Around the World Day 66: Dayton, Ohio

    Contrary to what you might think, this two-week detour back to the American Midwest was a perfect way to continue our world journey.  Traveling can take away blinders that might prevent you from seeing the beauty and/or hypocrisy in your own country of residence.  Thus, this is a blog to describe my feelings upon re-entering the good old (actually, really young in comparison to every other culture and people I have just visited, although as an established country and government, still old) US of A. 

   First, I hadn’t noticed when I left that the design on the back of the penny had changed for the first time in many decades, and I was thus very surprised to see that we had different looking currency to use!  My second impression was of great relief to hear English being used everywhere.  My third impression (we were in Chicago’s airport) was of the friendliness of many people around us.  We happily engaged in a long conversation with a group of passengers who, like us, had just traveled on 10-hour plane rides.  In true American fashion, we joked about the silliness of some airport policies and eventually chatted about our trips as we went through a whole bunch of lines.  Our newly made friends then let us use their cell phones to call home and let our family know that we had taken a bump and made $250 just for waiting ½ an hour until a later flight (and running across the Chicago airport, which is a commonplace occurrence for Michelle and I as it has happened 5 out of the last 5 times we have been there).  America is the land of opportunities!

   One exorbitantly priced burger later (although, nothing compared to the $17 vegetarian burger combo meal we purchased at the Burger King in the Istanbul airport) we were in America’s heartland, Ohio.  I love Ohio, I went to school there and will be moving there in the spring.  So, when I started to critically analyze my home with the same eyes as the ones I used to look at China I was surprised at the many things that I had never noticed before.  First, America’s weight problem was more than apparent.  Nowhere in the world did we see people as overweight as those in Ohio.  Useless sensationalist news about murders and boring social pieces assailed me on all televisions.  I always knew that I disliked the news, but my newfound love of international stories made the terrible newscasting even more disappointing.  Service while in the States continued to amaze me at its poorness. Waiters messed up 3 out of four of our meals, returning an item to Walmart reminded me of the worst bureaucracy we faced anywhere (although with more employees then the populations of Oregon, Vermont, and Montana put together, perhaps Walmart is more like a country of its own).  Fox News broadcast vapid discussions about whether someone has the right to build a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11^th terrorist attack in NYC.  Of course they do according to the constitution!  And no, I do not care what CNN’s viewers have to say about important news issues…I care what unbiased polls say and what people with deeper knowledge then I have say on the issues. 

   If I were a visitor from another country, however, none of the above concerns would come near to the weirdness of holiday preparations in Ohio.  The downtown of Fairborn, Ohio, is covered in ghoulish Halloween decorations complete with mechanical zombies throwing up.  I am not sure what I would think of this strange American tradition.  What if someone was asked about these traditions?  “Uh, Halloween?  No, costumes and candy don’t have much to do with anything religious.  Uh, well, yeah I guess there is a religious holiday that it is for, but we just like scaring little kids and adding to their weight problems.”  What if this visitor from another country were to turn on television?  Well, they would be greeted with no less than a dozen different shows focusing on vampires or vampire like creatures.  Don’t get me wrong, I love vampires…but our country’s current obsession is patently weird. 

 

  Then, when I ran out of gas as a visitor in one of my giant gas guzzling SUVs that I rented because it was the thing to do here, I might stop into a BP gas station.  If I were a globally conscious traveler I might think it interesting that BP was trying to earn the trust of the community by having a group of beautiful 20-something women pump my gas, chat with me, clean my windshield, and hand me a $5 gift certificate for BP gas. 

   But, as I said before, I love my country even more now than I did when I left.  If I were from China, I would read for the first time the news of how a Chinese political dissenter who is locked in a Chinese prison was just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  If I were from East Africa I would marvel at the grocery stores that stock any food from around the world.  If I were worried that Americans wouldn’t be nice to me because I was foreign, I would be super surprised at the many people who would strike up conversation standing in line or waiting on me in a food establishment.  I would go to the American Air Force museum for free and marvel at the technological advances over the decades that America has made.  I would have a complex emotional response to seeing the plane that dropped the Nagasaki atomic bomb, but I would also be impressed that America has bravely fought for decades for the freedom that they enjoy. 

If I were from India I would be awestruck by the enormity of the IMAX screen showing a movie about the incredible views that the Hubble telescope has taken over the years.  I would note the pictures of 100 billion galaxies each containing 100 billion stars taken by NASA with a humbleness that I might have gotten the impression that Americans lacked.   If I were from Cambodia, I would savor the politics of the region.  I might be very surprised by the influence that religion seemed to have on many political pundits and voters on issues because I would be told that there was separation of church and state.  But, I would revel in and be very impressed with the press coverage of an upcoming election that many people really seemed to care about and the impending power that all citizens would have to make changes to the government without the influence of corruption.

  And finally, if all of the cars, buildings, and infrastructure overwhelmed me, I would drive 5 minutes to a nature park and watch deer, owls, squirrels, and the gorgeous fall foliage demonstrate to me that America is truly beautiful.  

Getting Lost in Shopping

   We tried to take a short cut to cut home one day, but instead spent 3 hours wandering around miles of shops and winding alleyways marveling at the sheer amount and variety of products Istanbul had to offer.  Let’s start with the Grand Bazaar, a beautiful old building housing a bazaar that is hundreds of years old.  It housed the usual fair: carpets, scarves, luggage, jewelry, etc.  Then there were the clothes dealers outside, again fairly mundane…just a lot of knockoff name brand products.  Ah, but then we entered the streets and were dazzled with an array of products.  We walked through the four blocks of kitchen supplies, rounded the corner and walked through the battery and cell phone two blocks.  Cell phones are boring, so we turned right (after it took us 45 minutes to locate our tour office when we were only 1 block away, we started to use Michelle’s compass that she got free in Hong Kong with her backpack to guide us) and walked up an alleyway to a store.  Inside the store, we saw an array of cheap crap that would put even a Walmart-sized Dollar Tree to shame. 

From plastic Sponge Bob square pants toys to Chinese children cartoon pinups, junk spilled into every hallway of the seven floor complex.  Feeling overwhelmed with so much useless stuff, we ventured through the building assuming that surely there would be another way out…either for fire code purposes or just out of the logic that no one would willingly take the route we took just to look at this stuff.  But alas, the hallways just got smokier and smokier (if there had been a canary, it would have already died and been added to the piles of toys with no one noticing) and we were forced to backtrack.  Back through the cell phones we got to the Viagra and Cialis section.  Seriously.  Multiple people selling nothing but sex-life enhancing drugs on the street for about a block.  Then came guns; handguns, rifles, shotguns, and hunting supplies followed by suitcases.  As if to protect you from the Viagra popping, handgun wielding, angry man who bought a suitcase to hold all of the useless crap he bought while trying to find his way out of the junk store, the next block had AT LEAST ten stores that sold ONLY evil eye charms.  Nothing else.  These weren’t jewelry stores and they weren’t religious items stores.  They sold only evil eye pendants (not even fancy ones).  

We finally saw our way out of the labyrinth of markets through the blocks of toy stores and a block of clothing button sellers.  

It took us hours to navigate the streets of Istanbul, but two pieces of baklava and a bowl of bean soup later, we would have done it all again.  This time, though, perhaps we might have found the holy grail…or at least a block of stores specializing in them.

Street Food…Finally!

   After watching street food be prepared all over the world, we finally felt comfortable with the cleanliness to try some in Turkey.  Bagel-like bread with sesame seeds came first.  

Then fresh squeezed pomegranate juice (very, very sour!) whose season we had just hit and would be all gone in two weeks.  

We bought fresh squeezed orange juice and candy that was made by wrapping a gooey corn syrup in multiple flavors around a stick.  We had corn that was boiled and grilled.  Instead of eating roasted chestnuts (the most popular street food) we opted to buy lots and lots of baklava, fortunately we could order it by the kilogram. 

   We found a restaurant with the best rice in the world and, as in all restaurants, unlimited free amazing bread.  The waiter was so happy to see us come back (all the waiters get customers by wooing them off the street in the first place) that he chatted at great length with us each time we stopped by even though it was busy.  There were stores with a dozen types of eggs, there were bakeries that only made bread, there were meat stores with hearts hanging in the window, and there were Turkish Delight joints on each corner.

The Mosque that was a Church

   When Constantine’s successor built the gorgeous domed Saint Sofia Church in the 400s, he built the largest domed structure in the world for over 1000 years.  The walls from this era still stand around Istanbul, and the architecture from this period lived on even with the Ottoman conquerors who would later add architectural masterpieces around the city.  The Church still stands today beside the gorgeous Blue Mosque.  Inside the Church there is a unique mixture of formerly white washed pictures of New Testament stories and Jesus and Muslim additions such as stylized script of the names of major Muslim prophets and leaders.

The Turkish Tableau

We quickly learned that Turkey is a meshing of many different cultures pulled together by all being under Ottoman rule for centuries.  Each corner of Turkey borders a different culture and each corner of Turkey has a different culture.  From the European and Greek way of the Mediterranean bordering sections to the conservative Iraq bordering sections, Istanbul was a mixture of religious and secular, conservative and liberal, and old and new.  While Istanbul was more on the conservative side in terms of dress, not everyone we met agreed with that ethos nor was everyone we met a religious Muslim.  The legacy of Ataturk, the leader who in the early part of the 1900s united Turkey as an independent country and set all of today’s progressive laws and secular government into action, is very strong.  People seem to revere his secular and liberal ideas, making Turkey a very accepting place.  It is little wonder that Israelis traveled so heavily prior to the Gaza war in Turkey.  Turkish people expressed pride that there were Christians and Jews living in the country.  In fact, after their expulsion from Spain in the 1400s, Jews were invited to come to Turkey to eventually attain very high positions in business and government during the Muslim Ottoman Empire.  Strange as it might seem today, a century ago Jews were sewing the crescent moon and star on to their religious items right beside the Star of David out of national pride.  Even the Turkish language shares roots with central Asia and not Arabic.  The character of this modern country is a complex mixture of spices more varied than could even have been found in Istanbul’s spice market that come together to make a flavorful travel meal (with unlimited free bread).

Turkish Delight

Arriving at 5 am to an unknown city is great.  Walking around as shops open and businessmen get their breakfast sandwiches and the smell of warm bread makes you feel a part of the city.  That is until you realize that among the few thousand people you have seen get of the train you are the only one wearing shorts.  I couldn’t believe that in such a progressive country, men couldn’t wear shorts in the city!  After a quick change I asked at the front desk for a map.  I didn’t have Turkish Lyra to pay for it, so he just let me have the map and told me to pay for it later (he didn’t actually know my room number or name yet).  We went to one of the first of what would be the best restaurants in all of our travels in the morning for something like a potato knish.  A bread wrapped, warm potato filled pastry.  And then we began our tour.  2000 years of history laid strewn across a very small section of beautiful city. 

   People were friendly everywhere, although it did take us 25 minutes and 5 people to find the office of our tour company even though we were within one block and had an address J  Two of those people were police officers, one of whom waved a hand at us to dismiss us and the other was an off-duty young cop who apologized for the other police officer by explaining that he didn’t know any English.  The cop was very happy to help but wanted to make sure that in our brief conversation we knew that “We [Turkish people] like Americans very much, just not your government.”

Below is an 1800 year old pillar from Roman times describing how the Emporor brought the obelisk above the carving to the city.

  Food was delicious and plentiful, but even the dozens of baklava stores could not compare to the quantity of shopping that could be had in Istanbul.  We met a few Kenyans who had come to Istanbul JUST to shop (at one point their bags of purchases actually blocked our entry into the main door of our hotel).  Turkey is land ripe with history and a welcoming and unique culture.  Also, if you have been in countries that do not like bread for two months, then Turkey should also be called the Land of Bread and More Bread because delicious bread was to be found everywhere, even delivered fresh to your house by placing a bag of bread on your doorhandle.  Yum!

You should visit Cambodia

  It is hard to describe our short 3 day experience here, but this destination is one that I would recommend to anyone.  The people were super nice and genuine.  They made me feel comfortable even though I was aware of the rampant corruption.  People were genuinely appreciative of anything that you purchased or tips that you gave.  Seeing firsthand a people affected by a recent national atrocity brought into perspective and made more tangible all issues of human suffering around the world.  Meeting people who Michelle and I would have liked to have lived near and become friends with despite extreme cultural and religious differences was a powerful experience that I will treasure.  As a side note, Angkor Wat will most certainly get a boost in tourism after John Malcovich and Angolina Jolie film the story of the ancient Khmers that built the temples in a Hollywood movie that starts filming next year.  Good luck Cambodia!

A Water Way of Living

 Visiting Cambodian villages was tremendous.  House after house on stilts with a rice field behind each one.  Dogs wandered all over.  Kids on bicycles passed on their way to school, ox-driven carts watched as our car drove by, and ladies sat by boiling palm oil cooking on mounds of earth fashioned into an oven to make a palm candy for passersby. 

When we neared our destination of a floating village, we saw houses hundreds of feet out into the water on stilts with boats arriving and people climbing ladders to get into them.  Apparently, when the dry season comes, the house can literally be lifted to be put further into the water to be nearer to fishing areas.

The floating village did not require any lifting to go with the water level.  A banquet hall adorned with the trappings of a wedding floated by us first.

Then we saw the church and got to stop at a market, which housed proof of Cambodia’s omnivorous ways…a drink containing a dead snake and a dead scorpion that was thought to enhance male vigor.

   

Inside the market was an alligator farm.

Around the village kids rode around from house to house with pets and for fun.

Or else they hung out in their house.

The sanitation in such an area where water for drinking comes from the same source as waste is just scary, but, according to our guide, we saw nothing bad because when the dry season was upon them the water was so low that it was thick with brown dirt.  Life living on the water was no beach vacation.

The Living Spectre of Terror

   The mystical Angkor Wat is proudly being restored as the national Cambodian psyche is repairing from the terrors of the Khmer Rouge.  A mere 12 years ago, Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge was reported to have died thus ending decades of civil war that saw genocide, attempts to erase all of Cambodia’s culture, and a generation of fear.  Drawing from similar ideology as Mau Zedong during China’s cultural revolution, Pol Pot sought to destroy everything that was before and secure a permanent repressive government over a people who were frustrated with the war brought by America and Vietnam.

   Many people we met were in their 30s and had grown up during the civil war.  They do not have education much beyond grade school for going to high school was too dangerous.  “My Mother told me to run if I ever heard gun shots near the school because it was likely that the Khmer Rouge was coming to burn the school.”  Pol Pot’s disdain for education and intellectuals as well as all political opponents left among the 3 million dead (out of about 18 million people) the hope for a speedy recovery or the emergence of strong revolutionary leaders during the civil war. 

 Mass graves known as killing fields are uncovered with satellites all over the country.  Even in this large city, off the beaten path two blocks was a killing field from which all of the unidentified bones and skulls have been placed inside a stupa that is open for all to see except for some chicken wire.  I was deeply moved by this display.

(no picture was taken here out of respect)

   It was a period during which children learned how to plant mines rather than go to school as the Landmine Museum that we went to showed us.  There are still 60,000 unexploded landmines in the rural communities that maim thousands each year.  Outside each temple there are musicians who are all missing limbs because of mines who play and sell traditional music.  When I purchased a CD, the guide was genuinely happy that I chose to support the musicians.  In places that were important for tourism there were badly burned people begging for money.  Their presence in places where they could have been asked to leave speaks of the way that today’s Cambodians all feel the loss and pain of the last decades and want to work toward a brighter future in any way that they can. 

A display of diffused landmines a the Landmine Museum.

   However, government remains a significant problem that interferes with even a taxi driver’s every day struggle to improve his life.  Multiple tour guides and our drivers told us:  Corruption is acknowledged by everyone, and the government is widely disliked in private.  For example, the wonderful free children’s hospital in the city has been widely heralded for helping the children of Cambodia.  However, doctors will still demand payment of huge sums of money from parents needing anything special.  A huge sum of money might be $500 when the average monthly salary for a high paying job in town is $100/month.  It’s not that the doctors have too many patients either, they all have separate private practices that they are NOT fully booked in.  Contracts for tourism in Angkor Wat have been taken away from the longstanding company that employed all of the many taxi drivers and tour guides in town so that a Korean company can take over the tourism services of the site with very little guarantee that any local will still have a decently paying job.  Against any wishes of the locals, the deal was made between friends at the highest levels of government.  Elections are tainted because, according to locals, prior to elections the current government goes to the extremely poor rural areas (80% of Cambodia is still rural) and gives free scarves and $5 to each person if they will vote for them with promises of more to come. 

  The unfortunate legacy of the government and corruption resulted from the original incorporation of Khmer Rouge leaders in the formation of a new government with the support of Western countries and the UN.  Today, the atrocities committed during the civil war and the scars that everyone bears for a pain that only ended 12 years ago are not taught in school, they are not prosecuted in any war crimes trial, and to all but the bravest are not discussed beyond a whisper because today’s government is led by former generals of the Khmer Rouge itself.  As one Cambodian suggested to me, “People are too scared to start any sort of revolution because we got the Khmer Rouge last time it happened.  So we just have to wait for the old guard to die off so that the country can heal and move forward.” 

The Ghosts of Cambodia

 \  Buddhism and Hinduism exist in a strange blend here where individual beliefs and family traditions dominate how people in this very religious country worship their gods.  Where typically Buddhists refrain from eating meat, Cambodians proudly eat anything.  According to our driver, his favorite food in fact was crickets with beer although recently he had developed an allergy to crickets (not something that Americans normally have to deal with J). Some 30,000 monasteries exist in this country of only 15 million people. The Buddhist chanting was caused by townspeople bringing monasteries offerings of food so that during a particular holy period the Buddhist monks will allow the souls of the departed to be fed and have a reprieve from hell if they are unfortunately there. Spirits and ghosts are not just to be helped if they are in hell.  In fact, each house has a small spirit box into which breakfast will be presented as an offering every morning by people who struggle to find food for themselves. 

Below is a spirit box.

Every other house has a stuffed figure of a man or woman wielding a weapon to ward away evil ghosts.  Perhaps in a country where the horrors of the past linger so near a heavy on the present such wardings are to be expected.

Here is one such figure wielding a fearsome stick axe.

Not to be out done this one has a bazooka.

The Indiana Jones Experience

Built around 1100 years ago by rulers of Cambodia and much of what is now Thailand and Vietnam, Angkor Wat and the dozens of other temples surrounding this most famous temple are fabulous.  Each temple is very different as each was built by a different King who sought to make a newer and better temple to prove his supremacy to his predecessor and to immortalize himself as a semi god by using his face as the face of Buddha on the temples.  Some temples have been taken by the jungle, others have been put back together after hundreds of years of disrepair, and all are still actively worshipped at by Buddhists from any one of the 4 modern monasteries on the temple area grounds.

The respect for these holy sites by locals is clear and some are even closed every 8 days for prayer.  These are the facts, but the experience of seeing Angkor Wat is very unique. 

    Walking through these temples is right out of Indiana Jones.  Green moss adorns many of the buildings, stones of collapsed buildings lay beside ornate pillars that still remain.  Statues missing their heads of Vishnu, Buddha, elephants, dancing girls, and human-bird hybrids dot the landscape (the heads were pilfered for sale during the genocidal period of the Khmer Rouge and because the ones repossessed are difficult to match to their bodies, the head just sit inside the Siem Reap museum). Moats surround many complexes and 50 ft walls are decorated with massive bas reliefs of religious stories.  

The sun peaks through the ruins to feed the trees that seem to grow from the century old stones themselves. 

Buddhist chanting permeates all walls and brings an eerie charm to your time in the temples.

Smog and chaos to clarity and holiness: Cambodia

A prop plane containing 5 passengers descended through beautiful cloud cover to drop us off in our next tropical destination.  The air sang in our lungs for it was the first fresh air we had tasted in 22 days.  We hadn’t noticed how claustrophobic we had felt from the poor visibility or how the presence of more trees then buildings would thrill us.   Homosapiens really are connected to nature.

  It only took 14 people to look over our passports, get us our visas, and send us on our way (there were actually 14 people who did something to our passport in an assembly line fashion).  We then met the cab driver who had been waiting 4 days to get a fare.  Fortunately, in a country that is so desperate for jobs, the cab driver was excellent with better English then we had heard in 22 days from a non-tour guide.  We drove the couple of miles to Siem Reap, the second largest city in Cambodia of 1 million people.  Siem Reap was unlike any “city” I had been to.  If I hadn’t have been told it was so many people, I would have that it was just a town because of its lack of large buildings. 

  Service was extraordinary everywhere we went in Siem Reap.  Everything was served with a smile and the food, cleanliness, and genuinely smiling doorman were enchanting.  Tips were appreciated and valued to such an extent that tipping became a highlight of some activities.  For example, our hour-long massages (which, by the way were kind of unpleasant because they were Thai-like massages and required lots of stretching a pulling) that cost $8 were accompanied with a small $5 tip to the sheer delight of the masseuses.  We were the only customers for at least one hour in the massage parlor that had no less than 40 employees (this was standard for massage parlors). Note: there is a local currency but for as long as anyone could remember, all prices and money exchanges were in USD and the local currency was used as change for anything less than $1.

  We weren’t in Siem Reap to give tips.  We were here to see the world’s largest religious complex, the temples around Angkor Wat, which we got the chance to do right away.

I believe all stories from Bangkok and so should you

  Who hasn’t heard a crazy story from Bangkok?  Well, our mere overnight stay in Bangkok to catch an early morning flight gave us a glimpse of the city that entitles me to believe any story you might have from this land.  We drove in around 10:30 pm passing by a fruit market that is fully open.  I thought that maybe Thai people just really liked fresh fruit when sleep walking.  But then, as we drove the busy city streets past many spread out high rises, a number of well lit Buddhist temples, many Buddha statues along the highway, and many pictures of the well-loved King and Queen posted on all billboards I knew that Bangkok was special. 

Greeting us upon our arrival at the most happening spot in all of Bangkok, Khao San Road, were many signs and travel agencies in Hebrew.  Odd as that was, nothing was to prepare us for the hype around the street we had to walk through to reach our hotel.  The backpackers mecca, there were far more people with long matted hair, Bob Marley shirts, and hemp leaf shirts then I had ever thought was possible to be found in one place.  Yellow lights illuminated the street as throngs of people were partying in bars, shopping at offensive t-shirt stores, and engaging in a general level of merriment.  Street trolleys were so numerous that we were trapped behind a pileup of sliced watermelon and Pad Thai handcarts.  After our traffic jam, we just had to dodge the man trying to get us to take a free green Jello shot and we were home free.  That is, we were home to a dark alleyway full of cats that looked distinctly Siamese (we were very pleased at the appropriate face shape of the cats) tattoo parlors, food that had been sitting around far too long and people playing cards. 

In our room we dried off from the dripping heat before we ventured into the metropolis again.  In our second tour outside we noticed the many underwear street stalls as well as the large number of Thai women dressed in very little with a great deal of makeup hanging on the arms of disheveled backpackers.  There was comfort to be found in the midnight crowds, however.  For example, if I were to have lost my passport like the $3 watch that was taken off my wrist while wandering the streets here (yeah, take that you thief…$3!!) I could have just replaced it by paying the nice men (yes, there were many of these stands) who displayed all of the different states, countries, and type of IDs that he could make for you.  I felt sort of bad for these men though because a few of them were next to bars who made very clear that one need not purchase an ID for their establishments proudly “Don’t Check IDs” as per their large street signs.

The strangest observation made in this college student heaven was most definitely the Chabad House (a religious Jewish family’s home that often serves as a synagogue) that was two blocks away from our hotel in the midst of the hustle and bustle.  As it was Sukkot (the Jewish holiday of the harvest) there was also a giant Sukkah (a tent that religious Jews sleep in during the 8 day Sukkot holiday) inside which no doubt were a family trying to sleep.  An open air Sukkah in the middle of the craziest street I have ever seen was true devotion to religion.  We went to bed just in time to be serenaded by a trombone and clarinet duet being played on the street.

The Watch Saga

Scene 1: The Timex Explorer watch is bravely purchased from Walmart in preparation for its long journey around the world. Anticipation is high. The Timex Explorer faces a dark airplane and two nights illuminating the African Serengeti by its warm Indigo light. Then, disaster strikes! The son of a Maasai chief has spotted the Timex and its built in compass. Like a sack of potatoes the watch is traded for a stick. BLACK OUT.


Scene 2: A haggard Adidas watch gets passed from store to store, then outlet to outlet, and finally from street vendor to street vendor in the markets of India. Long, hot nights pass. Adidas's looks have long faded with his youth, but he runs second by second, still dutifully marking time. His price has been taken down from the respectable Nike price of 1000 rupees to a measly knockoff price of 100 rupees ($2). He hopes for the day he will be bought and taken out to fulfill that noble purpose in life, measuring the moments of our lives. One day at long last, he is bought and whisked away. His time is changed multiple times as he zooms across time zones. Adidas gives it his all, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour. He knows his time is short and it is not long before a large part of his plastic casing snaps off, but that will not deter his unbreakable spirit. He keeps going for two more days before sputtering to a halt, only able to manage a blink in each corner when the light that has long since broken is pressed. While only seeing his dreams fulfilled in the setting two weeks off his existence, Adidas's 122,872 clicks in that time were to him an eternity.


Scene 3: Rolex and Omega wander the rows of fake watches discussing the current news of the Pearl market stocks and bonds (futures of silk scarves are up while faux Gucci took a two point hit because someone misspelled "Guchi" on a large batch of purses). They walk right by 3 pointed silver star watch (3pss watch) without even noticing. 3pss is not even sure anymore whether it is his training not to be noticed, or whether he was just always invisible to high society. Built in one of the nameless factories by an unimportant wrench beside one of the thousands of smokestacks of his hometown, 3pss was a fluke of design. An almost attractive but mostly pointless 3 pointed silver star took up most of his dial. His too short and appallingly similar hour and minute hands were almost always obscured by that darned star. Doomed to be sold in some dollar store to a 7 year old who would not think twice before irreparably damaging the poor instrument, 3pss was about to pop out his own battery when a watch adorned with a Mau face saved him from oblivion. He was trained as a spy, taught the wisdom of Kung Fu, shown how to blend into the background when necessary and shine with a glint that even Movados would be envious of. And so it was that he had been biding his time silently waiting for that particular customer, dodging any type of sale by using his poorly designed facade to his advantage. Finally, the time came when that dark haired man with a big camera came by. 3pss heard the dark haired man be turned away by many venders because he wanted a knockoff watch for $3. Who ever heard of such a thing?! A $3 knock off watch in a Chinese market? But 3pss took his chance, dropping off his shelf just in time for the stallkeeper to notice and offer his cheapest watch to the dark haired man. Success of phase one. Five days would pass and the tension was building for 3pss. He would only have one shot...he had to be at his best. The dark haired man would be suspicious of getting a watch that was so shiny, but hopefully he would forget this detail. The moment was the upon 3pss. The streets of Thailand at 11 p.m. were hopping and the dark haired man wore a short sleeve shirt. Our spy shined like he had never shined before. Almost immediately he vanished like the master Kung Fu artist he was from the wrist of the dark haired man…into the pocket of a pickpocket and then on to his Thai contact. Who knows what secrets passed minute hands that day.


Scene 4: Enter stage right two cheap toys leaning against a toy box in the shadows. These are the rulers of the toy store in underpass 37. They work for Armani, the knockoff boss of all Turkish streets. Cheap toy number 1 spits some bubble yum in the spittoon before posing like the fluffy dinosaur that he is supposed to be. After the passing of the folks avoiding the road via the pedestrian underpass, toy 1 resumes his normal pleasure activities, the regular new toy shakedown. Under the thousands of disapproving evil eye charms hanging for sale in the store nearby, toy 1 and toy 2 approach our young hero, Casio. Built in the 80s but not turned on till 3 weeks ago, Casio was ready for this fight. The showdown began, sparks flew, but nothing could stop this firecracker. Heralded for weeks to come, Casio was eventually purchased for 4 Turkish Lyra ($3) and brought to America. The country had long since abandoned superman, but Casio was determined to fill his shoes. Only time will tell whether Casio will survive to defeat the evils of the world time and time again.



Here is hoping that my fourth watch will continue working!

Overnight trains

   Trains are great. In China. Overnight trains can also be great. In China. We have taken overnight trains in both India and China and in China the sleeper class was clean albeit slightly smoky. The sheets were only slightly spotted and food carts with fresh veggies and $0.50 packs of playing cards. The sounds of passengers spitting on the train floor marked the time as 18 hours flew by from Xian to Beijing. On the way I learned the marvelous game of Chinese chess (a game that strangers would come up and suggest moves by moving our pieces for us)...it is just like chess except there are canons, elephants, and officers involved. Outside each cabin there was a spigot for hot water and sometimes a tv for hours of unbroken Chinese language shows!



India however was a different story. We arrived at the dilapidated old station from when the British were there. From that point on until the train arrived at 2 am (4 hours late, even though we were only the train's second stop after 2 hours of travel) we avoided eye contact with the sketchy men who kept circling us, we dodged rats (we actually had to stomp to get them to move), and we entertained ourselves by watching the rats fight. We did make it unscathed on to the train, which is more than I can say for some of the dozens of people sleeping on the ground in the station who we watched be bitten by the rats. Ick.



A minor fight inside the train station with someone we thought was stealing our pillows (he wasn't, he was actually the attendant replacing them with slightly less dirty pillows) was all that we experienced before falling asleep. Boy were we happy to be off of that train in the morning...

The moral of the story: China trains good and, unless you are the pied piper, India trains bad.

China is a Powerhouse of Progress

   Forgetting the pollution and any political commentary of the government, China has created a healthy, wealthy, and happy population in the Eastern, well-developed portions of the country (the factory areas and poor farming regions of the west are less accessible, but someday we hope to see the beautiful nature there).  The people who we met were well fed, had fancy clothes, had cars, had a thoroughly comfortable life (remember that there are a whopping 110 million middle class Chinese).  Those that weren't quite there yet were still in a much better place than their peers in other countries.  The fact that we could eat anywhere and be safe (save for pick pockets) all over was an amazing testament to the livability of the places we visited in China.  I would be so happy to spend more time in this wonderful country if given the chance.  One very memorable moment was on a boat while dodging the smoke of one of the passengers. A member of our group wanted to buy a package of tea but the boat leader was all out.  Upon seeing what had happened, one of the Chinese passengers who didn't speak English handed (refusing payment) one of her tea packages (worth about $5) to my friend.  Based upon my experiences in China, this generosity was out of a desire to show China in the best possible light (true Chinese pride) or a spirit of building relations across the world that are becoming more important every day.

Snacker Beware...American People Have Different Tastebuds

I was desperate for a snack.  I bought some candies (no English on them of course).  They looked like dried fruit covered with sugar.  Yum!  Such fine powdery sugar...wait...no...salt....PTOOEEY.  Score one for Team Disgusting Foods. On to another store.  Crackers!  Skip the ones with shrimp and onions on them, perfect...green cover plain crackers.  Mmmm...savory....crunchy...fishy?!...BLUCK...Seaweed flavor!!!  Score two for Team Disgusting Flavors.  OK, ice cream.  Dodge the pea flavored ice cream bar clearly labeled with peas.  Chocolate covered vanilla...perfect.  Bite one...cold...chocolaty...purple?...TARO?!  Struck out by Team Disgusting Flavors.  I grabbed some water and went to bed.

(Strange flavors are not only to be found in China, these are Thai Lays potato chips and Hong Kong cheese that was found in the aisle beside the Abalone flavored peanuts)

Police Experience

Our group had two run ins with the Chinese police.  That might strike terror into some, but it seems almost inevitable with as many police as there are in China.  Every corner of a tourist area has some very young looking officers marching (they march in groups around the city) or standing on a multicolored box.  In fact, there were 20,000 police officers monitoring just the Shanghai subway.  Our overall impression of the police: really nice and unfortunately not very helpful. 

Experience 1:  A member of our tour group had a small ankle tattoo that had a five pointed star and a moon on it.  While trying to get into the World Expo, she was flagged by a police officer who brought her into the police headquarters.  She was then shuttled to a number of different people who checked her passport and were looking through a book of symbols to determine whether hers was of some dangerous society that she chose to put publicly on her body for all to see.  Unable to locate a symbol, more senior people kept coming to look until nobody seemed to know what to do.  Her traveling companion then took it upon himself to raise a fuss, charge in, and take her out.  Case closed.  She wasn't a subversive...

Experience 2: One of our group lost their camera while walking with another group member.  When I learned that the camera was taken from her purse I suggested that maybe it was those two people they were chatting with.  Apparently they had no idea there were people around them.  I was thus implicated as the witness to the crime.  We were directed to go to a police office where the officers spoke English to report the crime.  Into the police station for 1 hour worth of forms.  Smoke permeated the office and no less than 8 different cops came in to shoot the breeze while we were there.  They were certainly all rushing out to find our 5' 3'' purple-shirted male subject :)  But, we did learn that the Uncle of the police officer who spoke good English was a professor who worked at IBM in Montana!  Perhaps he knew where the stolen camera was...  When we were all done, the police officer kindly brought us to a neighboring restaurant and ordered us all the local dish.  I doubt that anyone would have found the camera in a large city in the US, but I also doubt they would have taken us out for a meal to make up for losing the camera.

Messages or Massages

It really wouldn't matter if it were on a Chinese sign, because English translations are so bad that they are normally incomprehensible.  In fact, Massages probably would have been translated into English as something like Stroking.  Not that the two were always separate, as I found out the only night that I went out with the group without Michelle.  I was loathe to not talk to a stranger (normally they wanted to take their picture with us...still a common occurrence), and when a nice frumpy looking Chinese lady asked me something that I didn't understand I tried to understand her better until my traveling buddy started laughing at me and I realized that her invitation to get a massage was accompanied by solicitations for her "pretty girls" who were sitting on a nearby bench.  Michelle didn't let me talk to any strangers in the middle of the night anymore :)

From the Infant Health Desk (read: changing station) to the Stool signs outside of bathrooms to the Careful Slide (read: Careful, Slippery) there was an abundance of really, really, REALLY amusingly translated English.  It wasn't even all translated the same way.  Each sign had a different translation that was typically made by google translator (I found this out at the end of our tour, but was none too surprised).  Even at the World Expo, the English translations were difficult to comprehend.  I could deal with difficult to understand, but 90% of the time, the English was unfortunately incomprehensible.  I might have broken multiple laws or put myself in mortal danger many times on the trip without knowing it because the translated sign made no sense.  But, I did very much appreciate the fact that everywhere in China, people tried to accommodate English speakers.  It is certainly much more than we do for them.

We did get massages in China.  They were awesome...for Michelle.  I chose to get a reflexology of the foot instead of the massage.  While Michelle sat in pleasure, I was in pain as the guy popped my toes and pressed on tendons to fix ailments in my stomach, brain, and all over.  Too bad I didn't know what reflexology was when I bought it.  I was sore for a day.  Unfortunately, we didn't have time to go to the Blind Meususes all over Beijing, but based on the cloud Michelle was on for a day after her first massage, it would have been great.