April 30th, 2006
Apr. 30th, 2006
12:52 PM
I know I'm not really leaving because life here doesn't have the decency to draw to a close. It won't even stick to the status quo; it keeps moving forward, getting better.

This week I learned 3 new kanjis and how to say "sperm" and "when do you close" in Japanese.

I've started hanging out with new people.

Work is the same as it's always been: I still get in trouble if I wear the wrong shoes, and I still have to get other people in trouble if they do the same. Due dates are still faithfully observed, lessons taught as if the Silk Road is not a prominent part of my future. The day after my resignation day, I'll put on my blazer and go to work and nobody will say anything because this life is real and the ticket to China is not.

May 7th, 2006
Small Triumph
May. 7th, 2006 at 8:13 AM
Today I feel like I am flying. In 23 days, I will be in Beijing and right now, everything I am worried about feels far away. My body is light and so is my mind.

I bought a new backpack on the way home today. It was one of my small Tokyo triumphs. I tried to do it 2 weeks ago. I listened carefully to the clerks' conversations with the other customers -- where are you going? for how long? this is our biggest bag, but it's too big for you -- and knew that I could manage it in Japanese. But no one would help me. I chose my own bag from the rack, tried to adjust the straps myself, asked a question in poor but understandable Japanese. The clerk answered as briefly as he could, then went away. I asked more questions and after each mono-syllabic answer, he vanished back to the cash register even when no other customers were there. But when a Japanese person asked for help, the answers were long and detailed. Whole conversations ensued. I felt small and stupid and foreign, so I left and quite nearly cried.

But I went back today. I chose several bags from the shelves, studied the diagrams on the brochures and adjusted the straps correctly this time. While clerks spoke to the Japanese customers, I hoisted bags off the pegs far above my head. In the end I found one that I liked with an easily adjustable harness that gives me lots of room to wiggle my shoulders. It is top-loading, but I think I can survive this. It is not the worst inconvenience I will confront in China.
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May. 7th, 2006 at 8:44 AM
This trip began when I read Red Dust by Ma Jian, a persecuted photographer who impulsively bought a train ticket and rode as far as he could. His trip took him to Urumqi, the furthest end of the train line from Beijing and the city furthest in the world from the ocean. From him, I learned about Uighurs, a group of Chinese-Arab Muslims I'd never known existed. I thought I would like to visit them. The next Christmas, my sister bought me River Town by Peter Hessler, a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in China. He too rode the train to the end of line at Urumqi and my desire to visit the Uighurs grew a little more. Somewhere, between finishing college and going to South America and moving back to New York, I learned more about the Silk Road and the minorities scattered along it in northern China. Because I believe you should daydream as much as possible and make plans for living them out, it wasn't long before I bought a used copy of the Let's Go Guide to China. Then, still not knowing when I would go, I drew up an itinerary and made a budget.

The most alluring section of the guidebook was less than a page long. It said BORDER CROSSING TO KYRGYZSTAN. I did not know what was in Kyrgyzstan, but my eyes had always been drawn to it when I looked at the map I'd pinned above my bed junior year of college. I thought there wouldn't be many times in my life when I'd be close to Kyrgyzstan, so I added it to my itinerary. And then it didn't take long to notice that Kyrygzstan was right next to Uzbekistan and I'd always wanted to go to there. The truth was, I didn't know what was there either, but I felt the pull of cities with names like Tashkent and Samarkand. My itinerary got a little longer. I ordered the Lonely Planet Guide to Central Asia before I departed for Japan. I thought I might go after a year of teaching.

Two problems remained: I did not want to go alone and it cost $2000 to fly home from Uzbekistan. The first one seemed nearly insurmountable. I thought the appeal of forgotten former Soviet Republics was obvious, but others did not. And who did I trust to be my companion for months of travel in places where we might not meet a single other foreigner? Then I met K. K. was planning to go to Africa when her contract finished, but I lent her my guide to Central Asia and spoke about my trip as often as I could. It wasn't long before I had a traveling companion.

Now only the second problem remained. While perusing the guidebook section of Tower Books one night, I discovered beautiful pictures of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. I could cross into Turkey from any of those countries and a ticket home from Istanbul was only $800. We decided to extend our itinerary one more time to cover the whole of the Silk Road and reach a more inexpensive port of departure. Still, problems remained. The only way from Uzbekistan to Azerbaijan was to get a transit visa through Iran or to go to Kazakhstan and take the ferry with oil pipeline workers. We decided these adventures were simply not for us.

I went home and stared at the new map I'd pinned on my wall. I realized it wouldn't be so hard to go to Kazakhstan from Uzbekistan and then to return to China and catch a flight home. I didn't know what was in Kazakhstan and still really don't -- maybe just endless fields, long train rides and the pleasure of being able to tell people I've been there. But now I know that Kyrgyzstan is still home to nomadic farmers who will let foreigners stay in their yurts and meet their herds for $5/night. And Uzbekistan was once the crown jewel of the Silk Road before it lapsed into centuries of obscurity. Its greatest architectural gems remained untouched. In China, there will be a hike a long the great wall, trips to the Tibetan villages of Sichuan and a month exploring the old capitals of the Silk Road and the villages in between.

The lesson I've already learned from this trip: daydreaming pays.

May 8th, 2006
May. 8th, 2006
11:45 PM
12 working days left.

Little tasks ticked off every day. Transferred the money to pay the balance on my plane ticket today. Typhoid shot is the only big expenditure left now.

Travel makes me feel in charge. I savor all my little pieces of knowledge, like how it's worth it to go to 5 stores to find hard plastic flip flops to wear in the shower because the rubber ones get squelchy and full of water.

I used to be able to make lists of fears before every trip. They were the kinds of fears that gave me nightmares and kept me from sleeping at night. Now I have only a list of moderate concerns:

1. Running out of time in China
2. Obtaining Kazakh visa
3. Difficulty obtaining Kazakh visa causing me to run out of time in China or Uzbekistan
4. Carrying large wads of cash (although pinguhateseng had a nice suggestion for doing that safely).
5. Theft of camera and/or portable hard drive (loss of photos is just devastating)
6. Icky toilets
7. Food poisoning
8. Combination of icky toilets and food poisoning
9. Terrifying public transportation
10. That returning to Japan next January will prove more difficult than previously anticipated
(I decided I should come back here because I want to make money and kill time while my Peace Corps application gets processed).

If you've friended me recently (say, in the last 6 months) feel free to introduce yourself. I probably can't add everyone back because I'm hoping to keep my flist small and perusaable while I travel, but everybody's welcome here! :)

May 11th, 2006
20 days left
May. 11th, 2006 at 11:11 PM
Today K. and I made our third -- and first successful -- trip to the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo. The first time we tried, we couldn't find it; the second time, we took a taxi and discovered we had given less than a block away...but it was closed for a public holiday. Today we navigated a chaotic building labeled only in Chinese, fought twice for places in a disorderly queue and finally, after twice being sent away for lacking paperwork, submitted our applications for a Chinese visa. We go back to collect them on May 16.

Sometimes thinking about this trip gives me a strange tight sensation in my chest, like all the freedom and joy I feel can't be contained within my body. Other times I spend hours in contemplation of the upcoming culture shock.

China probably does not have vending machines on every corner or a wide selection of hydrating Gatorade-like sports drinks. Nobody will line up in rows of 3 at the exact spot where the train doors open and I will have to fight for my place in every "line" I need to stand in. People will hit me without saying excuse me, clerks will take a long time doing things and nobody will think it's impolite to stare. Heated toilet will become so dim and distant a memory that I will think them part of my imagination. I might meet a traveler from Japan who will tell me about bidets and automatic butt-powdering functions and I will call him a liar.

Though I cannot imagine it now, I probably will not rise every morning and put on black eyeliner. I'll learn not to feel naked without big hoopy earrings dangling from my ears. High heeled shoes will not touch my feet for 4 and a half months. "Suitable for a conservative office environment" will no longer be the dominating feature of my wardrobe. I'll never have to fidget in shirts that button too tightly at the wrists and collar. Wearing wrinkled clothes will not be an abomination and I might even stop missing the smell of Bounce dryer sheets.

I can catalogue all the things I won't see or do or have, but what I can't imagine is what's waiting on the other side. My picture of 2:55 p.m., June 1, 2006 -- the exact moment I am scheduled to touch down in Beijing -- is blank. All I can see is a blinding white light at the entrance to an alien land.

May 14th, 2006
Pleasure
May. 14th, 2006 at 4:35 AM
A long time ago, outtajo tagged me to list 10 things that make me happy. Here's the list:

1. The smell of American laundry detergent. I don't care what you say. It's not weird to stand in front of the washing machine sniffing the bottle deeply.

2. Cold, fizzy Coke with no ice.

3. Perverted English misunderstandings, like the student who got confused and asked me "how long is your bush?" What he meant to say was "how tall is President Bush?"

4. That the hairstylist on my street puts its lovebirds' cage outside their shop so I can walk past colorful birds on my way to the train station every day.

5. Knowing that there is no place in Tokyo that will refuse to let you use their toilet.

6. Marks on the platform telling you exactly where the doors will open when the train comes.

7. The way clerks fan out your money like a blackjack dealer if they're giving you change for big bills.

8. Curling up with my soft banana pillow that is exactly the length of my torso.

9. Big hoop earrings. Especially vintage ones.

10. Robert Sean Leonard, aka Dr. Wilson on House M.D.

11. Heated toilet seats

12. Rehydrating sports drinks available from vending machines on every corner.

13. The taco stand I found in Shinjuku with homemade tortillas and cheese sauce.

14. Toe socks!

15. Having awesome travel plans.

That was easy. I think I could write 100, but I'm going to bed.

May 18th, 2006
Vendors
May. 18th, 2006 at 2:28 AM
Overly persistent street vendors are the great annoyance of traveling in the developing world. My first experience with them was in Egypt, which I was visiting on a long weekend from study abroad in Prague. We quickly learned that people left us alone if we only spoke Czech, except for the 3 times when it turned out the vendor spoke Czech too.

The technique needed more refining, so by the time I got to Morocco, I had learned to shout Czech non-sense: seven! toilet! death! (which, if you were wondering, is sedm! zachod! SMRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!!!) I found this tactic universally successful in repelling the unwanted attention of street merchants.

Okay, except for 1 of them. First he wanted to be my guide, then my boyfriend, then my drug dealer. He followed me in circles, immune to Czech nonsense ("ah, miss is from Slovenia, but she speaks English. I know she does!"), threats of the police ("FUCK THE POLICE! FUCK THE POLICE!" punctuated by jumping up and down) and my joining up with a group of guys I'd met at the hostel a couple nights before. Frustration boiled over and I turned to face him, drew myself up to my full 5 feet and 2 inches, stepped into his space and said "Fuck. Off." I walked away and he stood in the dust behind me calling me a racist whore.

I am thinking of meowing at the street vendors in China. I'd just like to know what they'd do.
12 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink What do you think I look like?
May. 18th, 2006 at 11:06 PM
I've had this pathological fear of posting photos of myself in my journal during my employment at Nova. I can't really account for it. But anyway, my tenure as a Nova teacher is just 3 days shy of being over, so come next Tuesday, I've decided I am willing to post a photo of myself.

Last month I posted a locked photo and got 2 comments saying "that's just what I expected you to look like!" and one that said "that is not what I expected you to look like!"

Comment here and tell me how you think I look.

May 21st, 2006
To the China portion of my friendslist...
May. 21st, 2006 at 12:43 AM
Help me out here! I'm getting very conflicting information about the cost of travel in China. I'm okay with prices for long-distance train travel, but day-to-day budgeting is being hard.

How much do you spend for a night's accomodation when you're out and about in China? And what standard of accomodation do you get for that? People are telling me that I "need" to spend $10-20/night, but my trusty Let's Go lists several hostels with dorms in the $5 range. Are they saying this because staying in dorms = having dirty shared bathrooms? Because I was under the impression that's what I'd be dealing with in China no matter where I stayed. Or should I expect that Chinese hotel owners are simply not going to allow me to stay in the dorms? And if that's the case, why has my guidebook so frequently listed this as an option?

And how much for a meal? Again, people are telling me that I "need" to budget $5 each, but I could eat for less than that in Chinatown in NYC. I can read enough to figure out what sort of animal I'm eating, so it's not a question of requiring restaurants with English menus. If an enormous bowl of dumpling soup costs $5 from the street stand in Chinatown here, how does it cost the same in China? And if I happen to think that steamed meat buns are delicious and that eating while people-watching in the town square is fun, can't I survive on a couple dollars' worth of food?

May 22nd, 2006
Inching towards departure
May. 22nd, 2006 at 12:55 AM
Today's progress:

3 bags of garbage disposed of
1 box of domestic goods assembled for giving away
1 massive roach killed with toilet spray (no freaking out)
1 final cup of apple tea partaken at favorite Turkish restaurant
1 bag of books sold at used book store
1 overnight Great Wall sleepover researched
1 youth hostel booked for stay in Beijing

The fourth task was the most worrisome. It seems a load 10 books is sufficient to give me a backache and render me short of breath and that doesn't bode well for the next 4 months of schlepping my worldly belongings around on my back.

The fifth was the most inspiring because staying in a Chinese family's home along a forgotten stretch of the Great Wall sounds like one of those travel stories I will tell over and over again, but it's worrisome too. I can't make the final booking till I arrive in Beijing and what if I spend the next 10 days looking forward to it and then I can't do it? One of the hardest things to remember before a trip is that when you're traveling, it never really is exactly like your daydreams, but if you don't do things, there's usually a reason and your memories come out brilliant anyway. I told myself this over and over again as I typed out my itinerary for my father and worried that I wouldn't get to do some of the things on the list.

The sixth was the most satisfying (though the third was a close tie -- I think fearlessness in the face of roaches is a sign of true strenght of character). K. and I selected the Red Lantern Hostel, a restored nobleman's house in hutongs. The photos in my guidebook are evocative -- narrow and winding streets, cluttered courtyards, mom and pop noodle shops just outside Tianamen Square. We'll share our room with 4 other travelers and our toilet with who knows how many more, but it's compromises like this that make our trip affordable. The $6.50/night we'll spend here will probably be the most we'll pay for accomodation anywhere in China.

10 days till departure.

May 23rd, 2006
Accomplishments
May. 23rd, 2006 at 1:24 AM
Why yes, I will be posting an entry like this every day until my departure! You can look forward to 8 more after this.

Today I:

*collected a Chinese visa
*purchased new glasses
*worked my second-to-last day of work
*teared up a little when I said goodbye to one of my favorite students and he gave me a tiny, random keychain kaleidoscope

Occasionally 1 day feels like 2, usually when the way I feel at the beginning is so different from the end. I feel like I've traveled a long way today.

I left the Chinese embassy feeling tingly because hooray! for obtaining the last thing I needed to start the trip and embittered because boo! for being charged the "American price" for the visa that was $30 higher than the Australian price and $25 more than I would have paid for the same visa at home.

I left the glasses place feeling pissed off and not all regretful of my imminent departure, even though I'm sure part of the problem was mine. Glasses here are pretty dirt cheap (the pair I bought was $80 for frames + thin lenses), so I wanted to buy a new pair before I left. The last time was very very easy, but I should have known that was no guarantee of success. "Many confusing Japanese things," the clerk said. "I don't get it," I responded. Miming ensued and I gathered I was to remove my contact lenses. Yay! I thought. It is like last time, when I told them my contact perscription and they made new glasses from it. I proceeded but then the clerk said many, many more incomprehensible things. K. helped and finally deduced that they were refusing to give me new glasses without an exam. I should mention that this was not the eye doctor, but more like Gap for glasses. I could dig it if a medical office required a medical exam before dispensing a perscription product, but that's not what this place was. And anyway, my eye doctor at home was totally willing to give me new glasses from my contact perscription.

This whole exam thing was a bit of a blow because I get headaches when my glasses and contacts are not the same, so K. graciously agreed to discuss it more. When her argument was unfruitful, I decided that submitting to the exam was better than surrendering the awesome sexy librarian glasses I had selected. I could see right away that taking eye exams in a language you don't speak was bad. It was not the same as the test at home and when I said "I don't understand" the clerk thought I meant "I can't see it." The pictures kept getting bigger and bigger until I was about to be perscribed glasses fit for a 97-year-old with cataracts. "Contacts glasses same okay," I pleaded. The clerk continued relentlessly with the examination, providing instructional diagrams that made no sense. Possibly because I couldn't see them without my contacts in. I should admit that my personality was probably not sparkling at this point. Being overcharged for visas, facing stressful communication situations and being unable to obtain a pleasing product I desperately desire does not bring out my best character traits. And seriously, is it so hard to believe that I know if I can see?

I clasped my hands in front of me and bowed my head. "Contact glasses same please honorable sir," I said, busting out the nicest Japanese I know (which, clearly, is not all that nice). Honorable sir said many complicated things which boiled down to "your attempt to contravene the established order will be thwarted at every turn."

Okay, so he probably tried to explain the test some more and apologized for forcing me to take it. The extra diagrams he drew support this theory. Still, my determination had not wavered -- I would have the sexy librarian glasses of my dreams and they would not contain whatever weird perscription resulted from the test I could not understand. I bowed my head and clasped my hands again, which probably looked ridiculous but I don't know how else to be polite. "I sorry. I not understand test. Glasses contacts same please please," I said. This scene repeated 3 times before I was allowed to walk around the store with a trial pair of glasses to prove I would not fall down or bump into walls. This is the hardest I have ever worked to buy something I did not strictly need.

I ended up having a chocolate ice cream shake for lunch (I deserved it!) and coming to work in a pissy mood. The day slid by so quickly though, with so many students saying nice things and after work I went to dinner with CB. Let me just say, there is no better way to end a day than with an honest conversation about friendship, connecting with people and things that really matter. It is hard to believe I started the day feeling so burned out and frustrated.
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Prayer Card
May. 24th, 2006 at 9:54 AM

Prayer Card
Originally uploaded by MissHolidayGolightly. The prayer cards at Meiji Jingu have been one of my favorite things about Japan ever since I saw them on my first weekend here. A donation to the shrine gets you a piece of wood and a marker to write down your best wishes for the world. When the display of cards fills up, a priest burns them to send your prayers to heaven.

This one says "I wish to contine my search to truly understand as much of this world and its people as possible within my short life. I wish for social progress -- for people to move together toward a world in which general welfare is better for all of us. Wish for my lie to be full of love, peace, passion, pain and truth. I wish for my country to no longer be run by right wing extremists."

My butt hurts
May. 24th, 2006 at 10:21 PM
Bad days are when you wake up on the floor with your pants around your knees, a pain in your backside and no idea where you are.

Let's review the day's accomplishments:
1. returned borrowed books and said good-bye to John
2. got vaccinations for Hepatitis A and typhoid
3. purchased travel insurance online

Who can guess which led to the above situation?


I've never had a problem with needles or injections before, so I am not nervous about going to get my travel shots. The typhoid one stings and burns, but I survive.

"Now I need your bottom," the nurse says and I oblige. "The needle is big and this will hurt, so I will do it slowly," she says. I think there is a flaw in this logic somewhere but instead of saying "just get it over with," I say "I feel dizzy." I think my speech sounds a bit slurred. Then the inside of my head feels like it's getting sucked down a drain.

The next thing I think is where are my pants? I can understand only one thing in the world: my pants are gone. But why? My brain can think of only one reason: I have been having SEX! But when? And with whom?

I open my eyes to a vaulted ceiling I have never seen before. I don't know where I am, I think, and I am not wearing pants.

Faces appear over mine, gradually expanding as if they're coming out of the drain instead of being sucked in. One of them is about 80 years old and the other one has blunt-cut bangs and orange lipstick. I had sex with YOU?! I think. Something is not right.

"Do you have a history of epilepsy?" orange lipstick asks.

I had a seizure, I think. Now my pants do not seem important.

"Do you have a history of epilepsy?" the big orange lips ask again. They seem agitated.

"No," I say. "Did I have a seizure?"

"No," she says. "You just fell over."

In that case, I think pants are important again. "I want my pants," I say and discover them around my knees. I like pants!

It turns out the injection is not finished, but they make me lie down for awhile and drink water. Then the doctor takes over and she has the sense to do it fast.

I suffered the following damage:
1. various bruises
2. scrape on ankle
3. diminished sense of bad ass-itude.

On the way home, it occurs to me how strange it was that they asked me NO questions about my medical history or allergies before giving me injections. I had never been to that clinic before and all they asked was my name and address. What kind of country is this where I can't have glasses without an exam but I can wander into medical establishments and demand medicine, no questions asked?

May 25th, 2006
A photo a day until I leave
May. 25th, 2006 at 12:36 PM

Passed out at Freshness Burger
Originally uploaded by MissHolidayGolightly. People sleep everywhere in Tokyo and I don't know if it's a commentary on how exhausted people are or how safe the city is. It's not just dozing either -- it's dead asleep, occasionally with drool. This guy was studying and then he completely passed out with his laptop unguarded beside him. If that had been me in NYC, I'm sure that (a) someone would have absconded with all my worldly possessions (b) the waitress would have asked me to leave.

May 26th, 2006
Today's accomplishment + Peace Corps update
May. 26th, 2006 at 2:30 AM
Way back in March, I got a PC recruiter and a big packet o'forms to fill out. This included 2 official FBI fingerprint cards to be completed by the local authorities. Between my two months of 6-day work weeks and my dread of actually doing it, I put it off until today.

Not surprisingly, my Japanese was not up to the task. I mimed wanting fingerprints at the Lost and Found desk, thinking they might tell me where to go, but instead they thought I was a crime victim.
Then they decided I was an ultra-cooperative criminal turning herself in and bringing her own fingerprinting supplies. Finally, they found an English speaking officer from the traffic control division who set the story straight. He put me in an interrogation room to wait while he fetched the ink, but another officer got confused and tried to interrogate me (in Japanese). I thought this whole experience was funny, but when Officer English returned, he dragged my interrogator out in the hall to dress him down and then made him come back to apologize to me.

The sad thing is, I'm pretty sure the fingerprints are not usable. The officer was really, really reluctant to touch me and kept miming how to do it on my own. I think they were supposed to press them onto the card for me. Anyway, they look all blurry but I'll send them in and see what the FBI thinks.

If they really are unusable, my application process will probably be very delayed. I figured I could arrange a telephone interview from China pretty easily, but I'm definitely not wandering into their Public Security Bureau and asking for fingerprinting. And no fingerprints = no interview. That means I won't be able to really get started until I get home in October. I guess I'll just try to think of it as more time to spend with friends in Japan and save money for fabulous travel during/after my service.

I already feel like the most devoted applicant ever! How many other people have been suspected of a crime and interrogated during their application process?!

And hello to the new people from peacecorpsfolks! Sorry you had to endure this story twice :)

May 28th, 2006
Last weekend in Tokyo
May. 28th, 2006 at 2:40 AM
It's 2:30 a.m. and I've just finished throwing out 5 bags of garbage. Today felt like the turning point between "I have plenty of time to get this done" to "oh my god how the hell am I going to get all of this done?" Kristy is coming over tomorrow to help me make my final packing decisions re: trip clothing. Tuesday is the official cleaning my apartment day, Wednesday is checking out of my apartment day, and Thursday is flying out day. That leaves Monday to get to the dentist, buy the last of my travel supplies, take boxes to the post office, and fix the holes I made in my ceiling when I decided I *had* to hang bamboo curtains over my loft. Somewhere in there I should make sure everything fits into my backpack.

I feel like I'm hemorhaging money right now. I keep frittering it away in $30 increments -- $30 to the landlord to close out my utilities for me, $30 for tickets on the airport train, $30 every time I go to a good-bye dinner with friends. And I still have to pay to ship things home, which means that I have to find boxes to ship it in...

Oh, and I need to find time to take my towels and blankets and pots and pans to my friend's apartment. The list keeps getting longer!

Of course, none of this stopped me from wasting 5 hours on the internet tonight!

But I wanted one last Tokyo weekend and I got it. Last night I had one last Friday night at my regular Friday bar with my regular Friday boys. Andy graciously let me sleep over and fed me cheese toast and we geeked out to re-runs of Deep Space 9.

Today I said good-bye to plastickitty, whom I met on livejournal. She is an enthusiastic, energetic person who always inspires me to see the best in Japan. We had an American lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express and then she treated me to dessert at this fancy cafe I'd always been too scared to visit. The chocolate cake had icing so shiny that I could see my reflection in it. It was absolutely decadent! I did feel the slightest bit uncultured though because I had no idea what to do with the unsqueezable, rind-less slice of lemon they gave me for my tea I insisted on photographing my food.

Afterward, we walked to Shibuya and stumbled across one of those strange vintage stores that seems to symbolize Tokyo. Its name was Nude Trump, which had been pared down to Ude Rump on the mailbox just inside the door. We climbed a dusty lineloleum staircase in a decaying office building and then, as we approached the store, the steps turned to marble and crystal chandaliers hung from the ceiling. Inside, we found vintage Playboy magazines, used clothes, halloween masks stretched over 1970s-era light fixtures and old marching band hats retailing for up to $280. It was hard for me not to photograph the few other customers inside, like the guy with bellbottom jeans and a ponytail down to his waist.

My final task of the day was to arrange the cancellation of my cellphone. It was the first thing that made me feel really sad about leaving Japan. I've had so much fun at all my goodbye lunches and dinners that I've forgotten to feel sorry about going, but cutting off my phone drove home the fact that for the next six months, some of my favorite people in the world will be out of the reach of the casual every day conversations I take for granted. *sniffle*

My day in pictures:

May 29th, 2006
Unexpected difficulties
May. 29th, 2006 at 3:28 AM
When you live in a foreign land, even cleaning your apartment is an adventure!

Bad news: How am I supposed to select the appropriate cleaner when I am unable to read Japanese words for things like "mold and mildew remover" and "non-abrasive cleanser appropriate for all surfaces?" I've been buying things with lots of warning labels on the back and hoping that none of them will eat holes in the floor.

Good news: I found something to fix the holes in my ceiling. It was labeled in English with big blue letters that said CRACK AND HOLE FILLER. Tell me I am not the only one who thinks this is funny.

Is it dangerous in some way to clean the inside of your microwave with bleach? Like, could bleach fumes and radiation combine in a bad, unexpected way that caused sparks, explosions or toxic gas? Because I still remember the day in 5th grade when we learned that bleach + ammonia = death. Why am I 24 and without this essential household knowledge?

I swear, if you just hang on for 4 more days, this blog will be interesting again. If I don't die in a household chemical-related accident before I get to Beijing.

May 31st, 2006
Here I go
May. 31st, 2006 at 6:43 PM
Today I checked out of my apartment and got back my full deposit and suddenly, as I walked out of the real estate agent's office with nothing but my backpack, this trip felt real. Two years of dreaming about to come true tomorrow.

Still, I tried to take a nap in the internet cafe and every time I closed my eyes, I thought "I've forgotten to wipe down the shelves" or "what will I do with all that stuff sitting on the table?" It is hard to believe that I am free -- free of having any more than I can carry on my back, free of worrying what other people think, free of being gentle kindness to frustrating students, free of trying to be friendly and approachable and yet a strict enforcer of Nova rules. Right now, my life belongs to nobody but me.

You can't see it, but I am pausing and savoring that thought.

My life is only mine.

As of this moment, nobody has any claim to me but me.

I don't have deadlines.

I don't have a dress code.

I don't have to be anywhere unless I want to be.

I can lie in bed and stare at the ceiling all day if I want to. In fact, I could do that for 4 months and 15 days if the fancy struck me.

Because I am free.

Here I go.
7 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Practical Details
May. 31st, 2006 at 6:55 PM
My flight leaves at 2:55 p.m. tomorrow. I will be reachable by cell phone until that time.

I am confident of having internet access almost everywhere I go in China and in major cities throughout the trip. Updates will be posted here about once a week, possibly more if internet is cheap and I have the writing bug (I often do). This may change in Kyrgyzstan as K. and I are planning extensive horse trekking and yurt stays. As per the promise I made to my parents, updates will include travel plans for the next week.

I *heart* comments and hope you will still send them even though I will probably be very, very bad at answering them.

Photo uploading is uncertain. My flickr page will be updated if I can, but slow internet speeds may prevent that.

Those of you who have my gmail address, I may be reachable on gmail messenger. Previous travel experience indicates that finding AIM in internet cafes is unlikely.

Plans for the immediate future:
Beijing & The Great Wall 　－ staying till we have a Kyrgyz and a Kazakh visa. This may take up to 10 days. Cross your fingers for it to take less.
Luoyang - Caves full of giant Buddha statues - likely a 2-3 day stop.
Chongqing - K. is arranging a cruise to the 3 Gorges; I am chilling out with chinkerfly and checking out an average Chinese city.

Next up:
Chengdu - hello cubestorm! In my mind, Chengdu is a place where we're going to eat a lot, but I'm not sure why I think that.
Songpan - jump off point for horse treks into the countryside populated by Tibetan villagers. Excursions to smaller villages and Tibetan lamasery if time permits.

Nope. Still doesn't feel real.

June 2nd, 2006
Beijing Day 1
Jun. 2nd, 2006 at 9:08 PM
Today I feel free, and underneath that, a little dislocated. It's strange not to work every day and stranger to accumulate so many new thoughts and be so far from the people I usually share them with.

K. and I started our visa chase this morning. Finding the Kyrgyz Embassy took over 3 hours of walking with one guilty KFC break and 2 sit-on-the-sidewalk chug-lots-of-water breaks. We thought the people at the Tourist Office might be helpful, but the first girl walked away when I said hello and the second shoved the map back in my face saying "no no no no no." At the next counter, the lady said "well, there are a lot of embassies over that way..." and shooed us out of the office. Finally we started cornering security guards inside their little kiosks because they couldn't walk away. After one nice guard set us on the right path, it took another hour of walking with one wrong turn and 2 incidents of near defeat before we found the embassy. Then we pounded on the door and rang the buzzer until someone came outside to direct us to an unlit corridor to wait till the Consulate Section opened at 3:00. I sat on the floor because it's not rude to do that in Beijing and K. went to get us Cokes and ice cream cones, because it's not rude to eat those in public here either. The line grew longer, 3:00 came and went, and not even the man with the official-looking letter from the Ambassador of France could get inside. In the end, the door opened only twice before it seemed to shut forever at 4:30. By then it seemed that the best K. and I could hope for was to give our passports to people who might not return them any time soon, so we left defeated with the plan to do more internet research and revise our itineraries to reach more friendly embassies if necessary.

I have never walked down a street in Beijing that wa snot lined with trees and for the last 36 hours, I have not seen the sun. Everything is gray here and so dusty that I could only see the blurred silhouettes of the skyscrapers at the end of the street. It is not as loud, dirty or chaotic as I expected, or as crowded. There's room to stop on the streets for a chat and people are leaning on fence posts or sitting on sidewalks wherever I look. More than any other city I've been in, I can see life -- fathers and daughters eating noodles outside the family produce shop, construction workers squatting on their yellow helmets at lunctime, groups of paunchy middle-aged men spilling out of sidewalk restaurants. Seeing all of that makes Beijing feel homey and peaceful no matter how big it is, and walking down the street here is mesmerizing.

K. and I finished our night by walking through the hutong (old traditional neighborhood) near our hostel. It's hard to choose one image that stands out from the butcher shops, shish-ka-bob stalls with charcoal pits along their sides, barber shops in the back rooms of ramshackle houes and tubs of grilled snails for sale on the roadside. We bought a huge, salty scallion pancake for dinner for less than $.50 cents and strolled through the streets stuffing it into our mouths, smiling at the shouts of "Hello!" all around us. On the way home, we followed a woman running after a tiny, fluffy dog whose legs moved so fast it looked like a whirring wind-up toy. She turned to us, laughing and shouted "He is naugh-TAY! so very naugh-TAY!" Maybe she's the person who will stick in my mind tonight.

It's good to be here.

June 3rd, 2006
Beijing Day 2
Jun. 3rd, 2006 at 10:29 PM
I'm getting used to things I didn't think I could do, like walking into the middle of the street and expecting cars to stop for me. The first night, I had to wait for Chinese people to cross the street and I never made it on the first time; today, I kept walking without a second thought. Not even the crosswalks here have traffic lights.

Nothing is impolite here. You can pick your nose in public and hawk up gobs of spit onto the street. If you're a man and you're too hot, you can tuck your t-shirt under your armpits and let your big beer belly hang out. Babies wear crotchless pants so they can just let...waste drop onto the street. I still can't figure out how parents can safely carry around children who might "go off" at any second.

Beijing is teaching me to be assertive again after 21 months of Tokyo self-restraint. Today I took the bus to Tianamen Square and it was easy, but coming back was hard. Each time Bus 22 let out passengers, I waited my turn to get on, and each time, the doors slammed in my face. Finally, I jumped on board before the anyone could stop me. The driver said "no no no bad bad bad" and I glared back until finally he said "well, okay."

Chinese people come to Tianamen Square as tourists rather than worshippers, except maybe for the two old men who stood ramrod straight for photos in front of Chairman Mao's portrait. It was grayer and dustier than anywhere I've been in Beijing and the inside of my mouth felt constantly dry. I sat on the fence drinking water and watching vendors demonstrate kites that trailed pennants 20 feet long.

Tonight was a victory for K. and me -- up until now, we've been too scared to go into a real Chinese restaurant. We chose one out of necessity after we took the wrong bus out of town and were too hungry to wait. A waitress noticed us staring into the windows and shouted for us to come in, so we did. She was the type who thought that repeating things very, very loudly might help foreigners understand, but fortunately our knowledge of Japanese characters was enough for us to read the Chinese menu. We got a plate of stir-fried beef and veggies and were exceedingly pleased with ourselves.

Chinese waitresses and store clerks still seem aggressive and intimidating, but I like the people I meet on the street. The man who lives next door to our hostel let us feed his kittens handfuls of cat food and today, when I was struggling to buy some bread from a street vendor, another lady told me the name of the thing I wanted and helped me pick out the money to pay.

I'll go to bed feeling content with what I've accomplished today.

June 6th, 2006
Jun. 6th, 2006
5:22 PM
First of all, some business: my gmail account is censored because it's apparently injurious to the moral welfare of China. That means if any of y'all have been sending me messages, I won't be able to read them for awhile. The best way to talk to me right now is probably just to leave LJ comments (sign your name if you do it anonymously!). I can use my hotmail account, but I haven't updated the address book for more than 2 years, so if you leave me your email in a comment, I'll put it in my address book and screen your comment ASAP.

China is probably the hardest place I've traveled. It's the language barrier that wears on me, although I learn a little new Chinese every day. So far I'm up to "I want that one," "how much is it?," and "that's too expensive!" plus "hello!" and "you are so cute!" which is what the shop assistants say to me when I try my Chinese on them.

Not speaking the language means you have to make a little plan for everything, like if I want the camera batteries behind the counter, I'll have to pull the batteries out of my camera and show them to the clerk because I don't know the word. Or like the other night, when we just caught the last train back to the hostel but it stopped one stop before ours. We had our address in English but not in Chinese, so it was useless. We ended up showing him the Chinese characters for the subway station nearest to our hostel, but even that required him to get out and consult with 3 other pedestrians.

Transportation is a headache. Not even Beijing natives know where things are. The subway is very limited and while the bus system is extensive, people have no idea what bus goes where. There doesn't seem to be a bus map at all. Each bus station has a route list for all of its bus lines, which I can read about 25% of, but the destinations I can read and the places I want to go don't always match up. The obvious solution is to take a cab, but even when you have the address in Chinese characters, a lot of them don't know where it is. Sometimes they're willing to call, but more often than not, they tell you to go away. It takes an average of 3 cabs before we get a willing driver, even when our request is something like "that train station at the end of the street which you can clearly see in the distance."

Still, I feel that we've been successful in our short time here -- we've eaten twice at street stalls without getting sick, been in a few Chinese restaurants, and most importantly, overcome non-existant directions and unhelpful cabbies to get our visa for Kazakhstan. The tourist sights have been so crowded that they completely destroy the atmosphere, but the people watching is still unparalleled. On the way to a temple, we took a wrong turn at a park that's been the best place we've visited so far. We watched old couples practice waltzing in the square, undaunted by the fact that their only tape was rap music. In another corner, we saw people practicing swordfighting and 3 more old ladies in short skirts trying to salsa. My favorite were the shuffling old men who practiced calligraphy in the dirt with sponge brushes and little puddles of water.

Tomorrow's plan: back to the park

Travel plans: to Chonqing on Saturday (arriving Sunday), pending availability of train tickets.

The Great Wall -- China Day 8&9
Jun. 10th, 2006 at 8:37 AM
On Thursday K. and I slept on the Great Wall of China, woke up at sunrise and hiked 10K down parts of the wall that haven't been rebuilt since they were last used to defend the country against invading Mongol hordes. A lot of things might have kept us from doing this -- fear of heights, of bees, of spiders, of sleeping alone in a desolate tower, of hiking alone on a rocky, uneven stretch of wall. I'm proud that none of those things got in our way.

We slept in a guard tower at the top of the wall called the Black Ghost Tower. Just getting there required 25 minutes of straight uphill climbing, one staircase so steep it had to be negotiated on hands and knees, and another with stairs so narrow it was more like climbing a rock wall. In the morning, we saw how long the wall really is. The sun illuminated rows and rows of towers on the top of the most distant mountains. We couldn't see the end.

The hike took 5 hours and passed 30 of those tiny towers. We stopped in each one, staring out at green mountains, blue sky and the wall from windows framed by collapsing archways. With each tower, the wall grew more and more decrepit. The staircases into the towers grew more and more jagged and sometimes we had to climb in by putting our feet in the holes between the stones. Piles of fallen rock littered the path.

The wall isn't level; it goes up and down with the contours of the moutains. Sometimes there were broken staircases to help us along, sometimes we balanced on the edges of rock walls and sometimes we climbed 70 degree inclines with just enough paving stones remaining to keep us from sliding down.

For the whole hike, we saw just one other group of hikers.

It absolutely goes on the list of best things I've ever done in my life.

June 11th, 2006
Goodbye Beijing, Hello Chongqing: Travel Days 10 &11
Jun. 11th, 2006 at 11:58 PM
K. and I left Beijing on Saturday afternoon. We took one last stroll through the hutong by our hostel, sampled sesame candy from the man with the candy cart, saw the goldfish vendor and the bicycle/office chair repair store one last time. Then we took one last pass down the street where we stayed, stopping in tiny stores full of musical instruments. We lingered in one for nearly half an hour, wandering through the random office supply section in the back so we could listen to the man play a huge string instrument with tiny felt hammers. It reminded me that the best discoveries in Beijing were always the random ones, like the day that I failed to find the park and went to the English bookstore instead. It felt like a failure until I flipped through the guidebooks and discovered that every mention of Tianamen Square had been censored from every one of them. Very ineffectively censored, that is -- just squares of translucent, easily removable white paper taped over the offending sentences. I wondered who sat in an office for hours cutting out bits of paper exactly as long as each sentence deemed worthy of censorship. Didn't Dante say the 7th Circle of Hell is pointless labor?

The train station was chaos, but the train was not as scary as I thought it might be. The toilet flushed the whole way through, so I could keep my 11-day streak of no disgusting toilets intact. The one hitch was the bunk beds. K. and I had top bunks, not realizing that we'd have to reach them without a ladder. They were 8 feet high and the only way up was by a tiny step, not even as wide as my foot, that popped out of the wall at about the height of my waist. From there, you had to swing your body onto the middle bunk and finally into your top one. Both of us deeply regretted our decision to wear skirts, and on a late-night toilet trip, I managed to fall all the way to the floor while trying to climb down without waking anyone else up.

Now, after 24 hours on the train, we are comfortably ensconced in chinkerfly's apartment in Chongqing. The city is made of hills and you can ride escalators up and down them for 12 cents each. Porters run up and down the hills, balancing their heavy loads in 2 buckets strung across their backs on a long pole. It already feels completely different from Beijing.

Please forgive the zillions of unanswered emails languishing in my inbox. Gmail is working for me again, so I've at least had a chance to read all the messages you've left for me. I will answer, but it might take some time...

cubestorm, Chengdu is our next stop. K. is buying her tickets for the 3 Gorges cruise tomorrow and then I'll be able to let you know when we'll arrive. Thanks so much for letting us stay with you and being so flexible about when :)

June 12th, 2006
Adjustments
Jun. 12th, 2006 at 12:02 PM
Spent the morning in Thalia's apartment uploading photos. Sometimes I have to remind myself that there is no right way to travel and it's okay to take time off if I need it. Tokyo was always busy, busy, busy. This is vacation. I can spend a morning inside if I want to.

I miss my cell phone.

Living out of a backpack is a bigger readjustment than I thought it would be. I miss having more than 4 shirts and I think a gremlin lives in my bag. When I want something, it forces me to make a trade: I'll give you this one thing because you really want it, but I'm going to take something else. Maybe I'll give that thing back too, but only after you look for 20 minutes and then I'll return it to the first place you thought it would be. Or maybe I'll just keep that thing until you look in every single store in Beijing and Chongqing and when you finally buy a new one, that's when I'll put it back in your bag.

Last night, we looked through aisles and aisles of sunscreen in Wal-Mart (yes, there is Wal-Mart in Chongqing) for sunscreen that would not also whiten my skin. We finally found one small bottle on the corner of the bottom-most shelf. This morning, I found my bottle of sunscreen in the bottom of your bag.

Now Thalia is taking us to eat at her favorite noodle shop. I will post some photos soon.
9 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Chongqing - Travel Day 12
Jun. 12th, 2006 at 11:11 PM
The smell of hot pepper burned my throat as soon as we walked into the market. There were bags of it on the floor, jars of paste on the table, mounds of red powder rising into the air. The egg sellers' tables were covered with things I had never seen before -- black eggs and duck eggs rolled in sawdust to preserve them. There were kinds of greens I had never seen before and delicate white flowers to naturally deodorize your bathroom.

Walking here is fascinating. The backstreets have rows and rows of mah-jongg parlors and butcher shops where the animals are still alive. If there are open spaces, people dance. In the parking lot of Wal-Mart last night, we saw a hundred people doing aerobics together in the parking lot with their shopping bags abandoned on the ground beside them.

There is something tropical about this city. The trees are lined with trees with huge leaves and the air is hot and heavy. This afternoon was my first experience walking alone in China. People stared. Boys at the bus stop pointed and shouted excitedly. It turns out that people can walk straight while craning their neck side ways to look at me.

An old man started a conversation by declaring "I think you are not Chinese." His name was Chris. He had a thin mustache, big gold glasses and a purple LA Lakers T-shirt tucked into his gray slacks. Thalia says he tries to "collect" all the foreign teachers at her university.

Tonight we went to chon-chon, a Sichuanese speciality. At the front of the shop were shelves lined with rows and rows of vegetables and meat on sticks. There were 3 kinds of mushrooms, bright yellow bamboo shoots and something with a long purple stem I had never seen before. We got plastic baskets to collect as many skewers as we wanted, then we carried them back to the table and fried them in hot oil. The proprietor seemed deeply pleased that we wanted to photograph all his vegetable sticks and carefully re-arranged them as soon as we approached with our camera. At the end of the evening, K. convinced all the waiters to assemble for a picture.

After dinner, Thalia took us to peer into Chongqing's night clubs. There is no cover charge, so we stopped to look inside each one. The most memorable was called the True Love Club and it was decorated like a wedding chapel, except that the dance floor was a trampoline.

People here stare. They don't blink. Their eyes never move. I wanted to ask the man on the bus if his neck hurt from craning it to stare at me around the other passengers. Intellectually, I understand that staring is not rude in China, but that doesn't stop the hairs on the back of my neck from rising. It makes me feel a little hunted.

It would have been a relief to get off the bus, except that the bus did not actually stop. I stepped out while it was still rolling.

June 13th, 2006
Chongqing - Travel Day 13
Jun. 13th, 2006 at 9:36 PM
Grocery stores are fascinating. Today we went to Carrefour, the big fancy French grocery store in Chongqing. I wasn't expecting tubs of live bull frogs or a selection of 3 kinds of turtles, live and dead. And Thalia said that sometimes they sell stingrays.

The gap between rich and poor here makes my mind reel. How do I reconcile the designer stores I've seen with the fact that some people are trying to get by selling pet goldfish on the street? We went to Starbucks today just to get off the street for a bit and it was hard to believe that I was sitting with the upper echelon of Chinese society. The cheapest cup of coffee cost 18 kwai, about the equivalent of $2 US. This was six times the total price of our lunch, which was a plate of dumplings and a bowl of wonton soup big enough to serve the 3 of us comfortably. On the bus ride back to Thalia's apartment, I watched a man harnessed to a cart like an ox, struggling to pull it uphill while shiny new cars swerved around him.

I can't get used to the dirt. I clean my fingernails in the morning and by the afternoon, there is black grit under each one of them. At restaurants, it's okay to throw your napkins and chicken bones on the floor. We wipe the tables before we eat and the tissues turn gray. The kitchen of the dumpling restaurant where we ate today was open and I could see a shirtless man grinding the meat. I have to turn off the part of my brain that thinks about these things. The dumplings I ate today were some of the best food I've had in China and for the first time in almost the 10 days I've been here, my stomach did not grumble when I ate. That means it doesn't matter if people don't wear shirts when they prepare food or if they wipe the tables or sweep up the refuse departed customers have left on the floor.
12 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Great Wall - Photo Post
Jun. 13th, 2006 at 9:44 PM

Blue sky

Green mountains

Broken staircases stretching into the sky

The view from the starting point to the halfway point of our hike

Beijing & Great Wall photos on flickr

June 15th, 2006
Goodbye Chongqing - Travel Day 14
Jun. 15th, 2006 at 12:47 AM
It's closing in on 1 A.M. and I have to be up at 6:30 to catch the 8:00 AM train out of Chongqing tomorrow. But I don't want to take the chance of forgetting today, my last day in Chongqing.

It was a lazy sort of day, devoted mostly to eating and relaxing in cozy cafes. After lunch at a "dishes" restaurant, the kind of place where your order lots of big dishes to share between you, we went to a traditional Chinese tea house. It would have been an easy place to pass without noticing. The doorway was dark and except for a huge jar of water in front of it, completely unremarkable. It was situated just inches from a busy highway, next door to a row of decayed-looking houses.

But inside was special. The light was so dim I had to pause for my eyes to adjust before I traversed the many staircases. Inside was crisscrossed by tiny streams of gurgling water and divided into dozens of nooks and hidey-holes. Orange lanterns hung from the ceiling and staring at the antique photos of Chinese brides on the walls could have absorbed me for hours. The tea wasn't like any I'd seen before. A mix of flowers and seeds floated on top of the cup, flavoring the water. Thalia held the lid over the cup with just a tiny crack for drinking so the flower petals couldn't fall out. I wish I could go back there again and again to have tea in every nook. It's the kind of place I could visit every day for weeks and still find some new corner to explore.

Next door was a Muslim restaurant, the only one in Chongqing. It was a so-called expensive restaurant, meaning that lunch cost 25 kwai (about $3 US) total for three of us. Having a clean floor, bright lights and big windows overlooking the city felt like paradise even though one of the waitresses was dangling her baby over a trash can, waiting for it to poop. We ordered 3 pieces of hot round bread spiced with roasted onions and skewers of lamb coated with a strange kind of pepper that makes your mouth numb. Thalia says that until very recently, it was banned in the United States.

Our last stop was the docks to book a nighttime cruise around Chongqing. K and I were the only foreigners on the boat and that made us instant celebrities (except for Thalia, but people don't realize she's a foreigner since her parents are Chinese). A middle aged woman poked Thalia on the shoulder and asked if her son could take a photo with us. He rose slowly from a bench in the back of the boat, looking faintly mortified while his aunties slapped his back and shouted encouragement. In the end, he took about six photos with us while the passengers behind us looked on. Then he disappeared for awhile and came back with a white scarf for K. and me.

Thalia (chinkerfly) has been an absolutely amazing guide and hostess -- I feel like in 3 days, I've seen more of this city than some people might in 3 months. I'm leaving here with memories I can savor -- mysterious vegetables in the green market, turtles for sale in the supermarket, vendors who spin intricate animals from sugar, the fisherman's store we saw today with gauzy nets trailing from ceiling to floor. I'm lucky to have come here and even luckier to such an amazing guide!

Next stop: Chengdu.

June 16th, 2006
Chengdu - Travel Day 15
Jun. 16th, 2006 at 1:02 PM
Stick-stick soldiers, members of the army of porters who troop through Chongqing's hills, pulling open the doors of our cab at the train station in the morning

Green fields whizzing past the window, tiny dots of men and women bent over to hoe and till and weed

Fighting old women and made-up young ladies for a cab outside the Chengdu train station, and failing

Flying through the streets on the back of a tricycle taxi, looking for the idiosyncracies of each driver -- this one made himself a shade from striped awning, this one can move the handbrake with his feet

Less street life here than in Chongqing, but still a million things to see out the corner of my eye -- touts fliinging their flyers at the passengers of moving tricycle taxis, a grandmother with man-szied baskets harnessed to each shoulder, a man pulling his son across the intersection in a baby walker on a leash.

And the thing you'll never guess? I wrote that while listening to a presentation about the Chinese insurance market hosted by the British Chamber of Commerce at a fancy hotel in Chengdu. The British Consul was standing at the table next to mine. cubestorm graciously persuaded her boss that we should be allowed to attend so that we could enjoy an all-you-can-eat buffet whose price exceeds our entire daily budget for meals, transportation and housing. I ate 4 different kinds of desserts and afterward, her boss treated us to a drink at the bar at the top of the hotel.

The hospitality continued this morning when K. and I somehow removed the door knob from cubestorm's spare bedroom, trapping all of our possession's inside. Her husband was kind enough to take time off work to come and open the door for us so we could enjoy important luxuries like clothing, clean underpants, and contact lenses.

Backpacking is so full of the unexpected!
4 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Photo Post - Chonqing
Jun. 16th, 2006 at 11:35 PM


This is Chongqing the way I remember it...

June 17th, 2006
Chengdu - Travel Day 17
Jun. 17th, 2006 at 6:22 PM
The dancers in the park are infinitely fascinating. The smallest group has an instructor who shouts at them with a microphone. Their brows are furrowed in concentration and only 2 or 3 people look like they are having fun. The most graceful woman in the whole lot is middle-aged and dances by herself, adding tiny, precise hand movements that make her look like she's meant to dance alone. The second group has a sprightly little instructor who dresses like an extra in a hip-hop video even though her face is wrinkled. They are all dancing alone, something classical and Chinese.

The third group is the one that absorbs us for 30 minutes. They take up a whole patio in the sunshine, everyone dancing with a partner even though there aren't enough men to go around. The women frown, concentrating on taking exactly the right steps but some of the men smile and some of them gaze enraptured into their partners eyes. Gradually they notice we are watching. Eyes fix on us though the feet keep dancing. I am addicted to spreading my smile through the crowd. One old man's eyes fix on me and I give him my most radiant smile. He looks perplexed but his lips curl up. I see a little girl in the crowd staring up at me. "Hello," I say and she looks away. We play this game thee times and then she shouts "HELLO!" Soon she is dragging her friends along to meet me and daring them to say hello to me. K. is creating her own drama with her camera. At first, it seems wrong to take pictures of people going about their daily lives but then we notice couples subtly edging their way into the camera frame. While K. is not looking, three more men stand behind her to inspect what she's doing with the camera. I lose count of the number of men who offer to dance with me.

When the music stops, one of the best dancers, a middle aged lady with a billowy skirt and a huge maroon fan, sidles over to talk to us. "Can I help you?" she says. We tell her we're just watching. "You're a good dancer," K. says. "Yes, I am," she agrees and giggles. The music starts again, but she wants to talk to us. Suddenly another lady, older with teased hair, seizes her wrist and motions for her to put away the fan. They waltz in front of us, stopping occasionally to pose for the camera.

Right now, I feel like I am not in China. Here I sit in cubestorm's comfy apartment, watching DVDs, cooling myself in front of a fan. I keep asking myself if it's okay to do this sort of thing when I'm in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime trip. But the devil on my shoulder helps me rationalize. You have to get up at 4 a.m. to catch the early bus for horse trekking tomorrow he says. This is the last time that you will have your own toilet, control your own swivel-y fan, or have any place to call your own for the next ninety days. And when he thinks that I will not break, he adds the most persuasive argument: You worked hard in Japan for this privilege of not working for a few months. You paid for this with weekend overtime, you stuck with being an AT when you didn't like it because you knew what that extra $100/month would mean in a cheap place like China. You gave up things you wanted to have and do to save the money for this trip. That means you cannot make this trip into a job.

I have mine own arguments too -- that the dancing this afternoon is enough to fill up my soul for a week and that's not even counting flying through the streets of Chengdu on the back of a tricycle taxi. The roof blocked out the gray skyscrapers ahead, leaving me to watch the fruit sellers with their piles of red cherries and ripe peaches. I flew "home" marveling at the number of tricycle taxis and motorscooters in the bicycle lane. My favorite were the female drivers, their faces covered by reflective visors, arms and clothing protected from sun and dust by little white capes that fluttered in the wind.

Yup. I've earned my time on the couch. I'm not moving till dinner time.

Tomorrow we are taking the early bus to Songpan, a village famous for its horse trekking opportunities. There may be internet in the village but certainly not on the trek, so nobody panic if you don't hear from me for awhile.

June 26th, 2006
Songpan - Travel Days 18 & 23
Jun. 26th, 2006 at 5:10 PM
June 18, 2006

Always too many things to record in one day...

Our bus driver going down whichever side of the road had the least traffic, honkly madly to say Ï'm going round a blind curve in the wrong lane" and sometimes just to say "I enjoy using my horn!"...

The exhiliration of being in the mountains, close enough to teh top to make out the individual trees growing along their spines

A single white farmhouse and behind it, a green mountain ridge shooting straight into the sky...

Yaks, white with neon ribbons on their horns, munching grass by the side of the road...

Tibetan prayer flags strung across the cliffs alongside the highway...

Baskets of baby bunnies, kittens, guinea pigs and turtles in the luggage compartment in the back of the bus...

Tibetan woman walking through the streets of Songpan...black dresses, red head wraps, fist-sized beads dangling from threads in their hair...

Sitting on benches round an old iron stove draped with newspaper, shoveling onion rice and yak stir fry into our mouths...

The tiny, cozy home where everyting was beautiful -- red and gold curtains, green and gold blankets, lattice work in the windows. Drinking tea and answering questions -- are you scared to go outside without a man, are your parents traveling with you, how is it that you and K. are from two different countries but speak the same language?

Gratitude for this hospitality shown to me by strangers. Guilt for knowing that I'd probably never do what they've done for me, welcome strangers from the bus into my home for dinner and tea

June 23, 2006

Past the bridge is where the local people go. We watched a jewelery maker bend silver into flower shapes for two old Tibetan ladies who greeted me with huge, toothless smiles. In the food market, I was a celebrity again. I take out my camera once -- to photograph a bag of peppers -- and six people crowd behind me, elbowing each other out of the way to see the tiny screen. For the rest of the day, the only other pictures I take are mental ones: women with long red skirts and big beads in their hair, furled-up prayer flags sold in bunches of 5, shop after shop wtih bolts of sparkling fabric to line the inside of Tibetan women's sashes. A Muslim cleric with a long beard and thick glasses strolling past the city gates and next to a Tibetan cloth store, an old Muslim man squatting in front of his spice tstall, swatting flies away with a yak hair broom.

Edited to add: I didn't actually go to Tibet. I went to a village in Sichuan with a large Tibetan population.
13 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Sichuan Horse Trekking - Travel Days 19-22
Jun. 26th, 2006 at 5:31 PM
In the 3 days since the end of the my horse trekking trip, I've been searching for the right words to describe an experience that was alternately terrifying, frustrating, eye-opening and exhilirating. It was a turning point of my trip, an expierence that made me feel tougher than ever and even more certain that traveling was the best decision I could have made.

Terrifying

The horse is tall. The stuffed saddle bags stretching over the seat of the saddle make it even taller. It's hard to hold onto the horn and I've barely ever ridden before. My horse breaks into a trot and I hold on for dear life, trying not to think of Christopher Reeve and severed spinal cords.

The trail gets steeper as we go. Uphill is not so bad; the mountains of equipment behind me keep me from sliding off the back of the horse. But downhill...I dig my feet harder into the stirrups and try not to look at the rocky ground below.

Ice Mountain is 4200 meters high and it's too steep for the horses to carry us down. The guides go on ahead, too focused on the horses to keep track of our progress. Soon they've vanished around the bend and K. and I are alone. The path is rocky and the pebbles won't stop slipping under my feet. I can see straight down to the rushing river at the bottom of the valley. No trees to grab onto, nothing to catch me if I should fall. I don't have a first-aid kit; the guides don't have a radio, and even if they did, there's no one to call for help. It's just me and the mountain.

Eye-opening

The bridge over the river is nothing but a narrow log, but on the other side of it, I can see a Tibetan temple, so I inch slowly across. The ground on the other side is littered with brightly colored bits of paper whose purpose I cannot guess. I worry that I am disturbing a sacred place, but curiosity gets the better of me so I edge closer. An old woman approaches and says something to me in Chinese and I think she is telling me to go away, but then she smiles and I realize she's explaining that I should walk around clockwise, spinning the prayer wheels for good luck.

The red paint on the temple pillars shines like it's brand new. The intricacy of the designs is hypnotic. Each time I turn to leave, some new swirl of paint catches my eye. I could have stayed forever and even now, the memory makes me want to sit still and retrace all the yellow and blue and pink spirals that must have taken so long to create.

Each time I think that my brain is full, that I've seen the last fascinating sight, that I can finish this trek and go home happy, we see something new. We turn a corner on the path and there are villages. The houses are two floors, made of wood, with intricately carved eaves and balcony railings. Some are painted, some have big dogs in front, some even have satellite dishes. All have prayer flags on poles in front, dangling from the edges of the balcony, spread across the fields like flags on a may pole. And in the middle of the town is the monastery. Teenage monks run outside at the sound of hoofbeats. They are wearing Nike sneakers under their red robes and baseball caps on their heads. At the top of the hill, we have a contest to see who is the tallest and they demonstrate the karate they've been learning. None of them can get enough of the digital camera. They pose for us and with us and when they've finished with that, they show us the best spots for photos.

At the bottom of the hill are piles of stone etched with curlicue Tibetan writing and buildings full of prayer wheels. A wrinkled Tibetan woman sees me watching uncertainly and motions for me and K. to follow her. We tug on rags below the wheels and they turn with a groan and rumble like a clap of thunder. In one building, they are wider and taller than a man. Our guide turns them as if they weigh nothing, but it takes K's and my combined strength to rotate it just an inch.

Frustrating

I am in the mountains with 4 guides who barely speak English. Asking where we'll go tomorrow, what time we should get up, what we'll eat for dinner takes effort and creativity. This is not quite what the trekking company promised.

The worst of the guides knows one word: HELLO! He shouts it whenever he wants to give us food, to help us onto our horses, to look at something, to stop or start doing something. When a meal is ready, he does not stop yelling HELLO until every last one of us is out of the tent. Once I am on the way to the "toilet" (read: strategic clump of bushes near camp). He sees the roll of toilet paper in my hand. But it's dinner time and that means he will not stop screaming HELLO until I have finished doing my business and have assumed my seat at the fire with a bowl in my hand. And every time he sees a digital camera, he will. not. stop. demanding that you take his picture and show it to him.

It's only funny in retrospect.


Exhilirating

This is the kind of scenery you see in photographs and movies without ever really believing that it exists, much less that you could walk through it. Mist over the tops of the mountains, trees arching over the top of the path, pale green moss dangling from the branches. Blue river water rushing over rocks. Knee-high wildflowers. No traces of civilization.

Being invited to a camp of local teenagers -- music cranked up, empty cigarette packs and beer bottles all over the ground. The priceless realization that 15-year-olds are the same everywhere.

Riding done for the day, the whole afternoon to explore. Sitting alone by the side of the river, savoring the privilege of doing nothing. I write: before I left, I was asking myself if I hadn't reached the life I wanted to settle into and if travel was perhaps a bit of my past that I clung to because it was once so large a part of my identity. Now I see how it still makes me feel awake and alive, how important it is to fight to see and do new things, and to have these moments to be alone with my thoughts .

The last day of our trek. My horse is determined to be at the front of the line and so is Kristy's. They run side by side and I keep my grip loose on the reins and let the wind rush through my hair. We are almost at the top of the mountain. We are almost at the top of the mountain and the air is crisp and cold. I think that I have never felt so free and that no existence could be more perfect than riding forever through the mountains.
10 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Chengdu again - Travel Day 24
Jun. 26th, 2006 at 8:45 PM
My favorite thing about China is the way that each day -- and each part of each day -- offers something new. It's 9 p.m. and I am walking back to the hostel after dark. The shop doors are bolted shut, the air full of the aroma of frying food from the vendros along the street. Each one is the same -- one stool for the vendor, one for the pile of veggies for frying, two for the customers, a bowl of hot oil in the middle. The sounds of traffic are fading, replaced by the zip-zip of motor scooters and the tinkle of tricycle taxi bells.

No day is complete without something inexplicable. We try to get a tricycle taxi back to the hostel. The first driver turns out down but hovers around us, driving in circles and staring. We can't agree on a price with the second one, then suddenly a Chinese man seizes our map and both drivers converge on us again. Then there are 5 of us in the intersection, traffic surging around us, negotiations taking place that we can't understand. I'm waiting to feel frustrated or tired or pissed off or stressed out, but the feeling never comes. Somehow a price is agreed on, a good one, and we're in the back of the cab, being carried toward the hostel, no idea why.

So this is the new me, who is really the Old Me, recovered from 2 years of a life too predictable. I'm out late after getting up for the 6 a.m. bus from Songpan. I spent 8 hours of the day sitting in the sun, unphased by the rattle of the engine, the clatter of the windows that never stay closed, and the ominous clangs of a luggage rack that long ago came unbolted from the ceiling. I like this part of me that knows how to live without lipstick, rolls with the punches, takes life as it comes. Soemtimes I watch American videos all afternoon. I need siestas at 2 p.m. and I duck into McDonald's more often than I thought I would. My endurance for the unfamiliar is not unlimited. But I'm free in a way that few people ever are in their adults lives, and I'm glad I've chosen this life even if I don't always know where it's going.

June 29th, 2006
Terra Cotta Warriors: Travel Day 29
Jun. 29th, 2006 at 4:43 PM
Pit #2 was still being excavated. Long mounds of earth ran back and forth across a hole 30 feet deep. Soldiers and horses and weaponry lay buried inside. Between the mounds were open pits and in them lay the broken bodies of soldiers -- arms, heads, shattered torsos, bits of pottery too small to identify. Like they'd all been murdered.

Pit #3 was called command central. It was the smallest we visited, the size of half a tennis court rather than a whole football field. It was where the generals were kept. They'd been carefully reassembled, but most of them had no heads. They're a ghost army now.

Pit #1 is what you see in photographs. Lines and lines of warriors with different armor, different faces. The privilege of walking between them is reserved for archaeologists and visiting dignitaries; we peons have to look down from below. But still we could see how some had mustaches and some did not, how some firm, determined mouths and some had lips that quirked with fear. Behind them, more of their comrades lay broken on the ground, awaiting reassembly. And in the very back stood lines of torso-less half-soldiers whose thighs ended in jagged shards of pottery. Others of their comrades lay on rice sacks waiting face-down for the recovery of their feet. Along side them were color-coded plastic baskets: red for hands and arms, yellow for heads, green for legs, blue for parts unknown.

The first big historical sight in China that hasn't disappointed me.

June 30th, 2006
Heroic Response to Extraordinary Difficulty: Travel Day 30
Jun. 30th, 2006 at 6:04 PM
I wanted this to be a reflection on what 30 days' travel has done for me: made me more patient, flexible and knowledgeable while also reducing my pants size and turning my arms a nice shade of golden brown. I was really proud of myself 3 days ago when I carried my 25 lb. backpack up 4 flights of stairs without breaking a sweat.

I thought that maybe I'd tell you about the myriad sights waiting for me in the Muslim Quarter of Xi'an: kids playing with a goat on the street, pita bread so big it had to be cooled on lawnchairs, the block of cow liver salesmen that invariably makes me nauseous, the men with waist-length gray beards whose sagging skin is whiter than mine. We sat on the street this morning, eating the lamb-and-cabbage dumplings we'd bought off the street for 12 cents, watching people watch us. A little girl watched us from the back of a tricycle taxi till it finally rounded the corner. One woman stared so hard she almost crashed her bike. A Muslim man saw us and smiled hugely -- a lot of the Muslim people here seem to do that. It makes me feel welcome.

But the real story of the day is the Uzbek visa. It's the sort of thing I KNOW I have to be prepared for, but that didn't make me feel any better this morning when I discovered that the visa regulations had suddenly changed and we'd need letters of invitation. Our guidebook directed us to Stantours, a Turkmenistani company known to be helpful to budget travelers like ourselves. We'd even written to them once before just to clarify the procedure on the off-chance that we needed some bureaucratic help. The $35 fee was reasonable...but that service takes 10-14 days. That meant we had to go for the $70 rush service to avoid a long delay in Almaty before we could even apply for the visa. Then I read a little further in my guidebook and discovered that a regular wait-10-days Uzbek visa costs $115 for Americans. If I want it in less than 10 days, which I do, I'll have to pay $230. This was not what I wanted to hear on a day when I'd already awakened on the wrong side of the bed.

But it's okay, I reasoned. Experience has taught me that memories are worth the money. Then Paypal wanted $1.95 to "authorize my credit card for expanded use," which by the way, would take 3-4 business days. That complicated the payment process somewhat. I told myself to stay calm and enter K.'s credit card number instead. She said I could pay her back. But once having entered an American address for myself, Paypal refused to allow me to enter an Australian credit card. Internet, by the way, was costing a fortune -- more per hour than I would ordinary spend on a meal. K. decided to send a second payment through for me, which of course meant that I'd need to get back online and send the agency an email telling them to expect extra payments from her and none from me.

Then came the really hard part: sending copies of our passport. "Can we make a copy here?" we asked the hostel. They said no. Nobody knew where we might find a copy shop. Our brains feared to even approach the question of sending a fax to Turkmenistan. We tried a travel agency, reasoning that they have all sorts of copy facilities and good international communication networks. "Can we make a copy?" we asked one. "No," the clerk said and walked away. We didn't have the Chinese to plead. Then I had an epiphany: nice hotels have business centers, so we took a bus to the Hyatt Regency. On the way there, we saw another hotel called Xi'an City Hotel Best Brand in China Welcome to Foreign Guests. I reasoned that since Chinese people seem very excited to meet foreigners, we might have a better chance of success there. I was half right -- everyone smiled hugely at us and rushed to be at our service. They made the necessary copies of our passports, but refused to believe that we knew the country code for Turkmenistan. They refused to even try the fax. Onward we went to the Hyatt, where they very politely treated us like the backpacking trash we were and refused to let us use the business center even for 5 minutes. But we were not easily deterred. I looked at the concierge with big sad eyes and when he said he didn't know where else we could send a fax from, he called the manager to ask permission for us. She too tried too say no, but she quickly saw that consenting would be a much faster way to get rid of us. Alas, that fax did not go through. We left dispirited, tried to get our passports scanned and burned onto a CD for emailing, then tried to photograph our passports at high enough resolution that they didnt look fake. All failed. I sent K. to the pool since she so desperately wanted to go and soldiered on by myself.

As I walked past the Xian City Hotel Best Brand in China Welcome to Foreign Guests, I had another epiphany: I could just say that I'd been to the embassy and checked the phone number. It worked. They believed me. One fax sent, one trip to Uzbekistan saved.

July 2nd, 2006
Reflections on a month of travel
Jul. 2nd, 2006 at 3:16 PM
China does not bother me. Talk about looking for the silver lining and making lemonade always sounded cheesy to me, but maybe that's the kind of person I am.

People stare and shout HELLO a lot. Although I kind of wish they wouldn't do this in public toilets, I like being in a place where people acknowledge your presence. It's a change from New York and Tokyo, where people who smile at other people are kind of strange. It is annoying to be approached by people who want to practice their English, but on the flip side, interest in foreigners means that almost everybody is happy to use what little English they have to help me buy things and find things around town. People have really gone out of their way to help me -- a restaurant owner personally escorted me and K. through the visa extension process at the police station and countless people have helped us when we were lost or carrying heavy bags.

Toilets do not scare me. When people told me how disgusting Chinese toilets were, I pictured lots of um, waste all over the floors and no running water. The truth is that while I don't recommend inhaling too deeply in your average Chinese lavatory, they are pretty well clean. I've only encountered one that didn't flush. And it only took me a couple days to get used to the abensce of doors on the stalls of some public toilets. Maybe I'd feel different if I hadn't used squatty potties in Japan before. But trust me, when traveling in lands with uncertain plumbing, squatty potties are way preferable to backed-up Western-style toilets any day. At least you don't have to put your butt where other butts have been before!

I think I've gotten used to the in-your-face sales strategies used here too. It really just means that you can tell a clerk you want pants and they'll go through the store and find all the pants available in your size for you. Who could complain about that?

I am in Urumqi now. On July 5, we'll be starting the 24-hour journey across the border to Almaty, Kazakhstan. I've loved my time in China -- I've never been in a place where I could see so many new things on a single city block, where so many economic classes were so close together, or where people have been so excited to meet foreigners (okay, maybe Egypt). It will be good to have to a break from staring, honking, TVs cranked up to ear-splitting volume and babies who are allowed to poop on the street. But I know I'll be glad to come back here to finish my trip in September.
2 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Urumqi Snapshots: Travel Days 31-32
Jul. 2nd, 2006 at 3:42 PM
Morning

I wish I had a camera to record the scene in the bathroom mirror this morning. Foreground: me, brushing my teeth in a crumpled t-shirt and wire-rim glasses. Background, in the other side of the mirror: elegant, older Uighur woman in printed dress, twisting her hair into an intricate knot and tucking it under scarf. Beside us, sunlight streaming in the open windows illuminating rows of laundry left to dry over night.

Afternoon
The hotel doesn't work like other hotels. Instead of a key, we get a battered metal dog tag with our room number. Every time we want in, we show the tag to the floor attendant, who opens the door. This means that if I go to the toilet when K. is not in the room to let me back in, I have to get the attendant. Since I've eaten something that disagreed with me (again), the woman is quickly annoyed with me. There's a pile of free chamber pots in case you don't feel like walking down the hall, but I think I prefer the moderate inconvenience of the toilet.

Our room is the type that's rapidly becoming familiar to us -- clean, but with peeling paint on the ceiling and cold linoleum floors. The wide-open window is the only thing that makes the room feel welcoming. When I squint my eyes, the skyscraper outside almost looks like the Empire State Building.

There are no doors on the cubicles in the bathroom. This doesn't even phase me any more.

We're getting hungry, so we go otu for food. I notice the restaurant because it is bright blue and one waitress's periwinkle head scarf is fluttering in the breeze from the window. Inside are bare white walls, tables with plastic cloths and floor sprinkled with napkins and old chicken bones. We wait in suspense for our food because we don't really know what we ordered. Is it that lady's rice pilaf with a side fo lamb? Dumplings flecked with scallions? We listen to the thud-thud-thud of the chefs pounding out noodle dough in the kitchen and watch the head waitress pace back and forth in a black dress that shows off her considerable curves.

Luck is on our side when the food comes: we've gotten pepper-and-onion mutton with thick homemade noodles. It is just the right amount of spicy and I can taste how fresh the noodles are. For the first time since Chongqing, we order seconds.

Then we go looking for kebabs. The restaurant we find is like our hotel -- old but more charming than decrepit. The walls are made from 3 different kinds of material stapled together and the ceiling paint is peeling. We make our own way of eating kebabs: slide the meat of the skewer with the bread like a soldier cleaning his sword after battle, spread the plate with thick chili paste and dab up just enough to make our lips burn. It's delicious and so is the chef behind the glass partition to the kitchen. His biceps bulge under his tight white T-shirt when he slams the dough on the table. He has high cheek bones, a long straight nose and full lips. Everything about him is severe and intense.

I am going to eat everything in Urumqi.

Night
I see the smoke before I spot the market. Food stalls line a narrow side street, tables spread out behind them. The smoke is so thick it burns my throat and I can barely see ahead of me. The specialty is grilled things on sticks -- tiny birds, exotic mushrooms, live insects, squirming larvae of something or another. There are goats roasted whole with white teeth gleaming from their charred skulls, plates of chicken heads and feet with a side of fruit, quail eggs in wonton soup, choose-your-own-filling scallion pancakes, stew fo 3 different kinds of snail.

The woman in front of me can barely hold a microphone in the scabbed stubs of her fingers. She pushes a cart with a collection box in front of her. The 8x10 picture on the box shows her family -- a smiling husband, a sick-looking baby and herself, not quite looking happy. She sings in a faint and broken voice, trying as hard as she can to earn the money she's asking for.

July 5th, 2006
Tianchi & Urumqi: Travel Days 33-35
Jul. 5th, 2006 at 11:33 PM
Tianchi -- Heaven Lake in English -- is paradise. It's more of the beautiful scenery that you expect to see in photos more than in your real life, but more importantly, there are no decisions to make other than which rock to sit on while I appreciate the views. I don't know why, but on this trip I am suddenly conscious of how many decisions you make in the course of a day and how much bigger those decisions can seem when you're starting over in a new place once or twice a week. In the city, the questions seem endless: what food issafe, where to turn left, take a cab or brave a bus, street food for dinner, stay in a dorm or splurge on a double room? Being out in nature is the only time I don't have to think.

What I remember about the lake is the lifestyle as much as the scenery. A place so easily within reach of tourists -- and their money -- and yet completely uncommercialized just 20 minutes from the bus stop. Our host, Rashit, earned as much as the average Chinese monthly salary from the Israeli tour group who stayed with him the night before we arrived. Yet, his kids happily played all day with our empty water bottles. Rashit himself wears the same dusty and battered clothes as the other shepards who aren't putting up tourists in their yurts and his lone concession to modernity is a black-and-white TV inside his kitchen shed. It takes integrity to make a choice like that.

The yurt we stay in is the best symbol of the life along the lake. Imagine that everything in your life, even your house, is portable. You don't keep things you don't need. The whole time I stay in the yurt, I never see more than a dining table, cooking pots, portable stoves and boxes that I assume hold the family's clothes. The yurt itself is both simple and fascinating. The round walls are made of skins laced together; more laces hold in place a brightly painted wooden door. There's a little vestibule for taking off your shoes and putting the stove. The rest is flat floor and walls covered by blankets. In the roof, there's a little circle where you can see the sky.

The whole time I was at the lake, foreign sounds enveloped me. Who knew that goats could howl? There were hoofbeats outside our yurt all day and at sunset, the sound of a shepard's horn and the bellows of what might have been a 100 cows answering from all over the mountain.

Back in Urumqi, we are celebrities again. Traffic literally stops while drivers stare at us in the back of a taxi. Later, people actually run into traffic to talk to us through the open window. More than anyplace else I've been, Urumqi feels like a frontier. Outside the city is nothing but stony desert and dry brown mountains. Inside, the city has a cobbled-together feel -- the shiny building downtown with half its buildings still under construction, the Muslim/Russian quarter where not everyone speaks Chinese, marketplaces where you can see the poverty the Chinese government wants to hide.

I was hoping to be on a bus to Almaty tonight, but like so many things here, it turned unexpectedly complicated. At the bus station, the clerk said no international buses were available and wrote down the name of a hotel. We didn't know where the hotel was, but she promised any taxi driver would. As promised, the first cab driver we asked took us there, but when we asked for the bus to Kazakhstan, the receptionist had no idea what we were talking about. Finally a Kazakh man explained what we wanted and she told us to go to room 2121. Inside was just a woman selling bus tickets and changing money inside a big hotel room with extra desks, but she had tons of Kazakh customers so it seemed legit. The bus for tonight was sold out, but tomorrow evening begins the 24 hour ride to Kazakhstan.
1 comment Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink

July 10th, 2006
Almaty: Travel Days 37-39
Jul. 10th, 2006 at 8:59 AM
The bus tickets from room 2121 led me to the nicest bus I'd ever seen -- room for 21 passengers, each with a bed and enough room to sit up in. It did not quite compensate for the 24 hours of bouncing up and down over uneven pavement, fists curled tight around the bedframe to keep myself from rolling off.

People are the highlight of Kazakhstan. Yrrrrrrlan is probably who you imagine when you think of Russian Mafiya -- tall, rippling biceps, head shaved bare, a mouthful of gold teeth. He may or may not have been smuggling refrigerators and auto parts across the Chinese border. But there is nothing sinister about this man. He gives us bananas, buys us cookies, explains corruption persists in his country, makes sure we know how to catch a taxi safely.

Ainul is 17 and speaks in a torrent of disconnected English: "this is a fan. this is the floor. what is this? what is that? the number you have reached is disconnected. can I help you?" Her mother is the front desk clerk at our hotel (really, just a dorm letting out spare rooms for the summer) and at first, they try to convince us to come live with them in their tiny 2-room flat. Now they've settled just for feeding us, waiting for us at night with melons, ambushing us on the way out the door with home made bread. Sometimes this much hospitality scares me -- I am the shiny new American toy, sure to disappoint them somehow when cultural misunderstanding strikes. And sometimes this much hospitality wears on my stomach. Lunch yesterday was lamb kebabs made almost purely of unchewable gristle; after gorging myself on breakfast bread yesterday, they presented me with cold grains of rice soaked in sour cream. "National dish!" they exclaimed. "Eat eat eat!"

Armand is perhaps my favorite. He is 17, originally from Uzbekistan, here to take exams to enter a Kazakh university in the fall. "I can speak English because a Peace Corps volunteer came to my school last year," he tells me. With shining eyes, he repeats everything his Peace Corps teacher told him about the United States before grilling me about exchange rates and the war in Iraq in near-perfect English. Meeting him gives me hope for the kinds of things I might achieve with my own Peace Corps assignment.

Almaty is a home-y sort of place with clean streets and modern amenities. The toilet stalls all have doors, it's okay to jump in fountains and for the first time in 2 years, I'm in a place where I look like the people (although they all know I'm a foreigner, probably because I haven't dyed my hair, am not wearing a mini-skirt and do not regularly flaunt my bosom). I'm deceiving myself to think that life is good for everyone here -- just a short walk out of the city center and I see rusted Soviet infrastructure and ramshackle apartment buildings. But for now, I'm happy not to challenge my perceptions too much. Sometimes it's a relief to wrap yourself up in the familiar.

That didn't make it any less painful to pay $50 to register my visa though. Central Asian bureaucracy is exhausting, and I'm saying this even before the trip to get that magic Uzbek visa stamped into my passport tomorrow.
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July 13th, 2006
Almaty: Travel Days 40-42
Jul. 13th, 2006 at 10:03 PM
This is a letter that I wrote to my mother:

When I tell youthat I am in Kazakhstan, I don't know what you picture -- poor shepards and mangy flocks or crowded bazaars full of men in flowing white clothes. I came here because when I saw KAZAKHSTAN printed on a map, I had no mental image of what might be there. The truth is that walking through downtown Almaty is like walking through a nice part of Tulsa. The streets are lined with tall trees and expensive shops. Restaurants serve dishes I remember from my childhood dinner table -- chicken kiev and beef stroganoff. Every so often, I forget where I am because it seems impossible that such an obscure corner of the world could remind me so strongly of my hometown.

Yesterday I rode the trolley car to the market at the edge of the city and this is where I first felt I was somewhere really different. Apples and oranges and apricots stacked in pyramids sold by men with embroidered skull caps on their heads...bins of nuts so painstakingly arranged that each almond points the same direction... And the mix of people...sometimes I think they are too different to belong in the same reality... tall, leggy Russian women with designer jeans and tight tops, ancient women with tattered kerchiefs on their heads and rows of gold teeth in their mouths, Muslim women in flowing dresses with their hair bound up in scarves...

When I tell you that the college dormitory where I'm staying lets out spare rooms, and that whole families of 4 live in one room using the one toilet at the end of the hall, I know you will picture squalor, but you shouldn't. Every morning at 7, the hallway is mopped till the floor shines. Everyone leaves their doors open in the evening like it's one big neighborhood. Inside everything is tidier than even the houses in Japan, with white curtains blowing in the breeze from open windows and neat piles of slippers by the door. The people here are a microcosm of the diversity of the city -- the pregnant girl whose bathrobe is tied tightly all the way to her neck and who never lets a single strand of hair escape from beneath her scarf and the Russian beauty who strides down the corridors in her tiny silk nightie.

There is something dynamic and fascinating about this place that you could miss if you didn't look closely enough. It feels like a place shaped by diverse and powerful forces...different systems of government, different religions, the slowly growing prosperity in the cities and the ghosts of the Communist past and the nomadic culture that went before it.


P.S. We got our Uzbek visas in just twenty minutes. Tomorrow we take the train to Turkistan, a complex of ruins near the border. On Sunday we'll cross into Tashkent.
4 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink The Bath House: Travel Days 41-42
Jul. 13th, 2006 at 10:22 PM
The heat sears my lips and the inside of my nose. If I stand too long on the floor, my feet begin to burn. The air is thick and I feel its heat all the way down into my lungs, but I breathe in deep because I love the smell of the dried myrtle leaves the old ladies use to whip themselves.

This is my strongest memory of Arasan, the public bath house in the center of Almaty. It has claimed almost all of our last 2 days, wresting away time we'd thought to use for churches and museums.

The changing rooms are chaos -- too many huge Russian women on narrow benches, everyone trying to claim the attention of the lone attendant to lock their locker. Then there is the frenzy of the washing room, running to seize a plastic bucket and fill it at the ancient taps and claim a position at the washing tables before they're all taken. The room resonates with the sound of water splashing over bodies and little girls giggling as they soap their mothers' backs.

The heat grows as we walk naked into the next room. Two saunas -- one the approximate temperature of hell, another more moderate one for weaker girls like me. Early in the session, it is packed, no room to do more than sit on your little square of towel. Later in the day there will be room enough to lie down, close your eyes and feel the heat and sweat rolling down every curve of your body.

Then it's out of the sauna and into the showers to wash away the perspiration before jumping into the pool. I leave the water as hot as I can stand it because I don't want to spoil the shock of jumping into the freezing cold water. Precious seconds are lost trying to tie my towel securely over my head -- no uncovered heads allowed in the communal pool here. Slowly I climb down the steps, letting the cold creep up my feet, legs, torso and neck until every inch of my body is shocked into life. I take 20 minutes to saunter leisurely from one side of the pool to the other, then climb out to lie on a bench and stare up at the blue domed roof.

What I love most about Almaty is how easily I can step from comfortable and familiar to new and exotic. It will be hard to leave this place -- and its bath house -- tomorrow.

July 17th, 2006
The slow train to Hell Turkistan and eventual escape
Jul. 17th, 2006 at 7:28 PM
The train ride starts out pleasantly enough. The family in K's apartment invites us to sit on their comfy bottom bunks and soon they are unwrapping half of a delicious roast chicken for us to share. We have no common language, but I like watching the sunset over the empty plains, tearing chicken off the bone with our fingers and pointing out the funniest phrases in my Lonely Planet Russian book. When the conversation gets more stressful than fun, I crawl back into my bed and watch the last rays of light fade into blackness, thinking how happy I am to finally know what's in Kazakhstan.

I awaken at 4:30 a.m. to sweat-soaked sheets. The compartment is not air conditioned and the windows will not open. The smell of the toilet just around the corner is not pleasant. A fight has broken out between the passengers in the lower bunk and someone newly arrived with excess baggage. He is insisting that we all sleep with our bags so that he can have the luggage racks. I have it good though -- in K's compartment, a strange shirtless man is trying to bully her into sleeping on the luggage rack. The good thing about Kazakh hospitality is that about 8 people tell these weirdos to piss off.

I'm up again at 7 because someone is tickling my bare feet. The daughter of the family next door thinks this is a good way to invite me down for breakfast. By now, they have wedged 8 people onto their bunks, all of whom are staring at me. For awhile, they are content to talk about me rather than talk to me ("why are Americans so serious? I don't think she looks happy..."). Then the torture conversation starts. No one will believe that I do not speak Russian. Nobody realizes that I understand more than I speak. "Perhaps she's stupid," says the fat woman who spent 20 minutes trying ask my religion before finally making the sign of the cross. Now that they've determined I'm a Christian, they want to know why I'm going to a Muslim site in Turkistan. "Beautiful architecture," the most complex Russian phrase I know, is unsatisfactory. Over and over again, they point to the same phrase in my book -- "do you have any information about religious sites?" How I could I possibly answer that question in Russian? It takes 30 minutes for them to give up, but next they want to know if I am married. I answer truthfully, which might have been a mistake. Soon someone calling himself Robert DeNiro is asking for my address in the United States so that he can come marry me after my trip. Apparently he is serious. A death glare eventually dissuades him from ogling my bosom.

At 10 o'clock, our adopted family decides it's time to gather our baggage and prepare for disembarking. I go into my compartment, whereupon I am shouted at by the 8 ladies now occupying the lower bunks. Apparently my efforts to get my possesions from the luggage rack are disrupting their conversation. Little do I know that it is actually 45 minutes until the train will stop. Our "family" drags us down the aisle and wedges us in front of the door, where we are blocking all the traffic to the hot water heater and the oh-so-fragrant-toilet (did I mention that the seat was black and crusted with...something?). As an added bonus, everyone in the entire car has now realized that there are foreigners on the train. People bring their babies for me to kiss. Some people shout at us for blocking vitally important throughfares. The vast majority shout questions at us in a mixture of Russian and Kazakh, undaunted by our apparent lack of understanding.

We think we are safe when we arrive at the hotel, but that's before they call their English-speaking friend to deal with us. He offers me a massage, then he wants a shower with me, then he asks if K and I will push the beds together so he can watch us do it. I tell him to go to hell and handle the rest of the transaction in my pygmy Russian. The room seems nice enough. Until the toilet seat slides off...while I am using the toilet.

K gets diarrhea within an hour of leaving the restaurant recommended by our guidebook.

I like the mausoleum, the way the sound of prayers echoes off the walls and breezes from the outside magically whoosh through the hallways. But while I am enjoying an atmospheric climb around the centuries-old ramparts, K is getting stung by wasps down below.

Food will make us feel better, we think. The waiters decide that they'll serve us drinks, but wait until they finish thier own meal before giving us food. We're okay to wait...until our table is swarmed by bees with a taste for Pepsi.

In the morning, K can't travel because of gastrointestinal distress. We think it will be relaxing to hole up in our room, but then the power goes out. It comes on 2 hours later...and that's when the toilet stops flushing.

Today we finally make our escape. Negotiating for the cab is straight forward and we come within a couple dollars of paying the local price. It's true that there's nothing to look at for the totality of the drive and just 2 conversations with the driver are enough to make me wish my phrase book included Even though I am 24 and unwed, I am not a hooker or No really, when I said that I would not marry you, I wasn't just playing hard to get or Have you looked in a mirror recently? That beer belly and the wart on the end of your nose is not a turn-on.

But now here we are in Uzbekistan, installed in a bed & breakfast with a female proprietor who doesn't want to do either of us. The sheets are clean, the toilet flushes and there's ivy growing along the windows outside. The cafe where we ate dinner served us immediately with big bowls of homemade noodles, stewed vegetables, soft chunks of lamb and just the right amount of spices. And the owner of the internet cafe has not attemped to use his English skills to pick us up. I like Uzbekistan.

July 18th, 2006
Woe: Travel day 48
Jul. 18th, 2006 at 7:07 PM
I burn, itch and smell like salad dressing. This is not a good day. I woke up with a total of 21 mosquito bites on my arms, which the nice old lady at my hotel decided to treat with vinegar (but only after she discovered she was out of vodka). If you put vinegar on a place where you've been scratching, it burns. And it still itches. And you don't smell very nice. These people are going to kill me with kindness. They really are.

I'm the queen of problem solving, but I'd like to give back my crown. We didn't get the appropriate customs declaration form when we crossed the border (probably because our cabbie bribed the guards to go through at the speed of light) so now we cannot change our traveler's checks. Today I visited 3 banks and a fancy hotel to find an ATM that would take my Mastercard, called the US Embassy to get a letter to explain the situation and made back up plans to have money wired in the event that the bank doesn't like the letter. There is no imminent danger of starvation as the most expensive meal I've eaten here costs $4 and internet is a mere 40 cents an hour, but it's time for this run of bad luck to come to an end.

The bad parts are what make the good parts seem extra-good, right?Tags:uzbekistan

July 21st, 2006
Tashkent: Travel Day 51
Jul. 21st, 2006 at 8:01 PM
If you saw a photograph of me at my favorite restaurant in Tashkent, you would never point your finger and say "that is Uzbekistan." You would see white tables and benches with pleather padding, waitresses in white tops and black miniskirts whizzing from customer to customer. You'd notice MTV playing on the TVs anchored to the ceiling and you would think it was any cheap diner in the United States.

When you got into the taxi, a sky blue car reminiscent of those in Starsky & Hutch, you might begin to think you'd left home. Then the driver would say, "This car made in RUSSIA! In time of BREZHNEV! And it is STILL GOOD CAR!" You'd nod politely and agree and then he'd say, "You want? I sell you... $300! GOOD CAR!" When you refused and he said "you like my shirt? I sell you... $4! GOOD SHIRT!" you might be certain you were not at home. And then you'd look out the windows and there would be high rise apartment buildings with geometric designs cut into concrete facades and petunias growing wild by the side of the road, pruned only occasionally by somebody's stray sheep.

And you'd know that you were at a crossroads just from the way that people dress -- jeans with flared legs and tight-fitting T-shirts for the men...or white skull caps and and baggy slacks. Women with tank tops, or regular old T-shirts, or long flowing dresses that hide the curves of their body. Uncovered heads, dyed hair, little kerchiefs, big wraps that hide head and neck. This mix of people, the mix of salsa and American pop and Turkish music on the radio, it's probably not what you imagined when you thought of Uzbekistan.

People warned me before I came here, mostly people who'd never heard of Uzbekistan before -- Isn't that a Muslim country? Are you sure Americans are safe there? It only takes one angry Muslim to...(insert horrible act of violence here). But the truth is that when I tell people that I am American -- which is at least 10 times a day because people here like talking to strangers -- their eyes shine and they tell me, sometimes in Russian and sometimes in broken English, how badly they want to visit my home country. I've been moved to the front of long lines at the grocery store, offered the deluxe computers at the internet cafe at no extra charge, handed visas in 10 minutes while others had been waiting for 3 hours.

Islam is not what most people think it is. The news would have you believe it's somehow inherently incompatible with democracy, free expression and American culture, but it's not. And no reporter ever mentions how deeply traditions of hospitality and generosity are observed, how people feed travelers and give to every beggar on the street. And they don't tell you that it's a complex thing, that there are people who idenitfy themselves culturally as Muslim without ever going to the mosque or that in some countries -- Uzbekistan included -- religion is still viewed as a threat to the government and that the call to prayer is banned.

I wish that everybody could see places like this, just to know how much like home they are.

P.S. I found a couple ATMs that would take my Citibank/Mastercard, so the money situation is resolved. :)

P.P.S. I survived a trip to the dentist in Uzbekistan. It was not as painful as I was afraid it would be, but they did ask if I had syphilis, then try to blindfold me. Although I'm not sure why I protested not being able to see the scary woman standing over me saying, "And now I vill driiiiiiill. Be patient. Do not move."

P.P.P.S. All visas for onward travel have now been obtained -- cheaply and painlessly, I might add! I'll be moving on to Samarkand on Sunday morning.

July 25th, 2006
Samarkand - Travel Days 53-55
Jul. 25th, 2006 at 8:37 PM
The steps of the minaret are nearly knee-high. The first staircase opens to a huge, dusty room. Bits of scrap metal prop up the brick walls and statues lie in the dust. Ahead of us, the next staircase is crumbling and only a corrugated metal roof keeps wind and rain out. We look questioningly at the police man who let us in -- is it really okay to be here? we ask. He motions for us to go on ahead. There's something faintly wrong about this. We never imagined that our sunrise trip to the Registan would involve bargaining with cops for entrance to forbidden parts of important historic sights. But now we're here, so up we go. The next section spirals up further than we can see, dimly lit by early morning light slanting through decayed window frames. At the top is a hole large enough for just one person to stand in. The stairs here are narrow and I realize that my knees are shaking. Right now, I am the tallest thing in Samarkand.

It is hard to write about buildings in a moving way. And the Registan is no mere building, at least not for me. It's the symbol of this whole trip to Uzbekistan -- Samarkand is the place I dreamed of when I came here, and the Registan is the place I pictured when I lulled myself to sleep with daydreams of travel. I stand in the main square knowing I have achieved the longest held dream of my life. I was terrified that this place might disappoint me, but it's the most absorbing building I have ever seen. The patterns of the tiles shift and change with distance. The symmetry in the designs makes me feel peaceful, but the variety and repetitiveness keeps me constantly straining to see new details. I stay until I have explored every corner but a day later it pulls my eyes in each time I pass it on the street.

The next day we are worried that blue-tiled buildings will grow boring, but the magic of Samarkand is that each site has something special to offer. The Bibi Khanym Mosque is half ressurected glory and half ruin. Going here, I can see every stage of this building's 500-year life. The 50-foot archways outside are covered with shiny new tiles and behind them are rooms whose vaulted ceilings are cracked and whose window frames creak and sway with the wind. The interior walls are charred brown stone now, pockmarked with holes where pigeons build their nests and scarred with imprints of the mosaic tiles that once adorned them. But each time I step outside, I see shining blue domes and I can imagine it new again...and then my eye catches bits of scrap metal and rusted bolts, and my heart hurts for the years the Soviets used a place like this to store old machinery.

Shar-i-Zindah is modern graveyard and a resting place for the heroes of Tamerlane's Empire. We walk past tombstones carved with the faces of the people buried beneath them, up a flight of white stone stairs, through an archway and into the ancient city of the dead. The tiles here are 3-dimensional, mosaics with flowers growing out, patterns of stars protruding from the walls, curves to match the curves of the buildings. Some of the mauseleums are being renovated to their former glory and a friendly construction worker lets me inside to see the work. The front steps are strewn with tiny numbered bits of paper, used by the stone masons as patterns for the mosaics. The ceilings and walls are done in blue and gold paint and it's mesmerizing -- Arabic calligraphy, stars, flowers, zigzags, windows whose frames are made of interlocking arches, and all somehow in harmony. Each one of these places is nearly impossibe to turn my back on and I leave each day here feeling peaceful and full.

Two more days here and then on to Bukhara.

July 27th, 2006
Last Day in Samarkand: Travel Day 57
Jul. 27th, 2006 at 2:50 PM
What makes Samarkand (and really, all of Uzbekistan) stand out to me is the people. They stop to chat, ask where I'm from, what the weather's like in America, and how I like their country and I never feel like a zoo exhibit the way I did in China. The conversations last just long enough for us to use up the bits of language we have in common and then people wave good-bye, suggesting where I can find them if I need help with something. Nobody ever hits on me and the people who try to sell me things back off fast when I'm not interested.

K. wants to sleep late this morning, so I decide to go alone to a mosque I'd been curious about. It stands on a hill overlooking the city and it doesn't have any tiles -- just pastel pink walls and extra-swirly domes. When I approach, I realize that it's a real, working mosque and I decide just to look from the street. I don't like to treat places of worship as tourist attractions, but I'm only outside for 2 minutes when people start beckoning me in. I enter feeling a little bit tense -- my head is uncovered, I know parts of mosques are off-limits to women and 2 years in Japan have given me a deathly fear of breaking social rules. But everyone seems to happy to see me. An old lady with gold teeth motions me into the prayer hall where I can see babies getting blessed. Then I find a bench with beautiful views of all the blue domes of Samarkand. Somebody brings me tea and the best raisins I have ever tasted. They seem to really get that I'm here to chill out. They give me long stretches of time alone and then sidle over for the usual "getting to know you conversation." It thrills me to understand and answer all of their questions in Russian. I wish everyone in America could come here because this is probably not what they imagine happens when lone foreign females visit Islamic religious sites. When I leave, one of the old men who entertained me shouts a halting "BYE-BYE" in English.

I walk back to the bazaar thinking about how much I like Uzbekistan because I can see lots of different things without feeling overwhelmed. Like, yesterday, I saw someone with 4 couches tied to the top of his aging Russian car. This morning, there were old women with pans of burning herbs blessing stores and homes for a few spare coins. Today's new thing is a funeral procession -- men wearing purple robes and embroidered hats, the coffin covered with a floral print blanket, everyone on the street passing their hands over their faces in...blessing? comisseration?

I stop to run my hands over the cracked and sun-warmed tiles at the Bibi-Khanym Mosque one last time. Today there is someone in the courtyard playing a tiny flute and the only other sound is pigeons cooing and flapping their wings in the ruined rooms. The overgrown wildflowers in the courtyard sway in wind and the place is just as atmospheric as the first time I visited it. It's going to be hard to leave here tomorrow but better to go now, when the magic still has a hold on my heart than to wait until I am bored.

July 28th, 2006
Bukhara: Travel Day 58
Jul. 28th, 2006 at 8:35 PM
The sun takes ages to set here, leaving orange coronas around the archways and domes that rise into the sky. Bicycle repair shops and butcher stalls sit alongside souvenir stands and the laughter of children resonates through the town's ancient, dusty streets.

Tonight, after 5 hours in a hot car with a very loquacious English speaking driver, we ate at our first real restaurant in a month. There were tablecloths made of cloth instead of plastic, a real menu, an air conditioner, no flies and no wasps. I ate the best fried chicken I've ever tasted -- juicy without being greasy, tender inside, marinated in just the right mixture of spices. Heaven is reprieve from dish after dish of stringy mutton. It was clearly the most expensive restaurant in town. Our three-course meal cost exactly $3.

Sanat, our cab driver, was entertaining for the first hour of the journey. He'd lived in America for a year ("This, I think, is a place where everything is right because you can speak your mind"), attended a Baptist Church ("I think they won't want a Muslim man there, but they let me sit in the corner and say my Islam prayer and I know they are good people"), and shacked up with a lady named Bolivia ("in your country, you know what is what. In Uzbekistan, I live with a woman, I go to jail or maybe her family just kill me.") His life as a conscripted Russian soldier in Afghanistan was haunting ("I don't kill people...I just translator and I always arguing with the Russian officers...please, please don't kill children. There is no need. These people die here, old young and they all say 'Allah is with me.' And then I did not understand, but now I do. I knew in the Baptist church in America, there is only one god and he has many names made by people. He gives no one a bad fate and that means the things that happen to me, going to Afghanistan, get divorced, have to leave America...is not bad thing. I just have to understand them"). "Creation science" was a surprising #2 on the list of things he loved about America and I had to hold my tongue for that bit of the conversation.

It is amazing to me that someone can come to America, study all day, get a night job bagging groceries with a manager who can't remember his name ("I say, 'boss, you call me Jesus Christ so long as you pay me' but it touch my pride a bit...that I have to choose an American name for this man who cannot read my name on my name tag") and still leave thinking that it's a country where everything is right. I have to admit, it did my soul good to hear my country praised because my fellow travelers have been far worse than I've experienced before. They say "what do you think of George Bush?" like they're daring me to defend him. Someone asked if I was "stupid and ignorant like everyone else in America" before I started traveling and somebody else suggested that because I'm the only American they've met in Uzbekistan, Americans must all be close-minded people who don't care about the world. The truth is that I actually like my country, although it takes real courage to say that to the audiences I've been faced with. I liked it when, after 2 months traveling through nations led by autocrats who suppress free expression, the US Embassy in Tashkent gave me a copy of the NY Times that was full of articles critical of the Bush administration. And I still love it because of the day I asked my students in Chinatown to describe their favorite or least favorite thing in America and all of them spoke about their freedom to attend war protests and their ability to fund college educations for their children after coming to this country with little more than their suitcases. A politics rant was not what I intended with this entry, but I think I needed to get it off my chest. Perhaps I'll enjoy our current B&B, which has no other guests.

July 30th, 2006
Bukhara - Travel Days 59-60
Jul. 30th, 2006 at 9:32 PM
The girls in the internet cafe are staring at me. It's because I can type fast. The one on my left looks like a pre-teen in America, with a sparkly headband in her curly hair and a sleeveless top that's just a bit too tight. The girl on the right wears a black silk scarf over her head and a big flower-print dress. Shyly she asks "where you learn this?" pointing at my fingers flying over the keys. Both of them have good English. They don't hesitate to tell me that I look 20 years old and that they are 13. I help them write an English e-mail to their sister in America, adding a little exclamation point to "I miss you." They've never seen it before and interrupt again to ask how I made it.

Bukhara is a tourist city and if you can accept that, you will love it; if you cannot, you will hate it. I don't mind. It is relaxing to wander through dusty streets in desert heat and the array of craft shops is fascinating. I can watch women weave silk while their husbands do embroidery, older brothers carving wood while younger brothers paint it, teenage apprentices gathered around a master carpenter at a shop whose sign reads "established with the help of U.S. Peace Corp." Bukhara is one big souvenir stall, but I am amazed by the work that goes into crafting each and ever piece -- it is all intricately painted, finely woven, carefully stitched. I wonder how hard it must be to make a living here when everyone sells the same things to tour groups far smaller than might pass through a similar city in another country. When I venture into the streets behind the preserved stone buildings, I see boarded-up windows and cracked walls.

The salesmen here are a friendly lot. They bargain hard, but "I'll think about it" and "maybe tomorrow" are acceptable answers even to the most high-pressure sales pitch. They are patient with my questions about design, craftsmanship and Uzbek society, even willing to teach me how to identify the best specimens of their chosen craft. My favorite is a sword salesman whose painted scabbards are so detailed I mistake them for real snake skin until I touch them. He dresses me up in a big Uzbek hat and lets me pose for photos with a fearsome sword in my hand.

The Ark, a royal palace occupied until a bombing in 1920, is surreal. I walk up the hill to a mosque supported by crooked pillars with faded paint on the walls. Behind it is a dirt yard littered with bits of spare machinery and a knee-high wall partly crumbled to rubble. I turn a corner to find the smelliest toilets in all of Central Asia and then a courtyard filled with rubbish and broken concrete. One wall is intact and I can see white cloths on the tables behind the windows and someone's pet dog tied outside. A wrong turn on the way back to the main building leads to a complex of white stucco walls with offices behind them. A woman is having tea with her son at a plastic table. I stop to investigate a mysterious hole in the plaster and my foot sinks ankle-deep into a pit of dirt. In the old stables, I am alarmed to see a platoon of soldiers bearing down on me but it turns out they just want me to join their group photo. We cross paths again in the museum and they take 3 more photos with me. A scuffle breaks out before the last one and the winner gets to stand next to me and hold my hand. Tonight's story at the barracks is "ohmigod I stood beside a foreign woman and I touched her hand!" Later, in an empty room whose roof is long-gone, we sit in front of a platform that was once a throne, looking at the chipped tiles that must once have hung over the grand entryway. Soon a man appears with (fake) royal regalia and a father and son are dressing us up and asking us to pose for photos with them. I agree but insist on holding the sword.

Emboldened by my trip to the mosque in Samarkand, I wander over to a mosque I saw from the top of the Ark. Its wooden pillars are warped and its paint faded by years in the sun. We sit on benches underneath the carved roof, letting the faint breeze ruffle our hair and listening to chanting from the Koranic school in the basement. One student rides across the courtyard on his bicycle and soon we see his teacher striding toward him with a most fearsome switch. Just as we are about to leave, an emissary from the school sidles out to ask us questions on behalf of his teacher -- where are we from? do people speak German in Australia? Is it hot in our home countries and do we play tennis there?

An evening stroll shows us another Bukhara entirely. The souvenir shops slumber behind carved wooden doors and children play at the palaces over run by day time tour groups. We lose our way and find Ulugh Beck madrassa, a ruined religious school in the process of renovation. A group of boys pull us into a shattered archway and K. reads to them from their most prized possession, a leather-bound English atlas given to them by a passing Frenchman. It's a good way to end the day.

August 4th, 2006
Moynaq - Preview of the End of the World
Aug. 4th, 2006 at 6:59 PM
We arrive in Nukus at 6 a.m. and our bus driver arranges for a cab to take us to the station for the bus to Moynaq. I pay to use the smelliest toilet in the world and chat with one crazy man and one very dignified-looking older man who becomes the information broker for everyone else. "This girl is from America," I hear him telling people. "She is going to Moynaq and she is an English teacher. She has no husband and no children..."

The bus must have looked very futuristic when it was made. I think that was in 1965. At least arriving at the station an hour and a half early means that we get a seat easily, although we do have to fend of the advances of a hawker who would like to marry us or, failing that, charge us an inflated price for a private taxi. By the time we depart, the bus is as crowded as the Tokyo metro and limited space in the luggage rack means we have to sit with my big backpack across both of our laps. We tried for the luggage compartment in the bottom of the bus, but it looked like the bottom was ready to fall out. Eventually, someone less picky wrestled a sheep inside it.

I am fascinated by the people on the bus and they are fascinated by me. Printed dresses, patterned scarves, gold filigree earrings with a different design for every woman. Every wrinkled face tells a story. I try to catch a young woman's eye to start a conversation, but they all giggle and look away. One old woman stands above us, raining red glitter from her dress and periodically stroking K's back. It's funny how much you can understand even when you don't speak the language -- I'm pretty sure she's speaking Karakalpak, but I knew she was telling people that we were tourists on the way to Moynaq, and perhaps from France. Everyone points to us, asks her some questions, then looks very satisfied with the answers. I hope she wasn't saying "these are foreign hookers but let's be nice and not throw stones..."

It's hard to imagine that we are going to one of the most blighted places on earth. Out the window of the bus, I watch women wade into green fields with waist-high plants and everyone on the bus is laughing and talking. But I can see the line where the irrigation stops. Just across the road, there is suddenly nothing but sand and pale green scrub. By the time we get to Moynaq, everything is hot and silent and still.

Moynaq was once a fishing port on the Aral Sea, one of the largest inland seas in the world. Irresponsible irrigation projects drained the sea away and now there is desert and a shoreline 8 hours' drive from where the docks used to be. Our cab drives past block after block of empty shops with faded advertisements in the windows, boarded up movie theaters, office buildings with holes in the walls, buildings that have been stripped of every brick and piece of plaster within reach of human hands. When our driver drops us off, we can hardly believe it's a hotel...and that's because it isn't. It's an abandoned building, but apparently he got tired of driving and dropped us off at a random place. The kids eventually tell us which direction to walk, then follow us shouting "money money money!" The first building we try is not a hotel either. We knock at the door and see an eye peer at us through rotted planks. "Is this the hotel?" we say. "No," he says and then he's gone before we can even ask where to go. Lucky for us, the owner of the real hotel spots us and waves us over. It seems to be an old apartment building. There's no running water and one toilet that we have to flush by pouring a bucket of water into the bowl.

In the morning, we go looking for the beached fishing trawlers lying in the desert where the sea used to be. Walking over the powdery sand is exhausting. Seashells strewn across the desert floor hint at the richness of life that used to live here -- they are all little clam shells, but the variation is amazing. They are white or black, striped with reds and oranges and blues and pinks. If not for those tiny reminders, it would be impossible to believe that this desert was an ocean just before I was born. When we finally reached a rusted fishing trawler lying in the sand, all we can do is sit in silence.Tags:uzbekistan
2 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Nukus -- Back in the USSR
Aug. 4th, 2006 at 7:32 PM
The bus returns us to Nukus just before 8 p.m. It wasn't a good ride. The ticket collector starts out friendly and gets angrier and angrier at my poor Russian. By the end of the ride, he is making fun of me and I'm doing my best to ignore him. He hands me my bag from the luggage rack and I reflexively say thank you. Then he's shouting "THANK YOU? What thank you? Why thank you? What is your problem?" This is the first time anything like htis has happened to me in Uzbekistan and we are shocked. He tells me something about where our hotel is but he gets even angrier when I don't understand. K. asks somebody on the street, but the first woman just turns her face away. Someone finally says there's a hotel, though not the one we'd chosen, just across the street. We decide it's good enough for us.

The lady at the front desk is very nice but tries to short change me by $5. She's a little peeved when I notice and call her on it.

It is an Old Soviet hotel, 10 stories high and decorated with what look like little drawings of workers' muscle-y arms. The elevator has an ominous sign that says FOR 2 PEOPLE ONLY but the bellboy steps in with us anyway, which is good because I would never have figured out how to operate it. The numbers on the buttons are all worn off and you have to press the enter key to make it go. It gets faster and faster and creaks louder and louder and by the end, I am gripping the handrail and reminding myself that numerous hotel employees survive this journey every day. At the end of the ride, the buttons all pop out with a BANG that makes me think a cable has broken.

Our room is okay, but I don't think the bathroom has known the hands of a carpenter, a janitor, or a repair person since it was newly built. There are some holes in the floor and the showerhead is missing. We have to flush the toilet with a bucket of water. At first, the floor attendant tries to persuade me that this water is for showering also but I make her turn on the running water. When we try to open the door to go to dinner, we discover that the handle is broken off. Then, when I try to pull it shut and lock it, the handle on the other side nearly comes off in my hand. It is decrepit but oddly fascinating.

Actually, I could say that about all of Nukus. Crossing the street usually involves stepping over at least one ditch. Nothing is sign posted and the sewage pipes appear to be above ground, which must be why I so often smell poo. Nothing is sign posted and everything seems to be closed. I doubt I would have eaten except that a few people took pity on us and opened the seemingly-locked doors of restaurants.

I never know what I'm going to get when I talk to someone here. The man at the corner store was really friendly and fascinated that K. is from Australia ("do you speak German? what language do you speak with your American friend?") but he overcharged us for our drinks. When I bought plane tickets to Tashkent today, people actually pointed and laughed at a foreigner trying to speak Russian. This made me sad, because I've been very proud of the amount of Russian I've learned here.

But at the Savitsky Museum, everyone is very nice. One guy has parents working on a vineyard in Fairview Oklahoma and another tells me about the Peace Corps volunteers he used to practice English with. They call around to find out how much the bus to Urgench will cost and when it will leave, and then, when we decide that we are tired of decrepit Soviet buses, they arrange for a cab to pick us up at the hotel tomorrow morning. And the museum itself is fascinating. The founder took advantage of his remote placement to buy up art banned elsewhere in the USSR, along with artifacts of the disappearing cultures around this region of Uzbekistan. I expected to see a lot of politically sensitive material, but almost none of it is. It's just ordinary art, sometimes abstract, sometimes impressionist, sometimes with just minor departures from the approved Soviet style. One woman's art was banned because her "use of the color black was not sufficiently realistic" and her works "carried and impressionist background." This, more than anything, brings the reality of living in the USSR to life.

We are leaving tomorrow at 8 a.m. for Khiva, a former slave trading city in the middle of the desert. It will be a good change, I think, with lots of pretty old buildings and foreign tourists. Coming here added a lot of depth to my impressions of Uzbekistan, so I'm not at all sorry I came here. But I won't be sorry to leave either.

August 8th, 2006
Khiva
Aug. 8th, 2006 at 2:15 PM
Day 3

We eat kebabs at an outdoor restaurant, watching the sunset over the blue domes of the mausoleum and kids play hide and seek among the ancient graves. It feels like we are saying goodbye to Uzbekistan tonight, even though we still have a few more days in the country. From here, it's a brief stop in Tashkent and 2 days in the Fergana Valley, then straight to the Kyrgyz border. After dinner, I stare at the outlines of old medersas and minarets silhoutted against the night sky. It's hard to say goodbye to such a beautiful place. As I turn back to the hotel, I am accosted one last time by a souvenir seller who's been giving me the hard sell every day. "You want to climb minaret?" she says. I tell her I'm too tired, but she keeps going -- "You come back tomorrow morning. Oh, you leave tomorrow morning? When you go? 8 a.m.? Well, you come back tomorrow 6 a.m. see sunrise, okay? Okay? I see you then?"

This afternoon, we negotiated our way into one of my favorite sights so far, the Juma Mosque. I say negotiated because technically, when you come to Khiva, you are supposed to buy a $7 ticket AND pay $1 or $2 extra whenever you go into specific historic buildings. We thought this was a rip-off, so we decided to offer caretakers a small fee instead.

Inside everything was dark and cool. A forest of carved wooden pillars, some 1,000 years old, supported a low ceiling. The only light came from a skylight over a pool in the middle of the floor. No two of the pillars were the same and exploring them in the dim light made me feel like I was lost in fairy land.

Day Two
I sit in a small room on the edge of the Pahlavi Mausoleum, listening to a man sing verses from the Koran. I come out and there's a wedding in front of him. The guests, whom I saw earlier kissing one of the tombs across the way, are gathered in a circle on the floor. They listening to the singing man, periodically passing their hands over their faces. Then everyone passes money up to a table in front of the bride and groom. When the service is over, everyone walks backward to the door. I see the newlyweds over and over again in Khiva, posing for photos in front of famous monuments. Later, I realize that this is a wedding city. I see people dancing and clapping around another bride in a gauzy white dress and velvet couches with plastic flowers just waiting to be used for wedding photos.

In the afternoon, I meet a young and very persistent souvenir seller. I decide to reward her hard work with a visit to her shop, but tell her that I only want earrings. She says she doesn't have any, but shoves me inside with her little sister and tells me she'll come back with some from her friend. The little sister unrolls carpet after carpet, unphased by my lack of interest. Twenty minutes later, she finally gets tired and starts putting funny hats on my head. Then big sister comes back with a selection of tacky earrings, which I somewhat guilty turn down. This doesn't deter her though. She grabs my hand and drags me to her friend's "shop," which is actually another teenager sitting on a step with a plastic bag full of earrings. They actually stick numerous pairs in and on my ears and if they weren't all so ugly and over priced, I might have bought one.

Day One

We walk around the city at sunrise. There is a surprise around every corner -- blue tiled palaces and tall, graceful minarets rising into the rosy sky. It is fascinating, peaceful, enthralling.Tags:uzbekistan
Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Back in Tashkent
Aug. 8th, 2006 at 2:43 PM
The airplane scheduled to take us back to Tashkent looked modern enough. I have no proof that the sudden drops in elevation were caused by pilot error or mechanical defect. But it was unnerving when the seat belt buckle came off in my hand. And when half the seats collapsed upon landing.

The baggage claim was a window with a metal slide underneath it. It wasn't a very slippery slide though, because the bags could only make it about 6 inches down on their own. We formed a line along either side to move the luggage along. Uzbek people put interesting things in the checked baggage. Like bags of mutton. If you are wondering, a bag of mutton with fat spilling out of the top should not be slid down a luggage slide.

We've checked ourselves into a real hotel so that we can have the pleasure of a toilet that always flushes and a shower that emits more than a tiny dribble of water. Our plans for our two days here are to stock up on toiletries and eat as much non-Uzbek food as possible. Since we left Bukhara, only 4 dishes have been available at every single restaurant we visited: plov (rice pilaf with mutton), laghman (noodle soup with mutton), manty (mutton dumplings) and shashlyk (mutton on a stick). I will cry if I have to eat them again.

August 10th, 2006
Thoughts on material depravation
Aug. 10th, 2006 at 9:09 PM
An email to my sister:

I've gotten used to having trouble with internet. Actually, it's been one of the easier things to deal with, because I can always update my livejournal and communicate with other people (so long as I am patient).

Material depravation is a little harder. I cannot turn my nose up at things that thousands of Uzbek people consider ordinary conditions; in fact, when I consider them closely myself, it is obvious that I have everything I really need to survive. But it exhausts me sometimes. I was telling dad the other day that there is not stuff in Uzbekistan -- like, I went to the nicest grocery store in the nicest city and there were only 10 aisles, most of which contained raw materials for cooking rather than the pre-packaged, processed junk food of my dreams. I do not want a bag of salt. I want a bag of potato chips. (I found some later at a mini-mart near my hotel). Sometimes, when I go to small towns, even ones with lots of tourists, things are just not available. It's hard for me to even identify which things. Just that it's weird to walk into a store and see only 3 or 4 dusty shelves. Once I went to a town where there were no restaurants, so we had to convince the propreitor of our hotel to hire an old woman to cook for us. We got some fried potatos, an egg and a glass of yogurt to drink. Kristy was still really hungry, but the town only had two "stores" which were really just the front room of someone's house. They sold lots of soap and detergent and some very dusty cookies. We asked and asked and finally Kristy got a pale yellow pepper that should have been bright green and a carrot that was tan rather than orange.

The next town was nicer. We stayed in a hotel that was really a very nice private house, but even so, the toilet leaked water all over the floor and stopped flushing just when I got sick AGAIN. The shower could not really be called a shower because water came out of just 2 or 3 holes in the shower head. There was no bathtub, so we had to wash ourselves with the tap on the wall. This is normal for everywhere we've been since we came into Uzbekistan and the constant little annoyance of not being able to wash or poop wears on me.

Now we're in a real hotel in the capital city and it feels like luxury, even though the room is very small and ugly. But the shower is a real shower, and the toilet flushes every single time and once when the TV stopped working (we have a TV!), they sent someone to fix it...immediately! And I am fascinated by the TV. There is only one English channel, which actually comes from Korea and is about Korean people. Last night I learned that the answer to a stressful job is to eat spicy food. When you eat hot food, it causes pain and that causes your brain to release endorphins that make you happy. I was even happy to watch Notting Hill and Charmed in Russian. And I saw a cartoon about some wrongfully imprisoned vegetables who escaped just in time to forestall an unjust execution and drive the capitalist pigs out of town. Afterward, they sang songs and worked together to build a new school house. I couldn't understand the songs, but I think they were about why Communism is good.

But I digress...Tashkent is this amazing playground after the little towns of Uzbekistan, but when I came here the first time, it looked all poor and dusty. We've been eating in "nice" restaurants, which means that they serve more than the 4 "national dishes of Uzbekistan" even though they do not have most of the things listed on their menu. Sometimes we order 2 of something and they bring us one and tell us to share. And I STILL think it's a nice restaurant.

But my favorite part of today was when I went to the really fancy hotel to use their ATM. I did not even have to pee, but I decided that I would go to the bathroom anyway. It smelled like lemons and everything was sparkly and spotless. There were attractive wicker baskets for throwing away your paper towels. I just sat on a toilet for a little while, appreciating the nice smells and many clean surfaces.

I am still rolling my eyes at myself for having problems with this -- it is ludicrous to say that you miss the presence of things that you cannot even identify, or for it to be such a problem to stay in big clean rooms with somewhat troublesome plumbing. Eating 4 national dishes over and over again is tiring, but at least they taste good. I should try to be more durable. Kyrgyzstan will be harder I know. There is even less stuff there, and the same 4 national dishes. In fact, we will probably not get to stay in hotels because we will mostly be staying with local families. That will be very interesting, but it will also mean tougher conditions. There's no reason to whine about that though, because I am going to a country where I can afford everything I really need and lots of people probably can't.

August 14th, 2006
Fergana -- Last stop in Uzbekistan
Aug. 14th, 2006 at 3:39 PM
It's Saturday night in Fergana, our last stop in Uzbekistan. It only takes 2 minutes to discover that there are no streetlights to guide us around the holes in the sidewalks, so we have dinner at the open-air teahouse across the road. Little do we know that it is also the town nightclub. Slowly the stage fills up with men dancing alone. One of them is doing real, John Travolta disco while 50 Cent plays in the background. Another does the hand jive like he means it, then waves his arms in circles through the air. When a lady in an Uzbek dress moonwalks across the stage by herself, I decide that this is one place I can dance.

On the way to the stage, we meet Liliya and Alisher. They demand that we sit with them and pour us shot after shot of vodka, which we are ordered to chase with warm slices of cheese. Even though this combination makes me feel ill, I feel a rush of gratitude for people who are so kind to us even when we have so little language in common. Somehow, even though we can barely communicate, we bond over the shared trials of being young and single, working crappy jobs for just enough money to get by. And then we are on the stage. Girls dance with girls and boys dance with boys. When guys try to join our group, Liliya shoves them firmly away. What constitutes a "good girl" in Central Asia is a continual source of fascination to me. It seems that guys do and say whatever they want and it's the woman's burden to know what to refuse. Liliya and her friends are wearing bare-midriff tops with tight jeans. They are drinking and smoking, but they are not really bad girls because their mothers are watching from tables just a few feet away. When Alisher, who wants to marry me, gets a little too fresh, Liliya's mother is summoned to thwack him really hard with her purse.

We don't make it out of bed until 11 the next morning. At lunch, our waitress is very excited to meet an American. "I look for husband. You have brother?" she asks. "Okay, how about friend? No? Nobody look for wife?" She draws a little picture of a bride and groom to clarify her meaning.

The bazaar is the same as all the others we've seen in Uzbekistan -- women in bright patterned dresses, a sprinkling of men with embroidered caps and red sashes around their waists, piles of onions big enough to bury a person in. No matter how many times I've been here, it always feels like stepping into another world.

At night, we go back to the tea house and this time Liliya is working as a waitress. A single man is air guitaring on the stage to Hotel California. He is a surprisingly well-coordinated drunk who is able to hop in circles on one foot. The manager lets his performance go on until he tries to snuggle a loudspeaker. Though he's escorted off the premises, he comes back a few minutes later, furtively air guitaring when the manager's back is turned.

It's a good good-bye to Uzbekistan.

We're in Osh, Kyrgyzstan now. We arrived without hassle, except for one border guard who half-seriously wanted to keep me in Uzbekistan in order to marry me.Tags:uzbekistan
Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Untold Stories, Unsolved Mysteries
Aug. 14th, 2006 at 3:58 PM
I.
People in Uzbekistan constantly throw water on patios, sidewalks, roads and other concrete surfaces during the day. Once, on a bus, the driver actually paid a little kid to walk down the aisle throwing water. Why?

II.
On cable TV, every commercial break includes at least 30 seconds of nature footage usually involving fish. It is not an avertisement for anything. Again, why?

III.
Men are nothing like what the guidebook warned me about. The only guys who've hit on me have been really funny, like this one:

Guard: Where is your friend?
Me: She's looking at tiles over there.
Guard: (excitedly) Will you marry me?
Me: Um, no.
Guard: (hopefully)Will you marry me tonight at the top of the minaret? One night only!
Me: Er, that's not really my thing.
Guard: (thoughtfully) Mmmm. You are good lady.

I've noticed I am complimented by members of both sexes for turning down proposals.

IV.
Getting from Tashkent to Fergana involves 2 negotiation sessions, a shouting match, and a harrowing walk across the highway. On the advice of our hotel, we go to the train station to find a shared taxi. A price is agreed upon, we're on the way...and then our driver stops at a bazaar on the edge of the city and tells us it will cost $15 each for a seat in a hot, crowded minibus. Alternatively, we can pay $30 each for a seat in a car. We are both perplexed and pissed off because this is not remotely what we agreed on. I decide to take advantage of the many taxi drivers swarming around us to arrange a new deal myself...but our original driver anticipates this plan, apologizes for the misunderstanding, says he'll take us to Fergana for the price we discussed and shoves me into the backseat. Then he drives us across the highway so that 6 lanes of traffic and a concrete divider separate us from the competition. This is when I figure out his deal -- he was never planning to take us to Fergana; he just wanted to take us to this bazaar, find a new taxi for us, charge us a huge finder's fee and then go back to the train station to repeat the process with the next foreigners who wander up. Sure enough, he soon shows up with a new driver who will take us for the more reasonable price of $10 apiece. We agree to this, and then he asks for $6 for a finder's fee. A shouting match ensues. I win. I think our new driver will drive across the highway to collect us, but I am wrong. He picks up both of our backpacks and leads us on a terrifying walk across 6 lanes of high-speed traffic and a climb over the tall concrete median. Then we get to sit in the hot car for an hour while he finds 2 more passengers to fill it up.

V.
Uzbekistan has way too many large flying insects. Imagine the bumblebee of your worst childhood nightmare and you will know what the scariest one looks like. They are long and fat with yellow stripes. Their legs dangle so far that you can count all six of them. They eat red meat, so they swarm your table when you order kebabs. I was terrified of them until I discovered what a satisfying THUNK they make when you bat them away with empty soft drink bottles.

VI.
In Nukus, we meet a guy our age who works with Doctors Without Borders and learned English partly from a Peace Corps volunteer. He speaks fluent Russian, English, French, Turkish and Karakalpak but when the project he works for closes, he has no better job options than to work illegally in Kazakhstan. He tells me his dream is to go to America and see skyscrapers.

VII.
According to a passenger in our shared taxi to Fergana, a doctor in Uzbekistan makes $50/month. A businessman or an office worker might make the same and a teacher might make a bit less. That's why there are so many taxi drivers. A car is a hugely prized possession here. It seems to me that having one might mean more to people than having a house. You can sell a car if you're broke and you can make money working as an unofficial taxi driver any time. There's a heirarchy of cars here. Old Soviet Ladas and Zhigulis are the lowest and some of them have to be started by inserting a screwdriver somewhere under the hood. If you see someone driving a Daewoo Tico, you can assume that you can flag it down as a taxi. It is a tiny car but clearly a source of pride. Everytime I get in one, the upholestery is spotless and the windows are so clean I sometimes have to touch them to know that they're there. The best car is a Daewoo Nexia. It has enough room to take 4 passengers and it's good enough to be an intercity taxi. Used ones cost $6,000; new ones may not be available.

VIII.
The beggars in Nukus piss me off. If I sit down to eat a Snickers or drink a Coke, a kid comes up to me and demands it. Eating bread and drinking water does not produce a similar effect. When I refuse to surrender my food, they walk away calling me something that I suspect is the Uzbek equivalent of "bitch."

XI.
I've had a lot of conversations about America. Examples:

me: I am from America.
them: Jennifer Lopez!

me: I am from America.
them: I am Mike Tyson!

me: I am from America.
them Washington DC!

me: I am from America.
them: Are you Peace Corps?

The last response is my favorite. The people always look so excited when they say it and they usually have a story about learning English with a PC volunteer. I always feel so proud to tell them that I will be working for Peace Corps next summer.

X.
I've changed a lot since I started this trip. I'm tanner and sleeker, with skinnier thighs and well-toned upper arms. I can eat what's put before me and the whole drama with the cab to Fergana didn't even really upset me. And now I am a plumber. Now I know exactly which knobs and levers to push to make a toilet flush.

August 19th, 2006
Modern-Day Kyrgyz Nomad
Aug. 19th, 2006 at 4:01 PM
I. Beginning of an Adventure

Up early to negotiate a taxi. 5 hours to the next city. One hour to relax in our new accomodation, owner bringing us raspberries from the garden that look like tiny jewels. An afternoon to explore, a home-cooked dinner, and then the alarm's set for the next day. My new life as a modern-day Kyrgyz nomad.

Osh flashes past in a day and a half. There's a ritual to changing money at the bazaar -- two staff to watch over every transaction, solemenly and slowly double counting the bills to so we can see the number's right. There are big wide streets and tall trees here, men in hats that add six inches to their height, and laundry hanging from the balconies of apartment buildings still decorated with Soviet murals. Something is indefinably different from Uzbekistan.

Underway to Jalal-abad in the morning, no idea if we got a good deal on the taxi or not. The fields roll up and down, green tinged with red and gold and cyprus trees in the background. Our driver deftly steers through a herd of sheep.

Shock at our first Kyrgyz homestay. We steeled ourselves for the worst and got the best -- foyer, bedroom, sitting room, owner who brings us pomegranites from his garden.

II. To Kazarman in the Little Volga that Could

Five curious faces watch our negotiation with the taxi driver, sticking their faces in the window to ask if we have cameras or husbands. One asks "I love you?" hopefully while pelvic thrusting to clarify his meaning. I ignore him to stare at our car, a Khruschev-era Russian Volga that will somehow carry us over the mountains. The driver digs K's seatbelt buckle out from under the driver's seat and blows dust off. And then we're moving.

Village life unfolds along the road -- boys driving herds of sheep and goat whose little hooves patter like rainfall. At breakfast, I understand nothing anyone says to me. That doesn't stop them talking to me.

Underway again for 10 minutes before we hit a roadblock where fake army men demand $15 for the use of the pitted and rutted gravel road. We sit defiantly in the car till they let us past. We drive in the grass alongside the highway to spare the rows of sunflower seeds drying on the hot asphalt. Limp yellow sunflower carcasses lie alongside them.

Up up up into the mountaintops till all life and color vanishes. Now there's only brown-green grass waving in the breeze. Glaciers glitter in the crevasses between the peaks. Our little car screams as it navigates craters, puddles and a river bed but dies only once. My door flies open when we bounce into a hole. The going gets better once we get back down. Unadorned brown and white yurts at the roadside sell gas cans and spare parts. Another fake roadblock, this one made from a birch branch and a paint can lid that says STOP. They at least don't ask for money.

Kazarman appears unexpectedly quickly. Our driver stops at a ramshackle house to deliver a package and I catch my breath, thinking this is our homestay and resolving not to look too shocked when I see whatever's inside. I'm ashamed to breathe a little sigh of relief as we set off on the dirt track again, stopping agaain and again to ask where our house is. All we have is a scrap of paper with an address scribbled on the front. More faces press against the window asking more questions I cannot understand. Finally, finally someone who knows the way.

The house is a little blue and white place with carpets everywhere and thick pads on the floor for sleeping. There is no running water, but miraculously, a satellite TV. It takes me, the driver, and another man to pry my car door open.

Food appears on the table as soon as we sit down -- homemade bread, goblets of jewel-colored jam, then a cup of thick gray mystery drink with sour white mystery lumps floating inside. Determined to be polite, I drink it down. The end of the cup is in sight when a plate of cookies appears on the table. I seize one, bite down...and then the instant knowledge that this is the worst thing I have ever tasted. One agonizing god-dont-throw-up-minute struggling to chew and swallow the whole sticky chewy sour dried yogurt ball from hell. Defeated, I ask the daughter of the family to walk me to the shop. Just five minutes down a road rimmed by brown bluffs, trafficked equally by chicken, horse, motorbike and car, and I have a Coke. God love globalization.

III. To Naryn with No Speedometer

At night a driver comes to our homestay and says he has to go to Naryn tomorrow anyway, so he'll take us if we just pay our share of the petrol. We agree instantly. This car is worst than the first -- no tape player, the windows don't open, front seat held up by a rope. Dust clouds billow through cracks in the floor. But it goes fast, and our driver is not afraid of potholes.

We drive into the bluffs whose contours shine golden in the morning sun. The gravel road skirts through the bottom of canyons, under jagged rusty rocks and alongside lakes with smooth, reflective water. Yurts spread out across brown-green hills and shepards on horseback peer into the windows of the car. We round a bend and the world opens up. On one side, a sheer cliff and ridges of mountains growing higher and higher until the furthest ones look painted on the horizon. We get out to appreciate the view. I feel so free.

In Naryn, $15 rents us our own 3-bedroom apartment with a girl who cooks breakfast in the morning and walks us to the bank and bazaar. I stay in the hot shower till the water runs out, thankful not to be moving for a day.

Tomorrow: Road trip to a caravanserai in the mountains
Tomorrow Tomorrow: on the road again to Kochkor, a town at the base of a splendid lake.Tags:kyrgyzstan, travel

August 30th, 2006
Pieces of the last 9 days
Aug. 30th, 2006 at 4:14 PM
9 days, no internet. Such is Kyrgyzstan. Fear not for my life if updates remain infrequent. Now, where to start the story of 9 days that have taken me further off the beaten track than I have ever been?

I. Lake Song Kol

When I first step outside the yurt in the morning, I think everything is silent. Then I teach my ears to listen to new sounds -- a hawk's wings flapping, insects humming, grazing horses ripping grass from the ground. I lean against the sheepskin covering of the yurt, feeling the sun on my face, fascinated by the changing patterns of cloud and sunshine. I am wrapped up in the little mysteries of this place -- flocks of sheep that move together with no discernable leader, cows who walk themeslves home at night in a straight single-file line.

I spend evening watching the storm roll in. Black clouds extend tentacles toward mountaintops and yurt tops. First trip to the outhouse (I'm sick again) reveals a wall of violet clouds on one side of the lake and sunny blue skies on the other. Next trip (10 minutes later), the bottoms of the clouds are turning black and the distance is shrouded in mist. The sound of thunder and howling wind is almost indistinguishable. Back in the yurt, I wrap my hands around a hot mug of tea and dodge leaks in the roof.

The next morning we are on horseback through empty valleys covered with scrubby green grass. We pause once while the guide helps a shepard round up an errant black sheep. He comes back to thank us at the end, as startled by us as we are by him, all of us staring openly -- we at his tall felt hat and long gray mustaches, he at my hot pink t-shirt and K's sunscreen smeared face. He speaks excitedly in Kyrgyz, not minding that we cannot understand.

II. Kochkor

We spend 5 days in Kochkor in between trips to lakes and shepard's summer pastures. Other tourists bustle out in a day or two, believing there is nothing to see in a town with one main street, no traffic lights and no running water. They are wrong. In the bazaar, there is an aged yellow sedan whose backseat is perpetually covered by slanting piles of tomatoes. The landmarks on the long walk to our homestay are a flock of six geese, two tan and white spotted calves, a trio of sheep and a house with a star, sickle and hammer still prominently painted on the outside. Some days weather beaten old men on bicycles prod cattle on the road with long leather whips; another day, families of 4 carefully bathe their calves with water from the old red pumps along the road.

One day an old granny with a floral headscarf and gold teeth walks me to the corner store, muttering in Kyrgyz and gesturing to the sky. On the way back, I meet Damira, the local English teacher. Am I married? she wants to know, and who am I traveling with? If I'm not married, she hopes it's not a man. She says she can find me a good Kyrgyz gentleman to be my husband, but understands if I would prefer to marry an American when I get home.

III. Treasure Chest Lake

It's hard to choose which direction to face. Left: our 2 yurts, surrounded by every possible color of horse and low green hillocks that give rise to mountains. Behind: a craggy peak covered with concentric circles of ice and beyond that, more horses and sloping valleys and peaks. Front: a lake rimmed by mountains and green hills. Go to the store, buy a 96-count box of crayons and count all the shades of blue inside. Then you will know how many colors spread across the surface of this one small lake.

Our host family has 2 yurts, one for sleeping and one for eating. I feel like I'm inside a Lara Ingalls Wilder novel as soon as I see the butter churn. Most of what the family owns is tied to the lattice that rings the yurt's round walls. There are 2 rifles, a handgun, a fishing pole, mittens and slippers, a knee pad for use when milking horses, and a few tupperware containers piled by a stove that periodically belches fire from its hind end. This is the most remote place I've ever been, a pasture accessible only by 6 hours' horse ride, but the radio on the ceiling plays Justin Timberlake, Shakira, and 50 Cent. In the sleeping yurt, strips of meat hang to dry from the ceiling. A big blue blanket hides boxes of clothes adn there's a hole in the floor for provisions that have to stay cold. We sleep on the floor, wrapped in all the clothing we own and all the blankets we can find. One morning, I awaken to find a cow looming over my bed with curious eyes.

Host mother is 23, speaks some English, wears a faded red scarf over her hair and has 2 children. Little boy rummages through our bags and steals food, kicks puppies, and pees on the floor of the yurt with immunity. Baby girl is 4 months old, impossibly fat, gurgles and coos and waves hands with tiny red-painted fingernails. Mother says we can take her home with us if we want to. Older sister is 27, plumper and plainer than mother. She stares and stares at me but never speaks. Husband is 27 too, and missing his two front teeth. He's worried that we aren't married at our ages and offers help finding good Kyrgyz men, possibly the 3 interchangeable brothers who wander in and out of the yurt slapping and punching and arguing with each other.

IV. Tash Rabat

Tash Rabat is a tenth century caravanserai surrounded by mountains and a faint dirt road that connects summer yurt camps to one another. It is fun to wonder through dusty rooms with stone walls, imagining the lives of the Silk Road traders who once passed through here. But my favorite part is the 2.5-hour drive there and back. I savor small sights -- 3 geese walking in a line, a fence made from rusted car doors, farmers walking into a field with scythes slung across their backs.




Now I am in Karakol, another town at the edge of another lake. But this lake is a beach resort, and it has internet cafes. I'll be here at least for tomorrow, and we have plans to visit some nearby hot springs sometime this week. Miss you all!

September 5th, 2006
Perplexed
Sep. 5th, 2006 at 1:45 PM
So I peered at my friend-of list today and noticed that there are now more than 180 people. I'm glad so many of you like my writing and new friends are always welcome here, but where did you come from? I noticed that several of you have no friends or communities in common with me, so how did you find me?

September 6th, 2006
Rough Road to Altyn Arashan
Sep. 6th, 2006 at 10:35 AM
I break on the road between Kochkor and Karakol. We have to change shared taxis 3 times and each time, the drivers want $50 per person for a journey that we know should cost $2 or $3. The first time, one of the brothers who runs our guesthouse goes to the market to negotiate for us. He laughs at the outrageous prices and the drivers reduce them accordingly. The second time, I manage to stay cool and calm. I sit on a ledge and read my guidebook until they figure out that I will not budge. The third time, the drivers refuse to negotiate with us. They will not take less than $40 for the 100 KM journey. We seach and search, backpacks growing heavier on our backs and finally, someone agrees to $5 each. He loads us into a comfy Pontiac van...and drives us to an overcrowded Soviet van. This is where I lose it. I fling my bags onto the ground and stomp and swear. I tell the driver to go to hell, that I will not pay the price agreed upon, that I will negotiate with someone myself. We talk to more drivers and then we come back to the minivan. But this time we get the price down to $2.50 each, only about 50 cents more than the locals are paying. It takes 3 hot, sticky hours to make the journey stopping at every town, village, and farmhouse along the way.

We want to go to Karakol because we want to go to the famous Lake Issyk-kul. We see its multi-colored blue waters and white sand beaches along the road for the whole 3-hour drive. But our Lonely Planet has lied to us (again). Karakol is not on the shore of the lake. We spend 2 days lounging about the hostel, reading in the morning and writing emails in the afternoons. It is easy to pretend I am not in Kyrgyzstan.

The next day, we decide to go to the hot springs in the mountains. Valentin, our Jeep driver, is a Russian muggle version of Professor Dumbledore who combines the vitality of a 20-year-old with the life experience (and wrinkles) of a 150-year-old. The Jeep, he says, is his music. It has carried him through regime changes, coup-de-etats and the career changes that went with them. It is a strange Jeep, a veteran of the Russian military. The gas tank is under the front passenger seat, the instrument panels are missing, the tailgate long gone and whatever used to be in the back has been replaced by 2 hard benches. Like Professor Dumbledore, Valentin is both a wacky and capable leader. We stop on rock piles and log bridges for him to tell jokes, but he seems to have a sixth sense about where the real danger is. Several times he makes us get out and walk near the river to avoid rocks poised to fall onto the road.

We stay in an old farmhouse by the river. I doze on bridges, skip on rocks near white-water rapids and meet K. for trips to our own private hot spring in a metal cabin. It's an idyllic existence, provided that it doesn't go on for too long. Unfortunately, Valentin doesn't rouse himself to leave before darkness falls. The road back is harder. My whole body aches from the effort of holding myself in the open-top Jeep as we lurch over river beds and boulders. On the smooth stretches, Valentin floors the accelerator and sometimes we tilt at a 45 degree angle. The wind is freezing. I imagine myself sipping cocktails on a beach, but mostly I think about the pleasures ahead at the hotel -- hot dinner, warm bed. I break again when I find out that dinner is a plate of cold rice and that K. and I have to sleep on a single bed in the cold concrete-floored office. Valentin's brother, who owns the hostel and is stuck in the Soviet customer service mindset, does not get why I am upset. Eventually, I get $1 off the regular price, but this is not much consolation. We leave as soon as we can for Bishkek, the capital city and stay for 2 days of yummy food and a cozy hotel.

And now we are in Osh, making arrangements to cross the border into China. I worried that I had made a mistake in trusting my life to Kyrgyzstan Airlines, but it was a safe flight over breathtaking mountains. This morning, I've already honed my negotiation skills with one prospective driver and he's coming for a meeting at 3.

Home in 5 weeks.

September 8th, 2006
Long journey across Irkeshtam Pass
Sep. 8th, 2006 at 12:44 AM
At 2:10 A.M., the lights click on. "Your driver is almost here," our hostel clerk tells us. I strap on my head lamp and carry my bags down 4 flights of dark concrete stairs. We are going to China.

There are 4 of us -- me, Kristy, an older man named Ivan who talks non-stop about religion and philosophy, and a guy our age named John who's just left a job as a lab tech to cycle across Asia. By 3, we've finished packing the startlingly nice van with bicycle parts, backpacks, and food for the 8-hour journey to the Kyrgyz border. The driver slips in, puts the key into the ignition and...nothing happens. It takes me 2 minutes to figure out that we shouldn't have left the interior lights on during 40 minutes of packing. The driver, unfortunately, needs close to 30 minutes to process this information. But his boss shows up at 3:30 with a brand new battery and then we're on the road.

Early morning Kyrgyzstan is intriguing. We pass donkey cart after donkey cart loaded with inverted pyramids of hay, some driven only by 9 or 10 year old kids. The road deteriorates rapidly and soon it's a mixture of gravel, boulders and potholed pavement. I try to tell myself that it's a Disneyland ride, but the increasing altitude, the bumps, the curves, and the overactive heater are overwhelming my stomach. I throw up the first time about an hour in. The second time, I mistakenly seize a plastic bag with a hole in it, which means I throw up into my lap. It's one of the times when I am so grateful to be traveling with a friend. Strangers can be kind, but only real friends let you use their towels to wipe vomit out of your lap.

By dawn, my stomach is settled and I can appreciate how rural this part of Kyrgyzstan is. We drive across whole towns in a minute, just enough time to glimpse women in their bathrobes driving sheep across the streets. It's 6 a.m. but the kids are already up and feeding the animals before school.

At 8:30, the engine just quits. We huddle in the cold on the side of a curvy mountain road while the driver drains the rest of the battery with unsuccessful attempts to restart the car. We all know that this van is dead, but for 2 more hours, the driver will maintain that it's just sleeping.

At 10:30, our guide returns with a van that we recognize as the marshrutka (taxi van) that travels between Osh (where we came from) and Sary Tash (an isolated mountain town). It seems that he has rented it for our use. I think of all the times I have stood at bus stops, wondering what the hell happened to all the buses that were supposed to come. Maybe their drivers were also lured away by stranded tourists in the mountains.

It's good to be moving again, and the marshrutka is incredibly clean but it's deficient in a few ways: (1) it moves slooooooooowly over the badly paved road (2) it is not good at maneuvering through flocks of sheep (3) the driver has a strange interest in broken engine parts and stops for a long time to purchase something large, greasy and mechanical from a broken-down semi and then leaves it in the middle of the floor.

I sleep for an hour and wake up when the van stops. We are broken down, but in front of the Pamir Mountains, a range of sheer white peaks that rise straight up from a green plain. Yurts are scattered across the fields and I imagine how exhilirating it must be to wake up to this view every morning. Thankfully, this break down lasts just long enough to take a few photos and then we're moving all the way to the first passport checkpoint...where the driver picks up 3 Kyrgyz hitchikers, which means we have to drop them off, and when we drop them off, there are more people waiting for a lift... To tell the truth, it's not that long a delay but we're already 5 hours behind schedule and not sure when the border closes.

The border, when we finally get there, is not remotely recognizable as a border crossing and I am so thankful for the extra $10 we paid for a guide to get us through. We walk into a maze of rusted metal trailers and through the first of two passport checks. Both take place in tiny wooden buildings with flaking paint. After the second one, our guide arranges for us to ride across 6 KM of no-man's-land in the back of an empty scrap metal truck. And it looks like No Man's Land -- stark red cliffs hemming in a narrow valley whose floor is covered by black pebbles and dirty streams. At the first of 4 Chinese passport checkpoints, we have to get out of the truck. This is harder than it sounds. The wheels alone are higher than my waist and just to reach them, I have to hoist myself over the top of the enormous cart hitched to the back of the truck. In the end, even with the help of 2 people, I fall getting out. There just isn't enough Meredith to reach from the foothold in the middle of the tire to the handhold at the top of the truck. Luckily, the driver catches me and I'm unscathed except for the grease on my right sleeve. And the embarassment.

We walk through 3 passport checkpoints. At the 3rd, we realize we have a problem. It's 4 KM to the final border post, the one where we get stamps and a taxi into Kashgar, but trucks from the Kyrgyz side won't be allowed through until 50 Chinese trucks heading the opposite direction clear customs. That means there's no ride for us for a looong time. We sit outside the passport control trailer looking pathetic for 30 minutes before the guards decide to let through 2 Kyrgyz trucks to help us out. I end up riding across the remaining stretch of border in a bulldozer. It's not as much fun as I thought it would be. It turns out that bulldozers are very, very tall and accessible only by a series of narrow steps not suited for climbing by clumsy girls with large backpacks. The vibration inside is overwhelming. My head swings back and forth like a bobble-headed doll and the diesel fumes do not help my stomach. I have never been so relieved to exit a vehicle in my life.

The final border crossing is fussy. Ivan gets shouted at about the apple he forgot was in his backpack and then offered a permit application to bring the apple across. The border guards say it might clear in a month. Then we all have to line up in front of a machine that is mysteriously able to take our temperature just from our looking at it. I would like one of the medical people on my friends list to explain how this is possible.

I know the taxi we arrange from the border to Kashgar is too good to be true. It's a Nissan that still smells brand new. The factory's plastic wrap is still on the creamy leather seats. After a month of traveling in dying Russian cars from the 70s, it feels like a limousine. But I've forgotten that the Chinese definition of full is different from mine. The driver insists that the backseat is big enough for 4 and wedges an extra passenger in.

The brown, jagged backs of the mountains along the road look like sleeping dinosaurs. I expect them to rise any minute and stomp across the blue rivers and multi-colored green grass in the valleys. Brown brick villages rise seemingly out of nowhere. It is hard to believe that people live in places so small and remote...and that they have satellite TV there.

At 7:30, our driver stops, removes a prayer mat from the trunk and prays facing Mecca. Afterward he feels conversational...which means he wants to share all the English he knows. "7! 8! 9!" he declares out of nowhere. "My brother is Oklahoma! 11...12...13!" He wants to teach us Uighur too, but it takes us awhile to figure out what's going on. "Excuse me. Ursu," he says over and over again as if his meaning should be obvious. We arrive in Kashgar at 9:00.

All I want to eat is rice. I think it will feel good in my still-swirling stomach and it's China, so getting rice shouldn't be a problem, right? The restaurant our hotel recommends has no rice. We ask 3 times just to be sure, pointing out each rice dish on the menu. There are french fries, but no rice. These people are deficient in being Chinese.

And now it is 11:30. I've been awake for all but 2 of the last 24 hours. The surprising thing is, today was pretty cool. How many people do you know who've driven across international borders in construction equipment?Tags:kyrgyzstan, travel
8 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Photo Post -- Khiva, Uzbekistan
Sep. 8th, 2006 at 10:31 PM

10 more at my flickr account

Internet is fast in Kashgar, so I can finally upload a few photos. Being a naturally disorganized person, I forgot to label my photo CDs, so I've been selecting random ones to upload. These are all from Khiva, Uzbekistan.
6 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink

September 10th, 2006
Kashgar
Sep. 10th, 2006 at 6:30 PM
Kashgar is part of a hidden China that few foreigners know exists. The majority of people here are not Chinese at all, but Uighur, a Muslim group descended from the Turks who lived here long ago. They have a separate language, culture and history and if I showed you photos of the old town, you would not guess it was China.

And in a few years, photos maybe all that's left of Kashgar's Uighur Old Town. As I walk through narrow streets of brown mudbrick houses, it is eery to think that soon this place will be no more. It is slowly being demolished to make way for modern apartment complexes, office buildings and shopping centers. I cannot say if this is progress or tragedy. I know the building boom is fueled by China's economic growth, adn that growth is raising the standard of living for a lot of people. I can't complain about lack of ambience if modern buildings make people's lives better. I'm just not sure if the Chinese government gave anyone a choice about the demolition of their homes, or if the people who lost their homes are the ones who will benefit from the new facilities.

I feel guilty when I go to the mosque. I love the trees in the quiet courtyard, the flaking yellow paint, and the way the carpets prickle under my feet. But do the people who use this mosque want me here? Working mosques are closed almost everywhere in the world. Maybe the people here want to share their religion. Maybe if I were a member of a beautiful, historic church I'd be proud if people came to see and photograph it. But really, I think I would find it annoying and disruptive. I suspect the people here do too, but this is probably yet another matter the Chinese government doesn't give minorities a choice about. A sign outside tells tourists that the Chinese government has given money to restore this mosque and that shows that "all ethnic groups heartily endorse the Party's religious policy." The mosque is open to show off inter-ethnic inter-religious cooperation between China and its many minority groups, it says. I doubt it. I don't think the Chinese government wants anybody's religious place to be too sacred.

I admit I'm scared when I see the Uighur beggar coming toward me. Her veil isn't really a veil; it's a thick brown blanket draped over her head. The completeness of this convering makes me imagine there's something inhuman under there, a ravaged face or some specter that can suck out my soul. As I walk around the city for a day, I realize that a lot of Uighur women cover their heads this way. I wonder what it would be like to see everything from behind such a thick veil. Every memory of everything you saw outside in your adult life would be overlaid by this pattern of crisscrossing brown threads. Would you just think that was normal, or would you itch to know what life looked like without it?

Kashgar, in my mind, is perfect. You can entertain yourself just by sitting on a bench and watching people go by. For almost as long as it has existed, it's been a trading post for traffic coming from Europe, the Middle East, Russia and China and you can see that reflected in the faces here. So many of the people are beautiful -- high cheek-boned, dark skinned but light-eyed, curly brown hair tinged with red. The clothes here are a mix of everything I've seen in Central Asia. So many patterns of sequined dresses, silk skirts whose designs look like technicolor rattle snakes. There are the heavy brown veils and light silk ones that expose only the eyes and other women who press black scarves against their mouths when they walk. The Pakistani men wear long white shirts with lose pants and the Uighur men wear black and white or green and white embroidered caps. It seems there is a wedding every hour here; I often see a wedding band playing in the back of a pick-up truck with the rest of the party roaring behind in taxis.

And this is a good place to travel. The backpacker hotels are very comfortable, but they're on opposite ends of town so there's no big fake tourist neighborhood. It's easy to expose yourself to something new, but easy to get something familiar if the new thing doesn't work out -- like last night, when our first attempt at dinner turned out to be fried pastries full of mutton fat with scrambled eggs and sugar on top, we could get pizza from the Western cafe down the street.

It's also very easy to meet other travelers and organize excursions into the country side, and that's what we've got planned for tomorrow. We'll be overnighting and Lake Karakul, stopping in some towns and villages along the way, and be back sometime Tuesday afternoon.
Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Photo post: Moynaq, Uzbekistan
Sep. 10th, 2006 at 6:45 PM

The desert you see here used to be an ocean, and that scrap of twisted metal is part of a fishing trawler now stranded in the sand hundreds of kilometers away from what's left of the sea. Moynaq is unquestionably the most moving place I've ever been. I always believed, vaguely, in protecting the environment -- using too much electricity is bad, recycling is good, oil companies are probably bad, that sort of thing. But this place brought home to me our power to actually destroy our world. Just 20 years ago, this place was a busy fishing port and now the fish are dead, the ocean is gone, the climate unbalanced and the town around it devastated. 1 in 10 babies there die, people die young of cancers they shouldn't get, and tuberculosis is once again becoming a common health problem. And we could do that to the whole planet if we weren't careful.

September 12th, 2006
Lake Karakol
Sep. 12th, 2006 at 6:35 PM
There are four people in the kitchen hut. Since they stare at me, I feel no shame about staring at them. Young man wears a clean white felt hat and a smudged pinstripe blazer. He likes to watch me write. Old Lady is maybe the matriarch of the family, or at least old enough to win the privilege of wearing rubber boots in the no-shoes area. Young Lady is maybe my age and looks like a queen. Her gold earrings are so big that looking at them makes my earlobes ache and her dress is made of brocaded purple velvet. I've spent most of the afternoon watching grandmother feeding bits of brush into the fire. Her skirt took lots of work to make. There are 2 layers, the bottom plain white, the top gauzy purple with black velvet flowers and rhinestones. Both layers are trimmed with the same purple velvet of Young Lady's dress. With this, she wears a puffy fleece vest, a green sweater and a flowered scarf.

Being here is beter than being in the yurt. Grandmother has the fire to feed and guests to tend to, so she doesn't have too much time for staring. Activity stopped when I went into the yurt this afternoon. Mother dropped her embroidery threads, the kids stopped doing their chores and Father, who wasn't doing much to begin with, was riveted by watching me take off my shoes. Maybe I should have tried harder to interact, but the staring made me feel like a hunted animal. I went to the kitchen instead.

This is my fourth combination lake trip and yurtstay, and it's going to be my last. The lake is pretty, of course, but I've become inured to turquoise waters fringed by snowcapped peaks and it's too hard to relax here. Kyrgyz people in China are different from Kyrgyz people in Kyrgyzstan. Maybe the number of Russian people in Kyrgyzstan means white faces aren't interesting any more. I thought white faces wouldn't be interesting here either because of all the summer tourists, but I was wrong. Staring twice forced me to abandon tranquil spots by the lake. The first time, a young man approached and asked if I'd like a horse ride. When I said no thanks, he decided to pass the day by watching me read. The second time, a young couple's motorbike broke down. The lady argued with her husband until she noticed me. Then she sat down beside me, less than an inch away. She never blinked. That's when I went back to the yurt.

Kyrgyz homestays have been responsible for 66% of the inedible food on this trip. I couldn't bring myself to eat the lunch -- fried sheep's heart with salty yak milk tea. I claimed a bad stomach and surreptitiously ate a pack of instant ramen instead.

Just before dinner, Grandmother reminds us that everything in the yurt is for sale. She gestures to pots, cushions, wall hangings and cheap bead bracelets, inviting us to ask the price. There isn't much I'd like to buy. Most of the hangings are made with neon thread that I can't picture in my house, the cushions are not very portable and I do not need an old iron tea kettle.

I ask where the toilet is and the guide gestures expansively outside. The trouble with the-world-is-your-toilet philosophy is that this high altitude section of the world doesn't have enough air to support trees or bushes. It takes quite a long walk to find a big rock that isn't within view of the yurt, the road, or the many shepards in their pastures. When I come back, Grandmother is trying to convince K. to give her our lip balm or possibly our shoes.

A week ago, this sort of experience would have exhausted me, but now that I've returned to the comforts of China, I enjoy it. It's interesting to compare these shepards to the ones we stayed with in Kyrgyzstan. The difference in the quality of life is almost shocking. In addition to the 2 felt yurts, the family has a compound of 6 concrete ones. They have 2 cars and 2 motorbikes, a TV, a VCD player and a little bit of electricity for each building. And it does my heart good to see the little girls playing with dollies and the boys with toy trucks. Intellectually, I understand that not having toys is far from the worst thing that could happen to a kid; emotionally, I was sad that I never even saw toys for sale in the bazaars in Kyrgyzstan.

The other great thing about this trip is that we have a guide who speaks fabulous English. For the first time, we're able to ask all the questions we want. Admittedly, they are strange questions -- how much does a full-grown camel cost? and how long does a baby camel take to reach maturity? how long does it take a piece of yak dung to burn?

It is definitely my last homestay/mountain lake visit of the trip. But it was interesting, and I'm glad I went.

Kyrgyzstan in review
Sep. 14th, 2006 at 12:30 AM
Kyrgyzstan is the hardest place I've ever traveled. I'm not sorry I went there, but I'm also not sorry I'm gone.

The terrible roads and the overcharging taxi drivers were hard, but what really exhausted me were the men. I've traveled to 26 countries now but this was the first place I had to substantially change my lifestyle because I was female. Kyrgyz women do not speak to men outside their circle -- male travelers learned this when they tried to ask women for directions and they ran away; I learned it when every man I spoke to took less than a minute to ask me to have sex with him. Unfortunately, that's not an exaggeration. At first, I thought it was my clothes, but then I looked around and realized that most young Kyrgyz women wear the same sorts of things that I do. Clothing doesn't matter; conduct does.

Going out after dark just wasn't an option. Like the Peace Corps volunteers told me, even men don't go out by themselves at night, so women definitely shouldn't. It was annoying to find men to go out with us every night, so eventually we just didn't. Planning your days this way is exhausting. At 5, you start thinking "well, I'd better get hungry now because it might take awhile to find a restaurant and then it might take a restaurant awhile to give me food and I definitely need to be home by 7..." Maybe 2 of us were enough to be safe, but I never saw Kyrgyz girls out in groups of 2. And that aside, Kyrgyzstan has no streetlights and a lot of open manhole covers and random ditches filled with slimy green water. It's a bad combination for night-time pedestrians.

When I crossed the Chinese border, I smiled at the border guard and he smiled back. It took me a long time to decipher why this stood out so strongly in my memory. Then I realized it was because I couldn't smile at men in Kyrgyzstan. I used to make a point of smiling at people whenever I met them, but in Kyrgyzstan, I stopped without even realizing it because guys took it as a come-on. It is such a relief to be able to smile when I want to again.

And I missed internet in Kyrgyzstan. It was around, usually, but so slow that all I could do was fire off an LJ update and an email to my dad. I know it surprises people that I'm online so often here, but it only costs about 50 cents an hour and it's the time of the day when I just don't have to think. You think all the time when you go to a new place every 3 or 4 or 5 days -- which hotel to stay in, where to eat, how to find places, whether such-and-such sight is worth seeing. The little decisions are endless. So at the end of every day -- and occasionally in the middle too -- I have to get online and pour out all those thoughts I've been thinking or find some website that stops me thinking at all.

29 days left. My feelings are mixed. It's hard to leave a life that puts so much possibility in every day.

September 16th, 2006
Photo Post -- Lake Karakul
Sep. 16th, 2006 at 11:08 PM

These photos are all from Lake Karakul, which I wrote about earlier this week. I feel so privileged to have seen such beautiful, remote places.

We left Kashgar yesterday morning and arrived in Hotan in the evening. This is one of the most remote cities in China, though you wouldn't know it from all the chain stores and nice restaurants. We'll be staying for the Sunday market tomorrow, then leaving via the Desert Highway to Turpan on Monday. I'll write more about my experiences here when the keyboard doesn't suck.

Photo Post -- Me
Sep. 16th, 2006 at 11:30 PM


This is largely for the benefit of my parents, who probably need to see photos of me looking healthy and happy. The first one is me and our yurt at Lake Song-Kol in Kyrgyzstan, so it was taken about 2.5 weeks ago. The second is the least recent, from sometime in June. And yes, bra straps are tacky and so are t-shirt tans, but sometimes a girl doesn't have a choice about these things when she travels. The last one is me in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The girl beside me is the daughter of the receptionist at the dormitory where we stayed. She was calling me "Aunt Mary" by the end of our time there.

Clicking on any of the photos in the last 2 posts will take you back to my flickr account. I uploaded a lot while I was in Kashgar, but it's not all organized/tagged/described yet and probably won't be till I get home.

September 22nd, 2006
Hotan, China
Sep. 22nd, 2006 at 10:20 PM
I should write about places before I leave them. I've lost the details of Hotan now, but the memory of a bright and vivid city remains. It was a modern place, with well-decorated restaurants and the same chain stores I remember from Beijing. The mudbricked old city was completely gone, the guide told me with a proud look at the new multi-story apartment buildings along the 4-lane highway. But new buildings can't erase an old culture.

One day it took us 20 minutes to catch a taxi. We stood by the side of the road, watching donkey carts and motorcycles pass. Some towed big metal snack stands for the nighttime food market, others pulled flat metal pallets full of exotic women, the most striking dressed all in black with veils to cover all but their kohl-rimmed eyes.

On Sunday we went to the market. The cab driver dropped us off in the middle of the street. We stood there, being honked and shouted at, for the ages it took to martial the courage necessary for wading into a shifting sea of cars, motorcycles and donkey carts. Inside, the wares were no different from the dozens of other markets I've seen in my time here -- bruised bananas, piles of mismatched baby clothes, whole sheep dangling from hooks. The medicine man, as always, had a big audience and a microphone. We had to walk carefully to avoid the holes people used as rubbish dumps and the shallow ditches were mothers let their babies piss and shit.

Cooler, quieter avenues led to the hat bazaar. Green and white embroidered skullcaps for the men, sequins and tassels for the ladies, and velvet with white piping for the children. Everyone covers their head here, no matter what age or gender.

Outside again, past the hat sellers are rows of fish stalls and beyond that, the cloth market. I finger shining, gold embroidered cloth at hundreds of stalls. It feels heavy and sumptuous, but here it's every day stuff, material for cushions and curtains and blankets. Though I don't know what to do with them, I buy little swatches of cloth -- one fuschia, one a deep yellow that makes me taste butterscotch and my favorite, a shining sapphire blue with pink and pale green paisleys. There is a ritual to cloth-buying and a crowd gathers to watch me complete it. I inspect the meter stick, then I watch the measurements be made. I think this is enough and wander away to look at some heavy gold braid, but the merchant calls me back. I'm to hold the cloth while he cuts so I can see he's honest. When the transaction is complete, I have to elbow my way out of the crowd. K. makes her purchase, patterned red silk, in a quieter bit of the market. Veiled women help her inspect the cloth and negotiate the price.

I smile each time I find the bits of cloth in my bag.

September 23rd, 2006
Goals achieved
Sep. 23rd, 2006 at 10:19 PM

create your own visited country map

I've long held a goal to visit as many countries of the world as I've lived years on the planet. This trip, I finally surpassed that goal. 24 years, 26 countries.

So much of the world left to see!

Turpan, China
Sep. 23rd, 2006 at 10:27 PM
Some days I think China is perfect, somehow relaxed and slow-paced and fascinatingly frenetic all at once. I love how a single walk down the street rewards me with 10 things I've never seen before, the sense of community here, the way people go out of their way to help me.

Other days I think I would not live here for a million dollars . The inside of Emin Mosque was calm, quiet and cool before the tour group arrived. Then all 10 of them bunched behind me, all jockeying for a look at my camera. Apparently, I am a better attraction than a 300-year-old architectural masterpiece.

It seems that people in China cannot grasp that you might not want to talk to them. They make games of shouting hello in funny ways, yelling louder and louder until you respond. At dinner, a young man named Ozzie joined our table. "My teacher tells me to practice English with every foreigner I see," he says ominously and sits down. We try to be friendly; we don't want him to think that foreigners are mean. Then we try to talk over his head so that he'll give up and go away. But there is no dissuading him. "Which syllable is accented in secret?" "Is my pronunciation of this word nice?" "Can you tell me about the grammar in this sentence?" We leave before dinner's finished.

I meditate on these things while I sit outside the mosque, waiting for the tour group to leave. When I go back in, I forget all my frustration. The only person left inside is a Uighur man in a black skull cap. He sits on a railing, reading the Koran, chanting at first and then singing. His voice echoes through long hallways and tiny meditation chambers illuminated by shafts of light from windows high in the ceiling. I go upstairs and sit in an arched window frame, looking out over fields of grapes, until the men come for midday prayers.

There are no taxis to take us the 3KM back to the city, so K. and I begin to walk down curving lanes shaded by poplar trees. It's hot work in spite of the shade and we are so grateful when an old man in a donkey cart offers us a ride. We leap on while the cart is still moving and feel like royalty parading through the city streets. Even the police stop to wave.

Leaving Turpan took 17 hours though it was only supposed to take 8. The bus arrived 4 hours late and the journey took far longer than it should have, though I can't guess why. But now we are in Dunhuang, a city on the edge of the Gobi Desert, planning an overnight trip to sand dunes and caves of Buddhist art.

September 25th, 2006
Why
Sep. 25th, 2006 at 4:36 PM
People never realize how much downtime is involved in a trip like this. K. and I came back from the Gobi Desert late this morning, planning to take the train to Lanzhou as soon as possible...which turned out to be tomorrow night. Secretly I am thankful. Not only do we get to escape the discomfort of the overnight bus and the many filthy truck stop toilets along its route, we also have an excuse to spend 1.5 entirely guilt-free days reading and perusing the internet.

Time on my hands means I can tackle the tough question c_double asked me a few days ago -- what inspired me to take a trip like this? Whether he meant the long-term travel or the destination choices, I don't know but I'll answer both.

As for the travel, none of us choose what we love. I knew when I opened my first guidebook to Europe that I had stumbled across a passion I would pursue as seriously as some people pursue a career. My freshman year of college I had promised myself that I would never force myself to settle for anything less than what I loved. I was so filled with the desire to be extraordinary and in high school, that had meant being the valedictorian, the state champion debater, being voted most likely to succeed -- in short, being known to be indisputably better than anyone else. I'm not proud of thinking this way, but the world is small when you are in high school and so far as I know, most 16-year-olds are misguided in one way or another. Going to a big university in a big city taught me that there is no way to be better than everyone in the sight of everyone, and that's when I discovered that the secret to inner peace is to stop comparing yourself to other people and do things because you love them. But I still wanted to be successful, and if extraordinary was too high a goal to aim for, I at least wanted to be different. So when Lauren rescued an outdated copy of The Rough Guide to Europe from the Barnes & Noble scrap heap for me, I read it cover to cover and thought: this will be my success and maybe, maybe my extraordinary: to live a life of discovery and possibility and die an old lady with lots of stories and few regrets. So I bought a ticket to Paris and wandered through Western Europe and studied in Prague. I was the first in line for the $200 tickets to Cairo at the student travel agency, and after graduation, I spent 4 and half months in South America. I came back to New York City for awhile, working 2 jobs for barely any money and my life in a Peruvian barrio in Queens felt like a kind of travel too. I sat on the floor at Barnes & Noble reading guidebooks in my spare time, and read the Lonely Planet Worldguide while I was supposed to be doing work at work. By the time I'd gotten a job teaching in Japan, I was already seriously planning the trip I'm taking now.

Lauren probably doesn't know that she is responsible for this trip. Way back when I was planning my first trip to Europe, she gave me a map of Eurasia to hang on my wall that went clear out to Kazakhstan. I used to look at all those strange "stan" countries and wonder what on earth is there? It made me crazy to look at a place on a map and have a blank in my mind. I looked for books and webpages about Uzbekistan and tucked away every scrap of information I found, chanting someday, someday in my mind. In Prague, my roommate Joy and I talked about how fascinated we were by the Silk Road and she mentioned a Washington Post reporter who'd traversed it and an author, Robert D. Kaplan, who'd written about it. It was my first inkling that it was possible to travel in this part of the world. As soon as I got back to America, I looked up the books and the someday, someday in my mind grew louder. I didn't know when I would go, but all those "somedays" were a promise that I would. That was my senior year of college, 3 years ago now.

Since I cannot live without a guidebook to read, I bought an old Let's Go China on half.com the summer before I came to Japan. As soon as I saw the section labeled Border Crossing: Kyrgyzstan, I knew I'd found my opportunity. I took a copy of Lonely Planet Central Asia with me to Tokyo and read it faithfully for inspiration. I put pictures on my walls and in my wallet to remind myself to save and I still smile when I remember the day I told my boss I was quitting to travel the Silk Road.

My goal is still to die an old woman with many stories and few regrets.

Hope that answers your question, c_double.

September 27th, 2006
Busy Days & Awe in Dunhuang, China
Sep. 27th, 2006 at 1:32 PM
I try to hold the Mogao Caves in my mind. I see pale green walls painted with a thousand Golden Buddhas and an arched ceiling covered with a thousand of his disciples done in darker paint. It is a place where no space is wasted. Where there are no Buddhas or disciples there are lotus flowers with intricate patterns between their petals, and where there are no lotus flowers there are carved blocks of wood and dragons on the ceiling. The newest thing here is 600 years old and the oldest is more than 1,000. Cracks in the walls show layers of paintings made centuries apart, each style distinct from the other. The oldest are done in black and orange and powder blue. The thousand disciples are stone sculptures that pop out of the walls, bordered by angels in diaphonous blue dresses. The Buddha statues here are thin and framed by halos of sculpted fire. The centerpiece of the whole complex is a 90-foot Buddha carved from the cliffside. His feet are larger than my head and his head almost too high for me to see.

In the evening, our cab driver takes us to the edge of the city, where modern apartment blocks give way to mudbrick houses with slanting straw roofs. We hear our camels' harness bells jingling before we see the guide come around the corner. He leads them by a rope tied to spikes in their noses, and they kneel obediently for us to climb on board. Civilization soon gives way to desert and it is easy to imagine myself as a merchant or a princess traveling the ancient Silk Road. We are riding through a rocky plain and in the distance are sand dunes taller than the highest building in the city we have just left behind. Between us and the dunes is the graveyard, though it takes me a long time to realize that these unmarked, brick-covered, cone-shaped mounds are graves. As we ride further in, the graves change -- some are marked by cracked tomb stones, others by huge metal flowers. Splintered twigs and dead trees sprout from the center of most of the mounds and there are altars made of cinderblocks and jam jars in front of a few. Clothing, shoes and children's toys are spread across the desert, half-buried in the sand. I can only assume they are relics of the dead.

The guide erects a little tent for us in the shadow of the biggest dune and then leads the camels away. I feel a little desolate as I watch him leave. When the jingle of the harness bells has faded, we can hear nothing but wind and the rush of sand. We're alone in the Gobi Desert.
Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Idleness in Lanzhou
Sep. 27th, 2006 at 1:58 PM
We came here on the night train. The other passengers in the compartment were good about not staring...so long as I was lying still and reading. Me taking out my contacts or changing into pajamas under the sheets was the best show they had ever seen.

Lanzhou is not a special city. In fact, it is famous only for being the most polluted city in the world. We are here because it's the hub for transport in the region and so that K. can try to buy her plane tickets home. Tomorrow we move on to Xiahe, the largest center for Tibetan Buddhism outside Tibet.

There are exactly 14 days remaining in this trip. My mind is in a very peaceful, contented place where I feel that I've seen and done so much that I've earned the right to relax. I let myself eat cheeseburgers rather than ordering surprise dishes from menus I can't read, and I don't begrude myself an hour or two at the internet cafe every day. It is easy to bear what hardships and unfamiliarity are left when I know the comforts of home are so close at hand. Each day I think about seeing my family, eating cheese, and watching House. I've started drafting a grocery list for my father in my journal. It is lengthy indeed.

And as this trip draws to a close, I've started to dream about my next destination. I want to go somewhere easier, I think, though I said the same after South America. Thailand might be nice; I am a city girl and Bangkok strikes me as a fascinating, lively place. It would be easy to make a little side trip to Angkor Wat, and perhaps spend a few days in the jungle on the way. Or I could go to Costa Rica. I've heard its pretty with a good tourist infrastructure. Then there is Berlin. Expensive, yes, especially with the Euro but it has museums and architecture and an intriguing Communist past. Perhaps it would make a good week-long getaway.

Yesterday I discovered that Lonely Planet is giving away a free guide to the "best travel experiences of the world" if you place a $40 order on their website. I bought Africa on a Shoestring because I don't know anything about traveling there and it bothers me to know nothing about a part of the world. And then I added USA & Canada on a Shoestring because I don't know much about traveling there either, and perhaps I can manage a little road trip when I am next at home. They are my birthday presents to myself because I can't live without a guidebook to read. An article in Real Simple magazine once suggested keeping two desks in your home -- one for work and bills, and one for working on your dreams. It will be a long time before I have a home big enough for two desks, but the idea that you should make a designated space in your life for pursuing your dreams struck me. I try to keep myself surrounded by inspiration.

I wish I could post some photos of the Gobi Desert, but I haven't had a computer with a CD drive since I was in Kashgar. So here is a picture of a Uighur man in Kashgar who stopped to watch K & me sample some street food (which turned out to be sugared pastries covered with sugared eggs and filled with mutton fat). I had a very hard time explaining that I could not actually remove the picture from the camera and give it to him.

October 5th, 2006
Photo Post - Xiahe, China
Oct. 5th, 2006 at 2:06 PM
Xiahe is not in Tibet, but most of the people here are Tibetan. The monastery here stretches for whole city blocks and the town is alive with a constant procession of monks and pilgrims. This is where I have been for the last week, alternately gazing amazed at the foreign culture around me and hunching over my toilet bowl, miserable at what the food here does to my body. This is what I see on the days I am healthy enough to venture outside:

October 6th, 2006
Xiahe, China
Oct. 6th, 2006 at 5:49 PM
K. and I rose at 5 this morning and rode to the Xiahe bus station in the back of a pick-up truck. By 11, we were back in Lanzhou and we'll be here until tickets for the train to Beijing finally materialize. This trip is over in 5 days.

This is what I remember of Xiahe:

The bus took curving roads around the kind of terraced mountain farmland you see on postcards of China. The villages were barely 10 houses across and every spare space was covered with this year's harvest -- bright yellow corn cobs stacked on the roof, shining piles of corn silk by the front door, mounds of potatos as tall as a man spread across the yard. And there were mosques. Everywhere. Sometimes two or three for a village that seemed barely large enough to support one. Some had domes and spires like you might see in Pakistan; others were just tall pagodas topped with a crescent. The image that will stay in my mind forever is two graceful spires soaring over cyprus trees in the middle of a field, all surrounded by mist.

Slowly the mosques gave way to the yellow, white, blue and red prayer flags of Tibetan Buddhists and then we were in Xiahe.

I imagined the monastery to be one building, but instead it was the size of a small town. The rooftop of our hotel looked out over a sea of tiny white buildings, white stupas and tall, gold-roofed halls of worship. The complex was surrounded by prayer wheels and pilgrims passed by all day and night.

Xiahe itself seemed designed to support the 1,200 monks of the monastery and the constant flow of pilgrims passing through. I spent hours peering into the shops of the main street. They sold cloth in orange, fuschia, and a thousand gradiations of maroon for the monks' robes. There were golden prayer wheels for home altars and molds in case you needed to make your very own Buddha. Paintings of rainbow-colored gods hung from the ceilings of every shop and their shelves were full of buttons, earrings and knives to decorate the pilgrims' clothes. Next to the monastery was a full street of cobblers to re-sole monks' and pilgrims' battered sandals.

On my last day in Xiahe, I walked as much of the pilgrims' path as I could. The prayer wheels, as long as my torso and painted with Tibetan words, hung underneath a long wooden roof. They turned with squeals and groans as the pilgrims passed, some giving them energetic shoves and others half-hearted taps. Some were young but most were old, old ladies whose greasy hair and dirty fingers attested to the length of their journey. Somehow even the ones who leaned on canes could walk faster than me. They wore heavy brown coats with one sleeve on and the other trailing on the ground. They had red sashes or silver-ornamented belts and heavy earrings of coral or turquoise. All wore their hair in two braids and all fingered prayer beads as they walked. A few sang and many peed unashamedly in the open field by the side of the path.

I walked with them and could see nothing but a telescoping line of prayer wheels. I could hear nothing but the rhythmic patter of feet and the steady groan of turning wheels and I could feel my mind growing peaceful, blank and empty. The faithful walk the 10 kilometer circuit 1,000 times.

I left Xiahe less than 12 hours ago and my 3 bouts with food poisoning have already faded from my mind. Traveling is hard, but there are rewards too.

Books!
Oct. 7th, 2006 at 12:16 PM
My birthday is coming so I'm updating my Amazon wishlist. Recommend me something! I'm especially looking for absorbing, character-driven fiction but travel books are good too. And children's fantasy. I read lots of things.

Yay for upcoming unfettered access to inexpensive English language books!



Tales of the Otori: Grass for his Pillow by Lian Hearn -- Historical fiction with fantasy woven in. The story of a young Japanese lord seeking to avenge his adopted father's death, reclaim his inheritance and marry the woman he loves. Absorbing fight scenes and equally well-written dialogue, plus real, 3-dimensional strong female characters. I highly recommend it.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova -- a kind of blase update of the Dracula legend, but the descriptive writing is something I can only aspire to. The plot stretches from 1950s-era Istanbul to newly Communist Hungary, rural Bulgaria, Slovenia and France. It's given me a whole new list of desired destinations.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory -- the story of Mary Boleyn, the forgotten sister of the decapitated former queen Anne Boleyn. I don't usually go for historical fiction, but the characters here are really well done and the dialogue is *perfect.* Could easily have been a boring story, but never was.

Little Earthquakes & Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner -- I lump these together because they're pure chick lit. Pool reading, but addictive nonetheless.


October 11th, 2006
The End
Oct. 11th, 2006 at 3:29 PM
At 5 a.m., the car is coming to take me to the airport. I have traveled across 4 countries and lived out a dream I nurtured since I first began to travel. My heart can't settle on a feeling. I only know the name for a few of these emotions: there is peace, exhiliration, and the same feeling of freedom and possibility I felt when this trip began. I feel this even though my life will be more constrained now because taking this trip is an affirmation of the freedom and possibility that life holds. I wish I could name individually the people who made this trip possible and the people who made it better.

My parents, who paid for my education and thereby gave me the freedom to travel without worrying about the loans that burden so many of my peers.

Kristy, for giving up her own African dreams to follow me here and sticking by me through so many sicknesses and unpleasant moods.

The university student who delayed going to his sister's birthday party to help us get a cab and when that didn't work, personally escorted us on the bus to the hotel.

Urmat, the 23-year-old coordinator of the Shepard's Life program in Kochkor, Kyrgyzstan. Without him, I would never have experienced the isolated wonder of Treasure Chest Lake or the alien lifestyle of the nomads who live there.

Trent and Rejoice, the Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan volunteers who invited us to their home and birthday parties even though they barely knew us.

Thalia, for showing us a side of every day Chinese life that we'd never have found without a local guide.

Kirsten and Mark for allowing us to spend a weekend in their apartment even though they only knew me through the internet.

Tsweong at Tsweong's Cafe for offering to take me to the hospital when I was so sick.


Everyone chef who ever delivered on special orders of Western food, and every hostel and hotel operator who provided a comfortable home away from home.

People at home always worry about what evils await you on the road, but what travel really teaches you is that people are good.

October 17th, 2006
Home again (after one last "adventure")
Oct. 17th, 2006 at 11:45 AM
Each time I purchased a cheap airline ticket in China, Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan, I braced myself for lost luggage and inexplicable delays. In the end, it was getting to America that did me in. I dislike air travel intensely.

Getting through security at Tokyo Narita took 3 hours and 4 security checks. I marveled at the speed and efficiency of the airport staff. It was my fellow passengers who caused delays. We listened to recorded announcements ad nauseum. We received written instructions with our tickets. Twice Delta staff members came to the check-in line to remind us individually that no liquids or gels were permitted on board the aircraft. Still the passengers ahead of me loaded their luggage with bottles of soft drink and water. "I'll throw away this water bottle," one man said grudgingly. "Would it be okay if I bought a bottle of Coke though?" For a theoretical physicist, he seemed to lack a 3rd grader's understanding of the world "liquid." The Delta staff tried hard though, bringing out the pilot to greet us in the departure lounge and apologize that the Department of Homeland Security had just demanded yet another passport inspection before we could get on the plane. (For the record, I made it on with multiple liquids and gels that I wasn't even trying to hide -- I'd just forgotten they were in my bag! I feel so safe now...)

At Atlanta, my connection was delayed for two hours because of thunderstorms in Houston. We spent one of those hours sitting on the runway and when we finally arrived, we were trapped on the plane for another restless hour. It took 30 minutes for baggage to appear on the carousel (this was already 11 p.m.), but it turned out they'd filled our cargo holds with the luggage of a flight scheduled to arrive at 12:30. They told us there was a "strong possibility" that if we waited, our bags would come with that 12:30 flight. So wait we did. The line to make a claim was so long that it took an hour to finish and 2 friends have recently had things stolen by baggage handlers, so waiting another 30 minutes for my precious souvenirs seemed worth it. Of course, when the 12:30 flight arrived, they had gate for it, so it was 1 a.m. before their baggage appeared on the carousel. Happily, my backpack was there.

After all that, it was still a 2 hour drive home. I woke up starving at 9 this morning, but now that I've eaten, I'm going back to bed.

Trip Report -- Uzbekistan
Oct. 19th, 2006 at 7:20 AM
If I had to choose a favorite country from this trip, Uzbekistan would be it. While other travelers were frustrated to encounter tour groups and breezed through in just a week or two, we used the full 30 days on our visa. The 4-5 days we spent in each location were certainly not "necessary" to see the big sites, but it gave us time to find favorite cafes, uncover less visited attractions, and most importantly, to make a few local friends. The government's paranoia and the bureaucracy attached to getting a visa made us feel a little uptight before we arrived, but when we finally made it across the border, we discovered a country full of friendly people happy to meet foreign tourists. We felt safe everywhere during the day and were happy to wander around at night in the smaller towns we visited; in larger cities with poor street lighting we came in before dark unless we had a local escort. Police officers in Tashkent, the capital city, are to be avoided; elsewhere, neither we nor any of the tourists we met experienced any problems. While the Lonely Planet guide makes it sound as if female travelers might experience a lot of sexual harassment in Uzbekistan, we found that most of the guys who approached us just wanted to practice English (although I did receive a few marriage proposals and one or two requests to "get married for one night only.") The majority of the backpackers we met were traveling alone and even the solo female travelers reported feeling comfortable. Clothing was not as much of an issue as I was expecting. I wore the same t-shirts and jeans as I do at home and didn't notice lacivious stares from men or hostile stares from women. That said, keep your shoulders and legs covered, at least to the knees.



Tashkent is the capital city and the major border crossing to and from Kazakhstan. We passed through twice -- once when we arrived in the country and once on our way out of Khiva. The first time, we stayed at Gulnara B&B near the Chorsu metro station and paid $13 for a double with shared toilet. Gulnara is an adorable old lady and her 2 English-speaking children were very helpful. Tasty dinner there is a slightly overpriced $4, or you can take a 500 som (about $.50) cab ride to an area near Tinchlik metro station where several courtyard homes serve good food for about $2. The second time, we stayed in the Orzu Hotel, which I think was a better value than Gulnara's. For $15 each, we got a small but very nice room and a bathroom with nice, reliable plumbing. Plus the breakfast was practically a buffet. I didn't find Tashkent to be a very interesting place to visit. There are lots of mosques and medersas, but you're better off leaving them for Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand so that you don't overdose. I think my favorite place was the small flea market and street fair near Mustaqilik Maydoni metro, where I bought some interesting and inexpensive Soviet-era items.

Samarkand was my favorite stop in all of Uzbekistan. This entry describes how magical it was for me. Some other travelers seemed disappointed to find that a city had grown up around the ancient sights, but for me, that was part of the magic -- I loved seeing ancient and modern Uzbekistan side-by-side. We stayed at Bahodir B&B, very popular among the backpacker set. $9 got us a room with our own toilet and the friendly owner, $1 dinners and great location compensated for the somewhat run-down rooms. The Registan is the most famous place in Uzbekistan and I found its massiveness (is that a word?) and intricate tilework mesmerizing. We came back several times to see it in starlight and to climb the minaret at dawn. To do the latter, you must negotiate a price with the guards. $2/person is reasonable. One disclaimer: a lot of vendors have set up shop inside the old archways, but most of them are pretty laidback and accept "I'll think about it" as an answer. Bibi-Khanym Mosque was probably my favorite sight of the whole trip. Parts have been restored to the former glory, while others have been left to crumble. Still others show evidence of the Soviet occupation, when it was used to store and service machinery. Going there was like looking at 500 years of Uzbek history. Shar-i-Zinda, an avenue of ancient tombs, was equally fascinating. The tile work here is really fabulous -- a lot of it is done in relief and several of the mausoleums have been opened up to show the mosaics inside. Many of the tombs are under restoration and the carpenters are really friendly. I was able to watch them crafting new tiles outside and then someone offered to open up a mausoleum so that I could see the new paintings they were working on.

After Samarkand, we went to Bukhara. This was probably my least favorite stop in Uzbekistan. The souvenir stalls are positively endless and after Samarkand, I was a little sick of old mosques and religious schools. As a result, we skipped several of the most famous sights and the only place I can remember visiting is the Ark, a royal citadel at the top of a hill. It was a very surreal place -- some parts immaculately restored, some turned into offices and others left as bombed out rubble. The real highlight of the place was its popularity with Uzbek tour groups. K. and I were huge celebrities here. People kept coming up to shake our hands and talk to us and a group of soldiers actually got in a scuffle over who could stand next to me in their photo. Another guy paid for us to dress up as royalty and take a photo with him and his son. We stayed in Rustam & Zukhra B&B, a new place recommended by our cab driver. $10/night got us a room with a toilet and a TV, plus included breakfast. The location was good and we liked the staff.

From there, we went to Moynaq with a brief stop in Nukus to change buses. Moynaq, a dying town on the edge of what used to be the Aral Sea, is a deeply moving place. Walking through a desert covered with sea shells, staring at rusted out fishing trawlers, and seeing the devastation of the town... this entry describes it as best I can. Like Auschwitz, it's a place I think everyone should visit so we can understand the devastation we can cause in our own world.

On a practical level, Moynaq is an adventurous destination. A decrepit bus travels here from Nukus every morning; it's wise to arrive 30-60 minutes early to ensure that you get a seat. There is only one guesthouse ($4/person) in town, about 3K from the bus station and completely unsignposted. Finding a taxi is challenging, but try flagging down private cars. The guesthouse has limited electricity and no running water. As there are no restaurants in town, it is the only source of food. We regretted not bringing more snacks with us -- lunch was not available at the guesthouse and the 2 shops in town stocked dusty cookies and mutant-looking vegetables.

The Soviet city of Nukus was one of our final destinations in Uzbekistan. It's a city of ugly high rise housing with no streetlights, deep drainage ditches and the faint smell of poo. It also has one star attraction, the Savitsky Museum. The founder of the museum was an artistic renegade who, knowing he was far from the watchful eyes of the Soviet government, began to collect artwork banned elsewhere in the USSR. I was expecting art full of political content, but it turned out to be beautiful pieces done in styles other than Soviet-approved realism. Seeing the range of things that used to be outlawed really brought home how much the Soviet government tried to stifle individuality and creativity. We made one serious mistake in Nukus: staying in the Hotel Tashkent. The decrepitness of the place was strangely fascinating, but only because we forced ourselves to look at the silver lining. The staff at the Savitsky Museum can arrange much nicer homestays for the same price, but unfortunately, we arrived after their business hours.

Khiva was our last Silk Road destination in Uzbekistan. A lot of people complained about its unreal, museum-like feel but we enjoyed it. This was partly because we'd come from the desolation of Moynaq and the discomfort of Nukus and partly because we made an effort to see the city early in the morning and late at night, when fewer tourists were out. This allowed us to have a lot of tourist attractions to ourselves (though we had to bribe some guards to let us in) and most of my memories are of kids playing hide-and-seek among ancient gravestones and newly wed couples posing for photos in front of colorful minarets. I cannot recommend our hotel though. Zafarbek B&B had perfectly nice rooms with attached toilet for $12/person, but the staff was really unfriendly and seemed annoyed by reasonable requests, like "please fix our toilet because it does not flush and it leaks all over the floor." Breakfast was nasty.

After a brief return stop in Tashkent, we went to Fergana City to cross the border. This area was the site of anti-government riots, so prepare for some police checkpoints on the way to the city. The police might ask you to step out of the car, show your passports and explain the purpose of your visit. There are no big sites here, but it was interesting to see an average Uzbek city and Margilan, the next town over, has a pretty cool market. Across from Hotel Ziyorat (a good value at $5/person) there are a couple teahouses that double as outdoor dance clubs on weekends. We met some really fun people here and although the LP guide claims that you need to dress more conservatively in this area, we found that we were wearing more clothes than most of the young women. From Fergana, it is about a 2 hour drive to the Kyrgyz border. Bargain hard for a taxi.



Transport was probably the biggest headache of traveling in Uzbekistan. The bus and train system is limited, so most people go to the bazaar to buy a seat in a private taxi. Foreigners need to bargain hard and you should always ask locals or hotel owners about the price. An alternative is to have your hotel arrange something for you. Of course, this costs about twice as much as the local price but it comes with perks like a more comfortable car and sometimes an English-speaking driver who can tell you about the area. In general, we paid about $5-10 each for a seat in a shared taxi and $15-20 each when we chartered a taxi from the hotel.

Money can be another logistical challenge. ATMs are available only in the lobbies of fancy hotels in Tashkent and vary highly in their reliability. It's probably best to get all the U.S. Dollars you'll need from your home country, but we were on a long trip and didn't want to carry $1000 in cash with us for 2 months. It is theoretically possible to change travelers checks, but expect that you'll have to go to a few banks before you find one that's willing and even then, there may be up to an hour of paperwork. Double that if, like us, you don't get the required customs declaration form when you cross the border. In the end, I used my Mastercard debit card to withdraw money from hotel ATMs, which dispensed US $$$. The Hotel Uzbekistan was the best place I found to do this. I was frequently able to withdraw the $500 maximum and always able to get out $300; even so, it took a few trips to get out all the cash I wanted for a month. There are also Visa ATMs, but they seem to dispense money only in Uzbek currency. This makes it difficult to accumulate as much as you need as $100 US = 120,000 Uzbek som.

Exchanging money can be done at hotels, bazaars, banks and exchange booths across the country. The only trouble is that the largest note is worth slightly less than $1, so changing just a little money can leave you with a huge wad of bills. I needed a shopping bag for my money the day I changed $200 and received it in notes worth 20 cents. You can pay for taxis, souvenirs and accomodation in dollars.

Language was not as difficult as I expected. A lot of young people are studying English these days and most people were happy to combine their basic English with my basic Russian so we could get things done. I also had lots of opportunities to practice with the friendly young people who wanted to chat. I do recommend learning to read Cyrillic before you go -- it's not that difficult and will definitely help you out, even though a lot of signs are written in the Latin alphabet too.


Visas were a headache. Americans now require a letter of invitation. We got ours from Stantours (google for the website). Their service was excellent and regular service (7-10 days) costs $35, payable by bank transfer or paypal. Unfortunately, we needed the rush service (3-5 days), which was about $70. The visa itself would have cost me $100 (special American fee), but I stupidly said I wanted rush service, which raised the price to $150. I had not realized that having the letter of invitation means you can get the visa in about 20 minutes for the regular fee. We got our visa at the Uzbek embassy in Almaty. Just getting into the embassy was a test of patience -- we put our name on a list and then waited outside for 3 hours. Keep in mind that all payment must be made in new, clean and unmarked US dollars and come armed with multiple photos and copies of your passport. If you are American or British, it's a good idea to apply for your visa in China or Central Asia if you can. A lot of travelers told me that the embassy in DC denies applications for no reason; the one in London may take more than a month and ask for health certificates and letters of employment. Saying that you work for Peace Corps or any US government organization will result in the immediate denial of your application.

Border crossings are a mixed bag. Coming from Kazakhstan into Tashkent, our cab driver decided to bribe the border guards for a faster crossing. This did indeed expedite the process, but it also meant that we didn't get the customs declaration form, which you need for changing traveler's checks and exiting the country. I got a letter from the US embassy stating that my form had been "lost," so I had no trouble leaving; my Aussie friend, who didn't have an embassy in Uzbekistan to help her out, faced a lengthy argument to exit the country without paying a bribe. A further delay resulted because the border guard wanted to marry me (no joke) and kept my passport until we had a lengthy discussion about the proposal.



All Uzbekistan entries

There are 4 Uzbekistan photo albums on my flickr page.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

October 23rd, 2006
Texas, America
Oct. 23rd, 2006 at 8:31 AM
clairegebert wanted to know about real life in America; this is my best attempt to answer.

It's true what they say -- everything is bigger in Texas. Everywhere I look, I think this is a society that has space. To my Tokyo eyes, even the average house is huge, set far back from the street on an expanse of green grass. Seeing all those big houses makes me think of all the "stuff" they must have inside. Like, Dad and F. probably have a normal (by American standards) amount of stuff for career people whose children are all grown, but the things they have are out of reach for a lot of people in Tokyo. Not for lack of money, but for lack of space. Luxury, for me, means having a place to put two sets of dishes and different kinds of wine and martini glasses.

Cars here are enormous. They don't look like they should fit in garages, but then, most people have huge garages to go with their huge houses. You know your society is doing well when everyone has a two-car garage. Coming from Kyrgyzstan, where a lot of people couldn't afford even a rusted out Soviet model, it is amazing to me that most families have either two cars or so much stuff they need to store the excess in the garage.

People are big too. It is heartening to see beautiful, curvaceous women again and to walk into stores knowing that the width of my upper arms won't stop me from finding clothes. But the people here go beyond voluptuous; they are obese. We need a better middle ground --women shouldn't feel bad for not looking like movie stars, but we need to take care of ourselves too.

I see why it's hard to stay healthy here though. What a restaurant serves in one meal would last me for three. There is usually a healthy section on the menu, but it never compares to all the deep fried and cheesy goodness. Last night, I could choose between "caesar salad with marinated and grilled fajita chicken" or "baked chicken stuffed with sauteed mushrooms and roasted poblano pepper smothered in ranchero cheese sauce." Guess which one I chose. At least I could only eat half of it.

There are about 100,000 people in this city but you couldn't guess it from driving around. Aside from all the big houses, there are almost no two-story buildings. Excess of land means that everyone builds out rather than up. Yesterday we went to Houston, the 4th largest city in America. There were skyscrapers in the financial district and there certainly wasn't empty land like there is in Beaumont, but still, many of the shopping centers were long, long buildings with one or two floors. Sometimes I think that excess of land lets people take the environment for granted. I don't think very many people recycle, but then, when you have unlimited space for garbage disposal, it's easier not to think about those things. Maybe America is behind the rest of the world on environmental protection because so many places still have smog-free skies and rivers that don't reek of sewage.

Everytime I go back to America, I think it's more diverse. Caucasians are the single largest racial group here, but they no longer the majority. I expected a large Latino population, but there are a lot of African-Americans here too and yesterday, at the mall, I saw women with covered heads, women in saris and a few women from Africa. Our own town, only moderately sized by American standards, is able to support an Indian cultural center. The thing is, I'm not sure how much people learn from this diversity. I've seen more interracial couples than I expected but fewer mixed groups of friends. Beyond an upsurge in the number of ethnic restaurants, it doesn't seem like there's much cultural exchange. I wish multiculturalism fostered a greater interest in world affairs.

I've read that only 1 in 5 Americans has a passport and judging from the number of people who refuse to accept mine as valid photo ID, that's probably true. People often mention this statistic when they want to cast Americans as ignorant, but I don't think that's fair. Texas, New York and California are so different they sometimes seem like separate countries and the number of different cultures you can experience in New York City and San Francisco is staggering. I don't blame people for using their paltry 10 days of paid vacation to explore their home country.

Saying that the "American dream" is real is too simplistic, but I think there is a lot of opportunity here. I'm amazed at the number of people I know who own their own homes, run their own companies, switch careers, go back to college or re-enter the workforce after years of being a stay-at-home mom. Before I traveled, I hadn't realized what an incredible privilege those things are. For my students in Japan, changing companies is difficult; switching careers is inconceivable. I think those opportunities are fueled by some good ol-fashioned American values like self-sufficiency, individuality and independence but coming back here -- however temporarily -- reminds me how hard it can be to support yourself. Public transportation is almost non-existant; you can barely survive without a car. If you're making ends meet with a couple part time jobs instead of a single full-time one, you have to provide your own health insurance. Doing that is so expensive that most people choose to go without.

And here is one thing I hope not to take for granted again: I have just published a lot of criticism about my country and I will not get in trouble for it. The fact that I am even able to critically evaluate America means that I grew up in a school system that encouraged
critical thinking skills and that I live in a society where information is accessible. All of those things mean that change is possible in my country. After 4 months of struggling with internet censorship, reading state-run newspapers and hearing people despair about presidents they can't change, it is impossible to live here and not feel lucky.Tags:america
16 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Life Plans and Living Expenses
Oct. 23rd, 2006 at 9:52 PM
This evening my father and I spoke about what I might do after Peace Corps. I know I want a masters of education; the question is where I might get it. I wanted to live closer to my family, but the more I think about it, the more I doubt my capability and desire to live anywhere other than New York. I cannot see myself happy in Texas long-term -- much like Japan, it's simply not my culture. Austin might be an option, but the University of Texas there does not have an ESL program open to people who don't already have a Bachelor's of Education.

And then there is the matter of having a car. My father supposes that he spends $200/month for insurance and gas. If I bought a car, my insurance would be cheaper but life in an urban area would create parking expenses. And the type of used car I could afford would no doubt generate unpredictable repair and maintenance cost. I might very well need to make car payments too. It doesn't seem worth it when I genuinely hate to drive. America's lack of public transport seriously limits my options in life.

New York is not as expensive as people imagine. Not if you know how to do things right. When I lived there last, I took home $18,000 a year -- that's $1,500 a month. I put $400 or $500 of that in the bank each month and managed to take a trip to Morocco without depleting my savings account. Rent cost $500/month. I lived in a Peruvian and Colombiano neighborhood in Queens and shared with a girl I found on craigslist.com. Landlords in New York are responsible for your water and heating, but ours was generous enough to include all of our utilities. Our apartment was a bit run-down and not entirely roach free, but my bedroom was larger than the one I have right now in my father's house.

My monthly metro card, a $70 expense, came out of my pre-tax income, so it fit effortlessly into my budget. A further $50/month went toward the telephone, internet and cable bills, leaving me with about $110 to spend per week. I don't remember exactly how I spent that, except that living in a neighborhood where lots of families were struggling kept costs down. My weekly trip to the grocery store was cheap, although my diet consisted largely of 8-for-$1 packs of instant noodles. I also remember that I never felt poor except when I compared myself to my more carefree friends. Sometimes I felt like a broken record stuck on "can we go somewhere cheaper?" I could afford to go out to dinner but not to have drinks afterward. Yes, I'd love to come watch a movie; no, I wouldn't be ordering anything from the Chinese place while we watch. New York is a brilliant place to entertain yourself cheaply. All you have to do is walk down the street or find a nice bit of grass in the park. Tower Video rents old movies for $1 on Wednesday and Thursday nights, the bakery in Chinatown sells big, satisfying steamed pork buns for $.35 each after 5 p.m. and the Grey Dog will let you linger for hours over a single $2 cup of hot chocolate. I even knew of a second-run movie theater where tickets cost a mere $5. The only challenge was reminding my friends that these were the only things that I could afford.

It is hard for me to imagine living so cheaply in a more middle-class city like Tulsa or Beaumont. My favorite free options, like pay-as-you-wish museums, strolling through ethnic neighborhoods or camping out in massive public parks, are just not available. If you can't afford to go shopping or dine out, I'm not sure what you can do on a Friday night. And you're forced to subject yourself to unpredictable expenses like gas and vehicle maintenance. New York is reputedly the most expensive city in the United States, but I can think of nowhere else that I could finance a trip to Europe on a $10/hour job or save money out of an 18K salary. I think I'm decided: New York City is my home.

October 25th, 2006
My Body: An Unexpected Triumph
Oct. 25th, 2006 at 12:19 AM
Going to bed without writing is not permitted. If I accomplish nothing else during these 2 months at home, I am determined to write every day. So here goes:

Travel usually changes your mind, but this trip made the biggest impact on my body. It is rare, as a woman, to feel completely good about what you see in the mirror but I found the secret -- it's not about how your body looks; it's about what it can do. And my body does fabulous things. It carried me over 10 hilly kilometers of the Great Wall of China, navigating broken staircases and 70 degree inclines. And this was a week after my departure from Tokyo, where "exercise" had meant walking 5 minutes to the train station. In spite of near-constant digestive issues, my body almost never let me down. It trekked to embassies during heat waves, stood up on crowded trains, even learned to climb into top bunks that did not have ladders. In Chengdu, I hiked up 7 floors two or three times a day because that's where cubestorm's apartment was. Each day, I made it a little further before I stopped to rest. Once I carried 40 pounds of baggage on a 30 minute walk, but the best triumph was my arrival in Tokyo: I climbed the 5 floors to Anne's apartment with my 35-pound backpack and never needed to stop to rest. Yes, my thighs are wider than my hips; no, my stomach is not flat and no, I most certainly cannot wear the new skinny jeans. But none of those things matter if you see your body as something more than a tool for attracting men. I finally what it means to look good for yourself -- it's not even about looking good; it's about feeling capable of doing anything.

Sometimes I wonder if I come off as a little too self-confident when I write. Then I think it doesn't matter if I do because you shouldn't feel ashamed to know your strengths. Here's my dare: in your journal or in the comments, write about one thing you love about yourself.Tags:emotional organization
15 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Inspiration

Oct. 25th, 2006 at 9:30 PM
I want to write every day while I'm home, but what to write about? Ask me some questions! Or leave websites with writing prompts or something :)

October 27th, 2006
Thunderstorms & Birthday Resolutions
Oct. 27th, 2006 at 10:19 AM
East Texas is a giant flood plain and after 2 hours of rain, the overwhelmed storm drains surrendered whole lanes of road to the water. Convenience stores stayed open even as water lapped at the doors and men in tall fishing boots forded flooded parking lots to buy cases of beer. We drove whichever way we wanted on whatever lane of the road was open and for an hour, I felt that I was back in China.

I devoted a part of my 25th birthday to writing a list of 10 things I want to accomplish in my life. I've done this before, with concrete goals like getting an English PhD or traveling to Turkey, but this time I chose more abstract projects. The jobs that we want or the destinations we dream of are shaped by a gradual accumulation of life experience and can't be committed to in advance. These are the principles I'm committing myself to keep in mind for the next year, and hopefully, the rest of my life:

1. Think before I speak. All those things that I think "maybe this sounds snide and judgmental" but then say anyway...that needs to stop.

2. To be more generous. So many strangers have been kind to me in my travels; now that I know how much that means to a person, I cannot fail to do the same.

3. Not to give into fear of intimacy or rejection. Every single person is a world unto themselves; I cannot claim to be a seeker of new experiences if I cut myself off from them.

4. Talk less, listen more. Learn to ask truly interesting and important questions.

5. Remember what it's like to have a strong body that feels capable of anything; take steps to maintain it.

6. Cultivate long-lasting relationships with friends and mentors. Accept that, in the course of years, there will be times when you don't connect but recgonize that life may bring you back together again.

7. Continue believing in my own power and responsibility to make myself happy.

8. To continue pursuing my goal of dying an old woman with few regrets and many stories but also to recognize that someday I may wish to settle down.

9. Never stop writing; believe in my power to be creative.

10. Learn my family's history.

What do you hope to achieve?

October 30th, 2006
Dallas, America
Oct. 30th, 2006 at 3:37 PM
On Friday night, my father and I drive to Dallas to support my sister at the 3-day Breast Cancer Walk. I hear road trip and envision 2-lane highways with greasy spoon diners. I've forgotten that America has 4-lane freeways lined with fast food outlets.

We arrive after midnight. It amazes me that a city so large can be so uncluttered. Shopping centers and skyscrapers sit in asphalt oceans of parking lots so far apart that I can see why nobody walks between them. Even at this late hour, they are illuminated by soft yellow flood lights so I can see that nothing unattractive is permitted in Dallas. Everything is painted in cream, peach or buff. Shopping centers are ornamented with cornices, molding and miniature turrets; each skyscraper is made from sleek mirrored glass. Everywhere I look is a place to buy something that you probably don't need.

By day, I see two-story four and five-bedroom brick homes that I am tempted to call mansions. What amazes me is not that wealth exists but that there's so much of it -- addition after addition filled with massive houses and billboards advertising plans for more. "Live like a million for only $300,000!" they say. Only $300,000.

Land is cheap here, I suppose. The city builds forever outward, sustained by an increasingly vast network of highways and overpasses. DART, the train system, runs through only a tiny portion of downtown. Nobody can even tell me where the stops are.

We drive further into the suburbs to find the route of the breast cancer walk. The manicured shopping centers dwindle (but don't disappear). Trendy Tex-Mex chains give way to taquerias and mom-and-pop diners that beg me to explore. We stop at one for breakfast, the Airways Cafe. A slow-moving cook points us to the day's special: single meat burgers for $1.19. The pin-up above the bar is disturbing: a cowgirl whose body has been labeled with cuts of meat. Chuck, says her shoulderblade. Rump roast, says her ass. The inscription above her says "stop eating steak."

We order. Beer biscuits for my dad, breakfast tacos for my sister's boyfriend and pancakes for me. Then we wait. And wait and wait and wait. Soon we hear shouting from the kitchen. Several customers help themselves to milk from gallon jugs in the easily accessible fridge. The fight in the kitchen intensifies and the slow-moving counter girl is pointing at us, screaming "THEY HAVE NO HASHBROWNS!" I am annoyed but also pleased with this little piece of Americana.

The next day, we follow the walkers into downtown Fort Worth. The skyscrapers here are all Art Deco and the simple little churches recall a more distant time in history. A little driving takes us into a neighborhood where every sign is written in English and Spanish. Colorful taquerias and boarded-up movie theaters break the endless line of pawn shops, bail bondsmen and workers' compensation lawyers. "SELL YOUR HOUSE FOR CASH!!!" one billboard says. Another reads, "Drive drunk and go to jail? Another government lie!" Below it is a phone number for a lawyer.

This bit of color is swallowed up by touristy souvenir shops within a couple blocks, but I want to go back and explore. There must be so much hidden below the surface here.

October 31st, 2006
Bureaucracy
Oct. 31st, 2006 at 10:29 AM
At the end of my stay in China, Under the Tuscan Sun came on TV. The main character, an American, had no trouble purchasing property in the European Union and her intended mulit-year stay did not attract the attention of immigration authorities. In fact, moving to a foreign country was so easy that her best friend was able to live there indefinitely with a child.

Being an expatriate is not like this. Visa authorities with armloads of paperwork stalk you at every turn. The omnipresent need for work and residency permits limits your options and if you are American, you can count on more paperwork, extra fees and no chance of obtaining the self-sponsored visas available to your colleagues in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Theoretically, my life is made of free-time. In actuality, I spend every afternoon and many mornings sorting out the paperwork associated with Peace Corps and my temporary return to Japan.

The Nova visa packet came with 10 pages of application and a 32-page instruction booklet. You must use black ink and write only in capital letters...unless your passport uses small ones. Everything must match the exact wording on your passport or college transcripts. Using white-out on visa application forms is prohibited, so if you make a mistake, you must start over. It took 6 tries for me to write my work history in America, my work history in Japan and my educational history starting from elementary school without making any mistakes. Then I printed up 6 identical passport photos, wrote my name on the back of each -- exactly as it appears in my passport -- and made photo copies of every one of my previous entry/exit stamps to Japan.

The Peace Corps medical clearance packet is more than 50 pages long. It includes an eye exam, a complete physical and 2 pages of dental charts. The VA hospital, which is supposed to do PC physicals for free, refused to see me. In fact, 3 different VA hospitals told me to go to hell. I spent an afternoon negotiating the maze of automated telephone menus to reach the Peace Corps head office and ask about this, but there was nothing they could do. Then I scheduled an appointment with Planned Parenthood, who will charge me on a sliding scale. I got the appointment at the NYU dental clinic yesterday after spending 2 hours investigating clinics at OU and OSU. I'm still not finished though -- now I need an eye doctor appointment and I need to call free clinics around Tulsa to see if I can get my exams just a little cheaper. I also need to write a letter about my coping skills in order to (hopefully) avoid a full psychiatric evaluation.

I am thoroughly exhausted.

November 1st, 2006
Photo Post -- Urumqi Night Market
Nov. 1st, 2006 at 5:08 PM
A lot of people told me Urumqi was dirty, ugly, boring and all-around sucktastic. I disagreed. From the moment I stepped off the plane, I felt I had arrived at a frontier. This is a place where so many parts of China come together. The Han Chinese downtown is full of modern hotels and clothing shops, the Uighur Muslim quarter like a market straight from Egypt and a tiny Russian-Kazakh district where there's not a Chinese-speaker to be found. These pictures are from the famous Urumqi night market. It's one of those places that occupy your senses all at once -- the smell of garlic, chili oil and roasted meat, vendors shouting and beggars crying, whole lambs and a thousand unfamiliar foods dangling from each and every stall. I went back all 4 of the nights I stayed in Urumqi.

November 2nd, 2006
Photo Post -- Tianchi, the Heaven Lake
Nov. 2nd, 2006 at 7:19 PM
Just outside Urumqi, the city I posted about last night, is a turquoise blue lake in the mountains whose shores are populated by nomadic Kazakh shepards. Ironically, China is a better place to experience traditional Kazakh culture than Kazakhstan. While the Soviet Union forced Kazakhs to give up their herds and settle on collective farms, the Chinese government allowed the small Kazakh minority to continue wandering. We stayed overnight in a yurt camp used to hosting tourists. When we awoke at 9 a.m., half the yurts were gone, leaving only empty door frames in their place.

November 5th, 2006
Motorcycles & Disparity in Galveston, Texas
Nov. 5th, 2006 at 9:54 PM
The first time I went to Galveston, I was 11 years old and in 5th grade. It was the first time I had seen the ocean and I did not mind that it was brown. Feeding seagulls on the ferry did not frighten me and although I was not surprised to see houses on stilts, I was shocked that they came in colors like pink and turquoise and yellow.

Today the seagulls terrified me. I held out a shred of bread and they dove for me. I looked up to see an entire flock of them above my head, crying shrilly and snapping their beaks. I tossed whole slices of bread as far from me as I could manage and ran for the car.

And today I saw vast economy disparity. Maybe it wasn't there when I was 10, more likely I didn't know to notice. So many of the houses along the beach were Texas-style mansions, Tudor and Victorian-style homes built to look like they came from the turn of the century. The bigger the house, the taller the stilts; rich people's things need protecting. But only a block or two inland were homes with peeling paint and boarded windows. There were no nice homes inside the island and no bad ones on the beach.

I was thinking about these things when we stumbled on the 2006 Galveston Harley Davidson Ralley. Whole streets were closed off by barriers that only a motorcycle could squeeze through. The police stood on platforms above the crowd in front of signs that said "wheelies and burn-outs punishable by immediate arrest." The smell of beer was inescapable and the T-shirts extraordinarily crass. The best one said "My vibrator weighs 1000 pounds. It's air cooled, it has 5 speeds and you can hear this bitch cumming." Harley Davidson girls wearing leather chaps and not much else stood in a crowd on one street corner, posing for photos and selling calendars between puffs on their cigarettes. My favorite biker carried a cane, wore a firey-looking bandana, was missing every other tooth and had a long gray pony tail spread across his back. My second favorite biker was a doughy middle-aged man from the Ride for Christ Christian Bikers Association. He looked very, very confused.

I would've liked to stay longer, but I think my stepmom was scared.

November 8th, 2006
Countries whose names end with -stan
Nov. 8th, 2006 at 2:16 PM
Ages ago, kittybaby96 wanted to know the difference between all of those 'stan countries I visited. This is my summary.







I. Kazakhstan



When I think about Kazakhstan, I think about contrasts. How everything was crowded but so neat -- the way whole families might live in a single but perfectly clean room or the way the fruit and nut vendors stacked everything so perfectly in the chaos of the market (pictured above). The city center was modern, with lots of tall apartment buildings and designer boutiques, but on the edges you found the remnants of old Central Asia -- the rusted Soviet train tracks, the bazaar, the bath house with its big gold domes. It was like a tiny blueprint for the whole country. Well-developed capital, small towns where everything sat silent and still with nothing more than the basics on the shelves of the stores. It will take a long time for the new oil wealth to trickle down, if it ever does.

You should also know that Kazakhstan hurt the worst when the Soviets came. Stalin forced its nomadic people to settle and its vast plains, once grazing grounds for the shepards' livestock, were plowed to become collective farms. The shepards, knowing nothing about how to farm, were unable to grow crops. Thousands starved in the famine that followed.


II.Uzbekistan




When I remember Uzbekistan, I think of architecture. This is the place where I was daily mesmerized by intricately patterned tiles, hidden courtyards and dramatic archways. I felt as if I could see into 5 centuries of history everywhere I went -- modern-day Uzbekistan, with crumbling monuments and women wearing sparkling dresses; Soviet Uzbekistan, where sacred religious sites were used as machine repair; and the Uzbekistan of Timur, where every building was an architectural masterpiece designed to dwarf and impress. The people here were among the best I've ever met. Eager to talk, eager to help, rarely too pushy with their merchandise or marriage proposals. I felt safe and welcome everywhere I went.

This is also where I saw the most sobering sight of my trip. It took us 15 hours to reach Moynaq, the town that used to be a fishing port on what used to be the shores of the Aral Sea. Soviet irrigation projects dried it up, leaving a desert in its place. The town is desolate, the stores abandoned, the people subdued. 1 in 10 babies there die, tuberculosis is rampant and cancer is on the rise now that the chemical weapons testing site that used to be an island is connected to the mainland. Walking across the desert, knowing it used to be an ocean is the first thing that made me understand that our planet's resources are finite. I try to picture that desert every time I'm tempted to stay in the shower too long, to run the water while I brush my teeth, every time I'm about to take having water for granted.


III. Kyrgyzstan



Kyrgyz people are nomads. In the winter, they live in the village; in the summer, they take their livestock into the mountains and live in yurts. The per capita income here is lower than any other country I've been to, but the people are self-sufficient rather than poor. Even the rich families we stayed with kept enough animals to feed them during the winter and almost every home has a courtyard for gardening. Wool from the sheep is pressed into felt and used to make durable, intricately patterned rugs and to fill blankets made from shiny cloth. Everyone grows up riding horses.

This is the one place where I didn't see horrifying reminders of Soviet days. The country's high altitude, mountainous terrain prevented the Soviets from undertaking the farming and irrigation projects so disasterous in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The lack of natural resources and infrastructure meant that the country was heavily subsidized by the Soviet government. The money dried up when the USSR collapsed, but the new Kyrgyz government had a plan -- promoting tourism. Kyrgyzstan scrapped the arcane visa laws common in the region and invited foreigners to visit. In order to ensure that local people earned the money, a Swiss non-profit organization helped create the country's unique Community Based Tourism initiative. Each town has one or two coordinators who speak English and help travelers find accomodation with local families as well as guides for hiking and horse trekking. Travelers pay the families directly and at the end of the season, each family pays a small commission to support the organization. With the help of this program, I visited hidden corners of the country not listed in my guidebook, met more locals than I ever could have on my own, and spent more than a week living with Kyrgyz nomads. I highly recommend it.

IV. Helpful Links
Community Based Tourism - Kyrgyzstan
Stan Tours - visa assistance for Central Asia. Absolutely essential for Americans who wish to visit Uzbekistan.
Lonely Planet Central Asia discussion board
Uzbekistan trip report on Lonely Planet Thorn Tree
Eurotrek - travel advice for every country in the world
All photos link back to my flickr account.

Quizzes
Nov. 9th, 2006 at 10:16 PM
I don't usually post quizzes, but I liked this one. Sample question:

12. Rufus (Bill and Ted fame) appears out of nowhere with a time-traveling phone booth. You can go anytime in the PAST. What time are you traveling to and what are you going to do when you get there?
In 1989, thousands of people gathered for a candle light vigil in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia. Their completely peaceful vigil resulted in the resignation of the Communist party leaders and the first democratic election since WWII. When the last Soviet helicopter departed, thousands of men stood in the town square, shaving off beards they swore they'd never cut until Soviet troops left their country. I want to see that.



1. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up?George W. Bush.

2. You can flip a switch that will wipe any band or musical artist out of existence. Which one will it be?
That "Beautiful" song is an unforgivable offense. I know that a lot of people like it, but I hear the story of a man who became creepily obsessed with someone on the first meeting but lacked the will to become a stalker. Not having lived in the U.S. for so long, I don't really know who sang it but feel he should be killed before he has the chance to produce more lame songs.


3. Who would you really like to just punch in the face?
Republicans.

4. What is your favorite cheese?
Camembert

5. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your immediate disposal. It is?
Foccaccia with honey mustard, thinly sliced turkey, brie and lettuce.

6. You have the opportunity to sleep with the movie-celebrity of your choice.
Robert Sean Leonard. Go rent Dead Poets Society and House if you don't know who he is.

7. You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice.
Lately I'm in to classical music and while the artists are very talented, they don't really turn me on.

8. Now that you've slept with two different people in a row, you seem to be having an excellent day because you just came across a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk. Holy crap, a hundred bucks!
Paying for those damn Peace Corps-required medical exams.

9. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?
Tough call, but I think I'd like to see a giraffe. I pick Africa.

10. Upon arrival to the aforementioned location, you get off the plane and discover another hundred-dollar bill. Wow! Now that you are in the new location, where are you gonna go to spend that?
I will be going on safari. See above about giraffe.

11. An angel appears out of Heaven and offers you a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. "Be brand-specific" it says. Man! What are you gonna say about that? Even if you don't drink booze there's something you can figure out... so what's it gonna be?
Dom Perignon sure tastes good. I could celebrate my safari.

12. Rufus (Bill and Ted fame) appears out of nowhere with a time-traveling phone booth. You can go anytime in the PAST. What time are you traveling to and what are you going to do when you get there?
In 1989, thousands of people gathered for a candle light vigil in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia. Their completely peaceful vigil resulted in the resignation of the Communist party leaders and the first democratic election since WWII. When the last Soviet helicopter departed, thousands of men stood in the town square, shaving off beards they swore they'd never cut until Soviet troops left their country. I want to see that.

13. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place?
I'm making a world where you can't use your private religious beliefs to legislate a nation and where the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness aren't violated just because you happen to be gay or Arab or a woman or different from everyone else.

14. You have been given the opportunity to create the half-hour TV show of your own design. What is it called and what's the premise?
It is about me. And I can defeat the powers of evil with my awesome sword fighting skills and witty retorts.

15. What is your favorite expletive?
"Byoukimochi." It means "carrier of sexually transmitted diseases" in Japanese.

16. One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren't really doing anything, they're just standing around your bed. What do you do?
I sell them to a museum because they are probably worth a lot of money.

17. Your house is on fire, holy crap! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don't worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what's the one thing you're going to save from that blazing inferno?
I have made this decision before. I lived less than a mile from the World Trade Center and when I had to evacuate, it seemed possible that my apartment would be gone by the time I came back. I took my photo album and a favorite stuffed animal and halfway through the long walk to my friend's apartment, I would have gladly sold them both for a hot meal, a change of underwear and a toothbrush. When it seemed possible that I would have to evacuate again, I packed a first aid kit, plenty of water and a bunch of toiletries. There's a bag on my closet floor leftover from the trip I just completed. It has my passport, a wad of emergency cash, an extra credit card, a debit card, a head lamp and a lot of emergency supplies. If a fire breaks out, that's what I'm taking because it turns out that no possession is as valuable as being able to provide for yourself.

But then, I might impulsively grab my jewelery box because I am very, very attached to my collection of vintage jewelery.

18. The Angel Of Death has descended upon you. Fortunately, the Angel Of Death is pretty cool and in a good mood, and it offers you a half-hour to do whatever you want before you bite it. Whatcha gonna do in that half-hour?
I'm taking everyone I love on my African safari so they can understand what's so amazing about traveling. If they knew that, they could have a little piece of me to carry around forever.

19. You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what's even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What's it gonna be?
The ability to become fluent in a language just by listening to people speak it.

20. You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?
Sitting on the steps of the Sacre Couer in Paris. I hadn't realized that when I climbed it, I would be able to see all of Paris. I sat there, watching the sunset and eating the most delicious sandwich I'd ever tasted, and felt this amazing sense of possibility both for the rest of the trip and the rest of my life.

21. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?
Nada. I like myself and I wouldn't be myself if not for all the experiences I've had.

22. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But check this out... you can move to anywhere else in the world! Where?
Paris.

23. This question still counts, even for those of you who are under age. Check it out. You have been eternally banned from every single bar in the world except for ONE. Which one is it gonna be?
Advocates in Tokyo. It's fun to drink with gay men and drag queens.

24. Hopefully you didn't mention this in the super-powers question.... If you did, then we'll just expand on that. Check it out... Suddenly, you have gained the ability to FLOAT!!! Whose house are you going to float to first, and be like "Dude check it out I can FLOAT!!"?
The next door neighbor's? I suspect that floating is a very slow way to travel.

25. The constant absorption of magical moonbeams mixed with the radioactive vegetables you consumed earlier have given you the ability to resurrect the dead famous-person of your choice. So which late celebrity will you bring back to life?
Audrey Hepburn.

26. The Celestial Gates Of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn't think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person/etc. of your choice to the living world.
My grandpa on my mother's side.



1. Yourself: Overflowing

2. Your boyfriend: Imaginary

3. Your hair: Unremarkable.

4. Your mother: Unexpected.

5. Your Father: Taciturn.

6. Your Favorite Item: Journal.

7. Your dream last night: Discomfitting.

8. Your Favorite drink: Coke.

9. Your Dream Car: Nonexistant.

10. The room you are in: Nook.

12. Your fear: None.

13. What you want to be in 10 years: Passionate.

14. Who you hung out with last night: Family.

15. What You're Not? Afraid.

16. Muffins: Cinnamon.

17: One of Your Wish List Items: Books.

18: Time: Progressing.

19. The Last Thing You Did: Telephone.

20. What You Are Wearing: Pajamas.

21. Your Favorite Weather: Warm.

22. Your Favorite Book: Character-driven

23. The Last Thing You Ate: Mexican.

24. Your Life: Vibrant.

25. Your Mood: Focused.

26. Your body: Acceptable.

27. Who are you thinking about right now? Life.

29. What are you doing at the moment? Thinking.

30. Your summer: Unusual.

31. Best part of your life: Confidence.

One month of books
Nov. 10th, 2006 at 5:47 PM
I hate it when I forget the books I've read. That's why I'm going to start keeping a reading log.



Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin -- Journalist and Orwell expert Emma Larkin goes to Burma (now known as Myanmar) to learn about George Orwell's brief stint as a British colonial policeman. Although the book considers how Orwell's police career influenced the writing of 1984, it's really about the amazing resiliency and spirit of Burmese people living under one of the world's most brutal and oppressive governments. Every word is perfectly chosen and every person, building and jungle Larkin visits emerges vividly from the pages. This is one book I'm not selling back to the used book store.


Bodies We've Buried: Inside the National Forensic Academy by Jarret Hallcox & Amy Welch -- The directors of the National Forensic Academy in Nashville explain how real-life crime scene investigation is done. Great premise and lots of interesting facts, but the book suffers from an inconsistent and overly colloquial writing style. I question whether they employed the services of an editor. Your ability to enjoy this book depends on how many awkward sentences you can stomach...and whether you can handle truly graphic descriptions of decomposing human bodies.


Amy & Isabel by Elizabeth Strout -- An Oprah book that I probably would have cherished when I was about 16. Strout gives each of her characters a distinct and believable voice, most especially teenage Amy, who speaks a little and thinks a lot. It's a character-driven novel, which I like, but the character development is predictable almost from the first page. The weather-related symbolism is a bit heavy-handed but I could've lived with the too-neat ending...if only Strout hadn't also felt the need to spell out exactly what lessons we were supposed to learn from it.


Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro -- I'm not finished yet but I'm in love. This is the story of high school students growing up in a not-too-distant dystopian future, but this isn't really a sci-fi story; it's a story about growing up, wanting things you can't have and how far you'll go in the struggle to fit in. I'm reading this slowly so I can savor every chapter and I keep taking little breaks so I can fix particular passages in my mind forever. I have 130 pages to go and I'll be heartbroken if they disappoint me.


Feel free to comment on what you've been reading.

November 13th, 2006
Remembering Spain
Nov. 13th, 2006 at 7:15 PM
It's hard for me to remember my trip to Europe now. It was only 4 years ago, but life has been so busy that the details have faded. I remember the broad arcs -- the peace of having nothing to do, the little variations between each country, the best foods I got to sample. But I was happy to find my old travel journals and recover a few details, even if they're not very well written.

7/24/2002
Today I'm in Toledo. For the first time, I feel like i'm really in Spain. The north part of the country was cold, green and rainy like Ireland but Toledo is just how I pictured Spain -- the country side is dusty and brown, dotted by tiny hills and a few hearty-looking green plants. The city is a maze of narrow cobblestone streets that zigzag up and down steep hills and every building is made of stone the same color as the parched soil. At sunset, the light glances off of them, bringing out shades of pink and yellow. The heat, the stillness and the old buildings make this place seem timeless; I can believe that tomorrow conquistadors will come riding across the plains with riches from America.

7/29/2002
Relaxing in the cool shadows of Segovia's aqueduct. I felt so tired and frustrated and lost when I arrived, but I looked to the left and there were the arches of the aqueduct looming over the street. It's so cool -- there's just an aquaduct, thousands of years old, sitting in the middle of this normal modern neighborhood.

...

Just boarded the night train to Lisbon. 25 minutes to departure. No matter how tired or burnt out I am, the promise of a new city brings feelings of excitement and curiousity. I love that I will go to bed in Spain and wake up in Portugal.

8/06/2002
11 p.m. exactly. I heard the bells counting it out. Laundry was an adventure today. I forget that driers are luxuries in other countries. After a lot of effort and some confusion, I persuaded the man at reception to let me use the washing machine. Gleeful with anticipation of clean clothes, I threw in literally everything I own except a sports bra and some gym shorts. Somewhere in the 2-hour wash cycle, I realized there was no drier...but I discovered there was a clothes line on the rooftop. As I hung my clothes over the twisted metal wire, I felt as if I had been trasnported to another time. The smell of my laundry mingled with the aroma of Spanish cooking from the apartments below. The sun was just setting and the whispy clouds glowed pink above the red roof tops. I stood up there a long time, listening to the conversations drifting up from below.

After that, I borrowed a giant and horrible lime green shirt from a guy in my dorm and went out wearing that and a damp skirt. Sevilla is beautiful. In Barrio Santa Cruz, the buildings are painted a deep gold and above their rooftops soared the steeple of the cathedral. Lemon trees grow in every plaza, giving all the streets a faint aroma of lemon.

Now I am back on the roof and the sky is dark. Below me I hear the faint clatter of plates from the outdoor restaurants that crowd the sidestreets. The plaza is illuminated by the yellow light of the surrounding apartments and the clothes on the line are blowing faintly in the breeze.

November 20th, 2006
Facewash Question
Nov. 20th, 2006 at 1:52 PM
I'm spending the weekend in Dallas with my sister. I think I could live here, except for the troublesome need to drive. There's good food to be had and a surprising amount of diversity. The political orientation does not match mine, but you can find kindred liberal spirits everywhere if you look hard enough. It is still not New York though. I think New York will always be my real home in the United States. Living there fills me up with energy and inspiration and it remains the only city in the world where I never have to look hard for something to do. When in doubt, just go walking and you'll stumble across something unique and fascinating.

But now for the real purpose of the post...

What kind of skin do you have and what kind of facewash do you use for it? I purchased some Clean & Clear in Uzbekistan and loved it muchly, but when I got here, I found the formuals were not the same. Their blackhead cleanser smells bad and leaves tiny blue beads in my eyebrows and their regular kind makes my skin burn. The challenging thing about my skin is that it's oily but paradoxically prone to getting dry and flaky.

November 26th, 2006
Thoughts on being American
Nov. 26th, 2006 at 8:37 PM
I first felt proud of my country when I was teaching English in Chinatown. At the time, I wasn't feeling very good about America -- George Bush, having just invaded Afghanistan, was formenting war on Iraq and I believed (correctly) that he was about to squander the goodwill of the world. So when I gave my students the option of describing their favorite or least favorite thing about America, I was expecting them all to share their disappointment with American politics.

The first student, an elegant and simply spoken grandmother, said her favorite thing about America was our English class. In China, she said, the government did not give you things for free, even if you needed them. Several other students chimed in to talk about the AIDS education and computer literacy classes they'd taken when they first arrived in the country. Then the success stories started: teenagers at the top of their classes, others on their way to Ivy League colleges. One had saved enough from his job as a factory worker to help his son start his own business. With chills down my spine, I realized that the American Dream was not just political propaganda; it was real, and every last one of my students had lived it.

When I went abroad to South America and Japan, listening to criticisms of America hurt me unexpectedly deeply. It was nothing that I hadn't said myself, but I knew the people making them didn't see the America that I did, a place that, however flawed politically, allowed absolute freedom of speech and opportunities for success unequalled by any other country in the world. In the two and half years that I lived overseas, I became America's most passionate defender. I never supported Bush or the war in Iraq, but it was desperately important to me that people understood how America's political situation came about and why it wasn't the most important fact about my country.

But now that I am here I have slipped back into my role as critic. The repeal of habeas corpus for suspected terrorists, the radio commentator who said Muslims shouldn't be allowed to serve in Congress, all the politicians who want to outlaw abortion while reducing funding to organizations that provide birth control...it infuriates me. We have such an amazing place here -- so much more wealth, diversity and opportunity than any place I've been in the entire world. I just want it to live up to that.

December 10th, 2006
New York, NY
Dec. 10th, 2006 at 12:27 AM

Still home after all these years.

I tried not to compare the present with the past. Comparing my memories to what I saw in front of me was like one of those games where you have to spot tiny differences between two big pictures. Everywthing was the same...almost. Same atmosphere, same buildings but familiar shops and restaurants removed or relocated. I could no longer step out onto the street with the assurance that my feet would carry me where I was going. My favorite coffee shop felt like a relic from a previous life. I felt that way about a lot of old favorite places but the sense of home in New York never changed. A lot of places are adequate, but only New York adds something to me. Every day I walked around Union Square Park, alternately exploring the green market and the art sellers spread across the sidewalks. There is so much creativity here, so many different ways to live our lives.

This is the first thing I've written in ages and I'm not very proud of it. My ability to focus feels shattered and I don't know if I should just let it be for now or try to force myself. I never feel healthy when I don't write but I hate to make it chore.

Kyrgyzstan Travel Info
Dec. 13th, 2006 at 5:41 PM
Kyrgyzstan was one of the most difficult and rewarding places I've ever traveled. Infrastructure was poor -- intercity transport requires negotiating with cab drivers at the bazaar and the complete lack of street lights makes it unsafe, particularly for women, to be out at night. I found the local Russian very difficult to understand and occasionally people were rude or impatient when I didn't understand. That said, staying with nomadic families at two different mountain lakes was one of the great travel experiences of my life and when I think about the country, I remember that experience far more than I remember the challenges of traveling there.

CBT, or Community Based Tourism, makes Kyrgyzstan far more accessible than it might be otherwise. Their website offers a good introduction to the country. Several cities and towns have a CBT office with an English-speaking coordinator who can arrange homestays, horse treks, visits to nomad families and (expensive) chartered cars between cities. Their office should be your first stop anywhere you go.

Travel in Kyrgyzstan outside the summer season (May-October) is not recommended. Before and after this time, roads may be closed and nomad families will have returned to their villages. You can go skiing in some parts of the country, but activities are very limited. June-September is the best time overall.



We crossed the border from Uzbekistan at Osh. From the border to Osh, a cab should cost about $3. We first stayed at Sarah's Guesthouse, which was cheap but not very comfortable -- the common bathroom was not too clean and the room was too hot at night to keep the door closed. Later we moved to Osh Guesthouse, the big backpackers crash pad. It is exceedingly difficult to find and can be very crowded, but it's a great place to meet other travelers and to arrange inexpensive transport to Kashgar in China ($35 per person in a full car). Osh is not a big sightseeing destination, but the bazaar is vast, sprawling, colorful and generally amazing introduction to the region. You will probably pass through the city at least once during your trip because it's a transport hub for the rest of the region.

From Osh, we went to Jalal-Abad, a 2-hour $5 ride in a shared taxi. We arranged accomodation through CBT. $11/person bought us a whole floor of a 2-story house with a host who behaved as if he was our butler. Although there's not a lot to see in town, the fresh fruit is delicious and it's interesting to see an average down-at-the-hills Soviet town.

After a overnight stay, we arranged a car to Kazarman. This was a little tough as Kazarman is decidedly off the beaten path. It took a few tries just to find the right place to hire the car (I think it finally turned out to be the long-distance bus station). The 8-hour trip was also a bit expensive -- about $50 to buy out the whole car -- but it's a tough and rarely taken journey, so you will have to pay a bit extra. It was hard to believe that the rusted-out old Soviet car we got could make the trip, but it did, fording creeks and driving over rocks and ruts without once dying. The road is not quite as scary as Lonely Planet makes it out to be, but it is made of dirt and not in great condition. The other hazard along the road are fake toll collectors who try to charge foreigners up to $15 each (about one month's salary in Kyrgyzstan) to use the road. We just sat in the car, politely refusing to speak to anyone until they finally gave it up. The scenery along the road is fantastic -- mountains, the occasional glacier, farmers in their yurts, families drying sunflower seeds along the sides of the highway. It showed me parts of Kyrgyzstan that I would never have seen otherwise.

Kazarman itself feels like the edge of the world. It's a small gold-mining town with no sights of particular interest, but again, I found it fascinating to see an average Kyrgyz town up close. You will need to ask your host to cook for you (about $2/meal) as there are no restaurants. You might also want to bring some your own snacks because there's only one small convenience store.

Our host helped us arrange a car to Naryn, another town with of no special interest but a good base for excursions in the surrounding country side. The best of these is Tash Rabat, a 10th century caravanserai surrounded by a small yurt camp. If I had known it was possible to stay overnight here, I would have. The surrounding mountains are beautiful and the shepards' paths make it easy to wander from yurt to yurt.

Our next destination was Kochkor, which turned out to be my favorite of the trip. Shepard's Life, an organization similar to CBT, is based here and offers a range of horse treks in the mountains. We stayed in their coordinator's lovely home in a room full of traditional Kyrgyz blankets and rugs. Our hosts were the most solicitous of our trip, always checking what we wanted to eat and if we needed any advice. I loved the way that farm animals were always wandering down the street and the Sunday livestock market was probably the coolest thing I saw in the whole country.

We arranged two excursions from Kochkor, to Song-Kol and Treasure Chest Lake. Song-Kol, highly recommended by Lonely Planet, was a bit of a disappointment. It is an incredibly peaceful place, good for wandering around but the scenery does not at all compare to Treasure Chest Lake (not in any guidebook). Where Song-Kol is accessible by car, Treasure Chest Lake can be reached only by a 1-day hike or 6-hour horse trek. Words really fail me on the scenery here. I just remember that the first time I saw the lake I knew instantly that it was the most beautiful place I'd ever been in my life. The family we stayed with were real shepards, not just people with a yurt who took in tourists and I felt completely immersed in an alien lifestyle. It is one of the best travel experiences of my life.

All our onward stops, just Karakol and Bishkek were disappointing after Treasure Chest Lake. Karakol is battered and run-down and not on the lakeshore as Lonely Planet implies. The drunks wandering around didn't add to the atmosphere and 3 people in our hostel were mugged after dark. We did enjoy a 2-day excursion to Altyn Arashan Hotsprings, which we arranged through the Yaktours hostel. The alpine scenery is different from anything else we'd seen before in Kyrgyzstan and you can stay in the springs for as long as you want. When you arrive, you get a key to a small hut the springs run through, so it's like having your own private bath for about $3.

Bishkek is pretty easily reached from Karakol. We took a comfortable, modern bus -- the first we'd seen in Kyryzstan -- for about $2. Bishkek itself is nothing special, but if you're in need of comfy accomodation and some good food after your hard journeys through the countryside, it's a good place to stay for a day or two. From there, we flew back to Osh for about $50 and then crossed the border to China.



All Kyrgyzstan entries
Kyrgyzstan photos

December 18th, 2006
One last New York day
Dec. 18th, 2006 at 12:07 PM
Yesterday I flew in from Rochester; today my flight departs for Tulsa at 4:35 p.m. I take my last day to explore Clinton Hill in Brooklyn, an area I've never visited before.

C.'s apartment is a bargain because it's a newly renovated building in an area that's not quite yet up-and-coming. The floors are made of shiny dark red wood, the living area spacious, the kitchen not too cramped for two people to stand in -- by New York standards, it's a palace. Everything in here looks new.

The street is lined with tall and narrow town homes, painted deep blue or dark red or covered all over with shingles. Turning left onto Myrtle Avenue, I hit a public housing project after a block of walking. It looks like an ordinary apartment complex -- tall brown brick buildings grouped together around little courtyards. Even after 2 years in Japan, it still takes me by surprise to be the only white girl sometimes but it doesn't feel like a dangerous place. Not if you can get over the media image that black guys in low-slung pants are scary.

I step into the deli for a Coke and interrupt an animated argument in Arabic. At least, I think it's an argument. Arabic always sounds angry to me.

When I walk in the opposite direction, I see New York City glamor mixed in with the grit. Well-appointed restaurants like Chez Lola and Clinton Hill Cafe rub shoulders with a dirty-looking nail salons and Community Care centers. The doctor's office has a hand-written sign in the window, a cracked linoleum floor in the lobby and just one flickering fluorescent lightbulb. One block up is a swanky-looking boutique with glass lanterns and fancy baby clothes in the window.

As I turn back toward C.'s place, I stop to peer at hand-carved African statues in the window of an international goods shop. A Nigerian Muslim community center is on the next corner and across the street from it, the Revelation Christian Church.

It's definitely New York.
2 comments Leave a comment Add to MemoriesTell a FriendLink Rochester, NY
Dec. 18th, 2006 at 12:58 PM
I had no expectations for my trip to Rochester except to see my friend Marlene. Mid-sized American cities always make me think of Dallas or Oklahoma City -- perfectly decent places to live but a little flavorless and overrun by shopping centers and chainstores. Rochester wasn't like that.

On the way to M.'s apartment from the airport, we wind past rows of huge Victorian homes painted all the colors of the rainbow, including electric blue. M's own apartment is in a bigger building with just a little vintage flavor -- a narrow-planked wooden floor, accordion-like radiator and a claw-footed bathtub. The most fascinating thing about visiting friends is finding out how their possessions match yours. M. and I both decorate with the same square cards with inspirational quotes. Her bookshelf is like an alternate universe version of mine with all the books I picked up and almost bought at Barnes & Noble. We spend an hour at the used bookstore pointing out books and recommending them to one another. Our taste is almost exactly the same yet we've read almost none of the same books.

I don't go into a single chain store, cafe or restaurant the whole time I'm in Rochester thanks to M's devotion to getting to know her city. We wander between British pubs, sports bars, mom & pop Italian restaurants, one truly ghetto-fabulous diner and a big but cozy coffee shop near the Eastman School with dark wood tables and funky photographs on the walls.

On Friday afternoon, we hit the Eastman Museum, one of the world's greatest photography collections. Unfortunately, we hit it on an "off" day -- the exhibit is photographs of pets. Our tour of the Eastman House, the home of the founder of Eastman Kodak, doesn't go much better. Dottiness rolls off our aging, frizzy-haired tour guide in waves. I tell her I'm from Oklahoma and she immediately begins speaking to me in Spanish. Haltingly I admit that I have ridden horses before and for the rest of the tour, she calls me Horse Girl. I spend the rest of the tour trying to stay out of her line of vision and soundlessly slink away after she deadpans that she needs to kill several of her co-workers.

Saturday is the best day. We meet up with a couple of M's friends for a wine tasting tour around the vineyards of Upstate New York. All the wineries around here are small, unpretentious and unique. We drink in mansions overlooking the lake, pre-fabricated buildings of corrugated metal and a big wine store on the top of a hill. One has a mideaval theme; another is like a giant frat house, serving jello shots and encouraging patrons to chant before tasting their specialty vintage. I realize that drinking wine is basically a describing task and for awhile I'm enthralled by the parade of adjectives: dry, sweet, smooth, spicy, velvety, nutty, buttery. Then my happy glow crosses the line to drunkeness and the only two adjectives that matter are delicious and not delicious. By the end of the day, I've lost count of the wineries (M. suggests 8 or 9) and I think everything is the best wine I've ever tasted. My bags are heavy with all the bottles I bought.

We spend the evening curled up in M.'s apartment, napping at odd times and watching Garden State. I stay up long into the night, filling my paper journal with gratitude for the friend's I've kept across the world.