The Gadabout

The Land of Many Zeds

2011-08-06T21:21:00.006+02:00

Victoria Falls from the Zambia side

We managed to get out of Malawi before the demonstrations started. I will say that Malawis struck me as an exceedingly laid back and mellow people. Things must be pretty bad for them to take to the streets, and the President, "His Excellency", must feel pretty threatened for his security forces to open fire on them. I hope things improve significantly and rapidly.

While languishing in Lilongwe, I had been unable to face the idea of getting to the coast of Mozambique via three minibuses and a potentially multi-kilometer walk across the Malawi/Mozambique no-man's-land of the border crossing.
James and Rob, two thirds of the Gang of Six, took pity on me over a most delicious Indian curry and let me continue to tag along. The rest of the Gang had gone to Zambia already. We crossed into Zambia and began to look for a nice spot to bush camp in. Bush camping is basically short term squatting. You find a place where there are no signs of life where you're consequently likely to go unbothered by inquisitive locals. It took a while, but just before the last light went down on the day and after we'd purchased an enormous bag of charcoal, we pulled off the road, into an untended field covered with high grasses, and made camp with a nearly full moon, saving a lot of AAA battery use in my headlamp.

The next morning, we drove through Zambia's capital, Lusaka. Lusaka is a strangely bland mix of Africa and suburbia. There are dudes trying to sell you iphone covers and wooden carvings at the stop lights just outside the spacious parking lot of a fully Western mall, complete with home furnishing superstores and fried chicken chains ("Steers"). I think James was a little embarrassed by Rob's and my excitement at the prospect of drip coffee from an overpriced Starbucks-ish cafe, but even he was impressed by the toilets at the mall, fully equipped with Xlerator hand dryer! This was where I realized that heading south in Africa means heading towards, admittedly potential, luxury and infrastructure. A hand dryer sighting is pretty significant for me. A functioning hand dryer is definitely noteworthy. An Xlerator sighting is gaspworthy; the only thing that could top it is a Dyson Airblade, and I don't want to be greedy.

After doing some supply top-ups in Lusaka, we continued along the smooth, recently paved main highway for some kilometers before heading south towards the Zambezi River, which marks the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. An overlander heading north had recommended a campsite called Zambezi Breezers. While the name is evocative of a strangely colored, sweet wine cooler, it is one of the nicest campsites I've visited. The owners go to great pains to ensure green grass, which is so much nicer and cleaner to camp on than dirt. Sited right on the Zambezi, you can see Zimbabwe on the other side of the river, you can hear the hippos snorting below you, and you are advised to stay well clear of them when they are on land.

This is a good time to talk hippopotamus. Along with buffalos and crocodiles, they are responsible for more human deaths than any other African animals. Fear not the leopard and the lion, but tremble before a hippo making its way to the water! Hippos spend all day in the water, protecting their skin from the sun. I might do the same in Africa, were it not for the omnipresent crocs and/or bilharzia. The hippos come out of the water at night to graze. They can trek quite a ways inland to forage for their food. They can also run surprisingly fast for such cumbersome-looking creatures, both along the river bottom or on the ground, and they don't like for you to get in between them and the water. That's where a lot of the trouble comes in, and it generally results in the human being bit in half or some similarly gruesome outcome. They also have a reputation for bumping the underside of boats with their considerable bulk. That gives the crocs a good opening to make a meal of you, even if the hippo's rage is then fully vented. All this adds a new dimension to the calculation of getting out of the tent and going to the toilet in the middle of the night when you are smack in between the hippos' river refuge and feeding grounds. It really is easier to wait until the morning.

Elephants crossing Zambezi, pic taken by Jimbo

For all that, I never even got a good look at a hippo at Breezers, but I also didn't wee in the night. Our last night there, I'd finished my shower and was heading back to the truck when I saw James running with his camera to the river. It was a still night with a full moon. I joined the guys on the bank where the hippos were snorting just below us, hidden from view by reeds and bushes. In the middle of the river, right under the bright moon, three elephants walking in a line were crossing the Zambezi. It was one of those unexpected and beautiful moments, a prized memory I'll remember for a long time. And to think that those ellies brought no passports, had no visas, got no entry or exit stamps when they moved from Zim to Zambia (they saved at least $85 USD, assuming they're not citizens of either nation).

Vic Falls Bridge - the lady in the hat directs traffic

We could have stayed another relaxing day at Zambezi Breezers Wine Cooler, but we packed up the next day and headed for Livingstone, Zambia, a prime beneficiary of Robert Mugabe's wrecking of neighboring Zimbabwe. We've already had the biology lesson for the day; now let's tackle history. If you were already confusing Zambia with Zimbabwe, let me muddle you further. Back in the day, i.e. the 1960s, there was no Zam or Zim, there was Northern and Southern Rhodesia, named after Cecil Rhodes, who was the British Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, a founder of De Beers, creator and funder of Rhodes Scholarships, and a great colonial booster at the turn of the turn of the 20th century. He was instrumental in building the railways from South Africa up, including the bridge over Vic Falls, and generally comes off as an autocratic and flawed visionary (though I admittedly know very little about him, and most of that is from Wikipedia and some informational hut at a bungee jumping office, so take that into account). Both of the Rhodesias were white-ruled, as was true in most of Africa up into the 1960s. Independence movements then began to gain momentum across the continent, and by the 1970s, it was a different kind of governance in the former British colonies. If I may generalize, unfree minority rule by whites was replaced by unfree minority rule by blacks. And a lot of places changed names. Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, and in 1980 Robert Mugabe became its president. By 1997, once the UK stopped funding the "willing buyer, willing seller" program, he began his policy of land redistribution, which largely entailed squatters taking over white-owned farms amidst escalating threats by armed militias, eventually driving white Zimbabweans off the farms or out of the country entirely. Pretty soon, Zimbabwe had to start importing maize, which it formerly used to export around Africa. Hyperinflation set in, hitting 79,600,000,000% mid-November 2008. These were not good times for Zimbabweans, and tourism fell off. What was once Zim's main tourist draw, the town of Victoria Falls, which is at the base of the eponymous waterfalls, stopped getting the visitors. Tourists still visit the falls, they just do so from the Zambian side, at Livingstone. The worst thing to happen to Zimbabwe is probably the best thing to happen to Zambia. You can now buy $50 trillion Zimbabwean notes as a souvenir.

The Pilot, the Monica, the Angels - Vic Falls Microlight

Livingstone is the "adventure capital" of Zambia. You can bungee jump off Vic Falls Bridge, you can jump off the gorge in a gorge swing, you can take a microlight flight over the falls, ride a helicopter through the gorge, white water raft the Zambezi, etc, etc. There are endless ways to spend your dollars; I had to choose widely. But whatever choice you make, it won't be cheap. First expensive choice: microlight over Vic Falls. I'd never even heard of a microlight, but it's basically an ultralight airplane that seats a couple of people. It's loud, it's chilly, but you're in the open air, not enclosed in a cabin. It was awesome. It would have been even better if my German pilot weren't trying to use the event as a prostylizing tool. Here are a few choice quotes that I managed not to snort at: "Doesn't it (the spray from the Falls, which typically rises 40m or 1300 feet) look like angels rising up to heaven?" and "Do you see that rainbow? If you let it, it will follow you forever." Those quotes don't quite get at his pushy conversion agenda, but I think they give you the flavor of what was making me roll my eyes. Nonetheless, when he was quiet, I was enthralled with the view. We flew directly over the Falls, the twisted gorge below, as well as the Zambezi upriver, where I spotted elephants, hippos, and crocs just chilling in the morning sun.

None of us fell out! On this rapid....I fell out twice.

My next dollar-sucking adventure activity was white water rafting on the Zambezi. First item on the morning's agenda was signing the indemnity form. Now, when you're given an indemnity form IN AFRICA, you should take heed. Which I did. I still ended up with two black eyes. This was my first white water rafting experience, though I do not plan for it to be my last. Somehow Rachel and I ended up spending most of the 15 rapids in front (that's me upper left, holding on for dear life), and I managed to thwack my forehead right between my eyes just below my helmet with my very own paddle. Because I'm a very coordinated woman and a natural athlete.

Nonetheless, the hardest part of that day was the hike down to the river, made on some kind of typically African janky ladder-like structure made of random branches that went on forever. I made the mistake of wearing my "Peps", which are knockoff Converse Chuck Taylor wannabes that I picked up at the Pep store in Livingstone and have no tread whatsoever. The oar was basically my walking stick on the descent; without it, I would have gone down it ladder-style, no question. After that indemnity-reflection-inducing activity, I was relieved to climb in an inflatable raft and traverse crocodile- and hippo-riddled rapids. The day really was loads of fun, and I would like to commend SafPar for doing a great job and having very fun, competent, and professional staff. Sadly, this is unusual in Africa, all the more reason for me to mention these guys here.

Another campsite where you don't want to wee in the night

The night I was nursing my-soon-to-be-black-eyes, we sneakily bush camped where this photo was taken. Pictured here is the gorge that the Falls have been carving for millenia. In fact, Vic Falls has moved many times. As the water dissolves the sandstone that's layered in with basalt, the drop moves further upriver. The basalt is hard stuff and takes a long time to erode, but the sandstone is easy work for the average 38,430 cubic feet flowing per second over the falls. While Victoria Falls may make David Livingstone and my German microlight pilot envision angels gliding up to heaven, I think it's impressive and beautiful enough without the celestial comparisons.

Breezing Through Malawi

2011-07-19T09:20:00.001+02:00

Lake Malawi shore, early morning

When the Group of Six first picked me up, there were actually only four of them. We met Jenni and Pete the next day just in time to be blocked from traveling down a southern Tanzanian road that, within the last two years, now runs through a national park. Since foreigners pay entry fees for both vehicles as well as themselves for each 24 hour period in the park, it was going to cost us $600 to drive along this road. Locals pay 1000 Tanzanian Shillings for the same privilege, which is less than a dollar. Welcome to Africa!
Rather than pay that ridiculous amount of money, we backtracked and found a deserted grassy plateau where we could camp.

This out of the way spot was quiet and beautiful, but not completely uninhabited. For here we encountered the siafu ant, yet another of an African pest that the world didn't need. These ants roam, thoroughly swarming whatever patch of ground they happen to be on. Should you step on them, scores immediately start crawling on your shoes, up your legs, getting as far as they can until you flick them off. They are big, and they lock on. Of course, they bite. Poor Jenni got them first, then some got on Pete, whereupon he, with real flair for the dramatic, shot them with a flare gun. Since we were next to waist-high dry grass, we had our first bush fire of the night. The second one was more intentional and served to warm us and cook the chili. The next day, we drove all the way to the border with Malawi, leaving Tanzania behind. The border proceedings were orderly by my much lowered standards and quick by anyone's standards.

The defining geographic feature of Malawi is Lake Malawi, part of the Great Rift Valley, which keeps getting bigger because the Nubian and Somalian tectonic plates keep pulling apart. If you look at a map of Africa, you can see how much of this rift, or tear, in the earth's crust has filled up with freshwater, at least south of the Sahara. Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika, and Lake Malawi, not to mention smaller lakes such as Nakuru and Navaisha all appear, to my uneducated eye, to be the work of tectonic action. Following the western shore of the lake, we made our way south and stayed at a proper campsite, which was great because I had not availed myself of the bush shower facilities these guys have and was consequently pretty ripe. The other nice thing about proper campsites is they have bars. And bars in Malawi have Kuche Kuche, the hilariously named local beer. We arrived at night, so it wasn't until the next day that I could see how lovely the lake is. The water is very blue and far off in the distance, you can make out Tanzania (further south you can see Mozambique instead). The lake is so immense that it's often referred to as a sea.

The excursion du jour the following day was high up in the hills to visit Livingstonia. Named after the famous explorer Dr. Livingstone, the town was founded by Scottish Presbyterian missionaries who couldn't take the malarial conditions found at lake level and sought out a more salutory climate to spread the Good Word. Now, it's a sleepy little city with not much more than a technical college and a church with a tin roof and a stained glass window depicting Dr. Livingstone encountering native Africans. He's got his compass and his sextant and the locals have the African equivalent of togas. Pretty tasteful depiciton for the early 1900s which is when all these big red brick buildings were built.

The next day we headed further south down the lake near Kande Island. The particular campsite we stayed at, Kande Beach, does a booming business in the big overland trucks plying the highways of Africa. They look like semis, but they act as buses (max capacity 24 or so, and there were five of them at our campsite. The next day were the Overland Olympics, which I found rather a frightening prospsect. Luckily, so did Pete and Jenni, and they had a plan to escape. In these unofficial Olympics, each truck constitutes a competing team, there are events like tug-of-war and three-legged races, and there is assuredly large amounts of booze a-flowing. For me, it's a bit like New Orleans Mardi Gras; I'd be happy to watch the proceedings from a comfortable balcony in the French Quarter, but I don't want to be in it, wading through the muck of the actual scene. I was going to miss the pig roast feast scheduled as the closing ceremony, which was the only real bummer. We left the four others to compete and represent whatever contingent would have them, and we headed west onto the Viphya Plateau.

View from the Fire Tower Hill, near Luwawa Dam

The Luwawa Forest Lodge was our home for the next three nights, and this place won me over, even if we did have numerous skirmishes against the siafu, including one battle where they were swarming the camping spot I'd staked out. I squealed very much like a girl, kicked off my shoes, and started frantically picking these critters off my feets, legs, and pants. Pete was a hero and retrieved my shoes with a stick, flinging them to knock the ants off. There were still a few ant heads embedded in the rubber of the flip flop afterward. But let's get back to how nice Luwawa is; it's nice and cool, even cold sometimes, particularly on clear nights. There is a constantly stoked wood oven that provides hot water at all times. Hot water availability is pretty unusual in most of Africa. Even more unusual, the water supply comes from a nearby stream that is actually so clean and free of parasites and other scaries that it's drinkable! The last drinkable tap water I encountered was in Cairo, and there it tasted like bleach. The plateau is dotted with tree plantations, and the lodge has made the most of the setting, marking numerous trails in the area. The owners have two giant, obedient mutts that we could drag along with us on our hikes. It was really a lovely time partly because we had the campsite all to ourselves. A few guests stayed in the lodge, but the group of fifty English schoolkids due to arrive were delayed a day. That, and the manager's generous offer of a free night, persuaded us to stay one more night. This was very canny of him because we were running out of food, so we ended up spending loads more on dinner at the lodge. But tender beef stroganoff and chocolate cake with custard sauce are hard to come by in Africa, so I'm not complaining. Plus talking with expats always gives you an interesting perspective on a place, by which I mean, you learn what a hassle every little thing is.

For example, Malawi is very poor and heavily dependent on foreign aid, much of it British. His Excellency, President Bingu wa Mutharika, recently purchased a presidential jet, using some funds from the Brits that were not earmarked for such a purpose, Malawi having many more urgent needs than a jet to whiz the Prez around his petite nation. Around the same time, some diplomatic cables were leaked showing the British High Commissioner to Malawi commiting the cardinal sin in politics - telling the truth - and His Excellency promptly ejected him and his family with 72 hours notice. Her Majesty's Government responded in kind, which doesn't seem to have been expected on the part of the increasingly authoritarian politico. Now there are intermittent petrol and diesel shortages, not unknown before all this and generally caused by foreign exchange shortages, but these can't have been improved by the diplomatic row. The new rule is you can only fill up your vehicle's gas tank at the petrol station. Sounds sensible at the outset, yes? But in a country where all kinds of businesses and residences rely on generators, either due to the crap infrastructure or simply the geographic distance from same, filling up a jerry can doesn't make you a hoarder; it makes you the norm. We've found diesel without any real work so far, but the petrol queues are absolutely insane. I've never seen lines of cars this long. Ever.

And Now For Something Completely Different!

2011-07-14T18:13:00.000+02:00

Having been in Africa since April, I knew it was time, past time in fact, for me to go on safari. Due to my reluctance to ply the crap roads of Kenya, I had flown all the way down to Zanzibar, which meant I'd have to double back quite a distance to get to the Serengeti in Tanzania or Masai Mara in Kenya, which are contiguous with each other along each country's border. Both of those parks get massive amounts of traffic and consequently have very high entry fees. But they're close to population and tourist centers, and you are virtually guaranteed sightings of the Big 5 (the hunting trophies of lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, buffalo). I was willing to forego that certainty in order to have a less populated trip.
Luckily, back in Lamu, Murray, an Australian, told me about his plans to see Ruaha National Park in southern Tanzania. The second largest park in a large country packed full of big national parks, it's known for its large populations of elephants and lions and for being really, really out of the way.

Destination known, I needed to get organized. Ruaha gets a few thousand visitors a year; I couldn't just roll up to the nearest city and expect to be plonked down in a Land Cruiser with five other passengers, as you can readily do in the other parks mentioned above. I ended up finding a steal/splurge package with Coastal Travel, a company that flies bush planes all over Tanzania and owns safari lodges as well. It was a splurge because I would be flying from Zanzibar straight into a national park, where I would be picked up and taken to the safari lodge. Compared to a three hour ferry ride to Dar es Salaam, a 7 hour bus ride to Iringa, and then another 2 hours to the park, all in the usual level of discomfort I now associate with independent budget Africa travel, a bush flight wins every time. On the other hand, the package was a steal because I wouldn't normally be able to afford staying in a park lodge period. Lodges inside national parks are not dead cheap.

The flight from Zanzibar to Dar is a thirty minute ride over gorgeous shades of the blue Indian Ocean. I sat directly behind the pilot of the Cessna Caravan and ogled the view from start to finish. But I noticed the craftiness of the local woman who asked to sit in the jump seat, or what would be the co-pilot's seat if the flight had one of those. Changing planes in Dar, I put on my biggest smile and nicest voice and asked if I could sit up front. Thank you, Captain Maynard! This is where my day started getting unbelievably good. We took off, and I've never had such a fantastic view from a plane. In these smaller planes, you don't fly incredibly high, so the view of what's on the ground is still good. Our first stop was Selous Game Reserve. We started to approach a flat strip of dirt, the landing strip, and I stared straight ahead. Was that...? No, it couldn't be... Oh my god, yes there were two giraffes on the "runway." We buzzed them, turned, and reapproached while a car waiting at the strip drove the giraffes off the strip to clear the way for us. The captain was bemused at how awesome I found this; it's pretty much a daily ocurrence for him. For some reason, giraffes really dig the open space of the landing strips. Our second attempt at landing was successful, and we dropped off some folks, picked up some others, and headed off into the great big blue for another 90 minutes to Ruaha.

Approaching Ruaha, there were no giraffes on the runway, but I could spot elephants, zebras, and some vultures as we touched down. This is my kind of "airport." Abundant wildlife, one open-air office, no x-ray machines, no tickets, no identification required, and the long drop toilet's down the hill, smack in the middle of a national park! Ruaha is actually so big it has two landing strips. Two other guests and I were picked up by our driver and guide, and we were off to see the game. First objective? To check out the pride of lions lounging in the shade about 40 minutes away. Once we got "bored" of watching two adult females and 13 cubs yawn, nurse, wrestle, and unnervingly make serious eye contact with us, we went off to scope out a cheetah. It was a big cat kind of day. And at the end of it, we went back to the lodge, settled into our kerosene and candlelit tents with open air bathrooms with solar heated water, then had drinks around the fire and a big communal dinner. Lodge living is really nice; I can recommend it to you.

Mdonya Lodge is basically set right next to a dry river bed, and the nature really comes to you, which is why you're not allowed to walk around unaccompanied after dark. A couple of Masai guards are on hand to fetch you and take you back to your tent. It was novel, but that was fine. How many times in my life will there be a Masai warrior available to escort me anywhere? I could see the flashlights reflecting in impala eyes on the short walk to my tent. Lions prowled around the camp the first night while the hyenas yipped in the distance, and a buffalo was grazing between my tent and the neighbor another night. I began to see the advantages of the nocturnal escort pretty quickly.

With the help of my skilled guides and drivers whose eyes are better suited to this work than mine, I saw so many animals doing so many things over the next few days: Lions mating, a leopard stalking, elephants tearing down trees, giraffes lowering their necks to waterholes, a dead hippo bloated on its back in the river, not to mention small jackals, crocs, bat-eared foxes, rock hyraxes, which turn out to be elephants closest living relatives though you'd never know it, a python, kudu, dik diks, and loads more that I won't list for fear that you've already stopped reading this.

The morning of the second day, the manager of Mdonya, Alex, told me she'd received an email inviting me to join some overlanders on their way south. Huh? Ruaha NP is just about the last place you expect to be tracked down. And then I remembered that a group of English people I'd first met in Ethiopia, then ran into again in Zanzibar, were staying with the founder of Coastal Travel, the company that owned the planes, tents, and vehicles I was enjoying so much. They're a great group of Brits heading in the same direction, so I was more than happy to take them up on the offer of riding along for a bit. I was due to fly back to Dar late the next morning, and I planned to meet them there. As the Aussies say, too easy, right? And so, on my third day of seeing beautiful wild animals in a stunning part of the world, I got dropped off back at the airstrip, fully intending to score the jumpseat again.

At the airstrip (no elephants this time), I ran into Malcolm, who also works for Coastal. He seemed surprised to see me because he thought my friends were picking me up in Ruaha. Huh? By this time, I was really confused. I had contact numbers for two of the six Brits, but neither I nor Malcom had mobile phone coverage in the park. All the communication between the group and me had had at least two intermediaries, so I really didn't know what to do - get on the plane and surely miss them or wait with no transport or accomodation in the park. Michole, yet another Coastal manager, to the rescue! Her phone worked at the airstrip. I couldn't reach Jenny or Pete on their phones, but Michole was able to reach Nicola, Coastal's founder, who assured us that the group had left Dar that morning, would be camping outside Ruaha park tonight, and that if I didn't meet up with them, I could fly back to Dar a day later, thereby assuring me that I would not be a refugee in a huge landscape teeming with lions. I had already seen over 50 separate lions at this point, six of them with fresh blood streaking their faces, feasting on the remains of a zebra, so you can see my concern.

This was all pretty great because it meant I got more Ruaha and Mdonya time. Of course, I inadervently made a whole lot of work for the staff. The airplane people were concerned that I wasn't on the flight, Alex and Sarah back at camp worried that I'd missed the flight because of the driver, yadda yadda yadda. But Coastal came through and treated me wonderfully. I got the last guest tent (sorry, Malcolm, it would have been yours otherwise), I got to spend time at the camp during the day listening to the birds, and I got to watch a leopard start stalking impala at sundown. Not bad for another day in paradise. Fortunately, the lodge's Blackberry worked, so I was able to text the Group of Six, for lack of a better term, and work out a plan for the next day. Too easy, right?

Actually, it was in the end. Even though I didn't get the text saying they'd be a half hour late to the air strip the next day, so I was in a car with another Coastal employee getting a ride to the main gate, hoping that somehow we'd got our wires crossed and that was where the group would be. Just as we were leaving the strip, they pulled up, I threw my bags in the back, and we headed off for more game viewing. We almost picnicked where the lions ate the zebra, but it still smelled of carrion even though aside from some darkened spots on the ground, no trace of that zebra remained. We had a little bit of patented Africa beaurocratic inefficiency (a facet of Africa I have yet to fully address in this space, but it's coming) getting out of the park, whereby I needed to part with another of my precious Andrew Jackson's ($20 bill), and then we bush camped in some kind of sand quarry just outside the park's unfenced boundaries. I was offered the choice of a tent on the ground or a spot inside the Land Cruiser. When I reflected on the local fauna, it was a quick decision. And a good one too, because the lions did not sleep that night. Tucked into a sleeping bag on a plank in the back of a converted Toyota suited me fine.

A Stonetown Made of Coral and a Boutique in a Prison

2011-07-01T16:23:00.000+02:00

Indian Ocean, Zanzibar Archipelago

Zanzibar, the Spice Islands, Unguja...evocative names, yes? Perched off the Tanzanian mainland, this archipelago lures tourists and aid workers needing a break from the rigors of the African mainland. The spice industry isn't what it used to be, so what else will bring in the dollars? Make no mistake, it is dollars that are wanted. Tanzania charges US citizens $100 for a visa, which is what the US charges Tanzanians, so it's "fair." But I think it's extortionate! The very nice woman at the embassy in Nairobi tried to sell me the line that the visa is good value since it's a multiple entry visa one for twelve months, but I was unimpressed given that I'll need no more than one month of the alotted year. I sucked it up, flew to Zanzibar, forked over my hundo, and do you know I didn't even get a sticker in my passport? Just a stamp. The most expensive rubber stamp transaction of my life. Now I wish I'd had it done in Nairobi so I'd at least have a proper visa sticker to show for all that cash.

Stonetown Harbor

Once I'd passed through immigration, I was asking some of my "I just landed in a new country" questions, such as "are the ATMs outside the airport?" and "where is the toilet?" The young man answering these questions had me very worried for a bit. Yes, the ATMs are outside, but they might eat your card. The toilets are being renovated, but you can use the public ones outside. He seemed very uncomfortable recommending this toilet to me, hinting that I should hold it until I got to town, but he needn't have worried. My standards are lower than your average musungu coming off the plane in Zanzibar. And the ATM did NOT eat my card, so I was pretty happy about things. And I could skip a $10 taxi ride and hop in a dalla-dalla (basically a truck with a roof and railings over the bed that serves as the fresh-air version of a matatu in Tanzania) for the low, low price of 300 Tanzanian shillings. At about 1600 shillings to $1 USD, I don't know that I've ever paid less for airport to town transport. Unsurprisingly, I was the only musungu on the dalla-dalla; at one point, the man sitting next to me said something to the conductor along the lines of "swahili blah blah musungu swahili blah blah blah." At which I turned to him and asked "what about the musungu?" Everyone laughed, except the speaker. Swahili speakers, please note that we know what the word means! You're trying to sell us t-shirts that say "musungu." If you want to be surreptitious and talk about us white folk RIGHT IN FRONT OF US, you're going to have to be a bit more subtle.

After settling in to my room at the Manch Lodge in Stonetown, I had a delicious lunch of breadfruit in coconut curry sauce with cassava greens - Swahili sana (very Swahili). One of the guys who works at the guesthouse showed me Lukman's, the restaurant where you can score such deliciousness as that as well as the most tender octopus I've ever eaten, swathed in a mild coconut curry. He gave me his name, which I have forgotten, and his nickname, which is unforgettable. When a man says to call him Chi Chi, how can you refuse? Chi Chi has been most helpful with all my Zanzibar questions, as well as rescuing me more than once from the attentions of one of the other guys who hangs about here.

Typical Stonetown entryway

Stonetown is the old Arab section of Zanzibar, made up of twisty alleyways and close-together buildings made of coral rock. For those of you who've read my previous post regarding Swahili history, Zanzibar's is even more mixed up. Here's a brief summary of sixteen centuries in one paragraph paraphrased from Lonely Planet Africa and random tourist signs I've come across (so take these historical sources for what you will). Persian traders made it here in the 8th century, and over the next seven or so centuries, the city grew wealthier and more powerful trading slaves, ivory, wood, and spices. The Portuguese knew a good thing when they sailed by in the early 16th century and tried to set up shop, going so far as to build a large fort on the edge of Stonetown (Mombasa has one too). But the Portuguese didn't hold power for long; the Omani Arabs wanted in on the game, came over, kicked the Portuguese out, and installed themselves as the ruling power that same century. By the time the 19th century rolled around, they were so ensconced here that the sultan moved their capital moved from Arabia to Zanzibar. In the 1860s, the sultan requested that the island become a British protectorate (it sounds like a strange request to me too, but every source I've seen so far puts it that way) though the sultan remained in charge. That's how things were until all of Africa was stirring for independence in the early 1960s. Zanzibar became independent in 1963, and then one year later, united, in a fragile sort of way, with Tanganyika, which is the former name of mainland Tanzania. And so they remain today, together but apart, geographically and temperamentally. Zanzibaris think the mainland is too hectic and that it doesn't send enough electricity. I can't speak to the mainland's pace of life yet, but I have experienced two multi-hour blackouts in five days.

After independence, many of the Arabs returned to Oman, where you can apparently still find pockets of Swahili-speakers if you go looking in Muscat. I met a Swahili-speaking Omani woman the other evening in the ladies room at Mercury's, a waterside bar and restaurant named after Zanzibar's most famous son, Freddie Mercury. After the Arabs moved out, Stonetown was pretty vacant for a decade or two, but nature abhors a vacuum and people love a good real estate deal. So far as I can tell, Stonetown has spent the last thirty years filling back up and becoming more and more touristic, but surprisingly, without losing all its charm and soul. It is touristic. Souvenir shops, fancy cafes, posh restaurants, spas where you can get your body scrubbed and your feet painted with henna - Stonetown has all that, most of what is on offer (over)priced in US greenbacks. Yet, the boys sill play marble in the streets, and the locals still saunter down the streets, offering as many genuine greetings - jambo! - as salespitches - looking is free! After Egypt, Ethiopia, and Kenya in succession, I'm used to the hard sell, and I can be hard back. One evening in Stonetown, sitting on the waterfront, eating my Zanzibari pizza at the night market in Forodhani Gardens, a young man sat down next to me and asked me if he could ask a question. I replied "If you're going to sell me something, absolutely not." And do you know, the poor boy obeyed! He just sat there, silently; he made no attempt to chat me up, to deny that he wanted to sell me something while eventually working his way round to his pitch. It was amazing. I daresay my offputting response wouldn't have worked anywhere but Zanzibar, which is part of why it's so likeable. People actually listen. Oh, you don't want to be followed on the street? OK, I'll leave you alone. You don't want to go snorkeling tomorrow? All right. You don't need a taxi? Karibu (you are welcome). After the last few months, sheesh, the last year, this ready acceptance of my non-purchasing position is novel and very pleasant. It won't do as a marketing slogan: Come to Zanzibar where you only have to tell us to shove off once! But if you ask me, it's a real selling point.

Prison Boutique, Turtle Island

The Zanzibar International Film Festival coincided with my arrival, as did a much-hyped Shaggy concert, which I attended with Sahale and her husband, who together own a convenience store here and seem to enjoy my popping round and talking their ears off. With regards to the concert, I preferred the openers - youth groups doing traditional dance and a Senegalese dude playing an instrument that I'd describe as a cross between a banjo and a harp - to the proper concert. Maybe if Shaggy had started earlier than 12:45 am my opinion would be different. The next day, I popped over to Turtle Island, also known as Prison Island, which is just off the coast and visible from Stonetown. The sultanate built a prison that they planned to use for rebellious slaves, but they never quite got around to using it. Once Zanzibar became a British protectorate, slavery was outlawed (I think the Brits banned it in colonies and territories in 1819 or so, so it would have been made illegal at the time Zanzibar entered protectorate status, if I surmise correctly). What to do with this sturdy structure sitting all alone on the island? How about turn it into a quarantine station? If you sailed over from Asia with some nasty disease, they would have a place to park you and hopefully keep you from starting an epidemic. The problem was that there wasn't quite enough infectious disease traffic to keep the prison, now a hospital, busy. And the island was temptingly close for Zanzibaris to use it as pleasure spot, so locals kept hopping over for holidays and picnics. I guess this is why leper colonies and tuberculosis asylums are normally in lame locations; that keeps the healthy people away. This confused sense of purpose continues to this day because trips to the island are marketing with lures of seeing the prison ruins. But the prison was never used as such, is in no way a ruin, and in fact houses a shop called the Prison Boutique, which are two words I never expected to see together. The boutique was unfortunately closed; I would have loved to see what they're selling. There are also the turtles. These are giant land turtles, native to the Seychelles, I think, that were gifted to the island. You can go feed these hulking creatures, which are very, very big and old. One is reputed to be 185 years old. They eat leaves and such, and they stretch out their long necks, open their mouths, let out their enormous, strangely human-like tongues, and then chomp down with a loud "haaitccch." That's my approximation of the sound. You could easily lose a finger in these jaws, so care is needed when dangling a branch in front of the mouths. I attempted some snorkeling on the reef of Turtle/Prison Island, but it was cloudy out, which makes for poor visibility and rather cool temperatures, and that closed out my Turtle Island daytrip.

There's more to Zanzibar than Stonetown. There is forest, spice factories, beaches, and villages. After that, I don't think there's too much more actually. I decided to head to Nungwi, which is basically the northern tip of the island where the diving and snorkelling are finest. Nungwi is quite nice, various beachside resorts with a proper locals village abutting the tourist section. It's nice to have some cheaper, local dining options, so I liked that aspect of Nungwi Beach. But the weather was rainy and cloudy until the day I left, the diving and snorkeling was prohibitively expensive, the village lacked an ATM, leaving me unable to conquer objection number 2, and I had a strange allergic reaction to (probably) some fish I ill-advisedly ate. I wasn't sad to return to Stonetown, though I was pretty carsick on the hour long trip, which doesn't bode well for future bus days. But I have postponed the inevitable lengthy bus journey. It's coming, but not just yet. Stay tuned (but give me a few days).

Bussing to Lamu

2011-06-25T16:59:00.000+02:00

Prepping the grill, Lamu in background

The air-conditioned bus I took from Nairobi to Mombasa was a delight. First, it was entirely on paved roads, something I took for granted that day but don't now. Second, it was air-conditioned. Third, we were plied with soft drinks, nuts, water, and biscuits throughout the ten hour journey. Fourth, I saw zebras on the side of the road. Yes, those reasons are in order of importance.
The scenery started out as the chaotic outskirts of the capital, then gave way to Kenya's iconic grasslands as we passed near the huge Tsavo National Park. This reminded me of The Man-eaters of Tsavo, which is a real trip of a quick read if you enjoy memoirs. Based on a British engineer's time in Kenya building the Uganda Railway, J.H. Patterson and his team of Swahili and Indian workers were plagued by a pair of maneating lions, who did serious damage to both the employee count and morale. Those lions are eventually shot to death by the author, as are many others in this short book. Whenever a Masai shepherd self-interestedly rolls up saying he's seen a lion, Patterson drops everything railroad-related, grabs his rifle, hops on his horse, and runs off to hunt. He relates killing two to three lions in a day more than once, which I think is excessive by any interpretation of hunting for sport. Reading this book and seeing some aerial photos of elephant herds taken by Dennis Hatton-Finch (the Robert Redford character in Out of Africa) in the 19-teens, I can hardly imagine how many big mammals roamed around what was then a very lightly developed continent, though the development could still be improved upon as you shall read shortly. For example, Nairobi, a city of more than three million people, didn't even exist until the Brits needed a central railway office somewhere between Mombasa on Kenya's coast and Uganda.

After Tsavo, everything started getting greener and lusher, and then the palm trees popped into view. Soon we hit Mombasa, which gave me my first taste of Swahili culture with a dash of the Indian diaspora. I was only there one evening, and the usual warnings about muggings, lone females beware, blah blah blah, kept me close to my hotel, but I ventured far enough afield (ok, actually just next door) to have some delicious chicken tikka with chapati and fresh pineapple juice. I was heading to Lamu Island the next day. Lamu, also known as the Vain Island, is further north of Mombasa, and just off Kenya's mainland. I had asked every Mombasan I talked to what was the best bus company for this journey, and the consensus was clear: Tawakal. My ticket placed me in the second to last row of the bus, which was far from ideal, but it was just a six hour bus ride, right?

This is the bus ride that broke me. The first three hours weren't so bad. Yes, my rightful seat was occupied by a very big mama whose headscarf kept fluttering in my face when she left the window open, which was so preferable to her keeping the window closed that I had to enforce a window open policy about five hours in. And yes, the seat in front of me was permanently stuck so far back that I didn't really have leg room. And yes, the aisle was taken up with paying passengers sitting on coke bottle crates, so personal space/tropical climate/body odor created what might be akin to my first circle of hell. But those factors were nothing, NOTHING, compared to the condition of the "road" on the back half of the journey. Pitted, pot-holed, or just plain washed away, it was an unpaved track wide enough for two buses that somehow seemed to have developed enormous speed bumps to boot. By the time the back wheels were bumping their way out of a road crater, all of us in the back of the bus were propelled high in the air, then slammed back into our seats. It took a lot of smelling salts to make it through this ride without developing a full migraine or nausea. I do believe permanent damage was done; I think I'm shorter after the spinal compression I endured on the landings back in the seat. Let me put it another way, by bum was sore for two days after this bus ride, such that both my bed and the sandy beach were tricky surfaces to manouver, and I also had pain in my ribs from where they kept lurching into the arm rest. This bus ride was unremittingly awful. I prayed that I would love Lamu, so I would have a few days before I had to get back on that bus.

Lamu being an island, the journey isn't over when you get your dust-encrusted backpack out of the belly of the bus. Nope, then it's time to take the ferry, and I should have sprung for the speedboat, but I went frugal, opting for the public ferry, which was so overloaded with people, baggage and, oddly, for a destination without motorized vehicles, a huge truck tire, that I semi-seriously pondered how much clothing I could quickly doff in case we sank and I needed to swim to shore. But we made it, as your deductive skills will have made you aware, and I even had a familiar face waving to me at the dock - Oscar, fresh from hitching a ride with a frozen fish truck from the Ethiopian border down to Nairobi, then non-stop busing from there to Lamu. I already knew this, but now you do too: he's more hardcore than me. Having been in Lamu for a couple of days, Oscar beat the beach boys off me, who earn a commission for guiding customers to guesthouses and whisked me off to my reserved en suite room, tout suite.

What is Lamu like? I should probably give some background on Swahili culture, which will serve well for the next blog post or two, since I am in Swahili-land. The term Swahili generally refers to an Afro-Arab mix that came about when bold Arab traders hopped in their trusty dhows and sailed down to the Indian Ocean coast of Africa. Like the Vikings, American GIs in various locales, and many men surrounded by exotic women in strange lands, some of them stuck around and started families. Predominantly Muslim, often - though not always - lighter-skinned than their more inland fellow countrymen, Swahili people have been a thriving community in Africa for hundreds of years, living along the coast from Somalia down to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Certain Arabian practices were adapted to Africa. For example, medina-style villages and cities, where the buildings are built quite close together and provide familial privacy, were the norm, which is why even today in Lamu, you can drive yourself or you can drive a donkey, but you can't drive anything else. The 2 meter wide "streets" won't work for cars and I guess the locales have made the smart call to just say no to scooters and motorbikes. This makes for a quiet town where you're constantly dodging donkey scat. Women's attire would translate pretty well from Lamu to the Middle East. The abaya here is called a bui bui, and the headscarf is generally very colorful with an additional black chiffon piece that I call the "bandit wraparound" with its wide slit for the eyes and ties on the back of the head. The five year olds wear headscarves so ponderous that they're more like ponchos; maybe the bandit wraparound seems like an upgrade by comparison. You probably know more Swahili than you realize, and you learned it all from The Lion King. Hakuna Matata? Swahili and I'll let you recall the translation. Simba means lion, and it's also the name of a big cement company.

Lamu's nice beach is a forty minute walk away to Shela, which is fine at 9am, but there's no shade at the beach nor on the return walk to Lamu town. I can't hang with that, even if you can time your beach outing to wade out to an island of smooth sand that you can claim in the name of your own self, as Oscar and I did. I need shade after 11am when I'm 2 degrees south of the equator. So I only went once. But I did go on a sunset cruise through the extensive mangrove forests and have a delicious fish and vegetable curry on the beach, courtesy of Captain Baji. Oscar, Hillary, an English lass on holiday, and I found Baji to be very good fun and a good cook, so the next night we all pitched in on another fish and vegetable feast at a beautiful, traditional Swahili home, fueled by a 5 liter box of South African wine and a full moon on a roof terrace. Don't worry, we roped in Iratxe, a Spanish education volunteer, to help us drink all that wine, so it was only one liter per person, a perfectly reasonable amount of boxed wine to imbibe in one evening. I later found myself at Petley's Landing, "the" bar/club in Lamu, having a Tusker beer at 3am explaining the concept of agnosticism to a very nice Kenyan named Joseph, and I realized that this was madness. It was hours past my bedtime, prophylactic hydration and headache prevention were absolutely the only things I needed to take care of now, and even that wouldn't prevent the dreaded Sunday tummy later.

Sunday tummies require rest and grease, so that's what I was occupied with on Sunday. I valiently tried to find a cheap flight to Nairobi, not because I set to go to Nairobi; I just didn't want to make that horrible bus journey again. But no cheapies were available for the following two days, and I was unwilling to wait in sleepy Lamu longer than that. So I buckled and bought a bus ticket. Again, I was too late to get a good seat up front, but I compromised by going only as far as Malindi, two hours north of Mombasa. So I would still ride on that terrible road, but I would have relief after no more than five hours, and I'd get to check out Malindi, which turned out to be completely unnecessary though not unpleasant.

Malindi in a nutshell: it's the Italian hotspot in Kenya and where the locals make the adorable beaded sandals that you see everywhere across the country. Where the Italians mass, you can count on finding a couple of fancy (for Africa) restaurants, and I used my time in Malindi taking advantage of that and cheap laundry service. And then I left. The beach, though beautiful with glittery, golden sand, is so windy at this time of year that I couldn't face sitting down on it. And then I saw local fisherman gutting freshly caught shark, which always upsets me. Malindi is the only place I've ever seen a hammerhead shark. Too bad it was a baby, only one foot long and dead.

My bus luck continued to hold, by which I mean this time I got seated in the very last row of the bus. By the time I reached Mombasa, I was a woman on a mission: I was going to fly to Zanzibar. I knew what was in store for me south of Mombasa because I had been asking around - two hours of crap Kenyan roads to the border, then three hours of crap Tanzanian roads to Tanga. Should the road conditions between two major port cities less than 200km apart dictate travel times of five hours? No. And I was done with it. I was pulling a princess move and flying. I had been working on a decision tree of doing a safari in Masai Mara if I could fly cheaply to Nairobi; otherwise I would go on safari in Tanzania, probably to one of the parks in the south, which would have the disadvantage of being more expensive but the advantage of being uncrowded almost to the point of unvisited. After two of the most uncomfortable, hot, stinky, nauseating hours in the "nice" bus back to Mombasa, my decision was made. I would fly. And that's how I left Kenya after 17 days, in a fit of bus-journey-related pique.

There are always things I mean to write about in any country, but I forget to or I can't quite fit it in, or it isn't "appropriate" for permanent accessibility on the web I'm just going to shove some of those impressions here at the end of my last Kenya post, ok?

If there is one bright side to bus and matatu travel, it is reading the slogans on the back windshields. Bigger than bumper stickers, they're more like the vanity plates of Africa. "We fly, others cry" made me feel like I was part of the other and not of the we. "Just Trust in the Lord" is excellent advice under the circumstances of African highway travel, as you pass an 18-wheeler on its side in a roadside ditch. While the self-serving "Crucial Assignment" justifies all manner of dangerous practices, doesn't it?
Kenyan toilets can flush toilet paper. I still can't believe it. There are exceptions, but by and large, toilet paper is available and flushable. This really is amazing to me, which is why I've been marveling at it for more than two weeks and am sharing it with you. I've been gone a long time if this is something I can't get over.
But the eggs! Is it the chicken feed or are they just old? I've never encountered a paler yolk in all my life. Say what I will about Ethiopia, and I have said so much, but the eggs there are beautiful, bright yellow yolks that are rounded and high with surface tension. I marveled at Ethiopian eggs, and in Kenya, they're the saddest eggs I've ever seen. The yolks blend in with the whites. How do you get an egg yolk the color of creamed sugar and butter? It doesn't even really taste like yolk. I find it unnerving.
Pale chicken eggs might soon prove to be the least unnerving eggs I encounter in Africa. When dropping off my laundry in Malindi, the receptionist asked me if I wanted my clothes just washed or ironed as well. Why would I, a grubby backpacker, need my t-shirts and cargo pants ironed? So I elected only for the wash. Shortly thereafter, I read about mango flies, and I'll never foregoe the ironing option in Africa again. Get ready to be grossed out. Mango flies lay their eggs in damp clothes; they particularly love the seams probably because they take longer to dry. When the eggs hatch after incubating in the seams of your underwear, they burrow into the skin now handily rubbing against the fabric that has hosted them. Lovely so far, right? Once underneath the skin, they mature and grow larger until fully grown maggots erupt from your flesh. How revolting is this animal's life cycle? There is an effective weapon; heat kills the eggs, which is why thorough ironing is so common here. This does me little good because I generally hand wash and air dry my clothes, and now I have to take mango flies into account on top of avoiding tap water and mosquito bites! I have spent more time envisioning the horrors of the itch associated with mango maggots burrowing their way out of my armpits than I have imagining the aches, pains, and potential death from malaria.

You say musungu, I say matatu

2011-06-14T16:32:00.000+02:00

Tea fields in Nandi Hills

Where you've come from has a lot to do with what you think of where you are. Flying from Addis Ababa into Nairobi is another form of culture shock. Nairobi's reputation is terrible, which it may deserve, but the worst thing I can say about it, from my admittedly limited experience, is that it's an overpriced UN-NGO hardship wonderland. I spent two days there upon arrival in Kenya, and I encountered one single tout lamely try to sell me a safari and no muggings. But I can't count the number of new Range Rovers, fancy coffee shops, and Ribena squash bottles I came across.
The UN's Africa headquarters are here, which means the NGOs, charity workers, spouses without work permits, and children needing a Western eduction follow. Nobody from outside of Kenya wants to live in Nairobi, so the ex-pats all get paid a hardship bonus, which drives up the cost of everything. Nairobi, a place nicknamed Nairobbery for its very high crime rate, a place where askaris, or armed guards, and high fences are de riguer in residences, a place where no one considers it safe to walk a few blocks at night, shouldn't have the demand to sustain high real estate prices. But it does. It's one of the most expensive places in Africa to buy a home, send your kid to school, etc. If the UN flocked back to Geneva tomorrow, I wonder what would happen to the cost of living here.

Aid workers aren't the only mammals flocking to Kenya. I've arrived here just ahead of the wildebeest. Millions of them, accompanied by nearly as many zebras, typically come up from Tanzania's Serengeti into Kenya's Masai Mara in July and August ever year. Of course, the Kenya Wildlife Service and Community Reserves are helpfully raising park rates from $60 USD per day to $75 on July 1. My plan is to time my first real African safari for the sweet spot of late June. Maybe the 'beests will be early and I won't be too late to save some cash. I was musing about heading west to Uganda to kill some time, as you do, while chatting with Pippa, a Kenyan resident staying in the banda, a simple cabin, next door to mine at Upper Hills Campsite in Nairobi. She and her family live in Nandi Hills, high up in western Kenya, and she offered a ride there and spots in the guest cottage to Chloe, a recent uni graduate, and me. Sold!

The five hour drive from Nairobi to Nandi took us across the Great Rift Valley, over the equator (Nairobi is just south of it), and alongside my first sightings of proper African game, which is almost a misnomer as it's illegal to kill any game in Kenya. Nairobi's fancy nyama choma (barbecued or roasted meat) restaurants have to import their zebra from Tanzania. From the highway, Pippa pointed out zebra, Thompson's gazelle and impala as we drove through one very gamey spot. We passed Lake Navaisha, now home mainly to flower farms and Kenyan migrants, though the hippos still lay claim to shoreline, Lake Nakuru, one of Kenya's many soda lakes that provides flamingo habitat, and Lake Elementaita, part of Lord Delamere's legendery huge land holdings. If you've read or watched your Out Of Africa or are up on the Happy Valley set, his name ought to ring bells. Either way, a scan over the wikipedia entry for the Happy Valley Set is entertaining; these people really got up to some mischief! A few hours later, we hit the Nandi Hills, which at 7000 feet elevation, are pretty high up. Pippa's husband works for one of the large Kenyan tea plantations, so we drove up, up and up amongst endless bright green tea fields until we came to the house, which is surrounded by bright green tea fields. It turns out that tea and I flourish in the same climate - lots of rain, but still sunny, cool but not cold, refreshingly misty but not foggy. It's a mild climate, and the soil here is so fertile that nearly anything grows well. Their veggie garden has radishes growing next to avocado trees, passionfruit near raspberries, onions abutting loquats. This part of Kenya is beautiful and well off the tourist track, so I'm quite appreciative that Pippa went out of her way to share it, even forgetting to warn her husband that she'd picked up two rando backpackers along the way. And I got to tour a tea factory! I know more about tea production than ever before, knowledge that I will save to bore you with at future dinner parties.

Cherengani Hills, western Kenya

After two nights of plantation living, which I truly found relaxing and delightful, though I could see how you'd have to take up lots of hobbies so that you wouldn't take up drinking, Chloe had to fly back to Nairobi, and I still didn't know where I'd go next. It was Saturday, which is a good day for the Nandi Hills set to make the hour drive to Eldoret for a good curry, so I asked Pippa to bring the map of Kenya along. I'd decide my next move at the restaurant over butter chicken and one of the best paneer dishes I've ever had. I chose to head north. First up, I got dropped off at the matatu station by my delightful hosts. Matatu is Swahili for "minibus" and English for "you're in Africa on a budget and without wheels of your own, sucker." Matatus never leave until full, and full in Kenya means every seat is filled and the pathways between seats have small planks placed over them, thereby creating another seat. I do not kid. Matatu timing is tricky. You want to be early enough to get a real seat but not so early that you have to wait hours until the bus fills up. My wait was about a half hour, which gave me time to try to contact the place I wanted to stay. The numbers weren't going through, which would normally be expected in Kenya - if you dial a land line. I have yet to meet with any success in calling a land line in this country. Either the copper wire has been stolen or the lines were destroyed in the election violence of 2007, which was very, very ugly and evident in burned out buildings in Nandi Hills, a hot spot at the time. So mobile numbers are the only numbers worth dialing. I had three numbers for Sirikwa Safari, but I wasn't getting through on any of them. I wouldn't have been worried at all except that it was already past four, my matatu journey to Kitale was theoretically one hour, and I had no clue where to go once in Kitale. I did know that Sirikwa was 26 km out of Kitale, but that's hardly reassuring two hours before sunset.

Once the matatu got on the road, I gave calling the guesthouse another go and met with success. Richard, the proprietor, gave me directions, and I relaxed. I relaxed a little too much actually. I'd taken a motion sickness pill because I'd had a rough ride on Kenyan roads to Eldoret in the front seat of a plush company car, and I knew no matatu journey could compare favorably. One side effect of Dramamine (generic, purchased cheap in Ethiopia) is drowsiness. I fought it but I know I dozed, and Eldoret was the last glimpse I had of my iphone in my bag. Unless I hallucinated seeing it there and somehow left it at Pippa's, which is a possibility currently being investigated. However, I'm pretty sure it's gone. I have numerous feelings on this:

I'm surprised this is the first thing of real value that's been stolen in 16 months of travel
I hope the jerk who stole it breaks it when he tries to unlock it
I can't believe the people sitting next to me on the matatu would have taken it. The young woman who became fascinated with the fistula pamphlets I was reading? She's no pickpocket. The man in the suit cooing to the baby girl on her mother's lap? Again, not a thief. Those matatu stations are pretty hectic, and I am generally good about demanding personal space and sole possession of my bags, but my luck and attention are obviously not infallible.
I miss that iphone already. My currency converter! My alarm clock with world time zones! My address book! How will I live without you? I have a long list of things I would rather have had knicked than that piece of awesomeness.

But it's just a thing and not worth getting too worked up about, so I'll move on, literally and emotionally. It was still light in Kitale when I arrived. My mantra on the drive there was "Makotano to Sirikwa." I needed to catch a matatu heading in that direction and get dropped off at Sirikwa, and I'd repeated it at least three times when Richard gave me the info so that I wouldn't forget it. I needn't have bothered because intantly upon alighting from the first matatu, there were five men ready to herd me on to another. Where you go? Where you go? I was passenger number one on the next matatu, so I had a wait ahead of me. And it was getting darker. I vociferously refused the "death seat." You don't want to ride shotgun in a matatu; the statistics aren't good. But neither are they good for passengers at night in the rain. And that's what I was.

A very nice family acted as translator to ensure that the driver knew where I wanted to stop. Peter, the husband, could not stop welcoming me to Kenya, which was lovely until I started running out of responses. Thank you, asante, thank you very much, asante sana - you can only repeat this so many times. When he spoke to the driver on my behalf, I understood the first word - musungu, which is the Swahili term for white person. For some reason this cracked me up. I imagine talking the same way back at home. "Hey, the brown guy wants another cup of coffee. Can you ask that black lady directions for directions? When is that yellow person coming to take my order?" Can you imagine? But here in Africa, I am "that white lady." Don't think that musungu is derogatory. It's not flattering, but it's not an epithet, just a descriptor. That doesn't mean I like being called it either. That took my mind off the terrible road conditions, and soon enough, the driver stopped, shimmied my backpack out of the small opening remaining from the overstuffed and tied down tailgate, and drove away.

Cats warming on the woodfire, Sirikwa House

Originally, the plan was to take a furnished tent. Permanent tents are quite common in Kenya; some of them even have toilets. But the rain had made everything quite sodden, so on the advice of Jane, Richard's mother, I upgraded. Certainly no tent can compare with the Blue Room. Jane and Richard are hybrids; they look, sound, and act pretty English, but both were born, raised, and lived most of their lives in Africa. Jane and her husband once had quite a large farm in this area. In the 80s, some Germans rolled through and asked if they could camp, and Sirikwa Safaris began. In addition to camping, there are a couple of guest rooms. I scored the blue room, which has room for three, a fireplace, a garden view, a sink, two full length mirrors (I'd have been thrilled with just one!), and scores of old hardback books, National Geographics, and various other magazines, including the June 5, 2008 edition of Horse & Hound, Britain's Only Equestrian Weekly. Basically, it's my kind of time warp. Oh, and you can have your meals with the family too. I could have happily stayed longer, and had it not been the rainy season, hiking in the hills nearby would have been delightful - not to mention free of KWS park fees. Should you find yourself in western Kenya, or eastern Uganda for that matter, stop and stay here; it's a great place.

Saiwa Swamp, home to the sitatunga

Lest you think I came all this way to read 15 year old Sunset magazines and eat bacon with breakfast, I will have you know I came in search of the sitatunga. You read that right; I didn't know what it was a few days ago either. The sitatunga is the world's only aquatic antelope, and in Kenya it's mostly found only in the Sawai Swamp, one of Kenya's smallest national parks. Sirikwa House is just a few kilometers away, and my plan was to go there with a wildlife guide and check out this little slice of swampy haven for birds, various monkeys and wild cats (though no lions), and the endangered sitatunga. Knowing that boardwalks and viewing platforms had been put in helped. That's how I found myself, post delicious English breakfast with the tropical addition of passion fruit and papaya, accompanied by Moses, my Catholic Kenyan guide, tracking the sitatunga. Whenever I am looking out for wildlife, whether walking, driving or diving, I remind myself not to get too invested in seeing that one thing. I've been diving with annoying people who rate a dive as a disappointment because they didn't see a shark, nevermind all the other wonderful creatures and scenery they could have enjoyed. Today, when we started out, all I could really see was very tall swamp grass, and so I reminded myself of what I just wrote. I needn't have bothered; we saw three sitatungas in the first hour. They are odd looking creatures. During the day, they rest standing in water, hidden amongst aquatic grasses and reeds. I never saw their legs, but their huge ears are always twitching, turning, flicking, constantly occupied with hoofed prey's eternal focci: listening for danger and shooing insects.

You don't have to go far to see more common animals here in Africa. I see crowned cranes at least once a day here in western Kenya, but they are easy to spot, being huge and conspicuous. A Debrazzas monkey popped his head in the window over breakfast this morning, and I've seen colubus monkeys in trees outside homes in Nandi. Vervet monkeys are everywhere, but they are not as good looking as the colubus, who put on a trapeze show in dapper black and white costumes. Unusually for monkeys, they no longer have thumbs, which greatly facilitates their jumping from branch to branch. As we were nearing the park exit, a bush buck raced across the path a few meters in front of us. And there were plenty of bugs! Hefty termite mounds, lines of red ants, which are very, very big critters and have a nasty bite, with which I luckily remain unacquainted. All manner of buzzing, flying things were around me, near and far, in Saiwa Swamp. It wasn't very quiet, what with the birds and the bugs. The insects had some strange sounds - otherwordly, high-pitched helicopter-like whirrs; they sounded electronic, but it was definitely organic.

Riding back to Sirikwa, I was reminded of the punchline to an inappropriate, not very funny joke. Our trio, made up of the motorcycle driver, myself, and Moses, were riding along on dirt roads with locals taking the good long looks that rural people do to new and unusual sites, such as a musungu squashed between two wafrikis, and all I could think of was that we looked like an oreo. Then the motorcycle ran out of gas, which was unsurprising. I paid him half the agreed fare, and Moses and I started to walk. The next thing you know, cries of "musungu, musungu" broke the air, and an ever-growing troop of children followed us. I'm betting the relatively few white tourists who make it out here don't walk much; they're smart and bring their own wheels! Moses and I walked along the paths, and as more kids heard the call, "muhzooooooooongoooooo", out they'd come running. At which point, I'd wheel around, point at the new arrival, and call out "mafrika, mafrika!" Brief but complete silence, then hysterical laughter ensues, as I've just pointed out a black African.

Matatu, Nandi Hills, this is the mellow version of a station

Yesterday, I discovered luxury matatus on my way back to Nairobi. They go from point to point, rather than stopping anytime to pick up new victims, and you have assigned seats. Seat number 3 for me, please. In the center middle, so that the sun stays off me and I can see out the windows, which is a mixed blessing. If you can see ahead of you, your life flashes before your eyes frequently. But if I can't see out the windows, then car sickness results. Last night, I got back to Nairobi, which I'm actually rather fond of with all the Kenyans in suits pretty much ignoring me, which is quite a novelty, and will take an air conditioned bus to Mombasa tomorrow. I paid 400 shillings more the a/c bus, and if it doesn't work....well, I really hope it works.

Drugs and Disease

2011-06-06T12:44:00.001+02:00

Harar street scene

After convalescing in Addis Ababa, I'd recovered enough control of my innards to sit on a bus for a full day, so I planned to go to Harar, in East Ethiopia. Still a walled city, but once completely closed off to unbelievers, it's religiously Muslim, ethnically Somali, and quite different from the other parts of the country I'd seen so far. My tourist class bus broke down a little past half way there.
Actually, it didn't quite break down; it hadn't been working well the whole trip and the AC had been completely out on a bus where the windows were sealed shut. I've never been so happy to be transferred to a minibus in my whole life, even if every time we stopped in a town, someone tried to grab inside my backpack sitting on my lap or put a finger on my camera lens. After an 11 hour journey, we made it to Harar and I had some pizza and beer, true balm for weary a traveler.

This part of Ethiopia is famous for being the home of chat. Chat or khat is the plant, catha edulis; the leaves that are chewed to a relaxing, mildly stimulant, and addictive effect. Long a part of the culture in this part of the world, it has been exported to places such as Yemen, where huge portions of the population chew it daily to little good effect of the economy. Everyone is too busy chewing chat to go back to work after lunch! Chat is becoming more popular across Ethiopia, and this isn't considered to be a good thing. I still wanted to try it though.

Put the chat in your mouth and chew

I sprung for a guide that day, good thing, too, or I would have been hopelessly lost in the walled medina. He was quite keen to show me the ways of chat, and after it poured rain in the early afternoon, he assured me we'd get a good price. Chat is quite perishable; it loses potency within a day or so of being harvested. And strong rains in the field also mean that farmers want to get back to check on the crop. When it rains, they just want to sell, sell, sell. We bought a big bag of chat, an amount that seemed excessive to me, and headed to a traditional Harari home where we could lounge, drink tea, and chew chat. As you do. The first thing to know is that you only chew the smallest of leaves, the new growth. So each twig or branch yields a couple of small leaves that you wad up with many others and place on one side of your mouth. You're not supposed to move it around to the other side either - then you might not be able to "feel" the chat working. I didn't feel anything special in my mouth, except that I felt more like a ruminant than at any other time of my life. These leaves taste about how you'd expect - bitter. You may choose to chew sugar or peanuts to cut the taste. We went with peanuts, a choice I would make again. I put sugar in my tea, and I went through a lot of tea while chewing on those bitter leaves, so it was a nice contrast to have another flavor dimension. You've got your wad of leaves that you chew on lightly, you swallow and don't spit, you drop in a peanut and some new leaves every now and again, and you sip your tea. That's chat chewing, and I cannot say that it's how I'd want to spend every afternoon of my life. But it is addictive and plenty of people do spend their afternoons thusly. The streets of Harar are dotted with men parked against a wall with a big plastic bag of chat. They appear destitute, possibly homeless, and I think they are. If you had a home, wouldn't you chew your chat there, rather than on a sheet of plastic on the street? After a few hours of sucking on my cud, I would characterize the sensation as being a very relaxed kind of alert. The general consensus is that while chewing chat, one makes great plans that are forgotten the next morning. That certainly sounds like a drug to me.

View of Harar from Arthur Rimbaud Center

Harar is also known for being the one-time home of Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet cum arms dealer, the birthplace of Haile Salassie, the last Emperor of Ethiopia, and haven for handfed hyenas. Yes, you read that right. Every night, in two different spots just outside the old walls, a dude rolls up with baskets of old stinky meat that he feeds by hand to hyenas. I am normally against wild animal feeding, but I still found myself there watching the 50 birr show. The craziest and scariest part were these two Isreali girls who interacted with these wild animals in a way I couldn't comprehend. It's one thing to put a stick in your mouth with a piece of rancid meat hanging off it when the alpha male human is thisclose to you and isn't afraid to smack an uppity hyena around. But when all the meat is gone, and a hyena is staring right at you, do you start to walk up to it with your arms outstretched and ask it to marry you? Those girls were on something, and it was a lot stronger than chat.

Harar is a one day town, but it takes two days to get there and back, so the next morning, I was up at 4:30 ready to be at my bus on time at 5am. I had paid my hotel bill the night before, but I guess I hadn't been clear that I needed the gates unlocked as well. No manager, no guard, nobody period. I took a look at the fence and realized that it was easily climbable. Nothing like clamboring over walls at 4:45am! Unfortunately for me, there was very little light, and while I successfully negotiated the fence, I slipped in the mud on the other side of the wall. Of course, I had 16kg on my back, which is not conducive to balance. So I fell in the mud, knowing I was many hours away from a chance at cleaning myself. Mud dries though, and it's easier to flake off your pants then anyway. I was not as much of a sight as I suspected at the time.

Onto the bus for another 11 hours of un-air conditioned countryside viewing. I would have enjoyed cooler temperatures, but the view was beautiful. Rolling hills, acacia trees, scenic valleys - I kept expecting to see Lucy climb down from a tree and walk across the grass. Most of the primates I saw on the side of the road were urinating though. Only this time, I did it too. Our stops were unofficial. Men get to pee on the right hand side of the highway, and ladies dodge the traffic and use the left. There was one stop where everyone was on the right, the ladies congregating in one area, the men in the other. There was no shelter really, and there were a lot of female bums on display. I was very close to dropping trou and going native myself, but I realized that farengi bum might be more interesting than habesha bum. So I kept walking until I found some thorny, dried out acacia I could squat behind. I am not yet able to pull my pants down and pee in front of a mixed crowd. But give me time. Who knows what lowered standards await me?

Back in Addis, I developed a bit of a cold (was it the chat? the cipro? who knows?) and was deliberating as to how to proceed to Kenya. Should I spend a minimum of five days on minibuses on some of the worst roads in Africa or fork over less than $250 and fly direct from Addis to Nairobi? When I put it this way, it seems so obvious, but I'm sure I'd see some great things overland. I'm also sure I'd be overheated, dehydrated, and nauseated from the fumes coming out of the decrepit vehicles for days on end. You can see where this is going. I fly tonight.

While buying my ticket, I ran into Sophie, an Aussie med student who was going to visit the Hamlin Fistula Hospital. Fistulas are the kind of medical condition unknown back home. I'll just quote from the center's site:

The continuous pressure of the baby’s head inside the mother causes a loss of circulation to part of the bladder tissue and sometimes the rectal wall. The tissue dies and drops out, leaving a hole. As a result the mother is left incontinent of urine and in 20% of cases incontinent of bowel contents as well.

A woman with a fistula almost always loses her baby, her place in society and her family, her dignity, and her health. Some of the women who have received treatment here have suffered for years, being moved into a small hut apart from the rest of the family, self-starving themselves so as to reduce the waste products their bodies create, losing leg length and muscle function from lying down for months on end. Fistulas are a horrific, though preventable and curable, condition. The Hamlin Center operates, rehabilitates, and trains patients free of charge. It's an impressive place dedicated to reducing the suffering of women whose isolation and pain I can scarcely imagine. Check the site out if you want more information and a reminder to count your blessings.

On that note, here at my hotel, the oldest in Ethiopia natch, I saw a little girl out of the corner of my eye one day. Running and laughing, she made me smile, and I turned to look at her. What I saw was a four year old with a huge, deforming tumor growing on the lower left side of her face and neck. The next day, I started talking to an older American man at the hotel, Dell. It turns out his organization, International Children's Outreach Network, has been helping her. As her tumor grows, it will cut off her airway, strangling this little girl. Today, she can't close her mouth due to the tumor's deforming of her face. Treatments in Israel haven't worked, and Dell has lined up a hospital in New York that will attempt to remove the tumor. The problem? Getting the US Embassy to approve a visa for this child. She would go unaccompanied by family, who would be considered an immigration risk, flying to a foreign country for massive surgery. Dell's got a family lined up to take care of her in the US, but how much more frightening does the US Government have to make such an event for a child in a desperate medical condition? I hope her visa is approved and that her doctors can help her live a normal life.

Better Living Through Chemistry

2011-05-29T10:17:00.001+02:00

St. George's Church, Lalibela, from ground level

Warning: This is the post where I'm going to get negative. Some of these thoughts have been burbling in my mind since I arrived in Ethiopia, but I wanted to see if the impression stayed before I shared it with the whole world (or the small part of it that reads this). My nasty case of what I am calling Ethiorrhea has probably contributed to my urge to whinge.
Two nights ago, I woke up 5 times in 5 hours to the joys of travellers diarrhea. It hasn't improved despite my following the rules. After researching it a bit, I think I've passed from simple TD and moved on to mild dysentery, which is reason enough to bust out the great anthrax-killer, Cipro. I just popped my first pill and washed it down with Oral Rehydration Salts. Yum.

Being sick here reminds me of being sick in Nepal; not coincidentally, these are two of the filthiest countries I've visited. Here's a quote about Nepal from an English friend who loves Nepal: The hygeine is appalling. It doesn't take a genius to put hygeine and disease together, I know, but I enjoy making small correllations (not necessarily causations). One of the things that I have noticed in both countries is that children often have runny noses that no one ever wipes, so they'll have these crusty tracks overlaid with fresh dribbles between the nose and mouth with flies descending on the filth. Now I know: in a place where nobody thinks you need to get the snot off a kid's face I'm likely to get sick. Because if that doesn't bother society at large, I bet a lot of other things don't! Such as restrooms with no water to rinse anything with, not to mention soap. I ask you, without toilet paper AND without water, what the hell am I supposed to do in there?

I'm not done yet. Next topic is public urination. So many men in Ethiopia just take care of business right on the street, in the village, in the city, wherever they like. They don't mind sending an arc of urine two, three feet in front of them, and then they button up as they continue their stroll down the street. It disgusts me. Find a semi-private place, bub! Today, I had to step across a urine rivulet as some teenager parked himself in the middle of the sidewalk. This was just outside my hotel in Addis Ababa. Ethiopian women don't take the same liberties or receive the same prerogatives, not with peeing in public and not with lots of other things, leading me to a new theory of societal order: Where men can piss freely, women can't do shit. I don't yet know how true it is, but it feels like it might be broadly applicable. Where the whole civic space is a potential urinal, what's left for the ladies? And even if my theory is completely wrong-headed, it's still nicer for a dude to find an alleyway and zip up before moving on.

I've got one last bone to pick. The usual term would be begging, but it's not like begging which has a supplicating aspect to it, it's demanding. I'm not referring to the lepers, the amputees, the blind, etc that beg; I don't know what other option they have in Ethiopia if there family can't or won't take care of them. I'm talking about young, but healthy, children. I don't know who taught the kids that "Hello, give me money" is a proper greeting, but it's an unavoidable salutation on the historical circuit in the north of Ethiopia. It's not just a few kids doing it either. It got so bad, particularly in Axum, that I began to ignore almost every hello directed my way. If it was a kid, she wanted money, but she'd sometimes downgrade her barked order to a pen rather than cash. If an adult, he wanted to sell me an overpriced tour. There were a few genuine hellos in there, but they were hard to distinguish. Not until Lalibela, just a few days ago, did someone, a young girl, say "Hello, welcome to Lalibela." That was the first welcome I'd received in two weeks in the country. I don't know that it would have made such an impression on me but for my coming from Egypt, where you get it about a dozen times a day.

Are you tired of my negtivity yet? Would you like to read about Lalibella now? I feel like a world-class complainer at this point, so the post needs some historical relief. Lalibela is a tiny town in the hills in the middle of nowhere. It's another one of these choices between a two day drive or a 45 minute flight commonly found in Ethiopia. Although by the time the Chinese are done with the roads, who knows how short the drive times will be? As things stand today, you drive up into the these lovely hills and come to the town, which is named after the man who started it all, King Lalibela. Lalibela ruled in the 11th century and was alive to the hardships and deprivations that Ethiopian pilgrims suffered on the way to Jerusalem. To relieve their suffering (and to put his name on some offerings to God, I'm guessing), he decided to build a Second Jerusalem, a consolation pilgrimage site, if you will. When I read that, my first thought was "thank god we don't have three religions fighting over this one too!" My second thought was "too bad we can't make a Third and a Fourth and give everyone their own J-town because no one really wants to share the 1.0 version." But I digress. The king needed a draw. What would pull the pilgrims in? How about 11 churches completely carved out of bedrock, using only chisels and axes with all construction completed within 25 years? The man knew what he was about because one thousand years later Lalibela is still pulling in the pilgrims and the tourists. I made it to just over half of the churches, due to both my ongoing monument fatigue and having only a day and a half in town. By far, St. George's Church is the most impressive because of its aesthetics and symmettry, but that doesn't mean the others aren't impressive. Imagine standing on a rock plateau and thinking "where my feet stand now is the future roof of a church I will chip out of this stone, shard by shard." There's not much to see inside the churches aside from monks who are either sleeping or hitting you up for cash, but you do get a very good view of the hand chiseling that created these structures that has eroded away somewhat from the outside.

Ethiopian Danish and "Makiyato"

Update: My final night in Lalibela was the onset of my sickness; the next day it was back to Addis for Ari, Oscar, and me where my suffering continued unabated until I availed myself of the magic of modern medicine. I'm now three Cipros into a 10 pill course, and I feel like myself again. I missed out on the EthioJazz night because of the illness. I woke up in a feverish haze and started banging on my own locked hotel room door until I realized I didn't actually want out in the hallway, I just wanted the toilet. And I had to forego Addis' delicious pastries, macchiatos and juices. But no more! I bravely ate a danish and drank half a macchiato this morning. I will be having a juice today, even if avocado and mango are the last things my poor, terrorized belly needs. The Spaniards, 2 Aussies and I are trying to finalize a rental car and driver for a tour of the Rift Valley and the tribes of the Omo Valley before heading into Kenya, so this may be my last post for a while. I feel a bit bad that it's so negative, but Ethiopia hasn't made it easy. And I felt that way before I contracted Ethiorrhea.

Update 2: The car rental is off. Each time we've been at the point of payment with a firm the terms or the vehicle have changed substantially out of our favor. The Spaniards have caught a ride with some overlanders we met along the way, and I haven't decided what I'll do next. But I won't be renting a 4WD, I can promise you that! Oh, Abyssinia....

Smoke in Your Eyes and Butter in Your Hair

2011-05-27T08:01:00.000+02:00

View of a dammed river from EA flight to Axum

Rather than slog two days on a succession of minibuses, Ari, Oscar, and I flew on Ethiopian Airlines to Axum. I am a fan of this airline, which covers Ethiopia's major cities and tourist attractions by flying Bombardier twin propeller planes in circular routes. For example, our flight attendant's daily route is Addis to Gondar to Lalibela to Axum to Gondar to Addis. The plane takes off, you check out the scenery while sipping a warm Pepsi, and then the plane lands. These are quick flights into small airports.
Yet, you still must budget a lot of time to negotiate security (the same woman picked my backpack apart completely - twice) and any other ticket line or airport service you may use. These things take time, so much more time than this gringo is used to. But it certainly doesn't take two days by minibus, so I'll take it. By the way, I've been called a gringo twice here in Ethiopia; once it was meant to sting, the second time it was just a descriptor. How did that word get here anyway?

Fallen stelae, Ax

Axum today is a dusty, small town though it's growing. You can tell it's growing because there are piles of road materials and cobblestones blocking the sidewalk up and down the main drag. It used to be the capital of the Axumite Empire, up until the 7th century or so. This empire was no joke, it stretched up into Sudan, to the Red Sea, across the Suez to southern Yemen and most, if not all, of present day Ethiopia. Pretty big for a sophisticated, well developed trading empire that most of us "educated" westerners have never heard of. Lasting from about 400 BC until the growth of Islam all around isolated the now Christian society, the Axumite kingdom marked tombs with stelae and obelisks, many of which dot the area today. The tallest of these is 33 meters tall. It fell and broke. But there is another that is 22m and a replica of one that is 27m tall. That last one is a matter of contention; the Italians uprooted it and plopped it down in Rome in the '30s. They agreed to return it in a treaty, but still haven't.

After walking around in the heat and viewing empty tombs and obelisks, I quickly started having flashbacks to my Egyptian monument fatigue. No more tombs for me. I need a long break from the rooms of the dead, though they are a handy place to escape the mid-day sun. You can take day trips around the Axum area and view monasteries improbably set on top of mountains, but I'm done with monasteries as well, and the monasteries here very often don't allow women anyway. So why spend $80 to rent a 4WD and a driver to check that out? I let Ari and Oscar explore the environs while I took a cafe day. Drinking macchiatos and mixed mango and avocado juices can occupy me for hours, as can brushing the flies off my shoulders and out of my ears.

Handicrafts for sale, Axum

Before I managed to write off Axum's monuments entirely, we met a lovely Ethiopian girl, Zabeeb. Zabeeb is living in Axum and working for the Chinese road crew; she translates what the Chinese management tell her in English to the Ethiopian workers who speak Amharic or Tigrinya. Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia, but plenty of Ethiopians from the 81 or so tribes in the country don't speak it. Tigrinya is the official language of Eritrea, whose border is very close to Axum, and it's the common language in this part of Ethiopia. Zabeeb offered to show us around and cook for us, an idea we predictably adored. For my part, I was more excited about the food than the sightseeing. But it was Saturday, market day, so she took us through the whole thing - from the frankincense that women throw on the charcoal fire to make the house smell nice to the injera mill to the livestock market that would make a PETA member would sputter in rage. I tried a delicious new fruit, kasmir, the English name of which I don't know but it might be a custard apple, and I picked up a traditional beauty tip.

Injera stones for sale, Axum

Zabeeb pointed out a woman sitting on the ground against the wall. In her hands was a gourd. Inside the gourd, water and what looked like large lumps of very soft and creamy cheese. Zabeeb described it as "butter" and told me that you rub it in your hair, leave it on for hours, preferably overnight, and then shower and shampoo it out. It's supposed to be good for your hair and moisturizing for your skin as the water carries it down your body. It smelled like very grassy, herbal butter, which is probably what it is. And for five birr, I was going to try it! So the gringos purchased their hair treatment, and then we headed to Zabeeb's for lunch.

Livestock market, Axum

Lunch was delicious, entertaining, and eye-opening. Zabeeb has unofficially adopted two girls, 15 and 16 years old. Zabeeb herself is only 22, so they are more like younger sisters than daughters. The girls had set up a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony which we watched after our lunch. Watching Zabeeb and the girls make lunch was interesting, if only to see how manual the stove is. The typical Ethiopian home has a small charcoal brazier that holds one pot at a time. You place charcoal briquettes on top and the kettle or pot rests on them. If you want high heat, someone squats in front of the brazier and fans it, increasing the oxygen to the briquettes, for as long as you want that higher heat level. What strikes me about the way I live back home is not just the luxuries I take for granted, but the labor saved from the most mundane of tasks. There are lots of reasons American women work outside the home, but one of them surely is that we have cooking heat at the turn of a knob needing neither firewood collection nor grass fans to act as a bellows. How many cups of tea would you offer a visitor if you had to fan the flames to boil the parasites out of the untreated water anyway? A corollary of this is that I'm not as good at improvising something out of nothing as the majority of the rest of the world. Zabeeb doesn't have a potholder, or not that I saw, but she has the smarts to fold up the outer leaf from a head of cabbage and pick up the hot lid with that.

Grinding the coffee at a coffee ceremony

After a fantastic lunch full of vegetables and tella, homemade beer, it was time for the coffee ceremony. Set in the middle of the room were fronds from trees in a circle. On top of that, the cups, the stove, the unroasted coffee, a few tools, and, popcorn. First, the coffee is washed in several rinses of water and some frankincense is thrown on the fire to set the mood. Then, the coffee is roasted by hand - it's held over the fire in a small, long-handled pot and constantly shaken so that it doensn't burn. Once it's roasted and the room is smoky, the coffee gets a rest and the popcorn gets popped. Once the popcorn is done and it's had a quick pass around the room, the water gets boiled. This and the coffee are combined in a narrow-necked heat proof bottle, from which the brewed coffee is poured into cups and served. I take this with sugar because it's potent and thick, though very good. Tradition says you are to take three cups of coffee at a ceremony; I hit my limit at two.

Stelae field, Axum

Our day with Zabeeb and her girls was pretty dang good, even if we did later walk around town with hardened butter in our hair. I believe I addressed in my last post my declining standards of vanity, but I didn't think it would come to a new low so soon after typing the words. No one seemed to pay any mind, and once I showered according to Zabeeb's instructions - stand under the hot water for a few minutes to let the butter move out of your hair and over your skin, then shampoo twice - I did have some very soft and yet ungreasy hair. Do not try this at home though; I'm pretty sure it only works with Ethiopian butter. In fact, this prized highland butter is one of the things that US Customs agents are quite familiar with. Apparently, Ethiopians visiting or returning to the States stick loads of their butter in dry ice to freeze it thoroughly, then pack it in their checked luggage. I doubt they then waste it on their hair.

Abyssinia with a new 'do

2011-05-25T12:39:00.000+02:00

I left Egypt with a new hairdo, thanks to my new friend, Nina. Nina works at the Mobinil store where I had bought a sim card when I first arrived in Egypt. Once I was back in Cairo, I had occasion to stop by and renew our acquaintance. I'm so glad I did; she's a funny, smart Coptic Egyptian career gal who speaks perfect English and gave me new insights into living in Egypt as a woman. Short story: it ain't easy.
She took me to her salon, which surprised me. In conservative, unofficially sex-segregated Egypt, do you know who was washing my hair? A man! And who was cutting my hair? Another man! And who managed this salon? A man again! The staff was more barber shop than beauty salon in terms of the employee profile. Lest you think that such salons make no accomodation to the prevailing culture, I did discover the back room, where veiled women go and get their hair done and their eyebrows threaded without any men around.

Back to the haircut. It was pretty stressful for me. My hair was ragged at the ends. I knew something needed to be done, but after ten happy years of Jill cutting my hair, I find it hard to put my locks in the hands of another. It was white-knuckles all the way. The dude did all right on the cut, and he styled it beautifully. But I wasn't perfectly satisfied with the end result, so I've since cut my own bangs (or fringe) back - all by myself. My work is amateurish, but hey, I'm in Africa. I wear t-shirts and Birkenstocks every day. Yes, it has come to hippie shoes, people. The beauty routine has been reduced to the clean routine. Style has been reduced to covering body parts from solar rays.

With my blown-out 'do, said birkenstocks, and tees, I made quite an entrance on the Addis Ababa stage. Or maybe I just looked like an easy mark. I have a developing theory that each country has a different flavor of hassle. When you first arrive, you haven't developed your arsenal yet; you're poorly defended and the enemy knows it. After a few days, you hone your skills, and over the course of a few weeks, you're a hardened visitor, ready to rebuff the most agressive street tout in the land! I didn't expect Addis or Ethiopia to be so...I'm still not sure what the word is. Dichotomatic? Extreme? Let me put it this way: in two days in Addis, I became instant buds with a lovely Ethiopian woman, Tsion, who sat me down in her internet cafe and chatted with me for hours over machiattos but I also was repeatedly called a bitch on the street by a young man who was did not appreciate my telling him I didn't go random places with strangers (why was I even honest anyway?). Almost everyone starts out exceedingly friendly, but they don't all end up that way. I don't want to be rude to every overture, but I also don't want to engage in a conversation with every person who approaches me long enough to suss out if they're genuine. Bottom line: if you talk to me first, I assume you want to convince me to part with money, by means fair or foul.

Aside from the macchiatos, pastries, and fresh fruit juices, Addis didn't charm me, so I left - for the "Ethiopian Riviera". Bahar Dar is set on the shores of Lake Tana and supposedly a nice place to spend a few days. I disagree. My guesthouse was redolant of shabby chic, perched on the shore and covered with lush gardens, all good points. But outside those peaceful environs and aside from some cool fellow guests at Hotel Ghion, it was constant hassle, mostly for boat rides to see monasteries on islands in the lake. I'm making it sound worse than it was, but after beers lakeside, three island monasteries (one was closed, one was ugly, one was very interesting and full of Ethiopian Orthodox church painting), and two nights, I was ready to move on.

The next morning, two Spaniards, two Mexicans, and me - it sounds like the beginning of a joke - piled into a minibus and began to wait for the tipping point. The tipping point on African public transportation is the point at which the vehicle is so crammed pull of people and goods that the driver considers it profitable to begin the journey and every Westerner thinks the auto might tip over. It's a shifting point, based on seats, distance, and cargo. The journey doesn't start until every single seat is filled. No way, no how. But you can stop along the way and pick up some random boxes or bags of chat (which I'll review after I've tried it). The boxes get strapped to the roof in improbably high stacks, and the bags get stuffed under seats or between legs. There are frequent stops to drop off and pick up people and more stuff, which give the young and the very young of the village a good opportunity to stare at you or attempt to sell you things. I understand vending chewing gum and sodas in this context, but what am I gonna do with a live chicken on a four hour minibus ride?

At the end of the ride, Ari, the Spanish girl, put it best when she said her bum felt like a stone. I'm not tall, but seats on buses and vans in so many countries are made for people shorter than me. My knees are up against the next seats, and worse, I can't sit up straight because of how the seats are shaped. And I'm 5'5". Even if I try to practice good posture, I can't see out the window, which makes me carsick. Four hours of this is nothing by Ethiopian or African standards. Luckily, Ethiopian Airlines heavily subsidizes domestic flights because the distances are long and the roads are poor. Two day bus journeys are normal. You spend 12 hours in a minibus, stop and sleep in some city or town, and get back on and go for another however many hours until you get there. These are not coaches, these are minibuses usually driven by some rando with an addiction to his hand phone. What I'm saying is: god bless Ethiopian Airlines.

Once our bums regained feeling, we decided we liked our new location, Gondor. Ethiopia's capital from the 1630s until the 1880s, it's now a city of 200,000 people clustered around what was once the center of the empire - the Royal Enclosure. Begun by Fasiladas, the enclosure houses the ruins of six castles surrounded by a solid, sturdy stone wall. It reminded me of Edinburgh. When Fasiladas came to power, he kicked out all the foreigners. This move might have been precipitated by some Europeans finally having succeeded in converting an Ethiopian king, Fasiladas' father, to Roman Catholicism. This did not go over so well with the majority of the country, who were then and remain today very happy with their Ethiopian Orthodox practices. Dad got done away with, Fasiladas got the head job, and the Papists got the boot. Still, these castles look very European. Made of stone and complete with battlements and towers, they are about the last thing you expect to find in Africa. Fasiladas liked to relax too, and he built a beautiful bath complex just outside of town. Today, it's only filled at the Epiphany when young boys get to frolic in it, and the devout come and sing songs and celebrate the holiday here every year.

Speaking of celebrating religious holidays, I think it would be very hard to be a good Ethiopian Orthodox. First off, you must fast every Wednesday and Friday. That means no meat, no eggs, and no dairy. Then you also have to fast on Mary's day, and St. George's day and many, many other saints days. These don't happen once a year though. They happen every month. Then there's Lent, which is 55 days long; you fast the entire time. Now that Lent is over, the faithful get two months of no fasting at all. I'm happy for them, but it's killing me. You cannot find vegetables. You can eat meat and injera. Injera is THE staple in Ethiopian cuisine. Made from tef, it's a sour, moist, bubble-pocked flatbread that acts as a plate, napkin, and starch altogether. I like it quite a bit, but not everybody does. I doubt my description will bring any conversions, but I do really like it. But to always eat it with meat, beef mostly, tough beef most of all, is really getting to me. My Spanish pals and I asked around and found a fancy hotel that will prepare special fasting food for us, by which I mean vegetables and injera. I've never had such a hard time finding veggies, and I blame Easter!

Before leaving the Gondor area, we wanted to see the Simien Mountains, which are home to geledas and walia ibex, as well as majestic scenery. We didn't go high enough to see the ibex which roam above 3400 meters, but the geledas, also known as baboons although they are exclusively vegetarian, so maybe they're just monkeys, were roaming all over. We walked along the escarpment at 3200 meters elevation and took in the views of the surrounding volcanic peaks, table mountains, cliffs and valleys. This national park gets about 20,000 visitors a year - not many - and if I come back to Ethiopia, I'll do this place justice and stay for a few days. The road from Gondor to here is currently being built, and like most roads built in the developing world, it's a Chinese project. I've been reading about the Chinese roadworks in Africa for about as long as commodities have been booming, and today, I saw them! Complete with blue jumpsuits and straw Chinese-style hats. I also saw something unexpected - snow, ok maybe it was hail. As we drove back to Gondor, the rain began. And then there was frozen water collecting on the ground. Who needs Kilimanjaro for snow when you've got road construction in Eastern Ethiopia?

There's so much more to write about - Ethiopian time telling (genius), its history (fascinating), whether goats outnumber people (indeterminate), the music (fantastic), but I have to get this posted while I know I can find wifi. Tomorrow I fly to Axum, an even older capital of an even larger Ethiopian empire. Today, Axum is less than a quarter of the size of Gondor, so infrastructure may not include wireless internet access. But this may give me time to get a handle on the goat question and write more.

Nubia to Sinai to Cairo

2011-05-10T21:59:00.001+02:00

Abu Simbel from a distance

A three hour train ride from Luxor - first class, natch - is all you need to get to Aswan, Egypt's southernmost city. It's set in a beautiful spot on the east bank of the Nile. Islands of various size sit between the Nile's banks here, and the First Cataract, one of six between Aswan and Khartoum in Sudan, stymies boats and gurgles the waters. The docks are crowded with white boats - one-masted feluccas, two-masted dhabiyas, and gleaming white engine boats, and some of the big Nile cruise ships. It's not a booming year for tourism, so most of these boats aren't plying the water, but they still look beautiful floating on the blue Nile.

Aswan is in the area known as Nubia, in ancient times it was sometimes controlled by Lower Egypt's rulers, at other times a client state, and sometimes independent. Without getting too deep into ethnic identity, I'd say Nubians see themselves as more African, less Arab, while Lower Egyptians see themselves as the reverse. It's a mellow place, a relief after Luxor, and my personal favorite city in Egypt.

Philae Temple

First up on the sightseeing was Philae, a Ptolemy temple built about 2000 years ago. The Ptolemies were Greeks who ruled Egypt after the Egyptian pharaohs lost power, and many, if not most, of the remaining well-preserved temples in Egypt today come from their reign. Even our word "Egypt" comes from their language, it being the Greek name for the country. Egyptians refer to their country as Misr, which is pronounced somewhat like mass-rə. Anyway, the Ptolemies built a beautiful temple on a dove-shaped Nile island just south of Aswan and all was good until the High Dam was built. Remember all the times you've heard of the flooding of the Nile? As the water source for Egypt and the longest river in the world, its annual flooding was critical, foundational even, to the development of Egyptian civilization. But not everyone likes to let nature take its course because she is fickle - sometimes neglectful in her stinginess and sometimes destructive in her abundance. The British were the first to tackle the problem, building the Low Dam, which was too low to control the Nile's annual spate, but today serves as a nice bridge between the East and West Banks in Aswan. In the 60s, Egypt started building the High Dam, which would not be breeched by the October floods each year, but would create a huge lake behind it, necessitating the removal of thousands of Nubians from their homelands and the painstaking dismantling of monuments to relocate them out of newly-formed Lake Nasser's reach. What does this have to do with Philae? Philae is situated between these two dams. Once the High Dam was complete and the Nile flooded, Philae spent some months of the year partially submerged in the Nile's waters. A beautiful site, but terrible for the stone. So some folks got involved, carved up a nearby, higher island to mimic Philae Island's original shape, moved the temple piece by piece, and now you go to a new Philae Island and there are no threatening river waters eating the stone, and I kinda wish there were. It looks beautiful in the photographs, and it was unique, even if it was unsustainable.

Surprisingly, the Nile this far south is clear. I could see the sandy river bottom from the boat, and our boat captain taking us back from Philae filled a Sprite can with the top cut off and passed it to Greg, who declared it quite sweet and fresh. A sip wouldn't hurt, would it? I can report it did not and that I agree with Greg - it tasted really good, much better than Cairo water, which is safe to drink because it's highly chlorinated.

Lake Nasser, or what Ramses II gets to look at

The next day I rose at 2:45am to join the convoy to Abu Simbel, which is so far south it's almost Sudan. The convoy is a long line of buses and cars escorted by one police car for the three hour journey to Lake Nasser. It's for my protection, I know, but the end result is just target clumping. Doesn't it make it easier for any terrorists by collecting all the choice targets in the same place? It also creates a real toilet issue. It's 7am, you've been up for four hours and in a bus for three of them - where do you and the hundreds of sunburned sightseers want to go first? Still, good old Abu Simbel and its partner temple dedicated to Ramses' II wife, Nefertiti, are splendid. Like Philae, these were carefully dismantled and relocated due to the construction of the High Dam. But these puppies were carved into rock cliffs, so the process was more involved. They are a marvel of construction twice over - just to make them at all, and then to cut them up like a jigsaw puzzle and reconstruct them in a new location thousands of years later.

The Nile's First Cataract

Abu Simbel aside, Aswan's other highlights are river-related. Greg and I took a sunset boat ride around Elephantine Island one evening. Our Nubian captains were delightful and took us over the First Cataract, onto the west bank, where camels and trinket sellers congregated, to their village where we rode a Nubian taxi (a donkey cart), and back to Aswan at dusk. The next day, we were all set for a two days and two nights on a felucca, which I was all kinds of ready for. Aswan Individual is the company we used, and Waleed, the local partner, had made us feel we were in good hands already. Waleed had taken us to local cafes and spent much time showing us around his city. Should you ever find yourself in Aswan, I recommend he and Petra unreservedly.

Not my felucca, but a close match

I was really just looking forward to lounging on a sailboat for a couple of days, watching the banks of the Nile float by. It was perfect. Crew outnumbered guests - 3 to 2. Captain Minshawee kept making us tea, which wasn't always good for me because you had to go ashore to relieve yourself. We went to the markets at Daraow, where we stocked up on camel meat for dinner and I got to buy more sand-roasted peanuts and dume juice, which is made from the fruit of a local tree, ground up, combined with milk, and has a delicious malty, butterscotchy flavor. Minsahwee also took us to to his village where we met some of his family. I swam in the Nile, which I expected to be muddy and warm, but was in fact, crystal clear and chilly. At all other times, I lounged in the shade, watching the world go by, or reading, or napping. After a week of nonstop temple and tomb viewing in the heat, felucca living, complete with getting my ass kicked at Uno by the crew, was just what I needed.

Temple of Horus, Edfu

Once those 46 hours of heaven drew to a close, I had to summon the energy for two more temples, one at Kom Ombo, dedicated to the crocodile god, Sobek, and one at Edfu, dedicated to Horus. Future Egyptian visitors take note of my opinions: Kom Ombo is not a requirement, but Edfu, even as over-templed as I was (and remain), gave me the best picture of how these temples fit into ancient Egyptian religious life. This temple was completely buried in sand until the 1850s or so. It took decades just to clear it all out, but that sand did us a favor; the temple at Edfu is the best preserved temple in Egypt. It even has a roof! You know how happy that makes Superhotbutterwoman because of my vampire tendencies, but it also clearly shows how the rooms flow into one another, which is something you can't always discern when there's no roof and the walls are falling down into piles of hewn rock. I was also glad there was a roof because the screw dropped out of my sunglasses right as I entered the covered portion. One of the guards insisted on trying to fix it while I meandered around. His English and my Arabic were at about the same level, so my attempts to tell him not to worry about it because I had an eyeglass repair kit in my backpack were futile. By the time I was ready to leave, he was still struggling to use the quill of a feather to screw it back in. He earned his baksheesh, even if I ended up doing the repair myself.

Jumbo, sunset, Sinai

I was off to the Sinai the next day to meet up with my friend, Gary. His plan is to drive from London to Cape Town, and he'd just arrived from Jordan. He graciously allowed me to join him on Jumbo, the utilitarian Land Rover that is both transport and home for his trip. We camped on the Gulf of Aqaba in Dahab for one night, then headed inland near Mount Sinai for two more nights. I visited St. Catherine's Monastery, home to a stunted tree that is believed by some to be THE burning bush. I forgot to find the bush (this is what happens when you don't review the guide book beforehand!) but did enjoy the walk there and the chapel. The desert here is beautiful, rocky and mountainous, with this gorgeous peachy, tan tint to the landscape. The sky was blue during the day and black and starry at night. Really a lovely place, even taking into account the nonstop police checkpoints on the roads.

A couple of days ago, we took down the roof tent and drove into Cairo. Finding the campsite near the pyramids in rush hour took time, patience, many changes in direction, GPS, Lonely Planet maps, and superhuman bladder control on my part, but we made it. I'm now back in Cairo, again enjoying the largesse of my pal Andrew (now I've got my own room!) and getting organized for the next country, Ethiopia.

Superhotbutterwoman Returns

2011-05-02T09:01:00.001+02:00

Carved columns at Habu Temple

Having slipped and slid my way around the Cairo train station before, I expected no problems sauntering up and purchasing a ticket for the sleeper car to Upper Egypt. I knew how to get there. I knew where the ticket office was. I had even previously been assured that though you're only supposed to pay with dollars or euros that I could complete the transaction with Egyptian pounds. This overconfidence should have given me pause. I requested a ticket for that night. No train tonight. Tomorrow? No train tomorrow. When will there be a train? A shrug of the shoulders, a very expressive version of the gesture from the man behind the window. Why? The big why is why I ever ask why.
Does it matter? Does it change the fact that I'm not taking the train in that direction any time soon? No and no. Why do I still, why do I ever, ask why? The answer was interesting though; protests in Qena, north of Luxor, had blocked the tracks. A to-do over the nomination of a new governor who was both Coptic Christian and associated with the former regime. An unpopular choice. I could have told the powers that be that. But my having that kind of foresight didn't get me closer to Luxor. I got conflicting advice about buses running, and just because a bus is running doesn't necessarily mean that they'll sell a foreigner a ticket under such circumstances. They've got some silly rules about foreigners moving about the country that predate the revolution, our ostensibly for our safety, and aggravate me considerably. I'll discuss them on my next post. That left Egypt Air as my only sure route south.

It turned out all right, as it almost always does - at least for me. Just after buying my ticket, I walked out on the street and saw a probable shoplifter experience the hard boots of street justice, which was scary. Once a cop arrived to save the poor boy from any more kicks to the head, I dashed away, hustling through the street rather than the packed sidewalk, which was wall to wall dudes rubbernecking. I wouldn't say that physical violence is a common street scene in Egypt, but one thing I do know is that when strangers start wailing on each other and I don't know what it's about or how to improve the situation, it's time for me to get the hell out of there.

Luxor Temple in late afternoon

By the next afternoon, I was in Luxor, ready to absorb the glories of ancient Thebes. Do not believe the sorry misrepresentations Las Vegas may have given you regarding Luxor. It doesn't even have a pyramid. All the pyramids, so far as I'm aware, are in Lower Egypt, near Cairo and the ancient capital of Memphes. But Luxor has no need of those showy triangular tombs because it has almost everything else. Imposing and beautiful temple right on the banks of the Nile smack in the middle of town with an avenue leading to it flanked by seventy sphynx (there were originally 600!)? Yes, Luxor Temple. The largest religious structure ever built just a couple of kilometers north of town? Yes, that would be Karnak Temple Complex. Dozens of elaborate tombs carved deep into rock and covered in painted representations of starry skies, the gods giving life to pharoahs, and heiroglyphics saying I don't know what? Sure, they've got two of those - the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens. The kingly version is where Howard Carter poked about and discovered Tutankamen's second burial spot. The original one was disturbed shortly after he was buried, so the priests of the time hustled about and found a small, unimpressive tomb to throw all the riches and mummied rams in (I'm not making this up, mummified animals were definately part of the scene, and you haven't lived until you've seen a mummified baboon). They managed to flummox tomb raiders for centuries with that dodge, and King Tut's tomb is still the only one where we have any tangible sense of the splendors a pharoah meant to take along with him, or occasionally her, on the afterlife ride. Luxor also has Queen Hatshepsut's Funerary Temple, which is tastefully and extensively restored, giving you a wonderful sense of what these buildings were like before they became ruins. There's also Habu Temple, one of my personal faves. AND the Colossi of Memnon, all that remain of a temple complex that was bigger than Karnak was at that time, but was extensively damaged in the annual Nile flooding before the Nile was dammed south of Aswan.

Samara, Hassan, and Amira of Pharaoh Stables

These that I have mentioned are just the ones I saw over four intense days of sightseeing. There are more. From Day 1, where my pal, Greg, an Aussie who sat next to me on my flight to Luxor, and I went horseback riding around the West Bank, which is where most of these monuments, excepting Karnak and Luxor Temples, are, it was non-stop monument touring and sunstroke avoiding. I exaggerate a bit because I did expect it to be hotter than it was, but it was still pretty scorching in that sun. These buildings used to have roofs, and I, for one, would have preferred that the ancients, the olden time people, and the more modern residents of the greater Luxor area had kept the originals in good repair. On the day we went to Karnak, we met a lovely Canadian couple with two great boys. The oldest, all of 8 years old, knows more about ancient Egypt than I do and has a decent grasp on the common ideograms used in their art. And he's hysterical and provided me with my latest favorite quote. We were trudging around Karnak's endless pylons, dodging the sunny bits as much as possible, and Aidan casually drops that he's assumed his "superhero alter ego - Superhotbutterman, whose only weakness is heat," and whose "main enemy is the evil, villainous sun." I think I'm Superhotbutterwoman myself though my superpower hasn't manifested itself, unless perhaps it's finding delicious uses for butter. I hope Aidan doesn't mind a hanger-on so early in his superhero career, but it's just too awesome not to appropriate.

A beautiful bull sculpted at Queen Hatshepsut's Temple

Not all monuments are created equal, and Luxor could give Howard Carter himself monument fatigue. For the record, the Valley of the Kings is, in my opinion, a rip off. Yes, the tombs are larger and more splendid than those found in the Queen's Valley, but entrance to the site itself of three times as much, most of the temples are closed, and the ones you really want to see require an additional surcharge of $9 to $14 USD. And the valley is much larger, which means you're in the sun more, making you more likely to spend E₤20 on a cup of tea. This is in a country where tea is routinely E₤2.

Not even American movie theaters extort their captive customers with 1000% markups. If you find yourself here and you want to beat the crowds and save some dosh for baksheesh, hit up the Queens. However, if you're a budding Egyptologist, then don't listen to me.

Threshing wheat by hand on the West Bank of Luxor

Thankfully, one needn't live exclusively in the ancient past while in Luxor. Luxor town is predictably touristic, but not unbearable. Horse-drawn caliches are a way to beat the heat and get to your destination with a better view than in any taxi. The West Bank, however, is a lovely alternative. From there, you're closer to most of the monuments and you can take a quick E₤1 ferry ride 24 hours a day to cross the Nile if you need to get to the other side. But the best thing is that you very quickly find yourself among hand-tended wheat and sugarcane fields. Seeing the green fields and the barren mountains while circling ancient temples and medinas on horseback was such a nice way to get a sense of the area. I would definitely recommend it and the family company we used, Pharaoh Stables, to any future Luxor visitors.

I would also recommend mastery of the phrase "La shokrun," which means "no, thank you." You will need it. And if you are female, even when accompanied by a male, be prepared for all sorts of questions and comments. At this point, I think I really have heard it all from "how many camels" meaning how many camels I might be worth (this is always addressed to the man I'm with; you can guess how flattering I find this) to "ah, beautiful eyes" when I'm wearing sunglasses. I've now taken to parroting back the questions called out to me repeatedly on the street. Hi, where are you from? I just ask it right back. They say they're from Egypt, I say "ah, good country," just the way they say that stock phrase to me. They say "only five pound for scarf." I say, smilingly, "ten pound!" or "looking is free!" and keep walking. I take my lines from their lines, and since Egyptians do have a very good sense of humor, it works out all right. But the key is to keep walking. You cannot pause; they will descend on you like you're the weak wildebeest, and they're the starving lion pride. And given the state of this tourist season, that's not far off.

After running that guantlet at every site and most main thoroughfares in Luxor town, in addition to fighting the evil, villainous sun as Superhotbutterwoman for the better part of 5 days, I was ready for a change of pace. And then, just like that, the government in Qena gave in, dropped the objectionable candidate, and train service was restored! Greg and I went first class to the end of the line and the beginning of Nubia, of which I'll write more soon.

Al-Qahira & Al Iskandariyya

2011-04-22T23:16:00.000+02:00

Party boats on the Nile in Cairo

Over a year ago, I came to Egypt and, in this very blog, declared that I hated Cairo. But I also felt that I needed to give it another shot, and here I am again. Some things have changed since my prior visit; you may have heard a bit about it. Last year, I would ask Egyptians if they thought Mohammed ElBaradei, the Egyptian former director of the UN IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency, if you're geeking out), had a shot at becoming president. He had just then started making noises about running, and thousands of Egyptians had defied the security forces to greet him at the Cairo airport when he entered the country. Every Egyptian I asked this question of responded the same way: "Mubarak will be president until he dies and then it will be his son, Gamal."
This prediction was not spoken of with enthusiasm; it was wearied and cynical. Now, Mubarak is in the hospital under arrest, and his sons are cellmates in a prison outside of Cairo. There's a sense of relief and release. Cars everywhere have these faux license plate bumper stickers that say Egypt 25 January, in both English and Arabic. T-shirts say the same thing. The name of the metro stop "Mubarak" has been scratched off the maps inside the subway cars. Nobody knows how it's all going to turn out, but I hope the best for Egyptians, most of whom have suffered under grinding poverty, rising unemployment, high levels of illiteracy (40% of Egyptian women cannot read), and rampant corruption.

My first couple of days in Cairo I didn't do much; I'm staying with my pal, Andrew, who I met while in Egypt last year. He shares an apartment, and his flatmates don't mind a crasher on the spare mattress in the dining room, which is lovely for me. They've got satellite TV - Cairo's rooftops are covered with dishes - and I've been sampling some of the English language offerings. The censoring is ridiculous. Watching Masterchef, a wildly popular Australian reality show that's like Top Chef only with non-professionals, Andrew pointed out to me that they cut off all mentions of the word "pork." The word itself isn't halal? I'm not an advodate of censoring for a variety of reasons, but one of my big objections is that it perpetuates ignorance. So you censors might catch the mention of pork on a cooking show and bleep it out, but because you know so little about pork, you don't realize that proscuitto is pork too, and you don't catch that. Later, we watched an episode of Modern Family. The gay couple with the adopted kid? Um, they're not really in it in the version that the Dubai network puts out; they made a brief appearance at the end for a family group hug, but were otherwise completely absent. Why even bring that show over if you're going to cut out one of the primary households? Just show the Brady Bunch.

Graffiti outside Cafeteria Freedom

I did have a birthday recently, which necessitated some celebration. We headed to Zamelak, a posh expatty neighborhood on a island in the middle of the Nile smack in the heart of Cairo, for pizza. We were both disappointed that beer was only available as take out. But we would have our beers yet! In downtown Cairo, close enough to Tahrir Square to make out a placid crowd milling about, we headed to Cafeteria Hooreya, translated as "freedom." This place is great. Like any cafeteria worth the name, flourescent lighting floods the place. There was one waiter handling all the business, and it was jam packed. Egyptians, foreigners, men, and women filled the place. Our waiter, the one and only waiter, stalks the place with a dozen locally brewed Stella bottles cradled in his arms. If you want one, he offers it to you holding the bottle opener on top. As you grasp the bottle, he pops the bottle open for you and moves on to the next thirsty patron. The place is so smoky that my nose burned within a few minutes of arriving. Well before we left, my voice became hoarse. I'm blaming my hangover on all that secondhand smoke rather than the fourth beer. I hate to think that I don't know when to stop at my advanced age!

Cairo and all points south were gearing up for an extremely hot spell, as hot, dry winds from the Sahara were heading to Egypt. It seemed like a good time to take the train to Alexandria for a few days. I got to the train station and found it to be under massive and chaotic construction. Just a total sandy mess. And there's no universal ticket counter. Why have that when you can instead set aside different offices that only sell tickets to certain destinations? And while you're at it, keep all your signs exclusively in Arabic. It's for the best. I was clambering across planks laid across torn up flooring, and green plastic plastic draped down from the scaffolding, obscuring all sightlines. I finally foundnd a ticket office except they only sold tickets south. That was on platform 11. I had to go back to platform 4 and find the office there for tickets north. OK, I could do that, and I could even deduce which one was platform 4 in Arabic numerals, which are NOT exactly the same. Let's just say our numbers are inspired by their numerals. I've picked up that a 5 looks almost a 0 (a 0 looks like a . only centered vertically); that's how I found platform 4. And that's when I completely slipped on a sand covered metal plank just laying in the torn up mess that makes up this station. And I bit it. I just fell flat on my butt. I know something blue came out of my mouth, something that would have been censored on television, but even then, it was becoming pretty funny.

The ticket office successfully located, I got in line to buy my ticket. The ticket lines are separated by metal railings, and for each window there is another railing bisecting the space just until you get to the window, which I assume is there so that people can get out of the way once they've got their ticket, smoothly making u-turns as they complete the transaction. But that's not how they're used. No, folks make two lines for the same window and you have to be quick getting your cash in that window. I, however, am not quick. I'm the never-know! I don't know how much the ticket is, when the train is, or, right at this exact moment, if I even have enough cash. See, I was getting short on funds, and sometimes, even after more than a year of this kind of thing, I have these notions of how things might be based on how things are back home. So I figured that surely there would be an ATM at the main train station of the capital of the nation of Egypt, right? Wrong. Ticket E₤35 (Egyptian Pounds). Monica's cash, E₤33.50. So close! I'm about to walk away and go find a cash machine when the young man behind me offers me the difference. How sweet is he? Then he won't take the E₤33.50 that I have on my. I'll accept a pound and a half from a perfect stranger (it's E₤6 pounds to $1), but he's not buying my whole ticket! He eventually accepted the money, but I was so grateful to him. I had well over an hour before the train, so new mission was to find an ATM, which involved the usual Cairo-craziness and was only particularly memorable for my accidentally kicking over a policeman's tea in a glass resting on the ground. What made it worse/better/funnier is that he was part of a group of four cops who are all giving me the "welcome, welcome to Egypt" routine, and I just mowed over his beverege. Cash in hand, I was now fully ready to laugh at myself and my bumblings in the whole enterprise and patiently await my train. I again met my ticket counter hero, who turned out to be a Libyan trying to make his way back into Libya from Tunisia in the most roundabout way as necessitated by that country's tumult. I had an uneventful second class trip to Alexandria. Two and a half hours north to the Mediterranean, to the city founded by and named for Alexander the Great.

Alexandria is Egypt's second largest city, with something over 4 million people, small change compared to Cairo's 20+ million, but still not tiny. It hugs the coast for a good 20 km but only extends 3km inland. It's all kinds of mellow compared to Cairo, which isn't saying that it isn't noisy, crowded, and full of honking. It is, but it feels like a breath of fresh Mediterranean air compared to Cairo. And it has a fascinating history as well. Founded by Alexander the Great when he was a-roaming and a-conquering, it was the capital of Egypt for over a thousand years. Famously, Alex was home to one of the seven ancient wonders of the world, the Pharos Lighthouse. It's no longer standing (only the Pyramids of Giza exist today), but Qaitbay's Citadel does. Built in 1480, this fort is sited on the same spot of old Pharos and is really one of the more livable forts I've visited. Full of light and really rather airy, it's a beautiful old fortress, but I'd still prefer to have seen old Pharos, which was 135 meters tall, had 300 rooms in the lowest of its three sections, and was used continuously from its completion to 283 BC until the Arab invasion in 641 AD. Earthquakes took a toll after that, progressively collapsing sections. Restorations helped it hobble along until the early 14th century, when yet another earthquake took down the lowest section and it was all over. Enter Sultan Quaitbay.

Alexandria also has some catacombs, and I have been in many an ancient tunnel at this point, but never proper catacombs. These are pretty small, but still pretty cool. You walk down a spiral staircase until you reach the rotunda. The rotunda has various rooms opening from it, from tomb chambers to a room to store animal bones (why?) to what I call the picnic room. It's a spacious room with benches carved out of the bedrock (everything is carved out the bedrock actually). Families would come down here, bring food and wine, and hang out, just to check that all was well with the deceased's tomb situation. Down there, you can see the fusing of Greek and Egyptian art forms. I'm no art historian, but even I could the typically Egyptian gods, which are often man/animal mergings, carved with Greek stylings. No photos allowed, so my attempt at description is the best I can offer. I gave a cursory glance to the Roman amphitheater, the only one in Egypt, through the wrought iron fence surrounding it. I took in a museum, had some grilled seafood at the legendery Qadoura Restaurant, and planned to leave the next day.

Biblioteca Alexandria

At breakfast the next day, a friendly Australian author staying at my hotel told me I couldn't leave without seeing the new library. And I can't be bothered with any kind of rushing these days, so I decided to stay one more night. I also enjoy Alexandria; there's not that much to do really, but it's right on the Med, as was my hotel, and it's just got a nice vibe. Don't confuse the Biblioteca Alexandria with its ancient counterpart, one of the repositories of most of the world's learnings for centuries. That's all been gone for centuries. In its stead, the powers-that-were built a rarity in Egypt - a truly modern building. My exterior pic here doesn't do it justice. Inside it's a combo modern library/gallery/museum/planeterium complete with metal detectors and gift shop. After taking in a self-guided tour amidst a couple of tour groups, the only ones I've seen so far this trip in Egypt, I risked life and limb crossing the Corniche and spent the rest of the afternoon at a palm thatch cafe perched right on the Mediterranean Sea. I'm glad I stayed another day.

Khan Al-Khalili, uncrowded

Now I'm back in Cairo, and I finally made it to Khan Al-Khalili today, the famous market in the heart of Old Cairo. Nearly bereft of tourists, it was much less crowded than I expected, though by the time we made it to the metro stop heading home, I informed Andrew that I thought I was going to need a drink tonight. The Khan will take it out of you. I'll probably watch some heavily censored movie tonight. Good times in the Middle East!

One Woman! One Woman!

2011-04-15T14:35:00.000+02:00

Leaving Nepal for Dubai, I planned on a short stopover in the United Arab Emirates, perhaps most famous for Dubai. My flight landed in Dubai, but my perusal of wikitravel beforehand persuaded me to hop on the Emirates Express bus for a two hour ride to Abu Dhabi instead. April 10 was a good day to be female for me.

Beginning in Kathmandu's airport, there were separate security lines for men and women at two different points (although the pat downs the ladies administer are more akin to a feeling up). Male passengers outnumbered females by a good three to one ration, so shorter lines for me! Upon landing in the Emirates, I realized that all buses in the UAE reserve the first few rows for Ladies Only. In fact, it was only because I am a woman that I got the last seat on the bus to Abu Dhabi. Had I been a man, I could not have sat next to the woman. That explained the man helping me get to the bus insisting to the driver that I was "one woman, one woman."

To go from Nepal to the Emirates is a shift. The sandy spaciness of it reminds me of driving on I-10 through Phoenix, and the nouveau-riche, glitziness feels vaguely Vegas, albeit with no gambling, scarce booze, and few blondes. The Emirates are clean, modern, organized, and run on immigrant labor. Filipino shop clerks, Pakistani taxi drivers - these make up a significant portion of the people you see out and about. Native Emiratis for the most part don't do the low- or un-skilled jobs. From what I can gather and what I've read, large numbers of immigrants from South Asia, Africa and Southeast Asia come to the UAE, work to send remittances home, and squeeze into apartments with their fellow countrymen. MUST be Filipino, ONLY from such and such Indian state are typical snippets from the advertisements. The Central Post Office is, hands down, the most organized P.O. I've ever visited. At the front desk, you get a number based on what service you need. That's genius - who wants to stand in line behind someone shipping four boxes when all you need is two postcard stamps?

Other things struck me, like the ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) petrol stations' having mosques on the property - perfect for when the call to prayer and the call to fill up your gas tank coincide. Or the woman in her abaya and full face veil, the sheila, unashamedly cutting the line at the supermarket. I realized how handy these sheilas can be; how much less do you care about dirty stares directed at you when no one can see your face? If no one can see you blush, I doubt you blush much. The only way to recognize such miscreants is by her handbag. And a flash handbag is de riguer here. Line-cutter's was a melange of black, purple and pink leather. I'd know her purse anywhere, and she didn't even cut in my line! Incidentally, falconry has been a part of the culture for a very long time, and the hood that is placed over the bird's eyes to deprive it of its sight is known as a burqa. This is also the name for one of the oldest traditional Emirati pieces of dress, a mask worn by females once they came of age. This might be my favorite pic of one.

My second day, I took a bus to Al Ain, which is an ancient oasis town inland, close to the Oman border. I'm really glad I went; I visited one of the National Museums and Al Jahili Fort, a historic mudbrick fort pictured here, both stops being very informative. It turns out people have been living here for at least five thousand years and leaving interesting tomb complexes dotting the area along the way, as well as some of the earliest evidence in the world of aflaj, irrigation systems funneling water from aquifers though underground tunnels to oases. They're known by many names, including kattaras, and I've written about them before. Well before human settlement, about six to eight million years ago, this area was a fertile grassland, similar to today's East Africa. In fact, the Middle East and Africa were then physically connected, at what is now Ethiopia and Yemen. Elephants, hippopotomus, rhinoceros, ostrich, sabre-toothed cats, crocodiles, and giraffes all lived here until the area reverted back to a desert, which it had been before this geologically brief green period, and which it assuredly is now.

The small sandstorm we drove through on our way to Al Ain proved that. After those quick two days, it was back on an airplane, headed to a repeat country. Perhaps you can guess it, or perhaps I already told you my plans, but I'll write again once I have more to say about it, aside from it's the first place I've had Yemeni food, but I am so crazy as to be in Yemen. As it is, I wrote this and the preceding post all at once, and I'm all written out.

Killing Time in Kathmandu

2011-04-15T14:04:00.000+02:00

Stupa of Bouda, a Tibetan Buddhist temple east of Kathmandu

What happened to me? Did I become a hermit in some cave in the Himalayas? Did I muster up the fortitude to climb to Everest Base Camp? Or did I do a spot of trekking and limit my sights to those in the Kathmandu Valley? Take a guess, dear readers.
After returning from Chitwan and getting the colors out of my clothes (though not entirely out of my only sports bra - damn you, red dye!), I wanted to see Bhaktapur, another of the valley's historic, medieval powerful city-states. Bhaktapur is amazingly well-preserved for a city made of brick and wood in a seismic zone that already suffered a catastrophic earthquake in 1934. You pay a price for this history, a steep entry fee of about $15 USD. If I was going to pay that, I was going to stay and take my time. I took a small bag with me and headed to the bus station, that being a pitted parking lot with vehicles of various size and road-worthiness heading to various destinations.

First bus to Bhaktapur, still at the Patan bus station

At first, I was so pleased with my bus, beautifully decorated with posters of Korean(?) pop stars and colorful pom poms hanging from the dash. And the music! It was like a mash up of Bollywood and 70s American TV theme songs. C.H.I.P.S. was the reference my brain made at the time, though I cannot hum a single bar of its theme from memory, so take it for what you will. We were hopping merrily along the highway until we hit a roadblock, more like a human shield of Nepali policeman with their plastic shields out completely blocking the road. I guessed that marked the end of the ride. But because I'm a know-nothing foreigner, I still had to pay full fare, which isn't quite fair, but neither is the fact that 28 cents means almost nothing to me, so I guess not fair is fair enough here.

But how to get to Bhaktapur? Of course, there were scads of people standing around just watching the scene, some of them were walking along the side of the road, and plenty more were walking in the wide ditch alongside the road. I figured I'd join in, rubberneck the roadblock, and hopefully quickly catch another bus. After passing the wall of cops, I came across a big bus, empty of all passengers with all its glass blown out stranded in the middle of the road. On the other side of it, another human wall made up of police blocking the road from traffic's other direction. The bus was the problem, but I couldn't figure out what its problem was. Rather disturbingly, it looked like an explosion, but I couldn't really ask that question of anyone. There weren't any injured people around, and no one seemed especially concerned about the situation, so I may be completely wrong about an abandoned bus in the middle of a highway with all its glass blown out. I don't know. It was hot out, and I just wanted to get to Bhaktapur. I asked a young Nepali woman in western clothes what was going on. In her halting English, she kindly offered to show me the way, which consisted of walking along the same road until we got to to Thimi, which is the village just before Bhaktapur, where I caught another minibus, and voila, I had arrived.

Bhaktapur temple, dedicated to the fierce Shiva

In addition to its Newari red brick and carved wood beauty, Bhaktapur is known for the king of curds, juju dhau. Sweet, rich and creamy, you can find it at the tourist cafes, but it's better and cheaper if you buy it from the small shops consisting of an open window and a small fridge. For the cost of a minibus ride back to Kathmandu, you get a small plastic cup full of the goodness and a wooden spoon to shovel it in. Delicious. I have a thing for yogurt and its culinary cousins, and juju dhau is goodness we need in the world.

The day after returning from Bhakapur, MaJo, my Guatemalan friend I met at my meditation retreat, and I joined a group making a two-day trek up to Chisapani, a village in the mountains surrounding Kathmandu. Day one involved a 1000 meter ascent, which is what turns me off on Himalayan trekking. I don't like going uphill that much enough to do it day after day after day. We met some great people and were welcomed with traditional dancing by the villages once we arrived. That was nice, but less nice was fending off the invitations to drink rum in the hotel rooms of two of the men who were on the trek with us. Villages are not really the right size to lose unwanted suitors. MaJo and I had only one option once we were too tired to enjoy the cold temperature, the repeated escapes from our admirors, and the escalating drunkeness and belligerence of the locals - it was our bedtime. We had only been shown one way to get to our guesthouse from the village. It was the shortcut. The thing about shortcuts is they must have a trade-off, otherwise everyone would take that way everytime. Our shortcut was incredibly steep, rocky, and pitch dark. I had wisely brought the headlamp out with me. At 8:30pm, we arrive at the gates to our guesthouse and find them padlocked. That's not exactly past curfew; in fact, we were altogether too early - the proprietors were joining the party in the village. But neither MaJo nor I knew who they were, had any idea of where to find them, or had any appetite for climbing back up that steep, rocky, unilluminated path to get answers to the first two questions. So we climbed the fence. The next morning, our hosts were curious as to how we got in, then apologetic, which was very nice. But I still don't know why the gates had to be locked anyway. Isn't village living supposed to be bucolic and safe?

Once back in Kathmandu, I was resolved on no more trekking. Then I vacillated. How do you spend six weeks in Nepal and not do some proper Himalayan treks? Ask me how. MaJo graciously let me stay with her in fancy-pants Patan, which is sort of a suburb of Kathmandu and home to the UN House and many expats, as well as its own Durbar Square. I really enjoyed having an apartment to stay in, a kitchen to cook in, and a neighborhood to be in. So I parked it in Patan. I pitched in with the rent and had a bit of a stay-cation in K-town, which was really nice. Just being able to make tea and toast in the mornings was a delight. Of course, Patan isn't so fancy that it's immune to the load shedding of Nepal. We had our 14 hours without power daily too, but the inverters kept the lights on and gas water heater meant you could still get a hot shower anytime.

It's easy to make light of the load shedding when you're minimally affected by it, as I was, but I worry about Nepal's progress. I read in the local English-language papers of factories that get power for eight hours a day. How can a factory be productive and profitable when it gets that little power? Most of the time, half of the ten hours a day of power availability are at night, when you are least likely and able to make use of it. Nepal is dependent on hydropower for almost all its power, so the dry season (now) is always trickier for power supply. Now, my knowledge is imperfect, but it sounds like Nepal is locked into long term contracts with India, to whom it sells most of its power. This is no bad thing in of itself - British Columbia sells something like 70% of its hydropower to California, for example - but you have got to take care of your own first. Nepal has many more problems that its lovely people don't deserve, but this post is long enough that it needs no more political ranting.

I do have one non-political rant to add however with regards to Nepal. Bird poop. In 45 days in the country, I was pooped on by birds three times. Three times. On top of the three times birds have used me for target practice previously, this makes a lifetime guano attack tally of 6. I think that's extravagant. But the Nepalese assure me it's a sign of good luck.

What Caste Is a White Devil Anyway?

2011-03-23T14:48:00.000+02:00

Tippy canoes at Chitwan National Park

Chitwan National Park, one of Nepal's and Asia's premier wildlife parks, is only about a five hour bus ride south of Kathmandu. My friend Prem, who I'd met when I first arrived in Nepal, is from the area and invited me to meet him down there and check it out. First, I had to get my wildlife fix, which entailed canoeing, elephant riding, and that classic mode of transport walking. That's where I saw beautiful hornbills and kingfishers, rhinos hanging out in a placid river, small herds of spotted deer, a creature called a yellow-throated marten, wild peacocks and many other birds (I was hanging out with some diehard birdwatchers).

After a couple of days of wildlife spotting in the park, Prem and I joined his friend, Grupendra, on a short trek to his newly opened guesthouse in Upardang Gardi. This teeny tiny village of around 30 families is set just below an old Nepali fort built in 1800 to keep out invaders from the south. I'm pretty sure this means the Brits, who were deep in the East India colonial period around then. It's a beautiful area and at only 1275m elevation, I was only huffing and puffing and hating the trek for the last hour or so. As I described it later, the trail is up, up, up, and more up, up, up, up a bit more, up, up, and up. And then you're there! Still, I loved it. We had the trails to ourselves unless we came across a family selling honey on the trailside. And when the rain started, we took shelter in a very basic home made of twigs. The parents were out, but the four sisters were home and as shy as could be. They were also frightfully dirty, by which I mean that the only part of their slight bodies not covered in dust and dirt were under their noses where the snot ran down. But I probably would be filthy as well if I were subsistence farming using slash and burn techniques on a remote hillside where water, firewood, absolutely everything, had to be procured and brought home uphill using human labor. Once we reached the cottage, I downed a lot of boiled water and then taught the guys how to play Hearts. Prem kicked our butts.

Kumari Devi shrine at Upardang Gadi Fort

The next day, we explored the old fort, which is no longer used as such. Building it must have been a serious project. If the materials weren't already at the top of this mountain, they had to be brought up. Again I marvel at the ambitions of mankind. To me, if you've got the gumption to cross malarial jungles and climb mountains just so you can go fight some people and acquire some territory and power, you've got a lot more initiative (albeit of the wrong kind) than I do. Inside the fort is a small shrine to the Kumari Devi, a virgin goddess. Nepali warriors apparently prefer the female deities, which says something about who is ultimately considered to be the more ferocious sex. The concept of the Kumari goddess is interesting. Even today, in Kathmandu, a young girl from a particular caste and group is chosen to be the living embodiment of the goddess Kumari. She goes to live in a house in Durbar Square, the historic royal square, and is trotted out daily for the people to worship. Once she bleeds, either by a cut or wound or the onset of menses, she's out though, and a new Kumari is selected. The word Kumari means virgin.

Down the mountain was a lot less strenuous than the trip up, and we passed lots of villagers gathering to celebrate Holi. I don't have pictures because I didn't feel right whipping out my camera, but it was so cool to see a group of brightly dressed women sitting down at the edge of a cliff singing songs, playing instruments, and just generally relaxing and having fun. In a small part of the world without electricity, where making tea involves pumping the water from the well and collecting the firewood necessary to boil said water, I imagine holidays where you get to see your neighbors from the village one hill over are a nice break. They do use calling signals from hill to hill to communicate in this area as well; I guess it's a good way to get the rugrats home in time for dal bhat.

I've been jokingly calling myself the white devil due to the reaction I got from most of the children in rural Nepal. They are the shyest kids I've come across anywhere, huddling together and hiding their faces when you look at them, even if I'm smiling and greeting them with a 'namaste.' When Prem, Grupendra, and I reached a village where we could take a jeep back to Tandi, I really did feel a bit like a white devil, so fascinated were the locals. We sat outside a tea shop, having Nepali tea, which is basically chai style tea, milky and spiced. Standing, sitting, and squatting all around us were kids and men - every single one staring at me. There was no chatter amongst them, certainly none of them were talking to me, but they were getting a good look at this white devil. It was a little unnerving, but also amusing. Of course, crowds beget crowds. At its peak, I'd say we had a good fifteen people parked in front of our little tea-drinking threesome. This white devil takes dairy.

Typical Holi scene, Tandi

Now that we were back in the plains amongst more people, I got my first glimpses of Holi. I'm still a little hazy on what the basis of the holiday is, but maybe you can make more of this wikipedia entry than I can. So far as I can tell, it's an excuse to make an unholy mess. Colored powder and colored water is used to annoint friends, family, and strangers. This powder is deeply pigmented, sometimes incense scented, and gentle folk give you a tikka, which is the mark on the forehead, with it. Most people, including the young men on the street who approached me and almost always asked beforehand, swipe a goodly amount on both sides of your face, saying 'Happy Holi.' And then there are the matrons, the grown women, the mothers, the pillars of society. They got up in my business, mashing powder in my hair, using so much on my face that powder billowed off me, and, to top it all off, stuffing it down my shirt. And then laughing hysterically.

It was a blast, and I don't begrudge those women their fun at all because they're the ones having to clean up all the mess. And it is messy. But it's also great fun. We ended up bringing the party to the brother of Ranjan, another of Prem's friends. There was raksi, Nepali rice wine, beer, and dancing. I got a lot of questions, including my favorite from a young boy who was obviously asking questions for his shyer, less English-speaking friend: "What caste are you?" The neighbors dropped by, strangers dropped by, some to watch the fun, some to join the dance party. Very good stuff. Amazingly, back in Kathmandu, I found a laundry service that got the colors out of my kit as well. It's a Holi miracle.

As they say on the tailgates of trucks here in Nepal:

Nepali Belching Women's Choir

2011-03-15T19:39:00.000+02:00

In terms of the amenities one typically expects in an "International" airport, you won't find them at Kathmandu's. Duty free shopping? I didn't see any. Do you need to get a visa on arrival as I did? You'd better have your ready cash in USD, Euro, Aussie dollar, Indian rupee, whatever foreign currency is accepted, because they don't take Nepali rupees (which are not allowed out of the country) and they don't have an ATM at the airport.
Good thing I had arranged a pickup with my guesthouse. I only had enough USD to get a monthlong visa, rather than a three monther, but you can easily extend your visa once in the country. I got all squared away with my forms, photos and fees, retrieved my bags, exited the airport, and was promptly catcalled. I definitely made a face. I was just so shocked; it's been months and months since I've had the experience. Southeast Asia has its hassles, absolutely, but men making "appreciative" noises as you pass wasn't one I noticed.

But Kathmandu is different. How many capital cities have 6 hour power blackouts ranging across the city daily, as a fact of life? Many guesthouses and businesses have generators to keep the juice going during these outages. How many bustling tourist quarters go nearly pitch black at around 11pm nightly? It's one thing not to be a late night town, but keep some lights on, would ya? Street lights are uncommon, so once the businesses close, it's lights out. When you are a solo female, that is plenty motivation to get back to your room before the dusty, pitted roads are bereft of lights and people.

After a few days seeing sights such as Durbar Square, the old historic royal/temple district and a variety of Buddhist and Hindu temples, fending off street touts offering everything from pashmina scarves and trekking expeditions to tiger balm and hashish (Nepal, incidentally, is the only country where I personally have been offered drugs on the street), I escaped up to the hills surrounding Kathmandu for another 10 day Vipassana meditation course. Because I am crazy. At least that's what I thought the first three days. The first Vipassana course felt like a life-changing experience, the second more like masochism. Oh, it was hard to concentrate. I wanted to leave, I wanted to run away, I wanted to be doing anything else but what I had come there to do. And it was a less comfortable experience than the one I had done in Malaysia. For example, both facilities had cold water only. That's not really a problem in Malaysia. Cold water showers in the tropics are refreshing. But what about cold water showers at 2000m elevation in very late winter? If "refreshing" properly describes the experience of watching steam rise off your shivering, wet body, then, yes, I guess cold water showers on Shivapuri Mountain are refreshing. In Malaysia, the 4:30am to 6:30am meditation session had been surprisingly enjoyable; it was by far the coolest part of the day there. That and the early morning quiet combined to make it a lovely time to meditate. Here in Nepal, it was also the coolest part of the day. I wore a combination of 4 shirts, a sweater, a hoodie, long johns, pants, and a skirt, and still I spent the entire two hours shivering, just dreaming of the hot milk tea I'd get my numb hands on at 6:32am.

Along with the hot tea came food. Two meals a day for me, no food after noon, which meant I was going 19 hours between lunch and breakfast daily. In the evenings, I had hot lemon water with sugar and salt - just like fresh Gatorade, only better. But breakfast and lunch always involved one food item - beans. Nepalis like beans. The national dish is dhal bhat - lentils with rice. It's a running joke that Nepalis don't want to eat anything else even when they have the option. Luckily, we had more than just lentils and more than just rice. But whether they were lentils, black-eyed, kidney, garbanzo, or pinto, we had beans twice a day. I like beans, always have, but that is a lot of beans. And you would expect a certain physiological effect to accompany such prodigious ingestion of legumes, especially when you park a hundred or so people in a room and tell them to sit without talking for hours on end. The men farted. A lot. But that's dudes! I wasn't surprised. A few women farted. But many, many women burped. And when I use the verb "burp" or "belch" here, it's because the English language doesn't have a word to express the elevated or more forceful degree of burping that I encountered in the hills of the Kathmandu Valley. I was not afflicted myself, nor was everyone, but there were times when you'd have five women all burping repeatedly. Ten burps in ninety seconds from one person: not unusual. Call and response belches between two or more women: not unusual. One massive burp broken up into three or more truncated burps: not unusual. Maybe my mind was just looking for something to fixate on, but I began to classify these burps. Each burp began to have a personality trait (let's not use the word flavor here). There are blunt burps, questioning burps, bleeting burps, long-winded burps, inconspicuous burps. There's a Ph.D. dissertation in this somewhere, I'm convinced.

The burping never stopped, but my ability to concentrate on other, more important, things, like meditation, improved over the course. In the end I was glad I had done it again and was renewed in my determination to meditate regularly. By the time I got back to Kathmandu, I had some plans to hang out with some of my fellow attendees. Good times, right? Two nights ago, I got the dreaded travelers' sickness. In over a year of travel and countless nibbles of shady food, I have had amazing luck. It ended March 13, 2011. After just one night of projectile vomiting and diarrhea, I felt spent, totally depleted and utterly without energy or concentration. It was all I could do to get up and down five flights of stairs to a pharmacy to get rehydration salts and more water. I spent all day yesterday in bed, too tired to read or do anything, just laying there when I couldn't sleep. I am very glad that I'm staying in a nice place; they have room service here, so I was able to eat some plain rice and soy sauce for dinner (yay! more rice). Whatever got me appears to have done its worst. I don't have my full energy levels back but I'm not bent over a toilet either, so no complaints will be documented in this space.

I've now extended my visa here, so I'm feeling much less pressure to do this, that and everything else in the next two weeks. Tomorrow, I take a bus down to Chitwan, which is in the southern plains of Nepal. Chitwan is considered one of Asia's premier wildlife parks, as it's home to one-horned rhinos, sloth bears, and royal Bengal tigers. I may see no more than a deer and a bird or two, but there's only one to see what one will see. I'll update you accordingly.

A Passage to India

2011-02-24T08:06:00.000+02:00

Singapore, the tiny, organized, and crowded city-state perched on the end of the Malay Peninsula, is a trip. That's the place where chewing gum is illegal (LOVE IT!), caning is a practiced corporal punishment (NO LOVE FOR IT!), and the Merlion is the symbol of the nation (LOVE IT CAUSE IT'S CRAZY!).
The Merlion is a mythical creature dating from the ancient period known as the 1960s. Half lion, half fish, he has been campily representing Singapore for about 50 years. I'd make you guess which half is the "mer" and which the "lion," but I think it's not too hard to do and it's in the pic.

Singapore is crowded, bustling, clean, clean, clean, and modern. If you like high-end shopping, do come. I didn't know they made Gucci stores that big. If you like deep-rooted funk and the ability to eat, drink and drop litter wherever you like, anywhere else in Southeast Asia will suit you better.

I had planned to spend about 6 days there before flying to India and doing yoga for a month. But that was before I realized I couldn't get a visa in Singapore. Apparently, the Indian High Commission only issues visas for residences of Singapore. Kuala Lumpur is a 5 hour luxury bus ride away, so I postponed my flight, changed my registration with my ashram in India and headed back to KL to get the visa there, knowing that five business days would be required to process it. However, not until I arrived in KL did I get the really crappy news. India had just recently changed the rules (November and January have both been bandied about as when): tourist visas are only approved if you are applying in your home country. Which sucks. Because I'm not there now, but I was! I was welcome to apply, but 90% of applicants are rejected. Great odds, but I went for it anyway, even throwing in a nice little letter designed to sway these hard-hearted beaurocrats from their silly policies. I opted to leave out the jokes about being a terrorist Pakistani bride to improve my chances. And I waited.

The waiting wasn't so bad. I went down to Melaka, which I had missed on my other two trips to Malaysia and may be my favorite spot in the country. It has a fascinating history, which I will try to write about another time. I took this photo there on the final day of Chinese New Year, which really is a holiday that keeps on giving since it lasts a fortnight. And I had company during my visa limbo. I reunited with Julia and Tatjana, separately, here in KL. I saw Vinay, who I'd met in Australia. He helped me drown my sorrows in the delicious solace of mojitos and laughter and he introduced me to Chris, who shuttled me all over KL in the paperwork process known as a visa application submission. Chris introduced me to George, who also took me all over KL and helped me out endlessly, particularly when I was super bummed out upon finding out that I was REJECTED. At least they rejected me in five business days!

I had been unaccountably hopeful before seeing those terrible letters on the screen of my iphone, so my disappointment was pretty deep. I had to eat the cost of the airfare, which blessedly was cheap, and I had to come up with a new destination. Ready for something not Southeast Asian and unable to go full-on South Asian, I hit upon the solution before the day was done. Nepal! It was already on the shortlist, it had just fallen off my radar a bit. Suddenly, I was (almost) convinced that Nepal was going to be better than India. I'm holding a little bit of a grudge, you see.

And so, that's where I'm going. I'll start in Kathmandu, then recharge at one of the Vipassana Meditation Centers, which is where I'll meditate all day and keep my trap shut. And then, trekking, temples, and who knows what else? Rhinos or abseiling perhaps. I'll let you know, but probably only well after I've done it. Kathmandu has reliable internet - when the power's not off, but I don't expect much outside of that historic city. It's Nepal.

More Malaysia

2011-02-11T07:25:00.000+02:00

After my night on a beanbag, I hopped on a bus out of Khao Lak, still undecided as to where I was headed. But the bus was heading south, and that was the correct direction. I figured it would work out. My pal, Tatjana, had to get out of Thailand that very day; her 30 days were up. That's how I ended up on my way to the Malaysian border.
Our bus ride to Hat Yai was easy, aside from my keeping the bus from leaving behind Tatjana with the sticky rice and banana she had bought us at a stop. It was covered in flaky coconut and delicious. Definitely worth yelling, "wait, wait, please, wait" at a bus driver for. Once in Hat Yai, we needed to get to Penang Besar to cross the border into Malaysia. No problem, right? Tatjana and I were making this up as we went along. We had no Malaysian guidebook, no Malaysian cash, no idea as to how to get from the border to the nearest town, but were we worried? It was 4:30pm and we were only 50 kilometers away. No biggie.

The bus came. It was not the minibus I was expecting, which would just rush over to the border and be done with us. We should have waited for that tourist special. This was a proper, though dilapidated, bus, and it took us on a multi-hour journey through Hat Yai's rush hour traffic and to every little collection of plywood huts along the highway to the border. We finally got to the border, which was still open to our great relief. We got stamped out of Thailand and started walking across no-man's land or whatever that blank bit of land between two countries is called. It's at this point that we realize that we are the only ones walking this thing. There's not tons of folks crossing to begin with, but none of them are on foot. They got wheels. We don't. As we meander down the road with our backpacks, we both were glad we weren't doing this alone. It wasn't scary, but man, crossing a fairly desolate border at night on foot? Not the most fun you can have in the world by yourself.

Once we get into Malaysia, we pepper the immigration officials. How far is the next town? Is there a bus? Taxis? ATMs? Once again, Malaysian helpfulness shows its lovely face. One of the guys shows us the way to the bank, calls a taxi for us, and gives us a recommendation for a place to stay in Kangar, which is the closest town, 30 km away. How nice is he? In Kangar, the hotel is over our budget, but our taxi driver has another place - Hotel Malaysia. Now, the Hotel Malaysia ain't bad, but it kinda had a creepy vibe at 10pm. But we were desperado, and so we took it.

The next morning, we needed to nosh and figure out how to get to Langkawi, a large island off the northwest coast of Malaysia. Along the way, we met another lovely Malaysian, Toman, who treated us to breakfast - black bean dumplings and hot coffee - gave us loads of info, and told us we should check out Chinese New Year in Penang, another island just south of Langkawi. A plan was forming in our minds....

We made it to the coast on a local bus and somehow scored the last two seats on the largest passenger ferry in Malaysia. Tatjana and I felt like our luck was changing. At least we hoped so, this trudging around to find a place everywhere we went was getting old. Unfortunately, it wasn't over. Langkawi is a funny mix. It's got about 100,000 locals, and it's very popular with both Malaysians and foreigners as a tourist destination. The entire island is duty free, so beer and alcohol is widely available and cheap, which explains the popularity with the foreign crowd. Some stretches of beach are informally Malaysian and some our foreign. You can tell by the swimwear. It is a nylon burka? It's the Malaysian end of the beach. It is a string bikini? Farang. But it was crowded. We tried four guesthouses before finding a place that had two dorm beds, and regular readers know how I feel about dorm beds. We moved into better digs the following day. Over the next few days, we met up with Tatjana's friend, Julia, and rode the Langkawi cable car, pictured above. This cable car is pretty intense. It's like an plexiglass enclosed gondola that swoops up a mountainside 800 meters. It's quite steep, so steep that the operating hours are very dependent on the wind. At the very top, they've built an improbable sky bridge between two peaks. From there, you can see the island's beaches and smaller satellite islands as well as loads of student groups, honeymooners, and freaked-out folks. It's pretty dang high up there. The price of the tickets was on the high side, but it turned out to be the coolest thing we did in Langkawi, so do it if you're ever there.

The Chinese Lunar New Year was upon us, so it was time to ditch the beach and see something a little different. If Langkawi is a big island without a lot of people, Penang is a small island with the highest population density of any Malaysian island. Penang is thisclose to the mainland, and Georgetown is the old colonial town with its traditional shophouses and Chinese temples. Because of Chinese New Year, all the Chinese restaurants closed, and for the most part, very few ethnic Chinese were out and about. They were celebrating with family. But they were visiting temples too. That's a scene. We visited two temples in Penang, the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy and the Snake Temple. Both were swarming with the faithful and incense. Incense sticks in hands, in boxes full of sand in front of statues, huge pillars of incense, arranged in grids outside. So much incense I had to back away at certain points. But all those people and all that smoke gave the temples an air of hushed hubbub. Everyone is walking around, holding their incense sticks and bobbing them up and down in front of their bowed heads, lighting a candle, murmuring a prayer, burning a piece of offering paper. It's crowded and full of activity, but everyone is quietly doing their own thing. If I'd had a gas mask, I could have stayed all day.

The three of us also went to the Chinese Chief Minister's Open House. We had no idea what this was except there would be free food, and it was quite far from Georgetown, the tourist hub, so it was likely to be interesting. Great call on our parts. After a long bus ride, we get out at PISA, Penang's big stadium. Stadiums are large. And if it's not a game day, they always look...closed. As PISA did on this sunny day. But we kept walking around it, passing closed gate after gate until we found an open gate, and then a kindly young man standing over a hot wok showed us the way in. I'm still not clear on what our host's job responsibilities are, but he puts on a good buffet. One side Chinese food, the other Indian, Chinese and Indian dancers, and loads of Penangese. I made that word up by the way, but it might be right. Julia, Tatjana, and I found some seats, and met so many more lovely Malaysians, full of things to do in Penang, asking all kinds of questions about us. Eventually, a man named Chandra and his adorable son and daughter gave us a ride to the Snake Temple, which was above and beyond but ever so appreciated.

The next day I flew to Singapore, thinking I'd spend a quick week there seeing it, before jetting off to India. I was very wrong about that.

Island Time

2011-01-31T09:26:00.000+02:00

So much for my new year's resolutions, i.e. to blog both more frequently and less wordily. I am never really sure when I'm going to have wifi access and if nothing is written, then I haven't anything to post anyway. And I've been busy! Not every minute of the day exactly, but the activities have not been conducive to the writerly state of mind or to having access to the world wide web. I shall now do my best to make up for the lack of information, dear readers, should you have the patience to slog along to the end.

I did find out the name of the island I was heading to from Krabi: Koh Jum, where the "j" is a combined "j" and "ch" sound. It's not big or important enough to warrant an actual docking by the ferry to Koh Lanta, so the ferry pulls closeish to the island and the longtail boats come out to meet the ferry. In the usual Thai way, by which I mean it seems like chaos to the uninitiated farengi, but all the Thai people know exactly what they're doing, the longtails line up parallel to the ferry right up next to each other. Then, your luggage is handed down to the first one. If that boat doesn't belong to the guesthouse or resort you're staying in, then your bag is passed over from longtail to longtail until it meets the boat that matches your destination. As for you, you climb down the ladder to the lower deck, step onto the longtail and keep climbing until you get to the boat headed to your beachside bungalow destination. Of course, I had no idea how it all worked beforehand. I'd been told I'd be getting off at the second ferry stop. So when I climbed up to the top deck to see us in the middle of bright turquoise water and all these longtails swarming us, I figured out pretty quickly that we weren't disembarking at the dock of Koh Jum, which may not even exist anyway.

Once off the ferry, I was quickly dispatched to Paradise Bungalows, where I had a spacious bungalow without a lick of electricity. During the day, you don't need it, but at night, well, moonlight only illuminates so much. And it gets dark around 6:30pm, which is not my bedtime. Each evening, I would pick up a lantern from the main restaurant/bar/lounge area. The lantern gave off enough light to get me back to the bungalow and find my way around, but it wasn't quite enough to read by (unless I was willing to risk a fire by placing it on the mattress and I wasn't). Head lamp to the rescue (thanks again, Tina)! Koh Jum is a lounger kind of island, and heaven forbid I upset the balance by trying to go against the grain. I read a lot. I finished a fascinating biography of Peter the Great that my dad had given me as plane reading (thanks, Tom!), I picked up and quickly finished Enduring Love by Ian McEwan at the book share at the guesthouse (disturbing, but good), and started an Anthony Trollope novel, which my Kindle informs me I've now read 96% of. That's a fair bit of reading for four days. I walked to the village a few times, once even catching a ride with a young local girl on her motorbike. I had asked her if I was heading the right way to the village (all dirt paths look the same to me), and she nodded yes, and then with a toss of her pink headscarved head, indicated I should hop on her bike. This was a bumpy ride and we both giggled most of the way. Walking back from the village that first day, I spotted a very long (more than a meter) dark snake wriggling away from the road. A few minutes later, I was walking through the neighboring resort and saw two enormous monitor lizards crossing the path a few yeards ahead of me. That stopped me in my tracks. I yield to lizards that exceed 4 feet in length, hell two feet even, especially when their mouths are notoriously full of nasty bacteria. They had just been scouting the chicken roost for eggs. I can't speak to their success, but I don't know what man or critter would have stopped them.

I received some new compliments on Koh Jum. A local woman praised my sisterwife look - long sleeves and ankle-length skirt, telling me it was beautiful. I know how to impress the locals on a small Muslim island with my fashion choices. That was predictable enough, but the head waiter at the guesthouse surprised me by being positively jealous of my arm hair. He kept going on and on about how nice it was, and how he wished he had some. I told him I would be happy to give all of mine to him, and we both shook our heads ruefully at this impossibility. On at least two occasions. He really did seem quite sad about not having dark arm hair.

I had had more indecision than I usually do about what to do with myself since I got back to Asia. As I left Koh Jum, I managed to make a decision - to head up north along the coast to Khao Lak and join a liveaboard for the Similan Islands. Unbeknownst to me, Khao Lak is rather ritzy and resorty and, at this time of year, positively crowded with northern Europeans escaping their winter weather. I don't mind that annual exodus, but I do mind having trouble finding a room. After a few rejections, I ended up asking around and finding a room behind the Khao Lak Supermarket. Reception is the checkout counter of same. It felt a little odd, but it's really rather handy. One can get a room, water, sunscreen, beer, snacks, etc. for a reasonable price all in one place. It was only for one night, and then I was going to be living on a boat for three days and two nights.

The Similan Islands are a group of nine small islands in the Andaman Sea off the West coast of Thailand. Khao Lak, the jumping-off point for visits there, suffers no lack of Similan liveaboards, and I found a very good value one leaving the next day, which suited me. A smallish boat, the Nuan Nang, or seagull, was sturdy and seaworthy, but she tipped with every wave. Dramamine to the rescue. After three days of being tossed around on deck, I was ready to get back on land. The diving was quite nice. I am a spoiled diver, and I found the sea life and corals to be unexceptional in the Similans. However, the islands have these enormous, great, gray boulders that spill off the islands into the sea, giving the dive sites an unusual topography. You swim above, between, and around these submerged boulders, some rounded in shape, some rectangular, but many of them as big as a small house. This trip gave me my first opportunity to use my Christmas gift - an underwater casing for my camera. I am still quite the novice, but I expect to improve with practice. Fish are so tricky, especially the flat or narrow ones; they don't have many good angles if they barely exist in that third dimension.

I had two dive buddies on the trip. The first one had blue eyeliner tatooed on her lower eyelids. I found it hard not to stare at those two bright blue lines. My second buddy was a better fit. Tatjana and I hit it off before we got on the boat, and when we got back to Khao Lak, we both had to confront the stupidly crowded lodging situation in Khao Lak. After trying four places, all full, we ended up at Walker's Inn, where Tatjana had stayed before. Andy, the kind and irreverant proprietor, let us camp in an anteroom that was a combination hallway, open space, and storage closet. Quite happily, I slept on a beanbag. We were so grateful just to have a place to rest, and we weren't the only ones. Four Hungarians and a French guy joined us on the floor before the night was out. Lesson learned - book ahead for Khao Lak. Andy was nonchalant about his good deed; he told his pals over beers that "they refused Joseph and Mary a place to sleep, and people were still talking about it two thousand years later." Thank you, Andy!

That doesn't quite catch me up to where I am now, but it's taken me two days to get this much written, so I'll post this and play catch up when I can. For now, I will only say that I'm not in Khao Lak.

Back to Bangkok and then?

2011-01-20T04:36:00.000+02:00

In the (made up) words of J-Lo's incarnation on Go Fug Yourself, hola lovers! I'm back, and I've heard the word. I'm supposed to write more often, but I'm supposed to keep my posts shorter. I'll do what I can. It is a new year. My last update found me lounging amongst the electrical outlets in Texas.
I made it down to the booming metropolis of Corpus Christi (hey, don't laugh!) and then, on Christmas Day, my youngest sister, Maggie, and I flew across the pond to Vienna to visit another sister, Lee. Vienna is a stately city, full of palaces and museums and cheap opera tickets (if you're willing to stand up for the performance and we were!). Lee's friend Kyle hosted us in his apartment, showed us around, patiently translated the names of every pastry we pointed to, and was just generally a top-notch tour guide and host. Danke schön, Kyle.

Mid-January marked the end of my stateside holiday. I had a wonderful time seeing my family and friends, and I had a lot of relaxation time too. Don't roll your eyes at that! I know you're thinking it's all relaxation all the time around here, but traveling has its stressors - different languages, alphabets, standards of personal space, water pressure, etc, etc. In fact, I wondered if I'd gone soft in two months home. And I may have.

It's hard to be sure of that at this point. As I write this paragraph, I've been in Bangkok for only a few more hours than it took to get here from SFO. A 36 hour journey involving four flights, one long layover, and a midnight arrival at BKK took it out of me. That much time in planes and airports is decidedly not good for your body, and I question its effect on one's soul as well. I did fine - I only fervently wished for one gray-haired, balding, pony-tailed, middle-aged American guy to shut up for our two shared flights. But there was rampant testiness all around me: the pouty delayed couple at SFO, fighting British family whose adult members kept dropping the f-bomb at El Chino's at LAX, aforementioned American who almost got booted out of the emergency exit row for being "borderline disrespectful" to the flight attendant. It's the usual air travel story; I had just had so very much in a day and a half. And no good movies either! Charlie St. Cloud go away. On this trip, I acknowledged a change in me that I have been reluctant to face: Dozing is no longer my default state on an airplane. Ah, those were the days. Now I really, really, really have to work at sleeping, and my body really, really, really has to need it. Gone, perhaps forever, is that pleasant sensation of the airplane's take-off pressing my head against the seat, sending me into an instant nap.

The lack of sleep didn't fully sap my brainpower though. I used my long layover in Detroit (yes, I started on the West Coast and flew to Detroit to get to Asia) to book a proper hotel for two nights in Bangkok. That was a good decision. Priceline, I thank you. I was racked with indecision as to what to do next, but I ended up buying a ticket on a flight down to Krabi. I was thinking of going to the island of Koh Lanta and getting some quality time in with a hammock, but I started chatting to a Swedish gal on the shuttle from the airport, who recommended another place instead. So in about two hours, I'm hopping on a boat and going to an island whose name I don't know. I am sure that the bungalow I've booked on no-name island doesn't have electricity, so don't expect an update too soon. Perhaps I'll compose it on paper by candlelight, but I doubt it.

The Perfect Christmas Magazine Gift?

2010-12-13T22:53:00.000+02:00

My return to the US was pretty seamless. On my flight from Tokyo to San Francisco, I was initially thrilled to be able to make complicated requests like "no ice please," have fluent conversations with strangers, and fully eavesdrop for the first time in ages. And then I heard what people were saying and I yearned for the traveller's cluelessness all over again.

That red and blue state stuff hasn't gone away yet, kids. If it isn't the middle aged white guy who now lives in Thailand sitting in front of you bitching about Californians being "disconnected," it's the gay Texan who now lives in California sitting next to you bitching about Texans being intolerant. Within 10 minutes of boarding the plane, I yearned for the familiar drone of foreign tongues. They might be bitching too, but I can't understand it.

Even after encountering Two Americas in two square meters (I'm pushing metric), I slipped right back into San Francisco mode upon landing, which tends toward the gourmand side of things. There was a lot of eating and drinking. Really a lot of drinking, leading to a new record of most morning headaches I've ever had in a three week span. But I was not my usual omnivorous self. No white rice, thank you very much. In fact, no Asian please, I've had enough for a while. Pizza, heh. Brunch? Not really in the mood, probably because I've had no shortage of eggs in 2010. Sandwiches, however, those I wanted. Yummy, delicious sandwiches - on toothsome bread - didn't have many of those while gone. Here's a tip: Get the Tunisian Chicken Salad Sandwich at Foreign Cinema if you find yourself in SF. And cheese! Oh, I wanted cheese (still do!). Goat, cow, sheep, runny, hard, smoked, accompanied by salumi or crackers - doesn't matter, just hand it over. And refill my wine glass while you're at it. Thanks! I said that kind of thing a lot. Eventually, my stomach and my waistline could take no more. I cried uncle, right about 9pm on Thanksgiving. Thank god I didn't give in a day sooner. That would have been a tragedy. I cherish Turkey Day.

Of course, the food and booze are not the only draws in the 941XX zip codes. To all my friends who put me up, who put up with me, who wined me and dined me, shuttled me all over the city to this restaurant or that friend's house, or saved a few hours in their busy schedules to hang out with me, I am grateful and delighted to have seen you. And for those who I missed, I'm sorry, and I won't be such a bad planner next time.

I'm now in Texas, in a bustling suburb of Houston, mooching off my family. This is the land of plenty - plenty of room to drive, plenty of room to park (these parking spots are gargantuan!), and plenty of electrical outlets. My parents' home is only a few years old, and every wall has outlets. I never have to look for one - I just have to look at a wall and two plugs are waiting there for my appliance. After spending months angling for power outlets in various hotels, guesthouses, and hostels, this seems so very, very American. We will not use some janky, ungrounded, non-surge protector power strip with a frayed cord to plug in three oscillating fans and some flimsy fire hazard light fixture - outdoors. No, we will leave that to the rest of the world. We have a plug for everything and everything in its plug. It's the American way, which may have something to do with our per capita energy usage.

I tagged along with my dad to the barber shop, which is where I came across the magazines pictured. Who needs Town & Country when you have Garden & Gun? I also fell a little bit in love with Wal-Mart. Before you judge, let me preface this by saying that I went mid-day on a weekday when pleasant, middle-aged or older employees outnumber the customers. I was already crushing when I found 3 oz. of Colgate for 97¢, but when the phone charger that I came for was half the price that the AT&T store sold it for, well, what can I say? Wally-World, I'm yours. And naming your house brand of generics Equate was pure marketing genius. Anyway, all this traipsing around the suburbs doesn't happen on foot. People might look at me funny if I were to walk on the few sidewalks so I'm driving. And driving is fun, especially when you get sing along to the radio, and you can't be late because you don't really have to be anywhere anyway. I rotate around three stations, or rather three decades - the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s. It's a constant flashback when I'm running the radio dial. The 70s are the songs that were hits before videos, the ones I know the words to but I don't know why. I have vivid memories of listening to the hits of the 80s on the radio and watching the videos on MTV. The 90s were a real jumble musically. One minute it's the Gin Blossoms and the next it's Snoop Dogg. But I would like to ask Sirius Radio if we really need to keep playing "Things That Make You Go Hmmmm?" I think I can speak for Generation X when I say no.

In other news, I am an old sap. Here is a list of things that have made tear up in the last few weeks, only one of which is exempt from mockery:

Toy Story 3 - viewed on a plane, it made me laugh, it made me cry. Do you know how ridiculous it feels to be tearing up to TOY STORY 3 while sitting in the aisle seat flying over China? Pixar, you are master manipulators!

Happy Christmas (War Is Over) song by John Lennon - I guess I never really listened to the lyrics before, and it was the anniversary of his death, and I cried at Toy Story 3, so how was I supposed to stay dry-eyed here?

The silent viewing of nine recently killed US servicemen at the end of the News Hour. I haven't been able to make it through one of those without tearing up for years now. There is terrible and senseless loss on both sides of any conflict. I do not intend to gloss over that in any way. But seeing the photos of such young people whose lives are forever over makes me very sad for them and the folks who love them. All but one of these nine men were younger than me, most by a decade or more.

With that, I'll leave it to Mr. Lennon to say what I'm thinking.....

A very merry Christmas

And a happy New Year

Let's hope it's a good one

Without any fear

And so this is Christmas

For weak and for strong

For rich and the poor ones

The world is so wrong

And so happy Christmas

Scruples & Sugar

2010-11-08T08:20:00.001+02:00

I made good on my boozehound ways (see end of previous post) and made my way to Bangkok the day after returning to Peninsular Malaysia from Borneo. I needed one night in KL because I had a rendezvous to keep - meeting a fellow Vipassana "old student" to pick up some materials to aid my spiritual progression. Anything to keep me from becoming a full-blown boozehound, right? What with 10 days of waking up at 4am, scuba diving appointments requiring 5:30am wake-ups and climbing into boats to tour the Bornean jungle at 6am over the course of one month in Malaysia, I figure no other country can top Malaysia for my average wake up time. I was ready to turn off the alarm clock for a bit.
The plan was to get to Bangkok and stay there for two weeks. I've got a case of travel fatigue. The constant changing of countries, cities, beds, climates and cuisines is wearing - though the last three months have been unchanging in two respects, they've been warm and rice-filled. I knew what I needed - to stay put for a bit. This is my third time in Bangkok now; each time I arrive I like it more and more. Yes, it's noisy and smelly and smoggy, but it's also just the right mix of Oriental and Occidental, if those words are still allowed to be used in polite company. It's also a thousand degrees cooler now than it was when I was here in August. A thousand degrees cooler on the Celsius scale.

Maria joined me in Bangkok a couple of days after I arrived, so we've been spending our days wandering around, taking the river ferries to skip the legendary traffic jams, getting Thai massages that hurt so good, buying cheap jewelry in the 'burbs of Bangkok, reading crap, doing our bit to support the Singha brewery, and sampling the culinary delights of the Thai capital.

Let me tell you more about the crap I'm reading. I have been making way through the massive tome that is Shogun. Yes, that one - James Clavell's "extraordinary saga of a time and a place aflame with conflict, passion, ambition, lust, and the struggle for power." It's over a thousand pages of cultural confusion and ritual suicide set in medieval Japan. How could that not be a page-turner? And then there's Scruples. Yes, I read a Judith Krantz novel. That book is absolutely ridiculous, and so much more a product of the 1970s than Shogun is a product of the 1980s. It's eye-rollingly bad and strangely quotable (poor Maria had to hear so many of the worst lines). Judy never misses a chance to use the c-word or to capitalize "Lesbian", both things I wouldn't have expected from a book whose author I mistakenly lumped in as a Danielle Steele contemporary/acolyte. To think I took a break from Anna Karenina for this campy drivel. But I can't have been the only sucker because Amazon tells me Scruples was translated into twenty languages. Think about that. This is why the rest of the world thinks we're crazy.

We've also established ourselves as regulars at the bar across from our guesthouse. I'm not sure of the name, but Maria suspects it's the Studio Bar, which sounds good to me. We're generally the only non-Thai customers, which I find surprising considering that the place is located directly across the small lane where our guesthouse is located AND is decorated with an eclectic mishmash including the world's most amazing gold wallpaper, ukuleles hanging on the wall - ready to be played - and terrible paperbacks, including Scruples 2, which I won't be borrowing. But we're the only visitors soaking up all this glory, which is combined with welcoming and friendly staff. These kids also have spot-on musical taste, some of it familiar to me, but not all of it. Check out Playing for Change for one of the really cool things they turned us on to (Stand by Me is a good track).

So far, it's been nine months of seeing some of the world. Ten countries in, I've discovered that not putting sugar in your coffee or tea is an American thing. We seem to be the only people who don't do it. The idea of unsweetened tea or coffee is suspicious in most of the countries I've visited. People question your decision and look at you funny. I can now throw back coffee and tea that is positively syrupy with dissolved sugar cane. This is not a good thing, but it keeps me extra-motivated on flossing. And we're the only ones using corn syrup too; the rest of the world is using cane sugar - sign me up! But the sweetness of corn is big in Southeast Asia - I sampled sweet corn ice cream in Malaysia. Those eight spoonfuls of white sugar I'm sure I put away daily haven't improved my fitness level either. There are just two parts of my body that are stronger than before I left the US - my calves from the constant walking and my shoulders from lugging my backpack around. Every time I get a massage, the ladies just press and press on the muscles where my pack rests on my back and squeeze the heck out of my lower legs. On my least glamorous note, I used to be so clean back when I didn't live out of a bag. Clothes were worn a minimum number of times, and thoroughly washed in a washer. Those were the days. Now, I've adopted Maria's 4 Levels of Clean. She shared these with me in New Zealand, and they are, undoubtedly, Travelers' Truth. The 4 Levels of Clear are: Clean, Mostly Clean, Clean Enough, and Not Clean. Whenever I share the 4 Levels of Clean with another traveler, we talk about how items that are really Clean are initially almost unwearable. As ridiculous as it sounds, you want to keep the Clean things clean for as long as you can. So you keep the Mostly Clean and the Clean Enough in the rotation just a little longer. Not Clean, well, it's really not clean. My standards haven't slipped that far, hamdullah.

I mentioned I had travel fatigue above, and I didn't exaggerate. I miss a lot of people and customs from back home, but I'm not quite ready to unpack the backpack for good. So I'll be having it both ways - home for the holidays and then back on the road. In a few days, I'll be flying back to the land of the free and the home of the brave, drip coffee, smoky bacon, and toilets that can handle toilet paper. Those really are some of the things I'm looking forward to. And going at least a full week without white rice. I'll arrive too late to have voted or to see Massive Attack and Thievery Corporation play in San Francisco. But I'm early enough for Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, and Christmas. It remains to be seen if I can make that interesting enough to update the blog. But I'll be departing the US in mid-January. They say coming home is it's own form of culture shock. Who knows? I may miss all this so much that I dig some Clean Enough clothes out of the hamper, go find myself a Mexican Coca-Cola, and read Scruples 2.

When the Rainforest Gets Too Real

2010-10-26T03:07:00.000+02:00

What do you do after experiencing ten days of real peace and quiet at a meditation retreat? Fly to Borneo for some world class scuba diving! Borneo is a big island shared by three nations. One chunk Malaysian, the bulk Indonesian, and a tiny morsel owned by Brunei (I don't know the adjectival form for Brunei). I flew to the Malaysian state of Sabah, famous for orangutan, WWII death marches, and some of the world's finest scuba diving.
Without our planning it, my friend Maria and I ended up booking accommodation and dives with the same place at the same time in the same (pretty random) part of the world. That turned out to be great in many respects, not least of which is that the town where we met up, Semporna, is a total dump. Smelly, charmless, and bereft of truly tasty dining options, Semporna has earned a place in my vocabulary; it's a not-quite-a-curse-word curse word. When I stubbed my toe on the pavement after slipping on a banana, I exclaimed "Oh, Semporna!" I put the emphasis on the middle syllable in this usage. It's my new "dagnabbit."

Obviously, visitors don't flock to Semporna to sample the town's delights - which Maria and I can confirm for you do include bed bugs. They come to see what lies beneath the waters surrounding the islands dotting the region. Those attractions could have kept me around for longer than six nights had my budget cooperated. The waters of this part of the Celebes Sea are considered one of the most bio-diverse ecosystems in the world, and there is something for almost any kind of dive freak - shallow sandy areas crawling with life, deep waters surrounding pristine coral reefs, muck diving (finding small and unusual critters), sharks, sharks, sharks, and a protected, seemingly healthy local population of turtles. For once on this trip, I had planned ahead and booked two days of diving at Sipadan, which is an oceanic island that is now a protected national park and a highly sought after dive destination with a daily limit of 120 divers. Just a small sandy speck of tropical paradise from the surface, the island's sides plunge down to the seafloor 600 meters, or around 2000 feet. The reefs surrounding the island are generally a steep wall, which means you swim with the reef on one side and a huge expanse of endless blue water on the other. The visibility is often superb (generally to 40 meters which is really stellar underwater), so you can also look down and see coral for a while and then.....endless bluuuuuuuuue. Sipadan's coral is in great shape, and fishing is prohibited. It's fish confetti down there - so many tens of thousands of fish swarming all over the reef. I lost count of how many sharks and turtles I saw there; I often lost count on a single dive. It's really made me rethink my fish eating. When you see what a really healthy reef looks like before humans warm it up, blast it to bits with dynamite, dump cyanide over it, or just fish it to death, it makes you want chicken instead.

After the diving was done, Maria and I spent a day kicking it in our hotel room in Semporna. We were enjoying the a/c, the cable tv (Discovery Channel is big in SE Asian hotels), and the company of the other. That's where I realized that I'm kinda over Malaysia. My reason is lame, but I feel what I feel. To borrow a phrase from a New York gubernatorial candidate, the beer is too damn expensive! Beer usually runs for around $3 a can. A can, people! Beer is highly taxed in Malaysia, and it isn't especially easy to find either. You can only find it at Chinese or Western owned restaurants and bars. And then you have to fork over 9 ringgit for it. I repeat: The beer is too damn expensive. I am still contemplating an early departure for Thailand just so I can afford to indulge in two beers a night. Does this make me a boozehound? Maybe, but I find the tropics intolerable without fans and ice-cold drinks, and I don't really like soda, which means beer is my cool-down drink of choice.

But I have a few more days in Borneo before I jet back to KL, so I had to see some jungle and a glimpse of some rare wildlife. I'm writing this from my riverside B&B where we go out in the early morning, the late afternoon, and the evening to see the wildlife, such as pygmy elephants, kingfishers, hornbills, proboscis monkeys, and wild orangutan - all of which I saw in the wild. This morning, we started on a boat on the Kinabatangan River, then moored on the jungle's shore to take a little forest walk. Now I handled a large millipede on this walk. I allow spiders to domicile with me as long as they don't hang over my bed. I even tolerate flies congregating on my ankles occasionally. But I have found my limit. Leeches are the limit. Borneo is home to three kinds of the leeches: the brown leech, the tiger leech, and the giant leech. As we tromped through the mud and water in borrowed wellies, I was so focused on making sure leeches didn't crawl up my pants that I missed the ones that got down my shirt. Upon returning to the boat, I realized I'd itched my shoulder twice and then remembered Sugi, our guide, saying that a leech hooking in to just the right spot on your body "tingled." Looking back at my "tingling" shoulder, I saw a spot of blood on my shirt. That's when I started squealing. It's a good thing I had a tank top underneath my long-sleeved shirt - otherwise I would have scandalized my guide because that shirt was coming off. For me, urgency can pretty much be defined by how quickly you want a blood-sucking leech removed from your flesh. Turns out I had another tiger leech just near my armpit on my chest, and that dirty beast must have been there awhile because I bled for quite a while after picking him off, and the bite mark is still puffy and red (update: it's still bruised with a dried blood cap three days later). DISGUSTING. Just the memory of them doing their little body-heat-seeking dance made me shiver for a good hour or so. Leeches are now officially my least favorite life form, topping mosquitoes, which is irrational because they eat the same thing - blood - but these leeches at least don't carry diseases. You can't the same about mossies. I don't care, and I won't be taking the night walk to give the leeches another shot at me in the dark.

Sittings of Strong Determination

2010-10-16T14:48:00.001+02:00

From Phnom Penh to Kuala Lampur is quite a jump from one capital city to another. KL, as it's almost always referred to, home to some of the scrapiest of skyscrapers, is a polyglot town full of ethnic Malays, Indians and Chinese. They're all Malaysian, mind you, but they're different, and you see it, feel it, and hear about it from the respective groups. Malaysia feels palpably richer than the other Southeast Asian countries I've visited: Thailand, Burma, Indonesia, and Cambodia. The cars here are bigger, nicer, and newer. Heck, cars outnumber motorbikes by a significant margin which is a real change from the last few months. The streets are cleaner, the roads are paved immaculately, and the highways are dotted with toll booths accepting EZ passes. KL has shopping malls, huge themed malls, like the mall devoted to all things tech. Let me put it another way: Malaysia is a country with fire extinguishers, and you get the feeling somebody comes along to check them every few years.

And why did I notice the presence of fire extinguishers? You've got the time to see a lot of things when you spend over a week and a half on a silent meditation retreat. It turns out that not talking for 10 days is surprisingly easy. It's meditating for more than 10 hours a day that's hard. Between the hours of 4am and 10pm, you rack up about 10 and a half hours of meditation, seated on a cushion on the floor. You break all that action up with two meals - breakfast and lunch - with some fruit for first timers like me at dinnertime. There are also rest periods where you can stroll the grounds or take naps or hand wash your clothes - you know, just generally live it up! But no talking, no intoxicants, no sex, no physical contact of any kind actually, no eye contact, no gestures, and no meat. Caffeine is fine. They're reasonable people, these vipassana meditators.

Broadly, Vipassana meditation has you focus your awareness on your body, making note of the sensations, both pleasant and unpleasant, that you are bound to feel if you just sit there and pay attention for hours on end. Whether good (leading to craving) or bad (leading to aversion), vipassana teaches that the essential character of either type of sensation is the same - it arises and passes, or put another way, everything you (think you) feel is subject to the law of impermanence. So you're better off just noticing the particulars of any situation and staying equanimous about it (and everything else in life) than wanting more of this and less of that and getting disappointed or angry or bitter, etc. Equanimity is the name of the game, and maintaining it the goal. Sounds easy enough, but that's just knowing in the intellectual sense, not the experiential sense. And Vipassana is all about experiencing reality for yourself, particularly in a sitting of strong determination, where you don't move open your eyes, hands, or legs from your starting position for a full hour.

What follows is a lighthearted take on the experience. After I make fun of it and me, I'll give you a more serious, though brief, take for those who are interested.

Day 1
Interesting. My back hurts from all this cross-legged seating. I'm hungry.
Day 2
This is going to be a long 10 days. My back still hurts, but it's better. I nap every single chance I get, meaning I'm napping three times a day.
Day 3
There was a glitch in the wake up bell. It went off at midnight instead of 4am but all I knew was the gong struck so I got out of bed, started to meditate in my room, until I fell asleep on the cold, hard tile floor. I woke up two hours later wondering why in hell the breakfast bell hadn't rung. That's when I discovered it was 2:30am. Pro - get to sleep for another hour and a half! Con - I'm already really hungry. Most of all, I hope the songs "Elvira" and "Total Eclipse of the Heart" get out of my head within in the first week since they've been in my head since shortly after arriving here.
Day 4
Today is Vipassana Day - the first day where we actually start practicing vipassana meditation (it was anapanna meditation previously, in case you're wondering). It's a very frustrating morning, but the afternoon is transformational. I got my wish too - today's songs of the day are "Tequila Sunrise" and "I Am 16 Going on 17." Obviously, things are getting better.
Day 5
Lots of progress today though still very, very sore in the back and the knees. I'm not even hungry and cutting down on the Vico (basically Ovaltine, which is most delicious when combined with evaporated milk and brown sugar). The songs in my head are getting worse: "The Gambler" and "Rock On."
Day 6
Fell off the wagon. I goofed off for an hour and a half after 3 full hours of non-stop meditation. Hard to focus today. The returnees I rode up with say Days 2 and 6 are the toughest. Can't say I disagree.
Day 7
Breakthrough day! My back still hurts but my knees are better. "Kids In America" was stuck in my head and that was bad enough until the woman next door to BROKE PROTOCOL and started singing. Now it's "Mister Jones & Me" which is so much worse. This just shows me I have plenty of work to do on reducing my aversions.
Day 8
I'm really in the swing of the meditation now. It's hard to fall asleep at night even because I'm not tired, and I don't need the naps anymore. That's great, but the songs keep coming. "Eternal Flame" started the day, and "It's a Kind of Magic" is closing it out. The music of the 80s is seriously over-represented in my brain.
Day 9
Today was rough. Whenever I start getting impatient, I recite to myself "Equanimity, Monica" which I've shortened to "Equa-Monica" which makes me feel like I'm summoning my superhero self. Her superpower is to be incredibly even-keeled!
Day 10
We speak! You have never seen such a goofy bunch of smiling fools! Everyone is on cloud nine, chatting each other up, and grinning from ear to ear. Good moods abound.

What did I take away from this experience? Lots of things, and I won't bore you with all of them here. Although I will bore a select few of you with details galore in the future. I've dabbled in a few different styles of meditation, and one thing they share is a propensity to use an animal metaphor to describe the mind: the mind is a monkey, an elephant, etc. I've decided the mind is like your three year old having a temper tantrum at the grocery store. Sure, you're bigger and stronger and theoretically, you can just impose your will on the brat, and for its own good, you should. But wouldn't it just be easier to give in and buy the brat some candy and shut him up? And doesn't everybody else's three year old look so well-behaved? So it goes in meditation. And just as spoiling children leads to all manner of problems down the line, so does spoiling your mind by letting it have the lead all the time. But it's so good at throwing those hissy fits; during those first few days in particular, I thought of people and events that I haven't thought of in years. Like all three year old brats, my mind has very powerful weapons to deploy in getting its way. Any technique that helps you develop mastery of your own mind is pretty useful, and I found this practice to be refreshingly free of dogma, religion, and, for lack of a better term, bad vibes. It's about finding a way to make your life and your world better, more compassionate, more useful, more positive. Who doesn't want that? Undoubtedly, my 10 days (really more like 12 because they don't count the travel days) learning Vipassana meditation were one of the most intense experiences I've ever had. I suspect, though time will tell, that it will also have been transformative. It's not the 10 days that will do that, of course, it will be the consistent practice of meditation. And that's on me. So we'll see. But at least I know I can keep my trap shut for 10 days.

PS - No pics because I didn't really take many and my current connection won't allow for an upload.

Cambodian Reap-offs and Breakdowns

2010-09-25T14:45:00.000+03:00

From Battambang to Siem Reap, one can take the road or the river. The river takes longer and costs more, but it's quite scenic, taking you through the floating forest and through some floating villages over a seven hour journey.
Thankfully, I had a pair of earplugs handy because this boat's motor was unbelievably loud. The floating forest is what it sounds like; we had to roll down the tarps along the open sides of the boat to keep the branches of the trees from scraping us all to bits. The twigs still brushed up along the tarps and pressed up against me, and more than one slipped in at the bottom and scratched my arm. Occasionally, we'd have to stop the boat, pull the motor out of the water, and scrape all the accumulated vegetation off it. As for the floating villages, well, I hope the residents have good relationships with their neighbors. These homes, which appear to be one or two room huts set on top of bamboo rafts, are lashed quite close together. And you can't just go take a walk to get away, you have to bust out a canoe. The children in these villages are mad waivers - the Queen of England probably can't outwaive a 5 year old Cambodian. They waive, you waive back. They will stop whatever they're doing - bathing, playing, canoeing - just to greet you. It's exceedingly friendly.

Upon arrival at the dock near Siem Reap, the tuk-tuk drivers gave me the first taste of how it was going to be in Siem Reap - up in my business. Drivers climbed along the railing of the boat in their zeal to get a client, they crushed around us, completely surrounding us. Siem Reap is the city that thrives on the remnants of the Angkor Empire. This empire ruled huge swathes of what is now Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand from about the 9th to the 14th centuries. Their capital was located just north of Siem Reap's location today and was known as Angkor Thom. And the most famous wat in the world, one of the largest religious structures in the world, and Cambodia's pride and joy, Angkor Wat is here as well. Angkor Wat's iconic stupas are on the Cambodian flag, restaurant signs, t-shirts, and the most popular beers in Cambodia, Angkor and Anchor. Even the Khymer Rouge named the ruling echelon the Angkar, which means "organization" but I like my theory more.

And it is impressive and worth the renown. The Angkor Thom area probably contained one of the most extensive water management systems of its day, was home to around a million people, and had enough wealth and artistic ambition to build numerous elaborate temples that still draw thousands of visitors annually. It is true that I'm templed out - really and truly templed out at this point - but I was still amazed at the vastness of Angkor Wat itself, surrounded by a moat and covered with detailed huge bas relief sculptures, impressed at the huge and enigmatically smiling faces of the Bayon, pictured, and awed by nature's ability to take over what we create at Ta Prohm, where the jungle has entered the ruins and tree roots surround the rocks.

But it is also a major hassle to deal with. First there is the matter of the tickets. I don't mind buying a ticket. I don't even mind buying a very expensive ticket. But I do mind that some private company is the one who holds the contract to sell the tickets and seems to do nothing aside from printing them out. In a country this poor, and most of the people in Cambodia are very poor, that ticket revenue represents a lot of cash that the government could use for things like decent schooling, mosquito nets (dengue fever infections are rife amongst rural children), potable water, or help for the needy and disabled. I know that this private company pays the (in my opinion corrupt) government for the privilege, but the only reason any company would do so is if it gets to keep a share for itself. I maintain that share would be better utilized for the 15 million citizens of Cambodia rather than the small number of beneficiaries getting those profits now. And if I pay $40 to see a temple, don't expect me to pay 2000 riel more to use dirty, smelly, soap-less toilets. I have a hard time believing that having the same prime minister that the Vietnamese army installed in 1979 still in power today leads to the most effective allocation of government contracts.

Because so few of these dollars trickle down, one is constantly besieged with demands to buy cold drinks, scarves, bracelets, and the like (I will never feel the need to buy a bamboo cow bell. This is not an SNL skit. I do not need think it needs more cowbell). Most of these vendors are children who should be at school, even the low-rated, free Cambodian schools, and they are relentless. Every time I arrived at or left a temple, I felt like a celebrity defendant leaving the courtroom - the press crowding around me, clamoring for my attention, too many people yelling at me all at once to talk to them, to notice them. It's hectic, it's unavoidable, even at the least visited temples where the quoted prices are even worse, and in the searing 90+ degree weather, it'll suck the Angkor-loving life right out of you.

It's no better in the town of Siem Reap itself, which is an extension of the Angkor experience in that every single person you encounter is offering something you don't want: a tuk-tuk ride, a massage, a fish pedicure (this is where small fish eat the dead skin off your feet - I'll stick with pumice, thanks), a t-shirt, etc. No does not mean no in this context. I hate to ignore someone who is talking to me, but if you have rejected a tuk-tuk ride from the same driver seven times in a row, what other option do you have? It's not a cheap town either, so I dubbed it Siem Reap-Off. My traveling buddy, Jace, and I had intended to stay 3 full days before leaving, but after my second day of temple hopping, I had seen enough and suggested we ditch the Reap-Off and spend that extra day in Phnom Penh instead.

That was a good idea. Phnom Penh has some of the same hassles as Siem Reap, but it's a real city and the capital of Cambodia to boot. And the nice thing about a city with a couple of million people in it is that you can count on at least 1.8 million of them ignoring you because they have better things to do. Tuk-tuk drivers here generally accept the fourth decline, we're having insanely good luck with the street food, and I just generally dig the vibe here. It's a mix - heavy on the Cambodian with a splash of Chinatown and a strong dose of French colonial. There is the usual southeast Asian disregard for traffic norms and safety precautions (I'd like to start with a mandatory Machete Safety Basics course), but there are also great bookstores and small shops full of cool Cambodian products made from silk and recycled plastic.

Phnom Pehn is home to the Royal Palace (Cambodia is officially a kingdom) and the National Musuem, which houses a fantastic collection of Khymer sculpture and helps to put the context of what would have been worshiped inside the temple ruins at Angkor. It's also home to the most gruesome memorials I've visited, the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum and Choeung Ek. Toul Sleng was an ordinary Phnom Penh high school until the Khymer Rouge converted it into the S-21 prison, where over 17,000 people were "processed." Less than twenty survived. Kept captive, interrogated, and tortured, sometimes for months on end, Cambodian men, women and children were brought here, photographed, and logged before the real horrors began. Classrooms partitioned into makeshift cells with wood or brick barriers make up whole sections of the building. Worse are the rooms where the beds still sit that the victims were chained to for their "interrogations." The only other items in the room today are some of the accessories of torture and a lone photograph on the wall. I don't want to describe any of these extremely distressing photos, but they were taken by the Khymer Rouge to document their revolutionary efforts. There is much more to see at S-21, one of the most effective and simplest museum presentations I've ever encountered. I don't think any visitor to Phnom Penh should skip it, but I was sick to my stomach from the first.

After S-21, we followed in the path of thousands of doomed Cambodians on our way to Choueng Ek, the Killing Fields. This is where most of the inmates of S-21 were driven to be executed and buried in mass graves between 1975 and 1979. There are dozens of killing fields across Cambodia, and memorial stupas have been erected at many of them. The Choeung Ek stupa holds in glass cases thousands of human skulls, bones, and the clothes the victims were buried in. The stupa sounds grisly, but it's very moving. What is undeniably grisly are the mass graves where human teeth and bones still poke out of the ground, more rising anew after a flooding rain, and the killing tree, still standing, against which babies' heads were smashed as they were swung by their feet. I had an idea of what I would encounter at S-21 and the Killing Fields, but it is one thing to know about a thing and another to see it.

Without getting too much into the complex and cynicism-inducing politics of Cambodia's modern history (the US was financially supporting the KR against the Vietnamese throughout the 1980s and the KR represented Cambodia at the UN!?!?), most of the members of the top leadership of the Khymer Rouge are still alive, and only one, who went by the alias of Duch and was the chief of S-21, has confessed and asked for forgiveness from the Cambodian people. If, over the course of four years, almost two million people were killed by the KR, all the cities in Cambodia were forcibly emptied, and every person was compelled either to join the Khymer Rouge or to take up forced labor and live a life governed by fear, drudgery, near-starvation and paranoia, could there be a single Cambodian family that wasn't deeply traumatized?

I've got one more full day in Cambodia, and I'm determined not to spend it wallowing in genocide. Tonight is Saturday night in Phnom Pehn and I'm really going to try to go big. I may even go to the Heart of Darkness, PP's first and oldest club. After that, I'll be in Malaysia, where I'll be doing something really challenging - not talking for 10 days. By the rules of engagement of vipasana meditation, I won't be updating this blog during that time, but you can be sure I'll have something to say when it's over. Until then, take care, and if you're motivated by what you've read here, count your blessings.

Lazy Beach, Bokor Ghost Town, and Survivors

2010-09-22T14:09:00.001+03:00

I've got some catching up to do here on the old Gadabout. One of my excuses for not updating is that I found a secluded tropical paradise that didn't have internet access. Lazy Beach on Koh Rong Saloem is your own private island on a budget, and I can't recommend it enough for any of you who may find yourself in a position to go to a Cambodian island someday.
Twelve bungalows, no neighbors, one beach with a coral reef perfect for snorkeling at one end, another beach just a thirty minute jungle path away. That second beach is heaven squared: fine white sand, warm clear water, flat shallow water that lets you float in just as much depth as you like - crocodile-style. If you get bored, you can go fishing. Or you could just suck it up and lounge in your hammock. Once the sun goes down, you can night snorkel and watch the phosphorescent lightshow the plankton put on.

After a reluctant leave-taking of the LB, I headed to Kampot, which is both a town and a province. Known for its exceptional peppercorns, the region is still ramping up production of the famous pepper after the Khymer Rouge forced locals to forego the capitalist concept of competitive advantage and plant rice in the mid-70s. Set on the Kampot River, the town of Kampot is charming, retaining much of its French provincial-city style, and home to some really cool businesses employing disabled Cambodians, like EpicArts, a cafe where the staff is deaf, and Seeing Hands Massage, where the masseurs are blind. To be fair, Seeing Hands can be found in all Cambodian cities and in other countries, but I have to work it in on this blog somewhere. If you visit Cambodia, do check them out. The massages are very good, and sometimes they are better than good. I had one in Battambang that was in my Top 5 Massages of My Life List. You choose how strong or gentle you want the massage to be, and this Battambang version was shiatsu as a martial art. I was repeatedly incapacitated by two fingers and a thumb or an elbow pressing along my hamstring. Amazing stuff that requires deep breathing to make it through, which is how I happen to like my massages.

But I'm off topic. Back in Kampot, the active choice of daytrip is a hike up Bokor Mountain. Technically, a part of Preah Monivong National Park, a Chinese/Cambodian consortium bought the rights to the park and is building a modern road up the mountain and a huge hotel at the top. But there is already a road up and a casino at the top. Back in the 1920s, the French decided they needed a hill station to beat the Cambodian heat. To get there, they would need a road, so Cambodians were forced to hand pick a way up the mountain, so the French could ride elephants or horses to the top. Hundreds of Cambodians died in the process. At the top of Bokor, you could entertain and accomodate yourself at the casino, head to the Catholic church, post your mail at the Post Office, and report any crimes at the Police Station. The French left Bokor for good after the Khymer Rouge takeover in 1972. But the Khymer Rouge used the location to their advantage and turned the casino into a prison in the 1970s and then later used it as a hide-out once the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia. It remained in their hands until the 90s. The casino is a handsome old building that isn't as dilapidated as it could be. The weather up on Bokor is wildly unpredictable, but it does tend to be rainier, foggier and damper than at lower altitudes, which leads to all these old buildings to be covered, thickly covered, in mold. Green mold, black mold, gold mold, all cut through with the graffitti of visitors. Yes, people emboss their names and other commentary in mold. Surrounded by the fog and the rain and the jungle, and wandering through the abondoned former casino/hotel/prison/torture chamber, I got a little spooked. But there is always something else to spook you in Cambodia as you shall read shortly.

The day after our Bokor expedition, a few of us rented motorbikes and tooled down to Kep, which is a fishing town on the coast. The drive was beautiful, the seafood was delicous, and the buses and trucks helpfully honk before they pass you at high speeds. It's a warning that you are about to eat their dust, literally. Kep is particularly famous for crab, which is pulled fresh from the traps once you order it. We just decided not to think about where our seaside restaurant's squat toilet drained. We tooled along the roads leading to the pepper plantations, past rice paddies, and loads of villages. Nearly every Cambodia village I've passed has a roadside barbershop. Usually, it's a bamboo hut with two walls and a thatch roof. Often it has a professional barber chair, with a pneumatic lifting mechanism. No doors, no walls, but they've got a chair lift!

Next up, Battambang, Cambodia's second largest city, and a place I wish I could have spent more time in. It's another river town, but it's also really low hassle and amazingly friendly. We spent our one day in the region on a daytrip. First up, the Bamboo Train. This is a homemade train set on a piece of track that runs between two small villages. The track continues all the way to Phnom Penh, but this section is only used by simple bamboo platforms, powered by motors, and set on modified tank wheels. You read that correctly. The thing fairly flies on the track, clatteringly along. If you come across an oncoming bamboo train, the operators size up who has the lighter load. That train is unloaded and disassembled to give way to the heavier train, then reassembled (taking no more than a minute) and reloaded. It's another example of creative recycling on the part of Cambodians and an example of sucker tourists (like me!) paying $6 for the privilege of a two way trip. I did enjoy tooling around the village at the far end of the track, watching the little kids play in the newly harvested rice and getting a tour of the "brick factory" by the preteens.

After hitting up Banam Temple - 359 hot steps to the top, we headed to Phnom Sampov. Phnom means "mountain" in Cambodian in case you have noticed its repetition in place names, as I have. Phnom Sampov is yet another Cambodian heartbreaker. In the 60s, the King built a lovely Buddhist temple with a couple of stupas at the very top. In the 70s, the Khymer Rouge converted the temple into a prison and used the caves to kill thousands of people. The caves are accessed by holes in the ground that drop into shafts. The Khymer Rouge used the butts of rifles to hit prisoners in the head, thereby saving bullets, then pushed them down the caves. More than 6000 people were killed on this mountain. Our guide told us that the caves were designated for certain populations - one for old people, one for children, and one for the rest. Many years later, one man began to collect some of the bones and now that cave has been transformed into a memorial to those people and to Buddha. There is a reclining Buddha and the usual offerings and incense, some of what you can see in the picture above. And there is a memorial case with a pyramid of human skulls stacked inside. If that doesn't make you wonder what we humans are capable of, you can turn around and look up at the hole that those poor people were thrown down and then stare at a cage full of their bones, a macabre jumble of skulls, femurs, and vertabrae.

That is just a taste of the horrors of Cambodia's recent tragedies. It's not ignored, but the people do seem to wear their scars lightly. Our guide up Bokor, Try, was this itty bitty Cambodian man. He picked up a dozen or so Western tourists in his minibus, and predictably, a few of them grumbled that we were running late, that we had to squeeze a few extras in the van for 20 minutes - the usual whinging from the most fortunate people in the world (and I absolutely include myself in that number, only this time I wasn't complaining). Once we were all gathered and about to hike up a jungle covered mountain, he gave us the most awesome introduction ever, which I will loosely paraphrase from memory here:

I want to apologize to you. This morning, I lied to you. I said 10 minutes, I said we only needed to pick up one more person. I'm sorry about that, but I hope you understand. My name is Try, and I'm 52 years old. I'm married and I have two children. My family were all killed by the Khymer Rouge when I was 12 years old. I am the only survivor. I lived in the jungle alone for two years before joining the Vietnamese Army to fight the Khymer Rouge. After the war, I spent three years working with the United Nations to help clear Bokor National Park of land mines, so you don't have to worry about going off the path here. Ready to take a walk?

2010-09-09T08:26:00.001+02:00

After escaping from the clutches of the Hellions, I escaped into the warm waters of the Andaman Sea for a day of scuba diving, which was uneventful (except for a relapse into the hell known as motion sickness) but still quite nice.
I met some cool people from the hostel including a hilarious Australian who also wanted to escape the party village and move to a quieter, nicer beach on Phi Phi. So Jace and I packed our bags and long-tailed it to Hat Yao (literally Long Beach), which is one of the more delightful beaches I've found on this trip. That was another two days of doing nothing - I've racked up a few of those here in Southern Thailand.

I was tentatively planning on heading next to Malaysia, but Jace roped me into joining him in Cambodia with a short detour to Koh Chang, off Thailand's eastern coast, instead. It was a good thing we were well rested because we had a 25 hour journey ahead of us. One longtail boat, one ferry, one minibus, and one 13 hour bus ride later, we arrived at Khao San Road, Bangkok, at 5:30 in the morning. Luckily, Lee and I had our bus station mishap in Bangkok a few weeks before, which meant I had accidentally learned exactly how to get to the Eastern Bus Terminal from Khao San Road. The saying is true - you really do learn from your mistakes. By 5:40am, we were on the 511 chugging along the emptiest streets I've ever experienced in Bangkok. At the bus station, we had an easy time getting our ticket to Trat, where we would then take a minibus to some village on the coast, then pick up a ferry to Koh Chang. Koh Chang is Thailand's second largest island (Phuket being the biggest, if you're looking to go on Jeapardy any time soon), so we did need one more taxi to take us to Hat Tha Nam (Lonely Beach), where we found Kachapura, a lovely bungalow surrounded by gorgeous plants. This bungalow also had a tv and a dvd player and we needed it. Koh Chang is a "wet" island, and August is its rainiest month. We arrived on September 3 - well within the rainy window. Chang means elephant in Thai, and I doubt they roam free on this island, but it would be hard to tell because it is pure jungle. Green and lush and wet, it's quite lovely, but so out of season in early September as to be almost dead. Now I like out of season more than most, but this was a little too much. I'd really like to come back when the weather is more hospitable and hike up to some of the waterfalls on the island and partake of some easygoing island living with significantly less hassle than Chang's more famous cousins. But I had to get out of Thailand on the sixth unless I wanted to pay 500 baht for each day of overstay. I didn't want to stay that badly.

Two taxis, one ferry, and one minibus (destination: "Cambodian border"), and five hours later, we crossed the border from Thailand into Cambodia, and I swear the temperature dropped 5 degrees - Fahrenheit. After submitting ourselves to a "health check" at Quarantine, which consisted of paying 20 Thai bhat for a temperature check done with a nifty thermometer gun pointed at our foreheads (35.9 C), we passed the Immigration Police Office to go to the Visa Office, where we purchased our visa, then backtracked to the Police office. There were no others tourists, so it wasn't a problem, but it seems like a funny way to organize the windows, no? Lines must happen occasionally, and I'm American through and through when it comes to queue management. After repeatedly assuring our "health check" provider that we didn't want to buy cigarettes (probably smuggled as this border is famous for the activity), we got a taxi, an unmarked Camry, and made our way into Krong Koh Kong. By this time, it was sunset and this little town seemed to be full of young Cambodian kids on too-tall push bikes all greeting us with hellos and smiles. Pretty charming.

Krong Koh Kong (also known to me as King Kong Hong Kong because I have a hard time getting the real name right in my head) runs on three currencies - the Thai baht, the Cambodian riel, and the US dollar. Prices are generally quoted in baht, but you can pay in any of those currencies at fair exchange rates. If you pay in baht, you'll get baht back. If you pay in dollars, you'll get greenbacks topped up with riel in place of US coins. If you pay in riel, you best have a roomy wallet; the current exchange rate is about 4200 riel to $1. Further away from the Thai border, baht aren't accepted; US dollars, however, are so accepted that guesthouses and beer are quoted in them. In fact, that's the currency you get from ATMs. As it was in other non-US countries I've visited that use dollars widely, Cambodians are picky about the condition of the bill. In the states, we shove around all manner of bills - crumpled beyond all recognition, torn nearly in half, covered with phone numbers or political statements. Doesn't matter in America. It matters here. I've never seen such an abundance of beautiful, fresh greenbacks. I joke about Cambodia feeling like home actually. The ATMs spit out the good old USD, and for the first time since mid-April, I'm in a country that drives on the right. Three days in, it still doesn't feel right, which just goes to show you that you can get used to anything.

Krong Koh Kong doesn't get as much tourist action as Sinahoukville, which is about 4 hours further east. But there are some lovely natural sites that you can do as daytrips. Jace and I opted to check out the Koh Por waterfalls. Two motos took us to the "harbor" where we hopped into the tiniest little speedboat you ever did see. We raced about an hour upriver. Our boatman was also our guide, so when he found just the right rock to moor the boat to, we clambered up the rocks and started walking. After about a half hour, we were upriver of some good sized rapids. It being the wet season, the water level is nice and high, and the water is filled with red silt, causing Jace to make the accurate comparison to Willy Wonka's river of chocolate and express the Rambo-like feeling I've used as the title for this post. The silt is so fine that you don't feel it in the water, and the water was fresh and cool - perfect for taking the edge off the hot sun. And we had it all to ourselves! There was no one else there. After a bit more lounging, we hiked another half hour upriver where you can stand under a more traditional waterfall, by which I mean one that won't take you down and drown you. That said, I, not being a natural outdoors woman, slipped on the slippery rocks, fell, and managed to lose a third of a toenail. It's nothing a little Liquid Skin can't handle. From there, we could see that two rivers met below the rocks that we were on, one blue and the other red. A place that pretty, no noisy crowds to deal with, and a ham and cheese baguette - I ask what else you need for a delightful day?

We walked back to the boat quickly, and the weather was still gorgeous as we started speeding back. But it is the rainy season, and mid-afternoon is the usual time for the rainstorms to strike. Fat raindrops started falling and didn't stop for 40 minutes. The speedboat didn't stop either, and I sat on the forward-most bench. Heading into rain at 30 miles an hour stings the face. I luckily had my shades on. I got the giggles the worse it got - the rain kept coming down, we were completely drenched, my bench had no padding, and it was a rough ride. I had to hold on to the bench with both hands while trying to shake the water out of my eyes. I don't know how our driver could see! I actually don't know that he did see anything....luckily there wasn't much river traffic. Eventually, we made it back to the harbor, where we were picked up by our two moto drivers, who held umbrellas with their left hands while driving motorcycles with their right hands. In the rain. I know, unsafe, but hilarious.

This morning, we took the bus to Sihanoukville, on the coast. The drive was gorgeous. The road is smooth (built by the Thais) and the four river bridges are sturdy (built by the Japanese), but the scenery is even better. In the background are forest covered mountains translated in English as the Cardamom Mountains - such a pretty name for a range, though the official title is Chuor Phnom Kravanh. Rice paddies and small homes and villages dot the sides of the road. Cattle seem to prefer the paved road to the sodden ground as well. I haven't seen much of Sinahoukville yet, but it's loads more developed and touristy than King Kong Hong Kong. Within seconds of arriving at the beach, young kids try to sell bracelets, kramas (traditional Cambodian checked scarf/towel/sarong), and pedicures. These kids could make a killing at telemarketing - they have a comeback to every attempt to brush them off. "You don't want a bracelet? Why not? What's you're favorite color? I make one in your favorite color - with your name! Open your heart, open your wallet!" That last one sounds like a tv evangelical actually. Have they been exposed to the ministry of Joel Osteen?

Dinner tonight was a real Cambodian experience. Next to the saddest, smallest Ferris wheel I've ever seen, dozens of barbecue stands set up shop nightly. Jace and I went all in - Cambodian rice wine - sweet and sour and not as lethal as I'd feared - pork ribs, beef satay, chicken wings, small clam-like shellfish, spiders, grasshoppers, and salty eggs. I think that was everything we ordered. I now know that I prefer grasshopper to spider, but I really prefer pork ribs over everything else. Lots of tourists stop by and gawk at these stalls, eventually working up the nerve to down a bug or two. Our restaurateur must have appreciated our willingness to trying the stuff as part of a real meal because he dropped off a plate of cuttlefish, frogs, and crab legs, gratis. You can get anything down so long as you've got booze and hot sauce.

2010-08-29T06:43:00.000+02:00

Phuket (not pictured here, that's Phi Phi). What do you think of when you see the word? The 2004 tsunami, over-development, and masses of sunburned Westerners?
It's all there, including lots of signage for a tsunami evacuation route amidst the touts offering tuk tuk rides, massages, and custom suits. But there are also lovely beaches where you can watch the sun set over the Andaman sea, little fruit shake stalls where smiling Thai woman beam at the delight you take in the banana-coconut shake they blended just for you, and delicious, fresh seafood at nearly every eating establishment.

August is the rainiest month in Thailand. Certainly, there is rain, but it doesn't happen everyday and rarely lasts long anyway. However, this is the season of rough seas and lower visibility, so I can't get my full diving fix. I'll return in the next few months and take care of that then. In the meantime, I'm just glad it isn't high season here. I don't think I could take it! Phuket reminds me of Dahab in Egypt, in that it doesn't even feel like the country it's a part of - too touristic, too many tourists, and too many locals chasing their business.

I did come to appreciate one Western institution in Phuket, the 7/11s, which are everywhere in Thailand. At first, it seemed a shame that another American chain was pushing the small businesses out of the market. Call me a capitalist pig if you like, but when I enter one, I remember how awesome it is to go into a place that has everything at a great price in a small space. They are like the Walgreens of Thailand. Do you need toothpaste, beer, yogurt, sandwiches, nuts, pens, airmail envelopes, fabric softener, bug repellent, body lotion, a sunhat, toilet paper, plug adapters, new underwear, soda, milk, or super glue? Hit up the S'leven. They'll have it. Even if all we needed was water, Lee and I would browse the aisles just to see what each one carried. And the air conditioning is a nice break from the oppressive afternoon heat.   Another thing they sell at the 7/11 that is ubiquitous in Thailand is a wide variety of talcum powder. It's part of the beat the heat strategy that also involves multiple cold showers a day. I'm signed up. I do get an old lady feeling dosing up on body powder before going about my day, but it helps. You need a multi-prong strategy against the climate here, involving lots of cold water, hats, sunscreen, and talc.

After Lee headed back to the States, I stayed in Phuket just long enough to decide where to go next. I decided to go into the Heart of Backpacker Darkness, Koh Phi Phi. It's an odd shaped, sometimes described as an anvil, small island that was truly devastated by the 2004 tsunami. It swarms with two forms of life - bugs and backpackers. Ostensibly a nature reserve where limestone cliffs covered in vegetation are surrounded by white beaches lapped by the most beautiful light jade colored waves, it's very developed and has a reputation for being a crowded party town. However, it's gorgeous and I did want to see it, and I figured the low season would be my best shot for enjoying myself. Phi Phi empties out each month for the Full Moon Party held on Koh Phanang, which is on the other side of the Malay Peninsula, and I was lucky enough to arrive the day after the full moon. Phi Phi charmed me then. The main village, Ton Sai, is a little warren of alleys, there are very, very few cars and motorcycles, and the Thai folks on their push bikes say "beep beep" to alert you that they are coming. This is so superior to a horn's honking sound! Beep beep, they say, and you move out of the way. However, as the partiers recover from their Full Moon Hangovers and make their way to Phi Phi, much of the charm has been lost.

In a deliberate effort to meet some folks, I decided to stay in a dorm here. This is the cheapest accommodation I have ever paid for, by far. At about $5 a night, the room has 17 beds. That's not a typo. Even though all my roommates considered me the epitome of lameness for not going to the beach parties at 11pm and staying up till 4am, they were all really nice and considerate. Not one of them woke me up in coming back to the room, and I do sleep like a fidgety old lady these days. I was impressed. But last night, the Hellions arrived. It was about midnight, and I was minding my own business in the bottom bunk reading by the light of my headlamp when the first one arrived. He started TALKING IN A VERY LOUD AND DRUNKEN VOICE even though we had a couple of people trying to sleep. And then his Canadian wife arrived. She is enough to ruin the widespread and generally deserved reputation Canadians have for being cool and nice. And then the rest of the crew showed. When the wasted Aussie girl who was picking fights with one of the Hellions crawled into the bunk bed above me, which was already occupied by another Hellion, I prayed that they would pass out before they got very far in any cuddling. Readers familiar with my Australian wanderings will recall my sensitivities on this score. Eventually I managed to fall asleep, thinking that at least they would sleep late. Right? Wrong. At 7:30 this morning, all five of them just start having loud, outside voice conversations. I'm thirsty, go buy some water, who get back first last night, someone stole my wallet, did I take out my contacts, who drew the penis on my leg in marker?   They kept this up for an hour, and those are actual snippets of what passes for conversation in this crew. They kept making jokes about how annoying they were and how much the rest of us must hate them, so they are self aware to know that they are inconsiderate and just want us to be sure they don't care a bit about it. You can imagine how charmed we all were. And then they started throwing trash from their beds on the floor. By this time, I was up and about and realized that my towel had been appropriated as a blanket by the couple above. That towel was never going to touch my body again! After a shower with a fresh towel and hearing that they intended to stay here a week, my decision was made. I moved into a single room. Life is too short to spend it around cretins like that if you don't have to.

It's encounters like those that make me find southern Thailand vaguely depressing. There are loads of people visiting here who want to relax and see a beautiful part of the world and be polite and friendly to the people they encounter, Thai or farang. And then there are the Hellions, who seemingly want to get pissed, offend everyone in their path, temporarily deplete my faith in humanity, and laugh loudly and drunkenly at their own antics.

I'll probably stay a few more days here though. I can't decide whether to do a day of diving in the Phi Phi Marine Park or to take a boat trip around the islands here where I can check out the beach where they filmed The Beach. It's Maya Bay, and it's supposed to be beautiful, but I don't know if I can be bothered. I never saw the movie, and it's packed with visitors every day. Hat Yao, or Long Beach, is a 30 minute walk away from the village here on the island and is a fantastic place to while away a day on the white sand under a fig tree with the warm, clear water a few feet away. I'll make sure I never mention its existence to the Hellions, that's for sure.

Night Ferries Are Better Than Night Buses

2010-08-19T12:54:00.000+02:00

I realized after posting my last post that I probably sounded rather annoyed with all of our transit mishaps. I was a little disappointed that we'd lost some time, but I didn't mention the fantastic foot massages we'd received in Bangkok or the fact that our trip coincided with the Queen's birthday.
The Queen is so revered here in Thailand that her birthday has been elevated to a kind of Mother's Day. Whether this glory is reserved only for her, as a mother of the country, or if it is also reflected on all Thai mothers, I can't tell. But there were parades, festivals, and HUGE color photos of her from all stages of her life everywhere we went.

After missing the quick boat to Ko Pha-Nang, I was girding myself for and setting Lee's expectations very low for our night ferry to Ko Tao. I really didn't know what we were going to get into, and walking onto the ferry up the car ramp alongside boxes of pineapples and one huge pile of dirt wasn't raising my hopes (do they need dirt on Ko Tao that badly?). On an upper deck, a local woman motioned for me to open a door, and there was a cabin with 10 neat bunk beds, complete with one blanket per bed, an adjacent toilet, and, most blessedly of all when spending the evening in the tropics in an iron box, air-conditioning! One Wal-Dram later and I was off to a good night's sleep, considering the circumstances. We arrived at Kho Tao at 4am, but were allowed to slumber on for another hour and a half or so. Where there are arriving boats, there is a cafe open to serve the disembarkers (is that a word? it should be). After refreshing ourselves with mango shakes and setting our absolute highest price for a taxi, by water or land, to get to our chosen guesthouse, we began the bargaining.

Ko Tao is a funny little place. Uninhabited until the early 20th century, it was used as a prison a la an even more remote Alcatraz. Then in the late 1940s, some fishermen and their families came and settled in. It's a tiny island, doesn't have much fresh water, and has a coastline that is a rockline. Huge boulders piled up against cliffs make up most of the perimeter; those are interspersed occasionally with small beaches not known for the fineness of the sand due to most of it being made of broken coral bits. But all that coral makes it popular with the underwater sporting crowd. The interior looks impenetrable, covered with tropical trees, including beautiful tall palms. But there are roads, albeit pitted, bumpy, and hilly. There must be plenty of money made on the island because I've never seen so many new Toyota trucks.

Lee and I took our overpriced water taxi to Tao Tong Villa, and we immediately knew we had scored. Tao Tong straddles a rocky point of the island which means it has two small beaches, loads of sea views, and super snorkeling just steps into the water. Critically, there is no shortage of hammocks, lounge pillows and low tables on the covered deck, tasty food, and beer. On our second day, we joined some of our fellow guests and took a long-tail boat around the island, stopping to snorkel at spots along the way. The snorkeling just got better and better that day, and we even saw two very good sized black tip reef sharks swimming close to shore (and to us!). Lee and I were not messing about with the tropical sun and wore shirts in the water and hats in the boat (I still burned a crescent of skin on my bum). None of our European companions followed suit, and one Spanish senorita asked us if we did not like the sun, to which I replied that I like the sun but I don't like what it does to my skin. You could tell she thought we were a little bit crazy. I felt vindicated later in our stay when Italian Antonio confessed that he had thought it was a little much that we wore shirts but his back was now burnt and peeling.

We had loosely planned to spend a couple of days on Ko Tao, then take a boat to Ko Pha-Nang, just south, but we had too good a thing going at Tao Tong. So we stayed and read books and snorkeled and lounged and watched sunsets and found it delightful. We did need to make it to Phuket at some point, since Lee must catch a flight from there. After our surprisingly comfortable night ferry from Chumphon to Ko Tao, we thought we'd take another one from Ko Tao to Surit Thani, which is on the east coast of the mainland. This would be a longer journey, at least 8 hours, and though I knew it was a different boat, I was hoping it would be as comfortable as the one we had taken a few days before.

If you made an internal wager with yourself that I would be disappointed in that hope, you win! It wasn't terrible - I actually slept rather well - but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone requiring privacy, conditioned air, and security in knowing that the sheets are clean. All the luggage is held on the main deck, and up a few steps is another deck which extends for most of the length of the ship. You can't stand up fully on this deck, and on either side of the central walkway are pallets (mattress is too strong a word) with pillows. Each pillow has a number painted above it. Lee and I were assigned to pallets 33 and 34. That location had a good point and a bad point. The bad point was that we were way closer to the toilet than you want to be on a boat full of farangi who've been eating chili-laden food and drinking beer for days. The good news was that pallet 35 was the last spot on that side, and we willed it to go unfilled. It did, so we got to spread out a bit. Lee dug out her new sarong, which had the honor of being broken in as a shared pillowcase as its first use, and we both felt that so long as we didn't catch bed bugs we'd be ok. Once we figured out to open the windows, we got a cross breeze going that made things immeasurably nicer. The Thai family across from us oohed and aahed at Lee's red haired beauty, and that's always nicer to have right across the way from you than a view of some sour faced tourist pouting. This boat didn't lack in those either.

We got smoothly moved to a Phuket-bound bus only an hour later than the stated departure time. Plus the journey only took 2 hours longer than the stated travel time. Even so, we made it to the very clean, comfortable, and hospitable P&T Kata House before 2pm. That gave us time enough for cold showers (the only kind I need here), a tasty lunch cooked and served by a sweet Thai woman, and a quick stroll to Kata Beach to catch a magnificent sunset. No evidence of bed bugs either, so I really have no complaints this post.

2010-08-12T12:53:00.001+02:00

If you had to guess how long a flight from New Zealand to Thailand was, what would you reckon?
Had you asked me before I checked on the matter 15 hours before making the journey, I would have said 8 to 9 hours. Wrong! It's more like 13 hours, which is about as long as it takes to fly from San Francisco to Taiwan. Auckland to Bangkok is a distance roughly equivalent to the width of the Pacific Ocean. Now we both know.

I managed to stay awake for almost the entire flight, which is really amazing for me. Normally I pass out when a plane takes off from SFO to LAX. I must have been in a Meryl Streep kind of mood because I watched 'Out of Africa' (very good) and 'It's Complicated' (only if you make it that way by sleeping with your married ex-husband!). I met my sis Lee, who had just made the journey from San Francisco to Bangkok, at the hotel and we gabbed a bit then passed out.

We are four days in to our trip together of just over two weeks together, and while nothing has gone seriously wrong, nothing has gone right either. We're having fun, but we are being thwarted by transport complexities and language barriers at every turn. I don't mind so much, but I feel badly for Lee, who has a return flight to the States in 13 days. It started in Bangkok, where the distances are large and the traffic is terrible. We had a plan for one evening - dinner in Little Arabia and cocktails at Vertigo, both farflung to our lodgings. Cabs are cheap and plentiful, and we were armed with the addresses of our destinations. But we had addresses in American accents and Roman letters. Thai script would have made up for what we lacked in linguistics, but we realized that about 15 blocks too far past our destination on our way to Little Arabia. We backtracked on foot and realized that the soi, or alley, that Lonely Planet says holds a warren of small lanes fit to bursting with Muslim and African eateries was nothing but a dark dead end that I wouldn't have even ventured a few footsteps down had I been alone. And then the rain started. We managed to eat, of course. You can't go hungry in Bangkok - it's impossible. If you can rub 5 baht together, you can score a delicious grilled, unripe, baby banana, and that makes a fine breakfast or snack anytime. After being lied to by a Lonely Planet, getting rained on, and eating at a Muslim restaurant which naturally serves no alcohol), we really needed a drink, so we attempted to catch a cab to Vertigo, a bar on the 59th floor of the Banyan Tree Hotel, known for the breathtaking views and prices. The cabs were full, and the one that wasn't refused to take us for less than 200 baht, which is less than $7 but is a ridiculous price for the distance in question, especially when the cabs have meters. We did manage to get a tuk tuk to take us, but he handed us off to another driver along the way (maybe they don't like to go too far out of their territory?). Neither seemed to know exactly our destination, but they also didn't seem entirely clueless. I'm firmly back in the Never Know Zone, so it's hard to know when to push it or just see what happens. After stopping twice for directions provided by other drivers and knowledgeable locals, we made it to Vertigo, which is fancy enough to have a dress code, and were discreetly ushered to the 52nd floor. In the elevator, I pressed 52, then saw that Vertigo is on 59, so I pressed that button too. But in the lobby, we had unknowingly encountered the Thai reluctance to break the bad news - Vertigo was closed due to the rain, but we could grab a drink on the terrace of the restaurant of the 52nd floor. You can be sure we did.

Earlier that day, Lee and I had made the executive decision to head for the bus terminal servicing the south of Thailand the next morning and grab a ticket to Chumphon on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand. It was just too much trouble to score a ticket in advance that wasn't going to be backpacker ripoff special. After our breakfast of Thai champions, sweet Thai iced coffee, we hopped on the 511 bus during morning rush hour. The bus attendant, whose sweetness was not obscured by her facemask, made sure we got off at the right stop after about 45 minutes of riding, except we had taken the right bus in the wrong direction and had arrived at the bus terminal that serves eastern Thailand. OK, we could just get right back on the same bus heading in the opposite direction, right? Except the stop didn't indicate that it stopped there, even though 4 kind people had seemed to indicate that it did. I need to emphasize the "seemed." I had forgotten how little English was spoken in Thailand, particularly in Bangkok. That's not a complaint, just a statement of fact. My Thai is currently limited to: hello, thank you, and the number 7 (easy to remember because it's 'jet'). I want to convey how little assurance there is that you and your conversational partner are on the same wavelength in any interaction outside of buying street food without inquiring anything other than price. After more than a half hour of waiting for the return of the 511, we decided to risk life and limb and cross the street in the hopes that one of drivers of the many 511s going the way we came could confirm that this was a stop. And what do you think came by as were on the other side of the street? Yup, a 511. At least we now knew it was a stop! Back across the road to wait another 15 minutes, and within an hour and a half, we had made it! Four hours after leaving our hotel, we were on our way to Chumphon.

There was a brief mechanical repair interlude halfway into our 8 hour bus ride. But you'll hear no complaints from me for I had a seat, which was more than many Thais crammed into the aisle and standing for the journey had. And I had a window seat, which was more than poor Lee had. She either had one man's sweaty armpit right on top of her head OR one very fat man's belly right in her face for most of the trip. Around 9:30 at night, we got into Chumphon, which, for travelers, is little more than a transit point to get to the islands of Koh Tao, Koh Phangan and Koh Samui. This morning, we bought a ferry ticket to get us to Koh Phangan, home of the notorious Full Moon Parties, which hold no appeal for either of us, but the island is also home to mellow beaches and warm water and hammocks and we cherish those things. Twenty minutes before the ferry was scheduled to depart and ten minutes after our shuttle was to have picked us up, the hotel receptionist informed us that the ferry was canceled, but we could go tomorrow at 5am. Gee, really? Lee and I had had suspicions that we were paying a bit more than we needed to for these tickets anyway, so she went off to check out more options while I got our money back, doing so with a smile, as you must do everything in Asia, while confirming our earlier suspicions with close observation. Thai script may be incomprehensible to me, but they use Arabic numerals just like us.

We'd just missed the 1:30 fast boat, which means that we are killing an afternoon in this little city while we wait to board our 10pm ferry. That is the slow boat, which means we'll arrive at Koh Tao at 4 am. So 43 hours after leaving our Bangkok hotel, we'll make it to the islands - even if it's not the one we wanted.

Six Month Summary

2010-08-07T14:44:00.001+03:00

Tonight is my last night in New Zealand before heading off to Thailand. The cold I had took me down for a few days, but I recovered sufficiently to meet up with my pal, Maria, in the north island and see a bit more of Aotearoa, the Maori name for NZ|, meaning "land of the long white cloud." They should have stuck with that name because it is the truth. There is always a long white cloud about to descend on your mountain, road, lake, ski slope, beach, glacier, etc.

Tomorrow is my 6 month anniversary of leaving the USA. It certainly doesn't feel like I've been gone that long, and I am looking forward to seeing many more places at a much slower pace than that which I have so far maintained. Some folks have asked me if I feel like I've changed or if I have had any epiphanies. Perhaps I've changed, but I haven't noticed it yet. As far as epiphanies, the big one was deciding that taking this extended trip was the right thing to do, and that was over a year ago. I have loads of mini-epiphanies though, and I thought I would share with you the ones I can remember (some of my best ones happen when I'm driving or falling asleep - paper isn't handy then). Without further ado and in no particular order are:

Things I've Learned in the Last 6 Months

If it's wrong to love q-tips, I don't wanna be right. I left the US without them, suffered 3 whole weeks living that way until they were reintroduced into my life when I met up with Claire in Morocco on week 4. She can confirm my irrational exuberance at the time. I bought some in Turkey and haven't been without since. I don't that like that wet ear feeling after a shower! I don't care if it's dangerous to swab your ear canal. It feels too good.

Lady Gaga is the new Coca-Cola - she is everywhere.

There is always a new low in pickup lines, and those don't bring out my generous nature. I was at a pub in small town Australia when a 30ish Aussie redneck sporting a mustache and a paunch bestowed upon me one of the least charming pickup lines ever: "You're a 7 or 8 right now, but you could do better." My shock eventually gave way to my sharp tongue, which replied "You're right, I can do better than you, so you should go away and try that line on someone else." I know that's not a nice thing to say, but you can't reward lines like that.

The bigger and better your first aid kit, the less you will need it. It's a heavy good luck charm.

The less you need to do, the less gets done. The corollary to this was expressed by an Aussie I met as "If you need something done, give it to a busy person." I psych myself up for doing laundry a good 48 hours before it gets done. I heartily resent getting up before 7am (though that's not new). The mere thought of dealing with an embassy to get a longer visa than what I could get on arrival in a country just makes me weary. However, the prospect of walking non-stop for 8 hours a day doesn't faze me at all. Just don't give me a to-do list to complete along the way.

If you never wear high heels, your feet never hurt. Oh, your dogs may bark a bit from time to time, but just take a seat and get a flat white and you'll be right as rain after a few minutes of rest.

Amazon should be subsidizing my travels for all the free press and praise I give the Kindle. I know at least two sales are directly attributable to my demonstration of the powers of the Kindle, and I'm convinced more will come once. Jeff Bezos, are you listening? This is viral marketing at its best. Help me help you!

I love watching rugby. I don't get all the subtleties, and I would be scared to death of ever playing this rough game myself. But it's so much fun to watch. The scrum reminds me of horned, male animals duking it out on a plain to see who gets mating privileges that season. The tackling is ridiculous. It's just so animalistic! I expect a broken neck every time. I'm so pleased each time a player gets up and walks away. No padding means you can see more of the male form - a longstanding quibble I've had with American football. No commercial breaks except for half-time means the game moves along swiftly - less than two hours total for the Bledisloe Cup game between New Zealand's All Blacks and Australia's Wallabies earlier tonight. Rugby is a national obsession here in New Zealand, and adding to the appeal, the All Blacks perform a haka, a Maori dance, at the beginning of each game. And there is Daniel Carter. Ladies and gays, click on that link right now. You're welcome.

That's some of what I've learned. Were you expecting something deeper? I will tell you that I'm having a fantastic time. Every country I've been to so far is a country I want to revisit. As much as certain things about the States make me crazy (can we just go metric already?!?!), no country on earth (that I've ever been to) serves up convenience, choice, and service the way we do. I've learned that it's a privilege to be able to show your knees in public and to drink water from a tap, hell, to have a tap inside your home. I've learned I don't sleep well in a room with more than two people in it, including me. So I suppose I've really learned that I'm a product of the culture I was raised in, and as nice as it is to see how the other 99.5% live (someone, please check my math), it's hard to transcend what you know. Unless, of course, we're talking rugby union v. gridiron.