dreams in catalunya

this is a bit dated, but philip just sent me this picture, taken the day i arrived back in budapest from my bike trip. i miss that bike.

in the present: monday night i stayed in narbonne with a french couchsurfer named valerie. that town felt great- i read by its tree-lined canal for a few hours while i waited for valerie to get off from work. she was very generous, driving me out to the beach for a walk and cooking me dinner.

on tuesday it was a bit dicey getting out of france. the train workers went on strike to protest job cuts, but the union agreed to provide a minimum of service to keep some things running. it was chaotic, but everyone was very helpful and i eventually got out into spain.

when i arrived in barcelona i dropped my bag off at a hostel called INOUT, which is actually a non-profit that employs disabled people, located up in the hills outside of town in a national park. then i went back to town to try to find tristan. this was kind of a nightmare, as his directions were things like "If you´re exiting the train station then you take a left" (who knows how many entrances there are to barcelona´s two train stations), "the main plaza...I don´t know if it´s the actual main plaza" and " then walk about 3 minuites" (what a way of describing distance). so i scoured that town for four hours without ever finding him. and he failed to find the hostel, staying somewhere in town that night.

i would have been madder at him if i weren´t enjoying my walk. the architecture and character of the neighborhoods i explored felt great, some of my favorite i´ve seen in europe.

wednesday i found tristan sitting at the base of the mirador de colum, a big statue of columbus at the end of la ramblas next to the harbor. we spent the day walking around the neighborhoods near la ramblas, watched portugal beat czech republic in the eurocup, played frisbee in plaça catalunya, and just generally had too much fun.

thursday was daydream festival, the event that brought us here to barcelona. i enjoyed some of the opening bands, like cuchillo, m83, low and ENEMC. but the headliner was radiohead. they played a two-hour set that really just defies description, so i won´t try.

at about 1 am we made our way to nightdream, an aftershow at razzmatazz club back in town. we had to kill a few hours until the trains started running again at 5, so we did it in style, rocking out with the beautiful spanish people to music that was far too loud. my ears are still ringing.

we´ve basically been recovering ever since. some walks in town, running errands, getting groceries, watching more eurocup games, tossing disc in parc de la ciutadella, recklessly gambling on our utter lack of poker skills- which feels fine as long as it´s just between eachother.

being here in the heart of the 1936-7 workers´ attempted revolution that i now know backwards and forwards, i was excited to see what the barcelona museums had to say about that bit of history. so i spent a few hours at the museu d´historia de catalunya, which had big exhibits on industrialization and the spanish civil war, periods that were raging with class conflict.

i was fairly impressed with the content- it was surprisingly class-conscious, but at the same time containing the standard demonization of anarchists, repetitively calling them terrorists while omitting the far more common state terrorism used against the workers, as well as the government's use of agents provocateurs using terrorist tactics to give the state the pretext to suppress worker organizations. but generally very detailed information- i learned a few things i missed last fall.

the movement is certainly still alive here. right near the university i found the fundació d´estudis llibertais i anarcho sindicalistes, proudly flying the black and red CNT/FAI banner. it contained a huge bookstore of radical material, the equivalent of lucy parsons in boston or left bank in seattle. the person at the desk spoke almost no english though (and my spanish is pathetic), and their english book section was about half of one shelf. the movement turned in on itself, down in a little national hole. shame. if (when) i come back i will work on this problem...

so this is it. this was the climax, partaking in the urban festival club bar culture, dipping toes in the waters of what appears to be the all-too-standard young traveler regimen.

so the romp is at an end. in a way it was a long indulgent vacation. at the same time much of it was uncomfortable, and frugality and austerity kept me from getting too soft. some of the time i was moving fast, hardly getting to know a place before i dashed off to another, just a manic tourist frolic. at other times i balanced this with longer stays- wandering the same neighborhood or wwoofing or slowly hiking through foothills. parts of it were frustrating because i missed so many things, wasted time on things i later regretted, pursued a dead-end toward russia, and so on. but if i think of it all as scouting, just impulsively exploring, then i can accept my myriad mistakes and confustions and distresses as learning the hard way. if its scouting, it all makes sense. as scouting, i forgive myself for being shortsighted and ignorant of so much. traveling in the future i will be that much more competent and capable.

tomorrow i fly back to the states, to return to alaska for another summer of commercial fishing. i am actually thrilled to go back, having gone through a few cycles of travel burn-out now. i am tired of being homeless, living out of my pack. i miss the comforts of family and home. so this ending feels right.

this is the last post, unless i feel i have anything insightful to write about re-integration into US society, the infamous reverse culture shock. kop kum kop, kop jai, shishi, bayarla, kosonom, merci, gracias, thank you for keeping me company.

if we build it, they will come

my first week here i spent most of my time working on a future hedge: building fences, backfilling the trench that the fence sits in, adding compost, planting saplings and transplanting other hedge bushes. i also did plenty of dishes, as i couldn't stand watching karina both cook and clean up.

my evenings i've spent mostly writing and reading- outside in the garden if its nice, or holed up under a skylight in steve's antique shop. they have a huge book collection, and used to run a book exchange until too many unfair trades made them quit. they have great taste in literature (lots of my favorites in there anyway) and some of my happiest moments have been getting to know those shelves and reading as much of it as possible before i leave.

i've also tagged along on some outings- to the bar with steve, and to the kids' school for a buffet and dance performance. it seems odd that there is an international community here- from all over europe but especially britain, and even a woman from vancouver canada.

using french has been lovely (the first time in the last four months of travels that i had a hope of understanding locals in their own terms). this is the first immersion i've had in french since sénégal (fall 05), and it's rusty of course. my vocabulary is pitiful, but my comfort and ability to improvise came right back. i used french a lot in the first two weeks before i came to chateau lassalle, but here i am in a bubble of english (actually, british, which sometimes i can't understand at all). so, time out in the community is nice, even if it's just to flex the ol' linguistic muscles.

this second week i enjoyed the work much more. replacing huge oak rafters in the barn, chiseling away at ancient masonry, busting down walls with a sledge, painting shutters, and cutting up old moldy floorboards for firewood.

this is all part of the master plan. i will explain as best as i can.

there is one barn right next to the house, which currently holds the brocante (antique shop), library, storage spaces, and a big room that serves as an art gallery, studio and gathering space for social gatherings. steve and karina host cultural events here, art shows and entertainment and the like- in fact last saturday night they had an event, displaying posters from the summer 1968 near-revolution that rocked france (as well as many other parts of the world). these propaganda posters are beauties, giving me the itch to get back to printing t-shirts.





also, they are experimenting with a sunday restaurant, and even as i write this there are a couple dozen people out in the garden being served lunch.

but with this second barn on other side of their house that they have recently acquired, they want to reorganize their project. they want a physical separation between their private family space and their public project, so they are going to move all the public things to the second barn. it is also big enough to house a real restaurant and kitchen, and a half-dozen art studios and apartments. eventually lassalle could become a full-blown cultural center and the heart of an artsy little community.

now this is rural france, and there isn't really the right type or size of communty here to fully support a project like this. yet. things are building momentum slowly, more people are getting involved over time, locals are being slowly drawn in, and physical construction is coming right along.

as steve put it, quoting the classic film directly: "if we build it, they will come". it's actually quite inspirational, and i wish i could be a bigger part of it. perhaps i'll come back some day.

so now my two weeks here are coming to an end. tomorrow i'm headed off to barcelona for the final chapter.

may 14 - tristan!

on the 13th i caught a train to vienna, then an overnight to strasbourg, then to marseilles, then to nice, where i met tristan at the airport. i was thrilled to see him, having looked forward to this chapter of the travels for a long time.

we didn't mess around in nice, in my mind just another patong (trendy, packed with tourists, utterly unaffordable) - yech. we hurried on to hendaye, a port town in the southwest corner of france, right on the border with spain. basque country. hendaye is the beginning of the GR-10, an 866km trail that stretches from one end of the pyranees to the other, winding back and forth across the french-spanish border. we arrived in town late, and ended up sleeping in some woods that were probably part of someone's yard (we had to climb a barbed wire fence to get in).

after that first night camping was a lot easier. we headed up into the hills, hiking east for four days before turning back toward hendaye. each day we tried to pass through one village, to fill up our water bottles and buy bread and other groceries. this was tricky sometimes because we were definitely in siesta country, and just about everything closed at about 12:30, opening again a couple hours later, if at all. so some nights we had awkward meals.

we passed through the villages of biriatou, ibardin, and sare, making it almost to ainhoa on our last day, and making a detour on the way back to go to la rhun. being on the border, some of these towns had both french and spanish names (hendaye = hendaya, sare = sara, la rhun = larrun). and some street names had basque translations included. hearing basque was wild, it sounds like nothing else i've ever heard.

we really didn't walk all that far. the steepness of the terrain, the weight of our packs, and various aches and pains kept us down to an average of maybe 5 hours of hiking per day. we stretched a lot, did yoga and chi gong, took naps, took breaks to read in condusive spots, and short side-trips without our packs. each night i made a campfire, even when all the wood was soaked, so that we could roast our fresh vegetables and saugages. and we talked. especially in those first couple days, i was extremely stimulated by tristan's presence- not surprising given my last couple weeks of lone austerity. i felt like a whole new person, just bubbling with social energy.

but yes, although we could see the real dramatic snowcapped pyranees in the distance, we barely scratched the surface of their rhelm. distance covered was not the goal, although if i ever return i believe that it will be.

the basque countryside is a strange society. there is very little industry besides tourism, and the lack of jobs leaves the region almost devoid of young people, who must just all be living in cities. almost all the tourists we saw were middle-aged and older french people. almost everyone on the mountain trails were older couples, locals on day-hikes. we saw a few people with big packs like us, but i think that they were all french too. the droves of internationals supposedly come in august, which probably both increases services for backpackers - food and lodging - and also increases local vigilance - chasing campers off of private land.

the people that do live in the area we hiked through seemed to be pretty well-off. people on pensions or government money or something. all the houses were picture-perfect whitewashed with tile roofs and big yards and gardens. certainly weren't any slums, or the rural trailerpark strip-towns characteristic of the states' rural regions.

the return hike was nice because we knew all the best camping spots and necessary timing between towns. we could take our time and relax, as on the way out we'd wasted so much time wandering around lost. the GR-10 is well marked in most places, but not everywhere.

we got back to hendaye on friday. tristan caught a train back to nice on saturday. he'll be at his tama do training in the hills near there for the next two weeks, and i will spend this chunk of timing wwoofing (Willing Workers On Organic Farms - the french website is http://www.wwoof.fr/). i spent the weekend walking around hendaye, reading and worrying about connecting with my wwoof hosts. i camped in the hills just outside of town, in a lovely thick patch of trees covered in ivy. it's been raining pretty much constantly, but i managed to catch a couple hours of sun on sunday afternoon, spreading out all my gear and finally getting dry.

sunday night i caught a train to dax, then a bus to mont de marsan, where i was picked up by steve. steve and karina are a british couple, around 40 years old, who have been living here for the last 10 years with their three kids - jack, 12; finley, 10; and ella, 4. they live in a massive old house, called chateau lassalle, which is just outside of a little village called aignan. they don't know how old the house is exactly, but its been here since the 1400s at least. there are also two barns, a guesthouse, yards and fields, gardens, and a pond on the property.

i think it was all in disrepair when they bought it, and they've been fixing it up slowly ever since. steve is a handyman extraordinaire. i know that he's done lots of landscaping, put new tile floors into the entire house, built a traditional slate roof, and built a very nice garden. who knows what else, a place this massive and old and complicated must absorb thousands of hours of labor.

steve has a law degree, used to teach literature, and has always run an antique trade. karina is a journalist who runs and writes for a magazine. she researches wealthy philanthropists and their organizations and publishes their financial dealings, and the resulting transparency helps keep them honest and helps charities and other groups seeking funds. they both appear to be tireless champions of parenting, carefully and creatively chosen careers, and domestic projects.

most importantly they are extremey generous. they feel that 30 hours of work a week is a fair exchange for room and board, which is perfectly acceptable to me. with my first shower and laundry in several weeks, and a comfy bed in an old (dry!) camper, i am very happy. it still feels like vacation, even though i just spent the last two days shovelling muddy clay in the rain, which is just as fun as it sounds. the food and wine and company and environment are excellent, and i feel right at home.

a returned bike

after i wrote last i headed back into bukk nemzeti park for two more nights of camping, spending my days riding up and down those hills. i ended up coming across, besides those wild boar (i am told that there are lots), big black and yellow poisonous geckos, one deer critter with big curved horns, and millions of birds. there are almost one thousand species of birds in bukk alone, and day and night i was immersed in unfamiliar songs and chatter. most were little but there were a few hawks and today i saw a stork.

on thursday i met up with a couchsurfer in miskolc, hungary's third largest city. viktor is writing his dissertation on the environmental and political history of the sajo river, which flows through the region and was affected by the heavy industry of the state-socialist era. he also writes articles of political analysis for european newspapers. i aspire to take on similar roles in the near future, and found our meeting to be inspirational. it was great getting to know him.

viktor is a bicyclist and knows the roads in his region, so on friday he led me most of the way up to aggteleki park, through a labyrinth of tiny villages that i could not have found by myself. it was an exhausting day, but just as it was getting too dark i made it to my destination, the town of segliget.

i stayed in segliget (pop. approx 1,000) for two nights with another couchsurfer, a british guy named simon. he runs a guest house in addition to his job editing for a cycling magazine, which he can do from his home. foreigners are rare in rural hungary, but he's made it his home for the last few years, and speaks magyar well by now. with him translating i was better able to experience the local culture, hanging out at the fast food place and bar, playing pool and drinking beer and a crazy slovakian liquor called bekarofka, which tastes like cinnamon and herbs.

saturday i had a lovely lazy day, laying around napping and reading, preparing myself for this last bit. sunday and monday were a long slog, 150 and 105 km respectively, just a sprint back to budapest. it got pretty tedious, the endless hills and windy roads i took to avoid the big highways. i was tired, and losing motivation, sick of being dirty and sore and wet and homeless and worried about flat tires (i got four total - with the weight of my pack strapped to the back it didn't take much of a bump). despite all that, my camp last night made me feel sad to end my trip. i slept in a meadow between two little villages, surrounded by rolling forested hills and the endless birds. once the moon set the stars were brilliant. i am going to miss this.

so, now i am back in budapest at philip's apartment. that old white peugot got me through 650 km of magyar countryside. i was so sad to return it today- i'll be lucky if i can find its equal back in the states. now i am headed to nice, france, to meet my dear friend tristan who arrives in two days. i have a train ticket to vienna austria for tomorrow. from there, my fate is in the hands of the european train network.

topheavy in bukk

first- before i flew back to the states i played in the hungarian ultimate frisbee national championships. it was one of the most thrilling days of my life, i still get the giggles thinking about it. i played for a team called halodigaze, who i had practiced with the week before.

the tournament was in a town called markaz, about an hour and a half drive from budapest. it is wine country, and some of the people organizing the event ran a winery (the prizes at the end were therefore all wine-based). it was a cold and rainy day, but at least no wind, which really screws things up. there were seven teams and two fields, and each team played 4 or 5 games to determine the standings.

we lost our first two games, to the two best teams there - the two that ended up playing for first. it was a tough way to start, but after that our team clicked. everything started working perfectly, and i finally relaxed and was able to play my best. we won our other three games, taking third place. again, one of the most thrilling days of my life.

i am trying to find pictures online, and will inform if i do.

so. now that i am back from the states, i am doing just what i planned. i bought a bike in budapest, along with a lock, helmet, pump and tire repair kit, all for about 220 dollars (if i return it all in good shape, i'll get about 170 back- this is far cheaper than renting). i didn't get paniers, but there is a rack on the back that is good for strapping down my bag. unfortunately this makes me quite topheavy, which took a while to get used to. also, it takes at least 10 minutes to get it all strapped on correctly. i have to take it off and wear it when i lock up my bike and leave it behind, so i am loath to stop in civilization, it's all just a pain in the ass.

on friday i rode about 85 km, from budapest to just past the town of gyöngyös. that night i nested in a patch of bushes between a dirt road and a vineyard. wrapped in a cacoon of garbage bags and nearly all my clothes, i was almost warm enough to sleep. almost. not a great night.

(but man, plastic bags. greatest invention ever. i am utterly dependent on them, and keep a big stash on me at all times. so here's to plastic bags, my best friend out here).

on saturday i rode the rest of the way to eger, about 45 km. i stayed in a little hostel that was run by a family. the son, bolasz, spoke some english, but not his parents. bolasz took me down the family's cellar where he had me taste his father's wine. the earth under eger is just full of cellars, running right into each other (our was separated from the neighbor's by an iron gate). the heart of wine country, most of the town's business is wine. there is a little valley outside town called szépasszony-völgy (valley of the nice lady) that is just ringed with cellars buried into the hillsides. from the openings of each people sell their wine, give out tastes for free and glasses for less than a dollar. this was may-day weekend, a big four day holiday for the country. all the tourists there appeared to be magyar.

i slept for 14 hours that night. for good reasons. sunday i took off for bukk national park, riding up and up until i ran out of daylight and had to find a spot to sleep. i was nice and warm with my sleeping bag i bought from bolasz' mother, which is purple and white and covered in flowers ("just like a man!" announces bolasz).

monday i spent hiking, exploring the confusing network of paths winding through the park. i climbed to some hilltops for the views, found a sweet little spring, and generally just soaked up these beautiful forested hills. things were peachy until a massive thunderstorm broke over my head. i took shelter in a little wooden observation tower, across a meadow from some type of corn-dispensing container, for luring critters of some kind. i thought it would be deer, but last night a pack of wild pigs or boar romped around it. grunts and oinks and squeels and bubbling splashing as they churned the whole area up into a muddy sloppy pond. i slept up in the tower.

today i came back down to eger, about 20 km, to resupply. i am subsisting on bread, cheese, jam, peanut butter (trying to make this precious little jar from santa barbara last as long as possible), carrots, bananas and yogurt. the limiting factor is water, as its so heavy to carry. i wish i knew where all the springs were in this region.

interlude

my granpa ron passed away on the 19th of april. i flew to santa barbara california for a week to be with my family.

i wouldn't write about it here - this is such a light-hearted project. in fact, it's hard to start writing about anything again. it doesn't feel right to embark on frivolous travels and write silly stories after something like this.

i just wanted to explain my silence of the last two weeks. more will come soon.

prague spring and

we flew from ulaan bator to prague instead of budapest because the connection in russia would have left us in moscow airport for 23 hours, as opposed to 4 for prague. we chose wisely. obviously with no visas they keep you penned in, with upper-class consumer goods duty free (but not 500% markup-free) shops and restaurants. the real problem was that a half liter of water would have cost us almost $10. and we were thirsty. and there were no drinking fountains. the exchange rate with russian rubles is intolerable steep. good thing those bureaucrats gave us such a headache, otherwise we'd have gone in and i'd have gone broke.

after three weeks of grey windy death-dry winter in mongolia and china (i know i shouldn't complain about a winter so short, but) the spring in prague felt just like heaven. i was giddy. there were little buds everywhere, tiny white flowers all over bushes, trees just barely getting their leaves out. the city is small, and it is surrounded on most sides by big hills, each of which are covered in parks. i love that they've kept them as they are, prevented the private development that must want that prime territory. we got on top of eight of them in our four days in the city. there are mossy broken stone staircases winding up through neighborhoods that lead up into the parks, and redundant layers of paths crisscrossing all through them. they were full of people walking their dogs. and the spring smells- again, just giddy.

we heard that prague has quite a nightlife, but i was sleeping from about 10 pm til 7 am each night, so i have no idea. we did visit some local bars and restaurants, which were very nice. eastern european beer is the best. and czech food isn't too bad either - we had some amazing garlic soup. i keep thinking about it. the standard local fare seemed to be pizza, which was unexpected. we did plenty of cooking at our hostel's kitchen.

one day i walked southwest from our hostel, and within a half our was in meadows that bordered on farmland. prague is tiny. we walked all over it in just four days. a perfect city for walking.

last friday we caught a bus for budapest. it took about 9 hours, through southeastern czech republic, the western edge of slovakia, then continuing on southeast in hungary. we passed mostly agriculture and forests, mixed together with little towns. we showed up, figured out the subway, and made it to philip's apartment in District VI, on the pest side of the danube. philip and rachael came back on saturday, after spending a week in the netherlands where philip had to do some work in person.

we've spent the last few days wandering around, getting to know the city. we visited kerepesi cemetery, which i loved for its ancient crumbling overgrown headstones back in the woods, and for its weird russian section. the majority of the graves were for russian soldiers who were killed while helping the nazis off in world war II. but then there is a section for those who died in 1956, suppressing the hungarian uprising. it seemed strange to us that, now that the USSR has fallen, the hungarians don't tear down these monuments to their own suppression by stalinism.

1956 is the most fascinating thing about this city to me. there are bullet-holes everywhere. for about 10 days hungary had a government in which stalinist leaders were replaced with democratically-elected ones, workers' councils were rebuilt and re-empowered, power was decentralized to these councils, and the entire military (eventually) sided with the uprising. this is everything a trotskyist advocates and works for in a stalinist deformed workers' state. unfortunately, all trotskyists and other left-commies had long been purged, so there was a disturbing lack of leadership. also, the red army rolled in and crushed the puny hungarian army, purged the army leadership of sympathizers, executed a bunch of politicians, re-instituted mandatory indoctrination for rank and file soldiers, suppressed the new councils and unions, etc. hence, 10 days.

we wanted to take a walking tour of the history of communism in the city, but it was going to cost about $50 per person. so, eli and i spent a couple days doing research, and gave the tour ourselves. we took philip and rachael up to the castle district in buda where students at the technical university had helped organize, agitate for and instigate the uprising, alongside the working class at every step (one good thing about stalinism that allowed this- the middle class monopoly on higher ed was replaced by a reactionary system of giving the education to working class and peasant kids instead).

then we walked down to Bem Ter in buda, where a crowd of between 10 and 100 thousand people rallied on 23 october 1956, the first big show of force by the people. then we walked across the Margit bridge, following the path of the workers and students as they headed into pest. they split up to head to the parliament building where they joined with others, forming a crowd of 200 thousand; to the world's biggest statue of stalin, which they tore down; to the radio building, which they tried to take over to broadcast their demands; to various military barracks, where they convinced soldiers to join them; and to communist party offices, the homes of politicians, and every other strategic point in the city. the soviet soldiers stationed here sympathized (they were of the same class, and were equally abused under stalinism) and showed very little resistance. USSR leaders could only get their soldiers to fight the hungarians when they brought in fresh ones who were told they were off to fight nazis or capitalist troops at the suez canal.

well i could go on and on (and on and on) about this, but the important thing is this: the students and workers explicitly stated that they did not want a capitalist counterrevolution. they understood how much worse that would be than stalinism. they fought for exactly what i would have fought for in their situation: a more free, democratic version of what they already had. this is exactly what modern trotskyists fight for, and it's inspirational to see how far these folks got in '56, despite the forces stacked against them.

on the 50th anniversary, just a year and a half ago, this city erupted. riot cops had to bust skulls left and right to get everyone to lie back down again. the heritage of '56 is alive and kicking. i've certainly never been in a place so rich with progressive revolutionary history, and, just under the surface, contemporary energy...

today eli and i went to the national museum, which had decent exhibits on the last 900 years or so. its funny to see their history of the mongolian invasion, after seeing it from the other side in mongolia's national museum in UB. they glossed over the communist period, so we really didn't learn much. there was crap propaganda, trying to talk up the economic development during their capitalist periods while ignoring the development under stalin (which dwarfs the economic progress of any other period). they also didn't give much attention to '56, treating it like a anti-communist insurrection (which is ironically the same thing the USSR insisted that it was- an attempted counterrevolution. this is significant, that these two types of ruling classes would propagandize against '56 in the same way. both clearly feel threatened by it.)

we also visited the radio station today, where the first major battle of '56 was fought, and where the first budapest resident was killed (by the hated AVH - hungarian secret police - who were holding the station. they all got killed by the way).

just a few other little things:

standard fare here is turkish food. been eating gyros and falafel every day.

also, i've attended the practices of three different budapest ultimate frisbee teams in the last 4 days. this is my first real foray into strategy, set plays, reading the field and knowing how to move properly. i am exhausted and sore, both physically and mentally.

also, eli tricked me into eating a piece of cheese with ketchup on it. i thought it was sriracha hot sauce. it wasn't. it was gross. to get him back i emptied the sri from his bottle and replaced it with ketchup. bizarrely, he hasn't even noticed. i almost died watching him eat a sandwich covered in it last night. he is all hell of dense. damn revenge is sweet. this is even funnier because i'm writing about it, but he won't read this for a long time, if ever. don't tell him or anything, i want to see the expression on his face when he figures it out.

Free Tibet (from a return to feudalism!)

The liberal argument for the freeing Tibet from Chinese governance is based largely on the principals of self-determination and freedom of religion.

Freedom of religion is fine, accept when it is tied up with the materialist world of class structures and mass exploitation in feudalist and capitalist societies. In this case class war must be waged against religious elites until they relinquish their hold on the means of production. After this is accomplished, there is nothing wrong with congregations democratically choosing to donate money to their local church, priests, monks, etc, allowing the less harmful aspects of religion to continue on as they were.

Self-determination takes precedence in many cases, but not always. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we fully back the local resistance against US imperialism, even given the quantitative differences (it's all capitalism) between the dictatorial Hussein regime and the theocratic US puppet regime, between the theocratic Taliban and the current warlord puppets. The blows dealt by these local resistances to the international ruling class and the power of the current hegemony are always desirable. More importantly, the type of social change that needs to happen in these places can only come from working class power (either domestic or international) and cannot possibly come from some imperialist power clearly just bent on oil profits and military bases on new frontiers. Imperialist success only strengthens the power of core capitalists, so class war demands that we fight them on all fronts.

However, the right of self-determination is overridden in certain situations, even according to liberal logic. Liberals argue for "humanitarian" intervention (by imperialist powers) in situations of genocide, such as Rwanda, Sudan, and Serbia, thinking (incorrectly) that core-type ("first world") democratic political systems will replace abusive, dictatorial domestic governments.

While we disagree with liberals on the legitimacy or desirability of imperialist intervention (violation of self-determination) for "humanitarian" purposes, we see communist intervention (same violation) in non-communist territory as an essential aspect of international revolutionary activity. The international working class should do everything it can, in any of its organizational forms, to support domestic working classes. For example, the Soviet regime in Afghanistan was by far the most progressive in Afghanistan's sordid history (especially for women). The imperialist intervention on behalf of the "right of domestic self-determination" resulted in weakening the Soviet Union, a civil war and rule of theocratic warlords in Afghanistan, and the material basis for the current power of "al-Qaeda" terrorist organizations. So in this case, Afghanistan's right of self-determination is overridden by the need for internationalist working-class revolution.

Before China invaded Tibet, the region had a feudalist society. Almost all the land was owned by a small ruling class of secular landlords and elite monks (with the Dalai Lama at the top) who used a police-army to maintain their position of power. Everyone else was a serf, barely a step away from slaves, who were bonded to the land (imprisoned, beaten, mutilated or killed if they tried to escape). They could only keep enough of the food they produced to survive, and sometimes not even that. Peasants were taxed for nearly everything they did, keeping them in a constant state of poverty.

There were thousands of beggars. There were slaves - whose children were the same - who were kept as domestic laborers. Peasants had neither schools nor medical services. Female peasants were taken by both secular and Buddhist elites and forced into sexual slavery. Life expectancy in the 1950's was 35.5 year (in 2001 up to 67) and infant mortality was 430 per 1000 births (now down to 6.61). Elite monks maintained an underclass of lower monks, who ran the monasteries and served the elites. Young boys were forcefully taken from their peasant families to join this part of the underclass. Torture was standard practice, used by elites against insubordinate or runaway peasants. The ruling class used all the coercive powers of state terrorism to maintain the class structure.

That class structure still exists today in capitalist regions. During our travels in Thailand and Laos we saw hundreds of wats (temples), which were ornately designed, covered in gold leaf and full of statues and offerings. They were the largest buildings in small towns, and were clearly the end result of the systematic appropriation of the vast majority of the wealth of the people. We saw monks everywhere, a class of people who do not work - fail to contribute materially at all to society - but still eat and live comfortably in their compounds. Even on the subway in Bangkok we saw a sign that told passengers to give up their seats to monks.

The Buddhist idea of karma and multiple lives is used to justify all of this - if you are suffering in this life, it's because you did something to deserve it in a former life. And by suffering in this life, in the next you will be born into a more privileged position.

The Chinese Maoists invaded in 1951 but they didn't make serious changes right away. Horrified by the threat of communism, the Tibetan ruling class tried to instigate an insurrection against the Chinese, from 1956-57. This revolt was coordinated and funded by the CIA, which provided military training, support camps in Nepal, and regular airlifts. The revolt was extremely unpopular and the elites trying to push it were crushed by both the Chinese and their own peasants.

After the failed revolt the Chinese abolished slavery, the system of unpaid serfdom, and the oppressive taxes. They built secular schools and power grids and running water systems. By 1961 the Chinese had expropriated much of the land, giving it to peasants and forming communes to control production. Improvements were made across the board, in livestock, irrigation and agriculture.

Since then the Tibetan peasantry, alongside the rest of the toiling masses of China, has been the victim of the array of problems of Stalinism. Forced collectivization, mistakes in planned economy leading to starvation, the 1966-67 Cultural Revolution suppressing religious freedom and the recent colonization by Han Chinese. In the 1970's and 80's China admitted many mistakes and passed reforms to try to correct them, but there is clearly a great deal of political repression and lack of economic power in the worker and peasant classes.

Because the Dalai Lama has been forced from power, he has had to grant concessions and pander to many groups in his efforts to gain support for a counterrevolution in Tibet. He called himself half Buddhist, half Marxist in an effort to co-opt the socialist-leaning sections of the Tibetan masses. He lobbies liberals all over the world with appeals to human rights and religious freedom (China's Stalinism has given him plenty of fodder). He claims that the Chinese occupation has killed about 1.2 million Tibetans, but there is no evidence for this. His assertion that monasteries have been reduced in both numbers and population is also baseless. He admitted that there problems with the old system, and has proposed reforms, hoping to convince those who know Tibet's true history. However, he still keeps the same old circle of Tibetan feudalists around him as advisers and political allies, and these peoples' interests will certainly have a predictable impact. The Dalai Lama has cleverly and effectively used lies, omissions and distortions to manipulate liberals - as well as conservative class warriors fighting communism - into his campaign to free Tibet from Chinese control.

The international ruling class solidarity with the Dalai Lama is transparent. The exiled Tibetan ruling class received $1.7 million a year throughout the 1960's, and now the US Congress currently gives them $2 million a year for "democracy activities". The Dalai Lama also receives money from capitalists like George Soros.

As Trotskyists we advocate political revolutions in Stalinist deformed workers states like China - rebuilding workers councils and using their power to replace bureaucrats with democratically elected leaders. This necessitates a large, strong, educated, organized urban working class, which can only be created by the development of economic infrastructure - factories and service industries. Chinese central leadership, as corrupt and abusive as it is, has moved Tibet in this direction. The old Tibetan ruling class, with the Dalai Lama at its head, would pull Tibet back two huge steps - from deformed communism, past capitalism, to feudalism. It would be a long and tortuous road from there back to a stage where a working class is growing and empowering itself. Therefore, we support the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and its suppression of the feudalist movement, which is merely cloaked in the garb of Buddhism.

If Tibet's independence movement was like that of Hungary in 1956, where a domestic political revolution moved the nation from Stalinism toward a more libertarian, free, democratic socialism, we would fully back a Free Tibet campaign. However, because the Free Tibet campaign is led by feudalists, it is far more similar to Afghanistan in the 1980's. "Freeing" Tibet would really just free the old ruling class to retake it, which would let loose hell on the toiling masses.

This is a materialist argument, as as such cannot address spiritual concerns. A spiritualist could argue that all horrors of feudalism are acceptable because it allows a small group of monks to pursue enlightenment, an endeavor which cannot have a material value assigned to it. There is no logical rebuttal to this, except that in socialism, all people would have equal access to such spiritual quests. Spirituality would not be based on a ruling class's ability to exploit and enslave the vast majority of the population.

If you have any doubts or questions or would like to learn more we strongly encourage you to read these articles - one independent, one from a bourgeois university, and one Trotskyist.

http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24045

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/911/tibet.html

books read in asia

reading western books while traveling can be a very dramatic experience. sometimes i really do get lost in them, and when i look up and realize where i am its almost like nausea or vertigo or panic. like waking up from a powerful dream. also, the associations i form between these books and the places where i read them are fantastic. the memories are all intertwined.

here are the books that i read in the last two months:

ward churchill - marxism and native americans
jose saramago - all the names
immanual wallerstein - alternatives: the US confronts the world
edward abbey - hayduke lives!
joseph heller - catch 22
tom wolfe - radical chic & mau mauing the flack catchers
j. m. coetzee - disgrace
kurt vonnegut - galapagos
harry cleaver - autonomous marxism
kurt vonnegut - breakfast of champions
edgar allen poe - the murders in the rue morgue and other short stories
graham greene - the quiet american
maurice brinton - the bolsheviks and workers control
jonathan safron foer - everything is illuminated

most of it is political, even several of the novels. i learned a great deal from these. also, lots of it is dark. that darkness has had quite an effect on my experiences. imagine reading poe (variations on the deaths of women) while fasting in the jungle of southern thailand. or coetzee (did not like- just rape and dog murder) with a fever in patong (hell). or all this critique and rebuilding of marxism while hanging out in nations whose governments have been guided by the very worst, corrupted interpretations of marx and his successors. (4 of 5 countries visited so far have such histories, counting czech republic, where we just arrived).

getting checked

we spent two days in terelj national park, sleeping in a ger (mongol yurt). the park is gorgeous - i recommend looking at pictures on google image. those rocks, all granite i believe, made for the best climbing yet in these last couple months. the first day we took a horse ride, but it was not good. it was far too cold, with the wind piercing easily every piece of clothing i had. it was warmer to just walk, so i did. this evoked the wrath of our guide. he had been micromanaging us the entire time, yelling at us to go the same direction we were already going, over and over. he screamed at me, got off his horse, did everything he could without actually touching me, but i was too stubborn and too uncomfortable to just do what i was told. he finally gave up, but there were some strong feelings left in the air between us the rest of the ride. (i wish i'd known at the time, some tourists on a ride the day before had been very rude and disrespectful. so he was probably just primed for a nasty confrontation.)

the second day eli and i tried to get as far as we could in one day. we hiked along the ridge-tops going east from our camp, climbing up lots of the big rocks for the views. i collected rocks all along the way, finding (quartz?) crystals and obsidian other things i can't identify. i regret not studying a natural science, geology really, instead of what i did. i could have given myself my political education in any case. i really am hooked on rocks at this point. and lichens. terelj was thick with them. just perfect, it easily made up for the fact that just about everything else was dormant and brown and hunkered down for the brutal mongol winter.

besides those two excursions, we spent most of those two weeks in ulaan bator. its odd that i was ok with it, as cities usually repulse me. it might have been the cold (!) and the wind (!), keeping us near the warmth and comfort of our hostel. it might have been the abundance of international food, and how cheap it was. it might have been the fact that i had the energy and initiative to get political research done, and hash it all out with eli. lots of time went into this.

one of our last nights there, i had one of the more dramatic adventures of my travel life so far. we were out to celebrate the birthday of william, a british guy we'd been hanging out with. by 3 am, we had stopped at about four establishments, and were ready for home. in UB there are only a couple metered taxis - traditionally, anyone can just wave down any car, and they will reset their trip odometer. they charge about 50 cents per km. this worked out almost every time, although sometimes we had to argue. in this case, the driver demanded some ridiculous amount, and we argued. i was in the front seat, with my bag on my lap, and everyone else got out. to prevent me from getting out, he grabbed onto the strap of my bag, and he was big, way bigger than me, so there were no questions about a struggle. then he hit the gas. my door flapping open, eli and the two brits chasing us down the street, his meaty hand clamped on my bag, we took off.

i told him take us to the cops, they will sort this out. this was preferable to being dropped off way outside the city, but i knew what would happen with the cops. they would listen to and understand him (and his lies about how much i owed) and would take everything of value from me, sharing it with the taxi but taking a cut of course. so we find some cops, and they search me, taking my money (luckily only had about $1.50). but they also take my leatherman. the taxi drove off, leaving me to argue with the cops. i was not about to lose that tool. it was a gift from my mother, was useful almost every day, was indispensable for work in AK, was worth about $80, and certainly could not be replaced in mongolia.

i knelt inside the cop car's open door, leaning in, and badgered those cops, holding out my hands for them to return my tool, spouting off every argument conceivable to me. you are stealing from me, its not right to steal. that was a gift from my mother (i drew them a family tree). my initials are carved into it, here is my ID, my name, my initials, mine. how could you keep this knowing my initials are on it? repeat, repeat, repeat. they yelled "ugui!" (no) and i yelled ugui! right back. they shoved me, made threatening gestures - dragging knife across throat, pretended to kick me, grabbed at my neck. but they weren't really serious. i could tell, they kept looking down, looking at the leatherman, unsure of themselves. i was having a hard time not cracking up. i kept having to look away. it was the same coping method as dealing with the enraged screaming horse guide: look away, imagine self somewhere else, take deep breath, and continue playing determined role in a detached way. stubborn, ignoring adversaries, just going through motions.

it finally worked. they handed it back, i walked away. as soon as i was out of sight, i sprinted home, cackling maniacally the whole way. i never could have done all that, badgering those cops into returning my tool, if i hadn't been fairly intoxicated. its not like i would have been scared if sober (there were people all around, no reputations of police brutality, especially for foreigners), but i would have been self-conscious and my normal timid self. i would have given up early.

back at the hostel, my three friends were upset. they had tried to call the cops, had one of the managers on the phone, had told everyone that i'd been kidnapped by a taxi. it was all much harder for them than it was for me. they had to worry about the unknown, i just had to say to myself "well here we go..."

i found out the next day that technically it's illegal to carry a knife, so maybe the cops were trying to tell me that. it was a miracle that they gave it back.

oh yeah, and "getting checked" because mongolians seem run into each other a lot. on a big wide sidewalk, people will just put their shoulders right into you. it doesn't seem loaded with intimidation like it would in the states. maybe its just how they cuddle. in any case, we got kind of tired of it. also, russia checked us pretty effectively. its funny how poorly that chunk of our travels turned out. if we'd known, we probably would have flown straight from bangkok to eastern europe. its hard to regret those last three weeks though.

maoism to mongolia

before eli and i left beijing we met up with the city's ultimate frisbee team, which hosts pickup games open to the public two days a week. it was a blast, we were sore for days. i am very proud of eli - as little as he's played before, he managed to catch an impossible one diving heroically.

there are some goofy scams in beijing. young women kept coming up to us, telling us that they were students of art or calligraphy. then they tried to take us up to a studio or office, where they would try to sell us expensive art. not a scam really, but it was pretty clear that the skill these young women had was to speak english and fish for tourists, not make art themselves. eli ended up with some very nice paintings of cranes. the other one, which we were warned about by little notes on the walls of our hostel, was also based on young english-speaking women fishing for tourists. in this one they would try to lure us to teahouses, where they would secretly order us the most expensive teas possible, and present us with the bill. i'm sure they either worked for the teahouses or got kickbacks. a pair of women in tiennamin square weren't very good at it- after making small talk for a while, one said, out of the blue, "my friend is very a-thirsy, she would like some delicious chinese tea". it sounded so contrived and awkward, and illogical as they had not consulted before dropping this line, we just laughed and walked away.

on tuesday we caught the train from beijing to ulaan-bator ("UB"), the capitol of mongolia. it was about 30 hours, so all passengers had varying types of beds. we got the cheapest, the "platzkart", hard-sleeper, which we shared with a chinese man and mongolian woman. we read a lot and watched out the window as we passed through the gobi desert. it was beautiful, especially at dawn. besides the flat hard sands of the desert, the landscape could almost pass for eastern washington, idaho or parts of utah. brown rolling hills, little rocky outcroppings, bland little valleys. everything brown. there's a short growing season out here, and we are definitely too early to see it.

we arrived in UB wednesday afternoon and found a hostel. since then we've been exploring the city, butting heads with russian bureaucrats and travel agents, hanging out in markets, and eating food from all over the world (UB is shockingly cosmopolitan, far more so than beijing, or at least the parts of beijing we explored). mongolian food is difficult, partly because it is about as greasy as chinese, and partly because there are almost zero vegetarian options for eli. this is traditionally a nomadic herder society (these are the folks that domesticated the horse) and about 30% of the population still lives in gers (like yurts) that they pack up and move around with their herds. almost no arable land, the grasslands easily destroyed by overgrazing, so almost no veggies, all meat dishes.

there are brutally skillful pickpockets here. eli got his camara stolen our first night. we'd been warned, but we just weren't vigilant enough. all the foreigners here have stories about it. eli is sad. we have to find him a new one. by the way, he's posted lots of pictures on his facebook profile, so if you have an account and want to see them just request him as a friend (just search for eli hartman).

we've been hanging out with a couchsurfer named otgonbataar, or otgi for short. he went out to dinner with us (mongolian bbq - don't we have those in the states?) and took me to play ping pong. there are pong places all over, its as common as billiards. all cities should have such. it was a blast to play here - otgi set me up to play against a superhuman player. i couldn't return his serves if he didn't want me to...

so yes, we are going to abandon the russian part of the trip. visas will take far to long to acquire, three weeks when anyone else besides americans can get them in one week. also russia is extremely expensive. after all the trouble we've been through with these embassy bureaucrats and forms and travel agents, we are happy to boycott the country. if they make it this hard to get in, they don't really deserve our support of the tourist industry.

its actually a shame, and quite a disappointment. eli's been studying russian language, geography, history and politics for years now. i was very much looking forward to having him as my guide and interpreter. we were of course also looking forward to all the historical museums and statues of our heros... at least we made it into the lenin-statue range, there are a few here in UB (mongolia was a soviet satellite, which explains the bland, utilitarian architecture here).

today we took a mini-bus ride about an hour out of UB to a little town called Zuun Mog. we hiked up into the hills, explored cairns covered in prayer flags and offerings, wound our way through sparse little patches of conifer forest (what a relief to see a bit of green) and ended up at an old monastery, only partially rebuilt after the soviets destroyed it in the '20s. it was beautiful country, far more so than i expected. as soon as you are out on foot, the brown blandness gives way to millions of patches of brilliant lichens, dormant grasses and mushrooms and shrubs, birds, foxholes everywhere, feces everywhere from cows, goats, sheep and big elkish critters. tons of evidence of a vibrant summer - this place must simply explode in a couple months. looks like we came here at the wrong time, whups, oh well, we'll just have to come back.

monarchism to maoism

after southern thailand i headed back up to bangkok to meet eli and prepare for our departure. i stayed with couchsurfer (CSer) fang again, and she helped me get all my errands done. shipped a package back to the states, took care of chinese visas, did some shopping. fang finally found employment the last day i was there, after searching for about two months. its clerical work, for a big international corporation, so she'll get health insurance and a higher salary than she expected - sounds like a great deal, and quite a relief after such a long search. we celebrated by going out to dinner with her mom, fong, who spoke french with me and told me i was a good son. it sounds like i am welcome back any time. i loved them, felt perfectly at home with them, and will certainly try to visit them again.

eli stayed at a hotel in the city, and i spent a couple nights with him there. he stayed on a street called petchaburi, near the ratchathewii stop on the BTS, the elevated train system. petchaburi is great - if i lived in bangkok i would live near there, and in any other big city i would try to find the equivalent. there's nothing like it in the states. there are vendors of street food, noodle soups mostly, open all night, at least til 2 am. there is a constant bustle, people cleaning and getting ready for the markets of the next day. there are internet cafes open late too. it just felt lively, spirited, just oozing solid, lovely character.

another neighborhood we spent time in was on silom street, a couple kilometers to the south. this was an international neighborhood, with many expats and tourists, and many businesses catering to them and run by them. there was every type of food, including lebenese which we went to twice in one day it was so good. there were irish pubs, and coincidentally we found ourselves in one on st. paddy's day night. it was hopping, with an irish cover band playing great rock and roll, football on all the tvs, packed with foreigners. quite a sight, rivaling that superbowl scene back in chiang mai last month.

wednesday we caught a flight to beijing, four hours north which took us from a tropical climate headed into the hot season (nearing 100 degrees when we left) into a temperate climate in early spring. its cold. low 50s and high humidity, but it feels freezing to us, spoiled as we are with the tropics. many deciduous trees, most just barely starting to bud leaves, but many with flowers in full bloom. very nice.

although, its hard to appreciate it with the level of pollution. it really is horrible. each day so far, the last three days, we've barely been able to see two blocks down a street. the sun is barely visible through the haze, which is kind of brownish yellow, although i'm sure foggy clouds are there too. tons of cars here, none of the massive flocks of motorbikes from SEasia. most men appear to smoke cigarettes, lots of them, inside any type of building too. men are constantly hacking and spitting, which is a cultural habit sure, but must be physicially based on this environment too. so, breathe shallow, try to ignore it, remind self that we'll only be here a week.

the food has also been a problem. on the first two days we ate three normal meals at restaurants of varying class ($1 to 4 a plate), and they were invariably, if it can be beleived, many times more greasy than chinese food in the states. again, a complete physicoligal rejection. not fun at all. so, we've been avoiding it - we stocked up at grocery stores, both local and an international one, ate baked biscuits and little light dumplings from street vendors, lots of fruit, peanut butter and jelly, got pizza last night, and tonight, in a stroke of brilliance, cooked ourselves some pasta at our hostel's kitchen. it was amazing, perfect comfort food, no grease at all, just solid carbs and veggies. the only meal in china so far that we could stand repeating.

we are staying in a wonderful neighborhood just south of tienanmin square. i imagine it is one of your butongs, grandma, for there are plenty of older folks here, every type of shop necessary (one could probably live their whole life here and never have to leave for any material reason), what appears to be a well-integrated and well-adjusted community. there are also plenty of young people here, with 24-hour internet cafes where they play video games and modest little restaurants where they drink these olymics-edition 3.6% alcohol tsingtao beers. plenty of familes too, babies and little kids riding bikes, everyone mixed in this mini melting pot with the travelers from the few hostels around here. this latter group supports a few tourist shops, many selling buddhist and communist souvenirs and propaganda (eli and i bought 14 posters, even maoists can't help being just wonderful).

i've been calling this the petchaburi of beijing.

i'm sure that there are other good spots, but all we've seen so far besides this has been very unattractive. massive highrise edifices, being built on top of each other, huge eight-lane intersections, wide bleak empty sidewalks, everything paved sterile and grey. middle class consumer goods and restaurants if anything, but usually no store fronts at all. no street vendors, so crazy little shops, no one just hanging out on their stomping grounds, chatting with their neighbors, people-watching. on the bus ride into the city on wednesday night we passed mile after mile after mile of this foreboding unheimlich mallish hell. i feel very lucky that we are staying where we are.

yesterday we tried to get russian visas, but were told that we had to have an itinerary for our entire stay, hotels booked, train tickets bought, entry and exit dates set in stone. this confirmed some rumors we'd heard and things we'd read on line, but contradicted other stories we've heard of travelers just winging it through, stopping whenever wherever they wanted. the embassy bureaucrat who shot us down spoke to us condescendingly, telling us that these are big cities, who will be responsible for you?

that flies in the face of our traveling style and experience. so far we've just been showing up in cities, often with no map or guide book or contact info, just knowing how to say hello and thank you, and we've done just fine. within 24 hours in beijing we had a hostel in an awsome neighborhood and were comfortable with the public transportation system. as long as the stress of wandering lost and aimless doesn't bother you, this is just fine. we are loath to use travel booking agents, as they nearly double the costs and provide a service for us that we easily do ourselves. we don't like planning ahead because we have no idea how we will feel about the places we visit and need to be able to improvise along the way. so screw that bureaucrat. basically the only thing keeping us on our track into russia is eli's ability to speak the language (which both of us enjoy emensely. its just delightful to hear him successfully communicate in that mad tongue - we met a couple from vladivostok the other day and he made instant friends with them). so, we will see how this develops. we're going to try our luck with the russian embassy in ulan-bator, mongolia, next week.

today we explored the beijing military museum, a massive place with entire wings dedicated to certain stages of the wars with japan and the great march and whatnot. very interesting, just brimming with chinese communist party propaganda - some hilarious, awkward, silly. it got old after a while though, just too repetetive and mind-numbing. how many murals and statues of happy, diligent, placid-faced maoist soldiers helping old peasants can you put in a row before you drive visitors out? we also visited tienanmin square.

we've been trying to visit only political/historical or communist based museums and tourist attractions, avoiding those of buddhist, bourgeois and cultural character on principal (although we did transgress once in chiang mai and a couple times in luongphrabang). we don't want to provide any material support to these insitutions by buying tickets, or social support by giving them an audience, or ideological support by reinforcing the stereotype that westerners are all liberals who will swallow this crap. considering our political orientations, this is just being consistent. we feel perfectly comfortable hanging out with the chinese cops and soldiers who are all over the place, whereas in thailand or the states (or any capitalist country) we can't stand them, as they are literally class enemies. sure this is an extension of our theoretical worldview, but more importantly its just a gut reaction to the vibrations these maoists are giving us.

next time i will write about tibet, which will add another important dimension to this issue.

the chinese government blocks tons of websites (it is a bureaucratized stalinist deformed workers state after all), including youtube, wikipedia, almost all the sites of my trotksyist parties, and of course blogger.com. so my dad is posting this for me.

koh lanta

i spent the last three days couchsurfing with suriya chuichom, sleeping on his floor (concrete), riding around on a motorbike i rented from him, and using his expert advice to explore the island. he has two full-time jobs, one working nights at the reception desk of a resort, the other running a tourist booking agency out of his home.

i've been fasting for the last three days, so i had to fill my days with something besides eating. i spent one day up above a waterfall and one day perched up on top of a hill in the rotting frame of an abandoned restaurant overlooking the sea, islands, and the thai mainland in the background. the whole hillside was basically abandoned, just me and big raptor birds floating on the updrafts.

i went swimming, rode motorbike to every corner of the island, and watched the sun set from a different beach each night. i got lots of reading done, lots of sitting, stretching, singing, dancing and exercising. i get to cut loose when traveling alone and hiding out in the jungle.

i'm fasting for many reasons, but partly because eating was dominating so much of my time and thoughts, and partly because everything here is either fried in partially-hydrogenated oils (loaded with trans fats, i would die early living here) or loaded with coconut milk. i think i need whole grains and wheat bread to feel healthy and normal.

but i've really enjoyed this. hopefully it will help me have more will power over hunger and get me to appreciate food in small portions, which i generally fail to do (i'm the live to eat type, not the other way round). i'll start eating again tomorrow.

i'm about to catch the night-bus back to bangkok, where i will stay with couchsurfer fang again and meet eli, so that we can arrange travel out of southeast asia, finally, after staying two weeks longer than expected. no amount of time is really enough to be satisfied with this region. oh well, i'll just have to come back.

bang sak

so i last wrote from patong beach in phuket. it was horrible, an entire urban sprawl based on bourgeois tourist trash. cost of living was exorbitant, with food costing perhaps 10 times what is does in real cities.



eli had this masochistic urge to make me see bang na, this party-road that is overflowing with prostitutes and liquor and clubs. he knew i would be repulsed and pissed at him, but he wanted me to see it anyway just for my reaction. i never saw it, because my brain physiologically rejected the entire city, giving me a fever for one night. not fun. luckily i recovered quickly, with just dizzyness and weakness for a few days. fast recovery was probably due to our speedy exit. only one night lost to that pit.



we took a bus about 2.5 hours north to bang sak, a tiny town, really just a higher concentration of buildings along the coastal highway. this is where amanda, our friend from boulder, has been living. she has been an english teacher at a local high school, and now that her class has graduated she has started working at the office of a tourist scuba diving company. she grew up in thailand, went to an international school, and she is half thai half american. she speaks both languages with almost no accent, so she is great to hang out with here.



we stayed in the same duplex as her for the last 6 nights, spending our time at the beach and at an amazing little thai restaurant, where we ate at least one meal a day every day. i don't think i'll ever find better food than that. goodness.

amnat runs the restaurant with his girlfriend bam (who does all the cooking and cleaning, just can't speak english so amnat took our orders until we learned enough thai). amnat offered to take me fishing with him in the andaman sea, paying $5 to a local boat owner for a trip that normally costs tourists $50. i accepted, knowing nothing about what i was in for, and amnat told me nothing. so i was totally unprepared.

we got on the water at about 5:00 pm, five of us, me and amnat and a young boat driver and two elderly men. the boat was maybe 30 ft long, with a ragged tarp canopy covering a bit of it. we had fishing poles and lines connected to bamboo rods and we pulled by hand. the targets were little tropical looking fish, maybe 1-3 lbs each, that live near the bottom and apparently eat dead squid meat, which was our bait.

first there was the squall. heavy rains, thunder and lightning, and me without any kind of jacket at all. then we stayed out all night, a total of about 17 hours in fact, well into the next day, pulling in these little fish. my genetic curse reared its ugly head for the first 15 hours - i only caught one fish, at 2:30 am. they made sure i was baiting the hook properly, was letting the weight sit on the bottom, everything. they couldn't understand my bad luck. amnat would look at me all forlorn and ask "why no bite?". meanwhile the other guys, especially the older men, were pulling them in every few minutes, quietly filling up coolers with their catch. it was miserable, exhausting, humilitating.

finally at about 8:30 in the morning i started using a free line to fish, just holding it in my hands. for some reason it worked, and i was almost keeping up with everyone else those last couple hours. all told i caught 1 kungfai, 1 samat and 8 gau. i guess i would do it all over again if i had the chance. maybe. i was slaphappy crazy that day when i got back, and exhausted for several days afterwards.

amnat and bam cooked up some fish dishes for me that night. too bony to really enjoy (thais just eat the bones i guess) but it feels great to eat what i just caught a few hours before.

after that eli and i spent our days in bangsak lounging around on the beach, reading, socializing with amanda's group of friends, eating absurdly well, naking naps, planning for our upcoming travels, and exploring a bit. i rented a motorbike for three days which we used explore and visit other beaches, other restaurants and other towns.

bangsak and the towns near it were hit the hardest by the tsunami of december 2004. amnat showed us a book of written accounts and pictures published by one of the relief organizations that helped rebuild. most people on this coast survived (about 8,500 died) but the wave took every building and material object it could, leaving nothing but foundations. we spent several hours reading those stories and listening to amnat's own account: the wave hit them while they were trying to escape in his minibus. he was thrown out and managed to stay on top of the water and survive, but his wife was killed. even though she was in the bus with him, it took him many days to find her body. heartbreaking stories, i wish i'd been there to help in the aftermath.

today i split with eli again. he's going to fly back to chiang mai to collect his things, and i took a bus 5 hours south to krabi. we will meet up in bangkok in about a week. krabi is famous for having lots of good rock climbing around it, lots of beautiful beaches and cliffs and lagoons that i'm sure are crawling with farengs, but i can't figure out krabi town itself. i walked this city all afternoon and evening, looking for cheap accomodations and the tourist district (which i needed only for a used book store, where i can trade read books for unread ones). i finally found a decent guest house, but i couldn't for the life of me find any fareng territory. no bars, no hotel strip, no western food restaurants, no booking agencies, no harrassment. no english-language bookstores. maybe i just failed to find it. it is nice though, being completely ignored in a town in southern thailand.

tomorrow i will take a ferry out to an island called koh lanta.

living on busses

that's where i've been for most of the last five days. 4 hours from vangvieng to vientiane, 2 hours to oudonthani across border in thailand, 12 hours to chiang mai, 10 hours to bangkok, about 5 hours navigating bangkok's public transportation, 10 hours to surat thani, then 5 hours to phuket. so now i have finally arrived here in patong beach and rejoined my beloved friend eli.

the farm was hard to leave. i kept extending my stay there, but after 10 days it was beginning to pinch the time i had left for the last adventure in asia. so i had to leave. the structure of the mudbrick house's outer walls is basically complete, and the last few days we were plastering them with layers of specialized mud, each harder and more waterproof than the last. peter keeps a blog of its construction, which you can see here: http://earthbricker.wordpress.com/

also, some of the other volunteers passing through the farm, erik and susan, write about their travels here: http://bigadventure08.com/

i spent a couple of the last days doing more biking and climbing. vangvieng has a tourist place called greendiscovery, which gives guided climbing tours, but i didn't want to fork out the money and have to sit around with a bunch of newbs. so i asked, and they handed me their big fat book of information. it had maps, directions, pictures, detailed descriptions, climbing jargon i could not hope to understand, maps of the routes up cliff faces, everything. for dozens of sites all over laos. they even said i could go make photocopies if i wanted, which was shocking because they were handing over such a valuable stash of info and stood to make no money off of me. on wednesday i tried to find one of the sites, which i never could find, but it resulted in a beautiful hike up a stream through a mostly bamboo forest. cool pools, waterfalls, and gorgeous moss-covered rocks. i did get my feet covered in leeches though.

on thursday i ran into a pair of french speleologists (spelunker scientists) out in the western valley where i was biking and climbing. they were mapping the depths of the region's caves, many of which the lao have never explored. one is 8 km deep they say. they are finding new species of spiders and ancient artifacts like footprints and burned torches. for their work they had to have backgrounds in geology and biology too, to understand how it all fits together. what a cool job.

getting back to chiang mai, the apartment, and my big packpack was ridiculous. it felt like an absurdly luxurious treasure trove of resources. for my three weeks in lao i had three shirts, two shorts and two underware, and the odds and ends in my daypack (stupidly underdressed - i froze for the first week until i finally bought a sweatshirt).

that day, saturday, i got a ride out to payap university to play in the weekly ultimate frisbee game. almost everyone was an expat, either an english/international school teacher, a missionary, or a capitalist of some kind (one guy admitted that he was on the run from the FBI - he said that they killed two "kids" and tried to pin it on him, letting him take the fall for the murders). that capitalist type was either retired at about 40 or ngo workers, but even they openly admitted that they worked with and supported venture capitalists. sooooooo, scum of the earth basically. they are fine as humans of course, but most of those economic roles have just got to go.

the english teaching is a tricky one. i did play this very role for three nights at the farm's classes, but i'm not at all comfortable with it. the thing is that economic hegemony translates into cultural hegemony, especially these days with globalized economy and information revolution. so the culture of the current world "empire" gets imposed, through force or subtle manipulation, on everyone else. teaching english has always seemed inherantly ethnocentric, egotistical, self-serving, and the easy way out of cultural clashes and language barriers. instead of one person learning the language of their host culture, they teach thousands of their hosts their own language.

i confronted ward, the teaching coordinator at the farm, with all of these ideas before i left. he respoded that the lao get such an economic advantage out of learning english that we are giving them a gift, and it would be detrimental to them to judge this situation in such a way that would lead to us to withhold it. standard liberal argument, accept the breadcrumbs that fall your way, fighting over them and trying to justify the system that lets them slip off the banquet table. lao is still totally impoverished, and isn't really changing in any substantial way.

here's the problem: this system, in which it is mildly economically advantageous for peripheral workers to accept cultural hegemony, is a direct result of international capitalist class dynamics. the majority of the core of the ruling class, and therefore the biggest, richest, most touristy middle class, happens to be in the US. any decent revolutionary program would end this relationship between core and peripheral regions. if the lao controlled their own regional economy with workers' councils, and wealth was redistributed from regional capitalists and from core/hegemony regions, they would never ever have the material incentive to assume this subservient position, in which their culture and language are slowly replaced.

so do we continue teaching english, justifying our behavior by appealing to the relatively miniscule advantage they derive from it? knowing full well that this type of reformist activity - granting tiny concessions to the permanently toiling masses - serves to distract, to satiate, to buy off a tiny population (the farm's program might affect a couple hundred people), which only postpones the day when people are compelled to find and attain a real solution to this problem. drawing out their suffering, extending indefinitely the amount of time the lao (and everyone else in this situation or similar) must endure this slavery, humiliation, exploitation, and destruction of their of their culture? well, what's it going to be folks?

at least lao doesn't have the standard hyper-consumer-whorism of even semi-developed capitalist countries. when i got back into thailand, i was immediately repulsed by the massive billboards, the corporate logos everywhere, the fat bloated make-uped bling-blinged middle class, and the pickup trucks with massive speakers in the back, cruising slowly through chiang mai blasting ads through the walls, bedrooms, and skulls of more potential consumers (this last constitutes a crime against humanity by the way, easily a lynchable offence in any community i would choose to live in).

lordy.

i stayed with a couchsurfer (check out couchsurfing.com) my one night in bangkok. fang took me out to a dinner of excellent street food, let me play her family’s piano (pure ecstasy, i am more homesick for piano than for anything else), helped me navigate bangkok’s busses and trains (never could have done it without her, and even let me stash my big bag at her house for a week. like all couchsurfers i’ve met, she is kind, sociable, curious, open-minded and generous. what a cool community to foster such attitudes on an integrated and international scale.

phoudindaeng

since i last wrote i've spent 4 days building the mudbrick house, one day intertubing down the namsong river, taken one hike up into the mountaintop regions, one afternoon playing frisbee (a guy on the farm is a pro), and one more bike trip to the western valley to hit that cave again.

the mudbrick house is going up fast. when i arrived they were just finishing the walls of the first floor. it had taken them about 5 months to build the foundation and make the thousands of necessary mudbricks. the house itself was only started 3 weeks ago. today we almost finished the walls of the second story, and i actually spent most of my time working on an artistic bit - empty wine bottles lodged in the mud between the bricks in nice patterns. splotches of green light will shine through.

today i quit early today because ward (who runs the school program) needed an extra teacher. so back to the school, all the kids screaming and grabbing to hold my hand. after lessons we busted out a foot ball and my frisbee and played mob-style catch/chase. hugs and handshakes and see-you-tomorrows, which hopefully will be true. i put my name down on the whiteboard under the afternoon teaching section, holding my spot. there are people showing up every day wanting to teach, and ward turns them away.

a german named peter, who runs the mudbrick project, has been here 4 months, and speaks lao very well. i asked questions about politics, and he had lots to say. in his opinion: this is the best government lao has ever had because it generally has left the people alone, skimming a bit off the top for their own corruption, but that's it. now, however, they are cooperating more with the institutions of neoliberal globalization - the imf, world bank, foreign capital, etc - which is making things worse. standard developement-of-underdevelopement force-countries-into-debt funnel-money-out-to-western-contractors maneuvers. works every time. the labor market is largely unregulated, leaving wages at about $50/month (so says sam franey). no minimum wage, no government guarantees of standard of living. the health system is dysfunctional. number one rule at mudbrick house is no getting hurt, as past trips to the local hospital have revealed incompetence and lack of resources. most resources for education and health come from ngos. most police are indeed in plain clothes, and there are lots of them. people aren't necessarily afraid of them, as they are their neighbors and they've coexisted for decades now. people don't care about national politics (perhaps they've been trained with negative reinforcement to not care), but are very dedicated to local politics, for which they are not supressed.

on saturday most of us volunteers took the day to go tubing down the namsong, on which our farm sits. on the 4 km stretch between the farm (where all tubers are dropped off) and vangvieng, there are probably 15 to 20 bars, and more all the time. one was built just in the last 3 days - a rickety bamboo roof, bar, massive speakers and a couple coolers is all they need. most tubers don't make it past the first few bars. they get too drunk to continue (for the record i made it to town). in fact, i am told that there are several drownings each year. pretty straight-forward there, hard to feel bad for people who bite it that way. there are huge rope swings (too high for me - after the arboretum bridge i've lost all taste for long plunges), volleyball courts, shaded decks, huge sound systems pumping out mostly bob marley and techno. the bars have staff with ropes and bamboo poles literally fishing for customers as they float past. mix in little kids helping tubers through the shallows where they get stuck (then demanding money), herd of buffalo trying to swim across and playing chicken with tube traffic, and the absolute scum of the already inevitably scummy tourist crowd, and you have quite a scene. once is enough.

that night we attended a show at the youth center (also supported by the farm). they played a video of a teen soap opera made by local phoudindaeng actors. then a powerpoint presentation (they had projector, screen and laptop) the local environment. then presentation of kid's newspaper, the first issue, covering local issues. then boys playing acoustic, singing and dancing western acoustic emo pop. then girls singing a few songs. then full troop of about 20 kids, most in full ceremonial costume, singing and dancing to traditional music. most of the performers were young teens, most of the audience was younger. it was embarrassing of course, because teenagers are just so awkward, but the lao culture took the edge off at least for this particular farang.

on sunday i forded the river, walked across the farm fields, and up the mountainside. the only established trail served some tiny farm fields nestled into tiny valleys in the saddle of two peaks. some lao were also digging up edible roots on the trail. i tried to push past the trails, but the thickness of the undergrowth bested me. i was covered in sctratches, bruises, bugbites, sweat, dirt, floaty seed puffs, gnats in eyes, hair full of burrs, sharp grass leaves (20 ft high stalks) cutting into my arms and face. i've never been so itchy in my life. also found some decent faces for bouldering, but most of the rocks up there are just far too jagged to play on. extremely sharp, almost no large surfaces, just pitted, spiney, craggy gnarls of blades. all followed by a couple hours of tossing frisbee. these days are very good for me.

circles

its taken me quite a while to figure out exactly what i want. our last day in vangvieng, saturday, i rented a bike just to see how far i could get. i crossed the river and went through the gap in the mountains, into the next valley over, and took the road north until it ended. i passed many villages, each smaller than the last, until the very last, panampe, which was nestled into the crook of the mountains as the west wall met the east wall. it was beautiful. i wanted to stay out there and work with the villagers, but everyone i asked - five people in three villages - said no, they didn't let visitors stay. why? i asked. no, they repeated, either not understanding or just refusing to answer.

so, what is this? government policy? possible, considering that eli and i were turned back on our walk around vangvieng on friday when we came across a sign that said something to the effect of "there are no services for visitors past this point, so visitors are prohibitted from entering east vangvieng". maybe they are trying to keep the tourist industry penned in and quarantined, allowing the locals to enjoy their own culture, left alone. or maybe it was all just cultural? there is some norm against letting random strangers stay in a private residence? whatever it was, i felt like i hit a wall. very frustrating.

so i found instead an organic farm which accepts volunteers. the timing was bad though, as eli was ready to move on and i wanted to go with him to vientiane, the capitol. so on sunday we took a bus to the south for 4 hours. we spent two nights in vientiane so we had time to explore the city and go to the national museum (formerly called the revolutionary museum).

the museum was fantastic. we had been to one in luangphrabang, the old king's palace that had been preserved along with lots of his booty. vientiane's museum was much more interesting. it was huge, and each wing was for a different era of their history. prehistory (dinosaurs, early homonids, cave paintings, early tools, etc), the various kingdoms that controlled the territory, and finally the 20th century.

there were rooms dedicated to the french occupation (1893 to 1954, interrupted briefly during world war 2 when japan took over the region). there were murals of french soldiers killing laos and buring their villages, with captions like "the brutal french occupation slaughtered our people and stole our lands". there were also photos of french citizens back home protesting their government's imperialism. the implication was clearly that the french underclasses were on the same side as the lao people. i love that this communist government uses its museums to spread international class consciousness.

when the french lost the war and pulled out in 1954, the united states stepped in and propped up the old monarchy, instigating another decade and a half of civil war. eventually, in 1964, the US began to intervene directly, the "secret war". there were rifles on the walls next to pictures of smiling villagers and burning wreckages, captioned with things like "comrade so-and-so used this rifle to shoot down an american imperialist helicopter". the US hired mercenary armies from thailand and south vietnam, shipped weapons to monarchists and US puppets in laos, and generally carpet bombed any territory that successfully liberated itself. so of course now laos is the most bombed country in the world, with more bombs dropped here by the US than were dropped in all of world war 2.

the next few rooms were about the communist party (pathet laos) and its early years. the politics, the struggles, the programs, the development, etc. there were rooms filled with pro-government propaganda, showing pictures of hospitals and roads and bridges and factories that the planned economy had successfully created.

so yesterday, tuesday, i parted ways with eli and took the bus back up north to vangvieng. i rented a bike and rode 4 km north to the village of phoudindaeng. i found the farm and met the people running it, and was immediatly enchanted. first of all, no one runs it. its basically a collective, and certain key people help lead the various projects, but no one is in charge. the guy who owns it, a lao guy named "mr. t", had just left for a conference on organic farming in germany. there are probably 10 or 15 locals who work there, along with however many volunteers happen to be there - in this case about 15 people. the farm grows mulberry trees, and they use the berries to make smoothies, tea, wine and jam. they have banana trees, goats, pigs, chickens, geese and silk worms. they have a bar on the river, where they catch tourists intertubing and sell them beerlao and mojitos. they also run school programs.

check out their website: http://www.laofarm.org/

when i arrived they were about to go teach an evening class and needed an extra teacher, so they invited me along. we had groups of kids, aged maybe 3 to 12, rotate between stations where they stidied different things. i was teaching directions (up, down, backward, forward, left, right, etc) but they were also learning colors, numbers and animals from the other teachers. i was teaching them english, but i made them teach me the lao words for everything (down is "nang", up is "lukol" etc).

i spent today working on a mud-brick building (this country is running out of wood, in a few years mud buildings will be essential, so the farm is trying to teach the locals the skills now). i got covered in mud and exhausted from hoisting bricks and climbing scaffolding. doesn't get much better than that. i love the other volunteers. they are from all over the world, all ages, of every conceivable background.

i wish that i'd found the farm before spending four days puttering around the town. its good that it worked out this way, as i needed some time on my own. i will catch up with eli in chiang mai thailand in about a week.

down into vangvieng

we left luangprabang on tuesday, taking a seven-hour bus ride south to vangvieng. the bus took us through steep hilly (almost mountainous) country, winding along hairpin turns and steep drop-offs. we passed through many little towns, every 5 or 10 km, stretched along the road, dusted grey-brown by the traffic on the road, comprised of cinderblock buildings and huts.

we arrived in vangvieng after dark and grabbed a guest house near the bus station (we might have been overly hasty, fearing a repeat of our first night in luangprabang). as we started exploring, we realized that the weird black empty thing seperating us from the rest of the town was a gravel airstrip. people drive all over it, kids in bike/scooter gangs hang out, and busses are parked on it. we have yet to see an airplane.

this town is a bit surreal. it is a popular spot for european tourists, and israelis as well. there are dozens of restaraunts that have raised padded booths for people to lay in, and tvs that play episodes from american tv shows from dvds, from the time they open until they close. they each stick with one tv show. there are probably 2 that play the simpsons, 1 that plays family guy, 3 that play sports and movies, and about 15 that play friends. endless reruns of the same shows. you can't walk a block without hearing the friends themesong. at least it can't be heard from our guest house. then i would lose it.

as it is though, these things can be avoided. oddly enough, we keep noticing that when the lao themselves are watching tv, they usually choose american professional wrestling or low-budget thai soap operas. interesting taste.

on wednesday morning we found sam franey, my friend from alaska with whom i spent two summers cutting salmon. he has been here in vangvieng for weeks, and knows the town well. we just missed his brother, gabe, who just returned to the states to work some more.

sam and i rented mountain bikes ($1.50/day) and took off for the mountains. there is a gorgeous wall of jungle-covered rocks sticking up maybe 3 km to our west, and the road we chose took us through a gap, into the next valley over. it was gorgeous, flat yellow and green farm fields seperated by tiny huts, rows of trees and streams. the next range of mountains was barely visible beyond (its been overcast and hazy every day).

sam helped me find some rock faces to climb, but most were choked up with vines and bushes growing out of cracks. climbers must prune certain cliffs, because everything looked equally inaccessable. we made our way to a cave, one of many that draw tourists here. we climbed bamboo ladders up to the entrance, and used my headlamp to explore the whole length of it. it went back hundreds of meters, and its interior was covered in beautiful formations and surface textures, all carved out by running or dripping water.

i found some old broken pottery on a ledge, along with a handful of broken stone figures of the buddha. they can't be too old, but its exciting to find artifacts of any kind hidden deep in caves.

today we walked to the one sports field we know of, and tossed my frisbee around. some local kids, teenagers, began to join us. it didn't look like they'd ever thrown a disc, but they caught on fast. when we had enough locals and they were good enough, we started a game, and played all afternoon. it was a blast, and the kids seemed to be in a constant thrilled state. i'm sure we'll be back at it tomorrow, although my feet are trashed from playing barefoot on gravelly dirt/grass.