Hotel

Koh Samui

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I arrived on Samui, an island in the south of Thailand, from Bangkok on tuesday. Doug, my son and his Thai wife Luk found me a lovely quiet hotel with a pool right in the middle of Lamai but back off the street. Of course there was a method to their madness…Luk loves the pool but last night, she hit the bottom and chipped a tooth. She’ll have it fixed in Trang, where she is from, when we take Ting Tong (their Shamitzu) to stay with her mother while we all go to Kuala Lumpur next month. Prices much lower in Trang.

Bought an internet card at the IT Internet Complex up on the ring road so now if I walk up to the 2nd floor veranda of the hotel I can get WiFi reception on my computer. There is WiFi access over much of the island now.

Hard to believe how much Samui has developed since I was here two years ago. And the government has recently eased up on foreign investment after having previously clamped down. But a welcome change from noisy smoggy Bangkok. Blue sky…blue water…eye candy.

Last Days In Jinghong

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Joe, a gregarious Dai tour guide who hangs out at the tourist haunts looking for business invited me to join him and his family and friends, including a young French couple, at the new BBQ restaurants on the road along the river…the ones we couldn’t find before. His English was great and we shared many ideas. “My heart is breaking with the pollution in the environment,” he said. I told him about Amy’s International School and it’s mission to bring east and west together. Not against each other, he asked? No I said, entwining my fingers. Together. He liked that, as he entwined his own fingers. I told him he had one foot in each culture. He liked that too. Then he wrote a C on one shoe and a W on the other shoe as we laughed.

It is the Spring Festival here and fireworks are going off everywhere. Over 20-40 small dishes (river snails, cow’s skin, river moss and the like) we raised small glasses of beer too many times to shouted toasts…first among ourselves (we women toasted to our beauty…!) and then with a group of about 20 Anhi teachers sitting at the next table.

The next day a German woman and her son, who is getting an advanced degree in business in Hangzhou (SW of Shanghai), invited me to go with them to a small village on the other side of the Mekong River by ferry and then tuk tuk. She is here, like me, visiting her progeny. Her son has been here three years and is fluent in Mandarin…as are many of the Westerners I’ve met here. A group of American high school girls here in Jinghong on break from on a one year exchange program in Beijing to learn Mandarin amazed me with their ability to speak the language…their futures will be bright with opportunities.

I will be glad to leave the An Ya Jiu Dian Hotel, however. It is newer…clean and very nice with satellite TV and a hot and cold water cooler for about $7…and friendly owners. It’s just up the street from the western-oriented Mei Mei Restaurant on Man Lan Lu. But there is a restaurant down an ally behind the hotel…outside my window…that starts up about midnight…with many shouted toasts…and finally subsides about 3am. Ear plugs only take the edge off.

No lack of internet cafes on this street!

And I won’t miss the Asian toilet, if you know what I mean. The shower head is above the open-hole toilet in the floor so one must be very careful where one steps.

Zhondian aka Shangri-La

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Bob took a flight south from Kunming to Mangshi and then on by bus to Ruili near the Burma border.

Jana and I left Kunming on a Yunnan Airlines flight to the village of Zhongdian, a mainly Tibetan town near the Tibet border. The view of the sun glinting off the snow-capped 13 peaks of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Range out of the plane window on the way to Zhongdian was breathtaking. The highest peak is 5596 meters and runs 35km from north to south and 12 km from east to west. Zhongdian, 198 km north of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, at 3200 meters high, marks the start of the Tibetan world.

Jana and I took a cold taxi ride to the unheated Tibet Hotel and booked a $2 double room on the second floor with squat toilets next door. We dumped our luggage and went to the freezing cold hotel coffee shop across the parking lot for breakfast. A young Western couple came in about 15 minutes after we had ordered. We waited about 45 minutes and finally asked the waitress where our food was. After much back and forthing it was finally determined that our breakfast had been served to and eaten by the young couple. He was very apologetic but she kept saying to the waitress “well, you brought it to our table!” So we had to reorder and wait again for our food.

Then we warmed up awhile in the sun on the hotel veranda before walking through Zhongdian-buying our regular supply of necessities- toilet paper and water.

We laughed when we came upon a sparsely stocked department store with Santa Claus singing jingle bells inside the front door. We looked for but could not find a towel to buy as the hotel charged 50 cents touse a towel for the hot water shower that is only available from 7pm to11pm.

Any place in the shade was freezing cold but we were warm as long as we were under the sun. We ate a late lunch at the Tibet Cafe where two young Tibetan waitresses were huddled around a charcoal stove. We talked to a youngish German woman with a small child-the only other customer in the cafe-who had been living in Zhongdian and studying tourism. She suggested that instead of going south to Lijiang on the main road, we take the road from Zhongdian to Baishuitai and then on to Lijiang. The road follows the Yangtzse River through Tiger Leaping Gorge. We looked at all the maps and pictures hanging on the walls; read the travelers tip books and laughed at some of the stories-some of them not so nice about the Tibet Hotel. We ate noodles and shared hot Chocolate cake.

Jana went back to the Tibet Hotel to crawl into bed and get warm with the electric hot pad under the bottom sheet while I walked several miles looking for the Gyalthang Dzong Hotel, a US joint-venture hotel, which was nowhere to be found. After a cold day, we spent a cozy evening reading in our warm beds heated by an electric pad under the sheets.

Thursday Dec 5
The next morning we stayed in our warm beds and worked on our journals and read guidebooks. We looked for a heated restaurant for breakfast but found none. Finally we we found the Camel Cafe on the main drag through town where Jana had Banana Oatmeal Porridge with condensed milk and I had the infamous backpacker Banana Pancake with sugar. Now I know why banana pancakes are so popular with young backpackers…with no syrup the bananas make the pancakes a little moist and sweet.

We found the bus station and bought tickets to the Baishuitai limestone plateau. Then we took the Number 3 bus to the Ganden Sumtseling Gompa-a 300 year old Tibetan monastery complex with around 600 monks. The monastery is considered the most important in southwest China.

Jana had been given a crystal by a friend and was asked to bury it as close to Tibet as we could get. So we spent some time out on the hill behind the monastary looking for an appropriate place when we came upon two old men fingering some beads. Jana chose to drop the crystal among some carved rocks under a tree behind the old men while I recorded the event with her camera. Satisfied with mission number two, we made our way through the maze of buildings, back down to the road, visiting with several young monks along the way…taking picture of one looking out a window with his little dog and another on a cell phone.

We ate dinner at a Tibetan style hotel next to the monastary….sliced sauteed (dry cooked) Yak meat, which was delicious, an eggplant and tomato dish and what turned out to be lamb neck bones on curried rice.

In the evening the Tibet Hotel coffee shop was full of smoking Chinese guys so we drank hot lemonade at the Snow Drift Cafe across the street from the Hotel, sat on a couch in front of their charcoal stove and visited with two girls, Phyllis (German but living in Switzerland) and Alex (English but living in the States and attending Ohio State in Columbus) who were on vacation from their MBA exchange program in Shanghai. We exchanged travel tips for awhile and then fell into a conversation about the Chinese economic system or lack therof. I gave them my book, �The Coming Collapse of China� in exchange for some chocolate and Jana heated up a sewing needle with a match so one of the girls could puncture a blister on her foot after her two day trek through Tiger
Leaping Gorge.

At the end of the evening, the cafe dog that had befriended us earlier fell asleep on the couch between Jana and me. We looked at the walls full of pictures of Chinese tourists that the cafe owner had previously led on tours through Tibet. We watched the Tibetan waitress playing with a Chinese puzzle. Then we reluctantly walked back across the street to our cold hotel room.

A stay in this town followed by a bus trip through Baishuitai, along the Tiger Leaping Gorge, to Lijiang would top my list of the ten best places to travel…in good weather.

Hong Kong

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Wednesday November 20 2002
We flew to Hong Kong from Bangkok on China Airways at 3pm…a one hour time change. We noticed the metal spoon and fork that came with our food service but with plastic knife instead of a metal one…

I am always forgetting to fill out departure and arrival cards and you would think I�d have memorized my passport number by now! Difficulty finding information about bus and train to Hong Kong; finally found an ATM after a fashion. On the way out of the airport we saw guy in suit squatting, talking on his cell phone: past and present.

A very plush train took about 15 minutes to travel to Kowloon Hong Kong (vs. the bus that took one hour) but was about $10 each. A young professional woman with a badge walked very slowly through the train carriages casing everyone…watching for what…?

Garden Lee Guesthouse Cameron Road
We had made a reservation via email with Charlie Chan, the manager, for a Y400 (8 Yuan to the dollar) a night triple but when we arrived we were informed the triple was not available so they gave us two doubles for the same price. We were given a handful of keys…key to street enclosure; lift to eighth floor; key to hall door in entry; key to room just a little larger than a double bed; key to valuables drawer…

Applied for a multiple entry 90 day visa through the guesthouse. Then we got something to eat at small noodle shop up the street; were taken to the very back and seated.

Impressed by cleanliness and orderliness of the city; was told that plain clothed police patrol the tourist areas and fine anyone tossing garbage Y600. Little old ladies with brooms and dustpans keep the gutters clean just like the cities of SE Asia.

Bob and I sat on the steps of guesthouse and waited for Jana who came in from the airport on the bus about 11:30pm. Then went across the street to noodle shop so Jana could get something to eat; seated at the very back again…

Cambodia Today

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Pol Pot, the architect of one of the most brutal and radical revolutions that had its origins in Beijing China, was never brought to international justice. He died in 1989 from Malaria (or some say a massive heart attack). Some of his cohorts are running free; some are in jail in Phnom Penh.

The guesthouse where I was staying offered motorcycle tours to Pol Pot’s house and grave about four hours from Siem Reap but knowing that there are still a few thousand Khmer Rouge out there and knowing they hate the Americans I decided to stay put. Today Hun Sen of the Cambodian People’s Party, who destroyed all his opposition with political guile and cunning and likes to be called The Strongman of Cambodia, was elected Prime Minister in 1998, amid rioting and demonstrating, but recently seems to be a force for stability. There will be another election in 2003.

The People
Even though the country is very poor, the Cambodian people are surprisingly open, cheerful and friendly…busily going about their business on bicycles and motorcycles…scars lying just beneath the surface by years of conflict and the legacy of an estimated four to six million landmines dotting the countryside awaiting new victims. As many as 40,000 Cambodians have lost limbs due to mines…the highest per capita rate in the world…about one in 250 people. But they are reserved and guarded with foreigners…those human ATM machines.

At the Goldiana Hotel in Phnom Penh, the desk folder contained 7 double sided pages of Non Governmental Organizations with 35 NGO’s listed on each page…all attempting in one way or another to undue the ravages of war…providing over 70% of the income of the country.

It is heartening to see children gleefully playing marbles in the street and friends laughing over a beer in a sidewalk cafe…life bravely continuing on. We still prefer to eat at sidewalk food stalls, many of which are really extensions of the family kitchen that is all moved back inside at the end of the day. We did stop in one restaurant for Bob’s favorite drink, iced coffee and my favorite drink, Lemon Juice, to find that as many as 35 older children from the countryside lived and worked there so of course Bob entertained them all with his camcorder…their giggling and laughing…

New Delhi

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July 27-30
The hotel arranged to have us taken to the railway station in their car for the 6am train to Delhi, so at 5am the streets are full already and workers are queued up at the tea stalls for breakfast. In Africa the pace was slow and men sat around doing nothing. Here, sure, some are lying on just a small dirty piece of cloth on the sidewalks asleep but most men are up and about-energetic and eager for the day’s work-meager as it will be. Interestingly you seldom see women on the sidewalks. As the train pulled into the station I looked at it dubiously, but it turned out to be ok. It was not the cleanest train ever but had air conditioning-the most important thing in this heat.

On the outskirts of Delhi I sleepily watch the plastic and cloth shacks and the naked children whiz by but come alert when I catch a glimpse of a young man seemingly out of place in his nice new yellow shirt and new-looking grey slacks sitting on a stool and leaning on his arms high on a bank above the railroad tracks…maybe he is dreaming…maybe he’ll be going to school…or to work in the new hotel in New Delhi this new day…

Four hours later we stumble out of the train station behind the only two other young but tired looking white tourists who keep glancing back at us…I guessed French or Italian…and probably wondering who else from the west besides them is nuts enough to be in India in the summer. It is 106 degrees on this day. We have not seen one American in India.

The taxi ride to the hotel and subsequent auto-rickshaw rides in the insane traffic looking at alternative hotels all afternoon does me in. We finally choose the Ajante Hotel primarily because it has a restaurant and high speed internet downstairs. For two days I refuse to leave my air conditioned room except for brief forays into the internet cafe. Bob braves the heat, noise and traffic to explore the city by himself, getting lost of course and having to take a rickshaw back to the hotel.

Udaipur India

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July 18-21 2002
To make it easy on ourselves we left at 4am for a one-hour flight north to Udaipur in the state of Rajasthan. When the taxi pulled out we noticed the food stall down the street was still doing a brisk business at that hour. And with the exception of upscale Marine Drive along the bay, the streets on both sides all the way to the airport were covered at intervals with neighborhoods of pavement dwellers.

Our hotel in Udaipur, the Caravanserai (a word meaning traditional accommodation for camel caravans) is built entirely out of stunning white marble-floors, stairs, bannisters, walls-quarried about 50 miles away.

We have a view of Lake Pichola which is drying up because of the drought that has sadly plagued northern India for the last five years. The famous Lake Palace Hotel usually out in the middle of the lake is now actually on the bank.

This year’s expected monsoon has not arrived as yet–late with no rain predicted. Indiginous tribal women (adivasis) in their brightly colored saris with contrasting choli’s (sari blouses) crouch on their heels at the dhobi ghats (place for laundering) on small platforms out in the water to launder clothes and bathe themselves. Our hotel is on one of the tangle of streets in the old city and after a short walk we pile into bed for a nap.

The Internet Cafe
The internet cafe around the corner is run by a good looking 26 year old guy who likes being a businessman but went to medical school (Indians don�t need 4 years in a university first) to please his father. He and his wife live with his parents and siblings. His father owns a hotel and I gather the family is from an upper caste. A cousin who is single helps the young internet cafe owner with his business.

They ask me if I think things in their town are expensive and I reply that heavens no-for us westerners everything is very inexpensive. They say that some foreigners think everything here is too expensive. I ask who in the heck thinks this. They laugh and say emphatically “the Israelis.”

Then we talk about customs and the cousin says if he falls in love with a girl outside of his caste it would be impossible to marry her. Similarly, later around the corner we talk to a guy on a motorcyle who is on his way to visit his girlfriend of five years who he sadly can’t marry because she is not of his caste. I put my hand over my heart in sympathy for him.

Nice

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From Avignon we took a train southeast to Nice on the Mediterranean and stayed there in a virtual apartment in the Hotel Constadt a block from the water. Spent most of the two days basking in the sun…with a few topless sun-worshippers…people watching on the Promenade…peaceful at this time of year…the sky filled with colorful kites.