The Xiamen train station is new and huge and looks out at a very large mountain park I wanted but did not make it to.

There are perhaps 200 people on this (one of two) waiting floors and as far as I can tell one foreigner.

I am feeling a bit guilty. Was so tired of my hotel in Xiamen. The dirty carpet, the noises and the smells. Couldn’t wait to leave. They on the other hand knowing I had complained about their noisy (broken pressure tank) water system, waived all my laundry charges. Then gave me a bag of four boxes of four differing flavored pineapple cakes. And four of them took me and my luggage to the taxi and stood by in a row as I departed all the time thanking me for staying in their hotel. Asia.

A huge mob gets on the train with plenty of line cutting, etc.

The first class car (17 dollars) soon fills up and we are on our way.

They are a pretty well behaved crowd. Eating various things. A little cart comes down the aisle and sells food and drinks.

Rolled out of the city at 70 MPH, then cruised around 120 MPH. Don’t quote me on this but I think that the fast trains in Taiwan hit maybe 175 MPH and maybe close to 200 in Japan. But we are moving!

I thought that this was interesting.  Children fares by height.

This is an eroded costal topography with hills and silted valleys. The hills are green with trees. In the valleys there are always buildings. A countryside landscape but with more buildings than one would expect. All the buildings are rectangular and look self-designed. Agriculture and canals/streams wind through the settlements.

The young fellow beside me is a student at the Fuzhou University. Studying Urban Design. He helps me read on my ticket the correct station. They have four, which I did not expect.

We make a few stops and after every stop a person comes down the aisle with a long handled dustpan and a broom and tidies up. Every station is huge, new, and mostly empty. There are many of these trains passing and in the stations.

Fuzhou looks like another unexpectedly big city. With traffic and other problems. I will have a look around and put up some pictures later.

How time flies. Chinese New Year was so late this year that although it is hard to believe it is almost time for the Spring Festival.

I am leaving Xiamen tomorrow to take the bullet train up the coast to Fuzhou, and will post a few pictures looking back.

Xiamen has been recorded as a city for around a thousand years, but apparently little ever happened here. During a period around 1000-1200 when China was open this was a major export city for tea. That’s about it.

General Koshinga retreated to here with his Ming army in the mid 1600’s when the Manchu were overthrowing the Ming Dynasty. He apparently stayed here quite a while. Maybe a decade. This is interesting (probably only to me) in that when the Manchu began to pressure him, he crossed the straights to Taiwan, besieged the Dutch Trading Port at Tainan, and threw the Dutch out of Taiwan. Apparently then living happily ever after.

It has been quiet for me too. My hotel turned out to be not so good, and in a not so interesting area. It has been cold and drizzly with grey skies every day. And going around the city the people are sullen and act as if they are being watched or afraid of something. So I will be glad to go.

Interestingly, this the major city in China for returning Chinese, those who made their money in the west and then returned to their own culture. They can surely live like kings here.

The city is quiet, clean. Has great seafood everywhere. Nice shops and markets.

I took some bus trips. 17 cents US.

There is one little not so interesting museum.

A huge university.

Plenty of beaches with walking trails. . A good place for a bicycle ride or some wedding pictures.

Nice suburbs.

A little old city near the beach. I did not make it into the actual old town. I have to return to Xiamen to exit China in a way that I can get to Taiwan, and will stay in the old town in a week or so.

I cannot imagine how many restaurants there are in this city. Thousands and thousands. They line the streets.

It was cold and rainy this morning, and I live in an area that has some shopping malls, so I went down to just one for an indoor walk around, and took some pictures of the restaurants in there. Many of these are mall food, but some are pretty nice. We could use a few of these in Bemidji.

I have not been doing much, but wanted to post some things and keep in touch.

I am living in Xiamen, on the south east coast of China. For China this city is paradise.  Good weather, pretty clean air (almost blue sky). The city is as clean as Tokyo. Sidewalks everywhere. Parks. Flowers.

It is so quiet and peaceful here, like a big country town, and it took me two days to figure out why. There are no motorcycles!! No roaring, smoking motorcycles, darting everywhere, driving around the cars, on the sidewalks, against the traffic, through the red lights that they have had everywhere else I have been on this trip. There are very few two wheelers here and they are either manual or electric. What a difference this makes.

There is even a large pedestrian only area downtown near the river.

I have a big and OK hotel room.

Acres and acres of breakfast.

But no internet. I am behind the great firewall of china that stops all foreign news and so I have no connection to outside China news of any kind. But I do have a little window that my smart wife set up for me that I can open now and then, which I will use to send this post. But I am really cut off.

So, if I were young and single I would go for rollicking Vietnam. But the quiet life here is fine for now. I have been here three days and have not seen another westerner. There is no English anywhere, unless things like this count.

99 percent of the people respond in a friendly way. They are just so serious. One interesting thing is that the little children who I presume are learning English in school like to say hello and good morning to me.

Some pictures:

My morning staple: bread with red bean paste.

Some bonus pictures.

The stock exchange (and boy is he hung)

The strawberrymobile

Color

Writing tools

and a little cutey

This is a communist country. If you don’t believe it these women will shoot your ass off.

Ho and the Marx brothers watch over everything here, including traffic intersections.

I was always amazed to be in the back back country in China where they had not seen a foreigner for decades and go into a conference room and encounter big pictures of Marx and Engels. Two old Europeans watching over the proceedings. Their extrapolation of the future based on a foggy analysis of industrialization in the 1800’s was silly before the ink was dry, but it sure gave a good theological underpinning for dictators.

As to Ho Chi Minh, we can hate him or whatever, but he was a giant of a man.

The War Museum

I really did not want to go to the war museum. But being here I kinda had to. It was worse than I imagined. No matter how Hollywood spins it we lost a war here, and the victors always get to tell the story. The museum as I expected was propagandized but it was still shocking to see the terrible photos and our country and our soldiers portrayed as war criminals and heartless, savage killers.

There were two people I went to university with who I know came here and returned in a box. After five years of engineering school. An example of why at the time we called our casualties:  wasted. But it is so long ago I cannot recall their faces. And I am older now and understand loss.

I was living in London through the hottest of the war and the wrap up, and missed the demonstrations and most of the news and the uproar. To me the war was just a sad thing, but we were all in a global struggle with communism then, each of us fighting in our own way. I believe to this day that communism enslaves their population, but maybe not in the domino theory, as we did then. This was a grim, deadly serious struggle. We lived under the risk of a preemptive nuclear attack every day.

The museum did surprise me in that although it was primarily about the conflict with the USA, it was presented as a fight against foreign aggression. They, for example, displayed captured US ordinance: planes, tanks, etc. (they look so primitive now) beside a reproduction of an infamous French prison.

Here is one thing I guess I did not appreciate and will give them. Napoleon III sent the French army to invade their country and the French ran things here for 6 decades. It is hard to deny that they enslaved the country for the collection of natural resources for export and French profit. By any measure: life expectancy, education, literacy, home ownership, the people were worse off after the 60 years than before.

Another thing I did not appreciate was that the USA had a military contingent here from 1950. Supporting the French. And when the French were thrown out and the country partitioned (North and South, like Korea still today), we took over the cause of supporting the South. Which led us into a land war in Asia against a people struggling to throw out the foreigners. What were our politicians and generals thinking?

I am sure that all sides in a war do bad things. We did bad things.

We bombed and bombed and bombed.  Targeted bombing. Carpet bombing. Air Force Chief of Staff Curtus LeMay was quoted in the museum with his resolve to “bomb them back into the stone age”. I remember that quote because LeMay graduated from my University and Engineering school and I was proud of him until that moment.

All significant buildings in North Vietnam were destroyed. All factories, train facilities, bridges, roads, ports. And (I myself believe by accident) some churches, schools and hospitals.

According to a study done by Columbia University we rained maybe 100 million liters of poisonous chemicals on the country. Napalm, phosphorus bombs, combat gasses, defoliants, dioxin.

I got to see examples of the horrible little “anti-personnel mines” that we would sow over areas. They would last for years waiting patiently to indiscriminately kill or maim.

And I was convinced that as the war rage got higher and higher we went over the line with the torture and execution of prisoners.

I cannot look back through any lens of time and understand how our leaders could believe an end so important as to unleash these means. But they did.

And I cannot buy the premise of the museum: that we abandoned our principles and aggressively abused a people yearning to be free.

The facts are that we wasted 60 thousand American dead and wounded 300 thousand. The Vietnamese losses are staggering: 3 million killed of which 2 million were civilians. 2 million injured. Hundreds of thousands missing and presumed dead. What a tragedy.

There are not many pictures in this blog. I could have put up some of the shocking and horrific ones from the museum, but why? Perhaps this terrible affair should just recede into the history books alongside the long list of other tragic war histories.

I just hope we are learning something from all this.

Anyway, at high tide the coconut barges are coming downriver.   The rainy season will start any day. It is time to move on.

When the plane in from Singapore just landed here a Vietnamese lady told me she was sorry for my visit because at New Year the city would be so boring. That has not been a problem, but only because I can be entertained anywhere. The city is dead.

All of the local Vietnamese shops, restaurants, whatever .. and many foreign ones are closed and shuttered. That leaves lots of security guards siting in doorways and a lot of tourists ambling around.

New Year came and went. There were great fireworks over the river, and lots of firecrackers on the streets.

They have firecrackers that explode with bright glittery confetti that covered the streets the next couple of days.   But the celebration was actually pretty tame. Subdued anyway, nothing like the wildness of Sinalog in Cebu.

The next day there were lots of very bright beautiful dresses on the women. And a lot of strolling around in them. For the holiday they decorated about a five block area with flowers and there was a large crowd promenading and the men taking pictures of the women.

This is a long holiday, four days off, which is customary in Asia. It is their biggest holiday and people need time to travel to the countryside because the first two days are supposed to be spent with the family.

These people are very friendly. It is their custom to say Happy New Year to each other on the new year day, and I had endless greetings and smiles everywhere I wandered. Seeing them off work I can say that they like to sit and drink tea, hot or cold with friends and family. They like all manner of games, board games of all kinds and card games. Card games everywhere. In the mornings there are discarded playing cards on the streets, I can only guess that if you lose it is the card’s fault.

They love potted plants, potted trees and any kind of flower.

It continues to be beautiful weather; beautiful blue sky, breezes, but between 10 am and 4 pm it is hot.

The tropical sun is brutal when it is overhead and I have had to use an umbrella for serious walking. And along a river/tributary where there is some breeze.  Cathy says the differential between the current lows in Bemidji and the highs here is around 115 degrees F. She also says that living there we do not sweat enough .. she should be here.

I have had a few French and Italian dinners, there are many many restaurants and cafes.

And I am not starving because my little hotel has about an acre of breakfast bar.

But with things starting to open up again I was able to find a Vietnamese meal last night. It was Chinese like, eaten with rice bowl and chopsticks. Everything I had was good, but I really cannot say much after one meal. Except that the South African Pinotage I had with it was surprisingly good.

As always, a few bonus pictures:

This one means little to anyone but me, but I used to see these penguin trash receptacles all over China 30 years ago, and they were the exact colors.

Incomprehensible ceremony:

In the old newsreels during the war the river was always full of floating green stuff.  And it is.

Road warier.

Local bully.

And I can never get enough of these local markets.   (Don’t eat the fish, I walked along the river and have smelled it)

They call it Ho Chi Minh city now.   But even though the American round of the many wars fought here is receding into the history books, it is still Saigon to me.

Perhaps coming here after three plus weeks in India is a factor, but I find the city quite beautiful. My camera does not take night photos well, but in the evenings the city is a riot of neon lights. Some streets even have neon decorations arching overhead for blocks.

There are sidewalks. And they are clean.

I am staying in the old city, but it has a many new buildings mixed in with some historic ones.

The air is quite clean (for Asia). It is hot around mid-day, but so far a nice breeze has been blowing.

The sun is shining and there are trees, green grass and flowers everywhere.

I want to start looking for remnants of the old French colonial days. Have not seen much yet.

Did have Cassoulet, Cote du Rhone and French cheeses for dinner last night. There are quite a few French restaurants here. Was talking with the chef (from Toulouse, been here 14 years). This sounds silly but is the kind of thing that happens on the road, about variations of Cassoulet. He showed me the sausage he imports and uses. He leaves the fat under the skin on his duck confit as rich as possible as opposed to rendering it for crispiness. I value some lamb, as it was served in the old market in Paris before it was torn down. He poured me a very large snifter of Calvados during this conversation, which made the morning start late. But I digress.

My hotel seems to be in little Tokyo. Even the signs are in Japanese. It is hard to find a Vietnamese restaurant between the French, Japanese and Argentine steak houses.

These people seem to be a very happy lot. I am very comfortable walking around everywhere, and feel safe and free from hassles.

But this is Asia. A 45 minute walk through nice suburbs and you reach some harder stuff.

At the moment the whole city is gearing up for Chinese New Year, which is a good and a bad thing.  Much of the city will be shut down as owners and staff travel to celebrate with family in the countryside.  But there will be parties, fireworks, street festivals, etc.  and I will try for some pictures.

Bonus pictures: A bicycle driven fish concentration camp.

Strange tourist crafts.

Unknown fruits.

Not much else to relate. Except that I had a 6 dollar haircut and now my head looks like a big white mushroom.

I used to come here when it was Bombay.

This place has cleaned up a lot.  New buildings, a few new roads, hardly any trash compared to the other places we have visited on this short trip in India.   A whole new area North of the old town with new hotels, restaurants, etc.

It is obviously a more wealthy city than say New Delhi.

They have got the cows and the bicycle rickshaws off the roads, but since there are 50 times as many cars on almost the same roads as 30 years ago the traffic is impossible.  Not bad, impossible.

It seems that throughout Asia as they clean up the poverty and disease and general dirtiness that made travel here so difficult in the past .. they have created such terrible air pollution and traffic problems that is still very difficult to travel here.

Took Cathy down to the old town area to show her the colonial buildings, areas I used to hang around, hotels I used to stay in that we cannot afford, etc.

Otherwise, we decided that we had seen enough of India for now and hung around the JW Marriott for some pampering.

We made some friends in the Concierge lounge and on Cathy’s birthday they brought her a cake and champagne.  Life is good.

Came to Sarnath to pay homage to Siddhartha Buddha at the place of the birth of Buddhism.

In 528 BC, Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment at nearby Bodhgaya, and became Siddhartha Buddha. Upon enlightenment he was allowed to perceive the interconnection between human desire and suffering.

Five weeks later, here in Sarnath he spoke of his knowledge for the first time, and revealed the eight fold “middle path” leading to the attainment of enlightenment and the escape from suffering and sorrow.

There is not much here now, but the place is still more significant than merely historical.

This was a mecca for Buddhists until maybe the 4^th century and occupied still into the 9^th century. Then a long decline started after the Muslim invasions.

This Stupa has been excavated and two earlier constructions are underneath. A pillar found nearby indicates that this is the place where Siddhartha Budda delivered his first sermon.

We are staying right on the waterfront of the river Ganges here in Varanasi; to Hindus what Rome is to the Catholics and Mecca to the Muslims.

Lord Vishnu, one of the three major Hindu gods, through one of his incarnations recognized the Ganges at Varanasi to be an especially holy place.  For reference, Vishnu is the god of maintenance/preservation. The other two major Hindu gods are creation and destruction. The fun loving rascal Krishna was one of Vishnu’s avatars (incarnations).

This site is so holy that to die and be cremated here greatly speeds the release from the cycle of re-birth. Maybe even a direct/immediate escape. So, lots of people come here to die. Our hotel was re-purposed from a 120 year old building built/donated for people to come and die in.

The next best thing is to die and be brought here for cremation and dispersal in the holy water.

The cremations go on at the water’s edge 24 hours a day.

These are photos of small areas for simple pyres for poor people. We could not photograph really elaborate areas.

All along the waterfront are buildings built by various past rulers, maharajas, etc. from all over the country and as far away as Nepal .. for their people to use. The donations enhanced their karma.

There are over 700 temples, countless shrines, schools for persons pursuing a life in the religious orders. Some religious instruction takes place in classes right on the waterfront.

Just a dip into the sacred Ganges at Varanasi will relieve one of their bad karma. Sometimes ever the accumulated bad karma from previous lifetimes too. Millions of pilgrims come here to dip and splash and wash in the river, especially in the morning. Bus groups from other areas arrive for this cleansing.

One can purchase a polyethylene jug to take some river water home for future use.

Every evening the Temples must conduct elaborate ceremonies (involving much fire/burning things) to encourage the river to continue to accept the bad karma.

It is easy to scoff at all of this, but numbering at around a billion there are probably more Hindu than Catholics. And as for the Lutherans, they should never let any controversy over these religious things come to a vote.

Along with the pilgrims there are 3 million people living here, thousands of sacred cows, all manner of loose farm animals (bullocks, goats, sheep, pigs, dogs) roaming around the two streets. With every manner of vehicle. So walking is impossible. A taxi which we clocked in two journeys made 5 miles an hour average speed.

Here are a few pictures though:

Tasty snacks

There are beggars everywhere in India.  But they swarm in Varanasi.  The woman with child is almost a caricature. I could not point the camera at the maimed, crippled limbless horrors.

Lots of rickshaw drivers and pestering potential guides.

Street entertainment. Like this man with a cobra in a basket.

Or, one could just relax and lounge with the dogs.

(title courtesy of C.A. Marchand)

I am pretty sure that no one would ever come to Agra except for the Taj Mahal. But I did not photograph the endless poverty and trash and dirt and yes, squalor. Nothing but nice things in this post.

A very long day. Eight hours in the car coming and going. Our schedule just never worked for an overnight in Agra to see the Taj at dawn. But the morning fog did lift for us to enjoy a bit of blue sky.

Agra was the stronghold of the Mughals who ruled India from here for 200 or so years.

They built a number of palaces and forts around Agra, but their home base and strongest was Fort Agra, here in the city. Some pictures. It is a pretty enlightened place with fountains, markets, mosques, audience halls, a courtyard to grow grapes to make wine and a harem.

The third Emperor, Shah Jahan, built the Taj Mahal as a tomb for and memorial to his beloved third wife. She died in her 14^th childbirth.

And although this is certainly an ego driven construction it is also a monument to love.

Reportedly a learned man, he believed that all religions should be respected equally and as an example married three wives, a Muslim, a Christian and a Hindu. He hired three Architects for the construction of the Taj Mahal. A Turkish one, expert in symmetry. A local one expert in Italian pietra dura (stone inlay). And a Persian one expert in the construction of gardens. The Taj is within a symmetrical garden and the building is perfectly symmetrical from four sides.

Some gates to the garden area. Two were used as a Mosque and a guest house respectively.

I try not to think that in many ways this place has become yet another tourist “been there seen that” check off site, because this is one of the greatest works of art ever constructed.  Of course it is a World Heritage site. The particular translucent marble changes colors with the ambient light, brilliant white in the sun but shades of yellow and gold in low light. Originally the extensive inlays of semi and precious stones would reflect colors and light. The entire interior is covered with carvings and inlay. Sorry, no pictures allowed inside – but you do see some of the inlay work here. Just imagine it on every surface.

One thing I would especially have liked to photograph were the large screens carved out of single pieces of marble.

Vandals and invaders have removed the gold inlays (used fires to melt it out). And the precious stones (chisels). But the building is still stunning.

An interesting sidelight. Shah Jahan was deposed by his son, the last Mughal Emperor, and imprisoned in this apartment in the Agra Fort for the last 8 years of his life. He could look out the window and down the river at the Taj. After his death one of his daughters arranged for him to be entombed with his wife in the Taj Mahal.