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November 30, 2005
Bored silly...
So, I’m sitting here in a 3000 Dong/hour Internet cafe reading mail, getting up to date with www.bootsnall.com, and inspecting my web site statistics. There are lots of ‘kids’ about who probably should be at home doing homework but are now chatting on IM (some with video), playing silly games and otherwise wasting time much more innocently that I ever did as a teen.
The web site statistics are really interesting. You all can follow them if you like at http://www.dietpizza.ch/statistics/awstats.www.dietpizza.ch.html. The search engine query terms are very interesting. Lots of perverts on the prowl (probably at work) searching for ‘katoey’ or ‘sex love live bad girls islands vip photo’, random hits from people searching for travel information, and a few unexplained searches like ‘pam up tomato’ and ‘blg’.
By the way: who is rivera.hmdnsgroup.com?
Posted by stu at 11:48 AM | Comments (1)
November 29, 2005
Hanoi in a Week
This is my second trip to Hanoi, the first having been with my father, sister and brother with Military Historical Tours in August 2000. The changes to the city and people are stunning: ATMs are abundant, bicycles are out and scooters are in, there are tourists, restaurants and shops everywhere, and the Vietnamese aren't surprised anymore to see westerners walking about. The new Hanoi is still enjoyable but the old, innocence will be sadly missed.
This is my seventh day in town and I've had the opportunity to really get about. My 5km, 1.5 hour walk to the air force/aerospace museum was a waste of time as it closed in March for renovations but really got me outside of the tourist safety sphere. 
But the Vietnam Military History Museum was a big hit with its outdoor monument constructed of American and French aircraft, exhibits covering all of Vietnam's thousands of years of history, a few intact, captured US Air Force aircraft (a H-1 Huey helicopter and a A-37B two seat attack jet), and a café that seems popular with the local business lunch crowd. Also a great pleasure and somewhat educational was the Lonely Planet Vietnam's Hanoi walking tour of the Old Quarter that included Hang Non on which my hotel is situated. Many of the street names in Vietnam refer to the wears that had been traditionally sold on that particular avenue. (E.g.: 'Hang Non' means 'Hat Street'.) A big treat for me has been the old, romantic French colonial architecture that is still prevalent in both old and new buildings.
Oh, and Hanoi is cheap! My favorite cheap place is the Bia Hoi Junction at the intersection of Phu Ta Hien and Phu Luong Ngoc Quyen where several informal Bia Hoi (literally translated as 'Fresh Beer') joints service up the cold, good stuff for 1500 Vietnamese Dong each…or about US$0.10! Here Levine, Pamela and I drink up and pose for a picture on my second day in the city.
Posted by stu at 11:18 AM | Comments (2)
November 24, 2005
Friendship Pass: Nanning to Hanoi
(On Monday I made an uneventful 100 Yuan bus trip from Yangshuo back to Nanning. My visa for Vietnam was ready and a 138 Yuan bus ticket to Hanoi needed securing.)
Tuesday morning, bright and early at 0730, my bus departed for Hanoi. It was a very modern bus with large, business-class seats, unnecessary air-conditioning, an audio/visual system, and a friendly stewardess that spoke a few bits of English. Our route to Pingxiang, the last remaining Chinese town before the boarder, was a mixture of new highways and old country roads that took five hours to navigate. We stopped in Pingxiang to have our free lunch and pickup some more passengers, namely two western guys. One of them, Levine from Germany, was haggling with an illegal money changer for a good Yuan-to-Dong conversion rate. I settled quickly for 1800 Dong/Yuan although the inter-bank rate is ~1940. Levine did a bit better and ended with the moneychanger telling him that he was ‘a little bit Chinese’. It was a nice compliment.
Joining us on the bus with Levine was a 70-year old Dutch-Ozzie man who had been teaching English in China for a wee bit. He was a nice enough chap but I didn’t really speak much at first. Our bus trip to the border region was fairly short and bumpy. We soon ran into several kilometers of freight lorries heading south that were waiting on the side of the road with engines off and drivers asleep. Our bus driver soon gave up trying to plot a course down the tiny road and instructed us all to get off and walk the remaining distance to the boarder.
The Dutch gentleman quickly went ballistic. It turns out that he had two large, airport friendly (read ‘totally inappropriate for this kind of travel’) suitcases and a large plastic shopping bag full of stuff. I quickly put on my 17kg rucksack and left for the boarder…before he looked to me for any help. Near the end of the 2km walk he had nearly caught up with me—some nice fellow put his bags on a hand cart and pushed them to the door of the Chinese boarder complex.
The Chinese side of the Friendship Pass boarder is dotted with several buildings. I was too scared to take many pictures so entered the immigration and customs building quickly. After receiving an exit stamp I navigated my way through the construction-zone of a building with lots of helpful signs…in Chinese only. Thinking quickly, I just followed the Chinese guys who were on my bus. He he…it worked.
There is about a 200m walk downhill accross the official territorial boarder and the Vietnamese immigration building . It was a really strange experience walking in that no man’s land between countries that reminded me of those cold war thrillers where the spy walks across the bridge to the West German side in some sort of dodgy prisoner exchange.
The Vietnamese immigrations and customs hall was in great need of a process consultant. Nobody knew what was going on, required forms were hidden away at the end of the hall (not near the entrance where they were needed), etc. The Vietnamese immigration officer did not like my passport at all and inspected it for a good twenty minutes while he thumbed through the pages, compared the Hippy Stu picture with my present appearance, examined the two 20-page passport supplements, and scrutinized many pages/stamps with some sort of special light scanning device. In the end all was good and he let me enter Vietnam without the rubber glove treatment. I was the second person to reach our new bus that would take us all to Hanoi. Yippee.
Everyone made it through the boarder we hopped onto a new bus at about 1330. The Dutch-Austrailian man was in some sort of tizzy because the Chinese boarder official was confused with his visa and an evidently erroneously granted/issued visa extension. It took him a good twenty minutes to clear Chinese immigration and by that time Our Dear Dutchy was all worked up. Levine was being very understanding, patient and sympathetic to him. After hearing a few bitches like “Why do these people make it so complicated?� and “I just don’t understand!� I moved forward a few rows, cracked open an ice cold Tiger Beer (12,000 Vietnamese Dong), and started grooving to The English Beat on my iPod.
About two hours latter the batteries on my iPod expired so I started speaking to Levine and Dutch-boy again. Apparently, while in my own little world, driver explained to everyone that we were due into Hanoi around 1800 or so, which sent the Dutch man into his third tantrum of the day. He was expecting the bus to arrive in Hanoi at the scheduled 1500, which was enough time to take the one hour taxi to the airport where he was planning to catch a 1700 flight to Saigon and then an onward flight to Sydney, Australia. I was absolutely flabbergasted by his incredibly delicate itinerary. Even back in Switzerland or America or Europe it would be downright foolish to plan so tightly for a back-to-back Train-to-Bus-to-Taxi-to-Airplane-to-Airplane journey! But this bloody idiot thought he could travel through rural China, across the Chinese-Vietnamese boarder, and down into Vietnam like he had some sort of magical charm that would ensure success.
We stopped for a pottie break, I bought another bear, fell sound asleep for another hour…and completely tuned out from all the drama that the idiotic Dutch-boy was suffering. He was still raving about how ‘these people’ were thwarting his travel plans when I awoke.
At about 1700 we pull off the side of the road outside of Hanoi. It was rush hour. The bus driver waves down a taxi for the Dutch Ozzie for his hopeless passage to the airport. The rest of the passengers gather their luggage and leave. Levine and I are a bit stumped about what is going on but take it in stride and get back onto the bus. Twenty minutes later, this beautiful, young English-speaking Vietnamese lady boards the bus and tells us that a) the bus is not going into Hanoi during rush hour, b) it just happens that the bus is run by a company that owns a hotel in the old quarter, and c) she would love to take us to her hotel in a subsidized taxi. My ‘bull shit’ indicator started beeping very loudly at that moment and we started quizzing her about all the specifics…I was not happy. After agreeing to the 15,000 Dong taxi fare each (same as it would have been from the bus station into the Old Quarter) we hop into a small, new taxi and head into town. An hour later Levine and I had exchanged emails, Pam and I finally met up at the Tin Tin Hotel (270,000 Dong / night) and the two of us headed of for dinner at some nice Italian place.
By golly, Hanoi has changed since I was last here in the summer of 2000.
Posted by stu at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)
Li River Excursion
My last full day in Guangxi Province started out at 1000 with a bus ride to Xingping with a fellow traveler, Alina from Scotland. The one hour, 5.5 Yuan bus ride was pretty uneventful except the scattering of cute children we saw along the way.
Once in Xingping we took a short, 2 Yuan ride down to the river boats in a three wheeled death machine with no suspension…vowing to walk back if we lived to make that decision. A bit of confusion and many attempts by vendors to sway us into purchasing some trinkets or foodstuffs, we boarded a 15m long shallow-hulled boat with a the tour guide, the boat captain, a nice French couple, a Spanish woman from the Canary Islands and a few Chinese tourists who did not speak English.
Soon we set off on our 50 Yuan, two hour cruise (“…a two hour cruise…�) up the Li River towards Guilin to view up close and personal the breathtaking limestone mountains. Within twenty minutes we pulled over for what seemed to be a “these are my friends and relatives selling food, buy something� break. Another twenty minutes later and we were still standing there wondering what was going on. That is when Alina interrogated our guide and learned that the boat was not licensed to transport foreigners—you see, a lookout for the boat captain had seen a police patrol boat coming down the river and we had to (literally) wait for a “the coast is clear� signal.
Once back on the river we got into the thick of some stunning scenery. Lucky for us, the day was clear and sunny. There are many fantastic photos in the photo gallery (or soon will be) if you care to have a peak. Fan-fucking-tastic.
Occasionally the boat captain would start pointing to specific mountains and described in Chinese what the individual mountains were named, a brief history, etc. Most of us just looked at the peaks in awe and somewhat confused.
The boat trip ends after two or so hours and we all head up for Xingping Highstreet on foot where the bus to Yangshuo awaits Alina and I. Since we didn’t dare take the death scooter again, and we didn’t pay enough attention to the route to and fro, we became predictably lost. All in good fun. Half an hour later we board the bus packed with domestic tourists and begin the slow journey back to Lisa’s Café…stopping frequently to pickup and drop off locals.
All bitching aside, the trip was amazing…I have these images of the jagged, unique limestone peaks etched in my brain…probably forever.
Posted by stu at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)
Photography: The Freaky Westerners
At several times during the trip to Yangshuo, in Guangxi Province, myself or the group I was traveling with became the object of fascination with the domestic Chinese tourists. As mentioned in the previous post, my personal Chinese fan club had their photos taken with me. But the next evening while dining with some fellow travelers on ‘West Street’, many domestic Chinese holiday-makers found us interesting enough to attempt snapping pictures of us covertly. After a few beers, we decided to start taking pictures back. :D Some of them found this humorous and laughed, while some were embarrassed and quickly scurried away.
Posted by stu at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2005
Chinese Dreams
The train ride from Hong Kong’s Hung Hom rail station to Guangzhou East train station was uneventful, expect for the nice British educated Korean banker beside me who was full of friendly conversation. Once officially stepping into China there was about four hours or so to make it to the new Baiyun airport outside of town. I let myself get semi-swindled into a 200 Yuan taxi ride in a late model air-conditioned minivan with the friendly talkitive taxi tout.
My China Southern Airlines flight CX 3331 was pleasantly uneventful. (Some Chinese airlines, specifically China Southern Airlines, have absolutely terrible safety records...surely one of the most dangerous flights of my life.) Upon landing in Nanning I grabbed a one hour, 10 Yuan bus ride into the provincial capital and grabbed a room at the Yinhe Dajiudian hotel opposite the train station. 88 Yuan per night for two nights, what a deal.
First thing Thursday morning I was up and heading for the China International Travel Service office (CITS) to arrange for my Vietnam visa (450 Yuan.) For some silly idea I thought this could be arranged in one day...maybe two tops. They informed me that it would be three days. After spending a few more hours in Nanning it became painfully clear that a side sojourn was in order. Nanning is no tourist mecca. At Gene’s earlier recommendation I was headed for Yangshuo via Gaulin.
Three busses and 130 Yuan later I arrived at Lisa’s Café guesthouse, an ‘institution’ as per the Lonely Planet guide book.
Lisa is a very friendly lady with a quirky sense of humor. While checking in she asked me to please not to steal away her beautiful waitresses to America. “I’ll try...but no promises.� The staff is generally really nice. Lisa even has an Ethernet cable to hook up my laptop to her ADSL line, which is a convenience totally not expected from an inexpensive guesthouse in rural China.
The next day while uploading pictures and writing this blog entry, ‘Apple’ came at sat with me for a while. We worked on her English by discussing my trip through China, my charity work with Child’s Dream and Animal Care Payam, religion (Christianity) and Daoism. Heavy stuff, really. Lisa asked me also to write Lonely Planet an email pointing out all the inaccuracies in the Yongshuo section of their China edition. Yes, ma’am!
Today I went for a walkabout through town. The nearness of the steep-but-small mountains is really striking. Check out the picture gallery if you have a moment.
After wandering about town I went down to the Li River where a group (extended family?) of Chinese people took an interest in me for some odd reason. While photographing the river and mountains it became clear that many people were gawking at me—-one was unashamedly taking my photograph. I smiled into the camera. Next a young boy walked up and said ‘Hello’ and indicated that he wanted his photograph take with me. Two dozen photos later and the entire group had their pictures taken with ‘that savagely handsome western man’. (My Mandarin is a little rusty, so they could have been saying ‘that geeky, unshaven freak with small elbows’.)
Posted by stu at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2005
Pam's email story
Pamela, my colleague from Child’s Dream, is in the north of Vietnam now scoping out new projects for the organization. She wrote this form email to her friends and coworkers about her experiences so far and I asked her for permission to share it with everyone. Her writing is really good! You can check it out on the new Pam’s Stories page. Maybe I can get her to start her own blog...
Posted by stu at 01:54 AM | Comments (2)
November 15, 2005
I'm famous now!
There is this travel community called Boots-n-all that I’m really fond of, and they have a sister site called www.whygo.com. Basically it changes once a day to include submissions by visitors and I sent them several of my favorites. Sunday they posted one from my April trip to Nha Trang, Vietnam! You can check it out at www.whygo.com It is a picture taken from my beach chair of a jewlry vendor listening to Roxy Music's Avalon on my iPod.
Posted by stu at 05:14 AM | Comments (1)
Long weekend in Hong Kong
After Thursday’s late arrival, Gene and I quickly met at his office building, Charter House in Central, so I could access his flat. Then it was a quick HK$20 taxi ride up into the mid levels of Hong Kong Island. (The mid-levels are served transport-wise by cars, busses, taxis, sidewalks, and most interestingly a reversible escalator that starts smack in the center of Central). Next was a quick dinner with Alice and then straight to bed—the past 1.5 days of travel had taken its toll.
The mid-level escalators drop one directly into the heart of central. On Sunday’s this becomes the focal meeting point for the thousands of foreign domestic servants to meet up with each other, eat, gossip, play cards and enjoy their once a week day off. Most of these women seem to be from the Philippines but there appear to be other countries as well.
Friday saw me on a walking tour of Central and thereabouts in search of the Chinese Visa Office. Through security, up to the seventh story of China Resources Centre on Harbour Road, fill out the application form, take a number…and wait. An hour and HK$390 later I was instructed to return Tuesday morning to pickup my passport with visa. Next was Tex-Mex time at Coyote Bar & Grill Lockhart Road that Lonely Planet lists near the Visa Office. Veggie burrito, basket of chips and a water: HK$270! Not a good deal. I was beat and went straight back to Gene’s to watch DVDs and sleep. Blah.
Saturday was more fun: Alice and I met at the MTR’s Central station, exit A and then were off on the ferry to Lamma Island. Our last planned hiking trip on the isle was a wee bit on the wet side. This time the sky was sunny and clear. Along the way we came across this cool Organic Farm/Tea bar run by a nice chap, his wife, and an orange cat who demanded respect. We had some organic passion fruit, organic iced Lemon Grass Tea, and I bought some organic red chilies for a certain punk ass bitch named Steve in Denver. Oh, I should mention that we tossed the passion fruit peals to the rabbits that were clearly grateful.
That evening, Gene, Alice, Alice’s friend Mary, and myself went in search of Stu-friendly food. On the third attempt we found an Indian joint on Wellington Street called Tandoor Indian Restaurant. Good stuff. HK$960 later, Alice and Mary went their individual ways home. Gene and I stayed in SoHo and headed for a private party some of his friends were hosting at Om’s Lounge on Graham Street just north of Staunton Street. After an hour or so of talking to banker after banker after banker, I finally met a non-banker. It was very refreshing. That said, one of the bankers had heard of Child’s Dream before! Very exciting—surely Marc and Daniel back in Chiang Mai will be pleased. Then Hong Kong’s finest showed up and made everyone go inside. Om’s is a small joint and it quickly became unbearably hot. So, Gene and I headed for Barco on Staunton Street where we drank many San Miguel beers until 0500 while talking politics, history, and all that drunken argument-inducing kind of stuff. (Gene’s one of those well informed conservative types who knows his shit. But I’m still right, damn it!)
Sunday was culture day. Alice and I went to the Space Museum to watch a one hour film in the Stanley Ho Space Theatre (HK$32) about Albert Einstein. Next we were off to the Hong Kong Art Museum to see the ancient Chinese Gold and Jade jewelry exhibition. Some really old items were on display, some dating back to 3000 B.C.E.! Alice had to leave for a family dinner but I stayed on and toured the Chinese Fine Art Gallery on the fourth floor. My favorite painting was Zhang Ding’s contemporary, western-influenced Girl of Ethnic Minority.
Today, Monday, had a single goal: organize the transportation to Nanning in mainland China. After some initial confusion and hours of walking all over Central and TST (southern Kowloon), I had purchased a KCR East train ticket to Guangzhou East Station on the mainland for HK$190. In two days, Wednesday, my 1100 High Speed Express Through Train take me into China proper were I have about four hours to catch my HK$660 China Southern Airlines CZ 3331 flight to Nanning.
Tomorrow’s plan includes checking out Hong Kong University’s graduate school admissions office, picking up my laundry, buying some Stu-friendly food for the following day’s journey, dinner with friends, and packing. Blah.
Posted by stu at 02:33 AM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2005
Freaks on the Internet
Every few days I check out the statistics on my web server. The www.dietpizza.ch search statistics page details the search queries that people have used to find my site with. Some of them are pretty interesting, such as ‘slinky dress photos’ and ‘katoey breasts’. Have a look for yourself!
Posted by stu at 03:14 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2005
Chiang Mai to Hong Kong trip
The trip down to Bangkok was pretty fun. After consuming my bottle of wine, the cheese and some of the bread (which turned out to be days old rubbery stuff) I met a couple from Germany. Hannes and Ola are from Ulm, a city in the south of Germany that is the birth place of Albert Einstein. We played ‘guess what this Swiss German word/phrase is’. After a few beers in the ‘party wagon’ we decided to leave when we realized how drunk the Piper 100 sipping staff were—they were getting confused as to how many drinks we had.
On this journey the train was on time and I made a hasty exit at the Bangkok airport around 0530. Since my flight was not until 1320, there was plenty of time to kill...too much, in fact. After reading several dozen pages of Spycatcher, wandering the length of both check-in halls, paying too much for internet access and multiple lattes, I was finally able to check in for my Emirates Airlines flight EK384 en route from Dubai to Hong Kong.
The flight was running about two hours behind schedule. While waiting at the gate a Latino man came up to me and asked “Are you from New York?� Ah...no. We chatted about how late the flight was, his dozen years of living in NYC, charity work in Thailand (me) and his native Honduras (him) and the various levels of service we experienced with different airlines. This last topic is one I’ve had before with many people and can state, for the record and unequivocally, Singapore Airlines rocks and all American-flagged carriers do not meet the expectations of the experianced traveler.
Posted by stu at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)
November 09, 2005
New Book Review section
There is a new section the this site now, the Book Reviews. I’m definitely reading lots more on this trip than usual…this is great.
Got to do some packing: I’m off to catch my train in a few minutes. The train down to Bangkok is 562 Baht for an overnight sleeper car with no aircon. That's about US$13. Just like last time, some refreshments were in order.
75cl bottle of Khao Yai wine: 445 Baht
Goodwill Parmesan cheese: 261 Baht
Roussel D'Auvergne blue cheese: 255
Butter: 26 Baht
1L Aevian water: 59 Baht
Party cups: 22 Baht
Wine opener: 45 Baht
Bread: 15 Baht
2 Bluto red apples: 270 Baht (!)
All told, my food and drink cost 2.5 times the train ticket. Somehow this all made sense at the time but now seems silly.
Posted by stu at 08:43 AM | Comments (1)
November 06, 2005
Operating Theater
For four days in a row the team would start trickling into Animal Care Payam ‘Station 1’ at about 0730. Either Paul, Maggi, or both spent the night at the critter-infested station waking up on a regular basis to look after the post-operative animals. I showed up early to get the sterilization center prepared and ensure operating instrument sets were ready for the vets as they required them. As the 0800 or so the rented scooters starting to bring in people a few at a time and animals were entering the second of four phases: pre-op. (First phase was capture/intake.) In pre-op they were examined, tagged, documented, shaved and given some anesthesia. At about this time an operating table would be prepared for the animal. Then the veterinary team would bring over the clearly stoned animal and tie them down to the tables. (The tables, desks and dining tables, were too low for our Danish vets and had to be raised with 20cm or so of bricks.)
The length of an operation depended on the animal and if there were any complications. Male dogs and cats were quick. Females were slower because castration requires major internal surgery. The lighting conditions in Station 1 were terrible so the operations took place near the big door or even out under the roof overhand where the sterilization center was located. I distinctly remember witnessing three complications.
- A female cat came into the station in what was believed to be a pregnant state. The plan was to abort her pregnancy and then fishing up with a castration. When the vets opened up the cat they realized that her uterus was totally inflamed to the point of bursting and that there were no live fetuses to abort. It was very fascinating, in a detached, clinical sort of way. The Swedish television camera men got it all on tape. Removing the feline’s incredibly large and inflamed uterus left her about 20-30% lighter by days end. One vet told me that if that cat had gone on just a few more days she surely would have died.
- One puppy’s intestinal track filled with gas after receiving the anesthesia. This apparently happens if there is a specific sort of infection within the canine. The vet (head vet, forget his name) solved the problem by poking a hole in the pup and the gassy, smelly contents volcanically burst into a bucked held by Tenna like a zit popping on a greasy-food-eating teenager. The entire scene was really fucking gross.
This cute grey puppy’s lungs filled with fluid after receiving the anesthesia. No surgery for this pup. The vets were initially skeptical about him even pulling though…but fortunately for us all he did. He really was adorable.
The human resource logistics surgeries were move varied that I would have expected. Some times a single vet seemed to work the animal alone, some times half the entire team would be gathered about. Occasionally there were veterinary students taking direction from someone on how to ‘cut this’, ‘tie that’, and other basic surgical techniques. And lastly, but most disturbingly, even the vet’s young children got into the act.
After surgery the animals entered the post operative phase of their ordeal. Here is where we tattooed their ears with a number and chained/boxed them up for recovery. Some animals ‘came to’ quickly, and some not so quickly. My sterilization center gave me an all-to-close view of the secondary post-operative waiting area. I saw animals coming out of their drunken stupor that would make any Brit proud. I saw dogs having doggy nightmares, fights amongst drunken dogs (again, to make a Brit proud) and some that seemed to sleep and sleep and sleep so much that we became concerned.
Once an animal was recovered, it was either picked up by its owner or returned to where we had first captured the ownerless animal. There were a few animals that wondered back across half the island in search of more attention and food. These returning dogs, despite my involvement with cleaning puppy guts off of surgery kits, was one of the most emotionally painful experiences for me of the twelve days on island.
We would work until about 1600. By the, people started to trickle away just as they had arrived. The only constant was Maggi and Paul and the animals.
I understand that not a single animal died during or immediate after our efforts. But there are sure to be fatalities as we discovered after the Danish veterinarian team left. For example, Paul found a dog that had opened it stitches and her intestines were starting to fall out. Paul took the dog to the Thai Ranoong-based vet but he was not so interesting in helping out…for political reasons: he had issues with Maggi early on because she was organizing a major veterinarian effort in his back yard without his leadership.
Posted by stu at 09:55 AM | Comments (2)
November 04, 2005
Koh Payam Photos
So I've spent the past several hours uploading select, shrunk and cropped photos from my trip into the photo gallery so please enjoy. By Sunday evening I hope to have put to ASCII another story or two from my experiances.
Currently, I'm back at the Royal Guest House in Chiang Mai. The plan is to get some more stuff done for Child's Dream, head for Hong Kong and spend the weekend with Alice, Gene and Hoi, and then head down overland to Hanoi were Pam is doing some new Child's Dream work. After that I'm off to Laos and then back to Chiang Mai for some more work.
Posted by stu at 07:59 PM | Comments (1)
November 03, 2005
Volunteers
The first few days of volunteer work with Animal Care Payam was a wee bit disheveled. Without going into naming names and other details, the initial group of volunteers revolted against Maggi, the founder of the charity. Spoiled little shits. Anyway, Maggi recruited this Belgian guy Paul who is way too full of energy. He in turn rounds up from the streets of Ranong a group of recruits to help fill the newly created resource gap. Paul also worked day and night until the project was complete—making cages, rounding up animals, propping up Maggi’s soul and caring for post operative dogs and cats through the night in a snake, rat, spider, scorpion and mozzie infested shack. Good on him.
For some reason or another, all the new recruits and I ended up staying at the Bamboo Bungalows together without any of the other volunteers. This includes the married ‘professional travelers’ Mars (Kiwi) & Jessica (Swede), two absolutely hilarious English ladies named Boo and Rachel finishing off a year long trip together, and the three-weeks-in-Thailand Swiss Misses Christine and Jasmine of Biel. Because we were all staying at the Bamboo Bungalows, were for the most part well traveled, and also not participating in the above mentioned political mess, we sort of bonded.
After a few days, the Danish veterinarian group showed up piecemeal over three days. They were more than a team, though, and included vets, nurses, students, girlfriends, children, and a Swedish camera crew. The lead nurse, Harpa from Iceland, brought a degree of organization and leadership that we really needed to seriously get going. By the time we finished there were 160 spayed or neutered animals wondering the island! We all thought this a great accomplishment considering the primitive conditions, limited resources and blazing hot weather. Tenna at one point described the situation as ‘kindergarten surgery’.
Once the Danes arrived, the asked for a few ‘reliable’ volunteers to help out with specific tasks. Initially I was assigned to Jessica who was in charge of the instrument sterilization process. The idea was that we would take used instrument sets (which I called ‘utensils’ for the first two days) with blood and guts on them, clean them up, rinse, place in a sterilization bath of Tang-colored Hexaclordrine (?) and then server them back up for use. As this process can easily lead to a bottle neck in operations, it is considered vital.
Jessica, to her masochistic credit, was there helping out despite her deep underlying fear of dogs—she had twice been attacked by a group of dogs in the past. While intellectually she knew there was little risk, especially cleaning tools, it was brave of her to be there. Unfortunately on the second day a dog got aggressive and completely out of control. Jessica panicked on a low level and made a hasty exit. She could be heard muttering to Mars, her husband, “just get me off this island�. So, our hero Stu moves in to take over the sterilization operations alone for the rest of the day.
(All teasing aside, Jessica and Mars made a huge contribution to the overall effort despite their early exit. Seriously, they were slaving away from the first moment when I was having doubts about the entire operation, stepping back and contemplating exit strategies. Cheers to them.)
The next day Christine became my dedicated help for the day. We quickly developed and optimized our cleaning system to allow for more instruments and operating tables. There was a good rhythm flowing so we had enough time to occasionally break for food and take some pictures. It was fun. We made a good team. To bad for me that Christine was heading back for home the next day. What was somewhat exciting was that that afternoon I was interviewed by Swedish Television 4 for a documentary that will apparently air in February in Scandinavia. I described where we were, what I was doing, where I was from, and why Chang beer is better than Singha. Important stuff—we’ll see if I make the cut.
The third day was hotter than usual, and I was alone on the sterilization center. This Japanese woman was supposed to help me out but she seemed busy helping out with pre-op stuff so I let it be. Also, many of the non-bamboo volunteers completely flaked on us leaving the team short-handed. A vet had brought along two extra surgical kits which gave me the confidence to continue alone. After five hours of work, I was hot, tired and ready for a break. That’s when Christine and Jasmine showed up to say goodbye and catch their 1400 boat back to Ranong. I helped them shuffle themselves and their packs to the pier and distinctly remember Christine putting her hand to my head and noting how red and hot I was. An hour later I sunk into the beginnings of a not-so-mild case of heat stroke.
Lucky for me, Sari (Danish daughter of the head vet) who had helped me out the first day a bit came to my aid. She’d grown up with all these little tools and processes and took over for me. I went back to my little grass hut, ate a sandwich and totally crashed out. This was the first night of four where I suffered from a nasty headache and an intermittent 39-40C fever. Apparently, three of the Danes also took ill about the same time. Sari ended up filling in for me the following day even though I promised her that I would show up. Oops.
In the end, it was a good effort. Not only Maggi (the founder and my original recruiter) thanked me, but also many of the Danish team which was a relief. You see, I had gotten a bit stroppy with two of them. The first was a male vet whom I mistakenly thought was the father of this 14-year-old spoiled brat prancing around on a scooter (which Maggi rented in her own name) like it was his personal death wish toy. It turns out the kid is the son of the girlfriend of the head vet. Oh, ah…fucking royalty. Anyway, the dude thought that I overstepped my bounds as a lowly volunteer. We later made up. Next was a Danish vet that I chastised for breaking one of my process rules: she turned in an incomplete surgical set, which is a real problem for my process. Seriously! She wouldn’t even say goodbye to me. Bitch. No Valhalla for her.
Posted by stu at 01:01 PM | Comments (3)
Paradise
Koh Payam is a small island of the coast of Ranong, Thailand immediately south of the Burmese coast line. At approximately 6km by 13km, it is a little on the small side. No air port, a single dock for boats and only a few hundred Thai and Burmese inhabitants. There are about ten or some bungalows and resorts, many of which are closed during the low season: later summer to end of fall.
There are basically two paved roads on the island, one of which is considered the main road as it runs out of ‘town’. The secondary road is pretty messy and not so fun to navigate...especially in the dark. Legend has it that there are two cars on the island although I only saw one during my entire twelve day stay. Otherwise, the left-side-of-the-road drivers are all on scooters. I shared a Honda Econoline scooter with Christine (of Biel, Switzerland) most of the time. As she likes driving, has a mild Type A personality affliction, and most importantly actually has a proper motorcycle license, she did most of the driving. She’s also got a thirst for speed—-we topped out at 80kph once, which is amazing in hindsight considering the state of the roads and the size of the island.
It is about a 2.5 hour boat ride from Ranong. (150 Baht for Farang, 100 Baht for Thais.) The twice a day 15m wooden boats are slow and very ‘rustic’. Weather and cargo permitting, one can climb up to the front and just sort of hang out and take in the sights, which I did on my return along with this friendly dog that I got along with. There are two piers in Ranong from which the ferry departs and returns to depending on the tides. I had to climb up onto a fishing vessel and then the dock with my 15kg pack wearing only flip flops under very dodgy circumstances on my return trip.
My lodgings consisted of a leaky grass hut on the beach (250 Baht/night) at the Bamboo Bungalows run by this Israeli guy (Uli), his wife (Nok), his brother (Ronnie), and a mixed Thai and Burmese staff. They’ve got this wonderfully relaxed way of running things there: no passport, credit card or other deposit was required on check in...just choose your favorite bungalow. There were more upscale huts to choose from, but none of those where a mere 10m from the beach like mine was. Several evenings there were spent on my front porch watching the sun set in the warm ocean breeze.
The food served there, when available, was usually fantastic and never dipped below good. The Thai was predictable excellent. The 80 Baht spaghetti plate was surprisingly good. They make their own home made bred for sandwiches that all the other guests and I were very impressed with.
At one point we had this strange Bamboo-Hawaii connection: I’ve lived there for 7.5 years on Oahu, Ronnie lived on Maui for a few years, and three other guests (Jason & Kara (Kauai, Big Island, & Molokai) and Caroline (Big Island). Maybe they could rename it Kamaina Bungalows? Since there was not even a dozen guests at the time, this seems somehow significant...in a probably pointless sense.
Bamboo Bungalows is located on Aow Yai Beach along with a few other joints. At the end of the ~3km long beach is a place called the Rasta Baby Bar which lights up a bonfire every evening at sun set. The drinks are a little pricey but many people seemed to be hanging out there. (Well, a dozen or so last time I went...it is low season after all.) They’ve got this big swing out front which is pretty cool. Christine took a liking to it right quick. They guys working there are really nice and seem to smoke lots of grass.
Koh Payam is a cozy little island and I am thinking about spending my mid-December to early January time there. It is high season for the Bamboo Bungalows, but they half promised to let come back at a discount. As Ronnie pointed out my last day: “Stu, you’ve sort of become part of the scenery already!�
A note on the ‘Koh’ prefix for islands: apparently the translation from Thai to other languages is not so systematic and this results in some variety of spellings. Specifically with ‘Koh’ (island in Thai), it is frequently translated as ‘Ko’ and ‘Kho’. For some reason or another native German speakers love to use ‘Kho’. Many of my fellow Animal Care Payam friends referred to the island in writing as ‘Kho Payam’. Interesting, huh? I learned all this on a Lonely Planet Thorn Tree discussion board a while back.
Posted by stu at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)