Gong Xi Fa Cai

There are a dozen animals in the Chinese zodiac, each one assigned to a calendar year on a 12 year cycle. Those born under the sign of the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit or whatever other animal in the zodiac are said to embody the characteristics and attributes of the animal which is assigned to the year of their birth. I'm a monkey. Monkeys are supposed to be well-rounded, witty, intelligent and deep thinkers. They are also supposed to have stable careers and do not trust others easily. Do with all that what you will but I like being a monkey.

Each spring, the arrival of the new year in the Chinese zodiac is celebrated all over southeast Asia in what is sometimes known as the Spring Festival. The exact date of the new year is based on both the position of the Sun in the Earth's sky and the moon phase, so it is not tied to a specific date the way our western new year celebration works. Some call the celebration Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year. Since the coming of the new year is celebrated beyond the borders of China, I'll be using the term Lunar New Year for the rest of this post, even though technically that's not even true because the celebration is based on a lunisolar calendar, not a lunar calendar. 

When we determined that 2024 was finally the year that we would make it Angkor Wat in Cambodia, we knew we would be visiting in the middle of winter to avoid the monsoon season (May through September) and the hottest and most humid months of the year (March through June) and that right before Christmas was probably not a great time to spend two plus weeks halfway around the world. We settled on February, which happened to be the time of the Lunar New Year celebration in 2024. This seemed like something we had to do.

Just not in Cambodia. 

We picked Singapore. 

Year of the Dragon, baby!!!!

2024 is the Year of the Dragon, which has to be about the coolest animal in the Chinese zodiac. Even as biased as I am towards monkeys, I have to go with Dragon as the best, Tiger as the second best and Monkey in the three spot. But this isn't about Monkeys. 2024 is all about the Dragon.

Unlike our new year celebrations here in the western world, the Lunar New Year celebrations are not confined to a single night. It's actually a 15 day long celebration. I'm not saying that people in the United States don't know how to celebrate the ringing in of a new year, but we spend all of maybe 8 or so hours maximum commemorating this event and that's usually if you are hosting a party or something. If you are a guest, you are probably in for a few hours less than that.

Lunar New Year celebrations are a time to reunite with families; remove clutter and baggage from your life and your home; and pray for good fortune and protection against evil. It is an event consisting of many intricate rituals and traditions which are respected and practiced correctly to maximize good luck for the coming 12 months or so. It's some serious business.

The primary impetus for this trip to Southeast Asia was without any doubt to finally visit Angkor Wat. Lunar New Year was a secondary attraction and it was supposed to be just that: secondary. But honestly, celebrating Lunar New Year was the best thing we did on this trip. It was such a privilege to be a part of something so ancient and revered that is so steeped in tradition and that builds and reinforces important connections between people and their cultures. Every moment we spent doing something related to the celebration of the new year was an important event. It was such a rich experience. 

I know we got a uniquely Singaporean Lunar New Year. There are traditions in that tiny island nation which do not appear in the celebrations in China or Vietnam or Malaysia or anywhere else in the world. That just added to the special-ness of this experience, even if we didn't stay for the whole thing or take in everything we possibly could have taken in. I think we clearly got enough to make this probably THE signature experience of our 2024 travel year. And we got it in the second month!! Not that I'm saying the rest of the year won't be great, but it's difficult to see anything topping this.

Here's what our slice of Lunar New Year looked like in 2024. Singapore-style.

River Hongbao

Singapore hosts two Lunar New Year celebrations that are unique to their country each year: River Hongbao and the Chingay Parade. Unfortunately for us, the Chingay Parade (which is sort of a deluxe talent show and parade in one and is clearly the biggest and most over-the-top celebration of Lunar New Year) is at the end of the 15 day celebration and we would already be back in the United States having finished the rest of our vacation by the time that kicked off. We figured when we were planning this trip that if we scheduled our trip around the actual New Year's Day, we'd be all set with all the good stuff. Turns out we were wrong. I'm not sure it mattered. We couldn't have realistically covered the entirety of Singapore's Lunar New Year celebration since we only get so much time off work. 

Stupid work...

So that left us with River Hongbao, a Singapore tradition since 1987 to celebrate Lunar New Year along the Singapore River. These days, it's held at the fabulous Gardens By The Bay and how cool it is seems very, very dependent upon when you go.

Here's how it works. 

Basically, a portion of the Gardens By The Bay park is cordoned off so that a series of three-dimensional static and animatronic displays can be installed as a sort of a walk through display type event. All 12 of the zodiac signs are represented beside signage detailing each animal's fortune for the year in addition to the lucky numbers and lucky colors for each animal (the dragon holding the wand a couple of pictures up is one of the 12). There are some other displays that represent Singapore's commercial history along with an amusement park which looks like a county fair type thing and some food stands that look like they belong in the same sort of venue, although the food is absolutely nothing like a U.S. county fair. 

At the center of the whole thing, there is a giant, 18-meter long dragon suspended between the Gardens' man-made super trees, along with a giant sculpture of the God of Fortune. They are both suspended or standing next to a performance stage, although I believe the performance stage may have been removed after the opening ceremony. My memory is not super-clear on that one.

The displays are fine. The fortunes next to each of the 12 zodiac signs, which are essentially horoscopes for the year, are fun and if you are into that kind of stuff. And, by the way, I know it makes no sense with my personality but I am totally into that sort of stuff. I love zodiac symbols and horoscopes and all the rest that comes with it. I suppose it helps that I see a lot of monkey and a lot of cancer in me, although I suppose the characteristics descriptions for both western and eastern zodiacs are sufficiently vague that everyone is supposed to recognize themselves to some extent.

Here's the thing that made River Hongbao worthwhile for us: at certain times on certain days, there are special celebrations that are impressive, and they are centered around that dragon (I assume it's a different animal in non-dragon years). We made it to River Hongbao for the opening ceremony and if you are in Singapore at this time of year, I highly recommend going. It's going to take you a bit of time to get there; there are going to be a ton of people there; and it's going to take you longer to get home than it took you to get there, but the fireworks display (which takes all of a couple of minutes) is definitely worth seeing in person. There's some kind of performance schedule at the stage. I'd skip those and just keep your eyes on where the fireworks are going to happen.

This really kicked off our Lunar New Year celebration with a bang (pun intended). It was held on New Year's Eve eve and got us warmed up for staying up until midnight the next day.

Lion Dances / Dragon Dances

Lunar New Year has its roots in Chinese legend. According to lore, there was a beast in one particular Chinese village which every year on the start of the lunar year destroyed all the crops and animals belonging to the villagers. The villagers called this beast Nian, which means "year" in Chinese.

Eventually, the villagers discovered Nian was afraid of loud noises, bright lights and the color red. I mean...why these things...but just accept it... So every Lunar New Year's eve, the villagers would perform a dance with loud drums and cymbals using a replica of Nian's likeness, with one person manipulating the head of the beast and the other taking the hind quarters, to scare the actual monster away.

The dance has evolved today into the lion dance, which features two people (or more if there are more than one lion) in costumes basically resembling the lions in the picture above. I know, they don't look quite like the lions we find in Africa today but go with me here and trust me: for the purposes of Lunar New Year celebrations in Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, these are lions.  Sometimes, the lion dance is accompanied by a dragon dance but not always. I'm not sure but I believe the dragon dance is a supplement to and not separate from the lion dance. Or maybe I believe that because that's what we experienced.

Lion dancers, their costumes partly shed, exiting the party zone at Lunar New Year celebration.

We tried very hard to get to a spot where a lion dance was being performed in our time in Singapore. There are schedules on websites of various sorts with times and dates where these dances are performed. Most seemed to be in shopping malls remote from the city center where we were staying and with everything else on our schedule, we just passed on all that and hoped we'd find one. Hoping is not generally a good plan.

We struggled with this. We'd seen a lion dance up close and personal in Hawaii in 2016 when we were unwittingly there around Lunar New year. We didn't see any lion dance up close and personal in 2024. We just couldn't find one. To make our situation worse, we ended up seeing multiple flatbed trucks with lion dance troupes packed into the back with all their gear when we were walking, bussing or grabbing (Singapore's version of Uber or Lyft) around the city. 

We did manage to be in attendance at two lion dances in Singapore but we didn't get great looks at either one. The first was at the opening ceremony of the River Hongbao discussed above during the fireworks celebration. We honestly were so far from the lion dancers and were so focused on the fireworks that we didn't even notice it was going on until we saw the dancers dismantling their costumes. 

The second one was at the midnight celebration of Lunar New Year in Chinatown. We knew full well this one was going on but the space was so tight and our spot was so off to the side that we didn't get a great look at the dance itself. We saw all the gear being loaded in and out and the dancers (both lion and dragon) waiting to dance really clearly but the actual dance...not so much. 

I'm still counting this last one as checking our lion dance box. Hey, you can't always get the perfect view of everything. We tried to be comprehensive with Lunar New Year. We missed perfection on one or two things. 

Yu Sheng

One of the most important traditions of Lunar New Year is families coming together or reuniting and celebrating. It is typical for households to go out to eat as an extended family and indulge in a pricey, multi-course traditional meal called a reunion dinner.

Now, this was not exactly us on this trip. We weren't reunion-ing together with any other family members in person and we are together pretty much all the time and that's just the way we like it. But look, we are not sitting out any tradition that involves food really so we were totally in.

This tradition is common in many Southeast Asian countries right before Lunar New Year and it doesn't have to necessarily be the actual eve of the new year for you to do this. Most restaurants we checked out seemed to be offering seatings of reunion dinners both before and after the actual New Year's Eve in addition to being on the actual day of the midnight celebration. Menus for this meal vary, but there appeared to a soup of some sort, some noodles, some abalone (apparently canned abalone is a Lunar New Year thing...) and some seafood. But every reunion dinner meal in Singapore starts with the same thing, and it's uniquely Singaporean; you will not find this dish in any other country. It's called Yu Sheng.

Chinatown (Singapore) on Lunar New Year eve.

Yu sheng is basically a big sort of salad topped with raw salmon (although other toppings are available). It comes as a series of small piles of ingredients like glass noodles, grated carrot, grated daikon (sometimes colored) and seasoned nuts. What all we got on our plate I couldn't say because I didn't write it all down and I can't pick it all out from my pictures (something about the food coloring). 

Then the salmon is placed on top, followed by (in sequence) lime, Chinese five spice, cinnamon, sesame oil, plum sauce and crushed wontons. This adding of ingredients is all done at one time by the whole dining room. Before each of those last ingredients is added, there is a speech from the host about good wishes for the year and the whole room yells "lo hei!" which means good fortune.

Then you each get a pair of giant chopsticks and start tossing the salad in the air while yelling "lo hei!" over and over again until the salad is fully mixed or you are lo hei-ed out. After that, it's dinner time. The Yu Sheng is actually really good. I was concerned that the cinnamon was going to overwhelm the whole dish but it didn't. 

I believe we were the only non-Chinese family in the place where we ate our reunion dinner so I appreciate the restaurant staff walking us through the whole meal and its tradition but especially the Yu Sheng. They made us feel like we were part of the celebration, rather than outsiders crashing the party. Participating in as much of Lunar New Year in Singapore as we could was very important to us and we were grateful for the staff going overboard to clue us in on what was going on.

I should note that we found it quite difficult to find a restaurant that would accept a reservation for just two people for our reunion dinner. Most menus are set up to accommodate groups of at least four and really ranging up to 12 or more at a table. I guess the amount of money we were going to spend for a prix fixe meal for just the two of us doesn't usually make sense for a restaurant at this time of the year. The first place we made a reservation actually emailed and told us that their reservation system mistakenly accepted a reservation for two and that they had cancelled our table and then their system auto-sent an email asking why we cancelled and suggested we try their Greek restaurant instead.

Ultimately, we asked our hotel for advice hoping they would squeeze us into their theoretically sold out restaurant on New Year's Eve which is exactly what happened (having status helps...). Ironically, we were sat at a table that could hold at least five. I appreciate the Andaz Singapore doing this for us. It was a nice gesture and definitely solved a problem for us.

Fireworks

We did quite a bit of research about where to watch the fireworks on the eve of Lunar New Year. Our final decision came down to two spots: (1) somewhere in front of Marina Bay Sands, the massive hotel on the water at the end of the Singapore River; or (2) Chinatown. We figured Marina Bay Sands would put on a hell of a show akin to a western New Year's Eve fireworks celebration and that the scene in Chinatown would be more packed and way less deluxe. We picked Chinatown anyway.

I have no idea what the celebration at Marina Bay Sands was like. We didn't go and we didn't look it up after the fact. We stuck with our gut on this one and went all in on Chinatown.

Now, I didn't expect this night to be like Times Square in New York City on New Year's Eve in the United States or anything. I didn't expect Ryan Seacrest or Anderson Cooper or Andy Cohen (Andy is the BEST on NYE) or Maroon 5 or Rod Stewart or Green Day or any sorts of internationally (or is it just western world?) famous celebrities in the mix. 

I was right. There WAS a stage show and there was nobody famous that I recognized. Me not recognizing someone doesn't make them not famous, by the way. It was all in Chinese (Singapore usually has everything spelled out or broadcast in four languages; not on LNY Eve) and seemed to feature heavy emphasis on the organizing committee of the local Singapore government, although I might have been misunderstanding this (it was in Chinese after all). 

The stage show featured singers, a lot of talking by the two or four of five emcees running the whole event and there was a lion and dragon dance that winded its way through the crowd pretty close to (or maybe a bit after) midnight.

The Lunar New Year eve stage show (on the right). The dragon dancers are in waiting.

And yes, there were fireworks. But maybe those need some clarification for what I assume is mostly a western audience among the dozen or so people who might actually read this thing.

When people in the United States think about fireworks, we think about explosions in the sky. We think about multiple colors and patterns and effects. We think about a grand finale which seems to go on forever and builds and builds and builds to a massive climax and leaves us fully satisfied. We think about 20 minutes or more minimum. Whether it's New Year's Eve somewhere or July 4 throughout the nation or a display to close a concert at the Hollywood Bowl or a sporting event, these shows are extravagant and magnificent and awe-inspiring.

That is NOT what happens at Lunar New Year's Eve in Chinatown in Singapore. Maybe fireworks is even the wrong work. Maybe it's firecrackers. Honestly, the celebration that night in Chinatown looked like someone lit something on fire in an empty parking lot. It was loud, it was smoky and it was bright white. It lasted all of a couple of minutes, although legitimately, I didn't time it. If that's what it is, I'm good with that. I wanted authenticity here. That's why we ultimately picked Chinatown over Marina Bay Sands. We were in Singapore. I wanted a Singapore celebration, not a New York Times Square one.

I don't know how long it takes to get out of Time Square on New Year's Eve (or I guess the early hours of New Year's Day) but we got home (meaning to the hotel) at 41 minutes after midnight. Singapore public transport is efficient.

Red Envelopes

Like any good holiday (and I'm being causal and callous with those words a bit, I know), Lunar New Year involves the giving of gifts. Hey...who doesn't like gifts or presents on holidays?

On Lunar New Year, there is a tradition of giving money in red (remember the color that scared away Nian?) envelopes. Just to be clear, people like me, who are gainfully employed and theoretically taking care of families, do not receive red envelopes with money inside. The giving of red envelopes is specifically focused on children and maybe parents and grandparents and people who serve you all year (I guess like dry cleaners and mail carriers and others that we sometimes give end of year tips to in the United States). If you want to do it right, give denominations of money ending in 8 (which is lucky) and avoid 4 (which sounds like the word "death" in Chinese).

We didn't expect to have anything to do with this tradition in Singapore (although admittedly I did buy some off Amazon and give my wife an iTunes gift certificate in a red envelope festooned with an impressive-looking dragon). But it seems restaurants like to hand these things out so you are prepared to give, I guess. We were handed a stack of red envelopes (although admittedly one was orange; not sure what's up with that) after each of three of the meals we ate in Singapore. I love these things. They are like little works of art and they are so carefully conceived and put together. They are displayed in the picture above. Personally, the deep red Tiger envelopes are my favorite but that may be the beer connection speaking there.

Our mini collection of red envelopes (also known as hongbao by the way) was a nice addition to our experience. I usually tip our cleaners in a plain white envelope when they come to clean our townhouse once a month. For the last two months, they have received the money in one of these envelopes. They might continue to do this for the near future.

All of these things together added up to the best thing about our vacation in Asia (and particularly Singapore). Red envelopes. Fireworks. Lion Dances. River Hongbao. Reunion dinners. All of it was important. All of it reinforced the other experiences into something that was so rewarding. We felt like we were part of something that had been going on for centuries, probably because that's exactly what was going on. And in case you think I was poo-pooing the whole fireworks thing, I wouldn't have it any other way. That celebration the way it was done was part of how the whole thing goes down and I didn't want or need anything different.

The title of this post is an Anglicization of the Chinese greeting used on Lunar New Year. Gong Xi Fa Chi (pronounced gong she faa chai, although I know I need some sort of accent on the faa to make it a short sound) literally means "I hope you get rich". The actual nuanced translation may be "I hope you enlarge your wealth" or something like that but essentially it's a wish for prosperity and particularly monetary prosperity during the coming year. 

I'm cool with all that. Hey, I hope 2024 brings me a ton of money personally. I mean who doesn't wish for more money? I know there's more to life than that and I'm totally thankful for the things in life that make me realize that every day (particularly the one person I go everywhere with). This whole experience was supposed to be the second best thing we would do on the other side of the world. It wasn't. It was number one. I'm so glad we did this. Maybe do it again next year of the monkey?

Grand Central

I'm about halfway through blogging about our Southeast Asia trip but still traveling. OK, maybe a bit less than halfway through. Time for a blog post break from Cambodia, Singapore and Malaysia (with a bonus country added on the end) to check in on our U.S. travels. I'll get back to SE Asia, I promise.

I've never really traveled much for work. I am fortunate enough that my job has taken me all over this country of ours but not for a very long time or very regularly. Honestly, traveling for work sucks for me. It ends up being a plane or car or train ride; then straight to the hotel on arrival; back and forth to the office; some substandard restaurant for dinner; and then sitting in my hotel room and repeating until it's time to go home. I'm not cut out for that stuff. It sounds fun and glamorous. I don't find it that way.

But late last year, I got asked to take on an assignment that required me to spend two to four nights in New York City each month. I love New York so I eagerly agreed but the first couple of months doing that went just as described above. So this year, I decided to change that. I made it my mission this year to live a little on these trips. Rather than hitting the closest restaurant to the hotel and going straight back to my room, I resolved to explore a little at night. Pick out a ramen place a few blocks away or get on the Subway and go somewhere further. Maybe I didn't need to stay at the same hotel every time up there. And I wanted to try to hit a sight or two at night in the City that I'd never seen.

Last year and January of this year, I'd been focused in an office in the Financial District so I'd always stayed down by the Staten Island Ferry terminal in lower Manhattan. But in March that assignment moved to Midtown and for my March trip I picked a hotel right next to Grand Central Terminal, the great train station on 42nd Street that has been transporting people to and from New York for over 100 years. I thought I'd use that venue as an opportunity to explore Grand Central a little at night and on the following weekend. I'd never stayed this close to this important civic building but I'd been an admirer for decades. Time to dig a little deeper.

When I think of Grand Central, I think of my dad. My first memories of transiting to the station (and I'm using "to" deliberately because it's a terminal stop) were the few trips my dad and I used to take in the 1990s down to New York Knick games from my parents' house in Connecticut. We'd drive most of the way to the City but then hop on the Metro North train for the last little bit which would deposit us in the bowels of the station an hour or so before gametime. 

From there, we'd walk up into that magnificent public space that is the Main Concourse. What an amazing way to enter New York. It is truly one of the great interior spaces in this country of ours. I feel confident making that statement without (certainly) having been to every interior public space that's ever been built in the U.S. That hall is the connection hub between New York and the rest of the country that is served by the trains that take people to and from the Terminal. It's a grand mixing bowl of residents and workers and tourists.

When we first started going down to the City, the ceiling of the Main Concourse was black. We assumed it had always been that way. We'd read stories about the ceiling having the heavens painted on them with lights for each star but we just figured the effect relied on the pinpoints of light that shone through the holes in the vault that covered the space. 

Then one day we arrived there and a piece of the ceiling had been cleaned and it was this copper patina green color in that patch, not the black that we'd always seen. And there were lines and figures connecting the points of light. It was amazing, the first step in the grand restoration of that space. It's a pretty amazing space but it's better with a clean ceiling. Now, of course, it's completely clean and it's glorious.

The current Grand Central Terminal was created by accident. Or I guess more accurately, it was created by an accident. 

The current Terminal is not the original Grand Central. There were actually two earlier Grand Centrals: one called Grand Central Station and one called Grand Central Depot. When Grand Central Depot was built in the 1860s on 42nd Street it was considered by some to be too far to realistically serve the city of New York. But it quickly picked up business, as evidenced by its demolition and replacement with the second Grand Central.

That meant more business. So much business, in fact, that by the time it got to the beginning of the 20th century a couple of years after the start of construction on the second Grand Central, the area north of the station was a dangerous mix of steam-filled tunnels, malfunctioning signals and employees that saw little point sometimes in staying at their post to operate said signals because, well...what's the point if they don't work to begin with?

It was no big deal, though. There had been proposals to get rid of steam engines in New York and go electric but those suggestions had been put aside. Too expensive! Why fix what wasn't broken? Visibility in the tunnels wasn't that bad. The railroad magnates who had set up and were operating under this accident waiting to happen were raking in money hand over fist and nobody was getting hurt. What's the problem?

Well there wasn't one really. Until there was. 

One of the original chalkboards with train departure and arrival information. Chalkboards!!!

On the morning of January 2, 1902, a man named John Wisker was driving Train 118 south towards the old Grand Central Station. Maybe he was late. Maybe he was rushing. Maybe he ignored a signal. Maybe the signal was obscured by smoke or steam or fog. Maybe the signal didn't operate. Maybe the signal operator didn't even turn it on. Or wasn't able to turn it on. But one thing we know did happen: Wisker drove Train 118 right into the back of another train stopped and awaiting a go signal to proceed to Grand Central. 15 people died in that crash. It is still Manhattan's (not New York's) deadliest train accident.

Two things happened next. 

First, they tried to pin the whole mess on Wisker. But there was so much evidence of things being broken and so little evidence that Wisker actually did anything deliberately wrong that no conviction was ever reached.

Second, things started to change, mostly driven by the state of New York. The railroad owners (and particularly the Vanderbilts), who were mostly responsible for the whole messy situation to begin with, proposed some action. A new station and a new system of getting trains in and out of it. Nobody ever charged the Vanderbilts or any of the other railroad tycoons with any sort of crime, by the way. Ain't that always the case. Sure they had to spend a whole bunch of money to clean their own mess up, but I'm guessing they got way more back.

So, how do you get a new rail station designed in New York? How about holding a competition? Good idea! Especially after your main rivals, the Pennsylvania Railroad, just did the exact same thing and got a gorgeous new station on the west side of the city a few blocks south of 42nd Street. Have to keep up with the rivals.

The competition ended up with two winners, two separate architecture firms who were assigned to work together to pull the whole thing off. See if you think there's anything sketchy about the process here. The main functional design of the building was conceived and executed by the firm of Reed and Stern. "Reed" of Reed and Stern was the brother-in-law of William Willis, who happened to be the chief engineer of the New York Central Railroad. The exterior of the building was designed by the first of Warren and Wetmore. Whitney Warren was a cousin of Cornelius Vanderbilt's grandson.

Nepotism, anyone? I guess it doesn't really matter any more. The result is spectacular.

Vanderbilt Hall (the old waiting room) just off 42nd Street.

Before March of this year, I had never really done anything in Grand Central Terminal outside of the Main Concourse. And that was not that much even then. I'd traversed through that space many times between the tracks and the city but that time is pretty ephemeral. I'd also eaten dinner with my dad a few times on our trips down to New York in one of the restaurants that used to occupy the terrace at the west side of the hall. More recently, I'd dragged friends to that same space for drinks where we could talk and gaze at the magnificence of the place. But outside of that? Nothing. I knew there had to be more to the place than that. 

If you exit out the front of Grand Central and take a left, you will find the Hyatt Grand Central New York hotel. You don't even have to cross a street to get there. It's on the very same block as the Terminal. That was my home for four nights in March, selected deliberately so I would be able to do something more than just work and eat and sleep. I wasn't going to mess up this opportunity. 

Did you know there's a whole dining concourse at Grand Central that's below the main level of the station? Honestly, I didn't and I'm sure anyone from New York reading this post is rolling their eyes right now. I also didn't know there is an indoor gourmet market on the main level between the Main Concourse and Lexington Avenue to the east (cue more eye-rolling...). In my four days in my hotel on the same block as Grand Central, I ate at (or from) each one. I didn't intend to. I just discovered something that I thought sounded good at mealtime and took a chance.

But I DID know there was at least one restaurant at Grand Central and it's one I've wanted to eat at for decades: Grand Central Oyster Bar. It's not quite on the dining concourse. It's halfway between the main floor level and the dining level. The Oyster Bar was the first stop I planned when I knew I'd be near Grand Central. I think any time you can check something off a wish list that's been on there for decades on a work trip, then that's a worthwhile work trip.

Grand Central Oyster Bar: outside and in.

The Oyster Bar and Grand Central Terminal are virtually inseparable. Two weeks after Grand Central opened for business, the Oyster Bar opened for business. It's been there ever since. 111 years and counting. It is truly a New York City institution. It's in a gorgeous vaulted space deep in the heart of the building and the vaults are completely covered with tiles and a ton of lights. It's straight out of the opulence of the 1920s or thereabouts over a century into its lifetime. 

And the food? Seafood. They still serve super-fresh fish and other sea creatures that are flown in or caught daily and they still run out later in the day. That definitely means it's fresh because no way do you run out of frozen fish. They also are still firmly entrenched in the idea of serving commuters. Want to eat at Oyster Bar on weekends? You can't. It's closed.

I love all that.

Our experience at the Oyster Bar was just that: an experience! The decor is amazing. The menu is amazing. The service and the prices are New York (or New Yawk) all the way. It's old school food and old school service. Don't know how you want your fish or whatever else you are ordering to be cooked? Don't worry, your waiter will tell you. In fact, he'll tell you even if you DO know how you want your food prepared and served. I'm sure you have input but it seemed pretty definite that we should order how it was suggested. I got the fried oysters. No preparation suggestions there. How could I not get oysters?

Daytime...

One of the great things about staying very, very close to place like Grand Central is that you can take time whenever you want to walk down from your second floor hotel lobby and around the place, both inside or out. That is definitely something I took advantage of a lot, especially to check out the exterior on multiple days and at multiple times of day. Whether it was just walking past the place on 42nd Street and seeing how it looked from street level or taking a walk down Park Avenue which literally wraps around the station (you cannot actually walk all the way around Grand Central on Park Avenue). 

The views of the front of the station from Park are definitely worth savoring. The station which looks so gigantic from street level looks really, really small when viewed in front of the MetLife Building (formerly and more famously the PanAm Building). It is to me one of the best views in New York City. I admit I walked down Park Avenue to see it this way at least three times in the four days and nights I stayed there. 

What can I say...I'm a fan. Have been for a while.

And that second floor lobby thing in our hotel? There are few ground floor elevators in New York City around Grand Central. The space below the entirety of the neighborhood around the station is occupied by train tracks. No basements. No below grade elevator pits. Meaning no elevators at grade.

and nighttime.

But to really get into Grand Central for real, we decided to take a tour. Not a self-guided one. A paid one.

A company called Walks operates a few tours in New York City, including the official tour of Grand Central Station which they run pretty much every day of the year at 11 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. I have taken I don't know how many tours of buildings in my life (I mean I AM an architect, after all) and I have to say this tour is one of the most engaging and informative that I have ever taken. Maybe it's because my baseline knowledge of the history of Grand Central was lacking, but I thought it was well worth the price of admission, even after walking around the building a few times on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights before our Saturday tour.

I won't blow by blow it but I might spoil a surprise or two. 

The main hall, with the Information Booth front and center.

Did you know that the term "commuter" was invented at Grand Central Terminal? It's true.

There was a time when the future of train travel as a means of getting to work was way less than the sure thing that it is today. Or maybe that's written wrong, because going to the office at all seems to be less than a sure thing following the recent global pandemic. But in the first half of the 20th century, the railroads using Grand Central figured folks could use a cost savings to take the train on a daily basis into Manhattan. 

So to encourage daily business travelers to use rail to get to work in Manhattan, the railroads advertised that they would "commute" part of the fare for regular travelers who used their services on an everyday basis. Those with commuted fares who traveled through Grand Central eventually started to be called commuters. 

Did you know that Eastern Standard Time was ALSO invented by Grand Central? That's also true. Or maybe mostly true. Or at least the first clock displaying Eastern Standard Time was installed at Grand Central. It's in the Graybar Passage that connects the Main Concourse to Lexington Avenue to the east.

I honestly had no idea how time zones were invented in this world of ours but apparently, they were invented by the railroads in the United States. As rail travel to move people long distances became more and more common, the railroads found that different passengers from slightly different places might be keeping slightly different time. By this I mean that someone from Philadelphia might set their watch a few minutes ahead of New York which might be a few minutes ahead of someone in Pittsburgh or Albany or wherever.

The problem with all of this, of course, was that people kept missing trains. So the railroads got together and standardized times so their operations would have a chance of working smoothly. In Grand Central, they installed a clock with the words "Eastern Standard Time" carved into the stone in the building. It's still there today, even though Daylight Saving Time is in effect for about half the year. That idea was implemented after Grand Central (and the carved-into-stone words above the clock) was finished.

Oak leaves above the entrance to Tracks 107 and 108.

Speaking of clocks...

There are two other prominent clocks at Grand Central: one atop the Information Booth that sits right in the center of the Main Concourse and one that adorns the front of the building. The faces of the clock above the Information Booth are milk opal. It's apparently worth $10 million. And the one on the front of the building? Tiffany stained glass and 14 feet in diameter. No way does it look that big.

Look close at the Information Booth and it looks like there's no way in or out. There are absolutely no doors to the thing. But in the center of the Booth there's a spiral stair which takes people down (and out of the booth). Look closer and you'll see an acorn on top of the clock. The acorn was the symbol of the Vanderbilt family. You'll find acorn shaped light fixtures and oak leaves in some of the carvings too.

I'd put the acorns and the spiral stair in the Easter egg category, little surprising gems of information that you only know if you know. The best one of these in Grand Central for me was the discovery of the Campbell Bar, the gorgeous old converted reception space of the office of one John W. Campbell, who rented out a suite in the Terminal as his private office. The expansive reception space is now converted to a high end bar, with the original decor (minus a Persian rug supposedly worth pretty much a fortune) intact as installed by Campbell.

Who would have even known this thing is here? It's not accessible from the interior of the Terminal. You have to go outside, around the west side of the building, under a porte cochère and up a couple of staircases to get there. If you go, bring money (not meaning cash; meaning be prepared to part with some). We ordered a beer and a bottle of water and paid $23 (without tip). A small price to pay to spend 20 minutes or so inside the space. It's not like we are going to go here every time with visit the City.

There was a time that Grand Central was threatened with demolition. The station that Grand Central had been built to rival (and best), Pennsylvania Station, had just been torn down, viewed by some as a relic of a time and a mode of transportation no longer relevant to society in the 1960s. Once they got rid of Penn Station, Grand Central was next.

Fortunately for us today, the demolition of Penn Station was the rallying cry that pretty much started the historic preservation movement in this country in a serious way. Grand Central particularly has Jackie Kennedy Onassis and architect Philip Johnson to thank for its protection. As an architect, I have mixed feelings about historic preservation. Some of what we protect is, in my opinion, just old and not historically valuable. Where to draw the line between the two seems to be a constant balancing act which sometimes gets priorities wrong. I'm pretty sure in stating, though, that those words do not apply to this station.

I'm grateful it's still here in the 2020s and I'm grateful I decided to spend a little portion of my March work trip (and maybe a day or two extra on my own dime) to dig a little deeper into this New York icon.

The hidden staircase to and from the Information Booth.

Finally, just a note about that black ceiling that my dad and I had seen the first time we walked into Grand Central. We assumed (or maybe it was just me; I don't want to assume that my dad made the same mistake as me) that the ceiling was black due to all the smoke belched out into the building by steam engines that served the building. This couldn't have been true because steam engines were banned in Manhattan before the building was completed. 

Deep down inside, I really think I should have known this. 

When it came time to launch the cleaning effort on the ceiling and get rid of the black color and get back to that gorgeous copper patina green, the folks engineering the restoration made the same mistake I did. They assumed they would be cleaning soot off the ceiling and designed the cleaning methods for that kind of remediation. It didn't work. And if I think deep down inside I should have put two and two together and ruled out steam engines as the cause, then I really think professionals hired specifically to address this problem should have figured it out also.

What caused the black color? Nicotine. Cigarette smoke. How disgusting is that? There's one small spot on the northwest corner of the ceiling that they left uncleaned. It's super small. But tobacco was the cause. Dropping the mic on this post now. Back to Southeast Asia next.

A picture of the postcard of the Campbell Apartment we got "free" with our $23 beer/water. Taking a pic of the actual space with an iPhone proved more difficult than it would seem.

Tomb Raiders

When we arrived at Angkor Wat temple last month after traveling halfway around (and a good bit down) the Earth to Siem Reap, Cambodia, I expected I would find a magnificent ruin just barely hanging on and standing upright. I figured some ancient structure surrounded and subsumed by the jungle of Southeast Asia. I expected tight quarters, constricted views, plenty of exotic carvings and lots and lots of vines and tropical plants. I was thinking a plundered maze-like shrine that looked like Raiders of the Lost Ark or Tomb Raider or something like that. 

Why did I expect this? Well honestly, because I remembered seeing photos in books and on line that looked like I described above. I couldn't wait to get there myself. Maybe if we were really lucky (and I know this is placing a western bias into the fantasy that I've set up for myself), we'd see an orange-clad Buddhist monk walking through those old halls reminding us of the tradition and purpose for the place. Angkor Wat was number one on my travel list for years for all those reasons. I wanted to breathe and take and drink it all in. Is that all too much to ask?

Apparently it was. Waaaaay too much.

Jungle? Vines? Barely hanging on? Struggling to stand upright? Umm...no. Angkor Wat looks nothing like I imagined or wasted a few minutes putting keyboard to screen to place into the first two paragraphs of this post. Was it incredible? Oh, yeah! Was it what I expected? Not really, no. It lacked the romanticism. It lacked the mystery. It lacked the danger. It lacked the uncertain structural stability. It lacked the monks (at least when we were there). Indiana Jones? Lara Croft? Nope. Not at Angkor Wat. Not there. Totally NOT that place.

But Ankgor Wat is not the only temple near Siem Reap. The Khmers built around 1,000 or so in their ancient capital of Angkor. They are literally everywhere you look when you are driving or riding around in the right spots in the outskirts of Siem Reap. After all, the Khmers spent about 600 years building these things one after the other. Why they needed all these temples is beyond me but I know enough to know that pretty much every new ruler in a certain period of time built himself at least one new temple. These things add up.

Then in the year 1431, the Khmers picked up and moved town to a spot to the south and east which is about where the current Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh stands. Why the move? Better crop growing conditions. Better access to the Mekong River. Further from the Thais, who decidedly did not get along with the Khmers. It was a win-win-win. Seems like a no brainer to me.

When Angkor was abandoned, much of what the Khmers had built fell into disrepair. Over time, their houses and temples and everything else they constructed became forgotten by the rest of the world. And yes, a lot of it got overgrown and overtaken by Mother Nature. Not Ankgor Wat, which continued to operate as a Buddhist Temple even though the Empire that built it had left it behind. But yes to some of the others. So that image of a centuries-old temple buried deep in the jungle of Southeast Asia filled with treasure and danger? It existed. And exists. Today.

We signed up for a tour of Angkor Wat that started at 4:30 in the morning. When were done exploring that temple, our guide took us to lunch (or maybe it was a late breakfast; tough to tell when you start your tour at 4:30). Then we walked across the road, climbed up a temporary wooden staircase spanning a stone wall and down the other side and entered a place called Ta Prohm. This is what I was looking for.

Ta Prohm was built by the Khmer King Jayavarman VII. Construction started in the year 1186. Jayavarman was the nephew of Suryavarman II who 65 years or so earlier started building Angkor Wat. From the conditions of the two sites today, it is incredible that Ta Prohm is younger than Angkor Wat. And, I know, there's not really much of a difference between 835 years old and 900 years old when it comes right down to it but Ta Prohm just feels so much older. And old isn't really the right word, it feels more ancient. It's the jungle, I am sure, that does this. It feels like Ta Prohm has emerged out of time. Ankgor Wat doesn't quite feel that way.

Ta Prohm is really big. Not quite as big as its more famous cousin over at Angkor Wat (which is about 150% bigger) but it's still big. The outside wall that we climbed over is rectangular in plan and measures 650 meters on the short side by 1,000 meters on the long side. That's about 5-1/2 football fields (with end zones) by 9 football fields (again, with end zones) for those of you that do your measuring in football fields. 160 acres. Big. So big that there used to be 12,500 people living inside its walls. That's big, right?

Within Ta Prohm's outer walls there is a lot of space. Today it is filled with jungle. No formal paths or wide open spaces here. Just jungle. There is clearly a lot of forested area that used to be open back in the day which is now just filled with whatever has grown naturally over the last almost six centuries. 

Towards the back of the property there were four additional concentric walls, all square in plan, that enclosed the heart of the temple. We entered at the opposite side of the temple property from the temple proper so I'm considering the side we entered to be the front. I could be wrong on this one and I'm not sure it matters other than to say that we got to the deepest part of the temple last in our tour. We started in the jungle.

Just a note on the first paragraph of this section. I am pretty confident that Jayavarman VII did nothing personally to "build" Ta Prohm. I am sure (like his uncle before him) that all the work on this place was done by local labor that either donated, were convinced to donate, or were forced to donate their time to moving and placing giant pieces of stone to glorify their ruler. That and a few thousand elephants, no doubt.

The very interior of Ta Prohm. Headless Buddha. Lots of these in Cambodia.

I have a little bit of a confession to make about our time at Ta Prohm.

One of the ways I remember facts and feelings and anything sensory from our travels is by taking notes. I'm serious. I take a lot of notes on vacation. When we are being led around somewhere like Ta Prohm (or just walking around on our own), I'm usually typing furiously in the Notes app on my iPhone 8 (go ahead and laugh!) so I can remember everything I'm experiencing. Or some of it anyway. It really does help.

I didn't do that so much at Ta Prohm. It happens sometimes when something gets in the way that either distracts me or takes my attention away from my iPhone (written ironically, I hope, this way deliberately; we DO spend too much time on our phones). At Ta Prohm, it was two things that did this for or to me.

First, there is so much to see. The scale and the scope of ruin and wonder at this place is just incredible. Everywhere you turn or look in every viewshed or around every corner is out of some amazing fantasy. It's sensory overload. It's all I could do to keep up with everything my mind was taking in.

Second, it was hot. Like hotter than I've ever really experienced hot. Like distractingly, I-have-to-focus-on-putting-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-and-take-it-all-in-and-there's-no-time-for-note-taking hot. Not so much with the sun as with the air temperature and the humidity. I'm not saying it was this way just at Ta Prohm. We found this to be the case everywhere in Cambodia. It's just a hot, hot place. I wore long pants because we were visiting an active temple (for respect) and we were in the jungle (to protect the legs). It was so hot that the knees of my pants were sweated through. I'm a sweaty guy in general but my knees??? It was hot. Notes took a back seat. 

The reason why I write that is really as a disclaimer for the lack of facts and details in this post. It's more feelings. I don't necessarily feel that is a problem. For me, Ta Prohm was very visceral. It was all about feelings and emotions and discoveries. Ta Prohm has character and untold secrets oozing from it. It has soul. But for this post, we'll have to live with lots of pictures and lots of feelings and maybe a story or two sprinkled in.

There is one fact about Ta Prohm that is worth noting because it totally reinforces its situation. And once again, we have to bring Angkor Wat into the narrative. 

Angkor Wat was built as a physical metaphor for Mount Meru, where the Hindu gods were said to dwell. Because it was designed that way, when you visit that temple you are constantly walking up until you reach the summit way above the ground plane where you started. Ta Prohm isn't designed and built with that same intent. It's flat. When you are standing in the middle of the temple you are no higher on the face of the Earth than when you entered the property. 

For the knees and the sweating (sorry...had to get that in there again), this is a huge advantage. I can walk a lot longer a lot cooler around some place that's flat than I can when I'm constantly climbing stairs. For Ta Prohm itself, its elevation (or lack thereof) has allowed it to be absorbed and conquered by the jungle much more easily than it would have if it had resembled Angkor Wat. The trees are clearly taller than the structure that the Khmers left behind. There's no competition. It's like it was made to be overgrown by the jungle. It wanted to be consumed.

So about those feelings...

It took us about 10 or 15 minutes of walking Ta Prohm's property to get to something man-made beyond the first wall we climbed over. It's the building shown two photographs up in this post. I honestly have no idea what the building was used for but it fit into what I was looking for: a clearly abandoned, really old building that had been grown on and around to almost become part of the jungle. The stone is weathered; the place looks a little unsafe; and there's enough living stuff on its walls and roofs to fit the picture in my mind's eye. To top it all off, right in front there's a tree that looks like it was thrown down from above and its roots are just the lower half of the tree just smushed on top of the Earth.

It got a bit crazy from there. We entered the main portion of the temple after that.

Have you ever seen a tree growing on top of a building? I don't mean like in a planter or on a landscaped roof terrace or something like that put in place specifically for that purpose. I mean a tree growing on top of a building. No soil, no pots, no real way for a tree to survive. On top of a stone building. You can see that at Ta Prohm. And not just once. This happens all over the place. And they are the most unusual trees. More vine or even creature than tree. Thick naked, no bark limbs and roots everywhere. Growing, grabbing, cascading down the very structures they are sitting upon. 

Part of what makes Ta Prohm so enchanting is this juxtaposition between manmade and nature while also understanding that it is nature which is really in command here. Every turn you take, everywhere you look, every step you take and every arch you walk through and ruin you pass it's nature slowly taking apart what man put in place.

There are piles of rock everywhere, presumably demolished by the slow advance of plants that swell and move and push aside stone as they grow. But there are also joints filled with roots and limbs that are destined for future destruction just as soon as the vines and trees that are slowly consuming the place decide that it's time to take down another portion. There is scene after scene after scene of this stuff as you move through the place. Each view you get is more improbable than the last. Look at this! Can you believe what's happening here? What is with this giant tree? It's the stuff of fantasy. It's just incredible to see. And everything I hoped we would see before we set off halfway around the globe to get here.

And those walls that enclosed the inner portions of the temple? I am sure we walked past or through or over those things but there were no discernible barriers as far as I was concerned. The jungle took them all.

There are two specific story memories I have from Ta Prohm. One is about the entrances to Ta Prohm. The other is about the stegosaurus. 

What's that, you say? Stegosaurus? Yep. Stegosaurus. Let's start with that.

Take a look at the picture below. In a corner of Ta Prohm at about chest height or maybe a little lower if I'm remembering right (and there's no way I could really tell you exactly where this thing is), you will find a carving of a stegosaurus. On many levels, this is really pretty cool. There are other creatures carved into the walls of the ruined temple but this one has to be the most amazing one. I mean, who doesn't love dinosaurs.

It was only until a couple of days later that I really started to be astonished by what I'd seen. Were people in 12th century Cambodia digging up fossils of dinosaurs or is something weirder going on? So I looked it up. Sure enough, the first stegosaurus discovery (at least in the western world) was documented in 1877. What on Earth did this carved dinosaur in the jungle of Southeast Asia mean? 

Were there stegosauruses (or is it stegosauri?) roaming the planet in some spots when man was around? There are apparently some conspiracy theorists who believe that's exactly what it means. The truth of the matter is that while scholars cannot agree on what kind of animal is represented here, it's not a stegosaurus. The "back plates" of the animal are likely just abstract representations of leaves. 

It did keep me guessing for a few days, though. Or maybe a couple of weeks.

Lastly there are the entrances. If it seems strange to write about the entrance last, that's because there are four of them and they serve as both the entrances and the exits to the property.

When we climbed over the outside wall of Ta Prohm at the beginning of our visit, we did it not because there was no entrance on that side of the temple, but because the entrance pavilion was under reconstruction and was closed. The wooden staircase replaced the entrance. There was no other way to get in. I also (and I'm blaming the heat here) didn't pay attention to what was below the scaffolding that the workers were standing on. Didn't even notice the gate.

But I did notice it on the way out. It's the cover picture of this post. You can see how big it is by the person standing just in the shadows of the doorway on the facing opening. You can also see two of the four faces on the pavilion. 

This is a motif we'd see again on our day roaming around some of the temples of Angkor, notably at Bayon Temple, which has a total of 216 faces. Depending on your beliefs, the faces either represent the four faces of the Hindu god Brahma or the four Buddhist virtues of equanimity, loving kindness, compassion and sympathetic joy. Pick one. Or pick both. I kind of prefer both here. Of all the structures we saw at Ta Prohm, this last piece, despite its slightly battered condition, is probably by far the most intact and serves for me as the most vivid memory of the workmanship that made up this magnificent temple.

Finally (which I suppose comes after lastly)...if you are a huge tomb raider fan, the original Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movie was actually filmed in part at Ta Prohm. We didn't know that when we visited but it totally fits. This place is enchanting. It gave me everything I hoped I would find in Siem Reap, just in a different location than I thought I would actually find it. It's all good. I got what I came for. I'm happy. 

The craziest tree at Ta Prohm. How is this thing even surviving?