Photopost, 3 from Europe

It's a week I look forward to all year: tour guide summit week in Washington State. So many wonderful people, sharing this lucky career, and an employer I believe in.

I had a delicious meal in this sidewalk cafe in Brussels.
The rain only added to it all.

So I'll be learning and sharing and laughing a lot these next 9 days. But not much sleep. And nearly no free time. So the next few posts will be photos that have been lingering on my computer, unused, but in which I find some version of beauty, and a post link for each place.

A friend my lady and I made in Greece.
A time that feels both near and unbearably far away

How wonderful to live in a world with so many facets of beauty!

So much beauty in Istanbul, it was difficult
to pick just a few for a post about the city.

Happy January!

Things got a bit Biblical in Hoi An, Viet Nam

Nobody bombed Hoi An. North Vietnam, South Vietnam, even the Americans in their flying fortresses decided the ancient port city of the Champa Empire with its softly Southeast Asian old town and 16th century Japanese Bridge was not a place for the ugliness of war. (Or maybe they were just focused on Hue. But that can Hue-t.)

After escaping the festive plane I headed for Hoi An, which is kin to Bruges, Rothenburg, and to some extent Venice. Powerful merchant centers, all lost their influence when the tides of trade shifted elsewhere, leaving behind period pieces to be preserved by their neglect. Whoddathunk that forgetting something could make it so easy to remember?

Spared from the abrasive concrete edges and phlegmy pollution of its modernized neighbors, Hoi An is a beautiful place to walk, down streets made elegant by centuries of spice trade flowing from Indonesia up to China, ceramics shipped off to Egypt, and an amalgam of international styles that persist in the city’s impressive tailoring sector.

For long slow hours I walked the quiet ways of Hoi An, past the unintelligible slogans of bicycle vendors selling food to the locals, and the proffered meats and fried treats of those hawking snacks to foreigners. Dark alleyways with Vietnam’s delicious street food where I continued to eat all my meals on low plastic stools, a bowl of soup while kids peered at me and their parents coaxed them to break out a shy “hello.” I enjoyed Hoi An, but my experience was deeply underwritten by one other factor.

It rained. Nonstop. For days. The Old Town was underwater, streets for blocks around rising liquid to the tops of taxi tires. Flooding blocked off the section of the city the hotel map told me to see, but it didn’t take much effort to enjoy what I could reach. I figured I’d come back another time to see the sights.

Yes, I liked Hoi An. Despite the rain. Then I heard of the city’s fame for ruthlessly overcharging foreigners, its notoriously crummy museums with their inflated ticket prices, and all-around tourist gouging practices run rampant. Huh.

So thank you, typhoon whatever-it-was. With your deluge of assistance I saw a muzzled version of modern Hoi An, most of my fellow foreign friends holed up in their hotels, and the ambition of voracious vendors muted by your constant cool downpour.

Tourism is a hell of a thing to do to a country. And Vietnam’s got it bad. But it’s a veneer, a sideshow distraction of mutual exploitation, and it’s not so hard to get past. Sometimes you just have to walk two minutes away from the tourist hub (Hanoi), and sometimes a mere relentless rainfall can restore an ancient city to its fundamental character.

Trekking in Sapa, Vietnam, and a moment anyone who's done it remembers

“Oh my god, she’s the cutest thing EVER!” cried Megan, one of the two other tourists besides myself following our local guide down the mountainside of Sapa, Vietnam. “I want to take her home!”

Su looking out over Sa Pa valley

She was talking about Su, and I knew how she felt. Something over four feet tall and with a smile that could warm up winter, Su was simultaneously an instant friend and a cultural experience. After rescuing us from the relentless souvenir sales pitches of a scrum of local women, Su led us down from Sapa to her village of Lao Chai.

Along the way she answered all our questions, about the ethnic groups (including her own Black Hmong), life in the valley, and many we hadn’t thought to ask yet. But asking how she learned to speak English so well was obvious.

Su told us about the bugs they dig
out of the bamboo, how they're
cooked, and how they taste.

“We learn from talking to tourists.” That made sense, and the people of Sapa did seem to speak much better English than the lowland Vietnamese I’d met, but given the range of her vocabulary it didn’t do justice to her hard work and initiative. I’d bet Su was particularly fluent, an impression reinforced by the silence of the two other local women who accompanied us down through the terraces where buffalo looked at us without curiosity.

Were they on the path by coincidence, to keep Su company, or were they apprentices? One carried the customary woven basket and the other had a ruthlessly adorable sleeping baby strapped to her back. Halfway to Lao Chai the baby woke up, and was quickly passed to Su.

Su peeling sugar cane for us
It's the favorite treat of the Sapa area

“He is my son,” she explained. We all cooed over the cute little fellow, who had inherited his mother’s radiant smile, and I added aunts to my list of possible statuses for the two women. We reached the village, saw the traditional rice milling devices and hand loom, and sank with sighs into our seats for lunch. That’s when it all came clear.

Arms full of scarves and shirts, hands holding an array of earrings and bracelets, the two women descended on us with calm intensity, knowing full well that we already saw them as part of our team. It was an awkward mess. On the one hand we wanted to show our respect and friendship for these women and their people, but on the other hand it was a souvenir ambush when we thought we were safe.

As with so much of life, I can’t find a clear feeling about this. I certainly can’t blame them for wanting to make a living off the wealthier visitors who swarm into their homeland every day. And a lot of what they are selling really is superior goods to what you find elsewhere, actually homemade in an age of “homemade” stamps on factory presses.

Crossing the bridge to Lao Chai,
our vendor friends close to their target

But what of the implicit deceit? The snake in the grass routine of putting you at your ease, then exploiting what you thought was friendship? But who are we to expect friendship from people for whom we have done absolutely nothing, can’t even talk to, and into whose faces we routinely thrust our foreign cameras?

I had it easier than the other two, since women are subject to a much wider array of articles. Once I had a couple ribbon bracelet thingies they left me alone. Alone, a tourist, a resource milked, a visitor whose entrance price had been settled.

Lunch was good. Su was still incredible. And the rest of the walk only got better.

Hanoi is many things, let's start with the loudest

Hanoi is of course many things, but one seems like a logical place to start. And nevermind that two come to mind first. So we’ll begin with the primary denizens of the city, filling its streets like those industrious ants, buzzing through its byways fit to put the flies to shame. Even when they’re still, they line the sidewalks like ribs, or cluster in alleys that no one else needed.

Everybody has one. The humans that coexist with them. Or at least, every family has one, both kids held in mother’s arms while dad steers, and she’s not tense, it’s just too everyday for that. Because you have to take the scooter. Everybody does. Drives. Walking is a precarious dare, in among the handlebar horde, since didn’t I already warn you that everybody drives? It’s a feedback loop, 49 cc’s of inevitability.

I smile more these years after giving up on auto ownership, but on those times when I have to pilot one of the things, or more precisely when I have to park one, I wonder at the foolishness of people owning four-wheeled transport in San Francisco. Everyone should just have a scooter. You can fit so many more, scoot so much quicker, and get much better mileage. And you’re out IN the world, not hidden from it!

Why, how do you deliver dishware?

So while I love walking the streets of a new city for hours at a time, in Asia I always make it a point to catch a scooter ride somewhere. Rickshaw? Tourist gimmick. Scooter? Cultural interaction.

“Have you noticed how many Mercedes there are here?” my Vietnamese friend asked me yesterday. I hadn’t, but that seemed impolite. So instead I asked something I’d been wondering.

“Speaking of expensive cars, back home I’ve learned that BMW drivers are more likely to be assholes,” I haven’t seen any Priuses so didn’t need to include them, “Is that true here too?”

My friend scoffed. “Anyone in a four-wheel is an asshole here.”

Seemed true, on yesterday’s walk that took me along Hoan Kiem lake, past the Opera House, and through byways and backstreets until I caught a bus in front of the Soviet Friendship Hospital. (Because that’s a thing.)

Sorry about the blur, but you can still see his method, no?

So after dinner, somewhere off my map, I grabbed a scooter taxi guy dude thing. I don’t know if they have uber/Lyft here, but I’ve seen plenty of Grab Bike guys in their uniform green jackets and helmets. He handed me his spare, which perched on top of my massive cranium, squeezing a headache in but that’s the price you pay, along with about $1.00 to cross the city.

Taking photos while riding?
The things I do for you people. ;)

Motorcycles technically have their own lane here, a great idea, but traffic is a fluid concept, lane lines and red lights whizzing past all around like so much decoration as we squeezed between trucks and two-wheeled clusters, wrapped a roundabout and dodged the people going the wrong way. It’s another of those times when you just have to sit back, relax, and wait to see if you make it.

I did. Home, to another day, and tonight, I’ll head to another place. 300+ kilometers away, I think I’ll pass on the scooter this time. My overnight train is out there somewhere, waiting for me...

What is Skopje?

Skopje, Macedonia, from the ancient Kale Fortress

Skopje has nothing to do with the Italian verb scopare, which technically means “to sweep,” but just as “to screw” has a bit more oomph than inserting a light bulb, scopare is that favorite vulgar verb of the angry, horny, or adolescent.

And they don’t speak Dutch in Macedonia, so Skopje has nothing to do with the diminutive -je in that language, which makes things smaller, cuter, cuddlier. If you have a dog in Holland, you have a hond. If you have a puppy-wuppy, you have a hondje.

So while Skopje might sound like a quick little lusty interlude to me, and now to you (you’re welcome), no one will have any idea what you’re talking about when you try to explain why you’re giggling in front of the heroic statues. (But feel free to try anyway.)

So that’s what Skopje is not. But what Skopje is?

It's a neolithic settlement already 4000 years old when the Romans got there a bit before 0. Then centuries of chaos calming to empires that crumbled back to chaos, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Ottoman all getting to fancy themselves eternal on the banks of the Vardar River. After six millennia, Skopje is a powerhouse arena of history, culture, and pride...that currently hosts a Las Vegas style showroom of propaganda mayhem like I had never seen. It’s bizarre. Surreal. Kinda hideous. And I loved it!

It was mostly men, but these ladies were lurking near the opera

Statues of scholars in robes, kings in crowns, and the odd barbarian looking perplexed and aggressive over a big lumpy club line every bridge, lurk in arcades, and loom like suicidal squadrons on the edges of prominent buildings. Don’t jump, toga-clad men! We’ll get you some modern fashion!

I gave some background here (click to open), but why all the classical imagery?

Macedonia declared independence in 1991, and 27 seconds later was feuding with Greece over ownership of the name and Alexander the Great’s legacy. The quandary continues, as Macedonia struggles between Classical or Slavic origin, bashing out an identity for its ethnically diverse population in a region where such questions have been soaked in blood for centuries.

Just slightly a mother and father national
foundation story going on here.

So some say the classical theme is anti-Greek, part of that dispute. Others say anti-Bulgarian for much the same ethnic reasons. But a former adviser to the Prime Minister reassures us on both those counts.

“No! It’s not anti-Greek or anti-Bulgarian!” Says Shmuel Ben David Vaknin. And we pause for a quick sigh of relief before he adds “Antiquisation has a double goal, which is to marginalize the Albanians and create an identity that will not allow Albanians to become Macedonians."

Something of the Romans must have lingered in Skopje, because it doesn’t take an Australian playing a Spaniard in an American movie about Ancient Rome to tell me that if you win the crowd, they won’t ask questions. Bread and circus, man, bread and circus. (Except without the bread.)

So is it working? Are the people placated? Blood-red handprints on shiny new marble say no, but we’ll talk about that next time.

Because even though the towering statue of a warrior on a horse is the centerpiece of an international dispute, it is also a great fountain, spraying water from a variety of jets, at unpredictable moments from unexpected places, shifting colors as grandiloquent music piped into the square on pigeon-pooped speakers.

And the kids loved it.

And I loved that.

Small-minded men have been picking fights since we climbed out of the trees, but as July heat emanated from the stones after dark on a calm Macedonian evening, the laughter of happiness was enough.

And that's what Skopje is.

Photo Friday - Stairs

I’ll make you a deal. One post per week with words in it, less than a page-worth, circa 500. And one post of photos. Workable?

Wednesday had words in it, and next week just might have a massive conspiracy to reveal, so today is for letterless images, eyes but few i’s.

Today itself is a day between places, step by stepping, heading somewhere I’m sure, where I expect perhaps. But along the way, beauty lives in every detail in this marvelous world of ours.

 This is half of them, the other half are on the vagabondurges.com version, here.

See you Tuesday (unless the government finds out and assassinates me first.)