Travel – Page 3 – Robins Have Wings

25 November, 201225 November, 2012

Street Corner Gods and Th Sukhumvit

This is how I ended my first full day in Bangkok. I come to be at this Traditional Thai massage shop because of my high school chum, Lyle. She’s been living in Bangkok for 11 years with her husband Peter and their three boys, Nathan, Alex and Iain. After reading my blog earlier this year and reconnecting at our high school reunion, Lyle extended an invitation to visit and you know that I can’t turn down an invitation to travel. So here I am, pictured above, getting a foot massage, followed by an intense neck rub and arm and shoulder stretching.

We spent the day exploring her neighborhood off one of Bangkok’s main thoroughfares, Th Sukhumvit, along with my friend Nancee. There’s a Traditional Thai massage shop on almost every corner mixed in with “salon and spas” offering oil massages better known as massages with happy endings. Lyle and I spotted one professorial gentleman and presumably happy customer rubbing the small of the back of a Thai massuese before strolling away from one such salon. Lyle says this is the norm in her neighborhood where the famed Cowboy Soi, a street lined with strip clubs and known well by sex vacationers to Thailand, is a couple of blocks down the street.

The massage spots, traditional or not, are not to be outnumbered by the Hindi gods and spirit houses littered with Buddhist offerings in front of every business along Sukhumvit. Some are quite elaborate and some are quite simple. Lyle explains the way Thai people never miss a beat as they acknowledge these spiritual hot spots with a wave of a hand over their head or a small prayerful bow, known as wai, then go about their day. We see this happen in the short-time that we stand before a multi-armed goddess encased in a gilded pagoda.

Beyond the buildings with gods and spirit houses are the street vendors. They’ve thought of everything they possibly can to sell from sunglasses and fake polo shirts to Cialis and dildos for the sex tourist who has left these essential items at home. Personally, I think that if you have to resort to purchasing Cialis on the street, you’ve reached a new low. But there is one place in Bangkok that makes it very clear that sex tourists are not welcome.

The Atlanta Hotel on Sukhumvit is a historic treasure in Bangkok and does not entertain the sex business in any way shape or form. Its policy is clearly stated outside its door, while its web site declares the establishment as a bastion of wholesomeness and culturally sensitive tourism, adding:

The Atlanta is against sex tourism.

Sex tourism is exploitative, socially damaging and culturally demeaning:
those who want to buy sex should do so in their own country.

Tourism is not about going on a rampage through other people’s country: those who cannot go abroad without behaving badly should stay home.

SEX TOURISTS ARE NOT WELCOME

SONY DSC — Lyle and I as sex tourists. (Yeah, right.)

Doesn’t get any clearer than that. The Atlanta is a quirky little place. It feels lost in another time and place and in a good way. Carved wooden daschunds greet you at the entrance of the art deco foyer and waitresses in the hotel restaurant wear name tags like in an 1950s diner. The pool, Thailand’s first hotel pool, is like a weird wonderland and tiny zoo, starring a family of terrapins and clutch of multicolored cats. But the best thing about the Atlanta is the food. It’s a little quirky too. Ever had a spicy fruit salad? Pad thai in an egg wrapper? Me, neither. It was good. The eggplant in Penang curry was also a hit on a menu covering breakfast, lunch and dinner with a wealth of vegetarian options to boot.

We wanted to sleep on the restaurants red vinyl covered booths after we ate, but we continued our tour of Sukhumvit instead and find ourselves at the Emporium on the corner of Sukhumvit and Soi 24. It’s a massive mall in the tradition of Paris’ Galleries Lafayette with floors of stores you know like Guess and Zara along with a department store topped by a glorious gourmet grocery and food court. Then there are stores you may not know like the super cute It’s Happened to Be a Closet. OK the title of the store makes no sense, but it is a little slice of funky fashion fabulousness. Imagine if Anthropologie added pedicures in smooth leather chairs and served high-end food and wine. That’s this place. Hot, right? Lyle tells us that we have to go to the original store in a rowhouse in Siam Square. We take note and make a plan to visit it later during our trip.

Now, we are on a mission to end our day with a foot massage. But not before we snap photos of a transgendered man dancing in a dress on stilts at a pet adoption fair or the lovely park dedicated to Thailand’s queen. At Technique Massage on Soi 23 off Sukhumvit, which happens to be Lyle’s favorite escape, we settle into reclining blue chairs to have our tired feet rubbed.

7 July, 201111 November, 2012

Smarty Pants on Parade

There are lots of smart people hanging around Oxford, in case you didn’t know. The place is lousy with them–the confidently smart, the unassumingly smart, the old and smart, the young and smart. My friend Helen is one of these smart people. She has just written a book, “Keeping the Nation’s House: Domestic Management and the Making of Modern China,” on the role of women and home economics in forming modern-day China. She’s a tenured Chinese history professor at Virginia Tech University and she’s a research associate for one of the leading academics on Chinese history. This is how I come to attend a lecture on western journalists covering China. It interests me too, given my journalism background. The panel is made up of two journalists and two academics who discuss the challenges of covering China accurately and trying to avoid spreading stereotypes about the nation and its people. Covering any topic honestly and accurately is the goal of any journalist, but covering a place as complex and with a history as vast as China’s appears to be particulary difficult, and few do it well, according to this panel. We are in a room full of equally smart undergraduate and graduate students from China who ask all the questions we want to ask and crowd the panelists as if they are rock stars once the lecture is over.

After the lecture, Helen and I join her equally accomplished friends and colleagues for Sichuan Chinese food in an building that looks like a lecture hall called The Old School. Her friends Amy, Jen, and Lily share her interest in China and they order from the menu in fluent Chinese. It is impressive and an impressive array of food arrives at our table. It is all spicy and delicious and we cool our mouths with Tsingtao beers.

It’s the end of a day full of marveling at the history smart people at Oxford. Earlier, I went to the Ashmolean, the oldest public museum in the UK, chock full of artifacts from early European, Asian and Middle Eastern cultures. I was stopped by Powhatan’s Mantle. Powhatan was the chief of the Powhatans when John Smith arrived at Jamestown. There is debate as to whether or not Powhatan’s mantle was a cloak or a wall hanging, but it reminded me of Aboriginal art, circles of beads surrounded beaded images of two animals, maybe deer, on either side of a man. The museum did a great job of linking the intersection of cultures, art and religion through trade and wars that brought these diverse peoples in contact. It’s why Spanish tiles look like Morrocan tiles, which also look like Turkish tiles. I couldn’t make it though the entire four floors of the collection. I found myself practically running though the exhibit rooms before I had to meet Helen for lunch in the museum’s cafe.

The smarty pants tour continued through a few more of Oxford’s colleges and sites. We wove our way through trongs of tourists and prospective Oxford students along the way, making our way to the courtyard of the Bodleian Library, one of the world’s oldest public libraries. At New College, we marvelled at its beautiful gardens. Due to a shout out from my former colleague Beth, we stopped at St. Edmund’s Hall, the last of the medieval halls, which actually looked quite modern and quaint at the same time. It reminded us most of our alma mater, Swarthmore, somehow. I think Magdalen College was one of my favorites of the bunch, its chapel boasted a replica of DaVinci’s Last Supper. The cloisters were bursting with white hydrangeas against a vibrantly green lawn. One of England’s famed red phone booths was a pleasant surprise along with a deer park, where the deer put on a little show for us. Legend has it that the deer here inspired C.S. Lewis to include the fawn character in his Narnia chronicles. We stopped for scones and a pot of tea at the country’s oldest coffeehouse, maybe the world’s first, Queen’s Lane, where apparently Tolkien, Lewis and other liked to have literary chats. And, we ended our tour at Queen’s College, site of the lecture, which had a very Baroque feel. It’s chapel featured a guilded eagle, chandeliers and a ceiling painting ala the Sistine Chapel. Having seen smartness through the ages and walked along the path of past smarties, I am now feeling rather smart myself.

10 June, 201113 November, 2012

Travel Itinerary: See Sade, Party with Pippa, Write My Own Viking Saga

Before the blogging begins, I think I should explain the title of my web outpost. Robins have wings is a pretty obvious factual statement. For me, it is a declaration and a reminder not to stay settled or grounded for too long. Having the name Robin illicits all kinds of pop culture and nature references–Rockin’ Robin, Robin Redbreast… I’d like to think of my name as a self-fufilling prophecy. I was meant to take flight, explore, take unexpected journeys near and far. So, this blog will chronicle these adventures.

Speaking of which, I have over a month of adventure planned for the summer and I leave tomorrow! First, Montreal where I will see my style icon, Sade, in concert at the Montreal Jazz Festival and sample poutin, then on to Oxford, England to visit my high school and college chum Helen. We plan to venture to London Town where I hope to party with Pippa and make it into a British tabloid. I may see Wimbeldon, even though I will have missed all tennis action at the All England Club. Finally, I fly to Denmark for hot dogs,egg chairs, Viking history a la “Game of Thrones” and a lovely beach getaway with a new Danish tennis friend. You can trace each destination on the map below, pan right and left. Follow along and try to keep up if you can.