CK's Journal

Saigon - taking it easy in the tropics

2012-01-28T04:57:00.017-06:00

Mostly I photograph what I see as we walk around vs. "the sights." Photo: the food court area at Binh Thanh Market - Action! Saigon photos are here

We had an inauspicious start to Saigon (and a sweet ending): At the airport, long a notorious den of taxi cheats (notorious even for SE Asia), we were caught up in the new dispatch system. Still a cheat, but only for a few dollars; even so, there's an ill taste to being cheated. Through the rain and insanely crowded streets to the “backpacker alley” where our hotel (Kim Hotel - $20/night) is – too narrow for cars, so we got out at the entrance to the alley. I waited with our luggage under an awning and Leslie went down the alley and pretty soon here came the two young women who've helped us before and down the alley to the hotel we went, splashing through the water.

Checked in, bought water, went looking for something

to eat. We met a promoter and d-j who recommended a place. It was okay, but a little over-priced like a lot of places on this alley, which is on a steady march to mid-prices in food and lodging.

Photo: al fresco dining on Bui Vien Street

The next day we went to the alley where the people sell stellar pork chop and egg on rice with some vegetables. A great breakfast with more and more powerful coffee – WooHoo! From there to a bus place to get tickets to Phnom Penh. The buses are so full that we couldn't get seats together, so took what we could get. Lots of foreigners headed out of town as most of Saigon closes down for Tet.

One of the things that's happened with both of us in aging is that we remember less and less of our night dreams. More often than not all either of us can remember is that there were dreams. Now, in Vietnam, both of us are dreaming more and remembering more. Last night Leslie dreamed this (from an email she sent to David and copied to me): “I had a wonderful dream about you last night. When it began, you were your current age/appearance, but after a nap, you were a beautiful baby boy again (wasn't a surprise at all in the dream). I wrapped you in a soft blanket and took you for a walk in your stroller, held you, etc. and it was incredibly happy and serene. I sat and watched your sweet

little face, especially your mouth, while you slept - just wonderful.

It was a rare gift to have the dream and to be able to remember it in great detail; both of us are so happy you're our son.”

That was a nice one to hear about!

Photo: pork chop and egg on rice, with vegetable and coffee for breakfast

Back to the Kim for a lazy hazy tropical afternoon. This from email to Jessica from Atrium Obscurum: Back out to the streets, Leslie and I walking around – going a way we hadn't gone before, through labyrinth alleys and passageways, just digging being there, stopping in at the "bauty shop" to get my beard trimmed (everyone having a good time with that). Stopped at a street vendor for noodles with vegetables, chillies, and garlic +

cha gio and cooold Saigon beer for dinner (little blue stools and metal table on the sidewalk of course). The Vietnamese variation on chilli oil is knocking me out! It's hot here, after Hanoi and Hue - Ahh, Hue. Now back in the room listening to Solar Fields, feeling good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJKB6knW4FY

Photo above: flower vendors and customers in the rain - talk about sweet!

On to Binh Thanh Market. To get there you walk through a big park which is currently filled with flower and bonsai vendors in the most amazing display I've ever seen – and I've seen a few flower shows. We wandered through the flowers for awhile, then to the market where we got pretty much over-heated. Binh Thanh is the main tourist market in Saigon, so in addition to areas set up for locals, there are many stalls selling the same old stuff for tourists. Since this is Tet season, there are quite a few Viet Khieu (overseas Vietnamese) in town and the joint was jumping. I had decent Bun bo Hue, but Leslie was so over-heated she didn't eat.

Photo below: Pham Ngu Lao, the backpacker area of Saigon

The next morning it was more pork chop and egg on rice, more coffee, more coffee, talking with the old lady who's always sitting in the alley – not that we could understand much of what either of us could say. She walks (assisted) up from wherever she lives down the alley, sits in one of the three chairs

with a back, the coffee lady brings her a glass of coffee, she has a cigarette, someone sits with her, talking, drinking coffee, smoking together. The good life.

Photo: flower delivery

More flower market, more food court, this time for bun thit nuong, banh cuon, and fried bread with whole shrimp in it (I gave a pass to the heads). Back to the room for a nap and later for a walk, this time to a different part of the park, where we watched guys playing an amazing fast hacky-sack kind of kick game with a shuttlecock.

Photo: who wouldn't love a Vietnamese girl on a moto, with her mask, her gloves

Then an exercise class led by a compact, muscular woman and then a different exercise class that was pretty sexy. Then along a street past the “open tour” buses, and on to the same place as last night for more noodle, cha gio, and beer. This place, by the way, was where last year when we were walking to catch the early morning bus to Phnom Penh, there was a huge dead rat about six feet from where we were eating this trip.

But that was then, this is now.

Photo: lots of women and girls posing for photos at the flower show.

Really, once again, it's just being here. I don't think there many of the “sights” we've missed over the past seven years. Here's a big event for us: Today the woman who makes the banh cuon at Binh Thanh market came out from her stand and cuddled Leslie. Saigon travelers will know what an unbelievable thing this is like anyone

ever got affection from one of the food women here. Sweet. So that was the high point of the day in our exciting life.

Tomorrow we catch the bus to Phnom Penh. On the road again. Just can't wait to get on the road again.

Photo: this is the woman who came around the counter to snuggle Leslie - uninvited, unexpected, such a beautiful thing to happen.

Hue (it's raining)

2012-01-18T21:12:00.019-06:00

Someone on a travel forum said that this journal is boring. My response: "Thanks for the comment. It's what happens when you get old, if you're lucky: just happy to be alive, happy to be with your wife, happy to be in Vietnam again ... simple needs, simple pleasures, laying up treasures where moth and rust don't corrupt." Here are the Hue photos. Photo below: Street of dreams (speaking of simple needs)

In the Hanoi airport we talked with a pleasant couple from Germany. At some point the man said he hoped it wouldn't be raining in Hue. I didn't say so, but I thought that I hoped it would be raining in Hue. It's winter and it's Hue and I love the rain in Hue. And of course it was raining when we landed – ahhhh, Hue.

The ride into town from Phu Bai Airport was as always, a panorama of mossy temples, shrines, and other religious structures interspersed

among the usual open-fronted stores selling pretty much the same old stuff, then a few markets, then bigger and bigger buildings, modern ones and the smaller stores and the motos, bicycles and cyclos (more than in Hanoi or Saigon), cars, trucks, but nowhere near the congestion of Hanoi or Saigon. It feels so good being in this place. Then turning left from Hung Vuong on to Nguyen Tri Phuong and pulling up to the alley where the Binh Duong and other budget hotels and cafes are. We're here! Get a room ($18 for triple – none of the doubles working for us). Drop our bags, step across the way to

Cafe on Thu Wheels for some soup, noodles, garlic bread, and beer with U2 on the sound system – a backpacker cafe – banana pancakes for me soon. Photo: An Cuu Market

Back in the room, listening to a live recording of the Wave Farmers album, a psychedelic trio (electronic drums, synth, violincello) playing at Soul Rise. Perfect for Hue. Going to see them, be danced by them again in March at Mannafest.

Email to Jim: Yes, the journey continues well. I was lying on the bed yesterday (a rainy day) with moderate abdominal pain and maybe a little fever, in kind of a daze, staring at the art deco-ish light fixtures and the detailing on the ceiling and windows – happy me (except for the tail end of a sinus infection, a broken off crown, abdominal pain & fever - and

also that I seem to be talking more and more about physical ailments - at least it's not bowel-related – give me a few years). Hue is waaay slower than Hanoi. I love it here. Feeling good today ...

Photo: Our alley - Binh Duong Hotel on right, Thu's on left

We took cyclos to Pho An Cuu, a big market by a small river. This market is very different than the heavily-touristed Dong Ba Market (on the Perfume River) with it's aggressive over-charging vendors. Leslie bought some more peppercorns and we furnished some comic relief for several vendors. From there we walked to the Big C department store, checking it out (getting jiggy again), had lunch at a little cafe inside: Banh cuon, salad, nem, and peanuts. I was starting to feel pretty bad by now, so we left, cyclo back to hotel where I lay on the bed for a few hours. Had some yogurt for dinner, feeling better, slept hard that night. Photo: Leslie buying pepper

I fixed coffee in the room (Trung Nguyen #4) and we had our usual leisurely morning, then walked to Nina's Cafe for an excellent omelet and cafe sua da (35,000 dong – about $1.70USD) and comfortable chairs. http://ninascafe.jimdo.com/ Then to the Family Home Cafe for Leslie to try their egg sandwich – another good one, but the chairs are uncomfortable (Asia, the land of uncomfortable chairs).

Photo below: Coffee in the room

We walked across the Trang Tien Bridge over the wide Perfume River to

a supermarket to get some yogurt, then back across and southwest for a pretty long walk on Le Loi to Dien Bien Phu Street to a place named Quan Tai Phu that's well known for nem lui (grilled pork on lemon grass). When we got there I went to the toilet – through the kitchen and a short passageway that was (no kidding) 18” wide with loose tiles on the floor and into the squat toilet room about 3.5'x3.5' where all sorts of newly laundered clothes were hanging so that I was peeing with someone's damp clothing on my shoulders. When I got back to the eating area, they'd brought our unordered food (and no idea of the cost). The server showed us what/how to put the various vegetables on the rice paper and then the pork, and then some weird looking and very tasty dark viscous sauce. I think there were 12 pork things, all for 50,000 dong ($2.50USD). Wow! Sooner or later we're going to get over-charged (and needless to say, we bargain firmly with cyclo drivers) but so far, things are working out well for us in Vietnam. Here is the food blog that describes nem lui (page down a few times) http://theworldtastesgood.blogspot.com/2009/02/hue-part-3.html.

Sunday: After a banana pancake breakfast (with honey and yogurt - see Photo above) and

not forgetting a glass of very strong cafe sua and a few minutes later splitting an omelet/baguette sandwich, we took a riverboat cruise for 100,000VND (Leslie's bargaining acumen) to Thien Mu Pagoda, 45 minutes up the perfume river. This where the monk Thich Quang Duc lived before he went to Saigon in 1966 to immolate himself in protest against the VN government and the war. The pagoda and grounds were quietly beautiful – understated and mossy with just a few people around and a view from the grounds across the wide river, past the plains, to these mist-covered mountains where we fought and bled, where so many from every side fought and bled and died, aching for life – me for a beautiful dark-haired girl whose photo was so washed out from the water that only the shadow of her left eye was left and now, 45 years later, looking across the room from where I write she's sitting on the bed, the love of my life, beautiful, her hair white now and here we are in Hue and I look out through the glass-paned doors toward palm trees and mossy buildings - it's misting in Hue.

Photo above: Random lane; photo below: These mist-covered mountains beyond the Perfume River - photo taken from Thien Mu Pagoda

Aes Dana, Summerlands ... then Vibrasphere, Forest Fuel … Aes Dana, Les Grandes Fonds … Solar Fields, Summer … Hue, misting, humid, green Hue, perfect for psytrance.

We walked along a quiet section of the riverside, then along Le Loi Street and back to the nem lui place, and added a bowl of bun thit nuong – grilled pork with cool noodles, vegetables, peanuts, and nuoc cham with, what else, chillies. Every morning we've marveled at our lack of GI distress. We hope for the same thing tomorrow.

Monday: We had another late start, coffee in bed, talking, and finally to Nina's Cafe for an excellent backpacker's tradition – banana pancake (with honey and yogurt) and more stout

coffee, then we walked along the Perfume River again and over the new bridge to the Citadel side of the river and wandering down side streets through neighborhoods in the soft mist for a little over three hours – more overgrown green, more mossy walls, gates into houses, tin roofs, tile roofs, shrines, incense, women with conical hats, past a school with children playing in the street – “Hello! What your name! Yo-yo-yo!” Bicycles, motos, xyclos, fruit and vegetables for

sale, coffee/tea shops with stools at low tables, cafes, and finally through a gate in the huge wall, across a narrow bridge over the moat, into shops and to the old

bridge in the mist that's a light rain by now. It was really raining by the time we got to Nina's for banh khoai – kind of like a fried pancake folded over pork and shrimp – cut it into strips and wrap them into rice paper with steamed bean sprouts, cucumbers, lettuce and dipped into nuoc mam-based peanut sauce. Back to our room that's been damp the whole time we've been here, and damper now. We're pretty damp too. LOL, our clothes
are damp, our bodies are damp, our books are damp (the pages are kind of wavy, if you know what I mean), our bed is damp – it's damp … it couldn't be better.

Photo: Nina in front of Nina's Cafe

Hanoi 2012

2012-01-13T06:20:00.025-06:00

Hanoi was a resting place for us this time around - taking it easy, walking around the Old Quarter ... "This is the Asia we dreamed of from afar. Steeped in history, pulsating with life, bubbling with commerce, buzzing with motorbikes, and rich in exotic scents, the Old Quarter is Hanoi's historic heart" (Lonely Planet). Just photos are here.

Recall that I left my pack in the airport in Hong Kong and eventually got it back. The only time Leslie carries a purse traveling is when we fly. Now, Leslie left

her purse at the visa issuing area in the Hanoi airport and when I raced back to where she'd left it, there it was, sitting on the bench. Lucky twice! On to the Camellia 4 and into our room around 9pm. Really tired. We went across the street to the King Cafe for chicken with garlic and chillies, an order of french fries(!), and beer. Photo: Passages like this are everywhere

The next day we had the Camellia's outstanding breakfast buffet, including pho ga + massive amounts of Vietnamese coffee, then walked to the bank to change money. Last year while we were at that bank there was a baby shower going on. Leslie asked the woman who was helping us about the shower and after some puzzlement (Why is this foreigner asking about this and how does she know?) it turned out it was for her, so she and Leslie had a good time talking about the baby. Photo: Flower vendor - tons of goods are sold like this

We walked to the Intimex Store, walked around there looking at this and that food, kitchen wares, etc. (Leslie and Charles getting jiggy), and bought some yogurt and 250 grams of Trung Nguyen coffee. We walked to the well-known (and not highly recommended by me) bun cha place on Hang Bo Street. We had bun cha (grilled pork served in nuoc mam [fish sauce] with vegetables) and nem (fried spring rolls), which was very good, but expensive ($4.50USD) and way too much food for us, so we got almost a full order of bun cha to go and went back to the hotel.

By now I was feeling pretty bad with the onset of a sinus infection, so I started a course of azithromycin and took some ibuprofen and rested. The last thing I remember as I fell asleep was the maids outside our door, laughing, talking, carrying on – happy me.

Later, as Leslie was getting the bun cha out of

the refrigerator in our room, the shelf it was on collapsed and the plastic bag of pork and fish sauce burst, sending the smelly stuff everywhere. I roused myself from bed and we got a pretty big mess cleaned up pretty fast. Is this the Flub and Dub Asia tour? Photo: Well to do child near Hoan Kiem Lake

The next day we had the breakfast buffet, but were a little more restrained with our coffee intake. After breakfast we decided to walk straight up Pho Hang Giay from our hotel. After the first block there were no more women selling souvenirs or shoeshine guys wanting to fix my shoes and the street got more and more congested with vendors, stores, and tiny cafes along each side, pedestrians, people carrying cafes on a stick (little stove on one end, food, and a

few stools on the other), impossibly laden motorcycles, trucks, so on and so forth. Photo: Selling bread

Eventually we realized we were at Dong Xuan Market and went inside into narrow, crowded aisles with people pushing past us in that insistent, but somehow not very intrusive Vietnamese way. Even so, people who are easily irritated or who have personal space issues should never come to a place like this.

Leslie added to her pepper collection with 250 grams black pepper from a woman – a good deal for the woman and for Leslie. After 30 or so minutes we left and quickly found the narrow food alley near the market where we've been before. Straight away Leslie spotted a woman selling banh cuon so we squeezed into the bench and a stool and had some decent banh cuon with pork and very good nem for 20,000VND each (20,000 VND = $1USD). Photo below: We ate at this banh cuon place every day

The woman sitting next to Leslie got us squared away on how to fix it in a bowl of sweet nuoc mam with peppers and garlic and we tucked in for an outstanding and massively fun meal with people brushing past (lots of body contact), motorcycles scraping by, people reaching over our heads and between us and we're in the juice now! On the way out we spotted another western couple at another stand having a good time eating snails – of course they were Australians (the people, not the snails). I asked if they had a camera for a photo of them and took their picture. We're

all having a good time.

Oh man, how did Leslie and I find each other. From the halls of Thomas Jefferson High School more than 50 years ago to this narrow alley somewhere in Hanoi. Yes! Photo: Leslie buying pepper

The next day we visited Jim (an internet friend) at the school where he teaches. We visited his class and talked with the students, who were poised and articulate. Really a good time with these lovely young people and this man who has found a good home in Vietnam. Photo below: Impossibly jammed street that nevertheless manages to move

Our scene in Hanoi is much like anywhere else – walking around, enjoying the street action, checking out the little stores selling everything

imaginable, eating most meals on the street, visiting markets, finding the flow. Hanoi has astonishing traffic – people walking, people carrying huge loads suspended from each end of a split bamboo pole, countless motorcycles, fair number of cars and trucks – and zero traffic rules, except for the only rule, which is bigger has precedence (motos over people, cars over people and motos, trucks over everything). You have to really pay attention and never stop or flinch. It's the pedestrian's responsibility to choose a line of walk which doesn't challenge the vehicles and the motos and other vehicles then flow around the pedestrian. Also, when there are sidewalks, they're usually

completely filled with vendors, people working on this and that, and parked motos. It's a little dangerous and sometimes overwhelming, but still, a good or at least engaging time (what with so much to see and to keep track of). Today I somehow ran into a motorcycle, which fortunately wasn't moving, otherwise I'd have more than a sore knee. Photo: A brilliant selection of garlic goodness

We went back to the food alley near Dong Xuan for lunch: banh cuon (steamed rice flour crepes wrapped round a little seasoned ground pork), banh with egg and no meat, bun cha, nem (fried spring rolls) – all served with a bowls of sweetened fish sauce to eat out of and tarted up with

fresh garlic and chillies in vinegar, fried garlic, ground roasted chillies, and tiny limes to squeeze

onto it all. All of this for 70,000 dong (~$3.50USD). On the way out of the alley we stopped and got two fried dumplings, one stuffed with yellow bean and some coconut and the other a "salty mystery mix" that included meat of some kind. Photo: Hoan Kiem Lake

This vendor is described here on Sticky Rice: http://stickyrice.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/03/fried_cake_ball.html.0.....3. The next day I ordered two with bean paste and coconut, which I think is the better way to go.

Classic Leslie: We're having bun cha at another place in an alley and in addition to the usual grilled pork and pork patties, there is a third item. Leslie picks it up with her chopsticks and says, “I don't know what this is,” and takes a bite.

The night before we left I was finally well and walked to meet Jim at a cafe near the cathedral. I got there first and stood on the sidewalk, as I've done before, looking across the street as the

motorbikes, pedestrians, bicycles buzz in several directions across my consciousness until I'm in a trance of motos/people/Vietnam/alive/ good and the incessant voices talking, laughing, bargaining and the smells and dust and colors flashing. Photo: Little temple in the Old Quarter - crematorium door

That's pretty much what we're doing in Hanoi: walking around the full, noisy streets, seeing what there is to see (we've already seen most of the “tourist attractions”), eating fabulous street food, experiencing the intense street vibe, resting … Photo: St. Joseph's Cathedral - a far cry from our clinic site in St. Joseph's Catholic Mission (serving Vietnamese refugees)

Here is a weblog on food and the scene surrounding it in Hanoi: http://stickyrice.typepad.com/my_weblog/extreme_ch

eap_street_eats/

Hong Kong2 - Into the Flow

2012-01-06T04:17:00.028-06:00

We're into the magic of the Hong Kong trip now - the crowds, the harbor, the Star Ferry, the food, the people, the alleys and narrow passages ... ahhh.

Here are just the photos of Hong Kong: https://picasaweb.google.com/109537175190450928722/HongKong2011

A little background on Hong Kong: We've always stayed in Kowloon. Kowloon is a peninsula split by Nathan Road running north from the harbor

and the Star Ferry. The ferry runs back and forth between Kowloon and HK Island where the financial district (Central), Wanchai, Happy Valley, Victoria Peak, etc. are. The southern end of Kowloon is called Tsim Sha Tsui (TST) and is the main tourist area. TST is where the Chungking Mansions is - which nobody would call a tourist place – one newspaper called it “the most notorious flophouse in Asia” - I call it amazing. Here is something from Chungking Express: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCMkHm7HTBU&feature=fvst.

Photo above: Street performer, playing beautifully.

Going north from TST there is Yau Ma Tei where the Temple Street night market is, and then Mong Kok, which is where we're staying. Hong Kong is the most densely populated place on earth and Mong Kok is the second most densely populated district there – wow, people everywhere. No kidding, it's an art to move through the crowds and the people there are artists - no bumping, no jostling, just flowing through a true sea of humanity. To me, it's sometimes magical, sometimes a little crazy, and always intense.

Photo: The corner near the entrance to the Sincere House where we're staying. Can barely see the entrance between/above the man in the orange sweater and the woman in the pink top

Here is our trip. Up at whenever. The room we're in now has no window, so it might be 5 or 7 or later (but not much). I fix coffee in our little filter

holder and we have coffee and talk. I go for a fast walk with a little running and whenever there is a street to cross and the light is red, I do 25 inclined push-ups (total at least 100). On the way back to the room I pick up breakfast – usually dim sum, sometimes ham and egg sandwiches at Cherikoff Bakery or 7-11 (7-11 not the same as in U.S. - way smaller, cheap, and with some unique products such as rice with chicken feet). After breakfast I shower, get a leg-rub, and

we talk about the day. Then it's off to the races and back by around 4pm for Leslie to get a back-rub, take a nap, and figure out what's for dinner. I usually go for a walk after dinner.
ove through the crowds and the people there are artists, no bumping, no jostling, just flowing through a true sea of humanity. To me, sometimes it's magical, sometimes maddening, and always intense.

Photo above: On the street

The day after the last post we caught the bus to the Star Ferry and the ferry across the harbor to Central, then #15 bus up the Peak, going higher and higher past the office centers, TB hospital, past the graveyard, past the ultra-expensive apartments and homes

and then HK the skyscrapers, buildings, the harbor, the buildings spread out below in the haze that's always there at this time of year. The bus lets off near a shopping center-type place and we go up to Pacific Coffee where we always go, sitting at the glass wall overlooking all of HK, lingering over a double espresso, enjoying the view, reading the South China Morning Post, talking ...

Photo: The Star Ferry

Back down on what seems a crazy fast bus ride to where we get off to walk

to a famous wonton noodle shop for shrimp wonton noodle soup (the shrimp here have a wild taste, unlike the bland shrimp we get in the US) and vegetable with oyster sauce. We sat at a table and talked with a woman who came to HK from Vietnam in the early 80s. She's doing well now, but I know those were some grim early days. Bus to ferry and ferry back to Kowloon, riding that ferry so many times over the years and every time magical. This was our biggest day so far – Leslie is better and better every day.

Photo: On the ferry

And so the trip goes, no big events, few big attractions, just Being. Here. together.

The next day we went to Pat Kwan, the chilli sauce etc. place to buy some black peppercorns, then across the street to Fa Yuen Market to buy white peppercorns and walk around. The nice looking woman at one of the fruit stalls remembered us from last year (“You go to Vietnam.”), which was nice. I walked to the Chungking Mansions to change money, then back up the road a bit to meet Phil (an internet friend) and his son Henry. We had a good time - Phil is an easygoing person,

easy to be around and Henry is a great kid – like his other two children. I was running late, so made a sweaty dash to the ferry to meet Leslie, back to Tsim Chai Kee for more soup and vegetable. This time we shared a table with two students from Singapore and had a good time talking with them too.

Photo: Leslie waiting for the elevator in the Chungking Mansions

On our last full day we went to the Chungking Mansions for some Indian food and ended up at a Pakistani place having a good, cheap meal of chicken tikka masala, naan, pakoras, vegetable samosas, and milk tea. The place had one table, which we

shared first with two men from India, then with an intense guy from Pakistan, and of course there was the amazing parade of humanity from across the globe. Yeah! After we ate, Leslie wanted to take the elevator up to see if the floors had changed. The first one we saw was quite a bit nicer than in the old days, but the other two were the same as ever.

Photo: CK at entrance to the Mansions

That night I walked down to the Temple Street night market to see what was happening in the way of thangkas. Too bad, the place that sold quality Tibetan and Nepalese goods was gone.

Tsering, a Nepalese woman Leslie met before was still selling images, thangkas, etc., but the quality is not comparable to the other place. Sai Yeung Choi Street South was blocked to traffic and full of people, amazing crowded, buzzing with energy and conversation. There were some stre

et performers, including a young woman playing a Chinese violin beautifully. Hong Kong. What a place!

Hong Kong1

2012-01-01T00:13:00.022-06:00

It was good flight San Francisco to Hong Kong. Leslie is the Master of good seats - thanks to (1) her persistence - no surprise that to anyone who knows her! and (2) seatguru.com. On a 747 in economy there are a total of six rows of two seats. All the other rows in economy are 3-4-3 (total about 400 seats). The two seat rows are the bulkhead seats where the fuselage tapers at the back of the plane so between the seats and the bulkhead there is some extra space - we had about 14 extra inches. So there we were with our own little scene, just the two of us with all our airplane stuff - books, blankets, Tabasco.

Photo: from the window of one of our rooms at the Dragon Hostel

I added up the hours starting when we got up at 6am in SF the morning of departure to finally collapsing in bed in HK at 8pm - 46 hours on the go, except I slept ~5 hours on the plane and Leslie slept~3 hours. Leslie felt bad on the flight with the tiredness and aftermath of pneumonia, and she felt worse when we got to HK. We cleared immigration and went to the wrong luggage carousel, then to the right carousel, through security and then - disaster! I'd left my backpack somewhere in the luggage area and no way were they going to let me back in. So we ended up spending an anxious two hours at the airport with Leslie guarding the luggage and me hiking in the

bowels of the office areas from from one end of the airport to the other. We finally left, packless, with Leslie and I both pretty down.

Photo: One of our rooms (the incredibly noisy one). The rooms at the Dragon are less than 7x12 feet - including the bathroom.

We caught the A21 bus into town, walk a few blocks to the Sincere House in Mong Kok, to the 7th floor where the Dragon Hostel is, wait for room, I caught a bus to the Chungking Mansions to change some money, back to Dragon, got a room, Leslie to bed. I caught the A21 back to the airport and on the ride I'm worrying, realizing no way should I have left Leslie alone feeling so bad. At the airport I ran up the stairs to the lost & found office (I've learned my way around the back ways of the place) and there it was - my pack - sitting on the floor!!! Nothing was missing either. Lucky I didn't lose it in Dallas or Bangkok or Phnom Penh. Back to the A21, back to the Dragon, back to Leslie, who was still in bed, feeling "maybe a little better." I'll never leave you like this again.

For dinner we had sandwiches we'd kept from the flight. I couldn't stay awake, so went for a walk around the neighborhood scouting out a cheap place we could eat tomorrow - a place with seats with backs - nothing but the best! I found a place and as I was walking I thought about our last trip and how exhausted and bad Leslie felt then when we got to HK.

That was heartening and I worried less. Finally at 8pm, so many hours after we got out of bed in SF I laid down to sleep in HK.

Photo: On the street

We awakened at 5am and Leslie's first words were, "I'm better." Oh happy day! We laid about talking and in me an undercurrent of joy and gratitude that she's better and we're such good friends. I fixed some coffee and we hung out for another hour or so. I went for a fast walk, doing inclined push-ups at every corner where the light was red and along the way I saw some people eating at little folding tables set up on the sidewalk. That's usually a good sign - and it was this time too. I'd found a good, cheap dim sum place. So for breakfast in our room we had steamed shrimp dumplings, steamed BBQ pork buns, and fried curried chicken rolls.

The trip has gone from exhaustion, sick, anxious to feeling better/feeling good, decent dim sum, rested (but still tired). In short, Oh a happy day, a happy day.

Photo: The place where I get us dim sum for breakfast

We're settled in to the trip. Leslie is still fatigued from the pneumonia, so we're doing something we've talked about in the past: hanging out in a few blocks area, seeing and doing what there is to do right here. And there is plenty - at least there is for the easily amused like we are - digging the amaaazing crowds; enjoying discovering new places to eat like the dim sum for breakfast place, like new noodle soup places, renewing our Taipan Bakery trips, making the phone mall scene (oh wow, if you haven't been HK you've probably never seen anything like this place - 100s of little shops [4'x6' or as big as 8'x10'] crammed full of 4G phones and people packed in everywhere); hanging out in our tiny room, talking, having coffee, just being together, happy in this room. We're in our 3rd room! The first one had some men working very noisily nearby all day, so it was challenging to rest. The second was too close to a main street so it noisy all night until ~4:30am. This last one is quieter all the way around - ahhh.

Photo: The entrance to the Sincere House where the Dragon Hostel is is right past the stinky tofu place on the right of the photo.

This is the first Asia trip where I've had a laptop, which is nice given we're spending a fair amount of time in the room. I really am enjoying the music ... Pearl Jam playing Yellow Ledbetter, Aes Dana doing Summerlands, Vibrasphere doing Forest Fuel, Bob Dylan singing Not Dark Yet (at Jack Kerouac's grave), Brandi Carlile singing Downpour - David gave me this song and the refrain echoing in my mind for days now ...

And when you need someone to carry you through

I'm gonna be there for you

Sometimes I can't even begin to believe this life, these times.

Photo: Breakfast in bed (like there's anywhere else to eat in our room. Steamed pork with black beans and chillis, har gow, stuffed fried dumplings

It's New Years Day. I went for the usual walk-run-walk-push-ups-walk. Dim sum again for breakfast - today steamed pork with black bean and chilli, har gow, stuffed dumpling - all for $45 HKD (a little less than$6USD). Leslie and I walked to the Taipan bakery, then she went back to the Dragon to take up ice, pay Stanley, etc. and I caught the #2 bus to Chungking Mansions ("a place like no other place in the world ... huge ramshackle dump of a place ... caters for virtually all needs ... undercurrent of sleaze ... peculiar odors ..." Lonely Planet]) to hang out and change money. Uh-oh, many of the shops closed and fewer people in the hallways.

Maybe it's the end of an era.

Photo: Star Ferry. the Twinkling Star

We rendezvoused at the Star Ferry of course - "I'll meet you at the Star Ferry." We rode the ferry to the Island and back - no destination other than the ride itself. In a beautiful stroke of good fortune, we rode the Twinkling Star both ways. Since 1978 this one has been my favorite (all the ferries are named something Star - Morning Star, Evening Star, Meridian Star, Twinkling Star, etc.). Caught the #6 bus back past our stop so we could go to Wellcome Grocery, where we bought beer and yogurt. Back to our room for awhile, then to the fish ball restaurant for shrimp and vegetable

wonton noodle soup and steamed vegetable. Back to the room for a nap. It's been a very good day. Leslie is stronger every day.

I forgot to say that after the Chungking Mansions I walked to Ka Ka Lok Fast Foods (where in 1978 we used to get nice little ham and egg sandwiches) to get Leslie - what else - a ham and egg sandwich. Good times.

Photo: Al fresco dining at Ka Ka Lok

San Francisco, on the way to Asia

2011-12-26T13:29:00.009-06:00

It was a wonderful Christmas. Santa came early and left gifts and filled stockings - incredibly we actually found some bits of carrots that the reindeer didn't finish on the front steps - wow! I read The Night Before Christmas same as I have for the past 25 Christmas eves. And the magic of Christmas and our little family.

We stayed at Charles' house, so were with David and Charles most of the time (Charles was on-call, hence working

on and off through Christmas eve and day). We all cooked and hung out and walked around the neighborhood (Castro and Noe Valley). David and Charles made a roast, curry, macaroni and cheese, souffles and I baked two pecan pies.

Leslie and I did our usual San Francisco trip ... trolleys and buses all over creation. Look at that! Yeah, Look at that building ... house ... garden ... trolley ... person - over and over again. Look! Look!

Photo: And look at that pecan pie Leslie and David are holding! Taken with camera David and Charles gave us.

Of course we made it to Good Luck Dim Sum. Of course we found new (to us) bus routes. Of course we went to Haight-Ashbury and Golden Gate Park. Of course we found new places and new marvels. over and over again ... Look! Look! Of course we made it to new places and new marvels.

We wanted to be sure we didn't wear out our welcome and so moved from Charles' house at the junction of Noe Valley and The Castro to David's apartment waaay up the hill in Diamond Heights/Twin Peaks. So here we are with San Francisco and the Bay spread out before us diamond lights in the night and fog in the morning. We're leaving tomorrow night for Hong Kong. Leslie has (again) gotten us brilliant seats on that big Cathay Pacific 747 - at the back of the plane where the fuselage begins tapering and there isn't room for three seat rows, so we're in one of three rows on each side of the plane with two seats + space between the seats and the bulkhead to stretch our legs. Niice.

Photo: David and Charles outside of David's apartment

I'm reading one of the books I've been saving for travel - Jon Krakauer's Eiger Dreams. Here is something from the chapter titled On Being Tentbound: "Being tentbound isn't wholly

an ordeal. The first few hours can pass in a dreamy euphoria while you lie peacefully in your sleeping bag, watching raindrops trickle down the outside of the translucent fly, or the snowdrifts slowly climb the walls." Exactly so. Cozy in my tiny space, glad I did a good job of getting stakes in and reinforcing them with rocks (the wind blows hard in the Wind Rivers), rearranging my stuff, getting ready for the short dash to the overhanging rock where I'll brew up some coffee or hot chocolate - ahhhh.

On the road again.

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(The following written before the preceding - what can I say but that it's the internet) It's Sunday. I stayed home from church to prune the roses and get the yard squared away in general. Last night I did a good close-to-final packing so that I have all my stuff + our medicine bag + the "kitchen" and electronics box (coffee, sugar, heater, plugs adapters, etc.) in a medium-size roller. I also have a carry-on daypack with a laptop, books, weeks worth of medicine, etc. in it. There's also a shoulder bag which we'll leave in Cali. Leslie has a shoulder bag and a carry-on bag. Summary: check one bag, carry on the rest.

Photo: What a great trolley coming up the F Line! I think it's one of the ones from Cincinnati or Baltimore (SF bought old trolleys from various places and volunteers restored them).

The past few days I've felt occasional waves of euphoria as the trip gets closer

and closer and and it's two days before we leave.

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Tuesday. Last night we talked more about the sense of adventure with this trip.

"Whole generations of westerners who went out there as soldiers, doctors, planters, or journalists lost their hearts to these lands of the Mekong ... there are places that take over a man's soul." Jon Swain

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Leslie feeling waves of anxiety and euphoria. Me too. This feels like an adventure. The route is not untraveled (San Francisco, Hong Kong, Hanoi, Ninh Binh, Hue, Dalat(?), Saigon, Can Tho(?), Chau Dac(?), Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, BK, HK, SF), but still, given our ages, every trip has the distinct potential of being the last. And, even in these days of bottled clean water and plenty of aircon guesthouses, there's some of what some people would see as somewhat hard traveling in that route + it's hot, and maybe, hopefully raining some. At this stage of the game it's a challenging trip. Like the Sherpas say, Ever Onward!

These lands of the Mekong ...

2011

2011-12-12T12:58:00.021-06:00

2011 has been an amazing year, and I'm filled with gratitude. We’ve had some really good times with David and an intense family time in May. Leslie and I have traveled a lot, hung out together a lot – these are the days. Leslie is taking care of business. I’ve been baking and cooking some wonderful things (see below). I was able to backpack again(!) and am planning on going back into the mountains in 2012. Photos: Spring, Wind Rivers, San Francisco & home, CK's SF trip, Trance & assorted, Thanksgiving

Next year we may need to slow down some.

Photo: Spring at our house

Part of retirement has been (thus far) a marked reduction in time and effort in helping others. Leslie is doing a big job with someone who has pancreatic cancer and other serious problems and I’ve been helping some with that, but she’s doing most of the work. Maybe we’ll get back to those sorts of things further down the road; maybe not. Maybe our race is run and it’s goodbye to all that.

Our house smells like coffee every day. Some days it smells like coffee and chocolate, some days like garlic and chilies, some days like cookies and hot chocolate, some days like curry and chutney, some days like bread coming crusty and brown hot off the stone and out of the oven.

January – We traveled for about 8 weeks in Cali and SE Asia with David (the trip started 11/2010 and ended 1/2011).

Photo: Junior wren - her or his first day to fly

February – Arthroscopy knee.

March – Cali (Oakland & SF) – some good times.

April – I went to Oklahoma to see Jeff for a couple of days – a good trip.

May – Berkeley for David’s graduation from Berkeley Law School (photo below). Congratulations! And talk about an intense family trip. What a great thing to have been there, then.

June – Deep in the Heart of Trances (photo below), which was wonderful and Sonic Bloom, which wasn’t. Deep in the Heart felt like coming home; Leslie to San Francisco to spend a week with David.

July – Rest. LOL, after I wrote “Rest” I quit working @ the Agape Clinic – differences in values. I’m fully retired. What a wonderful career and what a wonderful time working with Leslie.

August – Full Moon party @ Armadillo Acres; backpacking in the Wind Rivers, into the alpine and the incomparable Titcomb Basin, again! Past the trees, into the alpine, rock and snow, water and tundra, high and wild and beautiful

September – Many days August and September over 100^o; Leslie to SF for a week with DK and at Holden’s; David home for a few days; CK to SF for a week, staying with DK.

Photo: David after receiving his diploma

October – We had a brilliant trip to SF and Berkeley – saw David, 4 days at Grant in Chinatown and 4 days at Judy’s guesthouse in Berkeley (Leslie got us $99 RT tix DFW-SFO – we had to go); party near Austin.

November – Soul Rise, a perfect psytrance gathering in the Hill Country - good times with Loyed, Melvin, Roberto, Devon, Derick, Chris, and others; I reached my goal of doing the same # push-ups as my age: 67; to San Francisco for a great Thanksgiving with David.

December – home from SF, getting ready for SF and Asia.

Some of what I’ve cooked in the past several years is listed below. Baking has been a wonderful experience:

Flour in the air!

Flour in my hair!

Flour on my nose, ears,

Flour everywhere!

Photo: One of my campsites in the Winds

Mains & related

Tomato basil soup

Bun cha

Chili

Grilled chicken (Cajun, jerk, curry)

Spaghetti/marinara/putanesca

Pesto

Tom ka

Tom yum

Avocado salad

Poulet Marengo

Stuffed chicken breast

Mushroom soup

Lahb

Crostinis a la Leslie + pesto, kalamatas, other

Goan curry

Tikka masala

Chutneys

Raita

Assorted dehydrated things

Photo: The bench in front of the Star Grocery - where we sit to have morning coffee in Berkeley

Breads

Whole wheat bread from Tassajara

Biscuits

Batards and Boules from Acme Bread Co. recipes

No-knead bread

Country French sourdough

Sourdough and yeasted breads with cheese, kalamata, herbs

Photo: Sunday morning at Deep in the Heart of Trances

Desserts

Pecan pie from Cook’s Illus.

Pecan pie (chocolate/bourbon), whipped cream

Toasted pecans

Nutella

Banana pancakes

Hot chocolate

Chocolate pie almond crust

Pecan sandies

French toast with eggnog

Honey bars from Tassajara

Apple cobbler

Banana nut bread

Orange marmalade

Madeleines

Pear, strawberry preserves

Chocolate chunk pecan cookies

Brownies

Ice cream (chocolate, vanilla, pistachio)

Oatmeal-raisin-walnut cookies

Triple chocolate cookies

Chocolate pecan torte

Photos: Above is of peach blossoms and below is whole wheat bread and some oatmeal cookies

San Francisco and Berkeley

2011-10-30T20:06:00.006-05:00

San Francisco, Berkeley, war story, psytrance. Photos have become difficult to insert in this blog, so I'm putting a couple in and the rest (a few of home, most of SF & Berkeley) are here: https://picasaweb.google.com/109537175190450928722/2011OctoberHomeSF

Another Bay area visit - a few nights in San Francisco and a few in Berkeley. We stayed at the Grant in Chinatown. I was sitting in the bay windows (room 501) overlooking the street and remarked to Leslie that it feels normal to be sitting here, overlooking Grant Avenue, the main (tourist) street in Chinatown. We spent a fair amount of time on Stockton, the next street up with all the grocery stores/shoppers, dim sum joints, BBQ places, etc. We had dim sum about twice a day

while we were here. As always we took the bus, trolley, etc. all over creation.

When we were checking in at the Grant a woman gave Leslie two passbooks which allowed us to ride everything but BART for free - including the cable cars. So instead of the already very cheap senior rates on everything it was all free. We made it to Chinatown, the Tenderloin for curry at Shalimar (where I saw a man smoking crack at a bus stop - the same bus stop where I saw someone selling it last trip - I need to find another stop), the Castro, Haight/Golden Gate Park, Embarcadero (where Occupy SF was set up - buncha hippies who just don't get it that it's a good thing to take money from old people, cut back on veteran's benefits, tax the middle class at higher rates than the rich, etc., Lord, Lord, someone is crazy here and it's not me), Richmond to the Pacific, all over the place.

We spent several days hanging out with David and his friend, Charles and that was wonderful. We also saw Dave's roommate, Matt, which was also good.

Notes from a day: Dim sum for breakfast at You's (photo above), stop in assorted Chinese grocery and other stores selling mysterious things, take the bus to the Japanese dollar store, take the trolley to an art deco store, take the trolley to the Castro for a visit to a natural foods store, walk around the neighborhood, take the bus back to the trolley, trolley to Ferry Building, bus to so on and so forth. Photo: Our room at the Grant - $75/night.

So that's kind of the story of how we travel - hanging out, walking, riding, resting, ride some more, walking...

From SF we went to Berkeley – a garden city, so many houses are true gems. We stayed in a guesthouse (Shout Out for Judy's Channing GH – review follows). For $50 night, shared bath, kitchen to hang out in, good vibes, good times.

This is my Yelp review: Five stars for sure. The rooms are immaculate as are the shared bathroom and WC. Judy had fresh flowers in our room, a fresh bottle of water, and some chocolates. The kitchen is available and it's very comfortable. We had breakfast and dinner there most nights (food from Berkeley Bowl - a 30 minute walk away). Good Lord, you can even go out back at Judy’s and check the chicken coop for fresh eggs! A washer and dryer are available and I think there is a TV available, but who needs it here? Internet access is fast and reliable. The garden is great - classic Berkeley, very inviting. The Berkeley Cafe Trieste is a few blocks away, as is Good V-V-V-Vibrations, Black Oak Books, an architectural salvage place (nice), and some upscale cafes. Bus stops are nearby, but we've always thought Berkeley bus routes are confusing. Yet, we got back every day. Finally, it's nice to do business with a truly good person. So yes, it's a very good place and a good deal.

We did the usual - bus to Elmwood, the UC Cal campus, I met an internet friend on Telegraph, sat at the entrance to Sproul Plaza (Shout Out for Free Speech), and of course Leslie and I took the bus to Oakland, for, what else, dim sum.

Leslie got a call early this morning from someone who had read some of my things on the internet. It was from the older brother of one of the men who was killed in our unit in Vietnam - one of our first men killed. I ended up standing outside our little dim sum place in Oakland talking with this man on the phone - pretty hard to hold it together for both of us I think. I've gotten several calls like this in the past few years. So sad. This man told me how he'd enlisted after his brother was killed. Went to the infantry, but because of the death of his brother, wasn't in combat. Incredibly he spent a year with a primary duty of being one of the men who informs families that their loved one was killed.

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I posted this on facebook a few weeks ago ... There was a levain (pre-ferment) working in the kitchen for some sourdough bread and I was sitting on the floor in the front room, using a mortar and pestle to grind some seeds for a Goan curry and I was thinking, “I must be retired.” I got all inspired and here’s what I baked and cooked these past few days: Country French sourdough (plain and with cheese and Hatch chillis), whole wheat bread from the Tassajara Bread Book, triple chocolate cookies (the real deal – oh man!), Goan shrimp curry (brilliant), chicken tikka, tikka masala curry (okay, not great), raita, grilled CM sausage, and grilled Hatch chillis. I am retired and the house smells good. And since then, mango chutney (2 batches), cilantro chutney, and karahi potatoes.

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Before the SF trip, I went to a psytrance festival with friends from Dallas and Oklahoma. I was there for three days, camping in the hill country. A beautiful time. http://soundcloud.com/eckoe/drift

The Charles Kemp Award for Excellence in Community Health

2011-09-29T18:15:00.009-05:00

When I started at the Agape Clinic it was a one day/week treat ‘em and street ‘em clinic with a vaccination program. Leslie and I were responsible (i.e., none of this would have happened without us) for the clinic expanding to four days of services/week including expanded primary care and providing a medical home for people without insurance. There were specialty services (gynecology, psychiatry, neurology, dermatology, etc.), health education (in the clinic and community), health screening (cancer, depression, etc.), and other services. The clinic was in excellent financial shape (in at least the top 12% of US non-profits according to figures in the New York Times, 3/26/2009) and the clinic had been presented at a number of national conferences and was the subject of articles and chapters in professional and lay publications. There was a spirit of kindness toward patients, volunteers, and staff – that spirit and the clinic were described by the clinic psychiatrist as “a collective.” To me it was more than a collective – it was a living manifestation of hope and loving kindness. We were taking the word agape seriously. Photo: Leslie in her natural habitat. I'm there too. From an article in the the Advocate.

Some months ago I was approached by leadership at Agape about the establishment of an annual named award commemorating my service to Agape and the community – something along the lines of the Charles Kemp Award for Excellence or Compassionate Service in Community Health. Though I’ve received awards in the past, it had never occurred to me that an ongoing award would be named for me.

It was tempting, but eventually I declined the award – in part because I’m not into that sort of thing (awards are nice, but sometimes there's something else to give), but primarily because there are vast differences in values between the current clinic leadership (including the board of directors) and me.

San Francisco September 2011

2011-09-21T18:11:00.009-05:00

I've run into far too many problems with this blogging host. I don't like to learn new things, but I have to find a new place to keep my journal. In the meantime, Here are the photos from San Francisco: https://picasaweb.google.com/109537175190450928722/2011SanFrancisco

Here are the words:

Wednesday

I was tired from the flight, etc. on Tuesday, so was slow getting going. Basically this day was a trip to Safeway via #24 bus down Castro and the F Line Trolley to Market. Shopping was slow in a new-to-me store, but I got it done, had some sushi for lunch and headed back to DK's. I cooked up some chicken with shrimp sauce (substituted yogurt for heavy cream – good call CK), roasted new potatoes with rosemary (filched from a neighbor's substantial stand), and salad, and (at last) some country French levain. SF has such good bread. Leslie and I went on a bread quest in Dallas last week. We looked at Eatzi's and Empire Bakery, which is supposed to be Dallas' best bakery. Neither had the sort of crusty, coarse artisan loaf we were looking for. Well, I got it here. What's up when I bake better bread than Dallas' “best?”

Thursday

Okay, SF, I'm here now. Caught the #24 down Castro to Haight Street. Walked along lower Haight to Buena Vista Park, then up into the park and around the hill and back down. Talked with some homeless men, then on down Haight to Golden Gate Park, where I sat for awhile with some brothers, then back along Hays Street toward Divisadero. I was a little lost, so stopped in a coffee shop (Sacred Grounds) for a double espresso and pastry and wrong or maybe just unintelligible directions. Anyway, I found myself and caught a bus to Geary and then our old favorite, 38L to the end of the line. I walked from the bus to Point Lobos above the mighty Pacific Ocean and down some trails to a small beach so I could put my foot into the water.

My first time in the Pacific was in 1965, near Camp Pendleton. (Haha, I didn't get into the water coming back from the rifle range, where the non-quals had to march in the water while the rest of us hiked along the shore.) Then into the Pacific from the Philippines and Vietnam, and much later, David and I were in SF and Palo Alto looking at unis and made it to the beach and in 2005, from the beach near Hoi An, and now, today, loving being near/at the Pacific Ocean again.

From the ocean I took the #38 to 6^th Street and walked over to Clement Avenue to Good Luck Dim Sum where I had sui mai, har gow, steamed pork bun, and a chive dumpling all for $4.40. I walked back to Geary and caught, what else, the #38 toward downtown and got off just past Jones Street in the Tenderloin. I walked across the street at mid-block and almost blundered into some homeless men sprawled on the sidewalk (a different sort of homeless than in the Haight) – yikes – I cut up and then to Jones and into Shalimar where I got chicken korma, tika masala, rice, raita, and naan to go for dinner. The #38 back to Divisadero where I almost went the wrong way (what is Post Street doing here? Is the street in the wrong place or am I?). I got reoriented, fell into a conversation with a man who had hair like Frank Costanza, rode up Divisadero, which becomes Castro, up, up the hill to David's hilltop apartment. Whew – I'm exhausted.

Friday

My basic problem in SF (and elsewhere) is that I start out too early so a lot of places are closed. I took it slower this morning, lounging around the apartment, cleaning the bathroom, and getting things generally squared away. I took the bus to 24^th Street and walked around some (still to early for Qiona though), then caught the #24 back up and over the hill to the Castro where I walked around some more and went to Cliff's everything store looking for something to hang a hanging basket from. The owner and I had a nice conversation about “Yankee” push screwdrivers and drills – which I discovered are very expensive now. I left empty-handed, but it was a good time.

I had this amazing inspiration that since you're not here, I can just go right on back to Shalimar – which I did, for another order of tika masala and naan. It was better there than take-out. Mmmmm.

From Shalimar I walked to the bus stop on O'Farrell. There were two men sitting there (a black guy about 50 years old with good dreads and a white guy about 60, looking pretty down and out) and as usual I said, "How y'all doin'?" The black guy nodded and the white guy didn't say anything. The black guy reached into his jeans cuff and pulled something out and was doing something in his palm and then I could see he was pinching off a piece of something kind of waxy and off-white. He gave it to the white guy who put some money in the other guy's hat that was sitting between them and then walked off. The black guy nodded to me again and I said later and he left. Meanwhile the white guy was sitting in a doorway in an alley across the street. I watched him light up and then kind of jerk back and shout "Goddam!." My guess was that he'd sucked a hot coal of crack down his throat. The bus came and I headed on.

I rode the bus to Stockton and walked up the street to where it starts to be two ways and caught the bus headed up the long hill into Chinatown. I got off shortly after the top of the hill and walked along the street. I stopped at one of the packed produce markets and got four baby bok choy for a quarter and about a pound of cherries @$1.59/pound. Then on to our favorite BBQ place for an order of pork and an order of duck to go. Caught the Stockton bus to Geary, back up Geary to Divisadero and on to Castro and up the hill to DK's.

Dave worked for awhile when he got home, destroyed the duck and pork, and then I read and he computed for awhile before sleep. You said one time that you always get enough walking in in SF. It's so so true.

Saturday

I fixed eggs scrambled with cheese, red pepper, tomatoes, and chives + levain for breakfast. And then here we go again on the #24 bus. We stopped at Spike's Coffee for an excellent espresso and latte. Coffee on the sidewalk – to me this is San Francisco. We walked along Castro a way and went to a wonderful plant store – clearly a work of skill and love. Then caught the bus to Geary, and at 33^rd Street the bus turned, which was (to us) an unexpected turn of events. We got off, walked back to Geary, and tried again, and this time got to where we wanted to go – a stop close to the cliffs and bluffs above the ocean. We walked along the trail for awhile, then off the main trail to some steps going down and then over to some bluffs. Amazing, windy, cold, foghorn blowing, Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, surf rolling in and in and in … then down to the beach with the surf breaking over the big rocks. What a place.

The next stop was Good Luck Dim Sum, where we had a major feast for $12: shrimp dumplings, pork sui mai crystal dumpling (my new favorite), fun kor, chive dumpling with shrimp, steam BBQ pork bun, fried taro, and Chinese chive dumpling. Ay Caramba! A woman and her daughter invited us to sit at their table. We ate and ate and couldn't eat it all. The woman said we should take the leftovers home (thanks for the supervision), which we were already going to do, but still, it helps to know that that's what we should do. Back to the Castro, where we got some sausages at A.G. Ferrari's and then went to Worn Out West, a place that sells used western wear. The clerk or owner was basically naked (at least above mid-thigh, so that would be basically naked). We went to a few other places and then caught the bus up the hill and here we are, seven hours later. A good day. I'm planning on fixing some putanesca like you used to get at La Dolce Vita, but, I'm not sure – that was a lot of dim sum we had! Haha, David had a few potato chips and I had some cereal and yogurt – that was our dinner.

How I wish, how I wish you were here! I love you Leslie.

Sunday

Eggs with cheese, chives, red peppers, and tomatoes – and of course some country levain – for breakfast again. We took old #24 down the hill to Spike's (my new favorite place) for a double espresso for me and a latte for Dave. Matt V. came by and we had a nice time talking outside. FYI, Leslie, Spike's is right across the street from the Tibet store around the corner from the Buffalo Natural Foods store. Matt and David and I walked up Castro to Market and Matt split and David and I took the (underground) Muni to downtown. We went in a few stores (C&B, C&B2, and Williams-Sonoma) looking at household stuff. The downtown Williams-Sonoma is their flagship store, so it had everything – really a foodie's paradise. We stopped in at Rasputin Records, which like the Dallas stores, didn't have anything by Aes Dana.

David was planning on going out early (early for him is 7), so we skipped lunch and came home in mid-afternoon and I fixed the putanesca. I added the sausage from Ferrari's and we had a nice salad and levain. Good grub! A very nice day.

Monday

I did laundry, straightened up and headed downtown to meet an internet friend for lunch. I got there early and decided to recon the place where we were going to eat. Here I went, back into the Tenderloin and there I was, lost again – due in part to the good idea of asking a mentally ill homeless woman for directions. While I was lost I visited something called “The Tenderloin National Park” - a nice little area of paths and plants (including some fairly large San Pedro cactus) between some buildings. I found the place I was looking for (Saigon Sandwich) and it looked good, so I went back to where I was supposed to meet Don.

Thanks to the miracle of cell phones we did meet. We walked up Larkin to Saigon Sandwich, got our food (I had banh mi sui mai) and squeezed into two of the three seats and enjoyed some good food, conversation, and watching the Tenderloin parade.

After lunch I headed back on (surprise) the wrong train. When I realized I was lost I got off and took the train going in the opposite direction. I sat next to the first really toadish person I've interacted with. She had her feet in the seat next to her and I asked her to please move. “What?” she said. “Move your feet. I want to sit down.” She was pissed, but moved. After a long tunnel it looked to me like I might find my way to somewhere if I got off (and I wanted to be away from this kind of gross person). An actual good move. I was on Noe and a man I asked for directions walked with me through a lovely and very upscale neighborhood – pretty Berkeleyish. And then Bam, I was on Market 2-3 blocks from the Safeway where we've shopped before. I had a list of things to get, so got the shopping done, got on the F Trolley to Castro, caught the #24 up the hill, and was home ~4p.

I fixed stuffed mushrooms (with shrimp, etc.) for dinner. Also some toast with pesto and some toast with the extra shrimp stuffing and a salad. A great dinner. And I made some spaghetti to freeze for when I leave.

I love you Leslie. I'll call as soon as I can.

Tuesday

A lazy day. I fixed David's lunch, got him off to work, had breakfast, drank coffee, read – sitting in this 2^nd floor San Francisco apartment – and just generally lazed around. I made a Safeway run and brought the food back to David's apartment, then took off for a last visit to Shalimar (3^rd time in 8 days). While I was eating I watched a man who evidently hadn't been there before. He ordered from the guy who brings the food and then dove into his iPhone, where he stayed the whole time, thus missing the show in the dining area and behind the counter. Of course the server didn't bring the sauces, so I told him where they were. I wonder how much of a tip he left.

Caught the bus up O'Farrell to Divisadero, Divisadero to Haight, and walked along Haight. I saw the same homeless crew I'd talked with a few days ago in Buena Vista Park (it was early afternoon so they were pretty drunk), but didn't speak because they were interacting with the police. I stopped in at Amoeba Records, which also didn't have anything by Aes Dana. I walked on to Golden Gate Park, saw the bros I'd spent some time with the other day, and hung out for awhile. Caught the bus in front of Amoeba and was home in no time. Made a ton of pesto and had leftovers for dinner while David went out for dinner with several of his Berkeley classmates.

Wednesday

Another lazy day. I drank coffee and read for a few hours, then cleaned David's apartment. Around 11 I caught the #24 the opposite direction than usual, then #48 down 24^th Street to Mission. I walked waay down Mission, past a hundred bodegas, dollar stores, cafes, bars, head shops, women selling fruit, abuelas, veteranos, moms with strollers, mutterers, the whole scene. Had a long lunch at Big Mouth Burgers, eating and watching the vatos across the street pass the bottle, then a number around, playing with a pit bull, hangin'.

Back at David's I got some Jamaican chicken going in a slow cooker, then made one last Safeway run for a loaf of levain and some more chicken to add to the stew. It took exactly an hour to get there and back. Declan, one of David's housemates was home from France and Ireland and Alice, the other housemate was stuck in Ireland with passport problems. Declan opened a letter from the property manager and told me they and David were going to have to move as the person who owned the home is moving back to SF. They have two months, so it could be worse.

For dinner we had Jamaican chicken, rice, and brocolli. David's quartet is practicing at his apartment this evening and I fixed some hors d'oeuvres for them – crostinis with pesto, hummus, antipasto; and tostados with guacamole and salsa. And now I'm sitting here listening to these young musicians play. Sweet.

I'll see you later today!!!!!!!!!!!

Ice cream, David’s visit, more on birds

2011-09-02T10:47:00.005-05:00

For David’s visit home I made some pistachio ice cream – cooked up a custard of cream, milk, egg yolks, sugar, vanilla and chilled it and then churned it with a lot of toasted pistachios (for a quart of ice cream

I used ~4 ounces of nuts). No fillers, no expanders, no anything other than just those perfect ingredients. AND, I made some bittersweet chocolate sauce (Callebaut), which I dipped the cones in and dipped that into chopped pistachios. I also put some of the (cooled) chocolate down into the cone and then froze the cones before I served them. This was the first real ice cream I’ve made, with a custard and all. It was the best ice cream I’ve ever had. Retirement!

David came home for the weekend and though he was out most of the time, it was still a good time. Chris just got home from

Afghanistan and we had a good lunch at Shirin’s – curry, Parsi potatoes, cilantro and onion relish, raita, samosas, etc. It’s always good to sit around the table at Shirin’s – as we have for the past 20+ years. Photo: Wren's nest at the front bathroom window. The babies stayed totally quiet the entire time except when a parent was coming in with food. Then there was a quiet little cheeping. After the babies flew, the parents never came back.

David’s job is going well – 26 years old, living in San Francisco, good job, good apartment – yes! His first publication is here. Good work DK!

I’ve added a few more bird photos. Leslie knew

something was up when the jays and crows started a hubbub. She was thinking a cat was in the yard, but when she looked out, there was the hawk. Yikes, a killing machine!

Wind Rivers, 2011

2011-08-23T18:59:00.013-05:00

This blogger program is a problem. When I add photos I also get sentences and words fragmented. I give up. Here are the words & a few photos from the Wind River Mountains 2011. The photos are in Picasa here: https://picasaweb.google.com/109537175190450928722/2011WindRivers

I started Monday morning and drove north on 35 through Oklahoma and into Kansas, then west on 70. Stopped for the night in Hays KS and on into Colorado (see the sunflower fields stretching yellow along the highway). At some point in Colorado I talked with Leslie who told me she’d talked with my professional liability agent re not renewing my insurance and I’m thinking, Oh, but a few miles up the road I began to experience feelings of freedom – the loss and the gain and now the unmistakable intro to Dark Star.

Along the road, It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. Closing my good eye so I won’t see the sign that says I’m another 8 or 10 miles closer to Limon. Thinking of Leslie – I don’t know, maybe it was the roses, the roses or the ribbons, in her long brown

hair. And finally, way off in the distance, the mountains and closer, the snow high up on the mountains. Past Denver, past Fort Collins, 287 north into Wyoming. Spent the night in Laramie and on the road early, seeing magical words and places from my youth – the Snowy Mountains, Medicine Bow River – seeing snow fences in the morning sun. After Rock Springs it’s 98 miles to Pinedale, with the snowy peaks to the east, on the my right. Am I really going up there into the snow and ice! Photo: Camp in Titcomb Basin

I stopped in at the big general store and called Leslie one last time before I turned off the phone and drove up Skyline Drive to Elkhart Park TH. I was saddled up (for you DK) and on the trail by noon.

Day 1. The first hour I stopped four times briefly and then took a 5 minute rest. The second hour I stopped three times. After that I don’t know – it’s all woods for the first few miles. I was happy to pass Miller Park, a large meadow a few miles in. I’d slept there once before on the way out and was thinking I might stay there this time on the way in.

But I was doing fine and continued on to Photographer’s Point. Before I got there I met an older couple who said they’ve spent a lot of time in the Winds. The man told me they were on the way out as they’d seen a small grizzly (oooo – scary word to write sitting in a tent in a wooded area – I’m serious) and opined that the mother was nearby.

I’m camped by Barbara Lake – too close to the trail and the lake, but the bear thing is on my mind and I don’t want to be back away from where I would be found if there were problems. I’m at 10,000 feet now – a gain of ~9,250 feet from Dallas. It took me two hours

to set up camp – tent up, pump water, inside of tent set up, not eat (I had

a Snickers ~2:30), food hung, protein drink made and cooling in the lake for breakfast tomorrow. I think I’m stronger than I was two years ago, but the altitude really gets to me. Haha, a chipmunk just startled me scuffling around the tent, then the chittering – ah, that’s good to hear. The guidebook called this part of the trail “arduous.” Photo: Weasel on the hunt

Day 2. I slept from 8:30-6:30 and lay in my tent until 7. I guess I was tired. Breaking camp was slow and I was on the trail ~9. In ~30 minutes I got to a place where I’d camped before several times near an unnamed tarn in a little valley. Up, up, down, down, past Hobbs Lake. lots of trees, but some open areas, past Seneca Lake. Somewhere around there I talked with a man who said snow conditions are bad and that someone fell to his death yesterday on Gannett Peak. The understanding was that there was a father & son climbing together and that it was the son who fell. This was sobering on several levels and I decided to not try to repeat the epic trek of 2009 and instead, take the road more traveled and go to either Indian Pass or into Titcomb Basin.

The worst part of the day’s hike was a stretch of switchbacks up a dry, rocky area, sucking air, puff puff and finally over the top and into classic Winds terrain. I stopped in a timberline meadow, the same place Jeff and I had camped before and though I was again too close to the trail, this is where I stopped – wasted. I collapsed for awhile, drank the last of my water and set off down the hill to pump some water. Uh-oh, the pumping got harder and harder. A clogged filter, no doubt and hard to fix where I was. Glad for my emergency bag, which includes iodine tablets and iodine taste neutralizer tabs. Back at the campsite

I got my tent up a little faster than last night. I crawled into the tent and lay there for awhile, nauseated, with a headache, like I said, wasted. Last night I didn’t eat anything and tonight may be the same. BUT, I’m in sub-alpine meadows with granite domes and knobs and a lot of open areas and a few stands of trees and Titcomb Basin a few miles away.

So the first push is done and I’m in a place I love.

The mosquitoes are bad. I’m using 100% DEET and a head-net. I hike with the head-net pulled back and when I stop on one of my frequent rests, pull it back down over my face in the moment before they start to swarm. I try to get into the tent when the wind is blowing, hence less swarming. I open the netting fast, dive in, close it fast, lie there on my back watching for any that might have gotten in with me, and kill ‘em.

Day 3. I hiked from that good campsite past Island Lake with some dismayingly steep downhills (USMC doctrine: He who humps down must hump up.). When I got to the Indian Pass cut-off I thought, hmmm, uphill all the way, and so headed up the +/- level trail into Titcomb Basin, “a sight that will haunt you forevermore” (from Great Adventure Treks of the World). I didn't

get as far into the basin as Jeff and I got, but here I am hidden away in a small grassy area among the granite domes and knobs with the stark basin before me. I’m still not feeling great, but not as bad as the two previous evenings and here I am, at last. It’s all above timberline now.

I didn’t eat lunch today as even a Snickers or granola sounded unappetizing to say the least; gross to say the most. Dinner was ½ packet of IDAHOAN mashed potatoes (In case you haven’t tried them, a great freezer bag dish.), pepper jack cheese, dried focaccia (another break-through item), and some bacon from the Central Market salad bar.

Ahh, the sun just slipped over the peaks to the west and suddenly it’s cool and I feel good.

Overall, I’m happy with most of my decisions – to not try Knapsack Col alone again, that I hiked past Indian Basin and into Titcomb, and that I didn’t let the other people’s fear of a bear infect me. I don’t like my decision to leave my bear spray in the car to save weight (8oz).

Day 4. I was awake last night from ~2:30-4:30, awoke at 6:30, fell back asleep and woke at 8:30. Had some oatmeal and coffee for breakfast (almost everything sounds bad). I left my tent and all and hiked toward the back (north) of the basin. I met some guys from Pinedale, one of whom had a photo of a trout he’d caught – the biggest I’ve ever seen. One of the men had a pistol – a .45/410 – I want one!

What a place, so raw and wild and high. I hiked until the trail ran out and then followed the cairns across granite and tundra further up into the north of the basin. I passed where I came down Twins Glacier from Knapsack Col in 2009 in what I realize ever more clearly was a high-water mark for me. I’m feeling tremendously grateful that I did that. I’m feeling like it was probably my last rodeo.

Across the tundra, granite slabs and domes, across snow patches and snow fields (but none steep or challenging) until I got to a larger snow field that I went part way across and when the effort increased, went back – back down through the crag encircled basin, through boulder fields and marshy meadows and crossing streams from 8” wide to 20’ wide, all rushing to join the bigger streams from the big glacier run-off, cascading in waterfalls, water slides, rushing streams down to the big one, a fast shallow river down into the highest Titcomb Lake and picking up the trail again, hiking alongside the lake. I stopped to talk with two women with a golden, who sat her big wet butt on my leg, then got up to shake off on me giving me sweet Goldie flashbacks. One of the women spotted a weasel in the rocks behind us which was cool, as I’ve never seen a weasel in the wild.

Back at my campsite I was thinking about people who played a part in me being here. I’m dedicating this hike to Dave (swimswithtrout) whose passion for the Winds shines through in his brilliant photos and his tireless encouragement of others. And also to Dorf, whose excellent trip reports have provided me with many hours of pleasure and whose report of Peak Lake over Knapsack Col showed me the way to go in 2009. And also to Joe (offtrail) who has been generous in his support and who is an inspiration. As night fell, a coyote howled from about 100 feet away, just on the other side of a granite knob. I thought at first (I hope I hope) it was a wolf, but it wasn’t.

For lunch I had ½ a granola bar and for dinner chipotle cream sauce with a little dehy burger, some pepper jack cheese, and a “hunger-grab” or something like that bag of nacho flavored Doritos. I ate the whole bag.

Animals I’ve seen: today a weasel, yesterday a rat swimming underwater in one of the beautiful little streams, chipmunks, pika, marmots, and from the highway, pronghorn antelope.

Day 5. It was raining early in the morning, but it slacked off ~8. I had a protein drink and granola bar for breakfast and was on the trail ~9:30, hiking out of Titcomb, sad that I will probably never see this place again and grateful that I got here in the first place. Remember the part about hiking down means hiking up? Near Island Lake I took a wrong (early) turn and hiked up that hill only to find the trail petering out at the top. Hmmm. I hiked back a bit and talked with some men from northern Virginia who told me I was on the way to Way Lake or something like that.

I hiked and hiked, past the Highline Trail, past Little Seneca Lake where I met a 69 YO man, so that was encouraging. Past Seneca Lake I was starting to get tired. For the whole trip I’ve been in a negative energy in/out balance. I had hoped to get to Hobbs Lake, but ran out of steam and stopped at the first decent water, a little jewel of an unnamed tarn by a little meadow where I did my afternoon sinking spell. My wrong turn and poor nutrition did me in.

Haha, I’ve ripped the seat of my trousers out again. Ridicerous. Every time I come here I tear up another pair. This time the seat was somewhat torn and then I ripped it all the way out while I was hanging my food and tumbled 30 feet down a steep slope. Whomp, I landed on the trail. Really ridicerous.

When I started this hike I was thinking in terms of a vision quest. The vision was of Leslie, seeing her true essence – not just the woman I love and her true nature, but her eternal self. I’ve never seen that before.

Day 6. Crying in the morning light. My beloved wife.

I tried something new: protein drink and a granola bar

for breakfast, and then I mixed up another serving of protein drink to carry. I had thought I might stop at Miller Park, but ~11:30 I downed that 2^nd protein drink and was hiking strong. I talked again with the Polish couple (Andres and the woman had a difficult to pronounce name) I’d spent some time several times over the previous days. I also talked with Jeff and Jessie from Wichita KS who I had met on their way to Gannett, but with one of them feeling bad, had backed off the snow up to Bonney Pass. I blew on past Miller Park – I could smell the stable. The bad weather was settling in on the mountains and I hiked the last mile or so in the rain. Photo above: I camped by this tarn my last night

To the car, to Ridley’s General Store, and to the Wind

River Brewing Company for one of their brilliant burgers and fries. Ahhh. Ran into the young men from Pinedale I’d met at one of the Titcomb Lakes – and the Polish couple. A perfect ending. Photo: When in Walsenberg, I always stay at the Anchor.

Birds and the mountains calling

2011-08-05T17:13:00.010-05:00

I’ve written before about how when we’re lying in bed we can see the bird feeder right outside the back window and 7 feet past that, the bird bath and behind/beside the bird bath is a big bush that's undistinguished in terms of flowers, but is a major bird bush. Actually our entire yard, front and back, is a bird sanctuary. With all the bird-watching, squirrel studies (all squirrels are named Chubby), lizard updates (all named Mr. Green), various roses and other flowers coming into or going out of bloom, so on and so forth, it’s as if our lives inside our house extend to outside. Photo: Junior wren on the front porch - first day of flying

So many wonderful things …

The adolescent jay dive-bombing the feeder to bother the other birds.

Mr. and Mrs. C (the cardinals) are always first to the feeder, just as the sky begins to lighten.

The year before last a wren couple made their nest in our mailbox, so we closed the porch off. One day we found a tiny baby wren (no feathers, big head, totally helpless on the porch and put it back in the nest – which we confirmed later really is the best thing to do). When the junior wrens were ready to fly, they spent a few hours clinging to the brick, flying from wall to wall and away they flew. Photo: Junior wren on Phyllis' house - first day of flying

Now there’s another wren nest in the ivy growing all around and on the front bathroom window overlooking the driveway. When a parent is on the way with food she or he calls in a kind of descending trill and the babies respond with the faintest of peeps that Leslie can hear, but I cannot. After the babies get their food there is complete quiet. I walked up on the porch a few days ago and there were two junior wrens on the porch. I got the camera and went to the driveway, where the juniors were practicing flying back and forth between Phyllis’ house and ours. A few juniors were around the next morning and by afternoon they were all gone. Photo: Junior wren on the feeder on the front room aircon - first day of flying

The “homeless birds” (drab-appearing cowbirds and grackles) are the most spectacular bathers, using their wings and tails to splash water everywhere. They crowd up – 6-8 of them on and in the birdbath.

Doves are a poor symbol of peace – they’re aggressive with other birds and among themselves. They lift their wings and spread their tails to appear bigger and run toward others. What goofy birds they are. The sparrows pay them no mind, crowding around like they do. Photo: Chubby in the roses at a living room window

The sparrows are always around, crowds of them, hopping and flying around, happy as larks. They seem to have no conflicts with anyone, including among themselves. They’ll take a piece of the bread and kind of hop off the edge of the feeder to the ground where if they drop the bread often another sparrow grabs the bread and hops away. When the young ones are able to fly to the feeder they hop after adults, shivering and cheeping for food.

For awhile we had what we called sparrots – parrots that flocked with sparrows. They actually live closer to the lake and after a month or so, found their way home.

Once Leslie called me to the back of the house and there on the bird bath was a hawk – a force to be reckoned with.

We have blackbirds (all named Quoth the Raven [said in a husky deep voice]) who prefer the bread. When one of them lands on the feeder it pretty much clears the deck, except for Chubby. They take a piece of bread and fly back to the birdbath to soak it for 15-20 seconds, the scoff it down and back to the feeder. Back and forth, back and forth. Photo: Robin red breast and cedar wax wings in back. The cedar wax wings are around for one, sometimes two days/year - just passing through

Leslie rescued a baby jay from Judo’s formidable jaws. She fed it little pieces soaked dog food on a toothpick for a few days and then found a rescue place (ABC Vets) that took it.

We are on the 35th day of >100F. We’re filling the birdbath several times/day and I’ve begun spraying the leaves of the pecan tree and the bush by the birdbath, thinking that that might improve things for the birds. Yesterday, when Leslie was lying down to take a nap (actually it’s mostly lying down for her daily back, hip, and leg-rub – same as mine, earlier in the day) I saw a hummingbird hovering by the bush by the birdbath. There are no flowers – what is that little guy doing – Oh, right, having a drink, taking a break from the usual fare of Phyllis’ Turk’s caps. Photo: Quoth the Raven

This morning, before daylight we saw an owl on the birdbath.

In a few days I’m headed to Wyoming to do a similar trek to my epic (it was epic for me, anyway) hike into the Wind River wilderness in 2009. https://picasaweb.google.com/chaskemp/WindRivers2009North.

As is increasingly so, I’m uneasy about being away from Leslie, especially going into a wilderness area. But I have my SPOT (satellite beacon to check in okay or to send distress signal) and an ever increasing sense of my limitations. And this time I’m uneasy about leaving home in all this heat – Yikes! And I go with a tremendous sense of appreciation for a wife who is so supportive of this. Leslie is a rare one – in quite a few ways, actually. For all our life, all our love, all our work together, all our travel, our wonderful son, our dreams, all these days, and so much more: I love you. Photo: Looking back on the mountains I came over in 2009.

From Dallas I35 north through OK City, Wichita, go west on I70 to Denver, north on 25 a few miles, cut off to Ft. Collins, then north on 287 to Laramie, west on I80 to Rock Springs and 191 to Pinedale. Here is an exact route that will be abundantly clear to anyone around Pinedale. I’m planning on starting at Elkhart Park outside of Pinedale, through Miller Park (“Parks” are huge meadows.), past Photographer’s Point past Hobb’s Lake, Seneca Lake, Little Seneca and then if everything is real good (I’ll let you know by sending three consecutive I’m okay messages) north on the Highline Trail past Lower and Upper Jean Lakes, on to Shannon Pass Trail to Cube Rock Pass around the south side of Peak Lake up through Peak Basin and up between Split Mountain and G-4 to overlook Mammoth Glacier, then traverse around to Knapsack Col and down into Titcomb Basin to Island lake and on out. If it’s going just okay, i.e., I’m too slow or too much knee pain or whatever, I won’t send 3 consecutive okays and will go past the Highline Trail cut-off to Island Lake and from there into Indian Basin and either up Freemont Peak or just mill around in Indian or Titcomb Basins for a few days and then out.

And here's a song for you, sweet Leslie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j4cu-MuLgc

Starting Hospice

2011-07-31T15:44:00.010-05:00

Here is how hospice started in Texas in 1978-79.

I was interested in dying and death before I got into nursing – what with all the gunfights, mines, morters, and so on. And the healing path after the war also brought life and death into sharper focus. Dorothy Pettigrew, one of my teachers at Baylor told us about Kubler-Ross’ stages and I sought out more information and the opportunity to work with people at the end of life. John Reed was very helpful in this process and I owe a lot to him.

When I graduated I went to work at the VNA and again sought those opportunities. I decided I needed to get better at communicating with patients, so went to UT Austin to work on a master’s in psychiatric nursing (I had a fellowship and veteran’s bennies). It was an intense year in school and another good year with Leslie.

There were few jobs and little apparent opportunity in those jobs in Austin and so Leslie stayed and I went to Dallas. It was in no way a separation, but it was a commuter marriage. Leslie stayed at Carol Nunley’s and flew in every Friday afternoon and left Sunday afternoon. I had an apartment in an old sixplex on Prescott in Oak Lawn – every weekend, what a great time we had there.

At the end of our time together in Austin I spent a week at a “Transitions Workshop” with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Stephen Levine, and about 75 people who more or less fit into one of three categories: some had life-threatening illness, some had lost a loved one, and some were working in terminal care in some way or another. This thing happened at a Catholic retreat center in San Antonio. The sessions went from ~8am until 1 or 2am. On the first morning we were all in a large room, going through us all, with people sharing why they were there. We learned later that this was called bullshit time, because so many people would be saying they were there to learn about dying and death. In our time, however, we went from a person who was dying to someone who was afraid to a man who said he was there because he was always judging other people, and somehow these people freed things so that other people began saying why they were really there: because of our pain. Photos by Debora Hunter

Most of the rest of the time was spent in a process called externalizing, in which people would express pain, anger, grief and say what they had to say to those who had been a part of whatever it was that was happening (God, an abusive parent, self, spouse, the usual line-up). Part of that was that nobody was comforted. People, myself included, expressed the pain, then deeper, and deeper into it, until (often with groaning, sobbing, and so on) the pain really was out, not sanitized for public consumption, but agonized, snot-running, sweaty, and raw. People were realizing they could survive these terrible feelings. Though toward the end there was comforting, and greatest in the comfort was that we were all doing this thing. One thing I shared was how Donohue was killed. It was the first time I said this aloud, though I was running the video in my mind every bleeding day of my life for 10 years. I later told Jeff and I wrote it here: http://sites.google.com/site/chaskemp/personal2

In Dallas I went to work at the VNA. When I graduated from the master’s program I was thinking I should have a certain level of job, certainly “higher” than staff, but after the Transitions Workshop, I realized all I ever wanted to do was to help others and the best way I could think of to do that was to work with patients (I still believe that). So I went to work as a staff nurse providing care in people’s homes. Within a few months some other people (Ruby Carter, Tim Brown, Johnnie Turner) and I were meeting to talk about what we could do to do a better job caring for people with terminal disease. There were no pagers at the time, so we all carried note cards with all our names and phone numbers and we’d give one to each patient who was dying – the idea being that surely, one of us was bound to be available no matter what time of the day or night the call came.

Not too long after we got this going, the VNA Executive Director, Elsie Griffith called me to her office and told me she wanted me to “work on something for people with terminal illness.” I came out of the field and went to work on program planning and on how to get leadership to buy into what I was planning. Early in the process someone asked me to look in on Jan, a young woman with metastatic breast disease. Incredibly she lived about a mile from my apartment and I began helping her mother, Jean, an amazing woman. I think it was about three months before Jan died. She had an incredible journey, with many long nights at the edge.

Meanwhile, back at the VNA we brought in Al Shapero, one of my professors (design and management) at UT, to help with the planning and bringing the organization’s leadership along. It all came together and was kept real, at least in part through my nightly encounters with Jan’s journey toward death. Somewhere along the way I spent a week at Hospice of Marin, where I learned more about program details and met some of the other people who were making hospice happen in the U.S.

VNA had Dallas divided into three districts and we started the program, (initially the VNA Terminal Care Program – creative, ain’t I – and later called the VNA Home Hospice), in the East District. It was a very lean program, basically a team of nurses, medical director, social worker, chaplain, home health aides, lay volunteers – each team integrated into their district organizational structure. Three months later we started in the West District and three months after that the third district and Dallas was covered.

Each time we started up, we had a training program that lasted about a week if memory serves me. We covered hospice principles, symptom management, communications, spiritual care, etc., and we also had some powerful exercises and meditations. One of the people who helped with training was Herman Cook, who had worked with Kubler-Ross at the University of Chicago and was now (at the time of the training) a chaplain at Parkland, Dallas’ county hospital.

One very nice outcome to the care we were providing was that the percentage of VNA patients with advanced cancer who died at home went from ~32% to >66%. On any given day we were taking care of more patients than any hospice in the U.S. It was working.

In keeping with my outlook on things, I didn’t have an office for quite awhile. Still focused on patients. Then I had an office and a secretary, Virginia, who did wonderful work. I told everyone who worked in hospice, including administrative, that we would all always be working with at least one patient. Virginia worked with this woman, whose life was truly tragic.

At this time there were a few hospice programs on the east and the west coasts, and of course in the U.K. In Texas, there were a few people talking about it, but we were the first people in Texas to actually provide hospice care.

There was a spirit alive in those days – one which is still alive in many hospices! It was a spirit of hope for our patients, of faith in our potential and the potential of our patients, of pushing the limits of symptom management, of dedication to this better way of living in the context of dying. Those were epic days of legendary efforts in mercy. People like Cathy Little, Laura Neal-McCollum, Major Thomas, and Jimmy Boyd were spending day after day in the presence of suffering, fear, despair, and pain. By their faithfulness, skill, and love they showed that hope was real and healing possible.

How can there be healing in dying? When my teacher, Stephen Levine said,

We’re born to be healed

He wasn’t talking about healing the flesh. It’s the healing of the spirit, the person, the family, the past, the present, the future. We worked so hard to ease the body and thus open things up for communication, growth, and healing.

Reach out your hand
if your cup is empty
If your cup is full
may it be again

Let it be known
there is a fountain
that was not made
by the hand of man

A year or so into the whole thing I went to work on a proposal to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services for our program to become one of the national hospice demonstration projects. Several other people were also involved in the writing and together we produced a proposal that was awarded (our functional and successful program had everything to do with the award). We became a national demonstration project and the program began going through a lot of changes. I did as I intended all along and became a hospice clinical specialist (training, consulting, difficult patients and families). I was betting that VNA would hire someone good to take my place and then the most awful thing happened. The program went under an administrator who didn’t get it except as a career thing and she hired a guy who was just a terrible choice in so many ways. That was a very difficult time for me.

I worked in hospice for about two years. They were extraordinarily intense years of pushing the limits of care, grand innovation, hard work, and the realization of dreams beyond dreams.

Fifteen years later I wrote Terminal Illness: A Guide to Nursing Care. When the book was finished, the editor asked me to write an epilogue and though tired of writing, reluctantly I did. In the first sentence I wrote that the purpose of all this was for the patient and family “to have the opportunity for reconciliation with God, self, and others.” It blew my mind that I wrote that. It was as if, oh, right, there’s the purpose of life: reconciliation with God, self, and others. My life, your life, all our lives. Some of us have farther to go than others, but there it is.

Goodby to all that - Hello!

2011-07-24T14:53:00.012-05:00

I had planned on retiring about three weeks from now, but things changed and I resigned from Agape. For the longest time I thought I would never want to retire, but I am truly ready. I’ve had a good career. There have been probably about 40,000 patients (hospice, refugees, immigrants, psychiatric ER and state hospital, in the community); several thousand students; working with Leslie to manifest hope, love, faithfulness; countless hours in inner-city apartments; three books, many articles, etc.; writing grants and raising some millions of dollars – and never losing track of who I was serving. The hardest parts of leaving are leaving people like Nora and walking away from something I was good at, that mattered. I wrote a 3 part account of all this when I left Baylor several years ago at following link. http://ckjournal.blogspot.com/2008/03/im-retiring.html /03/im-retiring.html. Photo: Megan, me, Joe - two people I'm sad to leave. Plans:

Leslie and I will be together differently in some ways. For one thing there’ll be no work worries/stresses to get in the way of things. We’ll see how all this goes – changes and stuff to work out, no doubt. I’m looking forward to it. Photo: Leslie on the bus leaving Rangoon for Moulmein ~2007 and Leslie waiting for the bus in Kathmandu ~1978.

I’ll be gardening, baking, cooking, working in/on the house and yard, working out, meeting friends, riding my bike and Leslie will be keeping our business act together, doing all her correspondences, exercising, going out with friends, doing house, food, etc. things and who could guess what all else.

We’ll travel – more or less continuing our current patterns of west coast 3-4 times/year to be with David and Asia once a year – maybe get to Boston area, other places.

I’ll backpack as long as I’m able – this could come to an end at any point as it’s pretty hard on the body. Next up is ~10 day trek in the Wind Rivers in August. Photo: High up in the Wind Rivers - rock, ice, snow, air, the wind, a little lichen. It took me 6 days to get to there.

Volunteer-wise, I’ll be helping with some psytrance camping gatherings. This is a new direction for me and I’m really excited. I like the people I’ve been meeting at these gatherings and I like the music. Next up is Soul Rise in September near Austin. See photo below from Deep in the Heart of Trances.

Hopefully I’ll spend more time with Jeff.

What else? I don’t know.

My mate, Jeff said this: "How cool is it to have someone to testify that it all even happened." He was talking about the gunfights, the blood and iron of Vietnam, and how 30-something of us (of the >180 who started out together) came home on-time. All the others were dead, too badly wounded to keep going, and of course the lucky ones with malaria or 3 non-crippling wounds. He was talking about the years after, when we really did dance beneath the diamond sky, filled with wonder and sparkling beauty, the years of healing, returning to the heart. Photo: At Con Thien

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Jeff was talking about how we both, in different ways, have been/are with people at the end of life, manifesting faithfulness and truth in those difficult times. He was talking about NOW, as we again dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the trees, circled by the circus lights … again filled with wonder and sparkling beauty … and now there are all these other people dancing too! Photo: The dance floor at Deep in the Heart of Trances - just wait until the night!

51 is the number of push-ups in one set I did this week, on my way to doing more push-ups than my age. Haha, I’m not sure I can get to my age before I’m another year older. So it’s either 16 or 17 to go. (At least I’m not going on about health problems, much.) I decided to stress my knee to see if I’m able to backpack after arthroscopy earlier this year, so this week I hiked for an hour up hill and down dale with a 35-40 pound pack. More laughter: my knee is fine, but my back hurts. But I’m good to go.

I saw a woman last week who asked if she could bring her daughter to the clinic for significant interrelated psychiatric problems. Sure. The mother and daughter came in today. The young woman’s problems are extraordinarily difficult and they have high mortality and morbidity rates. Serious morbidity has already occurred. We made some progress, I felt mostly as stop-gap measures, but, you do what you can and you take what you can get. Afterward I was telling Leslie about this and later she came back with a brilliant intervention and suddenly there’s light and a way. Wow! Photo: Leslie in her natural habitat (scan from a magazine article)

You (actually I mean they) say stop
I say go
You say why
I say I don’t know
Oh-Oh, Oh no
You say goodbye
And I say hello
Hello hello
I don’t know why you say goodbye
I say hello-o-o-o-o helloo

Spring 2011 photos

2011-07-04T20:45:00.001-05:00

Spring 2011 photos are here: https://picasaweb.google.com/chaskemp/Spring2011# (click slideshow)

Spring 2011

2011-07-03T13:48:00.014-05:00

We were at a wedding and someone was asking me about retirement, what I planned to do and I answered garden, bake, backpack, festivals, travel. Leslie mentioned that I was starting a 10 day backpacking trip next week (and that she was going to Cali). I thought, though the moment had passed, that a major part of my plan for retirement is just being with Leslie more. Photo: From the small balcony upstairs at the house where we stayed in Berkeley.

And I was thinking about this and that, like the bride’s parents and their journey from war and Vietnam and what Leslie and I have done so far this year. I’m working out and Leslie’s walking. I work two part days/week and was doing some serious gardening until it got so bleeding hot and Leslie does everything that keeps us going (considerably more than two part days/week!). We’ve been having lunch together almost every day, going on weekend “field trips” to Saigon Mall and Super H, and random things like Half-Price Books. As much as possible, we’ve had some long easy days, like on Fridays. Photo: Where Telegraph meets UC Berkeley at Sproul Plaza, where the free speech movement started. Pretty good little band.

January (the trip started 11/2010 and ended 1/2011) – we traveled for about 8 weeks in Cali and SE Asia.
February – Arthroscopy knee
March – Cali (Oakland & SF) – some major good times
April – I went to Oklahoma for a couple of days – a great trip
May – Berkeley for David’s graduation – talk about a family trip!!!
June – Deep in the Heart of Trances, which was wonderful and Sonic Bloom which wasn’t; Leslie to San Francisco – San Francisco!
July – Rest
August - ?
Photo: David moments after graduation from Berkeley Law! Good work! WooHoo!

My teacher, Dan was talking earlier about Nietzsche’s idea that the “death of God” results in "weightlessness.” I was thinking about that in relation to faith and works – I was thinking that often, without works (doing good, being in the flow, practicing mercy, etc.) there is a lack of weight and substance in life.

For me, the faith vs. works question is false. The way I see it is the reason to do works is not for some future reward, but because it’s just what a person does, maybe cannot not do. We’ll find out whatever in the sweet by and by. Photo: Speaking of substance ... country French sourdough loaves, several with cheese.

In June Jeff and I went to Deep in the Heart of Trances. It was basically a perfect party. There was music from Friday evening to well into Sunday morning. Here is an example of the sort of music we listened and danced to (click start on the third piece, Summerlands - whew!): http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfulltext%5D=aes+dana 5Bfulltext%5D=aes+dana

Photo: Sunday morning at Deep in the Heart

A Victory for Veterans

2011-05-19T18:21:00.004-05:00

New York Times, May 18, 2011

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered an overhaul of mental health care for veterans, who are killing themselves by the thousands each year because of what the court called the “unchecked incompetence” of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In a scathing 2-to-1 ruling on May 10, the judges said delays in treating post-traumatic stress disorder and other combat-related mental injuries violated veterans’ constitutional rights. The delays are getting worse as more troops return from Afghanistan and Iraq, the judges said. About 18 veterans commit suicide on an average day.

The government’s obligations are clear. Veterans are entitled by law to be treated for injuries and illnesses. Benefits claims are supposed to be dealt with in days or weeks, but it takes an average of more than four years to fully adjudicate a mental health claim. When a veteran appeals a disability rating, the process bogs down drastically. The problem is an overwhelmed bureaucracy and a chronic inadequacy of resources and planning.

The judges said the system for screening suicidal patients was ineffective, and cited a 2007 inspector general’s conclusion that suicide-prevention measures were mostly absent. The same report found that the veterans department’s regional medical centers have suicide-prevention experts, but its 800 community-based outpatient clinics — which veterans most often use — do not. This crisis plagues active-duty soldiers, too, and the Pentagon has lagged in responding effectively. The government has long known what it was up against with P.T.S.D. and brain injuries — the signature afflictions of current wars.

This new ruling came two years after the appeal was filed, during which lawyers for the government and the nonprofit advocacy organizations that sued, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, were trying to negotiate a plan for fixing the system. Those negotiations did not succeed, so the judges have remanded the case to the district court to order one.

The government can keep appealing, but it should work with the advocates and enact a plan to fulfill the promise of the veterans affairs secretary, Eric Shinseki, to do better. For 25 million veterans, including 1.6 million who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, the choice is clear.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/opinion/19thu2.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211

After All This Time

2011-04-16T16:54:00.009-05:00

Heading out of town and want to leave this with you, Dear Leslie (Listen to the words here):

There were trains And we out-run 'em There were songs And we out-sung 'em There were brighter days never ending There was time And we were burnin' There were rhymes And we were learnin' There was all the love two hearts could hold

And after all this time You're always on my mind Hey I could never let it end 'Cause my heart takes so long to mend The dream that keeps your hopes alive The lonely nights you hold inside And after all this time You're always on my mind I still want you

There was rain That we outlasted There was pain But we got past it There were last goodbyes still left unspoken There were ways I should have thrilled you There were days I could have killed you You're the only love my life has known

And after all this time You're always on my mind Hey I could never let you go A broken heart that heals so slow Could never beat for someone new While you're alive and I am too And after all this time You're always on my mind I still love you

And I could never let it in 'Cause my heart takes so long to mend The dream that keeps your hopes alive The lonely nights you hold inside And after all this time You're always on my mind I still want you Hey after all this time You're always on my mind I still love you

Hi Michelle!

2011-03-20T20:01:00.003-05:00

A couple of days ago we went to Super H – a huge Korean grocery store with a good food court. We had bulgogi and crab cakes and it was great. A woman sitting at our table went out of her way to make us feel welcome, so it was more than just a good meal. We went back today for sushi (crunch roll – fried shrimp, avocado, cucumber, crab, “made crunchy”) and some spicy Chinese chicken and soups. It was a good lunch and grocery store trip and something wonderful happened.

I ordered the sushi and went over to where Leslie was ordering the Chinese food. She was saying that what a young man sitting nearby was having looked better than what we’d planned on getting and when I looked over at his food, the young woman sitting with him said, “Mr. Kemp.” It was Michelle, a former student who had done a really good job working with Karen refugees. Having an understanding about these things, she was able to touch people’s lives and she was willing to give self to people. Nice.

Things like this happen, connections, memories, things that affirm us all – Michelle, Leslie, me. Photo: Karen woman holding Michelle's hand as they walk

I had a student once, who had worked at the edge for quite a few years – a missionary in Latin America, liberation theologist. She said to me (old Marine, hospice worker, refugee worker), “You know, you and I are the oldest and least cynical people in this room.”

More dreams and sparkling realities

2011-03-17T15:17:00.008-05:00

Voting: Below is a link to voting for Gardeners in Community Development, AKA, "The Garden" - the people and effort that have meant so much to our East Dallas community and the refugees who found refuge with us. Each vote takes GICD a step closer to $5000 for walk-ways and other improvements for elderly (that's me) and handicapped (not just yet) gardeners.

Visit www.deloachcommunitygardens.com to view videos from nominated gardens. GICD's entry is next to the last, Center for Growing People. Thanks!

To Phyllis: I taught and practiced that what we do should make a difference. If we weren't there, would it have happened? If the answer is no, without us it wouldn't have happened and if what happened helped or lifted people up, then we’ve done well. I saw Phyllis, my former Dean today and it was a lovely reunion. She said (or I think she said) something about challenges in working with me and later I’m thinking, thanks to her being able to let me do the work, which wasn't always easy for her to do, and me doing the work, many students had life-altering learning experiences and many people were healed, helped, informed, lifted up – mercy was given and received. If you think about it, it was an amazing thing we did.

Our House

2011-03-04T17:02:00.009-06:00

Our house was built in 1931. We bought it in 1979 and have lived here ever since. We’re talking about moving for several reasons:

David will be graduating in a few months and wants to live in a more progressive place than Dallas (and so do we). Our plan all along has been to live close to one another and we intend to be where he is.
We’re getting older and less willing to do the upkeep on this house vs. what we think a condo would involve. It would be interesting (though I'm sure, expensive) to live in a house with climate control, with central heat and air for example.
We like to travel for months at a time. Living in a place where we can just lock the door and go has enormous attraction to us.

Thinking in real terms about leaving the house, I thought I would put together some of the photos I’ve taken of the house, the garden, and living here. Looking at the photos clarified that it’s not just the house, but our life in this house – what we see when we look out the windows, what we bake, the neighborhood, the birds singing, and so on.

My Mom lived for several years in the little house behind ours. She died there and we took care of her through months of cancer. Our son grew up here. Oh, there are joys and treasures and memories beyond measure in those happy times in our little family ... all the Christmases, the tent in David’s room, cooking, baking, snow days, ball in the hall, Grandparents living with us (3!), Christmas tree forts, playing in the front yard – back yard – field – railroad tracks, the babies, homework, eating at DK’s little table in the kitchen, Goldy, Judo, Chris and David playing in the mud – building fires – playing up and down the street, Katy, Laura, Chuck living out back, making the couch into a boat, the tree fort, the garden, Little Wolf, not to mention Running Bear! It just goes on and on through countless happy days in this house. Leslie and I being in love, making love, being parents, sharing life, working together, lying in bed and having coffee and a back rub almost every morning, now growing old … and so

Here are some photos of our house and life

Nice secluded house for rent

2011-02-24T16:15:00.006-06:00

The little house behind our house will be available for rent in May. Details:

Lakewood/Old East Dallas area – 3 minutes to new Whole Foods, 8-10 minutes to Baylor, 10-12 minutes to Central Market or SMU, 12 minute bike ride to White Rock Lake.

One bedroom cottage with living/dining area, kitchen, bath – 550 square feet. Newly painted. Mostly carpeted, some parquet floor. Living room & bedroom windows look out on rose & perennial garden. Photo: Living area. See bedroom window far right of photo.

Three ceiling fans, one air conditioner – unfurnished with gas range, refrigerator, provided. Good built-in cabinet space, shelves, bike storage.

Very private & peaceful on quiet residential street. Cottage is behind our home, so quiet is important (we’ll be quiet, too). Photo: From living room window

Limitations: no smoking inside, no pets, no loud motorcycles, 1 car only.

$600/month, bills paid (with moderate utility use). Phone, cable, internet not included. One year lease with security deposit.

We are seeking a single, quiet person or couple with references.

Reply by email to schedule an appointment. chaskemp gmail.com

Heroic journeys

2011-02-14T18:10:00.005-06:00

Do you believe in magic?
These people have been on my mind.

Aaron is a former student of mine, who, along with his wife Diane, has a small farm (http://www.oneworldfarm.com/) in Venus, Texas – a farm and a state of mind where new hope is found – where the answer is Yes – where a man with far-advanced alcoholism (a fifth/day) became sober and more than a year later is still sober – where a child with no place else to turn found a home and love and a new life – where furniture made by refugees can be bought – where dogs find refuge – where people find refuge. Some people wonder, what’s the deal on the child who found refuge at One World Farm and the answer is, there’s no deal, it just is. Here is something on Youtube on the Karen. Photo: Here comes the sun ... it's alright

Claire was working in the garden, was bitten by a mosquito, infected with West Nile virus, ended up in critical care for many weeks, became a “feeder” (fed via a tube), and many months later is still wearing leg braces, using a cane, and suffering lingering neurologic effects. The rehab team wanted to do some cognitive restructuring, so assigned her mental exercises like designing a shopping center. Let’s see, do we want the paint store next to the hardware store or the tire store? Claire said, “Naw, I’m not gonna do that.” Instead, she studied for her nurse practitioner boards to become re-licensed – a very very difficult and complex undertaking. And she passed. Next on the agenda was finding a place to get in the many clinical hours required for re-licensure. After several rebuffs she ended up volunteering at Agape, where she distinguished herself in providing women’s health services, helping people deal with sexual issues, inspiring staff and volunteers, and keeping it real.

Chuck has renal cell carcinoma with distal metastases. He has known despair and defeat and has persevered. Markedly thinner than before, sometimes the sadness written clearly on his face, he has continued to study and teach his faith. This past Christmas he asked for help in connecting with people in need. I put him in touch with Nora (speaking of Heroic!) and by the time Christmas rolled around, 54 people – the poorest of the poor, the ones who never get to a Christmas handout program – had a nice Christmas. And good grief, he continues to referee basketball games! I should also note that his wife Joan, a beautiful and good woman, is central in this journey.

Small wonder that I would be thinking of them - Imagine!

Asia 2010-2011

2011-01-23T16:30:00.016-06:00

Happy Trails to You!
Looking back on this last trip to Asia; going over favorite memories, these things emerge.

Hong Kong: As always the Star Ferry, the bus ride to Victoria Peak, Tsim Chai Kee for shrimp wonton noodle soup, getting apples and oranges for a good price at Fa Yuen Market, the Indonesian encounter, feeling so safe at the Dragon Hostel that we kept our door propped open most of the time we were there except when asleep. Photo: From Pacific Coffee on Victoria Peak ("The Peak"). This is the second time I've used this photo - I really love it.

Bangkok: Nice clean cool no-brothelish hotel and having coffee outside in the morning, amulet market, figuring out how to take the buses well, food courts and especially Siam Paragon, chicken street, figuring out that we were never going to get a cab or tuk-tuk for anything other than robbery cost, salad bar at Tops Market.

Chiang Mai: Lanna House, a nice hotel with decent breakfast buffet, Central Airport Plaza for the best food court, taking 20 baht song taoews everywhere, mango with sticky rice and sweet coconut milk, khao soi noodles. Photo: David and Leslie near Hue - speaking of photos I love!

Phnom Penh: Being with Samnang’s family and David at this place of good memories, Juedi’s cooking, dinner with Henning and Ment, hanging out with Lance in Battambang.

Saigon: Being back with Mrs. Kim and the sweet girls who work there, the pork chop lady – WooHoo!

Hue: Being in this beautiful city, staying in the Binh Duong II, eating at Thu’s (mmm, banana pancakes), taking a car into the countryside on a beautiful rainy day (see photo above).

Hanoi: Staying at the Camellia2, breakfasts at hotel, meeting up with David, Chicken Street with Jim, Halong Bay junk trip, going to King Cafe with David, graduation day at the Temple of Literature (see Photo at left), walking around the old quarter.

Overall: Traveling with David, traveling with Leslie (speaking of perpetual motion machines!!!), Leslie tracking the money so well, Leslie's brilliant plane seat work (we had some great seats), doing really well on public transportation, so much championship food, just the whole thing.

The Bus Ride (a story written on the bus from Battambang to Phnom Penh)

Introduction: One of the people who posts on the Lonely Planet Thorntree Travel Forum calls himself Bun Cha, which is also the name of the brilliant grilled pork, noodle, and sweet fish sauce soup dish (usually accompanied by the little fried spring rolls called nem) served mostly in Hanoi. Photos taken at various times.

His name was Trevor, a recent graduate of an average Australian university. His girlfriend, Jennifer was an American, a university drop-out – “I’m taking a year or two off to sort my head out.” They had traveled from Bangkok, where they spent two weeks mostly on Kao Sanh Road, to Phnom Penh. With visits to the “killing fields,” Tuol Sleng, and the tour to the garbage dump where ragged children sift through the stinking detritus (a tour!?), Phnom Penh was a sobering experience, so they were glad to get to Siem Reap where they met the most fabulous tuk-tuk driver … But they needed to have a real Asia backpacking experience, so bought tickets for the 12 hour bus trip to Ban Lung.

“Is there a toilet on the bus?” Asked Trevor. “Yes, have toilet,” said the pretty and terminally bored girl selling tickets. They boarded at 6 in the evening and the first thing they noticed was that the seats didn’t have much legroom. “But hey, it’s Asia and we’re backpackers.” As the bus pulled onto the road, Jennifer asked, “Where’s the toilet?” “I don’t know.” Trevor answered. “I’ll ask the guy who’s riding up there with the driver. “Where is the toilet?” The question drew a blank look from the driver’s assistant. “Where Toilet?” Blank. “TOILET?” Shrug. Back in his cramped seat he said, “I don’t know where the toilet is – I couldn’t get them to understand the question.” Jennifer is getting irritated, her voice rising, “You’d think they would learn to speak English! Why don’t they know where the toilet is!” Across the aisle a weathered western traveler says, “There’s not a toilet on this bus.”

By now the TV monitor is showing a series of boy meets girl videos and the singing actually isn’t that bad, but jeez it’s loud. The bus is rocking, horn blatting along the “highway” and the air-conditioning vent is drip-drip-dripping on Jennifer which upsets her, so she and Trevor switch seats (“It’s gonna be a long damn trip” he thinks) and by now the video is a Chinese movie featuring preposterous fights and sword fights and pretty girls with tragic looks if you know what I mean and I think you do.

The bus stops at a restaurant where you probably don’t want to eat. “There’ll be toilets out back.” the man across the aisle says. “Well finally.” Jennifer says, but returns unhappy. “They’re just holes in concrete – I can’t do that!” Trevor shrugs. He’s getting a little tired of it. The driver blows the horn and everyone gets back on the bus.

And so it goes into the night, the singing, the biff-bop-pow of endless fights, the blatting of the horn. Jennifer finally has no choice and uses a rest-stop toilet. “They don’t have any paper! Oh my God!” The air-conditioning finally fails around 11:30. By now the video is the most awful variety show low-brow comedy routine and the volume is even louder.

Trevor and Jennifer hear a man behind them say, “Turn it off.” Nothing happens, of course, and again the man says, “I said, turn it OFF!” The guy beside the driver looks back, then turns away. “TURN IT OFF, I SAID!” Trevor looks around and to his horror, sees a man standing up with a double-barreled shotgun in his hands and it’s almost like Trevor is looking into the side-by-side barrels like two huge nostrils, the kind of nostrils where you could pick your nose, with a finger in each nostril at the same time! Boom! The monitor vaporizes! Boom! The DVD player explodes! Their ears are ringing and the smell of cordite fills the air. The man walks toward the front of the bus, the driver shrinking against the window and the driver assistant guy huddled shaking in fear on the floor. The man reaches over and pushes the door opener. The door opens and the man steps out of the bus and walks into the darkness of the Asian night.

“My God,” Trevor says, “What just happened? Who was that?” The man across the aisle says with a slight smile. “What just happened was justice. And that was Bun Cha.”

Hong Kong on the way out of Asia - Asia!

2011-01-18T10:00:00.009-06:00

Tuesday. The taxi ride from the Bangkok hotel to the airport was memorable for a circuitous route, some white-knuckle speeds, good time, and a pleasant negotiation with the taxi driver at the end. We had an easy flight from Bangkok on a plane less than half full – mostly Indians, many of the men with long beards and turbans. After a last minute on-line check, Leslie found that our plane had many open seats and so changed our seats to

the two end seats of a four-seat row. Nice! Glad to be on Cathay Pacific. Photo: Coffee at Pacific Coffee on the Peak overlooking the harbor

At the HK airport we had an interaction through which I realized, “It’s not me, it’s you” (the person at fault, as usual, in general). What a breakthrough! All these years, thinking, “It’s not you, it’s me” – but then to find out, no, “It’s you!” Leslie had a slightly different take on things.

Back in Hong Kong, the beginning and end of all our Asia trips, we go quickly through the best-managed airport ever, down the ramp to the A21 bus, hop on, pay our senior fare of $16.5HKD (~$2.10USD) each vs. at least $230HKD (~$30USD) for a taxi, and in less than an hour we’re at our place at the Dragon Hostel in the Sincere House on Tung Choi Street at Argyle Road. It’s the Dragon Hostel, but it’s really a guesthouse. Our room is larger than before (sleeping area 7.5’x7.6’ + some hall space and bathroom 2.4’x5.75’). The exchange rate is 7.78HKD to 1USD (all prices in this blog are in HKD). With temps in the 50s and 60s, it’s as cold as we’ve ever seen here.

In an effort to avoid the Chungking Mansions (where we always change our money) we discover that the bank wants to charge about $15USD to change $200. Not likely, so on the bus we go, down Nathan Road, and through the portals of one of my favorite and one of Leslie's least

favorite places, Chungking Mansions. Leslie did the deal and when I suggested she give the money to me after the pay-out (we’re in a wide corridor of a notorious place) she growled at me and wanted to talk about it. I was looking at the money-changing guy and I kind of shook my head and shrugged and he actually smiled – an unheard of action on the part of a CKM money-changer. Photo above: A back section of the harbor from airport bridge

By now we’re pretty tired. Bus back up Nathan Road to pay for the room, then to dinner at Good Hope Noodles, where Leslie decided she didn’t want to eat because of the general grubbiness – always a good move to follow ones’ instincts (oh, and there was a hair in her food). Incredibly, the waitress deleted the cost of her noodles. I finished mine and Leslie had the last of the tripnic for dinner: bacon sandwich, fried bananas, and frozen yogurt.

Our room at the Dragon is one of the larger ones and has windows. Windows are the good news and the bad news as this is not a quiet part of a not quiet city. The step up into the bathroom (the usual tiny space) is, according to Leslie, “Luang Prabang high.” So here we are with a few days in Hong Kong and then back to the states. A good place to be. Photo: Dragon Hostel commons - Stanley at his desk

Wednesday. We had a good night’s sleep, due in large part to turning on the aircon fan. Breakfast at the café run by “Jenny” at the Fa Yuen Market. Leslie had soup with noodle, vegetable, egg, and pork and I had the usual egg, bacon, and toast. After breakfast we went to get apples from the nice-looking woman at one of the fruit and vegetable stands. There were too many men pushing carts through the narrow aisles, so the woman said come back later. I wanted to walk down a little aisle nearby where there were some foreign places (Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian), so we went there. There were a number of Indonesian people eating and several were super-friendly, telling us about the food and wanting us to eat there, but we said later. Back at the vegetable stand we bought 4 apples for $10 and the woman gave us 2 very tasty mandarin oranges. Of such things are good times made. Photo below: Random street scene in Central

After relaxing in our room for awhile we thought

we might mount yet another expedition to what we call the “middle class people’s shopping center” or the Sham Shi Po area where the amazing Golden Computer Arcade packs ‘em in. For once, choosing something easier, we walked around our neighborhood and the Ladies Market for about an hour and a half. We saw the BBQ place where I had such a good meal when I’d gotten totally lost in 2005 (this time outside the BBQ place the police were tending to an old woman who had fallen or something) and later we stopped in the Taipan Bakery for a coconut tart and a scone.

We walked back to the Fa Yuen Market to try

the Indonesian food. With help from a woman selling sim cards I got tasty nasi campur (that’s phonetic) – rice with a piece of chicken, some kind of fried grain patty, and a packet of coconut-based gravy with black-eyed peas, tofu (or chicken) skin, and some kind of vegetable to pour over the rice, all wrapped up in brown waxed paper stapled together and unfolded and eaten with ketjap manis and several sambals at an amazingly small counter with some friendly Indonesian women. What a time! Photo above: Our happy little room at the Dragon Photo below: Indonesian cafe. Food is in the paper packets on the counter

Leslie took a nap while I wrote and read (The Winter King, a book about King Arthur).

After she awoke I went on a BBQ pork quest while she went to the buzzing busy Dragon office/common room with a constant in and out of Chinese tourists, Europeans, and assorted people. The quest was for Wing Hub Roasties, which I had tried and failed to find our first time through HK in November. The reason to go to Wing Hub is that they are one of the few places in HK or the world, as far as that goes, that they do Chinese BBQ in the old way, with wood fires. This time, with a better map I was there in about a 15 minute walk. I was a little early to bring food back, so I wandered, including wandering back across Nathan Road and to the flower market, including the ultimate orchid seller, then got turned around – Oh Lost! But the better map served me well and I was soon in the take-away line at Wing Hub, where they had sometimes 2 and sometimes 3 men chopping and slicing non-stop. It was quite a performance and then it was my turn and of course none of the chopping guys spoke a word of English and my pronunciation of char sui was off, but someone came to my rescue and they chopped it up and got me out of there for $30 for a big serving of pork on rice. I went a few doors away where I’d seen someone buying bun and tried to get 3, but the woman would only sell me 2 orders of 3 for

$15 ($2USD). Okay, so I got 3 pork and 3 chicken, which was fine, because I’ve never had chicken. Another good guesthouse picnic.

And that’s a day or so in the exciting life of the easily amused Leslie and Charles in Hong Kong. Photo: Star Ferry. Photo below: On the ferry

Thursday. I slept poorly last night. I had an apple and a granola bar for breakfast and went with Leslie to the Fa Yuen Market for another bowl of soup from Jenny’s. We took our laundry to what turns out to be a Thai operated place, did this and that in our room for awhile, and started out for the Peak: Bus #6A to the Star

Ferry, ferry across the harbor (free for seniors), bus #15 up the winding narrow road (I sat in one of the front seats on the top deck and had a nice time talking with a German couple headed for 10 weeks in New Zealand), and then there we were, again, on Victoria Peak looking out over Hong Kong and the Hong Kong harbor. Of course we went to Pacific Coffee and straight away got a table next to the big window so we were hanging over the steep side of the Peak with the Peak Tram coming up the track almost directly beneath us. A good time, reading the South China Morning Post over an espresso on one of the clearest and certainly the coldest day we’ve ever had in HK.

Bus back down, got off at exactly the right place to walk about 15 minutes to Tsim Chai Kee Noodle where we had what we always have – the world’s greatest shrimp wonton noodle soup, steamed vegetable with oyster sauce, and (for me) Coke. Photo: THE MENU

Total $52HKD or $6.60USD for two people – not bad! We’re going back tomorrow. Walk toward the ferry along elevated walkways, through the IFC Shopping Center, past the big construction site with fewer sidewalk superintendents than usual, because of the weather I guess, and back on the ferry to Tsim Sha Tsui, bus up Nathan Road, pick up the laundry, to the room, and collapse.

For dinner I started walking back to Wing Hub Roasties for duck, but (1) I was pretty tired and (2) I’ve had a lot of rich food in recent weeks, so instead went to the Taipan Bakery and got an egg tart and a coconut tart, which along with an apple and some milk made a decent meal. Leslie had leftover wonton noodle soup, frozen yogurt (kept from the breakfast buffet from the Bangkok hotel), and an apple from the Fa Yuen Market.

And that’s another day in the exciting life of the easily amused Leslie and Charles in Hong Kong. Their motto is, Where’s the Party At!

Friday: Breakfast at Fa Yuen Market again. We eat at one of the first places on the 3^rd floor. The next section is where the bird fanciers meet (men with one or more bamboo bird cages with song birds in them and they hang the cages from whatever while they have tea and talk with their other bird fancier buddies) and the last section has dim sum and whatnot, along with old people, including one man with a poodle that sits quietly while the man hangs out with his friend having dim sum and tea. Photo below: These jewelry/gold stores are on every 2nd or 3rd block along Nathan Road

After breakfast Leslie went back

to the room and I took the bus down Nathan Road first to the Chungking Mansions to buy a couple of little bags and then to a Pacific Coffee to meet Phil, an internet friend, along with his perpetual motion machine son, two year old Henry. Had a really nice time, a nice man, neat kid.

Back to the Dragon and Leslie and I took off for Tsim Chai Kee for more shrimp wonton noodle soup and so on – of course. Last Star Ferry rides to the Island and back, walking around the neighborhood. Making a Ladies Market run and Leslie doing very well with some gifts. She went back to the room and I went to the roasted duck place for some great duck on rice. Leisurely packing. Good night moon. Good night Hong Kong. We had championship neighbors this leg (it can get a little loud at Stanley’s with comings and goings and groups of young Chinese travelers talking in the halls, but not this time around). Photo: Fa Yuen Market

Good night’s sleep, fixed coffee, Fa Yuen for breakfast, said goodbye to Stanley, walked a few blocks to the A21 bus stop and away we went to the airport for $16.50 each (just over $2USD/person). Had a kind of weird encounter with an older American woman who had a couple of bags stacked in the seat beside her. I asked her to move them and she said (combatively), “Where would I put them?” I said,

“In the luggage bins” and reached to give her a hand with them and she says, “You can’t take my suitcase!” “I’m not taking your suitcase – whatever” and went to another less desirable seat. What a jerk. The people she was with, her son and I guess her daughter, were apologizing and I’m saying, nevermind. Across the bridge, over the harbor, and we’re here, Hong Kong International Airport – light years beyond DFW not quite international airport. Sigh.

Thailand: Bangkok and Chiang Mai

2011-01-10T03:53:00.017-06:00

The first time we flew into Thailand, in 1978, we could see pagodas far below rising out of squares of green padi, then a big sprawling city, and thump we were down and the airplane door opened and the thick warm, then hot tropical air filling the cabin with Asia and my mind flashing back and now, ahhh.

Food! Let's talk about food. Thailand and Food – it’s a lifestyle!

Wednesday: “American breakfast” from hotel buffet included in the cost of the room – egg, bacon, toast, preserves, pineapple, watermelon, coffee – not great; lunch: ground pork stir-fried with chilies, red curry (chicken), satay, rice, and (as with every other meal) massive quantities of prik nam pla (fish sauce and little very hot chilies) and assorted other

chili-based condiments; dinner: Indian set, including chicken tika masala, dhal, raita, potatoes with dry peppers, rice, cilantro and other chutneys. Photo: She's fixing mango with sticky rice

Thursday: pad see eu (fried flat noodles with Chinese greens, like chow fun) and coffee; lunch: green curry (chicken), ground pork with chilies, rice, pad thai (fried rice noodle with shrimp, peanuts, tofu, bean sprouts), ice coffee; dinner: grilled chicken, papaya salad (shreds of green papaya pounded with peanuts, green beans, fish sauce, etc.), sticky rice, bad sausage from a street vendor (took one bite, no mas).

Friday: American breakfast (because street vendors near hotel gone); fried bananas, lunch: green curry, chicken with cashews and dry mild chilies, pork satay; dinner: grilled chicken & pork, papaya salad, peanuts, sticky rice.

Saturday: American breakfast (still no nearby street food); lunch: tom yum with shrimp (piquant multi-taste sour soup), red curry, ground pork

with chilies and green beans, rice; dinner: salad bar (ahhh) with romaine, mild peppers, etc. + Chiang Mai sausage (spicy, citrusy, cilantro grilled sausage) naan. Photo: bowl of red curry, satay, prik nam pla, ground pork with chilies

Sunday (travel day to Chiang Mai): Getting tired of the so-called American breakfast; lunch: “tripnic” (sandwiches); checked in to hotel and headed for Sunday street market and dinner of mango with sticky rice with coconut milk, chicken and pork satay, more mango and sticky rice, a little bit more mango and sticky rice, a little bit more …, crispy, tasty French fries(?).

Monday: Vegetarian hotel buffet – cereal with banana, pancake, vegetables, potato fritter, coffee; lunch: khao sawy (a Shan noodle curry soup with chicken, crispy things, pickled cabbage, shredded cabbage, shallots, basil, cilantro, and so on), pad Thai, iced coffee; dinner: chicken panaeng curry (“dry” fried curry)

with citrus leaves, peanuts, and rice, a little bit more mango, sticky rice, and coconut milk (did I mention that it’s sweet coconut milk?), salad. Photo: Khao soi stand (or in this case khow soy)

Tuesday: More vegetarian buffet – cheese toast, vegetables, cereal with banana; lunch: chicken with ginger on rice, pad see eu, a little bit more mango, sticky rice and coconut milk; dinner: khao sawy (it’s spelled several ways) again – even better this time, papaya salad with little dry shrimps, salad, roti with banana and sweetened condensed milk from the Muslim man and woman selling from a sidewalk stand outside a Buddhist temple.

Wednesday: Vegetarian buffet with good mushroom soup, yogurt, corn flakes with banana,

coffee; lunch: chicken panaeng, rice, pork satay served the old-fashioned way with peanut sauce and cucumbers and onion, khao sawi, a little bit more mango with sticky rice and coconut milk, ice coffee. To me, the best meal so far. We ate at the huge food court in the basement of the Airport Central Mall, a quintessential Thai place with endless stands selling everything imaginable and few foreigners, except one expat type who told me that the panaeng I was ordering is the best in Chiang Mai. Photo above: Papaya salad and khao soi

Check this out: the panaeng with rice was 30 baht, as was the satay, and also the mango with sticky rice; the khao soi was 25 baht and was the best so far, so we’re talking the supreme Thai feast for <$4 for 2 people!!! And, I hadn’t wanted to go on this expedition – I was just going along to get along (like when Leslie goes to REI); and for dinner, sitting tired in our room a little bit more mango, etc. and how about some banana roti, and salad for the virtuous among us. Photo above: Panaeng and satay; Photo below: curry and so much more

And so it went, meal after meal …

Walking through the small streets of moat-surrounded old Chiang Mai City, thinking that somewhere around where we are today we

were in 1978 only funkier then and remembering sitting in an open-air café (rice with two curries for 20 baht and served with lime-infused prik nam pla) with a mouse running along a wall and outside a dog vomiting on the sidewalk and everywhere around here then and now temples and pagodas with dogs and cats hanging around the grounds tolerated and ignored and back then they were a scabrous, mangy lot with heavy parasite loads and now much healthier and better fed or at least not so skinny and in my life I’ve seen a temple or two – from the tiny one somewhere near the DMZ that Jeff and I went into

during a lull in the fighting during Operation Deckhouse to the Cao Dai extravaganza in Danang to all the ones with Leslie, from the breathtaking Shwedagon to the Old Moulmein Pagoda where I sat exactly where Kipling's beautiful Burma girl, Supiyawlat sat,“lookin’ lazy at the sea” to the crumbling chedis rising endlessly across the deserted plains of Pagan (now called Bagan) to Mahamuni in Mandalay and then the hills of Sagaing with so many white and gold payas to Swayambhunath with its mysterious eyes looking across the Kathmandu Valley and the prayer wheels spinning and prayer flags fluttering and the pilgrims and hippies and monks to the jumbled ruins of Angkor

and behind the temples we’re slow-walking through the heat with traditional trance music drifting though the forest and ruins to Wat Tuol Tom Pong with all the poor young men living in the open dorms beneath the bot (central sanctuary) and whether the temples and wats are fully active or not, always the monks with shaved heads and orange or gold or brown or dark red and occasionally grey robes and sometimes umbrellas and sometimes alms bowls which are a far cry from “begging bowls” since giving alms is merit for the giver, not the monk and sometimes there are nuns, wearing white or pink robes and really, many of these child monks

are orphans or from families too poor to feed them and now through these lanes in Chiang Mai as one after another white and gold stupas rise elegant in shaded quiet temple grounds (one, Wat Chiang Man, had a little store selling water and snacks and robes etc. for monks, including the shoulder bags and when I asked the woman running the store how much a bag costs, she smiled in a friendly way and said, “No” and I thought, cool) and here we are again and yes, we’ve seen some wats, some temples, some chedis, some pagodas and I’m hoping to see a few more.

One of the pleasures in traveling is reading – for me, nothing deep, just good old page-turners. So far I’ve read Gai-Jin, another great Clavell travel read; most of Kerouac’s Big Sur (I quit after reading about 90%, not enjoying the dissolution of a formerly great writer); The Quiet American by Graham Greene, which, although written in the early 1950s, captured the Vietnam War as about as well as any other book; WatershipDown – oh what a great book; Rats, a good book about, what else, rats; Pale Horse Coming, an uber violent book

We went to the amulet market in Bangkok via the #25 bus.

Fortunately, the wrong (blue) #25 bus passed us by because the driver let some people off before the bus stop and then wouldn’t stop for us. A woman who saw what happened engaged Leslie in conversation, learned where we were going and told Leslie that she was going the same way to pray at a temple a stop or two before where we wanted to go. So we followed her to the right (red, or as she said, “led”) #25 bus, which took us to within a few blocks of the amulet market near a water taxi pier. Had she not helped us it would have been a very long day. Photo: Outside the amulet market

Randomness:

Plenty of wild and ca-razy guys around, wearing shorts, Chang and other beer-logo t-shirts and escorting their young prostitutes here and there, filling the other 23 hours with shopping ...

Amazingly pushy French guys at Bangkok airport (Leslie muttering, well, I won’t say what she was muttering). Photo: The extra nice bus stop near our hotel

People who’ve helped us: the woman on her way to pray and got us on the right #25; the Indian man who gave us a lot of information on riding the bus; a man who asked us where we were going as we walked down a tiny lane near the amulet market, and then redirected us; three women at a food court – one who got up from her seat to tell me where to find utensils, another who helped Leslie order, and

another who sent a friend around and out of the way to show me where to order khao soi; the school teacher who tried to explain that Skytrain stops are on the back of the card and then when Leslie (independently) figured that out I asked the man if that was what he was telling me and he said yes; and many more people helping and sweet - about 4-5 people helping and nice for every one lying and so on. Photo: On the bus - the one with a teak floor

Sports TV from Japan: Women wrestlers and a totally stolid audience (the kind of Japanese people spending an evening at the rasslin' match; then a few minutes of scantily clad babes playing a sort of football. Uh-huh.

And now I’m just about out of steam. Fever and feeling bad for a night and a day and a night. Up and at them again today for one more amulet market and gold store run. Headed to Hong Kong tomorrow. Photo: The old people's band, playing at the walking market in Chiang Mai

Finally, two nights ago I dreamed the essence of Leslie. What an amazing beautiful experience that was! Her Mom was there, too, and that was nice.

Cambodia - Phnom Penh and Battambang

2010-12-31T02:57:00.022-06:00

The bus Saigon to Phnom Penh gave us a nice ride – enough leg room, stops every two hours (but toilet on the bus just in case you wanted to use the smallest toilet in the history of the world), great scenery, working aircon, part of the time four seats between the three of us, good “tripnic,” easy driver going smooth and slow, easy border crossing – all good.

We got a tuk-tuk to Samnang’s house near the Psar Tuol Tom Pong (Russian Market) and then we were on the small street that used to be dirt, used to be full of flies, used to carry the stench of blood and raw meat from the “wet” market two blocks from the house, but now is paved and now has no wet market. Samnang came out to greet us – a great relief as he’s been unwell for several years; then Sokhom, also a relief as she’s had some serious health issues in the past year. Back up the steep stairs (mother cat and four kittens ensconced on the landing at the second floor) to the third floor room where we’d stayed before, back to our little place in Phnom Penh, a city that 30 years ago was a ghost town, empty of all but a few returning people stumbling into the ruins of a deserted city, and now full of people, full and for me, because I wasn’t there (just a shore where some found refuge) it’s like it all never happened. Streets full, shops busy, people, tuk-tuks, motos, cars, trucks, fewer beggars than five, even two years ago, fewer children grubbing in the garbage, Phnom Penh.

David gave me this gift: Downpour

We settled into the pattern from several years ago – breakfast (like the other meals, prepared by Juedi, a cook among cooks), then walk to the Russian Market or go somewhere else like the Okay Guesthouse for a bus ticket to Battambang or the National Museum, then lunch, another walk with my wife like the Energizer Bunny go go go, dinner with Chanmony (Mony), Sophea, Leslie, David, Juedi, Samnang, playing games with the mangosteens – good times. Photo above: On a tuk-tuk

The third day I took a bus to Battambang to visit Lance and Chharvy – another hypnotic bus ride. All SE Asian buses have a video monitor playing too loud music, movies, etc. At first it was pretty good Khmer music, but later, not so good, and another world unfolding … a policeman standing in the street reading a newspaper as he sort of directs traffic … bumpy road, stopping to pick up more passengers, the bus filling

with passengers, stopping to get air in the tires … and as we get to the outskirts of town, more and more traditional wood homes and women wearing sarongs and karma … a few horrific but small slums of thatched and cardboard walled houses standing in layers of garbage and unimaginably filthy water … the driver’s assistant passing out little black plastic bags for people who might be feeling queasy from the rocking/rolling ride … stopping along the way in villages and small towns to pick up more passengers and the people getting on now are country folk, smelling of hard

work (sweet summer sweat), smoke, fish and I’m inhaling it like it’s life itself and iPod perfect: and it stones me to my soul … fields dotted with palms stretching away across space and time. Photo: Inside the Russian Market

Is this the people’s bus? Did we just stop at the bus stop where the women walked to a nearby fence-line among the bushes and the men walked to a further place, all of us urinating on the ground – except a couple of men (the cads) using the closer area and on the way back from the further place I pass the actual toilets (latrines) and no doubt, the bushes were better. It's 9:50am. Photo: Bus stop food

It’s harvest time, people working in the fields, unhusked rice spread out on plastic squares in front of homes. We pass a wreck – a truck with the front end badly smashed and then another truck with a man slumped over the steering wheel. Off in the distance a low mountain with pagoda spires white and gold. Photo: Drying the rice

Almost all the houses I see now are made of unpainted, weathered wood, galvanized roofs, a few tile roofs, some houses of thatched walls and roof, some with bougainvillea in amazing cascades of magenta, pink, red, all the yards are dirt, water buffalo, banana trees, kilns, ducks, huge water jugs, TV antennas, bus horn blatting, creamy yellow stucco schools built in a U with shaded courtyard/playground, stores open to the highway (really a two lane tarmac) between the two

largest cities in Cambodia, gas for sale in recycled liter bottles anywhere from 5-12 bottles at any one stand, trucks and wagons (some ox-drawn) loaded with great bags of rice. Photo: The girls who take care of the latrine

At the next stop the little girl latrine attendant asks me for my ballpoint pen. I give her a princely (or princessly) 500 Riel note (about 12.5 cents) and she thanks me, a silent and deliberate somphea.

Hammocks slung under houses, spirit houses, ponds with water lilies, lotus, the video is the awfulest variety show, the 4 year-old Chinese girl up and across from me staring at the heavily made-up woman across from me, cafes in towns, one table open-air pool halls with dirt floors, Kompong Chhnang, Kratie, Pursat, nameless places. Cambodia. Photo: Canal outside of Battambang. Photo below: road outside Battambang

Yesterday I saw a Rolls Royce parked in Phnom Penh and on the dashboard two gold-encrusted general’s hats and I thought, who wouldn’t like to fight a war against an army with generals who ride around in Rolls and live in palaces.

Battambang was good. Like everywhere else we’ve seen, more prosperous than before. We were hanging out in Chharvy’s internet café and Lance was playing his guitar and I couldn’t place the tune – just that it was very hip, then, of course, Visions of Johanna. Some of his expat friends came for dinner sitting at a table on the sidewalk in front of the cafe,

smoking Cambodian cigarettes, telling stories of fevers, parasites, and the like, and one man, thin with frequent cough talking of the older days, 25 years ago, Aeroflot flights, DC-3s and dirt runways, all of which I dug hearing as I’m ever more appreciative of reminiscing, even when not my own. Photo below: Wat Ek Phnom, Lance, beggar

In the morning I had curry and bread from the White Rose – ahh. Then we took a tuk-tuk along a winding riverside countryside road to Wat Ek Phnom, a collapsing 11th Century ruin with a drooling, mentally retarded boy scampering on hands and withered legs along with us.

On the way back to town we stopped at a Pepsi bottling plant, deserted since the war, a little eerie … riding on through 100s of school children, shady road, old houses, and back into Battambang where I waited along with a Japanese backpacker, a monk, and a glue-sniffing street kid for the bus back to Phnom Penh. Same bus same deal coming and going and back to the house after 6. Photo above: Woman in Phnom Penh

The great meals, the walks continued, along with good conversations with David and Samnang. One night we had my internet friend Henning and his girlfriend Ment over for dinner.

We thought the plan was to have pretty much what was on the café menu – not hardly. We had rice, chicken with cashews and mild dry chilis, luc lac, raw beef salad, amok (fish curry), red curry (chicken) with baguettes, Tiger beer, green(!) Fanta – what a feast! Henning and Leslie got on very well and a good time was had by all. Photo: Samnang and David

Tuesday morning after breakfast David took off for Cali – it was an emotional goodbye for Samnang and Sokhom, knowing as they did that it might be a last goodbye. After lunch with Than and Juedi, Leslie and I left for Bangkok – a difficult parting, for the same reasons as the morning.

Saigon: Porkstock 2010

2010-12-24T08:07:00.010-06:00

How perfect is this. After negotiating a decent taxi fare (140,000VND or ~$7USD) to the area where we planned on staying, the taxi driver loaded our bags into the trunk and then closed the trunk on his keys so they were trapped at the top of the lid. Bags in trunk, keys in trunk, our destinies entwined; and after much ado, the keys released. Photo: Truly, the Breakfast of Champions

We did what we’ve done every other time in Saigon – leave Leslie (and this time, David) in a café with our bags and I struck out to find a place to stay. I went to several places, including two (Kim Hotel and Saigon Comfort) where we’ve stayed before, and came back to the café to discuss what I’d found. I hadn’t taken off my heavy daypack and by the time I got back to the café my back was soaked. Leslie went across the street to look at the Kim and told Mrs. Kim, yes to a 4th floor $23 triple with a balcony over the alley/lane. Photo: The pork chop lady with a friend reading my note to the lady, thanking her for great breakfasts in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010.

Trip Advisor Review: We stayed at the Kim Hotel in 2007 and it was a good value. We’re here again in 2010 and it has become a great value. The hotel has been renovated, but remains a family-run and family-oriented place. All the people we’ve seen staying here are couples and families – no prostitutes and no rowdy gap year groups of guys. The rooms are decent size (ours holding a queen-size bed and single added bed comfortably) with good aircon, wall-mounted fan, and small balcony. Wifi is good and there are also 2 computers downstairs for guest use.

Staff are friendly and helpful, Mrs. Kim remains pleasant and helpful, and the bill was accurate.

The location is on a (relatively) quiet “backpacker alley” which is clearly seeing a lot of upgrading so that soon this will be pretty much a flashpacker and mid-priced alley. It’s a 1-2 block walk to the grittier environs of De Tham and Bui Vien main, and a 6 block walk to Ben Thanh Market. Altogether the Kim Hotel a good place and a good deal.

Our first morning David and I went to breakfast at the place where we'd eaten before. A great breakfast – rice with pork chop, egg, and some vegetables. To me this is the best pork ever. Oh, and a powerful café sua da and then another. Truly, The Breakfast of Champions. Leslie had planned on eating at another place, but our report was so glowing that she wanted to go see the pork chop lady. I believe I’ll have another café sua da. Back to the room to rest and then to Ben Thanh Market with David to walk around and then, no surprise here, bun thit nuong and banh cuon. David bought some Christmas presents and then back to hotel to rest and then to the streets. Dinner in a café on the alley and around the corner to De Tham Street for shakes (one mango, one pineapple). Photo: Bags of shrimp in various sizes and grades

“Goodnight Dad.” How sweet to hear those words. We met David at the Hanoi airport and since then we’ve been together, again, in Asia, from Hanoi to Hue to Saigon and on to Phnom Penh. Together, comfortable in the sorts of budget places we like, eating on the street, in backpacker cafés, walking, walking through the teeming streets. “Goodnight Dad” – grateful that I learned from Leslie how to be a good parent, that I wanted to know, that I worked to reverse my

karma that would have been my son’s karma and now isn’t. “Goodnight Dad.”

The next day the porkathon continued with the same breakfast, later back to Ben Thanh for shrimp on sugar cane and pork satay. Leslie bought some pepper and got so mixed up on grams and dong that she asked me, “What should I do?” We went back to the hotel to pick David up and to Bui Vien Street for pho from the Pho Bo café that’s been around for awhile. This is pho definitely made with ox tail stock – the real deal. The days blurring now, with the one constant being the pork chop lady. Photo above: Food court at Ben Thanh Market

On our last morning we got coffee from the place next door to the Kim, six egg sandwiches on

French loaves (3 for breakfast and 3 for Leslie’s obsession, the “tripnic”) on French loaves from a street vendor on the corner, and away we go on the bus Saigon to Phnom Penh.

Beautiful Hue

2010-12-18T07:00:00.025-06:00

Photo below: Vietnam coming right at you

As we travel I’m dreaming more than I have in several years. For example, there was a man named Paul who I’d known in the past and who was now dead. I met his daughter and then his son-in-law at a used bookstore and they were talking about him and how he’d cared about me a great deal, but I couldn’t place him. The son-in-law climbed up a display and got down a book by Paul. It was a large “art book” and when I turned it sideways I could see Paul's image on the book and then I knew who he was.

I remembered him well and with affection. He had been a good man; a good man and a tragic man like Larry of Larry and Nina. I opened the book and realized it was about seeing – as in seeing/experiencing the essence of things. I bought the book for $25 though it was too big to be carrying in Vietnam. I could tell his daughter and her husband really loved him.

Yesterday we ran into Danny and Marloes (the people from Amsterdam we’d met at Halong Bay) in a market alley off Ta Hien/Dihn Liet Street, where people would ride up on their motorcycles to shop for underwear and what have you. We went to the bun cha place on Hang Manh Street where we feasted on bun cha and nem – what else - and then walked to the Intimex Store. While David, Leslie, Marloes, and Danny were shopping I had an espresso in the nearby coffee shop. Then the Dutch contingent was off to take the long bus ride

Hanoi to Vientiane to Luang Prabang and we walked back to the hotel. Photo: David and Leslie near Hue

Our last night in Hanoi David and I again ate at the King Café, where Leslie and I ate several times in 2007. I think we had chicken with chilis, pork with garlic, rice, and beer.

Here is what I wrote on Trip Advisor about the Camellia 4 in Hanoi (written in Hue):

We stayed at the Camellia 4 Dec 4-13 2010. We first stayed 2 nights at another hotel (Sunshine 2), but Camellia 4 was a better deal (larger room,

quieter area, better breakfast buffet, more helpful staff). The room was $25USD (including tax) for a double and went up to $30 when another person arrived and we changed to a triple. Photo: Roadside cafe, the whole thing carried by one woman

The area was good in that there was tourist infrastructure, but most of the businesses were Vietnamese-oriented. It was quieter than (for example) Ma May Street, but really there are few or no quiet areas in Hanoi.

When we went to Halong Bay a mistake

was made with the room we were supposed to get on our return. The night manager was creative and effective in figuring out a solution to solve the problem - very impressive. All the staff were helpful and in pleasant - especially the two women working the desk, and also housekeeping and food service. Photo: The woman in the white shirt patted Leslie as we passed

None of the staff pressured us re booking tours or onward tickets. In fact, the quieter of the two agents explained costs that a better-known travel agency (Hotels-in-Vietnam) intentionally glossed over. Basically the Camellia 4 agent gave us full disclosure and a good trip. He also responded appropriately to a problem with part of the tour.

We flew Hanoi to Hue. The airport for Hue is at Phu Bai, about 10 miles from the city. Phu Bai, where many years ago the Marine Corps had an air base. One night Jeff and I were in a tent, drinking, and a Sergeant told us to quit. He and Jeff came to blows almost instantly and Jeff not only beat him down, but the Sergeant also stepped on a lighted heat tab, which stuck to his foot and gave him a bad burn. The outcome was that Jeff was sent to Khe Sanh. Phu Bai, where I ran to jump on a plane that was taking off for Khe Sanh,

and once on discovered that it was full of 55 gallon drums of aviation fuel, a doubly bad thing as all planes flying into Khe Sanh were fired on by AA machine guns. Phu Bai, where I went for a plague shot when I was supposedly exposed to plague and of course I wasn’t current on my plague shots. Photo: Thieu Tri tomb

On the road into Hue through light traffic we passed the usual series of small shops, many small temples with the elaborate roofs of Vietnam, markets – Vietnam. Our hotel was the Binh Duong III, a nice place in a backpacker alley too narrow for anything other than motorcycles, bikes, carts, and people walking; and 10 steps across the alley is Cafe on Thu Wheels,

a classic backpacker café. The Binh Duong III is a flashpacker hotel – clean, quiet, hot water, aircon – a solid $20 triple room hotel. Photo: Thieu Tri tomb

Our first full day in Hue, Leslie and I walked across the Perfume River bridge to visit a grocery store where we’d been before, while David stayed at the hotel finishing a paper for school. It was a good walk, though hot, and coming back, a sweetness when a woman walking past us carrying one of the sticks with a heavy basket hanging from each end reached out unbidden and patted Leslie’s hand. It was this same bridge that a few years before a girl riding past me on a bike reached out and slapped me softly/firmly on the chest – the wide Suong Huong (river) flowing below.

We ate this day, as every other day, at Thu’s – so much good food:

banana pancakes with honey of course, omelets, baguettes, pork many different ways, luc lac, pho, nem, morning glory, curry, shakes, café sua da, so on and so forth – all fixed in the closet of a kitchen by the same ancient woman as before, now even more stooped. Photo: A break in the rain at Thieu Tri tomb

The next day it was raining and cold, so we hired a car to visit several of the many tombs around Hue. The tombs are very small tombs surrounded by elaborate buildings, platforms, fences, and gates. The ride into the countryside was wonderful – rainy, green, narrow road, Vietnam. We first went to the Thieu Tri tomb, which isn’t listed in some guidebooks.

It was a little run-down and completely deserted. Perfect. Photo: David at Minh Mang tomb

The rain was really coming down and we slogged through mud puddles and made our way carefully across very slippery paving stone platforms, up stone steps, across more slippery platforms through amazing gates, to mossy buildings with dragon-cornered roofs and across more platforms and run-down mossy fences inlaid with latticed tiles overlooking lakes and beyond them more platforms and buildings and fences. Finally back to the car we were wet and happy.

The second tomb was Minh Mang’s, which was larger, more elaborate, better maintained, and with a few tourists around. It was still raining and cold (for lowland Vietnam), but we went through most of the area and came out pretty wet. We spent a total of about 2.5 hours at the two tombs + time getting there. We had clarified with the woman who arranged the tour that we would go for about 4 hours. The driver, however, wanted to bring it to a stop since we’d gone to the places on the agenda. We talked on the phone with the main driver,

who said that the woman didn’t say what I said she said, and then said, “I want you to help me” (by overpaying), but didn’t want to take a lesser fee for less time. They ended up agreeing to take us to a shopping center … to dry off and warm up and visit to the Big C food court for decent banh, bun bo Hue, French fries, pad Thai, pineapple shake, and bubble tea. Photo: At Minh Mang tomb

The next day we went to the Citadel, the former imperial city – a huge complex of old gates, halls, platforms, and so on. I was there in 1967 when it was utterly deserted. Then in 1968, the VC captured Hue from the

ARVN and executed at least 2,000 people. Marines then took the city back and in the process damaged some of the imperial city, where the VC where holed up. All the damage seems repaired now and of course

there is no acknowledgement of the massacres in any guidebooks. It was another rainy grey day. Leslie pushed us onward and we covered the whole complex. Whew. Photo: Bun bo Hue and some kind of banh

After this trek, Leslie was ready to walk to Big C to get some this and that. Have mercy! Away we went (David staying back at the hotel) for another trek, rewarded by seeing a woman apparently on her firsts escalator ride clinging to the rail with both hands, close to panic. Then Leslie had an encounter with an older woman (one of the few betel chewers we saw) who couldn’t turn off the water in the toilet -

and neither could Leslie, so of course some young women also in the toilet had great fun helping the old people. Apparently Big C is a destination for country folk, because several groups of young people approached us with, “Hello!” and then cracked up laughing. My response of, “Hello, what’s your name?” sent everyone into confusion and laughter. All in all a good time was had by all.

Tomorrow, Saigon.

Halong Bay, The Ship of (some) Fools

2010-12-12T07:23:00.010-06:00

The journey began in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, a maze of narrow streets, French colonial buildings, cafes, street vendors of everything imaginable, shops selling aromatic herbs, old people sitting in doorways, motorcycles, bikes, and wandering foreigners seeking whatever it is they seek walking incessantly along the streets. The blue bus picked them up one by one, two by two, three by three. There was the besotted banker from Hong Kong, barely able to walk,

sleeping or passed out for the entire bus trip. There was the simple-minded American “English teacher” from Saigon and his “student” who was accompanying him on this journey. There were two Portuguese couples, each with a Chinese daughter and each in Hanoi to bring home the Vietnamese babies they had just adopted. There was the serious Belgian Air Force officer making his way through Southeast Asia; the American family on their journey through Asia; the kick-boxer and her boyfriend from Amsterdam. And there was the Eurasian (she said, not me) woman from Hungary who had had too many cosmetic surgeries and injections and was too fond of drama.

From a harbor with a faint smell of urine (or strong, depending on where you stood),

they set sail on the Angelina, this ship of fools, sailing into the mist. La-la-la-la-la.

I walked up to the salon, where the Eurasian woman, Christina was sitting with our tour guide, Lucky. “I want to ask you,” she said, “Do you have medicine for me? I have, what do you call it, the sickness of the ocean. I want to womit.”

“No, I don’t have any medicine like that.”

“They have no medicine for the womit! No penicillin, no paracetamol. They have a bad business. They boolsheet.” She sits, rigid, staring into space.

What could I say? “Yeah, well, uh.”

Other people began filtering into the sal0n, each one queried similarly, until the man from Amsterdam said, yes, he had some of the medicine she wanted. She took 1 pill (of ginger, it turns out) and was miraculously healed in less than a minute – and stayed sickness of the ocean-free for the rest of the voyage. Meanwhile, the gala welcome meal began, with the waiter taking drink orders.

“I thought non-alcohol drinks are included.”

“Drinks not included."

Course by course, plate by plate the food arrived. There was cucumber and tomato salad, seafood soup thickened with a lot of cornstarch, weird little cutlets, tofu with fish flavoring, a whole fish – enough for each person to have 2, maybe 3 bites since the English teacher didn’t eat fish. “I take many medicines and they don’t agree with fish.” As we talk about places we’ve been we discover that he’s taught English in Vietnam for 11 years – 3 months on, 3 months off and has never been to Hanoi or Cambodia. “Do

they eat a lot of rice in Cambodia?” he asks. I can see we’re going to have some heavy philosophical discussions.

Christina continues to complain, the Vietnamese student is basically mute except to ask for chili sauce (via the “teacher”), my wife is starting to snarl at Christina, and the Belgian man is monosyllabic – leaving me, the least social person on the bleeding boat bravely trying to carry this shipboard conversation. “Where have you been? Oh, where are you going?” And so on.

By now we’re into Halong Bay, where several thousand

limestone islands rise up, often vertically out of the green waters of the gulf of Tonkin. I’ll let Lonely Planet describe it: “Magnificent Halong Bay … is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of Vietnam’s natural wonders. The islands are dotted with innumerable grottoes created by the wind and waves … Ha long means ‘where the dragon descends into the sea.’” It is breathtaking, unfolding near and far slowly as the boat glides through the water.

After the meal we rest in our cabin to talk about the other passengers. It may just be a two day cruise, but we’re quickly into the spirit of cruises.

“Why don’t you try to be nice to Christina?” I say. “Oh please,” my wife answers. “Why should I?” “I don’t know. Because it’s nice?” She shakes her head, saying in essence, because she’s a “boolsheet” person. “Well, it won’t hurt.” She just shakes her head. Our son leaves on an excursion with most of the other passengers to climb 142 steps to a cave and go kayaking and swimming.

Then it’s time for dinner! More sparkling repartee! Christina is sitting where I sat at lunch, at the head of the table and seeing my wife’s Belgian-like one word responses to Christina, I switch places with her. Good move, CK – weird on my left, wife on my right, and the Belgian man having almost nothing to say across from

me and then the English “teacher” ... I was thinking about Mick Jagger singing, “If I could stick a knife in my heart, Suicide right on stage.” Another cucumber and tomato salad, fried fish, fried potatoes, rice, vegetables, and the piece-de-resistance, another whole fish – another 2 or 3 bites for each person. Really, pretty good. After dinner I go back to our cabin to read.

“Be sure you leave the key in the door” my wife said, so, after reading awhile I put the key in the outside lock Homer Simpson style and hang around outside to see her reaction. She was slow to come back, so missed my joke. While I was gone the Belgian man had opened up and turned out to be an interesting companion, which was good because from the start he seemed like a good guy. Our son had gone up to the top deck, so I joined him up there for awhile, talking

quietly in the foggy night – another memorable time. Photo: The freshwater lake in the middle of an island

In the morning my wife stayed with the Portuguese people to play with the babies (in her natural habitat) while my son and I went off to visit another cave. As caves go it was okay, but past the cave we hiked up a trail to an overlook above a freshwater lake in the middle of the island and surrounded by steep mountains like in an Edgar rice Burroughs book where pterodactyls might swoop down and fearsome creatures rise up out of the water and somewhere along the way the Belgian man told Christina to quit complaining, so she starts talking to me about what a rude

person he is, “I tell him he boolsheet!” and I’m like, “Uh, what can I say?” And she’s quivering with indignation, sitting at the back of the little boat (but at least she didn’t womit on the ride back

to the boat) keeping on with the breast (or should I say, falsie – why she didn’t have them babies embiggened I can’t say) adjustments.

Back from the excursion we all gather in the salon, my wife and I sitting at a different table, soon joined by you-know-who, complaining and me with my stock answer, “Uh, I don’t know, what can I say.” And finally she moves to the end of the table, thus ending another stellar interaction.

We cruise through the bay, across open water, and

into the harbor for (another gala) meal, this time at a restaurant with a vague smell of urine about and several big, wide bottles as in 2-3 feet high full of pickled cobras and assorted snakes with the tops of the bottles covered in something like Saran Wrap (I’m not kidding), this time with the kick-boxer and her boyfriend, both of them fun and nice, the vastly more conversational Belgian, and “Do they eat a lot of rice in Cambodia.”

Ah, the bus ride back to Hanoi. It starts with a new “tour guide” telling my wife and me that we need to move to the back of the bus because “Two people get

car-sick. Cannot sit in back.” My wife, diplomat that she is, says, “No.” The tour guide says “Seats in back good,” and my wife says, “No.” Guess who wanted to displace the two older people? Yep – Christina and her new buddy, the banker. So we didn’t move and the “guide” figured out how the two darlings could sit in front, Christina directly in front of me, ever ready to start it up again.

We stopped at the typical SE Asia bus way station for people to use the toilet, buy drinks, snacks, and of course there were any number of sorry-ass souvenirs. Back on the bus, Christina gets out some “pearls” and “jade” she’d bought and a cigarette lighter, holding her new treasures over the flame to test their authenticity and

when she wasn’t doing that she was fiddling with her hair and adjusting those remarkably movable breasts.

It was raining and traffic started stacking up and the bus driver tried a muddy side road, which didn’t work so there we were, backing up and around as people honked and motorcycles flowed around us in a never-ending stream. Back on the main highway, designed for two-lanes, but now create-a-lane 3 and 4 lanes wide we were part of an endless maneuvering for advantage, sometimes coming to enough of a stop that people were getting out

of buses and cars and milling around the highway and Leslie talking with the Dutch couple and me with some young men from Ireland and I was so happy that I’d dehydrated myself and didn’t have to use my pee bottle and in the back the Portuguese families singing and playing games with their children (these were some truly outstanding parents) and then, from behind the Dutch couple and behind our son sitting behind them next to the Belgian man, we hear the English teacher and his student, “la-la-la-la-la” as they work on singing happy birthday in Vietnamese and our son, the Belgian man, and the Dutch couple cracking up.

And, in a perfect ending to the trip, the bus driver and his accomplice, the “tour guide” started letting people off in more or less random places, saying things like, “One way street, cannot go. Hotel very close.” My wife said, no surprise if you’ve paid any attention at all, “No.” the guide says, “Street too narrow. You can walk in 5 minutes.” “No.” So we ended up back at our hotel, several hours late. La-la-la-la-la.

Hanoi 2, days of magic

2010-12-09T01:46:00.011-06:00

We met David at the Hanoi airport this morning. Waiting for him was grand – people waiting for relatives, holding bouquets, greetings with smiles and tears, hugs, happiness. I’m thinking some people together after a long time apart. Being here at the airport as well as on the streets it’s like when I’ve been in Vietnam in recent years, thinking about what a shame about the war with these people – I mean, look at them! It’s not that I think we were necessarily wrong to fight the war (remembering the exodus and pain of millions of SE Asian refugees), but more that we were caught up in a matrix of karma related to colonialism, international communism, South VN’s struggle for independence, and

other factors. Whatever the issues and complexities, it’s sad to me that we were fighting these people (as if all war isn’t sad). So there I was at the Hanoi airport, waiting for my son seeing the smiles and flowers and tears and of course tears in my eyes. Vietnam! Photo: Proud relatives of one of the new PhDs (see below). This post begins and ends with beauty.

Walking around Hanoi we pass many women’s clothing stores selling some pretty bad looking clothes, but we hardly ever see a woman who doesn’t look good, showing that the woman makes the clothes rather than the clothes making the woman. The fact is, the huge majority of Vietnamese women are very very spiff, and a pretty large percentage are very good-looking.

We passed the French-fry alley today, right past

the bun cha place on Ha Tien (according to noodlepie, one of the best). The bun cha place is closed for the day and what was a place to eat is now a living room and what was an alley earlier in the day is now a hang-out for high school or college students eating fried potatoes and fried something else – just like the last time we were here. Just like the last time it’s the wonder of the streets that calls us. Photo: As I've told you so many times, do not eat vegetables and fruits that haven't just been peeled (leave 'em for me). This is bun cha, a great dish and good for you.

So, happily we’re together with David (who is tired after a stout flight SFO to Taipei to Hanoi), going to Halong Bay day after tomorrow, then flying to Hue a few days later. Trains in VN are pretty grand, but we’re getting a little old for a squat toilet on a train rocking along down the tracks.

At the moment DK and I are headed for a walk around the block and to the satay lady across the street. Well, that didn’t work out too well. Photo: The satay lady. You can dine in or take it to go.

When we first saw her she had plenty of satay left, but by the time we got around the block she only had 3 sticks and 5 pig feet left. So we got the satay on a bun for Leslie and left the pig feet for someone else. 15 minutes later the lady had packed up and left. We took the sandwich to Leslie and went back to the King Café and had pork with onion and extra garlic + rice. Can you get extra garlic in Vietnam? If you took the garlic, nuoc mam, and sugar out of Vietnamese food, the whole place would just collapse.

Listening to Jerry Garcia singing these Visions of Johanna ...

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet? We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it … Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues, You can tell by the way she smiles … 10,000 or more Mona Lisas sitting straight and fine riding motorcycles through this city and if you could see the woman sitting on her tiny stool defining elegance as she fries the nem at the bun cha place on Hang Manh Street you’d know what I mean or if you’ve been to Vietnam with eyes wide open, you know what I mean. Photo above: On the street

Thursday

At breakfast I talked with two (South) Vietnamese men from, wait for this, Mississippi on their first visit to Hanoi. There was also a table with some French women on their way to Saigon to work with an NGO. We’re Americans, one of us Khmer-American. And of course the people working at the hotel are Vietnamese from the north. We were like a microcosm of the past 50 years of VN and SE Asia history,

representing a lot of shed blood – by ourselves, our families, our people.

David stayed at the hotel working on a paper while Leslie and I went to the Temple of Literature (where for a 1000 years scholars took exams for higher learning based on Confucian principles) for an hour or so of sheer magic. It was graduation day for one of the universities and there were students all over the place, posing for photographs, laughing, having a grand time, unimaginably beautiful in their ao dais and happiness. They were more than happy to share with us, posing for our photos, sharing the joy. As we

went further into the complex we came upon a group of about 8 people in their 40s and 50s – PhD candidates in the final moments of receiving their degrees. Serious men and women receiving high honors in a country and culture that honors learning, families bursting with pride, an American couple deeply moved by it all. It doesn’t get much better than this either.

Dedicated to mrmookie and the joy and beauty of Vietnam. We're lucky alright.

Hanoi 1

2010-12-07T03:47:00.013-06:00

We flew Dragon Air to Hanoi – a good flight, except for an obnoxious woman sitting next to Leslie doing some serious monkeyfying (playing with her toes) and complaining. We got in a little after 7pm and cleared customs/immigration before 8. Our hotel, Sunshine 2 had a car and driver waiting and were in our okay $22 room around 9. Photo below: Produce sold door-to-door

We’re staying in the “old quarter” area of Hanoi – streets ranging from narrow with room for one car to very narrow with room for motorcycles and bicycles only. The basic road rule of Southeast Asia is in place: bigger always has

precedence, i.e., buses and trucks trump cars, cars trump motorcycles, motorcycles trump bicycles, and everything trumps people. There are countless motorcycles on the road (not to mention parked packing/blocking the sidewalks) and so far we’ve seen only one traffic light. The way people cross the street is to spot some sort of a slight break and start walking, never slowing or hesitating and let the traffic flow around you. Rotten people that we are, we try to walk next to an old person or women and children, in hopes that this will increase our chances of survival.

Friday

Like most other budget hotels, the Sunshine 2

includes breakfast in the price. We had a nice, leisurely meal with strongly strong coffee, baguette, noodles, egg, fruit, but skipping the barely cooked bacon. Then out to the streets to fin

d another place to stay. It was too late to check out of our current place so

we put a deposit on a room at the Camellia 4, which is half a block from where we stayed the first time we were in Hanoi. Then it was a major expedition to change money. We’re so old-fashioned that we still use travelers checks and not many places change these, so we made our way through the maze of streets (the map makes it look straightforward, but it’s not) and part way

around Hoan Kiem Lake to a bank that does change TCs. Had a late lunch of cheese, tomato, and onion sandwiches and fried potatoes at the King Café near the Camellia. Then back to the hotel to rest. Are we getting a little old for this? Probably. We’re pretty tired. But here we are, together again. Photo: Flowers door-to-door

When we left the US, plans were being made for Leslie’s sister Becky to start chemotherapy in early December. We just got word that Becky died a few days before chemo was to start. She was diagnosed just about a month ago, so progression was shockingly fast. What a terrible thing – early 60s, seemingly healthy, big family, a good life. I’ve known her since she was 15, such a beautiful girl. It’s all too sad.

Last year we cancelled our trip to Asia because Leslie’s father was sick. This year we decided to go ahead with our plans as Becky would have gotten only 2 or 3 chemo treatments by the time we returned, so the long haul of cancer –

where we could have truly contributed – would be still to come. Another part of our thinking was that we don’t have many, if any Asia trips left in us. So here we are and there they all are and it’s impossible to return in time for the funeral. After talking with another sister and David, we decided to stay here and continue the trip because, really, what else is there to do?

No good options in this deal.

Walking in a daze around the streets of Hanoi, where people know something about death, with life and death close to the surface, we walk. Unreal.

Tuesday

We moved hotels from the Sunshine 2 to the Camellia 4 – a good move. Our room is twice the size, better breakfast buffet, an

d better (quieter) neighborhood for $25/night. Like other budget hotels in VN, the Camellia is very narrow with about four rooms on each floor. Our room is on the top/7^th floor and has a good view over the rooftops of the Old Quarter. The roof covers a work area above us and we’re treated to random pounding, clattering, and what you might call unrestrained conversations among hotel staff. Photo: Room at Camellia. Photo below: This is an entire portable cafe - they're everywhere.

I met an internet friend at “chicken street” for a good time and good food. Chicken street, a block of nothing but places serving grilled chicken. We had 2 orders of great chicken served with cucumbers and vegetable in sweet vinegar and garlic, grilled bread, and chili sauce + beer over ice and I’m flashing back to the 1960s going to little lane-side stands in country villes and drinking beer over ice (don’t drink the ice

– they put ground up glass in it and you’ll die a horrible death – whatever, man) and one time going on a night ambush with a “civic action” squad somewhere near Danang, but what we really did was set up on some elevated railroad tracks not far from the ville where their position was and hung out on those tracks for hours drinking ba muoi ba (33) beer over ice getting pretty loaded and now in Hanoi, sitting on (what else) a little blue plastic stool next to a faded yellow stucco wall eating grilled chicken and drinking beer

and talking about the magic of Vietnam (and make no mistake about it, this IS a magic place) with an old Asia hand and then a motorcycle ride through the

matrix of motorcycles beeping, bicycles, people, people people, narrow streets, dark streets, light streets, markets, voices, voices voices and believe me when I say it doesn’t get much better than this. Someone else’s blog description of chicken street: http://www.pikeletandpie.com/2010/01/pho-ly-van-phuc-aka-chicken-street-hanoi/

Hong Kong 2

2010-12-04T00:10:00.017-06:00

All I can say about blogger.com is I wish I was using another blogging program. Sentences broken, photos lost, blech. Wednesday: Back to Fa Yuen Market for breakfast. The woman at the café where we’re eating is willing to work with us on varying orders, so Leslie ended up with soup with spaghetti, ham, egg – which was okay, and worth getting, but not twice. It was a

leisurely morning with time spent in the office, talking with an English

man about our age – a regular Asia traveler, on his way to China. Photo: Breakfast place in Fa Yuen Market

We caught a bus down Nathan Road (the main road running north/south bisecting the Kowloon peninsula) to the Star Ferry, ferry across harbor, then bus #15 to the Peak at $4.9HKD/person senior rate. Most tourists take the tram straight up, but we learned awhile back that the bus is slower, more scenic, and way cheaper. Had a long, leisurely double espresso high, high above this great harbor, a super favorite thing for us to do. Bus back along Queen’s Road and getting off at exactly the the best place to walk to (surprise) Tsim Chai Kee Noodles for another bowl of shrimp wonton soup, vegetable, and coke and Leslie making friends with a majorly cute server. Our table-mates were an old woman and her somewhat strange son. Photo: These stores selling aromatic things are all over HK

On the way to the ferry we walked through the IFC Centre, a massive shopping mall and office complex. We saw a crowd around a store and went over to check it out. It was an event, including several glam models and assorted beautiful people.

Back across the harbor I left Leslie and took na bus to the Chungking Mansions to change money and walk around among the Chinese, Middle-Easterners, and Africans. There were fewer angry looking men with beards and whatnot than in previous years. I saw the Everly Bros – one of them with his dentures out – in their little store. Meanwhile, Leslie was sitting on the couch in the Dragon office with a German woman with a roach tattooed on her ankle shouting into her computer/skype on the one side and a Brit doing the same thing on her other side, and then a crowd of Chinese people came in talking loud (no surprise there!) with an old man with them wearing a spor

t coat, cable-knit sweater, slacks of dubious cleanliness, white socks, and felt shoes and lighting up what Leslie called “a big cigarette.” Photo: Dragon office/commons area

I’m not sure about Leslie, but I’m already prett

y much outside of time by now. Later she confirms the same. Random notes: Our first room was $240HKD ($31USD) and second was $280 ($36USD).

The second room was 6.5 feet wide, 9.5 feet long, and the bath was 27 x 66 inches. Sign on the wall: “Please DO NOT use the Bath Towel as floor mat,, or clean the stain (such as curry, food, hair highlight color …”). Stenciled on trash cans on Cheung Chau Island: “Beware the shaft.” On Star Ferry: “Take care when crossing the gangplank.” We ate for <$10USD/day/person. Photo: From Pacific Coffee on the Peak. Tram in lower right of photos

Thursday

An easy departure day – same café for breakfast, with “Jenny,” the woman running the place giving Leslie another variation on breakfast noodles. We bought some apples and coconut tarts for the trip. Walked to some gold stores to look at 24K jewelry. I’d looked for in 2005 and again in 2006 for good gold, but couldn’t find any. Leslie noticed a couple of nights ago a crowd of people in a jewelry store and was thinking there would be gold there. Then she talked with a woman waiting for the ferry who said that Yau Ma Tei is the place for gold, thus confirming the reason for the crowd. Sure enough, there was all the gold anyone could want – we’d just been looking in the wrong part of HK. But the price is >$1300USD/ounce, so too much for us. Looking at all the good gold, it’s easy to see why people

get gold fever.

Back at the hostel, said goodbye to Stanley, caught the A21 bus to the airport, going across amazing bridges over deep water channels with huge ships going under the bridges, and here we are in a true world-class airport. Photo: BBQ place in Mong Kok - this is the place where I stopped on a day when I got totally lost in 2006. Check out the goose with its head hanging out.

Hong Kong photo album is here

Hong Kong

2010-11-30T02:44:00.012-06:00

Weird blogger program, breaking up sentences and even words and there's nothing I can do about it. Sorry. The 14.5 hour flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong was fine, with okay seats – the first and second seats of the middle

section, with, thankfully, a nice person in the third seat. I slept some, but Leslie never was able to s

leep. We got into Hong Kong a few minutes after 6am, changed a few dollars, and caught the A21 bus to

Mongkok. We dropped our bags at the Dragon, had breakfast at the Ho Fun Café, and caught

a bus to the Chungking Mansions to change $200. Rode back up Nathan Road and

checked in to the Dragon, where sure enough, we got a room with shared bath. Photo above: Mong Kok sidewalk

We walked around the neighborhood some, including to the Sino Plaza, a very busy collection of mostly tiny shops selling electronic gewgaws. By now, Leslie was shak

y-tired, so we went back to the Dragon and she stayed in the room while I went on a fruitless

search for Wing Hub Roasties. Unable to find Wing Hub, I went back to a place we’d gotte

n take-away (what they call to-go) pork and duck before. The duck was good, but the pork was just brilliant. The best. This day, Sunday, was kind of a lost day as we’d been quite a few hours with little or no sleep. By the end of the day Leslie had gone 48 hours with zero s

leep – not bad for 65 years!!! Photo above (by Leslie): bird fancier at Cooked Foods Court, Fa Yuen (people's) Market

We slept like logs. In the morning fixed coffee with the filter holder (kind of like a Mellita) that Leslie got for traveling), and walked a few blocks to the Fa Yuen Market. We had planned on getting dim s

um for breakfast at the 3^rd floor “Cooked Foods” food court for breakfast, but changed our minds and had a western breakfast (eggs, ham, toast, coffee)

at a place where we’d talked with the owner several years ago – and it was here that the trip seemed to really begin, with a friendly woman at a nearby table, men with so

ng birds in cages, and Leslie and I planning our day in this amazing city. Photo: random lane Cheung Chau

We took a bus down the canyon of Nathan Road to the harbor. What kind of a day would it be without a ride on the Star Ferry across the harbor? We had thought we’d go up the Peak, but it was a hazy day and so decided we’d take a ferry to Cheu

ng Chau Island. It was a nice 45 minute ride on the “fast ferry” (no smoking, no gambling, passengers must stay in the saloon) to the island. I guess if we’d not been to Lamma Island several times in the past Cheung Chau would have been more engaging. Maybe the best way to say it is it was a good trip to a kind of gritty (as Leslie would say) island town. We were tired by the time we got back to our room. We cleaned up and went out to Good Hope Noodles for shrimp wonton soup and a plate of Chinese broccoli. And finally back to our room where we are as I write this. Photo: Star Ferry, the very same ferry that Suzy Wong and her lover rode back and forth across the harbor, falling in love.

Sorry about all the broken-up sentences and words!

Asia 2010-2011

2010-11-26T12:35:00.005-06:00

The trip started in Berkeley where we had Thanksgiving with David and Kevin. In a few hours we’ll take off for Hong Kong, where we’ll stay in Mong Kok at the Dragon Hostel. Photo: $4 worth of dim sum from Chinatown in Oakland. Starting the trip with a dim sum binge

http://www.worldisround.com/articles/336394/index.html

My amazing wife is fine with us staying 2 nights in a room with shared bath (hopefully without a turtle – see link above), then 2 nights with attached bath. The thing is we really like the Dragon – it’s well-run, it’s 2 blocks from the MTR and a main bus line, half a block from the Ho Fun café, 2 blocks from the Fa Yuen Market, and it’s in the most crowded area of a very crowded city with the most amazing crowds in the streets.

Then to Hanoi for about a week while we wait for David to join us. Depending on the rains, we’ll go to Sapa up in the mountains or Halong Bay. Then on to Hue (beautiful city of ghosts), Dalat, Saigon, Phnom Penh … deep into the lands of the Mekong ...

“Whole generations of westerners who went out there as soldiers, doctors, planters, or journalists lost their hearts to these lands of the Mekong ... there are places that take over a man's soul.” Jon Swain

More beautiful things

2010-11-03T19:01:00.005-05:00

Two excellent short films by Jun, my cycling buddy. Jun did the video on Leslie and me cited elsewhere in the journal.

State Fair of Texas

Greenwood Cemetery

It's Magic!

2010-10-27T14:35:00.005-05:00

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Sometimes I find myself wishing I wasn't working. Mostly it's just laziness, but also the fact that I've lost a step. I'm not as adept at keeping track of the multiple problems of multiple patients and the multiple questions and issues that come my way in a busy clinic day (I can keep only about 6-8 windows open). So I'm slower. But then there are realizations that I'm doing a good job for the patients and that I can have some fairly deep clinical insights; there is the pleasure of working with my colleagues; and there are moments like in this photo. What joy to see three generations together like this! What joy to provide care for people who really have their act together, like la abuela in the photo.

Photos and words

2010-10-21T18:11:00.008-05:00

For obvious reasons I hesitated to write this, but it’s true, so ... I became enlightened and nothing other than this life, including the service, would do. That’s why. Of course it was transient. But those few days spent in that state (and Leslie’s profound influence) were enough to keep me on the path for >40 years. Photo: David and me

An email from a former student, very nice to receive: "Just wanted to see how things are going. J told me he was heading to the clinic, so I asked him to get your email address for me. School is going really well. They are definitely keeping me busy here. Seems like I literally study all day. Fortunately, I am a big enough nerd that I don't mind all the reading. I did not get a chance to come by before I left, but I did want to thank you for your support and encouragement. I remember as a nursing student the professors would always ask us about our plans post graduation. I would tell them that I intended to go to CRNA school. You were the only professor who told me I could actually do it, and supported me. I learned a great deal from you during my clinical rotation, and one of the most valuable things I learned from you was how to be a caring clinician. I admire how you reach out to the patients. Hopefully if all goes well, I can one day offer my services as a CRNA to those in need." Photo above: Highway Colorado headed into New Mexico

Part of my answer: A nerd in understanding the patho, the procedures, the meds, etc., makes for a stud out there at the literal edge of human existence, where you’ve been spending your time.

Photo: Chocolate chunk cookies (the best recipe) and whole wheat bread (Tassajara recipe)

Truth, Justice, the American Way

2010-10-06T16:21:00.012-05:00

Like many other people I am deeply affected by the death of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who committed suicide after another student posted videos of Tyler having sex with another man. I realize (sorry to be soooo slow) that discrimination of any sort against gay people is a civil rights, a justice issue – the same as the other great civil rights/justice issues of the 20th Century.

Why this time? Why not (ABC News, I think): “… 13-year-old Asher Brown, who told his parents he was gay, fatally shot himself last week after they said bullies pushed him too far. Two other teenagers hanged themselves after classmates had bullied them for years over their sexual orientations. 15-year-old Billy Lucas of Indiana hanged himself three weeks ago, and 13-year-old Seth Walsh from California died this week, eight days after trying to hang himself from a tree.” Why not Matthew Shepard? Why not others? I don’t know.

But I do know, here I am, with no more tolerance for religious bigots who model intolerance and hate and then lie about it with the old “hate the sin, not the sinner” shuck and jive. No more tolerance for people who justify prejudice because it’s part of their culture (Hispanic, Black, Redneck [everybody else gets a cap, why not us], whatever). No more tolerance for looks and innuendo. No more tolerance for really, face it, people’s own personal threat over something (same sex sex) that isn’t unusual, that lots of people do or have done, that animals other than the human animal do.

Being gay isn’t a lifestyle choice – it just is, the same as being hetero, BUT if it was a choice, then so what. Who is anyone to tell anyone else that a choice that doesn’t hurt anyone is wrong?

Here is a link to the It Gets Better Project - a very good thing for young people struggling with cruelty. From one of the vids:

There really is a place for us
There really is a place for you
One day you will have friends who love and support you
You will find love
You will find a community
Life gets better.

Despair, Hope

2010-08-29T11:11:00.006-05:00

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Someone said to my teacher, “I want to kill myself in despair over the suffering.” And I thought…

Dan, I want to lift you up in rejoicing over suffering ended, diminished, and accompanied in your ~60 years of mercy and my ~40 years of trying and if both of us fall over dead today, we know that younger people are moving up to the line and we’ll get past a 100 years of mercy one way or another. A 100 years, a 1,000 years, we’ll hold the line.

I was talking last week with someone who works emergency about working in emergency and how it’s possible to take (literally) just a moment or not even that, just in the way you be, to be nice; to bring some confidence and comfort to people at the edge of existence – and people going beyond that. You don't have to go anywhere to be a missionary. I was thinking about 10 or 12 years ago when I was in a room with a man in his 70s and his wife, also in her 70s who was dying and I noticed her breast was exposed in all the action and I reached over and covered her and her husband said, “It’s okay.”

My beloved wife

Links, a little freer, working out, food

2010-08-24T11:18:00.006-05:00

Two new links, two new trips: Blog removed (Chris in the Marines in Afghanistan) and The Way Life Should Be (Mandela with the Jesuits in Maine).

Yesterday I realized that I was enmeshed in a political internet forum and that the ugliness was bad for me. The way it works is people will post on a topic and often the more conservative posters will then be attacked in personal and vicious terms by "progressives." And the thing is, the political forum is on a backpacking site so naturally I’d be going there. And I would think, I’ll just have a look at what’s being discussed on the political forum, and there I’d be. So I took it all out of favorites. I feel better already. Photo: Behind the refugee agency with some Karen people.

Today I rode home from the lake via Loving Street, which has the steepest hill. Oh man, what a grind! The first time I did it, I started to walk across Gaston (big, busy road) when I got to the top and realized my legs weren’t working very well at all and I couldn’t really turn around, so Mr. Rubber Legs was shaky-walking across Gaston. Time today: 1.15.

Last week I was lying in bed, thinking that it had been a long time since that same morning when Jun and I rode around White Rock and that maybe I’d work out tomorrow and then, come on, I need to take several days off each week and so okay, but the point is, when was the last time I wanted to exercise? Never in my life. Yet here I am, looking forward to the next 14 mile ride and especially the last hills. The schedule I mentioned in the last post remains the same:

Sunday – Ride home to around White Rock and back
Monday – Gym (at 35 minutes now)
Tuesday – Ride
Wednesday – Rest
Thursday – Gym
Friday – Gym
Saturday – Rest

And here I am, plotting and scheming to increase protein intake and learning lots of new good things about nutrition. Photo: Waiting for the clinic to open.

Started tonight getting food together for Colorado. It looks like this:
Breakfast: Freeze-dried eggs with cheese and bread (crostini-type toasts) alternating with oatmeal, fruit, and milk. Coffee and/or hot chocolate. I’m working on a protein drink – something like dried milk + protein powder (whey) + water chilled in snow. We’ll see how the test kitchen does (at least 50-50 chance of blech, I think).
Lunch: Granola or granola bars & candy bars for snacks
Dinner: Chili, burger, pasta, chips, cheese; Chipotle chicken, green beans, bread; Mashed potatoes, bacon, cheese, bread; Tom kha with chicken and rice; Spaghetti, pasta, burger, cheese, bread;

I’ll have this on the first (solo) part (Ute Creek Semi-Loop) and repeat it when DK and I are on the Elk Park/Chicago Basin shuttle loop.

Summer, Plans, Beautiful Things

2010-08-08T11:54:00.010-05:00

DK left two days ago for Chicago first, then Berkeley for his last year of law school. It was a good summer with him here; a significant change from two people to three in our medium-size cottage; and the only thing I would change would be for him to be around more. From his blog: “Today I leave Texas, and I don’t yet know when I’ll be back. I had an unbelievably great time this summer. I could not ask for more.”

The plan as it stands is to head back to Colorado next month. Current thinking is for me to start with the Ute Creek semi-loop, a 25 mile lollipop loop in the Weminuche Wilderness. I’m giving myself a few extra days on the trail to go slow and acclimate and hoping I don’t go too slow so I get a few days in Fort Collins (the town of my dreams). Then I’ll meet David in Denver and we’ll go back to the Weminuche to hike the Elk Park/Chicago Basin shuttle loop. We’ll catch the train from Durango and get off at the start of the hike, hike a 40 mile loop, and then catch the train back to Durango. We’ll go back to Denver, he’ll fly to Berkeley and I’ll drive back to Dallas.

My inability to get up the hill in New Mexico with Jim Z was a major wake-up call. Shortly after returning home I joined the Lakewood Gym and have been working out five days/week since then. Last week I biked around White Rock Lake Sunday and Tuesday (14 miles each time and the hard part is the hills on the way home) and worked out at the gym three days. This seems like an excellent schedule that addresses cardio and legs with some upper body as well. I’m pretty excited about it all – glad that I’m getting it done kind of like cardiac rehab before an MI. I’ll have 7 weeks to get to an improved condition.

Along with the same theme of health, or something like that, a week ago I bought a Cuisinart ice cream maker for $5 at a garage sale. The test case was basic chocolate ice cream and it’s grrrreat. Since I started baking, especially around the holidays, I’ve been thinking it would be a good idea to be able to make some primo vanilla ice cream to go with certain pies or some dark chocolate ice cream or fresh peach ice cream – so many possibilities, like mixing in chocolate covered peanuts, other things from bulk... The next test will be to make that primo vanilla, the one with 1.5 cups milk, 1.5 cups cream, a vanilla bean, 2 eggs and 3 egg yolks, and some sugar. ¡¡Ay Caramba!!

And now to the photos. In the top photo there's more beauty here than is first seen. Lupe’s daughter, obviously, and her hair(!) - and also that she's planning to cut her hair and give it to an organization that makes wigs for people with cancer. And there's the man in the photo, Alan, the dermatologist who gives several days each month to the poor – he’s beautiful. And the room they’re in, the derm room, started by Carrie K when she was a resident and still going years later while Carrie’s gone on to teach at UPenn – the room is beautiful (not to mention Carrie!) and then there was Kelly (in the photo here), who worked in the derm room for three years and who passed on at such a young age. That was one of the saddest things - and she was beautiful.

Safely home

2010-07-20T10:39:00.006-05:00

This post is about this photo: Chris, me, David, hanging out like we have for 20 years. Chris is headed back to Cali Wednesday and a month or so later, on to Afghanistan. David is leaving for Berkeley in a few weeks. What can I say? Old man, young men, father, brothers and sons.

Semper Fidelis means Always Faithful

Journeys in the West

2010-07-14T18:23:00.008-05:00

Having some formatting problems with adding photos causing broken sentences and then losing photos when I try to fix the problem. Reminds me of Windows 10 years ago. I'm just going to put the photos back up - again and we can live with broken words. Photo: CK & JZ, Wheeler Peak Wilderness in New Mexico

Leslie and I had breakfast at Whole Foods, then came home to say goodbye to David. I was on the road around 9:30 and then the endless Texas drive through Denton, Decatur, Wichita Falls, Vernon (State Hospital for the Criminally Insane), Childress, Clarendon, Amarillo, Vega, into New Mexico, and to Tucumcari, an unappealing town that I guess exists mostly because it’s hard to drive all the way from North Texas to Albuquerque or Santa Fe. There are new hotels/motels on the newer highway (I40) going past Tucumcari, but along the old Route 66 that runs through town, there are classic 1950s motels all along the highway. I stayed in one of the latter, pretty cheap, 56 Cadillac parked at the office, guy with Vaseline Hair Tonic or something like it working the desk, naugahyde furniture, the works. Photo below: Jim at our campsite in the trees

It was an okay room and I dug it a lot. Up early,

peanut butter sandwich and apple (from home) and cooold milk and coffee for breakfast. I took Highway 104 to Las Vegas and drove for several hours in the dark and in the dawn without seeing any other vehicles. On to Taos, where Jim Z. walked into the coffee shop were we planned to meet about 2 minutes after I arrived. It was a good trip backpacking with Jim, except I fell out on the second day; actually I was pretty much fallen out the first day, but on the second day realized there was no way I could make it up that mountain in any sort of reasonable time. Jim was kind and helpful and in the end, it was a good trip.

The first night we camped on the side of a hill under some trees on land that turned out to be privately owned. Joe, the man who owned it drove up in his pickup, saying, “You need to explain yourselves.” “Uh-oh,” I thought, “I need to stay out of this conversation.” Jim talked with Joe, who said we were welcome to stay on his land as long as we didn’t have any animals with us and didn’t build a fire. The next two nights we camped

in a grove of large pines near a stream and then hiked out.

From New Mexico I headed to Colorado, where I hung out in Fort Collins and Boulder for a few days, waiting for Jeff. Happy me in those mountain towns where (unlike Dallas) I look pretty much like everyone else. That’s a real nice thing for me. Photo: CK & Dr. Love

Jeff got to the hotel around 1am and I awakened long enough to let him in, and slept through him eating, showering, arranging his gear.

The next day we drove to the festival

site, where because of eagles nesting, camping alongside the river and under the trees next to the music had been changed to a treeless field far from any water and a 40 minute drive from the music. We camped kind of at the edge, near some other older people and a coffee and taco stand. A 20-something woman camping nearby attached herself to us and we had good times sitting around the campsite. When it came time to head to the music, the organizers had just one or two buses running and there about a hundred people clustered at the bus door, reminiscent of buses in Phnom Penh, except the buses there are spiffer. So we just spent several nice, though sunny days at the campsite.

The drive home was okay. I missed the turn-off at Raton Pass, so went a ways out of the way and once again drove many miles, this time on Highway 56/412 Springer to Clayton, without seeing another vehicle. Then I was again on Highway 87 Dalhart to Dumas and somewhere along the way there was a huge thunderstorm and I got off at a picnic area. I jumped out and ran through the rain (watching for rattlesnakes) to stand under the concrete cover over the picnic table, peeing into the torrent. Dash back to the car

to unleash the magic of the Campry, stretching out with my feet in the trunk and the rain pounding on the car roof and falling soundly into some of the best and dreamingest sleeping imaginable. Photo: CK & LK around 1970

Then that long cross-Texas drive and finally home and so glad to see Leslie and David. Several things were learned on this journey, including that I need to get it together on my physical status. To that end, I’ve resumed biking and walking and yesterday started at the Lakewood Gym. Another thing I learned was that Mike4 H. was right: the best way to Colorado is I35 through Oklahoma into Kansas to I70 on into Denver.

Lighter

2010-06-18T19:40:00.008-05:00

Here we go again, Wheeler Peak Wilderness for 3-4 days with Jim Z, on to Fort Collins area for an outdoor party with Jeff, and then … just got word this evening that Martin can’t make it to the Weminuche Wilderness, so the last of the trip is cancelled. Jeff and I may backpack a few days or hang out in Boulder – or not – I don’t know. Photo: We think that's a finch in the left center - the only one we've ever seen

Brief aside/ introduction to the next paragraph: I talked with a nurse today who told me she helped take care of me in surgical ICU and that I was in pretty bad shape. She did reassure me I didn't say anything I'd regret - I have NO recollection of being on a ventilator - days completely lost and that's probably best.

Since that hospitalization, I have been even more fully aware of the many and deep connections to Leslie. Over the past few days I've had feelings of dread about being away from her for so long. In the final analysis - by the time the trip rolled around - this trip was based more on getting into the mountains with Martin vs. just getting into the mountains (though I was really looking forward to getting up there with Jun, too). Anyway, I’m probably coming home a few days early. Photo: At the clinic

The moment I realized the trip would be shorter than I'd planned, I felt lighter. I'd already begun having feelings of dread, and now - now I'm distinctly lighter.

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Dream the world all alive
Busily conspiring humming like a hive
Dream the world all alive
I dream it as me

Rise as fair and tender leaves
Brightening in countless eyes
And the sweet song of whales
Beneath the sea

If I could sing only one song I'd sing of you
If I could sing only one song I'd sing of you
If I could sing only one song
If I could sing only one song I'd sing of you

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All that's the best about me is about you or for you or from you.

Bread, Hope

2010-06-02T16:20:00.011-05:00

Bread I’ve baked in recent months:

Yeasted French (Acme Bread Company recipe from Glezer book)*
Yeasted herb slab (also Acme)
Sourdough,* San Francisco style from Reinhart book*
Sourdough, French (we liked the SF better)
Sourdough with kalamata olives
Sourdough with pepper jack cheese – a breakthrough!
No-knead French*
No-knead sourdough
No-knead French with rosemary
Whole wheat (Tassajara and Reinhart recipes)
Banana bread (not yeast or sourdough)

*Books include Artisan Baking by Glezer, Artisan Breads Every Day by Reinhart, The Tassajara Bread Book by Brown. Sourdough starter made from recipe in Glezer book. No-knead bread is from NPR recipe here.
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Photo: And dreams emerge - a photo of Hong from Alison in Hanoi & Australia

Some of my notes from a church school lesson. Reading the notes again, I’m amazed and uplifted. Things in parentheses are my additions.

People need an upward vision in order to find an earthly place to stand. Purpose in life not solely self. Faith (and experience) gives us a spiritual place to stand.

If you want to save your life you must lose it.

We are called to put on love in all its manifestations. Love is hope-bearing. We’re in the business of bringing hope/vanquishing despair.

A story about a young man, dying from AIDS, asking his father, a Baptist minister (a religion and role associated with a lot of judgment), “Daddy, will you come lie in the bed with me like you used to.” Choosing the heart of his faith over theological judgment, the father lay down with his son and held him as he died.

A metaphor for living a sacred life is building Jerusalem – where we live. William Blake wrote a poem on this and it became the hymn, Jerusalem. We are in the business of bringing hope AND building Jerusalem – in our life/heart, our family, our church, our community, our world.
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I don’t know who this is from: Our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit

The patients that stood out to me today

2010-05-27T20:40:00.004-05:00

The patients that stood out to me today were:

55 year old woman with no way to get into Parkland and 1) uncontrolled insulin-resistant diabetes, maxed on all the oral hypoglycemics we can give (metformin, glipizide, pioglitazone); 2) bipolar disorder controlled on olanzapine and fluoxetine; 3) hypertension managed with lisinopril; 4) hyperlipidemia marginally controlled on simvastatin; 5) OA, for which she takes ibuprofen; 6) and she’s also taking aspirin and multivitamins.

6 year old girl c/o 2 week history of red eyes with exudate and dry skin on her hand. As the encounter unfolded, she said she was crying every day, had headaches, and insomnia. Her father is in jail since February and it’s unclear when he may be reunited with his family. Photo: Nora and me

21 year old woman in NAD from Burma (Karen) c/o cough and feeling warm at night. The first thing I noticed was head lice, then a normal exam until her lungs, where I auscultated rhonchi in all fields – what!? Renee listened and found the same thing. So she walked in with a cough and out with pediculosis and community-acquired pneumonia, probably mycoplasma. I started her on a challenging regimen of clarithromycin, prednisone, albuterol, ibuprofen. Also permethrin for the pediculosis.

Mary saw a woman I’d seen 3 weeks ago. At the time she was in respiratory distress and I called 911. They declined to transport her to a hospital because she didn’t have any symptoms other than SOB (lungs clear, no fever, etc.). Nora took her to the Baylor ER, where she was admitted (for >week) with a pneumothorax.

We ask all patients, have you ever been physically or sexually abused? It’s not an uncommon question, but we take care in how we ask it, trying to create a space where people can say yes vs. just tossing it out and then on to the next question. And here I was in exam room 2, with Nora and a 32 year old woman who answered, “Yes.” She was raped when she was 18 and this was the first time she’s said anything about it. And so there we were and after I worked her up, left so that Nora could sit with her, listening, the woman crying, Nora talking in the soft connecting way she has. Paroxetine, regular visits, “You came to the right place.”

How long, how long must we sing this song, how long, how long?

What I said at a graduation ceremony yesterday evening

2010-05-13T14:57:00.007-05:00

Congratulations. To the graduates who worked so hard for this wonderful achievement – the FNPs and this, the first group of DNPs from Baylor – the first BSN to DNPs in the nation! Congratulations to the families of the graduates who supported them and sacrificed to help them. Congratulations to the faculty who taught and mentored the graduates. And congratulations to Dean Lott, Dr. Brucker, Dr. Faucher, Mrs. Kurfees and everyone else involved for creating the DNP program. What a great day this is. Photo: One of the DNP graduates when she was an undergrad - outreach in the community garden

What great opportunities lie ahead for all of you.

You/We have the great opportunity to heal the sick. Like anyone else, we can (and should) be kind and gentle. Like anyone else we can pray for and with others. Like anyone else we can support and contribute to the efforts of people working to heal the sick. But in our case we also touch people physically – with kindness and gentleness. We can often heal the body, and even play a part in the healing of the spirit.

I’m still just overwhelmed by this – by this daily contact with the suffering and need and hope of the world. And it seems such a privilege, such a wonderful thing to talk with a person, examine that person, and then understand what is the problem, why it occurred, and best of all, what to do to manage or heal the problem – and then do it! I well remember the first person whose illness I cured. She was about 50 years old and looked about 60 – a person who’d had a hard life. She had been treated as an outpatient at a major medical center for pneumonia, but the treatment was unsuccessful. I gave her clarithromycin and it worked! We were both very happy.
And so we do countless variations on this – people with diabetes and hypertension and pharyngitis and otitis and asthma and acne and along the way we ask questions like, have you ever been physically or sexually abused? On most days are you mostly happy or mostly sad? Is there anything else? What questions do you have?

Here is something one of my students wrote in her journal: “When she admitted to having thoughts of killing herself it just added to the weight in my heart … when we prayed it was the first time I participated in spiritual care. I didn’t know what to do because while Lupe was praying I started to cry, but tried to stop because I had to get through the rest of the day.”

So we work to heal the sick and lift up the oppressed and as we work to provide holistic care to as many people as possible, we must remember that there are others waiting to be seen and if we take the time to do a 100% job in all dimensions with one person, another person may get nothing. So we work smarter and faster and learn to deal with priorities, but still, there is much to do, much left undone. – there is a deep ache in the world, a groaning inwardly while they wait, while we wait.

Let me read to you what I wrote in my journal last week – about Albert Schweitzer:

Schweitzer suffered from major depression while he was in a French POW camp. Through his depression he became aware of “the fellowship of those who bear the mark of pain” – and he further realized that all people bear pain – and in this way (and other ways) he understood that we are One.
He discovered that the ideal is the human capacity to experience and express reverence for the miracle of life … and to act on that reverence.
The greatest happiness is through seeking and finding ways to serve. And he discovered that people who set out to do good should not expect others to help move boulders out of the way; in fact, others will sometimes move boulders into the path of those trying to good.

Like Dr. Schweitzer we all see things that need to be done.

Who and what will you see? People who are hungry? People who are thirsty - who thirst for freedom and justice? People who are strangers in a strange land? People who are naked – naked of dignity and of hope? People who are sick – sick in body or sick in heart? People who are in prison – in prison like Paul or in prisons of a different sort. What will you see and what will you DO.

Here is something else from my journal – about a woman in prison …

A middle-aged woman came into the clinic today. Her chief complaints were diabetes and asthma. The promotora who saw her in intake asked two depression screening questions and on the basis of the woman’s answers then administered a more complete depression screen, which also was positive. When I saw her she said that “something happened” when she was 8 and 9 years old. It turned out that she had been systematically molested when she was a child. She had not told anyone other than her mother until today. One of her children has been asking her, “Mommy, why don’t you ever hug me?” The answer, which she hasn’t been able to say, is that she cannot. There is something about physical affection between family members… because, naturally, it was a family member who molested her. She and I talked for awhile and it was intense there in exam room 4. When we were done, I told her I was glad she came in and that she had come to the right place. I gave her medications for the diabetes, asthma, and depression (or more accurately, PTSD). She’ll see our psychiatrist next week...

There is much left undone by the ones who went before us, by the Apostle Paul, by Maimonides, by Albert Schweitzer, by Mother Teresa, by countless people – and these people, dear ones, are our colleagues, our brothers and sisters in faith and works. They would ask that we carry on; that we see the poor and the afflicted and that we do something about them – that we do something about the individuals who cross our paths AND that we create even greater opportunities – programs for adult survivors of abuse, for children whose potential is swallowed up in the hard life of poverty, for prostitutes, for drug addicts, for people seeking to break free from so many different prisons. So much left undone.

'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' Photo: The students had a shower for this Karen woman who was pregnant. You can see the guys are having a great time.

You/we have the rare opportunity to heal the sick. To relieve suffering. To help the world be a better place. To be a part of the great dream of mercy and human dignity.

I’ll end with the Oath of Maimonides* (gender-adjusted)

The eternal providence has appointed me to watch over the life and health of Thy creatures. May the love for my art actuate me at all times; may neither avarice nor miserliness, nor thirst for glory or for a great reputation engage my mind; for the enemies of truth and philanthropy could easily deceive me and make me forgetful of my lofty aim of doing good to Thy children.

May I never see in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain.

Grant me the strength, time and opportunity always to correct what I have acquired, always to extend its domain; for knowledge is immense and the spirit of a person can extend indefinitely to enrich itself daily with new requirements.

Today we can discover our errors of yesterday and tomorrow we can obtain a new light on what we think ourselves sure of today. Oh, God, Thou has appointed me to watch over the life and death of Thy creatures; here am I ready for my vocation and now I turn unto my calling.