DECEMBER IN YANGON, PART I

A little subtle Myanmar propaganda across from the U.S. Embassy

I loved driving through Bulgaria in 1969, and not just the bit that was on the "Hippie Trail" between Nis and Istanbul. I took the better part of a month and drove from Sofia to the Black Sea, met up with some fun-loving Bulgarians and drove all over the country with them. Earlier I had decided I liked Budapest more than Vienna; it seemed freer and more... romantic, less uptight and stuffy. I was blind to the oppression and tyranny in Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria even though it pervaded these places. I just didn't notice. Years later I was living in West Berlin. Everyone knew it was just a matter of time before the wall dividing the city was coming down. There were already holes in it and most of the guards looked the other way-- at least when West Germans went back and forth. I persuaded some West German friends to take me across one night. It didn't look free and romantic; the oppression, tyranny and decrepitude were apparent and tangible... and chilling. It scared and repulsed me. I was happy to get back to West Berlin.

A few hours ago, decades later, I just returned from a place like that, a place you read about in books by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley: Myanmar.

Myanmar was Burma when I was a small boy (and avid stamp collector). I remember there were military coups when I was in elementary school. It was one of those closed off places-- exotic, mysterious, impenetrable, vaguely dangerous, like Albania, Mongolia, North Korea... places no one ever went. In the 80s the military junta took the name SLORC (an unfortunate-sounding acronym for State Law and Order Restoration Council). It sounds like something from a James Bond movie. For the people there, I just discovered, it doesn't feel like a movie. It feels like a nightmare that never ends. Paid Republican lobbyists and operatives in DC got the military dictators to ditch the SLORC moniker for SPDC (State Peace and Development Council, which sounds far less ominous-- like Bush's Clear Skies Act).

One of the first things I noticed is that the oppressive, paranoid tyranny in Myanmar exists in a parallel world next to a beautiful traditional Buddhist culture. The gentle people, predisposed to kindness, seem a little nervous-- hundreds of beloved and revered monks were brutally and ruthlessly murdered by the regime a few weeks ago after peaceful demonstrations-- but when you shoot anyone (except some of the soldiers) a mengalaba (hello) their wariness invariably breaks down and they smile. They are friendly and the reserve often vanishes quickly and, at least in Yangon, more of them spoke English than anywhere else in Southeast Asia I've ever been.

The whole city seems to be rotting and breaking down, although it may also be a work in progress of sorts. The city is immense-- but kind of slow and quiet... kind of left behind as the rest of the region rushes headlong into the 21st Century and globalization. Roland says Yangon reminds him of Havana in many ways.

It is easy, fast and cheap to get a visa directly from the visa section of the consulate in Washington, DC-- way smoother, quicker and far less expensive than working with the outsourced visa company India now forces you to work with to get a visa for that country. We flew Air Asia from Bangkok, a kind of Southwest Airlines for SE Asia. It is cheap and only takes an hour and a 15 minutes. (The flight back was delayed for a few hours and they gave us a signed chit so that we can get our money back, an Air Asia policy for flights that are delayed for over 3 hours. (The guy who runs it, Tony Fernandes, was the head of our Malaysian company when I worked at Warner Brothers. He learned a lot more about customer service than most music industry execs ever did.)

The currency exchange system in Myanmar is a real mess. If there even is an "official rate" it's around 500 kyats for a dollar. But dollars are the preferred currency in Yangon-- as long as the bills are new and crisp and have no marks or tears-- and even taxi fares can be paid with them. The street rates of exchange vary between 1,000 and 1,500 per dollar (depending on your bargaining ability)-- a very wide disparity. The whole thing is kind of shady and bizarre and, for a normal tourist probably pretty disorienting. Few places accept credit cards and the ones that do, charge an exorbitant fee. When you leave the country you pay a $10 airport exit tax. They want it in dollars. If you insist on paying it in worthless kyats (which can't be exchanged outside the country for any real currencies), they charge you 16,000-- not just far more than the "official rate," but more than the best black market rate!

On the other hand, we found the December weather absolutely fantastic-- warmer than Delhi and cooler than Bangkok. Bangkok is hot and steamy, never under 90 with lots of humidity. Yangon is dry and in the 80's. It gets hot in the sun in the afternoons but it's pretty comfortable and without the hellish man-made weather of Bangkok.

Part II next time I get to a computer.

THERE ARE STILL JEWS IN YANGON, MYANMAR!

I travel with my pal Roland a lot and he loves going to strange and exotic places, as I do. He also likes checking out weird scenes like synagogues in bizarre countries. Recently I wrote a post about the remnants of the Jewish community in Cochin in Kerala, India. In 1991 we were traipsing around Egypt and Roland talked me into getting on a Sinai bus for a dusty drive to see the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity on Christmas Eve in Bethlehem. A few years later he even managed to find an Iraqi synagogue in Singapore and 3 days before it was blown up, a synagogue in Istanbul. He's an atheist whose distant ancestors he thinks were Catholic (he's unsure).

Anyway, now we're in Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Myanmar (formerly Burma) and a less "Jewish place" you could never imagine. I thought about looking into it and thought, "Nah; not a chance." I was wrong. We were wandering around in a squalid Muslim neighborhood this morning when all of a sudden we see a star of David and Hebrew writing on a building.

It isn't "officially" a synagogue any longer. There are only 8 Jewish families left in town, most of them having fled when the Japanese took over in 1942 and the rest when the nationalistic socialists got control in the early 50s. The last rabbi left in 1963. So officially the synagogue is a museum and community center. There's a trustee instead of a rabbi, Moses Samuels, who helps keep the joint going and he has a son in NYC, Sammy who graduated from Yeshiva University and says he plans to return to Yangon and run it after his father. The official name is Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue and it' on 26th Street, not that far from the Bogyoke Market.

There weren't any Jews around, just a Burmese caretaker. Later a Canadian Jewish tourist from Thunder Bay wandered by. We saw pictures of Sammy Samuels and he looks Burmese. Outside I asked a couple of guys lounging on the street who looked like Al-Qaeda recruits if they were Jews and they giggled.

Bunny Girl Papercraft Model

This is a pretty cute looking papercraft of a Bunny Girl - we all love Bunny Girls right? Possibly first inspired by Hugh Hefner's Playboy bunnys, Japan has taken the concept and run with it, Japanese Bunny Girls seem to show up all over the place - from games to anime - Bunny girls for the win.

Grab the model here (down the bottom of the page you will find some links to gif files and a PDO file).

Don't forget to check the authors homepage for some more remarkable models.

THE DELHI AIRPORT EXPERIENCE

Flying out of Delhi's international terminal is, to put it mildly, stressful-- even more stressful than air travel has become in general-- and chaotic. Not only is it the most aggressively anarchistic place I've ever been in, at least 75% of the passengers look like they could be featured in a Watch For Terrorists ad-- if not an al-Qaeda recruitment poster. An American profiler would short circuit.

There may be, on an office flow chart in someone's desk somewhere, a schematic for how it's all supposed to work... but I doubt it. At every step along the way, among the pushing, shoving crowds-- many of whom seem to have never been confronted with the concept of "a line" before-- there is something designed specifically to hold up the process and make you return to Go. If you ever thought getting to the airport two hours before your departure was too big a waste of time, let me assure that they must have had Delhi in mind when they made that rule of thumb... and they were being optimistic.

The first nightmare involves getting the bags you intend to check into a great big cavernous black box and collecting it on the other side. Somewhere along the arduous quest for departure someone is bound to tell you about this-- usually the man at the end of the 30 minute line in front of the check-in counter. Black box first, check in after. But once you get through the crowds to the black box and figure out vaguely what's supposed to happen and how, you need to confront several hundred Osama bin-Laden look-alikes jostling in front of and all around it. I thought I was at the Kaaba. Nothing really seems to happen-- just a tremendous amount of seemingly unfocused kinetic energy but no discernable movement towards any goal. I knew I'd be OK eventually but I couldn't help wondering if the fragile looking elderly ladies lurking apprehensively on the outskirts of the melee would wind up stuck at the airport forever.

Eventually you find someone with an airport smock, slip him 10 rupees (like a quarter) and he shoves your bag into the box, gets a security string tied around it and you're good to go-- back to the boarding pass counter line. It was worth the 10 rupees because he alerted me about the need for a security stamp or some kind before you can get your boarding pass that allows you to proceed to the security check. I'm sure regular Delhi Airport commuters are well aware of this quirk.

Once you pass through security, it's less chaotic-- but just a little less. There are families (or tribal groups) camped out on the floors, apparently not having chairs as part of their culture. (Later, on the Air India jet, I realized some of my fellow passengers were among the 700,000,000 Indians I wrote about at DownWithTyranny a few days ago who have no access to sanitary facilities. Besides explaining seat belts and oxygen masks, the flight video does a tutorial about how to use a toilet.) But first I had to find a gate for my flight. There were just 3 question marks where a gate number should have been on my boarding pass and the loudspeaker announcements were so garbled and so unintelligible that it was impossible to tell if they were in Hindi, English or something else. Eventually some airport employee started walking around the terminal shouting "Bangkok flight, Gate 11." That worked. I won't have to brave this nightmare again for another month. And in a couple of years this will place will be left to domestic passengers since India is building a new international airport on the other side of Delhi. I only hope it is as well-planned as the brand new Bangkok international airport.

EATING IN DELHI

I've always loved Indian food and I've spent enough months in India since 1969 to not need a getting-used-to-it period when I get here. Now, I know it sounds a little trite, but you know what they say about how the best food in any country is what people prepare in their homes? Well, it's even more true in India than anywhere else I've ever been. But that isn't only because the home cooking is so good-- which it is-- but because the restaurant culture is so, surprisingly, stunted and undeveloped.

A few nights ago I went to see an operatic presentation sponsored by the Italian embassy at Delhi's 16th century Purana Qila (Old Fort) with my friend Daleep, his mom and cousin. By the time we got back to their house, around 9pm, we were all starving but no one much fancied a restaurant. As we walked up the stairs, Daleep's cousin mentioned that he had a hankering for brains; I mentioned that I'm a vegetarian. By 10 we were eating a sumputous 7 course feast-- including brain curry and lots of vegetable preparations. [I passed on the brain curry of course, but as always in India there was plenty for non-brain eaters to feast on.] Of course, it helps to have lots of good help. I only wish, though, that Delhi restaurants were nearly as good.

The problem-- and a silver lining-- is well-illustrated by 2 very different Connaught Place eateries within a minute of two from each other, Veda and Vega. Ask any concierge at a top hotel where to go eat and they will invariably mention Bukhara (more on that later) and Veda. Most of the top restaurants, like Bukhara, are in hotels. Veda isn't. It's a trendy, transnational Indian fusion restaurant catering to the call center crowd and to tourists daring enough to eat outside the hotel scene-- but only so far outside. The food isn't bad; it just isn't exceptional, although the prices are. Basically the food is kind of Indian and kind of arty/trendy... but not really Indian, just arty/trendy.

Down Connaught Circle a block or so is Vega, a vegetarian restaurant no one will ever call in-crowd. Vega is just behind the lobby of a small, modest hotel, the Alka. It's the next best thing to home cooking I've found in Delhi. And they just keep bringing heaps of delicious food until you absolutely insist that they stop. I ordered a thali and it included any and every kind of bread as well as every Indian veggie dish you ever heard of although just the normal, traditional ones, all cooked without onions and garlic. And the bill came to about a tenth of what the fancy places-- like Veda up the street-- cost.

Park Balluchi advertises that it has been voted the #1 best restaurant in India year after year. They're mixing up "best" either with "popular" or "richest food." The setting, in Hauz Khas' Deer Park, is lovely, the service is fine and the plates are gargantuan. The mewa paneer tukra (grilled balls of soft "cheese" stuffed with nuts, raisins, mushrooms and cream) was opulent and over-the-top. I managed to eat almost half an order.

Bukhara, in the Sheraton, makes the Park Balluchi seem like a soup kitchen by comparison. If being around trendy people turns you off, skip this place but it really is "the best" restaurant in town, at least from the international, cosmopolitan perspective. They started with 17 items on the menu when they first opened and they've never changed anything. Daleep's cousin works in mangement at the hotel and he told me that the ratio between lentils and butter in their famous dal makhrani (black lentils simmered for 12 hours in tomatoes, ginger and garlic) is one to one! It's impossible to get in without a reservation.

The Imperial Hotel-- the best in town unless you don't like traditional places-- has a whole slew of top restaurants, from a sumptuous All-India epicurian festival, Daniell's Tavern, to the hipsterish Spice Route, a pan-Asian (mostly Thai-oriented) extravagenza in one of the most gorgeous rooms in the city. They've also got the best Italian restaurant in Delhi, San Gimignano. Three other hotel restaurants of note are Masala Art at the Taj Palace, Dum Pukht at the Sheraton, both over-the-top, and the more reasonable Chor Bizarre, a Kashmiri restaurant in the Broadway Hotel.

I tried a couple of South Indian places I liked a lot, Swagath, which serves the unique seafood-and-coconut based cuisine of Mangalore (in Defense Colony Market) and Sarvana Bhawan, part of a very reasonably-priced, respectable chain. My advice is to stick to the free-standing places that non-trendy, middle class Indians eat in and to avoid the over-the-top (mostly hotel-based) joints that will be as bad for your health as they are for your wallet.

Dragonball Z Papercraft

Well, Mr. Satan/Hercule and Majin Buu to be precise. They have been created by Mike McDermott - Does that name sound familiar? Well it should, he is the same clever chap that created the Halo Master Chief papercraft featured here (and just about everywhere on the net) not that long ago. I really like Mike's papercraft and I really like Dragonball Z, so these have made my day :)


You can grab Majin Buu here and Hercule here, don't forget to check the rest of Mike's Deviant Art pages out, there are more impressive paper models to be found.

Some more Anime Girl Paper Models

Excuse my ignorance on these models, but I have no idea what they are from, where they are from or what they are all about, they are pretty extra special cute papercrafts though, I know that much! there's 3 in total - all in PDO format - they look pretty complicated so maybe not to good for beginners! Give them a go and have fun!

Grab them here

Mario Papercraft - Thwomp

Nice Thwomp paper model from moreprime.com - Thwomps are those annoying blocks in Mario that tend to fall on Mario and crush him. This is a really nice model! Go grab it here.

Also check this site out for some lols with Thwomps

Thanks Jose!

Star Trek Paper Model

Star Trek is a great television series, some would say the greatest television series ever! Well, who am I to argue? I've always had a soft spot for Kirk and crew, Picard and his shipmates hold their own pretty well too.

Why not make the Trekkie in your life one happy camper by building them a really sweet Papercraft U.S.S. Enterprise for Christmas? Or perhaps you are looking for a holiday project to adorn your desk at work next year?

Hit the link and enjoy!

Don't miss out on the other great Star Trek Models on this site either!

The Borg Cube
U.S.S. Reliant
Vulcan Shuttle

Spiderman Papercraft Plus!

I have mentioned Paper Robot's website around this way before, they are the wonderful folks who created the transforming Optimus Prime papercraft, they have been busy people since last time I checked the site and have an incredible update with tons of new models - of course these aren't your usual run of the mill paper models ever, they are freaking sweet paper models! Go now and download: Spiderman in his classic costume, Spiderman in the black symbiote costume, Evil Dead's Ash and my favorite; a transforming Jetfire. Nice work guys!

Grab them all here

Paper Model Tank

These are a really nice looking set of papercraft tanks from Sega, after a bit of sleuthing I am pretty confident that it comes from the Dreamcast game; Advanced Daisenryaku 2001 and to be honest, the very little I do know about this game is from the fountain of knowledge itself, Wikipedia:

Advanced Daisenryaku 2001 is a follow up to SystemSoft Alpha's Advanced Daisenryaku: Europe no Arashi. Both games run on Sega's Dreamcast system. Advanced Daisenryaku 2001 fixed some bugs and moderately improved the graphics of Europe no Arashi and as such it is less of a sequel and more of a fix.

Grab the papercraft here. (Sadly I can only find the link to one of awesome looking tanks :( If anybody has any luck locating the rest on the site let me know!)

Silent Hill Papercraft

Tubbypaws has been whipping out some pretty sweet papercraft in the last couple of weeks, first the Portal Papercraft which I absolutely love and now a supremely cute Silent Hill paper model, I know you are asking yourself, how can anything to do with Silent Hill be cute? Well, this talented paper modeler has pulled it off superbly. Kudos to Tubbypaws!

Check it out here

HOW SAFE IS DELHI-- WITH ALL THE MONKEYS?

I'm a firm believer in traveling as light as possible. For one thing I hate checking luggage. "One in every 138 checked bags was lost during the first nine months of this year, compared with one in 155 bags a year earlier." Now that statistic is for U.S. carriers, which are much worse than reputable international carriers, like British Air, which is what I'm flying on to India. Nevertheless, I don't want to bring anything extra or check anything. So the weather becomes a problem. In Delhi, my first stop, the temperature dips down into the 40s and it cane get colder. That means I need a jacket. In Yangon and Bangkok it never gets below the mid-70s and is as likely to be in the low-90s; no jacket needed. Maybe I can just bring one I hate and leave it in Delhi when I fly to Bangkok.

But what about the monkeys? Do I bring monkey food? Or pick it up when I get there? Are you supposed to feed the monkeys. The ones I've run into in Nepal in 1970 were pretty nasty and aggressive. When I returned 20 some odd years later they had replaced them with tame, friendly docile monkeys. I hear the ones infesting Delhi this year are neither tame, friendly nor docile. They're eating people's small pets, attacking people and trying to steal babies. Does it sound like a Hitchcock movie with simians instead of birds?

Troupes of monkeys are out of control in India's northeast, stealing mobile phones and breaking into homes to steal soft drinks from refrigerators, lawmakers in the region have complained.
"Monkeys are wreaking havoc in my constituency by taking away mobile phones, toothpastes, sipping coke after opening the refrigerators," Hiren Das told Assam state's assembly Saturday.

He said the primates were "even slapping women who try to chase them."

"It is a cause of serious concern in my area, with more than 1,000 such simians turning aggressive by the day," fumed Goneswar Das, another legislator representing Raha in eastern Assam.

And last month the deputy mayor of Delhi died when he fell off his balcony defending himself against a monkey attack. Another bunch broke into Sonia Gandhi's daughter's apartment and wrecked it, while others have been ransacking hospitals and attacking patients. They're out of control but devout Hindus believe they're the incarnation of Hanuman and can't be killed.

The problems stems from humans displacing monkeys from their natural habitat. Tens of thousands of them have moved into Delhi... where the livin' is easy. Gee, and I though all the danger on this trip was going to be in Myanmar.

EXPENSIVE JUNK TO AVOID-- TODAY AND FOREVER

One of the things Roland loves doing when we go to Bangkok, something that basically makes no sense to me at all, is to buy fake Rolex watches and other brand name tokens to the excesses of consumerism. I like buying jade Buddha heads and traditional art. Last night we were pouring over tour books and planning out our trip to Burma and Roland blurted out, "Oh, I bet they have some cheap Rolexes at the Bogyoke Aung San Market or at the Theingyi Zei" (which is even cheaper and offers another Roland specialty that goes right over my head: a snake section that features the fresh blood and organs of various snakes; some live ones are disemboweled on the spot for medicinal consumption). Let a psychiatrist deal with the snake thing. I want to talk about the fake Rolexes. Actually, what I really want to talk about is a story in today's NY Times by Dana Thomas, author of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster.

Ms Thomas deals with luxury items made in China and other places that are neither Italy nor France, but not the illegal counterfeits Roland craves, the super-expensive, authorized ones that have become a mainstay of the "democratized," newly middle class, luxury industry. "For more than a century, the luxury fashion business was made up of small family companies that produced beautiful items of the finest materials. It was a niche business for a niche clientele. But in the late 1980s, business tycoons began to buy up these companies and turn them into billion-dollar global brands producing millions of logo-covered items for the middle market. The executives labeled this rollout the 'democratization' of luxury, which is now a $157-billion-a-year industry."
Maybe this is where Bush gets his ideas about democratizing Iraq and the Middle east and any country he doesn't like. This is mostly bait-and-switch production, with the newly corporatized-- rather than democratized-- name brands outright lying, or just deceiving, about where and how their overpriced consumer garbage is made. Example: "To please customers looking for the 'Made in Italy' label, several luxury companies now have their goods made in Italy by illegal Chinese laborers. Today, the Tuscan town of Prato, just outside of Florence and long the center for leather-goods production for brands like Gucci and Prada, has the second-largest population of Chinese in Europe, after Paris. More than half of the 4,200 factories in Prato are owned by Chinese entrepreneurs, some of whom pay their Chinese workers as little as two Euros ($3) an hour."

Luxury brand executives who declare that their items can be made only in Western Europe because Western European artisans are the only people who know what true luxury is are being not only hypocritical but also xenophobic. They are not selling “dreams,” as they like to suggest; they are hawking low-cost, high-profit items wrapped in logos. Consumers should keep in mind that luxury brands are capable of producing real quality at a reasonable price. They know better, and so should we.

I avoid that stuff. Two days ago I noticed my Levys were precariously hanging together in a few sensitive areas by some threads so I braved Roland's scorn, drove over to a K-Mart and plunked down $15 for a new pair of Levys, which I intend to wear 'til they get drafty. And today, like I said earlier, is a Buy Nothing Day at my pad.

Crash Test Bunny Papercraft

The clever people at www.play-roll.com have a fantastic downloadable crash test bunny papercraft for you to print, cut and build. I love it! Don't forget to check out there entire site, plenty of goodies to be had!

Mizuiro Gakuen is back!

One of my favorite paper model creators has resurfaced with a brand new website and a whole bunch of sweet new papercrafts. It's a happy day indeed for paper modellers everywhere, go now and have fun!

Check it out here

Pop Up Christmas Cards and Decorations

It's almost my favorite time of the year again folks - Christmas! - I'm starting to think about who I buy presents for, who just gets a card and who just gets a lump of coal :) Instead of the same old boring overpriced christmas cards, this year i'm doing it in style - Put simply, pop up christmas cards kick ass

Canon Japan to the rescue >>

Check the rest of the links for some other awesome christmas gift boxes and christmas decorations. Here's a list of other DIY Paper Christmas goodies they have on offer:



Christmas Star Box
Christmas Boot Box
Santa Claus Banners
Santa Claus Mask
Santa Hat Ornament
Angel's Wings and Halo Ornament
Santa Claus Christmas Wreath
Basic Christmas Wreath
Christmas Tree Ornament
Snowflake Ornament
Santa Claus Diorama

LOST LUGGAGE STILL PLAGUING U.S. CARRIERS-- AND CONSUMERS

I left home when I was 13, but only temporarily. I hitchhiked from New York to Florida. I only got as far as New Jersey when I was arrested on the Turnpike. The police called my father and made him come pick me up. He was pissed but he gave me the bus fare to get to Miami Beach. It wasn't until later in my teenage years that I left home for real-- this time to go to Tonga, a small island between New Zealand and Hawaii. I hitchhiked all the way to California before being arrested this time-- having stowed away on a ship in San Pedro. After that I discovered airplanes. I had never been on one and they were incredibly convenient. I mean, compared to hitchhiking... they got you there so fast.

It wasn't long before I also discovered that you are better off not checking bags. My primary motivation was getting out of the airport fast and the baggage carousel was always a place I didn't like hanging around. And on top of that checked bags get lost-- a lot. It's easy for me; I travel light. After nearly 7 years living overseas I came back to America with 2 bags; no need to check anything.

Today's NY Times published a story on the worsening checked luggage situation in the U.S. (I never noticed it overseas and I usually feel far more confident checking luggage on foreign carriers. When I fly overseas I never use U.S. carriers, always British Air if I can or another foreign carrier if there's no B.A. flight. "One in every 138 checked bags was lost during the first nine months of this year, compared with one in 155 bags a year earlier."

Holiday travelers can expect to feel the effects of six years of airline downsizing in one way or another. About 27 million passengers are expected to fly during the 12 days surrounding Thanksgiving, 4 percent more than last year, the Air Transport Association said.

But there are fewer airline employees to look after them, and their bags. And to squeeze more flights out of the day, planes are sitting on the ground for shorter periods between flights. So predictably, more bags fail to join their owners, particularly on connecting flights.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for failure,” said Hans Hauck, manager of baggage operations at American’s headquarters in Fort Worth. Since Mr. Hauck started his job in September 2006, American has not met its bag-handling goal in any month. As of late last week, though, Mr. Hauck remained optimistic that he would make his November number. A look at American’s bag-handling operation, which is the biggest of all United States carriers, shows it is making lots of little improvements but still losing ground. American misplaced 7.44 bags for every thousand passengers through Sept. 30, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported, up from 6.04 for every thousand a year earlier. (All but a tiny fraction of misplaced bags are ultimately reunited with their owners.)

And American isn't the only U.S. carrier that can't do the job. Actually none of them can. Anecdotal evidence shows Delta being the airline most poorly run, although supposedly statistics show that the small regional airlines do even worse than Delta when it comes to lost bags and American Eagle was the worst of the worst.

Two of the biggest problems are downsizing, with fewer employees to do more work, and an inability for the system to read at least 10% of the bar codes on checked bags.

About 2 percent are misread and dropped onto the wrong pier. Then, it is up to a worker stacking the bags on carts to notice the mistake. “He better,” said Ms. Wilewski, the baggage manager.

American and other domestic airlines have resisted investing in radio frequency identification tags, which are used by big retailers to track inventory and are far more accurate. The tags cost about 20 cents each so it would cost $50,000 a day for American’s 250,000 bags, plus the cost of hardware to read them at each step in the process.

“We don’t lose enough bags to justify that investment,” said Mark Mitchell, American’s managing director of customer experience.

Papercraft Roast Chicken

I love strange and unusual papercrafts, I really do. Some of the strangest papercrafts out there are of everyday objects such as food. The papercraft steak has been mentioned here before and while I do love a steak dinner, sometimes a roast chicken is just what the doctor ordered. You can find an impressive paper chicken to download and build here. Yum!

World of Warcraft Paper Models

World of Warcraft, if you have been living under a rock is the world's most popular mmorpg. It would make sense that one or two papercrafts exist of characters from the game right? Well, yip not only are there one or two, there are freaking heaps! and there is even a site dedicated to them! Ladies and gentlemen head this way for Wow papermodel heaven!

Back after a break

Woah, no updates for a while! I've been vactioning on a tropical island for the last two weeks and haven't had much time for papercraft or blogging, I was to busy drinking cocktails and soaking up the sun! There's been plenty of fantastic paper models floating around the internet in my absence which I will be adding to the site this week, fear not paper modellers, I'm back with a vengeance!

IS THIS A GOOD TIME TO VISIT MYANMAR? REALLY... WHAT ABOUT BURMA?

Ten years ago Roland and I arrived in Egypt just as everyone was leaving. The airport was packed with tourists and they were all headed out. Sixty or so tourists had been slaughtered at the temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor by some Islamic extremists from al-Gamaa al-Islamiya. Not only did we have the temple of Hatshepsut to ourselves, and not only did we have the Luxor region to ourselves, we pretty much had all of touristic Egypt to ourselves. We also had an entire luxury ship cruising the Nile to ourselves... well it was Roland and I plus 2 elderly Brits on their way home to England after a lifetime of foreign service on the Arabian Peninsula. Four of us. It was the best. Not for the 60 dead tourists who were chased through the ruins and chopped up with scimitars... but for us, the following weeks.

Anyway, when the military regime in Myanmar started responding to peaceful protests from monks in Yangon by wholesale slaughter Roland suggested that this might be a perfect opportunity to visit. I mean not that week but after the troubles died down. We were planning on spending most of December in Thailand anyway.

The only really great hotel in Yangon is The Strand, an old colonial Victorian palace in the heart of the city. It's a small, opulent hotel with only 32 suites, all with lavish, up-to-date amenities. And prices to match. But they're not fools either and when I pointed out that foreign tourists would probably be passing on Myanmar this season, I was able to get a drastically reduced rate. (According to today's NY Times "up to 90 percent of bookings by tourists have been canceled," since the unrest. And Reuters is reporting that "the military junta's ruthless and bloody crackdown have hit tourism hard, with some hotels slashing prices by 80 percent to try to attract visitors," which are still largely empty.)

I got a little nervous yesterday when I saw that Bush had slapped more sanctions on the military dictatorship there, but this morning I saw that the regime (theirs) has lifted the curfew and the ban on public gatherings. The regime (ours) is still grousing about this and that but it doesn't look like they will do anything to ruin our trip-- or do as much damage to the already damaged country as they have to Pakistan with their misguided, DC-centric, foolish policies.

That isn't to say that the whole enterprise-- for Roland and I-- isn't a little hairy. Every other day one of us asks the other if we're making a mistake going.

An ominous calm has settled here, less than a month after the military junta crushed an uprising for democracy led by the nation’s revered monks. People have quietly returned to the squalor and inflation that brought them to the streets in protest. There are even suggestions of peace: young couples embracing under trees around scenic Kandawgyi Lake; music from a restaurant drifting across the placid water.

But beneath the surface, anger, uncertainty, hopelessness-- and above all, fear of the junta-- prevail.

...After the government shut down Internet access and denied visas for outside journalists, keeping much of the world at bay, terror continued to rage through Yangon, the main city, for days, according to witnesses and dissidents here. Soldiers raided homes and monasteries to arrest demonstrators, witnesses said, using pictures taken by government informers during the protests.

Even back when the Times Travel Section did a big feature on Myanmar in 2006, tourists were grappling with the morality of traveling to the country. On the one hand, "As Southeast Asia modernizes rapidly-- Starbucks appears to be colonizing Thailand-- Myanmar, as Burma is now called, remains the last country in the region preserved in amber... Western influences are almost nowhere to be found." On the other hand, the reasons aren't because the people are charmed by the quaintness of yesteryear.

There's a reason for this sensation of being stuck in time, of course. Decades of rule by one of the world's harshest military regimes have left the country isolated and its economy a shambles, discouraging tourist arrivals, putting modern amenities out of many people's reach, and keeping the Burmese wedded to traditional life. (In 2005, Myanmar received some 660,000 foreign visitors, according to the government, compared with the more than 11 million in Thailand in 2004, as reported by the Tourism Authority of Thailand.) "There's only one destination where we won't market holidays, and that's Burma," said Justin Francis of Responsible Travel, a British travel agent promoting socially responsible trips. "We'll market trips anywhere else where we think it'll benefit local people-- even Zimbabwe."

...Like Responsible Travel, and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy opposition leader, many Myanmar-oriented human rights groups support a boycott of tourism, which they see as endorsing the government. The groups draw up "dirty" lists of travel agencies that send tourists there, blast publishers of Myanmar guidebooks, and try to shame celebrities who visit, like Mick Jagger. "It's naïve to say you can help as a tourist," said Tricia Barnett, director of Tourism Concern, a British group advocating responsible tourism, who believes that most of the tourist infrastructure remains closely linked to the regime.

For other travelers, convinced their tourism dollars will help average Burmese, the appeal of the last truly Asian place in Southeast Asia is exactly the reason to come. "When I was in Burma, I've never met anyone who said that I shouldn't be there," said Andrew Gray, founder of Voices for Burma, another advocacy group. Mr. Gray argues that educated tourists can spend money on local businesses without government links and help average people in one of Asia's poorest nations.

The call for a boycott has sparked fierce debate on Web sites and in hotels across the Asian backpacker trail. "I don't know of any debate that's as vocal as this one," said Brice Gosnell, a regional publisher at Lonely Planet. That's not necessarily bad. The debate educates potential visitors, and many independent travelers I've encountered have waded through political tomes before choosing to go.

Paper Craft Buildings

Looking to build your own version of Chicago? or perhaps just need a few paper buildings for some table based war game action? BuildyourownChicago.com has everything you need and more. You do have to purchase some of the nicer models for the low low price of $1.50, but you can also grab a few freebies from this page.

Nice stuff! Visit the site here.

Paper Model Cars

So you want some paper model cars? Well, some kind soul has created just about every car in paper that you would ever desire - here's a quick run down of the brands available on this website:

Alfa Romeo, Honda, Mini, Subaru, Fiat, Porsche, Ferrari, Peugeot, Toyota, Nissan, Lotus, Volkswagen, Mazda, Mercedes, BMW, Suzuki, SAAB, Hummer, Altezza, Mitsubishi.

It is truly an impressive list of paper car papercrafts! Surely your make of car is there?

Get them here.

George Bush Papercraft

Of all the things to make a paper model out of, the people at Recortables.net have created a hilarious President of the United States papercraft - ol' chimpy McGee himself - bloodied axe and world in hand, that's not all there is to find at this great little papercraft site though, we also have a (very evil looking) Pope Benedict model, the King of Spain, the Prime Minister of Spain and of course Osama Bin Laden (which sadly doesn't seem to be available for download yet).

These are great looking models which you can grab here.

Halo Papercraft

With the launch of Halo 3 mere days away, it is perfect timing that a Halo paper model would arise from the depths of the internet, I found this via the fantastic Paperkraft site which you should visit and bookmark, they have some great papercrafts available : )

The model should keep you busy till the game arrives!

Grab it the Halo Papercraft here

Chocobo Papercraft

Sane Person's papercraft has been mentioned here before, it seems as though a nice little update has been added since I last looked at the site, this time it's a Chocobo Paper Model. Sweet! if you don't know what a Chocobo is, Wikipedia has a lot of information on the yellow birds:

A Chocobo is a fictional large, normally flightless galliforme/ratite bird capable of being ridden and is a staple of the Final Fantasyseries. While ordinary Chocobos are yellow, certain rare breeds are of different colors and have special abilities, such as crossing mountains or flight.

Grab it here, along with some over great Final Fantasy paper models.

Paper Model Treasure Chest

If you have played a Japanese Roleplaying game, you will more than likely have come across treasure chests. I always greedily rush over to open them and find the goodies inside. The thing is you never know what the damn things will contain, sometimes it's a potion or a new weapon, sometimes it's a trap chest, you open it and lo and behold it comes alive and attacks you, mocking your greediness.

This papercraft seems to understand the issues surrounding treasure chests (and my greed) and gives you the option of building it with or without the monster!

Grab it here.

Skull Paper Model

The Skull-a-day site is a pretty simple premise for a blog - a skull - a day, pretty cool idea huh? Of course at some point you know a Papercraft would work it's way into the mix and it's a nice one at that, the jaw even moves :)

Grab it here and if you want even more paper skull goodness, check this link.

NEW YORK CITY IS STILL A MELTING POT BUT IT ISN'T JUST POLES AND IRISH AND RUSSIANS AND ITALIANS: MEET THE NEW NEW YORKERS... DRIVING YOUR CABS

Guinea, not Jackson Heights

I'm in NYC this week and judging by the taxis, I really am in one of the most cosmopolitan, international city in the world. The guy who drove me from JFK to my hotel on the Upper West Side came here from Kandahar, Afghanistan. He came as an illegal immigrant, spent 3 months in jail and eventually was granted political asylum. Each of his two younger brothers came and remained here the same way. His wife and elderly parents are in Qetta in Pakistan and he's hoping to bring them here too. He works 7 days a week and sends a lot of his earnings to Qetta. The two younger brothers work in a fried chicken restaurant. They live in Queens. His American odyssey seems very much the same as the story of immigrants I've heard all my life.

We drove through Queens to the 59th Street Bridge through whole neighborhoods of Muslim immigrants, from Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India... some from Afghanistan, Egypt and other countries.

Last night my friends Charlie and Sharon got married and I dressed up in a Zegna suit and a Fray shirt, reminiscent of my old corporate days-- not something I thought would be the right dress for the subway. I waited for one of those van-looking yellow cabs. The driver, Mohammed, was also a refugee who sought and was granted political asylum. He was the first taxi driver-- or anyone else-- I had ever met from the small West African country of Guinea. When I was a child Guinea was granted independence from France and I remember the fiery president, Sekou Touré coming to the UN and pushing a socialist agenda. He was demonized by the American media. When he died in 1984, General Lansana Conté staged a coup and became president and still is. He's more pro-American and a pretty brutal, if ineffective, dictator. In 1998, Mohammed, my driver, was elected to the city council in Fria, just north of the capital, Conakry. Unfortunately for him, his party, the UPR, won the national elections and Conté decided to kill lots of them and... change the results. Mohammed was one of the lucky ones and he escaped to the U.S.

Guinea is a desperately poor country and would like to encourage a tourist industry. Their propaganda refers to the country as the Switzerland of Africa, which is clearly absurd, although it does have mountains. The tourism industry has potential and promise but they only get about 100,000 tourists a year (few Americans). You can fly there from Paris. There aren't many hotels, though the best one in the country is a Meridien with 96 rooms and there is also a Novotel.

Amazing Bumblebee Model

I'm not normally one to post a model that you my dear reader can not download and build yourself, but occasionally I come across something so special I've simply got to share and this papercraft definitely falls into the special category. Whats great about this page is that you can see the entire process of the model's creation from start to finish. Awesome and very inspiring!

Check it out

Contra Paper Model

Contra from the amazing folks at Konami was first released way back in 1987, it's a classic side scrolling, shoot em up game with what I always found was immense difficulty and boss battles that were over the top in the best possible way! Contra 4 is soon to come to my favorite handheld gaming device the Nintendo DS as well, sweet!

You can grab a Contra Bike Papercraft here, thanks for the linktip Pat!

JEW TOWN, COCHIN, INDIA

I'm busy making reservations for a trip to India this winter. Everything seems so much more expensive than I remember it. And it wasn't that long ago that I visited Bombay, Delhi and Calcutta. The first time I went to India, though, that was like a whole different world and a whole different age. I had just graduated from college and I drove across Europe and Asia to India. It was still 1969 when I got there-- December 1, 1969, in fact. I remember because it was a major day in my life. I was waiting for my paper work-- or my van's paper work-- to get processed at the Pakistan-Indian border (Wagah, I think) and it was very hot in the sun. I had spent a year being very frustrated about not being able to stop smoking pot and hash. But suddenly at that remote, desolate border crossing I felt a hand reach inside me and rip away the desire for drugs. Gone; forever. I never desired to use a drug again after that. What a great way to start my trip inside India.

Eventually I made my way down to Goa and rented a house on the beach. When I left I decided to drove to Sri Lanka. In between was Kerala, a very green and beautiful state. I remember they had the most Christians and the most Communists. In fact they had a Communist state government that was working far better than any of the other state governments. I was pretty carefree and drove wherever my fancy took me. I wound up one day in Cochin, a seaport on the Arabian Sea. Today's Washington Post has a story about the city, now (since 1996) called Kochi, In India, A Jewish Outpost Slowly Withers.

When I visited in 1970 is was a real outpost with nothing going on at all. I don't remember it as a city, just more as a village. Now there are around a million people and it's a major port and historically it was a place filled with traders from all over the world: Greeks, Arabs, Romans, Chinese, Portuguese, and Jews. And Cochin has been somewhat famous in the west as an oddity, a Jewish enclave in Hindu India.

I was curious about Jews living in such a place and I decided to investigate. I found very little-- an old synagogue but no actual Jews around. The Indians boys eager to take the three or four visitors a day on a tour weren't Jewish and they said the Jews had all moved to Israel. Legend says the first Jews to have settled in Cochin came when Solomon was King of Israel. A thousand years later there were Jews from Europe arriving and at the time of the Inquisition, more Jews from Spain and Portugal arrived. In the middle 1500's the Jews of the area sought protection from the Hindu king against Muslim oppression and he let them build their own "Jew Town" in Cochin.

It was still called Jew Town when I visited, although I didn't see a single Jew. According to the story in the Post there are only 13 elderly Indian-born Jews left. "In Kochi, there is concern that Jew Town soon will be little more than a quirky tourist destination." That's certainly what it was in 1970 when I visited. Occasionally Jewish tourists from the U.S. or Israel come by but it's the kind of place that's not worth more than a pleasant afternoon on the way somewhere.

Ren and Stimpy Paper Model

Well to be precise it's just a Ren Hoek paper model :) but oh man is it sweet! If I had to list my top ten shows of all time, Ren and Stimpy would be well up there. A quick search on youtube reminds me why!

You can download the angry little Chihauhau from this link

Create your own Papercraft

For us mere mortals without the 3d skills (or software) to create personalized papercrafts comes a very cool site; Paper Critters gives you the opportunity to get creative and produce your very own paper models, what a damn cool idea! and who says flash is all bad?

Check it out and dont forget to share your creations!

ME AND MATT DAMON IN TANGIER

When I first drove down to Morocco from Spain in 1969 I had heard enough about Tangier to think I should avoid it. We took the ferry from Algeciras to Ceuta (a cheaper alternative than Algeciras-Tangier). Ceuta is technically part of Europe-- the last Spanish enclave in Morocco, just a couple hours drive northeast of Tangier. We headed for Tetouan instead, avoiding Tangier entirely. At least for a while. We drove all through Morocco, loving it-- I've been back a dozen times since-- and then decided we were old Moroccan hands enough to brave the weirdness of Tangier. I must have picked up my preconception about Tangier from meditations on Paul Bowles' most brilliant novel The Sheltering Sky-- although they were strictly my own meditations, Bowles having loved Tangier so much that he decided to live there... forever. It didn't take me long to start liking it either.

Yesterday I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum, which takes place in Moscow, London, Madrid, New York and... Tangier. I've never been to Moscow but the movie didn't evoke anything special for me geographically in the other cities-- except Tangier. The scenes-- shot on location, of course-- were beautiful, action-packed, exciting and realistic real and I recognized almost every spot they shot.

The last time I was in Tangier, December, 2005, I was already thinking about starting a blog and I took some notes and pictures and wrote it up. These days I wouldn't think about leaving Tangier out of a Moroccan itinerary. It's a sophisticated, exotic and unique city, very different from any other place in the country. The energy is powerfully kinetic-- young and vibrant and bursting at the seams. It's pretty cosmopolitan and very much it's own thing.

Here's some footage someone shot in Tangier as they were getting ready to film a scene from the movie. It sure sounds like Tangier.

Subway Car Paper Model

I think this is awesome idea, a blank subway car paper model for you to download and then draw, design, bomb or just scribble away on. This would be great for Graffiti artists to practice on before they go out for the night to have a paint ; )

Don't forget to send the creators some pics of your finished model, you can grab the All City Style Blank Subway Car here

Brickboy Paper Model

Who is Brickboy?

In 1942 a young Dutch boy, working at a stone factory, fell into the brickbaking oven. He came out as a living brick! By the end of WW2 he helped Canadian liberators who named in BrickBoy. Over the years many have seen him and on this website you will find artists impressions.

Have you seen BrickBoy? Would you like to design your own Brickboy? Click the link ladies and gentlemen and enjoy : )

Final Fantasy Papercraft

The Final Fantasy series are some of the best rpgs on the market, from the NES to the Playstation 2, the games have always delivered.

The iconic game in the series would have to be Final Fantasy 7 though, it's reached cult status. The characters were great, the story was epic, the gameplay damn impressive, it blew away everybodies perceptions of what a role playing game could be when it first came out and ensured that a Playstation One was a necessary purchase.

Why not reminisce about Cloud, Aeris and crew with some awesome Final Fantasy Paper Models?

Grab them here

Starcraft Papercraft

Unless you have been living under a rock (or god forbid you don't like real time strategies) the news of Blizzard's Starcraft 2 has got to have filtered through to you by now, if you are not in the know check this link and weep for your future self because you know that this game is going to consume your life at some point when it is released. When I watched the gameplay movies I actually coughed a bit of coffee onto my keyboard, it's just that damn slick. So in celebration of Blizzard making my dreams come true I have dug up some lovely Starcraft Papercrafts.

Grab them here.

Paper Model Mech and Astroboy Papercraft

Another stunning Papercraft Mech for your collection is to be found here. Not sure which particular manga or anime it's from but the model is freaking awesome! grab it here, password is on the page...



On the same site there is a very nicely done Astroboy Papercraft for your building pleasure, grab Astro here

Designer Paper Model

The designer paper models are coming in thick and fast today ladies and gentlemen, this time the talented Marshall Alexander informs me of his Paper Toy 'Nana' Awesome stuff keep them coming Marshall! This just confirms my suspicions that paper is the new format of choice for designer toys ; )

You can grab Nana here

Custom Paper Toys

Matt Hawkins was kind enough to let me know about his new site; custompapertoys.com He has some absolutely magnificent papercrafts to download there, it's a pretty simple premise, a new designer paper toy every month. So far we have seen Mr Robot, Uncle Bam, Tri-bunnies, Owwwl and Melvin. Check back on this site regulary people, it's all class!

A SHORT TRIP TO WASHINGTON, D.C. AND CHICAGO-- HOTELS, RESTAURANTS AND THE ART INSTITUTE

Normally my wonderfully resourceful and infinitely patient travel agent, Jeannine, books most of my hotels. I still get incredible corporate rates based on my old corporate president days-- and upgrades and extras... lovely; and I'm thankful to the universe. On my most recent trip-- to DC and Chicago-- she worked her magic in Chicago (more of that in a moment) and I decided to let the organization which had asked me to come to Washington handle the hotel details there. That's because Washington's third-rate, overpriced hotels are always booked up in awkward ways. If you'll be there Monday thru Friday, everything is cool except one detail-- like Tuesday isn't available. So, knowing the organization had a "deal" with a conveniently-located hotel that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg, like the dependable but expensive Ritz Carlton, I decided to let them sort it all out. Mistake.

I arrived the day before the meeting and, the St. Gregory, a somewhat renovated, self-described "luxury hotel" didn't have a room. They did ask me for "picture ID," making me wonder if they've been having security problems. Someone behind the desk spoke passable English and we finally figured out that my reservation started tomorrow. And, of course, they were booked solid. In fact, they told me, everyone was booked solid. I didn't relish walking around M Street with my two bags-- nor did I relish spending an hour trying to decipher the barely comprehensible English of the person pessimistically offering to help me find somewhere else to stay. I looked around at this gussied up dump (at $314.88/night) and wondered if I could charm my way into the Ritz. What's another $200 a night? It didn't matter; they were booked. The Four Seasons was booked. Literally all those hotels on M were booked, like The Fairmont and the Park Hyatt.

Then I decided-- my bags starting to feel heavier than I remembered-- to climb down off my high horse and go across the street to the Westin Grand. Sure, it's like a somewhat trumped up motel, but I was thinking I could save some money. I was correct about the motel quality of the service but not about saving any money. They didn't care that I'm a Starwood VIP cardholder or that my corporation has a great discount. I hadn't made any reservations in advance and they were very aware Washington was solidly booked and if I wanted the room, it was $500 a night, internet access extra. In fact, everything is extra. I admit, the room was nice. It was the only nice thing about the place and I was happy to check into the hideous, security conscious St Gregory early the next morning.

They too charge for internet access, as sporadic and undependable as it turned out to be. The first time I ever went to Europe-- 1969-- I arrived in Luxembourg at night and my girlfriend and I were considerably less picky than I've since become. It was already night and we just plopped down in the first place we found. In the morning we discovered it was a whore house. Years later I visited an old friend who was residing in the same type of establishment in Bangkok. There's something about the St. Gregory-- maybe the way you have to insert your key to make the elevator run-- that reminds me of those places.

I don't know the restaurant scene in DC. Sometimes people take me out. Once I even got invited to a state banquet at the house Bush is currently occupying. Normally I just eat at either of the two Noras, the Asia Nora on M Street or the regular place at Florida and R. They're both as conscious about health and serving organic food as they are about serving great-tasting food. I had all my dinners in one or the other this time and all the dinners were delicious and reasonably priced.

I have to admit, though, that I was happy to be flying to Chicago. I always forget how much I love that city-- 'til I get there. It's even relatively nice flying there from DC since you can go from that conveniently located National Airport, a $20 cab ride away. National claims to have free WiFi but they don't, at least not in the United terminal. I made due, happily, with my book.


And when I got to Chicago, Jeannine's efforts kicked in. I stayed at the Park Hyatt at 800 North Michigan Avenue. Before I explain why this is a world class luxury hotel, let me also say that it cost me considerably less than either of the two dives I stayed in in DC. The staff is impeccably trained and whether it was real or an act, they were all always friendly, cheerful and helpful. The place has the feel of a boutique hotel and it wasn't until a day or two after I got there when I was walking to it that it dawned on me that it is actually a huge hotel. The rooms are unbeatable; everything beautiful, comfortable, user-friendly, tasteful. Even f I was paying the outlandish prices at the Grand Westin or the St. Gregory I would have at least felt I was getting my money's worth.

First night I ate at the Green Zebra on West Chicago Avenue, just down the road from my hotel. It's an upscale mostly vegetarian restaurant dedicated to perfect service and serving fresh, seasonal, flavorful food. It isn't cheap and the plates are small but it was delicious, engaging and interesting and I'd eat there again. The following night, however, the restaurant was chosen based on size. We needed a place that could accommodate 20 or so bloggers. I don't remember the name; no need.


My favorite spot in Chicago: the Art Institute. Yep Chicago has one of the world's greatest art museums, certainly better than anything on the West Coast and right up there with the Met and MoMA in NYC, the Tate, the Louvre, El Prado...

Nighthawks the Hooper I was eager to see again was on tour but I got to marvel at some of the amazing works by Gustave Caillebotte, Georgia O’Keeffe, Francis Bacon, Magritte, Seurat and hours worth of paintings before I had to catch my plane back to L.A. Before leaving I booked a week at the same hotel in August.