Dragons & Basil (Bangkok- Part 4 of 6)

I’ve always loved dinosaurs.  Like most kids, maybe. I remember going to the Peabody Museum down at Yale as a child and being in awe of the size and imagined ferocity of these creatures. I rather liked the Ankylosaurus because they were basically turtle Thors.  Well, I arrived in Bangkok from Istanbul very early in the day and couldn’t check into my hotel at the time.  

Note: I stayed at an Amanta property and it was fantastic.  Clean, well-managed, responsive, comfortable beds, and…hot high pressure showers! I made a course correction on this trip re my lodging plans.  Due to bad luck with a couple of squalor-stays using AirBNB in Casa and Lisbon, I went back to hotels. A few reasons.  First, they're predictable.  You know what you are going to get.  No Byzantine quest to find the place and then go through a  self check-in process where you have to decode three separate lock boxes while reciting incantations in Latin as if you are going into the Vatican's Holy of Holies. Second, they generally have laundry services; and on longer excursions like this one where you are only using carry-ons, that’s very helpful and saves you the agony of going out and looking for a private operator, though there is a certain charm and adventure to that too, I’ll admit. Third, I like to have access to the staff for questions on logistics, local services, sites, etc.

In any case, I stored my luggage at the hotel and I went for a walk, which took me through some local markets, into a nice - really nice indoor air-conditioned mall, and ultimately to Lumphini Park for a nice walkabout. I was caught by surprise at 8:00 on the dot when all of the walkers and runners and bikers in the park stopped dead in their tracks and took a position of attention. Then I heard music over the speakers and realized it was the Thai national anthem.  I later learned that this happens every morning at 8.   

I continued the walk.   I then sensed movement on the edge of the pond to the left, turned my head, and this is what I saw creeping out of the muddy waters as I strolled by.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I was.  It was like I was 8 again, which I am in many ways, but this time it was more about childlike wonder than it was about laughing at flatulence.  This animal was gorgeous. Intelligent eyes, 4’ long head to tail. Its skin was dry, mottled, green-gray, and scaly only in the sense that they looked like small beads, rather than overlapping plates of armor. Still it looked thick and protective. And it had certain quadruped swagger; its body language saying, “I’d eat you if I were bigger, you tender pale morsel.” I continued the walk, smiling at I don’t know what.  Maybe by existing in the same moment with that child of Daenerys. I don’t feel like doing any paleontological research right now, but I want to say that the Gobi Desert in China is the most dino fossil-rich area in the world, isn’t it?  Is this connected to the dragon focus in Asian culture?  Dunno.

Thailand is charming and I’ve really enjoyed it.  The people are so kind and attentive.  The uniquely Thai design elements in architecture, sculpture, and textiles are unique and magnetic, and the food is wonderful, deep in flavor, and fresh.  But I also realize that what I am seeing right now is a huge city.  The place is enormous and loud and chaotic in a weirdly orderly way. Yes, they have beautiful parks situated well throughout the city to support the physically active (and the lizards), but it is still a small piece of a highly built environment.  At some point I’d love to come back to this country and get up into the mountain villages near Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, and Mae Hong Son, and listen to the sounds of macaques and gibbons, rather than Hondas. 

Thailand is also one of the most challenging places I have ever been in terms of figuring out my way around.  I felt truly foreign here. I always manage to get done what I need to, but English is not ubiquitous here (the hospitality industry as an exception), and the alphabet, Aksorn, derived from the ancient Khmer culture, is utterly unique (also gorgeous to look at) but impenetrable if you need to read something. I felt like a pre-schooler just staring at these indecipherable symbols. Consequently, there was a great deal of made up in the moment sign language, mostly me pointing at things and looking clueless.

The traffic here is a sight to behold, and like many other South Asian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian cities, the motorbike/scooter class absolutely rules the roads.  There are so many of them and it is as if they have no individuation.  It’s more like they act like an an ant colony, or maybe even a murmuration of starlings. Perhaps blood cells in our veins. No individual matters, but the moving, revving, exhausting, honking horde of them has some kind of proto-sapient agency. They are better understood that way. Remarkable to watch.

But not simply watch. One must participate in Life.  Not sit back and judge it.  And no, I don’t have a death wish but I do want to experience things and get adrenalized a little bit when I can. Not by cave diving, not by free-climbing, and not by bungee jumping (though I would maybe do that for money if offered).  The Uber of this part of Asia I’m visiting is called Grab.  It's like Bolt in Portugal or inDrive in Morocco. Works great. In Thailand the vehicle options to get you to your destination are varied.  Cars, vans, limos, etc.  But one of the options is motorbike. So, yeah.  You can request a scooter to come pick you up.  Because there is so much congestion the two-wheeler is almost always the fastest way to get to where you need to be, especially if you aren’t carrying luggage. You request it, the response time is fast because there is always a scooter somewhere near you, as close as a nitrogen atom.  They arrive, they give you a helmet, you verify identity, jump on the back of the bike and off you go.  Accelerating into traffic, weaving in and out of cars, dodging truck mirrors to avoid getting straight-armed, and ultimately, breathlessly, you arrive, thankful you remain alive. (It was like this fake pic)

Bangkok is so hot and humid.  It puts SC in August to shame.  And what’s funny is that one of Thailand’s draws for Westerners is the food.  At least it was for me;  but with the heat conditions I never became ravenous because that’s how my ridiculously shredded body deals with wet air and being incinerated daily. But I did become lazy. In fact one night, after a day bopping around the city, lethargic, I became a bit peckish and just hopped over to the Boss-level 7-11 next door and got some easy to prepare spicy rice noodles to make in my room. It was either that or shrimp and plum flavored rice cakes or hot chili squid Doritos. I had stopped at a hawker stall near Lumphini Park earlier in the day for lunch and had a heaping, fresh, and incredibly tasty plate of Rad Na Goong, and that lasted me until later, around 5. So, water boiled, I added it to the noodles, and “nee-ngai!”  It was done. Delicious!  And from 7-11!  I also had some pickled mango, a grapefruit and a few slices of pitaya.  Cost me maybe $3. “Such a deal,” my friend G. Himmelfarb would say.

I did starve myself for an entire day however toward the end of this BKK leg to force a ravening hunger because I had made a reservation at Gobi, which is supposed to be one of the best buffets in town, and I wanted to get the most from it. It delivered.  Honestly, kind of light on the Thai offerings, but it was constructed to serve a very international crowd.  They had  a couple of Thai noodle dishes (Padh Thái , Lǎo Thái ), sticky rice, prawn cakes, char-grilled chicken, roast whole salmon, and several steamed vegetables. Beyond that they had prime rib, a little taco/burrito section, fresh pizza (looked good but I didn’t want any), and a really large South Asian station consisting of a nice biryani, three different curries- lamb, chicken, and vegetable, and fresh garlic naan. I’m not a big sweets guy, but the dessert section was incredible too. So colorful.  Cakes, pastries, tarts, bread pudding, ice cream with fixings.  But I had a quarter ton of fresh fruit to rationalize the health benefits in the face of the insult I had just exposed my body to.

I’ve never been one to drink my calories, unless it involved carbs during a long race, or a good cocktail, enjoyed in moderation.  I don’t do soda or fruit juices, but after being here in Thailand I kind of get it.  It is so hot and humid here, so many gallons of perspiration leaking out of millions of sweating bodies, that people are going to want something beyond simple water to replenish it. Drinks are a massive part of the economy here.  Cha Yen (Thai Iced Tea), Nam Prao (Fresh Coconut Water), Oliang (Iced Coffee), Nam Manao (Lime Juice), Nam Krajiab (Hibiscus Juice), Nam Hoy (Sugarcane Juice), Nom Yen (Thai Pink Milk), Nam Dok Anchan (Butterfly Peaflower Tea).  All of these are everywhere, and they are very popular.  And so colorful!  I have seen more people drinking these than holding plastic bottles of water. I didn’t imbibe, but I do understand. Also, WTH is boba? It seems like beach ball tapioca, but I'm not sure.

Ever walk down the street and see a couple and do a double take neck snap asking, “How the Hell did that happen?”  Well, after the first day in BKK  I needed a neck massage (which I ended up getting-read on) because of this phenomenon. I have seen so many middle-aged and older white guys coupled up with gorgeous Thai women. It hit me as a bit creepy at first.  The cynic in me went right to the three ring binder “mail order bride” phenomenon. Well, I dug a little and learned that this is a bit anachronistic at this point and since the advent of dating apps, we’re seeing a whole lot more “legitimate” matches which are more a function of Western men shifting from past norms and willing to have a relationship between equals rather than ones where the middle class dude is preying on the socio-economically desperate realities of the woman. It used to be that he wanted a hyper attractive woman to be his; and she wanted a sugar daddy to take her away from the overwhelming drudgery and poverty of the Thai backcountry.  Now it is a dialogue, or at least it seems that way.

I got a Thai massage and it was awkward at first. This is one of those things one must be wary of.  I can’t even count the number of times, as I strolled the streets of BKK, that I was asked to come into a “spa” and get a “delightful” massage, the end state of which was amorphously promised at best.  What I do know is that the Sirens sitting outside those establishments were, to a woman (and they were all women)- dressed to the nines, skin forward, made up cosmetically with what can only be described as a sultry and suggestive messaging. I kept the beeswax in my ears and strode on.  So, I did some research and found a place that was certified, ethical, and had a great reputation locally and internationally amongst the traveling class.   As luck would have it was only a short walk from my hotel.  A place called Mooklada.

After a run one morning I walked into that place, sweaty and spent, and made a reservation for later in the day.  The guy asked if I wanted a man or a woman to work on me.  I didn’t care, and I told him. This was therapy and education for me.  Nothing else.  So I went and did my day and ended up back at Mooklada late in the afternoon.  I walked in for my appointment and the lobby was full of staff.  The women were beautiful, yes, but they were wearing Polo shirts and trousers, not fishnet and only fishnet.  

I got a guy masseuse, Somchai.  He was super kind and he knew straight away that I was a first timer and maybe a bit disoriented and nervous.  I had no idea what to do.  Without a word spoken he urged me to sit down and then with a tub of hot water and soap. He washed my feet. Feet are considered to be the lowest and dirtiest part of the body, and so this is a symbolic gesture of preparation prior to a therapeutically cleansing activity. After the foot bath he directed me upstairs to the massage rooms. There were four calm sanctuaries up there, each with a pad, and lovely and calming decorations, separated by thick curtains. I was the only client up there. Somchai motioned that I should get undressed and get into this cotton pyjama-like outfit for the massage.  So I put all my stuff into a bin and got into that very non-Lululemon ensemble.  Very comfortable.  He motioned that I should lay down on the mat face down, and then he went to work. Thai massage is a very unique thing. Combining acupressure, Ayurvedic practices, and the meditation of the practitioner while he/she is practicing, it is less about simply rubbing muscles and more about full constant bodyweight focused on areas the therapist identifies (for me he found that my neck/cervical area was full of tight knots and he really hit those hard - to great effect. He wouldn't let it go), rocking of the joints, cracking toes and fingers, and pull/push assisted poses and stretches.  He giggled at the end when he saw how absolutely unflexible I am because of stupidly tight hamstrings. I’m embarrassed by this as well. It was an hour treatment, not all comfortable, and I felt fantastic at the end.  I slept like a babe that night. (This a rendition, and very close.)

Not unlike this very unique idea of saudade, a nuanced “longing” I learned about in Portugal, Thailand also has a sociocultural interpersonal stance which I find to be fascinating and which doesn’t map to anything in our American culture or language.  It is called Kreng Jai, and it basically means a desire to avoid causing discomfort or bothering others.  It is a sort of a hypercharged sense of empathy and it translates into radical kindness and acknowledgement of every move of the other person so as to ensure a smooth flow of the situation, whatever that happens to be.  From a good meal served by the wait staff, to an interaction with the hotel cleaning lady to your madman Grab scooter driver, to the lady in the hawker stall who only knows one thing, and that is how to make a delectable mango sticky rice for you. It’s everywhere from the bow of greeting and thanks, to paying the handful of baht for a delicious meal down some back alley.  It is a tangible thing and the world needs more of it.

I say farewell to Thailand in hopes that I’ll be back and that I will be able to reciprocate the kindnesses shown to me, and emulate them. Also see lizards and primates.

Thanks for reading.

Late Onset God (Istanbul- Part 3 of 6)

This one is different, but the fact that I’m writing it in Istanbul is apt, since this is a place where Christianity has waxed and waned epically over the centuries. It also seems appropriate personally as my late-in-life shifting perspective can be seen to be the result of a slow-moving synthesis as "Reason and the Material" encounters "the Ideal and the Perfect."   I want to try and unpack some of that at a high level, as much for my own benefit, as your potential, but unlikely, interest.   Apologies, as usual, for tangents, discursions, and abstractions. I simply can’t help it and don’t care to, in any case. And if you want to see what I wrote about Istanbul on my last visit in 2023, right this way. 

I’m sitting in a restaurant just north of the Hagia Sophia, the air redolent of sea salt and the death cries of the Janisarries. Then, Pink Floyd’s "Wish You Were Here" emerges from the speakers. It surprises me. It’s a gut-punch of a song that usually leaves me a wreck, ever since my brother Jonathan died in ’87 while I was stationed in Pearl Harbor. He had this album in his CD player when I returned home from Hawaii and visited his empty room.  After he died, the world felt wrong; and this tragedy a jagged piece of glass causing me and my Mom and Dad to experience an intense, confused, and enduring exsanguination of the soul. During that time so many years ago I wished my brother and God were here. Still do.

Istanbul is a place where the air is heavy with history.  I wasn’t planning on coming here on this international flyabout, but Trump’s war in Iran forced cancellation of one of my flights to SE Asia, because it would have taken me into the Gulf States for a connection.  So I had to reroute to avoid flying over Iranian airspace. Istanbul is also the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, a religion I have been touched by in an unexpected and powerful way, and which all began two years ago.   

Fate conspired to have me arrive on a Saturday, the day before Holy Pascha. So, it seemed as kismet that I should walk up to the Fener-Balat area on Sunday morning and attend the Agape Vespers at the Hagios Georgios Church. So I did, fueled by a simit and double espresso.  It was very powerful, very moving, and I was grateful to see the EP, Bartholomew I,  in person. Interesting fact - Bartholomew, known as the “Green Patriarch,” for his work in environmental activism, was awarded the 2025 Templeton Prize.  

I was a creature of the Analytic School—crisp, tight, and suspicious of anything that didn't smell like a coherent syllogism, nourished by brute verifiable facts.  I wasn't an atheist, never was—those people always struck me as too (ironically)  "holier than thou" in their ill-reasoned certainty—but I was a rational agnostic who thought the Abrahamic deity had a hell of a lot of explaining to do. 

Standing here now, 64 years into a finite life and becoming more aware every day, with the miles of a thousand trail runs and hikes hammered into my body, and the ideas of so many thinkers whispered into a brain which needs to listen more,  that I’ve spent my life dancing around looking for and struggling to prove and justify the Holy.  As a rationalist I was looking for "God the Explanation." I should have been looking for "God of the Infinite Embrace"—the arc that contains the project of scientific inquiry itself which, to this point, has been an epistemological keystone; and yet it is very clearly limited in its domain of inquiry, in its methodology, and in its capacity to address teleological questions. 

My pathway into Eastern Orthodoxy didn’t start with a bold revelation or a supernova of insight; it started with the cadence of thudding footfalls while training on the dirt of Nassahegan with the voice of David Bentley Hart and others in my ears. Listening to Hart and Tyler Cowen trade rapid-fire erudition rounds on everything from Orioles baseball to Heidegger, to New Testament, to Baroque music, to Death, etc was like witnessing two friendly masters sparring, and delighting in the enterprise.  Hart, with his fifteen languages and relentless deconstruction of the "blind watchmaker" version of God, gently directed me toward an idea that was only lingering, unformed at the periphery: that God isn't a "thing" among other things, but the Infinite Ocean of Being. 

For an old student of the Medieval Scholastics and the Analytic School, the appeal was deeply cerebral because of the clear contrasts. I began to see that Orthodox theology is undergirded by a fierce Neoplatonism. It reflects a "Chain of Being" that doesn’t treat the world as a machine, but as a Thought that God is thinking. This is where Ian McGilchrist comes in, though I didn't know it yet. We’ve become a society dominated by the left-brain—the "Machine," as Paul Kingsnorth calls it—obsessed with efficiency, commodification, and objectification of the Human. We’ve lost the right-brain’s capacity for distilling Truth from the mythopoetic, the holistic, and even the silent. 

Orthodoxy offers a rejection of this clinical, algorithmic, dangerously accelerated, toxically literalist world. It leans into a more contemplative, even mystical, “Apophatic” theology—the idea that the Godhead is utterly inscrutable and beyond category. If you try to pin God down with human language, you’re tilting with knights of ether. Words like “Power,” “Knowledge,” “Good,” “Evil” are artifacts of a capacity to symbolize which is only 100K years old.  A blink. And yet this ineffable God we worship is praised within the construct of ancient, deep, mysterious, and sacred rituals.  Ritual that has been preserved in the same state for Ages and Ages, and ritual that brings order to sometimes chaotic lives.  

Language is a tool for the discrete, but God is the meta-linguistic "Pure Act." This is the "Deep Magic" of ontological inevitability.  You stop looking for a bearded anthropomorphized Voluntarist God who "flexes a muscle" or “points a finger” to stop a car crash and you start seeing a God of pure Idea, pure Experience, pure Love,  whose “Power” is merely a tangent of His Omniscience. An inevitability.  I’m reminded of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, “All men by nature desire to know.”  We all want to participate in the Big Thought. 

Seen this way it casts the bog standard “Omnipotence” attribute in a far different light. One I like. And in understanding the limitations of language and ceding to humility in the face of a truly ineffable Ontological Primitive, you see your way to taking another angle at classical Theodicy. In fact, the problem of suffering and evil is probably the most frequently deployed justification for atheism, ever. And it is not necessarily irrational to think this way if you don't push beyond our constrained and imperfect human faculties. Isaiah 55:8 nails it with “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,...”  

As Aquinas argued, God’s knowledge is the cause of things. To "know" a possibility is to give it being. In this light, evil isn't a choice God makes to "permit.” I found echoes of this in the Muslim Sufi poet and theologian ibn al-Arabi’s panentheism—the idea that the world is a mirror for the Divine, yet the Divine remains hidden behind the veil of its own light.

One of the most significant pivots for me was moving from seeing God as an "Infinite Doer" to an "Infinite Knower". If God is beyond time and space, then time doesn't matter "beyond it."  God knows all of history as a single, eternal "Now."  Because God is a single unchangeable Now.  Kind of like a photon. As  Abbé Faria taught Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo, true power isn't brute force; it’s the perfect knowledge of how the the Logos unfolds. 

But OK.  That is all head.  All brain.  Those words are just kindling and cotton in wait for a firestone, a catalyst to inflame a boundless potential domain of Love and Awe and Humility and Gratitude.  For me, that catalyst was the Orthodox Divine Liturgy. It’s not "three tunes and a Ted talk" as the standard Protestant service is sometimes teased. It’s an initiation. When I walked into Holy Trinity in New Britain that Sunday morning in February of ‘24, Fr. Philip Beiner—a former lawyer and intelligence professional, presiding—I felt a sensory bridge back 2,000 years. The smell of incense, the darkness, the heavy weight of the Byzantine icons, the monophonic chanting—it was sacred.  Truly sacred.  It was a denial of the austere, perfunctory, and antiseptic reality within which I, we all, currently reside.   

I thought back to a winter night, Christmas time, at King’s College Cambridge service many years ago now. I had stood in that candlelit stone darkness, flames fluttering, incense wafting, people in big hats and richly colored vestments walking somberly atop the ancient rock floors, and suggested to Carol, my wife and partner at the time, about how a 16th-century peasant who, by day, worked catching eels in the nearby fens, would walk in and just  "know" there was majesty here.  That God was here. There would be no question. Because the beauty and impact would have been so far beyond his conception.  At the time, I felt nothing spiritual; I was too smart after all. 

But in the Liturgy that day, the "proposition" gave way to "disposition." And in that moment as I walked into the nave and sat down, my eyes welling up for reasons that confused me, I muttered to myself, "Oh. Here He is." And I meant it.  So very powerful. That was well over two years ago and I remember the experience like it was yesterday. 

I would be utterly remiss if I didn’t talk a little about the church I am attending.  Where I live, in Burlington, CT, I have 4 x Orthodox churches within 20-25 minutes of me.  Three in the Orthodox Church of America (OCA):  Holy Trinity in New Britain, Saints Cyril & Methodius in Terryville,  All Saints in Hartford;  and one Russian Orthodox Church, St Panteleimon, in Hartford.  My first exposure to the Divine Liturgy, that powerful experience I described above, was at Holy Trinity.  But I wanted to experience others as well.  So, my next stop was Ss Cyril and Methodius, presided over by Fr John Hopko.  I knew the Hopko name because Fr John’s dad, Fr Thomas Hopko, Memory Eternal, was a powerhouse in the formation of the OCA, an important and gifted theologian, seminarian, and teacher. Fr Tom is a name known by everyone in these circles.  He gifted us hours and hours of Orthodox material which has proved to be critical in my own nascent formation. The only criticism I have is that he could have probably said everything he needed to say in those podcasts using 33% fewer words. But I listened with nothing but respect and gratitude. And often a smile at his unstoppable loquacity. 

I later learned that Fr John is very much his father’s son. He is so clearly full of the Love of God, the love of the faith, and the love of his parishioners. And he likes to actualize that Love through words.  Lots of them, and in many directions because he has so many domains of expertise and interest: Orthodoxy, History, Fly-fishing, US Politics, International Relations, Family, others. He also has a point a view on religious practice.  A sense of a right way and wrong way to be one of the faithful.  His Five Part heuristic (and I paraphrase) is basically:  “Say your prayers.  Come to Church. Read the Bible.  Love your neighbors. Participate in the Sacraments.”  All that is spot on.  No issues from me. Do all that and you’ll live a better life on many fronts. But bring in a “Yes, but what about…X?” or “If that’s true then…isn’t it the case that X” or “Why does the church believe…X?”  You get a sigh, maybe a patient shrug, or sometimes (and I’ve told him this), you get what I really love, which is the surly and pugnacious Fr John. 

This is funny and true. During my first visit to Ss Cyril and Methodius I had sent a note to Fr John telling him I would be attending the service.  It was a wonderful service, even though I still had no idea what was going on. It was soon after Pascha, as I recall. Afterwards people venerated the icons, received the priest’s blessing and cleared out.  I just sat in the back and waited until he came out. Well, after I introduced myself, I launched into some stream of pretentious polysyllabic incoherence ending with saying something about "the very clear influences of Proclus’ and Iamblicus' philosophy on Orthodox theology."  He became somewhat huffy and grumbled, “It just gives us a language to use.”  He was in a mood and I think I set him off. Well, I didn’t show it, but it delighted me. I thought,  “Here’s a man that has an opinion, isn’t afraid to lay it down, and that there is a depth of mind and disposition in there that has considered a lot of hard edged theological questions. Many more than I have. I like this guy.” 

So here I am, an "ecclesial outlaw," living a life that doesn't quite fit the "celestial HOA rules" of rigid Eastern Orthodoxy and I understand that. I’m a "C-grade" practitioner at best, currently sitting in the Divine Liturgy without taking part in the sacraments. I read scripture (not enough), I pray twice daily. I fast (kind of). I do my best to Love and show Compassion to all (poorly, probably).  I still struggle with Pride, with Tolerance,  with giving Grace.  My language can be salty, my entendres double, and my disposition toward Humanity writ large less than kind.   But, as Gregory of Nazianzus suggested, faith isn't a prize for the perfect; it is a hospital for the broken. At least my Mom thinks I have greatly changed since attending church. She told me.  But then it makes me wonder if she's thought I've been a total asshat for the first 62 years.  ; )

I’ve spent decades running through woods, climbing up mountains, and trodding upon some corridors of power. I’ve seen enough of the "common sense" basic Scientistic and Materialistic interpretation of the world to know it is empty. Plenty of knowledge, not enough meaning.  My pathway to Orthodoxy has been a slow-motion collision with a Truth that finally makes the white noise of the world coalesce into a song. Call it enchantment. 

All of that as it is.  I may be walking a bit crookedly, and I still have more questions than the Liturgy has candles, but I finally think I know which way the grain of the universe runs. I'm no longer just an observer of the created; I’m a participant in the Thought God is thinking. It’s a rough road, but it’s the only one that feels real. 

Thanks for reading.

Riad Revelry (Morocco-Part 2 of 6)

My Portugal Era (absolutely no nod to Swift-unless it's Jonathan, because he matters) ended with a lovely run on a clear crisp Lisbon day before my flight out, but oh what a horrible apartment I stayed in.  My AirBnB track record is pretty good, around 90%, I’d say,.  And I get that this is part of travel; we encounter, assess, modify behaviors and expectations, and adjust.  Simple.  It’s just that all of this is easier to do when one has clean briefs.  I thought I would be able to accomplish this at the Lisbon place.  The owner said I could; I coordinated with him on it 2 or 3 times; but, alas. The machine didn’t work. It beeped with confidence, flashed boldly, but wouldn’t turn on.  I messaged the owner of the place, and he told me he could come by in the morning. But I had to fly so the timing didn’t work. The owner ended up coming over… at around 10:30pm. While I was asleep on a bed that felt like granite composite, but seriously with this guy? I had already done it by hand in the sink. 

The place was bad enough (coffee machine didn’t work, either!), but now the really awful part, and that is when I was laying out my wet sink-scrubbed clothes on the rusty balcony railing.  So, I’m doing the chore and then I hear screaming down on the ground three floors below.  I see a guy gesturing, yelling, and running. It seemed he was having a manic episode, but it happens that his dog, a brown mid-sized pup had escaped his leash.  The guy was in frantic panic mode because the streets were busy with cars. The dog miraculously made it across the street into a massive circular park surrounding the city bull ring, Campo Pequeno, which had a mall underneath it. The man got within a foot of the dog and almost had him, but then the dog sprinted away again, toward another busy thoroughfare.  This time he wasn’t as lucky and was struck full on. I heard the awful thud of simple physics from a distance.  The man screamed (it was horrible), traffic stopped,  and a group  ran into the street and gathered around to support the guy and see to his dog, which wasn’t moving. I don’t know how it all resolved other than seeing the dog’s body being carried off the road to a median. Maybe the news would be good.  Not a great happening. Makes my whining about a stupid busted washer pale in comparison. Poor pup.

And with that I Ieft Portugal and arrived into Casablanca without event. I took a taxi into town. That was a white-knuckle affair. It was almost as bad as Cairo when I was there in the early 90’s.  Almost. The bumper to bumper clearances could be measured in millimeters as my driver raced to get me into the city and drop me off at what would soon be revealed as a cesspit of a building within which was situated a chambre du squalor. Honestly, the place was utterly misrepresented on AirBnB.  It was difficult to find, in an old dusty crumbling building that reeked, on the 3rd floor, and to get up the cracked and slanted stairs in the dark I needed to use my iPhone lamp to see because there were no lights. There were also some very sketchy harsh-looking dudes hanging around.  The room wasn’t a stand alone with facilities, desktop, bed etc, either.  It was basically a room in a house.  Shared shower (which had a broken head), no coffee available, shared kitchen which was blasted and under construction and full of cement dust, tiles on the floor which were loose and sharp, and the added bonus of rave techno/EDM ambience across the street which I discovered  would last until 4am.  Not great at all, but this is part of travel.  Suck it up and move ahead. Fortunately I would only be in Casa for 2 nights and one full day before I trained back up to the airport to pick-up Ida. 

So, while the place was sub-optimum, I still wanted to make the best of my Casablanca day, so got excited about that. I knew I wanted to run, see the Hassan II mosque, and visit the Old Medina. But I was starved after I arrived. I had no agenda but to have a beer and some food, I didn’t care what kind.  I ended up at a funky little local restaurant about a half mile from my  hovel, called Le Trica.  Filled by locals who stared at me, I went in all proud and tall wishing hello to everyone in my broken French, probably saying, “Good breakfast, you rank toad-curs,” or some such. I sat, ordered a beer and a pizza (don’t judge), and attempted to ask the waiter if he was happy with Morocco’s draw in the World Cup. He is.  Funny about alcohol.  This is a pretty devout city, and there isn’t much booze around.  Those places that have it seem to be secreted away down alleyways and with no signage.  Almost like a speakeasy. Or in my case, speakhard. The pizza was small but sufficient, I had it with a side of Moroccan chicken fritters. Oh, and pizza is served with a side of Tabasco there. Additionally,this place had one wall full of Marvel characters and this made me smile. I had Jack Kirby thoughts.

I walked home in the dark and slept for most of an evening that featured a hootenany across the street in a hotel. The din ceased at around 4am. I arose at 6am. I needed coffee, which wasn't available in my place, so I went out in search of an open cafe, which I found.  A couple of hot noirs got me going and I was energized for my run. This I did, a bit nervous wearing shorts, as I didn’t want to offend the locals.  Turned out to be fine as there were many guys out running in Arab League Park, a beautiful green space in the midst of the city. Good run. Flat.  Not like the hills of Porto and Lisbon. 

One of the highlights in Casa is the Hassan II mosque, down by the waterfront.  It is massive, its edifice dominating the coastline for miles. On my way there I took a wrong turn and found myself in an area of crushing poverty.  Indescribable destitution. Emaciated adults in rags, suffering kids, fish waste parts being sold for next to nothing, many beggars.  No buildings intact.  Dust and rubble and just that. And I also somehow lost my cheaters. It was annoying but I knew I had to find a replacement. I was a bit low after seeing what I saw, but the tour of Hassan II was fun because our guide was sassy. That said I’m rarely impressed by new buildings, and this behemoth was built in 1993. It was fine.

After that, the quest was on for reading glasses, I tried by navigating to two places where Google told me were opticians, but found naught but nothingness, and these in more very sketchy areas. My head was on a swivel. I did get the opportunity to chat with a couple of Moroccan midshipmen in broken French and Arabic because it turns out the Moroccan Naval Academy was right there in the neighborhood. That was cool.  Finally, I stumbled into a massive mall.  Marina Mall, I think it was called.  Anyway, it was incredibly vibrant with many clothing boutiques, shoe shops, phone hockers, ridiculous kiosks selling things I didn’t understand, and, thankfully, an optician.  So, I got my glasses, enjoyed a mall schwarma (surprisingly tasty) because I was starving, and exited.  I saw that the Old Medina was right across the street between me and my apartment. 

Beyond that I noted that on the east end of the Medina was Rick’s Cafe.  As in Rick Blaine - Bogie’s character from 1942’s Casablanca.  It was a re-creation, of course, as Rick’s Cafe Américain only actually existed on the Warner Brothers set. I love that film, a classic. And I knew this place was a tourist gimmick (started in 2004 by an American diplomat) but I bit hard and am glad I did. There was gaggle of Korean tourists there when I arrived and I had a blast watching them do poses on the steps of the place. Pointing, pursing lips, peace signs, tongues out, the basic drill.  I am so glad Instagram was created in my lifetime.  It adds such richness and meaning to our global culture. I also enjoy being stung in the eyes by bullet ants. So, I bribed the be-Fezzed doorman to let me into the bar and I enjoyed a mid-afternoon Sour Jdid.  The interior is a remarkable and brilliant recreation of the place from the film. I just wish Sam was there playing.  All in all, I see Casablanca as a 1-day city.  I enjoyed my full day and its little adventures but was ready to bolt back to the airport, pick up Ida and head off to Meknes, the first of our three city tour, which would also include Fes and Tangier.   

Ida and I found each other at the airport and hugged out the missing feels for a while. Her solar smile always makes things better. We hired a cab to take us to Meknes, opting for that so we could get there for dinner.  The train would have gotten us in too late. I have a friend from way back in grad school, a Moroccan guy, Mohammed (Mo).  He got his PhD in Electrical Engineering in the US, married an AF intel officer, and works for the Navy in high voltage control systems.  He is also a devout Muslim and is very interested in Sufism. In my studies years ago, as a Philosophy student, I was mostly focusing on and writing about Epistemology, Logic, Philosophy of Science, and the like. But I also had a great interest in Medieval Christian Theology to include Aquinas and some of the mystics.  So Mo and I, when we met a few years later, had a lot to talk about. And we did.  It had been a while but we reestablished comms and he gave me so many wonderful contacts and recommendations for our trip.  One rec was that we should visit his hometown of Meknes and stay at a lodging owned and operated by his friend, Rauff. Riad Ritaj.  So we did.  That place was magnificent- exotic, scented with incense, adorned with tapestries evoking the sultans of yore, and filled with all sorts of cushions and pillows.  Really breathtaking.

Ida and I were hungry, so we went in search of a restaurant.  The place we chose was called Dar Baraka.  It was well-reviewed and many eaters, mysteriously, included the word “quirky” in their notes. Spot on. So we navigated to the place, which was close and easy to find. There was a sign that indicated “Open,” but the door was closed and locked. Yet we heard sounds inside.  I recalled some review that mentioned, "Hey the door might be closed and you have to knock." So we knocked more than a few times.  Finally, a short, wizened, older man opened the door and gruffly asked if we had reservations (he reminded me of a Sackville-Baggins with his attitude and expression).  We did not. It was about 6pm, and he finally invited us in, insisting that we had to be finished by 8pm because he had people who had made a rez coming in.  We walked into the place which was small, comfortable, colorful, and a bit dusky. It was set up with small chairs and tables in front and lovely cushions with embroidered coverings on the floor along the wall in the back room.  He seated us in back.  After that he was no longer an annoyed hobbit, but our host; and he was very sweet. When he took our order he sat down with us and took notes on his pad, with a pencil.  We ordered a Moroccan salad, and Ida and I each had tagines.  I think I had kefte, and she had chicken. And khobz, lots of khobz, too much kobhz, the distinctive Moroccan round bread.  Delicious.   Turns out this was the man’s home and he was the sole server/busser/host and his wife was upstairs cooking everything. It was Ida’s first meal in Morocco and a fine one too.

The next day, our only full day in Meknes, was spent wandering throughout the Old Medina, getting lost in the winding alleys, finding our way, and getting lost again. One of the highlights was seeing the Bab al Mansour, the giant arched doorway leading into the medina. We toured the gorgeous and extravagant tomb of Moulay Ismail (1645-1727), Sultan of Morocco, while deftly evading offerings of calash rides from aggressive taximen, and we spoke with some artisans at the coop.  We talked with shopkeepers, drank hot minted sweet tea, smelled spices, admired olives, sampled honied baked goods, and even marveled at the buffet of cow parts for sale in the butcher shops from aged hooves, to livers the size of my back pack, to cuts of meat I didn’t recognize, and of course no pork. We remarked upon the power of markets to build community, to encourage conversation (sometimes this can be wonderfully heated in the course of negotiations) and civic thickness.  It is a common theme in our travels together to compare and contrast cultures. This is an especially rich theme with Ida as she is a US citizen, who emigrated from Albania to the US via Italy as a political refugee.  She’s seen a lot.  And at times the US rightfully takes its hits. Airpods vs Engagement; Self-importance vs Community; Processed vs Fresh; Futbol vs Football…these kinds of things.  In the case of the butcher shop in Medina, however, and as much as I am generally concerned with overregulation and dumbass nannification policies, I’m happy we generally have clean points of sale for meat.

We were due to head out to Fez the next day so in the morning I arose and got a quick run in. While out there I received a text from Ida that Rauff, the riad owner, wanted to meet us.  So I got back all sweaty and sat down for a coffee with Rauff.  Nice chat, and then he insisted to take us around and show us his town, of which you could tell he was very proud. As we walked around, it was clear that Rauff was a man known and respected.  We later learned that he is a direct descendant of Moulay Ismail, and his family is ancient.  He took us around and showed us his various properties in the medina. They were stunningly beautiful, though careworn and on their way to rejuvenation by Rauff’s good works. It was as if the 17thC were right in front of us.  Ida was so inspired by the beauty and it was nice to see because as a recent empty nester she is now in a place where she needs to no longer sacrifice as much, which she has done a lot, and can focus on surrounding herself with a beauty found in her own unique aesthetic.  And since she is Albanian by birth she is drawn to interiors and colors which are tied to 7thC Arabian wanderers and travelers of the Silk Road. Mystics, Rumi-readers, Ottomans, merchants, nobles.  And knowing this woman as I do, I realize that the nomadic theme is apt. Our tour ended and we caught a petit taxi to the train station for our next leg-Fes.

Word on the street is that Marrakech is tourist-central.  That may be the case, but Fes was running a close second.  You can feel the energy of the place.  And the energy is derived from rapacious commerce.  Fes is about the medina and it’s legendary 9000 streets/lanes/alleys/roads. Markets abound, proprietors are almost rabid for your coin, and the breadth of wares is galactic: shoes, pipes, books, underwear, socks, caftans, jalabiyas, hijabs, records, ceramics, almonds/walnuts/pistachios, nougat, tea sets, junk food, healthy food, coffee, mint tea…and rugs.  Oh, the rugs. 

One of the highlights of Fes was helping Ida purchase her rugs. She was motivated to buy and I was prepared to ensure a good purchase.  I did a lot of research and knew that I would have the advantage if I could negotiate in English, so we found a quality place that had been featured in the NYT, and the owner was pretty good with English. More importantly he loves the US and was proud of the NYT feature.  Advantage me. Instrumental, transactional me (but only in this case).

I told Ida to just follow my lead because I would burnish my thespian chops and put on a show.  I would raise my voice, gesticulate with great animation, and speak in very serious tones. So we started.  My strategy was to begin by ignoring the guy (this is all a dance, remember) and control the showroom space by selling Ida on certain elements myself.  And I wanted to do it very vocally so he could hear me, and know that his only purpose here was to be a price negotiator, if it even came to that.

Sheep wool vs camel wool, size difference calculations, room configuration, fringe color, geometry,  Kelim or regular rug style, etc. We went through all of it. After a while I told (not asked) the man to please lay out three separate rugs Ida had liked- one larger one and a couple of  wide runners.  Once he did that, I began talking again about lots of nothing to Ida, not letting the guy say anything.  All tactics at this point.  Then with a heavy sigh, I said, “Ok, what are you asking for these three pieces?”  He’s not stupid, so came in hard and high. I laughed, and told him he’s a funny guy and that we had seen the same thing in Meknes at the coop for far less. Then we said thanks and started to walk.  He called us back as I knew he would.  So the waltz went on and on. I played the “Hey Babe, let’s go at least see what others can do for us.” card, and started to walk out again.  Then he stepped in front of us and asked us for a LAFO. It was fun and amusing. Long story shorter, we got an excellent deal and dropped the guy about $2200 from his original play. Everyone left happy and I got him about 300 bucks less than I thought I would.  The whole thing took 90 minutes and I was exhausted.

After that we strolled around and came upon a surprise delight in the form of the University of al-Quarawiyyin. This is a school started in the 9th century by a woman called Fatima al-Fihri, and is the oldest degree-granting university in the world.  It was a delight because I remember writing about this place 40 years ago when I was an undergrad.  I won’t go into a massive digression except to say that there is a largely unknown (in the West) period of history known as the Islamic Golden Age (roughly 9-12thC) where the Muslim world blossomed in fields as diverse as math, history, optics, theology, philosophy, and education. I was fascinated by this back in school because I was working on understanding how Aristotle’s work influenced Christian thinkers like Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and learned that much of their access to the Greeks came via Arab translations.  And this university was part of that whole ecosystem, along with Cairo and Córdoba.  So kind of wonderful I got to see it. Or, to be honest, be reminded of it.

Another highlight of the Fes visit was the tannery.  We were planning to visit it anyway and it just so happens that on this morning we were shanghaied by a man who demanded to take us there personally.  So, we smiled and went with it. We got there and he demanded a tip. Because of course he did.  Anyway, I thought it was fascinating because they were using techniques and technologies from centuries ago.  Water wheels, vats, drying racks, men in the dye vats traipsing around. But it smelled strongly of uric acid, and the merchants were over the top in our face. All part of the experience.  Ida thought it was exploitative and barbaric. She’s not wrong.  All in the name of the tourist dollar.

Tangier was our next and last destination.  We took a bullet train up (impressive!) and arrived at Zoco Riad, a nice place in the medina with a generous breakfast and fantastic staff.  We immediately realized that Tangier had a different energy.  Cleaner, tighter, more cosmopolitan, and most definitely not as driven by the tourists as was the case in Fes. One of the first differences is the close proximity to Europe.  Literally.  Up at the Casbah museum you can see Spain clearly across the 8 mi strait.  Ida got emotional.  She is a US citizen and has been in America for decades, but she is a European at heart, and there is that longing.  That saudade. And that European influence plays in Tangier.  More Spanish spoken, than French. Fewer burkas and hijabs.  Different foods.  More wines. Pretty clean.  Good public service operations in full view of the public. I liked it. I also noticed a correlation with cat health.  There are tons of these felinities on the streets of Morocco (not unlike Istanbul).  Of the 4 cities I visited (Casablanca, Meknes, Fes, and Tangier), I saw that there was a correlation between the cleanliness of the city with the health and disposition of the cats.  Tangier cats were fat and friendly.

For me, the highlight of Tangier was our first morning spent up at the archaeological museum. We went there right after spending some time in the Casbah Museum, which featured a very powerful exhibit by African Union artists.  Excellent. The archaeological displays were fine, not spectacular; but that day happened to be a school day for the local kids and there was a field trip going on, and that was spectacular.  I walked out of one of the exhibits and was approached by a little boy.  He was confident, yet shy, as he asked me where I was from and whether I liked the exhibit. I told him I was American and that Ida, my partner, was too.  He smiled deeply, clearly excited.  Well, as soon as the conversation started, I was swarmed by kids who were fascinated by my language, by the fact that I liked their museum, their heritage, their culture. All of it. They were 5th graders, so 10 yo, and there were probably 40 of them scattered around the stone square.  The questions were endless and asked with earnestness and urgency, and the sweet innocence of youth.  Do you like Morocco?  Are you a Muslim? What’s your favorite meat?  But pork? What football team is your favorite? Top player? What video games do you like?  Do you have children? What are their names?  Would they like our country, too?  How is your wife so kind and beautiful? Where do you live?  Can you speak Arabic?  

It was the greatest. Meanwhile Ida, an educator, was talking with the kids’ teacher and comparing notes.  These children were truly remarkable.  They were deeply interested in me and Ida, but they also saw us as a way to practice their English, and they did it with energy and desire to get better.  Ask them what they wanted to become as they grew up and they saw themselves as doctors and business owners, and yes, footballers, the common boy answer.  It was vibrant.  I signed at least 10 autographs, my only celebrity being to exist as a human in that moment with those kids and engaging truthfully.  That’s it.  It started to become disruptive with the noise and excitement from the class so we were politely asked by the museum staff to wrap it up, so we did. But I wanted to stay.

The next day we took a trip out to The Blue City, Chefchoaun. It is a beautiful place aesthetically, but we'd both thought that the blueness went way back centuries.  Wrong.  They painted the city blue in the 1970s and it was purely for the tourist draw. It was a good day, though TBH I was disappointed when I found out the recency of the blueness.  What was interesting on the trip was the van load of people.  There was Jet, the US-Bangladeshi UVA student studying neuro science, an interesting mixed race UK couple, a NY Jewish Progressive female solo traveler, and her counterpart a Wisconsin Cheesehead MAGA female, also going solo. The ride back from Chef featured a spirited debate between the two ladies regarding US voter fraud. It was annoying because I go on vacation to avoid that bullshit, but also fascinating to see two natural predators go after each other in 3D. MAGA lady was more effective because she was more rhetorically aggressive, and more wrong;  but she ended up crying and apologizing to NY Progressive lady. I said nothing, enjoying the show, knowing that whatever sense I laid down would be meaningless. I guess that's kind of sad.

Morocco was wonderful.  We stayed at a lovely villa near the airport the night before we flew.  Me to Istanbul and Ida back to the States.  It was owned by Alain, a friendly and gregarious Belgian man, and his wife Soumia, a beautiful, brainy, and statuesque Berber woman and professional midwife.  We ended the evening before the flight by enjoying tea and cake with them while sitting on Berber cushions and conversing long into the night, trading contact information so we could stay in touch.

Saying goodbye in the morning to Ida was hard. But hard things make us stronger, as they say.  Until next time, then.  Onward to the land of Ottomans and Orthodoxy.

Thanks for reading.