As I’m finishing up my program here in Qingdao, China, I’ve probably got one more email after this, and then I’ll be off to Nanjing, China, to start classes at Nanjing University.
As some of yall may remember, part of my work here in Qingdao was to do some sort of community service project. Saturday before last, I completed that project at the Qingdao Museum. My project was to teach a short Saturday course on American holidays for some kids. The kids came to the museum every Saturday for a couple of weeks. Before me, there had been a Texan who had taught them about Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving, but she had to leave, so she couldn’t teach the class on Halloween.
That’s where I come in. I wrapped myself in toilet paper to pretend that I was a mummy, and taught them the history of Halloween and how kids in the US trick or treat. The toilet paper didn’t really hold up on my legs and arms, but it survived on my chest and head. See the pictures in picasa for the frightening results:
As I’m finishing up with my work here in Qingdao, I’d like to tell yall about my favorite restaurant here. Its Chinese name is Brother’s Quick Dishes, but they miss spelled the Chinese word for “dishes.” I’m not sure the guy who owns it graduated from elementary school, so the spelling error is excusable. It’s near my apartment, a friend who lives near me joins me for a meal, generally on the weekends. In the eight weeks we’ve been here in Qingdao, we’ve eaten at this restaurant about twenty times total, trying to get there at least once a week, but usually more often.
Some of my friends asked me for the address so that they could go sometime. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an address. They asked me how to get there, and I had trouble telling them. “Its in a little dirty alley behind some apartments. You’ll see a sign with misspelled Chinese on it, and a little shack and you’ll just know you’re there.” Those were the best directions I could give them.
“Brothers” is on a little dirt street that runs behind several apartment complexes. The ‘street’ is lined on both sides with shack-stores built from left over plywood and roofed with blue, plastic tarps. These shack-stalls sell everything from fairly attractive but extremely cheaply made women’s high heels to buckets, and most things in between. Brothers is located where the street stalls open up into a wider, dirtier market area. Just across from the restaurant, there is a man sleeping in a selling live fish, chickens and other birds, and a chopping block where he’ll kill them for you fresh.
The restaurant’s facilities are not all that much better. The restaurant was built out of left over construction supplies. The walls are made out of old wooden doors and plywood, the roof is made from sheets of metal and a large tarp. The structure is enforced with steel rods. One of the windows is just a large hole where they decided not to put any material. The floors are dirt, leaving it quite messy after it rains. The smell of smoke from the patrons competes with the smell sewage coming in from the market, fighting to see who can get to you first.
The kitchen facilities are also not particularly nice, either. Behind the seven or eight tables that occupy the middle of the room’s space (I hesitate to call it a room), within eyesight, there are a couple of tables for preparation and only two woks for cooking. You really can’t go to Brothers when its busy otherwise you’ll have to wait since they only have two woks and one cook. The water from the kitchen comes down for a little pvc pipe in the ceiling and, like the electricity, is probably being stolen from the nearby construction site.
But the food is seriously the best Chinese food we have ever eaten. The sweet and sour chicken is to die for. Better than anything you would pay for in a fancy restaurant downtown, better than anything you could get in Beijing or Shanghai.
This restaurant has two workers: the cook and the boss/waitor. When we first started coming here the cook had burnt his foot bad, some of the hot coals from one of the two woks falling on him. He had to keep it wrapped in bandages. Those would get dirty with the muddy floor, so he kept his foot encased in a beer box, hobbling around with the thing attached to his leg.
The boss is kind of dim as far as I could tell, but his son goes to Qinghua University, the closest thing China has to an MIT.
The place is mostly frequented by construction workers and sailors. Behind the alley, the Chinese are building eight or ten apartment buildings, each 40 stories high. It’s crazy to watch so much building going on in this economy.
For the pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/agenbite.lee
"A day at the Museum" has my Mummy pictures and "Brothers – The restaurant" has the other pictures
Anyways, that’s about it for now.
Bon Appétit,
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Village People
I apologize for not emailing yall sooner. I’ve kept meaning to, but I’m pretty busy. I generally don’t leave school until 10 or 11 at night, and even when I leave, I generally go out to a street-side Shishkabob place and spend another hour or two eating and reading some Chinese political science articles for class.
But that’s for another article. As for news, the biggest thing that has happened is that I got interviewed by the Amatuer Traveler podcast. For those of yall who don’t know, a podcast is kind of like a radio broadcast, but you can do it on your own and you just put it online for people to download. I’ve listened to the Amatuer Traveler podcast for over a year, and I contacted the host to see if I could help him out with anything in China. He asked me to come on the show and talk about Beijing as an independent traveler. So, for those of yall who want to hear what I’ve got to say about Beijing, check it out:
http://amateurtraveler.com/
Click on the above link and then look for my picture and the words “Independent Travel to Beijing, China – Episode 193. Just above the word “podcast,” you can see a play button. Press that, and the program will start up. (Let me know if yall have any issues with this). It’s a pretty big show, getting about four to five thousand downloads a week.
And now for something completely different: this Saturday, I went to my friend’s house and hung out in his village for the weekend. His village is on the northern part of the Shandong peninsula (I live on the southern part of the peninsula). I took a crappy bus made by a company called Iveco (combining the reliability of Russian engineering with everything you love about the “Made in China” brand). After about five hours of bumping across Shandong, I arrived at my friend’s village.
I’ve been to Chinese villages before. In January 2007, I went to a different friend’s village on the border of Yunnan and Guizhou province, in some of the poorest areas of China. I’ve also been to a village outside of Beijing, where my host family owns a vacation home, a richer locale. Each area I’ve been to was pretty different, and this one was no exception: it was not really a village, instead it was more like a series of small factories mixed with farming communities.
When you think of the word ‘village,’ you probably imagine huts made out of mud with straw roofs. There is some of that in China, but not much where I was. My friend was from the poorest village in the area, so it was more like that than any of the other areas. Most of the houses in his village were built with bricks made in a factory just outside the village. The inside of the house was all tiles and concrete. In the center of the house, like most other village houses throughout China, is a roofless courtyard. The rooms of the house are arranged around this courtyard, a little garage, three bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. In one of the corners of the courtyard, there is a cocker spaniel and a couple of birds in cages. I’m putting pictures of the place online.
This village is the poorest in the area, that’s because they don’t have many factories in their village. Nearby this village is a defunct brick factory and a small plastics factory. Surrounding the village is farmland, with corn, peanuts and their most famous product, strawberries.
I’m not sure how long this can continue though. The pollution is starting to have a real effect. The creek that separates this village from a neighboring village is completely black. Trash is piling up on both sides and the banks are the local dump. I saw some ducks were bathing in the black creek, and I told my friend that we had better not be having duck for dinner. My friend said “It used to not be a problem, but in the last 10 years pollution has become a really noticeable problem.” Really? The pollution is beginning seep into the aquifer so that the water from wells is undrinkable.
The other villages in the areas are a lot richer and a lot less traditional than my friend’s. Most have a couple of factories, and much more modern houses, i.e. not made of bricks. One of the villages nearby is one of the richest in all of China. It has almost 10 big factories. As far as villages go, this place is in the money. They have their own mall and their own stadium and they are one of the only villages in China with a KFC (that’s a huge honor. In this country, KFC is where you take your hot date when you’re getting to know her).
Hanging out in the villages was a lot of fun, giving me a chance to relax. The pace is real laid-back. I enjoyed it a lot and I may get to do a lot more of it later depending on where I do my internship next spring. I’ll keep yall informed.
Here are those pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/agenbite.lee
I’ll try and send emails more frequently as I’m finishing up my program in Qingdao.
But that’s for another article. As for news, the biggest thing that has happened is that I got interviewed by the Amatuer Traveler podcast. For those of yall who don’t know, a podcast is kind of like a radio broadcast, but you can do it on your own and you just put it online for people to download. I’ve listened to the Amatuer Traveler podcast for over a year, and I contacted the host to see if I could help him out with anything in China. He asked me to come on the show and talk about Beijing as an independent traveler. So, for those of yall who want to hear what I’ve got to say about Beijing, check it out:
http://amateurtraveler.com/
Click on the above link and then look for my picture and the words “Independent Travel to Beijing, China – Episode 193. Just above the word “podcast,” you can see a play button. Press that, and the program will start up. (Let me know if yall have any issues with this). It’s a pretty big show, getting about four to five thousand downloads a week.
And now for something completely different: this Saturday, I went to my friend’s house and hung out in his village for the weekend. His village is on the northern part of the Shandong peninsula (I live on the southern part of the peninsula). I took a crappy bus made by a company called Iveco (combining the reliability of Russian engineering with everything you love about the “Made in China” brand). After about five hours of bumping across Shandong, I arrived at my friend’s village.
I’ve been to Chinese villages before. In January 2007, I went to a different friend’s village on the border of Yunnan and Guizhou province, in some of the poorest areas of China. I’ve also been to a village outside of Beijing, where my host family owns a vacation home, a richer locale. Each area I’ve been to was pretty different, and this one was no exception: it was not really a village, instead it was more like a series of small factories mixed with farming communities.
When you think of the word ‘village,’ you probably imagine huts made out of mud with straw roofs. There is some of that in China, but not much where I was. My friend was from the poorest village in the area, so it was more like that than any of the other areas. Most of the houses in his village were built with bricks made in a factory just outside the village. The inside of the house was all tiles and concrete. In the center of the house, like most other village houses throughout China, is a roofless courtyard. The rooms of the house are arranged around this courtyard, a little garage, three bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. In one of the corners of the courtyard, there is a cocker spaniel and a couple of birds in cages. I’m putting pictures of the place online.
This village is the poorest in the area, that’s because they don’t have many factories in their village. Nearby this village is a defunct brick factory and a small plastics factory. Surrounding the village is farmland, with corn, peanuts and their most famous product, strawberries.
I’m not sure how long this can continue though. The pollution is starting to have a real effect. The creek that separates this village from a neighboring village is completely black. Trash is piling up on both sides and the banks are the local dump. I saw some ducks were bathing in the black creek, and I told my friend that we had better not be having duck for dinner. My friend said “It used to not be a problem, but in the last 10 years pollution has become a really noticeable problem.” Really? The pollution is beginning seep into the aquifer so that the water from wells is undrinkable.
The other villages in the areas are a lot richer and a lot less traditional than my friend’s. Most have a couple of factories, and much more modern houses, i.e. not made of bricks. One of the villages nearby is one of the richest in all of China. It has almost 10 big factories. As far as villages go, this place is in the money. They have their own mall and their own stadium and they are one of the only villages in China with a KFC (that’s a huge honor. In this country, KFC is where you take your hot date when you’re getting to know her).
Hanging out in the villages was a lot of fun, giving me a chance to relax. The pace is real laid-back. I enjoyed it a lot and I may get to do a lot more of it later depending on where I do my internship next spring. I’ll keep yall informed.
Here are those pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/agenbite.lee
I’ll try and send emails more frequently as I’m finishing up my program in Qingdao.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Arrival in Qingdao
Sorry its been a while since I wrote. I haven’t really been traveling, so my activities these last couple of weeks maybe be less interesting. Still, there has been a lot going on as I settle down here in Qingdao, a major port in the north of China and a former German colony, and get started with my classes.
I spent my first weekend here in Shanghai, meeting up with an old friend. This was my first time in Shanghai, and I didn’t like, but then, I’ve always hated Shanghai, even before I went there. Beijing and Shanghai hate each other, and I liked Beijing when I lived there two and a half years ago.
From Shanghai, I took an overnight train to Qingdao. I had arranged to stay with a Chinese guy, Bob, I meet online through couchsurfing.net, a website that connects travelers with people who have a place to stay and an inclination to meet people. The idea is that you let someone stay on your couch and you get to meet them and show them around town or whatever.
I rolled off the train that morning in Qingdao, emerging onto the streets from the Bavarian-style train station. I meet him at the main entrance to the university later that morning, and he grabbed one of my bags and helped me drag them to his dorm, up seven flights of steps.
He had arranged for me to stay in an extra bed in his dorm, three rooms crammed with 12 guys on bunk beds. I got there at around 9:30 in the morning. In the center of the largest room, there were four computers, surrounded by several bottles of open beer and cigarettes burnt down to the end half put-out in the ash trays.
Everybody except for Bob were just in their underwear. Some of them had not yet woken up, others were just on their computers, playing Warcraft, a computer game some of my roommates at UGA had been addicted to.
Staying with them was a fun experience, a real look at college life in China, something I had only seen glimpses of before. In the two nights that I stayed in their dorm, three of the 12 guys didn’t go to class once. These were the guys playing Warcraft in their underwear. As far as I could tell, these guys never left their room except to get food, and even this they did fairly efficiently: while the other two continued playing Warcraft, one of them would go pick up something and bring it back to the room, where the three of them could continue to play while eating.
After staying in the dorm for two days, I left to find my own apartment. It was kind of difficult to find a lease for just two months. I did the best I could, but I could only real find one place that worked out. It hasn’t been remodeled since the 70’s. The ‘kitchen’ doesn’t have anything for cooking, except some random piece of plywood, which is fine because I was born without the ability to cook. I found a couch in the second bedroom, under some more plywood and a desk.
Apparently there was some water damage, and the walls have been spoiled by mold. I scrubbed that off with bleach, and it looks like I killed it all. The bathroom is pretty messy, but there’s not much I can do with that. The circuit breaker is a little loose. Before, when I wanted power I had to take a stick and smack the circuit board until the lights came on. I think I’ve fixed it because I haven’t had that problem for the last week or so.
Finally, I have a trash can that was here when I got the lease, but some of the previous residents appeared to not have one. Instead of taking the trash out to the pile of trash in the parking lot, they just dumped it out the back window. Not entirely sure why, but the area outside my back window is completely covered in what looks like a foot or more of ramen noodle packages, plastic bags and pieces of paper. Not that it matters. The area behind my apartment is a little brick wall and, behind that, construction.
The bathroom is also lacking. It’s pretty dirty, and I don’t have a hot water heater. The landlord said that they had fixed it, but it still doesn’t work. I didn’t want to bother with it, so I just fill a bucket with water and use that to shower. It may sound bad to those of yall who’ve never been to India, but it’s not really that bad. Kind of refreshing in fact.
My bedroom is alright, good enough for me at least. Overall, my apartment is good enough for me for two months.
If you want pictures, I’ve put some up on my new picture site:
http://picasaweb.google.com/agenbite.lee
I’ve also put a lot more of my pictures from the trip online.
I spent my first weekend here in Shanghai, meeting up with an old friend. This was my first time in Shanghai, and I didn’t like, but then, I’ve always hated Shanghai, even before I went there. Beijing and Shanghai hate each other, and I liked Beijing when I lived there two and a half years ago.
From Shanghai, I took an overnight train to Qingdao. I had arranged to stay with a Chinese guy, Bob, I meet online through couchsurfing.net, a website that connects travelers with people who have a place to stay and an inclination to meet people. The idea is that you let someone stay on your couch and you get to meet them and show them around town or whatever.
I rolled off the train that morning in Qingdao, emerging onto the streets from the Bavarian-style train station. I meet him at the main entrance to the university later that morning, and he grabbed one of my bags and helped me drag them to his dorm, up seven flights of steps.
He had arranged for me to stay in an extra bed in his dorm, three rooms crammed with 12 guys on bunk beds. I got there at around 9:30 in the morning. In the center of the largest room, there were four computers, surrounded by several bottles of open beer and cigarettes burnt down to the end half put-out in the ash trays.
Everybody except for Bob were just in their underwear. Some of them had not yet woken up, others were just on their computers, playing Warcraft, a computer game some of my roommates at UGA had been addicted to.
Staying with them was a fun experience, a real look at college life in China, something I had only seen glimpses of before. In the two nights that I stayed in their dorm, three of the 12 guys didn’t go to class once. These were the guys playing Warcraft in their underwear. As far as I could tell, these guys never left their room except to get food, and even this they did fairly efficiently: while the other two continued playing Warcraft, one of them would go pick up something and bring it back to the room, where the three of them could continue to play while eating.
After staying in the dorm for two days, I left to find my own apartment. It was kind of difficult to find a lease for just two months. I did the best I could, but I could only real find one place that worked out. It hasn’t been remodeled since the 70’s. The ‘kitchen’ doesn’t have anything for cooking, except some random piece of plywood, which is fine because I was born without the ability to cook. I found a couch in the second bedroom, under some more plywood and a desk.
Apparently there was some water damage, and the walls have been spoiled by mold. I scrubbed that off with bleach, and it looks like I killed it all. The bathroom is pretty messy, but there’s not much I can do with that. The circuit breaker is a little loose. Before, when I wanted power I had to take a stick and smack the circuit board until the lights came on. I think I’ve fixed it because I haven’t had that problem for the last week or so.
Finally, I have a trash can that was here when I got the lease, but some of the previous residents appeared to not have one. Instead of taking the trash out to the pile of trash in the parking lot, they just dumped it out the back window. Not entirely sure why, but the area outside my back window is completely covered in what looks like a foot or more of ramen noodle packages, plastic bags and pieces of paper. Not that it matters. The area behind my apartment is a little brick wall and, behind that, construction.
The bathroom is also lacking. It’s pretty dirty, and I don’t have a hot water heater. The landlord said that they had fixed it, but it still doesn’t work. I didn’t want to bother with it, so I just fill a bucket with water and use that to shower. It may sound bad to those of yall who’ve never been to India, but it’s not really that bad. Kind of refreshing in fact.
My bedroom is alright, good enough for me at least. Overall, my apartment is good enough for me for two months.
If you want pictures, I’ve put some up on my new picture site:
http://picasaweb.google.com/agenbite.lee
I’ve also put a lot more of my pictures from the trip online.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Writer's Block
For those of yall who do keep up with this, I apologize for not keeping up with things. I'm in China now and it appears this website is blocked. It took me a little while to figure out what I was going to do about that. Now, I'm sending the things I want to say to someone in the US and they are updating the site. I'll put the post the things I meant to update, and the date on there will be the time that I meant to update them for.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Paradise Recounted and Addendums
So my journey is over. At least, the part where I travel around aimlessly is over. Now, I’m going to be getting down to business, doing some work on my Chinese. I went through four countries (unless you count Holland, where I had a four hour layover) and the one feature that has unified them has been that they all drove on the left side of the road, a weird coincidence. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite make it to Singapore. Instead, I chose to go to a little island paradise about three hours away from Singapore. Still, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be traveling around southeast Asia some in the upcoming year, so I’ll get there.
This island paradise was pretty sweet. I’ve heard its where they filmed the movie “Blue Lagoon,” but I’m pretty sure that’s not true. Still, it was fairly unspoilt, having some guesthouse bungalows along the three or four miles of beach, along with a small town in the middle. The rest was mountain jungle and sweet snorkeling beaches. It felt kind of like living in a zoo with all the animals we saw. There were Monitor Lizards, these big lizards with long claws that grew up to about 10 feet long, half of that tail. There were lots of bats hanging up in the pine trees lining one of the beaches near the town. At night they would swirl around me while I read outside my bungalow, swooping in to catch bugs hanging out at the florescent light. Pythons hung out in the trees, and monkeys jumped around on some of the ships harassing tourist and going crazy when one of the Monitor Lizards approached them.
We also did some snorkeling, which is what the island is known for. It was some of the best snorkeling that I had ever done, which surprised me because we originally thought it was just a place for lame Malaysian families to put on life jackets and wade out into the ocean. But when we got in there, there were some giant fish coming right up to the beach. All colors, all sizes just swarming around you. Some of the Malaysian tourist were feeding the schools of fish entire loafs of bread, causing them to swarm around the dock. Out away from the Malaysian tourist, there were some small reefs along a point, and smaller but more colorful fish darted in and out between the rocks and coral.
All and all it was a pretty cool place, and I’m glad I skipped Singapore to go there.
If you want to see the pictures from the island and the rest of the trip, check out:
http://mapvivo.com/journey/8746
As for the addendums, I wanted to mention a couple of things I had forgotten or had intentionally left out of the other emails.
The first was when I was discussing what was wrong with India, I mentioned the fat main in the black jacket who worked for the railway as bad case of Indian bureaucratic no-think. I have a better example. When we were hanging out in Varanasi, the holy city on the Ganges, we wanted to store our bags in the train station’s left luggage office, but they had a regulation: you had to put a little lock on the main opening of your luggage. Of course, Robby and I had hiking backpacks, so you can’t really lock them. We argued with him for a little while, explaining that they wouldn’t be held responsible if anything was stolen from the bag, but that they were responsible if the bag was gone. He refused to comprehend the logic that the little lock on the bag would not prevent someone from walking out with the bag. We debated for about fifteen minutes until he signaled he wouldn’t help us. I was getting pretty annoyed, and since he wasn’t going to help us, I decided to send him a little message: I took a ruler on his desk and broke it in half. I gathered my bags up quickly and left.
Take that Indian bureaucracy. For the rest of the trip, Robby and I argued over whether my violent protest at the bureaucrats stupidity was right or wrong. Let me know what yall think.
The other thing was about the Nepalese government. I mentioned that the communist had abandoned the government after trying democracy for a year. The communist leaving the government was more than an article in the newspaper for us. Coming into Nepal, our bus got caught in the tail end of some protests after the son of a communist leader was run over. I meet a British guy who said he had been there for six hours just sitting. But get this: Nepal is so dependent on tourism (I think 70-90% of its GDP comes from tourism), that the communist protesters agreed to stop and allow tourist buses through during the middle of the day but continued to dam up Nepalese traffic. Later that night, as we ploughed through the darkness towards our destination I noticed a fire burning in the middle of the road up ahead. I was worried. The bus slowed down and pulled off to pass it. As we went by, I saw teenagers standing around the fire looking agitated and wearing red clothes. The watched us go by but didn’t do anything. I asked one guy if that had to do with the communist, but he said he didn’t know.
Anyways, it was a really cool trip. Learned a little, saw a lot and had fun along the way. Glad to be back in China where they drive on the right side of the road.
Best,
Lee
This island paradise was pretty sweet. I’ve heard its where they filmed the movie “Blue Lagoon,” but I’m pretty sure that’s not true. Still, it was fairly unspoilt, having some guesthouse bungalows along the three or four miles of beach, along with a small town in the middle. The rest was mountain jungle and sweet snorkeling beaches. It felt kind of like living in a zoo with all the animals we saw. There were Monitor Lizards, these big lizards with long claws that grew up to about 10 feet long, half of that tail. There were lots of bats hanging up in the pine trees lining one of the beaches near the town. At night they would swirl around me while I read outside my bungalow, swooping in to catch bugs hanging out at the florescent light. Pythons hung out in the trees, and monkeys jumped around on some of the ships harassing tourist and going crazy when one of the Monitor Lizards approached them.
We also did some snorkeling, which is what the island is known for. It was some of the best snorkeling that I had ever done, which surprised me because we originally thought it was just a place for lame Malaysian families to put on life jackets and wade out into the ocean. But when we got in there, there were some giant fish coming right up to the beach. All colors, all sizes just swarming around you. Some of the Malaysian tourist were feeding the schools of fish entire loafs of bread, causing them to swarm around the dock. Out away from the Malaysian tourist, there were some small reefs along a point, and smaller but more colorful fish darted in and out between the rocks and coral.
All and all it was a pretty cool place, and I’m glad I skipped Singapore to go there.
If you want to see the pictures from the island and the rest of the trip, check out:
http://mapvivo.com/journey/8746
As for the addendums, I wanted to mention a couple of things I had forgotten or had intentionally left out of the other emails.
The first was when I was discussing what was wrong with India, I mentioned the fat main in the black jacket who worked for the railway as bad case of Indian bureaucratic no-think. I have a better example. When we were hanging out in Varanasi, the holy city on the Ganges, we wanted to store our bags in the train station’s left luggage office, but they had a regulation: you had to put a little lock on the main opening of your luggage. Of course, Robby and I had hiking backpacks, so you can’t really lock them. We argued with him for a little while, explaining that they wouldn’t be held responsible if anything was stolen from the bag, but that they were responsible if the bag was gone. He refused to comprehend the logic that the little lock on the bag would not prevent someone from walking out with the bag. We debated for about fifteen minutes until he signaled he wouldn’t help us. I was getting pretty annoyed, and since he wasn’t going to help us, I decided to send him a little message: I took a ruler on his desk and broke it in half. I gathered my bags up quickly and left.
Take that Indian bureaucracy. For the rest of the trip, Robby and I argued over whether my violent protest at the bureaucrats stupidity was right or wrong. Let me know what yall think.
The other thing was about the Nepalese government. I mentioned that the communist had abandoned the government after trying democracy for a year. The communist leaving the government was more than an article in the newspaper for us. Coming into Nepal, our bus got caught in the tail end of some protests after the son of a communist leader was run over. I meet a British guy who said he had been there for six hours just sitting. But get this: Nepal is so dependent on tourism (I think 70-90% of its GDP comes from tourism), that the communist protesters agreed to stop and allow tourist buses through during the middle of the day but continued to dam up Nepalese traffic. Later that night, as we ploughed through the darkness towards our destination I noticed a fire burning in the middle of the road up ahead. I was worried. The bus slowed down and pulled off to pass it. As we went by, I saw teenagers standing around the fire looking agitated and wearing red clothes. The watched us go by but didn’t do anything. I asked one guy if that had to do with the communist, but he said he didn’t know.
Anyways, it was a really cool trip. Learned a little, saw a lot and had fun along the way. Glad to be back in China where they drive on the right side of the road.
Best,
Lee
Monday, June 15, 2009
The Sweet, Sunny South
Take me back to the place where I first saw the light
To the sweet, sunny South take me home
Where the wild birds sing me to sleep every night
Oh!, why was I tempted to roam.
-Joan Baez, "The Sweet, Sunny South"
Hey yall,
We were standing in a junkyard. The grass was overgrown and a few cars were up on cinderblocks. There were chickens running around underneath our bus as they raised it on a jack to tried to fix it. I walked to a little stream rolling through the back of the junkyard. I could just barely hear the words to the above song plucking away. It was then that I realized I was kind-of back in the sweet, sunny South. Kind of.
It’s been 10 days since I’ve left India, and life has been much easier. Southeast Asia feels a little bit closer to home. Its dirty, but it’s the kind of dirt that I like. The people are nice, and the lifestyle here is laid-back as lakeside lawn-furniture in the heat of summer. There is a really cool mix of Chinese, Indian, Malay and Thai cultures here, leaving a fusion of all of Asia on this thin strips of land. The weather is also a little bit nicer. I sweat, but I don’t get heat exhaustion, usually. So far, the monsoons have not dropped onto us yet.
Robby and I have been heading towards the equator for this leg of the trip. We started in Bangkok and, after India, we were amazed at the efficiency. The buses run. The people are nice, mostly. It’s not normal to have streets filled with slums. Of course, Bangkok has its ills, but we even enjoyed some of those.
From Asian modernity of Bangkok, we took an overnight bus/boat to an island called Ko Tao. It’s a part of an archipelago off southern Thailand’s east coast, in the Gulf of Siam. Of the three island’s in this archipelago, this island is a scuba hub, and the other two islands are party/beach islands. We did two dives, snorkeled, motorbiked, etc. for two days. We were tempted to stay longer, but these islands have a way of sucking you in if you stay too long. Some of the westerners who live there for years seemed to have lost all their will. Every day, their life is dive in the morning, sleep in the afternoon, party at night. Repeat. Despite the party mentality of some of the local expats, I really liked this island and may have to come back (but not for too long).
From there, we penetrated deeper into Asia’s sweet, sunny south. From Ko Tao, we took a night boat back to the mainland, and I was rocked to sleep by the waves tossing the boat around. The next day we arrived in Penang, Malaysia. Penang is an old colonial city that used to be a major trade node between China and India until it was overtaken by Singapore. It has a lot of crumbling colonial architecture and the population is a majority Chinese, so I got to practice some. Here, we also meet up with Robby’s girlfriend, Laurie.
We made a quick stop in the Cameroon Highland, hiking around this colonial hillstation in the middle of mountains and tea plantations. The Cameroon Highlands is one of the few places in Malaysia where it’s too cool to sleep naked, a welcome break from the equatorial heat of the rest of the places we had been in Southeast Asia.
Now we are hanging out in Kuala Lumpur, the biggest city you’ve never heard of. It’s the capital of Malaysia, and has the Petronas Towers, once the tallest buildings in the world, still the tallest pair of twin buildings. Tonight, we’ll be taking a night bus to another cool scuba island. At that point, we will split off: I will head back to Kuala Lumpur to fly to China on the 19th where I will start classes. Robby and Laurie will continue on to fly from Singapore to China and maybe travel with me for a weekend or two, when I’m out of class.
Best,
Lee
To the sweet, sunny South take me home
Where the wild birds sing me to sleep every night
Oh!, why was I tempted to roam.
-Joan Baez, "The Sweet, Sunny South"
Hey yall,
We were standing in a junkyard. The grass was overgrown and a few cars were up on cinderblocks. There were chickens running around underneath our bus as they raised it on a jack to tried to fix it. I walked to a little stream rolling through the back of the junkyard. I could just barely hear the words to the above song plucking away. It was then that I realized I was kind-of back in the sweet, sunny South. Kind of.
It’s been 10 days since I’ve left India, and life has been much easier. Southeast Asia feels a little bit closer to home. Its dirty, but it’s the kind of dirt that I like. The people are nice, and the lifestyle here is laid-back as lakeside lawn-furniture in the heat of summer. There is a really cool mix of Chinese, Indian, Malay and Thai cultures here, leaving a fusion of all of Asia on this thin strips of land. The weather is also a little bit nicer. I sweat, but I don’t get heat exhaustion, usually. So far, the monsoons have not dropped onto us yet.
Robby and I have been heading towards the equator for this leg of the trip. We started in Bangkok and, after India, we were amazed at the efficiency. The buses run. The people are nice, mostly. It’s not normal to have streets filled with slums. Of course, Bangkok has its ills, but we even enjoyed some of those.
From Asian modernity of Bangkok, we took an overnight bus/boat to an island called Ko Tao. It’s a part of an archipelago off southern Thailand’s east coast, in the Gulf of Siam. Of the three island’s in this archipelago, this island is a scuba hub, and the other two islands are party/beach islands. We did two dives, snorkeled, motorbiked, etc. for two days. We were tempted to stay longer, but these islands have a way of sucking you in if you stay too long. Some of the westerners who live there for years seemed to have lost all their will. Every day, their life is dive in the morning, sleep in the afternoon, party at night. Repeat. Despite the party mentality of some of the local expats, I really liked this island and may have to come back (but not for too long).
From there, we penetrated deeper into Asia’s sweet, sunny south. From Ko Tao, we took a night boat back to the mainland, and I was rocked to sleep by the waves tossing the boat around. The next day we arrived in Penang, Malaysia. Penang is an old colonial city that used to be a major trade node between China and India until it was overtaken by Singapore. It has a lot of crumbling colonial architecture and the population is a majority Chinese, so I got to practice some. Here, we also meet up with Robby’s girlfriend, Laurie.
We made a quick stop in the Cameroon Highland, hiking around this colonial hillstation in the middle of mountains and tea plantations. The Cameroon Highlands is one of the few places in Malaysia where it’s too cool to sleep naked, a welcome break from the equatorial heat of the rest of the places we had been in Southeast Asia.
Now we are hanging out in Kuala Lumpur, the biggest city you’ve never heard of. It’s the capital of Malaysia, and has the Petronas Towers, once the tallest buildings in the world, still the tallest pair of twin buildings. Tonight, we’ll be taking a night bus to another cool scuba island. At that point, we will split off: I will head back to Kuala Lumpur to fly to China on the 19th where I will start classes. Robby and Laurie will continue on to fly from Singapore to China and maybe travel with me for a weekend or two, when I’m out of class.
Best,
Lee
Thursday, June 4, 2009
“Bangladesh is God’s cruelest joke. 120,000,000 impoverished people living in a cyclone-prone country where the average elevation is about 10 meters above sea level.”
First, I know it was wrong to tease yall about a trek to the Himalayas and not provide any pictures. This must have been troubling for those of yall who believe that New Zealand or Colorado has 'real' mountains. Well, the situation is now being rectified, and you can check out my journeys to India and Nepal
Nepal: http://mapvivo.com/
India: http://mapvivo.com/
This morning we left Calcutta, India, a city that calls to mind the regal settings of the British capital of India and the worst poverty in a country known for slums. This afternoon, we arrived in Bangkok, Thailandg the South Asian leg of our journey, and starting the South-East Asian leg. For me, south-east Asia is a little closer to home, and I’ve been to Vietnam and Laos, so hopefully, this won’t be as trying. So far, its been a freakin' breath of fresh air. Unlike in India, things are not unhealthily dirty, the air is breathable, and the girls know how to dress a little bit better. I'll let yall know more as I encounter it.
I know that it has sounded like I have hated India. And to a certain degree, that’s true. It’s been a rough trip with some parts that I really didn’t like. That said, travel isn’t just about sitting on a beach, imbibing strawberry daiquiris and reading pulpy novels. For me, travel is also about learning, and this trip has been a real learning experience. In fact, it has been a great time to be in South Asia since there has been a lot of news coming out of the area. I’ve been able to see, first-hand, the news happening, talk to the people living it, and look at how local media has viewed it. Anyways, here’s some of the stuff that I got to see.
Indian Elections
Just after I arrived in India, the results for the month-long voting process in the world’s largest democracy were announced. About 600 million people voted, and the voters continued the Congress party’s (the party of Gandhi and Nehru) rule in the Indian parliament. This affects you because George Bush tried to ignite the US-India relationship by creating a bond with the Congress party and making a deal that we would sell them nuclear energy technology (selling Indians nuclear teachnology was illegal before Bush legalized it). This election is, in some way, a mandate for the improvement in US-India ties. It is also a rejection of the BJP, the Hindu nationalism party.
Nepal’s Government
A couple of years ago, Nepal, then a monarchy, deposed its king and became a monarchy. A year ago this May, they formed a republic, a big step for Nepal. Last Friday was the first anniversary of the new republic, but no one was celebrating. Just recently, the communist prime minister quit the government in protest of some military problems. This has been huge deal here and is kind of rocking Asia’s international scene. I won’t go into it any more.
Cyclone
Cyclone Alia hit Bangladesh and the east of India. There has been huge amounts of flooding, and many have died. I’d heard about it before, but it was interesting to see the local perspective. We haven’t really noticed any major problems in Calcutta, where all the refuges are flooding in. The only problem we have encountered is the cancellation of a light show because of the flooding (how the light show and the cyclone are related are anybody’s guess).
Hindu nationalism
One of the coolest things I saw in Delhi was the world’s largest Hindu temple. It was built a couple of years back to this Swami who preformed miracles as a child, levitating a basket of fish, jumping in a fast river and floating down it for days, standing on one leg and meditating in the Himalayas for seven years straight. But he’s not important. The cool thing about this temple is that it was a monument to Hindu nationalism, the belief that Hinduism and India can save the world and teach the West how things should be done. The temple had an Imax, an animatronics show, and a little boat ride (like the monster pageant ride at Six Flags Atlanta). The boat ride claimed Hindu’s had invented several things several thousands of years ago: the number zero, math, philosophy, democracy, plastic surgery, rocket ships and airplanes. They also claim that if everyone in the world embraces Hinduism, the world’s problems will be solved.
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