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.

Cali, Colombia 1998

Columbia, 1998

So, there I was, sitting in the Cali airport, waiting for my plane. I had made it through the military security guards and was watching the sun come up over the mountains. The flat section of land on which the airport is located is surrounded by green jagged mountains that had early morning wisps of cloud lingering.

I was heading home after a three-day trip to Columbia. The trip had started out OK with a safe arrival in Cali. We made it through Immigration and the expected car and driver were at the airport and we made it to the hotel. Armed security guards were all over the lobby including a plain-clothes guy with a shotgun hung down his back with an over-the-shoulder lanyard. We were advised not to leave the hotel due to all the kidnappings and murders.

The thing I had to do the next morning went well and I was back at the hotel by lunchtime. It was National Secretary’s Day and there was an afternoon of festivities at the hotel for the local businessmen and their secretaries. There was music, a fashion show, buffet lunch and a constant stream of drinks leaving the bar where I stood and watched. I commented to the bartender that all of the women were gorgeous and he agreed. He explained to me that most of the men had two secretaries, one who could do the work and one who it didn’t matter if she knew how to sharpen a pencil. Apparently the older, less attractive capable secretaries were still back in the office working. He also explained to me that I was lucky to have gotten a room because most hotel rooms in Cali were fully booked on National Secretary’s Day.

I went into the American Airlines office that afternoon to change my return tickets. Just as it was my turn for service an armored van pulled up front and three armed guards got out for the daily mail run. Two had pistol gripped shotguns held high, fingers on the triggers, not on the trigger guards. The third had a 45 in one hand and the canvas sack in the other. One shotgun stood at the rear of the office, one waited by the front door and the hand gun did the bag swap. I stood at the counter, hands flat on the surface, unwilling to reach inside my jacket for my passport until their trade was done and they were gone.

On the way to the airport the next morning I saw a dead man lying in the street with a pool of blood seeping out from under the jacket someone had placed over his head. The driver didn’t seem fazed; he just swerved and kept going to the airport. The airport security guards showed a keen interest in their x-ray of a box of golf balls in my carry-on luggage but I had managed to convince them that the balls were neither explosives nor drugs. It wasn’t easy considering I didn’t speak Spanish, they didn’t speak English and they were heavily armed and very excitable.
So, there I sat. The morning breeze was coming through the open walls of the airport. With it came the bats, home from their night of doing whatever it is that bats do. The bats flew into the airport and disappeared up the cracks between the precast concrete roof panels. The cracks must have been just wide enough for the bats to roost. That would explain the long lines of bat crap that were evenly spaced across the airport floor, one line under each crack.

From the terminal we could see the aircraft being loaded with luggage. They took the job seriously with armed sentries, locked luggage wagons and a manifest against which to check each bag. A few bags that didn’t match up were left on the tarmac. The plane was swept by sniffer dogs before we were allowed on.

Security in Miami was tight on arrival as well. Random flights from Columbia were met by an advance contingent of federal officers. Their job was to check the passengers over before they got loose in the terminal. My papers were in order but I am always nervous entering the US. We walked single file through the jetway into the terminal. We had to go single file as the DEA was in there with drug dogs. I wasn’t carrying anything but one of the dogs took a keen interest in me anyway and I was pulled aside at the end of the jetway. The DEA patted me down, searched my carry-on and let his dog have another go at me. When he was done I got passed around to Immigration, FTA and Customs agents, all in plain clothes with badges on their belts. This was all before going through the terminal to the regular Immigration and Customs lines where I had the same questions asked of me again. Welcome to America.

Costa Rica, Mid-70s

Trip Report
Costa Rica, mid 70s

So, there I was, sitting at the bar minding my own business. The party had broken up earlier and all the good people had gone to bed. It was our last night in Costa Rica and the tour group had gone out for a big dinner celebration complete with a mariachi band. I was having one last beer before heading up to bed. The guy sitting at the end of the bar wasn’t quite ready to call it a night either and we started talking. It turns out neither one of us was particularly fond of the hotel bar so off we went looking for another cantina.

By the third or fourth cantina, Jimmy was eager to try out his Spanish language skills on some of the local women and I went along for the ride. We met a couple of young ladies with limited English and hit it right off. Mixing with the locals often ends up badly and this time was no exception. I missed whatever happened while I was in the can but when I came out Jimmy had his head out the window screaming for the police and the girls were scrambling out the door.
It was getting late by then but Jimmy was still determined to make a night of it. The cab passed through an area where there were a lot of young ladies hanging out on the corners. Jimmy took a wad of bills from his pocket, threw them on the front seat for the cabbie and bailed out of the cab. As we pulled away the cabbie laughed. We were in the District of the Fallen Flower where, as the cab driver explained to me, the women weren’t women but hombres. Jimmy was in for a surprise.

The cab driver and I were getting along OK so we went to a downtown cantina for a nightcap. Between his four words of English and my four words of Spanish we managed to drink beer and tell stories for a few more hours. That’s when I noticed that the sun was up and there were people in suits walking the sidewalks. It was 7:30 in the morning and the bus was picking me up at the hotel at 8:00 for the trip to the airport and home. We hopped back into the cab.
I think the driver was drunk because he was all blurry. I managed to slam my hand in the cab door as we took off from the alley behind the cantina. We pulled into the hotel lot and almost hit the bus that was waiting for the tour group. I said goodbye to my new friend and got out of the cab with blood dripping down my arm from the cuts on my hand. The rest of the group was ready to go. Compared to me they all looked perky, well rested, clean and ready for the trip home.

All of that rushing was for nothing. There was a shortage of airplane fuel at the airport so we sat for hours in the lobby of the hotel. Our rooms had been given to the people who flew in to replace us that morning. We ended up boarding the plane in mid-afternoon and flew south to Panama where we fueled up for the trip north to Vancouver. We were taking the long way home.

I had arrived in Costa Rica two weeks earlier. The plan was to spend a week in San Jose and week on the west coast in the small town of Jaco Playa. The hotel in San Jose was clean enough and there were lots of cantinas within walking distance so I was happy. Tourism was just opening up in Costa Rica and the people we met were friendly and helpful. The city children appeared to be well fed although there were hundreds of them sleeping in the streets and the parks. There was some begging but mostly the children would sing or dance for spare coins.
We took a day trip to the east coast city of Puerto Limon. The train to Limon was an older narrow gauge train that stopped for anybody standing on the side of the tracks, mostly farmers with a sack of coffee beans but occasionally little children who would sell chicklets and chips to the passengers and then get off at the next stop. The trained rolled through windy valleys cut in the low mountains. There was lush, green growth as far as the eyes could see, with coffee and banana farms crowding the railway. We hopped off of the train whenever it stopped in a village and bought cold beer to drink on the train. We would buy it from the cantina closest to the train station and always had difficulty explaining that we needed that many bottles of beer and that they were to go, not to drink in the cantina. I learned the phrase ”No par aqui” on this trip.

Puerto Limon was a depressing place. The town looked like you would expect with narrow streets and pastel colored buildings but the people were sullen and rude. Most of the young men in the port worked as sailors and had seen some of the world and what they saw at home lacked in comparison. We only had a brief ride through the port area and we were off to the airport for the ride back to San Jose.

The plane we were to ride on was a 1941 Curtis that had seen better days. The flooring looked like plywood and the chairs were simply bolted to the flooring. Two oscillating fans on the forward bulkhead provided ventilation. The prop engine on my side of the plane poured out black smoke but the other engine seemed OK and we roared off down the runway. Despite all the noise, the plane could not make liftoff speed so we slowed, turned around and tried again. After three failed takeoff attempts we were informed that we had to disembark so that they could do some maintenance on the plane.

We got off of the plane and stood on the side of the runway as the plane tried to take off once again. This time it was successful and it flew in a large circle, landed and pulled up in front of our group. No mechanic had come near the plane but the Captain declared it fit to fly and we got back on. The plane did lift off on this fourth attempt and we were off to San Jose. By the time we landed in San Jose I could not see out the rear windows on my side of the plane. The last thing I saw out the windows before they were covered in black oil was flames pouring out of the engine.

We heard that the next day’s tour group to Limon had to take the train back from Limon as the plane would not fly, no matter how many times they tried to take off.

I was running out of money right about now. This was way before international access to ATMs and back when American Express Travelers Checks were the vehicle of choice for travelers. I found the local American Express office to buy more travelers checks and was told that they didn’t have any. The office had sent a courier to get some but he hadn’t shown up yet. I asked when he would arrive and that is when I first understood the full impact of the expression “manana” or “tomorrow”. It is like the Arabic expression “ins’ allah”. It means maybe or maybe not, nobody really knows and nobody cares to get more definite. The courier never did show up.

Jaco Playa was a beautiful small village on the west coast of Costa Rica. The beaches were black sand and dense forests backed to the beaches. The hotel was fairly new and had some grass huts down on the beach. We never strayed far from the beach or the hotel for the week we were at Jaco. There simply wasn’t anything to see or do. The eco-tourism boom hadn’t started so Jaco was just a small beach town in the middle of nowhere.

The walls in the hotel rooms did not go all the way down to the floor, nor did they go all the way to the ceiling. There was a six inch gap that allowed the cool ocean breezes to flow through the rooms. The gap also allowed the bugs and critters that fed on the bugs to enter our rooms. I was never woken by mosquitoes but was woken by small lizards scampering along my arms in the night as they looked for their dinner.

During the day we drank by the pool and roasted in the sunshine. Most of the hotel guests ate in the dining room, which was open to the beach view, but I have always been one to avoid hotel dining rooms. In the late afternoon three or four of us who would walk down the beach to a small group of cantinas on the shore. The food was good and cheap, mostly beans and rice with a little meat, and the beer was cold. We would have a few bottles of local beer and eat dinner while watching the sun set into the Pacific. The locals loved us, mostly because we could afford to buy rounds. The nightly walks back to the hotel in the dark were safe. The biggest hazard we faced was stepping on a frog on the beach.

In the bus that took us back to San Jose I sat in front of the then-typical American tourist. They were from New York, very loud and obnoxious. I was also in front of them at the reception desk. The hotel did not have a reservation for me but quickly found me a room. The New Yorkers weren’t so lucky. The desk clerk informed them that their reservation was not on file and the New Yorkers became very loud and insulting, the man pounding his fist on the desk and making demands. Suddenly the clerk could not speak a word of English. The couple from New York demanded to see the manager (el manager-o to them) and when he arrived he could not speak English either. Which is odd because I had met the manager at a cocktail party a couple of weeks ago at the hotel and he had spoken English quite well. He needed to speak English to get his business management degree from Harvard. The couple could not convince anyone in the lobby to translate for them and had to leave the hotel without getting a room. That lesson has always stuck with me when traveling.

That night was our last night in Costa Rica. It was a great trip, I met some friends that I kept up with and visited a few times when we were back in Canada. .

Saudi Arabia, 25-Jan-07

Trip Report
Al-Khobar
25-Jan-07

We have had an extremely quiet couple of weeks. Nothing but working and watching TV. There isn't much else to do. I have been going to the gym at the labor camp fairly regularly and have dropped 5 kilograms.

We did go for a drive last Friday south along the Arabian Gulf. There are several public beaches and the crowds were pretty good despite the cool wind. Most of the beaches are family only, no single guys.

Fish and chips must have been popular once as there are big fish and chip stands all up and down the shore. Big concrete fish, now derelict and empty. These would make great lawn ornaments if only my lawn was big enough.



And speaking of giant lawn ornaments, check out the grocery cart in front of the local Giant grocery store. To give you a sense of scale you can see the construction trailer behind one of the cart's wheels.





The car wash guys in the labor camp parking lot are getting more aggressive. Now that there are two of the car wash guys (we call them “Clean, Boss?” and “Wash, Boss?”) and there is competition in the parking lot they are not content to just casually ask us if we want our cars washed. They lurk in the shadows, jumping out and pouncing as we walk from our cars. I left my room tonight and almost got run over by “Wash Boss?” on his bicycle. I think he was circling the block waiting for me. But I can’t get “Wash, Boss?” to clean the car because “Clean, Boss?” saw me first and is my main guy for car cleaning services. At least that is the way he explained it to me. Must be a Union thing.

I was reading the paper and found that the divorce rate is skyrocketing in Saudi Arabia. Apparently the divorce laws are pretty lax it makes divorce easy to get but pretty fair for the woman financially. They interviewed a young woman who “doesn’t want to become a statistic” so she is taking a special woman’s study class at the University. The course covers all the topics she needs to know about being a better wife like fashion, manners and cooking. Welcome to the 40’s.

Today was our day off so I went for a walk along the corniche. There is a nice walkway in a downtown park that runs along the Gulf shore. The Starbucks there either doesn’t make chai lattes or I just couldn’t explain myself properly. It turns out I don’t like coffee lattes.

We went downtown on the camp bus this afternoon. We had an early dinner at the Thai restaurant and then it was two hours of wandering through the t-shirt souks looking for bargains. Most t-shirts are under two dollars which isn’t bad for a used t-shirt. LeMarr was looking for a movie and ended up buying DVDs off of a back-street vendor. They stand in front of real stores, get you interested and then take you down a back alley to their "store" (as shown). LeMarr says they have everything from Windows XP and the latest movies to the latest PlayStation games. They even have bootleg versions of new games that just came out in the States. He bought Snakes On A Plane.

That's it for this weekend.

Peas be with you.

SAudi Arabia, 3-Jan-07

Trip Report
30-Dec-06
Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia

The flight from Dulles to Frankfurt was oversold so the Lufthansa agent bumped me up to a business class seat. It sucks when you know that the best thing that will happen on a trip happens on day one. It’s all downhill from here. The flight to Bahrain wasn’t oversold so I had to sit in steerage with the rest of them.

Winter has arrived in Saudi Arabia. I think it is colder here than it was when I left Virginia. You can stay warm if you sit in the sun and stay out of the wind. The wind blows steadily from the mountains to the north bringing cold air and rain occassionally. The forecasted high today was 12 degrees C with a low tonight of 3 degrees C.

It rained here last week and it was a real mess. Al Khobar is right on the Gulf and the ground is flat with a high water table. Any rain that falls has got nowhere to go. The sewers back up and sewage runs down the street. A couple of years ago one of the underpasses filled up with storm water but the locals drove through it anyway. Their cars flooded and people died.

The locals are all bundled up against the cold. The Saudis have switched to their winter-weight robes, typically in gray or brown, that are heavier than the white summer robes. The TCNs (Third Country Nationals, the Sudanese, Sri Lankans, Indonesians and others) are really bundled up with toques, scarves and parkas.

Booger the parking lot cat is gone. LeMarr took over feeding him when I left in November. After feeding the cat for a while and gaining the cat’s trust he was able to get close enough to scratch him. And grab him. And bring him back to the labor camp with him. LeMarr kept Booger in his room but the houseboys kept letting him out. Booger would wait at LeMarr’s door and go in for a can of tuna dinner and play Nintendo all evening. LeMarr even made a litter box for Booger and no training was required. Then one day he was gone. I noticed there is a significant drop in the number of cats at the compound since I last left, down from dozens to just a few. It’s a hard life being a runty parking lot cat.

31-Dec-06, New Years Eve

Our Project Manager came in to my office today and announced that this was the first New Years in 8 years where he didn’t have to buy a goat. He just arrived from our office in Egypt. Each New Year he would buy the office drivers a goat. They would butcher it, share the meat and eat it for New Years. No goat for us, I guess. Maybe he’s afraid to buy us a goat after what happened to Booger.

1-Jan-07

I needed two forks, one for in my room and one for at my desk. The Panda only sells forks by the dozen ($1.75 for 12) so I bought the whole pack. I gave the extras out to the Filipinos in the office today while wishing them each a Happy New Year. I told them it is a Canadian custom to give away cutlery on the New Year. Nobody batted an eye; they just accepted the forks, thanked me and got back to work.

2-Jan-07

The Eid holidays will be over Wednesday and not a day too soon. We have had housekeeping once since I arrived and the towels, thin as they are, do get a bit skanky after a few days. I’m hoping too that they will pick up the laundry soon too. Else I will be rinsing out my shorts and hanging them in the trees to dry on Friday.

The good news aboot the holidays is that the customer hasn’t been in the office all week and we have been able to get some work done. The office has had a more relaxed atmosphere without the customer and the Filipino Engineers have been playing music all day. This particular group favors Tony Orlando and Dawn, Englebert Humperdink and Celine Dion. Over and over and over. With singing along and tuneless whistling. I’m ready to tie a yellow ribbon around somebody’s neck.

We had Dinner and a Movie at John’s place tonight. LeMarr made a pretty good pot of spaghetti and we watched Animal House. LeMarr is so young he had never seen the movie before. We pulled all kinds of quotes out of the movie for our wall of inspirational quotes in the office.
When we pulled back into the labor camp tonight the guards were huddled around a fire. They had moved the fake jersey barriers (most jersey barriers are concrete. These ones used to be painted plywood but now they are made of sheet steel) into a square and had built a fire inside of their makeshift fire pit. They were all busting up wooden pallets for fuel and looked like they were having a great time. It isn’t that cold out either. Maybe 10 degrees C. They’d never last in Sudbury.

3-Jan-07

I spent the afternoon in the Saudi police station. It wasn’t much of a police station, just an out building in the parking lot. A few chairs, a couple of tables, a steel roof and some signs in Arabic. No phones or fax machines, no real door and no lights. But it was a pretty interesting visit. There was a group of Indians (not the cowboy and Indian kind, the other ones) that looked like barbers. I’m not sure what they were there for as they just sat there and didn’t talk to anyone. I also saw a guy with the most unfortunate unibrow I have ever seen. The hair across his nose wasn’t just a few hairs sticking out. The hair across his nose was thicker and bushier than his eyebrows. I just couldn’t stop staring. You know you shouldn’t look but you just can’t tear your eyes away. The exciting group was about ten guys, one who was bleeding from the forehead. They were all yelling (Dirka, dirka! Mohammed Ali! Jihad!) and waving their arms around, crowding around the cops trying to get their points across.

Earlier that day: LeMarr is leaving Saudi tomorrow so he offered to take us out to lunch today. We piled into the cars and headed downtown. Pett was navigating as I drove the lead car. Pett apparently doesn’t have clue how to get from our office to the Thai restaurant and we got lost. Picture a scene from the TV news showing Beirut or Baghdad, one-way narrow streets, cars parked on both sides, buildings crowding the streets creating poor visibility at intersections. So we’re cruising along, still in the lead car, and we enter an intersection. This is where time slowed down and I saw the van, speeding at us from the right. Wham! The van slammed into the passenger side front fender and shoved us through the intersection. Time sped back up again right about then. Nobody was hurt. Fortunately it wasn’t a Saudi driving the van but an Afghani (not the cowboy and Indian Afghani, the other kind). Everybody jumped out of the cars and cell phones were popping. It took the police about an hour to arrive on the scene and our Saudi agent and office manager were already there when the police arrived. Good thing our agent was there as the police didn’t speak English. It turns out the stop sign that was supposed to stop the Afghan van was no longer on the signpost.

But the important thing is (besides the fact that nobody was hurt) was that LeMarr came through on his promise to buy us lunch. While we were waiting for the police to arrive he went to a corner store and bought us each a soda and a couple big bags of chips. What a guy! We will miss him.

So, I spent the afternoon in the police station with our agent, the Afghani, Mr. Unibrow and the barbershop quartet. I had to re-enact the accident for the police report. I was the pack of Marlboros and the Afghani was a cell phone. We ran them into each other a few times, signed a few forms and we were on our way.