You can just imagine the look on my son Josh’s face in Hong Kong today as my chair collapsed out from under me in Las Vegas as I disappeared from view in his skype video frame! He he. Fell on my bum as he kept helplessly asking “are you alright?” Are you alright?”
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!
WOW what a city. BANGKOK is alive. It is New year for them amd they celebrate with water. The streets are alive with people walking arround with water pistols and clay. Everyome is om thr street. You goota srr it to belirve it. I a, tryimg hard to stay dry. I a, im a pub lookimg out the door. Free intermet here too. The ,usic is nom stop. The people have beem doimg this for 3 days. I arrived here on Khao San Rd this mormimg 5 a, om bus from Laos. This key pad is worm out amd I a,guessing the keys. I am mot drumk. Love you all Leila
Eumice get in here. The city is alive. You would love it. Wear a bra. Pleasr come Leila. Hree internet here im pub. Ill check soom. leila
I groan. Leila is on Kao San Road where all the backpackers stay. I don’t know if I can take any more of this! I am 62. She is only 50!
Seeing the Mekong in Vientiane during dry season was a worse shock than seeing it in Luang Prabang…down hundreds of yards from the water line in the wet season. Leila, my Australian travel mate, says she thinks the dam on the Yangse River in China has also effected the water level on the Mekong.
Last night we checked out the many food stands under lights along the river offering BBQ chicken, Mekong fish and prawns and a nice hotpot but it was so hot we really didn’t feel like eating…opting for a beer instead while some raggedy children and a few adults came by begging. A young woman with pretty good English at a table full of prosperous looking Laotians next to us asked Leila where she was from. “Australia,” said Leila. “Oh, your English is so good for an Australian,” the woman said…leaving Leila laughing but speechless. After a few minutes the group left the table and a group of three little girls descended on the left-over food eating ravishly.
We wandered along to a street-side restaurant to order something a little less filling and ended up giving some cold table water to two more little girls which they guzzled down quickly, fended off a guy weaving along like he was on glue, gave our left-overs to another guy that seemed mentally ill. I don’t remember street people like this when I was here before…
When I was in Luang Prabang, I met a lovely Philippina next to me at an internet cafe. Susan works for a British non-governmental organization that delivers medical care to a rural area in SE Lao and will be here a month. She gave me her cell phone number and we promised to meet in Vientiane so tonight we will have dinner with her and her niece along the Mekong.
Yesterday morning I walked to the Post Office around the corner and down the street and then slowly swung a wide path through the city…dawdling in used book stores, Jonesing for all the quality crafts and household items in shop windows and reading pithy doggeral on t-shirts. By 4 in the afternoon I was hot and wet with sweat as I passed an old woman in a big floppy straw hat watering off the sidewalk. She didn’t see me until after she had managed to hose my sandaled feet and my ankles…sorry, sorry she begged. Oh no, no, I laughed. “Good big,” I said as I gave her the thumbs up. Then she laughed big, tickled at my enjoyment. Sanook!
This morning, tired of my guesthouse rice soup with pork for breakfast, I walked to a nearby hotel that offered an inexpensive buffet breakfast (with heart-shaped fried eggs) and spent the morning comparing travel notes and our respective country’s politics with a young Aussie couple at the table next to mine. I recounted that a couple years ago when returning to Bangkok after a month in India I would never have guessed that it would feel like heaven in the taxi traveling into the city from the airport. They both threw their heads back with a belly-laugh…saying that is exactly how they felt a week ago when they flew in after five weeks in India! Then we all had a good laugh remembering the way Bush limply muttered that he “had never been in India before,” when what he really meant was that he had never been anywhere before!
Ending the BBC news report today on the Oscar winners, the anchor noticed that the Icelandic singer Bjork was nowhere to be seen. “She was wearing the white feathered swan dress she wore her Oscar year,” he said, “and Dick Cheney shot her!”
The Tajik and Olga
In Irkutsk, when we find our seats on the train to Ulaan Baatar, we find a good-looking 40 year old Muslim man from Tajikistan in our cabin. He has studied English in school when he was a boy by showing us how tall he was, and remembers a few words. He shows us pictures of his wife and four kids back at home in Tajikistan. We show him pictures on the computer of our trek in 1996 in Kyrgzstan although aware that the Kyrgeez and Tajiks don’t really like each other very much.
We are able to figure out that he is returning to Ulaan Baatar to operate a “caterpillar” at a gold mine after a three-month summer break with his family. We soon put our sausage and cheese and bread on the little table and he pulls out his bottle of Vodka. He is charming and has a wonderful smile and a quick laugh…I like this man.
The next day Olga, an energetic middle-aged blond, begs to move from her assigned seat near the toilet at the end of the carriage so she joins us…immediately kicking the mellow Tajik up to the top bunk and spreading her belongings from one end of the cabin to the other. Fluent in English, she says she gave up her doctoral studies in Chemistry in 1993 because there was no work in her field, to become an entrepreneur and she makes the trip to Mongolia and China every few months to buy merchandise…”everything for health” she says. She instructs us where to get a cheap hotel in Beijing and gives me an empty bottle to have the Chinese traditional pharmacist fill for my psoriasis.
Soon she and the Tajik are really going at it in Russian…the bluster again…and I ask her what they are talking about. Olga is incensed: “He leaves his wife in Tajikistan to work in another country but when I ask him if she works he says no she has to stay at home and only leave when she is with him!” This goes on for awhile and is actually quite entertaining to watch…then she non-plusses Bob by showing him a picture of man (XY) and woman (XX) and showing him that with an unfinished “X” (referring to the “Y” that “there is a mistake!” When he objects she says “well maybe women are more clever. He just looks at her.
There is something in the European demeaner/attitude that brings out my anti-establishment posturing. On the flight from the U.S. to Frankfurt (Lufthansa Air) my seat was broken. “No problem,” said the sweet little blond frauline in braids. “We’ll find you another seat after everyone boards.” “Perhaps in first class” I suggest. (87.3% joking but it’s always worth a try). “I DON’T THINK SO” was the authoritarian autocratic response of this idealic frauline now converted to “big nurse.”
On boarding an open top tour bus in Berlin I ask the attendant (100% joking) whether this is the bus to Paris? I DON’T THINK SO.” is the less than friendly response while he is thinking “scheiskoff!” In Krakow our taxi driver parked his upscale white Mercedes next to a bright orange-colored street rod. “Maybe you ought to paint your taxi that color,” I suggested. Predictably…”I DON’T THINK SO!” Suspect that my attempts at humor need a total revamping.
Europeans perceive Americans as large, loud and naive. (This does not apply to me of course.) I think that the Europeans are a bit dorky. Especially men wearing shorts and regular shoes with black socks. Oh well.
Traveling continues to be a learning experience–the perception/interpretation of other cultures as well as our ability to tolerate/adapt/react is a challenge. The language barrier contributes to frustration but that is my problem, not theirs. I’m in their country. Still working on the smile. But occasionally it is difficult to smile when confronted/frustrated. Am going to schedule a session with the Buddah who seems to have a corner on smiling.
Most encounters however are rewarding. And each day offers the promise of a new adventure/experience–and that is exciting. However, it seems that adrenaline rushes are good for a day or two–then need a day of R&R. This sort of thing did not seem as necessary back in my frivilous youth. The R&R days usually are not planned…they just occur as in “crash.”
Later,
RLG
Down the Yangze River
From it’s origins in Tibet through Tiger Leaping Gorge to Chonqing every Chinese calls China’s longest river Chang Jiang and at 6300km is the third longest in the world. From Chongqing to the North China Sea just north of Shanghai, this river is known as the Yangze by Westerners. Along the way lie the three gorges, regarded by many as one of the great scenic attractions of China…at least for now.
By 2009 when the mega Three Gorges Dam is completed, the gorges will become part of history…nearly 2 million people will have been dislocated…the water will back up for 550km and flood an area the size of Singapore. The dam is five times as wide as the huge Hoover dam. The wall swallows up 26 million tons of concrete and 250,000 tons of steel. It will yield the equivalent of 18 nuclear power plants…four times more than an power station in Europe and eight times the capacity of the Nile’s Aswan Dam and half as much again as the world’s current largest river dam, the Itaipu Dam in Paraguay. and it is said that it will prevent flooding and relieve the region’s environmentally damaging dependency on fossil fuels. It will cost as much as $36 billion generating electricity that will have cost $2000 for every kilowatt of capacity.
The dam will be an epic show, Lonely Planet says, of the new 21st century Communist might and definitive proof of man’s dominance of nature. Li Peng needed a project of this magnitude, and stature says Simon Winchester in his “The River At The Centre of The World,” to revive his image and the morale of the Party, still shaken by the aftermath of Tiananmen Square tragedy.
Chinese Saying: You Can Always Fool a Foreigner
Foregoing the expensive luxury boats for foreigners, we managed to negotiate a ticket for a local Chinese boat down the Yangtze…paying two guys a dollar each to carry our luggage and lead us down the dock to the right boat which we never would have found by ourselves…although we later had our doubts about whether we were on the right boat anyway…doubts nurtured by other travellers’ stories about scams designed by smaller boats to cash in on the more expensive tickets.
Our tickets were for a four passenger compartment…so small all four people had difficulty all standing up at the same time…our fourth compartment mate being an older well-dressed Chinese man.
Waiting on the boat for an 8pm departure, we were immediately offered the entire compartment to ourselves for an additional 200 yuan (about $25) which we declined. When the older gentleman lit up a cigarette in violation of compartment rules we had our suspicion that he was a pawn in an effort…assuming we wouldn’t want a smoking partner…to extort extra money from us. But they can always fool a foreigner.
Then they came around again and wanted an extra $40 each for three side trips…only one we knew for sure we wanted…the trip down the three little gorges which is said to make it all worthwhile. The first trip was at 6:00am the next morning so we crawled into our bunks early. Waiting for sleep amid the constant noise and activity on the boat I thought about “The Gorge,” the music amphitheater in central Washington that sits absolutely on the edge of the Columbia Gorge. I really didn’t think anything I would see here could beat that. But you can always try to fool a foreigner.
A Chinese Adventure With Three Foreign Devils
Then at 2:30am…we hear banging on the door which swings open and the lights go on…a lady engages in lively conversation with our Chinese roommate of which we understand not a word. The Chinese man pulls out his ticket…it wasn’t clear who wasn’t where they were supposed to be.
The three of us responded typically the way we usually have on the whole China trip: Jana groans, oh it can’t be 6am yet as she pulls out her ticket and tries to figure it all out. I’m not moving, I said. Bob lay motionless with eyes closed…waiting for it all to sort itself out.
The lady leaves. Amid our confusion…and explanations to us in Chinese…our roommate suddenly says “bye bye” and flicks the light out as he leaves…but we had just gotten back to sleep when he came back and pointing to his nose delivered more explanations in Chinese. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with his nose. Then he pointed to his watch…oh, I thought…he points to his nose to indicate himself! Then he points to the door. He was to go at 7am. But you can always try to fool a foreigner.
On top of all this, during the night my heavy rubber slippers provided by the boat had fallen off the end of my upper bunk and hit the Chinese gentleman below me on the head…so before he left in the morning our Chinese friend pointed to my slippers and then to his head…sorry, sorry, sorry I begged him…later-peels of giddy laughter. Next time he sees Westerners on a tour he’ll probably get as far away from them as possible! Couldn’t fool a foreigner on this night.
Bus to Dali
As we pulled ourselves up into the luxury express bus we felt that we were living large…we wouldn’t have local color but we would have comfort for a change. Jana, looking at the TV monitor up front says, oh we’ll have a TV. Oh goody I said sarcastically…another Chinese movie. Then Jana said, “Guess where we are sitting?” Where, I asked looking around? The “Big Noses” are in the back again, Jana gasped!!!
But the road was good and we enjoyed the three hour trip through beautiful terraced valleys dotted with Naxi villages with red brick houses and swooping rooflines. Most houses had big double gate/doors with brass handpulls. We noticed some solar panels and saw one satellite dish on top of an official looking building. Listening to Hotel California by the Eagles, we incongruently flew past women walking slowly by the sides of the road carrying heavy loads of wood and brush on their backs.
The bus dropped us off by the highway near Old Dali before it proceeded up the road five miles to the New Town. Horse carts waited to pick up travelers…we asked to be taken to Yu’an Garden or Guesthouse Number 4 as it is called by the locals…a lovely compound with garden, free internet, homey laundry lines and showers and squat toilets down the walkway. The first chilly night we walked down the street to Marley’s Cafe and, huddled next to a charcoal fire with two other tables of western travelers, ate a delicious chicken soup.
We have discovered that after a day of bumpy bus rides, smelly squat toilets, freezing showers, hard beds in unheated guesthouses, frustrating efforts to communicate, hacking and spitting, ever present acidic gas that burns your nostrils and throats from the burning charcoal used for cooking and heat, a bed will do wonders.
Laughingnomad 