Paraag: Cultural Learnings from China for Make Benefit Glorious Village of Hoboken

Hello everybody! Once again, for your reading pleasure, I have been sentenced to a few weeks out of the country, and will therefore continue my habit of capturing my experiences in poem. In this case, my poetry is in free verse, which interestingly enough resembles a narrative. I am in China for two weeks for a 3 credit course that I am taking at NYU for my MBA degree with 50+ other students from the school. The course is aptly called Doing Business in China. I had actually wanted to take the Doing Business in Outer Mongolia or Doing Business in Liechtenstein, but those booked up too fast. Following the course in China, I’ll be going to Singapore for 4-5 days for work, and then back to China to do some sightseeing, somewhere (I haven’t figured out where yet, but since the country is sooo small, my options will be limited). Sunday, May 13, 2007 After some last minute shenanigans in attempting to get to the airport on time (fortunately all was well and there was much rejoicing), I met up with Liang and checked in at the Continental gate in Newark. Many of you may know Liang – he and I have been friends for 10 years and have canvassed the country together with P&G (Mehoopany, PA to Cape Girardeau, MO to Cincinnati, OH to Avenel, NJ). Liang is also taking classes at NYU for an MBA. Don’t get any funny ideas; he’s engaged. To a female. The Continental flight was really interesting – it was only a 13 hour flight and flew over the North Pole. I believe this is my first flight over the arctic region, though I’m not really sure that it matters. As many of you have experienced, service in coach class on US-based airlines has seriously degraded over the years in efforts to maintain low costs. As a result, there is no more free liquor on international flights (not cool at all) and meal #2 had a striking resemblance to meal #3 – both involved a bread product, cheese, egg, and a mystery meat that we shall call “sausage”. And both were equally nauseating. However, meal #2 came with a small container of Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream. Gotta give the props to those wily folks at Continental. Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, they pull out the Haagen-Dazs trump card. Check-in through Chinese customs was relatively uneventful as well. I don’t think they really looked at any of our documents. There were three forms that we needed to fill out: an entry card, a customs card, and a health card. The health card was funny – I guess that the idea is to prevent people who have certain diseases from entering the country. But the classification of a disease was quite inconsistent and somewhat dubious – a virus or a cough, among others, and even had a box for the “snivels” (my guess is that they meant “sniffles”). On a positive note, I could already see that the Chinese government is putting a lot of effort into making the travel experience as user-friendly as possible in anticipation for next years Olympics – the customs desks had buttons for customer feedback installed that allow the traveler to press a button corresponding to their experience with their customs agent: just right or too much time. I was just happy that they let me through to begin with. My visa photo was less than friendly-looking and worth a double-take to anyone paying attention, and one of my technicians even texted me to let me know to “Have a safe trip. I told the FAA who you really are.” Our two week course is at Tsinghua University in Beijing, which is widely considered to be the top university in China. Our hotel is the Unisplendour Centre, just adjacent to campus. The hotel itself had just been completed 1 ½ days prior, and had that fresh “new car” smell (also known as Eau du Drywall or Paint Thinner au Jus). As we found during the coming days, “completed” is a term that is being used quite loosely. Eventually (probably the day we check out), the hotel will have a gym, sauna, and bowling alley. I’m sure it will be a lovely place. Until then, we’ll manage using a single elevator and an unfinished stairwell. Many of the others registered for the course (60 in total) had also flown in on the same flight and were ready to get some real food after a few hours. So we headed downtown to this neat pond area (Qian Hai, I think it's called) which has many small restaurants and bars littering the pondfronts. After some meandering, the group of us settled in and picked a rooftop bar with enough space for the 15-20 of us. We had some appetizers that loosely resembled chicken fingers, lots of cheap Tsingtao beer, and just spent some time getting to know one another. After a few hours of cheap beer and very little food in our bellies, we opted to skip dinner and head to a place called Bed for more cheap beer and small appetizers. I could see that cheap beer was probably going to be a recurring theme throughout this trip. Somewhere around 1am, I headed back to the hotel to attempt to get some sleep on my bed that was about as comfortable as plywood. I know I’m making this hotel out to sound like a nightmare, but it actually is quite nice – once it’s all done, that is. Monday, May 14, 2007 Breakfast this morning wasn’t really much to write home about, but it’s at the hotel and it’s free, so I don’t know that I’ll be going anywhere else really. At 9am this morning, we had our first class session, which basically consisted of a few administrative issues to discuss and a couple of video presentations. I think they knew that we would be tired and jetlagged and didn’t want to schedule anything for today that we really wanted to know. The video presentations were apparently narrated by the Chinese Don LaFontaine (the dude who does all the movie trailers in the US in an inordinately excessively dramatic fashion). It didn’t take long for the entire class to be cracking up at the guy. First, he told us about the history and importance of the Badaling (ba-da-boom) section of the Great Wall of China, which we are scheduled to visit in week 2. We also learned that the Great Wall is indeed, very solid. Video #2 was about the Forbidden Palace, and was also fortunately narrated by the Chinese Don. For the remainder of the trip, the whole class was essentially extolling the virtues of the Badaling section of the Great Wall and its solidness. It would not be wise, dear reader, to question the solidness of the Badaling section of the Great Wall – doing so would certainly make you suffer. After an interesting boxed lunch (you get the distinct feeling that I’m not going to like the food on this trip, but let’s see what happens though) and a brief stop back at the hotel, we loaded onto two buses for a company visit to the Capital Steel plant. This place was absolutely enormous – a sprawling 17 square kilometer campus just outside of Beijing. The imagery there was really neat – there’s a mountain range in the background and a bunch of small Chinese pagodas and decorated walkways and a lake in the middle of massive pipelines and multi-storied factories and kilns. Our tour guide couldn’t speak an ounce of English, so Liang was volunteered to translate to the entire group. Conditions weren’t very ideal to learn very much, and we basically had the equivalent of an elementary school visit to a big steel plant where we could ooh and ahh over the vats of hot liquid magma (ok, ok, it was hot liquid molten steel) being poured into other vats, and then somehow magically pressed into sheets of finished steel. It was really hot outside too, so we were just happy to get back onto the bus. Maybe that was just me. We had a welcome dinner at the hotel, where we were ironically not really verbally welcomed by anyone in particular other than the wait staff. Dinner was better than previous meals and beer was also cheap (free, in fact). One of the other students on the trip, Rina, led a group of us to a place where she had had a good foot massage on Sunday night. Since it was about $8 USD for an hour, eight of us decided to try it out. As we would later find out, they didn’t quite have the capacity for eight people to get an hour-long foot massage at once, so they gave us a couple of random masseuses who appeared to be newbie trainees (I got one of the newbies). My masseuse kept looking over to the girl right next to us to see what she was doing and then attempted to do the same. Needless to say, my expectations weren’t very high and I wrote off the experience in the first 2 minutes. Though my masseuse was not female, he was a good looking young fellow. But I don’t swing that way – I believe the immortal Tone-Loc said it best in verse: “it’s the eighties, and I’m down with the ladies”. On a positive note, I was entertained by some Chinese gameshow featuring 40 Chinese Backstreet-type Boys who danced around. Two teams of two of them were somehow selected to compete in a contest to sweep and clean a hair salon, and then one on each team had to wash the gloop of gel out of their teammate’s hair. Riveting television. It’s really unfortunate that I didn’t bring TiVo to share with you all. I promise that I’ll remember next time for you. After the massage, we met up with about 20-30 other folks at an expatriate hangout bar called Tree for the rest of the evening. Strangely enough, of the two beers on tap, one was Beamish (and Irish Stout similar to Guinness), so I had a glass of that. When I realized that I could get four Tsingtao drafts for the same price, I switched over pretty quickly. Tuesday, May 15, 2007 Even though we got home pretty late last night, I decided to peel myself out of bed this morning to go for a morning jog on about 4 hours of sleep. Amazingly enough, there were 4-5 others from my class who were doing the exact same thing. I guess I’m not the only idiot out here. But the lack of proper rest was very apparent from the actual jog – I did about 2 miles at a pretty slow pace. We had a class this morning on Human Resource Management in China and learned some interesting things. First off, it became quickly apparent that to make sense of anything here, you have to understand the history of the past 30 years to understand what changes the nation has gone through. So, for you, dear reader, let me summarize briefly the recent history of China. And I promise that it will be shorter than the brief history that I gave you last year of Ireland. Way back in the year of 1949, two significant events took place. The first is that my mom was born that year. The second is that this is the year that the Communists won control of the country in a revolution, forcing the Nationalist government to flee to Taiwan. Mao Zedong (a.k.a. Mao Tse Tung) was installed as the Chairman of the new government. In 1966, Chairman Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, in which he aligned with students (who became the Red Guard) against other members of the CCP which put the nation into anarchy until solidifying full control of the country and the CCP under Chairman Mao, while sending his political enemies in the CCP to work in the farms. The revolution was purification attempt against capitalist and anti-socialist tendencies that had been creeping up. After Mao’s passing in 1976, Deng Xiaoping took over and began to reform the CCP and the country’s economic policies, which eventually opened up the country to free enterprise, to foreign companies and to foreign investment. But during the period from 1949 to 1976, the entire country was a planned economy, where the government effectively owned and operated all enterprise – people were told where to work and each work unit (i.e. companies, factories, etc.) was given an annual output goal. This is a massive amount of change between then and now. Also, the Chinese government doesn’t tend to do anything rapidly – they believe in gradual change to better manage any adverse consequences that may arise. Arguably, this is also a trait of Chinese people as well, along with the patience to wait for change. Americans, on the other hand, are quite impatient. So, back to the Human Resource class, we learned several interesting facts: the labor participation rate for women in China is ~80% versus 65% in the U.S.; bribery and corruption is very difficult in China (as opposed to India) because no single person in the government has enough power to be able to make significant decisions – there’s just too much bureaucracy; state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China have a flatter pay gradient between the bottom and the top than private enterprises, and as a result, there are some significant pay discrepancies from market salary rates both at the top and at the bottom. We learned more, but I’m even beginning to bore myself. After lunch, we received a tour of the campus – for being in a major city, Tsinghua is extremely spread out with lots of open space and room to enjoy. I’ve gone jogging in the morning a few times to take advantage of this (the hotel gym and bowling alley is still under construction). We kept asking our tour guide where the Tsinghua students go to relax and hang out, and effectively we were told that they don’t do this at all. Liang’s fiancée Chenlu confirmed this later on, saying that they were “a bunch of nerds”. J Next was a visit to the Tsinghua Science Park, which required business casual attire to watch a 30 minute video presentation and a 30 minute Q&A session to learn very little about anything. About all we could gather is that the science park is a for-profit arm of the university that aims to be similar to a Venture Capital firm and provide financial and mentoring assistance to fledgling companies in exchange for ownership in the firm. But the presenter wouldn’t share any details about how they chose firms to invest in, what discount factor they applied (risk), and what return they were expecting from their portfolio of investments. And they also shared that they were being used by some major companies, including Google, Schlumberger, and my very own Procter & Gamble. Liang and I were both a bit puzzled by the association with P&G and were determined to go visit P&G’s office here and find out. After a bit of searching, we finally stumbled upon the Beijing Technical Center and had a very difficult time finding someone to talk to (and understandably so). After some very minor digging, about the only thing that we could ascertain that P&G needed the science park for is real estate. For dinner, about 20 of us went to a well-known Peking Duck restaurant called BaDong (the BaDongaDong restaurant was around the corner). We sat family style around two large round tables and let some of our members of Chinese heritage (Ken and Yenyen, primarily) order the food. After an amazing meal with a variety of appetizers (including duck tongue), entrees, four Peking Ducks, and a lot of beer for those who were drinking, we feared the worst from the bill – after all, the menu didn’t even have prices on it, which is a clear sign of “frugal buyer beware” in the States. So we all took a guess at what the cost would be per person, and whoever got closest wouldn’t have to pay – most of the guesses were in the 300 yuan range (about 40 USD) and reached up to 900 yuan. The total per person ended up being 161 yuan – which amazed everyone at the table. To work off our full bellies, we began a 20-30 minute walk to a bar. Unfortunately, after 30 minutes or so, we came to realize that we were walking in the exact opposite direction. So we took taxis to the bar of choice tonight, called Face. Our cab and one other somehow got dropped off at Babyface, which was a full out dance club/discotheque. 30 minutes later, we figured out where Face was and walked there. It was a neat place, with lounge-type rooms, an outdoor area and a few rooms with a pool table. We grabbed a vacant room with a pool table and hung out until 2am, when the bar closed. I played a couple of games with Kathryn as my pool partner – but we are both billiardly-challenged. To give us even a fighting chance, I came up with a few ways to even the playing field: our opponents had to play left-handed. We were still embarrassed. Wednesday, May 16, 2007 I didn’t sleep very well, but still decided to get up at 6:30am and go for another morning jog, pretty much duplicating my route from before. I’m guessing that I’ve had about 10 hours of total actual asleep time since I arrived in China. Our class this morning was on cultural values. This is a very important discussion to have, however, it didn’t end up being much of a discussion. The material was very contradictory and we all left a bit confused: on the one hand, Chinese people are reserved, but they are also very friendly. Chinese people are very direct, but they go around in circles explaining context before getting to the point. All the while I was trying to place my experience with Chinese-born friends and colleagues into what I was hearing, and some things made sense and others didn’t. But that in itself may be the issue. You simply cannot make generalizations about a nation that has undergone the amount of social and economic change over the past 30 years. If anything, this is what I learned from the class. A few of the generalizations probably still make sense, in comparison to the prototypical American at least: respect for authority, respect for elders, and very patient. However, I think these generalizations are probably true for the entire continent. One thing that we did learn is that Chinese names are written and spoken with the surname first, and that you should always address someone by their title (Doctor, Professor, Chairman, General Manager, Director, Vice President, etc.). At P&G, everyone is on a first-name basis – we all call our CEO by his preferred initials A.G., and I have to think a minute when someone else mentions something about Mr. Lafley. From what we’ve learned, most foreign companies have held on to their own customs from their base country – this is also true of many European companies in the United States. Another key takeaway was that guanxi, or social networking, is vitally important to getting things done in China – business occurs through connections to those in a position to help. As such, Chinese take guanxi very seriously and will go out of their way to invite someone over for an expansive dinner or give gifts for this aim – an argument could be made that this is a milder form of bribery, but likewise an argument could be made that this is no different than any other society. From a business standpoint, the key point is that you need to make a connection with someone who has connections to be successful in China. Interestingly enough, one of the most common criticisms that Asians get in the US in the business world is that they do not network enough. But maybe that’s just at P&G. It was extremely hot today – the sun was being especially vicious in direct contact that I could feel my skin burning and melting off. What a wonderful day to tour Tiananmen Square, which was a huge open air area that could hold half a million people. More importantly, there was no shade. After the Square, we toured the Forbidden Palace, which still has a huge picture of Chairman Mao on the front. The Palace had a little more shade, but indoors would have been even better. The Palace itself was very beautiful – there was a lot of fresh paint and a couple of the buildings were inaccessible due to restoration (part of getting ready for the Olympics?). The palace grounds seemed to be a never-ending cascade of courtyards leading to buildings with pass-though gates to the next courtyard. Perhaps the most memorable portion of the tour came from our tourguide Tony, who looks like a 6’4” version of Yao Ming. On the bus ride to the Palace, Tony showed us a map of China and said that it looked like a rooster or a cock. Then he pointed to one end, saying this was the cockhead, and the other end was the cocktail. Immediately, every male on the bus went into full Beavis & Butthead chuckle mode. Yes, men – they’ll never grow up. After the palace, a huge group walked over to a market area where food stalls were set up so that you could walk up and buy appetizers from a variety of vendors to fill your tummy. I had an awesome bowl of tofu and a dumpling, but our sub-group didn’t appear to be too adventurous. We didn’t have any takers for the grasshoppers or scorpions. So we just ate at a nearby restaurant and let our Chinese delegation (Liang and Yenyen) order for us again. And to finish the evening off, nine of us went in search of a massage parlor, and we found a pretty good one at the Peace Hotel. Liang, Rina, and I had a one-hour full-body massage while the rest had foot massages. And no I did not get a happy ending (Mom – don’t ask what that means, just move on please). My masseuse kept commenting in Chinese that I was very strong and had a lot of dense muscle, or at least that’s what interpreter Liang tells me. The massage did work out the kinks in my quads, which had been very tight for the past few days from my morning jogs. However, my back and shoulders had also been bothering me but I don’t think the masseuse had enough time to fix that quite up. After the full body massage, the three of us decided to follow it up with a one-hour foot massage. I learned that when you tell the masseuse if it hurts where she is massaging, she can tell you which part of your body that is linked up to and that it’s an indication that you have issues with that particular organ. For me, both feet indicated stomach problems (strangely enough, I’m suffering from a bout of heartburn just as I write this). Kevin (who had the foot massage first) decided to join us and do a full-body massage while we did our feet. Then he decided to let this masseuse dude (who also is a chiropractor and acupuncturist) do this thing called cupping on his back. Basically, cupping involves taking a mini fish bowl like thingamadoodle (~4” diameter), lighting a match in the bowl to expand the air by heating it up, placing the cup on your skin while the air is hot, and the subsequent cooling of the air will create suction. Don’t worry – I have pictures. Each of which are worth 1000 words. Supposedly, cupping does something about your Chi when the bowls are placed over the pressure points. Two of the twelve cuppings on Kevin’s back caused extra discoloration – the masseuse dude said that meant he had some issues there. Since my shoulders were still sore, I figured that I might as well try this too. One of the cups fell off and broke, and another one showed extra discoloration – supposedly, this one was linked up to one of my kidneys. Or perhaps it’s just a blood blister. Who knows? At the end, I was left with 11 little crop circles on my back. Very attractive indeed. Thursday, May 17, 2007 For whatever reason, I wasn’t able to sleep a wink last night – nonstop tossing and turning from the crazy firm beds (inspired by plywood), Liang snoring, me consciously trying to fall asleep when Liang wasn’t snoring, and some residual jetlag for sure. However, I somehow still remained completely coherent all day today as if nothing happened (though some would say that I’m not quite coherent in normal situations). Today’s morning class was taught by a professor from the Tsinghua Law School on the Legal Environment for doing business in China. I think the professor knew his stuff, but he just droned on and on and didn’t really use his own slides very much and didn’t really make any major points. At one point, one of my classmates asked him point-blank what he would consider the top 3 watch-outs or must-dos regarding the legal system and he somehow managed to skirt that too. Typical lawyer, I suppose! At the same time, this was a confirmation of one of the generalizations that we learned on Tuesday about Chinese people – they give too much context and take a long time to get to the point. One other thing that was apparent was that history explains a lot here as well – the CCP and Chairman Mao had essentially done away with laws during the Cultural Revolution. It was Mao’s way or the highway, except that I don’t think the highway was really an option. So the country basically had to recreate an entire legal and judiciary system from scratch after Mao passed away, and as a result, some legal frameworks that we are used to in the US simply don’t exist in China. Lunch today was from McDonald’s – your pick of a Big Mac or chicken sandwich. I opted for the chicken sandwich, but it didn’t taste right at all so I tossed it. The last thing I wanted to eat was McDonald’s though; I barely touch the stuff in the US and I’m certainly not planning on starting in China. So I just went back to the hotel to attempt to get a nap in. It didn’t work. This afternoon, we had a company visit to Lenovo, a electronics manufacturer who recently purchased IBM’s computer manufacturing division. The thought is that you’ll begin to see the Lenovo brand in the US in the next few years. Haier, a long time Chinese manufacturer of appliances and electronics, has already begun selling a few things. Anyway, the Lenovo trip was neat. We got to look at some of their new products. And then we got a tour through their assembly area. Their facility was pretty hi-tech and they’ve instituted lots of operational and supply chain improvements (automated warehouse, Kanban, grape charts, 5S to name a few). Liang and I had all sorts of more detailed questions on logistics and supply chain since we have a manufacturing background. Unfortunately, our guide could not answer any of our questions. You know – for a group of 60 MBA students, you’d think that the company would have a senior manager talk to us and give us the chance to ask more strategic questions. It didn’t happen at Capital Steel, and it didn’t happen here. Great. After Lenovo, we headed downtown to the Lao She Teahouse to watch a traditional Chinese variety show. They kicked it off with some traditional Chinese music, which somehow managed to resemble bluegrass music with all the twangs and slides in the performance. There was also a very poor and unfortunate martial arts performance from some supposed yong monks – I called them the Shaolin-monk-wannabees. But there were two really cool performances too: the first was a hand shadow performance (two guys making animals using their hands between a light source and a screen) with some unbelievably real looking dogs and birds. The second neat performance was a guy who balanced a huge jar on his head – he’d toss it in the air with his head and catch it again on the top or the side or even the rim. But jeez – give me 20 years of non-stop intensive training and I’m sure I could do that stuff as well. Show me something impressive already… Of note, on the busride to the show, Tony shared with us how he met his current girlfriend. One of his aunts set him up and they met at the subway and walked around and talked for 15 minutes or so. Then he told her “I think you are very clever and very beautiful and I think you would make a suitable match for me.” He was visibly blushing after he told us this. Tony’s the man. I’m going to try this line sometime – clearly, I can use all the help I can get. Now that my brother has gotten engaged, there’s no escaping the questions from my parents anymore. Damn you, Rupa! A bunch of us headed out to an ex-pat bar called The House of Suzie Wang – kind of a strange name for a bar, but whatever sells I suppose. It was too packed, so after an hour or so, we decided to go clubbing and took taxis to Babyface (the same one from a few nights previous). The music was very techno, which didn’t appeal to everyone, so half the group (including me) walked over to Face. Boy this seems repetitive. Friday, May 18, 2007 Last night, remembering my issues the previous night with falling asleep, I got some OTC sleeping pills from Quoc, who had successfully used them to conk out on the plane for the entire flight over – seemed like exactly what I needed. I looked at the box and it said to take 2 pills. So I did. When I attempted to wake up at 7am this morning, I wasn’t exactly in one piece. My body and my mind were simply not on the same page. I spoke with Quoc later on, and he told me that he only took 1 pill for the entire flight here. Couple that with the fact that I’ve probably only taken an OTC sleeping pill once before in my life and couple all that with me only looking for 4 hours of sleep and then I realized that I made a wee minor miscalculation error. This morning’s class was supposed to be on Corporate Strategy. The professor who taught it chose to not follow his slides whatsoever and kept going on tangents, and we ended up learning more about financial markets than anything else. He was a really good professor and very knowledgeable and we enjoyed his perspective, but he didn’t stick to topic. Even so, I learned a few good nuggets of info that I shall share with you: the country has deregulated significantly and the private sector now accounts for more than 80% of China’s GDP; SOEs are still established in key core businesses like telecom, utilities, and airlines; many SOEs function as a government work unit and not only as a corporation – in addition to a production function, they also have an administrative/social function to perform (hospitals, schools, etc.); and some of the small struggling SOEs were taken public with cooked books to bail them out in the stock market only to have the true performance become apparent a few years later. The professor had an interesting analogy to explain this last point: it’s like an ugly girl – she has plastic surgery to make her look pretty and someone marries her, then they have an ugly baby and the husband realizes that he has married an ugly girl. Political correctness is not a strong point of this faculty. In the afternoon, we had a class on Private Equity taught by a guy who works in industry. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your preference for learning new things), I don’t think I have much to share with you on this class. It had very little impact on me. Liang, Deborah, and I left early to get a taxi to the airport to catch a flight to Xi’an (home of the terra cotta warriors). Since we left during rush hour, the cabbie took a bunch of backroads and we got to see an ungodly amount of new construction for Olympic Village and other hotels for next summer’s big event. When we arrived at Xi’an, we were dropped off at a really nice looking hotel and realized that Liang’s uncle had the serious hook-ups. We were only charged 300 yuan per night per room, whereas the going rate was closer to 800 yuan per night (~105 USD). After settling in, we went to the Muslim section of town – apparently, there’s a large Muslim population in the city that started when the Mongolian Khan’s invaded and a few of the soldiers stayed back and settled here. This group of Muslims is their descendents. Anyway, the Muslim section is basically a street full of street vendors and neat little eating booths. So we walked around and did some window shopping and ate some random little appetizers before sitting down for a full meal. The food was crazy cheap – I think we paid about 30 RMB ($5 USD) for all 3 of us to fill up our tummies. But the best part of dinner was this “fashionable” Chinese dude at the table next to us, complete with Right Said Fred “I’m too sexy” inspired see-through top. However I would suggest that he should probably should lose the gut before going with that particular look. We took turns trying to secretly take pictures of him or take a video clip of him. Saturday, May 19, 2007 We started a full day tour this morning to go see some local sights and the terra cotta warriors. Our tour guide Sally was local, very fluent, and very knowledgeable. I kept wanting to ask her if the bus driver’s name was Harry. The first stop on the trip was to the Wild Goose Pagoda (not to be confused with the Wild Turkey Pagoda). This structure is over 1300 years old and was built to house a bunch of books that one of the first Buddhist monks brought over from India. The pagoda also leans a bit to the west, so Xi’anians call it their “Leaning Tower”. The next stop was to some ancient archeological ruins from way-prehistoric times. These ruins were discovered when some pots containing skeletal remains were excavated during construction of a power plant for the city. After discovery, the location for the new power station was moved elsewhere, and a massive structure was constructed in place to serve as a museum right there. For lunch, we were taken to a place that specialized in tour bus groups. In other words, they specialized in giving you a bunch of not-so-great food and letting you meander around their mall for a bit to do some convenient shopping. I actually ended up getting a Gore-Tex North Face jacket, but I had to do a bit of bargaining. This was my first foray into this since I had arrived, and I talked her down from 960 RMB to 350 RMB (~$45 USD). I now know that this even was probably way too much, but at the moment, I was proud of myself. Next, we were taken to a “terra cotta factory” which was essentially another excuse to go shopping for a few hours. I was less than amused. Finally, we were taken to the actual site of the terra cotta warriors. There are about 7000 of these statuettes at this site that were constructed long ago by an emperor who believed that he needed protection from his army in the after life. So he ordered his entire army to be cloned in clay, but 20% bigger. As a result, every one of the statuettes is unique and different and a mold had to be made for each person. After the emperor died, a general who was looking to take over the kingdom ordered all of the statues destroyed, so they’ve been working on restoring the statues to original condition – so far about 1100 have been reconstructed. Also, they haven’t completely excavated the entire site because they found that the paint fades over a few years and they want to try and preserve it when they can find the right technology. There are three pits of warriors on the site, and insanely massive buildings have been constructed over them to house them in place. Pit #2 is almost completely unexcavated – they believe that most of the warriors in this pit are still in tact and again don’t want to ruin the paint by uncovering them too early. The weather was extremely hot today, and the smog was getting outright unbearable. By the end of the trip, I had come down with something and decided to stay in for dinner and get some rest. My stomach was queasy, my sinuses were stuffy, and I had a headache. Xi’an is surrounded by mountains on three sides, so this could explain the thickness of the smog. I don’t think we saw a blue sky the entire time we were there – just this grayness hanging around. Ick. Ordering room service for dinner was quite an experience though. For the first time this trip, I didn’t have Liang around to translate for me. So I called up room service and asked for the Beef with Oyster Sauce. However, somehow I had ordered the Minestrone Soup instead. After a few back and forths with the lady on the phone, she put someone else on the phone and we went back and forth again a few times. Finally, I realized that they were expecting me to order by number and thought that I was ordering B-4 (sounds like Beef) which was the Minestrone Soup, whereas I was looking for an L-5. That was some nice excitement. Then the dish came with mushrooms, rendering half of it inedible for me. Mushrooms are part of the slimy food group, which I don’t care to partake in. There’s also the sticky food group (which includes caramel and honey) which I also try to avoid. Okie doke. That’s all for now. I’ll send you the next write-up as soon as I have it completed. Until next time… Tidbits: 1. Chinese people seem to have some strange fascination with the English language. Most people walk around with T-shirts that have words emblazoned on them in English, even though they can’t read the language. The strange thing is that often these English phrases make absolutely no sense – we saw one that said “Where there’s smoke, there’s smoke” and another that said “We delieve in the fower of lovers. Lovers rock.” right underneath a small skull and crossbones. 2. There’s also some strange fascination with Snoopy. In the course of a single day, we came across three different items emblazoned with a Snoopy logo. The first was a cheap ball point pen that came with our welcome packet. Later, an old lady’s hat had the little Snoopy figure printed all over it. And lastly, a worker at the steel factory had some very crass artwork stenciled on the hood of his car; but he also had Snoopy car seat covers. 3. Random aside… one of the more underappreciated song lyrics is from Coolio’s song “1, 2, 3, 4” where he pines that “if you got beef, then eat a porkchop”. Excellent advice. I think I’ll have a T-shirt made with this line on it. (Sorry about that – I was listening to my I-pod when I was writing this update, and I have this song on there.) 4. I had forgotten my sunblock back home. So I went to a shopping centre to buy some, and all lotions (including suncream) were “whitening”. The standard Chinese consumer has fair skin, and therefore “whitening” lotion blends in with their skin. On my skin, the opposite is true. 5. We learned that infrastructure is growing in China at the rate of a full city of Houston per month. And since Houston is crazy spread out, so that’s a crazy amount of development.

Stay Away from me Lucky Charms, Dammit!

And thus beginneth me second week in Ireland. Initially, I had thought about flying up to Scotland. But throughout this past week, I had decided that there were plenty of areas of Ireland that I had not yet seen. And so I decided to stay. And stay I did. Indeedio. Monday, September 11th I started a five-day trip through Northern Ireland and northwestern Ireland today. I didn't book it until the day before. It's with Vagabond Adventure tours, a small start-up tour company that is aiming to take tourists off the beaten path. Instead of a tour bus, they take tourists around in converted 4x4 Land Rovers, so that they can really and truly go "off the beaten path". It's quite awesome. I stumbled upon it quite by accident. Actually, the credit all goes to Preeti. She noticed their Land Rover while we were at the Cliffs of Homer... errr... Moher, and bugged me to check out the website, and everything sort of fit into place. I wanted to go to Northern Ireland, and they were going. In fact, they hadn't had this tour in many weeks, and this would be the last trip North for the season. It's funny... keep a good attitude and the world somehow conspires to make things work out. Or at least I like to believe that. So, we headed north from Dublin. We were five people in all: Dave, our driver and tour guide extraordinaire; Janine, a paralegal from Seattle; Lucy, a surgical assistant from Holland; and Genevieve, a finance-person-of-some-sort from Montreal (that's Frenchie Canadien). Lucy had actually been on a tour of Northern Ireland with a larger tour company called Paddywagon the week before, but she disliked it so much that she spent her every last shilling to come on this trip. Lucy and Gen had both done Vagabond tours in the weeks past of Southern Ireland. Dave's first task on this trip was to teach us how to speak like the locals: apparently "Northern Ireland" is pronounced "Nor'n Ir'n" up yonder this-a-ways. Each of us had to pronounce it correctly before Dave would continue further. After crossing the border into Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland, we noticed a few neat things to indicate the change: the color of the lines on the road changed, the signs changed from kilometers to miles, and suddenly there were kiosks around offering to change money, no doubt for a nice dandy fee (Nor'n Ir'nders use pounds and not euros - just like them snobby Brits). It was amazing to think that a short decade or less ago, this very border that was now barely marked had been heavily armored during "The Troubles" as the Irish calls it, between the IRA and the Loyalists and British government. But more on that later. No tour to Northern Ireland is complete without a thorough dousing of history, and the history really comes alive here because it's still so very real and in your face. And it will literally render you speechless. The first stop for the trip was to Slieve Gullion (not to be confused with Gollum, of Lord of the Rings lore), which is another ancient burial tomb that sat atop a tall hill. And we had to climb this hill. At one point, someone broke out into "Climb Every Mountain" from The Sound of Music. It was probably me. Now, the very top of this mountain was all rocks, a rocky shoal, if you will. I don't really know what a shoal is, but I like that word. Dave explained that on a clear day, you can see 25% of Ireland from the top of this shoal. This was not a clear day though, and we could barely see each other. The words "Marco" and "Polo" were uttered much. Oh, I just looked up what a shoal was, and it's the complete opposite of what I was trying to describe. I guess I'll have to try and use it correctly some other time. This afternoon, we arrived in Belfast, which is really a very beautiful city. We swung by the Crown Bar, which is a wonderfully decorated old-school saloon, and walked by the Europa Hotel, which holds the distinction of being the most bombed hotel in the world. After some lunch, several of us took a tour of the City Hall, which was celebrating its Centennial. The real eye-opener of this visit to Belfast was the Black Cab tour, which didn't make too much sense, since we were in a cab that was green. I asked our driver, Eamon, about this, and he clearly thought I was an idiot. He got no argument from me on that point, and by this point 4 hours into our weeklong trip together, my traveling companions had also become well aware that I was idiot. A Black Cab tour of Belfast takes you through both the Catholic and Protestant sides of Belfast and tries to explain what's going on in the city and what happened in history. Okay, I can't really go too much further without going into a history lesson. Those of you who don't want none of that thar larnin' schtuff, skip on. But I beseech thee to not skip ahead, because this is incredibly real and has parallels all around us. So, without much further ado about nothing, here goes: Am Awfully Brief and Somewhat Accurate History of Nor'n Ir'n and "The Troubles", by Paraag Maddiwar, copyright 2006 So, a long, long time ago in the late 1100s, the English had taken over Ireland and asked them to get lost, eh, - you know, in a friendly "vacate your property or die" sort of way. Conquests were waged at some point, and the English kings decided that they could grant land to Englishpeople and Scottishpeople, enforceable by the local English brute squad. The Irishpeoples were none too happy about all of this, and therefore many additional skirmishes took place over time. Somewhere in the mid-1500s, Henry VIII of England was excommunicated by the Pope basically for getting a divorce from Catherine of Aragon and remarrying Anne Boleyn. So, he installed himself as the head of the Protestant church and England became Protestant. But the Irishpeoples remained Catholic. In the early 1900s, the Irishpeoples finally were able to kick out the Brits from the majority of Ireland and proclaim independence as the Republic of Ireland. However, not all of Ireland republicized with them - specifically, 6 counties in Ulster (one of four regions of Ireland) were predominantly British Protestant and didn't go along with it, and instead decided to stick it out with the Brits. The problem was that there were still a good number of Catholic Irish peoples hanging out here. It was, indeed, a recipe for issues. In the 1960s, the Catholics were kinda tired of being discriminated against and launched a Civil Rights movement; interestingly enough, this was roughly around the same time of a similar movement by the African American community in the United States. Initially, these were peaceful marches by the Catholic community asking for equal representation in government and equal voting rights and equal access to land and housing and your standard basic rights issues. But tension was in the air, and before long, skirmishes started to take place between the Catholic and Protestant communities and some mayhem was ensuing. So the British Brute Squad came in to maintain order, and the Catholics were initially happy that someone was there to help maintain the peace. Through a series of events, including the highly unfortunate "Bloody Sunday" (also of U2's "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" fame), the British Brute Squad began to be seen as the oppressors as they quite unevenly maintained the peace. The IRA that we've all heard of started up around this point, and the "Troubles" began, largely a back and forth, tit-for-tat type of battling between the communities. There was virtually complete segregation between the two sides (education systems, housing boards, etc.) and very limited means for thoughtful discourse. When you're bourne into and surrounded by all of this, it's not as easy as it might seem to stand back objectively and cut it out. And neither side wanted to back down. When Margaret Thatcher came into office, she labelled the IRA as a terrorist organization and started treating the Irish-Catholic political prisoners as criminals. This most certainly wasn't helping the situation. Finally, in 1998, Tony Blair and leaders of each community ushered in the Good Friday Agreement whereby both the British and Irish governments publicly proclaimed that they had no claim over Northern Ireland. Though it may seem simple, this was a tremendous symbolic gesture. The region would become self-governing through a power-sharing agreement. Largely, the population was tired of the Troubles and wanted a return to sanity. The fear and mistrust still runs deep between the communities, though, since it's impossible for all of that history to disappear with an agreement. Since 1998, there has been a tremendous decrease in violence, and the vast majority of people simply want to move on. In fact, some locals (or at least tourist guides) say that every tourist to Northern Ireland is a vote of confidence in their peace process. That concludes my awfully brief and somewhat accurate history lesson. Well, perhaps it wasn't so brief. But you all know that I'm a wee bit on the long-winded side when it comes to writing. Hope I have not bored too much. So yeah, back to the Black Cab tour. The communities in Belfast still remain largely divided. In the rougher areas, there's a huge wall (like the Berlin Wall) that separates the two communities. So Eamon took us to each community to show us and teach us. First we went to a sort of slummish-area on the Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist side, and we saw lots of murals celebrating their martyrs and heroes. Several murals were very graphic in nature, showing armed gunmen and the like. Other murals outright denounced Catholics while celebrating their paramilitary organizations (the UDF, UFF, UYM, etc.). Then Eamon took us across the wall and we saw the Catholic murals and memorial gardens, which were much more toned-down. Dave told us later that the Catholic murals used to also be quite graphic, but have been toned down as they have realized that the international community doesn't react so good to pictures of masked gunmen. The Catholics had some other interesting murals: one of our own President sucking the oil from the Middle East with a smattering of skeletons on the ground; another of Frederick Douglass, who spent time in Ireland after escaping from slavery; and another one claiming similarites between the Palestinian community and the Irish Catholic community. Nevertheless, we tourist types were very happy to put the heavy stuff behind us as Dave drove along the eastern coastline of Northern Ireland to a town called Carnlough, where we called it a night. Actually, it was just late afternoon, so I took a stroll to the world-famous Cranny Falls, which are almost a tenth of the height of Niagara Falls! They were nice and simple and peaceful, but I didn't see an easy accessway to the water pool below the falls, so I could not go swimming. And there was much sadness. Genevieve showed up soon afterwards along with some young local friends she had made. One of them made it a point to talk lots about how she was cousins with one of the Dixie Chicks. Quite random. Tuesday, September 12 Okay, I know yesterday's summary was waaaaay too long, but the history lesson is largely over. And I really couldn't write anything without including the history. So get over it already and stop your whinging (French-Canadian and/or British for whining). We continued along the Great Eastern-Northern Ireland Coastal Highway (GENICH for short) for some time this morning. Across the way on the West side we could slowly and faintly make out the mountains of Scotland through the mist. They were spitting distance. That is, if you can spit 20-some miles. For a good few hours, I was just perched on the right side of the land rover staring and sticking my arm out the window with the camera in feeble attempts to take pictures of what were incredible views, only to have the pictures come out mildly incredible. But you know this already, pictures will simply never do justice. Along the way, we stopped and Genevieve and I hopped out for a short hike to meet the others at a really really old church, Layd Church. Much of the structure of the church had crumbled away. It was neat and sorta creepy to walk around and look at gravestones laid down some 5-600 years ago, right next to stones that had been placed down only a few years ago. I've never been much a fan of graveyards though. Kinda gives me the heebie-jeebies. There was an old interesting structure with a loop on the top of it. So Dave told Gen and I to clasp hands through it and he'd take a picture. Then he announced that we were now married. Well, that was pretty simple. And here, my mom's been trying to figure out how to get me married off for some 32 years. Hey mom - that's all I had to do. Outside of the church, there was an old burned out Honda hatchback sitting in the makeshift parking area. So we took a picture for Dave to use as marketing material for Vagabond's Northern Ireland tour. I was thinking that if my buddy Zach had been around, he'd probably be saying something like "It's a Honda; we can bring it back to life." So off along the Eastern coastline of Northern Ireland we went until it became the Northern coastline of Northern Ireland (maybe it was the Northeastern coastline). This coastline gradually got steeper and steeper as small beachlike enclaves gave way to cliffsides. Our next stop was Carrick-a-rede, which is an extremely small island right off of the Northern/Northeastern coast. Being that we are now on cliffsides, the only sane way to get to Carrick-a-rede is via the aptly named Carrick-a-rede walking bridge. Now, the guidebooks advertise this as an Indiana Jones style hanging rope bridge that is very adventurous and daring. Indeed if I were a smarter feller, I'd play along. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out on the island eating a boxed lunch and staring out into the ocean. But about the only exciting part of the bridge was the sine waves that occurred when multiple people on the bridge walked in unison. Sine waves that people like me liked to add to by strategically choosing when to take my next step at an unnecessary force. It's like those ants in the Tom and Jerry cartoon where Tom is relaxing on the hammock and the ants bounce him off. And that annoying little Jerry squeals in delight. One of these days, I want Tom to eat that blasted Jerry. We had lunch on the island and then walked around a bit. There's not all that much walking around to do on the island - it's kinda small. But, as opposed to the lawsuit-happy US, there weren't any real fences on the periphery of the island to save you from plunging to your doom. I got a little too close to the edge for Gen's comfort, so she told me that she was divorcing me. Oh well. Guess I gotta get back to that church... After a brief stop on a secluded hidden beach that the Paddywagon tour had just vacated, we continued along the Northern coastline to what's known as the Giants Causeway. Genevieve and I took the long route to the Causeway from the old and mostly gone Dunsevarick Castle. This is a 7-10km walking path along the cliffside which allows you to really soak in the scenery and offers much more spectacular views in relative solitude than the tourist trap known as the Causeway. And pray tell, what is the Causeway? It's basically a bunch of basalt rock formations where nature demonstrated a geometry lesson by forming perfect five, six, seven, eight, and ten-sided columns and structures along the cliffside and shoreline. It's very strange looking. There's a perfectly logical geological reason for this that I don't quite understand. And there's an old folks tale that Dave related to us that goes something like this (there's lots of mildly differing versions of this readily available from a Google search)... Back in the day, there lived a huge Irish man named "Finn MacCool, a man so large, you could see the whole of Ireland between his legs. He was, indeed, a horse of a man." (Brief aside - that last part is in quotes because Dave had a habit of saying the entire phrase at the mere mention of this fellow Finn, even if he said the phrase a mere few minutes prior. Good times.) So this very large man Finn MacCool, "a man so large, you could see the whole of Ireland between his legs. He was, indeed, a horse of a man", built this causeway to Scotland to fight his rival, the Scottish giant Benadonner. Finn spent an entire week building the causeway, so he was tired and fell asleep. But Benadonner was on his way across. So Oonagh, Finn's wife, did some quick thinking and dressed Finn up as a baby. When Benadonner arrived, he saw the huge baby and figured that Finn must be much much larger. So he ran back to Scotland, tearing up the Causeway in the process. This really happened. It is a veritable fact. I swear it to be true, especially since the US Intelligence Agencies have assured me that it is, indeed, a horse of a truth. Wednesday, September 13 This morning, we all woke up to the fresh smells of the bed and breakfast we were staying in that was situated on a pasture. Mmmm... mmmm... how I love the smell of fresh cowdung in the morning. Nothing like a little wake-me-up. Our first stop this morning was by another beach and did doughnuts in the sand. Wheeeeeeee! I asked Dave if I could drive the Vagabond Land Rover. He said no. Dave sucks. Next, we followed some back roads to a lookout point with some spectacular views. These were backroads that most tour buses would never bring you to. It was, indeed, yet another Vagabond Exclusive. Dave also made sure to check with Lucy to see if Paddywagon had brought her up here the week before, and, indeed, they had not. Unfortunately, up on the clifftop where the lookout point was, there were gale-force winds in effect and a smattering of rain was beginning to take shape. Basically, if you stopped and jumped up, you would land a few inches in front of where you started because the wind was so strong. It was so strong that when we were headed back to the vehicle, I even walked backwards to shield my face. So we walked very slowly and very deliberately as close as each of us were willing to get to the edge so that we could see the mist-covered view, which was still quite spectacular. The lands below were flat as could be, stretching for kilometers and kilometers and dumping into water. Was it the ocean? A river? I don't know. I couldn't tell with all the mist and gale-force winds. But the highlight of today was our visit to Stroke City, which is what some people call the town of Derry/Londonderry. The Protestant/Loyalist/Unionist crew calls it Londonderry, while the Catholics called it by it's olden-day name of Derry. Since everyone was trying to be politically correct, all of the signs say Derry/Londonderry. This got kind of cumbersome to say, so it became known as Stroke City. This was not named as such because people in this town were gluttons and had a high incidence of heart failure, but because "stroke" in Ireland means what we normal people in America would call a "slash". After having lunch in Derry (I had a very large mystery-meat Yankee Burger and a Guinness at some bar), we had a walking tour with a local feller who gave us the lowdown on the city. The city has a full city wall structure that still remains in tact around the old city, and the majority of our tour was along this wall. Derry plays a significant part of the recent "Troubles" history as well, as this was the site of "Bloody Sunday". Beyond that, Derry plays an important role in the history of the country as this was a site of many battles and a famous siege between the Irish locals and the British occupiers. I'll spare the history lesson for now, assuming that you can google it if you are interested. Within a few minutes of leaving Derry, we were back in the Republic of Ireland headed towards the County of Donegal. This is a county that often gets overlooked by tourists because it's not as close to Dublin as most of the other sites. That also means that it is more untouched. So, Dave drove us through the Blue Stack Mountains (no clue why they were named this since they weren't very blue and I didn't see any stacks of anything) and let us out to take a walk by some "famine houses", which were old stone houses that were vacated by potato farming families during the Great Famine. Next, we took a walk with a local dog (I forgot the dog's name, but let's pretend it's Rufus) to an ancient burial site called a "dolman". A dolman is an extremely large flat rock perched atop a few vertical rocks. This makes you wonder how such huge flat rocks got there to begin with. My guess is that they used prehistoric cranes powered by prehistoric hydraulic systems. So Rufus hopped up top of the flat rock, and was soon getting a wee bit too visibly excited. Ironically, local legend has it that making whoopee atop these dolmans (which, remember, are ancient burial grounds) is somehow fortuitous. Tonight's stop was in a small town called Ardara, which is close to the west coast of Ireland. Gen and I took a walk after dinner and stopped in a few different pubs and had a glass of port at each stop. Unfortunately, none of the pubs had any music. So we went back to our hotel pub and had another glass and listened to the country twangings of small feller who was seemingly delighting his small crowd of blue-haired tourists. And then he sang "Sweet Caroline" in the perfect cheesy country lounge singing voice. The blue-haired people loved it. Gen had never heard the song before, and didn't seem to believe me when I told her that everyone in the States sings along loudly in the pub when this song is played. So I sang along too. Thursday, September 14 This morning, we got a late start out of Ardara, and headed back into the mountains. A good portion of the morning drive was stunningly picturesque. We were driving in a valley with steep mountains on either side of us (which, of course, explains the existence of the valley), and there were also some small lakes in valley keeping us company. In the distance in front of us, we could see the ocean and a beach in front of that ocean, since that's where beaches ought to be. And then we passed a mini-waterfall where we stopped for some pictures and I commenced to be eaten alive by the small bugs that hover around waterfalls. Then we turned left. Into the mountains we went, off of the paved road and onto a narrow gravel road that was not-so-aptly named Granny's Pass. I didn't see any grannies up here, nor did I expect to. This was, indeed, yet another Vagabond Exclusive. And Dave also made sure to check with Lucy to see if Paddywagon had brought her up here the week before, and, indeed, they had not. I've run out of adjectives to describe the scenery, so you'll just have to look at the pictures whenever I get around to sending out a link. So just close your eyes and imagine something. It's kinda like Spongebob, except with more natural scenery and green and less annoying voice and yellow. See? That's some darn good imagery right there. We were on our way to the Slieve League mountains, which were some crazy tall and steep mountains that dumped straight into the ocean - in fact, at it's peak, it was about 2.5 times taller than the Cliffs of Homer... err... Moher. That's some pretty tall mountains right there. The difference, I suppose, is that these mountains weren't a pure vertical drop into the ocean, which probably explains why they weren't called the Slieve League Cliffs of Insanity. I suppose you could say that the Slieve League mountainside was, indeed, a horse of a mountainside. If we had half a day here, I would have loved to hike along the edge up to the top - there was a well worn trail to the peak and beyond. Instead, we were probably around halfway up where we were congregating near the carpark. The amazing thing is that there were very few tourists here, because County Donegal is seen as being too far away for most tourists. Silly tourists... the Cliffs are for kids. We took a quick stop to pick up lunch and eat it on the side of the road perched high up another mountain overlooking the ocean. Interestingly enough, we were overlooking an area where Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker had bought a nice house with ocean view. A few years ago, Sir Broderick apparently had a car accident that killed some locals. He was very sad and apologized profusely to the family, and I think he was even forgiven by the family. Wow. I'm boring myself. On our way to the town of Sligo, we stopped off to let Lucy and Janine have a horse-riding lesson for an hour. I did not join, because every time I ride a horse, I feel like I'll never be able to have kids when I finally get off of it and I'm curled up in pain. I'm sure that this must be the horse's fault and cannot have anything to do with the fact that I don't know how to ride a horse all proper-like. So Dave drove Gen and me into the mountains and we saw more scenery. Last stop tonight was Mullaghmore, a small coastal town West of Sligo on a small round peninsula offering spectacular views of the ocean. The waves were really picking up because there was a storm or something somewhere in the world. The waves were just massive - they were, indeed, a horse of a waves. So surfers were very very happy this weekend. But I was not - if the waves weren't so strong, I would've been able to have a surfing lesson tomorrow. So, I took an hourlong jaunt around the periphery of this peninsula. Every few steps, I'd stop and take another picture of these crazy high waves crashing into the side of the peninsula or some funky rock formation. It was stunning. When I got home and took a look at the pictures, they all seem to look the same. Pictures suck. Friday, September 15 This morning, we went to the site that everyone who comes to Ireland comes to see. Yes, we were at Drumcliffe, site of the grave of poet W.B. Yeats. It was small and non-descript, and in all other ways, not really live-altering at all. But, at least the feller had his wish of being buried next to his all time favorite mountain. And that's gotta count for something. Next, we went to Strandhill, a small beach area with a facility that gave seaweed baths. I wasn't all that up for the seaweed bath, so I hung out with Dave and Gen staring at the huge waves crash into the shoreline. Then one of the local shopkeepers informed Dave that there was a beached whale nearby in the next inlet and that we should go down the beach a bit, and turn left to walk over the sand dune. So, we walked down the beach, and then turned left. Except we turned left a bit too late and suddenly our short-cut became an extremely long hike through really itchy armpit-high grass weeds growing in a sand dune. And this was no normal sand dune, it was huuuuuuge - it was, indeed, a horse of a sand dune. As we got closer and closer to our destination, the winds brought an occasional whiff of the distinct stench of a large dead fish. Yum. Unfortunately, the beached whale wasn't as beached as in right in front of us beached. It was beached way out in the water a bit away. Then again, judging from the distance and the stench, perhaps it's a good thing that it wasn't beached right in front of us. From Strandhill, it was back to Sligo, where I bid adieu to the gang. They were all on their way back to Dublin to end the trip. I was on my way to Galway, a town a bit south of Sligo on the West coast. After a short 2 hour bus ride, I was there. In a few hours, my Dublinese friend Shashi joined me. We were headed to the Aran Islands the next morning for the weekend. And that was Friday. Saturday, September 16 We got up early this morning to pack up and walk the whole TWO BLOCKS to the bus stop where we caught a bus to the aptly-named Aran Island Ferries to, wouldn't you know it, take a ferry to the Aran Islands. Our bus was a wee bit jammed. We were standing up the entire time and we were in front of the yellow line. Can you imagine that? It was like we were in Indonesia or something. When we got to the ferry, I proceeded to sit downstairs in the middle of ferry, where the rocking and swaying motion is minimized. This helps prevent unnecessary yakkage of my 12th consecutive traditional Irish breakfast. And I napped. Shashi was bored, so she went outside up top and watched the rescue team glide down from an overhead helicopter on a training mission. Or something like that. I was asleep, so I had to take her word for it. There are three Aran Islands - Inishmore, Inishmaan, and Inisheer. That's Gaelic for Great Island, Middle Island, and East Island. Truly, the talent for aptly naming things is something that is in the Irishpeoples blood. We checked into our bed and breakfast, except that they didn't have any rooms available when I made a reservation, so they let me rent out an apartment that the owner had for a pretty cheap price. While it may not have quite been a deeeluxe apartment in the sky, it was still pretty sweet. Except we were only there for a night, and couldn't really enjoy having our own kitchen very much. Oh well. I didn't really want to cook on vacation anyway. So, what is there to do on the Aran Islands? Go for a bike ride. And since neither of us had gone bike riding in a very very long time, this was the perfect time to spend an entire day bike riding. After teaching Shashi the basics (never slam your front brake only, especially when you are moving semi-decently fast, else you get tossed quickly head-over-handlebars), we were on our way. But, what stuck out about this island? There were endless stone walls everywhere. And they were tall and quite close together. A lot of the roads we were riding along were narrow as well, so it felt as though we were in a giant maze. A maze that never ended. It was quite creepy. I was starting to not like it very much. But then we got to Dun Aengus. This island is relatively flat other than the occasional molehill, but apparently it all rises up to a point on one of the edges of the island - this at the old fort/castle/whatever known as Dun Aengus. And the edge of this side of the island is pretty much a cliff all the way down. So, many more cliff-like views were had. The wind was blowing up at us from the ocean as well, so it made for a neat sensation to lie down on the ground looking over the edge of the island down to the ocean below with the wind in your face. Like Superman. On the way back, it started to rain. Shashi has a tip for everyone out there. When biking in rain, try not to wear a pair of shorts that could turn a light shade of transparent when wet. She spent the ride back to the hotel/apartment with her jacket around her waist. Sunday, September 17We had thought about renting the bikes for a full day and taking them out this morning, but by the end of the ride yesterday evening, my butt was sore from the seat and Shashi couldn't move her quads. So we figured we'd be best served to turn the bikes in early. Today was a pretty bland day in all. Mostly travelling. And we took all sorts of modes of transportation. We took a ferry from the Aran Islands to the mainland. A bus back to Galway, and a train back to Dublin. And a taxi from the Dublin train station to downtown. Except when I got downtown, I learned that all of the mid-range priced hotels (there are no cheap ones from what I could find) were charging exorbitant prices and were sold out due to the impending Ryder Cup. So I found a room at Trinity College in a dorm room. Except it was more like a jail cell than a dorm room - cinder block walls, fluorescent lighting, narrow enough that you could reach both walls, a shared bathroom, and escape-proof windows. Monday, September 18 Bad weather finally caught up with me on this, my last day in Ireland. So I grabbed a book, went to a cafe and then a coffeehouse and read a book. Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Then I went to the Guinness Storehouse for the brewery tour. Except that it wasn't really a brewery tour. You paid something like $15 to go on a self-guided tour through a set of exhibits that explain how the beer is made. But no tour of the actual brewery. But at the end, you get a free Guinness, though you did just pay $15 bucks for the supposed free beer. I got to learn firsthand though how to pour the perfect Guinness. So now I can watch the barkeeps next time and point out the error of their ways. The free beer is generally consumed on the top floor of the exhibition building, which has a wonderful 360 degree view of the city. While we were up there, the skies cleared up enough for me to see across the land of Dublin. This evening, I booked some tickets to what I thought was a play. But it turned out to be a stand-up comedy show. Oh well... it was called "Jesus: the Guantanamo Years", with the premise being that Jesus returned to earth only to not get past U.S. Customs (being a man of Middle Eastern descent) and was detained in Guantanamo. I thought this was a pretty funny basis for a play. But not really a stand-up comedy act. I'm a bit of a stand-up comedy snob, and I didn't really think it was all that great of a show. Well, that concludes this trip. I hope you've enjoyed reading all of this as much as I've enjoyed writing it. Then again, it's really not all that much fun to write. That's why it took me do darn long this time. But it's a lot of fun to read later on, so it's worth it. Next year, I'm off to Kilimanjaro - likely for the first two weeks of September like this trip. If you're interested and serious about being interested, let me know. I'm going to try to book flights and such a bit earlier than later. Since the hike will only be a week's worth, I'm going to look into a safari for the other week, or something like that. Toodles! Tidbits: 1. I don't think the French Canadian accent sounds like a Canadian accent with the French "ze" added in random places. I never once caught Gen finishing a sentence with "ze eh?". Imagine my dismay. Also, never tell a Hollander (the Hollish?, Hollandaise?), even jokingly, that they are an American-wannabe. Them's bad idea jeans. 2. Apparently the European teens have brought back an old fad with a bit of a twist. Remember back in the 80s when it was cool to roll up one pant leg? Well now, these crazies tuck in one pant leg into their sock. Just one. Not both. I almost went up to one of the idiots to say, "Ummm... excuse me, but your pant leg is in your sock." It's like the fad here in the States where people like wearing their collars up. It takes every amount of restraint that I have to not go up to them and fold the collars back down. It makes them look like yuppie Draculas. 3. All of the signs in Ireland are written in both Gaelic and English. Though very few people speak Gaelic. About the only places that Gaelic is spoken is in the boondocks of the country. 4. For whatever reason, all bars are required to post standard government sheets on the window with the price list that they charge for their beer and liquor inside. 5. Irish drivers are really polite. On these roads, you're allowed to use the shoulders as passing lanes. Except in Ireland, the slow drivers will move over into the shoulder allowing you to pass them on right side (remember - they drive on the wrong side here).

The Luck of the Irish be with ye

Hello all. It's another mass form letter from me. Which can only mean one thing: I'm on vacation again. Actually, I was on vacation but am now at home, so my apologies for the delay. Feel free to attempt to garnish the wages that I get from this travelogue. So, where did I decide to go this time? I figured that it was time for me to really buckle down and explore my roots. Yes, Ireland has a long history dating back many many generations of O'Maddiwarty's. Oh yes, I'm traveling for week 1 with my friend Preeti, who has been very anxious to leave behind her residency in the thriving metropolis we all know as Lansing, Michigan (that's the state capital, folks) to go to a far off land and relax a bit. My understanding is that it was a successful week for her as well. Monday, September 4th I arrived at the airport today and went to get my rental car - something I thought I had gotten a steal of a deal for: $184 for a week in a Passat. Not bad at all. But there was a minor catch - apparently, as of September 1st, Mastercard stopped covering rental car insurance for Israel, Jamaica, and Ireland. Why oh why Ireland is on this list is beyond me. And the friendly folks at Europcar wouldn't rent without insurance or without charging the value of the car on my credit card up front in case something should happen. So, we ended up paying for the insurance from Europcar, which was about 1.5 times the car rental cost. Makes a horseload of sense to me too. The week was not starting well. So off we were in our newly rented Nissan Primera (kinda like an Altima, Passat-ish enough) to the Wicklow Mountains just south of Dublin. Task one was learning how to drive. These people drive on the wrong side of the road: since we in the U.S. drive on the right side of the road (not the left), it stands to reason that in the UK/Ireland, they must drive on the wrong side. So, I was back to figuring out which side of the steering wheel had the blinkers and which side had the windshield wipers, but more importantly: how to operate the stick shift with my left hand. This indeed required an unnecessarily large amount of concentration to will my left hand into the correct position. My old roommates have witnessed my feeble attempts to throw a football with my left hand. It's less than pretty. The other thing that I think we take for granted is the fact that we "learn" where the right side of the car is in the US. When the sides are reversed, it's not so easy to transpose that "learning" to the other side of the car. But don't worry, oh reader, no accidents were had, thereby completely wasting the money we spent on the car insurance. Damn. You know, I kinda wanted to wreck the car to at least get some value from that lost money. I mean, might as well, right? We went to a town called Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains, where some saint founded some monastery in the mountains and there were a bunch of ruins made of stone. Okay, okay. That's not a very good description. But it was rainy when we got to the ruins, and I was in no mood (carryover from the morning's insurance shenanigans) to give a flying monkey about it. The mountains were pretty, and we had a nice hour-long walk by some lakes. That's really about it. Back into the car, we drove and drove and drove through very narrow roads towards Waterford, where we were hoping to stay the night. But the jetlag finally caught up to me, so we stopped to grab a bite to eat in a dumpy town called New Ross. If this was New Ross, I didn't want to go anywhere near Old Ross. The tourist information centre folks told us straight up that about the only thing to see in New Ross was a schooner that was parked right outside of it. And I saw the schooner as we walked into the tourist information centre. Impressed I was not. Why they needed an entire staffed tourist information centre to begin with was a bit confusing. The only place to eat in this town was a new 2-week old Indian restaurant. And the food: imagine Green Giant frozen spinach for a moment. Now heat it up and throw some curry sauce in it. That's the saag paneer. Preeti didn't find much paneer in her dish. And the inside was a bit cold still. Ick. But the decor was muy impressive. At the centerpiece was a small orange candle-holder with Jagermeister imprinted on it. Preeti asked the owner-dude if she could have it (well, it was kinda cool-looking), but he told us that he got it from the owner of a nightclub that he moonlights at and didn't get enough for all of the tables to begin with. So he could ill-afford the one on our table to give Preeti. Better than this centerpiece were the "Martha's Vineyard" emblazoned water pitchers that our glasses were filled with. That's a bit more on the random side. Those resourceful Indians... Tuesday, September 5th We did end up getting into a B&B in Waterford for last night, but only after the very friendly and helpful folks at the Travelodge told us that we could save money by getting breakfast for free at a B&B instead of getting a room with them. The Irish people are strangely helpful. How the Travelodge manages to stay in business with such friendly business-giving-away-staff-people is quite baffling. Maybe they get kickbacks? So, why are we in Waterford? To go to the Waterford Crystal Factory. Go figure. It was very convenient that they located the factory in a town with the same name. Otherwise, I think all sorts of confusion would occur, and you could be assured that some hilarity would ensue. So here's the skinny: crystal is basically glass with some lead oxides and other top-secret special sauces blended in to make it authentic "Waterford". We got to watch as a fruitbowl platter thingy was bent into shape by a guy using a wet folded newspaper as his tool of choice. We also saw a bunch of glasses made through a blow-mold. Then we saw the etching and engraving processes required to turn the crystal base structure into art. It was actually pretty neat. And I learned a few things from the gift shop where our tour surprisingly ended. 1) Marquis is a brandname that Waterford contracts out to a firm in the Czech Republic - Marquis branded items (like my little crystal thing I got from P&G for 5 years of service that was worth 20 Euros) are generally of lower quality, probably because they contain fewer lead oxides and not quite so much special sauce. 2) All of the Wedgewood dinnerware that my old roommate Scott bequeathed to me is some pretty high class stuff. A small plate runs something like 12 Euros, and here I got most of an entire set of it for free. However, the newer stuff says that it's "Microwave and Dishwasher Proof". The stuff I have is about 40 years old, and clearly is not anything proof (including Marcus-proof). I was on my way to the counter to protest this point, but Preeti pulled me back thinking it would be a losing proposition. She's probably right. The funny thing is that they still sell the same style, so I could replace the broken pieces. The next event for the day was to go to the Blarney castle outside of Cork. The key event here is to lie down on the ground on your back and drop your head underneath to kiss the Blarney Stone, along with the 3 billion germs lingering around from the previous visitors who have undoubtedly frenched the thing and/or hocked loogies. To get to the Blarney Stone, we had to walk up very claustrophobic spiral staircases in an old castle (Blarney Castle, to be precise) for 6.34 flights, where the Blarney Stone all of a sudden appeared to be more like a Blarney Wall than anything else, with a section of floor conveniently missing in front of it to allow your head to dip down under it. The prize for kissing the stone is the gift of gab - allowing you to talk your way out of anything. I'm just baffled beyond words. Very strange indeed. Wednesday, September 6th We got up this morning, grabbed breakfast and a Subway sandwich for the road, and headed out for Mizen Head, the most southwesterly point of Ireland. On the way, we passed all sorts of neat scenery - mountains and rolling hills rife with those picturesque mortar-less stone walls running all criss-cross around the landscape. My thought had been that these stone walls were erected primarily for land division purposes or to keep animals in a particular enclosure. Later I learned that the land had so many stones in it that the olden-day people had to oull them out and do something with them to make the land usable. So they made walls. Within these walls were mostly cows and bulls, and plenty of sheep. Preeti noted that some sheep had a splotch (technical term) of blue paint on their backs and some had pink splotches. I decided that this was the way that the farmers could tell if it was a male sheep or a female sheep. Then she found sheep that had 2 splotches of blue on them. These, I decided, were the gay sheep. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And then she found some with a splotch of blue AND a splotch of pink. We surmised that these must be sheep that would have been welcome on the set of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. More interesting than the walls and animals that we saw were the town names. Names like Innishannon, Gaggan, Bandon, Ballineen, Skibbereen, and my personal favorite: Ballydehob, which quickly overtook Gobbledegook as my favorite word. When we arrived at Mizen Head, we saw the ocean south of us. And it was nice. Then we paid about $5 to cross a pedestrian bridge out to the old lighthouse and some random establishment out on the rocks and we were be-smitten by the views. The establishment was downright creepy though - this is where the lighthouse keeper used to live, so they tried in vain to turn it into an exhibit, complete with a couple of "experience" rooms sans light so that you could try to imagine what it must have been like for the lighthouse keeper to live in a creepy place surrounded by plasticized fake rock walls, a painted blue sea floor, with only the light of a ten-inch black light as your guide. Wow. After Mizen Head, we headed up to the Beara Peninsula. The southwestern portion of Ireland basically comprises of multiple peninsular fingers jutting out from the mainland into the Atlantic ocean. Some peninsular fingers are fat and some are skinny. Mizen Head is the first peninsular finger, and Beara Peninsula is the third, of five in total. The fourth one is the most famous one - the Iveragh, also called the Ring of Kerry (no relation to ex-US presidential hopeful John). The second most famous one is the fifth finger, the Dingle peninsula. About all there is to do on the peninsular fingers is drive around the periphery on the wrong side of the road and stop every five minutes and oooh and ahhh. Which is what we did. And lots of it. The nice thing about Beara is that it's just as scenic of a drive as the Ring of Kerry, but far less touristed. So our oohs and aahs took place in much more serene circumstances. If anyone has driven the PCH in California, these peninsular drives are similar except the roads are narrower and the landscape changes to include valleys, cliffs, and mountain views. Okay. Maybe they aren't so similar. But it was worth a shot. Thursday, September 7th This morning, we drove around the Ring of Kerry. It wasn't extremely different from the spectacular views around the Beara Peninsula, but we figured we might as well drive it since we were already here and there's nothing wrong with having more spectacular views, right? Also, the tourist buses normally drove it counter-clockwise and we would be going clockwise, so we wouldn't be stuck behind throngs of them. Though, I suppose, now we had to face them head-on on narrow roads. Despite our fears, the traffic wasn't actually very bad. I love traveling in low season. I highly recommend doing this whenever possible. After the Ring of Kerry and some nice cheap lunch, we headed to Tarbert to take the aptly named Tarbert-Kilkee Ferry across the bay to Kilkee. It was either that, or drive inland about 85 km and then back on the other side. We chose wisely. From Kilkee, we drove up to the Cliffs of Moher. When I first saw the name, I thought it said the Cliffs of Homer, but unfortunately I was wrong. It's more unfortunate for the storepeople there though; imagine the merchandise that they'd be able to sell with a picture of Homer yelling "D'oh" and tripping over the edge of the cliff. Maybe I'll get someone to make me one of these shirts. That's just pretty damn funny. Anyway, the Cliffs of Moher were pretty darn high - about 213m high of sheer verticality plummeting into the ocean, to be precise. Again, this being low season, there weren't too many tourists there, but more than enough. It was about 7pm by the time we got there, which was perfect for viewing the sunset. Preeti and I walked the length of the paved footpath, which ended abruptly though there were several more kilometers of cliffside to be walked along. Instead, an sign blocked our way asking us politely to not go any further. Preeti obliged. In true Paraagian fashion, I did not (as did many many other able-legged tourists) and ventured out. I was still a safe distance from the cliff edge (no unnecessary risks taken - I promise, Mom), and my destination was a lighthouse tower thingy in the distance at the very end point of the cliffs. After 30 minutes of fast-paced walking, the lighthouse tower thingy was not seemingly any closer to me, and I noticed that there were no longer any tourists ahead of me. So I turned around and joined Preeti to watch the sunset over the ocean. I got lots of pictures of this so that you can enjoy it as well. (Rachel - this might be a good one to print out for the wall as well.) Friday, September 8th By the way, did I mention that we had absolutely phenomenal weather so far? I don't think I did. By way of this short paragraph, I'll consider it mentioned. Today we headed towards the town of Limerick to go castle-hunting. First up was Bunratty Castle, which, of note, hosted the World Down Syndrome Swimming Championships in 2006. Must... not... crack... joke... too... politically... incorrect... By the way, I didn't see any swimming pools around. So who knows how and where this contest took place. Bunratty Castle is a folk theme park type of thing that tries to recreate the olden days, much like Colonial Williamsburg. They had authentic olden-day people complete with olden-day garb, living like the olden-days burning peat bricks in their fireplaces for heat and to cook on. And every once in a while, one of the olden-day doors to the olden-day buildings would open up into a non-olden-day souvenir shop. It was a spectacular blend of new and old. My hats off to the genii who came up with it. The centerpiece of the Bunratty Castle folk theme park type of thing was the restored Bunratty Castle itself. Apparently, someone named Earl used to live there - many of the rooms had his name on the door: "Earls Closet", "Earls Private Chapel", "Earls Kitchen", etc.. After Bunratty Castle, we went into Limerick and toured through King John's Castle. A life-size figure of King John greeted us at the doorway. He looked like that uber-creepy Burger King feller with the perma-smile in those really creepy Burger King commercials that give me the heebie-jeebies. In one of the rooms, they had some French life-size figures that looked like 80's hair band rock stars. This castle actually had some real history to it though, and they put a lot of effort into explaining the significance that the castle played during the war in Ireland between Protestant Dutch William the Orange and Catholic English James I for the throne of England. On our way back to Dublin, we stopped off in the town of Nenagh, to get some food and drive by the P&G plant so that I could get an obligatory photo of the outside. I'm such the company man. Back in Dublin, a friend of mine hooked us up with a sweet hotel right in Temple Bar, which is an area in Dublin where lots of the bars and restaurants are. Very sweet. Dublin seems to put a much higher priority on pedestrian-only streets than we do in the US. In fact, I can't really think of too many areas at all that are pedestrian only in the US. In Europe, it almost seems that most larger cities have pedestrian malls of some sort. Maybe that's why we're overweight Americans... Though it was a Friday night, Preeti and I had dinner, watched some street performers who didn't appear to be particularly good at what they do, and just strolled around the area soaking it in and getting a lay of the city. Saturday, September 9th Today was explore Dublin day. We began by heading over to Trinity College to go see the famed Book of Kells, which according to Wikipedia, is an ornately illustrated manuscript produced by Celtic monks around 800 AD. By the way, I'm still not certain if Celtic is pronounced with a hard or soft "c" sound - I've heard both from Irish-speaking Irishpeoples. But back to this manuscript, the exhibit showed the extreme amount of effort that went into making such a book - from making the pages to procuring the ink (some of which came from a stone only found in the Middle East) to the elaborate artwork. From there, we went to the Long Room of the library, which interestingly enough was quite a long room. That wasn't the cool part though - this room was chock full of really really old books. And they were organized in an interesting fashion - large books on bottom, small books on top. No Dewey Decimal system here. The next stop was the Christchurch Cathedral. Cathedrals are always neat places to be - very peaceful and quiet. This cathedral was no different. Well, there were a few things that were different on display. For example, they had the bones of a cat and mouse encased in a display - these creatures apparently got stuck in an organ piper and become mummified. Good times. And the cathedral came complete with a spooky grotto underneath where all sorts of characters were buried. Come to think of it, there were just way too many graveyards in Ireland. But I suppose that's what they get for living in a country with a civilization older than 400 years. (Native Americans didn't entomb their dead, from what I understand.) Next stop was Kilmanheim Jail. We learned that this was the first jail that was designed to reform criminals rather than simply contain them. This jail was designed to give each inmate his/her own room, and to only be allowed to speak to guards and not to other inmates. The idea was to force the criminal to think about and reconsider his/her crime. While this may have been a good idea, it didn't work out so well. The jail was frequently overcrowded. In fact, during the Great Famine of 1846-1851 (not to be confused with the Splendid Famine of 1078 or the Marvelous Famine of 1425), many poor Irish people were committing crimes on purpose to get into the jail so that they could at least get some food and shelter. It being Saturday night (and Preeti's last night in town), we decided to hit the town with my local friend Shashi, who took us to a nice place to eat and hooked us up with a great pub/club. Sunday, September 10th Somehow, Preeti managed to wake up this morning and make it to the airport. I, on the other hand, slept in. And then continued to sleep in. Finally, in the late afternoon, Shashi joined me and we drove up to the ancient burial mounds in Newgrange just north of Dublin. These burial mounds were created in something like 3000 BC. There are actually three sites up here: Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth. Unfortunately, the Newgrange tours were all sold out, so we were left with going to Knowth. Knowth's burial mounds are not quite as impressive as Newgrange, but they are moundy enough, indeed. All in all, the combination of the dreary weather (it finally came) and the tiredness from the night before dampened any fascination that I might have had for this archeological site. But the views were fantastic from atop the mound, that's for sure. Okie doke. That's all for now. I'll try and get the next installment out to you in another week or so. -Paraag Tidbits: 1. The Irish Road-Maker People (RMP for short) really love their roundabouts. I kinda like those roundabouts too. Preeti and I early on decided to try and say roundabouts like Irish people would, but the best we could do was the faux-Canadien "roundaboots". And then we exploited every opportunity we had to say it. 2. Don't try the black pudding if you ever go to Ireland. It's not really pudding. I didn't fall for it either. But I was afeared, very afeared. 3. In Ireland, a mobile home is not a sign of a hillbilly dwelling. They tend to be vacation homes for the middle class. So it was really strange to see a beautiful coastline or picturesque city with a trailer park in a prime location. Given my Kentucky roots, my mind couldn't even process this complete reversal. 4. Johnny must have had an Irish brother named Eddie. There are Eddie Rockets restaurants populated all over Ireland. I never went in, but my guess is that they served black pudding too. 5. The Euro really sucks. Or rather, the exchange rate sucks. Funny story. Okay not so funny, but you've read this far and so you might as well stick it out. I kept calling them Pounds instead of Euros the entire trip. Okay, that reads very unfunny. But I already wrote this and hit the "send" button, so it's too late to delete it.

Livin La Vida Costa Rica, with a vengeance

Ever notice how some movie sequels attempt to be unnecessarily creative when a simple 2 or 3 suffix (as in Jaws 2 or Jaws 3) would do? I think Die Hard has to be one of the worst offenders, with Die Hard 2: Die Harder, and then Die Hard with a Vengeance. Then there's always the "Son of ___", "Bride of ___", and "___ Returns". Let me know if you remember a better silly sequel name. Enough of that though, to the main course. The resumption of our travels...

Saturday, September 10
Today we began a 2-day trip to go see the turtles in the Northeastern corner of Costa Rica - in a place called Tortuguero. Which literally means "turtle-catcher" after the natives who used to catch the turtles (I'm guessing here). This 2 day trip began with a 3 hour bus ride full of camera-toting tourists, many of them not of the 20 & 30 year old persuasion. Ooooh - the excitement of adventure was thick in the air. The northeastern area is a bit marshy and not so habitated, so the roads were not in spectacular condition. We did get to see a banana-packing plant along the way though. And about 30 kilometers of nothing but banana plantations. Fun. Our tour guide on this bus ride was the king of the entirely unnecessary dramatic pause. I've never seen (or heard) anyone, ANYONE, ever use as many dramatic pauses in normal speech where they are absolutely unnecessary. Neeraj and I had to duck down so that he didn't see us cracking up. He'd say things like, "And dinner tonight... ... ... ... is at 7pm... ... ... ... 7pm... ... ... ... 7pm." After a 2 hour boat ride from the end of the bus road, we finally arrived at our fancy hotel. They had a live band singing. Except that I thought it was more speaking in a tune rather than singing, since there was a clear lack of musical essence to the voices. And the song? Matilda. "Matilda. Matilda. Took the money and run Venezuela". In the early evening, we took a short trip from our hotel into the town of Tortuguero. During this short jaunt, we quickly got annoyed with one of the other tourists - someone I like to call "Cluelessita". I'm jumping ahead, but this quick bit will explain the name completely. On the ride back to San Jose, this girl said (and I quote, or pretty darn close) "Sometimes when someone is speaking Spanish, I can pick up a few of the words and I get really excited. Then I lose them because I got too excited." Anyway, after Cluelessita asked an inordinate number of questions related to the life cycles and mating habits of turtles and responding to each of the answers with a glossed-over brain-dead "Wowwwww", Neeraj and I went off in search of an internet terminal so that he could contact his wonderful loving girlfriend. This evening was actually pretty cool. At 8pm, we went to the beach with the park rangers to watch the turtles lay eggs. No flashlights, no cameras, and no light-colored clothing. The intent was to be as invisible to the turtles as possible. Quick aside - Neeraj had no idea what the hubbub (bub) was about with all of these turtles - he thought we came here on a 2 day trip to see the standard turtle (about 6 inches), not realizing that we would be in the midst of behemoth green sea turtles (4 feet long). So everyone who knows or sees Neeraj anytime soon, be sure to point at him and laugh uncontrollably. At him. Not with him... ... ... ... At him... ... ... 7pm. So we spotted a turtle that had just come up on the beach and was beginning to make it's way to the top of the beach to potentially lay some eggs. The group sat down and held still so as to not frighten the turtle away. Instead of coming straight up the beach, this turtle decided to come in at a slight angle and came within 3 or 4 feet from us. We were in spitting distance. Not that we would spit on a turtle. But it wouldn't notice anyway because it has a shell. We also got to watch several turtles leave the beach to go back into the ocean, and also saw a turtle laying eggs. Quite an eventful evening.

Sunday, September 11th
We woke up at 5am this morning to go on a boat ride through the canals to go check out some birds. Not "birds" in the British slang, but birds as the squawky lightweight creatures that we know them as. And we saw many birds, and I no longer remember which ones. I'm not much of a birder. We also saw some Caymans (mini-crocodiles) and a few small turtles. After a quick breakfast and shower, we took a quick 2 hour boat ride back to the bus ride, and then a 3-hour van-ride to San Jose. With Cluelessita. Neeraj and I had both come to the conclusion that we could ill afford to look at each other for the majority of the trip or else we'd burst out laughing at Cluelessita. And that would have been... ... ... rude.

Monday, September 12th
Today was the first day we had on our own. The previous week and change had been prescribed by the package tour we had paid for. The rest of this week was up to us. So after some hemming, and a little bit of hawwing, we settled on renting a car. Not a normal car, mind you, but a 4 wheel drive manual. A Daihatsu. What the heck is a Daihatsu? I think maybe it's Kia's low-cost division. And that's pretty darn scary. Acting on some advice from other Tortuguero tourists, we settled on our destination of Dominical on Pacific coast - largely a sleepy surfer town with nice beaches. The route to Dominical went through the mountains - a stretch of road that the locals call "Devil's Pass" because it's very windy and high in the mountains. But that Devil was no match for my driving prowess, as I conquered it in no time. That is, only after I took the hint of other motorists and became comfortable with passing very large trucks going very slowly on a very windy road. At some point, you just say "the hell with it" and punch the gas. In the States, I wouldn't do this. But in Costa Rica, all of the drivers are very aware of their surroundings and understand what other drivers must do. So they are expecting this sort of driving, which is why it works. Similar to New York City driving, which wouldn't work in most other places in the country. We reached Dominical just after sundown and picked a place out of the guidebook called Tortilla Flats. This was our first sub-4 star hotel experience in Costa Rica. And even then at $35/double, it was more than most of the tourists here were paying. But you get what you pay for. Neither of us slept well, and I got freaked out by a co-habitant roach that I met during a late-night bathroom break. I hate cockroaches. Pure loathing. Even as I type this, I am shuddering.

Tuesday, September 13th
After some breakfast and dropping off a load of laundry, we drove a few kilometers up to a private rainforest reserve called Hacienda Baru for a tree-climbing and zip line adventure. On this trip, our guides pointed out a few birds, a two-toed sloth, and a three-toed sloth. The only reason we knew how many toes they had is that we waved and then counted quickly as each waved back. The tree climbing adventure was neat - they suspended several ropes from a really really tall tree. And we used ropes and winches to climb up. Winch #1 was attached to your body harness. Winch #2 was attached to your legs. So, the process is that you stand up, putting all the pressure on Winch #2, and raise Winch #1 as high as possible. Then you sit in your harness with all the pressure on the recently elevated Winch #1, and lift your legs up along with Winch #2. Lather, rinse, repeat. This was quite a work-out for both of us, since we were mostly using our arms and not our legs. I could even hear my old climbing-fanatic roomies yelling at me "Use your legs!!!". Acting on a tip from someone we met at the hotel's bar last night, we decided to head north to the Rafiki Safari Lodge (yes - Rafiki like Rafiki the medicine monkey from the Lion King). All of yesterday's driving was on paved road. Today was all unpaved. After 20 km on very pot-holey road, we turned onto a gravel road for 17km. Actually, calling it gravel is like calling Cluelessita a Rhodes Scholar. Many times along the way, we questioned whether or not we were on the right road, or even on a road at all. When we arrived, we didn't know what to think. Then the manager, Loki, came bounding down the steps to our Daihatsu in the empty parking lot to welcome us and lead us up to the bar to chat and have our free welcome drink. Apparently, we were the only guests, and the last guests were the ones who had recommended the place to us. Rafiki is a relatively new place, opening in 2000 to preserve rainforest, promote socially and environmentally responsible tourism, and raise money to soon begin a tapir reintroduction program. What's a tapir? It's this huge behemoth of an animal that occurs naturally in these parts and through Central America and parts of South America. Rafiki recycles everything they can, composts or burns everything else (they go through great pains to ensure that it's done in an environmentally friendly way). All of the power is hydro-electrically generated from a nearby stream. The lodging at Rafiki is nothing short of extraordinary. They took African safari tents, added a big front porch, and outfitted the back of the tent with a large bathroom rivalling that of 4 star hotels. Our jaws dropped when we saw it and we were speechless. Needless to say, staying at Rafiki is not cheap, but since it was low season, we worked out a deal with Loki that was mutually agreeable. And no, this did not include washing dishes or performing certain favors. But by far the coolest part of Rafiki is the pool, or more specifically, the huge concrete waterslide leading to the pool. The pool itself is quite small, but is filled by water from the mountain stream, and overflows into a lake a few 100 feet away - the constant water replenishment means that no chlorine is needed, which is again, environmentally friendly. But back to the water slide - Neeraj and I must have slid down it at least 6 times each. And you go so fast that you get scared each and every time you slide down it. Just phenomenal. This evening, two girls joined us and Loki as the inhabitants of Rafiki: Jill and Renee, who are originally from Cincinnati. Jill has been in Costa Rica for the past few months doing odd jobs, including serving as a raft guide at Rafiki for a week or two. Renee is her visiting older sister, who currently lives in Phoenix working in a landscape architecture firm.

Wednesday, September 14th
Our big adventure trip this morning was a combination horseback ride (something I had sworn to my privates that I would not do again) and rafting trip down the Savegre River. The coolest part of the horseback ride was that we saw a family of toucans. I tried to take a picture, but the darn things wouldn't stay still or in plain unencumbered view. Stupid toucans with their Stoopid Froot Loops. The rest of the horseback ride was largely forgettable as far as I was concerned. Anytime we tried to gallop, I had to re-swear that I'd never do this again. The pain. Oh... ... ... the pain. The Savegre River itself is mostly a Class 3 river - nothing all that spectacular for normal rafts. But we weren't going on normal rafts; the rafts we were using were called "Mini-Me's". It's basically a much smaller raft for two rafters and one guide in the back, which means that the raft is much more maneuverable and much lighter. This is basically a recipe for getting tossed. And I got tossed a lot, beginning with the second rapid. Loki was our raft guide, and we pretty much told him to maximize the fun at virtually any cost. Which is pretty much a raft guide's dream. Renee, on the other hand, was scared to go at all, so their boat took easy routes with minimum spillage potential. We got tossed and then went back for more. All in all, Neeraj got tossed 5 times and I got tossed 10 times. Several of my unbalancings we due to rapid swings and shifts of the raft, completely attributable to the skill of Loki. The last 5 came on the same rapid - a relatively small rapid that was good for surfing (the raft pretty much holds in spot provided that the balancing is right) with an eddy to the side that allowed you to re-enter the rapid if you lost it. So we redid this rapid about 8 times. This was the mini-highlight of the trip, by far. Well, besides the waterslide, which we slid down another 8 times or so when we got back. We decided to stay at Rafiki again tonight because we were having such a great time, and having good company makes all the difference in the world. For anyone who is counting, this would make the first time that we are staying in the same place for consecutive nights.

Thursday, September 15th
This morning, we went on a 2-hour hike with Rafael on a close-up look through the rainforest and learn more about the plantlife and birdlife of the area. I'm not naturally very excited about plantlife and birdlife, but I was very excited just to take a hike (pardon the euphemism) and have a look around and appreciate nature and its beauty. And it was visually stunning. Since Neeraj and I have had so little actual exercise, we were absolutely pooped with just hiking for 2 hours. Very very sad. But we had the perfect remedy for this when we returned. Waterslide. Say it with me: water... ... ... slide. After cleaning up, we drove up to Quepos and the Manuel Antonio National Park, which is quite possibly some of the most touristed area of the country. A few short years ago, this area was considered to be quiet and hidden. Now, it's full of large resorts overlooking the Pacific. I wasn't particularly looking forward to going here based on everything I had heard, but I didn't want to not go either since the surrounding landscape is supposed to be beautiful. After finding a place with an ocean view, we pretty much just planted down to rest. We were both exhausted. Our room had a TV too, so we watched some Telemundo. I love Telemundo. Sometimes I turn the volume down when I watch Telemundo - but that's a different story. I watched some of the Miss Italy pageant - the talent portion of their pageant is quite diverse and interesting. One girl did what looked to be a stripper routine on the host, and another did some face-painting. But the Telemundo highlight was watching that show "Small Wonder" - remember that sitcom from the 80's? It's the one of the family with a 10 year old robot daughter who talks in a monotone voice, but somehow their idiot community doesn't realize that she's a robot. It's way funnier in Spanish. And no, I was not drinking.

Friday, September 16th
Our main activity today was a kayaking trip through a nearby mangrove swamp called Isla Damas. It was just me and Neeraj on this trip with the guide (like that's never happened before), and we had actual kayaks this time (not the inflatable kind). But there was no danger whatsoever. Except the swarm of monkeys that we met. And any temple-going Indian knows, monkeys are evil. They steal your things and hide their poop in your clothing when you're unawares (no, this has never happened to me). We did manage to see more birds and more trees. After cleaning up at the hotel, we swung by the park entrance and picked up Jill and Renee to give them a lift back to San Jose. It was a 3-4 hour drive, and it was getting late. The treacherous part of the trip was up a mountain, without guardrails. And seemingly without any lines or reflectors whatsoever. This was the real adventure. There were a number of times where I had no idea where the pavement was, what direction it was going, and where the edge of the cliff was. With the headlights coming in my direction, I generally just aimed to stay to the right of them and cross my fingers that I was correct. On more than one occasion, the road signs were not reflective in nature, and we barely veered in time for our turns. The redeeming factor in this trip was the radio. For whatever reason, Costa Rica has a plethora of radio stations that play 80's music that is extremely singable. So, every 3 minutes, we were all hooting excitedly and singing along to songs we hadn't heard in forever. We even heard two separate Bangles songs ("Eternal Flame" and "Walking Down Your Street") on two different radio stations. I mean - when's the last time that's happened?

Saturday, September 17th
I returned the rental car and then got on my flight home. No drama. No interesting stories. Nada. Sorry to disappoint. I did finish another book today though - "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" by David Sedaris. I've read another book by Sedaris, and something tells me that all of his books are pretty similar. It's an interesting read. Nothing I'd say that you MUST go read now, but it's not a bad read in the least. That is, if you are like me and don't care much for the movie-worthy action adventures or murder mysteries or Harlequins.

Okie doke. That's it for now. I don't know where the next trip may be, but I figure that it will be something a bit more adventurous. Currently, I'm leaning towards a long hiking trip (7-10 day) in Patagonia. Any takers? Let me know if you are interested and we can work out a time frame that works for all those interested. As far as the extended guys weekend out, let me know if you are interested in that too. I'm thinking of a 3-day rafting trip down the Colorado River in April for starters.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.
-Paraag

Tidbits:
1. One of the first things Neeraj and I looked up in our Spanish-English dictionary was "moo" when we passed a cow on the bed of a truck. Just so that you know, it's "mugido". No really... it is... No joke... mugido.

2. To give you an idea of the level of comedy between my brother and me these past 2 weeks, here's a few sample whittled-down conversations:
me (offering a bottle of sunscreen): "do you want to put more on?"
Neeraj: "did you just call me a moron?"

me: "you have the door key, right?"
Neeraj: "no, you're dorky"

Neeraj: "wakka wakka wakka"
me: "here comes Jaws" (from a Pac-Man sticker 25 yrs ago when we were utes)

Neeraj: "what the hell is that?"
me: "must be one of them Mexican staring frogs of southern Sri Lanka"

Okay, maybe you had to be there. I was going to try and have a count for you of the number of obscure movie/TV/advertisement references we made over the length of the trip, but I lost count on the second morning.

3. I'll try again. On Friday, we asked our kayak guide what river we were crossing. After he replied "Naranjo", my brother asked if this was like "naranja" which means orange. When the guide replied that it was not, my brother responded with how about "naranja con cojones?"

4. Watching NFL games on HDTV is amazing. This has nothing to do with the trip, but I'm watching football right now as I write this, and it's important to note.

Livin La Vida Costa Rica

Hi. I'm in Costa Rica. And you know what that means... you probably should move on to the next message until you have time to read this! For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, a brief introduction: every year for the past three or so, whenever I travel abroad for fun and pleasure, I send back a weekly note to my friends and family who want to keep tabs on me. This was blogging before people knew what blogs were. And I'm too stubborn to find a blog site. So hit delete if you want to or simply tell me to get you the hell off of this list.

The quick overview - my brother Neeraj and I are in Costa Rica for a couple of weeks. For any of you who have had the pleasure of meeting my brother, you`ve understood within 5 seconds where I got my rather strange sense of humour from.

Saturday, September 3rd
I got up early this morning to catch my 8am flight out of LaGuardia. Worse even, my poor cousin had to drop me off. Wow. I'm even boring myself already. This was a pretty ho-hum day. I waited at the hotel for my brother to join me. In the meantime, I read an ENTIRE book - The Kite Runner by some Afghani fellow. It's really quite good. Consider that a reco.

Sunday, September 4th
Neeraj and I started the first real day of our 10-day package tour today. I got lazy and we booked a package tour. Very unlike me, I know. Please forgive and forget. First stop: the Monteverde cloud forest. We boarded our private soccer-mom mobile transportation taxi for the 3 hour ride. Roughly 53.7% of this ride was unpaved and filled with pothole-hell. But we arrived to the Hotel El Establo in the early afternoon. This hotel was absolutely stunning. We had a "Junior Suite", complete with a walk-out back entrance that overlooked said-cloud forest. Our first event of the day? A Canopy tour. I had no idea what a canopy tour was, but what I did know is that we were doing the tour with "The Original Canopy Tour" company. It`s a good thing I did this package tour thingy, otherwise I may have been tempted by "The Imitation Canopy Tour" company`s offerings. And that would have been very bad. So, the canopy tour is basically as follows: the company selected very strong and sturdy trees to build platforms on way way up there (enter some height dimension here that would make you go "oy vey!"). Between these platforms, they string a super duper heavy duty industrial-grade cable. And on this cable, they attach you with a harness to a pulley and send you on your way. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! It was fun - yes. But we were so focused on getting us tourist types from platform to platform that we didn`t really have time to focus on the surrounding nature. So, 1 hour of 7 zip lines and 2 rappels and we were done. On our tour was a fellow who manages the zip line operation up at Whistler. He says he was "merely" on vacation, but we think he was doing some serious recon work. You know - since Whistler in British Columbia and Monteverde, Costa Rica are direct competitors and all. I made it a point to let him know that "The Original Canopy Tour" is often imitated, but never duplicated. Neeraj and I were not content with driving through pothole-hell only to take in a few zip lines, so we signed up for a night walk to look for sleeping animals and grody bugs. We even got to hold our own weakly powered flashlights in desperate need of new batteries! Imagine the fun and excitement. So let`s see - we woke up an armadillo sleeping in the trees (that`s what we were told it was), made a tarantula retreat into a hole, and saw lots of ants, leaf-cutters, and other grody insects. Unfortunately, they didn`t let us keep our weakly powered flashlights in desperate need of new batteries as a souvenir. After a quick dinner at Morphos Cafe in the tourist trap town of Monteverde, we went in search of nightlife. We found it at Bar Amigos. Blaring music, disco lights, and completely empty. Perhaps 9pm was too early. But I`m an old fart now, so we headed to the hotel, where hanging out on the back porch watching the lightning and listening to the thunder over the cloud forest narrowly beat out watching Scary Movie 3 on the tube.

Monday, September 5th
After a quick breakfast of black beans and rice and scrambled eggs, we were picked up by another soccer-mom mobile to head to the Arenal Volcano. Except this time, our ride was not so private: we were joined by 4 backpackers and a local lady complete with snot-nosed (though cute) 2 year old. After surviving another few hours of pothole-hell on dirt bullock-cart roads, we came to Laguna de Arenal. The next portion of our trip was by boat. So there`s a bunch of us tourists standing there, waiting for instruction, and the fellow tells Neeraj and me to get on the boat. So we do. And the boat takes off. The backpackers are still standing on the dock. And so we`re the only two people on the boat with at least 60 seats. We thought we had booked a relatively cheap package tour. I guess not. So Neeraj and I did what anyone would do in this situation - we laughed and pointed and stuck our tongues out at the backpackers. And when we got to the other side of the lake? Yes - we had our own private tour bus take us to our hotel. Quick aside to demonstrate the level of stupid comedy that ensues when my brother and I are in the same room. The tour company`s name was Arenal Adventures (not to be confused with A Renal Adventure that occurs with passing a kidney stone), and their motto was "For Nature Lovers". Upon seeing this plastered on the boat, I promptly turned to Neeraj and said "Neeraj, don`t be a nature hater". Okay. Maybe we`re the only two people in existence that find this funny. Our hotel here is Arenal Paraiso, and our accommodation is a private bungalow with a view of the still-active Arenal Volcano. There is a beautiful pool with a wet bar, and 10-15 small jacuzzi pools scattered about for privacy. Very romantic indeed. Too bad we`re not gay. True - we are brothers, but remember that we grew up Kentucky. Our tour this evening was to the base of Arenal Volcano. Pre-1968, no one knew that this was a volcano, and the name was Montana Arenal. Unfortunately for the villagers on the west side of the "mountain", everyone learned the truth loud and clear as a village was wiped out. Since then, the volcano has been spewing forth a steady stream of lava bursts. With the binoculars, it was possible to see some red rocks tumble down the side. After the volcano tour and some nice picture-taking activities, we went to the Tabacon hot springs for a relaxing soak in hot springs and a grand buffet dinner. Again, Que Romantica!

Tuesday, September 6th
Ahhh... our first real exercise on the trip was planned for this morning. After another breakfast of black beans and rice and scrambled eggs, we headed out for a 4 hour mountain bike ride with two other tourists, who doubled as American Airlines flight attendants. Chris and Andre. Both female. And both over 40. But they were loads of fun and we learned plenty about the secret lifestyle of flight attendants. By the time we returned to our private hideaway bungalow, we were thoroughly exhausted - feet, ankles, quads, butt, you name it. All in pain. But instead of relaxing to give the pain a chance, we had to get cleaned up to be taken to our next destination: Selva Verde. Selva Verde is a private rainforest reserve on 500+ acres. They are level 2 on the eco-tourism commission scale thingy, whatever the heck that means. And this being low season, we were about the only ones there. Except for about 15 retired folks with Elderhostel. Neeraj and I tried to do as much exploration of this place as possible, since our departure was scheduled for early the next morning. So, we took a walk about the grounds. Or at least we tried to. The primary forest was restricted for private tours only and it was too late in the day to take a private tour. So we were left with the much smaller secondary forest, which to our chagrin was not very accessible either. The park attendant there basically restricted us to a straight gravel road that ran for a few hundred meters. That was much fun. So we went back to the room to rest the aforementioned sore parts. Then we met Iliana. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. She works at Selva Verde and spoke perfect American English. Probably because she grew up in California, but that´s beside the point. She came by and talked with us as we had our dinner in the empty dining hall, and then we were graced by her presence again later as we had a few cordials at the bar. And that´s about it. Quick clarification for Neeraj`s girlfriend Rupa (earmuffs for the rest of you). Iliana is no Rupa. Believe me. I just had nothing more exciting to write about than a decently cute lady who we spoke to for about 5 minutes in total. We were THAT bored.

Wednesday, September 7th
We woke up this morning at 6am to go on a free birdwatching tour with one of the guides. As expected, we were the only people on the tour. So we had customized service. Among the more impressive sightings were a toucan, a couple of kingfishers, and other random birds that we don't remember the names of. Later in the morning, we went kayaking this morning on the Class 2 Sarapiqui river. Neeraj has never kayaked before, and I`ve been a few times. But before you get some amazingly glamourous imagery in your head of us doing rolls and hot dogging it in the rapids or anything like that, I should make a few minor clarifications about this kayak. Firstly, we were in a 2-person kayak. Secondly, the kayak was inflatable. They call it a ducky kayak. I think of it more as an inflatable canoe. But it was all good since neither of us had ever been in anything other than a raft over Class 2 rapids. Again, we were treated to customized personalized service, since we were the only two people on this trip with our guide. Our guide David gave us little to no instruction at all too, which I particularly liked. David reminded me of Lou Diamond Phillips. Or Benjamin Bratt. Or a cross between the two. Along the way, Lou/Benji took us on a quick meandering through the woods to find some poisonous frogs. He caught a few really cool ones - a red one with blue legs called the Blue Jeans frog and a camouflage green and black one called the Sgt. Slaughter frog (okay - I don't remember what the real name was). W got to hold them and cuddle them and call them our own. They're poisonous but it's safe as long as we didn't lick them or rub them against any open wounds. Which was a bummer since I wanted to have a distance frog-spitting contest with Neeraj. Oh well, next time... After a quick lunch, we were driven in our luxury vehicular transport (a 20 year old four-door ratty pick-up truck) to our next hotel, which was another private reserve called Sueno Azul. This place could have been really cool, except that it was virtually deserted. It`s two in the afternoon and even the reception fellow was at a loss for what we could do for the remainder of the evening. Looking at the brochure for the place, we saw this huge man-made pool that is filled by a natural waterfall and figure that perhaps we should head over there to find people. Since there is no way to easily get there at this hour, we embark on a one hour hike on a gravel road. The place is deserted. So deserted that the fellow who maintains the area comes up to us and strikes up a conversation (though he speaks no English) because he`s bored out of his mind. We take a dip and then head over with this fellow to the butterfly garden that he also maintains, where we get to see all sorts of pupae, larvae, and all of those other icky and slimy and gooey stages that a butterfly goes through before becoming a butterfly. The neatest part of this excursion? We rode a tractor back to the lodge.

Thursday, September 8th
This morning we begin our 2-day/1-night rafting adventure down the Class 3/4 Pacuare River. On the trip with us were a couple from a Barcelona business school, a married couple who run a restaurant and store in Florida, and six ex-Enron older fellas who get together for an extended weekend every year for a guy`s weekend out of sorts. This is their 12th year doing this, and they`re just loads and loads of high hilarity and are full of stories of their drunken misadventures in the past. Through the course of conversation, it turned out that one of those guys has spent the last year and a half in Indianapolis (where my brother lives) and they both used to frequent the same place (BW3) and play the NTN trivia game all the time. They even recognized each other`s NTN names. Small world. After having breakfast and riding in a bus seemingly in the middle of nowhere for 3 hours, we finally arrived to the put in for the rafting trip. The six fellas in one raft, the other six in the second raft. The other raft also had an innertube that they dragged behind the raft for someone to attempt to ride out. "Attempt" is the key word here, as it didn´t take long for the first guy on the inner tube to get tossed. I was very jealous - I WANNA RIDE THE INNERTUBE!!! Today`s rafting adventure only consisted of one hour of Class 3 rapids. Along the way, we passed by many of the campsites of the other rafting companies. And then we arrived to the Pacuare Lodge where we were staying. Boy this was luxury. A bungalow for every 2 people, complete with fully functional bathroom. The kitchen was amazing and appointed with extremely nice cooking appliances. The lawn was meticulously manicured. Unbelievable. To kill some time while most of the others went on a canopy tour set up here, a few of us went for a short jungle hike to a couple of waterfalls for a swim and a waterfall massage. It had rained extremely heavily last night (which made for a much better and faster first day of rafting by the way), so our waterfalls were more than mere trickles and were powerful enough that we had trouble even staying underneath the waterfall to get the waterfall massage. But that didn`t keep me or Neeraj from trying. Our guide Laura remarked that we were like little kids. Dinner this evening was exquisite and by far the best meal that I`ve had so far: beef tenderloin, cashew rice, and some steamed vegetables with a few glasses of red wine. Even our dessert plates were decorated, just as you`d find in a fancy restaurant. Even breakfast the next morning was sans the black beans and rice. And yet, we were in the middle of nowhere without even electricity. Led by the six older fellas, we all proceeded to the bar and drank the place out of beer, vodka, and tequila. Slowly, everyone retired and went to sleep... before 11pm. When the guys realized this the next morning, they quickly realized that this was the earliest any of them had ever gone to bed on any of their prior 12 excursions. Even so, one of them was so drunk that he fell in a ditch at some point and woke up in a dirty bed with an extremely badly bruised/broken toe.

Friday, September 9th
At first, I thought to myself that this was way too luxurious for my style. I thought differently this morning when I woke up completely and utterly refreshed. The pampering had had its intended effect. So I showered up and headed to the dining bungalow, and WHAAAA! There's a huge 4 or 5 foot long venomous Bushwacker snake right there on the ground in front of me. And now that I've jumped away, it hasn't moved an inch. And it appears that its head is propped up on a rock. And there are people inside the dining bungalow laughing at me. Nice prank. But I want to see my brother's reaction. After all, night before last, he freaked out over a crunchy junebug on the OUTSIDE of the window screen. This should be good. So I walk with him from our bungalow to the dining bungalow making sure that he passes right by the snake, and ummm... nothing. Doesn't even notice it. So I call out to him to stop and motion over and he's like - "Hey, there's a snake on the ground." Today is the fun day of rafting: all Class 3s and 4s. Yippee! The first half of the day was largely uneventful in our boat, as we were mostly turning around to watch the six guys sing songs and halfheartedly paddle out of synch. After lunch, Neeraj and I swapped with a couple of the older gentlemen who weren`t of the mind to get tossed from the boat. In the end we were very happy that they offered to do this. For one of the rapids, we all stood up on the raft in a circle huddle, and attempted to ride out the wave. It didn`t work, and three of us were tossed from the boat. For another rapid, we headed straight for a rock wall as our guide yelled "No brakes! No brakes!". I got tossed with Neeraj on this one, and found myself under the raft for what seemed like 90 seconds, but in reality was a little more than 5 seconds. I was actually pretty calm and collected while under water, and I remember thinking to myself that I just might want to find out where the edge of this raft is because breathing is important too. And seemingly, every which way I went, all I found was more raft. Until 90 seconds later of course (or 5 seconds if you want to believe the guide). The guide told me that he could see me pushing up on the raft floor and that I traversed the raft a couple of times before finding the edge. All good fun. After the rafting run, we said our goodbyes, exchanged e-mail addresses, and headed on our way. The fellas were heading down to a town on the Caribbean coast called Cahuita, and we were headed back to the lovely Sueno Azul, where we would again have absolutely nothing to do. So I picked up a book there called "Ragtime in Simla" by Barbara Cleverly. I don`t recommend it. It`s your standard murder mystery with plot twists and so forth, but it was set in early 1900`s India. Every major character was a Britisher, except of course for the fellow who came out of the woodworks to be the ultimate villain - the seemingly innocuous (and very Indian) workplace confidante of the female suspects. Just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Okay, that`s week one in a nutshell. I`ll write more when I get home and let you know all about week two.

Tidbits:
1. I`m thinking of starting my own guy`s extended weekend (3-5 days) out type of groups. I`m not looking for any level of drunken debauchery here that these guys partake in, but I think it`d be neat to have a standing weekend trip where a bunch of us go hiking/camping/rafting/biking/spelunking/whatever to somewhere where few or none of us have been. And you rotate planning ownership among the group from year to year. Let me know if you`re interested.

2. For whatever reason, virtually every tourist that we`ve come across from the US has been from the West Coast. My theory is that East Coasters go the the Caribbean for vacation, while West Coasters go to Mexico or Central America for vacation. Note that I`m still working on the refinements of this particular theory.

3. Black beans and rice and scrambled eggs are the standard breakfast here, as Zach and I found that a single pancake and porridge were the standard breakfast in Peru. In both cases, it was very good and filling the first few days, but gets very old very quickly. I want my Kashi.

4. The standard phrase that everyone says here is "Pura Vida", which is the national "hello" or "goodbye" of Costa Rica, and literally translates to "Pure Life". I suppose this is akin to "Hang Loose" in Hawaii and "No problem, Mon" in Jamaica.

5. Does anyone know how to say, "Get your brown ass a calling card so you can call your lovely, spectacular, magnificent, loving girlfriend" in Spanish? Rupa would like to know.

6. Any serious coffee buffs out there? I'm thinking about hauling back some nice beans, and just wanted to know if anyone was nuts about coffee enough to want some.