THE CITY THAT LIVES LIKE A VILLAGE

Back in Mandalay

I used to pity the poor poll taker, trolling city sidewalks with a clipboard asking strangers questions. Until I realized my job is the same. As a guidebook author, it can feel like you're paid to ask people their telephone number, and how much they charge for a bottle of mineral water.

In nearly all the places I've gone -- Bulgaria, Mexico, Queens -- I go anonymously. It amuses me sometimes when a hotel proprietor complain 'no Lonely Planet author visited US' when one, perhaps me, actually stayed there and never told them. It's important to be anonymous so you can keep the service normal, as any random traveler would expect to get walking off the street. And it's particularly important to keep mum in a place like Myanmar, where -- if word got out that you were a 'writer' -- you could be deported on a day's notice.

No one has recognized me from the book photo, including immigration, until I got to Mandalay, a big booming city that, Yangonites like to say, 'lives like a village.' A trishaw guy who rents bikes for about $1-a-day helped me for a full week last time. Dealing with repeated questions about weird things like where to find cheap puppets, cheap chapatis, get credit card transfers. He earned my trust, and on the last day I told him what I was doing. Yesterday I was back in downtown Mandalay needing a bike, and I saw him walking a block from his stand, and he immediately recognized me. 'Robert!' I was impressed. 'You're fatter now. Very handsome. Too thin before.' I hadn't realized. 'The toy you gave me... it's up on my cupboard at home!' I had forgotten.

The downtown guesthouse I'm staying is easily the best cheapie in the city. I checked in yesterday and got one of the pricier rooms -- $7 per night, with a zany tile and wall panel job that would make Mondrian's head spin -- and negotiated it WAY down to $6.66 per night for three nights, by simply asking. The manager realized a day later she had seen me before. 'You've been here before. You came by bike, then saw a room, and wrote down the rates on a business card, then came back a day later...' She said it all with a guarded smile -- I think she's figured out why I'm here.

Yesterday I met a tiny 83-year-old Indian Muslim man who approached me on the street to ask if he could speak a little English. He retold his family story... he fought with them against the Japanese in WWII, then his father moved to Bombay, and he moved from Pwin-U-Lwin to his daughter's home in Mandalay. He then introduced me, quite formally, to his 10-year-old grandson. Wrapping up his little two-minute talk, he asked, 'Can you understand my English?' Yes, very well. 'Oh, very good, sir. Thank you for speaking with me.'

I just walked by and saw him sitting on his daughter's porch watching traffic of ancient buses filled with commuters and monks, a few trishaw drivers looking for fares, and a motorbike beeping by or two. I waved, and he gave me a quick salute.

'Hello again, sir!'

FINDING CHRISTMAS IN MYANMAR'S 'DRY ZONE'

Does Dust Count as White?

A hundred miles or so north of Yangon, where I am now, Myanmar's big fat dry belly begins. In towns like Magwe, Meiktila, Taungoo and Mingyan (rhymes with 'engime') palm leaves sway in the light breeze,
but during Christmas season – the heart of the dry season – they're
caked in dust. If you squint, it almost looks like snow. Add to that
the multi-layers of wool sweaters, wind breakers and army-style green
coats, locals put on to fight off the dusk 70-degree temperatures, wearing them all day as I sweat in a t-shirt, it actually almost looks cold.

Christmas is everywhere in Myanmar, as it's not hard to sell this
country on another light-filled festival. Everywhere you go, you see Christmas tree displays, fake Santas, fake reindeers. People put strings of rainbow lights on their lone balcony plant, or a tree before their teashop.

In Taungoo, I stopped to photograph a makeshift shop called 'Merry X'mas' (with apostrophe) selling crappy Chinese imported ornaments and fake two-foot trees. At a SuperOne 'supermarket' on Yangon's Aung San Rd, they sold gift baskets for the occasion: each filled with coffee mix, tea bags, peanuts, crackers and a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label. Cost was 49,000 kyat, or about $40.

I've been wondering how it'd be to be away from Oklahoma for Christmas this year. And I've been surprised at how melancholy it can feel to brace for a 'lost Christmas.' As a kid, each Christmas had an identity – the time I got a dinosaur I was scared of, the time Chip's family got a blue van, the time I had mono. The weeks beforehand, I played a one-on-zero game of 'knee football' that I'd keep track of on successive nights in a tiny notebook from TG&Y – a one-kid series of the Christmas Bowl. Each year, one team – the Monsters – would win, usually with a lobbed TD pass late. I believe the Monsters never had a first-half lead, come to think of it. I always felt that it was a travesty that no team in college of pro football named themselves that, so I let them prevail. As a kid I knew, nothing beats a Monster.

I knew this year Christmas would be different, and it certainly began that way. After a surreal Christmas Eve in Pay Nyi Daw – the Myanmar generals' insane new project of building a new capital (more on this later) – I bused to Meiktila arriving just before midnight brought Dec 25. At the first hotel, they told me that 'all hotels are full,' givinga sideways open-hand pivot to show 'no luck…' I hesitated a few minutes in disbelief. Motioned to their courtyard bench, wondering if I could sit there till 7am? No restaurants were open, and my hotel was on a dark alley near the mosquito swarms of a Meiktila Lake.

Hesitation often works in travel, and did here. The manager and his son murmured then shyly approached, 'We have one room upstairs… would you like to see it?' Off we went, the son leading me to a concrete box closet with a single bed stuffed in and another bed frame stained in a betel-nut spit (locals check teeth-staining betel net, often spitting blood-like pools of betel/saliva mix on streets; a week ago I got a splash on my trousers), cob webs and a nasal-clearing dose of just-applied insecticide. 'Three dollars, no breakfast. OK?' Like I could refuse. (It was a rare small-town hotel with 24-hour generator, and I kept the light on all night, and the door cracked to air it out.)

The next morning, I borrowed a bike to collect a few facts, and stopped into see the British officer's club where Aung San Suu Kyi and Michael Aris honeymooned many decades ago (now part of a hotel), I left for Mandalay. The bus guys charged me double the local price, but I insisted on a front seat, right before the cracked windshield, so I could watch the scene of passing ox carts, fast hand-offs of toll fees at gates (the driver will NOT slow down for anything), and graphic billboards of traffic accidents to calm down drivers. After three hours we pulled into Mandalay's dusty 'highway bus station,' as monk chants from a nearby monastery nearly drowned out the taxi offers. I picked one, and he soon pulled out a creased photo of a woman. I knew what was next. 'You want? 30,000 kyat' (about $25). No thanks.

Once checked into my guesthouse I rented a bike and hit the Mandalay streets determined to find some sense of Christmas. I pedaled past a lively street pwe (traditional festival), with balloon games, weird snacks, giant ancient film projectors set up showing stilted clips of traditional dance for a couple dozen sitting Indian-style in the middle of 27th St – it was all to raise money for a local monastery. I dropped into nearby BBB, a ski lodge looking place serving 'European food.' A Chinese family kept on scarves and coats during their Christmas dinner. I needed something other than noodles to tribute Dec 25, so went for a $1.50 burger. 'Sardine or beef?' asked the waiter in a striped fake Izod. (I went with beef.)

On the way back to the hotel, I drove along the long moat of Mandalay Palace – the last home of the last Burmese king (until the new one, more on this later) – and passed Sedona Hotel, the fanciest Mandalay gets. Locals were streamed in twos past the cheerful security guard to pose with an elaborate Christmaslight display. A six-year-old kid was flashing fake gang signs in front of a tree in lights, a couple women took turns photographing each other before a Santa-and-his-reindeer display in the front lawn.

My camera batteries ran out of juice and I started back. At the corner, two trishaw drivers – deeply suntanned faces, in camouflage jackets, knelt at one corner. I heard them mumble something and I looked over. Guys who make $2 to $4 a day thrive off jacked-up fares from foreigners, or commissions if we buy a puppet or gem from a shop he takes them to. I know where this is going. He'll say something like 'where you go?' or 'you need ride tomorrow… I know all the sights' or even worse 'you want woman?' One looked at me and started to say something.

'Merry Christmas,' he said bobbing his head.

Oh.

'Yes! Thank you. Merry Christmas.'

TIMELESS IN MRAUK U

Boat Collisions & Rat Sex

Some read novels by Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway less for the great writing but the envy of experiencing exciting transitional times in transitional lands at ages long past. That's happening now in Myanmar. One of my favorite places seems even farther back.

The last time I visited the Rakhine ancient kingdom of Mrauk U (Monkey-Egg, no one knows why -- no monkeys around, but indeed a few eggs) I was a day behind a group of Italians who hired a 'private boat' to take them after dark on the six-hour trip from Sittwe. An unexpected storm came, capsized the boat, and five were killed. The next day it was all sun, and I was safely board a much larger ferry boat, enjoying stops at riverside towns were hawkers offered insects on a stick for a boat-time snack.

This time I tempted the night, when the temperatures drop radically and the Milky Way's smear with stars cross the sky -- something I've not seen the equal of, even in deserts. The two boat drivers used a flashlight-style device to warn oncoming boats -- or find out where shallow spots were. We never hit the shore -- not that we could make it out often -- but we did collide with a rowboat right before we arrived. The boat didn't capsize but the driver sure gave our guy ugly looks as we passed.

Soon we arrived at the Mrauk U dock. You could just make out lights ashore -- at first looking like some pagan display of fire, then realizing it was just the striped lights leaking through a thatch hut. 'Where you from?' asked a thin guy in a longyi, grabbing my offensively heavy backpack to take to his trishaw. (I let him.) Another held my hand as I waddled onto a long, thin, wobbly plank-board bridge to the shore; 'careful!'

I clicked on my flashlight as the pedal-powered trishaw squeaky pedals weaved us over bridges and past commuters not worried about light. In town a couple guys sat under a lone buzzing fluorescent bulb outside a tiny cinema (TV with VHS tapes) plucking on old acoustic guitars. Soon we pulled into a small guesthouse that had three clocks over the desk: Bangkok, Myanmar, Arakan. Arakan (the alternate name for this, Rakhaing State). Doesn't that have the same time as 'Myanmar'?, I asked. 'It does now, but we used to be 15 minutes earlier.' (I love this.)

The guesthouse rooms had plyboard walls (you hear your neighbor snoring plainly), but staff worked to make them inviting. A tiny desk in the corner, with a sculpture of Mrauk U's distinctive 64 traditional hairstyles, worn in the days before 1784, when this was a lively international capital, with samurai guides, present-day Bangladeshi Muslem archers, and occasional Portuguese pirates that were seized and executed publicly in horrible ways. On the wall, placed too high, was a tiny framed print of two eagles. The American Room.

In the morning, I was awoken by murmuring chants at 5am -- it sounded like a pagan ceremony, and it surrounded by room. Soon a loud crash came on the corrugated metal roof above me, then a hissing sigh, and another crash. Rat sex? When I went downstairs for breakfast, I skipped the subject of the frightening animal romp, but asked about the chants. With a bow, the tiny manager told me, 'Oh, that's just students next door. It's a girl school. They were memorizing their lessons. History today.' They memorize fast. 'Yes, very fast.' As he spoke, you could see -- in this town of 20,000 without much electricity, where locals get around by foot -- woman with bright dresses carrying tin water pots from Bangladesh on their heads or propped against their hips. They take them to a nearby well to collect water for the morning -- they'd be back again in the afternoon, and evening. It never ceased to be fascinating to see in four days there.

There is very little here that's changed since 1784. That's maybe something worth writing about.

SITTWE ROCKS

I have a new favorite city

A scrappy port town near Bangladesh, where the wide muddy Kaladan River mixes with the Bay of Bengal, Sittwe is not loved by most visitors. Getting here means a full-day boat ride from an already-isolated port town Taunggok – or an hour flight from Yangon or Thandwe, which I opted for. A couple hotels, powered round-the-clock by generators... don't expect a fan to be blowing after 11pm. It's a diverse place – something like 25% of the locals are referred to as kala (outsider, or foreigner), in this case meaning Muslims. Some are descendants from the nearby Arakan Kingdom of 'Monkey-Egg' (Mrauk-U), who came from today's Bangladesh as archers for a religion-tolerant king. Others are more recent arrivals – people without a nation, called outside Myanmar as the Rohingya. Nearly everyone who passes through, takes a quick taxi to the jetty for a (sometimes leaky) boat ride six or seven hours to Mrauk-U. But I had a hard time leaving. Despite its remoteness, Sittwe is not exactly unknown. During September's protests, something like 20,000 locals – most of whom are Rakhine (or Arakan), a ethnic group similar to, but distinct (very), from the Burmese – followed monks down the main road (Main Rd) and past the new government-built clock tower to the City Hall, where they shouted for democracy. No deaths occurred. One local told me, "Half of the soldiers were Arakan. We heard them warn to Burmese solidiers, 'if you shoot, you'll get my peanut" (meaning bullet). No shots were fired. My timing coincided with Arakan State Day, "a government-made holiday," one Rakhine local said dismissively. Still I went to Lakandaya, a shimmering gold zedi visible from the plane on landing (it's just after the octagonal prison if you're on the right side of the plane), where thousands of monks holding brown umbrellas, kids in t-shirts, and men and women in longyis stood on tip-toe, or climbed trees, to look over a mass of spectators at a couple traditional Rakhine events. The first was a team of bare-chested men, with their longyis wrapped into something like a padded Speedo. They climbed a greased-up bamboo pole standing at least 30 feet, to retrieve a white flag at the top. One by one, the teams would climb on each others' backs on hold on desperately to the pole, then eventually slide after making it 15 or 20 feet up.

A local I met said, "Come, wrestling's about to start. I got VIP seats." We breezed past the uniformed police and into padded armchairs in a shaded makeshift 'bandstand' looking over a round sand pit where two men kicked and grabbed and slapped at each other. There is no three-second pin in Rakhine wrestling, or fancy costumes. They took turns as an 'attacker' or 'defender,' with the simple goal of knocking the other down, however briefly. A local translated the hilarious trash-talk dialogue of the middle-aged MC with a mic and a serious look. "He's saying, 'The Sittwe guy is no good. He has cold blood. He better get it hot or he's going to lose!'" Soon he was slammed to the ground, the other picking him up and helping him brush off dirt. Some would walk off the ring arm-in-arm. Before crouching in the shade to watch other matches, wrestlers would circulate through the bandstand to collect 'prize coupons,' simple white pieces of paper you could purchase for 50 or 100 kyat (about $0.04 or $0.08 each) and give to the wrestlers, win or lose. The MC said: "Please give coupons to the wrestlers to promote our traditional sport! These guys are very poor. If you can't give there won't be anyone to play in the future." I gave. A local told me, "The best wrestlers are from very small villages – the guys here from Sittwe always get beat badly." Soon cleared-out seats were emptied. Across the ring, where locals held up hands to block the sun from their faces, were being made to sit by police in army helmets. Then the green-uniformed man in glasses and a frown rushed in to sit up front, alongside a plump-bottomed woman in a floral dress. "He's the regional commander of the military – not a good guy," one local whispered. How does it make you feel seeing him so close? "I feel like arresting him and executing him," he laughed, only half-joking I think. The military officers here are nearly all Burmese.

Later I rode with one guy I met along the Strand Rd at low tide as dusk approached. Groups of locals played soccer in the black sand offshore. Strand Rd ends at a stunning point – labeled View Point – where they charge you $1 or so to take pictures. The Sittwe local drove to the nearby navy base, locked up and restricted, and asked if we can go in to access the black-sand beach that faces the sea, and where a tricky undertow takes a few lives annually. And we rode along it for a sunset ride.

The next morning I woke early for the stunning fish market on the water in the center. it swarmed with shoppers. Trishaw wheels bumped tenderly into my shoes, and locals carrying huge baskets filled with rice or dried fish or vegetables bounced past me. At the end of the market is a wild fish market, with decapitations-in-progress. One group circled a giant eel, which was being unceremoniously de-gutted. 'You! Here!' They beckoned me closer to take a photo of the suspended guts – something very valuable around here. Nearby dried sharks and barracuda hang under a high-ceiling market, and dozens of just-caught sting ray lay on bare concrete.

I walk into a crummy looking export company, where tiger prawns were being packed "for export only – people here are too poor to buy." A thin gray-haired man with a funny beret and deeply sun-darkened skin walks up and hands me a pink piece of paper with Arakan writing. "It's an invitation to play golf," one worker explains. "I like golf," the bereted man manages, not one to let lack of language to stop a conversation. "But I don't like playing on the military course." I risk a recommendation, suggesting he could defecate into the hole so the officers behind him would get a surprise. He laughs loudly, nodding. "Yes! Very good idea!"

NGAPALI BEACH

Myanmar's Great Sun-And-Sand Destination Meets a New Sort of Traveler

I noticed the guy long before we met. A gray-haired accented foreigner with a baseball-style bamboo hat with a tiny Swiss flag sticking out the top. At the Thandwe Airport, where foreigners looking for 'escape' flies in for a few days to the Ngapali Beach resorts. Locals were meeting him warmly with embraces, as he loudly barked out praise and salutations. Turns out, the long-retired self-confessed 'millionaire' from Zurich is doing something special here, and in other needy places: overseeing charitable projects himself. He's built schools in Cambodia, dams and 'houses for the aged' in Myanmar -- he's done projects in Slovakia too. 'Never give money. Find out what they need and get it for them,' he told me frantically afoot at a leafy, laid-back squid restaurant on the Ngapali Beach road, where we met the day after arriving by plane. 'If there are 37 students that need 37 books, a school and a teacher, I arrange it. But never just hand over money -- it'll end up in the wrong pockets.'

It all started when he broke away from a tour group, years ago, and met some children begging, and after getting to know them, an eight-year relationship was formed. They’re now at a university with $300 in a savings account (which he started with $30). Breaking out of conversation, he would walk away suddenly to harass, in a good-naturedly way, a restaurant owner, whom he's known for eight years ('you do nothing but sit around!'). Returning back to me, teetering foot to foot, to explain more about why visiting Myanmar is good ('we cannot change the government, but we MUST help the people'), and a bit about his life ('I had a dream at 30 to retire at 55, and I did'). What exactly is it that he does now? 'There is no name for it. Well, other than Just Do It.' Mr. Hansruedi Schreiber is 69.

Ngapali Beach doesn't usually bring this sort in. A handful of $150-and-way-up resorts dot the 3km beach, like the newish Aureum Palace (run by Myanmar leader's son-in-law -- don't go) or the startling luxurious Amata (with $420 bungalows with satellite TVs in an area with electricity access only a blip of the day). Some visitors bee-line here after arriving Myanmar, like the American couple complaining out loud how hard it is 'to pay a bill' -- must be newcomers. The beach is lovely -- facing the turquoise Bay of Bengal (or 'Bagel' in one misprint of a local brochure), and occasional ox-cart tracks in the mostly empty gold-sand beach, as local fishers and hay-movers still prefer the beach for intra-village transport to the one-lane, seriously dodgy road. At dusk, it's nice to listen to the chugging motors from a stream of fishermen heading to sea, where they soon dot the darkened horizon with lights -- looking like a skyline over in India. They're squid fishermen, using the light to attract 'sea monkeys' and other assorted critters that will make up the menu for the $2/plate restaurants the next day.

Somehow, in an impoverished country with more than its fair share of unrest, it just feels a little odd sticking around an insulated, luxury resort like this for long. The main reason to come is to meet and talk with locals that have so long been shut off from the world. Unless, of course, you're here to build a dam.

YANGON'S OLD AIRPORT

Earlier this year, Yangon opened up a fancy new international airport for the big jets to come and go, but the old one -- now handling domestic flights -- is my favorite. I showed up this morning for a flight to Sittwe, an old port town on the Bay of Bengal, and a man in an orange vest got my bulging bag and brought it in the airport (35-cent tip) where a friendly 20-year-old airline staff member greeted me and took me bag to the service counter. 'No passport needed.' He hurriedly weighed the bag, tagged it and took it to the baggage handlers, as another person got me my boarding pass in 40 seconds. I put my bag on the X-ray belt -- no one looking at it -- as I beeped loudly going through the x-ray myself -- no one cared. The fading waiting lounge is busy with activity. Kids play on the carpeted floors with toy cars, business people sit over a coffee at a stylish cafe with this (quick) email access (for $1.60 for 30 minutes). Nearby rows of red vinyl and blue plastic seats are filled with a few foreigners, a few monks and plenty of locals headed to Bagan, the beach or Sittwe like myself.

For tea, I followed the 'Airport Restaurant' sign to the mezzanine lounge -- faintly formal, and seriously fading. And sat with a cheap tea and looked over a wall mural showing Burmese nat spirits, horses, mountains. Out the window, a military air force plane took off as domestic propeller planes of Air Bagan and Air Mandalay quietly waited.

'Thank you sir,' said the staff as I left with my empty plastic tea cup.

YANGON ROCKS

I HAVE A NEW FAVORITE BAND

Last time I was in Myanmar, the frequent music videos I'd see on TV, or playing on TVs in overnight buses or market stalls, caught my eye and ear. I called a rock journalist of a local paper on my last day and asked him to tea and to shop-around at local CD stores. I wanted to know who was 'the Stones, the Nirvana, the Madonna of Myanmar' and get some of the key releases. A few key names kept coming up – Iron Cross, mostly – but also Lazy Club, which I got to see for $3 the other night outside Yangon International Hotel.

Yangon concerts are frequent once the rains stop – mostly outdoor events with opening-act fashion shows, a few bands and giant posters advertising things like coffee mix or instant noodles. The audience swarm around the stage: mostly upper-class local kids, including drunk young men with shirts off, young punks with cobweb designs painted on their face and spiked haircuts and leather jackets that read 'Sex Pistols,' couples hugging while shouting out the lyrics.

Lazy Club (like Iron Cross) is a band with rotating singers. Their CDs are labeled not only as 'Lazy Club' but also with the individual singer featured, such as the outrageous Phyu Phyu Kyaw Thein, a 30-year-old (or so) Catholic Burmese woman who has delighted many with her strong voice, but alienated others by her stage persona. 'A bit too confident,' one Yangon local said. 'No one is used to seeing that.' Her set began as all sets should: with Lazy Club's guitarist doing Eddie Van Halen finger-lifts on a triple-necked guitar blasting through a Marshall stack. Nearby the pudgy bass player in glasses and a pea-green shirt shyly looked down at the frets of his six-string bass. A keyboard player hid behind a rack of synths, the drummer behind the cymbals. As the guitarist started into a chugging death-metal rift, on walked the Grim Reaper, in a full black cloak, face obscured by a black veil. The Reap held a mic and belt out words in Burmese, as leather-jacketed kids up front showered the stage with middle fingers and 'hang loose' signs they see on Malaysia TV. As the song wound down, Reap ripped off the cloak: and Phyu Phyu stood in shiny gold pants and top, with gold streaks and sparkles in a faintly bee-hive haircut. She straddled monitors and held the mic out for fans to sing along. The drunk guy next to me yelled 'I love you' in English, a mosh pit appeared briefly behind. Women with dyed blonde hair shouted out lyrics or fist-pumped along.

The next song was a cover of Bonnie Tyler's 'Making Love (Out of Nothing At All).' Celine Dion and Bon Jovi songs followed, somehow the guitarist found innovative ways to get chugging, distorted riffs into everything. The hour set never got old. None of this would fall flat in Brooklyn. Except here the sponsor is Mama's Instant Noodles.

Throughout the set, four middle-aged people sat stone-faced in chairs to the right-side of the stage, and in plain view of everyone. Three gray-haired women and a pudgy balding man. Censors? I asked a kid next to me with a outgrown buzz cut who they were. 'I don't know.' What did he think of the show though? 'She is everyone's favorite Myanmar singer.' Mine too.

ROUND & ROUND (Not the Ratt Song)

A RIDE ON YANGON'S CIRCULAR TRAIN

A British travel photographer I met here – pressing well into his middle ages, but with close-cropped dyed-black hair, and looking like he'd double as Brutus' cousin in a Popeye cartoon – told me Burma's like any other ex-British colonial place: 'As soon as they got in, they'd build a train.' Yangon's 'circular line' ($1 per ride for foreigners, or 1 cent for locals) is that legacy. The slow-going ride bounces on a long three-hour loop, counter-clockwise or clockwise around Yangon, connecting 25 or so stops used by commuters not willing to shell out the more expensive bus fare (up to 15 or 20 cents). The rails are the 1890 originals. Nice for history buffs, but hard on the butts.

This morning, I went out on a ride with a Yangon friend. We joined a team of commuters – Indian women in saris, Muslem men with turbans and long beards, betel nut-chewing Karen men in skirt-like longyi, vendors carrying (now empty) pots of mohinga (fish noodle soup), sold at morning markets in the center – and rolled out of central Aung San Station at 5mph. The train would slow as it come to frequent stops, then stop briefly, then roll backward slightly, before it pressed on. Out of the center, we passed simple wood huts, canals covered in water cress, and recently planted teak trees: in 15 minutes you feel like you're in the countryside.

A man in the back of the eighth car – where we stood— asked if we'd like to sit. He carried a green flag he wove out the window at stops. A couple seats sat bare on the packed train, but behind a small cord. VIP section?, I asked my friend. 'No, it's for foreigners.' Despite my inflated ticket price, I wasn't 100% comfortable with the segregation, so stuck with standing. After 30 minutes we got off at Gyo Gone stop, a couple blocks west of the former 'Rangoon Institute of Technology' (that's right: RIOT), and one stop before reaching the infamous octagonal-shaped Insein Prison. In 1988, students at a teashop across the street from RIOT got into a fistfight over the music playing – one group had a Shan singer Sai Hti Sai on, another wanted something more poppy. The police were called, and when they couldn't break it up, a student was shot. Things spun out of control. The students merged to protest the shooting, the government backed the police, and students took to the streets in protest, and it soon became something a lot bigger than a fight over music: but a call for democracy, a full year before Tianemmen Square. Afterwards, the government changed the name of the city to Yangon, so that the institute wouldn't remind anyone of the event: from RIOT to the less explosive YIOT.

My friend took me to the little teashop where a revolution began, a bare concrete-floor spot with a simple roof with faded ads draped down. 'You shouldn't have your camera out here,' he said, untucking his nice white shirt to look 'less formal.' 'People may be watching.' The shop was closed – being Sunday – so we went on to quickly peek at the former RIOT – a Soviet-built institute from 1964 with overgrown yard and fading gold buildings.

The train could be a great way of getting around town, and stopping to see various sites outside the center, but once you hop off another doesn't come for '45 minutes or so.' We took a cab back.

First Impressions of Yangon

It's odd to go to any place that's experienced recent disaster -- Phuket after the tsunami, the World Trade Center site after 9/11 or here in Yangon after peaceful protests by monks in robes turned violent across TVs and newspapers worldwide a couple months ago. Being back in Yangon, my first time here in three years, feels remarkably the same -- as it never happened. Last night I wandered down 19th Street in Chinatown, where barbecue shops plop out plastic tables and chairs onto the tiny street after dark and serve grilled mutton, shrimp, vegetables for beer-drinkers in the open air. Street vendors with antique wood carts pushed by displays of pineapples or smoking roasting peanuts, as cars ebbed slowly down, tapping the horn for beggars and a foreign tourist or two to get out of the way. Over by the central Sule Paya, a gold-topped pagoda on a main downtown street, moneychangers asked 'you want to change money? Good price!' I crossed the wide boulevard, dodging oncoming cars along with monks and businessmen and into a bookstore selling 80-year-old copies of 'Treasure Island,' left behind from the English colonial days. All this I've done before here, but still there's a sense something's changed. The difference only comes when you speak to people.

A 60-year-old bald guy at a teashop adopted me, and was clearly outraged that monks would be shot by the military. 'There have only been two times the government has killed monks,' he told me. 'The first was years ago when a non-Buddhist Shan king killed monks at Inwa. And then in September.' He holds out hope that change can come -- 'but it must go through China,' he said. 'I hope the US will boycott the Olympics.'

Another 20-something tattooed guy I met, with a seemingly a permanent smile, said his brother marched in the streets. 'They knew how far to stay away because the soldiers' rifles can only shoot 600m, so they stood 601m away.' But as the soldiers edged closer, disguising their steps by stepping with one foot and dragging the other behind, a guy next to his brother ripped open his shirt and yelled out, then suddenly fell to the ground, killed by a gunshot. 'My brother got away, but he's in some of the photos you see.'

Yesterday I walked by the now-infamous spot where the Japanese photographer was shot and snapped a few photos of the building and billboard behind him. I looked back across the street to see where the video had been shot from -- a corner apartment block had half a dozen storeys with balconies. With a little geometry, I'm guessing, you could figure out where the video camera was set. Thank goodness the government is so anti-education.

ReidOnTravel Update

A BREATHER & A HARD TRIP

The past several months have been busy for me -- finishing up maps for the website, tracking the Central Vietnam floods, and finishing up the last text for the free Vietnam guidebook. I've also been talking with a publisher about making a pocket-sized 'alternative guidebook' to Vietnam, which I'd like to see IF it can be made for dirt-cheap prices.

So many of the travelers I see in Vietnam have a good time. Still I'm a bit worried most are falling into a trap. Whether they're carrying backpacks or Gucci roller suitcases, they pretty much see Vietnam the same way. Hopping up or down the coast, staying in the same places (Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hue), and taking variants of the same group tours -- Halong Bay cruises, Mekong Delta boat tours, Sapa treks. Nothing wrong with that of course. All three places are wonderful, and sometimes it's just as well going on a tour, but I hope -- with this guide -- to push travelers JUST a bit beyond the usual travel ways of the country. It's a lot more rewarding to get just a taste of what's on the next block.

I just wrote about how to see the Mekong Delta on your own in 'DIY Mekong Delta Adventures' for Transitions Abroad's new Nov/Dec issue (in print version only). Somewhere over the years, no one's noticed how easy it is to go and around the famed boat trips on your own -- and get more out of the trip. Also, the good folks at GoNomad.com recently posted an excerpt from my blog about how to find the best Hue food away from the traveler's guesthouse ghetto.

Next Up: Burma
I'm heading off tomorrow night for a research trip updating Lonely Planet's Myanmar (Burma) guide. I was last in the troubled country three years ago for LP and have been following the military crackdown closely. Because of the military government's brutal regime, many outsiders believe travelers shouldn't visit (to money out of the government's hands), others -- including most Burmese people you meet in the country -- want 'independent travelers' to come. Just not on group tours or staying in high-end hotels. Tourism has fallen by 90% to the country during its high season, mostly affecting small privately run businesses. Every year, off-shore oil reserves -- not to mention the trade of rubies (and heroin) -- brings in hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to a select few up top; an average traveler staying in family guesthouses for a couple weeks spends about $300 -- with all but a fraction staying in private hands.

I'll be gone through mid to late January, and will try to post on-the-ground reports of what's going on in destination areas like Yangon, Mandalay, Bagan and other places in between.


Robert, in snowy Brooklyn

Visiting My Lai

SOBERING DAY-TRIP FROM HOI AN
The following is an unedited preview of the online guide entry, which will be posted on www.reidontravel.com by September...


One of the most grisly moments in the "American war" makes a sobering, memorable out-of-the-ordinary day trip out of Hoi An. On March 16, 1968, US soldiers troops killed either 347 or 504 villagers (the number is still debated) in a systematic, planned attack of the (VC stronghold) of My Lai (now called Son My), about 110km south of Hoi An. Vietnam’s not always known for a delicate touch on its war memorials, but this one is a stand-out.

No organized group tours from Hoi An regularly go south here, but most travel agents can arrange a tour by private car (about US$45) or motorcycle taxi. It can also be done – with a wee bit effort – by public bus (see Transport).

open 8am-5pm daily; admission US$0.65

→ If you’re traveling with kids, note that the site museum displays many graphic photos of massacre victims.

Some History
Less than two months after the 1968 Tet Offensive sent shock waves through the US military, the frustrated ‘Charlie Company’ of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade – who had only been in Vietnam four months – followed orders to this hamlet, where the VC troops were supposedly based. A young officer, Lt William Calley led the ‘search and destroy’ attack, which fell into mayhem quickly – with soldiers shooting children, women and the elderly; raping teenage girls; and carving the initials of the ‘Charlie Company’ into bodies.

One soldier, Herbert Carter, supposedly shot himself to stay out of the conflict; helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson Jr (pictured, above right) evacuated a dozen villagers.

Initially the attack was claimed a ‘military victory,’ until photos by Ronald Haeberle and reports from soldiers leaked out. By November 1969 – 18 months later – it became an outrage (spurring on the growing peace movement). It eventually led to the conviction for premeditated murder of Lt Calley, ,who served four years in prison. President Nixon released Capt Ernest Medina, believed to have ordered the attack.

The Site
There are three key parts to the site. Straight ahead, as you walk in, is the museum, behind is a memorial statue – with a woman defiantly clenching her first, and in the grounds to the left is the site of much of the old village.

The paths around the village site are thoughtfully laid in dirt-brown cement, with GI-boot and barefoot footprints madly imprinted to show the chaos of the event. Plaques mark the foundations of the homes, and the number of killed at the site. It’s fascinating to walk around, and see farmers outside the fence peacefully farming in the rice fields, just as many locals may have done on that fateful day.

Do not skip the museum, which chronologically retells the event through photographs. A marble list names of 504 victims, identified by age (many many are under five years old). It’s capped with North Vietnam’s reactions during the war – ‘the atrocious crime can’t be forgiven,’ and calls to ‘punish the thug’ - plenty of photographs of victims and survivors. There’s a short book available in English.

QUANG NGAI
The area’s beautiful, but Quang Ngai’s not. It has its cult fans – amongst many long-term expats, who rally over the countryside drives in the area and the ‘authentic’ experience they have in this friendly town – and a handful of wide-eyed travelers stay a night here en route between Hoi An and Nha Trang. There are several ATMs in Quang Ngai.

There are several budget hotels. KIM THANH HOTEL (tel 055-823-471; 19 Hung Vung St; rooms US$5/8-10 with fan/AC) is in the guidebooks, but worth considering as the manager Mr Dung speaks some English and can rent you a motorbike for US$5 per day.

TRANSPORT
The My Lai site is reached from the mid-sized town Quang Ngai, 100km south of Hoi An via Hwy 1. No public buses go from Hoi An to Quang Ngai – but it’s not hard to catch one on nearby Hwy 1.

From Hoi An, a motorcycle taxi ride to Hwy 1, at Vinh Dien (9km west), is about US$1.50 to US$2, where frequent buses of various shapes and speeds and conditions roar by. Be choosey. A nice ‘newish’ pink on - without air con – I offered for made the 100km trip south to Quang Ngai in over three hours (with frequent stops and backtracks to pick up big bags of rice). A minibus marked ‘Ban Me Thuot-Danang,’ on the other hand, made the return trip in just over one hour! Both charged 50,000D (about US$3.15) one way.

Hwy 1 no longer cuts through Quang Ngai, but takes a branch a kilometer east of the main road Quang Trung St. Motorcycle taxi guys wait there. It’s about a 1.5km walk to the center intersection at Hung Vuong and Quang Trung Sts.

If you’re making a daytrip here, consider hiring the motorcycle taxi for a few hours. It’s about US$3 or US$3.50 to get a ride to Son My/My Lai, then My Khe beach for a meal if you want. You’ll need three hours, unless you’re planning to swim a while. You can rent a motorbike from Kim Thanh Hotel for US$5 per day, but they’ll want to keep your passport.

To reach Son My/My Lai from Quang Ngai, take Quang Trung St north across the bridge, then follow the first right (there’s a sign) east. Otherwise you can take the bridge north of town on Hwy 1, then take the first unsigned road east. Son My/My Lai is 12km east. The beach is another 3km.

Travel agencies in Hoi An can arrange a motorbike driver to visit here for US$15 or US$20.

Starting Up Again... DALAT overview

I'm back in Brooklyn, but thought I'd post some raw excerpts as I start writing up the various sections for the rest of my online guide...


DALAT: HILL TOWN OF THE SOUTH
Only a century old, Dalat has long been the place – for French colonials at odds in the tropics, Vietnam’s last king looking for hunting grounds, communist-era locals on honeymoon – to go to get away from the Vietnam day-to-day. In the last 15 years or so, guidebooks have put Dalat at par with other itinerary staples as Nha Trang and Hoi An, but not all visitors are equally swayed by its gentle green mountains, brisk temperatures and quirky take on what tourism means. Nightlife is limited, and the dining situation not that much more advanced. But I like it. Here, more so than anywhere, you can relive the colonial age in a superb French-villa resort or palace hotel (for varying costs), take some rewarding DIY motorbike drives in the hills, and sample some of the sillier products of Vietnam tourism, like bunny statues and ‘cowboy rides’ and dream-like tree/cave hotels with red-eyed kangaroos you can tour. It’s a place that – at first glimpse – feels a bit like a new country. I think it’s the clothes. Men wear berets and suits all day Sunday, and women are in full outfits rather than the lightweight pajamas in hotter parts of the country. A local French expat said, ‘It’s more formal here, probably because of the French influence.’ Few visitors stay more than a couple days, but it makes a good alternate route between Nha Trang and Saigon.

BEST HOTEL - EVASON ANA MANDARA VILLAS DALAT
Tel 063-555-888; Le Lai St; reservation-dalat@evasonresorts.com, www.sixsenses.com; rooms from US$155
One of Vietnam’s best deals for luxury and quiet, the dreamy ten-villa, 57-room resort – soon expanding to 17 – is a thoughtful modern make-over of 1920s French villas on a hill-side location a couple kilometers west of Dalat center. Guests reach their villas on cobbled sidewalks through the forest. Part of the Evason/Six Seasons chain, each villa here holds onto its original (sometimes quirky) design. I enjoyed Villa 13, with views to the north, a great common area (with Wifi access), ‘rustic’ untreated wood floors, balconies looking to the northern valley of Dalat, TV with DVD player, an electronic click-on furnace for chilly nights, huge beds, and a claw-foot tub in the bathroom. Breakfast’s included in Nine, probably Dalat’s best restaurant – it’s ideal on the deck in morning. Nearby is a heated pool and a spa. The hotel arranges Dalat tours in vintage French cars, or – interestingly – very authentic walking tours of ‘street food’ spots around Dalat, including Chinese wonton soup, Dalat’s version of banh beo, and heated che pudding desserts – well worth signing up for. Similar conditions elsewhere – like Six Senses’ Hideaway Resort off Nha Trang go for much more. By all means try to stay a couple nights here.


BEST ATTRACTION: DIY MOTORBIKING TO ELEPHANT FALLS
Everyone goes -- meaning heaps of Vietnamese tourists on tour buses -- to nearby falls that are over commericalized and littered. I preferred spending half a day leading myself on a US$4 rented motorbike to Elephant Falls (Thac Voi; about 30km west), a dramatic falls in Nam Ha village, where you can walk down into the spray for vantage points from slick rocks. It’s more removed from the kitschy falls near Dalat – like Datanla – so there’s generally fewer visitors, plus the ride there’s fun.

To get there, drive out of the center west along 3 Thang 2 Street, taking a right at the roundabout at Hoang Van Thu St toward Cam Ly Falls. Shortly after you pass the falls (on your right) the road forks – go right towards Suoi Vang villlage (signed; not towards the Heroes Cemetery), 3-1/2km north. At Suoi Vang, the road forks again; go left 10-1/2km to Ta Nung village, where you turn right 13km to the village Nam Ha. The silkworm factory is to the left before you get to an unsigned turn to the right to the falls. If you pass the iron-grate bridge, you’ve gone a bit too far.

The falls are open 7.30am to 4.30pm. It’s about US$0.45 to enter, and there’s a large jolly Buddha to see at the adjoining Linh An Tu pagoda. Steps head down to the right of the falls, some carved from slippery rocks – go slow. A bit after the second bridge, the path forks – go left for a close-up vantage point of the main fall; go right to reach the foggy-from-the-spray base below.

BIKING TO NHA TRANG
The best way to move on from Dalat is on a bike in the backroads downhill. Talk with PHAT TIRE VENTURES (tel 063-829-422; 73 Truong Cong Dinh St; www.phattireventures.com, info@phattireventures.com) about their US$68 daytrip heading one-way to the coast.

Stopping for Now

I've been sidetracked by the mad dash of my last two or so weeks of research and abandonded this blog thing. I head home today and will be writing up Hanoi, Halong Bay, Ninh Binh, Sapa, Hue, Danang, Hoi An, Nha Trang and Dalat to expand the online guide to match 99% of most travelers' itineraries.

Meanwhile, I offer these suggestions:

DON'T BUS TO/FROM DALAT. The road is still windy and narrow -- like the ol' Hwy 1 -- and takes up eight hours of a day. 'Open buses' use minibuses, which are almost always less comfortable. A flight is $27 and takes 35 minutes. You save a day, and one of the country's hardest days of busing on your bum. The catch is that Vietnam Airlines often 'sells out' the flight way in advance. In actuality they leave four or five seats for 'VIPs' -- and you can often get one, stand-by style, as I did this morning. Just show up an hour before and see if you get lucky. If not, the buses from Dalat pass the airport and you can catch one to Saigon.

HIRE A PRIVATE CAR BETWEEN HOI AN & HUE. Many take this four-hour trip on a open bus that zooms through the Hai Van Pass, rather than going over the short scenic road, and skipping past the gates of the remarkable Bach Ma National Park. Hiring a private car costs about $70, fits four OK, and you can see the pass, stop at Lang Co beach for lunch, and hike to falls in dramatic Bach Ma. Few visitors do this, and it's worth the 'splurge.'

BIKE FROM DALAT TO NHA TRANG. Here's something interesting. Phat Tire Ventures, in Dalat, offer van/bike trips downhill from Dalat to Nha Trang which take the same amount of time as the car-sicky bus trip. Sure it's about $65, but the guides and equipment are good, and you access a new road that gets a lot of jungle/mtn/sea views. Don't go the reverse way -- they don't offer the uphill variant, actually -- as it goes way way up.

So long for now.

RR, in Saigon

HUE: Try the Food

Some travelers I meet traveling north-to-south or south-to-north across Vietnam are skipping Hue, a sleepy city about mid-way up Vietnam’s slender girth. All too often those who do come often miss its greatest attraction – not the royal tombs in the hills up the Perfume River, or the bomb-blasted Citadel in town, but the food.

I always try to fit Hue in on any trip back to Vietnam. Known for its sleepy pace and pagodas and heavy rains, Hue was Vietnam’s capital during the Nguyen Dynasty years from 1802 to 1945, when the last king turned in his funny gold and red robe and capital duties shifted back to Hanoi. Over the dynasty’s run, many kings spent most of their time writing poems, fathering children (Minh Mang had 102 wives, and more children), or designing their architectural legacies -- and in particular their tombs.

Kings were finicky, too, for their food. Over the royal years, nervous chefs churned out ever-changing dishes for kings who demanded 52-course meals. Most were adaptations of the dishes ‘commoners’ made outside the Citadel walls (supposedly numbering 1400 of Vietnam’s 1700 dishes). You won’t find many outside Hue – even in Hue-themed restaurants in Saigon or Hanoi – but the legacy still lives on in family-run alley spots here.


Breakfasts for many locals mean an unusual crunchy bowl of com hen, a spicy cool-rice dish with tiny river clams (about the size of a broken-off tip of pencil lead), peanuts, pork rinds, green onion, mint, fish sauce and peppers. 'Foreigners can't eat it,' I was warned by a local, holding his belly with a grimace. 'They get sick. People from Hanoi and Saigon too.' I already had my belly full of it -- and was feeling fine. It's not too fishy, and no spicier than some of your more milder Thai dishes. For 45 cents a bowl, and a shocked crew at Ba Hoa (Truong Dinh St, just east of Hanoi St) who interfered to mix my bowl when I hadn't mixed it adequately, it's hard to not take a chance. I've not seen this elsewhere.

Bun bo Hue is one of the city's most famous exports -- and one of the few that reach US Vietnamese restaurants' weekend menus. Like its more famous cousin pho bo, it's a beef noodle soup served with a clear beef broth but healthy doses of chili, shrimp paste and a rounded slippery noodle that slips off your chopsticks and sending dots of reddish-brown broth on your shirt. The best place in town -- I heard over and over -- is Bun Bo Hue (17 Ly Thuong Kiet St), a block south of Hanoi St. And it's quite good. Like the other cheapies I found, it's a simple concrete-floor, open-front place, with aluminum tables and trash thrown on the floor. The bowls are prepared up front -- just order, sit and await the bowl (about 50 cents).

Hue takes Buddhism a bit more seriously here than most of Vietnam -- with more monasteries than anywhere else, and the nation's most famous monks. Famously in 1963, Thich Quang Duc drove to Saigon to protest anti-Buddhist policies of the South Vietnamese government and set himself on fire on a Saigon street. Beyond the pagodas nowadays, where robed monks and apprentices break in the afternoon for volleyball games you're welcome to join, Hue's vegetarian scene is more developed than anywhere else in the country. Com chay, or vegetarian food, places pop up on riverside locations and alleys. The best though is right in the heart of the backpacker ghetto (of sorts). Tinh Tam Restaurant (24 Chu Van An St), run by a Buddhist family, serves fake meats -- the grilled 'deer' with lemongrass is superb, and only $1.50; as is the mixed fig salad served with fake-shrimp cakes to scoop it up (60 cents) -- that attract monks and a few Lonely Planet holders.

The power of guidebooks has long been known at the corner of Dien Thien Hoang and Tran Hung Dao Sts, north of the river near the Citadel walls, where two bustling-with-travelers (and locals) restaurants with 'deaf mute' owners set up with similar names (and billboards lined with quotes from Lonely Planet and Routard guides). Both are welcoming places serving cheap, Hue-style food -- and can be walked to after a tour of the Forbidden Purple City of the Citadel. The original, Lac Thien (6 Dinh Tien Hoang St) is slightly better, to my taste. They serve banh khoai (about 40 cents), a shrimp and bean sprout 'pancake' served with peanut sauce, and the (tastier) nem lui tom, a delicious shrimp salad dunked in fish sauce and served with cucumbers and rice paper you roll yourself. It's also made with vegetables, beef or chicken and costs about $1.25.

Far better (and more remote), is Cung An Dinh (177 Phan Dinh Phuong St, off the alley at 148 Nguyen Hue, several blocks south of the river), which serves bite-size banh beo, banh uot and banh nam -- variations on glutinous rice rolls coated in dried shrimp and wrapped in banana leaves. At $0.40 a pop, it's easy to try them all.

Hue does have a few fancier -- and Western-style -- restaurants too, generally at the upscale hotels. One good exception is Y Thao Garden (3 Thach Han St), a French villa locale a few blocks northwest of the Citadel's inner walls. Y Thao goes for royal-style set meals, with several local delicacies served at $8 per person. A popular start are the lightly battered eggrolls served with pomp atop a peacock-style dishes carved out of vegetables and fruit. It's good, and busy with tour groups, but for the real deal -- as the locals have always eaten it -- you have to go 'poor but luxurious,' as the local mantra dictates. Simple places, cheap prices, rich taste.

T.H.E. B.E.S.T. C.A.V.E. O.F. A.L.L. T.I.M.E.
VIETNAMESE LOVE CAVES, and pretty much every visitor to Halong Bay -- Vietnam's famed sea spot of limestone cliffs peeking up from the green sea off the coast a few hours east of Hanoi -- go on wooden junk-style ships that pay a visit to a cave or two. Today I made it to the top attraction, the 'Amazing Cave,' where a guide painfully pointed out the many forced likenesses in the stalagmites -- 'this is three elephants,' 'this is tiger,' 'this is the Boston Marathon... 1982' -- capped with a truly amazing view of the bay from a gap at half way up the mountain.

But the best cave -- of all time -- is half a country south, in the depths of Marble Mountain, just outside the country's third-largest city Danang. Visitors on tours, or with guidebooks in hand, almost always miss HELL CAVE, as my motorcycle taxi driver called it. Ticket takers -- charging about $1 for admission -- told me it was anywhere from '20 to three years old,' but the napping workers in a nook inside (sculpting figures in the limestone) make me think it's a work in progress, still.

You enter hell on a bridge over a fake pond with fake hands reaching out. The water's clear enough to show a few discarded ones laying at the bottom of the water. Inside bats squeal and triumphant lights illuinate carved figures and tall scary chambers that reach five or so storeys high. Deeper it gets goofier, with decapitated hands and heads looming from the walls, aligators eating humans hole, women getting tongues taken out by pliers, and blue-skinned demons holding up the dead on bloody tridents.

It is the best cave of all time.

I Saw the Turtle!

A crowd in Vietnam either means a group of parents waiting for kids leaving school, or a fight. In Hanoi, there's a third option, if you see a crowd on the rim of Hoan Kiem Lake (Restored Sword Lake) in the center of town: someone's seen the six-foot-long turtle that many believe doesn't exist.

Hanoi's famed lake is based on a 15th-century legend of a massive turtle who first gave a sword to the (actual) nobleman/warrior Le Loi to fight off the Chinese, then after doing so successfully, Le Loi went boating in the lake with the sword, and the turtle came and snatched it back -- then disappeared in the murky depths never to be seen again. (When I hear of the tale, I always enjoy imagining the sound of the turtle snapping at the sword -- a non-threatening, but decisive, snap, re-claiming the sword that Le Loi may or may not have wanted to return...) One of the tiny islands on the lake is 'tortoise island' with a slightly leaning, picturesque tower built in rememberance of it. In 1993, plans were made to drain the lake until some protested to the government -- at a period when not many did; scuba divers searched for turtles and none were found. All this is fun and fine, but the catch is there really are VERY LARGE turtles in the lake. Or at least one. And if spotted, expect a large crowd will gather to look.

Walking by the lake today, I saw a huge crowd gathered on the lake's northern end. Looking in -- about the place where I saw a bloated dead rat floating amidst some garbage a couple weeks ago -- huge bubbles appeared. The suddenly, a head! The head of a massive turtle. The crowd 'oohed' as if spotting a dragon decapitating a llama, the turtle slowly moved toward the center of the lake -- occasionally showing its head again. I couldn't believe my luck. I telephoned a pal in Hanoi, Nam, who said 'What? I've never seen it in my life.'



Apparently sightings are rare. The following comes from a decade-old article that speculated that IF the turtle existed it would last much longer...

"This turtle is a fascinating phenomenon, probably the biggest soft-shell in the world and certainly the most endangered," said Peter Pritchard, a renowned turtle biologist. "People in Vietnam are treating it like the Loch Ness monster, but this is not a myth. People need to treat it like a biological thing — an endangered species."

But is the turtle related to the sword-biting legend, or just a passerby? Dr Ha Dinh Duc, supposedly Vietnam's leading 'turtle expert', believes it IS the turtle -- about 560 years old now. He said...

"Yes, that's right, the same turtle," said Duc, 56, a biology professor at Hanoi National University who has studied the Hoan Kiem turtles since 1991. "Some scientists don't believe a turtle could live this long, especially in a lake so small and with so many people around, but I think so."

I do too.

Bumpkins without Barriers

VIETNAM'S BEST MUSEUM:



Hanoi's Ethnology Museum -- an awkward 15- or 20-minute drive west of the center -- is likely Vietnam's best museum and all visitors to the capital city should set aside a few hours to see it. In the two-floor white building are exhibits and videos that tell the tale of Vietnam's ethnicities, starting with the Viet (Kinh) -- or 'Vietnamese' -- who make up 86% or so of the population.

I went yesterday with Giap, a 25-year-old guy at my $12 hotel who volunteered to take me. He waved a 'no' to the ticket counter and didn't pay, and 'became one' with many of the exhibits. A couple German tourists sat on tiny bamboo stools watching a video on the tradition of non la (conical hats) as made in Chuong village, about 50km south of the capital. Giap -- who's from that area -- stepped onto the exhibit, which had various stages of the hat-making on exhibit and various tools used -- and picked up a triangular iron device and long, flatted pieces of bamboo 'paper.' He started moving the device over the bamboo. 'Make non la like this,' he said, or something. A minute later the video showed the same. The Germans, and myself, were impressed.

A country bumpkin in the city for a couple years, Giap -- who works every day at the hotel, and is in Hanoi to 'study automobiles' (to be a mechanic I think) -- may stand out a bit in some parts of ritzy Hanoi, but he was at ease in the museum. In another exhibit, he picked up rocks and hit them against a bronze gong to simulate the sounds he listened to growing up in the countryside. As we walked past mannequins with various ethic garbs on, he'd point and ID them immediately: Tay, Hmong, Giao. He knew most, if not all. At one point he sat in front of a buffalo sacrifice video engrossed.

Outside there are many rebuilt traditional structures lining a nicely manicured garden. The most irresistible is the tallest -- a Bahnar communal house, built in the fashion of a hundred-year-old, all-bamboo one from near Kontum in central Vietnam. Nearby stood a longhouse. We hopped up and sat for tea and cookies left for visitors. Giap rinsed the cups out with tea, and poured it out in a nearby 'stove area' before we drank.

At a nearby cafe, Giap -- who shares his name with North Vietnam's greatest 20th-century general -- cooed to birds in a cage effectively and flirted with two Vietnamese women as we had something cold to drink.

He speaks maybe three words of English, but it's hard to imagine a better 'guide.'

Through August, the museum has a FASCINATING exhibit dedicated to the 'subsidized economy' period from 1975 to 1986, when locals lined up with food stamps to get rice and supplies. 'Very bad,' Giap said with a frown, not that he personally remembers it. The exhibit shows 'dream' items -- like a stove brought back from someone visiting the USSR, or plastic sandals called Tien Phong which one woman sold to pay for a flight home to Hanoi from Hue. Videos and photos tell the tale of the hardship. One person said, 'Our greatest dream was to have enough food and clothes.'

Things have changed. For one thing, in 21st-century Vietnam you can have a rather anti-communist exhibit like this in plain view of Hanoi's authorities.

My Favorite Tourist

Lonely Planet author and friend Tom Downs recently said to me that pretty much any time you see old photos of a place, you see what the place was like 20 or more years before that. In other words, we -- as traveling documentarians, either by writing or camera -- tend to focus on what's already old, nostalgic. For example, while studying Russian in Moscow and St Petersburg during the 'first summer of Russia' (1992), instead of photographing grandmothers holding up toothbrushes for sale outside a metro stop -- as the Russians first clumsily toyed with free market -- I photographed onion-domed churches and Kremlin walls that haven't, and won't, change for decades. My friend Matthew Jesse Jackson, of Chicago University (and more distantly, Alabama), once said, 'Pretty much any newspaper clip you ever save ends up more interesting on what's on the back side.'

Most conversations I have in Vietnam tend to end in a local or expat observation like 'things have changed so much' or 'I bet you can't recognize it' (I lived here 10 years ago) or 'every day there's something new... it's like a whole new city.' Generally I find more what hasn't changed -- the unwieldly power cables blocking balcony views and congregating at concrete tower poles at intersections; how you hear the approach of a waiter by their sandal soles dragging on the pavement; if you stop to write a note on the street you have an onlooker or two unshyly looking over your shoulder at every word; the same decayed French colonial buildings line many streets; many motorcycle taxi guys think if they ask you four times for a ride you'll finally relent; the food's still much better than any Vietnamese restaurant outside the country; on hot days guys walk around with shirt pulled up into 'half shirts'; simple concrete red/white markers mark the distances between cities on one side of the road; people still eat on tiny sidewalk plastic stools; many transport overloaded doses of mirrors, bamboo baskets or live pigs on a motorcycle; many bicyclists pedal while sitting on the back bumper rather than up on the seats; the non la (conical hat) is everywhere; farmers work by hand; and many more.

Some things have changed too. Mini hotels are more comfortable, new office buildings look like skyscrapers in Danang, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Importantly to travelers, most cross-country 'open buses' that ply the improved highways -- but generally still overwhelmed by large vehicles and little ones -- are much better than the pile-in, smoke-spewing mammoths from a decade ago. And who gets on them has changed -- in the form of a novel, recent phenomenon: the Vietnamese tourist. They're every where. The 'open bus' that you can hop on/off from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City was once 98% foreigners, now it's mostly locals (on most buses I've been on anyway). Take a group tour -- to a cave, a tomb, a pagoda -- and guides are sometimes required to say everything in English and Vietnamese. This is new.

Most Vietnamese tourists go on group tours -- to Halong Bay, to Sapa, from top-to-bottom on big-bus tours. Not all. My favorite Vietnamese tourist I've met so far -- an architect of 'New Sagion,' wearing a foldable 'outback' hat, with the faintly Mick Jagger-1965 longish hair you see on some of the more interesting guys in their late '40s or early '50s -- sat next to me on my bus to Danang. His family went to France for a holiday, but he flew to Hue and was spending '12 days to get back to Saigon.' On his own. I didn't realize he spoke English until we saw the aftermath of an injury-free accident. 'Accident here. Motorbike fell,' he said suddenly. 'Anyone hurt?,' I wondered. 'I don't think so.'

Van is spending a day or two in places in Vietnam's southern half-- perhaps by design, perhaps not, but his English skills (and fact he didn't leave country for vacation) makes me wonder if he's a South Vietnam veteran; I didn't ask -- to photograph with the massive camera he held. He pointed out a place -- near Lang Co pass -- where he had gone two days before. 'I stayed in that guesthouse and woke up for sunrise to watch the fishermen come home. Let me show you.' He brought out a huge camera and flipped through shots of pink hues of the early sun making a black outline of wee fishing boats. 'Beautiful, yes?' He doesn't want to sell them, though he easily could. 'It's just my hobby.' He's very good at it. Pulling into Danang, he pointed out women fish sellers setting up along the waterfront. 'This is where to get seafood. Very cheap and very fresh.' He's been there before too.

I got out at Danang and he headed farther south. I forgot to ask him for his contact info.

Touring the DMZ with South Vietnamese Vets

In Hue -- the capital of Vietnam during the Nguyen Dynasty (1802-1945) -- visitors have three principal choices for tourism: a boat tour of the king's tombs located on and off the Perfume River inland, a looksy at the Citadel in town (largely destroyed during the French and American wars, particularly the Tet Offensive in 1968), and a tour of the 'DMZ' (demilitarized zone), that once separated North from South. For the latter, it practically makes no difference who you sign up with on a group tour -- a travel cafe, an agency, your guesthouse, your hotel -- you end up on one of two buses that engage in one of the less rewarding trips you can take Vietnam: 11 hours in all, about nine on the bus, a dissinterested guide who was three at the end of the war, and little explanation to take in sites ('firebases,' 'army camps,' filled-in bomb craters) that no longer exist. One guide said: 'We're passing a firebase...' as the bus of 30 tourists zipped by, 'But there's nothing to see, and locals will just try to sell you things, so we're not stopping.' Money well spent.

I signed up for a tour reluctantly (partly to see what so many take, and because it was harder to access some sites -- including the Vinh Moc Tunnels where 300 villagers lived underground -- on my own), but instead I broke away for half of the tour and hired a South Vietnamese veteran to take me to a few sites not included in the tour. It doubled the price of my day trip -- from $10 to $20 -- but was easily four times as rewarding.

On the way to the US Cong Tien firebase (aka 'Charlie 2'), where my 62-year-old guide Dien had once worked (and met with 'Westy' -- General Westmoreland -- many times, apparently), we stopped off in a forest of rubber trees to check out a bomb crater. It's one thing to look at a hole, another to get some background. 'We're south of the DMZ now, but the VC came here every night. We'd send up flares every 30 minutes from 5.30pm to 6am so they couldn't make movements. During the day the US bombers flew overhead to ID camouflaged enemy bases... then bomb it or drop agent orange. In 1968, this was all jungle. By the end of the year... nothing.' The workers collecting rubber wore uniforms. Dien explained why, 'The government runs this whole area. They're party members, working like collective farmers.'

We finished at a North Vietnamese Cemetery, where over 1000 gravestones are grouped into areas for 'heroes,' 'southern soldiers' (meaning VC from the south), Hanoi soldiers, soldiers from Ho Chi Minh's home province, and unknown soldiers. There I gave 25 cents to a minority kid with a deformed hand ('from agent orange') and shook hands with a North Vietnamese vet with one arm, visiting on a group tour from Hanoi. Mr Dien spent 'two years, six months' in a re-education camp. The US welcomes southern vets who spent three years in a camp, and their families, and pays to relocate them. But Dien spent six months in a hospital from an illness he sustained in camp. 'I've tried and tried, but your government says no. I don't understand.'

With a few hours to spare today, I took a tour up Highway 49 -- an old 'elephant trail' and 'tank trail' that's now a bumpy paved road to Laos -- where the US used to send artillery to cut off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. South VN vet Mr Dung, 53 (a refreshingly unpolished but knowledgable 'guide'), only spent a month in jail after the war. 'I wasn't important,' he said. 'I was young. I spent three years in the army. I joined at 17, illegally. I lied about my age to get in. I wanted the money,' he laughed. Mr Dung -- who wore a bandana much of the trip and carefully weaved around Laos-bound trucks going 70 km/h -- is a talkative, likeable guy who stopped people on the road to talk. In Hong Tien village -- about half Vietnamese, half Pa Hy people -- he stopped a little 70-year-old man with gray hair and a ballcap on, and chatted as if they knew each other. Turns out, his family was born in Laos, moved to middle Laos in the '40s, then across to Vietnam in 1976. The VN government allows that, I wondered? 'Sure,' Mr Dung said. 'Laos and Vietnam are like USA and Canada -- like brothers.'

Heading up forested hills that too had been leveled by agent orange during the war, he flagged down a motorcycle guy going the opposite way. Sam, about 25, lives in hut on the mountain and was balancing a self-made metal detector in front of him. Mr Dung translated, 'He's searching for bomb shells and bullets. Honda pays 250,000 dong (about $16) per kilogram of iron.' I asked if he found anything today. 'Not much,' Mr Dung again translated. 'Just some helicopter bullets and M-16 shells.' Mr Sam held out a handful and offered it as a gift, then showed how his detector works. Turning it on, a 1950s war-movie radio sound came on, as he passed it over the metal, it silenced. 'Very dangerous work.'

If you want good DMZ tours, Stop-n-Go Cafe in Hue offers alternative tours ($16 by motorcycle -- but 300km in one day!; or about $50 or $60 with car). Or you bus to Dong Ha, about 50km north, and drop by DMZ Cafe, where Dien (and two other South Vietnam vets) work. Let me know if you're interested in meeting Mr Dung in Hue.