Kindred Spirits in Quindao
Saturday, October 30th, 2004
Walking by the Foreign Language Bookstore in Quindao, just up the street from my comfy clean hotel room that a tout from the railroad station led me to…80 yuan she says..that’s about $10..I look in to see what they have in English. Most of the books are in Chinese…the English selection is tiny with dreadful choices and high prices. Just then I see the first westerners I have seen in Quindao walk in…where are you from, I ask…from the Gold Coast of Australia…oh, I find Australians everywhere…yes, she laughed…we manage to find our way all over the world! These women have just arrived from Shanghai where they participated in the masters section of an international dragon boat competition. One, Tye, is a nurse…the other, Leah, a school janitor. Dragon boat racing, they said, originated in China but is very popular in Australia.
Are you alone, they ask. When I say yes, their eyes light up…oh good, then would you like to come with us? Of course I jump at the chance. I show them where the internet cafe is that I had walked all over town looking for and finally found that morning by accident as there was no sign on the outside of the building. And I give them a card for the hostel I stayed at in Beijing which delighted them no end.
We have dinner together…the women pass up tubs of all kinds of shellfish to choose from on the sidewalk in front of tiny restaurants with only two or three tables…and finally choose to have “hot pot” that sits on top of a flame with your choice of all kinds of fish from the sea…a dozen different kinds of clams, little crab, shellfish we have never seen before, various unknown kibbles and bits, leafy vegetables, thin sliced mutton or pork, as much as you could eat for 29 yuan or about $6. One of the women is a bit nervous about all the unknown bits…but we laugh it off and make a complete mess on the table…the big Chinese group at the next table finding our clumsy adventure quite funny.
The next evening they showed up at my hotel door….we just showed the Chinese girls at the desk downstairs “big hair” they said…and the girls immediately knew who they were looking for…besides the fact of course, that we were all westerners…we must all know each other! They shared some wonderful chewy sweetened dried fish with me and needed me to show them how to do email so off we went out into the evening again.
My last evening in Quindao, at a 4 star hotel coffee shop, I invite the friendly waiter who has been letting me use the hotel’s free WIFI with my laptop to have dinner with me…seafood soup and jousa (dumplings)… before he has to go to his university classes at 7pm. Jack is his English name given to him by his English teacher and I find myself wishing Chinese English teachers would get a little up-to date with the English names they hand out. Jack, Han Chinese, is from Urumqi in the largest and most western province in China…Xinjiang…which has a majority of muslim Turkic speaking people. His family still lives there. He is 23 but says he is not a good student. I ask why and he says he likes sports…he would rather play American football! I say, what!! He says it’s a sport young people like but his parents don’t. I say, yes, I understand! I ask if he plays basketball and mention Yao Ming’s name…he dismisses Yao…”oh, if I were 7 feet tall I would be famous too!”
I let Jack order…he is anticipating a soup with “all kinds of shellfish from the sea” but when it comes it’s basically an eggflower soup with only a few little bits of shrimp and clam. He looks disappointed and I realize he has never done this before. The soup is only 6 yuan…less than a dollar. But Jack only makes $200 a month and I wonder what this skinny kid eats every day. At his bus stop we shake hands with lingering looks and he invites me to come back to Quindao again.
I have a hard sleeper booked on the train today at 1:30. I will arrive in Shanghai tomorrow about 9 am when I will book a dorm bed for 100 yuan…about $12. Right now this hotel I am in is celebrating a wedding with drums and a funky dragon made of balloons. The dragon lies down and the groom carries her over it and into the elevator…the ceremony will continue downstairs.
The Tajik and Olga
In Irkutsk, when we find our seats on the train to Ulaan Baatar, we find a good-looking 40 year old Muslim man from Tajikistan in our cabin. He has studied ... 
Coming down out of the mountains we were happy to see Ruili lying in the green lush valley below...a larger city than I thought...a Chinese/Burma border town with a mix of Han Chinese, minorities ... 
Monday Dec 9 2002
In Old Town Lijiang, we are woken up by a knock at the hotel door at 8am. Two couples from Taiwan were on their way to Zhondian with a driver ... 
September 24 2002
Bob left Hanoi right away on the train for Sapa near the Chinese border to do some trekking among the colorful minority villages and then to spend three days in Halang Bay ... 
A Sleepover in Soweto-Africa's largest township
On our way to India we stopped in Johannesburg for two days to stay with Lolo Mabitsela in her Bed and Breakfast in Soweto-a township about 30 minutes outside ... 
June 11, 2002
On the way from Serus the topography is incredible--perfectly formed mesas and buttes-almost Utah-like. We stop in the tiny wide spot in the road called Bethanie. Bob mails a card ... 
Sun May 25, 2002
Up at 5:30 for the sunrise micro-light (motorcycle with wings) ride to view the falls and the geologic formation left by them over thousands of years. The half hour ... 
In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa your car "hoots" not honks. Hoot, I tell them, is what an owl does! Rod says Geese "honk" and cars "hoot!" We laugh. ... 
That night Rod has arranged for us to have dinner at the home of a local family. We each take a bowl and spoon from the truck and are led down a series ... 
Zanzibar's native cuisine brazenly drenches seafood in local aromatic spices. At night, locals gather at Forodhani Gardens, a strip of park on the waterfront right outside the House of Wonders. Before sunset, cooks begin ... 
May 5, 2002
We left for the 4000 mile seven week trip in a Mercedes Benz truck overland from Nairobi to Capetown. As Bob suspected there would be, there are 17 kids all under ... 
Landed in Eletherios Venizelo airport and everyone clapped as is often the custom around much of the world.
Took a one hour bus ride from the airport to Monastiraki Square Station at Syntagma Square in ... 
We took an excursion trip south and east past incredible green terraced fields and old Berber kasbahs (ancient Moroccan self-contained communities made out of the rust colored mud of the countryside)-seemingly idyllic-to the Atlas ... 
The fall of 1995 Bob and I joined an REI adventure tour company based in Seattle Washington on an 18 day trek in the highest and most dramatic part of the central Tian Shan ... 
Zoe