Gas Powered Perambulations

Please bear with me as I take one of my occasional breathers from the world of modeling and delve back into other subjects almost as far removed from poetry and the symphonic, but still closely entwined with art.

A bit of background to catch up my newer readers: my wife is from Vietnam so I have recently had the pleasure of periodic travel to East Asia. While there I've spent most of my time in  a lovely vibrant town once called Saigon and now officially designated Ho Chi Minh City. I've come to the conclusion that one of the more characteristic things about any given place is the way we get around. Ho Chi Minh is quite unlike most other places I've been. (And I've covered some distance in my short life, touching the soil of forty-seven states, nine countries, and three continents. Typically for at least 24 hours and in many cases quite a bit more than that.)  The US is a car country defined by fancy highways of almost exorbitant length, with a few significant exceptions. (And even the exceptions have their share of pavement.) Europe, with less space for roadways and more people per square klick, is remarkably multi-modal.

Asia, particularly South and East Asia, make Europe seem only slightly more densely populated than the moon. I expect most people have seen pictures of Asian traffic; the solid walls of people on the streets of Mumbai, the miles long parking lots leading into Beijing, the trains breathing pressurized human life in and out of Tokyo. Ho Chi Minh isn't quite like any of these. There are no trains to speak of. There is but one highway (though a second is under construction) and it isn't as yet a parking lot. And no one seems to walk much of anywhere. (I'm a little surprised people walk from their bedroom to their front door, but the houses are small and vertical and motor vehicles don't do stairs well.) So what is Saigon traffic? Motorbikes: mopeds, scooters, crotch-rockets, even the occasional cruiser. It seems as though all the bikes at Sturgis have been hit with a shrink ray and gotten very jiggy populating the streets and lanes of a large, but surprisingly compact Southern Florida style paradise by the millions. It may be the largest collection of two-stroke love on earth. And of course everyone is honking or beeping at all times, traffic laws are fluid, and signals are scarce. In short, it . . . is . . . FUN!

Some minor temporal liberties have been taken, but I hope this gives you a flavor of where I'm going. It's a fun town, Saigon, a great place to relax, eat, visit friends and family. It's a busy, bustling place where a lot of people work and play hard. It makes for a truly memorable power-assisted walk in the park.

A bit off topic but oh so important . . .

Here's a little photo-essay that explains a few things.

(The baby is unrelated. Well, not unrelated, exactly, but not ours.)

This is a little overdue, but hopefully it gets the point across. Thank you.

The Face of the Earth or Where Have I Been Lately?

First, to discourage the ugly rumors that might pop up when you disappear for six months:

I am not dead. In fact, I am VERY not dead. I'm so not dead I'm getting married. (Death tends to annul marriages in even the most conservative of cultures.) Which also explains why the 2012 installment of the annual fleet review didn't happen in 2012. It's been rescheduled as a coronation review. More on that later. But for now I give you a few photographs from a recent trip to visit my intended Queen:

These things tend to begin when you arrive in distant places. It's been my turn twice now. Next time she can do the arriving.

Once you're done arriving, you might pass an immigration interview.

After which celebration might be called for . . . 

Sometimes young Beans like to shoot zombies with peas . . .  

More elaborate celebrations might call for trips to visit interesting places like museums filled with rusting locomotives. (I do have a somewhat anomalous definition of interesting.)

Thank goodness she loves me. I enjoy my locomotives, but they'd be a lot less interesting without good company.

Buddhist temples are also worth seeing.

If you chance to visit Vietnam, do eat the food. The food is generally incredibly fresh and very very good. And the array of different eats is positively dizzying.

Did I mention temples?

The landscape is also quite lovely.

Since Vietnam is conveniently located between India and China (hence the regional exonym Indochina) Vietnamese religious culture is nearly as rich and ancient as Vietnamese cuisine. Buddhism is much more prevalent than Hinduism, but both can be found. I believe this is an older Khmer icon but I will not attempt to comment on who might be depicted.

Somewhere in the above room I can only surmise there must also have been an icon of Shiva. As it happens, he's not the only creator/destroyer who can dance.

Of course, smiles from loved ones do give us a reason to dance. Cam on em yeu. Gap lai em rat sau.

And finally . . .

The two of us.

For everyone else who has wished us well.

And finally, a little blurry, but well . . .

Thank you all.

Narita Japan

There are two posts I should really add to make the travelog complete, but I'm going to post them in reverse order. This will be the very last thing I did. After leaving Ho Chi Minh City I had a lengthy layover in Narita Japan and decided to go exploring just a little. My primary goal was to find and explore a rather old Shigon Buddhist temple called "Naritasan Shinshoji" or "Narita Mountain New Victory Temple." This "new" temple having been founded in 940, apparently, and being one of the oldest in the Kanto region. (Thank you Wikipedia.)

So I took a train into town, bought some breakfast at a lovely little cafe, and commenced wandering around. When that failed to net me an old temple, I went back to the train station and got a map. Worked much better.

It was in an older picturesque part of town with lovely narrow streets and lots of traditional buildings (and plenty of police peep cams.)



A twenty minute stroll brought me to the temple where I spent the next hour or so wandering around and listening to a very neat religious service of some kind. (Much fire, chanting, and drumming. And lots of people in formal Japanese clerical garb of one kind or another and, thankfully, even more ordinary folks just going to temple for their own reasons so it didn't feel so touristy. Pretty normal assortment of people in their "Sunday" best. Much like a typical church in the west, but without the shoes and with more percussion.)

The music was splendid. The body of it was microtonal chanting that didn't change pitch much, but was sort of rhythmically fascinating. And the slow rise and fall was really neat. Behind this was some very driving periodic drumming that gradually increased in tempo, with a few different types of bells dropped in from time to time for emphasis.

Next to the temple was a Japanese garden that reminded me of home, oddly. (The city of my youth is home to a rather large and well regarded Japanese garden called "Seiwa En" or "Garden of Pure Clear Harmony and Peace.") Obviously the garden's (Japanese) creators got it right, as the version in Narita was clearly quite similar.

Behind this was a cemetery where I got myself briefly lost: an experience I recommend, so long as you're not in a hurry to catch a flight. (I wasn't, thankfully. It was all quite a good thing.)





Of course, all of this will no doubt bear periodic repeating as time goes forward. I suspect I will be making annual or semi-annual pilgrimages to Ho Chi Minh for Tet, so it should be quite possible to stop through Japan from time to time on the way there or the way back.