April 15, 2007
A Road Not Taken, Much
By DAVID McANINCH
NO one answered the buzzer at 964 Jamaica Avenue. A locksmith’s calling card and a KeySpan service notice protruded from the doorframe and fluttered in the breeze, just beneath the sign that read “Taxidermist.” Frozen eerily behind a vitrine above the boarded-up storefront were a lifelike fox, a hawk of some sort, and what appeared to be a couple of chickens.
That a taxidermist’s shop at the edge of Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, had apparently gone out of business was less of a surprise than the fact that such a thing was ever in business in the first place. What kind of city dweller requires the services of a taxidermist? Bereaved poultry fanciers? Urban fox hunters?
If you walk slowly enough and look hard enough, such curiosities abound along Jamaica Avenue, as they do on so many of New York’s unsung thoroughfares. Before the mysteries of the taxidermist’s shop could be pondered at length, within blocks new distractions presented themselves, including, among other things, a gun-supply store with a live firing range in back, an old man in a red vest riding a tricked-out Schwinn festooned with giant Albanian flags, and a plaque honoring the nearby birthplace of Fred Christ Trump, “father of The Donald.”
These may not be worthy attractions for your uncle visiting from Ohio. But they are unexpected delights in their own way, hints that New York bristles with history and eccentricity far from the city’s throbbing heart. They are signs of a street life that, though distinctly urban in its grit and rough edges, is more villagelike than cosmopolitan, a life lived beyond the reach of large-scale gentrification, a long way from the tourist traps and even the most far-flung outposts of hip New York.
Once an Indian path, then a busy wood-plank toll road that connected the farms of Long Island to the Brooklyn ferry docks, Jamaica Avenue appears today to be decidedly average in everything except length, stuffed fowl notwithstanding. The street, which extends roughly 15 miles from eastern Brooklyn all the way to the Nassau County line, is not up-and-coming, it is not celebrated in song or letters, and it is not well traveled by people who don’t live nearby.
It arcs through a half-dozen overlooked neighborhoods, past transit hubs, friendly main streets, cemeteries, suburban-style cul-de-sacs, bustling shopping strips and industrial corridors. The businesses along Jamaica Avenue — run by Guyanese, Colombians, Irish-Americans, African-Americans, Dominicans and Lithuanians, to name a few — include roughly 20 pizza joints, as many West Indian steam-table restaurants, a dozen florists, and so many hair and nail salons that counting became onerous after 30 blocks or so.
The residential areas bisected by this artery are middle-class and uniformly unglamorous. In sum, Jamaica Avenue is a locus of everyday life of the sort lived by the majority of New Yorkers. To walk the length of such a street is to recognize the beauty, pathos and humor inherent in the seemingly banal goings-on of a city’s less-traveled wards.
Junior Gardeners of the World
Jamaica Avenue, unlike Fifth Avenue, Flatbush Avenue or Broadway, does not originate at a triumphal arch, a soaring bridge, or land’s end. It emerges from beneath a thicket of elevated subway tracks at Broadway Junction, just beyond the northern border of East New York and site of the New York City Transit Authority Surface Transit Headquarters and the massive East New York Bus Garage and Shop. On a recent cloudless morning, drivers sipped coffee outside the yawning hangar doors, beneath an insignia reading, “N.Y.C.T.A. Surface Transit: We Serve With Pride.”
What the first mile or so of Jamaica Avenue does have going for it is topography. Past the bus garage and the access ramps for the Jackie Robinson Parkway, as the street eases into a stretch of tidy detached houses and rundown bodegas, a tree-lined ridge heaves up dramatically to the north — Long Island’s terminal glacial moraine.
Pedestrians are few. A handwritten sign affixed to the back of an old station wagon in a junk-strewn lot at Miller Avenue advertises a “Rebuilted Shopping Cart” for $7, ostensibly a good price, though the item in question was not on display. A striking but dilapidated Queen Anne-style house lords over the sleepy corner of Warwick Street, its beautiful window mullions spiked with millions of flecks of peeling yellow paint.
Several blocks east, a sunny mural on a concrete gatehouse announces the Highland Park Children’s Garden, a one-acre enclosure within the sprawling namesake park. A barrel-chested man with slicked-back gray hair emerged from behind the gate and introduced himself as Dennis Moore, “local historian and co-coordinator of this garden.”
“We’ve got gardeners from Suriname, Bangladesh, China, P.R., D.R., the Philippines, Ireland, Trinidad — oh, and one from New Jersey,” Mr. Moore said. “This is the oldest public children’s garden in the country. Also, this was the eastern flank of the Battle of Brooklyn, right here where we’re standing.
“I used to walk by this place 60 years ago when I was a kid. Now I live on Richmond Street. Most people don’t think of a middle-class white dude from this neighborhood, but here I am.”
He plucked a leaf from a chocolate-mint plant and popped it into his mouth, then bent to retrieve an empty soda can from a patch of giant hosta. “Kids still toss trash over the fence,” he said. “But guess what happened when we started cleaning this place up? Vandalism went way down.”
A quarter-mile on from the garden, past a giant winged statue honoring World War I veterans, Jamaica Avenue intersects with Force Tube Avenue — the off-putting name is not a reference to the making of foie gras but to an underground water tunnel — beyond which one enters the City of the Dead.
For the next mile, graveyards stretch north to the horizon: the National Cemetery at Cypress Hills, with its neat rows of bone-white headstones; Salem Fields, beneath which members of New York’s Guggenheim family repose; Cypress Hills Cemetery, resting place of Mae West and Jackie Robinson; down-at-the-heels Maimonides Cemetery, where a sign by a rusted gate reads, indignantly, “This Is Not Cypress Hills Cemetery”; and, finally, Mount Hope Cemetery, beside the Queens border and opposite the erstwhile taxidermist’s shop, where the dead surveil the dead.
The $79.99 Tuxedo
No slogan-emblazoned sign at Eldert Lane alerts visitors that they have entered Queens — nor, for that matter, is there one welcoming westbound travelers to Brooklyn, a fact that Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz might be interested to know. Still, as Jamaica Avenue rolls into the western fringe of Woodhaven, things change perceptibly.
Daylight dissipates beneath the elevated tracks of the J and Z lines, which run above Jamaica Avenue after Crescent Street; on a sunny day the el creates a kinetic dance of light and shadow as beautiful as a painting by Mondrian, who happens to be interred nearby. There, within just a few blocks of the cemetery district, Jamaica Avenue becomes Main Street, U.S.A., replete with taverns, barbershops, hardware stores, and a small-town feel that’s a world away from Manhattan’s see-and-be-seen restaurants and sleek flagship stores.
Exclusive Menswear, near 84th Street, will sell you a respectable-looking tuxedo for $79.99; at the catering hall down the street, the Knights of Columbus meets once a week; and at nearby Schmidt’s candy shop, chocolates are made by hand and displayed on fudge-spattered wax paper in wood cases. The woman behind the counter at Schmidt’s seems to have an arrangement with the Manor Delicatessen, across the street. “Go over there right now and try their German potato salad,” she instructed a first-time visitor. “It’s the best in the city.”
On a retaining wall beneath a railroad overpass at 100th Street, a weather-beaten mural depicts a bulldog wearing an F.D.N.Y. helmet and extending his paws to embrace a crudely drawn New York skyline; above him is the mystifying inscription “Let’s Not Lose It!”
A brown sedan slowed to a stop beneath the overpass. “Looking at the mural?” the driver, a brunette of about 20, shouted at the stranger staring at the artworks.
“A local guy painted it 20 years ago because the city was going to close our firehouse,” she explained. “The firehouse stayed, but no one’s done anything with the mural, so my friends and I are going to start cleaning it and restoring it next Saturday.”
She started to say something else but stopped to let a train thunder past overhead — the prevailing etiquette in this part of Queens being to stare politely into the middle distance until the noise dies down.
“Come by and help if you want!” she said finally. Sure enough, they were there with buckets and scrub brushes the following weekend.
Just beyond the overpass, Jamaica Avenue crosses into Richmond Hill, a heavily Guyanese neighborhood where roti joints are scattered among numerous street-front attractions that could easily escape the notice of a busy passer-by. There are a hobby shop at 105th Street that sells vintage Matchbox cars for a dollar; a used bookstore that specializes in baseball, military history and Judaica and is open only on Saturdays; Rubie’s Costume Shop, a vast, two-story emporium that sells everything from latex severed heads to medieval jesters’ uniforms; and at Myrtle Avenue, the wedge-shaped building, with its stained glass and carved-wood cherubs, that once housed the famous Triangle Hofbrau, the borough’s oldest continuously operating restaurant until it closed in 1999.
Curry Chicken and Tom Boy Soda
At 129th Street, where the elevated tracks veer away from Jamaica Avenue, the coziness of Richmond Hill gives way to semi-industrial blocks largely devoid of pedestrians. At 130th Street a woman desultorily pushed a cart selling flavored ice past a chain-link fence hung with soot-covered tinsel letters that spell “Season’s Greetings” — the sign’s owners apparently oblivious to the fact that Christmas was long gone.
Beyond the Van Wyck Expressway, Jamaica Avenue enters the neighborhood that shares its name, the origin of which locals are forever obliged to explain to outsiders. The name is inspired not by Caribbean Islanders, of which there are many in the vicinity, but by the Jameco Indians, of which there are now none.
As the street plunges into the neighborhood’s commercial heart, it becomes an exuberant off-brand mecca of cheap electronics stores and hip-hop apparel outlets with names like Hyperactive, Pretty Girl, Hotti Hotti and Don’t Panic. Shoppers, conveyed from far and wide on the many bus and subway lines that converge there, share crowded sidewalks with workers from the main branch of the Queens Public Library, the Social Security Administration building, various county courts and the other government buildings nearby, and with all manner of shills, proselytizers and hawkers.
Parked at a folding table near 161st Street, Michael Evans, a garrulous type in mirror sunglasses who described himself as a street author and reformed three-card-monte sharper, thrust a copy of his latest self-published novel, “Son of a Snitch,” into the hands of a wary-looking mother of two.
“That’s a $17 book on sale for $10!” Mr. Evans said. He turned to her son, who looked to be about 8: “Shorty, you got to read if you want to be a man!” After a half-minute of deliberation, the mother pulled a 20 from her wallet, whereupon Mr. Evans leaped to his feet and gave her a hug.
Not all vestiges of Jamaica’s earlier days have disappeared.
Some, like the fantastically ornate 1929 building at 165-11 Jamaica Avenue that was once the Loew’s Valencia movie palace, have been virtually engulfed by the garish awnings and signs that have metastasized across the avenue’s facades over the years.
Others have fared better. The King Manor Museum, a 200-year-old gambrel-roofed mansion, is set like a jewel within a one-block-square greensward, one of the few in this parks-deprived swath of Queens. Just up the street, in a prim corner building free of loud ornament, sits Klingbeil Shoe Labs, a 50-year-old artisan’s workshop where top figure skaters, including Sasha Cohen and Emily Hughes, still go to be fitted with custom-made boots.
Beyond Merrick Boulevard, Jamaica Avenue takes on a local flavor again, with a heavy accent on Central America and the Caribbean. At tiny Kassim’s, one of the many West Indian and Guyanese lunch counters that dominate the culinary landscape east of Woodhaven, a huge variety of curry and rice dishes are on offer, along with more than a dozen curiously named baked goods, including butter flaps, tennis rolls, chester cakes, pine tarts and cassava pone. The curry chicken at Kassim’s was sweet and tender, and went nicely with a Tom Boy raspberry soda — “As Famous as Kaieteur Falls,” says the label.
As you advance east toward the neighborhood of Hollis, Jamaica Avenue widens out and quiets down, and worthy distractions are harder to find, unless car transmissions or hair braiding happens to be your thing. But at 176th Street, near the avenue’s eastern edge, a bright yellow facade inscribed with the words “Afrikan Poetry Theater” provides a break in the drabness of the low-rise streetscape. On the walls of the building’s cool, wood-paneled vestibule hang portraits of Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X, and plaques bearing aphorisms like “If You Are Failing to Plan, You Are Planning to Fail.”
In the room beyond, a woman in bright blue African-print shirt and pants prowled a stage before several dozen rapt schoolchildren. “Reach up and pull down two handfuls of wisdom,” she boomed, “and give them to your neighbor!” Small hands grabbed the air as fans twirled lazily overhead.
‘Live Cricket’ and Uncle Buddy’s
Back outside, the avenue’s two- and three-story storefronts marched off in either direction across the flatness of Long Island. To the east, along the hardscrabble blocks of Hollis, gas stations and restaurant-supply stores alternate with Haitian storefront churches and Trinidadian restaurants advertising “Live Cricket” in the window — which, to an outsider’s sun-fried mind, at first evoked an exotic appetizer.
East of 225th Street, along its final mile and a half, Jamaica Avenue traverses yet another borderland, or, to be more precise, it is the border: businesses on the north side of the street bear a Queens address, and those on the south side belong to the rest of the world. Here, in the Bellerose neighborhood, Jamaica Avenue — or the Jericho Turnpike, depending on which curb you’re on — is less a street than a suburban road.
Just as one passes over the Cross Island Parkway, not far from Jamaica Avenue’s eastern terminus and a horseshoe’s toss from the Belmont Park racetrack, a shabby-looking corner bar called Uncle Buddy’s Tavern comes into view on the Nassau County side of the street. On the sign out front is a little silhouette of a martini glass. Planted on a barstool near the door at the end of a long journey, a visitor can marvel at the sight of cars turning right on red and gaze across the border at New York, contemplating the long route home.
dimanche 15 avril 2007
vendredi 13 avril 2007
vendredi 23 mars 2007
lundi 19 février 2007
Hanoi
The Awakening of Hanoi
TO find the Mai Gallery in Hanoi, you must first walk down the bustling avenue of Le Thanh Tong, a street filled with flower stalls, neighborhood shops, sidewalk cafes and the ubiquitous roar of hundreds of motorbikes streaming in the direction of the century-old opera house. As you turn down Phan Huy Chu, one of a maze of narrow alleys in the Old Quarter, the throngs of teenagers leaning against parked mopeds with their cellphones cupped to their ears quickly disappear. Instead, squatting on the sidewalk stirring steaming pots of soup laced with noodles, pork and cilantro, are elderly women, their faces hidden under traditional farm-field conical hats, chatting among themselves as they give you a quick, inquisitive glance.
As I made my way down this passage on a warm morning in late November, I thought about why I had come to Hanoi — to see a country I knew only from history books and vaguely remembered images from the nightly news in the 1970s. The map of Vietnam was like a screen saver on our television set, and the war in Southeast Asia dominated the discussions at the dinner table in the politically active college town of Ann Arbor, Mich.
Thirty years later, I found myself experiencing an enormous disconnect. Hanoi was not at all as I had pictured it. Instead of being a squalid third world capital struggling to recover from years of war and isolation, it was a stylish, European-influenced metropolis with manicured lakeside promenades, tree-lined boulevards, ancient pagodas and French-colonial buildings painted in a peeling palette of jade, turquoise and burgundy.
On the streets, elderly men sipping tea at food stalls and grandmothers balancing poles on their shoulders laden with heavy baskets of fruits and vegetables were outnumbered by representatives of a younger and more boisterous generation. Nearly sixty percent of the population in Vietnam was born after the war ended in 1975, and Hanoi feels like a city of teenagers. They were everywhere — doubled up on motorbikes, their hair streaming behind them like jet spray as they raced off to school or work. At night they gathered in the parks and the city's dance clubs before zooming off again to start a new day.
Two days into my stay in Hanoi, I had made the obligatory visits to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleumTemple of Literature (once a university, built in 1070) but had also found my time increasingly taken up by visits to the city's art galleries. That's because back in London, where I now live, friends who had been to Hanoi had all come back raving about the art. One showed me her collection of traditional paintings — each a different village scene, Impressionistic in style, painted on wood and then treated and polished with sap from a lacquer tree. They were stunningly luminous, laced with gold and silver gilt as well as crushed eggshell. The effect was like looking at a detailed painting under a thin, still puddle of water. (where the body of the still-revered leader lies in state) and the
“Just wait,” my friend said. “You will fall in love with the art there.”
And I had. But while I was fascinated by 20th-century Vietnamese art — a mixture of Eastern techniques (woodcutting, engraving, silk and lacquer painting) with European influences from the early 1900s (Impressionism, Cubism) — I was most taken with the contemporary works by younger artists, many of whom are integrating the traditional into the modern and expressing themselves in new ways that reflect an awareness of what is happening in the Western art world.
THAT'S one reason I was now headed toward the Mai gallery, hoping to meet Tran Phuong Mai, the owner, herself. As I wandered from art gallery to art gallery, her name kept coming up in conversation, as other dealers would describe her — sometimes with a slight roll of the eyes or a faint note of exasperation in their voices — as being among the most prominent figures in their midst, the one who was most adeptly taking advantage of the increased attention contemporary Vietnamese art was attracting in the West. (Well, that was certainly in contrast to one gallery owner I met, who when I happened to mention that Charles Saatchi, the noted British collector, was beginning to feature young Vietnamese on his Web site, said, “Charles Saatchi? Oh, I got an e-mail from him several months ago asking me if he could link my gallery Web site. But I had never heard of him. Is he famous?”)
Young, stylish, attractive and with a close relationship with many of the city's young artists, Mai was beginning to sound like a character I knew well from my days of living in Manhattan in the early 1980s, when New York's downtown art scene was exploding. Could this be the Mary Boone of Hanoi?
Opposite a wall of boldly drawn graffiti in the tiny alleyway was her sleek, modern art gallery. On display inside the stark white space were the colorful urban landscape paintings of Nguyen Bao Ha, an Abstract Expressionist, whose work has been described as depicting the “cancerous” pace at which Vietnam is being developed. There was no one inside, however, except Mai's mother. Her daughter, she explained in her halting English, was at her new art gallery, her second — a sign that business was booming.
When I finally tracked down Mai at the other gallery, a three-story space on less-remote Hang Bong Street, it was clear to me she was a young force — she's 36 — in Hanoi's art world. With a stylish crop of jet black hair and trendily dressed in a hooded red zipper jacket and black skinny jeans, she looked every bit the part of an artist's friend. But she also had the demeanor of an experienced businesswoman. She instructed her assistant to get us a pot of tea, and she invited me to sit while she told me her story.
“We were the first private art gallery to open after doi moi,” she said referring to the Communist government's decision in 1986 to allow foreign trade and private ownership. A poet's daughter who grew up around artists — many of whom painted her portrait as a child — Mai opened her original gallery in 1993 with the help of her parents. “Previously, every gallery was state owned, and Vietnamese contemporary art was anonymous to the rest of the world,” she said, adding that the Hanoi University of Fine Arts (previously the École Superieure Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine) had provided Vietnam with an unending supply of talent since it was founded by the French in 1925.
“Now many of our artists are exhibiting outside of the country,” she said, adding that her paintings, like those in most Hanoi galleries, range in price from $300 for a small canvas by a relatively unknown artist to less than $6,000 for a large canvas by one of the “Gang of Five”— the first contemporary group to gain international recognition outside Vietnam, in the late '90s.
“My clients come from all over the world,” she said as she escorted me to see “master” paintings — works from modern artists like Bui Xuan Phai, whose work is frequently compared to Van Gogh's and Klee's, and who died in poverty in 1988. Now his paintings are sold by Mai for $10,000 and go at auction for twice that.
After warning me about Hanoi's many “art shops” — kitschy stores aimed at tourists that sell cheaply produced decorative art — she sent me down the street to meet Vu Dan Tan, one of the first experimental artists in Hanoi, whose atelier, Salon Natasha, is open to the public and served as one of the first meeting places for contemporary artists in Vietnam. I found Tan, a white-bearded man, sitting in his paint-splattered studio surrounded by his work, paper creatures and masks constructed from recycled packaging — a style developed during the war years when materials were short and now was a statement on the Western-style consumerism that has enveloped the country. He told me his work had been exhibited in Australia, GermanyJapan. “It is a very different time for artists,” he said, sitting down gingerly at a wooden desk covered with paint brushes. and
An international art expert agreed. “There are many vibrant young contemporary artists in Hanoi, and people are definitely buying their work — hoping it will one day appreciate,” Mok Kim Chuan, a specialist in the Southeast Asian Paintings Department at Sotheby's in Singapore, told me by telephone. “We are not auctioning many of the younger artists yet because their work is still readily available in the galleries, but we are very aware of them.” He said that the post-Impressionist works by the Vietnamese artist Le Pho, who died in 2001, were now auctioning for around $300,000. “Contemporary art is very hot right now,” he said.
Suzanne Lecht, an American art consultant who escorted Bill Clinton around the galleries of Hanoi in 2000 and who has lived in Hanoi and run the Art Vietnam gallery since 1994, is trying to help Vietnamese artists gain more recognition in the United States. Her newest gallery, the Fielding Lecht Gallery, is in Austin, Tex., and she is planning an artist-in-residency program in Hanoi for international artists. “I want it to be a meeting place for artists from all over the world,” she said in a recent interview. “It will also expose Vietnamese artists to many more ideas,” she added.
Just down the road from Mai's second gallery is the Apricot Gallery, which features minimalist artists like Le Thiet Cuong, whose family fled Hanoi for the countryside from 1964 to 1973 to escape American bombings, and Le Thanh Son, whose colorful canvases of village life impressed Mr. Clinton enough that he bought one to take home.
All galleries must get permission for exhibits; the government frowns on raw sexuality, and overtly political paintings, like depictions of “Uncle Ho,” are prohibited. Curious to see the experimental side of Vietnam's art scene — which was beginning to feel like a cross between Montmartre in the 1920s and Williamsburg in the 1990s — I visited L'Espace Centre Culturel Français de Hanoi and the Goethe Institute. Both, being foreign owned, get less government scrutiny (though they must still get a permit) and regularly hold public events that give exposure to installations and performance art presentations by conceptual artists.
At L'Espace an exhibit called “Surfaces” was on display, which showed small bits of dirt from historic places in Vietnam like My Lai, the site of a massacre of civilians by American troops in 1968. The Ryllega Gallery, next door to the opera, also provides space for experimental art installations, aided by a grant from a British cultural organization.
Art, it seemed, was everywhere in this city — from the Hanoi Museum of Fine Arts, with three floors and more than 2,000 objects on display, including artifacts from the Stone and Bronze Ages, an array of Buddhist images (one from 1057) and early lacquer paintings, to the many Hanoi restaurants that incorporate contemporary Vietnamese art into their décor.
In the public spaces of the century-old Metropole hotel, I noticed well-heeled American couples checking out the contemporary art on display in the lobby before heading out to the thatched roof terrace bar overlooking the hotel pool. The bar, with its large comfy wicker chairs, is an inviting spot to enjoy a well-made cosmo and warm, crispy spring rolls.
And, later, at dinner at the fashionable Restaurant Bobby Chinn, I watched a parade of young women in miniskirts traipse by my table and then followed them into a back room, where they were nestled on silk cushions in velvet banquettes, a water pipe in one hand, a drink in the other. On the walls behind them were abstract paintings from Mr. Chinn's personal art collection, which he regularly rotates through his restaurant.
When it comes to darting in and out of galleries, restaurants and the many craft and silk shops in Hanoi's densely populated Old Quarter, walking is the best way to get around. Though the roar and density of the traffic is overpowering, it's easy to navigate the city with just a hotel map in hand.
Even a simple stroll around Hoan Kiem Lake, looking out onto the tranquil Ngoc Son Temple, which floats like a jewel in the middle of a lake, provides a glimpse into local culture. I watched an outdoor traditional flag dance exercise class (while enjoying a ginger ice cream from Fanny's, a near-legendary ice cream shop by the lake) followed by a noisy aerobics class of middle-aged women boogieing down to techno music. The language barrier makes it hard to strike up a casual conversation with strangers, but those who do speak English (mostly the under-30 set) are eager to practice with Westerners.
One day, having already enjoyed a typical breakfast of pho (beef noodle soup), I allowed myself Hanoi's other cuisine, French, and sat down at a table on the second floor of the Paris Deli, a comfortable bistro with black-and-white photos of Paris on the walls. From my window seat by the balcony overlooking the trendy Nha Tho Street, with a view of St. Joseph Cathedral in the distance, I took in the street scene below as I sipped a glass of Beaujolais nouveau, which had just arrived that week, right on time.
When my confit de canard appeared, my young waiter started a conversation in English that lasted nearly 15 minutes. It turned out he had a friend in New York. “If I visit, will gangsters and thugs get me, like in the movies?” he asked. “I see you later,” he said after I paid the bill, though we had not exchanged numbers, making me wonder if the city was much smaller than it seemed.
MY last morning in Hanoi, I again met with Mai, who had said she wanted me to meet Nguyen Manh Duc, a man in his late 60s who is considered the father of experimental art in Vietnam. When a friend and I arrived at her gallery, a taxi was waiting for us, and we quickly headed out toward the suburbs, the European elegance of Hanoi gradually replaced by urban sprawl. Thirty minutes later, after several cellphone calls between Duc and the taxi driver, the taxi deposited us on a corner where we were met by a thin man on a bicycle. He motioned us to follow him down a road and around several corners. There, in the middle of a neighborhood filled with housing projects, we came upon the exotic Thai Stilt House, Duc's home and atelier.
Walking through large wooden gates decorated with decoupages of photographs, notes and fliers, we were directed up a flight of wooden stairs, and we added our shoes to a pile before walking into a dimly lighted room. It was filled with hundreds of Buddha statues and ceremonial ornaments. Sitting around a low wooden table on stools about a foot from the ground were five young Vietnamese art students (all men, ages 23 to 27) drinking tea and smoking Vinataba cigarettes — no doubt the Vietnamese equivalent of the French Gauloise. Duc had invited them to meet us.
Most spoke little English, but they seemed excited to meet Americans, particularly Americans interested in Vietnamese art. All spoke reverently of Duc, whose Stilt House has been a salon for the avant garde art movement since the 1990s — the setting of controversial art events, installations and performance art. Sometimes in broken English, but mostly through the translation of another young student, they explained that at their art school they were mainly taught traditional European and Eastern techniques. Modern artists were not taught and were barely even discussed. “We come to Duc to create contemporary art and to talk about ideas with him,” said one of them, who like the others, had never left the country, though each of them had a Yahoo e-mail address.
Duc, described by one gallery owner as a “Ghandi-like” figure in Hanoi, sat listening as the young men discussed their nascent careers and then, only when pressed, added his thoughts. “There is still a big separation between mainstream art and experimental art in Vietnam,” he said through an interpreter, not wishing to elaborate further on the subject. “I will just say that when they are here we try to close that gap.”
We spent nearly an hour in conversation, until squatting on the tiny stools began to feel painful and the combined smell of smoke and strong tea became overpowering. The students and I walked out into the street, and the conversation lingered, as they peppered me with questions about my life at home, and what I thought of Vietnam. Finally, it was time to go. They thanked me again for coming, hopped on their bicycles and headed off.
Three hours later, on the computer back at my hotel, e-mail had arrived from one of my new friends, containing an attachment. “Here is my painting,” he wrote. “Hope you like.”
I did.
VISITOR INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Tourists can apply for visas, required of all American citizens, by mail or in person at the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington (1233 20th Street NW, Suite 400, 202-861-0737; www.vietnamembassy-usa.org). A single-entry tourist visa for one month costs $65 and will take five to seven business days to process. TraveltoVietnam.com (based in Ho Chi Minh city) also has a visa processing service available online that takes from one ($38) to three days ($28). You then collect your visa in Vietnam at the immigration desk at the airport, for an additional charge of $25. (A 3-by-4-inch photo is required.) Most visitors fly to Hong Kong, Seoul or Bangkok for a connecting flight to Hanoi on Vietnam Airlines. A recent Web search for flights leaving New York at the end of February turned up round trips with one stop each way from $1,325 and with two stops from $1,064.
The Vietnamese currency is the dong (the exchange rate in early February was about 17,000 dong to the dollar), but most transactions in Vietnam can be conducted in dollars, and United States-based credit cards are accepted at almost all hotels and restaurants. A.T.M.'s are also quite easy to find.
WHERE TO STAY
Sofitel Metropole Hanoi, 15 Ngo Quyen Street, (844) 8266919; www.sofitel.com. Resplendent with Old World charm, this landmark hotel has wooden ceiling fans, teak shutters and marble floors in the lobby, as well as a vintage Citroën strategically parked near the entrance. The lush interior garden has a pool bordered by lounge chairs — each adorned with a conical hat to shield sunbathers. There are two restaurants (one featuring Vietnamese cuisine), several bars and a health club and silk shop on the property; this is an easy place to take an afternoon off from sightseeing. Rooms in the Opera wing feel less “colonial” in décor but are larger than those in the old wing and still luxurious and well appointed. The only inconvenience is that the business center is in a separate building next door. A double room starts at $190 a night.
Hilton Hanoi Opera Hotel, 1 Le Thanh Tong Street, (84-4) 9330530; www.hilton.com. This is a 269-room luxury hotel that is centrally situated near the Opera House, hence its name. Sadly, the hotel is largely lacking in charm, though the grand galleried lobby is nice for a drink and often has live music. The hotel also has an outdoor pool, a health club and spa, two restaurants, a sports bar, a cafe and a well-equipped business center. A standard double starts at $190.
Church Hotel, 9 Nha Tho Street, (84-4) 92881188. This simply appointed 26-room hotel is the closest thing Hanoi has to a boutique hotel, with rooms simply decorated with white linens and dark wood furniture. It is in the trendiest part of the Old Quarter, full of restaurants and silk and crafts shops, but is also not far from the Temple of Literature and Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. Double rooms start at $65, including breakfast, and can be booked at www.hotelvietnamonline.com.
WHERE TO EAT
Restaurant Bobby Chinn, 1 Ba Trieu Street, (84-4) 9348577; www.bobbychinn.com. Looking out over Hoan Kiem Lake, Bobby Chinn serves up a mixture of California and Asian cuisine. Signature dishes include green tea smoked duck, roasted squab wrapped in crispy almond-scented rice paper and sticky rice dumplings with mung bean purée. But diners also come here for the scene, which mostly takes place in the back room, where silk drapes are used to intimately partition off tables. Dinner for two, plus wine, about $110.
Paris Deli, 6 Phan Chu Trinh Street, (84-4) 9345269, and 13 Nha Tho Street, (84-4) 9286697. With two locations, these casual French bistros serve good French food, including baguette sandwiches and pastries at affordable prices. Lunch for two, plus wine, $35
Café des Arts, 11b Ngo Bao Khanh, (84-4) 8287207. This charming brasserie is filled with art and is often the setting for exhibitions. The French menu includes classics like bouillabaisse and steak tartare. Dinner for two with wine, $60.
Club Opera, 59 Ly Thai To Street, (84-4) 8246950. In a villa across the street from the Metropole, this elegant restaurant serves superbly prepared Thai and Vietnamese food, like shrimp in coconut sauce and fried fillet of sea bass with mango. Dinner for two, with wine, $70.
VIEWING ART
Mai Gallery, 3b Phan Huy Chu, (84-4) 825-1225, and 183 Hang Bong Street, (84-4) 8285854; www.maigallery-vietnam.com.
Apricot Gallery, 40 B Hang Bong Street, (84-4) 8288965.
Art Vietnam, 30 Hang Than Street, (84-4) 9272349.
Salon Natasha, 30 Hang Bong Street, (84-4) 8261387.
Gia Huy Gallery, 49 Hang Bong Street, (84-4) 9288746.
L'Espace Centre Culturel Français de Hanoi, 24 rue Trang Tran Tien, (84-4) 9362164.
Ryllega Gallery, 1 A Trang Tien, (84-4) 9332878; www.ryllega.com.
BUYING ART
All galleries will ship art home for you, and there is no United States import duty on original works of art. There is a small customs fee for art leaving Vietnam, but that is included in the shipping price. A 100-square-centimeter painting, for example, would cost roughly $150 to ship to the United States and should arrive within five to seven days. A larger lacquer canvas could cost as much as $1,000 to ship. Beware that many of the lesser-quality “art shops” will try to convince you of a work's authenticity (forged copies works by popular artists are common) by giving you an “exclusive right certificate.” Such a document means nothing, as the art industry is not regulated by the government.
GETTING AROUND
The first thing anyone tells you about Hanoi is that it is impossible to walk there — the traffic is insane, with traffic lights and stop signs practically nonexistent, and you take your life in your hands every time you cross the street. But still, nothing quite prepares you for the out-of-body experience of trying to wade into the rushing traffic, making sure to move at a steady pace, eyes fixed straight ahead, as you feel the whooshing of air in front of you, and the occasional brushing of an elbow against your back, as motorcyclists swerve around you without slowing down. No wonder most tourists try it once, and then spend the rest of their trip either in the back seat of a taxi or in the cramped quarters of a tuk-tuk. A 10-minute ride in a taxi or tuk-tuk will set you back only about 40,000 dong (a bit more than $2), though with a tuk-tuk, it is best to negotiate the price before the journey.
lundi 12 février 2007
Phnom Penh
February 11, 2007
Next Stop
In Phnom Penh, Hopefulness Replaces Despair
By STUART EMMRICH
IT'S a late Saturday afternoon in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and the waterfront along the Tonle Sap River is the place to be. As clusters of elderly women sit on concrete benches overlooking the water, peddlers set up stands from which they sell slices of fresh pineapple while youngsters on motorbikes deftly weave among the crush of pedestrians. Boat captains yell out to passing couples, offering sunset rides on their tiny wooden vessels, as shirtless children swim or fish in the muddy water. Suddenly, a lone elephant, gently guided by its young handler, majestically makes its way through the crowd.
At this moment, Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, seems frozen in time, as the scene in front of you plays out much the way it must have 70 or 80 years ago, when Cambodia was part of French-controlled Indochina and the city was known as the Pearl of Asia. But then you notice the bank of A.T.M.'s in the nearby storefronts, the Internet cafes crammed with fashionably dressed teenagers checking their e-mail, the sleek air-conditioned bars with names like Metro and Heart of Darkness. And all around you, you hear a polyglot of languages — English, French, Korean, Spanish, Chinese — that are a testament to this city's reappearance on the global tourism map.
In fact, after a few days in this city, you notice that Phnom Penh has something of a “next Prague” vibe about it — a place where many young people from around the world, heady with excitement and the thrill of the unknown, are coming to reinvent themselves. At least that is what it feels like as you run into groups of Americans hanging out in one of the cramped nightclubs along Sisowath Quay, or vie with Australian expatriates for a table during the crowded two-for-one happy hour at the Elephant Bar in the Raffles Hotel, or scan page after newspaper page of job listings in the English-language Cambodia Daily.
New high-end restaurants are just around the corner from stalls doing a brisk business selling street food. A stylish boutique hotel — the 10-room Pavilion — has recently opened, bridging the gap between the palatial Raffles and the tiny, bare-bones establishments catering to the backpacker crowd. And the National Museum, which after years of neglect and near-ruin under the Khmer Rouge, is slowly coming back, its incomparable collection of centuries-old Khmer art, including some stunning stone sculptures, now attracting hundreds of visitors a day.
That museum is no sleek tourist attraction, but instead a quiet, largely open-air gathering spot, with overhead fans gently cooling visitors eager to escape the sometimes oppressive midday heat. (Air-conditioning was recently installed in one room for an exhibition of Rodin watercolors from the Rodin Museum in Paris.)
On a recent morning, a visitor to the museum would have encountered a group of young monks sitting quietly in the corner of the lovely contemplative garden, while nearby a mother with a young child took a quick nap, and a British couple played several hands of gin rummy. Meanwhile, French tourists just off a bus busily made their way through the galleries before heading off to the next stop on their itinerary: the Silver Pagoda, a few streets away.
Thanks to the influence of the French, and the easily navigable grid system of wide boulevards and numbered side streets they left behind, Phnom Penh is a highly walkable city. Well, it would be if there were a few more sidewalks and if those that exist weren't crowded with parked motorbikes that make passage almost impossible at times, thrusting the unwary pedestrian out into death-defying traffic. Even the most determined of walkers will eventually give up and hire a tuk-tuk to navigate the city's neighborhoods. (Be sure to negotiate. You'll be surprised at how quickly that first price quoted you — say $4 for a trip from your hotel to the National Museum — is cut in half the moment you show any hesitancy or start looking around for another driver.)
No matter how you get around Phnom Penh — by foot or by tuk-tuk — you will undoubtedly end up at some point at the Foreign Correspondents' Club, commonly called the F.C.C.
The food here is undistinguished (at best), and the toothache-inducing fruity drinks should be passed up in favor of a cold bottle of Angkor Beer. But perhaps the best seat in Phnom Penh is one of the stools in the F.C.C.'s third-floor bar at happy hour. (Yes, happy hour seems to be a big thing here; almost every bar and restaurant in town has one.) Here, as the sun slowly sets behind you, you can watch the action below on the quay slowly shifting from day (vendors hawking their wares, young monks taking a stroll along the waterfront) to night (clubgoers ramping up the energy and noise level).
Sitting at the F.C.C.today, one can barely imagine what Phnom Penh was like in the 1970s, when the country was under the brutal repression of the Khmer Rouge -- a period later immortalized in the film, "The Killing Fields." But a remnant of that past can be found at Tuol Sleng, more commonly known as the genocide museum. No matter what you remember from history books or news reports, nothing can quite adequately prepare you for reality of what Cambodians lived through while under the four-year rule of Pol Pot, when nearly 2 million Cambodians (about a fourth of the country's population) were exterminated.
Set incongruously in a lovely residential neighborhood, the genocide museum brings you up short almost immediately with a sign warning that any loud talking or laughter is strictly forbidden. That warning seems all but superfluous as you enter the first-floor galleries and see the walls covered with black-and-white face shots of the Khmer Rouge's many victims: Most of them, boys and girls alike, are heartbreakingly young. Some, incredibly, even managed a smile for their photographer. Silence seems the only appropriate response.
Upstairs is another photo exhibit of some of the victims, with their life stories recounted by surviving relatives or friends. You want to turn away, but you can't, so you read about the daughter snatched from home and never heard from again, or the son whose mutilated body was found years after he had left for work in the morning. You leave, like the other visitors, somewhat dazed, and find yourself at the nearby Boddhi Tree garden cafe. It looks as if some of the other patrons have sought some post-museum refuge here: More than a few seem to have a stunned look on their faces.
Then, however, it's back out into the daylight, and a leisurely walk back toward the waterfront, passing the ornate homes on Street 57, the shops and cafes on 240, all buzzing with activity, the smell of grilled meat wafting toward you, a snippet of Beyoncé heard in the air.
This, you tell yourself, is Phnom Penh today. And you feel better.
VISITOR INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Phnom Penh is easily accessible from most major cities in Southeast Asia, with several nonstop flights each day from Bangkok on Thai, Bangkok or Siem Reap Airways. United States citizens need a Cambodian visa to enter the country. Those can be purchased upon arrival at the airport for $20, but you'll need to bring a passport-size photo. The U.S. dollar is accepted for all financial transactions in Cambodia, and most prices are quoted in dollars.
WHERE TO STAY
Raffles Hotel Le Royal, 92 Rukhak Vithei Daun Penh, (855-23) 981-888; www.phnompenh.raffles.com. This elegant 78-year-old hotel, which reopened in 1997 after a major renovation, is one of Phnom Penh's prime gathering spots. On weekends, the lushly landscaped pool area is often crowded with expatriates who come to see friends, catch up on local gossip or just hang out with their children. The Elephant Bar is usually jammed as well, particularly at happy hour, and Le Royal restaurant is one of the prettiest (and most expensive) dining establishments in town. Room prices start at about $260 a night, but deep discounts — particularly on the weekend — are often available if you call the reservations desk directly. The hotel also has a business center, but communication with friends back home can be expensive: You'll be charged $1 for every e-mail message sent on the hotel's computers.
The Pavilion, 227 Street 19, (855-23) 222-280; www.pavilion-cambodia.com. A small, but well-appointed boutique hotel a few blocks from the Royal Palace. The lush garden is a popular place for guests to gather for an early-evening cocktail. Double rooms start at $50 a night, and the hotel offers free Wi-Fi access.
WHERE TO EAT
Friends, 215 Street 13; (855-23) 426-748; www.streetfriends.org. One of a collection of nonprofit restaurants in the city that employ young Cambodians to help them get started on a career. Among the offerings are an excellent Kkmer seafood soup with lime, and a coconut lime cake with passion fruit syrup. Main courses run about $3 to $5.
Boddhi Tree Umma, 50 Street 113, (855-16) 865-445; www.boddhitree.com. A pleasant garden cafe, across from Tuol Sleng. A Cambodian noodle curry costs about $2.
Foreign Correspondents' Club, 363 Sisowath Quay, (855-23) 724-014. Forget Cambodian (or even Asian) cuisine here: the menu runs more toward pizza, sandwiches and salads. But the real attraction is the open-air setting and the unsurpassed views of the Mekong, plus a chance to mingle with other Western tourists. Main courses $6 to $10.
For truly authentic Khmer cuisine, one must go to nameless little places all over town where you'll spend less than a dollar — but it might not be advisable to ask just exactly what this meat you are eating is. A more upscale (and perhaps less-adventurous) alternative is Malis, 136 Norodom Boulevard, (855-23) 221-022, highly recommended by locals for its expertly prepared contemporary and traditional Khmer cuisine served in an elegant garden setting. Dinner for two should run about $30.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/travel/11next.html?8dpc=&pagewanted=print
Next Stop
In Phnom Penh, Hopefulness Replaces Despair
By STUART EMMRICH
IT'S a late Saturday afternoon in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and the waterfront along the Tonle Sap River is the place to be. As clusters of elderly women sit on concrete benches overlooking the water, peddlers set up stands from which they sell slices of fresh pineapple while youngsters on motorbikes deftly weave among the crush of pedestrians. Boat captains yell out to passing couples, offering sunset rides on their tiny wooden vessels, as shirtless children swim or fish in the muddy water. Suddenly, a lone elephant, gently guided by its young handler, majestically makes its way through the crowd.
At this moment, Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, seems frozen in time, as the scene in front of you plays out much the way it must have 70 or 80 years ago, when Cambodia was part of French-controlled Indochina and the city was known as the Pearl of Asia. But then you notice the bank of A.T.M.'s in the nearby storefronts, the Internet cafes crammed with fashionably dressed teenagers checking their e-mail, the sleek air-conditioned bars with names like Metro and Heart of Darkness. And all around you, you hear a polyglot of languages — English, French, Korean, Spanish, Chinese — that are a testament to this city's reappearance on the global tourism map.
In fact, after a few days in this city, you notice that Phnom Penh has something of a “next Prague” vibe about it — a place where many young people from around the world, heady with excitement and the thrill of the unknown, are coming to reinvent themselves. At least that is what it feels like as you run into groups of Americans hanging out in one of the cramped nightclubs along Sisowath Quay, or vie with Australian expatriates for a table during the crowded two-for-one happy hour at the Elephant Bar in the Raffles Hotel, or scan page after newspaper page of job listings in the English-language Cambodia Daily.
New high-end restaurants are just around the corner from stalls doing a brisk business selling street food. A stylish boutique hotel — the 10-room Pavilion — has recently opened, bridging the gap between the palatial Raffles and the tiny, bare-bones establishments catering to the backpacker crowd. And the National Museum, which after years of neglect and near-ruin under the Khmer Rouge, is slowly coming back, its incomparable collection of centuries-old Khmer art, including some stunning stone sculptures, now attracting hundreds of visitors a day.
That museum is no sleek tourist attraction, but instead a quiet, largely open-air gathering spot, with overhead fans gently cooling visitors eager to escape the sometimes oppressive midday heat. (Air-conditioning was recently installed in one room for an exhibition of Rodin watercolors from the Rodin Museum in Paris.)
On a recent morning, a visitor to the museum would have encountered a group of young monks sitting quietly in the corner of the lovely contemplative garden, while nearby a mother with a young child took a quick nap, and a British couple played several hands of gin rummy. Meanwhile, French tourists just off a bus busily made their way through the galleries before heading off to the next stop on their itinerary: the Silver Pagoda, a few streets away.
Thanks to the influence of the French, and the easily navigable grid system of wide boulevards and numbered side streets they left behind, Phnom Penh is a highly walkable city. Well, it would be if there were a few more sidewalks and if those that exist weren't crowded with parked motorbikes that make passage almost impossible at times, thrusting the unwary pedestrian out into death-defying traffic. Even the most determined of walkers will eventually give up and hire a tuk-tuk to navigate the city's neighborhoods. (Be sure to negotiate. You'll be surprised at how quickly that first price quoted you — say $4 for a trip from your hotel to the National Museum — is cut in half the moment you show any hesitancy or start looking around for another driver.)
No matter how you get around Phnom Penh — by foot or by tuk-tuk — you will undoubtedly end up at some point at the Foreign Correspondents' Club, commonly called the F.C.C.
The food here is undistinguished (at best), and the toothache-inducing fruity drinks should be passed up in favor of a cold bottle of Angkor Beer. But perhaps the best seat in Phnom Penh is one of the stools in the F.C.C.'s third-floor bar at happy hour. (Yes, happy hour seems to be a big thing here; almost every bar and restaurant in town has one.) Here, as the sun slowly sets behind you, you can watch the action below on the quay slowly shifting from day (vendors hawking their wares, young monks taking a stroll along the waterfront) to night (clubgoers ramping up the energy and noise level).
Sitting at the F.C.C.today, one can barely imagine what Phnom Penh was like in the 1970s, when the country was under the brutal repression of the Khmer Rouge -- a period later immortalized in the film, "The Killing Fields." But a remnant of that past can be found at Tuol Sleng, more commonly known as the genocide museum. No matter what you remember from history books or news reports, nothing can quite adequately prepare you for reality of what Cambodians lived through while under the four-year rule of Pol Pot, when nearly 2 million Cambodians (about a fourth of the country's population) were exterminated.
Set incongruously in a lovely residential neighborhood, the genocide museum brings you up short almost immediately with a sign warning that any loud talking or laughter is strictly forbidden. That warning seems all but superfluous as you enter the first-floor galleries and see the walls covered with black-and-white face shots of the Khmer Rouge's many victims: Most of them, boys and girls alike, are heartbreakingly young. Some, incredibly, even managed a smile for their photographer. Silence seems the only appropriate response.
Upstairs is another photo exhibit of some of the victims, with their life stories recounted by surviving relatives or friends. You want to turn away, but you can't, so you read about the daughter snatched from home and never heard from again, or the son whose mutilated body was found years after he had left for work in the morning. You leave, like the other visitors, somewhat dazed, and find yourself at the nearby Boddhi Tree garden cafe. It looks as if some of the other patrons have sought some post-museum refuge here: More than a few seem to have a stunned look on their faces.
Then, however, it's back out into the daylight, and a leisurely walk back toward the waterfront, passing the ornate homes on Street 57, the shops and cafes on 240, all buzzing with activity, the smell of grilled meat wafting toward you, a snippet of Beyoncé heard in the air.
This, you tell yourself, is Phnom Penh today. And you feel better.
VISITOR INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Phnom Penh is easily accessible from most major cities in Southeast Asia, with several nonstop flights each day from Bangkok on Thai, Bangkok or Siem Reap Airways. United States citizens need a Cambodian visa to enter the country. Those can be purchased upon arrival at the airport for $20, but you'll need to bring a passport-size photo. The U.S. dollar is accepted for all financial transactions in Cambodia, and most prices are quoted in dollars.
WHERE TO STAY
Raffles Hotel Le Royal, 92 Rukhak Vithei Daun Penh, (855-23) 981-888; www.phnompenh.raffles.com. This elegant 78-year-old hotel, which reopened in 1997 after a major renovation, is one of Phnom Penh's prime gathering spots. On weekends, the lushly landscaped pool area is often crowded with expatriates who come to see friends, catch up on local gossip or just hang out with their children. The Elephant Bar is usually jammed as well, particularly at happy hour, and Le Royal restaurant is one of the prettiest (and most expensive) dining establishments in town. Room prices start at about $260 a night, but deep discounts — particularly on the weekend — are often available if you call the reservations desk directly. The hotel also has a business center, but communication with friends back home can be expensive: You'll be charged $1 for every e-mail message sent on the hotel's computers.
The Pavilion, 227 Street 19, (855-23) 222-280; www.pavilion-cambodia.com. A small, but well-appointed boutique hotel a few blocks from the Royal Palace. The lush garden is a popular place for guests to gather for an early-evening cocktail. Double rooms start at $50 a night, and the hotel offers free Wi-Fi access.
WHERE TO EAT
Friends, 215 Street 13; (855-23) 426-748; www.streetfriends.org. One of a collection of nonprofit restaurants in the city that employ young Cambodians to help them get started on a career. Among the offerings are an excellent Kkmer seafood soup with lime, and a coconut lime cake with passion fruit syrup. Main courses run about $3 to $5.
Boddhi Tree Umma, 50 Street 113, (855-16) 865-445; www.boddhitree.com. A pleasant garden cafe, across from Tuol Sleng. A Cambodian noodle curry costs about $2.
Foreign Correspondents' Club, 363 Sisowath Quay, (855-23) 724-014. Forget Cambodian (or even Asian) cuisine here: the menu runs more toward pizza, sandwiches and salads. But the real attraction is the open-air setting and the unsurpassed views of the Mekong, plus a chance to mingle with other Western tourists. Main courses $6 to $10.
For truly authentic Khmer cuisine, one must go to nameless little places all over town where you'll spend less than a dollar — but it might not be advisable to ask just exactly what this meat you are eating is. A more upscale (and perhaps less-adventurous) alternative is Malis, 136 Norodom Boulevard, (855-23) 221-022, highly recommended by locals for its expertly prepared contemporary and traditional Khmer cuisine served in an elegant garden setting. Dinner for two should run about $30.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/travel/11next.html?8dpc=&pagewanted=print
jeudi 1 février 2007
Brooklyn
I think walking around the different neighborhoods in Brooklyn is an incredible way to spend a Saturday or Sunday or any day. If you don't mind walking 3-5 miles and don't mind walking through some neighborhoods that aren't bad at all but might seem bad to a wide-eyed tourist who's never been to NYC (not sure if you have or not but I'm just saying...), here's one where you'll see a lot of different things and can stop in to different places. You can do what you want but if I wanted to see a bunch of different neighborhoods this is what I'd do:
Start in GREENPOINT, which used to be a very Polish immigrant neighborhood but is changing a lot. Lot of artists, musicians, etc have been moving in there the past 3-7 years. You can get there by taking the E/R/V train over to Queens Plaza in Queens then transferring to the G Train towards Brooklyn. Take the G train into Brooklyn and get off at the Greenpoint Avenue/Manhattan Ave stop.
Walk down Manhattan Ave South until you get to/near McCarren Park. This is a huge open park area. It's not a direct thing but from Manhattan Ave (have to jig over on Nassau Ave for like 50 yards), make your way onto Bedford Avenue. Go SW on Bedford Ave through WILLIAMSBURG, which is "hipster central". To it benefit, Billyburg does have a ton of restaurants art galleries, etc. Walk on Bedford Ave for quite a while through South Williamsburg, which is a combination of million dollar lofts and Hasidic Jewish people. There are a lot of other streets in Williamsburg that you could spend hours walking around on but I'm moving you through neighborhoods.
Continue on Bedford Avenue into the CLINTON HILL area, where you will find food from pretty much every country you've ever heard of (and some you haven't). In Clinton Hill, when you're on Bedford, you'll finally change to a different street when you get to Lafayette. Turn right on Lafayette, unless you want to go hang out in Bed-Stuy (which is changing but would probably scare a lot of people).
Walk on Lafayette from Clinton Hill to FORT GREENE, another area that's become much less diverse than it used to be but has great food selections. Take Lafayette for a while. You'll be in the midst of a mall in the middle of Brooklyn that buts up against the rail yards. I think this is going to be the site of a huge development including the New Jersey>Brooklyn Nets stadium but might be off.
At Ashland Place, turn left unless you want to walk for another 100 yards to visit the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) which is quite cool. Turning left on Ashland Place, this street turns from Ashland into 5th Avenue in PARK SLOPE, which is where a lot of young couples (both straight and gay) live and go out. Walk down 5th Avenue until you hit 9th Street. (unless you feel like walking around Park Slope- if you do, 5th avenue is known for bars/restaurants/coffee shops and 7th avenue is known for shopping)
Turn right on 9th Street and walk through the mainly industrialized GOWANUS section. It's a nice contrast after the yuppified area of Park Slope. Walk under huge highway overpasses until you get to Smith Street in CARROLL GARDENS. Turn right on Smith Street and walk up this street which may feel similar to 5th Avenue in Park slope. Lots of young families (and some singles) live in Carroll Gardens.
In Carroll Gardens, you can pick up the F Train back to NYC (You'll have had many other chances to pick up the train throughout the walk if you get tired or bored- just carry a subway map with you) or you can soldier on and walk through COBBLE HILL (go up Smith Street to Atlantic and take a left).
My recommendation if you keep walking on would be to walk over to the BROOKLYN HEIGHTS PRomenade, as it offers incredible views of NYC. You could also walk around Downtown Brooklyn but to me there's not a lot to see there.
Enjoy!
http://forums.craigslist.org/?ID=57152263
Start in GREENPOINT, which used to be a very Polish immigrant neighborhood but is changing a lot. Lot of artists, musicians, etc have been moving in there the past 3-7 years. You can get there by taking the E/R/V train over to Queens Plaza in Queens then transferring to the G Train towards Brooklyn. Take the G train into Brooklyn and get off at the Greenpoint Avenue/Manhattan Ave stop.
Walk down Manhattan Ave South until you get to/near McCarren Park. This is a huge open park area. It's not a direct thing but from Manhattan Ave (have to jig over on Nassau Ave for like 50 yards), make your way onto Bedford Avenue. Go SW on Bedford Ave through WILLIAMSBURG, which is "hipster central". To it benefit, Billyburg does have a ton of restaurants art galleries, etc. Walk on Bedford Ave for quite a while through South Williamsburg, which is a combination of million dollar lofts and Hasidic Jewish people. There are a lot of other streets in Williamsburg that you could spend hours walking around on but I'm moving you through neighborhoods.
Continue on Bedford Avenue into the CLINTON HILL area, where you will find food from pretty much every country you've ever heard of (and some you haven't). In Clinton Hill, when you're on Bedford, you'll finally change to a different street when you get to Lafayette. Turn right on Lafayette, unless you want to go hang out in Bed-Stuy (which is changing but would probably scare a lot of people).
Walk on Lafayette from Clinton Hill to FORT GREENE, another area that's become much less diverse than it used to be but has great food selections. Take Lafayette for a while. You'll be in the midst of a mall in the middle of Brooklyn that buts up against the rail yards. I think this is going to be the site of a huge development including the New Jersey>Brooklyn Nets stadium but might be off.
At Ashland Place, turn left unless you want to walk for another 100 yards to visit the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) which is quite cool. Turning left on Ashland Place, this street turns from Ashland into 5th Avenue in PARK SLOPE, which is where a lot of young couples (both straight and gay) live and go out. Walk down 5th Avenue until you hit 9th Street. (unless you feel like walking around Park Slope- if you do, 5th avenue is known for bars/restaurants/coffee shops and 7th avenue is known for shopping)
Turn right on 9th Street and walk through the mainly industrialized GOWANUS section. It's a nice contrast after the yuppified area of Park Slope. Walk under huge highway overpasses until you get to Smith Street in CARROLL GARDENS. Turn right on Smith Street and walk up this street which may feel similar to 5th Avenue in Park slope. Lots of young families (and some singles) live in Carroll Gardens.
In Carroll Gardens, you can pick up the F Train back to NYC (You'll have had many other chances to pick up the train throughout the walk if you get tired or bored- just carry a subway map with you) or you can soldier on and walk through COBBLE HILL (go up Smith Street to Atlantic and take a left).
My recommendation if you keep walking on would be to walk over to the BROOKLYN HEIGHTS PRomenade, as it offers incredible views of NYC. You could also walk around Downtown Brooklyn but to me there's not a lot to see there.
Enjoy!
http://forums.craigslist.org/?ID=57152263
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