Amsterdamage

Back in Amsterdam

Aug. 9

Hello, all.

So far, so good, and you can’t ask for more than that. The train out of Penn Station was on time, and although I was confused by the monorail stops at the airport, I got to the right terminal. Actually, I got off by mistake at Newark Terminal C for an instant, but had time to ask and get back onto the train so I made the next stop (Terminal B) without delay. Damn, I’m easily confused.

That gave me plenty of time to nurse a couple of beers over fish and chips and watch women’s water polo from London. Who ever heard of water polo before? But they were televising the bronze medal game and the gold, which pitted the United States against somebody else, maybe the team from Brazil or Mars.

I think the sport has become popular because of an event I read about in the New York Times. It seems that there is an underwater camera to catch the action as the ladies wrestle for possession of the ball.  According to the Times, there is sometimes a “swimsuit malfunction.” According to the story, one network switched to the underwater camera just as one player grabbed another by the swimsuit and bared her opponent’s breast “for all to see.”

Wow. That would be something if you don’t have Netflix or HBO. 

I noticed there was no underwater camera work in the broadcast we were watching at the bar. But that was all right. I had beer—Sam Adams Lager, Blue Point Toasted Lager (which is downright spectacular, for a lager), and Stella Artois (which is good if you have it first, but is weak after the Blue Point). 

Besides, I have Netflix.

Aug. 10

I don’t recall much of the flight except for seeing parts of movies, one about old Brits on vacation to India and another in which Owen Wilson was a champion birdwatcher. After four pints at Chammps Sports Bar, I slept for most of the trip. Conditions were better than I could have expected. The only empty seat in the plane was the one next to mine.

I got onto the right train at the airport, so I went directly to central station. Actually, it was guess work because the train wasn’t marked and no one was sure we were on the right train.  The rest was easy, because I took a cab.

Larry and I took off to rent a bike and on the way passed the maritime museum. Across the canal from the museum is another museum that looks like nothing less than the bow of a sinking ship.

A sandwich of smoked herring with a glass of white wine constituted breakfast around noon. Space cake and coffee around half-past 12 were good for lunch.

It’s about 2 in the afternoon, local time. The space cake is kicking in.

More later if I remember.

Harry

Aug. 10

Two seats for the price of one! 

Space cake for breakfast. Guess you will have space cake for dinner, which is soon.

You are in your element. Have fun.

Did you meet Ms Libby in Newark Airport? August 9th was her first day on duty. I expect to read about her in your journal.

Joanna

No, I didn’t see Libby. Maybe on the way back.

Harry

Catching Up, Sort of

Aug. 11

I am officially traveling again.

The rows of townhouses in the old city are all either four or five stories high. The top story is a dormer with a projecting beam and hook, one after another down the street, waiting for pianos, sofas, and lynchings. As I’ve remarked before, this city looks as good close up as it does in postcards.

I’m sleeping on the top of Eerste Atjehstraat 44. You can actually find that address on Google Maps.

A little to the northwest of No. 44—an inch or two depending on the scale of your map—there is a landmark noted: Brouwerij ’t Ij. (I don’t know how to pronounce it, but when I say “brew’ree tie” people seem to know what I mean.)

It’s really a brewery, and has a tasting bar that is open for a small amount of time each day—maybe four to nine. but it also has Amsterdam’s only windmill. Larry introduced me to the place the last time I was in the city. He even snapped a photo of the windmill with me in front of it.

So yesterday in the cab coming from the station, when I saw a windmill. I honestly thought, “Is that the Brouwerij?” and was very smug seeing a few minutes later that, yes, it was. Hot damn. I know my way around Amsterdam. I think you can see where this is going.

Shortly after I finished yesterday’s brief message, Larry and I took off for the far side of old town. The buzz was fantastic. Walking was a challenge. Standing was weird. It seems this place all floats on water, but you can only sense the rocking after space cake. Riding the bike was downright magical. I am not as aggressive as locals, so I stop from time to time for tourists, delivery trucks, pregnant ladies with strollers, and the distracted.

Larry had a meeting at four, and we were early, so we traced a route over canals, through picturesque neighborhoods of light and shade, and I have literally no idea where we went. We stopped outside a fantastic bar that I will never find again without assistance.

It specializes in Dutch craft beers. I don’t even remember what I drank. Maybe it was water. I’ve rarely had beer that tasted so good. 

I fell off the bike only once. And that was on the way back from the station yesterday, before we got to a coffee shop or a bar. I was stopping, pulling up to a light, when a lady came barreling past me from nowhere because I had wasn’t paying proper attention to traffic in the bike lane.

My front wheel jackknifed around on me and I went down. I landed on my right hand and may have brushed the ground with my trousers, but they were unharmed so everything was fine. I have only packed one spare suit.

I apologized to the lady, who had stopped for the light. but she didn’t turn around or acknowledge me in any other way. Maybe she was afraid I was mad instead of embarrassed.

So we get to the neighborhood where Larry has his meeting. He’s writing for the website and catalogs of a local retailer. I need help with the bike chain when we are locking up our rides. This is not a good sign.

So Larry goes over it real slow: “Meet me here at 5:30.” He points to a bar across the street from where his meeting is. He says it three or four times, I think. Or maybe my mind is running deja vu in a loop. I mean, how would I know the difference?

He has me write down the address of the bar. I have the presence of mind to dog-ear that page in my notebook. I also note the cross street.

I also have a plan. I tell myself: No turns. Just walk a straight line, Harry, maybe stop for another beer, but don’t take any chances on getting lost. You may not be able to find your way back this time. You may not be able to ask directions. Not sure, but there is a remote chance that you have lost the power of speech.

It’s like I told Matt once. He was a toddler and we were out on a country road, and he was concerned that we would get lost, because I said I had never been on that road before.

I have been lost before, son, but I have always found my way back again. Except once. I used to be somebody else. That shut him up for all of two seconds, and then he started to talk to his Mom.

Anyhow, straight lines don’t count for much when you are walking in a fog. The patterns of the paving stones are fantastic. The color on the canals looks like Impressionism. The voices in your head get very witty. Sometimes you laugh out loud at their jokes.

The streets change names, too. So I’m on Haarlemmerstraat, then Haarlemmerdijk, but how did I get onto Nieuwedijk? Did I get to an intersection and decide that it was necessary to turn? Left or right? This is like being outside or inside the moat at Chiang Mai. Only this time I was really spaced out.

I turned around and tied to retrace my steps. OK, I actually got back to the starting point, but only half an hour had passed which left me another hour to kill. I walked the other way, and came back with little difficulty. OK, this is getting better. Remember, Harry, you can recognize the Brouwerij’s windmill from half a mile off. This is the sound of hubris taking hold.

So now I’m ready to walk the cross street, Kaisersgracht. This is the canal street where I stayed last time, but that apartment was almost at the other end, far across town. I was on the west end of the canal this time. But I knew (sort of) where I was.

Then I got cocky. I made a turn.

When I eventually groped my way back to Kaisersgracht, I had lost all sense of direction. But after all, the canal only goes to the left and right. That gives me a 50 percent chance of being wrong.

In my experience, 50 percent is a sucker bet.

It was only after I had gone quite a ways--a mile, maybe 20--that I actually noticed that it was the wrong ways. The numbers were rising. I was so stoned asking directions back at the intersection never occurred to me. I have no idea why looking at the street numbers ever occurred to me at all.

So here are the right bearings, but it's now down to 10 minutes before I'm supposed to meet Larry in the bar, which was an indeterminate distance away.

So there are a couple of ground rules learned.

Rule No. 1: Don’t go exploring a strange city, if you have an appointment. Or are stoned. 

Rule No. 2: Don’t panic. It’s for occasions like this that they invented cabs.

I get out of the cab and go to the place, but Larry's not in the bar. Did I have it right? Or was I supposed to go across the street where the meeting is? I do that.

It's another bar, so I order a beer. I tell the bartender my mission--that I'm supposed to find my friend Larry somewhere around here, who is in a meeting with Derry, the boss. The bartender goes upstairs, but isn't too sure if I'm Harry or Larry. He knows I'm not Derry.

So Larry comes out of the meeting, grinning all over. He knows the synapses are slipping and misaligning all through my head. Meeting's not over yet. Fine. I'll wait here and sip this beer. Good, then you won't get your ass lost again.

I had a little chat with Derry, too, when the session broke up. He remembered meeting me two years before.

That first space cake came from a shop called Bush Docter—yes, spelled that way on the sign. It turns out, as Larry told me later, this is a hangout of one of his friends, Barry. So everybody knows Larry, too. He’s chatting up the people at the counter. A guy on the steps gives him a Marlboro to mix with hash.

And that’s where I had my first space cake of the trip. 

At some point we linked up with Sir Michael, a British ex-pat friend of Larry’s, who met us and took us some place to get hamburgers. 

Michael is probably my age or older. He is leading the bicycle convoy. I can barely see him. He is tear-assing up the road. Larry’s next and then I get cut off by a van. 

I pedaled forward and stopped. Sooner or later they’ll backtrack looking for me. I stay there a couple of minutes and then think of a better spot, back at an intersection, which is where I found them. Or rather, they found me. I could hear them calling my named from a crowd on the roadside.

They had made a right in the instant that the van had my full attention.

We finished the night at the bar of the Hemp Hotel. This is where many of Larry’s friends hang out. Sir Michael’s a regular. There was a Rasta-looking guy named Banta tending bar when we got there. His hair was gathered under a large knitted cap. 

As I found later, Banta isn’t Rasta. He is African, raised in Germany, but doesn’t care for the German language so he came here to study at the University of Utrecht in an all-English degree course.

The trip back to the apartment was without serious incident. I know this because I woke up there with nothing broken or bleeding. Love to all.

Harry

Thailand Part 4: Returning by Way of Pattaya

Pattaya, Where the Twain Meet.

Jan. 5

We arrived at our second-to-last hotel, in the resort town of Pattaya City, on the afternoon of the 4th. I had thought it was a suburb of Bangkok, but in fact, it's about an hour and a half on the highway from the Bangkok Airport.

We were on the Walking Street the first night and hit a few bars. We also stumbled into a discotheque and stumbled right out again. Even though it is technically closed to motor vehicles at night, we had to dodge a few motorbikes and other vehicles. Somebody brought in a classic old-man car with fins. It was low, wide, long, and excessive, white with black trim and chrome. It may once have belonged to the 5,000-year-old pimp. On the way out I was almost run over by a Mercedes. The plate number was a single digit, and Larry says it must be a politician. They're alike everywhere.

Anywhere you turn somebody is trying to sell you something on the street. There is some street food, but far less than in Chiang Mai or Bangkok. Instead, people sell things like hammocks, toy lasers, glowing plastic helicopters, or themselves. 

I can't quite describe this place. It has many of the elements that Bangkok is reputed to have. You can walk down the street and see a family of tourists with their kids, hookers, and Russian gangsters, all on the same block. Think of Seaside Park or Wildwood, N.J.: boats on the water, parasailing, a beach, Put that on steroids (primarily testosterone) and mix with a kind of Las Vegas Gone Wild. 

For instance, this is the first time I have roomed at a hotel that includes condoms in the mini-bar. Beginning about five in the afternoon, when I’m in my room, I can hear the music from the saloons below in the street. If I step out onto the terrace, I can feel the heavy bass. And that's coming from six floors down.

This is one of those places where the West has collided with the East and the accident scene is in chaos. Upscale hotels and shopping centers are next to street markets, with open stalls selling leather goods, underwear, souvenir brass knuckles, and other essentials. There is all kinds of food. One menu at a brew pub offers dishes ranging from pizza and spaghetti to bierwurst and Thai pork. That was at a place called the Hopf Brew House, a German theme restaurant that brews its own beer. The pizza is very good Euro style. 

The mix of food choices lets a farang, who may be retired and living here or just passing through, order a steak, while his Thai lady, who may be his wife or someone he has hired to be his girlfriend for an hour or two, can enjoy pad thai or red curry.

It's a collision of all things cultural. In one lane off the Walking Street is a Malaysian halal food stand run by bearded Moslems right next to a hotel that advertises room rentals of three hours for 300 baht. 

We are in a hotel called the Eastiny 7. (Said like "Easton"—as in Pennsylvania—with a diminutive ending added.) It sits on a side street called Soi 7. Starting across the street and continuing to the beach road is a warren of bars. Most of them are open to the air and serve beer only in bottles. Many also serve girls.

I went out for walk this morning. I put on sunblock, a T-shirt, and a linen jacket, which is dripping dry in the closet as I write. 

I'm back at the hotel and hiding from the heat. I got only semi-lost. I walked about a mile too far. 

On the way back, I was looking for Harry's Bar, which Larry had mentioned. I had already found Harry's Fashion on the Walking Street and a "no weapons" sign outside the Sweethearts a Go-Go bar.

Brian, my daughter's significant other, had heard about signs like that outside bars in Thailand and wondered what a place would be like that had them. Brian, it would be like Pattaya.

I spent two hours or more prowling up and down the Walking Street last night, looking at the lights and the strange sights. I couldn't believe how different it looks in daylight. For one thing, it is open to vehicles during the day. That's how they get the cases and kegs of Chang and Singha to the bars. 

Anyway, there are Harry's Bars in many places. Perhaps they are in acknowledgment of the support I give to their industry. Harry's Fashion—I don't know. I am the only farang who goes out in a jacket. Every time I do, ten guys get into my face telling me how they can make a duplicate "at best price."

Never did find the bar, but lots of other strange stuff. The beach is full of Russians. Some of them wear Speedos. Enough said.

I haven't seen so many signs in Russian since the last time I passed through Brighton Beach in Brooklyn.

The side streets are full of tailor shops, bars, strip clubs, nail salons, and 7-Elevens. A couple of streets, I found, have specialties. One area is known as Boyz Town, and there is a lane that has a lady-boy bar and a few other related attractions. Lady boys are a phenomenon associated with Thailand. They are neither transvestites nor transsexuals, but a gender in between.

When I signed up for my Asian Gmail account, Google requested the usual demographic information. Perhaps because I was signing up from Thailand, when it asked for gender, the options were male, female, and other. 

This is the view from the steps in front of the Eastiny 7 hotel, looking toward the beach on the Gulf of Thailand.

It is now more than 30 hours after my arrival in Pattaya. I have hit a wall and have been walking around like a zombie for the past two hours. We'll probably cab it back to the airport hotel tomorrow afternoon. Right now, this old man needs a sound night's sleep.

Good night, all.

Back Home

Jan. 8

There's no worse place to be than an airport. Larry was on his way to Saigon and my flight to Tokyo was scheduled to leave shortly after his. Both flights were going out early, so we stayed Friday night at a hotel called the Great Residence, just outside Suvarnabhumi, the Bangkok airport. [Editor’s note: Harry seems to have learned to spell the airport’s name after his third pass through it.] It was sort of like one of the motels in the Meadows, in the shadow of the Jersey Turnpike.

They had a restaurant, where I decided to get two cups of coffee to go. If I put them in the refrigerator in the room, there would be iced coffee when I woke up at four. They told me there would be a wait of 10 minutes. It seems nobody in Thailand orders coffee in the afternoon. They brought me one, in a porcelain cup. No, two. Song (which I think is two in Thai). Take away (which is "to go" in British and in the Thai brand of English). They had no idea what I was talking about. Crazy farang.

I stacked two cups, put a saucer on top and got them across the parking lot and up three floors to my room. I had no expectation that I would make it, but was damned sure going to try. Wow. I did it.

An enterprising cab driver had found a business opportunity in the isolation of the place. He offered to take us to a market about 10 minutes away. "It's not a shopping mall, is it?" Larry says. "No, no, a market." "Thai food?" "Yes, Thai food." So for 400 baht, a little less than $15, we hired a cab for two hours. 

We passed some interesting stalls along the road, and that looked promising. But the driver left them behind and about a mile up the road made a left into Paramus, N.J. McDonald's, KFC, a Tesco food market, and stores selling clothes, jewelry, knickknacks, and whatnots. 

The stores had set up garment racks outside in the plaza, so there was space only for a thin line of Thai carts selling meat on a stick and sweets. The beer was being sold next to the two loudspeakers providing the soundtrack for the entire mall and the far reaches of the parking lot. We tried to get the bartender to turn the music way down, or better yet, off. He either couldn't understand what we were asking, or else couldn't believe that anybody, even a farang, would be crazy enough not to appreciate the sound system.

Even I wasn't pleased with this place. It was nice enough, but I can get nice anywhere, even in Indiana. This also constituted an instance of messing with food, so you can probably take a good guess at Larry's state of mind.

Luck was with us, as usual, because after a few minutes of bewilderment, we met the driver. He had seen us wandering in circles and came up to see how we were doing. "We want to go to the other market." Blank stare. "The one we passed." "You want to go there?" Crazy farang. But he took us. And it was worth it. We stepped under the roof, onto the concrete floor, under the bare light bulbs. As Larry put it, "Welcome back to Asia."

There was produce, meat, and seafood on display and we could smell the cooking. I don't know what all goes into Thai food—green and red chiles, garlic, basil, maybe lime, ginger, coconut—but you can breathe and say, "Thai." The same way we can identify other kinds of food—French, Italian, Chinese, even good WASP (think home fries, or steak)—by smell, unless they are being made bland, as they may be at a mall. An elephant can do it from at least 4 kilometers away.

There was a family selling fresh fish. The man and one of the kids were squatting on the floor, removing the heads and entrails. Of course, we could not smell the fish, because it was so fresh. I didn't see any plastic bags of live eels, as I did in Chiang Mai, but they may have been there. Didn’t see fried insects either, but then I didn't ask.

We bought something that looked like an empanada to start and then a bag of assorted deep-fried vegetables, and a browned rice pancake. When I first picked it up, I thought it was a take on hash-brown potatoes.

We were the only farang in the place, and nobody looked at us as if we were crazy. These people were busy.

Later we came to an area with tables and several food stands. We sampled a couple of kinds of flavored rice. Larry said one may have been cooked with a little pork blood. There was a fatty pork in gravy with something pickled—maybe bean sprouts—on the side. There was also the very hot green papaya salad. It's delicious but I need a lot of rice to calm the burn. As he was digging in, Larry started to pour sweat. It was running all over his head, like tears of utter joy. 

Would the temperature of this climate drop maybe five or ten degrees if they took all the chiles out of the country?

The driver was waiting for us outside the 7-Eleven. There's always one of those. He was killing time over a large beer, so we joined him with beers of our own. Larry gave him a tangerine, and then we headed back. All in all, a fitting way to end a visit.

I had about 30 hours to make the transition back to my home planet. The Great Residence is a Thai hotel. The room is plain and could be at a Super 8 or Holiday Inn in the Meadowlands, only they speak a different language. Plumbing is always a hint that you're somewhere else. Pattaya caters to foreigners and so is a little more Western. There was a tub, for instance.

Most places where I showered in Thailand had little or no separation of the shower area from the rest of the bathroom. One had a glass panel to keep the shower from splashing on anyone who may have been using the toilet at the same time. In most cases, the shower was one corner of the bathroom. Except in Pattaya, the water only runs cold in Thailand. 

The shower is the Continental type, the spray head is on a hose so you can pick it up and spray yourself all over. This is more convenient than the fixed head we are more used to at home, especially when the water pressure, as it is in almost every motel I have visited, is low. If you can take the sprayer and hold it three inches from your arm, for instance, the suds wash off better because you take advantage of the entire volume of water. 

The water heater is a unit on the wall. At one place, I had to push a button to turn it on. In the others, it came on with the water. 

I was looking for soap at the Great Residence and it was only in the morning that I noticed the dispenser on the wall in the shower corner. I prefer bar soap, because I usually wind up wasting most of the liquid soap I use. I had brought a bar with me, so that was OK. Shampoo from the dispenser was very handy. Take some for my hair. Take more for my whiskers. I may get one for home.

The plane was late getting out of Bangkok, and there was a short turnaround for my flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles. My ticket said 17:00. When I got to the end of the security line at Narita, it was 16:30. So I told everyone "I have a plane leaving at 7. No, 5." and they promoted me to the head of the line because they feared I was either mathematically illiterate or delusional and therefore possibly disruptive.

As it turned out, I had my usual difficulty dealing with forms and schedules. That was the boarding time. My flight, UA0890, according to my voucher, was supposed to take off at 5:45, although the board had departure time at 5:40 and the gate had it at 5:30. That may all have been consistent, in fact, considering gate closings, departure from the gate, and extra point conversions. But I had been up since 4 a.m. Bangkok time and now I was wandering around somewhere in the future or the past, so I was a bit hazy on a lot of concepts. Net score: No longer farang. Possibly Yankee. Still crazy. But I was on a plane and pretty sure it was the right one.

To live and die in L.A. may be better than spending time at an airport. I can't say for sure, because this trip I was only passing through LAX for a couple of hours. I haven't seen the city since the early 90s, and that has lasted me. 

Get this: I'm coming through airport customs for the fourth time in the past 13 months, and I forgot the declaration form. I had to go back and fill one out. I filled out an immigration form, too, just in case the rules had changed. I was given hardship consideration here too and allowed to return to the head of the line.

I had put my vest on before I got off the plane in Los Angeles. There is a buckle at the back. TSA is on high alert here. Maybe they always are. Everybody gets a scan. You can't even leave your handkerchief in your pocket. So I go through and the way is barred. The agent at the scanner "wants to check my back." I added LAX to the list of places where I have been subject to government search.

OK. I'm on the last leg. I stop to have a beer with lunch because I can: Somebody else is driving. A few barstools away is a 30-something kid on a cell phone. I hear him order a white Russian. Then he says something to the bartender. Apparently one of his backpacks is missing, the one with the skateboard sticking out of it. I suggest he retrace his steps. It's probably still there; most people are honest. 

So he went. He just walked off, leaving his other bag on his seat and several small bills on the bar. He came back about five minutes later with the bag. He had left it and security had seized it.

After bonding over an instance of lost and found, I learn that this is Fred. We are on the same flight to Newark. He is going home to New York before leaving for Uruguay to go skateboarding.

He has been skateboarding in Thailand too, a year ago. I guess it can be done. He knew about the moat at Chiang Mai. He told me about a traffic accident in which he bound up injured people with his shirt and socks, and sent them to the hospital in his tuk-tuk. Then because it was so late, he had to wander shirtless for hours. 

It can be done. But he has also consumed a lot of white Russians.

So many, in fact, that when he orders another, he is flagged. "I want you to get home safe," the bartender says and pours him two tall glasses of water.

Just when I thought adventures were over on this trip, I have a drunken skater to watch over on his way to the gate. Get your wallet, your credit card, both bags. He's doing all right for someone so well lubricated. When we get to the gate, he mounts his skateboard and casually rides it to the men's room. I figured that's where he went, because I lost sight of him in the crowd. When I could see the far end of the hall, there was no wreckage there.

He shows up a few minutes later, phone at his ear, heading for the gate. Job over. 

When next I see him, he joins the queue for the lavatory in the plane and he is pouring Jack Daniel's into a plastic cup. 

My last sight of him was gliding past me at Newark on the way to the baggage claim. I wonder if he could do that sober.

Today's photo was taken from my room in Pattaya. It is looking roughly the same direction as the street scene I sent the other day.

So I am back in Montclair and am sending this e-mail after getting in a good 12-hour's sleep.

Harry