When the East meets a scruffy art school brat - September '94

This posting is a bit more text than sketches since my first trip to Asia was an epic assault on all my senses. I didn’t really start sketching until I returned on future trips when I was able to process the experience a little slower. (future posts)

In the fall of 1994, my roommate, John, a Merrill Lynch summer associate, told me he was flying to Vietnam for a week. With its romantic and war-torn past, it was too much for an American voyeur to pass up. I jumped on the opportunity to journey into this mythological place.

Europe? Whatever. See it, done it. I was ready for a challenge.

Unlike John, I had no vacation days to use up, as I had no job. I thought if I was going to the far side of the world that I might optimize and spend a week in Thailand, a week in Taiwan, and a week in Japan, as well. (this one trip alone gave me enough miles for a free round-trip domestic ticket.)

But I didn’t do any sketches of my first week in Vietnam for several reasons:

One, I was a bit over-whelmed by the country.

Two, I had a camcorder in my hand most of the time. But more importantly-

Three, because when you are traveling with non-artists there is very little time to stop and study a place longer than it takes to snap a picture. Then it’s usually on to the next place, instant memory captured. It made me realize how valuable my sketchbook was in really experiencing a place, really being in the moment.

Alone, I must sit for 30 or 45 minutes to do a sketch of a place. Doing this affords me to study the daily cycle of life on any given street corner – the sounds, the smells, the ebb and flow. Being alone invites locals to look over my shoulder and admire, which often results in me turning my attention to capture their great faces in my book.

I love doing this because often the people I draw are ordinary civilians or even street people. In almost all cases they usually are amused, momentarily embarrassed, and finally proud to be deemed important enough to be recorded.

But when you’re walking around with two other pasty-white guys bearing fanny packs and sweaty brows, the locals usually keep a distance.

In Thailand we met up with John’s American cousin, Rich-san, who came in from Japan with his Japanese girlfriend Tomiko. She in turn was meeting up with her Boston College roommate, a famous Thai pop-singer who went by the name Em. ( She apparently was known throughout the Thai kingdom for a song called “Sau, Sau, Sau” or something like that. My apologies to Em, wherever you are, if I really screwed that up.)

Em must have been famous since when we went to meet up with her in the lobby of the Oriental Hotel (regularly rated the top hotel in the world) all the local Thais turned their heads, wide-eyed, and whispered to each other in excited but hushed tones.

Em must have been famous since she took us to a very classy and posh restaurant that served Royal Thai cuisine where each bite was both extremely tasty and too spicy for my western mouth.

Em must have been famous since she pretty much wouldn’t stop talking about herself.

But she was nice about treating us all to lunch and she did think I was cute in a scruffy way. Still, had I known we were going to a fancy place ahead of time, I would have worn something a little nicer than my RISD sweatshirt, khaki shorts and sandals. Feeling a bit self-conscious about my budget traveler attire, I tried to keep my hairy bare legs hidden under the crisp linen table cloth.

The week in Vietnam consisted of a few days in Saigon, and a few days in Danang and Hoi An. The trip ended with me in the Continental Hotel truly believing I was dying from a 24-hour stomach virus, thanks to a bad batch of scrambled eggs from a hotel in Danang. There’s nothing like vomiting, shaking, sweating, hallucinating, and host of other horrors while your Mommy is on the other side of the world. But incredibly after 24 hours of that maelstrom, I was fine.

I’ll write more about Vietnam in future postings, though, as it became a very big part of my life in future trips.

After Rich and John took off for home, I hung out in Bangkok for another day or two, haunting the bars of Khao San Road, the backpacker ghetto. There I met two guys my age, Tim Murphy, a serious-minded Irish law student with round spectacles, and Chris Solly, an affable tall and skinny Englishman. Together we decided to brave Patpong, the legendary sex-bar district. You can’t go to Bangkok and not say you haven’t seen a goofy sex show.

So the three of us God-fearing souls, a bit nervous about entering a seedy sex club, agreed to pick one on the main drag, adjacent to where many tourists frequent a night market. Of course no sooner had we firmly decided on this than we got lead away by a young tout advertising a “cheap place”. He waved a little laminated menu in our face advertising beers for 50 baht (about 2 dollars) and a free show. The “cheap place” was through several winding dark alleyways and up a rickety flight of stairs, COMPLETELY out of site of the main drag.

Yikes.

We sat down, each had a beer and watched a lame sex show where bored little naked Thai girls performed tricks with their genitals. To our left, a fat drunk German blissfully sat in a dark corner as several naked little things massaged his stomach and giggled. Not finding the ambiance very settling we decided to pay for our “cheap beers” and move on.

When we got to the cashier, we were told we owed not 150 baht as promised (6 dollars), but 900 baht (36 dollars) and a sign that was not there when we entered was suddenly and conveniently produced, stating 300 baht a beer.

We had been scammed.

And, of course, our little tout was no where to be seen. Instead several muscular and menacing- looking Thais appeared in his place, surrounding us.

When we objected, the proprietor leaned over his counter and angrily yelled "You Pay 900 Baht NOW!!"

Tim tried to put up a lame argument which only resulted in the thugs moving in closer on us. His thinking was to firmly arbitrate a solution. My thinking was “ Let’s pay these fuckers, get the hell out of here, and chalk it up to a costly but funny anecdote, not a lesson learned the hard way as it appeared to quickly be moving towards.”

After a minute of the owner yelling at us to pay and fists becoming clenching, I slapped down the money for all three of us and pulled my friends away.

Outside, our Irish law student was still demanding justice, angrily repeating, "Let’s go to the fooking Police."

I voiced my skepticism at what the police would do, aside from laugh at us, but Tim insisted.

Well I was wrong.

At the local police stand, a senior police officer listened politely with an amused smile and then calmly swaggered back toward the bar with us in tow. When we turned a corner, our little tout saw us and suddenly ran ahead to the bar in a panic. We hadn’t even reached the bottom of the stairway when the owner and all the thugs came down with a pile of money.

The policeman didn’t even have to say a word. As the proprietor nervously doled out the baht back into my hands, the officer quietly maintained his amused smile. I mistakenly did some wrong math and looked at the owner, confused. The owner then just gave me the rest, effectively giving us free drinks, and then some

It was then that I learned that the Thai police want to protect tourists who visit the sex district. Apparently they are notoriously brutal on offenders to tourists. It’s a big source of revenue they don’t want to discourage, and lord knows what payoffs go on for the police working that beat.

Now that justice had been served and the three of us had become more discriminating in our ways, we picked a new girly bar safely on the beaten path. No gross Germans, just a naked Thai couple having sex on a Harley in the middle of the serving bar.

I left the slimy back alleys of Bangkok and headed up to scenic Chang Mai in Northern Thailand for a week, visiting mountainous temples, wadding knee deep through monsoon floods, and getting fantastic traditional Thai massages (legit, mind you) for about eight dollars per two hours. I also bought a cassette tape of Em’s songs and bragged to the impressed locals about how she took me out to lunch.

From Thailand I flew to Taipei, Taiwan to visit the family of my friend Sylvia, who was back in NYC. When I arrived her older uncle, who spoke no English, picked me up at the exit (holding a sign with my name) and drove me to her parent’s house. Most of the 30-40 minute drive from the airport was spent conversing through pantomime, grunts, and smiles.

As Sylvia’s father was a doctor, her family lived on the top of a four or five floor medical center in the middle of Taipei. They were very accommodating to this westerner, almost too much. At meals, although Sylvia’s younger sister and her parents ate family style, picking from many little dishes on the table, they always gave me a big plate with a sample of everything and a can of Coke.

The Won’s had an amazing collection of art in one room. Ancient ceramics seemed to be their specialty, but I was most impressed by a framed robe worn by the Last Emperor of China. They proudly displayed the depth of their ceramics knowledge at the excellent Taipei museum which has the largest collection of Chinese art in the world, thanks to Chang Kai-Shek and his buddies who fled the mainland with a pretty comprehensive booty.

Irma, Sylvia’s sister took me out one night to take in the Taipei nightlife. In 1994 it seemed to consist of two things: 1)cruising the outdoor markets for beans and shaved ice, then going to a tea house, or 2) karaoke. We did the former with a nice medical student that Irma was dating –SECRETLY dating apparently.

At the end of the night before we got back home, Irma took me aside and asked that I not tell her parents about the boy. It seems he was only 2^nd generation Taiwanese, from the mainland. Her family was something like 7th generation Taiwanese and would never approve of him, regardless of how good he was for her. Like Maria and Tony, their love was forbidden.

Mid-week they sent me on a flight to take a day-tour of the Taroko canyons in Hualien. Most of the people on the tour were part of an organized group of Koreans who knew each other. That left out me, a young Taiwanese businessman with whom I chatted, and a short quiet Japanese guy who lingered nearby us much of the time.

One of the nicest parts of the trip, though, was when the Wons took me to a local park on the beach late one night for a full moon festival. It seemed bizarre but also appealing to me that families gathered to picnic and socialize under the soft light of the full moon.

I was quite a novelty for the little kids who stared and giggled at me as I stood on the beach with Sylvia’s uncle, engaged in a unique conversation. In lieu of a shared language we passed a stick back and forth, each of us drawing pictures in the sand to illustrate our points.

From Taipei I flew to Tokyo, Japan, which became one of my favorite countries to visit. I pretty much spent the whole week walking around the city by myself, except for a night out or two with Tomiko and her friends, a mix of business expats. ( I remember one was a sort of Chinese-American fratboy who was asked if he spoke Cantonese. “Nah, man!”, he replied, “I ain’t no low-class Chinese. I speak MANDARIN!”)

One of my discoveries on this trip was Japan’s awesome art book publishing world. The books are pricey but they are SO well made. The publishing industry there has such a reverence for visual artists. The art books are printed so nicely and so eloquently designed that it has since been a priority to troll the aisles for these gems every time I’m in Japan.

Another pleasant surprise was the ubiquitous presence of Ultraman, a childhood favorite of mine. When I was a latch-key kid in elementary school, home alone while waiting for my librarian Mom to return from school with my sister, Ultraman was one of my babysitters. He was just such a badass to me and my neighborhood friends, defending Japan from giant rubber monsters by shooting lasers from his hands in a karate-chop pose. In Japan he is as part of their popular culture as MickeyMouse is here. He's on subway posters, in tv commercials, and in toy stores everywhere. I couldn't resist picking up some Ultraman booty for myself.

(postscript: In re-reading this post, I just realized none of the places I linked to are displaying Ultraman anymore. It seems the long arm of copyright law does not want Ultraman consorting with renegade sites.)

I also took a bullet train out past Mount Fuji to Kyoto for a couple nights. Kyoto was absolutely stunning in it's serenity, once you leave the main town for the surrounding temples in the hills. I again checked into a traditional ryokan with tatami mattes, a futon bed and a Japanese breakfast in the morning.

When I checked in , I gave the proprietor a dirty jacket to clean, forgetting that its pockets held some cheap limestone carvings I bought from some kid vendors in Vietnam. When the laundry came back the proprietor realized the carvings had broken. I told them not to worry about it, but the next morning they presented me with a very nice embroidered silk wallet as an apology.
Have to love this country.

I spent a lot of time walking around Kyoto's ancient temples and rock gardens, visiting all the greatest hits. At the Golden temple there were tons of uniformed teenage schoolboys and girls on tours. Part of their assignment was to engage foreign tourists and try to speak a few words of English. In doing so they would present a welcome card they had handwritten which spoke of wanting peace in the world after the tragedy of Hiroshima. I received one card each from a boy and a girl. The messages were similar, but I noticed the boys put far less effort into the card -usually just some handwriting. The girls meanwhile put the boys to shame, decorating their cards with colorful designs and meticulously crafted illustrations of cute geishas.

I had an odd series of encounters in Tokyo. When I flew into Japan initially, I noticed the quiet Japanese man on my day trip to Taiwan’s countryside was on my flight. Later that night after checking in to a small neighborhood ryokan in the Ueno section of town, I was at the front desk when the SAME guy appeared, having checked in as well. We recognized each other and spoke a bit.

Tens of thousands of hotels in Tokyo and this guy ended up at the same place. Very odd. But it doesn’t stop there. Later in the week I went to a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome by myself (Yomiuri Giants versus the Hanshin Tigers – can’t miss that pairing) which seats about 55,000. Who shows up in my section alone? Yep. My quiet hotel-mate.

It was probably just a series of weird coincidences, not, as my parents suggested, that he was a spy for the Japanese government. I have a hard time believing that a nation known for pursuing unattainable levels of honor and perfection would produce such a lousy candidate. He had absolutely no talent for covert action.