Category: May Term 2011

One of the ironies of a visit to Hanoi is the importance here of Ho Chi Minh, the founding father of the modern Vietnam. What’s ironic (at least to me) is that he is so strongly identified with Hanoi–yet his legacy is a city 1,000 miles from here (Saigon), where he was less well identified (and I suspect–though a lot of time has passed), less well revered.

We had about three hours between getting to the hotel, having a Pho breakfast (that was my choice, anyway), and departing for two of the Ho Chi Minh sites. One is the somber mausoleum. Born in 1890, Bac Ho (uncle Ho)’s career took him to Paris and the United States (as kitchen help) and back to Vietnam as an avid nationalist, which essentially meant anti-French. With the Communist Party legal in France, he became steeped in Lenin’s Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, and founded the Communist Party in Vietnam. At the end of WWII, he declared the independence of Vietnam from France, which united the whole country–for about a month. The French effort to retain power lasted a decade; then the American effort to prop up South Vietnam as a Christian/Capitalist bastion lasted until we pulled out troops in 1972, and witnessed the North’s slicing through South Vietnam, ending in the unification of the country on April 30, 1975. By that point in time, Ho was dead, having expired in 1969. His body was flown to Moscow, to be embalmed by the (I think) Bulgarians who had done Lenin and would later embalm Mao, housed in a tomb in the old French government quarter. As I said, the chamber is somber, and unlike the similar one for Mao, there is no souvenir mall at the exit.

The queue then winds its way to the simple house that Bac Ho built, rather than occupying the palace of the former governor general of Indochina. It’s three rooms, on stilts, near to the mausoleum.

The other visits today emphasized the heritage of Vietnam as within the Chinese sphere of influence: the famous one-pillar pagoda, built a millennium ago (Hanoi celebrated 1,000 years as a city last year, having been founded as a dragon city in 1010 (supposedly on October 10); the equally ancient pagoda on one of the lakes (where Sen. McLain was shot down in 1969), erected by the first emperor to beat the “feudal Chinese aggressors,” and the lustrous National Museum (couldn’t believe I’d not been there before) with its excellent collection of Cham art, and some really nice items from the Nguyen dynasty (in the 18th-19th centuries). The highlight is the Temple of Literature–the Confucian temple in Hanoi, with its stone steles detailing the achievements of scholars (by definition, those who had mastered the Confucian classics, and topped their classes in the exams, which gave them the right to rule under the emperor). That the Chinese culture came so far from Xi’an, or even Beijing, and impacted imperial lives here, is a testimony to its power. As I mentioned, Chinese characters were used until Portuguese missionaries gave Vietnam an alphabet.

We had the afternoon to wander the city (or recover from a train ride; the best part of a 33-hour train ride is hour 34!), and Hanoi is a city made for wandering. Half the size of Saigon, the streets are half as wide in the old town; the jumble of guild streets and shops and motorbikes and cars and horns make it a colorful place to lose an afternoon, or get lost for an afternoon. Sidewalks are for parking bikes.

We had an IWU gathering in Hanoi tonight that I bet was the largest gathering of IWU-related people in the city’s 1001-year history. In addition to our 15 students, we invited parents of our students from Hanoi. Eight showed up, not including one sister who now knows more freshmen at IWU than possibly any other member of her class (she enters in the fall), and the younger brother (2nd eldest I think he described himself as) of one of my advisees. Jim and I sat with the parents (and the translator), while the young people conversed. I really hope we’ll be able to visit again when they come to graduation next spring. The dinner, incidentally, reminded me that Vietnamese food is among the best in the world. Among other treats (other than the superb rice-wrapped spring rolls), we had shredded chicken banana blossom salad with shrimp chip, and carmelized basa fish in clay pot. Yum.

Our 26-hour visit to Hanoi, crammed with interesting things, comes to an end tomorrow when we leave the hotel at 7:40 a.m. for the ride to the airport and then the nearly two-hour flight to Hong Kong.

Not sure I told you what’s the best thing about a 33-hour train ride, but it’s hour number 34!

The 120-mile Cu Chi tunnels that we visited today may well be epigrammatic for a history of Viet Nam; the tunnels show the determination of the Vietnamese people to persevere in the face of great odds against invaders. The tunnels, about 40 miles from Saigon, were dug in the hard clay soil beginning during the post-World War II war against the French. Twenty-five years later, the tunnels had been expanded to develop a city underground that at one time accommodated over 10,000 people. Some of the most bitter fighting of the American war was around Cu Chi. That included the dropping of 130 million tons of bombs; tunnel rats who went into the caves, which had three levels—as deep as 27 feet. Some of the bombs contained Agent Orange, which rearranged genes and the environment, denuding areas to this day, and deforming people permanently. The guide challenged us to find an opening, as our GIs tried to do—and we had no success; the entrances were camouflaged and small enough for its inhabitants. Maybe 8×10 at most.

The macabre “theme park” included an opportunity to fire machine guns or AK47s. It also included some grim displays of people traps—bamboo stakes and pits with maimers and killers that our guide cautioned me about. He said a lot of older American groups consider it propaganda; as I told our students, if they want to see the American equivalent, The Green Berets is “our” propaganda.

In the free time we had before leaving, I walked through the French Cathedral (1886)/Post office (1891) to the History Museum, housed in a lovely old French building, and probably begun under the French. It tells the story of successive waves of invaders beaten back—the “feudal” Chinese (Song, Ming, Qing, and Mao dynasties), the Cham (Indian-based, which left behind marvelous artifacts here and at Danang), and the numerous dynasties that at various times tried to unify the country—and the peasants who at various times said “enough,” and brought down the dynasty. The last emperor Bao Dai died in Paris in the 60s or thereabouts.

The exhibits reminded me of the indebtedness of Vietnam to Chinese culture (despite the millennium of warfare with the “aggressors,” as the museum described it). I know we’ll see more in Hanoi (Chinese for “in the middle of the river”). Even the language used Chinese characters until a Portuguese priest developed an alphabet. Given the numerous Chinese (especially in Saigon, which has a Chinese section called Cholon), you sometimes find Chinese characters as well. Buddhism came to Vietnam through China, which is why it’s similar to what we’ll find in East Asia. That was of especial interest because today was (at least here) the celebration of the Buddha’s birthday. I asked to stop at one temple to see how it is celebrated (I’ve washed the Buddha in Hong Kong, for example), and our guide noted that this temple had produced some of the monks who, in opposition to the Diem regime during the Vietnam war, had doused themselves in gasoline and immolated themselves (that black and white photo again). Much of the museum collection was from rich people whose idea of luxury was to have goods similar to those of the wealthy Chinese. It’s part of the model that helps define the Chinese cultural sphere (China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and the Chinese diaspora elsewhere.

We’re on our way to Hanoi—via a 33-hour train ride. Jim and I are sharing a compartment with a Vietnamese couple and their oh-so-cute 3-year-old daughter. We’re about to leave, and I’ll probably have time to observe the countryside of this long (over 1,000 miles to Hanoi), but thin country. It is 5 a.m. here, and we’ve just arrived in Hanoi. As I expected, it was a National Geographic trip. Some of it was in black and white, the imagery from the 1960s—the paddy fields, with cone hats on the farmers, water buffalo supplying cow power, the haystacks forming interesting shapes (more interesting than Monet) as the beasts ate away, graves in the middle of fields, even some corn to remind us of the Midwest.

The National Geographic-est (if I may coin a phrase) was probably the stretch from Danang over the mountains to Hue. Danang sits on the Vietnam Sea (that’s what the South China sea is called here); it’s where 50,000 American troops waded ashore in 1965, escalating the “adviser” stage to the war stage of the Vietnam War. The bay is beautiful, and to go up and over, the French built three tunnels and hugged the bay. You had to know what to look for in Hue—and I’d been here in 1995, so I had a pretty good idea. Hue was the capital of the Nguyen Dynasty (the last one, which ended after WWII), with what’s left of a forbidden city (I saw the walls from the train), three open imperial tombs (mimicking the Chinese Imperial tombs), and, when I saw it, the flagpole from the citadel. A huge flagpole, it’s another of the 1960s black and white TV memories—the hoisting of the VC flag over Hue during the Tet Offensive of 1968, which was the watershed in the war—the point at which ending it predominated over winning it.

But of course the highlight of the train ride was the “Hanoi Station,” because we knew what that meant—shower, brief nap, and more sightseeing in the capital of Vietnam.

I’ve been to Saigon as recently as two years ago, but the phrase that came to my mind two years ago—let Saigons be Saigons—has developed a new meaning for me: The end (especially for the Vietnamese) of what they call the American War. For the Vietnamese, the wars are in the past, partly because even the most recent of the long history of Vietnamese wars, against China or the Khmer Rouge, was over 3 decades ago. Of the 62 million Vietnamese, probably over three-fourths were born after the North Vietnamese tanks burst through the presidential palace gates in this city (renamed Ho Chi Minh City, though I’ve never heard a local call it that) in 1975. In addition, the Vietnamese have moved beyond the ideology of the U.S. war, and for the last 16 years have plowed ahead with reforms that have made this, like China, a communist country in terms of party control (which includes a ban on Facebook and Yahoo groups among others), but a rampant economy.

Saigon was apparently a major port for the Khmer, was conquered in the 17th century by the dynasty centered in mid-Vietnam at Hue, and given life as the “Paris of the East” (one of many claimants) following French occupation of Cochinchina in 1858. The city still bears the marks of French rule in its architecture—including a marvelous Hotel d’Ville, a soaring Catholic Cathedral (I think it is the second most Catholic country in Asia, after the Philippines), Post Office, and several buildings that house museums. And the food. I can hardly wait for tomorrow to have a baguette for breakfast—with pate, etc.

The city hasn’t entirely forgotten the American period. One of the highlights, or perhaps lowlights, is the War Memorial Museum, which documents the atrocities Americans committed during the years when we, like the Chinese, Khmer, French, Indians, etc., tried to conquer the country. As I told Professor Sikora, for Americans of a certain age, the city is best viewed in black-and-white, which was how we viewed it in the 1960s on TV. I remember when I came in 1995, having flashbacks that began at Than Sun Hut Airport, which was the main air base; the concrete hangers from newsreels (to protect against snipers)—they’re still there; the palace, where on April 30, 1975, the North Vietnamese put an end to the South Vietnamese government that had lasted around 3 years after we pulled out our troops; the Rex Hotel, once home to journalists, and transformed from a ratty but atmospheric hotel when I had students there in 2001 to a glowing 5 star building today, and so forth.

Today (as in the past), Saigon was the commercial and economic hub of Vietnam (again resembling China, where the southern cities—Shanghai and Guangzhou—reflect economic wealth and Beijing is the political center) while Hanoi is the political capital. Some of that is from the strong influence of Chinese in Saigon. The Saigonese (?) average income is, at around $3,000, triple the average of the country. I think what pumps up the income are remittances from overseas Vietnamese. Like most developing countries, there are extremes of wealth. Our guide said that houses in District One (like Paris, the arrondissements are numbered) cost over $3,000,000 U.S. There are 8 million or so inhabitants, and over 4 million motorcycles. There are sidewalks, but they’re only slightly less hazardous than the streets for pedestrians, who have to weave around parked motorcycles (Honda is preferred over the much cheaper Chinese model).

We’ll get to see a lot of the country because tomorrow night we’ll depart for a 30+ hour train ride from Saigon to Hanoi. It’s over 1000 miles from one city to another, but I will try to write before we leave.

As we say here, I feel like a million dong. That’s around 50$ U.S. The largest bill is 100,000, so being a millionaire is relatively easy—and relatively meaningless.

One of our students pointed out that the Singapore we’ve seen is a city designed for tourism. I had to counter that we arrived here on a late Friday and we were leaving early Monday morning; hence, what we would see were primarily tourist sites—and the tourists, whom Singapore, knowing tourism is the world’s largest business, has consciously (everything in Singapore is conscious) sought to attract. In recent years, the government has tried to shed the “boring” impression of Singapore as a “fine” city, where you get fined for spitting, chewing gum, etc., and built a number of facilities to attract foreigners. For example, gambling is legal; in good Singapore fashion, locals pay $100 Singapore to enter. The city fathers don’t want citizens addicted.

Singapore is home to many multinationals because it is a well-run city. In the past, we’ve visited the American Embassy, Caterpillar (which has a logistics facility here), Medtronic, and Cargill. It’s a regional hub for Cargill, we were told, because it’s close to anywhere in Asia, and it’s a civilized place to live. I saw two things that demonstrated good Confucian values, if not civility. On the bus, seats are reserved for the elderly, handicapped, and pregnant women. The driver stopped when a pregnant woman got on and scolded a man to put his daughter on his lap to free the seat for the woman so he could continue to drive. On the subway, three people shooed others away and insisted a foreign professor take the seat for the old guys. I accepted with some embarrassment, preferring to think it was respect for teachers rather than for age!

When we crossed the border from Malaysia, it was readily apparent. Housing developments and high rises, which accommodate nearly 90% of the 5.3 million Singaporeans, are incredibly clean. We were told they get fresh paint every five years, which helps prevent the heat/humidity/salt damage we’ve seen in so many other Asian cities. And, given that Singapore has nothing but human capital (it imports food and water, among other things), the Singapore story (the title of founding father Lee Kwan-yu’s biography) is indeed impressive. The government (it’s been one-party rule since it separated from Malaya in the mid ’60s) has focus on education, jobs, and housing—with the result that the standard of living is I believe higher than England.

We had a free day today, and I convinced three of our students to fulfill one of my bucket list goals—to bike on Pulau Ubin. The island, off Singapore, which is itself an island in charge of 60-some islands, is a jungle that supposedly resembles Singapore 50 years ago (I can only imagine what it was like before the opening of the Suez Canal in the 1860s put it on the map; it had been a British colony since 1819, when Raffles got the local Sultan to cede it to the British—the lion supposedly seen by the Indonesian ruler gave the area its name, Singha(lion) pura. We took the subway to the bus to Changi Village where we caught a boat to bike for about 3 hours in Singapore circa 1950; it was thick with trees, some wild animals (a boar burst from the woods), some Malay and Chinese homes and cemeteries, and a few new resorts. Most of the trails were paved, at least the 10 miles or so we traversed, but we did get off to walk along the ocean and through a mangrove swamp (with mangrove palms)—typically education plus!

Yesterday we saw tourist spots and tourists (few get to Pulau Ubin) that typify the shopping, eating, and sightseeing. Places included the Orchid museum (did you know that 10% of all flowers are orchids?), the colonial quarter (Little India, Chinatown, and the British buildings that now house government offices); the financial district (services and technology is how Singapore is trying to maintain its role as a supplier of human capital. It has the busiest container port, which I think is one of the most stunning sights in the city. Some 130 banks call it home; 11 are local/global powers), the Sands casino, and harbor, and the primarily resort island of Sentosa. I’ve been to the aquarium, so I separated off to the lone remaining fort on the island, which is part of Singapore’s World War II story—an important one, it turns out in the global picture. Churchill called the fall of Singapore the greatest disaster of the war, and in terms of the East/West balance, it was as important afterwards as the Japanese victory over Russia had been in 1905—proof that the West was not superior and could not protect its colonies. In Singapore’s case, its vulnerability by air (two battleships sent to protect the peninsula were sunk on December 10, 1941; the Japanese had 3 times the number of planes, and they were superior), and the quick advances down the peninsula (the Japanese were in Johore, across from Singapore by early February) overcame the fact that the British had over twice as many soldiers as the Japanese did. The Commander, Gen. Percival, wanted to fight on, but his staff argued for surrender; the terms were unconditional surrender.

On the way back from biking today, I realized we were passing a museum I’d not yet seen, one that would complete for me the WWII story—the prison at Changi was where the Japanese interned the Allied soldiers (Indian troops were the majority; then Brits, Australians, New Zealanders, and some Americans and Dutch. The Japanese occupation of Syanon was, like most WWII prisons, horrendous. Angered by support for the Chinese in China, the Japanese murdered around 6,000 (though estimates range up to 20,000), taking boatloads out and shoving them overboard. Many westerners (the Japanese generally held people who surrendered in contempt) got taken to build the famous (or infamous) railroad from Burma to Thailand that you may know from the Bridge over the River Kwai.

This is an historic time politically for the ruling People’s Action Party. In the election last week, Singaporeans voted for the opposition parties in record number. Six (of the 84) seats in Parliament went to the opposition, the most in Singapore’s history; the popular support fell to 60%, down 15% from ten years ago, and about nine percent from five years ago. This vote, despite Mentor Minister Lee’s urging, “Don’t rock this foundation. Remember, don’t risk your assets, property values, job opportunities.” Even more baldly, voters ignored Lee II (his son is prime minister), who warned that PAP favors PAP districts for improvements in housing. The papers attribute the vote to more open information partly via the internet, more well-educated opposition, and concerns about immigration which has led to housing and transportation pressures (about 2 million foreigners work in Singapore; if you have a skill, it’s relatively easy to get a work permit). In any case, the 87-year-old Minister Mentor and his immediate successor have announced their resignation in this morning’s newspaper. No doubt the Singapore story, notwithstanding the title of Lee’s biography, will have different chapters in the future.

We’re leaving for the airport at 4:30 am, so I’ll close now, but I’ll give you one more good reason to visit Singapore—near the equator (we’re 1 degree 18 minutes north) and close to sea level, gravity exerts an extra pull, which is why your scale lies here!

Maybe it’s true in Ho Chi Minh city, which used to be called Saigon, our next stop.

Salamat Pagi from Kuala Lumpur

The morning paper (a cross between the National Enquirer and USA Today) has been following a local controversy that tells a lot about Malaysia. On Saturday, a Malay paper had a headline that asked, “Can Malaysia become a Christian country, with a Christian Prime Minister.” The article outlined a cabal of Christian organizations that were purportedly plotting such an event. Today’s paper assures its readers that the possibility cannot happen, in part because the constitution guarantees that Malaysia will protect its Muslim majority, and the “constitution cannot be changed.”

That the occurrence can be feared is a measure of the multiethnic society that Malaysia has become, a product of its history, especially under the British, who brought in a variety of ethnic groups–especially the Chinese and Indians to milk the rich resources of the country. Today, that’s oil (which generates 40% of the revenue) and palm oil (which requires about 1 million imported workers, mostly from Indonesia), but historically meant tin mines and rubber. The 1Malaysia tagline is a direction the country has sought since independence, but the scars from the past (there were major race riots in the 60s) are still present. As the latest flap made clear. Essentially, the government is Malay dominated (UMNO, the United Malay political party celebrated its 65th anniversary yesterday, which meant 65 years of political domination, about a third of it under Mahathir Mohammed, a strong-willed, British-educated Prime Minister, who for a long time questioned the United States and really remade the country–Putrajaya, the new capital; the Petronas Towers, at the time the highest building in the world; Cyberjaya, a high-tech corridor, etc. The Chinese are dominant in the economy, and the Indians, as our guide Mr. Singh put it, are in between. The proportions are about 60% Malay, 30% Chinese, and 10% Indian. My understanding is that Bahasa is the official language (shared with Indonesia, whence came many of the original rulers of the country–the Sultanate of Malacca was a dominant regional power until the Portuguese ended its existence in 1511), but that Mandarin Chinese and Tamil are pretty much required in the schools, for those of Chinese descent (most of whom are probably Hakka or Hokkien speakers from South China) or Indian (Tamil is one of 14 official Indian languages).

I have sought to emphasize the Muslim nature of the country to our students, and it is more obvious here than in Penang (which, as one of the Straits Settlements, together with Malacca and Singapore) had its own British government, and even today have no Sultan and are administered separately. It was one of the reasons we visited the Islamic Art Museum of Malaysia, a stunning building with stunning artifacts, many of them from the Ottoman Empire that last May was one of our concerns in Eastern Europe; the borderlands/boundaries between East and West stretched from Vienna to China. It was one of the reasons we visited the Palace (originally a Chinese home, large enough to accommodate his seven wives), now occupied on a rotating basis by one of the Sultans, who is king of the country for five years. Even the Petronas tower is symbolic of Muslim dominance in its Islamic design. Muslims here operate under Sharia law (there is a civil law for non-Muslims), and as I recall, if you marry a Muslim, you convert. It seems to be a milder form than in the Middle East, but it still is a Muslim country, determined (ala Mahathir) to play an important role as a progressive Muslim force, a goal which is pretty impressive for a country of 29 million.

What we did Thursday confirmed much of the above. We took a morning trip to the new capital, Putrajaya, named for the first prime minister of Malaysia, which is an impressive city of up to half a million people. The parliament, the palace of the sultan of Selangor (who gave the land for the city), the Prime Minister’s offices, and the new mosque establish Putrajaya as a contender for the new caliphate or at least a contender for influence of the world stage as an avowedly Muslim country. When I compare it with the buildings in Kuala Lumpur, built a century earlier as examples of Turko-Moorish architecture designed by British architects, I’m more reminded of the splendor of the Moghul Empire in India.

The other visit was to an agricultural park in Putrajaya, that has a “live kitchen” (as the sign described the fresh food place), and the panoply of agricultural products that helps make Malaysia a gourmet’s paradise. If you love fresh fruit, you’ll be comfortable here, with everything from rambutan to durian. One highlight was a stand of rubber trees (Putrajaya had been a rubber plantation). Malaysia had, at one time, been the largest producer of rubber, but is now number 4.

The evening was capped by a cultural show featuring Malay food and Malay dancing. With the gamelan, I could have been in Indonesia, but that is where the Malays, especially the Sultan of Malacca, came from.

Tomorrow morning we leave Malaysia for Singapore, and I bet that by 5 p.m. tomorrow, the Republic of Singapore will become my favorite country in Asia.

I hope you have a pleasant day.

Another wonderful day that began with the “other” weather in Penang–we had a severe thunderstorm last night, providing us with hot, humid, and rainy weather, rather than the hot and humid that is the standard fare. That put an end to the original plan I had, which was to bike in the morning–that, and the sad fact that as we get closer to the equator, daylight gets shorter; it wasn’t light until around 7, and by then, traffic would make bicycling too much an adventure.

The rain stopped before we left, and the “regular” hot and humid weather returned–which, in turn, made our visit to the Dell factory a challenge, because the visitor guide said “long pants, real shoes, real shirt.” When we got to Dell, as it turned out, I recognized our three hosts from my last trip. Two were in HR, and they gave us an overview of the company. Dell is a Fortune 40 company, with headquarters in Austin, Texas (the mother church), somewhere in Europe, and Asia Pacific, in Singapore. The factory is under the Asia Pacific region, and now supplies Asia Pacific with servers and desktop computers. Last time I was there, the Penang factory was the major assembler of laptops for the American market; in fact (I checked when I got home), mine was made there–and I received it less than a week after I placed the order. I remembered that the plant managers last time had talked about an imminent change, because stockholder pressure was being exerted to outsource manufacturing. Dell was one of the few computer companies to manufacture its own machines.

Last year, the company switched the production to Xiamen, China, and relegated the Penang facility to Asia Pacific. One of the results was the reduction of the staff from almost 4,000 employees to around 600. When I asked about managing a multiethnic work force, they told me that by law they had to hire at least 30% Muslims, and had an extra long Friday lunch hour, which is one of the times of day Muslims pray (and Friday is the holy day). Starting workers get 600 ringits a month for a 6-day week (Monday is the off day), which is about 2,400 U.S. dollars. As I mentioned, the average income in the country is around 14,000. The visit once again confirmed my mantra over the past few years that “what was, isn’t, and what is, might not be.” Even in Asia.

We spent the rest of the day visiting and viewing in Penang, a city of around 1 million people that has made a special point of being an attractive free enterprise zone for multinationals–high tech companies such as Western Digital, Intel, Hewlett Packard, and Sony, which we saw on the way to the airport. The managers praised the well-disciplined work force, and the HR manager told me he was in charge of helping employees become better prepared for the future. That was the message of his presentation, and the vision/mission statement of the parent company.

They also told me that the plant was already doing some contract manufacturing for other brands, and had a plan to continue to seek ways to use its assembling skills, not to mention the space that once housed 4,000 employees.

The rest of the day was spent not in the present/future, but in the past–the 250-or-so-year-old history of the once-British colony. Mr. Light helped the sultan of Perak break free of his payments to the King of Siam in the 1780s in return for the Sultan’s giving the British East India Company the rights to the island of Penang. Thus began the gradual British establishment of Malaysia–Malacca came during the Napoleonic wars (to keep it out of the hands of the French, the British conquered it from the Dutch; after the wars, they exchanged it for Bencoolen), and later added Singapore. When the East India company could not protect Pinang, it called in the British army, which established a garrison at Fort Cornwallis.

The main visits demonstrated the Chinese impact (which still exists) on the city. One was the restored (for $7 million) house of the “capitan” of the Chinese community, sort of the political administrator who reported to the British (there was also a Muslim capitan and an Indian one, but the Chinese were the most numerous and the ones most responsible for the wealth of the colony). He married a Malay woman, and the house is now a museum to the Boba/Nonya culture that emerged. One thing I noticed was that in the shoe collection, there were no shoes for “bound feet.” Back in history, one of the Chinese emperors liked women with small feet, and thereafter, non-peasant women had their feet bones broken and bound to make “lily” feet, a practice that did not end until the 20th century, but the Malay wives had regular feet.

The second tour was of a “clan house” for the Khoo family. You might have seen it in The King and I, shot in Malaysia because the Thais refused to allow the film, which is still banned in Thailand, from being shot there. The clan, from Fujian (Hokkien in the Fujian dialect), established a welfare/education society for ancestor worship and fellowship. One fascinating feature (to me) was the hall of scholars, where the Khoos are listed by generations (now on the 43rd generation) together with their accomplishments, mostly academic. Schools included the Middle Temple in London for barristers, as well as commonwealth schools in England, Australia, and Malaysia–the emphasis on education is soooo Confucian.

I still marvel in driving around the heritage district at the old colonial bungalows. There are streets full of two-story buildings, with the second floor built over the street, shading against heat and rain. Happily for me, in the old district, residents cannot tear anything down, which means the clocktower to Victoria, the old government buildings, and the homes of the rich and famous remain.

It’s almost as good as going to a museum for me, and you know how much I love museums!

We are about to depart for Kuala Lumpur, so I hope we will have adventures there that I can share in the next few days. I’ve been to Penang maybe five times–not often enough, and as you can tell from the blog, never long enough.

Some like it hot, one of the students reminded me, was a movie set in a sleeper traincar that resembled the one that took us on our 22-hour ride from Bangkok to Penang, our first stop in Malaysia. It might also refer to the weather, which is hot and humid—really hot and humid, almost what I understand you’re about to get at home.

28 hours ago we were visiting the Weekend Market in Bangkok, a sprawling center that houses small shops selling everything from cute dogs to pewter buddhas and everything in between. Professor Sikora and I took advantage of the eateries there to sample squid satay (barbequed squid on a stick) and we took advantage of public transportation to get there; Bangkok has a highly developed sky train system, which allows you to look down on stalled traffic—and feel like a local because you can navigate by yourself. We did take a cab back to the hotel to make sure we got back in time because we were leaving for Malaysia at 1 pm.

The train ride, as I mentioned, was about 22 hours, which included time to navigate a border crossing and a customs/immigration check that led to two stamps in our passports. The air-conditioned ride got us about 8 degrees closer to the equator, and a direct distance of almost 600 miles, although if you look at the map, you’ll see that we made a dog-leg turn that probably makes it closer to 700 miles. When we got here, we came to the Bayside Resort Hotel which is at Batu Fehringi (Foreign beach), a good 15 minutes from historic Georgetown, but in a rather posh part of the island along the ocean. We had enough time for most students to take advantage of the ocean or the pool—or both. Our introduction to Georgetown consisted of a tricycle ride (the bike apparatus is behind a two-wheeled cart) that took us around some of the historic area to our Chinese restaurant. Tomorrow we’ll get the day tour after our visit to the Dell laptop facility before our flight to Kuala Lumpur.

The differences between Thailand and Malaysia are apparent even from the train (which goes through some of the worst parts of towns, just like in the U.S. Thailand is about 95% Buddhist, reflected in the number of Wats (temples); Malaysia is about 60% Malay and Muslim, reflected in the mosques (although the 30% Chinese are concentrated in some of the cities, including Penang and Malacca, which historically were part of the “Straits Settlements”, together with Singapore, rather than one of the Sultanates; the sultanates still exist, and one of the sultans becomes King of Malaysia every five years.

There’s a lot more wealthy apparent in Malaysia; the CIA factbook gives an income of over 14,000 for Malaysia, about 6,000 more than Thailand. In addition, only 13% of the work force is in agriculture, which contributes 9% of GDP, a closer correlation than in Thailand. I remember going on this ride in 1997 with my son David. I was reading Megatrends Asia, which extolled Malaysia as a progressive Muslim country, which was considering a major infrastructure loan of over 400$ B to India. It owes a lot to the strong rule of Mahathir Mohammed, who was prime minister almost as long as Lee Kwan-yu, his equally strong counterpart in Singapore.

Penang was and is one of my favorite cities, with its strong heritage mix of ethnicities and the presence of a lot of colonial architecture; the stately British government buildings surrounding the maidan (a parade field), with a clocktower the grateful citizens built in honor of Queen Victoria’s jubilee; Fort Cornwallis (he became governor of India after Yorktown), reflecting the importance of Penang at the entrance to the Straits of Malacca, currently and historically one of the most important trade routes for East-West commerce; the shop houses with the second floor extending over the street, allowing pedestrians to be sheltered from heat and rain; homes of the rich families still preserved today.

Tomorrow we’re touring the Dell factory, then, after a tour of historic Penang, we will take a plane ride (happily) to Kuala Lumpur, until recently, the capital of Malaysia and still its most important commercial hub.

Before I tell you what it was like to join the 5 million cars on the streets of Bangkok and tell you what it means to be in a Kingdom, let me finish part of what I told you yesterday about agriculture in Thailand. I looked at the CIA factbook this morning, and learned four numbers that will help put it in perspective. First, agriculture contributes about 11% to the GNP of Thailand, but employs 40% of the population, which is to say that 60% of the population contributes 90%. Third, if labor costs were as at the cannery/plantation (around $2,500) but the average income is over $8,700, then a lot of people have a much lower than average income. However (and this is a typical economist trick—on the other hand), unemployment is under 1.5%.

This morning, and most of the day today, we were one bus on the road to three royal residences. The first, the Grand Palace, was built by the first King of modern Siam (the country became Thailand in 1939) when he moved the capital across the river from Thonburi to Bangkok in 1782. The Grand Palace is probably the “face” of Thailand, with its temple complex housing the Emerald Buddha. It symbolically states that the King of Thailand fits squarely into the Hindu-Buddhist tradition of the Ramayana, the great Hindu books about the battle between good and evil. The current king is Rama IX, with all the kings having been named “Rama”. The temple part houses the statues of Rama and other figures from the Ramayana, such as the monkey king, Hanuman, who leads the forces of good. The chedi and stupas (the tops of the temples) and much of the temples, in fact, are covered with glistening gold leaf and colored cut glass that make this one of the more colorful palaces in the world. Exiting from the temple part of the complex, we left the world of the Ramayana (the book has seven volumes, I believe; when I read the abridge version, I was reminded of the bewildering complexity of German folk tales, on which several Wagnerian operas are based!) for the later efforts of Siamese kings to prevent absorption into the European empires by adopting many features of Europe (see The King and I for a thinly fictionalized version of the story of Mongkut’s bringing in a school teacher for his many children). In the newer part of the palace (the only part regularly used today—as a guest house for royal guests), the buildings are a Thai-European confection, with European palace buildings topped by the traditional Thai roofs. The whole palace is guarded, but the changing of the guard is performed by troops with modern rifles, but dress uniforms including a white pith helmet. It won’t confuse you with London, but the similarities with European practice are there. My favorite external part is the elephant stand, where the king can mount-dismount his elephant (the traditional transportation—not to mention the heavy infantry of the warfare in this part of the world, an area that until the Europeans conquered it was marked by Burmese-Siamese wars. Bangkok became the capital because the Burmese generals devastated the former capital, Ayudhya (again named for a place in the Ramayana). Siam’s ability to escape colonization (the Thais will point out that the country was the only one in SE Asia not to fall under European control) partly because it served as a buffer between the French in Indochina and the British in the Malay States and the Straits Settlements, as well as India.

Of the other palaces we visited (the king today lives in yet another one, and I know we will be near still another one when we journey by train tomorrow) one was built by a late 19^th century king, and, even before air conditioning, had large windows, high roofed rooms, and other features to capture whatever breeze there might have been. Given the power of the king (he was absolute ruler until a coup in 1932 established a constitutional monarchy), there were undoubtedly a number of servants whose job it was to fan the royal family. Even today, a large staff maintains the grounds impeccably. I told Professor Sikora, my colleague and co-leader, we needed to bring the gardeners home to give us the kind of yard the king enjoyed.

This evening we got to enjoy a view of the Bangkok from the river, past the royal palace with its royal barge landing, to the residence of royal commoners today, the Mandarin Oriental (formerly the Oriental hotel), which is always listed in the top ten hotels in the world. When I was here with Mrs. Hoyt in 2001, we stayed at the Oriental, where I bet we are listed among the famous people who have made it their temporary home. I might lose that bet, but I think you understand why I’m tired. Its 11:30 tonight, and we have a lot to do tomorrow. We leave Bangkok for Malaysia tomorrow, so if I don’t get online until then, may I wish all the moms out there a happy Mother’s May?

It was 42 degrees when we left Chicago almost two days ago; it’s over 90 here in Bangkok, and that’s only one of the many contrasts between being at 12 degrees latitude and being at 40 some in Chicago. We’ve had an eventful day—beginning with our arrival at the hotel around 1:15 a.m. We had an early wake up (6:30) because I had arranged a site visit to a pineapple plantation nearly 2 hours from here. The whole day, in fact, was planned as a business day because we will be in Penang, Malaysia on Monday. Through our admissions officer, Paul Schley, I contacted families of students from Bangkok, who scheduled a full day for us.

The trip to the plantation reinforced what I’ve always felt about the city of 10 million—apart from the Palace area, I am totally bewildered. It simply sprawls, and I’m always glad someone else is driving. The ride went through a rich agricultural area—rice paddies, rubber plantations, mangos, tapioca, banana trees, etc. And pineapples. CP, the company we visited, is the largest agribusiness in the world, having surpassed Cargill (which is a 110 billion dollar operation!) by virtue of its operations in China. At our dinner that evening, the daughter of the founder of CP briefed me on the history; she pointed out that the company went to the Chinese government said, “We are overseas Chinese; we want to help rebuild China.” Today, CP has a feedmill in every province, which has catapulted its volume ahead of Cargill.

Imported originally from Brazil, the pineapple has taken root in Thailand. We learned that it has a 36-month growing cycle, with each plant potentially producing a successor (called a sucker). The 4,800-acre plantation we visited uses 300-plus workers for a 6-day week, which nets them around 200 baht a day (about $7) to harvest, plant, water, nuke with nutrients or herbicides or insecticides. We watched a harvest (they spread the crop out so there’s either harvesting or planting almost every day). I was a little surprised by the labor-intensive work involved. We saw a harvester; essentially, it was a conveyer belt, with workers behind it throwing hand-picked pineapples on to it; other workers sorted the good from the bad.

From the plantation, we went downstream in the value chain to the factory, which processes the pineapple for stores around the world. We saw Kroger, Safeway, and Sysco cans. Just as the plantation was possibly the first visit to a farm for some of our students, the cannery might well have been their first to a manufacturing facility. There, about 1,500 employees process the pineapples, only 15% of which come from CP farms—the remainder from other growers. They get about $6 an hour, with free residence in the company dormitories, and we saw the world’s most popular motor vehicle, an F-150 come in to disgorge its cargo. One highlight was eating pineapple from a freshly pulled plant (our guide assured us that different provinces have different-tasting pineapples, but fresh may trump pedigree). I used to make sweet and sour pork with whole pineapples partly because it was the only known use I had for a machete. We had lunch in the factory, in the VIP lunchroom—and you can guess what we had for dessert!!

On the way back in, we stopped at a project, a new apartment building that our Admission person told me we should see. It gave us an idea of the conglomerate nature of CP (it does more than agribusiness). It is 150 apartments for rent close to the main Skytrain line. The architect told us about the award-winning design, which is meant to evoke Spain—with arches and a multicolor façade. The common facilities on the 3^rd floor include an outdoor pool that begged for a swim (I resisted). I was not surprised by his answer to my question (prompted by what I had seen in Singapore) about urban planning that there was zoning (but nothing like the 20-year-plan has). You can see it in the hodge-podge architecture around the city, where rich-rich rubs elbows with the slums.

Our students’ family hosted dinner at the Grand Hyatt, a five-star hotel not far from where we are. The dinner was a buffet, with a dessert table any chocoholic could spend a lot of time enjoying; a meat assortment—lambchops, a pork pate, a full range of sea creatures, mango salad—well you can see why I’m in the land of Smiles. And ready for bed.