Subways

Almost Lost On The Subway

Posted on by Laughingnomad

This week Josh and I went to the Beijing Exhibition which is a miniature replica of the city in a huge building. Josh says they have one of these in every major city. Very well done! Then we walked through Tiananmen Square. It was full of tourists as we are still in the Chinese New Year season…one family asked to have our pictures taken with them. You know…we were a curiosity! I have had that happen before in rural China and other out-of-the-way places.

Then we were going to take the subway back to Lido…the neighborhood where Josh lives. The subway was packed of course. Josh says, “get on!” Which I did. Only there was no room for Josh! The doors closed and the train took off with Josh standing on the platform! As he receded from sight I hollered Josh! Josh! with my nose pressed against the door window! The Chinese on the train thought that was pretty funny! Stupid Laowi (foreigners)! I had just been following Josh around and had no idea where to get off. So I got off at the next stop and called Josh on the cell phone and told him where I was. What did we do before cell phones! So along comes the next train with Josh’s sweet face in the window!

Washington Heights

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The “F” subway line, if you take it to the very end at the northern tip of Manhattan Island, lets you off in a Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights. Everyone on the streets and in the stores were Spanish-speaking giving us the feeling we were in another country altogether!

The sidewalks were filled with cheap clothes…Bob snagged a turtleneck pull-over for $2.00 and I bought a pair of stylish black snow boots for $25. We had pork roast, ribs and fried sweet plantains at a restaurant but weren’t sure if we were getting a good sampling of Dominican food.

Vibrant Bangkok

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Bangkok Air From Koh Samui to Bangkok again. Not a pretty city but it’s vibrant. The populace, as with much of Asia, lives outdoors-almost all 10 million of them. It is increasingly cosmopolitan and this year seems to have more farangs (Westerners) than I can recall in my several former visits here.

It is a paradox of a city. Some big money and big establishments with big prices but the vast majority is poor and the cost of living (by most western standards) is inexpensive. Traffic predictably chaotic with frequent gridlock. Travel by sky train and new subway system redeeming (and air-conditioned).

Walking is an adventure with uneven and poorly constructed sidewalks, often with holes, open pits, and unstable underfoot tiles– exposed haphazard electrical wiring and the mangiest dogs anywhere –all of them breeding exponentially. Hard to tell if they have any owners. Half of the dogs have orthopedic disability either from vehicle vs dog and/or intracanine squabbles. They sleep on the sidewalks during the day and roam at night occasionally in packs that cause a pause and change of direction for us pedestrians.

Shops, vendors, food stalls on wheels, open front restaurants, open sewers, tuk-tuks; all contribute to a cacophany of sound and smell that paradoxically continue to be both enticing and repelling. Bangkok is not renowned for it’s aesthetics. It is visited for it’s populace…the Thai people.

Smiles and accomodation prevail—but who knows what is lurking beneath…best to accept the presentation at face value and not analyze. The attitude, dictums of the Budda prevail. Mei pen rai (“whatever”).  As a passenger on a motorcycle taxi the driver, without looking, pulls out and speeds into the flow of traffic. “Slowly, slowly”, says I. “Mai pen rai, Budda will take care of us,” is the nonchalant response. The concept of liability has not reached these shores. Persons or events are either lucky or not lucky. Inevitable comparison of societies is fraught with subjectivity and tilted by one’s biases. Perhaps it is best (and more just) to live and let live. Enough. RLG

In The Metro Never To Return

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Our homestay in Moscow is in the “burbs.” Tanya works for a French men’s underwear company and later admits that her son is the wholesaler and she works for him under the table. When Bob says he wants her to bring home a red French thirty dollar thong for him, she giggles but doesn’t believe him.

She is lively and we love to make her laugh by telling her how good a cook she is…fried potatoes, boiled eggs, sauted chicken, toast and cucumber and tomato salad for breakfast! She says she taught herself English three years ago using a book and audio tapes. Her apartment is brand new IKEA and spotless…when she tells us her mother was German I said to Bob “I knew it!” We sleep in her comfortable living room on a couch made out into a bed…Liam, a 24 year old, from Vancouver B.C., traveling a similar route as we are sleeps in her bedroom and Tanya sleeps on a mat on the floor in the tiny kitchen–her guests supplant or probably exceed her income.

Our first foray into downtown Moscow is quite an adventure…we can’t read the Cyrillic words on the walls of the underground so we look closely at the first three letters…and even then ended up nowhere near where we wanted to go…so reasoning that if we just get back on the train going the way we came from we could start out again where we started out before. But of course there was no way this was going to work in Moscow. What started out to be a 30 minute trip ended up being 2 hours. All we could think of the whole time in the underground was the old MTA song by the Kingston Trio:

Well, let me tell you of the story of a man named [Bobby}
On a tragic and fateful day.
He put ten roubles in his pocket, took his family,
Went to ride on the M. T. A.

Well, did he ever return?
No, he never returned and his fate is still unknown.
(What a pity! Poor ole [Bobby.} Shame and scandal. He may ride forever. Just like Lenin and Trotsky.
He may ride forever ‘neath the streets of Moscow.
He [could have been] the man who never returned…