The Next Three Days

A last minute change means that I now fly to Hanoi tomorrow morning instead of taking the 2 night train. After a day in Hanoi I head on a tour to Ha Long Bay for 2 day/1 nights. On Return I catch my overnight sleeper train to Nanning, China.

Wow Saigon!

Now this is a city that buzzes! Here is my list of things to do:

SEE
- Presidential palace: impressive with much history but the interior is nothing spectacular. They play a short video in the basement explaining the last 150years of history ending wi a long segment of Vietnam's struggle against the "American Imperialists". The photo gallery is quite interesting, also in the basement
- War Remnants museum: previously known as Meseum of American War Crimes. The US doesn't come off well here once again. In fact, it's an excellent museum that can easily take up 3-4 hours. It's packed but can handle the crowds very well since its organised and well laid out. Be warned that this is super intense - I saw quite a few visitors in tears half way through. The crowd is probably 50-50 Asian and European tourists.
- Jade Emperor Pagoda: this is a functioning pagoda used for prayers so no fee for entry but its out of the way, off the tourist trail. Make sure you head here because inside this tiny little, dark chamber is an incredibly impressive sight. The Chinese influence is clearly evident but the exterior simplicity and interior awesomeness is amusing.
- the French quarter: this is the fancy part of town which houses Notre Dame, the palace, post office, etc. Remarkable contrast to the remaining 90% of Saigon and oh so French!
- Riverside view overlooking District 1. New Saigon lies beyond the river connected by a 4 lane highway that lies empty for most part as the 2 wheelers cramp into one lane and the occasional Toyota SUV zooms past. This is ex-pat land.
- Tao Dan park: in the morning come along to the coffee shop in the south west corner and watch the old men enjoy their birds...not euphemism, they actually bring along their pet birds in cages and hang them up so you see 20-30 cages with different birds that sing in the morning as their owners chat and drink coffee along with the sun rise. The women practice a slow form of martial arts which is their work out. Younger people play badminton, martial arts and even dance. A real pleasure watching locals enjoy their patch of grass since personal gardens attached to ones own home are unheard of.

DO
- motobike tour of Saigon (XO or Vietnam Vespa). This is THE way to traverse the city. 2 wheeles are like swarms of bees zipping past and around slower, obstructive cars. Quite a remarkable sight.
- take a local bus. Very easy to figure out how it all works. Fast, cheap and reliable.
- walk down Dong Khoi from Notre Dame to the river


EAT
Just about anywhere along the road will be magic!. A few shacks/holes in the wall that were recommended to me and proved to be fantastic, are:

- Pho Hoa, 260 Pasteur St, District 3
- Pho Anh, 10A Ky Dong, St
- a shack with no name, at the intersection of Cach Mang Thang Tam and Bac Hai, at the corner of  Le Thi Rieng Park- they do "pancakes" or " sizzling cakes" called Banh Xeo.

In general, grab a map, keep your rain gear to hand, bring walking shoes and just walk! It's fascinating. Checkout shops, watch what people are eating along the road, see the various historical/religious sites. Fun 3 days.

I didn't bother going to some of the major tourist spots such as Ben Thahn market.

Bangkok to Cambodia, overland...

The Guide: seat61.com

Leaving Bangkok

I went to Bangkok's Hua Lamphong station 2 days before I was to depart for Cambodia just to confirm the train details. There is a very helpful tourist info desk which is well-staffed with English speakers. It is open during working hours and located at the main entrance to the station near where the taxi drop-off and entrance to MRT is. 

They explained that the train to Aranyapathet is a busy commuter train that is free for locals and 48baht for foreigners. As seat61 said, this cannot be booked in advance but there are no issues with buying on the day. Arrival slightly ahead of the train departure time is advised to not only buy the ticket but also get a good seat - window, facing direction of travel. Since its free for locals it does get very busy for the first couple of hours at least. While it is technically 3rd class, it is comfortable and clean. I was lucky to get a sunny day with no rain in late Sept so the journey was very pleasant with fresh air through open windows and interesting scenery. The passengers are a real mix across Thai society as well.

Toilets are available on the carriages but they are not the kind you want to have to use. There are various food items sold during the journey - all traditional Thai snacks. Some are very clean and well presented, other items are a bit more rough and ready.

I took a bottle of water sandwich and some wafers for the journey. The water is especially necessary when queuing at Thai immigration. In hindsight, I would have carried a bit more because the earliest I could get any decent lunch is after 3pm once I reached Siem Reap.

At Aranyapraphet

As soon as the train pulls up to the platform there are numerous tuk tuks and motorbikes available. I got a ride for 80baht to the border and didn't bother to haggle down. The tuk tuk might stop at a Cambodia visa centre which is in a new, white building. One can get a visa there or if you already had an e-visa like me, then just complete an immigration form which is free. This immigration form  is also available Cambodian arrival check point, in case your tuk tuk takes you straight to the Thai Border post.

The Thai post building here also looks quite new and I've attached a picture of the shiny new arch that marks it. From the Cambodian visa centre walk 200 metres down the road and the Thai border post will be on the left. There could be a long queue as I faced which takes a while but the process is simple.

Following Thai border control follow the blue exit signs that are fairly self-explanatory. Immediately ahead of you lies the Friendship Bridge and thereafter starts a long row of casinos and hotels. It starts to feel a bit chaotic already but just follow the road. At this point it's also hard to figure out where to go but walk on the right hand side of the road and after a few hundred yards, up ahead the Cambodian Arrival Post is marked. 

In this small building you queue for entry into Cambodia. You can get that immigration form here as I mentioned above. Going through immediately you will get surrounded by people offering rides to Siem Reap. It's quite difficult to tell who is genuine and who is not. As a solo female traveller I opted for a pre-arranged taxi which was organised by my hotel. It was a nice relief to see my name held up on a piece of paper so if I had to repeat this process or recommend to any one else, I would suggest doing this. The cost of the hotel taxi: $45. Peace of mind : priceless!

the drive to Siem Reap after this is about 2 hours.

On Bangkok (or Why Indian cities should be like this one)

Thoughts on Bangkok - bottom line, I wish Indian cities were like this one.

- public transport, underground, sky train, motopods, taxis are clean, efficient, reliable and have air con (not motopods and tuk tuks obviously)
- traffic is crazy at peak hours but everyone obeys traffic laws, drives within lanes and no crazy Indian style obnoxious honking, at all
- everyone uses public transport not just the population at the bottom of the hierarchy
- taxis and tuk tuks are super clean. It always amazes me how and why Indian taxis are so gross.
- streets are clean and so walkable.
- people do not have a bad BO problem
- I can eat from a hole in the wall or a street cart and not get Delhi belly. 3 days in Bombay with a frankie and vada pao knocked me out! The hole in the wall places might be small in Bangkok but unlike their Indian counterpart they are clean - try out the nizam place behind Taj in Calcutta and I promise you the sight of it will make you give up food for a week even if the nizam roll there was pretty phenomenal.

Observing the way bangkok runs, makes me wonder whether we Indians are innately smelly, unhygienic and incapable of long term innovation beyond quick fix jugaad.

The Bombay I spent my summers in is now just a growing dust bin. I don't care how many fancy malls and swish hotels come up, the streets are filthy and infrastructure poor. The beaches I grew up on building sand castles are not only covered by tarmac now but also filthy. Observing Ganpati being celebrated in the city unfortunately only brought out the worst of its character. I can't imagine how Mumbaikers have the patience to live through it year after a year - a festival that is clearly so politicised that it has lost all cultural and religious value.

Consider Delhi, my old home. That I prefer Delhi to Bombay today is unambiguous but despite the metro, the new roads and the city being cleaned up since I lived there 15 years ago, fundamentally life hasn't changed. The features of Bangkok that make me admire it so much are entirely missing in Delhi as well.

Certain differences between BKK and Indian metros can perhaps be forgiven or be written off due to my jaded view of India or, arguably, unreasonably high expectations of where it should have been today. However, I don't believe it's possible to accept or justify why the quality of written English of national newspapers is so very poor. I was pretty disappointed reading 5-6 different newspapers in Delhi and Bombay and observing that celebrity gossip is given more space and importance than national issues. Also the space allocated to celebrity endorsements makes reading a newspaper plain irritating. The quality of analysis is certainly very poor as well. On top of that poor grammar too? English is a national language, how can this be accepted?

I leave bangkok in a day from now and expect to do so with much respect for the city. If Bangkok with its "Asian" ways, so very similar to India, can create and sustain such a living environment, we Indians really need to stop kidding ourselves and actually make India Incredible rather than just delude ourselves that she is so already. The chaos used to be amusing but now it's just embarrassing.

Beyond Beijing...

Oct 27 Beijing to Tokyo with Micky C!
Nov 2 Micky C heads back to London, I shall perhaps take the ferry from Fukuoka, Japan to Busan, Korea

Could be interesting to take the cross country train from Busan up to Seoul, spend a few days there and then take the overnight ferry from near Seoul (Incheon precisely) and head back into China through Qingdao - all of course depending on whether I get that Double Entry visa... We shall wait and see.

The Next 3 Months.

This blog has the very high likelihood of turning into a travel journal over the next few months as I go traipsing around SE Asia on my own - mother does not approve.

This is the plan so far, all hinging upon the benevolence of the China Embassy staff to approve my visa.

Sept 19 London - Bombay, by air
Sept 24 BOM - Delhi, by air
Sept 27 DEL - Bangkok, by air
Sept 30 BKK - Siem Reap, Cambodia, by train and Toyota Camry pick up trucks (apparently)
Oct 3 Siem Reap - Phnom Pehn, by bus
Oct 4 PP - Saigon HCMC, Vietnam, by bus
Oct 8 HCMC - Hanoi, by train (2 days - it looks spectacular!)
Oct 10 Hanoi - Nanning, China, by train
Oct 11 Nanning - Yangshou, by train and bus/car
Oct 16 Yangshou - Xi'an, by air
Oct 20 Xi'an - Beijing, by train
Oct 26 Beijing....TBD - any suggestions??

Currently I'm awaiting a visa for China that half of my journey depends on. Oh what an arduous application process that was!

The logistics are easy - make appointment online, fill out form online, print and take to the Visa processing centre (near Bank). Easy.

I was told that getting a visa if entering by air is the easiest as the Embassy team pay most attention to the port of entry and how that entry point will be met. If my case, explaining the plane/train/bus journey was all too complicated so I had to end up typing out a letter explaining the transit points and how I intended to meet them. The whole situation appears to be much more complex because I had th audacity to request a DOUBLE entre visa. WHOA! I had to "kindly request" this in my visa application for the reason that I might want to pop over into HK and then back into China for continuing my travel. Let's see how that plays out.

Also remember to take along proof of accommodation - I had to print out all hotel bookings and train, flights booking info. Handily the processing centre has set up a few PCs and a printing machine for people to use so clearly I'm not the only one suffering through this. Make sure you take enough lose change since every 4 pages of printing = 20p.

For a 10am appointment, I arrived at 9.50am and left just before 1.

Other visas:

Cambodia - e-visa online, very straightforward
Vietnam - in person visa including an option for next day express processing, very simple again.

Great sites to use for planning a trip like this:

If there was just one resource needed, it would be this: http://www.seat61.com

http://www.talesofasia.com
http://www.travelfish.org

I've also bought GroovyMaps for each city I am heading to. Will have to check them on location but they come highly recommended as the best practical travelling companion by the independent travelling community. http://groovymap.com

Money: Biggest expense is of course accommodation since the train and bus journeys will run into a few tens of dollars. Flights courtesy of BA airmiles. Most hotels I can pay online in advance or by credit card on check out. I'll be replying on the Post Office travel card which works as a pre-loaded debit card - the 2012 version of travellers cheques I suppose. In terms of cash I'm only taking $ with a lot of singles, 5, 10s. Local currency for Baht, Dong and Yuan will be exchanged on arrival in each country. From what I have read $ is the de facto currency in Cambodia.

5 days to go.

The Dating culture amongst Indians

Since the early nineties when I was growing up in New Delhi, life for a teenager in India appears to have come a long way. My generation and those younger are much more amenable to dating and figuring themselves out through relationships that are not initiated strictly with an intent to get married. Like most things in India the trends across social strata vary so while the upper middle classes may have begun to the embrace some form of casual dating while the bulk of the population does, I think, still tend to favour the tradition “introduction” route, or at least works to maintain that perception.

Amongst the group that has tended towards the independent pursuit of life partners, there still are very many who continue to favour the family driven process. I find it rather interesting but also question how long culture can stand up against economic independence?

The reality of life in India, wealthy or otherwise, is that we like to live in large joint families back home. If not in the same home, we live near enough to lovingly interfere in each other’s lives. Cousins are like siblings, and everyone is an Aunt or an Uncle. Along with this, we then tend to live under someone else’s rules for much longer than in the West. Perhaps only on marriage or maybe much later does a young family or couple get the chance to settle down in their nest and draw up their own rules.  At the same time, younger affluent Indians are becoming economically independent at an earlier age.  They are adults, but they live like children in the sense that they don’t have all the responsibilities of independent living – paying house bills, cleaning up, cooking, etc. Young Indians succumb to the privileges of living with parents and in doing so hand over some autonomy in their own lives. They inevitably develop distinctly different outward personalities – the work/friends personality and the one at home; The latter to fulfill the expectations of the parents, hence the loss of autonomy.

Through our culture, while economic independence was not achieved until much later in life, incomes from individuals within a family were pooled for a common budget and joint decisions were made to enable a happy co-existence, but now that the younguns can afford their own cars and flats below the age of 30yrs, the strain on who they are and who they present to their parents might start to give. There will be a reduced inclination of subservience to the parents under whose roof a young adult lives. While the parents were the driving force behind the decision to get married and whom to marry, it might no longer be so since the married couple will be living in DLF while the parents live in Green Park.

If the bride is no longer going to have to adjust to the groom’s family home with incumbent traditions and dynamics, why would the incumbents continue to have a dominating vote in selecting her? The new bride will move in to her married home with her husband and they will begin life in their own nest. She doesn’t need to wake up at a certain time to be able to help in the family kitchen before the communal breakfast. She doesn’t need to learn how to make tea in 4 different ways to please all tastes and she certainly doesn’t have to dress to seek her in-laws’ approval either.

The dynamic of a newlywed life is changing. Economic independence is bringing about this cultural change. Sure I still know many of my generation who still look to their parents for advise, but if we can get up and go to work every day, make up our own mind about what job we want to apply for, pick out our own flat and choose our own car …why can’t we select our partner in life too? It’s not about marginalising parents from this process, but more about understanding why smart, aware, financial independent individuals are not confident enough in the social arena to know what they are looking for in a life partner and then, how to go about finding them. Perhaps, they simply prefer to follow their parent’s choice in the matter. Is that becuase in these matters, we are in fact quite a shy nation? The personal confrontation of approaching another person to reveal our true feelings for the fear of rejection or even simply to have to reveal our emotions, is a fairly frightening thought. The alternative of managing a relationship through parental intervention is a somewhat easier concept to accept. Perhaps with economic independence being achieved earlier in our lives, where we are forced to take most decisions for ourselves rather than revert to the household norm, we will overcome any such hesitation on the relationship front ; that certainly was my own experience.

My bet is that very soon, within my lifetime, we will see a marked shift whereby young Indians will learn to go through the heartbreaks and joys of romance, live and learn by the process of trial and error which eventually leads to understanding themselves better. And the only way to figure out what you are looking for in someone else, is to figure out what you yourself are all about first and not be afraid to have your heart broken.

______

I’m curious about where the thinking stands currently - if you have literally a few minutes to click a mouse a few times, would be great if you could complete this short poll. Results will be published for public enjoyment. All hail Google docs...


Quick Poll - please click!

Why Indians dig fairness...

Is it the result of a century of white rule or is it just that we crave what we can't have? Whichever one you think it is, have a read of this explanation by Alyque Padamsee ...

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/business/she-is-not-a-moron-she-is-young

He may have been a great judge of indian aspirations to have crafted those memorable ads back in the day, but Mr Padamsee sure is trippin' if he really thinks Indians chase white skin because of it's reflective qualities!

By a look at the comments on this article, he really has misjudged his fellow countrymen by miles on this one. 

By George, I think he did it!

Only last week, we were discussing how the government appeared to be stalling. Too much rhetoric, not enough action. In times like this, when so much is obviously fixable and the hardships being suffered provide need for immediate solutions, I for one, want to see the government making practical, sensible decisions. Ok, so its the government and it don't always work that way, but the stalemate has been broken.

By George, I think he did it!

Political sympathies aside, today's heavily leaked budget, was practical and necessary. There are probably elements where it could have been even more brave but it did what necessary. The opening statements set the tone, the subsequent details confirmed the intentions.

So much of the critical rhetoric now is focusing on the 45p tax but that to me is unjustified political opposition. The pain was shared by the top and middle earners with much needed concessions for the low income earners. Good to see the obvious loop-holes surrounding stamp duty being closed out - they really are after those "static assets"!

I only hope that this is the beginning of a trend that sees a shrinking government, a growing vibrant private sector with public sector wages finally seeing some reality being brought into line with the private sector.

The Lost Generation...

It is a broad generalisation, but not inaccurate, to say that many young people have less sense of their responsibility and need for self sufficiency today. This is in my view caused by, amongst other reasons, a generous welfare state which can lead to dependency within a family across generations. We are subsequently faced with young people without motivation who are in fact selecting the rational choice based on what they observe around them of less work to achieve payout comparable to the working population. The solution here needs to be of the “stick” variety rather than “carrot”. The former is needed to stem the spread of the problem; the carrot is used to address the prevalent symptoms.

For the wellbeing of individuals and society as a whole, it is in our collective as well as selfish interest for each of us to pursue occupations that we hopefully enjoy and have a natural interest in. This is the ideal aim that most working adults might not relate to as they head to work each morning but it is the ideal that ought to be targeted through increasing exposure. Students and young people can only identify what they enjoy based on what they have come across. The education system needs to be able to expose them to ideas beyond their usual comfort zone. This can be in the form of exposure to occupation, languages, culture but also the working environment, social work, community involvement, etc. The aim here is to also provide a reality bite by subjecting them to the real world notion that actions have consequences and that there are pressures of adult hood to be prepared for. If students see more, they identify options that they are naturally inclined towards and are self motivated in pursuing these (the “carrot” approach).

Along with Sir Terry Leahy’s publicised remarks about the education system not supplying employable youth, the recent articles in the FT(Jobs for the young and Education system ‘failing business and workforce’, Feb 21) discuss the softer skills and training that are lacking in young people ranging from personal presentation, conversational skills, work ethic etc.

How do young people get the idea that wearing a hoodie to a job interview is not appropriate? To some extent it is an observation of a generational gap. The evolving trend over time has been to adopt informality and the younger generations are naturally less formal and more relaxed than older ones. However there continues to be a need (at least for now) for professionalism in the work place. The stick approach will state that young people learn to do whatever is needed else they pay the consequences for not abiding i.e. unemployment and low income. The carrot approach means that they are given experience while at school to become familiar with and understand this concept of making themselves better employees and productive workers.

At the end of the day, this is a social issue. The culture supported or created by the welfare state has contributed to its establishment. Poor standards of literacy and numeracy are more directly targeted by education but the softer skills and life training needs to become a core part of the school experience. This is not about the state taking over and interfering it is about the state (since we have one) being concerned for its overall wellbeing.

A few points I would like to see executed in mainstream education that every student has to go through:

1. Classes for managing personal finance

2. Compulsory community work

3. Compulsory work shadowing/experience (paid or unpaid)

While attending University and further education is not a must for every student, getting a job and being self sufficient is.