Third time's a charm?

Ok, I am giving this blog one final go, after two failed attempts.  I have always liked the idea of keeping a blog, but just never found the time while I was taking advantage of Beijing's nightlife or gallivanting around SE Asia as a tour leader.  Now I have LOTS of time on my hands, because I live in the small, rural city of Tonjiang in Sichuan province, China, hundreds of miles from any other foreigners or English speakers.

The journey to get out here was a long one: 30 hours by train from Beijing to the provincial capital of Chengdu, followed by a 7-hour car ride to Tongjiang.  Or so I was expecting.  Obviously there were delays, starting with the SEVEN AND A HALF HOURS I spent sitting in the Beijing train station waiting for my 11:20am train to depart at 7pm.  I split the time poring over GMAT test-prep books, inducing a neck cramp through awkward sleeping positions, thinking about the fact that this delay was going to cause me to arrive in Chengdu at 1am, and trying to alleviate the lingering effects of the previous night's shenanigans with some McDonalds.  Have you ever been to that website "F My Life?"  Well, I felt like a potential candidate for it. 

The inside of the station in the morning and a bit of the sunset as we were boarding:

Once on the train, things improved drastically: I had my bed and my dinner, and the one other foreigner on the whole train was in the same car as me.  Because I certainly didn't come to China to talk to Chinese peple.  As it turned out, I had a couple hilarious local characters sharing the same berth as me--my favorite being this dude who, at 60 years old, told me the secret to staying healthy into old age was to drink beer every day.  He looked pretty sprightly for 60, plus he shared some of his homemade food with me.  Bonus points for awesomeness.

Fortunately (unfortunately?) the train ended up taking 35 hours instead of 30, which means I rolled into Chengdu at the slightly more sane hour of 6am.  Desperate for a shower before beginning the long car ride out to Tongjiang, I scooted over to the nearest hotel where you can rent rooms by the hour.  "Do you have your Chinese state-issued ID card?" the attendant asked me.  "What??  I have a passport," I told them, "How can I have Chinese ID card?  I'm (umm, obviously) not Chinese."  Of course this meant they were not authorized to let foreigners stay at their hotel, so I went around the corner in search of another option.  Same deal at the next one.  And four more after that.  Thank you, Chinese Communist Party.  I had been really concerned about being so sedentary for 35 hours on the train, so the hour I spent lugging all my belongings for the next 5 months around in the rain to every hotel within a quarter-mile radius of the train station was really a welcome bit of exercise.  Particularly at 6am.  I finally gave up, had some breakfast, and called to meet up with my fellow carpoolers for the drive to Tonjiang.  And just because I hadn't suffered enough that morning, I was made to ride bitch the whole way.  AWEsome.

Mrs. Lan

Mrs. Lan runs a laundry service out of her shop across the street from the hotel where my group was staying when the severe flooding took place in Hoi An. On the day that I was evacuating my group from our hotel, Mrs Lan helped me out by calling her brother-in-law to paddle his boat out to the hotel and take some members of my group into town. After I had seen all my passengers off, I ran across to her shop to buy a couple cheap ponchos that I could use to cover my bags and protect any work-related documents from getting soaked. I thanked her again for her help with the boats (and all my group's laundry!), and hopped on the final dinghy to meet up with my group in town. When she saw that I had bought the ponchos for myself--not, as she had thought, for passengers in my tour group--she actually tried to give me back the money I had paid for them! Her shop was already knee-deep in water and likely sustaining quite a bit of damage from the flood, yet she wanted to give me my money back for the ponchos because I had given her a bunch of business with my group's laundry. Her generosity given the circumstances was astounding, though I absolutely refused to allow her to return the money (the equivalent of US$0.65). What is even more amazing is that Mrs. Lan was not the only person I saw that day who refused to allow the floods to dampen their spirits--I have never seen so many people smiling (or lauging at the foreigner paddling a fisherman's boat with old Vietnamese men) in the face of such adversity.

Reason #276 Why I Love Cambodia

I had an incredibly simple yet beautiful experience last time I was in Cambodia. As I was walking through the Killing Fields with some members of my group, a few children who were playing in a nearby field approached us. At first they echoed the ubiquitous chant of "photo! photo! one dollar!" in an attempt to convince us to pay them a dollar to take their photo. While I declined the staged photo op, I instead started chatting with them and playing some of their games. Went I went to say goodbye, one of them came over and gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek; I smiled and gave the child a hug in return, and again turned to leave when another child came over to hug me. Giggling and flashing their beautiful Cambodian smiles, all 5 of the kids lined up to hug me and give me a kiss on the cheek before I left. It was such a beautiful experience at a site where such tragedies had occured only 30 years earlier.

Floods in Central Vietnam

Last week, central Vietnam was hit with persistent rainstorms, which led to much flooding in Hoi An, a popular tourist town about 4km from the coast. I was staying with my tour group in a hotel about 3km away from the old town of Hoi An, far from the lower streets in town, close to the river, which had begun to flood as our group attended a cooking class on Sunday evening. The river rose about half a meter over the duration of our 2 hour cooking class, so we had small fisherman's dinghies paddle us back to a dry street, and hopped in a cab to head back to our hotel.

This is what my Monday schedule was meant to look like:
9am (approx): get up, eat breakfast, pack, and take care of any last-minute errands
11:30 Meet guide in hotel lobby
11:45 Depart for airport
12:30 Arrive airport
13:40 Fly to Saigon
14:45 Arrive Saigon, drive 30 min to hotel, check group in, free time the remainder of the afternoon
19:30 Group dinner

This is how Monday turned out:
5:30 Wake up, roll over, and marvel at the sheets of rain which are pouring down before falling back asleep
8:00 Wake up again, notice that it's still raining buckets, go to breakfast
8:45 Walk out to the street in front of the hotel, and see that the water has flooded the street and is as high as the middle of my calf
9:00 Call the local Vietnamese guide, Hoang, (whom I am working with in this part of the country) who is staying in a city about 45 min away and tell him that the street is flooded.
9:05 He assures me that the bus will have no problem driving in the street because it is a big bus. We agree to move the departure time to 11:30
9:15 Return to room, pack, wonder about the rain which continues to fall havily
10:30 Field hundred of questions from the passengers in my group, none of which I know the answer to
11:00 Receive a call from Hoang, who tells me that the bus driver has just arrived in Hoi An, and that there is no way we can get out
11:01 Silently curse and wonder what the hell I am going to do
11:05 Call the office in Saigon, tell them we are stuck in the hotel and will not make our 13:40 flight. They manage to get the whole group onto a 10pm flight
11:15 Inform my group of the situation, and continue to field questions about how they are going to pick up their custom tailoring (which Hoi An is known for), which is certainly the very least of my concerns, especially since I know all the tailors' shops are under at least 2 meters of water
11:30 Receive a call from the office informing me that all our (paper) air tickets have to be physically taken to Da Nang, a 45 minute driver from where we are, to be reconfirmed for the 10pm flight. Contemplate suicide. Curse Vietnam Airlines for such an inane and archaic system. Wonder why a concept as simple as e-tickets hasn't taken on in Socialist and/or Communist Asian countries
12:00 Inform group of the plan (again), tell them that they will likely have a couple hours to relax in the hotel and vicinity while I head into town to get some boats to transport us to a dry area of town and pass off the tickets to someone who can take them to Da Nang
13:00 Start walking 3km in waist-deep water
14:00 Arrive at the dry area of town where Hoang is waiting with the new (tiny!) bus that will eventually take us to the Da Nang airport. Pass the tickets off to Hoang, who then gives them to a driver to take to the Vietnam Airlines Da Nang office. Turn around and head back to the hotel.
14:10 See all our group's luggage (17 bags!) pass me in a boat being pushed against the current by five people. Rejoice and breathe a sigh of relief.
14:15 Find two old Vietnamese men in a fishing dinghy and convince them to paddle their boat out to the hotel and pick up members of my group to bring them back to town. Find a second boat to join the armada, hop into one of the boats, and start paddling with the Vietnamese grandpas.
15:00 Arrive back at the hotel and load most members of my group onto the boats--6 of them decide that they don't mind walking, so I lead them along until I can find another fisherman's boat for the last few group members.
16:00 Hop on a boat to bring up the rear, and head towards town. Again.
17:00 Arrive in town to find that all members of my group have also made it and are alive and well. Hear that one woman has even managed to collect her tailoring. Rejoice again; one less thing for me to think about.
17:45 Hop in the 20 seater bus with my 15 passengers, all our luggage, Hoang, the driver, and the driver's assistant (yeah, I don't really get it either) to head to the airport. Still in my wet clothing, but relieved that we are finally on our way.
19:00 Bus engine stalls out as the road is now enveloped in knee-deep water and the engine is flooded. The driver proceeds to open the access door to the engine (which happens to be between the driver and passenger seats), and goes to work. The bus fills with a bit of black smoke, and I wonder if this day can get any worse.
19:03 My group starts singing "Row, row, row your boat." In a round. I thank goodness that I have an amazing group of passengers.
19:15 Bus is up and running again!
19:30 Arrive at the airport, check-in, settle into a noodle restaurant across the street and put on some dry clothes.

22:00 Plane takes off. Take a deep breath and thank god the day is finished.

With two members of my group, as we begin the 3km walk from our hotel to the dry area where we can meet our bus

Bia Hoi

I recently had nearly 5 days off in between two tours to get to know Hanoi a little better, and was able to explore some of the wonderful tree-lined streets of colonial architecture; local restaurants; and parks filled everyone from small children to elderly grandparents strolling, playing badminton, or reading.

On one particularly sunny day, I joined two other tour leaders who also had the day off to head to a large public pool out in the embassy district (ie the area of the city where foreigners on extremely comfortable expat salary packages live) where we could pay a few dollars to swim and spend the afternoon there. We packed a picnic of some baguettes and brie (thank you, remnants of French colonization), hopped in a cab, and headed out. Upon arrival, we found a large deck area encompassing a 50 meter pool....which had apparently closed about 20 days earlier and had been sitting in neglect ever since; the walls and surface were now an emerald shade of green as algae took over.

Non-plussed, we walked back out to the main highway, and spontaneously hopped on a city bus that happened to be pulling up to a random bus stop as we were walking past. We rode for about 20 minutes before finally hopping off, resigned to the likelihood that we would just return to the tour leader house and spend the remainder of the afternoon on the couch. Until I spotted a Bia Hoi and suggested a picnic there.

What is "Bia Hoi," you may ask.
A: A beer drinker's heaven.

"Bia hoi," are the ubiquitous local restaurants that serve fresh cold glasses of local beer for 2,000 VND/glass ($1 = 16,000 VND, so you're looking at about 8 glasses of draught beer for a measley dollar). Because the beer is brewed without preservatives, the kegs are delivered daily to local restaurants around the city, and must be consumed that day. Cold, light, and incredibly cheap, we figured a few rounds at the bia hoi wasn't a bad runner-up to a day spent lounging at the pool.

As the locals patrons derived amusement from our very beginner Vietnamese skills and snack of brie and baguettes, I whipped an ad hoc tablecloth (aka bath towel) out of my bag, and three icy, frothy beers appeared on the table. The amused waitress even brought over a knife for the cheese, before we could even think to ask, as the two men sitting next to us laughed and gave us a thumbs up. A vietnamese twist on our picnic, the bia hoi pit-stop made for a great afternoon.

"Mot, hai, ba, YO!"

Chad, Ross, and I enjoy our picnic, complemented by Bia Hoi (and a slew of amused onlookers)

Vietnamese Language

In a bout of ambition (and possibly a little too much wishful thinking), I decided that I was going to use my 4.5 day break between tours to be as productive as feasibly possible. This mainly entailed seeking out a Vietnamese tutor to meet with during the week, so that I can do more than, say, order a chocolate ice cream and iced coffee in Vietnamese (the first two things I learned to say. No, seriously).

I figured that, since my time is limited and I won't be back in Hanoi again for about 5 weeks, I'd get in some basic phonetics and survival phrases from which I can build upon and teach myself a bit. I had been optimistic that, being able to speak Chinese (which also has tones and from which many Vietnamese words are derived), it would come pretty easily. This was far from the case. For starters, they have two sounds that are 1)nearly impossible to pronounce and 2)pretty much sound identical to me. The first one is "nh," which is probably closest to the gn- at the beginning of "gnocchi." The second one is "ng" which sounds like....well, pretty much exactly the same as far as I'm concerned. A more formal, linguistic explanation is: when you pronounce the "nh" sound, the top of the front part of your tongue touches the the roof of your mouth in the front. For the "ng" sound, the front of your tongue doesn't touch the roof of your mouth at all, but rather the back of your tongue touches the roof of your mouth in the back. Basically, just stick your finger down your throat and start gagging--now you can speak Vietnamese! In all seriousness, though, it sounds a bit like you're choking, especially when it comes at the beginning of the word, as it so often does.

The other thing I learned (also, unlike Chinese) is that Vietnamese doesn't have just one or two pronouns for the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd person pronouns. In English we have "I," "you," and "he"/"she"/"it." In Vietnamese, however, the pronoun changes according to your age, gender, the age/gender of the person you are talking to or referring to, or whether you are talking to family, friends, or a stranger. A couple quick examples:
This is how you would refer to yourself/say "I" if you were talking to the following people:
--Grandparents, aunts, uncles: "Chau"
--Parents: "Con"
--Brothers, sisters, & friends who are older than you: "Em"
--Brothers, sisters, & friends who are younger than you: "Chi" (if you are female) / "Anh" (if you are male)
--Anyone in a formal setting: "Toi"

Ummm, yeah. Not confusing at all.

"You" and "he"/"she"/"it" get even trickier, because you would refer to people differently depending on whether they were younger than you, slightly older than you, approximately the same age as your parents, or approximately the same age as your grandparents.

To top it all off, there are 6 different tones, so any given word means at least 6 different things accoring to the pitch of your voice when you say the word.

I'm wondering if I really need to know how to say anything other than "chocolate ice cream," "iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk," and "noodles"... Sounds like a pretty balanced diet to me.

The begging dilemma

I absolutely adore Cambodia--the scenery is gorgeous, Angkor Wat is an unbelievable sight to behold, and the people are some of the warmest, most pleasant I have met anywhere in the world.

That being sad, both poverty and the ramifications of Cambodia's tragic recent history are still very much evident throughout the country. While the tourism industry is clearly helping to the country into greater future prosperity, it is an uphill battle for many Cambodians. As a tourist or temporary visitor to the country, it can often be easier to turn a blind eye to some of the social problems plaguing the city streets.

Yesterday, as I was walking back from the office to my hotel, a young girl of about nine years old started following me, asking for money. I feel rather strongly that giving to children often causes more harm that help--parents are often aware that foreign tourists are more likely to give to small children, and they thus send their children to beg for money rather than going to school. Parents also learn to depend on the children and children learn to depend on begging, perpetuating some of the social problems and causing inequality in communities. Furthermore, it can undermine the poverty alleviation efforts of governments or NGOs. I often encourage others to give to organizations that provide social assistance or teach vocational skills. While it oversimplifies the situation, the well know proverb that if you give a man a fish he will eat for a day, but if you teach him to fish he will eat for a lifetime is relevant.

All that being said, it is hard to look into the eyes of a nine year old, her baby sister of a about 10 months cradled in a large scarf tied around her shoulder, barefoot and underclothed for the rain that was beginning to fall, and claim that you can't or won't help her. After she followed me for about two blocks, I stopped at a small street small to buy a snack to eat--I figured it was better to give her something to eat, rather than to pass along money that would be very unlikely to actually go directly towards helping the young girl. Upon ordering a couple kebabs for her, two other girls showed up, so I ordered a couple extra for them as they giggled and told me their names. After I handed them to the children, the first girl pointed out that the baby she was carrying had finished the milk in its bottle. We wandered further along the street, walking for about 10 minutes before I found a large grocery store and went inside to buy some milk to refill the bottle. The rather well-stocked shop carried powdered milk formula for children, so I purchased a can of that as well (making sure it was age-appropriate and had directions in Khmer, as I didn't want to give anything that might be detrimental to the child's health) and gave it to the young girl. As the girl nodded that she understood how to use the formula, I left her to tend to her crying baby sister, wondering what would happen as the rain began to fall harder.

The rebirth of the blog

So...now that I don't actually live in China anymore, I thought it would be an appropriate time to give "Dig a Hole to China"another go. naturally. I've headed further south for a new job, leading trips through several countries in SE Asia. While there is a good chance I'll head up to China again sometime next spring to lead trips there, for the next 6 or so months, I'll be showing groups of foreigners all over Cambodia & Vietnam. Long hours and more work than you'd imagine, but all in all a pretty magical job. I'm more than happy to give up the monotony of sitting at a desk all day for the excitement of sunrises at Angkor Wat, exploring Ha Long Bay or the Mekong River on a boat, and--one of my favorite activities--eating all the wonderful dishes on offer in Asia.

Hopefully you'll enjoy reading about my various adventures--from life on the road, to travel adventures, to people I meet, to all the gorgeous places in the world I am paid to show other people.

"Civilizing" The Masses

In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing government has launched a long-term plan of public service announcements to "educate" its citizens as to how to behave in a "civilized" manner. Examples include plastering the subway stations with posters depicting commuters on escalators, standing to the right and passing on the left. Other similar posters illustrate, with a series of arrows, how to wait a couple meters behind someone in front of you at an ATM machine, proceeding only after the previous person has collected his/her cash and receipts and stepped away from the machine.

In its efforts to showcase the best possible image of China during the Olympics, one of the many concerns of the local government is that some of the cultural differences will not be well interpreted by visitors. Apparently Chinese tourists have gained a somewhat negative stereotype abroad for being "rude," and some visitors to China feel the same way about the locals.

A few weeks ago I witnessed a discrepancy between a foreign tourist and a Chinese woman in the bathrooms at a major tourist site. While many westerners will wait in a single-file line for a bathroom stall to open up, Chinese people tend to stand in front of individual stalls and wait for that particular one to open up. So as a group of a few foreign woman were waiting in a line for a free stall, the Chinese woman was shouting about their being open stalls, wondering why these women were loitering near the entrance to the bathrooms rather than proceeding ahead. The foreign tourists, of course, couldn't understand what the Chinese woman was saying, and replied (in English) that they were waiting for someone to exit, as they continuined to block the entrance to the bathroom stall area. Eventually the Chinese woman became so annoyed with waiting that she barrelled past the foreign women and found a stall that had, in fact, been empty all along. While I couldn't understand the language the foreign women were speaking to eachother, I could infer their reaction by the tone of their voices. I'm pretty confident it wasn't "oh, look, that stall was open all along! How silly of us!" but rather something along the lines of "I can't believe that woman just pushed us out of the way, these people are so RUDE!"

While I do understand the governemnt's concern about what these foreign visitors will have to say about Chinese cultural differences when they return home, I find it ironic that they have launched a very pointed campaign at reforming these habits. One of the biggest customs they are trying to address is the Chinese tendency to push and shove to get somewhere or something, rather than waiting in a single-file line. I'll be the first to admit that I hate feeling like someone is giving me a kidney massage every time I'm pushed into the crowd while trying to board a packed bus. I've had public transportation experiences here that seriously redefine the word 'crowded.' However, as long as the government isn't providing enough resources, people are going to rush to the entrance, and push their way in. Hopefully one way they'll bolster their own efforts by adding more transportation resources. Maybe they'll even come up with a campaign to discourage people from hollering "hello!!" in the face of every foreigner they see....

"Civilized Conduct: A One-step Difference"

"Civilized Conduct: Leave A One-meter Gap"

The Blocking of Blogger.com

As many know, the internet is somewhat censored in China, and there are many sites that cannot be accessed from within the country. Until recently, Wikipedia.org was blocked, and there will be occassional chunks of time during any given day when google.com cannot be accessed. Most of the sites blocked by the Chinese firewall may paint negative pictures of the Chinese government, or periods of rule in Chinese history. While you will get hundreds of thousands of hits if you google "Tianmen Square 1989" and almost 3 million hits if you search for "China human rights violations," many of the links will bring up a "this page cannot be displayed" message when clicked.
Any blogspot.com URLs are also currently blocked here. I received error messages every time I tried to log onto a particular one during the summer, but then was able to access that one and a number of others over the past couple months. A few weeks ago, I again received the error messages when trying to view a couple of my favorite blogs. I had to go through a proxy server to view both others' blogs and my own, but I was still able to log in and post messages on Dig A Hole to China. Now, however, I am completely unable to access my blogspot.com account to post. We will see if anything changes in the near future, but in the meantime I will have my brother and sister post for me from the US while I search for a new URL....