Thursday, May 28, 2009

all,

ah, life is using me like a speedbag. been too tired and too overwhelmed to check in here, and for that my apologies. like a child's balloon set free by the little hand, i rise and sink with each new prevailing force: the uplift of praise and attention for the book, the sinking dread of waiting (will the Times ever notice?). i feel alternately blessed in the extreme for being here and being this close to being able to share one of my great loves with a large number of people (yes, darlings, read good things!) but on the other shut out of the inner sanctum, shibboleth-less, not able to overcome nepotism and better networkers and all the rest. First i compare myself to my savvy New York friends and i think that of course i could never succeed; i bemoan my bucolic roots, my lack of this and that and the other. then i remember those roots and think how happy almost anyone from my highschool would be to be in my shoes, how surprised they'll be at the 25th reunion, and how fortunate i've obviously been to get this far. i said to a friend the other day that i should write the word "grateful" on post-its and put them all over my apartment, office desk, messenger bag, etc., just to remember where i am and what i've been able to do and how full the glass really is.

the stack there, of course, are the 50 books in B on the B. it was A.J. Jacobs' idea to stack them; he did it with his encyclopedias following his magisterial reading of them all for The Know-It-All. i had them like that in my apartment for a few weeks; they're almost as tall as i am, and it felt nice seeing them as a daunting tower, rendered entirely familiar.

was interviewed on NPR today for Weekend Edition. Leann Hanson asked me what i'm reading, and i answered Dickens' nonfiction (as i say on my new website, jackmurnighan.com), right now The Uncommercial Traveler. as i told her, he would read things in the news that interested him and travel out to those places just to poke his nose around, tell the story, document all the great stuff in life that interested him. as always, his incredible lust for life shines through, his ability to relate and appreciate all manner of (good) people, his inexhaustible wit, and the consummate charm of his perceptions and prose. in today's parlance, it's a little like a blog, and as the world's greatest serial writer ever, Dickens would have been the finest blogger of all time. i'll be typing up some of his quotes on Twitter (twitter.com/jackmurnighan), but maybe i'll collect them here soon.

ok, so tired i might collapse. woke up at 2:30 this morning from stress and went straight to work. will write again soon -- and will announce when the NPR piece will air. for now i don't know.

affection to all.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

what flies, what dangles

The semester has ended; my students are hacking up their final papers like so many alleycat hairballs; spring is springing along the east coast, causing otherwise insightful people to tell each other how exquisite the palpably obviously exquisite days are; and I have been counting down these days, minutes, and moments of panic, waiting to see if my book sells or if I should roll myself in a rug on the Bowery. (on a sidenote, I take comfort that some years ago I figured out how to keep one’s self alive, food-wise, on $1.17 a week plus a lemon peel – details on request). The waiting game is not good for my psyche, and I haven’t had the focus I’d like to have, thus the infrequency of these posts. My apologies.

That said, no small number of curious life experiences have transpired since last we spoke. In the research for my forthcoming experience-daredevil Nerve column, I Did It for Science, I went to a hypnotist to try to relive the “primal scene” (the origin, says dr. Freud, of much neurosis, of which I have much). I won’t preempt the material I’m going to put in the piece, but I will say that the first question the receptionist asked, when I called and explained my agenda, was, “In this life or a previous one.” Right now, honey, it’s all about this one. If I can get it somewhat down, maybe I’ll go back a few.

A few days after doing the chicken dance in Mesmer’s office, I left early to go to DC to give a seminar en route to joining up with Dave (my best bud from high school) for a weeklong trip out to Carolina’s outer banks. En route, I repeatedly saw one of my favorite things, Truk Nutz , which some years ago I made the mistake of not buying for my brother. Life is full of regrets, not attaching a set to Hillary’s Subaru, not riding the mechanical bull in all my years at Duke, or not buying Foam the 8-lb can of gefilte fish or keeping my ultraskanky moustache for Jeremy’s bachelor weekend. Alas.

Dave had never seen the nutz, so I was happy to share my cultural expertise. And then we arrived at the beach house, tastefully appointed with a zebra-print sunken bar, redundant microwave, 4 dishwashers, and a screening room with leather armchairs, cup holders, and the complete 35 dvd “one-and-a-half-star collection” (“Hey, anyone for Hitch or National Treasure II?). I know I’ve been ranting ceaselessly about vulgar expenditure, but this house might take the Devil’s food. (I will confess to enjoying the pool table, however, and my game actually seems to be developing).

I also managed to save a fading dragonfly. It was indoors, clearly being undone by the décor and about to expire, so weakened that I was able to grab it by its body (thorax?) and take it outside, where, when released, it flew off happily, despite the lack of zebra-print. Maybe this will increase my multiple-decade dream of coming back as a dragonfly in a future life. Why that, you ask? Among animalia, they’re the most nimble fliers, and oft they do it one mounted on another. What better existence?

So I guess I’m not just focusing on this life, try as I may. Clearly I need to be back in Ms. Inimitables’ arms, where the here and now seems especially there and then, flightlessness notwithstanding.

Till next time, my lovelies.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

the everything in anything

i often tell my students that, as Andrew Marvell expressed so nicely in his poem "on a drop of dew," the everything is contained in the anything. i also try to tell them that traveling is delightful in that it forces novelty and alterity on us, but one can find the infinite without ever leaving home -- if we look carefully enough.

that said, they might well rejoin that it's easier for me, for i do live in chinatown, after all. a trip to the market that my bro and i call the arcade (for it passes between mott to elizabeth streets just above hester) is an argument against flying anywhere for difference, revealing such culinary curios as pig uterus, pork bung (apparently foreskin -- or so i'm told), and this beauty, taken with my camera phone in a quick fly-by.
i sent it to bro, phil, andrew, and ron (all experts at the placing in the mouth of all and sundry), and there was various speculation as to whether this creature was dredged from the Mesozoic, the Pacific deeps, the isle of Komodo, or Loch Ness. all speculation welcome; i'll provide the answer in an upcoming post.

but the lesson, as always (and even if you live in Normal, Illinois), is to keep your eyes open. the everything teems; allness abounds.

on a personal/biz note, as those of you receiving my tweets and/or facebook updates will know, it looks like Naughty Bits might be relaunching. this is very exciting, and i'm open to suggestions of brand new or coming-down-the-pike books to cover (both fiction and non). i'll be alternating: classic one week, contemporary the next. stay tuned.

putting this up now, for, on bro's advice, going to try to keep posts at fewer than 8500 words. apparently my burmese days got a little taxing for the employed reader; my apologies -- truly.

love to all. xoxo

Friday, May 1, 2009

re-naissance indeed...

Blog

Lovelies,

I'm back, have been back, have fully reacclimated to the ways of white people, to undercrowding, social order, directional traffic, trash collection, gratuitous appliances, non-organ meats, factory-made whiskey and Blackberrys. My book is done. My teaching job dissolved. My lovelife's solid. And I'm just another blanquito in the crowd. In many ways, it's good to be back; in others, I feel what I'm going to start calling the alienation of familiarity.

Here were some of my observations upon returning home:

New York felt decidedly calm. I could cross the street with no fear of death – even at night (something I had not experienced in some time).

We have too little street food, by a margin of about 9,000 fold. And, please, the hot dog?

White girls are tall.

So-called Green Liberals don't give much thought to the ecology of air travel (and shipping – think imported beer. Buy local cans!).

Snow sucks, as do shoes (after 6 weeks of sandals only, what a falling off). Escaping winter is magnificent.

Work, at least as the editor-at-large of Nerve and the instructor of Writing for Magazines, is rather nice.

A dhoti is just as useful as advertised, and can even double as a shawl.

My son Lars took a while to reintegrate me; that was sad. But then he did, and I wish I could thank him in a way he'd understand.

Ms. Inimitables is a fount of joy.

The Internet – especially the Google machine – is decidedly pleasant, though one can get used to having no information really quickly.

Running water is decadent and should be appreciated as such.

Hot water is almost criminal.

My three-room apartment is a palace. There are plugs everywhere.

My lightbulb to human ratio is the inverse of everyone's in Laos.

It doesn't make sense to have a place where you work and a place where you live (Dave feels this will eventually change in America)

My brother and Hillary now have three children. They gave terzo my initials: Juliet Katherine Murnighan.

I'm itching to conduct another wedding – or at least to baptize Phil when spring comes.

Somehow this blog revolutionized my relationship with my Dad. And for the first time ever, I know he'll read this.


_______________________________


Now that I can't entertain you with the comestation of insect, arachnid, and rodent, I will have to provide other reasons for your visits; these will include a series of regular blog features, updating often (though selon l'humeur d'ecrivain) and all trademarked, including Life's Delightful Bargains, That Which Shouldn't Be Brooked, The Philosopher in the Kitchen, and Interminable Gratuitous Literary Citation (just kidding … I think). Expect at least one new installment of each every week, and I'll do my best to post on this autofellative thing every day the Muses deign to descend.

I also want to launch a little tie-in promo for my book http://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Beach-What-Literatures-Greatest/dp/0307409570 (due out now May 19th, please review it ye media moguls), namely a kind of opt-in book club where I tell you which classic I'm reading and you read along or just take my word for it. First up will be Dostoevsky's The Idiot; after that probably Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (if I can stomach it) or Stendahl's Charterhouse of Parma, and then some Mark Twain (I've never read either Tom or Huck, only The Innocents Abroad and that 20 years ago) or Wilde (again but carefully). And an added bonus: if anyone can convince me that Fitzgerald is actually a great writer (not merely good), then I'll let she or he pick one of the next reads. Until then, FSF is officially overrated.

Nice to speak to you all again. As always, i love to hear from you. And if you want to review my book or give me work, my hat's in my hand.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Post 22: Surprises in Burma




If they’re going to have so many staff members standing around doing nothing in these airport lounges, why don’t they teach them massage? Of course, I’d rather they just pump neurotoxins into business class or pull a pistol on you when you check in, but there you go (and if I’m one of the offed, well, I earned it).

Day 25, evening. I arrive in Yangon and get the usual hustle into a cab, but my driver speaks good English and doesn’t seem sketchy, helps me with pronunciations of things, and so I ask him if he knows a place that’s better than the one I had from the book. He takes me to Beautyland II PIC, and they’re total Scheissters: they tell me there’s only an expensive room left, then I see other people check in later, and in the morning I hear the same line to another group. Can’t they just say that there’s a first-night charge and then you get the cheaper rate? Wouldn’t that be a bit more savory?

Day 26, evening. Ok, so I think that might have been the best day of my trip. I’m sitting in my room having a paan as I write (betel nut in a leaf with various bizarrities, to be chewed and spat in blood-colored whaps. The first time I saw a stairwell in India, I thought someone had been murdered in it, but it was just the dried sputa of years of paan chewers). The power just went off and I have no windows, so I’ll head down to the restaurant and type up the deets.

Well, it started beautifully, as I walked around and ultimately sat down at a place on the street because the rag-clad proprietors looked so surprised that I was interested in the food. It proved to be a combo dish: the young guy cut a crunchy fried crueller (sort of like the Chinese one at Noodletown but with chick peas in it) into bits, then put it over noodles with chili and cilantro etc, then poured broth over. So it was noodley, yet crunchy, spicy, fascinating, utterly delicious, and 27 cents (little did I know how indicative of much Burmese street food would this curious “soup” turn out). Here as everywhere else so far, there’s plenty of streetside eating, sitting on the tiny plastic stools that make my milk-fed Western knees bang on things, but the combinations clearly reflect the part-Southeast Asian, part-Indian, part-Chinese nature of the place. There are fried samosa-y things and fried unidentifiables galore, as well as the occasional waist-high mound of cracklings (and if you don’t know what that is, shame on you!). But there are also noodles everywhere, both Chinese-style and Vietnamese-y.

Quick rewind: On the plane on the way over, I wore the shirt, so a woman from the row in front of me starts talking to me, teasing that she’s stuck sitting with her mother, though it’s only a one-hour flight. She’s a bit older than I, born Burmese but living in Hong Kong, perfect English, clearly aristo, and with about 9 other members of her family in business class heading back for a big reunion. Well, she sees my language book and starts helping me, then asks where I’m staying, then insists that I come with her and her family to the swank hotel for the night and stay on at her cousin’s home from that point on. Of course I’m mortified with all this, but I have to say yes, knowing how much the insider thing will improve my experience. Well, mercifully the hotel is full, so we arrange to meet the next day at the posh Traders Hotel lounge at noon.

I’m early. I’m always early. And I’m hungry, another virtual always. So I stroll, and walking behind the hotel, I find an alley with what turns out to be one of the joys of Yangon: a curry stand with about 8 different options. You get a plate of rice, then you can order as many little dishes of curry to accompany as you want, all served with soup, a plate of veggies, a salty fish sauce, and a bowl of fried chili paste which I systematically decimate. I got two curries: shrimp (chinga), and fish (nameroo), both excellent, especially with the chili paste. I also ate the cucumber chunks, but as I was leaving saw a tub of water with a ton of cut-up cucumber floating in it and I got a seriously sinking feeling.

The hotel lobby lounge is literally a museum. Again, what better agent of artistic production than radical wealth imbalance? (Does the cultural elite, myself included, ever really consider the implications of this? Our relics are simply elaborate tombstones over enormous and anonymous mass graves.) Anyway, I’m getting more and more uncomfortable waiting for Lorena (and not because of the cucumber water), so I’m ultimately kind of relieved that she doesn’t show up (is a pity, though, as I would have had a pretty incredible level of access…)

So now it’s back to traveling my way. I go rebook my room at the proper rate ($9), then head to the streetfood. I skip everything that looks like anything else I’ve had elsewhere, and eventually I see some people eating what for me is a kind of culinary holy grail (as laab was in Laos): Burmese tea salad. It’s made with a special kind of wet shredded fermented tea leaf, mixed with an incredible mélange of flavors: thin strips of cabbage, lime, roasted peanuts, fried onions, dried chick peas, etc etc etc. It’s just over the moon, but what’s better is the ruckus I cause by ordering it and sitting down with the people on the street. It’s really sweet: the father is running the stand; the mom gives up breastfeeding to come over; she has a few words of English, then sees my Burmese phrasebook and starts reading it; then the bomb daughter and brother come over; they pick up my other pages, and all 4 are reading and standing around me as I eat. Eventually, the mom finds the word “salad” in my book and I recognize the word for tea (“lepet”), so now I’m armed with “lepet thote” – a phrase I will repeat to great effect many times in the next few days. Then she goes and brings me a tomato salad to try (also unreal); I roll a cambodian smoke and a betel-mouthed guy comes up, sees my Burmese book and asks what I’m smoking; I offer him some and he puts a pinch in with his paan. Now that’s bold!
The salad and unlimited tea ultimately costs 45 cents, so I give the dad double, say thank you and move on, where I pass the most glorious streetside tobacco girl who reciprocates my eye for 30 seconds (good god) as I walk to the river (more on her soon). There’s a No Foreigners area on the bank that seems inhabited, but I know this is a country not to fuck around with that stuff. So I quickly put my journal away, and head back, walking down a market street and turning into a sketchy alley where there are a lot of exceedingly dark storefronts with plates of food out front. I poke my nose into a few, then get semi-beckoned into one with a glassful of god-knows.

And now it begins. It’s a bar; I discover that when a voice says, Drink this, and hands me a glass. Of course I drink it; I can tell it’s alcoholic, but it seems maybe beerish/ciderish or a little stronger. So I go in, and a very tall (for Myanmar) and very very dark man with betel teeth insists that I sit down (I will ultimately learn that they call him Somali – as in Somalian -- because he’s so dark), and now I’m committed – though quite scared. The smattering of English among the all-male, all-dodgy bar patrons is a bit like words using only one row of keys on a typewriter (a lipogram, for the Oulipians among you). But I drinking heavily, and they love it; I cheers various people and we each drain our glasses. And soon they start bringing me food -- little plates of chicken blood cakes, roasted corn (which the man breaks off the cob with his thumb), Indian-style veggies. They are fascinated -- but terrified -- of the Cambodian tobacco (which admittedly has few friends). When I took it out to roll, the barman brought me some newsprint to roll it in – I remember seeing that in India. Then they ask me if I like marijuana (for safety reasons I vociferously say no), and on we go with the drinks. It’s completely hysterical. They are clearly here every night, the exact same reprobates, and I’m no doubt the biggest break in the monotony they’ve had in a while. We wrangle our way around various topics, and every new Burmese word I learn they find fantastic. I tire quickly (the “beer” I’ve been drinking turns out to be 50 proof applejack – Mandalay mamagee) but the next day will be the Myanmar independence day, so I promise to come back. And I know for a fact that they’ll all be here.

On my way toward my hotel I stop and ogle a mid-seventies Mercedes mini-limo in near mint condition parked on a side street. There’s a man near it who speaks good English; the car’s not his, but he works for an English-language school just there. On a whim, I volunteer to come do a conversation class for his students the next day.

This pic is obviously from my class (actually from the second day, as I go back three days in a row). It was fantastic. As you can see, there were 40 people packed into that filthy room (and this was a private school), half my students were monks, everyone was incredibly appreciative, the headmaster had me for typical Burmese lunch PIC, and I realized that this too should be a part of 3rd-world tourism: teach every day, give a little, have an impact, but also get much more access (one of the monks who was asking me political questions slipped me a piece of paper, saying, “This is a very good website. Sadly, checking it now – as I obviously didn’t try while still in Burma -- I can’t read his writing enough to find it. Pity). So when I left I told them all I hoped I’d be back in a year (which is true), and if so, I’ll be their teacher every day.

Later, back to the bar. Of course it’s exactly the same: same crew, same irate wives coming in now and then and berating their deadbeat spouses (who slink down in their chairs but don’t get up, then sit silently for a while after the women leave but keep drinking and eventually perk up), the same glazed eyes and room temperature liquor and amusement at my antics. When I use the word for chili pepper, they think I want some (or they use it as an excuse to fuck with me) and someone runs out and brings back two huge green ones, daring me to try. Ha, they dared the wrong man! I ate one whole and then held the other one out for whoever would follow. The guy that they only call Crazy Man finally took me up on the offer, washing it back with his half-mug of clear lightning, oft-refilled.

(it turns out that he and another of the most-hammered guys in here are bicycle rickshaw drivers – word to the wise!)

But the best incident of all was when I took out the remainder of a cheroot that I had started earlier in the day, put out, and brought with me. They all were looking at it funny; then the barman took it from me and said, “No good tobacco. No Myanma (they leave off the “r”) tobacco” and hands me another. I start to unwrap it and he takes it away too, pulls it out of its plastic, taps the wide end down on the table and ties it off with the plastic wrap just above the ring, and gives it to me to smoke. The only issue is: it’s backward! Or at least I think it is. The wide part is supposed to go in your mouth apparently, but that wasn’t how I smoked the last one (because to us, of course, conical smokes go narrow side in). And it’s got a built-in filter on the wide end, which means that I cremated and inhaled the entirety of the lung protector my first time around. No wonder they were starting at it!

And I have to say, smoking it the right direction, it was considerably more pleasant.

Okay, I haven’t spoken much yet about the food, and that’s a shame. I ate so much and so well, I’m tempted to say it was my favorite cuisine yet (though truthfully I have been blown away everywhere. One really can’t go wrong, unless you eat snakes).

The best food/cultural experience I had, though, was when I took a walk across the train tracks. (I would have made the trip across the river, but it was sealed off to foreigners). It didn’t take me long; after 15 or 20 minutes I was in an admittedly frighteningly poor part of Yangon (I was looking for two outlying markets that were on my map that didn’t prove to be in the indicated places, but no matter). It was interesting: as the streets turned from pavement to mere dust and the houses from plaster to corrugated metal sheets leaning together, I started getting a little nervous. But just as I’d think of turning back, I’d smile at someone and say Mingala-ba and they’d wave and nod and smile and all was clearly kosher.

I passed two young studly guys (scary), but then noticed that they were manning a string attached to something. I looked up and couldn’t make anything out, but they pointed toward where the moon would be and I saw the speck of their kite, up where the valkyries must wait and watch, and again I realized how easy it is to misread and misconjecture. Too busy kite-flying to mug me.

Then I heard drums. A rolling staccato, almost African (so of course I was in my element), and as I walked by, the players could see I was tapping air castanets (no wrist gyrations though, I promise), and they hooted at me, so I started drum clapping and foot stomping along, faster and faster (and they increased with me), and of course that drew the neighborhood out, and the rhythm kept increasing and getting louder, and it ended in mass cheering.

I’m still a little delirious from all that (and only half a block further down the street) when a woman grabs my hand, firmly. She speaks to me and I have no idea, and I try to keep walking but she stays with me, holding me so there’s no way I can get away. She keeps talking and I keep saying, No Myanma, but then she stops us and slowly starts singing to me (she seems pretty sauced), gives me a very mischievous grin, and begins swaying a bit like she’s prompting me to dance with her in the middle of the road.

Kind readers (if any of you have endured this far), forgive me: I failed you and me both. I didn’t dance. I smiled awkwardly; I slunk back; I eventually broke grip and high-tailed away, wuss that I am. Ach! Where does this bone-marrow instinctual No come from? I know that had I danced, I would have been roundly laughed at, but isn’t that much of the point? In India I danced for a huge group of local musicians, and it was one of the best days of my life (if you haven’t heard that story, I’d be happy to tell you). Why not give her a few spins? Sway a little of my curious childhood learning? (Granted, had she seemed a little less like a lunatic, it might have helped). But no, I wilted, again, as apparently no amount of roach-eating or muscle wine or tarantula is enough to shore up my masculinity into a ready Of Course. Sad, but hopefully alterable. Some day.

Well, I ultimately pass a ramshackle curry stand and stop to eat. I look under the potlids and pick one, then point to the rice, but then trying to get some tea, I can barely get a trickle out of the teapot. Predictably I had unscrewed the cap, but didn’t know to take the lid off, which was more or less to them like not knowing that you have to tear the sugar packet to get to it.

Had a nice fish curry, then what should probably be described as the limburger of fried little whole fish (called something like en achow) -- funky, but delicious. The man serving was wearing the dirtiest shirt ever I’ve ever seen on someone not coal-mining (except for when Mike used to come back from his summer job scraping the inside of boilers – wow). Total cost was a third of what it was at the place behind Traders, so it pays to go to the provinces.

Then I stopped by this contraption , called mote-le mia (means couple according to one person, cupcake according to another): little fried savory cups – unreal. I think these were my favorite food apart from the tea salad (though when I got them a second time in regular Yangon, she only gave me about a third as many and they weren’t anywhere near as good).

Oh, one other rival was the Burmese version of an Indian dish called aloo that I had under a bridge; that was incredible: PIC Aloo means potato, and this had both fried chips and boiled bits, then like 40 other flavors and textures, and all this would then have a flavorful soup poured on top (bro, it was the same trick more or less as your homemade potato chips with veal stew).

A few more Burmese notes: most of the men I met, especially the ones that approached me out of nowhere, asked rather quickly, Are you a bachelor? Is this code?

Had a few disappointing breakfasts: eggrolls cut up with sauce over, a mixed cold noodle, the traditional Burmese soup/noodle/mash. Harder to find a good breakfast here than elsewhere, though the rest of the meals were killer.

Opted not to eat at either Tokyo Donuts or Tokyo Fried Chicken.

Lunch with the headmaster by the way consisted of pan tribio: veg curry, Indian soup, chicken curry (hin), lemon sauce, and a spicy veg relish. Amazing.

Now I’m going to have to do a side piece on eros in Burma, because it was very different – and very pronounced. I think I’ll so it as one of my columns for that new magazine, so if you’re interested, let me know. I had a number of encounters (apart from those with the men) that were very charged, and I think made more charged by the repression and restraint of this culture. The number of obstacles put in the way of having any actual encounter (no guests in the hotel, no privacy anywhere, no PDA allowed at all, etc) had, I must say, a surprisingly potent ability to facilitate daydreaming. I found it intensely stimulating (sorry bro; I know you hate to hear about girls).

Ok, sorry about the drop in stylistic flair these past few posts. I haven’t been able to keep the same groove I had at the beginning. But I still appreciate your attention, and I hope they haven’t been boring.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Post 21: In which your protagonist does his best imitation of a village octogenarian

hello again, didn't mean to leave you hanging for the gripping New Years Eve finale, so here goes (and burma posts to follow soon):

Well, much as I’d like to blame the village water or my Phnom sausage, I suspect that my shyness was once again the culprit: I went to be at 9. Yes, 9, and not a minute past, and slept well till I heard the kids come in at 12:30 (the two girls parting from the two boys, by the way; I doubt it would have differed for me), then slept again till 6:30 when my alarm went off. No dogs, no roosters, just the sleep of the 170-lb male who had only eaten a sandwich bag of sticky rice and 4 oranges the whole day.

Day 24: I wake feeling pretty damn good, surprisingly. Apparently, my microbial boarders were on a transit visa, happy to return to the next fool who bikes himself beyond the paleface pale. It was clearly a good idea to wait the extra day before undertaking the 24-hour, 3rd-world bus adventure over roads that from above must look like a mongrel with mange, and from the ground turn us each into tuning forks of nausea.

I still don’t really feel like eating, so for breakfast I only have a grilled liver sandwich (good re-entry food), but as a result, each time the bus stops for people to sit down to a meal or buy some victuals, I act like the village poor man, shuffling around the bus, rolling dubious smokes, nibbling from a bag of sticky rice dipping only in gao. It ultimately looks so bad that a concerned Lao man asks if I’ve taken lunch, and I say that I brought some with me and go hide.

It’s a full day, night, and morn of bus travel through mountainous Laos, so of course my journal pages fill and fill. Again the scenery is staggering, and I can see the payoff to the 2-day river trip to Luang Prabang (only the halfway point to Vientiane): a single jutting knob of a peak, 270-ed at the base by the Mekong, blinking its apex through intermittent clouds. From the river that must have been stunning, though unlikely to have been worth the 48 hours of tourist hell to get through; we made it in 12, and the view from beside was pretty fantastic in its own.

Culturally, again we see a wide range of ethnic villages, practices, and garb (with various old ladies having tied up their hair with cloth in such odd – to me -- shapes that they look like extras from the Star Wars bar scene). These village kids smile, but they don’t run down from the hills to wave at us as they did in the more remote zones. But were one to do only this trip and the morning market in Namtha, I think it would be adequate to feel like one had seen the northern Lao people; my river trip, plus bus, plus bus feels a little redundant.

One new element, though, is how much the people seem to pee. The bus stops literally every 2 hours, and almost everyone clears out to whizz. I keep trying to, thinking that we must be stopping since we won’t be able to for another 6 or 8 hours, but two hours later, sure enough, over we pull at any old flat spot with brush. The guy next to me, let’s call him Dr. Squirmy (as he keeps moving around bumping me, leaning against me, brushing my foot, shifting, and being a nuisance), goes out and goes every time. I can’t imagine how. One time when he rests his head on my shoulder -- _well_ across the line! – I nudge with elbow and give the WTF sign. From then on he’s a little better behaved. Eventually I offer him a lao lao; he sniffs it and makes the most pinched pained face I may have ever seen, and turns away in disgust. Eventually we reach the terminus; I ask Ventiane? and he says no. Love it.

Day 25: So I shook what I have of a tail feather to get to the airport for the earlier flight to Bangkok, hoping for the earlier connection to Yangon (Rangoon). Sadly, that flight only operates a few days a week, so I’ve now got almost 5 hours on my hands, only a dollar of local money left, and I’m at the airport. So of course I do the old heel-toe out to the main drag and go in search of breakfast. The options don’t look great: grilled meats which are delicious but expensive and not filling (and after two days of monking it, I really have my appetite back). I see a few places with the Lao version of congee: Chinese rice porridge that can be yummy but a 3-meat version can also be gotten on Chrystie street for $2.25, with tea (I once took a first date there -- oops). After taking in the sights and smog of a half mile or so, I gave up and went back to the closer of the congees. It had blood cakes in it, so that (in my new understanding) boded well.

Of course it was the best I’ve ever had (no photo, I’m afraid; camera too deeply packed). – By the way, I’m writing this in the business lounge in Vientiane, and a very attractive hostess woman just walked by, then into the women’s room, where I hear her hucking up loogies. What a continent. –
So I have to try the other one now, even though I’m feeling pretty full, and it was different but perhaps equally good. In both cases, only men were eating, but both times one of them started up conversation with me in English, liked that I spoke a bit of Lao, and of course it was a total blast. At the second place the lady even offered to refill my bowl for free, which I sadly couldn’t manage, having gone from Gandhi to Gael Greene in but a few hours. The moral is as it’s always been: go where you’re not expected to be, eat, and you will triumph. Jeremy, I hope you and your colon are listening.

From the lounge: Am I nearing the age where I’m supposed to be wearing one of those fishing vests when I travel abroad? Pop, do you have a closet full of those things I don’t know about?

How delightful is sweet tamarind? Like a date with an attitude, and I mean that in both senses (of date). Marvelous. Plus the incredible crackle snap of the outer “shell” – more life a wafer crust – then the inside looks like a giant ant and you ultimately spit out chestnut jewels. Bro, the kids would love these. I’ll buy some for them at the bodega.

The Bangkok biz lounge allows you to mix your own drinks, and they have the makings of negronis, so of course I’m in trouble. Three weeks of lao lao and the like makes the palate a wee bit jonesy for something a little more nuanced (and Italian). It’s weird though how bad the food is in these places. Are they catering to brits? It’s a lot of “pies” and the like; almost everything the serve is in puff pastry. Egads. In laos the summer rolls were worse than the pizza. How is that possible? In Thailand the most attractive thing is the beef stew pie. That’s like saying Renee Zellwegger (I know that’s not spelled right) is your best option for a lead actress. I thought this was Hollywood?!

Now a thing I’ve never learned how to do (as you all know) is to say no to free food or drink. This can get one in trouble. I don’t have my brother’s capacities (as we’ve noticed from the relative merits of our posts), so Herr Doktor Wuss-Ass really shouldn’t be negroni-ing mid-afternoon. (A guy just came out with a chef’s hat on – he should be in federal relocation.)
But what’s a former grad student to do? You show us crudite (by the way, how do you make a fucking egu in windows? It’s not a key command – that I can find – and it’s not a g-d “insert symbol” so WTF????) and cheese balls, and we think it’s a feast. And it will always be this way -- at least for me. That’s why my 1-drink-a-night policy in New York the last few months had an escape hatch if the drinks were free or if the 24-oz can cost the same as the 16-oz. I have rules, but I have _rules_.

Erratum (and what do I pen that won’t be an erratum later): the “Vietnamese” Mekong whiskey I alluded to in an earlier post is Thai. I kinda thought it was when I said it. Still stinks.

The other great specialite (no egu) of these lounges is the tuna sandwich, de-crusted. Now _that_ will make me go first class every time!

I’m going to say it right now: wealth is an obscenity, and I can’t endorse it -- for myself at least. So if I ultimately do well, I’ll have to capitulate and spend what’s necessary to support the lifestyle of my wife and kids (assuming). But if I’m alone, no way will I spend more than 100k per (in today’s dollars – and that’s a ton), and if I do, call me on it. Meanwhile, while they’re single, my kids will be entitled to whatever in their day is the equivalent of 30k-now a year (obviously once they’re married and breeding, they get more). So if they want to fingerpaint all day and can drink PBR, that’s their choice, but if they have higher standards, they must earn. All extras pass down the line. I don’t mind siring a line of dreamers and drifters and hippies, as long as they’re not too spoiled and have some sense of things. And they will _always_ be funded 5 grand whenever they want to spend a year in Asia – but just 5 grand.

A number of you commented on the apparent nudity in the rat video. I was wearing a towel, but I guess that wasn’t clear, and I honestly didn’t think it would come across as weird being shirtless in SE Asia. Sorry about that. But one of my burgeoning you-write-for-me-now-let’s-be-friends since I started back at Nerve, Elizabeth Manus, asked if I was a “introvert exhibitionist.” At first I pooh-poohed this, but then I felt the nail strike deeper and deeper. It makes a certain sense, though: the introvert suddenly and miraculously becomes a bit hopeful, saying, Wait, I might be noticed if only I try? So, yes, I will put myself out there, always with fingers crossed, virtually always stung and disappointed by response unequal to my hopes. And such, they say, is the nature of…

I believe this day of drinking is positioning me perfectly for an evening in Yangon (Rangoon) spent snacking and cherooting at the tea shops (where the eating is good), then crashing hard. After Captain Squirmoid’s antics and the psoriasitic road last night, that might just be ideal.