A travel tale

From Justin Hall, Writer/Artist of 'True Travel Tales':

So here I am on the long, long flight home from Bangkok feeling guilty that I haven't sent off enough travelogues on this trip of mine through South East Asia. The last half of my travels I was occupied with meeting my mom and our friend Sarah in Vietnam, going to Thai massage school for two weeks in Chiang Mai, the arrival of my friend David from LA, and finally over two weeks of travel with my boyfriend Nash. Shoddy excuses, perhaps, but hey -

The best way to make up for this, and get as much information in a possible, is to do a kind of "best of" list. Besides, it's a format that works well for all of our limited attention spans.

MOST PROFOUND REVELATIONS ABOUT RELIGION

The thing that first struck me about Theravada Buddhism (which is the form practiced in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, but not in Vietnam, where Mahayana Buddhism is dominant), is that to the ignorant observer such as myself, it looks a lot like Catholicism. They're both focused on the teachings, character, and visual image of one man (the endless seated and reclining buddhas become as mind numbingly similar as all the crucified Jesuses), they both have monks in cool robes (though saffron beats brown hands down), and neither of them is afraid of kitsch. Neon halos on the buddhas, anyone?

The differences between the two religions are also interesting. Whereas Christians regard their prophet as an actual god (or rather one of the triple manifestations of the one God), Buddhists view the Buddha as a normal man who achieved enlightenment, to which every person can aspire given a few lifetimes of hard work.

Buddhism also, in my view, comes much closer to the reality of death. Whereas I don't believe in reincarnation, except as a beautiful allegory for the dissolution of the body and the subsequent rebirth of our components in other forms like a worm or a flower, I think the idea of nirvana is spot-on. Christianity's idea that after death our consciousnesses remain essentially unchanged, and that we get sent somewhere where they either stick bird-wings into our scapulas or beat us for eternity with hot pokers, seems unspeakably silly. When we die, we die. End of story. Our consciousness is dissolved into the universality that exists behind such things, which nirvana is as good a name for as any.

My problem with Buddhism is that the crux of its teachings concentrates on getting us to nirvana as quickly as possible. In Vientiane, Laos, I had a little breakdown at a particularly vulnerable moment and ended up laying on the ground of a temple crying to myself (don't worry, I was alone). It was all because of my intense love of life and therefore fear of death, which I realized would always keep me from Buddhism, in which the first Noble Truth is that "life is suffering."

Life is not suffering, not for me! I don't want nirvana! I don't want to die! I love life, the grand, majestic mystery, in all its often gritty, seedy glory, and I can't imagine wanting to dissolve my consciousness any sooner than I have to! I'd much rather keep on getting reincarnated than dissolve into the eternal.

MOST INSURMOUNTABLE CULTURAL DIFFERENCE:

The mole hairs. Throughout South East Asia (especially in Myanmar, for some reason) there is a grooming tradition for men in which the long, wiry hairs that grow from facial moles are actually cultivated. Faces otherwise completely shaven will sport anything from a few hairs reaching out like thin, twisted fingers, to a shock of hair up to several inches long. The hair is usually black, though some older men have white mole hair.

I pride myself in my acceptance of cultural differences, but the mole shrubbery took some getting used to. I had to resist staring, especially when the men would carefully stroke their hairs, as well as fight the urge to just reach out and yank on them. I felt like it would wave at me when people talked or smiled at me, and I just wanted it to stop.

The mole hair look was particularly difficult when combined with the effects of the:

MOST DISGUSTING STIMULANT

The beetle nut. Wrapped up in a bundle of leaf, the beetle nut is chewed for its mild stimulant effect, like smoking tobacco or chewing coca leaf, and is similarly addictive. It's mostly an old-person thing (though it's also popular among the younger generations in Myanmar), and there's nothing like a wrinkled face flashing a big, beetle-nut smile of bright red, bloody-looking gums and rotted, blackened teeth.

BEST PLACE FOR A SPIDER MAN FIGHT SCENE

The ruins of Angkor in Cambodia. Angkor Wat, the largest and one of the best preserved of the ruins, would be the best place for a truly spectacular battle. I spent many slack-jawed moments staring out across the three levels of immense, intricately decorated buildings and pillared halls, imagining Spider Man scampering through a tight, shadowy hallway to evade pursuit, then crawling across the sheer walls and impossibly steep staircases covered in friezes of apsara (sacred women dancers with perfect circular breasts and fingers hyper-extended backward in graceful arches), and finally flinging himself out over one of the great, central courtyards, catching the carved side of a tower with his web, and swinging back around to land a kick on his enemy's jaw with an appropriate POW!

Unfortunately, the adversary would be Angkorr (double "r" intended), a little known and particularly idiotic Marvel super-villain who materialized from the mystical ruins of mysterious Angkor to menace the world's heroes in some lame 80's comic. Sad to think that's the only Cambodian character in American comic books.

BEST PLACE FOR A FEEDING FRENZY

The tailor shops of Hoi An. Hoi An is a gorgeous little port town in Vietnam, full of amazing Chinese and European colonial architectureŠ but I barely saw it, as I was in the midst of a shopping frenzy. All I could see was fabric like fresh blood in the water. Now mind you, I HATE to shop, especially for clothes, and am extremely bad at it. It intimates and frustrates me and makes me feel inadequate as a gay man. But luckily my mom and Sarah were with me to show me how it's done. Each day I warmed up to the process a little (it certainly helped that it only cost around $10 to get a shirt custom made in one day), and ordered clothing a little more daring - so that by the time we left I was actually eyeing the Chinese buttons and flared silk pants. Mercifully I was gone before it all got out of hand.

In one of the tailor shops a really amazing thing happened. I met:

THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON OF MY TRIP

There was a couple that caught my eye. She was a gaunt, white woman in her 50's, her face taut from too much plastic surgery, and with fancy sunglasses perched on top of her big, bleached hair. She looked like she was from Florida, but her accent was Australian. She was arguing in tight, clipped tones with the saleswomen about a suit for her husband, a handsome man with a full head of silver hair. He was, in fact, going for the Chinese buttons - under her direction of course. We joked about how we needed women in our lives to help dress us.

The next day I met another Aussie couple in the same store (she was also directing his clothing purchases), who told me that I had met Bob Hawke, the prime minister of Australia from 1980 to 1990, and also the Guinness Book of World Records holder for drinker of the tallest beer mug. I wasn't sure which title was more important to them, and to Australia in general. His wife was Blanche D'Alpuget (I'm not making up her name), a writer who apparently was interviewing Hawke for a biography when they started dating.

I thought it was incredibly cool to have met them, but my mom told me I was being silly when I kept on mentioning it. And in truth it was pretty negligible compared to:

THE OTHER FAMOUS PERSON I MET

OK, so Em Satya isn't that famous really - which is a crying shame. John Weeks, an expat mini-comics creator living in Phnom Penh, introduced me to Em Satya, one of Cambodia's greatest living cartoonists. He produced comics in the 1980's, after the Khmer Rouge had been deposed and the Vietnamese were in control of the country. Unfortunately Cambodian comics publishing died out after the Vietnamese left, and all the comics sold in markets across Cambodia now are reprints from the 80's - from which the cartoonists make nothing, of course.

Em Satya is a masterful artist, even more impressive considering that he now has partial paralysis on the right side of his body and has had to teach himself how to draw again with his left hand. He ekes out a living by illustrating educational tracts for aid groups operating in the country, and doesn't do comics per se anymore. He does, however, have a graphic novel of over a hundred pages that's virtually finished, for which John can hopefully find some funding to print it. It was amazing meeting him, a genuine Cambodian national treasure, and a truly world-class cartoonist.

By the way, speaking of the Khmer Rouge, they were truly the:

GREATEST HORROR

Visiting S. 21, the grade school that Pol Pot and his cronies turned into a torture and death camp, was like visiting Auschwitz. The Khmer Rouge killed probably around 1.5 million people (they're still finding mass graves, so the number will always be uncertain), and at least that number died from starvation and hardship during their reign. Because bullets were scarce, most of the victims were bludgeoned to death or hacked apart by machete. There is a tree in the killing fields against which they would bash the babies' brains out.

When you hire a moto dop (motorcycle taxi driver) to take you to the killing fields, he will invariably ask you whether afterwards you want to go to the shooting range nearby as an additional attraction. Apparently you can pay extra money for them to put a chicken out on the range for you to shoot, and I heard a rumor that if you pay $100 you can bazooka a cow.

We humans respond to death strangely - Which brings me to:

THE STRANGEST CORPSE

Ho Chi Minh takes the cake. Apparently he asked to be cremated upon his death, but the Vietnamese government knows a good personality cult when it sees one, and had him embalmed instead, a la Lenin. Once a year he gets sent to Russia for touch-ups. I filed past his corpse, looking like a Madame Toussaud wax figure in repose and bathed in an eerie white light, with my hat in my hands alongside a crowd of Vietnamese school children on a propaganda field trip.

After leaving the mausoleum, which is a tremendous display of socialist-style architecture, I plunged back into the streets of Hanoi, which are a tremendous display of unbridled capitalism. I wonder what Uncle Ho would say about the new Vietnam.

BEST PLACE IN WHICH I SHOULD HAVE SPENT MORE TIME

Luang Prabang, the jewel of Laos. This is one of those true rarities in the world, a city combining a stunning location (at the intersection of the Mekong and Khan rivers) with gorgeous architecture (both French colonial buildings and old Buddhist temples), beautiful arts and crafts, good food, friendly people, an unusually interesting selection of travelers and expats, and a temple-studded Mount Phousi (pronounced "pussy"- tee hee hee) rising up in the middle of the city. I highly recommend this place. I spent about four days there, and wish it had been longer.

STRANGEST POSITION IN THAI MASSAGE

You have the client lying face down on the floor. Spread his/her legs and bend them at the knees. Sit down on the client's raised feet, above his/her buttocks. Reach down and pull the client's arms back so that his/her hands are resting on your thighs, palms down. Reach under the client's shoulders to the front of the deltoids and pull back three times, arching his/her back with a soft, medium, and hard stretch.

Do not try this at home.

BEST WAY TO WIN AN ICE CREAM CONE

My mom and Sarah and I had a running game as we traveled in Vietnam. We would count the number of white man/ Asian woman combos that we observed (there were around 20 a day on average, and covered a full range from sex tourism to marriage), and we would get a free ice cream cone when we spotted an Asian woman/ white man combo. There were three free ice creams in two weeks.

In Thailand, quite possibly the biggest sex tourist destination in the world, the daily count would, of course, have been much, much higher but still not a lot of ice cream cones.

THE MOST AMAZING THING SEEN IN BANGKOK'S RED LIGHT DISTRICT

You think I'm going to write this down here? Are you crazy? My parents are reading this travelogue

OK, so that wraps up my random trip highlights. I'm back now in lovely San Francisco, where it immediately started raining today, my first day in town, which is also my birthday. How's that for an omen? Apparently the entire winter had been gorgeous here, until I showed up. However, I'm still glad to be home. It's a wonderful place.

Much love,

Justin