JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

Posted by jdbernard743

· March 15, 2013

A Stunning Surprise

Yesterday I was struggling to find the subject for my next blog post. I had just finished Alexander Maksik’s excellent short story, Deeper Winter, in the March issue of Harper’s, and I thought that might be it. It is an interesting story and the author is a friend whose work I admire and love to promote. But, the day took a different direction when a Vietnamese friend invited us out.

In the 6 years that we have been hanging around Vietnam we have attended a number of “performances” and most have been disappointing. We’ve seen water puppets in Hanoi, traditional dances in Hue, light shows in Hoi An, music recitals, visiting orchestras, school talent shows, Hard Rock Cafe grand openings, and holiday galas. None of them has captured our imaginations like the one last night.

Our friend didn’t supply any details about what we would see but she did say it was unique and she thought we would like it. She was on the mark.

The event’s venue was the Saigon Opera House or, as it is officially known, The Municipal Theater of HCMC, a building constructed in 1900 in the style of the Third French Republic (see above). It’s a grand building presiding over Lam Son Square in the center of old Saigon. The theater itself is always a surprise because it seats only 800 and takes up only 1/3 of the building’s interior. It was used as a theater until the French ouster and the division of the country in 1954 when it was converted to accommodate the Lower House of the Republic of Vietnam. It was restored to its original function as a theater in 1975 after the Fall of Saigon and restored architecturally in 1998. It’s an architectural treasure, but it’s a government building and suffers accordingly.

Last night’s event, The AO Show, is a mixed-media happening that combines dance, music, and theater elements. It is a concept piece in the best artistic sense. It is misleading to focus on the fact that it is a series of vignettes describing the transformation of modern Vietnamese society and its people. It’s not boring. It is equally misleading to say the it is reminiscent of Cirque du Soleil, but both things are true. The Director is Vietnamese-American, the Music Director and Training Director are both French-Vietnamese, and the Choreographer is a Vietnamese dancer trained in Japan. All of them have international theater credentials.

The show was developed in 2009 and has been performed a total of 217 times – most of them in Europe. It has never been performed in the United States. It would be criminal to miss it given the chance. The trailer is on YouTube. Be sure to watch it “full-screen.” Take a look now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QLzzuOyzdo” title=”AO Show”>. It is hard to describe the energy, artistry, aesthetic, and creativity that combine to deliver a stunning theater experience. I hope Americans will have an opportunity to see it sometime soon. It would be a great addition to any contemporary dance or theater series. I’m going to to do my best to get the troupe to Seattle.

Stunningly surprised in an alley in Saigon.

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Posted by jdbernard743

· March 12, 2013

· 2 Comments

Saigon Redux

This is the approach to the Aries Hotel, our *** accommodations in Saigon. And this, believe it or not, is the buffed out end of the alley. The entrance, behind the photographer, is a little sketchier – motorbike parking, a woman on her haunches making Pho, low plastic tables where the men of the “hood” are drinking beer, and three scrawny cats keeping the other critters away. Marilynn has lived in Saigon off and on for the last three years, but it was difficult for her to even look at the hotel when we started into the alley. I think of it as part of our ongoing adventure. She thinks of it as part of my effort to put her in risky settings and make her into a Third World woman. In any event, I persuaded her to keep walking and at least look at the hotel.

Fortunately, this was NOT a hair-brained internet booking like the one I subjected her to in Seoul. The Aries is less than a year old, owned and built by our friend, Bobby Nguyen, a successful Vietnamese-American developer from Norfolk, VA. We knew Bobby casually from conversations on the terrace at Coffee Bean near Notre Dame in the heart of Saigon. When we couldn’t get our old apartment back for this stay, I asked Bobby about staying at the Aries. Now, it’s fair to say that Bobby is about as cool and stylish and anyone I’ve met in a long time, so I was pretty sure his hotel would be a quality place, even though we hadn’t seen it. What we didn’t know was that it was down a dark alley, and that when we arrived after midnight on a long flight from Seoul our emotional fragility would test the friendship and maybe even our own relationship.

We made it through that first night without speaking to each other, but in the morning things started to look up.
The hotel entrance looked pretty good, but the alley was still the alley and the Pho lady and cats were still there. Daylight does magic for alleys in Saigon. It was actually pretty clean and well swept – for an alley in Saigon. And the room was very nice and comfortable.

The relationship issue was still lurking and I asked Marilynn to withhold judgment for a couple of days to see how it would feel as our home for the next month. God bless her. She did and we are settled in the alley now. Not bad digs for an alley entrance, eh?

We’re now in our old routine – 6am to the gym, lattes at Coffee Bean at 7:30, back to the hotel for a light breakfast at 9, work until noon then visit friends and meet others for alfresco dinners in the soft warm tropical evenings. Not a bad life, eh?

Now that we’re settled and Marilynn’s head is screwed on straight, we have time to look around a little. This morning we were riding down in the elevator with a couple of Vietnamese guys. Marilynn noticed that one of them was wearing a Nike T-shirt with Cougars on the chest. Never shy, she said Cougars? WSU Cougars? Damn straight. You guessed it – the two guys in the elevator, in the hotel, in the alley, in Saigon, were from Seattle. Not only were they from Seattle, they are Boeing engineers, live in Kirkland, and one of them raised his kids in Kenmore about a mile from our condo. We were even at the same event last year supporting PeaceTrees Vietnam, a great organization that is involved in de-mining operations in Quang Tri Province. Over breakfast we chatted about the chances of this happening and decided that the universe was messing with our heads and that we better get together for coffee when we get home. What are the chances?

I get in trouble sometimes, but I truly believe in adventure travel. You don’t have to ski steep faces in the Chugach Range or dive with the Great Whites in South Africa to have an adventure. Adventure travel is anything that stretches the boundaries of your personal comfort whether it’s hanging off a cliff or staying in an alley in Saigon. Good things happen when you let yourself have new experiences.

From an alley in Saigon.

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Tags : Travel

Posted by jdbernard743

· March 8, 2013

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Dennis Rodman, Diplomat -The Worm Turns

Having ranted about my disappointed expectations in Seoul yesterday I want to get back on track today. Our visit to Korea has had some interesting synchronicity. North Korea has been hogging the news cycle, even in the US, recently. Last week, Dennis Rodman, jumped into the headlines by appearing with Kim Jong-Un and proclaimed his love for the pudgy little dictator and delivered the message that all the North Korean leader wanted was to have President Obama “give him a call.” Who would have guessed that “The Worm” would be the catalyst for resolution on the Korean peninsula? How I Learned to Love Kim Jong-Un and the Bomb. It’s a catchy title for his autobiography, eh?

Rodman notwithstanding, there has been a serious focus on the two Korean states in recent weeks. I haven’t kept up on NK’s rocket technology since the failed launch in 2010, but crazy as he might be the little dictator might end up blowing us all to smithereens. In December NK apparently launched a successful long-range rocket and three weeks ago they conducted another provocative nuclear test. This week a major US/South Korean joint military exercise is underway, and Wednesday Kim Jong-Un declared his “right” and intention to deliver a preemptive nuclear strike in the event NK deems itself vulnerable to a US strike.

I awoke this morning in Seoul to news that the UN with China’s concurrence has increased sanctions against the rogue nation for the fourth time, sanctions that tighten commerce in technology, materials that contribute to nuclear development, military goods, and surprisingly luxury goods like yachts, race cars and jewelry. Somebody must know something about the little prince’s taste in luxury. We know that his actress wife is addicted to high fashion and expensive jewelry, but it’s surprising that the UN considers this restriction significant enough to include it in the sanctions.

Yesterday we visited the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), the line of demarcation at the 38th Parallel that has divided the two parts of the peninsula since 1948. The DMZ itself is a crazy-quilt of razor wire, guard towers, peace monuments, observation posts, tunnels, an industrial enterprise zone, new but unused rail facilities, and tourist sites – an area of hope, despair and military posturing. I found it fascinating and depressing to know that both Korea’s, the US and China devote such immense resources in money and manpower to the continuation of this 70 year old conflict. The experience reminded that Korea, Northern Ireland, Gaza, Yugoslavia, and Vietnam – all countries that were artificially divided over politics, war or religion that effectively divided cultures, families, and resources eventually came undone in armed conflict. I don’t know what will happen on the Korean peninsula. The division has now affected three generations on both sides and the affect on the north has now included physical and cognitive deterioration due to malnutrition. Defectors from the north have not been embraced by the south and it seems almost unanimous that integration of the two Korea’s would present monumental problems if it ever came to pass. Looking at the consequences and problems of integrating the two Germanys and the situation in Korea it is doubtful that unification could be successful. If there is any question about this you only have to read Barbara Demick’s book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.

In any event, this short visit to Seoul and the DMZ has been interesting and worth the trouble. The value of international travel is not a function of traveler comforts. Good transportation and quality hotels can ease the pain but getting to know the people and the culture are the benefits even if they don’t live up to one’s expectations.

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Posted by jdbernard743

· March 7, 2013

· 3 Comments

Surviving Seoul

After yesterday’s grinding 11 hour, three movie, flight from Seattle Marilynn and I landed at Incheon International Airport outside of Seoul and hopped the hour-long Korean Air Lines shuttle into the city. We had reservations at a three star hotel that I booked online, and for the first time in four years we are breaking up the trip to Saigon with a three day stay Korea. We’ve passed through Incheon International a half dozen times but neither of us has ever been into Seoul proper. It sounded like a great idea; Korea is booming – Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, L/G, Daiwoo – and new cities are being built from the ground up to handle the growth. Two years ago I blogged about Incheon International and suggested that it was the world’s best airport and our opinion of South Korea was bolstered by yesterday’s trip from the airport to the city in a comfortable new natural gas powered bus on wide, beautifully engineered, well-lit highways and causeways.

That was, however, the end of the honeymoon.

The KAL bus doesn’t stop at the New Kukje Hotel, the one I booked online. That should have set off some kind of alarm but it didn’t. On arrival in downtown Seoul we were casually offloaded with our four bags into the street in front of the Koreana Hotel, roughly two blocks from the New Kukje. The experience might have been different if we hadn’t been exhausted from the trip. It might have been different if it hadn’t been 32⁰F. It might have been different if we had packed light like we usually do, but we were packed for two climatic zones – winter in Korea and the 90⁰/90% heat of Saigon, as well as business in Saigon and vacation at the beach on Phu Quoc Island. It might have been different if the street we were standing in wasn’t six lanes across at rush hour with no crosswalk between the Koreana and the New Kukje, and it might have been different if we could have persuaded a taxi to take us the two blocks at any cost. But, it wasn’t different. In a Kafkaesque scene, we asked cab after cab to drive us the two blocks to the hotel and all of them pointed at the hotel sign and told us to walk. We could see the New Kukje sign from where we were. It might also have been different if any of the taxi drivers or the doorman at the Koreana had spoken some English. Yes, yes, I know, this sounds like an ugly American rant, but Seoul is an international business hub and I’ve traveled to a hell of a lot of primitive places where it was easier to get what I needed than it was last night.

But wait… there’s more. A cab driver did finally take pity on us and we loaded the bags and squeezed into the cab. As it turns out Seoul is a maze of one way streets and it took us ten minutes to navigate to the New Kukje where I happily paid the cabbie twice what he asked for. We were finally there, but “there” didn’t look even vaguely like the pictures on the website. The “New” Kukje is a one star hotel masquerading as a three star and the “New” in the name was probably true in 1975.

I thought Marilynn was going to kill me. The marble lobby of the New Kukje which was by far its best feature smelled like kimchi, not my favorite food to begin with. Getting off the elevator at our floor we noticed the dirty, frayed carpet and the dark narrow, twisty hallway that led eventually to our room which was heavy with the smell of cigarettes. But… wait there’s even more.

The Agoda website, where I made the reservation, promised a restaurant and a bar but the bar was non-existent and the restaurant manager told us they were no longer serving at 8pm. We ended up walking two blocks to the Texas Bar, begged for some peanuts which our perplexed waiter found and washed them down with two draft lagers. Back in the room, the two bottles of water provided by the management were gone in a heartbeat and there was no minibar to restock from. The only redeeming feature of the room was crisp white sheets and we gave up the quest for satisfaction after I let the front desk know we were leaving in the morning. I groggily went online and booked a room at the Koreana where this in-town odyssey began three hours before.

I wish I could say that today was better. We did manage to move out of the New Kukje after a little tiff over the length of our stay and traveled by taxi over to the Koreana. We took a quick city bus tour with a guide who didn’t know the population of the city or the name or purpose of a huge stone monument in one of the roundabouts. I think we knew almost as much as she did which was OK since there isn’t really that much to know about a big modern Asian city that has torn down most of its history. At 2:30pm we were turned away by five different restaurants because it was past lunchtime (and one who told us they couldn’t serve us because it was “break time”). Yes, God, there is a mandatory break time for employees at Shy Baby, the soul food restaurant in the Seoul Finance Center. I kid you not. Soul food in Seoul.

I’ve given a lot of thought to global citizenship and often wished that more Americans would do the same. I’ve lived in Germany, France, Vietnam and all four corners of the US. I value tolerance and celebrate differences, but Seoul is challenging the thin veneer of my global principles. I know there are good things happening here, just as I know even the best restaurants butcher the dining experience occasionally. I know the city will be easier on the eye when the leaves pop in the spring, the murky gray inversion lifts and those down parkas and knit caps come off, but I think I’ll give it a pass. I’ll have to be satisfied with a new Samsung Galaxy or Hyundai Sonata if that day ever comes. I’ll just know that hot new products are more important than communication or personal comfort in Korea and that might count for something. It’s time for me to move on to Vietnam where the people are poorer but more welcoming and where I know more about how things work.

Despite all the disappointments in Seoul I remind myself that being able to travel, to live in comfort, to have the gift of free expression, to have successful children, and to be healthy enough to enjoy all of them is an extraordinary gift mostly made possible by the gift of birth in America. Don’t let me forget this if I start to launch into another ugly American rant which I might do if I have to listen to much more from John McCain or Lindsey Graham.

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Tags : aviation, downtown seoul

Posted by jdbernard743

· February 22, 2013

· 3 Comments

“Amour” Is Hard Stuff…

Last week was all about love – but sometimes love isn’t easy to watch or talk about. Great art is great because it taps into universal truth, but sometimes the truth, even as it is revealed in art, is hard to digest.

Over the last 10 days I’ve seen the following performances: Romeo and Juliette, the ballet, Rigoletto live from the Metropolitan Opera in HD, and Amour, the Oscar-winning Austrian film starring Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant. In spite of the fact that Valentine’s Day fell in there somewhere, it’s not a lineup that promotes optimism about love. All three stories are about love that ends badly. Valentine’s Day we celebrate love with red roses and chocolates but real life isn’t always roses and chocolates.

I saw the three performances in the order listed and that happenstance sequencing is interesting in its timeline of love. Romeo and Juliette is a story of first love and families in conflict. Rigoletto is about a father’s love for his daughter and his efforts to protect her from the lecherous Duke, and Amour is a voyeuristic, unvarnished look at a French couple’s love at the end of life.

The Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production of Romeo and Juliette, danced to the music of Prokofiev, is all about love. I’m not a big fan of Prokofiev’s score for the ballet. I like the lyrical, romantic Tchaikovsky version more, and I was imprinted by the Fonteyn/Nureyev pairing with the Tchaikovsky which I saw in San Francisco in the 1970’s. Nevertheless, Prokofiev, like Bernstein (West Side Story) captures the conflict with his punctuated dissonance without undermining the love story. This PNB production is magical. The sets are spare, abstract, geometric shapes, and the balcony scene is set on a long narrow ramp that rose up between these shaped backdrops. Like other R & J’s it is soft focused and romantic, all pastel colorings, and a clean almost clinical staging. It’s hard to see it as a tragedy but, after all, Shakespeare’s title is The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet, whether it’s acted, danced, or sung, whether it’s the classic play or even the pop-rock Dire Straits song, is overwhelmingly set as a virginal romance with a tragic ending.

Verdi’s Rigoletto is different. Except for the music it’s not romantic but it is a love story that ends up with a twisted unexpected ending. In a botched effort to protect his daughter, Gilda, from the lecherous Duke of Mantua, Gilda, besotted by the Duke, decides to sacrifice herself to save her father and in a case of mistaken identity is killed. Nothing in opera is ever simple and the Met’s new production of Rigoletto, like Romeo and Juliette has been “updated.” Tony Award-winning director Michael Mayer has set the opera in 1960’s Las Vegas, with the Duke’s entourage based on Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. Hard to believe but true. And… it works if you’re not wedded to the original setting in 1500’s Mantua. The music is memorable and romantic, even if the update is a stretch and the end tragic.

On the other hand, there is nothing romantic about Amour. It is an unflinching look at George and Anne Laurent, a pair of retired piano teachers dealing with the indignities of old age. Over the course of the film Anne suffers two strokes and a botched operation and in the process extracts a promise from George that he will not send her back to the hospital or to a nursing home. The camera rarely leaves the couple except when their distracted, slightly annoyed and irritated daughter visits and urges him to put Anne in a nursing home. The daughter clearly cares but prattles on about her own problems not wanting to personally deal with or face the truth of her parents’ situation.

I think we all fantasize or at least naively hope that we and those that we love will pass quietly in our sleep and that everything will be in order and no mess will be left to clean up. It’s a fantasy. My wife is a consultant in senior healthcare and she reminds me frequently that the end of life is not pretty and that my intransigence about assisted living and nursing homes is all about the fantasy. I’m one of those in denial.

Amour is haunting. It’s hard to watch and impossible to forget. I’m sure my children won’t see it and would be bored if they did. They are like the Laurent’s daughter. They have their own lives, their own children, their own problems, and they don’t want to face the truth or deal with it when we, their parents, come to the very end. The truth is that we are close to that end. At 75 I know that my life and Marilynn’s will end sometime in the next 20 years but I don’t want to think about it. I hope it’s a quality 20 years and that we die in our sleep without pain. More fantasy. More denial.

We don’t want to burden our children or even talk to them about it, but the reality is that eventually our children will be pulled into the mess at the end. In earlier times families were involved in all phases of their integrated lives and there was an expectation that they would step up for each other including the messy parts at the end. I’d like to think that is still true, but I think it’s an extension of the fantasy.

Go see Amourif you want a reality check.

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