Author: karenswenson7289095

Friday, December 28, 2018

The receptionist at the hotel, Rhama, also serving as the concierge, who arranged our drive to the archeological site of Volubilis, had told us it was only a half hour drive. I had not been very enthusiastic about this trip. I was wrong. However, it took us an hour and a half to get there but driving through the countryside, which we had not seen, more than made up for the time. Our driver stopped at a place full of tables and little stalls selling things that had a view out over a dammed lake to the mountains. The valley is not only beautiful but also extraordinarily fertile with the kind of rich dark soil I know from North Dakota where it is called Dakota Gumbo. Wheat had been planted and was springing up vividly green against the black earth. There were orange trees and olives as well as almonds in bloom. They have an extraordinary scent.

My best experience of this was driving north in California with Mount Shasta ahead of me—when I first noticed the mountain I mistook it for a cloud but when it remained statically in the same shape over many miles I reidentified it as a mountain—with almond orchards on either side of me. Their scent made the drive a sensual orgy.

Our driver, Mohamed, drove on the two-lane road at a speed that made me fasten my seat belt firmly. Since I spent six year driving back and forth across the U.S. ten times, I am a critical observer of other’s driving skills.

As we descended further into the valley, on our left we saw the roofless pillars and arches of Volubilis. The Blue Guide calls this “breath taking,” with their unerring capacity for cliché. It isn’t quite that but it is certainly a view that focuses you. There is quite a lot of Volubilis to see and we spent three hours doing it. It falls roughly into two categories, buildings: the Basilica, Forum and Capitol, floor mosaics: Hercules´s Labors, Wild Animals, House of the Acrobats and a number of others. There is a route to follow and you are given a nice little map with everything labeled in English and Arabic.

As we got in line to buy our tickets, I heard the man in front of me say to his wife, “They charge local people less. I think I could pass for a local. ¨

To this she replied, “You could but you could pass for quite a few things. You could be a Turk.”

I looked at his swarthy bearded face. Indeed, he could have been local or a Turk. “Where do you come from?” I asked.

“From Persia,” he answered. I am always amused by this euphemism for Iran or perhaps I am envious that I have no such euphemism for the U.S., that allows me to detach slightly from my country, but I was delighted to run into an Iranian and get news of things there, not that news is very good from anywhere these days. But the line moved swiftly and we didn’t have a chance to get very deeply into connections we might have.

It was cold, but the architectural remains are beautiful to walk among. The isolated arches with their keystones look precarious but are undoubtedly firm. The pillars have that sturdy Roman quality. “Here stood a civilization you could count on,” they seem to say. On top of one, as though endorsing this statement there was a large stork’s nest, a sort of porcupine bun of twigs. The mosaic floors are charming—the fish gracefully arching their tails, an octopus looking quite spider like, a man riding backwards on what is, I suppose a donkey but could easily be a long legged anteater, the people often round-eyed and startled looking, Hercules doing well as he wrestles with the lion. It has a cozy feel to it.

When we finished at the last arch it was three o’clock and getting colder. We hurried back, but could not find Mohammed because neither of us remembered that he had told us to look for him in the coffee shop. Kathy called our hotel and all was well.

He drove us through the green valley where small flocks of sheep were being herded home for the night. At the gate, Bab Bou Jeloud, he deposited us. We hurried off, very hungry now, since it was four and we had had no lunch, to the Clock Restaurant where we had an okay but not super meal. Kathy had an orange cake either this time or before that was a wonder and flourless.

It was getting dark as we walked home and the atmosphere in the Medina was different as people closed their shops. I did not feel as safe as I had during our daily walks. I had the sense that “nice” women were not unaccompanied by a man at night in Fez.

Home in our beautiful hotel we paid our bill, packed, and then, although quite full from our late lunch at the Clock, dutifully ate our eggplant salad. There wasn’t much room for it but I also knew that this was the best eggplant salad I was going to have for many years. It was going to be a high bar.

In my elegant room, carved and painted ceiling overhead, great arched windows shuttered, silk curtain pulled across the door, I packed up. Fez had been interesting but a quiet interesting, not the cymbals and trumpets of Istanbul.

Thursday, December 27, 2018

It has, since seeing the Chergui mansion, occurred to me that what the tourist bureau in Fez should do, since non-Muslims are not allowed in mosques and most medresas, is to, forgive this very suburban thought, have house tours. Our hotel and the Chergui mansion were very satisfying to see and a half dozen such establishments would take up the slack left by the unseeable mosques.

We walked to the Bab Bou Jeloud Gate, there was no demonstration this time, perhaps the Swiss man accused of the murders of the young women had already been arrested, stopping for coffee at one of a number of cafés before the gate. It had an open area upstairs where we could look down on the constant movement of men and women shopping or engaging in pushing things for sale hither and thither on donkeys or a variety of carts. Although there were certainly tourists, it was not by any means all tourists. Below us in a wheelchair was a man with an intelligent, very well shaved face who looked as though he had had a stroke. His face was twisted and he either could not speak or spoke with great difficulty but his companions spoke to him and he watched the scene around him with interested eyes.

We came down stairs, paid our bill and walked to the Botanical Garden with no difficulty. Norman, our morning waiter with braces, had suggested it as a destination. It has a pleasant pond with egrets, ducks and geese on its far edge. There are streams leading to the pond with pretty bridges over them. Huge trees tower over you, bright beds of flowers, herbs of various kinds and fountains lead you from area to area. There is also a cactus garden with aloes and those cacti that seem to be composed of green plates connected edge on edge. Not thrilling but pleasant.

We ate on the terrace of the restaurant where we had stopped for coffee not a very good lunch. I think we both felt rather as though we were kicking a can down a dusty road. This was not high thrill tourism.

I think it was this afternoon on the way back that we stopped at the medresa across from the water clock that we had not been able to see before. It is pretty with warm cedar woodwork but not exceptional. However, it was full of an international gaggle of tourists, a number of whom were Chinese, many honeymooning couples, leading me to contemplate the fact that if you are a Chinese husband you must also be a fashion photographer. The young Chinese women, usually with their intensely black hair let down posed in 1920’s dance postures—one knee up, head with sweeping hair bent over it with arms and fingers outspread to the sides. Their husbands dutifully recorded these inappropriate poses, kneeling, bending twisting to get the right angle.

On our way back to Derb al Horra I noticed a shop with a pretty swing coat embroidered white on black. I don’t think I would have gone in but looking inside I saw a number of Japanese couples shopping. The Chinese will go into any shop. If you see Japanese it is probable that the shop is of interest since they shop stylish, high end.

It turned out to be a good place full of interesting things, clothing, shoes, inexpensive jewelry, scarves. To my delight I, who am not in favor of tee shirts ever, found a tee shirt with a camel, ruminating on his cud in a fez, looking out from under high grade eye lashes at you with that hauteur which is intrinsic to camels, The following legend marched below, “ Un chameau, c’est un cheval dessiné par une commission d’éxperts.” I bought it for my grandson.

And so home, first for mint tea and then for eggplant salad. The hotel had filled up a bit by this time. Besides Kathy and me there were three gay couples. Unfortunately we couldn’t pass as a lesbian couple as we had separate rooms.

Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2018

We decided to go further afield, to the area known as Fez el Andalous, which meant coming down Tala’a Kbira and crossing the river. I am not sure which bridge we crossed over. Unfortunately the river has had a concrete channel created for it, making me think of the Los Angeles River which is more concrete than river, but the Fez River in its present state is a major triumph of a local young woman educated at Columbia and Harvard, Aziza Chaouni. She was the driving force, which helped the local government to turn the river from a lethally polluted sewer into a now largely un-littered stream. It had been covered over with concrete because its fumes were so noxious. Not only did the raw sewerage of the Medina flow into it but all of the chemicals from the tanneries, infiltrating the water table. It may not be a green place yet but it is a triumph none-the-less.

The buildings around the river are recent and are decorated with modern tiles that are cheerful and brilliant against their tan background. This was also the area of the university, a famous institution in its day. It has not returned.

El Andalous, or al Andalous is an area settled by Andalucians, Moslems who left Spain in 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella reconquering Spain declared it an exclusively Christian country.

We walked up the hill to the Mosque Andalous, which we could not enter, through streets that felt totally different from those on the other side of the river. There seemed to be more space, more air, a lighter sense of life here. People talked or shouted greetings to each other. They seemed in less of a hurry. We walked into the court of something, probably a mosque, where a woman motioned to us that we could not enter but gave us each a small, white candle as a consolation prize.

We came back across the river. Climbing up Tala ‘a Kbira, we came to a shop we had noticed in our previous perambulations because its lamps were more interesting than most. I have been enamored of the Moroccan pierced brass lamp and the Moroccan stained glass lamp since I first saw them. I carried one of the stained glass variety all the way back to the US with me on my first trip to Morocco in 1960. Unfortunately, it was squashed by the heavy plaster cartouche it was attached to in my Brooklyn house when the cartouche detached itself from the ceiling one night and descended via the electric wires of the lamp to the floor. The shop was large and full of lamps casting, from their piercings, flecks of lights like swarms of insects to dance among the shadows of the shop. Kathy bought a gorgeous one shaped, most unusually, like a doughnut, that when not on looks unpierced but in darkness when illuminated casts a complex and delicate dance of patterns shinning from its piercings.

Kathy asked the older man who was obviously in charge why his lamps were better. He told her proudly, “Because I employ designers.” He also said that he designs many of them himself. The workmanship is quite fantastic.

I showed him the card of the jewelry shop we had seen with our guide. He drew a map, which amazingly we were able to follow. They remembered us at the shop. I searched out the green necklace; Kathy, still feeling dubious about the quality of the moonstones looked them over again. There are seemingly endless cases displaying necklaces, earrings, and bracelets.

We both bought after bargaining quite well. I got him down the equivalent of a hundred euros.

We had a late lunch at the Clock Restaurant, on the top floor with views out to various solid, square minarets. I had an excellent couscous with delicious roast chicken that looked as though it had been lacquered. Getting up those stairs to the roof was a real haul but worth it.

We walked home through the familiar streets but on the lane, Derb al Horra, that took us from Tala’a Kbira to Tala’a Sghira a man stepped out of a door way and motioned us in. This is one of those situations where being two is a godsend. Alone I would never have followed the man, in working clothes and his better dressed companion into the dark entry way and corridor that led into the house. The companion asked for an entry fee of about 2.50 U.S. The better-dressed man tried to explain to us in French where we were and what we were looking at.

What we entered was an old house, in a terrible state of abandonment and decay, called Dar Ba Mohammed Chergui, Chergui for short. It was straight out of Omar Khayyam,

“They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:”

Well, maybe not the Lion but certainly that Lizard and all his relations. The garden was hip high in grass and smelled of jasmine. The fountain’s tile work was barely discernable, it was so engulfed in weeds and white banks of jasmine. A few orange trees laden with glowing globes struggled against the encroachment of their wilder neighbors. Some windows were broken; others still shown with brilliant reds and yellows. A chandelier dangled its wires, its arms askew. Shutters, ceilings, walls were painted with entrancing designs or vases of flowers. Archways were filigrees of white honeycombs or exuberant stalactites of many colors. Everything was vivid with color and design.

With limited French we understood that the house had belonged to a man with three wives but it had been bought by someone from Qatar who could not get money into the country to fund the renovation because of “political” problems. We later saw a huge poster advertising a new hotel to be constructed from the Chergui and another mansion. It certainly will be grand if it ever happens. In the meantime the Lizard is in possession.

We were greeted at our hotel’s outer door by our plume-tailed friend. I begged permission for his entry. He came and sat with us over tea.

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

We had a latish breakfast. The breakfasts are really heavenly. This time besides the delicate omelet there was a small crepe, dainty as a lace handkerchief, a shellacked cushion of anise bread and another cushion of corn bread, all warm and fragrant accompanied by honey, butter, cheese, apricot jam, and strawberry jam. The usual fresh orange juice plus endless pots of coffee.

We walked out of the hotel’s tiled passages to the street and turned left to go to Tala ‘a Kbira. Again we were headed for the mosque. I can’t remember whether we never made it there the day before or if the doors were closed. This time the great doors were open and we had glimpses of the green and white tiled interior accompanied, as a flute might drift above a cello, by green branches, but only glimpses. The Karaouyine mosque is largely surrounded by the bazaars. One sees, about six feet up extending across the opening of passages into the bazaars from the mosque, metal or wooden bars. These mark the boundary of the horm, the area of sanctuary around the mosque.

Dodging carts loaded with brilliant oranges, stacked with tottering six-packs of soda, detritus from gutted buildings, donkeys heavily loaded with skins or anything else possible, we worked our way to Place Seffarine, an open area with an ancient tree, leaning, stunted and heavily pruned, where you are deafened by people pounding on brass and copper pots which they are fashioning into the required shapes. Accompanying this pounding were two men, one African with a grizzled beard, the other Moroccan and younger in striped djebllas wearing hats between pill boxes and turbans with tassels attached on long leashes which, as they pounded on their drums, they whirled happily around their heads for cash.

This square with its copper and brass pots, its stumpy old tree shedding bark in pale patches and the remains of the water clock on Tala ‘a Kabira became my two favorite locations in Fez. Seffarine, however, is an outrageously noisy place and difficult to tolerate for long. Also, it is a center of milling tourists, which is unappealing. We luckily took the wrong way out of the square and the tourists quickly evaporated. The nice thing about tourists is that they have a narrow track that they follow and once you step off that path you are immediately in another world. This was a shabby world of tiny shops reselling things slightly damaged, elderly men and women begging, children chasing each other and a number of miniscule restaurants around a small tree whose base was heaped with things that might be useful someday and a convention of cats. We took note of the location of the square and headed toward the tanneries in the correct direction this time.

As we came closer we caught whiffs of the tanneries. Someone carrying a bouquet of fresh mint stopped us and presented us each with a branch. This was a big help. The tanneries are, of course, heavily touristed and therefore the hassle factor is high. We climbed up a stair sniffing our mint with each step to look down on the terrible vats in which the skins are dyed. It is a colorful sight but a deadly occupation for the men who work here. Their lungs are eaten out by the chemicals and as they tread on the skins in the dying process they are poisoned through their skin by the dye. There is also a store on the terrace from which you view the pools of dye.

We walked further on to climb the stair to a second terrace, which gives a wider view. It reminded me of being in Bangladesh on the coast where barefoot men, with no protective clothing, take great, rusty ships apart with acetylene torches. There are jobs that are done by those with neither education nor options.

There were some charming yellow, little slippers on our way through the wind of streets haunted by the tannery odor but the asking price was ridiculous and we were going to have to inhale during the bargaining process.

Finding our way back through the alleys punctuated by little shops and huge iron bound doors, we came out into the Sefferine, not difficult to find, just follow the sound of pounding. We took a left to the tree surrounded by restaurants. I had a lamb tagine, delicious, while a complacent, black and white cat, sure that if she waited in well-mannered silence she would receive, kept her big green eyes fixed on every movement of my fork. Of course she received a little lamb. Allah will provide even to cats.

An elderly man with a fine bushy grey beard came begging and the women behind us bought him lunch. We gave him a little change. One of the fine characteristics of Islam is that people follow its tenants and give to those in need. On the other hand I find the brusque way Moslem men and women as well brush or even barge past you without a murmur of apology irritating after a few days.

Leaving the restaurant we circled and doubled back on ourselves three times until we found entering Sefferine plaza an embarrassment. Kathy figured the right way out and we climbed up Tala’a Kbira to cross over to Tala’a Sghira climb up more, and slip into the lane leading to our wide wooden doors.

Monday, December 24, 2018

We found our way to the museum that turned out to be open, although on the Internet it said it was closed. It is an open square around a garden of orange trees, bamboo, jasmine bushes and a magnificent old oak with mighty limbs. The exhibits are interesting because they are local. There is delicate embroidery and some that is heavy and intense. There are ceramics and jewelry and handsome djellabas, a good-looking saddle, and some antique firearms that may have been more ornamental than utilitarian.

We walked to the Bab Bou Jeoud Gate, built in 1912 with green ceramics on one side and blue on the other. The Kasbah above turned out to have little interest so we returned to the Gate where a, I suspect government instigated, demonstration with drums, signs and chanting was being held in memory of the two young Scandinavian women recently murdered in the Atlas by, it is claimed, ISIS. (They have since arrested a Swiss man for the murders.) Anyway it was a nice gesture.

We walked along the Tala ‘a Kabira, a main drag though the Medina, to the Clock Café, climbing, climbing—bless them; they have a handrail–to the roof terrace where I had a banana lassi. We sat near some, I think, French women, mother and two daughters possibly, who were juggling maps and guidebooks. Maman wanted to know if I was having a smoothie. When I said it was a banana lassi one knew immediately she did not eat bananas.

We came down and looked at the struts and wooden pieces of what was once, it is thought, a water clock, although no one knows how it operated. There used to be shallow brass bowls on the struts, elegantly carved, but those have been removed for safekeeping. Across the way is another medresa we thought we could not enter. The doors to all of these unenterables are huge and handsome, sometimes clothed in brass, sometimes just great slabs of wood held together by iron bands, studded with more iron.

We were now headed to the main mosque the Karaquyine, hoping that the door would be open so that we would at least have a glimpse in. Along the way we inspected poufs in various colors, designs, and finally materials, although the original thought was leather. However, coming from Spain, where the leather-work is fine, we became more and more disenchanted with the quality of what we were seeing, finally deciding that the leather was out but a rug pouf might be in. The street is a continuous flow of shops tumbling down and up hill.

We stopped for lunch at a small, shiningly clean shop run by a young man and woman that proudly features takeout but has a few nice chairs and tables inside. I had a delicious chicken sandwich with a sort of salad on the side.

Then more shops, including a large ceramic shop of many rooms and courts with a proprietor, who when he is softening you up for the kill, tells you that “you bargain like a Berber.” Kathy acquired a large hazy blue, ceramic menorah trimmed with silver. I discovered a bunch of really filthy, very rusty old locks with keys. For the last 30 years or so I have given my son a lock for Christmas, only missing out once or twice, and I had been looking in all the shops we went into. Surely, I would find one. I did, a nice specimen. I would guess close to a hundred years old.

This shop was on a street that connects Tala ‘a Kbira to Tala ‘a Sghira. We made it safely to Sghira but then, recognizing things around us, knowing signs for cafes and other Riads, we became totally lost, utterly confused and having asked our way a couple of times accepted the humiliation of having a man call our hotel. They sent out a rescue team in the person of Hadid who takes care of the pool.

We had a small plate each of the extraordinary eggplant salad for dinner. It is smoky and slightly picante. We ate it almost every night knowing that probably never again would we have aubergene salad of this quality.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

I should have mentioned that we are the only people in the hotel. That never happens and it’s wonderful to have the place to ourselves.

We had a fine breakfast of three different, small breads right out of the oven, a melt in your mouth mushroom and cheese omelet, absolutely fresh orange juice, all sorts of jams, yogurt and several pots of coffee. This was served to us by “Norman”, that’s our approximation of his name, who has braces on his teeth—a sure sign of being middle class—and is studying to be a lawyer. He is bright and full of ‘satiable curiosity.

We had hired a guide for the day, a distasteful decision but we felt a necessary one, who was a tall, good looking man named Fouad. He was fine. I just hate being guided. He took us up and down all kinds of alleys and lanes, all of which were exciting and surprisingly clean. They were exciting because of the goods—slippers in glowing rainbows of colors, djellabas in all colors and fabrics with little round buttons marching down their fronts, embroidered cloths, pallequins, women’s gowns, pierced brass lamps, stained glass brass lamps, pharmacies, spice stalls exhaling heady breaths of herbs at us.

He took us to a rug place, which had a wonderful view from the roof but, when we were not interested in buying, and what was on offer was not a patch on the Istanbuli carpets, the man was definitely rude in his disappointment. Not good. More interesting was a sort of lavish antique store with very interesting jewelry, pierced brass lamps of high quality and a vast, confusing collection of jars, pots, old silver, woodcarvings, some dubious. My feeling was that there were well-managed old things here. Kathy found a bowl full of big hunks of moonstones, quite amazing, softly emanating bluey-white with yellow flashes.
I, unfortunately, found a many stranded green bead necklace. ($360) But …

The rule is, NEVER BUY ON YOUR FIRST DAY. We didn’t but a lot of pressure was applied to Kathy before we left.

Then he took us to a place that sells argan oil, solid amber perfume, and something tied up in netting that, when inhaled, opens your sinuses like a hurricane working its way down a passage of locked doors, and various beauty products. Somehow we both went into aphasia and found ourselves counting out the equivalent of $100 each quite passively.

We found that all mosques and most medresas will not let us in as we are non-believers. However Fouad did get us into one recently renovated medresa that is beautiful with floors and floors of cells for the students, rooms for the teachers, a central court with fountain and oodles of tourists of all nationalities and races.

We had an adequate lunch at a place where all the diners were tourists. I had couscous, which was a bit soggy. By this time we were both itching to get away. We were delivered back to the hotel. The tour was only $25 each so there was nothing to complain about.

We settled onto a couch above the swimming pool and were joined by the plume-tailed cat who has taken a fancy to Kathy. Late we had eggplant salad for dinner in the cozy dining room.

The Fez airport is airy and pleasing to the eye with yellow dancing designs on its pillars. We were met by a lean, bespectacled young man, who took us to the car in which he would deliver us to the Riad Alkantara. It was so wonderful to be met rather than finding a taxi and arguing about the price, which we, being newly arrived, would not know. It is always acrimonious and one always feels one has been cheated by one’s ignorance.

Kathy engaged him in conversation while I tried to decifer what I saw out the window. He is a husband and father with an incomplete bacalaureat. At the moment his wife is finishing her degree. Outside the car the darkness was illuminated by continuous strands of multicolored signs and neon. Occasionally we would pass, it was Saturday, a large room, its doors open to the street strung with lights outside and softly glowing with in where many people walked and talked, brilliant in sweeping, long clothes, a wedding.

We stopped at a softly lit open place with a jumble of buildings to one side. Here a man with an irregular collection of teeth greeted us, took our bags and headed down a lane. We hurried after him twist by turn under high lamps and high walls passing a few, but not many people. Our suitcases on their rollers rumbled along behind us and him over the cobbles.

Around one corner a small, marmalade cat with an imperial plume for a tail acquired out parade, preceding us, led us through a great double wooden door, down a twist of passages to where a garden and palms glowed in the light of high, pierced lanterns delivering us to the desk and Rahma‘s, smiling scarf wrapped care. He then left going off into the night and his personal activities.

The hotel, the Riad Alkantara, priced well above our usual level of accommodations, is gorgeous. Whether it was just someone’s home or ranks as high as a palace I am not sure but it is beautiful. After registering we walked through a tile court with stairs down to a garden of palms and orange trees around a big pool, then down to a second level court, also over looking the pool and then into a court with a skylight under which were rugs, sofas, capacious armchairs and a piano. Here the walls are decorated with tiles and the intricate stucco work which is typical of Fez.

In my room the coffered ceiling is painted and inlaid with designs. There are two huge shuttered windows and a French door, so that one side of the room is almost completely glass. At night I close the shutters and the French door is covered by a heavy, cream colored, silk drape. Above the windows is beautiful stucco work deeply incised to give it shadow. At one end of the room is a neat little wc and at the other a bathroom with a tiled shower which must be climbed up and then down into and a handsome brass sink.

I settled in in the digital manner, which means after unpacking and hanging up, there is plugging in to charge. And so to bed, under the coffered ceiling and the chandelier’s ropes of crystals.

The flight to Phenom Penh is a short one from Bangkok, the airport functional but undistinguished and the entry process painless and efficient. The later gave me my first opportunity to experience the graciousness of Cambodians. After I had supplied the man behind the counter with 1,200 Baht and a picture, he told me to stand to one side rather than get on the next line. He then went to the people beside him behind the counter, got my visa and brought it to me. Nowhere in the world has this happened to me. How incredibly kind.

Exiting the airport, I found a line of ATMs as promised but had to work my way through three before I found one that would accept my card. I now had two one hundred dollar US bills, a bill I am so visually unfamiliar with that it always looks like play money to me. I picked up a piece of paper for a $15 taxi into town, but couldn’t imagine the taxi would have change for a hundred dollar bill. The taxi dispatcher was dubious about my chances of getting change. I went into a fast food restaurant five steps away. The young man at the cash register cheerfully supplied me with twenties. Graciousness again.

Cambodia does have its own money but it operates on the dollar and that is what you get from an ATM. Cambodian money is used to make change for anything under a dollar.
It is a long ride into town through the usual SE Asia urban airport disorder, well; let’s revise that to, the post-airport disorder endemic in the modern world. The only thing different is that everything is new. There were a few empty shops gathering road dust but generally there is a bustling sense of prosperity.

The FCC, the Foreign Correspondents Club, where I stayed is on the river, the Tonlé Sap, but between hotel and river is a road intoning a monotone roar of traffic of all varieties—top end: Mercedes and Rolls Royce, the later an obscenity in a country this poor; mid-level: cars of all nationalities, trucks, vans, tour buses but not a lot; low end: tuk-tuks of different kinds, cyclos but not many, motorcycles, motorcycles pulling all kinds of carts, scooters, bicycles.

The pollution is bad but the view of the river spotted with small islets of water hyacinth floating on it is lovely. My room had a fair-sized balcony facing a four-story building with verandas. I had lunch on their bottom floor and felt as though I was being gassed. It was a nice crab salad, however. I wrote in my journal naively, “I suspect it will be noisy later.”

The FCC is pleasantly old. My room was large with a big bed, a big bathroom, and both aircon and a ceiling fan. I love ceiling fans. A desk lamp would have been nice.

Buying postcards from of wizened woman in glasses in a wheelchair, I didn’t notice until far too late that they were not photos but rather smeary paintings of Phenom Penh.

That night I found that the River Crown, where I had had lunch, is a party venue with competing sound systems on each verandah. Thank God I had excellent earplugs. I could shut it out completely, well; the baseline had a tendency to thrum in one’s dreams. But still no mean feat.

The next morning at 6:30 the view from my balcony was pale with dawn and quiet, a few joggers, but by 7:30 the world was too much with us with constant traffic, although no horns.

The Phenom Penh I knew 28 years ago is completely erased, not entirely a bad thing.

My friend in Phenom Penh is C; we met in Pakistan on November 7th or 8th in Gilgit in 2001. She had just been hired for a job in Afghanistan, which was cancelled a week later, while she was walking on a glacier and knew nothing about 9/11. I was headed up to the Chinese border to go to Kashgar with four Czech men and one French young woman. I learned a little about events in the Pakistani border town.

As I got off the vehicle I had thumbed on the highway outside of Gulmit, a heavenly town in the Hindu Kush, a young European woman came up to me and said, “Do you know?” These are words you never want to hear while traveling. I said, “No. You’d better tell me.”

“You can watch it on TV tonight but you won’t understand what they are saying because it’s in Urdu, of course. Two planes have crashed into the World Trade Center buildings in New York City. That’s all we know.”

People talk about suspension of disbelief. I experienced suspension of belief. Seeing the clips on TV, which as all say, looked like a disaster movie sequence, only made it worse. How could you believe in this? But in the middle of the night in my grotty room I sat bolt upright thinking, “This is real. This is going to change my life forever.”

The Czechs, the French woman and I went on into China. That border crossing is one of the most interesting in the world since it is largely uninhabited and wild. I saw Bactrian camels near the checkpoint. We had a lovely time in Kashgar at the market where all varieties of livestock are sold. When we came back to the hotel the young Chinese woman at the desk said to us, “You were planning to go back to Pakistan tomorrow?”

“Yes,” we all replied.

“Well, you can’t they’ve closed both sides of the border.” She seemed to take a personal satisfaction in announcing this.

We went to a café to decide what to do. My companions all needed to leave on schedule because they had jobs to return to. I thought that probably if I gave it three days the border would open again but staying alone in a not nice Chinese hotel for 3 days did not appeal. I decided to go with them.

We found a sleeper bus to Urumchi with bunks in it, two people two a bunk. This in a culture where you may not see your girl friend’s face but you can certainly see her bottom when she squats by the roadside. Urumchi was great because I got to see the mummies of Urumchi in the local museum. (I can tell about this if you are interested but I am already on a lengthy digression.) We then flew on to Beijing where I stayed for five days or so. I learned to dislike it very quickly, although the people are nice. It’s ugly, huge and soulless.

Around six pm C and her daughter M, age six and the image of her mother, came by the FCC. I met their tuk-tuk driver, John. Gracious is again the right word. We ate in the hotel restaurant, which has a selection of cats who circulate under the tables. Of course, there are the old Western men with young Cambodian women. Earlier I saw in a café, a grey, super-fat, waddler with a girl in her mid-teens. “Yech” as Rudi would say of things other than duck noodles. However, the one in the restaurant was not fat, was quite nice looking and his companion was not underage. He talked with hardly a breath between paragraphs while she smiled and listened.

The next morning I had breakfast on the verandah under fans turning in the best SE Asian lazy fashion while I watched the boats. The breakfast is enormous—a slightly bready croissant, eggs, a slice of ham, stir fried tomatoes, mushrooms and greens and what I very much suspect, from the after taste, is instant coffee. At eight am I was alone except for an Anglo-Asian couple.

John, C’s tuk-tuk driver who was on loan to me, picked me up for a tourist day. We went to two wats, Langka and Montrei, both new and not very interesting. At one a monk called out, John translated, “If you are Chinese, I am not saying hello.”

The Lonely Planet lists the Prayuvong Buddhist Factory as worth seeing. They manufacture Buddhas, gaudily painted, and spirit houses. Unless you have never seen such a place, it is not worth seeing. But it is tucked up a green and leafy little alley that has a neighborhood feeling. It was also fun watching John find it.

The Russian Market was a dead loss for me. It is constructed like most SE Asian Markets as a sort of ramshakled roofed-over area with long narrow aisles between stalls where you suffocate from the heat. There were lots of silver boxes but I think, all plate, not real silver. The clothes were polyester, nylon and rayon with a few pieces of Indian cotton. Near there was a very nice coffee shop where I had a cappuccino and a meringue.

Outside the Russian market, around its edge were more interesting stores. One had three paintings on glass but I was not inspired to buy, as they were very crude. There was a dress shop with interesting designs but all executed in poly.

John brought me back to the hotel about two. I dawdled over lunch, a pleasant fish curry, thinking I had lots of time but as I came down stairs there was Helen Jarvis. My Australian friend Kathy had connected us. We got into Helen and Allan’s car and drove through quite heavy traffic over the new bridge across the Tonlé Sap with the old one under repair next to it. This let us onto a highway from which we turned onto a concrete road between the usual concrete houses. When that ended in a dirt road the houses also changed. They were traditional wooden ones up on stilts. Their house on the right is very long containing rooms for three groups of people. They have one large room with an ensuite Khmer tiled bathroom, a couple with whom they are friends have another large room and bath and the third room has a Western tile bath and was inhabited by a Cambodian woman who has now moved further up country. There is a big kitchen-dinning room. The verandah runs all around the house. They have superb vistas of the Mekong and an island in it.

To my consternation I found that the trials of Pol Pot´s leaders had occurred. I had heard nothing about this, although I had known the trial was pending and that there were difficulties around it. If I have my facts straight there were five people charged, two of whom never reached the trial stage. One died and the other, a woman was declared mentally unfit to stand trial. She also died shortly thereafter. All those sentenced received life imprisonment. There is no capital punishment in Cambodia.

From my muddled notes: The UN in participating in the trial had three requirements:
1) That there was evidence of the crimes
2) That there were suspects and witnesses.
3) That the country be able, I think from the point of view of jurisprudence, to try the case.

The answer to the third was, “No.” I remember that in 1990 there was only one judge who had survived the Pol Pot purges. The judges, therefore, were a hybrid of Cambodians and international judges.

Helen told me that the people in the villages wanted to know if, since Pol Pot was dead, his children could be tried instead, or if his bones could be tried. I totally sympathize with this thinking.

The final judgment was in 2013. I have no memory of seeing this in the press. Those sentenced appealed but lost their appeal.

Issues, not examined before, came up in the trial such as forced marriages, the forced consummation of these marriages. It is easy to spy on people from under their houses in this part of the world. If a marriage was not consummated the woman might have been raped by the KR.

Helen and Allan have bought land across the road from their main house and erected three wooden houses, which they rent through Air B & B. At the moment they have four mysterious young Chinese men who originally booked for three nights, stayed a week and are now negotiating for a month in another of the houses. The son of one man is coming to stay. The man is planning to get a puppy for him, although the boy will only be there for a week. Allan suggested that they might eat it. That would be a more merciful fate than what otherwise is likely to be its lot.

Allan and Helen kindly sent me home with their driver after a dinner of fish curry, a good fish curry, my second as I had had one for lunch. They have two lovely cats who obviously think well of themselves.

The next day John picked me up at 10 after a repeat of the lovely breakfast of croissant, scrambled eggs with ham, fried mushrooms, tomatoes and greens. The only fly in the ointment is the, probably Nescafe, coffee.

We went to Wat Phenom, well worth the visit since the wat itself is up on a knoll and it is fun to look down terrace by terrace through the trees. There was a ceremony going on with music—one drummer with three drums, two Asian xylophones—rather than being straight they are sway-backed—two of the crescent shaped gong “xylophones.” I loved it, didn’t want to leave. The images and paintings are better than in the other wats.

We drove to Mekong Quilts, P’s NGO, on Street 240. I bought a quilt with multi-colored fish for a friend’s unborn son. I also met P’s Cambodian ”daughter” Channy who runs the shop. The quilts are made by Vietnamese women, I think, and they have shops in Vietnam and Cambodia. They are not particularly cheap but the money goes to the women. While we waited for Channy, one of the girls told me she wanted to travel. We talked about that and how to travel as a woman alone.

Meanwhile the rain was pouring down and John had zipped up his tuk-tuk curtains. We went to the Central Market as the rain eased off and then disappeared. It is architecturally interesting with a big dome in the center but still it houses mostly polyester and the kind of Asian jewelry that terrifies me because everything glitters so much I can’t believe it is real.

From there, where I bought nothing, we went to the East-West Travel Agency on Street 57 north of Boung Keng Kang Market where two shy, defensive youngsters sold me a round trip ticket to Siem Reap. Their enthusiasm for the glitter of the town unsold me on staying there. But they explained the tuk-tuk guide system.

John got me to an okay, but not terrific, French restaurant where in its cool and quiet arches I had a lamb brochette and a lemon tea. The only other inhabitants were two couples, one of which was French.

The final stop, irony intended, was Tuol Sleng. I would present John with a list of places I wanted to go to in the morning and he would decide on the order in which we would go to them. Helen had told me that it has been enlarged and improved. They have organized it in a much more logical way.

The rooms full of photos are still for me the most heart rending and poignant—the fear, the despair, the madness, the incomprehension and the children. The photos of the children throw me into a rage. As was true last time, I feel I must look into the eyes in each photo as the only recognition I have to give.

Now the survivors have told their stories; you can read them; other stories you listen to. There are more cells open to be viewed, some are of wood. I mention this because, inexplicably, I found the cells of wood less terrifying than those of brick. These were closed last time, only the brick ones that I remember with horror, were open. There are the torture rooms with metal beds that would conduct electricity.

They have made pleasant places to sit in the grounds where doves call to each other and a peacock sweeps the grass with his tail. They remind you that you don’t have to look and read if you don’t want to. Places are offered for meditation and prayer.

Tuol Sleng effects me like the Snow Queen’s Mirror but does not caused in me what that Mirror caused in Kay. I find days afterward I have shards of emotion, half-formed thoughts, slivers of rage, broken reflections of sadness.

Thursday I was on my own. I went to the National Museum, which I have happy memories of. Now it has far more objects in it, too many, particularly the small stuff. Small stuff in museums is exhausting. The building needs to be enlarged and refurbished. The signage for the smalls is done on pieces of semi-transparent plastic making it, at least for old eyes, difficult to read. Among the smalls, my favorite things are the lamps. Half opened flowers on tall, leaved stems, are cupped to hold oil and a wick.

The big statues I quickly remembered, although I had forgotten the horse-headed god. Seeing him brought back murals in caves in Tibet where he also appears, frequently sitting in the lotus position. These statues are imposing. They were my first indication of what to expect in Angkor in 1990 but the galleries were less crowded, and therefore, the impact of a broken armed Shiva, a headless Lakshmi was greater. The result of that former spaciousness was interesting.

I was looking for a particular bronze, I think a Shiva (I have to admit to not having read his label because I was so entranced by him) that I remembered with electric clarity because of his face, the grace of his arms and the openness caused by his shattered state.

When I found him he was about a tenth the size he had been in my memory. I had enlarged him hugely. Also, as I approached him with the happiness of reunion I saw, to my horror and rage, a Chinese man reach out and knock on him with his knuckles. I suppose to find out it he was metal or papier-mâché. I shook a teacherly finger at the Chinese man’s face and said, “No, no. Don’t touch.” He recoiled but I could tell from his body language that if I moved away he would do it again out of defiance. So I stood guard until he and his wife moved on.

The exhibits now go up to the 20th century, including gold woven fabrics, looms, and the carved cabin of a boat. There’s a charmer of a monkey, one of Hanuman’s crowd, giving his human girl friend an open-mouthed love bite on her cheek. In the grounds there is a fine Ganesh who holds the end of his trunk in the palm of his hand, an interesting gesture.

I had an adequate lunch in the museum café and then, without thinking, went to the University of Fine Arts. I was supposed to see Proeng Cheng at three but I forgot that. I got to the University about two pm. I waited for him. They called him from the gate, and that was fine.

There are sculptures by the students scattered about the campus. But only one interesting one, it was of hands grasping each other’s wrists and ending with a skyward pointing finger.

I recognized Proeng as he came down the path. I don’t know if he recalled me. We found plenty to talk about. He’s been minister of Culture several times and has the usual complaints about lack of money and interest in the arts.

To my astonishment he told me he received his postgraduate education to be a stage manager in Pyongyang, North Korea. Having been to North Korea and seen the spectacles they put on, it would be a good place to study for that job. He returned to Phenom Penh in 1978. That was the year it became safe, more or less, to be in Cambodia, always excluding land mines. I came twelve years later and it felt to me as though the KR had left a month before. He married late but has one son who is his colleague at the University.

He told me Ouk Chea died around 1996 making me sad as I have such memories of Ouk as a good, extremely intelligent person who would have been a great help to his country.

IN MEMORIUM: OUK CHEA

When Ouk knew that Pol Pot was coming into Phenom Penh, he destroyed all his family´s documents, threw away his glasses and told his children that, no matter what the situation, they must tell anyone who asked that he had been a pedicab driver. Pol Pot’s soldiers asked to see his hands. They were, of course, soft. The soldiers tried to bribe his children with food. Everyone was hungry in Cambodia. He saw his youngest daughter die of starvation. When I knew him he was Minister of Cultural Monuments.

On Friday the 26th I made the short flight up to Angkor uneventfully. Here and in Phenom Penh for the first time in years I had to figure out what to do on arrival. I have been traveling known routes for many years. You get a tuk-tuk for $29 and are driven wherever you want. Mr. Pheap took me to the ticket office where for $37 I bought a ticket with my picture on it for Angkor. We drove through Siem Reap, which looks like a never-ending strip mall punctuated by grandiose hotels. I don’t remember anything about Siem Reap twenty-eight years ago. I had also forgotten how enormous Angkor Wat is. Without disrespect, it is typical of dictatorship architecture. Its goal, as is true of the Forbidden City, is to overwhelm and let you know how small you are. The temperature was in the 30’s Celsius. I carried water but it was a tough day of over ten kilometers.

In the first set of buildings there was 28 years ago a decapitated Buddha. Pol Pot had ordered his soldiers to decapitate all the Buddhas of Angkor. Now most of the statues are whole. The complex dates from 1010 to 1220. I found the corridor that has the bas-relief of the battle from the Mahaburata, it’s wonderful, but not the one with the men pulling on the snake, nor did I make it to the third set of buildings. If I did this again I would spend one day in Angkor Wat. Since it opens at six am one should start as close to that time as possible and quit for the day after lunch. A walking stick would be useful for balance on the uneven stones and a flashlight would be handy.

There were lots of people, plenty of Mainlanders. But the Chinese problem is not the tourists but those who are coming to stay and buy land as has happened in Burma. John says they are now 60% of the population of Phenom Penh. The number of people makes things a bit difficult but more annoying is the number of people asking to be your guide or trying to sell you guide books or picture books.

There are people of all nationalities. I heard someone speaking Spanish. It turned out to be a father and son from Barcelona. The son was amiable but the father had his nose in the air. The funniest incident occurred as I waited for Pheap after walking around. A round-faced Chinese woman with round glasses asked generally among the waiting drivers, while slowly, carefully outlining of the letters with her forefinger, “WC?” They were immediately helpful.

Next Pheap took me to Ta Prohm which I had never been to but which I immediately fell for, not because of the tree eating its main tower, although that’s pretty spectacular, but because of the delicacy of its carvings and its feeling, even with a milling crowd of Columbians, of tranquility. Its stone has a reddish cast to it. It was off limits in 1990.

We went to Bayon next which is smaller than I remember. You are allowed all over it. This wasn’t true in 1990. There were a lot of Mainlanders taking pictures of themselves, a thing they could have done in their own kitchens. It is difficult to find your way about. The steps are often tumbled and uneven. Sometimes you are in short corridors that are dark.

Coming around a corner in a puzzled state I came upon a boy. He helped me find my way and before I knew it I was engaged and he was saying, “I am a student.” This is a usual scam opening line. But he lead me in and out of chambers, up and down stairs, lending a hand when necessary before whipping out a plastic encased statement about a fund for students. I gave him $10 and he disappeared as if by magic.

In Bayon, it occurred to me, among those smiling stone faces, that this is the smile Pol Pot was trying to imitate.

Pheap then took me to a place for lunch. It was lousy but in a more or less air-conditioned space. I had a petrified chicken leg with rice and a watery ginger drink, not very cold.

It was only two and I didn’t need to get to the airport until 5:30 so I asked Pheap to take me to another temple. We went to a small, isolated one, Baksei Chamkrong. It is just a single tower with narrow steps straight up. There was a photo shoot taking place in front of a man and woman in brilliant blue, Cambodian period costume. I watched that for a while and then walked around the temple finding two groups of big black ants marching in double file through the grass. I stepped over them.

I ran into two Europeans here. The first was a nice Dutchman who immediately climbed to the top, while I climbed a bit and contemplated the narrowness and slipperiness of the steps. Then a young woman appeared. We got into conversation. She lives in New York City, is in the hotel, hospitality management business but is originally from Macedonia. I gave her my email but unfortunately have not heard from her.

I decided not to climb to the top because I was fearful of coming down in a heap.

My driver then took me to the airport where I hung about for several hours with Mainlanders who had been on a buying spree in Siem Reap. When I arrived in Phenom Penh John and I had great difficulty finding each other but did and I got back to the FCC to put in my earplugs and go to sleep.

Errata: While the women in all Angkor sculptures are bare breasted, none of them have nipples. Was this some sort of censorship? Puritanism? On the other hand, all of the nagas have nostrils. No snake has a nose since they smell with their tongues.

C is a big Halloween person, so I was taken by John to someone’s apartment full of women and children—all races represented. The children were the most wondrous potpourri, or perhaps, salmagundi, of possibilities. The children were watching a ghastly kids show with awful music and dancing which was a well diluted combination of Indian Bollywood and American music video. C had organized the costume theme that had to do with some Net Flics show I, of course, have never heard of about a sci-fi monster. One of the mothers was the monster and wore a suffocating mask that resembled a purple Venus Fly Trap. C, equally suffocating, was in a prim polyester buttoned to the neck and wrist blouse and glasses she couldn’t see out of as the female scientist, victim of the monster.

Children and parents in tuk-tuks go around to prearranged stops in the ex-pat cum international community neighborhood. The receiving houses are given donations of candy to help out. It was great fun.

One little boy clung to his mother until she put his hat, a white cylinder whose significance I never figured out, on his head, whereupon he became quite his own man. There were pirates, a thumb sucking ghost, a number of cats, mostly tailless, various monsters, many witches, and ghouls with lipstick blood at the corners of their mouths. Royalty seems to be unfashionable, although there was one princess. One of my favorites was a mite of a girl in cave girl dress and a pearl necklace who suddenly had a spontaneous melt down.

It was well organized. We had fun going up and down the leafy lanes, following the list of addresses, clambering in and out of the tuk-tuk. It seemed to me that the local people in the street and standing in front of their houses enjoyed watching the foreigners in dress up.

When I went back to the hotel I found I had a new leak in my bathroom. I had had for days one that ran down the wall. I pointed it out to the adorably pretty chambermaids who responded, “We mop.” But now I found that the toilet paper roll on the shelf above the toilet was sodden. The new leak was from the ceiling. When I reported this to the woman at the desk, she said that they would not be able to fix it until the day after tomorrow, the day I was leaving. I turned down the offer of another room. It seemed like too much trouble.

Sunday John took me to the PO to mail my eternal postcards. Across the street I found a nice shop that sold silk, not just the thin stuff I have been seeing in shops around town, or the gauzy that is used for blouses, but fabric by the meter. Interestingly however, it is all of a solid color. There are no woven patterns. However I bought four yards of heavy orange and yellow silk. I think next time I will have to spend more time looking about for silk.

That afternoon after four we went out on the river—C, her daughter M, T, and Mi with her daughter about M’s age and Charlie who is maybe four. Immediately upon getting on the boat Charlie loudly decided that he was going to drown. Indeed that the entire purpose of the outing was a plot to drown him. Later M, when the boat rolled the tiniest bit went into panic. I told her it was what boats do; it was all right. She calmed down. Also with us was T an interesting man who has a company and who, as C puts it, “Just lives here.”

Everyone but me had brought dips—babaganosh, potato chips. T is an environmentalist, knows Helen and therefore, is aware of what is going on in ways most people are not. We went up river, around and island and then back down, passing other boats, among them the long ones carrying sand. This export of sand is causing environmental problems up river.

People live on some of the small boats, not many. T says the government is trying to force them out of their way of life both here and in Vietnam. Boat people in south Asia are like the nomads of Tibet to the Chinese, an uncontrolled population that they feel they must either eradicate or some how get under their thumb.

Getting off the boat was more of an adventure than getting on since in the dark we had to walk a two- plank walkway to the shore. This took serious concentration. John picked up C and me, dropping me off at the FCC

I flew the short flight back to Bangkok and got right into my life—went to the gym, saw the dressmaker, had a facial, a manicure, a pedicure, and got help for my computer from the landlady’s son which involved buying a memory stick.

I had been kindly invited to go out to the ISB, the International School of Bangkok, in Nonthaburi to talk about poetry to a class of six sixteen year olds. The town is an expat town full of blond women with babies whose only knowledge of Thais is their maid and the man who serves them lunch in the restaurant. I find this sort of thing horrifying. It is done, however, all the time in Spain by the Brits who build a town of their own next to a Spanish town and then never fraternize, but hire maids from the Spanish town. I am told it started as an enclave for Chevron employees. The thought that you might learn from another culture doesn’t occur because, of course, you know everything.

But the girls were a mix—Thai, Taiwanese and Thai, Chinese, Chinese and Thai, American, European—and all intelligent. Their teacher was an enthusiastic American, bubbling over with ideas. I enjoyed them enormously. We read poems I had asked to be printed out by Elizabeth Bishop, Carol Ann Duffy, Evan Boland, Audrey Lord and me.

Saturday I had my last lunch with W and T, which made me sad. They are off to Japan with their older relatives for a week. T chose the restaurant, which W didn’t know, although it is near his old high school. A simple place with Formica tables it serves interesting things—crab stir fried with vegetables, a clear soup with tofu and clumps of scrambled eggs, a night blooming flower with ground pork, delectable, a green chicken curry with, beside the usual eggplant, the shoot front the coconut tree, absolute heaven, another curry with shrimp, green shoots of some kind that was so hot I couldn’t do it. For dessert we had coconut ice cream made from the juice of the coconut. Yumm.

Sunday I went to the Royal Sports Club for dim sum lunch with Mond and Johnnie. When we had eaten we went down stairs to the open-air coffee shop for cappuccino and to watch the last horse race in Bangkok for a while. The new taxes are so high that they can’t afford to hold the races any more. The stands were full. We were not 20 feet from the track. It was thrilling to watch the bright dots of color that were the jockey’s silks, hear the horses pounding toward us and the finish line. And that seems an appropriate finish line for this year’s Asian blog.

Arriving in BKK on a Friday means you are up against evil traffic. The driver I got at the airport needed a john. There’s no john he could use in the airport? So we drove to a gas station where he left the meter on while he went to piss. He took me into BKK by a truly obscure and round about route. It took between and hour and a half and two hours. When I finally realized where I was I was most relieved.

I had given him the A One card, which explains how to get to Soi Kansemsan. However I could tell he had paid it no mind. Kansemsan is one way. He did understand my slightly hysterical hand motions accompanied by incomprehensible English. We got there. He was about 50 Baht over the usual price but since that’s about a buck and a half, what the hell. When I paid him he gave me a hangdog look. I gave him a mean look.

Wonders! My old dentist N had sent me an email about a pulmonologist at BNH Hospital. I went streaking off. They didn’t want to let me in to see him because he was due at the Palace but I threw my age at them and they gave in. Thank god this is part of the world where I can trade on my age. In the US they wouldn’t care.

Dr. Chan Chai is a terrific doctor, kind, sensible, and hears what you say. When he went to listen to my lungs I scandalized the nurse and possibly him by taking off my shirt. I didn’t want any interference with his ability to hear wheezes. But one doesn’t do that in Thailand. To my amusement the nurse snatched at the curtain and closed it, although all of us who were in the room were on the same side of the curtain. He told me the cough is bronchial and I’m on the mend. So that was a relief.

To celebrate I had green chicken curry with eggplant at Paling Ling in the basement of the Paragon. Excellent. While I ate I had a lot of enjoyable eye contact with a little girl, maybe eight, no more than ten. Her mother was introducing her and her brother to coconut juice in the shell. I urged her on with eyes and motions and she took to it. Her younger brother squirmed, had a sip and didn’t like it. She actually ate the slippery inside which one might not take to easily. I loved watching them.

Sunday I went out to lunch with W, T and N and N’s younger daughter to a 123-year-old Chinese restaurant, now being operated by the third generation. It is plain and populated by old but extravagant eaters.

We had goose feet, which I don’t like as much as chicken feet, crab and pork rolls, oysters in eggs, heavenly, (I used to eat this at the market by the canal when I stayed out in Banglampoo, but only during the day because at night the rats ran over my feet) rice with taro, shrimp, mushrooms, bits of chicken, kale stems with mushrooms and duck tongues, (doesn’t that sound like something from Henry VIII´s banquet table?) noodles fried crispy with ham to which you add a sprinkling of sugar and then sour sauce, odd but interesting. It was all good and lively. We were supposed to finish with durian ice cream, the specialty of the house, and the dish that started the restaurant, but they were out. Imagine durian ice cream 123 years ago.

So we went to have a Thai dessert. T and N grew up about two streets away where their mother had a store. Next door is a Thai dessert place—rows of glass bowls full of all kinds of things, a man with an ice shaving machine and sugar syrup. The place was jammed. I prefer Thai desserts to Chinese. You chose things from the bowls; they are added to shaved-ice sweetened with syrup and at the bottom are thin noodles. With my noodles I had water chestnuts, longans, gingko seeds, some part of the water lily and something else white and crunchy. It is the variation in texture that is the treat.

While we were consuming this in the shop open to the street in a bedlam of noise another noise began to intrude, a drum and then a gong and then firecrackers. Above the heads of my fellow desserters appeared two dragons, one yellow, one blue, twenty feet long. I went tearing out with my IPhone followed by W who worries about elderly women doing things. The men who were holding the dragons up on sticks made them sway and ripple down the street while periodically firecrackers were thrown under their feet. Behind them came two-man dragons leaping ferociously about. Last of all came child dragons shyly peering about, distracted by what was going on around them.

It is the ten days of the Chinese Vegetarian Festival. The temples are full of people remembering their dead. In Thai it is called Kin Jae. It is also called Jiu Huang Ye, the Nine Emperor Gods Festival. It starts on the first day of the ninth month and is celebrated in Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma and by the Chinese population in Indonesia. What is interesting is that it is not a China Chinese festival but a SE Asian Chinese festival, a celebration that the Chinese diaspora created.

As we drove to Chinatown for lunch we passed the Dusithani Hotel, which is standing empty. To W’s upset and my chagrin it is to be torn down. Not that it’s a wonderful piece of architecture but, for this town a middle aged landmark, put up in the 50’s and surrounded by trees can cause nostalgia. They, W says, will put up a huge hotel-mall-office building. This town does not need another mall. The trees will go. What BKK needs is to be planted with so many trees that it looks like a jungle from the air and even then they would not be able to absorb all the CO2.

On the Sky Train an overweight young thing with her two friends asked if I was all right standing or did I want a seat. She said she would ask someone to give up a seat. We were a stop away from my station so I said I was fine and thanked her. As she was getting off she asked me if I wanted to go to National Stadium and when I said I did she told me it was the last stop. Unfortunately when the Thais help they are apt to assume that you are a congenital idiot. One of her friends had on wonderful plastic silver sandals, which snaked around her ankles and had a toe strap in the middle of which there was a one-inch by half an inch diamond.

Another day a woman with whom I had had no previous contact on the Sky Train tapped me on the shoulder as she got out at the Siam station obviously thinking I must want the Siam stop.

I can’t remember which day, but I was caught in a storm as I got off the Sky Train. I stood for about 40 minutes under the eaves of the building on the corner of Kansemsan and Rama I. I watched Rama I become a creek, the cars splashing up waves as they went by, people deciding what to do—get wet or join us under the eaves, or unfold a poncho. Then I watched the rain come down in slender silver chains changing in the light. Two boys had lunch sitting cross-legged under the eaves and then played with one’s camera until it began to lighten.

At the dress factory, after the usual start-stop drive, which may be in part due to her being so tiny that she has trouble reaching the pedals, I announced that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. It was now almost three. They sent a girl out for sum tam with sticky rice. Sum tam is a Thai salad made from green papaya and other things. In this case the other things were mostly tomatoes, onions and peanuts. It was okay sum tam but not special, however, the whole factory was delighted to see me eating sum tam and a ripple of commentary passed through the first floor accompanying my meal.

A couple of times a week I see a slim, young man walk down the Soi in a fascinating get up. He wears black trousers, a white shirt with a long black kimono type coat open over it. Last time I saw him he also had a gold shoulder bag. He looks as though he is wearing a Russian fur hat because he combs his intensely black hair up slick from his forehead in a high pile with similar side pieces, also high, in the back not quite so high with a concave place in the center as one would have in a high Russian fur hat. Bangkok is relaxed about these things. But I want to know where he works.

I saw Kai when I picked up everything. I love what he’s made for me. He told me that my body language suggests that I am rich. That’s interesting. I wonder what I can do about it so taxis won’t charge me so much.

He also told me an interesting story, I wonder how much is true, about Jim Thompson. I have to stop here because some of you don’t know Jim Thompson.

Jim Thompson was an American who was in the OSS in the Second World War. At the end of the war he came to Thailand and decided to stay. He started the Jim Thompson Silk Company, reviving the Thai silk industry and giving work to hundreds of women, particularly Moslem women in my neighborhood, (the Jim Thompson Museum, well worth a visit, is in the next soi to mine) who were weavers but also in villages outside of Bangkok.

He took a vacation in 1967 in the Cameroon Highlands in Malaysia, went for a walk, and disappeared off the face of the earth. The mystery continues unsolved.

Kai says that Thompson had a lover, a soldier in the Vietnam War, named Bush, who lived with him and helped develop his business. He says Bush went with him to the Highlands and either didn’t go on that walk or escaped or killed Thompson. He, Bush, then married a wealthy friend of Kai´s, a Thai who had a son by him. The man carried on the business and his son, Kai says, now is carrying on the business. The Thai woman divorced Bush and married a French antique dealer, living in Paris until she died.

I had immediate doubts about this story because Westerners, whether straight of gay, come to Thailand because they like brown bodies. They have no interest in white bodies. Thompson was gay and it is unlikely that he would have been interested in a fellow Caucasian.

So I did some Googling, discovering that, indeed, he started the company with a partner, an American, George Barrie about whom there is no information beyond the fact that he was Thompson’s partner. That Kai would get the name wrong is not surprising. The present CEO of the company however, is Gerald Mazzalovo and I know that Thompson created a board of directors to keep the company stable. I have met some of them.

The other thing that is interesting about this bit of gossip is that in Thailand, certainly in Bangkok, it would raise no eyebrows that Thompson was gay or that he had a lover of whatever shade. Even in the 50’s and 60’s it would have been unremarkable. That the lover should then marry a woman would also be unworthy of comment. That’s normal.

I had a gay Caucasian friend here who was for some years the lover of a Thai wrestler. After a while the wrestler told my friend that he wanted to marry and have children. He did this, telling his wife about his affair with my friend who was always welcome in the house.

Now these are the same people who are scandalized when I take off my shirt so that the doctor can listen to tell if my lungs shake, rattle and roll. This is a culture where prostitution is unremarkable, just a way of making a living. Fascinating isn’t it? We take totally for granted what we are taught by our culture, don’t question it.

My grandsons leer and slightly sneer about PDA, or they did, until I asked them what was wrong with a culture that says people who love each other should not touch in public. Would that culture be puritanical by any chance? Possibly a tad hypocritical?

This is one of the reasons I love traveling.

One day in my room I reached to take my gym trousers off the inflatable hanger I had put them on to dry out and to my immense startlement, and his too, a lovely, plump, browny-beige gecko tore like a surprised naked maiden who had dropped her towel across the wall and shot behind the wardrobe. I should think the unairconditioned hall would be better than my room for hunting insects but I was delighted to see him. I haven’t seen a gecko in over a year, not since Algernon, who was quite large, lived for a while in the patio off my bedroom and hung out in my window box.

Thursday was carnival of errors. After the gym, I went to find my jeweler, Rudi Crosley’s new location. Her instructions were that she was in the DD Mall near Chatuchak, the huge weekend market, in a grey building, on the third floor next to the escalator. I knew this was going to be difficult, just not how difficult. I asked at the ticket kiosk of the Mo Chit Sky Train stop where Chatuchak is, where the DD Mall was. No one had heard of it. I asked people coming up the stair from the street. Most didn’t speak English and walked straight on as though I didn’t exist. Others said, “No English.”

At the bottom of the stair I found two young men who spoke English. They tried looking up DD Mall on their phones. One helpfully told me, “There’s a DD Mall in India?” I said that wouldn’t work. We asked tuktuk drivers. They had never heard of it. I foolishly hadn’t topped up my phone and could not make calls. I asked one of the young men to call Rudi’s number. He did and she seemed to explain things to them because they said they would find me a motorcycle to get me there. I said, “I am too old for a motorcycle.” We got a cab and they instructed the driver who nodded firmly. We waved at each other as I took off.

The driver dropped me at what looked like a mall but it turned out not to be. However, the doorman told me the mall was five minutes down the street. I walked through a fish-for-aquarium market. There were fish, all sizes, all colors in plastic bags in aquariums, in plastic pools and basins. Nemo, where are you?

However, there was a Seven-Eleven and I got my phone topped up.

Then I saw the mall but it was the JJ mall, not the DD. Since consonants slip and slide between English and Thai I thought it might be all right. Chatuchak Market is also known as JJ Market, for instance. By now I had been on this search for an hour. I went into the mall, took the escalator to the third floor and found myself in a parking lot. I called Rudi but her phone seemed not to be working. But she called me back. I tried to explain where I was. She said severely, “I told you DD, Dog, Dog, not JJ.” I explained that no one seems to know where DD Mall is. She told me she would send her driver to bring me to the right mall but I must go to the front of the JJ mall. He would meet me there.

Have you ever tried to find the front of a Thai mall? I found what I thought was the front and called again. She said, “The driver is waiting for you in the front.” At this point he and I saw each other. I felt like a desert islander rescued by the Royal Navy.

Since her driver has zero English, there was no point in asking questions. We crossed the pedestrian bridge over a large street, no signs, we walk, we walk and there by all the Norse Gods and the Norns was the DD Mall.

We took the escalator to the third floor and there was Rudi her white hair up in multicolored rollers because she was leaving tomorrow for a jewelry show in Singapore. Rudi is 85.

I picked up my earrings and ring, bought an exquisite ring, as instructed for 150 or less, for a friend and announced that I was hungry, not having eaten since breakfast, it now being 3pm. Rudi suggested the Food Court on the 7th floor and told me only to eat the duck noodles because everything else is “Yech.” I took the driver with me because I needed him to order the duck noodles. When we got to the 7th floor the food court was closed.

When we came back to Rudi I told her I just wanted to go home. She told her driver to take me to the Sky Train. We drove there in her Mercedes.

In the basement of the Paragon, at Paling Ling I had red duck curry and was very happy.

I haven’t been to Suan Prakkard in probably 25 years. The name means Cabbage Garden, which is what it used to be. They call it a palace museum but it consists of a congregation of Thai teak houses that were once a wealthy family’s home. I took a taxi but it can easily be done via Sky Train and foot. Not surprisingly it has changed in those years. There is now a big administration building in glass and marble with a small bronze of a military ancestor outside hung with a necklace of marigolds. You pay a small fee; they lock up your purse, give you a fan and a brochure.

The first group of rooms, part of the administration building, houses the family’s collection of objects excavated at Baan Chiang, a 300 BC archeological site with lots of bronze ax heads, spear heads, a bracelet with tiny bronze bells hanging from it, bracelets of stone and glass. There are some earrings that would be worn today in Barcelona. They are turquoise, curved like rams’ horns. There is also pottery—some incised with decoration, some painted. It seems to me the collection is larger than it was when I originally saw it.

The houses are scattered about in clusters among ponds with turtles sticking their noses up at you and little brooks with reeds on their banks. My favorite among the teak houses is the Lacquer Pavilion, 17th century, covered with scenes from the life of Buddha done in black and gold. Another house contains a display of the Khon dance that tells the story of the Ramayana. Masks for many of the characters are on display. There is a house full of old crystal and silver, a chapel house with a nice collection of Buddhas, two Burmese and one from Gandhara. There are houses full of collections of minerals and seashells, one with musical instruments. Once these were sleeping houses, dinning houses, a reception house in which to entertain guests.

It was a killer day and the vegetation in the grounds makes it hotter, more humid. There was a tailless cat under some bamboos as I left trying to cool off.

Saturday I went to the Chatuchak Market early, 10 am, and wandered about for an hour among artificial flowers, soaps and scents so overwhelming you gasp for air, children’s clothes, women offering foot and hand massages unable to find the sections I wanted. Finally I discovered a map on the wall, reoriented myself and went to see what antiques or “antiques” were available. The only interesting things were some Burmese lacquer ware boxes. There was some new gold and silver jewelry in a familiar shop and the stall that sells all things fake Tibetan. But a woman who was just setting up had real batik, not the best, but real from Indonesia. I bought.

About this quest for cultural things that are and are not done, when I said to Moon that she would have to put my zipper on the side since I had no husband to zip me up the back, she said, “Only Western husbands zip up their wives’ dresses, not Thais.”

I am fascinated. What is that about?

The flight from BKK to HK was surprisingly wearing but that might have had to do with getting up at 5 am to drive to Suvarnabhumi Airport with my favorite driver who hates early hours. However, he knew exactly what to do when we hit a jam, looping us swiftly around it, through barely awake concrete towns, via local roads. 6:30 am traffic jams are so modern, up to date and First World.

The traffic was modern but so was the imbroglio I found myself in when I tried to get a ticket for the train into HK from the airport. The one machine that takes credit cards was under repair, all others took only cash and the human behind the counter was only allowed to take cash. So I got on the train without paying and paid at the HK stop where, mysteriously, the humans were allowed to take credit cards.

Sue met me at the Airport Express a great kindness. After we deposited my bag at the Helena May, she dropped me off at GrEAT in Pacific Place, a supermarket for the rich, the beginning of my HK sticker shock. Then she had to go because, although she could start the car, this was puzzling, she could not find her car keys.

My room in the Helena May measures almost twice the size of my room in the A One, besides being elegantly decorated with pistachio moldings and a bright green, cream and black rug, a big black desk and a comfortable chair. However, there is a sink in the room and WCs and showers, one bathtub, are down the hall.

True to her custom, Sue supplied me with an orchid, this year a double stemmed three foot giant with arches of purple flowers and buds, the coffee machine, two phones that with both of us on WhatsApp I don’t think we will use, and far more chocolate from Maison du Chocolate and the Mandarin than anyone needs.

My bill at GrEAT didn’t seem worse than last year but the deposit for the Helena May has doubled, and when I stopped to register at the Pure gym I could get no plan and was told I would be paying almost 45 US a day to exercise. That was a punch.

I love the first part of the walk up from Pacific Place, which takes you by IM Pei’s building for the Bank of China; it is all angles that are emphasized by steel bands. He said he was inspired by the shape of bamboo. His ability to abstract an essence of form from an object fascinates me. On either side of the building are stairs up the hill that pass a Chinese scholar’s garden of rock shapes and running water. There was a girl, maybe six, working her way across rock and dashing water to some flowers under her mother’s watchful eye to pose for a photo.

After Pure the climb becomes serious and I try not to measure my progress, just walk with head down.

At the Helena May I unpacked, did my laundry, arranged myself and even washed my hair.

As I read SCRAPS OF WOOL edited by Bill Colegrave, a collection of delectable, inspiring, thrilling, hilarious travel pieces by everyone, I heard booming noises and went out on my verandah that faces, across Garden Road, the lane beside the US Consulate. Looking down hill I could see, in the slender channels between the buildings, fireworks leaping up in the harbor. The days of interesting buildings in HK has passed but the HSBC, which is a bit like the Pompidou in Paris, having its intestines on the outside, and the IM Pei Bank of China are two monuments to the time when amazing things were happening here. Between the HSBC and the Pei is the monumental glass block mediocrity of the Cheung Hong building. On one side, as the booms continued, I could see bloody sparks being thrown in the air, on the other, golden showers of light were flung up, as though King Midas was casting his wealth up into the sky.

I had lunch with P who goes back to live in Australia from time to time, sternly telling herself it’s the right thing to do, to be near her children and grandchildren. After about six months she usually loathes the place, finds the people unfriendly, insipid and uneducated, and starts hunting for a job in HK. This time she found one in Macau and is cheery, happy and grateful to be back.

I would l like to return in thought to the day in Chiangmai with the half renovated temple by the stream. There are places that enter you, a larval infection into the blood stream. This may happen even before you travel. I used to lie on the floor of my room turning the pages of the family atlas, like large unwieldy sails, fascinated by the colors of countries, by an incantation of names in my head that seemed to rise dispersing rich odors, subtle perfumes—Kabul, Gilgit, Kashgar, Lhasa, Quito, Sucre, the unpronounceable Ushuaia, the angry crackle of Caracas, the gawky awkwardness of Florianopolis. It was hard to breathe the excitement of the names was so intense.

And when I got there some were wildly, vividly dramatic, spilling over my expectations—the white backbone of the Himalayas, revealed at 5 am from a balcony, no longer in existence, of the Kathmandu Guest House, stretching its irregular snowy vertebrae from one end of the horizon to the other. Or, they could be small, soft, transient as the green tattoo of a lichen on the paw of a stone, Buddhist temple lion—Luang Prabang thirty years ago dusty above its rivers, steps up to teak houses littered with children, temples drowsing in the morning sun as monks in orange robes walked barefoot through town and laughed at my inability to divide the alms rice into suitable portions. There is the road I shall never take and never forget. On a ridge in Tibet we stopped, I turned my back on my companions wanting to be alone to be alone and watched a scrim of dust move away from me on the wind over the frail tracks of the road branching to the left.

Those moments are yours in a manner that is inexplicable. They don’t belong to you. They are imbedded in you. They do something to your DNA perhaps. Certainly they inoculate you against the lies and thefts of your culture’s dogmas.

Things that make HK special: getting up early while the traffic is almost nonexistent on Garden Road and having my breakfast at my desk while reading, then doing email, listening as the traffic thickens into Hong Kong’s day. Sometimes I then go down for the communal breakfast.

I had a 10 o’clock with Kitty for manicure, pedicure, and to hear about her son’s progress in life. He has now graduated college, is teaching music to young children and looking about for a position to play tuba in an orchestra. There is, apparently something in the wings, but it is not secure enough for him to officially tell his mother so her information is filtered through his father. I hope he gets a wonderful job in a good orchestra. There aren’t a lot of tuba players so he should do well in a market where there is a shortage.

Sue arrived at the end of my session and we went for dim sum at Dragon i where Karen, only the second Karen I know to pronounce it my way—she also has a Danish grandmother—joined us. It was good but noisy. We had deep-fried crab claw, shu mai, ha gao, spinach dumplings, soup with a lovely big dumpling in it and two veggie things because Karen is a veg.

Then up alleys this way and that, into an elevator and out into a calm, dim, brown and beige reception room. In this hush we were ushered into a room with three beds for our foot/leg massages. Mine was as strong as I could stand. I thought maybe my skin was going to peel off. I have bruises on my calves from bumping into the bed at the A One in BKK. By the time he was through with me, those bruises were 90% gone. We were all as limp as over boiled macaroni. It was 75 minutes, 3 of us in a row on beds with two men and a woman. My man asked Sue in Chinese, “How old is this lady?” He was quite happy when she said, “82.” The Chinese get a kick out of age.

Then Sue walked me over to Venise’s place for a facial with cream, steam, and suction machine. The trouble was Venise talks and at this point I wanted silence to snore in.

The next morning Sue and I had a pastry breakfast with friends A, a Native American who is an actor in films and TV here, N from Kenya, cheery and round of face, and M from the UK who these days seems to spend his time going in and out of China. It was a very talkative breakfast, good to catch up.

We went down to Central where Sue has a private, family, four-car parking space in Tak Shing on Theatre Lane. Theatre Lane is a pedestrian street so when Sue turns off of Queen’s Road and noses the big, white BMW into the crowd waiting to cross, people are always shocked, although they always make way. Occasionally someone will look angry or affronted. Sue and I adjust our faces to apologetic smiles, as she turns into the crowd apparently ready to mow down rows of pedestrians. The doorman at Tak Shing comes up, lowers the chain of the parking lot and then takes the car keys from Sue. We always know who in her large Chinese family is about in Central.

As we walked from the family parking lot, we could hear a vehement drum being beaten. The new Swatch shop on Queen’s Road was insuring its future prosperity by having a lion/dragon dance. The small Purple shimmied about on all fours while the Big Red leapt like a flame shivering all his scarlet dangles. Then he climbed a pole, brown arms coming out of the dragon’s mouth and an assistant with a stick bringing up his tail behind him until he did a hand stand, one hand, on top of the pole. The big gold drum thrummed him up.

We climbed up to Mountain Folk Craft where the same three little ladies are tending the store. They are now on the far side of middle age, backs getting a bit humped, hair dyed piano key black. The store always has interesting things: Chinese puppets, shadow puppets, embroideries, wood carvings, blue and white block printed fabric, old ceramic bowls, jewelry, inlaid boxes and on and on. There is a very battered green crystal frog there who is always tempting, in part because he is battered and cracked. There’s a big chip in his lower jaw.

We went to Miranda’s tiny store but she is travelling and it was closed. Among other delectable treasures in the window she has a piece of white jade so finely carved it might be a tracery of mist.

But it was time for me to treat Sue. I was taking her to China Tang, David Tang’s last restaurant. I only just heard about his death from Sue. He certainly did some wonderful restaurants and shops. This restaurant serves the cream of HK business with their favorite foods. The atmosphere is elegant, unobtrusive; the chairs which gently embrace you are covered with fabric with Chinese cloud patterns. The noise level is very pleasant and conducive to conversation. We had a junior and a senior waiter. The junior, often unsure of his English, would give an embarrassed little bow and then go off to find his senior who would give us a full English explanation of whatever.

We had a lobster bisque soup dumpling each with gingered vinegar dribbled over it; white bitter melon in pomelo sauce presented in the form of a tree; exquisite strips of tripe in a perfectly tuned hot sauce; shrimp dumplings; Japanese beef dumplings rolled in sesame seeds. The dessert was a disappointment; some sort of almond milk with egg white but the cappuccino was superbly perfect. I am perhaps too confirmed a Westerner for Chinese desserts.

Walking about Central five ten years ago, one would see Chinese women trying to be blonds with straw hair or hair of a particularly chemical red which is what happens when you bleach black hair. Now what I see must cost multiple earths because it is beautiful, often tawny blond, soft and swaying, rippling to the owner’s walk. From the back one becomes convinced that the person is Caucasian until you come around their corner. Blond still doesn’t really work with the Asian complexion, but it must be stutteringly expensive and the owners are obviously pleased.

When Kitty found out how much I was paying at the gym a day she started scouting among her friends for a deal. What she found was that other places were even higher. But her effort is much appreciated.

Yesterday as I climbed slowly up the hill from the gym I passed the little cave like stall on the corner squeezed in between the traffic cross over from Cotton Tree Drive to Garden Road on one side and the sheltering bulk of the St. John’s Building on the other. There is a big, old tree in front of the shop and they surround it with their wares, nodding arcs of yellow freckled orchids, pots of ivy. But inside hover the dark faces of purple orchids and white ones like geishas. As you pass, the odor of moss and meadow wafts out into the traffic.

Here an elderly woman, possibly younger than I, her very black hair contrasting with her face paling with age, and her fragile, greying husband have their flower shop. As I trudged by she called out to me, “Do you have far to walk?” I called back with my reserved breath, “Only to the Helena May.” She nodded me on.

Sue picked me up in her low slung, sexy, silver Mazda X something. She immediately led me, of course, into financial peril in a place called Joyce—trousers, admittedly very beautifully cut, for 2,000 US. She ended up buying a gorgeous McQueen black jacket with iris embroidered on it in white. We looked at shoes but nothing for me worthy of the price.

I did buy presents at Shanghai Tang, which will get shipped out before I leave.

We had lunch at Duddell’s, so named because it is on Duddell Street next door to Shanghai Tang. We started with a few pieces of dim sum, followed by fish maw with bok choy, the maw is crunchy and delightful in texture, and excellent soup, a couple of shrimp swimming amidst a couple of vegetables, dryly cooked fried rice and Chinese sweets. Sue wiped hers out. Mine sat there forlorn and unloved. We ended with a cappuccino, which may seem anomalous but is quite common even among Chinese however it does make the waitress smile.

We drifted through the Yewn, a miniscule shop whose specialty is square rings set with diamonds or beasts carved out of gems, or laced with emerald tendrils of ivy. They start at 20,000 US. They had a very unusual, asymmetric teapot in the window that had caught Sue’s eye.

We walked on through the Landmark building to Harvey Nichols to look at shoes where I was waited on by a young woman of great enthusiasm and a brain you would have had to excavate for through strata of make up. But with Sue’s help, not the sales woman’s, I found and tried on repeatedly the shoes I had seen the day before. I bought them. After a certain age one’s feet develop enormous character. Their preferences are totally capricious. They will purr over a pair of shoes one day which the next they declare to be a gift from Torquemada.

Sue, who by now was on a tear, got us on a tram, my second tram ride in all my years in HK, to the Western Market which upstairs houses a fabric market where, perhaps ten of fifteen years ago, I bought some purported silk which turned out to be excellent rayon. I still have the outfit made from that faux silk. So I approached this whole enterprise with a bad attitude. The black wool crepe I bought, however, seems to be very good quality at a good price. Moon will correct me if I am wrong when I deliver it to her in BKK.

Coming back we stopped to buy cheap, Chinese clothing for a little girl I know. These are bright and enormous fun—little cheongsams, little padded jackets with Chinese frog buttons marching their loops down the front.

While I wait for Sue at the taxi stand in front of the St. John’s building I count the number of BMWs between traffic light changes. The record so far is six. I also do, “One Mercedes, two Mercedes, three Mercedes, four….” It is usually several traffic lights between Rolls Royces.

The next day I had a nasty sore throat and life has largely been at a halt since then as I have been confined to quarters. I went to Sue’s GP in Central, Peter Chow who to my great amusement is, although Sue uses him as a GP, a plastic surgeon. He listened to me breath, agreed that my lungs were infected and heaped me pills for all times of the day and a nasal spray. I have been dutifully taking the pills ever since.

When I left Dr. Chow’s office, I walked down the line of taxis on Pedder Street forgetting that the front line is for Kowloon. I walked back and got a cherry driver who looked me over, “How old?” he asked.
“Eighty-two.”
He chuckled approvingly.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Sixty-four.”
“A mere child,” I responded.

That night I disobeyed common sense and went to City Hall to hear Stephen Hough, (for those not English, this is pronounced Huff) who is, the program proclaimed the premier pianist of England. He played to a large, attentive, mostly Chinese audience Debussy, with bits of Schumann and Beethoven at the end of each set. His rendering of Debussy was brilliant, the best I’ve ever heard, I think, for its delicacy. Sometimes Debussy is too abstract for me. There was a ten-year-old Chinese boy sitting in front of me with his mother. He too had trouble with Debussy, less with Schumann and with the Beethoven Sonata in F his spine uncoiled like a flame and he shot up, attentive leaning into the music.