It’s obvious what I should write about now. Marjie and I went to Ninh Binh this past weekend to enjoy the luxury of a soft opening at the Ana Mandara. I’d put a link to their website, but I can only find reviews and articles about the resort.
Tub with a View
Let me be clear, the weekend was a blast, but there was always something nagging me. We paid a fair to high price for what got. Can you complain about a bathroom with a view like this? Probably not, aside from the fact that anyone on the second floor of that building in the distance can look in, so … nice try. The buildings for the Deluxe Bungaloos had intricate wood carvings and traditional looking ceilings with exposed cross beams. Despite the initial appearance of luxurious elegance it only takes a few attempts to open or lock the bathroom door, the one call to maintenance to show you how hard you have to pull to unlock your door, and seeing water stream into the room during a heavy rain storm to realize the resort was not necessarily designed with attention for certain environmental factors that seem to afflict Vietnam – heat and rain. See, when it rains, you’d like to think your room is not at risk of flooding because the door doesn’t really seal when it closes. And, you’d like to think for the money poured into the wood and carvings that the designers also thought about perennial power shortages and high electricity prices, resulting in a beautiful, highly energy efficient bungalow. Not really, there were many holes to the outside where A/C could escape and bugs could enter. For the days when the weather encourages you to open the window, the lack of screens and mosquito nets coupled with pools of standing water making you decide between saving the planet or getting malaria.
Alright, enough griping. OK, well almost. The food was really expensive and there wasn’t much variety. It tasted good, but it just wasn’t worth what we had to pay.
That was it. All the little quirks aside, we loved our weekend there. We took a tour of the area to visit the three caves – Tam Coc – a few temples, the green pagoda – Bich Dong – and took a long bike ride around the Van Long Nature preserve.
Did I mention it rained all weekend? Well it did. And I think we loved what we did even more. Marjie was hell bent on taking a tour to see the caves. I was less than enthusiastic – another tour? in the rain? really? I could tell this was not a battle that could be won, so I went along. She was excited and loved it. I loved it, too. I’m glad she was unwavering in her determination to brave the fringe weather of a tropical storm to check these places out.
The River and Karsts
We were rewarded with lovely views of a karst lined river. We saw old temples. While not trying to be Theroux poo-pooish, the sites were only slightly marred by the stream of tourists, buses, and tourist service facilities that surrounded each of the attractions. The whole series of attractions was like a theme park for Vietnamese history. Think of Bush Gardens in Williamsburg, but much more legit and filled with locals trying to sell you all sorts of souvenirs.
I have to say, my favorite part of the weekend was riding around the Van Long preserve because we were on our own, didn’t need to listen/talk to a guide, and we could just go at our own pace. Aside from getting soaked in the last 20minutes of the ride, the other two hours took us through some ruddy roads, jungle, and around the big mountains. Next time we’ll actually get into the preserve with our own inflatable kayaks.
Though this may not be the most well thought out, insightful piece, I want to get back into the habit of writing. My one observation, confirmed during a conversation on the shuttle on the way to work, is that land use here in Vietnam leaves much to be desired. There’s no coordination across the country, so you wind up with massive concrete plants in pristine places that sit idle. You have massive industrial parks that are connected to no major economic center because the roads are terrible. You have massive resorts that likely employ local people, but they’re right smack in the middle of traditional rice paddies.
OK, who doesn’t like a 4 day weekend? That’s what I thought. I just had one this weekend and used it to do the kind of traveling I like to do – budget, rustic, active, and with a dose of good food to boot. Ethnic Travel delivered on its trip to Mai Châu.
I booked a 3-day/2-night trip starting and ending in Hanoi to the region. It wasn’t my first choice for the 4-day weekend. I wanted to go to Sapa. But the trips with Ethnic Travel all started in Sapa, so I would need to get myself there. Because I wanted to travel on a Vietnamese holiday, that meant I needed to book a train ticket about 5 months ago. Or I could just hire a driver for the low price of $80 a day. To further crush any desire to go to Sapa, the guy in the tour shop said that Sapa was not yet green.
He recommended Mai Chau instead because “Mai Chau is very green right now”. That was all he needed to say – green, now. So, I took out all the money I had in my pocket to secure a spot in the tour.
It was absolutely a great decision to go. For starters, the folks I met on the tour were great and mostly live in Hanoi, so I got to know a few folks I might actually be able to hang out with on a more long-term basis. Very exciting for having moved to a new place. Second, the mountain region appeared about an hour or so after we left the Old Quarter of Hanoi. Insane. Why didn’t I know the hills were so close? Probably because I hadn’t bothered to look at a topo map.
At Work
As you can see, the guy in the tour company office wasn’t kidding about Mai Chau being green this time of year. The hills were covered with gorgeous green trees and the fields of rice had so many vivid shades of green that it was hard to believe the surreal scene was not a figment of cinematic imagination.
The tour package itself was a mix of driving, walking, biking, lounging, eating, wishing one another good health (with 80-proof rice wine shots), and playing in a reservoir that we choose to believe is clean (and those brown turd looking things were really just mud in the water from upstream, rather than … well, you know). It was a really nice mix of activity, down time, cool off time, and experiencing the countryside.
By cool off time, I mean, it was pretty warm. It wasn’t Vietnam hot, just in the 80s or so with a humidity of about 80% or more. So when you thought about walking, your body had already know you were going to think about walking about 10 minutes ago and began to perspire in anticipation of your thought. After the two or so hour walk up and over a pass on a jungle trail, my shirt was soaked, completely. My only thought was … I would love for Marjie to see this, but I am not coming back in July or August when the temperature is blistering, it’s raining heavily, and the Black River is really muddied with real run-off.
We had a chance to see what a big rain does to the countryside … the water just has no where to go but pool in any low point it can find. It drags all sort of mud along with it turning the road into a series of somewhat deep pools of water that cars and scooters have to carefully navigate so as to not soak the engine and stall.
Sunrise
The experience itself was great. Speaking a little Vietnamese, I quickly became the group’s interpreter when we wanted to order coffee, reconcile bills at cafes, and generally communicate with our hosts in the absence of our tour guides. Being able to talk to the hosts, and the sunrise on day 3, was the highlight of the trip.
The conversations confirmed what I’ve read in development books and articles. People who live and work in the countryside would love to earn more money working in the city. What we see as beautiful scenery and a break from the daily grind of work is to them a mind-numbing drudge of never ending work that they can’t escape. When you can’t grow enough rice to feed your family, when you can’t afford to send your son to any sort of college, when you can’t afford to treat the wood in your house so it can resist termites, when the only thing for adolescents to do is drink beer and get wasted, what kind of life is that? It’s not. It’s a grind. The grind of the poor.
It’s just a reminder that progress and development are important. In an ideal world, people who live in the countryside could chose to make that their life, not simply be stuck in it because they were born there.
That’s my soap box. Back to the program. Despite the poverty, the folks we met were very happy to have us and cooked us excellent food. It’s great that we are able to bring much needed money into their family. One of the hosts said, and I’m writing from rice-wine assisted memory and translation skills, that he was more than happy to supply the rice wine for us because we help support his family. I think what he said was heartfelt and honest. It just made being able to speak Vietnamese and being on this trip even more enriching.
Although everything was great with our hosts, we were completely unsuccessful in being able to order drinks at two different cafes. The first time, I ordered and probably confused the heck out of the lady. The second time, while watching a Ballywood film dubbed into Vietnamese (without any of the emotion), the tour guides who speak fluent Vietnamese couldn’t even get the wait staff to deliver a proper order.
No blog post is complete without a picture of puppies, so here
What was tricky? Ordering this yogurt coffee drink that is popular with young folks here in the city. I had never heard of it. I mean, who the hell puts yogurt in coffee? It sounds gross. Hot coffee + cold yogurt = tepid mushy mess. I tried to describe it to the first lady and I know she thought I was crazy. I thought I was too, but the one person who got the drink really liked it. Everyone else who wanted the yogurt coffee wound up with a sweetened-condensed milk coffee, sort of. This was the first time I tried to use my Vietnamese with this group of folks, so when the orders came all messed up, I felt bad. No one minded, but I took it as a failure of the most basic skill set … ordering food.
Ah well, all was clarified today in class. The drink people wanted me to order is really yogurt with some coffee and ice in it rather than coffee with yogurt in it. In Vietnamese if you say (coffee) (yogurt) you get mostly coffee with some yogurt. That’s not what people wanted and luckily no one got served what I actually asked for. Instead, it should have been (yogurt) (coffee) (ice).
Aside from the challenges of ordering coffee, the trip was great. I loved the walking, taking photos, and being able to talk with the people who really live in those places. I know I’ve got a long way to go with the Vietnamese – as was evident when the driver was talking to me about the traffic in Hanoi … all I got was there are some bad kids who drive through the lights, you shouldn’t signal because someone will cut you off, and after you get used to the traffic you’ll be fine. There was a whole lot of other stuff I didn’t get. So, that’s the goal. I’ve got two years to get good at it before I need to start working on a new language.
The next big trip will need to be further afield – perhaps Ha Giang, where it will be cooler and similarly green.
I’m in Hanoi. I arrived on the 13th around 10pm. By 2am, I was sound asleep, only to be awakened at 4am when the dehumidifier beeped to tell me it was full. Somehow, that set the wakeup time for my body for the next couple days. But I digress, first things first.
Well, training in the US is over. I passed the Vietnamese language test on April 1st with a 2+/2 and now it’s onto the month of in country Vietnamese training. It’s a great opportunity. I don’t have to worry about consular duties and can simply focus on improving my speaking, comprehension, and reading skills. It’s amazing how fast all of that fades … since the 1st of April (check the date of the post, April 17) I feel like I’ve already lost lots and lots and lots of Vietnamese speaking capability. The half life of the Vietnamese in my brain seems to be more like that of gallium 67 (3.3 days) than that of cobalt 60 (~5.3yrs).
The week of April 3rd was a whirlwind of activity, though. Lots of meetings with folks at the State Department, squaring away the pack out of all our stuff, getting final vaccinations, saying bye to friends, and getting to our friend’s wedding in NJ. It was busy, but not overwhelming. The only thing I will comment on is the pack out.
Did I really bring this stuff?
For any other new Foreign Service people or people moving overseas for the first time with an option to ship things ahead with unaccompanied air baggage, here is my advice. Plan what you want to send. Don’t just start dumping things in the big box the day the movers arrive. I have random stuff with me now – stuff I brought with me on the plane. Stuff like little elastic black pieces of material with Velcro ends. What? Don’t ask me, we found them, so I put them in my bag rather than throw them away. How about Hungarian money from Marjie’s trip to Hungary to be at Julz & Peter’s wedding? Or what about a pedometer with a burned up battery? Methyl cellulose for glue in book binding? The only reason I have that is because the movers didn’t pack it up. Obviously, then, I needed this with me immediately upon arrival.
Happy to Have!
On the flip side, the things I’m most happy I brought are: 1) my small Japanese style knife, and 2) my espresso maker (with coffee from Stumptown). Things I wish I had … are slacks. Lots of slacks. I have one pair of jeans, one suit, one pair of khaki pants that I wore to my wedding, and a pair of suit pants that no longer fit. Hmmm, not a whole lot of casual options. Ah well.
The other aspect of packing the UAB (unaccompanied air baggage) on the day the movers arrive is that you might not remember what’s in there. I know I have a printer coming as well as (roughly) 100 clothes hangers and my slacks – I hope. Other than that, I kinda don’t remember what I put in there, so when it arrives in the next few days, it will be like Christmas in April.
Anyway, the apartment is great. I’m working on a walking tour of the interior that doesn’t compromise security and advertise to the entire world what I have inside (aka nothing). I’ve also posted photos on flickr of the views, which most of you have seen (below if you haven’t).
So far, the biggest thing to report is I’m slowly overcoming jet lag. The 4am to 8pm sleep schedule is slowly being shifted. As of yesterday, I was up until about 8.40 and didn’t awake until about 6.30am. I kinda like the morning schedule, but I know it won’t last long.
I’m sitting in the Jungle Junction restaurant located in the Victoria Falls Hotel. I have a stunning view of the Falls’ mist and I can’t tell you how gorgeous the day is, with clear blue skies, light breeze, and nice, nice temperature.
When you’re inside the compound, it’s easy to forget and not acknowledge the reality of what surrounds you. You have about 13,000 residents in Vic Falls town. The industry here is tourism. Unfortunately, there are few tourists. I walked around the Kingdom Hotel, a big, Vegas-like structure with a casino, shops, big dining area, and lots of rooms. It definitely feels like an all-enclosed resort where you don’t need to leave for any of your needs, except for viewing the Falls in a helicopter or doing the bungee jump. Inside, though, it was empty.
I talked with two different workers in the gift shop, where they sell outrageously priced stuff. Well, they’re like US tourist-place prices. A hat for $20, a small souvenir picture book for $12, and postcards for $1. I couldn’t bring myself to buy anything, but I felt bad for the workers. At 10.30am, I was the first person to walk into the shop.
If you choose to leave the confines of your compound on foot, the hawkers descend upon you. This morning someone who obviously smoked more than a fair share of weed came to offer me trinkets – stone carved representations of the Zambezi river god called nyaminyami. I told him, and the guy with him, that I wasn’t interested, yet, the stoned guy with his glassy eyed look thought that perhaps no meant yes, so he offered me Zim dollars instead – a crisp one trillion note. I was rude to the guy – I asked if he was deaf because I had already said that I wasn’t interested in anything. He then glared at me until he decided I really meant I wasn’t going to buy anything. He left with, “You come and you don’t want to give us anything. It’s just like you …” the rest I don’t remember, but he was really saying you’re a white tourist, so you must give me money – you owe it to me.
Other people have tried to use a similar tactic. First they try to be friendly, then they try to use guilt to make you buy something. They may be smooth talkers in their own mind, but they have yet to learn that business is about relationships and until you’re in the business of hostile take overs, getting angry with people who might at some point in the future be inclined to buy something is not a way to generate business.
But it’s these interactions that you deal with, when you walk through town to and from anywhere, that tend to wear you down. There is always a Zim dollar to be traded – “Five dollars for one trillion.” Um, I can easily get three trillion in change from the bus drivers in Harare. I ‘m certainly not giving you $5. It gets old real fast.
Despite how old it gets, I’m not oblivious to why. These guys – and they’re all guys – are hustling for anything. They’re all young, too. They’re not old men and they’re not young kids, they’re maybe the 16 – 30 year-olds who don’t have work. Life is tough for pretty much everyone in Zimbabwe, job or not, so I can’t blame them for trying to hustle the tourists. I try to be firm, but not rude.
I felt bad about being rude to the stoner. I saw his compatriot – Temba or Trust in English – and apologized for being rude. He said, “No problem. That one is crazy. He smokes to much weed and drinks too much beer. If you don’t want to do business, no problem. We are just trying to make money.” I asked about the t-shirts, everyone wants old clothes, “Do you sell them or keep them?” “We keep them. We can’t afford to buy new ones. Some of the mean ones, like that guy, they try to sell them.”
A little later, I saw the stoner and apologized. He wasn’t interested at the time, but later in the day, he smiled and laughed with me when I saw him.
I return my attention to the gorgeous view in front of me. The green, manicured grass being watered as I type is a good metaphor for the compound. Where the sprinklers reach, it’s green and carpet like. Just outside the reach of the sprinklers is the dry, brown natural vegetation of this area at this time of year. The boundary is clear and abrupt. It’s just as abrupt as walking outside the gates of your compound and onto the streets of Vic Falls.
We were burning the midnight oil last night preparing for the OxFam Australia financial audit for today. By we, I mean they, because I don’t have anything to do with the finances. Unfortunately, midnight comes at around 6.15pm because the groundskeeper kicked us all out – he wanted to go home and had no audit in the morning.
To square away all the paperwork, we needed to get an invoice from the producer of the album. We got about 100m from the building and the car stopped. Oops, no gas. Everton and I decided to walk to the nearest gas station. It seemed awful dark, as in no street lights. When we arrived at the station, no power. So, Everton called a friend. They said they’d come bring us gas.
About an hour and a half later, they arrived. Great! They went to pour the gas into the tank and it was black. Oops! They filled up an old oil canister with the clean petrol. Power was still out in the area, so the crew had to go drive around to find another pumping station. The first one they went to – on the second trip – said they wouldn’t fill a plastic gas canister. They learned that only after about 20 minutes in the queue.
To make a long story short, it took an additional one and a half hours to get clean gas. With 6L of gas – maybe 50km of driving – we head to get the receipt. It’s about 8.30pm-ish now. When we arrive, well … no power, so he can’t print the invoice. The producer didn’t even have enough petrol to get home.
We left there around 9.45pm-ish. No visit is ever short in Zim, hence the half hour visit. From there, we had to drive Winnet home, which was about 20 to 30 minutes from the producer’s studio. Everton lives on the other side of town. Another 30 or so minutes home. When we arrive 10.30pm-ish – no power.
OK, we’ll just get up early in the morning. Next day – 6am, I’m up. We leave to get the invoice and arrive at the office by 7am. Well, we need gas. The 24hr station near Everton’s is closed – of course. We had to drive into town through a smog of exhaust to find a pumping station with gas and no queue. That took us through the crazy part of town – people and commuter mini buses everywhere. Did I mention I was driving?
After getting gas, we headed to the studio, got the invoice and made it to the office by 8am. Perfect.
Except, OxFam Australia cancelled the meeting and rescheduled for Tuesday.
I’m sure many of you must be wondering what a typical day in the life of Chris de Veer is while he helps out his fellow world citizens in Zimbabwe. Wonder no longer. I will tell you.
I have settled into a sort of rhythm that starts around 7am. I wake up, pack my sleeping bag, and get dressed for work. Yes, I sleep my sleeping back. It gets chilly at night and I love the comfort a down bag gives me. Getting dressed takes about three minutes because I don’t have a dazzling array of clothes to choose from. Although I have two pair of brown pants to choose from, I wore one pair for the first 10 days, so I’m switching to the pair I just bought. For a top, I have three collared shirts – light blue (anyone remember me recuperating at Grandma’s last summer? Same shirt), light beige (thanks to Moustaffa’s in Singapore), and white (Target?). One pair of shoes. So, there’s not much decision making to do.
After I’m dressed, I go outside in the front yard and do about 20 minutes or so of taiji. Before anyone asks what the neighbors think, we’re behind a seven or eight foot cinder block wall. The only people who see me moving around are the folks I live with.
Having started the qi circulation, I come in for some tea or coffee and breakfast. Then off to the office where I begin the daily struggle with the Internet. The struggle for information nirvana involves starting multiple page requests and cycling through them until one or more are done. Usually it’s best if you have something else to do like read documents, compose your emails, or translate War and Peace from Russian into Shona. You know, the stuff you normally do.
After a long day of reading nd answering ten or so email messages, trying to download files, and organize my thoughts that are scattered across 15 different tabs, it’s time to go. Lest you think I just came to Zimbabwe to sit in front of a slow Internet connection all day, I don’t just do this. There are periods where I talk with staff to get a better feel for the organization and what it needs.
The past couple weeks, SHAPE has had some artists in the recording studio laying down sick beats for the SHAPE’s fourth album. This process often required staff members to swing by the studio to listen, talk with the producer, deliver food to the artists, or simply pick them up to bring them home. It could take an hour, it could take three. It just depended on the day, whether a power surge had blown up electrical equipment, someone had run out of gas, or the diesel generator was choking on too much lubricating oil.
Upon arriving home, we would eat dinner. South African, affectionately called SA (sounding like essay) soaps would be on TV and sometimes the brilliantly produced Zimbabwean TV news. Usually, we go with BBC or SA news. If we have a game, we might play, or not. We often talk about Zimbabwe and the US.
I prefer to bathe at night, so they’ll heat up some water and I go do my thing. Did I mention where I’m staying there isn’t running water? Not sure what the problem is, but the house has taps and sanitation, the city’s delivery system is broken. The same can be said for electricity. It’s usually off on Thursday, but it can be cut any time for any amount of time. Makes bathing in a room with no lights interesting.
After I finish all that, I usually lay out my sleeping bag again. I either read a magazine or write in my journal. Then I pass out, to do it all over again the next day.
My first impression off the plane was – flat. Then I felt the temperature – cool. Then I saw the airport – am I in Zimbabwe? I ask, because this airport looks so much better than the one in Delhi. I sailed through customs and was met by Shep, Sisa, and Chenge at the airport.
Driving into town, I was at first reminded of Ethiopia. There was a smell of burning wood in the air, along with the browning grass, and gnarly trees that brought back memories of my first experience in Africa. The more I drove around, though, my thoughts turned to China and Kyrgyzstan. Both of these places had infrastructure before the neglect set it. Kyrgyzstan more so than China, I seem to recall. The houses all have walled in yards. Glass is often cemented atop the wall to discourage unwanted visitors from just hopping over when no one answers the gate buzzer. These aren’t just houses for the rich, but the middle-class.
I learned, though, that houses cost $150 – $300k, depending on the area, so few Zimbabweans actually own them. They simply rent. In some areas, you have million dollar homes. In Zimbabwe? Are we talking about the same country? Who knew? At least rent is cheaper than New York. They are stunned when I tell them how much my rent is.
Food, is not cheap, either. There are no coins for change, so there’s dollar-rounding on your food bill. By that, I mean what ever the final price is, it’s rounded up to the nearest dollar, or you get a bunch of candy as change. You can expect to pay about $3.50/lb for chicken or beef, unless you go to a butcher, where you could get the beef for about half that per pound. A 2L bottle of water costs $0.80. A 1lb box of instant, Nescafe coffee cost about $6.50. Shocking.
Doubly shocked when you think about how little folks make and how high unemployment is. So, even though it’s better, it’s still not a cake walk. But where is it a cake walk? I can go a few blocks away from my Park Slope apartment to find folks struggling to make ends meat. It’s not any easier in the US.
And gas? How about $1.50 per liter. That works out to about $5.70 per gallon. And, this is a city with unreliable public transportation. You ride minibuses, you catch lifts, you walk. Unless of course you have a car and money to continually fill the gas tank to drive along so-so roads, many of which are riddled with potholes. Cars are mostly older models of Toyotas, BMWs, Mercedes, trucks, even Pugeots.
Still, this place is nothing like I expected. If you read the US State Department’s website, you’d think setting foot in the country is tantamount to either a jail term or death sentence. Far from it. I know there are shenanigans that go on here, but the people are friendly. I’m amazed by how many Shona say that they are a peaceful people, not like those South Africans. So, despite the high prices, the pollution, the power cuts, and the lack of running water – all things that I pretty much anticipated (except the high food prices) – Zimbabwe has refreshingly It’s much better. Much better.
I just enjoyed reading this story about villagers in the hills of Darjeeling opening their homes to travelers for home stays. I love this quote, which is so true:
“Only a few days?” he said, appalled. “You have to stay at least two or three months to enjoy this place, to even begin to understand it. What are you going to learn in three days?”
So remember that when you go travel. A few days is never enough. Like the Dutch teachers I met in New Zealand in 2003 told me, “Take your time.”
It’s funny how a random, brief interaction with two people can create an impression – a directive, even – that you remember years later. I was somewhere on the path (track in the Kiwi parlance) to see Tane Mahuta -Lord of the Forest, and the largest known living kauri tree in New Zealand. The kauri tree lives in Trounson Kauri Park on the North Island. I think I was already receptive to their message of slowing down my travels, which is why it resonated with me in a way that allowed me to change my travel plans completely.
I had planned to go to South America, study Spanish in Bariloche, Argentine, then go to China, then get a job … Instead, I loved New Zealand so much, I extended my stay until after the premiere of The Return of the King. Yes, I am a fan. Although I think Tolkein was not the best writer in the world, Peter Jackson and his team did a fantastic job putting the story on the big screen. For the premiere of the final movie, there was going to be a big celebration in Wellington I didn’t want to miss.
I won’t gore into more gory detail that’s already covered in the daily details of my state of mind. But almost six years later, “Take your time,” still resonates. How many other life altering messages are there that we can hear when we’re in the right frame of mind?
All that from a story about staying in a village in the hills of Darjeeling.
I just saw this on the front page of the NY Times: 1 Killed by Blast in Cairo Tourist Area. According to the article, someone threw a grenade into the mass of tourists. The last time something like this happened was in April of 2005, but it was a suicide bomber. I consider myself lucky because I had been in the market only hours before the April 2005 explosion. Natasha (girlfriend and travel companion at the time) and I had a train to Luxor to catch, so we were out of harm’s way when the bomber killed people. Here’s my blog entry from that day [Travel Entry 104].
SAFE!
I just found out, about 24 hours later, that someone tossed a bomb in to the bazaar where we were yesterday (7 Apr 2005). We left the bazaar around 15.00, the bomb exploded around 17.45 according to the news. At that time, I was being frustrated by Microsoft Paint on an Internet computer about 3km from there.
For now, I just have to deal with the hassle of people peddling tours, boat rides, and taxis here in Luxor. I promise to stay safe.
Our folks, my folks in particular, were worried senseless. The had no way of calling us. They sent about 6 or 7 emails, each more frantic than the last, wanting to hear it we were OK.
The only time I ever experienced hostility in Egypt was when I was heading down to a subway station. A man walking up the stairs started shouting at me, “Get out! Get out! We do not want you in this country! We do not need you in this country!” I ignored him for the moment, but eventually did leave Egypt.
The most recent connection to the bombings in Khan el-Khalili also remind me of the temporal brush with disaster in Kyrgyzstan. There was a snow storm that blanketed the Khan Tengri and Peak Pobeda (victory in Russian) base camp in snow. We needed a helicopter lift to get out because it would be too dangerous to walk back over the glaciers. Where was that crevasse?
About a year later, I was in London and overheard a TV news report that a helicopter had crashed in Kyrgyzstan near the Chinese border. They hadn’t yet said where in the mountains, but I knew from looking at the video that it was the same place I hopped on the helicopter.
Again, my brush with disaster was temporally separated from my geographical presence. The recent bombing in Cairo made the echoes of my experiences a little louder.
