Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Easy Sell

I was on the train to Fez, Morocco's iconic, time-machine of a city.  I had been in transit for over 2 full days, including a 20 hour layover in Doha, Qatar. The train was overcrowded and could have used more ventilation.  I was relegated to sitting in the aisle, but was relaxed and feeling happy to be on a train heading to a new city in a new country.


From Morocco


I couldn't help but feel a little worn down.  Besides missing 2 nights of solid sleep, I was hungry.  I arrived on the tail end of Ramadan, the holy Islamic month of fasting.  During Ramadan, Muslims refrain from allowing anything to pass between their lips during sunlight hours.  While non-Muslims aren't necessarily required to fast, it's inconsiderate to eat or drink anything in public.  My options were limited, so I picked up a package of fig newtons and stuffed my face in the privacy of the bathroom stall.

I hadn't bothered to book a hotel,  but was scheduled to arrive at 4:30 in the afternoon, leaving me plenty of time to wander around.  I would be arriving the day before the break of Ramadan, a period of feasting and celebration, which in terms of significance, could be compared to Christmas in the U.S.  I wasn't sure how this would affect the availability of rooms.  I was also unsure just how difficult it would be navigating the old city.  Fez is divided into two sections, the modern half, and the old medina, a walled city whose footprint has remained largely unchanged for the past 700 years.  The medina is a maze of 9000 streets and alleyways in an area of just 1.5 sq miles, and my guidebook guarantees that every visitor will get lost at some point.


From Morocco


From Morocco


A half hour before arriving in Fez, Amin, a well dressed and well spoken Moroccan, joined my compartment and chatted me up.  Amin was a few years younger than me, living in Toronto, and visiting his family in Fez.  He asked me where I was staying.

This is situation is familiar to me and it's one where I hate to mistake friendliness for poaching or poaching for friendliness. I had just read this blurb from my guidebook:
The touts who used to hang about Fez train station to pick up customers have now taken to boarding trains to Fez, often at Sidi Kacem junction.  Be particularly aware of overly friendly young men approaching you claiming to be students or teachers returning to Fez - they'll often have "brothers" who have hotels, carpet shops or similar.
This type of ploy is not new to me, but I had no reason not to play along, or at least hear him out.  His narrative was convincing.  He first told me the name of a nice little place in the old medina where his girlfriend, from NYC, had stayed with her friends.  And then as an afterthought, checked his phone to see if he had the phone number.  Lucky for me, he did.  And then, lucky for me again, he offered to call them to see if they had an available room.  Lucky for me, they did.  He quickly quoted me a room for $24, which was at the high end of the budget spectrum, but not outrageous.  Before I knew it, he had arranged for someone to meet me at the train station.  He also gave me his number and suggested that we meet up later in the evening.  He promised to call the guesthouse.

There was a girl waiting for me at the train station, we took a taxi to the walled city and she led me down a narrow walkway into the medina.  I was already disoriented.  The room was nice, a little overpriced, but nice.  Unsure about where I was and unsure about the practices of Ramadan (the fast is broken after sundown), I asked about finding a restaurant nearby.  She recommend against eating at any nearby restaurants because I might get sick from the food, but conveniently, her mother would be happy to cook a meal for me.  For a $12 dinner, the food was good, if a bit overpriced.  But I had a full stomach and a bed to sleep in. I was happy.

The next morning I was having some bread for breakfast at the guesthouse.  I got a phone call from Amin who informed me that I would be having lunch with him and his uncle and that they would be picking me up shortly, just outside the medina.  I still hadn't made up my mind about Amin.  On the one hand, I was pretty sure that his casual hotel recommendation was disingenuous.  On the other hand, the rest of his story seemed entirely plausible and it's possible he was just helping out a friend or family member by sending them a little extra business.  During our meeting on the train, I kept asking innocent questions about his time in NYC and about his travel plans.  His responses were peppered with extraneous details that would have been incredibly difficult to fabricate.  So off to lunch I went.  Besides, "travel rule" #1 is never say "no" to an opportunity.

Amin and his uncle Hassan, a respectable looking man in his mid-30's, picked me up in an older, but well kept Mercedes.  We stopped at a cafe to have some coffee and bread.  Amin excused himself to go to the ATM.  I made small talk with Hassan, who was living in Switzerland, working as an architect for UNESCO World Heritage.  He was under the impression that Amin and I knew each other from Amin's time in NYC.  He seemed surprised that we had just met on the train.

After coffee, Amin said he needed to make a run out to the family farm, and that I should go with his uncle.  The two of us drove to another cafe so Hassan could say hello to a friend.  We met two older, distinguished looking men.  Hassan informed me that we were talking with the governor of Fez, a good friend of Hassan's father.  While they talked in Arabic, I sat quietly and tried to keep a polite look on my face.  Hassan informed me that we would be having lunch with the governor as I followed them around the corner into an apartment building.

The apartment was spacious and upscale by any standard.  Hassan and the governor excused themselves for prayer and I was left to watch CNN headline news for the next hour.

Hassan and the governor returned from the mosque and we had a feast of a lunch, prepared by the house help.  It was an enormous spread of roasted chicken, couscous, vegetables, and yogurt.  We talked about travel, something Hassan seemed to know something about.  We talked about the hospitality of the Moroccan people and how I was now family, after having shared a meal with him.

After lunch, Hassan took me to his apartment, which was in a new development of the city.  He said that he likes to keep the apartment for when he visits and that he owned many properties.  He also told me about Amin's entrepreneurial ventures of buying Moroccan crafts and selling them in the U.S. and Canada at art auctions.  His apartment was filled with old lamps, tile fountains, and ornate wood furniture.


From Morocco

We killed a few hours smoking grape-apple shisha (hookah) in the midday heat, talking politics and more travel.  Eventually the conversation veered toward the Ground-Zero Mosque controversy.  He asked me if I believed in Osama Bin Laden.
"You mean, do I believe he was responsible for 9/11?" I asked for clarification.
"Yes."
"Yes, I think he was behind the attacks.  You don't?"
"He wasn't.  And I have proof!"  Hassan said, getting more excited.  "Tell me, do you know how many Jews worked in the World Trade Center?"
"No, but I assume there were a lot."
"Five thousand Jews worked in the World Trade Center."
"Ok, that sounds plausible."  I skeptically replied.
"So tell me, how is that not a single Jew showed up for work that day?" he exclaimed triumphantly.
"Um......I don't know.  That's a difficult fact for me to refute right now....." Especially because you're craaazy, I was thinking to myself.  "So who was responsible for the attack if it wasn't Osama Bin Laden?" I was curious to find out.
"I don't know.  The Jews, the media, the government, who knows?" 
"But why then is there video tape of Osama claiming responsibility for it?"  I innocently asked.
"How do you know that the person you saw in the tape was really Osama Bin Laden?"
Checkmate.
"Yep, I guess you are right. I don't know that it was actually Osama Bin Laden because I've never actually met Osama Bin Laden.  You sir, have proven your case."

It was about this time that Amin showed back up.  I asked him a few questions about his business of importing Moroccan goods to the U.S.  He said that he made $30,000 at his last auction and that by getting a certificate indicating that all the goods were art pieces, he could avoid paying import duty on them.  I asked more question and remained skeptical, he seemed to have everything figured out.  Then he offered to get me in on the action.  There was no reason why I couldn't turn the same sort of profit in DC.  Not wanting to go down this road, I simply said that I had no extra money for this kind of venture.  Then he said that he would be maxing out the amount of duty-free goods he could bring back, and that if I wanted to just transport some hand-stitched tapestries, I could take a 10% on the auction price.  I told him I might be interested, but under no circumstance was I going to put up any money for this.  I was sure that he was going to start backtracking his offer, but he did not.  We left the matter unsettled.

Fez is renowned for it's high quality leather goods and for a production process which has remained unchanged since medieval times.  The Fez tanneries are made of primitive limestone vats where pigeon shit and cow urine are still used as a key compounds in leather production. Amin wanted to buy a new leather jacket, because the one he got in NYC for $1200 was sub-standard quality.  Amin had already sweet-talked Hassan into buying the jacket as a gift for him and suggested that Hassan get one for himself.  Amin needed to do some shopping for his import business and so Hassan suggested we go to the leather shop.  And, as long as we were going, I could also take a look to and maybe get a discount for a purchase of three jackets instead of two.


From Morocco


So off to the tanneries we went.  When we walked in I was immediately handed off to an older gentlemen who gave me a quick tour of the place and then started on his aggressive sales pitch.  The month I spent in India was good training for these situations as I politely held my ground and refused to show any preference for any of the products being showcased in front of me.  Out of morbid curiosity, I asked for the price of a black leather jacket.  The negotiation started at $750.  I laughed.  I told him I would give him $50 for it.  Meanwhile I kept Hassan in the corner of my eye, who didn't seem to be doing any shopping at all, just talking to another store clerk.

After talking in circles for 20 minutes, it finally became clear to the salesman that I wasn't going to put up $700 for a jacket.  So then he started in a sales pitch for leather handbags, perhaps for my mother, who surely deserved it.  Hassan, who was supposed to be my bargaining ally, also pressed me to get something and seemed frustrated that I wasn't interested in buying a high-quality leather jacket.  When we walked out of the store, there was definitely a chill in the air, like we just gotten into a fight.  He asked again why I didn't want a jacket.  I told him that I didn't have extra money, and that besides, picking up the jackets was his idea, not mine.  "By the way," I asked, "Where are the two jackets we came here to get?" I was feeling a little angry and betrayed, despite all the warning signs.  He quickly countered that they didn't have the sizes he needed, which was such an obvious lie.  He re-composed himself and said happily that he only paid $500 for each jacket. "Good for you." I said with a little bit of snarl.  He coldly pointed me in the direction of my hotel and muttered something about maybe seeing him the next day.

The next morning I changed guesthouses, effectively cutting off any means of Amin getting in contact with me.  Even as I think about this experience now, I can't quite make sense of it.  Throughout the day I had my guard up, but the more time I spent with them, Hassan especially, the most preposterous it seemed that he should dedicate so much time and effort to make a commission on something like a leather jacket.  He showed me pictures of the house he was restoring in the old medina on a $2000 MacBook.  Mixed in with those pictures were pictures of his home in Switzerland (so he said).  There was absolutely nothing about him that indicated that he made his money by scamming tourists like me, or that it would even be worth his time.  There are far too many details to mention, but after spending 6 hours to him about his life and never being evasive about answers, it's difficult to square the reality with the narrative.

The next day I walked into a random leather shop, picked up a similar looking jacket off the rack and asked how much it was.  Negotiation started at $100, a far cry from $750.  Out of curiosity, I also checked out the import laws on art goods to verify the claims Amin was making about importing.  It turns out that fine-art over 100 years old is exempt from duty, but all other handcrafts are taxed like any other good.  I'm still unsure of the angle Amin was going for when we supposedly agreed that he would entrust me to transport goods worth thousands of dollars.

All in all, the day didn't cost me a single cent and I had quite a nice lunch followed by a shisha session and interesting conversation.


From Morocco


I ran this episode by my brother, who has been to Morocco twice and has had the advantage of a home-stay while taking Arabic lessons.  None of it surprised him.  It's nothing for a middle-class Moroccan to work in Europe for a season and then come back, putting his European credibility to work while taking advantage of rich tourists.  The Mercedes that Hassan drove may not have been his car and nice clothes are cheap to come by.  I can never relate all the details of the day that made the days events seem incongruous.    For me, trying to put all these facts together is kind of like Hassan trying to account for the 5,000 Jews who didn't show up for work on 9/11.  Who can say what makes sense?

This episode, which happened within the first 36 hours of my arrival seemed to set the tone for the rest of my visit.  Just watching Moroccans interacting with each other gave me the sense that they are a warm people, but everyone I interacted with was just trying to sell me something.  The Moroccans that I would have been interested to talk with were probably the ones who respectfully left me alone.


From Morocco



From Morocco


There were two separate instances where boys, maybe 10 years old, started throwing rocks at me because I refused to give them money.  With so many European tourists coming to Morocco to have an exotic Middle-Eastern experience, it's not a surprise to me that the balance is not holding.  For me, it's hard to feel really good about visiting a place where touristic dollars have created a clear class division and along with it, a sense of contempt.  The progress of the world seems to have skipped over Fez the way a single house has been skipped over by Santa Clause in a neighborhood full of good kids.  Donkeys still do all the heavy lifting, as the streets are too narrow for any motor vehicles.


From Morocco


Marrakech is an assault on the senses.  Snake charmers are playing their double-reed flutes (they sound like oboes, but with more of a buzz), all sorts of kabobs are being grilled in the main square, the buildings are pink and lit with ornate lanterns.  It's all a really wonderful thing to experience.


From Morocco


From Morocco


From Morocco


From Morocco

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Tough Crowd

I had just arrived in Seoul and the girl working at my guesthouse was telling me about her recent 17-month journey across Asia and Africa.  I asked her why I had met four Korean girls on my trip, all of them traveling alone, but hadn't met a single Korean guy.  She said there is a joke to answer this question: Korean women love all sorts of things.  They love art.  They love travel.  They love books.  They love music.  Korean men on the other hand?  They love to drink. 

I hadn't really planned on going to Korea, but it's a short flight from Mongolia, and besides, I now had friends there that I didn't have before starting this trip.  I met Su Wol in Chile and then MinYoung and GaYoung in Bolivia.  Su Wol and GaYoung are back in Seoul, while MinYoung is still traveling South America.  MinYoung was kind enough to electronically introduce me to her best friend Sun.

From Korea

For me, Korea was a strange place.  It's one of the most homogenous cultures in the modern world resulting from a historically unbroken national identity, geographic isolation, and the continuous threat of foreign invasion.  Like every Asian country, there is a dichotomy of embracing western culture and holding on to traditional values, but Korea seems especially polemic.  Koreans are inhaling western culture but remain leery of westerners.  Good Ol' American Baseball caps and gangsta rap are all the rage with the college kids, yet a club bouncer, younger than me, screamed at me when I tried enter because it was for "Koreans only".

From Korea


In a city of 10 million people, there is a quiet efficiency to everything and a conspicuous absence of society's disenfranchised.  But smiles and random interactions with people are hard to come by.  The success of Korea's hard-working, older generation has paid off for a now successful younger generation who hardly has time to enjoy it, as they've also inherited the obligation of 60 hour work weeks.  I spent three and half weeks wandering the streets, trying to make friends and trying to pin down the Korean psyche.   

Finding random people to talk to on my travels has never been a big problem for me.  But for some reason my time in Seoul started to make me feel uneasy.  I kept looking for people who might be interested to talk with me, but kept coming up empty.  It was the eye contact.  I kept looking for eye contact and no one, and I mean no one, would give it to me.  So what's the deal?  It turns out there are a lot of web postings on this topic. From AskAKorean.blogspot.com:

When is it ok to Make Eye Contact?

Dear Korean,

In the U.S. I'm used to looking everyone I meet or speak to in the eyes
to show respect and that I'm listening. I was told that this is not
proper in Korea when in certain settings. What settings would this be?
Is it ever okay to look someone in the eyes for a prolonged amount of
time? Can you ever look superiors in the eyes or is it only family and
people younger than you? Can you not look the elderly in the eyes, even
if they are your family?


Confused, but willing to learn

Dear Confused,

Never, never, NEVER look into the eyes of someone who is in a superior
position than you are. This includes everyone who is older than you, even by one year,
family or not. This also includes people who are higher than you in a
workplace or social hierarchy, regardless of age. (For example, your
boss, a judge, etc.) In practical terms, this means that you are pretty
safe with not looking into anyone's eyes when you are in Korea.

It is ok to look into the eyes of someone who is your peer (and feel
close enough,) or someone who is younger or in an inferior position than
you are. But be mindful of how "peer" or "inferior position" are
defined. For example, a person who is younger than you but in a higher
grade in your school is not your peer -- she is your superior. A person
who is older than you but began working for your company in the same
year can be your peer.

Be also mindful about the message that you are sending when you do look
into people's eyes. For Americans in Korea, it is very easy to cross the
line between seeing and glaring when you look into someone's eyes. And
glaring in Korea means about the same thing as glaring in America --
anger, disappointment, rude curiosity, intense romantic interest, etc.,
depending on the situation. If you are unsure where the line is, just
don't look into anyone's eyes.
So basically, I spent a good deal of my time in Korea being rude to people.  But at least I'm not alone here.  One comment to this post:
The Chinese guy said...  Interesting, no wonder everybody thought I was a psycho in Seoul.
As I adjusted to this new social norm, I still felt that Koreans were a tough crowd.  It wasn't my imagination.  Socially, it's considered a little strange to strike up a conversation with a person you don't know.  This makes things a little difficult for someone like me, who is traveling alone and  trying to make friends.  Even the bars in Korea are not really conducive for meeting people.  It's rare to find a bar that actually has bar stools, where you can sit next to, and maybe talk to strangers.  The most popular places are table service only, which means if you show up by yourself, you get seated in the corner with no chance to talk to anyone.  The usual advantage of a crowded bar is that there are people standing around, making it easy to talk to whoever you end up standing next to.  These situations are virtually non-existent in Korea.

I had a handful of successful attempts at chatting up people which resulted in a nice conversation or dinner companion, but I also experienced far too many failed and awkward attempts to even mention.  When I say Koreans are a tough crowd, I think it is best illustrated by this particular situation I encountered one weekday evening.  I walked into a bar around 6:30pm,  hoping there might be an after-work crowd.  Despite being in a busy downtown district, the place was empty except for a single girl sitting at the bar.  I took a seat a few stools down from her and ordered a beer.  I glanced over and her body language was indifferent to my presence, but it was just the two of us so I figured I should try to make friends.  She was finishing up a Scotch on the rocks and ordering another.  Wondering if maybe she was drowning her sorrows, I asked her if she was having a bad day.  She quickly replied that she was actually having a really good day.  Then she turned her back to me.  A little discouraged, but not defeated, I let ten more minutes go by and tried another conversation starter, but got the same indifferent response followed by more "leave me alone" body language.  Ten more minutes passed and we were still the only people in the place.  It still seemed silly to me that we should be sitting in silence, so I made one more effort and asked her about the Scotch she was drinking, and suggested that we share one together.  All of sudden it was like we were old friends. She was giving me all kinds of advice on where to go and what to do during my stay in Seoul.  We ended up talking for an hour.

So what did I learn?  It turned out that she was friends with the bartender, hence drinking for free and killing time before meeting up with some friends later in the night. She made reference to the fact that she is a really friendly, outgoing person, interested in other cultures and wishing to go to Germany for grad school.  What kills me about this experience is that I agree with her, she was a friendly person, but getting the conversation started felt like pulling teeth.

From Korea

Needing some insight, I turned to GaYoung, Sun and Garam for insight.  GaYoung had just finished traveling South America by herself, Sun has lived in Canada and Denmark, and Garam, whom I met through couchsurfing has lived in Canada and traveled in the U.S. and U.K.  This meant that I didn't have to spend too much time explaining my western mindset.  I ran the story of the single-scotch-drinking-girl by each of them and they all had the same reaction: "Yep, that seems about right.  It's kind of weird to just start talking to someone you don't know." 
So I asked them all a follow up question, "Let's say you're out and about and you see a cute guy.  How do you let him know that you want him to talk to you?"
Eye contact and a smile, surefire western cues, are pretty much out of the question.  Sun actually said that if she looked at a guy and smiled, he would probably think that he had something on his face. 
"Ok.....so, what do you do?" I asked.  Again, I got the same answer across the board:  Nothing.  You do nothing.
At this point I'm not surprised, but there must be something I'm missing.  I'm convinced that there is a secret signal, the way a baseball coach lets a runner know he should steal second base. 
"Ok, let's say that you do nothing and that actually works.  You've done nothing and for some reason the cute guy feels compelled to talk to you anyway. Do you act really interested, or do you play a little hard to get?"
"Play hard to get."
"How does anyone meet anyone???" I asked incredulously.
"Blind dates."
"Blind dates?"  I guess most people just wait for a friend, co-worker, or family member to set you up with someone.  I asked if they like this system.
"Not really."

From Korea

I was out one night with GaYoung and Stephane, a French guy, whom I met at a guesthouse.  We stopped at a late-night food stand popular with the after-bar crowd so Stephane could get something to eat.  I wasn't hungry and so sat down, occupying two small tables while they ordered food at the counter.  At this point, two other girls were about to sit down at one of tables I was holding when they realized I had two friends coming back with food.  As they excused themselves, I asked them to please join us.  They said no, they could find another table.  I had learned that an opportunity to make a new acquaintance was not to be squandered, so I begged them to please sit, and then eventually did.  When GaYoung came back and saw our table taken over, she frantically said, "What's going on???"  It was not the welcome I wanted our new friends to have.  Having insisted that they eat with us, I tried to make some conversation about where they had been for night and what their plans were.  GaYoung, still uncomfortable with the situation, scolded me for being rude.  Afterwards GaYoung apologized to me but said that it just wasn't normal to invite people to your table and insist on talking to them.  Tough crowd.

Garam, who studied in Canada and spent a month hanging out by herself in NYC was telling me about making friends while waiting in line in a NYC bagel shop.  I asked for some advice on chatting up Koreans.  She more or less told me I was out of luck.  Then she said something which seems perfectly phrased:  Koreans are very kind people, but not necessarily very friendly people.

Korean guys seemed less interested in talking to me than Korean girls and I was put off early into my visit when two guys, both older than me, had just come from the office, saw me sitting by myself, and offered me a shot of tequila.  We talked a while and they ordered more tequila and then more tequila.  Then they excused themselves, said something about Korean tradition and whether I would mind getting the bill, and then they were both gone.  I couldn't believe they were trying to stick me with their tab.  There was no chance I was going to pay their outrageous bar bill and the last thing I wanted to do was get into an argument with the bartender over who was responsible for this.  I had no choice but to settle up my own tab and then leave immediately.  I wandered down the street into an unremarkable basement bar where I was immediately pestered to order a drink. I was still letting the tequila settle, so I asked for a few minutes.  The waiter was being really pushy with me, so I told him was just going to leave, at which point he grabbed my arm and gave me a bill for a beer that I didn't have.  The night got worse after that.  There were a few upscale nightclubs in the area with recruiters working the streets.  I followed a few of them and then got into arguments when I wasn't willing to plop down a pile of money for the privilege of walking in.

The next day I was feeling a little bitter over the previous night.  I found a park bench and was reading the latest news on my laptop.  It started raining and the old man next to me shared his umbrella, gave me a tissue to wipe off my screen, and restored my faith in humanity.

I found that making plans with people was difficult because of their work schedule.  Su Wol, the girl I met in Chile, was working 10 - 12 hours/day, 6 days a week.  The more people I met and the more questions I asked revealed that long working hours, 10 - 14 hrs/day, was the norm.  Out of curiousity, I checked Wikipedia to see if my observation could be backed up by some statistics.  This is what I found: 

By far, workers in South Korea have the longest work hours among OECD countries. The average South Korean works 2,390 hours each year, according to the OECD. This is over 400 hours longer than the next longest-working country and 34% more hours than the average in the United States. A typical workweek in South Korea is 44 hours or longer. Most people start their day at 8am and end at around 10pm or later, often having dinner before returning from work. Until legislation in 2004 virtually abolished the six-day workweek in large corporations known as chaebol, South Korea was the only country in the OECD that worked Saturdays.  Despite the legal framework many office staff are regularly required to work on weekends or stay at their desks idle, waiting for their superiors to leave.
That last sentence eludes to the strict adherence to hierarchy in Korean culture.  Sun gave me a few unexpected examples of how hierarchy plays itself out.  She had to train herself to eat lunch very quickly because her boss was also a fast eater.  His hectic schedule had him rushing off to meetings, allowing very little time for lunch.  Whether Sun also had a hectic schedule was irrelevant; Eating with her boss meant starting and finishing with him, even if it was cut short. She also said that Korean students never ask questions in class, because it is considered rude to be interrupting (or contradicting) the teacher.  She was always a little amazed with the ease that foreign exchange students asked questions and spoke their mind.

GaYoung, Stephan and I were having a little cultural exchange, asking what we liked and disliked about our own cultures.  GaYoung was proud of the fact that Koreans are such hard workers.  When asked what she disliked about Korean culture, she said that she wished Koreans had more fun.  After spending the summer in South America and staying with friends in Brazil, it was easy for her to contrast the two cultures.  To me, her statements were a little ironic.  The hard work which she is most proud of, in my mind, is to blame for the cultural aspect she dislikes the most, not having much fun.  But to keep things in perspective it's important to understand that for the first half of the 20th century, Korea was dominated by the Japanese and then suffered division after World War II, leaving most of the country starving.  Now one of the most modern countries in the world, they have an economy to be proud of.

Another sentiment that I heard from Sun, GaYoung and Garam, who, unsurprisingly, are all couchsurfers, was that they wished Koreans were more keen on inviting people into their home.  GaYoung loved how Brazilians would invite her to their home within hours of meeting.  Sun wants to find a boyfriend who will let her have an additional room to host all of her international friends.  Her friends tell her that no Korean guy will put up with that.

I feel like I spent all my time in Korea with a puzzled look on my face.  For being such a huge city, everyone looks like they shop at The Gap and has the same quiet look of content on their face.  Or maybe it's discontent, I can't say for sure.  When I go to place like Mongolia,where people are living in tents and eating a steady diet of yak cheese, I'm looking in from the outside without the pretense of being able to understand their life.  Life in Seoul however felt like it should be much more accessible, but it wasn't. 

Now I feel like I've painted too gloomy of a picture, because there are many things I really enjoyed and admired.  I don't feel qualified to talk about the Korean sense of aesthetic, but there are so many beautiful things in Korea.  Beautiful buildings, art, decorations, restaurants, handicrafts, all wonderful marriages of form and function.  Korean food is also completely unique and so delicious.  And of course I think grilling your food at your dinner table is such a perfect idea.  Petty theft, vandalism, and random street crimes are basically non-existent.  It's a wonderful feeling to not have to clutch your belongings everywhere you go.  The public can be trusted with nice things, like interactive touch-screen maps at the subway stations, those wouldn't last one day in New York City. 


From Korea



From Korea



From Korea


I feel good about my time in Korea, and the friends I made are very special people.  But I find myself wishing my western values on their culture.  I wish Koreans didn't work as much, had more fun, and were more outgoing with each other.  For a country that seems to have everything under control, they have the second highest suicide rate in the world (according to Wikipedia, just trailing alcoholic Belarus), which is nearly three times the U.S. rate.  I keep thinking about something that Garam told me while explaining her struggle to balance work and her desire to travel.  Being called "unique" in Korea is not considered a compliment, but that's what I liked about her, she was unique.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Blue Skies and Mutton

About four years ago I watched a DVD series which followed the actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on a motorcycle journey from London to New York.  The footage from the Mongolian leg of the trip is what first put into my mind that I wanted to come here.  It's a country of vast open spaces, nomadic culture, and a strong historical legacy.  With a population under 3 million people and a land mass twice the size of Texas, Mongolia is the most sparsely populated country in the world.  About 40% of Mongolia's population lives in the capital city, Ulaanbaatar, and 30% of the population live as nomads, raising livestock and living in gers, traditional tent houses.

From Mongolia pt 1



From Mongolia pt 2

Sandwiched between two superpowers, Russia and China, Mongolia has been shaped by a desire to preserve the Mongol empire, which was founded by Genghis Khan in 1206, and by the power disputes between Russia and China.  Before coming here, I wrongly assumed that Mongolia would be similar to China.  The people look more Chinese than Russian, but culturally, the Russians have had much more influence on the country.  China's millennium-long history of wanting Mongolia's land has led to some very anti-Chinese sentiments, despite the fact that 70% of Mongolia's exported goods are bought by China.  In the 1920's,  Russia offered Mongolia a shot at real independence, but that was followed by more aggression.  In 1937 Russian leadership executed 27,000 citizens (17,000 Buddhist monks) in an attempt to eradicate religious power.

Coming into Ulaanbaatar (UB), the block concrete buildings are reminiscent of any Communist city from the Soviet era, partially because the Mongolian language also uses the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.  Store fronts are comparatively nondescript and the biggest shopping center, the State Department Store, looks like a 7-story office building.  Commercial branding and advertising  is completely understated by western standards.  Once I adjusted, I found it to be a pleasant city. The streets and sidewalks are clean (especially for someone coming from Manila!), car horns are not used excessively and there are plenty of good restaurants and bars to patronize.

Ulaanbaatar is the central hub for any kind of tourism in Mongolia.  Traveling outside the city into the country-side requires extensive planning and pure solo travel is mostly a bad idea.  Roads deteriorate very quickly into meandering tracks of dirt, and road signs are non-existent.  Without a knowledgeable driver, the chances of a breakdown or getting lost is high.  Because the roads are so bad, bus service is limited.  Informally organized shared vans is how most people get from point A to point B.  Locating accommodation can also be difficult.  In smaller towns there are no externally marked hotels or guest-houses.  But there may be accommodation, which is likely to be a single room with 6 mats on the floor and an outdoor pit toilet.  Without a translator, it would be difficult to locate these places.  Traveling with tents is the norm, so that it's possible to just set up camp wherever you happen to be when the sun sets.

From Mongolia pt 1

Mongolians have a long history of nomadic lifestyles and hospitality.  The ger tent is the accommodation of choice for the entire country.  Families can easily break down the tents and transport them with horses when it's time to move on to greener pastures.  Some families will live in ger tents during the summer season, when there is plenty of grass for the livestock, and then live in a city or town through winter.  Since traveling overland can be difficult, there is an understanding that if you stop at a ger, you will be offered whatever they have, which usually includes milk/cheese/yogurt from horses/cows/yaks/camels, depending on where you are and what's available.  Fermented mare's milk is a Mongolian favorite, I personally found it to be undrinkable.


From Mongolia pt 1


Most of guesthouses in UB also double as tour operators, providing vehicle, driver, guide, food and camping equipment.  Travelers are expected to self-organize and then a trip can be planned to suit everyone's needs.  Most tours last between 1 and 2 weeks, but 5 or 6 weeks is also possible.  Nearly all of the travelers I've met are passing through Mongolia on the Trans-Siberian railway, which cuts down from Lake Baikal in Russia into Beijing.  More than one person has given me a quizzical look when I've told them I've flown here from the Philippines.

The first traveler I met at my hostel was David, an American.  He is a semi-professional photographer (www.fotosbydavid.com - worth looking at) and it doesn't take very long to get the impression that he has been everywhere.  Now 49, he has been traveling the world and working odd jobs for the past 20 years, leaving behind a career in finance and letting the worth of his MBA slowly deteriorate.  I mentioned that one of the reasons I wanted to come to Mongolia was because no one comes here.  With a streak of cynicism, he role-played the scenario of me being at party, talking up my adventures: "Yeah, back when I was riding a camel in the Gobi........"
And then someone interjecting, "Oh, you got stuck on that tour too?"

The next few travelers I met: Franco, Harry and Joe, were also characters in their own right, and not the typical 20-something backpacker from Europe.  I spent eight days locked up in van with these guys on a tour to Khovsgol Lake, Mongolia's second largest lake located on the Russian border and southern edge of Siberia.  Franco, Italian born and 49 years old has been living in Japan for the past 10 years where he teaches English, Japanese, Italian, Spanish and also speaks some Russian.  He doesn't know how many countries he as been to, he lost count after 100.  We called him Marco Polo.  Harry, a 47 year old Kiwi had just finished installing power lines in Iraq and was taking his savings to travel the world and find a place to set up a little hostel, probably somewhere in Southeast Asia.  Joe, 38 from Boston, has been on the road for almost a year and has traveled to at least 120 countries at this point in his life.  There was a point where Franco said, "So I was thinking about going to Sulawesi next year, what can you tell me about it?"  And of course Joe had an answer.

I had been a little apprehentious about spending 8 long days in a van with 5 other guys who I had just met, but time passed quickly and with a lot of laughter as we swapped travel stories.  Franco is the only European I know of who has crossed the U.S./Mexican border by floating across the Rio Grande on an inner-tube.  He started the story and I had to interrupt.  "Wait wait wait, you're an Italian citizen right?"
"Yep."
"So.......why wouldn't you just enter the U.S. legally?"

Back in the 80's it was difficult for an Italian without a permanent address to get a visa.  Franco was traveling South/Central America and was getting low on cash.  He had a friend in NYC who could get him a job as a waiter at an Italian restaurant, where he could make good money and then continue his travels.  The only problem was getting to NYC.  So he paid a Mexican guy to float him across the river, had a tense interaction with a police officer when he wandered into town, but eventually got to the airport.


The trip to the lake was not an easy ride.  I spent a lot of energy just hanging on, trying not to get tossed across our Russian minivan. The landscape is beautiful though, just miles and miles of hills and grass.  The first night was stayed near a monastery that was devastated by the Russians back in the 30's.  A small community of monks live there now and I was happy when at dusk they broke out a soccer ball and motioned for me to join them.  Once we got to the lake we had 2 days of horse riding and relaxing.


From Mongolia pt 1


From Mongolia pt 1


From Mongolia pt 1


Another reason for coming to Mongolia is that I would be here for the big national festival, Nadaam, where sporting competitions happen all over the country.  The three events are wrestling, horse racing, and archery.  The biggest events are naturally in UB, but the country-side festivals offer a more intimate look and were more enjoyable to be at.  As part of our tour, we stopped at a few small towns and got to see a mix of the festivities.


From Mongolia pt 1


From Mongolia pt 1


From Mongolia pt 1



From Mongolia pt 1

We stayed the night in one small town which could have been plucked from an old John Wayne western, complete with log cabins and everyone on horseback.  I was wandering around at dusk, taking pictures, when I stumbled upon a small community center with what sounded like church music coming from the inside.  It turned out to be a talent show for the Nadaam celebration.  I was looking a little lost, not sure what to do, when a girl my age saw me and led me in to find a seat.  She was from a bigger city a few hours away and was visiting family.  She spoke some English and invited me to the dance that was to follow.

The dance held in building that resembled a junior-high gymnasium, with pale blue walls and lit with harsh florescent lights.  A guy with an accordion-sounding synthesizer pounded out traditional melodies.  The whole town was in attendance, from 13 year old girls to the crazy old drunk guy who made his rounds pestering everyone.  Between each song, everyone cleared the dance floor and sat on a row of chairs which lined the walls.  The men were then obligated to ask the women for a dance.  Every 3 minutes, for an hour and a half, everyone sat down and then got back up, and then sat down and then got back up.  I was getting a little tired of this, and a little tired of counting the steps in each the dance when my new friend told me that the "free dance" was coming soon.  Once the free dance started, the everyone organized into a giant circle.   Eventually the circle got too big and it broke down into two smaller circles, everyone dancing in place and just looking at each other.  The weirdness of it all was compounded by the contrast between the women, who made quite an effort to get dressed up, and many of the men who looked like they just got down shoveling manure.


From Mongolia pt 1


Franco, Harry, Joe and I had all arrived in Mongolia at roughly the same time, and so we were experiencing the same first impressions of the people and personality of the country.  After 2 days, Harry was ready to leave Mongolia, saying that he had never met such an unfriendly population of people in his entire life.  Even Franco, whose stories exuded a certain optimism, was having trouble coming up with something positive to say.  After being here for 6 weeks, I feel like I can say that Mongolians are friendly, but they're friendly in their own stone-face sort of way.  Mongolians, especially in the country-side, aren't big on greetings and smiles.  For Harry, who has been living in rural Queensland, Australia, it's unthinkable to pass a car on a lone stretch of highway and not give a wave.  In Mongolia, the opposite seems to be true.

On our second day of driving we stopped for lunch in the rain.  Rather than cook outside, we drove to the nearest ger and invited ourselves in.  Lucky for us, the woman living there had been to school in Russia and could speak some English.  She was really great.  A little while later, a few Mongolian men came in and didn't seem to want to acknowledge our existence.  I offered them cigarettes, which they seemed to like.  This scene re-played itself in a number of different ways over the next week.  In retrospect, I think the men were a little shy, and there just isn't a culture of making a big deal about visitors.  It first felt like they were being rude, but of course that wasn't the case.  A few days later, we were staying in a town for the Nadaam festival.  Harry, venturing off on his own, opened the gate of the guest-house just as a guy was passing by on his motorcycle.  The festival was a 20 minute walk away.  The guy on the motorcycle just stopped and nodded for Harry to get on the back, and then drove him the festival, all with an expressionless face.  After that, I told Harry that he had to stop calling Mongolians unfriendly.

I also met a Korean girl, just out of university at one of the guest-houses, who was doing some volunteer teaching in UB.  I asked how things had been going and she said the first few months were really rough because she thought no one liked her.  After adjusting to Mongolian personality she felt better about her experience.  Another culture note is that it's not good to keep saying "thank you", especially for small gestures because it diminishes the worth of the statement.  It makes a certain amount of sense, but you can imagine that it makes for more subdued interactions.

From my guidebook:
The empty steppes have also made hospitality a matter of sheer necessity rather than a social obligation.  It would be difficult for anyone to travel across the steps without the hospitality  that has developed, as each ger  is able to server travelers as a hotel, restaurant, pub and repair shop.  As a result, Mongolians are able to travel rapidly over long distances without the weight of provisions.  This hospitality is readily extended to strangers and usually given without fanfare or expectation of payment; foreigners are often perplexed by the casual welcoming they receive at even the most remote gers.
We arrived back in UB on July 11th, which was both the official first day of Nadaam and the World Cup final.  It was nice to be in the Philippines at the beginning of the World Cup and then catch a few more games in Mongolia.  For two countries that have never had a horse in the race, the people in both countries were fervent fans.  Despite 2:30am kick-off times, people were gathered in outdoor big beer tents equipped with large-screen projection sets and lots of cheering, regardless of who played.  I think being abroad for the World Cup is a special experience.  It's really nice to see something so universally loved.  I was in Kenya during the 2002 World Cup, and the enthusiasm for any African team was religious.  It's hard not to feel good about an event that crosses so many cultures.

As part of the Nadaam festival, there was a big outdoor concert in the city square.  Walking down the street, I chatted up a Mongolian girl, Tsagii, to ask about the festivities.  It turned out that she was a Japanese teacher at one of the language institutes in UB.  We quickly became friends and she was happy to meet me for Nadaam the next day.  Tsagii invited me to teach English at her school and also mentioned she would be visiting some family in her hometown in the Gobi.  I was already thinking of heading in that direction for my next tour.  When I mentioned this to Tsagii, she invited me to join her as an alternative. The chance to get away from an organized tour and visit a little town in the middle of nowhere is exactly the kind of thing I hope for when I travel, so I was very excited at the opportunity. 

Just a quick geography lesson:  The Gobi region refers to most of southern Mongolia and northern China.  It is a desert region, but the iconic sand dunes account for less than 3% of the area, it's mostly hard dirt and rock.

Tsagii's home town, Zunbayaan, is accessible by train, just 13 hrs south of UB.  The route follows the Trans-Siberian Express.  Zunbayaan used to be a prominent military town, but went into a decline after they downsized their presence.  Nowadays, a Chinese company drills and ships oil, but no money is going back into the local economy.  The town is surrounded with hollowed-out, concrete apartment blocks. Through the hot afternoon hours, the town is nothing but a dusty ghost town.  As the sun sets and weather becomes tolerable, people slowly emerge from their homes.  There is not much to do there, but it was nice to get a little glimpse into this community.

We stayed with her aunt and uncle, who live a small, 3 room house.  Her cousins, 2 girls in college, were also home for the summer.  They were incredibly gracious hosts, giving me "the bedroom" while everyone else slept on the floor in the living room.  Tsagii's uncle, Tau, quickly became a little overbearing, as he had the personality of that drunk guy at the bar who wants desperately to be your best friend.  He knew two English words, "James" and "ok". Every 5 minutes he was checking to make sure that everything was "ok" and performing over-dramatic charades to show me how to perform simple tasks such as washing my hands, or to needlessly point to the television if I wished to watch it.  Tsagii was apologetic and maybe blamed a bit of his behavior on his drinking.



The whole of Zunbayaan looks bombed out.  Tsagii's uncle gave me a tour, which included an abandoned oil rig, and an overgrown swimming pool, which he was proud to point out as Mongolia's largest swimming pool, and an abandoned army tank.  Tsagii hasn't lived there since she was a small child and has a good sense of humor about the appearance of the place.  We also visited a ger just outside of town as the camels were coming in for the night.  Tsagii and I took a quick ride around.  Now I can tell everyone I rode a camel in the Gobi, and it wasn't a tour!  





Surrounding the town are a number of historically-significant religious sites because of an influential 19th century Buddhist monk who lived in the area.  The whole family and I spent a day driving around to visit each site.  There is a sacred mountain shrine, where we threw vodka into the wind as an offering.  There is also an "energy center" near a small temple that will give healing energy to anyone who lays on the ground there, and a few small caves where a monk meditated for 108 days straight.   It all sounds more exciting than what is was.  Throughout the day, Tsagii's uncle encouraged me to do shots of vodka with him, which we took from the plastic coin dish that came from the car's console.  I'm not an expert on these matters, but I think when you're doing vodka shots out of used car parts,  it could be a sign that it's time to cut back.



Back in UB I spent a few days teaching English at the institute where Tsagii worked.  They offered me $8/hour, which I think is a pretty respectable wage.  It was more difficult than I anticipated, mostly because I had no curriculum to follow, and the dozen students in each class were at all different levels.  For the first 10 minutes, I asked a lot of questions and got nothing but blank stares in return.  Eventually they warmed up to me and things got easier, but it was a rough start.

I was trying to figure out my next move when I met Baghi, a 27 year old girl, at a nightclub.  She is a former tour guide, currently doing a bit of event organization and promotion.  In the coming week, her friends from Italy, a couple, were coming to Mongolia for a special tour.  Baghi had been their tour guide the year before and they had maintained the friendship.  Now they were coming back and were hiring Baghi unofficially, by paying her way, to visit two remote regions in the north and west of the country.  The first planned leg of the tour was to the corner of western Mongolia, high in the mountains, where the population is mostly Kazakh (the Kazakhstan border is 24 miles from Mongolia).

I had already read about the region, and was intrigued, but had not met any other travelers venturing off in that direction.  Going there alone would have been cost prohibitive for me.  Baghi invited me to join them and help me arrange my flight and the necessary border permit.  For reasons that aren't important, I wasn't able to join Baghi's tour, but was able to fly out with them and to join an Austrian guy on a similiar tour.

Arriving in Olgii, the primary city in the region is a little surreal.  This is the guidebook's intro:
Traveling to Mongolia's western most province gives one the distince feeling of reaching the end of the road, if not the end of the earth. High, dry, rugged and raw, the isolated, oddly shaped province follows the arc of the Mongol Altai Nuruu as it rolls out of Central Asia towards the barren wastes of the Dzungarian Basin.

From Mongolia pt 2


We spent our days driving, camping, and visiting gers.  Sleeping at an elevation of 8000 ft, the temperature dropped to about 25 degrees the first night.  I kept thinking about how this was August, the hottest month of the year, and there was ice on the tent.  People live in the ger camps only in the summer, letting their yaks and goats graze while they can, and then move down to lower elevations in the winter.  It's a hard life to live. Every ger could offer us the same basic food:  yak-milk tea, yak cheese, yak yogurt, dried biscuits, and sometimes dried meat.  It gets old quick.  Our own food also got old pretty quickly.  We had some variation of  boiled potatoes, carrots, cabbage, rice and fried bits of fatty mutton 3 times a day.  Back on my first tour to the lake, we were complaining about the food and made up joke:
Q: What does Mongolian food taste like?
A: Whatever supermarket-brand bbq sauce you've drowned it in.

Whatever.  It was funny at the time.


From Mongolia pt 2


From Mongolia pt 2


From Mongolia pt 2


I spent a few days hanging out in with Baghi in UB and she did a good job of explaining some of Mongolia's history and culture to me.  With such a long history, and such a small population, Mongolia has been fighting to preserve it's existence for a long time.  There is an aspect in the mindset of Mongolians that distrusts foreigners, especially when it comes to preserving Mongol blood.  At one point, the Chinese tried to breed out the Mongol race.  Now it's taboo for Mongolian women to date Chinese men, and those that do risk having their heads shaved as a type of scarlet letter.  I experienced a little of this animosity myself.  Just walking down the street with Baghi or Tsagii elicited some very unfriendly stares.

Baghi's older sister married a Korean man, which the family is ok with.  However, her sister is not allowed, by order of the family, to raise her son in Mongolia.  When the son is 10 years old, he can come live in Mongolia.  The reason for this is so that her son will never be mistaken as a pure Mongolian.  Learning the language so late in life will guarantee that he talks with a Korean accent, which will effectively bar him from a career in politics.  Last year, when the son was 5 years old, her sister requested to move back to Mongolia, but the family decided that she had to wait another 5 years.  Baghi insists that family relations are good, and she has been to Korea to visit her sister.  It's the responsibility of each Mongolian to protect the blood.

I also heard another story, from a German guy who has been living in UB for the past year.  His friend (also white) was dating a Mongolian girl.  One night they were walking down the street and someone spit at her feet and said something about polluting the blood.

For the most part, walking around UB was a pleasant experience for me and as far as I know, seriously violent crime is not a big problem.  But Mongolian guys seem to be really aggressive.  One night I was walking around and another guy, with friends, abruptly stepped in front of me and stared me down, like he was just waiting for an excuse to start a fight.  On another night, 3 guys were walking towards me and out of nowhere one took a full swing at my face but pulled the punch at the last second.

There aren't really official taxi's in UB.  Any car is potentially a taxi and if you stand on the side of the road with your hand out, someone will stop.  There is an understanding that it's about $1/mile.  One night I took a taxi home at 3am and got into an argument with the driver about how much the fare was.  In my mind we had agreed on a price before I got in.  He basically tried to keep my from opening the door, and when I finally got out, he started pushing me against the car.  I should mention that like most men in Mongolia, he was also a lot bigger than me.

I have some big news to share as well.... I got married!!!  Here is our wedding photo:


Unfortunately, my new wife has to stay in Mongolia to take care of the yaks....They don't milk themselves you know.


From Mongolia pt 2

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

More Island Life

I spent five more quick weeks in the Philippines.  Many of my days I spent wandering around by myself, but nearly every night I went out and found people to talk to.  I traveled a good mix of small islands, big cities and rural country.  No single place was exceptionally noteworthy, but I always found someone or something that kept my interest. 

Of the major Filipino islands, Palawan is the least developed.  Roads become unmanageable during the rainy season, ATMs exist in only one city, and electricity is rationed in smaller towns.  While access to the island is not difficult, it is time consuming, which limits the number of visiting tourists.  The primary attraction of Palawan is an archipelago of limestone-cliff islands set in vividly clear, blue water.   I spent about a week here, island hopping and relaxing.


From Philippines - part 2



From Philippines - part 2


From Philippines - part 2


The snorkeling here is top-notch, made even better by the surreal color and clarity of the water.  Every now and then, life gives you a really unexpected moment of wonder.   Near a rocky outcropping, a massive school of mackerel were taking shelter from the open sea.  Millions of fish, changing direction in unison, swam in figure-eight patterns around the underwater rock columns.  I swam into the middle of the school and was completely surrounded by a wall of fish on all sides.   Motionless, I floated just below the surface of the water, watching flashes of silver dart back and forth, feeling really lucky.

My friend took this picture, which sort of captures the moment: 


At first glance, El Nido, the small town used as a base for island hopping, is nothing special to look at.  It's lined with modest, beach-front restaurants and the entire town is small enough to be covered by foot in 15 minutes.  The people of El Nido gave it a certain charm.  While walking down the street, everyone made eye contact with me and smiled.  I rented a motorbike without the need to hand over my passport or a credit card.  The guy at the rental shop explained that it was a small place and if anything happened, he'd find me.  Riding into the unpaved country-side, I was greeted enthusiastically by every child who happened to be out playing in the yard or walking down the street.  It was hard to be comfortable in the midday heat and I got hit with a craving for ice cream.  After poking my head into a few store fronts I stupidly realized that of course there was no ice cream, the electricity is cut every day from 6am - 2pm.

I met Mel, an outgoing 24 year old, waiting tables at a beachfront restaurant and was immediately impressed with his knowledge of world geography and American politics.  We started talking about travel and he quickly listed off a number of places he'd like to go.  His confidence had led me to believe that he had already done some traveling, and was thus a little shocked when I learned that he had never even left the island.  I had a hard time believing that being as smart as we was, he couldn't manage to find a way to leave.  El Nido is the type of place where it would be easy to ignore the rest of the world, but he's constantly keeping up on current events and and spends his free time taking the vocab quizzes in Reader's Digest.  Not satisfied with his degree in finance, he was looking for a way to continue schooling.  I felt really bad for him, ambitious but stuck.  After the restaurant closed, we sat on the beach with his friends and drank beer.

With a population just shy of a million, Cebu City is described by my guidebook as an entree-sized version of Manila: noisy, crowded and dirty.  The guidebook authors recommend against spending your vacation here.  All this is true, but it's not fair to trash the city without mentioning the incredible BBQ found in the city center.  There is a huge tent area, filled with dozens of vendors offering cheap, tasty bbq.  The meat is raw and skewered, you pick what you want and it's grilled for you on demand.  The collective smoke from each bbq is trapped under the giant tent, which has almost no ventilation, and it smells wonderful.


From Philippines - part 2


I had a reunion with Rowelyn, the girl who gave me a ride from the airport to my hotel on my first day in the Phillipines.  She had been living in Taiwan for 3 years as a caretaker for elderly people.  Her next gig is in Fort Nelson, British Columbia.  It's not possible for her to make a decent wage in the Philippines, so she must work abroad.  I had assumed that Fort Nelson was a suburb of Vancouver, but I looked it up and it's a town of 5,000 on the same latitude as Anchorage.  A little worried for her, I asked if she knew exactly where Fort Nelson was.   She had not bothered to look it up!  I suggested that she do a little research, because come this January, she is going to be in a world of hurt.  One night the weather dropped to a frigid 80 degrees and everyone was wearing jackets.  She doesn't even know what minus 20 feels like.  Her obligation is technically 2 years, but her friends in Toronto have promised a transfer after only a few months.  I can't wait to see how this turns out. 

The Philippines face a problem common to many third-world countries, which is that the most educated tend to work and live abroad.  I just read that the United States receives more nurses from the Philippines than any other country.  I met several nursing students in Cebu, all of whom were planning on working abroad.  Staying home just doesn't seem to be an option.  One girl, who was shy, short and really petite, was just finishing up her nursing degree and said that I was the first American she had ever talked to.  She said Americans frightened her because American people are so big, which made me laugh.  She is apprehensive about working in the U.S. because she heard Americans don't like immigrants.  I wasn't sure what to say.  On one hand, I can't imagine anyone being mean to this girl, on the other hand, I couldn't promise her that she won't face any discrimination.  Not long after meeting her, I read an article about several Filipina nurses being fired from a Baltimore hospital for speaking Tagalog during their lunch break.  Maybe she should be apprehensive about Americans.

I met Jill, a Couchsurfing Filipina who owns her own coffee shop and hosts Couchsurfing get-togethers.  There I met a few other Filipinos, a French guy, a German girl and two Dutch guys.  After a night of hanging out at the coffee shop, the 7 of us took a weekend trip to a nearby island.  We stayed out on the beach all night and watched the sun rise.
   
The French guy (29 yrs old) is on a "travel-around-the-world" trip similar to my own.  He spent his first three months volunteering in Mali, which I was very interested to hear about.  He had a classic storyof signing up for one thing and getting thrown into something completely different.  Working without any other western counterparts, he secured quite of bit of funding on infrastructure projects.  His contribution was significant enough that his village gave him a piece of land to call his own.  So if nothing else works out for him, he will always be a land-owner in Mali, so he has that going for him, which is nice.

The two Dutch guys are both living in the Philippines for a one-year volunteer program with a Catholic organization.  One teaches high school for underprivileged kids and the other works in an orphanage for boys.  I asked if they were surprised by any aspect of the work they're doing.  Garbage was their the answer.  Filipinos definitely have a littering problem.  It is really frustrating for them to see the adults of the organization just throwing trash out the window and letting it pile up outside.  Filipino cities are full of litter, a problem that all classes of people seem to contribute to.  I read that because of the country's long history of colonization and war, and disdain for a corrupt government, Filipinos lack a sense of ownership on public space.  It seems to me to be a strange and unfortunate mentality.

Of course there are exceptions, but generally speaking, the cities here are completely lacking aesthetically.  Broken and dirty concrete covers the streets and buildings.  Grass is almost non-existent and sidewalks are poorly laid out.  My hunch is that all this has contributed to the success of the shopping mall here.  Shopping malls are incredibly successful, sometimes with their own mega-courtyards for outdoor shopping.  For cities that have grown up without any city planning, the mall is refreshingly clean and organized.

Back in the city I met Kim, attractive with a combative personality, at one of the trendy night spots.  Her friends showered me with attention, which made me a little suspicious given my daily run-ins with sex workers.  But I saw them out again the next night and they were equally friendly without any hint that they were trying to drum up business.  As we made small talk, I mentioned the hostel where I was staying.  At $7 per night, it was probably the cheapest place in the city.  I made a comment about how it was pretty bare-bones accommodation.  Kim's responded by saying that I probably didn't understand how poor she was and that the place I was staying was much nicer than where she lived.  This surprised me, as I definitely hadn't pegged her as being desperately poor.

Fast-forward a few days:  While hanging out with Jill and our crew of couchsurfers on our weekend get-a-way, I got a text message from Kim saying that if I came back to the city, her landlord had an extra room for $30/month.  To put things into perspective, a decent hotel room starts around $15/night, so $30/month is really, really cheap, even by Filipino standards.  I texted back and said that I would probably just get a hotel room.  She was oddly persistent that I should stay there.

At this point I should say something about my travel philosophy, which is to try to never say no to an opportunity.  This has mostly worked out for the best, although it sometimes lands me in uncomfortable situations.  Riding the bus back to the city, I was curious to see where Kim lived, if she was as poor as she said she was.  When I got my hotel at 10:30pm, they were all booked up.  With this news, I figured I might as well go and see what Kim was trying to sell.

The taxi dropped me off at the designated street corner, in a not-so-nice neighborhood.  I stood there with my backpack on, trying to figure out where to go.  A young couple came up to me, looking really concerned that I was standing there, and asked me where I was going.  "Uh....just looking for my friend."  Then they asked where I was staying.  "Um, hopefully with my friend."  They asked what I would do if I couldn't find my friend.  "Yeah, I don't know."   I eventually found her and her house.  She was renting a room from her friend's family.  The downstairs was damp concrete and cinder block, the walls crawling with cockroaches.  Off the main room was a single water spigot, used for all kitchen and bathroom needs.  Upstairs the walls and bedrooms where single sheets of plywood.  Kim's room, which would become my room, was just big enough to have a twin-size wooden platform as a bed, with no mattress or pad.  There was no ventilation and the air was stifling hot.  Within two minutes of arriving, Kim was insisting that I fix her laptop, which wouldn't boot. 

I carry a portable version of Linux on a USB drive, which is ideal for troubleshooting computers.  As I sat there on the wooden bed, sweat pouring off my body, I had to look around and laugh.  It was definitely not a situation I could have ever imagined being in.  After determining that her hard drive had unfortunately died, I asked if I could take a shower.  Kim and her friend led me back downstairs to the spigot, where I filled a bucket of water.  I was a little confused, because I was essentially standing in a hallway, and there was no door to close me off from the main room.  Her friend looked at me and said I should just turn off the light.  Ok.

Still trying to figure out the bedroom situation, I asked Kim what the deal was.  Since she originally told me that there was an extra room for rent, but clearly I was taking over her room.  She said she would just sleep downstairs with her friend.  The next morning I packed my stuff up and said I was just going to get a hotel room.  She seemed disappointed.  I couldn't really see a reason for my staying there, just to save a few dollars.  I said goodbye and jumped in a taxi.  Later that day I got a text from Kim asking for a HUGE favor, she needed to borrow some money.  How much money, I asked.  Big surprise, she needed $30, the exact amount she was going to rent her room to me.

Now things were starting to make sense.  She promised to pay me back within two days, and that it was really important that she get the money.  Of course this raises all sorts of questions, none of which have convincing answers.

Kim had gotten married when she was 21 to an English guy.  After 7 months she discovered he was cheating on her.  Her heart broken, she divorced him.  She had been in a string of relationships with other Europeans, always ending the same way.  Her last serious boyfriend was a German guy who was "separated" from his wife, but not really.  Kim didn't have a job, but received some sort of regular alimony payment from her ex-husband. She was living with her friend because she wasn't getting along with her dad, but wouldn't tell me exactly why.

The money she needed was to get her identification papers in order so that she could get a job at a call center.  Call centers (mostly for banks and credit cards) are a coveted job for unskilled Filipinos.  I heard this from other people as well.  I told Kim that I wasn't comfortable lending her money but I would still like to be friends with her.  The next day she sent me another text saying that if I could lend her $16 dollars, it would really help her out.  I'm not so naive that I believed I could lend her money and get paid back.  But for $16 dollars, I could fund a little drama, see how it played out, and maybe, just maybe, help Kim get a job.  I was pretty well convinced that she had absolutely no money and was waiting for her alimony to arrive.  She promised to pay me back just as soon as she could.  The upside is that she got her job at the call center.  After two days of hearing that she was still waiting for her money, I stopped asking.

Getting the chance to scratch beneath the surface of Kim's life was interesting for me.  Her life is a little bit of a mess, but I have hope for her.  It's was interesting to because in many ways her story is not unique.  I met a 20 yr old girl on the street.  Not a prostitute, just someone who wanted to talk.  She told me she was leaving in a few weeks to visit her friend in Thailand, where she was going to work.  It turned out that her "friend" was a 60 yr old American guy, who needed someone to help "care" for him.  She had been chatting with him online for two years and now he was paying to have to come to Thailand for 3 months.  There are a number of troubling questions about this situation, and she was understandably nervous about going.  She was a bright and articulate girl, and still, she saw Thailand as her best option for making some money.  On another occasion,  I met a young, nice-looking prostitute outside of a night club who offered to go home with me.  After I declined her offer, she was more persistent and said that she didn't need any money, just some food to eat.  I told I didn't have any food at home.  Really desperate just to get some food, she offered to cook for me.  Those kind of conversations never make you feel good. 

Other run-ins with prostitutes were more light-hearted.  At one bar I had a number of different girls come sit next to me and asked if I could buy them a drink.  I think it's a quick, polite way to find out if you're interested in doing business with them.  One girl sat down and asked me if I like "short time".  This kind of broken English is common in Vietnam or Thailand, but not in the Philippines.  I wasn't sure if I heard her correctly and asked her to repeat herself.  "Do I like short time?" I replied back.  "What's short time?"
"Boom boom short time."
"Ah, boom boom short time......no thanks."

Filipina girls are somewhat plagued by social-economic problems that lead to all these situations.  But one thing I kept hearing over and over again was that they didn't like Filipino guys.  So many of them are looking for a Western guy.  At one restaurant, I made friends with the waitress and bartender.  We went out after their shift and one of the girls, who was around 25 yrs old had just married a German guy who was 60.  They had their first child together and were building a new house.  She could not be happier about her situation.  My impression is that Filipino guys have a reputation for not treating their women very well, and the Western influence and affluence is just more attractive to Filipinas, who don't seemed to be concerned about age gaps.  I guess it's a win-win situation. 

On from Cebu City I bounced around to a few smaller cities, rented motorbikes, and explored the country side.  One afternoon I was passing through a forested area outside a small town and came upon an open-air arena filled with people, betting on the cock fights.  I've never been to anything quite like it, so the the novelty factor was high.  The fights only last a few minutes and it's rare that an injured bird will make a come-back.  The appeal is lost on me, but those are the kinds of random things that you hope to find when you just pick a direction and ride.
 


From Philippines - part 2


From Philippines - part 2


On another day I was out riding around in a very rural area and stopped at a roadside bbq stand.  The only other people there was a group of older guys who quickly invited me to sit with them.  I ended up eating and drinking with them for a few hours, sharing stories and answering questions about our lives.  One guy, an ex-policeman, was convinced that I was trained military or intelligence because I was out there, traveling alone, and feeling completely at home.  Really funny stuff. 


From Philippines - part 2



From Philippines - part 2


I spent my last days in the Philippines back in Boracay, the ultra-tourist beach town.  Geographically, it was on the way back to Manila, but also I wanted to take it easy for a few days before heading to Mongolia, my next destination.  I arrived in Ulaanbaaatar, Mongolia's capital city, on July 1st.  It's definitely another place all together. 

more shameless sunset pics:

From Philippines - part 2


From Philippines - part 2