Ho Chi Minh City

(apologies for the lack of photos…time constraints, stay tuned)

You enter Saigon along a highway that is flanked for miles with small stores, rice farms, and repair shops. As you approach, they increase in frequency, until the black soot clinging to the concrete tells you are in a city again. Motorcycles dominate the roads, chaotically darting and buzzing amongst the cars. The only traffic rule they follow is a Darwinian one: wherever a motorcycle can go, it will. That includes sidewalks, crosswalks, and the wrong way on a one way street.

Interestingly enough, the drivers of these death machines will often cross several lanes of traffic, pop up a curb, burst through a fruit stand, and then casually ask you if you might need a ride somewhere. One imagines that if one of them took you to your execution, you'd be somewhat relieved to arrive in one piece.

In any case, your bus beeps and honks its way over a bridge or two, and plunges into a modern, but still old city. Saigon is built flat and spread out, rather than up. Depending on where you stay in it, you can have a dozen different experiences. On the outskirts, you'll swim in a steamy sea of South East Asian grime and mania. Trucks and buses belch smoke and dust onto impromptu cafes where patrons poke through bowls of pho. Women walk balancing loads of coconuts or fruit on long staves. Motorcycles run down everyone in sight.

In the center, though, you find the wide, patient boulevards of colonial France. The traffic is still incredible, but you can easily escape it in small boutiques or cool cafes, which serve some of the best iced tea you'll ever find.

We liked it so much, we immediately ditched our idea of a trip to see some wartime tunnels outside the city (there's a perfectly informative book we'll read), and concentrated on the city itself. The first day took us to the War Remnants Museum. It is, as you might imagine, a long, gruesome, and pretty much accurate portrayal of the US war on Vietnam. Hardly the sort of thing you follow up with a steak dinner.

From there, we went book shopping, and I was left, as usual, to ponder who chooses the absurdly high-falutin titles in a foreign bookstore. It had no less than five books by Thomas Hardy, in addition to Vanity Fair, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen, Middlemarch, Ethan Frome, Silas Marner, volumes of eye-closing Wordsworth, the sonnets of the Reverend John Donne, and the complete works of the lesser Bronte sisters. I was once a graduate student in literature, and I've read most of that stuff. My advice: buy a gun instead. It's quicker and you'll suffer less.

We ended up eating dinner at a café and considered the day a success. Tomorrow, we'll head back out to take in the Ho Chi Mihn City Museum and the city market. Then, we're off to home.

Mui Ne: The Backpack Archipelago

We are relaxing in Mui Ne, a coastal town about three hours north of Saigon. Nicole and I have a tradition of ending every trip with a stay at a resort for a few days. This one, "The Beach" is like any you've ever seen: beaches and pools, cabanas, and German and Russian men sunning themselves in bikini bottoms. Since there's nothing interesting here, we'll take up a different topic.

Mark Twain once said something like the following. A person may naturally be a great bore, but he will never reach his true potential until he travels. How many of you have seen a pair of travelers come back from a 'round the world' tour, world-wearily heave their backpacks into their living rooms, and proceed to tell everyone who can't run fast enough all about the eye-opening trip they've taken to Thailand and beyond? They must be brave, foolhardy, or just plain nuts.

In reality, exotic travel is amazingly easy today. The reason is an institution we've nicknamed the Archipelago. It's a network of interlinked budget hotels, restaurants and travel agencies that stretch out like friendly islands across the developing world.

How does it work? Let's imagine that you're in Thailand and want to go see Angkor Wat. Don't have a visa? No worries, it can be arranged either at your hotel or at the travel agency next door. Need a plane ticket? No problem. Hotel room? Let us know what you want to pay per night. Not sure what to do there? They'll arrange a tour. When you arrive, the Archipelago is there to feed you, house you, do your laundry, and send you on your way to the next stop. A child could do it, maybe even a dumb child.

Oddly enough, the Archipelago makes the most visible symbol of the adventurous traveler, the backpack, an unnecessary affectation. The modern travelers' backpack has become an evolved monstrosity, capable of carrying more than any normal suitcase. It is designed not for serious travelers, but for well-heeled 20-somethings who want to look fabulous in far flung destinations. We abandoned ours years ago in favor of much smaller rolling suitcases that can double as backpacks in a pinch. In five years of travel, we've used them as backpacks once. That was in Copacabana, Bolivia, and it was only because we went the wrong way.

The Bible of the Archipelago is The Lonely Planet, that maddeningly uneven but unavoidable travel guide. In addition to providing valuable transportation information and dreadful restaurant tips, the Planet also gives the Archipelago its moral backbone. In sanctimonious and claptrap-filled asides, it urges you to be a sensitive traveler. According to it, that means not feeding Bolivian peasants candy, picking up after yourself if you're in the wilderness, pondering the adverse psychological effects of Chinese children growing up without brothers and sisters, and avoiding plane travel if possible (this, from a travel guide!). The LP's hold is so pervasive though, I challenge anyone to travel the length of Bolivia without having at least one conversation in which an earnest backpacker warns you not to feed the proud peasants sweets. As if it would have occurred to you to do so otherwise!

The Archipelago has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it has made travel to anywhere convenient and pleasurable. You can see great sights without undue effort. Wherever you are in the world, you can find a lounge with natural wood chairs, tapestries on the walls, and a menu that features hamburgers, fried eggs, pancakes, and coffee. (That's right, the anti-American backpacker universe has brought Denny's with it everywhere). You can listen to old rock and roll in a setting that feels exotic and authentic. It's fun, and easy to meet people.

On the other hand, the Archipelago has also MacDonaldized travel to a great deal. We may find the faux-Tiki lounges exotic, but that doesn't mean they have anything to do with native culture. Americans often deck out their backyards in a similar style. We have whole chains of stores like Cost Plus and Pier One that sell the same crap that is supposed to be so authentic in Hoi An. When the Third World goes upscale, it likes bright paint, marble, tile floors, clean walls, crystal chandeliers, and gold leaf—not wicker chairs and bamboo roofs.

It also insulates us to a great degree. Travel is supposed to be about confronting other cultures and learning about them. The Archipelago is much more about other cultures anticipating what you'd like to see in them and delivering it to you. If you want to find a country spiritual, they'll find a monk or a medicine man for you to study under. If you want to feel adventurous, they'll bring you a mountain to climb. Whatever need you have, whatever itch you want to scratch, the Archipelago can supply it. Of course, most people simply want to drink beer, see sights, and party in a "Third World" environment. And that's what the Archipelago is best at.

One of the best parts of our trip, and most difficult, was that we decided to avoid the Archipelago in China. Instead, we made separate arrangements outside the sainted Lonely Planet. This made travel much more cumbersome, but also more interesting. In Vietnam, this was impossible. There is only the backpacker's route…the few Vietnamese who travel use it as well. So we dropped back in.

Nha Trang

Leaving Hoi An, we boarded a Vietnamese Air ATR-72, one of my least favorite planes. It heaves and pinwheels into the air, turning every atmospheric disturbance into a gut-wrenching lurch. Our destination, reached happily without barfing, was Nha Trang, a coastal city that had had an important military airport during the war.

Today, Nha Trang and its beautiful bay are all about tourism, both foreign and domestic. Large hotels line the beaches. Strips of open air restaurants provide a gathering place for a vast population of underemployed motorcycle taxi-drivers. Along the coast runs a wide boulevard and a concrete boardwalk. Vietnamese youngsters crowd the beaches in bicycles. The only sound you hear, though, is the towering waves pounding the coastline. No one can swim here, but that doesn't stop them from coming.

As with much of Vietnam, we've been impressed by Nha Trang's fast-approaching modernity. Poverty exists of course, especially away from the coast, but this is a country on the upswing. Everywhere new buildings are going up, streets are being paved, and the strange concrete blockhouses are receiving their coats of bright lacquer.

We checked into our hotel, and walked along the beach. There, we were struck by something. Stretching across the miles of beautiful white sand were acres and acres of sunburnt European flesh.

Naturally, the sight of all those bloated bodies was worrisome to a true patriot. For years, America has been the undisputed world power when it came to waistlines. Our Nachos Bell Grandes, Whoppers with Cheese, and Grand Slam Breakfasts have kept us in a class of our own. And while the title is still not in doubt, warning shots are being fired across the bow. New powers are gathering at lunch counters around the world, devouring pizzas, choucroutes, and haggises whole. They are ordering an extra schnitzel when no such schnitzel is nutritionally necessary. Who knows where it will end?

I urge my countrymen to get to work. We cannot afford to rest on our capacious laurels. To the trough! Applebees and Papa Johns await, my friends! Go forth. Order something made in a skillet, and get it with a side of hamburgers!

Hoi An: The Cham

Vietnam's entry in the sweepstakes for Large Ancient Monuments of Note is the Cham ruins about 30km outside of Hoi An. In a rattling and mostly comprehensible overview, delivered free of charge by the bus company tour guide, we learned that the Cham were a Hindu kingdom established in Vietnam around 200 AD. It flourished for about ten centuries after that until it was subjugated by the Vietnamese. Interestingly enough, they used Sanskrit for their inscriptions. Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, derived from the same root as English, Russian, Greek, and French. It's quite far from home here.

The first order of business on arrival, however, was to escape the free tour guide. He was a short young man in a button down shirt with a voice like a bullhorn. Like many tour guides here, he spoke his own, entirely unique dialect of English. But he completely lost our confidence by insisting that we spend 20 minutes in the tiny Cham museum. Its exhibits consisted of a few stone inscriptions and some large-format photographs of the site. It all would have been much more apropos if we not sitting a kilometer or so from the scenes they depicted.

Finally, he released us from the bondage of the museum and allowed us to go towards a "staging area," where we were to wait for some "jeeps." He was technically correct in his use of the plural—there were two, honest to god American military Jeeps—but with a group of roughly 30, we were in for a long wait. Luckily, the first people into the initial jeep were three portly natives of Holland, whose bulk took up 95% of the space.

"Come on," said urged our sanguine guide, "It holds six."

The hell it did, but Nicole and I were desperate. Before the Jeep pulled off, we leaped into two startled but ample Dutch laps. Then, clinging to the frame of those legendarily uncomfortable vehicles, we made our way up to the ruins.

We had been warned that the ruins themselves were not overwhelming. Even so, we found them pleasantly whelming. The Cham built modest brick towers with small, claustrophobic sanctuaries. Their stately but decaying brick blends nicely with the rich, emerald green of the subtropical forest. The Vietnamese have made the most of it too. Handsome stone paths run throughout it, leading you easily from site to site. We spent a happy hour there.

Hoi An

It took three dollars and over four hours to move the short distance from Hue to Hoi An. An hour or two of that was driving. The rest was spent at a hotel and restaurant on the outskirts of Hue. It was a charming place in own small way, and I'm sure the bus driver's brother is quite proud of it, but it was hardly a necessary stop. Welcome to this part of the world.

You don't hear of Hoi An nowadays, but it was once quite the place. Here, a major river met the ocean—think an Asian New Orleans. Traders from all over the east piled in for a four-month-long trade fair. They built Chinese mercantile clubs, Indian trading houses, and Japanese homes and bridges. All of this has left Hoi An a charming jumble of architectural styles, dominated mainly by the yellow walls and gently sloping tile roofs of Old China.

In recognition of its unique character, UNESCO has designated Hoi An a World Heritage Site, an awesome distinction that is intended to preserve places of cultural interest. Instead, it has had the perverse effect of drawing millions of tourists who might potentially destroy it.

In Hoi An, though, the crush of tourists actually works to the site's advantage. It was a bustling market center, and the thousands of visitors return it to its original purpose. The heavy wood Chinese houses, the narrow streets filled with foreigners, and the Vietnamese hawking wares are somehow more authentic than otherwise.

So what do you do here? Tour Vietnam style. You buy a ticket, and wander through houses, museums, and temples. At every one, you're greeted by a person who clips your ticket, sits you down, and then, in the most astonishingly impenetrable accent and diction, starts to tell you about the place.

"Welcome to theees hoose," a girl says, "live in this place blah blah blah wood walls blah blah blah marble blah blah blah China, impenetrably nonsensical stuff that goes on for no less than ten minutes, and then you hear, to your immense relief, 'Follow me.'"

From what I can tell, the Vietnamese speak excellent French, but their English is largely theoretical in nature. Their tour guides memorize long scripts which have been quite artfully constructed, with anecdotes, recurring jokes, and other important literary devices. Then the scripts go through a strange metamorphosis, first to French, and then to a kind of English that no human being has ever spoke or is likely to speak. In this form, it is memorized by a Vietnamese guide, who delivers it faithfully to you, even though he or she hasn't the foggiest idea what the words mean. The result is a painful ordeal for both teller and audience. I'm sure it will improve with time.

In other words, we're quite enjoying ourselves. They like to serve beef wrapped around cheese and fried won tons smothered with garlic tomato sauce. They smile a lot; we smile back. It's a very welcoming place.

Hue: The Wet Way Tour

Hue, Vietnam is one of the rainiest places on earth, and we have caught it in high mass form. It has alternated between drizzling, pouring, and raining water buffalos ever since we have arrived. Water is pooling ominously in the streets, and at times I half expect animals to start lining up two by two and asking the way to the ark, but it hasn't quite come to that yet.

The people seem perfectly accustomed though. Many get around by bicycles that have been customized with a basket that holds an elongated rain poncho from wheel to wheel. The shops and restaurants also have wide awnings that make it possible to walk around without getting too wet. Street life, so common in the rest of the Vietnam we have seen, is muted here, or driven into the garage-like restaurants on the bottom floors of buildings.

Hue was the first large town south of the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, the 10 kilometer swath of land that separated North from South Vietnam. It also lies at the narrowest point of the country, only 50 Km (30 miles) across. These circumstances made it the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

Of course, in Vietnam, no one seems to remember. The DMZ tour is remarkable for its lack of sights. Apparently, on the few sunny days when it operates, you are taken to areas where such and such a thing happened, or such and such a firebase used to dominate a hill, but there are almost no monuments. The tour is supposedly a good way to see the countryside. The Vietnamese seem as intent on forgetting the war as the Americans are on refighting it shot by shot in books, movies, and chat rooms.

But it is rainy and nearly impossible to get around, or even stay outside for more than ten minutes at a stretch. What you do see is an unpretentious city that stretches out along two sides of a river (its lovely name is "Perfume River"). On one side is the imperial seat of the Vietnam empire. On the other side is a familiar backpacker district of hotels, restaurants, photo shops, and Internet cafes.

This afternoon, we will don our ponchos and go see the imperial palace.

Ha Long Bay

(Apologies for photos, it's been quite rainy and hard to shoot anything but grim-looking landscapes)

Dawn has struck on Ha Long Bay, and we are in our cabins on an "authentic junk," in reality a junk-shaped, diesel powered, mini-cruise ship. It has showers, flush toilets, air conditioning, and a staff that is currently preparing us hot coffee and breakfast. So far on this voyage we have eaten stir-fried squid, steamed clams, boiled shrimp, stuffed crab, poached fish, and French fries. I love seafood, but I am concerned about breakfast.

The event is a two day cruise on Ha Long Bay, in the Gulf of Tonkin, where an ambiguous incident led to a foolish and angry declaration by the US Congress, which was in turn used by successive presidents to widen and prolong the Vietnam War. Our spiffy tour was arranged by our hotel (a bargain at $50 per person for transportation, one night, two days, and a bushel of freshly-killed crustaceans).

We began with a long van ride through a very young country. Most Vietnamese were born after the war, which has filled the country with sprightly 20-somethings.The object of their desire is—unlike the Chinese—not a car, but a motorscooter and an apartment in one of the narrow concrete buildings found everywhere. They are an entirely unique architectural form. They have three stories, two balconies, all squeezed into a building perhaps 12 feet wide. Their street side is garishly painted and often fitted with ornate Art Deco balconies--always empty--while the other sides remain concrete-prison gray. At their base, dozens of people squat at impromptu restaurants, which typically consist of a woman and her daughter ladling out soup to customers who laugh and gesture with chopsticks.

Still, Vietnam is not a place where it is easy to get close to the people—by this I don't mean it's not easy to wrangle a bowl of pho out of the confused woman and her daughter mentioned above. I mean that tourism mostly consists of sitting with other westerners on buses and boats and looking out at the Vietnamese as if you were in some kind of human zoo. A good example of this was a French couple (doctor and radiologist) on our boat who had brought their young daughter for a three week trip. They said, "She is learning a lot, she is seeing poverty. Tres triste."

For all that, it's sometimes nice to be in a zoo. Ha Long Bay is one of the more magical places on earth, a rare instance of beautiful green mountains buried mostly under sea. Our first day began with a visit to a cave, where our guide seemed to think that we would all be interested in seeing stalagmites that (he said) looked like camels or stars or turtles. None, in fact, looked anything like those animals. However, there was one called "finger rock," which did bear a most striking resemblance to a human appendage. Not a hand with a finger pointing in the air, mind you, but from the peals of laughter that rang out in the cave, you'll know it was something far more amusing.

From there, our guides shanghaied us into some cold kayaks—a circumstance that led not to kayaking, but to a huddle of cold tourists shivering on a dock and pooling their money together to buy beers. Our party consisted of three Austrians (who seemed vastly less interested in the scenery than they did the astonishingly reasonable price of Hanoi vodka on the boat), a young French couple who spent most of the time with their faces stuck together, and a chummy Australian who could talk about Brisbane weather for fifteen minutes at a stretch. In all, a good party.

The second day, those of us who were not throwing up Hanoi vodka over the side railing were treated to a cruise through the mountains and a long description of the many golf courses available in the Brisbane metro area. It was raining, though, and it looks like more of the same is on the way.

Rain Check

A pair of windy, rainy days has kept us in our hotel room (which is, in most respects, exactly like any other hotel room). It has also provided some time so that Joe could complete a rush job for one of his long suffering clients. We're off for a boatride today on Ha Long Bay, with an overnight stay, but hope to return on Saturday with a more interesting post.

Hanoi Hilton

We were buying a salami and a baguette in a modern supermarket, when I realized why I liked the city. How pleasant to find oneself in a place without attractions. In Hanoi, there's no Splendid Tower Built By A Rich But Entirely Forgettable Personage. There's no Bulky Monument To Commemorate An Otherwise Uninteresting Historical Event. Not even some Extinct Religion's Temple To A Now-Unworshipped God. The curse of traveling is the oversold destination, and Hanoi has none of it.

Here we can enjoy an unembellished city. There is nothing particular to see and nothing important to do. It was raining today, but we donned hooded jackets and found ourselves again in South East Asia. The smell of spices and peppers, the beeping of thousands of horns, the chaotic traffic swirling about you like gnats as you cross a street, the apartment blocks wrapped in power lines and covered in creeping mildew—we were happy.

To provide some context for our visit, we decided to find the Hanoi Hilton. It was a prison built by the French, for whom it housed thousands of Vietnamese prisoners that no one cared about. After the French decamped, the Vietnamese Communists then housed about 25 of my own countrymen there, about whom many people cared a great deal. One of those prisoners is now running for president.

Today, 90% of the prison has been leveled to make way for an office tower and shopping mall—welcome to the New Vietnam. There Nicole and I sipped a coffee and shopped in a modern supermarket, purchasing, quite by accident, some French cheese, a Vietnamese baguette, and an American sausage. I'd like to point out that this historically ironic meal went quite well with a Thai beer.

Then we went over to the prison. Only about a quarter of it now remains as a museum, which excoriates the French and Americans. History is always written by the victors, of course. Do you want a description of the place? Thick walls, imposing gates, miserable concrete cells, the entirety of John McCain's flight suit, and a scale model of a guillotine. Prisons are not much fun though, so we left just before we got to the exhibit on Comrades Propagandizing the Revolution—fascinating though it most certainly was—and walked home in a driving rain.

Tomorrow, we will have more to report.

One Night in Bangkok

It's not entirely clear to me how Nicole discovers these things, but for the Macau-Hanoi leg, she unearthed a budget airline called Thai Air Asia. It was having a fare promotion that would bring us those 600 miles at a cost of less than a dinner and a movie in the States. But there was a catch. We had to book two flights, one to Bangkok, and another to Hanoi. That meant that between the two we would have to deplane, collect our luggage, go through immigration, check in again, go back through immigration, and get on another flight—all in two and a half hours.

Sitting in our cozy hotel room, snifters in hand, we came to the conclusion that it was doable. It might even be adventurous. The only downside was that if we missed the connecting plane, we would be stuck for a day or two in Bangkok. We love the city, though, and the prospect of green curry and mugs of Singha sounded just fine.

Of course, we were wrong. Getting stuck in Bangkok was not the only downside. There was also the possibility that we might get stuck in Macau. This unpleasant reality dawned on us as we sat in front of an empty gate at the Macau Airport, while the departure time for our flight passed. Not only was there no plane, there was no visible presence of Thai Air Asia. This had bad news emblazoned all over it. As a precaution, we immediately headed over to the duty-free shop and spent our last Hong Kong dollars on a two-pound Toblerone chocolate bar and a bottle of Macallan single malt scotch. It simply wouldn't do to be caught overnight in an airport without basic supplies.

About a half hour later, a young Chinese man with floppy hair—he looked like a high school freshman—walked up to the counter and commenced a boarding procedure that I'll charitably say was one of the most chaotic I've ever witnessed. Thai Air Asia does not have assigned seating, and, this being China, we had to all shove our way onto the plane like a herd of wildebeests on the annual lion-run across the Serengeti.

We arrived in Bangkok a half hour late. Thai immigration was agonizing. It's not normally so, but there was a religious convention of some kind going on that had attracted an enormous quantity of barefoot old men with Father Time beards. In our calculations, we had, somehow, omitted to account for this possibility. They were wandering through the immigration area, oblivious to the finer points of passports, customs, and, for that matter, lines. The Thai police soon rounded them all up, and we pushed through and gathered our luggage.

I love Thailand dearly, but it's not easy to navigate the 50 yards or so outside the arrival terminal at the Bangkok airport. Hoteliers and gypsy cab drivers block your path, grab at your suitcase, and understand the word "yes," but not "no." They're quite useful if you've come to the city with the intention of paying someone an absurd sum to drive you to an overpriced dump of a hotel, but that was not our intention.

Luckily, we guessed correctly that the departure gates were on the second floor. Working together, we quickly deduced the proper check-in counter, and managed to hit it exactly an hour before our plane departed. (In case you're wondering, that's about the bare minimum for ensuring your baggage makes it on an international flight).

With boarding passes that were printed on paper one grade above Kleenex, we sprinted off to immigration, where we received another shiny new stamp on our passports. At security, the Thai Home Guard inexplicably relieved Nicole of a jar of peanut butter, but allowed her to keep a —to my mind—far more dangerous bottle of Sriracha hot sauce. People of Thailand, your airport security men require more training, preferably in deductive reasoning.

Finally, we escaped, and made a final sprint to our plane to Vietnam. Total savings: about $600. Total stress: priceless.

Macau: Where Worlds Collide

It took one good long shower and a wrestling match with an iron to transform two scruffy backpackers into a pair of presentable adults. With our hair raked, our jeans flattened, and our nails neatly sandblasted, we stepped forth into a warm Macanese night.

A Reuters reporter recently wrote an article in which he declared that Macau was the new Las Vegas, and maybe even better than Las Vegas. You can only come to that conclusion under one of two circumstances: either you have never been to Macau, or you have never been to Las Vegas. There's a lot more to Sin City than a couple of megacasinos and dreams.

Even so, Macau offers a fascinating and easily-observed contrast between the two cultures. Our hotel, the Lisboa, sits across the street from the gleaming, new Wynn. The latter is said to be an exact replica of its Las Vegas counterpart. And while I can't shake the impression that the original Wynn is much bigger, the interior design of this one is spot on.

Why they've decided to build exact copies I don't know. But it is interesting. After weeks of being subjected to Chinese notions of design, we can now see ours inflicted on them. And I have to say that any American walking from the Lisboa to the Wynn will initially feel a burst of national pride. The latter is simply a different world, and one I like much better.

The Lisboa is a warren of scalloping passages, small shops, and cramped corners. Ghastly vases and sculptures jut out everywhere; shockingly ornate chandeliers dominate the foyers; busy restaurants shoehorn their customers into tiny tables; and the gaming rooms are low, circular, and claustrophobic. We have lost our way numerous times. Then again, it's thronged with prostitutes, a fact that some people might consider goes a long way to making up for its spatial deficiencies.

How different is the refined styling of Steve Wynn. As the creator of the most opulent casinos in Las Vegas (if you have never been to a Steve Wynn casino and your experience of Vegas included a $4.99 steak dinner, please do not extend your impression to this discussion), his design focuses on light and air. Passageways run like huge avenues through the casino, ending either in lights, mirrors or windows, which creates an illusion of immense space. Still, it is impeccably marked and organized. You could never get lost there. The gaming rooms are vast, but cleverly baffled with lushly folded curtains that absorb sound so well that you can talk in a whisper in a room full of hundreds of people. The triple-wide carport is never clogged; the reception desk never has a line. For someone who has spent weeks in China, this piece of convenient, transposed America can be exhilarating, even liberating.

Nicole and I lounged contentedly in thick armchairs, sipping perfect martinis that came in brimming chalices. (By definition, a perfect martini comes in a glass that is able to house a goldfish in comfort). We gazed lovingly out onto the casino, but soon realized that our fellow guests were not impressed with it. They were much more inclined to pull out their cameras and snap pictures of themselves in the star-spangled lobby of the Grand Lisboa. They want to stand in its pits and bet like a bunch of floor traders on Wall Street. They love gold leaf, neon lights, and shimmering crystal. Give them bangles, or give them death.

And they gamble like sailors on shore leave. Their favorite game is baccarat, which gives them decent odds, and the ability to lose their shirts in a hurry. If enough of them manage to do that, we may yet see Macau turn into Vegas. But it's a long way off.

Macau: The Other Las Vegas

The entire movable wealth of our pint-sized Hong Kong hotel room consisted of two packets of rose-scented soap and a water glass. It wasn't much of a haul, considering how we'd been swindled, but it was the best we could do. So, after turning the AC up for one last sustained blast, we shut the door on the Mirador Mansion forever.

The weeks of smog, traffic, and fighting old ladies have tired us to the degree that we've settled on two days of luxurious R & R in Macau. The former Portuguese concession, like Hong Kong, is technically a part of China, but it has its own customs and immigration policies. You reach it from Hong Kong by an hour long ferry sprint, which we passed mostly in fog, until the bridges and casinos of the New Babylon reared into view.

Macau would like you to believe it's the new Las Vegas. A formerly seedy enclave, it has reinvented itself as a hotel and casino paradise, filled with shopping, gambling, and sin. We may be travelers, but we remain patriotic Americans, and would like to inform the world, that we don't give a rat's ass that Macau turns over more money than Vegas or that its casinos are infinitely more profitable. That's merely because the Chinese are what Tony Soprano would call degenerate gamblers who don't understand that if you sit long enough at a roulette table, you will lose your home.

How is Macau not like Vegas? In the first place, we arrived at our hotel (the famous, venerable Lisboa), and were greeted with a small foyer dominated by an enormous crystal chandelier that obliterated the view of anything else. The lobby was upstairs, and had—of all things—a long, slow-moving line. In addition, they had changed our reservation from a double bed to twin singles. And, as we had arrived a mere hour early, our room was not ready. In Vegas, if you were a hotel manager and any such crimes occurred, you would be immediately taken out and shot. In fact, they might not even waste the time to take you out first.

Unlike Hong Kong, Macau is a small territory. The optimistic American company Avis offers cars for rent, though you can probably skateboard anywhere you need. Still, we are having great fun. Our hotel room faces the harbor, and there is both a Jacuzzi and a stereo in the bathroom. The in-room minibar is free, though it is remarkably deficient in potable wine and spirits.

The Macanese idea of luxury hotel is hard to describe accurately, except to say that it dovetails neatly with Saddam Hussein's notions of proper palace decoration. Every room features an explosion of crystal, fake gold, glistening glass, and faux luxury. They glitter like old Las Vaegas.

The casino floors sit behind metal detectors—none of your Vegas-style transparent security here. They consist of small, serious rooms, filled with thoughtful, intelligent people. Cocktail waitresses do not soak them in free alcohol. They don't shout and joke. But for all that, they still stand four deep, blithely wagering their children's education on red number four.

Our time so far included a turn around the Grand Lisboa, our next door neighbor and, coincidentally, the ugliest building in the world (a pear shaped, gold-bedecked monstrosity). Soon, we plan on checking out the new Wynn and Venetian casinos, both supposedly exact copies of their Vegas counterparts (this saves on architecture costs). Our goal for the evening is to find a package of linguica sausage and an honest Manhattan. If we do, you'll be the first to know.

Hong Kong: Two Tales of a City

Our first experience in Hong Kong was unpleasant. We'd booked a hotel room in a building named Mirador Mansion. Mirador is Spanish for "view," but the building is neither a mansion, nor, unless you fancy scabrous courtyards with pockmarked walls, does it have a view. Still, we are here, having secured a closet-sized room from a vicious old hag for a scandalous amount. To get her back, we have left the air conditioning on constantly and resolved to steal everything that is not nailed down. Unfortunately, she seems to have anticipated this, because most things are, in fact, nailed down.

Still, Hong Kong is a terrific city. We have seen two parts: the ultra-modern, towering Island, and the lower-rent, bustling peninsula of Kowloon.

We started out last night in Kowloon, in a neon-crazed neighborhood of restaurants and stores that mostly sell electronic goods and diamonds. There are also platoons of men with Indian accents offering you "copy watches" and tailored suits of clothes. We dealt with them by our usual method: a look that simultaneously communicates an extreme disinterest in their goods and an earnest desire to murder their grandmothers. The pace is hectic. Sidewalk vendors haggle with customers, girls tap you on the shoulder to drag you into stores, and every sign cries out that its owner is practically throwing merchandise in the street.

Exhausted by the lights and chaos, we retreated to our closet, and woke the next day to try our luck on Hong Kong Island.

This was a different city. A gorgeous, efficient subway dropped us off in a futuristic landscape of glass, marble, and steel. Impressively modern buildings reach dozens of stories in the air. They link to one another with intricate skyways, while elevated roadways snake between them at dizzying heights. As you follow signs from one place to the next , you find yourself passing through the gleaming lobby of some multinational corporation, and then, a half block later, through the kitchen of an open air restaurant serving bowls of noodles for $2. It's very fun.

After a trip up the funicular to view the city from Victoria Peak, we ate some soup and returned to our closet to plot an assault on Cantonese cuisine. Still, we already miss China. As we walked through the subway, I came within an ace of leveling a middle-aged woman with an armful of groceries. Unfortunately, she stepped aside at the last minute and politely inquired if I'd lost my mind. As Freud would have it, civilization has its discontents, and today I am one of them.

One final note: yesterday we able to check our blog stats for the first time in a while, and were surprised to find that some 438 people had viewed it in the last 24 hours. Considering that our previous best was 20, we wondered what had happened. Then we realized that our post on the Li River had contained the words "beating," "off," and "Angelina Jolie."

Our course, we deplore any additional readers brought to us by such low, underhanded means. Hot, free sex, get it here, get it now.

Guangzhuo, Night Adventure

I looked up from my morning paper (Yahoo news) to see a tour group gathered in the lobby. Its leader was urging them to take part in one of two pre-breakfast activities: painting or tai chi. Unfortunately, I'd seen several of them in the bar the night before, a bar that boldly advertises its creative cocktails, among them the Long Island Ice Tea, the Sex on the Beach, and the Bangkok Happy Slutmaker. Most of the people looked liked they'd had several of each. And they'd had more than enough of activities.

We'd managed to avoid all that, so instead, we embarked on a restful day in beautiful Yangshuo, in preparation for a late-night plane flight to Guangzhou. We sipped at a coffee, took a turn around town. Then we lunched on beer fish – the specialty of Yangshuo (excepting stewed endangered turtle and stir fried dog—and I'm not joking this time). How can I describe the complex symphony of flavors that caressed our palates? How about: "It sucked." Guanxi food is, in general, flabby, lifeless, and uninspired. Beer fish is no exception.

But beyond food, it seemed we'd been cursed. There are only a few cardinal rules in travel. You should never, for example, fly with an airline that asks if you have pilot training. You should not rely on a train's bathroom. And you should never arrive in a city after midnight without a hotel reservation.

By a long chain of unfortunate circumstances, this last thing is exactly what happened to us. Our first hotel rezzie fell through; our second never got back to us to confirm or send us directions. Any attempt to book afterwards was stymied by an inability to communicate by phone. And so, we found ourselves mulling about the Guilin airport, wondering if we should take off for Guangzhou. We did, taking odds on the likelihood we spent the night in anxious slumber on the airport floor.

We needn't have worried. Our plane arrived a half hour early, and a hotel booking service located at the baggage carousel found us a cavernous room near the airport for about $38. We woke to an excellent breakfast of noodle soup with eggs, and were soon hurtling in a taxi through old Canton (which looks like the worst parts of the Bronx times ten), and then on a very modern train towards Hong Kong. As I write, we are arriving in Kowloon, with more details to follow.

Yangshuo: Li River Trip

Nicole and I are happily ensconced in hotel in Yangshuo. ("Ensconce," by the way is a silly word, often used in travel writing. It is nearly as bad as "traipse." A sconce holds a candle, and, no, we do not feel as though we've been stuffed into a candlestick. We are quite comfortable.)

We have firmly entered China's western tourist region. Yangshuo serves a backpacking and rock climbing clientele and is overrun with Australians, Germans, French, and the odd American, who is skulking, mostly to avoid the loud anti-Yankee tirades unleashed by the others.

We have gotten here thanks to a boat ride the Li River from Guilin. One of the two Chinese poets whose names I know, Li Po, has called the Li a blue silk ribbon wandering through a forest of jade pins. His description can't really be improved upon. Unless, of course, you consider the pesky fog (smog?) that has shrouded the region in haze.

In any case, if you've never seen a karst landscape, hopefully the photos give you an idea of what we're talking about. The river rolls on for miles through these curiously tall, rounded peaks, covered with lush trees and faced with stern planks of stone. Of course, this being China, you see it all from one of a line of boats that crowd the river like a fluvial traffic jam.

But a boat trip is a very fun thing. The moment we shoved off, there was tremendous excitement. We all piled to the top rail with our cameras at the ready. For the next 20 minutes we shot everything from ducks and mountains to people picking up garbage on the side of the river. Time wears. Soon, we found ourselves standing wearily on the deck. Hours later, we had retired our seats and ordered beers. Near the end, a tour guide announced that Brad Pitt was beating Angelina Jolie to death just outside the boat. No one even bothered to look up, though someone did say, "Screw you, sir. We're going to sit here, get drunk, and read our books."

Still, I like a boat ride, and Yangshuo, though neon-bathed, is a beautiful place. Karst promontories tower above it, neatly framing a small lake and graceful stone bridges. This is postcard China, but it's also no secret. Sloppy backpackers and well-heeled Chinese throng streets lined with a familiar mix of cafes, bars, pizza parlors, and stores selling "native" art. We may not do much here but take a walk around: almost every activity involves booking a tour through an agent, and they all feature hard-sells and visits to dubious attractions. At any rate, the scenery goes well with a latte.

Future note: We've decided to fly east today to take in Hong Kong and Macau, and then shoot off an extended trip/rest in Vietnam. China has been fun but exhausting. Stay tuned.

The Great Taxi Race

We arrived in Guilin at about 1:30 in the afternoon, after a flight of about an hour. The train, for some reason known only to God and a few Chinese transit officials, takes 24 hours. We had booked a hotel, which sent a car to pick us up, driven by a hustling tour agent named Jerry.

Guilin is by Chinese standards a small town, which means that it is about the size of San Jose. It's also a big tourism destination for Chinese, a matter of rice paddies, caves, and river trips. It's also reputed to be filled with scam artists and pickpockets. Still, Jerry was friendly and well spoken, and he soon talked us into using his company to arrange our boat and bus tours. The combined rate was a little less than we'd expected from the Lonely Planet.

The next morning found us sipping good McDonald's coffee in our hotel. We were waiting for a van to pick us up so we could see the Dragon's Neck Rice Paddies, a curious feat of agricultural engineering worth seeing, apparently. Our appointed time went by and we grew more nervous.

As seasoned travelers, we'd been scammed before, but we felt Jerry was an extraordinarily gifted con artist if he was one. He had even, while driving us, handled a personal call from a South African tourist client who wondered if she should take a pee before entering a particular cave. "No, there's no toilet inside," he said. "You should go before you enter." Now that's service.

Luckily, he'd given us a card with his number on it. We went to our hotel desk and had the girl give him a call. For a few anxious minutes we waited--he had told me he played badminton, I remembered. How many badminton-playing swindlers could the world possibly contain? After a moment, the hotel girl's face brightened and she handed me the phone. "They didn't pick you up?" Jerry asked. "No problem," he said, "I'll fix it."

What followed next was something we'll call the Great Taxi Chase. The girl from the hotel took some instructions from Jerry and piled us into a taxi. And off we went, barreling down the road as fast as we could to catch up with our tour bus, which was well on its way out of town. I don't know if you've ever been in a Chinese taxi, but under ordinary circumstances, it's not for the faint of heart. In the United States, Asians have a reputation for being over cautious, plodding, and absentminded drivers. In China, they combine a NASCAR-like love of speed with aggressive road rage. Add in a driver promised a good tip for catching a bus, and you have a great recipe for angina.

In any case, we soon overhauled our bus and hopped on. Now that we could enjoy it, we noticed that the countryside outside Guilin featured high rounded peaks that drop precipitously onto yellow rice paddies. It was harvest time, and they were dotted with neat grids of drying sheaves, punctuated by groves of orange and pomelo trees, and flat mats covered with drying seeds.

Our bus soon wound into the mountains, switching back up between terraced fields and traditional Chinese farmhouses. Then we reached our first stop: a dreadful tourist trap of a town with women who grew their hair out to one meter lengths—a feat available to Nicole should she ever feel the need. For about $7 per person, they performed a "hair show" during which they combed and coiffed themselves to the caterwauling of what sounded like fifty cats in heat. Nicole and I excused ourselves; the rest of our party wished they had.

After that, we piled onto a different bus and shot up to the rice paddies, which you can see from the photo. They are quite curious, sitting as they do so high up, and capable of capturing and holding water. Still, the excitement only lasts about an hour and we were soon headed back to Guilin.

If you're ever in Guilin, Jerry's full name is Jerry Weng, and he works for the CITS travel agency. He's worth his weight in gold.

Farewell to Sim...

It had been our intention to ride the Yangtze down the Three Gorges, a tedious but beautiful three day boat trip. But the weather is not cooperating. An early winter has brought a lot of rain to the area; coupled with the ever present smog, we are doubtful of our chances of seeing much. And three days on an open boat in a driving rainstorm is no game at all.

And so, we've boarded a plane for the picturesque landscape of Guilin, famed for its pretty river, its enormous caves, and its natives' willingness to eat everything from garden snakes to civet cats. There, one simply does not order the "Special Meat Curry."

Before we arrive, though, we'll cast one last look back at Sichuan. Normally, we don't call out particular establishments, but owing to tragic circumstances, it might be well to bid a final farewell to Sim's Cozy Guesthouse.

This establishment is located in a 100 year old traditional Chinese courtyard house, sandwiched between the rising behemoths of the New China. Next door, an enormous office building is being jackhammered into place. On the other side, a mall is already going great guns. Still, when you're inside, you find a throwback architecture of ponds, gardens and fountains. Passageways turn into staircases that ascend into balconies, with old trees importunately thrusting their trunks through it all to reach the sky.

Like many guesthouses in China, it offers a complete ecosystem for the backpacker lifestyle. There are clean rooms, laundry service, a DVD library, breakfast, lunch, dinner, a place to get sloshed at night, and even friendly attendants willing to listen to piss-drunk 22 year olds from Rotterdam slobber on about their solutions to the world's problems.

Though Nicole and I did not avail ourselves of its services, most did. Its café did a nonstop business selling beer and wine—one older couple seemed to have viewed Sichuan entirely from its Table Number Three, sluicing down a long succession of bottles of Campo Largo. As far as we could tell, they never left.

Sadly, Sim does not own his cozy guesthouse; and property rights are not what they should be in China. Soon its gracefully sloping tile roof will be pulverized to make way for god knows what new concrete monstrosity. For that, we raise a glass to Sim, and wish him the best of luck, wherever his little establishment lands.

Panda-ring to our tastes

Sichuan is the land of the Panda, and Chengdu houses one of the world's foremost breeding centers. To visit it requires either a tour, or a difficult bus route involving a change between two stations.

Not many of the backpackers here wanted to attempt the bus, but Nicole and I have been impressed with the willingness of the people to help wayward westerners. So we set off with the Chinese names of where we wanted to go, and plenty of hope.

Luckily, it turned out to be a complete disaster. When we got off at our appointed station, we could not find the right bus, mainly because it was no longer running. The substitute route, unmarked in our instructions, left from the back corner of a cavernous bus station. How would we ever find it?

The key was simply to walk around the bus station looking like a complete idiot (difficult for you, perhaps, but we find it comes quite naturally). Within a few minutes of wandering, and all sorts of people pointing us in this direction or that, and we easily found the new bus. In fact, no less than five people piled off it to study our Chinese directions, and pantomimed us into getting on.

We owe them all a big favor, because there's nothing more wonderful than looking at a panda. I, being a part time journalist, might be prone to cynicism. I know a few colleagues who could eyeball a panda playing with a ball and say, "Great, it's a panda, very cute, now where's the bar?" But not me. Those roly-poly little fur balls are absolutely delightful.

Sadly, though, their environment is shrinking and if Chengdu is any indication, there's not much hope for restraint. When it comes to pollution, the city puts all others (including itself quite literally) in the shade. It is a mass of construction, dust, and ugly, faceless buildings, punctuated by the crushed remains of old apartment blocks waiting to be resurrected into malls and bypasses.

If you're ever find yourself with a warm feeling for Ayn Rand, and believe the market and unrestrained capitalism will always provide for the peoples' good, come to Chengdu and breathe in the retort to her arguments. It will be marvelously instructive.

Such Barbarians

We left Xian behind by boarding a train crammed full of people eating, drinking, and card-playing—all of it loudly. Nicole was scandalized by the fact that her bunk had been previously occupied by someone who had left it littered with food and hair.

This brings up the inevitable discussion of difference in manners between ourselves and our fellow travel companions. There are many culturally determined things about the Chinese, which by dumb luck play exactly into our notions of dreadful manners. And, we suppose, vice versa. One of these is bedding. Americans simply do not sleep in others' beds. Even on an airplane, we demand a clean blanket and pillow.

Another is eating. Where the westerner sits primly, mouth clamped shut, chewing impassively, the Chinese picks up a bowl, sets it an inch from his face and slurps and shovels its contents into his mouth, smacking his lips with joy. If he (or she) encounters, say, a chicken bone, it is sucked clean of its contents, which are then tongue-sorted into edible and inedible portions, one in each cheek. The former is ingested, the latter expectorated into one's hand and thrown onto the table.

I know this is all arbitrary stuff, totally unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Why should we, in eating, make such a Stoic go of it? We sit down to a bowl of steaming lobster bisque, which we should, by all rights, grasp with both hands and slurp down in a frenzy of unbridled gastronomic glee. But what do we do instead? We pick up a spoon and scoop up infinitesimal portions of it, with our faces betraying no more emotion than if we were taking down a plate of prison chow. Except that we say--usually in a hushed tone--"This is very good."

And presumably, we do hundreds of thing that the Chinese find beastly. We often find them looking at us with a "what the hell are you doing" stare. And we return the favor.

In any case, we began our train trip by giving in to our cultural norms and unrolling yoga mats on our (to us) filthy beds. We awoke in Sichuan to a different countryside, a hilly, riparian landscape marked by wheat fields with neat sheaves stacked up and drying. There were vegetable gardens, rice paddies, farmhouses—and, yes, the occasional smoke-belching, coal-fired power plant. It is still China, after all.

Now we have arrived in Chengdu, in the heart of Sichuan. It's actually the famous Szechuan of American Chinese restaurant lingo. And justly so. Food in China, though all eaten with chopsticks, varies greatly. We found Xian's love affair with star anise a little overpowering, but here the main event is the pepper, and we are happy. Much of the food is also served on a steaming cast iron platter, which does things for bacon that are indescribably delicious. Nicole and I have been doing our best to brush aside cultural norms and get down to some good, honest, Chinese slurping. We'll let you know how it goes.

Do you fancy luxury?

These pix were taken inside a high-end mall in Xian. There are several there, offering up everything from Prada and Louis Vuitton to Max Mara and Salvatore Ferragamo. They abound in polished glass and plasma screens, not to mention brigades of bored-stiff sales clerks. The only thing they lack is customers.

It's puzzling in the extreme. I used to live in downtown Palo Alto, one of the most expensive zip codes in the US. And we didn't have half of these stores within a 30 mile radius. Do the executives at Givenchy really think the natives of sooty Xian are going be slathering themselves with $100 per ounce face cream anytime soon? Especially, when you can buy buckets of perfectly useful imitation goop on the street for a few yuan?

I work in marketing at times, and my guess is that behind this are some really slick management consultants—presumably the army of well-heeled mattress salesmen and babbling idiot frat boys at McKinsey. They've told a tremendous tale of the need to build your brand in the burgeoning Chinese economy. They've backed that up with trend lines and statistics in handsomely bound volumes with quotes from the leading analysts at Goldman Sachs and Solomon Smith Barney. Who are themselves busy peddling Chinese stocks to their American customers...

Someone should have told these captains of commerce that it's impossible to build your brand if your store, which has no customers, sits in the middle of a mall, which has no customers. It's that age old Chinese proverb: if a leather hat is on sale for $800 in a Xian mall and no one sees it, is it really on sale?

They will read this and say I don't get it. I'll be honest. I don't.

Terra Incotta

We have spent the last two days in Xian, here to view the famed Terracotta warriors of the Emperor Qin. They lie about an hour outside town, a trip you arrange either by paying your hotel $20 per person, or by navigating a holy hell of a train terminal, where you catch a local bus for about $1. We did the latter.

The bus takes you northeast of Xian through what the Lonely Planet describes as a fertile river plain. The description is accurate so far as it goes. But it leaves out the nuclear power plant, the post-industrial ruins, and the moldering communist era communal apartment blocks that lie along the way. Pomegranates are grown alongside a muddy road with buses and trucks belching clouds of smoke over them. I like a good pomegranate, but I have my limits.

You eventually find yourself deposited in a vast parking lot. You cross this, and find a vast row of restaurants and gift shops. Then you have a fifteen minute walk through a gauntlet of shills selling food, dim sum, and miniature terra cotta warriors. Then, you reach the gate. Next, you have another fifteen minutes of slogging through lines of tour guides offering their services. Finally, just as you are about to give your mortal coil its pink slip, you reach the complex.

"So mind boggling it's hard to wrap your head around," writes the editor of the LP in a superbly executed mixed metaphor. Not entirely accurate, unfortunately. There are three main pits, the third of which contains about five broken shields and a crushed chariot. The second contains about 20 or so warriors, many with their heads cut off.

The first is very impressive, comprising several hundred (thousand?) warriors, each one made of baked clay with a different face. This detail is important because it means that molds were used only once, greatly increasing the work. They are also both realistic and in many cases touching. These were people. Their features are varied and human: here an eager young man on his first campaign, there a grizzled, wild-eyed veteran you'd want to avoid on the field of battle.

Nicole and I could study them well because we had a 300 millimeter camera lens with us. Otherwise, you're kept at such a distance from them that it's difficult to see them except as rows and rows of warriors standing in review.

They were the creation of the first emperor of China: Qin. A remarkable, crazy, madcap and cruel man, he conquered six kingdoms, enslaved hundreds of thousands, killed about as many, and generally put the world under his sway. He then created and buried this bizarre army underground so that he could continue his ass-kicking ways in the afterlife.

Beyond Qin, Xian is a tourism one-trick pony. The nicest thing about it is that the city walls remain in tact, giving you a good idea of how seriously the Chinese took external threats.

On to Xian

Getting out of Beijing involves--for the cost conscious traveler--a trip to the city's cavernous West train station. Its crowded waiting rooms resemble an American airport after planes have been grounded for three days. The trains themselves are another matter. Because of the ditstances, you typically go by "hard sleeper," a small room with 4-6 comfortable bunks. They're quite a nice and restful way to go.

Because we slept most of the way, we thought we'd leave you with ten observations about the trip so far:

1. The people are extremely friendly and nice, and they're quite happy to take a few minutes out of their day to point to you whatever you want.

2. They find Westerners so exotic that we were stopped several times on the street and asked to pose for pictures. We obliged, but held our wallets closely.

3. They are environmentally tone deaf. They dry corn for cornmeal on the sides of rural highways. Apparently the exhaust from the cars speeds drying. Problem: the cars use leaded gas which is then deposited on the corn. Yum.

4. The Chinese love McDonalds and KFC. They also have lots of western-style bakeries.

5. The Chinese have few Internet cafes and online gaming venues. Given government policy, we can understand the first, but not the second.

6. The beer in China is disgusting. Oddly enough, the Tsingtao you get in the US is quite good. And China consumes more beer than any other country.

7. If you enter a Chinese restaurant, regardless of linguistic difficulties, you will leave with a meal.

8. They stare at Nicole more than Joe. Of course, no one usually stares at Joe.

9. If you have to pay for a toilet, it is invariably ten times as foul as one that's free.

10. Through all the chaos, order eventually emerges. It is really not that hard to travel in China. They are nice people, just different.

The Great Wall

Somebody ought to be shot for saying that the Great Wall of China is visible from outer space. The most surprising thing about it is that it's not really all that wide. Or tall. If you could see it from space, you could easily see a three bedroom house at the same distance. Frankly, with Beijing smog being what it is, it's surprising you can see it from the ground. And it's a ridiculous proposition that you could see it on most days from a blimp.

But it is quite picturesque. More on that later…You get there by taking a bus, the 919, north of Beijing. Getting on requires the usual hand signals and misunderstandings. Luckily the pronunciation and tone pattern for "Badaling," the town where you see the wall, is nearly identical to "Badabing," Tony Soprano's favorite strip bar.

Once you get there you have a ¾ mile uphill walk—I mean, really, why the hell wouldn't you put the bus stop a full 3/4 of a mile from your destination? This is China after all! The town itself is a collection of souvenir shops, selling, as is the way with communist countries, all the same stuff.

So you arrive. And there it is, many feet high, 15 feet wide, built and rebuilt of rocks and concrete, most of it presumably 12 years ago with a crane, and covered for miles with hoards of Chinese. It's steep too. The wall snakes along the ridges of mountains, which ascend and descend with no particular regard for your feet, legs, and lungs.

The crowds are astonishing, and they accentuate a problem westerners will always have with the Chinese: space. In America, everyone gets a good foot and a half circumference and must be asked permission to be touched. Not in China. People simply bustle along, jostle and shove eachother, without so much as an "excuse me." We usually try hard to accept local culture, but for some reason, it is exceptionally difficult to do so with space. Whenever someone shoves you in a line, you instantly react, typically with a four letter word and an elbow.

But there are advantages to being a westerner. As we trudged through a particularly narrow doorway, Nicole and I were pushed out of the way several times by those trying to get there first. Then, she tapped my shoulder.

"What?" I asked.

"We're much bigger than them," she said.

It was true. Suddenly, a great weight lifted off my shoulders. The next second, an old lady tried to jostle past me, and I promptly hip-checked her over a baby carriage. I looked back, and saw Nicole stiff-arming a couple of schoolgirls. Then, to the doorway. A middle aged man was barreling through with a full head of steam. He saw me coming, my right shoulder lowered. He knew what had happened. He tried to reverse direction. But, alas, it was too late. I slammed into him like a freight train, knocking him back into his wife and three children. We emerged from the doorway, serene and triumphant.

Actually, it was a peculiar thing, because we soon realized that everyone had taken a right when they reached the wall making that side particularly crowded. We decided to go back and try the left, and for some mysterious reason, the area was nearly empty. After an arduous climb, we found ourselves high above the valley, with no one to bother us. We opened a bottle of water, sat down by ourselves, and quite enjoyed the peace and quiet for a good long stretch. The wall really is quite impressive, especially in its great distance, and worthy of the homage it receives.