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.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, March 10, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
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.
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.
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