Cabo San Lucas

Mary Jo and I just got back from a winter trip to Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip of Baha California.  What a pleasant break from the winter cold and rain it turned out to be!  We traveled with a rather large group of our daughter's in-laws and friends (around 32 people all told).  Their family has made this a periodic winter treat, and were kind enough to ask us along this time.  We all stayed at one of those all inclusive hotels where you can eat and drink whatever and whenever without facing a new charge.  You can just put you wallet away for the week and lay back to enjoy your self.  It was our first experience with this type of payment, I liked it a lot!  This photo is from the balcony on our room. 

The hotel felt a little being on a rather large cruise ship, one anchored in the bay instead of traveling around the oceans.  We were a few miles from town, so it was an excursion to go anywhere, so mostly I didn't.  It seemed to be enough to eat, read, chat with folks, sit in the shade, nap, and party a bit at night.  My daughter, wife and myself did take an excursion one day on an "outback adventure."  This adventure included camel rides!

The camels seemed to be in excellent condition (I suppose, except with absolutely no experience with camels I might have been very far off with my judgment).  The camels were definitely difficult and uncomfortable to ride.  They had these high-tech metal saddles, which might have been good for the camels, but weren't all that great for us.  My daughter said that the ride is a lot like one of those mechanical bulls that you can attempt to ride in cowboy night clubs.  I have never attempted that, but it seems to be about what I would expect - with the exception that the "hump" seemed to be kind of floppy so that sometimes you lean to one side, thinking you will fall ten feet to the ground to the left - then it flops the other way and it feels like you are going to fall off to the right side instead.  Not really my idea of an ideal way to travel. 

During our adventure we were treated to a nice, easy and short walk through the desert with the guide pointing out the medicinal plants - particularly those that have aphrodisiac properties.  There seems to be quite a large number of desert plants with that property.  We then went to a shade structure by the ocean and were served a very nice, authentic seeming home cooked meal.  Along with the meal we "had" to sample various types of locally made tequila.  They were all good, and there were a lot of samples.  By the time we were finished with dinner it appeared that at least one of the women in our tour group must have rubbed up against some of those desert plants.  She was snuggling with the guide all the way back to her hotel.  I wonder how the rest of her evening went?

A bunch of our group went fishing one day.  The caught a few fish, but not a big harvest.  It was just as well, because it turned out that it would cost $20 a person to have the fish cooked and served for dinner - and dinner was free otherwise.  So the fish went the way that most probably do down there, the boat skipper and help got them.  I didn't go fishing out of laziness and couldn't see a good reason to pay for riding around in a boat for a few hours.  I have lots of boat time under my belt and didn't need to pay for that.  Some of the men-folk also went golfing, but that was during the time that we went on our outback adventure.  Since I can't hit a golf ball, much less get it into one of those tiny holes in the ground,  there wasn't much point in me going with them. 

It was a fun and very relaxing week. I am not sure if I will want to repeat it again, but it was a fun thing to try out.  The weather was perfect and there were lots of nice people from the land of ice and snow to visit with besides the ready made group that we traveled with.

Streets of Hanoi

My wife and I spent a few days in the downtown Hanoi business district in Vietnam. It took a little while to catch on to the layout of things, but it soon became apparent that the town is much like a giant department store, with a block representing a department. A block (or sometimes two or three blocks for popular merchandise) is devoted to a single type of product. There is the clock street, toilet paper street, cell phone street, toys street, musical instrument street, etc. If you want to purchase an item, all you need to do is find out where the appropriate street is located and you will find LOTS of that thing. Unfortunately, most of the stores have identical items so the selection isn’t all that great. The problem is that this layout makes the shopping center very big, miles across in fact. It is a real project to fill your shopping cart.

The streets, and sidewalks, are full of things. The streets are lined with concrete sidewalks on both sides. The problem is that it is almost impossible to walk on them because they are full of things. The stores are open fronted affairs with roll-up garage style doors. Their merchandise is easily visible from the street, but it also tends to flow out onto the sidewalks. Then there are all of the scooters parked helter-skelter on the sidewalks. Thousands of them create an obstacle course that makes it almost tempting to use the street instead of staying on the sidewalks, if it weren’t that walking in the streets appeared to offer the prospect of instant death from being hit by one (or more likely, several) vehicles.

Many of the vehicles are motor scooters. It appears that the maximum number of passengers that can comfortably transported by a small scooter is five. I heard rumors about folks who could fit up to eight, but didn’t observe that many. Three or four people is very common. The typical family arrangement was a baby on the handlebars, two small children standing on the floor boards between the handle bars and seat, a father driving on the seat and his wife sitting behind. In addition to all of these people, they often were carrying large items (I saw one with a door being carried cross-wise to the direction of motion) that used up any additional space that might have been available.

In addition to the merchandise and the vehicles on the sidewalks, there are restaurants - hundreds of them share space on the sidewalks. Usually food is cooked on a tiny coal fired, one-burner stove that uses six inch diameter by four inch high fuel pellets. These stoves are vertical cylinders about a foot in diameter and 18 inches tall. They are just right for cooking a single pot meal – which is what you get at these street restaurants. Each restaurant has one or two tiny tables and chairs. They look like and are proportioned like our tables and chairs, but are much smaller. The seats of the chairs are six or seven inches high and the table tops are 16 inches high by a couple of feet across. Service is family style. A large bowl is placed in the middle of the table. Customers sit around the table and share whatever happens to be in the bowl. Each person gets a small rice bowl and pair of chop sticks. Usually the food was very tasty. You move from restaurant to restaurant to get a variety of dishes if you want more than one course. Meals on the street cost much less than a dollar. Bottled beer and water are usually available for an additional five cents or so. It is pretty easy to have a nice meal, with beer, for around fifty cents. Apparently, this is where almost everyone in town eats. I was told that the locals do not usually cook at home and can’t afford the in-doors style of restaurants which can cost as much as $4.00 for a many course meal with wine or beer. The food on the streets is good and very inexpensive. I didn’t even want to consider sanitation, but managed to avoid getting sick while in Vietnam.

Getting across the streets was high on my list of terrorizing activities in Hanoi. (The remainder had to do with riding in vehicles of all types and possible sanitation problems.) The first thing that becomes immediately obvious while walking in Hanoi is that there are a lot of vehicles on the roads. So many in fact that there are always at least ten or more vehicles lined up side-by-side across street. The biggest space around vehicles is about three feet front and back, and a foot to the sides. Normally, they are much closer than this. The traffic is mixed, consisting of motorcycles, scooters, trucks, bicycles, oxen, donkey carts, cars, pedi-cabs and pedestrians carrying two baskets held on the ends of a stick over their shoulder. The speed of the traffic is not too great. I would guess the average speed is about 25 mph. It seemed like about 80 percent of the traffic moved on the correct side of the street, leaving interesting patterns in the traffic flow when someone was working their way upstream against the flood of traffic. The first time I had to cross the street I stopped to wait for a break in the stream created by a stop light or something. This was a silly thought. There are no stop lights or stop signs except on the major thoroughfares. On the majority of the streets traffic just keeps on flowing along.

Realizing that it was futile to wait for a break, I just stood there in utter confusion. Luckily, we were with friends who told us the trick of crossing the street. It was simple really, just step into the flow of traffic and walk across! Nothing to it really. The only rule was DON’T STOP. If you stop, you will undoubted get hit. I was never brave enough to just step off the sidewalks without taking a peek at the oncoming traffic. I would wait until there was a space big enough to get at least one foot on the ground before the oncoming traffic got to me. This would sometimes take several seconds, but gave me the feeling of confidence needed to perform this operation. Once in the traffic it felt like being in the middle of a school of fish. All of the vehicles managed to flow around both sides of me without so much as a bump or “close call” (less than an inch or so might have been considered a close call). I didn’t notice any piles of corpses on the streets, so I assume that it works most of the time.

In order to perform this maneuver I found it necessary to first come to grips with my life, and impending death. I finally decided that it was as good of a day to die as any, so I might as well not worry about it. Death in Hanoi would be a bit of a problem for folks, but so be it. I got pretty good at this after a bit of practice. I finally got to the point that I no longer had to come to peace with my death; I was permanently ready to die and could walk right on across without hesitating. That is, until I came to my first intersection with a stop light.

On the main street through town, very close to the old Hanoi “Hilton” (prison), are a couple of three and four-laned streets with stoplights controlling the traffic. The interesting part about the traffic lights is that there doesn’t appear to be a consistent pattern to them from street corner to street corner. The location of the “stop” and “go” lights isn’t consistent, and as far as I could detect the meaning of the lights varies from place to place. Of course, since I am color blind it might just be that the shades of color weren’t consistent so I got confused. At any rate, I found it difficult to interpret the meaning of the lights.

At one point I came to a one-way, three lane street that I had to cross at a light. The street was FULL of vehicles from sidewalk to sidewalk, filling the entire length of the block. Approximately forty scooters were lined up with their front tires exactly up to the crosswalk line (there is a very steep fine for crossing the line while parked, which includes having any part of your vehicle over the leading edge of the painted line). As usual, no vehicle in the queue was more than about a foot from others in any direction. I had noticed that the traffic doesn’t start off from a light like we do in the States. We allow the vehicle in front of us to go a short distance before we start, with the result that once everyone is up to speed there are spaces built in to the traffic. In Hanoi this isn’t necessary because there is no space between vehicles. All of the vehicles take off at the same instant, maintaining the spacing that they had while stopped. It is much more efficient in getting people on the way, but has the feeling of the start of a race about it.

As I approached the intersection it appeared that I had lucked out and the traffic was waiting for me to cross. I confidently strolled to the middle of the road in front of the waiting vehicles, when much to my horror the light changed! It didn’t fiddle around with a yellow phase, but went directly from stop to go. The entire pack of traffic immediately bore down upon me, at which point I grabbed onto my sides and let out a loud scream, having visions of being turned into hamburger as hundreds of vehicles bumped over my crushed body. My attention was yanked back to the moment when a girl on a scooter passed very close to me. She was laughing joyfully at my predicament.

Her laughter pulled me back to reality and I remembered that the solution was to just walk on across the street, which worked. As I approached the sidewalk I noticed an amused policeman, armed with an automatic rifle, watching my progress. He looked pleased to note that I managed to get safely across the intersection.

China Trip

It has been a few months since returned from a great trip to China.  People keep asking me; “how was the trip?” or; “what was the most memorable part of the trip?” or similar questions.  Part of the problem was a month in China, much of it in very rural and ancient villages, has so many experiences that it is difficult to sort through to find the “highlights.”  A larger, and more interesting, problem is that what was “memorable” seems to be shifting with time.  For example, at the time one of the topics high in my consciousness was how to get through the sanitation problems without getting violently ill.  I got ill twice while on the trip, so obviously I wasn’t completely successful with that.  Everywhere that we went the lack of “adequate” sanitation was very evident.  However, on retrospect that was a nuisance, but not really a big deal.  
From the prospective of three months, the things that I most remember about rural China are the wonderful smiles and apparent happiness of the folks that we encountered.  I have never seen a group of people that appear to live in such peace and contentment. Sure, they have lots of problems and have a lot to complain about, but those didn’t seem to impact their inner joy.  It was amazing to me to watch people doing the hardest labor I could image, in some of the most primitive and trying conditions, but apparently in complete contentment.  I guess I would have to say that the beauty of the people is first on my list of memories.  The second has to be the food.  I really enjoyed eating there, no matter where I was.  I fully expected to have a “problem” with the food and to miss my American food.  However, I every meal was wonderful and I never missed anything.  In fact, when I finally had to come back and eat my normal food it was with a kind of distaste.  I still have that feeling.  I can eat American food without a problem, but I really miss the food from the rural villages and the street merchants.
The scariest experience, that made me search deeply into myself to shift my prospective of the world and life, was walking across the streets in Hanoi.  The first time I encountered the requirement to do that I almost gave up and decided that I would be limited to the block I was in rather than cross the street.  The problem started with streets that were full of traffic of all kinds.  I mean full, not just busy.  There is a constant flow of traffic (cars, trucks, bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, pedicycles, animal drawn carts, people carrying things on a stick over their shoulder,  you name it, it is in the mix).  Most of the traffic travels on the right hand side of the road, maybe in the 80-90% range, but that leaves quite a few going against the traffic (it is not obvious how they manage that feat).  The streets are filled from sidewalk-to-sidewalk, with seldom more than 18 inches or so between the vehicles in any direction. 15 or 20 vehicles side-by-side across the street seemed about normal (obviously, most of them were motor cycles of one kind or another). On top of that there are no stop signs or other means for creating a break in the flow.  Luckily, the traffic was fairly slow, only 20-25 mph I would guess.
My first instinct was to stand on the sidewalk and wait for a break to cross in.  It quickly became apparent that I could stand there for days and never get that opportunity.  Luckily, the friend that I was with knew the “trick” (if you could call it such a thing).  He said you just walk into the street, but don’t stop or change pace!  What a great trick, nothing to it.  All you have to do is step directly in front of a dozen or so vehicles and pretend that you are invincible.   While I was trying to come to grips with that concept, I noticed that he was already standing on the other side of the street waiting for me.  Apparently it had worked.  So….. I stepped off of the curb and walked with as much dignity as I could to the other side.  IT WORKED!  I was still alive.  All that it required was coming to the complete and immediate decision that this was a good day to die.  I found that I was never quite as relaxed with the approach as he was.  He would step into the smallest of spaces to begin the crossing.  I didn’t have that kind of nerve, I always had to wait until a space come up that was big enough to get my foot on the ground, usually about three feet of space.  Sometimes this took awhile, but it helped me to feel “safe” in the insanity of the situation. Once in the midst of the traffic I felt completely safe.  All of the traffic just flows around you, kind of like a school of fish flowing around you when swimming.  As long as you are constant and steady, they can all miss you.  I can see why you don’t want to stop though, because three or four vehicles will be aiming for the space that you are vacating.
Only once did I actually let out a scream in trying to cross.  It happened at an intersection near downtown Hanoi that had stop lights and a crossing zone.  It was a four lane, one-way street crossing a four lane, two-way street.  I came to the intersection and found the amazing experience of an empty crossing zone, backing up a complete block FULL of vehicles ready to cross.  I don’t know how many were there, but it is safe to say there were hundreds waiting there, all ready to go when the light changed.  I hadn’t gotten used to the idea that the signals worked differently at every corner, so I mis-guessed what the lights meant.  I got about a third of the way across, and the light changed – instantly releasing the entire batch of vehicles toward me. Having no need to allow space between vehicles, they didn’t start up one at a time like we do.  They all started at the same time with a roar, creating a slug of traffic headed directly at me.  That caused me to scream in panic.  It also caused a cute girl on a scooter to burst out in laughter as she whizzed by me. Luckily, I had practiced the art of walking calmly into the oncoming stream of traffic, and I made it safely across.  After that, I was much more careful to wait and figure out what each signal was going to do before crossing in front of the waiting horde.

Peru

In 2007 I took a trip to Peru with a group of my "Toltec" friends.  We spent much of our time in the Cusco area, including a trip to Machu Picchu.  The trip also included a few magical days at Lake Titicaca.  While we were staying at Cusco our guide and friend took us to see a "shaman" ceremony in the surrounding mountains.  The story of the trip will have to wait for a future time, but I want  to post a short clip of those shaman as an experiment in attaching video to the blog.  The "normal" folks in the video are some people from the group that I was part of, as well as another small group touring the area.  Both groups are very "spiritual" in nature and were in the area on a spiritual quest.  This event was one of the high points of the trip.  Enjoy.

Travel agents

I have been pondering the issue of travel agents, tour guides, travel tours and the like to try to determine what I would like from these services versus what I feel I have gotten from them.
The first thing that comes to mind is that I don’t like the idea of traveling with a large group of strangers in a tour situation.  At first I thought that my objection was in being forced to follow the time and direction of the tour – which is part of the problem.  I also find that my encounters with tour groups have not been pleasant; the folks see to be extremely rude and self centered – promoting the idea of the “ugly American.”  As far as I can tell it isn’t limited to Americans, it has to do with traveling with a large group and that somehow carries the culture of the group along with them – which inevitably clashes with the local culture and customs.  I don’t think it is reflective of a nationality, but rather a mode of travel.
Upon further contemplation, the problem that I have with traveling in a large group has to do with the type of experience that is possible.  I am much more interested in the people and culture than in the “things” when I travel.  Experiencing or seeing the things gives me an excuse to move from place to place, but my interest is in meeting new and different people (who seem to always turn out to be amazingly the same).  In order to do this I want to slide between the currents as invisibly as possible.  I don’t want to change the flow, I want to observe and experience it.  Large groups of people in a tour completely change the environment that they travel through.  You can see the effect very forcefully if you watch what happens when a tour group shows up and finally leaves.  The enter experience of the place changes to take maximum advantage of the dollars that the tour group brings with them.  The local flow of life stops long enough to take advantage of the group, then it falls back into the normal pace of things once the tour has passed.  It is kind of like hunkering down for a tornado, and then coming out and resuming life after the storm.  I want to experience life where I am visiting without the storm.
One way to do this is to just dive in and wander about the new and strange country on your own.  The problem that I find with this is that I usually don’t find the interesting things to find, often don’t really contact any of the people because of language difficulties and other reasons, and have the risk of exposing myself to more danger than is necessary.  It seems to make sense to me to obtain assistance in moving through the unknown country.  This can be obtained either by hiring someone or “imposing” upon a friend.  The friend is of course the preferred approach, but is seldom feasible.  My wife and I toured Australia with friends who have lived there for many years and were totally spoiled by the experience because they knew the place, knew us, and we got to play together on our trips.  
Assuming that it is not possible to find a knowledgeable friend to act as a tour guide, then the option is to hire someone.  For me, this is the reason for going to a travel agent – to get expert assistance in getting the kind of trip/experience that I want.  Most travel agents seem to believe that their job is to book travel and accommodations.  In the age of the internet that is not necessary.  I am perfectly capable of finding and booking transportation and lodging, and can do it at a significantly reduced rate.  Travel agents are not the way to take a “bargain” trip.  
To be useful, travel agents must provide a service beyond simply booking the services such as transportation, accommodations and tours – I think they need to find ways to act as the traveler’s “agent.”  What I am looking for in terms of a travel agent and/or local guide is someone who will act in my behalf, as my agent – rather than as a person who seems to always be working to maximize their profits, or the profits of their friends.  I want a travel agent who will make sure that as I travel I feel like I have gotten a fair deal all along the way.  I am not pleased with spending $450 for a local tour before I go only to find that it is normally priced at $150 when I get there.  The extra $300 leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  I don’t like to find that I have been booked into a dump of a hotel that is located across the street from a nicer place at a lower price.  Basically, what I am paying for is someone to do the foot work required to find out what a fair deal is rather than my having to do that on my own.
When I get to wherever I am going, I like the idea of obtaining a local guide that can show me around, find ways for me to experience the people and culture, and help me get “good” deals on purchases of goods and services.  Basically, I want them to act as my advocate and/or agent helping me to find my way around.  I would also like them to assist me in getting my bearings so that I can explore on my own, in relative safety and in ways that maximize enjoyment of their country.  I don’t want to always be taken to the stores of their friends to purchase over prices, crummy trinkets.  I don’t want to just go to the places where the big tours visit, I don’t want to always be on the lookout for price gouging and shoddy merchandise.  I want someone to help me find good things for reasonable prices.  I guess I want them to treat me as a friend, rather than as a source of extra income.  I am of course willing to pay for these services, but don’t want to feel that there is always “extra” income in the form of kickbacks.  I want the guide to pay attention to my interests, rather than just follow the course of most profits for them and their friends.  
Examples of what I am looking for are directions to good restaurants that the locals use and that serve local food and local prices (rather than very expensive restaurants that serve “tourist” food), places where locals go to find entertainment (local music, etc – something besides casinos and whore houses would be nice for a change), assistance in understanding how to judge and price local arts and crafts, etc.  In short, I am hoping for someone who is there to help me rather than help themselves and the local economy to my detriment.  I would rather stumble around by myself than be in a situation where I am always having to be on guard from the person who I have hired to help.  
It is my expectation that travel agents will have created a network of trusted contacts that can assist them in providing good services and a reasonable price, and that can assist me as their client once I get there in finding trusted guides, services and goods.  If travel agents can’t provide this kind of quality service, then I have no need for their services, I am better off doing the best that I can do by myself.

  

Trip to Panama

My brother and I made a trip to Panama a couple of weeks ago. The initial purpose was to take our father through the Panama Canal, but it turns out that he didn’t feel up to it, so we went by ourselves. The area was pretty interesting from the historical point of view. It was fun to find myself in the middle of the areas that we have been taught about the with regard to the early explorations of the new world. Columbus was there, Balboa is evident everywhere, the great pirates sailed these seas (Henry Morgan, Sir Francis Drake, etc.). The cannons shown in the photos were intended to protect the gold and other valuables stored at Portabella, on the Atlantic Coast. After many pirate raids, they finally put up massive, well armed fortifications on both sides of the harbor. These armaments were never used, which either means that they came too late and were no longer needed, or they were so formidable that it was not necessary to us them. Maybe it was a kind of “cold war” tactic that was just too much to attack.
We did manage a trip through the canal, which was totally different than what I had in my mind’s eye. The canal is not a big ditch across the isthmus, but rather a few locks and ditches connecting huge manmade lakes. There are three identical pairs of locks on each side, bring the ships up to the level of Lake Gatun. There is a cut through the continental divide that is almost 8 miles long, and then the trip though Lake Gatun is about 15 miles. There is also higher elevation lake that supplies water to Lake Gatun and electrical power to the project. The whole thing is a VERY impressive project. They are beginning the construction of a third set of locks paralleling the two that are already in place.
Some of the stories about the building of the canal are pretty impressive. For example, when the French were attempting to build the canal they had so many corpses to deal with that they put them into barrels, pickled them, and sold them around the world for medical specimens. They sold so many that they funded the construction of a very large, modern for the times, hospital. Unfortunately, they hadn’t figured out what the cause of the malaria and yellow fever was. In an attempt to make a pleasant setting, and to keep the ants under control, they planted lots of well watered flowers, and put the bed posts in containers of water. This created wonderful environments for the mosquitoes, bringing the cause of the problem right into the hospital – where it enhanced the availability of corpses for sale. They lost 35,000 people in the hospital, and possibly that many more who died outside of the hospitals. At one point they had so many critically sick people that instead of admitting them to a hospital bed, they were admitted to lay in their coffin! That would be a pretty good clue about how sick you were.
One day we took a tour to an “Indian Village”. It was a rather confusing event to me. We got there by outboard motor powered dugout canoe, which was pretty neat. They first took us up the river to a waterfall, which brought up all of images of heading up a river with the natives in the middle of the rain forest (which was in fact what we were doing). We came upon a large dugout with hundreds of cases of Coke Cola stacked in it. It turned out that this was a film crew filming a Coke advertisement. You just can’t get away from civilization any more.
After the walking trip to the water fall (I managed to slip and fall into the creek on the way back from the falls), we went to the village. The village appeared to be in the style of a real village, but the people didn’t live there. They worked there during the day giving shows to the tourists and selling stuff that they said they made. Who knows if they really made it or not. There were some nice baskets, wooden carvings and small carved animals. I left my donation at the souvenir hut. The ladies danced while the men played music. It was fun, and nice to see them doing this, but it was also kind of weird being some sort of “voyeur” looking at their cloths, music, buildings, etc. The ladies were topless, so that was kind of odd too because of the “presentation” aspect of the events. The story about them was that the tribe had lived in the rain forest near a border (I didn’t figure out which one) as farmers. It got the point that they couldn’t get their crops to market, so they moved to this rain forest, which then because a national forest – meaning they couldn’t farm there either. In an attempt to keep their village together and live the life that they wanted to live, they began this tourist business. If that is all true, then I guess it is appropriate to go and see what they have to show. If everyone spent as much on souvenirs as my brother and I did, they should be doing quite well.
There is a lot of very poor people in the country, especially in the cities. Most of the cities are what we would call “slums” with extremely poor folks with no obvious source of income. We were warned many times to not go to those locations any time of the day. In fact, the “safe” locations for the tourists butted right up to those that are not safe. We got shooed out by the “tourist police” whenever we got too close to the other side of the street. It was kind of hard to tell where we were because it all looks about the same, terrible. The business district of Panama City is modern, clean and safe. However, we couldn’t find any interesting entertainment in town. We had lots of folks offer to help us find strip joints, “sex clubs”, “clean” ladies, and the like – but no place that just had local music and people enjoying themselves. There are lots of small, and not very interesting, casinos in the area – this is where you find the “clean girls”. Not much for us to do. I suppose you could find more if you spent a bit more time.
I found that the tourist support folks (hotels, tour companies, hotel transportation, etc) to be extremely untrustworthy. It wasn’t that they were dangerous or anything like that, but extortion is their way of doing business. I constantly felt like I was surrounded by a bunch of thieves trying to get all that they could out of me. There was never a time that it seemed like any of these folks were in the least bit interested in our welfare; it was totally focused on making as much money, in the shortest period of time, as possible. I tend to be kind of lax about this sort of thing, so ended up on the wrong end of the deal many times. I started to learn to treat everyone as a bunch of lying cheats, but that took much of the fun out of the trip. My brother made a personal connection with one of the bell hops at the hotel, which started to make all of the difference. He helped us find inexpensive transportation, good local restaurants, things of interest, etc. However, he was certainly not the norm and it only happened because of a personal connection. My advice if you decide to go there – BEWARE, you are not seen as a friend, you are seen as a mark!!

China Trip

It has been a few months since returned from a great trip to China.  People keep asking me; “how was the trip?” or; “what was the most memorable part of the trip?” or similar questions.  Part of the problem was a month in China, much of it in very rural and ancient villages, has so many experiences that it is difficult to sort through to find the “highlights.”  A larger, and more interesting, problem is that what was “memorable” seems to be shifting with time.  For example, at the time one of the topics high in my consciousness was how to get through the sanitation problems without getting violently ill.  I got ill twice while on the trip, so obviously I wasn’t completely successful with that.  Everywhere that we went the lack of “adequate” sanitation was very evident.  However, on retrospect that was a nuisance, but not really a big deal.  
From the prospective of three months, the things that I most remember about rural China are the wonderful smiles and apparent happiness of the folks that we encountered.  I have never seen a group of people that appear to live in such peace and contentment. Sure, they have lots of problems and have a lot to complain about, but those didn’t seem to impact their inner joy.  It was amazing to me to watch people doing the hardest labor I could image, in some of the most primitive and trying conditions, but apparently in complete contentment.  I guess I would have to say that the beauty of the people is first on my list of memories.  The second has to be the food.  I really enjoyed eating there, no matter where I was.  I fully expected to have a “problem” with the food and to miss my American food.  However, I every meal was wonderful and I never missed anything.  In fact, when I finally had to come back and eat my normal food it was with a kind of distaste.  I still have that feeling.  I can eat American food without a problem, but I really miss the food from the rural villages and the street merchants.
The scariest experience, that made me search deeply into myself to shift my prospective of the world and life, was walking across the streets in Hanoi.  The first time I encountered the requirement to do that I almost gave up and decided that I would be limited to the block I was in rather than cross the street.  The problem started with streets that were full of traffic of all kinds.  I mean full, not just busy.  There is a constant flow of traffic (cars, trucks, bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, pedicycles, animal drawn carts, people carrying things on a stick over their shoulder,  you name it, it is in the mix).  Most of the traffic travels on the right hand side of the road, maybe in the 80-90% range, but that leaves quite a few going against the traffic (it is not obvious how they manage that feat).  The streets are filled from sidewalk-to-sidewalk, with seldom more than 18 inches or so between the vehicles in any direction. 15 or 20 vehicles side-by-side across the street seemed about normal (obviously, most of them were motor cycles of one kind or another). On top of that there are no stop signs or other means for creating a break in the flow.  Luckily, the traffic was fairly slow, only 20-25 mph I would guess.
My first instinct was to stand on the sidewalk and wait for a break to cross in.  It quickly became apparent that I could stand there for days and never get that opportunity.  Luckily, the friend that I was with knew the “trick” (if you could call it such a thing).  He said you just walk into the street, but don’t stop or change pace!  What a great trick, nothing to it.  All you have to do is step directly in front of a dozen or so vehicles and pretend that you are invincible.   While I was trying to come to grips with that concept, I noticed that he was already standing on the other side of the street waiting for me.  Apparently it had worked.  So….. I stepped off of the curb and walked with as much dignity as I could to the other side.  IT WORKED!  I was still alive.  All that it required was coming to the complete and immediate decision that this was a good day to die.  I found that I was never quite as relaxed with the approach as he was.  He would step into the smallest of spaces to begin the crossing.  I didn’t have that kind of nerve, I always had to wait until a space come up that was big enough to get my foot on the ground, usually about three feet of space.  Sometimes this took awhile, but it helped me to feel “safe” in the insanity of the situation. Once in the midst of the traffic I felt completely safe.  All of the traffic just flows around you, kind of like a school of fish flowing around you when swimming.  As long as you are constant and steady, they can all miss you.  I can see why you don’t want to stop though, because three or four vehicles will be aiming for the space that you are vacating.
Only once did I actually let out a scream in trying to cross.  It happened at an intersection near downtown Hanoi that had stop lights and a crossing zone.  It was a four lane, one-way street crossing a four lane, two-way street.  I came to the intersection and found the amazing experience of an empty crossing zone, backing up a complete block FULL of vehicles ready to cross.  I don’t know how many were there, but it is safe to say there were hundreds waiting there, all ready to go when the light changed.  I hadn’t gotten used to the idea that the signals worked differently at every corner, so I mis-guessed what the lights meant.  I got about a third of the way across, and the light changed – instantly releasing the entire batch of vehicles toward me. Having no need to allow space between vehicles, they didn’t start up one at a time like we do.  They all started at the same time with a roar, creating a slug of traffic headed directly at me.  That caused me to scream in panic.  It also caused a cute girl on a scooter to burst out in laughter as she whizzed by me. Luckily, I had practiced the art of walking calmly into the oncoming stream of traffic, and I made it safely across.  After that, I was much more careful to wait and figure out what each signal was going to do before crossing in front of the waiting horde.