Asia 2008

I took a sleeper back to Hanoi the night before last. In the same compartment were two people who had escaped from Cambodia in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge came to power. Only they had gone to southern Vietnam, which was not a region popular with the northern government after reunification in 1975. In 1980 they again fled as refugees - Vietnamese boat people - taking a boat to Thailand over three days and nights. They spent three years in a refugee camp. That’s a lot of bad luck.

But it ended at that point. They left the camp to go to Australia. He sells Asian-language CDs in Melbourne. I got the impression that there is a large enough Asian community in Melbourne that they don’t have to speak English too much, except to their son, who does not speak Vietnamese. This was their first trip back to Vietnam in 28 years.

Anyway, yesterday I saw that in the last year global rice prices have risen by 70%, and by 20% this year. The rise in price is not just due to increased demand as people get richer and eat more; indeed the Chinese are switching out of rice and into meat.

Whatever the reasons, this is an important event. Rice is traditionally the staple of most of India, of southeast Asia and of China up to at least the Yangtze. Rice has supported greater population densities than all other staples (with the possible exception of wheat – I can’t be bothered to check these off-the-top-of-the-head factoids because this is a blog, after all), which is largely why Asia has three-fifths of the world’s population. Indeed, rice supports three-fifths of the planet.

In Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, saying ‘eat rice’ means more than just ‘eat rice’. In Thailand it just means ‘eat’ (kin khao). Asking ‘have you eaten rice today?’ is a way of saying ‘how are you?’. In Vietnamese it is polite to say ‘please eat rice’ (mơi ăn cơm) before every meal – even if the meal is noodles.

You can even get rice-flavoured ice-cream here. It's not bad.

Vietnam is usually counted the second-largest rice exporter in the world (4.5m tonnes) behind Thailand (9.5m tonnes); India may have overtaken Vietnam last year, however. Thailand produces over twice as much rice as it consumes, and Vietnam nearly twice as much. So the rise in the price of rice improves their terms of trade, making imports cheaper relative to exports, and increases real per capita income.

Vietnam and China, and now India, have restricted exports in order to ensure domestic supplies. Since rice is storable, such price rises can also encourage speculative hoarding on the part of producers, leading to further price rises.

The increase in price will also transfer wealth from rice producers to rice consumers within Vietnam, that is, from urban to rural areas. Since 57% of the VN population work in agriculture, producing only 20% of GDP (both numbers falling), so the first-round effect could be geographically similar to that of a redistributive tax policy. (A second-round effect will be to encourage an increase in rice cultivation, if there is any land left uncultivated, or a switch out of less remunerative agricultural products. This will not happen immediately: rice production is forecast to rise by only 1.8% in 2008, and VN rice production is not forecast to increase at all. For the full glorious statistics on food production from the UN FAO, see http://www.fao.org/newsroom/common/ecg/1000820/en/Rmprod0308.pdf. International trade in rice is in any case forecast to fall because of the export restrictions.)

The price rise will significantly reduce real wages in rice-importing countries, especially in Bangladesh and Burma, both of which are terribly poor to begin with. Since it is a staple, consumers cannot easily substitute into other foods, and in any case food prices have been rising in general (wheat has more than doubled in the last year, for example, leading to a ‘pasta strike’ in Italy last year). North Korea would also be hit if China decides to change the price of its subsidised rice exports. The Philippines and Indonesia are the largest importers but, being less poor, they ought to have a more diversified food consumption pattern to begin with.

That’s enough cod economics. Any more would require research, and that’s out of the question.

On our way between Chiangs Mai and Khong we stopped for lunch outside Chiang Rai - which is, incidentally, in the Golden Triangle. Over the road was Wat Rong Khun, a modern wat, designed and built by an artist by the name of Chalermchai Kositpipat. Construction began in 1998 and is nearly complete.

It is a modern take on an old theme, and unique in Thailand in being all white; it looks as if it was carved from sugar candy.

The bot is one of the less rectilinear buildings I have seen.

The finials look like winged elephants. Species mixes are common in Buddhism, as in Greek and Rowlingian mythology.

To get into the bot, you have to walk over a bridge guarded by a couple of spirits. Demonic hands stretch out from below.

The walls of the bot contain a representation of “an escape from the defilements of temptation”. It’s uncannily like a Last Judgment, which Buddha in the place where Jesus would be. The style is sci-fi art. Darth Vader appears. There is a plane crashing into the Twin Towers (its position in the picture implies opprobrium, not glorification).

Thirty years ago Hàm Rồng, the hill above the town, was largely deforested. When Sapa began to develop as a tourist destination in the 1990s, the town turned it into a park. They replanted it, laid out paths everywhere, and even created an orchid garden; orchids grow very well around here.

In the park there is also a ‘European garden’ (with what I would guess to be pansies, violets and marigolds), a ‘cloud garden’, a ‘stone garden’, a medicinal plant garden, a spot that claimed to offer a view of Fansipan, a couple of cafes and a house on stilts where dances are performed by the ‘minorities’ daily.

A lot of thought and a hell of a lot of work have gone into it, and it is pleasant to get away from the hoots of traffic. It’s a pity it isn’t mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide.

On a foggy day I was almost the only person in the park. The stone steps were treacherous and I shuffled around like a nonagenarian. I bumped into a group of tourists from Saigon; we conversed in bad French. They thought I would be at home in the fog; I gave them a lecture on the Clean Air Act.

Anyway, when we were walking to Tả Van, Matt pointed out that there did not seem to be enough rain to generate the rivers. Yesterday the answer became clear: occult precipitation (and what a great phrase that is). Everything in the park was dripping.

Anyway, having had my fill of wandering around a town that looks this this, I'm off tonight back to Hanoi, where I plan to do much less blogging.

Did I mention taking an elephant ride in Chiang Mai a couple of weeks ago? I don’t think I did. We got to Chiang Mai early in the morning and while some of the group went off to a cookery class, Rae and I took a minibus to an elephant reserve outside Chiang Mai. We spent about an hour perched on top of a balding forty-something elephant as it strolled around the nearby landscape.

It’s not a comfortable way to travel, and it was unbelievably hot. We had both pointlessly brought rucksacks with us, as well as cameras. We had bought bunches of bananas too, to feed the elephant. I ended up covered in banana as the bunches disintegrated in my lap. Elephant power consumption must run well into the kilowatts, so they can eat an endless number of bananas. They also get through 40 or 50 kg of feed a day.

Elephants are a bit of a problem in Thailand. They used to carry loads, provide power, and function as tanks in battles; now all that is done mechanically. You see small elephants sometimes in the streets of Bangkok and Chiang Mai. This is, obviously, not their natural environment. Their keepers ask for money for the elephants, but then abandon the elephants when they get too big. Inevitably, these abandoned elephants cause problems. So the advice is not to give to these people.

Quite often our elephant would stop and lift its trunk, demanding bananas. So long as we had any, Rae would oblige. It was a long reach forward.

Occasionally the elephant would stop altogether and trumpet.

There are all sorts of words for elephant in Thai, for immature female, mature female, mature male and so on. The only one I can remember, other than Chang (which is a brand of beer with a picture of an elephant on the front) is Phan, an immature female. This is Phan Dii, an 8-year old female.

The H’mông arrived in waves between 1700 and 1900, pushed out of China by the Han. They were, and are, wet rice farmers cultivating flooded paddy fields. Their land in Vietnam is far from flat, so they had to construct terraces. They have terraced the entire landscape around here. The valley beneath Sapa is like a living contour map. It is an impressive achievement.

It’s tempting to take a lot of photographs of this orthogonal world. I took these photos during two walks with Matt, the first to Càt Càt, the second from Cầu Mây to Tả Van (I hope all the diacritical marks are appreciated).

Càt Càt, a H’mông village, is 3km below Sapa. A couple of H’mông girls walked along with us, one each, trying to sell us bracelets and mouth harps. They gave up after a mile or so. At Càt Càt we walked down a steep path to a bridge where we found the remains of a French hydroelectric power project, and a non-functioning waterwheel (it’s dry season). Then we climbed up beside a waterfall and looped back around. We saw: children, pigs, dogs, chickens, water buffalo, terraces.

The walk was just long enough for us to discover the inadequacy of the 1:75000 tourist map.

Undaunted and unintelligent, we planned to walk 17km up the valley back to Sapa the following day using just the map.

It didn’t work, of course. We took a motorcycle taxi each down the valley to Cầu Mây easily enough. I hadn’t been on a motorbike since I was about seven and didn’t enjoy the ride much, although the views over the digitised valley were lovely. The sensory package was not helped by the stinking helmet.

At Cầu Mây the river is crossed by an old rattan bridge and newer steel suspension bridge. The rattan bridge would not have been worth travelling to see, had it been the sole objective. As we left the main road to descend to Cầu Mây, we were again picked up by two H’mông girls. Mine was called Chu and was nine years old.

The other girl was extremely shy and we never found out her name. Chu was unshy; indeed, she would not shut up. Unfortunately, the conversation was limited.

“You buy from me?”
“No thanks”
“Why not?”
“…”
“You buy music from me?”
“No thanks”
“You buy bracelet from me?”
“No thanks”
“You buy only one”
“I have one”
“You buy two!”

Repeat 100 times (no exaggeration).

The children around here are equally proficient in English and French. It is easy for them to learn, of course. Some of them are quite good.

In between (although usually before) the incessant “You buy from me?” requests, there are also genuine questions: “What your name?”; “Where you from?”; “How old are you?”; “You got wife?”. Always with a smile. These are probably both preludes to a sale – establish contact, then try to close – and genuine questions. Everyone in SE Asia asks the same questions (also, sometimes, “How much you earn?”). There are a couple of H’mông girl-women around town who always say hello: Xo and Dzao (no idea about spelling).

Chu and her friends gave up shortly after we crossed the river. We headed left for half a mile to Giàng Tả Chải (pronunciation: no idea). It is supposed to be a Dao village. But when we got there, it seemed to be deserted. There turned out to be one old lady sitting in the sun, who offered to sell us stuff when we approached. Everyone else was at Sapa.

Then we retraced our steps and walked up a very slippery and difficult clay path beside a waterfall. The idea was to walk along a path next to the river to Tả Van, about 3 km away. But we must have missed that path because we just ended climbing up and up, and up, on a very slippery path. It was hard work, and felt like this:

Even when we thought we had eventually reached the top, we hadn’t.

Eventually, we faced a choice: carry on up, possibly even up to Fansipan, or down a path to a couple of farmhouses.

We plumped for down. After scrambling down between paddy terraces we reached a couple of huts. We asked for directions for Sapa and the lady pointed up. Then she pointed down. Hmmm. We tried to carry on down, but our way was blocked by some territorial dogs (even a scratch here and it would be back to Hanoi for some rabies injections). So we picked our way around an amphitheatre of terraces on a path next to a wall. When that petered out we resorted to walking along and up the paddy walls themselves, not designed to take people of my mass.

We had lunch at a local maximum next to a bamboo grove and then faced the fact that we had made the wrong choice, so we headed straight up another 200m or so, and finally reached a wide track, which wound down over a couple of miles or so to Tả Van.

Tả Van is supposed to be a Dáy village, but it was difficult to tell. Tả Van was nothing special; everyone was selling tat. There was a substantial school and some other civic buildings, so the village is doing well.

At this point Matt estimated we had climbed 800m or so, on very difficult terrain. We were tired and mistrustful of the fictions on our map, so we called it a day and took motorbikes back to town.

All this, of course, is just a transparent excuse to insert some pictures of terraces.