Travel Tales from Planet Backpacker

   Even though I later went back and deleted the “Bring me the head of the monkey god” comment from my blog, I’m superstitious enough to believe that this flying monster might try fiddling with my flight, especially here on his home turf in India.

   Back home, I’m not much of a believer in sympathetic magic -- like where poking a pin in a rag doll can give someone a pain in the rear. But here in the world I call Planet Backpacker, things like voodoo, evil eyes and dancing gods with six arms seem to have more currency. It’s a magical world, after all, and certainly a place riven with myth, mayhem and chance.

   And it’s not wise to cross Hanuman. In Indian mythology he is a fearless, implacable foe -- a regular badass monkey monster, if you will.  Clever and cunning, he is devoted to Lord Rama, one of the chief gods of the Hindu pantheon.  

  Long ago, in a war against the demon king Ravana on the isle of Sri Lanka, the monkey god was sent to the Himalayas to find a magic plant growing on the side of a mountain which could help win the war. Unable to find the plant, Hanuman simply tore a Himalayan peak from the earth and carried the mountain back to Lord Rama.

   So, I certainly hope the monkey god doesn’t have an internet connection, much less an interest in reading my blog.

   As it happens, the plane lands just fine and the worst of it is navigating the abysmally bad airport in Bombay (aka Mumbai), where a bored customs officer insists on tearing through all of the gifts I bought in India.

   “What’s this?” he says, fingering two small brass cymbals connected by a length of rawhide.  Purchased from a Chinese peddler at a flea market in Goa, the cymbals are rimmed with the signs of the zodiac.

   “They’re for playing music,” I say, demonstrating.  I give the cymbals a gentle rap and the ringing hum of a vibration fills the air.

   Big mistake, because the officer spends the next five minutes enchanting his colleagues with his skill at clinging the cymbals.  The steam of an intolerable pressure starts building in my brain, wondering when this idiot is going to let me go so I can catch the next plane to Delhi.

   But here on Planet Backpacker, you don’t mess with customs officers or airport security men unless you wish bring down a world of hurt and hassle.

   “You are musician, eh?” he says at last, pointing to the half-size guitar on my shoulder.

   “Yes. I use these cymbals to start the show,” I reply. “You cling them together and then you start to play.”

   He gazes at the cymbals in his hands -- obviously, he’d love to have them, and if no one was crowding over my shoulder, perhaps he would.  But by now the long line behind me has grown restive and he hands them back with a sad sense of resignation.  “Go,” he waves.  “And have a good trip. Come back to India someday, yes?” 

   Yes, yes I will, I think, walking away.  But I cross my psychic fingers with the promise because there’s so much of the world to see. Other gods, other people... Who can say? It could be Latvia next, or Mauritania or Japan. For all I know, India will have to do without me.  

The American Remnants

Jan. 8, 2008

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

   A ruined man in his 50s walks up to me at the American Remnants Museum in Saigon and asks to shake my hand.  It seems rude not to, given that he has lost both arms above the elbow, so I grasp the tender stub of his right arm.

   “Where are you from?” he asks.

   I look him in the eye and notice that his right orb is a wet snail, boiled away in the blast that took off his arms.

   “America.”

   “Can you buy a book to help me out?”  He has a stack of photocopied guidebooks under his left arm.

   “No thanks.”

   I walk off and he calls out “Happy New Year” after me.  We’re on the brink of the Year of the Rat in southeast Asia.

  It’s a kneejerk reaction on my part, due to a mix of horror and my resistance to being manipulated with a guilt trip.  But of course I feel mean and like shit almost immediately and walk back to try to find him. What would it hurt to buy a book from an old vet?  

   But of course, he’s gone.

   Amputees hang around all of the tourist sites in Vietnam.  That, and people who suffered horrible birth defects as a result of our spraying Agent Orange all over the countryside -- a chemical defoliant meant to clear the jungle of trees, but which also affected the people who breathed its toxic fumes or drank its poisoned waters. These include men with arms the size of newborn infants, or geeks twisted into knots and lying on the pavement.  When Americans get on their high horse about Saddam Hussein using poison gas to kill his enemies in Iraq, they forget our own chemical war crimes with Agent Orange.

   Evidence of the efficacy of Agent Orange in twisting humanity into monsters is found at the museum.  Along a dark wall, you come face-to-face with pickled birth-defect babies floating ghastly and silent in jars of honey-colored brine.

    The American Remnants Museum used to be called the American Atrocities Museum. When relations softened between the countries it was renamed the American War Crimes Museum.  Then, in the spirit of political correctness, the “Remnants.”

   And maybe that’s the best way to put it, considering that armless vet hanging around the ice cream stand.

   Here are heroic photos of American troops in combat, taken by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers.  But there are also photos of U.S. soldiers torturing or beheading prisoners, or dragging people to death behind tanks.  There are photos of napalm and white phosphorous victims with their faces melted away. Photos of little children, begging American soldiers for the lives of their parents.  

   Here too are photos of the victims of the My Lai Massacre, and of nearby My Khe, where on March, 16, 1968, up to 504 people, including women, children and old folks were systematically murdered by U.S. troops in an orgy of torture, rape and mutilation. 

   A BBC News report from the time offered this take on the massacre:

   “Soldiers went berserk, gunning down unarmed men, women, children and babies. Families which huddled together for safety in huts or bunkers were shown no mercy. Those who emerged with hands held high were murdered. ... Elsewhere in the village, other atrocities were in progress. Women were gang raped; Vietnamese who had bowed to greet the Americans were beaten with fists and tortured, clubbed with rifle butts and stabbed with bayonets. Some victims were mutilated with the signature “C Company” carved into the chest. By late morning word had got back to higher authorities and a cease-fire was ordered. My Lai was in a state of carnage. Bodies were strewn through the village.”

   The bodies strewn in the fields of My Lai aren’t propaganda photos shot by the Vietnamese.  They appeared in American magazines, such as Life, and in U.S. newspapers.  These images appeared regularly in the U.S. press in the ‘60s and ‘70s and were a major reason American opinion turned against the war.  As a result, the U.S. military instituted rules to control the free-ranging press in future wars, “embedding” reporters with the troops in Iraq with a show of allowing access to the war, while keeping their cameras and questions far from the action.

   But the Vietnamese unwittingly deal themselves a riposte at the museum, which features a replica of the “tiger cages” of Con Son Island, where Viet Cong prisoners were packed into cells, often awaiting torture.  Open grates at the top of the cells made it possible for the jailers to urinate and defecate on the crowded prisoners, on top of whatever else they cared to throw in.  

   One teenager was tortured by having his legs amputated one joint at a time over several months -- an old favorite in Asia, going back to the days of pirates and evil emperors.  Legend has it he refused to give up the names of Viet Cong members of his family and village, if he ever knew of any in the first place.

   Of course, the Viets neglect to mention that the tiger cages were maintained by their own countrymen in what was then South Vietnam, and not by the Americans.  In fact, it was a visit by two U.S. Congressmen, Augustus Hawkins and William Anderson, in 1970, that exposed abuses at the prison in Life magazine and the U.S. press, prompting the Vietnamese to clean up their act.

   But overall, the American Remnants Museum is a grim place with a grim message: war is hell.

The Isles of Aran

   The Aran Islands are the real dear old Ireland -- spines of stone fences criss-cross the hills -- bleak, gray and peaceful as the grave.  The boat rocks with a lunatic violence on the crossing, and every roll feels like we're going to tip & flip beneath the waves. 

    But once we land, i find a spooky campsite by the sea with what looks to be an old abandoned bathhouse.  Yet inside is a free hot shower and bathroom -- it's a suite at the Hobo Ritz.  And boy, do i need that shower.

   Above the camp is an ancient ring fort -- 2,000 years old, with a 15th century castle plunked in the center.  Man, this is the real shit, i think. The good part of the stay though, is hanging out at the pub that night, watching World Cup soccer on the telly, listening to the buttery Gaelic language of the locals, and chatting with a local musician.  

   Seamus invites me outside for a smoke and we talk shop.  I mention that i like the song, "The Hills of Athenry," about a young man who is transported to Australia on a prison ship for stealing crops to save his baby from starvation. I have played it myself at open mics in pubs back home, and have even had tears well up in my eyes when singing it.

   "By a lonely castle wall, I heard a young girl calling: 

   Michael, they are taking you away.

   For you stole Trevalyn's corn,

   So our babe might see the morn.

   Now a prison ship is waiting on the bay."

   Seamus makes a face. "I hate that fookin' song," he says -- "Everyone here plays it to death."  

   I guess it's the "Margaritaville" of Ireland.  He isn't too keen on Irish music in general. 

  "Irish music is full of self-pity and sad songs about what the British did to us," he says. "It's time to get over it -- it's time to move on."

   It's a tough bunch of people on these islands.  The men do whatever work they can find -- fishing, building, playing guitar in the pubs -- whatever.  Every pub in Ireland seems to have some poor slave playing a guitar...

   Fifteen hundred years ago, this was literally the End of the World -- no one knew what was over the sea beyond the Aran Isles until the Vikings discovered Iceland.  Perhaps they saw the smoke of volcanic eruptions hundreds of miles to the northwest and surmised there was land there -- that's how the Polynesians found Tahiti.