Reunification Day

It's 04:30 Sai Gon time and I'm sitting in the departure lounge at the airport awaiting my flight to Hong Kong. It's also "Reunification Day" here in Vietnam. Next to Tet, this is the biggest holiday of the year.

Reunification Day marks the fall of the South Vietnamese government and the defeat of the USA in 1975; it's sort of like our Independence Day. On the way to the airport a few minutes ago, there were already fireworks going off in the early dawn, and revelers on the streets.

It's my reunification day with my country, home, and family. It's a celebration for me as well.

Thanks for traveling along with me once again. Hope to see you soon!

Sai Gon Night Rider

I can tell that it must be nearing the end of this particular trip because the wrinkles in my suits are taking longer and longer to hang out when I get to a new city and hotel. I also find I’m beginning to think about creative ways in which to wear a dress shirt again and avoid having to send it to the laundry and paying $15.00 a shot. (After all, I can have a new shirt made for $20.00.) Most telling of all, I’m losing my grip on reality.

This fact came to mind last night after I returned to my room from a ride on the back of a motor bike through the streets of Sai Gon. I was tired and dizzy from full day of travel from China to Vietnam. A spectacular thunderstorm had delayed our arrival at Sai Gon’s airport, and therefore put us smack in the middle of the city’s rush hour as we made our way to our hotel in the center of the city. The “ … conveniently located New World Hotel, just 20 minutes from the airport …” was a two hour crawl instead.

Several weeks before, I had made arrangements to meet my Vietnamese translator (Thi) for dinner the night of my arrival. Now that I was over two hours late, I was anxious and disappointed about missing that appointment, and knew that I had inconvenienced him. However, when we arrived at the hotel, there he was waiting by the entrance, looking perplexed but cheerful.

“Dr. Jeffrey! Welcome to my city!”

I greeted him with my apologies, and explained the circumstances of my delay. “You shouldn’t have waited for me, Thi. You should have just left a message for me with the Concierge.” (I was so tired and fed up with travel that all I wanted to focus on was checking in and going to bed.) “Perhaps we can meet for coffee tomorrow” I offered lamely.

“But Dr. Jeffrey; I have my motorbike, and we are to have dinner together, don’t you remember?” The expression on his face was one of utter disbelief that I was actually considering not honoring the commitment I had made to him. That was point at which I now know that fatigue kicked in fully and overtook my sense of reality. He looked at me plaintively as he held out a less than substantial helmet obviously meant for my use.

“OK” I said with a lopsided smile, wondering who the heck had uttered this decisive and fateful word. I asked the front desk to send my bags to my room, rolled up my sleeves, put on the helmet, and climbed onto the back of his motorbike.

There are 3 million motorbikes in Saigon. They are all driven by people who have no regard for their lives. We were suddenly surrounded by every one of them.

To observe the flow, listen to the din, and take in the acrid smell of this mechanical river from the sidewalk is a stunning thing. To be in the clutch of its current is awesome. The dense, hot night; monsoon wet, made our forward progress seem heroic. Speech was impossible, so my mind focused on the neon blur developing around us like a time exposure. This distraction kept my thoughts away from myriad options of probable, instant death. I was both into, and out of the experience.

I have no idea of how long we rode. We stopped and had dinner somewhere, but what we ate escapes me.

This was all last night. The fact that I’m writing about it tonight is a very good sign.

Sitting here now, I can hear the muffled honking of horns and the roar of the river 20 floors below. The idea that I jumped in and swam is curious to me. But then; so is life.

Beijing to Guangzhou

The haze approaching Guagzhou and the Pearl River Valley

I just arrived in Guangzhou. Though it was only a 3 hour flight south from Beijing, the bus travel to and from the airports added almost 5 hours to the travel day. It was cold and raining this morning in Beijing, and here it's a muggy, dripping, hot, polluted 80 degrees F at 8:00 in the evening. Chinese legend tells of Guangzhou being founded by Five Immortals riding five rams. Each ram planted stalks of rice which symbolizes abundance of harvest or prosperity. And this is how Guangzhou got its nickname, 'Yang Cheng' , which literally means 'Goat City'. ( Good luck finding a goat within the city limits today .... )

The city is the capital of Guangdong Province, one of the richest industrial areas in China in the south of China, and is the second largest source of Chinese students studying in the U.S.; that's why I'm here. The city and it's 14 million inhabitants haven't shown me much to write home about, thus far. However, none of the roads from the airports to the city centers in China that I've been on have been scenic routes; quite the contrary.

Tomorrow is another full day of meetings with U.S. Consular officers, and presentations to agency study abroad counselors. I'm beginning to dream about my PowerPoint presentation, and it's bordering on the "nightmare" category.

To clear my head of travel and thoughts about the schedule on Friday, I took a walk through the market area just a few blocks from the "lovely" Dong Fang Hotel, where I'm staying. It's an assault on your senses to navigate these little roads and alley ways. I smelled more things that I couldn't identify than those I could, and saw goods being sold that I could only guess and wonder about. I did recognize the product in one particular food stall. Prior to coming upon the scene below, a small group of us had been contemplating a Peking Duck dinner later this evening. My thoughts quickly turned (along with my stomach) to something more vegetarian.

Saw - Ree .......

Thanks for looking in on me, and I apologize for disappearing from your radar during my first week of travel. The pace of the tour and the fog of my jet lag have kept me from getting up a new post.

The first few days in Shanghai are a blur as I think back on them now. I know some good meetings took place, and I distributed a couple of boxes of materials, but the details elude me right now. I do remember that the weather was bad and that the drivers and crews of the formula one race teams were staying in the hotel. The Shanghai Grand Prix took place while we were there. (I knew all the media and fans weren’t outside the hotel to see me enter my bus the morning after I arrived….)

I’m in Beijing now. Yesterday I made 18 individual 20 minute presentations to teams of study abroad agents. I could hardly remember my name at the end of the day. On the way to dinner, I asked a fellow tour member if I looked as bad as I felt. He said, “Let me take you picture. Like the saying; it’s worth a thousand words.”

I offer the words to you here below.

I’ll be OK after a good night’s rest.

Quiet Endings

The weather has turned very cold again during the past two days. The snow and ice that had been swept aside on the streets earlier in the week to melt, have now become frozen masses.

I took a short taxi ride from my hotel last night to one of Beijing's old huntongs and had a quiet meal with a colleague. It was like stepping back in time. The old neighborhoods, dating back to the 17th century seemed to be patiently resting in the frigid night air. The small restaurant oozed agelessness, and echoed faintly with the sounds and smells of the (perhaps) millions of customers who had occupied its interior briefly over the centuries. And there I sat, yet another customer who hoped for something hot and good, to help him shake off his weariness from the day's labors, and ease him into a good night's rest.

It worked. I left satisfied and happy; feeling once again privileged to have experienced such a moment in time.

Tomorrow morning I reurn to California. I'm ready.

A Winter's Afternoon

The bitterly cold weather has slowly been yielding to intimations of spring over the last few days. Yesterday, I was privileged to see some evidence of this with a quick visit to the historic and stunning Summer Palace located near my hotel. The iced over waters around the palace complex showed some thawing near the shore in the faint, late afternoon sun. It was a wonderful calming way to end a hectic eight hours at the study abroad fair. The memory and stress of dealing with a crowd of over 20,000 students seem to flow out of me just by being at rest next to the lake.

The thought of having to go back again to the exhibition center and face the crowds one more time this morning didn’t sit well with me all night. But, in the end, I returned, and survived, and am now taking advantage of the comfort and seclusion of my hotel room.

Sometimes you feel yourself weightless, thinned, traveling like this. You draw back the curtains on a rectangle of a huge cityscape at dawn, and realize that you are cast adrift from everything that has given you identity. Thousands of miles from anyone who knows you, you have the illusion that your past is lighter, scarcely yours at all. Even your ties of love can seem attenuated, until you power up your laptop, download your e-mail, and look at your blog to see if anyone remembers you or where you are.

Thanks for checking in on me; it means so much.

A sweet potato vendor outside the Summer Palace

Meanwhile, Back in Beijing ....

The last time I was in Beijing was in the fall of 2008. It's a different experience this week. It's winter, and it's very cold. The green parks, the showy display of flower beds, and green trees that line the city roads and highways have given way to a monochromatic landscape. It's difficult to find people wrapped up in anything but black and drab gray.

I had spent an afternoon last October wandering around the Forbidden City amidst thousand of Chinese tourists groups while trying to fend off hawkers of maps, trinkets, and bandit taxi drivers whispering promises of sights and experiences that only foreigners could sample and appreciate ( and afford). Yesterday afternoon, the Forbidden City was "forbidden" due to ice and cold. Not a duck could be found on or near the frozen moats.

An old friend from Athens that now lives just outside Beijing, came and collected me from my hotel yesterday at noon. He was eager to show me some of his adopted capitol city (from the warm confines of his driver equipped, posh, American sedan) that I may not have seen previously. We drove around the city for a while and then he suggested that we go to a traditional tea room that someone had recommended to him.

With the aid of a GPS and several questions to pedestrians along the way, the driver was able to find the address. The tea room was in a residential area just off a main city street; it indeed looked old and established. We were greeted inside by too many hostesses, and the sound of traditional Chinese music. After being led to a small table and freeing ourselves from our overcoats, it all changed. No sooner had we sat down when the Chinese music hesitated, and "Hotel California" began to blast through the audio system. We laughed, complemented the hostess on the "quality" of the musical selection, and enjoyed the tea.

This proved to be the start of a very multi-cultural lunch. We found the only Moroccan restaurant in Beijing; a small, 4-tabled store front, and spent a couple of hours surrounded by conversations in Arabic, French, English and Chinese.

I have been reading a travel book about the Silk Road, (thanks, Chris!), in which the author, (Colin Thubron) comments about the Great Wall. "It was built to keep the Chinese in rather than the nomads out ... it separated civilization from barbarism, light from darkness." My afternoon experiences called to mind that the Wall has crumbled, and that for good and bad, the barbarians are inside.