The British couldn’t pronounce Yangon so the spelt it how it sounded to them,  Rangoon.  Burmese People was too long as a translation of Myanmar so they changed the name to Burma.  And so it goes.  The “ugly Brits” preceded the ugly American by a century in making things sound their way.  Today we are struggling with the Burmese people’s pronounciation of English and we plan on doing so for the rest of the week. 

Everyone has a smile,  except for the immigration officer who snatched my passport out of my hand and practically threw it back at me after prolonged study. Traffic is insane.  They drive on the right,  sort of,  but most of the vehicles have right hand drive,  steering wheel on the right. We haven’t walked unescorted yet,  but I fear for my life and sanity when I try.  Private cars have only been permitted for a decade and no allowance had been made for parking much less highway space. Thus it seems half the cars are in continousl circulation looking for a parking place.  Everything moves a walking pace,  but at least the interior of our tour van is  air conditioned.

We started our tour from the airport with a visit to the Reclining Bhudda, I know we just saw one in Bangkok a couple of days ago,  this one is different,  much bigger,  68 meters head to toe. Also less gold and more colorful.  This one replaces an ugly predecessor that was neglected and destroyed by the environment.  Then we went shopping in the market,  one name of the market is Aun Saun Market. To much good stuff and a bit travel weary we bought nothing.  I do want a loungy, no idea how to spell it, it is a skirt like wrap worn by most Burmese men. It looks very comfortable for this climate and would make a nice table cloth when I decide not to wear it.

The meals have been wonderful.  Myanmar curries are quite varied and subtle in their shadings.  Many have strong spice heat with underlying flavor notes that ride over (under?) the heat. We took a meal off and had counter for in the restaurant lobby,  curried chicken stuffed in a pastry. Very nice.  Oh yes the hotel,  we are staying at the Chatrium, where Hilary stayed when she called on Myanmar as Secretary of State.  Obama is reported to have complained that on his visit here he didn’t stay long enough to use the hotel.  Looking out my window as I write I see the staff setting up the grounds around the pool deck and every place else for a wedding party of 900 guests!  It is hard to find anything to complain about.  The hotel is definitely at the top of the class of OAT hotels, the guide is wonderful even if this is his first OAT tour.  Having only four of us on the tour really is beyond expectation. Heddy and Carol (her name is Carol Ann) seem quit compatible and good travel companions.  We’ll know better tomorrow as it appears we need to be at the airport at 5 AM give or take. At least traffic should be light,  I hope.

We are watching the news from Ukraine where we started this extravaganza with some horror. Looking at the news from Bangkok, which we left 1 day ago, is scary,  especially since we need to go through there two more times,  in five days and again on December 31 on our way to the US.

Got off the plane in Bangkok alone,  just the two of us,  no for leader, no group,  oops, where is our hotel transfer? After some searching we located an OAT representative who got us a porter and a car to Pantip Suites in central Bangkok.  Note to Dan and Malena: that is Pantip not Pantop. When we walked into our suite I was sure they had made a mistake.  The livingroom/kitchen is about 30’x 20′ and the bedroom is about the same square footage. All of this on the 24th floor overlooking central Bangkok.  We have learned that this condo/hotel was built before the 2008 recession and our “room” was built as a condo.  Very nice quarters indeed especially since our next stop will include a stay in a tent. The rest of our group is two women due to arrive late today in time to leave for Myanmar/Burma on a 9 AM flight tomorrow necessitating leaving the hotel at 6 AM 🙁

Our explorations have been a bit limited as we have other things to do.  Our first day we met Lucky,  our guide for the Thai portion of the trip and got oriented with map and coffee to what to do in Bangkok. That afternoon we set off by cab for the pier on the river where all boat tours seem to start.  We boarded a free shuttle to Aseatique, a recently developed shopping/entertainment/dining area in a former warehouse port area.  It also houses a very large Ferris wheel, much like the London Eye. We shopped,  bought a small suitcase to store our cold weather clothes here in Bangkok for pickup when we return on Dec 31 on our way to the states.  This will lighten our luggage enough to get us well under the 44 lb limit which we crossed as we left Russia. We rode the Ferris wheel,  we dined at Baan Khanitha right on the boardwalk, would recommend it to any visitor to the area. We took a tuktuk back to the hotel for an outrageous overcharge of 200 baht ($6.25) it only cost 72 baht to get there by cab, but that was daytime.

Sunday we loafed about in the morning before setting out for Jim Thompson’s villa. I won’t tell his entire story here. He was an adventurer who fell in love with Thailand in the 50’s and settled here and developed the silk industry. He was very successful, unmarried with no children when at age 61, while visiting a friend in the country he went out for a short  walk and was never seen or heard from again. His collections of local art and artifacts have been retained in the original villa and are a must see. The shops, both at the villa and nearby are wonderful.

After some time at the hotel to relax, we set out for the Night Market, not far from the villa. This was very interesting. Not wanting to walk to the train after dark we took a cab from tne hotel to Silom Rd near the intersection of Patpong where the market is. We stopped in at the Jim Thompson store and enjoyed looking at many things we don’t really need. Then we start walking toward the market, a side trip down a brighly lit street found us surrounded by “girls” many in uniform outfits that barely covered. This long block was a major redlight district and we beat feet back to Silom once we realized where we were. We found our way to Patapong and began to check out the merchandise,  it was lower quality than Aseatique but much higher than Siem Reap.  We were looking to the side of the road for a restaurant and noted that there were  many sex shows here too. Every other doorway gave a clear view of scantily clad pole dancers. Ignoring this to the extent possible we settled on TipTop Restaurant which offered a reasonable menu with an understanding of the needs for vegetarian! Carol produced her note that says in Thai that she eats no meat, fish, chicken and the hostess made it clear she understood. After a bit more walking we engaged a cab for 200 baht to take us back to the hotel.

Walking in Bangkok: traffic here drives on the left, remember to look right before stepping into the street, look left too as a motorbike could be coming from most anyplace, what rules? The sidewalk on many of the streets around our hotel are narrow, nonexistent even. Most are single file, there is no curb, and powerpoles and other sign posts force you into the street. We have learned to walk on the right facing traffic, at least you can see the motorbike that is using the walkway to pass a car! To cross the street step out with hand firmly extended toward oncoming traffic, they will adjust their speed and position to miss you, most of the time, be prepared to alter course if they don’t. So far we are unwilling to do this after dark.

Yet another place we’ve read about,  seen news about and never quite dared to dream of visiting.  Yet another killing field,  this one marked with the bones of many of the deceased in a stupa for all to see. This is a country where we never quite knew who were the good guys and who the bad.  Prince Sihanuk seemed to be unable to decide either and in his desire to stay neutral he caused as much misery as he wanted to prevent. Khimer Rouge v the government forces.  Pol Pot v everyone.  As we repeatedly learned,  independence is only 15 years old.  People are killed and maimed by leftover land mines every day.  Unexploded munitions are rusting in farmers fields waiting for inadvertent contact to ruin another life. On the streets of Siem Reap the more visible hazard is traffic gone wild.  There are five traffic lights in the city and drivers consider them a recommendation not a requirement.  Stop signs seem to be totally ignored.  The approved method for entering traffic flow is to keep moving assuming there will be an opening when you get there.  It seems to work, mostly. Traffic is a mix of tour busses and vans,  motor bikes in the 100 cc range and tuk tuks – a motor bike with a hitch in the middle of the seat pulling a cart.  The cart can be for passengers or for cargo.  At least traffic generally flows and distances are minimal compared to China.  Our hotel is in walking distance of central Siem Reap and only about 5 kilometers to Angkor Wat, the main tourist attraction. 

I suppose I could regale with details about the sites we’ve seen from Angkor Wat to the “ladies temple” and several more temples including the one where Tomb Raiders was shot with trees draped over the walls. Maybe I’ll get back to that.  We have experienced a couple of new modes of transport including a long ride in a long tail boat on Ton Le sap,  the largest freshwater Lake in Asia and a ride in a cart drawn by water buffalo. The cart is as what one would imagine with no suspension and the track was not smoothed for us.  Since we were sitting on mats in the carts,  we were all grateful when we reached the end of the ride.

Food varieties became another significant adventure.  On the day we visited Angkor Wat, we went in the morning which is not the best time for photography since this temple faces West unlike all other temples and the view was into the sun.  The reason for doing this was to face smaller crowd. It worked, the crowds were large but manageable.  Later in the day as sunset approached, we returned to see the facade lit by the setting sun.  Seong, our tour leader arranged snacks and drinks for us.  The Cambodian wine, called Wrestler,  was not great but at a fortified 20% alcohol I was able to drink some of it.  The snacks included silk worms, snake jerky and waterbuffalo jerky as well as frog legs. I tried it all to Carol’s distaste.  That was just the beginning as it turned out.  The next day,  today as I write,  we stopped along the road to Ton Le Sap to sample deep fried crickets,  grasshoppers,  and rice frogs (maybe we had the silkworms today not yesterday). Once we got on the lake John, the other guy in our touring foursome, continued to pester Seong about findng him a live snake. At the floating village, we indeed found a live water snake and Seong handed it to John.  A bit later Seong escorted us to a table and served us a lovely soup with water snake in it.  Carol absented herself while the rest of us tucked in and tried it. The skin was too tough to eat so we peeled it off and sucked the meat off the spine. It wasn’t bad,  but I won’t go looking for it either. Although we leave Cambodia in the morning,  I am sure we will have more surprises as we go to Thailand,  Myanmar and Vietnam through the month of December.

Since I last wrote we have toured Potala Palace and Jokan Temple and flown to  Chongqing, maybe the largest  city in the world with population over 33 million stretching for miles (kilometers) along the Yangtze River. This is where we bordered our river boat MV Victoria Lliana for three days and over 640 kilometers of down river passage through the 3 gorges and passed the 3 Gorges Dam through  the 5 step shiplock. Our entire group had chosen the Executive Deck and given the light passenger load we had the Executive Deck dining room to ourselves. We were served by Sunshine and Rainbow who learned our names almost immediately. We were greeted and served our preferences without having to ask. Talk about about spoiled.  Note to anyone thinking about this trip, DO NOT miss it and do not take passage on the lower decks. The Chinese do not understand the term “No Smoking”.  The water may be 150 meters up, but the gorges are still massive and very deep. I cannot even imagine what they must have been before the dam.  The lower section we traveled was very rough before the dam and today it is serene sailing.  We considered  both sides of the argument for the construction of the dam and while we understand the negative ecological impact of the flooding, we also see the immense benefit of the dam for hydropower, flood  control, and irrigation. We concluded the trip on the river just below the dam and faced a 5 hour bus ride to get to Wuhan where we stayed overnight before catching a plane to Hong Kong.

Out from behind the firewall!  The phrase “one country, two systems” takes on new meaning upon entering Hong Hong. While it is not truly western,  it certainly has a feel of freedom. Not the least it is seen  in what is available online; Facebook, Google,  NYTimes, and all my blogging and RV Forums are now live. It is seen in billboards, and peoples faces. Even more are the crowds! Yesterday as we walked about within long walking distance of our hotel to several market areas we seemed to receive the full body massage no matter where we turned. This is not a place for those who do not like crowds.  Think Times Square on New Years Eve, or in Rochester, the Cornhill Festival on a perfect weather day.

Sunday had us out and about again. This time we ventured by bus to Stanley Beach/Market/Plaza. We arrived mid morning to find the crowd starting to build.  By lunch time, when we had split off from the group we arrived with, the crowds had continued to grow, with seemingly every family that had a child descending on the place. We enjoyed touring and shopping and had a delightful lunch at a place called Classified . Then we found our way back to the bus terminal and boarded a bus back into town. Not being familiar with the stops on the way  back, we stayed on one stop too far.  Once we got oriented we enjoyed the 15 minute walk back to the hotel.

Tonight is our fairwell dinner and four of us will continue on to Siem Reap,  the capital of Cambodia in the early afternoon.

A quick update.  Our flight from Moscow took off at 3PM, only 4 hours 40 minutes late without so much as a “we’re sorry” until we landed at 3:15 AM. Other than that the flight was very nice,  the food was plentiful and good and the indoor of the plane was on great need of updating.  The video entertainment was a three pound tablet with a smaller screen than my tablet and no place to rest it in a viable position.  It went directly into the storage pocket only to be sent at the end of the flight. Reading and sleeping torrent with eating condoned the time quite well.

We were dropped at the hotel by city guide Andy at 5 AM or so and found our way to our room where we slept until 9:30 awakening in time to rush to the dining room and grab some breakfast before they cleared the buffet away. After meeting our Tour Leader, Michael, (they all seem to have Americanized names for leading American groups) we set out to walk to Nanking (or maybe Nanjing) road which is very long long pedestrian shopping street. We spent our afternoon walking and window shopping.  We wondered off onto a side Street where we found a local restaurant where we ordered too much for lunch.  I decided not to have one of the bullfrog dishes.  May after some time here that may not put me of my feed,  but I’m not there yet.

We dined at the hotel restaurant restaurant,  once we found it.  A trip to the 2nd floor brought us to the Leningrad Bar. I decided me must have been pushed through a time warp as the main offering was vodka and the snacks were Russian dishes,  also the primary section of the menu as written in Cyrillic! 

This morning,  Saturday I think,  we met or new group and spent the day touring.  The highlight was the Shanghai Museum where the 2 hours of alloted time was enough for one of the 4 floors and a run through of the others the special exhibit of French Impressionists was not available  to us and the lines for those with tickets were hours long.  Dinner with the group in an hour.  Now I must truck on down to the lobby to use the wifi to get this out.

It seems that most of my apps for writing require an internet connection for writing. I have lost what I wrote since Shanghai to lousy internet connections. I will try to recapture my impressions here. This may be a longish post as I cover 4 days in and around Shanghai and a like amount in Beijing. I will start with some general thoughts about China and the Chinese. Much of our experience has been noted by many other travelers from the West. China is crowded. Shanghai has 23 million resident population and Beijing 33 million. Everything feels crowded and compressed. The people seem extremely rude as their sense of personal space is much closer than ours. They take jostling against each other as normal. For an example on our visit to the Forbidden City as we tried to get a view of the throne in the first pavillion rather than queuing and filing past they jammed the stairs and platform and the only way to get near was to be pushy. Carol felt threatened by the scrum and backed out. I got to the front and experience a full body massage, my pictures are useless as everytime I got something in the viewfinder I was shoved aside or someone pushed in front of me.

Traffic is beyond belief. LA Freeways at their worst are mild in comparison. Any trip could be from 1 to 3 hours and the mix of cars, busses and 2 and 3 wheelers of all sizes  going in all directions makes trying to make sense of the flow bizarre. Walking across a marked intersection with the light is dangerous as bicycles, peddled, gas powered, electric powered pay no attention to lights and cars turn right on red without even slowing down. John, the English name of our Beijing guide, advised that we cross like sticky rice, in a tight clump that would intimidate riders who are inclined to thread through a loose group rather than give ground to anyone. It worked mostly, no one got hit, but it was close several times.

In Shanghai we saw much of what is on the tourist menu starting with the Shanghai Museum.  We walked the Bund, the Whampoa River front, both with the group and on our own after dark. We walked  Nanjing Pedestrian Road which is a mile long shopping strip with every high end shop you can imagine, plus KFC, McDonald’s,  and Subway.  We ate at a couple of local restaurants that we selected on our own and successfully shopped in a drug store for masks against the smog. Haven’t opened the package yet, but the air has been dreadful most every morning. We visited two areas in the Shanghai area, Zhu Jia Jiao and Suzhou which was 40 minutes on the Bullet Train which reached 298 kph according to the onboard screen. In both towns we had boat rides, visited markets and toured gardens. These gardens are actually homes built around elaborate gardens featuring water, wood, stone and buildings. The higher the status of the owner the more elaborate the garden. On our last day in Shanghai we toured a very high status garden that was 18 years in development in 1557. After lunch in a private home we flew to Beijing.

We did what is required in Beijing. We toured Tiananmen  Square, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.  The Forbidden City, being the Emperor’s home contains the second most fantastic garden we have seen, the Summer Palace takes credit for being the most fantastic with its 758 meter long  corridor and the Marble Boat. Except for the Great Wall these were all as expected from other traveler’s reports and photos. We were concerned that the attack in Tiananmen Square would prevent our visit, but everything was cleaned up as if nothing had happened 24 hours later. Our visit to the Great Wall was incredible. We went to a section that is seldom visited by tour groups as it is 15 kilometers further and in a much poorer state of repair not to mention that it is not the most famous photo op that everyone takes. We were the only group on the wall and there were only a dozen or so others we saw whole time we were there. Our entire group climbed onto the wall and then ascended 700 uneven steps to the high point in the area. Michael, our tour leader, has lead many groups and was surprised that everyone  made the entire climb, we range in age from 61 to 78, and the eldest does not seem to be in any kind of shape,  but he made it, just more slowly than the rest of us. We have toured enough factories, silk, carpet, and jade tomorrow to make me wish for a tour of an electronics factory. The working conditions we have observed leave a lot to be desired.  I did buy a silk shirt.

We have attended an acrobat show and a made for tourists Chinese opera.  The latter was after visiting the opera school where 10 year olds to 19 year olds learn the craft while also getting a academic education.  Travel in Beijing culminated with an overnight train ride to  Xi’An whwere the highlight will be the Terracotta Army. We saw some magnificent szmples of them at the Xi’an Museum this afternoon.  The train ride was an experience I do not need to repeat. We were in first class cabins with four bunks, OAT had bought all four for each couple. We had less room than in the motorhome bedroom, the tracks were not smooth and the car  rattled. There was one western style toilet for the car and three sinks in one separate cabin. I slept fairly well, Carol didn’t.

To get current, we had Mongolian hot pot dinner tonight and for of us took Michael up on his offer to see the sound, light and water show on the grounds of the Large Wild Goose Pagoda. We walked over from our hotel and saw a 30 minute show. The fountains were great the lights were okay and the music was strange to say the least.  Along with some Chinese numbers they played William Tell Overture,  selections from Carmen and other Western music.  Glad we went,  glad to be back on the hotel room with good wifi for two nights. I cannot begin to guess what future nights will bring.

We awoke 15 minutes earlier than usual to have our checked luggage out the door at 6:45 for departure to Shanghai.  We managed to get breakfast in by opening the dining room 5 minutes early and choking down some food before being in the cab at 7:15. Despite my concerns about traffic we walked into the terminal at 8:15 two hours before scheduled departure,  whew. But wait what are these extra passes we have been handed? Complimentary meals?  Uh oh. The flight is delayed 3 hours and 40 minutes.  We were not planning on using the business class lounge here,  but now we will have plenty of time to enjoy the luxury of waiting in relative comfort.  Of course we will arrive in Shanghai at something like 2:40 AM if we actually take off at 2 PM. More news on that as we experience the joys of travel.

Thinking about 5 countries and 7 cities over the 22 days so far.  This area like so many others has been fought over,  conquered and freed from conquerors so often in the last century it is hard to grasp what the people have lived through.  In the USA we have had one bloody internecine war in our history since independence and that was 150 years ago.  The most recent change in governance in this region was 1991! That was when the Baltic nations became independent from USSR for the first time since 1941 (and the USSR ceased to exist). These are people for whom the only choice was rule by Nazis or Soviet Union who ever was in control at the moment.  Hobson’s choice which is to say no choice at all,  both sides slaughtered or deported those they saw as dissidents. Russia is finding itself too as a much smaller country,  missing Ukraine which is comparable in size to Texas and is the second biggest country in Europe after European Russia.  Each of the Baltic States are best compared to our small states,  NJ,  Connecticut,  etc. Their population of about 1,000,000 each consists of  one third pensioners and about one third employed.  This is not a good population base on which to build an economy especially as there is significant “brain drain” from each of them as the young graduate from very good inexpensive universities and head out to find satisfactory employment elsewhere.  For many of us the Baltic States did not exist at all as we read about world politics through the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

As we prepare to head to China which has yet to really break the bonds of totalitarian rule,  I wonder what the future will be as Russia continues to squeeze the Baltic nations to prevent their deepening involvement with the EU and NATO.  This is playing out today.  Our course will continue to take us to killing fields. We may be less emotionally pained as these are not our close family, but nonetheless they are family of man.  As we sat as a group over the last several days I wondered where we might go in our travels to not find a place of pain.  Carol and I concluded that the nature of humans is such that there is no such place.  The US may not have recent history,  but certainly our ancestor’s treatment of the natives has not been without death and deportation, nor has our northern neighbor Canada’s history been clean on that regard. 

I will continue to revel in the joy of travel and accept that amid the beauty and grandeur that we see there will be reminders of pain and savagery. 

We sat and talked with Yechiel this morning (for us) and we were able to see each other as we spoke across 11 time zones using Google hangouts on my tablet.  This was a dream at the 1964 World’s Fair when we were newlyweds and today it is essentially cost free. 

The grand spaces in Moscow,  Red Square and the Victory Park are so huge as to be daunting and yet we look forward to seeing  Tianimen Square which is said to dwarf them.  The beauty of the gold onion domes of Moscow (candles to G-d) make it truly look like a fairy tale invention and the ancient places we visited all along the way are with me in mind’s eye and in digital images which are too many to share or even sort through as we add new ones each day.

I ramble because I am trying to record impressions not necessarily a coherent story.  Please forgive my wandering from subject to subject,  maybe someday I’ll edit this blog,  somehow I doubt it.

Or Moscow in two and a half days on a dead run.

We were met at the airport by Lara who escorted us by mini van to our hotel where we went directly to lunch without passing “go” and collecting $200. After lunch we went to our rooms to find the luggage waiting and enough time to figure out how to operate the safe and freshen up for our tour of Red Square and GUM the major department store that has stood on one edge of the square for 120 years.  We got yelled at for being late coming down from our rooms as there was no place to park the mini van and he was tying up traffic illegally while waiting,  as if anything could make this traffic worse.  Dinner was not included and four of us set out up the street to a Scottish (!) Restaurant.  It was quite good and we enjoyed ourselves.  I couldn’t bring myself to order Scotch so I had vodka deeming it appropriate in Moscow even in a Scottish restaurant.

Tuesday, today? We dressed with as many layers as we could fit against extended time in 30 F temperatures for extended walking in unsheltered park areas. We toured a Midtown Cemetery where,  Krushchev, Yeltsin,   Shostakovich,   Rostropovich, Mikoyan (that’s a history test) and many other luminaries,  political,  military and arts are buried.  We visited Victory Park (WW II) which seems to extend forever,  there is a fountain for every day of the war.  Finally we spent a long time in an art gallery dedicated to Russian art, Tretyakov Gallery, from the days of icons to just before the war.  After a tour ofthe Moscow subway, we returned to our hotel to thaw out. Later we got 6 of us together for dinner out at an “oriental” restaurant.  The menu ranged from Turkish to far Eastern and it was very enjoyable.  It would have been more so without the hookah pipes at nearby tables.

I have noted that we are a well oiled tour group.  We managed to stay together on the subway through rush hour and then find our way from the Metro stop to the hotel after Lara dropped us at the nearest stop.

In the morning we tour the Kremlin grounds.  It will be cold!  After lunch we return to the hotel to pack and prepare for a final farewell dinner.  We fly on the following morning to Shanghai to join a new group and begin again.