Paradise Lost – a weekend in Kep

Infinity pool

To mark the half-way point of the workshop in Phnom Penh, my colleague and I had decided to take a weekend trip down south to Kep, a sleepy little place on the Gulf of Thailand and just a stone’s throw from the Vietnamese border. (See slide show below.)

A luxury resort tucked away on the coast, fresh seafood and a respite from the capital’s traffic for a few days were refrains of a siren song I had no interest in resisting.

Our driver picked us up on Friday morning and slowly made our way out of the city, heading south past various government ministries, including one that used to be the American embassy, and which was the scene of a hasty US evacuation just days before the Khmer Rouge took the city in 1975.

As we got further from the center, the constant swirl of scooters, cars, carts, bicycles and pedestrians that make up the city’s streets began to thin out. Buildings were replaced by small plots of land and then the landscape opened up to reveal large rice paddies, watery green carpets of spindly stalks.

Hygiene hazard

As Phnom Penh receded, so did those city scenes of young Cambodians on scooters chatting on mobile phones and hulking Lexus SUVs daring any other vehicle to impede their way. Country concerns took over. Scooters here might be loaded with precariously balanced pig carcasses or even live ones, on their way to a meeting with the butcher’s knife.

Twice small motorbikes passed from the other direction with what looked like, from a distance, big bunches of dark foliage tied to a pole balanced behind the driver. They were dead chickens, a lot of them.

Out here, more men and women were wearing the krama, the traditional Cambodian checked scarf that can be used as head covering, sarong, bag, washrag, towel or blanket. Houses got humbler, many up on stilts in the midst of the paddies, some not more than thatched walls and a roof. Often a family would be gathered under it, one or two people in a hammock, others sitting around talking, holding babies, just taking refuge from the tropical sun.

Car-side service

In the villages we passed, small, ramshackle shelters housed shops selling cigarettes and gasoline decanted from old soft-drink bottles. Pigs and dogs ambled among customers of the open-air butcher shops, surely eyeing the large hunks of bloody meat hung on hooks.

On one section of road, roadside stands offered a local delicacy, frog. Smaller ones were a kind of finger food, I suppose, kind of like the fried tarantula other regions are known for. Here, the larger amphibians came bunched on a spit: frogkabob. We politely declined when offered one at the car window.

Kep-on-Sea

Kep was not always the quiet, you-can-hardly-call-it-a-town kind of place it is today. In the first half of the 20^th century, it was a swanky resort town for the French colonials and Cambodian elites. It was known as Kep-sur-Mer, here the French built large villas along the waterfront and King Sihanouk had a mansion built on a hill overlooking the Gulf.

But as the country descended into civil war and then into full-on living nightmare, Kep was dragged down too. Eerie reminders of that rise and fall are scattered about in the form of those once-grand villas, whose ruins still stand – quiet witnesses of the Khmer Rouge’s lust for destruction.

Ideological victim

Since the buildings were seen as examples of bourgeois decadence, they were gutted and burned by the radical egalitarians in their red kramas and black pajamas, and left for the jungle to retake. Where their residents went is unknown to me. Probably some got out of the country before the KR came; others perhaps were not so lucky and ended up in a work camp or those notorious fields.

Some of the villas have disappeared all together, only a gate and stone fence on prime real estate remaining. Others just stand there, crumbling, too far gone to be brought back to life. And besides, superstition prevents many Cambodians from doing much of anything with them. Places where bad things happened are to be avoided.

In fact, the region around Kep was one of the last hold-outs of the Khmer Rouge. One man told us that as late as the mid-90s, Khmer Rouge fighters would occasionally emerge from their jungle hideouts to rob and pillage and generally terrorize everyone.

Paradise regained

However, some buildings in Kep have been saved and been brought back quite spectacularly, including a few at the most fabulous resort we stayed at, Knai Bang Chatt. It preserves some of the flavor of what I imagine Kep to have been in its heyday, a little sliver of paradise by the sea.

Two Belgian men found several buildings that had been built by students of Cambodia’s leading architect, Vann Molyvann, who was himself a student of the European modernist masters.  As one of the current owners is the son of a well-known Belgian interior designer, as you probably suspect, the design concept is not exactly High Holiday Inn.

Resort with a view

The rooms are simple, almost sparse, but lovely – filled with ochre surfaces, cool tiles, and small touches such as a pitch-perfect bowl or rough hewn table that keep them from being cold and unfeeling.

The landscape is lush, and spills down to the sea side, crossing an infinity pool on the way along with lounging beds and a breakfast table perched out almost on top of the water.

Next door is a sailing club with a former fisherman’s house that is now a restaurant/café, from whose deck we saw one of the most amazing sunsets ever (and I don’t usually gush about these things).

Needless to say, we hung around the grounds most of the time, completely satisfied by the surroundings. I got a class ‘a’ sunburn because I am a class ‘a’ idiot and spent a great deal of time in the pool sans sunscreen trying to figure out why I look like a fish out of water when I’m in it trying to swim.

Old Spice

Sunday rolled around and as a last outing we hopped in a tuk-tuk and asked to see a pepper plantation. The region’s pepper is supposed to be some of the best anywhere. But who knows how pepper is grown? I sure didn’t.

Fruits of the harvest

So, under a scorching sun, we bounced down a dirt path off the main road and came upon a collection of thatch-and-wood shelters, a few mangy dogs and a hen and her chicks pecking around – Tara it wasn’t.

But all around were mango trees and tall, leafy columns that turned out to be pepper vines on poles. Our driver told us to eat some of the green berries off the vine. The taste was sharp and intense and stayed with me for several hours.

Mouths tingling, we set off to look around a bit. As I was heading back to the tuk-tuk, sweating gallons, I heard a sudden noise behind me. I turned around to see a teenage boy in a red krama holding something coming my way. I think I let out an audible gasp as visions of gun-toting teen soldiers, brainwashed and merciless, flashed in my head. The guy just smiled, whirled his stick, and walked on by.

I made a mental note to read no more books on the Khmer Rouge, at least while I’m here.

 

Istanbul – a tiny tour

Outside the Blue Mosque, the red flag

On the way back from Kazakhstan, I stopped for two-and-a-half days in Istanbul. It was my first time in the former Constantinople.

It’s a fascinating place with so many different layers of history piled up on top of each other — Byzantine capital, Ottoman imperial city, teeming Turkish metropolis.

After Aktau, I was jumping for joy to be in a real city, where one could get non-instant coffee and find a newspaper not in Russian. Since I hadn’t seen any of the tourist things, I approached the hordes and dove in.

Here are a few snaps I took scurrying from one site to the next:

 

Aktau – Sand in my eyes

Seaside idyll?

“You would gaze around and feel so dreary that you might well hang yourself.” –Taras Shevchenko (1850)

Landing in Aktau, in far western Kazakhstan, on a Saturday at noon, and taking a cab into town from the airport, I could well sympathize with Mr. Shevchenko’s sentiment on being exiled to this parched region back in 1850.

The Ukrainian poet had run afoul of the authorities, who in good Roman fashion, decided to send him packing to some God-forsaken place. Lacking piles of rock in the Mediterranean, the czar picked a more-than-suitable alternative, a stretch of barren land on the eastern side of the Caspian Sea – my home for a week, Aktau.

But then it wasn’t Aktau back then; I don’t believe it was much of anything, except scrub, flies, rock, wind-blown sand and perhaps a camel or two. In fact, later on, the covert settlement that would spring up in 1961 when the Soviets discovered there was uranium in them thar’ hills simply had a number as a moniker. Two years later it was baptized Shevchenko, after the region’s reluctant former resident.

Shevchenko ponders his fate

My introduction to the place was not, shall we say, auspicious. After a pretty stress-free flight on Air Astana (which wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, and in fact better than some Delta planes I’ve been on) I grabbed my suitcase off the creaking conveyor belt and headed out into the blinding sun. I nodded at one of the more reputable-looking individuals among the gaggle of men offering rides into town.

Being very clever I thought, given how poor my Russian is, I asked him to write down the price he would charge for his service. 300 T was entered into my little blue notebook – a steal! Especially since my two-year-old guidebook said it’d run me about 1,000 tenge, the local coinage. Oh, foolish traveler…

We set off down a brand-new road that looked suspiciously like the one that leading from Astana’s airport to its city center, complete with new streetlights every five feet and billboard after billboard featuring the glories of either: 1. Kazakhstan (usually with children, old women or veterans in the photo), 2. The President (usually surrounded by children, old women or veterans) or 3. Astana! This national PR campaign had gotten out of hand.

My driver kept talking to me like I could understand what he was saying, at one point saying something about the hotel and holding up five fingers. OK, since the hotel was actually outside of Aktau, I thought he was bumping the price from 300 to 500 tenge, just €2.30 – still, a steal! Oh, naïve visitor…

Road to nowhere

The taxi sped through this wasteland – a post-apocalyptic landscape if I’ve ever seen one. (Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” came to mind.) There is no fresh water here; the city has to desalinate all it uses. The ground is so hard, I read, that jackhammers have to break up the soil before trees can be planted.

As we approached town, the already-gusty wind grew in force, clawing at the small trees and whipping up dirt and dust, throwing it in the faces of the figures making their way across the rocky shoulder. Russian pop blared from the car stereo, which the driver didn’t feel the need to turn down when holding any one of several mobile phone conversations, he’d just yell into the thing.

Aktau itself doesn’t present her charms readily. The city was born at an unfortunate time in Soviet architecture (err, was there a fortunate one?) and the crumbling apartment blocks don’t look better here than they do anywhere else in the former eastern bloc; except here, they were getting lost in a sand storm. We skirted the downtown area and headed south toward the Dostar Hotel, the compromise (and in the end, bad) choice since the other business hotels in town were not within the budget. Being an oil and gas town, Aktau’s prices are surprisingly steep.

Finally, a bit of blue unfolded to the right, and then unfolded some more – and the sparkling waters of the Caspian Sea brought a modicum of relief from this arid landscape, at this stage broken by three-story barracks-like apartment blocks in front of a distant blur of factory smokestacks. The salt-water sea is a lovely sight, a blue and bright oasis under the unrelenting sun.

Enjoy Soviet-style accommodation!

Pulling up in front of the hotel, I handed my driver the 500 tenge and all hell broke loose. He thought I was trying to cheat him; I thought he was trying to cheat me, and it turned ugly, degenerating into our yelling at each other in languages the other didn’t understand.

In the end, thanks to a barely bi-lingual hotel receptionist, I learned the man is just this side of illiterate, and thought 300 spelled three thousand. I gave in to that, but refused to go up to 5,000, and that was that. He stormed off in a huff, I marched off indignantly to my room. Welcome to western Kazakhstan.

Aktau, what does one say? After a week, her charms were still somewhat elusive. Perched as she is on the edge of the desert, she’s got a dust problem. But at least the Caspian keeps her cooler than the oven behind her and back in hammer-and-sickle days, her coast sported an elite resort for Soviet higher-ups. In the winter, she doesn’t get the bitter Siberian winds of Astana or other places on the steppe; it rarely snows. The streets are kept relatively clean by a brigade of women wrapped up like rubber-booted mummies who sweep the sidewalks.

There are long stretches of relatively uncrowded beach and the hotel balcony allowed for pre-sunrise views of the twinkling lights of tankers waiting to dock in the far distance among the rhythmic red and blue flashing of buoys. At the other end of the day, the sun’s slide down under the watery horizon would set off a tumult of breathtaking colors in the sky.

Proletariat housing

Oil in the region has given Aktau a leg up, and while the old apartment blocks are still there, they’re interspersed with new business centers and luxury apartment blocks under construction, plus a plethora of big single-family homes in various states of completion, McMansions that would feel at home in any high-end US suburb — well, save the two that appear to have been built for King Arthur and Zeus.

The Kazakh people were a little hard to get a read on. Some were very warm and hospitable, such as those I worked with. But others, particularly in the public sphere, could be pretty unpleasant. I’ll stop complaining about German shop staff now. The hotel personnel at the Dostar combined incompetence with discourteousness – always a winning ticket.

Perhaps it’s that Russian way I’ve never really appreciated or understood, although Kazakhs I spoke to say they are very different than Russians. The women, one group told me, treat their men like kings, whereas Russian women do not. Do the Kazakh men deserve such an attitude, I asked? Not from what I’ve seen.

An outing with the girls

No matter, the fairer sex here will stand by their men, and preferably perched on very high heels. As in Mongolia, the women under 40 here are generally decked out in at least three inches of heel, often more.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a trip to the supermarket, a walk along the beachfront, a trek through cityscape of crumbled sidewalks and dirt lots. When I said most women where I come from prefer flats for everyday wear, the looks were incredulous – but heels, they’re part of being an attractive woman.

These Kazakh women, with their highly developed sense of balance, are always en pointe – hoping, I guess, to impress the royalty who cross their path.

 

Karaganda – the city that forced labor built

Heroes of coal

When I would ask my interpreter what Karaganda was like, since she had studied there for a year, she would only say “industrial city.” So the picture in my mind was pretty grim as we left Astana in a hired taxi for the three-hour drive south, crunched in the back seat of an old VW Golf, Pink Floyd edition. But after a week of the capital’s empty shine, I was ready to move on, even if it did give me black lung.

After what seemed like an eternity on a road straight as a steel rod but disconcertingly dotted with memorials to fatal car crashes, complete with photos of the deceased, a smudge appeared on the horizon. Thank heavens we’re there, I thought, retangling my legs into another position. That relief turned to horror as the very epitome of industrial squalor began to come more clearly into view.

A jumble of smokestacks, the biggest one spewing a thick cloud of black smoke, was rising up from the empty steppe like some malevolent oasis. I must have made some sort of “oh” sound because my translator said, “that’s not Karaganda, don’t worry.” Whew.

Turned out, it was Temirtau, one of the world’s largest steel plants, built back in the Soviet era and still carrying all that

Insalubrious

period’s charm. It’s also one of the country’s biggest polluters, has a very high accident rate, and according to the UN, has dealt with a major intravenous drug problem, with a syringe of the local drug mix cheaper than a bottle of vodka. The lure of a blissful narcotic escape from those hellish surroundings is understandable enough. I snapped a shot from the window, which was about all the interaction with Temirtau I was interested in.

The arrival in Karaganda was a much happier event, although this city built on coal and prison labor is not likely to win any beauty contests soon. It has its share of giant, Soviet-style apartment blocks in various states of decrepitude, there are older buildings from the 1930s and 40s that line its main tree-lined thoroughfare. Several parks and greenbelts give it some breathing space. And the people are friendlier, it seems, than in Astana.

It sits on top of an enormous coal basin, and coal, along with prisoners, are what built the city. It’s renowned, or notorious, for the KarLag prison camp system set up by Stalin to send those who fell out of favor with him or his regime. It was a whole network of camps, which got going in 1931 and whose last admin center didn’t close until 1961. At its peak, the system covered an area bigger than France.  One afternoon we visited a memorial to those who died in the camps.

Gulag cemetery

It’s a mass grave out on the steppe, marked with crosses and small monuments from countries whose citizens died here – from Romania to Germany to Korea and Japan – hundreds and hundreds of thousands. Somewhat chilling, besides the cold, cutting wind blowing over the flat landscape, were the military exercises the Kazakh military were holding about 40 feet behind us. The sound of rumbling tanks kind of overwhelmed the solemn atmosphere of the place.

When those prisoners weren’t being taken to giant pits dug in the frozen ground, they were breaking their backs building much of what is now Karaganda, or digging coal for the Soviet state. After the camps were shut down, many people who had been sent to the region decided to stay here. And many of those walking on the city’s streets today are descendents of the one-time prisoners. Karaganda used to have a large ethnic German population, since many of the Germans who had emigrated to Russia centuries before were exiled to remote Kazakhstan when World War II broke out. There are still some around, although many have left, a good percentage having gone back to Germany under a repatriation program offered by the German government.

Despite all that history, and the fact that the eastern Karaganda state region is radioactive thanks to Soviet nuclear tests, the city seems to be getting on with things. Miners are still around and the city’s local heroes, although the pits are out of town and their numbers are declining.  There were a couple of decent restaurants that served food that wouldn’t take five years of your life. One hip café we frequented, Chic Orange, had a photography exhibition going on and seemed to be the gathering place for Karaganda’s hipster scene.

The people at the TV/Radio station are really on the ball, and their work is admirable. It’s an independent station that

Still standing

ran afoul of government censors and got its news programs jerked off the air. It’s going back on next month and is determined to go ahead with its mission, although admitting it will have to dance a little cautious two-step with the authorities, since it doesn’t want to see suited men from the National Defense Committee (shudder) descending on its premises again.

One of things I liked was all the Soviet-era imagery left around the place, like murals and statues and mosaics – all featuring those valiant workers striding toward a socialist Utopia. Fun stuff. The biggest Lenin statue in Central Asia is here, which was going to be taken down after Kazakhstan gained independence but Communist die-hards held protests and sit-ins, and the statue stayed. This week, there was always a little bouquet of fresh flowers propped up in front of Vlad.

 

The Neverland Ranch of Capitals – Astana

Futuropolis?

I didn’t know much about Kazakhstan before getting here. For most people, the ‘stans just kind of blend together in some vague blur (umm…over by Russia…somewhere?), if they even register at all. Kazakhstan did get some publicity – unwelcome by many – as the home of the Borat.

But it’s pretty much considered a backwater…even the Soviets thought so, using it as a home for a sprawling labor camp network and then a nuclear test site. Despite the less-than-charming recent history, when Kazakhstan was offered as a three-week gig, I took it. Central Asia, why not? (Slide show below)

Arriving in Astana at 4:00 a.m. on the red-eye from Istanbul, I wasn’t really in the mood to face the scrum of people jostling for places at passport control or the severe-looking matrons from customs barking at me in Russian. “Anglisky?” was my feeble rejoinder, always met with a stern “nyet!”

Slightly traumatized, but really too tired to care, I waved off a couple of shady guys asking if I needed a taxi and grabbed an official-looking one which took me on a smooth-as-silk ride into town. Unremarkable? Perhaps. But the June trip from airport to town in Mongolia, just to the east, involved lots of pothole dodging on dimly lit roads. I expected a similar experience here.

Go Astana!

But no, not in President (18 years and counting) Nursultan Nazarbayev’s showcase capital, plopped down in the middle of the steppe, like some gaudy oasis. The roads were lit to near daylight levels, billboards along the road screamed about the wonders of Astana (the self-promotion was immediately suspect), and passing through the new part of town, the “Left Bank” (roll eyes here), was like getting a guided tour of bad 80s American architecture.

Astana, whose name — its third since 1961 — simply means “capital,” was a provincial town of limited importance up in northern Kazakhstan, the more undeveloped part of the country. But Nazarbayev decided back in the 1990s that he wanted to move the capital from Almaty, down south, up to the wind-swept plain.

Why on God’s green earth? Well, the government said it was because Almaty was seismically unstable, was too close to China (those marauding Reds could overtake the capital in two shakes) and Mr. N. wanted better transport connections with Russia, Kazakhstan’s past political and current cultural overlord. And What Mr. N. wants, Mr. N. gets.

So, in 1997, the capital up and moved, and Astana began its transformation. Maybe it’s comparable to Berlin, which underwent its own metamorphosis when the capital was moved back there after all those post-war decades. But at least the Germans had historical reasons for doing so, and a little more taste.

The telecommunications ministry looks like gold lighter, a 36-floor one. The finance ministry resembles a dollar sign, the national music academy a grand piano. Walking down toward this architectural conglomeration of (expensive) kitsch one day, I happened upon a building that’s a dead ringer for the Jupiter 2 from “Lost in Space.” It was the new circus, which features a fountain that would have been right at home on Mr. Jackson’s ranch.

Many of these confections in glass and steel are found on Nurzhol bulvar, an east-west axis that is meant to be Astana’s showcase mile. At one end is the sweeping edifice of KazMunayGas, the company exploiting the country’s rich oil, gas and mineral reserves and which has, to be fair, pulled it away from the economic abyss the rest of the ‘stans are teetering on.

Through its grand arch, one sees the new pleasure palace being built called Khan Shatyr, shaped like a oversized tent, or maybe Kazakh yurt, under whose canopy Astanites will be able to enjoy summer temps even while its -30 out. Down the grand axis past raised flower beds, fountains and walkways already kind of falling apart, one marvels at huge towers rising and whose style might be described as Islamo-Western-Soviet-Logan’s Run-Gothic.

A strong hand

At the other end is the gargantuan Presidential Palace, and behind it, a large glass pyramid, sporting the understated name of the Palace of Peace and Harmony.  Oh, lest I forget, in the middle rises the Bayterek, the symbol of Astana emblazoned upon just about everything in this city. It looks like an oversized lattice vase with a gold ball up top and reflects an old Kazakh legend about a bird that laid a magic egg high in a poplar tree. The egg contained all the secrets of happiness, but which were beyond human reach.

Not anymore. Under Mr. N., visitors can pay $2.50 and ride up to the egg, reflect on, I don’t know, the symbolism, and lay their palm in a golden handprint the president has left as you look out onto his residence. I thought it was creepy; many Kazakhs love it. It’s a must-have photo for newlyweds.

What is interesting is seeing how Astana ends as suddenly as it appears — beyond the gaudy glitz lies empty steppe as far as you can see.

All in all, Astana is an odd place. Several of the Kazakhs I’ve worked with this trip agree, saying because of its artificiality, it’s rather sterile and doesn’t have much character. They say the people can be brusque and have little sense of community because most of them are transplants, having come from other places for work. Of course, bad taste aside, my lack of initial warmth for the place itself was  compensated a great deal by the warmth of many of the people I met at the radio station.

KZ girl group belts one out about Astana

My main problem with it is the feeling in the air of authoritarianism, which is definitely Nazarbayev’s style. (Journalists at this radio station are forced to put some kind of positive story about the president first in their newscasts. A similar good news story about the government has to come second. Only then are they free to write what they want, or what is actually news.

The president’s grand axis reminded me not of Paris’ own Axe historique, but the axis one sees in the mock-ups of the Nazi visions for post-war Berlin, the planned world capital of Germania. Not that Nazarbayev has much in common with Hitler, but there is a certain megalomania going on here, a sweeping sense of self-aggrandizement and the brooking of no dissent set in steel.

In fact, I just learned today that parliament (such as it is) voted in 2008 to rename Astana “Nursultan,” Nazarbayev’s first name. The prez humbly said that now was not the time, but did not reject the idea that some future generation might rechristen the city yet again.

 

Into the Steppe

The Mongolian Steppe

Lest any gentle reader take offense at my views on the Mongolian capital (and one comment-leaver did mightily, but at least he/she loaded the vitriol with one of my favorite words — „puerile” – points for that), I’ve decided to wrap up my Mongolia blog series (short as it may be) on a more positive note. No, I am not caving in to a bad review (freedom of speech, baby!), but actually, once you get out of the fairly hellish hole of Ulaanbaatar, the country is transformed – visually, at least. (There’s a slide show below.)

Escape we did, on the weekend between the two weeks of the course, aided by two Australian women who were doing a year’s Peace Corps-like work at the Press Institute where we were teaching. Incredibly friendly in that very Aussie way, we’d asked them for some advice on where to go for a couple of days in the country. Next thing we knew, they had set everything up, arranged a driver, reserved some huts in a yurt camp, and are buying food and lots of beer for a planned picnic on Saturday. We just had to show up.

Hitting the road Saturday morning in a minivan, we left the prefab facades of UB behind, then drove though the informal settlements that are popping up all around the capital as people from the countryside flock to the city — tending their traditional flocks isn’t cutting it for a lot of Mongolians financially anymore. Many bring their traditional homes with them, the white, circular felt tents known as yurts, or gers in Mongolian.

Ger with satellite dish and solar panel

It seems a poor tradeoff to my untrained eye, giving up the austere beauty of the Mongolian countryside for the squalor of a crowded outlying neighborhood of UB. But then again, I might opt for some city living after years of isolated living on the steppe, when temps drop to -40 degrees in the winter and the prices I’m getting for my sheep continues to plummet. That romanticism would also likely die a quick death from frost bite after a few late-night trips to the outdoor pit toilet.

But, hey, I was just there for the weekend, so I feel free indulge in some purely aesthetic appreciation – and there’s a lot of wonder at. After the last gas station on the outskirts of UB falls behind, the landscape opens up, long stretches of rolling green grassland with low mountains in the background that appear to go on forever. It’s the largeness of it all that’s most remarkable — especially the sky, which overpowers the land below and which on this weekend was roiling with cloud formations in advance and retreat.

It’s a largely empty land – about two-and-a-half times the size of Texas, but with a population of only 2.7 million. We passed through one town on the way to our destination, but otherwise you pretty much just spy the occasional ger or ger group from the road, a herd of horses or flock of sheep, and, well, that’s about it.

Revenue Source (Photo: Marc Seidel)

The road leading up to our ger camp was pretty good; it had been repaved by the government due to the mining operations nearby. But at one point we veered off onto a dirt path and, yes, even in this almost deserted landscape, almost managed to hit another car head-on in a Mongolian game of off-road chicken.

Disaster averted, we arrived at the Secret History Ger Camp. I think the Secret History part refers to an early Mongolian literary/historical work – but it pretty much remained secretive to us. The place was kind of upscale for a ger camp. No white felt tents for the tourists, no ma’am, these were wooden. The main house had a restaurant, masseurs, and a karaoke room, which was often in use. (Mongolians love karaoke.) Still, the gers themselves were just one room structures, no plumbing inside, and a stove in the middle with a box beside it filled with wood and dung for heating.

All in all, a good time, enjoying a few beers and a picnic amid the grandeur of the landscape, watching sheep head served in the restaurant, moving the party into the ger at night amid the warm heat of the dung-fed fire (it doesn’t really stink). This camp was surrounded by hills that actually had trees – a rare treat.

Luxury Gers

The hotel staff would come out at night and get the fire started for you and you’d keep it going as you fell asleep. In some places, the Aussies told us, personnel come into your ger again at 4 a.m. to restart it, which I imagine could be disconcerting. In our case, they didn’t, although I wish they had. I woke up at about 6:30 just freezing – the temps had really dipped over the weekend. I made it over to the phone with my Mongolian guide book phrase section shivering in my hand.

Got someone from the main house and started scanning the entries…no word for “fire” here, only “Please hold the dogs!” and “I hope your animals are fattening up nicely.”

Finally, there it was: “stove” (zuukh), so I yelled that into the bad line and the number of our ger. They seemed to get what I meant. I was quite proud, although no one ever knocked on our door. Turns out, I’d said “two” instead of “three” just sent the fire lighters to the Australians’ ger.

Well, I was awake by then, and decided I might as well take a morning walk. Once out into the bracing air, I noticed a big mangy dog eyeing me warily. Remembering that phrase I’d just passed by in the guide book, I made a wide circle around him on my way toward the far horizon.

 

A Manly Skill

It was the end of our first week in Ulaanbaatar and my colleagues and I were looking forward to getting out of the town to refresh battered senses with some idyllic countryside. But we still had a Friday evening to kill, and another few hours nursing beers at the Grand Khaan Irish Pub didn’t really appeal. Luck for us, due to the recent presidential inauguration, there were some festivities going on, including a wrestling bout in the arena just down the street from the hotel, so we decided to check it out.

Wrestling is one of Mongolia’s three “manly skills,” along with horsemanship and archery, and it’s also the most popular sport in the country. It’s said Chenggis Khaan thought it was a good way to keep his troops in shape. And from what we saw, he might have been on to something, although I feel for the horses these men might have been riding back then.

Inside the wrestling arena, just down the street from our hotel, we happened upon a strange site. Some 20 hulking men, dressed only in small blue briefs and red jackets of a sort or just red sleeves sans any jacket, were in the center of the arena, amid a few robe-and-hat wearing men. To my untrained eye, it seemed they were just walking around somewhat aimlessly. Maybe every now and again two of the men would lock arms and pushing against one another. All of this was accompanied by a constant drone of a Mongolian announcer. Sometimes one of the wrestlers would fall, sometimes not.

As I was standing in the stairwell, failing to make heads or tails of anything, I suddenly felt a hand grab my shoulder and pretty much jerk me backward, almost off my feet. I turned around indignantly, ready to rail against the rudeness of it all, when I saw that that hand belonged to a man about the size of a tank, whose way I was apparently in.

Our chosen stairwell turned out to be the one through which wrestlers who’d been knocked out of the competition, or maybe just taking a break, returned to their seats. In any event, they weren’t smiling and didn’t appear like they’d be receptive to a lecture on stadium etiquette.  I kept my mouth shut and made sure I noticed who was approaching from behind so I could meekly stand aside in time.

These were big guys, some with Sumo wrestler stomachs, others solidly built like moving brick walls. I did find the uniforms odd – kind of like a Wonder Woman meets the Incredible Hulk.

 

Ulaanbaatar – What would Chinggis say?

I didn’t have any idea about Mongolia’s capital before coming here — I mean, who does? Ulaanbaatar is far removed from, well, pretty much everything. It’s light years away from the Paris-London-Barcelona tourist circuit and even those who do venture further afield generally don’t make it as far north as the world’s coldest national capital. And after being here a week and a half, I can see why.

I don’t want to be unfair. This windswept city on the steppe emerged from seven decades of communism less than twenty years ago. Seventy years of Soviet-style city planning and architecture would take the shine off just about anything. But, my god, UB (what those in the know call the city) takes being dreary, dowdy and down-at-heel to new heights, or lows, as the case may be. I wonder what the proud Chinggis Khaan (the current spelling of Mongolia’s national hero, Genghis Khan) would think of the administrative and cultural capital of the country that descends from his massive Mongol empire – at his death, it stretched from the Caspian Sea to today’s Vladivostok. Well, truth be told, UB didn’t even exist when he was around. All the better.

A fairly representative apartment building

I’m not recommending saying no to a trip to Mongolia – the countryside is spectacular. The wide steppe—startling, empty landscapes rolled out under a towering sky broken by occasional herds of sheep and horses—is overflowing with austere beauty. But the built landscape, that’s another thing. I’d relish a week out on the steppe, living in one of the traditional yurts, the round, felt tents that many Mongolians, especially those still living a nomadic lifestyle, call home. I’d even put up with the boiled meat and dairy products that make up the traditional diet for a while.  But I’d likely give the capital, something of a sore on that mightily impressive landscape, a pass.

What to say? It’s mostly a collection of concrete, prefab buildings in various states of disrepair, dropped around crumbling sidewalks and murderous traffic. Once you get maneuver the open manholes and rock-strewn walkways, its takes a powerful death wish to attempt crossing any street. Drivers actually appear to speed up when approaching pedestrians and one more than one occasion I’ve almost been taken out by a packed city bus whose driver took a corner like he was trying to keep his lead in some urban Grand Prix.

Crossing the street is like a real-life game of "Frogger"

The ugliness of some of the city is actually oppressive, and not just to the effete aesthete whose idea of nirvana is sipping espresso among the lovingly restored medieval buildings of Paris’ 4^th arrondissement (err…not referring to me, of course). Once I spent the better part of a lunch break looking for a café to get a break from the meaty, greasy stuff that Mongolian cooks at the Press Institute provide. It was apparently just around the corner from where we’re working, in a particularly unattractive corner of this unattractive city.

After spending half an hour tripping over crumbling concrete, dodging accelerating vehicles, squinting at faded street signs in Cyrillic mounted precariously on cracking facades, I gave up, and got back to an interior as soon as I could (almost losing a foot to a car in the process), anxious to leave behind the urban landscape outside. All the better, again, since I later learned the last trainer to find that particular café spent the next two days on the toilet.

Best to ignore the ground and focus the gaze upwards

The city of one million (which got its current name, “Red Hero,” from the socialists in 1924) is ringed by mountains, which are lovely. The city is growing fast, since many traditional nomads are finding they can no longer sustain themselves herding animals, so they move to the city and further strained the creaking infrastructure. (About one-third of the country’s population lives here.) UB is ringed with these new settlements, ramshackle collections of yurts, or gers, and small houses, often without electricity or plumbing or much of anything. They are heated with coal and I’ve heard that in the winter, the city lives under a thick blanket of smoke. That, in combination with temps that drop to -40 degrees, is a concoction that must be pure hell.

It's dinner time!

And the food…don’t get me started. Perhaps consuming fatty, boiled meat all winter and dairy products all summer was a diet that appealed to Chinggis’ marauding armies or sheep-herding nomads eking out an existence in a hostile climate, but I and my heart don’t want any part of it.

Still, there’s some great cashmere sweaters and blankets to be had. We’ve met some very cool Mongolians, who are trying to make the most of a difficult situation. Corruption is rampant in the country and is hindering development. The global economic crisis has snaked its way into the steppe, with crashing demand for costly cashmere hitting herders hard. But democracy is established, the country is eager to overcome its geographic isolation and join the international community. And, UB now has two vegetarian restaurants. Things are looking up.

We met some Australian women who have been here working in Ulaanbaatar for about a year. They took us out on a trip to the countryside on the weekend. One of them summed it up for me: “Well, UB is kind of a shithole, and I probably won’t ever be back. But in the end, I’m glad I came.”

 

Idyllic Days in the Mormon Kingdom

Beaver Island Sunset, photo: flickr/xray10

After the sheer chaos of India, the neon-lit crush of Macao and the freeway frenzy of suburban Dallas, Beaver Island, MI has been a welcome respite. It’s slightly off the beaten track, which adds to its appeal. To get there, take a plane to Detroit or Chicago, then another one to Traverse City, then drive an hour up to Charlevoix, then hop into a six-seat puddle jumper for the final 15-minute flight to the island, the largest in Lake Michigan.

Beaver Island is about 13 miles long and six miles wide, with a year-round population of around 550. Its fairly flat landscape features forests and meadows, several lakes and the small town of St. James at its northernmost

flickr/kafka4prez

point. My friend Dan, who I know from San Francisco, moved here with his partner three years ago after falling prey to the isle’s bucolic charms.

Having had enough of California, he was ready to come home to the more grounded style of living in Michigan, where he’s from.  So he bought 10 acres, cleared a plot and had a big old wooden house built.

It was quite a transformation from San Francisco urban living: here he’s got to drive 15 minutes largely on dirt roads to get his mail, clear the road in front of his house with his own snowplow, and worry about things like coyotes, road grades and illegal logging. Still, the tradeoff was well worth it.

Not that I have to worry about anything while I’m here. I just sleep late, play Wii games up in the tower room, plug into the wifi network, enjoy a few of the thousands of DVD’s he’s got, take long walks in the woods, or read in a big comfy chair…until I fall asleep in it. Maybe I’ll stack a little wood. Or, maybe just do nothing.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Strangite)

But Beaver Island has not always been the halcyon retreat it now is. At one point, it was proclaimed the kingdom of a schismatic sect of the Mormon Church, a utopia that fell under the sway of an authoritarian who had himself crowned King before being shot to death by two followers. James Jesse Strang considered himself leader of all Mormons after the death of the Church’s founder, Joseph Smith, although Brigham Young had the vote of the majority.

James Jesse Strang

So, undeterred, the “Strangite” Mormons moved to Beaver Island in 1848 and eventually drove out the Irish settlers already there. After the coronation in 1850 (held in a log “tabernacle” and complete with metal crown, red robes, breastplate and wooden scepter), Strang grew more and more autocratic, lording it over his followers, putting many restrictions in place – as well as taking five wives and fathering 14 children.

Two men he’d had flogged because their wives did not meet his strict dress code decided enough was enough. One day in town they shot Strang in the back, right on the water’s edge, an event that’s rather creepily reenacted by local middle school students on occasion.

After Strang’s death, the community was set adrift since no successor had been named and they left the island. Little remains of the Mormon era — sadly, the royal regalia has been lost, but the Mormon printing house is still around, as is the King’s Highway, the island’s main north-south thoroughfare that the Mormons built.

 

Welcome to Venice, on the South China Sea

Ruins of St. Paul's Church

Macau has a rich history. One hour’s ferry ride west of Hong Kong, it’s a blend of Portuguese and Chinese culture. Under Lisbon’s rule for more than four centuries, it’s dotted with colonial-era buildings and churches, a fort or two, and bilingual blue-tiled street signs with Portuguese names that pay homage to its past, although the number of Lusophones still here is negligible. There are temples, traditional shops and ways of life that merit exploring.

Yeah, maybe we’ll do that one of these days. But right now, let’s go gambling.

About 30 million people came here last year, and it wasn’t mainly for that quaint Portuguese ruined church on the hill. It was to enter the ticky-tacky temples of games of chance that tower over the place, and which generate more gambling revenue than Las Vegas.

The Venetian, Macau

The most renowned is The Venetian, the sister hotel to the Vegas resort of the same name.  According to Wikipedia, this 40-story behemoth is, at 10,500,000 sq. ft. (980,000 m²), the largest single structure hotel building in Asia and the fourth-largest building in the world by area.

I believe it. We went to check it out after work one day and, well, these pictures can tell more than I can. Although, sadly, you can’t take pictures in the casinos themselves. Anyway, the whole thing is about as faux as faux gets. And if Las Vegas signals the fall into decadence of Western culture, I suppose The Venetian is a big old mile marker of the East’s own voyage down that particular road.