Mexico City

OK!
So.
Anyway.

Some of you may know that I will be imminently starting work as a research assistant in the Neurology Department of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine [December 2018 update: oops we all know how that turned out!]. In Baltimore.  The onboarding process takes some time though, and I can do all of that remotely, so I decided to go to Mexico for the month that I have free.  So here I am, and it has been five days, all of which I have spent exploring Mexico City (El Distrito Federal).

My mom was skeptical of my booking a flight that left at one in the morning, as well as of the airline I chose. Aeromexico has a sub-two-star rating on Yelp.  But that was the cheapest option, and the similarly priced flight from one of the big American carriers would have gotten me into the  DF at nine at night, as opposed to five in the morning, which I preferred due to the fact that it gave me more time to explore the city.  It also seemed like all of the really negative Yelp reviewers had made amateur mistakes like scheduling five-minute changeovers or losing their departure card. So I was pretty sure that I would be fine.

So, at Dulles at 11 in at night there was only one check-in line visible, and all of the people were speaking Spanish. The flight was full, so I had to check my bag. Also, I was so focused on just making sure that I got on the plane successfully, that I didn't pack anything in my carry-on bag.  Literally all I had for the plane ride was an empty bag.  One of the passengers was carrying-on an expensive camera, and turned out that he was a cameraman for CNN, going to cover the Hurricaine, and that was another thing; I was starting my Mexican adventure right when the worst storm ever recorded was scheduled to make landfall.

In the terminal, I had some conversations in Spanish, and I got suggestions for where to go in Mexico.  In future blog posts, if I go to one of the suggested places, I will let you know. 

The flight was pretty uneventful.  I really slept most of the way, and had some pretty vivid dreams.  To drink, I initially asked for water, but changed it to be the super fizzy Mexican Agua Mineral.  Was good.

Landed.

In the immigration line, right ahead of me there was a tall-ish guy with dark curly hair who was happily chatting with a woman who was physically next to us, but a bit of head of us in line due to it's serpentine form.  Then we got into a conversation about Mexico, and where we both lived in the DC area. An interesting fact that came up was that, in spite of his fluent Spanish, Mexicans can tell immediately that he is Puerto Rican, from his accent, and the way he looks.  This shouldn't be surprising.  Still, I forget sometimes that all of the Spanish speaking places have accents as different as American and British accents. It turned out that the woman was one of his co-workers. He works for some health-related department of the federal government, and he sometimes has to give presentations to Spanish speaking audiences who are all from the same country.  He told me that the co-worker woman, in spite of not being a native speaker, could, due to her being a philologist, suggest regional Spanish words to use that are tailored to the audience.   He also gave me further suggestions for where to go, emphasizing the beauty of the town Puebla. I told him where my hostel was, and he suggested that since he knows the right way to get a cab in the airport (slightly complicated in MEX), and since the place where he was staying is in the next neighborhood over, and since he speaks fluent Spanish, we could share a cab.

When visiting a foreign country, it is sometimes unwise to be trusting of strangers.  But the way he was being so friendly with his co-worker, and the way he described where he lived in DC all added up, so I went with him.

Before getting to the cab area, I had to clear customs. I pressed a button, and a green light turned on. Ivan (the guy with curly hair) kindly explained that the way they decide who to search is the pressing of a button, which randomly causes a green or red light to turn on.

So, I was glad for his help, and I got to the hostel safely at 7 AM, and I gave him my email and the URL of this blog.

I confess that before leaving DC I had briefly considered the feasability of walking all the way across Mexico City as a way to arrive at the hostel while simaltaneously 'getting to know the place'.  This would have been a bad idea.

I had chosen a small hostel in a nice quiet neighborhood called 'La Roma Norte'.  There were some huge hostels near the Zocalo, but I went with this smaller one because I read that this neighborhood was nice,  which it was.  The blocks near the hostel had many plants and trees, as well as Parisian-ish architecture, which had been promoted by the dictator Porfirio Diaz. The hostel itself had a nice living room, with plaster moldings on the walls, and ceiling height glass doors that opened inward, revealing a stone railing that looked out to the street.

The surrounding areas,  Roma and Condesa, are well-off too, with upscale areas that look just like Clarendon (neighborhood in Arlington). 

But I was really tired, and didn't yet notice this; I fell asleep on the couch, not wanting to wake the other guests in the dorm by setting up my belongings.

Woke up.  Showered.

It was time to try buying a Mexican SIM card.  I had heard that you could just buy them in convenience stores, so I went out to find an OXXO or 7-11.  But at every convenience store I went to, I kept on being referred to other convenience stores.  Finally I arrived at one that did have SIM cards, but the guy said that they only had regular SIM cards, not micro or nano.

So, from a guy working in an electronics shop which also did not have SIM cards, I finally got directions to walk way over to the Avenida de la Reforma, where I found an official TelCel store in  a shopping mall.  The guy behind the counter was very professional (wearing a suit and tie) and I was able to understand most of the points of the way the charges for minutes and data worked.  But sometimes I had to tell him 'no te comprendo, pero yo te creo'.

I bought an envelope in which to put any money that I would keep in my locker in the hostel. In selecting the envelope, I was reminded of the meaning of the word 'tamaño'.

So I get back to the hostel, lock up the things like my passport that needed to be locked up, and I ask Alejandro, the very friendly guy who works there, about where I should go. He suggests going to either the Zocalo, or the neighborhood Coyoacan, where Frida Kahlo lived.  I chose the latter, and took the metro there. The thing was, though, that the line for Frida Kahlo's house was 45 minutes long.  So, at the suggestion of a certain couple I talked to, I went to Leon Trotsky´s house.  The coolest thing about being there was just knowing that he had lived there.  There were pictures of him with Frida Kahlo, and many memorabilia.  The problem was, though, that the English guide was kind of dull.  The Spanish-speaking guide on the other hand, was very didactic and clear, but I could only understand 30% of what he said. In the end I learned about how the house was fortified and guarded, and how the eventual assasination went down.  Very sad.  He was from a Jewish family, BTW.

So then I ventured to the plaza of Coyoacan. It was a beautiful scene of hundreds of Mexicans just sitting around on benches, having fun, and there was one of those classic out-of-tune organs that the guy plays just by cranking it, and, even though I don't remember clearly, there must have been a guy selling balloons. There were actually two adjoining plazas, and one had a fountain in the shape of coyotes.  I later learned that 'Coyoacan' means 'place with coyotes'.  I am guessing that the name came before the fountain.

To eat, I had some elotes, corn kernels with salt, chili peppers, and lime juice. 

Adjoining that plaza was a magnificient colonial church.  The interior was flanked by intricate carvings of saints, about six on each side.  The altar was incredibly ornate, as well, and there was a lot of guilding.  You deserve a better description, but all I can think of to say was that it was in a very colonial-Catholic style, and very impressive.    The priest was saying about something about 'este es mi sangre, este es mi cuerpo', and there was a woman in a white dress with a white veil.

Afterwards, I walked around the plaza a bit more.  I asked a guy 'Why do so many restaurants specify themselves as Mexican restaurants?  Since we are in Mexico, shouldn't it be enough to just say 'Restaurant'?'

There was night and there was morning: a Second Day.

With two Spanish women who were doing their masters degree on monkeys in Chiapas, I went to the anthropology museum.    To get there, we had to walk through a park known as Bosque de Chapultepec.  In a way that was similar to a park that I saw near Coyoacan, the park was fairly densely planted with trees, so that it was a bit of a cross between a park and a forest.  It was Sunday, and there were many people riding their bikes and rollerblading.

Ivan, the guy from line, had highly recommended the anthropology museum, saying that I should devote several hours to exploring it.

It was a large museum, almost certainly larger (and better) than the Natural History Museums of New York and DC. There were two stories, stretched around a very large courtyard, which featured a unique fountain, in the form of 'rain' falling down onto the cement from a gigantic tree-mushroom type thing.  Along the length of the building that stretched around the coutyard were many salas, each devoted to a different time period or Mesoamerican civilization. Sala means 'hall' or 'room', but not all rooms are salas. A living room in a house is called the 'sala', but a bedroom is not.  I spent a good deal of time in the 'origins of man' and 'population of the Americas' rooms, taking the time to read all of the explanations in Spanish (some were available in English, too).  Even though they were excellent exhibits, I spent too much time in them, because there are many exhibits like that at museums around the world.  What was truly special were the other Mesoamerican civilization focused rooms. Each was completely filled with priceless artifacts, with detailed, well-written explanations. What was surprising was that there were many more Mesoamerican civilizations than I had previously known about.  For example, the Teotihuacan ruins were built by a pre-Aztec civilization that were not the Maya.  In total I spent about four hours exploring the place, but I eventually stopped reading the Spanish, because my brain hurt. One highlight was the large round  Aztec 'Sun Stone', often mistaken for the Aztec calendar. It is shown below, but the photo is not mine:

 


Also interesting were various codices, folding books in which civilizations colorfully recorded their history in their pictographic writing systems.

I took a break by the pond in the middle of the courtyard, and I talked to a Mexican family, and their seven year old boy practiced his English with me.  I also ran into the couple (whom I learned was Brazilian) that had suggested that I visit Leon Trotsky´s house.

Afterwards, we went to a market (2017 update: this was Mercado de la Merced), where we were the only tourists.  One of the Spanish women thought that it had herbalist and witchcraft (brujería) related stalls, but it was just a huge crowded market, selling ordinary things.  We had some good lamb tacos, though, and it was still interesting overall. 

Next, we walked to the Zocalo, and viewed the cathedral, which was even more impressive than the church in Coyoacan, and included a chamber that had more of a white-marble look.  There were carvings on the side, covered by ceiling-height wooden gates, which were themselves impressive.  In the middle there was a large, ornately carved 'building within a building'.  '¿What could be up there?', I wondered to myself. Organ music was playing.

Right outside, there were glass windows on the ground, displaying the original Zocalo stones, built from the destroyed Aztec temple.  'We were a bunch of really nice people back then', remarked one of the Spanish women.

Made efforts to see Diego River murals inside of a fancy building.  They were closed that day, though.

Had some beers.

The Spanish women went to see some mariachis, and I went to see the Palacio de Bellas Artes, a concert hall with beautiful white marble architecture on the outside, and art-deco architecture on the inside.  As I approached, I saw some Muslims praying in the square.  There was a Diego Rivera mural there as well (Man at the Crossroads), but I was not able to see it. 

On the way back to the hostel from the metro, I had quesadillas for dinner, which I then bought from the same quesadilla stand for the next two nights.  One of them included huitlocoche, also known as corn smut.

The next day I went to Teotihuacan. When walking in, I bargained the price of a small paper guide down from 100 pesos to 30 pesos.  When walking around I heard many didactic tour guides, and I would sometimes listen in on them, but never blatantly followed them. It sounded like they were worth hiring. Instead, I just read the informational signs, which were just OK. But still, I was impressed by the size of the city: it was over a mile long.  Down the main stretch, there were some murals and carvings, but not too many.  Recall that I prefer to not take too many photographs.   

I climbed the Pyramid of the Sun, and snapped this photo:

Walked around the base and saw these flowers:

Climbed the pyramid of the moon:

When I was on top of the Pyramid of the Moon, I actually read my guide (it was in Spanish), and I saw that there was a palace to the side of the pyramid of the moon (the right side in the picture above).  There were some murals:

But then I further read my guide, and found that there were many resplendently painted sights scattered outside of the main area of the park.  The next three photos do not do these amazing murals justice (found in the ruins of a palace called (if I remember correctly) Pantitla.  The parts that were still there looked like they were painted yesterday.  The human figures in this one are all having a good time, festively waving flags and playing instruments.  My iPhone ran out of power, and I was not able to take a picture of the area above this mural, which portrayed Tlaloc, the water god, with drops of water flowing from his hands.

Note the wave pattern that is very similar to the ones found in ancient greece.

There were three or four more areas like this, all with amazing paintings, but the park closed before I could get to them.  I actually plan on returning to Teotihuacan when I go back to Mexico city in a few weeks to see the murals I missd.

Went back to the hostel, and then Ivan called me to have dinner with him and his friend from Mexico city.  We went to a place that had a sort of 'elementary school' theme which was located in one of the upscale areas, and I had some sort of steak sandwich.  Ivan is a super friendly, funny guy, and he was joking around with the staff the whole time. They had dots pre-printed on the cards for the playing of dots, and I won a very competitive game.  Afterwards, they drove me around the city, showed me some monuments and some prominent art-deco architecture, and pointed out a bad neighborhood near the Zocalo to which I should never go.  Thanks a lot for a great night,


The next day I got up early and successfully visited Frida Kahlo's house.

On the way there, I asked a security guard standing in front of a blue house '¿Esta es una cas azul, pero no es la casa azul de Frida Kahlo, verdad?'

He said, 'Si, la casa azul de Fida Kahlo está por alli'.

 I payed for one of those automatic audio guides, and it was completely worth it. The house was full of her paintings, and memorabilia.  She had an incredibly painful life, having overcome polio as a child, only to have her body nearly destroyed in a bus accident when she was 18.  Her marriage to Diego Rivera was passionate, if somewhat unfaithful, and she was an enthusiast for traditional Mexican culture, which was reflected in the decorations of the house.

The pain of her life is reflected in the stern, resolute countenances of her subjects, which are often in contrast with their colorful surroundings. One particularly interesting painting was a still-life of fruit.  At first glance, it looks beautiful, but then you see that there are mushrooms sprouting from many of the fruits.  They are also cut open, in in a rough, un-careful way.  The general effect is to create symbolism which the audio guide told me is related to Kahlo's fertility issues.  The fact that such deep symbolism is found in a still life, which, I imagine, are sometimes just boring decorative pictures, is part of why Frida Kahlo is considered a master.

There were also some cubist works of Diego Rivera.  His cubism period is less known, but I did notice that one of the paintings included a clock, which is a motif that appears in some of his other work [2018 update: was confused between Salvador Dali and Diego Rivera. Won't happen again].

I was glad to have seen some of the best ancient and modern Mexican art within two days.  I even think that there are distinct bridges between the two eras, as Kahlo and Rivera both include traditional Mexican elements in their work, and the distorted decorations of ancient Meso-American art are slightly surreal.

Also, the Trotsky memorabilia in this house was actually even better than the Trotsky memorabilia in Trotsky´s house.

A newspaper announcing the successful Russian revolution:

There was also a telegraph from Diego Rivera to some Mexican communist organization, asking for help influencing the government to grant Trotsky assylum, and opining that the Mexican Stalinists should relax, and stop threatening violently.

I also took pictures of Frida´s mole recipe.  I had not paid for permission to photograph anything, so I only photographed things that I thought I might read later. 

Later that day, I went to Xochimilco, where there are, to this day, Chinampas, gardens on pads of soil in the middle of a lake, which were previously cultivated by the Aztecs. The problem was, though, that the area is getting urbanized so quickly that it is not the Garden of Eden that it once was.  There is a nature reserve nearby that might be worth visiting someday, though.

That is it for now.  I will tell you about my visit to the Dolores Olmedo Museum to see more works of Kahlo and Rivera, my Dia de Muertos in Oaxaca, and surfing at Puerto Escondido in future posts.  I am publishing this post on November 5, from Puerto Escondido, sitting at a computer outside a supermarket. There is a TV here that is showing the Mexican soccer team play Nigeria (Mexico is winning 1-0), and these guys sitting here get REALLY excited when it looks like Mexico is about to score.

On The Trail

Before I begin, let me say that I went to the JHU senior prom tonight, and it was a lot better than I expected.

So, anyway, this post is about the three day backpacking trip that I went on during Spring break. Shortly after, I wrote an outline, but am just now taking the time to complete it.

It was Spring break.  I had already hung out at home, and gone out to a bar with my friend Joe, so I decided to hike on the Appalachian trail.

My first time hiking on the trail was with Joe, and my friends Tony and Ryan when we were sixteen. I had to miss the first day of hiking for Passover, but my mom graciously drove me out to meet them for the second day.  I packed a tent, but we hiked the whole route in one day, so I ended up carrying it all of the way to Harper's Ferry without even using it.

The next hiking trip was for my senior project, at the end of high school, in which my friend Andrew Kramer and I hiked from Harper's Ferry to Port Clinton, Pennsylvania (about 200 miles). He showed exceptional adaptability and ruggedness, in spite of never having gone on a backpacking trip before. We  also started with another companion who lasted for two nights. I kept a fairly comprehensive diary of that trip, and will eventually finish typing it up, eventually. When we were done, my grandparents graciously drove to the middle of Pennsylvania to pick us up, on a day's notice.

Then, the summer before my sophomore year of college, I did a hike where I started at the southern point of where Joe, Tony, Ryan, and I had started in 2009.  My mother graciously drove me out to the trail, and I  made it to Harper's Ferry in two nights, finishing in the dark. In the morning, I took the train home.

So, starting this trip, I had done a solid section from the middle of Northern Virginia to the middle of Pennsylvania. I decided to go south from where I had started three summers ago.

I made the typical preparations for backpacking, but also went on a slightly expensive trip to Casual Adventure in Arlington, where I bought, among other things, a dry bag, and a pair of red flip flops, that I am wearing as I write this.

The morning of the hike, my mother graciously drives me out to my starting point (shown above).
I start hiking in the right direction.  See, it was Spring break, so I was expecting it to be a warm hike. In reality, though, it was the last day of Winter. Still, I had been a boy scout from fifth through eighth grade, so, naturally, I was prepared.

As I was climbing up the very first ridge, I noticed the phenomenon where ice crystals raise up small bits of mud, creating a crunchy hiking experience. I broke off some of the ice crystals, and saw how they were formed in an array of hexagonal columns.

At some point, as I was walking down a slope,  a raccoon was walking ahead of me on the trail.  It noticed me, and we both stood still,oll with it's body facing forward, and it's head looking to the side and backwards.  It left the trail to the right.

I also saw a family of deer.

Throughout the day, I kept on seeing things that looked familiar, and realized that I had not started at the place that I thought that I had started; my previous summer hike had actually started further south of where I had started, so some of the hike was re-tracing in reverse where I had been before.

I came upon yet another familiar sight: a shelter that I had slept in before. I realized that I had also hiked this part of the trail on a trip led by my AP Chemistry teacher Junior year of high school, David Soles.  I was not sure, however, whether that whole trip was on the Appalachian Trail, so it did not factor into my knowledge of the sections of the trail that I knew for sure that I had hiked.

As I walked, I saw some bear scat on the trail.

Also, I had packed matzah, and ate a lot of it that day.  I am not sure whether matzah is a good backpacking food or not; it is dense in calories, but the square box does not fit cleanly into a backpack.  I nevertheless thought to myself: 'I may be eating the bread of affliction, but I am not feeling afflicted; to the contrary, I am having a great time'.

I saw a woodpecker (with a red, crested head) on the side of the trail, pecking away.  I stood and watched it, until it noticed me, and flew away.  There were quite a few more audible wood-pecks in the depths of the woods as I hiked that day.

Eventually, I came to the shelter, and I decided to set up my tent inside the structure.  I also remembered this place from my junior year hiking trip.  I took out all of my stuff, and put it into an array, putting it back into my backpack, in a more organized way.  Pack organization is a key point of enjoyable hiking, but it can take two weeks or more to nail a good system down.   This reorganization is one of the several candidate times at which I may have lost the family heirloom that I lost on this trip.

A guy named Paul came to the shelter.  We chit-chatted a bit, but he set up his tent further away.  I made myself dinner on my white-gas stove.  A bad combination of dried vegetarian chili, mashed potatoes, and ramen, but very filling.

----------------
The next morning, I woke up, and snapped this photo:

and this photo:

And it was still snowing.

I had a quick breakfast of fig newtons and bread of affliction, said goodbye to Paul (who started at the same point as me, but was just doing an out-and-back), and started on my way.

I was walking through powdery, virgin snow. It was hard work, and I was sweating.  I should have taken off layers earlier in the day than I did.

So, powdery virgin snow, and it was still snowing. At first, it was a mixture of small flakes and sleet. It was getting all over the bushes and trees, and everything was white and quiet. This was the solitude in nature that I was looking for.

As I kept on walking, I noticed remarkable ice formations on the trees.  On the branches, and on the jagged bark edges of trees, ice crystals, lines of hexagonal columns, had deposited, all facing the same direction.  It was as if someone had moved all of the trees, and some of the rocks, two inches in the same direction, and that they had grown tiny streaks of ice in the wake of their path.  When I saw these, I was surrounded by frozen mist and clouds, and the crystals were deposited into the wind.

I saw another bird.  Lacking a crest, I am not sure whether or not she was a woodpecker, but she was certainly pecking wood: a thin fallen tree, broken halfway through the trunk, reclining at an angle. I briefly stood there watching her.
She turned to me, and said "Heed well the words of Aristotle and Plato" and then she flew off.

Due to my swishy rain pants I had been making slow progress, and I was slightly worried about reaching the next shelter. Still I took the time to walk point-two miles to a lookout point.  The lack-of-a-view, just mist, snow, and clouds was deeply calming.  I thought further of the reason that I was not taking very many photos.  Doing so would make me focus on documenting everything, and negate the serenity that is a natural part of hiking.

At some point in my hike, I walked through a grove of trees that had been charred in a fire, or attacked by gypsy moths.  Their skeletons formed silhouettes against the mist and the grey sky, reaching upwards.

That day, I also saw a dead tree trunk with the most perfect array of mushrooms that I had ever seen. Diagonal lines in both directions.

As I walked, I soon found myself in grave peril; it had gone just above freezing, and the blades of ice were falling from the trees.  I was hiking in a forest of falling razor blades, and it caused me great discomfort.

Also, since some of the snow was melting, but it was still around freezing, I saw icicles forming on the rocks in real time.  I thought back to the time, when, as a kid, my dad tricked me into thinking that the large icicles on the rocky outcroppings on the way to Pittsburgh were 'world famous'.

At some point I had crossed into Shenandoah National Park. Also, I had passed two men at some point, and was no longer walking on Virgin snow.  Instead, I was walking on two sets of footprints.

It was getting dark, and I was almost at the shelter, and I decided to stop, and check my map.  I saw a strange dark blob about 25 yards ahead of me.  I should add that I was not at the shelter I wanted to be at; there was one further ahead, that I would have liked to reach. I look up from my map and I see a hiker coming through the woods.  He calls out to the dark blob, which then moves and responds; the dark blob was a guy, with his back towards me, and a trash bag covering his backpack!

There were three guys a couple years younger than me, and they told me that we were right by the shelter.  We had to walk down a long, downward-sloped side-trail to find it. There was an older couple there, who had been hiking at a similar pace as the three guys for a few days.

All through the day, I had been fairly warm, but at the campsite, I was fairly cold.  My boots were slightly damp, which was no problem during the day, because in the morning they were dry, and in the afternoon it was slightly above freezing, and I was moving.  Now, the temperature was definitely below freezing.

There were many things to do to before bed, and brushing your teeth and cooking dinner can take a long time when it is freezing and you are trying to keep your pack organized.  My dinner that night was a better combination.  Also, I had a hard time staying warm that night but by using all of my clothes I was able to get comfortable.

I got up early the next morning but got slightly lost trying to leave the shelter site; there were several trails going off in other directions, and the trail to leave was actually obscure and hard to find again in the dim light; the older couple had left, and the three guys were still asleep.  Being lost is especially disconcerting in the freezing cold.  But I found it.

So, in the morning, it was still nice to be hiking in the snow, but it was not a fresh powdery wonderland like the day before.  Instead, the footprints in the snow had melted, and refrozen in an icy fashion.

As the morning progressed it quickly grew warmer; the snow was melting all around me, and I could see the grey clouds blowing away in the wind.  It seemed like they were being fed by a cold steam from the melting snow.    I went to a lookout point and snapped these photos:

The steam on the mountains and the overcast, yet still moving sky created a sense of changing weather.  It was, after all, the second day of Spring, and some blue is even visible in the pano-shot. This was a change from the other photographs, shot a minute earlier.

Saw another woodpecker.

So, there were many other beautiful views; the Shenandoahs really let you see the 'shape of the mountains'.  I crossed Skyline Drive many times, and the signs were in that national park font that evokes a strong feeling of Americana.

The trails here were my favorite, very narrow, and on interesting, rocky terrain along the ridgeline, with small trees to the side, not much taller than me.  The pine trees were, of course, very green, but the cool, sunny, and pleasantly moist weather made them seem even greener. It is difficult to describe this weather, but I had taken off all of my layers, except for the standard shorts and t-shirt.

Saw some interesting wood:

I was hiking quickly, though, because I had to meet my mom at six.  My diet during the day consisted mostly of Fig Newtons.

Eventually I get to the road where I was supposed to meet my mom, but I decided to talk to the ranger at the ranger station of the Shenandoah National Park entrance. There were two roads, and I was not exactly sure where to find her.  If I had thought for a second I would have known what to do, but I was really tired.  Again thanks so much for graciously driving out there to get me!

The ranger was not very helpful, but so I walked for two minutes, and found the white car by the side of the road; but it was locked and empty!  All I could do was wait, and ponder all of the terrible scenarios that could lead the car's being left empty by the side of the road.  But then mom came to the car from the direction I had originally come; she had gone hiking that way while I was talking to the ranger.

Update

Dear Friends and Family,
I realize that I have been out of contact with you for some time.  I do not believe that I 
wrote about the very conclusion of my Vietnam trip.  During the two days in which I collected
my belongings in Singapore, and the two months that I was working, I had limited time, and 
neglected to write, in favor of other recreational activivies.  Access to this google blog has 
also been restricted during my travels in China.  Here are the essentials of what I have been doing.
-I toured central Vietnam, and visited the old imperial city of Hue, and saw the ruined forbidden
city of the Nguyen dynasty.  I am not sure how to pronounce 'Nguyen'.  
-At a different site in Hye, a imperal mausoleum,
I saw one of the loveliest Asian courtwards of my travels, with roofs arranged so that I felt comforably enclosed, but still had access to the sky.   There was also a courtyard with decently manicured bonsai, in an
attractive array.  There was also the blue car that can be seen in the background of the famous picture of the Buddhist monk on fire.  I should mention that the events of the 1970's were not a major theme of this trip, and that
I hope to better understand them in future readings. 

-I then journeyed to the immaculately preserved trading town of Hoi An, purposefully left untouched by both sides in the American War.  I ran into my acquaintance from Hanoi, as I rode my bicycle past the tea house where he was sitting.  I had a cup of iced chicory coffee, and we had a nice conversation.  The place was run by deaf people, and the silence was serenely peaceful.  A crowded, chaotic, dusty, hot, humid city like Hanoi will stress you out even if you are exclusively enganged in recreational activities as I was, and  that tea house was the most relaxing place that I have ever been.  There was a friendly, silent confrontation however, when I tried to pay them for the coffee, which I guess they did not keep track of since I had ordered it at the same table as my friend, who had previously ordered.
 
-I should mention that I also visited the thousand-year-old ruins of the Champa kingdom, whose architectural features included columns directly influenced by classical Greece, and roofs influened by Polynesia.
-In the Saigon (that's the coloquial name) airport I finally had Vietnamese food that was basically the same as the food from Eden Center, the Vietnamese shopping center in Northern Virginia, where they fly the South Vietnamese flag.  Talk about a lost cause.
-In Singapore I stayed in my favorite hostel.  It is probably the cheapest accomodation in Singapore.  Like everything in that city, it is immaculately clean, but it is a very minimal operation.  It get's Western backpackers such as myself, but it also get's a whole host of other interesting people, such as an incredibly friendly Malaysian-citizen auxiliary police officer, and some slightly shady, but still great to talk to Indian businessmen.  They all remembered me from when I stayed there before I went to Vietnam, which was nice, and I  went on a jog with the police officer, who is training for his fitness test.  He had a funny little joke; the first time I stayed there, I had the bunk next to him (on the bottom), and before he went to sleep, he would hang up a towel from the top bunk to block any light and sound, and he would say 'OK, it's closing time, I am closing up the shop!'.
 
-I should also mention that I randomly ran into one of my Singaporean JHU BME classmates on the subway, after getting my stuff from storage.  Gabriel Chew, are you reading this?
----------------------------------
I waved goodbye to Singapore from the plane, and I could see across the Island, and the straits of Johor, to Malaysia.  A foggy overcast, combined with the tropical sun gave everything a warm orange glow, but prevented me from seeing to the Eastern or Western tips of the island.    
 
 From the Kuala Lumpur airport, all you could see was oil palm plantations from horizon to horizon, but the architeture of that airport was highly impresssive, and included a long, gently gently curved arch supporting a concourse, under which planes taxied.
 
After going through customs in Shanghai, I was happy to see the smiling face of a someone holding a sign that said 'Jordan Mandel, Johns Hopkins University'. 
 
That's enough for now.  
 
Jordan

Leaving North Vietnam

It has been a great time.  I stayed a few more days in Hanoi after writing my last post, and headed out towards an old (but very touristy) French hill station called Sapa, and hmingled with the Hmong people for a little bit, and visited some pretty isolated towns, and saw some amazing landscapes.

It is probably true that all mountain ranges have a distinctive appearance; my dad could certainly identify the mountains of Hawaii from a single photograph, and I could identify the Appalachians. Similarly, the Tonkinese Alps, as Westerners call the mountains of Northern Vietnam, have a very distinctive appearance: larger than the Appalachians, but still rounded: just as covered-in-green as the Appalachians, but green with a deeper hue.  The subtropical vegetation is broken by areas of (green) grass and rice-paddies, so that it is rare to see a mountain completely covered in forest, as the Appalachians are.  This brokenness should not, however, be described as 'spotty'. If the different classes of green areas could be described as a checkerboard in three shades of green, there would be at most four squares per mountain.  Though the vegetation of these mountains is shorter than the forests of the Appalachians, it is generally more dense.   I think that the deer, with no predators left, eat all of the underbrush of the Appalachians, causing the relative sparseness of vegetation on the forest floor.

A distinctive feature of the mountains of the older islands of Hawaii is how clear it is that water has been the main force shaping them over the millions of years.  The shape of the Tonkinese Alps is notably less fluvial.

The agricultural practices of this area of Vietnam are also very interesting.  Along the sides of the mountains there are terraced rice paddies, just like you've seen in pictures.  Cultivating these paddies looks like incredibly difficult work. Building them in the first place requires basically amounts to changing the landscape of a whole entire mountainside.  When that task is complete, cultivating the rice can involve walking waist-deep in the mud, directing your ox has he plows, or does some kind of other kind of work, something I saw several times.  I like the fact that, if one were to make a topographical map of these areas, the map would be 100% accurate in the places where the rice paddies are.  Another amazing sight was when, travelling along a ridge, there would be a small or medium sized hill in the valley that was completely covered in rice, so that the top of the hill was  a single paddy.  It looked like Legos.

 They grow corn in these mountains as well, and the way they plant it is also interesting.  When being driven, in the Eastern US, I like to look out the window, and look down the spaces between the long rows of corn as I go by.  Here, the corn was planted densely, but haphazardly, which was a bit unsettling.  It was also planted on some very steep areas of the mountains, without terracing.  "How do they do that?", I thought.

I stayed a night in a Hmong village.  They are very kind, but also very poor.  The food that they served me (I was paying them) was actually not very much (it was enough, though, and I was satisfied), and it is possible that the shortness of the Hmong is caused by their diet as well as their genes. That is just a guess though, I would not take it too seriously.  The Hmong have probably learned English better than the ethnic Vietnamese, and it serves as a common language between the ethnic minorities that live in the mountains. I was even surprised when I was able to exchange greetings with with a Hmong girl who was my age... in Spanish!

As I mentioned, here are many other ethnic minorities in these mountains besides the Hmong (such as the Dzao and Thai), all of who have their own clans, identified by a color. Each ethnic group has their own language (with dialects for each clan), clothing, and customs. The Hmong have colorful clothing, and the women wear combs in their hair.  The Dzao women have headdresses made of red cloth.  I saw many other styles of clothing, but I regrettably did not learn what ethnicities belong to which style of clothing.  Particularly striking was one ethnic group where the old women wore majestic black headdresses, but many of these people seriously did not like having their picture taken.

I bought a few Hmong handicrafts, and their weaving reminds me of that of the people of Guatemala, examples of which can be seen at my house in Arlington.

...

After  doing all of that, I came back to Hanoi for a day before a one-day, two night trip to Halong Bay, from which I returned today.  The highlight of this day was the water puppet theater, located across the street from the lake that I mentioned in an earlier post (the lake where I bought the plums).  I would have to say that the water puppets were the most amusing thing that I have seen in my life.  I use the word 'amusing' in a very literal sense, and I acknowledge that the word 'amusing' is not taken very seriously these days. We have all seen a movie or a TV show where, right before the villain is about to vanquish the hero, the villain goes into a prolonged speech about how 'amusing' the efforts of the hero efforts of the hero and his friends are, which in turn, gives the hero a chance to make a miraculous escape, and ultimately prevail.  In contrast, the water puppets were actually entertaining, and caused me to grin and lightly chuckle throughout the show.

The theater was a about two thirds of the size of a typical American movie theater, and the stage consisted of a shallow pool of water, about the width of the singles court in tennis, and about  third as long.  On the side of the stage opposite the audience there was a screen with it's bottom edge barely submerged in water, behind which stood the puppeteers. They operated the puppets using long poles which extended towards the audience from below the screen, so the that the puppets would move and dance on the surface of the water. These poles must have been rigged with wires that controlled the finer movements of the puppets.  This form of puppetry extends back in history for about 1000 years, and was originally performed on the rice paddies surrounding Hanoi.

To the left of the stage, from the audience's perspective, was a platform upon which sat an ensemble of musicians who played traditional Vietnamese music which included an introductory piece, and accompaniment for each act of the puppet show.

The ensemble was dressed in traditional Vietnamese clothing, and was led by two female singers who also played small percussion instruments, and included a flautist (who played a traditional wooden flute: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1o), a traditional Vietnamese zither or dulcimer, a violin-like instrument that consists of a single string, and a sound box at the base (perhaps one of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Vietnamese_musical_instruments#Bowed), and a drummer/percussionist who had a drumset consiting of many traditional Vietnamese drums and percussion instruments.  Perhaps there was a banjo-like instrument as well.  In any case, all of the instruments are certainly contained on the main traditional Vietnamese instruments Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Vietnamese_musical_instruments#Bowed.

The music, especially the flute, part, was rhythmically complex, and all of the musicians were well-trained.  I would not be surprised if the music was based on a scale similar to the Western pentatonic scale (with added semi-tones).  The singing had the particular harsh twangy harshness that can be found in east-Asian music (like Chinese opera),  but it is a harshness which I actually tend to enjoy.

The show was divided into fifteen separate, unrelated acts.  The program said that hundreds of traditional water puppet acts exist.
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Spoilers contained below.
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The one called 'Buffalo Boy Playing the Flute' was my favorite.  It just consisted of a boy... on a buffalo... playing the flute... but the way that they made the buffalo bounce in and out of the water, and turn it's head was incredibly realistic.  

Another good one was called 'Catching Fish', in which two fishermen frustratedly tried to catch fish which jumped in and out of the water.  They got angry at each other, and started trying to catch each other, and in the end one fisherman caught the other in his trap at the exact moment that the other fisherman actually caught a fish.

In the Dance of the Phoenixes, two different colored phoenixes swam around, breathing fire from their mouth.  Then they sort of went underwater for a little bit, and there was smoke caused by dry ice under the water, and when they popped up, one of them had laid an egg!  It then hatched, and a little phoenix swam around with the two big phoenixes.

Also striking was the "Tale of the Returned Sword".  It has to do with the legend concerning the lake across from the theater.  Back in the day, when the Chinese or someone was invading, the gods gave the emperor of Vietnam a majestic sword, which allowed the Vietnamese armies to drive out the invaders.  When it was over, a GREAT TORTOISE arose from the lake, and asked for the sword back.  This is the reason that the lake is called (translated from the Vietnamese) the Lake of the Restored Sword.  The tortoise puppet was painted golden, and had a deep, impressive voice.  

No one can deny that the Vietnamese have shown incredible fortitude in the face of foreign invaders.

The final act was a dance of four sacred animals, and included a dragon, a phoenix, the tortoise mentioned earlier, and a mythical creature that is translated into English as unicorn, but was probably one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qilin.



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End spoilers.
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For 60,000 Dong, or 3USD, it was good entertainment.

So, anyway, I just got back from Halong bay, and I am going to catch the night bust to Hue, another ancient capital, from which I will go to Hoi An, a place that is reportedly worth seeing, after which I will fly out from Da Nang.  This will take place in the space in about four or five days.


 
 

More Hanoi

This will be a concise post.

When I started writing all of the words had funny diacritics on them because the computer was in Vietnamese mode.  So, anyway, when I left you last time, I had just gotten up from a nap, and I was eager to explore Hanoi some more.
So, I walked around, and ate some rice porridge from a nice old lady; it was a really small street food operation, just an old lady a pot and a single stool.

I decide I want to get a bus ticket to Halong Bay, and I have to hire a motorbike.  Hanoi is one big 'no thank you' because the guys with motorbikes are always asking to give you a ride.   They sit on the corner all day, just asking to give rides, I don't see how they make a living.  So I hire this guy, and the traffic was crazy, my parents would have had a collective heart attack, but it was really fun.  I wore a helmet.  He dropped me at the wrong bus station, and I take the public bus, the 08, back.  I see a large part of Hanoi with no tourists; but I hear they are not very accommodating to non-Vietnamese speakers.  The lights and densely packed commerce reminded my of New York City.  Hanoi has French coffee culture, and I saw a Cafe called 'Cafe Bodega'.

That night I wrote the previous Blog post.

The next day, I got coffee at an amazing Cafe that had been in business since 1936.  It was tall, narrow, with steep staircases, and short stools. I rode over there on a motorbike with a seriously pretty girl from California, and we had our coffee on the third floor balcony.  She has regrettably left Hanoi.

Later that day I saw the French quarter.  The little public parks were just like those of Washington DC, except that the centerpieces (statues, etc) incorporated Asian elements; Imagine dragons adorning the fountain in DuPont Circle.  There was a lot of French architecture, also similar to Washington, DC.

I went to a temple called the Temple of literature; the roofs were made of terra cotta scales; I can't make heads or tails of Asian roofs usually, so I was glad to see one that I understood.  There were many large granite stones with Chinese inscriptions.  Probably the most lovely Asian temple I have ever been to. 

Went to the prison where John McCain was kept.  Saw his flight suit.  Pictures of American POWs having a good time, an obvious fabrication.  The museum did a good job of explaining how bad it was to be a Vietnamese prisoner under the French, though.

Went to Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, but not the immaculately preserved man himself  Saw guards in seriously good looking white uniforms.


Then did some sort of fun activity by the lake; I had been recruited by some people to help teach some Vietnamese kids some English; seriously fun and enthusiastic program organizers my age; I could never be that cheery and enthusiastic for so long, but I bet I could manage to somehow organize fun activities for kids; when I babysat, the kids thought I was good.  Added some of the organizers on Facebook.

Yesterday, I was eating some great dumplings on the street, got into a convo with the Vietnamese girls to the right of me, she has great English, turns out she studies bioengineering at UC  Berkeley, friended her on Facebook.

Vietnamese is hard; if you don't get the tones right for even things like 'Thank you' or the name of the street you live on, they won't even understand you.  But I hear that the tones come with practice, and once you get them the grammar is easy, and writing is easy because they use the Western alphabet.

Photos coming eventually, my Hemingway-esque descriptions should suffice for now.

Baruch Hashem.

Hanoi: Some more, Till Day 2 Morning

So, we set off in this van, and I am sitting next to the other Western traveler.  Things seem pretty normal, except for that there are more motorcycles on the road than normal.  Overall, I am impressed by how modern the country seems;a big paved highway, with development all around me; this was in stark contrast to Myanmar, where the grittiness and vague incompleteness of the development implied seriously lacking economic development.  The other traveler was Elena, from the Netherlands; she was on a fairly large break from work, travelling, spoke with an excellent Canadian accent, and is staying at the other branch of the hostel at which I am staying, but I have not seen her since.

We arrive at  a really nice tree-lined lake in the middle of Hanoi, and I walk down the side; there is a red bridge to a temple in the middle of the lake, as well as a mini-pagoda in the middle of the lake; there are benches by the side of the lake, and everyone is having a good time.  I buy some grapey-looking things from an old lady, and it turns out that they are mini-plums, and she puts a mixture of sugar and chili powder on them.  I contentedly walk by the lake, eating my spicy little plums, sweating, and drinking some water.

Then I have to cross the street.  There is a crosswalk, but no light, and there are motorcycles and cars going in both directions, except that within the directions, there is no semblance of lanes, or anything, they are just sort of doing what they want, so I just stand there as this mass of motorbikes glides by; meanwhile Vietnamese people are just casually walking through the mass of traffic, as if it is no big deal.  Eventually there is a break, and I am able to run across, but it seemed like these people had some magical 'not getting hit by motorcycles' ability.

So, I am in the old city of Hanoi, and it is a huge mass of motorcycles, pedestrians, and larger vehicles, spilling onto the sidewalks; the buildings are majestic but faded, in a style that seems colonial, even though this part of the city dates back 1000 years.  There are people sitting on little plastic chairs, spilling from the sidewalk onto the streets, eating some food.  Shops are also spilling onto the sidewalks from the storefronts. Everything is spilling everywhere.

With the help of my great 3G SIM card, and the surprisingly excellent google maps coverage, I make it to the hostel without incident.  Overall, it is a very nice place, for $8 a night you get a nice lounge area, breakfast, and a bed in a dorm.  It has clean interior, with modern-ish architecture, and almost everyone is an incredibly attractive young person, just like myself.

I had originally booked at the other hostel, but switched my booking to this branch when it had one extra half star, but Elena had said her friends liked the other one better.  But I didn't switch back, because that would be way too much changing my mind, sometimes I just have to stick with my nearly inconsequential decisions!  The main difference is that this hostel can be pretty rowdy, and the other one is chilled out.  There is thumping music coming from be bar (yes the hostel has a bar) as I type this.  I read that it might be the biggest hostel in Southeast Asia. More on that later.

So, I go to my room, and get my stuff together, putting it in the locker. I decide to get lost, and just star walking; the streets are much like what I said before, a gloriously chaotic mess; I see people eating Pho, and I sit down and have some awesome Pho Ga, which means Chicken Pho.  Really good.  Chickeny, spiced perfectly, with some scallions.  Though the streets are narrow, they still find room for trees with purple flowers.   So, I just walk down the narrow streets and labyrinthine alleys, all of which have people on plastic chairs eating street food.  Though the food is close to the street, the street  is only a little bit dirty, in contrast to Yangon where it really seemed like a terrible idea to eat anything that had even got within a meter of the stinky, grimy street no matter how good the food looked.

The traffic here was way worse though.  In Yangon, I saw a bumper sticker with the message 'Lane Driving is Safe Driving', but they make no pretenses of following that philosophy here.

I get back to the Hostel, and decide to have a few beers with the people; people from England, Australia, and quite a few people from Galway, Ireland.  None of them knew my friend Joe, though. The beer was called Larue (they had it on tap), a very light beer; the thing is though, that it actually is drinkable, unlike the beer in the super bowl advertisements. They had a thing they flipped a coin, and got an extra drink if you were right; by patting the Irish people on the shoulder before I went, I was able to make my chances of winning to .75 from .5.  The Irish people were OK with it, they laughed about it too.  We we got some more Pho on the street. The slices of beef in the soupe were super fatty, but in a really good way, so as to be pleasing to the palate.

We then all went out to some other Western (not Cowboy, just Western in the sense of not Asian)  style bar, and had a good time.  There was a computer from which the patrons could put on songs, and I chose Soul Shakedown Party by Bob Marley.  Yeah, going to western style Bar is not that authentic, but I am forced to go mainstream when I interact with other people.

I had a great time, but drank just enough to give me a headache during the free walking tour the next day (which was pretty good, but not great).  I had to take a nap after that headachey tour in the hot sun, which was when I had another pretty serious adventure.

Hanoi: Prologue

I will start with yesterday.  I flew out of Singapore mostly without incident, but I had an overall feeling of unpreparedness; I had booked two nights in a hostel in the old quarter of Hanoi, but other than that, I had no idea what I am doing.  The plane ride itself was fine; I tried to sleep; there were three seats for two people, which was nice.  It was interesting seeing Vietnam through the plane window; I remember green colors, and red roofs. 

So, we land, and we walk out to a large shuttle bus that takes us to the terminal.  I come out, and I see the window where I have to apply for my Visa; I give them the approval letter, my passport, and the required form, and I give them $45 five minutes later, and my passport has a stamped visa.

I then go through immigration without incident, except for that the guy angrily tosses aside the receipt for the visa when I hand it to him with the passport. 

I also walk through the 'nothing to declare' lane of customs without incident.

So, I get out into the arrivals area, and begin thinking of what I have to do;
I had changed money in Singapore, so I go into a bathroom stall to take some money from the plastic money pouch they gave me, and put it into my wallet.  I go buy a SIM card, and I get a pretty good deal; unlimited data for a month, for about $15, but I will have to top up for more calling minutes. 

There were several ways to get into the city; one was by taxi, and that costs a weterner about $15;
doing that, one has to be weary of scams.  If you tell them the name of your hotel, they will take you to it, pretend to somehow find out that it is actually full, and then take you to a fake hotel of poor quality, and you realize how much of a fool you are when you wake up the next morning. 

I didn't take a cab.

There are also public buses, but I neglected to take those, even though they are the cheapest option.

Instead, I took a minibus run by Vietnam airlines; for 40,000 Dong (~2 USD) they take you to the Vietnam airlines offices in Hanoi, which is only a medium walk away from my hostel.  Taking that didn't go 100% smoothly, though. 

I see the line of minibuses, and I get into the biggest one, which is empty, mostly. I sit there for a while, and I ask the guy (who I already knew spoke English) "so when is this thing leaving?".  He says 'oh, whenever it fills up'. 

"oh, so is it better to get on a smaller one?'
"yeah, sometimes".

So I just sit there waiting for a little while longer, and decide to get off, and onto a smaller one.  I do that, and then the driver says 'why are you going there?' (in broken English; If I used words to mimic the way he sounded, it might come off as racist, so I am just typing in gramatically correct English even though it was broken English in reality).  He continues "same as this one" (the one I was just on).  I ask "oh, so when is it leaving?".  He says "15 minutes".  I grudgingly get back on, and I sit there in indecision, not wanting to be a pushy, grumpy western tourist, but not wanting to wait an hour on a still mostly empty minibus.  Another Western tourist, a woman, gets on, and leaves her pack at the front of the bus.  At this point we don't say anything.   I then see one of the smaller buses leave full of passengers, so I get annoyed and decide to look for the public bus.  So, I get out and look around for a while for the public bus, asking people.  When I look back about seven minutes later, the minubus that I had been on had disappeared!

So, I walk down the terminal, to where the buses were, 'about a kilometer a way'.  I should mention that it was over 100 degrees and humid; far worse than anything I had ever experienced in Singapore.  At some point, I see another large minibus.  The guy is like 'two dollars, Hanoi, want to get on?' and I think 'oh no I am not falling for this again' (somewhat irrational, because if I had been patient before, I could have been gone already) I say, 'when is it leaving?' and he says 'five minutes'.  I think 'yeah right'.  But then I ask someone else 'do you know where the 07 or 17 public busses are?' and he says 'no have'.  So I figuratively say 'fuck it', and get on the second minibus.  Then I notice that the Western tourist lady has switched minibuses, and is now on this one; I guess she got fed up with wasting too.  Then I notice that the Vietnamese businessman who I had originally talked to had done the same thing.  And then I realize that this was the same bus as I was on before, and that it had just driven down the terminal to pick up domestic passengers. I pay by 40K Dong, sit next to the other Western tourist, and we head off.