China can't stop the madness

Today at work someone asked me if I could know a random statistic from my life, what would it be? I of course wanted to know how many cups of coffee I've had, and how much I've spent on coffee in total. Rent, I remember, says something similar: "How do you measure a life? ...In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee..."

Somewhat related is the fact that I've been out every night from Tuesday through Saturday - a personal record for me. But not all of it is happy - friends leaving Beijing and having goodbye get-togethers.

I've also had a brief brush with the Beijing police on Friday night - which was considerably more than I've ever interacted with them anywhere else. For some reason we decided that it'd be a great idea to bike into the construction site of the new CCTV tower - possibly the most sensitive construction site after the Olympic stadiums - and, you know, check it out. So the security gate was up, the guards were just lounging, and we zoomed straight in. Nevermind the guys shouting at us or the security guard who gave chase on his own bike - we were pretending, I guess, not to understand or speak Chinese. But unfortunately, the road dead-ended, so we stood around and stared at all the night construction until the fuming security guard caught up and escorted us out. It might have been over then, but as it turns out, the security guard was extremely upset (he was definitely justified), called the police and proceeded to guard us. Keep in mind that we were all somewhat tipsy at the moment, having just come from drinking cold foaming beer. And the cops arrive!

But as it turned out, I didn't get to go to the police station, becasue as my friend rather chivalrously assured the cops, there was no need for me to go. So I'm sorry to have missed the "after party", you know, the part where they question you and threaten to take your money or keep you overnight, but end up just letting you go.

And the best donuts in Beijing are in Shunyi!

it's unbelievable, but...

There's free internet in the Hong Kong MTR stations.  And everything is shiny, and new, and dazzling. But everything is also so expensive! I did get a free ticket on the Airport Express though (by virtue, apparently, of telling the British man behind me that the ATM wasn't working.) I also got a job offer on the airplane, even before I revealed where I went to colege. Hmmmm. Perhaps this Hong Kong trip will be longer than expected :)

5 weeks & counting: books, more books, Vietnamese deliciousness, hong kong,

...that I've been at my new job. Has it been so long already? I can't remember who links here and how, so I don't want to say too much: if you want details, you must email. But it's true, I'm back in book publishing, specifically English books on Beijing, China, Chinese culture, & the like.

It's not Let's Go and never will be, which is not to say that one is better or worse. They're completely different in method and methodology, and if anything, this is even more relaxed than what you might expect from an office of college students.

In other news, it seems that I will be abroad for yet another Harry Potter release (by abroad I mean in a non-English-speaking country). Let's cross our fingers that the Chinese bookstores ordered enough copies to survive the expat-onslaught - I now regret not pre-ordering, even though this time I was vaguely determined not to get into the anticipation. Ever since Book 5 (Phoenix), I've become more ambivalent, though that didn't keep me from running around Munich trying to grab a copy of Half-Blood Prince the day of my flight to China. More than that, I dislike endings, I don't want closure: I prefer to think that the story goes on somewhere, that the adventures continue, that somewhere someone is telling the tale.

That said, there's plenty of books I love more, and recent reads too. Good Omens is one of them, the perfect blend of humor and speculation and a brilliant dash of the unexpected and the whimsical. It'll turn on your head all your expectations about good & evil, demons & angels—who knew that they could work so well together—and of course, the end of the world. It also has a self-fulfilling prophecy in the foreword: your copy of Good Omens will invariably get damaged in some way, possibly in the Vietnamese ocean.

(Speaking of which, I had real Vietnamese coffee today, at the Vietnamese restaurant at Wanda Plaza. Definitely the best pho I've had in Beijing so far, though the broth could have used more flavor & depth: fortunately there were chilis and sweet chili sauce to add some zing. Crowning moment definitely the rich, aromatic, real Vietnamese coffee, served in individual drip filters and poured over a tall glass of ice cubes. Nothing compares.)

I'm heading off to Hong Kong in 2 days, where I will replenish my stock of English reading material as well as Lush soaps. Yes, this trip is definitely becoming pricey, with all my planned purchases, and then just think of all the unplanned ones!

I was here 2 years ago

Two years ago, perhaps even to the day: it was sometime in mid-June
that I was wandering around Vienna for the Go. The sun was golden, the
coffee strong and delicious, and I hopped on a train out of town, past
a Hundertwasser trash incinerator to Stift Klosterneuberg.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/travel/17cultured.html?ex=1339732800&en=3017cc0439e9c313&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

My most vivid memory of the monastery, though, is not of all the art
and treasures or the winery, but of forgetting my notebook full of
*all* my Vienna research at the monastery, which is on top of a hill.
And I only discovered this when I was at the train station, at the
bottom of the hill and a bit further off. So it was a mad scramble up
and down the hill to get my notebook before the train comes in 20
minutes. It might have even been the last train back to Vienna -
whatever it was, I was panicking. But somewhat to my surprise, I did
finally make it in time though :)

Everything I learned about bathroom cleaning, I learned at Harvard

That above statement is completely true. I've never been so glad to have done Dorm Crew as when I was scrubbing down the bathroom tiles of my new apartment. (Landlord: We cleaned it! Look how clean it is. Later: I watch grubby water run down the tile walls...)

So, yes, I've moved out of Beida to the wonder and craziness of living within the 2nd ring road of Beijing. I am right next to old hutongs / new business buildings / the Olympic Media Center / dirty wangbas / spas and salons that may or may not be dodgy / and exercise-loving men and women who love to play badminton at 6:30am. It's a bundle of joy.

No, honestly, I quite like living here. I quite also like my new job, esp. when we spend much time buying Olympic tickets online / going for walks to mango shaved ice / having long random lunches / being otherwise silly. No, but we work too, and the work's great. General positive enthusiasm on all fronts!

That's all for now because the mosquitoes have sapped away much of my blood & willpower to continue.

my heart's desire: grasslands, at long last!

Continuing my promise from the last, oh-so-long-ago post, Xiahe. Because I want to indulge in nostalgia, and anything to procrastinate from the business of moving.

Nomads, Tibetans and travelers alike, come to Xiahe, which perhaps may be why it's surprising that it's still a one-street town. Ten years ago there was only a dirt road, and dirt houses. One year from now, there will be an airport.

Xiahe's Labrang Monastery is the largest center of Tibetan Buddhism outside of Tibet proper. (The majority of Tibetans have historically lived outside of the actual region of Tibet. They're scattered through all of western China.) The town is a curious mix of the pious, who walk for miles from the neighboring grasslands, the world-hungry, most of whom come from outside China, and the business-savvy, who see Xiahe's potential as a destination — the more accessible Tibet, one of the last holy places to evade Han influence.

Labrang is grand and glorious. Much of this I didn't photograph, because it wouldn't have come out anyway. And you can sense the "terrifying beauty" from the sky, too. I didn't also want to be the traveler who sees everything as his chance for the perfect shot, the perfect picture.

It's hard to say whether the monks were victims or beneficiaries of tourism. Certainly a bit of both. Interest in Tibetan Buddhism, revenue, a slice of the outside world come into this remote valley, versus having people come and look at them everyday, snapping their photos without permission. Anyway. Some of them seemed to be cool with it. Some seemed...bemused, or downright disapproving. They're also supposed to be quite well off.

Surrounding Xiahe are expanses of grasslands, and mountains, and cliffs. If you go south, you reach the lovely highland forests of Sichuan, and to the west, the more desolate plains of Qinghai.

Prayer flags in the wind, atop the mountain pass. Qinghai beckons in the distance.

I would like to be under the great sky, says Rilke. Shelley is overjoyed at her first grasslands. And sheep.

We met her and her friend along the road. She's 28 years old, and married, with a 12 year old son already. She wanted to know if we were married, and surprised to hear we were 22 and single. They were very curious about our cameras, so I took some photos and showed them. Later we took a picture together.

Our driver was an easy-going guy about our age. His name meant "Bright Pearl of the Qilian Mountains", somewhat girly I'm afraid. He also wore sunglasses that gave him an odd insectoid appearnce. He offered to take us to Ba Jiao Cheng, an ancient city from the AD 200s, once a site of strategic importance back when the Han fought the Uighurs fought the Tibetans fought whatever Central Asians that decided to maraud down that day.

DRIVER: Let me take you to Ba Jiao Cheng!
WE: What's there?
DRIVER:
A wall.
We: ... What's so cool about the wall?
DRIVER: It's really
thick.
WE: ...
Anything else?
DRIVER: No, not really.
WE: You make a very convincing argument. Lead the way! But first let's sit
here on the road for 30min. so you'll drop the price by 10 RMB.

And so we did sit, and so he did lower the price. But it turns out that the Ancient City was far more interesting than its "really thick" wall, because of the crowd of Tibetan children who turned up when we arrived.

I suspect they're there regularly, actually, because appparently Chinese tourists give them sweets and snacks. I didn't know this, but after some moments of awkward ni hao's and smiles and how old are you questions, I thought chocolate would be a nice interlude. It turned out that that they were mildly suspicious of the chocolate, which I broke off from a larger bar, so I had to eat a few pieces to demonstrate.

They were eating it silently (were they enjoying it??) when a second car came up. Out leaped a Chinese man, who immediately began flinging mad, mad handfuls of fake-Oreos to the kids. My fear that they didn't like sweets was unfounded afterall: a flurry of plastic wrappers went up into the air. Conclusion? Fake oreos will get you farther than Belgian milk chocolate.

So we spent most of the time hanging out with the kids, watching their mothers do laundry. Their mandarin was elementary (they were about 10-13 years in age and were attending the nearby school), so we got by on very limited conversation. Their mothers spoke only Tibetan, but seemed equally amused by us.

It was hard to leave though, because this village was so remote, hidden from the rest of the world by cliffs and grasslands, with only a narrow dirt road tying it to Xiahe. We are so transient - visitors come and go all the time - bringing in pieces of the world out there, but in such small, disjointed fragments - how can they grasp all this in the context of their own lives?

Travel boggles the mind, sometimes.

Continuing to run amok

So I have survived random bits of western China, and no, the trip wasn't as dangerous or as tough as I expected. But it was far more beautiful than all my expectations, especially the grasslands, and happily devoid of the usual May-Holiday tourist horde.

We began our trip auspiciously, by missing the train. Andrea and I dashed about like crazy people around the station—I didn't know I could run so fast with my backpack—leaping over barriers and pounding on locked doors. But Chinese trains, whatever their other faults, are deadly punctual, and no one would let us onto the platform at 2min. before the scheduled departure time.

There was nothing for it but to buy tickets for the next day's train, which, thankfully, we made, and spent a delightful 22 hours on a hard seat. Most of the ride we shared with 18 workers heading from Hebei to build a railroad in Ningxia. They were very curious about these 2 Chinese and 1 Caucasian girls, stared as if transfixed, smoked like an out-of-control forest fire, drank hard liquor, and were generally pleasant company all around.

Continuing the tale of our transportation woes, there were a few tense moments when a crowd of men surged up at the Lanzhou South Bus Station and immediately started grabbing our bags to try to get us to get on their bus, as opposed to the dozen others all going to the same place. It didn't get any better when they started pulling our arms as well, and I hit back a few times.

But to be honest, I actually thought it was kind of exciting, especially the part where we burst out of the knotty circle and shook them aside—so like an adventure story! fighting off dirty villains!—and I think my subsequent nonchalant attitude rather bemused my travel companions, who were slightly more concerned. Perhaps, deep down, I really wished for things to get more out of hand...it at least would have been more lively than waiting 2.5 hours for the bus to depart.

Fortunately, we didn't sit aboard various vehicles all these hours (~40) for nothing. Some pictures of Zhongwei (中卫), in Ningxia Province:

The Gao Temple in Zhongwei, which I now think of as "Chinese Gothic" in all its elaborate spires and eaves. It also featured a haunted-house-esque Hell in the basement, which we didn't see.

The Tengge'er Desert, Inner Mongolia. Andrea's camel got particularly snotty after I paid it a compliment. Mine seemed like it was in a rush.

This place (Shapotou) also captured all the contradictions of traveling in China. On the one side, incomparable beauty, sand dunes to the horizon, little beetles scurrying about on the wind-rippled dunes. On the other side, you have a mini-yurt village—if yurts were made of cement and painted with vaguely Greco-Roman athlete types—a volleyball court, ATVs for rent, and most perplexing of all, giant hamster-ball contraptions which roll down a gentle slope for just RMB 30. This is also not to mention the infrastructure madness on the side facing the Yellow River, where there are ziplines, slides, rafts, and more.

But then, behind all this, the desert is still there. All you have to do is point yourself northward, and off into the great, limitless expanses you go.

More on part II of our trip, Xiahe—quite truly the highlight—in another post to come.

A trip a month...

...keeps my camera busy? ...diminshes one's bank account? ...keeps one happy and sane? (But of course!)

Whatever the reason, it's time to be off again, this time to Zhongwei (中卫) in Ningxia Province and Xiahe 夏河 in southern Gansu. Expect this to be rough: we're beginning with a 22hr. on a hard sleeper train, and our return trip is uncertain (will we get back to Beijing in time for Andrea to go to class and I to work?), depending on the reliability of Chinese travel agents (...). These national holidays stress me out.

On the positive side, there will be deserts of vast proportions, hairy camels, grasslands, Tibetan monasteries, more grasslands, and of course, the sparkling cleanliness of rural China. I very much look forward to it all.

Last month I was in Nanjing & Shanghai, and it was most relaxing. I crashed the wonderful hospitality of Zhenzhen (who lives in a mountain terrace), woke up at 10am, looked for plum blossoms, and wandered around in the nearby mountain.

All this confirmed a realization—slowly dawning all this year—that contrary to what I believed growing up, Beijing is not the best place to be in China. In fact, right now, sometimes it's not very pleasant at all. When you think about cities like Kunming and Nanjing—warm weather, trees galore, clean air, less crowded, no traffic jams, cheaper living—you wonder why you are in Beijing at all. Not that I have lost faith in my home city (for it is still home, despite all the years away and all its annoyances and flaws), but it does make me want to get away. Home is not home because you'll always want to live there, but because you'll belong to it and know it even if you are several elsewheres away.

I've stayed up too late packing again; some things never change.

in which surprising resemblances to greek heroes are discovered

Like Achilles, I seem to be rather weak in the foot area. I rather excel at injuring my left foot.
(Why just the left?)

Most recently I dropped a drawer on it, but fortunately from a low height. Just prior to that, I got the same foot stuck in the bus door. Rather than screaming or otherwise calling attention to the problem, I stood there in a dreamy daze, thinking to myself, "Hmm, my foot is stuck in the door. This hurts. Quite a lot. I wonder if anyone will notice?" Then after a few moments I realized that I had to open my mouth. (This is typical of me: in high school I sprained my ankle and decided the best course of action would be to Not Tell Anyone.)

And on top of everything, the same disobedient left foot hasn't completely recovered from falling off a bike in Vietnam. My biking skills, on the other hand, have improved admirably in the same span of time. I biked around 18km on Saturday, to the Botanical Gardens and back, and it was surprisingly easy, even. It no longer bothers me that I have to share the road with, god forbid, other bikers, or cars, or motorcyclists. Dare I say I'm ready for the mountains?

beijing snapshot, saturday night

Sanlitun on a Saturday night is strangely heartbreaking. Not heartbreaking in the way you might expect, young lovers wearing each other to pieces in dim bars and hidden rooms. But heartbreaking, more fundamentally perhaps, because behind the French restaurants and gleaming mirrored lounges are broken-down lots, full of demolished rubble and low ramshackle 'houses' that look like they may fall apart with a slight push.

On a Saturday night, people here are sitting beneath awnings at a makeshift night market. They’re eating Y2 per bowl of cold green bean noodles, and grilling kebabs from meat that has been sitting out on a wooden board for perhaps far too long. Hasty menus advertising fried rice and noodles are scrawled on plaster walls. Men loiter, smoke, hunch over wooden tables in the shadows.

A woman wrestles with a bouquet of long-handled mops: everything sold here is strictly functional. Bright pink plastic slippers, cleaning detergents, buckets, water bottles. A sign on a the wall points to the grains store around the corner.

But less than 500m away, on a very different Saturday night, clubbers are dancing behind the impregnable walls of Mystique. Water flows down the walls at Alfa, where people dance and press up against one another in black booths. Other people burst into spontaneous laughter as they lurch down the street. There are stores with Y3000 wooden tables and spas that offer baths in milk and rose petals.

It’s really the same scene as in any modern city, but here the surrounding contrast is more jarring and startling. The space between is so much smaller, the 2 different worlds separated by just a few meters, but also overlapping becasue they share the same roads and the same names.

And then there are the people who work here, in these sleek, elegant places. Do they live nearby? Do they care they are here? They smile and they smile and they are so nice, but I wonder, what are they really thinking, as I wave goodbye.

Things that I find difficult to do...

1. Figure out China's internet filtering: Hey, China, make up your mind: either block blogspot.com or don't, but let's stop this back-and-forth hesitation. Either we are all trying to undermine you or we are not. These things do not work halfway. The revolution must be total and complete.

2. Bike in a wrap skirt: You know, the skirt that is just one long piece of fabric that you wrap around and fasten with a tie? Does not work well with bikes, especially not on windy days! I may have scandalized half the Beida campus and random passersby when I zipped past with entirely more leg exposed than is proper. On the other hand, the Beida campus could definitely use a bit more scandalizing.

3. Figure out Rowling's mental state: What's up with the title of Book 7, "Deathly Hallows"? And do you think JKR and whoever is in charge of Bloomsbury's children division were drunk and/or high when they approved the cover art for the British children's edition? Hermione & Ron look particularly awkward: is he falling forwards or backwards, and why such ruddy cheeks and shiny noses?

4. Go to bed: I can't seem to go to bed before 2am, and it's not for want of tiredness, either. Going to bed just seems like hard work and effort. I have to forcefully exert energy to do it. It's just much easier to continue awake. Really.

5. Enjoy my job: I didn't get hired to edit websites, fix Dreamweaver, or make stupid presentations on the Olympics. Not in the job description. This would all be made better if they gave me Photoshop, but there is only one license in the whole company, and it goes to the girl who does not know how to use it.

Nothing says springtime like forsythia

Somehow my lazy, waltz in at 11am part-time job has suddenly turned into a 4 days a week, practically full-time, stuck-to-my-desk-all-day job. The design/web person left mysteriously, and the new German/Belgian interns are overloaded with work, so they asked me for help:

GERMAN GIRL: I COLLAPSED. On the SUBWAY.
GERMAN BOSS: *pointed look* Would you like to work a few extra hours?
ME: Well, yes, if you put it that way.
GERMAN BOSS: Great! I'm off to Laos.

At this point, saying no would have been churlish and mean and awful! It would have been saying to A., "Yes, by all means, do collapse from overwork again!"

(But I'd also really like to tell A., J., and N. that collapsing is what happens when you live off fruit, salads, and Diet Coke. A. eats apples and mangoes, J. eats bananas and cookies, not sure what N. specializes in. According to A., at least, this is the sum of their lunch and dinner. A. is also under the impression that China will make her fat, because according to a fellow German, that's what happens to Europeans upon coming to China. I told her she has nothing to worry about.)

So, part of my new job description includes getting A.&Co. to eat, but I also get to play with Macromedia Flash MX and Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is more of a bitch than anything, but Flash MX = crazy hard. Took me hours to make this flash animation.

I like it, but I'm afraid that it will get sued for copyright infringement (I'm not sure where the photograph is from; I found it in the Temporary Internet Files folder. I think it comes from The New York Times, if for no other reason than that it's a good photo - does anyone know if they ran an article on Tibet recently?).

Other reasons why I come to work: the coffee. It's not very good coffee, certainly, but it's free and plentiful. I'm probably also the most willing coffee brewer in the office, and when we're out of coffee, I mope from cubicle to cubicle until I find the Chosen One who knows where the lovely extra coffee is stored. My coffee is also somewhat notorious.

COWORKER: *sips* ... You made this, didn't you. *grimaces*
ME: Yes, I did! *beams, is ridiculously happy to share the joys of coffee with the world*
COWORKER: *runs for water cooler*

I'm convinced, really, that it's not my taste that's skewed, but other people's. The best moment of my coffee-making career was when a fellow caffeine-hound complimented me on my coffee.

Happy Equinox....

Dear Beida Students:
If you want to make out enthusiastically at 10pm in the middle of an empty field, more power to you, but please to take off your backpacks first. It makes for a much more aesthetically pleasing sight.

Love,
Shelley, who prefers her PDA tasteful

~

In other news, it's the vernal equinox. And while I put off an email, let me recount recent spectacular earring losses. First one vanished while I was biking (unmatched earrings are almost as sad as unmatched socks....actually perhaps more so). Then I lost 2 (different) backings, thus giving me unmatched backings as well.

Then one of the "marble" black and white discs from Dali fell and broke in half. Ironically, now that it's broken I finally believe the salesman's claim that it was real marble/crystal/rock substance. But the breakage is actually rather nice, so I will just have to artistically break the other one. Symmetry is so overrated.

All this sacrifice has not been in vain: my biking has been improving drastically! (Yes, they are correlated, and this is my personal opinion.) While I'd write a memo to Beijing drivers that bike lanes exist for a reason, there's nothing like dodging cars/other bikes/wayward pedestrians to make you really, really pay attention. I do need a loud jangling bell, though, or a "New biker—please stay AWAY!" sign, or perhaps just wobble so menacingly that everyone is terrified—who let this drunk girl out onto the streets? And etc.

After this, traffic in any other city will probably seem sedate and zombie-like. I secretly wonder if perhaps there has been a champion biker hidden in me all these years, and has now finally discovered its perfect habitat in Beijing.

vietnam, the pictorial version

Clearly this is an attempt for me to waste time, look at pictures, and think about how nice it would to be have a bowl of pho ga while sick in sub-zero Beijing weather. A curse upon you, El Nino!

But actually, it was cold the first few days in northern Vietnam. Here we are crossing the border. I was sort of sad to leave China (I might not come back again!) but ironically, at the end I didn't want to return . This place was all very new, by the way, as China tore down everything in its eagerness to attack Vietnam some 30 years ago. Boo, China. Now it's called the Friendship Pass.

Our first meal in Vietnam was the first, and possibly the best, of many bowls of pho. I began with a plan to take pictures of all the pho, but the number grew out of control. Sometimes we had pho for dinner, then breakfast the next day, then lunch; by dinnertime again I’d insist on absolutely no pho.

After this meal, we had some beer with a few guys, who were really interested in our marital status. They turned out, in fact, to be older than we. They also really wanted Cliff's phone number.

Vietnamese people clearly love da bai cai just as much as I do. This is in Cao Bang, an awesome northern city in which we were the only tourists. We spent a lot of time looking for food here (no restaurants) and bargaining for motorbike rides out into the beautiful countryside. To quote the Go: "Cao Bang is magical." And so it was.

The saga of pho continues! This is our third bowl, served up lovingly by a shop near the bus station of Cao Bang. Not the best, I think, but doesn't that plate of fresh lettuce look so tantalizing? And those limes? And the chilis??

Our first self-piloted motorbike ride down the highway of Ninh Binh—by the way, most highways in Vietnam are just two lane roads, with no divider and no lane markings, because lanes are interepreted very loosely, and the two directions of traffic exchange sides pretty fluidly.

Sadly, this one of the few action shots I have, because pretty soon Cliff forbade me to take photographs while on a motorbike, or do anything else involving movement and not holding on.

On one particularly lazy day in Ha Noi (well, there were several), we went to 3 or 4 cafes in one day. But this was the first that we went to in all of Vietnam, the first place where we discovered the wonder of Vietnamese coffee. The NYTimes recommended the French pastries here, and the coffee was probably the best.

Another pho shop! It's a definite truth that market stalls and open-air street shops sell the best bowls of pho, not restaurants, though there are those that try to charge you 30,000 dong for a bowl. Plastic chairs, ingredients hanging out in the open (including these fine chicken asses, see them up close), bent chopsticks, unidentifiable meats—all the sure signs of quality. And in the end, you pay less than US$1 for a delicious, steaming bowl of pho.


We paid 2000 dong to cross this thing. I'm glad someone's maintaining this bridge though! It wouldn't do to let it fall into ruin. We had to push the motorbike across.

I'm also sort of ridiculously proud of the fact that I stayed in my first bungalow. In fact, I found out just what a bungalow is. And learned to take record-speed (for me) cold water showers.


Our ridiculous seafood feast. Ridiculous in how cheap it was, and how delicious it was, and how much devastation we caused.

See what I mean? Utter devastation. In our defense I say that scallop shells are much more substantial than scallop meat, though the shrimp were mad hefty. Where else will you find this for US$10?


We gave away all our candy here to these fishermen's children in Mui Ne fishing village. Even though they fought over the candy (we had a limited supply, and somehow the children multiplied when the chocolate came out), they were pretty sweet and cute, especially compared to the children who came later....


The pirate children of the sands! They look very sweet, cajole you to ride down a slide down a sand dune, and then when you're down immediately ask you for 100,000 dong. Also, if you slide down with one person, you're somehow expected to pay all 8 of them around you. Here they are mobbing someone else. Really, they were vicious. It was awkward, and Cliff thinks I would have really given them 100,000 dong if he hadn't been there. (They were so cute at first.)

I enjoy this picture. Dog investigates.

Floating market. Those were some pretty knobbly, warty carrots in that boat.

Here is a landmark moment, one might even say a Hallmark moment. After years of not eating pineapples out of extreme phobia (due to one bad childhood incident, involving salt), I had my first fresh pineapple again. You can see its hacked off bits on the floor of the boat there. And it wasn't just a small chunk of a pineapple. It was almost half. I have to admit it was not bad, pretty decent, almost tasty. I mean, I did eat nearly half the thing.


And because I'm a fan of full circles, endings that follow their beginnings, here is a photo to echo the first one.

V for Vietnam: Various Vagaries

I fall easily in love with foreign countries, but Vietnam, seems to have captured my heart most completely. Possibly it’s because I was there for a long time, or maybe this is because they have the best coffee ever. This is coming from someone drank her caffeinated way through Europe. But nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to the intense richness of Vietnamese coffee, blended with condensed milk and poured over ice. It’s sweet, but not sweet enough to drown out the intenseness of the coffee, which is the problem of American coffee with condensed milk: the sweetness completely overpowers the delicious bitter goodness that makes coffee coffee.

So now I’ve been spoiled by Vietnam, and any other coffee will never, ever completely satisfy me again. I may make an exception for Viennese mélange. Perhaps the secret ingredient of good coffee is a name that begins with a V.

(This now reminds me of V for Vendetta, which lots of words that begin with V, and Guy Fawkes, and Edmund Dantes, who was the ill-starred victim of a 20 Questions game that I bungled, and the answer was never attained.)

Cliff was actually almost not let into Vietnam—or rather, he was almost not let out of China, by the Chinese border officials, because they suspected him of leading an international spy and smuggling ring. He did actually have an extensive and cunning plan for the demolishment of Vietnam’s population of pineapples, shrimp, and general seafood, but they didn’t know that. Meanwhile, I had my eye on their sticky rice.

We did a lot of motorbike riding in Vietnam. Sometimes we rented our own motorbike, and went about according to do our own whim and fancy. This was awesome—as the lazy passenger I had nothing more to do than, you know, sit, and enjoy scenery, etc, so perhaps that's why I enjoyed the entire process more. Cliff had to ride through some drizzle, dust, mud, wind, rickety bamboo bridges. Pictures will soon testify to this.

Most of the other times, though, we were at the mercy and skill of a motorbike taxi driver. This is exactly the same concept as a taxi, except there are about 30 other motorbikes in the same street, coming from all directions, and you suddenly realize how exposed you are. Whether your driver has showered recently also becomes much more obvious and relevant to your enjoyment of the ride.

Then, imagine having 3 people on 1 motorbike. One of them is 6’3”. And it's a one hour ride down steep mountain roads, no railings, lots of hairpin curves and switchbacks. It's windy. A hat gets blown away. And it's getting dark. And you possibly just pissed off your driver by bargaining a bit too hard on the price (admittedly he was trying to rip you off).

Or, maybe it's completely dark and you're going down a road at surely illegal speeds—but probably not, as there are no speed limits ever posted—with a giant backpack whose weight is pulling you backwards.

Anyway, that's a few thoughts on Vietnam, most of which I wrote at work, so that's why it reads so haphazardly. There will be more later, with later being an uncertain span of time, because Internet access is sporadic and uncertain. I'm in a cafe right now in Jianguomen, but I must be getting home. Dinner calls.

unruly wanderings

still in vietnam, having crazy times, motorbikes, villages, rice paddies galore, unexpected pineapples, the best coffee of my life, the best seafood of my life, and swindling children on top of sand dunes!

[Edit: I'd like to make clear that I wasn't swindling children; the children were swindling me. They were pretty damn good at it too.]

why am i always so last minute?

waking up in 3hr. for flight to nanning, guangxi in 6hr. 30min.

then it's a 4hr. bus ride over the border to vietnam!

where hopefully we shall not be devoured by giant mosquitoes.

or devour any mosquitoes ourselves.

because, you know, in vietnam they eat everything.

including beating cobra hearts.

and yes, it's time for the obligatory F. Scott Fitzgerald quote about how it's always 3am in a real dark night of the soul.

Hello, this is my brain on malaria medication speaking. No, it's my brain on mefloquine speaking. Here I am awake at 3 am for three nights in a row, because I can't fall asleep, despite being really tired, because mefloquine is the crazy drug that gives you odd sleep effects. Or maybe there's something else wrong with me and it's not the drug at all.

Regardless this is all because I'm stupidly single-minded at times, and once I get an idea, there's no getting it out of me. I admit it, I wasn't thinking!

Doctor: Would you like the nice anti-malarial that has no side effects?
Me: No, no, I want the mefloquine!
Doctor: ...Are you sure.
Me: Yes, yes, I am.

And now, okay. If I were to go back and ask for the nice anti-malarial that doesn't come with weird effects on your sleep habits, I would feel foolish. Ah yes, I was an idiot, should have listened to you! Shouldn't have been fixated on mefloquine! Why was I stuck on it anyway? I have no idea. None at all.

Oh hell i want to go to sleep. Really I do. At least the Internet is somewhat faster right now.

To add to my list of supposed health problems, I drank water containing floating colonies of mold in it today. Why did I do that? Because, once again, I am an idiot.

Oh hell. What am I going to do? Go back to the doctor and ask for nice drug? Continue this as a damned exciting experience that undoubtedly will be unlike any other I've ever had? Enjoy the ride? Buy sleeping pills?

I forget to mention that another deterrent to returning to the doctors is the medical cost. For some reason only fancy foreigner-run hospitals have this stuff readily available, so it's US$55 + cost of drug for another visit.

And, dude, in America? $10 for a consultation, yo.

Hello, sleep or poverty?

At least I paid my credit card bills, thanks, super-slow Internet that only works at 3am.

Of Haircuts as a cultural experience & the Symbolish therein

"Why are most hairdressers men?" I asked him, looking around the busy shop, a whirl of scissors, blow-dryers, and conversation.

"Because men and women have different ideas of beauty." He said this as if it was the most obvious truth in the world, which it may in fact be.

"But then," I pursued, "Shouldn't more women be hairdressers, if they care more about their hair?"

"Ah," and he said this as if sharing a great secret, "But women style their hair for men."


Leaving the truth of that statement up to debate, I might also have liked to tell him that there are vastly different ideas of beauty between cultures, and ours, sadly, did not coincide.

But I didn't, mainly because he was so vastly pleased with his handiwork. And handiwork is probably the right word—he treated this as something he designed, and not only that, went over every strand of hair at least 5 times. I didn't count the number of times he exclaimed that this haircut is simply perfect! I just writhed internally, and glanced at the clock out of the corner of my eye.

"You'll stop all the passersby in their tracks," he said. (Word-for-word translation: "You'll have a 100% head-turning-rate", which he had to explain to me.)

I was pretty dubious of this. Either it was enthusiastic flattery, or he genuinely believed that this was the best haircut ever. Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that his glasses had no lenses. Was this literary symbolism for the fact that all men were in fact blind as bats and didn't give a damn for what your hair looked like? If my life were a novel, then yes, I think it was.

One Mao, Two Mao

Yesterday I bought a newspaper and a juice box for 0.50RMB, or the equivalent of $0.07. The newspaper turned out to be mostly detritus, and the juice I haven't tried yet—this same juice was the suspected culprit in a friend's food poisoning in Pingyao. Little yellow berries, shall I risk you?

Things you can get for twice that (or $0.14): A Suntory Oolong tea and a copy of The New Beijing Newspaper; a ride on a bus without A/C; a bag of popcorn; half a roasted yam.

Some prices in comparison:

> Imported box of Kellogg's cereal 50 RMB ~ $7
> Sony battery charger and 4 rechargeable batteries 170 RMB ~ $21
> Meal in the cafeteria 3.50 RMB ~ $0.44
> An extravagant feast for nine-ten people 600 RMB ~ $75
> My weekly commute 40 RMB ~ $5
> A flimsy new bike 180 RMB ~ $23
> Santa costume 36 RMB ~ $4.5

* Not all of these are my purchases. Some of them are just observations, like the cereal. I'll leave you to wonder whether or not I bought a Santa costume :>