Matthew and Tim’s Grand South Pacific Voyage

As is true of all great adventures, this one started before we even left.  Because we would be gone so long, we had to be sure that we had enough of everything on hand, meaning medications, which we couldn’t reliably pick up along the way. Fortunately, we were scheduled for an infusion visit literally the day before we flew out.

The Troubles Begin

As a last minute re-check, because I had checked these things before, or at least I thought I had, I went to the United States Department of State website to make sure my medication imports wouldn’t be an issue.  I have traveled to lots of countries over the past few years and my medications have never presented an issue.  I seriously doubted that anywhere I was headed, with the possible exception of Indonesia, would care a hoot what my drugs were.  Imagine my surprise then to discover that I could not legally enter Japan with my regular daily use long acting pain reliever that keeps the ravages of neuropathy at bay.  In theory, I was supposed to have a special permit from the Japanese Ministry of Health, a permit that takes at best two weeks to get, to import a legal medication.  It didn’t matter that my transit in Japan was less than 24 hours nor did it matter that I was only staying over because of flight schedules, not out of a desire to stay in Japan.  The US State Department proceeds to give anyone thinking of circumventing this rule an hour by hour break down of life in a Japanese prison (http://japan.usembassy.gov/e/acs/tacs-7110g.html), which is where you are assuredly headed if you break these rules.  Now, I would like to believe that the intent is to head off smugglers who intend to resell drugs in country not patients with legitimate needs.  However, the rule of the law extends to such things as cold medications and insulin as well.  There are NO exceptions for quantity, it matters not that you have a valid prescription or even a letter from a physician.  This also meant that I couldn’t travel with my testosterone vial and the needles to inject it (my body no longer makes testosterone and it serves more purposes than the ones your filthy minds are thinking, i.e. you cannot build muscle and you have ZERO energy from the food you eat, among other things).  You just can’t do it unless you have this special permit that takes weeks to get, IF they choose to grant it.  With a flight leaving in two days, what to do?
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But wait, it gets better!  Turns out Singapore couldn’t care about my narcotic pain relievers or my testosterone, but they prohibit the entry of any anti-HIV medication as well as barring from entry any person who is known to be HIV+ or who has AIDS.  Great.  My cruise ship leaves from Singapore, a country that doesn’t want me and to get to that country that won’t admit me, I have to pass through another country that won’t admit my medications.  What is a guy to do?

First, you panic.  You call the airlines and try to route around Japan.  Sure, you can do that for tens of thousands of dollars.  I could contact the cruise ship company and try to board at the first port of call in Indonesia, a country that doesn’t care about my medications or my disease.  The cruise company says you could TRY that but no guarantees.  Or, you can just say fuck it and brave it.  Screw the uptight bastards and their rules.  I’ll let you guess which option I chose.

Now, I have to stop here to warn any of you who are getting all puffy and uptight, making mental or verbal commentary about the barbarity of other countries, like Singapore, discriminating against me for having AIDS, or against Japan for prohibiting a diabetic from bringing in their insulin.  What type of ignorant savages are these people in these countries?  Now starts the chest beating and the flag waving, the whole jingoistic (I’ll wait while you look that one up in the dictionary) parade.  But, before you do that, I really should point out that until late last year the United States would turn away otherwise legal visa carrying or visa exempted international persons who were carrying HIV medications.  Oh yes, it was illegal for a non-citizen with HIV to enter the US and this goes a long way to explaining why international AIDS conferences are held in more enlightened places, places like South Africa for example.  US citizens have no idea how difficult it is to enter the US as a tourist, or for any reason really.  We rank right up there with other nations we so aspire to be like, places like Saudi Arabia, in terms of how difficult it is to obtain permission to visit.  The AVERAGE wait to get a visa to the US is SIX MONTHS, and remember that the $100 or more you pay to APPLY doesn’t get refunded if the answer is no.  And if you are a well meaning person from a “suspect” country, that wait can be even longer and can be subject to limits on how many tourist visas that entire country gets for any given year.  I don’t intend to debate whether Japan, Singapore, or the United States has a correct and fair immigration policy, rather what I debate is the often mindlessly knee jerk reaction among Americans to assume that we don’t as a nation do really heinous things to non-citizens ourselves.  Before you throw a stone at Singapore, take a good look at our own behavior towards the citizens of nations we consider our friends and allies.  Once you have a balanced and fair perspective, then voice your opinion, or better yet, work for real change instead of just bitching and complaining.

And by the way, that Nigerian guy who tried to blow up a Delta jet in Detroit, he had a valid visa to enter the US, so one has to wonder what all the bullshit process is really designed to do.  Protect us or just employ bureaucrats?  I mean, don’t you have to wonder?

How the Troubles Were Avoided

All that said, I prepared myself as best as I could.  I am not known for giving up easily once I undertake to do a thing, so I enlisted the help of my medical providers as a first step.  I asked my provider, who is also my pharmacist, which is so incredibly convenient, to reprint all of my prescriptions so that I would not only have the labeled bottles but also the printed scrips.  Then I made three copies of these and for Japan pulled out the parts Japan didn’t like, for Singapore pulled out the parts they didn’t like, and finally had a complete set for everyone else who couldn’t care less.

Then, I had my provider write three different letters further explaining my legal, in the US, need for these medications including what each one was for, once again deleting those which offending any one particular country’s sensibilities.

If haven’t recently mentioned what total rock-stars my providers are at this point, really, I should, because they really are.  After all, between 2006 when all this encephalopathy and dementia business was diagnosed and now, I have outlived my expected life span by a factor of something between 3 and 6, meaning that I have held on, quite successfully at that, to life for 3 to 6 TIMES longer than was expected at time of diagnosis.  So, clearly, I am not easily defeated!

Some Good Travel Advice Is Dispensed

I learned something from this experience, just like the boys in South Park always ultimately learn something too.  If you take medications, even ones that in the US are no big deal, I mean something as simple as a cold capsule, an asthma inhaler, an allergy pill, ANYTHING, CHECK with the representative office, embassy or consulate, of the country or countries you will be visiting LONG before you pack to leave to avoid any unpleasant in country problems.  Those simple things I listed above, cold pills and asthma inhalers, yeah, illegal in Japan and a surprising number of other places.  And I don’t mean just the countries Americans like to mock as being backwards (those countries really don’t care what you inhale honestly), but it could be any place you intend to go.  The US Department of State Travel website is a good first visit at: http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1765.html.  However, just remember that they tend to be a bit hysterical and overprotective, but still sometimes give good advice.  Good quality and recently updated guide books, such as those from Lonely Planet (http://www.lonelyplanet.com/) can also be invaluable.  And certainly contact the representative offices of the nation to which you wish to travel.  Most all of these embassies and consulates are on-line and can be linked to from their representative country pages on the State Department site.  They can be very helpful as most countries are more than happy to facilitate you visiting their nation and leaving behind money!  And some of them really just want to show you that they too have something to offer the world far more important than Bay Watch babes and Sponge Bob Squarepants.

If you are a traveler with HIV it all gets a bit stickier.  You can just about forget it when it comes to long-term immigration or residency, even if you have an employer sponsor.  This is generally due to the cost of treating you if you become ill and really isn’t intended to AIDS-phobic or even homophobic because you all know that over 90% of people with AIDS or HIV are heterosexual.  You DO know this don’t you?  Ok, now you do.  New Zealand, for example, has a lottery allowing for 300 infected persons a year to enter the country and pursue citizenship, but that’s rare.  The US won’t let you become a permanent resident if you are infected, which is weird since we don’t even have national healthcare!  But there it is.  There are only a handful of holdout nations that will still actively search for HIV medications in your baggage and I would guess that those will die down too now that Obama has ended the US practice.  After all, in places as diverse as Japan and Brasil, their immigration staff make it clear with big loud signs that they are only doing to us what we do to their citizens, so before you land in Japan, visit the lavatory, do something with your bed hair, brush your teeth, and prepare to smile, because you WILL be photographed and fingerprinted on arrival.  Yep, just like we do to all Japanese arriving citizens, even though they don’t require a visa.

I would strongly suggest that an HIV infected traveler visit the following non-profit website for up to date and well referenced information on restrictions on travel for HIV infected or AIDS diagnosed persons.  Knowing in advance can save you a world of heartache and expensive forced return tickets.  http://www.hivtravel.org/Default.aspx?pageId=142

OK, The Real Way We Got Around It

My solutions to these problems were the following:

For one month, I switched to a topical testosterone replacement.  It sucked, it smelled bad, it was sticky, and it didn’t work well, but I survived.

Fentanyl patches come in Mylar pouches, so I tested carrying one in my pocket in the Atlanta airport security check.  It sets it off, so now I knew I couldn’t risk that in Japan.  Instead, I stashed it in a carry on bag, then since there was no metal detector at Japan customs, I just walked in with it in my cargo pants pocket.

Late on the night before departure, Tim and I dashed to the vitamin section at Target.  We reasoned that one of my HIV drugs looked a lot like a Centrum vitamin, another looked a lot like a kids’ vitamin C, and another looked like a B-complex.  So, technically I didn’t carry any bottles to give me away, and in the end, there was no customs in Singapore anyhow.  But, we expressed ingenuity ans defeated outmoded and discriminatory laws, so big round of applause for us!!

Oh No, It’s The Swine Flu!

There was also the potential specter of the bug-a-boo scary thing to keep Americans in the proper state of fear to ignore what really matters in their world, by which I mean swine flu.  Does it strike anyone at all as humorous that we are a nation of handwringers of things that don’t happen, or happen rarely?  We won’t let our kids walk 10 feet to school because they will be kidnapped, never mind that child abduction is very rare and is almost always perpetrated by family members, usually parents, so instead we put the kids in cars where the statistical likelihood of death or injury is on an order of magnitude much higher than I can calculate.  Likewise, we are daily bombarded with the horrors of this swine flu, which as of my writing has killed perhaps around 11,000 people.  Now, that sounds like a lot of people, but many of them were already ill and would likely have died of something else anyway, but still, 11,000 people.  Wow.  But, pneumonia kills about 170 a day, every day and we don’t get up in arms over that.  I fact, LOTS of things are killing a lot more of us every year than swine flu in its wildest dreams.  Consider the following deaths in 2006:

* Heart disease: 631,636

* Cancer: 559,888

* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,583

* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 121,599

* Diabetes: 72,449

* Alzheimer’s disease: 72,432

* Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,326

* Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,344

* Septicemia: 34,234

And that flu number up there with pneumonia ISN’T some special flu, nope, that’s the regular yearly stuff.  So what is the bigger threat?  I’d say “put down that damn donut and cigarette, ride a bike for 30 minutes or so, and you might live to be 100!”

And despite this, we fear what 24 hour news tells us to fear and to be fair, as an immune compromised person any flu could be bad for me.  Problem was there wasn’t a lot of swine flu vaccine about.  However, I am special.  Yes, I am cute, charming, witty, kind, and lots of other kinds of special, but I am also special in a not so cute way.  Despite appearances to the contrary, I am quite fragile in the health sense really.  So fragile in fact that I was one of only 19 patients in my practice, which is full of immunologically fragile people, to be on “the list” of those patients for whom a dose of swine flu vaccine would be hidden to ensure that all 19 of us had ours before everyone else who wanted or needed it, including the doctors, nurses and other staff members.

To put it into a scenario that I think everyone can understand, let me relate what happened shortly after the New Year.  Tim had a mild sore throat, stuffy nose thing that lasted for 2 days, 3 tops.  He drank some tea, he swallowed some Nyquil, he whined, and then all was fine.  Predictably, I got whatever he had as well.  But by the time I went to the doctor, which was my regular appointment ONLY 5 days later because I WON’T complain unless it is really bad (which is a bad habit I know, but deeply ingrained in me), I had an ulceration in my right throat (that’s why it hurt so much to swallow!), infected ears and sinuses, bronchitis in the right and left lungs, plus a right lower lobe pneumonia.  My NP was really wishing I would complain earlier, but that won’t change.  The experience of 3 weeks of Levaquin, when the usual dose is 5-7 days, MIGHT make me think twice next time, but don’t count on it.  This is, by the way, the very real and relevant reason I ask about people’s, especially those monstrous germ vectors, CHILDREN, health and recent vaccination history before I visit, because what is mild or even preventative to you, might be very bad indeed for me.

This is a type of special too, but honestly, it is a special I could do with out.  But, since I can’t choose to NOT be that kind of special, I sure am grateful that there are a bunch of people who look out for me far more than I think I deserve.  With their love, kindness, and hidden drugs and vaccines on board, I was ready to board the big bird.

Take Off, Stage One

The big bird in this case would be a Boeing 747-300.  I had flown on a 747 before but Tim never had.  What neither of us had ever done was to fly on the upper deck of the 747.  In some airline’s configurations, the upper deck is Coach class, but in the newly Delta-ized former Northwest 747’s, upstairs is Business Elite, Delta’s International First product since they don’t fly a three class of service plane.  Very few carriers fly with three classes any longer, and when you consider what you get with an International Business Elite seat, what more could they give you short of someone to provide some very personal attention during flight, which I suspect is pretty well illegal throughout the world, unless this was Nevada Airlines.  At least Tim always says that is all they could do to turn international business class into First.  Korean does fly with three classes, and on both segments with them, Business was full up but First was curtained off and empty.

What I remembered most about the 747 was the hideous seat configuration in coach (3-5-3) ensuring that everyone is unhappily seated especially on very long flights and I also remembered how the gigantic thing with 4 engines would lumber down the entire runway at a speed that felt much too slow to take flight, and that when you did lift off the ground, it seemed to be a very begrudging sort of lift-off, as though the plane really didn’t want to do it.  But of course it did, else I wouldn’t be here to write about it.  This time around the seating configuration in Coach was of zero concern to me because I was in seat 78A, on the upper deck, in what has been reported to be one of the absolute best seats (Tim was in the other best seat) on the 747.  Before you choose a seat next time you fly, check out http://www.seatguru.com.  It will give you the low down on most major airlines seating arrangements on most flown equipment.

Sitting in 78A meant that no one could even attempt to recline into me because forward of us was the wall of the crew rest bunk.  Seriously, two to three bunk beds are in this cabin and the 747 flies such long routes that there are two captains, two co-pilots, and two navigators, a complete duplicate cockpit crew, on each flight.  I have to imagine that such an arrangement contributes to transpacific flight ticket costs.  Honestly, it looked a bit cramped in there, not really a good place to join the Mile High Club, but perhaps to an exhausted pilot, it looks just fine.

Stupid as it may seem, what really impressed me with the 747 business cabin was the little stow bins at floor level.  They were huge and held all our sleeping gear until we needed it, but they also hold most any carry on, in addition to the overhead bin space.  The overhead bins are perhaps a bit smaller than downstairs, but it wasn’t an issue.  Tim always has to jockey for position number one in boarding, so we get pick of the litter you might say.  The flight crew will hang your jackets as it is, so the small bin was where we put Trader Joe’s snacks, books, that sort of stuff you might want in flight and how nifty to be able to get to it without impairing your feet clearance area.

If we REALLY tried, we still couldn’t reach the bulkhead wall with our feet, not even when stretched out flat to sleep under our comforters with real pillows under our heads after a full 4 course meal.  I admit that the wisdom of serving hot soup at 35,000 feet with potential turbulence has been questioned by me on more than one occasion, but there it is.  Tim gets to know the red wine selections really well while I prefer the signature cocktails, something with pomegranate this time I think.  Was it comfortable you ask?  Let me put it this way: After all the drama and worry of the preceding days I was a bit tired, so in 78A on the 747, I slept blissfully for 11 hours of the 14.5 hour trip from Atlanta to Tokyo.  Yeah, it was comfortable.

Tokyo, Japan

Landing in Tokyo was uneventful as it was dark by our landing time of roughly 4pm, but I was able to make out that the airport is in a land filled with farms and forests.  This surprised me even though I was aware that Narita prefecture, where the airport is, is a long shot from the bright lights and big city of the Ginza in downtown Tokyo.  I guess I just didn’t realize how far it was.  And, I had forgotten that I knew perfectly well that the islands of Japan were heavily forested, and that in some places they still are, and that I also knew that Japan grows a great deal of its own food, if it isn’t in fact an exporter.

When exiting the airport you don’t appreciate it much and besides, I was focused on those uniformed and face masked customs guys, remember?  As it was, and as it always seems to be, I sailed through with no questions asked, no one knew or cared that I had “hard core” drugs with me.

It was a short shuttle ride to our airport hotel of the night.  We elected not to try to travel all the way into Tokyo proper when we had to turn around for a first of the day flight to Incheon, Korea in the morning to continue our journey.  The hotel rooms were elegant, if smallish, but nothing surprising to anyone who has ever stayed in New York City.  What I was most fascinated with, of course, was the Japanese toilet.  I had heard about these from my Mom and other sources and I was curious if all that I had heard was true.  They do make running water and other sounds to mask your sounds, they will rinse any part of you that is below the rim of the seat in water of a temperature of your choosing, and they will also apparently blow you dry when done as well.  As is true of Business class seats on an aircraft, a manual would be nice to explain how all of the buttons and controls work.

We did wimp out and opt for a “Western” style hotel room, which meant primarily I think that we didn’t sleep on the floor on a futon.  I was all for experiencing my time in Japan as authentically as possible but I also wanted a decent night of sleep for what promised to be a long day in the morning, departing on the first flight to Incheon, but not reaching Singapore airport until after 9pm and the hotel until most likely around 11pm.  And that totally ignores time changes and the International Dateline.

I was fascinated by the “AM/PM” mini-market downstairs.  First I was fascinated that there was such a thing, brand name and all, in Japan, and then I was horrified that such was how other cultures and people form their impressions of Americans, in addition to endlessly mindless television and movies.  The array of snacks on offer astounded me.  How can Japanese people eat all this snack food and yet it never shows.  I mean, come on, show me a fat Japanese person who doesn’t have a glandular disorder or who isn’t a sumo wrestler somewhere along the training continuum.

For eating, we went with the traditional Japanese “bento box” dinner.  I think most of you have seen them in the US but I doubt you have eaten the real thing unless you have been in Japan to get one.  I would say first that the food was excellent even though I have no idea what it was.  I am confident there was fish in there but beyond that, no clue.  Picking out the fish was pretty easy actually because it was served on a small screen over a dish filled with ice and was 100% raw in thin slices.  This style of presentation, known as sashimi, is not unheard of in the US, but there was also no soy sauce in view, no wasabi, and no rice.  The trappings of Americo-Japanese food were all absent, and the sashimi was the only thing I recognized in the box.  There was absolutely no beef or chicken Beni-Hana anything.  Honestly, I couldn’t have been more pleased.  It tasted delicious, everyone around us was Japanese and most of them were eating from very large communal steaming pots of a stew or soup of some kind.

To Incheon, Korea, On To Singapore

In the morning, an early shuttle ride had us to the Korean Airlines check-in area in plenty of time, early in fact since they were not open yet.  The line for check-in was quite long, backing out toward the sidewalk actually, but the Business check-in line consisted of just Tim and me.  Everything about Korean Airlines is streamlined and pleasant.  The staff are beyond courteous and efficient and I had to admit that I shuddered at the experience that I knew all too well would await an Asian traveler landing in LAX, Atlanta, or heaven forbid, NYC.  We in the US remain, at least in terms of our transportation options and behaviors, exactly as the literal interpretation of the Chinese word for us has us: barbarians.

Asian airports have to be experienced to be believed if you are primarily or only familiar with US airports.  The first thing is that they are absolutely spotless everywhere you look.  There is no trash, no dirt, just gleaming surfaces.  Mobs of people, yes, but they are orderly for the most part.  Once you clear security you could be forgiven for forgetting that you are in an airport because the only place you have likely experienced anything like what you are in now is a very, VERY high-end shopping mall.  Yes, there are planes outside and flights being called, but that seems somehow incidental, secondary to the real purpose, which is very commercial.  There are stores in both Narita and Incheon airports that I have only seen on Madison or Fifth Avenues in New York City.  Or in the airport in Istanbul as well.  I guess if you need a last minute Coach bag, Burberry shawl, or Prada shoes, you are in luck because you can easily find it right around that corner there, between the 747 back to LAX and the 757 to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.  Right there, you can’t miss it.  This impression of over the top high end mall-ness would only increase on landing in Incheon.

Then we went to the Delta Sky Club in Narita.  Once I ratcheted my jaw back into position, I could start to look about.  It was huge and it was amazingly opulent.  I am pretty used to the Sky Clubs in the US, which still get voted number one airport lounge by Business Traveler Magazine, but this was incredible.  Domestic travelers have no idea what they are missing.  Free hot food, mix your own cocktails, bottled beverages, and lounge seating for easily 500, all together it was heavenly.  And, it overlooked the active gates for both Guam and Saipan, both on my travel to-do list.

The flight on Korean Airlines was sadly short because these folks have it all figured out about flying in comfort.  US flights less than 8 hours don’t have meal service anymore, but not on Korean.  And for the first time I experienced bipimbap.  The word literally means “mixed rice.” Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with namul (sautéed and seasoned vegetables) and gochujang (chili pepper paste). A raw or fried egg and sliced meat (usually beef) are common additions. The ingredients are stirred together thoroughly just before eating.  It can be served either cold or hot.

Vegetables commonly used in bibimbap include julienned cucumber, zucchini, mu (daikon), mushrooms, doraji (bellflower root), and gim, as well as spinach, soybean sprouts, and gosari (bracken fern stems). Dubu (tofu), either plain or sautéed, or a leaf of lettuce may be added, or chicken or seafood may be substituted for beef.  For visual appeal, the vegetables are often placed so that adjacent colors complement each other.

Whatever it means and whatever it looks like, it is delicious!!  I am only annoyed that I only was able to eat it twice, once on the way to Incheon and once on the way to Singapore.  I will be on the lookout for it here in the US.  And the chili paste was so outstanding that I took a tube of it home with me where I shall hoard it until I can find its rival here.  I am still portioning out Brazilian hot sauces, so this isn’t unusual for me to do this sort of thing, in case you were wondering.

Everything fantastic about Narita is in hyper-drive in Incheon.  Even if you don’t like shopping malls, I think you would have to like this airport.  Again, it is spotless, airy, and enormous.  These places make every US airport I have been in, but especially such unfortunate world-ports as LAX, look truly what I imagine Third World to be.  The Business Lounge was expansive, light, and airy with a full-on free buffet catered by the airport Hilton hotel.  So, if you were not full from the breakfast in Japan, or the food on the flight, they would feed you again in the lounge.  I started to get stuffy, the feelings of a sinus thing coming on, but no worries, there is a fully stocked pharmacy down the adjacent concourse with a cheerful man who happily sells you $5 worth of decongestant and $60 worth of some Swiss essential oils, that through the language barrier and not wanting to look like a typical “ugly American” I buy with no argument.  I suspect that in reality language wasn’t much of a barrier for this guy and that such sales pay his undoubtedly high-rent, but he was pleasant and I felt better almost immediately.  Besides, paying for things in yen or won is like play money, that many zeros can’t be real!

The most amazing occurrence of all my travel days happened at the gate for our departing flight for Singapore.  Yes, even more amazing than US Airways loosing power to an engine and making an emergency landing in Pittsburgh all those years ago.  In the gate area everyone is seated, no one is crowding the gate area even though we should start boarding in mere minutes.  There is a demonstration of classical Korean music afoot about 10 yards behind us, all is calm, and the sun is shining through the floor to ceiling at least 50 foot high windows giving a view onto our gleaming 777 ready to whisk us to Singapore.  A US gentleman walks up to one of the three gate agents, all flawlessly fluent in English mind you (now try to find a gate agent in Atlanta that speaks anything other than Ebonics unless that gate is boarding for an overseas destination) and asks when boarding will begin.  This generally meaningless information, generally meaningless to US travelers in US airports, is printed on his boarding pass, but he asks because he is a US traveler and knows the information to be put there solely to entertain, not inform, you.  The gate agent looks at the clock on the wall, which reads 4:24pm and she informs the gentleman that the flight will board in one minute, just like his card says it will.  And sure enough, the big hand ticks forward one space, a bell subtly and pleasantly chimes, and all three agents move forward of the boarding area, BOW steeply from the waist, and announce that our flight will begin boarding now.

It seems like a small thing really, the civility and calm of the entire process, but as any of you who travel within the US know, it is a priceless and rare experience on home soil.  Gate agents who bow to you?  Get out of here!  Airline staff that seem interested and concerned in your well being and happiness?  NEVER!  But in Korea, it happens every day.

Incheon is not Seoul, but rather is outside of the city limits by quite a hike on the coast.  The airport in Seoul itself is still the old Gimpo airbase from Korean War days and if you watch enough M*A*S*H* reruns you will hear the name.  Incheon was purpose built to be an international hub airport, which would be a good thing given that whether you realize it or not, Korean Airlines is the sixth largest airline the world and Incheon is their hub.  The Koreans realized what I so wish US airports would, which was that the majority of the travelers in the airport are transiting, making a connection to somewhere else, so proximity to downtown is irrelevant.  Proximity and ease of getting to their next gate is what matters, and for that, places like LAX, Atlanta, and JFK are hideous by comparison.  Had we be transiting Atlanta for example, we would have had to reclaim all of our luggage, including checked items, gone through complete customs and immigration, then re-checked bags, then back to the concourse to wait.  Other airports in the US are quite similar.  Incheon avoids all that by its design as an international hub.  As far as Korean Immigration is concerned, I never entered Korea, rather, I just visited the mall they call Incheon International Airport.  You can fly to Gimpo from within Korea of course, but not from international destinations.  Of course there is transit to downtown from Incheon if you are in Korea for Korea itself, but given the volume of travelers in the international transfers and departures area, building Incheon was a stroke of genius.  One I can only wish the planners and designers for LAX or Atlanta would have by realizing what volume of traffic ISN’T terminating in their individual cities, which would require a leap over towering arrogance, and further realizing that what those travelers need instead of clogged toilets, surly staff, non-functional escalators and elevators, 1950’s air traffic control systems, and “art” from Zimbabwe, is a FUNCTIONAL transit center that is pleasant but which hasn’t completely lost sight of its purpose and function.  If LAX ever realizes that, the international airport would be out in some place like Mojave, where traffic nor weather are likely to be issues, and which could be easily connected to downtown Los Angeles and domestic flights by a light rail system requiring no more than 30 minutes of travel time.  Hell, the underground train in Atlanta requires about that much time to move you from the E concourse to baggage claim as it is!  Tim and I are lucky to terminate in a hub city of course, but we also know from experience that it isn’t uncommon for us to be two of three to four people total flying in from LAX who actually intends to terminate in Atlanta, not counting those unintentionally grounded here from around the world.  The rest are connecting and while Atlanta makes it easier than LAX or the NYC airports, it still has a lot to learn from Incheon.

The flight to Singapore was uneventful, I probably slept through most of it, and despite my fears, Singaporean customs didn’t really exist.  There were a couple of guys in uniform sulking about in front of the huge sliding glass doors that lead outside, but they were not remotely interested in us or in our baggage, so my illicit medications and my illegal disease slipped in unnoticed.  I guess it is a good thing that I have no intention of returning to Singapore since someone might read this and know my secret.

In Singapore, Against the Rules!

Once outside, there is zero doubt that Singapore is tropical because the heaviness of the sultry air will hit you after all that time in air-conditioned cabins and airports.  The weather is perfect for shorts and flip-flops, but locals would NEVER appear in public dressed as such.  No, only tourists would dare do such a thing.

We had to find a special cab to handle our luggage but we managed and were on our way to our respite for the next two nights, Raffles Hotel.  Explaining Raffles seems a bit like explaining the Ritz in London to me, but I can conceive that some people would not have encountered the name and legend if they didn’t read widely and eclectically or if they simply didn’t know much at all about the history of the British in southeast Asia, their struggle with the Dutch for control of what was known as the “Spice Islands,” comprising most of modern Indonesia, and even a bit about Britain in India, Burma, and Malaya.  These are all things that for some reason I am familiar with, so I know that Raffles was THE hotel of Singapore, the home of the infamous Singapore Sling, and without question the most luxurious hotel in all of Singapore.  It dates from 1887 when it was founded by four Armenian brothers and it was named after the founder of Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles.  Today the hotel is part of a hotel group, but remains the most fantastic relic of colonial-era elegance and service right down to the Sikh doorman to greet you.  Anyone who was anyone, including Queen Elizabeth II, stayed at Raffles when in Singapore.  Other luminaries to stay include: Rudyard Kipling, Noel Coward, Joseph Conrad, James Michener, and Somerset Maugham to name just a few of the literary highlights.  You can read all about it: http://www.raffles.com/EN_RA/Property/RHS/History/

And fabulous it remains.  It used to be on shore, but Harbor Road and former sea front property has moved inland with active land reclamation projects.  We arrived and were whisked in a way that I have only read about.  Baggage was no longer my concern as it was waiting for me upstairs in the room that overlooked both the street from a balcony and the inner courtyard since the room was really two rooms and a bath.  It was deliciously chill inside and I was a bit embarrassed to discover that we only had to press the button to ring our personal room butler.  It isn’t even necessary to make the effort to pick up a phone, no, just press the button from whatever room you are in.  There was delicious fresh tropical fruit set out, and the most fantastic single cup coffee maker I have ever seen.  I very much want one, but I fear they cost more than a single night at Raffles, and given that a single night at Raffles, ON SALE, costs more than the monthly mortgage on my first house, I might not be getting that particular coffee machine anytime soon.

I adored Raffles more than anything else about Singapore and I could have stayed there and not moved a muscle, being perfectly, if unexpectedly, content.  But we had promised to meet my parents in the famous Long Bar for a Singapore Sling.  In my head, I had visions of the Long Bar as it must once have been, filled with the mem-sahibs and puka-sahibs as well as the well-heeled British on holiday in the East.  I imagined white shirts and slowly turning fans.  The fans are there, but the white shirts are a rarity now.  Raffles isn’t run by idiots after all and they know they are famous world-wide (sorry Melissa A, but really, they are), so the Long Bar is open to the public as are some souvenir shops on the ground level.  BUT to get inside beyond that, you have to have a key, so the courtyard is wonderfully private as are all the room-level verandahs.  The Long Bar was noisy and loud but we had our drinks.  What is a Singapore Sling?  This is the most authoritative recipe I can find:

30ml Gin

15 ml Cherry Brandy

120 ml Pineapple Juice

15 ml Lime Juice

7.5 ml Cointreau

7.5 ml Dom Benedictine

10 ml Grenadine

A Dash of Angostura Bitters

Garnish with a slice of Pineapple and Cherry

In theory, the pineapple fruit and juice should be fresh and only from Sarawak (today in Malaysia) but you aren’t likely to have one of those about, nor are you likely to find one either, so if you want the fizz that they used to provide, add some soda water for bubbles only!

I am no overly fond of most any gin concoction, but it was tradition and it was a refreshing and 100% appropriate beginning to the grand adventure!

My initial impressions of Singapore were positive in that the city/state is certainly very clean and easy to navigate.  Some have referred to it as “Asia Light” implying that it is a watered down version of Asia, but having never been to Asia before, outside of Turkey, I wouldn’t know “Asia Heavy” if it hit me (this would change once I set foot in Indonesia).  Granted, it was at times hard not to think that we were really still in the US on a very hot and humid summer day in a part of a city with a large number of Chinese people.  All signage is in English and they use dollar signs in stores, so yeah, for a moment, I think you could get confused.

There is an overwhelming sense of newness in Singapore, and the few remaining old buildings tucked in here and there serve to highlight the newness of everything else.  The pace of the city is truly frenetic in that everyone is in a hurry apparently to be somewhere and do something, presumably to make yet more money for this little Asian Tiger Economy.  Even the escalators run at twice the speed of their counterparts in the US.  Hurry, hurry, buzz, buzz goes Singapore!

We rode subway transit and walked about in the older sections known as Chinatown and Little India.  Here, one can find pockets of the older Singapore but even those pockets are well maintained and well behaved.

A better drink that the Sling was had in Little India, at a slummy sidewalk café where the chairs read “Have A Tiger?” referring to the local beer.  Little India was much more casual than the rest of Singapore, more focused on catering to local needs, and perhaps that is why I liked it best of all.  Here were the plastic chairs on the sidewalk, perfectly complemented by Indian wanna-be gangstas.

Shopping is reported to not be for the timid in Singapore, but I have never understood the drive to fly around the world and then find oneself in yet another mall.  I don’t like malls at home; I surely don’t want to be in one in Asia.  But if one isn’t shopping, or isn’t at the amusement park on the island in the harbor, about the only thing left to do is visit the botanical gardens assuming that one likes plants.

One thing I did get to do in Singapore that I always wanted to do was to eat fresh durian fruit.  Durian is a large a spiky fruit that you can read all about at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian.  Suffice it to say that it is infamous for its odor, which some liken to rotting flesh.  Its smell is considered so foul that transporting it on commercial airlines or even on the Singapore subway system is forbidden.  Apparently the 2,000 tons that the US imports comes by container or air freight.  I have seen them for sale fresh in Chinatown in San Francisco for years, but no one on the street will cut one open to give you a sample.  In Singapore, you can buy the edible portion of the fruit, only about 15-30% of the total weight, from street vendors.  I never noticed a stench, although Tim and my father reported one.  The taste is very rich, almost like custard, not overly sweet, but still cloying on the tongue.  It is a flavor that lasts, so if you don’t like it, you will need a toothbrush!  I had eaten it in San Jose, California made into a fruit shake with the usual warnings given to me routinely by Vietnamese restaurant providers which amounted to “even if you don’t like the taste, even if you hate [whatever food I had ordered] you still have to pay.  Understand?”  The taste was much the same as that shake, which I ate all of and paid for, just a lot stronger and more concentrated.  I didn’t dislike it but neither do I crave it.  It was just a new taste to experience so I did.

I feel much the same way about the food we ate in Singapore as well.  Good eating is also a supposed hallmark of Singapore and well it may be, but having never been much of a foodie myself, I might not have noticed what I should have.  Rather than flash, we went into small local places, once for Vietnamese noodles and once, rather disastrously for most everyone else I fear, for Indian food.  I liked the Indian place but my tablemates I think wanted to be elsewhere.  But, they didn’t complain and they tried what was put in front of them, and what more can you ask for than that!

I am ambivalent about Singapore I think because I think of it as an ambivalent sort of place, a bit sterile perhaps, but that might be exactly the appeal of it.  For novice travelers or for people who are terrified of not speaking the same language, or of being in a place where the food is very different, it might be a good place to go.  For me, for legal reasons, I am not even supposed to go, so perhaps my impressions don’t matter.   But for a complex of reasons that I don’t know that I can adequately explain, Singapore is a place I have been but not a place I need to return to.

The Political Part of the Story

Singapore interests me deeply for purely theoretical reasons.  In the 1960’s, when it separated from the confederation with what is now Malaysia, Singapore was a sleepy, malaria-ridden, backwater port one degree off the Equator.  But through the sheer force of personality, vision, and drive of one man, Lee Kuan Yew, everything changed.  Granted, the island nation has not, nor is it now, what one might call a shining beacon of democracy and individual rights.  Drop a candy wrapper if you want to pay the $200 fine.  You can only buy a house from someone of the same ethnic background as yourself to ensure appropriate integration of the Chinese, Malay, and Indian peoples to avoid racial unpleasantness.  Savings plans are mandatory.  High IQ women are paid to reproduce.  And infamously, chewing gum is not allowed.  Singaporeans sacrificed a great many of what we as Americans might cherish as individual freedoms in order to become the world’s largest and busiest container cargo port and one of its largest economies in the time frame of a single generation of its citizens.  Education is free as is healthcare and housing is government subsidized with home ownership rates amongst the highest in the world and unemployment, despite the economic malaise of the world at a steady 3%.  Can one argue with results?

And the answer is, I don’t know.  The results are real and so were the sacrifices and the impositions.  Perhaps in a society dominated by ethnic Chinese people it was easier given a shared background of Confucian thought and belief that would emphasize the family, ancestors and those yet to come, far beyond any thought of the individual, a world in fact where the individual had no meaning beyond contribution to the whole, perhaps in that model of thought and background, the sacrifices were not so hard to make and the impositions not so hard to swallow.  As someone recently said, “if you find Singapore hard to take, try your hand at making it in a Jakarta, Indonesia, shantytown where you can chew all the gum you want, have no savings, and starve with the neighbors.”  And I got to thinking, maybe they have a point.  Maybe for the West, and especially for the US, the concept of individual rights has been elevated to the zenith of thought with very little thought for the attendant concept of individual responsibility.  We all want it our way at the drive through and then in life and yet rarely do we seem to think about what goes into having it that way.  We want to pay a little and get a lot, but we don’t pay attention to the price we really pay in lost jobs, expanding waistlines clogged with gum-filled cheap food, nor the environmental havoc we wreck so we can drive a Hummer because “we want to and you can’t tell me I can’t.”  It extends all the way to out of control children who believe they own the universe because their mommies had them late or don’t have time for them, but children are the ultimate accessory for the yuppie life we all are supposed to want, but no one mentions children come with responsibility, and when we don’t like that requirement, we push it off on day care centers, the public schools, and then ultimately, the correctional system.

Maybe the US could have benefited from more controls, more rules, evenly and adequately placed and enforced of course.  Maybe there is such a thing as a benevolent dictatorship, a paternal or maternal figure for a nation and a people that says “ENOUGH!”  Someone who can put their foot down strongly and force people to work together toward a common goal instead of their own petty wants and desires at any cost to those around them.  Maybe that would have been a good thing before we were taken over by the special interest groups and the corporations.  I have to wonder because when faced with what Singapore WAS versus what it IS compared to what the United States WAS and what it IS, the comparison frankly isn’t favorable.  And yes, I hear you saying that if I hate it here I should just leave, and believe me, if an enlightened country on this planet would accept me, I would leave tomorrow, but in reality it isn’t as easy as you might make it out to be.  And yes, I know I could have a much worse deal in the US than I do, but I have to consider all those who DO have a much worse deal than I do and I marvel that they survive at all, and that makes me think that something is seriously wrong in the road we have traveled and perhaps the Singapore Solution, or a variant thereof, might be a really good thing.

I have come to believe that the American focus on all things individual has led us to some ugly impasses domestically and internationally, from the way the unions strangled manufacturing out of a place in the American economy, to the way that special interests buy policy, to the way that religious extremism pushes ground breaking science and technology (markets we should have excelled in) overseas, to keeping gasoline unrealistically low priced so that we continue to suck it up by the tanker full, to the no rules and responsibility methods by which our children grow up to kill and steal the first time they are thwarted in their desires, to how our own government invades and bombs those who disagree with it or who have resources we desire.  It is trend that creates bullies and unpleasant neighbors.

Singapore makes a merit of academic achievement and competence, the US rewards football ability.  Something is askew I fear.  How many Americans can even FIND Singapore on a map?  The priorities are divergent and so, frankly, are the results achieved.

Singapore focused on itself as a nation by creating a national identity that people were willing, or had to, work for; something outside themselves.  I wish for the US that we would pull inwards, let some of the other richest nations in the world pick up some of the weight of unmet expectations, or better yet, set the world adrift to let it settle its own conflicts and issues.  The billions, the trillions, we send abroad could do so much for the many right here who need it.  If you feel badly for the hungry, the shelter-less, even the starving and those dying of preventable and treatable diseases, start at home.  There is more than enough TB, for example, right here in the US, you don’t need to join Bill and Mindy in Africa to find it.  If you believe that every person rendered homeless by Katrina is now safely and soundly housed, you live in a fantasy.  Whatever money you send to Haiti, the crisis of the day, is nothing compared to the disaster that Haiti has been since the 19^th century, and not a damn thing you send today will change that, rather, it will serve to entrench what is, for those who had money, food, and power before that earthquake, you better believe that in comparative terms to the heaving masses, they still do.

I live in times that occasionally seem desperate and I struggle to see how the path of our nation over the last 60-70 years can possibly be right and yet all attempts to change it drown in a sea of individual interests.  It stuns me, it causes me despair, and I find myself, of all people, wishing for a level and type of change we have never seen, for a Father Yew of our own to emerge perhaps to bring us back into light.

The overall conundrum I have with the way our nation operates is with our own arrogant surety of our own correctness to the extent that we feel entitled to force it down the throats of others at gun point.  I no longer, if I ever did, believe that we have the answers for the world about how to be and how to live.  I don’t know that Singapore does either, but I do think it is high time that we draw back to our own boundaries and borders to take care of our own selves, heal our own wounds and find what is right for Americans within ourselves and within our own abilities and resources.  I think it is overdue time that we stop assuming that we know what is best for the rest of the world when we so clearly don’t know what is best for ourselves.  There is a growing chorus of voices saying that the best bet for the developing world is for the giant economies to take their aid packages and go home since all that money traditionally and continually falls into the hands of the already haves instead of where it is intended.  These are voices coming from the developing world itself mind you, not just greedy Westerners.  Charity so rarely results in long standing real change instead of just creating the expectation of yet another band aid for the world.  And for those of you who want proof of that concept, fine, look to Singapore, a place that DIDN’T get showered with development aid and “assistance” in the aftermath of a devastating Japanese occupation in World War II.  They did it all on their own and I have to wonder if maybe that spirit of self-reliance, non-intervention, and non-manipulation, isn’t exactly what we need to pursue.

I am going out on a limb and saying I don’t care what China’s human rights record is.  I am bit more concerned about OUR human rights record.  I no longer believe that we have the moral authority to dictate what “rights” are in the world.  Historically, when people want change they will make it.  When and if the Chinese want change, they will make it, and I believe that the same goes for all people.  The Singapore way, the China way, the Swiss way for that matter, all are different than our own, but I don’t personally feel the authority, the moral righteousness that Americans so seem to feel that our way is the only way.  I would feel more comfortable with that concept of rightness if it wasn’t mixed up with “righteousness” which is a very different and dangerous matter, and one that I see so much of in the American people whenever I leave the country.

During my journey, I saw much that was DIFFERENT but nothing that was WRONG because I don’t believe I am the one with the omniscience or omnipotence to declare those variations, and honestly, I haven’t met a person yet who has the monopoly of what is right for all peoples everywhere at all times, and those who tell you they do are deluding themselves, or at least a bunch of other people for some gain of their own.  I would rather we tend our own gardens, borrow knowledge and ideas from the many that work within our own needs, and give freely of the same knowledge and ideas to others, but never engage in yet another “Free X-Country Americans Have Never Heard of, Know Nothing About, and Don’t Care About Except Which Bumper Sticker Is Cool This Year” campaign.  Let China get about its business, if Haiti fails then that is evolution at work, and before you run to “Free Tibet” be certain you know what exists there now and what you would be freeing it to return to.  In the case of Tibet specifically, while the Dalai Lama is cute and cuddly and all, and even Richard Gere likes him, remember that at home he was another dictator after all, running a theocracy with all power, wealth, and knowledge vested in the less than 1% that could even read.

And I already know which of you will be most angry at me for what I take away from my world travels and that is fine.  Be angry, that is your right.  But what isn’t your right is to brow beat me or attempt to correct me as you would a child because I don’t agree with you.  There is room in the world for more than one way of seeing things, and if that threatens you that much perhaps it is your own assumptions and values that need examining, not mine.  I am comfortable with not sending money to Haiti etc.  My question to you is: why do I threaten you so much?

Of course it wasn’t just the experience of Singapore that made me think about all these things, it was the entire journey, the entire experience of being free of America for a full month: the experience of spending time with others who come from so much less, who want so much less, and are happy to give of themselves to achieve it even though they will never see it personally.  And it helped that I have also re-read Dune by Frank Herbert as well as the entire Hitchhikers Guide series as well.  I think perhaps the world was a better place when it was bigger, full of more mystery, and when more of it was left to its own devices and desires.

Now I know this is supposed to be a journal of a journey, and really it is, for through my journeys, through my travels, I come to ideas about the world, about how it might be better, and if travel can’t do that for us, then why leave home?

Java, Indonesia

And to get back to travel, travel we did, making landfall in Indonesia, on the island of Java at the port of Semarang two days later.

There are several logistical things about Semarang that deserve mention.  First of all, Semarang is not an Indonesian tourist hot spot, so, depending on who you are and why you travel, either never go there, or get on a plane for there immediately.  If you want comforts, sights to see, and shopping to do, don’t go.  If, on the other hand, you want a glimpse into unadulterated Indonesian life, or more specifically since I doubt there really is any such thing as “Indonesian life”, Javan life, then go and catch it in Semarang.

When speaking of Indonesia, it seems crucial to me that everyone remember that it too is an invention, in this case an invention primarily of the Dutch and the British, with some help from the Portuguese.  The goal of course was to control the flow and production of spices (who knew Frank Herbert would be SO appropriate!) around the world.  Parts of Indonesia were once known as the “Spice Islands” after all, and to this day a good deal of pepper and other more exotic flavors flow from some of the thousands of islands of Indonesia.  However, as one might expect, life and customs on each island evolved differently, and what predominates on Java well might have little application on Bali or Sulawesi.  I have no comment about whether the creation and maintenance of Indonesia makes sense in a global political sense; it exists and we went there, but I think anyone would have to find Indonesia bewildering without a basic understanding of why each island might well seem so totally different.

It might, or might not, also help to remember that Indonesia is the world’s most populous predominantly Muslim nation.  There are more Muslims in Indonesia than the Middle East, so you might have to adjust some of your assumptions about who practices Islam, i.e., they don’t all live in a dry desert-like climate and speak Arabic.  The degree of orthodoxy varies widely in Indonesia, with the westernmost, and not coincidentally, poorest, islands, being the most strict in their interpretation and local application of sharia law.  For the most part, if you avoid drugs and sex, this won’t apply to you.  The object lesson here is that just like in the US, religious fundamentalism and poverty go together like cookies and milk.  By the way, Indonesia wasn’t lucky in it strongman, or men, so it bears very little resemblance to Singapore, which makes the old bogeyman of colonialism hard to blame for all the ills of the developing world given that a) the US was a colony once upon a time, along with Australia and New Zealand, and Singapore, and b) Singapore is not ethnically homogeneous either, albeit in a smaller space.

The other logistical issue with Semarang was that the ship stops there once a year, and since a vast majority of the service members of the crew are Indonesian, this is the one time a year their families can see where their mother/father/spouse/child works.  Contracts keep crews on board vessels for ten to eleven months at a time so the once a year stop means that families are reunited after long absences.  The ship allows family on board with free roaming and free food and it is a festive occasion for the crew.  Our assistant dining room steward’s mother came aboard in Semarang, and then hopped a flight to our next Indonesian port so she could spend another day with her son.  Granted, the excitement means that your socks might go missing from the laundry or you might get someone else’s underwear, but in the overall excitement and joy of reunion, I think most people are inclined to forgive such minor bumps.  And in another potential benefit of travel, you remember, or even realize, that despite the differences in language, custom, religion, and even food, we are bound together by the love we have for our families and the love they have for us.  Yep, even those Muslims love their children, and I suspect that the Soviets loved theirs too back in the 1960s.  It strikes me as tragic that more of us can’t remember that more effectively before we make some of the statements that we do and undertake some of the actions that logically follow those statements.

Java is the most densely populated place on the planet and a trip on its roads will leave you in no doubt that not only are there an untold number of people, but they all ride motorbikes, swerving in and out of lanes, trucks, buses, and cars, and yet, they all sensibly wear helmets.  To be clear, this is NOT Singapore, so the rules of the road are more like suggestions of the road, and there is a lot of very evident poverty.  And in spite of that, people are lovely and kind, smiling and waving at those of us who are obviously visitors with no attempts for the most part to even sell you anything.  You might be an object of curiosity, as in what is a tourist doing in Semarang, but you won’t encounter hostility.

Our goal in Semarang was to get to Borobudur.  Borobudur is a ninth-century Mahayana Buddhist monument in Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia. The monument comprises six square platforms topped by three circular platforms, and is decorated with 2,672 relief panels and 504 Buddha statues.  A main dome, located at the center of the top platform, is surrounded by 72 Buddha statues seated inside perforated stupa.

The monument is both a shrine to the Lord Buddha and a place for Buddhist pilgrimage. The journey for pilgrims begins at the base of the monument and follows a path circumambulating the monument while ascending to the top through the three levels of Buddhist cosmology, namely Kāmadhātu (the world of desire), Rupadhatu (the world of forms) and Arupadhatu (the world of formlessness). During the journey the monument guides the pilgrims through a system of stairways and corridors with 1,460 narrative relief panels on the wall and the balustrades.

Evidence suggests Borobudur was abandoned following the fourteenth century decline of Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms in Java, and the Javanese conversion to Islam.  Worldwide knowledge of its existence was sparked in 1814 by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the then British ruler of Java, who was advised of its location by native Indonesians. Borobudur has since been preserved through several restorations. The largest restoration project was undertaken between 1975 and 1982 by the Indonesian government and UNESCO, following which the monument was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Borobudur is still used for pilgrimage; once a year Buddhists in Indonesia celebrate Vesak at the monument, and Borobudur is Indonesia’s single most visited tourist attraction.

Our extensive photographs of the site will help make sense of much of this description.  And, it was nice in some way that there was link back to Sir Raffles once again in our voyage.

If you really want to know about Borobudur in detail and with authoritative knowledge, I am not your guy.  I have a book about it and I loved visiting it for it sheer massiveness, sculptural beauty, and history.  Even though it was raining at the time, a rented umbrella solved most of that problem and I am pleased to say that we followed the majority of the pilgrim path to the top.

What interested me more, and what you won’t find out about in any book other than mine, was the experience of driving to Borobudur.  On any given day of a cruise, there are few things I would LESS like to do than sit on a bus with a group of my fellow cruise-mates.  To be honest, I hate American tourists, in fact, I LOATHE them.  But one thing I would like even less would be being left behind by the ship, which is exactly what will happen if you venture out independently and don’t make it back by all-aboard time.  You then find yourself trying to negotiate local transportation to the next port, which might not even be accessible independently, and you understand that the risk you have taken, and potentially incurred, is yours alone with no right of recourse or refund.  No thanks unless I am somewhere where I am reasonably confident that I can make it back in time.  I wasn’t sure that I could cover the roughly 100 kilometer distance, about a 2 hour drive time (2 hours with a police escort through the city to get us through traffic in time…there was zero security threat), in reasonable time.  Therefore, we bit the bullet and took the ship bus.

Every bus has a guide with it and ours was cheerful and eager to help and be helpful.  Sadly, one of the sports American tourists engage in is baiting the tour guide in clear and spiteful attempts to draw attention to any negatives they can exploit about the country they are visiting, all done, I believe, in an attempt to reassure themselves that they are as superior as their smugness allows them to believe they are and that travel for this species of American is designed to remind them of how lucky they are to live in the United States.  To further this end, they will tailor their questions to be as hateful and judgmental as possible, in line with their not so subtle commentary about everything from the guide’s language ability to religious beliefs.

Every single time I heard disparaging comments about our guide’s English, which I had no trouble understanding, I wanted to stand up and invite just one of the fat and sullen Americans on our bus to demonstrate their command of Bahasa Indonesia, the local language.  Had I done so, I assure you, there would have been no takers.  But still, it remains one of my travel dreams to attempt this just once!  It doesn’t matter what the local language is, I am just dying to find one cruise ship tourist who knows even the smallest bit of the local lingo, provided of course that the local language isn’t in fact English.

At some point the guide mentioned, after being pigeon holed into it without seeing it coming, that technically Islam allowed him to have seven wives.  At this point you have to insert the expected gasps and stunned sensitive sensibilities of the bus group.  I couldn’t stop the guy from further pointing out that to do so though would be very expensive since every wife had to be given exactly equal treatment in everything from jewelry to number of children to amount of sex engaged in.  Therefore, he continued, it wasn’t practical since he had enough work satisfying one wife and her children!  He was beaming in pleasure that he had explained himself so brilliantly, and really, he had, and I don’t think he understood why the bus was practically hissing at him.  Again, I had to restrain myself from screaming at the freaks clutching Bibles to their breast to open the damn book and read the first chapter even where everyone but everyone has multiple wives, some of which they bought or bartered for, and then ask the obvious question of why it is acceptable in their precious Bibles but not in life?

Monogamy was an imposed Western tradition not a religious mandate.  Polygamy just makes sense if you are a nomadic people without modern health care.  How else would the tribe grow in size, or even break even?  Human pregnancy sucks up nine months, and then infant care takes most women another year or so before they are prepared physically and emotionally to become pregnant again.  Yes, there are the super-fertile freaks that drop one in the morning and then get pregnant again that afternoon, but hormones released through the stimulation of breast-feeding in particular act as natural contraceptives to give the born child a better chance at nutrition and attention.  Really.  You can even look it up if you don’t believe me.  So, take one woman off the baby making market for the better part of two years on average, but then what is the male, who ejaculates enough semen daily to impregnate literally millions of women, supposed to do?  Putting physical desire and outright randyness aside, generally a stupid thing to do when discussing male behavior, but bear with me here, a man could realistically be leaving a whole lot more offspring than he possibly could restricted to one woman, and natural selection does favor the one with the most living descendants and some would argue that males are hard wired evolutionarily to impregnate as many females as they can.  Hell, even “monogamous” male birds cheat on their “spouses!”  Polygamy solves this issue handily and gives multiple women legitimacy in terms of their children and their standing in the community.  Even the early Mormons understood this basic principle when settling the Utah desert, and whatever you think of Mormons, you have to admit that Utah is squeaky clean with excellent educational facilities.

Now look, untwist your panties and realize that given global overpopulation I really don’t think polygamy makes a lot of sense, and realistically, it isn’t commonly practiced except by the President of South Africa (and even he continues to cheat!) because it isn’t financially realistic.  But, I don’t think it appropriate to lambast another person’s cultural or religious principles just because they differ with yours.  Our guide was making no judgment about Christianity nor was he offering any of the hags on the bus a ring, instead he was sharing his culture and belief system, and even doing it in a self-deprecating and humorous way.  He should not have been picked on for that effort.

The poverty of Java is pretty obvious, especially in the fishing villages, and you could count on cleverly worded questions intended as excuses to look down noses from the crowd.  I think they didn’t quite know what to do when it was pointed out that Indonesia has free education and free health care!  Thankfully they were rescued by the admission that the best jobs in the police, military, or civil service were commonly purchased by wealthy families.  I didn’t have the guts to point out that increasingly that seems to be the pattern in American politics: buy what and who you want.  And the blatant cronyism of the Bush administration from FEMA posts (ooops!) to seriously mis-thought Chief Justice nominations (she wasn’t even a freakin lawyer, much less a judge!) stood on its own, but this crowd wasn’t thinking about that.  No, they were just relieved that something negative had been feed to them in time to stop them thinking about not-so-free education and health care at home.  Any of them with divine Medicare hopefully understood that it wouldn’t pay a dime for their care outside of the US, including in the ships infirmary, but that is a tale for another day.

Honestly, I hate Americans who complain about everything.  There is a class of American tourist that seems to find no joy or wonder in anything but in bitching and complaining.  They are always disappointed and nothing is ever good enough.  They are hypercritical of everything that is seen, tasted, or heard.  Increasingly I think there should be some sort of screening at international departures in the United States that prevents this type from leaving the country and representing us to the world.  Forget the fact that perhaps they are truly representative of the majority of Americans; it seems high time to me that we put a better foot forward!

The plus to taking the bus, and at one point a train, was that it gave me great views of the stunningly lush Javan countryside.  Being a volcanic island, Java is incredibly fertile, growing a good deal of rice as well as enormous jackfruits along the side of the roads and train tracks.  The largest of the jackfruits were protected from insects by bags ranging from woven fabric to modern day plastic.  Many people have asked me about jackfruit, which surprises me because I am so used to it from my days haunting Chinatown groceries and Vietnamese restaurants.  I mean, come on!  It is the national fruit of Bangladesh and you have never heard of it?  Its texture, when unripe, allows it to be used as a form of vegetarian chicken in curries!  Still never heard of it?  Check it out at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackfruit or at: http://thaifood.about.com/od/glossary/g/jackfruit.htm.

I found the temple at Borobudur to be stunning.  I am glad that UNESCO agreed with me and that it is no longer allowable for visitors to take parts of the temple with them as souvenirs, which accounts for the large number of Buddha heads that are missing from their stupas.  I was content with the modern day version of the same.  One of the above described tourists commented behind me at one point that Borobudur was “a pile of rocks” but I think they were confused with the intricate monument constructed at a time when Europe had lost most all meaningful knowledge and was cowering in darkness and fear with the contents of their own heads.  Those I have no doubt were full of piles of rocks!  And yes, I suppose one could view Borobudur as a monumental example of the wastes of energy and ingenuity that are committed in the name of religions, akin to cathedrals and mosques, but having been there, I can’t see it that way.  Instead, I saw it as the expression of the divine cooperatively built by like minded persons in exaltation of their beliefs.  Buddhism doesn’t feature a professional priestly class in general, although varieties of it do, so I don’t see its construction as something landless peasants were compelled to do in exaltation of a person who isn’t even viewed as a god per se, but rather as one who achieved enlightenment just as any mortal can provided effort is expended towards the right ways of living (which don’t involve, oddly, the oppression or murder of any other peoples).  The fact is that no one knows who built Borbudur or necessarily even why they built it.  But build it they did and I left honored to have had the opportunity to see it.

Bali, Indonesia

As I have noted, the islands of Indonesia can be worlds unto themselves with little direct similarity between them.  And thus it would prove to be when we landed on Bali.  Unlike Java, Bali is predominantly Hindu, not because the population is composed of former indentured laborers, which accounts for the Hindu populations of such diverse places as Guyana and Fiji, but rather because at one time, Hinduism was spread through missionaries and armies across southern Asia.  On most of the islands of what is now Indonesia, Islam replaced both Hinduism and Buddhism, but not on Bali.  Hinduism explains the small, and truly omnipresent, offerings of rice on leaves that are found on sidewalks and windowsills.

Also unlike on Java, tourism is very big on Bali.  Bali is the island of Denpassar, the home of enormous all-inclusive resorts and clubs designed to cater primarily to package tourists from Australia.  We landed at Padang Bai, which while not as heavily visited as Denpassar, is an up and coming resort location.  The effect of this new economic force would be quickly apparent.

Bali is also, sadly, the island rocked by terrorist explosions in nightclubs frequented by said Australians, most likely as a protest against the heavy Australian involvement in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.  However, I think it very important to note that in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, this was a very rare display of violence.  And I think that one has to conclude that if the world’s largest concentration of Muslim people is rarely violent, despite poverty and government corruption, then the violence in the Middle East must be seen more as a result of local conditions, largely imposed by the terrorist state of Israel, as opposed to being an expression of Muslim values.  Think about the point for a few minutes, really let it sink in, and then see what you conclude.

Padang Bai is what is known as a “tender port,” meaning that one uses the ship’s life boats to go ashore in an otherwise too shallow port.  Padang Bai is deep enough to allow for regular ferry services and I suspect that ferry passengers, mostly Indonesian, used to be the primary transit travelers through the town.  But with the arrival of cruise ships and package tourists, a new market segment opened up.

Literally from the moment we arrived on shore, and I mean while still on the dock itself, we were mobbed, swarmed, with vendors who were aggressive and physical.  Hands were touching you everywhere and naturally one starts to fear for the safety of one’s wallet.  Mine was never even approached in fact, so my one typical American tourist fear, which reminds me so strongly of Mrs. Pingleton finding herself in the “wrong” part of Baltimore in John Waters’ classic film Hairspray, came to nothing, but still, so many people reaching out to you, groping and seemingly desperate to sell you something, or to “give” you something as a pretense to get you to consider their “batik,” postcards, or whatever.  At some point, this behavior created a sense of almost claustrophobia in me that was going to cause me to either become angrily violent, which seemed so inappropriate on several levels, or to simply run away.  It was basic, primal, fight or flight time.

I am under no illusion that this behavior is anything other than the result of the influence of tourism on the Balinese.  Without doubt, the behavior of package tourists has caused the Balinese to recognize that for whatever reason their high pressure and highly physical sales techniques work with visitors.  Those visitors who find it distasteful have, ultimately, no one to blame but their compatriots who have shown the local people that this way works.  I do understand the influence of poverty and the relative wealth that everyone on the ship represented to the Balinese, but I still despaired that the influence of tourism on the highly visited island of Bali made for such a distinctively different experience compared to the relatively unvisited Java.

Perhaps not surprisingly, we didn’t spend a great deal of time on Bali.  We saw some fighting cocks, which apparently, serve as a way to keep currency in circulation on Bali.  Islanders are otherwise inclined to conserve cash, creating shortages, but they will let cash flow in betting on the outcomes of rooster fights.

We also visited the post office on Bali.  This was an experience by itself that I will always remember.  The post master was delightful and not busy, a Scotsman from the ship being the only other customer at the time.  We were given free Bali postcards for using the post office and our outgoing postcards were hand cancelled with a very long, at least 3-4 feet in length, serious cancelling stamp that came down with a resounding “thunk!”

We did stop and have several local beers in a small restaurant.  Being inside an establishment provided some respite from the constant sales pitches but even that wasn’t a 100% surety.  Afterwards, we renegotiated our way through the throngs of vendors to get back on board the tender.  Little did we know how lucky we were.

The ship did not set sail on time, and while we found this odd, we didn’t worry about it.  Our cabin was on the wrong side of the ship to witness the drama that was unfolding.  The tenders had failed due to a buildup of sand in the filters from the shallow bottom of the wharf.  Meanwhile, passengers who had gone ashore on organized tours and outings were returning by the hundreds with no where to go but to stand in the sun and heat of the open wharf, hounded by vendors for literally hours.  Food and water was taken ashore for them, which was important because more than one passenger would faint in the heat of Indonesia.  Finally, the cruise ship contracted local ships to start bringing people back while crews worked as quickly as they could to get the tenders up and running.  Those tenders also being our lifeboats meant that as long as they remained non-functional, for safety reasons, the ship couldn’t sale.  Eventually, all was made right and we sailed for Komodo.

Komodo Island, Indonesia

If you want remote and un-touristed, Komodo is it.  Arriving by cruise ship is one of the few ways to get to this isolated island.  There are neither ferry routes nor any airports, which is hardly surprising given that the island is home to only about 300 fisherman and their families.  The reason to visit is to hike to the interior to get a glimpse of the ora, or Komodo dragon.  The dragons live on only four islands in the world, all of them concentrated and next to each other in this part of Indonesia.  I had read of them many years ago, while still a teenager, so this was one of those truly once in a lifetime chances to see wildlife in its natural habitat, not in those cesspools we refer to as zoos, where most captive Komodo dragons live short and unhappy lives due to chronic infections and other diseases of captive animals.

This dragon doesn’t breathe fire but it is fierce in its own ways.  The dragon is the largest of the monitor lizards.  Its primary diet is deer, which is brings down by first biting, usually a leg, with their bacteria filled mouth, and then waiting for sepsis to weaken the animal such that it cannot escape.  However, the dragon is documented to not be above consuming people too, if it can get them.  For one such case, an unlucky Dutchman, they found a shoe, but nothing else.

Because the dragons have a keen sense of smell, able to detect blood up to a mile away, anyone with open cuts or wounds, or any menstruating women, were forbidden from going ashore.  The general demographic of our cruise mates largely and effectively ruled out the later forbidden category.  And, only those with tickets for an organized, and protected, walk were allowed on shore.

The island is run in cooperation with Australia as a UNESCO site, but if you ever get the chance to go there, don’t expect too much.  There are some shelters for lectures on the shoreline, but otherwise the island is blessedly quiet and undeveloped.

Unlike Java and Bali, Komodo isn’t in a rain band, so it is very dry, very hot, and features scrubby vegetation.  Therefore it surprised me that the island was replete with birds, and for the first time in my life I was treated to the sight of a sulfur-crested cockatoo (just like the one Niles Crane has on Frasier) living and flying free in its natural habitat.  I would also be able to see many other birds whose names I don’t know.  There were also dry land orchids growing, as they should, on the sides of trees, relying on airborne moisture and nutrients alone for sustenance.

We would also see the deer that are the favored food of the dragons, but of course, the goal of this exercise was to see the dragons themselves.  As it turned out, that wasn’t difficult since there was one obligingly on the beach under the pier when we came ashore!  I suspect that the cool wet sand and the shade provided by the pier were welcome respites for an animal that lacks internal temperature controls, otherwise known as being “cold-blooded.”  I have always found that term misleading though, implying as it does that such creatures don’t have the ability to move quickly and with purpose when desired.  In the case of the dragons, we were assured that they can and do move quickly when needed or desired.  Their tails are massive and make effective clubbing weapons to bring prey down towards the equally massive mouths.  Ambush is the favored method of attack though, and the island’s rare waterholes serve as convenient places to catch the unwary.  And in fact it was at just such waterholes that we had our closest and most numerous viewings of the dragons.  The guides carried forked sticks to protect us and all of them had special training in defending against dragons, and one had legs scars to show what one could do when provoked (and that was just the attack of a baby!).

When viewed, the dragons didn’t seem to take much interest in us, they certainly didn’t bother to run or even move, but you had the distinct sense that you were very carefully being watched, and anyone foolish enough to have leaned too close for that extra special shot I could easily imagine would have ended up with a missing hand or arm!

Of the three ports in Indonesia, hardly a representative sampling of all that Indonesia has to offer I realize, but nonetheless the parts I had access to, I would choose Komodo as the hands down favorite because it was remote, pristine, undeveloped, and because it allowed me to check off one of those life goals of places to visit and things to see.

I would encourage anyone who is curious about Komodo and its dragons to research the subject beyond what tidbits of information I can provide here.  Amazon.com features numerous books about the subject, including items for children.  And of course, there is also the easily accessed and digested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragon

The Ship Board Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Group

Tim and I did something entirely unlike our usual selves on this cruise in that we decided to be deliberately social.  Normally, and I don’t exaggerate, we take great delight in shunning social contacts and in mocking those around us, all to allow us to continue to believe in our own innate superiority.  Now, I can hear a few of you pooh-poohing this idea, but I assure you, it is quite accurate, and no, it ISN’T the result of my influence.  Timothy is quite adept at shunning people without my help.

But on this trip we decided to join the regular evening LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) gatherings which are announced in the daily programs.  In times past, these were referred to as the Friends of Dorothy meetings, and eventually we were able to figure out that to a group of much older gay men, and presumably lesbians too, this would be an adequate signal.  Neither Tim nor I have ever had a fascination with Judy Garland, so for us it was a bit of a stretch to figure out what it meant, until we finally consulted the all powerful oracle of modern life, Google, to confirm our guess.  By the way, the Friends of Bill meeting is the AA group.  I have no idea who Bill is, or was, nor do I understand the significance, but I suppose if I was a dedicated 12-stepper I would.

Anyhow, the meetings were now more clearly labeled and we found to our surprise that we had a delightful time.  We would meet for cocktails and perhaps arrange a group dinner or activity such as a wine tasting.  We also cheered on one of our group in the ship version of American Idol.  It was fun and simple with no suggestion of life-long friendships being made or kept.  For us, it was a departure from business as usual, but honestly, we were not deeply saddened that most of the group had joined in Hong Kong and were therefore departing from their month long journey in Sydney, Australia, leaving us with a good two weeks free from a sense of social obligation.  For while we enjoyed the camaraderie (and nothing else mind you!), we did at times feel like we just didn’t want to have to be dressed earlier than we had to for dinner etc, and at the same time we felt like there was an implied social contract that we were breaking.  It was a relief to discover after the first time we failed to attend that there were no bruised feelings the next time we did turn up.  I can’t say that we would join such a group again on a different cruise, for as is the nature of these things, it would all depend on the group you ended up with and we luckily had a great group of gentlemen, and one woman who was clearly not a lady, to drink and gossip with.  Another ship on another cruise the mix might be off, but I suppose the truth of that situation is that we won’t know until, and if, we try it once again.

Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia

Our next port was Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territories of Australia.  For those of you who are keeping track of these things, landfall here represented contact with our 6^th of the 7 continents so we were quite pleased indeed.

My initial impressions of Darwin were of color.  Color from the frangipani, or plumeria, flowers and the Red Jacaranda, AKA Indian Flame Trees, along with mounds of Banksia and Bougainvillea.  And of course the overwhelming green of everything else.  Make no mistake, Darwin is a tropical city with two distinct seasons: the wet and the dry.  And the tides rise and fall by 6 to 9 feet daily.

The city is small and pleasant as well as protective of their green spaces.  City administration buildings had to be redesigned so as not to damage a favored banyan tree!  Those green spaces attract large flocks of magpie geese, which we would see thousands of in Australia.  They were once a vital food resource for the native Australians, commonly known as Aborigines, although I am fairly certain that term is associated with disparagement today.

The city is a wealthy place due to vast mineral deposits and even more importantly for a place as overwhelmingly dry as Australia, abundant natural water.  The city receives NINE FEET of rain in the monsoon season alone, and this abundance of water along with tropical heat allows the region to grow tropical fruits for export throughout southern Asia, especially to land-strapped Singapore, which pays a nice price indeed, as well as, surprisingly, to Thailand.

Darwin is EXPENSIVE, even by Australian standards, and that is saying something indeed.  For those of you who hanker to head down under, be sure to take a hefty wallet.  The Australian dollar is roughly on par with the US version, at the time of writing this, one Australian dollar would net you about $0.90, but the MINIMUM WAGE in Australia is upwards of AUD$17 an hour (USD$15.30), so you can bet that even the most basic of necessities will set you back, and even more so in relatively isolated, and wealthy to boot, Darwin.  As an example, gasoline was posted at AUD$1.20 per LITER (US$4.08 gallon).  Adding to the costs in Darwin are even more inflated salaries and government tax incentives designed to keep the population in the Northern Territory as opposed to elsewhere.  Perhaps the Australian government is happy to have at least some people where the water is instead of many people with no water.

The city struck me as a young place with the standard uniform seeming to be tank tops, shorts, and flip-flops, which would make sense given the heat, and at least during part of the year, the damp.  There are two universities in the city, which would contribute of course to the overall young demographic, but it might also be a factor of the dominant industries, mining and agriculture, which don’t really appeal so much to the older set for physical demand reasons I should think.  And, the population doubles during the tourist season, so without doubt there is a good deal of seasonal labor, which often tends to be young as well.

All those youngsters hopefully didn’t come to Darwin in search of tasty waves or other ocean distractions because swimming in the ocean surrounding Darwin is a very bad idea indeed.  As explained to us, if the saltwater crocodiles don’t get you, the box jellyfish will!  So, if you insist on dipping a toe, you do so at your own risk (a side note, Phil Bronstein, Sharon Stone’s husband and publisher of one of two San Francisco newspapers, lost one of his great toes to a Komodo dragon at the San Francisco Zoo!), and take vinegar to deactivate the venomous stingers of the jellies, if you make it to shore in time.  Oh yeah, you can simply piss on yourself too.  It is the acid in vinegar, acetic in that case, or uric in your urine, that deactivates the buggers.

One of my favorite stops in Darwin was at the Post Office to mail more post cards.  In Australia, the Post has become a truly private venture, unlike in the US where the Postal Service, unknown to many I think, is technically a private business (postal workers are NOT Federal employees, and it is USPS.COM, not .gov) but which still answers to heavy Federal regulation in everything they do, most especially in terms of postal rates.  And of course the USPS operates at a loss.  The Australian Post Office most closely resembled a branch of Office Depot in the United States, fully stocked with a wide variety of office supplies, postal needs, and gifts.  As a private business its staff was incented to provide outstanding service and it was actually the sort of place where local people were actually shopping for kids’ birthday parties and such.  Most amazing of all though, as a private business, they kept hours into the evening, 8 to 9 pm even, meaning they were there to transact business at hours that the working public could use.  Imagine that USPS!

In line with general pricing in Australia, postage was not a bargain.  While I paid USD$1 to mail a post card to the US while in Indonesia (and they arrived thank you!), we paid 25% more, or about USD$1.26 (AUD$1.40) for the same service.  This caused me to reflect that US citizens have no room to complain when the USPS charges only USD$0.98 for the same service!  Our postal rates turn out to be a real bargain!

Unknown to me, and this the Darwinites would find unforgiveable, was the pivotal role that the city played in World War II.  As the northernmost point in Australia it was reasonable to expect that the Japanese would start an invasion of Australia in Darwin, and indeed, such was the plan.  With the fall of the island of New Guinea to the north, it wasn’t a big leap for Japanese forces to invade.  MacArthur, whom most Americans seem to adore even if they know little about the man or his behaviors, is still soundly hated in Darwin because he proposed leaving the city for the Japanese and staging a resistance further south.  The residents of Darwin wouldn’t have it and they held back the Japanese at great cost of life to themselves, and their defense of their city prevented the Japanese from ever gaining a foothold on the Australian continent, which was of enormous strategic advantage in the war effort.  The city remains rightly proud of its effort in a time of great peril and frankly abandonment on the part of the US and British forces, who were pulling Australian troops away from defending their own shores in favor of fighting as far away as North Africa and Europe.

The Northern Territories also have fairly large native Australian populations.  While cruising around Darwin we did see some native settlements which looked to me very reminiscent of reservations in the US, which wasn’t really surprising given the similarities of the experiences of the two groups.  Recently, though, Australian natives are being allowed ownership of their homes and this makes a marked difference, again, as it does everywhere in the world.  But suffice it to say that much has been written, filmed and otherwise noted about the relations between white and native Australians, and since I am not an expert, I will leave that one, perhaps surprisingly, alone.  But, before Americans leap into the breach with their own usually uninformed opinions and beliefs, they should at a minimum exert no more effort than is required to simply watch a movie such as Rabbit Proof Fence to gain some perspective.

OK, Another Slightly Political Part

And speaking of perspective about Australia, I was stunned that at least two people, upon discussion of our visit to Australia, commented to the effect of “Oh, that place where they sent all those criminals” as though they had wisely and cleverly summed up the Australian experience and at the same time had managed to impugn an entire nation of people based on events that took place some 300 years ago.

So, to be clear because this annoyed me HUGELY, yes, the INITIAL Australian settlement was of “criminals” transported from England.  This was the founding of what would become Sydney at Botany Bay.  HOWEVER, let us all be clear about a few salient points here.  The VAST MAJORITY of settlers who came to Australia came for gold and/or land as a means to escape poverty-ridden and overcrowded England.  They came by choice as free men and women.  Because of this influx, the penal settlement was moved to Norfolk Island out in the Pacific.  And how many of you smugly satisfied commentators have even heard of Norfolk?  Also, what qualified as a criminal subject to the punishment of transportation in England at that time?  Almost of all such “criminals” were people who couldn’t pay their debts and before formalized bankruptcy, such people were considered and treated as criminals.  More serious offences, such as what might constitute criminal behavior in the US today, were treated by hanging in the Britain of the time.  Given the current round of foreclosures and bankruptcies plaguing the US one would reel at the number of “criminals” being minted every day by 18^th century standards.  And finally, we as Americans have been seriously polluted by the image of our founding portrayed for us by such sources as School House Rock and the very selective US History textbooks we encountered in high school (without doubt the last time most of us bothered to read history) which would have us all believe that the entire US population was the result of those hard working and pious Pilgrim folk.  Hmmm, aside from the shocking amount of illegitimate births recorded at the Plymouth Colony, among other less than traditional Pilgrimish behaviors such as religious persecution, biological warfare, and witch burning that went on making it not all Thanksgiving feasting, we must remember that this was a very small part of the making of America.  Gasp, truth be told, Virginia, the Carolinas and especially Georgia were all penal colonies established by the British.  Indentured servitude was a more likely beginning for the majority of early Americans than some noble ideas about religious or political freedom and the opening up of the Australian penal settlement was a direct result of the loss of access to the closer and cheaper to get to American penal settlements.  So, the next time one is inclined to dismiss Australia as “that place they sent the criminals” one really should look in to the good ole’ American mirror to see yourself and your transported criminal past in it before getting too smug.  Geez, does NO ONE read anything other than People magazine these days?  We really could use with reading some Daniel Dafoe, Moll Flanders comes to mind, and even some basic Dickens!  Or for the really brave, how about some US History intended for adults, not the pabulum propaganda they feed children in school.

OK, I’m done with that point…

The Spermy Great Barrier Reef

The next place we would visit, not counting sailing the Arafura Sea and the Torres Straights, which I don’t expect most of my readers to be able to place easily on a map (but a big clue is where we started from and where we are headed…), we reached the Great Barrier Reef.  While we didn’t make landfall, which was fortunate for both us and the reef, the reef is rather hard to miss.  After all, one can see it from space, so it is rumored, so it would figure you could see it when sailing through it.  From the ship, the reef is composed of countless small rocky islands and sand bars, some mostly submerged but still visible.  It would seem to me that the early explorers couldn’t’ really have hit the thing, but apparently a lot of them did, the penalty for which was to sink.

Diving the Great Barrier Reef is said to be one of the lifetime goals of divers.  Not being a diver and having about zero intention of becoming one, I couldn’t really say.  I would have done the glass-bottom boat or submarine thing to see the reef, but as luck would have it, when we arrived the reef was spawning and all of the coral semen really clouded up the water to the point that even if one went down under water all one would see was the cloudiness of the semen.  Drat!  Honestly, I wasn’t too broken up about that part of it, I mean, a reef has to reproduce and if rampant and unchecked human reproduction can put the very existence of the Great Barrier Reef into jeopardy, I guess it has the right to not be visible on the days I happen to float by in order to reproduce.  I mean, hampering one potential sight seeing event of my vacation hardly seems as inconvenient as threatening an organic being’s very existence!

Cairns, Queensland, Australia

We did put into port in Cairns, which is pretty far up the northeast coast of Australia in Queensland.  Cairns continued the tropical theme of Australia thus far for us, so far removed from the desert continent stereotypes, which of course have a very large basis in fact as one moves south, but up here, all is lush tropical greenery with mangroves edging the coastlines.  The countryside outside of Cairns hosts massive fields of sugarcane, which is a top Queensland export.  That was something I honestly didn’t expect: sugar from Australia.

We rode out of Cairns to board a train bound for the tropical highlands, to a small town called Kuranda, which today, regardless of what it was originally, is a hugely popular vacation spot with Australians seeking respite in the highlands from the lowland tropical heat.  The train featured “natural” air-conditioning, which was euphemistic, but it did make it easier for Tim to attempt to photograph everything in sight, despite being handicapped by the seating arrangements.  The train ascends through lush rainforest greenery growing on the surrounding clay and granite hillsides.  Lantana, a type of flowering shrub that I myself have cultivated as a ground cover in California, was introduced to Australia from Britain, where it was admired as a garden specimen shrub.  Lantana loves Australia where is has become an important and difficult to control invasive species.  Living in Georgia, where the kudzu is an ever present threat, I could appreciate how one person’s garden plant could become another’s nightmare, but still, the flowering hillsides were pretty as long as one ignored the damage that invasive species inevitably do.

In Kuranda itself, we visited a wildlife reserve where we fed wallabies, which have to be the cutest miniature kangaroos you ever did see.  Clearly, these animals were bred for the purpose of interacting with people as they had zero fear of us.  This would be true of the actual kangaroos as well.  It was at Kuranda that Mom realized one of her life dreams, which was to hold a koala.  The koala appeared to be stoned out of its gourd, which seems to just be the way most of them appear most of the time.  Their low nutrient diet of eucalyptus leaves makes them a low energy sort of creature, although those claws, adapted to very firmly gripping trees, would seem to be able to inflict damage if really necessary.  Fortunately for all we had no need to find out!

There was a reptile house as well, which predictably I gave a VERY wide berth to, especially since it was rumored that the reptiles were LOOSE inside with the people being the ones contained.  Honestly, I don’t like snakes when they are dead and mounted, and I don’t even like snakeskin shoes, belts, hat bands, or anything that looks or acts like a snake.  Hate the damn things and have ever since I was 4 and had that close encounter with a 5 to 6 foot long timber rattlesnake in the Sierras.  I assure you that such an encounter will cure you of any and all curiosity about snakes you ever thought you might have.  This is ESPECIALLY true when you see it moving quite vigorously despite no longer having a head.  You are all free to go forth and have nightmares tonight.  I do all too often even after 30+ years.

What I did like in Kuranda especially was the butterfly house with its hundreds of free flying specimens in a rainbow of iridescent colors.  Some were flitting, some were feeding, some were breeding, and a few even landed on my sweaty arms for a taste of salt.  I found the experience to be magical and only regret that it didn’t photograph better than it actually did.

I spotted some awesome kangaroo shaped cufflinks, the only form of jewelry I like, which faithful readers will recall from narratives past, but they wanted $55 for them, which to me seemed insane at the time.  I would find that Australia is quite adept as separating one from their cash.

All too soon we were rushed off to our appointment with the Skytrain, which is a cable car system that would return us all the way back down the mountain to Cairns via a relay station in roughly the middle.  I have very little love lost for cable cars although I seem to be routinely getting on them in Brazil and Chile, and now Australia.  None of them have ever been as nerve wracking as the one up and back to and from Sugarloaf in Rio, but that was probably due to the large number of school children intent on making the car rock while suspended hundreds of feet over the Atlantic Ocean.  Yet one more reason to not like children.

But this Skytrain instead only held 4 persons per car and the views of the rainforest were incomparable.  We saw countless epiphytic species growing in and on the trees at canopy level, something you just can’t see from the ground.  Cassia trees were in full flower, with blooms of reds and pinks.  I spotted more Indian Flame Trees, Jacarandas, Cassia (both grandis and fistula), Plumeria/Frangipani, and orchids growing in the rainforest trees of Queensland.  In addition, I spotted more Sulfur Crested Cockatoos in the wild along with Rainbow Lorikeets.  As you might guess, the experience was purely magical.

Hamilton Island, Whitsunday Island, Queensland, Australia

We next visited Hamilton Island, one of the Whitsunday Islands.  Hamilton Island is best described as a very high end resort island complete with high-rise condominiums that I assume are both owned, rented, and time shared, as well as low-lying bungalow type accommodations.  The entire island is auto-free; transportation is via foot or electric golf cart.  In many respects, Hamilton Island reminded me of the higher end Gold Coast islands in Georgia; more St. Simon’s and Jekyll as opposed to Tybee, which will only really make sense if you have been to any of them.  Think more gated golf resorts and less family fun and you have the picture.  Honestly, I am more the Tybee Island type, so Hamilton was a bit outside of my speed or interest range, but it did afford me the opportunity to hold a koala, assured after my Mother had done it, and if for nothing else that made the visit worth it.  And one has to hold a koala in Queensland, because it is illegal for tourists to hold one in any other Australian state.

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

I have discovered that yet once again, Matt and Trey, along with the South Park boys they created, were right in their assertion that Peruvian pan flute players are literally everywhere, yep, even in Sydney, Australia.  Now, I can’t speak to the truth of the giant guinea pigs that they keep at bay, but as to their omnipresence, that I feel is true.

As a port on a cruise ship journey, Sydney was rather a strange experience.  The port was the ending point for most of the passengers with every one of them being replaced by new passengers, most of them Australians on summer vacation with their children.  To the plus, we did sail directly into the main harbor, right under the iconic bridge and directly across from the even more iconic opera house.  We will be one of the last ships to be able to do this because the new megaships are now too large to enter the main harbor, so a completely new, and incredibly remote, cruise ship terminal has been constructed.

My brief experience of Sydney left me feeling that the city was one that would be worthy of further exploration some time in the future when I could give it the time it deserved.  The city seemed eminently livable, friendly, and pleasant.  We arrived during a street fair that was fun to walk through with lots of vendors targeting the local crowd instead of tourists, for even a ship with several thousand people on it was little competition for the regular weekend crowds in and around the harbor area in Sydney during the height of summer immediately before Christmas.  The harbor is somewhat of a natural gathering point because the city is very water-based, and the city’s mass transit seemed to consist as much of ferries as of anything land based.  As we departed, we sailed amongst thousands of sailboats, residents of Sydney and the surrounding coastal suburbs enjoying a lazy and sunny Saturday.  I feel decidedly that Sydney is a place to return to in the future, and now with daily Delta service from Atlanta via LAX, that won’t be half the challenge that it once would have been.

30+ Days With the Parents

I don’t recall at this juncture if I have mentioned it or not, but we were traveling with my parents for 30+ days.  Now, I confess that at some point in my life I couldn’t have imagined a worse fate, but then I suspect that most teens and 20-somethings would feel that way.  Not all of course, but many if not most.  Pushing 40 as I was at the time, having fallen over that hill now, I have to say that I found the experience to be delightful!  It was a fantastic and rare opportunity to experience my parents as adults and they approached and dealt with me as an adult as well.  I realize that most parents don’t have the privilege of spending 30 days traveling with their adult children due to careers, finances, or infirmities, so I realize that what I experienced was truly rare.  The experience was fantastic and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  My parents made truly spectacular, low pressure, fun, and engaging companions and I am truly lucky to be able to say as an adult that I enjoy my parents as people as well as love and respect them as parents.  I have to wonder how many can say the same?

The second half of the cruise commenced with the seemingly obligatory day at sea.  I believe that the thinking goes that no one really wants a port their second day out with 12 more to go, so no matter how close the intended first port may be, at sea one stays.  That also allows for the first formal night to follow.  It wouldn’t be nice to make the first night on board formal since you wouldn’t be likely to have your tuxedo shirts pressed yet!  Of course, Timothy and I routinely would “dress” for dinner even on the casual nights, changing into something other than that worn during the day, and almost always changing into French cuff shirts in either French blue or white.  This game allowed me to bring 30 different ties so that I never wore the same one twice and it allowed me to find ways to match my growing collection of cuff links to my various, and invariably colorful, ties.  It became almost a pastime!

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

We docked in Melbourne (pronounced Mel-bun locally) and headed off to a wildlife preserve outside the city.  Our guide was a South African who had immigrated to Australia, but he had trained and worked as a naturalist in South Africa and clearly knew his stuff.  The man was a walking encyclopedia of all things natural.  He simply had to be a whole-grain chewing, probably quinoa, vegan!  And he attracted the doe-eyed attentions of a tiny, lonely, middle-aged woman who was traveling alone.  She hung on his every word and seemed especially keen to understand exactly when it was correct to use the term billabong (a native Australian word referring to a pool of water of a specific size and shape, really nothing to do with surfing or beachwear, the items with which the word is now inextricably associated).  It was sort of cute in a gruesome, Goth, sort of way.

Anyhow, the plateau and hills outside of the city are home to some significant populations of free-ranging wildlife.  Our first encounter was with a “mob” (truly the correct term) of kangaroos, which admittedly were a great deal larger than those viewed and fed in Queensland.  Their system of locomotion is truly efficient and graceful when viewed live and in person.  It must be said that there is an enormous difference in viewing ‘roos in their natural habitat, stepping through damp Australian grass interspersed with kangaroo droppings and kangaroo bones (nature is cruel) as opposed to viewing the semi-tame version in a concrete zoo.  Wild roos are not expecting food handouts, rather, they are wary of humans, keeping a constant distance, which makes sense given that kangaroos are hunted and eaten in Australia to this day.  Not to worry unduly however, they are not in short supply.  The wild and zoo animals are truly nothing alike, and anyone who believes that zoo viewing gives one a sense of the actual animal is sadly deluded.  If you want to see a kangaroo, I mean really SEE one, then fly to Australia and see them.

There was also a large pond on the preserve (apparently not a true billabong because of size, shape, or both) that was temporary home to literally thousands of migrating water birds, mostly egrets and herons, but also the official animal of Australia, the black swan, which is truly black except for the scarlet beak, an incredibly striking animal.  The noise from so many birds in one place was almost deafening, but being a bird lover I was entranced.  A small distance away from the pond we would encounter more wild birds, but these were emus, the relatives of those other large flightless birds the ostrich and the rhea.  They are odd, dusty looking creatures who don’t seem too much impressed with people.  They plodded by, stared at us with about as much interest as we had in them, and then continued on to whatever it was that emus do in the early afternoon.  I couldn’t imagine one sneaking up on you since their feet create what I can only describe as a timpani-like sound that reverberates through the ground.

We moved up into the hills to spy on a couple of wild koala (koala “bear” is a serious misnomer since a koala is not even remotely related to the true ursine bears).  I have to say that while they appear cute and cuddly, wild koalas are not exciting animals to watch.  They rarely move far or fast, instead clinging to the heights of swaying eucalyptus trees either sleeping, dozing, or munching leaves.  They are photogenic and cute, true, but decidedly not exciting.

As if I needed further proof that humans are idiots, especially in the presence of wild animals, one particularly embarrassing group from New Jersey was hooting and hollering at the female koala who wasn’t cooperating with their desired camera angles, and since we all know that the only purpose for wild animals is to pose for human cameras, this cretin felt entitled to terrify and disturb it.  We had been warned NOT to yell or otherwise make undue noise to avoid terrifying the poor animal, which was no doubt stressed enough at the presence of 40+ humans surrounding her tree.  Much to my pleasure and actual surprise, our wilderness guide actually shut down the rowdys in no uncertain terms!  Usually, tourists, because of their cash, are allowed to behave abominably in most any situation, so I was beyond pleased that some sense of decorum was being enforced for the overall good of the animals whose home we were visiting.

In yet another proof of the sheer native destructiveness and evil of humans, the koala were hunted almost to extinction in the early 20^th century for their pelts.  A robust population of hundreds of thousands was reduced to small and genetically isolated populations that are barely sustainable to this day, especially given habitat encroachment and destruction.  Genetically isolated groups are more likely to suffer from disease and may be completely destroyed by one infection since they are so highly inbred that the possibility of natural resistance to an infection that affects one member of the group is unlikely to have arisen.  Sadly, distances between groups are too far for migration to be effective, or safe for the koala given automobiles and dogs, to name their two worst enemies, so young males are unlikely to have a chance to breed, further limiting population growth and replacement.

Despite these obvious and well known problems, the Australian government is reluctant to declare the koala an endangered species.  If it did so, tourist contact would be limited, and the Australian nation as a whole is heavily dependent on tourist income to stay prosperous.  Tourist traffic is heavily driven by the opportunity to view and potentially interact with Australia’s unique native wildlife, arguably one of the few things you can count on most people to know about Australia, so anything that would limit tourist contact would be likely to also limit tourist dollars and euros, so the Australian legislature has consistently, thus far at least, refused to declare the koala endangered even though they so clearly are.

While in the reserve I had the thrill of spotting two pink frilled parrots, similar in many respects to sulfur-crested cockatoos but in colors of red and pink instead of white and yellow.  As we were leaving, I spotted a mated pair of simply stunning red-rumped parrots, resplendent in their blues, greens, and reds.  I was enthralled once again with the opportunity to view Technicolor birds in their native habitats, flying free.

Tasmania, Australia

Our farewell to Australia, at least in terms of the cruise, occurred in Tasmania, the small island off the southeast coast of the main continental landmass.  As many of you know, I am a devoted Canada-phile, but I have to say that Tasmania, as well as one more destination, gives Canada a run for the money in terms of most favored location.  Tasmania was stunningly beautiful, most reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest on an excellent day, but of course not exactly the same, just a point of reference.

And beautiful one would expect Tasmania to be since 40% of the island is under protected status and the population is a very small 400,000.  This is a lush island of forested hills and wide green plains both with profusions of flowers.  And where else can one see tree ferns growing in the wild?  Yep, those same pesky creatures that I struggled to keep alive in Bakersfield, California, actually grow where they will in Tasmania with no special effort.  It creates a magical environment to say the least.  But then again, they ARE Tasmanian Tree Ferns, even the ones I tried to cultivate in California.

Tasmania is very protective of its environment, as it should be, since to this day it harbors no termites and the rabies virus is also unknown.  In those two instances at least, isolation has paid very handsome dividends.  To continue this protected status, you will not be allowed to bring anything of natural origin on to the island with you.  Bring neither an apple nor a souvenir wood carving, nothing that could disrupt what remains of the pristine conditions.

The rampant blackberry vine, though attractive and delivering one of my favorite fruits, is actually an introduced and quickly invasive species.  Once upon a time, Tasmania had a unique micro-biome with plant and animal life unlike any other place on Earth, but the “discovery” of the island by Dutchman Abel Tasman started a fast and furious process of destruction that would leave very few of Tasmania’s unique species among the living, including the death of the last native Tasmanian human in the 19^th century.

Sadly, one of the major sources of income in Tasmania would appear to be the production of paper given the proliferation of paper mills.  Two other sources of income that were new to me were the mass growing of daisies for pyrethrin, a type of insecticide, as well as opium poppies.  The two fields were often side by side.  The opium poppies are grown and harvested legally for sale to authorized pharmaceutical companies to synthesize a wide range of modern pain relievers and diarrhea control medications.

We drove out into the Tasmanian countryside to visit a limestone cave rich in stalactites and stalagmites (TIGHT to the ceiling, and MIGHT grow taller from the floor).  Oddly, given that I am no big fan of tight enclosed spaces, I dearly love caves.  Granted, I don’t go for the ones where you have to rappel, swim, or wear a lighted hat, but still I enjoy the tame versions that one can visit around the world.  This cave had a unique population of bioluminescent worms making a home for themselves on the ceiling.  It was my first encounter anywhere with bioluminescent creatures.

Farming has become an increasingly difficult way to make a go of it on Tasmania due to global competition, so one family, the Wing family, decided to turn their former farm land into a licensed animal rescue and rehabilitation facility.  Orphaned and injured animals are raised and/or healed in their facility, which is open to visitors.  Amongst the many species housed by the family, I was most struck by a few highlights.  Orphaned wombats are foster parented by adult rabbits.  The wombats snuggle up to, or lay on top of, their foster mothers, seemingly quite content with the arrangement.  I was also struck by the Tasmanian devils, which of course bear no resemblance at all to the Loony Tunes version.  To me they looked rather like small black dogs, or they did until they were fed a wallaby thigh for lunch!  Those bad boys had some serious locking jaws that clamped down on meat and simply wouldn’t let go, not even if they were lifted clean off the ground by the meat they were clamping in their jaws.

There was a rehabilitating eagle on the farm as well, sporting an obvious wing/shoulder injury.  This bird was the epitome of fearless as it would stare right back at you as if to dare you to make the first move.  It is awe-inspiring to see such a magnificent creature up close in that way and to realize in a first-person sort of way that not all birds are the cute and singing variety.  There were other birds as well, including some of the parrots I had seen in the wild outside of Melbourne.  I found it somewhat magical that their wild brethren on Tasmania were clustered in the trees near the bird rehabilitation unit seemingly waiting on their friends and relatives to be released from the hospital.

I greatly enjoyed Tasmania and marveled at its many charms and attractions, chief amongst them being the peace and quiet of the lightly populated island, which becomes increasingly quiet and unpopulated as young people migrate to the mainland in search of economic opportunity, turning Tasmania increasingly into a retirement and vacation home paradise.  It is a paradise that I would like to have a chance to enjoy at a more leisurely pace in the future.

Onward To New Zealand

After sailing in relatively protected seas, our departure from Tasmania thrust us back into oceanic reality as we crossed the fairly rough and unpredictable Tasman Sea towards New Zealand.  Oddly, Tim and I have never experienced seas as rough we did off the coast of France in the Mediterranean, where the list of the ship was at a full 40 degrees!  By comparison, any roughness we encountered crossing to New Zealand was child’s play.

During the crossing, the ship hosted the Indonesian crew show during the after dinner entertainment time slot.  Different crew members performed different dances and songs, all of them uniquely talented, especially after working such long days with little time off for rest.  Our assistant dining room steward, Dimas, he of the doting mother, and others displayed heretofore unseen talents and abilities, and it highlighted something that I think it benefits us all as people to know, which is that we all are bound together by shared goals, skills, and dreams, it is just that some people have to work a whole lot harder to achieve those dreams than others do.  It isn’t that we don’t all dream of a better or different life, we are just different in what we have to do to reach it.  As Alan tells his children, “I do this for you so that you don’t have to grow up and do what your Dad does for a living.”  But the commonalities, whether it was Dimas’s doting Mom or Bekti’s junior high school age son receiving a new Netbook his Dad brought from Alaska (which Bekti feared would be used primarily to waste time on Facebook!) we are ever increasingly bound together by shared technology and abilities.

South Island, New Zealand

Our first arrival in New Zealand was in the incomparable Fjordlands National Park.  At first viewing, through the mists, Tim and I wondered what we were seeing since it appeared that there were trails of snow on the green hillsides.  We finally realized that in this extremely well watered place that spontaneous waterfalls were the order of the day, dashing down the steep mountainsides and ending into the ocean itself, which maintains a 1-2.5 meter layer of fresh water on top of the saline because of the massive amounts of fresh water running down into the fjord.  The heavier salt water sinks and the lighter fresh water floats, kept in this manner by the sheer amount of fresh water that arrives.  The location was a magical introduction to this most magical of nations.

I had noted that along with one other place, Tasmania gave Canada competition for my affections.  New Zealand is that other place.  Fortuitously indeed, New Zealand has benefitted from a low population density and a population that is among the most urban in the world, with 86% of the population living in cities and towns (32% of the total in Auckland alone!) coupled with extreme environmental awareness.  This has meant that the majority of New Zealand has remained untouched and pristine, never trampled and developed.  New Zealand remains the Nature Islands indeed!  And to keep it this way, the New Zealand government will enforce their right to rigorously inspect all arrivals for anything even remotely posing a threat to their unique paradise.  Don’t even attempt to bring any form of agricultural material ashore and they will even inspect the soles of your shoes for excess clinging soil, dirt, seeds, manure, etc.  It is, as they say, “Theirs to Protect.”  And in my estimation from what I saw of it, protect it they should.

New Zealand sound synonymous with sheep to me, and indeed, sheep sharply outnumber people.  New Zealand therefore is one of the top exporters of wool as well as mutton and lamb in the world.  With the advent of refrigerated shipping, they could add fresh meat and butter to that list.  Another top export from New Zealand, in ready view in any port we stopped in, and we stopped in 8 of them, is timber.  That saddened me because based on the amount of timber being shipped abroad it seemed that New Zealand wouldn’t remain green and pristine for long.  Most of the lumber seems to be headed for China as cheap building materials and as ingredients for plywood and chipboard.  L

I mentioned eight ports and I suppose I should list them here: Fjordland National Park, Dunedin, Lyttelton/Christchurch, Picton, Wellington, Napier, Tauranga, and Auckland.  I admit that I won’t have a great deal to say about each individual port but that isn’t because I didn’t enjoy them, but rather because I think of each port as mostly a backdrop to the great natural beauty of New Zealand that really wasn’t dependent on each individual location.  I would STRONGLY urge anyone who enjoys natural beauty and the outdoors to visit New Zealand as soon as possible.  In my increasingly wide ranging adventures, it ranks very high indeed and I can’t recommend it enough.

Despite its natural beauty and attractiveness, New Zealand looses roughly 55,000 residents yearly on average to emigration, mostly to Australia, but also to the United States and Europe.  Mostly younger people, they leave in search of higher wages and better professional opportunities than can be found at home.  However, the world wide economic contraction saw a fair number return home when the going got tough and their host countries no longer held any advantages.  Because of the general outflow of people, the country allows for a 1-to-1 immigration replacement policy with most of the new New Zealanders coming from India, China, and Korea.  This isn’t always well received by native Kiwis as these new populations remake the landscape of the cities and suburbs, mixing in and blending, or not, to various degrees.  Alas, New Zealand is highly unlikely to take me, even though I would gladly go, because of the anticipated cost of my care.  My only hope remains in becoming one of the lucky 70 persons with HIV/AIDS that the country accepts on an annual basis for humanitarian reasons.  A Sarah Palin led Republican victory in 2012 might well strengthen my application!  But I don’t think that hope will be enough to make me vote for the freak.

Dunedin, as the name implies, was founded by Scots and to this day maintains a high density of Scotsmen.  The city is of manageable size and makes a pleasant stop in its own right, but it also has the good fortune to be situated at the head of a bay that is rich in natural beauty and interest.  Near Dunedin is one of the few nesting sites of the Royal Albatross.  One can visit the observatory there to watch the birds, via close circuit television as well as directly, and to learn about these magnificent creatures, who take flight on their first try and then do not return to land for at least five years until they are ready to mate, for life.  Dunedin is also near the nesting grounds of the two of the rarer types of penguins in the world, the nocturnal Blue Penguin and the much larger and striking Yellow-Eyed Penguin.  With qualified guides these nesting areas may be viewed from camouflaged blinds.  The mud flats around the bay afford more opportunity to watch wading birds like egrets and herons going about the business of procuring dinners of mud crabs.  Conveniently, Dunedin is the land-based gateway to Fjordlands National Park, via either a road or railway, the terminus of which is the very scenic Dunedin Railway Station, which crosses the mountains comprising the center of the South Island.  Dunedin, with its access to Fjordlands, would make a wonderful South Island exploration base.  Finally, Dunedin affords access to the beautiful and historic Larnach Castle, Gardens, and Lodge.  The gardens, with their stunning views, are well worth seeing, and if visiting historic houses is your passion, the castle building itself will not fail to please.  You can read all about the place at: http://www.larnachcastle.co.nz/index.pasp

I can’t honestly say too much about Lyttelton/Christchurch because I was so exhausted from the full day of climbing up and down hills in Dunedin with our outstanding nature guide, Chris, the Scots proprietor of Back To Nature Tours, that I bailed on even going ashore here.  If you get to Dunedin, check out Chris’s offerings, but be prepared to be well exercised and beat the following day!  http://www.backtonaturetours.co.nz/index.html.

I found Picton, at the very northern tip of South Island to be a delightful place.  The town itself is very small, comprising little more than a main street with small offshoots from it, but that was part of its charm, coupled with being located on a deep inlet from the sea.  There was a craft fair on at the time and I was even able to admire the work of a fellow wood turner in the park.  I also technically broke the law in Picton by feeding ducks on the main drag.  To my credit, I didn’t realize it was banned until after I had started doing it, and by that time, well, the ducks sort of expected me to continue and honestly they were enjoying the shortbread cookies more than I was!  I was even able to bring home some small scrap pieces of native New Zealand wood to turn myself, given to my Dad by a local crafts shop that specialized in the items they turned in their turning shop in the back of their retail space.

North Island, New Zealand

Wellington is the national capital of New Zealand, and despite that, it struck me as a fairly mellow little city.  It was clean and tidy, of course, but it didn’t somehow seem to throb with the energy that I mostly associate with power politics.  Maybe the game is just played differently in New Zealand.  After all, the Kiwis broke out of a treaty arrangement with the United States due to our aggressive stance on nuclear weapons and declared New Zealand a Nuclear Free Zone.  Hmmm, aggressive stance on nuclear weapons that alienates even allied nations.  And I would bet that based on that description alone you would think of someplace other than the United States.  Sometimes, it pays dividends to look at your own country from the perspective of someone else.  You never know what you might see if you look through a different set of lenses.

I can however assure you that the area around Wellington is stunning, and if you doubt that, watch The Lord of the Rings movie series; much of the external shots were filmed there because of the beauty of the area.  The movies almost serve as advertisements for New Zealand tourism, and to capitalize on that you can take tours that visit sites used in the filming of the movies.  In town, I found some fantastic deals on stud and cuff link sets, almost impossible to find, at a formal wear and bridal shop.  One of the sets is in jade even!

Note to readers:  If you find yourself uncertain what to give me as gifts, REMEMBER, please, that I really like cuff links and especially when they come with matching tuxedo stud sets.  But cuff links alone are always a winner, especially the more unique and even antique varieties.  They need not be expensive; instead, the best ones I think reflect the spirit, interests, and even sense of humor of either the giver or the recipient.  I just wanted to make sure no one missed the generous hints I have been dropping!

Napier is a charming Art Deco village.  The décor is Art Deco because the town was destroyed by a massive earthquake during the Art Deco period and then conscientiously restored and maintained to look as it did prior to the earthquake.  Napier would best be described as a destination for vacationers both foreign but primarily New Zealander.  Is some respects, it reminded me of smaller central California coast towns like Morro Bay.  It is also home to the New Zealand National Aquarium, so if you have a hankering to see either a giant squid (dead and preserved) or a very much alive kiwi bird, this is the place to go.  I enjoyed strolled the shopping streets of Napier, having a lunch of fish, chips, and draught beer, and marveling at how much more things cost here than in Wellington down the road.  However, the shopping coup of the day went to my Mother who found this very nifty lemon juicing device that I still use to this day whenever eating fish, pork, or anything else that calls for a splash of fresh lemon juice.

Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty region (so named by Captain James Cook) is an incredibly fertile area for both agriculture (think kiwi fruit and wine grapes) and tourism.  Tauranga is easily the most popular domestic vacation destination for natives with its endless opportunities for fun outdoors and on the ocean, as well as its proximity to the volcanic hot springs and mud baths of the interior.  The place can get quite crowded during peak times but is lovely nonetheless.  Just take my advice and avoid the fish and chips outlet on the main drag operated by the Chinese folks.  Really, they don’t quite grasp the concept of fish and chips.

Finally, after 29 days at sea, we arrived in Auckland.  This would be a bittersweet moment in that it is sad to say goodbye to what has become your home for so long, and yet, one is ready to move on and to get back home to normal life, even if normal life means making your own meals and doing your own laundry.  Off boarding the ship was surprisingly easy with a new procedure that involves a great deal less overhead announcing and more passenger responsibility.  It was the idea of my fellow passengers having more responsibility that frightened me honestly, not expecting much from my fellow travelers, but as it turned out, they all did quite admirably indeed!

We had deliciously spacious, well beyond the 292 square feet we had been living in, and upscale accommodations at the Crowne Plaza, which also afforded excellent views of the Sky Tower, which is, at 1,076 feet high, the tallest structure in New Zealand.  You can even watch those foolish enough to jump off of the Sky Tower on bungee cords.  Seriously.  You can read about it at: http://www.skycityauckland.co.nz/Attractions/Skytower.html

Going Home

The most stressful part of the journey honestly was the return.  We found incredible deals on one-way business class seats from Auckland to Sydney, where we would join up with our Delta flight to LAX and Atlanta, on LAN Chile for under $250, making the cushy seats less expensive than coach!  What a steal!  We had four hours to make the connection, which was great since we were changing not only airlines but also airline alliances, our bags would not check through and would have to be reclaimed, taken through customs and immigration (for the whole 15 minutes we would technically be in Australia) and then rechecked in Sydney.  We had flown LAN Chile before and were delighted with it and we checked the on-time performance of the flight periodically and it was continuously on-time or early.  We had no fears until about 4:30am day of departure.  That day, Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere and Winter Solstice in the Northern, would prove to be literally the longest day of our lives, thanks to the International Date Line.

We arrived at the Auckland airport quite early only to discover that our outbound flight was already posting a delay of approximately an hour.  But this was OK, we were still within our window.  But as the delays and the morning drug on, we became more and more concerned.  Delta wasn’t waiting for us and there was no guarantee that they would graciously rebook us in our business class seats for the following day if we no-showed for the original reservation, or at least not for the same price we paid originally, to say nothing of yet another night on the road.  By the time it became clear that the boarding gate computer was down and that we were expected to board the aircraft, along with all the passengers who had originated in Santiago but who had to offload the craft for servicing, manually, it all seemed hopeless.  Eventually the computer became functional once again and we were off.  Sadly, our row in business was the last row, putting us only one row ahead of an infant from hell who literally emitted ear drum piercing shrieks for over three hours.  Seriously, the sound was so utterly intense and painful that it felt as though needles were flying through your eardrums and nothing but a hammer was shutting this kid up.  That, added to the inherent stress of potentially missing our flight home and sleep deprivation, was not adding up to a pleasant morning.

We did gain a little time in the air but there was still baggage claim, immigration, and customs to contend with.  And, being on a cruise and all, I had forgotten that it was the Christmas season and that all of Australia seemingly was at the airport.  It was madness.

Being in business class, our bags were tagged priority and were indeed among the first off the plane.  They were also among the first stuck on the baggage belt when it jammed.  We could see them but couldn’t get to them.  Finally we did retrieve them, all the while watching the clock tick, and then we faced down customs that wanted to inspect any wood carvings from Indonesia for the 10 minutes now that they would be in Australia before being rechecked to the United States.  Then it was upstairs to find the Delta check-in counter and many international airports do not have the dedicated counters we are used to in the United States, instead the counters are occupied by whichever airline needs them at the moment, facilitated by changeable digital display boards, so the locations are rather fluid and deciphered from rather cryptic signage.  Finally, we found it, all four of us arrived at the counter, and our bags went over the counter and on the belt just as last call for Delta check in was announced.  Yeah, it was that close.  TOO close.

Conveniently, I had forgotten about passport control leaving Australia and then security, and again I had failed to take into account it being Christmas.  If we hadn’t been flying business class and didn’t have passes that took us through the practically non-existent lines at the VIP lanes, I think we might still be there.  And, for some reason, in every security line we would encounter in Auckland and Sydney, Mom appeared to be a threat and was subject to time-consuming additional screening.  Odd, I have never considered her that all threatening!

Finally, finally, we made it to the gate, to, guess what, go through more screening since we were flying to the United States.  It never fails to entertain me, these procedures, given that terrorists who have blown up planes or flown them into things had boarding passes, seat assignments, identification, and even visas.  This makes all the bullshit they put you through just so much window dressing, designed to lull you into the illusion that air travel will ever be free from some degree of threat.

The business class cabin on the Boeing 777 was a new design for Delta, angled seats in little isolated pods that would be great for the single business traveler who wants isolation from the neighbors, but not so conducive to folks traveling together.  But this day would span more than 30 hours, thanks to the International Date Line, without changing calendar days, so perhaps some isolation and quiet were not all bad things for the 14+ hours it took to reach Los Angeles.  And compared to those suffering in a 3-5-3 seating arrangement in Coach, my seat, isolated though it might have been, was divine!

We landed at LAX about 30 minutes early which should be a good thing.  But, the Federal government doesn’t work before 6:00 a.m. due to shift differential payments, so Customs and Immigration don’t open before 6:00 a.m., so we waited on board until they did.  Coming from glamorous airports like Narita, Incheon, and Singapore Changi, LAX is sadly and embarrassingly decrepit and Third-world looking.  And it only gets worse for transit passengers.  You leave Customs and find yourself practically on the sidewalk.  You give your bags back to TSA, which wants to know when your flight leaves because the electronic scanners are not up and running yet (remember the Federal workday rules), so they have to inspect them all by hand.  Then you remember once again that it is almost Christmas and the security line for terminal 5 is out the door and down the sidewalk for your flight that boards in approximately 30 minutes.  But, luckily, LAX has bypass lanes for Business class passengers, which for the second time in our journey saved our skins.  Sadly, we ended up behind a woman who had never flown and didn’t understand much English.  This made security predictably drag a bit more.

But, in the end, we were in line in time and on board.  Never mind the obnoxious witch with the small dog who broke every FAA rule that didn’t please her, we made it home, FINALLY.  The house was still standing and after riding for an hour with a driver who seemed to love Christmas jingles beyond her own children, along with an overpowering car “air freshener,” home looked mighty nice.  Granted, the dog was blind when we found him and that started a whole new cycle of drama that is just now ending, but home we were.

Final Thoughts and Reflections From the Road

So, 48 pages and 30+ days again, would I do it again?  Yes and no.  I don’t for a minute regret the experience and if I hadn’t done it, yes I would do it.  Would I do it again?  No, and for several reasons.  The most important reason for not doing it again is the sheer amount of time.  The older I get, the harder time I have being away from home for that long of a time.  As it was, I had to stretch out time between treatments and in marshalling pain management medications.  And there was also just a comfort factor that sets in somewhere between weeks two and three.  You start to want your own bed, your own food, your own towels even.  You just want to be home.  And, there were some destinations, namely Singapore and Indonesia, that I would have no need to visit again.  I would, however, gladly repeat parts of Australia, namely Darwin, the Northern Territories, Sydney, and Tasmania, along with most anywhere in New Zealand.  Ultimately, it was unforgettable, amazing, and wonderful, plus, it gave me bragging rights to my sixth of seven continents in Australia, and now I know that it would be worth the time, effort, and expense to return to some places again in my lifetime.  I lived and I learned about myself, my world, and my family, at the end of it all, what more could I ask for?