June 8-13, 2009

From ancient to modern: Beijing and Shanghai are definitely required stops on any comprehensive trip to China. I loved the contrast between the two cities. While both are undeniably modern with their share of skyscrapers, my lasting impression of Beijing is the dry, dusty forecourt of the Forbidden City. Shanghai? It's all about the explosive color and neon lights.

We took the overnight train from Beijing to Shanghai, which is definitely my preferred way to travel. Again, no tickets booked in advance: we simply walked to the Beijing Train Station (only a few blocks from Tiananmen Square) the day before our intended departure and found two bunks in a sleeping car. The rambling waiting rooms of the station itself are incredibly confusing, however, with announcements almost impossible to hear; you have to stay very sharp if you don't want to miss your train.

Our berths were wonderfully comfortable - unfortunately they didn't do me any good, since I coughed the entire night through. I'd started coughing in Thailand, thinking it was just a pesky cold, but the instant we arrived in Shanghai and met up with a good college friend, she said: "Karen, you need to see a doctor."

I'd purchased HTH travel health insurance before I left for $1 a day, and our friend, who went to high school in China and had moved back there after college, swung into action. She called the Shanghai Global Health clinic and booked me an appointment for that very day, called HTH and got them to send proof of insurance and payment to the clinic, and an hour later I was seeing a French doctor in China. Which was excellent, because I did not have just a heavy cough. I had bronchitis.

Yes: during the entirety of my travels throughout East and Southeast Asia I did not suffer from food poisoning once (which we were half-expecting), but I did catch a nasty case of bronchitis, which had never crossed my mind. Thankfully I never had a fever, which was extremely lucky as this was the very height of the swine flu/H1N1 panic. Every airport we passed through had body heat scanners searching for people running a temperature; before being allowed off the plane in Beijing, medical workers walked through the entire plane and personally checked each passenger's temperature. I minimized my coughing with cough drops; being quarantined would have certainly thrown off all of our plans.

Antibiotics in hand, we were free to explore Shanghai, expertly guided by our friend J. I always feel I comprehend a city more when I'm forced to explore it on my own, but it's lovely to have a local show you the shortcuts (and where to get fabulous $3 foot massages after a long day of walking). J skillfully bargained for us with the Chinese vendors at the Fake Market, to our vast amusement, awe, and befuddlement at the rapid-fire Chinese. "I wasn't born yesterday" in Chinese is a very useful term when bargain-hunting, apparently. For those without a personal experienced bargainer, Mike at Moving to China Blog has composed a handy list of prices to shoot for.

June 5-7, 2009

There are some wonders of the world that have become so over-hyped, over-commercialized, and overrun with tourists jostling for their vacation snapshot that they perhaps aren't worth the time and effort and expense required to visit them.

The Great Wall is not one of them.

At the most popular visitation sites it has indeed become extremely commercialized. Badaling, the closest site to Beijing, requires visitors to navigate through rows of shops selling overpriced souvenirs, a live bear exhibit, and even an elaborate ride snaking down the mountain before finally reaching the Wall. It's essentially a miniature modern Disney World tucked into a curve of the ancient Wall, and while it's jarringly out of place, why not try to make a buck off the thousands of tourists that visit Badaling annually. But once you reach the Wall itself, all the silliness below is forgotten.

There is no question that the Wall is worth it. It is so very, very worth it.

As with most of our trip though Asia, we didn't bother to plan anything ahead: we arrived in Beijing on a Friday afternoon and walked over to the state-run tourist office to find a Great Wall tour for the following day. The office only takes groups once the bus fills up and you need at least 15 people or they cancel the tour. The one we wanted had no one else signed up and so was unlikely to happen, so we had to jump on another that included the Ming Tombs. Tours with English-speaking guides required a group of at least 6 to book, so we tagged along on a Chinese tour with only a Chinese-speaking guide. Elaborate pantomime gestures were employed on each side to communicate when we would need to be back at the bus after each stop, and the trip worked out beautifully: we got organized transportation to the sites and were free to wander the tombs and the Wall without having to shuffle along with the group.

Above the amusements of Badaling, the Wall is eerily quiet. It's simply ancient stones surrounded by misty forested hills, and the sense of history, the craftsmanship over centuries required to build it, is very strong.

The Wall follows the lines of the mountain ridges so closely that the walkway slopes perilously steeply up and down almost without a break. Railings have been placed to help tourists haul themselves up (and keep from tumbling down). When it's not an incredibly steep slope, there are steps - so many high steep steps! It is seriously exhausting and in the time alotted we were only able to pant our way up to two very high points. The next high point beyond us literally disappeared into the clouds. I can't imagine how soldiers actually patrolled the Wall.

It was so very, very beautiful, with the Wall curling and twisting in all directions, lush greenery covering the mountains and the mist shrouding the higher peaks.

May 27-31, 2009

Knowing that traveling for a solid seven weeks would be exhausting, we built a vacation into our vacation: a week on the famous beaches of Phuket, Thailand. While planning our trip, however, we hadn’t paid attention to the fact that May heralds the beginning of the rainy season in SE Asia. Our first full day in Phuket, it poured. With very impressive thunder and lightning. Armed with umbrellas, we wandered the beach despondently in the rain.

The thunderstorms didn’t return, however, and the rest of our time in Phuket provided fine beach weather, if frequently overcast. Instead of busy, crowded Patong Beach, we opted to stay a little further down the coast off much quieter Karon Beach. The small cluster of rather run-down hotels, restaurants and shops were nearly empty, it being the start of the low season – another fact we hadn’t been aware of. After three weeks of bustling, frequently polluted cities, however, I was relieved to no longer be dodging people and traffic at every turn.

Phuket was absolutely devastated by the 2004 tsunami only four and a half years ago, but the beach resort communities have made a remarkable recovery. The only overt reminders of the disaster are the “tsunami evacuation route” signs scattered along the beach and in town, pointing toward the inland mountains.

Not every day was spent lounging under a beach umbrella. This being Thailand, we were determined to ride an elephant. At the teeny Karon tourist office we found a reasonable day package to the mainland that included elephant riding, a visit to the “Monkey Cave” surrounded by hundreds of (very hungry) long-tailed macaques we first saw in Singapore, and, believe it or not, white-water rafting. Rafting is . . . really not what I associate with Thailand, but it turned out to be ridiculously fun. With some French tourists, we “rafted” (only in the merest sense as the guides did pretty much all the work) an icy, tumbling mountain river lined with boulders. The guides got the biggest kick out of steering us directly into these boulders, and there was much shrieking in French, English, and Thai. Good times!

Riding an Asian elephant was the highlight of my time in Phuket, however. Shoes must be left behind, and warm, bristly elephant hide feels deliciously strange to bare feet. Fifteen feet off the ground, we clung to our simple seat (no safety restraints here) for over half an hour as we dipped and swayed along a jungle trail. Our young guide, nicknamed “Ladyboy” by another driver, lounged negligently directly on top of the elephant’s head and shared such useful phrases in his English repertoire as “How old are you?” and “Do you have boyfriend?” and “Give me your cameras, I’ll take picture!” “Okay,” we said, handing them over - only to have him slip right off to the jungle floor, taking photo after photo, while our elephant, driverless, kept ambling along.

“Oh. Oh my,” we said, and clutched tighter.

“You!” our grounded driver said, gesturing to Monica. “Elephant head! Go! Get on!” (Snapping more photos.)

And she did. To this day both of us are still rather amazed at how she managed to scooch up the neck of a moving elephant and by some miracle not fall off, but she did it. “Karen!” she hissed. “If I start to fall will you catch me??” “Um,” I replied, eyeing the distance from my own unsteady seat. “Maybe . . . ?”

“Smile!” our guide cheerfully called out, and we dutifully grinned back, half in delight, half in terror. Eventually he scampered back up our elephant to take the seat beside me, and Monica rode just behind the elephant’s ears all the way back to the dismounting station. It should be noted that none of the other tourists got to experience such a hilariously thrilling ride. There are distinct advantages to being two girls with a Ladyboy guide.

May 16-17, 2009

April 7-23, 2009
Missouri, New York, Boston, Chicago, Maryland

I have a bit more of an excuse for not having this post ready, as I returned from my trips just over a week ago and ever since it's been a madhouse of packing, moving out, and getting ready for Asia & Australia. But I did indeed visit the campuses of the University of Missouri, Columbia, Boston University, Northwestern, and the University of Maryland, all of which accepted me into their journalism graduate programs. I'd been struggling on how to choose before, but in the end it was easy: Maryland, already my favorite, offered me a wonderful fellowship. And that was that! I am thrilled to attend graduate school on such a gorgeous campus. Every single building looks the same as the Journalism one: red brick with white columns. So Southern! It makes me want to swan around in a hoop skirt.

February 19-March 4, 2009

How has the time gotten away from me?? Two months later and I still do not have this post up. That is terrible. I promise a full write-up of my annual Bahamas visit when I return from Australia and Asia, but for now my photos will have to suffice.

Friends and I went to see the new Julia Roberts movie Duplicity last night. The movie opens with an aerial view of the Dubai coastline - followed by the exact terraced shot above. DUBAI read the bright white text over the image.

I jerked in my seat. "What!" I hissed involuntarily. "That's not Dubai!"

For the purposes of our characters it was, but I knew instantly this was most definitely a view of The Cloisters on Paradise Island, in the Bahamas. I cannot describe the disorienting feeling of seeing not just a place I know in a movie, but an exact image of a location as carefully composed in a photograph I have taken myself. They only showed it for the briefest of moments before cutting to lovely close-ups of Julia and Clive Owen, and for a minute I thought I was going crazy. To me, it was so clearly the Bahamas and not Dubai that I couldn't imagine how the filmmakers expected anyone to believe it. Maybe I was wrong; maybe I hadn't seen it properly; maybe Dubai has a spot with the exact same landscaping. But I knew, I knew what that shot was, and so I floundered silently in my seat for probably the first ten minutes of the movie.

Clive and Julia later visit the casino in Atlantis, however - a place I am also personally acquainted with, on many occasions - and that sealed the deal for me. They were most definitely truly at Atlantis, and the Cloisters? Are literally up the road. It's an easy hike, one I have walked myself. It's so clear that they brought cast & crew to Paradise Island, shot their scenes at Atlantis, then strolled over to the Ocean Club (upon which land the Cloisters adjoin) and were like, "Okay, now we're in Dubai!" Ha, I love little insights into filmmaking like that.

Of course most people are not going to be familiar enough with the Cloisters to notice like I did, and anyway that's all just movie magic. But they really are quite famous, at least in the Bahamas, and absolutely worth seeing. The Cloisters themselves are the remains of a 14th-century French Augustinian monastery dismantled and brought to Florida by William Randolph Hearst in the 1920s. Huntington Hartford, the billionaire who transformed little-known Hog Island into Paradise Island in the early 1960s, bought the stones and re-assembled them on the island. As I recall from my visit to the Cloisters three years ago, a plaque notes that they were a gift for his wife. Hartford built (among other Paradise Island landmarks) Hurricane Hole Marina and the Ocean Club. The Cloisters sit on a high point that slopes gently down all the way to the Ocean Club's swimming pool, where Clive and Julia's banter first sparks their romance. It's very, very beautiful, and the grounds are entirely open to visitors - the Cloisters themselves are on public property, and I believe anyone can wander the Ocean Club's gardens.

The north face of the Cloisters is nearly bare, but the south face looking toward Nassau Harbour and the city is covered in rich green ivy. The ground also slopes away to the south, leading to a lovely stone gazebo. From the harbor, the grounds are actually very difficult to see; they narrow and end in thick vegetation. Whenever we passed through Nassau Harbour on our boat, my family almost always anchored near the Cloisters - it's an excellent, quiet spot, well-protected from heavy shipping traffic. We always anchored off the one barren lot in perhaps all of Paradise Island, a steep hill thick with trees and dead vegetation, separated from the grand estates on either side by chainlink fences. A path wound up next to the fence from the tiny beach, though, and although it was a bit of a mad scramble it was the easiest way to get ashore. Much better than taking the dinghy all the way through the choppy harbor to the public docks. From the hill the Cloisters were a block east, and Atlantis only a few blocks northwest.

There was a time when we would visit Atlantis and its marvelous aquariums by taking the dinghy through a narrow canal in the shadow of the bridge - I can remember when Nassau Harbour had only one bridge spanning it; the second was built merely 10 years ago - that led into a quiet, sheltered pond lined with shops and restaurants. We would tie up at one of the restaurants' docks and there was the main (and original) building of Atlantis, just across the street - a luxury hotel, but still just a hotel. Not a mega complex. Everything was much quieter then: far fewer people and traffic and celebrities. After we were done with Atlantis we would wander across the breakwater facing the ocean and explore the other hotels on the horseshoe beach just to the west; I remember a memorable afternoon spent swimming in those hotels' pools. (We never swam in the Atlantis pools, though I suppose we could have; the other hotels were just more welcoming. And relaxed about supervision.)

Now, of course, the canal has been filled in; the pond has been dredged and enlarged and landscaped to create the Atlantis Marina, taking the shops and restaurants with it; the other hotels have long since been bought and obliterated to build more and more salmon pink Atlantis buildings. It's sad, in a way. Atlantis is a very fine resort, but it is still just a resort: very packaged and planned and glossy and commercial. It doesn't have the quiet dignity of the Ocean Club - a long, low building nearly hidden by palms and lush natural vegetation. There's very little Bahamas in Atlantis; the whole thing could just as easily be in Miami.

All the development is great for the Bahamas, in a way, especially in the Out Islands where jobs are few; but I miss the quieter pace of life I knew growing up. I miss the ability to just motor up in our old, patched dinghy to a sleepy restaurant on the water. Hopefully the Ocean Club and the Cloisters won't be soon affected by the ever-expanding Atlantis empire.

February 16-18, 2008

I traveled to Illinois again in February in order to attend my interview with Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism in Evanston. I was leery about making the trek in February thanks to Chicago’s notorious weather, but it actually turned out to be pretty mild. My previous trip to Chicago in October was great but had some major downsides as to unnerving inhabitants and only tolerable transportation. I found I liked the city much more after this fleeting visit, however. Just why is hard to pinpoint; I think it helped that driving my own car there, which enabled me to travel at my own pace and go directly to my friend’s apartment, instead of the bus dropping me off in the middle of downtown loaded down with all my overnight bags, made the whole trip easier. (Actually parking my car was a nightmare, but I only needed a spot for a night.) I also remembered a great deal from my earlier October visit, so in the end it felt more like I was returning to a somewhat familiar part of the world instead of a massive unknown city.

The day before my interview I ventured into the city to meet my friend for lunch. Catching the bus wasn’t a problem, but paying for my ticket was. I didn’t have time to purchase a day pass before heading out, so I had to pay in exact change, which was fine because I had plenty left over from paying tolls. Simple, right? No, of course I managed to get hopelessly confused.

First I asked the driver “Can I buy a ticket on this bus?”, remembering that some buses in London and Poland require you to have purchased one beforehand. His response was “We don’t sell tickets on the bus anymore,” which I at first took to mean the London example, except my friend had very explicitly told me I could pay in cash on the bus, so I was instantly befuddled. I actually half turned away to get back off, but then the driver said “No, you can pay here,” so I pulled out my fare, very much relieved. Except then I couldn’t figure out how to put it in the machine. Somehow I totally missed the dollar bill slot and was trying to force my dollar into a completely different slot, and I had to tell the driver “I’m sorry, it’s not taking it,” and he had to say “Uh, it should,” and we went back and forth and at one point I was ready to give up on bills and switch entirely to quarters, but then by some miracle I figured out my mistake and at last successfully submitted my fare. This whole show, meanwhile, was acted out in front of everyone else sedately seated on the moving bus while I braced myself against a pole.

I turned away, overjoyed to finally be able to find a seat, but swung back immediately. I remembered when I got on the bus from Krakow to Auschwitz I paid the driver my seven zloty but then just charged down the aisle to a seat, totally forgetting to get my ticket, and they had to pass it down all the people sitting in front of me and it was very embarrassing. “Oh!” I said, “Don’t I, uh, need a ticket?”

“No,” the driver said, with truly extraordinary patience, “we don’t give out tickets on the bus anymore,” and I realized he was saying that Chicago buses don’t print out paper tickets at all, even if paying in cash. By this point the driver was looking at me with great concern and making a few kindly meant comments. His exact words, and I am not making this up, were “Have you ever ridden the bus before?”

Ha! When I am in London I become confused by Japan; when I am in Chicago I am confused by London and Poland. The problem is not that I’ve ridden too few buses but too many, in too many different countries. They’ve all got multiple different systems and it’s impossible for any lone person to keep them straight. Impossible, I tell you! Luckily I got on the bus near the beginning of its route and so there wasn’t a lengthy line of irate people waiting behind me while I got a crash course in how to ride a bus in Chicago.

Amusingly, even after that debacle I still feel more charitable toward Chicago transportation than I did in October. It helped that my bus took me straight down Michigan Avenue to my friend’s workplace on the corner of Michigan and Wacker, overlooking the Chicago River. Yes, that location really is just as amazing as it sounds. We went to a yummy bakery/sandwich shop down the street with a prime view of the new Trump tower, and I told my bus story in great detail. Afterward I trotted several blocks down Michigan Avenue to Millennium Park to while away the afternoon.

I wandered all over the park and happily took lots of pictures of famous landmarks I’d missed on my previous visit: the Cloud Gate, the skating rink, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion. I got a big kick out of the Pavilion because once again it was something I’d written about while at my summer internship in London. In fact, I even corresponded with Chicago city planners to get a print-worthy photo of the Pavilion to put in the issue, so it was fun to actually be taking my own photos.

Of course I loved the Cloud Gate; who doesn’t? What a fantastically unique, trippy and fun sculpture. Watching people of all ages wonderingly approach the sparkling curved surface never gets old. The warped Chicago skyline reflected on the outside was incredible, but my favorite effect was walking beneath: the many twisting hollows produce image after fractured image of the people below like ever receding funhouse mirrors. Wild!

The sun disappeared about 4 p.m. and Chicago’s famous winds picked up. I ducked back into the bakery for hot cocoa before boarding what I thought was my correct bus home. Unfortunately, my friend had forgotten to tell me that the bus routes change in the late afternoon to deal with rush hour. Oops. The bus terminated its run wayyyyyy before my friend’s street. This actually happened to me fairly frequently in London – my normal buses would just have different final stops throughout the day. I never could figure out why; there appeared to be no schedule. It was exasperating but never really a problem with no shortage of buses and Tube stops in the center of the city. Here, though, there was no nearby train and I had no more money for bus fare. So I walked.

I knew if I followed the road I was on I would eventually reach my friend’s street. I just didn’t know it was much further away than I thought. Hmm. So I ended up a woman walking alone at dusk in not one of Chicago’s best neighborhoods, which was not an ideal situation, but I just turned up my fast-steady-know-what-I’m-doing stride and finally made it home safely. However, I now have yet another bus rule to remember (and be confused by): unannounced route changes.

The following morning I drove to Evanston for my interview. The two cities are really only 20 minutes apart, but it took me a bit longer as I figured out the route for the first time. I found the school, found my building, found a parking spot, but couldn’t find the restroom and so I madly brushed off lint on my suit in a random dim hallway. But I was on time and my interview went splendidly. I said nothing too cringe-worthy in relating my past accomplishments and I really liked what the admissions counselor had to say about Medill’s program. Crazily enough I almost didn’t apply to Medill because I wasn’t sure they offered exactly what I was looking for, but my personal visit utterly changed that notion.

Afterward I took a brief spin around the campus. Northwestern rests on prime real estate next to Lake Michigan, and the journalism building is located right on the beach. It is seriously amazing and reminded me very happily of my home in northern Michigan on Lake Huron. That accomplished I directly plowed through the hours-long drive back to Ann Arbor for my next big trip starting the following day.

I will be visiting Chicago again in April, however, to attend Medill’s Open House: because I got in! I got the good news two weeks after my interview. Medill is one of the absolute top journalism programs in the country, so that is enormously exciting. I’m not decided yet on whether I will attend Medill – I have to hear back from the other schools I applied to – but either way I’m looking forward to another Chicago trip.

January 19-21, 2009

So I was sitting in my room on a Monday morning, looking forward to a relaxing MLK Day, when my housemates burst in.

"We're going to the inauguration!" they shrieked.

My jaw literally dropped. "You mean . . . the actual ceremony? In DC??"

"YES!" they screamed, halfway demented.

"But . . . we don't have tickets. You know you're just going to end up watching it on TV in a bar somewhere, along with the entire rest of the country."

"DOESN'T MATTER!" their voices, if possible, at an even higher pitch. Quoth my housemate: "I went to the gym this morning and I was wearing my Obama t-shirt and the whole time I'm exercising I'm looking at him in the mirror and I suddenly thought 'Why am I not there?? How can I not go? I need to be able to tell my grandchildren I was there!!' ARE YOU COMING."

"Augh," I said. ".....yes."

"YAY!!!"

So four of us hastily packed overnight bags and munchies, piled into the car, and set off for the 8-hour drive from Ann Arbor to Baltimore on Monday afternoon. We didn't want to deal with the absolute insanity of driving straight into DC, so we decided to take the 11:30 p.m. train from Baltimore. We finally made it, ran into the station, and . . . the train was delayed an hour. AN HOUR.

Hahahahaha. This is why Americans have no faith in trains.

The train finally arrived an hour and a half late and we got to DC about 2:30 a.m., wherein I may have squealed upon catching a glimpse of the Capitol from Union Station. This is going to sound crazy but I had never in my life been to DC before - or Baltimore either, for that matter. I've never been to New York, Boston or Philadelphia, either. My housemate from Baltimore was scandalized, but I've just never had occasion to go and it's a long trip to get there. I’m from rural northern Michigan, which is not on the way to anywhere except rural southern Canada. If anything, this trip to the East Coast - and seeing how relatively close all these big cities are to each other - made me realize just how far out of the way my hometown is, heh.

We caught a taxi to Georgetown, where we crashed at a friend of a friend’s house. Georgetown – what little I saw of it in the dead of night – was gorgeous. I found it very reminiscent of London’s Notting Hill and Portobello Market neighborhood. At 6 a.m. we were back outside walking to the Mall. I fluttered in excitement again over sighting the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. The Monument looked particularly spectacular against the rosy golden dawn sky.

As we made our way from Georgetown streams of people began to trickle in from every direction, coming together in greater and greater numbers. I had a brief flashback to Football Saturdays in Ann Arbor and all the students converging on the stadium. But this wasn’t 100,000 people – this was 2 million. Two million!

By 8 a.m. we were crammed deep within the crowd and ended up watching the unfolding ceremony on one of the jumbo screens for the next four hours, literally unable to move. The sun eventually came out but my lord it was cold. Definitely below freezing. My toes were numb in minutes and my legs ached from standing so long. I think everyone around us was pretty miserable – but we were there! At the Inauguration! No discomfort could compare.

It felt absolutely incredible to be part of that huge throng - everyone was so happy and worked up and so Democrat, heh. There were cheers for Jimmy Carter . . . cheers for Al Gore . . . HUGE cheers for Bill Clinton . . . near silence for Papa Bush, and universal boos for Dubya. Yes!! It was awesome. And everyone went wild when Obama finally appeared. Volunteers had passed out little American flags and we all waved them madly and cheered ourselves hoarse at any sighting of the new First Family.

Clearly getting out of such a mob was near impossible, but we sucked in and plowed through in order to catch our train. When we finally squeezed free of the crowd I was a mess – coat all unbuttoned, scarf askew, sweater twisted sideways. Then began a veritable odyssey around extensive security barricades just to reach the station. So very many streets were closed, with police and FBI and Secret Service and snipers everywhere. Let me tell you, racing 20-some blocks on stiff frozen legs is not fun. As I staggered along the sidewalks I’m sure I looked like a casualty that had been trampled by the crowd.

We caught our train at last and had a lovely lunch and mini-tour of Baltimore. As we looked down over the waterfront I mused aloud “Hey, this really reminds me of Barcelona,” and my housemate exclaimed “Barcelona’s waterfront was modeled on Baltimore’s!” So that was rather exciting. I love the idea that I’ve been to enough international cities that I can recognize their urban planning, heh.

I helped drive home and we got back to Ann Arbor about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday morning. All in all it was like a 30-hour trip of near insanity, totally impulsive and spontaneous and madcap, but somehow it still worked out okay and I'm so glad we went. It really was important just to be there, to be part of the people, and I loved experiencing the crowd and just how happy everyone is that Obama is in and Bush is out. I was so angry and disgusted in '04 when Bush was reelected, but over the past year I’ve regained my faith in the U.S. and what Americans really want and stand for. There's still so much to be proud of about the U.S. and being American, and I definitely saw many reasons why that Tuesday morning.