will be way more valuable than another sleek, modern skyscraper. </div>
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So I say "save the old French buildings"! If not for the historical value, then at least for the commercial value!</div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0Bến Nghé, District 1, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam10.781282202499298 106.7007957066650810.773483202499298 106.69071070666507 10.789081202499299 106.71088070666508tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-89471088037070935892015-07-20T23:30:00.000-07:002015-07-20T23:34:41.970-07:00The Worlds Below Phong Nha - Ke Bang National Park<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At one point deep inside the Tu Lan cave system, the members
of our tour all pointed our headlamps up at a huge column. The solid sediment
looked as liquid as a clock in a Salvador Dali painting. No wonder people are
so drawn to touch formations in caves – it’s hard to believe that they are
solid. You want to poke it with your finger just to make sure. Luckily for us,
the cavern burrowing through the mountain above us and the sharp stalagmites
hanging over our heads were very solid. Barring an earthquake, we could have
sat in our cave for a thousand years and not notice a single change. With the
exception of a bat fluttering by every once in a while, caves are basically
controlled laboratories for nature’s geological experiments. While I was at
Phong Nha National Park in north-central Vietnam, I spent a fair amount of time
deep inside these caves, so I had some time to think about it. Here are my
observations about spelunking in the wilds of Vietnam. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of Phong Nha and the Dr. Seuss mountains behind it</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0gxQhBs98UsWUjlyDHKC7b03JyNtR3ALI1admzPVwFj8oypLIYVYt09sZ4Ewv5oAIT_Er86jhRx0LrLy3fPL-qaVJDXt5GMJ-9-TgOrpiKmLnN-ikOlypL1eDpOznmbNLGxTMBg0mtXtd/s1600/19497012679_a891254b8a_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0gxQhBs98UsWUjlyDHKC7b03JyNtR3ALI1admzPVwFj8oypLIYVYt09sZ4Ewv5oAIT_Er86jhRx0LrLy3fPL-qaVJDXt5GMJ-9-TgOrpiKmLnN-ikOlypL1eDpOznmbNLGxTMBg0mtXtd/s400/19497012679_a891254b8a_z.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cave Cricket</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">First, walking through a cave is a lot like diving </span>on a
coral reef. I started realizing this after our guide described a cave formation
as looking like a piece of coral. The same subterranean forces that shape the
rocks under mountains seem to have the same personalities as the submarine
forces that shape the underwater world. Beyond the visual similarities
between formations and coral reefs, the whole experience has a lot of
parallels. Going into a cave requires a similar checklist as descending below an
ocean surface: secure and check all of your gear; do a head count to see how
many people are in your group; identify your entry point and then descend. Like
diving, descending into caves can be pretty technical and you tend to be really
focused on just picking your way down the rocks. When I dive, I’m usually too
preoccupied with equalizing my sinus pressure and maintaining a constant descent to really notice
what’s going on around me. But then, you reach the bottom and realize that
you’ve landed in a different world. You start noticing fish/bats going back and
forth overhead; you crane your neck upward to see the coral/rock features tower
over head and, as you start traversing the floor of the sea/cave, you start
noticing little critters in the crevices and start sticking your mask/headlamp
into little corners to watch cave crickets/sea urchins hanging out on their
rocks.</div>
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You get the same kind of tunnel vision in a cave as
underwater. Both worlds require you to observe through a kind of window –
either a headlamp in the cave or through a mask underwater. This forces you to
process your surroundings piecemeal – it’s difficult to get the wide panoramas
that we’re used to with peripheral vision up on the surface. Every once in a
while, you have to look up and confirm that there is indeed something above. This
tunnel vision helps to maintain some mystery in your surroundings, but it also
helps you focus on what’s right in front of you. Sometimes peripheral vision
can be a distraction. Up on the surface, our wide field of vision just gives us
too many things at once. It’s distracting! Below the surface, the visual field
is more suitable to those of us who don’t like to multi-task.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A drop of water forming a stalactite</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Also, coral reefs and Vietnamese caves aren’t as far removed
as you might think. The layers of rock that form the walls of the caves came
from layer-upon-layer of coral reef, underwater plants and life that covered
the sea floor millions of years ago. Like most of the world, the caves
burrowing under mountains were once sea floors. Some people think caves
are haunted. I agree with them, but I don’t think that caves haunted by human
spirits – they’re haunted by the billions of pieces of compressed sea-life that
make up the walls and ceilings holding up the millions of tons of mountain
directly overhead.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the entrance to Ken cave from our campsite</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Second, I can totally see how previous human civilizations
could have mistaken caves for hell. The surface of Phong Nha national park is
remarkable for its natural beauty. The karst landscape makes for dramatic
mountains that rise up out of nowhere and sheer cliff faces framed in lush
jungle. The sun shines brightly, rivers flow through the valleys and humans
survive on what the earth provides. But look a little closer at one of those
cliff faces or follow a river upstream far enough and you’ll find a gaping hole
in what you thought was a relatively solid earth surface. They are dark,
mysterious places that don’t seem to provide much support to life – except that
bats fly out of their gaping mouths every dusk to prowl the night skies. Caves
are weird places and only the bravest/fool hardy of people would venture to go
into one without a reliable light source. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lush rice fields on the surface</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Imagine a medieval adrenaline junky venturing
out of the security of his village to go explore one of these holes in the
earth. Maybe he has a torch as a light source. He can’t convince anyone else to
leave the village to go on this asinine adventure, so his
discoveries can only be translated through the perhaps faulty wiring of his own
consciousness. He stumbles his way down sharp, loose rocks, eventually losing
the light from the entrance. At the bottom of the cave, darkness is absolute.
If it weren’t for his torch, he couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face.
The weak light from his flame shows bizarre, twisted formations of rocks. Stone
daggers thrust up from the floor and hang down from the ceiling, threatening to
impale him at any second. Blobs of collected sediment protrude from the cave
walls, eerily resembling slimy monsters that he’s heard described by local
fishermen who have sailed far out to sea. He hears noises but they are
unfamiliar and he cannot determine their source. Going into a cave is to go
into a different, unexplainable world that is so physically close to our own
but so far removed. The lush colors of abundant life that make up the outside
world immediately turn into a deathly grays and browns below the surface. If
our explorer can’t find his way back to the mouth of the cave, if his light
goes out, surely he’ll die down there. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I can’t imagine anything closer to the physical
manifestation of hell than going down into a cave. Naturally, there aren’t
devils dancing around with pitchforks, but if you look at some of those
formations from the right angles, the </span>stalagmites and stalactites look like
pointy incisors attached to gigantic jaws ready to chomp down on anyone foolish
enough to get in their way. With the right mixture of fear, imagination and a
few hundred years of creative embellishment, those caves become our modern
portrayal of hell. But even if Dante and John Milton were fooled, I’m not. I
know that caves are really just spooky abandoned coral reefs.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6UAMyN7YdrKpHbhlYceKN0Qb1R6s5hdaM0wUq_CIi0QtCOZz9bCyn0msaRRvB8SUMQdMHVKaBpj1wOwBYb3I2LZuyf6NqAhxhhOeCVwBrS2iS_uDfgSut_maWrfvIUT_QqsEW36tsoBxd/s1600/19495687678_7ff4c9c3c9_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6UAMyN7YdrKpHbhlYceKN0Qb1R6s5hdaM0wUq_CIi0QtCOZz9bCyn0msaRRvB8SUMQdMHVKaBpj1wOwBYb3I2LZuyf6NqAhxhhOeCVwBrS2iS_uDfgSut_maWrfvIUT_QqsEW36tsoBxd/s1600/19495687678_7ff4c9c3c9_z.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nautilus fossil/ghost in the cave wall</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, Son Trach, Bố Trạch, Quang Binh Province, Vietnam17.5431265 106.1448275000000217.0586195 105.49938050000002 18.0276335 106.79027450000002tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-57878120432494310642015-07-14T07:24:00.000-07:002015-09-10T18:17:39.099-07:00Bach Ma National Park<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm6YVIdJzh6EfGhAkN4MHnKlYvVetDD3hOcIvRbJqwoTFjQO5MxHPZDESoXrQRnX7jPnItdQBApWpU80Osu3RWolIbDoUanFIFL2wg_Jz77oKU6FC-Fl82L4o1aobsKSjGkCuwDmXeawgq/s1600/18901208463_1dae3b8c69_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm6YVIdJzh6EfGhAkN4MHnKlYvVetDD3hOcIvRbJqwoTFjQO5MxHPZDESoXrQRnX7jPnItdQBApWpU80Osu3RWolIbDoUanFIFL2wg_Jz77oKU6FC-Fl82L4o1aobsKSjGkCuwDmXeawgq/s400/18901208463_1dae3b8c69_z.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Entrance to Bach Ma National Park</td></tr>
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I stood at the front entrance eyeing the road winding 12 miles in front of me up to the peak of Bach Ma mountain. The ranger had just informed me that it would cost $75 to get a ride up to the top in a van. The situation reminded me of how Vietnam does not tend to cater to individual travelers. The van option was tailored to the more normal 10 person Vietnamese tour group. I just couldn't justify giving up a chance to climb a mountain for an overpriced, 30 minute van ride.<br />
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Even though Bach Ma National Park is only a few miles away from the coast, I could already feel the cool air beckoning me to ignore the perils of spending an afternoon outside in Vietnam. Bach Ma peak itself was covered in clouds and it just looked like a different world up there. The logician inside me was telling me to wait for a group to come along and share a van with them, but my feet were chomping at the bit to make the summit on their own. And I was off.<br />
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The road climbed steadily and steeply the whole way. I kept seeing signs warning of a 10% grade ahead, but really the whole way was a a steep incline upwards. After about 20 minutes, I was already being rewarded with stunning views of the valley below leading out to the sea. The clouds kept their cover, too, so that I didn't melt. Everything was coming together nicely and I was running on the adrenaline rush that kicks in when you semi-spontaneously decide to climb 4,000 feet in a day.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEO4vEzbGz2OyY5kGn7DkSJek6uBfSArRoDVfkylhuXLumrk8478byHL_MwgKQhHvlGJSBo31zLaYWYYooPKq8DoHr8XDXZwg5WIcVrP2Wj4dZIdJjTXdXKbI4zFCG4cwSIO68GzMw0sb4/s1600/19515432852_119b0afa9f_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEO4vEzbGz2OyY5kGn7DkSJek6uBfSArRoDVfkylhuXLumrk8478byHL_MwgKQhHvlGJSBo31zLaYWYYooPKq8DoHr8XDXZwg5WIcVrP2Wj4dZIdJjTXdXKbI4zFCG4cwSIO68GzMw0sb4/s1600/19515432852_119b0afa9f_z.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNRy5wYQ3GxIydHQE-2V_5zN-wxPA3hZvkAgZv0Ne67eiMcEUgSNL9cnIbN0KlTizE_P-Fk0lfUyP_pwbDcWJsjx32CfOn_lAiLmugxdbct5qoEF0JKDVNIic5eLJWk_sOyOSyrxvfK77w/s1600/18901216053_4916867a92_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNRy5wYQ3GxIydHQE-2V_5zN-wxPA3hZvkAgZv0Ne67eiMcEUgSNL9cnIbN0KlTizE_P-Fk0lfUyP_pwbDcWJsjx32CfOn_lAiLmugxdbct5qoEF0JKDVNIic5eLJWk_sOyOSyrxvfK77w/s400/18901216053_4916867a92_z.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">See if you can spot the black tip of the tail curving around the barrier </td></tr>
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As I settled into a good pace, neck craned to my left watching the landscape recede below me, I heard leaves rustle and looked back down at the road. About 4 feet in front of me, a black snake with the slithered ahead. It raised its head and I could make out the unmistakable flare around its neck: a cobra. I froze. Finally, I had the wherewithal to pull out my phone and take a picture of it, but I was so flustered that I kept pushing the home button on my iPhone instead of the big white button for the camera. Once I finally snapped out of it, I was only able to catch the last of its tail as it exited the road for the thicker cover of the jungle. From then on, I proceeded with a little more caution, making sure to walk in the middle of the road.<br />
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Luckily, there is very little traffic on the road up to Bach Ma, so walking in the middle of the one lane road wasn't a problem at all. Most tourists drive up first thing in the morning for the sunrise, so my mid-morning start missed most of the heavy traffic.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifKGbNRzk2lTOzpBLYNJUdbLR-rg-rbOoPun5sX_kF_UuOevv5mXbtS0iwN9f4I3Je4Nr0kMCQwrsZUaYjk8CRqkKIDXDQU4-odnzf-z_8XUOXYy-VUReyXEIUMCoU5yGXmbd-ohyphenhyphen5I0l8/s1600/19515435882_edd0ecc8b7_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifKGbNRzk2lTOzpBLYNJUdbLR-rg-rbOoPun5sX_kF_UuOevv5mXbtS0iwN9f4I3Je4Nr0kMCQwrsZUaYjk8CRqkKIDXDQU4-odnzf-z_8XUOXYy-VUReyXEIUMCoU5yGXmbd-ohyphenhyphen5I0l8/s400/19515435882_edd0ecc8b7_z.jpg" width="400" /></a>About half-way up, I started getting up into the clouds and the view disappeared. Even though there was heavy cloud cover, I could still feel the mid-afternoon sun trying hard to burn through the atmosphere. The result was a weird combination of dense, glaring fog and heavy, hot air. I've never been so hot in fog before - my understanding was that you needed cool air to create fog? Left without a view to occupy my attention, I wandered on through the fog for a few miles trying to make sense of the meteorological conundrum I was caught in the middle of. My conclusion: I don't understand weather sometimes.<br />
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As I hoofed it over the second pass, lost in the random thoughts that flowed through my brain after several hours of walking through white, it started to rain. As it had been threatening rain all day, I already had my rain gear on and I welcomed the slight relief it brought from the heat. Besides, I was only about another mile from my lodge where I could dry off. I was so happy when I rounded the final corner at mile 12 and saw the one-story stone building waiting in front of me. It had been the first sign of civilization I'd seen in hours. Part of me had started doubting that there actually was anything at the top.<br />
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Right as I entered the front lobby, the rain started pouring down in earnest. I had been lucky. Lucky not only to have made it in time to miss the brunt of the rainstorm, but to have ended up in such a beautiful place. The lodge I had booked a room in was an old French villa built by well-to-do colonialists in the 1930s. I felt like I was in a wine cellar somewhere in France: the rounded stone walls supported a conical ceiling with a single stone column in the middle of the room. A staircase followed the rounded wall up to the rooms. It was such a cool space.<br />
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However, the girl at the reception desk had to deliver the bad news that I actually would not be able to stay there that night as the electricity was out. I'd have to go another mile up the road to the next lodge. Under other circumstances, I would have been devastated. Anyone who has climbed a mountain knows that you count down every foot for those last few miles to the top. To add a whole 5,280 feet to my countdown was a blow to morale. But the rainstorm outside was intensifying. Lightning was flashing directly overhead and the wind was straining at the windows. Electricity or no, I was at least waiting out the storm in that grand, French entrance hall.<br />
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As I watched the storm, I realized that I had started the day somewhere in tropical Vietnam and in just a few hours had somehow made it to Oregon. The lodge was surrounded by pine trees that padded the ground below them in needles. Wisps of clouds blew up the side of the mountain and the rain kept driving down. Every time lightning struck, I heard a zap come from the fuse box on the back wall and began to understand how the lodge had lost its electricity.<br />
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About an hour later, the rain finally slowed down. The receptionist gave me a poncho and I set off on my final mile, teeth actually chattering in the cold aftermath of the storm. I had never imagined that I would one day be cold in Vietnam, but it's possible.<br />
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I spent the second day exploring the trails around the peak of the mountain. I got up early for sunrise at the peak and then made my way down through the leech infested forests to a series of waterfalls. At one point, finding a leech on my ankle, I freaked out in the middle of the road, flinging my shoes and socks off in an effort to get rid of the little suckers. I found five of them on me in all, with many more wriggling around in the bottom of my shoe. Once I had removed them all, I fashioned a pair of leech socks out of my poncho: I'd rather be wet than covered in leeches. It seemed to do the trick, as I went the rest of the day leech free.<br />
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The highlight of that second day was Rhododendron falls, the grand finale of a series of waterfalls winding down the mountain. And yes, I walked the nearly 700 steps down to the base of the waterfall and then back up. And these aren't your friendly, OSHA approved staircases; these are crude, concrete terraces of varying height scaling the side of a cliff. After climbing back up those steps, I was done for the day. I went back to the lodge in time to miss another afternoon rainstorm. I left my window open and watched clouds spill over into my room. I still can't really believe that all happened in Vietnam. It really is a different world up there.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The top of Rhododendron Falls</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The base of the falls, nearly 700 steps down</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Buddha in the jungle</td></tr>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0Bach Ma National Park, Phú Lộc, Thua Thien Hue, Vietnam16.1820039 107.9057812999999415.694036400000002 107.26033429999994 16.6699714 108.55122829999995tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-84465131162355499812015-07-01T08:32:00.001-07:002015-07-01T19:33:51.921-07:00Cat Tien National Park<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>To get in the mood for this first section, I recommend listening to <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B32URNrRkXqpd2V1YzRqOGNyUTlfcDRtRU9oQWc2VlVHMEdj/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">this sound clip</a> that I recorded on the evening when we begin. </i><br />
<br />
The rain finally came Sunday night at around 3am. It was
late, though, and made for a tense evening. The previous four days it had
rained all afternoon, washing the accumulated heat and dirt off of the day and
cooling the evenings. But Sunday night, I lost my patience waiting around for
the rain and went to bed feeling like the day wasn’t quite complete. I had been
waiting lazily enough, reading and swinging myself in a hammock out on a deck
overlooking the Dong Nai River. The waiting was getting uncomfortable, though. The mosquitoes had already managed to score a few bites on my butt, which I
have to point out was covered in two layers of clothing. I retreated back to my
bungalow and behind the protection of my mosquito net. By then, even the
crickets, cicadas and frogs had gone to bed and it was dead still outside as
everyone just kept waiting for that inevitable rain to finally come. I turned
on the fan in my room to blow away the tension in the air. It’s amazing how
heavy the air feels right before a storm.<br />
<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Typical afternoon rainstorm on the banks of the Dong Nai River. Cat Tien forest is on the opposite bank.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I felt like I had barely closed my eyes when I woke up to
thunder in the distance. It was a welcome sound and I lay in bed listening to
it gradually get closer. Within a few minutes, the thunder was peeling directly
over me, starting just behind my head and continuing down past my toes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I waited for the drops to start falling, but
they didn’t. Despite the lingering anticipation, I fell back asleep. The next
time I woke up, I heard footsteps approaching my bamboo bungalow. I held my
breath and strained to listen where they were headed. They approached my
bungalow, then started heading away from it, then sideways, parallel to my room
then… on my roof? Eventually, my senses sharpened and I realized that the
footsteps were in fact the rain beginning to fall around me. The slow, heavy
start transitioned to a steady rhythm that played nicely on the thatch roof
above me. With the tension finally cut, I fell back into a deeper sleep.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I dreamed of dinosaurs that night: specifically, a T-Rex
wreaking havoc on a ship. It was like “Jurassic Park: The Lost World” except
that my brain was playing all the scenes that took place on the boat that the
movie didn’t show. My dream ended differently, too, with the boat finally
pulling up to a curb along a Mexican sea-front plaza. The shallow water caused
the ship to tip over, releasing its deadly cargo into the party town. I can
only imagine that my dream was (at least partially) inspired by Cat Tien
National Park. The forest I spent the last 5 days in is a prehistoric kind of
place that seems to be fit more for giant lizards than soft skinned humans. The
giant “Tung” trees, for example, must have been around for the dinosaurs - they
kind of look like dinosaurs. Their long, ascending roots are like dragons,
with smaller, secondary roots coming off the main roots that make for
believable looking legs. Maybe my dream influenced that simile, though. A few
days before my dream, I had walked around a Tung tree comparing its giant roots
to flying buttresses of some medieval church or castle. I like the dragon
simile better though – it’s more likely you’ll see a dragon in that dense,
ancient forest than a gothic cathedral. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A massive root coming off a massive Tung tree.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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I celebrated my last day in the Cat Tien forest by crossing the
length of the park to Crocodile Lake. I didn’t actually see any crocodiles
there, but that didn’t take away from the experience. I rode my bike and walked
through dense jungle for about 3 hours to get there and the grand expanse of
the lake was a dramatic contrast. I don’t tend to get claustrophobic, but
walking through Cat Tien tested the limits of my senses. My eyes couldn’t do
much more than watch the path directly in front of me. As soon as I looked up
to either side of me, I was blinded by green. In the beginning, I’d try to use
my eyes to follow up on clues my ears were receiving – a rustling tree here, a
flutter of wings there – but my eyes usually couldn’t provide much help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once, while watching a tree top shake
violently, I saw a monkey fly through the air on its way to another tree, but
other than that my eyes were pretty much useless. By the end of my trek, I was
relying on my ears. Instead of trying to spot birds through the dense leaf
cover, I stopped periodically to listen to the <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B32URNrRkXqpZk9QMTBGWXZKZnFscDBmTlZOejhwcHppOEFv/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">symphony of calls all around me</a>.
At Crocodile Lake, though, the jungle opens up to an expansive wetland where
the eyes finally got to join in again: cranes circling over the water looking
for a place to land, brightly colored birds darting over the tops of the reeds
and red-headed ducks waddling through the shallow wetlands.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lava stone footpath to Crocodile Lake - chiseled and placed by hand.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
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I returned to the lodge sweaty, muddy and beat. It was 3pm
and hot and I had just covered 20 miles over bumpy, muddy roads and narrow
jungle paths. I was hungry and thirsty, as all I had during my trek was a Cliff
Bar and two bottles of water. Luckily, the lodge I was staying at served an
awesome river fish steamed in pineapples, tomatoes and
peppers. After I devoured that and finished off a liter of water, I crashed
into bed to sleep off the heat of the afternoon. The bamboo bungalows make air
conditioning futile, but the gaps in the wall allow natural ventilation to keep
the rooms cool. I actually visited another lodge down the road that had brick
built rooms and a/c, but they were still hotter than my little bamboo bungalow.
The technology may be a thousand years old, but it works. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My humble bungalow. The stockings hanging behind the chair are my leech socks. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steamed fish from the river right below this table. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Later that evening, the owner of the lodge I was staying in
showed me around his garden. He had planted about 40 hardwood trees that would
grow there for over a thousand years. Even though the lodge had
only been open for two years, the owner was obviously planning for a long
future. The trees he was planting would barely be adolescents (in tree years)
by the end of his life. But that’s the cool part about forests, I guess. The
giant trees that are already over a thousand years old transport you back in
time – even if not quite back to the dinosaur era, at least back to the gothic age. The little saplings that
reach up to your chest and are as big around as your thumb transport you a
thousand years into the future. Who knows what the banks of the Dong Nai River
and Cat Tien national park will look like a thousand years from now. I hope it
still looks similar. It was nice to have my weekend there in the
middle of both.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0Cát Tiên National Park, Cát Tiên District, Lâm Đồng, Vietnam11.419119 107.4265480000000310.921413000000001 106.78110100000002 11.916825 108.07199500000003tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-35141671551786551362015-06-17T21:15:00.000-07:002015-06-17T21:15:26.001-07:00Lessons Learned from 22 years of Jurassic Park<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<u>Spoiler Alert!</u> If you haven't seen Jurassic World yet and want to be surprised, you should probably save this until afterwards. If you haven't seen JP III yet... I suppose I can't blame you. Read on.<br />
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This past weekend, we went to go see Jurassic World and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/jurassic-world-roars-into-record-books-with-highestgrossing-debut-of-alltime-10320906.html">helped make box office history</a>. This was the first time I'd seen a Jurassic Park movie in a theater since The Lost World (the second installment) came out in 1997. When Jurassic Park III came out in 2001, the thrid grader inside of me was in regression and, in my attempt to be an adult, I didn't give the movie much attention. I actually didn't see see Jurassic Park III until earlier this year. With the anticipation of Jurassic World coming out this summer, my buddy Joe and I "prepared" for the release by watching the first three. Actually, after watching JP III and seeing the previews for Jurassic World, I had developed some pretty strong theories about plot continuation. I was sure that the boy who got stranded and survived on the island in JP III would grow up to be Chris Pratt, raptor tamer, in Jurassic World. Also, I was positive that the raptor calls Dr. Allen used in JP III to save his crew would develop into a more sophisticated method of training velociraptors. Alas, it turns out Chris Pratt's steely gaze and snaps are actually all it takes to prevent raptors from disemboweling you.<br />
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Anyways, as I was walking back from the theater that night, I started reflecting upon all the lessons the Jurassic Park franchise has taught us over 22 years. We have books dedicated to surviving a zombie attack, and yet living side-by-side with dinosaurs is probably (slightly) more realistic. So I think it's time to start keeping track of these valuable lessons.<br />
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<b>1. Fences do not contain dinosaurs.</b> Time and time again, Jurassic Park shows us that dinosaurs manage to get out of their cages: whether that be due to electrical failure, not using enough tranquilizers or outsmarting us. Inevitably, some poor guy on the ground gets eaten when the carnivores get out of their cages. So, instead of trying to keep dinos in their cages, we should let them roam free and the tourists should stay off of the ground. In other words, put the humans in cages. They're much less likely to try to get out than the dinos. The obvious solution to me is to tour the island of Jurassic Park by suspended cable car or by monorail like at Disney World. Seems like it would be much easier and cheaper to protect a narrow, aerial transport corridor than keep meat-hungry dinosaurs inside pens with perimeters several miles-long. Whatever you do though, just don't use planes or helicopters. That did not work out well for JP III and Jurassic World cast members.<br />
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<b>2.</b> D<b>inosaurs are super romantic. </b>Judging by the way that characters in the movies always seem to be rekindling existing relationships or making new ones, dinosaurs seem to be pretty good for one's libido. Whether it's Dr. Allen coming around to the idea of having babies with Dr. Sattler by the end of JPI, the parents putting their divorce aside in JPIII or Claire & Owen smooching by the end of Jurassic World, it's obvious that dinosaurs put love into the air. This is a solid selling point and should obviously be in any marketing plan for an actual Jurassic Park.<br />
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<b>3.</b> <b>The best way to fight dinosaurs is with other dinosaurs. </b>JP I and Jurassic World really bring this point home, but there's evidence in Lost World, too. If you're going to create dinosaurs, you'll inevitably have either a T-Rex, Velociraptor or some other ungodly creature chasing you. However, you'll notice that they almost never gang up on humans. If there's a fight between raptors and humans and you throw a T-Rex in the middle of it, the humans fall out and the raptor and T-Rex go at it. Looking at it through the lens of International Relations theory, dinosaurs live in a balance of power environment. Even though the T-Rex is "king" the others will create alliances if he gets too far out of bounds. Dinosaurs' main weakness is their susceptibility to divide-and-conquer tactics and that has usually been what saves the weakling humans from getting eaten. Only for a brief moment in Jurassic World do two breeds of dinosaurs team up, but this is an anomaly and there are complicating factors in that relationship that I won't go into here. Otherwise, if you're a woman or a kid, your chances of getting eaten are waaaaay lower than if you're a guy. Especially if you're a fat guy. Or you're an asshole. Dinosaurs really like to eat fat assholes.<br />
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<b>4. Handle dino babies with extreme care. </b>I strongly encourage re-watching the original Jurassic Park. It definitely stands the test of time and it's just fun. Also, you see little things that you might have missed when you saw it back in 1993. For example, when Nedry (aka, Newman) gets lost trying to smuggle embryos out of the park and drops the Barbasol can in the mud, the camera zooms in on it as we see it quickly get buried in mud. I guess this is some sort of ironic twist on the fossilization of dinosaurs and how some civilization, millions of years from now, would find a bunch of different embryos in this weird can. Anyways, given the attention Steven Spielberg paid to that Barbasol can in JPI, I kind of figured it was foreshadowing for some weird twist later on. I suppose it was symbolic of the the whole idea that Dr. Malcom's "chaos" would spoil John Hammond's carefully constructed fantasy. Or that fake Barbasol cans make for a lousy uterus. Later, characters learned the lesson of messing with dino babies much more overtly in subsequent installments. Taking a baby T-Rex or raptor egg is great for plot development but bad for life- expectancies.<br />
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<b>5. Our answer to Rhino poaching? Triceratops Horn. </b>As some of you may know, the illicit rhino horn market in Asia is driving the Rhinoceros to extinction. It's especially sad because men here spend millions of dollars on rhino horn thinking that it improved libido. As we've already seen, though, dinosaurs increase libido by just being around them. Being chased by them definitely seems to help more. Additionally, one of the most recognizable dinosaurs out there, the triceratops, has three large horns protruding from its face to help defend itself. One triceratops would yield way more horn than one rhinoceros and, seeing as it's a dinosaur, I imagine that we could convince rhino horn consumers that triceratops horn is more potent. If we could switch tastes in Asia, it could be our ticket to saving the rhino.<br />
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Of course, the moral implications of bringing dinosaurs back only to "farm" them for superstitious practices is something we'd need to work out. Admittedly, there are probably many other ways to curb rhino horn consumption, and Jurassic Park doesn't actually teach us anything about the medicinal value of triceratops horns... this one's a stretch. Maybe the JP franchise could eek out a fifth installment going off on this tangent. But in all seriousness, <a href="https://www.savetherhino.org/">rhino poaching is a horrible practice</a> and it makes me sick to think of people buying the stuff thinking that it will do them any good at all. I mean, at least cocaine and heroin come from regenerative plants so that the users are mostly just harming themselves.<br />
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Ok, now that I've gone from dinosaur containment practices to the awfulness of the rhino horn trade, I think it's time to wrap this one up. Next week, I'll get back to Vietnam. Thanks for indulging me on this little side-trip.<br />
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-63372756397678456882015-06-08T20:32:00.001-07:002015-06-08T20:32:34.591-07:00Learning Vietnamese<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As we settle into life here in Saigon, I am concentrating more of my time on learning Vietnamese. While Bryn spent eight months learning Vietnamese, I only spent my last six weeks in the US actually going to Vietnamese class. Needless to say, she's way ahead of me when it comes to communicating around here. As I play catch-up, I'm noticing some interesting features of Vietnamese as well as having realizations about my own English language. <div>
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First, Vietnam is one of the very few countries in Southeast Asia to use the Roman letter alphabet. Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and, of course, China all use very different alphabets that render most foreigners illiterate upon arrival. Vietnam adopted Roman letters back in the 19th century, though, so if you come here, you can at least make out the sounds of words you see on the street. This is a huge advantage to learning a language. In China, if you don't know the character, you don't know the word. Imagine walking down these two streets:</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/HK_ShanghaiStreet_CantoneseVerandahTypePrewarShophouses.JPG</span></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">http://www.vietnamese-culture.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/vietnam-cyclo.jpg</td></tr>
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<br />Ignoring the random English words thrown in the mix, you'd probably have a better chance navigating the second one (Saigon) than the first (Shanghai). If given a business card with the name "Ngoc Quyen", you'd be able to find it on the Saigon street. Unused to Chinese characters, you probably couldn't do the same thing on the Shanghai street. <div>
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It's such a huge advantage to be able to learn a word in class and then be able to reinforce that by seeing that same word on the street in context. In China, I remember that happening, but it was so rare. Here in Saigon, it happens all the time. Now, listening to Vietnamese is just as foreign and confusing as listening to Chinese, but having the advantage of recognizable visual cues in Vietnam - the fact that I'm mostly literate here - makes a huge difference. </div>
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The second thing I've noticed is that it's false to separate tonal and "non-tonal" languages. There is no such thing as "non-tonal" languages. The real difference is that in languages like Vietnamese or Chinese, the tones are set. Saying the same combination of letters with an upward, downward or alternating inflection will give the letters completely different meanings. Vietnamese officially has six different tones so that, theoretically, a word like "nha" could have six different meanings depending on what tone you use. Non-native Vietnamese speakers are stunned at this. But in English, or any other language for that matter, we use tones all the time, they just aren't formally written into the script. Think about saying the following sentence:</div>
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You went to the market on Tuesday.</div>
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Say that back to yourself in a flat tone. You are stating it as a fact. But now try playing with the tones. Depending on whether you raise or lower the tones or inflect certain words, you can infuse accusation, incredulity or condescension to that sentence. In English, we definitely use tones, they just aren't written. Our tones are up to the speaker to add and the listener to interpret. Sometimes that's why it's so easy to misinterpret the written word over the spoken. Reading Vietnamese, meanwhile, is like reading a sheet of music. If you substitute a D flat for a B sharp, the listener hears a mistake - not a change in tone. </div>
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So imagine for a moment trying to learn English as a foreign language and figuring out the nuanced difference between a rising or falling tone in a sentence. That tone is written anywhere. Without the benefit of growing up with an English speaking mother, how is one supposed to know what an "accusatory tone" sounds like? It's important to be conscious of this - especially when speaking to people whose first language is not English. First, be aware of the tones you're using and second, assume that the meaning of those tones is completely lost on your listener. It's hard to do. </div>
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So, when it comes to tones, I argue that English is actually the much more difficult language to speak. I try to keep this in mind as I struggle through Vietnamese class sounding like some amnesiac tropical bird trying to remember his song. The process is not beautiful, but at least I don't have to learn English!</div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-12946283302589378982015-06-02T20:36:00.000-07:002015-06-02T20:36:55.349-07:00Happy Birthday Buddha!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This past week was Buddha's birthday and we were in the traditional town of Hoi An this weekend to celebrate. Actually, it wasn't nearly that intentional. With a little dumb luck, we just happened to be in one of the best spots possible to celebrate Buddha's 2639th birthday.<br />
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Instead of trying to write all of this up, I feel like this week's post would be much better in the form of a photo-essay. After all, it was a very visual weekend so I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPNJF_t1uuIagtFx29mWvBFuvq-sjNoKCRArfUUArrotnvVU4zmkBAv8xUrz84-w7ixnztz8OISFMIM0-0OIRaUg5ha9egLNDScFae72OBefiN0Y5Cj_uLsnYwSmV__6AprxDcDZ91XnHS/s1600/18209680410_99ec30e27a_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPNJF_t1uuIagtFx29mWvBFuvq-sjNoKCRArfUUArrotnvVU4zmkBAv8xUrz84-w7ixnztz8OISFMIM0-0OIRaUg5ha9egLNDScFae72OBefiN0Y5Cj_uLsnYwSmV__6AprxDcDZ91XnHS/s400/18209680410_99ec30e27a_z.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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First of all, Hoi An is an old trading town in central Vietnam. The fact that it was a trade hub means that all sorts of nationalities and interests were at play here during the 16th and 17th centuries. As a result, each group built their own temples, meeting halls and shrines. Different variations of Chinese traders, Japanese monks and even a smattering of European merchants built their own meeting halls and places of worship. Today, all of these buildings make for a very eclectic town center. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNQP1Nfnb9_DLbTB50Hg9zWh85qx7dMlRviff-UMyowR0LBBzbxl5cGEXC7U1jdyAiI13uA40VnpGYG2XARy3ao2yBY99xJpaCOuYeBMMwCUxV84Bf0A67Wn5X_E7b0bIDh96Z8nqHyMKE/s1600/17782875674_04c1839a2d_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNQP1Nfnb9_DLbTB50Hg9zWh85qx7dMlRviff-UMyowR0LBBzbxl5cGEXC7U1jdyAiI13uA40VnpGYG2XARy3ao2yBY99xJpaCOuYeBMMwCUxV84Bf0A67Wn5X_E7b0bIDh96Z8nqHyMKE/s400/17782875674_04c1839a2d_b.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">And that beautiful town center was looking especially good for Buddha's birthday. One of the traditional symbols of Buddha's birth is baby Buddha walking on seven lotus flowers. Legend has it, that lotus flowers bloomed in the footprints of Buddha's first seven steps. Most towns acknowledge this with a poster or maybe even a little shadowbox scene, but Hoi An exploited its geography by installing seven huge lotus floats in the river. We must have seen at least five wedding photo shoots happening around the lotuses Saturday evening. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-oV3AsnTlJlJIPP_-x8X-tpPUzojTUpt5fF10GkDsoTvcOMzLjEnBEgRzrrTJN0nh9lX0Jc8rGbWI8x_pvjTftFGh7YEMUDHZoF5Ik4PQuU1iiGMwf8HDJKR3cEx-AzdIIz1v4KfU9N5x/s1600/18194064270_d0942b24c8_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-oV3AsnTlJlJIPP_-x8X-tpPUzojTUpt5fF10GkDsoTvcOMzLjEnBEgRzrrTJN0nh9lX0Jc8rGbWI8x_pvjTftFGh7YEMUDHZoF5Ik4PQuU1iiGMwf8HDJKR3cEx-AzdIIz1v4KfU9N5x/s400/18194064270_d0942b24c8_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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We were suckers and bought a few paper lanterns as soon as the ladies came out on the bridge to sell them. Being amateurs, we got caught up in the moment and lowered our lanterns well before dark. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEoElbtFkJXxrAqFv4yOYtkAwGMd1ACisEEyXrY9x6R80sHPG214SOettYwXa5v9Noc_uWzAPy2stl9g5a-ekqhwMiLomBvXgA72gTrI2G0Oofre3qOG9q0wBOKHF_w_4dYcKERJBejZgD/s1600/17759817694_6a6f63ae76_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEoElbtFkJXxrAqFv4yOYtkAwGMd1ACisEEyXrY9x6R80sHPG214SOettYwXa5v9Noc_uWzAPy2stl9g5a-ekqhwMiLomBvXgA72gTrI2G0Oofre3qOG9q0wBOKHF_w_4dYcKERJBejZgD/s400/17759817694_6a6f63ae76_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Our lanterns may not have added to stunning effect of seeing hundreds of glowing lights out on the river at night, but at least our lanterns were the first to start making their course towards the sunset. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZq4hY20CiVk5ThpxsYazYwn-k4g-btsL5sob0IgzRiWE7DC_6kQBrdBF0xzaib6TdBNeNG3Pqv7KmB3x-uz_LpmrSMtTMdq-FRtUwM9utASuDa_pUkZjqbd8BZf7V1cdmldYoO2g6l0Rt/s1600/18384112781_08a2787d66_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZq4hY20CiVk5ThpxsYazYwn-k4g-btsL5sob0IgzRiWE7DC_6kQBrdBF0xzaib6TdBNeNG3Pqv7KmB3x-uz_LpmrSMtTMdq-FRtUwM9utASuDa_pUkZjqbd8BZf7V1cdmldYoO2g6l0Rt/s400/18384112781_08a2787d66_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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We actually ended up buying some more later that night to join in the fun. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXtT3tBl4PBYBKdZd7WxNH6OtIY0CxWfdHPKztLynonbmGnZs3xaRA5ZOTejXAPgXx28o5AL41x4QP_UgpNkIuAqoda-zKjMWyEFb2KHZBbPk98U_SLdR66niBn3ZzjfOYISN1BMfa2-Wd/s1600/18217249758_e60b7ae690_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXtT3tBl4PBYBKdZd7WxNH6OtIY0CxWfdHPKztLynonbmGnZs3xaRA5ZOTejXAPgXx28o5AL41x4QP_UgpNkIuAqoda-zKjMWyEFb2KHZBbPk98U_SLdR66niBn3ZzjfOYISN1BMfa2-Wd/s400/18217249758_e60b7ae690_b.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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After a few hours hanging out near the river, we made our way further inland back towards our hotel. About a block before we got there, we found this temple decked out for Buddha's birthday and obviously ready to party. It turned out that we had already missed the main event, but we met some younger members who were lining up dozens of bicycles, attaching Buddhist flags and flowers to the baskets. We started talking to them and found out that they were organizing a bike ride around town the following morning. Would we like to come?</div>
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Heck yeah we want to come along!<br />
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Sunday morning, we joined probably about 100 other bicyclists for an early morning Buddha-birthday-bike ride around the city. Even though we started at about 6:30, it was painfully hot and we took lots of breaks. By 8am, we were totally drenched and had made it back to the riverfront where we had played with lanterns the night before. </div>
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The river was transformed. Thousands of locals lined the banks to watch the dragon boat races. </div>
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This was actually one of my favorite parts of the day. Judging by the enthusiasm of some of the spectators (who slapped their paddles on the water to splash the teams and sprayed hoses into the boats' path) I had to assume that some amount of money was on this race. Or, I suppose, more importantly, Buddhist bragging rights. </div>
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About eight boats raced in the first heat. As they approached the bridge, they prepared for the hairpin turn around a flag. </div>
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This was a tricky maneuver and the teams had obviously been practicing. Whoever could make the tighter turn got the inside track and was better positioned for the sprint back to the finish line. But beware! One team learned the hard way that being too aggressive on the turn can cause the boat to take on too much water and....</div>
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Womp, womp. This boat sank so fast, I couldn't even capture it on camera before it went down. Judging by the way the one guy is holding his paddle, I don't think they realized what had happened until they started treading water. </div>
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But everyone was fine, and after the race ended, they were even able to salvage the sunken boat and finish the race. </div>
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...and the bike ride continued. I know the hat looks silly, but man, my head would have been a ripe tomato if I hadn't worn it. These hats are highly practical and should definitely be adopted in Texas. </div>
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Fast forward about 36 hours and we're back in Saigon celebrating the last day of Buddha's birthday. I went to one of the largest temples in town for one last night of singing, dancing and reflecting upon the Buddha's teachings. For the first hour or so, one of the monks spoke to a congregation busting the seams of the temple. We had arrived early and so got seats up near the front, but by the end of the night, people were spilling out onto the street trying to get a glimpse of the show. Eventually, the sermon turned into dancing and singing, which was a little easier to comprehend. The sermon was actually really good for practicing my Vietnamese. The speaker spoke very slowly and used pretty simple constructions so that I was able to understand maybe 20% of what he said. If by next year I can understand 50%, I would consider that a great success. </div>
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As my parting gift to celebrate Buddha's birthday with you all, I leave you "Monk on Rollerblades". We found this little guy rolling around the halls behind the main congregation room. My initial reaction was to laugh, but I realize now how meditative it must actually be to roll back and forth down a hallway. If you aren't enlightened enough to walk on lotus blossoms, you may as well enjoy the journey on a sweet pair of rollerblades. </div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0tp. Hội An, Quảng Nam, Vietnam15.8800584 108.338046915.6357404 108.0153234 16.1243764 108.66077039999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-13028259755018258172015-05-28T22:54:00.000-07:002016-06-03T22:51:53.617-07:00My Vietnam Reading List<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
During my <a href="http://footstepsofphileas.blogspot.com/2011/06/like-good-wine.html">trip in 2011</a> and while living in <a href="http://footstepsofphileas.blogspot.com/2013/05/book-reviews.html">China in 2013</a>, I kept track of what I read during my travels. There is an abundance of literature out there about Vietnam and South East Asia and I dove into that genre in the months before we arrived. The obvious theme so far is that it's difficult to escape the shadow of the Vietnam war in the literature and history - it permeates everything. There are still plenty of books on my reading list and some of them should handle other topics, but the shadow of the war will always lurk, I'm sure. I definitely want to read more books written by Vietnamese authors. Looking over this list, I see that Western writers are over-represented.<br />
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As I read more, I'll update this list. This is what I have for now.<br />
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<u>The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future</u><br />
<i>Milton Osborne</i><br />
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Bryn got me this book for Christmas and thus began the transition from graduate school to preparing for our move to Vietnam. Bryn and I actually made it to the <a href="http://footstepsofphileas.blogspot.com/2013/04/to-edge-of-china.html">upper reaches of the Mekong</a> while we were in China in 2013. Later that year we took a boat from the border of Vietnam up the river to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We joked about how the Mekong was basically the Mississippi river and Saigon was New Orleans. This comparison (which I'll certainly have to lay out in a future post) only goes so far and this book clearly sets the boundaries of the metaphor. Osborne outlines the history of various powers trying to exploit the riches of the Mekong river. However, much like being a youtube celebrity, the Mekong appears to be full of opportunity, but exploiting that for material gains is tricky. Like the Mississippi, the cycles of flood and drought raise and lower the river's surface continually; shifting, exposing and concealing sand bars and other hazards. The river reaches all the way up to China but, unlike the Mississippi, it's only navigable for the first few hundred miles. Once it reaches Laos, waterfalls and shallow rapids have rendered it impassable. One of the more interesting parts of the book tells the story of an entrepreneurial French explorer who tried to set up a portage system to get around the falls, but it was ultimately unviable. Ultimately, the river has only served as a transport route for the final quarter of its course, servicing extremely poor Cambodia and a sliver of southern Vietnam. Vietnam actually only plays a bit part in this book, basically as just a launching point for French explorers in the 19th century. Aquaculture generates a meager revenue, too. Today, ironically, the Chinese may be figuring out that the most profitable way to exploit the Mekong may be to block it. As the Mekong descends from its Himalayan source, it flows through deep gorges that are very suitable for damming and hydropower generation. While China's maritime operations in the South China Sea may be <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-says-vietnam-weighing-ending-island-expansion-in-disputed-waters-1433162877">catching the headlines</a>, its more subtle operations on its <a href="http://footstepsofphileas.blogspot.com/2013/03/after-month-in-kunming-and-reading.html">back porch in Yunnan province</a> are also serving its regional power projection.<br />
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<u>Ho Chi Minh: A Life</u><br />
<i>W</i><i>illiam J. Duiker</i><br />
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At 720 pages, I'm pretty sure this book deals with every aspect of Ho Chi Minh's recorded life. It is excruciatingly detailed and, I have to admit, I skipped around a bit. Especially in the early years, it relies heavily on Ho Chi Minh's own quasi-autobiography. Ho Chi Minh wrote a story about a "friend" of his who is commonly accepted to be himself. It's tricky being a great leader: you have to connect with the people while remaining a bit mysterious. <br />
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The most interesting part, to me, was the evolution of Ho Chi Minh as a communist and the constant struggle he had with other communists over the independence of Indochina. Ho Chi Minh ran in French communist circles but he faced an uphill battle to convince his comrades that Vietnamese independence was a top priority. Mainstream communists were more interested in European labor issues and criticized Ho Chi Minh for being overly nationalistic. I can really only recommend this to people who are very dedicated to learning more about the genesis of Vietnam's independence movement and its complicated relationship with communism.<br />
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<u>Understanding Vietnam</u><br />
<i>Neil L. Jamieson</i><br />
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This has been my favorite book about Vietnam, so far. It was a welcome relief after the tedious sifting through mountains of details about Ho Chi Minh because it remained very much high level. Jamieson also avoided getting sucked into writing another commentary on the war. "Understanding Vietnam" covers 20th century Vietnamese history through the lens of Vietnamese literature. From the vehemently pro-Western writers of the late 19th century to the battle between self and family in the 1930s to the nihilism of the 1970s, Jamieson takes the vitals of each decade through a sampling of novels, poems and short stories. My favorite excerpt from the book discusses the evolution of Vietnam adopting Roman script. No other country in South East Asia uses Roman script, but newspaper editors here in the lat 19th century started adopting it because it was easier to work Roman alphabet presses than use the Chinese character script predominant at the time. Those same editors argued that Vietnam could attain higher literacy rates through adopting Roman script, which could be learned in a matter of weeks, rather than maintaining the traditional Chinese characters, which took a lifetime of study to learn. I have to agree with them. While Chinese characters are certainly more artistic and visually interesting, they smack of intellectual elitism; made for a world in which only a dedicated Mandarin class was ever meant to read.<br />
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But I digress. Jamieson's title might be a little too ambitious - it will take a lot more than this book to "understand" Vietnam - but it's a great start.<br />
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<u>The Man Who Was Thursday</u><br />
<i>G.K. Chesterton</i><br />
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This was my fun airplane read on my trip across the Pacific. I had never heard of G.K. Chesterton until <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/a-most-unlikely-saint/386243/">this article</a> in the Atlantic absolutely convinced me that I needed to check him out. Reading "The Man Who Was Thursday" was gratifying in the same way as reading P.G. Wodehouse who, now that I see their symmetrical names written out on the same page, must have been buddies with Chesterton. As I was reading, there was no doubt in my mind where the plot was going, but the language was just fun to read. I could tell that Chesterton didn't really care WHAT he was writing about just so long as he had an excuse to keep playing with the English language. Admittedly, "Thursday" has absolutely nothing to do with Vietnam. It's about a cell of anarchists in Victorian England who are all actually secret police trying to infiltrate the European anarchist movement. In 2003, a <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/03/18/germany.far.right.reut/">similar situation played out in real life</a> when a German court failed to ban the Nationalist Party of Germany (descendants of the Nazi party) because too many of the party members were government agents who had infiltrated the movement! I wish Chesterton had lived to see his ludicrous story come true.<br />
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<u>A Rumor of War</u><br />
<i>Philip Caputo</i><br />
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Caputo's classic was one of the first books about the Vietnam war from the perspective of the US infantry soldier. Lesson: try to avoid fighting wars in South East Asia. After reading "A Rumor of War" and spending a few weeks in Vietnam, I realized that the primary enemy that US forces faced in Vietnam was the climate. Between the scorching sun and flooding rains, Vietnam pushes the limits of toughness engrained in US marines. The heat and disease that this country is capable of unleashing on an invading force cannot be overcome by drilling and physical fitness. Like General Winter in Russia, General Heat and General Monsoon are Vietnam's two most capable military leaders. Caputo plays out the scenario over and over again: US troops go out on foot patrol all day in the sun while opposing forces hide in the shade of the forrest and snipe from the cool cover. I'm reminded of this every time I go walk the streets in the afternoon. Vietnamese reclining in the shade no longer fire rifles at me, but they still shoot looks of disbelief that I would be silly enough to go out walking in the brutal heat. Vietnam is a nocturnal country. During the daytime, all you can do is try to survive until the sun goes down. Fighting a war in daylight here is far too exhausting.<br />
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<u>The Sympathizer</u><br />
<i>Viet Thanh Nguyen</i><br />
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I just finished this book this morning. Nguyen had great timing on the publication of this book. It came out earlier this year, just before the 40th anniversary of the fall/liberation of Saigon in April, 1975. I liked "The Sympathizer"primarily for two reasons: first, it is a kind of spy novel that does not romanticize the life of a spy. After reading this, you definitely do not want to go sign up for the clandestine services and I think that's important. There are too many LeCarre, Fleming and Furst novels that make spies out to be dashing, all-knowing, clever operatives who shape history from the shadows. I'm sure those have existed, but Nguyen's informant narrator is probably much more representative of the average 20th century spy.<br />
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I also like this book because it tells the story of the retreat from Saigon AND the immediate aftermath once refugees made it to the US. The recent documentary <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTWX-BB4aAA">"Last Days in Vietnam"</a> does a great job of telling the story of the evacuation from Saigon, but it leaves it at that. What happened to all of those South Vietnamese who fled their homes to seek refugee status all around the world? Nguyen sheds some light on their lives after they were the newspaper headlines. It's depressing, and painfully graphic at times, but still an important historical novel about the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam war and the people who left their homes to seek a kind of refuge in the US.<br />
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<u>America's Longest War</u><br />
<i>George Herring</i><br />
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This is a great introduction to the political and military history of the Vietnam war. Published in 1979, it asks the question still very much raw at the time: "how the hell did we end up in such a mess?" and goes from there, detailing the US decision-making process at every significant turn. There are, of course, hundreds of books more or less on this same topic that have come out since 1979, most of which were written with the benefit of having more access to declassified information. But I like the way that Herring deals with the war as very much a contemporary issue. He was writing in the years immediately following 1975 without the benefit of years of hindsight. When looking at US involvement in the Vietnam war from a macro level, it's easy to belittle and ridicule the decision-makers at the time. But when you break it down, step-by-step, the whole debacle looks much more plausible. Herring especially highlights how, particularly in the early days, the US's vietnam policy was dictated by other, seemingly more pressing challenges like the Berlin crisis and the creation of NATO. By the time Vietnam became front page news, the US had already been forming an unintentional policy for over twenty years. That kind of precedence and momentum is very difficult to reverse.<br />
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<u>Vietnam: Rising Dragon</u><br />
<i>Bill Hayton</i><br />
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This is one of the most popular books on contemporary Vietnam. I appreciated it for its attempt to go beyond the war narrative and look at Vietnam a generation after hostilities. Hayton was a journalist in Hanoi and the book is a review of the major headlines of 21st century Vietnam. It feels like each of his chapters is a long or compiled version of his newspaper articles. The stories are all tied together by his thesis that the Vietnamese Communist Party has more or less given up the ideology of socialist revolution and is now selling itself as a club to join in order to increase the chances of promotion. In other words, the Party is big "c" Communist - it doesn't adhere to the small "c" communism of Marx or Mao anymore. I imagine he must have enjoyed breaking out of the word and space limits of print journalism and writing this book. That being said, it's a contemporary book. It won't go down in history as a definitive work on Vietnam and, in all likelihood, it will probably be obsolete in another 5-10 years. But that's fine. I leave it in the guest room for our visitors who want a peak into the contemporary life in Vietnam they see on the streets. <br />
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<u>Fire in the Lake</u><br />
<i>Frances FitzGerald</i><br />
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<u>Fire in the Lake</u> is all about US involvement in Vietnam during the war and how badly we miscalculated everything. In doing so, she goes to great lengths to explain how Vietnam works and how different it is from the US. It is interesting to think about her proposition that Vietnam's confucian background primed it for socialism - or, better, that the National Liberation Front was better able to exploit Vietnam's confucian past to usher in socialism. The book is also a great account of Saigon in the 1960s; a crazy, messed up place if there ever was one. I found myself coming back to two different ideas that I first encountered in <u>A Passage To India</u> by E. M. Forster: the first idea is that you can send in an army to fix one problem, but it will cause a hundred others in its wake. You can apply this to just about any modern conflict, but I feel like it's especially appropriate for the Vietnam War. US forces certainly achieved their mission by preventing The Republic of South Vietnam from falling into communist control, but in doing so, we destroyed it so badly that it wasn't fit for any type of political system - much less constitutional democracy. The other idea from <u>A Passage to India </u>is that life, especially in the tropical regions, is so persistent and encompassing. It's amazing to see Vietnam now, just 40 years later, and find so few traces of the war. Life has reclaimed the destruction wrought by the war - not completely, but it has been impressively thorough. I lived in Dresden, Germany in 2005 and there were still very visible remnants of war there 60 years after it was firebombed at the end of World War II. Vietnam, according to FitzGerald, received more US ordnance than all of the Axis Powers combined but you have to look hard to find evidence of it. I think that says a lot about Vietnam and how resilient of a country this is.<br />
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<u>Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific</u><br />
<i>Robert Kaplan</i><br />
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The prologue to Asia's Cauldron was by far my favorite part of this book. Don't get me wrong, this is a very helpful introduction to the South China Sea issue, with profiles of the major players and what their major challenges are going forward. However, I had a special, personal connection with the prologue. Kaplan begins his book with a reminder that, while today China is the ascending power in Asia that everyone is worried about, India is a major historical player. Kaplan highlighted this fact with a monologue on India's role in shaping Vietnam - reminding us that there is a good reason that the French called it "Indochina". Southern Vietnam was once a hindu kingdom heavily influenced by Indian culture and you can see that heritage in the Champa ruins that dot central and southern Vietnam's landscape. Kaplan specifically cites the Vietnam History museum's collection of Shiva and Linga statues.<br />
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This had a particularly strong effect on me because I started reading this book within a few hours of visiting that very museum earlier in the morning. The hindu statues were staring me right in the face as I read Kaplan's appeal to not forget India's influence in the region. What's more, without having any idea that Kaplan's book would touch on India, I started this book as I was flying from Saigon to Chennai, India, for a five day jaunt around Southern India. I felt really interconnected to this prologue due to my particular personal circumstances, but it stands alone as a great introduction regardless of whether or not you happened to visit the same museums or were on your way to India.<br />
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As with most of Kaplan's other books, I finished this one with a new, expanded reading list. No doubt that this post will continue to grow.<br />
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<u>The Quiet American</u><br />
<i>Graham Greene</i><br />
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I read this classic novel the first time we came through Vietnam in 2013. However, at the time, I was reading a bootlegged version with tons of typos and hadn't yet become familiar enough with the geography of Saigon and southern Vietnam to really enjoy Thomas Fowler's description of the city. Reading it for a second time, with a better appreciation of the city and the history, I was very impressed by Greene's ability to capture the American naiveté that led us into Vietnam. He was writing this book in the early 1950s but he could already see that the French war was quickly turning into an American war. It's a nice little snapshot of Saigon right before the Americans took over the war effort from the French. That being said, Vietnamese barely play a role in the book at all. Like all of the American war novels and movies that would flow out of Vietnam in the coming decades, "The Quiet American" uses Saigon as an exotic locale to showcase the political and moral wrangling of the western powers and individuals. Reading it just makes me want to get the Vietnamese perspective even more.<br />
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<u>Dumb Luck</u><br />
<i>Vu Trong Phung</i><br />
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<u>Dumb Luck</u> is a satirical work poking fun at how empty progressivism can be. It takes place in French colonial Hanoi in the 1930s. It chronicles the rise of "Red Haired Xuan", a street hawker and panhandler who, through a series of bizarre events and interpretations, ends up as the toast of the town. Part Peter Sellers in "Being There", part "Slumdog Millionaire" it charts Xuan's rise through society thanks to those around him projecting their own desires onto him and some seriously "Dumb Luck". It shows how progressivism for the sake of progressivism can hollow out a society and leaves you thinking that maybe there are some values in social norms, after all. The part that resonated with me was the observation on how arbitrarily success comes along to people. Sure, you can position yourself well for success, but you can never predict everything and chances are just as likely that someone in the right place at the right time has the most advantage of all. It's also a fun read because this was pre-communist Vietnam, when writers could be a little over the top and fanciful. The party doesn't approve of those literary qualities these days.<br />
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<u>The Sorrow of War</u><br />
<i>Bao Ninh </i><br />
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One of the most famous novels to come out of modern Vietnam. <u>The Sorrow of War</u> follows the life of a Vietnamese war veteran. One thing that strikes you early on is how similarly he describes his experience to Philip Caputo's in <u>A Rumor of War</u>. Some of the scenes in <u>The Sorrow of War</u> seem to parallel so perfectly with Caputo's memoir that you have to imagine that the two warrior-writers must have crossed paths in the jungle at some point. The major difference, however, is that despite how bad Caputo had it, he still went home after his tour of duty to a more-or-less functioning society that provided him basic services. Ninh's Vietnamese soldier could only go home once the war was over, and even then about the only support he had was a local bar where other veterans would hang out and comiserate.<br />
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The book is excruciatingly sad. Its story is the epitome of loss, regret and pain. I just finished it a few days ago and it's still affecting me. I can't think of any other book I've ever read that has had such a sad affect on me. It is a very important read to understand the Vietnamese perspective and to see how much their lives were wrapped up and, in some cases, suffocated, by the ten year conflict with the US.<br />
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<u>The Son</u><br />
<i>Philipp Meyer</i><br />
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This book is a break from Vietnam and a return to my own home country, Texas. It's the story of six generations of family growing up in South Texas. The patriarch, Colonel Eli McCullough, raised by Commanches who killed his family and learned that you had to take everything you needed to survive in life. His son, Peter, who strives to separate himself from the baser instincts of his father in an effort to distinguish himself from the frontiersman and prove that evolution is possible - even if it comes with its own downsides. We don't learn much about Charles, except that he's narcissistic and is proof that you can't copy the success of past generations. Whereas his father, Peter, tries to be more civilized that the Colonel and fails, Charles tries to be like the Colonel, but it does not work in his new era. His daughter, Jeannie, succeeds, though. She succeeds at turning the family's cattle operation into an oil operation, however her wealth does not help her own kids. She learns that want is a powerful force, and denying it to a generation is not as generous as it seems.<br />
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Personally, this book reminded me of my own grandfather and the life he built for his family in East Texas. It was nowhere near the scale of the McCullough family - a nearly royal line that governed a kingdom more than a ranch. But on a smaller scale, I know how it is to look up to past generations and marvel at their accomplishments and hard upbringing. The Son finishes, reminding readers that the infinite line of future generations will do the same, until we are forgotten. <br />
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-12239503058933960412015-05-18T20:15:00.000-07:002015-06-02T20:37:50.048-07:00A Pilgrimage to Con Dao<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Everyone, I think I've found the coolest place in Vietnam. It's the island of Con Dao, about an hour flight south of Ho Chi Minh City. It's a sleepy little place where you feel like you could just disappear for a few years and that would be ok. Personally, I went there to learn how to dive. Con Dao has the best diving in Vietnam simply because there's hardly anyone there. The coral and fish and beaches are relatively pristine (especially by Vietnamese standards) because there just aren't enough people there to destroy it (yet).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSnaWo2gtV0wgSEuqrirrPTP7XJOpEoEB_6M08XJBaD2WPb5jz6BcRS0dUi_oqn0jOGqQkq29YvU64j9Jw3HDp1hUIpQFJQEKuMSfWsIVoLbBaQD_emGTMbI8Qf02IInp2UiyKb4NEN9ZI/s1600/IMG_0864.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSnaWo2gtV0wgSEuqrirrPTP7XJOpEoEB_6M08XJBaD2WPb5jz6BcRS0dUi_oqn0jOGqQkq29YvU64j9Jw3HDp1hUIpQFJQEKuMSfWsIVoLbBaQD_emGTMbI8Qf02IInp2UiyKb4NEN9ZI/s640/IMG_0864.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hon Bay Canh: the island next to Con Dao where I learned to scuba dive</td></tr>
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However, as I learned when I got there, people do not go to Con Dao to dive. Most don't even go for the beautiful beaches, virgin jungle topped hills or caves. Most of the people who go to Con Dao are pilgrims going to visit the tomb of Vo Thi Sau, a Vietnamese nationalist martyr who draws hundreds of people every night to her gravesite.<br />
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Con Dao was established in the late 19th century as a prison island by the French. They sent the most subversive and dangerous political prisoners to Con Dao, where they were kept in "Tiger Cages", tiny concrete cells with iron grated ceilings that allowed guards to observe them from above. In the early 1950s, French authorities found Vo Thi Sau guilty of engaging in guerilla activities and was sent off to Con Dao as a teenager. A few years later, at the legal age of 19, she was executed on the island.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGtNxi9OXNwNOLG695Pf939XAA5FWnH662s4R514sRe-LvDNmAZ74UudyfgaAt_WQiiRuLNKurnx1rTKbptPuo5lI2Ixi9Sg6JEUsF2035xUkCriK_PNrT4cYpqFY7iodtJbvFU-iVAN1A/s1600/IMG_0838.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGtNxi9OXNwNOLG695Pf939XAA5FWnH662s4R514sRe-LvDNmAZ74UudyfgaAt_WQiiRuLNKurnx1rTKbptPuo5lI2Ixi9Sg6JEUsF2035xUkCriK_PNrT4cYpqFY7iodtJbvFU-iVAN1A/s640/IMG_0838.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dilapidated Tiger Cages at the old Con Dao Prison</td></tr>
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Vo Thi Sau wasn't necessarily the biggest, baddest guerilla fighter Vietnam had ever known. As a 15 year old, she lobbed some grenades at French soldiers and killed a few, but that isn't why she's remembered. Her name became synonymous with the brutality of Con Dao prison that long preceded her time there and continued for a couple more decades. In 1970, a <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/13476480@N07/11973133466/in/photostream/">US congressional visit </a>to the prison island discovered the brutal conditions of the Tiger Cages which, by then, were operated by the South Vietnamese government.<br />
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At around 11pm, we hopped onto scooters and rode through the night to the edge of town where the cemetery is. You have to understand that Con Dao is a sleepy place. You can walk down the main street in the middle of the day and be practically alone. But the parking lot in front of the cemetery was bustling with families on scooters and guards directing giant tour buses into impossibly small spaces. This is where the action is on Con Dao.<br />
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As we approached Vo Thi Sau's grave, the Vietnamese guy who worked at the front desk and had adopted me for the week explained to that people go visit the cemetery around midnight because the spirits are more active then. I had to smile at this. After nearly a month in Vietnam I know that midnight is a far more desirable time of day to be out and about. The reason why you can walk down the main street in Con Dao in the middle of the day and not see another human is that the sun is a brutal beast in the sky chasing you from tree to tree, sucking your energy and crisping your skin in between shady refuges. The huge, open area where Vo Thi Sau is buried offers no opportunities for shade. Going there during the day would be life-threatening and I can promise that the pilgrims would be much more conscious of the sun beating down on their shoulders than the sacrifices their ancestors had made on that island several generations ago. Granted, cemeteries are much more evocative at night. When shadows cover most of the ground around you and your eyes play tricks on you, it's easier to imagine supernatural forces controlling your surroundings. During the day, the vicious Vietnamese sun bleaches the imagination and denies those spirits their shadowy, natural habitat. In this way, the night makes for a much more convenient meeting time. Us humans benefit from the greatest source of shade of all - the earth's thick center - and the spirits are more free to roam while our vision is impaired by that same darkness. It makes perfect sense.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_o-VI-HBDJ9Wbyg2DJC6_E_MFWVWeVvKixOALftice7wbd59rI_uRC2pT8dicpKpF68h19wENyEOEUpGvli0QlaBcq249Vcs_v3fTFJ7uTVSqCaBZ1YWLjPvyUqLZEf9P81SsnyIa1ekI/s1600/IMG_0854.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_o-VI-HBDJ9Wbyg2DJC6_E_MFWVWeVvKixOALftice7wbd59rI_uRC2pT8dicpKpF68h19wENyEOEUpGvli0QlaBcq249Vcs_v3fTFJ7uTVSqCaBZ1YWLjPvyUqLZEf9P81SsnyIa1ekI/s400/IMG_0854.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vo Thi Sau's tomb: somebody pointed out to me that its red tip makes it look like a stick of incense. </td></tr>
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We laid flowers at the base of Vo Thi Sau's grave and each took a few sticks of incense to place in a sandy altar in front of the grave. Unused to working much with ritualistic incense, I burned my hand trying to stuff my three extra sticks of incense into a very crowded altar. Luckily, I don't think anyone else noticed.<br />
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Naively, I thought that once we had seen Vo Thi Sau's grave, we were done with the tour and that we would turn back. Not so. Nearly two thousand prisoners had died on Con Dao during the prison's operation and we had many more grave sites to visit. We walked down narrow paths through trees and fields of headstones just slightly illuminated by little lamps placed by each one. More incense appeared and we lit huge bundles of it to honor more prisoner martyrs. Once we had honored all of the main characters, we used the leftover incense to distribute amongst the less fortunate graves that had no name and whose sandy altars were barren of incense sticks.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFmVpmS3Hhn9ovDKhl8JZVVrnd3w0FiIAvme67FPit8HYhVyMPBbyHp0mW05_RDulFkMq_qJQK4KtCB9HT11dbcChXzjpE6Y3PCDqFCpF4G8KqPLMtsbSbMuXVseeUKYWMFci0yIcaAtpH/s1600/IMG_0858.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFmVpmS3Hhn9ovDKhl8JZVVrnd3w0FiIAvme67FPit8HYhVyMPBbyHp0mW05_RDulFkMq_qJQK4KtCB9HT11dbcChXzjpE6Y3PCDqFCpF4G8KqPLMtsbSbMuXVseeUKYWMFci0yIcaAtpH/s400/IMG_0858.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lighting a bundle of incense at one of the altars</td></tr>
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It was a wonderfully spiritual experience to be out in the cemetery that night. It was a completely different way of honoring the dead from what I was used to but it just felt right. Being so far away from the mainland, we had a clear view of the stars. The suns residual heat from the previous day was still enough to make us sweat as we walked through the grounds, but at least it didn't burn. It was up to the incense sticks to do that.<br />
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I don't think any trip to Con Dao is complete without visiting the cemetery and Vo Thi Sau's tomb. Most Vietnamese tourists who come to the island stay for just 24-36 hours; enough time to visit Vo Thi Sau and maybe spend a morning on the beach. However, I had a few more days and I spent them well. I got my diving certificate, drove all up and down the island and hiked to the opposite side, which was completely undeveloped, save a few miles of stone footpaths connecting various coves and deserted beaches. Bryn and I are already planning to go back later this summer. By then, the sea turtles will have migrated to the area to start laying their eggs. I heard that it's possible to sleep in hammocks out on one of the smaller islands and the marine park staff will come wake you up when the turtles arrive. You can bet that we will make that happen.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9c3C-_BhmoOx0ZFkBRNA9irvChI3KWxb7I29EZv1O_b_SWfPJ0aoe2egpuOR6dV7nr0ekq9HWXIU6FfYtfSf2-rZv3PanN38vH-CZ4l2hL5yF1950YE-Gdhz-jiYxIGau-pIe4SVZwsVV/s1600/IMG_0868.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9c3C-_BhmoOx0ZFkBRNA9irvChI3KWxb7I29EZv1O_b_SWfPJ0aoe2egpuOR6dV7nr0ekq9HWXIU6FfYtfSf2-rZv3PanN38vH-CZ4l2hL5yF1950YE-Gdhz-jiYxIGau-pIe4SVZwsVV/s400/IMG_0868.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I left the walk to the Ancient Tree to our next visit</td></tr>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0Côn Đảo, Côn Đảo, Vietnam8.7009282 106.611447399999978.5753587 106.45008589999998 8.8264977 106.77280889999997tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-22526112670769605352015-05-04T08:24:00.000-07:002015-06-02T20:38:54.605-07:00More Time Traveling in Vietnam<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We have been in Vietnam for ten days now - less than the amount of time that we spent here when we <a href="http://footstepsofphileas.blogspot.com/2013/06/travelling-back-in-time-in-vietnam.html">traveled through in 2013</a> - but this time, there is definitely a greater feeling of permanence. I think the yearlong buildup to the move, the months of full-time Vietnamese language learning, reading book after book trying to get a jump on this place and, of course, all those bowls of pho we ate in preparation for the real thing all created an immense build up to our arrival. By the time we landed here last Friday, there's no way our arrival could have matched our level of anticipation.<br />
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In 2013, we arrived in Vietnam after four months in China and an overnight bus-ride to the border. We hadn't spent much time anticipating what Vietnam was going to be like. Our first order of business was to check our gmail accounts and youtube without interruption and order a bowl of pho. Relative internet freedom and somewhat more familiar food gave us a high that developed into an outright love affair with Vietnam over the two weeks that we were here. But this time, our arrival didn't achieve quite the same climax. First, we were delayed flying out of Hong Kong; United Airlines iced us colder than a field goal kicker lining up with 5 seconds left on the clock. We spent an extra night in Hong Kong and made our flight into Vietnam the next morning. The 12 hour delay threw everything off. And when we got off that plane, we were wearing formal clothing: a long sleeve shirt with a collar and all kinds of buttons, tucked into snugly fitting trousers that covered me down to my ankles, where socks and leather shoes took over. This climate was designed for flip flops, mesh shorts and tank tops. Anything more than that will suffocate you. (As an aside, anytime anyone back home asks about the weather, I want to play them <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpktBGInl60">this clip from "Good Morning Vietnam"</a>.) Luckily, our commute is a short walk, so I think I can manage that without completely saturating my clothes.<br />
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Finally, instead of relishing the relative freedom of Vietnam (compared to China) and enjoying a nice big bowl of pho upon arrival, we were greeted with mountains of bureaucratic paperwork. Naturally, there were also plenty of perks that came along with arriving in Vietnam as a diplomat in 2015 compared to a backpacker in 2013. We had a ride from the airport in an air conditioned van; a big, furnished apartment in the middle of town stocked with food, and a community waiting to welcome us. I can't imagine any better way to enter a foreign country than by being greeted with friendly faces.<br />
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This is all to highlight the differences in our new way of life - I certainly do not have any complaints, it will just take a little adjusting, that's all.<br />
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Last week was a particularly interesting time to arrive in Ho Chi Minh City. April 30 marked the 40th anniversary of the reunification of Vietnam. Here, it was a cause for official celebration. In America, I think it passed with more pain and reflection on past mistakes. Here, there was a <a href="http://tuoitrenews.vn/politics/27728/6000-join-rehearsal-for-reunification-day-celebrations-in-ho-chi-minh-city">military parade</a>, numerous floats cruising down streets strewn with banners exclaiming "40 years." Dancers and acrobats performed for dignitaries just a few blocks from our apartment where, in 1975, a North Vietnamese tank entered the presidential palace and declared an end to a divided Vietnam. Just a few hours before that tank entered the presidential palace compound, the last few American Marines departed the U.S. embassy, ending a 48 hour helicopter evacuation of Americans and all the South Vietnamese citizens that they could manage. This past Thursday, on the 40th anniversary, about a dozen of those marines returned to the former embassy grounds (the site of the current U.S. consulate in Ho Chi Minh City) t<a href="http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20150430/news/150439957/">o remember two marines who were killed during the evacuation</a>. It was a solemn occasion and a stark reminder of the legacy that we follow here in Vietnam as U.S. diplomats. The contrast between the celebrations going on over the consulate wall and the somber reflection happening within the wall was striking.<br />
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But I really have to stress the word "official" when describing the celebrations. This wasn't a fourth of July type party where everyone was out on the street whooping it up. The sidewalks were mostly empty and shops were closed up in accordance with the letters that went out advising people not to leave their apartments during the parade. The celebrations were televised and that was how the population was supposed to observe them. We were even discouraged from watching from our balcony or windows. This celebration wasn't really FOR the people of Vietnam, it was for the unity of Vietnam.<br />
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To be fair, we ended up leaving our apartment and watching the parade from the sidewalk in front of our apartment the morning of April 30th and nobody stopped us. We even took pictures of the soldiers as they marched by. Hundreds of police and military personnel lined the streets but nobody did anything to stop us. There were other Vietnamese people out watching, too, so we didn't just get a pass because we were foreign. I think the "orders" to stay inside were really just suggestions. I can only imagine the negative publicity that would have followed if policemen had forced residents back into their apartments, forbidding them to watch the parade marching by their front doors. By the looks of the thin crowds outside though, enough people heeded the warnings and stayed inside. It was a clever trick by the authorities: issue a draconian order with the hopes that a majority of the people self-enforce. I imagine that tactic is used a lot here.<br />
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At first, I compared the April 30th Reunification Day to our own July 4th. But that's not exactly right. Vietnam's independence day is September 2, when Ho Chi Minh declared independence from France in 1945. After having experienced April 30th here myself, I think I would compare it more to our own April 9 - the end of the Civil War at Appomattox Courthouse. I tried to imagine how April 9 was in, say, Richmond, Virginia, in 1905, 40 years after Grant surrendered to Lee. I can imagine that different segments of the population observed the day quite differently; some with triumph, some with weary sadness and some with ambivalence, more eager to forget about it and just move on. That was at least the mixture of sentiments that I observed on April 30 here in Ho Chi Minh City. It's funny, my first blog post about Vietnam was about how traveling through this country was like traveling through the various stages of historical economic development. Here I am, two years later using my experience in Vietnam to look back in time in a completely different way. I can't wait to see what else Vietnam has to teach me about time traveling.<br />
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com1Bến Thành, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam10.779264156352742 106.6973304748535210.771464656352741 106.68724547485351 10.787063656352743 106.70741547485352tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-66467045140059040072015-01-12T11:03:00.000-08:002015-06-02T21:06:48.111-07:00Into the Depths of the DC Metro<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I guess it was in late summer of 2014 that I realized Washington, DC held something very special deep below its surface. Anyone who has lived in DC or spent a decent amount of time here notices pretty quickly that some of the metro stations here tend to be buried pretty deep underground. These extra-subterranean metro stops have particularly long escalators ferrying passengers up to and from the surface. I was particularly aware of these deep escalators since we live near the Rosslyn metro stop (with the <a href="http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/23038/what-are-the-10-longest-metro-escalators/">fifth longest escalator on the DC metro at 194'</a>) and I routinely commuted to DuPont circle (sixth longest escalator at 188'). Once I went to the Woodley Park metro station (which services the National Zoo and has an escalator 204' long) I was convinced that I had found the longest escalator in the WORLD. You can barely see the top of it standing down at the bottom.<br />
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But I was wrong.<br />
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My amazement at the size of these escalators finally inspired me to do some actual research on measurements. Lucky for me, there is a small community of escalator enthusiasts out there who have documented just about every technical aspect you could imagine of not just the DC metro station escalators, but weird and interesting escalators all over the world. For a nice global survey of escalators, there's this <a href="http://weburbanist.com/2010/06/20/attracting-stairs-10-extremely-elevating-escalators/">weburbanist post</a>. For more specific info on DC's metro escalators, Greatergreaterwashington.org has a few posts on the<a href="http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/23038/what-are-the-10-longest-metro-escalators/"> length</a> of escalators and an interesting discussion towards the end of this post on why the metro escalators are so <a href="http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/3290/metro-motifs-part-1-underground-stations/">deep</a>. There's also, of course, a wikipedia page dedicated to the DC metro stop that hosts the longest escalator - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheaton_Station">Wheaton</a>.<br />
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When I saw that neither Rosslyn, Dupont nor Woodley Park metro stations had the longest escalators in DC, I was shocked. But then, they are competing with not just any old escalator. The longest single-span escalator in DC also happens to be the longest in the entire western hemisphere! It's 230 feet long and, by my calculation, took 2 minutes and 52 seconds to ride up (without walking). When I found this out late in the summer of 2014, I determined to make the trek way out to Maryland, near the end of the red line, to experience this colossal conveyor of people. After all, how often do you get to live in a place that hosts the longest/largest/highest/etc. anything in a whole hemisphere?<br />
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I was determined to make it out to Wheaton at some point, even if it meant a 1.5 hour, $7 round trip just to ride the escalator. But fate intervened and gave me an excuse to go out there.<br />
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When I was home for the holidays, I was going through my old boyhood closet seeing what I should bring back with me. It's funny how the move-out process stretches on for so long. I think I've got it down to a bookshelf full of books now, though. Anyways, one of the items I found buried back in the closet was my old clarinet from middle school. I opened it up to find all the pieces still there and relatively in tact. It looked like it needed some maintenance but that could be arranged. I've always wanted to play an instrument and, in my adult years, I fiddled around with the piano. But those suckers are hard to move and I certainly don't want to lug one out to Vietnam. Sure, I could get a keyboard, but my level of skill probably doesn't justify the investment. Also, over the break while we were in Austin, we went to a friend's birthday part and lots of local musicians showed up for a birthday jam. Bryn and I and a few other swing-dancers took advantage of the opportunity to dance, but I think the musicians outnumbered us. There were a few clarinetists there (including David Jellema, the birthday boy) and hearing them play just inspired me to get back in-touch with my 14 year old self and start playing the clarinet again. I packed it in my suitcase and flew back to DC with a new project on my plate.<br />
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Back in DC, I started calling music companies to get estimates on clarinet repairs and I was referred to Chuck Levin's Washington Music Center - a musical institution in the mid-Atlantic that has a long, illustrious history. Its original location was in central DC until it burned down during the 1968 riots. Its new location, coincidentally, is about 1/4 of a mile north of the Wheaton metro stop. I was now chasing two Leviathans - one in the world of escalation and the other in music. I set the date for my big adventure for Saturday, January 10, invited my college buddy Joe along for the adventure and we set out that morning to add to our list of off the beaten path Washington, DC destinations.<br />
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Of the two, I think the Wheaton escalator won out. Chuck Levin's was cool - we talked to the son of the original owner who gave us a bit of a history lesson on the place - but they wanted waaay too much money to fix my clarinet. I realized that I probably would have shopped around a little more and done some research before making the trek out there; but since I was prepared to make the trip for no other reason than to see the longest single-span escalator in the western hemisphere, it didn't take much of a pretense to get me out there.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Displaying photo 1.JPG" height="640" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/?ui=2&ik=aa5aff19a4&view=fimg&th=14adf4a3327ec326&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&attbid=ANGjdJ9nvk1o-7zHUCA7BGXKS7Zp4PIv_sduyEkmux_S193mYe_Zkwh9FFtAjjliz5AnONLbDpjbkFk4cYnsRGyyDWLivD9oeWL437eBh-Tg6z9etORX8D4iHMIv3aE&ats=1421086267541&rm=14adf4a3327ec326&zw&sz=w1342-h557" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="477" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Escalators at Wheaton: Imagine a clarinet case in my left hand just a few inches further down. </td></tr>
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As far as escalator rides go, the ascent from the Wheaton metro stop was pretty cool. I guess my tolerance for long escalators has been heightened over the past 7 months of riding up and down the Rosslyn and Dupont escalators. When it comes down to it, a 230' escalator ride doesn't feel all that different from a 194' escalator ride. It's the journey that matters, though, and little adventures like this one are what make DC such a cool city to live in.<br />
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For those left wondering what the longest single-span escalator in the world is, according to the weburbanist post on the most extreme escalators in the world, Park Pobedy station in Moscow is the winner at 413'. Rest assured that if I ever make it to Moscow, riding that escalator will be on my list of things to do. Interestingly enough, despite the fact that the Park Pobedy escalator is nearly twice as long as the Wheaton escalator, it takes about the same amount of time to get up both of them (about 3 minutes). According to this <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31605-2004May16.html">Washington Post article</a>, the DC metro authority runs its escalators at 90 feet per minute instead of the standard 120 feet per minute for safety reasons. According to my calculations, though, the Wheaton escalator was moving a little slower - about 76 feet per minute - and the Park Pobedy escalator is racing along at about 140 feet per second: twice as long and twice as fast. Man, the Russians are beating us at this, guys. </div>
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In conclusion, as I was talking to the metro attendant at the summit of the Wheaton escalators, she confirmed my suspicion that there is no kind of plaque or acknowledgement of any kind that the escalators there are the longest in the western hemisphere. Considering that just about every other building, statue and section of pavement in this town is commemorated to some person, event or idea, I feel like the escalators at the Wheaton metro stop should be recognized for their distinction, to. I might get the chance to go back out there next month to visit the nearby Costco and maybe I'll bring some aluminum foil, tape and a sharpie to create my own little memorial to DC's longest escalator. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wheaton: The View Down</td></tr>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com1Wheaton-Glenmont, MD, USA39.038652995045716 -77.05089569091796939.032486495045717 -77.060980690917972 39.044819495045715 -77.040810690917965tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-13489144930795327202015-01-03T12:41:00.002-08:002015-01-03T12:41:42.403-08:002015 and the end of the even year curse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My adult life, until now, has followed very closely a pattern of odd years being good and even years being bad. I've known this now for at least five years and have helplessly watched as some mysterious, oscillating force in the universe has determined the happiness of any given year based on whether or not it was divisible by two. If I were forced to, I could justify this pattern all the way to 2001 or so - but it really started getting eerily predictable in around 2005. Even my on-again off-again dedication to this blog follows the even year/odd year rule. 2011 and 2013 were great years, full of adventure and satisfaction. 2012 was a trying year of figuring out how to fit into the world.<br />
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Maybe I unconsciously stopped updating the blog in 2014 because I was anticipating the drop after a 2013 filled with living in China, traveling through SE Asia and getting into a great graduate school program that let me live in Bologna, Italy. Maybe the mysterious, oscillating force is just my own weird attempt to impose equilibrium in the world. Regardless, 2014 broke the streak. Within the past twelve months, Bryn and I got married; moved to DC; found out we'll be moving to Vietnam in April, 2015 with the State Department; learned as much about the Civil War as one could during a summer and then I finished my masters five months ahead of schedule. Any low-points were relatively shallow and only served to provide a little contrast to the high points. Granted, one exception doesn't disprove a rule, but 2014's good outcome restored a little of my faith in the flexibility of the universe.<br />
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Luckily, 2015 is shaping up to be a good year, too. I finished my M.A. early so that I could start focusing on the transition to Vietnam and maybe even line up some job opportunities there. As of now, Bryn and I are scheduled to leave towards the end of April. That gives me about four months to do three things: 1) learn Vietnamese; 2) talk to potential employers; 3) get all of the training that I can to increase my job prospects. Luckily, the State Department provides language training to spouses, so I'll get about six weeks of all-day Vietnamese training starting in late February. Bryn has been in language training since September so I already have a head-start by helping her go over her vocabulary lists and learning how to count. By the way, two new tricks I learned in 2014: counting to 100 in Vietnamese and touching my toes. I've never been very flexible.<br />
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As for potential employers, I already started talking to people in the fall and so I at least have some resources to use in my search. One cool project I found was the Provincial Competitiveness Index, a USAID funded outfit that measures Vietnamese provinces' ability to economically develop. I'll figure out a way to at least talk to them before I land in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). There are also the multitude of foreign companies that are either just opening or expanding their operations in Vietnam. I'm not exactly sure what I could do for them or why they would need me, but I hope to figure that out over the coming weeks. Teaching is also an option in HCMC - either at local schools or leading online classes.<br />
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The State Department also hires qualified spouses to work in the consulate and I'm doing everything I can to open those doors, as well. I just took a test on Friday that, if I pass, will qualify me to take another exam in the coming months which, if I pass, could potentially qualify me to apply for certain positions at the HCMC consulate - but in no way guarantees me any job. I'm not too optimistic about finding work down that avenue, but at the very least I'm getting a good lesson in navigating the State Department bureaucracy. I have a feeling that will be a valuable skill to have over the coming years. Regardless of those exams, though, I'll be able to get training in consular affairs. I'll start the class in just a few weeks and, assuming I pass, I'll be a much more competitive candidate for consular jobs that open up in HCMC. It'll also be a great introduction to how a consulate works, so at the very least, I'll understand Bryn's job much better.<br />
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I think that most of my fate will remain undetermined until I land in HCMC, start meeting people and see what's going on there. Of course, the more prepared I am, the better, but I don't think it is realistic to expect to have a job when I land there in late April or early May. Of course, there's always my back-up plan. If absolutely nothing pans out, I'll learn as much as I can about the Ho Chi Minh trail that supplied the Viet Cong in South Vietnam and then try to re-trace its path forty years after it facilitated Hanoi's victory against the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. Regardless of what happens professionally, expect more blog posts on that topic in 2015.<br />
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I think that what I'm most excited about coming into 2015 is that the slate is pretty clean. When I started grad school, I did so with the intent of going on to work for the Department of the Treasury on countering illicit finance. That's still in my long-term professional interest, but it won't be quite so linear as I imagined. The opportunity to go live in Vietnam for two years is just too good to pass up and I am unbelievably proud of Bryn for making this opportunity for us. Now, I get to go over there and create a life for myself. That will be challenging, in a lot of ways, but challenging in a way that makes for great experiences and great life-lessons later on. I'm also pretty confident that it will provide plenty of good excuses to write, so stay tuned. </div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-59201869169274263142013-11-24T04:15:00.000-08:002015-06-02T21:07:14.523-07:00Turning Thirty<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As of today, I am officially thirty years old. Even though I've been practicing for the past few months, it still feels weird to say and write. The best part about turning thirty is that I got one of the most thoughtful gifts from all of you - a collection of stories and pictures from family and friends. Bryn did a great job putting it all together and I look forward to showing it off to everyone when I'm back in Austin over the holidays. By the way, I'll be back in Austin over the holidays and I'd like to see as many of you as possible for the 2-3 weeks that I'm there!<br />
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Many of the stories I knew and laughed or cried as I anticipated what came next. Some of the stories I had forgotten about, or was too young to remember and this was the first time I heard about them. Some of the stories weren't totally historically accurate, but you guys did a good job skewing the facts in my favor, so I'm willing to overlook the errors. I read over the book for about an hour this morning but will undoubtedly read over it many more times today and in the coming weeks. Thank you all for contributing and making today special. I hope you all know how much you mean to me and it's great to have friends and family as loving as the ones I've got. I'm a lucky guy, for sure.<br />
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The book is quite a good complement to a "life book" that my Aunt Suzy made for me when I graduated from high school. I like that there is now a "Volume II". I remember as a kid, my parents had a shelf of photo albums that documented the people and events that made up our family. Over the past few years, I've reminisced about those albums and suffered some nostalgic regret that now all photos are stored digitally and actual, physical albums are rare. But now I've got two albums of my own that I intend to keep on my shelf forever as physical memories of everyone who's made my life great. I couldn't imagine a better birthday present.<br />
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Yesterday, I was at the library checking out some books. A friend came up and joked with me about spending the last day of my twenties reading and working on papers. For a few moments immediately afterwards, I was overtaken by grief and felt this anxious guilt that I wasn't do something more spectacular. But then I remembered the last YEAR of my twenties and all that anxiety and guilt vanished. I spent the last year living in China, gallivanting around south east Asia and getting a masters degree in International Relations in Italy. The last day of my twenties isn't nearly as important as the last year of my twenties, and the last year of my twenties was full to the brim. I welcome the next decade with as much excitement as I celebrate the last.<br />
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And finally, just to add some historic significance to this day, Iran, the US and other negotiators reached a deal this morning in Geneva that will see an easing of tensions between Iran and the west: a historic event that indicates an improvement in relations between Iran and the US that has been sour for the duration of my lifetime. As I prepare for a career in international relations, I can't help but wonder what impact today's agreement will have on my future. Maybe we can all celebrate my 40th in Tehran? Who knows.<br />
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Have a good week and thank you all again! Bryn has posted pictures so check them out on her facebook page. I'll post pictures from today on flickr once I've done some things worth taking pictures of.<br />
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com1Bologna, Italy44.494887 11.34261630000003244.3136765 11.019892800000031 44.6760975 11.665339800000032tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-20014045176648756202013-11-12T13:35:00.000-08:002013-11-12T13:35:05.371-08:00Vietnam War Parable<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We're covering the Vietnam War this week in my course on "American Foreign Policy since 1945" - which is essentially a survey of the Cold War. Tonight, I was reading Daniel Ellsberg's "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers". Ellsberg is the one who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and has recently resurfaced in the news for supporting Bradley Manning. Reading his book has been illuminating. Most of it is actually about his experience as an adviser in Vietnam and his observations there during the US build-up of forces.<br />
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Past and recent political controversies aside, it's a good book and I thought this passage that I copied below was a nice parable of the American experience in Vietnam. I'm not sure if it's 100% accurate - the punchline seems too clean for real life - but that doesn't matter as much as the underlying point of putting US involvement in Vietnam within the greater historical context. It was good enough to get me to read it twice. I couldn't help but share it with everyone else.<br />
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"Later in the spring of 1966, during the Buddhist uprising, I was driving along a road between Da Nang and Hoi An in I Corps. The road had been blocked or cut every half mile or so - there were trenches across the road that we had to drive around on the shoulder or barbed-wire fences we had to cut through - not by the VC but by the Buddhist ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam] troop units who were opposed to General Ky's regime in Saigon. In effect, both sides in this civil war within the war were being paid out of the US budget.<br />
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Along the road was an unusual succession of abandoned fortifications, of varying constructions, that dated from different periods successively further back in time. There were recent Popular Force outposts. We had supplied the wages for the local militia that had built them and the cement, if there was any. But basically, these were mud forts, very primitive little outposts along the road supposedly to protect local hamlets. They had been recently abandoned because of the regional nonviolent uprising against the Saigon regime, which had been paying the troops out of US aid. Posts like these I'd seen all over Vietnam.<br />
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But next to one of them was a pillbox of another kind, better constructed and made out of concrete, a cylindrical box with narrow portholes. The interpreter driving with me, a young Vietnamese lieutenant, explained that this had been built by the French. I recognized that it looked like one of the smaller pillboxes I had seen in pictures of the French Maginot Line at the outset of the German invasion of France. We drove by several of these. Most were from the 1946-54 war by France to regain its colony, during which it had run a pacification program very similar to ours. But some of them, the lieutenant pointed out, went back much earlier, to the twenties and thirties (when the Maginot Line had been built) and even much earlier in the French pacification of Vietnam.<br />
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In the midst of these, along the road, were some pillboxes of a distinctly different sort, also concrete but rounded, like ovens. I recognized those from pictures of the Pacific island fighting by the marines in World War II. They were Japanese, built when the Japanese had pacified the area of what was now I Corps in their occupation of Vietnam during the war. Finally, we came to a massive knoll, overgrown with grass and studded with very old stones. I was told it was an ancient Chinese fort, constructed when the Chinese had pacified Vietnam, starting with what was now I Corps, over a period of a thousand years. When the interpreter told me that, I was reminded of what Tran Hgoc Chau had once said to me: "You must understand that we are a people who think of ourselves as having defeated the Chinese, though it took us a thousand years."<br />
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Driving this road was like time travel or visiting an archaeological dig that had brought strata from many historical epochs to the surface. It was a kind of open-air museum of successive efforts by foreigners to establish their authority and control over Vietnamese or at least to protect their own troops and collaborators from resisting locals. At this moment it was not secure for us, since the militia and ARVN paid by the GVN [Government of South Vietnam] had left the countryside tot he VC to demonstrate against the Saigon regime in Da Nang and other local towns. We drove fast, between the obstacles on the road, with our weapons at the ready. Even so, the children we passed, as always, were friendly to us. They waved and called out the only American words they knew: "Hallo! Number one! OK!," the same words that had so touched my heart when I heard them for the first time after my arrival in Vietnam.<br />
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The lieutenant driving with me remarked, when we heard some of these shouts, "When I was a little boy, their age, I used to shout hello at foreign soldiers too."<br />
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I said, "How did you say it? <i>Bonjour</i>?"<br />
He said, "<i>Ohayo gozainmasu</i>." Good morning in Japanese.<br />
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I knew we were following the French in Vietnam, who for all their colonialism were our allies in two world wars. But as someone who had grown up on movies of the war in the Pacific, and then on war stories in the Marines, I found it eerie to hear I was walking in the footsteps of Japanese invaders."</div>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4760311024028069494.post-78615092412122959252013-10-13T15:00:00.001-07:002015-06-02T21:08:32.604-07:00Leap years And The Even More Curious Phenomenon Of Non-Leap Years<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Autumn has come to Bologna and the past few weeks have been dreary and cold. Today, however, the clouds broke and it was a beautiful, clear, warm-enough day. I took an afternoon break from studying and ran up to my favorite spot in Bologna: Villa Ghigi. My own attempts to capture the view and the ambiance up there have so far been unsuccessful. However, this contributor to wikimedia seemed to do a pretty good job of it. </span><br />
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" 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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">View of Bologna from Villa Ghigi</span></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because of the weather and my battle with a persistent cold over the past couple of weeks, I haven't been running much. Getting out and stretching my legs this afternoon did me a lot of good. Well, maybe. The intellectual result of my run is outlined below. I'll leave it up to the reader to determine the normative value of the outcome which is detailed below.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've mentioned before that one of my favorite by-products of running is the unpredictable stream of thoughts that go through my head as I settle into an almost meditative state. Today, a particularly lucid stream of thoughts brought me to the question of leap years and how we deal with them. The progression of thoughts that got me to that point are another story entirely, but as I plodded back down the hill, I realized that leap years present a problem. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The whole idea of celebrating a February 29th every four years comes from our attempt to match the earth's revolutions around the sun to it's axial rotation - i.e. match earth years to earth days. There's no good reason why the earth should rotate on its axis a particular number of times as it revolves around the sun. To make life easy, we typically refer to a year as having 365 days. In fact, it revolves on its axis more like 365.2425 times for every trip around the sun. (I didn't know this as I was running, I just assumed there was a margin of error. Wikipedia told me the exact number when I got back.)<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"> Now, if the earth were kind to us, it'd pick a nice even number of days to go around the sun; for example, 365 or, if it were particularly kind, 360 days would make celestial time-keeping very neat and easy. Failing that, it'd be nice if the earth picked an easy fraction of a day to add on or subtract from each year. Granted, 365.2425 rounds up to 365.25 easily enough and so every four years, we add an extra day to even things out. None of us would ever notice a difference over the course of our lifetimes between measuring a year as 365.25 days and the ACTUAL length of 365.2425. But apparently, the Pope Gregory was wise enough to transcend living memory. He wanted a calendar for the ages, and to do that, you need more foresight than a measly lifetime.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rounding up to .25, adding an extra day every four years and leaving it at that could have DISASTROUS consequences; specifically, the addition of 3/100ths of a day each time we celebrate February 29. The additional .2425 days per year only adds up to .97 days over four years, not a full day. Over the course of many years celebrating February 29, the summer solstice gradually creep up and, instead of happening on June 21, it slips back to June 20. Extrapolate that error over a few thousand years and eventually the summer solstice would be in May. That's just unacceptable. </span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, I came back home and started tooling around on wikipedia. Thank goodness Pope Greg had considered this 3/100ths of a day we were adding every four years and formulated a strategy for correcting it. It turns out that at the turn of each century, the centennial year (e.g. 1700, 1800, 1900, etc.) is NOT counted as a leap year. Even though these years are divisible by four, February 29, 1700, 1800 and 1900 did NOT happen. In 1903, for example, the world had gone without a February 29 for 7 years so that the summer solstice in 1903 didn't happen until more than half way through the 22nd day of June. By comparison, the summer solstice in 1896 (the last leap year) was happening towards the end of the day on June 20th. </span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First of all, isn't that wild? There I was, thinking that I knew the calendar that I have spent nearly 30 years interacting with on a near daily basis! Maybe this is all common knowledge, I don't know. Usually I have a chance to talk through blog posts before I write them up but I didn't get a chance to talk through this one. I'm assuming this isn't common knowledge.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's more.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, most centennial years omit February 29, but not all of them. As it is, the extra fraction of a day we add each February 29th only adds up to 3/4 of a day each century. So dropping February 29 from centennial years puts us behind a total 1/4 of a day every 100 years. Again, small potatoes, but over the course of thousands of years, that could throw us off by a whole week!</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="File:Gregoriancalendarleap solstice.svg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Gregoriancalendarleap_solstice.svg/800px-Gregoriancalendarleap_solstice.svg.png" height="210" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I found this on Wikipedia. Search for "Leap Year" and prepare to sacrifice half a day learning about the calendar that measures your life. Don't worry though, you'll make up for the lost 12 hours over the course of the next 100 years.</td></tr>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thank goodness the Gregorians saved us from this confusion though. The ultimate correction in solving the leap year problem comes by celebrating February 29th on the centennial years that are divisible by 400. This means that the years 1200, 1600 and yes, 2000, celebrated February 29 in order to correct 400 years of ever so slightly shifting the summer solstice later in the year. </span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The exciting conclusion to all of this is that the year 2096 will see the earliest summer solstice since 1696; it will actually occur in the MORNING of June 20 (Greenwich Mean Time) opposed to the average of June 21, and the extreme of the afternoon of June 22 witnessed in 1903.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">Unfortunately, I probably won't be around in 2096 to experience this once-in-a-quarter-millennium phenomenon, but maybe my kids will? I'll be sure to forward this blog post along to them at some point.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">It also means that I missed the similarly momentous occasion of celebrating February 29 in 2000. It didn't occur to me at all that that specific leap year was so phenomenal. We were so caught up in the whole millennium and Y2K business and I was still riding the high of my 16th birthday. What a shame.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">Finally, in my lifetime I will likely never experience an non-leap year. And I have to say, I'm ok with that. Leap years are confusing enough, celebrating a non-February 29 would just be confounding. </span></span></div>
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Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14091433949060365831noreply@blogger.com1Villa Ghigi Park, 40136 Bologna, Italy44.476757749484079 11.32724761962890644.47534174948408 11.324726119628906 44.478173749484078 11.329769119628907