I’m using a pretty broad definition of art in this context, covering everything from fine art to handicrafts to ancient structures. All of that stuff UNESCO crams under the rubric of Tangible Cultural Heritage. And even the performing arts UNESCO considers Intangible Cultural Heritage. Close to our entire purpose in visiting other places is to see how those cultures express ideas about beauty, truth, and history.

I’ve already written about crafts and performance in Java, so for the purposes of this post I’m narrowing my definition of art to museums and galleries. But as you’ll see, that leaves a pretty wide range of expression on the table.

ArtJog

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than smart. Our stay in Bali coincided with their annual arts festival, Pesta Kesenian Bali. That same luck of the calendar delivered us to Yogyakarta during their annual arts festival, ArtJog. Staged at the Jogja National Museum and lasting five weeks, each year’s festival is curated around a theme. This year’s theme is Motif: Amalan, and is incomprehensible even by the standards of ArtSpeak.

To be fair, this morsel was translated from Indonesian (by ArtJog, by the way – I didn’t just run the original through Google Translate), but I really don’t think that’s the problem.

Thankfully, comprehending this year’s motif wasn’t necessary to appreciating the work that their rubric prompted. I’m pretty sure there was work on display that pre-existed, but the vast majority of the work was created for the show. This is a prestigious exhibition, and artists step up to be included.

The entrance to the museum drops you right into it, with a massive piece called Secret of Eden. Tree roots grow out of the ceiling and spotlights cast eerie shadows on the walls. You walk through the door and enter another, alien world. It’s a brilliant way to bring you into the exhibition.

This gives you a real feeling for the overall space.

Once past Secret of Eden, the rest of ArtJog is more traditional arts festival fare: paintings, sculpture, ceramics, kinetic art, multimedia pieces… But the range of expression and the quality of the work was impressive. We actually came back for a second visit, rather than racing through. There was a lot to see.

One of our favorite pieces was called Rupa tan Matra, which roughly translates to Unmeasurable Work, referring to the labor women put into the home. To us, it was the Cotton Kitchen, every item made completely of cotton. We were allowed to enter the room and get up close. The vision and the craftsmanship were perfectly aligned.

Here are some highlights from the rest of the show. We’ll warm you up with some traditional media.

This one needs its own explanation. There were about 8-10 of these in a white room. They all just looked like blurs, but after staring, and some strategic squinting, the underlying images came into soft focus. But they didn’t have any definition until I saw them through the camera lens, which picked up contrasts the human eye couldn’t make out. I always think of cameras as capturing what we see, but it’s clear cameras see differently than we do. This photo is what the camera saw, not what I saw.

And we’ll close out with the installations and oddities.

Sonobudoyo Cultural Museum

We’re always interested in what the kids are up to, but it’s hard to understand the modern context without going back to the source. The new work riffs on traditions, so it’s important to see both sides. The Sonobudoyo’s focus on Indonesia’s rich cultural heritage is the perfect counterpoint to ArtJog’s commitment to the moment.

While we’d seen many of the more modern exhibits, like the masks and puppets, in other contexts, seeing the ancient work, going all the way back to the Neolithic era, was wonderful.

The closest the curators could get to dating the Neolithic pieces was “1st Millennium,” which is pretty loose. You’d hope they could narrow it down a little tighter than a thousand-year window, but this stuff is pretty fucking old, no matter where it falls on that spectrum.

There was also a nice collection of the expected puppets and masks.

We’ll close out our visit to the Sonobudoyo with a random collection of Other Shit.

Wahanarata Royal Carriage Museum

This was a very strange place, and Dorothy and Nef had very different responses to it than I did. They thought it was a museum devoted to a particular slice of vehicular history, and I thought it was a monument to oppression, and couldn’t figure out why Indonesians tolerated its presence. Not that far apart, really.

Admittedly, there were some sharp wheels on display, all from roughly 1900, plus or minus. They were all royal carriages, and they were almost all Dutch, which is the part I struggled with. The Dutch permitted Indonesian royalty to exist only to the extent that they were agreeable puppets. It was easier for the Dutch to stand behind the throne than in front of it, with the Indonesian royal families serving as a wafer-thin fig leaf both concealing and legitimizing Holland’s brutal rule.

As part of this arrangement, the Dutch provided the royal families with carriages, toys intended to make them feel important. Modern. European. In the same way that Western dress infiltrated Indonesian society under Dutch rule. The condescension of the Dutch comes through loud and clear, although I’m less inclined to indict the Indonesians for complicity. Life during wartime…

All of which would have been fine if the carriages had been displayed with any shred of this history attached. They’re not simply artifacts of transportation history, they have meaning and intention. The signage was neutrally informative when it could have provided depth and context to the displays. It seemed like a curiously deliberate omission.

Contrast that with Bali’s Bajra Sandhi Monument in Denpasar, which featured historical vignettes, by way of charming dioramas, of key events in Bali’s history, with plenty of space given over to Dutch fuckery. If you walked into the Wahanarata with no knowledge of Indonesia’s history the displays would leave you with the distinct impression that the Dutch were kindly, generous carriage makers. If I were Indonesian I would want to burn the whole thing down. Or at least guest curate.

But Dorothy and Nef weren’t wrong (even though they deemed me a humorless git who couldn’t just appreciate a nice collection of antiques). There were some outstanding examples of the carriage arts on display. Why not simply enjoy them for what they are, rather than what they mean?

The Sultan’s Palace

A funny thing about the Sultan’s Palace museum is that it’s actually the Sultan’s palace. The current Sultan. It’s hard to wrap your head around, but Yogyakarta is a monarchy, whose Governor is the Sultan. Or whose Sultan is the Governor. The current Sultan, Hamengkubuwono X, wields official state power as payback for the then sultan’s support for independence during the post WWII revolution.

Chunks of the Sultan’s ancestral home have been turned into exhibits and opened to the public. But he still lives there. I said it was a funny thing, but it’s also an interesting thing, with exhibits focused around court life.

Like the illustration of troops, there were also hats and parasols on display that codified fine-grained definitions of role and status in the court. A lot of attention was given to these distinctions, in large part, I think, because it was all the Dutch let them do. They were cosplaying as rulers, making the cosplay itself the only thing they could control.

Every single design element of each of these hats communicated detailed information about the wearer’s position at court and relationship to the Sultan.

The same with the parasols. Color and pattern were an elaborate code, decipherable by every one at court.

Wet Ground

There’s a nimbus of ArtJog-adjacent galleries that pop up with shows coincidental with the main event, and ArtJog publishes a helpful listing of who’s doing what. We went to a popup craft market and found a maker of shagreen leather accessories, we found a gallery with breathtaking modern takes on traditional batik, and we visited Wet Ground, a little gallery with a small but choice smattering of wall art. You know. Art.

Monggo Chocolate Kingdom

If you think this stretches the definition of art to the breaking point, fine. You can just stop reading. I put it at the end on purpose. I think that the crafting of chocolate directly speaks to beauty, truth, and history. Rather than agreeing to disagree, perhaps we can just agree that you’re very narrow-minded.

But lest you think I’m shoehorning a factory and tasting tour into this post, Monggo did start out with a museum. Of chocolate art. Packaging, marketing posters, anything and everything chocolate-related.

The art was swell and the company history was interesting, but the truth is we just love factory tours. There’s something hypnotic about seeing things manufactured, the elegance of the orchestration required to make sure all the moving parts are moving in sequence. I’m hard pressed to imagine what I’d be disinterested in seeing manufactured. Turkey franks? Sure. Hula hoops, toilets, cardboard boxes, tires… Yes, yes, yes, and yes. It’s a human/machine ballet whose choreography never fails to entrance.

But they had a museum of chocolate posters, so it counts for this exercise. Don’t like it? Think I’m willfully blurring taxonomic boundaries? Get your own blog.

Chocolate in Indonesia is a Dutch hangover. Along with the twitching. Cacao itself was brought over by the Spanish in the 1500s, but the Dutch amped that up into large-scale production for export when they took the reins. Meaning that there’s really no historical legacy of chocolate consumption in Indonesia. That said, a handful of entrepreneurs have set their sights on creating modern artisanal chocolate, leveraging Indonesia’s still potent cacao production.

Monggo which means yes, please in Indonesian, is one of those ventures, founded by a Belgian expat in 2005 because he missed the chocolate from home. It’s grown from a one-man business, peddled from the back of a pink Vespa, into a thriving venture. At its pre-pandemic peak, Monggo employed over 160 people and produced 300kg of finished chocolate per day. When they outgrew their modest space in Yogyakarta, they moved to the spacious ‘burbs and christened the compound an entire Chocolate Kingdom.

The Kingdom includes the production facility, all behind glass so you can follow the process, the museum of chocolate art, and a shop/tasting lounge. As part of our modest entrance fee we were assigned a docent who stayed with us the whole way through, helpfully explaining the process and answering questions.

Truthfully, I could watch this all day. I think there’s something wrong with me.

This was followed by mixing and molding and packaging, but there’s nothing quite like seeing raw ingredients transformed, as if by alchemy, into something entirely new.

How did it end? In a potlatch of chocolate, of course. After touring the production facility, we decamped to the shop and tasting lounge where we picked up enough truly excellent chocolate to last the rest of our trip. Our favorites were the mango, unsurprisingly, and the rendang, which caught us by surprise. Rendang is a spice mix used for cooking beef in Indonesia, and we didn’t expect to find it in chocolate. But we’re glad we did.

We enjoyed bowls of their house-made gelato while we waited for our car. You’ll be shocked to hear that the chocolate gelato was very, very, good.

We booked a dedicated car and driver for the day. Neither site is that far from Yogyakarta, but the ride-sharing apps don’t work in the hinterlands. First stop: Prambanan.

Prambanan

As part of our package we were offered sunrise at Prambanan, which is supposed to be magnificent. It also requires cooling your heels for a couple of hours until the temple opens to the public. We enjoyed sunrise at Angkor Wat. We good.

Prambanan is Angkor Wat’s little brother, the second largest Hindu temple in Southeast Asia. It was originally built in 856 and was dramatically enhanced in 930. Sadly, it only survived until 1006, when a massive earthquake reduced everything to rubble. It wasn’t until 1930 that restoration began under the Dutch. They don’t get enough credit for their good works. It wasn’t all slavery and extraction.

According to our guide, Prambanan was also an answer track. Borobudur was constructed between 778 and 850. You’ll note that Prambanan was started just six years after Borobudur’s completion. The local Hindus were apparently dismayed by the massive Buddhist temple in their backyard, and built a response, not to be outdone. It turns out they were slightly outdone after all. Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world. Prambanan is the largest Hindu temple in… Java.

The restoration work is massive, ongoing, and mind-blowing. They are able to reassemble temple structures, from the mountains of rubble, using about 70%-80% of that structure’s original stones. That just boggles. I am boggled. Still, only 22 of the estimated 240 temples in the Prambanan complex have been restored. It’s the archaeologist’s Full Employment Act. But what they’ve been able to do so far is spectacular.

As a Hindu complex, Prambanan is devoted to the Trimurti: Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. They each get one of the three largest temples, and a satellite temple for their preferred mode of transportation: Brahma’s swan, Shiva’s bull, and Vishnu’s garuda. Vishnu clearly has the best ride.

Each of the three main temples also has inner sanctums, shrines with unlit statues. I think the dark definitely contributed to the ancient vibe. Very Indiana Jones.

Prambanan is also adorned with stupas, like the ones at Borobudur. Except they’re not stupas at all, they’re called ratna, and are completely different. They just look a little alike. While Borobudur’s stupas specifically contain statues of Buddha, the Hindu ratna are a purely decorative architectural element with religious significance, rather than a niche. They still look cool.

More Ramayana, Please

Prambanan is known for its bas-relief panels that retell a core part of the Ramayana, from the abduction of Rama’s wife Sita to Rama’s killing of the demon Ravana. This is the precise part of the story portrayed in the Prambanan Ballet’s performance. 72 consecutive panels across the three main temples are ordered so that you traverse them clockwise, or Pradakshina, always keeping the temple to your right.

More Stuff Carved Into Stone

In addition to the Ramayana panels, Prambanan is chock full o’ delicious sculptures and carvings. As you would expect.

We were offered a short walk to another part of the complex to view a Buddhist temple, but since we were headed for the largest Buddhist temple on the planet we chose to preserve our legs. On our way back to our ride, we passed a cassowary in a cage. Does there need to be a reason? You’re so literal.

Borobudur

Prambanan is a complex made up of hundreds of individual temples. Borobudur is a single gargantuan temple, filling the horizon and inspiring legitimate awe. As the design spec foretold.

As was the case with Prambanan, Borobudur was lost for centuries. Construction was completed in 850, but the temple fell into disuse by the 1500s, abandoned as Java’s cultural center shifted east and its religious center shifted towards Islam. It was eventually covered in volcanic ash and reclaimed by the jungle. Until a white guy discovered it!

In a brief interregnum sandwiched between Dutch fuckery, the British owned Indonesia. It only lasted a few years, from 1811 to 1815, but that was long enough for Sir Stamford Raffles, the very model of a modern Major-General (it’s actually hard to believe that Sir Stamford Raffles isn’t a Gilbert & Sullivan character), to stumble on Borobudur and, to his credit, recognize that some work needed to be done.

Actual restoration wasn’t commenced until 1907, under the kindly Dutch. That stabilized the structure, but the restoration that gave us the Borobudur we see today didn’t start until 1975, culminating on completion in the temple being deservedly named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.

The Buddhists, god love ’em, are geometry geeks. Borobudur is in the precise shape of a big fucking mandala, with four entry points in the cardinal directions and concentric levels rising through the three zones of consciousness: Kamadhatu (the realm of worldly attachment) at the lowest level, Rupadhatu (having transcended desire but still possessing an earthly form) in the middle, and Arupadhatu (the transcendence of earthly form) at the top, crowned by the central sphere representing Nirvana.

Experiencing Borobudur is to rise metaphorically through the zones of consciousness and arrive at the summit. Which is the closest to enlightenment I’ll ever get.

Even before entering the temple, the views from the outside are ridiculous.

One may experience the lovely grounds as one likes, but the ascent to Nirvana requires special shoes. Street shoes are verboten, to preserve Borobudur’s steps. These uncomfortable slides are gift with purchase. They wouldn’t take them back.

And there are plenty of those steps to reach the peak, around 150 in total.

The payoff is obviously the summit, but there’s plenty to see as you ascend through the various zones of consciousness. Borobudur boasts 2,672 relief panels, almost four contiguous miles of carving. Nearly 1,500 of those panels are a single narrative (the remainder are decorative), telling the story of Sudhana, a human who falls in love with Manohara, one of the Kinnari bird ladies. Why not?

To say nothing of the various non-relief statues and carvings.

But you came for the Stupas of Nirvana, and I have been denying you. They are everything they are advertised to be: beautiful, resonant, and deeply imbued with meaning and intention. They are simultaneously soothing and thrumming with power and energy. Nirvana is, as it turns out, a perfectly lovely place to spend an afternoon.

When it came time, we just couldn’t. Perhaps this is proof that we’re too old to keep doing this. Not enough in the tank for the Chicken Church. Time to hang ’em up.

As always, though, in Bali the journey is as important as the destination. Unless you’re asleep in the back of the car, it’s impossible to drive around Bali without being devastated by its raw, unfair beauty.

Besakih Temple

I have confessed, to my shame, to a notable case of Temple Fatigue towards the end of our ten weeks in Vietnam. There are just a fuck ton of temples and pagodas slathered thickly throughout the land, and they do get a little samey after repeated viewings.

And I’m going to get myself in trouble here, but I’m expressing a personal esthetic, not assaulting a sovereign nation’s cultural patrimony. I find the Vietnamese temples a little twee. Not at first. But on repeated exposure their delicacy starts to feel a little forced. Like how Brits seem so polite until you remember they were all caned at school for speaking up. Not Piers Morgan, obviously. Some folk clearly weren’t caned enough.

My point being, if I can crawl out of the hole I just dug, that we are having no such problem in Bali. Maybe after ten weeks we would, but I doubt it. For one, we’re not temple chasing here. We’re taking a more measured approach after our Vietnam experience, so that should reduce our risk. But I also just love the ferocity and joy in the Balinese temples. Their guardian gods are locked and loaded, ready to defend to the bitter end, if necessary, with nothing but love for their followers.

If we’re going to be choosy about our temple excursions in Bali, then we can’t miss Besakih, the largest and holiest temple in Bali Hinduism. Built on the slopes of Mount Agung, Bali’s largest active volcano, it’s not even one temple. It’s a complex comprising 23 separate temples. It’s also very, very old. It dates to at least the 8th century, but the stone bases of several temples, including the main temple, Pura Penataran Agung, resemble megalithic stepped pyramids. That would place the oldest structures at about 2,000 years old.

As you enter the temple grounds, the first thing you notice is Mount Agung looming over the meru towers and the tropical foliage.

The courtyard before the first temple has a massive fountain, featuring dragon heads and clawed feet.

Just past the fountain is the reveal, Pura Penataran Agung.

The temple’s plaza is used for prayer and is off limits to tourists. There are ceremonies going on all the time, so some parts of the complex will always be in use and inaccessible. Our guide, as a native, was permitted in, and took this 360° video for us.

We were able to get a look at the main plaza on our way up the side of the temple. The umbrellas are meaningful, as they collectively represent the Trimurti: Red represents Brahma, Vishnu is black, and Shiva is yellow and white.

Once you get to the top you can see the Gates of Heaven up close. We learned in Vietnam that the Gates of Heaven shape represents hands raised in prayer.

As we ascended further up what felt more like a small city than a temple complex, we reached the area where visitors are allowed to pray. We had purchased small pre-fab offerings on our way in, which is why we were able to enter the area. Our guide lit the incense for us, and we placed the offering where directed and knelt on the stone floor. A priest chanted and sprinkled us with holy water. Money was stuffed in a donation box. It’s almost like we knew what was expected.

Getting to the top also gave us access to spectacular views…

And a closeup look at the Besakih’s defining visual feature, the pelinggih meru towers. These are the primary shrines in Balinese temples, built with a masonry base, a wooden chamber, and thatched roofs.

The thatching is replaced every ten years, and the towers require ongoing maintenance. We were unsurprised to find construction going on while we visited.

The entire site was chockablock with interesting things to see wherever your eye happened to stop for a moment.

And of course, no visit to a Balinese temple would be complete without visiting the gods, who always seem delighted to protect and serve. Just like the LAPD.

There’s something about the culture of polytheistic Hindu animists that really speaks to us. The monotheists seem closed down and locked up by comparison. I suppose when your theology acknowledges multiple right answers it’s easier to relax into a lifestyle with a more expansive definition of normal behavior.

Sidemen: Textiles & Silver

This was the whole reason for the day trip. Songket is a ridiculously rich, complicated brocade only made on backstrap looms. There is no way to manufacture songket; it has to be made by hand. Thankfully, Sidemen, one of the few places that makes songket, was close at hand.

Pertenunan Pelangi Traditional Weaving

We’d researched shops and studios in advance, so we knew we wanted our first stop to be Pertenunan Pelangi. They explained that almost all songket weaving is done in women’s homes, because of the backstrap looms. Pelangi sells their finished pieces, but their onsite weaving studio produces ikats.

Which is fine, because watching ikats being woven is plenty fascinating. A large room was filled with over a dozen looms, a handful of which were in use while we were there.

What’s ikat? I’ll quote myself, from the post on Tenganan’s double ikat.

Pelangi specializes in endek, which is a weft ikat. That means that the warp (vertical) threads are a solid color while the weft (horizontal) threads are dyed to make the final pattern. That information is important in understanding what we saw on the second floor. There, a young man wove colored plastic strips into frames to create patterns. It took a few minutes to understand what we were seeing.

He was creating templates for dying the thread used to weave a particular pattern. They can weave from their library or create custom patterns on demand. This method, which we had never seen before, allows for mind-bending precision, permitting traditional ikat weaving to mimic complex brocades.

Later, when we went to Ubud, we visited Threads of Life, a high-end textile boutique, where they had examples of the hand-tied thread, ready to dye.

Minds completely blown, we staggered into the shop. There’s one section for the songket brocades they carry for local weavers.

And another section for their own ikats. Which were just fucking spectacular.

Kupu-Kupu Traditional Weaving

Our second stop was, as it happened, right across the street from Pelangi. Where we found a woman, a backstrap loom, and songket in progress. We got to see songket being made after all!

What’s the big deal with songket? Well, it’s an ancient weaving technique, dating back to the 7th century. It originated when Chinese traders brought silk thread to Indonesia and Middle Eastern traders brought gold thread. It is rich and luxurious, almost decadent, and another weaving technique it’s difficult to wrap your head around.

I am thrilled we got to see it being made, as there’s no way to appreciate it otherwise. I watched the weaver work for several minutes before I figured out she was weaving. I thought she was setting up the loom, because I’m used to seeing weaving where the shuttle moves back and forth on each weft row. Instead, she was taking individual warp threads and wrapping gold and colored supplementary weft threads around them to create the brocade pattern.

Every time I think I’ve seen the full range of complexity in weaving, shit like this happens.

Would anyone like to place a side bet on whether Dorothy bought a piece of songket? I thought not.

Agung Silver

Sidemen is actually best known for its custom silversmiths. You have to be a textile nerd to know it for its weaving. Since we were there, we let our driver take us to a place he knew, Agung Silver. The shops all have tourist classes. They give you seven grams of silver and a couple of hours to make a ring for about $30. Which is fine if you want the silver equivalent of a handprint ashtray. I have never understood the desire to make something badly yourself instead of spending that money on an artisan’s labors.

It was unprepossessing, but full of lovely things. Dorothy got earrings and I got a ring. I have decided, in my dotage, to becoming a ring wearer. Do not judge, lest ye be judged yourself.

Just Add Water

Technically this was a different day trip. Perasi Beach, known as Virgin Beach, had been suggested as part of this day’s itinerary, but we passed on it for the Sidemen trip because we’re old and weak. Dorothy’s craving for a white sand and turquoise water experience, however, was not to be denied. Our black sand beach in Amed was amazing, but tropes are tropes, and they are disrespected at your peril.

For those of you keeping score, this is what happy looks like.

Cremation Creations

On our way back, our guide pulled over so we could get a look at these astounding funerary sculptures being constructed. They are custom built to order for cremation ceremonies, and are lit up along with the loved one, to ease them on their journey. It’s a shame to see this much craft and devotion go up in flames, but they are purpose built, so they know their fate going in.

We were most taken with this piece. The fish part swam you to your destination, and the fierce beast head protected you on the way.

A new note for Sam and Ruby. In addition to daily altar offerings, we may require a Balinese style sendoff when we’re finally done. I’d had something more Viking in mind, but how can this not shift your perspective?

After much searching, we found Amed, a quiet beach community in East Bali known for its accessible snorkeling. It’s one of the few places on the planet where you can walk into the water and swim a reef, perfect for those of us not up to the rigors of, you know, actual swimming.

Technically, I am a NAUI-certified scuba diver. Realistically, I received my certification when I was twelve and haven’t exactly kept up. I have a memory of being competent in the water, but now I can’t quite figure out what prevents drowning. Are you supposed to just naturally float? Tread water the entire time? Swim uphill to keep from sinking? I see people do it, and it’s just baffling.

Bali Fun Facts, or The Parade of Ignorance

Bali is not a country. It’s an island in Indonesia. Bali is not one of the Spice Islands. They are also a part of Indonesia, but you can’t name a single one of them. While Indonesia as a whole is Muslim, hosting the largest Muslim population on the planet, Bali is Hindu and marches to its own offbeat drummer.

While Bali is a single island, the nation of Indonesia is home to… well, nobody knows exactly how many islands. Everyone has agreed to the oddly specific count of 17,508, while also agreeing that the correct number could be anywhere between 13,000 and 25,000. The count of inhabited islands is… about 6,000. Or 922. Or 10,000. Is mystery. Wrapped in rising sea levels.

In an unforeseen plot twist, Bali and Indonesia were not primarily fucked by the French. Say hello to the Dutch East India Company. Although Napoleon did have control of Indonesia for five years, because if there’s one thing the French can’t stand it’s being shut out of fuckery. Not to be overlooked, the US supported an Indonesian dictator because he was anti-communist. Did not see that coming.

In fact, our Southeast Asia tour has been a cavalcade of nations willing to overlook American sins in the service of being gracious to American visitors. I get the self interest of tourism-based economies, but most of the tourists we’ve seen seem to be European or Australian. They could easily shun Americans without tanking their tourism industries. So, points for being nicer than we are.

On the other hand, there’d be no tourist economy anywhere on the planet if they locked out the citizens of countries that had fucked them. Easier just to open their doors and our wallets. It’s like reparations.

I still say they’re nicer than we are, but that’s an admittedly low bar to clear.

Our Homestay

Our homestay in Bali feels like we’re living in a jungle next to a farm. Or farms. I think that’s because we’re living in a jungle next to a farm. Or farms. The grounds here are lush and full of tropical flora as well as a rich ecosystem of birds, bugs, reptiles, and cats. The farm(s) next door is (are) chockablock with chickens, roosters, pigs, geese, cows, and goats. Who all appear to be early risers.

And that thing about roosters crowing at dawn is bullshit. They go off all day and night.

Here’s a panorama of the grounds, with the morning soundtrack. It’s almost like you’re here with us.

Breaking Waves In The Hot Sun

Our homestay is across the street from the beach, a mere five minute walk to the water. The beachfront is littered with resorts with swimming pools and palapas for shade. The closest one to us is the Seamount, which has an outdoor shower for cleaning the black sand from our feet and a ridiculously warm pool.

Our first day here we were good citizens and paid for a day pass to the pool and the lounges, 50,000 rupiah ($3) each. Now we feel like regulars. We walk to the beach, swim, come back through Seamount’s pool area, wash our feet and rinse the salt off. Maybe we take a quick dip in the pool, maybe not. A couple of times we’ve drafted behind a group of guests moving from beach to pool and just blended in. But there are 24 hours in a day, and we did buy a day pass, so we figure we’re good until we’ve used up all 24 hours.

The beach in Amed is blessed with beautiful, volcanic black sand beaches. There isn’t a definitive count of black sand beaches around the world, but it’s a countable number. 20? 40? So it’s our first, and an unexpected treat.

The beach here is known for, aside from the black sands, a few things. First, it’s known for its very, very calm, clear water. The surf here ranges from pacific like a sheet of glass to adorable Shetland breakers with tubes scaled for a Surfer Barbie. Perfect for just bobbing. We’ve found that a morning bob is dramatically enhanced by an afternoon bob. There is no shortcut to this kind of knowledge. You just have to put in the hard work.

The other thing it’s known for, as noted earlier, is how close the coral is to the shore. There are multiple spots right on our beach where you can walk into the water with a mask on and be swimming in the equivalent of an aquarium in short order, no boat necessary. We’d read that about Amed, which is why we landed here, but that scarcely prepares you for the experience.

Unsurprisingly, given the quantity of black volcanic sand on the beach, there is a volcano nearby, Mount Agung, which looms over both beach and town. Its last major eruption started in 2017 and ended in 2019. So, yeah. Active.

Amed is a traditional beach village with a main drag following the shoreline. Officially, Amed is Bali’s second largest city, but they got there by cheating. They added six other adjacent villages to Amed and called it Amed. Right. The Greater Metropolitan Amed Conurbation. But Amed proper, pretty small.

The Neighborhood

Most of the shops along Main Street are dive shops, small restaurants (warungs), spas, and tour providers, with a smattering of minimarts, produce stalls, and retail sarong and authentic! cowrie bracelet shops. The closest thing to a central market is in a village three kilometers away. There’s not much by way of art or handicrafts or culture, which is fine. We’re here for the fresh fish, both as companions and entrées.

There’s plenty of neighborhood just off Main Street. Walking the residential streets provides a beautiful window into daily life here, as well as gorgeous views of the jungle vistas.

One of the things we noticed is that vernacular residential architecture is structured around compounds with multiple, discrete buildings. A kitchen, a common room for dining and gathering, a residence/bedroom for each couple, and a temple for the ancestors.

We obviously weren’t invited into anyone’s home, so the most we were able to see from the street were the temples. Echoing the larger compound, each temple had specific altars for each ancestor. Designs ranged from humble to ornate, but all of them were well cared for and well maintained. The daily connection to the ancestors is a real thing here, and kind of cool. Sam and Ruby are now hereby notified that we expect no less than altars tended daily when we’re gone.

We also learned that they use bamboo for everything here.

Other Things We’ve Seen In The Neighborhood

JFC: Jaya Fried Chicken. It’s really good.

This is a thing we haven’t seen anywhere else. Yet. Manufactured products and snacks are made in a string of connected packages. They’re perforated, so the bottom one gets torn off to sell. The benefit of this arrangement is that you just toss them over a string or a piece of bamboo and they display themselves. They don’t need counter space or a fixture, and it’s easy for customers to see what you have on offer. Very clever merchandising that benefits everyone.

Reggae Bars

For reasons necessarily opaque, Amed is flush with reggae bars. We met a guy in Hội Án who was also on his way for a brief stay in Amed, and he said he had a reggae bar he loved, and maybe we’d see him there. Not even close to enough information to locate him, even if we’d wanted to. Which we didn’t. There are a lot of reggae bars here. OK, not dozens, but way more than should be plausible outside of Jamaica.

Which is more than a little cognitively dissonant, as the Rasta religion forbids alcohol. No problem for the flexible Balinese.

One of these joints, Rasta Bar, is right next to the Seamount, where we swim, and I have to confess that it’s not at all unpleasant to bob in the ocean to the hypnotic reggae rhythm. Perhaps it’s that Bali and Jamaica share a laid back island vibe, but it almost makes sense.

But not the karaoke reggae bar. That’s just wrong.

You can join us for drinks on the beach at Rasta Bar, and enjoy the slinky reggae vibe.

Balinese Hinduism

Hinduism first came to Bali around the 1st century, but it didn’t stay put. Balinese Hinduism adds a soupçon of Buddhism to Indian Hinduism and wraps it around a meaty core of traditional Balinese animist beliefs, arts, and rituals. That was fine for centuries, but then it got weird, thanks to the Indonesian government.

On independence from the Dutch in 1945, the new constitution enshrined freedom of religion as a core right. However, Islamists took control of the Indonesian Ministry of Religion in 1952, and severely restricted what could legitimately be considered a religion that citizens had the right to practice. Aimed specifically at Bali’s Hindu population, the new rules required that a religion must be monotheistic, have a Holy Book and a prophet, and have a codified set of religious laws, among other strictures.

Having none of those things, the Ministry of Religion declared that Balinese Hinduism wasn’t a real religion. To which Balinese Hindus replied, “OK, we have all of those things. Now leave us alone.” So Balinese Hinduism is technically monotheistic and practically polytheistic. This makes Balinese Hinduism, in a roundabout way, much like Santeria, which coated Yoruban beliefs with a thin veneer of Catholicism, so no one got huffy.

I don’t know if the 1952 regulations were ever rescinded, but as a practical matter Balinese are still very much practicing their bespoke brand of Hinduism, seemingly unfettered by the long arm of the state. We spoke to one of our drivers about the differences between Bali and the rest of Indonesia, and he offered up a list of behaviors that would be unacceptable under Muslim law, such as premarital sex and drinking. It’s no wonder, I suppose, that Bali is Indonesia’s party capital.

Canang Sari

Canang sari, set outside of homes and businesses every morning, are a small but lovely manifestation of Balinese Hinduism. From simple to elaborate, they are sometimes tucked into altars, but are often just left on the sidewalk. They are a deeply felt thank you to Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa, the supreme being in Balinese Hinduism (or at least the one they picked to mollify the Muslims), for the gifts of peace, prosperity, and the harmony of the universe, weaving the ineffable into a daily ritual.

Penjor

Penjor flank the entrances to homes and businesses, and line the streets. Like the canang sari, they are devotional pieces dedicated to Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa. Unilke the canang sari, they are not a daily ritual, but are for special occasions and ceremonies, acting as a spiritual conduit connecting the mortal and the divine.

They are made, as a thank you, of the natural products that sustain Balinese life, such as bamboo, coconuts, bananas, and sugarcane. We saw many penjor with sprays of seeds attached all up and down, to also provide sustenance to bird life. While you can have them professionally made, people here take pride in making their own.

This is yet another example of the ways in which a shopping culture, as opposed to a making culture, impoverishes its inhabitants. It’s hard to put your soul into an Amazon cart, and lord knows I’ve tried. But when you make things, you have an incentive to make them well and make them beautiful. And then you’re surrounded not just by beauty, but by meaning. Or you could be surrounded by receipts. That’s OK, too. God loves all his children.

Bedogol

Another visual representation of Balinese Hindu beliefs is the presence of fierce gate guardians at the doorways to temples and homes. These Bedogol, or Dwarapala in Original Hinduism, are always in pairs surrounding the gate. The right hand Bedogol represents active energy and masculinity, while the left hand Bedogol signifies passive energy and femininity. The one is good for strength and protection, and the other provides intuition and gentleness. Together, they keep their charges safe from evil creatures and bad vibes.

I’m sure our Homeowners Association couldn’t possibly object if we put a pair in the hallway around our door. Who doesn’t need evil kept at bay?

Murder Most Fowl

There are a ton of free range chickens and roosters here, but also a surprisingly high population of caged roosters. There are shops that make and sell rooster cages, and then there are all the places with the caged roosters. It’s a thing. A weird thing.

It turns out that cockfighting is an ancient ritual connected to Balinese Hinduism. I told you the Balinese had made up their own brand of Hinduism, but you didn’t believe me, did you?

The roosters are caged because they’ve been trained to fight and aren’t safe wandering loose. And also because they’re super valuable. They start at 1,000,000 rupiah (about $60) and go up from there with pedigree and wins in the arena.

Cockfighting is actually a religious obligation at Balinese festivals and ceremonies. The losing rooster’s blood is meant as an offering to placate evil spirits. Legally, cockfighting is permitted in Bali only as part of religious ceremonies. And, hey! No gambling!

But we saw way more caged roosters than temples on their own could possibly have required. 100% there is non-religious cockfighting and gambling. We are shocked — shocked — to find that gambling is going on in here!

It’s also yet another layer of feigned compliance on the part of the Balinese. “Sure, we’ll be Hindu. We just need to add a few local spices. You need us to be monotheists? No problem, we’ll just pick one of our gods to be the Kahuna. We can only cockfight in the temple? You like our new temple?” Culturally they’re made of jello. Push on it and it seems to give, but the moment you let up it pops back to its original shape. They are Jedi masters of the Okey-Doke.

Roosters!

It’s hard to get a good look at the caged roosters, at least partially because it feels dangerous to get too close, but the loose roosters are spectacular. I know nothing about rooster genealogy, which I’m sure comes as a shock to y’all, but there seems to be a stunning range of rooster morphology on display here.

By The Way…

I got scuba-certified at twelve because my parents, Jackie and Stan, decided they wanted to dive and it became a family affair. It was a ten-week class, mixed between classroom (gas physics) and pool. The first three weeks in the pool were all swimming exercises, but we were permitted to put on scuba gear in week four and just sit underwater in the shallow end, to get used to the equipment.

At which point Stan stood up and tapped out. Give him credit for knowing himself. He found the experience claustrophobic and unsettling, and couldn’t think of a reason to shoulder past that.

Jackie and I continued, but I failed the final swimming exam. I did fine on the classroom test, and Jackie passed everything, but the swimming exam was hard. Among other soul crushing tests, you had to: swim two lengths of an Olympic pool underwater on a single breath; tread water for seven minutes with your arms out of the water, only legs; swim multiple laps, I don’t remember the actual number, in full gear, but only using your snorkel. They weighted you so you had negative buoyancy and had to swim uphill while someone walked at the edge of the pool and randomly poured buckets of water into your snorkel, to simulate all of your failed relationships waves. It was a lot, for a twelve-year-old.

I was technically too young, as thirteen was the NAUI cutoff, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to fail. But I was humiliated. It took me two more tries, but I did finally pass.

When I was thirteen and on our North American wanderjahr, we wound up in Acapulco, where Jackie and I took a dive boat together. We were the only certified divers aboard, so the guide provided training to the others: “OK. Exhale on the way up. Do you know what urchins look like? Great. Don’t touch them.” And off everyone went to enjoy their new skills. It really made me appreciate all the hard work I’d put in.

Then I touched an urchin.

Then we started looking at flights. They all stopped in HCMC for heinous 6+ hour layovers before continuing on to Bali. We decided it would be easier, and more fun, to burn a few days of our Airbnb, fly to HCMC for those days, and take a nice, direct flight to Bali. Three days in HCMC would be a rushed, tourist cadence, but we figured we’d have more fun than if we’d skipped it entirely.

So… maybe?

The thing is, we’re not at all used to the tourist cadence. Our slow travel lifestyle has us staying in a location for from 1-3 months, so we’re used to taking our time to learn a place. We don’t have any muscle memory associated with the guerrilla rhythm of hitting a place hard and fast to squeeze the juice out in a few days and move on.

It’s not like we haven’t had successful short jaunts. We spent three days in Lan Ha Bay, for example, but we had boat trips scheduled for two of those days, and toured a couple of local caves on the third day. We had an itinerary, so it worked.

We hit HCMC with nothing more than a vague idea. It’s one of those places with so much going on, it’s not immediately obvious what you’d triage down to for a three day visit. Chinatown seemed like it would be fun, and there were a couple of good looking museums. Other than that, our “plan” was to walk the city and see what it had to offer.

Which, as a practical matter, meant that we just kind of wandered aimlessly for three days. We did go to Chinatown, and we did go to the History Museum, but HCMC is a big capital-style city (I know Hà Nội is the actual capital, but HCMC has a more capital city vibe – like NYC vs. DC), and it wanted a plan that we hadn’t prepared. Still, more fun that a six hour layover at the HCMC airport.

Chinatown

HCMC’s Chinatown, Chợ Lớn, was not at all what we were expecting. Because, you know, ignorant. I was expecting it to look like a US Chinatown, which is stupid, since I’m well aware that the entire Chinatown esthetic had been dreamed up as a marketing ploy by a pair of white US architects who had never been to China. So HCMC’s Chinatown looked just like the rest of HCMC.

The other confounding factor is that Vietnam, due to history and proximity, is closer to China culturally than any other country. So when we went to Chợ Lớn’s main market, Bình Tây, we couldn’t tell the difference between the Chinese products and what was on offer at Bến Thành, HCMC’s main market. Again, ignorance, but Vietnam already has a lot of Chinese products, so the untrained eye really couldn’t tell the difference. Bình Tây and Bến Thành looked pretty much the same to us.

This was Bình Tây, the Chợ Lớn market:

And this was Bến Thành, HCMC’s regular market:

Obviously a little different in layout and overall design, but not much to pick between them as one being quintessentially Vietnamese and the other being hardcore Chinese. If you swapped the photos, no one would know.

After Bình Tây we walked around randomly hoping to see some of Chợ Lớn’s history, as it dates back to the 17th century, but no luck. Maybe if we’d done more research and planned everything out we’d have known where to go look, but as it was, Chợ Lớn was kind of a bust for us.

Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History

We also got to the history museum. Which I only have a few pictures from, because, honestly, museum fatigue. In our ten weeks in Vietnam it felt like we’d visited scores of museums, and at some point they just become a blur. Especially, because the Vietnamese forms share a number of design elements with the Angkor-era carving we saw in Cambodia. That’s a lot of time looking at art with a common underlying framework. I’m looking forward to Indonesia, where Bali and Java have distinct artistic traditions.

These Cham sculptures are from the 12th-13th centuries. The first two were building supports for a tower that collapsed before it was completed. They’re in such fine condition because they were buried in the resulting rubble, which protected them from erosion.

Unsurprisingly, Dorothy found beautiful garments.

Aimless Wandering

As promised, the rest of our stay in HCMC was completely random. We had post cards to send, so we went to the main Post Office, which was in District 1, where we were staying.

We had one dinner at a one star Michelin restaurant, Mặn Mòi, which also boasted high-style architecture.

Another dinner was at the Bến Nghé Street Food restaurant, a food court style arrangement with over 50 stalls. We could even have had tacos. Which we didn’t.

Randomly walking the streets we saw…

Random topiary.

Random electrical lighting objects.

A random Indian temple.

We even went to a typical pagoda, the Ngọc Hoàng, not far from our hotel. And tried really hard to care. But temple fatigue is real, like museum fatigue. Despite being stuck there in a torrential downpour, we just couldn’t get into it. Time to leave Vietnam.

But it did have a few treats. You still have to keep your eyes open, no matter what, or you’ll miss some tucked away morsel of wow. Not OK.

For some reason, we thought this table of offering votives was really beautiful.

I’ll leave you with the most HCMC thing about HCMC: Traffic.

That, by the way, was a street we never crossed. Normally we’d draft behind an auntie, but not even the locals were crossing that street.

Should we have skipped HCMC and just flown directly to Bali from Đà Nẵng? I still think we were better off this way, but note-to-self for the future, we should only do short visits if we’ve done our homework and have a clue how we’re going to spend the time.

Our sleeper bus was the most modern, tricked out sleeper we took. It was especially comfortable when we finally figured out that you could raise the seat backs, and not have to spend the whole trip supine.

We picked a hotel literally across the street from the Citadel and a five minute walk from the Antiquities Museum, so we were well situated to make the most of our brief time in Huế.

The hotel was surprisingly luxe. The first surprise was that it was hidden behind an unprepossessing facade down an alley, and the second was that it was only $35/night. That that’s a splurge is how this whole adventure works.

The Museum of Royal Antiquities

We debussed, checked in, got lunch, and walked to the Antiquities Museum. We planned on spending the next full day at the Citadel, so we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss the Museum.

As its name implies, the museum specializes in Nguyễn era artifacts, serving as a satellite to the Citadel across the street. And like a lot of museums we’ve seen around the world, this site’s building was as much a part of the display as its holdings. Long An Palace was built in 1845, early in the Nguyễn empire. It was destroyed in 1885 by, wait for it… French soldiers, and then rebuilt and restored in 1909 on its current site, just outside the Citadel.

The Palace was used as a resting place for the Emperor to refresh and recharge after official ceremonies, and it is ridiculously, painfully beautiful.

Even more astounding is the interior. The space is majestic and regal, and it was impossible not to feel just a little bit unworthy inside, like we were transgressing a boundary we shouldn’t have crossed, like we didn’t belong. The peek behind the imperial curtain was thrilling.

The collection of imperial artifacts, however, is every bit the match for the space in which they’re displayed. The collection stands up to the Palace itself, in its glimpse into a life of incalculable luxury and splendor. “It’s good be king” is a joke, but it’s not a joke here. The Museum of Royal Antiquities reminded me of nothing so much as Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, in its window into an opulence unfettered by constraints of money or propriety.

The artifacts are exceptionally well selected but, shall we say, lightly curated. If there was date information at all, it was no more precise than the century. Sometimes materials were listed, often not. The whole approach to provenance seems to be, “We found these in the Citadel. Now shut up and enjoy them.”

Okay. I can do both.

This piece had the most thorough provenance, unsurprisingly, as it’s a National Treasure. It’s the tiny throne of Emperor Duy Tân, who was seven years old when he was invested in 1907 by the French, who had just conveniently had his father declared insane. His reign lasted ten years before the French deposed him for not being as docile as hoped. Specifically, by trying to lead a rebellion against them.

He wound up leading a fascinating life, including working as an officer of the Free French, battling the Vichy regime. But the pictures of him as Boy King are haunting. There was an altar room to him in the Citadel, but no pictures were permitted. I scraped this from his Wikipedia page, where he’s giving off a distinct blink-twice-if-you’re-unsafe-at-home vibe. As all of the photos of him at that age do. Kudos to him for pulling a real life out of this twisted shit.

And of course, Dorothy found textiles. It’s what she do.

Unfortunately, none of the Imperial gowns were properly dated. They were all noted as between 1802 and 1945, the dates of the Nguyễn dynasty itself, with no more precise attributions offered.

Outside the Long An Palace, a smaller building housed artifacts from the Champa kingdom, dating from the 10th to 12th centuries. It was a small collection, distinguished by the incredible physical integrity of the artifacts. It’s hard to believe sandstone sculptures have lasted this long and look so good.

The Imperial Citadel

The Imperial Citadel, as all good citadels must be, is surrounded by a moat, with gates on all four sides.

The Citadel is also known as the Imperial City, because it’s both. As a citadel it boasted a six mile long moat around its entire perimeter and almost seven foot thick ramparts. And as a city, its almost four square miles held not only the emperor’s family, but also the mandarins and functionaries necessary to keep the wheels of the empire properly lubricated.

Here’s the main gate, Ngọ Môn, as well as a couple of the side gates.

It was hot the day we visited, over 90 degrees, but worse was the humidity. The air felt gelid, as if you had to physically part it to move forward. We noticed little trams driving about the grounds and accosted the first empty one we saw. The driver said it would cost ₫400,000, or about $16 USD, for the two of us to be driven around for an hour. That sounded simultaneously like highway robbery and salvation, so we hopped aboard. She drove us to the highlights, stopped while we explored, and dropped us off an hour later, to the minute, at the gate closest to our hotel. Worth every penny.

Among the many, many palaces in the Citadel, Kiến Trung truly stood out. It’s a modern (completed in 2023) recreation of a 1923 structure that was destroyed by the Viet Minh during the resistance to French occupation in 1947. So… authentic? ish? But beautiful and ridiculous all at once, as its exterior is extravagantly mosaicked. I’m glad we came after its completion.

Here’s a news item about the restoration from 2023, before the work was complete.

In fact, restoration at the Citadel is an ongoing process. It’s part historical site, part tourist attraction, and part archeological dig.

Another standout was the Thái Hòa Palace, the Palace of Supreme Harmony. Built in 1805 at the dawn of the Nguyễn dynasty, it was one of the very first buildings in the Imperial Citadel. Its grand scale, both inside and out, hints at its uses, as it was the site of official state functions. From coronations to New Years to the emperor’s birthday, any ceremony of note was staged at Thái Hòa.

The Queen Mother had a private residence, with its own lovely grounds.

The Citadel also has its own theater, the Duyệt Thị Đường, dating back to 1826. It’s still in use today.

The Thế Miếu Temple holds the 9 Dynastic Urns. They were completed in 1835 and are considered the most valuable bronze artifacts in Vietnam. Each one depicts a specific emperor and different geographic and cultural components of the country, representing both the continuity of the Nguyễn dynasty and the richness of the country as a whole.

The Citadel offers up treasures pretty much wherever you look, both indoors and outdoors.

Out And About

Aside from the Museum and the Citadel, we did get outside and see a few things.

In retrospect, we didn’t give ourselves enough time in Huế. We hit the Citadel and the Museum, as planned, but there was so much else of interest that we didn’t have time to see.

There are seven mausoleums for Nguyễn era emperors ringing the city, each more over the top than the last, and we weren’t able to visit a single one. There’s the Perfume River, so named for the delicate aroma caused by upstream orchards dropping their flowers into the river in the fall. We saw it, but didn’t have time for a boat trip. We missed the stunning Bạch Mã National Park. There’s more than one wiggy pagoda. We could have spent a week in Huế, but didn’t. Our loss.

But what we were able to do was more than enough to make the trip worthwhile. The Imperial Citadel and the Museum of Royal Antiquities were plenty rewarding.

While the Champa kingdom goes all the way back to the 2nd century, Mỹ Sơn dates from the 4th to the 13th centuries. Still, take that, 12th century Angkor Wat. On the other hand, Angkor Wat wasn’t blown to bits by the US in the Vietnam War (or the American War, as it’s called here). Many of the temples, including the largest one, were destroyed in a single week’s bombing in 1969. But the Taliban were barbarians for destroying Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas. Thank goodness we’ve permanently conquered The Moral High Ground.

That history is one of the reasons we took a tour group to Mỹ Sơn, despite our profound distaste for them. When we were doing the research for the trip one of the admonitions we’d read was to make sure to stay on the paths, as there were still unexploded bombs in the area. Okey doke. Maybe a guide isn’t such a bad idea.

The setting is beautiful, with the jungle kept barely at bay. It reminds me of Tikal’s eerie jungle/ruins vibe, or Ta Prohm’s Lara Croft stage set.

I especially enjoyed the entrance sign. While I know the first part as, “Take only memories, leave only footprints,” this was my first exposure to the warning not to kill. It’s like when you check into a hotel and on the dos-and-donts list is a restriction on having monkeys in your room. You just have to wonder what happened that made that warning necessary.

The ravages of the American attack were everywhere to be seen. In bullet-pocked walls, bomb fragments, and even in recovered American bombs.

The American attacks on Mỹ Sơn came to life most vividly through our tour guide, who had been working for the Americans in South Vietnam as an interpreter. This was a notable exception to the rule about listening to Grandda’s war stories. We didn’t want them over so we could go back to our video games, we wanted him to go on and on and on. I wasn’t expecting a living link to that history.

He told harrowing stories of coming into Mỹ Sơn after the bombings, with colleagues blown apart by bombs that hadn’t gone off on impact. Sadly, either his English or his memory, or both, were a little faulty, as we couldn’t quite follow his post-war chronology. Either he or his brother spent eight years in prison for collaborating with the Americans. Either he or his brother were taken to the US before returning to Vietnam. Which may or may not have been when he or his brother was imprisoned.

The specifics mattered less than the general arc, which was that the American fucking lasted long after they left. As colonialism do.

But the what was left of the buildings was splendid. Unless noted, these are all from the 7th-9th centuries. They show their age, in all senses.

Due to sheer age, and the odd bomb, many of the facade sculptures are in poor condition. But there’s more than enough left to grasp how much character the carvings have, and how splendid this must have been in its time. These all date from the 7th-9th centuries.

While I’m not a big fan of tours, this one came with a Malaysian family currently living in Sri Lanka. On the one hand. we had the opportunity to discuss those locations for future travel, which was helpful and informative. On the other hand, I was kidnapped.

Stockholm Syndrome, plain and simple.

There is absolutely no documentary evidence that I picked up the little terrorist and carried her. Those are unsubstantiated rumors, and I refuse to lend them credence by stooping to refute them.

The Ethnology Museum

The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology is unlike any ethnographic museum I’ve seen. Yes, it has a museum with galleries and explanatory placards, just as you’d expect. But the bulk of the grounds are taken up with houses brought in from all different ethnic groups and regions that have been rebuilt on site. Rather than just reading about how the different groups lived, you can go in their houses and feel it for yourself. Being able to enter all these different houses may well have been Hà Nội’s highlight.

What’s not obvious at first glance here is the extent of Vietnam’s ethnic diversity. There are 54 distinct ethnic groups in Vietnam, but the vast majority, 85%, are ethnically Viet. The next largest ethnic group, the Tày, is only 1.92%. Vietnam has a population of about 100 million, which, surprisingly, ranks it 16th largest in the world, but that’s still not a lot of people, divvied up into 53 groups. The smallest 45 ethnic groups account for only 3.7% of the total population.

The Vietnamese government values and supports the diversity these ethnic groups represent, which is the only reason many of them still exist as intact cultures and not just DNA fragments. It’s hard to keep groups that small discrete and unassimilated, so props to the Communists.

Ede House

A long house from the Ede tribe, this house was built for a powerful family in 1969 and relocated to the museum in 2000. The house is 140 feet long and 20 feet wide, and is oriented, as is traditional for the Ede, on a north/south axis, with the main entrance at the north end and the living quarters at the south. The extent and quality of the carvings speaks to the prominence of the family that built it.

Viet House

This Viet house is notable for the splendor and artistry of the wood carving. No mud house this.

Tay Stilt House

This is a multi-generational home built entirely on stilts. There are separate rooms for married children, a dedicated kitchen, and a master bedroom. The space underneath is multi-purpose, for everything from domestic animals to tools and a mill for pounding rice. It’s a playground for children and a place for elders to rest in the shade. The range and quality of weaving techniques is impressive.

Bahnar Communal House

Not housing, but a communal house from the Bahnar people, used for a variety of social and ceremonial activities, as well as serving as a guest house for visitors. As the largest, most impressive structure in the village, it was meant to communicate strength and power.

Every one of the houses at the museum had a video running inside documenting the reconstruction of the structure onsite, but watching this being built, with craftsmen climbing up the partially completed structure like acrobats, may have been the most impressive.

Khmer Junk

This Khmer junk is 84 feet long, and was built for racing during the annual moon worshipping festival. Also, not technically housing, but pretty fucking awesome. In 18 races, this baby came in first 14 times and second the other four.

The museum even has a water puppet theater.

Vietnam Women’s Museum

Well, the gals have their very own museum in Hà Nội, and you have to be just thrilled for the little darlin’s. I’m sure they’re all puffed up. There are exhibits on Women in the Family, Women in History, and Women’s Fashion, but the standout exhibit was on Đạo Mẫu, the worship of mother goddesses that dates back to the 16th century.

Central to Đạo Mẫu is the practice of hầu bóng, literally “serving the reflections,” a ritual involving dressing up and presenting as one of the deities. This is most often performance, but there are priestesses who act as mediums, allowing the goddesses to incarnate through them. Not unlike Santeria’s channeling of Orishas.

Either way, the ritual involves elaborate costumes specific to the individual goddesses, and the museum has an excellent selection. As well as videos of the performances, which may well have been nothing more than ritual performance but certainly had the ecstatic veneer of channeling spirits.

If you can, I strongly suggest zooming in on these pictures. The embroidery is breathtaking.

Đạo Mẫu rituals also involve paper representations of the stories being told, as well as fancy paper decorations. Paper seems to be an important part of many Vietnamese rituals, from altars to the streetside burning of joss paper for ancestors. The museum’s collection of the Đạo Mẫu paper goods was every bit as spectacular as the costumes on display.

Hoàng Thành Thăng Long – The Imperial Citadel

The Imperial Citadel is yet another box checked on our UNESCO World Heritage bingo card. It was Vietnam’s capital city from the 11th to 18th centuries, and was the very last thing we did in Hà Nội, the day before we left for Hội An. It is part monument park, part museum, and part active archeological site.

There were delightful details scattered throughout.

As beautiful as the grounds and buildings were, the standout was the museum, specifically the spectacular terra cotta collection. It’s hard to fathom how so much terra cotta has survived from the 11th century, especially given how much of it was rooftop decoration.

However, the highlight of our visit, for me, took place in one of the galleries. Two young boys, maybe ten years old, were loose from their parents, and one mustered up the courage to say hello to us. I replied Xin Chào, and he screamed like the family chicken had just politely enquired after his father’s health. Sometimes being a dancing bear is just flat-out entertaining.

Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum

Vietnam has been civilized for a long time, having had organized societies for at least 4,000 years. And organized societies have a penchant for creating art. Not that the National Fine Arts Museum has pieces going back 4,000 years, but there’s a rich heritage to mine, and the museum’s collection covers more than a thousand years of that history.

The Hall Of Wiggy Patriarchs

My favorite exhibit, it’s a series of life-size effigies of various patriarchs of the Tây Phương Pagoda near Hà Nói, all created in 1794. More than just life-sized, they are remarkably lifelike, each with its own personality. Unlike many of the Vietnamese figurative sculptures, they all look like very specific individuals, with nothing generic about them. Being in a room full of them, it was hard not to feel their presence.

Sculpture

I love how playful and spirited these pieces are, with an almost cartoony style. These wooden sculptures are all 17th century specimens.

The stone sculptures were just as entertaining.

Bodhisattva Avalokisteshvara

There were two of these in the sculpture hall, and they were both magnificent. This first one is from the 1500s.

The second one is from 1656, and is specifically referenced as the Thousand-armed and Thousand-eyed Avalokisteshvara.

Lacquer Paintings

Relatively modern, lacquer painting in Vietnam dates back only to the 1930s. We didn’t know you could paint with lacquer, so their collection, with pieces from the 30s to the 70s, was a lovely surprise.

Silk Paintings

Silk painting as a technique has a long history in Vietnam, but there obviously aren’t many ancient examples still intact. The museum has a thorough selection of modern pieces, though, which very much capture the range of expression that’s possible. Here’s a few from the 60s to the 80s.

Phnom Kulen has deep historical import to Cambodians, as the birthplace of the Khmer Empire. It’s the site where King Jayavarman II proclaimed independence from Java in 802 AD. It also has a Buddha carved out of the mountaintop, a river with a thousand penises, and a waterfall. No way we were missing all that.

Getting There

The drive out was beautiful, but also our furthest outing from Siem Reap, at about 90 minutes of driving. You have to go in the morning, as the road to the mountaintop is one way: up until 11:00, and then down afterwards. We stopped on the way to take advantage of the gorgeous view of the jungle stretching on seemingly forever.

Land Of A Thousand Lingams

Shiva is considered by many Hindu as God #1, and along with Brahma and Vishnu makes up the Trimurti, the Hindu Super Friends. Iconically, Shiva is portrayed as a lingam, the age-old phallic symbol, representing his boundless power and cosmic energy. *sigh* I remember when that’s what my lingam represented. At least I still remember.

Kbal Spean, or The River of a Thousand Lingams, is part of the Phnom Kulen National Park and is the first stop on our way to the mountain top. It dates back to the 11th Century, with some of the individual carvings dating to the 9th century. Clearly, there was some Shiva love going on here organically before it became a taxpayer-supported art installation.

The river starts from a spring, and the spring is considered holy even before the water flows over the lingams and sanctifies everything downstream. There were quite a few pilgrims, many of them Indian tourists, anointing themselves with spring water and leaving offerings.

Kbal Spean, irrespective of all that lingam, or maybe because of it, is a lovely, peaceful setting.

The lingams here are reduced to icons, circles within squares. Some are embedded within larger squares with an opening, symbolizing the yoni, together representing the totality of all existence. Sounds about right.

Angkor-era temples utilized the combination of lingam and yoni as their primary design conceit, with the central square representing the lingam and the primary entrance representing the yoni.

Approaching The Mountain

We can drive to the mountaintop where there are steps up to the temple and the big carved Buddha. The approach is lined with stalls, as it seems all entrances to tourist attractions are anywhere on the planet.

But the stairway up is spectacular, ornate, and beautifully maintained. It’s $20/person for non-Cambodians to enter, and you can see where the money goes.

The Plateau

Up the stairs and past the stalls is a plateau before you take the steps to the big stone Buddha.

The Buddha

Up the last set of steps to the Preah Ang Thom pagoda. The pagoda sits atop a massive sandstone boulder and houses a 25′ long carved directly out of the stone. Dorothy passed on the final climb. At least I brought her pictures back.

The Waterfall

The steps to the falls are, shockingly, lined with vendor’s stalls. Did not see that coming. Just past them is a small upper waterfall that feeds the big falls below them. This spot is popular with families with small children, as it’s super accessible and the water doesn’t really pool. Maybe four to five inches deep at most, as the water heads straight over the edge to become the big waterfall.

After a long, steep set of metal steps you reach the valley floor, where the action is. This is as much a plunge for locals as it is a tourist attraction, and both groups mix happily together. There are changing booths and lockboxes available for $1 USD each.

The water was pleasantly cool on a hot day, as opposed to heart stoppingly cold, and I got in to mid-thigh. Dorothy was pretty tired from the day’s hiking and climbing, and made the right call to sit the falls out. She waited near the parking area with Khun, and I went down with nothing in my pockets. I didn’t know I could have parked my things safely and gotten all the way in.

I may have missed my chance to stand under the fall, but the setting was gorgeous, and that’s the tallest waterfall I’ve ever been that close to at ground level. The tallest of the two falls is about 60 feet. Which isn’t even close to truly tall waterfalls, but was plenty majestic up close.

And that wraps up Cambodia. Next stop, Hanoi, which, I have on the best authority, Rocks.

Bayon

Possibly even more than Angkor Wat, the massive Buddha heads of Bayon are the single most iconic image of Cambodia. Even if you don’t know they’re in Cambodia, you recognize them.

Interestingly, the Angkor-era temples are the only part of Cambodia that the Khmer Rouge didn’t systematically destroy. Rather than seeing them as evidence of moral decay, as they did the arts, or a threat, as they saw the sciences, the temples represented the strength and power of the Cambodian people, the state to which the Khmer Rouge wanted to restore the nation.

So they let them stand, as exemplars of what the Khmer had once achieved and what they should aspire to in the future. Which is just plain weird on its face, as the regime wanted to return Cambodians to an imagined, “pure” agrarian past, but had murdered anyone capable of building monuments to the glory of the proletariat.

But I don’t suppose they took power on the back of the unassailable logic of their arguments. Thanks to that twisted logic, we still have Angkor Wat and Bayon, among many, many others, to appreciate today.

While Bayon has no moat of its own, like Angkor Wat, it sits in the exact center of Angkor Thom (Great City in Khmer), the final capital city of the Angkor empire. And Angkor Thom has a moat. A really big moat, three kilometers on each side. Angkor Wat’s moat encloses a site of about two square kilometers. Angkor Thom: nine square kilometers.

Angkor Thom and its temples, like Angkor Wat, all date from the 12th century, the Golden age of the Khmer Empire.

Also, while Angkor Wat had “Beware of Monkey Attack” signs, we never actually saw any monkeys there. Not so Angkor Thom. The temples had monkeys, the roadside jungle had monkeys. There was no shortage of monkeys on this visit. Besides us.

The Gates

Both Angkor Thom and Bayon are squares oriented to the cardinal directions: North/South/East/West. Bayon has four gates, one on each side, and the city of Angkor Thom has an extra gate, the Victory Gate, on the East side.

Angkor Thom’s gates are impressive structures of their own, irrespective of what’s going on within the city’s walls. We entered the South Gate and got our first glimpse of the imposing giant Buddha heads. Each of the four gates is topped by four Buddhas, each pointing in a cardinal direction. The bridges that lead to them depict the Hindu story of The Churning Of The Sea Of Milk. Because of course they do.

We’ll skip over the plot elements that brought our protagonists to this dilemma, but the gods and the demons needed to collaborate to churn the Sea Of Milk in order to extract the Nectar Of Immortality, which was achieved, somehow, by pulling on the Naga Vasuki, a giant god snake. The gods took the head and the demons took the tail. And they lived happily ever after.

One side of the bridge shows the gods pulling Vasuki from the head and the other side of the bridge shows the demons pulling from the tail. As you traverse the bridge, you travel through the gate that the four-headed Buddha watches over. It’s a pretty monumental passage, and it’s impossible to be unmoved by it. Much like the soaring Catholic churches meant to awe the peasants, the gates to Angkor Thom proclaim to all who pass through them the power and piety of their creators.

The monumental Buddha heads stand watch over each gate.

Magic Happens Here

As built, Bayon had 54 pagodas with four faces each. That’s 216 big Buddha heads. 37 of the pagodas remain. Which is still a lot of Buddha heads.

There’s something weird about seeing in person a thing you’ve seen in pictures over and over. I remember visiting MoMA when we moved to New York and seeing Starry Night for the first time. There was so much depth and detail that the reproductions couldn’t capture, it was disorienting. I simultaneously felt like I knew it well and had never seen it. Same with Monet’s Water Lilies.

And same here. The images of these heads are so iconic, seeing them in person was like seeing two things at once, the photographs in your head like a scrim over the real thing right in front of you. But the scrim fades, and you’re left with only the reality, which is breathtaking. If I was capable of emotions I’d have had some. There were feels all over the place, and I could almost sense them.

Just like Angkor Wat, every surface is pavéd with decoration. It’s not all there now, but it’s clear there was no unadorned surface when it was built.

Some of the friezes are really big. Really, really big.

Ta Prohm

If someone asked you to close your eyes and picture an ancient temple being reclaimed by the jungle, you’d be imagining Ta Prohm. Part of that is because the whole trees-growing-through-temples thing is so iconic on its own, but also because it served as one of the primary locations for the 2001 Tomb Raider movie.

Which makes it similar to some of the Star Wars locations we visited in Tunisia. What made those sites interesting wasn’t that they’d been in the movies. It was that they were so alien in their natural state that they qualified as outer space movie sets. Who doesn’t want to visit a place like that?

So it is with Ta Prohm. I have no more interest in it because it was in a movie than I did in the Star Wars sites (which I didn’t even want to see initially, as I thought they were only of interest as movie trivia). What’s interesting about Ta Prohm is the vibe that motivated the filmmakers to use it as a location. That seemed worth checking out.

The whole thing has a distinctly Tikal ambiance, another place where the boundary between jungle and temples is porous. Here though, it’s not the general encroachment of the jungle, it’s the opportunistic nature of the local spong trees. Ta Prohm was built without mortar, leaving room for the spong trees to take root in the loose stones.

The effect is spectacular.

Preah Khan

We had one more temple on our itinerary, but at this point we had both museum eyes and museum legs. I confess we didn’t spend much time at Preah Khan. It looked like the outbuildings at Bayon or Ta Prohm, not having a distinctive feature of its own, like the big Buddhas or the spong trees.

How jaded are we? But we had put over three miles on Dorothy’s recovering limbs that day, which was enough. There. It’s her fault.

Local Monasteries

In addition to the Angkor-era temple complexes, Siem Reap is blessed with a slew of in-town neighborhood monasteries. Open to the public, the grounds and buildings tend to be both lavish and peaceful. We visited two of them, because what else are we doing, but we could have made them a tour of their own.

Preah Prohm Roath Monastery

A mere five minute walk from the Sturm und Drang of Pub Street sits Preah Prohm Roath, the Disneyland of monasteries. Built in 1915, it’s known for its lavish grounds and an enormous golden Buddah that lives in the main shrine, which is from 1945. The buildings and grounds all still seem shiny and fresh. Especially compared to the Angkor era temples, all at least 900 years old.

Surrounding the Buddha shrine building was a 360 degree gallery of friezes.

The outdoor sculpture garden is amazing. Like a Hindu version of El Castillo de Los Duendes in Oaxaca, but with fewer Keebler elves.

Wat Bo

Wat Bo is a little older than Preah Prohm Roath, having been built in the 18th century. It’s just across the Siem Reap river from Pub Street and the night markets, nestled in a comfortable, active neighborhood. It’s not as elaborate as Preah Prohm Roath, or as goofy, leaning more into its quiet beauty. It’s a lovely afternoon stop.

But every building was over the top in its own way. It’s impossible not to be charmed by an aesthetic built on the concept of More. It spoke to us directly. And loudly. If we had a coat of arms it would read Si Aliquid Est Bonum, Melius Est. If Some Is Good, More Is Better.

Sitting in their cool gardens is a pleasure on a hot day. Which is all of them.

Tikal Walks Into A Sidebar

So this is that thing I do where I find some flimsy excuse to jam in a story from our past that’s tangentially, at best, related to something from our current travels. In this case, I’m using Ta Prohm’s comparison to Tikal to shoehorn in the tale of our 30 minute trip to Tikal, in the year of our youth 1985.

I have to start by confessing that at this moment I have no pictures of our Tikal trip. I thought I’d finished digitizing all of our photos in the run up to launch, but I missed the albums with our Guatemala and Tikal photos. I’ll send them out when we get back to Chicago, but I’m probably 7-8 months away from being able to add pictures to this post.

In our late 20s we were able to cobble together enough shekels for our first real vacation, the kind that can’t be done in a car. Dorothy had a textile book called Guatemala Rainbow, and all of the photos were of people wearing these ridiculously vibrant textiles, rather than just pictures of fabric. We wanted to go where people wandered around dressed up like that. There are worse ways to pick a destination.

We decided to get there by buying a package tour to Cancun. It was cheaper than just buying the airfare, and they let us extend our return date. We blew off the hotel portion of the package, which gave us two weeks to get to Guatemala and back to Cancun for our flight home.

And that was the extent of our planning. We didn’t know how we were going to get to Guatemala, we didn’t have any accommodations arranged, we didn’t even know exactly where we were going once we got there. We’d made a half-hearted attempt to make plans, but this was pre-internet, so making those arrangements long distance was hard. This was why travel agents existed, but we rejected the notion of planning the entire trip to the day. We’d wing it. What could possibly go wrong?

On the eve of our departure I called the State Department hotline for their Guatemala assessment. I’d waited until the last minute on purpose, as I expected we’d dislike the recommendation. We were traveling on the eve of their first putatively free elections, and expected there would be tensions. We were correct.

The hotline told us that we needed to: avoid a list of specific cities, the bulk of which were on our to do list; check in with the consulate the moment we landed to provide our detailed itinerary, which didn’t exist; avoid travel at night, which was the only stricture we could follow; and be prepared to be robbed at gunpoint, although kidnapping was deemed unlikely. But not impossible.

On mature reflection, we decided that if a State Department warning existed for tourists traveling from Iowa to New York City, it would sound about the same. And that as hardened, streetwise New Yorkers, we could handle whatever Guatemala threw at us.

What could possibly go wrong?

So we flew to Cancun, rented a car and drove to Chichén Itzá, where I had to get rescued from the top of the pyramid, kept going to check out Mérida, and decided that we’d get to Guatemala from there, so we ditched the rental car (its own story) and grabbed a flight.

We deplaned in Guatemala City, got the last rental car left, and headed to nearby Antigua, getting lost on the way in the dark. No GPS. We stumbled into Antigua and drove around until we found a nice looking hotel. They had a room for us.

That was our protocol for the whole trip. No plans, play it by ear, everything will be fine. We constantly saw tourists who’d made plans, or thought they had, struggling. The hotel they thought they’d reserved didn’t have a room. The guide they thought they’d arranged never showed up. And here we were, happy idiots, blithely blundering into repeated good fortune. It made stupid look admirable. And also set a lifetime of travel preferences. We still don’t like to overplan. Although we are slightly less intrepid than our 20-something selves.

And that’s how we planned to get to Tikal. The highway through the Peten jungle hadn’t been built yet, so the only way to get there was by plane. We figured we’d spend a couple of days there, get to Belize, spend a few days on one of the cays relaxing, and then get back to Cancun for our flight home. Easy, right?

We tried to figure out how to fly from Flores, the nearest airport to Tikal, to Belize, but what information we found didn’t make any sense, so we reckoned we’d make arrangements in the airport when we landed. Worst possible case we’d take a bus, as it was only about 140 miles. Worst worst possible case, we’d rent a car or take a taxi.

The only information we had was on a gas station style folding map. On the back it had a matrix of cities, showing the distance between them and the driving time. Except our map clearly had an error for Flores-Belize City, as it showed a travel time of twelve hours. No way that could be correct. That was just over ten miles/hour for the whole distance. Impossible.

Dorothy hadn’t had much plane time prior to this trip, so she was a nervous flier. Still is, a little bit. As we’re waiting in the terminal in Guatemala City for our flight to Flores, she’s checking the tarmac, afraid we’re going in something tiny. She’s relieved when we’re finally called to board, as the only plane out there is a big jet. Not so relieved when we hit the tarmac and walked behind that jet to a plane so small it had been completely hidden from view.

But all good, we fly to Flores on our little plane and no one wets themselves. A win is a win. I go to the desk in the terminal when we land to make arrangements to fly to Belize in a couple of days. To be told that there isn’t a flight in a couple of days. There’s one the very next morning and another four days later. The first flight meant we wouldn’t be able to visit Tikal, the entire point of this escapade, and the second one meant we wouldn’t have time in Belize, and if there was any hiccup we’d miss our flight back home from Cancun.

So I asked about buses or taxis, and was told that the twelve hour map estimate was about right, as it was mostly a dirt road. Or would be about right if the road was open. Which it currently was not, having been washed out in the recent rains. I’m a clever boy, so I ask about flying back to Guatemala City and getting to Belize from there. To be told that the flight to Guatemala City from Flores is the return flight from Guatemala City to Flores. Which happens twice a week.

Very reluctantly, we booked a flight to Belize for the next morning. Now all we had to do was find a place to stay, since we hadn’t made any arrangements in advance. We tasked our taxi driver with finding us a hotel, but he’d heard our saga. He told us that if we left at seven in the morning, he could drive us to Tikal, about 90 minutes each way, and get us back to the airport in time for our flight. We’d have about half an hour at Tikal, but that sounded better than missing it completely.

What could possibly go wrong?

The actual town of Flores is an island in Lake Petén Itzá reached over a narrow causeway, just barely above lake level. Our driver navigated us into town and left us at a hotel with rooms. We’d see him in the morning. The hotel was… interesting. We got to the front desk to check in by walking across the cinder blocks on the floor, as the first floor was a little lake all its own. Like a lake fractal. Lake, at every level of magnification.

We were given a room on the fourth floor, walkup, obviously, and assured that the water ran several times a day. How very convenient. It happened to be on right then, so we filled up a couple of buckets so we could flush the toilet.

Dorothy was a little beat up by all of this, so I ventured out into town to find some victuals and return with dinner. When I got back she was shaving her legs in one of the buckets, a fierce, desperate attempt to bring order and civilization to a disordered, uncivilized situation. Perhaps the single most Dorothy moment ever, and the picture of her that will probably flash before my eyes as I’m dying.

Sure as shootin’, our driver picks us up at seven. We leave our luggage safely minded on the first floor cinder blocks and make our way. We get our promised thirty minutes at Tikal, which, on the one hand, awesome, but on the other, sad. We deeply regretted being unable to tour Tikal properly.

OK, we head back to our hotel to pick up our luggage and go to the airport, which is right on the mainland side of the causeway. Except the causeway is blocked by the military, who explain that part of the causeway had collapsed since we left three and a half hours earlier, and no one was allowed on while it was being rebuilt.

I’m not at all sure what our driver said, but we were allowed to pass, and maneuvered delicately around the skiploader, with only the lakeside wheels in the water. We fetch our luggage, inch back across the causeway, and get dropped at the airport with moments to spare. They should have been ready to call boarding.

If our plane had been there.

But it wasn’t. It was late. As it turned out, six hours late. We sat in this tiny provincial airport for six more hours. We could have had a full day at Tikal.

*sigh*

We did get our three days at Ambergris Cay in Belize, in a hut right on the beach, just a few minutes to the reef. That was exactly the tonic we required after the tsurris of our aborted Tikal visit. It was glorious. Although we got to and from the Cay on a de Havilland Otter seaplane, which made Dorothy positively nauseous.

But because we’re apparently incapable of learning, we had one last gasp of stupid before we returned home.

We flew from Belize City to Cancun, and could have done the simple, obvious thing and stayed in Cancun overnight to take our flight the next day. But Cancun is boring, and Tulum, this was long before it got built up like it is today, was only a 90 minute drive south. We rented a car so we could spend the day on the beach at Tulum, overnight there, drive up in the morning and make our flight, no problem.

What could possibly go wrong?

We drove to Tulum, parked at a hotel by the highway, checked in, dropped our luggage off, and got into our rental car to drive the short distance to the beach and the ruins. Which car would not start.

We were able to get locals to push us and got the car started. With no promise that, if we turned it off again that it would restart, or that we could draw enough folks to get a push start. So we returned to the hotel. Dorothy grabbed the luggage while I gunned the engine in neutral.

We drove back to Cancun with my foot never leaving the gas. There wasn’t a lot between Tulum and Cancun in those days, so the car dying on that road would be bad. In the dark, since it was an unlit highway. And, because there was clearly some headroom left for agita, the most driving rainstorm I have ever, to this day, driven in. The rain was coming horizontally.

We made it back to the airport to return the car, where much arguing ensued. All of which I lost. First, I had nicked a bumper on a high curb, making a U-turn to get into the airport without letting off the gas. And of course, when the agent went out to check the car, it started right up, undercutting my entire argument.

Fine. Whatever. We had a cabby take us to the nearest place with an empty room, and we made our flight home without any additional drama, self-inflicted or otherwise.

We’ve been to Guatemala three times now, because we love it so much, but on this adventure I’d rather go to places we’ve never been before. But we just discussed, when we do the South America portion of our travels, stopping off at Tikal on our way back. 30 minutes didn’t do it.