Las Vegas Sept-07

Trip Report: Las Vegas, Sept-07

I have heard that the Las Vegas Strip has been designed and built with one purpose in mind. That purpose is to suck as much money as it can out of your pockets in as short a time frame as possible. I decided to put that theory to a test during a recent trip to the city. But first some background (the educational content of this report) on the "Entertainment Capital of The World".

Las Vegas is located in the center of Vegas Valley, a desert region of about 600 square miles, which is surrounded by the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Spring Mountains. The seasons are hot, windy, and dry, with desert conditions and maximum temperatures of around 120 degrees F during the summer. The mountains around Las Vegas reach elevations of over 10,000 feet, acting as barriers to moisture from the Pacific Ocean. Rainfall is minimal and there are about 216 clear days during the year.

The city was incorporated in 1911. In 1931 there was the legalization of casino gambling in Nevada. The gaming and entertainment industries boomed in Las Vegas after World War II. A street lined with large, glittering casino hotels came to be known as the "Strip"; downtown, in Casino Center, lavish palaces featured the country's top entertainers. By the 1950s Las Vegas had become synonymous with the unique form of recreation it had created.
I arrived in Las Vegas in early September and the summer heat was already fading. The daily high was always between 100 and 105 degrees. But, as the locals say, it is a dry heat. I spent the first afternoon wandering up and down the strip, getting a feel for the place. I could feel the money being pulled out of my pocket with every step.

The first vampires are the tour salespeople. They lure you in with some easy questions like "where are you from?" and with an offer of $10 show tickets, reduced tour prices and hundreds of dollars worth of meal coupons. All you have to do is sit through a three hour time share sales pitch. No thanks.

The sidewalks are also lined with guys handing out business cards for young women who were just sitting by the phone waiting for my call. Apparently there are a lot of young women in Vegas that love to talk to middle aged business men (like Scooter). They really should get friends their own age or take up sports. The guys would flick their cards to attract your attention as you walk by. That gets real annoying really fast. Their T-shirts (and the signs on mobile billboards) announce "Girls delivered direct to you in 20 minutes". That’s faster than you can get a pizza delivered.

Every hotel and casino, as well as most restaurants, have decided that the threshold for the price of a bottle of domestic beer is $6. That wasn’t going to work for my frugal nature so I went looking for more reasonable options and found one right up the strip from the hotel. The Salsa Cantina offers good Mexican food at reasonable prices and a bottle of cold Pacifico is $3. Or a bucket of 6 bottles for $15. I highly recommend the place based on food quality, service and value. Stop by and tell them I sent you.

We took in a view of the Strip and the surrounding area from the top of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel. The top observation deck is at 460’ above street level compared to 1020’ of the Eiffel Tower in Paris but you still get a great view of the surrounding area. A trip for two to the top was $18 but we bought some bootleg discount coupons and saved $5.

Day 2 was devoted to a road trip to the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. Scooter pulled into town the night before and rented a luxurious 2008 Aveo (dubbed The Red Roller Skate) for our tour. The car was so small that when we stopped for snacks we had to rearrange seating just to get the bag of Doritos inside. Winnebago’s towing bigger cars than ours passed us on the highway. The 4-cylinder 1.6 liter engine provided neck-snapping acceleration (if you neck was made of cooked spaghetti) and could take some of the hills without slowing down too much. The bright side was that the car was extremely red and was the most comfortable small car I have been in. Even after ten hours of both driving and riding the car my back didn’t hurt and my legs weren’t cramped. The other bright side was that Scooter paid for the car rental. We pulled out of Vegas in the early morning and headed east to the Hoover Dam.

Construction on the Hoover Dam—originally the Boulder Dam—on the Colorado River was begun in 1931, bringing to the area thousands of men seeking employment. And girls delivered direct to them in under 20 minutes. The seventy-story-high dam, which is regarded as one of the wonders of the modern world, still supplies affordable power to parts of California, Arizona, and Nevada. It is still pretty impressive despite its age and I especially liked the Art Deco styling. Another neat thing about the dam is that you can walk over it, lean right over the edge and look down the face of the dam to the power house and Colorado River below. After a brief visit it was back into the Red Roller Skate and off to the Grand Canyon.

I told some guy that I met in the Salsa Cantina that I had visited the Grand Canyon. He told me how he thought that it was amazing how a meteorite’s impact could cause such a hole in the earth. His theory would have been better, but still not correct, if aliens had been involved somehow but we all know (or do we?) that the Grand Canyon was carved out over 6 million years by the Colorado River.

The terrain changed as we climbed from wide dessert valleys with no vegetation to hills covered in scrub pines to rolling hills with pine and cedar forests. The area around Hoover Dam is extremely rugged and barren with marl outcroppings and hoodoos. Las Vegas is at 2180 feet above sea level and we climbed to 7000 feet at the South Rim of the Canyon.

We visited the South rim of the canyon. The views are incredible. What more can I say? Even the photos I took don’t fully express the scenery. Descriptive words fail me so I’ll throw out a bunch of facts. The South Rim is 7000 feet above sea level and 4600 feet above the Colorado River that runs through the Canyon. The Canyon is 10 miles across at the South Rim viewing posts. The Canyon is aptly named.

The other activity that Vegas is known for (besides gambling and girls delivered direct to you in under 20 minutes) are the lavish shows. We had great debates over what types of show to see. The problem isn’t that there isn’t a selection, the problem is that there is too much of a selection. My choices included Wayne Newton (a Strip staple since the Glory Days of Vegas) and the Mini Celebrity Impersonator Show. They had a mini-Elvis, a mini-Madonna and a mini-Britney Spears. The mini-Britney didn’t really look much like Britney except she was blonde and had a one-piece pink plastic jumpsuit. But, as we all know, Wisconsin is the cheese state, not Nevada, so my choices got shot down and we took in a show typical of Broadway instead. It was good but there wasn’t a midget in the whole cast.

One great sight in Vegas that is actually free (no hidden costs, no time-share seminar, no entrance fee…) is the Dancing Fountains at the Bellagio Hotel. The $40 million Bellagio fountain show is equipped with 1,200 nozzles and 4,500 lights, making it the most expensive and ambitious water feature in Vegas. The range of movement across the lake is varied; some of the movement is continuous, responding to the smooth passages of music, while other water jets are rapidly pulsing, reaching heights as high as 240 feet. We especially enjoyed the fountains that played to Elvis’ Viva Las Vegas.

And the final portion of this Trip Report, two top / bottom lists based on the recent experience.

Top Eight List (or Eight Things About Vegas That I Like)
8. Constant sunshine
7. Casino lights
6. The view from the top of the Eiffel Tower
5. Mexican restaurant with $3 bottles of Pacifico
4. Drinking in the streets

3. The Hoover Dam
2. The Grand Canyon
1. The Bellagio Dancing Fountains doing Elvis’ "Viva Las Vegas"

Bottom Ten List (or Things About Vegas That I Can Do Without)
10. Not enough to do on the Strip if you don’t gamble
9. Not enough fun things to make up a more positive Top Ten List
8. Guys handing out Call Girl fliers
7. The slot machine bells
6. The heat
5. Too-old women trying to look too-young through the use of mini-skirts and make up.
4. Time share sales reps
3. $15 inner tube rentals at the "free" hotel pool
2. $6 for a bottle of domestic beer
1. Mimes and other street performers

Cumberland to Shepardstown, Sept-07

Trip Report 1-Sept-07

This is a departure from the regular trip reports which, at a minimum, are for at least one overnight stay, usually in a foreign country. We had planned an overnight trip and we ended up in rural Maryland which is as foreign from Metro DC as you can get so I guess the trip qualifies for a report.

The plan was to drop one vehicle off in Shepardstown and drive the other truck with the bikes in it to Cumberland, Maryland. We would then ride the C & O Canal tow path from Cumberland to Shepardstown, a total of about 120 miles, with an overnight stop in Hancock which is about halfway. We would then throw the bikes into the truck parked in Shepardstown, drive back to Cumberland for the other truck and head home. In and out real fast, nobody gets hurt. You know what they say about the best laid plans.

There were three of us riding; Doctor Window Boy (DWB), Scooter and myself. The weather was perfect for the ride with sunshine, blue skies and reasonable humidity for this time of year.









We got off to a late start as DWB can’t quite get his act together in the morning. You remember him from the failed trip to the Bahamas? He was the guy who couldn’t make the 6AM flight. He even has a job where he doesn’t start work until 10AM. By the time we got on the trail we were about an hour behind but it didn’t seem important at the time. We made good progress the first 17 miles, doing a good 12 miles an hour which is pretty good for us on a dirt trail. We saw deer, wild turkeys and a great blue heron. And turtles. Lots of turtles sunning themselves on logs floating in the canal.



Picture 1: The trail and canal a few miles out of Cumberland



Then Scooter’s bike started falling apart. There is a hex screw that holds the pedal crank onto the crank shaft. That screw had worked itself loose and the pedal crank was all wobbly. So we dismounted and got out the tool kit (thoughtfully prepared by DWB) and found that we had a tool for every screw and nut on a bike except this one screw. Scooter tightened it up using a pair of pliers and we were on our way. For a mile. Then it came loose again and we had to stop. This is how it went for the next 43 miles with us stopping every mile (more frequently as the day wore on) to tighten the screw.



Picture 2: A familar sight. Scooter tightening the crank screw











Here’s how fast our progress down the trail was. There was a family out walking the trail. Grandpa, a couple of little boys and a teenaged girl (whose face showed how much she was enjoying walking along the dirt trail with her family). This walking family passed us. Twice. That’s how fast we were going between riding and fixing.

I rode ahead to the town of Paw Paw, West Virginia, to see if I could buy a hex key that would fit the screw. The business district of Paw Paw consists of a gas station and a Dollar Store. Neither of which sells the kind of tool I was looking for. I asked one of the locals if there was a bike shop in town and he said no. When I asked about a tool store or automotive supply store his face lit up and I thought I had hit pay dirt. He told me that they were going to build a tool store right across the street. I wasn’t going to wait for that so I headed back to the trail to wait for DWB and Scooter.








Picture 3: The Paw Paw Tunnel, 3280 feet long

While I was waiting a herd of teenagers on bikes went down the trail heading towards DWB and Scooter. One of the kids was on the wrong side of the trail with his head down, heading right for DWB. His friends were yelling at him, DWB was yelling at him but he just kept going. DWB thought he was just screwing with him, playing chicken, but the kid looked up at the last second, saw DWB and swerved. The kid missed DWB but swerved around him and nailed Scooter. Down they went. Scooter ended up with cuts and contusions on his arm where the kid’s brake handle got him. Scooter wasn’t having a good day.

At one point we had stopped to fix Scooter’s bike and DWB saw buzzards circling. He thought they were coming for Scooter but I was sure they were after Scooter’s bike. DWB was convinced that bad things happen in threes and was waiting for a bear attack next.

By now the afternoon was wearing on and I was getting concerned about being on the trail after dark. DWB rode ahead of us to the town of Little Orleans to see about tools or maybe overnight accommodations. Little Orleans is even smaller than Paw Paw and has a bar. That is it. We tossed around a few options but decided to forge forward to Hancock.

And forge forward we did, getting up to 10 miles per hour for less than a mile at a time, stopping so that Scooter could fix his bike. It started getting dark. There is a substantial tree canopy of the trail and the moon wouldn’t do us any good. DWB rode ahead of us to secure accommodations in Hancock and left Scooter and myself to cover the last 10 miles alone. The last hour or so on the trail was dark. We could see fires off in the woods where people were camping. We heard a woman in a farmhouse yelling at us and then she sent her dogs after us. I guess people lurking on the trail at night make her nervous.

A couple of times that screw managed to work itself right out of the hole and fall onto the trail. The last time it did this it was dark out and we couldn’t find it. Walking was too slow so Scooter took the pedal off of his bike and rode it like a scooter (hence the nick name) for the last 3 miles, pushing along with his left foot.

DWB rejoined us on the trail just as we pulled in to Hancock, 60 miles and 10 hours from our starting point. He had more good news. Both of the hotels were booked solid. We hadn’t made reservations because the Super 8 is never booked up (per DWB). If we had made it to Hancock in the afternoon we probably could have gotten a room. But now it was 10PM and everything was booked. We tossed around a few ideas. Scooter suggested we crawl under a pile of leaves (for insulation) in the woods. I thought that would just make it harder to find our bodies. So we gave up on the second half of the ride and called Bunny for a lift home.

We had a while to wait in Hancock so we went to Sheetz gas station for dinner and then out for a few beer. The beer was cheap ($1.25 per glass) but the bar was interesting. There were animal heads all over the walls. Heads from animals not from around here like zebras, wildebeest and gnus. The only local looking animal was a big plastic wild turkey on top of the cigarette machine. When is the last time you saw a cigarette machine? And it was a well used machine and everyone in the bar was smoking except us. Everyone looked kind of the same in an in-bred kind of way and the women were all bigger than the men. There was even a village idiot at the bar. Not just a slack jawed yokel but a real blithering idiot.

After a few beer it was time to go. Bunny was good enough to come and get us and not give DWB too hard a time (at least while we were there). We met her at the pick up point and she drove us home, arriving after 1 AM.

We still have to finish the Hancock to Shepardstown section of the trail and then it’s off to other rides. DWB has found us a trail that goes from Cumberland to Pittsburg, about 120 miles. We have already picked out a town about halfway along where Bunny can pick us up.

Paris, France. 1997

Paris, 1997

Ahh, Paris in the spring. The smell of springtime flowers and fresh baked croissants. Sunny days brimming with hope of a new season. Spring is the most romantic time of year in one of the most romantic cities in the world. But November is the off season for Paris, and in keeping with my frugal nature, the best time of year to visit. Anybody can go in the Spring. And besides, it was our thirteenth wedding anniversary and I wanted to do something special so I arranged a surprise trip for us.

I had booked the trip to Paris but had told the Light Of My Life that we were going to Atlanta to visit friends for the weekend. She fell for it and never suspected a thing, even when our tickets arrived via the FedEx pouch from British Airways, right up until we checked in at the British Airways counter. The desk clerk gave us two boarding passes each, one for that afternoon’s flight to London and one for the next morning’s flight to Paris. My wife, still thinking we were going to Atlanta, told the clerk we weren’t flying anywhere in the morning and to fix the problem. I showed her the boarding passes and just floored her. We got all the way through security before she could even talk. The first words out of her mouth were “But I’m not packed to go to Paris”.

Paris in the off season can be quite pleasant. The weather was brisk with sunny skies and a bit of a nip in the air at night. The hotels weren’t booked solid and you could get a seat in the restaurants. The locals aren’t quite as busy and stressed as they are during the summer so they are friendlier to deal with. My French is atrocious, despite my Canadian schooling, and I kept lapsing into Spanish but we still managed to communicate with the Parisites. The Apple Of My Eye (Pomme de Terre) tried out her French and got about as far as I did speaking Spanish.

The hotel was part of a small chain. Our room was so small that we had to move the bed to open the bathroom door. The good news was that the plumbing was all there and it worked. We tried a variety of restrooms during our visit including coin operated outhouses and unisex bathrooms in restaurant basements. The public restrooms in a city give an insight into the local population and customs that is often overlooked.

We only had a few days so we hit all the high lights. We grabbed a cab at the hotel and made our first stop at the Eiffel Tower. The Gypsies were out in full force, cruising the line-ups for the Tower, thrusting their grimy babies into out faces as the begged their way through the crowds. We paid for our tickets and boarded the elevator. The glass elevators afforded a great climbing view of the city and a good look at the mechanisms that drove the elevator up to the middle level. From there another elevator took us to the top for a great view of the entire city. We walked around the platform taking in the views of the city before heading off on a marathon walk through the city.

After the Tower we walked along the river and headed toward the Arc De Triomphe. We walked past the expensive shops with me pointing out distractions on the other side of the road. We strolled along the Champs Elysees and got caught up in a wedding group getting their pictures taken at a fountain. They were all guys, including the bride. He wore white. He wore a white dress.

After the first cab ride to the Eiffel Tower we stuck to walking or taking the subway. There were more beggars in the subway trains. When the train doors closed they would stand up at the front of the car and tell their tale of woe, speaking quickly and looking at the floor. Then they would walk down the car, hat in hand accepting donations and get off at the next station. At least I think it was a tale of woe. It sounded sad but it was in French so who knows? It could have been a recipe for cheese fondue. The Metro subway system was easy to use (we only got lost once) but mostly we walked. Paris is a fairly easy city to walk and the most of the things we wanted to see are all grouped along the river.

Most days we just strolled through the city, following the river. We would do some light sight seeing in the mornings and stop in a sidewalk café for lunch. The Beaujolais Nouveaux had just come out and we usually had a carafe of the wine along with a plate of cheese and bread for lunch. Maybe even another carafe of wine depending on the mood. Sidewalk cafes are plentiful in Paris and we had no shortage of places to stop along our walks. And, apparently, no shortage of the Beaujolais.

The graveyards of Paris are quite crowded. There is no grass, just little stone houses that look like outhouses crammed together. The tombs are packed next to each other and many were in bad repair. Broken stones exposed gaping holes under them. We couldn’t see any bones, though. I imaging the rats or tourists carried them away. Some of the stones were large and quite elaborate. Oscar Wilde’s stone is a large cat with wings, very reminiscent of something you might see in Egypt. But we weren’t looking for Oscar Wilde, despite his great contribution to European wit. We were looking for Jim Morrison.

Jim wasn’t hard to find. Arrows with the name “Jim” were spray painted by the Doors faithful on the little stone crypts at regular intervals so there was no getting lost. His grave was a simple one. Just a headstone, part of which was missing, and a low stone railing around a small gravel plot. Offerings left on the grave included a pack of cigarettes and some peas in a baggy. Not sure what the significance of the peas was but there they were.

We did all the touristy things we could think of. We toured Notre Dame Cathedral and climbed the steps to the top of the bell tower. The close up views of the carved gargoyles and other architectural details that we saw on the climb were well worth the effort. We walked through the Louvre and spent a drizzly morning looking at the works of art that have captured imaginations for hundreds of years. The weather outside had driven all of the tourists into the museum and we saw the Mona Lisa over a sea of Japanese tourist’s heads. The Venus De Milo was radiant but still without arms. Sculptors have a hard time with arms apparently.

We rode on a boat down the Seine River. By then the sun was shining and we basked in the warmth as we slowly cruised. The rooftop seating on the barge gave an excellent view of the numerous bridges over the river. The most interesting view of a bridge to me is usually from underneath and a boat gives a great platform for seeing the interesting bits.

We took a day to tour some of the smaller galleries. I mapped out a walking tour through one of the districts north of the river and away we went. We hit a few galleries but mostly just walked the autumn streets. We stopped for lunch at Bastille Plaza and enjoyed the last day of autumn weather while we had lunch in a sidewalk café.

It turned cold with snow flurries on our last day. The snow was enough to screw up the roads and the flights but we made it out of the city, to London and on to home. C’est frommage!

Ulsan, Korea Jan. 2005

Trip Report
Ulsan (Jan 2005)

Note: Photos will be added.

I spent a month in the shipyards of Ulsan, South Korea one winter. The South Korean shipyards had, at the time, sixty percent of the world’s ship building capacity and they were putting a ship, usually a freighter or a tanker, in the water every three days. Ulsan is a company town centered around the Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyards. We stayed at the Hyundai Hotel across from the Hyundai Department Store that was next door to the Hyundai Hospital.

The portion of Ulsan that we were in is separated from the main city by a short highway through a small mountain range. The terrain is quite rugged with exposed rock and weathered pine trees prominent in the landscape. The shopping area near the hotel had narrow winding streets and small shops. The streets were steep and wide enough for one car or a couple of motorcycles. Add wooden crates and tanks of fish out front of the restaurants and there wasn’t much room on the streets. There were tanks with squid, octopus, eels and those spiny inflatable fish. The restaurants were mostly seafood places with low tables and no chairs. There were a few small grocery stores and bakeries as well. The stores catering to westerners were closer to the main roads. We didn’t spend much time down there.

The hotel was a full-service hotel that catered to western travelers. They had a gym and health spa for use of guests and locals alike. The facilities looked nice and clean but I got turned off of the hot spas after my first visit. A group of naked old men filled the medium hot tub and proceeded to loofa each other. The thought of all that dead wrinkly skin floating around in the pool made me think of oatmeal and I never did go back in.

I thoroughly enjoyed the people of Ulsan and they inspired me to learn the Korean language. But, of course, I never did learn any Korean beyond how to order a beer and say thank you. Once we got out of the hotel we found that English was rarely spoken. We resorted to picking up restaurant menus and just randomly pointing at things to order. Some restaurants had picture menus but most did not. Many times the waitress would not serve us what we selected and would bring us what she thought a westerner would like, usually a pork cutlet in gravy.

We fell into a comfortable routine. The bus would pick us up at the hotel for the commute to the shipyards and bring us back in the evening. It gets dark early in February so we would walk across the street to the food court in the Hyundai department store basement. The food was good, hot and inexpensive. We could do our grocery shopping in the basement as well.

I had never seen so many people working in a department store. In a North American store you can never find anyone to assist you. In this Korean store there was a salesperson for every display bin or counter. When we bought fruit in the grocery store there was always someone to select the fruit, package it and weigh it for us. At closing time each salesperson would stand next to his or her bin, there would be a closing announcement over the PA, a bell would ring and they would all bow deeply in unison, facing the same direction, before leaving for the day.

After dinner we would cruise the streets for a while. There were several bars near the hotel that were not in the entertainment district. You took your chances entering a bar in the entertainment district. Hostesses would sit with you and expect you to buy them cocktails. I suspect the cocktails were just fruit juice or tea but they cost $20. We found a couple of bars that didn’t have hostesses and we frequented them instead. One bar, the Bull’s Eye, had satellite TV but only got the Discovery Channel in English so we watched a lot of that.

Eugene was our favorite bartender at the Bull’s Eye bar. She spoke English and was quite entertaining but mostly she left us alone. We nicknamed her assistant "One More" because that was the extent of his English. We would finish a beer and he would ask "One more?".

Eugene’s bar didn’t have a kitchen but she would go out to a nearby restaurant and pick us up something if we wanted. One evening Eugene was eating a plate of greens with little chunks of meat in it. It smelled really good so we asked her if she would go get us some. She brought us back two plates and we dug in. It was good, spicy but not hot, and the greens weren’t overcooked. The meat was a little rubbery but the sauce made it quite tasty. We were half done when our Korean host arrived. He peered at our plates, laughed and said it was an interesting choice for westerners. We asked what it was and he explained that the meat was from the digestive tract of a chicken. I asked if it was intestine and he relied that it came from lower down. There’s only one thing lower down in the digestive tract than the intestine. Just as we realized we were eating chicken assholes Eugene walked by, slapped herself on the ass and broke out laughing. But, the food was good so we finished it up.

Sundays were a day off and a good opportunity to roam around the area. One Sunday we climbed the mountain behind the hotel. There is a series of hiking trails that finish up at a pagoda on the mountain top. The trails ranged from wide gravel paths to steep climbs over boulders. We spent over an hour scrambling up the mountain and arrived at the top completely out of breath and worn out. There were twenty or so older Koreans exercising on the mountain top. They looked like they were in their eighties mostly and were doing sit ups, pushups and what looked like tai-chi. We felt totally bushed after the climb but and these elderly people had energy to go through an exercise routine.

From the top of the mountain you could see north to the City of Ulsan with the downtown core. You could also look down into the Hyundai shipyards and see the tankers that were under construction. Three LNG tankers with their distinctive domed tanks were being built and were so large that we could easily make them out from the mountain top.

The shipyards were a fascinating place to hang out for a month. During the short time we were there we were able to watch them build tankers in an assembly line fashion. There were three tankers on the pier. The one closest to the water was almost complete. Beside it was the second tanker with most of the hull complete. Third from the water was a tanker keel, just the bottom of the ship. Pieces of the double-hulled tankers were welded into large sections scattered all over the yard. The double walls of the tankers are over a meter apart and there is room between them for welders to crawl inside to do their work. Crawlers would move the tanker sections over to the assembly area and the cranes would lift the pieces into place. The most impressive lift we saw was the 1500 ton crane placing the deck in one piece onto the hull of the tanker. The deck was easily the size of a football field.

Once the tanker closest to the water was ready to sail they would bring a submersible barge next to the pier. Polished steel rails extended along the ground from under the ships onto the barge. Small compressible pillars sat on the rails and supported the ships. Frozen nitrogen was pumped under high pressure into the cylinders and the nitrogen would seep out the bottom of the cylinder onto the polished rails. This created an almost frictionless surface between the pillar and the rail that allowed the ship to be easily pushed along the rails onto the submersible barge. The ballasting of the barge was a little tricky as they have to keep the barge and the pier even as the barge accepts the weight of the ship. Once the ship was on the barge they submerged the barge and the ship would remain floating on the surface. The other two ships would be moved over closer to the water and a new keel would be laid in the third spot.

There was always something interesting going on in the yards from the early morning exercise routines of the welding crews to the construction of an offshore oil-loading platform.

The first birthday is a big event in Korean life. Celebrations usually include a dinner for all of the family’s relatives and friends. We were invited to our host’s son’s birthday dinner and it was quite an event. The family wore traditional Korean clothes. Speeches were made by senior members of the family and there was a lot of toasting with beer and soju. A full buffet dinner loaded with traditional Korean food was also provided. One of the young men at our table translated for us and filled us on some of the local traditions. One of the final events was a game in which the young child predicts his future. Items were placed on the floor around the boy and whichever one he selected first gave a clue to his future. If he picked the coins he would be wealthy, a ball indicates an athletic life and a roll of wool meant he would be a tailor. He selected the pencil and now looks forward to a life as an intellectual.

Our host took us out for seafood dinner one evening as our tour was coming to an end. He explained that it wasn’t a restaurant to which they would normally take westerners as the food was a little more exotic than usual but he had decided to take us there on the night he saw us eating the chicken assholes. Our party was placed in a private room with a low table. There were back rests that made sitting on the floor a little more comfortable. The meal started off with gruel which was followed by an endless parade of seafood dishes. There were whole fish that were salted and smoked, fish heads in a spicy sauce and fish organs both cooked and raw. There were shell fish, regular fish, octopus, shark, eel, abalone and others that I could not recognize. Most of the dishes were small and the plates were quickly emptied and replaced. I tried everything except for the raw fish intestines and I thoroughly enjoyed everything I ate. The meal took a couple of hours to finish and my hosts were polite enough to look away as I struggled to stand up. Grace has never been my strong suit and my legs had fallen asleep sometime early in the meal.

After a month of Ulsan it was time to head back north. I traveled through Korea on my way to Russia several times in the next couple of years but never did get to spend as much quality time there again as I did in Ulsan.

Seoul, Dec 2003

Trip Report
Seoul (Dec 2003)

Winter in Seoul is pretty much like winter can be in New York. You can get long stretches of cold gray days separated by a few days of sunshine. The snow falls, screws up traffic and makes life miserable for anyone walking the sidewalks and, after a few days, it melts.

I was sitting on a low stone wall in front of a Buddhist temple on one of those sunny days, eyes closed with my face turned up the morning sun. Even though the weather was still cold, it was the first time in days that I had been out in the sun and I was enjoying the mid-morning people watching in the sunshine. Westerners don’t typically attract a lot of attention in downtown Seoul but I was getting lots of odd looks from the passersby. Others had joined me in the sunshine, sitting on the stone wall and after a while it dawned on me that they were all deformed, crippled or otherwise handicapped in some way. It turns out that they were all beggars and I was in the middle of their usual begging territory in front of the temple. Apparently I looked healthy enough because nobody saw fit to give me a donation.

This was my first of many trips to South Korea. We were checking out a factory in the Anyang District and the work days were short so there was lots of spare time to look around. Seoul is pretty easy to get around in. They have a good subway system, most of the cabbies understood hotel names and the sidewalks are wide. Even with the crowds I never felt crowded. I was staying in a nice hotel that had a free happy hour, including drinks and food, for those staying on the executive floors. I wasn’t on those floors but looked like I fit in so nobody ever questioned me or presented me with a bill for all the food and drinks I consumed.

I picked up a few Korean phrases when I arrived in Seoul. They are the same phrases I learn wherever I go; hello, please, thank you and beer. Most of the younger educated people you run into in Seoul can speak English and we never really had any language problems.

I took the subway out to the Itaewon district one evening. It is a tourist zone with shopping and bars. You used to be able to buy some good knock-offs for cheap but now real stores have moved in and the independent vendors are harder to find. It was rush hour and the subway was packed with a standing room only crowd. I was the tallest, whitest guy on the train and all I could see was a sea of black hair.

We arrived in Itaewon without getting too lost on the subway and we started hitting the bars. The buildings along the main drag had storefronts on the lower level with bars either in the basements or on the second floor overlooking the street. Most of the signs were in English, unlike other areas of Seoul.

We moved from bar to bar along the main street and mixed in some shopping between drinks. I didn’t buy anything. I wouldn’t know a Hermes scarf from a herpes infested towel and wasn’t interested in buying a Coach purse that was made of cardboard. We found a couple of bars that had decent music but didn’t stay long at them. Every bar had a fleet of hostesses, each one anxious to be your friend as long as you bought drinks. That gets tired real fast so by midnight we were in a cab heading back towards the hotel. The cabbie was an old guy that didn’t speak any English but did manage to get us within half a mile of the hotel.

We were only in Seoul for a few days and spent the rest of the time there sampling the bars and restaurants in our hotel’s district. I love Korean food and you can eat pretty well for not much money, especially if you buy your food at a cart and eat out on the street. Even in the cold weather there were many street vendors offering up hot food and drink. I wasn’t sure what I was eating most of the time but it was tasty. I’ve always had a fairly robust constitution and can eat anything.

Our host took me out for dinner at an upscale restaurant and I was introduced to a Korean custom that I still don’t like. When in Korea it is polite to pour someone else’s drink and leave yours to be poured by him or her. The guys I was having dinner with always had a full glass, courtesy of yours truly, but mine was always empty. Maybe they were just really bad at taking hints (lip smacking, sighing, knocking my empty glass over, trying to drink out of an empty glass, trying to lick the bottom of the empty glass….) but the dinner was great. We had a constant stream of small dishes that were cooked on the tabletop grill. The grilled meat was tasty and when mixed with the side vegetables provided a great meal. I recognized most of the vegetables but tried everything. Some of the kim chi (fermented spiced cabbage) was a little strong but still very good when mixed with the meats.

Kim chi has a worldwide reputation that I was unaware of. When I left Incheon airport to head home I picked up a gift pack of 3 plastic bags of a variety of kim chi. I took it on the airplane with me and stuffed it in the overhead bin. The smell of the food slowly started seeping through the plastic wrap and soon the smell was just kind of hanging in the back, not really there but just enough to remind me of what was in the overhead bin. When we landed in San Francisco I opened the bin and the smell of kim chi rolled out like a wet porcupine and I almost choked. I pity the poor bastard that had his carry-on luggage in the bin with my kim chi. I made it through Immigration and headed to Customs. I had checked off on the Customs form that I was bringing in a food product. The Customs agent asked what I was bringing in. I replied that I had some kim chi. He laughed and told me that kim chi wasn’t food, stamped my form and I was in the country.

Al-Khobar 8-Feb-07

Trip Report
Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia 8-Feb-07

The weekend is upon us. This is a good thing, the weekend, in most places but here we have limited recreational options. The weekend, as one of my neighbor's said once "is all about killing time". Neighbor was talking about something else, maybe his work day, but the sentiment fits.


If the weather is nice we can head down to the Corniche, grab a Starbucks chai and go for a stroll along the beach walk. There will usually be a few people out fishing and some families enjoying a picnic but, for the most part, the park is empty.






Another option is to head south along the Gulf shore for a Friday drive. There are several Family Only beaches. There are also opportunities to rent 4 wheel drive ATVs and race along the dunes. A picture of one of the rental agencies is shown here. Camel rides and pony rides are also available. The ponies are so little that my feet would be dragging if I ever got on one.




Trips to Bahrain remain a popular option for the weekend. We went over last weekend and stayed at the luxurious Tylos Hotel. The place was cheap but not that clean or comfortable. The beds were like concrete slabs. John found roaches in his room. I was woken by a phone call at 1:30 AM by a woman wanting to know if I wanted a massage.
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So, if the hotel is so crappy, why do we go? Bahrainis have beer. There are several bars clustered in the cheap hotel disctrict. I figured that after 5 weeks of drinking nothing but tea and water I deserved a cold beer so of I went.





Scenes from the car: Here is a picture of one of the larger mosques in Bahrain.




Bahrain is different from Saudi Arabia in more ways than just having beer. They are building a large financial center, skyscrapers and everything, along the Gulf shore. Several buildings are going up and most have some degree of architectural thought to them. No big rectangular boxes for these guys.










Scenes from the car: Construction cranes at the Financial Center.

















The big pointy building shown here is a pretty neat building. There are 2 similar towers side by each. The towers are connected by three walkways. Each of the walkways will have a windmill installed midway between the buildings. The windmills will generate 75% of the building's energy requirements. My question is... If trhee mills will generate 75% of the building's energy requirements, why not install 4 mills and be energy independant?

We also had the opportunity to walk through the local vegetable, meat and fish markets. I couldn't take pictures due to local cultural sensitivities but perhaps it is just as well anyway. Picture a big warehouse, filled with stalls, each run by an independent vendor. Who smokes. While cutting up your fish or your meat. The sanitary conditions in the meat market could turn you vegetarian. Uncovered, unrefrigerated meat hanging and dripping on the floor. The fish market was somewhat better but that is only because they were selling the fish whole. Only a few vendors were gutting and cleaning the fish.

All of that being said, what are my plans this weekend? I'm going to sit in the sunshine by the pool and do some reading. If I get adventurous I'll head into downtown Al-Khobar and buy a new pair of running shoes. I'll take the slow bus from the camp because, as we know, it's all about killing time.

Norway, 2004

Norway (Feb 2004)

Bodo (pronounced like Buddha) is a beautiful Norwegian port city on the North Sea just north of the Arctic Circle. Bodo is at the mouth of a rather long fjord with the town of Rognan, our final destination, at the far end of the fjord. We arrived from Oslo on the morning flight and waited in Bodo for the rest of our group to arrive. The group eventually consisted of a few Saudis, a Belgian inspector, our Norwegian host and myself.

While we waited our host took us to the Bodo Museum. The museum contained an excellent set of displays that chronicled the local area’s efforts during the Second World War. If you’re ever in the area I highly recommend visiting the museum.

It was February but it wasn’t as cold as I expected for being north of the Arctic Circle. A light coat and a pair of gloves were enough to keep warm. I am experienced in winter driving so we divided up the group between my car and our Norwegian host’s car. We drove along the fjord heading east on snow-packed narrow roads that rose and fell with the contours of the land beside the fjord. The road would drop steeply from mountaintops to just a few feet above the fjord. There was a slight chop to the water and it was a very cold looking, inky blue.

I was thoroughly enjoying the drive but my Saudi passengers, not used to snow or winter roads, looked extremely nervous. The car was a front wheel drive VW Golf with studded tires so I wasn’t concerned about the back end sliding around a little. My passengers sure were, especially when we were close to the water.

We arrived in Fauske and checked into the best, and only, hotel in town. The hotel restaurant was excellent and I had a great slab of musk ox for dinner.

The next morning we continued up the road to Rognan, a town of about 2,000 people with around 5,000 in the entire area served by the town. The largest employer in town used to be the insane asylum but two moves by the Norwegian government in the 1980s changed that. It was decided that the insane would be better served in Oslo where they could be close to hospitals and their families. It was a reversal of the previous “out of sight, out of mind” philosophy. The government also thought it would be a good idea to diversify the remote northern economies and encouraged businesses and factories to relocate northward. I didn’t ask how many of the factory workers used to be asylum workers but I kept a running tally in my head as the week wore on.

Rognan is a relatively quiet town, even in the summer. There is one hotel and the downtown is four or five square blocks. The shops are all small and they close up early with most of them, including the beer store, closed by 4:00 in the afternoon. The hotel dining room had a great view of the fjord. The dining room served good, basic meals and I had a reindeer steak wrapped in bacon one night that was fantastic. The steak was extremely tender for game and the bacon kept it from being too dry.

I have never slept in a smaller bed than I slept in at the hotel in Norway. Even as a kid I had bigger beds. They were big enough, barely, that my arms would not hang over the sides. My calves hung over the end of the bed. One of our group was used to bigger, grander hotels and insisted on having a bigger bed. The hotel managed to rope two little beds together but he still wasn’t happy.

We spent 4 days in the factory and we impressed with what we saw of the place. The food in the factory cafeteria was simple but really well prepared and tasty. We would get a cut of meat, usually chicken or fish, vegetables, either potatoes or rice and a dessert. There was always a big jug of fresh milk on the table.

I make it a habit of getting out of the hotel and cruising the streets in the evenings when I travel. The fresh air and exercise are good for me and I get to see some of the town. Usually there is a little bar somewhere along the way a guy can stop in and have a pint. I found a pub in Rognan but it was nearly empty and I found out why when I got my tab. Beer was around US$9 per pint. Our Norwegian host explained that most Norwegians drink at home due to the excessive taxation on alcohol. Up until then I had enjoyed Norway.

We headed back to Bodo along the south side of the fjord, along a road that swung far from the fjord into the surrounding mountains. One of our hosts had a small cabin up in the mountains that they would cross country ski into for weekends during the winter. We parked on the side of the road behind him and he pointed way off into the mountains to show us where his mountain retreat was. Several people in our group expressed doubt over the wisdom of having a cabin that you couldn’t actually drive up to.

We made it back to Bodo and checked into the hotel for the night. I ducked the group that I had been with for the last week and walked through the cold night air along the waterfront looking for a decent bar. Apparently this was a unique waterfront in the waterfronts of the world as there were no bars. I found a coffee that sold beer and quickly ran up a large tab.

I would highly recommend a trip to northern Norway for anyone interested in mountain scenery, fjords, friendly people and good food. If you drink beer there are better, cheaper places to go.

Yuzhno, Russia, April 2005

Trip Report

Yuzhno, Russia's Far East

April 2005

Flying into Yuzhno is like flying into the 1950s. Between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the development of oil fields on the island there was a long period of stagnation. The runway is potholed and a wrecked plane has been pushed off to one side of the runway about halfway along. That plane is a real confidence builder in the local facilities. We were flying a Korean flight so weren’t too concerned about the aircraft’s maintenance record, just the airport’s record. Planes flew in and out of Yuzhno from Korea on Mondays and Thursdays. Flights from Moscow and other cities came on other days. It wasn’t a real busy airport.

This was my first visit to Russia and my travel plans had been changed so that I arrived a couple of days before originally planned. The 150 people got off the plane and walked across the tarmac to the terminal building. We all lined up in the small waiting room while the two immigration officers took their time checking our visas and stamping our passports.

I handed over my passport and customs declaration. The agent flipped through my passport to the Russian visa. Then I got the look. You know, the look that an immigration officer gives you when something isn’t quite right. I’ve gotten that look a lot in the last few years. She kept my papers and indicated that I was to return to the waiting room.

The room slowly emptied and I still waited. And waited. The plane that I had arrived on filled up and departed. Another plane landed and all of those people were processed through immigration and still I waited. Eventually, the head guy for the airport Immigration office and an airline representative came to see me. The airline rep explained that my visa was not valid until the next day and that I could not enter the country until then.

I was escorted to an empty departure lounge and was told to be prepared to spend the night there. I was assigned a guard and she didn’t look happy about the overtime. She didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Russian so she just sat in the corner and glared at me. Little did I know that the wheels of freedom were turning and that I would soon be out of there.

My driver made enquiries at the airport when I didn’t come out of the immigration office. He went back to the office and got our agent and lawyer to come down to the airport and spring me. The lawyer arrived and I was escorted to the Colonel’s office where my confession was to take place. My crime was breach of the regime of the border. I had to hand-write a confession and the lawyer translated it into Russian. There would be a court hearing later in the week and a small fine would be paid. The airline was also fined.

In one corner of the Colonel’s office, tucked behind the sofa, was a wooden plywood box, much like an umbrella stand with 8 holes drilled into the top. Five broom handles, each about four feet long, stuck up out of the holes. I remembered reading in the Gulag Archipelago that the KGB used to use broom handles in their quest for information. Not only were they convenient for beating people but they could be used to suspend a person between two chairs so that the interrogator didn’t have to bend over to far and strain themselves during a beating. I was going to ask the Colonel about the brooms but decided against it when he said I was free to go. It took six hours but I was finally out of the airport.

Yuzhno is a city with around 200,000 people in the city and surrounding area. The city is near the south end of Sakhalin Island in the Okhotsk Sea, just north of Japan, and is part of the Russian Far East. The airport is just south of town and the train station is downtown, near the centerpiece of the town, Lenin Square. A large statue of the man dominates the square and the downtown area spreads out a few blocks in each direction from the statue. Most of the younger locals speak English.

I wasn’t impressed with Yuzhno on my first visit, mostly due to the cold wet weather, but grew to like the town over four visits throughout the year. It was April when I first arrived and winter was still hanging on. It snowed 10 inches the first few days and melted during the rest of our stay. As the winter’s snow melted it exposed month’s worth of trash that had been tossed in the snow banks. The potholes in the roads were full of brown melt water and the sidewalks were constantly splashed by cars driving through the puddles. The potholes were so bad in some roads that drivers were driving on the sidewalks. The temperatures were below freezing at night but would warm up during the days.

The hotel was better than expected. There were no chain hotels when I was there. A Marriott was under construction, fed by the oil boom, but mostly there were small hotels. We had driven past some pretty rough areas on the way into town from the airport and I was pleased to see that the hotel was fairly new. The dining room served a European-style breakfast that included such hot delicacies as runny eggs, hot dog wieners, beans, fried oysters, breaded eggplant, fake bacon and my favorite, something I liked to call “what in Hell is that?” There was always a fine selection of cold cuts, pickles, olives and cheeses.

We were warned by our local office staff that we, as westerners, stood out like sore thumbs and there was a certain amount of risk in venturing out alone. Many of the local men were unemployed and did not have the skills to do much in our industry except be security guards. There was also a significant gap between the salaries of a western engineer and that of his Russian counterpart. There were muggings and assaults against westerners, even a murder in mid-summer, and we were given lectures on personal safety. Still, I was up early and out walking in the morning cold. Usually the only people I saw were old people shoveling the snow off of their sidewalks. It was about a mile from the hotel to Lenin Square and I walked it each morning before breakfast.

One Sunday the local office manager arranged a sightseeing tour for us. The driver took us south out of town and we headed to the Island’s eastern shore. The terrain we drove through was remarkably similar to that of Northern Ontario where I had lived for several years. There were low hills with rocky outcroppings visible through the snow. Scrub pine and birch trees, none taller than 20 feet were scattered among the brush. We passed small, frozen lakes as we headed east along a two lane paved road that wound through the hills.

The goal of our trip was to see the swans. Migratory white swans would rest in Sakhalin as a yearly ritual. When we got to the shore we could see that the Othotsk Sea was a frozen jumble of fractured ice stretching out to the horizon. There were small areas of open water near where a river emptied out into the sea and that is where the swans were swimming. There were more locals on the shore line watching the swans than there were swans. Some of the swans were close enough to be fed but most of them were grazing on the weeds that grew in the river’s mouth.

We continued south to the major port city of Korsakov. The port had seen better days. When the Soviet Union collapsed there was no management of the port or maintenance done for at least 10 years. Ships had been abandoned in the harbor and were now rusted hulks laying on their sides in the shallow waters. The cranes in the port, previously used for unloading ships were rusted and several of them were leaning.

Korsakov didn't look as propsperous as Yuzhno, which was getting a good deal of income and business from the oil industry. As we left the city and headed north on the highway we saw a man sitting on the side of the road with a jar of home made pickled cucumbers that he was trying to sell. Just the one jar. In Yuzhno we frequently saw people selling small amounts of vegetables, handfuls of carrots or flowers, a fish fresh out of the river that morning or whatever else they could grow that they thought they could sell.

After ten days in Yuzhno I headed back to Seoul, glad to be leaving the slush and damp of the spring thaw. I would be back.

Yuzhno, Russia. Summer 2005

Trip Report,

Russia's Far East, Yuzhno. Jul-05

I returned to Yuzhno in the summer for a longer stay this time. The short flight from the US to Tokyo to Seoul and on to Sakhalin was not available so I headed east instead of west and went the long way around. I flew to Frankfurt and on to Moscow where I caught a local carrier to Sakhalin.

I arrived in Moscow safely but had to change from the international terminal to one of the local terminals which was a hour’s drive away. This flight was a last minute arrangement and I had left messages with our local agent hoping to arrange a tour of Moscow or at least a ride to the other terminal. She apparently did not get my messages and I was unmet at the airport. I had a six hour layover so wasn’t too concerned about the schedule, only about getting a ride.

A local man saw me standing around unattended and offered to help me out with transferring between airports and with purchasing by Moscow-Sakhalin ticket. His name was Evgeny and he was a weasley little guy with bad teeth and wearing a shiny suit. He spoke a little English and had a car. I immediately trusted him with my safety and we left the terminal. He called for his cab and as we waited for the car we negotiated the price. He offered a receipt for double the negotiated price but I declined.

His car arrived and the driver got out. He was what you would expect a retired mob goon would look like. He was a little past his prime, big and beefy with slabs of fat where muscles once were. We stowed my luggage in the little car and away we went for a 100 km trip across Moscow. As we drove I was thinking to myself that the two of them could be driving me off into the woods where they could rob me and leave me dead in the bushes. Nobody would ever know.

It turns out my fears were unfounded and we arrived at the correct terminal. There are several terminals in Moscow and we had the right one. Evgeny took in to the terminal to the Aeroflot counter and we purchased my ticket. All I had to do now was find a way to kill four hours while waiting for the plane. You’d think that in Russia of all places there would be a bar in the airport. There is even a little bar in the run-down Yuzhno airport but not in this one.

The flight from Moscow to Yuzhno was another 8 hours in an already long day. I was concerned about my person hygiene having been on the road for so long but sat next to a French guy so didn’t have to worry about smelling worse than him. Aeroflot business class isn’t really much different from economy class, especially in the older planes like the one I was on, so I sat in economy scrunched up between the French guy and a Russian. When I fly I try to zone out and put myself in a happy place but it just wasn’t working on that flight.

I arrived in Yuzhno at noon on Sunday and made it through Immigration without incident this time. It was the Fisherman’s Holiday so the whole town was out enjoying the sunshine. There is a park behind the hotel with kid’s rides, a Ferris wheel and beer tents by the lake. The park was a social center for the town with something for everyone. The soccer field has seen better days. The viewing stands have been looted with the lumber stolen for other projects. There are two swimming pools that haven’t been used in years. A tree grows in the middle of the bigger pool and the smaller wading pool is heavily overgrown.

Throughout the park there are beer kiosks and stands where you can buy shwarmas and shashlyk. The beer tents by the lake each have a seating area with plastic tables, a different color of table for each tent. I favored the yellow tables and would stop there for beer and a snack after work.
Each of the beer tents had a shashlyk grill next to it. The grills were home made metal boxes on rebar legs. The charcoal was local wood and the whole setup was quite simple. The cook would put together small plates with chicken wings or pork chunks on a stick along with slice of bread, ketchup and chopped onions. We were cautioned by one of the locals that we shouldn’t et in the park. We told her that we were OK with the fact that there was no refrigeration for the meat and that the cook pees in the trees, has nowhere to wash his hand and smokes constantly while cooking our food. It was a cheap meal and you get what you pay for.

The summer humidity in Yuzhno is the worst humidity I have ever experienced. The temperature was quite moderate but I would break out into a sweat just by walking outside. We walked back to the hotel most afternoons and would be soaked within fifty yards of leaving. Fortunately, there were beer kiosks all along the street and we had plenty of places to re-hydrate. Public drinking was OK and many people would be drinking beer or vodka as they walked along the sidewalks.

Yuzhno, Sept 2005

My third trip to Russia was starting to be routine. The long flight was uneventful and I arrived at the hotel in one piece. The hotel was starting to feel like home and I even got my old room.
Accommodations in Yuzhno vary considerably. There are a few hotels, mostly small places with 40 or so rooms. There is one or two bigger hotels that are older and more run down but most of the small places are fairly new. Apartment blocks are all Soviet era and are the basic housing for everyone. There are very few single family homes. The apartments are typically 5 stories tall with three or four staircases. The apartments are centered on the stairwells and there are no horizontal hallways connecting the apartments on each floor. Three apartment blocks surround a common area or park where the residents play, park their cars or hang their laundry.

Many locals are fixing up their apartments to Western standards in order to accommodate the influx of international workers on the island. The apartments are rigged up with new appliances and furniture, walls are redone and new electrical is run. A mid-sized investment in pimping out an apartment means double the rents when renting to an expat instead of a local. This causes a lack of affordable housing which is another cause of friction between locals and the foreign visitors.

Many apartments come with a Mama, or housekeeper, as part of the rent. The mama performs housekeeping services, does the cooking and keeps the fridge stocked. Most of the guys were happy with the services provided and the food was always good. You just had to get used to coming home to find a bunch of people in your apartment, maybe watching TV while the mama does the ironing.

We started “Dinner and a Movie” nights at Dave’s place on Friday nights. Dave’s mama would cook on Fridays, usually enough for him for three days, so we would go over and eat it all. The food was always meat and potatoes style of cooking, basic but tasty. If we were really lucky Sanji would bring Indian food that he made himself. We would bring some local beer and maybe a bottle of vodka. There was a small grocery kiosk on the street in front of his apartment so we could easily run out for refills if required. I never saw a case of beer for sale, it was always sold individually.

After dinner we would plug in a DVD and watch a movie. The DVD player was eastern so wouldn’t play most discs purchased in the US. It would, however, play any of the pirated discs that are available in kiosks around the town. John had a bundle of pirated discs that he had purchased in Iraq so we had plenty of entertainment.

At one of these festive occasions, while we were eating some particularly good Indian food, I declared that we ate like kings. Allison, standing behind me, added that we also drank like fish. That became our rallying cry for “Dinner and a Movie” nights… “We eat like kings and we drink like fish!” or as the locals would say… Мы едим как короли и пьём как рыба!

When we weren’t drinking at Dave’s there was always the park. We would stop in at the Yellow Tables for a beer and shishlyk on the way back to the hotel after work. After a few incidents we decided it was better to never go to the Yellow tables alone, it was safer to have a wingman. Mike was a perfect wingman, he would only have a couple of beer but was willing to hang out as long as I wanted. It wasn’t that the Tables were dangerous, the hazard was the friendly locals. They would invite themselves to your table if you were alone and practice their English. After a few drinks out of the vodka bottle under the table the situation would typically sour. They usually had a brother who was unemployed, had lost their apartment to a foreigner or had some other bad experience blamed on the influx of westerners that they wanted to share with us. After a couple of ugly encounters we learned to smile politely, have one drink and then leave.

We were in Yuzhno for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the end of the war between Russia and Japan. It was a very festive day with a parade, speeches and a wreath laying at the War Memorial. The weather was nice that day, summer was nearly over and fall was around the corner. The park was packed with revelers, ourselves included. There was even a group of veterans decked out in their old uniforms. They were at a nearby table tucking into the vodka pretty briskly for a group of very old guys. Their uniforms were all different, some white, some blue and green. I asked one of our local friends if the uniforms represented different branches of the service and she replied that they were all Cossacks. After a few drinks they started singing their old songs as one of them played his accordion. Nothing says “party” in Russia like an accordion. A good time was had by all.

More Russian hospitality was displayed that evening. We were leaving a restaurant after dinner when we were invited to join a birthday party. The birthday boy had just turned 75. We were introduced and vodka was poured all around. We ducked out after a couple of accordion songs and shots. The dancing was starting and we weren’t having any of that so we left.

We had Sundays off and spent the days wandering around town. On one of my walks I found out that the locals don’t like you taking photos of the prison. The place is really run down, definitely not the kind of place you’d like to be stuck in for a couple of years. There is a wooden fence around the prison with shaky looking guard towers at each corner. I took a couple of pictures and one of the guards came out of his guard house on the tower and started yelling at me. As I was walking away a car came around the corner, stopped right in front of me and two guys in military uniforms got out. I thought they were going to take my camera but it turns out they didn’t even want to talk with me. They were heading into another nearby building.
The prison has a high metal grid along the one side. During more prosperous times they would cover the grid with cloth. It was to hide the view of the mountains from the prison yard. You wouldn’t want your prisoners staring at the mountains all day as they’d never get the license plates made. There was a prison break reported in the weekly newspaper. Two guys. One in jail doing 12 years for car theft, the other guy doing 5 years for rape. They caught one of the rabbits at his mother's huse. The other was reported to be still at large.

Nassau, Bahamas, Early 80s

Nassau, Bahamas, early 80s

The boat didn’t look like much. It was 110 feet long, a two-masted sloop with Chinese junk rigging. It was at the same dock in Nassau as the big cruise ships were and the comparison was stark. The cruise liners were enormous compared to our ship and were shining white and well lit in the night while our ship was small and dark. I got on board and, after introductions, found my berth and stowed my gear.

Some of the other passengers were already on board. The ship’s capacity was 30 passengers and there would only be 16 on this cruise. Three deck hands, a cook, a steward and the Captain and Mate made up the crew.

We sailed from Nassau the next morning for week of cruising the Bahamian islands. The cruise was fairly unstructured and we managed to find an anchoring spot each evening, usually near a palm-covered island with white sand beaches and clear blue water.

We sailed mostly in the lee side of the islands where the water was calmer. One morning we anchored in Governor’s Cove on Eleuthra Island. The town had a few colonial homes on the hillside overlooking the cove and some shops and a bar for the locals. We hiked over the crest of the island to the windward side where the surf was high. There wasn’t really a trail and we ended up in a low forest of scrub trees and prickle bushes. We stumbled out of the brush onto a wide sandy beach that was covered with naked people. There was a Club Med up the beach and we were at the far end of their beach. We played in the surf and did some body surfing but managed to keep our clothes on.

We were under power for most of time but did get the sails up every couple of days. The ship was rigged like a Chinese junk with the big square sails. There were no power winches to get the sails up so it was hard work getting the sails up but it was worth it. The whole mood on the ship changed whenever the sails were up.

One afternoon we anchored off of an unpopulated island and took the launch in to the shore. The group spread out over the beach and I sat waist deep in the sparkling blue water. I had tied the cooler to my ankle so that it didn’t float away and spent a couple of hours getting sunburned. The beach was that soft, white sand that you see in the postcards. There was none of the usual beach debris that you usually see, no shells, weeds or bits of driftwood. We were the only beach debris that day.

Barefoot cruising can be very informal and we would frequently climb out of the water, throw on a t-shirt and sit down for meals while still dripping. There was on couple on board however that would retire to their cabin an hour before dinner and emerge radiant, hair and makeup all in place, when the dinner bell rang. She had a different gown for every night and he wore a suit jacket and tie. They must have been confused about what type of boat they were booking.

We docked back in Nassau on a Friday afternoon and spent the evening wandering the bars along the waterfront. The waterfront was pretty safe. This was back when the buildings facing the water were all three stories with decks on the second and third floor overlooking the street. Small stores were on the first floor, restaurants on the second and bars on the third. There were the usual drug dealers and local suspects on the streets but they were kept out of the bars and we had a good time listening to some local bands.

After a week on the boat I was to spend a week in a Nassau hotel but the boat’s steward had quit the ship and the Captain had a vacancy that he couldn’t fill until the following week. Another week on the boat looked good to me so I hired on as steward. Duties included setting the tables, serving meals, tending bar and helping out the cook in the galley. Crew usually bunked together in the fo’csle but the passenger load was light so I got to keep my cabin.

First thing in the morning I would do the wakeup calls and get the tables set for breakfast. The cook was really good and there were never complaints about the food. There was fresh baking most meals, homemade soups and always fresh meats and fish. After I did the breakfast dishes there would be nothing to do until lunch. We were usually sailing during that break, off to another island.

I got to lead the shore parties for a couple of picnics. I would pack a lunch for everyone and load up the launch with food and drink coolers. We would have lunch on some remote beach and the tourists would ask all kinds of questions about local history, flora and fauna. I would just make up shit for answers and they seemed to be happy. One day I told them that pirates used to drag their ships up onto the beach for maintenance. The pirates would scrape all the barnacles off and reseal the caulking. I had the tourists searching the beach for clumps of barnacles stuck in tar that were scraped off of the boats. Of course, they never found any but it kept them busy scrambling around in the sand.

We did some of the usual stuff they do on cruise ships; we even had a costume party one night. But mostly we sat on the upper deck after dark, had beer and cocktails and watched the stars. One of the passengers had a guitar and I thought that was going to work out great for the evenings but he only really knew one song; The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald. We tired of that pretty quickly.

Beer was free for the crew, even temporary stewards. After the week was over and we docked in Nassau the Captain told me it was the only cruise they had led where the ship ran out of beer. And I made $85.

I recently had an opportunity to return to the Bahamas. It would have been interesting to see the changes over the last 25 years. Was the ship still sailing? I didn’t make the trip back. Dr. Window-Boy pulled up lame at the last minute and the trip floundered. Maybe next year.

Cayman Islands - Jamaica, Late 70s

Cayman Islands, late-70s

Irma Eldevira’s Boarding House was an old cinder block building surrounded by sand and random patches of coarse scrub grass. There were no trees so the house would bake in the afternoon sun. The agent at the Cayman Islands Airport had recommended Irma’s when I had balked at the $175 rates for the hotels along Seven Mile Beach. For $15 a night I got a small bedroom, clean sheets every three days and breakfast every morning. The breakfast wasn’t much but I didn’t care. I was the only guest and usually just left the house early in the morning before breakfast anyway.

Sunset House Dive Resort was just across the street from Irma’s. They were on the water but there wasn’t a beach to speak of. There was a small patch of sand where SCUBA diving students could wade into the surf but that was it. I would walk across from Irma’s and spend the day at the resort. They had a nice pool and a Tiki Bar down by the water.

I signed up for SCUBA lessons on a whim and really enjoyed the diving. The water was warm and we didn’t need wetsuits. There was an abundance of brightly colored fish and a good variety of diving locales. On our first dive our instructor picked up a sea urchin with his knife and cut it in half. Within seconds his hand was covered by hundreds of small exotic fish that swarmed to eat the insides of the urchin. The swarm around his hand was a colored, writhing ball at least two feet in diameter.

The diving was great. Our instructor took us over the wall on one of our early dives. We dove to sixty feet where the colors were bright against the white sand. Large coral outcroppings dotted the sand. Our instructor took us over the wall one at a time. We faced the wall, his hand on our elbow, and sank to 100 feet. As we sank the colors faded leaving only the dark blues and reds. At 100 feet we leveled out and turned around to face away from the wall. There was nothing but water, green above where you could barely see light and dark green below with no bottom in sight. I asked our instructor later why he held on to us as he turned us away from the wall and he said that a lot of people panic. That much water, with nothing else to see, viewed while suspended 100 feet below the surface, certainly assured me of my insignificance in the world and I could see how some people would panic.

We also did a wreck dive. The ship was a steel-hulled freighter that was down about 80 feet, tilted slightly on its side. It wasn’t a large ship, only about 180 feet long, and there was a large jagged hole in the starboard bow, just below what used to be the ship’s waterline. We couldn’t go inside the ship but swam along the side of the ship, level with the outer passageways, and circled around the bridge. There was a light growth of algae all over with some tendrils of seaweed streaming in the current. It was an eerie scene, looking at the abandoned ship where people once worked and lived.

We would hang out at the Sunset House Tiki Bar at night. The bar faced west and we could watch the sun set into the gulf. A few drinks, a bite to eat and it was back to Irma’s to sleep in the sandy sheets. I rented a moped for a week and used that to cruise the sea road looking for good places for food and a glass of beer.

I had lunch with a bank manager one day and he told me stories of the men who fly in from Miami carrying briefcases full of cash for deposit in his bank. They were big men he said, well dressed, usually sporting pinky rings. They would be searched at Customs to ensure that they were not importing guns or drugs but there were no rules about importing cash. They would deposit the money and be back to Miami on the same plan they had arrived on. I asked the banker if he ever suspected that these large sums of cash, twenty to fifty thousand at a time, might have been gained through criminal means. He assured me that each deposit was accompanied with a signed affidavit from the depositor that the money was gained in a legal fashion. It must be true because even criminals would never lie on a signed affidavit.

After two weeks on the Island I started to get restless and I still had lots of vacation money left. I checked with a travel agent for my next stop and she recommended Jamaica so I booked a flight to Kingston for the next morning.

I only had a small carry-on bag with me and was waiting at Irma’s for an airport cab the next morning. An unmarked police car pulled into the sand lot instead. Two detectives got out and asked Irma to introduce them to me. There was a man fitting my description that had been running up bar tabs at local bars and hotels and then skipping out on them. Irma gave them a character reference for me and I claimed innocence. I had been in several of the bars that they listed but had always paid. The lead detective told me not to leave the island until they were done their investigation and they left. And so did I.

Jamaica

Kingston in the late seventies wasn’t a very good idea as a tourist destination. The streets weren’t safe, even in the daylight hours and I never have been much for just hanging around hotels so I decided to leave. My destination was Montego Bay on the north side of the island. I picked up a cab at the hotel and asked him to take me to the bus depot. He told me that he could take me to Montego Bay for only $80 but, being the frugal guy that I am, insisted on a bus. Again, not such a good idea.

He drove me to the central town square where the market was and from where the buses started their routes. We parked and suddenly the daylight was gone. Every window of the cab was covered with hands and faces of the locals getting a good look at the stupid white guy in their market. The driver smirked and asked if I still wanted to take the bus. It being a good day for bad choices I said yes.

He locked me in the cab and went off to find a bus for me. When he returned he told me to keep one hand on my wallet and one hand on my suitcase. He grabbed my arm and pulled me through the crowd. I could feel the locals going through my pockets as I was pulled through the crowd. Anything in them was gone by the time we cleared the crowd. The driver took me to a Volkswagen van parked at the curb and told me that it was the bus to Montego Bay and it would leave when it was full. I threw my bag in the back, thanked him and he left me standing on the side of the road.

I hopped into the bus and sat on the back seat where I could keep an eye on my bag, next to the only other occupant in the bus. He looked at me and told me “Sit in the front, Whitey, it’s a lot safer”. Who was I to argue?

It was hot and humid out so I sat with the window open. I got a lot of angry stares from the people walking the sidewalk and a couple of little kids even spit at me but the scary part was the old guy. I don’t know where he could have been carrying the knife, it looked too big to be concealed in his only clothing, a pair of raggy old shorts, but suddenly he was waving it in my face screaming “White man, you going to die”. And I thought to myself, yes, probably today, probably right here. But the old guy moved on, apparently satisfied that he had scared the crap out of me.

The bus filled up, I paid my $12 and we moved inland, over the mountains to the north shore. We passed a housing project that had started out with good intentions. The concrete structures were terraced into the hillside. The government had given people the back and side walls of the houses with the expectation that the people would build the front wall and roof, thereby buying into the project and having a sense of ownership. None of the houses were completed and most didn’t even have roofs. The unsupported side walls were starting to fall over. The place was a dump even though it was just a couple of years old.

We arrived in the town of Montego Bay in early afternoon. I was met by two large men selling drugs. I declined; they looked at me with suspicion and asked where I was staying. I had no plans but was thinking of looking around for a room to rent and told them so. I got another one of those looks I was getting used to in Jamaica. It was that look that says “Stupid white boy”. They must have decided that I looked stupid enough that I needed help so they led me through some pretty crappy parts of town to the Holiday Inn where they left me shaking their heads as they walked down the street.

It had already been a long day so I checked in to the hotel and went to the hotel Tiki Bar where I was going to save a man’s life.

There I was, standing at the bar, minding my own business. I had my third cold beer on the bar in front of me and I was scanning the beach. The sky was clear blue and it was not but there wasn’t the humidity of Kingston. A man came out of the water and limped over to be bar. He had stepped on a sea urchin and the sole of his foot was filled with the urchin’s spines. The spines had broken off in his skin as he had walked up the beach and all that showed of the spines was thirty or so black dots. The man was in pain.

After we introduced ourselves and Dave had shown me his foot I announced that I could cure him. The SCUBA lessons of the previous week were already paying off. I got a bucket from the bartender, went behind the hut and recycled my earlier beers into the bucket. I talked Dave into sticking his foot into the bucket and the ammonia in the urine went right to work dissolving the quills. After twenty minutes, and three more beer, Dave’s foot didn’t hurt anymore. After a few more beer the quills were disappearing and everyone was feeling better. By that time Dave’s friends had joined us and everyone wanted in on the act and they were keeping the urine in the bucket fresh. After a couple of hours the quills were gone and Dave was healed. For the next two weeks he introduced me as the man who saved his life and he paid for my drinks whenever we were together.

We had the opportunity to go to Negril Beach Village one afternoon. One of the hotel guests was an insurance investigator hot on the trail of an alleged dead man. At least the guy’s wife claimed he was dead and wanted Mutual of Omaha to pay out on the policy. All the investigator needed was one picture of the man breathing and they wouldn’t have to pay. He had trailed the dead guy from Miami to Jamaica and wanted to cruise the little airstrips along the north shore to see if anyone remembered this guy. For some reason, there are lots of little airstrips along the shore road. The air strips didn’t look like much, just a short grass runway, a wind sock and a shelter for the ground crew.

We had lunch at Negril Beach. The resort was famous at the time for its laid back, yet hedonistic, anything goes atmosphere. There are lots of places like that now but this style of resort was different back then. The buffet was good but the lunch time entertainment needed improvement. It was a wet tee shirt contest but the contestants were all in the “not quite ready for prime time” group. The winner was a seventy year old woman who was thoroughly enjoying herself. The stage was a long table right behind and level with the buffet table so it was really hard to ignore the program.

It was on our way back to our hotel that we stopped in the airstrip that proved lucky for our investigator. The agent working the charter desk recognized the dead guy from three days ago. He had chartered an airplane to the Bahamas. The investigator made similar arrangements and left early the next morning.

The area around the hotel was nice but if you left the hotel compound there was always a group of peddlers and beggars to walk through. Drug sales were common. Cute little kids, complete with school uniforms, would ask if there was anything we wanted to leave with them. Shoes and wallets seemed to be their favorite items.

There was a good restaurant just up the road from the hotel that specialized in curried goat. There was even three goats tied up in the yard. One Wednesday they were out of the goat but told us to come back the next day. We came back and there was two goats tied up in the yard and the kitchen had been restocked.

By then I had been on the road for over a month and it was time to go home. Besides, Dave had gone home and I had to buy my own drinks so the money was starting to run low.