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.

Journey into Pakistan

The last leg of my trip was the week I spent in Pakistan. My journey there went off without a hitch, for the most part. It was a little different from last year's experience crossing the border by land. For those of you who followed my old blog on Windows Live Space (stay tuned for the archived version!), you'll recall how much of the VIP treatment I received crossing the border. To shortly re-cap that experience, when I arrived at the Amritsar border, my cousin, who was fairly high up in airport security, had a couple of police officers meet me there and drive me to the border. While I sat on a chair and had tea, people whirled around me and took care of as much paperwork that was possible for a third party to complete. When I crossed the border, Mom and Asif were waiting right on the other side, since Asif's nephew in the military is posted at the border, and they were able to get right in and even helped me fill out the customs form as there were some fields that weren't really clear to me.

This time around, because my cousin had moved to a different police unit, I took a taxi from the airport. One thing to note about that, if you ever decide to do a trip like this, is that the taxi ride will cost you Rs1500 when to get from the border to the airport, it's only Rs800. Secondly, make sure to have enough cash on hand because the airport is one of the few that doesn't have an ATM. I didn't have enough because I was expecting the 800 I had seen last time I crossed from Pakistan to India, so the taxi service had to stop at an ATM en route so I could get the remainder of the money I owed.

I was counting down the kilometres, and when I was 5km away, I sent them a text to let them know how close I was. I arrived at the first office on the India side, filled in all the paperwork myself, and was offered no tea this time around. I don't know why there are so many offices, but in total, you make 4 different pit stops where someone records your name, citizenship, and passport number, once in a computer, and the rest in some sort of log book written by hand. The 2 porters humbly accepted the Rs200 I gave them, though the one protested it was too much despite the fact he had tried to tell me how poor he was and how rich I must be.

I walked to the other side.

It's hard to describe how that feels, especially after such a long time since I last saw my mom, I just couldn't wait to give her and Asif great big hugs. I was a little teary but realised I'd have to buck up when I didn't see anyone waiting for me there. I showed my passport to the military guy sitting at the border with a Kalashnikov resting on his lap. Then I went to the next and only other office to have my bags scanned and to fill in the customs form. Mom and Asif had been with me there last year, but I figured Asif's nephew probably didn't have a shift that day, so they couldn't get as close as they usually do. I filled in all the necessary forms, and then I had to end up opening my one bag because something in it made them think there was a bottle in it; they suspected I was carrying liquor in, though the one man protested that I was trustworthy because he thought I was a teacher. People in that part of the world don't always understand what I do for a living, and if they have limited English, it's difficult to explain. In any case, they confirmed that I did not have alcohol.

I then proceeded out past the border in public space, and still, there was no one waiting for me. I figured they must be on their way, so my new porters took my bags and set them down in some shade in front of a shop, and one of the shop owners was kind enough to bring a chair for me and offer me water. These porters were not humble and complained about the Rs500 I gave them. Granted, that's only slightly more the value of the Indian 200 I gave the other fellows on the India side, so I was not impressed with that! Anyway, I know I looked like such a curiosity: wearing jeans and a t-shirt (atypical for that part, though common in some of the wealthier business districts in Lahore), a female alone with 3 pieces of luggage. Guys had kept hounding me to exchange money that I'd need for a taxi, and taxi drivers were hounding me to hire them. Little boys were sitting next to me staring at me in the unashamed way people from South Asia will do. I tried to get reception on my phone to send them a text and find out where they were, but the signals were so weak near the border that I wasn't able to get any reception. The kind shop owner was really paying attention. He spoke some English and asked me if my phone would work, and when I replied that it would not, he asked me if I had the number and offered me his own phone. I had been ready to cry, and this was the hope I needed.

Asif answered and said they were close by, so I was quite relieved to find that out! I wasn't sure what had happened to them up to that point and didn't know what to do. I had their address, but if I went there, I had no guarantee anyone would be home, and then I'd be stuck. So once it was determined that people really were coming to get me, somehow everyone around me figured this out, and I wasn't so much of a curiosity anymore. Another man approached me and said there had been some people looking for me there before but had been sent away. I didn't understand what he meant until I found out that Mom and Asif had arrived earlier, prior to my arrival, and tried to get into the border. They were told no one was coming until 4pm, so they got turned away. We don't know what happened, but we think maybe there was a bus of travellers expected at that time, so the border guards maybe assumed I was going to be with that group instead of travelling there by taxi.

It really warms my heart when I think about the concern of those guys around the shops at the border. Another man had helped me carry my bags to Mom and Asif's car; it was true concern. At no time did I feel unsafe; it seemed like those guys were truly hospitable and caring. It felt so good to be with Mom and Asif again and that finally, I could rest.

The Rest of India

I can't really say a whole lot about Pune and Hyderabad. We spent so little time there that I didn't get to do or see almost anything. I can say that the climate there was much more pleasant than it had been in both Delhi and Mumbai. In Pune, we essentially arrived in the morning, ate lunch at the hotel, did our fair, had a meeting after, and prepared to wake up at 3am the following day to catch our flight to Hyderabad. We had the evening free where we could have seen something, but most people were just too tired to go anywhere. It was okay for me because I had initially planned to go out with a new friend I had made last year during my business trip to India who is from Pune and lives there. He had always invited me to let him know if I was going to be in town, so I contacted him before I left, he gave me his number and told me to call him when I was there and we could go for supper or drinks. I had told him I wanted to try something that was typical from Pune or the region, so he said that he would take me somewhere for Puneri food. So once I was done my events for the day, I called him. That's when things became interesting.

A woman answered the phone, so she gave the phone to my friend. He told me he had just returned from a business trip to Mumbai and that he would call me back in about 10 minutes to let me know where we would go to eat. I then had a feeling I would never hear from him again. I was not wrong. He didn't even email to explain what happened. But I have a theory. Although we did not email frequently, we exchanged maybe 4 or 5 emails since last April, and I didn't really have a sense that he was romantically interested or anything. But at the same time, earlier this year or late last year, he revealed to me he had a 3-year old daughter. It seemed suspicious because you usually don't meet too many single fathers, but knowing he had done his MBA abroad and was of a younger generation, it didn't seem out of the question that he might have been divorced. Yet the number he gave me was his mobile, and when I heard a woman answering his phone, it struck me that this was probably his wife, and he's not divorced at all. I would imagine his wife put a stop to our dinner plans. The fact that he concealed this information, if it is indeed true, makes me think that maybe he did want to have some sort of affair or something. It's really suspicious, anyway. In the end, I was ok with not going out because I was equally tired. We had all woken up around 4 that morning to catch our flight.

As for Hyderabad, we at least got to see the city as we were driving around to visit the various schools. The city seems to be quite beautiful and is really rocky. I couldn't get too many good photos of it unfortunately, but there are a couple. You also see a lot of minarets there as about 60% of the population is Muslim.

The final city we went to, where there's a climate even more temperate, is Bangalore, now called Bangaluru, although I have a harder time getting used to saying that than I did Mumbai. The climate there is so nice, and the city is quite different in that about 80% of the population holds a post-secondary degree. I was considering trying to figure out how I could get a job there for a moment! I didn't really do much sightseeing there either as most of the people I was with just wanted to shop. I was a little disappointed because I had wanted to see the Bombay Palace, but I don't like to go out alone in India. I don't know that it's necessarily unsafe, but I just don't like to take chances. We did have a good time shopping at some Kashmiri emporiums. The 3rd and last store we went to was the best, and the guy there was super friendly and was telling me all kinds of interesting things about their textiles and fabrics. He also was kind enough to inform us that a guy who had offered to shuttle us to a factory of a store that was closed, a store that we had wanted to go to but was closed for the Ganesha festival that day, was just trying to take advantage of us and probably had his own store somewhere. Apparently even if there was a factory, it would equally have been closed for the festival because as government-run emporiums and businesses, they have to close for that festival. Yikes. I'm glad he was so friendly and helpful. He didn't try to "fleece" (another Indian term for taking advantage of someone) us at all.

Next up will be tales of Pakistan and the journey there.

Anna Hazare

I realised I missed out on a huge news event in my last entry, and I had meant to include it there since it was in Mumbai that I had seen my first set of Anna Hazare demonstrators from my hotel room. You may have already seen the pictures and wondered who he is.

I hadn't heard and of the news about him until I actually arrived in India. My uncle told me that many Indians consider him to be the new Gandhi as he leads a movement against corruption in India. All the news channels were covering his campaign 24/7. He threatened to go on a hunger strike if the government didn't pass a bill he had proposed that would see to it that those in positions or authority would become responsible for their actions and could even be prosecuted. At best, the government had said they would consider his proposal, but this wasn't good enough for Hazare, and his hunger strike threat continued. The drama heightened when he ended up getting arrested right before his strike occurred. If there hadn't already been thousands of people supporting him across the country, this only seemed to stir up more support for him as the demonstrations so far and all the way until the end had been peaceful. I didn't hear one incident of someone being killed or injured during the entire event.

While in jail, Hazare decided to start his hunger strike, and within a few days, the government decided to give him some space in a park in New Delhi to sit and strike. Interestingly, he was only allowed to do this for 15 days as apparently another group had rented the space after that two-week period for their own protest of some sort. In any case, if I remember right, it was about 11 days after he went on hunger strike that the government finally acquiesced to his proposal, and the process has already begun. One judge was already impeached before I left the country.

Quite honestly, I was surprised that this movement was successful. Corruption in India is so rife that it's almost its own institution. It was exciting to be there during one of India's most significant moments in history, and I was hoping to pick up some paraphernalia, namely the Gandhi-style hats that people were wearing that had Hazare's name written on them, but I hadn't a clue where to get one. I would have even loved to just go to one of the demonstrations to get photos and say I was there (which I'm sure made my cousins think I was crazy), but then I wasn't about to just head out there on my own and find one. Still, it was an amazing experience to be in India at that time. I encourage you to read the Times of India to get a more accurate overview of Anna Hazare's plight.

Photos from South Asia 2011

Again, remember that you'll have to tune in for more stories to finish explaining these photos in the next couple of days :o)