The Loooooong Trip

Sabang, Palawan

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 13:33:53 -0500

I had been wanting to go to Palawan for a while, so when I had a couple of days of time, this was my first destination when back in the Philippines.

I flew to Puerto Princesa, on Cebu Pacific. Puerto Princesa is a much larger and more normal, functioning town than I expected. It does not feel like a frontier town. I had a wonderful lunch at Kalalui, a cute restaurant made entirely of bamboo, with great food. I liked Puerto Princesa, but needed more adventure, so I took off to Sabang to see the famous underground river.

The last Jeepney was supposed to leave at 2; about halfway to the terminal the driver informed me that the last Jeepney leaves at 1.30. I got to the terminal at 1.45, and at 2.30 the Jeepney finally pulled forward to the gas station and proceeded to wait another half hour, while full of passengers, to get gas. Fortunately, I was online, thanks to the Globe Visibility 3G/GPRS service that we finally got to work with my Mac; so I was able to get a few things done while waiting. It felt a bit surreal to be online while sitting in this thing, though. We finally left... stopped in alittle town, where I bought some snacks from people selling them through the window.

The drive was pretty, and uneventful until we blew our first tire. It was promptly changed, though the replacement tire did not look any better. It had gaping holes...

I finally arrived in Sabang, after one more tire replacement stop. The scenery was beautiful, reminiscent of Ha long bay and the Cahabon area in Guatemala: Limestone hills and cliffs in a lush tropical environment.

The next day I hiked the monkey trail to the mouth of the underground river. It was a fun hike; very easy, since the trail is extremely well maintained, with lots of rails, bridges, and stairs.

At the ranger station at the river mouth, there were lots of monitor lizards. Cute.

The underground river itself wasn't very exciting -- much less interesting than, for example, the one near San Ignacio, Belice, where you get to paddle your own canoe into it.

But the beaches and scenery in the area were fantastic.

Before going back to Puerto Princesa, I hiked to the "Waterfall". This turned out to be very enjoyable, with lots of entertaining sights along the way. I rested for a while in a tree house, enjoying the breeze. It's so nice that some people take really good care of the place they live in here...

I did not investigate if there was an actual "room"

On the way back, I got down (Filipino English for getting off a vehicle.. I am learning.. :-) in the Vietnamese village. There used to be a large camp for Vietnamese refugees near Puerto Princesa. It was interesting to check out, and I had some yummy thit nuong.

Great Wall from Simatai to Jinshanling

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 12:50:29 -0500

Apart from the opportunity to hang out with Johanna, the Great Wall had been the main reason I decided to go on a short trip to Beijing. Of course, I also felt like I needed to see the capital of the country I lived in for 4 months; but somehow I knew that would fall into the must-check-off category. More on that separately, if I ever find the time to write it up...

There are many ways to see the wall, and fortunately Johanna (who is even cooler in person than on her blog) and Eliezer (who is every bit as interesting as Johanna had said) were in perfect agreement that the tour to Badaling that was offered by the conference they were attending was the worst one; this is the most touristy part of the wall, so we avoided it.

Instead we went Jin Shan Ling, and hiked along the wall to Si ma tai - following Sheel's recommendation, which was very consistent with the results of some basic online research ... and although I was quite sick that day, it turned out to be the best day of the trip!

Johanna's writing is WAY better than mine, so I will just shamelessly link to her writeup of our Jinshanling-Simatai hike and just post some pictures here. Even though she makes fun of me in it. Which she does well. And she deserves getting to make fun of me, for being such a wonderful friend, even when I whine all day.

From Cebu to the Camotes Islands

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 09:54:06 -0500

Junks, the incredibly interesting architect, guitar maker, bar owner, outdoor equipment manufacturer, musician and triathlete we met last time in Cebu, mentioned that the Camotes Islands would be a nice place to visit, and that he had a house there.

LP confirmed - a good destination for adventurous travellers. So Andy and I went, for the weekend.

Finding out when the boat leaves was not easy. After some initial misinformation most sources seemed to agree that it would leave at 6am from Oanu wharf in Mandaue City. We went half an hour early, which was good, because it turned out that actual departure is (and has been, for a year), 5.30am. UPDATE: This difficulty inspired us to build a Web App for Boat Schedules in the Philippines which has now launched. The boat was 170 passenger bangka "Ave Maria 3"; a wooden trimaran powered by two V10 truck engines, complete with the original steering wheel, stabilized by bamboo outriggers.

We were able to ride on the roof, and had a nice breeze and good views. I'd prefer a boat like this over a modern boat with assigned seats any day.

About 3 hours later we arrived in San Francisco, Camotes. Immediately as we docked, kids came over and started playing on the outrigger. Very cute.

We transferred to the house in Esperanza (we ended up not staying in Junk's house, since it sounded more complicated and he wasnt sure if the generator was working) on two scooters, one of which we then rented for the weekend (400 PHP).

The nice thing about it was that it runs on Coca Cola. Finally a good use for that stuff. (the cheaper models run on Pepsi; but I think that tastes like wok water, so I doubt it's good for the engine).
When Andy wanted to take a picture of this pretty little store, the people around stopped him. Not because they didn't want the picture taken, but because they wanted to pose.

I have to point out that absolutely everyone we had met until this point had been incredibly friendly, even for the high standards in the Philippines. But that turned out to be only the beginning...

We started exploring the islands... to get an overview, we wanted to get on top of one of the hills. That turned out harder than we thought. People in that community spoke little english; one of them eventually murmured something about "Mata Christo" and pointed to the hill, gesturing us to follow him. So we did, along with about a dozen kids. Half an hour later, halfway up the hill, it became clear that I had heard correctly. The scluptures along the trail up the hill were somewhat creepy. Very explicit. They seemed well maintained. The views were very nice.

Somewhere around here I started to realize that there was something very strange going on on these islands. Something wonderful... more about that in the next article.

The next morning, we decided to get some work done, and then hung out with the villagers for a little while.
There were a lot of scary blue jellyfish on the beach. As a joke, I asked our friendly neighbor Ron how they taste. With a straight face, he said that his uncle knows how to prepare a dish from it. I decided to call the bluff and accepted his offer to bring a little bit for us to taste. Oops, I thought, when he showed up with a big plate full. Oh well. How bad can it be, after tasting day old chicks the day before? As it turned out, it blue jellyfish in coconut sauce was actually quite good. Chewy, of course, but not bad. Spicy.
We continued the tour...
At one point we passed a highly efficient live fowl transport. 100 roosters and two guys on a scooter.

I admit this is somewhat cruel, but at least these roosters had a decent life until today, probably their last day anyway.

And then I saw it. The most amazing sight ever: Not only do they have trash bags here and use them, they even recycle!

You have to have travelled in the tropics in the developing world to appreciate this... What was even more amazing was that everything else seemed consistent with this; looking back, it hit me that people really take care of this place.
They like where they live; there were no signs of conflict, neglect, carelessness or despair. People seemed to have their lives under control. There were dozens of episodes of friendliness and vibes of happiness, every single one of which would have deserved mentioning if they had happened elsewhere. Incredible, really.
We explored a cave, had a competition on who can take the cheesiest picture (Andy won), watched a house walk by, listened to Gemelina's women choir (turning down an invitation join in), helped a 5ft tall young girl start he offroad bike (one of the few signs of OFW money), talked to a farmer about his eggplant plantation, and generally continued to have a good time.

After too little sleep we headed back to Cebu.

On the way back, I had a long conversation with a part owner of the boat, and met his nephew, Cliff, a very bright and motivated young man, who has some interesting insights on his family business and the shipping (public transportation by boat) industry in the Philippines in general. But that's another story.

UPDATE: Cliff is now running our little Philippines Boat ScheduleVenture.

Playing with a Mountain Lion kitten in Argentina

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 04:40:02 -0500

Click to Play

Someone had killed this cutue little kitten's mother. So our paddling friends from Cafayate, Argentina rescued it. A few days after this video was shot,
it was released into the wild.

Lake Taal - A volcano (on an island in a lake)^2

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 08:29:25 -0500

Apologies to the potentially confused reader-- this is another story that I am posting a couple months late...

Liz was in the area (well, she was in Taiwan, I was one country further south...), and we had spent almost no time together in the last 3 years, so she spontaneously decided to ditch the touristy part of the conference she was attending in Taiwan. When her travel agent confirmed that she found a flight for Manila for the next day, for a weekend, she literally got off the tour bus somewhere in the mountains in Taiwan and went home to get ready to leave the next day.

When she arrived, first order of business was to get a copy of the Lonely planet, which gave us an excuse to visit the brand new SM Mall of Asia, supposedly the world's third largest mall. And really, I do need an excuse to spend any time in a mall. Before switching to Apple, I had literally not been in a mall in 3 years. But most Apple stores are in malls, which gave me a chance to remember how much I hate their consumption-focused vibe and artificial environment.

That said, seeing people iceskating in the tropics, and having a super-sized (not!) brownie with ice cream was certainly entertaining.

Next, I needed to check email, so Liz suggested to do what only business travellers with a mild, healthy knack for bending the rules would do: Take a taxi to the nearest 5 star hotel and peruse their business center. Which we did; and just to make ourselves feel better about pretending to be guests (and to satisfy her craving for sparkling water), she ordered a $6 class of Perrier... It was interesting to realize that most foreign travellers in Manila only what we have seen so far -- a modern, overpriced facade, designed to shield the traveller who doesn't really want to be here from the reality of a country with some extreme contrasts...

After checking out business-traveller-Manila, we switched pace and took a bus and various other means of transportation to Lake Taal. This place is a bit of a geographical oddity: The world's smallest volcano rises out of a lake which is in a crater on an island in a lake which is in turn located on an island in the Pacific. Did I get that right?

pacific
    luzon island
        lake taal
            island in lake taal
                crater on island
                    lake in crater
                        volcano cone in lake

Yes, I think so...

The place was actually quite interesting and beautiful. The boat ride was pleasant, and I admired the car-to-boat conversion job. They use everything -- from clutch to steering wheel. I guess on fresh water you don't need marine grade parts.

And given that they built jeepneys essentially by hand, a converting a boat like this must be a trivial exercise...

On the island, (#2), it was strongly suggested to us to hire horses to the rim of the volcano (with the lake with the volcano in it...). So we did... my 13 year old horse guide finished his cigarette and off we went. The horses, although small, were some of the most motivated and strongest I had seen. It was hard to believe that they were able to do this... The trail was uneven and steep, and yet they decided to run along at an almost scary pace. Fun fun fun.

The inner lake seemed to have boiling water in some places, and I would have loved to swim in the section locals said was cool enough to swim in. But, no time, we had to head down.

Smoker kid was not happy when his tip went into his non-smoking companion's pocket, but he got the message that I am not supporting his efforts to kill himself. And if he can afford cigs he's obviously not starving.

By the time we got back, it was dark, so we spent the night in the little village of Talisay. We had a hard time finding food, a problem we solved by radical application of extreme friendlyness combined with mild pushiness... the hotel owner didn't want to cook, the cook had already gone home. We walked around the village (well, along the village, as there was only one road) and found out that there was no food to be had. As we walked by one of the houses on the lakefront, I noticed some coolers on the sidewalk, and opened the lid. Ha! Fresh fish, just as I thought. I bought about three times as much of it as two people could reasonably eat, and we headed back to the hotel and asked the owner if she was hungry, waved the fresh fish around, and asked if we could use her kitchen and buy some ingredients from her fridge.

Liz started working on some fantastic Taiwanese fried rice, while I did my best to look so clueless cleaning the fish that our new friend took over and taught us how to clean and cook what turned out to be bangus (milkfish -- the Philippine's national fish). After a brief, failed attempt to burn down the neighborhood (the gas hose had come off the stove) I had an opportunity to do something more useful and fix the hose. At this point we were all having a good time chatting and drinking beer.

The meal was delicious, and the hotel owner had turned from a tired lady who seemed to be annoyed with foreigners into a very friendly and wonderful person, once again demonstrating filipino friendlyness.

The leftovers were gone before we got up the next morning, and we were aggressively invited by the whole familiy to come back soon.

Friendly Philippines

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 11:24:34 -0500

Apologies to the potentially confused reader-- this is another story that I am posting a couple months late...

After touring lake Taal, we had about one and a half more days that were to be spent seeing something ocean-related.

But we were travelling, and of course things didn't go as planned. Between slower transportation than expected, excessive entertainment to be had using a variety of different means of transportation (but not requiring the excessive Trust In God displayed in this picture), construction sites, and ferry schedules that give plenty of opportunity to be flexible, we didn't make it to a tropical island resort.

We did end up on a random beach somewhere between Puerto Galera and Calapan, a wise choice mostly inspired by Liz's bladder.

There was a little community here, and people were sitting in the shade, enjoying the view. There were also some paddle catamarans here... and the coastline looked very pretty. And we were there...

After a very short negotiation, and plenty of advice and concern, we were handed a couple of paddles, and a plastic container (for bailing, of course), and we set off, headed straight to the point to the east of the little bay.

The boat was somewhat sluggish and hard to turn as expected, but once we had momentum it was quite efficient. certainly more stable than the panamanian Cayucos, and much easier to snorkel out of.

The water was quite clear (50ft visibility or so), so we could clearly see that all the coral was dead. But it was still nice, the coastline was pretty, we passed a rather strange structure supposedly owned by a german artist, and then landed on a beach in a little fishing community of a handful of houses.

People there were very friendly -- they welcomed us with curiosity and a smile, always a good combination. Soon we had some young coconuts in our hands. Very large ones -- not a variety i had seen before. I discovered that chicken anywhere on the planet love coconut -- I have an almost identical picture, taken in Panama.

The families here supported themselves by fishing -- there were quite a few boats, and later in the afternoon, some of them headed out to (I think) pick up their nets.

After snorkeling for a little while (some live coral, quite nice), we paddled back... And then found out that there were no more boats heading back to Luzon from Puerto Galera. As we were walking towards the road to catch a vehicle back to Calapan, we walked by the Oceano dive resort. I walked in and asked there about the schedule, just to be sure. As it turned out, another ferry was leaving Puerto Galera at 5.30pm, which worked out perfectly -- we were hoping for a nice dinner in Manila, before restaurants closed. That did not happen, but turned out to be completely unnecesary anyway: On the boat, we met a very nice and interesting young couple who gave a perfect demonstration of filipino hospitality by inviting us to have dinner at their house with them, after giving us a ride in their car, all the way to Manila! As it turned out, they owned the resort where we had asked for directions. Small world!

I'll choose a day like this any time over hanging out at a resort all day... we experienced more local culture in one day than many in a whole vacation, saw real life in a real place, and even made some wonderful new friends.

Taglish Illonganol... or: What do they speak in the Philippines?

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 15:36:18 -0500

Being pleasantly language-confused between german, english and spanish, I've been fascinated for a while with what happens when you throw together a bunch of people who are all fluent in more than one language... I find myself speaking germlish with german-speaking friends, spanglish in Panama, and struggling when trying to speak "normal" german ohne dabei akzidental englische oder spanische palabras zu verwenden.

And now -- here is a country of 88 million people, who all know some english, watch US TV, and grew up with a language that is a mix of spanish and a language that in turn is a mix of a number of languages in the same family as (I think) Malay. Tagalog/Filipino (the difference the seems to be unclear and is frequently overlooked) is wonderful mix of languages to begin with... but it doesn't stop there.

If someone asks you what time it is, it's perfectly normal to answer "cuatro y media" except that it's spelled "kuwatro ymedia" or something like that. Numbers, times, weekdays, and anything in the kitchen is spanish. "Siguro", according to lonely planet, means whatever spanish speakers apparently mean when they say "Seguro" (certainly) -- something like "perhaps" or "probably". How wonderfully pragmatic to translate it as what it *really* means in practice... Strangely, though, "media hora" does not mean "later, maybe, or next week or maybe not. leave me alone.", "ahora" does not mean "later today", and "ahorita" does not mean "in half an hour".

Apparently, the consensus is that which language you use is solely a matter of "convenience". Anything goes... and switching languages is not a sign of lack of proficiency in one language, but more a sign of sufficient proficiency in more than one language to pick whichever one is most suitable to express what you want to say. I do this all the time. But it feels odd and awkward, unless I do this with people I have know for a long time -- so it was refreshing and inspiring to be in a place where this is completely normal, on anything from advertisements to political speeches. Unfortunately, of course, half the time I had no idea what people were saying.

For now, i am limited to small observations. For example, take this advertisement. It looks like something you might see in Florida or LA... US-style advertising, with some spanish mixed in. Except that it's usually one or the other. And then, on closer inspection, one might wonder who came up with the combination of corn (mais) with ice (con hielo), why banana is spelled in english (not spanish), and most of all, what is "Buko Pandan"?

And who would mix all these things with what may be cow or soy milk, or maybe swiss-branded ice cream? Buko, it turns out, is young Coconut (pipa in Panama), and Pandan is green jello made using the extract from a leaf. Clearly, we are in Asia here. Grass Jelly, anyone? (though I guess it's a similar idea as "Waldmeister" flavor, which I still don't really know what it is). Now -- Bacolod is a town, "inasal" means something like "spit-roasted" -- that was relatively easy. My friend was also able to tell me what "Sarap gid" means: very delicious. However, it was less clear what language this is. After some thought, I was informed that it is half Ilonggo (a language spoken in the province of Ilo-Ilo), and half Tagalog ("Sarap").

On its placemats, the restaurant is trying to teach a few words of Ilonggo. For example, "delicious" means "Manamit", so "Manamit gid" means "really delicious". But until these teaching efforts bear fruit, it is of course much more convenient to use "sarap". One word at a time... for now, if you want to sound like you are from Ilo-Ilo, just say "gid" whever you have a chance to, just like you might say "ey" at the end of a sentence when you want to sound canadian, but fail miserably.

And by the way, the one dessert I tried (Mango with sticky rice in a coconut sauce) was indeed both sarap gid and especially manamit gid.

Almost as good as the purple Taro shakes. And the native tsokolate (ancient spelling here, probably due to some priest in Mexico) tasted exactly like the (slightly burned) chocolate Izmael's family makes in Panama.

The Peak at night, and another Lamma hike

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 15:29:21 -0500

On my first hike around Lamma Island, I noticed a trail that appeared to go to the top of a peak that promised a great view... That day I did not have time to go, but now, a couple of weeks later, we decided to go.

But let me back up... the day before, we had a few extra hours in Hong Kong, so Andy and I bought new cameras. What else would two geeks do in Hong Kong? And of course, they needed to be tried out the same day; none of us had been to the Peak, one of the main attractions in Hong Kong -- we missed the sunset, but Andy still managed to take some great pictures. I really don't like cities all that much, but Hong Kong is fascinating, just because of the sheer scale, and the contrasts...

We saw the nightly light show; somewhat disappointing, but still impressive.

Ok, back to the hike on Lamma Island. We had managed to pick one of the hottest days of the year for it, and there is absolutely no shade on the trail... the hike ended up being a lot more challenging than expected. But also more rewarding... We got a good workout, and the views were fantastic.

We walked from Yun Shue Wan to Sok Kwu Wan, then on towards Tung O, but instead of going down to the beach, we went right, past the red pavillion on the little pass that crosses the island's main ridge. At this point we were joined by another group of hikers, who first passed us, but soon slowed down. One of them, a guy from Finland, actually decided to lie down on the trail. At first I didn't realize that he was in bad shape... but when he asked me to get some water out of his backpack, it became obvious that he was in trouble. Clearly he was not used to the combination of heak and elevation gain... he finished his water, seemed to be dooing better, and then slowly headed down to the pavillion, while we continued to the top.

The hike took a whole lot longer than I expected, and I had a flight to Manila the same day in the evening. I was enjoying being outside and getting workout, so I lost track of the time; when we checked the ferry schedule later it became clear that I'd have to hurry back to make it in time. So I decided to run ahead... I had about 1 hour to catch the ferry, and was a 2 hour walk away from the ferry dock, and certainly needed to take a shower before getting on a plane. Fortunately, I knew the 2 hour estimate was the official trail hiking time for your average hiker in this area... and such times tend to be inflated proportionally to population density in the area.
So I started running. The first section was supposed to take 45 min, and it took me 14 minutes. That was quite encouraging... the trail from Sok Kwu Wan, however, was to steep for me to make it in less than one third of the official time, it took me about 30 min. And then -- well, the ferry schedule information was somewhat inaccurate, and I was so exhausted that I just wanted to lie down... (after drinking about half a gallon of water) I ended up changing the flight anyway. Oh well... it was worth it, for a wonderful day and a healthy workout.

Lamma Island

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 14:26:34 -0500

Lamma island -- after doing some reading online, this seemed to be the place to be in Hong Kong for crazy people like me who'd rather be closer to the beach and hiking trails than to the karaoke bar.

You know you are desperate to get away when the island that sounds like the most attractive destination features a huge power plant that looks like it came straight from a Japanese urban monster movie. But everything else sounded appealing, and, frankly, hard to believe. A place within 20 minutes of central Hong Kong that has no cars, just walking trails? Beaches where you can actually swim without transforming into the protagonist in above-mentioned type of movie? I had to check it out.

The walk from my hotel to the ferry dock was the usual Hong Kong experience of 3-dimensional urban planning, involving elevators passing through buildings, walkways across roads, and crossing a huge mall. Switters would have felt safe here -- my feet never touched the ground.

The boat connections are great, running every half hour or so. There are ferry piers in two villages on the island; I went to Sok Kwu Wan (40 min) and planned on coming back from Yung Shue Wan (20 min, more frequent service, until midnight!). You pay with the very practical octopus proximity card (which also works for the subway) -- only 2 US$.

The first thing I noticed as the ferry arrived in Sok Kwu Wan were the floating aquaculture setups built using 55 gallon drums; very similar to one of my crazy projects in Panama, but at a much larger scale. I'll have to come back with someone who speaks cantonese to find a way to check them out that does not involve swimming. The bay did *not* look clean.

The village is small and looks somewhat dilapidated... much more like a fishing village than I was expecting. I was delighted. So now what? There is a trail that goes to Yung Shue Wan, but that's the one everyone writes about, and as usual, I wanted to get off the beaten path.

I decided to follow the "family trail" in the other direction, going around the island clockwise, leading straight away from the main populated part of the village. They might as well have called it "rollerblading trail" -- although only about 5 feet wide, it is paved for all of its 15km or so. And they actually have vehicles to drive on it. This one looked like it was custom built with a 4kw generator.

The first few minutes of the trail featured an octopus-accepting vending machine, registered trees number T 20 through T 36, and registered slope 15NW. Apparently, even unregistered trees are more important than registered slopes, so they get to keep a little bit of soil around them. Nice.

And then I spotted an opportunity to step off the concrete... some barely visible stairs cut into the rock, leading straight up the hill. I have been in this situation so many times... the trail twigs (I wouldn't say branch here...) - you don't know where, or even if, it will go. There no sign, probably because no sane person would even try to go.

I almost always take the twigs (not just when hiking, but that's another story), and it's almost always worth it.

In this case, the trail actually improved, and so did the views. It led to the top of the highest hill in the area, probably about 300m high (20 min)

At the top, there was a group of workers sharpening their tools for chopping down the vegetation. We had a nice chat... they came from Kowloon to work here, and weren't sure why they were asked to chop everything down. They seemed to wonder, though, as they had clearly discussed this and came to the conclusion that it was to avoid fire hazards. Interesting...

After enjoying the view, I went back down on the other side of the hill, using the walkway that normal people use, passing more registered trees and slopes.

Between trees growing out of rounded faux rock concrete, high voltage equipment and walkway lights, and literally hundreds of skyscrapers in the background, I felt like I was in some kind of science fiction story, and about to find out that the registered trees were all fake.

This was clearly not the case -- by now I was having an incredibly enjoyable time in real nature, with stunning views and beautiful details to enjoy.

A few minutes later I passed through a little village with some nice old, and newer, buildings. It seemed a very unlikely location for a rural village, but there it was. People grew bananas and taro (the swamp variety, dasheen in Panama)

One of my objectives for the day was to go for a swim -- and the protected cove I saw from the hill seemed to be the perfect spot.

The way there featured many more atractions of twig nature, so it took me quite a while to get there. On the way, I found many lookout points, shrines, and... ruins of abandoned buildings. How very strange... 45 minutes from here you can rent apartments for USD $30,000 per month, and people put up with small sinks to save space. And nobody wants to live here? I don't get it. I'd love to find out what is going on with this...

Eventually, i did manage to reach the beach. There were a couple of buildings there, almost completely abandoned. I counted 3 residents who were about 250 years old total. I wished I could talk to them... and I hope someone does, and writes down their stories of what they have experienced while living in such a place.

I went for a refreshing swim... very nice, except for a few dead sardines floating in the water. The place was deserted enough to swim in my underwear without offending anyone, and there was even a public toilet with running water and a bucket to rinse off the salt and any traces of godzillitis-inducing substances. (Yes, I am spoiled.. the beach was truly beautiful, and the water was nice. I'm just trying to be funny. Ignore it).

And then.. kayaks. old ones, but they were certainly kayaks. Even a home-made outrigger canoe-type contraption (involving
PVC pipe as outrigger and traces of disintegrated duct tape). An incredibly tasteful water collection barrel (no sarcasm here). Peeling paint on "For Rent" signs. How very intriguing...

How can it be that on my first day exploring Hong Kong I manage to find the kind of place that I would have expected anywhere else, but not here. (Ok, maybe not in NY city either)? I love travelling, I really do.

And somehow I knew that the only other person in sight, who is swimming, would have a story to tell. Sure enough -- a very friendly lady from Scotland told me about a guy who ran a hostel there, who built furniture form driftwood, which he transported using his surfboard. The hostel is still there, and the 80 something year old local lady taking care of it (unless she is on her way carrying her starfruit harvest to town to sell it) is happy to rent out bunks or one of two small apartments, which supposedly even have an internet connection. Once again, I wished I knew some cantonese.

Did I mention I love travelling?

I decided not to attempt to hitch a ride with a Chinese family who had come for the day in a rented junk, and instead, head to the village to find a place to stay. I had seen enough to know I'd need to spend more time here.

So much more to explore... bunkers supposedly used to store kamikaze boats in WWII, and many miles of coastline, and, most of all, plenty of potential for more pleasant surprises.

Many moreincreasingly justifiably registered trees later, I started getting back into civilization...

On another, much more developed beach, I saw an interesting type of rescue kayak, but none of the three lifeguards protecting zero swimmers from the dangerous ocean knew how to roll and what a sprayskirt is for. Interesting.

Approaching the village, the practicalities of an island without cars became more and more entertaining... In an odd way I was reminded of Isla Bastimentos in Bocas. Concrete walkways, bicycles, houses on stilts, people bailing boats in ingenious ways, etc.

When I reached town, I had half an hour to secure a place to stay, with internet. A local real estate agent named Stephen was incredibly helpful, and I rented a small apartment for a few days that he manages for one of his clients.

What a day... a good reminder that it's ALWAYS worth to get out and explore!

Jade Rice

Sat, 06 May 2006 06:06:55 -0500

I have had the hardest time learning any Mandarin. I think the problem is that I can't remember sounds very well. I remember being very frustrated in high school that my french reacher expected us to memorize new vocabulary without writing it down. I know, the idea is to reduce mispronounciation that could result from writing things down... However, the first thing I do when I hear a new word is try to write it down, mentally. That, of course, does *not* work with your average Chinese language.

On the other hand, I am fascinated by the written language, and try to recognize and make sense of anything I see written. I remembered form my Taiwan trip that the characters for "Small Heart" mean "Careful" -- makes a lot of sense!

A stop at McDonalds provided much more entertainment along those lines. (And *why* did I go to McDonalds -- well, I love chocolate, and that's very hard to get in China. Believe it or not, McDonalds chocolate sauce on ice cream is the closest I have found... Very very sad and alarming)

Anyway -- for some reason, boiled and undoubtedly canned corn a la airline food seems be the latest with Chinese kids at McDonalds. With some local help, I managed to decipher McDonald's description of this precious miracle of western cuisine. The red characters above the cup in the pictures are made up of common components I had mostly seen before and mean:

"(tung, sweet) (rice plant, sun) (jade) (rice grain) (tree, not) (small)"

Of course, I was repeatedly told that I am not supposed to think of them that way, but somehow this makes it easier to remember for me. So -- tung, sweet is obviously sweet flavor. Rice plant, sun, I am told, means something like "good smell". Ok, I can see that, sort of. Jade rice grain means corn; a beautiful description, really, except that it makes me wonder what peas are called. The "tree not" =cup is proof that I am out of my mind trying to make these types of connections, and "small" of course refers to the serving size. It's nice to *not* be in supersize land.

Apologies to 1.3 billion people for butchering their beautiful language... but if nothing else, taking things apart like certainly helps explain the occasionally very entertaining translations to english that originate on this continent. ...

As tempting as the corn might have been, the oysters next door, barbecued and served right on the sidewalk in enormous quantities, were infinitely better, and went very well with the bean curd skin and cilantro salad.

I think I like it here..

Shipping a vehicle internationally...

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 05:43:52 -0500

After 5 years of roaming the roads of latin america, the Jeep is now on its way back to the US. It's held up amazingly well... The plan is to ship it from Ecuador or Peru to Panama.

From there. Robyn will drive it back to the US for me while I am in China. That is -- if it ever gets there. Shipping vehicles internationally has to be one of the most difficult industries to deal with these days... Quotes for containers varied from $1200 to $3000, and took an average of 10 emails to even obtain, involving literally dozens of people, and as many abbreviations. (vsl = vessel, for exmpl. :-)

CSAV offers ro/ro service, which does not require a container. It is not quite as safe as using a container, but at least in theory it should be much more economical... their pricing is a bit unclear at this point, though.

I will post a full report on how this went, for the benefit of future travellers...

Arrival in China

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 08:50:05 -0500

I still have a bunch of pictures from the Bolivia trip, but no time to put them up. So I'll skip them for now, so I can at least post something semi-up-to-date.

The plan for this trip was to simply be in one place for a while, and get lots of software work done. My friend Adeh from California has been living in China for several years now, and I have been wanting to visit him. When I heard that he was looking for a job right around the time that I realized I needed help, I decided that now was the time to go...

I arrived in Hong Kong on April 2nd, a sunday, so I had time to look around a little in the afternoon -- I would not get my Visa to enter China until monday. Hong Kong is as fascinating a place as I expected... and also as crowded as I expected. And as.. err.. efficient as I expected.

What surprised me was just *how* international this place is. I have seen a lot of places with cultural diversity, but this place beats them all. In Germany, if you take any 3 random people, you can be quite sure that at least two of them have a similar background. In California, it might take 20, but in HK.. 100?

For dinner I had some of the best turkish food I've had outside of Germany (yes, Turkey is on my list of places to visit...), figuring that I would have plenty of Chinese food in the coming months.
Another thing I liked was the combination of the old and the new... they really *do* use bamboo for scaffolding during construction, and groceries are delivered from the supermarket in woven baskets. Very nice.

On day two, I met up with Adeh, which was quite surreal. We had not seen each other in 5 years. We had some excellent indian food for lunch, in a converted apartment on the 5th floor of a random building. Adeh was introduced to the place by an indian ex-coworker.

After that we went to a computer market and picked up a Macbook for him and an LCD display for me. It was all very efficient, except for the part where I had to call me credit card company three times to convince them that I was indeed spending money in Hong Kong. I had never seen so much computer hardware in one place, and the salespeople were as knowledgeable as Fry's personnel is clueless.
The real adventure started when we arrived in Guangzhou, in China, and Adeh found out the hard way that his Visa had expired. Oops. So he ended up having to go back to HK, while I was stranded in a no-english-zone with an ATM card that didn't work (I had used it once in HK, and it stopped working... go figure). But the subway signs had Pinyin, and buying a ticket followed the same procedure as in OK, so I made it to the apartment ok, and everything worked out fine.

The next day we picked up some necessities such as whiteboards, live shrimp, and towels, and had more hardware delivered. Setting up a basic office was every bit as easy, if not easier, than in the bay area. And certainly cheaper...

The shrimps flopped around happily in their plastic bag while we picked up the whiteboards, until they made a very nice dinner.

A few days later we got an ex co-worker of Adeh's on board (very smart kid!), and right now we are interviewing software testers...

Some more random images:

From Rio Juramento / Salta to Tarija

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 17:26:53 -0500

After over a year, I finally picked up my gear at the Salta Rafting camp. Grillo had taken good care of it all, and gotten some good use from it. The overflow was even used in his first descent of the Rio Tarija (which I missed, unfortunately). The cataraft frame showed clear signs of not having been moved in a while... the white thing in the center of the picture is the seat.

After spending the morning playing with Grillo's new "canopy" (a zip line setup named after the canopy tours in Costa Rica, but across a canyon instead of from tree to tree), we packed up and drove to Salta for some coding and vehicle maintenance.

My favorite restaurant (Bosque la Cava) no longer exists - bummer! The place that is there now (Caseros & Cordoba) is decent as well, though. And it seems as though the previous owners passed on their collection of music to the new ones, since it is still just as cheesy and out of place, something that I fondly remembered about the place.

When we finally set off for Tarija, the following work had been done:

redid the doors (fantastic work, 900 block on San Luis)
new radio (Morrizio, on Mendoza) and 2 pairs of speakers
fixed alarm
fixed lights
fixed compressor
new cataraft seat
new floor for cataraft
waterproof bags to protect the computer and safe

The drive from Salta to Oran was uneventful, except for the pouring rain and us spending half an hour searching the jeep for peaches that we had bought and that should *not* stay with the 2 week supply of canned and dry food we picked up for river trips.

As we continued the next day, the rain stopped soon, and it was a nice drive up the Rio Bermejo gorge. The road is now paved all the way to Tarija, so it only takes about 3.5 hours. Still plenty of "geological instability" as the signs call it -- mud and rocks the size of my head, right on the road.

Robyn had some highly untable cream cheese, and we later had an incredibly cheap but good lunch at the junction to the road to Los Toldos (there is also a place to stay there that looks decent for its location). Wonderful people there... they were out of lettuce for salad, and so happily threw our leftover veggies into the salad.

Some day I want to paddle the Bermejo -- looks like it would be fun.

The view from the bridge over the Rio Tarija made me jealous of Grillo's trip down this river a few months ago. He put in right here and spent 10 days on the river, paddling from the desert into rainforest, complete with monkeys etc.
It was nice to see the Tarija valley green -- last time I was here was in the dry season. There are quite a few tiny vineyards here; surprising in this kind of terrain.

In Tarija, the people at the Hotel Costanera actually recognized me, after 1.5 years. Nice to be back.

Driving from Buenos Aires to Salta

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 06:44:27 -0500

The road trip from Buenos Aires to Salta started out fabulously with an attempt by two friendly Buenos Aires police officers to shake us down for some cash. They went through all the moves with textbook precision. Stern look, ask for papers, mention of which infraction they picked, matter-of-fact explanation of where we would get to pay the fine to be able to pick up the car again after they have it impounded. It was all there... the thoughtful look when delaying the call to headquarters and pulling out the form to report the infraction, etc. Then came the asking look, at which I felt obliged to do my part and ask if there might not be an easier solution... I promised to have a new license plate made right away, and come back to show it to them... That I'd really rather not be delayed a whole day because I have to visit my lawyer friend tonight... etc. This is where the police officer usually starts talking about his family that he needed to support -- and, yes, of course. 2 kids. Any contributions would be completely voluntary, he said. I briefly considered giving him something, but then had to agree with Robyn that there is no need to encourage corruption, so I just thanked him for being nice to tourists. We spent the night at Herman and Cande's house.

On day two, a gas station attendant put diesel into the gas tank while I was busy spacing out, and we spend a fun half hour with the gas station mechanics to empty the tank again. It contained 75l of diesel and 20l of gas, which were dumped back into the station's diesel tank. Don't buy any diesel there in the next few days.

During the next couple days, the crappy fuel line that a shop in Salta had put on a year before disintegrated in 3 steps, requiring 3 stops fixing it with increasingly durable fuel lines.

We did not make it Cordoba that day, and stayed in Oliva, a small town 100km before.
City of my dreams. I wish I could move there, but I forgot where it was. Somewhere between Cordoba and Tucuman, is my best guess.
Night two was spent in downtown Tucuman, city of bad drivers, abundant pharmacies, and lots of history. Seriously, the place seems to have more pharmacies than internet places, which is remarkable in Argentina. Google confirms that pharmacies are 2.5 more important in Tucuman than they are in the city of Rosario:

City	Hits( farmacia)	Hits( restaurante)	Pharmacies / Restaurant Ratio
Rosario	327,000	791,000	.413
Tucuman	97,000	93,300	1.04

However, there are also restaurants in Tucuman, and we had a nice dinner (at 10pm -- we were the first food customers of the day... life doesn't start until 10.30pm)

From Tucuman we drove directly to the Juramento river to my friend Grillo's rafting base. The area has an annual butterfly infestation -- the pictures don't do it justice, not even when you enlarge it. It was like driving through a snowstorm of butterflies.

Cow Wrestling in Las Delicias

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 16:09:18 -0500

I didn't take my camera. I should have known better. Always take the camera.

As I arrived on the beach on the Sixaola river to cross back to Chase from Las Delicias Arriba/Los Almacenes, there was a very friendly very drunk hanging out with a more sober, but equally friendly guy. The Drunk Cow Wrestler, or DCW as I shall call him, was about 2/3 through a bottle of Seco (the standard panamanian booze) and offered me some of his "vino de cana".

I declined, and soon after a couple of people showed up with a cow on two ropes. I then got to watch their attempts to make the cow swim across the river. This is where the camera would have been handy. Particularly when DCW got involved. They used a combination of pulling, scaring, and holding the cow to get it towards the water, until it lost its balance and had to swim. It was easy from there.. until they got to the other side, tried to load the animal into a truck, and I got my camera back.

This is where DCW (red shirt) got a chance to show his skills.

It was a miracle that he didn't get hurt. He stuck his hand in various places the I would think would be somewhat sensitive, and at one point, probably for effect, I think he actually kissed the animal. Bizarre.

And I am thinking... how inefficient is this. One cow. 3 guys, a boat, and a truck. To make $300 or so.

As I left, the cow still did not cooperate, even though (or, more likely, because) they cut its ear "so that it would bleed and be nicer". Yeah, right.