Versailles

20 km southwest of Paris, you’ll find thousands of people lining up to tour the palace and grounds. I was shocked by the magnitude of the crowds…. probably due to my lack of interest in walking around a stuffy old palace and my disbelief so many people would find a way to get to Versailles despite the lack of public transportation during the transit strike. To circumvent the lines, we bought time-ticketed entries and decided to roam the gardens and eat lunch. Lunch was the usual… chicken and tuna sandwiches on baguettes. I felt a little grouchy and took solace in cutting several dozen people in line to procure lunch. The grounds were organized around a stately cruciform-shaped reservoir descending from the palace. Walking past conically shaven topiaries, carefully winter wrapped marble statues, manicured lawns, and throngs of tourists taking delight in the resident swans, I began to think how incongruously the turbulent history and drama belie the serenity of the place today.

Back in 1600, Versailles was nothing. Henry IV visited the area and stayed in an inn for hunting. His son Louis XIII built a hunting lodge there in 1623 and decided to build a chateau in 1631. Sun King Louis XIV began embellishing the palace in 1661 by extending grandiose building wings, and laying out gardens, fountains, statues, basins, and even a zoo with exotic animals to boot. For my american readers wondering who gives a fuck about France, in 1783, the Palace was the site of the signing of three treaties of the Peace of Paris which the United Kingdom recognized the independence of the United States. For those morbidly curious about France’s use of the guillotine.... within 6 years, Paris would undergo the start of its own revolution on July 14, 1789. By October 5 1789, a mob of several thousand protesting the high price of bread, marched from the markets of Paris to Versailles. Bloodthirsty, they forced Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to return with them to Paris where their royal heads were eventually lopped off via guillotine. For those interested in more random useless trivia.... Napoleon, Emperor of the French seized control in the power vacuum in 1804, and considered making Versailles his residence, but abandoned the idea because of the exorbitant renovation costs. The Palace briefly returned to the world stage in June, 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Hall of Mirrors to end the First World War (but start the Second World War by inciting German resentment with its harsh terms).

Thanks, to American philanthropist, Rockefeller, who gave $2,166,000, (thirty million dollars today), to restore and refurnish the palace in 1928, Versailles was saved from shambles. Today, Versailles accommodates 7.7 million visitors a year. At 2:30, we faithfully joined the timed entry conga line through the Palace. There’s nothing worse in visiting a site than being crammed in with thousands of other people. I kept thinking to improve this conga line experience they should play Muzak, encourage people to hold on to preceding visitor’s hips and step to the beat. But I guess, our experience was akin to its heyday, when six to seven thousand persons, crowded into the buildings to keep it running. The crowds made the stuffy palace feel even more stuffy. I admired obscure things like the luxuriant wall paper, noticed how high the kings and queen’s beds were set off the ground, and was surprised Bernini’s sculpture of Louis XIV rested on a mantle. I longed to go back to the landscaped grounds outside… which we did. We walked until the soft yellow hazy sky turned purple blue.

Like aimless cattle, we were herded out en masse to find there were no regional trains from Versaillles to Paris since the transit workers were on strike. With Ubers charging $100 for a ride back into the city, we were resigned to eating in Versailles and waiting for congestion pricing to go down and riding a cheaper cab into town later at night. The kids were a little hungry from a day of strolling Versailles so we got a KFC snack for them— popcorn chicken, juice boxes, and 4 pieces of dark meat. Serendipitously as we were ordering food at KFC, I received a KFC rewards email. Weird. Apparently a guy named Han Low Meng in Singapore mistakenly put my email address for his rewards account by mistake. At the exact moment we were ordering, I was emailed his receipt and a reward for chicken nuggets. “Hi lowmenghan, Thank you for ordering! Here are the details of your order: 3x Original Recipe Chicken 1x Nuggets (3 pcs) 1x Whipped Potato (reg) 1x Pepsi (reg) 2X ORIGINAL RECIPE CHICKEN $ 7.10 1X COLESLAW (MED) $ 3.40 YOUR ORDER : 20191229-000276 DELIVERY DATE : 29 Dec 2019 ESTIMATED DELIVERY TIME : 02:20 PM ADDRESS : 07-325, 82, DEDOK NORTH ROAD, HDB-BEDOK, 460082 PAYMENT METHOD : Cash On Delivery CUSTOMER CONTACT NUMBER : 91759879 TOTAL : $ 26.60.

How does someone with a name low meng han, put down my email address? how are our names even similar? Low Meng apparently ordered a mix of nuggets and pieces of meat, and a couple sides like cole slaw and mashed potatoes and a soda. 10 days later, on January 7th I would receive another set of emails and rewards for chicken nuggets.... he apparently ordered the same food but added 2 egg tarts to this order. By his address and name and his chicken eating habits I have developed a profile of this random person through a little internet sleuthing. Asian, lives in a flat a little east of city center that costs about $300,000, orders more or less the same thing every 2 weeks, could be a lawyer or mechanical engineer based on linked-in profiles. Or maybe he’s a kid playing video games without a credit card and that’s why he pays cash on delivery. He eats erratically either early dinners or late lunches. But I digress. The kids at hand were still hungry despite our order. On the table next to us, a large group had left some pieces of chicken in their bucket along with a empty cups of soda and crinkles napkins and left. My nephew Matt kept joking “should we take the left-over chicken?” I thought young people these days have a strange sense of humor. but being the responsible adult that I am, I joked back, “why not?” It’s a little unusual. Of course the chicken was fine, but eating leftovers from another table is kind of taboo. After a few minutes of deliberations, he and ben ate the chicken out of the abandoned bucket and we left. They told me it tasted a bit stale... as if it had been left out on the table for a prolonged period of time.

We walked back towards the gates of Versailles. There were no taxis. The night sky was pitch black. Earlier during the day, thousands of people lined up in the forecourt to enter Versailles. Now the palace was dark... only a few desperate tourists were left scrambling trying to find their way back to the city. One black cab came by, an initial group balked at the price for a ride back to Paris. 60 euros. When they walked away, we gladly took the cab knowing it was 30 euros cheaper than Uber rates. The driver spoke chinese with a strange accent.... almost stuttering like a shanghainese. It is strange communicating in an unexpected language in a foreign country. My Chinese is limited, but I guess not as limited as my French. In chinese, I’m able to understand and transmit main ideas better.

“We’d like to go to the arc de Triomphe.” “Sure. Have you had a good time in Paris?” “Yes, we’ve seen so much. The Louvre, Pere lachaise, Eiffel Tower, Seine, Sacre Couer, Montmartre...“ “you’ve seen everything... too bad Notre Dame burned down” “Why is there so much traffic?” “The Parisians are returning from their beach cottages in Bretagne...” “they go there in the winter?” “Yes” “you’re lucky because of all this traffic you know. I originally came to Versailles to pick up a customer that I had dropped off from the airport earlier in the day, but the traffic made me late, the customer found another cab to get back to the city.. that’s why I was available to pick up passengers at Versailles late” “do you like Paris?” “Yes, I’ve been living here 25 years” “where did you come from?” “Cambodia” I had no idea France had extended to Cambodia and that Cambodia was integrated into the French Indochina union in 1887 along with the French colonies like Vietnam. In 1946, Cambodia was granted self-rule within the French Union and had its protectorate status abolished in 1949. “Really?” “Yes, I was helping a doctor there and when he returned to France, he offered to bring me, and i took the opportunity.” “It’s amazing you speak all these languages... French, Chinese, Cambodian...” “I had my son learn even more... Korean, Chinese, English, French, Spanish, and Cambodian” “that’s amazing” “it comes in handy for me, sometimes I get customers who pay $400 to hire me to drive them around for the day.” “What do you do with them?” “It’s crazy but rich Chinese love Louis Vuitton merchandise. I drive them to the LV store and they spend $20,000 on a bag, $8,000 for a watch, $5,000 for a wallet… LV limits the customer to 1 bag purchase... so oftentimes I help the buy an extra bag... a couple years ago I knew a worker there, and I was able to help my riders buy up to 5 bags!” As we were pulling up close to the arc nestled in the rich part of town, Trocadero, he warned us to beware of the gypsies. “Last week, I saved 2 old Chinese tourists from being mugged. If you see a gypsy. Just hit them to make them go away. Really. They’re persistent.” “Thanks for the advice.” As we closed the cab door and exited, we left the strange warm bubble that transported us 20 km from 18th century palace to a busy rotary where cars whiz by. Compared to the neat manicured abstract lawns of imperial palace of Versailles, French conquest and colonialism was anything but clean. In its wake, you have the massacres of Bataclan and Charlie Hebdo, very dark skinned North Africans hawking their trinkets outside major tourist sites, Cambodian taxi drivers, and an assortment of amazing Morrocan and Vietnamese restaurants delivering tastes of once-conquered lands...