Call that traffic? This is traffic!

It has been a week or so since we returned to Penang, sorry home to Penang, from Bangkok but as with my previous post about Penang I wanted to ruminate a while rather than jump right in. I did use the wonderful Track My Tour app (thanks to Chris as always) for those keen on a more contemporaneous account of our short trip there -- you can view it here -- but this post is made with the benefit of thinking about things a little first.

If you think that the header for this post is Crocodile Dundee-is you are right. That bit was my favorite part of the movie but exchange things for traffic and you have Bangkok.

Yes, that scene!

I thought Penang was busy and bustling with humanity after Bermuda and then Canada but then we arrived in Bangkok and my goodness. In the previous post I said that Penang was an assault on all my senses and it was but Bangkok is that on steroids.

5 million + people, endless traffic, small streets except for the freeways, monstrous buildings except for the tiny streets, hawker stands, market stalls... It was endless. Returning to Penang has made it seem that my new home town is serene in comparison.

We went on a night time tuk-tuk eating tour to some of the city's most famous restaurants, local not fancy. This one for deep fried chicken had its kitchen in the alley behind the restaurant itself.

Even though Thailand is the next door country to Malaysia, there are huge differences starting with religion. 95% of Thais are Buddhists and you can see this everywhere. Apparently 441 temples are in the city and I can believe it. You keep coming across them everywhere. Some not so grand but all reverently cared for and respected.

The Temple of Dawn by the river with the late King (left), the late King's wife (middle) and the current king (right). Their pictures were everywhere in the city. All huge pictures too.

And respect is a word that could be used widely in Bangkok, at least from my vantage of 4 busy days of visiting, sightseeing, eating (particularly) and drinking with our friends Tracy and Norbert from Malta (but also ex-Bermuda hands). From the greeting that practically everyone does -- the two hands together plus bow -- to the respect shown for Buddha and their King whose pictures are simply everywhere, particularly the late King who ruled for a long time and was considered a man of the people.

But yes whenever I think of the King of Thailand I do always think of Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr in The King and I. That was a wonderful movie with one of the classic movie lines of all time: "Dance after Dinner!" Just watch the movie and you will understand.

In that movie in the more serious scenes, few and far between I know, the undercurrent is clear that the King is fully aware that his kingdom is one of the few independent ones around. Every one of their neighbors is part of one empire or another and he is trying to make sure Siam as it was known then stays that way. Quite how that all happened is not clear to me even after reading my favorite go to knowledge site Wikipedia who sadly failed me in this question. Anyway, well done to him and his successors for managing it. No wonder the people revere their kings.

One popular connotation for Bangkok is sleaze -- girly bars and lady boys. In addition back packers and people that look as though they sort of arrived in 1970 and never left abound. This is strange to me as drugs are illegal and trafficking carries a death sentence but clearly people don't care and still come and stay in one of the endless back street hostels and get a tattoo and some body piercing. Why on earth would you get one of either of those in a grungey back street parlor where of course they sterilize their needles?

Oh yes, back to sleaze. I never saw a girly bar nor a lady boy, unless they were very good which I understand many are. We went to Khao San Road where endless westernized bars exist alongside mobile phone shops and trashy tourist souvenir shoppes. We also went to Pat Pong market which seemed to be grunge central alongside the massive night market selling trashy tourist items -- I bought some of these! I am sure they exist but just saying, we never found them.

What we did find were shopping malls. Endless and huge shopping malls. We didn't even go to the famous Chatuchak outdoor market. Didn't have to as there are so many others. All huge. All with massive hawker stands dotted inside and out.

On our food tour, the guide took photos so we didn't have to however  in every photo that included me, I had my head down in some dish or other! He could have said "say cheese" or something.

We also found traffic. Lots and lots and lots of traffic. Nobody uses taxis as they are considered untrustworthy. Rarely would they use a meter and would then charge a fortune for a ride. Particularly tourists. So people use Grab and Uber and of course the tuk-tuk. They also use the motor bike taxi which is not for the faint hearted as no helmet is provided and like I said there is lots and lots and lots of traffic. Also did I say that nobody pays attention to little things like road signs, give way notices, traffic lights... and as for the dividing line in the middle of the road. Chicken!

Chinatown just before Chinese New Year was thronging with people and traffic. I asked the guide if it was due to CNY that it was so busy and she said "no, its just Tuesday". As in on any day the crowds are like this...

One night we were planning to go our for a dinner to a place in the centre of the city -- we stayed in the old part, near the river -- and our hotel first asked why we wanted to go there as there were loads of great places nearby, then said it would take us an hour and a half to get there by taxi because of the traffic, and then offered to make us a local reservation. Our Uber took 20 minutes! I know it depends on your luck as on other occasions it did take a while but never that much.

And then there's the bugs! I suppose it is a 5 million person city so you should expect there to be 5 billion bugs. But did they have to all decide to eat me that one night?

I counted over 100 bug bites on both my legs from that one night sitting out by the river at night!

Brilliant city though. Loved it and am looking to return!

Kyoto Day 2 ... The Deer Hunters

This is the next post of our Japan trip.  It took place in September but I only managed to write these notes a couple of months later.  For contemporaneous reports, take a look at Track My Tour -- a brilliant app that I used to ... well, track our tour.  Here is the link.

After yesterday's breathtaking series of events, we did wonder what could top that and Cat's schedule for the day was interesting:

1.  Kyoyo station for breakfast
2.  Train to Nara -- Todaiji Temple (buddha), Kasuga Grand Shrine (3,000 lanterns) and Nara Park for deer (rickshaw between)
3.  Stopping train back to Kyoto stopping at Fushimi Inari
4.  Ponto Cho in th evening

It doesn't sound too much.  Only 4 things on the face of it.  Yesterday's had 6!

Anyway Nara was a short train ride away and is another Japanese city with old buildings on the outskirts built around the large train station... of course nothing like Kyoto's! Nara isn't that much of a city really but has a whole slate of important buildings probably because for about 70 years from 710 AD, it was the capital of Japan.  Back then it was called Heijokyo and lost its status in another one of the civil wars.

We asked a lady at the station where the Todaiji Temple was and she kindly hauled out a map and with vigourous strokes of a red crayon drew all the bits we should see in Nara City.  It was exhausting listening to her and we were probably the 43rd tourist who'd asked the same thing that day.  She was a one-person tourist authority.

More to the point, her directions were spot on too and all too soon as we strolled the 15 minutes in the warm sunshine (yay!) along Omiya Street, we came to the front gates of the temple and went inside.

We'd noticed before in Miyajima that deer walked all over the place and came up to people hassling them for food.  But here in Nara there were attack deer who hunted in packs.  Cat's mum, Thelma, made the big mistake of trying to shrink away from the deer and move away but they were remorseless and just kept on following.

Some do's and don'ts of deer feeding.  If feeding, place cookie in open hand and offer it to the deer.  Do not hold it in your fingers as they may get chomped instead by these voracious critters.  So (top) well done, Cat but (bottom) what do you think you are doing, Indy?  No fingers!!

And if you decide not to feed them, hold your hand out as though you are a policeman stopping cars.

Despite the Do Not Feed the Deer signs, concessions sold deer food to the massive numbers of tourists.  The food itself was large round cookies probably made out of something nutritious for deer.  Whatever they went nuts over them and herded around even the more.

Love the helpful signs!  Do NOT turn your back on the deer.

However deer aside, that wasn't the reason Nara was item 2 on Cat's list.  It was the wooden temple, Todaiji, the world's largest wooden building.  Founded in the 8th Century, the current version is number 3 or 4 rebuilt in 1709, but as the then Shogun was short of cash, he couldn't rebuild it to its full extent.  So it is only one-third the original size and still the largest wooden structure in the world.

The 800 year old gate house

But the real reason this place is famous is the Daibutsu (or Great Buddha) inside.  It is a monster, sorry being more respectful I meant ENORMOUS.

Pretty much standard lay out though:  chubby and sitting with a sort of cheery grin on his face.  Like many other places though, as the buddha is a peaceful man he needs protection so is surrounded by a series of scowling friends that I suspect are meant to scare the bejasus out of you.

Daibutsu in person

This temple reminded me very much of a Cathedral in the west in that it was set out wholly as a place of worship without other stuff getting in the way.  Mind you, the stalls where indulgences were sold were doing a roaring trade.

Some helpers, very grim looking too!

As far as I could work out, you bought an indulgence (something like good health or happiness for the family) and you took it forward to the statue of your choice.  There are plenty around so even if there's a throng of people, there's usually a free statue with one of those chests in front of it with what looks like sand and some candles.  You take a candle, wrap the indulgence around it (usually in the form of a small piece of paper with your indulgence written on it in Japanese characters) and set light to the candle setting it up in the sand.  That's the basis around which there are local customs in different places.  One that cropped up fairly often was the bell ringing option where for again a small payment of another indulgence you could ring that bell.

I know there's gift shops and donation boxes in churches but indulgences like this nearly brought the Catholic church to its knees and sparked the Reformation.

But we did buy a roof slate to help out!!

Next temple was thankfully only a shortish stroll away through the forest and always up more steps (!!) called the Kasuga Taisha Shrine.

I didn't count the steps!

This was a Shinto temple (remember Japan is about 50/50 Shinto/Buddhist) and had its own Zen garden of raked sand and perfectly shaped rocks placed just so.

This shrine is number 60 or so as it's been around over 1,200 years like many of the other temples, shrines, pagodas and other buildings in this really old city so has burned down many times before.  It is also home to the 3,000 lanterns which seem to go on forever.

However it was a long walk up and down through the forest, park and gardens so after Kasuga we were looking forward to a libation and something to eat but ran into the Five Storey Pagoda on the road back to Nara Station for a brief visit too.

The team on tour!

It had been a long walking day so the consensus was for not that much more walking and something easy for dinner.  However Indy found an Irish Pub near the downtown core of Kyoto which we found irresistable particularly as we found that Chelsea were playing Cat's dad Gordon's team, Everton, and were in the process of getting soundly stuffed.

15,500 paces of walking today according to my new pedometer!! Felt like it too.

The art photo!  Some of the lanterns in the dark... helped out by strategically placed mirrors!

Kyoto Day 1 -- Beat This!

This is the next post of our Japan trip.  It took place in September but I only managed to write these notes a couple of months later.  For contemporaneous reports, take a look at Track My Tour -- a brilliant app that I used to ... well, track our tour.  Here is the link.

Cat's itinerary for Day 1 in Kyoto ran like this:

• Arashiyama -- Tenruji temple, bamboo forest, Okochi Senso (villa that includes tea and cake), maybe Jojakko-Ji, moon bridge crossing and lunch in village
• Taxi (20 mins) to Kinkau-Ji (gold temple)
• Taxi or 30 min walk to Ryoan-Ji (stone garden)
• Ninna-Ji (5 storey pagoda) next door
• Myoshin-Ji and Taizo-In (walled complex of temples and gardens)
• Geisha evening

What a day if we actually made it all (we didn't!) but still an epic day!

The taxi ride to Arashiyama was through Kyoto, as it turned out the southern very populated part of the city to journey's end where we found Tenryu-Ji Temple (yet another World Cultural Heritage Site -- by the end of the trip this became kind of normal.  Everywhere was World Heritage this, that or the other).  However this was different.

Religion in Japan is in the main either Buddhist or Shinto -- about half each.  The religions co-exist fairly well and the temples themselves are pretty much identical except that in the Shinto ones, there's no big chubby looking chap sitting and smiling.  Usually there's quite a few grim looking guys whose primary job is to scare off evil spirits of one sort or other and in the process give small children nightmares.  However this temple was the first Zen temple in Japan established in 1339 by the Shogun following yet another civil war in which vast numbers died.  Of course it had the raked sand garden with little rocks strategically placed all around in perfect position (of course).

The publicity blurb says this version is of course not the first, nor the second or many after as most perished in fires throughout the ages, but dates back to the Meiji period 1868-1912.  Interestingly this temple is one of the few that did not start out as some bigwig's home that was subsequently bequeathed to the religious sect.  It was purpose built from the outset... even though a bigwig ordered it done.

Classic Kyoto art being preserved under the Tsuzuri program.  This is a dragon looking distinctly boggle-eyed.

Being a Zen joint, it was very nicely laid out with plenty of places to sit back and reflect.

Crazy thing happened after in that a TV film crew asked if they could interview us for a TV programme of some sort so Indy, Cat and I hopped into their car and were filmed and interviewed driving around pointing out sights and giving our views on the world.  Who knows where that will end?

Bamboo forest

Behind the temple was a bamboo forest that we walked through and up to a silent movie star's home in the hills above the temple called Okochi-Senso.  It was sited in a lovely spot in the hills.  Obviously the movie star was a wealthy guy to be able to afford not to live with the hoi-polloi in the valley below.

Daytime job

Okochi-Senso is a place where you can book for events of all sorts.  It is very peaceful and has lovely overland views.

The highlight of the day though undoubtedly was the golden temple called Kinkaku-Ji.  This again belonged to a bigwig but dates back to the 1300's ... even though this one was actually rebuilt in the 1950's.  

Kinkaku-Ji

Again lovely gardens all around and a splendid place to visit.

Both these places took so long to take in properly that we felt that enough was enough in the templing stakes and that a cold beer and quick rest before Geisha night was called for.

Actually there's no Geishas in Kyoto, they are called Geiko's.  They have trained for years and are in fact professionals who get paid to appear in various places... such as where we had dinner in Gion.  They have trainees called Maiko's who to all external appearance look identical except that they are not yet professionals and are therefore unpaid.  They have day jobs.

The evening had one of each who danced (really slowly) for us, poured tea, played a stringed instrument in a twangy fashion that sounded ... well sort of really twangy.  Reminded me of watching the Monterey Pop movie years ago which had Ravi Shankar playing in the same twangy way only for the audience to burst into applause once he'd finished.  He looked bemused as he'd actually just been tuning up.  

We got to play games with the Geiko/Maiko.  Something like slaps for drinks!  Great fun and the dinner was another one of a multitude of small exquisitely presented very small dishes of items that were largely unidentifiable... along with unending sake!!

The full menu was: Snapper and salmon sushi, boiled crabs and vegetables, ginger, egg, squid with salted entrails and roe of Ayu fish, Prawn, Fried maiden hair-nut, Kelp with herring roe, Duck, Edamame, Grilled scallop, gluten cake, grilled bonito, Hamo conger eel, Rolled tuna and condiments, Steamed snapper with tofy skin made from black beans, eggplant, salmon roe, Bean with shark fin thick starchy sauce, Fried Hamo conger eel, Deep fried Hamo's born, Tofy and yuba (tofu skin), wild vegetable with clear soup, Steamed rice with Hamo sea eel and Japanese pepper and for dessert Pear comport, Grape, Jerry, sauce mint.  Whoa!

This is becoming a trend!!!

Repentance and Compassion

It had to happen.  We had to turn south again and today was the day.  Most gloomy we were too as this has been a great trip.  Marvellous scenery and lovely people too.  So it was with regret we headed out of Eureka back along 101 – I think retracing steps is the gloomy part.  Things start becoming familiar instead of creating that squiggly feeling in your belly about the new things that you are about to experience.

We stopped briefly in Ferndale largely because we’d watched a Food TV programme called Diners, Drive Ins and Dives which had featured this small town.  Located 15 miles out of Eureka it is definitely off the beaten track but we found a healthy sprinkling of tourists like us with cameras at the ready. 

Annoyingly the reason we’d come was closed today!  This was a bakery making bacon and cheese scones that appealed to Viv so our stay was brief.  Cute town though with lots of Victorian style buildings.

Our trip to the next destination Ukiah (the county capital of Mendocino County incidentally with a county topping population of 36,000) took us through the Avenue of the Giants again, and this time we stopped and bimbled (see website here).

Fires cause this hollowing out effect in the tree trunks.  The tree remains in perfectly good health otherwise, this one being a monster.

The redwoods were just as large and lovely as elsewhere on the road trip and of course we had our daily hug again – this will be something we’ll miss when we leave California.  Simply walking through the trees and finding absolute silence is priceless.

Roosevelt Elk in the forest

We’d targeted Ukiah as I’d spotted in some brochure a comment about the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas being located there -- see website here.  It intrigued us for sure and having visited I still wonder why they located it there.  Perhaps when they started out in the 1970’s, the closure of the old county hospital gave them a start in infrastructure that they could readily use.

The man who started it all, Hsuan Hua, came originally from Manchuria via various parts of China.  There he met a 109 year old Buddhist patriarch who prophesied that the young man would be one of the most important leaders of the faith. In 1948 possibly co-terminous with the ending of the civil war in China, he left for Hong Kong which he left in the late 1960’s again possibly co-terminous with the Cultural Revolution on the mainland which threatened Hong Kong’s existence at the time.  Arriving in the US to spread the word he established the city as a place of teaching, reflection and worship.

The city is a regular school as well as everything else with children from all backgrounds studying there all with an overlay of the religious principles of Buddhism which appear to my superficial gaze to be the third way; namely neither materialistic/anarchist nor religious ascetic.  Just do the right thing and achieve an internal state of peace.  Very similar to the early precepts of Christianity really.

One thing I couldn’t answer was why or how the religion has been taken over by the Chinese for the original Buddha was an Indian prince born in 563 BC who gave up the material world at age 28 to teach inner peace and the third way as he traveled through that part of Asia.  He clearly did a great job as there are lots of Bhuddists globally today.  But when did the Chinese take over? 

Siddartha Guatama, the original 'awakened one' with his 5 companions that comprised the first 'Sangha' (from a painting in a Laotian temple) 

Not sure.  A question to answer to be sure.

We’d come to join in the ceremony of Repentance and Compassion, a daily ritual much like a mass in the Catholic church, held daily at 12.30 pm.  There weren’t many attendees, mainly monks and students by the look of them – the former wore sandals, the latter sneakers under their robes – who were on the right hand side of the hall.  We lay people were on the left hand side, women at the back, men at the front. 

Fortunately Viv and I were helped in our respective places by kind, patient and generous folk who pointed out in the book that accompanied the service where we are.  Viv thinks it was Mandarin, but the book was interesting in that it laid out the service first in English, next in characters and then finally in phonetic Chinese.  This was what they chanted in, very fast too so it was tough to read the English and follow the ritual despite my friend’s help.

The overall tone of the ritual was inner peace, seeking forgiveness for past transgressions and looking forward to a life of learning, compassion and repentance.  Again not much different from much of the Catholic and other Christian rituals.

This was a good experience.

The rest of the day was a madcap rush down the highway to San Francisco airport but as we’d chosen the no freeway option on our GPS much was over mountains again with more chicanes and windy bends than I could count and along the very high cliff top highway 1 – I had a death grip on the wheel of the car for much of it! 

But we got there in the end, staying at Pacifica just down the road from the airport and an early start tomorrow.

Thanks California and using the words of ex-Governor Arnold Schwarzeneggar, “We’ll be back!”