Worldwalker: 2010

Thursday, July 29, 2010

via Frankfurt to Lima - and home

I go to Frankfurt from here. There’s a mandatory stop for at least 24 hours there (this is in the fine print of a “Round-the-World”-ticket), so I visit my sister who lives there, and my parents visit while I’m at it. It seems I’m the first person on whose arm my niece is willing to spend some time away from the immediate vicinity of her parents. I am unaccountably pleased by this.

Then it’s off to Lima, via Caracas. Caracas has a very, very small airport. And the rolling staircase which is supposed to allow us to disembark is broken and so we wait in the airplane while it’s being repaired. This has me slightly anxious, because the flight left Frankfurt an hour late and I’m worried about my connection. But they have it repaired in a few minutes and I find thereafter that what little infrastructure they have here is entirely appropriate for the traffic they have. They can’t issue e-tickets, but I get my transfer ticket, and pass through security in the transit area, within ten minutes. And shortly thereafter, I’m off to Lima.

I arrive a day earlier than necessary, but the home office has sent enough work my way that I spend most of that day in the hotel room, working. I take a brief walk through Lima searching for a guide-recommended spot for lunch, which I don’t find. I choose a random hole-in-the-wall for lunch, which is decent, and dirt cheap. Everybody speaks Spanish here, and I feel somewhat out of my depth. After French, Spanish is definitely next on my agenda (French lessons at the World Bank start next week).

It turns out that the delegation we were supposed to meet here the next day isn’t available, so the only things being handled are the run-of-the-mill working group issues that my colleague who routinely handles GAFISUD is comfortable handling on his own (and to which I honestly cannot bring any added value by sitting in on the meetings).

So I have another day! Technically, it was two days to myself. Everybody who’s been to Peru from our office indicated that I absolutely have to see Cusco (and, by extension, Machu Picchu). But the flight is 400 USD, by the time I’ve added all the other expenses involved in getting from Cusco airport to Machu Picchu and spending a night there I arrive at a figure of around 800 USD to what would be something like a few hours there at best, with enormous attendant hassle. So – thanks, but no thanks.

But I do find (thanks, Lonely Planet) a guided mountain bike tour to Pachacamac. Which is awesome.

First, though, I’m invited to go to dinner with an international mix of other attendees to the plenary, with people from Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina and Costa Rica present. Dinner comes with a Pisco Sour, which is the signature drink of Peru (I had my first Singapore Sling two days earlier, in the aircraft about to leave Singapore). I’d describe a Pisco Sour as “Caipirinha meets Tequila”. Not bad. Been there, done that. It’s an enjoyable evening, though some participants appear to have been pregaming, which makes one of the conversations a bit strained.

We relocate, after dinner, to another place for drinks. The pregamers leave us to our postgaming. A Brujer Sour (“Brujer” means Sorceror) is made with coca leaves, and I am told that if I were to take a drug test tomorrow, there’s a risk of failing it. I am not introduced to all of the drinks I am presented with, but decide that I have had a sufficient amount, when a few hours and one establishment later I am drenched in sweat from quite a bit of dancing and find that it’s four in the morning. The (diminished, but still active) group appears to be inordinately impressed by my self-restraint as I head back for the hotel (and, I’m told, continued until the place closed around dawn).

I drink a bottle of water and set my alarm clock for three hours later, telling myself that this is the burden I bear in order to network, which is after all one of the reasons for me being here… ;)

Pachacamac is a town just outside of Lima, and part of greater Lima. The drive there (in a jeep, with the bikes in the back) drives home what I read in the guide: Lima sits in a desert. You don’t notice it in central Lima – they seem to have enough water, what with three rivers meeting the coast there. But all the green you see in Lima is the product of artificial irrigations. All, and I mean literally all, the trees, flowers, lawns etc. are regularly sprinkled with water – else they wouldn’t be there. In Lima proper you see buildings, blacktop or planted greenery. The moment you’re outside of Lima proper, you get to see open ground – which is a light grey, silt-like substance. Nothing grows there. The poor shantytowns (some with access to drinking water and sewage, some, further out, without) look like favelas built on the moon.

Our trip begins on relatively level ground. I’m grateful for that, as my legs shake and my knees hurt (ever so slightly)*before*

I get on the bicycle. I munch on local – well, munchies – and continue to drink a lot of water as we make our way through plantations and a bit of jungle-like wild growth close to Rio Lurin (which is otherwise nearly invisible, this being the dry season). We pedal across rough gravel roads and singletrails, with the occasional branch bouncing off our helmets, until we come to a pre-Inca ruin.
Pre-Inca, to me, sounds like “pre-ancient”. But, pretty much all the ruins here are pre-Inca. I thought I knew that the Spanish had conquered an ancient civilization here, and had thought that this had b

een the Incas. I am told that yes, there had been a civilization here for a thousand years or so before the Spanish came, but it had consisted of a smattering of rival city states. The Incas had been only one of these, and limited to Cusco (Machu Picchu) and its (inland) environment for most of this time. They had conquered much of current day Peru (including Lima) only about 60 or 70 years before the arrival of the Spanish. So they’d thought they were top dog for a relatively short time, before the Spanish came and allied with their former subjects to overthrow them (and then turned around to enslave their erstwhile allies).

From here, the trip ta

kes us up into the foothills. I’m sweating out

some of yesterday evening’s (or rather, this morning’s) effects as we go, and a good thing it is, too – my ability to handle what’s coming seems to increase in step with the demands of the tour.
The hills are almost scary, forbidding landscapes reminiscent of moon or Mars. They are light grey, or dark grey - the darker grey is a dried moss, which turns green once it gets moist.
This is how most of it looked:
Dry on the left, and a few seconds after having been “watered” ;) on the right.

The hills above Pachacamac have an eerie quality to them, like bicycling on the moon or Mars.

The pattern is that during summer, the clouds are high and sail o

ver these hills, to rain down in the Andes proper, further inland. In winter, they come in low and the moisture clinging to the hills makes the hills erupt in greens. At the same time, a lot of wildlife migrates from the now drying Andes into the foothills, which teem with life for a while until the next summer. It is July, and winter is just beginning here. Some of the higher, sea-facing hills are beginning to green, and we see the tents of the first nomadic herders higher up in the hills.
We also catch some of the first blooms of “Amancae”, which is the signature flower of Lima – it is endemic to the Andean foothills around Lima, and grows only during winter.
(see picture at right)

One part of the trail we follow has been “improved” – it’s pretty even, and otherwise pretty as well – too bad I can’t look at the stunning scenery much, but they did add rails or anything of the sort to the half-meter-wide trail, and it’s a steep drop to one side. They did add trash cans every 200 meters or so. We see some of the people charged with cementing these things into place. The trash cans themselves were shrink-wrapped for transport. The workers set them up inside their wrap, then tear the cover off their opening – and drop it on the ground.
Sigh.

We have a very local (and somewhat late) lunch out in Pachacamac, then head back into town. I’m roped into a football game between a number of the attendees here, organized by the secretariat in a local football (& cricket !?!) club. Our side loses 6:1 (or maybe 7:1), a result I find particularly displeasing as I was our goalie (couldn’t run much after my day). I’m happy everybody seems to agree the other team had a lot more shots on goal, too – so my quota of saves doesn’t seem to have been any worse than the other side’s. And my colleague from the “Banco Mundial” scores our side’s only goal, so at least the World Bank’s participation in this event wasn’t a total washout.

I’m dead tired after this – so much so, that after my shower I go straight to bed, even skipping dinner. The next day is remarkably uneventful for being the main reason for my coming. We present the Brazil report, have a productive side meeting, go to a reception (to which I bring my suitcase, leaving from there to the airport). There’s a lot of cabs coming by, few of them empty. Of those, the first five (!) refuse to go to the airport.

The driver who does agree to take me there explains that you need an official badge with a picture around your neck to be allowed to take passengers to the airport, and that those are hard to get. When I remark “ah, and you’ve managed to get one of those” (which seems counter-intuitive, he looks a bit dodgy in his hand-welded security cage), he indicates that no, he’ll drop me off very nearby and I’ll have to walk the rest.

Which is only a hundred meters or so. BUT it requires getting out of the car in a somewhat tricky spot, and in a bit of a hurry. And after he’s gone, I realize my cell phone is still in the taxi. Sigh.

Check-in and security take a little over an hour (for me, armed with a Star Alliance Gold Card for “Elite Access” and a UN passport) – it must take ages for everyone else. The lounge is hard to find, and internet access is ridiculously slow. Getting useful contact information from the t-mobile home page seems to have been made intentionally difficult to boot, and my first attempts to call someone (via Skype) are defeated by the poor connection. In the end, I manage to have my number suspended about five minutes before boarding. Phew.

I’m on my way home. Via the “George Bush Intercontinental Airport” in Houston, Texas, which comes across about as sympathetic as the name suggests (to me). I’d asked not to be woken for breakfast, given that the Continental flight had full-flat seats and this might allow me nearly six hours of sleep (it did - yay!). I thought I could eat a little breakfast in the lounge while checking my email. It turns out they don’t have a lounge in Houston, so I pay for breakfast at McDonald’s. And the only WiFi option they have requires downloading an executable file (on top of the charge). And my work laptop won’t even allow that.

Sigh.Can’t wait to get home. Just a couple of hours now…

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

I'm flying around the world ...

… again.

Unbelievable how quickly one can get jaded in this job. My last trip literally around the World was in March, when I went westwards to Vietnam, and for slightly complicated reasons spelled out here http://nebelwald-worldwalker.blogspot.com/2010/03/viet-nam-2010-return.html went westwards from there on my return trip (whenever facing a twelve hour time difference, which way around you travel tends to be decided by which carrier currently offers the lowest airfare). This time, I’m going to Singapore.

Again.

Notice a pattern here?

Nevertheless, some of the experience still feels exotic. Being informed during descent, for example, that importing chewing gum into Singapore is illegal (I kid you not). I’ve seen the nighttime approach to Changi airport before, but the sheer number of ships at anchor (hundreds) is still amazing. The Singapore Straits is one of the major shipping routes in the world, and its harbor continually busy.I don’t have such a good view of it, because I sit in the aisle. I generally do, because – that’s what I asked for. I admit I like the view on departure and descent, but … that’s just a couple of minutes while I spend many hours on these flights. And not having to climb over someone else every time I want to go the bathroom is a major convenience.

I’m travelling as part of a team this time – there’s four of us getting out of the airplane, the World Bank contingent of the team which did the Solomon Islands assessment – presenting, discussing (and defending) that report at the plenary meeting of the Asia-Pacific Group on Money Laundering is what we’ve come here for. Of course, we each also pursue a number of side meetings. One might doubt whether the work done at the plenary justifies the resources involved in shipping all the attendees halfway around the world (literally, in our case). But the primary utility of these meetings is the ability to grab a few key players in a coffee break and come up with an agreement of how to move forward.

But that starts tomorrow. We land just before midnight local time (Saturday evening), having started our trip roughly 24 hours earlier, at noon Friday. Travelling West, as we did, we gained 12 hours in time difference, but lost a day crossing the date line. FYI.

Germany plays for third place two hours later. I didn’t sleep much on the flights over here (DC-Tokyo-Singapore), so I’m tired, I’m jet lagged, but still … I stay up. And what a game it was! I get three hours of sleep before we meet for breakfast the next day.

As is usual before plenary presentations of an assessment report, we start working on Sunday. Unusually, none of our counterparts show up, so we break early. I feel like going back to bed, but I’ve seen people at meetings who gave in to that particular temptation, and their zombie-like state does not recommend it. So I check the website of the gym I went to last summer for the schedule, and it appears that there’s a “Mixed Martial Arts” class in a branch nearby that I might just make if I hurry.

It’s an hour of drills – punches, takedowns and the Straight Arm Bar (Juji-Gatame). It’s highly motivating and I am very quickly thoroughly drenched in sweat. I decide to jog back to the hotel for a dip in the pool, but after about 300 m decide to walk (!) to the subway (!) instead. I’m spent. It was great, though.

I do go for a quick dip in the pool, though it’s really more in the nature of paddling around a bit than any actual swimming workout, before meeting the team for dinner. After that it’s about three hours of sleep before getting up again for the World Cup Final. Which is shown from 2 to 4 in the morning, local time. With my apologies to any Spanish and Dutch people who might read this (whom I assume are the only ones whom might disagree), I could have skipped that one in favour of getting more than another three hours of sleep before the next day’s work.

Bjarne says lack of sleep is just lack of caffeine, and I manage to live by that creed until about 1500, at which point jet lag, exercise and sleep deprivation score a technical knock out. This is the first night that counts as such, and as usual I manage to sleep very well. After nine hours of sleep (pretty much doubling what I’ve had in the last three nights) I am ridiculously upbeat at breakfast the next day – so much so, that a team member (herself clearly still suffering from jet lag) inquires as to what I’m on. “Sleep,” I reply, “it’s awesome, and really cheap – you should try it”. ;)

Again, we’re here for work, and that’s not what this blog is about. Suffice it to say that the progress I make in the side meetings on matters not directly related to this plenary are easily worth the price of the ticket to get me here. The plenary, by comparison, is uneventful to the point of boring.

We go out to dinner with the Solomon Islands delegation. I end up having seafood on Clarke’s Quay in Singapore, and remember a dinner meeting I had in Tokyo a little over two years ago.(http://nebelwald.livejournal.com/2008/03/15/ under 6.5)

Then, this sort of meeting seemed unbelievably exotic to me – I recall how envious I was of the casualness with which the others swapped accounts of exotic cuisines in faraway places. Well, I’m there now. I am equally casual about it, because it doesn’t seem special anymore. That’s sad, really. But thinking back I realize that I had decided then that I wanted this, and I got it. I worked hard for it, and it’s gratifying to reap the reward. Though I wonder what it means that next to the somewhat higher standard of living we now enjoy in DC, the next strongest feeling of achievement I get is from having casual dinners in the far corners of the world.

And while the scenery somehow didn't seem all that special to me at the time, it certainly does seem unique to Singapore:

They make custom suits here in Singapore, for a fraction of the cost they would be in the US (or Germany, for that matter) – about 400 USD for a suit. But I’m told they are even better, and much cheaper to boot, in Bangkok or Hongkong. I guess I’ll wait until I happen to go there on business. Should be any year now. ;)

It rains really hard one day – Bjarne complains that the hand wash he did in the hotel room sink which he hung up to dry on his balcony was completely soaked the next day. The Phillipines complain that the hard rain we had here was the side effect of a typhoon which killed nearly two hundred people there. I choose not to complain about my hand wash (I’d done the same as Bjarne).

This hotel has a gym, and a pool. Its opening times are disappointing, but its size is good – swimming has become my number one antidote to the sort of crink in the back I get from enforced inactivity sitting around conference rooms all day and sleeping in aircraft chairs.

A colleague of mine and I also go to Evolve again – she does TaeKwonDo, so we

choose a Muay Thai class. Which is great fun. My arms are about to fall off when we Feed The Punching Bag, I’m not used to that. What turns out, in the days thereafter, to have been much worse is the time we spend skipping ropes – I’m really not used to that. I am limping (ever so slightly) for three days thereafter. But you can have good food very close to the hotel, too - and cheap:

Then pretty soon it's time to leave. Home - in a way.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Paris 2010

There are several direct flights a day from DC to Paris, on Air France. Therefore, I fly to Frankfurt and from there to Paris. Because Lufthansa gives the World Bank better prices.
This sort of thing has been remarked upon rather a lot by my colleagues. It seems rather counter-intuitive. But – the World Bank’s mission is to eradicate poverty. As usual, with really big public policy issues, this is being done by throwing money at the problem in the hope that it will go away. Only they’ve been throwing large amounts of money at the problem for quite a while now and it doesn’t seem to be quite on its way out the door yet.

So they’ve been looking at their programs for a while now, attempting to get higher efficiency out of lending and knowledge programs, or more colloquially put, trying to get more bang for the buck. Less of the sprinkler method, trying to deliver the needed – ahem – liquidity to more specific targets. The FPD-FI unit (Financial and Private Sector Development – Financial Integrity) that I am now proud to work for, in this metaphor is the semi-buried hose with tiny holes where water trickles directly to the root of the plant. The yearly budget for the whole team is smaller than most lending programs. The idea is that by delivering knowledge straight into the hands (or, rather, heads) of those who will be making important decisions for a country’s financial stability, we get a lot of leverage. But we, too, need to look at where we can do “more with less” (which wouldn’t be asked of everybody quite so often if the Pathfinder mission hadn’t been such a spectacular success, thus raising rather overblown and unfortunate expectations). And the travel budget of our unit is big. I assume our staff salary is a higher total, though I know the total cost of my travels for the unit so far already rivals that of my first year’s salary, and I haven’t even been here for half a year yet.

In fact, I’ve been here about half that – the rest I spent traveling. I notice that a lot, lately. Here is how you know if you’ve been traveling too much:

When the plane touches down and suddenly decelerates, you reach out and stop the closed laptop from sliding off the empty seat next to you without looking up from your book.

The first thing you check on the long-distance flights is whether there’s an electric socket at your seat, and if so, whether it has juice.

You not only know your passport number by heart, but also its issue and expiration dates.

Of the movies on offer during flight, you’ve seen every one that might be remotely interesting – and did so while flying.

You not only grab just the right number of trays at the security checkpoint to smoothly pass through that process, you get annoyed at people who don’t.

You don’t mind the small room, the ex-broom-closet bathroom or the lack of a gym or pool in the hotel, because hey – it’s got a stable WiFi connection.

For ten or more cities, you not only know the name of the airport, but its three-letter acronym (today I’m flying IAD-FRA-CDG).

But I digress. This trip to Paris is – weird. At first glance, it feels much like a vacation. The weather is simply gorgeous. After arriving on Sunday, knowing how good sunlight is to get into a different time zone, and needing some caffeine to keep me awake after a very short night on the transatlantic flight (sleeping in the afternoon would increase jet lag), I sit in an outdoor café with a cappuccino – strictly to make sure I can work the next day, right, no hedonism involved. ;) I also jog for a bit, down to the Seine and the Tour d’Eiffel and later spend an hour of the evening reading a book at the Seine.

Of course we work on Monday (and I’ve had a good bit to read up on – again – on the way over here to make sure I’m up to speed), but we only start at 9 and the OECD is only a 15 minute walk from the hotel (which is why I picked a small hotel way below the maximum rate for this trip). So I sleep until 07:30, which is practically a week-end for me. And I’m still back out of work by six in the evening or so. On Monday evening I go to the Tour d’Eiffel – I’ve never done this before. It really is quite impressive (though the flashing lights they put up there for the last celebration and re-installed after locals protested their removal don’t really do it for me).

The Seine at night (from the river bank)

and from higher up...

Tuesday we have a team dinner after our work – we meet at eight, which allows me to go for another small bit of jogging before we do. And dinner is nice. And fun.

And on Wednesday we’re done early as well, so I manage to write up all my changes (and hand them to our team leader) before leaving the OECD, and still manage to spend two hours with a book at the Seine before – supposedly – meeting two of our team for a well-deserved decompression beer in the Hard Rock Café. Sounds great. What’s to decompress, I wonder?

The talks actually went well. There was very little antagonism, lots of useful information. We had our stuff together, and when somebody needed to look something up for a bit, somebody else could smoothly step in so we never wasted time. When the other side asked for a run-down of everything they’d asked to be changed in the report that was NOT changed even though they requested it, and why it wasn’t, I could even do that – with enough clarity so no questions were left open, with enough firmness so no one started arguing the points, with enough diplomacy no one got angry (much) and with about five minutes preparation time. I actually impress myself and it seems I wasn’t the only one that was.

So everything worked just fine, like a well-oiled machine doing its thing. But I guess the lack of friction (which allowed us to get so much done so quickly) is due to intense preparation and focus, which is also pressure. I note my gut is more tense than it should be given what little obvious stress I feel (at home everything seems fine as well, yay!). And one of the two I was supposed to meet in the Hard Rock Café doesn’t show up because his back cramped up. I take it that’s a stress symptom, too. I don’t know what became of the other one, but I don’t find either one of them. I do find two people from the other delegation, and have a pleasant evening (and a few beers and a tequila) with them.

I get another dose of stress when I choose to take public transportation to get to Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle airport, rather than a taxi. I mean, 8.50 EUR vs 50 EUR – that’s just stupid. I’m not so spoiled that I need to be chauffeured around at the unit’s expense, now am I? Though even the tail end of Paris rush hour in the metro is no fun with luggage. Nor are the many stairs for the two train changes (no moving escalators here). Nor is the local train which brings me to CDG – slowly.I’m just lucky that I start this journey with the intra-European leg, and the concomitant shorter check-in and cutoff times. Everything’s all right. I’m coming home. J

The Gambia - Impressions from the Ground

We were picked up at the airport and brought to what shall be our hotel for this week. It’s a beach resort hotel. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Which brings to mind, as I walk towards the little building which contains my room, how much one’s perception is coloured by one’s needs. Apparently some people find this place nice enough to have their weddings here (there are two during the couple of days we’re here). And if I was on holiday, the signs exhorting me not to feed the monkeys might get a different reaction from me. There is a pool with a bar next to it, but the pool closes at sundown. Given that we work for most of the day, a pool that’s open 24/7 would be much nicer for me, even if it wasn’t outdoors. Heck, I’d trade most of the amenities for a fast internet connection. I can’t get one with my laptop. WiFi access is so spotty that half the time (I don’t try it that often) I can’t even get to a log-in page. This has been recognized by hotel management, so they rent out USB sticks that operate as cell phone modems. One of these should work anywhere in the Gambia, we’re told, which is really neat – only that it requires installing a program, and my system will *not* let me run executable files. So I’m stuck with the “business center” near reception. Internet access is slow even so, but I can check to make sure I stay on top of the more urgent stuff from work, and chat with my wife a bit every day. So far, so good. But it does mean we’re rather cut off from the real world.

Now that’s not all bad – mentally, it tends to happen to me on these trips anyway – enough stuff to focus on. We do a whirlwind tour of the institutions and quickly rack up a meeting record that would befit a full-fledged Mutual Evaluation. Of course our point, this time around (Horst was here during the last ME) isn’t to find all the possible flaws in the country’s anti-money-laundering system, but to find out which of those can best be addressed with a bit of help from the World Bank. And we make good progress. People absolutely do not work much past four in the afternoon here, so we tend to be back in the hotel by five. The standard day has me finishing my notes for the day, then swimming in the pool for a bit, followed by us having a beer near it and later (after I’ve had a chance to shower and get dressed again) meeting up for dinner in one of the restaurants close to the hotel. Which are dirt cheap and serve okay food. Except for the Bennechin Chicken to which Horst introduces me, which is a local specialty, way better than “okay” and hereby strongly recommended. Really good stuff.

Then it’s another day full of meetings. Work progresses apace. Our counterparts from the central bank have been (and continue to be) very effective at securing meetings for us. I realize on Tuesday afternoon that the Ministry of Finance isn’t part of the meetings we have scheduled so far, and ask if that could still be arranged? And on Thursday morning we meet the Permanent Secretary to the Minister of Finance. Good stuff.

We are so fast, in fact, that we should be able to finish a day early. I’d asked our counterparts to frontload our meeting schedule – to keep Friday, and as much as possible even Thursday, free so that we could schedule additional meetings or make-up meetings for some that fall through (generally something one needs to expect in the region). But we seem to be lucky (and have sufficient support from the Central Bank) – the (very few) people who don’t want to meet with us and claim other urgent appointments send a clueless stand-in, which just makes the meeting that much shorter. Remember, this isn’t an ME, we don’t need that many answers – really only the answer to how can we help? And you can’t help someone who isn’t interested in help.
So I realize on Tuesday evening that we can almost certainly get out of here on Thursday. Which is nice, because you can’t get out of Banjul on a Friday – our original plan therefore had us flying back on Saturday evening. Back when I was working at BaFin (certainly in the early years), needing to stay another day at a Beach Resort (maybe compiling a few notes and drawing up a Concept Note by the pool to ease the conscience) would have seemed quite the cool thing. These days it seems poor compensation for another weekend spent without the family.

So I ask AmEx to shift our departure to Thursday. It’s a little more expensive, but once you subtract the hotel expenses thereby saved, not so much. Still, it’s Wednesday afternoon before I know we can go home on Thursday.

Only on Thursday, during a meeting with the police, my cell phone rings. What the … ?! Noone here has my number. And the number that’s calling me isn’t one I know. So I suppress the call and get a text message shortly thereafter. When I check it the moment we’re out of the door, it’s my wife asking whether the volcanic ash would interfere with my return? What? The Gambia has a couple of hills way upriver. Senegal, which surrounds the Gambia, doesn’t even have those. The closest volcano I’m aware of is Kilimanjaro. What is she texting about? I compile a brief answer that I’m not aware of volcanic activity and currently not expecting delays.

Back at the central bank office, Horst checks his emails and notices, as a number two news item in small print beneath the headline of “how to dress slim” on msnbc’s website, a volcanic eruption in Iceland. If I hadn’t mentioned my wife’s text message to him, he wouldn’t have clicked on it (agonizingly slow download speeds having the effect of severely reducing curiosity) – and I would not have been on the phone minutes later. A *long* overseas call later (at least I’m not paying roaming charges on this one – the cell phone calls from Ha Noi came out to over 260 USD) we are now supposed to take the same flight, but only to Dakar, where it stops before continuing to Brussels, and take a United flight from there into DC. Phew.

We get back to the hotel after our closing meeting, where I ask hotel staff to call the airport and make sure that Brussels air will go as far as Dakar, if it can’t go on to Brussels. The answer is that the plane in question didn’t even make it out of Brussels on its way here.

Another *long* conversation from the hotel. Only 40 USD this time, which end up on the hotel bill (the Bank reimburses these costs without fault) and now we’re scheduled for a Virgin Nigeria flight, after midnight, to Dakar, going on to JFK with South African at 2:45 in the morning. I go on from there to DC, Horst has to take a taxi to La Guardia airport to take a plane to Toronto and then to Ottawa. Phew.

Our plane is late leaving Banjul (and unkempt and uncomfortable and not reassuring in appearance at all) – the lady at AmEx did mention that they usually don’t use this airline. I can see why.

And we get into Dakar late. Dakar airport is not nice. And we’re in a hurry. And spend some time arguing with the airline guy, because we get to the check-in desk only 40 minutes before scheduled departure, with 45 minutes being their scheduled cutoff time. They want some form of confirmation of our e-tickets, which is rough, seeing as these were issued over the telephone only a few hours ago. I asked whether a confirmation could be texted to my cell phone, but AmEx isn’t equipped to do that (which I consider a fault, text-to-mail and mail-to-text conversions are very much solved problems these days). They did email confirmations, and Horst’s blackberry finally finds a network it can work with. Which it couldn’t in Banjul. Which means that now the 170 emails or so of the last week (he’s officially retired, so doesn’t get as many as I do) are being pushed into the unit, while he’s trying to scroll through all that to show the confirmation to the airline guy. While I stand behind him and check the Lonely Planet guide for accommodations in Dakar (it seems the likelier option at this point).

But lo and behold, he finds it, the airline guy is happy with it, we spend some exciting time running after the guy through the airport (with all our luggage) (which is hand-searched), jump into a nearly empty bus which takes us across the airfield while two airport employees fill out manual baggage tags, hand luggage and boarding passes to the crew and get on board. And off we go. Phew.

South African has full-flat seats. And they’ve served dinner on the way from Capetown to Dakar, so the moment the seatbelt lights are off I go to sleep (it’s three in the morning local time, after all). And get what feels like a full night’s sleep and still wake up at six in the morning local time where we land. Going West sure is the easier direction of transatlantic flights. Supposing you manage to get on the flight in the first place. ;)

Friday, April 16, 2010

The Gambia – West Africa for starters

Monday’s my first day into Banjul (the hotel is in Serrekunda, a small town very close to Banjul on the Atlantic coast). Banjul is interesting. The streets are dusty (rainy season is still a bit off), but in relatively good repair (though of course only the major thoroughfares resemble streets as we know them, mostly cars turn off these streets onto dirt paths). The population is colourfully dressed and we do not see anyone in the time we’re here that would appear to be desperately poor.

There are a couple of goats in the streets. Here, and then again over there a block over. This intrigues me – I do not see anyone who appears to be herding them, yet surely livestock would be too valuable to let it run around on its own? The newspapers are usually a couple of days old, and do not evidence a desire to gainsay the government. On the first day I read an article that a leader of the opposition was arrested for Possession of Loudspeakers (without a license) and find an editorial next to it which attempts to point out to the reader that this shows how the law applies to everybody – a triumph for the rule of law in the Gambia. Aha. Shows you how valuable such an editorial is, because it wouldn’t have occurred to me to interpret the facts quite that way. ;-)

Then there is the usual West African experience of people trying to bum some money off us in one way or another. Most start with a friendly “conversation”, which seems hard to avoid – tell someone you don’t want to talk to them when all they’ve done is wish you a good day and maybe (usually) ask where you’re from. Then, after the young man has told me (in passable German) of his time in Germany, he presses into my hand a little necklace that he tells me they make for tourists around here and even sell in the markets, but he wants me to have it as a gift. I know, even as I take it, that taking it is wrong because it’s got to lead to the next stage, and sure enough it does. He would much appreciate if I had maybe just a tiny little token of appreciation for him as well. Just a few Euros, or maybe just one dollar? And of course he doesn’t immediately take the “gift” back when I shake my head, creating the difficulty that I can’t give it back (certainly don’t feel like throwing it down, I don’t want to insult) but don’t want to keep it either (not without paying, and I don’t want to pay).

This is when I realize something that’s been dawning on me for a while: Polite honesty works. “Look, my friend, I only took the gift because I felt bad about rejecting it, but now that I realize you expect a gift in return, it doesn’t feel like a gift at all, more like you’re trying to sell me something – and I don’t want to buy anything.” “Yes, I realize that in the market I’d have to spend money for something like it – but only if I really, really wanted to have it, which I don’t”. One can take this method further:

“No, I don’t.” ... “You don’t believe I don’t have money? Well, excuse me, I thought when you asked me if I had any money you meant do I have any money that I feel like giving to you, and the answer to *that* question would be ‘no’.” ... “Well, because it’s *my* money and I’d really rather hang on to it”. Etc. Not easy to stay polite while on the other hand honestly saying all those things that politeness would usually make us not say, but very much worth the effort. It seemed to create an impregnable shield against several touts desperately probing my defenses, without ever giving rise to aggression. I think I may be on to something here.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

KL 2010: The Return

Of course, I get to spend some time in Delhi airport again first. Sheeesh.
I walk out of the airplane and straight towards the transfer desk, but am stopped by an angry soldier who, in barely intelligible English, tells me to go back and contact the airline. Going back I am waved down the rolling escalator towards Immigration with everybody else, and after some asking around, told to “wait here”. With a bunch of others. “For whom, or for what, were they waiting?” Apologies to Manowar for the quote from “The Warrior’s Prayer”, and of course the answer proved much less interesting. What we were waiting for turns out to be someone else, with a handwritten note on which there were the names of some, though not all, of our group. We were told to follow this person, who, via a different route, though past the same soldier, takes us to the same transfer desk. At which, again, and predictably, we are told to wait. I’m used to this now, so just remark that I prefer to wait in the business lounge and walk off.
This time I’m outbound on Air India, so told to go to *their* business lounge. Which, I am sad to report, compares unfavourably to any I’ve seen so far, including Malawi and Papua New Guinea. Of course, the floors are marble (if in need of cleaning), but even cheap carpet reduces noise. They’ve got a telly on, of course, and it looks as though it’s the same stupid cricket game still going on. Sunday to Wednesday – that’s actually possible, I guess.
A young attendant practically forces his help on me to get an internet connection established and then, predictably, asks for a tip. I pass him a dollar note, seeing as I know I couldn’t have gotten one established without such help, though his vocal disappointment at the size of the tip fails to move me. This place is just as loud, and cold, as the other lounge was, but it’s smaller, the restrooms are decidedly unappetizing and the food on offer isn’t much better. I’m glad I don’t actually have to get something done, these are not conducive circumstances.
When nearly an hour before the flight no one has come to issue me a boarding pass yet, I go up to the front to inquire and meet an apparently recently arrived gentleman in the process of accosting random strangers to find out if they might be the individual whose name he’s got on yet another handwritten note. Which proves to be mine.
I am, again, asked to follow and duly do so – our way takes us past all manner of other travellers, half of which this person seems to know well enough to chivvy in one direction or another. One man stops us to (apparently) shout abuse at my guide (something about his bag, which looks alright to me) and after a number of similarly strange intercessions I am brought back to that same old transfer desk (I had suspected this by now). Where a heated conversation ensues between various people, sounding a lot like “^vS@fg$% ;"#[\ boarding pass hjx&” going back and forth in various shades of hostility. I am, in the end, issued a boarding pass, and, along with another woman we’ve picked up at the transfer desk seemingly at random, brought to yet another gentleman who compares my name to yet another handwritten list. He’s asked the woman in front of me for her name (while looking at her passport) – I’ve got a snide answer to that on my lips when, instead, he asks me where I’m going. While looking at my boarding pass.
They then take us to identify our baggage (I had found it worrying the first time around that they’d ask me to describe my luggage, which the Air India personnel in DC had assured me was checked through to Kuala Lumpur). Sure enough, in an unsupervised corral of baggage sits my trolley, with the KL-issued bar code tag on it that says “KUL - IAD” (IAD for Dulles airport in DC). My guide is happy about this and produces another bar code tag which he attaches to it. As it also says “IAD” (though preceded by “DEL”), I don’t object. He then tells me that now I am “free”. It’s half an hour before boarding time, so I head back to the lounge for a snack and to begin writing this down. Shortly thereafter, on my way to the aircraft, I am made to go through scanners twice, hand-searched twice, my hand luggage is scanned twice, and my passport and boarding pass are requested and regarded by five separate people with attitudes varying from intense scrutiny through boredom to cursory neglect.
What strikes me about the whole process is that in the end, all of these handwritten notes were produced somewhere ahead of time, before the individual in question had actually met me. Which proves that the e-ticket booking had in fact created a representation of all the necessary data here in Delhi before my arrival. That they could (and did) produce a bar-coded baggage tag for my suitcase means that there are machines somewhere that handle bar codes, and that they knew about my bag beforehand. So why, in the Hindi thousand (or thereabouts) gods’ names, do a dozen people have to consult handwritten notes? This is where we outsource our IT development to? Really?
If this was a place busy dragging itself out of abject poverty, I wouldn’t complain. And now that I’m in my almost full-flat seat for the return flight, I’ll stop complaining.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Kuala Lumpur (cont.)

The workshop at least goes well. My two presentations on Tuesday are very well received, both by the audience and my coworkers, some of each go out of their way to tell me how much they liked them. That they particularly liked their balance of down-to-earth procedural aspects and the more abstract goals included is particularly welcome, as I’ve spent some time lately to adjust them that way.
So Tuesday passes relatively well. Late in the evening, internet problems notwithstanding, I manage to Skype both with my dad in Germany and my wife in DC. We decide on a new approach to get things sorted out at home, which helps my general well-being. And it turns out that my coworkers who asked me to come along to a supposedly famous bar that evening haven’t left until I’m done with all this, so I come along for a nightcap. I feel that I earned it (and there’s no alcohol to be had on the grounds, this being a state-owned facility in a Muslim country).
The place in question is closed. So is the alternative suggested by the taxi driver. But my coworkers (French, the lot of them) spy a “Deutsches Gasthaus”

as we drive by and I drily remark that at least it likely has decent beer, which is enough to have us ending up there. So I’m having beer with a bunch of French people in a germanesque pub in Kuala Lumpur. It strikes me that when I had dinner with a bunch of international people in a Korean bar in Tokyo this seemed impossibly strange (and cool). Now I’m just happy to have a Warsteiner (though it seems to have spent a little too long in the bottle). I seem to be growing jaded frightfully quickly.

Wednesday there’s more of the workshop – I’m not really involved in this segment (which is why my flight leaves this evening), but want to see what the module organized by the Banque de France is all about. So I’ll quit after lunch. Should allow just enough time to pack my things and maybe for a second dip in the pool.
I want to come back here.

Kuala Lumpur, of which I’ve only seen glimpses through taxi windows, appeals to me. Sure, on first glance it’s just another big Asian city. And the advertisements everywhere for next week’s F1 race don’t intrigue me in the least. But even the slums are colourful, mostly the city is clean and it’s full of plants in riotous greens. Heat and humidity are not my best friends, and though they are sure to be one’s constant companions here, I think I’d like it here. And there’s supposed to be fantastic hiking here, not just Mount Kinabalu on Malaysian Northeast Borneo, but supposedly even quite close to Kuala Lumpur in peninsular Malaysia.
In short, having a longer workshop here, with a few extra days to spend in the end, would seem like a wonderful thing to do. I find myself pondering things like whether and how I could take my wife along, what to do with the kids in the meantime, etc. I don’t know. But KL isn’t going anywhere, so all sorts of chances may come up again. So I’m not regretful, though it seems that this trip had a lot of opportunities I felt the need to ignore. Well, one effect of cutting down on the ridiculous amounts of traveling I’m currently doing (I’m in the top quarter of this Fiscal Year’s travelers already, and only been with the unit for half of its length) should be that I might capitalize on one or two such opportunities during the year. And let me spend more time with my family – to which I shall now return. Another 30 hours, 22 of which in an airplane, but I’m looking forward to it.

Kuala Lumpur

It strikes me in the airport that I was here not that long ago, on my way to (and from) Singapore for the on-site audit we did last summer.
I take the “Ekspres” train into town from the airport and a taxi from the train station – this gets me to Bank Negara Malaysia (the Malaysian Central Bank) cheaper and faster than taking a taxi from the airport. The taxi driver has never heard of the Lanai Kijang training center of the bank, but they have a shuttle from the main office building.
The place is run like a hotel - check-in is fast, I jump into my suit and end up in the conference room two hours after touchdown (and only about 10 minutes after start of the workshop). Given that it takes a bit of time to get baggage and exit the airport, and that the airport is an hour and 15 minutes away by taxi (that’s how everybody else got here, only yesterday) I am quite proud of myself.
The organizer tells me to take the afternoon off – they’ve got a few presentations schedule for which my input isn’t needed at all (and which I’ve heard before, in one form or another) and they take pity on me. Which is nice, only – if I go to sleep now (which is oh-so-tempting), there’s no way I’ll sleep at night. I need to adjust to the local cycle, and that takes daylight. And I need a haircut. So I take a cab into town to the mall suggested by the very friendly people at reception.
It’s right underneath the Petronas Towers, so I even get a bit of sightseeing done. I get a haircut, and buy a pair of eye goggles for swimming on sale while I’m at it – they have a pool at the training center.

I try it out when I’m back – I still have almost two hours before the bus takes us to an arranged dinner, and am sorely in need of some movement, as well as some relaxation. Swimming provides both. It’s a 25m outdoor pool, with a pleasant water temperature. The goggles keep the chlorine out of my eyes and it’s the best thing that has happened to me in days.
In general, the facilities here are brilliant. While WiFi doesn’t work equally everywhere, it is often possible to get a pretty decent connection, the room is nice, the bed is large and firm, the shower is nice, they have a huge fitness room and apparently you can book a massage. If it wasn’t for me worrying about home all the time, this would be a brilliant trip.The evening entertainment features traditional dance. It’s in a dimly lit hall, and after a few bites from the buffet I literally almost fall off my chair as the fatigue catches up with me. I cannot keep my eyes open, so make my apologies to the organizer, get a cab back and fall into bed. I sleep for nine hours straight.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Dulles-JFK-Delhi-Kuala Lumpur

The taxi ride to Dulles passes in a blur while migraine and medication go head-to-head. My head, in this case. It’s a blustery, sunny day which would probably be perfect to jog in, but as it is I put the hood of my jacket on against the wind from the open windows, my shades against the sun and try to zone out.
Air India would like to “see” my electronic ticket. What part of “electronic” don’t they understand? Even in Blantyre, Malawi (not a high-tech country) I was able to walk up to the counter with my passport and be issued a boarding pass (although admittedly, a Zimbabwean woman next to me on that particular plane told me it failed when she’d tried it a day earlier). In the end, just before my computer is sufficiently booted up to show them the *electronic* confirmation I have, they manage to issue a boarding pass. Only to Delhi, however, where I’m assured I will be issued the pass for the connecting flight to KL.
On the whole an inauspicious start. I’ve got a short hop ahead of me to JFK, a few hours there and then a 15.5-hour flight to Delhi, six hours of layover there and then a five and a half hour flight to Kuala Lumpur, where the workshop is at which I’m supposed to give two presentations (and chip in as overall “resource person”). Starting a day late (due to my own carelessness, I had my passport safely tucked away in the *other* black bag) means I’ll get there Monday morning of the workshop at 0700, after a 30 hour trip and with 12 hours of time differential in my baggage. Not a pleasant prospect even on a good day. Only I still have about 100 pages of Mutual Evaluation report with a lot tracked changes in it to review, with Sunday as the deadline, so even without the migraine it wouldn’t be a good day.
I take some more medication on the flight to JFK, drink a lot of water, kick the seat back the moment I’m allowed to and doze off. It’s not quite the advertised “Full Flat” seat (annoying that, like coming to a full stop at a stop sign it’s a simple yes or no question – either it goes down to horizontal or it doesn’t), but it allows me to snooze.
By the time I’m in the JFK business lounge, my head appears to be on straight again. I still have a bit of tunnel vision, but the pain is gone and so I dose up on caffeine and start working on the ME report. And I get lost in an odd zone where the tunnel vision actually seems to help, inspiring a sort of tunnel vision in my mind that allows me to concentrate on the work. Something to be said about (good) business lounges, too, I guess – comfortable seats, quiet, snacks and bathroom only a very short walk away.
I get back on the plane, let another passenger borrow my copy of the Economist and get back to work. The extended range 777 I’m on does feature power plugs in the business class. I spend most of the flight in a work binge, with brief interruptions for meals and coffee, spurred by the realization, about halfway through my assignment, that I might actually be able to finish the entire thing on this flight – and mail it to the OECD in Paris from Delhi, and before the deadline. I actually do manage it, and derive not a small measure of satisfaction from it.
Doing this in Delhi isn’t easy, however. Delhi airport advertises that it’s the “most improved airport in Asia” according to some poll or other, which might lead the casual observer to assume it started out as an improvised airfield. I am – along with some other transit passengers – being asked to wait here, then to come along to some other desk, then to wait there. Some people are indeed being issued boarding passes for their connecting flights. I am again asked for my electronic ticket.
I am sorely tempted to explain to them that an electronic ticket is issued electronically. That this is the whole point of it – no paper to carry around (and lose), just a record for the airline that I’m booked on the plane so I identify myself with the passport and can go. In other words, progress. The obvious necessity to suppress this desire doesn’t make it any easier to hide my annoyance as I start up my laptop and show them the confirmation I’d been emailed. Apparently they expected me to print this out. And I’m wondering – really? If I had a printout of an email that says I should be on your plane, you’ll let me get on it? No confirmation in your records anywhere? I actually doubt it. And if they have a record of me somewhere, what’s the point of having me carry around paper? Aren’t we killing enough trees already?
Well, I’m told they need Malaysia Airline to issue that boarding pass and I should wait. I am annoyed enough at this point to point out pointedly (ahem) that I’d rather wait in the business lounge. They reluctantly agree that I have a point (sorry) and assure me that I’ll get my boarding pass two hours before my flight.
There are three business lounges, none of which advertises serving Malaysia Airlines. The first sends me to the second, the second to the third and while the third reluctantly admits that yes, they serve Malaysia Airlines (among others), they’d really like to see either my business class boarding pass or an invitation card issued to me. I didn’t close down my laptop all the way, and between the swiftly produced screen image of a confirmation email and my barely suppressed anger, I am – with an air of reluctant magnanimity now familiar to me – granted access.
The lounge is cold (of course, it’s 30 C outside so they make it so cold inside that I put on my windbreaker over my T-shirt) and it’s got a number of televisions running, with the sound on, showing live coverage of cricket. Which is about as interesting as watching a car rust, but louder. It strikes me, for the umpteenth time, how strange it is that all these nations who’ve shed various amounts of blood to shed the yoke of colonial rule are still wedded to so many English things. The older people in the Solomon Islands still remember Independence Day, yet they pass their laws in the name of the Queen. I mean, really?
Internet access requires having their third party vendor sending login information to your cell phone via text message. And though my phone works, no such message is received. They do have one (!) computer in their “business center”, but it doesn’t allow you to upload anything. It takes a long time and the intervention of a kind employee who lets me borrow his cell phone for the purpose until I can finally get my report sent in. The connection is atrocious, and I wait with mounting tension for the ten minutes or so it takes to upload the (admittedly large) file. I manage to connect with home for a bit, as well, though this, too, is negatively impacted by the quality of the connection. The news from home aren’t good, either, so I head for my connecting flight cold, tired, tense and spent. Which at least allows me to get a couple of hours of sleep on the flight.

Viet Nam 2010: The Return

It’s been tiring. Not that I mind being the center of attention – but with no one else to tag team with, for days, I find that every evening I’m spent. I don’t feel like walking around, like hitting the gym – just a shower and then check email in bed, over which I tend to nod off (did I mention the connection is slow?). On the last day we’re back a little early, so I wonder whether I can still hit the gym this one time in the hotel before leaving for the airport.
Before asking (I’ve checked out already, after all) I take a look to make sure that I have exactly the right time for my flight’s departure. I do have the right time – but a cold dread takes hold of my gut and I reach for the phone as I realize that I have the wrong day. I know coordinating between Emile’s changing itinerary on the road and myself was a little rough, and our counterparty kept changing arrangements on us until the last minute, but … I don’t know how this happened. My fault, I’m sure – it was information that I had on my printout since the morning I left. Three quarters of an hour of internationally roaming phone calls literally to the other side of the planet results in the realization that tonight’s flight is fully booked, as is the one tomorrow and the one after that. Korean Air won’t get me home before *Sunday*. After the wonderfully helpful lady on the helpdesk and I have established that I want to go home, preferably *now*, no matter how or in what class, I get booked on an Air France flight via Paris, Economy class, which leaves really soon. I get the hotel concierge to order me an airport taxi while I’m waiting for the e-ticket confirmation and jump in the moment I have it (technically I could have gotten that while under way, but I’ve gotten cut off once already and won’t risk Hanoi’s somewhat chancy cell phone service again).
I’m off to the airport, still in my suit, and as I fire up my laptop while the taxi weaves through the cacophony of honking motorcycles, past odd architecture and the flower market, that I feel like I'm in my own movie - a long way from home.
Where I’m now going. It’ll be two looong flights in really cramped seats, but – all’s well that ends well. As, I believe, I've mentioned before.

Viet Nam 2010: Workshop impressions

The workshop is okay. I’ve done this before. Though not through translation (simultaneous interpretation, that is), and I find that hard. It’s not just having to speak less, though I admit that I find that hard as well. ;-) I have to keep my sentences short and simple, to reduce the amount of content which gets lost in translation. But it’s not just meaning which gets lost in translation; it also takes a heavy toll on esprit, on engagement with the audience.

Asking questions of the audience and getting them to respond is never easy at the beginning of a workshop. But usually it can be done – I ask a really simple, very nearly rhetorical question while looking at someone who seems to have been alertly following my last two sentences and start nodding with him or her the moment (s)he realizes I’m looking for confirmation. Do that once or twice, and members of the audience will at least openly nod or shake their heads in answer to questions. Next a question on “who’s ever been told to do something by a boss and been left head-scratching and wondering ‘sure, but how?’” which invites a show of hands by a few people without requiring them to really step out and, usually, this puts me into the sort of rapport with the audience where asking questions works. But with translation, even supposedly simultaneous interpretation, this doesn’t work. I ask a question, and then have to wait for the translation to finish. So no one is speaking out loud while everyone waits for the translation on the headsets, the interpreter often rephrasing what I just said to make sure (s)he ends with a proper question, and an expectant hush settles over the audience. Into which nobody wants to venture, of course. Supposedly funny remarks also fall flat, either because they’re not funny (I admit that happens), or because the humour does not survive translation or because the interpreter chooses not to translate it at all (he admits that happens, he thinks this is serious work).
So that part is frustrating. But the group exercises work, and of course it’s always good to get the audience engaged, so I make a few changes on the fly – in the end I make the audience discover many of the legal obligations in their new law for themselves, along with how to check for it. I’m quite happy with the result, because I actually think that these people could, if they were asked to perform an on-site inspection starting tomorrow, do a credible job of it. Which is more than I’d hoped, given the inauspicious start.
It’s not just translation which is weird, though. People walk in and out of the workshop at times. We start with the advertised twenty, then it goes down a bit. I don’t know to what degree this is culturally accepted behavior, so I don’t remark on it, but wonder if they think “hey, this is just a flake from the World Bank, we can probably get away with murder”. And then remind myself that our English teacher used to say “if you don’t want to be in my class, I’d much rather you don’t come”. I’ll just make my workshop as good as I can and hope that it’s good enough to keep people here on their own volition.

And then there are the downright weird things which happen because this is Vietnam. It starts with Monday being International Women’s Day. I knew this. But I didn’t know this was very close to an official holiday in Vietnam. The State Bank of Vietnam’s employees are about two-thirds female, and of course the socialist states were (and apparently the remaining ones are) big about recognizing women’s contribution to society. They work hard, and of course like in most societies, they are also still responsible for maintaining the household. At lunch one guy goes around toasting every individual woman (and making her have a shot of whatever this is we were given as well). I’m told this is a day for the men to show their appreciation of women, and see that this is also a day for certain men to get drunk out of their skulls at work (while the women go back to work after lunch).
There’s a ceremony in the conference room next to ours, which includes what I would have to call a Karaoke performance. I would have taken the singers to be professionals (I thought all of the music came off a CD before I glimpsed live singing through an open door), but am told they are part of the State Bank of Vietnam’s singing team. I’m also told the amount of time in which we can’t talk in our workshop would be limited to half an hour or so, so we have a long and early coffee break. Nothing wrong with that, really, they served up some decent pastry…
During the course of the days, sometimes there are sudden snatches of sound blasting out of the conference room speakers. Sometimes it’s music, another time I’m told it comes from a nearby school. Boy, that teacher must be really angry at someone, I think.

On the third day we start an hour early so people can go to a wedding party/reception apparently held at the State Bank of Vietnam for an employee in the lunch break which we extend accordingly. An interpreter and I take the opportunity to spend roughly three hours taking cabs from one bank to another in order to effect a cash advance on my credit card. This is clearly asking a LOT. We’re sent from one branch to another, one bank to another and finally arrive at a bank’s head office, which is currently on its lunch break. The doors are open, but inside, on two desks standing next to another, lie three women covered by a blanket, with another one next to them telling us no, we need to go somewhere else. A discussion ensues between the women supposedly napping on the desk, the one standing and my interpreter which is probably the most surreal experience I’ve had working for the Bank so far.
But we get the money in the end. All’s well that ends well.

Viet Nam 2010: Ha Long Bay

Ha Long Bay

Getting to Ha Long Bay involves a three-and-a-half hour bus ride.

It takes us along a very long road, the traffic on which is the usual: Mostly motorbikes, sometimes carrying entire families, sometimes with a refrigerator on the back. Between that we have cars, and a couple of buses. Overtaking is often done for long stretches in the face of oncoming traffic, with right of way sorted by honking.

What I’m less used to is the scenery. Much of the road is on top of a dike, and we cross many bridges bridging what I assume are tributaries to the Red River flowing through Hanoi. The houses we pass are built tall, with their ground floor, often open to the street, clearly used as a basement of sorts, which I take for evidence of frequent flooding.

Alongside it all are the rice patches, divided in a checkerboard pattern by the raised paths providing access to them. The patches themselves are flooded, with the rice plants sticking out of the water. Driving by, we can see that these stand in orderly rows, mute testimony to the fact that they aren’t sown – every individual plant is planted, by hand. By people standing ankle- to knee-deep in water, bending down to place them. Millions of them. We see some of the farmers at work, often wearing the local conical hats, with bicycles parked on the raised paths, bent over in the fields. My back hurts from watching them. Or maybe it’s just from watching them for a few hours while cramped into a small bus with a bunch of other tourists.

In Ha Long Bay we get on a boat. It’s a Chinese junk type of boat, with “junk” describing the barge-like type of boat, rather than being a remark on the perceived quality of the vessel. There are at least a hundred of these at port, picking up their daily load of tourists. Getting there takes us past the usual hawkers, and onto a boat between which small rowing boats circulate, selling fruit, snacks and water – waterborne hawkers.

The junk, under power of its diesel engine puttering away behind us, takes us past and through the many limestone hills which rise out of the waters of Ha Long bay.

The day is somewhat overcast, which makes being out on the top of the boat (it has cabins on the bottom deck, a restaurant-type deck on top of that and a sundeck one level higher) quite nice. For much of this day and the next, we have a vista of stunning hills, with the smell of salty seawater, mixed with a hint of diesel, in our noses. The slightly hypnotic subdued thrumming of the engine, combined with the slight swaying of the boat, combines for a very, very relaxed atmosphere. Just what I needed.

We are taken to the supposedly most magnificent cave in the many (somebody seems to have bothered to count them, the number was a little over and-and-a-half thousand) islands. Though the cave was officially opened for tourism only ten years ago, graffiti dating back to 1938 (that I can see) shows it’s been a spot to go to for much longer than that. As much as I dislike these early despoilers of the cave, I envy them the ability to explore it on their own. Enough light seems to fall into the cave that I feel certain I’d be able to find my way even around the back of the third (and largest) cave of this system. The caves are interconnected, and full of stalagmites and –tites. And floodlights in off colours. And, of course, tourists. Which follow a path laid out in stones (boring, but fair enough to preserve the cave) and not only touch the limestone at every opportunity, but are actually actively encouraged to do so by the guides. “Touch the turtle, it bring long life!” - not to the limestone formation they call “turtle”, which is visibly blackened with the acid of everybody’s skin.

Afterwards, we anchor at one of the many waterborne settlements. Many fishermen live in floating houses, there are supposedly some floating schools. The few houses right here also have some floating cages with fish in them to prove their credentials, but seem to specialize in tourism. They have a bunch of kayaks and pretty run-down paddles which are rented out. An hour’s worth of paddling comes with the trip, and I note how the junks coming from the cave take turns delivering a boat load of tourists to paddle, to be replaced by the next one as it leaves. Nevertheless it is fun to go kayaking. I get the only single kayak which seems to be present, as we constitute an odd number. This should make me slower than the others, but doesn’t. Or maybe they’re just still in relaxation mode, while I’m off to see where the kayak will take me. Certainly I can do a somewhat larger round than what the guide indicated would take an hour. But I’ve left my cell phone on the boat and so don’t have a watch with me to tell me exactly how long an hour is, so – by playing it safe – arrive back at the floating huts after only 40 minutes or so.

I spend the remaining time squatting on the floating deck, talking to other early returns and buying a coconut.

This comes with the green skin and all the copra (white fibrous stuff between skin and nut) still attached which is usually already removed when buying these elsewhere. The seller hacks a little dent into one side through which once can insert a straw. It’s not bad. I later take the machete to hack it in two, but have only given it one exploratory whack when the lady in charge of the operation takes the machete away from me, ostensibly to do it for me. I sit back, prepared to both be slightly humiliated by her superior skill and to learn something by looking on. And sit and wait, with mounting annoyance, while she ineffectually whacks away at the thing until she’s gotten it open. I could have done that.

The boat moves on after bit, and anchors somewhere else – with fewer other boats around – to indicate that we can swim here if we like. The guide thinks I’m joking when I indicate I wish to jump off the top of the boat.

I’m not. ;-)
The water is pleasantly cool, and surprisingly salty. I realize(d) that this is seawater (apparently not everybody had), but the (few) other swimmers agree that it seems to have a higher salinity than ordinary seawater. I swim for quite a bit, and jump off the boat a few times for good measure. I attract a bit of a crowd (including a photographer :-) and a few fellow jumpers.

Dinner aboard is mostly seafood, that’s okay. We talk about travelling for a while after dinner – everybody around the table is on a long trip of several months, except for myself and a Vietnamese gentleman who works in Yokohama. Beer bought aboard is 1.80 USD a can – cheap for US standards, particularly if you consider that it’s sold to a captive audience, but expensive by local standards. We don’t drink much. I eschew the cabin for my hammock. I may not get to hike Cat Ba island, but somehow the hammock feels right. Before retiring, I find that some people on the back deck near the waterline of the boat have found that waterborne hawkers are still peddling the waters of Ha Long Bay after dark in their broad, shallow-bottomed rowboats, and apparently sell beer much cheaper. They have too much of a head start, however, for me to want to join the party, so I go to hammock.

We’re brought back to Ha Long city. It’s cloudy on Sunday, though if one lies down in what little sun filters down to us, out of the wind, it’s still quite comfy. At least I feel that way. Given that there’s not a lot of us doing this, maybe having been in winter not too long ago has something to do with it. An American woman who’s been travelling Southeast Asia for two months now seems positively chilled.

In Ha Long city, we are brought to a restaurant which serves an uninspiring meal, one drink included. The whole place clearly has deals with all manner of tour operators, and exists to churn out meals on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to please customers, it won’t have return customers. It has to be just good enough so people won’t complain to the tour operators, so it’ll have return business. It manages this balance quite well.

Then it’s back to Hanoi.

Viet Nam 2010: Ha Noi - Days 2 & 3

I meet Emile for breakfast and we go to the State Bank of Vietnam for our meetings. Which are confidential, of course. Suffice it to say that the first day wasn’t what we’d hoped. This is reflected by us having three hours with nothing particular to do in the early afternoon, before we go on to more productive meetings on the sidelines. We head, at my suggestion, to the Temple of Literature, which takes us past a fair trade crafts store and a Martial-Arts-specific sports store I’d noticed on my way back to the hotel the day before.

The Temple of Literature, I’m told, is a recent rebuild, although there has been a temple building in its spot since its founding (1070!). It has served as a university starting in 1076 until, I believe, some time in the 1700s. It’s picturesque, and the stone stelae commemorating outstanding deeds of its graduates at least are original, a fact mutely attested to by the severe weathering they’ve undergone.
On my way back, I try to buy a Gi – I’d like a tough, lightweight white one that I can take on business trips with me to use at whatever style I might encounter. It would be really, really cheap here – if they had one in my size. The only one they have has lots of black markings on it, which does not become a white belt. But they do have open-fingered gloves of the type I’d like to have to use on my boxing bag, and the one pair they have is even in my size. It’s not expensive at 10 USD, but I still reflexively attempt to haggle. And am told, to my astonishment, that no, he can’t go down on price with these – they’re imports, from China! Of course I am amazed to hear what good quality I am getting and hand over my 200,000 Dong. ;-) On our way back to the hotel (and our next work meeting), Emile and I are given to ruminate again how much perspectives change from place to place.
The meeting in the afternoon doesn’t seem to establish much we didn’t know. Emile suggests the gym thereafter, which seems the perfect place to work off some frustration. In the sauna thereafter we tell us that needing several hours to get precious few useful answers in personal meetings means we would never have gotten these answers through email, so – supposing we really wanted those answers – it really was necessary to come.
We’d asked for a meeting with a very senior person, admittedly at short notice. I had hoped this would be decided today – if we’re not meeting that person tomorrow, there seems little point in me going to the State Bank at all, and I might instead do the three-day tour of Ha Long Bay, with hiking included and everything. But the last email we get that day tells us it hasn’t been decided yet. While I consider this an indicator that a positive decision is very unlikely, I don’t want to take the chance of missing out on a meeting that could actually produce results. So I call off the three-day tour, incurring some charges for the late cancellation in the process, and resign myself to another day of possibly pointless meetings. What I’m getting paid for, after all.
It turns out that our Friday meeting goes much better than expected. We even manage to meet the very senior person in a very short meeting between two appointments and get things decided. We exchange high fives in the elevator afterwards – this has been a very good day. The afternoon informational session in the country office also provides a good bit of context for what I’ll be doing here, so I’m happy. We both are, as we say our goodbyes – Emile flies back to DC after nearly a month on the road, while I pack my backpack for the weekend.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Friday, April 16, 2010

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Monday, March 29, 2010

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