Well, how did I get here?

I went to the Flicks this evening to see a documentary, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.

The verdict?  It's not news to me. I remember stories of people who tried to leave Scientology finding rattlesnakes in their mailboxes almost 30 years ago.  I'm unlikely fodder for the Scientologists, or Jim Jones, or even Heaven's Gate, the group that aspired to evacuate Earth with the Hale-Bopp comet (much as I do love air travel). For two hours tonight, I watched and listened to former Scientologists -- and these were high-ranking people, not the riff-raff -- describing years of abuse and paranoia and fiscal skullduggery.  At the end, they asked themselves (and we, the viewers, asked the same of them), how did I get here? How could I have failed to see the warning signs?

I left the Flicks, a villa near the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and I pedalled through the dark streets of Phnom Penh on my bamboo bicycle. I stopped to wait for traffic at a busy intersection and noticed that the transgender Khmer singer at the beer garden to my right was delivering a fine rendition of "Stand by Me".  A tuktuk driver to my left pointed to the singer and gave me a thumbs-up. 

Click. 

Is this where I imagined I would be thirty years ago? Is it what my parents, teachers, mentors, friends envisioned for me? No. Sometimes we end up in places and circumstances that we might not have predicted. They may be sinister, as Scientology seems to me to be, or they may just be bizarre, like Phnom Penh. We might be able to outline the steps that brought us to our current situation, but I expect the various forks in the road will seem mysterious. We chose this route or that one because it seemed the path of least resistance, or the lesser of two evils, or the path we actually discerned to be most sound. 

I suppose people who followed more traditional paths must occasionally ask themselves the same questions, but perhaps with less sense of alarm. I've got the lyrics of the song, "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads ringing in my ears.

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack 

And you may find yourself in another part of the world 

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile 

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife 

And you may ask yourself 

Well...How did I get here? 

Hanoi, Part 1

Unlike Thai Railways, Vietnam's cars are either sleepers or seats -- the sleeping berths do not convert to seats during the daytime hours.  As Mark and I had the upper berths, and the lower ones were occupied, we either sat Indian-style, playing Scrabble, or we stretched out and read. We limped off the train on stiff legs in Hanoi on 22 March in the mid-afternoon.

I hadn't been to Hanoi for six years, and the change was remarkable. For one thing, Hanoi (like most of the rest of Vietnam) now has a full-fledged tourism industry.  Travel agencies on every street, organised trips here and there, hordes of backpackers and tour groups. I don't say this judgementally -- I'm sure it's a great boon to the Vietnamese economy, but it's also changed the country in ways that don't appeal to me. Another change that I noticed was the food. When I visited Hanoi six and eight years ago, there was still a noticeable French influence in the cuisine, an elegant marriage with traditional Vietnamese cooking. On this trip, we had remarkably few excellent meals, and Mark's quest for a croissant went unmet until we were back in Cambodia. We ate in local Vietnamese restaurants with no menus in English, street stalls, and restaurants that catered to tourists. It was all... okay. We agreed that we'd had far better meals in Phnom Penh, which surprised us both. 

As we walked from the Hanoi train station toward the old quarter, we stumbled upon the Thu Giang Guesthouse, tucked away at the end of a dark, narrow corridor between two shops. It was still outside the old quarter, so we were away from the wall-to-wall tourists, and the family that ran the place were a delight. No frills, but big room with a window (a luxury in many Vietnamese hotel rooms) for $12. It also had a wooden daybed, perfect for evening games of Scrabble, sipping rice wine that tasted like brandy. 

I lost this particular game.
It seemed to have Mark's name on it.

The weather was grey and cool in Hanoi, quite a shock after the torrid hot season in Phnom Penh. Shivering, I considered oodles of NorthFace anoraks. NorthFace clearly has factories in Vietnam, because their gear was in shop windows and on tourists all over the country. In the end, a black shawl seemed the most practical decision.

A stoic elderly bulldog, trying to ignore the
obnoxious mop of a poodle that insinuated itself between us.

The streets in Hanoi's Old Quarter, according to my Rough Guide, have names that date back five centuries, when the district was divided amongst 38 artisans' guilds. Some of them still house shops that offer the same goods; others have found new industries. Our guesthouse was on Hang Dieu (Pipe Street), now known for cushions and mattresses. Hang Ma craftsman used to make paper votive objects, and the street is still lined with paper goods shops.

A woman varnishes an altar on Hang Quat,
the street for religious accessories
(originally makers of ceremonial fans)
[photo:  AC]

Just opposite, I noticed a young shop owner pulling a long piece of bamboo out from behind his goods. I would have paid no notice to it, but I'd seen what this item was when I visited Ho Chi Minh City in December with Rose.  I tapped Mark on the shoulder and discreetly pointed toward the man. Mark turned around just in time to see him set fire to the bamboo.  Well, no, not really.  There is a tiny bowl about 2/3 of the way down the tube, into which he'd stuffed a wad of tobacco.  The two pipe-smokers gave each other small samples of their tobacco, and the shop owner lit up.

Mark took one whiff of the Vietnamese pipe tobacco and laughed.
It was so harsh and rough that he expects they'll find his
lovely, aromatic European tobacco useless.
[photo:  MU]

There's still a lot of commerce done by women carrying goods on bamboo poles slung across their shoulders and from the backs of bicycles.

Mulberry vendor near a covered market
[Photo:  AC]

Bonsai on wheels
[Photo: MU]

We decided to forgo the throngs of people queued up to view Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum (and its preserved inhabitant, who still makes annual trips to Russia for "maintenance", which mystifies me -- wouldn't it make more sense to fly the taxidermists to Hanoi?)  Instead, we decided to visit the Ho Chi Minh Museum just nearby, which the guide book described as "a surreal experience". That was putting it mildly.

Massive communist architecture
with effusive, reverent signage
[photo: MU]

Monumentally high ceilings, echoing marble and granite surfaces. Ascending these stairs felt every bit like approaching the high altar.  "The seamless combination of a cathedral and a casino," I whispered to Mark. We'd have giggled, but we feared we'd be thrown out.

[Photo: AC]

[Photo: MU]

This tableau ostensibly honours Vietnam's agricultural wealth. 

It made me feel slightly seasick.
[Photo: AC]

At the lower ground level were all manner of shops, selling everything from perfume and cosmetics to sandals made of old tires (made fashionable by Uncle Ho himself). The soldier figure, as best we could tell, was merely decorative. 

But don't try to steal a bottle of perfume.
[Photo: MU]

We walked back through a heavy drizzle, getting lost (as we so often did in Hanoi) and stumbling across the B-52 Victory Museum.  The building itself was closed and locked, but the exhibits outside it affected us both.  The Vietnamese shot the plane down in 1972 and pulled the wreckage from a pond nearby, which they later renamed B-52 Lake.  There's more information, interesting analysis and clearer photos here, if you're interested. 

The fragmented remains of a B-52 StratoFortress
[photo: AC]

The surface-to-air missiles that brought the plane down.

[photo: MU]