India Round-the-World/John 2 of 7
India Round-the-World, July 2 - November 8, 1971
SUNDAY, JULY 18. [[[11:15, 7/23]]] Up early again, trying to shit, but only manage to squeeze out two tiny peas. Lavish sex with the purple lotion that save us on Baby Magic, 8AM comes and goes without breakfast coming up, so we call at 8:20 and both change our minds and have American breakfasts, and Butterfly is very disappointed with us. Oh, Friday we took the first of the malaria pills, also. [[[And just now find I've been in Taiwan two days and haven't had Gamma Globulin for hepatitis, and this is a hepatitis area!]]] Figure that the temples in town will be very crowded, and read in the Kyoto visitor's magazine that Enryakuji on Mt. Hiei is very elaborate, so we get detailed instructions from the desk on how to get there, and we catch a taxi to the Shijo-Omija subway station, have the attendant punch out our 50 yen ticket on the machines we don't understand, and ride out to our first transfer point, sending three little girls across from us into gales of laughter just looking at us (and John's wearing his short shorts). Get sent running across the busy street to the other train for Sakamoto, and we left at 10 and got to Sakamoto about 11, even on a good fast connection. Out and walk up the hill past very nice private homes, and get to the temples that are National Treasures at the bottom of the hill. Across the great old stone bridges and up to the deserted areas of old temples, and it starts to rain slightly, accenting the running moats around each and every precinct. All roofs have the strangely pleasing asymmetry to the roofs, but the wood is all so drab it's hard to see one as being more valuable than another. See each one in order, and start up the steps for the ones on the hill, but it's just a tiny path and John's been saying he wants to conserve his energy because he's weak from diarrhea, so I say we should turn back. He want to go on. Climb higher and the path gets steeper, and we're rising over Lake Biwa, far above the Biwako Hotel, above the playing field from which we can heard the shouts and the drums of the baseball game, and it's very sweaty going in the dripping forest, but John says, "If there's another road up the mountains, it'll just go to the top anyway," so I continue up, and up, without a hope of finding anything, but just before the top I round a bend and there are thick old beams of latticework supporting TWO temples out from the sides of the hill, and we climb the grassy steps of dressed rock lugged up from far below, and peep in through the barred doors of the old sanctuaries. Dim dust is all we see, and set one door crookedly open by pushing too hard against it. It's noon by now, so we're quickly down in the rain, listening to the crows and mockingbirds calling humanly from the trees, and we're quickly to the bottom and over to the tramway for the top of Mount Hiei. It's scheduled for 12:30, but the rain suddenly comes down harder, there are bolts of lightning that flick the safety devices in the building and put the lights out for a bit, and the railway is delayed till 1PM. I sit and read "Waldo" while John looks around the place, particularly at the lovely legs of the schoolboy runners stuck in the station with us. One of the three schoolgirls screams at each flash and cowers under her sweater crying, at each thunderclap, much to the amusement of everyone but her. I read on and on, and finally about 1:30 the tram starts up, and we've been eating ice cream and chocolate to feed ourselves not very well. Into the rusty car with humidity fogged windows and start out with a jounce, and pause to take on some last minute passengers. Then above the trees and very quickly go higher than we'd climbed on the hill, and the sheer drops on either side of the car are quite spectacular. With the cog railways up either mountainside, the original temple must have been very hard to get to. But there are no rocks to be seen: evergreen and leafy trees cling to every precipice, and the contours and folds to the steep hills are delineated in kinds of trees: it's fascinating. Up and up to an impossible point and then the other car passes and we're only halfway to the top. Through two tunnels of some length, over trestles of breathtaking height over the tall treetops far below, and jounce to a stop at the top, at about 2500 feet. Past a few snack bars to a winding road past painted signs about the temples, and the sounds of the huge gong reverberate through the forest like a sound out of a Blackwood story. Through the tori gates to the precincts of the mountaintop temples, pay the bill, and I get more requests for photographs, and I'm not even in kimono. Up the stairs to the first temple and it's perfectly pretty and quite normal. The next is located dramatically up a long flight of stairs, and then we're higher to try our own hand at the enormous bell. Then up to a beautiful temple in which three monks are solemnly chanting to the smell of burning punk, and a feeling of timelessness comes over me as the rain begins to come down in a solid veil over the hilltop. No one moves from one place to another, and the only sound is the infinite patter of each raindrop. That cools the air finally, and we sit on the steps and watch the puddles teem with rain. When it stops we climb higher to another place, follow signs to Naintado, but somehow never get there, but take a side trip to an overlook of the mist-wrapped hills, beautiful in their silence, and John says that NOW he understands Japanese scrolls. Higher and seem to head toward a parking lot at the top, and gasp to the top to find a huge observation deck area, and a row of shops, and the actual summit of the hill. I want to see the view, and John angers me beyond reason by refusing to climb the 200 steps to the top. I fume up the last bit for an incredible view over the whole of Lake Biwa, with shelves of clouds closer to the lake than to me, and range after range of hills in the blue distance. The other way, the entire city of Kyoto with the enormous dark rectangle of the Old Imperial Palace is equally enthralling. Down too quickly to get back to John, who says he feels he MUST conserve his energy, and we agree we want to see the oldest building: Componjundo. Down the hill again, walking fast, and get to it at 4PM. It IS dark and huge and smelly and remarkably mysterious inside, and the sheer SCALE and AGE of the place is hard to conceive of. It closes at 4:30, just as we finish with it, and climb the hill and the gate to see it from above, then try to hitchhike back to the top to return to Kyoto by way of Yase, but the Japanese don't seem to accept hitchhikers, so we walk back down the hill, getting to the tram station just five minutes after the 5PM descent. Sit around and read and eat horrible Meiji "Pickups" that taste like puffed cotton and John has coffee and I have sweet icing on raisin toast and read, and down at 5:30. There's a bus waiting at the station that will take us all the way to the transfer point, which is fine, and it goes blaring its horn through all the small towns in the area. The train is in quickly and we're back to the station and to the hotel at 6:30, in time for a bath before the Suehiro dinner at 7:30. Walk down and get to our private room, but the Shab Shab bowl is a Pyrex dish and the waitress is a hardened middle-aged woman with no charm, and it's a good thing it's only 800 yen for the meal, because there's not much meat and we don't even have enough vegetables. Out at 8:30 and we're determined to find some place of interest. Walk Shijo and the Gion area and there are dim bars, but they're all straight. Follow two guys we'd seen before, but they end in a small shop that's nothing. Find the river and the way down to it, but again everyone's straight and nothing seems to be doing. Wander north and pass two heavily chaperoned geishas coming out of the clubby looking places along there, but still nothing in the line of a gay bar. John was flabbergasted nest Friday to find we HAD a card with a gay bar AND MOVIE on it for Kyoto, but forgot about it and didn't find it until Taipei. I'm tired of walking about and am even willing to go back to the hotel and let John wander around, but he comes back with me at 11:15, and they'd even put a night man on so we could get back as late as midnight. We agree it's just like having a curfew in school. Sleep at 11:30PM.
MONDAY, JULY 19. [[[It's 12:20AM, and I've GOT to stop, but I've ALSO got to finish this book tomorrow and get closer to DATE]]] [[[4:45PM 7/24]]] Up early again and have a fairly good bowel movement. Sex and breakfast, and we decide that since we have a Katsura Detached Palace permit for 2PM, we might as well spend all our time in the temples of the far west. Take a taxi to the subway on Kawaramachi, and buy two tickets to Arishiyama, but since they don't HAVE Arashiyama written on them, only the name of the train line, John makes a horrible mistake when he shows the tickets WITHOUT saying "Arashiyama" at the same time, and the guy says yes. We get on the train and stop two or three times underground, then sweep out over the outskirts of the city on an express run. The ride seems longer and longer, and then I see the towers of the Expo site and John tells me HOW he checked this was the right train, and I resign myself to looking at all the countryside on the way to Osaka. The train finally stops at Juen at 10:15, after we got on at 9:30, and we wait for a local back to Awaji, then switch to an express. Come back north and decide to take the train to the south station, strangely named Arashiama, and we're there about 11AM. Out of the station and there's a large map where I locate the characters of the Tenryuji Temple we're looking for, check it with a Japanese tourist couple who express interest that I can apparently read Japanese characters, and indicate a nearer temple to John, whose name we never DO find out. Up an enormous three flights of stairs to a closed dilapidated minor temple, or side temple in the process of being repaired, and a new annex with a solitary lady picking away on what looks like a typewriter. Down immediately and across the roaring Hozu River, just below where they shoot the rapids, and see what I take to be a sign toward the south shore of the river for the Daitokuji Temple, and across the gray green water with the neat sideways-falls across the whole bridge embankment, and pass a large number of resort-looking hotels and restaurants along the north bank, including a branch of the Kyoto Hotel. Back up the side road past lovely country villas, and someone practicing a Japanese tuba in a coffee shop, and into the wide gates of Tenryuji. I go up to look into the first temple and there's a badly conditioned black and white dragon flying across the ceiling that John doesn't see because he won't climb the steps. Toward the main temple complex and there are people padding around in green slippers on the pavilion, so we walk around the outside of the Chinese character lake, looking at the light and shade and moss and ferns, and then I pay for the slippers and pad around the open rooms, causing the blatant rattle of the push-button explanation. This may be the RUIN of the Japanese temple enjoyment! Sit and look at the lake in the steamy heat, and look at the old-man paintings on the screens and the fish swimming in the lake and the over-emphasized "rocks of heaven" in the lake. Around to side pavilions, enduring the stupid laughs of three Japanese students, and past what must be a "Keep out" sign into the tiny teahouse at the back. It really looks like it was designed for half-size people: not only do I have to duck for the low doorways, in some rooms I have to stoop under the ceiling and some few doorways would be too small for me if I walked through on my knees! Slide a few window panels back to look at the lovely small views of stream and trees and rocks and buildings from them, and see the classic "tree-jamb" room in the photograph, and then out to meet John on his rambles and we decide it's time to leave. He wants to eat in one of the restaurants on the riverbank, but it's 12:30 and I say I'd rather eat near the palace, since then we'd know how long we had. Walk back to the bridge and grab a cab, which seems to go the long way around for 1100 yen, and we get out at 12:55 in the middle of nowhere at the entrance to Katsura. Find very quickly that there's no place to eat inside, and walk around the other way past the large river to a tiny community where a Roppingi Snack bar is the only place to eat, and we're in to two cute waitresses and a sexy guy in a transparent purple shirt. Order "sandwiches and a salad" and I see the girl endlessly coating bread with mayonnaise by using them alternately as palette knives. Preparations go on so long we read the pulp picture books in the booth rack, and find bare Caucasian bosoms, comic strips with all Western faces, and one lovely sketch of a hand holding an invisible tube from which a lotion-like substance is being expelled in three copious jets. Another sketch had a blotch over a nude woman's crotch, so we decided that the FIRST sketch was really as suggestive as it seemed. Large good, though mayonnaise-loaded, salad, and TWO sandwiches each, one of slimy ham and another of a great crepe-thin egg omelet. Pay 900 yen for the feast and walk back to the grounds at 1:45, where I write 57-58 until 2, and then the 16 of us on the English tour start through. The guide is too pedantic and we sit too long in a waiting room looking at boring palms, and have too little time to look at "big ocean in little garden," but the trees are quite beautiful and one rock or another is nice. Formal tea house is old, and informal tea houses (sake houses) look better. Paths are fun and straight lines a novelty and details of roof and bamboo porch for moon-watching and polished floors are very nice. Touch football like the Kennedy's, even. Out precisely at 2:50, really too fast, buy a book (before, and listen to the guy speaking Japanese), and at the gate meet the guy, who wants to go with us to our next stop, which we decide might as well be Daitokuji. Taxi is 1060 yen, and we split it, and into the old Saga palace, where Ikebana started, and the four displays are almost nicer than the over-touted Katsura (but then they only spent about 9 days a year there). Hall of statues is impressive, particularly the 1300-year-old Michaelangeloesque muscled-knotted bodies of the demons under the temple guardians' feet. Nice models of the buildings and buy a book and look at the rest of the buildings quickly in order to leave for Ryoanji at 5. John loves it to the point of chewing out Americans who step off the porch, and I sit and look (writing 58), walk and look, and enjoy the sun filtering through trees. Enjoy the moss gardens behind almost as much, and we leave at 4:45, having bought book, to ENORMOUSLY enjoy the FABULOUS rocks and moss and trees in the surrounding gardens, brightly lit by the slanting sun. Sit on bench to watch ducks in pond, attract collie dog, and watch carp lazily swimming in dirty water. Leave at 5:30, cabbing all the way to hotel, treating fellow who leaves to cash a traveler's check at a bank. He's going to Nara tomorrow, so I decide we WON'T. Up tired but happy to the room, enjoy shower, and we decide to try Junidanya at 7:30, before Gion Corner. Have shab shab again, but it's cooked in a fitted BRONZE pot by an enthusiastic Japanese college girl, and the price is 1300, but the greater quantity of meat is enjoyable, though there were no tiny mushrooms that tasted the texture of bean sprouts, and no bamboo shoots, but it was still good, the décor was far better, and the laughing women who gave us our shoes for our kimonos helped too. Down to Gion Corner at 8:45, and the tea ceremony is served by two painted ladies in pants and eyebrow pencil who happened to be men, but that ran into the koto music, which continued through the completely inept and too-long Ikebana arrangement, the Gagaku was good for the reedy thumpy five-man orchestra and the lion-mask of the dancer, the Kyogen was an abbreviated, unskilled farce of a show, and the story (tied to a stock) easy to compare, and the tower-climb by the Bunraku was fairly good, but John was asleep in disgust and fatigue. Cab home as soon as we can find one on the street, and John's to bed immediately and I write 59-67 before I fall into bed at 12:10, sad about how FAR behind I've let myself get in this crazy DIARY.
TUESDAY, JULY 20. Up at 6 but can't drag myself out of bed to write, and we AGAIN have good sex and breakfast and I'm downstairs to make reservations for Takarazuka, after having decided to see the three museum exhibits today, since we go to Nara tomorrow and leave early the next day. John's impatient to get off on his own schedule, angry with me for leaving him a list of temples to see (that he actually follows, seeing the Museum, Nijo Castle and the Golden Pavilion, then coming back to read and write 20 postcards, saying he's annoyed I left word I was GOING to be back for dinner, since he wanted even to DINE alone), so when the girl at the desk says we have to go to the Hankyu Travel Agency in the Kyoto Hotel, John follows along a bit, then says it's silly, he's leaving, and he does. We continue over and I get a train ticket for 220, a park entrance ticket for 200, a Special Seat for the expensive price of 700, and then only after I enquire about the return train trip do I get another ticket for 220. Thank her and get a cab to the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art for the Michaelangelo exhibit, having already found from the Kyoto Today book I picked up at Hankyu (along with the description and allegory of EACH float in the Gion Festival) that the statues are only Italian reproduction of the originals. In at 9:40 and watch the 15-minute slideshow which reminds me of many of his works that I've seen really or reproduced, and then find the Moses to be too uneven in texture: his skin is highly burnished, but his hair and beard are a chalky matte texture. The Pieta looks smaller and less delicate than the real one, and the David has what looks like varicose veins and his face somehow lacks the mannish sternness of the original. But the sensuality of the twist of the body is still tremendously appealing, and I stand about 10 feet away trying to conjure the body into breathing life, to step down off the low pedestal and embrace me in his huge hands, his erection remedying the relatively small size of his genitals, the plaster-of-Paris looking marble turning into warm pink flesh. Too much. See a few large-crotched tight-thighed Japanese looking hungrily at the statues, but with such competition I hardly get a side-glance. It's not 10:15 and I go across the street to the now open Magritte exhibit, paying 300 again to get in, and I'm so impressed by the fact that this is NOT the exhibit at the Modern a few years ago that I buy a catalog for 600 yen and look through it. There are 100 paintings and sketches, most never seen before by me, and I notice a Japanese photographer snap my picture as I buy my book. He takes me again as I look closely at another, and when I stoop to get out the catalog to check the color and texture reproduction against the original of the shoes turning into feet, he snaps again and again, about six times, as I continue to look from the painting to the reproduction. Slide the book back and a short fellow with glasses asks if I speak Japanese, then if I speak English, then if I like Magritte. I mention the MMA exhibit and say it was jammed and he asks for my favorites, possibly the shoe-feet? I say I haven't seen the whole exhibit yet, but that I'll tell him when I see the rest. He's from Mainichi Press, which I think is Japanese, but Thursday I ask and get the English paper on the plane, but there's not a word about the Magritte opening, but I may have missed it yesterday. Will treasure the catalog, for REVE and the stone moon-candle and a few others. Then at 11 taxi down to the National Museum for the Hermitage Exhibit, starting with the beautiful Lake Baikal fish from 3000 BC, following through great Roman copies of Greek marbles, good Sassanian metalwork, lovely icons which started ahead of Giotto but remained quite static, then the jump to the lovely Melzi of the cover poster art, and a fabulously icy Madonna and Child in purest talcum marble. Rush through to a few striking Picassos and Gaugins and poor Matisses and Monets, and quickly the Russians take over with a few nicely romantic rainbows and snow scenes, but then the military takes over except for the few bodies of the Bathing of the Red Horse and the Bathing of the Family by the Russian Norman Rockwell. Out just before 12 and wander too far before catching a cab to the distant Kawaramachi Station for the easy-to-find train to Juso. Change and stand at the door during the 100-minute ride through the countryside to Takarazuka at 1:50, and into the fun park, do the Monorail quickly to see it looks more appealing from a distance than up close, go up and down the clever idea of the sky zoo, again liking the night areas, and a pink highlighted hippo munching pounds of greenery. Quickly across to the giant roller coaster, and it's smooth, fast, and fairly exhilarating fun, then quickly down to have 150 yen of meat sauce and rice and a green soda, and my teeth crunch into something gravely that I spit out. Grab a soft freeze and dash for the theater, finishing as I hand my ticket in just at 3, but the show's already started. And it's perfectly horrible. None of the high spectacle of the Asakusa show from before, except for the sinking of the ship, and all the girls are singularly unsexy. Costumes and colorful sets are great though, through to the 97 chandeliers for the finale. Talk for 30 minutes intermission to a fellow from Southern Kyushu who'd never been here before, spent six years in Amherst, traveled through Russia, and now teaches very conservative college students. Show goes on endlessly in the last 60%, too talky in Japanese and short on action. Out at 6 and to the station for a quick train, standing most of the way, change at Juso and carefully catch the express back, getting in at 7:45, and try to walk toward the hotel but get turned around on Karasuma and end walking toward Tokyo Tower. Wait and wait for a cab, getting a few snatched from under my nose, and finally get one at 8;10, finding John still in the room. He wanted eel, but I suggest crab for a second choice, and he agrees, so we're out to the Ten-Dorado, or something, where again we're pleased to see the plain interior of a real eating-man's restaurant. Also, they're open until 11PM. John orders a whole boiled crab and I settle for crab tempura, but it's so good I try John's and decide I LIKE crab if it's well done. Still hungry after I finish the 500-yen tempura and order a 500-yen roast crab with salt, still not getting up to John's 1200 yen for his whole THIS IS THE END OF BOOK ONE AND THE START OF BOOK TWO; THREE MORE TO GO! crab. Drink one beer then a second, and we're out and tipsy and walk around a bit, but though John goes down side streets to little squalid alleys, we hear people, but see nothing incriminating. Back to the hotel and he's quickly to bed, and I get to work on the diary again at 11, doing pages 67-68, almost 5 days behind, and the situation on catching up is getting worse instead of better. I shuddered when I first got three days behind, then caught up. Then it was 4 days and I never got better than 3. Now it's 5, and it'll get to 7 on the 23rd, which is the NEXT time I write after tonight, and I'm writing about a PREVIOUS Friday on a NEXT Friday, which is really sad. I keep fussing and worrying about the work, but don't DO it. I tell John that the trip just ISN'T as slow as I thought it would be---I'm not writing NEARLY as much as I thought I would and I'm CERTAINLY not READING as much as I thought. Only read 4 books in 20 days, or one every 5 days, so that the 26 would last the whole 128 days, which I didn't expect. But we're not just sitting and enjoying something that allows me to write in the spare time, and it's just lucky that John poops out early and I can write in the hotels after he gets to sleep. (He's also wonderful because the lights being on don't prevent him from going to sleep, whether it's in the camper, in the little room (where the light shines through the screens) of Tawaraya, or right now in the Evergreen, Chinese chattering loudly away on the next terrace at 10:30, but John's been sleeping since 9:30, except for just now when he turned around, cast an unfocussed eye in my direction, then pulled the sheet up around his head and went back to sleep). But at 11:30 I start nodding, so I give up, foolishly, and go to bed.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 21. Up at 6 and doze till 7, then cuddle with John and just about get to the point of going down after the initial erection when John goes for the lotion. That works well for the first few seconds, but then there's the thunderclap from the windows which always happens when butterfly comes in and we hear her light reedy voice. "No, not yet," we both shout frantically. Both jump up, I to my robe in the next room, John to the john. "You're too EARLY," I moan, trying to sound sleepy. Point to John to take away the bottle as I get into kimono and open the door for her, and she averts her eyes and comes in to open the shades and start about her business. John's down for a quick shower and I'm into the john when she comes back, then we eat. Find that the Nara train is at 9, and get to Kyoto Station with ten minutes to spare. Buy a 160-yen ticket for each, and are sitting in the air conditioned car when someone mentions the reserved seats over the loudspeaker and John rushes off to check. I follow with the kitty to pay the 200 extra yen for the computerized seat assignment, and we're back to the car just as it starts away. The awful kids across from us keep checking their new watches for time accuracy, and we're three minutes late as we pull into Nara at 9:35. Up out of the terminal to get a city map not much better than the one we already have, and walk along the main drag to see the modernistic Prefecture Buildings, then turn right into the park for Kofukuji Park and the distant tall five-story pagoda. They're repairing a few buildings, and our first herd of deer is rather a jolt with their graceful horns and plump sleek bodies. Parades of school kids troop through with straw hats and colorful clothes, clutching drawing boards and stumbling over their feet to gawk back at us. We tour a few old temples and pass the pagoda to see the kids frightenedly shooing away the deer, and a forest of antlers converges on the camerawoman to her dismay. To the confusing map of Nara Park and John sees where we are. Stop for a soda in the warm morning air and I fear it's going to be a hard day for him. Decide to leave the Nara Museum for later and head for the Kasuga Shrine, and I check with the list I'd made for the trip (when I also cleaned out my suitcase and sent TWO envelopes back to myself, with two paperbacks, too, and piles of souvenirs of Japan), and recommend that we walk the one kilometer to the Shin-Yakusija Shrine. Through lovely forest views with deer in the morning sun to a road, across to a tiny village where passersby direct us down the side street to the old walls around the still older shrine. Amazed to read that scholars see Greek influence in the plain boxy walls, and it's odd to see a Greek temple with a Chinese roof. But it IS from 786 or thereabouts, and impressingly aged. The twelve guardians are fun and I have to buy a book that shows their various weapons. I'd never even HEARD of the Tempyu clay style before today, and this is already the only sample LEFT of it. Back along the road that seems faster once we know what's on it, and back into the park, to cut uphill toward Kasuga. Lines of stone lanterns lead us toward a lane of smaller shrines with fresh flowers at their newly-painted doors, and we hear chanting and the sound of sticks being struck together, and we see three gray-robed monks attending two dancing girls with fans, and one monk rather sternly waves us to get out of the line of sight, but from where we can watch. The brightly-robed girls don't look at us, the flute continues and the chanting black-robed man continues to whack his hinged chopsticks together. The girls dance some simple charming figures, put the fans down, ceremoniously retire, bow, then proceed forward to pick up sets of temple bells which they chime for a few more dancing movements, then they, too, are laid down, there are bows, and the small courtyard silently files past us and hurries down still another stone pathway even more thickly set with stone lanterns. Obviously, this has made John's day and maybe week. Buy tickets that are postcards into the temple proper, and file past all the bronze lanterns and the National Treasures and peek around the corners at all the freshly-painted woods with all the other tourists. Check out each sight one by one, and we're finished and across to the Treasure House, where sharp razor swords, armor, jade, helmets, utensils, scrolls, and books are rather dimly laid out. Continue across the park through another old temple complex of little interest, following the signs to Kokkaden, on Sagutsangendo, the Second Month Hall. Debate paying the 100 yen entry fee, but the double dozen lovely statues inside inspire us to sit in the punk-reeking dimness and stare at the central Buddha, the moon and sun goddesses at either side, the four corner guardians, the two huge standing Buddhas on either side, the one with the beautiful eyes in her case can be seen only between the legs of the muscled giant in front of her. Sit for about half an hour, past noon, and finally go back out to the cloudy day for Nijatgedo, the second subsidiary hall high on a hill, and we take drinks from the springs, watch the woman praying to the small side altar, and look in at the empty central chamber, finding the view over the roof of Horyuji more interesting. Down the covered stairway and around the Daibutsu, but John's very hungry and I decide we look for food first. Out the deer-lined gate (bought 30 yen worth of toasts for them, and they DO eat them, and we also gawked at some sexy foreign tourists in sexy shorts), and find a little place, and again order the wrong dish and get greasy food, but it and beer sit well and we go to the john and out at 1:30 for Daibutsu. Building looks bigger from outside, and unnecessarily cruddy, because the image INSIDE couldn't POSSIBLY be as huge as it is, so the inside seems small. The enormous nimbus is held in place with structural steel, there are old pillars and new tiles and holes in columns for boys to squeeze through and "smaller" Buddhas about the size of the Statue of Liberty. Out in a daze and back to Soshoin, closed, and around to Kaiden-in in the rain to find it, too, closed. Back to street and grab a cab for 1100 yen for Horyuji, way out of town, and John uses the chance to nap. There at 3 and inside to buy tickets and maps and look at Neisan is a five-tier pagoda, statues inside where our awful friend gets my great answer "All those that WANT to" to his question "How many Buddhas can dance on the head of a pin?" Around, quite numb, to the museum to LOVELY Asaho statue and Nara period unique pieces and the Korean Alevoishaky and jewelry and butte-winged temple and hoards of dazzling things. To the next side and move by rote, absorbing temple and living quarter and tree and village street, and unfortunately continue to the temple at the end, horridly modern and concrete and aluminum, for a mandala in fragments and a stamp: graceful Kwannon. Back at 4:50 and guy says where we catch bus, and get one at 5, and traffic is very heavy, American amuses by shouting "Kon ichiwa" (Hello) out the window at passing girls, and we're in at 5:40 for the 6PM bus. But it's not until 6:30, so we take a "local" at 5:50 that takes only 5 minutes longer than the express, leaving us off at 6:30. Taxi home for a last bath and shave, and ask the hotel for a place for Sukiyaki and they say the Mishima Tei, that we'd seen near the shopping street and wanted to eat in but forgot about. In at 8 and they again laugh at our kimonos and clacker shoes, even leaving open door for others to see us. Motherly type clucks over us and surprises by saying that the 1800 yen deluxe dinner includes a raw egg whipped for the dip, and the meat is vastly marbled, but cooked to perfection and very tasty, and the vegetables are good and she even cooks rice in the final broth and serves us everything, which appeals to both of us. 4700 yen bill is most expensive and I cash a check first and we get towels as a present. Back to pay the bill at Tawaraya and get towels from THEM, too, and the 66007 yen is surprisingly low. Back to pack and have a final sex party and massage because it'll be too early tomorrow to have it, and even finish the sake to great dizziness and have great sex and get to bed at 11. Happily, I fall asleep right away.
THURSDAY, JULY 22. Up JUST before the alarm at 5:45, and into the bathroom to move it next to John just as it rings [[[5:45AM, 7/25]]]. John gets up and goes out to take a shower and I'm just finishing a satisfactory shit when the phone rings and rings. I bound out to answer it, and it's Butterfly asking if we want tea this morning. I say yes, knowing it will make her happy. She comes up and leaves it, concerned that John's beat her to the bathroom. He said she always wanted to get there first to lay down the wooden drain boards which had been pulled up to dry during the night. Pack quickly and get downstairs at 6:15 and everything's in order, so we lug them around the corner to the JAL office, only two people there to bow us out so early. We also left a touch-me under the tea things for the ever-serving Butterfly. I read a few pages while waiting in the crowded office, bus comes at 6:30 and everyone's on and we stop at two more hotels. There's a lot of traffic but we're still past all the now-familiar countryside and tunnels and rice fields to the International Airport at 7:40. Inquire to find that the post office doesn't open until 9AM, so my last envelope will have to wait until Taipei. Up to breakfast in the airport for 800 yen, and we wonder how to get rid of the last money. I'm into the gift shop and find they sell stamps, so I get one of each for 368 yen, then return to get a 500 yen note for easy cashing later, and I end up with 53 yen in coins, which I take as souvenirs. Into the waiting lounge at 8:30 and we board the plane fast, getting window seats in the next to the last row. Take off on time and I'm only a little nervous, but I don't feel like reading much and I stare out the window as Osaka goes into the mists quickly. It's cloudy until we're over Kyushu, and Hiroshima is the only big city, but there are lots of hill towns before we hit the rocky surfy coast. They serve a tournedo "lunch" at 9:30, and I'm hardly hungry enough to enjoy it, merely eating it methodically to get it off the plate, wishing the flight was over. It clears slowly and I look down at assorted scattered rocks in the Pacific and talk to the awful tour guide behind me who'd wanted the serial number of the plane for no good reason. Come in for landing almost on time at 10:30, and the north of the island was hilly and beautifully terraced, but the ocean didn't seem particularly spectacular. There's a town built around a river inland, and we circle around it over a factory area that pours tons of smoke into the air, with enormous power cables that reach from tower to tower set on hilltops for large distances. Lower and lower and the city is larger and larger, and the guide points out the Grand Hotel, with its 12-story addition on the hill in the direction of the important museum. Long wait to get out of the plane and we're first out the back to get good seats in the high-windowed jitney that takes us to a warehouse-like building with everyone standing inside for customs. It's hot and extremely humid, and I get out the book to while away the time. Health and passport checks go OK, and we're not jailed for our long hair. Very few signs in English, and as soon as we're through customs, which goes very quickly, we're besieged by dozens of hawkers for taxis and hotels, most of whom don't even speak English, and one persistent pest who insists that the Grand is $15 a night, way out of town, but his hotel is only $5 right in town. We endure it through the post office of my fourth envelope for 26NT, the Bank for $100 exchange into 4000NT, and the change of the Malaysian flight from this Sunday to next Friday, the next available date, hopefully long after the typhoon which has cancelled the continuation of our flight to Hong Kong. Another fleecer grabs our suitcases for his private car for the 100NT ride that's probably only double taxi rates for the hotel, surprised to find over half Taiwan is Christian. Taipei has three million people and smells, and we're up to the long entranceway to the hotel. Greeted at the door by a steward with a list, and our names are on his sheet for the Jade Phoenix. Around and check in, and the décor is very pleasant, but the average room and hall are quite plain but adequate. It's just past noon and John's all eager to get out to the museum, so we quickly stash things away and grab a cab for 26NT and the surcharge (for tourists only?) to the impressively enormous palace and pay the 30NT for entry and into the office-looking lobby. They seem to have no guides, but I buy a book for the whole collection for $5US, and we separate to see our own sections. I look at jade, old and new, stop for cake and juice in the tiny pergola, and some of the incredible silk tapestry before the fast and funny Gray Line tour at 3PM that shows us the highlights of other sections. I get a HIGH from the Buddhist bones and gold artifacts. We look through the treasure room until 4, when we're full up of the splendors of the museum and cab back to the hotel, and the driver doesn't even know the translation of "Grand Hotel." Traffic is much less frantic than Kyoto, but the cabs are poorer and dirtier, though far more numerous and available. The heat and dampness, however, is quite wearing and we bless the museum and hotel for their cool. Back to the hotel to shower and put things away and look to see what we want to do in town, and John calls his friend's friend Teng at 5, and he says he'll meet us at the Riverside Barbecue restaurant at 7:30. We dress and walk down the hill at 6, and people here stare at us in an open but surly way and there are no embarrassed smiles and giggles as from the Japanese. Everyone seems either stern or uncaring, and the desk clerks chat away before deigning to look up to see what we want. The tropical river stinks and clumps of vegetation and trash float down it, the watermelon rinds are thrown onto the tidal mudflats and a dark pall of pollution hangs over the city. We get a bowl into which we put beef, boar, chicken, mutton and lamb, cold and frosty from their cases, and onions and peppers and carrots and vegetables and pineapple on top, then he grabs my bowl and puts a half-spoon of oil and vinegar and soy sauce and hot sauce into the bowl, and directs me to the drum-like brazier. Everything's just dash onto the hot bars with a flash of steam, mixed around with large chopsticks while most of the juice boils or drips onto the fire, and then the much-reduced mass is shoveled into the bowl in about 30 seconds. Fast and neat, American soldiers abound, as do Caucasian-men Chinese-women couples, but they're quiet and seem to fit. The meat is poor quality, as is the large beer, but the pineapple is sweet and juicy. The sun smolders out as the planes roar low to land at the airport, and bats come out in droves to fill the air. The large punk seems to keep away the bugs. Drink beer 7:70 waiting for Teng and he shows up at 7:40 with a friend. We sit and drink beer and talk about music till 8, Tsang presenting John with a record of his music with Teng on violin, and then they say we should talk in the car. Through heavy traffic to the Circle Market, glancing at explicit hemorrhoid photos in a medicine shop and across to the wheel of shops in the center. They sell everything in neat piles: pork stomachs and livers and tripe and lungs and eyes and feet and skin, everything of beef and veal, egg yolks and all kinds of fresh fish, bones or whole, shrimps, prawns, squid, dozens of shellfish, mounds of fresh and peeled fruit, snack shops with penis power for virility and eel restaurants in dizzying array. Everyone shouts at us to buy and little urchins nudge us to sell shiny yarn. We're shouted into a fruit restaurant where we tentatively share papaya and pineapple under offending shreds of ice, and then we're back at the car, chatting the while about restaurants and Taiwan vs. Japan vs. the US, our guides solicitous for our information and entertainment. Then to Lungshan Temple, bright in its maintained exterior color, and amplified sounds of chanters reach our ears, and we're in through the crowded portals to see an incredible night-spectacle of hundreds of people of all ages, mainly in families, buying punk and statues, using lit wands of smoking sandalwood, shouting and praying and crying and moving about to the numerous shrines and it's an incredible visual and aural and nasal impact, far too many people to see individually, eyes torn between colorful painting, newly-fleshed Buddhas, blazes of fires from sacrificial urns, business-like vendors at long tables, worshipers and prayers and tourists all jumbled together like coins tossed in a hat. Out too quickly, absolutely dizzied and staggered by the sights, and it's 10PM and we've been up since 4:45 their time, and I feel ravaged by what I've seen and heard, and completely worn out by the intenseness of sightseeing. Drive past the three original city gates, get told places to see and eat, get our southern itinerary checked, and they drive us up to leave us BURSTING with fatigue off at the hotel, and though I become a week behind in the diary, I can only shower and stumble into a most welcome bed under one of the most efficient air conditioners in the city.
FRIDAY, JULY 23. [[6:45AM 7/25]]. Up greatly refreshed at 5:30 from sleeping in the cool room and I do John under the covers of his bed, and prevent him from doing me since I don't feel like coming. Into the huge dining room at 8, and the service is slow and quite poor, we have no salt or cream on the table and have to ask for more butter and cream for our toast and we even get charged 22NT for extra cups of coffee! They say the hotel is in the red and we can certainly see why. Boys in white absolutely swarm over the place keeping everything clean and dusted and spotless and shined up and watered, but many sections are kept only for VIPs and they don't seem terribly busy otherwise, and we're sorry to hear the pool is closed under the new construction. Decide to take an individual tour of Peitou and the north in the morning, which for $10US is expensive, but I hope to see what I want to see and make out a list accordingly. To the main lobby to arrange for our trip tomorrow, and get into the hired cab at 9;20, pleased with bright-eyed Burmese Tom Fong who speaks excellent idiomatic English. We chat about heat and hotels and schools and Taiwan and Burma and travel and money while driving north, stopping off at some college on a hill to climb to the political museum on the top floor and the hazy view from the roof. Told that the air is much BETTER since the factories moved out of town. UGH. Hills are lovely under shrouds of cloud, and we're north to the Green Mountain Park, offended by arrogant Taiwanese and Vietnamese military men who look down superiorly from their vast inferiorities. Up the pleasant paths through flower plots and postcard and drink salesmen and flowing streams, and John belittles everything and we're quickly back to the car to continue around the hills to Peitou. Tom suggests a blind massage, but John says he'd rather drive around. If we knew the trip would be only two hours I think we would have done it. Tom says we can't see Pietou on the same tour, and we look at seedy hotels and John can't understand why people would come to the hills for a sulphur spa when it could be shipped into the city. See bubbling sulphur springs with their stench and enjoy and sights of the sleekly fat water buffaloes on the roads and in the fields. Then it's the factory tour, stopping in to see them molding and baking and painting and glazing pottery, where I buy a marble stele for $1 for Mom, and across to a gem factory with too-high prices and a display that manages to make the construction of the pins and rings and mosaics look trivial. Back to the museum at 11:30, paying him his 400NT and he's all smiles and avowals of friendship and help, and we again separate. I see the rest of the Oracle bones and the calligraphy again and a lot of the pottery and porcelain, review the bronzes from yesterday, and down to get a guide to see that I've been through it all. To the snack shop at 1 to find all the food gone and John chatting with a Norwegian woman who talked to him first, and I have a cake and coke and an ice cream for lunch, ten back down for the scrolls and another round of the trinkets and treasures and look into the royal treasury again for the incredible ivory and boxwood carvings. John's back to the hotel early to read and take a nap, and I finally have enough at 3:30 and taxis back through the rain. John's reading and I take the shower and finally start back on the diary, disgusted with being a whole week behind, and write 68-76 from 4 to 5:30 to catch up with two days, and then John's urging me down to the street to look at the bookshops before we eat in the Szechwan place. By great coincidence, the Omei restaurant is right ON that street, and we get out of the cab and roam down side streets looking at all the useless merchandise: "everything I don't need" as John puts it, and we look at printed editions of all the major dictionaries for about $5 and of popular novels for $1, and there are notices about certificates of purchase or else we would be prosecuted for smuggling. Plethora of physics and math and chemistry and medical books, and shop after shop tends to be the same. Into the restaurant and again the Pavilion-like elegance of curtains and English-language signs succumbs to plain floors and tables and service, and it looks just like the old 456 with tables of cheery men drinking and eating loudly and slurpily. Look at the great menu and the owner REFUSED to give us the Szechwan duck for 106NT, insisting instead on the "Camphor and smoked tea" duck, and we order squid and hot cabbage for the other dish, and eat the peppered zucchini and red pepper and cabbage put before us as appetizers and I eat a piece of red pepper whose fire lasts me the rest of the evening. We have tea and he brings over a bottle of some variant of rice wine, tea colored and with a vague cherry flavor. Drink the whole thing while eating the squid and flavorful duck, using a variety of Hoisin sauce and green onions and the duck is cut with a cleaver to crack the bones, so it's hard to eat. An enormous French tour that fills three tables comes in and the place gets even louder. We finish up our dessert of watermelon and John wants to see the cruising in New Park, so we turn in the right direction and walk through the turnstile to roam the paths until we see the colored fountain, and there are more and more looks from possible young men and as we stand at the railing there are obvious cruises from flighty young queens. John goes off on his own and four or five unpleasantly faggotty kids flirt behind me by laughing in Chinese and then saying "Hello" like some trained bird. I get the same feeling of unpleasantness that John had for the place on Hawaii, and I don't like it at all. Everyone seems willing to eye me, and I feel slightly cruddy. Around to find John surrounded by a quieter group of three who are 17, 18, and 23, and he turns me off by saying he told them he's 24 and I'm 35, and I tartly request him afterwards to say it's NONE of their business if they ask how old I am. He can say what he likes about himself. It's now 8PM and I want to get to "The World Today" for the show and we ask three or four people for directions and get there at 8:30 to pay the 20NT each for admission and up to the third floor to change elevators for the amusement section. On 4 and 5 is a theater with the 12 spinning bowls on sticks trick, and we watch that, then up to 6 for a female singer, and up to 8 to go up to the roof and look across the city and see the quiet couples on benches, down to buy 10NT tickets for better seats for the puppet show, full of smoke and sparks and good vs. evil and too-loud music and good voices and colorful lights and costumes and a small-scale revolving scene that shifts again and again. John gets bored at 9 and we're down to 7 for a kooky fun house whose carts don't work, and they jump out afterwards to "scare" us and help us laugh, and it's sort of fun. Down to another singer and John decides he wants to quit the scene for a massage, so he leaves at 9 and I stick around hoping for Chinese Opera, but that hope goes as I see no time listed for it, but the vaudeville and rock and roll and singers go on and on. The boyish acrobats are fairly interesting, the girl rock quartet awful, but cute, and the American tourists snap pictures like mad. At 10:45 the upper theater finishes and everyone starts filing out and then our curtain closes and everyone walks down the long stairs to the crowded street. I'm practically falling asleep from boredom, and grab a cab and show him the letter head to get back at 11, and thankfully John's not in yet. Settle down to finish off Saturday and work on Sunday on pages 76-82, and John comes in to report glowingly on his hour and a half series of baths and swims and showers, and then the man who pushed and pummeled and stretched him, walked on his back and snapped his head and neck and back and arms and legs, and he was worried about the price but it was only $5US for over an hour. He loved it and said he would continue getting massages when they were so cheap. I write through to 12:20AM while he sleeps, then get into the john for a shower and brush my teeth and get to bed just before 1AM. We're disappointed so far with the whole island of Taiwan. Surely there's a morale problem because Peking seems to be recognized as more of a power over the 700 million Chinese than the 18 million on the whole island, but they're not going to get tourists with their lackadaisical attitudes and surly looks and their total nonunderstanding of English. In almost every way: cleanliness, industry, cheerfulness, intelligence and ability to help, and attractions for the tourist, Japan has it all over Taiwan. We're looking forward to the trip south, extending it from 3 to 4 or maybe even 5 days, hoping for the beauty of the island to seep through the indifference of the people. The only people we really TALKED to the first two days were students from Burma and Korea, not good for the Chinese. The extremely hot (95°) weather doesn't help, nor the pall of smoke over the city. Hopefully it'll be cooler and cleaner in the south, and we can temporize our harsh judgment of this poor little struggling country.
SATURDAY, JULY 24. [[3PM, 7/25]] John comes in to sleep with me about 7:30 and I feel very sexy but he just feels like cuddling and really isn't up, so I start gently playing with myself and he's aware of it and kissy and attentive and I get close to coming and breathe heavily and he's following my strokes with his left hand on my balls, and when I'm JUST ready to come, having been a tiny bit of the time at plateau, he slides his hand up and grabs my cock against my belly as I shoot up to my chest, and he squeezes and watches me and teases me so that I squirm and gasp, this time without my usual shortness of breath. It really feels very good, and John seems satisfied with the arrangement, too. Up and call to see what time the train leaves for Taichung, and it's 9:30 and we should pay the bill and leave at 9. Into the dining room for breakfast of French toast and eggs and the service is somewhat better today and there's even a cute little Chinese guy to brighten the atmosphere. Pay the bill from the kitty at 8:45 and the girl says she never saw Barclay travelers' checks before, but she accepts them. They also agree to store our bags and don't really care whether we come back for one or two nights on Thursday or Wednesday. Get cab at door that drives slowly and lets us off at bus station, and we walk next door to the train station and get on platform 1 for Taichung, and into car #1 with two girls behind who speak first in French, then in their native Chinese, and then in perfectly good English. Talked to a Korean student in the line who's sitting in the back of the train and ten minutes out of the station he comes up to talk with us about politics and long hair and Korea and the US and hotels and the Taiwanese malaise, and then goes onto women's liberation and he's remarkably woman-degrading from his strict Korean Catholic upbringing, and we amaze him with our unconventional ideas, but since HIS picture to US is unconventional, he at least has to agree that we may have SOME truth on our side. He turns me off by disparaging the girls behind us as being little better than bar girls, and then tries to amuse me by saying I'm by far the more conventional of the two and John pleases me by saying I'm more unconventional. Talk about Army and I can see John debating telling the guy that he was exempt because he's gay, but he ended by saying that not everyone really HAD to go. Quiet interlude we spent looking out the windows at the growing mountains, and some of the silhouettes against the sky are truly cardboard jagged and impossible. He's hungry but they serve no food, only tea from the racks in front of us and two hot towels. Out at 12:30 at Taichung and he wants us to eat in the Railway Shop, but it's very crowded, so we cross and he takes us into the Prince Hotel after we say we want a GOOD restaurant with clean food. This place is empty and he said many hotels were built to accommodate the Viet Cong on R&R in Taiwan, but soon they're all empty. Menu is very large and elaborate, and after much discussion we have an excellent shrimp and egg omelet, pork in sweet and sour sauce which is nothing special, and all of the pork pieces I get are extremely bony with little meat, though John said his were all meat. And then we have stewed chicken in sour cabbage sauce, and the chicken bones are actually splintered into some tiny pinhead pieces, a dozen to a bite, and I find it almost unpalatable because of it. They put nuts and vegetables on the table, but he warns us not to eat it, since if we TOUCH it they'll charge us for it, but additional rice is free, and he proceeds to gorge himself with two whole bowls, shoveling it in in the swift, ravenous Chinese method. Finished and we grab and check for 187NT, and he protests until I give him the old Dr. Sumner: working man treats the student until the student becomes a working man who in turn treats the student. He accepts. Back to the station and he says there are no more tickets for the 2:30 bus to Sun Moon Lake and we'll have to wait for the 3:20. Try more questions and suddenly there ARE two tickets for the 2:30 bus, and they're seats 1 and 2, the best in the place. "I don't know where they got them," he said, genuinely puzzled, "I guess maybe she likes you." He goes off with our thanks, having paid 2NT for our 62NT tickets, and I stand and read "Rocket Ship Galileo" while John wanders around. Stand before one gate and bus comes, but it's the wrong one and ask a guy for Sun Moon Lake and he points me to the center and we have a small difficult chat about Taiwan and travel. Bus comes in right on time at 2:30 and we get best seats and ride through flat city streets, horn in constant use to shoo off the motorcyclists to the side of the road where they belong. I hate such use of the horn: the passengers get a silly sense that they have the right of way, and the driver's mouth gets set into a down-turned grimace because no one pays attention to his horn unless THEY can see it's an emergency, otherwise they either completely ignore it OR turn a haughty look of "I own the road" back to the frustrated driver, who thinks he's ONLY trying to save their LIVES. The rice fields we pass are true works of art with their regular stone ledges and the flow of clean water from one level to another, and the neat green shoots of rice sticking regularly up. News comes on and there's the disquieting news that a typhoon might come! Wind and turn through hills and tunnels, and the 70km takes about 90 minutes. Stop at the lake and I get off to inquire, but John shouts me back because the bus continues up the hill to the orange and white balconied place I'd admired from below, and that's the hotel. In with our satchel and knapsack and messenger bag and our names are there for room 504, and again it's worked out OK. DOWN the stairs from the 4th floor to the fifth, and into a room whose whole front wall is glass that looks over the picture postcard view of all of Sun Moon Lake, with the little boats tootling between island and shore, their noise covered by a high, almost electronic buzz from what sound like the biggest cicadas on earth. They do sound like an irritating noise from a noise generator in electronic music, which gives it a tone I don't care for. We read all about the place and John's immediately in for a shower and I sit down at 4:45 to 6 and write 82-87, last Monday, and I'm feeling better now that I'm only four days behind. Then sit and drink the red rice wine that John walked down to town to bring up and watch the sky go darker, with tiny areas of pink cloud showing through breaks in the gray, and clouds that we thought of as being far away lifted in patches to show a higher range of hills behind the ones ringing the lake, and the clouds move quickly up and down and around, giving an ever-changing view out over the gray green lake with its herringbone patterns of boats' wakes interlinking. There's a Greek-like island with concentric circles of wet clay, dry mud, rocks and dust, grasses, a slanted stone wall continuing the conical shape of the island, then a brick wall surrounded by detailed trees, looking like a study for the Isle of the Dead, or a water version of Meteora. Behind that is a gray temple, then an orange-roofed elaborate Buddhist pile, then, on top, is a shaved dome clearing that looks quite sad, a perky crested 9-story pagoda of spanking newness. People talking and shouting from all the balconies, and I shower and wash my hair and we sit outside watching it get dark, and I tell John "I was seeing how attractive you were at the railing," and he pauses a moment while we embrace and says "I'm lucky to have you" and I come back, maybe too fast, with "Oh, I know you are!" We kiss and hold and get hard, and we're inside, to embrace and undress and have great sex, not even missing the Baby Magic. Wash and up to dinner at 8, and the Chinese menu looks fine and we start with three flavors cold, which is roast beef, cucumber and shrimp in the shells, which I end up eating! Then three flavors in scorched rice, great, which are a sort of celery, lush white meat chicken as tender as sweetbreads, and some kind of fat. And beef with Sacha sauce, Szechuan-hot with small bits of onion. All just fine, and the mixed fruit for dessert is the final touch of excellence: pineapple, honeydew, papaya, banana, watermelon tasty. Out at 9 and John comes right back to bed at 9:30 after we look at loud TV lounge and guy playing Chopin on piano. I write 87-92 from 9:30-10:30, waking John a few times, read book, write 92-97 from 11 to 12, people STILL chattering outside, and look at shooting stars with awakened John, read more, and bed at 12:50, earplugged.
SUNDAY, JULY 25. [[5PM 7/25: THE SAME DAY!!!]]] Wake at 5:30 with the sunlight streaming in the window, feeling slightly headachy from the less than five hours sleep, but the light is bright gray outside so I wrap a towel around me and go outside to sit in the silence. Even this early there are a few boats threading their way across the smooth lake and there're so many clouds in the sky that the chance of a beautiful sunrise is quite remote. Most of the lights go off on the slopes by 6AM, and there's only a bit of pink in the sky as I start to write at 5:45, finishing 97-102 by 6:15, which is Thursday, and I feel a glow because I now have only two days to go to catch up. John's up at 7, angry with me for waking him with the light last night, and I write 102-107 from 6:45 to 7:45, and that's Friday, and I tell John joyfully that I'm up to yesterday! Go to eat breakfast at 8, I have bacon and eggs and mixed fruit and coffee, and then at 9 we're walking to "town" to find that the price of rowboats for 2 has increased from 6NT to 10NT per hour, so after John checks by going back up the hill, I go up the hill to buy a motor launch ticket for 80NT for three hours and finally get a cheery old lady in a wicker hat to push us around in a boat with a capacity of at least 8 at 9:50. Across to Kung Hue Tao Island and find there's no temple there, so the low bell-sounds I heard around dawn came from elsewhere. Down quickly and get to the dock for the Hsuan Kuang Temple at 10, and we're up to the chintzy new temple and down the road being constructed in the heat, John taking off his shirt, for the pagoda. It's a long hot climb uphill, and it's new and tacky and not yet opened, and we're across to a temple being built and flirt with the construction crew and look down the verdant valley dropping below the peak. Down the path again and see a trail through the woods that has to lead to the temple, and it's all cement blocks a short space apart, and to my surprise it leads to ANOTHER temple, the middle big one that I'd forgotten, and it's much neater and richer, and I put on slippers and pad upstairs to look over the hills, then down past all the Chinese taking pictures of other Chinese and John drinks some of the local water, which I think is silly. Down the continuation of the path to the lower temple, I going much faster than John and have a MUCH-needed Coke that I drink very fast. He's down for an apple cider from the kitty and I have one too, to even the kitty, and we're down to the boat at 12:10, and she asks where we want to go and we point to the aboriginal village. John gets all clayey getting through the boards to shore from the dock, and it's more commercialized that we'd feared, with painted "aborigine" girls asking for photos, hawkers selling things, and John tries on a few shirts when the boatwoman (who catches clams between boat trips) enlists a Chinaman to tell us that our time is up. Back to the boat quick and across the lake that's now cooling off under heavy dark clouds, and out at 1:10 after 3 hours 25 minutes. Quickly up the road to the hotel in a drizzle, and wash for lunch. Decide to have a light one, and get only beer, fried rice, and a cold platter for 120 and it's heap of cold tongue and beef, tiny sweet-corn and cucumbers, heavenly hot cashews in sugar, a peeled tomato and the shrimps in shells and more cucumbers and maybe other things. Gorge to satiation at 2PM, and to the desk to seek advice for the next day, and AGAIN hear news of the coming typhoon, so all in all we decide NOT to go to Mount Ali and take our bus to Taichung and Lishan at 10AM tomorrow. Also reserve for a male masseur for us two at 9:30 tonight. John wants to go to the pool and we pack and get into trunks and do so, but it's closed due to heavy traffic of young kids, many cute, who wave to us and shout "hello" like bright-eyed mynahs. Back to the room at 3 and John has a cold bath while I wash my shirt, then he naps while I write 107-112, from 3 to 4, which finished YESTERDAY. He wakes and I tell him the great news, and I FINISH reading "Rocket Ship Galileo" at 5, and come back to write THESE pages 112-114 from 5 to 5:30, making a total of 14 pages written Friday, 15 pages done Saturday and 17 pages, today, Sunday, catching me COMPLETELY up to date (though I dread the time I'll fall behind AGAIN) and I cross off the LAST line on my tally sheet NOW, at 5:35PM!! [[[8:50AM 7/26]]] Start reading "The Green Hills of Earth" until 6:35, and then there are flashes of color from the clouds on the right and I wait for John to get ready to go up on the roof to see if there's a sunset. Then there's a huge red flare, like a concrete spotlight, rearing up behind the pagoda and John tells me to look at that, and I'm out to the verandah to see the other side of the rainbow arch against the lunar-like sun-lit hills way off to the left. Shout about going to the roof and John thinks I mean just upstairs, so I'm detoured and then dash to the roof of the main building. John's not about to walk fast, so I stand in the elevator waiting for him and another guy gets in who stops at three. All in all, we miss the sunset, but the clouds are still vividly colored in salmon and pink, and there are flashes of red in the lower, then the middle, then the higher clouds as the sun sinks below the earth's rim. John goes down because the blowing dust on the roof gets in his eyes, but I stay up watching the clouds rushing across the gray sky, hearing the pine trees bang up against the light posts on the roof, then it starts raining and I'm back down to the room to shave and read, and we go to eat at 7:45. "Light supper" turns out to be a cold vegetable plate with mushrooms for John, pork ribs Soochow style (Hoisin tasting and VERY tasty and tender pork), and bamboo shoot and vegetable soup, the small one of which makes at least four small bowls for each of us. Then John indulges himself by ordering a dish of hot cashews and sugar, but they're over-hot and greasy, the sugar melts, and they're not as good as lunch, and the price is a large 60NT. Take the rest back to the room after talking with the travel agent, who says we'll be stuck here another day, because the typhoon is due to arrive at 5AM tomorrow morning and all busses will be cancelled. Down to the room at 8:45 and the blind masseur is waiting for us, and I say he can't come in until at least 9:15. Nice bath to clean off, except that the shower cap KEEPS the water in and wets my hair. Out at 9:10 and he's led in by the room clerk who isn't TOO surprised at my nudity, and he's a small tight fellow with sculptured corded forearms, small pliant fingers, and deep eye sockets hidden by dark sunglasses. He removes his white doctor's jacket and shoes and crawls onto the bed in lotus position next to me on my side, works on my stiff neck and arms, fingers snapping, then the ticklish back, the buttocks, the front leg and the calf, then the same on the other side, then the back gently and the front even more gently, the stomach by a mere smoothing action. Then sit up and the back of the neck and the spine, then a cheery "OK," and the same thing with John on the same bed. He's out at 10, and so we pay him 100NT for just 50 minutes work, except that we pay his time to and from the hotel, too. It's raining and that keeps the radios and jabbering conversations low, but John was terribly disappointed this afternoon by thinking that, with the clouds rapidly charging over the hills and lake, and two or three hawks riding the air currents in graceful loops and swoops, this was one of the most beautiful and peaceful spots he's seen, and then the raucous neighbors, the too-loud TVs and radios, shouting and singing and rocking in English, absolutely ruined any pleasant thoughts. I spent the afternoon in earplugs and John went to the library to try to avoid the din. Also, he dropped two cashews on the table and picked up one cashew and my EARPLUGS and popped them into his mouth for one surprised chew. Funniest thing on the trip so far. The massage relaxes us toward sleep, and we read for a little bit but turn off the lights at 10:15 (I pull them out trying to get them on me, rather).
MONDAY, JULY 26. Wake precisely at 5AM, wind whistling in the old familiar way to typhoons, windows rattling in their sashes, and John's up to close things pretty tightly and we figure this might be the start of a big blow. Dream about school and time changes in going to West Virginia, and getting a haircut, and wake again at 6, this time the sky is pearly and the wind is less, so we might be out of the worst. Up finally at 7, recouping sleep lost night before last, I guess, and cuddle with John while dozing, then up and dress and read a bit and up to breakfast at 8. The lovely mixed fruit for 10NT and I have French toast on John's recommendation, and it's very well done and the maple syrup is good, the service is excellent, and everyone, seeing us for the second morning, bids us good morning with a smile. GREAT place except for the horrible PEOPLE. Find that the island divides the lake into an eastern, round, or "sun" part and a western, crescent, or "moon" shape, hence the name. Also, the bus will be leaving at 10. Down to the room to pack, and John spends a long time in the john, and I sit down to write 115-118 from 8:50 to 9:20 and John's up to watch the passing scene at the desk and I write these last few lines to bring myself AGAIN up to date at 9:30AM! [[11:15PM, 7/27]]] Up to the lobby with the last of the baggage and sit reading while loud Chinese kids break the rainy silence. We pay the bill and have lots of dollars left over, figuring to cash them back into US money to have more of that for the black market in Burma. Onto the bus at 10 and we're half way back on the right and ride down to the little town and the bus fills up except for one seat, so there's no moving around. John dozes, most of the way, and the guy in front of him shares some sort of hard black nut that smells of anise with his wife and they seem unconcerned about wrecking their teeth to break the shell and get at the little nutmeat inside. The guy in front of me pulls the yellow curtain in front of his face, and as the moisture from outside leaks in the window, it moistens either HIS vomit or some OLD vomit (nothing quite as smelly as reconstituted vomit!) on the floor, and he gets a wet towel out of his briefcase and keeps it over his nose for most of the rest of the trip. The rain comes and goes and all the rice fields are full to the brim with dimpled brown water and the rivers are rushing down their banks and falling in white gashes down rock walls to the full streamlets. Coolies (that WAS a Chinese word for worker) coolie in the fields with their half-top hats and black slickers or blue plastic raincapes farming their corners in the clayey fields' mud. Sheets of water sprang up from the careening bus and it's lucky there aren't many passersby. The motion of the bus and the smell from the floor make me nauseous and I'm glad this isn't the start of the 8-hour drive up the crooked East Coast Highway. Takes 100 minutes to get back to Taichung, even though the rattling bus SEEMS to go a lot faster than the other, and it thankfully uses its horn a lot less. Out of the terminal and make a direct hit on the Prince Hotel. They have a room for 160NT and we're up to the fourth floor to a WINDOWLESS room with a double bed in it. [[4:30PM, 7/28]]] Use the john as the girl brings in a pitcher of water, and then we're out to walk the streets. Walk away from the station down the main street and half the horns from the cabs are honking at US to ride with them---and there's a fearsome amount of honking. It's hot and humid and walking is difficult because there are children playing, people lying, and motorcycles and bicycles all parked up almost to the shop doors. One fellow sits with a mole with hairs at LEAST two inches long straggling out of it. People don't even shout hello to us anymore, we're so strange they just stare. Spot a restaurant and a movie poster and remember them for future use. Go north down a side street and walk around a few blocks just to see what there is and the intensity of city life fades into a suburban dustiness very quickly, so we're back toward the center. See a JAL office sign and down a street with silhouettes of naked women painted over lights, and a guy hawks us in, and JOHN doesn't even SEE it until the second time around. But no tourist office and the only thing I can think of is the huge Buddha, but John says he won't see it. Back to the restaurant and it's worse than anything I've eaten in in NYC, but surprisingly they have a menu in English and they have Crispy Duck for 50NT, and we order that and shredded meat soup, and the beef is either spiced or rotten, so I avoid it, but the slices of chicken and bamboo shoot are good. The crisp duck comes out whole on a plate, with its baked eyes staring out of it head above its bill. We pick away at the burnt offering and push it inside the raw-dough dumplings and mix it with the red sauce and brown salt on the plate. It's dry but very tasty, and we made a mess of it before finishing. Out and return to the street for "Dirty Angels" and find dozens of motorcycles and bicycles parked in neat rows outside, and it's Italian and goes on every 100 minutes from noon to midnight. Pay the 40NT for both to get in, and the place is almost jammed, mostly with men and there are gay overtones to the film right away and all the guys (except the stupid ones) are VERY good to look at, particularly the star, Lino Capellini, or someone, and it's a stupid low-budget film, but fun for an afternoon. Sit in it and through the 20 minutes of advertising from 2:00-3:30 and then back to the hotel to find WHEN we can get to Hualien. They get on phone and can only say that the roads are washed out and NO busses are going out ANY time. Either it's true or not, but in ANY case we're entirely sick of Taiwan and want to leave ASAP and find there's a train at 4:15 for Taipei. Pack and drink water and laugh at sign "No lettering in toilet, please," and use the john and pay 80NT for the half-use of the room and dash out to the station. Taiwanese again demonstrate an extremely PUSHY nature at the ticket windows, but twice having someone barge ahead of me and the third one DOESN'T get through. Have 234 ready for two tickets, but the price is only 136, so I suspect it's not air conditioned, but the seats are reserved and it leaves at 5:07PM. Sit down finally in the jammed waiting room and click my teeth to scare away the girl begging by pushing on my hand and thrusting her palm in my face. Finish "Green Hills of Earth" in the waiting room and on the train, and also finish "Red Planet" after it gets dark on the train. Unpleasant fuss when students discover they have SAME seat assignments as ours, but conductor smoothes it out somehow without bothering us. John's incognito anyway in the front seat. Crying baby with tiny cock sticking out, loud women and lots of rain and fog make it easy to read the whole trip. In at 8:45, pitch black and through the rushing crowds to the long queues of cabs, light out, in front of the station and get to Grand Hotel. They're now using the SIDE door, and get to the desk and get room 504, which is in the elegant Chi-Lin Pavilion for 700NT, but the room is marvelously spacious, looking out through huge windows over its verandah over the whole city. The bathroom is enormous and plush and everything is on a grand scale. Get a room service menu despite the boy's assurance it'll take a half hour and order beef with green peppers, chicken balls with mushrooms, and I have glazed bananas for dessert. We both shower, feeling great, and the dinner JUST arrives as we have some of the red rice wine we bought in Taichung. Meal is tasty but nothing to rave about, but the glazed bananas are brought in sticky and steaming hot, and the boy shouts to us that we take them QUICK, while they're hot, and dip them into the water and into our mouths. The caramel glazing stretches ACROSS to the water and BACK to my mouth and it's hot and crispy and soft and sweet and burning all at once, and I sip wine to cool it and tea to do away with the wine taste, and the whole is a simply psychedelic sensation of taste. Finish the whole plate before we even HALF finish with the meal, and we rather decide it was WORTH the expense of $1US for that dessert. Finish, nicely filled, and have more red rice wine and say how much more worth it we think THIS room is, and our suitcases come at 11, and we get things packed away again and, both very tired, we get into bed at 11:15, eager to get away from Taiwan, and I'm barely even CONSCIOUS of the flight coming up. [[[Noon, 7/30]]]
TUESDAY, JULY 27. Wake at 7 and have nice sex, then to have breakfast and back to find there's a flight at 10:15 we can take. Hate the crew in the dining room---so upper middle class American and hardly ANY of the international traveler type. Back to pack everything away and get to the lobby to carry our own bags to a cab. There's little traffic and the fare is only 30NT, hardly comparable to the 100 we were charged at the start. Porters shout at us for our airlines, but we carry in bags ourselves and check in at the JAL counter, then go back to the bank to change into US money, about $30 and change, and John gets rid of some of his US change into the bargain. Then proceed to the departure area, and I'm reading "Between Planets," having sent off another two packages, one of the marble to Mom, even though they were quite sure it would break, but I wasn't willing to pay $96 for postage for something that only COST $40, so I paid $13 for land mail. And a package of 3 books and the Taiwan Museum and a few other things to myself for a SECOND $26 postage. Sitting reading in the departure lounge and John turns to me from his reading and smiles and says "I love you." I turn red in confusion and he adds, "Why it should be here in the airport I don't know, but I do." I grin unconscionably and go back to reading, to look up and say, "You sure messed up my reading," look at a fairly cruisy guy in green shirt and trousers, but he's not seen afterwards. Onto the plane at 11:15 and the flight is announced for one hour and fifteen minutes, and we start off over the sunny island, but the clouds start in and get heavier and heavier, and we're flying at a bad altitude and the meal of snacks is fairly bumpy, and then the "Fasten Seat Belt" light comes on as the sky gets quite gray, and we begin jouncing around about ten minutes later and we start down abut a half hour before landing's due. Clouds all around, some in spectacular configuration, and the plane turns and weaves to avoid the worst part, but I'm terribly worried and sweaty. Announce a landing ten minutes early, to my delight, and we're flying low over choppy waters, and then there are rocky wooded isles below, and junks and sampans bobbling in the waves, and we dip lower and lower through the clouds, my stomach taut with tension, and the resettlement houses loom up on the right and I know John is getting a spectacular view of the harbor on the left. Land at 12:30 and I'm greatly relieved, feeling almost sick with fear. Out of the plane and wait for the luggage for an easy customs and through to a hotel desk where we make reservations at the Peninsula, another (the second) of the "five great hotels." Fellow with a chauffeur's cap takes care of our luggage while we go upstairs to find that the next flight to Kota Kinabalu isn't tomorrow, but it's FRIDAY, as planned. Shrug---well, we're going to see Hong Kong. Pick up travel information and maps and get out to a Brewster Green Silver Shadow Rolls Royce with lovely tan leather upholstery! Settle back in the air conditioned comfort for a trip into town, the driver telling us to see the Yaumati Typhoon Shelter, Shanghai Street and Temple Street, and we feel good about the day. Yes, there WAS a typhoon warning, but we'll have two days of cloudy weather and then all will be well. Drive up to the hotel and get a rather miffed "Thank you, sir," for the measly $4 tip, and inside to check into room 222 for at least one night, since the $135 rate is the lowest they have. $22.50 is a bit much, but the room is high, spacious, marvelously lit with indirect lights upward and downward from a teak border around the room, bronze-colored drapes on the window that looks out to the plumbing and water pipes at the back of the building, and a lovely bathroom. And the twin beds are squared together to form a king size double bed that we like. They bring in us, then the luggage, then welcoming tea, and we feel it's a great place, and decide to stay here all three nights after all. John's eager to sightsee, so we're out to Canton Road via the YMCA John wants to see, up along the docks and furniture carvers to Austen Road and over to Shanghai Street, and there are shops and stands and fruits and kids and sleeping dogs and leashed cats and hawkers and sights of all kinds. Come to a market area and see them gutting fish and hacking away at silvery bodies, cutting slabs of meat while boys on their haunches grab for pieces of gut in the bloody water just above the gutter, see headless and live chickens, all sizes of shrimp from an inch to eight inches, piles of shoes and clothes and vegetables, and though the cement is wet and the slaughter is everywhere, there's NOT the rank smell of old blood at all, so everything must be kept scrupulously clean. Frowning women look and shop and we thread through to the curious, sometimes smiling, stares of the vendors and buyers. Out at last, John very impressed, and continue up to Tung Kun Street for the anchorage, and see the rows of high-sterned mahogany or teak junks tied endlessly to themselves, fish-paddled sampans tilting back and forth between them, trucks and cranes and men loading and unloading from the docks. Kids wave to us and honk their boat horns at us and we wave back and look at the men sleeping or playing cards or watching TV or working. Back and forth along the fill area, and back to Nathan Road to walk all down it to the hotel. We bought some ginger wine in the "supermarket" which had almost every brand of American food and sundries imaginable (though no new Wilkinson-type blades for John's razor) and back to the hotel to shower and enjoy the wine. Decide on Peking Duck for dinner and get up to the Princess Theater Restaurant, through an awful lobby and shabby elevator, to a nicely decorated family-style restaurant that had a horde of about a hundred Japanese tourists all devouring Peking Duck in some cavernous backroom. We have soup with our meal of mushrooms and pork, and the duck is served whole and is cut at the table by a Chou En Lai type who must do hundreds a week. It's quite fatty and some of the meat has pieces of fat hanging off it, but we have lots of onions and lots of sauce and too many crepes, and lots of beer and the bill comes to 70NT with tip, and we're out, feeling very pleasant about it at 9:15. Grab a cab up to the LaiChiKok Amusement Park (since John talked me out of seeing the Miami Theater Restaurant for $50 with its Chinese opera floor show) for $4 and into the typical amusement entrance to see theater after theater and at the middle we find they have 9. One for Canton Opera, Peking Opera, Western Movie, Chinese movie, acrobatic (closed, sadly), Magic show, Leg Show (which we got to too late), Chinese singing, and floor show. Staggering. Sat listening to the listless but great singing, introduced by a guy in Noh-tones who yawned and looked in disgust at the crowd through his cigarette smoke. Then to some of the opera performances and it held up to its reputation of gaudy makeup, sparkling costumes and music of crashes and drums. One we sat in for awhile with a comic in a funny small white greasepaint face who mugged at the audience and used juvenile TV accents for his satiric remarks playing hammily to the audience who applauded his "aria" and the main soprano was applauded practically after every noteworthy PHRASE, carrying the opera tradition of applauding even one MORE step, to the delight of the connoisseur, I'm sure. But riff-raff sat around the back and chattered in mock disgust with the performance and I could barely restrain myself from asking them to please leave, but no one else seemed to think of it. Into a zoo where a bear was swiping at its tiny erection---what effect DO we have on animals---there were two erect dogs on the sidewalk this afternoon. We rode a fun house ride and looked at some of the movies, but we got more and more tired. Out to find no taxis available, so we got on the second deck of a #6 bus and John exclaimed all the way into town about how CLOSE we came to each of the florid electric signs strung across the street. Very tired, but we wanted to see the harbor, so we got off at the last stop and out onto the Public Pier, where John started talking with one of the flowers of the night, and I said I was going back to the hotel while he "went up Nathan and turned left." I wrote 118-119 from 11:45 to 12:05, after showering again, but then John came in to say he could find nothing but massage parlors, and we got to bed at 12:15, too tired to think of Macao in the morning, to music from next door, water down the bathroom pipes, assorted metallic clinks from all the walls and the rush of the air conditioner. The character of a hotel comes at NIGHT. [[2:30PM, 8/1]]]
WEDNESDAY, JULY 28. Wake actually at 8, a new late! I do him very well and we're slowly up and around, getting down to breakfast about 8:30. I have the rolls and cheese and hot chocolate, John has an omelet, and we go to check the "Around Hong Kong Island" tour at 11 to find that it's NOT the one from the hotel, but just around the corner at the Ocean Pier. Up to the room and get my binoculars and down around the corner to the boat. Buy tickets for $36 apiece and get led down to a table and John immediately goes up in arms "I don't like it, I don't want to do," and I insist that he's out of his mind, he should at least give the boat a CHANCE. Then it turns out that because of the high seas ("We couldn't even make it to Aberdeen yesterday") the New Territories and Outlying Islands alternative was going to be taken, and John settled down, saying that was a better sounding trip anyway, and I agreed when I looked at the map and saw we were going around to Aberdeen anyway. Hear that we can have chairs up top and ask the cute nicely-accented girl to have them sent up, but they don't arrive even AFTER she's noticed we don't have them, so I simply bring two up and put one near John, who'd squatted in the corner furthest from the kiddy-laden crowds, and I sit in the other corner watching the Yaumatei Anchorage slipping by under my binoculars. The ticket is also good for two drinks, so I get a vodka tonic, which makes me feel better, and then get one for John too and he beams up at me for getting it for him. Then I'm downstairs after passing LaiChiKok and not seeing the Amusement Park, and listen to the Chinese aversion to burning bodies from the girl's tasteful narration. Soup's served and I'm up to tell John, but he says he's not eating, and I refrain from bringing up his terrible hunger when he's not eaten. Back down for winter melon soup, a tasty beef and pepper sauce, a chicken and bamboo shoot serving and a VERY hot pork dish, and they left me out of the salad, even though I asked them for it. Past uninteresting islands and the only thing of note was the poor high and rusty Queen Elizabeth, her name still showing under the paint for "Seawise University," and it has to be towed to Japan for a large enough dry dock for refitting before she can even be USED in her new capacity. Bring ice cream up to John, and he says he wants MY drink, and this is after the girl came down and said "Your friend wants his second drink, he says he hasn't felt this relaxed in MONTHS." I thanked her, laughing, for the message. Up again with John to repeat the figures on one resettlement project: $110 million HK for 55,000 people in 8,000 families earning $750-1250HK/month, paying $120-150/month rent for 100-400 square feet. We go through the Aberdeen sampan lodgings, much smaller than before, and the Sea Coop and Taitak restaurants seem to be anchored far closer to the shore than they were before. So the homeless problem seems to be reducing, though they say there are still 700,000 substandard-living people who still have to be resettled. The sea is fairly rough, but with the food my stomach behaves, so there's no problem. Up into the hot sun where John is getting quite dark on his arms and face, and down to the cool dark where a large wide-spaced-eye family to two sons and three daughters makes pleasant watching. Back around to the harbor and all the sights from the top again, watching the Baikal docking on Kowloon side, and though I'm tired and it's 3:45, John says he wants to see Hong Kong, so we're out to walk west, since that's where the high spots are, and we're first on the main drag, with sterile offices and plenty of crowds, then we take a diagonal street, which is more typically Chinese shops, then go up a steep vegetable street and turn right on Hollywood Road, veering away from a terrace that seems to lead to the upper quarters of the city, and find ourselves opposite a passable-looking restaurant and we're thirsty. Go in and up to the second floor, and there's no menu, but little Chinese boys pass through the crowd with cigarette-girl halters around their necks, shouting their wares in Chinese, and John calls one over, finds that the cannelloni-type roll is filled with chicken and the boy deftly separates one from the sticky yellow sauce, and snips it into three segments like a bloated worm on John's plate. Then he orders two pallid gray dough-cakes with what look like cod liver oil inside, and I order lichee, but they don't have any, so I content myself with the hot tea. Men at nearby tables stare at us, but I don't feel like eating anything. John pays all of $1.50 for his lunch and we're back out onto the hot streets. Got to a far point and start asking for Hollywood Street again, for that's where the old Chinese temple is, and we wander generally uphill to the Prince Albert Park where huge multi-fluted trunks of trees grow right on a sloping rock wall at 75°, their roots spread over the flat wall like a wooden medallion. Ask someone for Hollywood and he says it's out the base of the hospital across the way, and we enter it and find we're on the 5th floor and we have to get to the Lower Ground floor. It takes an age to get the elevator, and then we're stopped at Upper Ground by interns with a crouching woman in a wheelchair and we get off to give them the lift. Down to Hollywood and past the street we came up before, and there's the old temple, with bell-shaped spirals of punk burning endlessly in the twilight. Dragon-wall is nice and everyone seems very casual in the temple. Out and see the sign for Ladder Street and it's highly tourist-oriented with jewelry and cosmetics and plastic junk, and we're to the bottom before we really notice, and it's been a disappointment. Want to catch a cab to the Peak Tram, but decide we don't have enough money, so we find a bank that will cash our Barclay checks (right over a sign saying to BUY them there!) after only 10 minutes and efforts of 6 or 7 clerks. Out and decide to take a double-decker trolley and it quickly gets crowded. Watch the map and figure we have one stop after the Hilton, but it waits and waits at the Hilton and finally the conductor comes up the steps and the driver, whom we'd ASKED for the tram, has been HOLDING the door at 5PM, the busiest time, just to make SURE we get out! Walk up to the tram and right in and it's painfully constructed because the seats face uphill, are VERY hard on the back, and don't change slope as the car goes from 0° to 60°. Views are great of the new apartment buildings and I'd forgotten the four or five stops on the way to the top. Out and there's no real viewpoint, so up to an observation point, but I want to go higher and John doesn't, so I climb road past new building and Japanese consul's home and shoddy apartment buildings and a park and a glass-bayed house and up a deserted sidewalk, over a downed face, up a wide stair, panting and sweating in the dank heat, and up to the barbed wire around the microwave station at the top, down a side trail and climb on VERY rusty broken ladder to a roof for a view over the WHOLE harbor from Green Island to north of the airport, where there's a slit of flames of some huge fire. Watching planes landing and taking off as the fog gets thick around the hill, sometimes obscuring everything, and I pick a ginger flower and another sweet-smelling white fairy blossom and watch the water change colors near the islands and the sky darken, and a soldier chases me out and down to the observatory again, where I watch already-lit signs become brighter in the grayness and people come up and down the hill, and at 8:30 I'm VERY tired and go down to walk to the ferry and come across to the hotel at 9:10, to a note that John left to see the town after 9, and I showered and wrote 119-122 from 9:30 to 10:05, getting up to date through this morning and figure I'll finish tonight before John gets in at midnight tonight. Dress in suit for the first time and down to Gaddi's at 10:30, ignoring the ostentatious rattle of the awful pudge next to me and have VERY thin watery vichyssoise, an elaborately prepared simple salad, very GOOD chicken a la Kiev with MUCH butter for the good broccoli and other vegetables, and the Pouilly Fuisse for $42 or $7 is VERY strong and I'd finished the ginger wine, too, and I can barely get through the mandarin orange which I feel VERY high through and KNOW that nothing spectacular is going to happen to me tonight, and get VERY soused back to the room at 11:45 and John's in and I undress and quickly fall into bed for a much-needed rest before tomorrow. [[[7:15PM, 8/1]]].
THURSDAY, JULY 29. Alarm rings at 7:30 and we get up fairly reluctantly: John's through showering before I get out of bed, and then it's getting close to 8AM and John wants to catch the first hydrofoil at 8:30, so we race to the Star Ferry and cross before having breakfast, walk the long distance around the 8-story parking tower to the Macau ferry, buy our tickets quickly, then get caught in a long slow line to get the passports checked, and it's very close to 8:30 when we get assigned two of the last seats left and sit down in two window seats in the next to the last row. Everything's almost claustrophobically close, and the windows so salted and watered that it's difficult to see out at all. So I'm up to the deck and John follows me when I don't get chased back down, and I do stand too far back and am chased into the four by six-foot passenger enclosure behind a motorboat windscreen that protects the actual exit and little else. Notice a brown haired odd-eyed fellow looking and looking at us, and his outer eyelids fall diagonally across his eyes to give him a curious sad inquisitive look as well as a soulful quality and an effective sunscreen from his prominent brows. He's outside taking photos with his attentive English-type friend, but there's no contact between them. We're up onto the foils of the Flying Skimmer almost at once, and it wasn't until we got past the protection of the major islands that we began rocking from one side to the other of the tunnel-type waves rolling like cylinders that we slide along like sleds, coming up from the stormy south. The sun is at our backs and the view forward is fine of the islands passing quickly. People filter onto the deck until it's crowded, particularly with a little girl who clings, crying, seasick, to her perplexed daddy. Largest empty space is just before Macao and we get there in about 80 minutes, in just before 10, and another VERY long wait before too-few inspectors to get more stamps and pay our $25HK apiece entry visa fee. Onto the dock to a talky taxi driver and John blows up finally, shouting "NO" at the top of his voice and we get to the next dock where they have a map and brochure about the island, and John says he just wants breakfast and time to look over the brochure. Catch the cab to the Esplanade for $2 and find it closed until 10:30. Walk around town, seeing another Chinese style-restaurant that I refuse, and decide to try the tall orange crown-crowned Lisboa Hotel. It's plushy and elaborate and the Lisboa restaurant is AGAIN Chinese style. I say he can eat here and "Where will we meet?" "I don't care," he says, waving his hands in disgust and I reach forward and grab his arm FIRMLY and repeat icily, "Where will we meet?" and he says, "The lobby." I go downstairs to the round gambling area and find Caesar's Palace is serving breakfast, so I have iced coffee (with ice!) and a ham omelet (with lettuce and tomato!) and the butter curls for the first time and I like it a lot. Meet John in the lobby and he's checked things on the map that I recheck while he looks at one of the two gambling levels. Hit one of the few beggars on the trip outside Taipei and walk to the post office, first cashing money in a changer, after being directed there by an office with a large picture of Mao that John wanted to patronize in SOME way but didn't. To the post office for all the Macau stamps (and second floor for flower set) and see to my dismay they have Guinea and Angola and Goa and Cabo Verde and a few other colonies. Around the streets to find the cathedral and ask to be let in first from the bishop's palace, but they refer us to the parish house, and we're let into the boxy, stark white building with silver candlesticks on the altar being the ONLY clue of a Romantic culture. Down and look for a beer place and find it, feeling hot and tired already, and decide to hire a pedicab to take us to the north, so we could walk back. $6 an hour sounds fine, so we put the top down and go pedaling off to Sun Yat Sen's house, bare except for photos and some English details, then to a large Chinese temple where they're mourning a dead man with flowers, a feast, chanting by three black-robed monks very conscious of the bustle around them, and the flute and drum ensemble. To the gardens in back, much better than the Floral Garden we stopped at to our dismal shoddy sorrow, and then restrain him from going to the North Gate: we can see Communist China on every side, no need to TOUCH it. Down to another Chinese temple, but it's the same as the last and we automatically cancel off the remaining ones on our list. Tell him we'll have him for another hour and get to Camoen's memorial, in large rocks where groups of men gather to talk in the coolest part of a hot island. To the museum but don't want to pay the $1 to get in, and down through baking streets through delightful little pastel pink and blue and green houses and shops, and we decide to end the trip back at the post office. It's just over two hours (12:15-2:30), but he shakes us by finally getting out that it was $6 an hour APIECE. We compromise by giving him 20, so we KNOW he was rooking us, and then John goes into the Ruby Restaurant while I cash $40 US and get $30 in Macau money for the P.O., but the foreign stamp window is closed until 3. Buy 10 airmail postcard stamps for the 10 cards I bought for a ridiculous $4 (that's 6.6 cents per CARD!) and John writes two and I write some, then get over to the PO for a lovely Portuguese fellow who takes over an hour to give me ALL the issues except for a couple of HUGE sets from Angola, and I spend all the $170.75 in Macau money I HAD. Back to the restaurant at 4 to find John slumped on his wicker easy chair in great content with two beers and some Coke in him, and I quickly get the last few post cards written and send them off in time to get a 4:30 cab to the terminal for the 5PM Hydrofoil. Read a bit of "Between Planets" before getting into the passport hassle, but we take off quickly at 5. This passenger deck has a sunroof, so it's easier to stand in and fewer people come out and John snoozes away in his seat. Back at 6:15 after a smoother and uneventful trip past all the same islands I saw on the way out, and we ferry over to the hotel and John wants to eat in just any old restaurant, so after we shower we walk into the section he'd patrolled last night and looked into a number of places that looked too fishy or too expensive or too small or too empty or not nice enough and I was getting VERY annoyed with him for not wanting a good restaurant and getting annoyed with myself for getting annoyed with him! Finally find a family style place that has an English menu and we start out with a birds' nest soup that has QUITE the consistency of the hardened nodules of semen I found in myself when I hadn't come in a number of days. But this was hot, and a whole bowlful of the ropy snot. It was a sweetened soup, very sugary, and hard to tell the original flavor of the swifts' spit we were drinking. Then chicken in brown sauce and that was a small portion so we had tiny river shrimp in scrambled eggs and much tea, including very small eggshell thin cups of some sort of "welcome/goodbye" tea that was VERY strong and VERY bitter, and he seemed rather sorry I didn't drink any of mine---as if I were refusing his hospitality. We talked about restaurants as we walked away from the place and then we were very tired as we filed through all the late-night traffic of the town. Into the room and get a note about leaving tomorrow and we make arrangements for the car to take us to the airport at 2PM tomorrow. I wanted to get down to some of the diary, but I was just too tired: for a stop we hadn't planned for, we ended up spending an awful lot of money and doing an awful lot of things in Hong Kong, and I can't say I don't like it anymore, but I STILL don't want to see it AGAIN, though I WILL concede that it DOES have a reasonably spectacular harbor. Bed at 11. [[[9:30PM, 8/1]]]
FRIDAY, JULY 30. Up at 7 and worry a bit about the flight today, and John wakes up and works over me for a bit, then goes for the Baby Magic and goes over me VERY slowly, until at the end he's lying across his bed, both hands smoothing my cock, head resting between his arms against my right buttock. Come in no uncertain terms. Then up and he showers and I fuss around with the time tables and changes of zones for the rest of the flights, gratified to see that NO flight will be as bad as the flight today UNTIL we go from Kabul to Istanbul in November. That's nice. Then shower and we go to eat breakfast at 9 in the Bauhinia Room at the Hong Kong Hotel and I have pineapple and scrambled eggs and bacon and John has papaya and an omelet and we look over the sun-drenched harbor from the parking lot of the Ocean Pier. See people heading into the Baikal and decide I want to see it too, but John says he doesn't want to stand in line and I go down at 10 and it's due to sail at 11, so I can't get on. Back to the hotel and John's back with his OWN prescription ground into goggle lenses for snorkeling and that's just FINE for $10US. I phone the doctor's office and find I can go down at 11 for gamma globulin for hepatitis and I do so, and it's jammed but they take me quickly, weigh me, and I weigh 148 1/2 lbs, which is 661/2 kg, and at .01-.03 cc/kg, they figure 1.3-2cc, and they give me 1.5cc, one shot only which only barely lets me feel it, for only $35HK, or under $6US. GREAT! Back worried only about the FLIGHT now and I write 122-127 from noon to 1, and then figure I better get started on packing, and get everything in order, finding I don't even have an envelope to mail off yet, and we hadn't felt like eating, but then John says he IS hungry and we're down to the lobby at 1:30 and he has Muesli and I have a roast beef plate, figuring we need $20 for airport tax, $6 for Rolls Royce tip, and $2 for porters, and we have to stint to $1.70 to the porter and end up with exactly NO Hong Kong money. Service is lousy and we're into the cab at 2;10 and at the airport at 2:30. Check in quickly and we're all ready to go at 2:45, an hour before the flight. I watch some LOVELY people going back and forth, including a cute butch blond with nice eyes and a stocky Malay with short shorts and boots. A baby boy screams and grabs at his father for about a half hour, sending his baby sister into hysterical sobs also, and they're on our FLIGHT! Read more of "Between Planets" and the flight is called at 3:20 and we're on to AGAIN find a confusion in double-seating and it looks as if EVERY seat is taken on this twice-a-week flight to Kota Kinabalu. We sit next to the last row on left, just where I would have CHOSEN to sit, and we take off on time and 20 minutes later the captain says we're 10 minutes ahead of schedule. Take off VERY slowly and rise VERY slowly and I sweat it out, knowing hottest air has least lift, and the 737 is so full they were even weighing the PASSENGERS to get the exact weight of the flight. I kept myself calm by saying over and over that the 737 was SO great between the Hawaiian islands, it'll be good here, too. Gradually get up to 33,000 feet (for a plane with a ceiling of 30,000 feet?) and feel better. Lunch of assorted sandwiches and salads is pretty fair and then there are clouds below and I practically finish "Between Planets" all but the last 18 pages. There's only one john and that's always taken and it does no good to wait in line because everyone just pushes in front as if there were nothing wrong with doing that. There's free champagne and white wine with the meal, which is great, but then they pass out free cigarettes and John tells the girl not uncertainly that he thinks it's a lousy custom, and then they push perfumes and booze and Malay reproductions and it's a bit much! The 150-minute flight goes smoothly and we land at 5:30, and I didn't see much of a town, only off-shore islands surrounded by coral which looked great for snorkeling. Out of the plane and it's much cooler than Hong Kong, though humid, and into the tiny airport first to get through everything but baggage inspection and bags take FOREVER to come, but then we pass through quickly. Out to put our bags in front of Hotel Jesselton car, but no one shows up so I get Borneo Hotel driver paged and he says, sorry, they're full up for tonight. Oh. Page Jesselton Hotel driver and he has a list of names, but, sorry, our names aren't on the list and he's full for the night. Oh oh. But here's our friend from the Eden Hotel, yes, he has rooms, and we go in HIS car through the continuous outskirts which turn out to be the whole city of Kota Kinabalu. Up two awful flights to the office and---no rooms left. Very sorry. He seems NOT to want to call anywhere---the Prince Hotel is just around the corner. Finally he DOES call---again and again, and must make about six calls and finally says they have a room at the Yin Hah, or something, Hotel, and it's just down the street---but finally John and I persuade him to lead us there and it's up two flights AGAIN to the office, a concrete building with open balconies, a common john on the floor, with two small beds covered with tablecloths and clean pillows and a holey-plastic covered chair and a wooden kitchen table and a tiny sink and, surprise, a window with an air conditioner in it. Have NO money yet---we forgot it was Saturday---and give a Touch-Me to the guy from Eden and he seems happy and we cash $3 for $9.60 at hotel for dinner and out to wander the town. I want to watch sunset and John suddenly says he wants to find a hotel for tomorrow NOW! I explode inside: THIS was the same guy who chortled, "Fine, we have no place to stay, it becomes an adventure." I GO to the beach and watch the last rays of sun vanish a bit too late, though we saw the final rainbow draped across the hills at the back of the town. It's raining slightly and the dappled water of the oily bay is pretty even over the muddy shores, and despite the shitty oily smell the wafts off the ocean. Walk north and find the Capital Hotel, and they can give us a room tomorrow for $55 a day. This compared with $22 where we are now. Walk further and reach the end of town suddenly at a Shell depot and turn back, finding the tiny Jesselton Hotel, and decide to eat at the Capital, since it looks like the only decent place in town. Sit in the almost-empty dining room with the orchestra warming up on the stage and we have the Dutch pea soup, filled with franks and ham and goodies, and John has enormous prawns and I have a fried fillet of fish that's VERY tasty, and we finish just as a bunch of 6-8 Americans troop in, the curtain parts and the band starts playing the inevitable MUZAK music, and we hurriedly cash a traveler's check and get OUT of there just after 8. Back to the Yin Hah Hotel and upstairs to the grin of the locals clustered around the cruddy bar downstairs and John decides to take a shower and does, and I go to the john, which works though it has no seat, and shower, which is fine, and it's even set up with a stool and red plastic pails if you like the Japanese sit-method, or a big blue plastic tub if you like the Western frontier style tub-bath. The orchid soap is almost usable and the place might not be THAT bad. Into the room feeling thirsty and ALTHOUGH the water is in a SPECIAL bottle that he opened and put a glass over as we came INTO the room, and there was a kettle for boiling water NEXT to the bottle, I STILL thought two or three times before finally pouring myself a glass and a half of the liquid and drinking it down with an "Oh, well, it's been a month and we've not been seriously ill yet, and we DO have anti-diarrhea pills and I DID get gamma globulin today (no ill effects at ALL)" thought, and nothing bad DID happen. Nothing to do but close the curtains around the air conditioner as well as possible, lie down on the pink and blue hand-stitched flowered tablecloth neatly wrapped around the bare mattress, and shut the light off. I wanted to write in the diary, didn't feel terribly sleepy, but John said he was dead so the lights went off at 9:30. I put in earplugs but STILL didn't get to sleep until well after 11, and then I woke again and again during the night, waking finally for good at 4AM! [[[8/3, 4:30PM]]]
SATURDAY, JULY 31. Lay there feeling AWFUL. Doze off and wake again and bounce back and forth until John wakes up at 7 and showers and we decide to leave as soon as we can. Check out, cashing a $10 traveler's check downstairs for the $22 rent, only $7.33, or $3.67 apiece, one of the cheapest (and worst) in a long time. John brushes his teeth in the questionable water and we're down to the Capital to lug our bags in and though room 806 isn't ready yet, we have them taken up while we go to see the ceremony at the memorial from 7:30 to 8AM, and then to the dining room to have breakfast. Fresh pineapple and omelets are adequate but fairly lack-luster and we're out at 9. Over to the Sabah Tourist Office to find that it's closed, then to the MSA Tour Office in the hotel building. Pick up a brochure on Kinabalu National Park, but she can't really tell us anything, except that another fellow there says, "Never charter a taxi, it's very expensive," and then when we ask how to get to the market of Kota Belud, he says, "Oh, you'll have to charter a taxi for that." The girl uses several unladylike phrases when the phone doesn't work, and finally she gets through to a girl friend of hers at the MSA main office in the Wing On building, and says we should go there. We do, and the girl tries to be helpful, but she can only mention a tour for 15 Japanese to Papar, and tomorrow they're going to Kinabalu, but we want to go to the fair. Then she says there's no chance of anything overland to Kuching, we'd have to fly but it would be difficult to reconstruct our ticket to find the charge for stopping at Kuching, so why don't we go to the MSD ticket office right across the way. She, as well as the other girl, says that the Sabah Tourist Office would be best. Next door to busy people and after much talk about how busy the flights are, it turns out that the few flights from KK to Kuching are all filled anyway. That solves that. She ALSO tried a number of times unsuccessfully to use the telephones. She also says that the hotel should be able to help us about Sunday. Then a blond American guy and little girl come in and THEY'RE walking to the bus station to inquire about public transportation to Kinabalu National Park, but after we get there it turns out that he's going Monday, which is too late for us, but he gives us the name of a Swiss at the Lutheran Center in Kuolat, from where we can see longhouses and maybe we don't NEED Kuching. But there's no bus to Kota Belud and we try a few of the black numbers on white backing---only THESE are PUBLIC landrovers he's the first to tell us---and they're not interested in Kota Belud in the morning. Disgustedly back to the hotel, our sixth and last hope of information and NO, she doesn't know what TIME they leave, how much they would cost (though one taxi said $60), or where we would get them. "They have no phone, they have no company, they're just there." We get furiously back to the room, go to the bank to change money, getting charged 75¢ from the 3.02 rate for something or other, and find that there IS a public transportation bus to the Tandjung Aru, the public beach, and somehow I get the idea that there's snorkeling there, so we pack snorkel equipment in the bag after John insists he wants to take his shower clogs, which I wear, AS WELL AS his sandals. In doing so he leaves my notebook and pen in the messenger bag, which makes me even angrier when we get to the beach. Walk to the station and see a bus earmarked for the airport, and we're on late, have to stand high up under the low roof and low dirty windows, and I put the satchel in the rack above the seats, next to a dusty seat cover that seems to have been there for months, and we start on our way for only 25¢ apiece. It's a long slow ride with starts and stops, and once a construction job on the highway stops us and we get a chance to watch the fashionably slim tailored figures of the Chinese female coolies wrapped in black and wearing black gloves and headscarves under their bamboo hats, working with pick and shovel over the steaming tarry macadam, slaving away HARDER than men would dream of doing, really getting their backs into it. Then continue and we go down a small road and then start BACK on the same road, and I glance down and out window and see a notice for Tandjung Aru---we've passed it and are going BACK the same WAY. Grab bag quickly and collar the guy to let us out, and even though we SAID "beach" he lets us get off at the next stop. Decide it must be to the right and walk back and along a finished road that poops out very quickly to two dirt driveways and we ask one of the most beautifully muscled torsos in a fetching sarong where the beach is and he moves with great poise and grace and beauty and says it's FURTHER along than we came -- we hadn't reached it yet. More frustrated than ever we walk along a back road past little bungalows without driveways or walks, just plunked in the middle of large lawns, and get to the end and back to the main road, hot and sweaty, and see the beach at the end and get to it to find a VERY level beach with almost no waves at all. Look right to the Lido Club and left to a tiny island in the distance and decide that would be the best chance for coral. But halfway there we pass the Borneo Hotel and John reminds me that this beach is for the sunsets, NOT for the coral, and there'll be NO snorkeling. That's about the last straw, and I tell John quite frankly how frustrating I've found the day: I'm pouting and in a lousy mood. We decide to stop for a swim and wade incredibly far over the rippled fine yellow sand before I even get my crotch wet, and then it decreases in temperature from about 98° to about 96° and I find it coolish, but walk all the way in, sun hot on my back, but don't swim because of my contacts. John says his lenses permit only tunnel vision, and that they blur when water runs inside, but maybe they'll be better when there's something to see. At 1 I'm up to the Borneo Hotel to see they have no rooms till Tuesday, serve lunch till 2, and don't know where one snorkels, try asking at the Yacht Club past the Lido. Fuck you! Back to tell John and he says he won't HAVE lunch. This sets me into ANOTHER funk, but a tiny cup of Milo-flavored ice sets my spirits better for 10¢, and I read the ENTIRE book of "The Puppet Masters," folding page corners down in lieu of underlining, and that's finished at 5:20. Some lovely bodies cavort on beach. The sunset looks better and better, going from blue to pink to crimson to coral to blood to gold to ruby, with streaks of purple and the waves reflect back incredible ripples and the LIGHT is a clean straw-gold of lambent purity, with the YELLOW sand and GREEN trees against the gray-black eastern sky for contrast. No rainbows in the east, but cloud-bows and brilliance in the west. Sun sets at 6:30 and we wait around till 7, deciding to get a cab from the hotel. Miss my sunglass case and John says it could be on the bus, and I figure that's so, ANOTHER negative for a LOUSY day. Call a cab at the desk and wait a long time for it to come, livened by the older father type and two sexy humpy heavy American athlete-types just RAVING for female sex. Cab comes finally, framed by the last of the sunset's riches through the Hotel Borneo's open porches, and to the hotel to John's showering and my underlining the turned corners to finish "Puppet Masters," and down to eat in the Jesselton's Chinese section, having sweet and sour pork and tasty vegetables that John ordered in a strange pique and we have lovely fried rice. To the desk to ask if anyone THERE would be interested in Kota Belud in the morning and the desk clerk remembers one couple and John talks to them and we agree to meet at our hotel at 5AM, on my word that it's going to be best at dawn and go downhill from there on. Back to our place at 9:15 and though I'm woozy from the beer, I'm determined to finish "Between Planets" since I only have 18 pages to go, and I finish that while John FINALLY finishes the Ruth St. Denis book, egged on by my saying he should finish it in July, and it IS the last thing he does in July. He says she reminds him of a dancing Messiah-complex, sort of a combination of Jeff Duncan and myself, and I laugh and say I'd be sure to dislike her, since after all there's only room for ONE Messiah at a time in the world. John and I kiss a bit and I say I KNOW how bad a day it's been, and even when shaving my razor started chipping pieces off one head, to add one last bit of damndest awfulness to a terrible day. John sets the alarm when I tell him the time and he puts it back into the closet and we're into bed at 9:30, with the alarm set for 4:30AM tomorrow, only seven short hours away. [[[8/4, 8:40AM]]]
SUNDAY, AUGUST 1. Wake with a start, pitch black outside. Think dully it can't be 4:30 yet, but check my watch and it says 5! The alarm rang and we didn't hear it! I'd slept with earplugs in because of the hotel's thin walls and varied sound effects and I'd missed it. To the closet to look at the clock and it's 4AM! Wake John and he said he set it at the time I told him, but it must be 5. He's dressed and downstairs in a wink and I wash my face and brush my teeth and follow at 5:10 and he's talking with a fairly nice Bill. Out to look for a land rover and there's not a ONE in sight. Walk back and forth in the dark streets and find bustling people and the start of the market, but no cabs. At 5:30 a taxi shows up and wants $70. NO, it's $60 and he agrees. Back toward the Jesselton and pick up Diane, and oh oh, the BABY. Ride through the outskirts of town in the dark, and the sky only gradually takes on color [just as that PEN ran OUT of color.] We seem to be the first car through, since we send groups of cows, herds of goats and prides of pigs scurrying from their resting places in the middle of the road. It's unpaved most of the way and clouds of yellow dust boil up behind us and we have to close the windows on the rare occasion that we pass anyone. Sky lightens enough to see Mount Kinabalu rising high above its foothills, its top castellated like the tower of an old English keep, with a debatable point as to which looked the highest. Bill exclaims about its clearness: anytime he went to see it, it was invariably cloudy and raining. They agree that living here is frustrating (he's been here a year and a half doing a forestry survey from Canada for the federal government, over from Sandakan for a week's vacation), they can be LOOKING at something in a store, which never has any organization whatsoever, no idea of CLASSES of objects to be sold together, and the owner, merely to save himself the trouble of selling it, will say that he hasn't any, and that one's already sold. Driver listens silently. The road is very curvy and steep, taken at a breathless pace, and soon the baby is belching up white sour curdy substances and crying loudly. John was in the middle of the back and switched with me about a half hour out, so I had the baby's feet in my lap. Get there at 7;10, in just an hour and a half, bypassing the empty town square market of Kota Belud, and people are just coming in, riding on water buffaloes rather than on the "swift Kadazan horses" we'd been looking forward to, and though there did seem to be a few pushy cocks around, we searched and searched but found no cock fights. For about an hour we were the only Caucasians, but later others showed up, including the American athletes. Watched them selling fresh and black-dried fish, looking like desiccated birds' nests, betel nuts and leaves for smoking, all fresh fruits and batiks and cotton for sarongs and plastic goods and a line of food stalls along the stream side. We sat and John had strong Arabic coffee that he liked and we shared a tiny banana fried in a greasy fritter batter. Hard-boiled eggs of a startlingly yellow yolk finished our breakfast, with some watered orange crush from the family. People very pleasant and curious, and the old ladies were colorful with their headscarves and sarongs wrapped around their waists with the invariably black blouse. Many of the women were fresh-faced and delightfully bosomy under their tight bodices and deep neck-clefts. The boys were even cuter in their tight-thighed trousers of perfect fit, though they seemed to bind their genitals so that there was only a shapeless lump in front. [From the PAM of the Malay for "Flush" we went to the DAL of the Indonesian for "Push" on the urinal]. [DODOL, fig-like confection like bean curd, but GOOD; SALA, lichee-type dry fruit, 2 chestnut-like seeds, pine cone exterior]. [[[8/8, 8:45AM]]] [GADO-GADO, or GADO2, a very hot mix of peanuts, eggs, meat, vegetables. GUDEG (GOO-dk) a bland strange combination of chicken in young jackfruit, fruit-nuts, and some fatty substance and eggs, supposedly boiled in coconut milk, with a puffy mushy "big Rice Krispies" sort of filler material. SATO, a great chickens broth with small bits of chicken and lots of raw cabbage and tomatoes. NASI GORENG, a bed of rice with lots of little things on top: cucumbers, tomatoes, small beef pieces, and a very funny fuzzy stuff like coconut husk that melts (or chews) down to a gummy sweetish stuff.] A connish-looking fellow in shirt and trousers sprinkles flour in a circle and spreads his cloth and puts out photographs and incense and bottles and books and airplane tickets and coins and cards, changes into a black shirt and turban while going through his "international fame" patter, does some card tricks, and introduces an orange powder which, when mixed with water, produces a hot paste that cures every skin disease. He sells dozens for $1. Cute goys watch him and I watch them, and a square-jawed cop looks on in absolutely complete innocence. Around to all the shops again, looking at smokers sampling wares, women with betel plugs pulling down the corner of their mouths, loads of cattle being weighed and dickered over with preternatural calmness, and all the kids looking curiously at us, frowning up at our strangeness. Finally it's 9:30 and we meet to drive up to the Rest House, and Kinabalu is getting clouded, but the forest is clear and green and very flat-topped and Africa-like. Listen to many birds and talk until 10:15, then drive back, I sitting in front and the trip seems very long and boring and we stop to see rubber plantation and I get a sample of gum, then stop at city overlook for a minute while everyone but me remains in car, then get to hotel at 12:30. Back to shower and shave, then have lunch of Chinese food and back to room where I write 127-132 from 2:30 to 3:25 and we read and nap a bit, then have great sex for a long leisurely time in the sunlight, and down to walk the town, going to the busses and finding my sunglass case in the FIRST bus, and going out on the rickety rotten boardwalks of the floating village and looking at and smelling the offal under the houses, laugh at the sign saying "these people must move," strictly propaganda, only in English, we figure, and back to Max's coffee house for John's Knickerbocker skyscraper and my butterscotch deluxe, but they're fairly plain for $2, and back to central promenade and look around the town, poking into just about everything, and then we sit on the benches and watch the people go by. Women tend to be underlings, too shy to really look at us unless she's married and walking with her husband. Boys tend to stare and possibly smile, but only after a bit do they REFRAIN from dropping their linked arms or fingers or hands. Also, we noted a boy standing embarrassed in front of his younger brother's nudity on the way to check out the boats (finding nothing, of course) earlier that afternoon and on the earth fill at the far end of town, made from fairly spectacular pieces of coral dredged from SOMEWHERE, another woman looked at us as if WE would mind the sight of her naked laughing son, running unconcernedly in the blazing sun. We just wish the older ones did that. There's an old Britisher walking stoically up and down the wall in his white feet in push-along sandals and starched shirt and slicked, thinning yellow hair and cookie duster mustache. It gets darker without a really nice sunset; but after the sun goes down the clouds get beautifully pink and rose and violet, and we watch the boys go past and one sits next to us, offers us a cigarette, and certainly tries to pick us up, but we aren't attracted by him. Why is it that the ugliest ones are the most aggressive? They HAVE to be, that's why, or they'll never get ANYTHING. Back to the room and quickly write 132-137 from 7:15 to 8PM, and I'm up to Friday, the day before yesterday. Down to eat at the Jesselton again, and John decides on pigeon, and it comes out very tiny and crisp on the outside, and the skin is so burned and there's so little meat and relatively little mess, so I help him with it while we eat the rather ordinary beef dish that I get, and I'm running out of Chinese food that I'd care to try. When all selections are placed before me every day, I tend to tire of pork, beef, chicken, fish, shrimp and soups. Back to the room and John reads while I write 137-142 from 9:30 to 10:15, and read for a bit, debating whether to start on yesterday also, but John gets to bed and I feel guilty about leaving the lights on to keep him awake, and I AM rather sleepy from getting up 15 1/2 hours before, so I read a little more then get to bed at 10:30, setting alarm at 6:45 for the train at 8. [[[8/8, 11:45AM]]]
MONDAY, AUGUST 2. Wake and shower and eat breakfast after leaving instructions with people at desk. "Will you do this? Do it yourself. We won't be here. You're to call at noon. We WON'T BE here!! And OTHER fellow finally understand and says he'll do it. To breakfast at 7:30, they don't have pineapple for me, so I have only eggs, and we get charged $6 for two breakfasts. Make a note to be angry about it later and out to find NO taxi. Dash down to center of town and get one and get to train station at 7:50, to find there WAS a train at 6:30 that got to Tenom at some EARLIER hour, and one at 8:30 that was NOT a slow LOCAL. So of the THREE possible departures, our phone call from the hotel got us the time of the ONLY one we COULDN'T use. I settle down to read part of "Between Planets." Out when the train comes in and we're amazed to see dozens of people storming the doors and pushing their way in, so that we're lucky to find seats together, even though they ARE facing backward. Sun comes in window and it's quite hot, and people crowd into the third-class compartment behind us, hanging off the sides of the car and shouting down to the people getting on and off at various stations. Vendors come to the windows at the stops, and even ride the train for a stop or two selling their stuff, and I buy a couple of ices from the woman, strawberry this time, and we throw the paper cups and wooden spoons out the window and onto the platform with the best of them. Everything goes out the window and the train produces a foul oil-smelling smoke, so they might not have their fresh air for long. Stop many more times, train going along rice fields with thatched houses on stilts, and small bits of forest with rivers running brown and slow to the sea. John buys small oranges and I could labels on telephone poles: 15/16, 15/17, 16/1, for the kilometer and the number within kilometer, bored with the flatness of the land and scenery. To Beaufort at 11:30, and train arrives at 12:15 that we leave on at 12:30. I'd seen the Padas Hotel as we came in, so we walked past the "front porch" shops up the long flights of stairs and the concrete marketplace, to the bare-looking hotel with spare furnishings. Have beer and chicken, fairly good, too, and pay and back to station to platform full of people. John notes his dislike of all the gas station signs and services in pseudo-English: Shellane. Doodlebug tootles in at 12:25 and there's a race for the three or four empty seats. I go for the ONLY one facing front on the right side, but it's taken and I scuttle around to the right rear-facing rear seat, while John's happy in the front left seat. Overcrowded, but we're off. Follow fast-flowing river over rocky ledges and rapids, and hills grow to steep mountains covered with vine-trailing jungles, with butterflies, brightest yellow birds, and hanging leaf-pots from vines on trees. At one point we cross a bridge with a brown boy bathing below in a brook, but sadly he's wearing fresh white undershorts and undershirt. Also see a loose young peccary running across a little stream and feel I'm in jungle country for real. Wait a bit for repair train to come past, and I rest myself from my twisted-around stance to see forward. Then we're off and into the tiny town of Tenom at 2:30. John wants to take the train right back, since his neighbor said the return trip took 6 hours, but I say "can we at least leave the station?" But I encounter a taxi driver who says that taxis can go as far as Keningau, and he'll only charge $5US per person. Since the whole trip should be $20 and Keningau is 1/3 the way, it sounds good. John balks, but I tell him if he can find a cheaper way, he should and I'll join him. Into crowded car and off along the very dusty road. Scenery is not so great, neither wild not terribly domesticated, just between. Into Keningau and find no one who wants to go to KK for less than $75, or $25 US, and we simply say "no." Land rover finally says he'll take us to Tambunan for $6 per person, and we agree. Into covered, open-sided back, and we bounce up and down for a bit alone, then have a drink and "funny" talk while they laugh at our insisting on getting to KK. They get gas, then go to HIS place to put in cots and they ask us questions and I'm getting frightened that they're about to take us off somewhere and rob us. Feel helpless and ignorant and totally frustrated, while John laughs, saying I should "play the game too." Into Tambunan at 5, and there's no one in a CAR, let alone taxi, and we ask and ask, but could only get a charter. Finally storekeeper directs us to a Roman Catholic mission near Bopah, and we walk the three miles in the silence, and no cars pass us. Two boys call out in precise English: Where are you going? and Where do you come from? We pass school and up road to dormitories and three boys agree to take us to the Father. He comes down the stairs with two other visitors and sardonically greets us, then his master Agustin takes charge of us and puts us in with the boys, saying they'll give us food. We get in and have mattresses donated to us with mosquito nets, also two blankets and pillows, and towels and soap, and we're off to shower in the cold water, and they all come in, too, but they don swimming trunks to wash themselves. We don't know whether it's Kadazan, Catholic, or strangers that does it. Agustin shows us around and gives us a quick talk about why the 99% non-Malay population of Sabah find the edict to speak Malay by 1973 strange, and how the government is fighting the "Communists," i.e., all who would want to change the status quo. He's from India, but wants us to go to his hometown of Kuala Lumpur, but adds we have to KNOW someone there or we won't like it. Dinner's at 9, after lovely sunset, and we eat mackerel and fried spam and rice and lovely hot pineapple soup, and two dogs come begging around for scraps, and Agustin disappoints them by going off to HIS guests, and they start talking to us. We talk about Kadazans and schooling and English and markets and New York and its coldness and about computers and their capabilities and John's book and their studies and the school and its system, and we feel quite wrung out from their cheerful inquisition. But they're so bright and eager and well-mannered and properly respectful that it's hard to resist their charm. We thank and thank them, then go off with Agustin to his place for coffee. They have an Arabic filter that John loves and I have some with sugar and milk and we talk about politics and Vietnam and schools and world affairs and student uprisings and the Establishment and I get a very strange sense of dislocation: US cocktail party talk in the wilds of Borneo in a Roman Catholic mission. Of course, we both realize that this chance to talk with the educated people of the country is a great joy and we should even be thankful for the horrible lack of communication and tourist facilities and information that led us into this mess in the first place. To bed about 11, and I have to go back to the white-tiled john to piss, while John did his in the house. To bed with the lights on because we don't know where the switch is and hear people coming and going in the light, so we resign ourselves that, like clothed showering, the fear of sex is so great that lights are kept on all night. I expected patrols. Mosquitoes buzz both inside and outside the netting, and I pull both blankets around me in the night chill and they're damp and clammy smelling from the humid weather. Light go off at 11:30, but there are still shuffles around the place and there are lights outside that shine in the window, and I imagine every mosquito in Borneo queuing up to come through the holes in the mosquito netting after my warms body. Finally doze off about midnight, but wake to think it 5, but it must have been 12:25, because I wake next at 2:15, and at 3:30.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 3. [[8/8, 4PM]] Wake again at 5 to find it still dark, then at 6 and stay awake as it gets lighter and people begin to stir. Out into the cool fresh air and watch the sun break through the golden clouds over the central range, with Kinabalu stark against the horizon. There's a lovely savor to the air and birds fly around, water buffalo plod along their muddy paths, ducks swim in the rice fields, cars and trucks dust their way down the road, people pass in the early morning haze, the girls are cooking in the kitchen and the boys are about chores already. I wander over to the church and look around it, rather nicely conceived to go from a small entrance to a large fan above the altar, and the priest is out and talking as I look at all the lovely flowers: if these all grow so easily here, it's too bad the valleys aren't masses of bloom. Breakfast is some sort of rice mixed with vegetables and fritters of some sort, rather tasty but greasy. We give Agustin the three touch-mes that we have with us and nicely the girls seem to crowd around one, the boys around another, and Agustin fools with the third. We suggest they be left in the science laboratory and he laughs. Shake hands all around and gather things up and get down to the road about 8:15. Nothing passes. Some boys come past to speak English and we walk toward Toboh. Then a truck comes past that had driven up to the mission as we left, and they stop and I THINK they say they'll leave some people off up the road and come back to take us to KK, but we wait to 9:30 and don't see them again, so we decide I'd heard wrong and get back to flagging down cars, reading "Between Planets" in the long wait between while the sun gets hotter and hotter. Finally around 10 a newer Toyota truck stops and after the driver assures himself that there are only the two of us and the small bag we're carrying, they let us into the enclosed back. But it's still very dusty and they seem to be in the process of widening the road, so there are raw scars in all the hillsides and I have great thinking to do about "progress." Surely the road will open up the interior, but the land is scarred for miles, the talus chokes streams which fill and kill the trees in the valleys, erosion will go a different way, and animal life will surely be disturbed. It raises clouds of dust on nearby foliage, and now the towns will begin to experience the noise and bustle of the autos and trucks bringing people and produce closer. That will bring the tourists, hotels, more shops, more money, and all the children can learn to beg and the parents to rook tourists. Awful. Pass the crest, rolling up and down very steep slopes, and there are great views to the west and KK and the ocean, and they say they are going to Ranam, giving me visions of getting to Kinabalu Park after all, but the ride is very tiring. We stop for a piss call and there are about a dozen butterflies fluttering at a wet spot, so I wet my finger with spit and quickly lured one up onto my hand, captivating John. He tries very gingerly and finally gets one up, delight in his face and voice. Back into the car and into relative civilization, then into KK and they park in the middle of town and we get out, thanking them profusely. Back to the hotel and gratefully into the room (after getting a note that KK park facilities were FULL for tonight, anyway) when John remembers that he left his boots in the truck. He runs out while I relax on the john with the newspaper and he comes back to say that he looked down three streets and they weren't to be found. Gone boots. Eat at 1 at the Jesselton, John prawns that get me angry and I insist I want American food tonight so I can try their chicken a la Kiev and don't really enjoy my sweet and sour ribs and fried rice. Then to look for a cab for the beach but there is none, so we're onto a relatively empty bus and enjoy the long ride around Tandjung Aru because we KNOW where we're going this time. There by 2:30 and lay on the beach for a bit watching the crabs rolling up little sand balls and putting them behind them and I can only figure they're shoveling them into their craws from below with their claws and drawing out whatever nutrients the sand contains and disposing of the rest, like an earthworm goes through soil. But it's also tempting to see an analogy with some stupid human activities, particularly some of my compulsions---maybe my reading and writing and going to movies---merely to get them BEHIND me, absorbing what little I can from them---and I look at them with solemn interest. But the sun is terribly hot and I decide there's just no need to get overheated, so I'm back to sit on a tree trunk in the shade and read "Puppet Masters" until 4:30, when I stop, prop myself between a couple of logs, and write pages 142-147 from 4:30 to 5:30, and again I'm up to the day before yesterday, hoping to get to yesterday before tomorrow (figure THAT one out). Then finish "Puppet Masters" a rather good book, by 6:10 and get down to watch the sunset. John called to a dog being walked by two young girls and I felt like telling him he was courting invasion, and then when they walked back they started talking with him---the usual banalities of who and where and when---and wanted to talk to me, too, but I rather shortly said I was watching the sunset. And it was a rather nice one, sending up great rays of pink and gold from the water, lighting the clouds most brilliantly, forming a golden amphitheater around the whole beach. John came over "to ask me" and whispered that he wasn't going to accept their schoolgirl invitation to drinks, and I said that was good. Then they left, saying goodbye to me rather sarcastically, and John and I stand at water's edge and watched the colors fade from the day's demise. Busses keep coming and we go to the old dance hall and decide to have a stout and a rum and Coke, and the stout is bitter but tasty and the colors are gone and busses are still coming and I look down to see them cooking satay next door, so I suggest we go down there to eat. Do so and the welcome is pleasant and they serve ten sticks each of the tender little morsels in the peppery peanut oil sauce for only $5, and we think it's a great bargain. Rush for what might be the last bus standing there, and I think one fellow's giving me the eye, but he gets off the bus early and I was wrong. The stout makes me slightly high, but nothing can come from it in such a place. Wander slowly back to the hotel, deciding that there's nothing on at the movies that we'd want to see, and we sit around the benches a bit but there's little traffic there, so we have no alternative but to return to the hotel. John does some reading and I finish the last 18 pages of "Between Planets," having leap-frogged over "Puppet Masters" into its middle, and when John's still up and I don't feel like writing, I pick up "The Rolling Stones" from the stack and start that. So now I've finished 10 of the 26 books in just 32 days, or one-quarter the 129-day trip (128 days if the first and last days are just counted as halves), so if the average continues I'll have read 40 books, and will have to buy more reading material by the middle of September. I know I should write in the diary but I simply don't feel like doing it, so I go to bed when John does at 11. [[And I don't feel like working on the diary now, either, sitting at 4:45 in the cool room at the Hotel Dirgahaju with the Arabic music ululating up from below and my teeth clenched against the pressures of my earplugs in my ears. All day has been a cacophony of music and it's another Sun-Moon Lake, a place of wonderful natural beauty spoiled completely by the horrible noises that man and his amplification make. My wrist aches and my fingers are cramped and I have to stop myself from counting the few number of lines I have yet to write (4!) before I can stop for this session and permit myself the luxury of the ultimate of travel laziness: reading. I'll be finished with my books in NO time, it seems].