Egypt

4 November

Raylene’s birthday finds us in Alexandria, just back from a wonderful tour of Cairo and Luxor with a wonderful guide.  More of that in a moment, but the first day was independent travel around Cairo.  As usual, that started with (and centered on) the Bazaar, a sprawling and lively set of twisting streets in the heart of Islamic Cairo, which turned out to be much bigger than I imagined from the maps.  I had hoped to make a mosque crawl of the historic buildings erected by successive medieval rulers, but that proved impossible, so the one frustration of our visit was too few mosques seen.  How- ever, we went with an intrepid group (4 others) of fellow shoppers and had a grand time.  I got lots of comments on my Aussie hat (where’s your horse?) and my bearded girth (Ali Baba!), but for the most part the vendors and the haggling were good natured and pleasant.  Zachary, as usual, was the main shopper, picking up a couple of gelabiyya (dress-like garments for men, full length), as did I (less colorful and only one) and Bettes.  We shopped for Laura and Raylene as well and even got some stuff for Alex, our neigh-bor (age 10), who is taking care of the cats on weekends.  The bazaar had some wonder-ful old buildings mixed in with the alleyways, and a famous coffee house in its core, El Fishawi, frequented by literary types as well as shoppers.  One of the highlights of the Cairo market was the spice stores with their nuts and dried fruits, and others mixed alcohol-free fragrances.  A couple of stores had real Bedouin goods, veils with coins and spectacular embroidered, full-length bridal dresses, but these carried serious price tags, so we just window-shopped.

Bettes was keen to buy raw cotton from a bale, which we succeeded in getting with the help of one of the many volunteer “guides,” who always seem to lead you to the family store of a relative on the way; this one also thought that she wanted cloths first, so we went into a fully Egyptian segment of the market for that before getting to the bales.  Bettes bought a kilo, which is a bulky amount (2 big plastic bags worth).  On the way back, a friendly vendor (“I am not a sketchy guy”) took us to see the cottage industry pita making before showing us his own family store of inlaid boxes.  We actually saw them being assembled before buying some gift items from him (my present for Raylene, for example); very nice pieces.  This is the kind of process that one experiences in Cairo—friendship and warmth and assistance, followed by a request for a donation or else a trip to a store.  Just business but with a sense of interaction and a smile, at least for those who know what the game is about. I did wonder how much they willingly took advantage of the naïve, of which our ship has a large contingent. 

After the purchase, we went on to the local, university mosque, Al Alzhar, which is one of the oldest mosques in Cairo (969) and is the oldest university area in the world.  It is a typical but nicely ornamented space: courtyard and transverse sanctuary where the faithful kneel and prostrate in the direction of Mecca.  This one had a lovely mihrab, or prayer niche, and its slender and lacy minarets, a later addition, made for a nice vertical complement to the openness of the courtyard.  We arrived at sunset, led there by the box vendor, and got to experience the place just before evening prayers.  Memorable exper-ience in any case, though we got used to the sounds of the calls to prayer echoing around the city at the five moments in the day that the Muslims pause.  Earlier we had been in the bazaar at a second storey Bedouin area when the call came, and the men came out of their stores and prayed in the central space of the roof, which formed a courtyard for them in the midst of their stores.  The next day we tried to break away from our tour to visit a couple of old mosques, Ibn Tulun and Sultan Hassan, near the Citadel, but had to content ourselves with their outsides, as they do not take visitors after 5pm.  Then we had another guide who took us to the Meidan mosque, allegedly the oldest of all in the city, and quite similar to the Al Azhar mosque.  We were requested to leave our donation with the imam for the community chest, but did not also request a tour from the guide (who would have had a request for yet another donation).  Cairo business even with mosques.  Afterwards, again in the waning light, we made our way back to the bazaar through an old city gate, the Bab Zuweila, and not far from there we were in familiar territory, even passing the sketchy guy once more (who remembered my hat and asked if we needed any more boxes, but was willing to say hi and let us go on our way with a smile).

Habibi! That means something like “best beloved,” but for us it was the term used by our tour guide Bahgat in Egypt everywhere we went.  This was a great trip, in part because our own Habibi so loved sharing his country with us and sharing his considerable know-ledge as well.  It turned out later that he has a master’s in Egyptology and hopes to finish a doctorate at the U. Chicago, so his expertise is legitimate, but he also has a simple and clear way of communicating these complexities to novices—no small feat.  We began the trip in the ancient sites next to Giza, Saqqara, with its innovative stepped pyramid and stone constructions by the architect Imhotep.  Already this was impressive, and a short visit to ancient Memphis, site of a colossal statue of Rameses II, confirmed that we were in for a most awe-inspiring tour.  Since there was a longish siesta, we decided to go in to Cairo’s fable Egyptian Museum on our own.  There we spent about two hours in a place that has the richest collections of objects but an installation that is dated to about 1910 rather than the present.  Small labels, when available, were hard to read, and the place had literally no air (as if we were in a tomb ourselves!).  The exception—probably due to the fund-raising of sending the objects on tour every decade or so—was the King Tut installation upstairs, which was air conditioned and handsomely displayed as well as dazzling to behold.  They are currently building a new Museum out in the direction of the airport (we passed it on our way out of Cairo), which should result in better climate con-trol as well as installation for visitors in the future.

After the museum we took a cab to one of the mosques I had hoped to see, but it was basically closed, so then we walked (with a “guide” who picked us up) towards the Meidan mosque and the bazaar at night, where we were able to rejoin our group at its bus stop there.  That was the moment that we also saw our “sketchy” box-seller again and rejoined the now-familiar bazaar.  I was glad that on a trip where it is so easy to feel shepherded and disoriented that I knew one of the old sections of the city well enough to feel truly at home and familiar with my surroundings.  Some of the vendors from the pre-vious day still remembered the Aussie hat, if not my face, and most were friendly as part of the come-on.  It did feel like home, something that does not always happen when one travels as part of a group.

We journeyed out to Giza to a hotel, the Meridien, right outside the pyramids.  Indeed the desert for the pyramids lay just across the street.  Instead of arising at 4:30 to see the sun rise from the Great Pyramid, we just went downstairs and observed what turned out to be a largely overcast morning, which did have some good pink color on some of the clouds.  The students reported a meaningful experience, but I was not that impressed from the hotel.  On the other hand, the stupefying size and hugs blocks as well as delicately fine engineering of the structures were truly imposing.  As my dad used to say, tourist attractions get that way for a reason, and the pyramids are the original tourist site, full of camel drivers offering rides (and sometimes taking clients for a ride before extorting more money out of them to get back to their group across the desert sands; this happened to one 12-year-old from our ship the day before we went, so Habibi negotiated the price and ensured a group ride on camels).  Also wonderful was the experience of seeing these pyramids after visiting the museum, and associating the sculptures of particular pharaohs, esp Mycerinus of the smallest pyramid, with their memorial structures.  After the pyramids we went through the city to the Citadel, built originally by Saladin, and a lecture on the faith by Habibi within the 19^th-century mosque of Muhammed Ali (a knock-off of Ottoman Turkish mosques but in alabaster, so it is renowned in Egypt and on all the tourism posters).  Great views of the city, including those mosques of Ibn Tulun and Sultan Hasan, which I had vainly hoped to visit on their interiors the previous day.

After a silly lunch buffet on a closed cruise ship on the Nile, complete with mediocre belly dancer, we ended the day with the mother of all Son et Lumiere shows at the pyramids.  The text was cheesy and the lighting all color and impressive for that.  The Sphinx was restored with full features at a few points as well; it remains an impressive monolith, whose guarding position for the pyramid precinct adds a figural touch to their perfect geometry.  All very impressive, even though one can feel a familiarity with this material after so much exposure. 

Our wake-up call for the flight (5 am) to Luxor was horrendously early, throwing everyone off for most of the next day, but our morning was still full, chiefly with the funerary (western) side of the Nile.  There we visited the Valley of the Kings, where the painted tomb chambers (Tut’s still had the large bottom sarcophagus and a few painted figures) were extensive and rich in variety, between the hieroglyphs and all the gods depicted.  I was surprised not to find more relief carving, which existed in some but not all.  We were allowed three tombs out of more than thirty (some were closed), which worked out fine for the time limits.  All were a little distinctive, but one also sensed the continuity with tradition that the pharaohs strove for in both life and death.  The building nearby of Queen Hatshepsut was as impressive as Imhotep’s stone work for the precinct for Zoser at Saqqarah.  Its ramps went up three levels, and the carvings were fine too, but deliberately erased by her son-in-law and successor, who clearly hated her for usurping his throne.  This was the site where German tourists were gunned down by Islamists in 1997, and here as well as other sites, there were tourist police around to keep order.  Our Luxor Meridien was even nicer, esp for us, since the late room availability led our guide to offer Bettes and me a suite overlooking the Nile.  We crashed there for the afternoon but were able to see the afternoon falluccas with sails on the river, then sunset, plus the later glow of moonlight (nearly full) on the Nile in the wee hours, and morning balloon ascents with the handsome sunrise, where the hills caught the first light of the sun.

In the evening, our visit to Luxor Temple was perhaps more dramatic for the stage lighting that they provide after hours.  It actually made the reliefs easier to read and showed the remarkable variety of spaces and components in the temple.  This set up the visit next morning to the still-more-colossal temple of Karnak, largest of the ancient Egypt, where a succession of rulers contributed spaces and statuary to the most sacred of all Egyptian sites.  I had wanted to visit their hypostyle hall of columns since seeing them in my mother’s college art book while I was a kid.  After some 50 years of waiting, they did not disappoint.  This is one of the most imposing and powerful spaces ever made, even if the slab stone ceiling was lost in an earthquake of the first century.  Obelisks, sphinxes, and colossal statues—they were all there at Karnak, so Egypt came to a climax in the New Kingdom worthy of the pyramids of the Old Kingdom.

On the way back to the hotel for the flight to Cairo and the drive to Alexandria, we had time to stop independently at the Luxor Museum, which is a gem of high quality pieces, air conditioned comfort, and labels that are clear and meaningful—in short, what we can hope the Egypt Museum will become.  One black small striding statue of Tutmoses III might be the most beautiful sculpture I have seen in Egypt, and there were colossal heads and other works from the time of Amenhotep III, the builder of most of the Temple of Luxor, surely the Louis XIV of the New Kingdom.  Plus a wall from Karnak put there by Akhenaten, whose bust appeared beside it.  I was glad to have had the chance to visit this one, a tip from Academic Dean Fil Hearn.  To celebrate, I bought a little white Horus fal-con figure from a tourist trap in Luxor.

Back on ship in Alexandria, we spent our final day touring the bazaar for nothing in par- ticular, plus visiting the main mosque of the city and dining while overlooking its water-front.  Alexandria is a truly Mediterranean city, which uses its waterfront well and put up a splendid modernist library on its shore.  It also has Greco-Roman ruins, but we arrived too late at the preserved catacombs to see the Roman-Christian remains there.  It has been lovely walking weather with light breezes and mid-70s temperatures much of the time we have been in Egypt, except for a hotter sun down in Luxor.  But our luck ran out just at departure, when we had to postpone the voyage to Istanbul due to high winds and rough seas to our north.  Turkey has been having floods and cold while we were in Egypt, so we are not sure how long our departure will be delayed.  I keep thinking that this low pressure cold front will move farther east and permit us to leave with only minimal time lost in Turkey, but now I begin to worry what will happen to our schedule if we are delayed too long to make up with greater speed.  I would hate to lose time in Istanbul, the port I have most eagerly anticipated up to now and most long to linger in.  I will still take whatever I can get, but this is disappointing.  On the other hand, I had two classes plus a big segment in the shared  course, Global Studies, on monuments of Istanbul, meant that I had little time to fret about missed opportunities and had to get on with business as usual.

Report to follow on how we left Egypt and found our way to Turkey—or wherever.

Update: we sailed at 6pm instead of the night before, but after some bumpy seas outside Alexandria, we awoke to clear skies, smooth(er) waves, and views of the Greek islands, including Rhodes.  Passage through the Dardanelles might be on schedule, since the ship has been moving faster than usual (22 knots rather than 17) and making up ground in calmer waters.  I think that our time in Istanbul will be the allotted five days, and our plans are to scour the city rather than doing excursions outward (Zachary was there last Xmas from Israel, so his plans, as usual, might diverge from ours).

India

October 19

India is still hard to take, and I really have developed a distaste for Madras/Chennai in particular, which has all of the sewage and trash and beggar problems with few of the compensations of either Bombay or Delhi.  On the first day here I tried to go with the academic dean on a tuk-tuk (or trishaw), the motorized tricycle that scoots through all the dense traffic here.  Not only was the museum closed—on a Sunday (what museum in all the world is closed on a Sunday!)—but the driver wanted to give us the tourist run-around and take us to the expensive shops with jewelry, rugs, and tchotchkes.  We let him do so, thinking that he was getting gas coupons or tee shirts or some compensation from the stores (which also were traps for our SAS city orientation tours and other independent students, all of whom we saw).  But at the end of the day, not only did he not deliver us to the one mall with noted books and records (my real objectives), claiming that they were also closed on Sunday; he also shook us down for more money since he had waited while we “shopped” in the stores of his choosing!  Most unpleasant, and I never did get to Spencer Plaza on two other attempts with similar drivers, who seemed allergic to the place like some River Styx they would not ford for love nor money.  Bettes and Zachary did offer more resistance, or insistence, and got there, so I now have a dozen wonderful Indian classical music CDs to take home, and she made wonderful purchases of silks and cottons at the places she managed to go to on the recommendation of our interport Indian students from Madras.  But I think I have a curse in this city.  On the final day I did get to the museum at last, which has fabulous bronzes, well displayed, including ten Dancing Shivas evolving from the 9^th to the 15^th centuries, as well as stone pieces frozen in British colonial displays that are losing their visibility.  Best of their fragments was from the stupa of Amaravati, whose other remains, much better displayed and discussed, are in the British Museum, London.  Also visited the meager and disappointing but significant tomb of apostle Thomas, a shrine with a mediocre colonial church attached—the only church and apostle tomb besides St. Peter’s and Santiago de Compostela.  But not their match…

Our main trip began the next day after an overnight train (six per compartment; we really got to bond on this trip).  Main morning stop was the Madurai Temple, as glorious in its colored gateways (gopuras) as impressive in its stone carvings in the covered shrine area.  They even had an elephant in there, who would take your bill and offer you a blessing with a tap of his trunk.  Fabulous carving, which made stone look as supple as wood (see below for follow-up sculpture purchase in Cochin).  All of the smaller Hindu temples in Asia are pale imitations and smaller footnotes to Madurai, so it was great to see the original, even if this kind of trip precluded intervening stops at other temples and museums.  Madurai even had a museum with its own bronzes and was utterly captivating.  A large royal palace, now unoccupied by administered by the state, offered a fascinating combination of Muslim arches like North India with elaborate Hindu ornament and great spaces, particularly the ballroom.

A long bus ride took us across the vast rice fields of Tamil Nadu, which were coming into harvest and included movable threshers that shook the grains off the cut stalks.  The goal was the mountain ridge of the Western Gats, the Appalachians of India from the first impact of the India plate into Asia.  These separate Kerala state from Tamil Nadu, and as the sun went down we climbed the mountains to our overnight stay, Spice Village, a resort that was as eco-friendly and dedicated to the nearby tiger nature preserve and national park as it was dedicated to tourist comfort.  Lovely pool, a town surrounded by spice markets (after all Malabar pepper and other spices originate near here), and other amenities, including cooking demo and classical South Indian dance of very high quality.

However entranced we were by the Spice Village, next morning brought an early boat ride on the nearby lake to see animals.  We had great luck: elephants on the distant hill (brown from their dirt bath in the red soil), otter, fish eagle and kingfishers, bison with white feet, and even a boar family nestling near us as we walked to the boat.  Our subse-quent descent from the mountain successively featured a limited coffee layer followed by giant tea plantations, and finally rubber plantations where plastic shielded the open cuts from moisture as the sap was collected in cups each day.  A ride on the canals and waters of the Periya River until sundown offered a respite in the open air before a night drive to a nice hotel in Cochin.

Our last morning was spent in touring the fascinating and diverse city of Cochin, where Vasco da Gama died and was interred in what became an 18^th-century Dutch church with its own tomb plaques.  Portuguese and Dutch traders populated the old island, which still has counterbalanced large /Chinese nets on massive wooden frames.  The Dutch section is being rehabbed for hotels and private residences and is really similar in its thick walls and painted stucco surfaces to the old Dutch sections in South Africa (Cape Town and Stellenbosch).  Then we visited the Dutch Palace, originally built as a gift of the Portu-guese to the king and richly ornamented with murals of the Ramayana and the gods.  It stands adjacent to “Jew Town,” where the oldest synagogue in this part of the world is still extant, though the community of old men is down to single digits (and we confirmed what Zachary had seen on the web, namely that the last remaining cohen had died at age 90 a few months ago).  Lovely building, documented as early as 1349, full of lamp donations and even hand-painted Chinese blue-and-white tiles; central bima in the Sephardic usage.  Bettes took some contraband photos, and we bought a few postcards for Zachary. 

Then we went next door to “Isadore’s” and bought a 19^th-century makara monster just like the ones we had admired in Madurai’s covered shrine area to go with our masks and other monsters at home.  For me we found a marvelous single block of wood of the hermaphrodite Shiva/ Parvati, the Ardhanarishwara, with two arms on one side and one on the other, different hair and trousers, even different buttocks between male and female halves.  It turns out that the manager there, Jose George, was the first non-Jewish owner of a house in that area and someone who grew up with the Jews, even acting as the Shabbos Goy to light the candles for the congregants.  We would have enjoyed lingering longer in the area and visiting other stores, but that is the cost of group travel: to have to rush back to the bush.  But we were thrilled with meeting him and finding such treasures.  Along the way we were also able to confirm that Shelley Errington’s brother, Troyce, must surely have bought his Goa ivories and his red Kerala-specific house-shaped box for dowry jewelry at this very store, which was the only one open 20 years ago in the town.  So we learned more about the things we had taken care of and also closed a circle that began with the brother of a friend who collected during the last century.  Even Shelley’s VOC box from the Dutch East Indies Company (1749 on its engraved ornament) probably originated in Cochin.

After cooling down in the hotel and enjoying yet another sumptuous buffet (South Indian food is really tasty, whether vegetarian or not), I got to watch Cardinals/Mets playoff baseball on ESPN Asia to my delight and surprise.  Our train back to Madras lasted 13 hours and put us at the ship at 7am, and the rain washed out plans to see the temples and silk factories of Kanchipuram, so Bettes went shopping and I finally got see the museum bronzes, even if the shopping center eluded me. 

Vietnam and Burma

September 30

Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City is paradise for our students.  North Face backpacks are cheaper for two (Zachary got his pair for $20), Ralph Lauren polo shirts go for about five bucks apiece, and pirated DVDs of Seinfeld, Sex and the City, and other favorites are a dollar apiece (even I picked up Hero and Constant Gardener).  Bettes bought clothing as I have never seen her do before, but it was spectacular stuff: silk for everything, some off the rack, some custom-made and really designer quality.  And the fashions are so attractive, especially the local suit of top and pants, the ao dai (Bettes got a pair of those, one of them in striking red—Suzie Wong, eat your heart out).  We also found attractive tops for Laura in silk and striking patterns.  I hope that they have heat waves next spring in Middletown, CT. 

Zachary got measured for both a suit and a jacket and purchased shirts to match, some tailored, some off the rack.  I could not help thinking back to those Oklahoma and Texas ancestors who were haberdashers and what they would have thought of all this and what tips they might have bestowed on his selections of material and design.  Even my dad would have had some fun advising at the fitting, but I think that he would have been proud of his grandson for wanting good clothing and having it properly tailored.  We ended the first day with a fine group meal at the Lemongrass, which looked as if it had been commandeered by Semester at Sea, even though each group booked separately, and there were a few strangers, i.e. locals, in the place.  Really great meal of Vietnamese cuisine, which came to about 25 dollars for the three of us.

Bettes’s four (!) traditional dresses turned out great; two off the rack, two made from scratch with measurements and fittings.  Additionally we found some terrific silks on offer in Cambodia, where she got a couple of skirts and a Kben, something like a longhi or sarong but wrapped around a sari to make baggy pants.  The woman in the market in Siem Reap actually was more comfortable bartering in French after all this time.  Zachary also made additionally purchases, and he is the king of bargainers.  While negotiating at Angkor Wat for some items, he drew the respect and admiration of his adversary, who turned to us at one point and exclaimed, “he knows the price of everything!”  We wound up concluding a bargain—for his purchases and ours together—and then taking pictures with the stall vendors, so respect and good fun as well as business.

Angkor and the Cambodia trip was as wonderful as I remembered and spectacular in spots, e.g. when we got first the sunset glow and then the double rainbow over Angkor Wat at the end of the first day.  The jungle temple of Ta Prohm had a musical ensemble on traditional instruments of beggars at both the entrance and the exit.  The apsaras at Prea Khan were still fabulous; it turns out that the ornamented the performance area.  Our guide was really informative about such things, and he showed us details in the great mural reliefs of Angkor Wat that I would have missed on my own, such as some of the characters in the Mahabharata fight or the particular scenes of the Ramayana in one of the corner galleries.  While our sunrise light was unspectacular, it was clear, so we made it around the reliefs before going back to the hotel for breakfast.  I had not seen all of them because of the climbing of the central peak.  This time both Bettes and Zachary went up to the top and seemed pretty impressed with the experience.  The guide was also great for the homey details of the Bayon reliefs of daily life.  While there seemed to be less time for the latter, we did have plenty of time for Angkor Wat as well as the purchases after-wards.  The one place we had no time for was Banteay Sri, but we heard that it was partly closed, since it is less well guarded and lower to the ground, so prey to defacement.  On this trip our hotel was luxurious, but the overbuilding and tourist overkill in the region was striking after a short five years from when we saw the first of the building under way.

We ended the time in Saigon with an expensive but luxurious dinner (and continual attentive service) at the Mandarin together with the Academy Dean and his wife.  This on top of two fine meals at the Lemon Grass near the dressmakers’ shops.  Well worth returning to if a later Saigon trip occurs.  Bettes and I discussed two scenarios: 1) her work in Laos and Cambodia with Deborah McClintock, who has made numerous weaving trips to the region; 2) some rendezvous with Laura in conjunction with her China experience.  Either way I could enjoy some more of those temples!

Midterms come up now that we are back on the ship, though we have two more ports coming up quickly: Burma and south India.  I am really enjoying the Asian art classes, one a survey in the order of the ship, the other on art and religion, so they do have some overlap in presentations.  I have gotten good responses to my shorter talks in Core as well, so in general this has been a good pedagogical experience so far.  Students especially appreciate having orientation to the places they are about to visit, which they are not getting in most of their other classes.  The survey class is a bit of a drag, since it meets at 8am and has students who are not hitting on all cylinders but also have less experience.  I wonder how much fun it is going to be to try to write textbook chapters on the ancient Greeks when I felt relatively uninspired to lecture about them while here; on the other hand the Asian things continue to fascinate me and to go over better.  I also have a nice complement of adult learners sitting in on my classes.

Yom Kippur occurred on the last day in port in Vietnam.  Zachary went to the small schul in town for orthodox services, and then he led the services on the ship.  He has been stal-wart in trying to muster the meager enthusiasms of the students on board, but even for services on the most solemn day of the year it was a bare minyan.  He read Torah and Haftorah for the services, just as Laura did five years ago, and I thought that he offered a good experience for those who turned out.  I have been disappointed by the lack of support for Jewish services on ship; the Christians hold a real bible-thumping weekly gathering with big numbers.  There are plans for a serious study group of sacred texts in the next few weeks, jointly sponsored by Zachary and one of the profs, who is also a Lutheran minister.  I will try to join that and see how it goes. 

The other disappointment relative to last time is the absence of a chorus, which I joined and eagerly participated in, including rewriting the lyrics of a standard sea chanty that we repeated each port.  Nobody stepped up to lead a choir this time, so that vital element of continuity and camaraderie is missing from this voyage.  There are times when I know I should not compare the two experiences, and I know that you cannot step into the same stream twice, but this is one case where the first one was definitely better.

12 October

I feel inexpressibly sad to leave Burma.  I don’t know whether it is a love of the land and people, fondness for the remarkable Buddhist monuments of Pagan (and Rangoon’s Schwedagon giant, which left me a little cold this second visit to its excesses of gold and white), or even some predilection from the genes of an old Burma veteran (my dad was in the OSS in WWII).  But I really have bonded with this country, as much or more than a decade ago when I first visited with a Northwestern alumni association trip.  And there is talk that this might—after only a couple of years—be the last SAS visit to the country. 

There has been considerable debate about the merits or demerits of our coming at all.  Nobel Prize winner Aung San Su Ky argues (seconded by Archbishop Tutu, who is sailing next spring and forbade a return visit as his precondition) that sanctions should be total and should include tourism.  Yet guides are among the best paid and most educated people in the country, and the presence of Americans and other foreigners clearly elicits joy from these generous and sweet people while possibly providing scrutiny for excesses committed by their military on the population.  Surely Thailand has been helped by its millions of visitors, and its recent military coup puts it on a par with the regime here, albeit forty years behind Burma.  So there is debate in our midst as well and controversy about whether we should have come at all. 

Our guide has been a splendid representative, passionate about his country and a fine teacher about Buddhism, including talks about the religion while we had a long stay at the Ananda Temple in Pagan.  He is the kind of person who could be a leader, and he has a small lacquer export business started in the last few years, so he is entrepreneurial (he has brothers who are also guides; clearly this is an educated and upwardly mobile family).  He has visited America a few times and has connections there as well as enthu-siasm for both classical and pop music.  All in all, splendid company.

We needed his great story-telling ability and lively personality, because our long bus ride between Mandalay and Pagan, scheduled for a full eight hours, became an endlessly slow ride and even a wait during floods that blocked the roads.  We had to wait for waters to subside at two points before we could proceed, and at one point a large sand deposit made us switch buses after traversing on foot with our purchases as bags were ferried by small truck.  We departed near noon and only arrived after 1 in the morning, though the Pagan hotel (New Pagan) was really a resort with truly luxurious rooms and pool.

Our first stop was Mandalay, which was much as I remembered with few new stops.  The same three pagodas, though the teak one was enhanced by the guide’s commentary, as he explained that it was once the king’s bedchamber from the great palace, moved out to be transformed into a Buddhist pagoda.  As a result, it was the only portion of the palace to survive British bombs during WWII and show what the interior once looked like (200 rooms altogether!).  Mahamuni Pagoda with its bloated gold Buddha still is constantly enhanced by added gold foil.  I did not add to its bulk, but I did go up and touch it, even touching it with my forehead, only to discover afterwards that I had picked up gold foil at each point of contact.   I remembered the site chiefly for its puppet shops, and we bought a pair for Zachary and ourselves.  Other than this stop, the visit to Mandalay was not very memorable, though the guide also directed us to a visit at Paleik, once a crossroads of trade whose prosperity allowed it to build hundreds of stupas, almost like Pagan.  Bettes also got to see cottage industry weaving of longhi cloths.

After that long drive the next day to Pagan, we did have a full day for that amazing place.  I went ahead and bought Don Stadtner’s guidebook to the area because I so esteem the rich panoply of stupas erected between the mid-11^th and late 13^th centuries before the Mongol conquest.  Our visit was a tease, including a stop at a lacquer factory rather than extra time at the pagodas.  Nice early morning and late night views from the top of sites, followed by a lavish, even vulgar catered dinner and cultural performance on the very front of a monument, complete with “Welcome SAS” sign.  Pretty good music and dance, better than the dinner event in Cambodia.  Most of our actual touring other than the Ananda temple and the paintings stupa consisted of a pony cart ride (through puddles and deep ruts from the rains) around the region.  We only stopped for photos—I am so glad that I had a full day at this place on my own during the last trip!  Bettes says that I am far too temple insatiable and that only the most fanatic of other travelers would have felt as I did, but I love this place and find it endlessly fascinating.

We returned to Rangoon the next day by air, pausing before a nice lunch at the Trader’s Hotel to enjoy the Schwedagon for an hour.  This is one case where I was more dazzled on the first visit.  This time I found it vulgar and excessive but still amazing.  I took time to sit in one of the temples and absorb the atmosphere of prayer and contemplation.  In the afternoon visit to Scott Market (to use its colonial name), we found the mother lode of Burmese textiles, the store that supplied most of the pieces for the recent Penn exhibition, “Mantles of Merit.”  The store is called Yoyama, and it had historical pieces from most of the hill tribes.  Bettes got a couple of pieces that she quite liked, and we would have acquired more if there had only been more cash on hand (no credit cards in Burma, which is cut off from the US by sanctions in any case).  A quick return visit on the final morning to a humbler vendor also got us another piece by a modern weaver that resembled a few pieces in the store. 

We bought gifts for friends and for Laura and some things Zachary wanted while revisiting the Scott Market.  Burma is actually the cheapest and best quality market site on the whole trip, though Vietnam runs a close second.  Students have loaded up on clothing in particular but handicrafts as well in both ports (not that they lacked for trinkets in Japan and China earlier).  At the gala in Pagan we all dressed up in local costume, which for men featured the longhi skirts plus bags from the tour company.  We felt a little as if we were in drag, and we had a group photo made of “men in skirts.”

But all of this is secondary to the powerful effect of visiting villages and sharing real looks and some rare conversations in English with locals.  The warmth and genuine generosity of the Burmese is truly inspirational, and the sincerity of their religious faith ranges from the perfidious generals (who have built ugly new structures even at Pagan but also in Mandalay and Rangoon) to the wider population.  One wonders how much this willingness to consider life as suffering and to try to transcend its privations has shaped or enabled this kind of imposed regime.  In any case, this has been a most thought provoking experience and has challenged all of the students to assess this stop against the kinds of insights they might have gleaned (but seemed largely unconscious of) during their earlier stops in such dicey settings as China and Vietnam/Cambodia.

My birthday comes up in a few days, and I am sharing a cake with our Indian interport lecturer as well as a colleague, the Anthro professor on the ship.  I will just be arriving in India on the day itself, so it should be a memorable anniversary occasion.  But I also want to make sure that this kind of Burma stop does not disappear from the SAS itinerary, so I might well be writing to the home office sooner or later to appeal for keeping this.

Japan stay (now en route to China)

14 September

We have now had three days in Japan with a variety of experiences, so it is time to catch up.  Our first day began late, as the ship did not clear until a little before noon.  We found another couple, senior passengers near in age, for a walk into Kobe, principally to visit the main dept store.  We started on the ground floor, where Bettes replenished the stock of coffee, and we walked through a few of the sections, highlighted by kimonos on the top floor (expensive but beautiful).  Then back down to two, where I actually asked directions (note for posterity—even using Japanese, doko desu ka) to the restaurant.  There followed the traditional perusing of the plastic food and ordering from that, and we sat down to discover that our companions had really never used chopsticks before.  Our subsequent lessons proved only slightly helpful, esp with the soba noodles, and after watching Dwight struggle a kindly Japanese customer actually came over and made her own attempt to provide him with Chopsticks 101 lessons.   Both Dwight and Jane were afraid that they would eventually starve while in Japan, and he came up with the great line at the end of the meal, “I am developing a blister here!”  We howled (and teased him again later, only to discover that their evening meal was at an Indian restaurant where they could use forks…).  Then a little more walking.  Bettes found a hidden Shinto shrine amidst the skyscrapers, but there was not that much else to exercise our interests until the ball game that departed in late afternoon.

            It was the same fun that Laura and I enjoyed on the last voyage.  Oryx has merged with Kintasu to form the Oryx Buffaloes (the two teams played each other in Kobe last time, and this time we were in the Osaka Dome, against the Softbank team, which won).  But the cheers and towels and audience fighting spirit were the same as before, and we were close to the bleachers, though not in them this time.  Zachary went and joined the rowdy cheering section and had a great time, including a photo with his Japanese neigh-bor in the seats.  Some of the students got really sloshed on beers, but most had a good time and were fairly responsible. 

            The next day was rainy, which might have been really unfortunate, but our tour of Kyoto Gardens was actually pretty attractive in the drizzle (sometimes downpour), with the greens enhanced, the waterfalls full, and the crowds reduced.  We started with the fascinating Zen rock garden at Ryoanji, which I had seen in photos countless times but was strangely moved to see in person.  I really was fascinated that it was just wide enough so that there was no privileged position, and one had to move along its breadth in order to see relationships of the larger rocks to one another and to see some details that were obscure from other viewpoints.  Afterwards, too, I found that I noticed small items all over the rest of the garden, such as the wonderful old root patterns or the growth of new trees out of the husks of old, dead ones.  This kind of attentiveness continued at the later two gardens, Golden Pavilion and Silver Pavilion, which are roughly contemporary and meditational sites as well, so very nicely suited to the same kind of attention,  I was much more aware this time of the wonderful placement of stones and miniature trees, so carefully but unobtrusively tended to make the shifting views and elevations works well.

The trip ended at the Sanjusangendo and its amazing 1001 Kannon figures, plus the fierce guardians (many from Hindu deities), which were not usually illustrated in books.  The students were quite receptive to all of this, especially the last item, and they really loved having classes come to life on site along with the professor right after the lectures.  I was able to benefit from fine Powerpoints by Julie Davis on Kamakura/Kei school sculpture as well as the Zen images on Muromachi Ink painting and related garden sites.

            Today Nara, which did not have the same excitement of novelty for me after the visit last time,  But Horyuji temple, the oldest in Japan, still has its captivating aura of simplicity and elegance and its rich trove of sculptures.  We did not stop this time for other sculptures in the Nara Museum, but the subsequent stops at Todaiji and the Shinto shrine of Kasuga Taisha.  This latter site really affected me more the second time, since I was better able to appreciate the beauty of its natural setting with enormous and intricate root-like vines and towering evergreens in a grove.  Again, the students were most appre-ciative, and I have tried hard to make the classes speak to the trip possibilities, for those students who are willing to take advantage of the off-ship cultural sites.  One funny moment happened to me (in the presence of Bettes, who might just kid me about it, and I got a few laughs out of the senior passengers in relating this) as I got off the bus at the Shinto shrine, when I was passed by a Japanese tour guide with her flock in tow.  She took one look at me with my red shirt and white beard and exclaimed, “Santa Claus!”  I am still not sure whether it was meant as a compliment or just an uncharacteristically spontaneous Japanese exclamation, but it made us all laugh.

Bettes chafed a bit about the regimentation of a bus group, but she soon found some fabulous spaces in the gardens and the Shinto site, and her attentiveness to details of buildings or plants in these places has been eye-opening for me (and for anyone who will see her unique photos, which have no tourist views—except for those I insisted upon—and seem detached for their origins, but which are rich in pattern and color, abstract and fascinating).  The weaving and color workshops have really sensitized her to things in this environment.

            Zachary has really blossomed on the ship.  He has become the front man for the tourist office, fielding questions and meeting people in the process.  This role will be all the more important in subsequent ports, since independent travel increases exponentially as the voyage continues, and this group of students seem to have started earlier than the former one did.  Z chafes a little under his micromanager boss, but he is handling it well and finding his escape in his public role.  Moreover, he has loved getting to know so many students and staff in the process.  He has made plans to join a number of them on his own travels in Japan, and his own independent travel on a Japan Rail pass has been impressive to date, including a day trip to Hiroshima and today’s round trip to Tokyo just to see the sumo wrestlers (we have caught a few matched on tv from the ongoing tourna-ment, but he wanted to sit though as much of a typical day at the dojo as time permitted).  Tomorrow he will join us for the day in exploring Kyoto on our own—probably a lot of crafts and street browsing with a few temples on the way.  Then Chabad services—our only Kobe option.   Z has been a leader, really a rabbi, on the ship so far for 2 Friday nights, but the turnout has been small.  He is undaunted and positive and willing to field questions or lead discussions if the interest is there.  In short, he has built a life for him- self on the ship and really found his own identity quite apart from us; indeed, most folks do not know the relationship exists unless we mention it, though a number of the faculty and staff have told us how impressed they are with his maturity and responsibility and also his increasing visibility and outgoing nature (we missed his star turn in a recent late- night karaoke event with the staff…).

            So things are going well so far.  I am enjoying the varied interactions with the students, including these dialogues on site for the trips from the ship.  Most seem pretty interested in the classes, and the first paper assignments showed some good papers, albeit with more writing problems from others than I expected.  I am taking an active role in the common settings for lectures: Cultural Preport and Global Studies (Core), chiefly with talks on the monuments as cultural artifacts.  So I am also a citizen of the ship and feeling that I contribute in my varied ways.  After Japan we are going to have only two days to China before going off on a long trip to Xi’an and Beijing, even arriving too late down in Hong Kong to do much there.  I wish I could show the town to Bettes a bit more, but it is mostly Victoria Peak and dining, so if a sacrifice had to be made, that would be my chosen omission.  Will report more on our varied doings on the ship and catch you up with later Japan and China in the next installment.

Brief Japan update (Sept 15^th):  Very full independent day in Kyoto by all 3 of us.  First, to the Nishijin fabric center, where Bettes got to see weavers and even basket makers after a kimono show (different runway models to be sure from our stereotypes).   One of the little old man weavers saw Bettes explaining to us what he was doing, so her interrupted his work to show us some of his beautiful obi sashes and asking us to note how heavy they were with their gold thread from the luxurious patterns. Then a little wandering in the “garment district,” where we stopped in on a yarn wholesaler (quite surprised to see gringos off the street),  Lunch at a mom and pop noodle place near Nijo Palace, which we visited both outside in the gardens and inside in the well preserved decorated rooms.  Off to Geion for the fancy shops, the Shinto shrine, and the historic neighborhood, where we saw quite a few kimonos on the street and a few young geishas emerging from the shrine.  Then to the remarkably clean, elegant, and well stocked “fish market,” before a final visit with Zachary (who had seen neither a Buddhist temple nor a Shinto shrine before today with all his trips to Hiroshima and sumo in Tokyo) to the Sanjusangendo, which seemed to make a powerful impression on him.  He went off to Chabad service in the evening, while we returned to the ship after a very full but rewarding day.

Between Honolulu and Kobe

5 September 2006

Our one-day stop in Honolulu was more interesting than I would ever have thought.  I always shunned the idea of Oahu as a big, touristic city of beaches and hotels with only Pearl Harbor to offer.  Bettes and Zachary went to Pearl Harbor, so I cannot judge the quality of that experience, though they seem to have been moved as much as most folks, esp by the museum there.  Instead I went snorkeling in Kaneohe Bay, which turns out to be the remnants of the old volcanic caldera in cliffs curving around on one side and a barrier reef on the other.  In between the waters are beautiful, though the reef causes a sandbar (where the new snorkelers were invited to practice).  It turns out that Jurassic Park and Lost are both filmed at or near there, so the scenery was as familiar as it was lovely, and I did feel that I got away from Waikiki for another part of Oahu.  I would still prefer to go to the Big Island or Kauai instead, but this was a good stopgap of necessity. 

As for the snorkeling itself, the students were enthusiastic, and I got to know some of them pretty well in bus and boat, so that was contagious and shared fun (I did not obsess with buying beer as they did, however).  The reef itself was small potatoes, with a small surface and a limited variety of colorful fish, all small, but there were yellow tangs, angel fish, and some beautiful blue fish that swam like hummingbirds in the water.  Not bad.

Then Bettes, Zachary and I joined up for the later afternoon along the strip.  We passed the hotels and paused to buy Z a tacky Hawaii shirt with a sunset scene in garish colors.  Then we spent the evening along the surfing beach and at the bandstand, where the cele- bration of Queen Lailukalani’s birthday brought out musicians and dancers of all ages.  Much Hawaiian stuff, including several hulas, but also Fijian music (they claimed) as well as Maori haka war chants by youths with marker tattoos on their faces.  Plus a few local musical items, such as the older female singer whose virtuoso trademark was an ear-splitting (or glass-shattering) high note held intolerably long.  Even yodeling.  We also looked in on an Okinawa folk festival with music, line dances, noodles and other attractions, though we left before the dragon and the drummers came out (featured on local tv back in our cabins).  Ate at food stands from local restaurants set up for the queen’s holiday (Labor Day weekend Saturday, so we were lucky in our timing).  Our choice was Indonesian with rice or noodles and chicken, plus spring rolls (loempias).  Bus back to the ship and time with a few more students en route (public transportation is good, and exemplary for handicapped passengers).

Classes are now in day four, two on one day, the third on the alternate day (no weekends).  Cap is 35, and mine are full or nearly so.  Some enthusiasm and energy from students that I did not sense on the last voyage—probably a different crowd this time rather than a different me, but I am probably less anxious and frantic with the unfamiliar material than I was the first time.  I do still review hard, and I am using digital images and powerpoint for the first time, but things seem to be working well so far.  I am getting to know their names and we both enjoy seeing each other at meals or on the fly on ship.

The faculty are still a good group and friendly, but the fields are skewed towards anthro, business, and creative writing, with too little history and international studies to suit my sense of the curricular needs.  Core is a common class with a leader and cameo appear-ances from the faculty.  I gave one already on whether “Asia” really exists or is just the collective name of the landmass by outsiders, and it went fairly well, highlighted by the Chinese mosque with a pagoda minaret in Xi’an.  This trip has much more internet presence than the last one; mercifully faculty do not have limited accounts before the fees kick in for too many minutes on line.  Internet is slow because of narrow-band satellite connections and the heavy student volume.

Because I take Tai Chi at 6am every morning without fail and sometimes teach at 8, my internet use is haphazard and takes a long time.  I have also been exercising on stationary bikes as on the last voyage, usually in mid afternoon after I finish teaching and am restless before settling in for lecture prep reading.

Bettes and I have a bridge tour scheduled later this week,  I am enjoying the newer ship and the lovely top floor cabin—with balcony!—that we were lucky enough to get (perhaps too few paying adult passengers?).  Right now everyone is gearing up for the excitement of arrival in Japan, and we lose our day at the International Date Line after tomorrow.  Getting those extra one-hour time gains across the Pacific has been a life-saver so far, and I don’t envy the spring voyage as it loses an hour every other day!

Having Zachary on ship is great, though we see him mainly at meals.  He has been quite busy in the field office working on the travel arrangements to come (with a fairly crazy, micromanaging boss, but he seems to be adapting fairly well).  Bettes gets a little bored with no real role but has found a class or two that she likes after volunteering to help set up things initially.  She is even trying out a Javanese dance experience from the woman who teaches me Tai Chi (and sits in on my Asian Art and Religion class), so I think that she will be glad for the time on ship as well as the trip as a whole when all is said and done.  Lack of the support group of friends back home has been harder on her, as expected (I am too busy and glad to be away from the ratrace of dept stuff, and I have my own busy role on ship).  But we are enjoying each other in the process, which is a good thing as well—and there are quite a few faculty couples just like us on ship.

More when we near or have already spent time in Japan.  Aloha!