Joys – Page 20 – syntaxfree

Kuching: Day One

While travelling in Greece several years ago, my companion and I were not surprised when the bus to Epidaurus left 45 minutes later than its scheduled departure time. We shrugged, accepted it as part of a Greek holiday, and counted our blessings that we’d found a shady spot to wait in. We were, however, somewhat blindsided when we turned up 7 minutes or so early for the return bus and found that it had already left, with the next bus due in about two and a half hours. We passed the time easily enough with other stranded backpackers, but I’ve never forgotten the laughable unpredictability of that particular travel glitch. Bloody Greeks.

Anyway, since a Greek bus leaving early is about as unheard of as a Parisian pavement without dog poo, I always dismissed it as a one-off, the sort of anecdote you throw into a conversation about travel stories when it reaches the point at which you revel, cackling, in the various national stereotypes your cosmopolitan jet-setting has only served to confirm.

Until we arrived at Senai Airport two weeks ago only to discover that the AirAsia flight described on our tickets as leaving at 1630 was, in fact, now leaving at 1545. We had received absolutely no notification of the change. But by a stroke of pure luck, we’d arrived in the last few minutes before the check-in counters closed, and made the flight.

Amusingly, the only reason we had even arrived as early as 1500 for what we thought was a 1630 internal flight was that the airport coach schedule from Senai Airport’s City Lounge was also markedly different from the coach schedule its website promised. So, having found that the 1440 coach no longer existed, we’d decided to take a cab rather than chance the 1500 coach. If not for that, we’d have been roundly fucked, first by the Senai City Lounge and then by AirAsia. Bloody Malaysia.

(There isn’t much more to write about the first day of the trip once we got to Kuching, apart from mentioning the great Teochew steamed fish dinner we had at ABC Seafood and the beginning of a dramatic shoe disintegration process that finally culminated in their utter surrender while trekking in Bako National Park two days later. I mostly just wanted to warn anyone reading this to be careful when flying AirAsia from Senai.)

Hanoi: Day Three

[I suddenly realized that I really should try and finish one trip’s worth of travel blog entries (Vietnam) before going on the next (Kuching for my second RWMF, next Thursday). Of course, I still only have 5 days blogged out of last August’s 17 day trip to London, Norway and Germany but Vietnam makes more sense as far as the art of the possible is concerned.]

For this day and the next, we’re on a tour to Ha Long Bay with Handspan Tours. After an early start, I drowse happily in the minibus, waking up intermittently to enjoy the bucolic countryside views and to steal Alec’s book every time he falls asleep (because for some reason I didn’t feel like reading my own). Of course, I soon fall asleep clutching it, wake up to find he’s stolen it back, and the whole cycle begins again.

The jetty is packed with pleasure boats parked at least five deep, and according to no discernable order or plan. We board one that will take us out to our eventual boat, the Dragon’s Pearl. Manoeuvring the boat out of the “berth” through all the others involves the sort of comedy hijinks that you thought only existed in the days of vaudeville or The Simple Life: Interns. The boats crash into each other gently but frequently, with crew members often using pure muscle power to push the boats out of a clinch. Tiny boats dart fearlessly in and out of the chaos, hoping to score a quick fruit sale to idle passengers. Our boat is in great shape, which is a relief after all the bangers we passed on the way, including more than a few names that I recognise from the other tour companies’ websites I surfed while trying to decide which tour to book.

We check into our clean wood-panelled room and report for lunch, which introduces us to the only disappointment of the tour: the food. It’s the sort of utterly bland, only nominally Oriental stuff that I haven’t tasted since we stopped for takeaway while driving through the English Midlands several years ago and I ordered Singapore Fried Rice for kicks. I assume it’s intended to cater to Western tastebuds, but it does both the country and Western tastebuds a huge disservice by doing so. I distract myself from the growing suspicion that I’m eating corrugated cardboard by running out frequently onto the deck to take pictures.

After lunch we make our first stop, at the Sung Sot “Amazing Cave”. Which, to be fair, is pretty amazing.

It’s quite dramatically lighted and has smoothened paths for people to walk along, but even if this detracts from the sort of raw “naturalness” that some people may want from a cave, it really still is spectacular.

Alec remarked that this picture makes him think of a mushroom cloud. Note the rather small people on the right for an idea of the scale of the place.

On the way out of the bay, we pass our first floating village. The next stop is Titop Island, which I think is the highest island in Ha Long Bay. You can climb to the top for a view of the karsts, which is okay but still inferior to drifting among them. The climb is straightforward but sweaty. Sodden with sweat halfway up, I suddenly remember doing a similar climb to my castle hostel in Bacharach, Germany – except with a backpack, and in the rain, and alone – and from then on it’s easy peasy.

There’s a swimming stop after this, but my eczema’s bad as it always is during any holiday where I spend a protracted amount of time in outdoor heat, and I’m wary of immersing raw skin where I don’t know how clean the water is. Later on, dinner features more mediocre food. Although our dinner companions are perfectly amiable, Alec’s beginning to feel the effects of yesterday’s street food on his digestive system and is a little under the weather, which affects my mood. (I become a ridiculous miserable wreck when anyone I love is ill and uncomfortable.)

After dinner, we sit on the empty top deck of the boat, which is anchored in the middle of Ha Long Bay for the night. As far as the eye can see, there are only the shadowy karsts, other boats in the distance with their lights reflected in the still water, and a clear sky full of stars.

Clan Of The Nick Cave Barenaked Ladies

This Coudal Partners contest on book/band mashups (via Daryl) is fun! Here are just a few of the entries that took my fancy:

Charlie and the C&C Music Factory
Chromeo and Juliet
Qur’an Duran
Courtney Love in the Time of Cholera
Bridge over the River Jamiroquai
The Odyssey and Cake
Pop Will Eat Shoots And Leaves
The Sun Also RZA (probably my favourite)

The contest’s over already, but as usual with these sort of things I couldn’t resist coming up with some of my own anyway.

Children’s books:

The BFG-Unit
Harriet the Spinal Tap
The Little Bonnie Prince Billy
The Curious Incident of the Snoop Dogg in the Three Dog Night

(double mashup!)

Smokey Robinson Crusoe
Alec Empire Of The Sun (okay objectively this one isn’t great but I’m sure you understand why it amuses me)

Penguin Classics:

Of Mice Parade And Men
East 17 Of Eden
Northanger ABBA
To The Lighthouse Family
The Autumn Of the Patrick Wolf
Mason And Dixie Chicks
Pnine Inch Nails
The Chemical Brothers Karamazov
Donna Summer Quixote
Tess of the D’urbervillage People

Others:

The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay Aiken
Kafka On The Beach Boys
We Need To Talk Talk About Kevin
If On A Winter’s Night A Blues Traveller
Anil’s Ghostface Killah
New Thom Yorke Trilogy
True History of the Kelly Gang Starr
Last Exit To Crooklyn Dodgers
Fear and Loathing in Las Ketchup

So awful that I just couldn’t leave them out:

W-iliad Grant Conspiracy
The Anticon-Tiki Expedition (yes, I know, record label)
The Bonjovifire of the Vanities
The Alcutchemist

Let’s hear yours!

Sonic Nurse, Two Years Late

I was just about to SQUEEEEEEEEEE all over this blog about Sonic Youth’s new album, which I got my hands on yesterday, but suddenly remembered that my reaction to the previous album was still languishing in my as yet unpublished top 10 list of 2004. Yes, I know.

So, since it’s not like this blog is overloading you with entries to read these days, I thought I’d just dig that up and post it as a prelude.

Sonic Nurse (Sonic Youth):

I should begin by admitting that I am incapable of being objective about this album. I’ve tried and failed to figure out how I would react to it if it were the first Sonic Youth album I’d ever heard, perhaps listening to it only because I’d read a good Pitchfork review, rather than in the context of what feels like the culmination of my decade of fanhood.

This album is vintage Sonic Youth firing on all songwriter and instrumentalist cylinders, and they know it. Pattern Recognition starts things off with what feels like unassailable confidence; you realize that this band which has collaborated with artists running the gamut from free jazz to glitchy ambient electronica and released entire albums of pure feedback is finally doing a tribute to themselves, and it’s going to be stunning. There are no dud tracks here – every song could have been the highlight of some lesser band’s career-peak album. New Hampshire, probably my favourite, is as broody and propulsive as anything on Daydream Nation, and although they keep this album version pretty tight at just a little over 5 minutes, it’s the sort of track that’s just begging for a protracted screaming-guitar-noise-freakout jam when done live. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to describe Kim Gordon’s singing as “heartfelt” before, but in I Love You Golden Blue she breathes her lines with a vulnerability I find surprisingly affecting.

In Paper Cup Exit, the line “I don’t mind if you sing a different song, sing a different song, just as long as you sing, as you sing, sing along” may seem incoherent or contradictory, but if you’re a Sonic Youth fan it makes total sense. As this excellent review at Stylus observed, “despite the consistently fine song-writing the band has to offer, it isn’t the songs themselves that keep their fans coming back. Rather, Sonic Youth is a band at perfect synergy with itself. Every tangential instrumental passage seems not premeditated, but psychically transposed.”

I heard Daydream Nation when I was 14; it changed the way I listened to music. Ten years on, as much as my musical horizons have expanded, Sonic Youth’s sprawling dissonance still explodes more stars in my head and quickens my heartbeat with more pure aural joy than anything else does. Sonic Nurse is my number one album of the year for more reasons than musical brilliance alone – it is beautiful unmistakable proof to me that my favourite band, 24 years, 19 albums, countless experimental tangents, and immeasurable critical acclaim after its formation, has not ceased to listen, create, and rock.

Drum’N’Bass’N’Strings

Something dramatic was needed to break my obsessive aural dependency on the sound of Elliott Yamin’s voice, so I revisited Venetian Snares’ Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett, which I’d been enjoying quite a lot before Elliott poured molten sex into my ears.

It isn’t easy to describe why this album’s fusion of (mostly) classical music with drill’n’bass works for me, because at first blush the concept sounds insufferable. The thing is, as drum’n’bass subgenres go, I like drill’n’bass because it has a certain drama and intensity that I find lacking in the jazzy stuff. On the other hand, classical music has lots of drama and intensity but lacks riddim.

Track 8’s sampling of Elgar’s cello concerto in E minor fascinates me. The sample of that famous bit of melody is cut off one note later than you expect it to be – one would have thought cutting the segment off on the D would make for the obvious easy loop but instead it’s left for one more note, which weirds up the time signature and the listener’s feel of the melody. Every time I listen to the track it always makes me feel a bit off-balance at the start, but then I descend into a geeky wanky happy place where I muse about whether I’d feel the same way if I didn’t already know the classical piece, and whether this use of the sample is deliberately intended to elicit this response in the listener, and then I look to the track title for any help but unfortunately it’s called “Szarmar Madar” so nothing gained there; meanwhile, there’s an opera singer throwin’ down high E’s and the chaotic beat’s just tearing shit up, and I start thinking tasteless thoughts about how even Jacqueline du Pre would dance to this except oh wait oops and I’m not even sure whether any of this is good or bad but I like the fact that the song is making me think it.

Zero G Funk

After months of good intentions thwarted by the forces of laziness, sleepiness, and car-lessness, we finally made our first visit to the Salvation Army thrift store at Bukit Timah and it won’t be the last.

I can’t show you pictures of the vintage sewing machine table Alec bought to put his computer on because it hasn’t been delivered yet, so just take my word for it that it’s incredibly charming.

I can, however, show you the record I bought for S$2.50.

Moon funk safari

Detail of front cover

Credits on the back cover

Intergalac-tic di-plo-ma-CY!

His Name Is Elliott Yamin

He wasn’t my favourite from the start, but how could he have been?

Until the top 24, the only real exposure he got was as a reluctant accessory to one of the Brittenum twins’ many debacles. Katherine got attention for having a mother who was a voice teacher. Ayla got attention for having a father who was a senator. Paris got attention for having a grandmother who was a famous singer (but, to be fair, also for the most spinetinglingly awesome audition I’ve ever seen on the show). Kellie got attention for having a father in jail and, later on, for defying every stereotype anyone had ever had about dumb rednecks by being even dumber than imaginable. But Elliott Yamin, diabetic and 90% deaf in one ear, apparently still wasn’t interesting enough to the American Idol producers to warrant any real exposure – at least, not until the Top 3 results show, when it was already too late.

And putting yourself into their shallow little heads, it was totally understandable. He’s got bad teeth, no titties, and is a nice, genuine guy, and of course none of that makes for good TV. Despite his lack of traditional good looks, he’s neither repulsively obese enough (Ruben Studdard) nor nerdy enough (Clay Aiken/Kevin Covais) to gain instant underdog sympathy – in fact, Taylor benefited much more from this right from the start, due to the grey hair and initial dismissal by Simon. Also, no all-consuming narcissism (Brenna). Also, no indication of serial killer tendencies (Scott Savol). What’s a nice guy with none of these trainwreck qualities got to do to get some attention?

Elliott’s answer to the question: Sing really really well all the time, including pulling off multiple fiendishly difficult songs with jaw-dropping ease. Sing songs you love, even if they’re not famous crowd-pleasers and the producers advise you against singing them. And do it all with warmth in your eyes, graciousness and humility, and a vocal tone that made me and many other women want to charge on stage and ravish him.

Well, his strategy obviously didn’t succeed in getting enough of America’s attention, but he certainly got mine.

I was bug-eyed, speechless and embarrassingly in the mood for love after Moody’s Mood For Love. Ready to enrol in teacher training college after Teach Me Tonight. Longing to go clubbing with him and dance like goofs after I Don’t Wanna Be. Wondering what it must be like for his girlfriend to watch her man, all dressed up and looking soooo hot, singing A Song For You to millions, and know she can get a private performance any time she wants. Exquisitely troubled after Trouble. And after I Believe It To My Soul? To put it very simply, a believer – that whether Elliott gets a record deal or not, sells millions of albums or not, he will be fine.

It takes a remarkable ability to keep things in perspective to pick a risky song like that, unfamiliar to many (myself included), knowing full well that it could seal your fate unfavourably in the competition but go for broke anyway because you love it and you know you’ll rock it. It was a great last song to be remembered by.

Please don’t disappear into obscurity, Elliott. I can’t bear the thought of never hearing you sing again. :(

Hanoi: Day Two

After a lazy morning and a little errand running for the next day’s trip to Ha Long Bay, we go to buy tickets for the water puppet show. The girl in the box office stares impassively at us as we stand about two feet away from her dull plastic window, trying to decide which show time to buy for. Having reached a decision, I step forward and open my mouth to ask for the tickets only to have said window abruptly shut in my face. A sign indicates the box office closes between noon and 12.45, and I guess the girl’s a real stickler for punctuality. If I were an uptight person this behaviour would annoy me but hell, I’m on holiday. We’ll go explore Hoan Kiem Lake and come back in 45.

Behind the counter

Truth be told, Ngoc Son Temple and the red “Sunbeam” bridge that leads to it are better appreciated from a distance. They look very picturesque when enveloped in the mist over the water, but once you actually get closer the temple’s fairly standard issue (except for the huge preserved tortoise carcass, that is) and won’t hold your attention long unless you’ve never seen a temple before. At the entrance to the bridge, I photograph a souvenir stall through its back door, and like the slightly different perspective it gives from the storefronts beautifully laid out for us tourists.

Is our children learning?

The banks of Hoan Kiem Lake seem as well-maintained as any park in Singapore. We stroll past a small series of modern art sculptures, a long line of propaganda posters, and scattered instances of furtive hand-holding and UST (for those of you who weren’t geeky enough to be active in the online X-Files communities of the 90s, that stands for Unresolved Sexual Tension) among young Vietnamese couples who should perhaps have been in school instead.

Eye of the tiger.

My usual penchant for bizarre statuary is amply sustained by this delightful white tiger on an ornamental wall near the entrance to Ngoc Son Temple. I want whatever mascara he’s got. Alec wants his ‘tache.

Proletariat and palm trees.

While we’re on the topic of statues, check out some Soviet Realism in the tropics!

Inspired by the spirit of revolution, our stomachs remind us it’s lunch time. And thanks to wuyuetian, I know just the place. Eating here probably breaks a couple of the food rules in the travel guide – all the raw vegetables look like they’ve been rinsed in tap water – but if you have to get food poisoning somewhere, you might as well get it from a meal as magnificent as this. (My stomach was fine, Alec’s was…rather more affected. Thank God for growing up in Southeast Asia, I guess.) Although I wasn’t too keen on the big stuffed spring rolls, the bun cha (grilled pork patties with rice noodles, to which you add herbs by the handful and ladle over delicious gravy that’s about 2 parts MSG and 1 part stock) is probably the best street food I’ve ever eaten. Our total bill, for huge unfinishable servings of pork patties, spring rolls, noodles, herbs, a Coke and a San Miguel, is 65,000D (S$6.50/a little over 2 pounds) – less than the price of a solitary San Miguel in most bars in Singapore. Thanks again, wuyuetian! I wouldn’t have had a clue about this place without your tip!

The Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre show (photo at the top) is quite charming, although water puppetry doesn’t seem to focus as much on the subtleties of an individual puppet’s movement (please note I know nothing about puppetry and my only basis of comparison is what I saw at the start of Being John Malkovich) as on getting the puppets to do synchronised dances and formations together. There are also light-hearted skits about villagers chasing fish around by thwacking themselves into the water, villagers chasing cats around by thwacking themselves into the water, and villagers chasing each other around by thwacking themselves into the water. And, of course, they do the legend of Hoan Kiem Lake. All good fun.

Light burden

After the show we walk around the cathedral area and do a little shopping on Nha Tho. This is most definitely an expat zone, with Spanish restaurants and suchlike, and cool shops full of cool things that I can’t bring myself to afford. I buy a weird little buffalo lantern thingy at a poky little place at the end of the road where the prices are less scary. My family thinks it’s hilariously ugly.

Since we’ve had local street food for lunch, the natural contrast in a trip to Vietnam is fancy French food for dinner. The outside courtyard of Green Tangerine is beautiful, and so romantic that I almost forgive Alec for forgetting to bring our travel guide. Almost.

This is what we have for dinner, and yes, I’m such a sad person that I actually copied all of this from the menu:

Starters:

Crab remoulade with orange zests on a layer of fresh asparagus, served with scallops marinated in orange flower essence separated by a sesame lace (Alec)
Scallops marinated in lavender flower presented on a bruschetta pancake (Me)

Mains:

Beef cheek braised in red wine perfumed with raspberry vinegar, with small diced potatos and apples enhanced by dates (Alec)
Pork fillet rolled in blackcurrant and “ngo” herb served with stuffed bamboo shoots and small vegetables crusted with sesame (Me)

Desserts:

A sort of taster dish, with chocolate truffle, creme brulee, a grape stuffed with sorbet, kiwi paste in a pastry shell and probably something else we couldn’t identify (Alec)
Creme brulee in Calvados, served in an apple baked in red wine (Me)

Total bill: 53 USD. We leave a 100,000D tip because the service has been lovely, despite being fully aware that that alone is more than our entire lunch cost.

Perhaps you’re wondering why we don’t seem to have explored the Old Quarter much. We did, but it’s just so difficult to capture its incredible appeal in words and pictures. Hanoi feels like its constant influx of tourists have little effect on its real life and the Old Quarter epitomizes this.

Everything to everybody

Yes, souvenir shops and hotels and tourist eateries spring up everywhere, but Hang Dau is still thronged every night we walk through it with happy Vietnamese women, a street full of shoes reflected in their eyes, and their men patiently waiting on motorbikes parked four deep. Yes, I do often have to politely decline the “Salut! Photo?” offers of the ubiquitious girls carrying baskets of fruit at either end of their yoke, but for every one of those girls there’s a wizened old lady in a conical hat carrying anything from plasticware to prawns at the ends of her yoke, and we mean nothing to her.

On the same street where I decide against buying a conical hat because I think the price is too high and I’m not in the mood to bargain, other shops feel it’s still worth their while to continue in the trades they have spent their lives in. I sincerely hope they never let us change that.

Ellen, My…Er…Bellen

Ellen Allien’s set at Zouk last night was cruelly short, ending just before 4, and before I’d got the chance to storm the DJ console and ask her to marry me.

Her set didn’t feature as much fembot voiceovers as I would have liked but it was still intensely, braincrushingly good for the most part. And when, during a beer break, I finally heard that wondrous disembodied voice proclaim “You…make…me…go MAAAAAAAAGMA!” I shoved my beer into Alec’s hands, raced back to the dancefloor, and went apeshit. I think anyone who drinks beer in Singapore will understand that sacrificing the first five minutes in which beer is actually cold and not nauseatingly warm should be ample proof of my love. O Ellen! How many more warm beers I would have drunk just to explore unknown trrrashsssscapes with you a little longer!

Still, in almost all respects it was a better night out than DJ T and M.A.N.D.Y. had been the previous night, except that I’d like to suggest to the dude in the striped cap that 1) it would be good to find a dance style that doesn’t involve elbowing people in the boobs and not apologizing, 2) your goatee looks like pubic hair, and 3) wearing the SAME CAP to two sweaty smoky club nights in a row is kinda gross.

Since the night ended earlier than we’d expected, we channelled our mutual lust for Ellen into supper at Arab Street. Cheese-coated chillies and almond spice smoothies are great at any time of day but when consumed while reclining on the cushioned floor of Ambrosia at 5.30 a.m., they approach divinity.

Hanoi: Day One

The Budget Terminal is the spitting image of most modern European airports and quite unlike Changi terminals 1 or 2 in look and feel. I haven’t a clue why other budget airlines wouldn’t want to use it – they’ve said to the media that their passengers won’t want to walk on the tarmac in the open to the plane, but this smacks of extreme muppetry.

Upon arrival we take the Vietnam Airlines minibus to central Hanoi (32,000D each). During the journey, we promptly fall in love with Hanoi’s vitality and charm even on our very first glimpses of it. The traffic is chaotic by Singaporean standards of course, but with none of the hair’s breadth brinksmanship I remember about Istanbul. Dust-bathed fruit sellers stand hopefully on the highway shoulder; a passing truck zooms past, then pulls over and reverses 20 metres along the shoulder for some bananas. Later that night, as we walk in the Old Quarter, kids playing badminton at the side of the road dart into multi-directional traffic to retrieve stray shuttlecocks without a moment’s hesitation.

It’s already dark when we reach central Hanoi. (Our plane landed at 1820.) As expected we’re mobbed by motorcycle/taxi/cyclo drivers the minute we step out of the minibus, but fend them off and walk some distance down the road to get our bearings. It only takes about half an hour to walk from there to our hotel in the Old Quarter, and if we were more familiar with the route and weren’t dragging luggage it would have been even faster. It’s a lovely first meeting with Hanoi – all along the length of Hoan Kiem lake, and then into the Old Quarter to Hang Bac, where we check into the awesome Queen Hotel¹.

It’s late when we set out for dinner, so unfortunately Cha Ca La Vong isn’t taking any more new diners. We eat at the only other place still open along the same road (Golden something or other). It looks like a tourist trap, but surprises us with perfectly cooked crispy squid in dill sauce and tender, flavourful beef grilled in honey. Bottles of Hanoi bia wash everything down well. Bill: about 140,000D. Singapore feels a million miles away.

¹ Review: Queen Hotel
We could have gone for cheaper places than this, but we haven’t been on a proper holiday together in ages and had decided we deserved something just a tiny bit better than usual. For US$35 per night in this place, we got a room with attached bathroom, aircon, small balcony, TV with most cable channels, DVD player, free Internet (note that this doesn’t even mean you have to bring your laptop – they have a freaking computer in the room with unlimited Internet access for you to use!), buffet breakfast brought to your room every day, and silk covers on the bed. Great service and attention to detail in beautifying even the common areas suggest this is a well-managed place across the board. If there’s a better room deal in Hanoi, I’d love to hear about it.