Item From the Past: Mutianyu

Terrific thunderstorms late this morning and early in the afternoon, while we were out and after we got home. May has turned warmish and wet, to contrast with April's dry and cool, and March's summertime preview. Thunder continues to rumble off in the distance even now.

The Nixons went to the Great Wall of China at Badaling. We went to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall in May 1994, mere weeks after Nixon died, though I'm certain that counts as a coincidence. I've forgotten why we made that choice, but it was an impressive pile of stones, about 50 miles from Beijing. Most of the pictures I've seen capture the arc of the wall as it makes its way atop a wooded ridge, and there's no arguing with fine vistas like that. But the wall has its charms closer up, too.

Little-mentioned in the tourist literature is this stone, not original to the 6th century structure or the Ming reconstruction. It says in German, Chinese and English, besides world peace boilerplate, "In gratitude for the help provided by the Henkel-Group, Düsseldorf, in restoring this section of the wall. Beijing, 1989." Solidarity among socialist nations is fine and dandy, but when you want help restoring a prized historic site and hard-currency earner, hire some West German engineers.

Item From the Past: Moscow Big Mac

In late September 1994, we visited Moscow, seeing many of the places that tourists usually see: Red Square, the Kremlin, Lenin's Tomb, St. Basil's, the Pushkin Museum, and the world's largest McDonald's. You know, the McDonald's that had opened to such curious interest from Muscovites in 1990. I've read that the 23,680-square-foot McDonald's remains the world's largest even now, though an even larger one is slated to open in London in time for the Olympics next year.

By 1994, the lines were still longish, but not around the block. Even so, the Moscow location was sprawling and busy. It had bouncers. It was the only McDonald's I've ever been to that had bouncers.

Among the small group I went with that evening, I was the only American. Also represented were a Japanese (Yuriko, that is), Britons, Australians, a Swiss, and I forget who else, but it was a motley international crew. Maybe we all wanted to confirm, once and for all, that the West had won the Cold War. The food turned out to be exactly what you'd expect. It was a McDonald's, after all.

I managed to find a souvenir during my visit, one that few others probably have. A paper place mat. It's too large to scan in toto, so I did it in two pieces. First, the happy McDonald's crew. Maybe happy because it beats working on the collective farm their parents did.

The right side of the mat featured what looks to be a job application.

To residents of Russia in 1994, the application might have been just as much of a novelty as the McDonald's itself.

Item From the Past: Cu Chi Tunnels

Once the bane of American forces in Vietnam, the Cu Chi Tunnels, or at least a carefully restored and de-booby-trapped section of the tunnels not far from Saigon, are now a tourist attraction, and have been for years. We visited on June 26, 1994, entering with a guide and a small number of other visitors. We didn't go very far underground or stay long, but it was still a claustrophobic experience, even in some rooms -- a command post, a "hospital," and so on -- in which you could stand up.

The tunnels we saw were enlarged for tourists. The Viet Cong hid in, or mounted surprise attacks from, much narrower ones. Just large enough for men to shimmy through, and fairly small men at that. Our guide illustrated this by entering one of the small entrances feet first with a hatch on his head, and then disappearing into it by closing the hatch.

This is an astonishing account of the men of the 3 Field Troop, Royal Australian Engineers, who entered the tunnels -- which were numerous enough practically to be an underground city -- to take on "the Viet Cong (VC) at his most dangerous -- in tunnels and with booby traps."

Not far from the re-created tunnels was a surface exhibit: a wrecked ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) tank.

An M48 Patton, if I remember correctly. I'm amazed that it didn't get picked apart for scrap at some point, though maybe that's fairly hard to do.

Item From the Past: Some Admirable Lateral Thinking

I've posted before about Kanchanaburi, Thailand, but not the view from the Bridge on the River Kwai.

Fiction has a way, of course, of fictionalizing things. According to the remarkable web site the Man in Seat Sixty-One, "there is a small technical problem with the Bridge on the River Kwai: It crosses a river all right, but not the River Kwai! Pierre Boulle, who wrote the original book, had never been there. He knew that the 'death railway' ran parallel to the River Kwae for many miles, and assumed that it was the Kwae which it crossed just north of Kanchanaburi. He was wrong -- it actually crosses the Mae Khlung.

"When David Lean's blockbuster came out, the Thais faced something of a problem. Thousands of tourists flocked to see the bridge over the River Kwae, and they hadn't got one; all they had was a bridge over the Mae Khlung. So, with admirable lateral thinking, they renamed the river. The Mae Khlung is now the Kwae Yai ('Big Kwae') for several miles north of the confluence with the Kwae Noi ('Little Kwae'), including the bit under the bridge."

Finally, any time is a good time to watch this clip.

Items From the Past: Wong Tai Sin Temple and the Shing Mun Redoubt

On the afternoon of [April 10, 1994], we went to Wong Tai Sin Temple in Kowloon, a colorful, lively place. A weekend crowd was there and the air was smoky thick with burning joss. It is the first Taoist temple I've ever been to, though if I hadn't read about it beforehand, I'm not expert enough in Chinese religion to have known that.


The Main Altar of Wong Tai Sin Temple. According to Travel China Guide, "Many people who visit the temple come to have their fortunes told. Generally, worshippers entreat the fate of the same year. They light worship sticks, kneel before the main altar, make a wish, and shake a bamboo cylinder containing fortune sticks until one falls out."

Friday [April 15, 1994], found us on a short trip out to the New Territories. We spent part of the day walking a series of trails connected to the MacLehose Trail, "family walks" in the parlance of the Hong Kong park service. To get there, you take the subway to the end of the line at Tseun Wan, a major nexus of danchi and construction sites. From there, take a microbus to Shing Mun Country Park, a fine green spot around a reservoir dug in the '30s to supply the city. Hong Kong usually isn't associated with this kind of greenery. Almost no one else was there -- I don't associate a lack of crowds with the place either, but the park defied expectations. Maybe it's a different story on weekends.

We were under a double layer of shade: tall trees, and above that, a high thin layer of clouds. So the walking was cool. Later we did go on a section of the MacLehose Trail proper, Section 6, and hiked up a hill to the Shing Mun Redoubt, or what was left of it from the battle in '41. Still in evidence were long tunnels made of concrete, dug through the top of the hill. At their entrances are fanciful names -- London streets. Later generations have added graffiti to the ruins, and nature is slowly eating away at the concrete.


A fragment of the Shing Mun Redoubt along the MacLehose Trail, which snakes through the New Territories for about 60 miles. I'm not sure why I didn't take any photos of the overgrown concrete bunkers nearby.

Item From the Past: Temppeliaukio Kirkko & Bart Simpson

October 1994

I didn't take particularly good pictures of the Temppeliaukio Kirkko (Rock Church) in Helsinki. Better pictures are at this all-around fine site. But I'm posting mine anyway, because I have an image probably no one else has (not this one, the one at the bottom). Look carefully in the top pic and you'll see the cross.

Located in a part of Helsinki known as Töölö (and who doesn't love Finnish place-names?), the church is a late '60s creation by Finnish architects and brothers Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen. I made lousy notes about my visit, along the lines of "visited Rock Church today."

But that's what the Internet is for, looking up stuff after the fact. The Sacred Destinations writer, Holly Hayes, has this to say: "The underground Rock Church is built inside of a massive block of natural granite in the middle of an ordinary residential square. From ground level, the shape resembles the ancient tomb at Newgrange, Ireland. But the structure is barely visible from outside, with only the copper dome poking out of the rock... inside, the church is circular and enclosed by walls of bare rock. The ceiling is a giant disc made of copper wire. The interior is lit by natural light streaming through 180 vertical window panes that connect the dome and the wall."

I stood in front of the church's entrance, turned around, and took a picture of the buildings in front of me. Only because the Minimarket window, a rectangle of pink set in gray -- and which promised Cool Drinks and Fast Food, in English -- was using Bart Simpson as its pitchman. Add the Coke sign, graffiti and black dog, and you've got a late 20th-century urban tableau. Or maybe just an array of things that happened to be there.

It's good to visit churches. It's also good to take in the detail of the streets.

Item From the Past: A Tale of Two Ten Tughrik

In September 1994, we managed to leave Mongolia with two 10-tughrik (or tugrik or tögrög) notes in our possession. These days, 10 tughrik are worth about U.S. 7.6¢, according to the ever-useful XE.com. I'm not sure what the exchange rate was 16 years ago, but I know that it wasn't hugely different. The denomination was definitely small change. In fact, I don't think anything smaller was circulated then.

One of the notes was an older, beaten up, Communist-era piece of currency.

The other was a crisp, new, post-Communist note.

In the early 1920s, the Republic of China, or at least whichever warlord was running the part of China next to Mongolia, determined to negate Mongolia's recently declared (1911) independence by force. The Mongolians resisted and eventually prevailed, in the sense that the country became a Soviet satellite for many decades, rather than part of the Republic of China and then perhaps the People's Republic.

One of the main Mongolian leaders against the Chinese was Sükhbaatar. He appears on both the older the newer notes. It's interesting that the older note dresses him in strictly military garb -- a specimen of the New Communist Man, maybe -- while the newer one has him looking distinctly Mongolian, a national hero up there with a certain 12th/13th-century Mongolian who kicked ass across Eurasia.

Item From the Past: Wat Yai Chai Mongkol

Here's hoping the Thais find political stability at long last, but not at the cost of their liberty. Too much of the former without the latter equals Burma, just to name a neighbor for whom government is a cruel master.

Speaking of Burma, 16 years ago this month we visited Ayutthaya Historic Park, Thailand. The connection might not be obvious unless you know that in 1767, a Burmese army destroyed the city of Ayutthaya, which marked the end of the Siamese kingdom whose capital had been Ayutthaya. It was a teeming and wealthy place in its heyday, holding sway over much of southeast Asia for centuries.

Its ruins endure, helped along by restoration in the late 20th century. It's a fairly large place with much to see under the tropical sun. Perhaps that's why Buddha reclines.

Remarkably, buddha-images.com more-or-less agrees with me, asserting that "if supporting the head of the Buddha, the image denotes that the Buddha is resting." Otherwise, he's "entered into nirvana." Since my knowledge of Buddhist iconography is pretty much on par with my understanding of particle physics, I'll leave it at that. In any case, that's the reclining Buddha at Wat Yai Chai Mongkol in Ayutthaya.

Discovery Thailand says, "Built by King U Thong (Ayutthaya’s first ruler) in 1357, the temple... has a large chedi that dominates the skyline. The chedi was built in 1592 to celebrate King Naresuan’s single-handed defeat of the then Burmese Crown Prince after an elephant-back duel.

"The size of the chedi was intended to match that of Phu Khao Thong – a Pagoda purportedly built by the Burmese which is visible in the distance from the temple."

The Thais and the Burmese have long been mixing it up, it seems. It's what neighbors do (sometimes with war elephants, no less). Chedi is Thai for stupa, and the one at Wat Yai Chai Mongkol is impressive indeed, whether or not it was in competition with a Burmese edifice.

More pics of the temple, and more recent ones, are at this site.

Item From the Past: Bensons MapGuide

Early in our stay in London in December '94, I lucked into a Bensons MapGuide London Street Map. Or maybe it wasn't strictly luck. I wasn't going to stay a month in London without a decent map, so I spent some time at a bookstore looking at the options. The Bensons MapGuide must have impressed me enough that I bought it, but it really impressed me as we used it to navigate the famously convoluted streets of the city. It's one of the best practical maps I've ever used.

I'm glad to report that the map is still in print, even in our time when GPS threatens to foster map illiteracy. The British map seller (mapmonger?) Stanfords says it well: "This map is simply streets ahead of all its competitors, as anyone who has explored central London on foot will testify: great overall clarity of presentation, excellent placing of names, exceptional presentation of small passages and shortcuts between buildings, etc...

"Excellent use of colours and symbols enables the publishers to indicate parks and green spaces; markets, prime shopping areas, and selected shops; pedestrian zones, elevated walkways, and access to streets and passages by steps; places of interest including tourist information centres, theatres, cinemas, and selected well-known pubs: transport network including streets with bus routes, Underground stations, overground railway lines with local and main line stations, and coach stations; for drivers, car parks and streets with restricted access or no entry, although one way streets are not marked; selected hotels, places of worship, post offices, police stations, viewpoints, etc., and last but certainly not least, public toilets!"

For some reason, I scanned the map's cover some years ago. That's good, because I can't find the thing now, not at least where I keep most of my other leftover maps (someday, I should gush at length about the greatness of Nelles Maps, many of which I used in Asia). I want to consult the Bensons MapGuide to see if I can pinpoint the location of this picture, taken in London that December.

Then again, it's probably Little Venice. London isn't generally known for its canals, not at least by casual North American and Japanese travelers, but they have a long history in the British capital and of course there are modern-day, web-site making enthusiasts. Even in December, the walk along the tow paths of Little Venice was a pleasant one.

Item From the Past: The Bayeux Tapestry

Google News ran this tag line for an ABC News story this morning: "Shortly after making his first ever spacewalk, Bresnik, 42, experienced another first: His wife gave birth to a baby girl back in Texas while he orbited 200 feet above the earth."

I clicked through to the story itself, and of course the text read the correct "200 miles." But I had to laugh at the thought of the new dad astronaut floating by office buildings and over treetops. You'd think he could have come to Earth from only 200 feet to be with his wife at a time like this.

That's another thing. Regarding the capitalization of Earth, as in the planet Earth, the AP Style Guide says, "Capitalize earth only when using it in association with the names of other astronomical bodies that are capitalized," which seems to imply that if referring to the planet to by itself -- say, "Major Tom never came back to earth" -- lower case it. That's never made any sense to me. When talking about dirt, lower case. When talking about the orb on which we live, upper case, same as the continents, countries, states, cities, towns and streets on which we live. What do the other planets have to do with it?

Fifteen years ago we visited Bayeux, France, which I remember being a delightful little town. We went for three reasons: ultimately to catch a ferry across the Channel from Cherbourg, but before that to see D-Day beaches and other related sites, and to take a good look at the Bayeux Tapestry. I can't remember when I first heard of it. Maybe it was from Paul Freedman, formerly a professor at Vanderbilt, now one at
Yale, from whom I learned a great many things about medieval Europe, some of which I remember even now.

The Bayeux Tapestry is exhibited in a revamped 17th-century seminary, now a museum entirely devoted to it. Note the ticket refers to Queen Matilda's tapestry; Matilda, William the Conqueror's wife, is sometimes associated with its creation. No doubt school groups and the like show up from time to time to see the tapestry, along with some tourists in the summer, but on a weekday in November, I was the only one there besides a guard (Yuriko wanted to rest, and hadn't come). It's behind glass, or probably sturdy clear plastic, illuminated in a way that doesn't harm the fabric, I suppose, but which still makes it vividly easy to see. Bishop Odo himself probably didn't have such good lighting.

It's an astonishing, intricate piece of work -- actually an embroidery, despite the name -- made even more so for being a 900-year-old graphic novel. One that continues to inspire:

The link to the animated Bayeux Tapestry, for Facebook readers.

Item From the Past: Oświęcim, Poland

October 24, 1994. Auschwitz II-Birkenau, with the main gate off in the distance.

Item From the Past: Irkutsk

September 21, 1994

Irkutsk has a distinctly European feel to it -- broad streets, trees lining those streets, a variety of old, short buildings. Not as much Stalinist concrete as I expected. Double windows seem standard just about everywhere, the better to deal with winter. The place is also as run-down as expected, especially the many wooden structures, which tend to be sagging and lined with character cracks. Enthusiastic rehabbers would love the place, except maybe that it's in Siberia.

Been to a variety of churches and museums, the most interesting among them the Decembrist Museum, once the Trubetskoy and Volkonsky homes, two families of Decembrists who eventually set up fairly comfortable digs in 19th-century Siberia, it seems. One church we didn't get to see was Saint I Forget Who: Our guide pointed to some drab Soviet building and explained that the largest church in Siberia used to be there, until Stalin had it destroyed. Someone asked why he had done that. “Because,” the guide answered, “Stalin was a weird dude.”

At an Irkutsk uni-plex on the 19th we saw Cliffhanger, a Stallone vehicle with some action and colorful death, especially people falling from airplanes and cliffs. It was dubbed into Russian the cheapest possible way, with one male voice reading the script as the story went along. It was a better movie without the English soundtrack, though occasionally it poked through the dubbing. "Gravity's a bitch," I heard one character say as another fell out of an airplane to his death.

Today we made an excursion to Lake Baikal. It's a clear, flat, blue, cold-looking lake, something like Lake Superior on a calm day, but with rolling, fall-foliage hills up against the shoreline. Something like Tennessee in late October, if it had a huge lake somewhere in the middle of the state. Add to that mountains in the distance, on the other side of the lake. Like the Rockies. So it's Lake Superior with Tennessee foliage and Colorado mountains. Had an excellent lunch at the Intourist Baikal Hotel -- lake fish and sour cream, very Russian. The restaurant also has a superb view of the lake.

The boat trip on Lake Baikal didn't take that long, just up and down the lake shore, with a stop near shore that allowed us to take a dip in the water. Of about a dozen of us, only two Australians jumped into the water, already -- always -- very chilly. They didn't stay in long.

Item From the Past: Igna 2, Bali

Swimming, bicycle rides, catching fireflies -- I did all these things with my daughters today, which would pretty much make it a Summer Day. I managed to catch a firefly between my palms, but it refused to be put in a jar. Lilly managed to get one in a jar, but almost immediately both girls decided that fireflies were born free, as free as the wind blows, so they released it, especially since it wouldn't light in captivity.

Fifteen years ago, Yuriko and I arrived in the town of Ubud on Bali, and parked ourselves at a guest house called Igna 2. It cost about 12,000 rupiah a night, all of about US $5.80 in those days. Not only did we get a room, more about which below, a lank young Balinese fellow who called himself Yogi brought us breakfast every morning. Usually its centerpiece was a fine jaffle.

Igna 2 was essentially a brick shack off the main road, a very Spartan place. One room, one bathroom, a porch. In this pic, Yuriko is standing next to the footpath from the main street we took to reach the place, only 100 feet away or so. She's also standing next to a tiny creek that ran near the property.

Because of the creek, the guesthouse had an amenity I’ve never gotten even in rooms costing 40 times as much, the sound of a gurgling creek accompanied by an army of singing frogs (or some kind of vocal amphibians) and a chorus of tropical insects. Every night, as soon as the Sun had set, the concert began.

Item From the Past: Notes on Xiamen (Amoy), China

April 23, 1994

Our first day in Xiamen we visited a late Qing fortress (vintage 1890s) down the coast on a hill, as good fortresses tend to be. The star relic of its martial past is a German-made Krupp cannon, big and outward pointing, to intimidate barbarians. It probably wasn't particularly effective at that job, at least as far as the Qing were concerned. But in our time it makes a fine little park.

Nanputuo Temple, near Xiamen University [pictured below], was open and doing a lot of the business that Chinese temples do, such as purveying joss sticks and places to burn them, and offering to have some calligraphy done. Repairs to the temple were even under way. What would the Red Guard think?

Our favorite part of Xiamen was Gulangyu (yu = island). We went there on Wednesday just before dark, but the island's electricity was off that night, so we didn't stay for dinner, even though some of the seafood restaurants looked intriguing. It wasn't until yesterday that we better appreciated the island's charms, including the fact that no cars or motorcycles are allowed on its narrow streets.

We came over on the ferry at about 3 and took a stroll, discovering Gulangyu to be a treasure trove of Victorian architectural gems -- gems marked by stately decay, covered in soot, and strung with drying laundry. Subtropical greenery added to the effect. Mixed in with the residences were trading company headquarters and schools, sometimes occupying older buildings, but also in newer ones that somehow managed to blend in with the older building stock.

Along a main street we had an excellent four-course dinner for two for about ¥40, or about $5. We were the only ones in the place, so had the full attention of the two waitresses, two teenage girls who giggled sometimes. At other times they would stand off a little ways and watch us eat. Maybe they didn't see too many foreigners in their establishment, but I would think the residents of old Amoy would be blasé about that kind of thing.

Various idlers concentrated themselves around hotels, asking "Money?" or "Change money?" or even "Hello, change money?" I only changed money once outside of the Bank of China, when Yuriko and I were sitting on a bench and reminded me of the FECs that I had -- not much, only about ¥110. I took them out of my wallet to look at them, and a man next to me on the bench, who had previously expressed no interest in us, suddenly offered a 1-to-1 exchange for RMB. I accepted the deal. I don't know what profit he got from it, since FECs were being phased out, but he must have gotten something.

2009 Postscript: RMB, or Renminbi (人民币), "People's Money," is Chinese currency, of which the yuan is the main denomination. From 1979 to early 1994, just before we visited, foreigners in China were supposed to use foreign exchange certificates (FECs) instead of RMB, which the government sold to foreigners at a premium to RMB. But as usual with this kind of thing, I understand that rule wasn't rigidly enforced, especially by the early 1990s. We didn't have to worry about it in any case, and thinking back on it now, I'm not sure how I got the FECs.

Items From the Past: Central Europe, November 1994

November was a fine month to be in Central Europe, at least in the immediate post-communist years. It wasn't any colder than in the Midwest and various places that would be awash with visitors in summer were a lot quieter, and probably somewhat cheaper.

Toward the beginning of the month, we were in southern Poland. Near Krakow is the Wieliczka Salt Mine. The "Underground Salt Cathedral of Poland" is a place of gray salt walls, sculptures and other artwork made of salt, and a considerable history in providing a formerly very valuable commodity. This exterior shot hardly does the place justice, but then again my snapshot from inside would do it even less justice.

This is a fall scene from Prague: the Old Jewish Cemetery, a burial ground from the 15th to the 18th centuries. It amazed me that this place survived the Nazis, but it did, and contains thousands of stones and countless other burial sites, including that of Rabbi Loew. The picture isn't his headstone, but of someone else whose identity can be known to readers of Hebrew.

Finally, here's an image from Vienna, that storied imperial capital with no more empire to preside over. We were fortunate indeed to be there for the annual Autohochhaltend Sängerfest. Choirs from all over Austria come to sing while cars were lifted in artful ways. I'd say there's no other festival quite like it anywhere. I managed to get a pic of some car-lifting, but unfortunately none of the singers.

Zero

Ed reports from the UK of a visit to the Prime Meridian: "I went to Greenwich today. Interesting, but much less impressive than crossing the Arctic Circle. I think we give more weight to latitude than longitude. Maybe that's just because we all hit all the longitudes long ago."

I can't describe crossing the Arctic Circle, though I have an ambition to do so (the ambition is fairly dim in February, however, when the Arctic has come to me). The closest I've come is Vyborg, Russia, latitude about 60° 42' -- roughly six degrees short. I've passed through all of the longitudes, as Ed has, and had before Yuriko and I made it to Greenwich near the end of 1994. Still, I got a kick out of standing on the Prime Meridian, as illustrated here, though I've since read that the zero line used by the Global Positioning System is about 100 meters east of the former line, now the tourist-attraction line, at the Old Royal Observatory.

The sign behind Y is, or was, actually a vending machine. Insert a pound coin and you get a time-stamped souvenir. (As a very small child, Lilly got a hold of this souvenir, causing the damage visible here).

"Some interesting stuff in the maritime museum," Ed continued. "The first actual Franklin relics I've ever gotten to see. Pretty exciting for an Arctic geek like me."

John Franklin relics -- very cool indeed, and I don't mean that as a gag line. I went to the Greenwich Maritime Museum, too, but don't remember seeing anything associated with the famed Arctic explorer. Maybe I was of too ignorant of Franklin at the time to notice, or maybe those items weren't on display. I do remember a fine exhibit on John Harrison and the Longitude Problem, which impressed me, and added to the experience of standing on zero degrees east-west.

In Old Ulaanbaatar

This is picture week, for reasons of time and also to do something with some of the images I've taken in various places. Today's image is one of my favorites among those I've taken myself. Time: September 1994. Place: Ulan Bator, Mongolia, or the vowel-intense Ulaanbaatar, if you prefer.

Anyway, it's the capital of Mongolia, and worth returning to if only to fly into Chinggis Khaan International Airport (thus renamed in 2005, I've read). One of the sites to see in town is known as the Winter Palace of Bogd Khan, the "Emperor" of Mongolia in the early 20th century, and the top-ranking lama in the country.

This painted wooden statue, and a companion on the other side, stood in 1994 in front of the entrance to one of the palace buildings -- a small, tumbledown place when compared to the Forbidden City that it seemed to be imitating, but interesting all the same. I was told it was a "guardian demon," though I suspect that translation does the creature little justice. Some years later, I heard -- in conversation over lunch with a banker, of all people -- that such guardian demons had "lost their jobs" at the request of the Dalai Lama.

I have no idea if that is the case, or can be the case. In fact the whole thing is a fog to this North American. But that only adds to the appeal of the image.

Item from the Past: September 13, 1994

We went horseback riding today, and we got riding lessons from the Master of the Corral — a weatherworn, stocky Mongolian of good cheer and few teeth. That is, he showed us our horses, on we got, and off we went.

About a dozen of us rode single file. Horse trails marked the land, curling across unkempt meadows and skirting wooded hills. For half an hour, we rode along, seeing few things that a North American would think of as rural, such as gravel tracks, abandoned shacks or even fences.

For a while, we joked with each other about the condition of our mounts, who were past their prime, and about our inexperience in the saddle, at least in this nation of horsemen. But before long, the deep quiet of the place began to sink in. There were no mechanical noises. Just your breathing, your horses’ snorts, the neighing of the other horses, and not much else.

Except during water crossings. That part of north-central Mongolia is surprisingly well watered. We crossed little streams, shallow but rocky rivers, lazy brooks and occasional — more than occasional — fords across fast rivers. The Master of the Corral knew the easiest places to ford, and rest of us followed, slogging, splashing and hanging on.

“Try not to fall on your heads,” said our guide Altai, who was at the front with the Master of the Corral. He often put his near-perfect English to use in warnings of one kind or another.

As we came out of the woods, our destination spread out in front of us all at once. We were at the mouth of a broad, grassy valley peppered with yaks and horses. Our guides galloped off toward the far end of the valley. The rest of us were inspired to do the same. We spread out and flew the length of the valley, kicking up our own breeze, with the high hills and high sun and livestock whirling by.

Once we’d had some fun charging around under the noontime Mongolian sun, Altai let us know that we were invited to rest here. Besides a fair number of yak and horses, the valley had a human population. At one end stood a solitary ger surrounded by a handful of scraggly trees, some tools and a few metal drying racks. At that moment the racks were supporting pans filled with blocks of something white and crumbly, about the color of tofu. We would soon find out what it was.

The Master of the Corral motioned for us to enter the ger. We all managed to squeeze in and sit ourselves in a circle around the wood-burning stove in the middle. The interior had visible signs of prosperity, at least in Mongolian terms. A proud family possession, maybe just a step below its livestock and a fine family altar adorned with photos and incense burners, seemed to be its radio, a not-too-shabby Japanese brand featuring AM, FM and short wave.

The woman of the house — of the ger — greeted us with a wry smile. Mongolia may be famous for its horsemen, but traditionally women did the important work of milk and meat production from the herds. No doubt our elderly hostess, who had the passing of a good many Mongolian winters drawn on her face, had done her share of this kind of work.

Now she was helping provide for her family in a more modern fashion: attending to passing tourists. I was certain she was related to, or at least a lifelong neighbor of the Master of the Corral. She was surely getting a cut of the $2 an hour we were paying him for the ride. You can argue that this somehow corrupts their culture, but our hostess would probably have none of it. She’d rather have an excellent Japanese radio.

Her eyes were bright and her gestures crisp. She immediately turned to the task, along with her daughter or daughter-in-law, of distributing yak cheese and milk to us. It was the cheese we’d seen drying outside.

“If you don’t like it, you should eat a little in any case,” said Altai as a plate went around. “It’s rude not to eat at least a little.”

Yak cheese looks like laundry detergent and smells like it’s been in a hot glove compartment a while. Is it healthful? Perhaps, but don’t look for it in supermarkets any time soon. Maybe you have to grow up with it to appreciate it. We were polite, and nibbled a bit, but none of us went for seconds. Our hostess didn’t seem to mind.

Yak milk, on the other hand, is something like buttermilk. It went down well and seemed to solidify in my stomach, but it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. Just the thing, in fact, to fortify one’s constitution before the ride back through the hills of Mongolia.

Item from the Past: July Fourth on the Malaysian Peninsula

On July 4 [1994] we boarded a train in Bangkok, which pulled out at 15:15 and headed south, through the hilly lushness and small towns on the Isthmus of Kra, a land feature that fascinated me on maps as far back as elementary school (along with Sulawesi, which I knew as the Celebes). It’s a long isthmus, and the train wasn’t especially fast, so we rolled on into the night.

Next to us was a girl freshly out of Berkeley, Kara, who had a lot to say about where she’d been, e.g., “China sucked!” We sympathized. She was one of the few other North Americans I’ve met in recent weeks. Plenty of Europeans, plenty of Australians, but not so many from my continent -- too bad, southeast Asia is worth the trip.

The berths were simple but reasonably comfortable, and the air conditioning worked fairly well, unlike during the run up to Chang Mai a few weeks ago. We arrived at the frontier with Malaysia just after waking up, and spent a while outside the train on the formalities of border-crossing.

We arrived at Butterworth more or less on time, and caught an enormous car ferry, mostly empty, for the short hop to Penang Island. Once on the island, we paid a tricycle rickshaw man RM$4 -- $3 fare, $1 tip -- to take us to the New China Hotel. He was the picture of a rickshaw man: wiry, deep brown, Chinese. The New China, a charming dump, distinctly risky in terms of fire (though we had a large window for escape), was cheap and well-located in Georgetown. Wooden floors, high ceilings, a flapping ceiling fan. Squat toilets, cold showers, and an indifferent-looking bar downstairs. All for RM$17.60 a night.

Georgetown turned out to be a low-rise, whitewashed, somewhat seedy town, good for walking after the heat of the day died down, and early in the morning. I took a couple of good walks before Yuriko woke. Over the next few days took in Ft. Cornwallis (nice clocktower), wandered around the Komtar Mall, saw the Kek Lok Sri temple, climbing its pagoda, swam at Batu Ferringhi beach, and rode the cable railway up Penang Hill. To escape the heat, we saw Heaven and Earth, an Oliver Stone failure, and the moderately funny Maverick, both subtitled in Bahasa Malaysia.

Item From the Past: The Death Railway

This item is from 11 years ago, around my 33rd birthday.

At 10 in the morning on June 10 [1994] we caught a minibus to Kanchanaburi. We rented a bamboo hut overlooking the banks of the River Kwai for all of 100 baht per night (about $4), complete with mosquito screens. No mossies got in by night, but a bird lives somewhere in the walls. That was our best guess, anyway, since we never did see it. A few times an hour, it would sing, “uh-oh,” “uh-oh,” “uh-oh,” “uh-oh.” That’s what I heard. Yuriko heard “aho,” “aho,” “aho,” “aho,” which means “stupid” in Japanese.

Late in the afternoon of the first day we walked to the Bridge On the River Kwai -- luckily under cloudy skies, though still hot. It’s a fine railroad bridge, rebuild after the war, unexceptional but for a bloody past and the gloss of Hollywood. You can walk across it. We did. There are essentially two planks alongside the rails and nothing much on the sides, so it’s best not to stumble. It isn’t a high bridge, but the river is still far enough down to do some damage after a freefall. Every 20 feet or so there are places to stand away from the tracks in case you’re on the Bridge when a train comes to cross, but nothing came along while we were on the Bridge. Since the line doesn’t go into Burma anymore, traffic is fairly low.

Near the Bridge are souvenir shops and a gaudy WWII “museum" -- overpriced even at 30 baht. All we bought we a couple of bottles of Coke. We walked back to the guesthouse via the main road through town, a long strip occupied largely by auto/motorcycle sales and repair shops. The town’s main recreation, it seems, is buzzing down the road, mostly on two wheels.

The next day we rode the train to the end of the line at a place called Nam Tok, a few miles shy of the frontier with Burma. In the signs for tourists, this is called the Death Railway, though it’s only a small part of the line that Allied POWs and native conscripts slaved on. The ride to the end of the line takes about two hours, and a regular ride costs 17 baht each way—so for two round trips, we paid 68 baht, or about $2.70. At a table at the station were tourist tickets for 100 baht each. For this you got a guaranteed seat, a soft drink (which normally run 10 baht), and a silly certificate saying you’d ridden the Death Railway. The tout at the table wasn’t especially energetic, and he left us and a handful of other tourists alone after no one showed any interest in his tickets.

The Death Railway is a local line, making whistle stops fairly often. The line follows the river, though a lush tropical valley. You see the river only occasionally, but then spectacularly. The train had mostly emptied out by Nam Tok, which sported a seedy, nearly deserted station building under dense foliage. There were only a few minutes to look around anyway, since the same train was going back to Kanchanaburi. En route back the train hit a truck, just enough to jar the passengers a little. I think it was a maintenance truck parked too close to the rail. This delayed our return about 30 minutes, but we weren’t on any schedule, and didn’t care.