SLOW BOAT TO BAGAN, Part One

This happened a while back. We'd gone to Mandalay, in Burma (Myanmar), to take a boat up the Irrawady River to Bagan. We'd overnighted at an almost-empty hotel the night before, as the boat left at dawn. In the middle of the night a humongous storm broke, the rain so heavy it woke us up.
We were scheduled to be picked up at 5:30AM but the driver apparently preferred to stay warm and dry. The night manager of the hotel managed to find us a taxi but it was 5:45AM and a 20 minute ride to the ferry dock and the ferry left at 6:00AM. The rain still bucketed down, dawn was nowhere to be seen (probably sleeping in). The taxi driver may have been trying out for a Grand Prix team. We got to the river right at 6:00AM. We were in the only car. The driver blew his horn.
It was scene from a Merchant-Ivory film: pitch dark and deserted, with two tiny lights at the top of the bluff overlooking the river, silvery streams of water dripping off the trees, the lights, the archway that led to the boat which we could barely see in the gloom. Frenetic activity somewhere below us. Nobody up top except the two of us peering out of the dry taxi. But the ferry appeared to still be there.
A man rushed into view, coming up stairs of some sort, and beckoned us forward. He must've been an official: he had a shirt on. We got out into the rain and followed him through pouring, ankle-deep water to the edge of the bluff. We looked down. And down some more. A twenty-foot wide set of stone stairs led to the water. We started to edge our way down, water cascading around us. We began at the same level as the boat's wheelhouse. It seemed to take forever on those mossy steps.
The boat, what could be seen in the darkness, was three levels plus the wheelhouse, and appeared to have open sides. It was painted, where it was painted, dark green. Thick groups of people with large bundles crammed the lowest level. Workers shifted and loaded things, clanging and thumping.
We got down to the gangplank. Literally, a plank, one single narrow, sagging stretch of water-slicked wood. Below it, down in the darkness, I could just see the dirty white swirl of the Irrawady. One by one, we crossed, stood facing the packed wall of people already aboard. Everybody was still standing.

Sketch, second level, Bagan ferry

"We've got first-class seats," I said to myself. "Where's the seating?"

The man who'd told us to go aboard, who'd taken our small suitcases, waved from a doorway and  shouted something. The crowd opened a narrow pathway. The man led us up a dimly-lit stairwell to the next floor: again chock full of people and their bagged belongings, most of them sitting, some of them sprawled out in sleep. Babies fretted, mothers stared blankly at the rain dripping off the open fretwork, a group of young men played a card game under one of the few lamps.

The man said, "First class up," and we followed. And then we were in first class. We stared. Dawn had finally arrived, or at least a lightening of the sky so that outlines were just barely visible. We could see the shoreline, almost eye level, almost visible in the still-falling rain. We could see trees, and a group of men carrying huge boxes on their heads, descending the stairs in ankle-deep water. We could hear and smell the river as it slapped past the hull.

And we could see an almost-empty deck, open, with rain drifting in. The rusting metal deck, three feet in from the railing, was puddled. A gust blew more rain into the puddles. There were four once-white plastic lawn chairs, available at any garage sale for a buck each. One chair was broken and tilted toward shore. I was beginning to feel the same way. The man went over to the chairs, tipped the water out of them and moved them a bit farther away from the rail. He pulled a rag from a pocket, wiped the chairs, then wiped his nose and put the rag away.

"First class," he said, pointing at the chairs. "Tickets?"

"Where's our suitcases," we asked, handing over the papers. It was chilly and we wore light clothes.

"Bagan," he replied as he pulled our tickets apart. "You get Bagan."

"When do we get to Bagan?" In time for lunch, hopefully?

"Tonight."

"Tonight?" We hadn't eaten breakfast; the hotel kitchen had been closed, as had every food shop we'd passed. "Is there a restaurant on board?"

He stared at us, as if he'd never seen Americans before. He probably hadn't, not on board this ferry in the rain and the slowly-paling darkness. He grinned and shook his head, waved one hand toward the prow of the boat. Upstream.

The boat's horn tooted, the sound echoing off the bluff. The faint rumble that had been under our feet grew stronger. Clatters and shouts from the region of the gangway sounded. Then the bluff, and the stairs, slid away and the ferry glided away from Mandalay.

"Bagan," the man said. "Tonight."

BOLOGNA, ITALY

In October 2011, my friend Lea and I met in Rome and, after a week trying to live and sightsee on a seriously restricted budget, picked up a car (at Roma's Termini rail station in the city's heart, but that's another hair-raising tale) and, after a couple of hours of wandering in the wilderness of the beltway(s), headed east.
We visited a lot of places which few Americans get to see, including the Adriatic Coast where I had this romantic vision of pristine beaches with the mountains of the eastern shore barely visible. What a delusion! It was mile-high condominiums and not a single sight of the beach for all the solid-fenced concessions. Don't let anyone tell you America's all about money unless you point out Italy's Adriatic Coast; makes Ft. Lauderdale's Galt Ocean Mile look pretty good.
So...a couple of weeks into the trip, staying in youth hostels and no-star hotels as is our habit, we made a reservation through an internet hotel booking company that touted this 4-star place as on the edge of Bologna. We passed it three times on our search, fetching up in an industrial park that had seen waay better days, and at last found the hotel - at 4PM - behind a defunct stripper bar. It was cold and overcast, and the hotel did not show its better face (but how could it with old newspapers blowing across the weedy pavement, and cement trucks crashing past on the near-by road?).
By a miracle of kindness, the hotel staff agreed we should not stay there. But where would we stay? Our internet search (in the despised hotel's lobby) led us to - gasp! - the Hilton Hotel Bologna.
"No, no, no, a thousand times no," I said. "I will not stay in an American hotel while I am in Italy."
"Oh, so you wanna stay here," my friend Lea asked, looking around the empty lobby. "Besides, the Hilton's only 50 Euros a night."
So, we drove another 45 mintues south, asked directions at five or six places, and got to the Hilton when it was just getting dark. The recently-cleaned glass walls gleamed. The building was new, low slung, the immaculate parking lot filled with late-model cars. I was, literally, on the verge of tears. How humiliating! What a come-down! Staying in an American chain hotel!
Parking was free, unlike other places where we'd had to run out every four hours and move the car to an impossible-to-find blue zone (a Euro per hour on the meters, by the way). In charming Treviso, for example, much though we enjoyed the center-city hostel and all the fabulous sights around it, our car wound up stashed twenty minutes away behind a dumpster.
Inside the Bologna Hilton, however, all was polished marble and fresh flowers and faux-rosewood and multi-lingual uniformed staff, and a happy hour with nibbles at the bar. We checked in, trundled our battered rollaboards down the endless carpeted (well-lit! silent! clean! carpet not ravelling!) halls. Two lefts and a right and we were there. The key card (silent! efficient!) opened the heavy rosewood (faux, but who cares?) door and there it was: America, transplanted to central Italy.
Two huge beds with four plump pillows on each. A tiled bathroom with walk-in shower the size of our last no-star hotel breakfast room. Thick towels, white as snow, on the heated towel rack. Refrigerator. TV. Phone, of course. Table with two chairs. Business center en suite. Hangers in the closet. A trouser press. Down the hall, a laundry. And out front, the public bus to whisk us into the heart of Bologna in only twenty minutes.
Welcome to America. We loved every minute of it. Next time I'm in Bologna, that's where I'm staying. If you can get in it, you should too.

COMING SOON!

If your idea of soon is 90 days, we're on the same page. Ninety days from now I'll be on the western edge of the Ring of Fire: Indonesia, Malaysia, perhaps Borneo, little-visited places like that. My first stop will be the spider-shaped island of Sulawesi, whose central core is five active volcanoes. Unlike previous trips (Italy in the fall of 2011, for examaple, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa), I will be keeping you up to date on food, sights, food, sounds, food, smells (especially food), and how difficult it is to get to Torajaland. Among other places.
Other places? Singapore! Home of the famous hawker food stalls and of a cuture that lives to eat (my kind of culture). Much has been written about these open-air stalls, but not by me. It's the only reason I'm going there: the food. As Singapore re-invents itself every five years or so, there's not much history there except in the food. An amalgam of Nonya, Chinese, Indian, and every other cuisine of the immigrants who bilt this economic powerhouse.
Then off to Viet Nam, where in the north the incredible karst formations jut out of the placid waters of HaLong Bay (no doubt you've seen photos, they're on the wall of every Vietnamese restaurant in the country) and, in the central coast region, the ancient Imperial city of Hue (on the Perfume River, just gives me chills to think of it) will whisk us into the distant past.
And finally north and east to Japan, where I'll spend a lot of time in ancient Kyoto, and especially at a sushi bar I've heard of there.
Get ready for a lot of up-close-and-personal: sights, historic and modern; food, from street stalls to sit-down-with-tablecloths; natural beauty (under the water as well as above); indigenous cutltures and their arts and crafts. And who knows what else?
Stay tuned! Meanwhile, there's a new story about a day on the Italian trip you might get a chuckle out of.
Thanks for reading.