Scott's Travel Blog

Eastern Tennessee

2011-05-01T08:14:00.000-07:00

I spent a wonderful two days in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Actually, in the hills about six miles from tiny Elizabethton. The couch surfing hosts were Pastor Tim and his wife Marcia and their 2 grown kids: Jill, 16, and Tyler, in his early 20’s. They live in an old home set back from a rural up-and-down road among a cluster of three or four other houses. Tim is pastor of a non-denominational church—and Marcia is an 8th-grade teacher. Tyler mows part time and is a talented woodworker in his spare time. Oh, and I met “Grandma”, who lives somewhere nearby. What I’ll remember most about her during our two very short visits is that she was a pilot who flew piper cubs and that she and her husband once had a couple of boats. Not to mention several children.

The surprise: here in eastern Tennessee, these good folks are progressives. Perhaps that’s due to the fact that they hail originally from up north: “Grandma” from Chicago and Marcia from Wisconsin. However, they’ve been down here for several years and love it. During my two days with them, we shared several conversations about politics, old TV shows, plays, books, and travel experiences. They’d spent 8 years in Kenya, which is pretty impressive, working with church groups, NGOs, and doing God’s work.

I felt rested while visiting them; I drove out to a couple of huge lakes, drove up the highway to a town called Roan’s Mountain (which naturally is next to a mountain named Roan Mountain). I did a couple of hikes, one on part of the Appalachian trail—and btw, “Appalachia” here is pronounced “Appalatchia”. In the town of Roan’s Mountain is a fantastic (and rather famous) bakery where a man and his wife made wood-fired pizzas and a host of specialty breads—and donuts from potato. Sounds gross but they’re delicious.

On one of my afternoons, I sat in their three-table ‘café’ and talked to the proprietor, a man named Tim (not to be confused with Pastor Tim). The guy, in his late thirties, was happily willing to discuss his history: “My family’s from here,” he said. “Have been since the 1630’s; my ancestors have been near these mountains for centuries.” Tim, however, had departed some years before for the Golden State of California. After being successful in the baking business, and in fact being asked by wannabe bakers as far away as Asia and Europe to be accepted as apprentices, Tim found the cost of California life too high. “Regulated, taxes, high rent, it’s all garbage,” he said. Between not being able to save and being ‘cheated’ by a moving company, Tim and his wife (also a baker) arrived back in Tennessee practically broke.

I asked him how he’d built up the current business (even though it’s not much more than a shack with an attached kitchen—with their old wooden home a few yards away). Tim said, “We built it up pizza by pizza. I started baking in the house over yonder, which you could never do in California! The state would be after you. But here, when the state guy came out so that I could get my business permit, I asked him if I needed a permit for baking goods to be sold inside the house. He told me, ‘shoot son, this is Tennessee’”. Thus, Tim and his wife labored, built the new structure and kitchen, and were soon baking like crazy. Tyler had told me that the pizzas and donuts were in demand all over the county. Tim confirmed this and said, “People in these hills were used to eating white bread. I got them started on sour dough bread and 7-grain bread and other stuff. Now I can’t make enough of it. The funny thing is that most of their grandparents and great grandparents probably had made their own bread, including sour dough. The kids and grandkids lost the touch. Modernization.”

I spent the rest of my time that day sitting by the lake and drinking coffee at a great little coffee shop in historic downtown Elizabethton. In the evening, some friends of Pastor Tim and his family came over: they were a couple living in Kentucky, parents of a young woman whom they’d known for some time. We sat around a true “Walton’s” long dinner table feasting on barbeque chicken, baked beans, potatoes, and fresh salad made from garden veggies. Dessert included some pastries I’d brought back from Roan Mountain, some apple dumplings, and a cake. A pleasant evening.

On Saturday, the last day of April, I drove an hour into North Carolina to a town named Boone. It’s a bit touristy, but I heard there were some good trails, and Tim had told me about some churches with frescoes nearby, and I wanted to see those. I checked into a mom-and-pop motel that is extremely clean, had good Internet reviews, and is utterly charming. I feasted at Golden Corral, spoke to a waitress about how one patron, angry that she couldn’t have her free coffee right away, left a penny tip (all kinds of exciting stories come your way when you travel), and spent the evening working on school stuff.

Gatlinburg and Asheville

2011-04-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

APRIL 24th
I spent a night at a Rodeway Inn in Asheville; the town is nestled in low mountains and is rather artsy but could be a cool place to live. At the visitor’s center, I spoke at length with a woman behind the counter about how her ex-hubby was diabetic, a jerk, and generally useless. But thankfully, she happily agreed to let me keep my blue pouch of insulin pens on her desk for the day while I toured downtown. Basically, I walked downtown Asheville and enjoyed a warm, sunny day of shops, parks, and a highlight: the house where author Thomas Wolf was raised—until he was 16 and went off to college. The tour was great, informative, and I saw the house as it was in the early 20th Century when his mother ran a boarding house. The poor kid apparently didn’t even have his own room but got shuffled around the huge, multi-room home.

After the tour, out on a street in front of a bookstore, a 50-something woman in a long green and grubby gown recited Shakespeare, announcing that it was the Bard’s birthday. To help celebrate, I read a scene from Macbeth with her. I felt a bit foolish, but on the other hand, I doubt of anyone watching could have done better.
In the evening after dark, I walked out to the hotel parking lot to get some fresh air. A hefty fellow in his 50’s with long graying hair and a broad face stood smoking, and we got into a conversation. He reminded me of the Indian chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and indeed, as it turned out he was half Cherokee. “But I’m just learning some of the language,” he said. “I’ve never lived on a reservation.” He was on some month-long high tech job and then off back home to Georgia. Fortunately, I learned from him that there was a reservation named, appropriately, Cherokee, located on the North Carolina side of Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

The next day, driving through mountains, I pulled into a lot at 6,200 feet and sat in brilliant sunshine watching the view. Coming down one range, I drove through the reservation of Cherokee, which is really nothing more than a small town with loads of tourist shops. At a visitor’s center, a young Cherokee woman told me that although everything is owned by the tribe, some shops are leased to whites who want to manage the stores. Ironically, I would later find in Gatlinburg that there were stores owned by whites who let Pakistanis and Indians (from India) do the managing.

Finally I made it down, through Cherokee, then to Pigeon Forge Tennessee, a town beyond the tacky Gatlinburg. I’d learned that there would be many more hotels in Pigeon Forge and that they would be cheaper; indeed, I got a good deal at a Quality Inns & Suites. $49 and room is great; ate at GC and then did some shopping; worked on school stuff and chatted politics and life with the front desk clerk, a young dude from Maryland who moved out here and wants to buy a truck and a trailer and some cheap land. In the evening, did the Jacuzzi.

MONDAY 25th: had breakfast in the “dining area” of the Quality and the drove into Gatlinburg. Since shops weren’t open, I drove into the park and got some info from the rangers about trails. I opted for the Appalachian Trail, that most famous of paths that begins in Georgia and ends in Maine. Driving up the S curves to a point at 5,000 feet, I parked in an empty parking lot. No wonder for the lack of cars; the sky is overcast and visibility is poor. In the distance, wisps of fog hovered over the hills much like they did in Transylvania.

I walked along what is clearly marked as the “Appalachian Trail”, and soon met up with a young guy backpacking. We stopped to chat, and I learned that he’d started his hike in Georgia, where his parents let him off, and has completed 200 miles. He’s got another 1,900 before he winds up in Maine. “Mostly I sleep in the shelters,” he said. “They’re like every few miles.” He, like Bill Bryson, had had the experience of trail visitors being generous in giving food items to the long-term hikers. Right now, the guy was excited because he was going to be meeting his parents down the mountain in Gatlinburg. They’d driven all the way from Pennsylvania to re-supply him and treat him to a hotel room and food. Life on the trail, day after day, gets a bit ‘rough’. After he moved on, I hiked some more, meeting a couple other young guys doing the long trek. We spoke a while too; doubtless they were glad for the rest. I asked one if he got tired of the forest after going through it for two months. He said, “No, it’s gorgeous; I love it.” I couldn’t help thinking that a full week would drive me insane. After all, trees.

After my lengthy hour-long hike, I drove down the mountain and along a narrow road through thick forest. I parked and did a popular trail that leads to a fine waterfall. At one point, a middle-aged couple coming from up the trail told me, “There’s a bear up there a bit farther, just sitting in a tree.” That’s not what I wanted to hear but chugged on anyway; and sure enough, after 20 minutes, I came to a bend in the trail where a few tourists were working their cameras—the bear in the tree was big, awake, but apparently intensely lazy, not moving very much and clearly not interested in rampaging against humans. I continued up the trail to the waterfall. Once there, I was mildly impressed though I’d seen much better on that overcast day in Pisgah Forest. Resting at the falls were the requisite fat family with their chubby children, a young couple in long jeans and with tattoos (they could have passed for followers of any mass-murderer), and me. We snapped pictures, put our hands in the ice-cold water and generally did what all people do when they reach waterfalls. After awhile, I hiked back down the trail, and found another knot of camera-toting folks taking aim at Mr. Bear. One retiree, a man with gray hair and dungarees, wasn’t content to be on the trail; he stepped further into the forest, half slipping in mud, in a quest to get a closer zoom at the bear; his wife, at the same time, kept saying, “Frank! For god’s sake, get back here! It’s a bear!” I couldn’t resist saying, “Frank, you’re going to get us all killed.” His wife just kept muttering “It’s a bear, a bear.”

APRIL 26th—After breakfast, I drove over to Sevierville to the apartment of Dan and Allison. It’s nice weather after all, so I went into the park and drove the ‘circular’ long drive on the narrow road. Stopped at to snap pics and walk around some old wooden homes from the 19th century—where doubtless, hillbillies lived. Saw an old cemetery in the forest, more streams, took a quiet walk on a hiker-less trail. The forest was quiet and only a few times did “bears” come to mind, such as when up on an include of thick forest appeared a giant dark shape—that turned out to be an uprooted tree.
Then did the whole Gatlinburg experience. What a monument to “tacky”. There’s no parking in this tiny overly touristy town, unless you want to pay the extortionist fee of eight bucks per day (who in their right mind would spend a whole day here?). So one parks at the visitor’s center and takes a trolley in. There’s an advertised $2 “all day pass” but at the desk, an old gentleman whispered, “The computer is on the fritz so we don’t’ have the passes available, but go ahead and just take the trolley on in…” Well, I figured this to mean FREE, but no, after you go out into the parking lot and board the trolley, the reality is that you have to pay a dollar –each way. Gatlinburg authorities have discovered yet another way to screw the tourists.

You have to see pics to understand the ‘entertainment’ available in Gatlinburg; I suppose for parents with kids that like ‘adventure’, there are many possibilities to part with dollars. Among the delights:
• Ripley’s Moving Theatre: dynamic Live Action at its best
• Ripley’s Haunted Adventure: Live the Nightmare (but the nightmare is really downtown Gatlinburg, so why pay?)
• Ripley’s Davy Crockett Mini-Golf. (do you see a “Ripley” pattern here?)
• The Rainforest Adventure Zoo (fancy title for a cheap “petting zoo”)
• The Hypnotized Comedy Show. “You will laugh!” promises the sign.
• Christ in the Smokies Museum & Gardens, where 12 galleries show you over 100 lifelike biblical figues. Oddly, the brochure shows a Jewish high priest that resembles Don Rickles; a woman garbed like Mary resembles Katherine Hepburn. Perhaps the creator (of the figures, that is) had a strange sense of humor.
• Grand Magic
• America’s hit Parade—but the brochure shows a crowd of hippies in pink and purple.
• The Muscle Car Museum (speaks for itself)
• And probably the biggest rip-off: TITANIC, the world’s largest museum attraction. I drove by a rather large “ship” built halfway to scale, but according to the brochure, what’s mostly inside are newspaper articles about the Titanic along with artifacts.

In the evening, I did laundry at WARSH PLACE. A few others lugged in baskets of dirty clothes and most of the machines were in use. A helpful, cheerful woman in her 50’s ran the place, pointed out the change machine, helped explain to her customers which machines would be best for their load size, etc. We chatted a bit, and when I mentioned that I needed to go over to Wendys because my blood sugar was dropping, she ran over to her desk and brought me a mint candy. I thanked her profusely though it would have been more enjoyable to cross the lot to Wendys and have a Frosty. Come to think of it, I did that as well. Walking across the enormous, mostly-empty lot, I watched dark clouds, big and billowy and threatening, cross over the Smokies. Beautiful.

In the evening, I chatted with Dan as he took his hound/Labrador mixed dog Baxter on his nightly walk. There’s a tiny park near the apartment; while we waited for Baxter to run amok, a rather squat shadow came strolling across the lawn with its two smaller dogs. This shadow turned out to be a woman, and Dan, being an amiable fellow and new to the complex, introduced himself. The woman was rather heavy set (let’s be honest, fat, like most human beings who reside or visit the Smokies, apparently) with a crew cut and with tattoos on her fleshy arms. If I’d run into her in a dark alley, I would have offered all of my money on the spot. Turns out she had been an LPN but found a better living in cleaning condos and cabins. “I can make sixty dollars per room,” she told us. “That’s like $600 a day.” More impressive was the fact that part of the year she works for the Democratic National Convention in Denver—soliciting donations and living free in a hotel. Frankly, it stunned me. I would never have taken her for a liberal.

Back at the apartment, Dan and I talked over couch surfing experiences. He and his wife Alison (who arrives back Wednesday night) backpacked and surfed all over South America for 6 months. He told a story about one couch surfing host, a woman in her forties, who has a constant stream of couch surfers, usually several at a time, into her tiny home. This home, Dan told me, was the size of his living room, and the woman had a 13-year-old daughter as well. “She also had a couple cabins out back and a minivan where she let people sleep.”

I slept fitfully for the first half of the night. The sleeping bag on the floor wasn’t too comfortable, so I borrowed a second sleeping bag from the closet, unrolled it, and lay it beneath the first one. That made life a bit easier.

Pics of Carolinas

2011-04-22T21:12:00.000-07:00

South in the Carolinas

2011-04-22T20:15:00.000-07:00

APRIL 15th (FOR PICS SCROLL DOWN)
I won’t bore you with my “Florida” activities: basically Disney world, St. Augustine and a national ‘forest’ in Ocala, Florida (a strange mix of pine, palms, and dozens of crystal clear spring lakes). The highlights of Ocala were the glass bottom boat rides over both a crystal clear spring lake and along a rather wildly forested river. Oh, and Epcot Center. Any narrative would be dull but the pictures are of at least partial quality; gentlemen will enjoy the i-movie of the Moroccan belly dancer.

On the 16th, I drove into Charleston, South Carolina, a truly beautiful city that can still evoke feelings of nostalgia for those antebellum days before the Civil War. This is strange considering that most of the tourists there know very little about the Old South apart from familiar scenes of Gone with the Wind. However, that aside, the lower part of the Charleston peninsula is a collection of old streets, gorgeous old houses, and of course, old money—and plenty of it, according to my friends Rachel and Scott, with whom I stayed during my days in Charleston.

Basically, this too will make dull reading: pictures are worth thousands of words so see the pictures. All I did was walk around enjoying the sunny weather, the sea along the battery, and a small park. And a couple coffee shops. One morning, Rachel met me at one of the non-touristed coffee shops, where we chatted before she took me on a mini tour of the peninsula. We walked up and down Meeting Street, Broad Street, saw the old abandoned 18th Century jail, and some shops. After a couple hours, she left to go back home and I wandered just soaking it in.

My next stop (and now I’m heading “north” for the first time) is Greenville, South Carolina. I hadn’t intended to stop for more than a look/see, but a wonderful couch surfing family had ‘accepted’ me, and I wound up staying for two full days. And the city is well worth it. I probably wouldn’t recommend it to tourists, but it’s one of those cities that might be very pleasant to live in. Low hills in the not-so-far distance and a marvelous revitalized downtown lined with shops on shady streets make this a winner. There’s a park with a waterfall, as well. I spent some time in the park and in the coffee shop, where I quickly noticed that the rock music being played was Christian rock.

Alison and Will were wonderful hosts. I had a very comfy futon to sleep on in a ‘room’ off the kitchen. Their house was somewhat new and clean, rather European-like, I thought. This wasn’t surprising since they’d spent nearly 2 years in Scotland as he worked on a PhD in English, with T.S. Elliot his specialty. Their children included Eden, just about 2, and Vincent, a few months old. “Vincent is named for Vincent Van Gogh,” Will told me. “That was Alison’s favorite artist.

In the evening, their church group came over for some socializing and then to discuss the sermon given the previous Sunday. The folks were very friendly; I chatted awhile with an architect and a retiree named Robert, who like many other non-southerners, has retired with his wife to a warmer climate. After the lesson, the men and women separated for prayer request; the men got the back patio on this lovely evening.
The next day, I drove north into North Carolina and into Transylvania county. I basically spent a day and a half in Brevard, an artsy mountain town though not comparable to Estes Park in Colorado. These “mountains” are part of the Appalachians, which in these parts are in the neighborhood of 2,000-3,000 feet—and covered with plenty of green forest. I frankly found downtown Brevard to be boring in its collection of shops so I headed for the supermarket and bought a chicken sandwich, banana, some potato salad, crackers, and a fizzy drink that may or may not have had some traces of alcohol (the name was Coors). I returned to my motel, a decent Rodeway Inn, and did some work on the Macbook and watched TV, switching between MSNBC, Fox and Seinfeld. Note: surprisingly, conservatives Karl Rove and Ann Coulter both publicly stated that they believed Barrack Obama had been born in this country and that Donald Trump was now a member of the nutty Right.

I was dismayed to awake to another day of gray, overcast skies and drizzle. But I learned within an hour that the weather had its benefits. As I drove out of Brevard and into the amazing Pisgah National Forest, I was able to stop the car and snap pics of rural Transylvania county—and I swear that they are similar to the pics I’d taken in old Transylvania. I loved the low mists hanging over the mountain treetops, the red barns set back in wide fields. And secondly, this meant fewer families out in the state park! I had a restful hike that led me for a mile over paths of wet leaves, dripping trees, mist floating above the trees, and utter quietness. At the end of the mile was a waterfall falling at least a couple hundred feet, splashing quietly into a shallow pool whose waters continued on down a stream. It was possible to climb over some rocks and sit behind the waterfall.

In the evening, I made contact with a Couch Surfer in the area and may go there tomorrow. For tonight, I’m safely ensconced in a comfy Rodeway Inn. I feasted at one of the best Chinese Buffets that I’d ever been in (mint choco chip ice cream—yes!) and got my pics updated.

South 5 Pics

2011-04-19T09:30:00.000-07:00

South 4 Pictures

2011-04-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

PICTURE 3 of the South

2011-04-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

Photo album #2 of the South

2011-04-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

PART 2 of the Southern Blog

2011-04-07T11:06:00.000-07:00

Friday APRIL 1st:
Left the Day’s Inn around 10am and drove on horrible highway 91 south (it’s all “Americana Crap”) to Madeira Beach, Florida, where I’m staying with Couch Surfers. Joan and her mom Pat are great! Joan works in admin and Pat’s retired. They live in a cool 2-bedroom home a ten-minute walk from the beach. Their “back yard” is about ten feet of grass and then a dock on a natural sea inlet! It’s like being on a gorgeous large lake; by sundown, we 3 sat on chairs in the back drinking red wine and watching the fish jump out of the water and a small sailboat sail by. I spent the afternoon exploring some overly-touristy shops nearby and watching the Gulf beaches wistfully. Tomorrow I shall go lay on the beach.

Sat 2nd: The highlights: more chats with Pat and Joan, and then walked over to the beach and found a place to lie. Great to be in front of the sea again; I simply relaxed and read my action/adventure novel. In the evening, Pat said, “I’m going to take us all out to dinner, Scott.” So I drove the 3 of us to a great little ‘happening’ restaurant with all kinds of sea décor: the requisite fake shark hanging from the ceiling, pictures/murals of fish undersea. The specialty was naturally seafood and Pat ordered up a huge plate of oysters for herself. I stuck with a safe salad and ventured to try a bowl of soup with scallops and shrimp. We watched those around us dig into heaps of oysters and when Pat’s came, she’d spoon the slimy cooked beasts out of their shell and eat them. I didn’t pay close attention to that, actually.

Sun: After a late-morning rest in the backyard overlooking their pier and parked sailboats, I packed up and departed after some hugs. Pat and Joan have been wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with them. The drive down to Cape Coral lasted a couple hours, and my next couch surfers. The scenery along the drive is hardly equal to Colorado but is enjoyable: lots of flat land filled with pines and palms, an unlikely mix.

Cape Coral is yet another retirement community though rather spread out. I’m not quite sure I ever made it to “town”. Joseph and his wife Joan live in an open area near a narrow highway; houses here are average looking with the typical Florida lawns: that is any mix of wild grasses, flowers, and the like. Their house was quite comfortable—a huge living room sported both a 56-inch flat screen TV and patio doors that looked out onto a small enclosed swimming pool. Down a short bush-covered slope was a salt-water lake and on the other side houses here and there. Joseph is retired from a variety of life’s tasks. Professionally, he worked with AT & T for a long time—but he’s ridden Harleys, has done scuba and flying. He just married Joanie, from England, a year or so ago—on the beach in Florida. She’s from the north of England, has that strong but cool north England accent, and was a delight to share Earl Grey tea with. On my second day there, I drove to a beach, and then to a little park on what looked like a giant lake but who knows. Around here most everything is salt-water inlets, I suppose, and canals. The whole area used to be a marsh.
Monday: We spent most of the morning just chatting over Earl Grey tea. I then moved on, heading north for the long drive to Orlando. I got onto a narrow (and wrong) highway and drove several miles out my way—but eventually found the interstate I needed. I arrived late afternoon in Kissimmee (near Orlando), where I’d be staying with another couch surfer; For tonight, I bunked at a Motel 6 for thirty bucks—just a couple miles from Disneyworld. The street is (predictably) filled with the usual touristy shops, restaurants, etc etc…the same as everywhere. But unlike the area around Disneyland in California, this seems a bit more affluent, upscale. Indeed, there are plenty of condos and vacation homes for miles around. It’s quite pleasant. For dinner, I bought a sandwich, some potato salad and yogurt at Wal-Mart and ate in my room while watching some Discovery channel special about the same Civil War era submarines that I’d seen in Columbus Georgia at the Civil War Naval Museum. I phoned Yanni, my next couch surfing host, and she assured me that I was welcome. “I live alone in a three-bedroom condo!”

Tuesday: I made arrangements to meet Yanni at her home just down I92, which was convenient to say the least. I didn’t have to run all over Orlando (a rather sprawling area) looking for a strange neighborhood. Pulling up to a row of expensive-looking condos in a gated community (yes!), I parked and rang the bell of the end condo.
Yanni is a fit, young-looking Norwegian woman in her 40’s. She’s into property management, real estate, has her own business. As soon as I entered the condo, I was impressed by the cleanliness of the place; yes, this was a true European home, spic and span. Impressive layout, furniture and spotless. “Make yourself at home,” she said. She had to run out on business, but I too had to hit the local Starbucks, so she gave me the combination of buttons to push for the automatic lock, and we took off on our separate trips.
Basically, I spent Tuesday and Wednesday hanging around home or Starbucks except for a trip to Target. I had plenty of schoolwork to finish up and had to figure out a few Apple application problems. I relaxed, in other words—and graded essays. Wednesday afternoon I treated Yanni to lunch at Olive Garden, and we enjoyed a glass of wine and nice long talk one evening about our travels—and boy does she have travels!
Like most of the Couch Surfers I’d met, she’d led a varied and interesting life. She’d traveled much of her life: weeks or months at a time in places: Philippines, Thailand, China, Cuba, Tibet, Mongolia, all over Europe, a year in LA, trips back and forth across the USA.

The FIRST blog of the Deep South Trip

2011-03-30T10:46:00.000-07:00

TO SEE PICTURES OF MY SOUTHERN TRIP, GO TO MY WEBSITE AT www.scottharrisonsutton.com and click on pictures.

After a last check of the tires at Jensen’s Tires in Omaha, I got on I-80 Eastbound but instead of heading straight east, I swerved onto I-29 South and passed the familiar bluffs that follow the Missouri. To spare you the boring details, it’s enough to say that the highlight of the day was a quick meal at Burger King. I stopped at a Motel 6 outside of Little Rock (after a long night drive along a dark highway winding it’s way through some little Ozarks). I swiped my Mastercard for the one-armed gentleman managing the motel and settled in my room. The good news: my Verizon Broadband card works fine and I instantly was connected, allowing me to call home, watch an episode of the soap-opera horror show Dark Shadows, and Skype with my good Syrian friend Khalil in Dubai. I slept fitfully though the temps are perfect. In the morning, I treated myself to a full chicken-fried steak breakfast at I-Hop and drove downtown.
The River Market is a collection of shops, restaurants, etc. next to the river. An old narrow bridge crossing the Arkansas River has now been converted for pedestrians only, so I climbed the steps and got a good shot of downtown. It’s okay, but like so many other cities in the USA, rather uninspiring and lacking beauty or grace. Driving through Missouri into Arkansas the day before, I noted all the same American signs that we grow up with: Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and, well, a hundred others that dot every American landscape and tend to force a conventional sameness to our culture. Bill Bryson comments on this in his travel books.
Downtown, I explored a tiny but free Arkansas natural history ‘museum’—with its live baby alligator (which didn’t budge at all for 3 minutes), stuffed eagles, pioneer bric-a-brac, all very cool. I learned that many Germans settled in the Little Rock area in the 1820’s, and were instrumental in assisting the local Indian tribes to re-locate to areas where they might be happier. How kind of them.
I met the couchsurfer's roommate Guilhem (he's a couchsurfer, too), an amazing young guy of only 25 but my god the things he has done! His girlfriend and he traveled a lot, in the stans, tried to get visa for Turkmenistan and even Turkmen friends couldn't get one, but they went to so many other places, even crossing illegally into Iraq. They went to Syrian, met a couchsurfer and stayed with him for 3 months. He's spent months in Mexico, and in Australia worked alone with no money in the outback, the desert, like a kind of cowboy or something. Oh, when he and his girlfriend were backpacking in the Arab world, they at times were so poor that they had no food, or not much, and spent weeks on some donkeys traveling in Kirgizstan and Tajikistan. He's lived in Little Rock now for nearly a year but has to go back in late May. He wants to stay longer but the company won't let him.

So we went to this cool place, kind of like a little park with this bizarre old mill that’s a recreation of an 1880’s water-powered gristmill. At dusk, very otherworldly, almost like something from Lord of the Rings. Then we went to a restaurant/bar he likes and shared a cheese and steak pizza, listened to some live music. We drove downtown to this River Market street I'd been on earlier in the day. At one bar, 2 guys on piano and a guy on drums did some hits from 60's, 80's, and 2000's, (I particularly remember Sweet Home Alabama) with a lively mixed crowd of people (drunks of course) all enjoying their jokes. They’d bring some drunk on stage and make him and some girl have a sitting-fast contest or something weird. Funny. It is apparently a custom to have the crowd periodically yell out “You slut, you whore, you bitch” to the keyboardist’s pounding on the keys. Everyone seemed to get quite a kick out of this.

We went back around 11pm because these Nepali guys or Indians (we don't even know) were supposed to be showing up around 1am. Meanwhile, there's a cat outside my door meowing because he wants in, well piss on him.
HIGHLIGHTS:
• The next day—I walked around downtown on a bright, sunny morning. After my usual coffee at the River Center, I took a trolley ride (kind of a “whoop de doo” affair) before visiting the Clinton library, which was fantastic. Two floors of memorabilia, facts, posters, displays about the Clinton years, including a full replica of the Oval Office and the briefing room. Very cool. Lastly, downtown, I visited the grand old statehouse.
• Met Guilhem and we went to the Old Mill again, hung out and talked on a rock bridge. Relaxed, we drove over to TGIF and met Dave (he’s just returned from his conference in another city). After some drinkies, we crossed the road to play some pool: I taught them cut-throat. That night, I was on the sofa. The cats chased each other around.
• The next morning after a banana and last chat with Guilhem, I drove to Memphis on an overcast day. Finding Jonathan’s place was quite easy, and I found him to be a nice guy who works in IT and is politically astute and well spoken. He invited me down to the patio with neighbors, one couple, a fat girl, and a tall, thin gay guy who with a balloon tied to his waist, was celebrating his birthday. “It’s ma birthday,” he’d say every few minutes. Later, I did some work on the laptop. And around 9pm the traveling couple showed up: they’re traveling around the country for 8 months! Engineer, 35, self-employed but the SUV gas needs = peanut butter sandwiches and camping/couch surfing. Nice talk until late. I slept fitfully on the sofa.
• Tuesday 15th: rainy day so in morning drove over to Starbucks for leisurely paper read; a friendly dude behind the counter told me about Gus’s Chicken, a place where some famous directors, when shooting on location, ate daily. One HAD to try it when in Memphis, he said. I drove downtown, parked, and walked the famous Beale Street in a matter of minutes. It was kind of cool to see but if you’re not into the tourist tramp scene (or the beginnings of Rock-N-Roll), forget it. Outside of one closed museum (curiously in a mall), I saw on display a piece of art work: a carving of jade horses—here courtesy of the Chinese. I rode a trolley around the gray streets on this gray day but got off at a gem: the Civil Rights Museum.
• The Civil Rights Museum was packed but worth it; displays included the bus where Rosa Parks had demanded to stay seated in the white section, a café showing mock whites mocking and teasing and flicking cigarette ash on a black couple, the marches, Selma, etc. It made me wonder how humanity could have existed in such a frame of mind in the 60’s.
• Then Gus’s, in line speaking with an African-American guy who was difficult to understand. Like most southerners, he was very friendly and very polite. One guy on the street asked if I wanted tickets to the football game; I told him I was leaving town that day and he genuinely told me to have a nice day. Back at Jonathan’s, I met his girlfriend who works on the “rails to trails” project. We walked next door to the Irish pub and sat talking about travel and politics. Then joined by Stan and Anders, two Louisville KY students but from Germany (Mainz) and Denmark. About 9:30, we went home; the girlfriend left and we guys carried on the conversation until midnight. Anders is diabetic so we had a spirited discussion of our condition. Jonathan and I told them about right-wing hate radio talk show hosts.
MARCH 16th: NEW ORLEANS
I got checked in that evening at the Bourbon Hostel after some difficulty finding them; the neighborhood is rather poor looking, some groups of black youth hanging out on a street of somewhat dilapidated housing. I went to the big TESOL conference (for ESL instructors worldwide) early in the morning and had one interview at noon. I met a couple colleagues from Omaha: Gail, a delightful Welsh woman who is my supervisor at Metro, so we had tea in the convention hall. I met also the woman who originally hired me in 1997 to come to Dubai, Susan Madson. That was a pleasant surprise and we made arrangements to meet the next day for lunch. After all the professional stuff, I changed clothes and left the conference, walking down to the famous Riverwalk and met up (as pre-arranged by cell phone) with the guys. Anders and Stan (couch surfers who stayed with Jonathan in Memphis) came to New Orleans so we had a great reunion. From their hostel (a different one), they brought a Swedish guy. So I hung out with a German, a Dane and a Swede.
I met up with them at the famous Café De Monde on Decatur Street, just across the street from Jackson Square. After coffee, we entered St. Louis’ cathedral. Did the re-enactment of the “texting God” scene. First we walked around the river front (Mississippi) watching the riverboats and eating fast food in the Riverfront center; then we rode a streetcar out to see the famous cemeteries (HUGE) but the cemeteries were all closed, the gates locked. Bummer, but we got some shots, and wanted to walk to City Park, and some native, a guy in his 40’s who looked like he’d seen better days, walked along with us on some shortcut through some okay neighborhoods. Thankfully, he didn't lead us to our deaths. At the park, we took pics of the huge old trees with the hanging moss from them; we waited for a trolley close to sundown that never came, and made a FAST decision to run across a busy street to jump on a bus.
Back in the French Quarter, we had a blast. It's St. Paddy's day and New Orleans has gone wild! The French Quarter had an Irish parade after dark, with LOTS of drinking, yelling and dancing in the streets. I had some green beer and watched humanity party. We followed one little parade, dancing, and the Swedish guy slapping the upraised hands of some of the other partiers, even kissing a couple of girls. People all dressed up and in cars and parade floats threw necklaces of beads to the crowd. On one street, another parade of tiny decorated cars filled with shriners waited for the head of the line to begin moving (apparently this occurred when the drivers finished their beers in the pub). Speaking with one chubby little fellow in his 50’s, I learned that his group of shriners do the parades regularly. “We raise money for handicapped kids, other needy groups.” Someone up ahead of the line honked and the crowds of revelers cheered. The guy jumped into his jalopy and within a few seconds, he pulled away.
And so on. Anders, a good photographer, snapped shots of partiers lining the balconies overlooking the streets. Clubs doors were open to the street, revealing various bands inside and dancers. Rock and jazz wafted on the air down the streets, one band’s sounds merging with those of another. On corners stood jazz bands, trumpeters, rappers.
I left it all at 11 because I had to come back and sleep since I'm returning to the conference tomorrow. Back at the hostel, I talked with a couple of the other ESL teachers (there are about a dozen staying here at the hostel)--including a middle-aged woman from Algeria and an American woman with missing fingers who has been living in Guam for 18 years. The hostel group has been friendly, interesting with most in a good mood.

Friday 18th:
• interviews, working on class stuff; lunch with susan
• meeting at fancy restaurant with Naomi, Gail and Sharon
• going to Motel 6 and sleeping

SAT: went around New Orleans, French quarter, art shop, out to see Katrina damage but didn’t find. Store manager showed water level and pic. I drove up to Baton Rouge, looked around. River front, nothing special, continued on to Natchez.

SUN and MON: natchez. Red Carpet Inn good, breakfast with black guy despairing over nephew and youth today. I wandered around Downtown, then the riverfront casino where I had lunch, won money. Walked around the visitor’s bureau with their displays/history of the antebellum days, civil war, reconstruction and civil rights. Then a Tour of Stanton Hall, in evening saw play called Southern Exposure. Black actress who played Australia quite good. Stopped for a marguerita at a convenient mart that was all black on way home. Tuesday worked at the coffee shop but went out to a city park with an old mansion and slave quarters. Talked to Rhonda, a couch surfer in Jackson.

JACKSON:
Spent a night with Rhonda and Mark, a great couple offering southern hospitality.
• daughter/boyfriend
• house rather chaotically decorated
• learned about quilting postcards and quilting art.
• Cats: boo radley and scout
(teddy bear hunt—Teddy Roosevelt came to Mississippi to hunt bears—hence, Teddy bears)

WEDN 23rd, after chatting with Rhonda for awhile, drove downtown but didn’t do much other than have Seattle’s Best Coffee at the King Edward Hotel—and walk a bit downtown. I did go in and toured the Capital building but it’s not as nice as Lincoln’s. Basically went back and Rhonda offered me lunch of gumbo if I waited a couple hours. I did. The gumbo contained okra, veggies, shrimp, oyster, crab, tomato. It’s served in a bowl with a big cup of rice, so it’s more like stew than soup. We bad-mouthed Newt and Sarah some more as Rhonda puffed on ciggies and the cat jumped around the table. We hugged goodbye afterwards and I drove off.

Birmingham, Alabama:
I spent 2 days with wonderful Couchsurfing hosts: Julio and Brenda. Pulling up to their home after spending a couple of hours at an upscale mall, I was welcomed into their spacious, clean home in an affluent neighborhood. Julio, tall and quite professorial looking, led me to what would be my own bedroom—complete with bathroom. Nice! Well, basically, Birmingham is one great little gem. Largely clean and spread over a series of hilly country, the place is green and for the most part well-off. Over the couple days, I visited a state park, the Vulcan monument, which is a metal statue (of Vulcan, naturally) perched on a high hill overlooking downtown; the statue was made in the early part of the 20th century for the World’s Fair—and a tiny museum tells the story of iron working, coal, etc and its importance to the rise of Birmingham as a city.
After that, I drove down to 5 Points, a commercial bisecting of 5 streets that form an area lined with shops, restaurants, etc. The kind of place where you see people outside of Starbucks sipping lattes and typing on notebooks. I became one of them for an hour or so.

The following day, I drove on a gray day up north of Birmingham to a grotto where a priest at an old abbey spent decades building dozens of mini-replicas of ancient churches.

About my hosts, Brenda and Julio (Jay): Brenda is highly placed in the banking industry, a bank out of Dallas Texas. Julio, in his early 60’s, is retired. In fact, he worked for years for Texas Instruments, in R&D, and has traveled extensively in Europe and Asia. He’s highly intelligent and told me the story of how he spent years living between places like Italy and Dallas—and in the process was missing his children growing up. He came to the point (his son was getting into trouble in school) when he gave the ultimatum to Texas Instruments to either let him remain in a position at home or to allow him to leave with a full package. Texas Instruments was so desperate to keep him that they refused to let him quit, essentially, though finally it worked out that he stayed on as a consultant. He became active in scouting with his son and continued on as scout master for quite a while.
The most interesting aspect of this couple is what brought them together as a couple: their breeding of canaries. In the basement aviary, nearly 200 canaries (yellow, white, orange, brown) chirped, sang, jumped, and ruffled their feathers. Jay and Brenda go to shows (who would have thought there were canary shows—but there are: worldwide) sometimes every weekend during prime show season. In the process, they breed them with genetics in mind, trying to reach the best bird they can. Brenda is enthusiastic about getting new members since the USA has far fewer canary shows than, say, Italy or Germany.
I asked them why they got involved in Couch Surfing. The answer is much the same as what others have said: they like to meet people from different cultures, different parts of North America, for that matter. They have surfed and hosted, and state that each of their experiences thus far has been great. “We had a young couple from Miami,” says Jay in a slight Cuban accent. “We got along so well with them that we’ve gone to Miami to visit them. At first, the guy said they had a small apartment…and wow! Yes, but like a penthouse with this fantastic view of Miami and the ocean.”

Monday March 28th:
I sat most of the morning in a Columbus Georgia coffee shop. The place had wooden floors, decent food, free fast wifi. What more could I want? Outside, the sky was overcast and there was a chill in the air. This riverfront area is nice, loaded with shops, but no one except some students from the local college were out and about. Columbus was where I spent the night at a decent Motel 6. My plan, after I left Brenda and Jay, was to head east from Birmingham into Georgia and wander through the counties. However, poor weather chanted my mind, and after my half day of work and arranging my photos, I took off heading south to Mobile. After four hours or so of driving, about an hour before dusk, I pulled off the interstate at a town called Greenfield in Alabama. About a mile further on beyond the usual array of Americana (gas stations, motels, fast food, Walgreen) lay a nice-looking two-street downtown, some old brick buildings and a nice town hall. I decided to spend the night. At a Days Inn, run by an Indian couple, I got a great rate of $54 and was happy with the room: decent furniture, a clean quality carpet, dressing area separate from the bathroom, flat-screen TV, and King bed.

TUES: I ate my free breakfast in a dining area while watching CNBC’s financial news and listening to a family with two little girls chattering. After checking out, I drove south for 3 hours to the town of Fairhope, Alabama—just minutes from Florida and across the wide bay from Mobile, Alabama. Here, I’m staying with Couch surfers Bill and Carmen Potts.
I pulled up a long grassy/gravelly driveway to a dark-brown wooden two-story home with an old fashioned porch wrapped entirely around the dwelling. They have 3 acres of land including a peach orchard, a trailer where the in-laws live, and a huge workshop for Bill out back where he works on his projects. Bill is in construction and Carmen is an ESL teacher—and in fact just attended the same conference in New Orleans!
Bill had come out of the barn-like workplace and showed me around. We chatted for awhile, and I did some unpacking in my room (yes, my private room!) and drove into town. Fairhope has its charming old town with some unique shops and cafes. Beyond that is a park and the wide bay, the sea. One pier a half mile in length juts far out into the gray/brown water, which I learned is not only sea water but in parts where the fresh water from rivers and streams flows into the sea. Not far away are estuaries. I sat looking at the sea for awhile and got some exercise after all the driving.

In the evening, in their large one-room living/dining area, we feasted on falafel sandwiches, prepared by Bill. Until shortly after Katrina, they owned and ran a small restaurant in town—doing Greek food. I asked Bill why Greek food and he answered, “Because there wasn’t any and I love Greek food.” He laughed. Unfortunately, Katrina did economic damage to Fairhope—along with many other communities on the Gulf coast. “Tourists not coming affected the townspeople,” Bill explained. “And that meant the locals didn’t spend much money, including going out to restaurants.” He and Carmen have tried to get their fair share with BP but BP reps are making things a lot more difficult than most Americans realize. “And it’s completely random,” Bill said. “My daughter, who’s 21, got $5,000 from BP for lost wages, but my son got turned down and he does the same thing.” Well, that’s the government.

Thursday was gorgeous as the gray skies turned blue and the temperature rose to the mid seventies. I wandered about town again, sat by the sea on a covered end-of-pier, did some reading. I ambled down the road passing 19th Century homes set back from the road, partially out of sight and hidden by magnolia and pine and wild oak. Spanish moss hung from some of the trees lining the road. I visited the Fairhope museum, which Carmen suggested. It’s small but packed with the history of this unique town. The director himself spoke with me for several minutes before pointing to the pictures and history of the founding of the town in the early 18th century.

Friday: I departed from the Potts after saying good-bye to Bill. Following the highway, I found a Starbucks and stopped for coffee and an email check. The rest of the day was driving into and across Florida’s northwest territory. By 9pm, I stopped at a Day’s inn and got a room.

Return to Thailand: the Adams Family, more demon possession, fighting the church Filipinos, good French Toast, and Amtrak through a winter wonderland

2009-12-25T19:57:00.000-08:00

I spent one night in my usual guest apartment at the hospital, got caught up with school stuff the next day, then took the overnight train north to Chiang Mai. I’d booked ‘Second-Class Fan’, but the train car seemed a bit more worn out than my previous Thai train. And just my luck, there was a gaggle of drunken Australian kids at the far end of the car. Fortunately, I had my I-pod and could drown them out for a couple of hours.

I met a German guy named Victor on the platform as we disembarking from the train early the next morning. We caught a Tuk-Tuk into the town and walked around a bit pricing various guesthouses. We took rooms in a clean place set down a quiet narrow street. My room had hardwood floors and a mattress on the floor, and a nice bathroom. It was a bit upscale from what Victor chose but I felt like splurging. He was spending eight dollars a night and I was spending something like eleven or twelve. We walked around the neighborhood a bit before Victor decided to go take a nap. I was lucky to come across the Paris Bistro, a cafe fronting the street where I had a good latte and something to eat. Over the next couple days, I visited with the British manager and his Thai wife, enjoyed a few lattes and salads, and the free Wifi.

The following day, I took songteow to The Chiangmai Adventist Academy, located about an hour out of town in a rural area of fields and low hills. The academy is a school (primary through high school) set on a 100-acre complex with a two-story academic building, a new church, and a dozen other buildings including boy’s and girl’s dormitories. I met and interviewed an American named David Bell, who gave me considerable information about the school—and later I met his wife Annabelle, a kind woman who provided me a thermos of hot water so that I could drink the hot chocolate and tomato soup that Faye had packed for me back in Bangkok. One morning, I had breakfast with them in their home, and the following day I went with an American guy and his kids to see some waterfalls. These falls were rather fun because they were flowing over calcified rock—allowing us to easily climb up or down the rocks over which the water flowed.

Mae Sariang and the Adams Family: I checked out of my Chang Mai Hotel and caught a tuk-tuk outside to take me to the bus station. In fact, the same guy who had brought me to the bus station a day earlier to buy the ticket. He’d laughed and joked all the way there but I couldn’t understand what he was doing—due to his poorly accented English and the blowing of the wind. So this morning, waiting for the minivan’s departure, I took a few thousand baht from the ATM at 7-11.
The ride to Mae Sariang was comfortable enough in the minivan, and we arrived into this small town after three hours. I noted one main street lined with shops, and at a bus station that was little more than a gravel parking lot and a few bamboo cafes, I met the Adams. They were sitting in their ‘ambulance’, a gold-tinted and somewhat well-used pickup truck with a back covering. Paul Adams, in his forties, is tall with graying hair. A man from rural Montana, he and his wife Lena have been in Thailand about a year. Together with their four kids, they live a rustic life in the Thai hinterlands that most back home could never imagine—taking care of over 100 children from an ethic minority, many of whom have escaped from Burma.
After the introductions, Lena said that we’d be going for lunch first. “We almost never get to town,” she said. “So this is a treat for us.”

“How far away do you live?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s about three hours from here, on the Burmese border. Actually a no-man’s land between Burma and Thailand.” I couldn’t believe that this couple had been willing to go three hours (each way) in order to pick up a total stranger that had told them he was collecting inspirational stories. The café where we drove for lunch consisted of several small booths in a garden; the owner and waiter was an animated fellow in his thirties, full of good humor and spouting decent English. After our meal of various rice dishes, we hopped in the truck, Paul and I sitting in front and Lena with nine-year-old Josiah and his older sister. During the long return trip, we passed fields and hills and jungle and villages, all against a backdrop of jungle-covered mountains—and the mountains were mostly in Burma. Lena, originally from Sweden, told me about their life: “It’s primitive,” she said. “A plain wooden house, a couple of rooms, no western toilet. And the conditions for the Karen people are much worse. There are refugees that after crossing from Burma just settle illegally along the river and survive anyway they can. They’ll hunt, fish, eat fish, bugs, rats.”

Here’s the thing: most Americans (most anybody) have never heard of the Karen (pronounced Ka-reen) people, who live in parts of northwestern Thailand and in Burma. They are victims of a continuing civil war in Burma but there is also a Karen ragtag army. The politics of who is fighting whom is complex, but tens of thousands are now in Thailand. Some survive on the land, others remain in refugee camps. The Adams family take care of over 100 children, some of whom are orphans, and all of whom live in various plain wooden ‘rooms’ built on stilts. Lena and her twenty-one-year-old daughter Melissa act as ‘nurses’ for the kids and villagers from the nearest villages. “Without training,” Lena said. “Although my second daughter, Maria, just returned from the States where she had months of emergency medical training.” There’s also a nurse living on the grounds with her two teen-aged sons.
Some three hours later, Paul pulled the pick-up into a rough dirt driveway and parked in front of the house. Tall trees, including a row of teak trees, and jungle growth, surrounded the home, from which extended a large wooden porch about seven feet off the ground. Barely a kilometer or two away stood a range of green-covered mountains. Tall graceful palms were abundant, down here and on the mountains. This was the quintessential jungle wilderness, in my mind.

I could see right away that ‘primitive’ was the correct adjective, and yet Paul and Lena and their hard-working kids all have carved out a home here. Past the door were two metal cabinets, one filled with medicines, the other with books: titles included This Day with God, Quintessential Herbs , Village Medical Manual, and Cooking. The main room were a couple of mats, and aside from a couple of black plastic trunks, a short two-foot high little table in one corner, and a dinky fridge, the place was wide open and empty. “Very often we keep the sick kids in here,” Paul told me. “Last night there were four patients spending the night.” The vertical windows, I noted happily, all had glass-paned shutters that swung out and were screened. Things wouldn’t be crawling or flying in as they had at the Maddocks’ place in Phenom Phen.

Paul indicated a door leading to a second large room. “We sleep in there.” Three or four floor mats lay beneath their individual mosquito netting. There was also a kitchen and bathroom at the back of the house—the bathroom was truly Thai. The toilet was one of the squat affairs with a concrete basin beside it filled with water. One poured water into the toilet after use in order to ‘flush’. In the next stall, a larger such basin filled with water was for hand washing, etc. On a table was a two-burner propane stove, a few cooking implements, a table for chopping veggies and a plastic bucket or two.

We’d arrived shortly before dark fell, and Paul said that we’d go down to the evening worship, held in the girl’s dorm. He led the way as the family hiked down a dirt pathway through some low trees, on either side of which were huts here and there. Not even huts, just bamboo and wood floors supported by poles and a simple roof. The girl’s dorm was such a structure about eight feet off the ground. I followed Paul up some steps and onto a platform where dozens of kids of all ages sat on the floor watching a man who read from a Bible. He spoke in Karen so I have no idea what he spoke of.

As soon as the Adams and I had sat down, the kids all rose to sing a song of praise. Considering that all these kids are either temporarily or permanently away from their parents, and that their lives had been filled with hardship, their faces showed contentedness, their voices as they sang with gusto. After the song, we sat again. One little girl was so cute that I chastised myself for not bringing along my camera (no chocolate for me for a month!). She couldn’t have been more than five or six, and wore a pink and red dress and a strange high hat. Her bible was open on the floor in front of her and she gazed down at it. A few of the smaller lads sitting next to me, not more than four or five, smiled shyly at me, cute as hell. Josiah sat with them.

In front of the house, a bit later, I met Gail, a tiny lady in her fifties, I’d guess, who hailed from Montana. She’d been here for a few months, along with her sons Bradley and Micah, and had been an answer to prayer; she was the lady who dealt with the serious medical issues. Her son Bradley, 16, drove their makeshift pickup “ambulance” almost daily to the nearest hospital or clinic, usually with Gail in attendance. Micah, 14, had a lot on his plate for a kid: he was teaching math at the school (on the second level of the bamboo platform); he also owned a scooter that he used to make medical delivery runs. Gail, a chipper woman with a clear desire to serve the Lord, said, “I usually wind up going early most mornings to the hospital with patients.” I asked her how long she might stay in Thailand. “Oh, I’m moving here.”

My sleeping arrangements were simple: a mat on the living room floor with a tent of mosquito netting over me. “We’re in a severe malaria area,” Lena explained. “The most prevalent is the kind that affects the brain. It’s extremely painful.” Just what I wanted to hear. “And it gets cold at night, now,” she added. I got the loan of a jacket, which I put on. It wasn’t cold yet, but I was determined to protect my sweet blood from the bite of a mosquito.

The morning came way too early! Life starts returning to all manner of man and beast around 5am; Paul had told me that on a good morning when they could sleep in (in other words, when patients didn’t bang on the door), the family might rise and shine as late as 6am. As they retired to their family sleeping room, I stuffed in my earplugs, downed a couple of melatonin, prayed I wouldn’t need to pee in the middle of the night (I’d been told that there might be a frog or a scorpion in the bathroom), I tried to drift off to sleep. Lying on a hard floor does not make this an easy task. If I lay on my back, after a few seconds my lower back hurt; if on my side, my shoulder hurt. My pillow was my jacket, which I had taken off and rolled up. It wasn’t chilly yet, but I had taken one of the woolen blankets to cover up with. “They’re new,” Paul had said. “The old ones you wouldn’t want. Sick kids and other patients have all kind of left their marks on them.”

So at 5:30am, I awoke to Gail rummaging in the medical cabinet, speaking softly to some Karen individual that I could barely see in the shadows; the sun hadn’t risen yet. Already, the family was stirring in their room, and one of the girls came out with a flashlight and entered the kitchen. I tried to catch a few more winks of sleep, but soon enough was up and looking out at the scene from the front deck. The fields near the house were covered with mist and the mountains were shrouded. After awhile, we sat about the living room with plates of hot rice covered with yellow bean broth and slices of fresh pineapple. I craved tea or coffee but was thankful to the Adams family for their generosity in letting me stay here. I’d interviewed them a bit the night before and gotten good information; tonight, there would be more.
Micah showed up with his scooter helmet and ate a plate of breakfast.

Lena asked him, “Are you going to pick up the saliva specimens from the village?” Not something one hears everyday at breakfast, of course. He said he’d have time to do that before he began teaching at 9:45. Paul suggested I go along to get some pictures of the village. “It’s just a couple dozen huts near a stream in the middle of the forest; they’re all refugees.” I said I’d love to and outside put on the helmet that Micah offered me. Maria, the girl who had studied EMT in the States, was going to follow on a second scooter. The road was well paved with lots of twists and turns and forest on either side. As we sped down the road, the morning wind was cold. We’d gone no more than three kilometers or so when Micah shouted out, “I don’t know where Maria is. She should be right behind us.” We doubled back, and rounding a bend, saw Maria sitting in a ditch on the side of the road, the bike several feet away where it had crashed into the brush. Micah pulled to a halt and we got off. “You okay?” I asked. She was rubbing her head but wasn’t crying or anything.
“Yeah, I think so,” she replied. “Just let me sit for a moment.” I walked over to where Micah was standing. He asked, “Did you get hurt?”

“No, I don’t think so, but I lost my shoes.” Micah and I pulled up branches, kicked back leaves, and finally Micah picked up an orange flip flop, broken and unusable. He straightened the bike, hopped on and started it. The engine turned over and it purred, so he drove it up the slight incline to the road and shut it off. “Least it runs,” he said. “Not like when Andrew crashed.” Andrew was the volunteer I’d visited with at the Maddocks’ place in Phenom Phen. He’d visited here several weeks earlier. Maria stood, a bit wobbly at first, and showed us a bleeding toe. “I think it’s broken,” She said, very calmly if you ask me. We advised her to go back home. Without shoes, Micah pointed out, she wouldn’t be able to walk on the rough paths going to the village. So while Micah used his pocketknife to cut off part of a plastic piece that had broken on her helmet, Maria climbed on the bike and started it. She zoomed off and Micah and I started off again for the village. I was thinking how resourceful a young man Micah was. How many fourteen-year-olds back in the States were accomplishing so much in their early adolescence? Not many, for sure. And all in a foreign country under difficult conditions.

The Karen village was barely a village. The huts looked like something out of a South Pacific movie—though more bamboo than palm fronds. Here and there, squatting around a fire or sitting on a bamboo platform, were people in little more than rags. A number of pigs and piglets (cute things) ran here and there, snorting and playing. Chickens joined in the fun as well. And kids, little ragamuffins, grinned and smiled and waved at me. Micah and I crossed over a primitive hand-built bamboo bridge that forged the stream and walked to the hut where he was supposed to pick up saliva samples. Coming out of the hut, he said, “They didn’t get delivered. It’ll be afternoon, so we might as well go back.” Re-crossing the bridge, I noted that there weren’t any roads. Or paths, really. It’s like the village was set down on field of dirt from which a few plants grew.

The rest of the day was busy for Paul and Lena and the kids. Paul was supervising the homeschooled lessons of both Anna and Josiah, their youngest, as well as keeping things clean and doing the odd job here and there. There were patients for Lena and her daughters to contend with, and the principal of the school came up to help translate on the front deck. I did some schoolwork and talked to Anna a bit, who also got permission from dad to show me around the school again. I observed a group of a dozen students at their English lesson—the kids sitting on the lower platform beneath the raised bamboo structure. They scrawled lessons on sheets of paper; the teacher of the class, Emily, sat cross-legged beside her students, writing words on a small whiteboard. Up on the main floor, Micah sat in front of a group of urchins learning math.

In the evening, the house became a mini-clinic. It quickly became evident that I wouldn’t be spending the night alone in the living room. The little girl who was brought in suffering from brain malaria needed to remain here for the night; another man, whom Nurse Gail had spent the day with at the distant hospital, was practically in a coma I gathered, and was spending the night out on the deck. Three other children with scabies came in to wash in the bathroom but then left. By 9pm, Paul had erected three big mosquito netting covers with mats on the floor. In one were two sick little girls; in the middle ‘tent’ was a sick lad with Nurse Gail spending the night beside him to make sure his condition didn’t deteriorate. And the last one was mine—thankfully closest to the bathroom. There’s a feeling of ‘camping’ in the air, but for the Adams and Gail, this is routine; it happens a lot.

My admiration had increased tenfold these last 24 hours. What these people were accomplishing was inspiring. And I hadn’t even heard the story yet about the demon possession.

Lena Adams, an educated woman who strikes me as imminently practical, told me “Demon possession is real.” But she said that I ought to hear the story from Gail, who was witness to the whole thing, along with her son Bradley. So as the children were sleeping beneath their protective mosquito awnings, Gail told me, with Micah breaking in to add bits of the narrative that Gail had forgotten. The story revolved around one particular twelve-year-old girl, the daughter of the camp cook, who had been possessed. There were several bizarre elements to the story: an attacking Burmese army, a cook who had offered spirit sacrifices, the theft of Micah’s wallet, and demons dancing in waterfalls. All of this, of course, will be in a book I’m writing, so I’ll just skip on over to my return to Bangkok for the time being. But keep an eye out for the book (or article)!

In pre-dawn chill, we woke, prayed and piled into the ‘ambulance’, Paul driving, and me riding shotgun. Lena, Anna and Josiah sat in the back for our two-hour drive to the town of Mae Sot, where I would catch my bus to Bangkok. On the way, as dawn began to creep up over the jungle-clad hills, Lena told me more stories about their life. At one point, too, we passed the United Nations refugee camps that house thousands of Karen refugees; There were bamboo and wooden ‘huts’ by the hundreds and hundreds, mile after mile. I would have loved to go in and see but that required a UN pass.

We arrived at the bus station and said our good-byes. I’d miss the Adams. I told them that I thought their work was inspiring, and not for the first time imagined my own life and those of nearly everyone I knew—lives where the quest for material blessings seems to be the order of the day. Well, I hoped I could make some alterations to my lifestyle once I got home.

The all-day bus was fine if not tiring; my seat companion was, once again, a young monk with a shaved head. The guy spent all his time staring straight ahead with hands clasped in his lap. Probably some sort of discipline-meditation act. I arrived in Bangkok at around 6pm, bought my ticket for Ubon, and wandered over to the KFC to feast on chicken and mashed potatoes, which I did while checking email. Thank heavens for free wifi.

The all-nighter to Ubon chugged along at 30-40 mph at times. I enjoyed my sleeping berth with curtains pulled shut while I listened to my I-pod. Arriving early, like 6:30am, I caught a tuk-tuk to the hotel where Carla had made a reservation for me. I was staying this visit at Natseri Mansions, the four-star hotel owned by Napat.

Basically, I had a nice five days to visit with Carla, Napat’s family, and Andrew, the owner of Peppers Café, where I frequented during my second trip to Ubon. Again, I rented a bike and enjoyed pedaling the streets of my old home-away-from-home. The only oddity was a meeting one evening at the church between myself and Carla on one side, and the dog-owning Filipinos on the other side. The pastor moderated. The plan was to address the issue of the pet dogs—a couple of which had attacked students—and why four Filipino families living on church property continued to let them run loose after having been instructed by the conference to get rid of them. Carla had seen one little boy—one of the school’s students—being attacked, barked and snarled at mostly, by a black beast, and one of the creatures even stole a sack lunch that one little girl had brought to the school to snack on before her English lesson. I myself had been barked at and chased while passing on my bike, and it amazed me that these four families had utterly disregarded the conference’s demands. Not only that, but because Carla had emailed her superior about the matter, the Filipinos held her in contempt, shunning her and acting in a most unchristian matter.

The meeting was a farce. The young Thai pastor was reluctant to even bring the matter up, and only when I forced the issue, did he agree to the meeting. He’s a nice guy, but so typically Thai, hated confrontation. One Filipino couple, a woman named Betty and her husband Toto owned 2 dogs. Wynn and 'Boy', another couple, own 1 black dog who tends to nip at heels. Also, there was Esther and Fred, who had 5 dogs now. Lastly, there was Chris and Joy, who own no dogs but were at the meeting. Joy was a wonderful woman, very kind. I’d seen her at two Sabbath services leading out, translating Thai into English. Her husband, alas, was the most sarcastic of the group at our meeting and utterly unfriendly. He’d also been fired from his position of school director a year or so earlier. Well, the meeting produced mostly insults to Carla (one woman even had the nerve to suggest Carla wasn’t a good missionary); Betty and Esther made a lukewarm promise to tie up the dogs, but the pastor pretty much said that sometimes they do things their own way ‘in the field.’. I pointed out that dogs attacking human beings was not a simple matter of autonomy. Well, we stood for prayer, in a circle, and one Filipino man who had been observing did a pretty decent prayer of reconciliation. The pastor suggested we all join hands. When I glanced over at Carla, she was crying so I gave her hand a squeeze. How can human beings, particularly Christians, treat each other so horrendously? It never failed to amaze me that ‘religious’ folks—be they Christian or Muslim—could possess an unfathomable depth of cruelty. After the meeting, outside in front of the church, I asked Betty whether she could be friends with Carla, her retort was, “No, it can’t be again.” Well, so much for forgiveness.

I biked to Peppers Cafe to have breakfast and see Andrew one last time. The Australian rustled up some delicious French Toast in no time, and I relished in the breakfast and my last edition of the International Herald Tribune. We talked about Ubon's barking, snarling dogs, traveling, and how he found it hard to keep a cook employed. I was sad to exit the cafe for the last time. Peppers Cafe has probably the best breakfasts in all of Ubon, and certainly Andrew's positive and friendly attitude only makes the place that more desirable.

On my last evening in Ubon, Napat’s family invited Carla, Angel and myself to lunch after their English lesson at the Kodak Shop. Angel didn’t come along, unhappy with me for getting involved (but as I told her, isn’t it any human being’s business to get involved when injustice is apparent). Napat, Sita, her brother Pi-nut and his wife were all there; we had a great lunch and exchanged emailed addresses. When Carla asked me how I would be getting from the hotel to the train station, Sita said, “Oh, we will be taking him.” A rush of gratitude overcame me, and I reflected the difference between this generous family of Buddhists and the type of Christianity I’d seen at the little church. Anyway, I spent the rest of the day biking around, a little sad that my long journey would soon be at an end, but I was also looking forward to the train ride from San Francisco to Omaha.

That evening, Pi Nut, Sita and Napat met me as planned in the hotel coffee shop and we then walked through the garage to their car. Somehow, my dusty old backpack didn’t have any right to be placed in the trunk of a shiny BMW, but I stuffed it in and off we went. At the station, they walked to the platform with me as night fell. The train was available for boarding, so after a couple of pictures and a round of hugs and handshakes, I waved as they left.

The too-well air-conditioned train delivered me back to Bangkok by early the next morning, and I took a taxi to the hospital and checked in, napping for a half hour or so. Dr. Nick and Faye had left the day before for California and a well-deserved furlough. I claimed my insulin from Panit, the Call Center manager who had been kind enough to store it for me in her flat, had a visit, and then went off to do a bit of sightseeing. Over the last two days of my Asian experience, I played the tourist and shelled out the ten bucks to see the Royal Palace—a complex of ornate and gorgeous temples that impressed even me after all these weeks of temples. In the night, I walked through Independence Square, where the celebrations for the King’s birthday were in full force. Throngs packed the square, the temples were alit in all their glory, and the smiles of the people told me that they were pretty happy with life. I myself happily wandered dark streets where spillover groups from the square walked, talked and laughed.

It’s ironic that I don’t remember much about my last day in Asia. I’d been to Independence Square and other places in Bangkok often, so I did nothing except relax, walk a bit, and pack to go to the airport in the mid-afternoon. The flight back, on China Airlines, was fine—and long at something like fifteen hours. The Pacific remained far below me and invisible. On long flights---particularly across the Pacific, one becomes sort of catatonic, numb. You watch a movie or two, down the chow they give you, stretch your legs in the rear of the cabin, and hope the ordeal is soon over. When finally the pilot announced that we were descending on our approach to San Francisco International Airport, my heart wasn’t the only one to lift. I wished he hadn’t mentioned the temperature: forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. I had been sweating the day before.

San Francisco’s skies were gray and a bit drizzly for part of the afternoon. I wandered around the Haight with “Jim”, a young Japanese guy I’d met at the hostel. This was his first day of a month-long trip to the USA. We explored a bookstore, mostly to keep out of the cold air, and took a couple of bus rides. We ate supper at an authentic Chinese restaurant in China Town. Climbing a narrow set of wooden steps, we came into a narrow and none-too-clean dining area all of seven or eight feet in length. A half dozen goofy, silly teen females sat about waiting for their food to arrive. The place looked utterly Chinese, that is to say cluttered and filthy, and I was disappointed with my sweet-and-sour chicken, the taste of which was more sour than anything. The chicken wasn’t the gristle and fat of Hong Kong or Beijing, but had it been served in an Omaha restaurant, there would have been a lawsuit, I imagine.

I’d been to San Francisco several times in the last few years, so seeing the sights wasn’t so important. I enjoyed meeting a few interesting characters: the African-American city bus driver with whom I chatted and chuckled as we passed down Market street. The old man who boarded the bus and glanced around for a free seat (there wasn’t one), and to whom I offered my seat. “Thank you, sir,’ he said, and we struck up a conversation that covered quite a lot of ground—mostly political in nature. Out of the blue, he said, “…and what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians, absolutely horrible. All that talk of ‘never again’, why don’t they remember what Hitler did?” He’d shake his head. “And I’m Jewish! I’m in exile from my family.”
“Quite a few Israelis are against their own government,” I added.
“More than quite a few!” he added. “The majority. But Americans don’t know it.” We came to his stop and as he debarked, he said, “It’s been a pleasure talking to you, sir,” he said. And we shook hands.

And then there was Matthew, in his late fifties but looking a bit weathered and worn. We met at breakfast in the hostel dining room. An Indian guy in his twenties had just arrived in the city looking for work (likely planning on working illegally) and Matthew had taken him under his wing. Explaining to me, he said, “I don’t know what it is but I’m always able to help people. I do that, I volunteer at the soup kitchen back in Denver.” I asked him what line of work he was in and he chuckled. “Unemployed at the moment. I’ve got some stocks but they’re not doing too well.” He was an interesting character. I learned that he’d dabbled in the business world, the IT world, played with stocks—mostly unsuccessfully. But he’d tell me about getting clothes at the Goodwill, and here during his five days in San Francisco, he was relying on the free hostel breakfast and then trips to Safeway. He wasn’t riding any public transport, just walking. And yet in the midst of what was obviously a lower point for him economically, Matthew was willing to help out this Indian fellow he’d just met. The first item was to locate him a more permanent place to stay. “I’ll find him a place today,” he said. “I just have this magic touch with helping the poor.” Obviously, though, that magic touch didn’t extend to his own financial success.

The Amtrak trip across the country was a joy; my first winter crossing of the American West meant I’d have plenty of snow to view. In fact, snow blanketed most of the Sierras, the desert flats of Nevada, and by the time we got to Salt Lake in the middle of the first night, big flakes of snow were coming down. During the second day, the snow stopped and the scenery was breathtaking in eastern Utah and Western Colorado: the low ranges that precede the Rockies were all images of green-brown pines, tens of thousands of bushes, snow, frozen ponds, the Colorado river with ice blocks floating slowly. The whole wilderness was a winter wonderland, and I shared it with an interesting collection of folks:

•Richard: a forty-something Californian whose ex and kids lived in Boulder. He wore his gray hair slightly slicked back and was unfortunately suffering the pain of a bruised knee, the result of a meeting between his leg and the boarding door of the train. Fortunately for him, a witness included the wife of a prominent attorney in Boulder. I gave him my vial of Tylenol. During one of our several conversations, we came up with a list of Dick Cheney’s crimes against humanity.

•Rabbit: yes, Rabbit is the guy’s name. In his late twenties, he and his girlfriend Cijay sat with Richard and I in the dining car during dinner. Note: Amtrak seats passengers together. I was convinced after one minute that Rabbit was gay as can be, but when he talked about his ex-wife, 13-year-old son, and cuddled up to Cijay, an attractive young woman, I was stumped. He’s smart about IT, though. The small company for whom he works just invented a complex system of server networking that HP just purchased.

•Taj and Mary: Taj was an Indian from New Delhi, also in IT. He and Mary, his Canadian wife, were making a big train trip across the entire USA before flying back to India. Mary kind of weighed upwards of a couple hundred pounds, I estimated, but had a laughing kind soul.

•Joe: the Amtrak employee in charge of the snack area in the lounge car. He gave free coffee refills to me as we chatted about travel, Dubai, and which were the best Amtrak routes.

•Eric: In his fifties, apparently, but seemed older, somehow. Rabbit, Cijay, Taj and I were playing UNO at night in the lounge car when Eric wandered by. He asked us if we were playing UNO, which seemed an odd question, but we said ‘yes’. “I loved playing UNO years ago,” he said, so we invited him to join us. He sat down but started rambling about how he’d been on 3 trains in one week, and related a hard-to-follow story about someone trying to kill him and his grown son in Ohio bringing him out to live next door.

Along with this cast of characters, I enjoyed a winter wonderland; in fact, we all enjoyed a variety of scenery. But when the train pulled into Omaha on a blustery and snowy morning at 6am, the conductor announced that there would be a smoking break here. “If you wish to stand outside and stretch your legs, you may do so, but you may wish to keep in mind that it’s a chilly zero degrees!”

I’d imagined my homecoming: a chilly but sunny day, and I’d walk the two blocks into the Old Market and enjoy a cup of coffee before boarding a city bus to take me out to western Omaha. The plan evaporated as soon as I stepped onto the platform and braced myself against a freezing wind. I hobbled along in my woefully inadequate light jacket towards the station to catch a taxi. Forget the bus; the pain wasn’t worth it. I looked up at the train, saw Eric at the window of the lounge car, and thought about all the people I’d met on this trip. Smiling, I hurried on to the station.

And that’s the end of a seven-month journey.

The transport stats:
FLIGHTS: (11)
• Omaha to Chicago
• Chicago to London
• Frankfurt to Beijing
• Beijing to Hong Kong
• Chengdu to Lijiang
• Guilin to Kunming
• Bangkok to Phuket
• Ubon to Bangkok
• Bangkok to Phenom Phen
• Phenom Phen to Bangkok
• Bangkok to Taipei
• Taipei to SFO

TRAINS: (58)
• Somewhere in bloody England to near Glenn
• The Hague to Hannover
• Hannover to Berlin
• Berlin to Brno
• Brno to Bern
• Bern to hiking place
• Hiking place to Bern
• Bern to Milan
• Milan to Venice
• Venice to Belgrade
• Belgrade to Thessaloniki
• Thessaloniki to Sofia
• Veliko to Bucharest
• Bucharest to Brasov
• Brasov to Vienna
• Vienna to Hannover
• Hannover to Hamburg
• Hamburg to Copenhagen
• Copenhagen to Oslo
• Oslo to Trondheim
• Trondheim to Oslo
• Oslo to Copenhagen
• Copenhagen to Hamburg
• Hamburg to Hannover
• Hannover to Basel
• Basel to Bern
• Bern to Lausanne
• (Somewhere) to Bern
• Bern to Lyon
• Lyon to Brussels
• Brussels to Cologne
• Cologne to Hannover
• Hannover to Frankfurt Flughafen
• Frankfurt flughafen to Cologne
• Cologne to Hannover
• Hannover to Celle
• Celle to hamburg
• Hamburg to Hannover
• Hannover to (town)
• (town) to Hannover
• Hannover to Stuttgart
• Stuttgart to Munich
• Munich to Salzburg
• Salzburg to Munich
• Munich to Hannover
• Hannover to Frankfurt flughafen
• Frankfurt flughafen to Hannover
• Hannover to Frankfurt
• Hong Kong to Beijing
• Beijing to Chengdu
• Kunming to Guilin
• Laos border to Bangkok
• Bangkok to Ubon
• Bangkok to Chang Mai
• BKK to Ubon (2nd time)
• Ubon to BKK
• SFO to Omaha
Long distance BUSES: (16)
• Sofia to veliko
• Heathrow to Cambridge
• Cambridge to London
• London to southhampton
• Southhampton to London
• Lijiang to Kunming
• Guilin to Yangshua
• Yangshua to Guilin
• Kunming to Luang Prabang
• Luang Prabang to Vientiane
• Railay Beach to Bangkok
• Phenom Penh to Siem Reap
• Siem Reap to PP
• LIjiang to TLG
• TLG to Lijiane
• Mao Sot to Bangkok

BOATS: (2)
• Ipswich to Hoek Van Holland
• Lake Geneve

SCOOTERS and Tuk-tuks: dozens!
1 weak horse

Cambodia -- where you’ll hear about the Killing Fields, an orphanage, a demon possession, and the fixing of my sunglasses.

2009-12-04T07:43:00.000-08:00

The Air Asia flight from Bangkok to Phenom Phen, Cambodia took only an hour, and as the plane approached the capital city, out of the window I saw a quieter, greener world. To the north of the country had been the jungle-covered mountains that separated Thailand and Cambodia; and after that had been green fields and spots of jungle and forest and villages. As the plane now dipped low on its approach to Phenom Phen, there was a great expanse of dark brown water, like a flood plain. Rivers and streams forked out of it, and in a couple places were peninsulas of land with houses on them. But on either side was water. Coming low for the landing, we flew over low buildings (no concrete high-rises here!) and homes—all of which had roofs of red or blue or brown. I could tell this would be a more colorful, down-to-earth place than Bangkok, a concrete jungle of unimaginative buildings.

The airport was a dinky thing, thankfully, although visa procurement was both efficient and inefficient at the same time. The Cambodians have the process down: passengers line up, turn in their passports, and the passports are passed down a row of several workers behind a desk, each glancing and stamping and writing. A man at the end of the row then calls out the name of the passport holder, who emerges from a knot of anxious passengers to claim his document. Sometimes the name gets mangled by the poor fellow whose job it is to call out what must be to him nearly unpronounceable names. Well, finally the man called out for “Scote Sootan” and I was legally allowed into the ancient land of the Khmer.

I carried only a light pack with me so escaped out into the world of touts and taxis and tuk-tuks. I paid the seven dollar fee at a counter for my ride into town. The tuk-tuk driver exited the airport and proceeded on down a main avenue on either side of which were the kinds of shops I’d come to see as commonplace in Asia. But unlike Bangkok, these buildings were usually three to five stories, at the highest, and mostly open to the street. The population looked poorer, too. In fact, just about everything looked different, which in my mind was a grand thing. Gray was now replaced by buildings in more earthy tones. Even the dirt along some of the side streets, I noted, was red.

As dusk fell on Phenom Phen, the tuk-tuk driver made it to the ADRA office, where I’d been expected (ADRA stands for Adventist Development and Relief Agency). I met the director of ADRA Cambodia, an American man named Mark Schwisow, and his wife Ann. In their office on the ground floor of a three-story building in a quiet residential neighborhood, I took out my laptop and went online while Mark and I chatted a bit about the work they are doing: water projects, sanitation projects, teaching projects, etc. ADRA has a solid reputation in any country where they are serving; in fact, the US government has hired them for projects due to their reliability and honesty.

At any rate, I was supposed to catch a midnight bus, another dreadful overnight bus, which would take me north to a town called Seim Reap. “Is it safe?” I asked Mark. Judging by Cambodia’s turbulent past and the fact that there existed much more poverty here, I thought it prudent to ask. I expected to hear “Oh, safe as can be.” But Mark said, “Uh, I think it’s probably pretty safe.” This didn’t inspire me. However, Mark was kind enough to speak to the guard and arrange for the guard’s brother-in-law, who had a scooter, to fetch me down to the bus station. After Mark left to go catch up on some work in his adjoining office, I logged on to the Lonely Planet website forum on Cambodia and typed in various phrases like “Cambodia night bus danger” but couldn’t find any discussion on the forum except for one traveler who thought night buses were dangerous because the roads were potholed, cows sometimes laid down on the roads, and for that matter, sometimes people slept on the roads. I don’t know if the traveler knew what he was talking about, but I prayed about it and decided to take the chance. I remembered a phrase from a movie, where a man played by Scatman Crothers says to his friend, “Life is risk, Mr. Conroy.” I guess it’s like “no pain, no gain” or another sign I recently had seen: “Show me a man who hasn’t made a mistake, and I’ll show you a man who hasn’t done anything worthwhile.” Plus there was the old Star Trek adage: To Boldly Go Where No one has Gone Before!

A couple hours before my bus would depart for its night-time voyage through rural and dark Cambodia, the guard knocked on the door of the guesthouse room where I was resting. I gathered my pack and went out to the main gate of the high metal fence that surrounded the ADRA office (and every other home on the street). The guard pointed to a youth, on a motor scooter. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen, but he offered a friendly smile. “What’s your name?” I asked, climbing on the seat behind him.

“Men,” he said, and when I asked him if he spoke much English, he chuckled and said, “No, maybe ten words.” So I was off to a potentially risky bus station with a kid who didn’t speak English and likely drove like most Asian males—that is, a bit maniacally. In fact, while enjoying his bouts of acceleration, Men slowed down at key intersections where scooters and bicyclists (and cars) from four directions tended to merge. I was reminded of those scenes of space battles in Star Wars, where dozens of ships come within inches of each other without colliding. Scooters in Asia weren’t quite as cool as that, but came close.

We rode along a wide boulevard that followed the river, which of course I couldn’t see at night, but there was a palace, and large roundabouts all alit, colonial-style hotels, and everywhere people: human beings walking along the road or shopping at any one of the ubiquitous stalls and stands selling foodstuffs (including, I’m sure, roasted bugs) and fruit cocktails. We pulled up in front of a large open-air night market, and Men pointed to a sign that had a picture of a VIP bus on it. “Bus station,” he said. There was no structure, no building, just a sign, beneath which were several parked tuk-tuks and their drivers. I would have thought it all a bit shady except for the fact that the street here, due to the activity in the market and the street lights, was well lit. There were a few white faces in the market, and a pair of policeman loitered. A rather rotund man asked me, “You go bus?” I said that I was, and he asked, “You have ticket?” I said ‘yes’ and he looked crestfallen.

“Okay, bus coming 11:30.” I asked Men for the time and he glanced at his watch, and then showed me. The time was 10pm; there was plenty of time to kill. Men must have known that because he said, “Come, go ride, later, here.” (Five of his ten words). So I hopped on and off we went for a very pleasant and exhilarating ride through the riverfront area of Phenom Penh. Afterwards, he returned me to the ‘bus station’.

Waiting for the bus, I started chatting with an older white man who sat on the plastic chair beside me. The bus waiting area consisted pretty much of a half dozen chairs sitting beside a booth and table on the corner of the street. The market was closing down; the tuk-tuk drivers were laying down in their front seats to sleep, and a couple of teen-aged boys behind the desk were watching soccer on an old TV. The man I spoke with was named David, who looked to be into his sixties. I remember only that he seemed a bit jaded and cranky. He had been living “for some time” in Siem Reap and loved it. He hated Phenom Penh, declaring that the place was a deathtrap and that motorcyclists here would just “run you over without even looking back.” He added that you could forget about any help. “You can lay in the street and die, and forget any medical treatment. My god, it’s medieval. I took this young Cambodian girl that I’d gotten to know, just like a daughter of course, to a hospital…” He took a sip of water, so I asked if she’d been sick.
“No, she’d gashed her leg somehow; the calf looked god-awful, ripped open and festering. So I took her to the government hospital and right there in the emergency room, which looked like something from a horror movie, some kind of doctor, without even washing his hands, started poking and prying while she screamed. I had to leave.” I asked what had become of the girl, and David said, “Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her around. Maybe she died.” Well, that statement certainly punctuated the end of that discussion. David introduced me to a friend of his, a man who’d sat quietly on a nearby chair. “Sim’s a dentist,” he said. I introduced myself to Sim and asked, “Do you think the bus will be crowded? It would be great to have two seats to myself.” I’d been hoping for that, anyway. It’s the way to survive a night bus. I longed for the Chinese sleeper bus, now.
“Oh, forget that,” David exclaimed. “We’ll be lucky to get any seats, isn’t that right, Sim?” Sim nodded in confirmation. “Very full, I think,” he said. The bus, he said, was coming from a nearby town; Sim had already confirmed with someone that there might not be seats. “Or maybe they’ll place a few short plastic chairs in the middle of the aisle; they did that once on a bus ride I took. It’s horrible, absolutely horrible.”

My hopes for a night of relative comfort were dashed.
But when the bus arrived, a rather large bus where passengers climb to the second level, a few passengers (mostly exhausted looking backpackers) disembarked. But by the time David, Sim and I had boarded, the very dimly-lit bus was packed again. I noted that someone was sitting in my seat, a European at that, so I showed him my ticket and mentioned that I’d like my seat. He looked like he’d comply, but along came a little Thai dude (bus employee) who glanced around, double checked the ticket, noted an empty seat behind my assigned seat, and ushered me to sit there. An aisle seat, darn it. And in the window seat was a long-haired Thai youth who looked none too happy. He’d been stretched out rather comfortably, and now came a white foreign devil to make him scrunch up. David had walked up and down the aisle twice already, and he’d muttered a couple of words that a good Christian wouldn’t want to hear. Finally, however, he got a seat towards the front.

As the bus driver navigated the unlit potholed road, the only illumination coming from the headlights, I got to talking to two chaps across the aisle from me. Two backpacking buddies, Martin hailed from Switzerland and his friend from Poland. The Polish dude fell asleep by some miracle right away but Martin and I chatted amiably for at least an hour. I think we knew sleep would be elusive, so why not talk? The topics were the city of Dubai, the organization of the Swiss (my comment) and the narrow view of many Swiss (Martin’s comment). Meanwhile, the Thai youth beside me stretched out one leg into my leg territory, which irritated me. I stretched mine out, kind of laying it against his leg, hoping the physical contact would dissuade him, but it didn’t. I attempted to apply just a bit of pressure, but already this guy was snoring. I gave up and kept chatting with Martin. Eventually, the invading legs withdrew to their own territory when the Thai guy changed positions, going into the fetal position, head dropping against the window. The bus driver, apparently looking for adventure, developed the habit of honking at any vehicle in front of him (not that there were many on this largely empty road). He’d hit the horn and pull over to the other ‘lane’ (not that there were lanes, really, on this great path of hard soil). As soon as he’d cleared the ‘slow’ vehicle, he’d weave back in front of it. This pattern continued throughout the journey, along with a tendency to locate potholes. I’d experienced frightening turbulence on flights, and this was worse—and continuous, hour after hour.

We arrived at dawn into Seim Reap. Actually, we arrived on the outskirts of Seim Reap, on a potholed road of rust-colored soil in the middle of jungle—or what Asians call ‘jungle’. More like rain forest but with tall coconut trees, broad-leaf plants, vines, etc. Very exotic but at six in the morning I was more interested in getting to the hotel that Mark had been kind enough to reserve for me by phone. First a few of the backpackers, including Martin and the Polish guy, watched as an evidently new bus driver tried to maneuver an empty tourist bus into a small driveway, where our bus was parked. A half dozen locals were motioning, shouting, and waving while guiding him in, but the front corner of the bus swiped our bus, smashing the mirror.

I took a private tuk-tuk to the Safir Hotel. The place was three-star at best but clean with a friendly staff. I slept for an hour or so until woken up by some idiot talking through a loudspeaker somewhere. Going to the window, I peered down to where there was a shed, a small grassy area, the usual junk lying around (it’s everywhere in Asia), and an old water-tower from which hung a speaker. Who would be quite chanting—and it sounded like chanting—at this early hour? Downstairs at the main desk, I queried the young twenty-something manager, and he said, “Monks, maybe the monks.” Well, honestly, I thought to myself. Why did they have to do their prayers via a loudspeaker next to a hotel? The sound was much worse than the Imam’s voice coming out of the mosque speakers in Dubai.

I walked across a little bridge that spanned a narrow, dirty river, and immediately loved the scene of tall elegant trees on either side of the river. I walked along the river for a few minutes, then cutting right and into the tourist district. The buildings were somewhat dusty and worn, but still attractive, mostly two-storey affairs. A few tourists walked along the street; others were parked at various cafes, sipping coffee and smoking. The usual thing. A middle-aged Cambodian guy, looking similar to an oily used-car salesman, asked me if I wanted to buy a massage. I said “no” because I absolutely despise massage (I know, one of the few human beings on Earth to say so), and the guy then asks, “You want boom boom?” What I wanted to say was, “No, you sick perv, I want to smash your face,” but simply said, “No, I’m American.” And walked off, no doubt leaving him perplexed. As I strolled into a mini-mart, I thought that perhaps there were as many American perverts as European perverts, but Europeans get those grand six-week vacations so can take the time to travel to Asia (where European men are always being arrested for one sick crime or another).

Anyway, I’m happy to report that at the minimart, I found Diet A&W Root Beer, a terrific bit of luck. As I drank it out on the sidewalk, glancing at a touristy road filled with dust in the air due to road construction, I thought, “This isn’t for me.” It was time to phone an Australian couple named Tim and Wendy Maddocks—who look after nearly 200 orphans just out of town on their multi-acre complex.

After speaking with Wendy on the phone and being invited to share a meal with them, I caught a tut-tuk in front of Safir Hotel and watched the busy road give way to country road, deeply red and with puddles and potholes here and there. We passed rural homes just outside of town, several skinny wandering cattle (sometimes urged on by a little withered old woman carrying a big stick). The ride was bumpy to say the least; my insides were jarred, but we arrived just at dusk, and Tim hopped in the tuk-tuk and told the driver to take us around the property for a look-see. “There’re some of the classrooms,” Tim said, pointing at a one-story building across a wide lawn. The tuk-tuk bounced as we followed a rough dirt path through the trees; here and there, dim lights glinted through buildings, homes. In an adjoining field, farmers were heading home after their labors, and a few cows stood doing nothing in this perfect quiet time at dusk. It did make it difficult to see the complex, however, so we headed back to the house.

Here’s the Maddocks’ story in a nutshell: An Australian couple in their 40’s, with their teen-aged kids, run an orphanage here. Living in a Thai-style wooden house with glass-less windows, with an adequate number of geckoes and mosquitoes, and sleeping on a floor mat, they live a lifestyle not many from the West would go along with. They’ve dedicated their lives to building an orphanage for the Cambodian homeless children—and their charges are numerous; but the entire complex of homes and school is impressive and touching. Tim and Wendy have lived here for several years in the forest/jungle with its collection of bugs, frogs, and the like—but also with the spirit of God and a few volunteers who make the place a home in the wilderness.

Their home, surrounded by trees, is a two-storey wooden house in the Cambodia style. The ground level, walls of dark wood, consists of an entryway, tiny kitchen, and a room in which a couple of teens were on computers. The kitchen was a one-person-at-a-time affair with little more in it than a small electric stove and fridge. The real basics. Wendy came out and introduced herself and sent her husband and I upstairs so that she could finish preparing the dinner. A steep flight of steps led up to a large room that was simply wood. Large glassless windows let in fresh air and anything that wished to fly in, though to be fair the place seemed to be bug free. That’s probably due to the geckoes in the place. They know how to keep a home bug-free. A short deck had on it a pup tent, which is where the son slept. At one end of the room was a web of mosquito netting covering mattresses on the floor. “That’s our ‘bedroom’, chuckled Tim. I couldn’t believe that a couple of westerners had chosen to live in this fashion for the last decade. How many people did I know in Nebraska that would play at camping in the Cambodian forest for ten years or more? Not many. Certainly not me.

Wendy came up and laid a tablecloth of sorts on the floor. “That’s our dining room table,” she said. Her daughter and son carried up some pots and pans, Tim brought some plates, and soon we had a mini feast: tiny bananas along with other tropical fruits (don’t ask me, I’m pretty much a ‘green apple’ man), sticky rice, tofu, some salad. Tim’s kids must have skipped dinner because it was just Tim, Wendy, myself and Andrew, a 20-something volunteer out from Montana. During the meal, I learned quite a bit about the operation.

At the orphanage were 170 orphans, from babies to near-adults planning for college. These kids are all divided up into ten different families, each headed by two ‘parents’ who look after not only the adoptees, but their own kids as well. “Can you imagine,” said Tim, “having a two or three bedroom apartment but more than a dozen kids?” Altogether, in what is known as ‘orphanage village’, there are about 220 people. When I asked how they can accommodate so many, Tim replied, “Everything is on faith. These are people God has sent to us; He will fund them. If they need a home, we take them.” He also stated that they operate on an empty bank balance. “We’re not funded by the church or any nonprofit organization. Somehow, when we need the money, God sends it. It’s always provided.” This takes faith, certainly, I think. Their budget is ten-thousand dollars a month, which goes for food, generators, trucks, repairs, and to build more buildings. Currently, the Maddocks have plans to build a TV studio in order to produce programming that will build the faith of the existing membership and beyond. “We want evangelistic programs that will touch the hearts of the Buddhist community—and for the talented young people here that are into the production process.”

They do have a satellite dish, but unfortunately, a lightning hit took it out of action for a while. When the service returned, all the channels were there—except for the Christian channels. “They were gone,” Tim said. A chill ran down my spine. After dinner, I interviewed Andrew, and then Tim took me over to a volunteers house, where I met a young woman who will share with me via email her story, and where on the front porch a frog jumped at my back, blast the thing. My cry of fear was obviously amusing to Tim and the girl. “I’m a city boy,” I explained sheepishly.
Tim got out his motorcycle in order to run me back to town. That in itself was an adventure, shooting through the night, weaving around potholes in the dirt road heading back to Siem Reap. As we pulled up to a street near my hotel, I told him, “That ought to be a ride at Disneyland,” at which he laughed.

The next day was Angkor Wat, one of the man-made wonders of the world. You can go to Google Images or the blog, but I won’t even attempt a good description here; it’s one of the places that has to be seen, experienced, absorbed. But basically: a collection of ruined temples covering many kilometers in the Cambodian jungle. They are ancient; no one knows for sure who built them or for what purpose. The whole complex was discovered by French archeologists in the late 19th Century after they heard reports of a lost city in the jungle, something only rural forest people had been rumored to know about. The place today has become a tourist mecca, of course, with the usual army of hawkers, touts and sellers—especially children sellers. After you buy the ticket at a ‘gate’, your private tuk-tuk driver hauls you down the road a kilometer to the biggest and most famous temple: Angkor Wat. Fortunately, at none of the temples are sellers allowed to hawk their bottles of water, T-shirts, etc. They are required to maintain a distance, usually hanging out in parking lots near the tuk-tuk drivers, who laze about or nap while the Westerners are inside climbing around temples.

I’d hired a tuk-tuk driver and guide at the Safir Hotel, and basically I spent a fascinating five hours wandering through various spooky-looking temples of dark rock. At my favorite, gargantuan tree roots above ground have wrapped themselves (through the centuries) around huge temple walls, around fallen stones, through doorways. It’s absolutely other-worldly. At one pyramid-shaped temple, the top of which I could reach only by climbing what seemed a thousand stone steps (but was more like fifty or sixty), I met two young women: Daniela and Annalenina. We were admiring the view of the surrounding jungle and catching our breaths, and as travelers do, started chatting. Annalenina was from Moscow but living in Dubai, which of course led me to ask a lot of questions about Dubai’s current news. Daniela turned out to be from Hamburg, a city in which I’d recently visited, so we chatted about Hannover. After a while, the three of us made our way down the steep staircase, quite slowly and deliberately because one slip and…no more traveling. Once down and on the narrow road towards the next temple, I suggested we meet up in the evening for supper. Daniela said, “Sure, that’s a good idea. But where shall we meet?” We determined that our hotels were an equal distance from the touristy street, so Daniela said, “There’s a minimart and petrol station right on the corner. Let’s meet there at 7:30.” That agreed upon, we found our respective tuk-tuk drivers.

During the entire journey, I’d thus far only purchased two knick knacks: a fridge magnet of the Great Wall and a fridge magnet of Sofia, Bulgaria. The reason for this is because I have more knick knacks than I know what to do with, so why buy more? But outside of Angkor Wat, in amongst several bamboo and wooden concession stands, a boy not more than ten years old introduced himself and asked if I’d buy post cards. Naturally, since I’d already been in the complex for a couple hours, I’d been asked maybe thirty or forty times to purchase something, be it water, postcards, tablecloths (yeah, like that’s what a single guy wants to buy), etc. But this kid was cute and started out by asking me where I was from. “America,” I said. He smiled and said, “America, the president of the United States is Barrack Obama, the vice-president is Joe Biden, there are 50 states and Washington DC is the capital, and…” He kept spouting off the memorized facts while I looked at the postcards. I needed postcards as much as a hole in the head, but I felt a little tug in the usually cold heart—and asked, “How much?”

“Only two dollars!” he proclaimed as if this was the deal of the century. “I let you have for one-dollar and two-thousand Rials.” I calculated quickly; two-thousand rials was about fifty cents. Remember, in Cambodia, everything is for sale in dollars, but once you get under a buck, the rials come into play. “I’ll give one dollar,” I stated, the selfish Yankee taking advantage of a poor third-world kid. “Okay,” he said, but not in a particularly grievous tone, which leads me to believe he got a fair price. By now, a little friend of his had come over with his postcards and implored me to buy more. “But I have ten already,” I said. His quick reply: “But if you buy mine, you’ll have twenty.” Nice try, kid.

As I walked along past a group of really poor-looking musicians sitting on the ground (a sign announced that they were victims of landmines), a small girl of perhaps ten or eleven wandered over holding a bright green T-shirt. “Hi Mister, where you from?”
“America,” I replied, wearying of the badgering. “Are you going to tell me the name of the president, too?”
She cocked her head and smiled brightly. “No, that’s Barrack Obama, but I just want you to buy a T-shirt. Very nice, good souvenir.” I relented a little. “No, thanks. I’m trying not to buy any more stuff. I just bought some post cards.” She implored me a couple more times and to put her off, I said, “Maybe later.” That was a mistake, of course. As I was nearing the gate (where the hawkers can’t enter) of the temple, she said, “Okay, I’ll watch for you when you come back. I’ll remember!” She gave me a broad genuine grin and turned around to pester someone else.
This temple was just plain bizarre. There were the usual walls, broken roofs, huge fallen gray blocks that had lain for centuries. Little crude paths cut through alleys, up steps, and through the inside of several half-destroyed structures. Had I been a travel writer in the 19th Century, I would have been forced to write a three-page detailed description that would have allowed the reader to visualize. Thankfully, now we have digital cameras and Picasa Web Albums. The coolest and most impressive sight for me was the many places where humongous tree roots had wrapped themselves around and through the temple ruins. This was definitely something out of an Indian Jones type film. Roots ran for yards and yards, attached to walls, going through walls, into empty frightening rooms. I wandered for over an hour.
When I returned the way I’d come, sure enough, the girl was loitering nearby with a couple T-shirts hanging from her arm. “I told you I’d be here,” she said with a chuckle. “So which one do you want, the blue or the green?” I shouldn’t have asked the price, but I did. Each T-shirt was three bucks or so. “They’re really cheap and you need a souvenir from here anyway, right?”
“But I don’t like the colors,” I said weakly.

“No problem, you come to my shop,” she said, pointing over to one of a half dozen stalls. Reluctantly, I walked with her. I could see that her English wasn’t canned, that she did understand the language. “So why are you selling T-shirts?” I asked, wondering that kids here were allowed to work. She tossed her head ever so slightly and replied, ‘Well, for food of course.” We laughed together. I don’t remember all that we talked about, but she impressed me with her wit so I bought a T-shirt. Sigh.

My last pleasant experience was having dinner that evening with Daniela and Annalenina. We met at the petrol station on time and walked to a café where they’d eaten before. When seated, Daniela asked the waiter, “Is it still happy hour?” It was, so at the end of a hot and tiring day filled with temple visiting (and for me, apparently, souvenir buying), we washed down the dust with some Thai beer. The food took an hour to arrive, but we didn’t mind. We enjoyed talking travel for a good three hours. Annalenina would be returning to Phenom Phen the next day for a couple days while Daniela wouldn’t make it back for another couple days or so. “Why don’t we meet there?” Annalenina asked me. “We can go eat something.” She wrote down the name of her guesthouse.

The next day, I took a bus back to Phenom Phen, this time commandeering two seats together in the rear of the bus. Once back in the capital city, I got checked into one of the ADRA guest apartments and spoke with Mark and his wife Ann. I got caught up with some school stuff, watched a gecko crawl on the wall, and got caught up with e-mail, two of which were from Daniela and Annalenina, and then I hit the hay.

I had set up an interview with Sathai, the PR guy for ADRA. But first, in the morning, I had time to catch a scooter-taxi into town. I walked along the river, passing the ornate palace of the king and several equally astounding golden temples. I found a halfway decent supermarket and got some cereal and cola light. Back at ADRA, I spoke to Sathai for a good two hours about his own Christian experiences. One of which was a little spooky. I’ll say, first, that Sathai is a strong Christian. Mark and Ann had assured me of this. He even did a little pasturing. So when he told me that his sister had been possessed by a demon, I thought, “oh oh.”

One more interruption: In the West, we’re used to “mental illness”, which exists in Asia as well, of course, but so does something far stranger and probably supernatural. Buddhists believe in ‘spirits’ of all kinds, and all through Asia I’d seen what look like giant birdhouses on stilts, only the ‘bird houses’ are facsimiles of tiny temples. Worshippers place offerings of fruit, glasses of water, flowers, crackers, whatever, on a tray in front of the miniature golden temple. These are to appease various and sundry spirits, whom the Southeast Asians take very seriously. So, this strong belief in the spirit world can be looked at from two fronts: either Asians are so aware of and afraid of ‘spirits’ that any mental breakdown is seen as a possession, or there is truth to the views of Christians with whom I’ve spoken that, yes, there exists actual demon possession here. Why? More ignorant minds, the victims of true evil? Certainly, I’d heard enough stories to know that there was more going on here than just ‘mental illness.’ Science doesn’t have the answers to everything.

Sathai’s story went something like this:
My younger sister was attacked by a demon. When I went to visit her and my parents, she was just lying in the bed and her eyes were a little red. I prayed, “God, stay in my sight so I can have a victory over the evil.” The demon had come at midnight, my parents told me, very frightened. My sister’s behavior changed, she yelled from the bed. She threw an electric mosquito paddle at our father, and then my sister said, “I’m Kuko, you’re father-in-law.” Mom cried out, “You are not my father-in-law!” When I arrived, my sister never looked straight at me…I think because I’m Christian, the only Christian in the family. She would put hand to her face.
I asked it, “Where do you come from?” and it replied, ‘I’m from Svay Rieng.’ I asked why it always came at night. The demon said, “I love her, why can’t I come?”
“If you love her why not come in the daytime?”
I told the demon, “I love and live with Jesus. I never see him act like you do. Is this the way you show love?” I then added, “If you don’t go now, I’ll tie you up and pray more.”
“Okay, I’ll go now,” it said.
The demon left. “My sister woke up and asked why I was there and seemed surprised to see me. She didn’t remember anything.

I got a lot more from Sathai, including his own testimony as well as some facts/figures about ADRA and the important work they do with the poor. I arranged to go with him to a countryside church in a couple days, and left him to his work. I caught another cycle-taxi downtown because I’d left a message at Annalenina’s guesthouse that I’d be there around 6:30pm. The guy who’d answered the phone promised to deliver the message. So at dusk, I make it down one rather decrepit neighborhood and finally find the Nice Guesthouse. A young guy of maybe twenty or so was sitting in a plastic chair at the front of the guesthouse, which was wide open, revealing a row of computers, a desk, some sofas. As soon as I mentioned that I’d left a message for a friend, he asked, “Who?” I said, “Annalenina. Is she here?”
“No, she got out,” the lad said, but clearly annoyed.
“Did I speak with you earlier?” I asked.
“Maybe, I don’t know, no, maybe brother,” he hedged. “Anyway, she go out.”
“How do you know?” I asked. How would he know? Did he keep track of each guest or was he just being lazy?
“I know, Anna, I know her, she go out. I not lying!” His face twisted in a look of anger and I hoped I wasn’t irritating a case of mental imbalance—or worse yet, demon possession. Goodness, you never know. I told him that we’d agreed to eat dinner and that I’d wait. He didn’t like the sound of that, saying, “She maybe come back 7:30, I think maybe. We go dinner 8:00.”
“You and Anna, going to dinner?” I asked. This was surprising. The guy was frankly an ugly shrimp. At any rate, I couldn’t really have cared less, so figured I’d just walk around a bit, find a KFC, and head back to my Internet activities. I had had a long day anyway so this suited me fine.

As I walked down to the corner, exiting the dark alley for a more vibrant street, I realized I didn’t quite know where I was. Fortunately, a young couple came along who had a map and were Irish (both good things, I suppose). We wandered hither and thither for awhile, but when they stopped into a cheap, tawdry-looking pub (and empty to boot!), I caught a scooter-taxi back to ADRA, first directing him down a street on which I knew there to be a KFC.

I had a scare when I returned to my apartment. On the table, I’d placed a can of Pringles and some cookies. I moved over to the table and was reaching for the Pringles when something behind an empty plastic wrapping darted out and scooted across the wall. A little gecko! Harmless, of course, but I detest being startled. And what was a gecko doing with chips and crumbs? That’s not in their food chain. I got my answer to the mystery when I looked down at the table. Well, an army of ants—all in a row, mind you—were busily engaged in carrying away the crumbs of this morning’s cookie treat. The gecko, now making a B-line for my bedroom, drat him, had seen the ants and wanted them, not my goodies. Now, I had to contend with the ants. The little wagon train of ants, each ant dutifully carrying a crumb, still in their orderly procession, marched under the rim of the table and off to some dark place on the wall. Rather unkindly, and not in a mood of brotherly love, I walked to the bathroom, tore off some toilet tissue, and returned briskly to the table where I wiped out the wagon train with a couple of swift moves. I’d wetted the TP first so as to be sure to catch as many of the beasts as possible. I threw the weapon of mass destruction, on which a number of ants were clinging in terror, into the trash can. I was furious that they’d gotten into my can of Pringles with the lid on. Crafty—but no longer among the living. There’s a lesson there for all of us (but I don’t know what it is).

Nov 20th—
Today was just a really pleasant day with no stress or appointments. Of course, how does one have stress while traveling? But when you’re a backpacking online teacher, there’s usually something every day if only student email to answer. And of course I had the medical stuff going on in Thailand. But this morning I left the ADRA apartment on a warm sunny morning, riding on the back seat of one of the ubiquitous scooter taxis. I then walked along Norodom Boulevard, one of the main thoroughfares crossing this small city, and had my first piece of luck of the day: I spotted a China Airlines office. Inside, a helpful young woman behind a desk provided a much-needed service, locking in for me a reserved window seat. It may sound like a tiny thing, but now I wouldn’t be burdened in Bangkok with locating China Airlines. I then strolled further on down this street of rather ordinary three and four-story nondescript buildings, thankful though for the shade of short trees lining parts of the road.

My second bit of luck was stopping in at Phenom Phen Optical. A couple weeks earlier, I’d stupidly wiped my expensive prescription sunglasses with a sweaty T-shirt on which there had no doubt been some sunblock. This resulted in my wiping away some protective film on the left lens and creating a permanent ‘smudge’ spot. You may remember the crisis of my first pair of expensive sunglasses: the ones that were left behind on a bunk of a Swedish train. I was getting ready to toss the sunglasses and buy some cheap non-prescription ones. When I asked the girl behind the counter about cleaning my lens (in the event there was a miracle spray), she examined them and said, “Sorry, sir, not possible. Must to replace lens.” One of her colleagues, a young man dressed in a shirt and tie, took my sunglasses back to an impressive-looking machine and then returned to say something to the girl. I was readying to walk out, expecting to hear an outlandish price, or perhaps a reasonable forty dollars, so I was stunned when she said, “Six dollars. Can you come back at 4pm?”

I walked past Independence Monument, which stood like a towering obelisk over the square below. Trying to keep out of the noonday sun, dodge tuk-tuks and scooters, and prevent dehydration, I stopped in at a nifty little bookshop—not one of the several second-hand shops that were stuffy and uncomfortable—but an honest-to-goodness clean book store that specialized, it appeared, in art, culture, history, travel. Best of all, I found an International Herald Tribune and a coffee shop in the back. I spent the next hour sipping Indian chai tea, spiced with the flavor of ginger, and reading. While paying afterwards, I discovered that I had in my wallet only two American dollars and only several thousand Cambodian Rials (about a buck). Time to visit a bank, I thought.

This is the cool thing about Cambodia: it’s the only country in Asia that prices in dollars and where dollars are the medium of exchange. Tuk-tuk drivers, shop owners, even the owners of tiny food stalls maintained plenty of US greenbacks in their pockets. Apparently, the dollar was king. But what is really cool is that ATM’s dispense US dollars! No one else does, that’s for sure. So here I was in Cambodia, getting accustomed once again to buying with US currency. I made this monumental discovery while at a Star Mart (like a Convenient Food Mart in the USA). I celebrated by wandering down to a mall of sorts and, at an American pizza franchise named The Pizza Company, feasted on double-cheese pizza and salad.

After fetching my glasses, now complete with two clean new lenses (they apparently replaced both lenses—for a total of six dollars), I caught a scooter taxi back to the apartment. I figured I’d need some munchies for the evening as I was going to stay in and write, so I wandered down the insanely-trafficked street, crossed the dangerous road beside a woman with her toddler (figured I was less likely to get hit), and bought some Ritz crackers at one of the hundreds of side-by-side shops that are nothing more than pieces of wood and corrugated metal. The road was potholed dirt; poor folks wandered, shopped, carried kids, kids wandered, dusty and in need of a good bath), and groups of young guys either sat on their scooters or just stood aimlessly. Had I been in Los Angeles, I would have fretted about safety; but here, I didn’t worry. Of course this secondary street was a far cry from any shopping district in LA. A little boy of about seven rode a bike too big for him, and as he passed, saw my smile and offered a big wide grin in return. I probably made his day, the happy white foreigner.

On Saturday, the pastor of one of the churches that lays outside of town, picked me up and we traveled to a village in his rather nice-looking black SUV. The church congregation certainly didn’t own any SUV’s. They were poor as the proverbial church mice. The church itself was bare bones: a concrete wall, whitewashed with a ceiling of wooden boards. The floor was bare concrete. But the people, about fifty or so members, seemed joyful if not quite poor judging by their clothing. Definitely rural Cambodians. Sathai showed up as the service was beginning and we took seats in the front row—on plastic chairs. After the service, out back of the church, some ladies were cooking up a storm beneath a simply awning of fronds. The largest Wok I’ve ever seen was filled with enough soup to feed a small army; kids and chickens and dogs played about the yard, and beyond the church were rice fields. The whole thing made me happy.

In the late afternoon, as the sun hung lazily over the river, I met Daniela, as we’d planned. Actually, we’d planned to meet at a restaurant at 738 Rue De something-or-other (I forgot), but when I got there at the appointed time, no one knew where it was. In fact, such an address didn’t seem to exist. I wandered along the river, only by chance spotting Daniela, who waved at me. “I’m so sorry, that address doesn’t exist now.” She laughed. “I was looking at my Lonely Planet Guidebook, which says it’s a great restaurant, but this morning, I saw that it was gone, torn down!” Anyway, we sat and watched the sun sink a little lower in the sky. The families were out in full force and a couple of women were hawking their wares to the families and to tourists. Friendly policemen directed traffic with a smile; it seemed like the happiest land in the world, and yet in the late seventies, this had been hell on Earth during the time of Pol Pot’s rule—and the genocide that wiped out some 1.7 million people! This very city had been emptied; revolutionary soldiers fresh from the countryside, had ordered everyone at gunpoint to exit the city. For four years, the now-vibrant Phenom Phen had been a ghost town.

My last Cambodian day was somewhat somber. I visited the Killing Fields. Waking early, I caught a scooter-taxi downtown and met Daniela at the address she’d given me: a combination ticket shop and hole-in-the-wall corner café. The beggars were a bit off-putting but I gave some of my bread to a man in rags holding his toddler daughter. She proceeded to eat the bread while they squatted on the concrete. Then we got our bus tickets, and a minivan took us and a few foreigners out to the Killing Fields. Since it must be experienced (and the movie viewed), I won’t go into details here. It’s kilometers outside of town, and a scant 30 years ago, soldiers as young as their early teens were hauling out prisoners by the thousands to be executed and buried en masse. Usually the means of execution was a hatchet to the back of the head. All the torture had gone on previously at the prison, so this was the final stop. Tacked to a large imposing tree, a sign announced that here was where soldiers swung babies and toddlers against the tree, smashing their heads against the trunk. A tall memorial has been created near the entrance, and hundreds of skulls are stacked at various levels. Tourists may go up to the ground level and see dozens of skulls, 3 of which are set clearly aside to reveal some of the execution and/or torture methods: the back of one of the skulls is caved in, another has several teeth missing (torture). It’s all quite depressing and one feels a great sorrow for the innocent people, whose only crimes were being normal, everyday Joes.

Daniela and I caught the minivan back and asked the driver to stop at the prison. A number of tourists, mostly Cambodian actually, walked around a central courtyard. The place had been a primary school before Pol Pot’s troops took it over to use as a prison in 1975. Incidentally, if you are wondering if this horrible leader was really named Pol Pot, the answer is ‘no’. He named himself that, and it stands for Political Potential. The brute was a strong communist. Anyway, the prison contained now-empty rooms, the walls scraped of paint, a plain metal bed frame in several of the rooms, where prisoners had once lain in suffering agony. There is a wing that contains sketches of various torture methods used—and hundreds of photographs of the victims, taken as they were processed here. Very disturbing.

After an hour or so, we were standing outside the building with the photos, and I said, “I think we can go.” Daniela said, “Yes, really, that’s enough.” We wandered a boulevard near the palace and came across a true Thai restaurant—one without tourists in it. I ordered rice and veggies (I like to play it safe) and watched CNN news from a wide-screen TV on the wall. There were about a dozen waitresses (and one waiter, the poor man) and as many customers. But they all were very friendly and happy. The food turned out to be quite good; I should have known it would. You know a place is good if you see a herd of SUVs parked outside. The rest of the afternoon was at the Soriya Mall snapping pics from the fifth floor windows of The Pizza Company and then along the river again. This evening, a large family of perhaps eight or nine adults and several children was taking pictures of each other in a marble pagoda; a western man who sounded American asked if I’d take their picture, which I did, and then they wanted both Daniela and I to be in the photo. We chatted, the man telling me he’d recently married a Cambodian woman. That explained that. The final hours in Phenom Phen were spent viewing the river from the FCC Restaurant patio—enjoying a gorgeous sunset.

Ubon Thailand

2009-12-04T07:23:00.000-08:00

Ubon, Thailand—where you’ll learn about missionaries, an old brothel named Disneyland, the search for my old house, and a horny leopard

I arrived in this provincial town at 7:30am on the night train from Bangkok. That may sound exotic, but in actuality, the engineer must have been either inexperienced or an overly cautious fellow; throughout the night, whenever approaching a stop, the train jerked its way to a stop, as if the poor fellow couldn’t make up his mind whether to stop or not. Or the guy had previously worked for Amtrak. At any rate, I didn’t get much sleep up in the top bunk and was happy to get off the train. I wandered into the small station and out the other side just in time to see a tall woman in her late twenties approaching from amongst some tuk-tuks and taxis. This would be Carla, the director of the SDA English Language School here in Ubon. The folks in Bangkok had put us in contact, and Carla had graciously invited me to come visit the school and my old home.

After our intros, we were getting ready to head into town in the back of a tuk-tuk when Carla spied a middle-aged Thai man walking towards us. “Tomas,” she cried in joy and with a laugh. “What are you doing here?” She spoke some words in Thai to him and turned to me. “C’mon, he’ll give us a lift into town. I met him when I first arrived three months ago.” The guy had a very nice Jeep Cherokee, and we piled in along with three backpacking women in their forties. Apparently he ran a makeshift taxi service. After dropping us at the “apartment” complex where Carla had reserved a room for me (and where she lives), I checked into a nice room with private bathroom and good wifi in the room and air-con, thankfully. I was sweating like a pig and it was only 8am.

I wound up walking with Carla a couple blocks to where the church and the school are located. It’s a nice little whitewashed church, though only twenty or so people were in attendance, mostly Thai’s but some Filipinos as well, and Angel, an American woman who is a teacher at the school. At the front of the church, a Filipino woman led out in the singing, and then translated the sermon into English with the pastor beside her. After church, I just wandered around this part of town remembering the old days and taking everything in. The town is not big—perhaps a hundred thousand, but just a collection of streets with one lane in each direction, and as in much of Asia, shops fronted the street, wide open and inviting customers to walk in. There wasn’t much in the way of English signs; and no tourists in sight. Ubon is a Thai town that offers nothing to foreigners other than friendliness and a chance to rest. Cars didn’t pack the roads as elsewhere; I could cross a street without worrying about a maniacal taxi driver aiming for my legs. Tall palms stood behind three and four story buildings that looked, truth to be told, a bit run down and tired—but that pretty much describes Asia, and is part of the charm of the place. Finally, here was a place without Starbucks or McDonalds—(or much Cola Zero, as I found out to my chagrin).

My swallowing difficulties persisted though I discovered that I could more easily swallow solid foods. Anything juicy had been giving me trouble, as if the swallowing reflex didn’t recognize “juice” as needing to go down, but in Ubon, I ate my first apple without half gagging on the juice that preceded the ‘meat’ of the fruit. I decided one morning to go find a coffee shop and read a newspaper. I’d been praying for an International Herald Tribune, VERY difficult to find in China and impossible in Laos, so imagine my joy when passing a small seemingly second-rate magazine shop and spotting ONE copy of the Tribune. I happily paid my 60 baht for the paper. So when I woke up that morning, I took my paper and headed down to the street, where I caught the “number 3 tuk-tuk”. Carla had shown me on the map the route it takes. “It’ll go up the one main street we have until it reaches Tescos,” which was a British supermarket. “And it’s bright pink,” she added with a laugh.

On the hot street under a hot sun, I waited only a few minutes for the number 3 Tuk-tuk, which was indeed bright pink. One climbs aboard from the back and sits on a bench on either side and beneath a canopy. Whenever you want to disembark, you push a buzzer and the driver pulls over, at which point you go around to the front and pay him 10 baht. Quite simple and wonderful. I wasn’t sure where there would be a coffee shop, but I figured there had to be one near the Swenson’s Ice cream parlor I’d seen the evening before while wandering about. “Western” goods and services were often in close proximity. The Tuk-tuk carried me and a half dozen other passengers along the somewhat busy main street, and only after a few minutes, I spotted the Swensons. I pushed the buzzer, the driver pulled over, and I paid him his 10 baht and stood under the hot sun glancing around as he took off. Scanning, my eyes rested on the one place a diabetic should avoid: a Mister Donut shop. There was nothing else around except for the ubiquitous Thai shops: a tire shop, a ‘refreshment’ shop (selling only sugared drinks, chips, various Thai snacks), a clothing shop, etc. I walked into the wonderfully air-conditioned Mister Donut and for the next hour or so, munched on two donuts, drank Latte, and read the paper. It was heaven.

In the evening, Carla and Angel invited me to go with them to the night market. Hopping on a Tuk-tuk, we rode a short distance to the market where there are dozens of stalls, booths, stands—all selling fresh grilled, baked, boiled or otherwise heated up foodstuffs. Fried bananas? Rice topped with either green veggies or some unidentifiable glop of something? Fresh-squeezed mango or pineapple juice? Carla opted for some grilled chicken whose aroma wafted through the air and past the plastic tables where we sat. I played it safe and chewed up my rice with chicken bits about thirty times before carefully swallowing. Afterwards, we each had a roti, which is a powerfully sweet taste treat that every diabetic and overweight person should fanatically avoid! So I had only one. At a roti stand, I watched the ‘chef’ spread a thin layer of dough over a hot circular griddle, on top of oil and grease and butter, naturally, just to make it totally bad for the health but assuring a delight for the taste buds. As it begins to cook, he lops on some butter, then squirts from a tube a steady stream of sweetened condensed milk, and sprinkles on sugar. Then he rolls it up, wraps it in paper, and you take it in anticipation of the rapture to come.

We munched on our rotis and took another tuk-tuk back to the apartments. Here, I completed the last step of my evening out: injecting a hefty 8 units of insulin into my tummy, which I’d noted hadn’t been decreasing in size although a few ribs were poking through skin. I unhappily concluded that I’d be the fattest emaciated man walking around town.

I had two joys primarily during my first days in Ubon: riding a bike around town, staying mainly on the many untrafficked roads, and visiting some of Carla’s classes. I twice did a stint as ‘guest teacher’ for her 4:30 class, which consisted of 4 children: pon, po, puey, and tang tai. And before you start snickering about odd names for kids, consider two of Sarah Palin’s offspring: Track and Trig. Pon was a pleasant but ‘naughty’ boy around 10; he and Po, about the same age, frequently chatted in Thai, heads together while Carla and I offered our lessons. Tang Tai was a cute little girl of about 10 or 11, and her English was probably best of the lot, though of course we’re talking about beginning level, the use of simple past. During one of the visits, she stammered out, “I…flew..on…plane….to…Bangkok.” Puey, a quiet, obviously introverted little girl of about 8 or 9, when asked a question, would look stunned and shy for moments before whispering a carefully worded answer. The first afternoon I met with them, Carla sitting to the side happily watching and interjecting comments, I told them where I was from, about my family, and about my trip. The two girls listened carefully but Pon and Po had to be dissuaded a couple of times from their ‘laughing chats’. I let each of them write down a couple of questions on paper (always the writing teacher), and then asked them to say their questions aloud. Actually, the questions were fairly thoughtful, Tang Tai asking, “What..does…you..father…work?”

The third morning, I met Carla downstairs at 9:15 because she was going to lead me over to a fancy little Kodak shop where she would meet the owner for some English tutoring, and where I could transfer my flashdrive pictures to a DVD. The owner was a woman in her early fifties, I imagine, and she was typically Thai: soft-spoken and gentle, and acted as if genuinely honored to have you in her shop. Carla had told me on the way over that the woman’s family was quite wealthy. “They own the shop, not to mention a five-star hotel and a restaurant.” No wonder the woman could enjoy a private tutor. At any rate, it was quickly decided that I would attend the first part of the lesson. Her daughter, in her early twenties, also studied with Carla. We all got comfortably seated around a big desk in a fairly empty (but air-conditioned) second floor room, and I repeated my lecture of where I was from, about Dubai, and about my trip, all of which they soaked in with smiles and little exclamations. The woman had traveled to Dubai and the daughter to Germany, so they were quite taken with me, as I later found out. We got invited, Carla told me, to a dinner on Friday evening. While we were chatting away, one of the worker girls brought in four big glasses of iced juice for our sipping pleasure. Very nice morning. When I tried to pay downstairs for the DVD with my pics on it, the girl behind the counter replied, “Free.”

I biked down side streets to a coffee shop named Peppers. I’ve no idea why it’s named Peppers since their menu is rather normal, nothing exotic. The owner/manager is a pleasant Aussie named Andrew, who was there that day with his Thai wife and 2 little daughters, one of whom was celebrating her birthday. We chatted about the usual stuff: home countries, heat, Dubai, life in Thailand, but he did convince me to come back the next morning for blueberry pancakes. For now I satisfied myself with Latte and the Herald Tribune. After a bike ride through the delightful roads of Ubon, past shacks, sparkling rich villas, lakes and temples, nothing can be better.
In the late afternoon, back at the school, I had a talk with Carla about the school. Unfortunately for the mission school, enrollment was way down, in fact practically nothing. This was because there was too little need for English in Ubon and too many English language schools. The fact that the SDA English Language School was a rather old two-story structure (though with a nice shady front lawn), was not air-conditioned (we sweated like hogs while sitting in either the office or the classrooms), and there was a general air of ‘old and poor’ about the place. This is no fault of Carla or Angel, who work under difficult conditions. I blame the mission ‘leaders’ in Bangkok, who do not have the foresight to see what is sorely needed in order to meet with success. It’s not enough to simply say “We are doing the Lord’s work.” To my way of thinking, the Lord would prefer if church leaders opened their purses a little more and tried using their brains. Ah, organized religion.

I started feeling lightheaded (when I get overly hot about politics or have had too much insulin). I joined Carla with Pon, Po, Puei and Tang Tui once again, though. Standing somewhat feebly in front of the four energetic students, I told them a story about snorkeling with a friend in Dubai and seeing a shark, and about my friend screaming when she saw the shark. The kids thought it moderately funny and learned the word “scary” and practiced their past tense verbs for awhile, but then I needed to get some carbs down my gullet in order to avoid fainting in the streets of Ubon, so off I went for dinner.

I chose an Italian place on the corner of the street closest to the apartments. I suppose it was the only Italian place in town, but it looked authentic and Carla had raved about the place. As the only customer I the rather cozy and well-decorated restaurant, two waitresses hovered over me as I looked at the menu. Realizing that I needed to raid an ATM, I asked a waitress if they accepted credit cards. The question was met with a blank stare, so I said, “How pay? Pay by credit card?” The girl turned with a shy look of horror to another girl and said, “Pay…pay?” Her companion was equally clueless so I withdrew my Mastercard from my wallet and showed it to her. She shook her head, “No, no, so sorry.”

“Where’s an ATM?” I asked. “A bank?” This word they knew, and the girl led me out the front door and pointed down the road. “Go to end road…to streetlights, then left” but she pointed right. We got it figured out and she said, “You take my bicycle please.” I thanked her, touched. Can you imagine a waitress in the US offering her bike to a total stranger who had only left an International Herald Tribune and a bag of red apples as collateral in the restaurant?

The girl pointed down at her bike, and I groaned inwardly. The thing was this tiny, girly-pink bike. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, however, so I climbed aboard what seemed little more than a toy, and pedaled off down the busier-than-normal street on my pink girlie bike. I got a few stares along the way, the white foreigner on a girl’s bike! I had to laugh though. How many Nebraskans were riding on a pink bicycle past tuk-tuks and pedestrians and chickens on a busy Thai road? Not many, if you ask me. Anyway, after probably making a lot of Thai folks chuckle as they walked along the road or watched from those open-front shops, I withdrew a cool ten-thousand from the ATM (don’t get excited, that’s only a couple hundred bucks). I returned to the restaurant and feasted on a big salad and spaghetti. Back at my hotel room, I had a warm shower to rinse off the day’s accumulated sweat and got caught up for the most part with my journal. I was getting used to this room, even though the ants in the bathroom kept appearing from nowhere.

I walked over to the school around 9am to meet Carla and Angel. “We’re going to a Veteran’s Day memorial in the park,” Carla said. “Wanna come along?” I said ‘sure’ but wanted to rent a bike for a couple days; Carla walked with me over to a little shop where a man did printing and engraving—but also rented out bikes. His wife, Yoko, half German and half Japanese, was a cheerful woman in her early forties who pumped up the front tire of a bike and waved happily as we three pedaled off down the street.

The next morning, the three of us attended a Veteran’s Day memorial service held in the city park; the military was represented by several hundred cadets, all of whom were simply kids trying to stay in the shade. Beside several bouquets of flowers and at a podium stood an Englishman speaking about how the city was honoring Mother Ubon, a truly elderly woman who during WWII had risked her life to give fruit to the allied POWS brought to Ubon by the occupying Japanese. The couple hundred in attendance applauded her as she collected her flowers. She told everyone (in Thai) that she wasn’t a hero, that it had been the soldiers. There were two or three picture-taking periods where the media snapped group shots, though it was never clear to me who was to be in the shots. There was a funny little Thai guy, obviously military, who was running around ushering anyone and everyone to come forward to be part of the group shot; why on earth he wanted me in my shorts and tank top, and sweat pouring from my face, to be in a photo with well-dressed (but definitely suffering) townspeople and dignitaries was beyond me. I guess I only went because my Uncle Clause had been a POW of the Japanese, and of course my own father had been stationed in England during the big war. Today was in honor of them and their service.

Then Angel, Carla and I pedaled our bikes (it’s so much fun!) to Peppers, the place owned by the Aussie, and feasted on blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup. They were delicious. Carla had ordered eggs but cooked well, so when they came out with yolk oozing from them, she wasn’t a happy camper. “They never can get it right,” she said. Well, after that, back at the SDA English Language School, I spoke with the secretary, a cute little Thai woman in her forties who speaks decent English. I’d been trying to arrange a meeting with an elderly pastor—in my search for stories of inspiration. I think she got tired of us asking, because she got hold of him and said, “He says, okay, but come now.” So just as I was dreaming about a nice nap, I instead drove with Jaroonee and her friend to the home of this elderly, retired pastor. The guy is eighty-three years old, but still pretty spry. But he said (speaking Thai to Jaroonee, who in turned translated into English) that he wasn’t sure of dates and would like to have his friend present “because she would remember more.” So we hopped back in the car and drove a few blocks to pick up an elderly woman. On the way back, one of my prayers was answered: I found the house where I’d lived nearly 30 years earlier and “Disneyland”, a place I’d visited in those days. More on that later.

In short, in the un-air-conditioned hall of the school, a once grand old two-story building, I listened to the history of the church and school in Ubon. The pastor or his friend, a genteel woman in her seventies, would alternately speak about those times and the hard life, and while Jaroonee translated, sometimes with chuckles, I’d type it out on my laptop. One of the stories the woman related, and as she sat in the plastic orange chair in this hallway, she told of how the pastor in his younger years had befriended a man named Mon, and after getting to know her, telephoned Mon, living in another town and said, “I have a girl here for you to marry.” Pastor Mun, at the time in his mere twenties, did come to Ubon, did meet her, and did fall in love. Eventually, they married and had a full life serving God in various places in Thailand and Laos. But that’s the subject of another book.

For now, after the interview ended, Carla and I biked through town to go to the night market. We stopped at Joe’s shop, where a friendly little Thai guy named Joe sells a vast assortment of semi-expensive and quality items: knick knacks to silk ties to art. He introduced us to a Chinese girl named Jessie, who is here guest teaching for six months at a small university. As we sat at a table in Joe’s shop drinking water and juice, she told us about herself, and of course we reciprocated. The cool thing about traveling is the human connection. The night market was right across the street, so we left our bikes parked in front of Joe’s and crossed over to the buzzing colorful market with its special enticing scents and deep-fried foods. I saw the same Roti maker rolling dough in which he’d sprinkle sweet condensed milk and sprinkle sugar, the same musician beggar playing his little ukulele as he slowly strolled along only half seeing out of one eye. Townsfolks and a handful of whiteys sat at cheap plastic tables munching on fried rice with assorted ‘goodies’ and drinking fresh-squeezed juices. Bugs flew here and there, this being Asia, but I thought it sad that this kind of social setting, a market, was missing from Midwestern society.

The next day, my fifth day in Ubon, I was going to bicycle up a few blocks to see the house where I’d lived in 1982—and a place called Disneyland, just down the street from that house. Carla and Angel asked if they could bike along; they, too, were anxious to see the places I’d talked about. The sun was strong and great puffy white clouds hung in the sky; we pedaled through light traffic past all the two and three story buildings (some old, wooden structures from way back) and others more modern. Passing a temple where I was sure the house had been near (and where Jaroonee had showed me just a couple days earlier), I was frustrated not to see the house. “Let’s try Disneyland,” Carla suggested. “Maybe then we can backtrack and find the house.” That sounded logical so I agreed. And within a few minutes, we coasted into Disneyland. Which requires an explanation here.

I had come to Ubon in 1982 for several weeks to teach English to Lao refugees in a Red Cross camp; the organization for whom I worked was Volunteers International. There were four of us volunteers: Clint, a rather serious youth who was technically ‘in charge’; myself, and then Jamie, a pretty young woman from California, and Duncan, an English lad of nineteen with blond hair and an amiable personality. We three gentlemen lived in one house that had been built by the church leaders two or three decades earlier; the house was a whitewashed affair that resembled an old American home from the period—front porch and all. Jamie lived alone next door. The guys’ house had an expansive green lawn on which the neighborhood boys frequently played soccer, and the house also had a collection of bats, ants, geckoes and roaches. The entire neighborhood had a rural feel about it though we could pedal into town within minutes. But this street was limited to our two houses and some wooden shacks. The road in front of our house was of dirt.

Down the street from us was “Disneyland.” In the 1970’s, while hordes of Yankee soldiers were based here during the Vietnam War, Disneyland was a brothel, an amusement park of sorts with undoubtedly wild rides. The place was nothing more than some wooden two-story shacks that looked like they might collapse would there be any tectonic jolt whatsoever. Then, years after the uniformed Americans departed, Disneyland remained a partial brothel but also a place where poor folks lived. I’d met a Thai teacher and his wife there, and every few days biked down the road to visit them. There was a little weedy front yard filled with junk and dust, a low fence, and a couple round metal tables over which hung a makeshift covering. A couple of chickens might have been clucking around as well as some stray mutts. There had been one young lady there, a twenty-two year old girl named Jau, that seemed to take a liking to me. For the longest time I didn’t know her profession—until one night when, at a rather seedy club, she showed up. For work, that is.
It’s like this: Jamie, Duncan, Clint and I had been teaching in the camp that afternoon. After ‘work’, we wanted to bike into town and catch a bite to eat. On one dust-covered street, inside a two-story building, there was a ground-floor eatery of sorts. But the manager insisted we go ‘upstairs’, and so we did (well, why not?). Jamie said, “Oh oh,” as soon as she saw how dimly lit the room was—and the men sitting about tables. But she was from California so made the decision to go in. Well, I’ve written a whole story about that night which I won’t repeat here; suffice it to say that the four of us, in our semi-missionary capacity, were struck dumb when a young beautiful Thai girl started doing a strip-tease. We were more shocked afterwards when some naughty boy switched on a projector. It wasn’t a home movie that you would show to an after-church potluck crowd.

Flash forward to 2009, and me wanting to locate my old house and Disneyland. It had seemed impossible once I got the lay of the land: the city had grown significantly even though it still was a very small city (or big town); I remembered nothing about the street layout of the town, and after asking a few locals where Disneyland was (and getting some funny looks—as if to say, “well, in California, isn’t it dumb kid?”), It became apparent that I wouldn’t find it. Not even Jaroonee had heard of it. But the day Jaroonee and I had gone to pick up the elderly retired pastor for an interview; she’d driven me by the house that the church had owned. A “Wednesday Market” was going on at the time on a patch of land so I didn’t get a great glimpse, but she assured me that this was the house in which I’d lived because Adventists had owned it then.

Which brings me back to my bike ride there in the morning with Carla and Angel. We pulled into Disneyland (the big sign that had read DISNEYLAND was no longer hanging between two trees) and celebrated our find with a couple of hurrahs. I happily pointed out the very same table that I’d sat at with the Thai couple and Jau twenty-eight years earlier. The memory was sharp in my mind because I’d bitten into a Thai pepper thinking it was a carrot. The resulting tears and agony had evoked a few chuckles from my Thai friends, but at least Jau, bless her, had had some compassion.

As I was relaying this to Carla and Angel, a woman (needless to say, a short, Thai woman) came into the ‘yard’ and asked, “Can I help you?” in English, a surprise. I guessed her to be in her fifties. Carla told her in Thai that we’d been looking for the place because some old friends of mine had lived here. Breaking into a smile at that information, as well as the fact that Carla spoke Thai, the woman answered some questions for me, but basically there was no Jau living here now and no teachers. Well, it had been ages ago. And Disneyland looked poorer than ever. From up on a balcony, a very old woman looked down at us. A couple other souls in poor garb shuffled across the dust-covered lawn and disappeared into one of the three shacks, two of which were closely set together. “Why don’t I get a picture of you and the lady?” Carla suggested. She was such a cheerful soul, and a real people person! She likes to laugh, and is one of those wonderful human beings that makes you feel a little happier, and her laugh gets you into a good mood so that you want to laugh too. All of us were smiling and shooting pictures when the very old woman joined us, and a new round of picture-taking began. The old woman’s face was heavily wrinkled and had seen a lot of hard times. But she possessed strong features and her lively eyes danced as she said to Carla, “You are beautiful.” To which Carla laughed hysterically and said, “You’re so sweet!”

The woman impulsively hugged Carla, which was such a sweet thing to see, and not content with that hug, she went on over to Angel and hugged her, a big full hug. More pictures, this time the whole gang, and of course with each of our cameras. “You’re good lookin’ honey,” said the old woman, first to me (with a hug, of course), then to Angel. Carla said, “Yep, she was definitely here during the American presence.” Doubtless that’s where she’d learned some of her phrases. At some point, she’d mentioned “G.I Joes”, another giveaway. Carla handed each of them a brochure for the English school though I doubted either could afford the classes. Carla would hand a brochure to Barrack Obama should he make an appearance in Ubon. But, heaven knows the school needs students.

We hopped on our bikes, waved and said our good-byes to the ladies, and rode on up the street. After crossing another road, I heard Carla say, “Is that the house?” I looked ahead and said, “That’s it!” But the place had changed dramatically; a once green lawn was now weeds and dust. A mini-market of tables, stalls and awnings had sprouted just to the east of the house, which apparently was deserted. There were some guys in chairs and a hammock under one of the coverings, doubtless shading themselves from the sun, and I asked Carla if she’d ask them if we could go up to the front porch at least. We parked our bikes and Carla went over to talk to them while I stepped up to the porch. I began to wonder if this was the house; something wasn’t quite right, but then, it’s likely my memory wasn’t quite right. Carla came over with a Thai guy in his early to mid thirties, and at the same time, a pickup truck had pulled up behind our bikes, out of which emerged a youth with shoulder-length hair. Angel at once thought he was adorable—reminding her of her adopted brother).

As it turns out, the youth had bought the house and was in the process of renovating it. In typical Thai fashion, both of the men insisted we all three go in. After removing our shoes (not that we could have gotten the floors dirtier than they already were), we walked in. I knew that this couldn’t be the house—and also remembered that Jaroonee had said one of the houses had been sold and demolished.
The bottom line was that the house in which I’d lived—with ants, bats, geckoes and roaches—no longer existed. As I looked across the lawn, I could see where the house had stood. This house we were in was the house in which Jamie had lived. Still, it was a cool and wonderful feeling to know that so many years ago, I’d been in this house and that I’d discovered my old stomping grounds. We had quite a nice visit with the guys, and Carla said, “Why don’t we get some pictures of them?” Needless to say, we are all now the owners of a fine collection of pictures—including the men because after our talk with them, we rode our bikes back into town and made printouts of the digital pics. We rode back to the house and presented them as a gift to the man who had been laying in his hammock just an hour earlier. He was pleased as punch and invited all of us for…well, some kind of fruit punch. We sat at one table next to a much smaller dwelling (one couldn’t call it a house), sipping drinks and being introduced to three young ladies who were masseurs. “Come, see,” the man said beckoning me inside the little place. The gals didn’t get an invite. I walked in to a little side room about the size of a bedroom. On the floor were three single mattresses. At the foot end of each mattress were little pink towels.
In the afternoon, we met up with Satpo and Sita at the coffee shop they own, a nice little place that makes great smoothies and has treats. Satpo also owns the adjoining hotel and insisted on taking us through two of the guestrooms, a king-bedded room and a double-bedded room. Here, Satpo learned from us to say “King-bedded room”, repeating the words slowly, and then thanking us.

Then I pedaled around, saw a temple, just enjoying riding. The one thing that made me a bit nervous was the dogs. In the temple compounds, there always seemed to be two or three dogs that would bark threateningly, trotting closer to the bike, but not too close, being uncertain about the white boy. And not only near the temples, but also ordinary neighborhoods. Underfed-looking dogs, probably not fed by owners who believe in a dog’s inherent ability to ‘catch food’, either slept at shop entrances or lurked about the streets. For the most part, I have to say, they rarely barked at me and only a couple gave chase. Usually, my shouting at them (usually in fear) dissuaded them from furthering their pursuit.

In the afternoon, I attended the kid’s class again. Tempo is a new boy, a little Thai Harry Potter. It didn’t take him too long to figure out how to be naughty, whispering and giggling to Pon while Carla was speaking to them. The kids were all rambunctious, though, and when Carla asked them if they were ready to tell Scott a story (she had told them the day before to memorize for me), they squirmed, shook their heads or looked dumbly straight ahead; so I had a quick idea: “Kids,” I said, getting up, “Let’s write sentences on the board.” Which is something they enjoyed as long as three could get up at once. They had to choose one animal that they knew and use it with one of the verbs I’d written on the top of the board. Overall, it went well. The kids expended some energy writing on the whiteboard (Carla whispered some ideas to Pon at the far end of the board) and they had good practice writing full sentences.

I rode my rental bike at sundown to the river, a gorgeous sight as a red sky off to the west made the water turn amber. This forty-something guy, who I’d seen standing over one of the many ‘cooking stands’ along the river, where one could purchase various fried or grilled foods. He must have seen a falong walk by, because all of a sudden he came up with a ‘hello’ and said some words that might have been “I see you are riding your bike down by the river” as easily as he could have been saying, “It’s my dream to kill a foreigner.” He was neither friendly nor unfriendly, and all of a sudden, the air reeked of Johnny Walker, which I doubted was emanating off the river. “Where you from?” he asked in carefully constructed English (must have been a challenge after the Johnny Walker). After mentioning “Nebraska,” he offered up this dumb look of non-comprehension. I promised to return for some of his good cookin’ the next day and biked off, keeping my eyes on a couple of mean-looking dogs as I pedaled.

The last event of the day was a fine dinner at the Rossito’s Italian Restaurant. Days earlier, when Satpo and her daughter Sita had learned that I’d be leaving in a few days, Satpo had insisted that she host a dinner for me. Carla told me one afternoon, “The ladies are quite taken with you; they loved talking about Dubai with you and think you are so neat.” She laughed. “They really like you.” I thought it was cool but wondered why I hadn’t had this effect on women when I was twenty-one. Anyway, we all met up at the restaurant, filling up two tables shoved together. Satpo had brought along her husband, who spoke almost no English and aside from Sita, her other daughter, who was married to a lawyer whose name was Pi Nut (pronounced ‘peanut’). He didn’t speak English either, so the only conversation at the table was between Carla, Sita and me at one end, and Angel at the far end chatting with Satpo. The others got some words in (with either Satpo, Sita or Carla translating) before the meals arrived, at which point there was more chewing than communicating. At the end of the meal, we had a round of “thank you”s, pictures, and handshakes. It’s never easy to have these cross-cultural dinners, but they’re usually enjoyable and make everyone feel good. It’s nice whenever people of different backgrounds (and worlds!) get along and laugh together. Stupid world leaders, most of whom in my opinion will one day be doing the backstroke in the lake of fire promised in the book of Revelations. Don’t bother with the life vests, boys.

On Friday, Carla, Angel and I caught a bus (air conditioned by the open windows) to Tiger Kingdom, an hour outside of Ubon in the middle of nowhere. It’s a zoo of sorts with only a few animals, but the thirty tigers are wonderful to see. Unlike the tigers at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, these beasts are energetic and have small yards in which to exercise. Tiger Kingdom also has a few lions, several leopards, cute monkeys (though cruelly chained or kept in cages), alligators, and bright colorful tropical birds. Highlights this day included a tiger that rose on his hind feet and pushed against the metal grillwork of his cage in order to impress me, a leopard couple, the ‘husband’ of which was clearly very infatuated (drooling, actually, in anticipation of mating; the female was less than enthusiastic, simply cowering), and a monkey that jumped at us, hitting the cage we stood beside. Well, check out the pictures.

We hitched a ride back to Ubon with a pleasant young couple in a Toyota Pickup with AC running and American pop music playing. They dropped us at Big C Department store, where we devoured some KFC before we caught our pink Tuk-tuk ‘home’. In the afternoon, Carla and I biked around, visiting some of her favorite temples. At one, we met a Thai English teacher, and I suggested that someone in Ubon start up an English club—since so many people wanted to practice their English.
In the evening, we biked along the river as the sun was going down, and then headed to a Vietnamese restaurant where Angel awaited us. The place was fairly upscale and a woman in her forties sung mournful Vietnamese love songs as a man played the piano. Not in the mood for love songs, we instead got to chuckling over movies, TV shows, and other equally important topics. This generally led to our guffawing rather loudly, I think. But the time was relaxing and fun. Sometimes, you just have to have a good time and laugh. As I biked home later, I heard “Hi Scott” from someone; turning my head, I saw the kid who worked at a fruit stand; I’d spoken with him two days ago—and he’d remembered my name. I was impressed and bought another apple.

Thailand: hospitals and snorkeling

2009-12-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

On the overnight train ride to Bangkok, I was in “2nd class air-conditioned sleeper”, as were all the sane backpackers and a number of Thais. The design and cleanliness left something to be desired; where the Chinese trains were fairly nice (if you stayed out of the bathrooms), this train’s interior décor was what I’d call “cluttered metallic”. Even though there seemed to be some cool air entering the cars, it was circulated by means of a series of ceiling fans pointing downwards and rotating. In front of each pair of facing seats (which became a single berth at night) was a metal combination rack and ladder (to reach an upper bunk). Together with dim lighting and a grimy floor, the effect was somewhere between ‘3rd world train and “Borg cube”.

My immediate neighbors included a Thai monk wrapped in orange robes, a gaggle of yackety Thai girls in their late teens, and two American backpackers, one of whom looked like a grumpy Bruce Willis; another, whose name was Daniel and who hailed from the Bay area, hobbled along on an injured foot. The result of being slapped in the foot by an errant piece of bamboo while dirt biking through rural Laos. That’s what you get when you go for adventure. Stick close to coffee shops and you’ll be fine, I always say. Well, but then I did go to Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Bangkok is, like most big Asian cities, crowded and polluted. Mostly flat, it lacks the exotic appeal of green, mountainous Hong Kong with its gleaming skyscrapers. Bangkok, nevertheless, is cool to visit. There are only a few staggered skyscrapers; it mostly has a cluttered feeling (like the trains) with streets filled with unimaginative buildings. The traffic, for the most part, during the day, remains at a standstill for several minutes at a time. Taking a bus for a kilometer takes about as long as walking. Still, Bangkok has charms: temples of gold and red with chiseled golden dragons sitting atop temple gates, a palace where the ancient kings of Siam ruled from, and famed Khao San Road—a pedestrian only tourist street littered with shops, booths, signs, touts and scantily clad tourists. Actually, I didn’t like it at all. It’s no different from other “tourist streets” in Asia—just shops of the same old junk you find everywhere else (usually for cheaper): clothing, jewelry, books, CD’s, knick knacks, and then the guesthouses all offering cheap rates and western food and Internet, and the cafes and coffee shops. It’s all quite dreary in its sameness. I guess tourists like it because there are some palm trees here and there.

I offered to share a taxi with Daniel at the train station when we arrived in Bangkok very early the next morning. He was limping along by now, having shed a quantity of blood onto the train floor after hopping down from the top bunk. He’d said one choice word repeatedly, which caused me to pull back my privacy curtain and peak out in the first place. The taxi took us to what is known as Mission Hospital but its real name is the Bangkok Adventist Hospital. 27 years ago when I was here, it was one of the best and I believe it still is. Bangkok has world class hospitals, something most people are ignorant of. Washington DC, London, and any old city in Germany would pop into mind, but not Bangkok, but the fact is that people from as far away as Australia (and certainly the Middle East and India) come here.

I’d booked the guesthouse through a kind email contact named Myrna. The hospital maintains a couple guest apartments for (mostly) Adventists coming for long-term treatment or as guests coming through Bangkok for another reason. After dropping Daniel in the care of the ER people, I checked in at some little office near a series of waiting areas. Since it was barely 7am, seats were empty. My apartment, as it turns out, was much more than I expected: two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen complete with fridge and microwave (and several bottles of water) and a living room. Goodness knows I’d have been happy with one room; this was luxurious. I wound up staying six nights. 

One of the reasons I’d come on the trip was to collect inspirational spiritual stories for a book I was contemplating. I’d had bad luck in China and Laos contacting any pastors but had already received some contacts in both Thailand and Cambodia. It was Saturday, so I wandered along a pathway on the hospital compound that cut through tall trees, banana trees, ferns, vines, a veritable rain forest—all here on the property. I’m exaggerating but the grounds of the hospital are quite green. I came across the church and spoke to a woman named Rickie; she’s in her fifties, I imagine, having lived here a long time. Her father, as it turns out, started an organization called Volunteers International way back in the 70’s. I’d been hired by him and his partner to teach English to Lao refuges in 1981—though just for a couple months, and ‘hired’ isn’t the right word since I wasn’t a professional and wasn’t paid. The whole thing was volunteer, as the name implies. Anyway, she told me about a woman running an orphanage on the Thai-Burmese border and told me the names of some guys to contact. After that, I attended the church service (in Thai and English) and afterwards enjoyed a potluck dinner with two American guys in their early twenties who are teaching here at one of the Adventist schools. I enjoyed their company but not the lunch since I could barely get down any of the rice with spicy green beans—due to my affliction, of course.

In the afternoon, I caught a bus (another rickety, smoke-belching affair) whose air-conditioning consisted of open windows. There were two centers that I wound up visiting: Big C was a modest multi-story department store but I succeeded in swallowing some KFC mashed potatoes with a little difficulty. I even tried ice cream and that wasn’t entirely easy going down. I did some work at Starbucks and got home by early evening, just lazing around the apartment reading and checking emails.
Sunday morning, I woke up a bit nervous. I was to see the doctor and get a true idea of what was causing my swallowing problems. Down in the clinic, when the nurse weighed me, I was chagrined to learn that I’d lost a couple kilos recently. What if I wouldn’t be able to swallow normally again? It’s scary. I tried to read the Bangkok Post while waiting for the doctor, but articles about train strikes didn’t capture my imagination. Finally, I was called in to see Dr. Nick (as he’s called), an American GP who is one of only a couple English-speaking docs to pass the Thai medical boards. It’s a miracle, really, since he’d only been in Thailand a short time. But more on that in my book. For now, I gave him the report from the Australian doctor and some more background. Yes, type 1 diabetic with pretty good control, etc. etc. He asked questions and set me up with an ENT—in fact to see him within the hour. Dr. Nick struck me as one of those dedicated, truly Christian missionary doctors whose only goal is to help other people. He also told me that his wife would be a wealth of information on Bangkok.

The ENT examined my throat, asked questions, etc. I was shown the way to the X-Ray department where technicians did a sinus X-ray and a throat X-ray, made a bit unpleasant by my having to drink barium (not too bad tasting actually). “Take a mouthful, and hold it in your mouth,” instructed a kindly middle-aged little Thai nurse. She ran off and the technician got his ultra-modern gleaming computer machine going and the nurse called out “swallow!” I only managed to push tiny swallows down one at a time, my poor old ticker beating hard. “Please, take another mouthful,” she said, watching me. “More. Good, now hold it, and when I saw ‘swallow’, swallow all of it in one go.”

I managed to do it, surprisingly, the third time. Off I went to wait for the report.
“The good news,” said the ENT doc, “is that there are no growths, no cancer, no stricture or blockage in the esophagus. The mechanism works fine.” Which I had to take issue with, of course. It wasn’t fine at all. But the moving images of my swallowing action were on his computer desktop as he pointed it all out. Nothing was preventing me from swallowing. “We can try a neurologist tomorrow,” he said.
Well, in the next couple of days, I saw the neuro doc, who said it couldn’t be ‘Mysthenia Gravitis’, or some such horrible disease as my sister back home had feared it would be. “You have none of the symptoms. I think it might have been a mild infarction in a region of the hippocampus”. (or something like that). That translated, as far as I knew, into STROKE, which sent my little heart into palpitations. “It should get better,” he informed me. “I’d take one aspirin every day…you are diabetic, it would be smart.”

Well, I did feel a bit better after watching the images of my throat swallowing without hindrance, and in fact got down a couple Dunkin’ Donuts pretty easily, and even a McDonald’s double cheeseburger. Liquid or any kind of fruit was problematic, but I wouldn’t starve, I found out. The thing that pleased me about the whole thing was the proof that American insurance companies and pharmaceuticals are ripping off the American public like bandits. How did I arrive at this conclusion? I had the following medical treatment:
• One consultation/exam with an American GP
• One consultation/exam with an ENT specialist
• One sinus X-ray
• One major throat X-ray
• 2 follow-up consultations
• 1 exam with neurologist
• 3 prescriptions

TOTAL cost: $100 US dollars.

Note: The MRI that I did a few days later cost a whopping $250! Compare that with $3,000 back home. And you don’t think we desperately need health care reform?
Phuket is a town on the west coast of southern Thailand. American viewers got a glimpse of Phuket and other Thai towns along the coast back in 2004 when the tsunami swept over them. You-Tube videos of that catastrophe are still popular viewing. The town itself is nothing special in my view; a few streets of ordinary shops. There’s a couple of beaches popular with the young partying crowd, but after landing at Phuket Airport (a rinky dink affair, thankfully), I climbed onto a bus that would take me downtown, where I’d try to find the Adventist Hospital and, hopefully, guest quarters. I wasn’t even completely sure how I’d spend my five days in southern Thailand, kind of playing it by ear. On the bus, I met a Russian couple named, appropriately, Boris and Tanya. With them, I wandered around downtown Phuket at dusk looking for the Thai Authority Tourist office but by the time we stumbled on it, the place was closed. Boris and Tanya wanted to go by minibus to the party part of the town, but after our good-byes, I walked down the next street I came to. This was yet another of the many Asian roads with dozens of dimly-lit shops with their open fronts to the street. Outside one car-parts shack sat a man in his forties, perhaps, with long hair. He reminded me of a Thai hippie, if there had ever been such a thing. The man and I enjoyed a short conversation before he led me out into the street and flagged down a taxi-scooter for me—and told the driver where I wanted to go. Thanking him, I took off clinging to a couple of metal grips on the side of the scooter as the maniac got me at warp speed through traffic to Mission Hospital.

It turned out that the hospital here didn’t have guestrooms, but I met Tom, a Thai man who works as assistant to the hospital president. He led me over to a nearby two-star hotel that the hospital sometimes uses for visitors, and I must say, the place was quite okay. Quite two-star, as well. But there was air-conditioning and a clean bed, so that’s all I cared about. The little lizard hiding beneath my shower controls during my shower was a bit un-nerving, I will add. Every time I’d adjust the hot water knob, he moved a half inch further up into the control box shadows, his cute little tail the only thing showing.

I had to call in to the Thai Immigration office the next morning. My visa would run out in a week or so, and I needed to stay at least a week beyond that. In the main office of a small white stucco building, crowded with a dozen desks, a uniformed white man came over to me as I entered. “How can I help you?” he asked with a Scottish accent. I explained about the extension I wanted, and he said, “Sure, just gotta have the passport, passport copy, application and nineteen-hundred Thai Baht.” I nearly fainted at hearing I needed the equivalent of fifty bucks just for an extension. “I also need an extension to the fifteenth of November,” I added. I knew it was more than the one-week extension that they gave everyone. “Let me speak to my supervisor,” said the officer, and he strolled into some office and spoke to a Thai guy sitting importantly at a big desk cluttered with paperwork. When he walked back, he smiled and said, “The captain says it’s okay to give you until the 15th.” He looked happier than I did, no doubt. Well, that was some good news anyway. Being hot and sweaty and wishing to only get to a nice beach, I nodded at the man. “Where’s the ATM?”

He gave me directions (basically for the 7-11, of course) and said, “Look, ya come back and I’ll help you get it all done in a jiffy.” I could see he really was trying to be helpful. There were a dozen other tourist in various stages of getting something official done, and three white Westerners in the uniform of Thai Immigration. How did that come to be? I asked the guy if he were from Scotland and he laughed. “No, from the Netherlands.” Well, he did have a Scottish accent. Maybe he’d studied in Glasgow. Anyway, after lugging my pack all the way down to the 7-11 and getting my cash, I returned, and sure enough, the Dutch guy filled out the application for me and got permission from his superior to tell the clerk to give me an extension to November 15th.

Across the street were some fellows sitting comfortably on their scooters; one middle-aged guy sat on a fold-out chair smoking in the shade of a tree. “Where you wanna go?” he asked me. I’d decided the night before to go to Phi Phi Island (pronounced “Pee Pee Island), so I said, “To the pier. How much go pier?” One might as well leave off prepositions when speaking with these guys. The man frowned as if in deep thought about the problems of the world, scratched his ear, hemmed and hawed a bit. “100 Baht,” he said. This was a ridiculous price; I thought 60 would be more like it and offered 60.

“Okay!” he said, all too quickly, and I realized that once again I’d not bargained hard enough. He would have taken me for forty, most likely. You’d think I’d learn. Anyway, the pier was a collection of tourist ferries and booths where you could buy tickets. At one counter, a girl asked, “Where you want go?” and I replied, “I wanna go phi phi.” I wished that the island had a different name. The funny thing is, there’s an island not far away called Pu Island. I bought a ticket and waited in a long ‘room’ about two-hundred feet long with only a small café at one end. Along with other waiting passengers, I read and sipped soft drinks. One exciting moment came when a bird flew through but didn’t quite make the exit; he smashed instead into the wall. Down the poor little fellow went and was surely dead on the floor. I wandered close and looked down. Yep, dead as a doornail. I continued reading, but noticed a pair of girls at the next table glancing down at the bird; now the creature was stirring! “He’s got one hell of a headache, I’ll bet,” I said. One of the girls smiled. “I’m sure.”

By and by, the bird (a pretty thing, dark with a yellow stripe) staggered a few inches, then flew up to perch on the door frame. That must have cost him some energy because he just sat there for the longest time. But by the time we headed out to board the ferry, the bird had flown away. All’s well that ends well.

Guess who I saw on the boat? Boris and Tanya; we greeted each other, and Boris pointed out where Tanya sat at the front of the ferry. There were approximately sixty or seventy seats all facing forward, and at the back of the room a short counter on top of which were some cans of pop and some beer, snickers, the necessities of life. All the seats were filling, with another forty or fifty passengers sitting or standing on the deck above. Once the captain piloted the ferry away from the pier, it picked up speed and we were on an open calm blue sea. I chatted with Boris and Tanya for awhile but headed up then to get some air on deck. The wind was warm but refreshing, that scent of the sea reminding me of Dubai. Backpackers made up the majority of travelers, though some were older, in their forties, fifties. The ship pulled into port, and because I carried only one smaller backpack (that I’d borrowed from Doctor Nick and his wife), I was one of the first off the boat as the others had to pull their packs from a little hill of luggage at the back of the boat.

I lost Boris and Tanya again. Walking first along a pier, I took it all in: an expanse of blue sea, a shoreline with nice beach. On one side of the pier were ferries, sailboats, and the like; on the other side, small motorized fishing boats, longboats as they are called locally. Each has a tiny canvas stretched over metal poles to offer shade. Not more than a few hundred yards away were the first towering limestone cliffs of the island as it curved around the port. Behind the town were high, grand hills. The pier walkway joins ‘main street’, more of a shop-lined alley along which are cafes, travel agencies, scuba-dive shops, knick knack shops, and, well, you get it. The same as all island tourist hot spots. Thanks to a brochure that Boris had showed me, I thought the best overall deal would be at The Andamon Resort. At a makeshift ‘office’ near the pier, I arranged to stay a couple of nights there, and a bony teen-aged boy of 13 or 14 walked with me down “main street” for close to fifteen minutes before we arrived at the resort.

I liked it immediately. The Andaman Resort looked like what I’d always imagined a beach resort would look like. Not the five-star Marriott type, of course, but an elegant three-star place with bungalows, a layered swimming pool facing the sea, and an outdoor café where a free breakfast buffet would be served. I checked in and was led by a youth to my bungalow. The room was large, had a ceiling fan, a clean bathroom and a fridge, wardrobe, all I needed. I dumped my pack and headed out to explore Phi Phi town. Wandering down “main street” with its twists and turns past shops and cafes all facing the sea. To my left was the water and fishing boats. Under a gnarled old tree sat three Thai fishermen. “You want go islands?” one said. He was wearing a sarong and off-white sweat-stained tank-top (hey, he’s a fisherman, for goodness sake), and his eyes were kind, the smile genuine. I asked him how much and where we would go. “Go four hours, four places for swimming, snorkeling, islands, okay, 800 baht.”

I told him that I’d let him know in a few hours, but it sounded good. Fifteen bucks or so to go snorkeling on islands wasn’t too hefty a price. I wandered on down to where another main road bisected “main street”—and ran into Boris and Tanya, and again we greeted each other happily. Turns out they too were staying at the Andaman Resort and were on their way to check in. I let them know about snorkeling with the private fisherman, and Boris said, “Yes, that sounds good,” and Tanya nodded in agreement. There were big tour boats that went out for the day for the same price, according to a dozen signs, but a private longboat was preferable. “Maybe we can talk him down in price,” suggested Boris. Later , I stopped by where the fishermen were sitting and made the deal with the man I’d spoken to. “Okay,” he said, pleased. “My name Zacharias. You come tomorrow morning, yes? Eight thirty.” At dusk, I plunged into the pool and watched the sun setting beyond the sheer cliffs on the other side of the water. Down at the beach, a couple of longboats were pulling up to shore.

The next morning, after a buffet breakfast where I managed to get down toast, scrambled eggs and even a few corn flakes, Boris, Tanya and I walked to where Zacharias was waiting. “We met another Russian couple last night,” Boris told me. “They should be here any minute.” Zacharias helped us each aboard the longboat, onto which we had to step from the embankment. The other couple, in their early twenties, came aboard and introduced themselves to me as Michael and Natasha. Settling onto the benches just under the protective tarp covering, they watched Zacharias start up the engine at the back of the boat. Boris and Tanya perched on the front of the boat.

The day was one of the best yet. Zacharias’s longboat glided and puttered over the waves past palm-filled forest and white sandy beaches. Limestone cliffs were set further back, and out to sea were other islands, three of which we visited. Snorkeling was great. At the first stop, twenty meters or so out from the beach, we swam with schools of clown fish. When Zacharias threw pieces of bread into the water, the fish darted in by the dozens. He’d toss the bread out to where one of us would be snorkeling or treading water, and of course we’d find ourselves swarmed, even nibbled at. Afterwards, Zacharias took us to an almost-deserted beach on Phi Phi Island itself. “Only way come beach,” he said falteringly, “is by boat.” We climbed awkwardly out of the longboat and waded in hip-deep water towards the shore. On the beach, a dozen tiny crabs darted hither and thither. Set a few yards into the forest was a makeshift shack where a longhaired Thai man of thirty, sleeping in a hammock, rose to get me a diet coke, which I was thrilled to find. Yes, this was paradise. Later in the afternoon, Zacharias took the boat to yet another island, the one where the movie The Beach was filmed—the one with Leonardo DeCaprio. There were too many little tourist boats near the beach, of course, but the high limestone cliffs sheltered the sea from the winds so that the crystal-clear aqua-marine water was quiet and shallow.

On the second day, Boris, Tanya and I decided to do a little hike. We’d gotten sunburned the day before, and I lent my bottle of white vinegar to Boris to apply to his burns. I’d looked all over the village for either vinegar (not in many tourist shops as you can imagine) or medicine to heal sunburn; finally, in one of the very few village food shops that catered to locals, I’d found the vinegar. At any rate, starting our hike that morning, we followed a pathway that ascended gradually at first. Signs with “Tsunami Evacuation” in big red letters and an arrow pointing up the trail were, to me, funny. When a tsunami hits, there is almost no warning—just the sea reversing itself and flowing backwards and revealing seabed. But by that time, it’s too late to really do anything except run like a maniac and scream a warning. Certainly, there’s not sufficient time to, first of all, fine the evacuation path, and then start climbing it. We hiked for ten minutes before at an altitude where I wouldn’t worry about floodwaters. The trail passed through palms, banana trees, ferns, towering trees with skinny trunks, wildflowers, shacks, a couple cafes. We climbed stone steps a couple of times, really panting as the demands on our lungs became more urgent. But at the top, from a few slabs of flat rock and a garden filled with brightly-colored flowers (and a tiny two-table café), the view was awe-inspiring: I could see the narrowest point of the island, a forty or fifty-meter wide stretch of island, on either side of which was beach. Back in 2004, the tsunami had just rolled over this fifty-meter stretch of hotels and town. Just beyond the twin beaches were limestone hills even higher than the one on which we now stood.

We continued on, Boris determined to get to the other side of the island. “I’m sure there’s a pathway,” he insisted. “How do the locals go? They don’t hire longboats to take them!” Sure enough, one of the trails veered off and headed downwards. The way was extremely rough, and after twenty minutes of heat, tropical bugs, huge tree roots snaking across the path, and rocks, we were tired. But we plodded on down because none of us wanted to go back the same way. Finally, we emerged onto level ground and into a clearing—and then beach. There were some primitive-looking wooden structures that turned out to be rented to the backpacker wanting a more ‘natural’ experience. I wandered around the beach, swam a bit, watched hundreds of tiny centipede like creatures crawl over slabs of rock. After an hour or so, Boris wanted to walk along the shore—except the ‘shore’ he desired to follow was covered with those rocks and probably thousands of those centipedes. I was more of a mind to get back, so we said our farewells for the time being and they continued on.

Now, I had a new problem. I had only a couple dollars worth of coins in my pocket. I’d kept my wallet back at the bungalow, figuring I’d be getting wet at some point. And the only ways off this beach included walking back that rough trail, following the centipede trail (which would take hours anyway), or by longboat. The longboats would cost plenty, so how was I to get off this island? I began to sympathize more with the castaways of Gilligan’s Island. I began chatting with a local, probably a fisherman and part-time water taxi driver. He said that some tourists wanted to go to Long Beach, which I knew was the beach near Phi Phi Town. From there, I was sure, I could walk through the jungle to my resort. After a while, a girl of perhaps nineteen or twenty came along with an older couple, and I asked them where they were going. Well, conversations begin this way on the road, so I soon determined that they were ethnically Russian but now German citizens. The girl, very pretty, was on a holiday with her parents, having convinced them after her first three Thailand trips to visit the islands. We all boarded the longboat by wading out and climbing aboard. The ride back was fun; I impressed the parents with my limited knowledge of German and Russian (they knew no English). I half worried about not having the fare but would tell the driver that I could find him later and pay him.

We came puttering close to Long Beach, nothing more than a five-star resort and a beach; the Germans were going to hang out here for awhile but I wanted to get back to the Andaman Resort. As I got into the sea, I handed my coins to the fisherman and said, “I only have this…” and was going to go into my big plan to locate him again, but he said, “Okay, no problem.” What a nice guy, I thought.

I didn’t hang around Long Beach, but asked a Thai girl working a concession stand how to walk to Phi Phi Town. She pointed down towards the end of the private beach. “There is a path, just follow.” What she didn’t tell me that the first part of the ‘path’ was an incline of practically straight up (slight exaggeration), consisting of dirt, rocks, a tangled mess of tree roots, and bugs. After navigating (and panting like a madman) the hill, the rest of the path was easy to navigate, through a woodsy area and over an area where the tide had gone out. I celebrated my return to town by visiting the Internet café, and then sipping a Cola Light and munching on chips while watching the sea from an area in the front of the resort where some tables had been set up. Darkness had fallen, and I soon went off for a swim in the pool.

The next morning, packing to leave the island, I noted that my camera was nowhere to be found—this with a bit of panic as I searched everywhere in my room. Well, I must have left it at the Internet café yesterday, I’d reasoned. And what were the chances that it would be there now? I didn’t like the odds but whispered a prayer. Maybe someone honorable had found my camera with all my pictures of Laos and turned it in. And maybe Rush Limbaugh would vote liberal in the next election. Myself and Mr. Backpack headed down the path to the office, where I hoped to hurriedly check out and get myself to the Internet café. My heart downcast, I offered a smile to the girl behind the desk as she checked me out and accepted my cash. At that moment, one of the workers, a teen boy in dark trousers and green T-shirt, came in with something in his hand. He spoke some words to the girl, but I already recognized my camera! “Yes, bless you, it’s mine!” I cried, and he looked surprised and handed it over. “Where did you find it?” I asked. He pointed outside and said, “On table.” Good heavens, I’d left it outside on the table the night before as I’d admired the sea, and throughout the night, it hadn’t rained (this was the tail end of rainy season) and no one had taken it during two hours of light this morning. I thanked God and vowed not to be quite so stupid in the future. But I’m afraid that is a regular promise that is regularly broken. Oh well.

One of the best places I have visited on this entire trip was Railay Bay. Getting there is quite an experience. First, I sailed on a small ferry that transported a crowd of backpackers to a town called Crabi. From the pier, a taxi driver delivered me to a place difficult to describe, the place from which one hired a longboat pilot to go to Railay Bay, which was only accessible by boat. It’s not exactly a pier, just a covered ‘bus stop’. A longboat pilot led a group of six of us out across an expanse of mud flats to where his boat lay in shallow water. The tide was out again. Rather awkwardly, one by one, we climbed aboard from a pile of slippery rocks. Once situated on benches, the pilot started up his engine and headed out to sea. The scenery was inspiring: more high cliffs, more karsts, more bays. After fifteen minutes, he puttered into one of these bays, the backdrop of which was a low mountain, more of a cliff, and several karsts. What got my attention right away was the lack of development. What looked to be little more than simple wooden structures, shacks as I’ve been calling them, fronted the sea. The tide being out meant that the boat halted a hundred or so feet from shore—and slowly and carefully, we six climbed with our packs and luggage into the thigh-deep warm water. Wading ashore was tricky; there was a wooden platform an inch or two beneath the water but the wood remained slippery. At any rate, soon I was standing on the shore and wondering how delightfully primitive the place appeared.

I wandered past cafes (very simple wooden platforms), a few touristy shops, and a couple guest houses before coming to what was supposed to be a simple two-star resort but turned out to be very impressive. A collection of nicely-spaced dark wooden bungalows, with plenty of tropical greenery and gardens between, were attractive and clean. A young woman led me to my room, taking me past a very inviting swimming pool with a grand view of the sea down the hill. After getting unpacked, I walked back down along the ‘beach’, which is actually on this side of the island only a few feet of dirty-looking sand on which bits of tropical plants were strewn. Not inviting at all. But it wasn’t supposed to be. The ‘beach’ was on the other side of a karst and some cliffs that rose up to a rather towering height. I followed a path at the base of this cliff to the other side—and was greeted with a view that made me realize how lucky I was to be traveling. Open sea in front of me—with three or four karsts jutting out of the blue water. To my left, a small lagoon at the base of these vertical walls, which were, along with the rest of Railay Bay, a magnet for the climbers of the world. Within twenty minutes of walking along the beach, wading over a calf-deep section of water to a mini-island, I’d met two couples from the States: one from Colorado and the other from Utah. All four were here to climb as many karsts and cliffs as possible in the weeks they were spending here. But for me, snorkeling would be the thing.

The next afternoon, an Irishman in his late thirties named Joe led a group of us out to a longboat. The pilot was a young Thai guy, naturally. Joe, the guide to whom we’d each paid fifteen bucks, was amiable and knowledgeable about these waters. He must have had spent a lot of time outdoors because his face was weather beaten with deep lines. Anyway, with me on the boat was a young English couple and a Dutch couple. The boat soon puttered out to sea just as the sky turned gray and gathering clouds promised rain. After a ten minute jaunt over the waves, Joe had the driver stop the craft at the base of a high karst. Jumping with our gear into the somewhat choppy water, Joe led us through an underwater ‘cavern’ (several meters wide). By the time we emerged on the other side, a good rain was falling. A little more water won’t hurt anything, I reasoned, and Joe was enjoying himself, taking pics with a waterproof camera and sharing his knowledge with us. As we swam back through a second cavern, I stuck my head out of the water just ten feet beneath a rocky surface only to feel the wind blast pellets of rain through. Back under the waves, all was calm.

Joe took us to a couple of other snorkeling points before we headed for a deserted island. The weather had cleared up by now and the skies were clear. The boat dropped us on the beach before puttering off. “The driver’s off to get our food,” explained Joe. “He’ll be back in a jiffy with some really great Thai food.” We all, in the meantime, had time to wander, explore. There wasn’t much to the island: lots of beach, a vegetation-choked hill, and a marvelous sundown to enjoy. The group broke up, with Joe hiking up through part of the thick vegetation. I found a delightful and peaceful place to sit at the base of the hill, in among some boulders, and simply gazed at a pink sky behind clouds moving in opposite directions. After, I don’t know, perhaps a half hour, a concerned Joe came from around the other side of the rocks. “Ah, wondered if you were okay.” We talked for awhile, awaiting the return of the boat.

After it reappeared and two metal containers of food were off-loaded, we sat and ate by the light of a couple of tiki torches. That alone was worth the price of admission, as they say, but there was more to come. After eating and re-boarding, we crossed the night sea to a practically invisible karst-hill. The massive rock was little more than a great black shadow set against the moon-lit sky. Jumping into the equally dark seawater, I was thrilled to see the thousands of pinpoints of light that are luminescent shrimp, tiny little things that swarm here beside the great karst. Through my mask, I could see as I moved my arms underwater that dozens (and dozens) of what looked like lightning bugs (the mini-shrimp) glowed brilliantly all through the wet darkness where my arm was. “It’s a bit disconcerting,” said the English girl. “They’re like all over me.” It certainly seemed so but I never felt the shrimp though one or two nipped at my legs. Joe said “Ouch” a couple times as he too got playfully bitten. Considering there were thousands and thousands of shrimp, a couple of nips didn’t seem to be much to worry about.

I hated to leave Railay Bay, but the next day, after a pleasant walk about the tiny village, a nice chat with the Internet café owner (a woman from San Francisco temporarily living in Thailand and a fellow book lover), and some lunch, I followed a few others to a longboat that returned us to Crabi. After that, I boarded a VIP tourist bus that made the long overnight haul back to Bangkok—where after a day or so I’d catch an overnight train to a town I’d once lived in, Ubon Ratchatani.

Laos: illness, snake wine, and death

2009-11-18T07:38:00.000-08:00

LAOS

In the Laos adventure, there will be illness and snake wine, but the only death came to a roach who entered my room. So read on...

The few more hours of bus travel meant that that we arrived in the town of Luang Prabang; the sun had gone down and we were tired and hungry. Only the Dutch girl had booked a room at a place called SpicyLaos Hostel, so the rest of us decided to tag along. We stopped a Tuk Tuk in front of the bus station and managed to get all of us and our backpacks into the back, squeezing together. Fortunately, Luang Prabang is a town, not a city, and we arrived within minutes in front of the hostel. The place was well located on a quiet residential street (which pretty much described most of Luang Prabang.

SpicyLaos was in actuality a UNESCO World Heritage site; in the past it had been the residence of Lao royalty. The old dark wood looked of high quality, and the hostel was on the second floor. A sign at the base of the steps asked us to remove our shoes. Up in the office, we checked in. The wide front wooden doors looked permanently open and there were a couple of computers near the front desk, and beyond the office, a large open room with some seating. I wound up sharing a room with a couple of Asian girls (some guys have to pay a lot for that), and the contingent of Europeans wound up in one room together. To satisfy hungry tummies, the Europeans and I walked down a couple roads to a night market where there were some cafes. One restaurant, the Tam Tam, had nice outdoor seating so we sat, chatted and ate. Paul told us that the next day, he and Martin would go out and buy a boat. “For what?” asked Andreas.

“To float down the Mekong into Cambodia,” Paul said. We were all impressed by the adventurous spirit of this pair of Germans. Driving an ambulance through Europe and Russia to Mongolia was not an easy task, and now they wanted to head down the long and perhaps somewhat treacherous Mekong, well, better them than me. The rest of us were hardly chickens; it takes a certain brand to venture out to the far places from home and backpack, often not knowing where you’re going. But apparently that wasn’t enough for Martin and Paul.

The following morning, I decided to go to some nearby waterfalls that the hostel manager had told us about. Paul and Martin were getting an early start on their boat search, and Impke and Andreas were content to laze about the hostel. I hopped into the back of a tuk tuk along with three women also staying at the hostel: Mary and Linda from Scotland, and Rebecca from LA. The driver drove on a nicely paved road that snaked through beautiful countryside: rice fields, open grassy areas cluttered with palms here and there, and lush green mountains in the distance. The landscape was hilly and I was thankful I had decided against renting a bike. The entrance to the falls generated one surprise: we had to pay 200 Kip to enter (about fifteen dollars); we’d been told at the hostel that the entire trip there including transport was 500 Kip, but we forked over the cash at the wooden booth and entered.

I’d been to Niagara Falls and knew this would be nothing more than a gush of water over a cliff, and that’s exactly what it turned out to be. Really nice, but not more; however, the delights were to be found in the pools of water that formed below the falls. At various levels, aqua-marine pools had formed, and mini falls three to eight feet in height. One of them was fairly large and made a great old-fashioned swimming hole. First, of course, after paying the entrance fee (with some general whining emanating from all four of us), we headed up a trail to a fenced-off area where a few minor league black bears were housed. I tried to snap a few shots, but for some reason, bears always know I’m taking their picture and either turn around or twist themselves into some pose that guarantees a bad picture. Rebecca was quite taken with them and hung out there a bit longer as Mary, Linda and myself continued up the slightly rising path (there were several paths actually), stopping only once to take pictures of some Lao children playing in a narrow muddy stream set in the woodland.

After awhile, we came to the ‘swimming hole’, as I call it. The water called out at me to jump in and join the half dozen others already treading water and watching the utterly delightful mini-falls a mere dozen feet away. “Let’s continue up to the main falls first,” suggested Mary, “and then come back and swim.” We were cool with that, and as Rebecca joined us, we continued up past other smaller pools of water, streamlets, Lao and Western tourists all with smiles on their faces. All manner of colorful tropical flowers decorated the pathway and pools, and when we came to a little bridge, we could see the main falls, a thunderous cascade of water falling a hundred feet or more—and quite inspiringly.

The real fun was back at the swimming hole. There were several benches set here and there, some with wet, happy tourists sitting on them. The area was shaded by tall trees, the sun only falling upon the pools. Placing our daypacks on a bench near the pool, we stripped off the excess clothing and stood like the rest in bathing suits. The water, as my toes soon discovered, was frigid and sent a shiver up my spine. Mary cried out as if in pain and laughed; Rebecca looked at the pool with doubt on her face. I walked over stones and a few flat rocks into the pool. There was nothing to do but jump in bravely—and yet I tip toed out like a big wimp until crotch deep, and took the plunge, I’m happy to say with a minimum of screaming. Within a minute or two though, my body warmed, and considering how we’d been sweating like pigs a few minutes earlier, this was heaven. I swam out to join a few others, the water being a bit deeper here. And then I spotted the tree.

An old oak leaned halfway over the pool, and attached to it was a rope. A young European looking guy was carefully climbing out on a nearly horizontal branch. Someone long ago had pounded some pieces of wood into the branch so that you could get a foothold and make it across the otherwise slippery branch. When he came to where the tree angled upwards, he took the rope, held on for dear life, and swung out over the water. He splashed into the water from perhaps ten feet up. I thought it looked incredibly fun, so got out of the pool and made my way over to the tree. Naturally, the “swing tree” was the main source of viewing entertainment for the gathering crowd in the woods and those in the water. I didn’t want to make too much of a fool of myself (difficult in the best of circumstances), but sure enough, by the time I’d awkwardly climbed the horizontal branch with the footholds (it wasn’t as easy as it had looked) and came to the bent tree trunk, I discovered to my embarrassment that I couldn’t reach the rope. Actually, anyone without the long arms of a chimp would be able to reach the rope; others after me had difficulty too; we all figured out that the best way was to follow someone with long arms out to the tree, and after they jumped, and the rope was still swinging, to grab hold of it and then take a turn.

Anyway, a guy who’d made the jump previously came and made his jump, thus providing me with the rope. I found out, when jumping off the tree branch, why everyone let go of the rope almost immediately: the thing was slippery; there was no way of hanging on and swinging back and forth. My plunge was exhilarating and for the second time, the cold jolted my dry skin. I stayed in the water chatting with some Canadians; we all watched a beautiful young girl in a white bikini make the jump. She had the attention of all the males, at any rate. Then a rather hefty young man with an ample supply of stomach made the jump, to the general hilarity of the folks in the pool. His crash into the water created a few waves.

When it came time to go (the tuk tuk driver had been waiting all this time in the parking lot with all the other tuk tuk drivers), the four of us had a quick bite to eat at one of several outdoor cafes. These were the “plastic table” kind of cafes, with a wall or two of bamboo, and quite open to the forest. I ate some fried rice with veggies and egg and downed it all with cola zero. There were oodles of knick knack stands selling everything from T-shirts to beads to stuffed animals. We idled past them and into the lot, finding our driver asleep in the back of the tuk tuk. The drive home was nice but by this time a feeling of fatigue had settled over me. Sun and swimming do that. All I wanted was a nap back at Spicylaos, not an argument with a tuk tuk driver. But that’s what happened when we got back to the hostel and he wanted 500 Kip from each of us, not the 200 we’d been expecting. “But the whole trip, including everything, should have been 500 Kip,” Mary argued with the man, whose English had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. She turned to me. “We checked with the manager, and the sign on the wall even says ‘all inclusive’ for 500 Kip.” I tried to hand the man 200 kip but he waved it off. “No, no, 500 Kip,” he insisted. Well, we all wound up paying, because at the end of the day, the mix-up hadn’t been his fault. Once in the lobby, we tried explaining the deceptive sign to the manager, who’d been a pretty laid back guy who spoke decent English, but now he too had suddenly lost his command of the English language, trying on the look of a dolt for size. None of us were happy about it, but there it is, the world of travel.

While walking around the neighborhoods, I’d seen several signs for guesthouses and investigated a couple of them; one man showed me a private room with AC and a private shower, and was only asking 60 Kip; back at the Spicylaos, I told the manager that I’d check out because for the same price of 60 Kip, I could get a private room with a shower a couple houses down. He looked through a couple of his books laying on a cluttered desk in the open lobby/office, then ushered me back to the hall with the rooms. He opened a set of tall, narrow doors and let me see the room that obviously he was hoping I’d take. The tiny room, a bit barren except for two single beds, was primitive but I liked the view outside a screened window: an overgrown backyard with banana trees, palms, a couple dilapidated shacks, one of them open on one side and apparently a shed of some kind, and a couple of chickens clucking about. The scene was the quintessential “Asia” for me, and I acted half interested. “How much?” I asked.

“60 Kip,” he said. “This is emergency room, but I let you have for sleeping, no problem.”
I accepted and laid my backpack out on the one bed. One of the reasons to stay here was because the old place was an UNESCO site, a cool old place to hang out, and I liked the social atmosphere of a hostel as opposed to being alone in a guesthouse. Plus I was simply too lazy to carry my pack two houses down. Oh, and there was free wireless Internet here, too.

In the evening, I strolled with Linda, Mary and Rebecca down to the night market, where again we ate at the Tam Tam, from where we viewed the market. Women, for the most part, sat on carpets and blankets and under protective awnings, their wares spread out in front of them. Tourists strolled by, looking, bargaining, and sometimes buying scarves, jewelry, knick knacks, clothing, food items, or old sketching of temples. After eating, I returned to the hostel because I’d promised Impke and Andreas that they could interview me. They were not only on a lengthy backpacking trip, but keeping a blog and recording “the sounds of a journey”, as they explained to me as we sat at a picnic table that evening. “I work in a sound studio,” Andreas explained, “so we thought we’d put together various sounds, everything from a temple prayer to traveler’s ideas about life.” I’d sparked their interest after all our conversations on the sleeper bus, so I was a likely candidate. The recorder going, we had a natural conversation about how traveling had changed over the years, which was true enough. Backpackers, for one thing, were no longer bums on the road who accepted a two-dollar bed for the night with its accompanying bed bugs. Now hostels had to offer clean accommodations, food, free internet, and a host of other services just to compete. Even traveling youth had become a demanding lot. All this we discussed, and more, until I returned to my cute little primitive room to do some writing. From the backyard came the sounds of animals lurking, some muffled conversation from the shed along with some weakly illuminated light, and the rustling of palm fronds.

The next morning, I got a shock as I sat out on the front deck (where guests plopped onto comfy cushions and munched on corn flakes, bananas and bread). After shoveling a spoonful of cornflakes into my mouth, I found that I couldn’t swallow! It was as if some force prevented the well-masticated flakes from descending into the esophagus. I focused on chewing a few more times, and found that I could push the pulp down—with effort. The second time, the stuff just slid down, making my poor heart pound with new fear. It’s bloody discomfiting to be in a 3rd world nation and discover that you can’t swallow. My tea would absolutely refuse to go down. If I tried, it just flowed down, and for a moment I panicked, but immediately knew I could breathe, so it wasn’t going down the wrong way at least. Well, I knew that medical treatment in northern Laos would be dodgy at best, so there was nothing to do but play it by ear and see if it got better on its own.

Impke and Andreas came onto the deck, saying they were going to walk about town and invited me to join them. I thought it a fine idea, especially since I wasn’t going to be downing more corn flakes. The humidity was sky-high, and we were drenched in sweat before we’d gone two blocks, but we explored a temple after climbing what felt to be a hundred stairs, found a hilltop view of the mighty Mekong River and gleaming red and gold temples rising out of rain forest. The beauty made me forget my swallowing problem. After descending to the main road, we had a wander through an old bookshop, and then walked down to a main road fronting the wide and brown Mekong, a river which begins somewhere in southwest China (in the Himalayas I presume) before winding through China, Laos and Cambodia into the sea.

We came upon a most unusual and, for me and Andreas, quite sickening stand. In the shade of some towering trees, along this quiet boulevard along the Mekong, an elderly salesman had a most unique item to sell: snake wine. Atop a plain table were several jars, of different sizes, but the largest holding three liters or so of…snake wine. Most of the interior contained two dead thick snakes, several rather hefty centipedes, two scorpions, and a couple of amphibious creatures I couldn’t identify—and didn’t want to identify. The corpses all lay in this jar of amber colored wine, and according to ancient belief, the drinking of such wine would cure all manner of ills; of course, were I to drink such a brew, I’d have all manner of ills. To tell the truth, I was surprised that I could even glance at the jar. Andreas couldn’t; he walked briskly away to take in the more pleasant sights of the moving river. But Impke was plainly fascinated; she asked the man questions, snapped a half dozen photos, and traced her finger along the glass following the snake’s body. “How many creatures are in there?” she asked in wonder.
The man laughed. “Oh, do not know, maybe three snakes and others.” These weren’t little garter snakes, either. The one looked like a cobra to me, it’s head flattened against the glass. In another smaller jar were two entire turtles. That was enough for me, and I followed Andreas.

After that refreshing little walk, I craved a coffee shop (though I doubted I could drink anything) and air conditioning. The German couple carried on with their explorations while I walked down the street until I stumbled upon the Noma Café, a real coffee shop/bakery. Other Westerners were sitting at quality tables eating quality baked goods and real food (i.e. pizza, sandwiches, etc). I ordered a latte and took a seat upstairs with a free copy of the Vientiane Times. In short, I passed a very nice time catching up on all the latest news from the capital of Laos (not very riveting stories, truth be told) and enjoying all the chilled air blowing down from the AC vents. I couldn’t swallow much of the latte, though, which freaked me out afresh.

Close to dusk, I was on my way down the road from the hostel towards the used bookstore when someone called my name. Sitting at a table on a deck extending to the street were the two Scottish girls. They invited me to join them, so I postponed the bookstore visit. We got to chatting; they’d been sipping marguerites, their glasses almost empty, and when a waitress came round, Mary said, “Oh, come one, we’ll have another, Linda.” They were both a tad tipsy, and Linda agreed that, yes, they really ought to have just one more fruit-flavored marguerite. Not wanting to be a party pooper, I ordered a beer. I never did believe that drinking a little alcohol on occasion was a big sin; usually, those who come down the hardest on great sins like drinking booze are the ones who quite ably ignore the hungry beggar on the street. At any rate, I knew I’d be unlikely to actually drink much of the beer in my current state, so no harm in ordering.

After my couple days in Luang Prabang, which I’d learned was actually a World Heritage site as a city, I boarded an 8am bus to go south to the capital, Vientiane. There, I would see my friend and ex-colleague, Don McKay, and see a doctor. I pretty much trusted that God would keep me alive and swallowing for the next eight hours. That I would be traveling through forested mountains far from civilization with a poorly functioning body did put me on edge a bit, but in such a situation, you just have to trust in God. If he wanted me to live, I’d live. It had been raining on this dreary morning. The Tuk Tuk driver, who looked to be a sixteen-year-old kid, had been waiting for me to come out of the hostel that morning; I’d used him the day before to take me back to the hostel and he’d agreed to take me to the bus station the next morning. At the station, I paid him and walked over to where a crowd was waiting to board the VIP Bus to Vientiane. The bus was a double decker, multi-colored, and quite comfortable looking, I could see. I got to talking to the only other white folks in the crowd, a young couple who turned out to be from Sweden. The guy, who wore dreadlocks, told me that he and his girlfriend were traveling around Asia for several weeks and then heading on to India. After a few minutes, the bus driver came along, opened up the wide storage doors so that we could stow our backpacks. We boarded, climbed some stairs, and luckily found that my assigned seat was in front of the Swedes. In the seat beside me was a monk draped in his saffron-colored robes. Just a kid, really; he couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. During the hours-long trip, I chatted back and forth with the Swedes, listened to my I-Pod (the monk had his own I-pod), and managed to swallow a bag of Lays, for which I gave thanks.

Vientiane is the capital of Laos. It’s a small city of under 200,000 residents. It’s rather unremarkable, and there’s nothing of major interest for the tourist—but that’s part of what draws backpackers to Laos. “It’s like Thailand was twenty years ago,” said one traveler. Vientiane has one monument that makes it onto the postcards, the Patuxai Monument—reminiscent of Paris’ Arch De Triumphe. It was this structure that I was looking for as I walked along a busy road towards dusk. Once at the monument, I’d been told, the Lakeo Guest House would be nearby. And since my friend Don McKay had made a reservation for me at the Lakeo, that was my ultimate destination.

As usual, the pack was getting heavy after the first kilometer of walking, but turning a corner of a street occupied by cars and Songthaews (pick up trucks with two benches in the back and with a covering overhead), I spotted the monument and groaned. It looked quite a walk from where I stood, and the final pink curtain of sundown was beginning to dissolve. I surrendered the need to walk and hailed a songthaew. After a couple of minutes, at a rather large roundabout, one pulled over and I climbed in the back, set my pack down and said what Don had emailed me to say: “Lakeo gue hau”. The driver fretted for a few seconds and then grinned and nodded. “Ah, Lakeo guest house, okay.” He revved up the engine and off we went for all of two minutes. After pulling up to a nice-looking three-story building, I paid him and then went into the lobby. A young man came walking across the room, saying, “Mr. Scott?” I said, “Yes,” pleased that I was expected. The man led me to the desk and said, “Mr. Don, he said you coming. He was here ten minutes ago.”

I’d arranged to meet Don at the Lakeo, expecting to arrive at the latest by 5pm but our bus had been delayed and then a group from the bus, including the Swedes, had all squashed into one songthaew for a ride into town. Once on the main tourist street, everyone separated, and I was determined to walk to the Lakeo. But here I was, so I phoned Don using the clerk’s cell phone, and Don told me he’d meet me in the lobby in about fifteen minutes. This gave me a chance to dump my backpack in my room. I was thrilled to see a nice clean modern room with full bathroom and of course, air conditioning, none of which we’d had in Luang Prabang at Spicylaos.

In the lobby shortly afterwards, Don came strolling in and we shook hands, happy to see one another. I’d last seen Don, who’s in his early fifties, in Dubai on the grounds of Zayed University, but since then he’d resigned and taken a job working for United Nations Volunteers—teaching Lao UN staff here in Vientiane. I’d known that Don was in love with Asia, particularly Laos; in fact, Don’s hearty recommendation to visit Laos is what made me add this blessed country to the list of countries to visit on my journey. Glad I did it, too. Anyway, he asked me if I minded if we didn’t go far for dinner because he wanted to get to bed a bit early; that was fine with me, so we walked out to where he’d parked his newly purchased motor scooter. I hopped on the back and we drove a couple blocks to an outdoor café. There, we shared a big plate of sweet & sour chicken, which I mostly got down. After I explained about my swallowing difficulties, Don said, “Try the Australian or French embassies; they have clinics. The Americans won’t, though.”

The next day was fairly hot (this being Asia), and I basically wasted the morning looking for the Australian and French embassies. This was due to my not wanting to spend a ton of money on tuk tuks, songthaews or taxis (that left walking, naturally enough)—and on the fact that the guys at the Lakeo front desk, while wishing no doubt to be helpful, simply gave me bad information so that when I walked to where the Australian embassy should be, according to their circle on my map, there was nothing but a collection of tiny shops. Finally, one man at a shop told me that it was located about five kilometers away. I wasn’t far from the road, which for the most part was not really built up, with patches of grass and weeds interspersed with shops and short rows of low buildings. I stopped a songthaew and rode sweaty and tired for ten minutes until we got to the embassy. At a gate, a Laotian guard didn’t speak English, but there was a sign on the wall saying something about a clinic. “Where is doctor?” I asked, to which the guard replied, “After 1:30, come back after 1:30.” The clock now read 11am.

On the touristy street, I stopped at a Noma Café to treat myself to Latte and eggs. The place was like its sister café in Luang Prabang, looking like any nice coffee shop in the US and air conditioned; I read through the Bangkok Post, tried some cautious sips of coffee, which either took up to several seconds to go down or slid down. The eggs mostly made it down, but when one forkful got temporarily lodged somewhere on the way down, with my eyes doubtless bulging, I pushed the plate away. I couldn’t even finish my coffee, and darn, I’d paid the extra few cents to be able to get free refills. It was time to find a doctor!

I spent the next couple hours or so searching for the French Embassy since they were closer in town here. Wandering down some of the more shady lanes past some lovely though worn-out buildings that displayed their French colonial grandness, and past a temple and stupa, and following a narrow dark river, I was enjoying being in Vientiane. I was actually in Laos! I was looking forward to another 3 weeks yet, hoping to remain here in the capital for a week or so and then head south to some islands and cross then into Cambodia. That was the plan. When I more or less stumbled upon the French Embassy, behind a concrete wall, a little guard came out to tell me that the clinic was no longer here but at a different location; he handed me a sketching he’d hastily drawn; according to it, I only had to walk about three blocks. I thanked him and continued on. Well, I found every landmark on his map except for the clinic, which was nowhere to be seen. And shop owners either didn’t speak English or had no idea where the French clinic was. The sun was beating down, I’d been beat for a couple of hours, so I gave up and decided that I’d simply call the Australian embassy from the Lakeo. To which I took a songthaew.

Once in the lobby, I asked the clerk behind the desk for help; his English wasn’t great but he spoke enough to be able to tell me that there was no phone directory, but he did pull out a tiny pamphlet that had ads for various entertainment in Vientiane, including, oddly, an ad for the Australian medical clinic at the embassy. “Can I use your phone to call?” I asked. The hotel phone sat right in front of me. “Sorry,” said the guy, who really did clearly want to be helpful, “But manager say ten Kip one minute.” This was like a dollar a minute for a local call, so I got a little hot under the collar. When he saw my irritation (and when I said that that was robbery), he pulled out his cell phone, the kind lad, and said, “You can use my phone, no problem.” I called the number listed in the ad, and basically learned from a nurse that I had to make an appointment; so I did just that, for 10am the next morning. I walked up the broad dark wooden steps to my room, pointed the AC controls at the unit, and showered while enjoying the artificial breeze. In the evening, Don came round and we took a songthaew down to the Mekong River, to one of his favorite restaurant bars. The place was on the second floor, was all wood and glassless windows, quite charming. I didn’t think the eating thing would go well, but I decided to experiment with French Toast. If I couldn’t get down French Toast with butter and syrup, things would be serious. After ordering from a lovely young waitress (which is all that they have, really, in Laos), Don talked about his decision to leave Dubai a few months earlier, telling me how he’d actually applied with the UN some time earlier but not heard from anyone. Then in the spring, the phone call had come—and he jumped at the chance to work here. “I mean, this is the place I love,” he said. He sipped from a glass of beer. Our view out the window was of the Mekong, a wide and graceful river, and the ubiquitous stands and stalls of Laos, workers hawking, selling, frying, eating, just enjoying life. “Still, you know, I might go back to Dubai. I can do it, I’m sure they’ll take me back. I don’t know, I haven’t figured everything out yet.” I understood the pull to Dubai, that damnable magnet that attracts you towards the acquisition of money; of course for me, it would be more than that. I have good friends there; I did miss going to Cocos Restaurant on Saturday night and playing UNO with them. But there were other things in my life now, other people, other opportunities. Things God wanted me to do, I knew. And earning the big tax-free bucks just wasn’t one of them. Well, the French Toast arrived along with Don’s delicious-smelling Thai meal, but after just three or four bites, I said to Don, “I just can’t swallow. Damn.”

The next day decided my immediate future. In short, I wound up sitting in the doctor’s office speaking with an Australian doctor in his thirties who seemed quite keen and interested and able, but after I described all my symptoms, he said, “I’ll be honest with you, it’s way beyond my scope. You need a good ENT to start with.” He suggested the hour’s trip to Udon Thani, a Thai town with a good hospital. “That’s where we send UN and embassy staff,” he said. “Or there’s Bangkok.”
“Bangkok?” I asked, “for good hospitals?”
“Bangkok’s got world-class hospitals.” And now that he mentioned it, I knew he was right. I’d even had rich Arab friends in Dubai who’d gone off to Bangkok for treatments. I made the decision to go to Bangkok. What would happen if I went to Udon Thani only to discover that I had to go to Bangkok? Why not go to the best place first? The Aussie doctor was very helpful in writing out a report for a specialist.

Back at the Lakeo, the manager stood behind the desk. She was Chinese, in her fifties, I guessed, and spoke decent English. She heard my predicament and sent one of her clerks off to some travel agency to see about booking a train or plane ticket to Bangkok. I’m not sure why they simply didn’t phone, but the young thin guy went off for something like ten minutes before returning. “You can come?” he indicated, and I walked with him a few blocks to an efficient little travel office where a young woman got me a reservation on the train to Bangkok for the next afternoon. It meant another 24 hours in Vientiane, and at least another couple of days of not knowing what was wrong with me, but I figured at least I’d see a bit more of the city. I sat at my laptop in the lobby of the Lakeo getting some school work done until shortly before 5pm, at which time I was to meet Don at the UN building. He’d taken me there the day before, showing me his office and the complex where he worked.

On the way to the UN building, I stopped at a minimart for some ever-so-slightly glazed donuts and a diet coke. Then in the lobby of one of the wings of the UN building, I sat on a sofa and munched on the donuts and tried sips of the cola. Things seemed to go pretty well though I had to concentrate on swallowing. But solid food was going down—with a lot of help from my mind—but going. Cola was the usual combo job of sliding and swallowing with effort. When Don came out, we headed down to the Mekong and walked along a dirt lane that followed the river. Three and four story buildings, some wooden structures and looking grandly old, stood on one side; on the river side were shacks, trees, stalls, parked bikes, parked Toyota Corollas, dogs, women in long skirts, fishermen, boys running half naked to swim, the best of Laos, it seemed to me as the sun hung low in the sky.

Don sipped from a beer and I from a bottle of 7-up on a deck café on stilts just barely over the Mekong shore. In one corner was a ramshackle kitchen—open to the elements-- that looked none too clean, and the tables and chairs on the deck were all of a light wood and a bit rickety. But it was a charming moment. The sun was just touching the horizon, the river, sending gold across the water. In the reeds and grasses ten feet below us, several youngsters wearing only shorts were jumping off a log and into the river. “The current can be treacherous,” Don said. But the boys seemed to be swimming fine. Out on the water, some longboats puttered by. On the other side of the river, the town was Thai. The river marked the border here, but there were no river crossings. A few birds flew over the sandbars of the river; some insects and lizards made their tropical noises, and the distant voices of the boys in the river were fading as they swam further out. I could understand why Don felt peace here. Especially after the lunacy and gridlock of Dubai. “Don,” I said. “If you have health, love your students, and love this land, you have it made.” He nodded. “You’re right.”

We didn’t want to eat here, so we walked back along the same dirt road until we came to a restaurant which, as many were, was open on one side to the road and river. We sat inside, where I once again picked through some sweet & sour, doing more picking than swallowing. A tall, rather big middle-aged Canadian talked to us from the next table after we started chatting with him—as Westerners sometimes do in foreign places. But I’m afraid he was a bit much. He was teaching at some school in town and had been here for some time, having bought a house in a nearby village. His new white jeep was parked outside. “For the Lao wife,” he told us. “Gotta have all of the best if you’re married to the foreigner.” I asked him if he’d go back to Canada, to which he laughed. “Not a chance, hell no. Why? Money’s okay here, got me a Lao wife, a house, some cash. No taxes, no cold weather. No, done with Canada.” He was quite expressive, arms often flailing or motioning. He did most of the talking, too. After we’d paid for our food and said our so-longs to the Canadian, we headed back down the road. “That guy’s just a little too much, said Don. “Man, I just try to stay away from people like that.” I understood. Compared to soft-spoken Asians, or even the more sedate Europeans, North Americans can take some getting used to.

Well, that's it for Laos. Darn swallowing problem.

More China Adventures

2009-11-10T09:18:00.000-08:00

CHENGDU—in Sichuan Province

Another long train ride, this time to Chengdu, was less interesting than the previous one. I appeared to be the only Westerner on the train. The train was packed with travelers since the week-long vacation holiday was approaching, and I’d unfortunately been assigned an upper berth. Rats. Well, most of the trip I read, looked out the window, and then after 12 hours met Lena, a young Chinese woman who spoke good English. We talked about our travelers while perched on seats in the corridor. She helped me select some food from what I call the “food lady” when she wheeled her cart filled with rice and veggie dishes down the train corridor. Lena also showed me a video on her camera of her skydiving adventure in Australia. When she got off the train a few hours later, I felt quite lonely. Soon afterwards though, a tall middle-aged white gentleman of large proportions (beer-bellied) came walking through the car looking a bit lost and asking a young Chinese guy he was with if he was sure this led to the diner car. I finished reading the chapter I was engrossed in before heading to the diner myself, eager to meet with someone who spoke English.

The guy was Michael, from Australia. Sitting with him and his new business-minded Chinese friend who was on his way to Chengdu to make a bundle of money, I ordered some tea and enjoyed some conversation. It did appear as if Michael, on a month-long holiday from Aussie-land and his wife and kids, had imbibed something stronger than the green tea I’d been drinking. He also reminded me a little bit of Kramer from Seinfeld—but without the wild hairdo. After chatting a bit about various travels (favorite topic of backpackers since no-one else is interested), I headed off to the bathroom to wash the omnipresent grime and dust off of my hands. I should mention that most of the toilets in the Chinese trains are of the squat style. The tiny room, twice the size of your average phone booth, contained only the silver metallic basin set in the floor and a floor suspiciously sticky with the remains of urine as well as the dust of human shoes. Ah, the joys of traveling in Asia (or Serbia). And of course across the corridor, where there are sinks, there is no soap. In fact, I didn’t notice anyone using soap. In most places in China, aside from KFC and McDonalds, you won’t find soap. It always irritated the hell out of me that in the 21st Century (got that? Twenty first!), trains in China didn’t have soap in the ‘bathrooms. I mean, what on earth do the Chinese schools teach the kids?

At the frenetic train station in Chengdu, Michael and I opted to share a taxi to the hostel where I’d made a reservation. He’d heard vaguely of another hostel but was willing to give this place a go. In the taxi, he rather exuberantly greeted the driver, a thin scared-looking man. “Hey, you won’t overcharge us, huh?” Michael said jokingly. “Chengdu looks great but lots of crazy traffic, huh?” The driver probably didn’t understand any of it but nodded a lot and drove us through some heavy traffic at dusk. My first impression was that Chengdu was an ugly city. The street on which the taxi weaved was narrower than the wider roads of Beijing, and either side was lined with little poor-looking shops. As in Beijing, these shops sold everything from toilets to travel services to grocery items. There was a considerable amount of horn honking, bikes dodging cars, scooters scooting between cars, dented buses carrying a full load of tired-looking passengers, and just a lot of dirt and grime.

The Traffic Inn, an oddly-named hostel, turned out to be a good choice. It’s set behind a larger hotel, and just aside a brown river lined with high grassy banks. The office had a proper counter/desk and two efficient English speaker young guys behind it. Two computer consoles to the side were occupied by backpackers. After checking in (we each opted for a private room), one of the guys led us through a dining/lounge area and through more doors to a wide corridor half open to the outside; the room was basic but clean: a big double bed, table, and a chair. There was a bit of the exotic to the place; I was reminded of a Caribbean beach front hotel. I asked the guy as he handed me the key if there was a good restaurant around. I wanted to add “not Chinese!” but didn’t. Fortunately, he suggested trying a place called Peter’s Tex-Mex. “It’s very popular with everyone,” he insisted. “Just out to the right, and after the flyover bridge you’ll see it. Five minutes.”

After a twenty-minute walk, with Michael fretting that we’d somehow missed it, the welcoming sign of Peter’s Tex Mex appeared. Inside looked cozy and clean. There was an interior second floor ‘balcony’ area, and best of all, a very clean bathroom that actually had soap in a dispenser. I ordered a salad because my body hadn’t taken in veggies in a few days and some pancakes. I washed it down with cola zero. (The next day, when I went back, I was delighted to find DIET A&W ROOT BEER.). The food was great, such a treat. When at home, we just don’t appreciate the variety of tasty food we have at hand, do we?

Michael was off to some other town the next day, which actually pleased me because we didn’t have much in common and even the next morning in the hostel lobby gave off the aura of one slightly drunk. Nice guy, though. I did some work on my laptop, grading essays, and then wandered down the street outside the hostel, following the river. Old guys were fishing (I wouldn’t eat any fish coming out of that river, I have to say), couples walked hand in hand beneath the non-romantic gray sky, and down on the main road, China hustled and bustled. I wanted to try a different restaurant, and had read on the Chengdu Tourist Map about a placed called Grandma’s Kitchen. It sounded cozy, with the promise of some good home-cooked food, presumably by an old woman who had years of culinary experience. Getting the directions from the ever-friendly kid at the front counter, I walked down more streets, wound up taking a public bus that hadn’t been washed (interior and exterior) in probably a year, and hopped off along a road where a subway system is in its early planning stage. Within the span of a few minutes, I saw tank-top wearing men (too thin to be construction workers) digging, sweating, working machinery, and a man pedaling some wagon contraption filled with little red Chinese flags. With the holidays approaching, he doubtless hoped for a booming business. Just after that, I passed a beggar with a huge hole in his calf, a deep gauge as if some beast had ripped away half his calf. He just sat with the leg exposed and a bowl filled with yuan notes. I fought off the nausea and hated the Chinese government for not providing health care to their citizens. It’s like David had said: “In China, if you don’t have family or close friends, and you get sick, you’re screwed.”
Anyway, I got to Grandma’s Kitchen, which was empty of customers, not a good sign. The waitress handed me a menu as I sat at a table near the window (great view of the metal barricade hiding the construction). I thought the Russian veggie soup might be good, and asked how big the bowl of soup would be (using motions). After all, Grandma was asking for three dollars for one bowl—exorbitant by Chinese standards. When the waitress showed me the bowl, the size of a small cup, I declined. I made the decision to go back to Peter’s Tex Mex, where I enjoyed a burrito and a chocolate shake.

My highlight of the Chengdu days was a visit to the Panda sanctuary, the breeding facility that’s appeared on various documentaries. The Traffic Inn bus took a group of us there, and we arrived early enough to watch the first feeding. The place is a little haven for the cute, seemingly cuddly bears, with forestland, bamboo in abundance, wooden walkways and platforms for them to play on. A small horde of tourists worked their digital cameras to the max as the first three pandas came ambling rather lazily along from their night-quarters and into a clearing. They climbed some steps and sat happily munching bamboo as the tourists clicked and oohed. It was impressive. A guide then led our hostel group to another viewing area, from which we could watch several pandas, a couple of them clearly youngsters, play. They don’t play fiercely but just sort of sit next to each other and without too much energy, nip, slap, roll around. It’s the kind of thing that delights tourists, of course. But the bears don’t play long, as if to say “we’ve done our show, now we’re going to be lazy.” At which point, they tend to either sit up next to a wall or go hide indoors somewhere. Tired ourselves but happy, we allowed ourselves to be led to a building with a café out front. While some of our gang watched a short video about pandas, I wandered down past flower gardens to a small lake cluttered with lily pads near the bank. A couple with their little boy were pointing at and watching goldfish frolicking near their feet, and when I say ‘goldfish’, I don’t mean just a school, but a whole school district. The fish were big ones and absolutely jam packed, wriggling, puckering, thrashing, swimming. I felt that I could have walked out across them.

The rest of Chengdu was okay. I did have a nice final day when the sun came out. I walked down more affluent streets with some high-rises, and found a large open square at the front of which was a large white marble museum and a statue of Chairman Mao. At the opposite end was a McDonalds, which I visited along with a good number of Chinese families. I took a picture of a big sign announcing the 60th Anniversary of the revolution; Chinese tourists were snapping pics of each other in front of it, and a nice father of two agreed with a smile to take my picture with my camera. I felt quite happy to be in Chengdu.

Tired of train travel, I decided to fly to Lijiang, which is further south in Yunnan Province. On my way to the airport by taxi, I again presumed that the airport would be similar to the Beijing train station: a dreary affair with hordes of Chinese with their sacks, bundles and boxes. So I was happy to see a totally modern, clean, efficient airport just twice as big as Omaha’s Eppley Airfield. There were even some luxury good shops. The check in at China Eastern Airlines went without fuss: the girl scanned my passport, found my online reservation and gave me my boarding pass. Security was present but not a nightmare. And as I’d expected to see an aircraft in the same condition of the city buses, I was thrilled to see a sleek modern jet. It didn’t take long to board, and I sat beside two Chinese women in their 30’s who spoke enough English just to ask me where I was from. The interior of the aircraft was practically gleaming, and when it came time for the usual flight safety rules, little projectors suddenly made an appearance from the ceiling. It reminded me of Sulu’s little view thingy on the bridge of the Enterprise.

Lijiang is a great and pleasantly small city in southern China not far from the Tibetan border. As I found out the next morning after waking up in my dorm and poking my head out the door, a low range of mountains was the backdrop to the city—one in which there are no skyscrapers, thankfully. The Pamba Hostel was set on a narrow pedestrian-only street. On either side and throughout this old town, the architecture was that of the Naxi minority: small dark wooden structures –and not entirely separate from the neighboring house or shop. For the most part it seemed like one building (usually one story) that kept on going down the street. At any rate, the streets, alleys and homes were quaint and delightful, until about 10am when the on-holiday tourists started emerging from their various guesthouses and hotels in order to wander the quaint and delightful area. Just my luck that I was here during the greatest holiday in a half century. Sigh.

The Pamba was one of the best hostels (except for the fact that the bed sheets had seemed a bit moist. Not quite mildewed but not quite crisp and dry. I’d found that often in China maids simply neglected to change sheets or really ‘wash’ anything. Some told me that if sheets, towels, even laundry were washed, it might not be with soap. Anyway, the guys behind the front desk at the Pamba were as unique as the town. Both Chinese, Nick was in his mid-twenties with black-framed glasses; he liked to crack subtle jokes and made it clear that he didn’t think there was such a thing as “freedom” in China, which of course any one of us understood. River wasn’t so funny but was attentive and kind, even lending me his jeans jacket that morning because otherwise I would have shivered with cold. Lijiang was a tad cooler than the cities up north, due to location.

So with River’s jacket keeping my comfy, I wandered along narrow lanes for quite a while, watching life and watching other tourists (mostly Chinese but a number of backpackers) watch life. There was a long-haired scruffy Chinese dude, kind of a hippie, who with his little ugly pink bulldog allowed backpackers to take his photo for just a few Yuan. He posed for me on a stone bridge with a clean stream and the mountains in the background. After that, I noted the incongruent scene of Chinese travelers talking on their mobiles while viewing some village women down by the stream washing their clothes in the same fashion as their parents and grandparents. I stopped by one of many shops selling various meats (in various conditions), all looking dried, twisted, almost like jerky. A young woman behind the counter offered me a taste of Yak meet, and I couldn’t refuse. Besides, I wanted to know how it tasted. Chewing it carefully, because the piece was tough, my taste buds made their conclusion: Yuck on Yak.
Other interesting moments: in a plaza containing a plethora of colorful red and yellow flowers (more preparation for the 60th anniversary), a pair of huge wooden waterwheels in a stream, and stalls selling everything from clothing to Tibetan prayer flags, I watched a garbage truck making its rounds on the neighboring street. As it would move forward, instead of the BEEP BEEP BEEP that you might expect, a speaker emanated the tune of Happy Birthday. After that, another heartbreaking image: a crippled man crawling, or rather dragging himself along the walkway beside the river. One of the guy’s bone-thin legs was somehow wrapped partially around his neck, the other just kind of stuck out. Very sad.

I found a great little café called the Prague Café. A two-story affair of wood, the girls running the place spoke decent English and served up a menu of Western items. The place would have been a hit in Europe or the USA. One wall was lined with well-worn books that you could buy or trade; on the other walls were various pictures and sketching of Prague, Czech Republic. Upstairs, where I sat in order to gaze out the window at the proverbial babbling brook running alongside the alleyway, there were more pictures of Prague, and one, oddly, of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara. But I didn’t give a damn. The food, when it arrived, was tasty and filling.

After a couple days of tourism and work (continuing the online classes), I decided to do the trek at Tiger Leaping Gorge (TLG). This is one of the most difficult treks in China (or so I read in a travel book). I hadn’t been impressed with the pictures at Google Images: a deep gorge, yes, with high cliffs on either side, and the brown Yangtze River snaking its way through one of the deepest gorges on Earth. Nice but I just wasn’t sure. But River, the guy from the Pamba, convinced me to go…at least along the ‘low path’ following the river. “Not as beautiful, but pretty easy to do,” he’d said. An Israeli guy that I met, named Hitai, was going to do the trek, and while packing our mini-packs in our room that evening, I decided to play it by ear. The first step would be getting there the next morning.

A minivan (arranged by Nick and River) took Hitai, me, and some other Israeli youth (ignored by Hitai) to a town about an hour north of Lijiang. The driver pretty much drove right through the town to where the trek would begin; at that point, it wasn’t going to be possible for me to follow the low road, so I made a quick decision: just do the trek the right way—from on top of the gorge. Of course one had to get there first. Hitai and I set off at a decent pace. The ‘path’ as it were was a dirt trail that just ascended from this one-lane road into some woodland. We weren’t even totally sure it was right but the driver had pointed and jabbered some Chinese at us. The nice thing was that we were alone on the trail. For awhile, we thought that perhaps we were on the wrong trail and the other Israeli’s had gotten it right. But we plowed on, following a curving trail that actually became a narrow ‘road’ of rocks and dirt. After an hour, we arrived at a tiny guesthouse/café—a bare-bones shack with a rickety wooden deck and a counter where goodies and drinks were sold. The teenage boy spoke a few words of English, offering “beer, water, cola…”

A funny note about water. When I’d met an Australian couple in Lijiang who had done the trek, the rather powerfully-built husband (perhaps in his fifties) said to me, “Take at least 3 liters of water! You’ll need it! The trek is treacherous in parts, and takes a lot of stamina!” He repeated at least once more the need for “three liters!” His wife had nodded sagely. “Three liters.” Well, of course Hitai and each had packed one tiny half-liter of water because we carried only our own small daypacks with the essentials of clothing and reading material—and the water. So here we were at this first guesthouse, and there are dozens of water bottles, so I bought more. “There’s probably all this crap at every guesthouse,” said Hitai. Looking over the assortment of Chinese crackers, chocolate, Doublemint gum, ice cream, colas, and stuff I couldn’t identify (that happened a LOT in China), I spied my Snickers. Just a half hour earlier, huffing our way up the trail, I’d commented how nice it would be to munch on a Snickers. After all, diabetics are allowed Snickers while on Asian treks. Hitai had turned and chuckled, “No, no, they won’t have Snickers up here.” He had probably wanted to add, ‘Silly Americans’ but hadn’t. Now at the guesthouse I smiled with triumph and bought the Snickers---just in case my blood sugar levels went low, you understand. The next hour’s walk found us walking along a trail on the side of the cliff. Upwards would be impossible, and down would be equally so. The views were fantastic though. On the other side of the gorge, the cliff still towered over us; most of it was forested or at least with a lot of brush and low trees. Way below was the Yangtze.

We lunched at a guesthouse with a pretty courtyard filled with bougainvillea or something similar. Already the view was quite splendid; from outside the guesthouse, you could look across the gorge at a massive green wall several hundred meters away. We chatted briefly with a Dutch couple, both in their late thirties: the woman was slightly heavy set with a ruddy-complexioned face and the hubby was well-built, a body-builder type though I thought that anyone getting that tanned was heading for a bout with cancer at some point. We also talked to the ladies at the next table, who turned out to be Danish. One was only in her early forties, but her companion had to be in her sixties. The climb would be a challenge, I thought. Hitai and I soon pushed on, following an increasingly difficult trail. In fact, I wouldn’t call it a trail. More like a rock-strewn pathway resembling the bed of an ancient waterless stream, only ascending sharply upwards. It got so that after fifteen minutes of following this ‘trail’, we had to take a breather. “How many bends did Nick say there were?” asked Hitai.
“Twenty-eight,” I replied. And we were on number three. “Look,” I said. “If you want to run ahead, don’t worry. I’ll catch up.” But the way my heart was pounding, I thought it might not be until evening at this rate. Earlier, when I’d asked Hitai if he were a fast walker, he had replied, “Well, I was Israeli Special forces” with a grin.

A half hour later or so, it was grueling. I’d lost sight of Hitai but carried on. It was necessary to get a good foothold. Of all the treks I’d done, including in the Nepali Himalayas and at Rocky Mountain National Park (that bloody horrible Bierstadt lake hike!), this was worst. I had to stop every few minutes and catch my breath. A serene and gorgeous place to die, though, at ole Tiger Leaping Gorge. Well, after a few more horrid minutes, I literally stumbled like a drunken Aussie upon a place well shaded by trees, and where Hitai sat on a boulder breathing heavily and saying “Wow, that was a bit…difficult.” Nearby were two old men with horses. They intelligently waited while we caught our breath and then said, “Ride horse, only 100 yuan,” which is about fifteen bucks or so. They smiled, hoping for a sale.
“No,” said Hitai smiling back. He flexed a muscle. “Strong, can walk.” The old guys should have been more concerned with me, a more likely customer, and indeed the one guy just started back down the trail in search of needy backpackers, but the one just squatted in the dust, patiently waiting for all of two minutes before repeating, “Ride horse, good, eighty Yuan.”
For a moment, I thought Hitai might accept. The guy just stared at Hitai. “He’s looking at me like a vulture,” said Hitai “Like he knows I can’t make it.” He laughed.

We plowed on up the old stupid mountain, me thinking how nice it would be to be sipping coffee at the Prague Café and the old guy leading the horse following us. After a couple of minutes he called out in Chinese to get our attention and said, “Okay, sixty Yuan.” Well, the long and short of it is that when he got down to forty, I did the math and said, “He’s offering to let me ride up the next twenty-something switchbacks for six bucks. I’m doing it!” Why suffer when you can enjoy a nice horse ride and help out the local economy? The poor old guy needed the dough, and he looked quite pleased as he helped me up on the horse, adjusted the saddle, fiddled with the stirrups, etc. I rode happily along, able to admire the view instead of watch the rocks on the trail. It made a nice difference. Hitai kept up a good pace, and to be honest, made better time than the horse, which I soon discovered was quite a weak beast, probably over-burdened, not, and panting like a puppy at play. I felt awfully sorry for the animal after another ten switchbacks. The Chinese guy, rather indifferent to the animal, followed behind calling out little Chinese “giddyup” equivalents.

The end of the switchbacks of Tiger Leaping Gorge isn’t really the top, but it’s the end of the arduous climb. It’s where I got off the horse; the rest I’d do by foot. At the top were a half dozen other hikers, all crowded around a couple Chinese vendors selling cola, beer, water, etc. under a wooden makeshift covering. I wondered how the vendor had made it up—or down—the trail with all that gear. Anyway, there was an outcropping of rock that looked down upon the river far below, but the vendor, a wiry little guy in his forties, said to all of us, “Can look, free, no pictures.” If you wanted a picture of the gorge, you had to pay about twenty Yuan, which of course was a rip-off but this was China. There were lots of them. Since the view all around us was just as spectacular, the gathering crowd of hikers, including the two Danish ladies, the Dutch couple and a few of the ‘lost’ Israelis, snapped pictures and drank thirstily from water bottles and still sucked in air after the hike.

That night, we all called it quits for the evening at the Teahouse Inn. The Dutch couple, along with a scrawny English kid and his German girlfriend, had intended to continue on until evening to the next guest house; but as the Dutch woman said to our group, “I think this is a good place to stop.” The place had a large courtyard and a couple of wings with rooms. Hitai chose to sleep in the dorm since it was only twenty yuan (about two dollars) but the Dutch, the young couple, the Danish ladies and myself all treated ourselves to the luxury of a private room. I paid ten bucks for a hot shower and double bed. Several of us met in the courtyard just before dusk, to sip tea, drink beer, do the usual travel chat. That’s the best way to get info about travel: talk to people doing it. All the guidebooks and online travel advice is nothing compared to chatting in person with people who have just come from such-and-such a city and give firsthand information. As a nearly full moon appeared above the cliff across the way, I was so thankful to God for bringing me to this place for this one hour (and to the private room, of course). The cliff was a mountain, naturally, but rising behind it was a range of grayer higher mountains, and behind those, snow-capped peaks. The full moon and the vestiges of dusk light were an ethereal background to the dusting of snow blowing off the highest peaks. This was what travel was all about. I kept that in mind as I lay in bed that night listening to the old Danish woman snoring like a lumberjack (why is it never a car salesman or even a doctor?).

In the morning, I woke and wandered down to the courtyard to try some breakfast. The air was darn chilly, and here I was without a jacket. Hitai had gone out to a market in Lijiang before departing and purchased a heavy sweater for the sum of 200 yuan (about $25). But he’d soon discovered that packing it in his daypack was a mistake. Expecting cold with altitude, he’d been surprised to find the day temps to be hot. In fact, one can hike at Tiger Leaping Gorge in short sleeves through December. At any rate, I was allowed by the family running the place (reminded me of a poor Nepali family) to hang out in the kitchen. I sat by the tiny oddly-rigged wood-burning stove as two teens prepared breakfast in the big open kitchen—one that looked like you’d expect to see at a guesthouse deep in the Himalayas. A kitchen none too clean, of course, what with a chicken or two wandering through, floors that hadn’t been cleaned in heaven knows how long, and general disorder. But they did a bang-up job with the food, though, and for a couple dollars, who can complain.

The Danish ladies had risen early and departed with the rising sun. I know that because I heard them banging around in the next room for at least an hour. The Dutch couple and others decided for a leisurely morning. So after breakfast, a slow packing, and some general chit chat in the courtyard, we set off though not at the same time. Hitai, who was happy just to wander about the nearby ‘village’ of three homes (more wooden contraptions rather like giant mansion versions of Jed Clampet’s old Kentucky home) and snap pictures of half naked kids running about small patches of corn or giant pigs grunting in their pens.

The rest of the day brought us a fairly level trail with minor ups and downs as the trail snaked through a mix of woodland and more open areas with brush, tiny spindly trees, etc. I’ll skip the scenery commentary and come to the end: by that evening, a group of us including the Dutch, the young skinny couple, and a few Israelis, all finally stepped onto concrete at the end point, where we cheered, the Dutch couple embracing. Some of them were staying at Tina’s Guesthouse, a much publicized (in backpacking circles) guesthouse near a large concrete bridge that spans the gorge. Hitai and I had talked about spending the night either here or further on down the road at a place called Sean’s Guesthouse. We checked out the rooms at Tina’s but didn’t like Tina herself. A Chinese woman in her 50’s, she seemed rather arrogant, and at first refused to help the Dutch couple telephone the place where their backpacks were being stored. In China, it’s common for hostels and guesthouses to make phone calls for guests, helping them out when possible. Plus the atmosphere at Tina’s was just a bit too touristy, as if everyone was spending the night here just because it was Tina’s and one was almost expected to. Hitai and I walked twenty minutes on down the road, a lovely walk that took us by quiet guesthouses, squat wooden home/shacks, all along the base of one side of the gorge. On the other side of the road was another drop of perhaps a hundred feet to the river. Our faithful friend, the “wall of mountain” as I thought of it, took up the view to our right.

Sean of Sean’s Guesthouse is a minor celebrity among some backpackers. Unlike Tina, Sean is laid back, helpful, has a sense of humor, and runs a clean and pleasant guesthouse. He’s probably in his forties but I’m not sure; he’s missing half an arm, speaks great English, and pointed out to me in his office the online comments that many travelers have made. “Look here,” he says, his finger next to one entry that states categorically that Sean is fantastically helpful and definitely on the bizarre side. “He’s right!” says Sean. “It’s the most honest post.” He laughs happily. He grew up in this village and knows the gorge very well. The rooms at Sean’s are good quality; Hitai and I shared a room because Sean gave us a big discount (just for asking). For five bucks each, we had two double beds and a private bathroom. After dumping our backpacks on the beds and peering into the bathroom, we were in for a surprise: there was a bathtub! A clean, modern bathtub. I hadn’t seen one of those for a month. I didn’t want a bath, but boy was it nice to not be spraying water all over the sink and toilet or have water flood the floor.

Dinner at the guesthouse was outside at one of several picnic-bench-like tables. After dusk, I sat with a twenty-something kid from Chicago who had been on the road for months and had months more to travel. There were three American girls who were teaching English in Kunming and were enjoying the big holiday by traveling. We all chatted, exchanged info, and this is where I got a valuable piece of information that practically saved my life: in Kunming, where I was headed, there’s a place called Chicago Coffee—with Wireless Internet, and it’s clean, with a clean bathroom. Well, more on that in the Kunming section. Jump ahead if you can’t wait. But to end this Tiger Leaping Gorge narrative, after a nice hot shower, a long sleep and a lazy morning, I boarded a minivan (arranged for a few of us by Sean) and headed back to Lijiang. Hitai and I said good bye because he was going north to another tourist mecca called Shangri-La. I just didn’t want to go to a place tackily named after the famous paradise shown in Lost Horizon.

I spent a couple more days at the Pamba enjoying the delights of the Prague Café, the little flowing ‘river’ on its concrete banks. I met a Polish girl named Gosi, an exuberant and happy young woman who showed me the correct way to use Couchsurfing and with whom I took a long walk in one of those Chinese parks that Americans think of as, well, oriental jewels: gardens, temples, serene lakes, bridges. In fact, I’d tried to get into the park days earlier, but the entrance fee of ten bucks really put me off. Sometimes the Chinese just gouge tourists. It’s ridiculous. The park wasn’t Rocky Mountain National Park, after all. I’d huffed at the ticket agent and stormed off. When I told Gosi, she said, “I snuck in a back way. There’s a gate but no one even stopped me.” So she insisted we try again—and we did, and no one stopped us. Who knows why. After enjoying the place and getting some good shots, we returned to the Pamba and talked over tea. She’d been hesitantly considering Tiger Leaping Gorge, but after my building it up to be ten times better than the Grand Canyon (it’s not), she was all in a bother to get Nick at the front desk to reserve a seat on the next day’s bus to the gorge. “I’m going to do it,” she stated. I suppose that after traipsing along the twenty-eight switchbacks, she was cursing my name.

The next city on my list was Kunming. To get there, I could fly or take the ‘sleeper bus’. Flying was too expensive due to the holiday, but Nick secured a lower berth on the sleeper bus for me. I left the hostel in the evening, just after dusk, and walked through the old town to the main street of ‘new town’. Unfortunately, it was drizzling and no taxi was stopping, so I fretted and said some bad words. Here it was, dark, cold, rainy and my bus was leaving in thirty minutes. Thankfully, a young guy on the side of the road spoke about ten words of English, but it was enough for him to make clear to a minivan driver (whom we flagged down) where I wanted to go.

Taking a Chinese sleeper bus is a bit of an adventure. We don’t have these in the USA. No one else has them, as far as I know. The interior layout consists of 3 short, narrow bunks set just off the floor, with very narrow aisles between them. Above each bunk is a higher bunk, so the bus holds approximately 30 or 40 passengers, who lay down for the duration of the voyage. I boarded with the other passengers on that dark, drizzly evening in Lijiang, and for the next 9 hours, the bus rumbled and weaved through Chinese countryside, its headlights a beacon for other buses, cars, pedestrians, cows, whatever was on the road. From blaring TV monitors at various points, passengers could watch a Chinese drama that didn’t make much sense to me; some young student type had had a run in with the Shanghai mafia, it seemed, and a girl was involved though I couldn’t make any sense of it. I listened to my I-Pod and read a bit. Thankfully, by 11pm the film ended (with some explosions if I recall though there had been a number of explosions and shootings) and the lights went out. The Chinese transport authorities love to turn the lights out. Probably gives them a sense of power. At any rate, I slept fitfully, mostly because of the one guy snoring on the bus—the guy next to me. The bus drivers weaving, a few sudden stops where the driver had obviously stomped on the brakes, even a called rest stop at some ghostly conglomeration of structures failed to awaken him.

We arrived in Kunming at 5:30 in the morning; the sky was still dark and most of the passengers emerged from the bus in a rather dazed, sleepy state. Out on a small road, I flagged down a taxi, handed her the slip of paper on which was written the hostel address, and she flipped on the meter and drove quietly. I’d expected a lengthy trip but we hadn’t even gone 5 minutes when she stopped in front of the Cloudland Hostel. A small courtyard with chairs and two billiard tables was devoid of human life, but I walked on into the ‘office’ and said I’d made a reservation online. A Chinese man (I guess I should stop writing that. Of course he was Chinese) of thin build (I should stop writing that, too. Most are of thin build). Anyway, he flipped open this little booklet which had English instructions for check-in typed out. “PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR PASSPORT” said the first page, so I complied. The guy jotted down the relevant info and handed it back. He flipped to another page. “WHEN YOU CHECKING OUT PLEASE BRING SHEETS AND PILLOW LINENS” and he handed me a pile of linen. Next page: “PLEASE PAY ON CHECKOUT. HERE IS YOUR KEY” and he handed me a key. I lugged the backpack up a flight of stairs, walked the length of a balcony overlooking the courtyard and quietly opened the door. I hate arriving late at night at a hostel because I’m a thoughtful person who doesn’t want to annoy others, but I needn’t have worried; a Chinese backpacker was sitting in front of his laptop watching something. Must have been important at 5:30am. I simply threw the sheets on the bed, smoothed them out, lay down, and slept.

Kunming turned out to be the nicest Chinese city I would stay in. In many ways, it’s the usual collection of big concrete buildings, but the place had some charms, notably a Wal-Mart and Chicago Coffee. Well, okay, it also had Western Hills Park. And some nice shady streets, parks where you could watch people doing their en-masse calisthenics, and markets. In the morning after my short nap, I was down in the office, now presided over by two very efficient and pretty girls who really made the place run. A few backpackers were out in the courtyard sipping coffee; one guy shot billiards, and I peeked into the hostel café with its nice dark-wood furniture and comfy sofas. I knew I’d like the place. In the office, I was handing over my passport to be kept in the safe when I noticed a Chinese girl holding an American passport. As we got to chatting, I learned she was from San Francisco and that she was boldly traveling around China for a couple months on her own. She’d befriended this old American guy in his late sixties named Gary, who had just arrived from the USA with his bike. So the girl, whose name was Yvonne, asked, “We’re going to Western Hills Park now, wanna come?” So I did.

We flagged down a taxi and began the twenty minute drive through decent traffic on a fairly sunny day. We wound up taking a taxi as opposed to the bus because Gary has a new titanium leg that cost as much as some houses, as he explained with a chuckle. “A tall man of average build and sporting a gray beard, he looked like he’d seen and done a lot in his travels, which had been considerable. “Does your leg hurt much?” Yvonne said from the front seat. Gary patted his leg and said, “Not much at all. But I was smart; it’s important to do hours of therapy a day for the first 3 months. I’ve biked, walked, stretched to get this baby in shape.” He said that he was going to bike through southern China and perhaps into Myanmar. I had to hand it to him, I’m not sure I’d be so adventurous with a new titanium leg. Anyway, he said that biking was more of the cure but that walking was still difficult if he had to walk too much or do much climbing. Therefore, when the taxi dumped us at the entrance of the park, more a series of low mountains, Yvonne was concerned that Gary might have difficulties ascending the sloping street that wound through this part of the park. Scads of Chinese tourists were everywhere, enjoying their holiday. We passed something like a Japanese Tea Garden, a couple small temples, but finally came to a ski-lift. “Let’s take it,” suggested Gary. “It’ll save us a half hour of going on up the hill.” Yvonne and I agreed.

Gary and Yvonne took one ski-lift and I sat alone in the one behind them. The views were interesting, certainly, mostly of trees and thick foliage, bushes a mere ten to twenty feet below, at times. The journey lasted nearly twenty minutes, passing one temple-clad hill and on over the treetops—though far to my left I could see Kunming farther below and the absolutely gargantuan Green Lake, aptly named. The body of water looked like someone had spilled a ton of light green dye into it.

In short, we spent hours there climbing steep stone staircases that meandered up, over, all around through woods, along cliffs, through a couple of mini tunnels, past temples, and outdoor garden cafes serving green tea, Lipton tea, cola, beer, etc. We stopped for a quick bite at some café with mostly clean tables. I offered to guard the daypacks and cameras while Yvonne offered to get me some food. “Soup okay”? she asked. “Just noodles.” I said, “sure.” When she and Gary returned, the soup looked like thin broth filled with all kinds of spices, noodles, little red things, little green things, and the steam made my nose burn. To be honest, it tasted okay but I would have preferred some good old potato soup.

One memorable stop was the place most sought after: Dragon’s Gate. It was an arch with some ornate colorful engravings set beside an opening in a cliff. In the cliff was a ten-foot Buddhist god to which now a dozen worshippers waved incense sticks at. Behind those who could squeeze into the opening were dozens of others, all of us jostling for elbow room and movement in a space about the size of a small living room. I leaned over a railing to observe the western edges of Kunming below and got a little dizzy. The drop was straight down a few hundred meters, I’d guess. There were some nice, expensive houses built on the shore of the lake, and I pointed out to Gary hundreds of dark specks in the water. “What are they?” I asked.
He squinted, shrugged and offered, “Ducks?” But to me they moved ever so slightly and had the shape of fish, but from this height they would have to be BIG fish! Oddly, whatever the creatures were, they had formed into a huge circular group; it was as if some force shield kept them within an enclosure. I never found out what it was exactly.

Gary, Yvonne and I took the ski lift chairs back across the carpet of treetops and on a gravel road, waited with a couple hundred others at a bus stop. Thank heavens that Yvonne spoke good Chinese; she asked a group of others, pouring over a map, how we could get back to the Cloudland Hostel. “You need bus 2,” a couple young male teens told us. So we stood and waited. Bus 16 came and a gang of tourists would do battle to board, squeezing in like sardines. With a belch of black smoke, the bus would pull out and another bus 16 would pull up and the same thing would happen again. “I hope we don’t have to wait too long,” said Gary. “I still need to assemble my bike tonight.” After another ten minutes of watching a string of bus 16s come, load up and pull out, we walked over to one of many young entrepreneur “private taxis”. One of them offered to take us for an amount twenty times the cost of the bus. Gary started to haggle, and the guy walked away. Obviously not interested in doing business. Yvonne had found a woman private driver, and we were about to settle on a price when bus 2 ambled along, so with a cry of joy, Gary led the charge to get on board. The thing arrived empty but by the time we boarded, it was standing room only. The half dozen teens that Yvonne had been talking to were on the bus to, and when after thirty minutes it arrived in some vacant lot, the guys were good enough to point the way to the street on which our hostel sat. We only had a short walk back.

We had dinner at the hostel. The café was dimly lit, even romantic with brick walls, Chinese lamps, soft music playing, and tasty food. We chatted and ate, washed pasta down with cold Chinese beer, and then Gary said he had to go to his room to put the bike together. “It takes a few hours,” he said with a laugh. “I’m pretty good at it, but I get bogged down with all the little nuts and bolts.” I needed to do schoolwork so, after agreeing to see Gary in the morning before he left, and to meet Yvonne for breakfast, I went to the office to retrieve my laptop and begin checking online assignments.

The highlights of the next day included a trip to Chicago Coffee and to the Golden Temple. Sounds incongruent, I know, but both were enjoyable. When Yvonne and I walked into Chicago Coffee, I saw Jenny, one of the American teachers who I’d spoken with at Sean’s Guesthouse at Tiger Leaping Gorge. She said, “I wondered if I’d see you here,” and I introduced Yvonne. While the two girls began chatting, I set up my laptop. There were more essays to grade, and the plan was for Yvonne to go investigate some things she’d wanted to do while I worked for a couple hours. Then we’d meet to go to the Golden Temple. And that’s exactly what happened. The only other thing I’ll say about Chicago Coffee is that they made fantastic apple-spice cake (one of their Halloween goodies). It might have been spiced pumpkin cake, or some such concoction, but it was like an autumn trip home and made me one happy camper. The manager, a guy in his late 30’s, hailed from Omaha Nebraska and planned to make Kunming home for the time being.

The Golden Temple was, like most temples, set high on a hill with a great number of steps leading to it. We passed a malformed beggar, a blind young woman singing, dozens of teens walking hand in hand, giggling as adolescents everywhere do, and more tourists snapping pictures. The pathway through the first temple building was lined with pink orchids and red banners from which hung dozens of paper lanterns. In a Bell Tower, we got a great view of Kunming’s smoggy skyline, but for the most part, the experience was pleasant even if I was getting templed-out.

Back at the Cloudland, Yvonne and I chatted over supper. She was worried and hadn’t slept the night before because she dreaded a phone call to her parents that she had to make soon. “I have to tell them that I’m traveling on after China, you know, like I told you, to Southeast Asia, India, then South America.” The thing was, her parents back in the bay area understood that she was going to do a three-week backpacking tour in China and then come home. “My dad will probably freak out,” she told me. I advised her to tell them ASAP and end the sleepless nights. “Tell them you’re old enough to do what you want.” And she was. While she looked to be in her very early twenties, she was in her early thirties. Asians certainly age well. After eating, she went off to pack because she was catching a night bus to Lijiang or Dali, I forgot exactly. I headed up to my room to shower off the day’s sweat but got to chatting on the second floor landing with an Australian who was teaching Chinese military cadets in Shanghai, and was, of course, on vacation for a couple weeks. When the topic of McDonalds was somehow broached, he made a true statement: “Don’t knock McDonalds. They have the cleanest toilets in China!” I laughed and nodded. “Really,” he said. “You know they’re cleaned well and regularly. Greatest toilets in China.” We wound up going the next day to Chicago Coffee, which he was keen to experience, where we talked and sipped lattes.

My journey continued the next day with another 24-hour marathon train ride to the city of Guilin, which is in the province of Guangzhi. But I didn’t want to stay in Guilin; my objective was a nice quiet town called Yangshuo, about an hour’s bus ride south. The geographical area around this province makes it into all calendars of China due to the fascinating formations known as karsts. You’ve probably seen pictures of these giant hump-shaped hills. At any rate, I was fortunate indeed to meet these teens on the train. Early into the journey, I got to chatting with a thin, wiry university student who was traveling with several friends, male and female. The guy, who said his “English” name was David, was the only one who spoke English, and a bare minimum; but he was a pleasant sort and was happy to practice his language abilities. Towards the end of the journey into Guilin, the whole gang (two guys and three girls) happily and with wide smiles posed for photographs as I snapped pictures of them.

Guilin seemed a bit of a madhouse with busier streets than in Kunming; David kindly walked with me to the bus station, which turned out to be no where near the train station; and once there, we had to navigate a combination marketplace and vague “which building is it” bus station. We brushed aside pestering touts, plowed through the crowd of market shoppers, and finally, at a ticket window, got the ticket. Actually, bless him, David bought the ticket for me because he didn’t think the agent would speak English. “The bus leaves in five minutes,” he said. Was he sweating from the warmth and all our walking or was he nervous that I’d miss the bus? Well, the contraption wasn’t easy to find; you would think this would be an easy task since loads of tourists come here specifically to go to Yangshuo; perhaps they all go through the same motions of frantically searching for a bus. There was an open area with perhaps fifty or sixty buses in various states ranging from doorless, neglected metal corpses to air-conditioned modern vehicles boarding passengers. But David (with me trotting along with my heavy backpack) was scanning the front windows, looking for the Chinese word ‘Yangshuo’. At the last moment, he spotted it, just as the driver was revving the engine and a station worker was ready to shut the cargo hold door. I pumped David’s hand and thanked him profusely. Hopping aboard, I found my seat and felt a great surge of relief that now I could rest.

Yangshuo was a pleasant three-day break for me. I checked into a proper hotel because most of the hostels were down on a street called West Street, an overly-touristy and very loud neighborhood; my hotel was owned and managed by Stephen, a helpful Chinese man in his thirties named Stephen who handed me a map, pointed out some important sights, and let me know I could rent a bike out for $1.50 a day. I found my room (a private room with bathroom), dropped off the backpack, and headed into town. There’s not much I will say about Yangshuo. It’s picturesque with high karsts not more than a hundred yards from my hotel and many more all around the town and in the countryside. West Street was indeed touristy; worse was a street that veered off of it; every shop catered to tourists and I doubt any locals even walk through it. There were the usual bars, cafes, hostels, tattoo parlors, clothing stores, etc. I have to admit that I took advantage of Ruby’s Café—because Ruby offered up some delicious sweet and sour chicken. Aside from that, and a couple places where I made use of WiFi, I hit McDonalds a couple times for some ice cream. I also went to dinner with a young couple staying at my hotel: a rather heavyset American in China studying, and his girlfriend, a native. A pretty quiet evening.

The next day, Stephen the hotel owner rented me a bike (a whole $1.50 for the day!), and I pedaled out into the street warily avoiding traffic that included massive exhaust-belching trucks, automobiles, rickshaws, a number of scooters, and pedestrians. But within ten minutes, I was biking through some pretty dramatic countryside filled with fields, farms, a village here and there, and everywhere the high-rising karsts, perhaps the oddest land formations I’d seen in my life: giant humps climbing a thousand feet out of the ground in their macabre shapes. I got lost once or twice, but happily because this was China and I was biking in the country. I followed a main paved road (with other bikers) to a one-street village where there was obviously a construction boom. Three new houses were being built, at odd angles as if the zoning authority had taken a holiday. The ‘houses’ were thus far of concrete blocks; other village buildings were brick or wood, but with partial walls or roofs of corrugated iron. Pretty much what you’d expect from rural China, and very different from Mayberry RFD. I followed a river that led to a place where tourists were taking rides on long narrow flatboats with the ‘driver’ steering from the back. At another place, a kind of rest stop, I bought a cola light from a teen-age girl who happily agreed to snap a picture of me with my camera and give me further directions. As the sun set, I headed back to town, very much rested—even after cycling through a dirty little village where the dogs looked menacingly at me.

The other thrill I had at Yangshuo was a boat ride down the Li River. This was a bit of an adventure; Stephen at the hotel had arranged for my minibus to take me to a point several kilometers away, at which point, he assured me, ‘someone’ would meet me and guide me to the right flatboat for my cruise. Stephen walked with me down the main busy street until he spotted a minibus approaching and waved at it to stop. “This is the one,” he said as I climbed aboard when it slowed (but didn’t completely halt), and he said something in Chinese to the ticket girl standing at the open door. After a twenty minute ride, the bus pulled into an open area of dirt and grass beside a river that looked to be low. The sky was gray and misty looking, and as the bus stopped, a small horde of women hawkers descended upon the bus. Obviously they made their living preying (I mean ‘helping’) on tourists, and I showed them my paid-for ticket. A couple of the women, one baring yellowing teeth that would make a Klingon proud, said something rude and wandered away. A few other western tourists stood gawking about, and a beggar woman, hunched over and holding a bouquet of half-dead flowers, stared at we foreigners with riches and pleaded.

Well, it turned out that no one was here to meet me. If it hadn’t been for one young Chinese man who was guiding some tourists on a hike, I’d have been in trouble. But he talked with one of the village women after I explained to him my new predicament, and lo and behold, she had a mobile phone and called my hotel. It soon became evident that I’d paid for some boat trip, but it was unclear as to which of the dozen boats on the river was mine. Thanks to God, the woman must have taken pity on me; the next thing I knew, she was beckoning me to follow her over a somewhat muddy path down along the river. A few boards had been strewn here and there over the dirt and mud, so between them and the patches of grass, I didn’t muddy my $120 Keens too much.

I think she more or less commanded one of the boat drivers to take me aboard. A young Dutch couple that appeared and started up a conversation with me wanted to go along with me (because one pays the driver the same price whether there is one person or ten), but the driver steadfastly refused with a number of head shakes, so the couple wandered off in search of kinder drivers. Several boats were pulling out into the river. These long, narrow boats with a canvas covering over three benches in the middle, are navigated from the rear by means of a long rudder (or whatever it’s called; I’m a teacher, not a sailor!). At any rate, off we went down the river, slowly and easily. Behind us and in front of us, but not too close, were other tourists on other longboats. Some were Westerners and others Chinese. People would offer little waves as they passed another boat. Every now and then, a two-story ferry would steam down the middle of the river but the Li River was wide. The banks and hills beyond were lush and green, and the karsts on all sides were mammoth monuments rising out of the Chinese landscape; with a gray sky, and mist hanging about a few of the tallest karsts, the only thing missing was King Kong. I was thankful the weather wasn’t sunny, though. I kind of liked the mystery that came with a gloomy day presiding over a karst-filled landscape.

I returned a couple days later to the city of Guilin, from where I’d fly back to Kunming. Remember the crazy bus station, the madhouse where David had helped me procure my ticket to Yangshuo? Well, it remained a madhouse. Fortunately my guardian angel must have sent this narrow-shouldered teen along to help me. I’d seen him on the bus, and when we got off, I asked him where the Imperial Hotel was (where I’d been told to catch the airport shuttle); he knew of it, and guided me through the raucous crowd and mini-market (and past a rather irritated taxi driver who thought the kid was ‘stealing’ me away from him). “I go get bahk,” he said, wondering why he would go get a bag if he’d just been traveling. But nevertheless I followed him out to the main road, which we crossed by means of dodging cars and buses (not easy to do with a heavy backpack). In a narrow alley, he stopped at a row of motorbikes and scooters and said, “Bahk.” He was here to pick up his motorcycle. Unlocking it, he said, “I take you to hotel.” He smiled, so obviously wanting to help some poor foreigner. I doubted his ability, as thin as he was, to carry me and my pack on the bike, and wondered how safe that might be in the insanity that is Chinese traffic. But on the other hand, I needed to catch that shuttle bus. I positioned myself carefully on the back, made sure my burdensome pack straps were fastened, and held on to his waist as he accelerated out of the alley and joined the stream of motorized humanity.
The ride was exhilarating, actually. He drove as carefully as any Chinese youth can, I suppose, only a handful of times weaving, turning and gliding amongst the buses, trucks and cars. “Wow!” I said to myself at one point. The sun was setting behind the buildings on a fine evening, a river flowed amongst the concrete and engines, people were walking everywhere (and driving everywhere but there are LOTS of human beings in China), and aside from the smells of exhaust, the tantalizing scent of grilled chicken reached my nostrils at some point. The kid stopped across the street from the Imperial Hotel, pulling just off to the side of the street; traffic was in gridlock here anyway and not moving much, and I thanked him profusely. “Happy to help,” he said, revving up the motor. “I hope you have good time in China!” And he was away.

The Guilin Airport was not as modern as Chengdu’s airport had been, but it was fine. I met a German couple on a two-week holiday; the man in his mid twenties was practically emaciated with skinny arms, and his girlfriend was rather plain-looking. But they were friendly and we chatted in the terminal’s waiting area. Our flight gate was changed without warning; we just suddenly noticed that another city’s name was flashing on the board, and had to wander to the other end of the terminal where “Kunming” appeared on a board at Gate 13. Thanks for the warning, I thought. The aircraft was modern, nice. The first half hour of the flight was calm; the Germans sat across the aisle and we talked travel until the turbulence shook us. I’d experienced awful turbulence on two other occasions: one when on a China Airlines flight landing in Taiwan; you know it’s bad when pale, scared-looking flight attendants applaud upon landing. The second time was on a flight from New York to Chicago. I’d honestly thought on both flights that God was calling me home. To be more precise, that he was calling the whole lot of us home. This time, however, I was on an aircraft belonging to China Southeastern Airlines, a rather rinky-dink outfit, and perhaps, I thought as we bounced here and there, an airline without enforced regular mechanical checkups. The passenger beside me now was grim-faced, staring straight ahead and probably watching his life flash before his eyes (no movie on the flight anyway). I prayed, hard, and the German couple held hands. During a particularly rough shaking, as if some giant kid was playing with his cute little China Southeastern plane toy, someone in the back cried out in terror. I heard a gasp elsewhere, and as the plane suddenly dropped, I uttered an “Oh my god!”

Well, naturally the turbulence ended and we landed safely. The Germans had pre-booked an expensive hotel so off they went, probably to sooth the nerves with a nightcap, which left me at midnight to get somehow to a hotel. The thing was that I had looked online earlier to see if the Cloudland Hostel had a free room, but they didn’t. I’d jotted down the name of a regular hotel and now pulled out the paper as I stood in line waiting for a taxi. That’s when this young dude in his twenties, and an older woman I took to be his mother, offered me a ‘private taxi’ into the city. They were pretty gutsy, standing directly beneath a big sign that read “Warning: do not accept rides from private taxi man, danger.” But it was midnight and I doubted it was Ma Barker and her son, so I walked alongside sonny, who spoke no English to speak of. Their taxi turned out to be a very plush BMW, and at first I felt secure enough moving through light traffic (it was midnight after all) on somewhat familiar streets. But as he pulled onto a poorly-lit road, continuing on through darker areas, I began to wonder if I’d wind up in some river—and they’d be in possession of a nice (though slightly used) backpack, an HP Mini Laptop, a decent digital camera (Japanese at that!), and $800 worth of insulin. The guy was just looking straight ahead at the road (not something all Chinese drivers do) and Ma Barker was in the back kind of looking ahead nervously); I whispered another quick prayer, looking out the window so that they wouldn’t see me praying and get any ideas to do something that they hadn’t been considering doing, if you know what I mean. But within two minutes, the guy entered a well-lit alley and stopped in front of a modest stone building sandwiched in between two others. A red-neon sign announced that it was a hotel. Relief swept through me as I got out, making sure that mom got out as well. It wouldn’t do to have sonny roaring off with my backpack in the trunk. I paid them, and thanked them. They were very gracious, smiled, and I knew I’d never been in danger. Good grief. The fears we Americans have of everything.

The hotel turned out to be the wrong hotel, but it turned out to be great. Although the clerk behind the desk spoke no English (he phoned someone, probably waking them up, and got instructions as to how to check a foreigner in). The room itself was clean, with a big double bed, and best of all, a big clean shower with a showerhead that wouldn’t wet the entire bathroom. As soon as I could throw off my clothes, I slept.

There’s not much to tell about my two days in Kunming. It’s a pleasant city and I happily returned to Chicago Coffee. I met an American student who was giving a bible study to a Chinese guy, and we talked briefly of the underground churches in China. “It’s interesting, but God is working in China. There’s an underground seminary that I’ve heard about where students are learning the Bible.” My other venture the next day was to go back to Wal-mart. You know, the place where they sell tied-up crabs and eels and frogs in the “supermarket” and where slabs of beef and whole chickens hang from wooden beams. Just like back home. Goodness. But I purchased some snacks and drinks for the long 30-hour bus ride to Laos, hoping that there would be some Westerner to talk to and that my I-Pod would stay charged for awhile.

The bus station was predictably hectic and dirty. I suppose it wasn’t much worse than the last Greyhound Bus Station I’d seen in the USA, but fortunately, despite that sense of grime and filth that you long to bathe away, there was a thirty-something man who walked around guiding white foreigners to the correct bus—the one heading to Laos. “Going Laos?” he asked me, and he took me to a waiting area, in which there were chairs that looked almost clean. I read another chapter in a novel until the guy poked his head in the door and motioned me outside to where several buses were parked. This was another sleeper bus, but on this one the lower berths were at least raised a foot from the grimy metal floor. Imagine the interior of a jet, with two narrow aisles running down the length of the craft and three single seats across. On the Vientiane Express, there was one berth next to the window, another berth in the center, and another on the far side. Above each berth was another berth; thus this giant metal box held maybe twenty-six or so passengers. Thankfully, the occupant in the berth in front of me turned out to be a 20-something German girl named Impke. Her boyfriend, Andreas, somehow had gotten berthed a few seats away. Soon we began chatting, and soon thereafter a few more Germans boarded and found their berths. The bus driver then chugged us out of the station and through Kunming and into the countryside. The 30-hour trip had begun.

Well, even though some of the posters at the Lonely Planet forum had bemoaned the agony of the Kunming—Vientiane bus ride, the journey was enjoyable, I must say. When the bus would stop for a bathroom break at some gritty-looking roadhouse, we’d wearily march off, stretch our legs, and chat to pass time. Impke and I chatted in between times we read our respective novels; two of the other Germans, a guy named Paul with his buddy Martin, had had quite an adventure these past months. “Martin and I drove an ambulance from London to Mongolia,” Paul said while Martin puffed on a cigarette. We’d halted at the side of the road and some of the Chinese men were peeing in the bushes while a few hardy women wandered off behind some trees. “It was for a charity, an orphanage in Ulan Batoor,” he said. On the way, taking weeks, they’d traveled through Eastern Europe and Russia, having stressful and interesting encounters with corrupt border guards, and also even saving the life of a teen-aged boy on the wild plains of Mongolia. But just as he started his story, the driver honked the horn, indicating that it was time to continue.

In the late evening, well after dark, the big bus halted in the midst of a large empty lot fronting a single dwelling, one of those cafes open on one side to the rest of the world. We could see tables, and a makeshift buffet, and a dozen workers and passengers of other buses sitting about. A TV blared loudly from the top of a fridge. Martin, Paul and I wanted something to drink. I was dying for a cola light but there wasn’t any. One of the guys behind a counter pushed some bottles of beer at us, and Martin said, “I’m getting one.” We all bought one, and I have to admit it went down well after hours in a Chinese sleeping bus. While we waited, Paul told us how they’d saved the life of the Mongolian kid.

“We were camped somewhere in the middle of Mongolia,” Paul said as we sat on a bench alongside a table. Andreas and Impke joined us, not drinking or eating. Around us, the Chinese passengers were availing themselves of the ‘buffet’, but after studying the interior of the pots laid out in a row, and not recognizing anything other than green beans, I along with the rest declined to consume food. “Just our ambulance, a campfire, and we were sitting and drinking some beer when this kid comes rushing into camp, crying about something, and then I saw that he was horribly burned on his chest, arms, and one side of his face.” They had been in the middle of nowhere, Martin interjected, and had gotten the kid into the ambulance while phoning a doctor back in Germany, one who had initially trained them in first aid. “He told us what to do but said we needed a hospital fast, so we drove for hours. When we got to a town, we found a hospital and got him to the emergency room. I mean, it wasn’t much of a hospital, but there were doctors. One of them said that we’d saved the boy’s life.”

Impke asked, “How did the boy get hurt?”
It was Martin who answered. “He’d been pouring a can of petrol into some canister…while smoking a cigarette!” He shook his head and we all moaned.
“The boy’s family lived in that town,” Paul said. “They wanted to have a big party, a celebration to thank us, but we had to go. We were on kind of a schedule to deliver the ambulance.”

After our rest, we boarded the bus and continued on our way. I spent a couple hours listening to various songs on my I-Pod. Late at night, Mr. Driver pulled into what can best be described as eerie. The road had been bumpy for hours, jarring us passengers. Now thankful for some respite from the ground ‘turbulence’, Paul, Martin, Impke and I, along with a new friend, a girl from Holland, walked around a pitted road hugged by trees, bushes, and decrepit shacks. Not even shacks, but little box huts with loose boards, corrugated iron ‘roofs’, holes, not lived in. There were bricks and chunks of concrete and stones strewn alongside the road here, and only the bus headlights illuminated this spooky planet. Impke said, “I absolutely must use the toilet,” and several of us strolled away from the bus. Some of the passengers were just peeing at the side of the bus, but perhaps we Westerners were too shy. We wouldn’t be by the end of the trip, but now, Andreas, Martin, Paul and I followed Impke. “I’m going in there,” she said, pointing to one of the mysterious box-huts. The Dutch girl followed her as they half climbed down a ditch to the hut. I found another one but didn’t see any way to actually enter unless I wanted to pry open a board nailed across the side. Besides, the interior looked rather spidery, if you know what I mean. And there was the stench of urine and …well, I didn’t want to go in. I wound up finding a nice tree, though.

Early in the morning, we arrived at the Chinese-Laotian border. A three-story building, partially of glass, was the customs office. One by one, we ‘checked out’ of China, a Chinese Immigration official stamping our passports. After awhile, we climbed aboard the bus and drove a few hundred yards to the border of Laos. Things went quickly and smoothly as visas were issued for $35. But it was Paul who said, “Look at the difference!” The trees, the flora, even some squat wooden housing like bamboo huts built on stilts announced a cultural difference from the giant neighbor to the north. Our last daylight in China had offered fields, some low mountains, some woodland but all dusty and grayish looking. But surrounding us were tall palms, lots of tropical-looking trees (I’m a teacher, not a botanist!) and even the soil had a rust-tone to it. “It’s like real rainforest,” Paul cried in joy. I asked him if he’d liked China. “No,” Martin answered for him. “We hated China.”
“I couldn’t wait to get out of that hole,” Paul stated.
Well, now we were in Laos, and the next stop, after a few more hours, would be Luang Prabang.

Hong Kong and Beijing China

2009-10-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

Sept 12th, 2009
HONG KONG!

After four months of organized and charming European cities, clean fast trains, varied cuisine and way too many palaces and castles, Asia is a new world! My first stop was Hong Kong, but since I had lived years ago in Hong Kong, this was more like revisiting an old friend-- of course, many more skyscrapers tower over the bay now. To walk into the street outside my ‘hotel’ is to join the throngs of Chinese, among which flow a few Indians, Australians, Filipinos and others. Nathan Road has the crowds, the double-decker buses, the plethora of street signs jutting out from the buildings. The city still smells like people, laundry, the sea, and exhaust. Good old Hong Kong.

The flight here from Frankfurt was good in that I had two seats to myself. Air China served mediocre food and I watched 3 movies: the one about the life of Jonny Cash (I hadn’t learned that he was partially abused in childhood or that he’d spent time in the pen), Transformers (mildly entertaining but utterly ridiculous; like no one would look out the window and see a 30 foot robot in the yard), and a great movie…that I completely forgot. Once in Hong Kong and through customs, I took the train into a main hub of Kowloon: Tsim Sha Choi. Even on this busy street, on a gray, hot & humid day, I easily found my ‘hotel’, a hostel in a somewhat dilapidated building called Miradou Mansions. It’s 16 stories high, and each floor has 1 or more hostels/guesthouses. I’d taken a private room on the 14th floor, in a hostel stuck at the end of a concrete and dirty hallway. The room itself was…well, the bed itself took up three quarters of the ‘room’--and it was a little bed. The ‘bathroom did have the usual sink, toilet and shower, but a shower head that sprayed onto the floor, the sink, and the toilet. Good drainage, I have to say. I stayed one night and moved downstairs the next morning.

The USA Hostel was a tad nicer. The bed only took up half the room. The bathroom was the same. I’d get used to standing under cool water and spraying water madly about the whole bathroom. Interestingly the ‘office’ was located in an non-air conditioned hallway of concrete. Here, two rickety wooden tables (one blocking an elevator that didn’t stop on this floor anyway) made up the only furniture. Everything out here looked rather grimy, laundry hung from rafters, and the humidity was stifling because the hallways bordered an open center of the building (like a courtyard --only we’re 13 stories up). Thankfully, my room had AC.

Hong Kong is divided into 3 areas: Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories. In the nineteenth century, the British leased Hong Kong Island from the Chinese on a 99-year lease. Kowloon and the New Territories are on the mainland but are still part of Hong Kong proper. Altogether there are several million residents, all of whom enjoy a kind of unique democracy in Hong Kong (British ruled for so long) and didn’t want to live under Chinese rule after the lease expired in 1997. China, however, allows Hong Kong some autonomy. The city has its own currency, administration, schools, etc.

Aside from riding double-decker narrow street trams through insanely busy streets, I got to meet my ex-wife’s brother and three sisters. I’d phoned from my hotel room and arranged with Aileen to meet my ex brother-in-law, a fellow named Mannie. After a morning spent at the corner Starbucks sipping Latte (the weather outside was gray and miserable), I met Mannie in front of Miradou Mansions—in what we jokingly referred to as the “lobby”—a rather seedy-looking collection of tiny booth-like shops, hawkers, and Indian touts pestering passing tourists to buy copy watches. I suppose it wouldn’t have been so shady a place if the floor had been cleaned in the last decade or so.

Anyway, Mannie and I walked down to the harbor—which is truly magnificent. I had thought Dubai to possess an inspiring skyline, but nothing comes close to Hong Kong’s. Hundreds of skyscrapers of various heights and shapes stand alongside the water and back up into to the low green mountains of Hong Kong Island. The skyscrapers are planted at various levels of the hills themselves. We crossed the harbor via the ever-popular Star Ferry—a collection of two-deck boats that have been faithfully making the ten minute crossing between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon for decades. The gray clouds and gusty winds blew the fragrance of the sea through the open ferry, and we were one among many sea craft on a choppy sea that afternoon.
One can see pics of Hong Kong island so I won’t waste time with descriptions—except to say that the main street, Queensway Road, is alive with thousands of human beings and as many shops. This includes a 7-11 on every corner—but minus the gas pumps. And Hong Kong residents must love McDonalds, which are everywhere. Aside from these vestiges of American capitalism, everything is Chinese: signs jut out into the street; skinny colorful double-decker trams rattle past, red lanterns decorate alleyways, buses belching exhaust rumble by.

In the evening, I met the rest of the Hong Kong contingent of the Miranda family. Three sisters were here: Aileen, Rose, and “Baby”, who must have been in her late thirties. They brought along a niece named Annabelle, a 19-year old who had just been in Hong Kong for a couple months and was dreadfully missing her family back in the Philippines. All of them worked here as domestic helpers (Except Mannie, who flew over recently to look for work). They all showed up at the entrance of Miradou Mansions and I took them upstairs so we could Skype with Yoli—they hadn’t seen their sister for several years. So out in a hot and humid concrete corridor, I set up my laptop and opened Skype. For the most part it worked. Aileen was first to sit awkwardly in front of the laptop and see her sister. But one by one, they each got a chance to speak as two Chinese hostel workers and a backpacker from Australia looked on in amused and happy interest.

It was dusk by the time we walked down to the waterfront on the Kowloon side. From here you can see the bay and the stunning colorful sight of Hong Kong Island’s waterfront. We gazed and snapped pictures (with a number of others) for twenty minutes before heading to …you guessed it…a Chinese restaurant for some eats. Aileen introduced me to the Chinese style of dining: everyone orders something and it’s placed on the table for everyone to select from. I ordered something similar to Sweet and Sour chicken (my most reliable Chinese dish in the USA); it was more like sour bone-riddled chicken, but nevertheless there were several items on the table that were quite edible, even tasty. I am not an ‘experimenter’ when it comes to food.

A word about Chinese food in China: it’s altogether different from what one finds on the table in the US or Europe. As I’ve walked Chinese streets gazing at those little old ladies who prepare various dishes out in the open on a little stove of bubbling concoctions—or passed cafes with big bold posters displaying eye-catching plates of food, I am constantly reminded of Klingon food. One of the dishes that Klingons savor is Gagh: serpent worms. According to Wikipedia, “Gagh is usually served as fresh as possible. It is traditionally prepared and eaten by poisoning the worms and eating them in sauce while they are still alive.” Well, honestly, I’m sure I saw this somewhere along the road. Call me a Midwestern boy from the cornfields, but I just cannot ingest noodles in black sauce with black snail-like creatures ‘swimming’ in broth. Naturally, noodles and healthy veggies make up the bulk of Chinese food; it’s just that it doesn’t look anything like what is served in western Chinese restaurants. After dinner, I returned to my hostel room to catch up on my journal, throw on the AC, and splash some water around my bathroom once again. Then it was time to sleep.

Friday evening caught me out on Hong Kong island doing a bit of walking around. Mannie had told me that on Friday nights, most of the tens of thousands of domestic helpers (maids) were enjoying the delights of a day off from their slave labor; that meant a trip into town to meet girlfriends, shop, enjoy some food and a good yack. I was supposed to meet Mannie on a Friday evening in front of a particular department store, and by a miracle and nothing else, I stumbled upon the place on Queensway Road. I had to plow through thousands of young Filipino girls on a dark street in the midst of these towering skyscrapers—quite the scene, and quite the noise. Filipino-girls-night out is much more pleasant than Friday night in Dubai, which is Indian guy’s night out, a hectic time when thousands of Indian and Pakistani laborers stroll along the Creek and elsewhere. Anyway, after Mannie showed up during a bit of a drizzle (forgot my umbrella again), we walked along looking for something to eat. I got the feeling he didn’t want McDonalds, so again we chose a Chinese café (crowded of course). My dish, when it arrived, looked pretty good: rice, a side of some unidentifiable green veggies, and chicken. I took my knife and cut into a piece of chicken. To my consternation, my knife met bone and gristle. I said to Manny, “This chicken didn’t have much meat on its little bones.” He thought that was funny. I figured out then that Chinese chickens must go through some sort of slice and dice machine, and whatever comes out gets thrown in the pot. I sighed and enjoyed my rice and vegetables. Manny just smiled a lot while feasting.

During my days in Hong Kong, I saw two other people regularly. The first was an older security guard whose job was nothing more than watching the elevators that climbed the fourteen floors of Miradou Mansion. One elevator hit the odd numbered floors; the other stopped only at even-numbered floors. Go figure. Anyway, one morning as I came out of the elevator, and the old guy in a modest uniform was ushering a line of several waiting people into the first elevator and then watching two cameras that showed whatever was happening on the elevators. And that was his entire function in life. Somehow, it saddened me. Into my mind popped the old phrase “there but for the grace of God go I”. Even the Wal-mart greeters, I thought, probably have more free time and a more satisfying existence than this poor man. After watching the elevators for a long 12-hour shift or more, he likely went back to a pretty lean bare-bones room to shovel in some rice and bare-bones chicken, and then sleep.

The other person that I saw each day was Beverly, a sweet girl who worked at Starbucks. Her English was good and she always had a smile for everybody. And she remembered my name each day. I’d go in with my laptop, select a seat near the outlet, plug in, and logon. Each morning I enjoyed latte and made up for shelling out the money by skipping a meal. Beverly would sometimes stop by for a quick chat about my travels, always smiling. When I mentioned to her about the bony, gristle-laden chicken, she said, “We Chinese think that’s the best part! We love it.”
At any rate, as luck would have it, a typhoon was passing just north of Hong Kong. This brought gale winds, rain, and dark skies. One afternoon, the weather cleared a number of people from the streets and some shops closed. Most of the time, it didn’t do more than sprinkle. I hopped on a double-decker bus on Hong Kong Island, one that would wind along the mountain up towards the Peak—a great vantage point to see the city. But that wasn’t my mission.

A last couple of memories of my days in Hong Kong: taking a public bus in order to visit my old home: the Hong Kong Adventist Hospital. That was 1982! The bus drove through Central and then began winding its way up the verdant low mountains as the rain began falling gently, which made it troublesome to take any pictures out of the windows. By the time the bus got halfway up the hill, and by memory I was hoping I was in the right place, torrents fell from the sky just as I stepped off the bus. Thank heavens for umbrellas. Even so, I was fairly wet as I climbed the steps that led up to the hospital.

The reunion was bittersweet. At the entrance of the hospital were a dozen or more people—most wearing the face masks that a few Chinese wore while out in public; at the hospital, it was a req precaution. Visitors sat on benches or chairs just outside the main doors watching taxis go around a circular driveway. I noted the building nearby in which I’d lived with the Huttons back in 1981, a dear couple who were volunteering their time to serve God. Inside the hospital, the lobby and halls looked the same, and yet different. There were no signs of Western faces; in 1982, Aussies, Brits and Americans had been at least a quarter of the staff. I chatted briefly with a smiling, happy young woman working at the reception. She confirmed that no one from my past was currently working at the hospital, but invited me to visit the cafeteria on the 6th floor for some hot tea until the rain ended. Interestingly, while in the elevator ascending to the cafeteria, at a 4th-floor stop, two nurse’s aides wheeled a gurney into the elevator—with an old and sick-looking Chinese woman strapped to it.

The rain had pretty much stopped by the time I caught my bus back down to Central. I met Mannie and we took the subway clear out to the New Territories, where he is staying. The place, a small 2-story home connected to other homes, belonged to Aileen’s employers but they weren’t living there so had invited Mannie to stay there while he looked for work. Mannie and I shared some wine and had a nice chat before I had to get back to Miradou Mansions.

BEIJING! Capital of the ancient Middle KingdomMy last morning in Hong Kong, I hit Starbucks to do some laptop work and then wandered the streets in Kowloon. By mid-afternoon, I checked out of the USA Hostel, and with heavy backpack on my poor old back, caught the subway for the train station. I had been wondering if it would be a dark, grimy affair with old Chinese ladies serving up puppy soup, but I had a surprise in store for me. The place was more like a small, modern shopping center—complete with a McDonalds and a delightful candy store. The place positively gleamed. The train, when the hundreds of others and I boarded, was also a pleasant surprise. I’d imagined a broken-down train filled with sweating, stinky bodies, spit on the floor, old torn fabric on the berths—but what I found was a train that was cleaner than many trains in southern Europe.

In China there are various classes to choose from: hard chair, soft chair, hard sleeper, soft sleeper. The most luxurious is the soft sleeper: there are 4 comfy berths to a “room” with a door that closes for privacy. However, most tourists are perfectly happy with the hard sleeper, which is 6 berths to a ‘room’, (there’s no door); it simply fronts the corridor, where a dozen lucky people can sit in handy little pull-down seats that measure only a few inches across. Anyway, hard sleeper is actually pretty soft and I was quite happy to be relegated to this class of travel.

On the train, I met David, from Belgium. An amiable guy of thin build, we got to talking in the corridor (as the only two Caucasians would do) about train travel and Hong Kong. “I had to go all the way to Hong Kong to sign some document with a notary watching,” he explained. “I’m working on a computer game with some Chinese guys in Beijing and we’re ready to submit it to Microsoft.” As it turns out, he had hired three Chinese IT guys (stealing one from Microsoft actually) to work on this computer game—which takes a lot of planning and work, apparently. I’d had no idea of course. Anyway, we headed down to the restaurant car for a look-see, passing through what seemed to be a hundred or so cars filled with passengers either relaxing in the corridor or stretched out in bunks. We got a few stares going through the cars, being white boys.

In the restaurant car, tables were covered with mostly-clean white table cloths and the waitress, a harried-looking young woman (odd since the only customers so far seemed to be a bevy of males in uniforms smoking at the back of the car) explained in Chinese to us that we couldn’t order food yet. She said this in Chinese of course, which didn’t help us. The expression and motions made the meaning clear, though. David asked, “But the sign above the bar says 3pm to 5pm.” She shook her head and said, “No, 4pm, 4pm.” “Can we order drinks?” he asked. She nodded at this so we ordered tea and were content to let the train glide along, the gentle rocking easier on the nerves than some of Amtrak’s trains. The waitress brought over a bowl of peanuts and wandered off. The scenery was okay, nothing great: mostly flat land, some of which was farmed, some low hills too. But it was China! We’d pass villages that consisted mostly of feeble wooden structures and one or two-story red-brick buildings, all of which looked like the next quake would bring down. See my pictures.

Later that evening, we and the other passengers hung out in the car. Well, what else is there to do on a train that doesn’t have a lounge car (God bless Amtrak!)? David and I chatted on and off in the corridor. There were only about twenty fold down seats in the corridor; the lucky few get them; the others lay in their berths, some already asleep; others read. Some visited other passengers, sitting in the lower berths. And here’s a lesson for you if you’re ever planning to travel on a Chinese train in “hard sleeper”: make sure you book the middle bunk. The top bunk is too close to the ceiling and a bit cramped; besides, in the top bunk you can hear all too loudly whatever Chinese music is pouring out of the speakers set close to the ceiling. The bottom bunk , regardless of who paid for it, might become a meeting place for others. Only the middle bunk remains strictly yours AND fairly quiet though you can still hear the old guys three doors down hacking and spitting (hopefully) into their hankies.

At night in my bunk, I alternated between a fitful sleep and pulling back the curtains to gaze out the window at the wonders of night-time China. For the most part, when passing through one town or another (a “town” in China might have tens of thousands of inhabitants, of course), I saw, in the flash it takes the train to pass a highway, scattered buildings, some multi-storied, cars whose headlights poked with weak lighting through dimly lit streets. But just plain weird were the images of decrepit brick structures close to the tracks—often hidden after about a second and a half by some barrier. It was as if “someone” didn’t want this side of China to be seen. Perhaps during the day it’s just “old buildings”, but at night it’s ghostly.

The train pulled into Beijing late the following afternoon. And how do I describe Beijing? The train station at which David and I’d arrived was mammoth and only 1 of the stations in this ancient capital city. Lugging our backpacks, we followed the other passengers through security, our packs going through the X-ray machine and an official glancing at our passports and ticket. Elsewhere in the world, train stations are a haven from the kinds of security arrangements one endures at airports; but not in China. Anyway, we finished and walked with the throngs through the cavernous station until we got out front, where I just stopped to gasp. Looking up, I noted that the station was as high as a cathedral with the words “Beijing North Station” way up high. “Impressive, isn’t it?” David stated. I could only think that one could put possibly a hundred or more Omaha Amtrak stations on just the ground level of this place.

I then turned to observe a wide boulevard crowded with traffic, a sickly-looking gray and yellow sky, and people everywhere. “The sky is like this a lot,” David said. “Come on, we’ll find a taxi, I hope. I can’t remember exactly where my office is.” On the train, he’d kindly invited me to stay with him and his Chinese buddies in their office/home for a couple of nights. “It’ll be a bit busy with us working against a deadline, but at least you’ll have Internet.” The only problem for David was that he’d lost his cell phone in Hong Kong and wasn’t quite sure how to explain to the taxi driver where he lived. Meanwhile, my backpack was getting a little heavy. We crossed the street, which in Beijing is often slightly risky because taxi drivers simply do not stop—even when they should. The sky wasn’t the only thing murky in Beijing, so were the traffic rules.

Fortunately, the one word David remembered (Woo-doo-kai) was enough for the taxi driver to understand ‘approximately’ where David lived, so off we went with a driver who like all the others tended to accelerate until the taxi fender came close to that of another car, and then locate his brake with alarming ferocity. After a few minutes, once the driver had maneuvered onto a street of gridlock, I had time to notice that the sky had turned an even sicker shade of yellow/brown/green. Back home I’d think “tornado weather” but here it was simply pollution. “How do people breathe?” I asked in amazement. David shrugged. “I had breathing problems for weeks after arriving.”

The intersection where the taxi dumped us (like everything else in China—BIG) looked a bit inviting, meaning of course that I’d spotted a McDonalds on one corner. Things couldn’t be all bad. Some French café sat on another corner, and though the street was a bit dirty and the traffic was this odd blend of shiny Toyota Corollas and crappy bicycles sharing the road, the sheer alien-feeling that possessed me made me happy. I was in another world.

Well, David thought he remembered how to get home. “Probably this way, just ten minutes or so I think,” he said. It turned out to be more like fifteen to twenty, but despite the heaviness of my pack (darn lugging a computer and all those boxes of insulin—both quite necessary to my life), we got safely to his apartment, which I’d imagined as a nice, clean office with perhaps a separate guestroom where I could sleep that night. Actually, the room was half taken up by work tables and the other half by a sofa and bed. Windows and a cluttered balcony beyond looked out at some gray building fronts. Laundry hung from nylon cords among the other assortment of odds and ends packed onto the balcony, and the room, too, showed that guys were living here (though one was married to a delightful girl named Sarah).
Anyway, it was marvelous of the guys to put up with a stranger in their midst as they hovered over computers and labored over their game (which they ultimately “sold” to Microsoft). After awhile, David suggested we go find some food. “We don’t cook much,” he explained. “When restaurant food is so cheap, like a couple dollars for a mountain of food, why cook at home?” He, Luke and Sarah, and myself walked through night neighborhoods utterly alien to me: four and five story buildings, some at odd angles, weak lighting behind windows, streets busy with pedestrians, dogs, rickshaws, cars rumbling through. In a way it all had charm since traffic wasn’t thick in these neighborhoods, though Sarah pulled me out of the way of bicyclists as well as a car, all the while chatting to me in mostly good English. David and Luke lagged behind, still deep in “game” talk. At the restaurant, I allowed my hosts to do the ordering. What eventually showed up were plates of food that we would all share: tofu and green beans in some dark sauce, bits of chicken in another sauce, an unidentifiable polyglot of veggies in yet another bowl, bowls of steaming rice, and the local beer.

We feasted, and I was an instant source of humor with my pathetic attempt at handling chopsticks (forget the cutlery in China!). Still, I managed to grab onto a chunk of tofu by the time David and company had finished off half the food, thus fighting off starvation. While we ate, Sarah voiced a political view widely held in China, even by the young: Tibet’s violence was mostly the fault of westerners. I replied with a nod and another clumsy attempt to get the chopsticks to grab a piece of sauce-laden chicken and then some rice (this involves scooping, at least for unpracticed foreigners).

That night, the guys worked late on their game. They each had their own job to do. There was a lot of technical talk, fretting, toying, tweaking, and so on. I was thankful to be a low-paid English teacher with few headaches (“why can’t students in college put periods after sentences?” was less a concern than “what if Microsoft turns us down after we’ve invested thousands of hours and dollars into this darn game?). Finally, though, at around 1:30am, David called it quits for the night and I was left alone in the room with my bed. I undressed, and exhausted, lay down only to discover that the “mattress”, if we shall call it that, felt more like a soft rock. If it hadn’t been for a poor night of sleep on the train the night before, I wouldn’t have gotten a wink; fortunately, I soon fell into a fitful sleep.

The next morning, only having the great sum of two dollars in my wallet, I decided to hit the bank and test out the ATM. Believe me, I prayed that the Bank of the West wouldn’t screw things up by denying my foreign ATM requests. I’d called their customer service twice before departing Nebraska to make sure they understood that, yes, I would be in some far-off places on the other side of the good Earth, and they’d assured me that all would go well. But as I walked along the street that morning (under a predictably gray sky), passing the morning hackers and spitters, and not-too-heavy traffic, I began to really worry that I wouldn’t get any cash. Then what do you do? The other side of the world, literally, and broke. I whispered a prayer—three or four times for good measure—and walked along feeling better. After all, I was in China!

You might laugh, but David had told me to go to the Wal-Mart to use the ATM. Wal-Marts, I should mention, are as popular in China as in the USA, the main difference being, obviously, that Wal-Mart in China wasn’t importing a lot of stuff from…well…China. Must have cut costs significantly. Anyway, I enjoyed an amble about the three-story place. IT was nothing like Wal-mart back home; more like a department store but a bit grimmer. I didn’t see a lot of ‘stuff’ that Americans would buy even were it available in the USA. The selection was pretty lame, actually. And by the time I got to the ‘supermarket’ section and saw the live crabs packed into an aquarium-like home, I decided to find my ATM.

The only ATM was marked as “China Construction Bank”. I stuck my Bank of the West debit card into the slot and watched it get sucked in. Praying it would come back out, I punched in the security code—and thank heavens foreign ATM’s offer the option of English—I followed the straightforward directions and listened to the whirring little gears getting ready to pump out some Chinese banknotes. And then, like magic, a wad of red Chinese Yuan notes popped out for me to grab. After pushing the ‘Exit” key, my card was returned. With a sigh of relief and great happiness, I walked out of Wal-Mart and headed off to my first destination: the Forbidden City!
Navigating the Beijing subway system is something even wayward Americans can do. It’s actually quite clean and efficient. The stations are straightforward with maps of the lines and the machines that dispense tickets. You insert the ticket into the turnstile slot, which reads it and spits it back out. It’s important not to lose the ticket because you need it at the other end as well. I took the escalator deep into the earth, then examined the network diagram and list of stations. Unlike in other cities, in China, there’s a wall of glass lining the track so that, I suppose, some unfortunate isn’t pushed by the crowd onto the subway tracks. On the other side of the glass, along the wall, were screens playing various commercials, movie trailers, and those ultra-fast images that speak mostly to youth; I call it the shaking-camera-hand syndrome.

The Forbidden City, needless to say, is old—and was quite verboten for most of its existence--that is from the ‘common man’. Home to various emperors of the Ming, Tang, Qing dynasties (and more probably but I couldn’t possibly care less) since the early fifteenth Century, it was only opened to the public after the great commie revolution in 1949—after, of course, some general looting and destruction during Mao’s cultural revolution fervor. But it remains today an UNESCO World Heritage Site, and impressively large. It holds nearly a thousand buildings and is surrounded by a nice deep moat. The emperors liked their space (and safety), apparently. At any rate, I spent a nice few hours wandering from along with the other thousands of tourists (mostly Chinese) from the lovely gardens near the North Gate through ‘palaces’, across empty stretches of stone courtyard, and occasionally peaking into the tiny shops selling knick knacks. It’s not really a place easily described, so instead of writing a thousand words, I’ll let you check out pictures.

I’d decided to leave David and the guys to their research, having found a nice hostel called The Happy Dragon. The place was nice: the girls behind the welcome desk were attentive and efficient; the dorm room where I stayed that night slept only 4, and there was a small but cozy room with several tables and sofas where one could order food throughout the day and evening. At most hostels, this is the norm, of course. Services such as “western food”, WiFi, and laundry service are amenities demanded by today’s more discerning backpacker. It’s not like the 60’s or 70’s when a hostel was simply a place to crash. Anyway, the ‘Happy Dragon café’ had WiFi , so I accessed my email, wrote to a chosen few, enjoyed a Cola Zero, and then wandered through the alleys of Beijing. A couple of the pedestrian streets were markets, tiny shops selling everything from pots and pans to chicken claws. At the end of this street were the two places that one could easily spot in Beijing: McDonalds and KFC.

Note: KFC in China simply doesn’t have any diet drinks. They give you a glass of boiled water. Hmmm.

The next day was the #1 attraction in Beijing, the “thing” that everyone had to see: The Great Wall. I wound up going with a gang from the Happy Dragon: a nice mix of nationalities. One tall, gangly-looking German youth and his friend sat near the front of the minivan, and the guy talked during the entire two-hour drive. Not in the low voice of one conversing casually with a friend sitting in the next seat, but as if he was lecturing half the bus; of course he spoke in German so no one really understood him. Actually, he turned out to be a nice guy. I chatted with him later. Anyway, the drive was through countryside that gradually got quite hilly and into fairly green-covered low mountains. The bus driver honked his way to the Great Wall, apparently unhappy with the number of others on his road. We passed cars, vans, trucks, scooters, bicyclists, old men leading cows.

You can’t even see the Great Wall as the bus approaches. Our driver ascended a low mountain on a series of switchbacks, the road well paved. Then instead of pulling up at the wall, as I half expected, the bus lumbered into a parking lot where a number of tourist buses already sat. We got off the bus, stretched, and our tour leader, a young woman hired by the hostel, did a head count and then explained in a halting English, the procedure. “There are two ways to get up to the wall…you can climb those stairs…” she pointed to some rough looking stairs that wound around some high plants and trees and vanished, but the hill above looked like quite the climb. “or you can go by ski-lift. Cost is fifty Yuan.” Several people groaned. “Ja, and how ve coming down, zen?” asked the skinny German youth.

The guide gave a wide smile, very genuine, and replied, “You can take stairs down or can go by toboggan.” This sounded interesting, but most of the group decided to simply take the ski-lift up and then play it by ear. “You have three hours to climb on the wall,” the guide explained. “Please be back here in parking lot by 2pm. Then we have free lunch.” Thus, we climbed a dozen steps to a hut where we bought our tickets. Then a few more steps to the point where you catch the ski-lift. Everyone seemed to be paired off except me, sadly. But the guide joined me, and on the way up the mountain, she asked questions about the US and Dubai. She loved her job, she said, meeting and talking with foreign people from all over the world. We passed over treetops and just ahead appeared parts of the wall. My excitement built.
The Great Wall is one of those things—like the pyramids or the Grand Canyon—that must be experienced. Pictures help, as always, but suffice it to say that it’s magnificent. At the top, the majority of the Happy Dragon entourage headed off along the wall to the west, where, as the guide had explained on the bus, one could walk for many hours, passing twenty two towers. To the right, she’d said, the way was steeper, more difficult and shorter: tourists could only go three towers before accessed was blocked. “But it’s an older part of the wall,” she’d said without much explanation. So, a few of us headed east, first down about twenty or thirty steps, and into a nice little tower room that was just a stone room with some windows. I loved the towers because inside, one could hop up onto a ledge beside the glassless window and gaze out at the sparsely-covered mountains. I imagined the hordes of invaders from the north who must have traveled for weeks in order to come do some sacking and plundering, only to discover that a mammoth wall lay right in their path. Talk about teed off, but what could they do? The thing stretches on and on. From my vantage point, I could see it snake along the hills, up, down, off in one direction only to disappear and re-appear as a thin line further on. I wondered about the guards. What did they do for all their days, weeks, months of isolation? Cook their food and dream about women, I suppose.

Leaving the tower, I was confronted with the unpleasant task of mounting a lot of stairs. Very steep stairs. I didn’t count but there must have been more than a hundred. The Germans, and an older man with dark features and graying hair, and an English kid who looked to be all of seventeen, all were in close proximity, huffing and puffing their way up at various points. Sooner or later, we all made it to the next tower, where everyone pretended to gaze out at the hills in admiration when all they were really interested in doing is sucking in air. An old Chinese man manning his “refreshment” stall, under a big beach umbrella, grinned at the poor unfit Westerners. “Cola?” he asked. “Beer? Water? Snickers?”

It took an hour but most of us made it to the farthest tower, at which point an intimidating sign, looking very official, forbade tourists to wander further. Not that we could anyway. The top of the wall here was overgrown with thickets, small trees, and looked impassible. We turned back and once more with varying speeds, traversed the wall with its ups, downs, and through towers, until we arrived back where we’d started. Since there was plenty of time left, I just continued on my way west. This part of the trek was more popular and somewhat easier. You could go a long way before hitting a set of steeply ascending stairs; parts of the top here were flat and easily walked. In the distance were towns, though I couldn’t make out details. The sky was blue, the temperature was in the seventies, and the wall was making me happy. I even bought a cola zero from an old woman.

Going down was fun! A pair of Chinese youths instructed us at the beginning of the toboggan run. “Push the lever forward to go, pull back to stop. Keep going.” A kid explained this to me and the English teen, who was quite keen to speed down the side of the mountain. The toboggans are simply a plastic seat with room for you to stretch out your legs on either side of the lever. It’s attached to a rail, and the thing sits in what I call a “stone waterslide”. I watched the English chap sit down in his toboggan as one of the Chinese guys said, “Okay, go.” With a push forward of the lever, the English teen was on his way. He vanished around a curve when the Chinese youth ushered me into my toboggan. With a push forward of the lever, I was soon sailing around a bend, picking up speed. Being a speed-coward, I pulled back on the lever and it slowed, but too much. So again forward with the lever until I felt I was going at a comfy speed for what seemed like several minutes. Around me was brush, some trees (deciduous and pines), and at what point, my vehicle passed over a small canyon about fifty yards in width and twenty deep. Very inspiring. I slowed to admire it all, and when I made it across, a guy sitting on a chair on a large flat rock said, “Faster, faster!” He seemed a bit cross that I was taking my time.
At the bottom, I got out and was soon wandering among the requisite tourist booths. You could buy anything with Great Wall written on it. I did buy, I have to admit, a small fridge magnet. After that necessity taken care of, I walked into an open area with a few tables and chairs outside a combination gift shop and café. The Germans were there, the gangly fellow complaining that he hadn’t been able to go fast on his toboggan. “Ja, ve vere behind some dumb girl,” he said. “She was soooo afraid, almost stopping every time.” He smacked his forehead in mock frustration but smiled. “Anyway, the wall was fantastic.”

On one of my best days in Beijing, the sun came out and the sky turned blue—for the most part. There was a little haze in the distance but for the most part, this was cheerful weather. People were out and about in good spirits, so I headed out to see the type of old traditional neighborhoods of Beijing that have largely been demolished over the years in the name of progress: The Hutong.

At one tiny stone bridge, pedestrian tourists, bikers and rickshaw drivers all collided, waited, cursed, tried to pass each other. We were surrounded by overpriced bars and restaurants but there was a nice placid lake to gaze upon. Many people were in paddle boats. I snapped a picture of a teen who sported a punk haircut, large nerdy-looking glasses and who was too busily engaged with texting to note the white foreigner taking his picture. I then visited the Drum tower, a squat but five-story temple and watched how the emperor’s servants used to give the correct time—by striking a series of gargantuan drums. As expected, a gaggle of western and Chinese tourists snapped pics as the ‘emperor’s servants’ offered a demonstration by rhythmically beating the drums for five minutes.

Afterwards, I got a little lost wandering through alley after alley of Hutong land. Dozens of tiny alley-shops looking none-too clean. By the time I emerged into “civilization” (meaning tall buildings and freeways), I caught a taxi back to the Happy Dragon and enjoyed a cola zero and lunch.

I’d wanted to go to a movie. Seeing a film while in a country is always an interesting experience. I decided upon Founding of a Nation, released during this holiday time. The movie was about Moa’s revolution, taking place from 1945 to 1945—and the quality of the production surprised me, as well as the English subtitles. Sometimes English translations can be very amusing, but for Founding, despite the fact that the words appeared for all of a half second, the English was spot-on. By the end of the movie, I was rooting for Mao. Beside me, however, a young couple had chatted through the entire movie and the middle-aged man to my right had snoozed. From the audience behind us came chattering and belches. I guess they weren’t feeling very patriotic. Or perhaps they realized that Mao had destroyed a lot of culture and many millions of human beings.

Denmark and Norway

2009-08-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

The train from Hannover up to Copenhagen was a treat (in first class): part of the car was the “silence zone” and separated from the rest of first class (only a few of us in there anyway) by a glass sliding door. There was free hot coffee/tea available and an attendant brought around a bread roll with some jam and cheese. When the train got close to the Danish border, it literally rolled into the multi-storey ferry that would take us over the sea for an hour. All passengers are requested to leave the train and enter the ferry, where a variety of money-loving shops charge exorbitant prices for so-called ‘duty free’ goods. The crossing was pleasant if not a bit warm. The sea was its usual grey color, not as inviting as the Persian Gulf, and watching the water from the top deck brought back a lot of Dubai memories of the beach.
Copenhagen is a strange city, and for me, not appealing. The architecture is pretty enough in the city center, but the place just looks tired. I would expect this in southern Europe but not in Scandinavia. You’ll see in the photos. I just didn’t think the town was clean enough, and of course as in all of northern Europe, there are the usual collection of drunks and other nutters at the train station and in the tiny enclaves of “parks”. The station itself is high-ceilinged with great wooden rafters and a kind of arcade of shops in the center. Exiting the station to find my hostel, I walked up the street for about ten minutes until I spotted a sign of cardboard with the word “hostel” and an arrow pointing the way. The place is imaginatively called “City Hostel” (I wonder who came up with that). A sweeping lawn in the front contained a few kids sitting here and there on blankets, some munching on food. Inside there was a nice ‘lobby’ area with comfy chairs and sofas. Several travelers were on their laptops, predictably. The guy who registered me was helpful and in short order, I was lodged in ROOM 3, just behind the luggage room. I had to pay $8 extra for sheets and $5 for breakfast, which was a bummer (almost every hostel I’d been in thus far included sheets and breakfast). The place lacked the charm of Hostel Mostel but was superior to the claustrophobic Butterfly Villa Hotel in Bucharest. After throwing the sheets on my bunk and halfway tucking them under the mattress, I took off to explore the town in what light was remaining of the day.
I don’t have much to report. I walked back down to the train station and further on past the famous Tivoli, the great “amusement park” famous for rides, gardens, restaurants, and entertainment. I checked the prices at the main entrance, only to find that entrance alone (forget the rides) would run me about fifteen dollars. For “charming”, I decided to give it a miss. I wandered on down past the city square, where a series of smaller pedestrian-only streets wander here and there. Since darkness was approaching, I hung out in the square for awhile before heading back to the hostel for some needed sleep.

The next morning, I explored further on down the same street where I’d left off the night before. Several twists and little bridges kept me busy studying the map, but I wound up at a charming street that dead-ended at a seawall. Across an expanse of water were more buildings, but the scent of the sea was refreshing, and the buildings along here were the old four and five story wooden structures that are uniquely Scandinavian. Each building was a different color: rust red, mustard yellow, light green. In a wide canal in the middle of the “street” were all manner of sailboats and small yachts. Seagulls called out and tourists ambled, the richer ones idling at outdoor cafes with prices to shock. In fact, prices at McDonalds were shocking (though not as bad as the $17 I’d paid in Switzerland). I’d noticed that a number of the kids (and older folks) staying at the hostel had visited the little supermarket near the hostel, but I was tired of bread (oh, my paid-for breakfast at the hostel had been BREAD, with only plastic-wrapped cheese slices to put on it, and two types of cereal. In short, a rip-off. So where to eat today? While online in the lobby, I noted a traveler’s review of a Turkish buffet she’d enjoyed while in Copenhagen; I was pretty sure I’d seen one on the way to the hostel, so I walked down the now-familiar street until, sure enough, a cute-enough café appeared, out front of which was a sign advertising a 49 Kroner buffet. That’s about six bucks so I hurried in. You couldn’t even get a Big Mac meal for that price. I wasn’t disappointed. There were several kinds of salad, mouth-watering boiled potatoes in buttery sauce, lamb, beef, pasta, veggies; I ate 3 plates of food and waddled away with no money left in my pocket but without hunger in my tummy. The food had been as good as in some of the Dubai restaurants.

I had wanted to see Norway because It’s one of two European countries to which I’d never been (the other being Albania). Since it was mid-summer, I thought to head first to Oslo and then take the train further north, close to the Arctic Circle. So I was keen to leave Copenhagen, which wasn’t doing anything for me. In the evening, I checked out of City Hostel and walked to the station. There, I checked in at a little counter just next to the train (rather unusual) and was given a berth for the trip. It cost an extra forty bucks but would be worth it, tired as I was. Inside the dimly-lit four-berth cabin, a guy was in the lower bunk; thankfully, the other bunks were empty and I hoped they’d stay that way. The dude was probably in his early twenties, I guessed, and when I asked , him if he were from “here”, he replied in a southern accent and chuckle, “No, from Alabama.” His name was Hunter, and we chatted for awhile until I climbed up into my bunk and went through the usual ritual of tucking in sheets and changing into shorts. The window didn’t open, which was irritating (oh how I missed those southern European trains now), but a slight draft somehow cooled the cabin down a bit.

When I woke, the sun seemed to be halfway up into the sky but my alarm clock told me 6:30am. I returned to sleep, occasionally waking to look out the window at passing meadows, rolling hills, then bigger green-covered hills, and villages. I was surprised to find that many of the houses that zoomed by looked similar to American houses—those of a certain style, of course, especially the ones I’d seen in the mountains of Colorado. Hunter awoke and we agreed to hang out together for the day; my train would leave around 2:30pm and his a bit later. Neither of us had wanted to spend the forty bucks a night minimum that a hostel would charge!

Oslo was so very different from Copenhagen and utterly delightful. These two cities had nothing in common. Whereas Copenhagen had that slightly dingy quality with dark-brick buildings, Oslo was bright, cheery, modern and yet you could see the older style architecture here and there. The city was also a bit hillier though nothing demanding, and quite clean. There were even a few high-rises (ten stories or so), glass and metal, and trams ferrying people to and fro. The citizenry this early morning, no doubt on their way to work, were garbed in brighter more colorful clothing than in other European countries, particularly Denmark. I liked the place immensely after only 5 minutes. The prices were insane, but we intended to visit a grocery store quite soon.

Basically, we wandered up to an old fortress, where a sixty-something gentleman behind the counter at the museum part told us, in flawless British English, that the museum would open in a couple of hours. “But tell you what, why don’t you go have a look now,” to which we replied our thanks gratefully. Something free in Norway! Our self-tour was interesting. Everything related to the wars fought from medieval times through the world wars and even a bit on the Norwegian contingent in present-day Afghanistan. Weapons, chain mail, cannons, etc. After looking around, we chatted a bit with the attendant again before wandering down a winding road and onto a main street. At a tiny supermarket (about the only kind Europe has), I bought a coke, bread, and a banana. There was a park nearby, a covered café in the midst of it, and benches, so we sat on a bench, munched food and people watched. Very pleasant.
Later in the morning, we went to a museum that housed the famous THE SCREAM painting by Edward Munch, a Norwegian. His famous painting of a human being standing on a bridge with hands clasped to ears and with mouth open is kind of scary if you ask me but for 1893 the comment about society was vivid. Anyway, the National Gallery of Norway was located near the university in a nicely shaded old neighborhood, and not very imposing, the museum nevertheless was a surprising little gem: it contained a few works by Van Gogh, Gaugin and Picasso—but for the most part, after seeing a few of the masters (there weren’t many) and about two minutes of the modern abstract junk (I mean, material), I gazed happily at various landscapes, always my favorite.
Trondheim Norway.

The afternoon train took me north through a gorgeous valley, following a lake for what seemed like hours. Mostly the train, filled to capacity, and with only second class seating, followed the water. In the distance (and not so far) were low green mountains. Most people, when they think of Norway (and granted, it’s not something that pops into most people’s minds at odd hours of the day), they imagine cute fjords (deep lakes with cliffs rising on all sides). But I had decided to head north towards the midnight sun instead.

My fellow passenger was a very pretty young woman (Nordic features, blond hair, etc) who was heading to some small town to work in a hotel for a month. Her English was fantastic (like all Norwegians!) , having lived in London for some time. We chatted on and off while admiring the fine scenery. There was no air conditioning on the train and the day was warm, so it was uncomfortable. I was happy to finally reach Trondheim at around 9:30pm. It seemed like noon! I would have admired the bright sky even more had I not had so much trouble finding my way to the hostel. Nothing was open at the station, no information, no nothing. Outside the station, a clean fresh-looking river flowed past some old wooden buildings that looked to be from the previous century (that is, the 19th). The place was nice, even from the train station.

The problem was that I’d printed out the “directions” to the hostel, but now they seemed woefully inadequate. It turned out to be a complaint that others shared. At any rate, after getting partial directions from a rather rotund African man (really out of place in this society from what I could see), and later from a local youth, I made it across a wide pedestrian-only bridge and passed some riverfront shops and cafes. Then I crossed a street, observed a sharply ascending hill, and thought: now where? As God was with me, an old gentleman in his 7o’s I imagine came into view on an otherwise empty street. “Excuse me,” I said, and showed him the poor map the hostel had provided. “Ah, yes,” he said in flawless English. “Follow me, I’m going that way myself.” He led me up the hill (one of those steep hills that you fret about in San Francisco), chatting about the usual stuff with me (where I was from, the trip, that he was retired, etc). At the peak, he pointed to the left and said, “It’s just another two minute walk.” Saying Goodbye, I went my way and he went further up the hill. I noted that I was out of breath and he was doing fine.
The hostel was a good one if not expensive. There was only one that I knew of in Trondheim. The girl at the desk was efficient and friendly. I was surprised to learn that sheets were extra; well, I thought, I came to Norway—Europe’s most expensive country. After checking in, I walked up a stairwell to the second floor. There was a long antiseptic-looking corridor, quite bland, leading to the room I was to share with three others. One was a French guy with a speech impediment and poor English; as I messed with getting some stuff rearranged in my backpack, he jabbered on about the necessity of seeing some churches because they were in such-and-such a style from the Middle ages when French influence…and so on.

I didn’t have time to explore since it was already 10:30pm. Well, I did really since it wouldn’t get dark until after 2am, but I was tired. I took a shower—carefully keeping my sandals on in the less-than-sparkling bathroom—and then sauntered on down to a tiny supermarket to buy the only thing I could afford: a small bottle of water and some bread. Oh, and a banana. I decided the Auschwitz diet might be a good thing for a few days.

The next day the weather was grand. Heading out after a fairly decent free breakfast, I met a young couple and began chatting. They were American though the guy, in his twenties and named Lars, was of Norwegian lineage. His girlfriend looked partially Asian and was fairly quiet. We decided to walk to the cathedral together. The cathedral being, naturally enough, the ‘Trondheim Cathedral’, and quite famous all throughout Europe. On the way, Lars talked a lot about how he had relatives here in Trondheim and how he was going to hook up with them. “Yeah, my uncle’s a cool guy. I saw him, I don’t know, maybe 20 years ago.”

The day was splendid. Warm, sunny, a delightful little mountain river that wound through the town, quaint buildings, trees, parks. I wished I could stay for a month, but then, I don’t have Bill Gates’ bank account. We walked through a well-shaded cemetery as the cathedral loomed over us, imposing and beautiful. As we approached the front of the cathedral, we noted the entrance fee, which came to about ten bucks. I have a major problem with anyone charging an entry fee for a house of God, so on principle alone I didn’t pay. Neither did Lars and his girlfriend. Instead, we headed to the town center. There was a square, tourists, kind of the same thing you run into in so many towns in Europe, but the place was charming and we sat at a café for awhile. I don’t remember much about the rest of the day because we just wandered before heading back to the hostel for a rest.

The next morning, I walked to the train station and bought my reservation for the return trip to Oslo. I would be leaving that afternoon, so in the meantime, Lars, his girlfriend, and an Asian couple they had met the evening before all went out to see some sights. “There’s a fortress or something nearby,” the young Asian man said. As we all five walked down a neighborhood of five-story apartment buildings, we chatted about where we were from, etc. etc. The youth, who introduced himself as MEE, was from Laos and had been studying in Stockholm Sweden for a couple years or so. His friend (maybe girlfriend?) was Chinese and had pretty much grown up in Sweden and considered herself Swedish. The two were making this trip during some holidays.

The fortress, when we rather stumbled upon it, was both disappointing and inspiring at the same time. It didn’t seem there was much left of the fortress. A couple of white stone walls and a tower, some ruins. But the view was fantastic. Perched on a high hill, the site overlooked the city on three sides below. The cathedral poked its spires above some green woodland, and the river flowed past a couple of bridges far below. The breeze was pleasant, and for the most part, after shooting dozens of pics (mostly of each other in various poses), we lazed on the grass and chatted quite contentedly.

I stayed as long as I could, but about 1pm, I returned to the hostel, collected my backpack, and walked back to the train station, now a familiar route. Luckily, the train back to Oslo had a first class car! I was very thankful that it was air conditioned and delightfully empty. I plopped down in a seat, took out a newspaper, and alternated between reading news articles and gazing out the window for the next several hours.

ANOTHER LITTLE TRIP: Bern and Lyon
I stayed in Hannover a week after returning from Scandinavia. But since I still had five days left on the rail pass, I thought to return to visit Felix in Bern. I emailed him asking if I might return for a night, and he wrote back, “Of course, I think two nights is better.” God bless Felix. I caught the train the next morning from the Hannover Hauptbahnhof and enjoyed a six hour trip down to Bern. This time I remembered how to get to Felix’s apartment so after a short ride on the tram (illegal as usual since I had no ticket), I walked with ease to his place. He was already waiting for me, having prepared some more fondue. “We’re going over to Manfred’s apartment again,” he announced with a smile. “And Theo is coming over, too.”

So we had another evening on Manfred’s terrace! This time, Manfred’s wife Kathrin joined us for the fondue and drinks and jokes. I tried Felix’s method of dipping the speared bread into a shot glass of schnapps and then into the bubbling cheese. The taste was heavenly—if there’s schnapps in Heaven of course. Tonight’s weather was even better than the last time. The air was only slightly cool, and in the far distance were the Swiss Alps—which had remained invisible on my previous visit. At sundown, a splash of crimson (a phrase WAY overused by writers, btw) lit the mountains like magic, and for the thousandth time, I gave thanks that I no longer lived in Dubai.

Felix had persuaded me to stay two nights (“Hey,” he said when I’d first arrived, “You can stay as long as you like; you always have a home here.”), and I decided to follow his recommendation to take the train down to Lausanne and then take the boat from there to Montreaux—and then ride a scenic train back to Bern. It would be an all-day trip but nice, he promised. And he wasn’t exaggerating. The sky was sunny as the train (Yeah, first class on a Swiss train, which means ‘upstairs’ in a booth-like seating area) wound through hills and valleys. In Lausanne, located in French-speaking Switzerland, I spent an hour or so down by the monstrously huge Lake Geneva. Foolishly, I’d neglected to charge my batteries (it always happens when you most need them), so I had to go into a little store and fork out $13 on some AA batteries. To punish myself, I skipped lunch (though I did buy a coke and some bread).  The boat was a two-deck ferry that took passengers to several stops along the lake. The second level was first class, so I got to either stand on the deck and admire the mountains in the distance or sit inside and rest my eyes from the glare of the sun (darn, losing those sunglasses in Norway!). For two hours, I snapped pictures, daydreamed, and relished the views of low mountains, many vineyard covered, and the towns that were built at levels on them. The whole thing was quaint as hell.

I disembarked in the city of Monteux. I couldn’t really tell any difference between this city and Lausanne: both were French speaking, built on the hillside, and had the same architecture and outdoor cafes. I just kind of wandered. I climbed a very lengthy set of outside steps that led up to higher street levels. I chose one neighborhood lined with shops and ambled along it until coming to a tiny supermarket. I bought an apple and some bread (no need for coke since the apple has juice inside, right?) and after awhile, walked back down to the lake, chose a spot among some trees, and ate my snack (also called ‘meal of the day’). At first I was annoyed by a couple sparrows who hopped close to my feet hoping, no doubt, for a few crumbs of my expensive Swiss bread. I pinched off a crumb and tossed it a few feet away, hoping they’d be happy and fly off. But of course not. It was like offering dollar bills to a hobo; the sparrows came back with some of their friends, so I wound up pinching off tiny bits and throwing them out. Most of the time, one sparrow or another dominated the foodfest, snatching the crumb and flying off—others angrily retorting and then coming back to Master Scott.

After all that fun, I climbed the hill again and found a café. I bought a pot of tea from an Asian waitress behind the bar and sat outside for awhile, cooling off and reading another chapter of the novel I was carrying, The Final Diagnosis. Reading about an autopsy and glancing at French architecture and the lake beyond was incongruous—but variety is the spice of life.

The scenic train ride back was delightfully and thankfully slow—nearly as slow as an Amtrak train heading through Iowa. But this train was a bit different, with less classy interiors but those wonderful windows that you can pull down so that you can stand, put your head out and really be one with nature and the wind. I hadn’t done this since Romania. Northern Europeans, like their American counterparts, tend to frown on open windows on trains. We passed all that you would expect to on a Swiss mountain ride: valleys, through mountain tunnels, over chasms, hillside pastures where cows wearing their chiming bells stood in the shade, farms, tiny mountain villages. The afternoon was superb, and when I returned to Felix’s, he was almost ready with a barbeque. “Manny and Theo are coming over soon,” he told me in the kitchen as he slaved over a stovetop pan on top of which lay strips of marinated meat.

Out back in the garden of the apartment building, a lovely green area with a barbeque area complete with table and wood-burning oven, a fire was blazing. Once the guys arrived, Theo with his scalloped potatoes, Felix started passing food from his balcony to Manny and I, who took it over to the table. For the next 2 hours, we feasted on potatoes, fresh vegetables, and the meat: horsemeat and lamb. I wasn’t sure I could do horsemeat (gee, my sister owns one), but it was quite good actually. Felix is a wonderful cook and we ate and drank (yes, Manny brought more wine over). Theo told a few more of the jokes he’d told weeks ago, but after a couple glasses of wine, they’re still funny. Kathrin joined us after her workout at the gym, and we stayed put in the little dark garden until close to 11pm. Felix had to work the next day, so after saying goodnight, I walked back to Manny and Kathrin’s flat to check email on their laptop (I’d left mine behind in Hannover and Felix’s was in the shop). We chatted a bit and Manny even came down with me on the elevator to make sure I got started back to Felix’s okay.

I had never really spent time in a French city (other than Paris, and even only the odd day here and there), so when I met a couple through couchsurfing and got an invite to stay with them, I accepted. Couchsurfing, if you don’t know, is an international online organization whereby you “surf” for a couch to sleep on at someone’s house. Hosts do this because they are interested in building international friendships and like to meet foreigners. Travelers get involved because they want a free place to sleep for a night. I’d heard about couchsurfing through Alexis, the French Canadian guy I’d met in Bulgaria, so after joining, wrote to a couple in the French city of Lyon.

So, the morning after the barbeque, I found myself back on the very same train that I’d taken the day before towards Lausanne. Only I continued on to Geneva and then Lyon. Ingolf and Kathryn (the couple) had written that they wouldn’t be available until about 7pm, so I killed time by walking about Lyon, going as far as the river Rhone. At about 6:30, I wandered back to the address I’d been given, and to my surprise, the ground floor door (entrance to the apartment building) was open, so I entered, climbed the stairs, and just in case they were home, knocked on the door. To my surprise, two Chinese girls opened the door and peeked out. When they saw me, they opened the door wider and said, “You are couchsurfer?” in a cute Chinese accent. Turns out they were couchsurfers, too. As they beckoned me in and brought me into the kitchen the kitchen for a glass of much-needed water, I learned that they’d spent the previous night with Ingolf and Kathryn but had a problem with traveling onwards; hence, they were staying another night. They were from Hong Kong, both in their late twenties but looking much younger, and with broken English and lots of smiles and giggles they were utterly charming.

They were thrilled to learn that I’d traveled in Switzerland—their next stop—and questioned me about various cities, hostels, prices. Unfortunately, I could only tell them about Felix, Manny and Theo and eating horsemeat and dipping bread in schnapps, so their enthusiasm dwindled.

Ingolf came home after awhile. He and Kathryn are actually Germans living for some years in France. They seemed to be in their late twenties and were avid bikers. Now, in the kitchen, he said, “Well last night the girls made Chinese food for us, so I guess it’s our turn.” It’s likely that he wondered what tasty dish an American could possibly concoct, so we decided on Spaghetti. Wandering down to the corner store, he and I chipped in to buy some big fat tomatoes, some zucchini, onion and—just in case we’d need it—a jar of sauce. Back at the house, we men took charge of the kitchen while the Chinese girls busied themselves in their guestroom on the internet desperately seeking the next night’s accommodations and train information. Ingolf started pasta boiling while I diced up the onions and garlic. We threw everything into a pot to simmer and chatted until Kathryn came home—exhausted—from work. It was then that I was really impressed with the whole concept of being a Couchsurfing host. Imagine coming home sweaty and tired at the end of a long day of work and meeting people that you didn’t know who would spend the night in your home. Wow!
We all had a super dinner. Kathryn, as she explained, had just started working for a company that sold tired on the Internet. They had needed someone who spoke not only fluent German but French as well. Which she did, of course. “It’s long hard hours,” she explained, “A start-up company, but by September I hope to negotiate a better contract.” After dinner, the Chinese girls and I did the dishes. We all chatted a bit but then the girls retired to the guestroom while Kathryn made up the couch in the living room for me. It was completely comfortable and I got a good night’s rest. The next morning, Ingolf and I had a small breakfast of bread and cheese (well, France, right?) and I departed. I had half a day to spend in Lyon before my train departed for Germany, so I took the time to explore the city center.

I returned via city bus to the center, the river Rhone. A few blocks further is the river Saone, both pretty with plenty of bridges crossing. Just on the other side of the Saone, a hill (and the streets) ascend for a few hundred meters. It’s utterly charming, all these twisty streets at different levels. I wound up at St. Jeans (St. John’s) cathedral, one of the best cathedrals I’d seen in a while. Set atop a rather mammoth hill, surrounded by trees, this is the seat of the archbishop of France and was built from 1180 AD to 1480 in the Romanesque and Gothic style. Good old English King Henry IV was married here. At any rate, I had a nice wander through and then took the stairs down to ‘the crypt’, which to me looked like a smaller sanctuary. Anyway, it was nice and cool (the temps were in the 80’s outside) so I sat in one of the pews for awhile gazing down the nave at all the artwork, the stained glass, and gang of Japanese tourists snapping pictures.

I had a treat on the way back to Hannover: a ride on the TVG (France’s version of Japan’s bullet train). This creature on rails goes up to 300 KPH (186mph). I had deliberately chosen a train that would bypass Paris since I didn’t want to get stuck going from one train station to another, and this one was direct from Lyon to Brussels, Belgium, where I would change for a train to Cologne Germany, and on to Hannover. The bullet train was fast, all right. As I sat in my seat, the scenery flashed by out the window. I spent some time in the lounge car sipping a diet cola, mineral water, and eating some licorice and gummy bears—all paid for with my credit card. Why? Because in Lyon I had literally spent my last 7 Euros. My pockets were empty until I’d get back to Hannover, but while in the lounge car, I saw an ice cold coke light and just couldn’t help using the old MasterCard. Since I was going to make one transaction, I thought I might as well go wild and buy 3 items. So there I stood (cheap French train had no seats; you had to stand at one of three ‘bars’) enjoying the melting Gummy Bears while looking out the windows at the fast moving French countryside, part of which was quite nice: we went through a narrow valley with perhaps 200-foot high hills on either side, all forested. But after awhile, we were rolling across farmland, pretty flat and, well, not much different than Iowa.

I changed trains in Belgium, happy to be in a first class compartment on a German train again because the attendant came around with little fancy chocolates or a little bag of mixed nuts—and I was slightly hungry. The ride, other than the snack, was uneventful. I read most of the way, more surgery and medical goings-on in the Final Diagnosis. I had to change trains in Cologne Germany, where I enjoyed twenty heady minutes in one of the grandest cathedrals in Europe. The place gives me the creeps when I look at it from the outside; it’s so darkly gothic in comparison to other cathedrals. Looks like something that I should have seen in Transylvania. I half expected vampires to fly out of the roof. Afterwards, I caught the next train to Hannover. Thus ended my travels in Europe. I would be spending the following weeks in Hannover. It had been a good long trip. 

Switzerland and Beyond

2009-06-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

Bern, Switzerland:
Good old Felix, a friend ever since we met while hiking in Zion National Park back in ’89, met me at the train station. He lives a few stops away from the center, in a nice roomy flat. I dumped my backpack in the guestroom and we caught up on my Dubai years and his recent travels to the USA (Felix has been to the States 32 times!). Bern is a lovely city, particularly the old town with the river flowing in a loop three quarters around it. Not that muddy brown of the Missouri or, frankly, most other rivers, but a clean, refreshing aqua. I love that glacial water. The highlight of the Bern stay, though, was a mountain hike.

Felix belongs to a hiking club, which consists for the most part of an over-40 crowd. Tough, fit folks, though. One morning, at the main train station, Felix and I met up with his colleague, a woman in her 50’s and the woman’s sister. The train out to the meeting point glided silently along its path through villages, a low range of mountains in view the entire route. At the actual meeting point, some town in a huge valley, the rest of the group was waiting—numbering about 20 people. Two by two, we went by ski-lift towards the top of one of the low mountains. By the time we got to the top, the clouds on this very cloudy day were beneath us. The sun made an appearance every now and then as we got started on our walk.

What can I say? The trek was demanding (of my energy levels) but gorgeous. For the most part, we hiked through forest, up and down, down and up. Every now and then a great vista spread before us of the valley and its villages far below. After an hour and a half, right on schedule, the group stopped at a picnic table and brought out goodies: sandwiches, olives, WINE, and a rather large slab of cheese. Felix, beloved by the group for lugging it along, cut off thick slices for us to eat. The weather was chilly so most of us threw on jackets while we ate the ‘snack’. Afterwards, the Swiss dutifully packed away all their rubbish—and we continued up, up, up.

The top, when we arrived, was just a couple hundred yards of wild grasses, flowers and sloping ground. At the very tip-top was a huge cross. I commented to one of Felix’s friends that there were likely angels flying this high up. She laughed. The woman had traveled to the states a couple of times and was quite happy chatting in English. At any rate, we made our descent, following a pathway that took us through more woods until, after another half hour or so, we reached a level area where there sat—surprise—a café/restaurant and some outbuildings. “Here, we’ll eat our picnic lunch,” Felix announced. I glanced at the gathering dark clouds, shivered with cold, and wondered about that. By the time we got to the restaurant itself, the sky opened sent some sprinkles our way in time to ruin the picnic. One of the die-hard picnickers suggested that we brace ourselves against the side of the restaurant and eat, but Felix’s colleague thankfully had the sense to suggest venturing indoors. We did so.

A heavy-set waitress was kind enough to allow us to eat our picnic lunch in her restaurant, provided we agree to buy some hot soup, which on a day like this was no trouble at all. She even guided us to a private room where a big table allowed all twenty of us to sit together. Beers were ordered, soup was ordered, sandwiches and other items to feast upon were brought out from bags. I had my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which got some stares. When I showed it to Felix and his colleague, they made faces. Most Europeans cannot get their heads around the concept of mixing jam with peanut butter. It would get the same reaction in the US if I were to suggest a peanut butter, banana and mayonnaise sandwich (which in reality mom used to eat). Anyway, the lunch went well. The big pot of hot chicken soup went down well with the crowd, and a bit more beer was consumed. The oldest in the group was a thin but hardy man who looked to be in his 60’s or 70’s. He’d had a couple beers by the time we ventured out of the restaurant into clear weather. Tough old bird. Led the pack as we descended down a road and found our way onto another path. “I thought that was the end of the hike,” I said to Felix. We’d hiked three hours up until the café. “Goodness, no,” Felix replied. “We have maybe three more hours to get down.” I groaned, thinking about my blisters. But the weather was clearing up and the forest was alive and green, something I’d not had much of in brown, sandy Dubai. So life was good.

The next ‘event’ during my stay in Bern was a fondue dinner. A couple nights after the hike, Felix took me over to his friend Manfred’s flat. Manfred was in his 30’s, one of those gregarious types who enjoys drinking and telling jokes. He worked at the post office with Felix, actually. Another guy, Ted, was also there along with Manfred’s live-in girlfriend, but she soon announced her departure for the gym. Out on a balcony overlooking the ‘yard’ of the building—an open area with a few tall, grand oaks and a view of the mountains beyond Bern—we sat around a plastic table and chatted while Manfred prepared the fondue. After a short wait, out came a bowl of bubbling yellow cheese and chunks of white bread. Manfred fetched a few bottles of beer, some mineral water and a couple diet cokes, and we feasted. I watched Felix skewer a bite-size piece of bread onto what looked like a giant toothpick about eight inches long and twirl the bread in the cheese. He managed to scoop up two pieces of garlic as well. The rest of us joined in.

The evening consisted of travel stories, drinking (especially for Ted and Manfred), commenting with appreciative tones on the gathering dusk, a pink sky as the sun set, and with darkness, the jokes. Ted and Manfred had a seemingly endless supply of jokes (predictably ribald), and what impressed me was their near-perfect English. Of course in order to work in the post office in Switzerland, one must speak at least three, if not four, languages, so Manfred’s English was great. I wouldn’t be able to tell the “why did the chicken cross the road?” joke in another language. I can’t even tell jokes in English, come to think of it. After Manfred and Ted had alternately told something like a dozen jokes each, I ventured with the one I could remember; I won’t repeat it here, but it usually gets a chuckle at best. At its closure, Ted smiled and Manfred laughed, but only because he’s had so many drinks that anything would have earned a laugh. Manfred’s girlfriend got back from her gym and joined us on the balcony. Noting that her dear one was getting a little loud for the lateness of the evening, she kept shushing him, which worked for a couple of minutes or so. Even Felix whispered a warning about neighbors sleeping. After that, Manfred quieted a bit. By 11pm or so, Felix, Ted and I left the party. Ted zoomed off half drunk on his motorbike and Felix and I walked back to his flat through the dark but utterly charming Swiss neighborhood.

VENICE

I took a day train to Venice, thankful for the brief stop in Milan Italy, a city at which I’d had to visit several times during my Dubai years because Alitalia rather enforced the visit in order to make connections to the States. I’d wanted to visit the train station again, always having liked its odd ambience: a mix of gothic, grime and a breezy openness. The platforms and waiting area had always been abuzz with travelers, kiosks selling foods, perfumes, magazines, you name it. Further into the station had been a dimly-lit passageway with ceilings and windows that reminded me of a cathedral interior. Thus, I’d been looking forward to seeing it again. BUT, wouldn’t you know, the Milanese had refurbished the place since my last visit. Now there were ramps and painted walls. I was disappointed but looked forward to Venice.
The city is gorgeous, no matter what anyone says (actually, everyone agrees on that although people disagree on the cleanliness and smell) Pictures will describe the city better than any writer, so I’ll not bother here. I did get upset lugging my heavy backpack up and down the grand canal looking for the hostel. The fools hadn’t had the foresight to mention on their website that the door faces away from the Grand Canal, thus making it difficult to find, and of course asking an Italian policeman or hotelier or kiosk worker is a useless endeavor, sure to invoke a shrug or some gobbledygook in Italian. A very unhelpful people, the bloody Italians. Anyway, I finally found the place, and a very helpful young woman behind the desk said, “Si, now I am afraid you must walk to the place where your room is; the rooms are not all here.” I felt myself getting slightly agitated but glanced down at the map she produced. “Our other place is here,” and she drew a quick circle around a point that I knew was back on the other side of the Grand Canal. “It’s only maybe fifteen minutes.” I sighed. Thankfully, she gave explicit directions about how many little bridges to cross. So off I went.
The walk along the Grand Canal is magical, especially at dusk. I stopped to rest and take in the view from the bridge that crosses the Grand Canal near the train station. Gondoliers, a polizia motorboat, some private craft and a public floating bus plied up and down the canal, seemingly in each other’s way. I hated to walk on, but I wanted to get situated before dark. The main route took me through the more touristy areas but all the venerable old buildings were alive with customers. Signs announced cheap spaghetti, tours, knick knacks, but none of the gross commercialism could dampen the joy of being in Venice. I found the ‘other location’ down one narrow street that dead-ended to a small canal. Opening the monstrously large metal door, I walked panting up two flights of stairs, opened another door, another, and found the room that the “red” key would open. Inside were seven beds, but no one was about, and only three of the beds had backpacks and gear strewn on them. I stowed my backpack under the bed, put my wallet and money pouch into deep pockets, and set out. My first stop was the only supermarket I found in Venice during my stay, a Billa (tiny stores found throughout Europe). Tiny things far from the American concept of a supermarket, Billa nevertheless offered me some bread, diet Coke, and a banana. I paid and wandered down some empty-looking alleyway that dead-ended to a canal (there are loads of these), I sat on the top stair of a set of steps that descended into greenish water. On the other side of the canal were old faded buildings, windows open, and clothes hanging out to dry. Music emanated from one of them, and in peace I ate my dinner.
The next day I just wandered, which is pretty much what one does in Venice: soak in the atmosphere of this city of watery streets. Well, I also spend an hour or two grading papers online from the hostel, but for the most part I was free on this sunshiny day. In one church, I saw an art showing. A Muslim woman, Moroccan I believe, had painted some abstracts of ‘modern female life’. But like most modern art, it made me yawn, and I more appreciated the chance to sit in a corner and enjoy the cool breeze.
I also made it through a maze of streets and alleyways to San Marcos Square, shown in dozens of movies. I’d been here in 1979, in the winter, when the square was under several inches of water (a regular occurrence). On this day, no fewer than a million people crowded about gawking at the amazing church, standing in queues, gulping from bottles of mineral water, and snapping pics (mostly of each other). I knew immediately that I would depart. Just beyond the square one comes to the sea, where you can walk along the cornice, the seawall, and gaze out past the sailboats and ‘bus stops along the wharf to some islands, on which sit villas and homes for the rich. With the sea on my right, and grand 17th and 18th century buildings to my left, I walked. This was Venice.

Train to Belgrade

My plan was to take the night train from Venice to Belgrade, and after a day in Belgrade, to catch another night train to Thessaloniki Greece. It meant spending two nights on trains, but I would save some money and have days to wander. At the Venice train station, I watched the last of the light ebb away behind the Grand Canal and then entered the train station. I found the platform and sat on a bench. The only other westerner was a young woman, a bit on the heavy side and with blond hair. She asked me if I were going to Serbia, and we started chatting about Venice, travels, etc. The girl’s name was Lori and she hailed from Vancouver Canada. Both of us wondered if the Serbian border cops would still be upset with America’s bombing of Belgrade ten years earlier. How long does it take to get over your country being bombed? There was a 50-something man in a uniform standing near the train (itself dark and empty inside) so I asked him if he spoke English. He shook his head and said some words that sounded rather apologetic. “Russian?” I tried, to no avail, but when he asked “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” my heart was thankful yet again for the German I’d studied. “Ja,” and I asked him if Serbia was safe for Americans. It was likely a dumb question, of course, but it never hurts to ask. He launched into a short lecture explaining how safe it was, how people were people, governments had their problems, etc. etc. and he smiled. I knew it would be okay.
At 11pm or so, Lori and I boarded and found our six-seat cabin. By the time the train chugged out of Venice, not many others had boarded. The entire car only had about a dozen people sitting in cabins. We wound up sharing with a young Serbian guy in his twenties and a pretty Serbian girl. Each of us had one berth on which to sleep, but after we’d gotten under way, “Mark” (English version of the Serb name) asked the conductor if he and I could sleep in the next compartment since there were so many empty places. “Sure,” the guy replied. It didn’t bother him where we slept, apparently. Some conductors are pretty fussy about staying where you’re assigned. We made up our beds with the sheets and pillows that the conductor handed us. After chatting for awhile (Mark mentioned that he was half Serbian and half Croatian), we climbed into our bunks and slept.
The next morning, with yet a couple of hours before reaching Belgrade, Mark and I sat in the next cabin with the Serbian girl. Lori had disembarked during the night when the train had stopped in Croatia. So it was the three of us. The girl, who spoke only broken English, would get a call on her cell phone every twenty minutes or so. Mark spoke to her in Serbian and explained to me that her sister had just had a baby in their hometown and there was some problem with the health of the baby. We said a few words of sympathy and she nodded and smiled. Breakfast for all of us was the almost the same: bread, water, apples.

BELGRADE
Not much to report. I spent one day here. The city is pleasanter than I thought it would be. While the streets and buildings are a bit ‘tired’ and lacking any grandeur whatsoever, there’s a wide pedestrian-only street lined with nice shops and trees. The people surprised me the most. I’d been here in the 80’s when everything was much grimmer—life under Titov and Communism had meant dull, worn clothing and a lack of vim and vigor. Of course life changed dramatically in the 1990’s for all of Eastern Europe, and now I found a well-dressed citizenry, particularly the women. They were much more chicly garbed than Americans. No sweat pants here; short dresses or slacks or denim shorts, pretty faces, smiles on faces. Couples walked hand in hand, families were out and about and the shops were filled. The buildings hadn’t changed much, but the people seemed to be doing well. I was still unhappy with Serbs for their attempts to annihilate Bosnians and then Kosovars.
I made my way up the pedestrian street to a little park. The weather couldn’t have been better: it was sunny and about 70 Fahrenheit. I drank a diet coke, people-watched, and moved on to a fortress that was open free to everyone. Inside was more ‘park’, some old walls, a few structures not open to the public apparently. No one seemed to mind. At a tennis court set aside a centuries-old wall, two men swatted the ball back and forth while a handful of us watched. Then, at an overlook point, I gazed at the Danube River far below, and forest, and villas dotting the hillside across the river and below us. Teens sat here and there on a low wall talking energetically or talking on a cell phone. After a rest, I strolled back to town and treated myself to a Big Mac (the place was packed). After a visit to an Internet Café, I spent another couple hours wandering before returning to the train station.
The train to Thessaloniki, Greece would be an overnighter—and I’d only booked a seat in one of those cute little compartments. The Belgrade station at night is quite different from its daytime character. Now, the place was in shadows, reminding me of the old Soviet times. The train itself was just sitting on the tracks, lifeless, dark and spooky. A few shadows climbed at different cars into the train. I was hoping to be alone in a compartment; that way, I could stretch out along 3 seats and sleep. For awhile, I thought I’d be in luck. As I watched more and more people climb aboard the various cars, and as some of the individual car lights would inexplicably blink on, no one entered my cabin. I kept my fingers crossed for privacy and silence. I had horrible visions of grumpy non-English speaking Serbian men filling the compartment and smoking all night while arguing. But as luck would have it, just a few minutes before pulling out, two men entered my dark compartment. I was sitting next to the window, and thankfully the seat directly across from me was jutting outwards, clearly broken, so at least no one would interfere with my plan to stretch my legs. With a cough, a man in his 40’s but looking rather sweaty and sick, sat in the middle seat; his friend, somewhat older, sat next to the door. By and by we figured out that we both spoke German, the older guy and I, so we chit chatted a bit. They were Macedonians heading back to Skopje. Well, after the train pulled out for the long haul to Thessaloniki, the sick Macedonian began to cough alarmingly regularly—without always covering his mouth. His clothes looked to have been purchased from a Goodwill about to go out of business. His friend leaned his head against the glass of the door window and soon began to snore. In the next cabin, a baby’s cries pierced the night. I was miserable.
Luck was with me. I stepped gingerly over the legs of the snoring Macedonian and headed down to the end of the car past the entire row of filled cabins. The conductor stepped out of his little ‘office’, and I asked him how much it would cost for a couchette in the next car (which I’d earlier noted was mostly empty). “Ten Euros,” he said in a friendly manner, and my heart perked up.
“Sold,” I said. I grabbed my backpack and left the Macedonians to the noise. In my new home in the next car, I happily had the entire cabin to myself. I selected the middle berth to sleep on, and the conductor brought me clean sheets and a pillow. I set myself up and spent the night first looking out the windows at the passing night scene (the occasional village, dark shapes of forestland, the lights of a farmhouse) and then slept.
The train was running late. We should have arrived in Thessaloniki Greece by late morning; however, the train, according to the conductor, was still in Macedonia! We hadn’t even made it to the Greek border yet. Well, I’d pulled the window in my cabin down to allow in the fresh cool wind, and I could alternately nap in my bunk or stand in the corridor looking out the window, so I didn’t really mind. I’d made a reservation via the Internet for a hotel in Thessaloniki, so I was stress free. The countryside was pretty though dusty (as is much of the Balkans). Low hills with some scraggly trees and bushes on them, fields, a narrow river keeping up with the train, that was about it. Very pleasant.

THESSALONIKI, GREECE

Thessaloniki is a city I last visited 20 years ago (gasp! 20??). It’s as different from Athens as New York is from Los Angeles. The city is spread out, partly up a small mountain and partly lining the sea. There’s no beach for most of the city; instead there’s a seawall that’s quite pleasant to walk along, the blue ocean on one side (the plastic bottles, seaweed and assorted garbage is rather unpleasant though) and 7-9 story buildings on the other. The place must have been grand in its day but is exhausted and a bit polluted now. Thankfully, the sea winds flow through the narrow streets that ascend gently upwards and push out any smog, I suspect. But here in Thessaloniki (hey, St. Paul was here chiding and teaching) are Roman ruins, the remains of old walls, towers, and history that makes you feel small and lonely in the world. Well at least it does travelers. The youth walked about on cell phones and dressed chicly, sexily. The women at least. Low-cut blouses seem to be the norm.

The memories I will carry away: taking bus 23 as it wound along backstreets that led upwards towards the crest of the mighty hill that is part of the town. At the top are some residential properties and shops, but on a Sunday not much was happening. A glorious 20-foot Roman wall stretched for a few hundred yards, and an old monastery (not grand in itself) sported a lookout point from which the city lay before you—far down below you, spread out and wonderful. I wandered past dusty little modest wood houses as well as more impressive homes. Little East-European looking cars sat near BMW’s.

In the evening, I sat in a restaurant (mostly empty) with white tablecloths and a glass-covered counter filled with various alien-looking food. Oddly enough, gyros were hard to find and those that existed in the corner kiosks were all pork, which I don’t eat. But here I feasted on fried potatoes, a mound of peas (they were generous with the peas, cheap on potatoes) and greasy but delicious chicken. Not bad after a few days of bread and similarly unhealthy eating. Some old tunes were playing, one of which was an old favorite: The Winds of Change by the Scorpions. I’d listened to that song many times before leaving for Russia back in 1991. After listening to some good old songs, I paid my 6 Euros and returned to my room; I’d splurged on a private room with a little (very little) bathroom, where in the sink I washed some clothes and hung them up to dry. After doing some work, missing folks at home, missing Dubai, and generally missing conversation, I read another chapter of Cadfael and went to sleep.

The 3 people that I did meet and talk to were Vicki, who worked at the Starbucks across the street. We chatted several times when I went in for tea (and work); her English was good and she’d done a little traveling around Greece and just was a pleasant sort to chat with. I also met Feona and Tonya, two gals from San Francisco who showed up in the hotel lobby late one evening looking exhausted. They wound up getting a room and the next day, the three of us caught a city bus for a long and hot ride to the end station, where we caught yet another bus to a village on the outskirts, one that fronted the sea and had a proper beach.
Well, ‘proper’ has different meanings. It was the best beach in Thessalonika, apparently, but I didn’t think much of it. The tacky shops and bars lining the beach were tourist rip-offs, and the sand was littered with cigarette butts (I think Greek babies must come out with a cigggie between their little pink lips). Compared to Dubai, it was abysmal, and I impatiently wondered why I’d endured the bus ride to experience ice-cold water and an unpleasant beach. Still, it was restful to lie in a lounge chair and watch the Greeks soak up sun and splash in icy water. Tonya and Feona had just come north from the Greek Isles and were beach lovers. They wound up staying long after I took another series of hot and dusty buses back to the hotel. For the evening, I wandered back down along the seawall and walked the half a kilometer or so to where there’s an old Roman tower (it’s called the White Tower if you want to Google it) and small plaza, along which Greek families and couples amble in the breeze. Very pleasant. Vendors hawk roasted corn on the cob and other goodies, couples embrace, children chatter, teens show off; in short, the realities and wonders of life are on full display.

My last evening in Thessaloniki. In a lonely state, I wandered the crowded streets. The old tired buildings are both attractive and depressing. They’re like the over-30 crowd here: worn out from life and time. These 7-9 story structures have some dusty glory attached to them, having seen a lot. As the sun hid behind the buildings, I wound up in a plaza in which is located a glorious domed church; it reminded me of a mosque by design, but that’s much of the Eastern Orthodox church style. Inside were paintings, icons, candles, incense, everything in a dim light with some rays of a descending sun passing through the open door and stretching into the entryway of the nave. Two massive chandeliers of gold color (doubtfully gold but who knows) hung from the domed ceiling, the cord coming down from the figure that must be Mary surrounded by angels. If this church had been in Omaha, I thought, the place would have been stripped bare decades ago. I watched a young couple enter (unlike their elders, the youth are trim, fit, sexy, alive), pick up candles and light them by sticking the wick into a burning candle. The man set them into slots and walked over to one of the paintings of what must be a saint. Leaning forward, he almost kissed it. His lips didn’t quite reach the frame, which was likely cheating (but quite healthier). I later saw an old woman’s lips make it all the way to the glass-covered icon. Well, I guess by that age, after wars and the troubles of life in the Balkans, what can a little painting kissing do?

Back at the Atlantis hotel, I checked email one last time and gathered my heavy backpack, said my goodbyes to the young ruffle-haired clerk who had spent ten minutes decrying the Euro and the economy and the general poor state of the city. I walked down the street towards the train station, stopped at a café for a diet coke and stupidly for a piece of bread spread with Nutella. At the station afterwards, I waited for the night train to Sofia.

This train was similar to the one from Belgrade. For reasons of finance, the governments of Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania don’t provide soap or toilet paper in the train restrooms. Nor do they spend money on a cleaning service. Grime is rather permanent, I suspect. On the plus side, I had my own cabin again, my own nice berth. Standing in the dark corridor as the train swept along out of Thessaloniki (the Greek government doesn’t indulge in lighting either), I met two Greek Cypriots—a father and his twenty-year-old son—and chatted. The son had lived in the Bronx while attending some business college and married a Greek-American woman, and they all lived happily now in Cyprus, though one brother lived in Sofia, where they were now headed. The father retired into his cabin by 11pm or so, and the son and I chatted on and off while watching the dark shapes of northern Greece go by. The window was pulled down to neck level and it was fun to poke your head out and get a true breath of fresh air.

In the middle of the night, the passport control dudes came aboard for passports. The officer, a rather stern-looking gentleman with a worn uniform, more or less ordered me to get off the train and go to the little station. He took my passport and hurried on to the next car. Well, it’s an EU country, I knew, so there shouldn’t be any worries. I climbed down he steps off the train and crossed a set of tracks to the border-control station. In one room, two or three guys watched monitors (or possibly a TV). In another office, a young uniformed agent in his early thirties jotted something onto paperwork. “Do you know when we get our passports back?” I asked. He replied in English, and in a very friendly tone, that his colleague would simply bring them here to get stamped. Another American, a kid of about nineteen and looking very sleepy, came in as well. After a few minutes, the young friendly border agent said, “Where is he?” and frowned. He ran off to hurry his colleague along. Soon, he was back with our passports, did the scan and stamp, and handed them back. “Have a nice trip,’ he said, and we boarded the train.

SOFIA

I visited Sofia Bulgaria on two other occasions and have always liked the city. In 1990, just as communism was coming to a close (protesters trying to burn down Communist Party Headquarters and lots of demonstrations brought about a swift end as Eastern Europe fell), I’d witnessed with my friend Stoyan a massive 100,000 person demonstration on a main square. At the time, the streets of Sofia were potholed, the buildings needed painting, the people were dressed poorly, and shops were half empty. I wasn’t too surprised to find things had changed dramatically. During my time in Sofia, I delighted that the streets were fixed, the buildings painted, the people well dressed and full shops. Life was looking better. I caught tram 18 from the main station and took it took it several stops to “Ploshads Makedonia”, where the hostel I’d booked at was situated.

The hostel is called Hostel Mostel. The guy that mostly ran the front desk was both energetic and extremely friendly. All about the big common room (furnished with sofas and big plush pillows on the floor) young and old backpackers chatted or surfed on laptops. Still, there was no feeling of overcrowding at all. The guy checked me in and led me up an outside wooden staircase to the second floor balcony. There were several rooms along here, and he gave me the electronic pass key to open the door. Inside were several bunk beds. I stored my valuables in a free locker and walked back downstairs. “Free breakfast,” the guy said, “and in the evening free spaghetti and beer! Free Wifi anytime you want.” This was wonderful! Since I hadn’t eaten since the night before, I helped myself to bread, hot tea, granola and yogurt, sitting at a table with a few others, one being Annie. She was from Seattle and was traveling on and off with some friends who split up occasionally to do their own thing. This morning she was expecting an Israeli friend back from Serbia, and as we chatted, a rotund man in his 40’s plunked down beside me. “I’m Meeshael,” he said, introducing himself. From Southern France, he said. By the time I’d cleaned my plate and refilled my hot tea, a youthful Israeli man came up to Annie and gave her a hug. “Benjamin”, she cried, ushering to sit with us. He had both a nice genuine smile and long locks of black hair. I couldn’t picture him as a soldier, though. More like the peacenik type.

Well, that’s what’s great about hostels. People back home wonder why I don’t stay in a hotel or pension. Why a hostel, they ask, as in a tone suggesting a place where homeless people and drug addicts might venture. But hostels internationally are a great thing. As one 61-year-old woman later described it, when you stay in a hotel, you’re alone. It’s boring. In a hostel, you meet people, usually interesting people, and these kids (and older travelers too) are hardly the unkempt vagabonds of the 60’s and 70’s. These 21st Century travelers wear decent name brand clothes, carry cell phones and/or laptops, and demand more services of a hostel, hence the free Wifi, breakfast and beer that so many offer.

After breakfast I called an old Dubai acquaintance named Radi. He’d lived and worked as a waiter in Dubai from about 2001-2005 or something like that. I’d drop in to the place where he worked and we’d chatted frequently and exchanged emails. I used Skype to call his house number, and he said we’d meet the next morning in front of the Hilton Hotel (main landmark near the ex Lenin Square, the place of the before-mentioned demonstrations.

I spent the late morning exploring some old familiar roads in Sofia—going with Annie, Benjamin and Michael the Frenchman. One little ‘market’ was a collection of booths where quiet hawkers (sitting in lawn chairs) sold icons, knick knacks, pennants, and old Soviet military items: knives, brass knuckles, ammunition, etc. Matroshka dolls were on most tables, and I allowed myself a tiny gift: a kitchen door magnet of the map of Bulgaria. Annie paused over each table perusing the items, so I wandered off to a nearby church, the magnificent cathedral of St. Sophia. I love orthodox churches. Sophia was high domed, dimly-lit with wall murals of saints and holy men, chandeliers the size of a VW bug, intricate carvings and the scent of incense. I whispered some prayers and walked back to rejoin my new buddies.

IN the afternoon, we all split up. I wanted to explore a bit on my own, revisit the square where the demonstrations of 1990 had occurred. After marveling at how clean everything was and how full the shops were, I decided it was lunchtime. I stopped in one café filled with locals and at the buffet counter pointed at the potatoes and chicken—and cola light. The place was ordinary, a regular greasy spoon, but the food was delicious and pretty cheap. It gave me the strength to wander on. In much need of a haircut, I tracked down a salon where a mere kid invited me to sit in the chair; he didn’t speak much English but I understood that he was asking how I wanted my hair cut. Since his looked pretty decent, I just pointed and said, “Like yours.” I have to give the kid credit, he did a bang-up job. Walking out, I felt the cool breeze on my scalp and was glad I’d gotten rid of my mop. Eventually I made it back to Hostel Mostel, where I took a nap in my bunk in an otherwise lifeless room, though open backpacks and clothes strewn about bunks hinted at life to come. I was awoken from my nap by a guy coming in. He was medium height, in his late twenties I guessed, with short and very curly brown hair. As one does, we said hi and started chatting about all the usual stuff. His name was Alexi, a French Canadian from near Montreal. Since it would shortly be dinner, we walked downstairs. I worked a bit on my laptop and he surfed at the PC. After awhile, the hostel dude walked back to a kitchenette and threw some spaghetti noodles into a huge pot. “Soon,” he said with a grin to several of us.

The spaghetti was good, as was the free beer, of which I allowed myself a glass. I sat with Alexi and two Swedish girls barely twenty, I guessed. One was quite pretty with blond hair—the stereotypical Swedish girl. Fine English, too. I asked her if she’d studied American or British English (her accent was American). “British English in school,” she said, “But we always watch American movies and TV, so we get the accent.”

The next morning at breakfast, Alexi and I sat with Michael the French guy, Annie, Benjamin and a newcomer who introduced himself as Dominick, an Englishman in his late twenties who lived in Milan. “Computer work allows me to live in Italy,” he said. He mentioned something about his girlfriend and moving to Italy and her kid and something else, but I couldn’t comprehend it all because of his accent and his being a soft spoken person. Tall and thinly built, he seemed to be a quiet, decent bloke, as the Brits say. I left to get to the Hilton by ten, and wandered a street market filled with bookstalls for awhile. Then, at the Hilton, I saw Radi standing in the parking lot with a grin on his face. We embraced and he led me across the street to an outdoor café. “Sorry I don’t have more time,” he said as we sat at a table. All around us people bustled hither and thither. “I got a new job contract just yesterday and am leaving for Germany to work on a river boat.” I felt sorry for his bride of only two years or so. Likely he wouldn’t get home again for at least a year. After leaving Dubai, he said, he’d worked on a cruise ship that plied the Atlantic, cruised to South America and the Caribbean, and even western European ports. Radi had seen a lot in two years. “But I quit a couple years ago. I saw a murder.” And he went on to tell a gruesome story about being in the mess hall for employees and watching a Filipino man hammer the brains out of a fellow Filipino worker. “A British girl that saw it went insane,” Radi said with a shake of his head. “I couldn’t work there anymore, so I came home and got married.” We talked and talked until he had to go do more paperwork. In two days, he’d leave Bulgaria, and I figured he’d need some time with his family.

IN the afternoon, I walked to an old familiar place called NDK. NDK is just a tram stop in front of the rather darkly imposing and old Soviet-style Palace of Culture. Pretty much the size of a small stadium, the place looked dark and foreboding in 1990. It hadn’t changed much. But beyond NKD is a bridge that goes into the newer part of town. On the bridge were photographs from the `1990s, displaying the demonstrations, even some fires set by protesters, and the victories and cheering throngs from the time when the Commies fell. I reminisced about my visit at the time and walked on over the bridge (passing a big new McDonalds) to, of all places, a mall. The interior caused me to gasp. It could have been in an American city judging by the way shoppers were dressed and by the stores. I found a Costa Coffee shop and sat reading the newspaper and sipping Latte. Walking out later, I ruminated on the differences in malls in my life. Take Westroads mall in Omaha, for example. That was quite comparable to what I was seeing now in Sofia. Both were far better than the run-down new mall in Southampton England, but of course substandard in comparison with the opulent malls of Dubai.

In the evening, I walked with Alexi and Dominick to what is known in Sofia as the Russian Church. It’s the prettiest tiny domed church, unmistakably Russian. We snapped pics, commented on its beauty , and walked further up a wide boulevard. Neoclassical buildings on either side reminded me a little of the grandeur of St. Petersburg. We found ourselves in front of St. Sophia, which I’d seen the day before, but with the evening light, a picture would be brilliant; unfortunately, as we walked up a sloping street towards the church and it’s large parking area, one of those giant luxury tour buses pulled up alongside. “No, go away,” cried Alexi, and we bemoaned tours and buses in general. The church was closed, so we agreed to return in the morning to venture inside; for now, we snapped what pics we could of the exterior. The only embarrassing moment for me was when a group of American men, looking to be in their 50’s, came up to ask for recommendations to a decent but cheap café. Ordinarily, nothing wrong in that, of course, but they looked and spoke precisely like Texas good-old boys (which they were) firmly out of their element. Probably on some tour. “So, like where’s the closest joint?” one asked Alexi, but none of us could remember the location of the cafes we’d eaten in. “Just point us in the right direction,” the one man said with a laugh. “Hell, we’re F______ing Americans; we have a natural homing instinct.” Well, what more can you say?

On the way back, we stopped in a park as the sun’s last rays were extinguished. Kids on bikes dared injury on one of those half-circle metal ramp thingies. You know, where they go down one side and up the other like lightning, twisting and turning. One kid was good, though. He did a complete turn, the bike upside down for an instant in midair. At one mysterious pyramid shaped monument about 20 feet high, we wondered aloud about its significance. Each white stone had carved on it a name, in Cyrillic of course. Alexi, always with an eye for the ladies, spotted two lovely young creatures sitting on a bench nearby. Since I knew some Russian, I went over and asked about the monument. Both of the girls smiled charmingly but replied in English, “Not sure, maybe war,” and the one pointed to the side of monument that we couldn’t see. Wandering over, sure enough, I saw the years (which I have now forgotten) from the late nineteenth century, the time when Bulgaria battled the Turks for independence. Alexi wanted to stay and chat with the girls, but it was practically dark, so we departed.

The next morning after breakfast, Alexi wanted to walk the two departing Swedish girls to the train station. I didn’t care to go until I learned they were walking by way of the “Lady’s Market.” Intrigued, I went along. The market was, when we arrived twenty minutes later, in a more run-down area. The mostly residential area’s apartment buildings needed painting and were chipped. The clothing was a bit more downcast. The faces not so animated. IT wasn’t dangerous or anything; indeed, the market was lively, filled with vegetable and fruit stalls. Brigitta bought a paper bag filled with ripe red cherries. Other stalls displayed clothing (including a surprising amount of women’s undergarments—hence the name, I suppose) and household goods. If you needed a broom or a mop or a hammer, this was the place to shop.
Somehow, while chatting and peaking at the interior of a tiny white church, and watching old men play chess and bums sit on benches, we lost the girls. No biggie, so we returned to the hostel, found Dominick, and all returned to see the vast interior of St. Sophia. There were no tour buses in front though two policeman on the edge of the parking lot called something out to us. I thought they were forbidding us to go towards the church and asked (in Russian) if it was allowed to see the inside. One young cop chuckled and said in broken English, “No, is okay, just not this way because barricade for cars..please to go around.”

Inside the church, more incense, icons and chandeliers. One mystery was in regards to the paintings, murals and icons we’d seen of priests throughout the Balkan lands. Inexorably, a priest would have a raised hand (as if giving the Vulcan ‘live long and prosper’ salute) –but with fingers curiously intertwined, crossed, or forming what looked like a tiny “okay” sign. We asked an old woman working a gift booth, and she answered in a stream of Russian. We politely said “Spasiba” and wandered away.

Veliko Tarnovo

I arrived in this charming town by bus (one of the nice air-conditioned jumbos) from Sofia in the afternoon. I’d pre-booked the Hostel Mostel from Sofia’s sister branch so had a place to stay. I knew it wasn’t terribly far to the hostel and there is only one main street here, but I nevertheless called the phone number I had on the brochure (from the lobby of a 3-star hotel), and a guy said, “Sure, we can pick you up, just wait about ten minutes, Stan will be there…” and the phone went dead. I guess 20 cents doesn’t get you much talk-time here in Bulgaria.

I stood with my backpack out front of the hotel. The weather was great, perhaps a bit on the warm side, but there was some shade, and the square was pretty. Within minutes, a man with a weathered but friendly face appeared and with a smile, ushered me towards his waiting car. He said, “I am Stan,” and after I threw my backpack in the trunk of his car, he drove along the main street into the old part of town, pointing out various sites (best café, the supermarket, the fortress on the hill) in broken English. I tried some Russian on him, and he smiled broadly, and thereafter mixed the languages.

About the town: Veliko Tarnovo was the capital of Bulgaria for many centuries, until just a hundred years ago or so. It’s a small town, really, but what makes it a great place to travel to is the beauty of it. The town is layered across a series of low mountains (or high green-covered hills, depending on your point of view). The old Balkan architecture is just another reason to like the town. From various vantage points from the town’s main street, you can look across small valleys, over red-tiled roofs, and wonder how on earth the inhabitants navigate the twisting up and down roads in the winter.

About Hostel Mostel: wonderful! Stan introduced me to a New Zealander named Andy, who is more or less based here now. He’s renovating some property he bought, I believe. Although the hostel has 3 large rooms with multiple bunkbeds in each room, there were only a dozen or so backpackers at the present time, so Andy and I shared one entire room. Stan proudly pointed out the dining area, a cute room with four tables and a counter from which you could help yourself to coffee, tea or cocoa anytime of the day or night. “In the evening,” he said, “Free dinner at 7:30, spaghetti. And in morning time, free breakfast.” Which is pretty much what I’d experienced in Sofia. He took me out back to a sitting area overlooking a garden, and then back to show off the ultra-clean bathrooms and showers. I was impressed! There was even free wireless. All this for 11 Euros a night (around $15).

After an amble about town (I hate to overuse the word ‘charming’, but the adjective works wonders), I stopped in at the restaurant Stan had recommended. It was clean and offered good home-cooked foods (Stan had said it was the only place in town where he dined). For about four bucks, I had a mini-casserole: sliced potatoes baked with cheese and egg. I had time to peruse my somewhat battered copy of the Herald Tribune and finish that off before walking back to the hostel for a rest. This is a town in which to embrace the peace. The first highlight of the evening was supper. In the dining room, we backpackers included a young English kid who was all skin and bones and spoke in that hard-to-understand (for me) Manchester accent, Andy, two California kids taking a year off from university (both into extreme sports; I told them that I was into coffee shops), and a couple from Australia named Judy and Tom. Judy was a kick. At 61, she’d traveled the world—and I mean just about everywhere. Back in the 70’s she’d done the Europe—India route overland, and has done all the old trails that make a backpacker green with envy. After having sold her two successful travel agencies, she traveled for something like 8 months out of the year.

After dinner, folks were either hooked up to their laptops, sitting on massive comfy pillows in the big common room or reading books, chatting. Suddenly, Stan entered and told us that we should run up the street and see the sound and light show over the fortress. The California couple and I dashed off, cameras in hand. Up a street, up a zigzagging staircase, down another road—and we came out through some trees to see the hilltop fortress, bathed in a red glow. Not only the fortress, itself perched on a hill, but the old wall lower on the hill and two towers, some outbuildings. This fortress had defended the Bulgarian nation for 1,000 years. We watched amazed as lasers shot out of the hillsides and bright flashes of white exploded here and there along the hill. The blood-red turned to blue, then to white. In the background, seemingly from the air, came the voices of angels accompanied by a fine symphony. Taped of course but nevertheless music to stir the soul. Later, Andy told us that tourists had to pay a good sum of their dollars and Euros to witness the show, but of course we and a few townspeople watched from just outside the fortress happily enough.

Later, in the back garden, I sat awhile with the English kid. He’d traveled to America, he said, having seen parts of California and then flying to the east coast. “I wished I’d seen the middle,” he said wistfully after I explained that I was from Omaha. We chatted travel for a good hour, all the while listening to the ‘noise’ emanating from the mountains that we could barely distinguish under a moonless (but star-filled) sky. The hills were alive, but not with the sound of music now; rather, bats, and by the sounds of their nocturnal life, quite a number of them. Eerie but cool.

Breakfast was good: bread, tea, various local jams, slices of cheese, tomato, cucumber, and what looked like lunchmeat. Simple but filling. I drank 3 cups of tea before heading out into the town again. My goal was to check at the supermarket to see if sugar-free Nutella (that crazy but delicious choco-hazelnut spread from Germany) was for sale. I walked down the main street, thinking that in 1990 (my last visit to Bulgaria), Veliko Tarnovo was probably pretty grim in terms of products, food, shops. Sofia had been. Now, shops were filled to the brim, everyone looked happy and well-dressed. There was a market place filled with stalls where hawkers (quiet ones though) sold veggies, flowers, goods. Stall after stall. I found the little supermarket, but no Nutella was to be found. L To escape the afternoon heat (temps were around 85 by late morning), I stopped in at a restaurant to inquire about prices for the evening. A rather rotund but pleasant gentleman showed me his menu, interestingly pointing out to me all the various dishes—unnecessary since the menu was in English. I then chatted for 20 minutes with a young woman (she stood behind an empty bar) about Dubai, which she’d visited. Apparently, her sister has been there for years, having gotten into real estate. “She’s rich, don’t worry about her,” the woman said with a smile. “But I don’t like Dubai,” she said. “Bad weather, and very fake, and no green!”

Lunch was with Andy, the California kids and Dominick. We ambled lazily up a cobblestoned backstreet at Andy’s suggestion. After fifteen or so minutes, that left the task of getting up to the main street. Andy asked a passing local, who pointed to a staircase up ahead. The climb was a bit arduous, and we huffed and puffed our way up between quaint and peeling buildings, probably two or three levels. We agreed as we arrived at the restaurant that we’d built up an appetite. In one corner, we ordered, talked and feasted. A nice big salad was sufficient for me because I couldn’t see eating more pasta.

In the evening, Dominick and I met an older man who was staying at the hostel. In the common room, he introduced himself as Paskel, from the Netherlands. He had short-cropped whitish hair and a lined face. We three wound up going out for a late evening walk through some unfamiliar streets, streets that looked a bit shabbier but for that reason mysterious and spooky in the approaching night. In the distance, the mountains of Veliko Tarnovo loomed large and dark, the sounds of the frogs in distant ponds and rivers grew louder, and some ragamuffin children played kickball in the empty street. This is what kids did before Gameboy, I thought. Anyway, we talked of travels, Paskel sharing his obvious love of Romania. “It’s the most beautiful place,” he said, and promised to jot down a list of must-sees when we returned to Hostel Mostel. On the way back, as we were passing a corner pub/café, Paskel said in his halting English, “This is a great little bar. I like to sit here and watch the people. I would like to sit now,” Dominick agreed, but I wanted a couple pics of night-Veliko. I returned to the hostel, collected my camera, and got some shots of a typical old street, the buildings faintly illuminated by the streetlamps. At the café, I ordered a diet coke from an extremely pretty waitress of about 18. I remember long jet-black long hair, sad eyes, and a genuine smile. It’s funny, but when I asked her if she would take a picture of me and the guys, she obviously thought that I wanted to take a picture of her, and nodded her head shyly. She was probably embarrassed as hell when I mimed her taking a photo of us at the table. As Paskel drank and spoke with feeling about the wonders of Transylvania, Dominick changed his plans to head to Istanbul , opting instead to go up to Romania with me the following morning.

After the usual breakfast, Dom and I said our goodbyes and shook hands with Andy and Paskel; the California kids had departed the afternoon before. Randy nicely drove Dominick and I to the train station. On the way, he pointed out the university where he was studying. The building was half hidden in a forest halfway up a hill. At the station, we said our good-byes to Randy, and piled into the little train that would take us to Romania.

ROMANIA
Bucharest was dark in more ways than one. An overcast sky didn’t lend an aura of joy to this run-down city of broad avenues and mammoth concrete buildings. Dom and I had made reservations at the hostel recommended by the California kids: the Butterfly Villa hostel. Well, their website directions were old, so we couldn’t figure out how to catch Bus #58. The road outside the train station looked like it would be miserable even in bright sunshine; scruffy men (the types that one would expect to hang out near train stations) loitered, packs of dogs wandered and barked, and no one really smiled. I hated the place. Three roads merged into one area in front of the station. Only because Dom had a cell phone could we call the hostel and find out that, ‘oh yes, we have new directions’. By the time we got to the hostel, located on a tree-lined street that had no charm whatsoever, we were sweating and tired. In comparison to Hostel Mostel, Butterfly was nothing more than a dying cocoon. Our room slept eight, and while Andy and I had been the only occupants in Veliko, tonight promised a full crowd, including a loud-mouthed kid going bare-chested and telling a friend about the delights of the women they’d met. “Romanian women!” he sang, “They are wonderful!” In a cramped common room, I tried to do some work on the laptop, a job made harder by the yacking of an overweight Australian woman who wouldn’t leave this guy alone. He obviously wanted to concentrate on HIS laptop, but she was determined to talk travel. I sighed and worked, missing Hostel Mostel and the gang.
Dominick and I ventured out close to dusk in order to rustle up some chow. No free dinner here at Butterfly Villa. We found a good little place, a bit smokier than I would have liked, but I had learned that in this part of the world, everyone (including, probably, babies’ fresh out of the womb) smoked like chimneys. The place had a nice feel about it, comfortable, uncrowded, and with a uniformed waiter who politely took our order. I can’t remember now what I ordered, focusing with pleasure as I was on the tunes of Julio Eglesias. On the way back, not ready to face the hostel, we stopped at a really funky coffee bar for latte. Funky due to the imaginative paint scheme: black and white, oddly shaped figurines, and (sigh) modern abstract art prints.
Interestingly, the bathroom outside our room was big, sporting a large black bathtub. After a much-needed refreshing shower (how we take these for granted back home!), I did some more work and then climbed into my bunk. The usual drunken kids showed up much later, and the kid in the bunk below snored. There’s always one.
The next day, it rained. That wasn’t what worried me. I should explain that Bucharest is rather famous for its packs of homeless dogs. For the most part, they are mere pests, but Annie (from Sofia) had been traveling with an American girl who got bit, so I fretted of course. It would be just my luck to get rabies. So as we walked (the rain hadn’t progressed beyond this stop-and-go drizzle), I was surprised to see my first ‘dog attack’. At a big intersection, a taxi was slowly making a right turn; all the while, two evil-looking mutts were in a frenzy to bite the tire. They practically frothed at the mouth, turned and glared at the citizens of Bucharest, so Dominick and I gave them a wide berth.
I wanted to see the building from which the dictator Ceacescu had, in the late 80’s, spoken to a crowd of thousands, promising free student money and a host of goodies, all in order to keep his sweet position in life. The result, of course, is that the masses soon thereafter pulled him out of his mammoth palatial home, took him and his wife to the back of the building and pumped bullets into their brains. That’s how you handle things in Romania. No bloodless revolution as had occurred in Czechoslovakia. We were walking along on yet another wide boulevard towards “liberty Square”, where the dictator had waved to all the little people (who rose up against him), but what had been drizzle quite suddenly became a shower. Dom and I narrowly ducked into a kiosk/café and waited for several minutes. When there was a letup, we half jogged down a side neighborhood towards a café we could see. In another of Bucharest’s funky bars, we enjoyed a latte and watched until the sky cleared. Dominick said, “I wouldn’t quite mind pushing on this afternoon.” To which I added, “Let’s get out of this city.”
TRANSYLVANIA

The train ride was great: we passed villages and wove through low mountains, mostly standing at the end of one train car meant for bicycles. Here, I pulled down the window and let the fresh air blow into the open car. After a few hours, we arrived in the town of Brasov. What a contrast to Bucharest. Brasov was a pleasant small city, with an old town of course. On one side of the town is a range of low green-covered mountains, but a couple of them angled sharply upwards. We caught bus 51 to the old town, driving through what promised to be a beautiful place to walk and window shop—elegant, obviously refurbished and painted buildings that likely dated back centuries. The bus stopped in a smaller square further up from the old town, but it looked more ‘untouristed’ here, with a couple of kiosks, unpainted buildings and a delightful orthodox church. Quite lovely, the whole thing.
We walked on a cobblestone street to the hostel we’d booked: the Kismet Dao. There, a vampire-like nymph with long black hair greeted us, checked us in, and let us know that our private room was just down the street. She led us there, chatting happily along the way passed old houses behind low walls and gates, from behind which dogs barked. She unlocked one rather massive iron gate and led us up some stairs of a villa and inside. “There are 3 bedrooms here, but so far only you guys have booked.” The ‘hallway’ was open with one of the largest mirrors on the wall I’d seen, probably to give the place a bigger feel (though that was hardly necessary). She waited as we set out packs down gratefully in the room, which was cheery enough with its two beds, a chair and long chest of drawers. “There’s also a kitchen,” she announced, leading us to a kitchen that looked a bit dodgy and dusty. “And here’s the bathroom,” she said, and fortunately it looked pretty clean. She led us back to the hostel. “Of course here you can come anytime you want to use free Wifi and the kitchen upstairs. Come, I will show you.” We climbed some steps and walked into a large kitchen and accompanying balcony whose view took my breath away. Beyond red-tiled roofs were the low mountains; to one side I could see part of the church. I determined to have some breakfast here the next morning.
We walked into town (about twenty minutes) and enjoyed a great afternoon and evening just ambling. It was a little more touristy than I would have liked. By late afternoon there were hundreds walking about spending their money happily at outdoor cafes and inside the many shops. When we got hungry, Dominick and I found a restaurant on a side street. The waiter spoke English and was well dressed; the tables had tablecloths, and oddly, only two of the thirty or more tables had anyone sitting at them. Well, I was hungry so ordered a Greek Salad (which I hadn’t found in Thessaloniki oddly enough) and some vegetable soup. I expected something that might taste like Campbell’s but when I put a spoonful of the soup into my mouth, I swore I had to eat another bowl the next day. Fresh and tasty!
The next morning, I dressed and took my laptop to the hostel kitchen to check email and do a bit of work. Dominick went off to take the cable car up the mountain and do a hike. From the balcony, as I stood sipping some rather abominable coffee (but free), and munching on a sweet roll, I was happy in my soul to see mist covering part of the mountain. How Transylvanian! After doing some work, I wandered down the cobblestone street to the Orthodox Church—and noticed a church graveyard that looked quite appealing. The church’s interior was nothing grand (I’d seen so many recently) but the graveyard, through a tiny gateway and walled in, contained a variety of headstones, some leaning, some big, some small, but all close together (by less than a foot) and all well maintained. Flowers here and there, little pictures of loved ones, icons. What surprised me were the dates on the headstones—they were all relatively recent. One old gentleman had just passed on in 2006. I was disappointed; the church plaque made it clear that the church had been here from the fifteenth century, but clearly the graveyard was new. I didn’t see any stone with a year older than 1952. Yes, I checked many. More interesting than poking about vampire shops for tourists. Back at the hostel, I experienced another of my BIG COINCIDENCES in life: In chatting quite accidentally with this kid of 20 or 21, we discovered that his father had been a colleague of mine in Dubai! How amazing is that? What are the odds that you’d meet someone in the middle of Romania—in just the right place and time?
That night, it rained. Not only that, it thundered and lightning flashed into our room. Dogs howled like werewolves, and the entire Transylvania experience felt complete. Loved it. The next morning, Dominick checked out since he wanted to get an early start to his destination: Serbia. I had tons of work to do so sat in that little kitchen at the main hostel drinking coffee, diet Pepsi, and for awhile, chatting with two older women who were staying at the hostel. I didn’t get their names, but one of them was 67 years old and had been traveling for like a year. Somehow, we got into this conversation about academia. “Ja,” she said, “When I was going to school, you had to study hard, to memorize, to take exams, but now,” she shrugged. She’d been born in Germany, raised in Argentina, and then lived for 30 years in Key West Florida. Quite an interesting character. When I mentioned some of my travel plans, she said, “Ja, I don’t know where I go next, really. I will see. “ She smiled. Here was a person who lived life more fully than I—because I have to plan everything in advance; I admired that spontaneity .
In the evening, I checked out and rode bus 51 back to the train station. The train to Vienna should have arrived from Bucharest on time but a ticket agent behind her window said, “It is an hour late.” The train station was a bit weird, actually. The usual suspect characters loitered, a couple of beggars, a 50-something woman leaning against a concrete staircase who stared at me. On the platform, where at least I could breathe some fresh air, I was looking at the train schedule when a young woman came up and said, “I guess you must be waiting for the train to Budapest?” Well, I knew it was the same train that would continue on to Vienna, so I said, “Yes.”
“I’m worried about the train,” she said. “I sure hope it gets here. I need to get to Budapest and catch a train to Prague.” We sat on a bench and passed the time by talking. Turns out Martika is from Sweden. At 28, she’s an intern in the medical profession and had been hiking in the Carpathian Mountains with several others. “But I only knew one girl before, my friend. The others, we didn’t get along so well. And we were camping…the Romanians told us there would be natural springs up there for water, but there weren’t. We had to melt snow to drink. Man, I hope the train makes it here. I can’t stand the idea of spending another night here.”
The train did come. I had my assigned cabin, and to my chagrin, noted that there were bunks for 6. And unlike in the Balkans, this time I was sharing with 4 others: a Bulgarian guy who resembled a bouncer—he already lay across the top bunk looking down at everything else like a vulture, a 40-something woman who I think was Romanian and 2 young gals in their 20’s. They, too, as I found out in subsequent conversations, were medical students and on their way to a conference in Vienna. And as for Martika, she got a bunk just a few cabins up. We wound up going down to the charming dining car and drinking a beer. She was so relieved at having made it onto a train leaving Romania that she bought me my drink. We hung out there awhile talking about the relative merits of national health care and other topics until we both started yawning. I slept fitfully in my middle bunk through the night, but in the morning in the corridor, as I was stretching and drinking from a bottle of water, I see the skinny British kid from the hostel Mostel in Veliko Tarnovo. We greeted each other happily, got caught up on our travels, and wandered on down the corridor to collect Martika and go off to the restaurant car for coffee.

Not much more to add. They both disembarked in Budapest around noon. I continued on to Vienna, where I had a couple of hours to kill before my train to Hannover. I rode illegally again on the subway down to Stefansplatz and got some shots of the cathedral and the Hapsburg Palace nearby. There were way too many tourists crowding the streets for my liking, and the heat was making me sweat, so I got back to the train station. When I did board my train to Vienna, I was ecstatic to see it was an Austrian train. Since I had the rail pass, I got to ride first class (None of the trains I’d been on in Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria or Romania had had first class!). After the Balkan trains, the experience was almost other-worldly, as if I was too soiled to enter such a haven. The seats were in various configurations in a half-open car. There were a couple of glass-enclosed ‘booths’, and every seat had a wooden table and electric plug in. What joy when the conductor (with that Austrian ultra-politeness) asked if I would like an English newspaper. I sat and read the Financial Times of London, ate some cookies I’d bought at the Billa Supermarket near the West Bahnhof, and glanced out the window at the passing countryside: green, manicured fields, that trim and neat rural Austria that couldn’t exist in wilder places like the Balkans. In the café car, I had a luxurious Latte, and a few hours later, was sorry to have to get off the train, but I’d arrived in Hannover.
Stay tuned for the Scandinavia installment.

· Chatting with son of colleague in Dubai, and others in the hostel. Next day work, chatting with 2 older women (German, Argentina, Key West, traveling). Eve to train station, late train, Martik the Swedish girl, doctor, on board got couchette sharing with 2 Romanian girls (going to medical conference), a polite thug and 40-something Romanian woman. Dusk in Restaurant car with Martika talking. Slept okay but passport control the usual pain. Morning, in corridor saw British chap from Manchester who I’d talked to in Veliko. Funny how you meet up with those you meet here and there.

BACK IN THE WEST: Stark train differences!
As of this writing, I’m sitting in first class on an Austrian train. I just spent two hours in Vienna, where I rode ‘black’, without a ticket, on the subway to visit Stefansplatz. I’d snapped some pics of the cathedral and the interior of a smaller but stunningly gorgeous sanctuary, walked briskly to the Hofsburg Palace for more shots and rode back to the Vienna West Hauptbahnhof after visiting the local Billa Supermarket for water, diet coke, and cookies. This train is positively futuristic in comparison with the Balkan trains I’d been riding. Comfy black leather seating, wooden tables, outlets for computers, even wooden dividers to offer privacy between seat groupings. Sliding glass doors, clean bathrooms with toilets that flush and self-clean. Toilet paper and paper towels! A diner car with freshly cleaned tables, all bright and cheery. Even the passing countryside is manicured between neat manicured Austrian villages.
Compare this to the Romanian or Serbian train. No first class; cabins that hadn’t been vacuumed in weeks, bathrooms that had likely last been cleaned in the 80’s. Forget the flush toilet; there’s usually a drain that spills waste onto tracks. Dented metal paper-towel holders are empty, and the floor isn’t something to discuss before a meal. WHY, I ask, don’t Southern Europeans have more pride? Even Amtrak staff clean the bathrooms (granted at the beginning and end of a journey).