A Bit in Bollywood

“London Dreams” will be in theaters in August, but probably not at a theater near you. That may not be a bad thing, as if you saw it, you might see my face in the concert scene at Wimbley Stadium. Now, you may be thinking, Karen, you’re in Mumbai, not London, but those clever Bollywood types found a way to fool the audiences by hiring 29 dirty backpacker Westerners to stand in the front row. Now, you may think, ahhh, that solves it, but these folks went farther and hired 60 foreign students from the universities in Pune to also come and fill in the front of the audience – so there we are, Westerners (aka white), Afghans, Iranians and some others, trying to block out the other few hundred Indians filling the stadium set.

We started filming at about 8pm and didn’t finish until after three in the morning – watching the actors (one VERY famous, the others working their way up into Bollywood tabloid stardom) lip-sync the same song, the Russian dancers (supposedly from London as well) dance and the audience in a hysteric rage that this very “studly” (he wishes) Indian lead singer make it to the big times in Europe. Oh, and he gets the girl, too. See, now you don’t have to see it.

So, I said to one student from Afghanistan, sorry we’re attacking your country. Oh, he says, sorry we’re attacking your troops. That settled, he told me all about the different actors and even how many lights made up the stage’s backdrop. We had a lot of free time. But, as the foreigner extras, we were treated to a catered dinner (at 1am) with all of the staff and actors and even got paid 500 Rupees ($10!).

Like Hollywood of old, the studio was way out in the scrub brush countryside, so it was almost two hours drive back to the city and finally, as the morning sun was coming up over the Gateway to India, and the Taj Hotel – now fixed from the November 26 attacks, it was time for bed.

I’m too old to be a screaming fan at a concert, but I am quite an actor, in case you do end up renting it someday. But I do know that being a big star isn’t all the glamor we claim. It’s boring and repetitive and not something I would want to do day in and out. But for a fun time when visiting Mumbai, I do highly suggest it.


The set - lights on the back of the stage and green screens to fill in the set


That's a rap - the lead actor is the man in the background with a grey sweater shaking hands

What's grosser than gross?

Put it this way, Manila lies. Their maps say the museums are on x street, but are really in a shopping mall.... really. And the shopping malls say they sell Birkenstocks, a shoe I can wear. And it's a nice mall with fancy stores and three stories and real legit (not like a street market or anything)with Starbucks, the Gap, Mark and Spencers, etc... but Birks! Yippee! I'm saved!

I buy them. I wear them. Now I can't walk. Literally. They weren't real. Now my feet are covered in pus-filled blisters that won't go away (it's been 7 days) even though the shoes have, and now I sit hobbled in Singapore and no way to go anywhere and feel better about all of it. So, since I made everyone see pictures of human bones, why not blistered, disgusting, horrid, deformed feet. DAMN YOU MANILA!!!!

Philippines Cock Fight

Walking down a dirt road, you can hear the cheers. It's Sunday afternoon and the Filipinos don't play football. Must be...it is... cock fights. The arena is full of men with the glass encased ring. The betting starts with the bookies waving and gesturing to their clients. In the ring the two cocks size one another up, line to line, then fluff their feathers with a friendly, as the two owners hold on to their tails and let the adrenaline start to pump. The sheath is removed from the knife on the claw. Betting stops. The crown quiets. The two cocks are placed on their line, then released, owners stepping back.

They size each other up. They strut. Then fly at one another, meeting mid air, feathers flying. Wings beat, crowds cheer. The referee picks them up and face them off again at mid ring. They continue until one falls submissive on the ground. Dead, almost dead, playing dead, doesn't mater. After a three count, it is a marked looser.


Bets are paid. Money is thrown into the ring. New men with new birds enter, odds ore determined, bets are placed and we start again.

Cambodia

There are two main events to Cambodia and both can bring you to tears, though for opposite reasons. In the modern times we are introduced to the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh where the bones on the victims are still scattered around excavated mass graves and the skulls are on display less we forget what exactly genocide means. “Should I show the pictures?” I ask then wonder why those who stay at home should be sheltered from this reality. It is like a repeat of the Nazi’s with the intellects, and past government officers along with their families first being imprisoned in S-21, where interrogation can mean anything an evil mind can imagine. It ends at the Killing Fields, not far from the city, then abandoned, where bullets were saved by using machetes. The Cambodia press this week ran an article of the identical thing happening now in the Congo. In Cambodia this happened in 1975 to 1979. Somebody hasn’t gotten the message yet.

The Killing Fields display sign says it best: “How hurtful those victims were when they got beaten with canes heads of hoes and stabbed with knives or swords before their last breath went out. How bitter they were when seeing their beloved children, wives, husbands, brothers or sisters were seized and tightly bound before being taken to their mass grave! While waiting for their turn to come and share the same tragic lot.”

Six hours north (with a stop to buy fried grasshopper or tarantella snacks) is the town of Siam Reap, and where the capital is full of sadness and dirt, with the wide, hot roads full of scooters and road side vendors, this city is ablaze with fine hotels, spas, night life, and anything your wallet can imagine, with the price tag to match. Siam Reap is the gateway to the temples of Angkor Wat, a complex of ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples that take days to explore. While people know it from the scenes in Tomb Raider, I can only assure you that the movie can not do it justice and the beauty and silence of the sites (especially when you are not being bombarded with children begging you to buy bracelets or books, or groups of Korean and German tourists chatting away) is an experience I will always take with me. Taking a bicycle there on my third day, I followed dirt paths that took me to the Death Gate, where the lack of road kept all of the tourists away, and down to small villages of people who live in the shadows of temples, and in the darkened corridors of both Angkor Wat and Bayon without another person to be seen or heard. Like the Great Wall, it is possible to be alone in the world’s most trafficked sites.

So these two sides of Cambodia have made a new side, where children stop to wave at foreigners on the Mekong, where the kids selling on the streets speak five languages and are quick to join into your conversations and tell their own jokes, and land mine victims play the most enchanting music to make a living. Mostly, though, its where people are happy, generally, all around happy and glad to welcome you.

Just a photo I like - Bayon Wat, Angkor Thom, Siem Reap, Cambodia

Saigon

Something happened in Vietnam that hasn’t happened often – friendship around every corner, welcoming neighbors at coffee shops and restaurants who welcome you into their conversation and accept you into their plans. Tonight’s dinner was with a Greek and two Israelis. The couple are full-time tourists, they said, with 5 years on the road traveling by motorbike and staying for months at each location. He works as a stockbroker and is free of desk commitments. Kostos the Greek works from his home country but has had a lifetime of living throughout Europe, Australia and Egypt. LTD the couple said – Living the Dream we are and then debated what made a person happy. There seems a clear inverse relation between happiness and wealth, as the farther one is into poverty, the more genuine the smile. The Vietnamese seem to smile quite a bit.

Today I smiled quite a bit, but through my hidden guilt. I visited Saigon’s number one tourist attraction (there aren’t many here) the Cu Chi Tunnels, where the Northern Vietnamese soldiers – the patriots – dug far into the earth and survived for ten years despite the invasion from the foreigners (aka Americans). These patriots were awarded the “American Killer Hero” award for their hard work in their country’s unification, fighting by day, farming by night to feed their comrades. The tunnels are small and narrow and one more time I have found a clear advantage of being short. I was first in and scooted my way through like a local (vs. the larger Westerners who had to crawl) and found myself alone in a dark tunnel that curled under the earth and around corners and B-52 bomb craters. A tourist today doesn’t go far, but the chance to be alone and hidden in the Saigon land was a treat , and fun, and gave me a real, genuine smile.

Saigon’s War Remnants Museum brought far less smiles and as I toured it with Vera from Germany, we had the opportunity to share ideas of national guilt. Agent Orange and Napalm took center stage of the third hall: The Vestiges of War Crimes and Aftermaths. Historical Truths, in Hall 1, left some questions as to the bias of history, but the photos in Hall 2 from war corespondents who died in the field made it irrelevant.

Will I tour Iraq in 35 years?

The Best Dressed Backpacker Bar Either Side of the Pacific

Hoi An, Vietnam, New Years fashion show brings everyone out in hand-made tailored shirts and dresses draped delicately down to perfect size and fit. The night rains on- the river so high that the first road and part way up the next block is mid-calf, but not to worry since tailored made clothes roll up fine, and if one needs new shoes, they can easily be made the next day. And if your fine Vietnamese silk stains, add a shirt to your tab and it will be delivered as requested.

Each town seems to have a “thing” for the tourists that sets it aside, weather it be a beach or museum, war site or waterfall. Hoi An, though sports a colonial old town, ancient Hindu ruins and a white sand beach, it is most known for the 200+ tailors who replace tourist shops. They are the tourist shops, for this is what one does here. Choose a style, choose your material, and go in for numerous fittings between visits to cafes and tea shops. It rained. It poured rain for days – I haven’t seen the sun since Boxing Day, and it didn’t let up long enough to even take a photo without the blur on the lens. But don your plastic rain coat long enough to make your fitting, and you will have something dry to wear to the New Year’s fashion show and well into the next year.