Worst Experiences

Danger in Nairobi

Posted on by Laughingnomad

We were advised to go nowhere in Nairobi on foot at night. The downtown area is poorly lit and muggings are common. When Bob was here six years ago his trekking outfit arrived late at night. He  had told someone he was going out for a walk. Before he could take off however, his trip leader pounded on his door in a panic-told Bob he didn’t dare go. So thinking the leader was a bit compulsive, Bob went down and asked a Kenyan guy in the cigarette kiosk if it was true. The guy responded that if Bob went out he would likely be mugged within two blocks.

As it turns out, at our first meeting the night before we left Nairobi, one of our well-traveled American safari mates who had been working in Spain for 4 years, was swindled out of $450 the day she arrived. They posed as police looking for counterfeit money and intimidated her into showing them the money…which they confiscated saying they needed to copy down the serial numbers at the police station. The “police station” was a sham. They were very very good she said with some chagrin.

Bob had an experience in Arusha where a guy heard the teller at a bank tell Bob to use an ATM. The guy tried to get Bob to follow him and Bob had to try to lose him.

Later, in Zanzibar, while walking along a beach Bob took a picture of a boat. He was approached by a guy who flashed a badge and told him he was a policemen and to go with him. Bob said no and walked off the beach back into town.

In Dar es Saalam, while the truck was parked in front of the internet, a “tout” followed Bob around for an hour and a half trying to get him to use his “guide” services. He wanted to show Bob something off the beaten track and after about a block and a half Bob realized there was “nothing he wanted to see.” He started heading back to the truck and the guy tried to get him to take a picture of the post office which Bob knew was a no-no. Two more guys came up to him from nowhere and flashed their badges at him and said “We are the police, come with us.” A third guy came up in uniform and told Bob to get into the car. Bob said no and walked away faster and faster until finally he ran about four blocks back to the truck. Bob said it was spooky because if they had tried to strong-arm him he didn’t know what he was going to do.

Diplomacy Egyptian Style

Posted on by Laughingnomad

As westerners we are not used to the constant demands for “baksheesh” (tipping) that make you want to blow your stack…and then they want you to be happy about it! Salaries and wages are so low that baksheesh becomes an essential means of supplementing incomes-so for a cleaner in a one or two-star hotel who might earn only about $35 a month tipping becomes the mainstay of the income.

Minimal Diplomacy
Waiter on the train as we were returning to Cairo, asks Bob “Are you happy?” “That much,” says Bob with a show of hands about two feet apart…There just is minimal diplomacy as we know it unless you are insulated in a four or five star hotel. But the older eccentric Brit eating with us in our hotel restaurant has been coming here every year for six years…and was here during the massacre in Luxor. You just have to realize they are trying to survive, he says, and that the people are living in a benign dictatorship that colors the cultural fabric.

At the airport, as we were walking up to the doors we thought we were home free. But as soon as the door opened there were two uniformed and armed police facing us. One yelled “what are you doing here!” With our bags it was obvious that we were tourists so the question was confusing. At that point, Bob retorted angrily that we were just trying to get into the airport! They let us go.

Cultural Attitudes and Mores
Is your husband looking for new wife, says the tour operator…want to trade your wife for a camel he says then to the young Irish guy visiting with his shy new Japanese wife on their honeymoon…your husband is a lucky man…if he finds new woman you just kill him and put him in the Nile.

In the souk (market) I said “see you later Alligator,” to a seller. “Here it’s not ‘After While Crocodile,’he replied. “it’s ‘In the Nile Crocodile’.” We laughed! Water is sprinkled on the streets to keep the dust down…making mud…as I walked down the street.

What are you looking for…nothing, I don’t need anything…I am just looking to appreciate…if I buy that it will just sit in my house…are you Egyptian he asked. No, I said, American…he said you think just like an Egyptian…what do you need. Nothing, I have husband and children and a house…what are you looking for…nothing…I have nothing, he said, what color do you want? Blue I said…how big do you need it…infinite size, I said not realizing what kind of game I was playing with him. Then…I have something you have never seen, he said…come look…

Young man wants to buy my shoes…with those shoes I could get dressed up and go to the disco and find a woman…!

After the souk, dodging 6 lanes of honking cars not traveling in any one lane, we cross the street for orange juice while a truck full of soldiers passed by waving and blowing kisses…also men sitting idle…not seeming to mind I was with a man…your husband is a very lucky man…to Bob again are you looking for new wife?

Later in Aswan I heard from a vendor…would you like a banana…just 30 minutes….

On the train on the way back to Cairo from Luxor…here is a flower (looked like a dandelion but smelled like a gardenia) realizing the server had to have gotten off the train at the last stop to get it…can be very charming but no clue about western sensibilities or boundaries…and I suspect they don’t care to know.

I read that even Egyptian women, who would not otherwise, wear the higab (Islamic scarf) outside the home to protect themselves from the same harassment. It is not really intimidating but just a nuisance, like a mosquito buzzing in your ear, Lonely Planet says. You can swat it away and keep it at a distance, but it’s always out there trying to get in your ear. The problem is, according to one Egyptian man, that for every 10 women approached, one will say yes. The Dutch woman on the train behind me said that her brother who travels a lot, has come across a lot of Egyptian men who hook up with Western women.

Bob And The Greeks

Posted on by Laughingnomad

How to Develop Your Patience by Traveling
On the plane to Athens the stewardess came by with a refreshment cart and Bob, who was on the inside seat and couldn’t see, asked for coffee. She told him he couldn’t have coffee but he couldn’t understand her English accent so he kept asking for coffee. Finally she scolded him good. I don’t know why she just didn’t tell him she didn’t have coffee vs telling him he couldn’t have it. We have often heard “can not!” while traveling.

As for me-she went right on by without offering me a roll. When you are on the margins of a culture you just never know for sure…why…or what?

Barri Gotic Barcelona

Posted on by Laughingnomad

In Barcelona we stayed in the Lower Barri Gotic area at Hotel Peninsular at Carrer Sant Pau, 34. Two single beds; sink; window opens into central court; very clean and nice bathroom and shower down the hall; towels, soap, toilet paper even. The hotel was on a narrow side street off the Rhumba or main promenade; full of Middle Eastern and Indian businesses. Down the street away from the Rhumba and couple blocks toward the water was a pretty rough area with prostitutes standing facing the street always with one foot up flat against the wall. Excellent cafe around the corner toward Rhumba; internet about three blocks down the Rhumba toward a statue of Columbus pointing the way West.

Bob came back late to the hotel one night about midnight. Right in front of the
hotel doors three guys walked up by him. One of them asked for the time and as Bob tried to show him his watch the guy tried to trip him. The hotel proprietor, who was on the job and alert, came running out of the hotel with a club. The men run off leaving Bob rather shaken and leery.

Big Deal
The architect Gaudi has left some remarkably wonderful work including the cathedral called the Temple Expiatiori de la Sagrada Familia. It won’t be completed before 2020. I want to come back to see it even if someone has to wheel me in here! The Gaudi Park, originally built as a planned living community, failed and was taken over by the city.

Seven properties built by the architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926) in or near Barcelona testify to Gaudí’s exceptional creative contribution to the development of architecture and building technology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Parque Güell, Palacio Büell, Casa Mila, Casa Vicens, Gaudí’s work on the Nativity façade and Crypt of the Sagrada Familia cathedral, Casa Batlló, and the Crypt in Colonia Güell represent an eclectic, as well as a very personal, style which was given free reign in the design of gardens, sculpture and all decorative arts, as well as architecture.

The work of Antoni Gaudí represents an exceptional and outstanding creative contribution to the development of architecture and building technology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Gaudí’s work exhibits an important interchange of values closely associated with the cultural and artistic currents of his time, as represented in el Modernisme of Catalonia. It anticipated and influenced many of the forms and techniques that were relevant to the development of modern construction in the 20th century.

Gaudí’s work represents a series of outstanding examples of the building typology in the architecture of the early 20th century, residential as well as public, to the development of which he made a significant and creative contribution. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Small things
How to feel stupid in another country: buy a Metro Pass and then stand there like a dummy because you cannot figure out how to get it into the intake slot where you walk through the stiles. Finally we both figured it out at once-take the paper pass out of it’s tight clear plastic cover! If you hate feeling out of control and disoriented be sure to travel-it’ll make you flexible and tolerant!

News
The International Herald Tribune co-produces a pull-out section with whatever country it is distributed in, so for example, in Spain, the paper co-produces the pull out with El Pais, the major Spanish daily. The chairmanship of the European Union changes every six months and Spain is taking its turn so the papers are covering the EU and Basque terrorism.

Night Train To Marrakech

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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The night train to Marrakech really gave us an opportunity to stretch our cultural boundaries! You have a 9 foot by 9 foot compartment with three “beds” or platforms on each side with about 18 inches in-between the two. You do not have enough room to sit up on your “bed.” In fact you almost do not have enough room to crawl into it-especially if you are in the middle or top bunks-which we were. We narrowly missed an opportunity to be in the same compartment as a crying child but Bob issued a request to the conductor and mercifully it was granted. It is 90-100 degrees F. in your compartment. A window out in the hall is open but someone slams shut the door of your compartment. Maybe the other window inside the compartment will open and maybe it won’t. If you manage to get it open one of your compartment mates will feel the draft and immediately close it. Then after awhile, in sheer desperation to be able to breath, you open it again only to have it slammed shut again.

We tumble gratefully out of the train in the morning to a warm sun and fresh morning air and the din of traffic and people everywhere. Bob and I have noticed all over Europe that people seem to make a big effort to avoid open windows and apparently “the draft.” Babies are wrapped unmercifully even on hot days!

Tangier $40 Taxi Ride

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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I think it is more difficult to ignore your own cultural filters when in a country similar to yours-for example-Europe as to America. There is a tendency to want to think that everything about a culture and a country is wonderful, which of course isn’t honest. If someone visiting the U.S. told me they thought every-thing was wonderful, I would think they were either dishonest with me or
they were a little stupid.

So with unfamiliar currency in Tangiers we were off our guard. We took a taxi to the train station to check on times/ tickets for the night train to Marrakech. Then took another taxi back into the city to use an ATM to get local currency. The taxi driver took us to a modest cafe near the wharf where we had a huge platter of delicious fried fish and shrimp with french fries. During dinner, however, Bob suddenly looked thunder-struck as he realized he had given the taxi driver $40 instead of $4…a mental miscalculation of the decimal point. We were amazed when the driver came back to pick us up! No problem, no problem he reassured us! We would get our change but would drive us around Tangier first.

That was the second mistake. It was night by this time and the tour was very nice. We saw all the other country’s embassy homes with very bored-looking armed guards standing outside the gates. The taxi driver took us to the highest part of the city with a wonderful view where he said we could get some special mint tea at a very special place. When he turned to go down a very dark and deserted dirt road I began to really panic. This is it, I thought, this is where we get knocked off and they steal our money belts! But in a couple minutes he drove onto an outcropping where there were many parked cars facing the lights of the city and indeed-there was a little shack where he took his dirty glass from under his seat, brushed it off and returned with the most delicious mint tea filled with mint leaves.

But when we returned to the train station the driver said he only had about $6 to reimburse Bob-the rest of the money was for the tour! I told Bob if that was the worst that would happen in the whole year we didn’t have anything to worry about. By the time we got on the train and he had to contend with the hot crowded compartment he forgot all about the taxi driver. This is part of the adventure we told ourselves!

Chunnel Tickets in London

Posted on by Laughingnomad

When Bob went to the train station in London to buy a train ticket through the chunnel to France, they did not bother to tell him that if he had a Eurostar ticket for travel through Europe his chunnel ticket would be 60 dollars less per ticket. (Special saver packages are not available to Europeans which may have something to do with it).

When we went back to the Waterloo station to take the chunnel; Bob tried to get a refund and they rudely refused to give it to him. So he felt gouged. On the other hand, he felt fortunate that he had the foresight to step into a travel agency on the way to Waterloo (you can’t buy train tickets in travel agencies in Europe) to ask a few questions. The very helpful agent on duty told him that when he bought the chunnel ticket, to buy a round trip ticket which was less than half the price of a one way ticket-that he wouldn’t be informed at the point of sale about the difference in price. Apparently it’s a way of making back some of the money lost when a tourist does not return to the country.

In the same way, the Eurail tickets for unlimited travel stops around Europe are very expensive and are not available to Europeans. If however; an American buys one in the states before leaving, there is a substantial savings. The same is true of the Eurostar Saver packages that allow, for example, two people who are traveling together to travel at a reduced rate. The only way we have found to deal with this is to temporarily become a Zen Buddhist.