Hotels,Hostels & Guesthouses

Oaxaca City

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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After three weeks in Salem sorting through 40 years of junk…one pile for St. Vincent de Paul, one pile for the dump, one pile to sell at the Assistance League and the rest in boxes to be stored in the basement until the house is rented out again…I took off for Oaxaca Mexico leaving Bob with the house.

Inhabited over a period of 1,500 years by a succession of peoples – Olmecs, Zapotecs and Mixtecs – the terraces, dams, canals, pyramids and artificial mounds of Monte Albán were literally carved out of the mountain and are the symbols of a sacred topography. The nearby city of Oaxaca, which is built on a grid pattern, is a good example of Spanish colonial town planning. The solidity and volume of the city’s buildings show that they were adapted to the earthquake-prone region in which these architectural gems were constructed. Oaxaca City is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Monsoon season here for the next couple months…hot and humid but not as bad as Thailand…rains buckets several times a day then sun comes out.

Houston airport is huge and I nearly missed my plane connection. No problem getting off the plane here…small plane from Houston configured with two rows on one side and one row on the other). 32 pesos or about $3.00 into the city from the airport on the shuttle.

Oaxaca City, pronounced “wahaca,” is generally referred to as Oaxaca and that is the way addresses read…Oaxaca, Oaxaca Mexico. The Zocolo (central plaza) and the streets for blocks around it are closed from traffic due to a teacher’s Oaxaca State union strike. DSC00616.JPG

Teachers are here from every region. They are camped out in pop tents and under plastic tarps…just sitting with piles of belongings and food. There is a big inequality of teacher’s pay…they get anywhere from 50 pesos to 600 pesos a day. (about ten pesos to dollar). Here is one brushing her teeth. brushing teeth.jpg

But Gerardo (apartment manager) said many of the teachers are under- educated and the strike is bad for the city. Someone said the unions are very powerful here…teachers are forced by the unions to sit in the streets or they won’t get union benefits. Teachers still receive full pay even though they are striking. Kids are the losers. The government apparently isn’t listening. Heard last night that they took over the airport and all the planes are grounded. So guess I got in just in time.

The city is charming…two story buildings…some very colorful. Outsides often are drab but inside the outer gates the interiors are beautiful. The whole of the Centro is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.

My apartment is a two story building with four apartments inside an outer building. I have a key to the outer “portal” and key to an upstairs apartment. When we arrived the carpenters were literally installing the kitchen cupboards…shavings and dirt and tools everywhere. Good thing I stayed in the hostel the first night. The 5-bed hostel room was clean and lovely (Paulina Youth Hostel) but hot as hell and stuffy…apartment much better. Free breakfast was great. So Gerardo took me to his house where his mom fixed coffee. They have had over 200 guests in the last ten years…showed me a picture of the principal of an elementary school in Beaverton who stayed with them for several weeks while studying Spanish. His mom has a cooking school on a patio outside the kitchen. Patio walls painted indigo blue and yellow. Then Gerardo took me to a supermarket to get ingredients for his mom. Then he took me with him to tour the Ethno Botanical Garden. After the tour I ran into a woman about my age, Sharon, who sat across from me on the plane. She has just moved here from Connecticut. She had earlier worked for the City of San Francisco for 25 years. She also lived in Veracruz for three years and is fluent in Spanish. She will be a good friend. We are meeting at a market Sat morning. Then Gerardo and I went back to his house where we feasted on yellow mole that his mom made for us. A young guy from CA staying with them and who is studying Spanish joined us as well as a German woman in her 30’s who is here studying Spanish for the 3rd time. Gerardo’s mom and she and I are going out next Friday to a bar to listen to salsa music. Gerardo, 25, is defending his bachelors thesis on human resources on tuesday.

When we got back to the apartment it was finished, clean with huge vase of flowers on kitchen table. I couldn’t believe it!

But the beds are hard as a rock…was really sore this morning. I miss Lyn’s bed…it was perfect. Going to have to get some foam or something! Kitchen pretty sparsley outfitted…about like Greg’s! 🙂 But I do have a brand new blender, juicer, coffee pot and fan. Wish I had some of the stuff from Azalea St. DSC00658.JPG

Glad I brought my down pillows…pillows here lumpy and flat as a pancake. DSC00662.JPG

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Went shopping at the supermarket last night at 8…finished at 10 and took a taxi home in the slogging rain. Most stuff had unrecognizable labels. Places here don’t cater to tourists like in Asia. I am realizing how comfortable I had become getting around in Asia…not so confident here…but went out walking today to get my bearings and then went to Sam’s Club (like Costco) in a taxi.

Lost my credit cards twice and found them again…not good for the nervous system. Tried to buy a sim card for Thai phone but it didn’t work…didn’t work in US phone either.

Unpacked already…extra bedroom has two twin beds waiting for my son Greg and his friends…and anyone else who wants to come. Wifi works great. Bought a bottle of wine and a wine glass…guess I’ll burn some sage and celebrate.

HI Sukhumvit Hostel

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Just so you don’t think I drowned in the Sangkren waters of Thailand, I spent the next few days in a great new 38 bed hostel called HI Sukhumvit in an upscale Bangkok neighborhood about 50 yards down Sukhumvit 38 from the Thong Lo Skytrain station. Dorm rooms with 4, 6 or 8 beds go for 300 baht or about $7 with A/C…a real bargain in this city of 10 million. Two bedrooms are available as is a single room for $500 baht. Phit, the manager and owner who is a recent graduate of Kasetsart University, will take good care of you. I can’t recommend this new, clean charming place high enough. It doesn’t even feel like a hostel but rather a home with DIY cooking, laundry and internet. Tel (66) 2391-9338 or email sukhumvit@tyha.org or find the link on http://www.tyha.org/HI Sukhumvit.html. Every night the Night Food Market vendors set up their stands just yards away along Suk 38 offering great Thai food. And next door is an upscale bakery and restaurant in a traditional Thai setting called “FACE” for that special evening out.

On April 24 I flew out of Bangkok to LAX on China Air and then to Las Vegas to spend some welcome time with my oldest son…as far away from the heat and humidity of the hot season in Thailand as I could get!

Luang Prabang Lao

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Luang Prabang is an outstanding example of the fusion of traditional architecture and Lao urban structures with those built by the European colonial authorities in the 19th and 20th centuries. Its unique, remarkably well-preserved townscape illustrates a key stage in the blending of these two distinct cultural traditions. It is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The last time I was here was in 2002. There are few changes and not as many tourists as I expected but then this is the off season. I’m in the Jaliya Guest House on the Pha Mahapatsaman…about three blocks from the tourist center along the Mekong River…a lovely cottage in a nice garden in the back with air con and TV for $12.

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A few doors down this woman was peeking out the door of her shophouse…just as I saw her doing two years ago!

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Yesterday, renting a bicycle for a dollar to scope out the village left me with sore legs. There are few tourists here now as this is the beginning of the hot season. It’s a relief to be out of Thailand…girls here are very different…no 70 year old farangs hand in hand with 19 year old “children” and besides such a thing is illegal here. Thailand ought to take a lesson.

I notice there are many more guesthouses and restaurants cropping up everywhere. The Red Cross up the street used to offer the only massage in town and now I see signs for massage all over. Chucking my bike for an hour, I enjoyed a “refillable” cup of coffee in front of the Scandinavian Bakery while visiting with a guy from Seattle Washington who has been living in Phuket Thailand for three years and is on a two-day “visa run.” He is planning on moving to Bend.

Typical Building From French Era
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It is getting close to the time for the water festival and the children have already started throwing water…giggling at startled pedestrians, taxi and tuk tuk drivers. It is best to keep a watch out!

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Every evening, near the night market, the Hmong people from the mountains set up their racks of woven fabric and other goods to sell in the middle of the street through town. I am learning prices.

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While having early morning coffee this morning I visited with a young woman from Eugene who knows Boni, a friend of mine from Salem! Susan has been living in Manhattan…but is planning on moving back to the northwest…and maybe even to Mexico to visit me!

Thai Cooking School

Posted on by Laughingnomad

At the Smile Guesthouse I attend cooking school. A Dutch couple and a German girl and I each have our own “station” with a wok sitting on a gas burner. O (pronounced O?…the voice rising up at the end) teaches us “New Thai” cooking style that is an attempt to limit the amount of calories and fat in the food. Coconut milk, common to all curries and many other dishes, is normally high in fat but in new style it is diluted by half with water flavored with dried mushrooms. Girls now limit the amount of rice and noodles in their diets…not eaten every day but considered a treat. No wonder the Thai girls have such flat tummies!
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For curries a little coconut milk is mixed with water in a wok. Prepared curry paste bought at the market is mixed with the water and milk and “fried” until it becomes dry. I make a “mistake” and try to mash the curry with my wok utensil…ending up with it all stuck on the back of the spatula instead of in the liquid! Everything is done precisely…the spatula is turned upside down and the paste is “chopped” and stirred into the water. More water is added until you have the right amount and consistency for a sauce. Then the chopped chicken, pork or beef or tofu is added (never fried ahead of time) along with strong tiny unpeeled garlic cloves, onions, a couple teaspoons of fish sauce, a little lime juice and half a teaspoon of sugar. Holy basil leaves are added last. For Tom Kha Gai soup, the coconut milk is never boiled because boiling separates from the fat from the “milk” and makes the soup look and taste greasy.

In the all-day class, we prepared six dishes…three curries, fish steamed in a banana leaf, (not my favorite) Tom Kha Gai (chicken in coconut milk soup and papaya salad. If green papya cannot be found you can fix it with shredded carrots…carrots and papaya taste the same we are told. We were supposed to eat it all afterward but of course it was much too much food for one meal. My left-overs are in my refrigerator in my room waiting for me to figure out how to reheat it for dinner tonight.

I leave for Lao soon.

Breakfast at Smile Guesthouse

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I have changed hotels. I am now at the brand new Bau-Tong Lodge with free WiFi that is down little soi 3 off Loi Kroh…for half the cost of the Galare Guesthouse where I was for the last three weeks.

The Smile Guesthouse, a few yards up the street from my hotel offers an all-you-can-eat American breakfast each morning for $2. Most of the diners are older male westerners who live here…except for “Sharkie,” a long-haired 22 year old from South Carolina that fights fires near Eugene Oregon. He has lived in Mexico and gives me good information. Some of them tell me their personal stories. Yesterday I had a long conversation with a nuclear physicist from California who is retired from a career with GE.

Today I breakfasted with a soft-spoken well-traveled gentleman from New Zealand. We trade travel tips and I try to help him with the Bangkok Post crossword puzzle. Next to our table is a German and an American who have a very opinionated debate about current Thai politics…each contradicting the other…neither listening to the other. Except for the 75 year old New Zealander, these men are all here for the Thai girls of course who treat them like gods. I sense a thread of commonality among them…emotionally very shallow and insecure…defensive…incapable of deep abiding commitment. And I wonder how they feel, or if they feel anything, about depriving their grandchildren of their presence…their love.

I tell Supoat, my tuk tuk driver, about my aquaintences at The Smile. He launches into an emotional and heartfelt tirade against prostitution in Thailand. “They all want farangs with an ATM card,” he says, “to get their money.” Yesterday he kicked one of them out of his tuk tuk, he said. “The farangs give nothing back to my country,” he says…his eyes flashing in anger. “They are ruining Thailand, his voice rising! Our men are very poor and cannot offer the young girls a life. I look at all the tuk tuk drivers and feel so sorry for them…they need help. I wish I could do something to help them. I am losing my heart,” he says…his eyes watering. I tell him I am losing my heart too.

Chiang Mai Thailand

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Flew from Koh Samui on Bangkok Air (the only airline off the island because Bangkok Air built the airport) and then on to Chiang Mai on budget Air Asia.

I guess Bob is in Bangkok, but I am in the Galare Guesthouse in a cozy Thai-style building on the Ping River that runs through the city. A broadband internet cable is plugged into my laptop. I am drinking real drip coffee made in my little Starbucks coffee maker on this blessedly cool morning and listening to Leonard Cohen on my tiny speakers.

I am mid-way through “All That Matters,” a lovely book by Wayson Chow about Chinese immigrants in the 1930’s in Vancouver B.C. Most of the Chinese those days were from the Pearl River Delta of Canton China who came as merchants to Chinatown in Vancouver or as workers on the railroad.

I catch up on the news in the U.S. on BBC TV…much better coverage than we get from US media. I am following the political crisis in Thailand in the English-language Bangkok Post in the downstairs open-air restaurant at breakfast each morning. In the streets of Bangkok thousands of people have been demonstrating for constitutional reform and an end of corruption…calling for Prime Minister Thaksin to step down. And that is really something for a culture that generally disdains confrontation. Locals are hoping there will not be a repeat of the military coup in the late 90’s that left scores of students dead in the streets.

I am walking distance to the Night Market (actually a street market) that bustles with open-street cafes until midnight. I usually don’t take the Tuk Tuks in Thailand because I am tall and the ceilings of these things slant downwards making it difficult to see ahead but they are the best way to get around in this city because they can dodge through the smooth-paved alleyways avoiding all the one-way streets. I like this city. Much quieter…even the Tuk Tuks don’t sound like weed-eaters…and the traffic isn’t as nuts as it is in Bangkok and on the islands.

More farangs (White westerners) in this town than I’ve seen anywhere in Thailand (even the islands because most tourists there just stay within hotel compounds) so Chiang Mai seems to be quite the tourist destination. Tour companies offer trips to places like the national parks, elephant training camps and to the Golden Triangle where Thailand meets the Lao, Chinese and Burmese borders that is famous for the opium trade of years past. I am thinking I will take one of these trips…maybe to the Golden Triangle…and to Chiang Rai through colorful Akha, Karen, Lisu and Palong hill tribe villages.

How long can I stay in my room, I ask the smiling girl at the reception desk. Until way next month, she says laughing. Maybe I will.

International Night On Koh Samui

Posted on by Laughingnomad

We’re back on Samui and I have rented a brand new furnished one bedroom house for $12.00 a night at “Solitude Resort” on a mountainside about a mile from Doug and Luk’s bungalow.

The first evening we were welcomed by our next door neighbors, a hilarious 55 year old skinny Austrian jewelry maker, Stefan, with a shaved head except for a very long salt and pepper pony-tail in back, and his flirty 30 year old Mongolian wife. He was escaping the extremely harsh European winter, he said. The owner of the simple “resort” with six houses and a swimming pool is a youngish Brit, Mark, from Yorkshire, and I understand only about half his English. His wife is a pretty young Hmong tribal woman from Lao. (I confess I can remember the names of neither woman.)

The Austrian and his wife were pretty well oiled by the time we arrived about 6 in the evening…Doug, and Luk and I opting for juice. The 7 of us sat on the front porch fighting mosquitos while the two guys regaled us with stories about how they met their wives (Stefan and his wife were both working in “Czecki” and Mark met his wife in Vientiane, Lao while on a post university year of travel) and about the difficulties in getting married when there are no consolates (Austrian or British) in the respective countries they are trying to get permission to marry in (Mongolia and Lao).

The women, with minimal English, gave up on trying to follow the hurried conversation and lapsed into a smaller discussion between themselves about how they had been married for 5 and 7 years and still had no children. To get married, Stefan had to go through the Australian Embassy in Beijing…Mark the Australian Embassy in Britain. Stefan was told he had to pay $125 for something but that it was “impossible to do!” (We all laughed having heard similar injunctions many times before!) Mark had to pay off officials all the way up the bureaucratic chain to the tune of $1500 to get the usual year waiting period reduced to three months. He had to fill out 25 forms that had to be translated in four different languages (the fourth because Mark’s father is from Mauritius off the coast of Africa). One of the forms Mark had to sign was an affadavit saying he had never slept with his prospective bride…if he had refused he could have been hauled off to jail…it being against the law to sleep with a woman in Lao if you are not married! I thought to myself that the pressure from the local families, probably financial as well as cultural, for these couples to be married must have been pretty strong to get these guys to go through all this rigamarole. Or maybe I have just become cynical!

Then, as usual between expats, the discussion turned to the lack of local efficiency…Mark lamenting about how any tools made in Thailand were sure to break or fall apart as soon as they were purchased…make sure anything you buy is made in China or the west he advises. And Stefan had stories about how gems were glass, earrings made of tin infected his wife’s pierced ears, and the gold he tried to make jewelry with broke apart because the 24 carot gold was so soft. (The Thais won’t have anything but pure gold. It’s a status thing.) This we already know of course. The evening’s black humor produced a lot of much needed comic relief. But, Mark says, even so, every place in the world having it’s ups and downs he would never choose to give up living in “Paradise.” We are all learning to live “mai pen rai!” loosely translated meaning “no worries’ or “never mind!”

This morning as I was leaving the house on the back of Doug’s bike, Mark was cleaning the pool. A 60ish year old Italian guy was animatedly trying to teach Mark Italian…in Italian…Mark patiently nodding and smiling all the while. Mark caught my eye and we had a good laugh!

These experiences I wouldn’t trade for anything.

A Light In The South of Thailand

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Visitors, to the south of Thailand, including foreigners, will soon have an opportunity to experience muslim life in a village in the province of Yala. A “Widower’s Village” is being built in Rotanbu Village under a resettlement project funded by Her Majesty the Queen. The 150 homes, built by the Thai military, are for Buddhist and Muslim women who lost loved ones in terrorist attacks and deaths caused by the Thai military in the southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. Holiday makers can stay in a home for a week-end for 200 baht ($5) a day. The Queen requests that visitors not interfere with muslim prayer rituals out of respect for the Quran. There will be no time for loneliness, one woman says.

“Taxation Without Representation”

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Taking a fast sleek train, we are visiting our country’s capitol city for a few days. “Taxation Without Representation” is written at the bottom of D.C. license plates here in the District of Columbia. Don’t know why DC’s fair citizens don’t have any representation in Congress, but we nevertheless enjoy their city.

The weather has been fantastic…sunny, clear and brisk. The trees have become a palette of fall colors. We are staying in a cute little Victorian bed and breakfast called Kalorama Guest House on Mintwood Place NW, (it’s on the web) around the corner from a slew of coffee shops (free internet at Tryst during the week) and ethnic restaurants full of thirty-somethings carrying computer bags and wearing official appearing ID tags. One overheard conversation: “…the working title of my book is The China Wars of 1871…” We think there are a lot of very highly educated people in this city but aren’t sure this is a good thing considering some of the policies coming out of this place.

But alas, our visit will be short. Tomorrow the Red Line of the clean plush subway train will take us from our neighborhood directly to Union Train Station…the most elegant we have seen anywhere in the world except maybe Victoria Station in Bombay..where we will catch our train back to Penn Station in Manhattan.

The gigantic government office buildings remind Bob and I of the utilitarian Nazi-built grey concrete buildings in the eastern sector of Berlin-what used to be East Germany. It occurs to me that at least our tax money hasn’t been spent on hegemonic architecture. But at least a few or more thousand people have jobs in this gigantic bureaucracy.

I spent two days at the National Archives digging up info on my great grandfather who spent 14 months in Confederate prisons, including Andersonville, while Bob roamed the city. We make fun of all the others walking around with cell phones glued to their ears but it’s a darn good thing we have them (cell phones and ears) or we’d still be looking for each other.

Revisionist history: Eisenhower was the first president to send “armed advisors” to Viet Nam. The last time I was in Washington I didn’t notice that the date engraved on the wall of the Vietnam War Memorial…1955… was the date indicating the first death. But the pentagon has revised this date twice in the eighties, explained the park service guide…upping it to sometime in the 60’s. But once a date is engraved you just can’t mark it out with a black marker, the guide wryly remarked…

The city, full of irony, was laid out by, of all people, the same Frenchman who designed modern Paris. The J. Edgar Hoover building is exactly across the street from the Robert F. Kennedy Justice Building-the two men, of course, hating each other during their tenures. Washington was in the south at the time of the civil war and a bridge crosses the Potomac River, at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, to connect the District of Columbia with Arlington Cemetery on land that was given the city by Robert E. Lee.

The Smithsonian Museums, set up by a foreign benefactor, are free and not to be missed. And the residence of the Vice-President was set up on U.S. Naval grounds in order to save taxpayer money by not having to build another palatial home.

But Bob and I looked at each other with not a little bewilderment when the hop-on- hop-off bus driver/tour guide told us that Washington D.C. had more species of trees than any other city in the world. We wondered how they figured this out.

Jazz In Familiar Old Quarter Hanoi

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I had to check out of Thailand…thought my visa was 90 days that I got in Kunming in December but it was only 60 days. So at the end of March I had to pay a hefty fine at the airport to get out of the country…almost 10 a day!

I hopped a flight to Hanoi and stayed at the Classic Street Hotel again…this time thoroughly enjoying the Old Quarter with a minimum of running around.

Found a jazz club and while enjoying the free WiFi on my laptop had a great conversation with an American woman who, having been out-stationed in Hanoi for several years with Ford Motor Company, met and married the sax player and owner of the club. Even bought a T-shirt with an orange sax and name of the club that I have now forgotten!

At the end of a month at the Classic Street Hotel I flew back to Bangkok.