Africa the Long Way

I flew out of Burlington "International" airport after having a nice brunch with my good friend from forever ago, Jon, who was kind enough to drive me to the airport (and drop off Pete the cat at my aunties' house). I was on Delta through Detroit and then Amsterdam, so it was a little less convenient than flying direct from JFK like the last time.

I got to Detroit around 5pm and went to my gate and found they had another flight leaving for Amsterdam right then. They asked me if I wanted to go, but I told them I'd only go if they could put me in business class. "Sure!" says the guy. Um, YES PLEASE. As you might imagine, business class is wonderful! Lie-flat beds, personal entertainment screen, delicious food and space. I opted not to sleep, since I had napped on the Detroit flight and I didn't want to miss a minute of my luxurious time in the air.

I landed in Amsterdam around 7am local time, so I had about two hours to kill before my flight to Johannesburg. I stopped by the transfer desk and asked if I could get an emergency exit row seat for the flight and they said sure, no problem! So, I got the seat I wanted. I then went into the first class lounge, which was quiet, and just read some books on my new iPad. As a reader I like it, but some people don't. Not my problem.

I found some eyedrops and my favorite Stabilo pens at the shopping area and then went to my gate. Amsterdam-Schipol has this stupid system where you have to go through another security check before you get on the plane, even though you've already gone through airport security to get to the concourse. It means that just before boarding, you have to queue in a long line, go through security again and be stressed.

Before you can even sit down in the gate area, they scan your ticket. When mine scanned, they said, "Oh, your seat has been changed to 31D." I explained that I had asked for Emergency exit row and I wanted to make sure that seat hadn't been taken away from me. I had to wait for the supervisor to check and he was a nasty little man who clearly had woken up on the wrong side of the dyke this morning. He interrogated me as to why I hadn't paid 50 euros for the seat, which made me defensive and stabby. He told me that I didn't have a good enough excuse to get emergency exit row and I asked him if he'd care to measure my inseam to check the length or if he'd like to have an arm wrestling contest to see how strong I was. He told me that he'd seen people who were taller and stronger. What a jerk! I'm sure something very unpleasant, such as a bird pooping on his head, will happen to him soon. Anyway, I got my (free) emergency exit row and swanned onto the plane with as much dignity as yoga pants and a Tyrannosaurus Text shirt will allow.

It has been a long time since I flew KLM and let me tell you, they have really gone downhill. The plane was shabby and worn. My seat had a weird lump on it. The food was crappy and the flight attendants more indifferent than normal. I was very tired so I slept for most of the flight, missing my kosher meal and awaking in time for the snack before landing.

As expected, my bag did not make it on the flight from Amsterdam to Joburg, so I exited customs since I didn't see a bag check desk, but unfortunately it was in a different section of the baggage claim area, so I had to go back inside through the employee entrance (which was rather terrifyingly easy) and then make a claim. They had a printout with my name on it showing that they knew in advance that my bag was on the flight (jerks!) so it was coming on tonight's flight, which meant that I wouldn't get it until Wednesday morning. Awesome. This is Africa!

Anyway, after a rather eventful drive home where the entrance to the N3 north was completely blocked off with no warning, necessitating a short trip on N3 south with an unmarked exit to cross over to the other side, we made it back to Cedar Lakes and I slept for about 12 hours. When I woke up this morning, I had spent about 18 of the past 24 hours asleep.

This weekend we hit Swaziland and Mozambique, can't wait!

Africa Kickoff

Today I depart for Johannesburg, South Africa. I will be there for five weeks, working for WIZZIT Bank again as well as attending World Cup matches! I have tickets to USA vs. Slovenia and USA vs. Algeria. Look for me on ESPN waving a giant American flag!

I also have a lot of travel planned; I am for sure going to Swaziland and Mozambique as well as tentative plans for Angola, Tanzania/Zanzibar and Zimbabwe/Zambia. Stay tuned!

I just got a new iPad so I am excited to keep my attention occupied on my horrible flight itinerary from Burlington to Detroit to Amsterdam to Joburg. I am almost hoping my flight out of Detroit is delayed enough that I get to spend the day in Amsterdam and not have to jump right on another flight. We'll see!

Talk to you all on the flip side of the world!

Road Trip by the Numbers

1 girl
1 VW Jetta
7 days
3136.5 miles
14 states
10 interstate highways
87 gallons of diesel gas

Living in a Post-Galapagan World

When I came back from Ecuador I fell into a minor depression for several days. The stark reality of life in Glendale, AZ was such a contrast to the vibrancy of the islands where I had been just hours before. My friend Yulia came back yesterday from two weeks in Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong, and we have the same problem: we close our eyes are are someone else, but we don't want to open then because when we do, we know we'll still be stuck in Glendale.

As trite as it sounds, the trip was a life-changing experience for me. I know that right now, in my life, I won't be happy in one place. I won't be happy tied down to one company, going from day to day at the same grind. I need excitement, variety and travel to stay happy. I want to see new places and experience new things as much possible. As a result, I have a quasi plan for the next few months, which is to pursue short term consulting work overseas, and to travel in the interim. I have the travel bug bad right now!

Some upcoming trips include: driving cross country from Arizona to Vermont, with stops in New Orleans for sure, South Africa for World Cup (staying with my parents, of course), Swaziland, Mozambique and hopefully Angola to visit a fellow Tbird.

Laverne & Shirley, Beijing Style [Jessica & Ginger's Adventures in Chaoyang]

Part I: My Tax Dollars At Work!

I plan to travel to Cambodia and Vietnam after the Beijing program ends, so I knew I would need to get more visa pages because both those countries use full page visa stickers. Luckily, getting new visa pages at the US Embassy in Beijing is incredibly easy! You can make a reservation online, so Jess and I signed up for 3PM and 3:30PM respectively. The embassy is located convenient to Liangmaqiao Station on the 10 line, which is the same one that is near our hotel. We hopped on after finishing up some accounting work, and made our way to the embassy. The embassy is located in a cluster pod of many other embassies; we saw South Korea, Germany, Brunei Darussalam and Israel. The US Embassy is a brand new modern glass and concrete monstrosity, not a shocker there. To reconfirm my print out map, I asked a policeman for directions and he gave me very clear and helpful ones--I'm glad that Mike and I went over a directional dialogue last week! It's been very helpful in cabs and in walking around the city.

Getting into the US embassy was surprisingly pleasant and easy. You do have to go through a metal detector and surrender your cell phone, but the staff are helpful and friendly and the process is very smooth. It's very different from the US consulate in Cape Town where you get the nth degree of inspection and questioning. The x-ray revealed a USB flash drive in my wallet which I had forgotten, but it was politely pointed out and I put it in my little tray along with my cell phone.

There was no line at American Consular Services, again a total surprise how easy and friendly this whole process was. I had to fill out a form (typical US Gov't, the form is two pages long, the first page is instructions and is removed and thrown away afterwards--seems like you could take one set of instructions, laminate it, and hand it out! Oh well...) which required my local address and my US address. I wrote out my hotel address in Chinese, thinking I was being helpful, but then was told by the consular services lady that I couldn't write it in Chinese. She went through a lot of rigamarole whiting it out with the little tape white-out thingy, which ran out so she had to find more! While she was looking, another woman came over to investigate the delay and crossed out the remaining Chinese characters, but my lady came back and insisted on whiting out the rest! Bureaucracy!

Jessica also needed new visa pages, but her passport is so old and tattered that they refused her request! Her passport is one of the old ones with the laminated photo page, and the lamination is separating and you can access the photo at one point. No wonder they didn't want to add more pages. The consular services lady suggested that Jessica apply for a renewal passport right here in Beijing. Here's the secret, people, renew all your passports overseas! It costs less ($75) and takes way less time, only 7-10 days. You keep your old passport, and then when you get the new one you just take it to a local office and request a visa transfer. No big deal! Jess opted to get the renewal, so she had to run over to a conveniently located photo shop across the street from the embassy.

Sidebar: Jessica wore her Obama YES WE CAN shirt to the embassy. This morning she asked me, "Do you think it will be weird if I wear my Obama shirt to the embassy?" I responded with, "Uh, I can't think of a more appropriate place to wear your Obama shirt!" So, her passport picture has an Obama shirt and the consular ladies really appreciated it.

So, new passport applied for Jess and I got my visa pages (the super tacky new pages that are FUGGGGGGG-LY!) all for just a 2 Yuan subway ride from our hotel! Bonus!

Outside the embassy we ran into a bīngtáng húlù (冰糖葫芦) vendor and finally decided to dive into this springtime Chinese candy delicacy. Bingtang hulu is candied hawthorn on a stick, often combined with strawberries or baby oranges. It's coated in sugar syrup so it's not good for your teeth, but MAN it tastes good! A full hawthorn one is only 1 yuan, the hawthorn/clementine one is 2.50. Hawthorn is sort of like a crab apple, but sweeter, and a little bit squashier. It's the primary ingredient in Haw Flakes, my favorite Chinese flake candy, as well as the more mysteriously named "Haw Soup", which is like fruit leather, individually wrapped (mysteriouser and mysteriouser). I want to eat one every day, which I would if it weren't sugar central. Jess and I hopped on the train to Sanlituan, to go back to Yashow market to get some faux jeans.

Part II: Down the Rabbit Hole of Bag Fakery

Yashow, if you recall, is the enormous 6 floor market next to Sanlituan Village (check out the real goods there, then head to Yashow for the knockoffs) that Jessica and I visited last week. We didn't buy anything because we were completely overwhelmed, but we felt prepared and better equipped this time. We first looked at some jeans stalls, and I found a nice pair of True Religion brand that were long enough and looked decently real. My problem in China is that there aren't any dryers so my jeans in particular are getting stretched out. I wanted to get some crappy knock-offs here so that I can beat them up and not worry about wearing out my good ones. I bargained down the lady to 250 Yuan, which is a huge savings on the US cost, which is about $250 and up!

We were tired and needed a pickmeup, so we went to a Mexican restaurant and ate some delicious burritos. Food was surprisingly authentic and tasty, although they did not give you endless chips and salsa, which I felt was sort of stingy. This is China after all! I guess I can't complain about the Mexican food. We were just pleased they allowed Jessica to order a bean quesidilla instead of a meat one.

After eating our fill at the Mexican place, we went back to Yashow to find more jeans. Jess wanted to go downstairs to look at sneakers, however, because she wanted to get some comfortable ones for the Great Wall hike the next day. The bottom floor of Yashow is all shoes and bags, so we were kind of browsing around when this very energetic shopgirl called us in and started showing us these really fake looking Prada bags. She was irrepressibly cute, but totally giving the hard sell "You like, you like, I give you best price!" She showed us that the Prada bags were real leather by waving a lighter over the surface of the bag--it didn't catch! She then took a fake leather bag and actually lit it on fire (melting and smoking!). She was really funny. Jessica asked her if she had any LV or Louis Vuitton bags, because she has been looking for the Neverfull bag for a long time. The shopgirl promised that she did have LV, and showed us one bag that wasn't actually the Neverfull, and it looked OK, not amazing. Her boss came over in the middle of our discussion, and after listening to use go on about better quality, he gave her the key to a storage room and told her to take us there. We got very excited, as we knew that the better quality fakes would be in the storage room.

She took us to the basement of the market, and opened the door to a room full of fake bags! LV, Prada, Chanel, Coach, Bally, everything was in there. She showed Jessica the large size Neverfull, but Jessica wanted the small one. While we were poking around and kind of dithering, the boss showed up with a black trash bag and pulled out a really spectacularly real-looking medium Neverfull. When compared to the fake large we were looking at, it had many differences. The lining was correct, the leather details were right, the printed monogram canvas was a better color, this was totally either "off the back of a truck" or "extra production runs at night" quality stuff. We bargained quite a bit and settled on 1500 yuan for the bag. Expensive yes, but the real one costs $700.

I had asked the boss if he had a specific Gucci bag that I've had my eye on for a couple of years, ever since I went to a tour of the Gucci store in LA. When I asked him about the Gucci again, he said, "OK, you come with me." He took us to a different secret room on the 6th floor of the market, this one was crammed full with more of the "fake" (yet real??) bags like Jessica's. He showed me the Gucci bag and it was impressive. Real black leather, correct lining, metal and bamboo accents all authentic looking. Having handled the bag in the store myself, I know what the real one looks like and this one was essentially the same thing. After a lot more bargaining (all this was done in Chinese, by the way), we settled on 1700 yuan. Spendy, yes, but I figured I deserved it, especially after landing an internship in January as well as getting a 3.875 GPA last module. I was even able to put it on my credit card (which I pay off every month, duh).

Jessica and I were high on our success, so I told the man that we had many friends who wanted to also buy bags. He gave me his number and told me to call him anytime for bags. I will likely go back in a few days with another classmate who wants to buy a bag for his girlfriend.

Jessica did manage to pick up a pair of shoes for the Great Wall (fake Converse sneakers, very cute) and used the old "I only have this much money" trick, but this time it was real! We were exhausted at this point, and decided to go back to the hotel.

Part III: A Light at the End of the Supermarket Tunnel

On the way back (lugging our illicit loot in a huge black plastic trash bag) we remembered that we needed to bring breakfast and lunch for the Great Wall tomorrow. We toyed with the idea of going to Carrefour, but that was too painful to contemplate. Instead, we opted to check out the Wal-Mart Supercenter three stops before our hotel stop. That station is where we change trains to go to Wudaokou, so we had seen the English language signs for Wal-Mart. Luckily the store is right next to the station, and there is a handy exit marked "Wal-Mart Supercenter".

Wal-Mart in China is fabulous. It's large, spacious, has helpful and friendly staff and very low prices. The food section in particular is very Chinese style, with all manner of dried and fresh odd vegetables, meats and other produce for sale (giant dried carp, sliced in half and hanging as well as turtles and deep fried baby ducklings). We stocked up on some bread, apples, kiwis, cheese and peanut butter. We made it to the checkout line but got in trouble with the checkout lady because we hadn't weighed our fruit downstairs in the produce section so as to get the sticker (they don't do it at the cashier like in the US--I should have remembered this from Croatian supermarkets). Luckily, the cashier told me I could cut the line once I got back with the fruit, so I ran off, let the fruit ladies weigh my fruits and put a little sticker on them (Job creation! This is China!) and then made it back to the cashier.

Jess and I FINALLY made it back to the hotel after a very long day. We let Hunter Kim inspect our illicit merchandise, since he's very in to luxury goods, and he gave them the thumbs up, said they looked really good. Also on the way back on the subway, we sat next to a girl with a large Neverfull that was either real or Jessica's quality fake. We also looked on the Gucci and LV websites and couldn't see anything on our bags that were a tipoff of fakery. All in all it was a day that started out crappy thanks to Accounting, and then got much, much better!

The Set Up

I decided to start a blog so that I could share my travels and experiences with a wider range of folks. I'll be abroad in China for the next few weeks studying abroad at Beijing Daxue, aka Beida, aka Peking University and then I'll be off to South Africa for the summer to intern with Wizzit, a microfinance institution that uses cellular phones for banking. It's gonna be wild! Welcome, and hang on tight--this one goes to 11.