The photos, finally!

Please click on the album to view the pictures in Picasa--and they'll be larger than thumbnail!

Re: Indonesia & the rest

Let's see if I can squeeze out one last blog entry from this trip. I feel like I couldn't process anything after the MC Fiasco because it really seemed to put me out of my element, and I didn't feel like I could either ponder or fully enjoy the rest of the trip. Granted, there wasn't much to do, either. I really had little time for anything other than working every day. Still, we did have some free time in Surabaya to do a little bit of sightseeing. After our one school visit that day, we did a free city tour, which included visits to a couple of important places like the city hall and the cultural centre, but it also included a tour of the House of Sampoerna. If you've never heard of this place or the name Sampoerna, it's Indonesia's most famous tobacco company. Phillips Morris, an American cigarette company, recently bought the Sampoerna company, so it is no longer Indonesian-owned. While I don't smoke nor condone smoking, it was interesting to learn about how the company started, through a Chinese immigrant to Indonesia, coming as a child and then practically being orphaned to building one of the most famous and highest grossing companies in Indonesia. You will see some photos taken in the museum, which is located next to the Sampoernas' actual house. Descendants of his family still live there. The factory was so fascinating to watch. We weren't allow to take photos there, unfortunately, to protect the privacy of the employees, who have historically all been women and continue to all be women to this day. Otherwise, I would have taken a video to show the speed at which these ladies roll cigarettes, all still done by hand, as is the packaging. Cigarette rollers must be able to roll 350 cigarettes per hour, if I remember right. What I do remember is calculating that the women must roll 1 cigarette every 6 seconds. Can you imagine! They go through a bootcamp of sorts, and all the women who can't roll fast enough don't get hired. It was so amazing to watch them that it actually looked like machines working, not real human beings. Kind of frightening, too, in a way.

Outside of that, the rest of the trip was fairly dull, sightseeing-wise. I did manage to get back to a place to get the fish spa treatment, which I had tried for the first time last year. Those little garra rufa fish are great to cleaning up your feet! I took a fellow recruiter with me this time, and he really enjoyed it too. We both laughed ourselves silly at first because it really does tickle, but once you get used to it and try to think of other things, you can calm down and even watch them gnawing away at your dead skin cells. I'm still not sure why dead skin is good for them, though.

The only other really eventful day was another bad day, but to make a long story short, some poor advice from a hotel staff member and lack of following my instincts led me to arrive too late to check in for my flight to Penang two days before I was leaving for home. I was scheduled to visit 2 schools there, making a day trip from Kuala Lumpur (KL) to prevent myself from having to bring all my luggage with me and save time going through the airport, and I ended up having to change everything around because the next possible flight that had space for me to get on was departing 45 minutes after my first school visit was supposed to start. I'm happy to say that I was able to go to these schools later and still meet with counsellors, but the bad part is that there weren't as many students to meet with because they couldn't wait after school that long. The other downside is that I had no time to do anything there, including not eating. Penang is known for its street food, and there just wasn't time to stop for food! I had a driver for the day who was going to take me touring around a little in the couple of hours I should have had available before my flight back to KL, but I didn't have any time at all. I finished my meetings and went right back to the airport! That was another stressful day, but I made it through.

As a result of schools not replying to me about my final day in KL, I ended up having the whole day free, which was great because it turned out one of my cousins was home for a holiday, so not only was I able to see my aunt, but also my cousin, so that was a treat as I hadn't seen him in 5 years. We didn't do anything but chat, visit, and then go out for supper with his in-laws, but it was still good, and just good to be with family and feel safe and relaxed after all the fiascos I experienced. I do wish I'd known in time that my cousin was going to be there because I would have taken a few days off to stay in KL and then he would have taken me all over to eat yummy food! Such is life, I guess.

I returned home to a blizzard, but I was happy to be home, where I knew I could be safe, warm in my apartment, and get everything sorted out that I needed to. I've also begun to realise that I am indeed travelling too much: I actually had the same flight attendant on my flight from Shanghai to Vancouver as I've had on one of my previous return flights from Asia. It's on Air Canada, and I just remember him because he's a really tall, older guy. You know it's bad when you start recognising the airline staff, and yet, I love it just the same :o)

MC Fiasco Aftermath and Beyond

Thinking that my troubles were finished when I received my emergency card in Jakarta, they still hadn't quite all been resolved. Issue number one was not even being able to check in to the hotel because my credit card hadn't arrived at that point, and without a valid card, they wouldn't let me check in. Now, I could have paid cash, but I didn't know how much they would have wanted me to pay for the deposit, and I had tried to find out in advance by emailing them, but with the language barrier, that didn't work out so well as people on the other end couldn't figure out what I was trying to ask them. So I had to wait. My colleague from another university was at some meetings, but I knew he was going to be back at the hotel within a couple of hours, so I sent him a text to see if he'd be able to use his card to check me in, and that way, I could at least get a room and then wait for my card to arrive that day so I could still pay with my own card upon checking out. By the time he returned, and I was able to check in with his card, my own card had already arrived, but the transaction had already taken place, so the clerk swiped my card just to see if it would work, and it didn't, so at the time, I thought it was just as well that my colleague was there to help me out.

I decided to phone MC to find out if I had to activate the new card, and they said that I didn't, but that the reason it didn't work was likely due to the fact that with these emergency cards, they have to punch in the number manually because they can't be swiped. I made a couple of insignificant purchases the next day to try to see if it would work, and still, even with the manual entry, the card still didn't work! I called them later, and I found out that the reason it didn't work is that the card had already been blocked because when they tried to swipe the card rather than do the manual entry, the card got blocked again, so I ended up having to get MC security to unblock the card. I'm happy to say the card worked for the rest of the time, except for a brief scare at the Sheraton in Surabaya, although it turned out it was something wrong with the hotel itself, not my card, thank goodness.

Other than that, I can't really say a whole lot else happened on my trip. In Hong Kong, it was great to meet up with old friends (i.e. recruiters I've met on other trips) and hang out with them. One of these guys, who happens to be Chinese, was able to introduce us to some interesting foods there. He took us to this place where they have good desserts, and I tried what he was having as he had recommended this coconut milk served warm in the shell. There were some gelatinous bits in it that I didn't think about, and then all of a sudden, he took another look at the menu and said "Ohh, I had better wait until you finish to tell you what's in it." Well, then I had to know, so he informed me that I was eating bird's nest and we ended up learning is called "harsmar" in English, although I'm not really sure if that's a word. In any case, for those of you that don't know, bird's best is sparrow saliva, the kind that's used to glue their nests together. Harsmar is also a questionable food, in my opinion. The taste was quite okay. It's not that I would seek out these foods, although it adds to my repertoire of weird things I've eaten, but the thing I don't understand is at what point someone decided these are things that should be eaten. I mean, Fallopian tubes of toads? Bird spit? That's the part I don't get. In any case, it's all part of the adventures of my life, right?

Let's see if I can muster up another entry for Indonesia :o)

Travel Advisory - The MC Fiasco

What an experience I've had the last several days. I'm not even sure what the best solution is to this situation I went through. There are things I and my office could have done better, but let me share the story, and please use it accordingly as you travel.

I checked out of my hotel on Friday morning from my hotel in Kuala Lumpur, and I went about my school visits that day. Our driver had arranged for a taxi for me to take me from the last school I could visit to the airport so I didn't have to return to the airport. When I got to the airport, I had to pay a bit of an excess baggage fee, so I tried to pay for that with my credit card, only to learn it was being declined after two tries. So I went to get cash, chalking it up to the system being down. I've had that happen to me before where the card didn't work somewhere, but it worked without problems before and after, so I didn't think anything of it.

When I arrived at my hotel in Hong Kong at around 10pm, I was a little concerned about the fact that I hadn't enough cash to pay the taxi because I thought I had enough for it, based on what I paid last time. I had to exchange some of my US cash right then and there to pay him--at least $50 minimum, so I'm glad I happened to have that much on me. When I got that settled, I went to check in, and my card was declined again. The guy at the counter tried it about 5 times with different amounts as we thought perhaps I had unwittingly gone over my limit and would need to make a payment, but nothing worked. He asked me to make a cash deposit of HKD500 (about CAD60), but I only had 300 on me, so they decided that would have to do. As soon as I got to my room, I connected to the internet to get a number to call MasterCard, and I was able to find that they had toll-free numbers for all over the world for emergency services.

I learned that between the time I checked out from my hotel in KL on Friday morning and tried to pay my excess baggage fee that afternoon, some 7 or so hours later, someone in Canada had used my card number somehow to pay for gas a Canadian Tire in Richmond. MC thought that was suspicious and blocked my card. So I ended up having to call another MC number in order to request an emergency card. According to their web site, they can actually produce one in 24 hours, so I figured I'd have one before I checked out from my hotel the following Monday. To make a long story short, once I got everything sorted out, they weren't able to get my card to me until Tuesday, which meant I'd already be in Jakarta by that time. What that meant was having to pay my full hotel bill by cash in Hong Kong and potentially not being able to check in at the hotel in Jakarta unless my card was already there, as the only thing MC couldn't tell me was the exact delivery time for the card. The annoying part is that my own bank, which is where my card is issued, didn't respond to these types of requests before 10am EST. Some emergency hotline! That delay didn't help anything, and I had to wait several hours before they would be able to respond to my request for the emergency card.

I don't really have tons of extra cash in my account, quite often, so thankfully I was able to take some out of my dad's account as we have a joint account exactly for this purpose, in case of emergency. Now, I wasn't sure what my dad's withdrawal limit was, I tried to take out the maximum from an ATM. I used the wrong PIN at first as I couldn't remember which one I use for that card. The initial amount, the machine said it didn't contain that much cash, so then I tried a smaller amount, and that worked, so I was able to take out half of what I needed, and then I tried another bank, thinking I might be able to get more, so I tried twice, and I couldn't get anything as I had apparently exceeded my limit. The hotel would have to live with it, and I'd have to pay them the rest the following day. That night, though, I got a phone call in the middle of the night. Thinking it was my alarm in my groggy state, I turned it off to realise I had answered a phone call, and it was my dad's bank, telling me that they suspected fraudulent activity because of all these attempts to withdraw cash from ATMs in Hong Kong. I explained to them the whole situation, and after some security questions, they were convinced that there was no fraud and unlocked the card. Imagine what would have happened if that had been locked, too! I don't even want to think about it.

Anyway, I was able to get to Jakarta ok, but as I suspected, they weren't able to check me in to the hotel because I didn't have a valid credit card on me, and my emergency card had not yet arrived. I wasn't sure what to do. Again, I didn't have enough cash on me for a deposit, and I didn't know what time my card would arrive. I had tried to email them the previous day to ask what I should do or what they would advise in this situation, but unfortunately, language issues prevented anyone from understanding what I was asking, so that didn't help at all. It suddenly occurred to me, though, that I would be able to get some colleagues already here in Jakarta to help out if necessary. Since the card is just to hold the room, my one colleague staying at the hotel could use his and at least I'd have a room while I wait for my mail. He was out at meetings, but I sent him a text to ask, and he was fine with that, so I just had to wait for his return, which was just a couple of hours after I arrived at the hotel. I call him my knight in shining armor at this point because I feel like he rescued me and saved my life!

By the time I tried checking in the second time, the credit card had arrived, but we didn't know that until the transaction with my colleague's card had already gone through, but at least I have it now, and it should help me get through the next few days until I get home. What an experience!!

In the meantime, everyone around me, from recruiters to Canadian government people, to the really good customer service overall that MC gave me, has really helped. People on Facebook have poured out their love, prayers, and words of encouragement as well as even financial help if need be. It's amazing, and I am blessed. I got a free taxi upgrade from a sedan to a minivan from the airport to the hotel, and then when I checked in successfully, they gave me a bit of a room upgrade as well, so it was like walking into heaven when I arrived, even though I've stayed in ever nicer rooms. But after an ordeal like the last several days, I don't even want to leave, and I feel like I can finally rest. Exhaustion has hit me like a ton of bricks! I can say I'm also glad MC is looking out for me, but it's just that the timing was so poor. Had this happened in Canada, it wouldn't really have mattered because I don't use my card that often there. But be warned, travellers. Have a backup plan! I'm going to check what measures my office has to prevent this from happening again!

A Perfect Afternoon in Macau

As I get older, I find myself caring more about some matters and less about others, being more amazed at simple joys yet increasingly outraged at injustices. It's the simple joys I wish to focus on at the moment.

For those of you that regularly read my blog, you'll know that I was already in Macau earlier this year on a work trip. It was an excellent, though short stay. I may have mentioned that there isn't much to see in terms of sightseeing. One probably needs less than 2 days to see all the historic/tourist sites available, although as I learned this time, there are some nice places for hiking and cycling, and the scenery around the islands is quite beautiful with hazy hills in the distance.

This time around, my friend Steve took me to one of the nearby islands, Coloane Island, which is quite known not only for its beach (not that great by most standards but people still seem to swim in it) but also for excellent BBQ street food. We had chicken legs, extra garlicky eggplant, and corn. It was absolutely delicious, and I loved just sitting on a bench eating and watching the waves--as well as people flying kites in front of the sign that says flying kites is not permitted . Unfortunately, I couldn't get a photo of that. In addition, it was just lovely because I think Steve is one of the few people that I feel comfortable with just observing what's in front of our eyes but not needing to say anything. Silence is not awkward. Although now that I think about it, I probably could have spoken less during that time! ha ha! After we finished, we walked around the beach a bit, and then as it turns out, there is a bit of a rocky pathway carved out around one side of the coast, so we walked that for a while, although I don't know how long that took because I didn't keep track of time, and I slowed things down by stopping to take photos of flora and fishermen. I'm not sure what they were fishing for, although Steve and I did see small silver fish jumping out of the water by the school. That was too difficult to get a photo of with my camera, but it was fun to see a school of fish jumping around the water like that. In any case, I had been in such a mood for a long walk that afternoon, and I've decided it shall remain as one of my favourite memories for the rest of my life.

Back on the Road--or in the Air or on the Sea

So I'm in Southeast Asia again. This time, my trip began in Hong Kong, which is actually a pleasant place to begin because the flight is relatively short compared to most other major cities in this region. Usually I'm in transit for 26 hours at least when flying to Malaysia, Singapore, or Indonesia as a first stop, but Hong Kong, I was in transit for less then 20 hours. It's quite a difference!

I haven't really done a lot here. To be quite honest, I'm not a huge fan of this city in general. I just dislike the crowded megalopolis of towering skyscrapers. Not to mention it's crowded and congested a lot of time, and it just makes me feel claustrophobic. It doesn't inspire me to go out and see anything. I probably mentioned in my blog post the last time I came here that I really realised how much of a prairie girl I am after being in this context. I love my wide, open spaces and skylines where I can see the sun rise and set, and the stars at night are not blocked by either buildings or pollution.

I did go to a cemetery this morning. There's a Muslim cemetery right next to my hotel, so I decided to check that out as it's open to the public. It's also right next to a Catholic cemetery, which is really interesting that they're so close. And then on the other side of the Catholic cemetery is a Parsee cemetery, but I didn't get a chance to see it as the entrance was a little bit farther than I wanted to walk, especially as I have to walk past a sidewalk construction zone. I took a few photos, which I hope is not disrespectful, but there were some interesting pieces, and I also thought it was interesting how many of the gravestones were in both Arabic and Chinese. The oldest grave I saw was from 1903, and it made me wonder for how long there has been a significant Muslim population here and why they came. (Having said that, there's a huge Sikh temple about a block away from my hotel, too.) Anyway, I'm not always a morbid person, but I do find that reflecting on mortality allows one to really appreciate life and to consider life profundities. I saw a grave where a man had lost both his daughter and his wife, and another two people who were related (as there were many people with the same last name of Bux in the same area) who died 3 days apart from each other. I wondered how they died so close to each other and thought perhaps they were injured in an accident and one died sooner from the injuries than the other. With the man who lost his wife and daughter, it even made me grieve for the his pain, though he himself is probably long gone as these ladies died in the 1940's.

Today, I'm hopping on a ferry to head off to Macau. It's a short ferry ride, about an hour and 15 minutes or so. I have a school I can visit there, and then my friend Steve still works at that school, so I'll visit his during the weekend before I have to be in Singapore on Sunday.

The Week in Lahore

Upon being picked up at the border, we went off to Mom and Asif's place. Almost immediately, we were slowed down by what I like to call a traffic jam, our car being stopped by a herd of buffalo. They were all coming out of a canal that's brown and used not only for buffalo to bathe in, but also for people to bathe in, wash their clothes, and go for an afternoon swim. According to Asif, that water used to be clean and clear back in the day, but now it's dirty and muddy, and probably somewhat dangerous as far as containing a threat of water-borne diseases. Needless to say, we didn't join the buffalo and kids in the canal and go for a swim with them.

I didn't really do a whole lot in Pakistan for the same reasons that I didn't do a whole lot while visiting family in India. With having such little time there, I didn't necessarily want to spend time going sightseeing all over the place, especially as Mom wasn't able to leave work for the whole week, just for a few hours on some days. It was enough just to spend time hanging out at home and catching up, doing a bit of shopping, things like that. We did go to Shalimar Gardens, though, and that was nice, but we were followed by a strange man who thankfully left us once he realised we were leaving. The one downside of this garden is, like other tourist attractions in the country, that it's not well maintained and that the government seems not to care about maintaining it. Originally, Shalimar Gardens had 7 tiers, each of which contained an orchard of a different fruit. There were clear baths and pools into which fountains flowed. Now, people have encroached upon the garden and usurped the land, so there are only 3 tiers left to see, and the water there is quite dirty and brown, though kids still play in it. It's just sad--and I know I mentioned this in my posts on Pakistan from last year--that the government seems not to care about these things. As Asif says, the government would rather spend money on the military rather than on things like education, infrastructure, or tourism.

I mean, when you think about it, India and Pakistan started out the same. They were all one country before 1949, and Pakistan was even given the larger portion of the state of Punjab, some of the most lush and fertile agricultural land in the region, and yet due to different policy decisions that were made, one country has prospered while the other has deteriorated. I don't say this to put Pakistan down at all because I really enjoy visiting there. In addition, when people ask me if it's safe or if there's the threat of violence, I tell them that it even exists in India (hotels getting bombed and what not) and that you just have to be careful not to hang around the places that are likely to get bombed. But the other component is that I've learned over time and throughout my travels is that at the end of the day, the majority of people just want to survive. They're more concerned about putting food on their tables and feeding their families than about their religious differences or political beliefs. Their poverty doesn't give them the luxury to waste time thinking of ways to destroy other things and people. They want to know love, they want to be happy, and they want to have their basic needs met. While I was there, Pakistan was hit by a second flood, more disastrous than the one they experienced in 2010. Sindh province was hit the hardest. I can guarantee at that point that no one cared about bin-Laden's death, the military (unless they were helping evacuate and shelter people), or anything else but getting help. How much international help came in? Who donated to help these people who lost everything, their homes, their crops, their livestock? It just goes to show that the stupidity of a few, whether they be terrorists, dictatorial regimes, or whatever, spoil it for the rest of everyone. It's why I'm against embargoes as a "punishment" against countries that the West disagrees with. The regimes in those countries don't care that these embargoes have dire consequences only to the masses. Because they're in power and have all the resources available to them, they aren't affected by these embargoes at all while the rest of the people suffer. Well, I guess I digress.

The main part of the week was spent relaxing at cool cafes, ice cream parlours, and helping out at the school that Mom and Asif opened. Their students are really nice, and it was a good opportunity to meet some of them. I didn't get to take as many photos of people as I would have liked, but I do like to show that Lahore is kind of a neat, organised city to some extent. The municipal government does spend money on monuments, topiaries, and lawn maintenance to decorate the roads and meridians. Women can wear tunics with jeans, and many of them do not have their heads covered. The city is becoming more modern as it grows, and you'll even see chains like The Body Shop or Australian coffee chains opening up in shopping complexes, not just in the airports. In fact, the Lahore airport doesn't really have much in the way of chains in it at all. From the outside, its architecture is like a beautiful mosque; from the inside, it seems kind of older and really different-looking from most international airports I've seen.

Speaking of the airport, it was bittersweet to go home. I missed my bed, but at the same time, my week with Mom was so short, though I'm thankful that I was able to get any time at all and didn't even have to pay for the main cost of the ticket since I was in the region anyway, just for my internal flights. I sat at the gate at the airport there after going through what seemed like security gate after after passport and immigration control after security gate. some nice qawwali song was playing on a boombox, advertising products for sale at the audio and video store, which is not something I've ever seen at an airport before. I had a lot of time to kill there as Asif had wanted to make sure we arrived early, just in case there were any issues or delays, and you never know what you will encounter on the roads or at the airport in that type of place. Getting through the airport was fairly confusing. Asif had paid for what I thought was the porter or parking, but I certainl wouldn't have know what the country was for the begin with. It became obvious early on why it was useful to have a porter there. Aside from helping you elbow your way through a crowd into the airport, they let you know where you're supposed to go next and help you navigate through the aisles and lines you need to be in. While I sat listening to that qawwali album, 3 different guys came by at different times to offer tea, coffee, or a soft drink. I'm not sure if they work for a company or if it's some sort of self-designated job. Whoever they were, I saw one of them deliver a hamburger on a plate with a bottle of ketchup to one of the passengers at my gate. It kind made me laugh, actually. It's just such an odd thing I'd never seen before. In any case, eventually I boarded to come home, flying through Doha and London this time around. I tried to sleep as much as I could so as to prevent myself from thinking too much about leaving, which only would have served to make me cry. I never seem to get used to the transient life.