rachelanderik

Hello Bombay, Goodbye India

2007-05-19T06:12:00.000-07:00

After a 22 hour train ride (the longest single mode of transport journey of our travels), we arrived at 10pm in Bombay [the official name of Mumbai was designated by the extreme right wing Hindu Shiv Sena party, so many people not in agreement with their ideas continue to call the city Bombay].

We took an auto rickshaw to Lucia's, the 91-year-old mother of Alfin, Rachel's parents' next door neighbor. She lives in Santa Cruz, a northern suburb. Lucia woke up to greet us when we arrived after 11pm--although she has a little trouble hearing, she's otherwise in terrific health, and was a wonderful host to us. It felt great to end our time in India staying with her, and we enjoyed hearing her life stories. Her servants Sunita and Laksmi were also really friendly, and Sunita had an adorable baby.

The next day, we took the train into what the British dubbed the "first city in India." Bombay commuter trains are often horribly overcrowded, but since we took them on a weekend and at off times, they were ok. A couple English women we met in Dharamsala said that Bombay felt like London to them, and while that may be an exaggeration, it certainly felt very, very different from any other place we'd been in India. These differences are more than superficial: Bombay produces a whopping 60% of India's GDP, and 40% of its manufacturing.

Our train arrived at the Victoria Terminal, a really crazy looking Gothic and Baroque building which looked like some buildings we'd seen in Australia. We walked around downtown, which felt much cleaner, more attractive, and calmer to walk than anywhere else in India. After a good afternoon at the Prince of Wales art museum, we sampled some of Bombay's street food: sugar cane juice, a grilled vegetable sandwich, mango juice, and pani puri (little shells of dough filled with a sweet or salty soup). Also better food here than elsewhere in India! Despite being more humid and still pretty hot, the temperatures were also considerable lower than other places we'd been, which was nice.

The next day we visited the house where Gandhi stayed in Bombay, and where he launched his nonviolent movement. We also walked along Chowpatty beach, which was mostly empty. We ate bhel puri (almost tasted a little Mexican, a mix of starches with cilantro and onions) and falooda, a delicious drink with pieces of kulfi ice cream. That evening we ate dinner with Lucia's extended family, all of whom are very well educated, successful and friendly.

Our last day in Bombay was relaxed- Rachel did some shopping with one of Lucia's relatives, and we went to a Bollywood movie called Bheja Fry (unfortunately not very good). Leaving that night for the airport, we were grateful to have been able to stay with Lucia. I read an anecdote somewhere about Gandhi's slogan to the British "Quit India," and how a British soldier had added under one of the posters "I wish I could." Despite feeling that way sometimes ourselves in India, we had some great experiences there, and enjoyed our time in Bombay.

City of Light, Jungle of Tigers

2007-05-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

The week after leaving Agra was dominated by train rides-- about 40 hours of them-- along with another 10 or so hours sitting in hot, filthy, crowded stations. In between these long rides and waits, though, were some iconic Indian experiences. From Agra, we headed east to Varanasi, a city on the Ganges that is one of the holiest places in Hinduism. This is not the right time of year to go there (or anywhere in India, really), as the temperatures the week we arrived had been daily hitting 115 degrees F; the blast of heat as we stepped out of the train was frightening. Although the heat was no better 10 kilometers away in Sarnath, where we had a SERVAS host, the noise and crowding were less. Our host was Christine, a German Buddhist married to an Indian man named Nehru. Christine runs a small eco-guest house that is also their home; they use solar power, build with natural local materials, and cook simple vegetarian food. There is no running water, but a pump in the yard provides plenty. Unfortunately Christine fell ill soon after we arrived, so we didn't get to spend much time with her or Nehru, who was either working in his saree shop or caring for Christine. There were some other travelers at the house, though, who were good to talk to.

Our first morning in Sarnath, the sun did not, as it usually does, burn through the clouds and start scorching the ground by 7. Taking this as a sign of a cooler than usual day, we headed into downtown Varanasi with another guest, a friendly, starry-eyed guy named Tom. He had already spent three months in Varanasi just hanging around, so he made an excellent guide for us in our one day there. We had to fight to get out of Sarnath though-- the auto-rickshaw drivers demanded exorbitant prices, and the public buses one after another refused to stop for us. Finally we all piled onto the narrow bench of a bicycle rickshaw-- incredibly hard work for the driver, with only one gear, but he was very happy to have such a large fare. It took an hour to cover the 10k into Varanasi, giving us a chance to look around calmly at the street scene. (From an auto rickshaw, all you can see is what's at eye level, which tends to be the underbellies of trucks and the front wheels of other ricks, all of which seem to be coming straight toward you at terrible speeds.) Once downtown, we headed toward the ghats. Ghats are, architecturally speaking, just wide steps leading up from the river; spiritually, though, each ghat has a different name and significance, and pilgrims make a certain circuit of the ghats, dipping in the holy water of the river at each of several different places. Many of them have shrines or temples on them or behind them, while others are backed by hulking castle-like buildings. The light, reminiscent of Nice, had a weightless, shimmering quality that covered everything with a sprinkling of fairy dust. We spent much of the day on the ghats, mostly walking, but also taking a rowboat ride on the river to see them from another view. They were endlessly engaging to look at because of the swirl of activities that centered on them. Huliking water buffaloes were scrubbed and polished in the water by their keepers; old goats napped in the shade while young ones chased each other; boys played small-scale games of cricket, oblivious to the pedestrians in their midst; tea-sellers sat and chatted with the regulars; unoccupied boatmen played cards. Meanwhile, groups of male prilgrims stripped to their underwear and jumped into th water, while the women mostly sat in groups on the steps. Tow of the ghats have a singular purpose, as cremation sites. Hindus believe that to die in Varanasi guarantees instant transport to heaven, and even for those who don't die here it is an honor to be cremated here. From the boat, we watched a group of men carrying a corpse, covered with a sheet, on a bamboo stretcher, then taking wood from the huge stockpile and lighting it, and the body, on fire. At any one time there are several cremations happening, at various stages; the male family and friends stay and watch the fire until it burns down, and then one person (generally the oldest son, I think) pours a bucket of Ganges water over the ashes. It was a powerful ceremony to observe. Sarnath is also a holy city in its own right, and we spent the following day exploring it a bit. There is an archeological site that is said to be where the Buddha preached his first sermon, making it a pilgrimage place for Buddhists from all over the world. That day the heat was relentless, though, and as we'd been having trouble sleeping (the solar powered fan only lasted a couple hours in the night), we spent much of the afternoon in the relative cool of the internet cafe.

The next day was the least complex of the marathon travel days: just one long train ride from Varanasi to the town of Satna, where we arrived at 9 p.m. and found a place to sleep and, as ever, a thali to eat. (A thali is a metal tray of rice, bread, one or two "vegetables"--almost invariably meaning potatoes--and lentils. It's good, once or twice. But in northern India it is both ubiquitous and exclusive-- most restaurants, except in very fancy or touristy places, serve nothing else. If I never eat thali again, I think I'd be okay with that.) The next morning we got on a train at 6:30, then another, then a bus-- and that was an experience. It started out great; we had a seat at the front, and it seemed to be leaving, unthinkably, ahead of schedule. But then it stopped a few minutes away, and proceeded to sit, in full sun, for an hour. During that time more and more people piled into the bus, to the point that people were squatting on seatbacks and there was no room to so much as shrug one's shoulders. Then, when the bus finally pulled away, another 20 or so people pushed and scratched to get on! There were people riding on the roof and a dozen hanging out the door. A 10 year old child had been put into my lap; soon after the bus pulled away, he started vomiting-- mosty out the window, but some on me. Then the old women who was sitting on Erik started hacking in a very ominous way; luckily we found a plastic bag in our backpack, and she managed to spit mostly into that and not on Erik. There were at least 85 people crammed into a bus that was half the size of a school bus or city bus at home. Suffice it to say that the hourlong ride dragged.

The goal of all this travel had been to reach Bhavangarh National Park, which according to our guidebook had one of the highest concentrations of tigers of any park in India. By the time we finally arrived, we were already questioning the wisdome of this quest; when we learned that prices had more than doubled since our book was published, it really started to feel like a mistake. But, having gotten there, we figured we should do the safaris we had planned on doing. Being the hottest time of year, the tourist presence was minimal and hotel rates were reduced, so we were able to stay in a much nicer room than we normally would have-- a shower with good water pressure instead of a bucket, and a powerful fan. Our evening "safari" (ride around the park in a jeep) did not yield any tiger sightings, but being in an open, clean, beautiful natural environment had a calming and rejuvenating effect on us. The next morning, we were back in the park at 5:45 (the park closes from 9:30 to
3:30, when both animals and peoples need to just be immobile and attempt to keep their blood from boiling). We saw herds of deer grazing in the meadows, a stork, sleeping owls, showoffy peacocks, lots and lots of monkeys, and a tree full of vultures. And then, at last, we saw a tiger. She was a 22 month old cub, not fully grown but spending the morning out on her own (her mother and 3 siblings are all around, we were told). She was up on a rock ledge, about 50 feet away and 30 feet above us. We never got a full view of her; mostly she was just lying around, gracing us with the sight of her head. We wished, temporarily, that we had an 18 inch camera lens like the other several tourists all did; our photos, I'm afraid, aren't too impressive. But she was truly gorgeous, and we were glad we got to see her. We spent a few hours after the safari luxuriating in our room, trying to prepare ourselves for the travel to come. Then we went back to the train station-- by taxi this time-- and retraced our commuter-line steps back to the hub, where we waited, and waited, and waited. Finally the train came, and we got on for our 20 hour ride to Mumbai.

Ambiguities in Agra

2007-05-04T03:08:00.000-07:00

In Agra, we were looking forward to staying with our first Servas hosts since Australia. However, it turned out to be our strangest (and least pleasant) Servas experience, although also very interesting.

Leaving Mcleod/Dharamsala, we caught the overnight bus to Delhi, which provided some beautiful views of sunset (after a downpour of rain that afternoon) with the mountains and town in the background. Back in Delhi, we caught the train to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. The ride wasn't very scenic, with lots of flat, dusty land cultivated into small fields.

After giving up on making train reservations at the crowded station, we were happy to get to Krishna, a former member of parliament, and his wife Saroj's house, where they live with their son Vikram, his wife Varsha, and their two children Baras and Nina. While it was cooler that day because of clouds and even a little rain, after lunch we were still glad to retire to our room for a siesta during the afternoon heat. After that, Saroj, a social worker who is involved in many community functions, invited us to accompany her to the innaugeration of an area summer school. The school itself was a good example of our surprise at the state of infrastructure in India- given how it's portrayed in the media (IT jobs, such a fast growing economy, etc.), we expected to see at least a moderate level of infrastructure, but in terms of things like roads, schools, and sanitation India is more like the least-developed places we've visited, about on par with Ghana.

At the school, we sat around for awhile with the group of other dignitaries/speakers, and then the ceremony began, with some students and the local tv station cameras in the audience. In a lineup that also featured school girls chanting, people giving speeches and enthusiastically reciting poems, and a dance routine by 3 boys straight out of Bollywood, we were also asked to speak. It was nice to be part of the ceremony, although still a little weird to be viewed as so important just because of our foreign status. Just like our appearance in a local newspaper back at the start of our trip in Turkey (at the eco-village Pastoral Vadi), we made the news, apparently both in tv news and the newspaper (unfortunately we never saw any of this).

The next day we rose early (but not early enough for sunrise) and went to the Taj Mahal, where we stayed for several hours. It was very impressive, and we could notice changes in the color of the marble with the changing light (the main reason to stay while there); but of course it was very hot and some hassles. Returning to the house, we left again shortly to buy groceries (to cook for the family tonight) at a store they said "had everything." When we arrived, not only did we discover that they certainly didn't have everything, but also what they did have was of pretty poor quality. We bought ingredients for pasta, and back at the house vegetables from a cart the the vendor pulled through the neighborhood.

That afternoon, Saroj brought us to a Hindu ceremony where a young "guru" was presiding. The ceremony was in a covered courtyard space in the middle of the old city, where the street life looks like it was lifted directly out of the Middle Ages--people, animals, goods, garbage, everything all jammed together in such tight spaces. Like at the summer school innaugeration, again we were guests of honor, going up to the front to have an orange saffron and sandalwood paste dot put on Rachel's forehead, and stripes on mine. The ceremony consisted of dancing, singing, and the guru speaking; Rachel was recruited several times to dance in front with the main women. At the end, we were given "holy food" (sliced cucumbers and a bag of potato chips), and touched with holy water. At one point, we were again pulled aside to talk to the tv cameras. The ceremony was really interesting to see, and one of those things that we definitely couldn't have done on our own. We cooked the pasta that night, but it seemed strange that only Vikram ate with us- Varsha watching the kids, Krishna in the other room drinking whiskey with some political friends, and Saroj not joining us because, as Vikram told us, it's not respectful for a son to drink in front of his mother.

It was interesting to talk with Vikram and his wife (separately) about their marriage, which was arranged. In India there's an entire section of the newspaper called "Matrimonials," with ads seeking both brides and grooms. The ads include caste, profession- strange to us, but maybe not that different from the personal ads at home. Varsha asked to see the perfumes we had with us, she said she collects them so Rachel gave her some of hers.

The following day Vikram gave us a tour of his marble workshop. He said that he is the 11th generation marble worker in his family, which did the marble work on the Taj Mahal. Vikram's workshop is currently responsible for the maintenance of the marble in the Taj, still using the same methods as his ancestors. The marble inlay work is so detailed and beautiful, and it was really interesting to see the process. He said the workshop is closed except to friends and dignitaries--one of the recent famous Americans who visited was Bill Clinton! That afternoon Saroj took us to a fabric store and tailor to get some clothes made- we thought for another ceremony we were attending that evening, but that turned out to not be the case.

Our final interaction was what made us look at everything a little differently: we were taken "to a friend's to have a drink," which turned out to be a jewelry store, where we did have a drink, but then were given the tour and expected to buy something, which we didn't. After this, it wasn't ambiguous to us whether or not we were being manipulated to buy things, but rather whether this was the only motivation, or it was mixed with some genuine hospitality. We think the latter was true, but still it was a sour note to end the time in Agra as we boarded an overnight train to Varanasi.

Himalayan Respite

2007-04-25T02:40:00.000-07:00

After a comfortable, air-conditioned train ride that included two servings of tea and a meal of naan and dhal, we arrived in Amritsar, in the northwestern state of Punjab. The population of Punjab is majority Sikh, a religion developed in the 1400s largely in opposition to the caste structure of Hinduism, with instead a core belief in the equality of all people. Amritsar is a pilgrimage destination for Sikhs because their most important shrine, the Golden Temple, is there. After a couple hours in our room to let the scorching heat of the sun dissipate a bit, we followed the pilgrims. Like them, before going to the temple we walked around a memorial on the site of the Amritsar massacre, a 1919 atrocity in which British soldiers opened fire into an enclosed crowd of unarmed protesters, killing a disputed but unquestionably grotesque number. (The British say 379; the Indians say almost 2000). We were there on a Sunday, two days after the anniversary of the event, and it was crowded with Sikh families making the circuit around different parts of the memorial. Leaving there, we bobbed along in the slowly moving crowd to the temple complex itself. Taking off our shoes (unlike in Delhi, we put them into our bag with no problem), we walked through the foot-washing area (much more symbolic than actual, given the number of dirty feet the water had seen!) and down the stairs. In front of us opened up a massive courtyard of white marble, surrounded by imposing white temple-related buildings. The courtyard formed a square border (albeit with 20 foot wide and 50 yard long sides) around a dark blue pool of sacred water. In the middle of the water, connected to one side by another marble walkway, stood the Golden Temple, shimmering wildly. For Sikhs, there are several sacred places in the complex in addition to the temple itself, and as we shuffled slowly through the crowd on the walkway we saw people praying at a holy tree and swimming in certain places in the water. The line to get into the temple was quite claustrophobic, and we didn't stay long inside the temple, but once outside again we could sit quietly and watch the setting sun soften the glare of the gold, creating a gentle reflection in the water. For Sikhs the last part of visiting the temple is partaking in a free meal in the open canteen-- people eating together as a symbol of equality-- and although we did not do that, we did sit in an area full of pilgrims and accept a drink of tea, following the invitation of a venerable Sikh elder to "feed our hearts".

The next day we left the agricultural plains of Punjab for the Himalayan foothills of Himachal Pradesh. The bus ride up to Dharamsala was, honestly, terrifying-- the bus seemed to lilt wildly with each turn, and the driver seemed scarily infected with road rage. We were happy to put the ride safely behind us, and to get settled into a room 15 minutes up the road, in the town of Mcleod Ganj. Mcleod is a very strange place, and one which even after two weeks here I haven't really figured out; nor am I exactly sure how I feel about it. In some ways it is wonderful: there are cafes everywhere, with atmospheres highly conducive to just hanging out; on a clear day, snow-covered mountains loom in the not-so-far distance; there are lots of activities to take part in, ranging from bootlegged movie showings to women-only dances to Buddhist debates to classes in any number of Eastern philosophies or practices (various forms of yoga, reiki, belly-dancing, meditation, Tibetan cooking, etc.). One of the unique things about it is that there are also a range of opportunities for both short and long-term volunteering, so even in a week or two it's possible to makes some connections with people and learn something about the community here. That community is mainly Tibetan: Mcleod is the home of tens of thousands of Tibetan refugees, and as the seat of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile is really the capital city for Tibetans throughout the world. Between what we've learned from the Tibetan museum and what we've learned talking to people, we've gained some understanding of what Tibetans have been through since China occupied their country in 1959, much of it horrific. The Chinese goal was both to exploit the rich land of Tibet and to force the people to assimilate; to do this, they focused on oppressing the Tibetan language, culture, and-- crucially-- religion. This was to be accomplished both through measures like tightly controlling the education of Tibetan children, and through the systematic use of violence and torture, much of it directed against monks. The Dalai Lama, who is both the spiritual leader and the head of government, escaped by walking through the Himalayas in 1960, and 120,000 of the 6 million total Tibetan population have made similar escapes-- we've met several people who walked around 26 days to reach India or Nepal.

We've been very impressed by the organization and spirit of the Tibetan community in Mcleod. The language and culture are taught to the children and are celebrated in daily life, as evidenced in part by the beautiful traditional woven dresses and aprons many of the women wear, the ubiquity of "momos" (dumplings) and other traditional foods, and the prayer flags that hang in the air all over town. There are a great number crimson-robed monks, male and female, many of whom are involved in politics and the study and teaching of philosophy. There are also many community organizations run by Tibetans and geared toward easing and improving the lives of fellow refugees, such as an unemployment cooperative that provides short-term jobs for those who need them, or an environmental group focused on recycling and trash reduction. I've been spending my mornings happily surrounded by laughing, crying, runny-nosed babies and toddlers in a free day-care for Tibetan single or both-working parents; there is a permanent staff of 6, supplemented by volunteers who sign up for two weeks or more. Erik has written an article and done some editing for a community newsletter, and participated in English conversation classes for Tibetans trying to learn the language. (The four photos of the man in a room are of one of his students, who asked us to send them to his brother in New York.) Even the for-profit enterprises-- shops, restaurants, etc.-- tend to have a community-empowerment slant.

All of this has been inspiring to see and cool to be part of in our small way. At the same time, there are other sides of Mcleod that have troubled us. The most significant of those is the disparity between the Tibetan and Indian populations here. Sometimes it feels like the only Indians we see here are beggars-- and there are many of them, a large percentage tiny, filthy, malnourished children. Of course that feeling is not actually accurate, but it does seem that, with the exception of a significant group of Indian teachers (mainly of yoga), the other Indians in Mcleod are either construction or restaurant workers, Kashmiri store owners, or tourists. There is an Indo-Tibetan Friendship Society that works to establish rapport between the groups, but there has been tension in varying degrees in the past, in part because Western tourists tend to be engaged with Tibetan people and issues here and not Indian ones. I think the infrastructure is a part of that-- the Tibetan community is really well set up to engage tourists-- but I can see why there would be some resentment. We've also been rather disturbed by the amount of development in the area. As it is now, cars careen noisily down the pedestrian-clogged single lane streets, and looking out over the valley brings a view of densely clustered cement buildings, with many more under construction. They have done a good job reducing the use of plastic water bottles, at least; there are several stores where we can cheaply fill our bottles with filtered water. One final, less significant gripe: some of the tourists here are a bit too kooky, even for us. Like in Thailand, there are a lot of people who come here every year for months at a time, which sometimes strikes us as frustratingly escapist. Then there's the countless hordes walking around with their wool hats and seven scarves and big cotton pants and bare feet, looking so constantly soulful that it just feels a little ridiculous. It's funny to be in a place where we feel, like, "establishment"!

To be fair, though, we've met some really great people here as well, and we were singing as loud as anyone when "Blowin' in the Wind" was sung at an open mic night. This is the longest we've stayed in one place all year, with the exception of our dear Henrik's apartment in Cairo, and it has felt really good-- and really needed. Erik's done some meditation; I've taken a great, challenging classical yoga class; we've both done a lot of reading and writing. Yesterday we took a beautiful hike up to an alpine meadow at 9325 feet: after 9 kilometers of walking up, we rounded a final bend onto an incredible panorama of looming, snow-covered mountains. We had tried the hike a week earlier and turned around halfway because the sky was black with rain clouds; getting up there on a clear day was wonderful. We've been eating at the same restaurant almost every night: it's such a pleasure at this point not to have to study a menu every time we want to eat, and besides, they have great brownies and lemon cheese cake. Thus fortified, we're ready (we think) to head back into hot, dusty, crazy India tomorrow, and to enjoy our last two weeks as fully as we can.

Darwinian Delhi

2007-04-13T04:09:00.000-07:00

India-whew! In many ways it's appropriate that this is our last new country of the trip, as it seems like we'll have to marshal everything that we've learned about traveling in order to get by here.

Delhi was our first stop in India- admittedly not one its easier cities, with lots of people, traffic, dirt, heat, and general chaos and hassle. Rachel said that India so far feels positively Darwinian, with so many people just struggling to survive.

Any guesses as to which country we've visited most resembles India? Yup, it's Egypt (probably didn't take most of you long). The similarities are multiple: very hot (it's over 100 here) and dry, ridiculous traffic, and almost every interaction being difficult in some way (haggling over the price of transport, trying to stay away from people out to scam tourists, having to have the exact small change for a transaction...). I can see why India has such great spiritual traditions- you need something to take you away from the chaos (and less humorlessly, the poverty) of everyday life here.

On our ride from the airport in an ancient taxi (may have even predated the Cairo dinosaur models), we passed a few cows along the urban roadside on our way to the Gandhi Peace Foundation, where a Servas host Babulal arranged for us to stay. We ate dinner in the "canteen" for about 75 cents each-- here it's common to eat everything (rice, beans, etc.) with your (right) hand, so I gave that a try. We then retired to our room--simple, as fits the Gandhian tradition, but already here I think our standards for what's acceptable have changed. In a place where there are so many people living on the street and in shacks, it's nice to have some privacy, a room and bathroom. From our balcolny we could see (and hear) commuter trains going by, often stuffed with people.

On our first full day in Delhi we visited the National Museum, a mix of some very interesting collections alongside some rooms that looked like they've barely been dusted, much less revised, during the past 50 years. While we were there, the lights would keep going out for periods of a few minutes. We saw the Harappan (Indus Valley) civilization artifacts, contemporary with Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and China; Buddhist and Hindu sculpures that had Barbie beat by thousands of years (most of the women have huge breasts and tiny waists), and finally the miniature paintings of the Mughal era and after. Like the erotic depictions in sculpture, many of the miniatures featured royalty or gods and the trinity of wine, women, and song. The miniatures were painted in exquisite detail- Rachel may have stayed looking at them all day, but we finally tired and left to a downtown commercial center called Connaught Place to check email. Connaught Place is the commercial center of Delhi, and while there are a few new looking boutique and brand stores (Adidas, etc.), many other basic amenities seemed very difficult to locate: we found only one internet cafe in this area, only one pharmacy, no convenience/corner stores, and very few restaurants or even street food vendors. Strange. Other than at a few of the more prominent sights, we also encountered almost no other tourists in Delhi.

Indian food in Delhi has been good but not exceptional, and a little repetitive. Meat is as rare here as anywhere we've been: no beef (Hinduism's sacred cows) or pork (taboo for Muslims), but unlike Indian restaurants at home, no lamb. We also haven't seen any fish so far. Tried some good mughal and tandoori chicken dishes, but the only other meat option seems to be "mutton," which our guidebook says actually means goat and not sheep. Local food in Delhi is very starch-heavy (rice, lentils, breads--many of which are fried, potatoes), with not many vegetables or fruits. While there are lots of interesting spices, the food hasn't been as spicy hot as what we've been used to eating in S.E. Asia. We went to a couple of Southern Indian restaurants in Delhi, which seem to feature different kinds of bread pizzas/tortillas and were mediocre.

Also unlike Indian restaurants at home, finding a beer can be difficult--I believe some entire states in India are dry. Most restaurants in Delhi don't serve beer, and places that do have a sign posted that the drinking age is 25, as well as security/police at the door. To have a beer one night we ended up at a place called Rodeo, where we sat on saddle seats at the bar and were served by waiters in cowboy costume.

On our second day we visited Old Delhi (Delhi/New Delhi aren't really different cities or names for the same city, instead the city of Delhi is composed of (7?) different areas from different time periods). We saw the massive Red Fort, built by Shahjahan in the 16th century, and the Jami Mosque, the largest in India. We were at the mosque in the middle afternoon, and the heat was so intense that after removing our sandals, we literally burned our feet walking on the stones. We climbed up one of the minaret towers for a view of the city. On the way up the tower, we were bullied by people shouting at us to pay to watch our shoes (or, like with "parking attendants" and cars in South Africa, basically paying people not to steal them), which seemed silly. As Rachel pointed out, it's even sillier that people have to sit on the hot roof all day and do this in order to make a living here. Looking out from the tower, there was hardly a tall building in sight. Apparently the areas of Delhi that are seeing a lot of development are further out--two advertised in a newspaper include Nodia and Gurgaon, which seem like enormous planned communities similar to the ones being built in Dubai. India is really trying to sell "medical tourism," or people coming here to have operations done more cheaply than their home countries; and one of these developments includes an entire "MediCity" to cater to these tourists' needs.

Our third day was spent going to the National Gallery of Modern Art, and the impressive Humayun's (one of the Mughal rulers) Tomb. That evening we met up with Jonathan (a friend of my friend Dan Vazquez), a very friendly and interesting guy who has spent 5 years in India. Part of his work here has been with sexual minorities. He told us that the categories of sexual identity are very different here; for example 99% of men who have sex with men are also married to women. Hearing about differences like this often make us think of how little we are scratching the surface of other cultures, based solely on what we're able to perceive as we move around as tourists.

Our last day in Delhi, we splurged for the luxury of hiring a car to drive us to some of the more distant sites. We first visited the Nehru museum and memorial, and next the Indira Gandhi (Nehru's daughter) museum. Visiting a Sufi tomb was difficult--the area was like the worst parts of Egypt and Cairo, so dirty but with so many more people just lying on the ground in awful conditions. After lunch in an ok but pricey Italian restaurant (it's been almost always true on our trip that "foreign" restaurants aren't so much good as just a change of pace) we visited a crafts bazaar, and finally an older suburb with the ruins of an aqueduct in the center.

Despite India being in many ways a socially conservative place, many Indian men seem to have no qualms about harassing women. Many men stare, not just from a distance but crowding around or following us. Rachel has already been grabbed once by one of our rickshaw drivers. Hopefully the stares are all the she has to put up with for the rest of our time here.

India is famous for its bureaucracy, and some of the strangest examples that we've experienced seem to be anti-terrorism measures. For example, you need a copy of your passport, visa, and a passport photo in order to purchase a cell phone simcard (we gave up for now); and to use the internet at a cafe you need a passport/I.D. that the business records, and has to hand over your internet records if requested by the government. Not clear to me how effective these measures are, but they certainly are a hassle.

Leaving Delhi, we caught an early morning train to Amritsar, a gruellingly difficult experience in just getting to the train station and finding our seats. As the train pulled away, we were glad we'd seen what we did of Delhi, but also glad to be leaving the city.

Finding Family in Malaysia

2007-04-11T04:42:00.000-07:00

When Erik lived in the co-op his senior year of college, one of his neighbors and friends was Nat, a friendly, quirky, motivated, very smart student from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Since we were in the neighborhood, relatively speaking, we were thrilled to make a trip from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur to spend a few days with him. We stayed with Nat and his family in their luxe but very homey house, which in itself felt great-- having a place to actually be able to unpack for a few days, and take a bath, and sit around chilling out without having to pay for the privilege is rare for us, and something we've come to value highly. On top of that, his parents, Bob and Sulumari, and sister, Cheryl, were warm and welcoming hosts, and we had a lot of fun spending time with them. We also got to hang out with his girlfriend, Lisin, a journalist. Eating was a central activity for all of us together (which we, obviously, love to do), and they introduced us to the full gamut of Malaysian food: Malay (similar to Indonesian, with lots of rice with different vegetables and sauces), Chinese, and southern Indian. Eating can take up a good percentage of the day in Malaysia, with long lunches, snacky afternoon teas, and late night dinners that can stretch on for hours of chatting (if you can stay awake!). We felt thoroughly spoiled, especially when Sulumari (an expert baker) made us brownies because we said we missed them from home. She put bananas in them, and rich rich chocolate-- delicious. They also had an amazing refrigerator drawer full of fabulous chocolates, which they got out one afternoon to eat as we watched one of my all-time favorite movies, "Fiddler on the Roof". It was one of the nicest days of bumming around we've had all year.

We were lucky to learn a lot about Malaysia in the short time we were there-- exponentially more than we would have learned had we not been staying with Nat and his family. The racial composition of Malaysia is a defining aspect of the country, not least of all because many politicians have, since independence in 1947, manipulated race (and racism) to control the government. The population is approximately 50-60% Malay (almost all of whom are Muslim), 20-30% Chinese (mainly Christian and Buddhist), and 10-20% Indian (mainly Hindu, Muslim, and Christian). Many, if not most, people are mixed, especially if their families have been in the country for more than a couple generations, but the identity cards that all Malaysians have to carry state only a single race (passed on patrilineally) and a single religion. The ruling government, unfortunately, has consistently racialized politics to try to garner favor with the Malay population; a couple of the opposition political parties are similarly race-based. Nat works for a different opposition party, one which stands firmly on a multi-racial platform and which is headed by Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy Prime Minister who is only recently out of jail after spending six years there on spurious charges. (The original charge was sodomy, which is indeed illegal in Malaysia; once that was shown to be too far-fetched for even the biased judges, he was jailed on another charge instead.) This gives a pretty good indication of the condition of opposition parties in Malaysia, which is basically just desperately trying to gain ground in an exceedingly oppressive political environment. The newspapers and other media are connected to the ruling party, which controls 92% of parliament seats as well as the ministries. There is an active community of bloggers, including Nat and Lisin, and apparently they are making the government a bit nervous, as one minister proposed making bloggers register. (The same minister also claimed that 80% of the 10,000 bloggers are "unemployed women" who are bored and trying to stir up trouble.) One night we got to attend a big fundraiser for Nat's party (for which he wrote the opening speech), an event that is much less frequent in Malaysia than in the U.S. Although the speeches were mostly in Malay, with some sprinklings of English (and Chinese), we were still impressed by the strength and charisma of both Nat's boss Tien and Anwar Ibrahim as speakers, and, from what we could understand, by the topics. (It didn't hurt that there was a never-ending supply of yummy Chinese food being served while they talked.) Hanging out with Nat's group of fellow activists and friends at a "mama" (a cheap, indoor-outdoor cafe where people can sit for hours) after the event, we felt similar energy as in our own group of activist-friends in Hartford; if these people have the chance to do their work, it seems like a lot of positive change could come to Malaysia.

On the more touristy side of things, we spent a couple days wandering around downtown Kuala Lumpur, a city fully surrounded by highways going every-which-direction (often without many signs), but with a pleasant and walkable downtown area. The mix of old and new buildings was striking, with mosques, temples, grand colonial buildings, and unusually attractive skyscrapers layered against each other. We were too late to get a ticket up the Petronas towers (the tallest buildings in the world up until a couple years ago), but we did walk around the fancy mall at their base, including a photojournalism exhibit tracing Malaysia's history since independence, and an aquarium with a cool tunnel to walk through with fish and sharks over and around you. We also took a day trip to Melaka, a city 2 hours south of KL, on the famous Strait of Melaka, that has an important history as a port from the days when globalization happened through ships. We went through the state house, which had fun exhibits of pottery and wedding costumes and the like, and through the history museum, which went painstakingly through the Melakan, Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Japanese periods of rule of the city. (The Portuguese-Dutch-English sequence felt very familiar from Ghana, South Africa, Mauritius, and Indonesia!) We met one of Nat's uncles for lunch, the Melaka specialty of chicken-rice balls (as they sound like, they are balls of ground rice flavored and held together with chicken broth-- very tasty). We also toured through the Baba-Nonya house (the male and female names for people of Chinese-Malay heritage), which was filled with outstanding works of embroidery and mother-of-pearl inlaid furniture. Then we headed back to KL, for one last evening with Nat and his family before flying back to Bangkok and on to our last 'new' country of the trip (France doesn't count, since we've been there several times), India.

King Power: Bangkok and the beach

2007-04-05T05:36:00.000-07:00

One omission from the previous Thailand entry is Thailand's obsession with its king and queen, which makes even the British respect for royalty look small. We previously posted the picture of a store full of yellow shirts that read "We Love the King" on the back. Monday, the day the king was born, is the day to wear your yellow shirt, and many, many Thais do so(Friday is the day for a blue shirt in honor of the Queen). Thai Airline's elite membership status is called "King Power", and the king's picture is everywhere: restaurants, public spaces, you name it.

One of the longest-ruling world leaders (I think for over 60 years), the king is a cross-eyed, slight bespectacled man who appears to split his time between living in extreme opulence and going out in his jeep to get in touch with the "rural people" (although that may have been more in the past, as most of the photos and footage of him doing this look at least 20 years old). We went to 2 movies in Bangkok, and before the movie you have to stand to "honor our king" while some sort of anthem and photo montage of happy Thais and the king plays (unclear if this tune doubles as Thailand's national anthem). I guess you could also say it's a little weird to play the U.S. national anthem before a sporting event, but this seems weirder.

Making fun of the royalty is strictly prohibited: Thailand recently shut down the video website Youtube because of a post that "defamed the king." While the royal infatuation strikes us as plain silly, aside from wearing yellow shirts most Thai people seem, like people in most places we've been, pretty much ignore politics completely. The governing politicians aren't much better than the royalty: last fall's military coup has left the billionaire and corrupt former Prime Minister Thaksin as the only opposition (his TV station, the only non-state media channel, has been banned).

So, back to our journeys. After the overnight train from Chiang Mai, we arrived in Bangkok, and proceeded to spend what felt like at least 45 minutes on a city bus through snarling city traffic. Someone told us that 10 years ago Bangkok was like Ho Chi Minh City, with scooters dwarfing the number of cars, but that as the number of cars increased the traffic has gotten much worse. We finally boarded the bus and after a 3 hour ride, a ferry to the island Ko Samet, and a "saganaw" (public transport pick-up truck with seats in the back) ride we arrived at a beach bungalow on a quiet stretch of sand. The island of Ko Samet is a national park, a designation we couldn't quite figure out other than maybe making the beach access public and not allowing big resorts to build there. We spent 3 full days on the beach, and developed a daily routine of walking into town for a "cheap" lunch (usually noodle soup and coconut ice cream) instead of the "expensive" but good restaurant at our bungalow, where main dishes cost about $2. At our bungalow we ate spicy glass noodle salad, green curry, eggplant with soy sauce, shrimp with ginger, and warm coconut milk with bananas for dessert.

Getting back to Bangkok from the beach also involved a lot of sitting in traffic. From the bus stop we took the new skytrain, an elevated train that seems to help some in alleviating traffic, as well as facilitates funneling people into the numerous shopping malls--with their elevated walkways you can go from mall to mall and avoid the street entirely for stretches. After a hot walk, we found a decent place to stay, although with a tiny room. That night we went to a mall food court very different from those in American malls: here the food is fantastic. We had Tom Yum Kung (spicy shrimp and lemongrass soup) and a vegetarian sampler, then mango sticky rice and a sort of sno-cone consisting of sugared fruits topped with shaved ice and condensed milk. We then went to an even fancier mall (Paragon) with an extremely fancy movie theater and watched "The Good Shepherd."

The next day we ventured out into the intense heat and sun to see the sights: the temple Wat Po with a huge reclining Buddha, and the King's palace (which had a bit of a Disneyland feel) including the Emerald Buddha (although I failed to notice it while we were there). From our hotel we took the skytrain and then a public transport boat along the river, both nicer options than being stuck in traffic. Bangkok is a huge city so it takes awhile to get around. It has a very developed, western look to it with lots of gleaming white skyscrapers. Culturally, the mainstream population seems very image-oriented, with enough electronics and lights in the area around the malls that made us think maybe Bangkok is a little like Tokyo. That evening, after getting a skewer of chicken hearts and livers from a street grill, we tried to go to a Muay Thai (kickboxing) fight, but finding the tickets having doubled in price from our guidebook's listing instead took a walk through nearby Limphini Park. Lots of people were exercising (one of the only times of day the hot weather permits this). We also walked through a night market, which had a stage of incredibly bad singers performing.

The next day we went to still more royal sights, this time the Vinamek teak mansion. We expected a dress code (long pants and covered shoulders) for the palace, but were surprised to find the same requirements here as well (they let you borrow the necessary garments). We also walked through Kho San road, the legendary heart of backpacker culture in Bangkok. It probably has an edgier feel at night, but at the time we weren't too impressed. For our last night in Bangkok it was back to the food court and the movie theater, and the next morning we flew to Malaysia (bypassing the long but also troubled overland route, where violence between the Thai government and Muslim separatists has occurred near the Malaysian border).

The Slow Boat to Thailand

2007-03-29T21:53:00.000-07:00

To get from Luang Prabang, Laos, into Thailand, we had a few options: a flight, expensive and not recommended since Laos Air won't release its crash statistics, which are assumed to be high; a rickety, bumpy bus that may or may not have gone the whole way; a fast boat, taking 6 hours, but for which crash helmets and life jackets are mandatory and which kills some people every year; or a slow boat, two 10-hour days on a bench-seated wooden ferry chugging along at a few kilometers an hour. Much preferring slowness to unnecessary danger, we chose the latter option, and though there is no denying that it was not the most scintillating or comfortable way to spend a couple days, there was a quiet beauty in the trip. For the majority of the trip, no road was visible from the Mekong; until recently, the river was the only mode of transport through much of Loas, and in some places it still is. There were occasional villages of stilt-legged wooden houses perched high up the cliffs, with steep sandy paths leading down to the river. We passed groups of people, including children, standing in knee-deep water bowed over large metal trays, sifting for gold. In the rapids that dotted the river there would often be fishermen gathered with poles and nets. Late in the day we saw a solitary elephant bathing near the banks, having seemingly finished a day of pulling logs nearby. A couple times, we passed other ferries (which seems to serve as a houseboat for the families who operate them) moving in the opposite direction, and a couple times the narrow, treacherous speedboats zoomed past. Other than that, though, the river was quiet and empty, save for goats and water buffaloes grazing and wading by the banks. The nights were spent in villages that seem to have their entire economies based on the tourist ferry traffic, with competing grungy guesthouses and unsavory restaurants lining the steets. The second of these was just across the river from Thailand, and in the morning we took a 5 minute ferry across to the border.

Northwestern Thailand is renowned as an area of great beauty, with lush rolling hills. Unfortunately, at this time of year (the hottest and driest), all we could do was try to imagine what it would look like, because everywhere we could see was dusty and desiccated. The air was still slightly smokey, although nowhere near as bad as it had been a week ealier (like in Luang Prabang), when forest fires and human-set fires were raging and smog levels were dangerously high. We took a bus from the border to Chiang Rai, a small, nondescript town (maybe also pretty in the right season) with a very laid-back atmosphere. Our friend Mark, from Bali/Singapore, was there with some other friendly, artsy, adventurous people he had met, and we found all of them at their guesthouse-- a place with a pool, wonderful in the heat, that was a clear magnet for the aging hippy ex-pats (many of them with Thai wives) that northern Thailand is known for. The weather and the profusion of unappealing tourist agencies combined to quell our ambitions to go hiking, and we spent much of our time just hanging out with everyone-- two women from Belgium, one from Finland, one from Germany, two men from Oregon, and Mark. Our favorite spot in town was the night market, which had tons of yellow metal tables jammed together in font of a stage (sponsored by Singha Beer) where a constant stream of dancers (some women and some men in drag) and ballad-crooning singers performed. Although it seemed that most of the tourists in town were hanging out at the market, we were collectively vastly outnumbered by locals, which is always an important indication of quality as far as food as concerned. And the food was delicious-- we tried as much as we could stomach from among the 100+ stalls, our favorite dish being a sweet-spicy-sour noodle soup called kaow soi that is typical of the region. There was a stall specializing in bugs, which Erik of course had to try, so we had a little plate of fried worms and crickets and really freakin' huge cockroaches; the woman selling them said not to eat the head, but Erik didn't see why, and at it anyway. (No bad results so far...). It was funny to see the cockroach next to a shrimp, because they really don't look that different, but that rationalization still didn't bring me any closer to tasting the bugs. After our nightly stuffings at the market, we would usually head over to Teepee Bar, a teeny place lined with punk and heavy metal posters, decorated with random bicycle parts, and with two bunnies who ran around as they wished on the upper balcony. We did manage to take in a little bit of "culture" as well, visiting a shocking, blindingly glittery white temple under construction just out of town. The inside walls of the temple were also unique; in addition to the standard images of Buddha, there were murals with dark warnings about modern life: gas pumps leading into the World Trade Center towers, nuclear rockets sporting Pepsi logos, and a tiny Superman looking sadly helpless in the midst of it all.

After a couple days, the Chiang Rai group headed off in different directions, and we left with Mark and Molla (the Finnish woman) for Chiang Mai, Thailand's second largest city, a few hours south. Erik's and my main activity there was to take a one day cooking class, held at the home of, and partially taught by, a popular TV chef. The class was a lot of fun; we made 6 different dishes and had to eat each one, making us totally stuffed. The cooking highlight for me was learning to make our own curry paste in the morning; we mashed roasted spices and herbs using a mortar and pestle, and learned how to preserve the paste as well so it will be feasible to make it at home. But the coolest aspect of the day was not the cooking itself, but a wacky and wonderful coincidence: as we chatted with one of the other women in the class, we figured out that she lives a couple doors down from my Aunt Jill in Phildelphia! Small world. After class, we met up with a woman from Servas, an Australian who has been living in Chiang Mai as an AIDS education volunteer for two years. After drinks with her, we met again with Mark and Molla, and managed despite our fullness to eat some more mango sticky rice, the food highlight of Chiang Mai. (The sticky rice is slightly salty, and topped with the stunningly sweet mango and creamy coconut milk, the combination is indescribably delicious.) Mark and Molla headed off to Bangkok early the next morning. After spending a couple hours in the cheesy but sweet city museum and puttering around a bit, we did the same, being shaken around like martinis in our little bitty bunks on the overnight train.

Laos: Where are we?

2007-03-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

After hearing that the bus was an excruciating ride, we decided to fly from Hanoi to the capital of Laos, Vientiane, a strange-feeling and sleepy city on the banks of the Mekong. Leaving the airport, we saw the locals unloading from their version of public transport: people packed tightly into the back of a large flat bed truck. We found another American couple (James and Ewa) to share a minibus ride into town, and found out that they were from Stamford, CT, and that Ewa had immigrated with her family from Poland to New Britain, CT! Our most local connection (in terms of people we've met) in one of the places that seems farthest from anywhere. Vietnam and now Laos also have had by far the largest number of American travelers of any countries we've visited on the trip.

Laos is a place that we've heard people describe as "what Thailand used to be like." Since the Communist takeover in 1973?, it has been a very closed society, which apparently has loosened/opened somewhat during the last decade, especially in terms of tourism and marginally in terms of economic development. That the country's primary economic goal is to crawl out of the U.N. category of "Least Developed Country" by 2020 gives a good indication of its current state. In contrast to the noisiness and crowded conditions of Vietnam, Laos seems quiet, sleep, and empty (granted we were there on a weekend, but the central area of Vientiane seemed depopulated aside from tourists). If I squinted my eyes, I could almost picture an American cityscape: mostly cars instead of scooters on wide roads with wide, empty sidewalks.

After a bit of a search (several accomodations were full, and there seemed to be a good number of tourists around), we found a nice guesthouse, thankfully air conditioned given the heat and humidity, and joined James and Ewa for a riverfront meal after we'd withdrawn from one of the only international ATMs in Laos. The next day, after breakfast at one of the French bakeries, we went to the Laos National Museum. There were some interesting history exhibits, but we thought about something that has struck us at many of the museums we've visited on the trip: how poorly presented and preserved the contents are. It seems like there should be clear opportunities for international collaboration especially in the realm of preservation/physical space maintanence (we imagine foreigners having a role in the content to be a more complicated issue than preservation). Security was also an issue for this museum, as they currently displayed a collection of small gold Buddhas that had been stolen and then recovered several years ago inside of a hulking cage of iron bars that obscured most of the statues.

In the museum's section on the U.S. "secret war" in Laos (during the Vietnam War), it was funny to see the word "imperialist" always follow a mention of the U.S. in photo captions, as in "the U.S imperialist weapon supply." One of the best presented exhibits of the museum was in fact a collaboration between Laos and the Netherlands, detailing a representative of the Dutch East India Company and his travels in Laos in the 1600s. Those Dutch were everywhere during that time period! From home in Hartford to so many other places we've visited: Ghana, South Africa, Mauritius, Indonesia.

Later that day I got a haircut, and then went to a meditation sitting and herbal sauna/massage at a nearby temple, while Rachel went to a spa in town. We met up with James and Ewa that night to drink some green beer for St. Patrick's Day at a local rooftop bar; the waiter brought the bottle of food coloring and squeezed a few drops into our glass before pouring the bottle of beer. We went home after the bar, declining a local's invitation to join him at a club at the recently constructed (by the Chinese) 14-story luxury hotel on the river.

The next day we took the day-long bus to Luang Prabang, a former capital of Laos. Dubbed the "VIP Bus," some buses were double-decker and painted with scenes from the Little Mermaid and said "King of Bus" on the front windshield. We had to settle for a brightly colored bus with purple floral print curtains, but it did come with an unadvertized guard carrying a machine gun, the first time we've had that anywhere. We drove through very primitive looking villages, the houses either wooden or thatched roofs and reed mat sides. We saw huge water buffalos, goats, and small black pigs along the road, as well as a motorized cart vehicle that had a small engine on the front axle and a steering mechanism that made the driver look like someone using a push lawnmower.

The air quality has been really bad in the region due to many fires (mostly from slash and burn agriculture--we saw from the bus a lot of banana trees planted in burned off areas--but also forest fires); some parts of northern Thailand have been designated disaster areas. At one point on the bus ride we were so close to a fire that we felt intense heat for a few seconds passing through. Sadly, as we were already anxious for the bus ride to be over as we neared Laung Prabang (LP), the bus was involved in an accident (not the driver's fault) where one scooter hit another scooter and one of the scooter drivers was knocked into the bus. He was still alive and taken to a hospital.

At our guesthouse in LP, we met another American couple, Zach and Gemma from the Bay area. The next day we visited the Royal Palace, which in addition to stunning glass mosaics, featured state gifts from other countries to Laos (moon rocks from the U.S.). There was also a great contemporary art exhibit with Western artists collaborating with Lao artists in many different media.

The following day, after breakfast at a western coffeehouse that could have been anywhere, the 6 of us Americans took a tuk-tuk (3-wheeled vehicle made from a motorcycle front and two benches with a roof on back) to a nearby waterfall. This is supposed to by the hottest time of the year as well as the driest (the rainy season starts in May), so we figured the waterfall would be a great way to cool off. As we approached however, the sky kept getting darker and darker, and when we finally hiked up to the waterfall the rain poured down in a terrific storm, leaving us drenched and shivering but laughing as we rode back and the rain stopped. The 6 of us had a nice dinner that night, and the next day Rachel and I set off on the slow boat to the Thai border.

Don't Blink: HCMC to Hanoi in a Week

2007-03-15T04:21:00.000-07:00

Having arrived yesterday in Vientiane, Laos' sleepy, eerily quiet capital city, we're feeling even more aware of the bustle and buzz that defined the cities large and small that we visited in Viet Nam-- the noise of traffic and vendors and conversations, the swarms of people everywhere,the rush of scooters and bicycles and cars. Added to this the fact that we were moving from one place to another daily or every other day, and our time in Viet Nam takes on the quality of a movie or song played at high speed-- but a great movie, a favorite song, enjoyable even if there's not enough time to fully appreciate it.

We made our way from HCMC north to Hanoi on a hop on/hop off tourist bus, run by one of many identical companies with identical itineraries. We chose it because it was by far the easiest way to get from one place to another in the limited time we had-- using local transportation can easily double the amount of time it takes to get from place to place-- but the trade-off was that we never got even slightly off the tourist trail (which is much, much bigger in Vietnam than we had expected). But of course, even the most touristy places were new to us, and we really enjoyed seeing them.

Our first couple stops, where we spent all day (or night) on the bus and had only a couple hours to poke around, were nothing special. We enjoyed hanging out in the market in the highland town of Dalat-- it was Women's Day,and families were out in force, eating at the several dozen food stalls serving pho bo (beef noodle soup) or big bowls of unflavored steamed snails. We ate with a friendly, if dazed, hippy from New York who had spent the last month at the Rainbow Festival in Thailand, wandered around a bit, and fell into bed. The next day, we had a couple hours in the late afternoon on the beach in Nha Trang, where we gave in to persistent pestering from a woman selling lobsters and let her grill a small one for us-- tough and short on meat, no match for a New England lobster. (Which reminds me that baseball season is about to begin... hooray! Which reminds me that we'll be home soon... hooray again!)

From Nha Trang we suffered through an overnight bus ride dominated by a couple of obnoxious English and Irish guys who kept turning on the lights and talking loudly while everyone was sleeping, and putting their feet on our seats. But arriving in Hoi An, a beautiful, interesting little city with a UNESCO-preserved Old Town, pushed them quickly out of mind. We spent the morning wandering around the Old Town, where almost all of the buildings are painted sunflower-yellow and one ticket gains you entrance to a range of sweet little attractions: a museum in an old wooden house displaying ceramics from the area's long history of trade, a Chinese/Japanese house with exquisite furniture lived in currently by the 7th generation of the same family, a Cantonese temple where a pig offering had just been put at the altar, a Japanese covered bridge. The city is also famous for its silk, with both lantern- making and tailoring as specialties of the residents. (How could Mia and I NOT have had silk dresses made to order, for a price that would have bought two hot dogs at Fenway Park?) That afternoon, we chartered a car out to My Son, an area of ruins from the Cham kingdom, which ruled much of Viet Nam from the 2nd to 16th centuries. One of the most striking aspects of the site was the fact that a number of important, well-preserved buildings had been destroyed by American bombs during the war-- they could survive for 1500 years, and then be ruined just like that. Of the buildings that were still somewhat intact,my favorite part was the Hindu carvings and sculptures that decorated them-- elephants, coconut trees, and quite prominent giant phalluses.

We had to say goodbye to Mia the next morning, so she could continue north in time to catch her flight back to Denmark. But Erik and I spent the day-- a poignant and in some ways terrible one-- at Son My, a couple hours outside Hoi An and the site of the My Lai massacre. The visit started with a video, which described life in the region before and during the war, then went into the horrific details of the massacre itself. Son My (a village of four hamlets, only one of which was actually called My Lai, but which the American soldiers referred to as My Lai 1-4) was believed, on scanty to no evidence, to be a hot-bed of anti-American activity. It seems more accurate that the people left behind in the village (the men always had to fight, on one side or the other), while probably not fans of the Americans who were bombing their land and killing their compatriots, were only actively engaged in trying to survive through the war. Regardless, the American in charge of the area, Lt. Calley, gave his troops the order to kill and destroy everyone and everything. Reduced to numbers, this came down to 504 people murdered, including 56 infants under 5 months old, 117 children, 182 women (including 17 pregnant women), and 60 men over 60 years old.

Much of this we knew, and were, in some way, prepared for. What got me more deeply about the site was all that we didn't know. The video, for example, focused on two American heroes I had never heard of, officers named Thompson and Colburn. Thompson was the commander of a helicopter who saw soldiers killing villagers and burning the village. He tried to get them to stop, and they told him to mind his own business. He got in his helicopter, and as he flew over the area saw a group of 10 villagers running away from a couple soldiers who were trying to kill them. He landed and ordered his gunner, Colburn, to point his gun at the soldiers, opening fire if they approached the villagers. Then he loaded the villagers onto the chopper and brought them a few miles to safety. These two men saved 10 of the 18 people from Son My who survived that day. What happened to Thompson? He was excoriated by the military, sent hate mail by the public (while Calley was lauded and, although sentenced to life in prison for his actions at My Lai, was pardoned by Nixon and never served any time), and became so depressed that he drank himself to death. There was one beautiful scene in the video, though, where Thompson and Colburn returned to Son My for a ceremony at the site, and were then reunited with the people they had saved, everyone too choked up to speak. The site itself was also very powerful. Next to the museum and a large statue were the remains of one of the hamlets: the foundations of burned houses, with a list of the family members who had been killed; bunkers where families had tried to hide before soldiers threw grenades into them; the ditch where 75 people had been systematically shot, after all the women and girls had been raped. The woman who guided us around this area had lost her grandfather and two uncles in the massacre. As we walked away from the ditch, she pointed at an old woman who was squatting cutting grass right near it, and told us that the woman was one of the 18 survivors-- she had lived because she was hidden under the corpses in the ditch, by some luck not having been shot.

The stories and images from Son My did not, of course, leave our minds during the rest of our time in Viet Nam, and never will. But one of the surprises for us in Viet Nam was how non-dominant the American War is in terms of the culture and longer history of the country. I think "Vietnam" has come to have such specific and multi-layered meanings for us at home-- a sort of code word for so many things-- that somehow I hadn't quite realized that it was also a real, living place. But it is-- I'd say one of the most vibrant, energized places we've been. The proud earlier history was on display at our next stop, the city of Hue, which used to be the governing seat of the emperors. There is a walled citadel enclosing the well-preserved (formerly) forbidden city of palaces and pagodas, and along the river, for many kilometers, are spread the emperors' tombs. We took a slow, quiet boat trip one day, which went from tomb to tomb (only one of which we paid to get into, having heard that they are all quite similar) and also to a beautiful monastery, which had been the home of one of the monks who burned himself in the street in opposition to President Diem in the early 1960s. We also tried another fabulous new food (I'd have to vote for Vietnamese as my favorite cuisine of the trip so far), rice-based globby things with shrimp steamed inside banana leaves, one type soft and almost drinkable, the other type chewy like Turkish delight.

From Hue, we headed to our last stop in Viet Nam, Hanoi. We were a bit worn out by this point and didn't make it to everything on our list, but still got a good taste of the city. It's smaller and less modern feeling than HCMC, but feels even more ridiculously busy traffic-wise, maybe because the streets are narrower and the sidewalks have even less (as in, no) walking space, they're so filled with soup stands and scooters and people drinking coffee. We spent a morning at the (imho) ridiculously overwrought mausoleum for Ho Chi Minh, a place where officious guards make you stand in line 2 by 2 and bare shoulders are not allowed (it felt like Vatican City, a place I find similarly uncomfortable and kind of gross). It was interesting to watch the many Vietnamese people visiting, as it did seem like a pilgrimage for many of them, with children in their best dresses and old people supported by a child on either side. The feeling of farce won out, though, when a soldier standing guard at the exit to the tomb room grabbed my butt as I walked out. (We furiously reported the incident to the office, where people said disciplinary measures would be taken, but I have my doubts....)

On the nicer side, Hanoi has a lovely lake right in its center, offering needed respite from the noise all around. The opera house, in bright yellow with gleaming white columns, was beautiful, and it was fun to see crowds of brides and grooms and their families gathered on the steps, trying not to get in each other's photos. There was a cool ethnology museum, with displays about several of the different ethno-linguistic groups in Viet Nam, as well as a really interesting room reflecting on the difficulties and tragedies of the 11 years, 1975-86, the country spent under total state control. We ate more awesome food at one of a few restaurants where former street and very poor children are trained to be chefs and waiters, and later placed in full-time jobs in the business. My favorite thing, though, was probably the water puppet show we spent an hour watching. Hidden behind a set, puppeteers hip-deep in water sent colorful, animated wooden puppets out to process, dance, and play in the water stage. In one number, a lone stilt-legged bird stalked through the water, followed by a meditative lute-playing farmer riding a water buffalo; in another, huge fish jumped and flopped around while a fisherman jumped up and down, haplessly trying to catch them before putting his basket over another fisherman's head instead; in another,fire-breathing dragons took center stage. The show was peaceful and chaotic, traditional and wildly energetic; just, in our little experience, like Viet Nam.

Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh (City)

2007-03-06T02:50:00.000-08:00

The chorus to Vietnam's rousing national anthem is "Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh (repeat)", and our first stop in Vietnam was Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in 1975 in honor of "Uncle Ho". We didn't have much of a mental image of Vietnam apart from movie and photo images of the war. It turns out Vietnam isn't that small (bigger land area than Italy), and certainly doesn't have a small population: 80 million, more than double that of 1975. HCMC is hot and fairly humid, but the land around is dry and the grass brown--not the tropical green vegetation we pictured (the image of the whole country as jungle from Vietnam movies).

Vietnam is the first country we've been in since Ghana where traffic drives on the right-hand side, and also the first country (not counting Singapore) back in the Northern Hemisphere since Ghana. Vietmam is the first "socialist" country we've ever been in, but you'd hardly know it from the feel of the chic streets in downtown HCMC--it feels nothing like our image of a drab, colorless, and consumer goods-short Soviet Socialism. Some of the evidence for something called socialism still existing here includes propaganda billboards that look like they could have come from Moscow in the 1920s or a Mexican mural in the 1950s, featuring smiling workers and peasants standing shoulder to shoulder, a dove flying overhead and the symbol of the atom floating nearby.

Today socialist Vietnam subsidizes 40% of the cost of gasoline, but most people aren't putting it in cars, as it also imposes a whopping 200% tax (even more than Denmark's 180%!)on every car purchased. Subsequently, there are lots and lots of scooters: 4 million of them (1 for every 2 people) in HCMC alone. All of these scooters make for an interesting traffic experience: despite being chaotic, the traffic is actually easier to walk through than a place like Cairo (now always the point of reference in matters like these), since the scooters can maneuver around us as we slowly cross the street. Riding in a car is a little more nerve-wracking, as the sides of the roads are always taken up by bikes and scooters, and cars are continually rushing to pass the truck or bus ahead of them so that it often ends up looking like a game of chicken on narrow 2 lane roads but somehow all works out without too many accidents.

We've also observed that scooters can be transformed into pretty much anything: places for people to sleep on top of as they balance against a wall, as well as a place for young couples to sit together in the park at night (who we guess are otherwise living with their parents). We did have one negative scooter encounter when one ran a red light and hit me on the arm; fortunately I was unhurt, but the collision was enough to knock him off his scooter.

Women riding scooters are clothed in gloves, face masks (which seem like more of a cultural thing than health, as the air quality doesn't seem as bad here as others), and hats. Like many other places, there's very little room available to walk on the sidewalks- mostly taken up by parked scooters, but also all kinds of food and other vendors. Pirate copies of books (the first time we've seen these!) are hawked everywhere- always the same Lonely Planet guides, best sellers and countercultural titles.

On our first day in HCMC we got a massage at the Vietnamese Traditional Medicine Institute from blind masseuses. From the similarity of their appearance with photos we saw in museums, we wondered if they were blind from Agent Orange exposure. Walking around that night we passed the local version of Times Square--huge ads for cell phones and electronic companies in brilliantly lit screens. Many of the buildings look new, with colorful and funky-designed facades.

The next day we took a tour bus to the Cu Chi Tunnels 70 km northwest of HCMC, used by Viet Cong guerillas and the local population from the war against the French and then the Americans. 16,000 Vietnamese people lived in the tunnels in those years, and 12,000 died. On the way there we passed rice fields (Vietnam is the second largest exporter of rice in the world, after Thailand), rubber tree plantations, and water buffalo. We didn't expect all the tourists who were there visiting the tunnels, but it was still an interesting site. We watched a Vietnamese propaganda film from 1967 lauding Cu Chi locals as "American killer heroes" and referring to American soldiers as "devils". We saw large craters from B-52 bombs, and various bamboo traps used against the Americans. There was a shooting range where you can fire automatic weapons--we passed. One stretch of tunnel was widened so that larger Westerners can crawl through it. While it was less than 5 minutes, the experience was intense: much of it completely dark and very small. Hard to imagine what crawling through it would feel like with the knowledge that others are there trying to kill you.

In the afternoon we visited the Reunification Palace. Rebuilt on the site of the French Palace, which was bombed by counter-Diem (the U.S. puppet president of South Vietnam) forces in 1960, the Palace housed the South Vietnamese government until North Vietnamese tanks rolled through the gates and "liberated" the city in 1975. We had a nice guided tour, and saw some of the signs of the corrupt and hated Diem's pleasure-rooms, including a gambling room with psychedelic portrait of Jim Morrison, a red plush cinema, and the top floor which was designed as a meditation space but converted by Diem in a discotheque.

That night our Danish friend Mia (who we'd met in Egypt) arrived, and we went out to dinner at a chaotic restaurant where your order is prepared by different chefs at a number of specialized food stands. The next day the three of us went to the War Remnants Museum, a great collection of intense photos and artifacts. It featured exhibits on the effects of Agent Orange on mainly the Vietnamese population but also on American soldiers, the massacres of My Lai and (Phan Huong?), the latter led by Senator Bob Kerrey, and a large and moving exhibit on war photographers and their role. We felt like every American should see this museum and these photos, and that it only cemented the outrage at America's needless war.

That afternoon we visited the Jade Pagoda, which was a baroque combination of Buddhist, Hindu and Catholic images and offerings. For lunch we had terrific shrimp pancakes wrapped in greens and dipped in fish sauce (see photos), while for dinner we splurged and ate at a nicer French restaurant. The next morning we boarded our bus for the journey to Dalat.

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Hungry Singapore Nights

2007-03-05T04:14:00.000-08:00

Or night, more accurately. Before coming to Singapore, we had only two associations with that teeny-tiny but totally packed city-state: the hyper-strict society that caned an American 15 or so years ago, and the name on the tag of lots of cheap manufactures. In our 20-hour stint there, we saw some hints of those, but also experienced a bright and vibrant global city.

We met up with our Irish friend Mark, from Bali, at a hostel in Singapore's Little India neighborhood. Walking in around 5, we couldn't see what the name was all about, but when we left the hostel at 7 to see the town, the area around us had been transformed into a different world. The narrow streets were packed to the gills with men (literally, only men) from southern India-- eating from stands serving Indian pancakes and chickpeas, standing in groups in the street talking, praying in the temple, sitting at plastic tables drinking tall beers-- and Mark, who had come from India before going to Indonesia, said it felt like a piece of Mumbai. We wriggled our way through the crowd to the subway, which, in itself, was pretty technologically cool. (The single-use tickets are sturdy plastic, which open the gate via a scanner, and come with a refundable deposit to ensure recycling, and the announcements of stations are impeccably audible.) The reputation for order and strictness was also in evidence: there was a looping video showing a simulation of what a Singapore subway bombing would be like and giving explicit instructions to passengers on how to avoid such situations; more lightly, there were signs at all the entrances saying "No Durians". (Tangent #2: A durian is one of the weirder tropical fruits we've eaten. It's the size of a coconut, but covered with short, sharp spikes; you really wouldn't want one to fall out of a tree on you. It smells like a mango slowly rotting in the midst of a garbage heap, a scent which not only carries across a room but also leaves its trace on anything it touches-- hence the subway ban. The edible part is a thin layer of slimy coating on the mouse-sized seeds. We also tried some rather more easily enjoyed fruits lately: rambutans, which are like lychees; mangosteens, which have a purple skin and almond-like seeds shaped in a flower; and salak, with a snakeskin-pattern rind and a pear-apple taste.) Anyway, point was, we got on the subway in India, and got off, it seemed, in China.

Ethnic Chinese make up almost 77% of the population of Singapore, so the Chinatown there is not the residential center for the community, as it has traditionally been in American Chinatowns. However, it definitely felt like the cultural and culinary center for Chinese in the city. From the subway, we came out onto a market street lined with tent-roofed stores selling red-tasseled lanterns, gaudy pink stuffed animals, and multi-colored sequined bags. The next street (the one we had been eagerly awaiting) was lined entirely with food stalls. We walked up and down the row, perusing our myriad options; then we dove in and feasted. Two choices had been recommended to us as Singapore specialties, a delicious barbecued stingray and rather slimy but generously filled oyster omelette. In addition, we had bitter greens sauteed with chilis, steamed buns filled, respectively, with pork, lotus paste, and red bean paste, and a wonton soup that was by far the most delicious I have ever tasted-- a rich, sour/bitter/spicy/sweet broth with thick, chewy, flavorful dumplings. Mmmm. We washed it down with weak but suitably-beerlike Tiger Ale, gaped at the flourescent parade celebrating the last night of Chinese New Year, then waddled our way back to Little India and went to bed.

In the morning, we said goodbye to Mark (but with the happy possibility of meeting agin in Thailand or Cambodia), then headed back to the airport for our third country in two days. Singapore was not a stop we had planned, but it was a thoroughly delicious one.

Beautiful Bali: Beach/Volcano/Beach

2007-03-02T21:36:00.000-08:00

We left Ubud for Lovina, a small town on the beach in the north of Bali. The bus went up and up and up volcanic mountains (the landscape was a little similar to southern Mexico), and then down to the coast. In Lovina, we stayed at Gede's Homestay (which I think just means that the owners live in the hotel), a basic beachfront place. The super-frienldy owner Gede was a local fisherman for 30 years, and has owned the homestay for 15, in which time he's learned to speak English (a process which we've heard so many people are able to do, still seems pretty impressive to us to just pick up a language from tourists). Because of the volcanic rock, Lovina has a black sand beach, the first of those we've ever seen. It also has a beautiful horizon, one that seems very flat and seems to spread out continually with beautiful low lines of clouds.

In addition to our stomachs having to readjust to developing world bacteria in Bali, another readjustment we've had to make after our South Africa to New Zealand developed world hiatus is our status as walking ATMs in the eyes of the local population. Everyone is trying to sell us something, and although people usually leave us alone after we say no a few times, a few are annoyingly persistent. At the same time that it's an unpleasant interaction/feeling for us, we also recognize that tourism is how people here live (again like other places we've seen, outside of agriculture there seem to be no jobs besides tourism). And targeting tourists as a means to make a living in Bali seems to have taken on a mood of desperation, as tourism has declined significantly since the bombings (one Australian woman we met said that there were more tourists here when she came 25 years ago than there are today). One sign in a hotel window read "Don't Let the Terrorist Win: Come Back to Bali" while a cruder t-shirt version read "Fuck Terrorist."

In Lovina we met Michael from Germany and Mark from Ireland, and the four of us signed up to go fishing. We set out with a fisherman (Gede's nephew) at 6:30 am in a narrow wooden boat with supports on each side. As we headed out to sea, we marveled at the beautiful mountains of Bali behind us. On the water we saw some amazing small flying fish, which looked a little like humming birds, that would zip along just above the water for what seemed like really long distances. The process of fishing consisted of the boat going to different spots marked with floating stations, throwing out jugs with a line and hook attached, and also trawling a line wrapped around a spool. While we never had a bite on the trawling lines, we caught one smaller grouper and one large Mahi-Mahi (see photos) on the jugs. Another highlight of the outing was seeing dozens of dolphins swimming and jumping nearby, including a few who swam right beside the boat for a short time. We returned about 11 am, and later (thankfully) that afternoon the skies opened up in a huge rainstorm, which we would experience many more times in Bali. That night we enjoyed the Mahi Mahi, which Gede had barbecued for us.

We left Lovina with Mark, heading towards the Gunang Batur volcano. We were dropped at the town of Penelokan, at the top of the ridge, and after walking around a little and getting hassled a lot, we spotted another couple who had just arrived--Steven and Ana from Holland--and all went together to a hotel in a village at the bottom of the valley. After more hassle from the hotel trying to sell us their exorbitantly-priced volcano hike, we followed the guidebook's suggestion and walked to the official hiking office to book for the next day. As the rain came that afternoon, we sat around the hotel talking and then went to bed early in preparation for our hike the next day.

Like Mt. Sinai in Egypt, the volcano hike is timed so that you can see the sunrise, which means that the 5 of us had to start at the unfortunate time of 4 am (the leftover bumper bar from N.Z. came in handy). We followed a guide up the side of the volcano, some of which was level and relatively easy but some very rocky and steep, which was difficult to navigate given that we were half asleep and didn't have enough flashlights to go around. But we made it to the main observation point and sat there with a few other groups of tourists, enjoying the spectacular view of the island of Lombok in the distance and the taller volcano Gunang Anung across from us despite that fact that the sunrise was obscured by a few clouds. We then hiked a little further to the very top, where except for a small store and owner we were all alone with our guide, looking down into the steaming crater, out over the black lava flow and over much of Bali. At the top, our guide cooked us eggs and bananas in the steam from the volcano. We then started our descent, part of which included "skiing" in stretches of black sand. We felt great arriving back at the hiking office around 10 am. It was an awesome experience and amazingly beautiful--see all the photos we took!

After a second breakfast at the hotel, we packed up and the 5 of us headed to the beach at Pading Bai, an even smaller town than Lovina in the south of Bali, and the ferry port for Lombok. Rachel and I hadn't planned to come here, but both Mark and Steven and Ana had been and enjoyed it, so we decided to check it out. Mark and Steven and Ana both had planned to move on the next day, but luckily for us they decided to stick around, and the 5 of us had a great time lounging on the beach but mostly eating, drinking, and talking in the local restaurants. They're all really interesting and friendly people; Irish Mark from is a chef, and Dutch Steven and Ana (via Portugal) are an architect and artist. Steven spent time in Indonesia before and speaks Indonesian, which also came in handy a few times. Although there were a few incredibly pushy massage women, overall Pading Bai was much more low key and low hassle than Lovina. We stayed in a nice garden bungalow (although unfortunately we found evidence of a rodent staying with us a well, who apparently stole one of my soaps). Some mornings were sunny and most afternoons were rainy, including one terrific storm where we sat in the beachfront restaurant drinking beer and jumping at the booming thunder.

Overall we stayed 4 nights in Pading Bai, with Steven and Ana staying 3 and Mark 4 also. It was great to hang out with people and have a very slow pace for awhile. The most exciting thing we saw in Pading Bai were beautiful processions of people to a local Hindu temple, with people dressed in white tops and multi-colored sarongs. We left Pading Bai on Saturday, March 3, and came to Ubud, where I'm writing this blog, for a little end-of-Bali eating and shopping. On our van ride here was a couple from Ostrava, Czech Republic! (Where one of the Partnership churches is located, and where Rachel attended the conference in 2001 and we both visited in 2002.) For lunch today in Ubud we took Mark's suggestion for a Babi Guling (suckling pig) restaurant--it was incredible! (unfortunately no photos) We saw a whole roasted pig being carried into the kitchen. Really juicy, flavorful meat, pork rind, blood sausage, and a few other tasty pieces we couldn't name but loved eating. From here we'll catch a van to the airport tomorrow morning, then on for one night in Singapore tomorrow night (where we plan to meet up with Mark), and then to Vietnam!

Meeting Bali

2007-02-21T22:43:00.000-08:00

We've been in Bali, Indonesia's small but oh-so-famous island, for a little less than a week now; but in that time, we have gotten rich, enticing tastes of many aspects of this beautiful place: the art and music and dance, the landscape, the food. It didn't start out so wonderful. We arrived in Kuta, a crowded, cheap-feeling resort town where RipCurl and Billabong stores line the main street and stalls selling vulgar t-shirts and low-quality clothes line the alleys. Needless to say, we weren't planning on spending much time there, just stopping for a night because of its convenience to the airport. Our plan was foiled, though, by the fact that our luggage had apparently liked Sydney (where we had a stopover on the way out of New Zealand) and decided to stay there. So until it arrived, which turned out to be two full days later, we were stuck. Not wanting to hang out at the beach in my underwear, which was all I had for a swimsuit, we spent much of our time at the hotel pool instead, which was beautifully set in a lush garden. We also walked around the town, as much as we could stand. We stared at the ground a lot, watching out for the daily offerings of flowers, food, and incense within a palm leaf that Hindus (the majority in Bali) set out on the ground each morning-- one of many ways in which mundane things are made beautiful here. We also visited the stark and moving memorial to the 200+ victims of the nightclub bombings that terrorized Kuta in 2002.

Finally getting our bags and leaving Kuta, we headed for Ubud, a small, artsy inland city that feels a little like Northampton. Here, unlike Kuta, the reason that so many people we respect got googly-eyed when talking about their own trips to Bali became much clearer. Ubud attracts a lot of tourists, meaning that there are of course a lot of touts; it is impossible to walk down the street without every 3 meters having hopeful voices ask, "Transport? Taxi?" while miming steering a scooter. But "no, thank you" is accepted with a smile, unlike in Egypt (although here they'll usually say, still hopeful, "Maybe tomorrow?"), and the high-intensity, jumbled, colorful beauty of the town more than compensates for any annoyance.

Ubud is known particularly as a center for the arts, and we have enjoyed exploring that side of it. We visited two museums, one noticeably better funded than the other, but both quite delightful and interesting with their collections of both traditional and more recent Balinese paintings and sculptures. The traditional works center around the great Indian epics and stories of the Hindu gods, and are rendered in extraordinary detail-- reading the paragraph-length captions accompanying the pictures gave us some idea of what was going on, but the artists always showed much more than was described. Many of the more recent pieces from the 60s and after, called "Young Style", were influenced by the presence of various European artists in Ubud, some of whom stayed here permanently. Some were described as having a "Western aesthetic," mostly for the use of perspective and, sometimes, the focus on one or two characters instead of many. But they also had a very distinct look from any European art we've seen, with an often extraordinary use of pattern, detail, and color. All three of those elements seem to be a central part of the visual life here: the shops spill over with gorgeous (sometime, er, irresistible) batik fabrics and clothes, which are also worn by people visiting the temples and the women who carry baskets full of offerings on their heads. There was rarely a painting of people that did not include representation of the fabric of their sarongs.

Besides the museums, we also took in two performances. The first was a series of traditional dances, accompanied by 15 or so musicians playing traditional (clangy, I have to say, to my ears) instruments. Some of the dances, mostly involving two or more female performers wearing tightly-wrapped silk bodices and skirts, would have been entertainments for a king in his palace. One, a warrior dance, would have been done at ceremonies to extol the virtues of Balinese-style manliness. (It was interesting for us to think about how this dance, which celebrated dexterity and fine movements, would have been different if it were an American warrior dance!) The most amazing thing about the dances was the incredible control the dancers had over every part of their body. They would hold their ring-fingers at impossible angles while quick-stepping their feet, always in a forward bended squatting position, and then move their eyeballs purposefully and keep their eyes open to painful-looking sizes. The next night was quite a different scene, as we went to a shadow-puppet show. We couldn't follow the story much, as the only bit in English was the occasional joke (including one with a puppet named Monica Lewinsky who has another puppet kind of drooling all over her, who then invites her for a honeymoon in Iraq... no, how about Bali instead... odd, no?). But it was cool to see the outlines the metal puppets made, backed by a glowing flame.

Although the main streets of Ubud are quite busy with traffic, not far off them are dirt roads, often narrowing into stone or dirt paths that lead through rice paddies to people's homes. We walked along two of those, one climbing gently along a ridgeline, and the other meandering past people working and ducks, cows, and chickens hanging out in the paddies. The green of all of it is both brilliant and calming. In addition, just at the bottom of one of the main streets is a quite enchanted-feeling, sacred monkey sanctuary and temple complex. Stone carvings of dragons, komodo and otherwise, seat peacefully in their moss-covered state, seeming quite breathingly alive. Meanwhile, the ubiquitous monkeys demonstrate the aptness of the phrase, monkeying around. They topple off walls, chase each other in circles, pounce on each others' stomachs and pick off bugs, beg for bananas, tackle the hard shell of coconuts-- all in all, quite a scene. We also took a little field trip out of Ubud to visit an excellent bird park. Set in a lush garden (everything here seems to be lush), the park had separate areas for South American and African birds, many of them cage-free, as well as groups of birds from several of the Indonesian islands; two of these exhibits, Bali and Papua, were set in miniature jungles enclosed by huge nets. There was also a bird show in which eagles, parrots, and owls flew from handler to handler chasing bits of meat, all backed by a landscape of rice paddies.

Given all these paddies, it should be no surprise that a food we've been eating a lot of lately is rice. We've sampled several of the typical Balinese dishes that go with it, and they've been almost universally delicious. One favorite is nasi camphur, which basically seems to mean a mini-smorgasbord of yummy vegetable, tempeh, and chicken preparations centered around some rice. We've also had jackfruit in a couple preparations, which tastes like a cross between artichoke and heart of palm; whole fish with forceful garlic sauces; gado gado, steamed veggies with peanut sauce; and rendang, a nicely spiced sauteed beef. There are also fruit juices of all sorts, sometimes ambrosia-good. (Although the avocado and chocolate juice was, I think, a one-time type of thing!). Tonight we've placed an order for a specialty dish: a whole duck, smoked with delectable spices. And the irony of it is that it costs less that one bowl of noodle soup we ate for lunch in our long day at the Sydney airport.

N.Z. Post-biking: Queenstown, Christchurch, and Wellington

2007-02-18T00:22:00.000-08:00

After our Backroads bike trip concluded in Queenstown, the "Adventure Capital of New Zealand" and where local A.J. Hackett brought bungy jumping to the world, we spent a couple days there, in Christchurch, and then Wellington before saying goodbye to N.Z. Although we were finished riding, our Backroads guide Michael didn't let us get away without a few more culinary experiences, including the Ferg Burger, and a great breakfast at Joe's Garage. On our first full day in Queenstown post-biking, we took a walk along its beautiful lakeshore, caught up on email, and had a nice dinner in and Scrabble game that evening. We also acquired a lovable stuffed kitty, who we named Queenie and who has been sleeping on our beds ever since. On the second day, Rachel and I did a great kayaking trip on the lake, with really choppy water. The scenery was still magnificent, and our kayaking guide was a real character who said he was a friend of A.J. Hackett (the bungy innovator). That afternoon, we visited the Kiwi Park, a piece of land that had been reclaimed by a family from a dumping ground and made into a bird sanctuary, where N.Z. birds including the elusive, nocturnal Kiwi were on display. We also watched (and participated in- see photos) a Maori cultural show there.

The next morning we set out on the long drive to Christchurch, the South Island's most populous city, and one of N.Z.'s most England-like places (sort of- a few pretty old buildings downtown and a beautiful botanical garden/park, but otherwise the same incredible N.Z. natural setting but marred by ugly sprawl). Allan and Sally drove the rental car, and, like us driving in Australia, could never quite get the hang of the turn signal/windshield wiper distinction on these cars. Apart from a break to watch people bungy jumping (they all made it look easy), we drove most of the day, enjoying some of our last glimspes of the amazing N.Z. landscape. The Seascape Escape Bed and Breakfast we stayed at in Christchurch was spectacularly located with a great view of the ocean, and we enjoyed their hospitality, as well as the hot tub we were wishing for after the days of biking! The next day we visited the Canterbury museum and a cool Arts Centre (the original university building, now made up mostly of working artist studios, a little like what used to be in the Colt building in Hartford). That afternoon we managed, despite technical difficulties, to talk to Rachel's sister Karen over Skype, did a little packing and enjoyed one last delicious dinner together.

Before going to the airport the next day, we visited the Antarctic Experience (70% of people going to Antarctica leave from Christchurch). In addition to live penguins and a "storm" room where we had to don boots and coats for a few minutes of cold temps, we also took a ride in a Haaglund tank-like vehicle over a land and water course behind the museum. At the airport we said goodbye to Allan and Sally, and they mentioned that at that point it was only 98 days until we come home! (Makes it sound like not very much time for all the countries we still plan to visit.) While they headed back to the U.S., we flew to Wellington, where we stayed with my friend Matt during our last days in N.Z.

I first met Matt at a hostel in London, when I stayed for a couple weeks after Rachel's and my Europe trip in the summer of '02, and then lived with him again in London while I was traveling in the spring of '03. Despite not having seen each other for 4 years, he was generous enough to host us, and it was great to catch up with him and his girlfriend Chrystyna. The afternoon we arrived, we took advantage of the fabulous sunny weather and Matt's friend's boat to do some wake boarding in the harbor: Chrystyna at an impressive level, Matt even more so, and myself, in my second time trying it, making a little progress so that i could actually stand up for a fraction of a second.

The next couple days, we slept in, caught up on email, picked up our Vietnamese visa and applied online for our Cambodian visa, and saw an exhibit which included photos of sheep wearing sweaters at the City Gallery. It was great both to see Matt and to regenerate before moving on to Bali!

Sore Bottoms and Happy Hearts

2007-02-09T20:55:00.000-08:00

Having just had the fantastic opportunity to get to know the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island at very close range (by moving over it at about 13 kilometers per hour on a dreamy titanium-frame bicycle), several words come immediately to mind to describe it. Hilly might come in at number one. But also: lush; wild; craggy; peaceful; unique; astounding; gorgeous. Some days, the individual components of the landscape were not all that novel; fields with sheep and cows grazing that could have been in Wisconsin, an untouched coast similar to Oregon, dense green forest, distant rocky mountains. But what was astonishing was the fact that all of these components were to be found right in the same frame. The rainforest came right down to the pastures, and on the other side of the street, across another small field, lay the mountain-framed coast. Spending hour after hour riding in the midst of this landscape was sometimes a transcendent experience. As we got further down the West Coast, the landscape became even more extraordinary. Glaciers became visible on some of the distant and not-so-distant peaks, and on one glorious day these mountains and others were reflected perfectly by the slate-colored face of the tannin-filled glacial lakes by whose sides we got to spend many hours. Our views were, by great luck, enhanced by a string of marvelously sunny (but not too hot) days-- in one of the wettest places on earth, we only got rained on sporadically on our first two days of riding, and got ideal riding conditions after that.

Of course, not even spectacular scenery could prevent completely some of the un-pretty sides of cycling from catching up with us, and we were all plenty afflicted with saddle sore and muscle fatigue from time to time. But our Backroads guide, Michael, did everything possible (short of butt massages) to keep those concerns to a minimum. Every morning there was a groaning snack table at our disposal (basically so we could restock on m&m's and whatever other chocolate he'd put out; we never seemed to reach the bottom of the nuts and raisins in our bags...), and the van was always available to shuttle us if we needed it, which we were all quite grateful for during a couple of particularly trying hill series. On a trip that usually runs with 16-24 people, we somehow ended up being the only members of our group, meaning that we got to set our own pace and preferences to an almost outrageous degree. It also gave us the freedom to eat at little places instead of in the hotels-- an opportunity Michael took full advantage of, bringing us to some high-quality little cafes with great local wine lists. Besides being an avid foodie and oenophile, Michael was also very knowledgable about New Zealand flora, fauna, history, and culture, and very easy and fun to talk to.

The distances between towns along the coast means that, for cyclists, there aren't many choices about where you're going to stay on a given night, but finding ourselves in several isolated, non-touristy places was a really cool aspect of the trip. There was Greymouth, a coal-mining and fishing town that has turned a floodwall into a walkway down to the harbor; Hari Hari, which has a population of around 50, all of whom seemed to be in the one pub, enjoying giant servings of chips and televised rugby on a Friday night (we were also treated to a slideshow by a local nature-lover and former park ranger, who's been doing the same show for almost 20 years); Inangahua Junction, pop. 100, where we stopped for lunch at a convenience store that has been run by the same couple (and possibly carrying some of the same stock) for 25 years, and where a country music festival attracting 4000 people is now held. (The local police took advantage of last year's festival to ticket every car parked along the street-- despite there being no other parking in town-- leading the festival's organizer to offer to pay for everyone's tickets.) Intermixed with these quirky, character-filled towns were the basic tour-bus stops, with fancy-sounding, overpriced (but occassionally very good) food and rows of shops selling greenstone jewelry, wool sweaters, kiwi toys, and the like. These were always enjoyable enough to spend a little time in, but the real flavor of the coast seemed to lie much more in the less glamourous places.

We did have a couple days off our bikes, in more touristy towns, and got to do some amazing (and butt-resting) activities there. In Fox, we took a helicopter ride landing on the Fox Glacier (one of the only advancing glaciers in the world currently), and then did a guided hike with crampons around the glacier before being picked up again. I found it terrifying, but everyone else seemed to love it; the turquoise-colored ice in the caves and crevasses was definitely cool. From Wanaka, an Aspen-30-years-ago type town on the shores of a phenomenally gorgeous mountain-ringed lake, we took a flightseeing trip over several mountain ranges to the fjord known popularly as Milford Sound. On a day that our pilot, Theresa, described as once-a-year perfect in terms of weather, we got a bird's-eye view of Mount Cook (New Zealand's tallest), as well as close-up encounters with the variety of craggy mountains through which multi-day walking tracks wend and off which adrenaline-crazy Kiwis ski after being dropped off by helicopters. We had a couple hours on a boat cruising around the fjord before, including a dousing under one of the many 100+ foot waterfalls cascading down the rocks into it, before flapping back off to Wanaka with Theresa in our flying machine. Awesome as those off-day activities were in themselves, they were greatly amplified by the sense of knowing the country, even if just fleetingly, that we had from our days of riding. Chafed cheeks and all, I'll stick to this mantra: It's always better to see somewhere from a bike.

Absolutely Positively Wellington!

2007-02-09T20:37:00.000-08:00

We arrived in New Zealand's capital city Wellington (whose slogan is "Absolutely Positively Wellington"-a little catchier than "New England's Rising Star" for Hartford), located on the southern tip of the North Island. After going through our most extensive and strict screening upon arrival at the airport (in an effort to preserve its biodiversity, NZ doesn't allow in any food or plant items, and inspects any outdoor gear- we had to present our hiking shoes, which passed inspection as we'd washed them in Australia), we spent the night in a backpackers before returning to the airport the following morning when Allan and Sally flew in- yay! This was a moment we'd been anticipating for a long time, and one that we looked forward to especially during holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas when we were away from family. And all of a sudden, there they were!

Although the NZ temperatures were much warmer for Allan and Sally, for us and our endless summer it's the coldest weather we've experienced in a long time, probably since Turkey. From the airport we passed a "Wisconsin Burger" restaurant chain (NZ has another Wisconsin aspect: lots of dairy farms (the modern milk machine was invented in NZ) and excellent cheese and ice cream!) on our way to our home for the next few days, a hotel suite downtown. Wellington looks a little like a Pacific Northwest city, with San Francisco-like hills: we took a cable car up from near our hotel to the botanical garden, and looked at the observatory. After a brief trip to the Vietnamese Embassy for our easiest-yet visa application (fingers crossed it comes through), we relaxed and caught up with Allan and Sally for the rest of the day, watching some Australian Open tennis on tv.

The next day we set out for the huge Te Papa (Maori words, which we think means "the nation" or "the people") Museum, an excellent natural and social history museum on the waterfront. We learned about New Zealand's geology (lots of earthquakes, given its location on a fault line), how it split from the ancient landmass of Gondwanaland (which also included Australia, India, and Antarctica), and all the weird flora and fauna, like the now-extinct giant moa bird and of course the Kiwi bird. Much of the museum was devoted to Maori artifacts and culture, including a giant canoe and a Marae, or Maori meeting house. New Zealand, while not as recently inhabited by humans as Mauritius, was only settled by the Maori sometime around 500 A.D. After the museum we walked to St. Paul's, a beautiful old wooden church, and then went out to a great dinner that night.

On our third day in Wellington we first visited the City and Sea museum, with more well-presented social history exhibits. We then walked through the steep botanical gardens during a Teddy Bears' Picnic children's day, and saw more of the festival in a cool dowtown outdoor Civic Center performing space. Early the next morning we boarded the ferry to the South Island, a very comfortable ride with views that reminded us of Alaska, with amazing mountains and water. We arrived in a little town called Picton, and endured a couple hour bus-ride with a crazy-talking driver past vineyards, sheep, and deer farms to the town of Nelson, where we arrived just before the rain and looking forward to the start of our Backroads bike trip the next day.

Great Barrier Reef

2007-01-24T02:35:00.000-08:00

Leaving Alice Springs after our epic (at least in terms of amount of driving) Outback tour, we had what was hands down our easiest flight experience ever. There was no one in line ahead of us to check in (where they didn't even ask for I.D.), nor in security; we boarded about 20 minutes after that and got our bags minutes after touching down in Cairns.

Cairns (pronounced locally like the French film festival town "Cannes") is the most popular town from which to visit the Great Barrier Reef. When we stepped off the plane the humidity was 85%, so although the temperature was almost 20 degrees F cooler than temperatures we'd had in the Outback desert, it felt much hotter. Dowtown Cairns isn't much, sort of like a miniature version of Cancun.

The next day we toured the Great Barrier Reef. When we were in Mexico, we met an
Australian woman who said that much of the reef could be gone in as little as 10 years time if current levels of coral destruction continue. Despite requiring an extra flight and our limited time here, this uncertain future was one of the reasons we felt we needed to see the reef on this trip. We were lucky with the weather--after getting rain in the desert, today in the rainy season of the Queensland tropics was bright and sunny.

Our experience definitely didn't disappoint: outfitted with wetsuits to protect against poisonous jellyfish and sting rays (famed Australian "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin's killer) but more importantly against the intensity of the sun, we snorkeled first at Michaelmas Cay, which was inhabitated by what seemed to be thouands of birds. After a great lunch on the boat, our second snorkeling stop was Paradise Reef. While we saw a few brightly colored fish (not as many as snorkeling in Mexico), the main attraction was definitely the coral, which was present in an incredible variety of shapes (including sponges, spiky trees, and all kinds of curvy, wavy-lined shapes) and colors (mostly brown, yellow, and orange but also splotches of brilliant blues, purples, and greens. We saw a ray and a little shark. The sea floor below was littered with dead coral, which we hope is not the future for the rest of this amazing environment.

After seeing the reef we're feeling ready to say goodbye to Australia and eagerly awaiting meeting up with Allan and Sally in New Zealand!

Adelaide to Alice: The Outback

2007-01-22T18:34:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Adelaide,a beautiful city ringed by parks, on Sunday, January 14, although couldn't return our rental car since the office had closed at 4pm. Luckily, we met up with our Servas hosts Brian and Chris at the office and were able to return the car the next morning; they said that the typical response to the office being closed then would be "that's Adelaide," with its reputation as a sleepy backwater city in comparison with Melbourne and Sydney.

Brian and Chris continued our experience of having great Servas hosts. Brian was a child in London during WWII, which he said wasn't scary to him but actually fun and exciting, with explosions and bomb shelters seeming like an adventure. He was sent to the countryside later in the war, and as a teenager became one of the "ten pound immigrants," those, many of them English but also many Greek and Italian, who paid a mere ten pounds for the weeks-long sea voyage to begin a new life in Australia. Referred to as "history's most successful voluntary migration scheme," it more than doubled Australia's population, which it felt was necessary after nearly being taken over by Japan in WWII.

The next day was the 6th anniversary of our first date, and we celebrated by seeing 2 movies (Little Miss Sunshine and Volver) and having a great fancy Greek lunch, as well as strolling through the botanical garden. It was nice to take a break from the usual tourist site routine and rest up for the start of our big tour: 7 days in the Outback from Adelaide to Alice Springs, with 18 passengers and 1 guide (a friendly, laid-back native of the Torres Strait Islands [off Cape York in Northeast Australia] named Kevin) in a big bus/van.

Leaving Adelaide on the first day of our tour, we drove through Australia's wheat belt. Farmers there don't use irrigation and so rely entirely on rainfall; because of the record drought this year most of their wheat crops yielded almost no grain and were harvested stalks and all as cattle feed instead. In less than a day's drive from the southern coast of Australia, we passed the "Goyden Line," the farthest point north that a 19th century surveyor declared wheat could be grown. North of the line is only suitable for sheep and cattle grazing. Later that day we also visited the Aboriginal Yourambulla Cave paintings. We spent the night in a hostel located smack dab in the middle of the Parachilna Gorge of the Flinders Ranges Mountains, which despite their relatively small size now (1100? m) used to be taller than the Himalayas. Going even farther back in geologic time, most of inland Australia was once a giant inland sea, and after that a dense forest, both of which are hard to imagine given the current vast, mostly flat arid plains.

On our second day, we made multiple stops to break up the driving: an ochre pit, a coal mine, a local eccentric named Talc Alf (for his talcstone carvings), the ghost town of Farina (Italian for "flour," the town was planned to grow wheat but never produced a single grain) and last but not least some giant "hippie sculptures" out of materials such as a windmill, small plane, and a bus. The ochre pit was the source of paint colors for Aborigines; those who collected and traded the ochre lived in the Northern Territory near Darwin and would walk over 2,000 km to reach this pit, and then carry back over 60 pounds of ochre on each of their heads for the return journey. That afternoon we saw a dingo cross the road, a dog-like animal that originally came to Australia from Thailand thousands of years ago.

Much of our drive on the second day (almost all on unpaved roads called "tracks") followed the route of the explorer John Stuart, who in 1862 became the first European to cross the interior of Australia, laying the way for the Overland Telegraph Line and then the steam engine train. The only reason that Stuart's expedition succeeded was the vast source of ground water, known as the Great Artesian Basin (which also provided the water necessary for the steam train). And the only reason he found this water is that the Aborigines (who of course, like with the ochre trade example, had likely been crossing the interior for thousands of years) showed it to him.

We spent the second night in the "town" of William Creek, population 6. It's the base for the William Creek Cattle Station, which with an area of over 22,000 square km is bigger than Belgium. It normally has around 20,000 cattle, but with the drought this year is down to just 1,000. No romantic images of cowboys on horseback here: the station is operated mostly by computer, and ranchers use planes instead of horses to cover the huge distances. Despite the high technology for ranching, a few of the locals at the pub proved to be slightly more stereotypical Outback residents, including one extremely intoxicated guy about my age who worked in a coal mine and had driven *6 hours* to come to the pub that night. Another interesting part of local culture given the Outback isolation is a one night "ball" held once a year where young people who may rarely see people their age where they live come from huge distances in the hope of finding a partner (or, as we guessed, just to have a good time). We drove past the grounds for one of these balls, which of course was now completely empty.

The rain began during the night at William Creek. A storm system had come down from tropical northern Australia and was pounding the outback in various places; it looked like the places we were heading were next to be hit. So the next morning, with our destination of Coober Pedy just 150 km away, we were forced to turn completely around to the next available paved road to avoid getting stuck. On our way, we passed (and actually nicked with our trailer) a rival tour company bus stuck in the mud. They were eventually able to get out by using the rail ties (called "sleepers") that are scattered next to the dirt road, remnants of the famous Ghan railway. The Ghan was named for the Afghans who brought camels to use for transport in the Outback desert after horses had failed. Australia currently has the world's largest population of wild camels, which we spotted several times as well as wild horses.

The rest of day three consisted of slightly scary, difficult driving over soft mud and flooded roads, (with some incredible views of ponds forming all over the desert), but Kevin successfully navigated us and the bus onto the paved road and to our stop in the town of Quorn that night. After a 4:30 wake up call the next morning, we were back on the road and by the middle of day 4 had reached Coober Pedy, the "Opal Mining Capital of the World": a day late and after 1,200 km of extra driving. The rain was still falling heavily, so much so that some of the hillside next to our "underground" hostel crumbled away. Because of its extreme desert environment, much of the town of Coober Pedy is built into the hillsides, where the opal mines were dug.

That night we went to an "underground" pub/club, and while Rachel and I were happy to go to bed early, unfortunately some of our group had other plans and managed to wake up not only our group but most of the other tour groups staying there by dragging one guy's bed into the hallway sometime around 3am, then staying up talking and laughing for an hour. (They also spent the whole next day laughing about it and refused to acknowledge that it might have been just a wee bit inconsiderate...). As I type this it sounds much funnier than it did at the time, and unfortunately this incident (and probably moreover the absurd amount of driving we were doing) led to a major rift in tour group dynamics.

On day 5, after driving most of the day, we arrived at Yulara, the accomodation area for Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock). Uluru is a huge monolith (all one rock, formed by the rest of the rock around it eroding) in the middle of nowhere, and a very sacred site for the Aborigines. The last few days of our tour unfortunately highlighted our leader Kevin's biggest weakness, timing (although again I'm sure he was exhausted from driving). After setting up camp we barely made it to Uluru in time for sunset, as we hiked past regular tour buses (first time we've seen them in the Outback!) to the lookout point. The sunset and Uluru's change of color with the light were impressive, but perhaps even better were the spectacular stars in the night sky, and the fact that we saw a comet that's even rarer than Haley's.

Day 6 was supposed to begin with a sunrise hike, but since Kevin and most of the group overslept we missed that. It was cool to walk around Uluru and see all the different formations in the rock, and learn a little about some of the ways parts of it were used in Aboriginal ceremonies/rituals. We definitely didn't want to climb it, which the Aborignals strongly urge people not to do but we saw several people doing anyway. When the Australian government finally "gave back" (in the form of a 99 year lease) Uluru to the Aboriginals in 1986, one of the conditions they required is that it remain open to climbing by tourists. In the cultural center, we saw the "sorry book" filled with letters from tourists who mailed back pieces of rock they took from Uluru, also forbidden by Aboriginal culture and supposed to bring very bad luck.

In the afternoon we were looking forward to hiking the Valley of the Winds in Kata Tjuta, another Aboriginal sacred site made up of a canyon and mountain formation near
Uluru. However, Kevin said it was too late and too hot, so instead we did a short hike, which wasn't great. After that we drove on to
Watarka (King's Canyon), a short day of driving at only 4 hours. That night the mood in the campground was a little better.

On our 7th and last day, we hiked through Watarka (albeit at an extremely slow pace for much of the way), which is formed by sand being pressed together so we could see the many layers of rock, some formed into beehive domes. There were also sides of the canyon that looked completely smooth from stone falling away. I swam in a pool in the Garden of Eden spot on the canyon floor, where giant cycads (ferns) from the time of the dinosaurs grew. Another of the amazing desert plants Kev pointed out was the ghost gum, a white-barked eucalyptus tree with the ability to cut off the water supply to one of it's branches if necessary in a dry time for the good of the rest of the tree.

Just as we've been reflecting more on political and cultural elements of the U.S. during this trip, on our trip through the Outback we found ourselves comparing the landscape to the West of the U.S.; despite the many wonders of the Outback, to us it just couldn't stand up to the majestic mountains and deserts we have at home.

Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road

2007-01-14T18:54:00.000-08:00

We had heard a lot about Melbourne as a city of artsy and culturally diverse character, and in our few days there we got a yummy taste of both of those. We stayed with Jane, a SERVAS host who is a teacher and a psychologist, working mainly with the large Indian and Bangladeshi student population in Melbourne. On vacation now, she likes to spend some part of her mornings at cafes reading the newspaper and people watching, and on our first day in the city she took us to a neighboring suburb to hers, where we sat at an Ethiopian-owned cafe and then walked through the maze of small shops filling the blocks: Indian grocery stores, with shelf after shelf of different chutneys; Sudanese variety shops, displaying long, colorful cotton robes of the type we saw in Upper Egypt; general South Asian stores selling everything from fake-bamboo mats to plastic buckets to decorative figurines. Our favorite was a large Vietnamese supermarkets, that was in reality a collection of separate stands, all of them brimming with a fresh, colorful variety of fruits and vegetables, and dotted with vendors shouting out the prices and quality of their wares in Vietnamese. While we couldn't understand what they were saying, we could understand the sticky plates of free samples that were found on each stand, and helped ourselves more than once. There was also a fish section of the market, with some still-flopping half-dead fish lying on ice, while others swam in small tanks helplessly awaiting the rubber mallet-wielding butchers who pulled them out for customers. We also walked through Chinatown, in the center of the city, and visited the Museum of Chinese-Australian History, an impressive small place with lots of information about the Chinese experience here, as well as an interactive multimedia exhibit that took us as "migrants" from Hong Kong harbor in 1857 to the hot, dusty goldfields of Australia. The story of Chinese migrants in Australia is quite similar to that of Chinese migrants to the western U.S.: numbers were very high in the late 19th century as they did extremely difficult and dangerous work, but as that work faded and the Chinese began to establish themselves more culturally and economically, both countries established harsh anti-Chinese measures (in the U.S. they couldn't own land or other property, and in 1905 they became the only group ever to be banned from immigrating to America; in Australia, the families of migrants were not allowed to come over, and the 1901 "White Australia" policy cut immigration from China and elsewhere in Asia until the mid-1960's). Somehow, the communities in both countries persevered, and have firm and important places in present society.

As for art, we got to see quite a lot of it in Melbourne, in both more and less traditional forms. In the two buildings of the National Gallery of Victoria, we wandered through galleries of 19th and 20th century Australian paintings, some of which resembled the romantic, adventurous nature scenes of the Hudson River School. The collection of Aboriginal artwork was astounding; beautiful to look at, it was also incredible to grapple with the way of thinking the paintings represented. I am only beginning to learn about Aboriginal beliefs and not even close to beginning to understand them, but what I think I can understand is that it is a worldview that is truly, thoroughly different from the one I'm used to-- and the fact that worldviews can be so different is pretty amazing in itself. The galleries also had a few quirky exhibits, some of which pushed the definition of art and culture in an interesting way: there was a stunning collection of mid-century hats by Melbourne's foremost milliner, a gallery of mint-condition sneakers analyzing their manifestations of form and function, and an interactive playing area tracing the development of video game effects and graphics! The feel of much of the city, with several funky-looking pedestrian bridges spanning the central river, a plaza with live-music containing several museums right near the downtown businesses, art deco buildings near the beach, and buzzing outdoor cafes absolutely everywhere seemed to encourage the art-viewing, art-making vibe.

Leaving Jane, her two cats, and the city, we took the plunge and rented a car for a drive along the coast. The disconcerting scariness of our first time driving on the left was certainly compounded by the fact that we hadn't driven on either side of the road in six months; but, once we got out of the city and away from the most crowded parts of the twisty-turny Great Ocean Road, we were actually able to relax and enjoy our two days of driving. The part of the road that was right on the coast, which lasted for several hours the first day, was quite beautiful, although I couldn't say it has anything over Rte. 101 on the Oregon Coast. One highlight was the statuesque limestone rocks called the Twelve Apostles, and another was leaving the crowds behind once we passed that landmark. The coolest thing was seeing koalas in the wild-- we pulled over in a spot where we saw a few other cars pulled over, and there they were, sleeping in the crooks of the trees! Toward dusk, as we drove through a long stretch of extremely dry fields, we came to a road sign warning of kangaroos in the next 30 kilometers-- and indeed, as we drove, we saw 20 or more in small groups along the edge of the forest (and, sadly, several that had been run over by the side of the road). They were super skittish and jumbed into the trees whenever we pulled over, but the thrill of seeing them lasted even if photos didn't. We spent the night in a room in a pub, an Aussie tradition (we've been told) that we enjoyed a lot, even though we were too tired to take advantage of the proximity of the bar. After a quick stop in the Coonawarra Valley wine region the following day (tasting at 9:30 in the morning really doesn't appeal), we drove on through more fields all the way to Adelaide.

"Kin's Kin" on Beach Rd.

2007-01-14T18:40:00.000-08:00

Flying from Mauritius to Sydney, Australia we got to gaze at the full moon lighting up the night sky as we moved 7 hours into the future. So, after leaving on Thursday afternoon, we arrived at 6 on Friday morning, January 5. My second cousin (my dad's cousin's son; our grandmas were sisters) Toby Monson, while not from the Beach side of the family lives on Beach Rd., and although neither of us could remember having met before (possibly at a family reunion long ago), he and his friend and housemate Shannon were super generous and friendly during the time we stayed with them. When we thanked him for hosting us he quoted a Michael J. Fox movie line "Kin's kin." Plus, since Toby works for a travel company called Let's Trek Australia, affiliated with Trek America (and knows our Backroads leader Allison!, for those readers from the Alaska trip), he was able to give us tons of great suggestions and set us up with tours for the rest of our time in Australia.

After sleeping a few hours, we set off to explore downtown Sydney. I was surprised by the look of Toby's neighborhood: most of the houses were brick, many in Victorian style with beautiful ironwork trim. Toby's had an added organic feature of at least 4 to 5 huge spiders that built webs every night on the front porch and sidewalk, so that we had to duck going out. Mysteriously, by morning the webs were gone (we said maybe the spiders took them down). Sydney (and later Melbourne) felt very different from the large cities in South Africa: very clean, totally safe feeling, and good public transportation.

Getting off the train at the Circle Quay stop downtown, we walked around the harbor, took photos of the Opera House and walked across the Harborside Bridge, where we saw groups of people strapped on with safety equipment doing the 4-hour climb to the top of the bridge. That night Toby showed us the family history research he's done on the computer program "Family Tree Maker," and we added Rachel's vital stats to my entry.

The next day (Saturday), Toby drove us to the nearby Blue Mountains, where we saw the 3 Sisters rock formation, and took a short walk down and "the world's steepest train" (like a roller coaster) back up the mountain. Getting on the train was difficult as we had to physically restrain a group of Chinese tourists from taking our seat from us! That night we enjoyed Rachel's birthday present from her parents- tickets to The Marriage of Figaro at the Opera House. It was a beautiful production in an amazing building--at night it looks a little like a cathedral with the lights from inside.

On Sunday we went to the Bondi Beach market, with all the latest in retro clothes fashions, and Rachel found a great red, white, and black dress. That afternoon Toby fired up the barbecue and we hung out with his friend Dennis, who's part Aboriginal and owns a dijeridu and art making company near Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia. We tried kangaroo steak: red meat which has a sweet taste a little like ostrich--I liked it, Rachel not so much.

On Monday we visited the Hyde Park Barracks, a very good museum in a building which housed first the convicts transported to Australia from Britain, and later immigrant and poor women. We walked through Hyde Park and the row of giant fig trees, as well as through the Strand arcade--while suburban malls and shopping centers are becoming more popular here, we were surprised to see so much shopping downtown. For our last night in Sydney we (mostly Rachel) made a delicious dinner of shrimp curry, salad and peach pie.

The next day we visited the Powerhouse Museum, a combined science/natural history/children's museum, on our last morning in Sydney before heading to the airport for our flight to Melbourne; we'd planned to take the bus but the flights were $50 (Australian) cheaper! Getting around in Australia is similar to back home; it dwarfs even the distances between places in South Africa, which were probably the longest we've had on the trip otherwise.

More Mauritius: Philately, Pamplemousses, 2007...

2007-01-03T04:14:00.000-08:00

Departing Mahebourg, we made the slow, jerky bus ride to Port Louis, Mauritius's capital city. We stayed 4 nights there with our Servas hosts Mineswar and Rambah. (As well as our final night (Jan. 3) in Mauritius, having had to return to collect our Indian visa: they were generous enough to host us despite the day falling smack in the middle of their exhausting-sounding New Year's social calendar, where they said everyone is visiting and inviting friends over from Dec. 31- Jan. 8!)

Mineswar works as the assistant to the Deputy Prime Minister; it was interesting to talk with him about the politics of Mauritius. He was very proud of the fact that Mauritians are literate, well-educated people, and told us the story of how, after gaining independence in 1968, Mauritius introduced free and compulsory education in 1977, which he attributed to causing the grip that a mere 7 families held on the economy of Mauritius to be peacefully broken in 1982. To me, Mauritius has an interesting in-between feel: there are still some very visible examples of poverty (shacks, things being older/broken, litter), while also having a good amount of wealthier tourist infrastructure and a high standard of living for the local population.

Our first full day in Port Louis, we headed for the tourist-friendly waterfront, recently renovated into shops and restaurants. We visited the Blue Penny museum, where we learned the meaning of the word "philately" (stamp collecting) in reference to the museum's name, as it houses the "world-famous" 1 and 2 penny red and blue stamps from the 1850s: aside from the ones in the museum, there are only a few others in existence, a pair of which recently sold for $5 million! More interesting to us than the stamps and postal history exhibit of Mauritius were the rooms of old maps (including the first globe, circa 1493?) and model ships, and the colonial history both of the country and the city of Port Louis.

Having acquired a bit of a taste for Bollywood movies after watching "Bunty and Bably" at Henrik's apartment in Cairo (a song from which was playing on the radio at our Servas family's house; they said it was the "song of the year" for 2006), we prepared ourselves for another 3 hours worth, seeing "Bhagam Bhag" in a waterfront cinema. We were surprised that it didn't seem to feature as many song and dance numbers, but still enjoyed the antics of a story that had an Indian dance troupe performing in London searching to replace its heroine.

The next day we set out for the nearby town of Pamplemousses, visting first a sugar museum and then the botanical gardens. Entitled "the Sugar Adventure," the museum was housed in a sugar producing factory that closed in 1999. Across the landscape of Mauritius you see old stone towers, which we learned there were smokestacks for sugar factories: like cheese factories in Monroe, WI, a landscape that used to be dotted with factories has seen their number dwindle with increased consolidation and "efficiency." We learned more about the history of Mauritius, and quickly walked through the exhibits of the science of sugar making to the tasting of 8 special kinds of sugar (the molasses sugar was our favorite) and 2 kinds of rum at the end. The gardens were lovely, a 65-acre area of shade filled with palms of all types, some of them exceedingly skinny and reaching to the sky, others short and bottle-shaped, others in the shape of massive Japanese fans. There were also a variety of kinds of water lilies, including some in the center of the garden that had diameters of 2 feet or more-- a funny-colored duck walking from one to the other looked very small in comparison.

Our final full day in Port Louis we visited the nearby Eureka mansion, a beautiful 19th century home with a "natural air-conditioning" architecture, including 109 doors! It also had a "Chinese room", which the guide there said was de rigour for a wealthy family of the time "to show how rich they were." In the afternoon we followed our travel guide's suggested walking tour for Port Louis, and enjoyed seeing the variety of architecture and cultural influences in the city. We trekked up the hillside to the Citadel for a view of the city, and walked by the stunning white-sand castle with green accents Jummah mosque (a good example of the city's mix of diverse cultures, the mosque is located right next to the Chinatown gate).

The following day we left Port Louis for Grand Baie, our third location in Mauritius and where we planned to spend most of our time on the beach (with the weather mostly cooperating despite a few spatterings of rain). We were pleasantly surprised at the atmosphere of the beach: while more touristy than the beach in Mahebourg, there were often a majority of Mauritians on the beach. Our pre-conception (especially based on the look that people gave us when we told them we were going there!) of tourism in Mauritius was that it was a much richer and ritzier atmosphere; we're sure some of that exists also but everywhere we've been has been pretty laid back.

On New Year's Eve we went out to a super-rich meal (which included lobster bisque, foie-gras, heart of palm, and veal) and then watched the fireworks on the beach. There were more fireworks in one place than I've ever seen: lots of big ones in the sky but also small ones (some incredibly loud) being set off by people all around us. The next day there were big piles of red firecracker wrappers so thick in the streets that looked like piles of leaves in the fall! And of course the holidays means a time to watch football: while we wanted to watch the Wisconsin Badgers in the Capital One Bowl on Jan. 1, unfortunately the closest we could come was watching an English "football" game between Manchester United and Newcastle.

Our last full day in Grand Baie, I (Rachel) had my first adventure of the new year: parasailing! The parachute was, at times, up as high as 60 or 70 meters above the water-- with the wind buffeting me around, the rope holding me to the boat looked pretty wavery, and I had to close my eyes to not think about snapping off and flying away, or crashing down into the water (and also just not to get sick). But it was also exhilarating and beatiful; looking out (which I did when the wind was quieter or I was lower down), I could see all the gradations in color and texture in the water, and the green of the sugarcane fields stretching inland. We also savored the finer side of beachfront fast food: small pineapples held by the stem and carved so they looked a little like a lolly-pop (see photo), roti/dhal puri (Indian tortillas filled with beans and hot pepper sauce), and delicious homemade ice-cream pops with flavors like coconut-vanilla and almond-pistachio. Back in Port Louis, we picked up our passports from the Indian High Commission, happily replete with Indian visas, and got ready to fly east to Australia.

White (sand) Christmas

2006-12-30T03:06:00.000-08:00

Geographically-minded as our friends and family are, we've gotten quite a few "where exactly are you?" questions since arriving on Mauritius. The answer is that we're on a teeny tiny island in the Indian Ocean, a bit east of Madagascar, a while still west of Australia. (It was a 4 hour flight from Jo'burg to here; it will be a 12 hour flight from here to Sydney.) Officially part of Africa, the population of Mauritius is majority of Indian descent, followed by Creoles (the descendents of Africans originally brought here as slaves), Chinese, and a small number of Europeans, mainly French. There are no indigenous people here-- I think the first place we've ever been where that's the case-- and there seems to have been something very evening about the fact of everyone being an immigrant, as the culture is syncretic in every realm, and the Mauritian identity seems to be stronger than any separate ethnic one. Which is not to say that the island's history isn't full of the same bad stuff as so many other places: it was the subject of battles between colonial powers, going from Dutch to British to French; it was built on the labor first of African slaves and then of Indian indentured servants; and it was long taken advantage of in the colonial model as a producer of sugar cane for its European rulers. But since independence in 1968, Mauritius has had free, multi-party elections every five years, educated a highly literate and largely bilingual population, and developed its economy in a diverse manner.

Our first several days were spent in Mahebourg, in the island's southeast, which is relatively undeveloped for tourism. The town itself was sleepy and relaxed, although the streets were packed with holiday bustle on Christmas Eve. One of the highlights of such a mixed population is, for us, the food: many restaurants serve Indian, Creole, Chinese, and French dishes, or a mixture thereof, in addition to others that specialize in one of the same. We rented bikes for easy rides to the beach, tried to visit a long-running cookie factory (they were closed, so we just had to buy the cookies in a supermarket), and visited a nature reserve called Ile aux Aigrettes. The latter is a small island just off the Mahebourg coast, where the Mauritian Nature Conservancy has gotten rid of all exotic species and replaced them with native species, including ebony, palms in different shapes, the large Aldabra tortoise, and the very rare pink pigeon. We got a glimpse of the pigeon, which was not as excitingly bright as we had hoped, but did have a definite pinkish hue. We also went for a hike up Lion Mountain, the most prominent natural landmark in the area-- or I should say I tried to go for a hike, and Erik actually did. Not far into it, we encountered a stretch of vertical rock that required climbing, not hiking; I made it up that one, but when we immediately ran into another, I gave up, dizzy already. Erik kept going, climbing more than hiking for much of the way, and was rewarded with gorgeous views. I sat looking at the ocean and sang myself Christmas carols (a little sadly, I'll admit).

On Christmas Eve we joined our hotel owner at a Catholic service, all in French, which may have served to make us more homesick rather than less. We went for Chinese food that night, which made me feel a bit more at home in the spirit of a wonderful New York Times piece I remember from 15 years ago, "Erev Christmas"-- about all the Jews in New York gathering at Chinese restaurants (the only thing open) on Christmas Eve. Our hotel had placed a little Christmas tree in our room, which we decorated with flowers that had fallen off a tree, and Santa did manage to find it, even putting an orange in Erik's dirty sock. We spent Christmas on the beach, which we certainly can't complain about, but it sure didn't feel right. It helped, though, that the beach was packed with Mauritian families, for whom a sandy Christmas picnic WAS the tradition. So for a day, we tried to pretend it was ours too-- and also talked a lot about past and future years, at home.

Homelands and Hartford: Experiences of Race in Post-Apartheid South Africa and the U.S.

2006-12-22T04:49:00.000-08:00

Throughout our travels we've been forced to rethink many of our conceptions of our native land, the good ol' U.S. of A. In many instances, despite their articulating severe criticisms of the American government/foreign policy, we've been surprised to find that so many people across the world have such a positive view of what the U.S. represents, and less surprised but still overwhelmed about how many people we meet ask us how they can move to the U.S.

South Africa felt different from any other country that we have visited on this trip, and also the most similar to the U.S. (and especially Hartford). Despite having our camera stolen in Mexico, and despite having been hassled and verbally harassed to some degree in nearly every place we've visited, before South Africa we haven't felt afraid or endangered. By contrast, in South Africa everyone we talked to tried to make us afraid, and we also felt some of that fear ourselves. In thinking about this feeling and South Africa's history of Apartheid (and the "Homelands," politically semi-autonomous Black areas that were supposed to demonstrate to the outside world that South Africa's racial separation worked for all) , we wanted to write more retelling and reflecting on our experiences of race there compared to our experiences of race in Hartford. We'll focus first on South African perceptions/stories of race, next on some of our own experiences/conversations there, and finally our reflections/comparisons to the U.S.

[Since our relatives are the primary readership of this blog, we want to first make clear that we were (and continue to be) very cautious and careful not to put ourselves in dangerous situations. Our only personal experience with crime in South Africa happened the day we arrived in Cape Town, a half-joking attempt at intimidation by 2 young men]

In our experience, an overwhelming aspect of race today in South Africa is all about crime and fear. Fear there is of an entirely different degree from the racial fear in the U.S. At least a part of this fear is justified by reality, by the statistics. South Africa has an incredible amount of violent crime: 52,000 murders per year in a country of 4 million whites and 40 million blacks (along with millions of people classified as coloured or Indian), and the highest (rate/number?) of rapes of any country in the world.

Again and again, we heard from people stories and personal experiences about crime. Our friends in the Peace Corps told us that P.C. volunteers are not allowed to visit Johannesburg. Several volunteers they know have been mugged. One had been "barred" (choked from behind with a steel bar) and bitten in Pretoria; he had to undergo the incredibly toxic and painful HIV-preventive vaccination. Bitten--like the stereotype of savagery, the humanity of the attacker being transformed into animal fury.

Johannesburg is portrayed as the center of all evil. Marcus, the English journalist that we traveled with in Ghana, had been working on a free lance piece in Nigeria before we met him. He was mugged his first day in Lagos. Marcus had worked previously for three years in Mexico; he said that Mexico City was like Disneyland compared to Lagos, and then later told us in an email that people in Nigeria said that Johannesburg is more dangerous than Lagos. Driving at night in Joburg, people don't stop at red lights, for fear of being highjacked.

The occupation with the highest death rate in South Africa is police officer: police are targeted and assassinated by criminals, and some police stations have hired private security firms to protect their police stations. The second most deadly occupation is a farmer, since farms are often isolated and therefore more vulnerable to attack.

While we were in Cape Town, 2 township tours were mugged. A year before, a bus full of German travel agents who were visiting was mugged on a township tour, and they caught the next flight back to Germany. Like the biting aspect of the P.C. volunteer's attack, here is another example of the outburst of anger: targeting those (whites on a township tour) who are actually trying to bring in money, tourism, etc. to impoverished areas.

It wasn't just whites who were afraid of crime: driving from Manyeding with the bride and groom, the bride told us to be careful walking around, and that she had recently been "barred" for her cell phone. Like in the U.S., many of the victims of crime are nonwhite: our Cape Town host's cleaning woman, who lives in a township, has her house robbed every few months. Our host told us she pretends to be asleep when the robbers enter so that she isn't harmed, knowing that the robbers will be back as soon as they've given people time to acquire new goods.

Like Rachel mentioned in her Urban Experiences blog, everything in South Africa has at least a fence around it, and probably more. (One of the more lighthearted examples of security was a few blocks from our host's house in Cape Town, the entrance to the hiking paths is padlocked (neighborhood residents are given a key) to keep out "sangomas:" traditional healers who were stripping the bark from some of the trees near the entrance to use in their medicines.) If plastic bags used be referred to as the "national flower" of South Africa (a problem which has since been solved by charging a minimal amount for plastic bags in stores), then razor wire is the "national plant." Never have we seen so much anywhere: at a gas station, the sidewalk fence between the pumps and the store entrance was looped with razor wire, presumably to deter would be robbers looking to make a quick getaway. The schools around Manyeding village were fenced with razor wire; they, like many of the houses with razor or electric wire fences and bars on the windows, looked more like prisons. One German told us about his friend who lived in a gated community outside of Pretoria. I almost had to laugh when he said that she's been robbed there several times, wondering if _anyone_ in the U.S. would live in a "gated community" that despite that status still has regular robberies.

Although we had many interactions with people around the issue of race, two of them stand out. The first was in Nature's Valley, talking at the pub with a white couple (an Afrikaaner man and an American woman) who owned a contracting business that employed about 40 workers. They spoke about the problems they have with all (whites included) workers, and their disagreements with Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), the South African version of affirmative action. While genuinely reflecting the realities of their situation, they also used the phrase "I'm not a racist but..." several times, as well as the half-joke, "What's the difference between a tourist and a racist? Two weeks." While we certainly disagreed with some of what they said, it was an interesting conversation in terms of giving us a glimpse of some of the issues from a very different perspective than our own: that of small business owners trying to make their company work in a new political and economic climate. Their attitudes were not just a simple as "black and white."

The second interaction occurred poolside in the Drakensberg mountains. A group of Colored (again, the South African term for people of mixed race: not as far as we can tell considered inappropriate by anyone but still difficult for us to write/say because of its history as a derogatory term in the U.S.) people about our age were starting their weekend, drinking and talking loudly. A white man who was sitting nearby came and condescendingly yelled at them, playing the race card from the start by first of all saying "I don't know whether you're staying here," and then justifying his own rights there by saying that although he lived in England now, he was born in South Africa. When he returned to his seat, the Colored people grumbled loudly "Go back to England" before eventually one of them offered him a glass of wine and some kind of reconciliation took place. This interaction was notable for its boring predictability, and the fact that while race wasn't really at issue (people being loud), that's what came to the forefront. In some small way maybe it represents the difficulty, the understandable wariness that all racial categories of people have in trying to live together in the "new" South Africa, which despite massive amounts of crime and violence has also experienced incredible change (our Servas hosts in Durban telling us that the downtown has basically gone from being 95% white to 95% black since Apartheid, and that this has happened peacefully).

In closing with a few thoughs on similarities to race in the U.S., one large factor in the perception of both is the media. In South Africa, the media seemed to relish the bloody headlines in a sensational, tabloid way. While it's clear that there is a reality to the crime and problems around race, it's also clear to us that, like our walking tour of Soweto demonstrated, crime and the perception of race as a type of fear is far from the only reality.

But crime does exist in South Africa, and because it's a part of daily life, it's how most whites experience the category of race and Apartheid inequalities directly. Living in a poor area of Hartford, we were also victims of crime: in some way, the statistics say it's almost bound to happen, if not to you directly than at least to someone you know closely. Fear and crime are the individual experiences, which understandably obscure the structural, the historical inequalities. Like in the U.S., those who are able flee these areas in their self-interest of avoiding crime--we heard time and time again about white relatives who were urging family still in South Africa to leave the country.

We felt that while talking with the white business owners in Nature's Valley gave us valid angles on social and economic questions of the present, it did not give possible answers to the sometimes insurmountable-seeming question of how to work to redress past wrongs. Some of the more extreme attempts at doing this (at least in Africa) seem like complete failures, for example president/dictator Mugabe's seizure of white farms in Zimbabwe (although these have the additonal problem in our view of not being done with sincere intentions but rather for Mugabe's own political preservation).

One white resident who, coming back from a hike, gave us a lift back to our lodge in the Drakensberg expressed surprise that the U.S hasn't been able to solve our race "problem," given that the demographic numbers are reversed (with blacks being 12% and whites over half of the U.S. population; and a much higher ratio of blacks to the white minority in South Africa). Maybe these numbers are part of the reason that the U.S. doesn't have quite the same fear--whites are more able to exist in the suburbs, away from inner cities and nonwhite populations, whereas, even with the hyper-segregation of Apartheid, it seems much more difficult for whites to live apart in South Africa. The numbers are not in their favor.

Despite this difference in numbers, what does feel very similar to the U.S. is the vast inequality between people, with much of this based in racial categories. While we don't believe that inequality is the only cause of crime, it certainly seems to be one of the main factors. In South Africa, people committing crimes don't just target whites, they target people who have something attractive to steal, and the majority of these are still white. Although the U.S. has the history of slavery to overcome, even its evils seem less in comparison to the acts of Apartheid. One example of this difference of degree, and still the strongest visual example of inequality in South Africa, is the housing. Blacks and other nonwhites were housed in "townships" under Apartheid, and today structures ranging from flimsy shacks to more solid small houses still stand, usually still completely separated from a nearby town or white residential area. Taking Hartford as an example, the housing of the poorest (and nonwhite) residents is certainly unequal, but even the worst public housing project does not resemble the total segregation of Apartheid townships. Most of the U.S. non-project housing differs from wealthier housing not necessarily in terms of the type of structure, but in terms of upkeep. Again despite its inequality and inadequacy, in comparison the housing for the nonwhite poor in U.S. cities seems like something which developed because of neglect mixed with racism but still in a slightly more organic process, compared to the stark, completely unnatural, hyper-racialized construction of the Apartheid townships. We write this not to excoriate the conditions of race in the U.S., but in attempt to demonstrate the degree of difference in South Africa.

One positive way in which South Africa differs from the U.S. on race is the willingness to confront some of these issues, and the belief that a way can be found to live together peacefully. These beliefs have a long history: in the African National Congress's 1955 Freedom Charter, it rejects the contemporary Pan-African Congress claim of Africa for the Africans and instead resolves that all residents of South Africa can live together. In comparison to leaders like Mugabe, whose attempts to overcome racial wrongs of the past seem to lead only to more problems, leaders like Mandela and now Mbeki have not blamed all the problems of the nation on its history or its white residents. On the Soweto tour, the Colored brother (who also told us that he didn't think blacks should be leaders of a nation!) of an ANC member who hosted secret meetings with Mandela remarked that he was very impressed by a speech Mandela made recently saying that blacks have a lot to learn from the successes of whites. The ANC goes to seemingly great distances to support its rhetoric of forgiveness, to build on some of the successes of the post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Committee: it even offered a state funeral to P.W. Botha, the last hardline Apartheid leader in the 1980s, when he recently died.

South Africa is a place of extremes, simultaneously extreme hope and extreme despair. It has experienced some successes in overcoming Apartheid, and in these we think may provide a model for working to achieve harmony among different peoples and overcome the categories of race by working towards greater economic and social equality.

Urban Experiences: Durban, Johannesberg, and Soweto

2006-12-22T03:58:00.000-08:00

Our stint in backpackerland took a welcome break when we arrived in Durban, South Africa's third-largest city and the southern hemisphere's busiest port. Although the Baz Bus didn't drop us off there until close to midnight, our SERVAS hosts, Alex and Tracey, picked us up and brought us home for a curry dinner with their two cats, Candy and Gidgy. Alec is a lifelong Durban resident; Tracey grew up in rural KwaZulu-Natal (Zululand), and has lived in Durban for many years. (Tracey now runs a Zulu crafts cooperative, working closely with local women and taking regular trips to various parts of the world to sell the goods.) They are enthusiasts of both their city and their region, and provided us with a wonderful introduction to the area. This included sampling Durban's iconic food, bunny chow-- an Indian curry served inside a hollowed-out quarter loaf of bread. Durban has the world's largest Indian population outside of India, and much of the food of the city is reflective of that, but the particular story of bunny chow is that it was used in past days (when servants were the rule and styrofoam didn't exist) as a way for servants to carry hot lunches to their bosses. The word for boss sounded, to English ears, something like "bunny", and so what had been called "boss chow" got its new name.

We spent some of our first day in Durban hanging out downtown, after successfully visiting the U.S. Consulate to get additional visa pages added to our passports. We visited an impressive art museum in the City Hall, which also has a natural history museum and a library branch, and walked around the surrounding streets a bit. We really liked the feel of the city-- vibrant was the main word that kept coming to mind, with the streets full of people walking, shopping, eating, and working. There was a dense concentration of small businesses, and a swarming outdoor market with long lines at the bunny chow stand. Alec estimates that, since the end of apartheid, when the restrictions on which "race" could live in the city finally ended, the population of Durban has shifted from about 95% white to 95% non-white. It felt a bit like walking around Park Street in Hartford. Also like Hartford, Durban has been busily developing its waterfront, although we must admit that the scale of their projects certainly dwarfs ours. Durban's municipal budget runs in the black, even as they build new stadiums for World Cup 2010 and keep the city beachfront in beautiful shape. We spent a thoroughly unintellectual but very fun day at the largest waterfront development, an aquarium and water-park where we oggled unlikely-looking fish, watched a dolphin show, and scooted down water slides.

Arriving in Johannesburg had quite a different feel, as the Baz Bus drove from one extensively-secured suburban hostel to another. Our hostel ran regular shuttles to a couple different places in the city-- the museum, a mall-- but strongly discouraged walking anywhere, and did not offer any opportunities to go out at night, such as for a jazz show as we'd been hoping. We felt pretty stuck, between the fear that the hostel worked to instill in us and, moreso, the high cost of getting around by taxi, given the dismal state of public transportation in the city. Every house in the suburbs had a solid fence topped with razor-wire, a gated driveway, a sign warning passers-by of armed guards on call. Is this how Canadians look at Americans, with our alarm systems and locked doors?

The first of our two days in Jo'burg was spent at the Apartheid Museum, an extensive, moving collection. I was very impressed with the museum both from a historiographic perspective and from a tourist's perspective. The museum was chock full of well-presented artifacts-- video footage of speeches and police beatings, photos, decrees, etc.-- and, through a smart counterpuntal exhibit, analyzed the factors behind the rise of apartheid, the effects of apartheid on life in South Africa, and the resistance to apartheid thoughtfully and simultaneously. The explanation, for instance, of how race and class were manipulated by the nationalist leaders to leverage the support of poor Afrikaaners was nuanced without being exculpating; the presentation of resistance movements and leaders was similarly complex, not idolatrous. We spent hours reading the texts and examining the photos, and could have spent much longer. But the museum was also well set up for the large portion of visitors who don't have or want to spend so much time; just walking through the exhibits, as we saw many people doing, one could still get a strong sense of the horrors of apartheid and the power of resistance. In our view, they missed a lot, but at least they got something.

We did have a rather unpleasant experience leaving the museum: the taxi we were in broke down on the highway, and we had to sit in it for 45 minutes waiting for another taxi from the same company to retrieve us. And then they wanted to be paid the full (and very high) fare! We disagreed.

Our second day in Jo'burg, and last day in South Africa, was spent in Soweto. Until we actually spent time there, Soweto loomed in somewhat mythic proportions in our heads: the center of the great student resistance movement that started in 1976, the one-time home to leaders like Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, and Desmond Tutu-- and also one of the world's most notorious ghettoes, a word synonomous with poverty and despair. So we thought. The Soweto we were introduced to, in a day of walking and taking local minibuses with a local guide, Eunice, was immeasurably more multilayered, more alive, and more spirited than anything we had ever read or heard about it had led us to believe.

We spent time in three neighborhoods-- the first surprise for us being that Soweto HAD neighborhoods. What we had pictured as a monolithic area of shacks was actually a whole metropolis in itself, home to 4 million people (a Kiwi we met that morning said that was equal to the whole country of New Zealand). We started in Orlando East, a working-class area composed almost entirely of the brick homes that every family is entitled to apply for once. Many of these one-room houses had been added onto (at the owner's expense); many also had one or more shacks in the backyard, lived in sometimes by family members in Soweto seeking work, sometimes by renters who were on the waiting list for a government house. Our first stop was in the shack where one of the guides lived, where we spent some time talking to her sister-in-law, who is a local activist focusing on issues of violence against women. As we left the shack and walked along the streets, we were struck by the absence of security fences, and the presence of children playing and people walking-- streetlife that was absent from the suburban area where the hostel was. We were also shown the house where Mpanza, known as "the father of Soweto" for his fight to get housing built there, had lived.

Leaving Orlando East, we took a minibus to Kliptown, a severely neglected area that fit more closely to our prior image of Soweto. This neighborhood has neither electricity nore plumbing, garbage pick-up nor schools: the government wants people to leave the area, has wanted this for decades, and therefore does not provide any services to it. But of course the fact is that people do live there, lots of people, and the government's refusal to acknowledge this has only exacerbated the situation. On the outskirts of Kliptown, we visited the homes of two interesting people. The first, Porto Lollan, was a 75 year old "coloured" man whose house, under the initiation of his late brother, had hosted secret meetings of Mandela and other leaders in the years before they were imprisoned. He had an interesting collection of photos and newspaper articles, but we were quite put-off actually talking to him, as he said something like "Black people aren't fit to be president." After him, though, we met an extremely inspiring man, Bob, who ran an NGO called Soweto-Kliptown Youth. He himself had been an abandoned child, taken in by a local activist and, in his words, told that he mattered and given a chance at life. He has used that chance to work tirelessly and effectively to improve the lives of Kliptown children, running a variety of programs and initiatives. He now has links with a charitable fund of the NBA, and photos of giant basketball players sitting in too-small plastic chairs in Kliptown, watching children performs gumboots dances, line his walls. In his work, he has also deeply touched the lives of some American children; he runs an exhange program with the exclusive Nobles School in Boston, and has received emails from the parents of the privileged students who have spent time in Soweto saying they don't know what he did, but they thank him for the effects that time had on their children.

Our final stop of the day was Orlando West, now Soweto's wealthiest neighborhood (referred to as Beverly Hills), and the location of the main sights that tourists usually see. (We saw several groups of tourists, in vans and buses, stopping off for a few minutes at these places, on the "Soweto tours" offered by every travel agency-- we were so thankful that a man we'd met at Inkosana had told us about the walking tour instead!) These sights were certainly powerful: the corner where a 13 year old boy, Hector Pieterson, was shot by police in 1976, the first casualty of the Soweto student uprising; the memorial museum for Hector Pieterson, overseen by his sister; Vilakazi Street, where Tutu and Mandela lived and where Pieterson was shot. But what will stick with us even more is the feeling of walking around the Soweto streets, of spending time in a neighborhood in the full sense of the word-- a real place, with problems certainly, but also with pride, with spirit, with identity.

Sweet Mountain Retreat

2006-12-20T13:03:00.000-08:00

We spent part of last week at the Inkosana Lodge in the central Drakensberg range, and can officially say it was the nicest place we've paid to stay at any point on this trip. Composed of one airy, low-roofed but high-ceilinged main building, and a series of thatched-roof huts all set within a multi-level yard and garden area, almost every window, path, and seating area at the lodge had views of the tufted green mountains a short distance away. Our hut had autumnal batik curtains with elephat motifs, and a traveler-suited design in addition to the fine aesthetics, with lots of tucked-away shelf space and a wooden clothes rack. (More and more, we are finding that things like having lots of hooks, a large sink for hand-washing, and good knives in the kitchen make the big difference between feeling thrilled or frustrated by the places we stay.) The kitchen at Inkosana also definitively topped our "best" list, with castiron kettles and ant-free brown sugar available for use. And in addition, there was the pool, a spring-fed, cast-cement version of a fancy suburban infinity pool, where we could soak in the cool and the view.

We had three main activities during our time at Inkosana: hiking, lounging, and eating. In the former category, we started out, the afternoon of our arrival, with just a walk along the roads near the lodge, which contained the delicious finger-staining surprise of a whole row of blackberry bushes laden with a first crop of ripe berries. Erik braved the brambles to pick them, while I supportively held out the bag to fill and tried not to eat them as soon as they came off the branch. The following day we just got our legs a little warmer, hiking in the morning from a meadow, down through a damp and (to me) claustrophobic forest, to a waterfall. The highlight of the hike was coming upon a troop of baboons, who sent out a couple of guards to bark angrily at us while the rest of the group ran away. The best hike, though, came the next day. We set out on a cloudy morning with a friendly, interesting Canadian couple we'd met at breakfast and headed up through forest into a long, gently climbing stretch of meadow (where Erik got in touch with his Swiss roots by attempting a little yodeling, with some measure of success). Once we reached the end of that trail, at the point where a final peak ascent would start, we turned and began to traverse the grassy ridgeline. On our way to the shallow pool that was our goal and picnic spot, we spotted a white-tailed antelope and watched as lightning flashed and crackled on other parts of the mountains, bringing with it thunder that lasted for a Beethoven-length timpani roll. When we reached the pool, the sun was bright and hot, although the wind tormening the grasses suggested another storm ahead. As we headed back along the ridge, that storm hit, bringing not just thunder and lightning (not too close) but also hail, which we waited out under some trees. The storm subsided for the rest of our descent-- then, just as we reached the parking lot, opened up full force, pouring down sheets of rain that continued for a couple hours. But by that point, we were back at the lodge, luxuriating in the comfort of a good day of activity. We did one more hike the next day, going back up to the end of the trail but skipping the ridge walk this time, and rounded out our time with another blackberry picking mission before going back to our regular backpacker life on the bus.

But what of those other two categories, lounging and eating? A joy in their own right, the hikes also provided pleasant justification for those activities. The windowledge in our little hut made a perfect table for afternoon tea and cookies (a habit I am completely ready to take up when we get home!) Ed, the owner of Inkosana, made wonderful hard, biscotti-like cookies called rusks which were perfectly suited for tea-dipping, and which I now have the recipe for (although I may need to find a way to modify the pound of butter called for in the original...). We would sit in our room reading and drinking tea, as afternoon thunderstorms invariably pounded and danced outside. The showers were walled but open-roofed; as the cold water of the rain mixed with the hot water of the faucet, we could watch the lightning touching down on the hills and illuminating the sky. Most nights the rain would quiet before dinner, allowing us to get to the main lodge or the kitchen unsoaked. Along with being a baker, Ed was an excellent cook, preparing huge, heavy dinners for many guests each night. We enjoyed eating his food once, but also enjoyed the opportunity it gave us to splurge on more gourmet groceries than we usually get-- since the only choices were Ed's restaurant (pricey, for us) or groceries, spending a little more than usual still meant spending less than the alternative. So we grilled (or braied, in South African) steak, lunched on smoked salmon, and ate strawberries and peaches with fresh cream so thick it needed to be scooped with a spoon. We were completely spoiled for four days, and enjoyed every moment of it.

Babes (and Dudes) in Backpackerland

2006-12-20T13:02:00.001-08:00

Leaving Andrea and Adam, we caught a ride with the bride and groom to Kimberley, with another man in the front seat so Rachel, the bride and I sat in the back seat of the small car, us holding our luggage and she holding wedding presents on our laps. Our train wasn't scheduled to depart until later that night, so we walked to The Big Hole. No surprises here--it is a very big hole, the largest open pit diamond mine in the world. We went through the museum, which did an ok job of telling the story of how the discovery of diamonds in 1867 helped shape South Africa's history. Eventually the English imperialist Cecil Rhodes won out in the struggle to control the diamond mines.

We didn't have the best feeling waiting at the Kimberley train station, after hearing so many stories about crime in South Africa, and with the circumstances being similar to the night in Palenque (Mexico) when we had to sit on the floor for a long time at night in an overcrowded station, and then our camera ended up being stolen on the ride. But, while the train ride certainly wasn't the most comfortable, fortunately that's where the similarities to our Palenque experience ended. We'd booked third class tickets (the first class was full), and the waiting area was packed with families: kids first playing/sliding across, and then sleeping on blankets spread out on the floor. After about an hour's delay we finally boarded the train, uncomfortably trying to sleep on top of our big packs in order to decrease the possibilities of having something stolen. When we tried to squeeze ourselves into the seat a man said it was no problem to put the bags on the luggage racks, and he was probably right: it seemed to be what everyone else did, and, with babies and kids all around us, the family atmosphere continued for the entire trip. Creeping along the tracks through the barren Karoo desert, the train was extremely cold at night and then very hot during the day. The trip was scheduled to take 18 hours; fortunately we were able to get off before Cape Town and catch a commuter train to our destination, Stellenbosch, arriving there about 5pm.

From Stellenbosch until Durban (in between staying with Servas hosts and Manyeding village), we were a part of the "backpacker scene" (hostels, as well as the individuals carrying the backpacks, are called "Backpackers" in South Africa). Although some of the Backpackers made us feel a little older, for the most part they were well set up for budget travel: more amenities like kitchens, swimming pools, and bars than we were used to, as well as being nicer overall than Egypt and Ghana's budget offerings, and of course more social.

Stellenbosch is the second oldest town in South Africa, in the heart of the wine region. There is a university but the term had just ended and students gone home, so the town felt quiet and relaxed. After settling in to the "Stumble Inn," we sat around their backyard fire pit, went out to a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant, and were happy to catch up on some sleep. The next day we took a wine tour: 4 vineyards with 5 tastings at each, in addition to one cheese tasting and lunch. A beautiful sunny day, it was a fun tour--we learned a little about wine and enjoyed hanging out with everyone on the tour.

Trying to rest and prepare dinner back at the backpackers, we were a little annoyed by loud music and voices. While we were eating we were glad to talk with Betty and Carla, professors from a small college in Nebraska (whose students we had been annoyed at earlier) who were leading a semester in Africa for 15 students. The students read several books, traveled together on public transport through multiple countries, and did a one week apprenticeship in Malawi. It was really inspiring to talk with them, one of those conversations that happened at the perfect time to lift our spirits. Betty actually has a book coming out in Feb. about her experiences called "Africa on Six Wheels: A Semester on Safari" (BettyLevitov, check out www.doane.edu for more info).

Leaving Stellenbosch, we boarded the hop on/hop off Baz Bus for the first time. South Africa has pretty terrible public transport (probably the worst we've seen actually, maybe rivalled by Egypt), so although the Baz Bus was expensive and had some restrictions on what days we could travel (and was sometimes late etc.), the fact that it not only got us from place to place, but also took us door to door to the Backpackers was a definite plus. It was also a nice way to socialize with people, and to see them again during different legs of our trip. On this day we spent the entire day on the bus, made a little more tolerable by watching "Shrek" and the scenery of the Western Cape coast: first rolling farmland and then beautiful coastline. Around 8pm we finally arrived at our destination, Hikers Haven in Nature's Valley.

Hiker's Haven is a converted vacation home, and with the owners' old books and decorations around it still had that feel--a very nice place. Nature'sValley is a small community (no bank but one all purpose grocery/restaurant/pub) in Tsitsikama National Park, a gorgeous location.The next day we went for a hike with an English and a German woman. The variety of scenery was incredible: we started along the coast, first on sand and then on jagged black rocks, then climbed up through the trees to the mouth of Salt River. From there we ascended again until we reached an open meadow plateau, and finally descended into the valley, following a stream through rain forest. Rachel (barely) overcame her fear of snakes to trail blaze off the path to the road, where we hitched a ride back to town to get out of the rain. As we were making dinner and planning an early bedtime, we got a call from the pub from the people who drove us back to town: Kathy, originally from Minnesota, and her husband Henny, an Afrikaaner. We had a very interesting conversation with them on race (more on that in an upcoming blog).

The next day we walked a little more along the beach, before catching the Baz Bus that evening and making a required stop in Port Elizabeth. Crossing into the Eastern Cape, we moved from the tourism-designated Garden Route to the Wild Coast, and also into the former Ciskei (one of the segregated "Homelands" for Blacks). Back on the road next morning, we arrived around midday at Buccaneers Backpackers in Cintsa, dubbed by the travel guide as the best in South Africa. As the clouds cleared and the sun came out, we tried our luck with a free canoe on a shallow lagoon, before participating in the daily "free activity" and more importantly, the free boxed wine that accompanied it. After a little rag-tag ping-pong and a lot of boxed wine, I was ready to call it a night (at 6:30) but Rachel was up for more socializing and a game of "Killer Pool" (billiards where everyone takes turns).

Buccaneers was really well set up: what started with a grassy hillside back in the '80s now has trees everywhere, with the main building on the hill and accomodations stretching down to the pool and the beach. We had bunk beads in the dorm with a fantastic view over the water. The next day of lounging on the beach unfortunately didn't prepare me for that day's activity, where instead of the wine doing me in, this time it was the sumo wrestling competition that left me with what seems to be a bruised rib muscle that is gradually healing (let the record show that I did win the match). After dinner we hung out a little, and I was only barely able to outlast Rachel, staying up to the late hour of about 10:30.

The next day we enjoyed a little more time by the pool before getting on the Baz Bus around noon for the long ride to Durban. They usually have a trailer for the big backpacks, but today it was broken so for a stretch of the ride we had to cram our packs into the aisle of the bus, which feels ok when taking the local minibuses (like from Kimberley to Kuruman), but not when we're paying what we are for Baz. Arriving in Durban at 11:30 p.m., our Servas host Alec picked us up, and Tracey had dinner waiting for us. Back with the adult crowd, we stayed up talking until around 2 a.m.--later than any night during our adventures in Backpackerland!

Wedding Crashers 2: Manyeding Village

2006-12-05T23:24:00.000-08:00

There aren't too many situations I can think of when 60 hours of being in a place would be worth 40+ hours of travel to get there and away. I wouldn't be too keen to fly from Hartford to Australia for a weekend, for example, although if somehow I could get home from here for one day with friends and family I would certainly do that. Anyway, I digress. The point is, this weekend we had the happy experience of several ridiculously long travel days being fully worthwhile for the couple days we got to spend in between. We visited a friend of Erik's from high school, Andrea, and her husband Adam in the village of Manyeding--four hours north of the diamond city of Kimberley-- where they have been in the Peace Corps for the last 15 months. The particular timing of the visit was centered on their host brother's wedding, which we were generously invited to attend.

Following the local tradition, this was actually the second wedding for the couple-- the first was held a few month's ago in the bride's hometown. However, the fact that it wasn't the first or only celebration did nothing to lessen the scale of the party preparations on the part of the groom's family. When we arrived, a large tent had been set up in the family's front yard, and was full of men hanging decorations and children cleaning tables and chairs. Meanwhile, in the back yard, the groom's mother, sister, aunts, and female cousins were chopping vegetables, stirring massive fire-black kettles, cutting meat, and washing endless cycles of dishes-- activities that Andrea said had been going on all week, and which would continue throughout the weekend. Innards of the two cows and one sheep the family had slaughtered for the celebration were hanging out to dry on the fence post (they make up the traditional night-before-the-wedding dinner, although we chose to eat pasta with Andrea and Adam instead...).

Saturday morning, the dawn was broken by the joyful ululations of the women of the groom's family: the bride and her family, having driven all night in a red minibus, picking people up along the way, had arrived. As out-of-town guests continued to show up throughout the morning, the ululations continued as well, as they did throughout the ceremony itself. A bit after 10, we heard clapping and singing, and went outside to find two groups slowly, rhythmically, melodically making their way toward each other: the women of the groom's family, with him in the center, moving from their yard outward on the village road, and the women of the bride's family, with her in the center, moving from the village road in toward the house. Eventually the two groups met, with ululations and song resounding; then they all turned together to walk to the tent the bride and groom in front of the group, and a couple women symbolically sweeping the path before them with brooms made of brush.

For the first wedding, the bride and groom had worn American-style clothes, but for this one they wore variations on traditional attire, to stunning effect. His shirt and the top layer of her dress were mocha-colored matte silk, while his pants and the under layer of her dress were the same material in a clear sky blue. She had a head wrap of the same fabrics, and also wore a double strand of ping pong ball-sized dark wooden beads around her neck, and matching (but smaller) earrings. Both his shirt and her dress were embroidered with almond-sized, cream colored shells. They sat at the front, at a table on a raised platform decorated with miniature cooking pots, impala skins, and gourds, some of which also graced the tables where the guests sat down. The ceremony was conducted entirely in Tsetswana, the local language, but thanks to a program made by Adam, and some translation by Andrea, we could follow what was going on. An Anglican priest performed a length religious ceremony, interrupted at times by songs when one woman would sing out a first line, and then other people would join in, singing in several-part harmony and dancing at their places. Twice the bride and groom were brought out to dance, led around by their cousins. When the priest was through, there were speeches by two of the older aunts, and some of the couples' friends, followed by toasts and prayers. And then... lunch. The women brought out the bucketfuls of food they had been preparing, dishing up groaning plates of pap (a heavy maize porridge), rice, mutton, and beef, with dottings of vegetables as accompaniment. While the tent had not been completely full when the wedding started, by lunch people were packed in and spilling out into the yard; invitations are not issued, so much of the population of the village comes out for the meal. Indeed, people continued showing up, sitting around, and eating well into the night, and the families stuck around throughout the following day as well-- all of this with no catering, just home cooking! Eek.

On Sunday we were able to see more of the village and hear more from Andrea and Adam about some of the issues they have faced there. They have four schools, one in Manyeding and three in other villages, on their circuit, and have found that the quality of the schools varies massively, according to the will of the teachers and principals-- unfortunately, there is basically no accountability from above. The government has provided some decent resources-- we were particularly impressed by sets of books on AIDS and anti-Apartheid leaders-- but the utilization of these resources is weak. Andrea and Adam have painted world maps, with every country labeled, on a wall of each of their schools, and are putting together lesson plans to try to avoid a similar fate for that initiative. Some of the other main challenges they talked about in the village are AIDS, alcoholism, and unemployment; general health and brain drain are also on the list.

The combination of sometimes feeling total despair at problems that seem insurmountable, and sometimes feeling inspired and moved by the strengths that exist despite so many problems, is something we empathize with from our own work in Hartford. More than once, though, Andrea and Adam told us that although they will not be able to have the largescale impact they dreamed of when they signed up for Peace Corps, the positive effects of their time in the village on both their host family and other villagers, and, especially, on them, have been great. It is stereotypical, but true: knowing people changes your perceptions of them; knowing other lifestyles changes your perceptions of your own life. It is a great threat to prejudice; it could stop war. If only everyone could have an experience like that.

Want to read more? Adam and Andrea's blog is www.thaboandlerato.blogspot.com.

Glimpses of Apartheid

2006-12-05T22:55:00.000-08:00

In Cape Town, we visited the District 6 Museum and Robben Island, giving us small glimpses into the history of apartheid in South Africa. (We've been overwhelmed by the prominence of race here as the defining issue, and plan to write a post specifically on this topic at the end of our time here--for now we'll stick to the specific sights.)

District 6 is a neighborhood of Cape Town near the water which was a poor but very mixed area; inhabited by Blacks, "Coloreds" (the South African term for a mix of black and white), Jews, Indians, and "Malays" (the term for Muslims). The first forced removals from the neighborhood happened in 1901, when local officials declared it a sanitation hazard. In the 1960s, all nonwhite residents of District 6 were forced to relocate: Blacks into nearby ghetto areas called "townships," other groups into their own separate areas. The museum houses a huge amount of personal photos and artifacts from the people who were forced out. Begun as a temporary exhibit in the early 90s, it was so popular that the museum found permanent housing in a former neighborhood church. According to Lonely Planet, the museum remains as popular with former residents as it does with tourists.

It was interesting to read about the interaction of the Garden City/Le Corbusier ideas of urban planning within this particular hyper-racialized context. After the residents were removed and the area cleared, several projects were built but most of the land remains vacant today, the object of ongoing claims by former residents and potential developers. The wealth of objects and information presented in the museum showed how the removal affected people's lives, but sometimes it seemed to understate the historical responsibility of the people and government for what occurred, displaying it as a tragedy but one which is safely behind us. Rachel noticed that one visitor had written in the guestbook "I'm ashamed to be white." That feeling is important for the past, but there also needs to be responsibility for the present.

We also visited Robben Island, which had been used as a prison since the Dutch arrival in the 1600s (the only successful escape happened in one of those early years) until it was recently converted to a museum. Taking the ferry from Cape Town's wealthy waterfront, we could look back and see the city framed by the awesome Table Mountain, a view that African National Congress (ANC) prisoners took as inspiration for the land they would one day return to. The visit was a contrast between the comfort (and of course freedom) that we experienced as tourists in a landscape that could have been any coastal vacation spot, and the awful conditions and degradation that prisoners experienced here. Arriving at the island, we saw photos of the ANC prisoners arriving in the 1960s, and when we were loaded onto our bus passed under the original sign: recalling the "Arbeit Macht Frei," of a Nazi concentration camp (which were first employed by the British against the white Afrikaaners in the Boer War), this sign read "We Serve with Pride." On the bus, we passed through the village, where some former prisoners who work as tour guides now live. The highlight was the limestone quarry where Mandela and ANC leaders were isolated and sentenced to hard labor, going blind from the sun on the limestone and getting TB from the limestone dust. During their lunch break, they would go to their "classroom": the tunnel in the limestone used as a latrine, telling the guards they were looking for shade but actually teaching each other from the chapters of the books they had read.

In the prison itself, our guide was Sparks, who was imprisoned in 1983-1990 for being a member of the military wing of the ANC, the MK or "Spear of the Nation." Everything about the prison life was based on segregating by race: Coloreds could wear long sleeves, pants and shoes while Blacks had to wear short sleeves, shorts and no shoes during the cold, windy and rainy winters. Food rations were also different by race. We saw Mandela's cell where he was imprisoned for 18 years, and the courtyard where he hid his autobiography, eventually transported out by the man who would one day become the Minsiter of Transportation!

At the end of the tour, our guide Sparks announced that we were privileged to have with us on the tour a former warden at the prison, who hesitantly, briefly raised his hand when Sparks requested, and said only that he had worked on Robben Island from 1976 to 1983, and at another prison after that. One Black tour member asked the warden if there were any Black wardens, to which of course he replied that there weren't. Sparks went on to speak of the reconciliation that has occurred, how he wasn't personally angry and how people need to live together now. However, as the group filed past him to reboard the ferry and journey back to Cape Town, we noticed that, unlike most tour members, the warden did not shake Sparks's hand. From the history of apartheid, some reconciliation does seem to have occurred, but much also seems to remain.

At Home in Cape Town

2006-11-28T22:37:00.000-08:00

After our little fiasco with Ethiopian Airlines, we were very happy to actually arrive in South Africa, and spent our first afternoon enjoying the beautiful air of Cape Town (and the 20 degree F difference between the temperature there and in Accra). Before dinner, we were picked up by our SERVAS hosts, Penny (human) and Cadeau (dog). As it's turned out, this has been a jack-pot, so to speak, of SERVAS experiences: Penny is warm, generous, thoughtful, interesting, and fun. From the two nights we were planning to stay with her, she opened her house up for five, which among other advantages allowed us to rest up, do some reading, and get some of the musty smell out of our clothes, which have finally been taken out of our backpacks. She cooked lovely dinners served with lovely wine, facilitated our touristing, and included us in her outings. And on top of that, Cadeau is ridiculously cute.

We've gotten to do a few hikes in our days here on the Cape. Penny has two hiking groups, one on Sundays and one on Tuesdays, which we've joined for loping walks through a rich forest and a sea-view scrub-covered hill. On both hikes, it was a pleasure to talk to her hiking companions, one of whom in particular stood out for having been the personal chaplain to Desmond Tutu for 20 years. In between the two group hikes, we went up Table Mountain on our own. It was a steep climb, so much so that at times it was dizzying to look out to the city and bay below; more strikingly, though, the climb was breathtakingly beautiful. There was a certain kind of unapologetically pink wildflower growing all over the lower 3/4 of the mountain, which was so exuberant in its pinkness-- here a sea of it, there a few defiant survivors growing out of rock-- that it made me giggle and gasp with every blink of my eyes. The trail up was somewhat crowded, as trails go, with twentysomethings by far the dominant demographic. The top of the mountain, though, where the cable car lets out, was a different story. There was a church group there of at least 300 people-- it seemed to be a convention of churches from all over southern Africa. Everyone was exquisitely dressed, the men in full suits and hats, the women in billowing, daisy-bright skirts and blouses, with matching hats and high heels. Although there were non-church tourists up there too, they were completely subsumed by the wave of church ladies. They were really a sight equal to the views of Cape Town spreading to the sea below.

We got another immersion in the flora of the Cape (a unique biome, called the fynbos, which is 80% endemic species) at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, a sprawling, sloping park with winding paths and open lawns, all replete with plants. There were also some goofy looking guinea fowl walking around, posing for photographs just like the squirrels in Harvard Yard; we saw a couple mongoose, too, playing a spastic hide-and-seek in the brush. The most prevalent species, though, was the Cape Town Hipster, a distinctive form of Homo sapien that came oozing into the park for a free concert as we, in our rather un-hip hiking clothes (see photo of Erik entitled "Cool Cat") were heading out.

Our most exciting species-spotting, although it certainly did not require any wilderness skills, was of the penguins that live just outside of Cape Town. They are African penguins, about 18 inches tall and pleasantly round; when they want to lie down, they simply tip forward and land on their stomachs, looking like one of those toys with the round base that will lean from side to side but never fall. We saw the penguins at the beginning of their molting period, during which they don't eat, so they were not playing in the water, but standing on the rocks or sand, their heads angled up toward the sun. Some were digging nests, which involved lying on their bellies in the sand and using their feet like rotorooters to gouge out a hole, sand flying out behind them. We've seen too many ads for "Happy Feet" lately, and were slightly expecting the penguins to jump into a song and dance routine, but even without that, they were pretty wonderful to watch.

On our last night in Cape Town, we went out with Penny to an African restaurant on a touristy street downtown. It felt a bit strange, especially after eating African food without much pomp regularly in Ghana, to be at a place claiming some kind of authenticity and attracting, of course, only non-Africans (more on that theme in the next entry). But despite that, it was a fun atmosphere, and the game meats that are their specialty were very tasty. We felt sad to be saying goodbye to Penny, who has made us feel nothing but at home for all the time we've invaded her house, but also happy to have had such a warm start to South Africa.

Bookends: Leaving Ghana

2006-11-27T09:02:00.000-08:00

As we left the beach at Kokrobite to spend our final days in Accra, little did we expect that the end of our time in Ghana would prove similar to the beginning (or at least the coming and going parts). Our first afternoon in Accra we checked into the Date hotel, recommended by the travel guide as the best budget hotel option in the city. While it wasn't too unpleasant, all we can say for Lonely Planet's sake is that we hope the competition in this category is extremely weak. At lunch we tried pepper soup, checking off another traditional dish (one that we'd been reading about in Ben Okri's The Famished Road) from our list, and then checked internet at Busy Internet, a huge, slick internet cafe that I think claimed to be the largest in Africa.

That evening we had our first Servas (the world peace hosting organization that we signed up but had so far been unsuccessful in contacting people) interaction, meeting up with Lionel and Dolly, an early-30s middle class couple. They picked us up at our hotel and bought us dinner at Papaye, a popular chicken restaurant in the Osu neighborhood (Accra's high end neighborhood, but which still has a lot of elements, like street vendors, which make the claim that it's just like London's Oxford Street seem a little exaggerated). It was great to talk with them, and we were the first Servas people they had interacted with as well, and we hope that it was a good start in Servas for both parties!

The next day we went to the museum, which had a variety of traditional cultural artifacts (including a necklace of human teeth from the Congo) on display. The most interesting parts for us were the exhibits on the slave trade. One followed the slave trading ship Fredensborg on its triangular route from Denmark to Ghana to the Carribbean and back towards Denmark, where it sank and was discovered in the 1970s. The evidence of the ship's records and daily life that was retrieved from the ocean floor made for a compelling and harrowing story. While Denmark was first nation to outlaw slavery (in 1792?), they had transported tens of thousands in the years leading up to then.

That afternoon, we met Henrietta, our first actual host with Servas, who picked us up at our hotel and took us to a business networking event at the British High Commission (Embassy, in American-speak) where she works. We drank a beer in the social room at the junior officers' residence area, and listened to an update from the High Commissioner (ambassador) on Ghana's upcoming 5oth anniversary, China's involvement in Africa, and the events in Cote D'Ivoire (which he asked the audience not to view as a positive long-term development, despite the fact that so many businesses are currently relocating from Cote D'Ivoire to Ghana). We then listened to speakers from the Ghana Stock Exchange and someone from the Commission on corporate social responsibility, while the audience reacted in a stereotypically boorish and rude manner. Afterwards we learned about some of the extreme and blatant discrimination that occurs in the High Commission office itself, some of the examples being that Ghanaian employees are payed something like 1/6 of British employees, and Ghanaians are not guaranteed parking spaces. After the event we drove to Henrietta and her husband Kojo's home over unpaved roads with huge craters.

The next day was Thanksgiving. Kojo, who works in marketing for billboards, took us with him to a meeting with the Jaguar car dealership, and then for a quick tour of the Coca-Cola bottling plant where his cousin works before we meet up with John from Sogakope and went to collect the dress and shirt we'd had made with local fabric. Our lunchtime meal on Thanksgiving consisted of pizza and beer at a gas station rest stop area. When we returned to Kojo and Henrietta's home, a friend of theirs took us to an internet cafe, where we used the Skype program (calling through the computer) for the first time. It seemed like it took a long time for us to find the internet cafe, and shortly after we did, the power went out. We perservered, and although the power went out again we were happy to hear our family's voices (and sad we couldn't be sharing the holiday with them!). When we returned home late, Henrietta made us banku and tilapia, the same as our very first meal in Ghana.

The banku was the first thing that made us think of a bookend, since we assumed it was our last meal in Ghana. Unfortunately, the more significant bookend was our trouble leaving Ghana, just as we'd had difficulty obtaining the visa to arrive. When we went to the airport the next morning, they told us that they don't do electronic tickets. We're unsure where our paper tickets are and what happened on the travel agency's end, but long story short we were able to rebook, should get a refund on the unused tickets, and actually ended up getting to Cape Town both earlier and with less time waiting around in the airport. So, like with the visa, what was at first a very frustrating experience worked out ok, and taught us a little more patience and flexibility. The rest of that afternoon we ate lunch with John, who was nice enough to stay with us while we rebooked, then went to an internet cafe and hung out in the same chain restaurant we'd eaten lunch at yesterday, and actually finished a crossword puzzle together. Returning to the airport that night, 12 hours after we were first there, we were glad to finally be getting on the plane but also very glad for the time we did spend in Ghana.

Touring Along Ghana's Coast

2006-11-21T08:35:00.001-08:00

One of our constant companions in the time spent in the Ghanaian Embassy in Cairo was a large, techincolor-quality poster of Elmina Castle, advertizing it as the oldest European building in Sub-Saharan Africa. Built by the Portuguese in 1482, it was taken over by the Dutch 150 years later, and used by them until the British got it in the late 1800s. But of course, like other castles along the West African coastline, this served only secondarily as a domain for European royalty. Primarily, it was a fortress for holding captured people until they could be loaded onto ships as slaves.

From the first sight of the fort from the road, it was overwhelming, disturbing, and nauseatingly spooky to think that, in a physical sense, the Middle Passage started here. Following a guide through the rooms as he spoke about their uses only increased that feeling. There were the male and female dungeons, and the deeper dungeon that he called "the room of no return," from which the loading of the captives into the underbellies of the ships actually took place. (The ocean no longer reaches up to the door, but it used to; indeed, the dungeons were designed to increase the terror of the captives, most of whom were from the interior and had never seen or heard of the ocean before, by surrounding them with the thunderous sound of the waves crashing against the outer walls). He also showed us the cell where drunken or disorderly Dutch soldiers would be locked for the night, complete with two windows to circulate air. By contrast, the cell next door, for Africans who challenged the slave traders, was airless. Men and women were locked in there to starve to death for their crime of resistance, and the bodies were only removed after the last one had died. One of the sicker elements of the castle was that the governor's rooms, a series of spacious chambers on the upper floor, had courtyard balconies and windows looking directly down over the entrances to the dungeons. You could almost imagine him sipping Medeira and smoking a pipe, looking with satisfaction over the cargo that would bring in his next payload.

The town of Elmina itself was a bustling sensory experience. Although the castle is one of the biggest attractions in Ghana, the tourist industry has scarcely registered on the consciousness of the town as a whole (not a bad thing, to be sure), and it still has the feeling of a vibrant small fishing and trade town. Brightly-painted wooden boats moved regularly between beach and ocean, sometimes passing the narrow inlet that divides one side of town from the other to deliver their catch to the market area. The market itself looked from above like a bed of zinnias-- a densely packed, stunningly colorful mass of what turned out to be people, energetically engaged in buying and selling small silver fish. Elsewhere, women carried aluminum basins, 3 feet in diameter and brimming with fish, on top of their heads, never registering any disturbance to their balance in the busy streets. The scene heading away from the castle and market, along a beach lined with fishing shacks and dominated by laughing children playing in the water, looked idyllic viewed from the castle. As we actually walked it, though, it was a bit depressing: trash and animal (and human?) waste lined the area where the children played, and was home to several nasty vultures digging through the fish corpses; sewage water tricked steadily to the ocean from the clustered tin-roofed shacks; and larger groups of men sat around by the boats, chatting while the women minded children and food stands.

The next day we had quite a different activity, taking a tro tro (public transportation van) out to a small patch of tropical rainforest 30 kilometers inland, Kakum National Park. The main attraction of the park is a canopy walkway, a series of seven bridges with metal ladders covered with plywood as their base and thick netting as their sides, suspended 90 feet above the ground between viewing platforms attached to massive trees. The hundreds of Ghanaian school children visiting the park the same time we were prevented it from being a meditative nature experience, and we didn't see any of the monkeys, elephants, or 600 species of butterfly that live in the park, but walking through the canopy between the trees was an awesome feeling all on its own. As I'm usually afraid of heights, I was careful to follow the rule about not looking down at first, but as I went on I got bolder, and more curious-- the coolness of the view down and across the canopy was worthwhile, but in the end I couldn't try it more than once. After the canopies, we took a short guided walk through the rainforest to learn about trees and other plants. It was cool, except for two unfortunate occasions of stepping into groups of hyper-aggressive biting ants, who managed to get themselves into our shoes before we'd even seen them on the ground. Some also made their way into my pants (I think my first time actually ever experiencing ants in the pants), where they showed their intention to bite all over, so I had to pull them down and have Erik pick the ants off my legs. Luckily, the hundreds of school children were not on the walk to see that.

Throughout this time, since Kumasi, we'd been traveling and hanging out with a great guy we met there, Marcus, an English free-lance journalist who had been in the Niger Delta working on a story about the conflicts there. He had spent three years in Mexico City previously, so it was very easy to form an initial connection over travel and beer, and as the three of us continued to take meals and visit tourist places (and eternally not-working internet cafes) together for close to a week, we logged a great variety of conversation-hours. We were all hankering for the beach, so the day after visiting Kakum we headed to Kokrobite, a fishing village/rastafarian enclave/ex-pat hang out just outside Accra.

We arrived just in time for Saturday night, a raucous, young-white-kid filled, music-pounding evening that might have been fun, had we not been exhausted. As there were no rooms left, we were staying in the loft, an open (but mosquito-netted) area directly behind the band and next to the bar-- which for that night meant that though we could go to bed early, we certainly couldn't fall asleep until late. In addition, though, the whole scene of the evening felt strange and sort of icky-- my impression of the crowd was that they saw Ghana as a cool backdrop for a party, and Ghanaians as interesting props within that, and that was about it. I have no doubt that my judgement was overbroad and unfair, but at the same time, there was something that just didn't feel right about it all. Happily, though, the big groups that had been there for the weekend took off Sunday afternoon, and Big Milly's turned into a relaxed beachside hangout. The only non-beach or food related activity we did in Kokrobite was go to a drumming, dance, and acrobatics show at the Academy of African Music and , a three-hour immersion in sound and movement that was tiring to watch, nevermind to actually perform. One of the astounding things to witness was the way the percussionists communicated as they played, engineering major changes in rhythm through subtle individual shifts. Otherwise, in addition to Marcus, we really enjoyed talking with an American couple who were traveling a bit in Ghana from Mali, where they have been living and starting a public health NGO. (The woman, who was one of the founders, was still in college-- we were very impressed). We also had conversations with some young people who are in Ghana as volunteers in orphanages. Talking with all of these smart, observant people-- like our earlier conversations with John in Sogakope-- was both heartening and disheartening, the former because of their energy and insights, but the latter because of all the destructive or unhopeful aspects of government and society that they face as obstacles to the change they are trying to bring around.

In this special week, we've had our share of longings for turkey with all the fixings and copious amounts of pie. But more than anything, we've been feeling great thanks for both this opportunity to travel and, especially, for the friends and family we are surrounded by, even so far away. We'll be thinking of you Thursday-- and hope you'll eat an extra piece of pie for us. Happy Thanksgiving.

Ashanti Culture in Kumasi

2006-11-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

After John accompanied us to the chaotic bus station in Accra, we were "on our own" for the first time in Ghana, en route to Kumasi, Ghana's cultural capital and second-largest city. On the bus ride, we half-watched a couple of low quality, soap opera-like Nigerian movies. The basic storyline was the the woman being unfaithful/evil and being verbally and physically abused by the man. We talked with the person sitting next to us during the ride, who then before he got off asked other people on the bus to help us find a cab at our stop. Many people in Ghana have been really friendly and helpful in situations like this or even just asking directions, and unlike other places there's mostly not the undercurrent that some sort of "tip" is expected for such help.

In Kumasi we stayed at the Presbyterian Church guest house, a big, rambling building with a large grassy courtyard and balcolny. Feeling too tired to venture out, we settled for a meal of Guiness Malta, a non-alcoholic drink advertised as a health drink and tasting like Raisin Brain. The next morning, after an egg, bread and tea breakfast at a street stand we headed to the Ashanti Cultural Center. The Ashanti were one of the dominant groups in Ghana before being defeated by the British at the end of the 19th century (more on that later). The main attraction of the Cultural Center was seeing artisans at work making batiks, weaving kente cloth (the ceremonial, incredibly beautiful garment of the Ashantis, the pattern is often a patchwork), and wood carving, among others. Next we toured Manhyia Palace, which was built as the dwelling for the Ashanti king by the British in an attempted apology after they burned and looted the previous palace in 1896. At that time, they sent the Ashanti king Prempeh I into exile, first at Elmina Castle in Ghana and then in Sierra Leone, but his followers continued to make the trip on foot to visit the king so he was then sent to the Seychelles Islands (near Mauritius). The palace itself was an interesting collection of objects blending traditional and modern culture: Prempeh I was the first literate Ashanti king so his small bookshelf (containing multiple books on golf) is displayed, as well as Prempeh II's 1950s television, the first set in Ghana.

The Ashantis have a very different take on women than the Egyptians. The Ashanti king is chosen by the Queen mother, who is either the mother or sister of the current king. When the British were threating the Ashantis, it was the Queen mother who led the resistance. Interestingly, our tour guide repeated the phrase we'd heard earlier in the Nigerian movie from the bus as one of the reasons for the king being: "only a mother knows her child," meaning that lineage can only be certain from the mother, not the father.

We also quickly burrowed our way through the gigantic market in the middle of Kumasi, West Africa's largest. Rachel compared it to the chaos of Cairo traffic with the maze-like subterranean passages of Harvard's Widener Library. There was a Ghana-Australia soccer game televised, which the tourist office had mistakenly told us started at 2pm, so instead of watching the game we spent 4 hours at an incredibly slow internet cafe located on above a Shell station convenience mart. When we did go to an Indian restaurant to watch the game that night, we ended up talking with our new friend Marcus, who we've been traveling with since then.

Pop Quiz! Dubai: Cairo as…

2006-11-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

a) French wine: Mexican, Turkish, or Egyptian wine
b) Jennifer Aniston hair: a mullet
c) Martha Stewart’s attic: Crazy Great Aunt Betsy’s attic
d) George Steinbrenner: Yogi Berra
e) One scoop of lemon sorbet: 3 scoops of gooey Ben and Jerry’s
f) All of the above

The answer to this quiz is F. How did you do? Dubai is, without question, more refined (a), stylish (b), and immeasurably neater (c) than Cairo. Like George Steinbrenner to Yogi Berra, in some coldly rational way it also makes a lot more sense (d)—but in the end, svelte and moderate as it may be, it’s decidedly more boring (e).

After the whole Ghanaian visa debacle, we were left with 36 hours in Dubai, an amount that turned out to be about all we could handle from both the budgetary and self-image perspectives. We are glad we got to see it, though. The post-Cairo shock of Dubai began immediately upon settling into our Emirates Air seats. The morning at the Cairo airport, like so much else in Cairo, had been chaotic—a taxi that failed to show, a couple hours in a cafeteria waiting for the check-in to open, a little visit with the Egyptian visa authorities to argue our right to leave the country without paying a fee (successful, but not without some palm-sweating moments), and a broken security device that meant switching gates a couple times. But on the plane it was another world. Flight attendants buzzed about catering to our every need, the seats were roomy and had fun rolling foot rests, and—coolest of all to us technology bumkins—there were hundreds of movies, new and old, and full music albums on demand, keeping us plugged in happily throughout the flight. The pattern continued on arrival in Dubai, where we were awed to walk without hassle through the impeccably organized airport, into a taxi with a meter, with a driver who followed lane lines and stop lights. Arriving at the youth hostel, though, we had our introduction to the other side of the Dubai coin—the cheapest place in town, one night at the hostel still ate up our budget for an entire day, and there was certainly no backpacker type feeling in the air.

On the upside, there was a television in the room, and waking up the next morning, 9 hours ahead of East Coast time, we had the joy of sitting in bed watching the election results coming in on CNN—no better way to start a day than with a long-awaited beating on the powers that be. After a little bit of gloating, we headed into town. (Another Cairo difference: We could take a city bus in Dubai, which actually carried the number of people that it had seats; in Cairo people were literally hanging out of the doors and windows of the buses, and tourists, expats, or anyone who could afford a taxi would not think of taking one of them.) We did our first round of imaginary shopping (or, accurately, I did some imaginary shopping while Erik pretended to pay attention to what I was pretending to buy) at the Gold Suq, a series of hundreds of stores selling gold jewelry in a dizzying array of extravagant, shimmering styles. To go along with the countless bangle bracelets (which I imaginarily bought for all of you, ladies, so I hope you like them), there were necklaces that could have weighed down an elephant, arm cuffs, tiaras, and even a sexy shirt of solid gold.

Leaving the suq with our credit cards unscathed, we walked along the wide creek that runs through downtown Dubai to the Dubai Museum, located in an old fort. The museum was a combination of a history of the development of Dubai, and a series of life-scale models showing examples of traditional crafts and lifestyles in the area, including both town-dwellers and Bedouin nomads in the desert. The story of Dubai’s astronomical growth over the last 50 years was striking—the population went from around 60,000 in the 1950s to 500,000 in the early 1990s, and is larger today, and physically the city grew from little more than a small, dusty port into an amalgamation of superlatives: tallest towers, most exclusive condominiums, biggest mall, and so on. Even more interesting, though, was the way the city presented itself through the exhibits. There was a subtext in the models of artisans’ workshops and Koran schools that felt familiar from visits to American natural history museums: there is room for these lifestyles in this museum, but out there in the real city, there is no place for them anymore.

As we sat at a creekside café, Erik smoking one last sheesha (water pipe with flavored tobacco) before saying goodbye to the Middle East, we continued to notice how diverse the people walking by were. In Egypt, we had never quite gotten used to the homogeneity of the population; there were foreigners, like our Danish friends, but they really stood out as foreigners; otherwise, besides small pockets of Sudanese refugees, it seemed that everyone was, by birth and ethnicity, Egyptian. By contrast, Dubai seemed to have as many Filipino, Chinese, and Indian people as it did Arabs. It felt markedly different to be in a multicultural setting again (and we enjoyed getting to eat Indian and Thai food!)

Sufficiently rested, we next tackled our biggest Dubai challenge: the Mall of the Emirates, the world’s largest mall. At first, what was overwhelming was the size; it took a good hour just to get our bearings and have some sense of the lay-out of the place. There were several soaring, metal-and-glass courtyard areas, with long rows of shops within and between them. At one end, next to one of several food courts (but not the one with women in cocktail dresses and stilettos waiting to get into the Armani café), was a viewing area overlooking the atrocious wonder of Ski Dubai—the indoor ski hill. Complete with a fire roaring in a stone fireplace, Ski Dubai had everything one could want for a winter getaway-- pine trees, sledding slope, chairlift, snow pants, and hip ski instructors to boot. Everything, that is, except for, say, the great outdoors, or any hint of authenticity. But maybe that’s the snobby New Englander in me speaking; the people playing inside their glass winter palace seemed to be enjoying themselves. Once we had adjusted to the scale of the mall, what became overwhelming was the fanciness of all of it, and, by sharp contrast, our own scruffiness. (For the sake of accuracy, again, I should admit that this didn’t faze Erik at all—only I felt like a pariah in my beat up travel clothes.) Everyone, it appeared, was dripping with money or, at the very least, on top of the most current fashions. This went for the observant black-robed women and white-robed men as well—the robes themselves were of fine fabrics, and their shoes, bags, and jewelry exhibited wealth as clearly as designer clothes did on other people. The shopping-and-showing mania continued at the Dubai Airport (voted the world’s best duty free!), where we spent the night. Attractive as some aspects of this materialist paradise were, and as ready as I’d be to spend another day there if I had nothing to do but spend money, by the time our flight to Ghana boarded in the wee hours Wednesday morning, we were quite ready to leave.

You Are Welcome

2006-11-14T10:00:00.000-08:00

‘You are welcome’ is a greeting we have often heard so far in our time in Ghana, whether from someone we’re actually meeting, or from a passerby on the street. The more relaxed pace and fewer restrictions placed on us than in Egypt, along with the warmth of many people here, has made us feel very welcome indeed.

The Accra airport was a contrast to the shopping-mecca of the Dubai duty-free (named “world’s best airport retail”)-- in fact, there wasn’t any duty-free that we could see. John, the director of the non-profit organization Youth Creating Change (YCC) and friend of our Hartford friend Marla Ludwig, met us at the airport. (Marla has visited Ghana twice, and is currently working on a project to raise funds and help organize the construction of a kindergarten in the village of Dalive.)

On the road from Accra to Sogakope, our first stop was the ATM. With the rate of 9,200 Ghanaian cedis to the dollar, we remain confused in trying to figure out how much money we actually have. On the rest of our trip to Sogakope we were struck by the store names. While Ghana has significant Muslim and Traditionalist religious minorities, it seemed like almost all of the stores we drove past had Christian names: “Not in my power,” "Prince of Peace Hair Salon," and "He is Love Cold Store," among many others.

The airport in Accra is located almost exactly on the equator, and the pace of life here moves accordingly with the heat and humidity. The land around Sogakope is flat and green, with palm trees and massive red-dirt ant hills taller than a person. The Volta river (beyond the dam, which created Lake Volta, the world’s largest artificial lake) provides hydro-electric power, but not consistently: when we arrived in Sogakope the electricity was off, making our hotel room a sauna.

The first night in Sogakope we met with members of YCC at their office, the bottom floor of an apartment building with space for computer classes and a library/reading area. Several of the YCC members were in their 20s, while others were high school students. People spoke about being involved because they wanted to work towards a better future. They devote a lot of time, all as volunteers, to YCC: one woman Olivia keeps the library open daily from 9-5. We also shared some about us: when she learned that my dad has about 100 cows, one high school student asked if he was a millionaire-- here, owning cattle is a sign of great wealth.

The second day we had breakfast at the hotel: banku (a fermented mash made from cassava) with a tilapia fish and hot pepper-tomato soup. You’re supposed to use your right hand to make a ball of the banku, and dip it into the soup. It’s common to drink beer for breakfast, and although we stuck with tea we could see the appeal of beer with this type of food. After breakfast, John took us to meet with the District Chief Executive at the government building, where local representatives were preparing to elect the district legislative leader. We also met with Moses, the director of Social Welfare, before starting the drive to the village of Dalive. We went with a surveyor to start the process for the construction of the kindergarten. When we arrived at the village, we first met the residents in a classroom, and set out to help with measurements for the building site. After we measured the distance to the river (in addition to growing crops like corn and cassava, most of the men in the village are fishermen), we ate fresh coconuts that one man climbed up a palm tree and cut off with a machete. We met again with the residents, and discussed clearing part of the building site before the surveyor returns to finish his work. Finally, we presented a bag of school supplies that Marla had sent. Currently one teacher has 55 kids in a room containing only a chalkboard, so the supplies will be a welcome addition.

We returned to Sogakope and headed to a local bar, an open air cement structure between a gas station and the government building, to negotiate the price with the surveyor. At the table across from us were the district legislators, who we learned had just elected the chief from Dalive village as the legistative leader for the district: a good sign for helping the kindergarten project to move forward!

On our third day we saw the YCC Library Club in action: about 25 kids ages 8-16 meet twice a week and read one book per week, which they present to the other kids. The Library Club is led by a high school member of YCC. That afternoon we traveled to the village of Adrakpo, where John met with youth interested in starting a Library Club there. Our taxi driver was constantly swerving to avoid the pot holes which covered the road: while the road the other direction from Sogakope is very good, the repairs are happening in stages and this one hasn’t been repaired yet. John told us that most of the books YCC currently has are American or British, and that they want to acquire more African books. The impact of this difference in cultural context was clear when we observed a role-playing session by the Adrakpo youth, and they read from The Babysitters’ Club series—Rachel gave them some of the context, which otherwise seemed entirely foreign to them, and absurd to us. Before we left Adrakpo, we were served a meal of banku and fish, and also got to meet a member of the village who had just returned that day from a one-year term as commander of African Union peacekeeping forces in Sudan.

We talked with John about what his goals for YCC are. They really want to get internet for the office, but some reason getting online in this region of Ghana is ridiculously expensive: John said it would cost $3 to 6,000 up front, plus $100 per month, which is what the Sogakope luxury hotel paid for their absurdly slow connection (picture dial-up circa 1996) that we waited and waited for while checking email. This amount is completely beyond the realm of possibility of YCC, a reality that is unbelievably frustrating and feels almost criminal: internet access would multiply the resources available to them and the students they work with by incomprehensible amounts; it's something that we in the US take completely for granted; and yet, by these flukes of history and patterns of economics, it's out of their reach.

Our last day in Sogakope was Sunday. We joined YCC member Olivia in attending the Assumption Catholic Church. Sunday services are 3 hours, and Olivia says she also goes to services every other day, which are 1 or 2 hours. The music was amazing-- resonant harmonies and vibrant, constant drumming. We tried two more traditional dishes: red-red (fried plantains and black-eyed peas in a tomato sauce) at a small one-table restaurant across the street from our hotel, and fu-fu, a mash similar to banku. In between we took a boat trip (two people rowing the three of us on a small, heavy wooden boat) on the Volta to the point where the river meets the sea. We were guests of Moses the director of Social Welfare for our evening meal of fu-fu. When we arrived at his house, the electricity was off so we dined by candlelight.

When we left Sogakope for Kumasi on Monday morning, we were incredibly thankful for the chance to meet John and all the members of YCC, and for the warm welcome we had received! We hope that we were able to contribute something to YCC, since we received so much.

Hotel Cairo/Chez Henrik: The Anti-blog

2006-11-14T07:48:00.000-08:00

[delay in posting because of blog site/connection problems]

This is a different sort of blog entry: instead of describing fascinating
new horizons and unusual sights, it describes a return to a place
(Henrik’s apartment) that has felt like a slice of home away from home,
about finding local fun with new friends, bureaucratic snarls and a time
for repose and taking a vacation from our vacation. Instead of in an
internet café, this blog entry is being typed in our friend Henrik’s
apartment. Because his phone line hasn’t been working for approximately
the past month, this entry is being posted at one of two neighborhood
branches of the western, English-oriented café Cilantro (where we first
went to meet a friend because it was one of the few available options open
during the day during Ramadan, and now go on almost a daily basis to spend
time online). In addition to their fondness for Mariah Carey (the album
Butterfly was on continuous loop for the over 3 hours we spent there one
day), the song “Hotel California” is also appears frequently on their
playlist, and expresses something about how feel unable to check out of
Cairo.

The first period of our time back in Cairo was expected: we arrived from
our trip to the Siwa Oasis the evening of October 23, hoping to be able to
get our Ghana visa (which we’d mistakenly assumed we could get at the
airport) in time to fly to Dubai on October 28, and then on to Ghana on
November 1. To keep the visa debacle story as concise as possible, here’s
the summary of 4 trips to the Ghana embassy (during which our taxi stopped
to ask directions from the same corner policeman, who would greet us with
a smile, 3 of those times):
1) Oct 24, the first day of Eid, the feast after Ramadan. The embassy is
closed until Oct 29.
2) Oct 29: we go and unsuccessfully argue to allow us to apply for the
visa, which they say is only possible on Tuesdays and Thursday.
3) Oct 31: we apply for the visa and unsuccessfully ask them to give it to
us that day. 4) Nov 2: we pick up our visas.
Between getting the visa, making the necessary flight changes, and buying
our second round of plane tickets for the trip, we are ready to stop
dealing with travel logistics for awhile. Needless to say, we will be
making advance inquiries for all remaining visas.

In those first days back in Cairo, we spent a lot of time with Henrik and
his Danish friends, at more upscale places mostly in the wealthier
neighborhood of Zamalek. We went to the open air restaurant Sequoia,
situated on the Nile across the river from the World Trade Center, which
also has a two-tower design (although they’re currently constructing a
third building in the middle—I don’t know if 9-11 had any influence on
changing the appearance). From there we went to a concert at the El Sawy
Cultural Center, a very cool use of space with a stage area constructed
underneath a Nile bridge, accommodating several hundred people. The band
was Wust El Balad, apparently a popular Egyptian rock/pop band, which
someone told us differs from most other pop groups in that their lyrics
are not religious. During the show, someone told us the songs were about
“Che Guevara, the war in Iraq, and marijuana”; the music was a little
reminiscent of Manu Chao, with an eclectic world-beat sound. To cap off
the evening, we followed the group to the dance club Latex, located
underneath the Hilton, which proved to be a typically snobbish and sterile
club environment playing poorly remixed hip-hop. Another evening we went
out with the same group to the bar at La Bodega, a trendy place that we
returned to another night for dinner with an American friend where the
food was good and there was even a decent bottle of Egyptian wine (the
maker imports the grapes from France).  We felt more comfortable in Cairo,
more familiar with the city. With Ramadan being over, most people seemed
happier as well, and although it’s still warm during the day, the weather
is much cooler now than when we first arrived (although the air pollution,
at levels up to 100 times what’s considered safe by the World Health
Organization, unfortunately hasn’t changed).

Aside from one tour of Coptic Cairo that a friend of Henrik’s invited us
on, we haven’t really done any sight-seeing since we’ve been back in
Cairo. Instead, we’ve been doing some of the things we haven’t done for
several months: listening to music, cooking, watching movies, and reading
Henrik’s books. In addition to a Danish cartoon movie called Terkel in
Trouble, we’ve watched 3 Danish movies: Adam’s Apples, a dark comedy about
a neo-nazi’s time after release from prison with a priest who refuses see
anything disproving the goodness of God; and the first two movies in Lars
von Trier’s American trilogy set during the Depression: Dogville, where a
woman on the run seeks shelter in a small town in the Rockies,  and
Manderlay, where the same woman attempts to set right life on an Alabama
plantation where slavery still exists. In these two movies, the picture of
America is very bleak indeed.

Currently, Henrik is attending a conference at Alexandria, so we’re all
alone in his apartment. We joked that when he gets back, he should change
the locks so that we can’t stay any longer, and he replied that maybe we
would change them by the time he returns. Henrik, showing his sense of
humor, also suggested that we just stay with him for the rest of the year,
and write fictional blog entries based on information we find online.
While respectfully declining his offer, in addition to planning a future
trip to Denmark, we have made Henrik and others promise to visit us in New
York so that we can repay some of the wonderful hospitality. It’s been
great to stay here, but when November 7 comes, we’ll be ready to not just
check out but to finally leave and get back in the pace of traveling.

Some Thoughts on Women

2006-11-03T06:15:00.000-08:00

There's one subject I've been avoiding because I've been so confused about it, which is the subject of gender in the Muslim world, and how I feel, as a woman, being here. We've written about it a little in specific situations, like in the two Turkish villages we went to, where we could be more detached and factual—women sat here, men sat here, etc. The part that has been more difficult for me is the things I've been feeling. One of them is much angrier and less open-minded than maybe I wanted to believe about myself; when I saw, in Istanbul, on a 95 degree day, a man in short sleeves with a few buttons unbuttoned, while his wife was shrouded completely in a heavy black robe, I felt true hatred for him. Same in the airport in Cairo: this man was in short sleeves, again, and his wife was not only in the black robe, but also had a solid black veil over her head covering her face—it didn’t have even the eye holes that a burka has. She was holding a baby. She looked like a ghost, like she should have been wearing a sign that said "there is not a person here." I almost threw up.

Those are pretty extreme examples, and I think my disdain for them is justified from a human rights perspective. But I also find myself feeling it about the focus on "chastity" and "modesty" of women as a whole. From a western feminist perspective those ideas are used entirely oppressively. However, it's also a problem projecting my theoretical ideas onto everything and everyone—I feel both constantly judged (the basic precept in Egypt particularly but the region more generally being that western women are all prostitutes) and constantly judging, looking at most men here as if they are misogynistic oppressive assholes and most women as if they are weak tools of the oppressors. This clearly is not a way I want to be approaching people, and goes against my own values by stripping people of individuality and agency. This has been weighing on me a lot. One of our first nights in Egypt I dreamed that I was with a woman covered in black and I was supposed to ask her questions about women in Islam—but when I asked, I could never hear anything she said. (My worry that I'm not open to other people's beliefs). And then the next scene in the dream was me at a burka rental store, and I was being put in a burka, and the dream panned out on me screaming. (My fear and hatred of the practice). I haven't fully come to terms with any of this, but it has certainly been an important aspect of my experience here.

One positive outcome of our unsought extra week in Cairo, though, has been that I’ve had the opportunity to read an excellent anthropology of poor women in this city, called Between Marriage and the Market: Intimate Politics and Survival in Cairo, by Homa Hoodfar. The most important lesson from this book, for me, is that to assume it’s possible to know what’s really going on in a society based on certain external appearances is ridiculously arrogant and simple-minded. As an abstract idea, this is something I knew already; what’s been really valuable has been to have felt myself making such judgements, almost against my own will, and then to have Hoodfar’s deeply interesting research shake me back into reality.

The guiding questions in Hoodfar’s book are, what choices do poor Cairene women make in planning for and within marriage, and why do they make them? The key idea is that the women are, indeed, actively making choices, and that these choices are rational in the context of their lives. One example of this is why women who did not grow up wearing the veil took it on. (This was a big trend, called “reveiling”, in the 1980s and 90s, when Hoodfar was doing her research; now, almost all lower and middle class women here are veiled.) Hoodfar found that women in her study often veiled in order to defend their right to work—whereas an unveiled woman going out in the morning or evening alone, or speaking as an equal to men, would garner accusations of “seduction”, a veiled woman would not, and therefore women would veil in order not to bring dishonor to their husbands while still being able to continue doing what they wanted to do (i.e., go to work). Relatedly, Hoodfar found that women would support the traditional gender hierarchy, validated and widely venerated by Islam, in large part because they were able to manipulate their lives within that hierarchy, and feared loss of control if the hierarchy were to change. For instance, the Quran states that a man is the breadwinner for the family, and with this position of responsibility he has various privileges as the family’s head. Hoodfar found that the women at least nominally upheld the “man as leader” idea, in part because they would use it to demand that the man meet his responsibilities of providing for the family’s basic needs; with high rates of illiteracy and extremely low wages in their own jobs, the women could not risk food for their family on demanding to be seen as equals within the marriage. Further, the women in the neighborhood most admired by other women were those who were able to keep up their husbands’ egos and reputations as household heads, while actually controlling most or all aspects of running the household themselves. In effect these women were often undermining the hierarchy, but in word, and when it suited their purposes, they were supporting it. A third example was that of family planning. Hoodfar found that, overall, choices about contraception were made by the women, and that many of them tried to have many children early in the marriage because they considered it a way to “secure” the marriage (which is borne out statistically, in terms of divorce rates) as well as to protect them in old age, as religiously sons are supposed to care for elderly parents, and there is no state social security. Thus, three things that could be seen only as forces of subjugation acting on women are, at the very least, complexified; the women are active, not passive, players.

The other crucial point from Hoodfar’s book is that we must recognize that words and concepts mean very different things in different contexts, and it is not only futile but actively harmful to push one’s own understanding onto other people and situations. (Our friend Henrik is doing his dissertation on a similar topic in regard to dialogue between Christians and Muslims in Egypt, using the theoretical framework of “language games”—meaning, basically, all the unstated social meanings and understandings that words carry, and without which they cannot be truly understood. That is, language never has a pure and simple meaning—it always has a context.) For example, when the women in Hoodfar’s study talk about a “love” or “western” marriage, they mean a marriage based primarily on physical attraction, which they rightly recognize as a tenuous basis for a long-term relationship—but of course when we talk about a marriage of love, physical attraction is only one of many elements we have in mind. The concept of honor as a person’s most fundamental defining characteristic—as the thing most to be protected in one’s life—has little currency in mainstream western cultures. However, it is of the utmost importance to both women and men in Hoodfar’s neighborhood. Similarly, when the women in Hoodfar’s study considered the western possibilities of being single or childless by choice, they found them absolutely incomprehensible, representing utter loneliness and failure as a woman. And their understanding of western society is that men have very little respect for women—we might say the same of theirs. Neither perception can be called true; but, based on the different ways we understand “respect”, both perceptions contain some truth.

To be able to talk about what should happen, you have to really understand what is happening. I am certainly not at that point yet on this topic, and never will be. But after reading, I can no longer look at the women here and see just victims of or participators in oppression. I cannot look at veils, or even fully covering robes, and say they are just tools of oppression. What I can say is that to be pushed into veiling, supporting the gender hierarchy, or having more children than desired, by economic and social circumstances, is wrong. The women act and make choices within the parameters of their lives, but the narrowness of these parameters indicates real failure on the part of the state. I don’t know what the answers are, but I think that a better education system, a decent minimum wage, and a social security program are places to start. It seems that maybe the state doesn’t know what’s really going on in the neighborhoods either. If it weren’t so serious, it could be laughable—the state wants to curtail population growth, which is among the fastest in the world, yet it doesn’t do anything to move toward a social security program, which could prevent poor women from feeling compelled to have many children! Both poor women and poor men (who face many challenges as well, although they aren’t what I’ve been focusing on) deserve a horizon of rational choices, of real possibilities, far greater than what they currently face. Ignorant criticism of their current choices, though, will do nothing to help foster that reality—on the contrary, it will only push it farther away.

From Belgium, With Love

2006-10-24T03:08:00.000-07:00

Our new friend Henrik is not only a ridiculously generous host or a hard-smoking, movie-loving, Egypt-studying Lutheran priest, he's also an accomplished travel planner, as we had opportunity to learn on the 6 day trip to northern and western Egypt that he set up for us and three of his friends visiting from Denmark, Canchanah, Mia, and another Henrik. We set out early in the morning a week ago, packed happily into a rented van. Although it took more than an hour to push our way out of Cairo, and our driver kept looking frighteningly like he was going to fall asleep as he drove, we made it to Alexandria and started our fun journey for real.

Alexandria was one of the central cities of the ancient world, but the physical evidence that remains of that is pretty limited-- a pillar here, a cool tomb there. The famous lighthouse, one of the 7 wonders of the world, and the ancient library, no longer exist. But in the last ten years the government has directed an international effort to build a new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which we toured. Every aspect of the contemporary architecture of the building holds symbolic importance: the letters from all different languages carved into cement to represent the international character of knowledge, the pyramid-shaped wall to represent the contributions of Egyptian civilization, the slab resembling a rising sun to represent the centrality of Alexandria in the world of the mind, etc. The interior, also impressive aesthetically, attempted to be ecologically harmonious as well, with hundreds of eyelid-shaped glass planes in the ceiling allowing the grand main reading room to be lit primarily by sunlight. There was an expansive, well-organized (at last!) exhibit of photos, paintings, and maps of the city from different time periods in the basement, and a large screen linked to one of the 300 computers available for use exhibited the interactive digitized version of a French collection of histories and drawings of Egypt compiled during the Napoleonic Era. That night we went to a restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean, where we chose fresh sea bass from the selection of fishes lying on ice, and they grilled it for us with tomatoes and onions. (The only thing missing, which we did really really miss, was a good white wine to accompany it-- even fancy restaurants like that are alcohol-free). We discovered that all of us enjoy savoring yummy food and interesting conversation, commonalities that served us well throughout our trip.

The next day we drove along the northern coast toward Marsah Matruh. The water, when we could see it, was brilliant, glimmering in various shades of turquoise. But the view was consistently marred by the cement corpses of half-built resorts and condominium complexes, and their equally-ugly completed counterparts. We were able to make our way through an abandoned-feeling area to enjoy a bit of beach, though. We also stopped at the war cemetary of El Alamein, the site of a WWII battle between British and German and Italian troops that was considered a turning-point victory for the Allies. Arriving in Marsah Matruh we found the tourist parts of town bleak and abandoned, but that served us well, because when we went wandering around the market after dinner, we had the enjoyable experience of having hardly anyone pay attention to us (except for the man who waved and shouted, "Hello, America!" as we walked by). It was all lovely, but we were still hankering for beer. Henrik asked a young man on the street if there was a place we could buy some, and he pointed to a side street, which we went to, and still saw no liquor store. Henrik asked someone else, and he found another man, who found another man, who surreptitiously opened up a metal grate covering a small, set-back doorway, and led Henrik and Erik in while the women (trying not to be more offensive to Egyptian expectations than we inherently are) waited outside. We got a little worried when they'd been in there for 10 minutes, but eventually they emerged victorious, holding cans of beer wrapped first in one opaque bag, and then in another. We figured that probably everyone in town knew what the teal colored bag meant (and a woman had walked in while the guys were in there to chastize the seller for doing business during Ramadan), but we got back to the hotel fine and sat around enjoying the beer.

The following morning we set out for the place that was the main point of the trip—the Siwa oasis, the only town in western Egypt, set in the desert in the northwest, close to the border with Libya. It was a cool thing, after driving for 5 hours in a barren desert landscape, all of a sudden to see thousands of palm trees, weighed down by luscious bunches of dates. In Siwa, as elsewhere, the hotels we were staying in were none too nice, but a friend had recommended that we go check out a certain restaurant at the good hotel. This we did upon arrival—and went back twice more within 24 hours. The restaurant was set up on a roof, in the midst of a grove of date palms. The look of the small hotel, unlike any others we have seen in Egypt, was harmonious and temperate, with a sense of flow and intimacy. The main dishes varied between decent and good, but what kept drawing us back, in addition to the atmosphere, was the appetizers and desserts. The baba ghanouj, olive tapenade (made from local Siwa olives), tahini, hummus, and salads were fresh and bursting with interesting flavors. Then there were date milkshakes, date crepes, and an ethereal apricot pudding, cold and smooth and perfect. We had a funny moment the second time we went to the restaurant, for tea and dessert that night. The waiter asked where we were from, and the Danes, wary of being received poorly due to the recent reignition of the cartoon debacle, said, as they had before, “Belgium”—a country they had chosen for its smallness and the unlikelihood of people knowing much about it. But the waiter responded with enthusiasm: “Oh, Belgium! The queen of Belgium was here six months ago” (the Danes look at each other, wondering if any of them know the name of the queen…). “Do you speak French of Flemmish?” Mia: “Flemmish” (a lie). Waiter: “A waiter here lived in Belgium for 8 years! He is your friend. Maybe he is downstairs….” Mia, smiling through her teeth: “Oh, uh huh, great….” After that the Danes decided to suck it up and try being Danes—too nerve wracking the other way.

The central activity we were going for in Siwa was two days and two nights out in the desert, exploring the sand dunes (which stretch all the way to the Atlantic Coast of Morocco) by 4WD by day and sleeping peacefully under the stars at night. The first afternoon with the jeep, the plan seemed to be on track. We stopped to swim at cold and hot springs (they are scattered all over the oasis), raced roller-coaster style down steep inclines, occasionally pushed the car when it was stuck in particularly deep sand, and generally spent hours admiring the incomparable look of desert stretching into desert stretching into desert. But then, when the sun set, our driver pulled the jeep into a camp where several other jeeps were parked. It was exactly what we weren’t looking for: the lights of the city were fully visible; there was a tent and a dirty outhouse (which we got unwillingly directed to when we tried to wander off to pee in the sand); there were a number of other tourists there, with more arriving regularly, with the accompanying noises of jeeps and talking; the food was cooked not over the fire but in a kitchen; and, to top it all off, because of a small spring, the place was swarming with flies and mosquitoes. We tried to make the best of it, asking for our own fire, away from the other tourists, and eating around that, now and again feeling like naughty teenagers as we snuck sips of the beer Henrik still had in his bag from Marsah Matruh. But as the evening went on, pretending that we were somewhere else became a bit more challenging, because, much to our chagrin, the Disney-esque “Bedouin Party” we’d seen advertized on some tour company posters began. For two hours, around the main fire, Bedouin guides banged drums, played accordion-like instruments, clapped, and sang, as they led tourist women in shaking their hips. Three times, the owner of the company and of our jeep came over, scolding us to come join the party, trying to pull Mia away to dance, and completely, absolutely refusing to accept that actually we just wanted to sit and talk, and that this party fit nowhere into our picture of a night in the desert. He finally walked away disgusted, but by that point the feeling was pretty mutual.

There were some more misadventures the next morning, as our jeep headed into town, not back into the dunes as we had thought. After some long arguing about whether we had to pay more (no) and what the rest of the trip would be, though, things got worked out, and we got what we were looking for. We visited some cool tombs, including one with perfectly preserved 3000 year old mummies lying in greeting in the walls, went to some more springs, and then happily went back into the desert. We spent some time walking around an area where the normally-distant fact that the desert was once under the sea was wonderfully evident, as the ground was full of calcified shells and fossils of small sea stars. Then we ran into some dunes that tried to suck the jeep up, getting stuck over and over again (that was fun, though) and eventually having to find an alternate route. We stopped back at the camp for dinner, but then enjoyed the feeling of leaving the other people and Bedouin party behind and heading out to our own spot, behind a dune, where the city lights could not be seen. Our driver built a fire and sat and talked with us for awhile. He is 25, and has been working since he was 11, when he stopped going to school. He likes Siwa (“none of the women smoke here,” he said with some admonishment as Mia and Canchanah lit a cigarette), and he doesn’t want to leave Egypt, but he wants a European wife (Mia or her sisters seemed to be on his list). It was nice to talk to him, but also nice when he left, and we were alone, without a jeep, without noise, to have our night in the desert. Canchanah (who doesn’t drink) made the rest of us even happier when she remembered that Henrik had brought a bottle of cognac with him to Egypt. He retrieved it from the bag, we toasted each other and the desert, and enjoyed our starry, silent night.

Soft Beach, Hard Desert

2006-10-15T06:50:00.000-07:00

After descending Mt. Sinai, we headed to an ecologically-minded place on the beach in Nuweiba which turned out to be much more expensive than we thought (and which we later learned doesn't allow Israelis to stay there, making us glad that we didn't either). The place we ended up was a "camp" called Soft Beach. Our accomodation was a reed hut with palm fronds for a roof and mats (with a few bed bugs) for a bed; although not the lap of luxury it worked out just fine. We spent days there enjoying the sandy beach, shaded areas with cushions, and good food from the restaurant (among the pictures is the "Egyptian breakfast" with falafel, fried eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, soft cheese, flat bread and tea) which at dinner time we have to guard against the especially daring cats. For some dinners, we've received along with our order a fly swatter to keep at bay a lovable but bold and persistent black and white cat named Goldie (whom Rachel named Prince Charles, for being an adorable royal pain in the ass).

To break up our lazy days at the beach, we went for a two and a half day camel trip into the desert, loading all of our food, water, bedding and other supplies onto two camels. Our camels were around 10 and 15 years old (they can live to be 45 years old). They're pretty amazing creatures--they can go for 3 weeks in the desert without water, and drink 60 liters of water at a time. Their feet are flat and broad, perfectly suited to walking on sand without sinking in; the hairs around their nose, eyes, and lips looked equal to whales' baleen as powerful filters; and their gums are tough enough to withstand eating desert branches lined with thick inch-long spikes. They can also carry huge amounts of weight, including, of course, us. Along with the camels we had two Bedouin guides, Muhti (who spoke English) and Selim. We talked with Muhti about how the Bedouins are treated by the Egyptian government. Muhti, who is 26, has been married twice, to an American and an Australian woman, with a big part of the incentive for being that marriage to a foreigner made him exempt from the army. He said that until around 10 years ago, Bedouins were not allowed to serve in the army because they were considered to all be potential traitors. After Muslim fundamentalist bombings in the Sinai in recent years, the Egyptian government imprisoned and even killed random Bedouins in an attempt to intimidate them. Muhti told us that Bedouins preferred the Sinai under the control of the Israelis, who pretty much left them alone.

On our first day, as we had crossed over the highway and were just making our way past the huge power lines into the desert, we stopped while Muhti walked over to retrieve something from behind a rock, coming back with several large, dried stalks with green buds on them. Rachel asked "Are those for hitting the camels?" and Muhti answered that no, they were for smoking, which he did in copious amounts the remainder of the trip.

We rode on the camels some of the time, but often walked. The first day, one of the camels decided to take off on a run, so Selim had to mount the other camel, chase down the fugitive camel and bring it back, all of which took about 45 minutes. While we waited, Muhti made us some of our first "roasted marshmallow tea," black tea with a smoky flavor from being made directly in the fire and with a ton of sugar. We had worried about how hot the time in desert would be, but our pace was relaxed: we rested in the shade for about 3 hours each day at lunch time. At our camp the first night, Selim made the first yeastless bread, cooked directly in the ashes on top of hot sand, then beaten with a stick to get the sand out, while Muhti cooked a stew over the camp fire. After dinner we gazed at the incredible stars, and later during the night the moon rose and the whole sky was bright.

Day 2 began with us waking up around dawn; after breakfast we set off for the Colored Canyon on foot--there was one point the camels couldn't climb. The Canyon, with its stripes of color and patterned swirls, was interesting despite being marred by Russian graffiti. Later that day we passed a camel that had died two months ago; its bones were mostly picked clean and bleached white, except for some dried skin. We camped that night inside a short rock wall enclosure (which it took Muhti and several Swiss tourists two weeks to build) at a small oasis. After a short time of walking on Day 3, Muhti hid his weed behind some rocks, and we left the desert and rode the camels along the beach back to our camp.

The desert was very empty, and very quiet. But it wasn't completely empty of people: not counting the tourists in the Colored Canyon, we saw two pair of mother and daughter with a donkey and their sheep, and one friend of our guides', riding past on his camel with a boom box playing. It also wasn't homogonous in landscape. The sand could be soft and deep or hard packed like pavement; dust-fine, pebbly, or a field of rocks; wide-valleyed or mountainous, clay or granite. And despite being mostly rock and sand, it certainly wasn't empty of plant life. The most prominent vegetation was the only tree, the see-al (sp?), which can stay green for 20 years without water. Its large, spiky thorns were no deterrent to the camels, who loved to eat it (after the guides had gathered firewood, they had to keep it out of reach or the camels would eat it). And there were multiple varieties of small plants. Muhti told us about the Bedouin medicinal uses of these plants, and we tried some of a plant to calm the stomach. We also tried a "desert fruit," which looked a little like a fig but with a red skin with yellow pulp and black seeds inside. It tasted curiously of wasabi.

We knew we were starting to get old when the mattress in our hut left us with aches and pains after returning from the desert. Nonetheless, we relished our remaining couple days in the hammocks on the beach, before saying goodbye to Prince Charles, Muhti, and the rest and heading back to Cairo.

Moonlight and Mt. Sinai

2006-10-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

After arriving back in Cairo from our less-than-ideal trip to Upper Egypt, we headed to the Sinai Peninsula with a spirited group of friends for three beach- and pool-side days. The group was made up of Henrik and five other Danes, most of whom we had met previously. Henrik had organized the trip, which was to a newly-opened resort where they were still working out some kinks in service and finishing the building, but where we also got an excellent price on rooms and board. It was not the kind of place we really like to support: everything on super-size scale, and no environmental consciousness save light switches that can only be turned on when the key is in them. But we will certainly admit to enjoying the comfortable bed, high-pressure shower, and plentiful lounge chairs; more significantly, we had a great time hanging out with everyone, and even fancied that we understood Danish sometimes when they would switch into that language. We didn't do much besides watch the kite-surfers showing off with leaps into the air and sprints across the water, read, swim, and have vicious games of pool in which my incredible skill at scratching was showcased. We also taught everybody my favorite childhood card game of Bullshit (or "I Doubt It", in Silverstein family parlance), and had as much fun playing that as we did reading aloud from our set of Bush cards. (An answer to the administration's assignation of a card to each high-ranking al-Qaeda person, listing the fine accomplishments or stunning words of a Bushie instead).

When our friends headed back to Cairo, we went instead toward Mt. Sinai, the famous site of Moses and the burning bush. We had been advised to hike in the middle of the night, in order to watch sunrise from the top, but didn't know whether there would be few or many people doing the same thing. Arriving at the base just in front of three full-sized tour buses, we got our answer. But happily, once we started up the mountain, we were virtually alone most of the climb.

Security at the base is heavy, and no one is allowed to hike without a guide, all of whom are local Bedouin. Our guide, Solomon, had spent his childhood in a village within the national park surrounding the mountain, and had not left the area ever before three years ago. He is now an army conscript based in Cairo, which he strongly dislikes, but is allowed 10 days each month to come home and work. He told us some about the historical monastary of St. Katherine's, which is at the base of the mountain, and pointed out some stars to us, but often we just walked enjoying the quiet. The moon was just two days past full, casting incredible light on our path. In searching for a way to describe it, we decided the look was more similar to walking by a fluorescent streetlight than to any other kind of light, but that still doesn't capture it: there was no harshness as with an artificial light, and it was somehow as if the path and we were lighted but everything was still dark. In any case, it was strange and beautiful.

The path was wide and basically gentle, with only a few steep bits. Looking out, we could see many other mountains and one tiny Bedouin village in a valley, and occasionally we came across people trying to sell camel rides or snack-stand tea houses filled with Snickers bars and Coke. The desert-ness of the mountain was striking; with no trees or grass around the path, and only sand and stone everywhere, it was almost hard to distniguish Sinai from the surrounding area. Between that and the fact of it being the middle of the night, a time neither of us had ever hiked before, it was quite a cool sensory experience.

The most wonderful part of the night came when we arrived at the peak. It was 4 a.m. and we were among the first people there, with the tour-bus groups still somewhere on the way up. The sun wouldn't come up for another hour and a half and the air and wind were very cold, so we wrapped ourselves in a rented blanket and sat in the shelter of a rock on the side of the peak. As we drifted between wakefulness and sleep, the silence was so complete that it reverberated in my ears-- something I'd thought was only a flighty literary expression before I actually experienced it! In the silence, I kept imagining three bell-like voices ringing out, singing "Dona Nobis Pacem" in a round. It would, to me, have been the only thing fitting to break the quiet.

When we woke up to the beginnings of sunrise at about 5:15, the peace had been pretty solidly broken. The hundreds of tour-bus people had arrived, and were crowded onto the east-facing part of the peak. Some of the Bedouin guides and blanket-sellers were talking and laughing at volumes that felt, perhaps unfairly, designed to be abrasive. The same feeling returned later, as they would run past all of us making our way down at high speeds, shouting to each other across the mountain; we found it understandable that they could be bored and frustrated by the tourist scene, which they saw every day, but given that for us it was a one-time experience, we found it a little annoying. Anyway, as the sun continued its brilliant rise, changing the colors of the clouds and sky and mountains minute by minute, no amount of noise could have cancelled out the magnificence of it.

The hike down had none of the solitude of the hike up; on the contrary, we were caught in a huge stream of people the entire time. This was largely because the downward path consisted of 2940 uneven stone stairs, laid out by a dedicated 12th century monk along what is said to be the original path of Moses. The other tourists were almost all Russian, and many of the women were wearing clothes that (if I were to wear them) I would put on for a night out in the city, not for climbing a mountain; the woman directly in front of me most of the way down, for example, had on fishnet stockings and 2 1/2 inch platform mules. But somehow she made it, and so, sleepily, did we.

Upper Egypt

2006-10-05T02:42:00.000-07:00

Upper Egypt: Aswan and Luxor

We left Cairo by train for Upper Egypt (basically everything south of Cairo, which is considered Lower Egypt. In addition to this flip from our thinking of north as ‘up,’ the Nile also flows from South to North.). Of the two most famous ancient cities of Egypt, Memphis was located near Cairo, while Thebes was located in Upper Egypt near Luxor, now known for Pharaoic sites and Victorian vacation spots-cum-tour group resorts.

We first arrived in Aswan, which our guidebook promised as much quieter, calmer and prettier than Cairo. Unfortunately, we found this to be true only in comparison with the noise of Cairo, as it was still far from quiet or relaxed. We found a cheap but grungy hotel and headed out to the Nubian Museum. The Nubian people have a separate history from Egyptians, as Nubia encompasses southern Egypt and Northern Sudan. While it had far fewer objects than the sprawling Egyptian Museum, and a better presentation than the laughable Police (which had a few old black and white photos and rusty objects) and Military (atrocious faux-palace interior decorating and unreadable captions) museums at the Citadel in Cairo, overall we were underwhelmed with the Nubian Museum.

Our next activity was a felucca ride, the traditional one-sail boat (our second experience, after taking a one hour ride after dinner on our last night in Cairo). The tourist office told us to ask for “Washington, like your capital” as our felucca captain; when we did so the captain walked over and said “Hi, I’m Muhammed.” His felucca was named “Devine Steel.” Muhammed exuded the felucca spirit—very laid back, he started singing the chorus of Bob Marley’s “Get up, Stand up” and said that he used to have dreadlocks. He told us about an American friend (from California, of course) of his who, after experiencing the felucca vibe, came back to Egypt and became a felucca captain himself. At one with nature, at the iftar (break-fast) at the end of our ride Muhammed dipped an empty water bottle into the Nile and quenched his thirst.

For dinner, we went to a place on the Nile which, according to the guidebook, served beer, but they told us that they don’t serve it during Ramadan. Being in Egypt during Ramadan has been difficult for us in multiple ways: not only restaurants but museums and stores have different hours, and while people are understandably more short-tempered and aggressive, we’re also expected to tip more. There are also some positives: one person told us that there are many fewer people at the tourist sites during Ramadan, whereas otherwise going to a temple “can be like being on the metro” (Our most crowded and unpleasant metro experience award goes to the Cairo metro (the only metro in Africa)—it was even worse than Mexico City, which Cairo rivals in somewhere between 2nd and 4th place (the exact population is unknown) for the world’s largest city.). And the Ramadan strings of flashing, brightly colored “Christmas” lights are nice.

When we returned to our hotel, we asked a third time for toilet paper in our room; after having been told “yes, we’ll bring it up in 5 minutes” previously, we were finally told the truth that actually, the hotel doesn’t provide toilet paper. Our first experience with it, but apparently it’s typical for Egyptians to not give you a direct “no” but to say instead “in 5 minutes.” After angrily buying our own toilet paper, we sat on some broken chairs on the roof top, with a terrific view of the town at night, including a busy market and kids playing soccer on a nearby field.

The next day in Aswan, we went to the Aswan High Dam and the Philae Temple. The dam is huge—over a kilometer thick at the base, with 17 times the volume of stone as the Great Pyramid. It’s proclaimed on a sign there as “Egypt’s challenge to the silent nature,” and provides hydro-electric power for much of Egypt. There’s also a towering, very Soviet-looking memorial to the Egyptian-Russian collaboration in building the dam. The Philae temple is one of the many sites that were moved (in its case stone by stone) in a massive UNESCO operation during the building of the dam, since they otherwise would have been underwater. It was a temple dedicated to the worship of the goddess Isis—lots of cool hieroglyphics. We had to take a boat to reach the island, and were just about to give up waiting for someone to share the price with when we met a group of an Egyptian-American couple who lived in New Jersey and Florida, and an Egyptian and German couple from Germany who let us share their ride. So far, it seems like Egypt is not very backpacker/budget travel friendly: most of the people are on package tours: Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and lots and lots of British (many of whom rival Americans as the world’s most obese, and, although we don’t want to become puritanical wardrobe police, seem to wear the most ridiculously inappropriate clothing for a conservative Muslim country).

In the afternoon, we paid to use the pool at a nice hotel (next to the beautiful Old Cataract Hotel, where Agatha Christie stayed to write Death on the Nile, and according to our cab driver costs an absurd $14 per person just to go inside and take a look), then caught the train to Luxor, where, as advertised, we were ceaselessly hassled on our walk to Happyland Hotel. It was a much nicer place than our hotel in Aswan, but also one which was constantly drilling us to recommend it to others (like the Manchurian Candidate line: “Happyland is the kindest, bravest, most honest hotel I know…). It was clean, had a good restaurant and a great breakfast—and provided toilet paper.

The next morning we considered renting bikes to go the Valley of the Kings, but postponed the decision due to the poor condition of the single-speed bikes, and instead walked to Karnak temple. We missed the turn off for the temple, and ended up on an interesting walk through daily life in a village, people working in the fields, etc. When we made it to the temple, we found it impressively was massive. Some of the highlights were rows of ram-headed sphinxes and a “hypostyle hall,” which apparently refers to an area with a lot of columns. The caption there read “This is the world’s largest hypostyle hall. It has no equal.”

On the way back to the hotel for lunch, we lost our appetite walking past all the meat (both alive and dead), produce, and other food being sold on the street. The combination of sun, heat, dirt, garbage, commotion and hanging carcasses/scraggly live poultry was nauseating. I suppose that in a way getting food in this type of environment is “closer to the source” (actually seeing the animal instead of a detached piece of meat in a sterile, Western-style supermarket), but my idealization of being closer to what you eat is more a combination of both pastoral setting and sanitation, instead of urban squalor.

That afternoon, I felt worn out, and Rachel had a fever, so we stayed in that night and the next morning. The next afternoon, we had to spend awhile in the heat hunting for hotel that a) would let us pay to use the pool and b) wasn’t ridiculously expensive (one of the cases where the prices have quadrupled from what the travel guide says). For dinner we went to a British pub, where we were happy to have some beer, less happy with what tasted like it may have been a camel-burger, and happiest to sit next to a super-friendly northern English couple, both nearing 70, who talked our ears off even though we couldn’t understand most of what they were saying because of their accents. The woman gave us both hugs as we left, and we headed for the train back to Cairo.

Cairo

2006-09-29T07:22:00.000-07:00

Cairo is not a beautiful city. The smog is low-lying and thick; pointing our camera toward where the pyramids stood in the distance, the lens could only just capture them behind the haze of pollution. The traffic is completely chaotic, with no stop signs or lights, no lane markings, and apparently no right-of-way or any other sort of rules. Cars honk constantly, and drivers often lean out the window to yell at each other. Stenches of exhaust or garbage predominate in many places. And yet, the wide and shimmering Nile in the middle of downtown is majestic and calming despite what is going on around it; the white suits of the police and flowing robes of the relgious men and women give off a sense of pride and history; and the highest-in-the-world population density means that there are always faces to contemplate and stories to imagine. It does not fit the image I had in mind, developed from who-knows-what combination of movies and books etc. But after almost a week hear, I am starting to see that it has something of its own, less pleasant certainly but also much more alive than a fairy-tale name.

We arrived at the end of the first day of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month during which people fast from sunrise to sunset, not letting anything (food, water, cigarrettes) pass their lips. At sunset the ezan (call to prayer) signals the iftar, or break fast. At this time, the streets are full of people eating; restaurants have the food out so people can dig in as soon as the call begins, and free food is served in various parts of the city; for a few minutes, time stops, as taxi-drivers, policemen, store owners, and everyone else digs in. Ramadan makes some things quite a big more difficult from a tourist perspective: museums and shops keep irregular hours, cafes and restaurants outside of tourist or expatriate areas are not open, people testy from hunger can create frustrating interactions, and sensitivity to the fasting people means we shouldn't eat or drink outside unless surrounded by other tourists. But it's also an interesting time to be here, to see how completely the religion is integrated into daily life, as well as to experience the post-sundown energy on the streets.

We have been very lucky to be housed by a friend-of-a-friend, a Danish PhD student in interreligious dialogue who has been living in Cairo for two years and has given us countless useful tips and insights into the city, as well as provided awesome hospitality. (Coming home to an apartment after a day of touristing feels really good compared to coming home to a hostel, especially an apartment stocked with excellent American movies....) We've also gotten to meet up with two other friends of this same friend (Lachlyn, whom Erik knew from high school, spent two years in Cairo), which has definitely been a boon for our experience here.

As for the sights, the Giza pyramids were a bit of a let-down. They're so familiar without visiting Egypt-- the name and the image of them-- that I had a high expectation for what it would feel like to actually see them in person, and it was different from just a picture, with their incomprehensible size, but there was also a lot to detract from the experience. Pushy vendors touting camel rides and cheap souvenirs were everywhere, some tourists were wearing shockingly inappropriate clothes (pink hotpants and a mid-riff shirt in an exceedingly conservative country? a see-through white mini-skirt for walking around in the dirt?), and the city has oozed out to the very edge of the historic area, with a KFC and Pizza Hut visible from the sphinx-- in all, not quite the desert romance I had in mind. But after Giza we went to some farther out pyramids, at Zaqqara, which are actually the oldest in Egypt, and that was quite cool. One, that we could see in the distance, was built by an architect who didn't calculate his angles correctly (let that be a lesson to you, kids) and ended up needing to make drastic corrections in the middle of the pyramid, leading to what is known now as the Bent Pyramid. The architect was punished by the angry king, who wanted a new pyramid built, but during the construction of the replacement the king died, and was put into the original anyway. There were also a couple tombs covered in hieroglyphics, which were truly beautiful. The concerns of the writing were aesthetic as much as they were communicative; lines could be written left to right, right to left, or up to down, depending on the needs of the overall design (the direction of the animals' heads indicates which way the line goes). The hieroglyphics were supposed to not only pay homage to the buried person, but also, like the tomb as a whole, provide everything needed for the afterlife. So, for example, one entire wall was covered with carvings of servants carrying various kinds of foods, and another of servants bearing drinks. While the hundreds of figures in each of these positions resembled each other, they were also individually wrought, with different supplies carried by each one. They were really astounding to look at. We've also visited the ridiculous and awesome Egyptian Museum. Like Cairo's streets, it's an exercise in chaos, with thousands upon thousands of ancient objects placed here and there, largely unlabelled, with some purported order but a general sense of disorder. But some of the exhibits were really awesome (with great thanks to Lonely Planet for pointing them out and saving us the exhaustion of figuring it out ourselves!). The ubiquitous treasures of King Tut's tomb, ironically available to us today because King Tut was so unimportant in his time that no one else had tried too hard to rob the tomb earlier, were especially impressive. His solid gold death mask, with lapis lazuli liner around his onyx eyes, was moving to behold, while the stature granted him by the several gilded cases of consecutive size that had covered his three coffins (one of those in solid gold) is quite something to think about. We also enjoyed the room of animal mummies: pet cats and dogs and baby babboons, and a holy 15 foot crocodile and 3 foot lake perch that were revered as manifestations of certain gods. We skipped the human mummies, though, because the additional 20 dollar entrance fee to see them was too much for us to stomach.

We've also been to a couple sights off the tourist track that gave us incredible peepholes into how many people here live. One was the back roads of the City of the Dead, an area of old tombs, some of them very grand and some not, where squatters have been living for many years, raising families in the shadow-- according to our driver-- of ghosts. They can get electricity in the tombs, by some quirk of urban wiring, but not water, which they have to bring in from elsewhere. These are the poorest people in the city. But from our perspective driving through, City of the Dead seemed lovely compared to the other neighborhood he drove us through. This was Garbage City, a place whose name is viscerally evidenced in every breath or sight one has there. There is no municipal garbage collection in Cairo; rather, people organize to get contracts to collect trash from various parts of the city, which they bring back to where they live, sort, and sell to companies. The stench in the air seemed unbreathable to me, although the people who live there, and in the other, competing, Garbage Cities, breathe it all the time. Looking one way, I saw two men sitting on bags of trash next to an open bag containing cow detritus and swarming with flies; looking another way, there was a young girl walking barefoot in the trash-strewn alley eating a lollipop. The government has tried to move people from the garbage city, but they don't want to; there is a good living to be earned in collecting and sorting what others throw away. The most desired contracts to get, according to Henrik, are for the wealthier neighborhoods, because in the poor neighborhoods people use everything themselves. He says that the residents of Garbage City are not considered poor; they have food every day. To me it fell into a category that has been growing larger and larger as we've been traveling: things we can see, but cannot begin to understand.

Three Central Anatolian Towns

2006-09-20T05:06:00.000-07:00

The 15 hours on buses from Barhal ended us in the small city of Amasya, right in the east-west center of the country. Arriving to a dingy hotel at midnight wasn't the best start to our short stay, but the one full day we spent in Amasya did have its share of nice things. In the morning we climbed the cliffs to the tombs of the Pontic kings who ruled the area in the 4th century-- there really wasn't anything to see there, but the size of the tombs was impressive. As we came down to the touristy neighborhood of Ottoman houses, which we planned to walk around, we were met by a university student speaking excellent English who had heard we were looking for a laundromat and offered to show us one. The laundry quest was unsuccessful-- more on that later-- but we ended up spending several hours with our guide, who was heading back to school in Ankara in a couple days but for the time being was looking for diversions in his hometown of Amasya. He took us around to various sites, the coolest of which was a gorgeous old medrese, or Islamic religious school. The school is now one where young boys, between 10 and 14, go to learn the whole Koran by heart. It is not open to the public, but following our guide, we were able to go in. Wearing religious caps and sitting crosslegged around the octagonal courtyard were boys hunched over their copies of the Koran, rocking and chanting in Arabic. When they arrive at the school, they learn to read Arabic, but do not learn what it means-- they read the Turkish translation of the Koran for that. They looked up when we arrived, perhaps particularly interested in seeing a woman in there (although I had to cover my head), but when they caught their teachers looking at them they bent back over their books. The hospitality of our guide was lovely-- he seemed to just love Amasya, and though we bought him lunch, we wouldn't have had to give him anything for the hours he spent with us. After leaving him we went walking around a neighborhood of run down but lovely old Ottoman houses and ran into two more instances of generous friendiness. First I went to buy an apple, and the merchant had us take it for free. Then, as we were walking, a family called to us from their raised porch inviting us up for tea, and we went and sat with them (saying our 3 Turkish phrases over and over...) for close to an hour.

Leaving Amasya, we headed to the capital, Ankara, but in hindsight wish we hadn't. Do you recall the Simpsons eppisode where Bart and family win a vacation-- the (misguided and NOT FUNNY) joke being that the trip is to Hartford? From our experience, Ankara would be a more appropriate choice for the unwanted vacation giveaway. Taking the metro into the city from the bus station, we were accosted by a man we saw to be a little eccentric who advised us to go to a different hotel than the one we had in mind, saying it should cost around 50 YTL (about $30). When we got to the hotel, we figured that maybe he hasn't been there in the past 10 years, since it now costs $95. After walking for too long with our heavy bags through a really ugly big-city landscape of noise, crowds of people and way too much traffic (the pollution felt much worse than Mexico City), we finally spotted the hotel we had originally chosen but were then unable to cross the street at an unmarked intersection for literally about 5 minutes. Having found the hotel, our next quest was to find a place to do our bulging bag of dirty laundry, but apparently there are no laundromats or laundry services in Turkey, as we were only able to locate 2 dry cleaners, one who rejected us and the other who said they'd charge over $30 to do the laundry. So we headed back to the hotel to do some hand washing.

Our reasons for coming to Ankara were the Ataturk Mausoleum and the Museum of Anatolian Civilzations, reputed to be one of the best museums in Turkey. We headed to the Mausoleum after breakfast, a journey that turned out to be as confusing and unpleasant as the walk the night before. But the monument itself, when we finally made it there, was quite interesting. The Museum of the War of Independence started out with several rooms of fancy shmancy Ataturk stuff-- a crystal shaving kit from the King of Jordan, dozens of jewel-encrusted daggers and swords, silk dressing robes, and the like. Then came the serious part: panaromas of battles, supplemented by the sounds of firing cannons and rapping bullets, and a dozen or more large paintings depicting 'ordinary Turkish people' helping the war effort while being tortured and killed by merciless Greeks. Though a bit Disney-ish in scale, it was actually quite moving. After that came a series of alcoves, each dedicated to a different one of Ataturk's achievements as Presidents between 1923 and 1938. Between the barrage of documents and the blaring patriotic music, we thought we might go into the exhibit American and come out of it Turkish. Finally, the museum brought us out in front of the towering columned monument, protected by fancily dressed soldiers, that contains Ataturk's supersized marble tomb. Over-the-top as it all seemed for a republic, it was still pretty cool to see. However, as we emerged from the museum, the thought of fighting our way through the Ankara streets to the Anatolian Museum we just couldn't stomach. Instead we bought some dried cherries and dates and set out for the bus station and the way out of town.

After escaping Ankara, we were happy to land in Safronbolu, a small town filled with old Ottoman houses (the town itself is actually a UNESCO site). We were very pleased with our pension, where we got a beautiful room for not much money. That night, however, we learned of a drawback: the singers from the bar 2 stories below sounded like they were right in our bedroom for several hours after we went bed. And after finally falling asleep, we were awakened at about 4:30 a.m. by the longest ezan (call to prayer) on the worst quality sound system we've ever heard, from the minaret that was practically right outside our window. The lack of sleep wasn't too much of a problem, though, because our only plan for three days in Safranbolu was to laze around-- stroll about, compare the Turkish Delights and baklavas of the many sweet shops, have picnics, that kind of thing. We were amused by the math at a cafe where our baklava and tea were listed on the bill as costing 3 and 6; when the waiter punched the numbers into the calculator he first showed us 11.5, then when we protested he typed them again and then showed us 8, which we paid, wondering what the next figure would have been if we'd said no to that. We thought our lazing would also include a lot of reading, but the rare tv in our pension room got in the way of that. The tv had digital cable, including three channels in English: the God channel (white televangelists), the God Revival channel (black televangelists), and the NBA channel. Remember those awesome 1993 and 1994 overtime playoff games? Alonzo Mourning's flat-top? When basketball shorts were still kind of short? We sure do.

On our second night, we decided that since we would be hearing the bar singers all night, we might as well sit in the bar. This was, perhaps, a miscalculation on our part, since the beer turned out to be ridiculously expensive, and they tried to charge us for the little bowl of nuts they'd brought unbidden to our table. But that aside, it had it's share of amusements. The main singer and m.c. struck us as painfully out of place in this little Turkish town, with his tight black pants, half-unbuttoned fitted shirt, and made-up face-- Provincetown would have been a better fit. But here he was, singing in this bar every night, and he seemed determined to make the best of it. He strutted back and forth, singing (off-key) with his eyes closed or rolled skyward, swaying when the guitarist, accompanied by his laptop, took over. At the end of each song, he would raise a cheer into the microphone (from our bed the night before we'd thought there was a very enthusiastic audience, but alas, it was an enthusiastic performer instead). He sipped raki between each song and smoked cigaretted whenever his dyed-blond female cohort took over at the microphone. We stayed at the show for awhile, trying to chat with the New Zealand couple we'd met, but eventually decided that the walls between the bar and our room made some difference, and retired upstairs.

Barhal: A Good Tip

2006-09-20T04:34:00.000-07:00

Leaving Kars, we were planning to on to Trabzon, a town on the Black Sea. Our guide at Ani asked why we weren't going to the Georgian Valley and Kackar Mountains while we were in the area, and since actually we couldn't think of any reason why not, we changed our plans and went. And lucky that we did-- our time in the tiny mountain village of Barhal was a highlight of our time in Turkey.

The village sits at 1100 meters, and is reached by a harrowing drive along a snaking one lane road in a confidently driven minibus. The 38 kilometers from the larger town of Yusufeli up to Barhal takes two hours to drive, and as a passenger you spend the whole time thinking thankfully that the driver isn't going any faster. The town really only consists of two general stores, two cafes, and a few houses, but is popular with outdoorsy tourists and has several pensions. Ours consisted of simple wooden rooms up on a hillside, with a barn filled with hay and a cozy dining terrace where our proprietor, Mehmet, served up hearty meals (always including bread, rice, and potatoes, along with meat, salad, and soup!) To our surprise, the pension was full of Israeli tourists; we learned that Barhal is one of the towns firmly on the Israeli Turkey circuit.

The morning after our arrival, we set out on a difficult, awesome hike, which took us 2000 meters up from Barhal to Karagol, or Dark Lake, lying in the rocks at 3300 meters. The climb started with an 8 kilometer uphill walk along the dirt road between Barhal and the even smaller town of Nasranah. (When winter comes to the region, which will be soon, the road and everything else will be covered by a couple meters of snow-- we couldn't quite figure out how all the people whose wood and stone houses are perched on the mountainside get around during that long season.) From there, a path started taking us up the mountain, but crossing a meadow we pretty quickly lost the path, and did our best to ask for directions from villagers; after a few detours and one shepard kindly running after us when we headed the wrong way, we finally made it to the right path. This brought us on a climb that was breathtaking in both the literal and figurative senses. Every step was truly a difficult effort, and our hearts were pounding, but the scenery that surrounded us was well worth it. To our left was a rich, rather gentle valley, green with brilliant patches of red plants dotting it; the odd house sat on the mountainside beyond. To our right was a harsh, steep valley of stone, all gray and black. In every direction, in the background, were mountains. Hawks swooped and called. When this stunning climb ended, we could see the waterfall that came from Karagol, and knew we'd almost made it. But again we lost the path, and the only way we could see to get across to the final ascent was by crossing the steeply sloped field of rocks, the remnants of some hopefully long-ago slide, that lay in between us and our goal. This we did, slowly and nervously but successfully. Then we pulled ourselves up clinging to some of the amazing rhododendron bushes that grew from the mountain in several places, and after a short climb more, we came to Karagol. There was a mist rising from the lake and a cloud over it, and the air was so cold and wind so strong that we couldn't admire it for long, and had to eat our lunch huddled between some boulders. Coming down, we found a path that avoided the rock scramble, although when it split we went--no surprise-- the wrong way, and after some failed attempts to cut back to the trail we had to retrace our steps. The last couple kilometers along the road felt pretty long, but it was a very contented tiredness that consumed us.

The next morning was rainy, which provided a welcome excuse for having a long breakfast chatting with three Israeli women we'd met on the trail, then all sitting wrapped in blankets reading and leading each other in yoga poses. We took just enough of a walk in the afternoon to justify our chocolate and honey-filled picnic, then sat reading more when the rain started again. The peace of the place could not quite last through the 15 hours of bus rides we had to endure the following day, but came close, and that says a lot.

Ani

2006-09-12T07:04:00.000-07:00

Ani is a medieval city, a thriving Armenian capital of the 1st millenium that survived Seljuk and Mongol invasions but has been empty since an earthquake in 1331. It sits just on the Turkish side of the Turkey-Armenia border, in the midst of a vast steppe-- picture the biggest, emptiest part of Montana, scatter around some reddish-brown fragments of magnificent buildings, add a Russian army base and barbed wire fence, and you've got an image of what Ani looks and feels like. (The army base, though an ugly intrusion, is really so dwarfed by the landscape as to be almost insignificant-- as long as you're not trying to sneak across the border anyway). Unlike any of the ruins we visited in Mexico or western Turkey, Ani is virtually untouristed, due partly to the inconvenience of reaching the site (there is no public transportation available), but probably more to the history of turbulence in eastern Turkey and the border region in particular. For us, the absence of other people for the hours we spent exploring the ruins was an awesome gift; I've never had the same feeling of being in a real place, and not some type of more-authentic Disneyworld, in any other ruin I've been to. But for the sake of the region's economy and all the travelers who are missing out on some incredible places, I hope tourism to the area goes up in the future.

The standing (or partly standing) buildings at Ani are mainly religious, for the reason that their arches protected them from the ravages of that 14th century earthquake, while most of the commercial and residential buildings were turned completely to rubble. Because of this, no two buildings were close together, and although you can see many of them across the steppe standing just at the city gate, the distance between them is actually quite large. There were a few Armenian and Georgian churches, with Armenian inscriptions carved into the outside walls. One of these had frescoes, including one with a man bound to a board and hanging upside down-- not sure if it was a Christian being tortured, or some Christians doing the torturing-- that we've never seen anywhere else. Another distinctive feature of the churches was the hive-like carved stone design of the ceilings. The Convent of the Virgins was set down a long path on the edge of a cliff overhanging the river, a location apparently chosen to keep those virgins virginal. But Christianity was not the only religion that thrived in Ani. There are also the remains of a Zoroastrian temple that was the oldest structure in the city, as well as a completely intact mosque built by the Seljuks that was the first mosque in all of Anatolia.

Our only disappointing moment in Ani came when we arrived at the last structure on our circuit, the palace, and found that it had been almost completely 'restored'-- which actually meant rebuilt using ugly new concrete blocks, entirely eclipsing what few pieces of the original remained. (The same was true of the city wall). Our guide told us that this thoughtless work had been planned for all of Ani, but thankfully a group of archeologists challenged the plan in court and won, saving the majority of the ruins in their proper ruined state.

Farming in Kinalitas

2006-09-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

Before arriving at our second organic farm, we were a little nervous about what to expect since the location is the farthest east we've been so far--where there are fewer tourists and less developed conditions. When we tried to contact the farmer, Nuri Celik, to confirm that we were coming, it turned out that he doesn't speak a word of English, and I couldn't understand any of his Turkish over the phone. So we called the woman from the TaTuTa (organic farm program) we'd signed up with in Istanbul, she spoke with Nuri and she said to call him when we arrived at the Kelkit town bus station and he'd pick us up.

Getting to Kelkit was no picnic: from Cappadocia, we took an unpleasant overnight bus (at one point in the middle of the night they were either refueling or fixing something, and had the gas tank area open inside the bus with fumes pouring out) that dumped us by the side of the road near the bus station in Erzincan at 5am, an hour earlier than we were scheduled to arrive. At the Erzincan bus station, we were able to communicate in German to buy our ticket (amazingly, when contrasted with our 5 word knowledge of Turkish, German sounds crystal clear). After a beautiful ride through brown mountains, yellow fields and clear blue skies, we arrived in Kelkit around 7am and called Nuri, and then waited about an hour and a half that felt much longer until he finally arrived. We'd planned on being taken out to the farm, having breakfast and getting to work, but instead Nuri deposited us in the care of a man we later learned to be his father's brother, who sat with us while we ate breakfast of soup and bread in a restaurant, and then took us on a short walking 'tour' of Kelkit (population 19,000 but with a smaller feel) before we settled into a table in an alley outside a teahouse for our first of many cups of tea. Nuri's uncle, like almost everyone else we interacted with in Kelkit/Kinalitas, spoke no English--we managed to communicate when necessary and a couple other times, but mostly sat until Nuri appeared again around noon. We went to a restaurant for lunch, then Nuri, who is the 'muhtar' (mayor) of the village of Kinalitas, brought us along while he picked up some papers, including a stop at a pharmacy where a woman who spoke limited English asked us if we thought America is imperialist, but when we said yes she didn't talk to us any more.

In early afternoon, we piled into a big van to the village of Kinalitas, which turned out to be driven by a weathered looking man we'd met at the teahouse who told us that he was a truck driver (possibly with the military) during the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s, and showed us his passport with dozens of entry stamps into Iraq in that time period. The village of Kinalitas is located on a hillside about a 15 minute drive outside of Kelkit, with a population of maybe a couple hundred. We met Nuri's family: his wife Emine, daughters Derya, age 26 (her husband died 3 years ago from illness and she is back in her parents' house, with a terribly palpable sadness); Hattiti, age 24 (she lives with her husband, they're expecting their first child in October); Seljuk, age 21 (he helps out with the farm work and, like all Turkish men, completed his mandatory 15 month military service); Yasmine, age 19 (she's marrying soon a friend of Seljuk's and moving to a village outside of Izmir, across the country on the Aegean coast), Habibe, age 12 (she could speak a few words and phrases of English); and Sahmi age 1 and a half (Sahmi was always entertaining. It was a good thing that, as far as we know, there were no loaded guns in the house as we saw Sahmi playing with a lighter, a hatchet and piece of firewood, and several large knives).

Habibe, whose head is not yet covered, took us on a walking tour of the village where we balanced on an irrigation wall, jumped over streams and ended up picking cucumbers and beans from their garden. In what became a pattern, the rest of the day was pretty much spent sitting around, first inside and then outside on cushions on the ground. We established some communication with Habibe through drawing pictures and pointing to phrases in our guidebook and her English notebook from school. Our first meal with the family that night felt incredibly awkward, as Nuri, Seljuk, Rachel and I were served first and all of the family women sat there in silence, waiting until we were finished to eat. This was a time where it felt very clearly like women are considered inferior, and it was uncomfortable for us. In what also became a nightly routine, after dinner we watched tv. In addition to the American music videos, highlights of Turkish tv include Turkish folk music videos (all shot the same way, and in the same mountain location), a soap opera of Turkish village life (I was trying to think of an American equivalent--maybe 'Dukes of Hazard?'), and a kickboxing tournament taking place in Turkey where the undefeated New Zealander Chris Johnson would do his signature King Kong chest pounding after every victory.

Day 2 started with us having breakfast, riding into Kelkit on the van, and then being taken by taxi to a large farm, where we waited in the office with someone who spoke only a few words of English. After an awkward wait, an employee of the farm our age who spoke English arrived and gave us a tour. The farm, Dogan Organic, is a huge organic project founded recently by a Turkish media mogul (he owns 90% of the media outlets in turkey; however Rupert Murdoch just bought his first Turkish tv station so the competition may be heating up) whose father owned a farm outside Kelkit. Dogan Organic is a very large operation: they currently have 1,000 cattle, 350 of which they are currently milking. Our guide Gunus told us that the farm had been awarded the best organic project in Europe. They have plans to expand even further, to ship and process their own milk as well as build modern milking parlors in the surrounding villages for the villagers to use. The farm is connected to a large agriculture university in Kelkit, and seems to have as its mission not just organic but also education and community development.

After the tour we went back to Kelkit and ate ice cream with Gunus until Seljuk picked us up. As we had been struggling immensely with figuring out whether there was actually any work we could do on the farm, or whether they expected us to stay as paying guests (the other option of TaTuTa), Gunus translated, and Seljuk assured him that we would be working. After lunch, we rode in the tractor, blasting Turkish pop and dancing in the limited space, with Seljuk and Habibe to dig a few potatoes and pick a little corn, and then drove back to the house and sat around outside, eventually eating some corn and playing a little 'volleyball' before going in for dinner. As we had already known with the amount of bread consumed, Turkey seems like the exact opposite of the Atkins diet, but the food we ate with the family was super starch-based. A typical meal might be rice or bulgar, followed by chickpeas or pasta, of course with bread, and sometimes with boiled potatoes beforehand as a snack (there was also some meat, vegetables, etc. but these were secondary). It was amazing how it felt different for us with the family after just a short amount of time: instead of being silent, the women at least participated in conversation at other meals, and a few times even ate with us. The division was still something that felt strange to us, but less so with time. Also, at the second two evening meals, Rachel stayed afterwards with the women while I went to watch tv with the men, and so she was able to 'talk' with them more.

Day 3 was market day in Kelkit. After briefly walking throught the market with Seljuk we were able to buy some presents for the family and then went to tea at several places, one including a cafe owned by a British man who teaches English at the university; they called him and we talked a little with him on the phone while drinking tea in his cafe. Back on the farm, we went back on the tractor with Seljuk and Habibe for a 'swimming' picnic next to a nearby river, where we didn't actually swim but played soccer, walked around and had a dance party from the tractor tape player to Ismail YK, the hit Turkish pop star of the moment. We then rode on the tractor to a nearby canyon, where we walked around.

On the morning of Day 4 we set off towards Kars: Habibe was very sad to see us go, asking us to stay just one more day, and Emine had tears in her eyes as we left. Although very challenging, it was a great experience for us to stay with them, and for them to open their home and their lives to us in such a warm manner. We hope that someday we'll be able to reciprocate with Habibe in the U.S., but for the time being that seems like a pretty distant dream.

Circumcised Rocks and Other Natural Wonders

2006-09-09T00:49:00.000-07:00

Between the village wedding at Kiralan and the village farm at Kinalitas, we spent three days frolicking in the tourist haven of Goreme, a town in Cappadocia. The Cappadocia region is characterized by unusual and impressive rock formations. Some were naturally formed by volcanoes, earthquakes, and erosion. These include the oddly-named 'fairy chimneys', which tour guides also refer to demurely as mushroom rocks, but which anyone who has been to middle school knows really look like towering phalluses. Others were manmade, including numerous monasteries built into the sides of cliffs, cave churches, and underground cities. We had fun exploring these. The Goreme Open Air Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage site, contains the best churches, with 12-1500 year old frescoes impressively preserved. Some of the frescoes were made during the iconoclastic period, when the church banned the portrayal of any human or animal images as idolotrous; these are mainly ochre-colored geometric designs. There were also paintings of humans made before and after the iconoclastic period-- the earlier of these were viewed offensively by the iconoclasts, who scratched out their eyes and sometimes their entire faces.

On a lively group tour-- our guide said we were the youngest group she'd ever had, but we all knew that she also meant we were the cheapest, buying one beer and two waters between us all day-- we visited an 8 storey underground city, going 65 meters down. The city was dug out by hand over the course of several generations, and was for centuries used by Christians as a hideout when the area was invaded. They had a school and a winery, a kitchen, and a torture device (see photo), and could live underground for up to six months. Each underground city was connected to a couple others by a series of tunnels (now off limits to curious tourists). We also stopped at a ceramics studio, where we watched artists creating labarynthine designs with no templates. The owner wooed us with tea and playing with the pottery wheel, and the finished projects were beautiful, but still not a lira parted from our group's hands. The best part of our time in Cappadocia, though, was a half-day hike between the cave site of Zelve, and Goreme that we did on our first day. We walked on thistle-strewn goat paths along the ridges of the steep hills, passing high over the souvenir stands and camel rides (see photo) of the fairy chimney area and instead seeing just the incredible rocks themselves. Further on, the rocks surrounding us wavered between pink and green in color, scattered vineyards provided sweet snacks, and we didn't run into a single other person for hours. When it was finally time to return to touristland, we ran into a little challenge finding a path down into the valley that didn't involve a sheer drop of some uninviting distance, but eventually we found a hill we could scramble down, and made our way back to town.

Wedding Crashers

2006-09-05T06:30:00.000-07:00

When we arrived at the bus station at Pamukkale, a tiny tourist town famous for its mineral water deposits and Greek spa-town ruins, we knew from Lonely Planet to expect to be hustled by penion owners competing for our business. We did not expect, however, that the pension we got hustled into would turn out to be our ticket into a completely un-touristed world. From the beginning, it was clear that the family that ran Seoul Pension-- 50-something parents and 20-something sons-- was very friendly, as they brought us tea and freshly picked grapes. The mother was a wonderful cook, and we savored every bite of the lamb, tomato, and onion stew she made us for dinner. But we were still quite taken by surprise when, after watching a movie in their living room, one of the sons told us that his parents (who pretty much did not speak English) had invited us to a stay in their village, including a family wedding, the next night and day. After that, the mineral deposits and ruins were cool to see, but it was clear the memorable part of our visit was yet to come.

Saturday evening, we piled into the car with Mevlut and Durdu and headed to the village of Kiralan, about an hour's drive away. (It probably should have been longer, but Mevlut drove like he was being pursued by wolves.) After stopping in their house-- two rooms plus an entryway, small kitchen, and outdoor squat toilet-- and meeting Mevlut's sisters and nieces and nephew, we were led to the house of the father of the groom. He is a very observant Muslim who lives half the year in Germany, where his son and new daughter-in-law will be joining him. He shook Erik's hand but not mine, but otherwise was very welcoming of these two strangers who had shown up at his door. We sat on the floor and were served a tray of local dishes, which we ate communally. I had a lot of trouble using my right hand, as is the Turkish custom... for a reason we unhappily learned when we first went to the outhouse and found there wasn't any toilet paper. (They did find some for us, though). Our host kept speaking to us in German, which, having only studied it for 6 months each, 4 years ago, we had a lot of trouble following. Meanwhile, Durdu would speak to us in Turkish and look at us expectantly, waiting for a response, while Mevlut would mix Turkish and English together, often with no better luck.

After a little while, I was called away by Durdu, leaving Erik in the living room, where he was to remain, with men speaking to him in German, for a couple hours. I was brought with the other women in a bus 1/2 a mile away to the the bride's house. She was dressed in a long, many-layered, feathery red skirt, with a long-sleeved white shirt, a gold chain maile-like accessory on her hands, and long necklaces with large gold coins on her neck. The yard was full of women sitting in a circle on plastic chairs; besides the young girls and one other woman my age, I was the only one with an uncovered head. The village custom is to wear patterned pantaloons under long, loose skirts, sandals with socks, long shirts, and white headscarves. Most of the women wore this style, although some of the younger ones and the bride and groom's relatives wore fancier clothes. In the middle of the circle, the bride and another woman (her best friend?) did a traditional dance, moving slowly around, then speeding up and kicking their feet together, while women walked up to them, moved their hands over them, then deposited some coins in a basket near the woman beating the drum. When the bride was finished, woman after woman got into the circle and the same thing happened, with the bride always offering coins to the dancers. This went on for a long time, as Durdu's neices and I exchanged sleepy glances. Then the bride and her friend were put on two chairs and a red sequined veil was laid over the bride's face. Young women began walking around them carrying candles and singing. Then sparklers were lit, and all the 7 year old boys who had been hanging out nearby ran to get them and jumped around the circle, holding the sparklers in everyone's faces and being halfheartedly shooed away by the women. After this went on for awhile, we loaded back onto the buses and headed back to the groom's house. There we sat eating melon and talking for awhile, although the only one who seemed to have any energy was Mevlut-- it seemed that his wife and sisters were waiting for him to decide when it was time to leave, even though they and the kids were quite sleepy.

In the morning, we feasted on breakfast foods at Mevlut's sister's house. Then he took us on a tour of the village. We saw the Sunday market, brimming with local grapes, peaches, and tomatoes, and the cemetary, wild-looking in an unkept field. At one point Mevlut called a group of children over who had been picking almonds from the trees, and saying something like 'I have some Americans here,' helped himself to a handful from each of their bags!

After our walk, it was time to go to the wedding. We headed back to the groom's house. Durdu had already been there for a couple hours, helping the women of the family with the cooking and cleaning. When we arrived, I was kept with the men, who were sitting at picnic tables in the yard enjoying the trays of food being brought to them, while the women cooked and washed an endless cycle of dishes. This went on for an hour or so, interrupted only by a prayer issued by the imam over a loudspeaker that had been set up in the yard. Then the groom and his best friend appeared, dressed in matching suits. With his father next to him, the imam performed a prayer over him. Then men, including Erik, went up to pin money on his jacket. After this the groom and his friend got into the back seat of his car, which had been decorated with hearts and paper. Everyone else also loaded into their cars, which had scarves of different colors tied to the right windshield. Those without cars piled onto buses ordered for the occassion. Honking the whole way, this procession moved toward the bride's house. The groom's car was parked right outside her door, while everyone else parked outside then gathered round, the men in the lot, the women near the groom's car. After a few minutes, the bride was brought down to the car, wearing a long white satin dress and the same gold necklaces and red sequined veil. This seemed to be the current manifestation of an old kidnapping ritual as the bride was packed into the car and led away.

Back at the groom's house, the car (with bride and groom still inside) was parked under a canopy. Again, the men gathered on one side, the women on the other. A sheep was brought out and held to the ground in front of the car by one man. Then another man began to saw at the sheep's neck with a long knife. As the blood began to spurt, Durdu pulled me through to be at the front of the crowd, but I was having a hard time watching and tried to move back. For two minues that felt like 10, the man sawed at the sheep's neck until its head came off completely. The sheep's body thrashed around as two men carried it away. Then the car was turned back on and ran with great intention over the blood on the ground. After that the bride and groom got out of the car and went inside. That was the only part of the ceremony that included both of them.

I was a little shaky by this point, but managed to follow Durdu inside, where women were gathered to take photos with the bride and groom. After that we gave our thanks to our hosts, had a last cup of tea with Mevlut's sisters and the children, and headed back to Pamukkale.

Pastoral Vadi: Part 2

2006-09-05T05:44:00.000-07:00

On our second-to-last full day at Pastoral Vadi, we finally got to do some outdoor work. They have a large field of 4-year-old orange trees (currently with smallish green oranges which will be ripe in January); our task was to use a small pick to clear away the grass and roots in a 3 foot diameter circle around the tree. We worked in the morning and lounged by the pool in the afternoon. The last full day, we went back to the trees, this time equipped with some gloves to protect all the blisters on our hands. Rachel unfortunately found a tree with a small bee hive and was stung 3 times. As a remedy, the farmer Yakup cut an onion in half and held it on the stings, which seemed to be successful in drawing out some of the poison.

Despite not doing much besides washing the dishes (which did actually take awhile), we felt like we had already earned our keep by serving as publicity models: the Turkish state tv network was filming a feature while we were there, and our picture appeared in the local newspaper the next day. In the picture, we're shown seated on cushions in a thatch-covered platform (perfect for tea drinking), engaged in a posed conversation with the owner Ahmed. Unfortunately, we didn't get a copy of the paper.

It was fun to get to know people a little more in the time we were there. Feride the cook enjoyed calling Rachel 'Elma,' which means 'apple': 'Erik' is easy for people to pronounce here because it's the Turkish word for 'plum' (or 'small apple'), but no one can pronounce 'Rachel.' We appreciated Feride's and Nurgul's cooking, including a meat,onion,tomato and parsley stuffed eggplant whose Turkish name translates as 'split stomach,' and a delicious eggplant and pepper ratatui. One evening, Yakup the farmer played the saz, a traditional stringed instrument.

One of our favorite people to talk with at Pastoral was Gemal, a friend of Ahmed's who's an economics professor at Vanier College in Montreal. He was working on a publicity article for Pastoral Vadi, and we laughed about the English association of the word 'pastoral' being some sheep hopping through the grass while a shepherd plays his flute--not exactly the description of an eco-tourism place! From books to politics to religion to travel, we spent hours talking with Gemal and hope to keep in touch!

Pastoral Vadi

2006-08-28T06:39:00.000-07:00

Before we start, we just heard the news about the bombings in Istanbul and Marmaris. We are not there, and are fine.

We are currently in the middle of a weeklong stay at the most isolated place we've been so far, a 10 acre eco-tourism site in a valley (vadi) off the Mediterranean Coast. It is the brainchild of an architect who has been envisioning the project for 25 years, bought land 7 years ago, and this summer opened for business for the first time. On entering the Pastoral from a rutted, rock-strewn dirt path of a road, we were greeted by a grove of orange trees, a greenhouse, pomegranate and pear trees, a sheep shed, and a mule. There are several buildings near the entrance made of traditional mud brick, and more underway of stone. Rounding the grove, we reached the kitchen, the center of the Pastoral; here, Feride and Nurgun cook Mediterranean flavored food (mostly vegetarian) in anchor-weight iron pots over an open wood flame, scented with sage leaves. Two pools, one for swimming, are fed by mountain water which, from the pools, continues to the sea, and which flows in through a trough carved from a tree trunk and wedged into the Y of another tree. Eating tables overlook the pool. Near the kitchen are several pavilions lined with cushions where one can sit, shoeless, and drink tea. Our house is one of 8 wooden cabins further along from the kitchen, with adobe tile floors, a chapel ceiling, and a large porch overlooking a duck pond.

We are here through the Turkish organic farming program 'Tatuta' as volunteers, staying for free in exchange for work. There turns out to be basically nothing to do in the outdoors, but we have become expert dishwashers (and Erik is probably the first man to hold that position in the whole village!) So when it's not dish time, we do a lot of reading, strolling, and tea drinking. The highlight of our very relaxing time here, though, was our first walk, when we were followed by an insistent, persistent, teeny tiny, nearly starving baby kitty. She followed us into every building we were being shown, forcing us to (willingly) to carry her and our host, a little less willingly, to introduce her to the architect's elderly mother; the cat-loving older woman fed her some milk and said she should be taken to the restaurant; and so, the kitty we lovingly call Scruffy made it out of the woods and into a well-fed home. (Unfortunately for us, Scruffy was not to stay at the restaurant, where we could pet her all day, but instead to go home to live with Feride, the cook; but we're consoled by knowing that she's happy).

Gallipoli

2006-08-28T06:36:00.000-07:00

After Istanbul we toured Gallipoli, the World War I battlefield located on the Dardenelles/Hellespont Strait near Troy. The conflict pitted the Allied forces against the Ottoman Turks, but most of the allies were ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps).
We brushed up on our history by watching at the hotel Peter Weir's (early 80s?) drama Gallipoli featurıing a young Mel Gibson (not a bad film except for the horrendous synthesizer soundtrack), and a dry documentary with interviews with Australian war vets.

Apparently it's unusual to have any foreigners who aren't from Australia or N.Z. tour the battlefields. We had an excellent tour guıde: a retired Turkish naval captain, university lecturer and military historian whose grandfather had been killed in Gallipoli. Although the battles caused an absurd number of casualties and highlighted the stupidity and carnage of WWI-style trench warfare, our guide said that both sides won some victory: for the Anzacs, their victory was the 'Anzac Spirit,' which led to Australia and N.Z. feeling less like British colonies and more like independent nations; and for the Turks their victory was Ataturk.

Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal) was a commander at Gallipoli who correctly guessed where the Anzacs would attack, and disobeyed the orders of his German superior to be in the right place at the right time. In one battle, a piece of shrapnel hit his pocketwatch which would have otherwise pierced his heart.

One example of the type of fighting and casualties is the battle of Lone Pine, where 2,200 Anzacs and 4,000 Turks died for a piece of ground (as our guide repeated incessantly) 'not bigger than 2 tennis courts.' But our guide also said that it was a 'gentleman's war,' that both sides came to respect each other, with some firing into the air instead of at the enemy, and both sides lobbing gifts instead of grenades into the enemy trenches. Despite estimates that as many as half of the 120,000 allied troops would be killed when they finally decided to evacuate, not a single allied troop was killed during the evacuatıon, which our guide said was the Turks keeping their tradition of not firing on a retreating enemy.

Shopping

2006-08-23T00:17:00.000-07:00

Ignoring the thousands of tourist shops that line the streets of Sultanahmet (the biggest touristy neighborhood of Istanbul), we've experienced three distinctive shopping arenas in the city. (Mom and Dad, don't worry, these experiences have been pretty much spending-free...). The first was the Grand Bazaar, which is basically a hive of teeny streets that some years ago were put under a huge roof-- probably for the purpose of guaranteeing no lost selling days during tourist season. Roughly speaking, there are different sections of the bazaar-- leather jacket streets, gold necklace streets-- but in reality brightly colored glass lamps and polyester 'pashminas' and faux-Abercrombie and Lacoste polo shirts have infiltrated almost everywhere. Probably the thing that pleased me most in the bazaar was the number of shopkeepers who spoke to us in French or Spanish or Italian instead of English-- I took this as a compliment on my outfit, but most likely it's just that there aren't that many Americans or Brits around. But I also enjoyed trying to call them out on some of their tricks-- which, when one person is selling a scarf for 6 lira and another is selling the same scarf for 20 lira, really isn't that hard. We did spend awhile in a closet-sized store selling Uzbek, Turkmen, and Kazakh jewelry and felt goods (including a felt bird we bought from Aid to Artisans in Hartford two years ago!), and there we had tea with the owner, who had bee in Turkey from Turkmenistan for a few years, and came away with a turqoise neckace for $6. Feeling rather victorious, we headed for home.

At the Spice Bazaar, a day later, our spending was not quite so controlled. This is the ultimate location for those ubiquitous childhood fantasies of being locked in a candy shop. Table after table is brimming with gooey, sugar-dusted Turkish Delight, baklava, dates, figs, dried kiwi, nuts, and spices. (I remember looking for saffron at Whole Foods and finding a square inch packet for about $20... here the saffron was mounded in a deep basket). We stocked up on snacks-- you need food, right?-- and kept ourselves going as we wandered the stalls by keeping globs of Turkish Delight in our mouths.

But I think my favorite market experience in Istabul was just perusing the wares set up every night on the ground at the ferry dock near the Galata Bridge. Here, tourists are not the target audience (a welcome change)-- rather, Turkish women, many of them in full coverings, toss around shoes and scarves and shirts, haggling with the vendors and creating massive bottlenecks for anyone just trying to walk through. Meanwhile, men walk around with boxes of 'designer' perfume, razor blades, lottery tickets, and anything else you might need for a night out on the town. Several sets of goods are sold by people who do not appear to be Turkish-- Kurdish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, or Uzbek would be my guess-- and their wares often consist of fur-lined leather vests and coats and hats with ear flaps and pom-poms: not the first thing that comes to mind on a warm summer evening, but maybe people plan ahead. We made the walk through this crowd several evenings in a row, enjoying the frenetic energy of it all and, usually, letting the slow pace take us over for a little while.

Aya Sofya and Blue Mosque

2006-08-18T07:40:00.000-07:00

Located next to Topkapi Palace, the Aya Sofya is the most famous sacred space in Istanbul. It's huge (larger than the Vatican) and really old: built by the Roman Emperor Justinian in the 500s as a Christian church, it was destroyed during the Crusades (we think by the Christians, but are unclear why the Christians would attack an already Christian city...). At any rate, when Istanbul was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453 the Aya Sofya became a mosque, so the mosaics of Mary and Jesus and the Archangel Gabriel now look down upon the mimbar (the Islamic equivalent of the pulpit). There are many beautiful mosaics, although not as stunning as the Kariye mosaics we saw later. The exterior of the building is not as interesting- the four minarets do look a little out of place with the rest of the structure.

The Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque are the two structures that dominate the landscape of Sultanahmet, the tourist neighborhood where we stayed. Our hotel's rooftop terrace had an especially great view of the Aya Sofya, which looks even more impressive lit up at night. We would also hear the muezzin call to prayer from the Mosque. Last Sunday, Muslims celebrated Mohammed's Ascension. We heard songs and speeches from the mosque until at least midnight, and people in our hotel said that some people stayed all night to pray. To enter the Blue Mosque, we had to go through a separate non-Muslim entrance and remove our shoes. They had cloth wraps at the door; Rachel had to take one to cover her shoulders, but despite the sign saying shorts weren't allowed they didn't seem to care about my wearing shorts. Inside, the mosque is beautifully decorated with tiles and painted designs, all in blue and red. There are small rectangles in the carpet for prayer rugs--not sure what the capacity is, but it was huge!

Welcome to Istanbul

2006-08-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

If ın some number of years I decıde to move to Istanbul (whıch I most lıkely won´t), or at least return here as often as possıble (whıch I lıkely wıll), one reason wıll be the sweet kıttıes that are everywhere and love beıng scrıtched, and another reason wıll be the baklava, and another wıll be all the ferry boats. But that´s not what thıs entry ıs about. Thıs entry ıs about Topkapı Palace.

Home of Ottoman sultans for hundreds of years, and located half a block from our hotel, Topkapı ıs composed of buıldıngs set wıthın four concentrıc courtyards, whıch ın the tıme of the court grew ıncreasıngly exclusıve as they went. The whole thıng ıs very beautıful, wıth bıg old trees provıdıng lots of shade and beautıful vıews of the Bosphorous, full of boats, and of the Blue Mosque. The most glıttery sectıon ıs the Treasury, whıch contaıns such ıtems as Suleyman`s jewel-encrusted dagger, countless wrıtıng boxes and flasks and other everyday ıtems covered wıth emeralds and rubıes as ıf they were no more than rhınestones, and an 86-karat dıamond, purportedly found ın a trash heap by a peddlar who purchased ıt for three spoons. But my favorıte sectıon was the harem. Fallıng ın between the thırd and fourth courtyards, one sıde of the harem was lıned wıth rooms for the eunuchs, maınly Afrıcans, who held a posıtıon of hıgh ımportance ın the court, and were of course the only men permıtted to be near the sultan´s multıtudınous women. Further along are the sultan´s bath, massage, and dressıng rooms, whıch come equıpped wıth gold faucets and marble walls. There are many rooms for the concubınes and the "favorıtes", who held wıfely status; the walls of all of these are fully covered wıth the blue and turquoıse tıles typıcal of the Ottomans. (I love these tıles, as you can see ıf we fıgure out how to get our pıctures up). There´s also a huge swımmıng pool for the exclusıve use of the women. Swarmıng wıth tourısts as ıt was, the ımpressıveness of Topkapı was stıll strongly evıdent.

Getting Cultured

2006-08-07T19:34:00.000-07:00

In the last few days, we have taken in (or at least been exposed to) as many manifestations of "culture" as any time since we visited 8 museums in 3 days in Paris 4 years ago. The first of the series was during our day-long stopover in Villahermosa, the capital of Tabasco, in between overnight bus rides on our way from Isla Mujeres to Mexico City. Although Villahermosa as a whole was a strikingly unlovely city, it was home to a unique and interesting site, Parque-Museo La Venta. Part of the park is a zoo containing only animals native to Tabasco, and peppered with reminders about the human responsibility to prevent extinction. The other half is a jungly walk that incorporates 30 or so Olmec sculptures, found earlier in the century at La Venta, and indicating that it was actually the central Olmec city during the time of their civilization, many years before the Maya. These were the oldest artifacts we have seen in Mexico, and are all that physically remain of the Olmec, whose language has still not been interpreted by modern scholars. Arriving in Mexico City, we followed up on La Venta by visiting the Templo Mayor, located in what is now the center of the country`s capital, and in what was at the time of the Mexica (Aztecs) the center of Tenochtitlan, their city in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The museum is very well set up, with a walkabout first to see all of the excavated temple, and then an indoor museum with extensive explanations of Mexica society. Unlike Rome, where large sections of the city feel to me to be permeated by ancient history, most of Mexico City feels quite removed from the Mexica past; the Templo Mayor is a moving exception.

The next day, we turned to art, spending the morning at the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the afternoon at the National Museum of Art (Munal). As the name suggests, the Palacio is a soaring Beaux-Artes building where every part is at least as much form as function. It houses several famous murals by Diego Rivera, as well as Siquieros and other artists. The temporary exhibit we saw was of contemporary Latin American art, which I am ashamed to say did no more for me than contemporary art ever does. The art at Munal, though, spoke to me strongly. That museum is arranged chronologically, from colonial religious art of the 16th century through Mexican art of 1950ish. While a dedicated post-modernist wouldn`t have liked the museums historical, contextual presentation of artisitc movements and works in Mexico, I certainly did. The development of a sense of nationalism in Mexican art, the continuing struggle over the last 200 years with the meaning of religion in Mexico, and the search for a definitive sense of Mexican identity were themes that particularly stood out.

Still on our feet, the following day we spent the morning at the incredibly expansive National Museum of Anthropology, which was quite as impressive as its reputation had promised. Each room of the museum is dedicated to the indigenous people of a certain area of Mexico. On the ground floor, the archeological record of the group is presented, with an incredible collection of artifacts complemented by some stunning larger pieces, both originals and reproductions-- murals, altars, carved walls, and the like. The top floor rooms take more of a modern-day anthropological perspective on each group, considering current traditions and economies, the effects of larger sociopolitical movements, and the like. Although by the end we were doing no more than walking through each exhibit, too worn out to read any more descriptions, the museum made quite an imprint. We followed that, rather discordantly, with an excellent tour of the Trotsky house, where he lived after being exiled from the USSR by Stalin, survived one massive machine gun attack, and was finally murdered with an ice axe in his study. The extent of Stalin`s global network, as described in the exhibit, was shocking to learn, and the unanswered questions that remain about Trotsky and his family were also intriguing. Also, our guide invited my sister Karen to give a lecture there when she finishes her research in the gulag this summer, which was tickling! We followed that up with an evening show of the Ballet Folklorico. It had a pretty Disney-ish feel, particularly after having spent even a little time in indigenous communities in the south, but nonetheless, it was a fun show.

We were prepared in our planning for all the museums to be closed on Monday, but did not expect that to include the large central park, Bosque Chapultepec. So we contented ourselves with watching "Miami Vice" and sitting around at Starbucks all afternoon.

Finally, on our last full day, we resumed our cultural endeavors with a flourish, taking the commuter rail out to the gorgeous Dolores Olmeda Museum. Like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the museum is composed of Olmeda`s private collection and is located on the grounds of her estate, which includes peacock-filled lawns and a stone hacienda with flowers climbing the walls. The permanent collection consists of room after room of Diego Rivera works, which exhibited a range of styles that I had never before associated with him; many indigenous artifacts, obtained who-knows-how; a fun collection of popular art, such as Dia de los Muertos skeletons and painted vases; and a room of Frida Kahlo paintings, which were unfortunately out on loan when we were there. There are also three of Olmeda`s "private" rooms open for touring, which were filled with probably 25 elephants' worth of carved ivory, and literally 100 photos or painted portraits of the ever-humble Dolores Olmeda herself. We followed that up with a walk through the now-open Bosque Chapultepec and around the zoo, where most of the animals seemed to be in hiding. And on our last evening in Mexico, we capped off our cultural experience the only way that seemed fitting: at the Coliseo, for a lucha libre. For the uninitiated, the lucha libre is a sporting event in which muscly men with waxed chests and backs, wearing colorful or skeleton-covered lycra pants and matching masks, pretend to fight with each other in a highly choreographed series of moves, while the crowd jeers and chants and blows noisemakers. The acting was pretty damn unconvincing, and after three fights that were all pretty much the same we cut out, but even so, it was definitely worth seeing. And now, with these many visions of Mexico floating in our heads, we prepare to fly out.

Adventures in the Kitchen

2006-08-07T19:08:00.000-07:00

Just in case any of you are worried that while we´re cavorting around the world we´re not giving enough thought to our future, you can rest easy: Erik and I are ready to begin work on the prospectus for our new Food Network reality show, "insert your name suggestion here." The focus of the show will be on the travails and creative victories of cooking in hostel kitchens, with whatever culinary, equipment, and personnel challenges that may involve. The trailer for the show may zoom in on the kitchen at Vallodolid, where Rachel and Erik, rosy-cheeked and optimistic after a successful trip to the supermarket, return to the hostel to find the kitchen overrun by French teenagers, who are not only overwhelmingly energetic but are also monopolizing all four burners as they concoct what appears to be a perfect French stew, including a bottle of white wine for braising the chicken. This shot will be followed by a visual of the same kitchen an hour later, when the water for the city has been shut off and all hostel residents are crouched over buckets, using up the hostel´s tanked water supply in the attempt to both wash and rinse their dishes. The full-length pilot for the show, though, will no doubt take place in the kitchen in Mexico City. An internet search conducted before arrival prompts our heroes to choose this hostel because of the central location and the kitchen advertised on the website. Soon after arrival, Rachel and Erik again venture off to the market, filling their bag with fruits, vegetables, cheese, and tortillas. That evening they head with abandon into the kitchen, preparedto cook up a feast, only to find that the "kitchen" does not contain any cooking equipment-- no knives, no plates, no pots, nothing. Upon going to the front desk to complain, Rachel is told by the manager on duty that of course there is nothing in the kitchen, you have to bring your own. Rachel accuses the hostel of false advertising, a claim that seems to hold no weight with the manager, but her tantrum does gain them the use of two plates and cutlery sets from the hostel restaurant. Somewhat satisfied, they head upstairs for cold tortillas with avocado and cheese, and mango for dessert. The next evening, now knowing what to expect, Rachel and Erik return to the kitchen prepared to enjoy another of the same meal. They sit down at the table and open the shopping bags they´d left, labeled with their names, in the fridge... to find that someone has stolen their cheese and taken a large slice off their remaining mango! Oh, the flying sparks! Rachel curses the thief, who probably also has her Red Sox hat, and hopes the cheese makes him sick, while Erik laughs and calmly eats his tortilla and avocado sandwich. And then, on kitchen attempt 3, our viewers bear witness, at last, to a kitchen victory. Having learned from another resident that there is, indeed, one communal pot, Erik borrows some matches from the surly manager to light the stove and cleans a bunch of spinach, and Rachel, armed only with your average eating knife, determinedly and jaggedly slices two onions; half an hour later, a fragrant and colorful vegetable dish is bubbling away, making for tortillas that taste gourmet to the dogged cooks. The pilot closes with a shot of Rachel and Erik toasting each other with their (borrowed) glasses of shockingly ripe Mexican wine. Producers, anyone?

The Cool and the Uncool

2006-08-01T13:36:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, before we came to Isla Mujeres, we took two buses to a small town a couple hours north of Valladolid called Rio Lagartos. Upon arriving, we were rather dismayed to find that the advice of the woman in the tourist office in Valladolid was quite wrong, in that we could not simply take a walk through the wildlife refuge in Rio, as she had said, but instead needed to hire a rather expensive boat to see any of the birds. We had barely enough cash to do that, almost forced to take another 50 minute bus ride to the nearest ATM, but squeaking by we made it onto a boat, and there forgot our annoyance at the bad advice-- nearly as soon as we pulled away from the dock, we came upon our first flock of wild flamingoes, standing in the water searching for shrimp to further pinken their feathers, or walking about in that knees-bending-backward way that never fails to look as if it should not be physically possible. A little bit farther out in the water, we came across two more groups of the birds; while one flock was not bothered by our presence and continued standing in the water, the other took flight, graceful feet running on top of the water to get going, the wings opening to reveal stunning black edging to the multi-hued pink of the rest. It was an exhilirating moment-- but also served, unfortunately, to render more gut-socking the theft of our camera that had occurred two nights before, on the overnight bus from Palenque to Valladolid. The sense of violation caused by this event was great, and was heightened by the fact that the thief took not only the camera-- the most expensive thing I´d ever bought, or was ever planning to buy before a house-- but also my Red Sox hat, and, just to be really annoying, our alarm clock. I was luckier than the young German man on the bus, who lost not only his camera but also all his credit cards, but it still put a damper on our travels here. I am happy to report, though, that the boat ride was a cathartic experience, the flamingoes supplemented by great snowy egrets and brown pelicans and myriad cormorants, and though we have nothing physical to show for it, the visions of those birds remain imprinted in our minds.

Cenote Dzitnup and Isla Mujeres

2006-08-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

Cenote Dzitnup

while in valladolid, we went to the cenote dzitnup. cenotes are underground caves with water in them where you can swim- supposedly these specific formations exist only in the yucatan and nowhere else in the world. the yucatan has no above-ground rivers because of the rock and soil composition: we did see some swamp-like areas, but i guess otherwise the water goes underground.

to enter cenote dzitnup we had to practically crawl through the opening to get to a huge cavern, with a hole at the top and sunlight streaming in. we could see a few bats, and there were long tree roots hanging down to the water that you could swing on. the swimming was nice! we couldn´t fail to notice yet another humorous mistranslation: "careful rocks are slepering," so we were very quiet in order not to wake the slepering rocks.

Isla Mujeres

we´ve been in isla mujeres, a small island off cancun, since fri., and have been enjoying the laid-back lifestyle of the beach. we were able to rent an apartment for the time we´re here, so have been very comfortable and able to cook for ourselves.

the beach here is totally different from the beach in oaxaca: here there are almost no waves, the water is really shallow, there´s a lot of white sand and little variation in the water level from the tides. the water can be all different colors, from clear to turquoise to a darker blue. the light also seems brighter, but the main similarity is that it´s really hot! we´ve done a good job avoiding sunburn so far.

other than going to the beach, our only activity has been taking a snorkeling boat trip. we snorkeled in two spots, one next to a coral reef (although the coral didn´t look very alive). saw lots of fish: tiny irridescent minows, medium-sized yellow fish that would be right on top of each other in a school, purple fish and rainbow fish and barracudas. we fed some of the fish with tortillas. the trip ended with a delicious grilled mackerel meal in a restaurant.

one of the spots we snorkeled at was next to one of several ships blown/wrecked by hurricane wilma last year, there´s also pretty extensive damage on one side of the island. not surprisingly, the mexican government´s first priority in rebuilding from the hurricane was areas like cancun, we´ve heard that parts of chiapas were also extensively damaged and that there´s been basically no rebuilding aid for them.

Ruins

2006-07-29T12:49:00.000-07:00

We recently ran into a couple who had seen 16 ruins in 20 days, so whatever proclivity I may have had to moan a bit about the ruins we'd been visiting, I'll stifle. And, as it turns out now that we're a couple days beyond ruin-visiting and are luxuriating on the beach in Isla Mujeres, the ruins we saw were actually really cool. First in the set was Palenque, an extremely-touristed, central Mayan site still somewhat in the jungle. This was my least favorite, maybe because the town and accomodations had put a bad taste in my mouth, maybe because the number of vendors of "Mayan" goods was so overwhelming. But the next day, we took a tour-- as, unfortunately, one has basically no option but to do-- to two other Mayan sites, Bonampak and Yaxchilan. Bonampak is famous for painted murals, which were cool, although someone said they'd be redone, which kind of detracts from the experience. Yaxchilan, though, was awesome. It is deep in the jungle, only reachable by boat, about an hour down a large, swiftly moving (and in my imagination, anyway, crocodile-filled) river. The first buildings we looked at were located up a steep path that seemed to be eternally on the point of absorption by the jungle. As we reached the buildings, our ears were accosted by shrieking from above that seemed a strange cross of sick dog and squealing pig. Howler monkeys were dancing through the trees above us, and a male, it seemed, had come to close to the territory of another male, causing the two to shout at each other, while the females and babies swung back away through the canopy. Throughout the visit to Yaxchilan, the monkeys got as much atttention from us and almost everybody else as the buildings did, but those deserved it in their own right-- empty of tourists in comparison to Palenque, and still alive in their jungle setting, still giving room for the imagination to picture a society actually functioning there.

Two days later, we went with some trepidation to Chichen Itza, worried that the swarms of cruise ship tourists bused in there for a day "in Mexico" (buy at the gift shop a celophane-wrapped basket with a shotglass picturing a donkey, a mini bottle of taquila, and a mouse-sized sombrero with "Mexico" printed on top) would take away any magic from the site. With some others from the hostel we were staying at, we took the earliest bus to the ruins, arriving right at opening time (making our mothers proud). And, joy of joys, we found we had done it-- the vendors weren't even set up yet, and the big buses wouldn't arrive until 11, by which time we were on our way out. We grouped up with some other English speakers, hostellers, to hire a guide, also an excellent decision, informative and entertaining, if not necessarily the source of objective scholarship. From him we learned that, like at Salem, the Mayans didn't actually sacrifice young women-- they simply gave them drugs, weighted them down with jewels and gold, and threw them into a fresh-water well, and if they drowned, well, that was an accident, not murder. We also came away with the impression that the Mayans of Chichen Itza, at least, had been quite obsessed with cross-eyed virgins, phallic earrings, and triplet dwarves. So I'm ready to go back and teach a class on the topic-- there are ways to make children interested in history.

San Juan Chamula

2006-07-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

We spent three days in San Cristobal, a really beautiful small city in Chiapas where 11 Mayan languages are spoken. (advertisement: We stayed at Hostal Miramar, run by a warm lovely couple who treat each guest like a cared-for child, but without the loving nagging of a parent-- highly recommend it). One of those days, we took a tour of San Juan Chamula, a nearby town with a vibrant Mayan character. The church there, from the outside, looks like a brightly colored but basically traditional Catholic church. Step through the door, though, and that impression changes immediately. Pine needles cover the floor, on which hundreds of small candles are also burning (this doesn´t appear to worry locals nearly as much as it does tourists). 50 or more figures of saints line the walls, with candles in front of each, and toward the front a mariachi-type band serenades one saint or another, surrounded by a throng of people. Throughout the church, Mayan families have set up camp to erform specific rituals, or for weekly worship. We watched one shaman woman perform a healing ritual: standing in front of the hundred of candles (of a specific color, depending on the ceremony) that the family had stuck to the ground, the woman chanted for many minutes over the sick child; then she took by the feet a live chicken the mother had been holding and starting swinging the animal, sometimes passing its head over the boy to absorb the illness; then, quickly, she snapped the chicken`s neck-- later, the family will bury it`s head, and with it, they believe, the illness. Next the mother passed her small glasses of soda, which she drank one after another. Ever since the early 50s, when a Chamulan man was given a glass of Coke in the city to settle his stomach, soda has been considered a holy drink in the town, because burping is seen as a way to expel wicked spirits. Which is what the shaman did next. So what does the Catholic Church think of all this? It excommunicated San Juan Chamula over a decade ago.

Zipolite/Mazunte

2006-07-20T15:27:00.000-07:00

we arrived at the beach in oaxaca at zipolite, supposedly a hippie haven but we saw just as many families on the beach. really hot temperatures. we spent the next couple days at mazunte, a slightly less touristy place. either way, at the beach everything is really laid back.
the higlight of our time there was a boat tour where we could swim holding onto a tortoise. at one particular spot we saw birds diving for fish, dolphins jumping, and turtles having sex (sorry, no pictures of this last one, but more pics to follow)

Monte Alban

2006-07-15T13:11:00.000-07:00

monte alban

we visited the zapotec ruins of monte alban outside of oaxaca city- smaller than the aztec ruins of teotihuacan outside mexico city, but still really impressive in size. unlike some of the other ruins in mexico which have been worn away from people walking on them, you can still walk almost everywhere in monte alban. there are all different levels of elevation: within structures, and from one structure to the next, lots of terraces and courtyards. the signs describing the ruins were in spanish, english, and the indigenous language zapotec- the first time i´ve seen that.

(pictures to follow)

Benito Juarez

2006-07-15T12:48:00.000-07:00

At this moment, we´re sitting, bathing suit-clad and sweating, in an internet cafe on the beach. The town is Zipolite, famous, according to our semi-trusty Let´s Go, for currents that come in from two directions and aging hippies running around in the buff. We have had some experience with both in our few hours here so far, but also there are lots of families, many of them Mexican, and the water is bath-like. (Also, the prices have quintupled in the 7 years since our travel guide went to press). Most of yesterday is not worth recounting, as it was spent on a bus, a late bus, weaving it´s way thankfully slowly from switchback to switchback. But the beginning of yesterday, and the day and a half before that, passed fairy-like in a mountain village, a couple miles in the air, called Benito Juarez.

Arriving, the bus dropped us off at the base of a dirt road, which, we soon discovered, wound a steep four kilometers to the town itself. But the mass of purple flowers and hummingbirds that welcomed us off the bus foreshadowed more beauty to come, and the feeliing of walking through a cloud created by the misty rain added to the rather mystical feeling. Arriving at the friendly tourist office, we paid for a single room and were given a full cabana, with fireplace and bathroom. Benito Juarez is one of several tiny towns linked by paths through the woods, similar in feeling to Cinqueterre in Italy, only a lot smaller and colder. The towns govern collectively, and have also developed a self-run eco-tourism business, with matching cabanas and tourist yuús, horse rides and birdseeing trips. We loved everything about being there. For lunch we splurged on hot chocolate and trout, wrapped in tinfoil and brimming with juices. The rest of the day disappeared reading, until around 8 a couple men came with a huge supply of wood and lit a fire for us. The next day, we took a 3 hour horseback ride in the morning. My horse appeared to be drunk, weaving back and forth constantly, and threatened to run away a couple times, but still we got lots of flower-filled valley views, and ran into some herds of sheep and a few grazing donkeys, and it was all very nice. Then we tried to hike through the woods to the next town over, Cuajimoloyas. There was one vague map, hanging in the tourist office, but the man there had said to just keep going right, so we thought we´d be ok. Well, we were ok, but after trying several forks, all of them ending quite unpromisingly, we gave up on finding the town and turned around. I guess, if they want to expand their tourist industry much, they´re going to have to put up a few signs on the trails. But it kinda seems like they like it the way it is, and so do we.

Oaxacan magic

2006-07-12T07:48:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning, our friend Kristin, from college, who has been living in Oaxaca for 4 months, invited us to join her on a visit a women´s weaving cooperative in a nearby pueblo, Teotitlan del Valle. We took two buses out to the town, made our way through the stalls filed with woven shirts, rugs, wallhangings, and headbands, turned onto a residential street, and knocked on the first door, unmarked by any sign. Inside was the compound of a remarkable family of three generations, anchored by an 86 year old grandmother, her daughter, and her five granddaughters. All of them are weavers, although all have to work other jobs as well. The flower-filled compound contains at least three large looms, a cactus for growing the bugs that make the red colored dyes, stocks of uncarded wool and endless reams of yarn dyed, with bug and indigo and lichen, vinegar and lemon and ash, an astonishing range of colors. On the wall is a poster, a gift from a cooperative in Oregon, against domestic violence.

Pastora is the oldest sister. Ten years ago, she started the women´s cooperative, called La Vida Nueva. One conversation with her is enough to sense the passion that courses through her. The family invited us to join them for a meal. During this, Pastora left her food sitting for much of the time, as she poured forth her thoughts on Zapoteca culture, on the recent election, on the war in Iraq, on the teachers´ strike, on the struggles of workers-- her speech ended with applause and a call for her to run for president. All of this energy shows itself in the weavings that she and the other members of the cooperative make. Some follow completely traditional Zapoteca designs, filled with symbolism that has stayed relevant for thousands of years. Others, like our favorite, Pastora´s design of La Mujer de la Maiz, are her own and others´variations on ancient themes. Two days after visting for the first time, we returned to Teotitlan to place an order for our own Mujer de la Maiz.

Market day in Oaxaca

2006-07-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

In the market in Oaxaca City, Erik made his first Mexico purchase: roasted grasshoppers. They tasted a lot like anchovies. And were actually pretty good. More pictures of our first days in Mexico are up here.

We spent the first two days in Queretaro, Mexico´s fastest growing city, with former K-O Spanish teacher Rachel Josephs and her boyfriend Sebastian. Sebastian, who is our age, is an architect in the process of having his first house built (picture of them below). We are wandering around for a year. We were very impressed. Also in Qro we tasted our first Mexican fruit, a pineapple, which was as sweet as only the canned ones are in the states. Since then we´ve feasted on mango, papaya, banana, avocado, and coconut, along with tacos by the dozen (if you haven´t been to Mexico, as I hadn´t until four days ago, you may not realize that tacos here look nothing like tacos in the U.S.; they´re little tortillas that can be filled with any number of yummy things and covered in lime juice and salsas). And we watched Kyslowski´s `White´, practicing our Polish as well as Spanish and French.

The bus ride from Qro to Oaxaca was uneventful, and would even have been pleasant, if not for the unavoidable, surround-sound showing of two of the worst movies ever to go straight to video. Seeing Double was the moving story of a British pop band, S Club, which awoke one morning to find their manager kidnapped and clones of themselves on a runaway world tour. After escaping from a Barcelona prison by conducting their dance routine with all of the prisoners and guards, our heroes move on to Los Angeles, where they befriended their clones, infiltrated the castle where the evil professor manufactured them, and freed the hundreds of others who were kept there. Then, Today You Die was the moving story of a big-hearted drug pusher, who escapes from prison, kills 40 or so bad guys while swearing copiously, then donates the $20 million he had been hiding to a children´s hospital. Aww.

But now we´re happily ensconced in a friendly hostel with parrots in the jungly courtyard. We spent the morning in the market-- picture a New York City block filled with stands containing, variously, shoes, ceramics, plucked chickens with huge feet, overflowing baskets of teeny shrimps, long strips of cow intestine (or something), radishes, chiles, mangoes, oranges, etc. Somehow, within this maze, we bumped into a friend from Hartford, Maureen. She guided us back to her apartment, where she and her girlfriend Hannah fed us on avocado and fresh string cheese, and, crucially, taught us how to use our blog. Anything you see here is thanks to them.

2006-06-13T11:02:00.000-07:00