A Good Thick Skirt

November 12/13 Beijing

Like so many trips, this one started out with more story than actual travel.  The trip was supposed to be last month but because of the meeting of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, security was doubled, and visas were delayed.  When I started the visa process anew, I called the Embassy to get advice.  I have a long-term tourist visa for China, but wasn’t sure whether or not I could use it for a conference.  They advised me that I would need a different visa, a “non-business” visa, so I applied.  For that you need a letter of initiation, which I had, but which they wouldn’t accept because it was signed in English, and they wanted it signed in Chinese characters. Another letter of invitation was requested and submitted.  After a week I got a phone call from the Chinese embassy…telling me that I already had a visa.  I explained about the tourist/non-business visa, and they said not to worry.  Just use my tourist visa and don’t tell anyone at the border that I am attending a conference.

The trip started at the usual time: in the dark with the snow swirling across the highway.  Check in was a breeze, and the plane was on time.  Although I was booked in a middle seat, it was between a father and son, so they were happy to trade so I could have the window.  Both had freshly trimmed mullets – a hairstyle that I had naively believed was long gone.  Little mullet was about 5 and a charming conversationalist.  He told me all about his trip to Mexico with his cousins and we watched the interactive map as they plane headed to Vancouver.  He was a little perturbed when the plane appeared to overshoot Vancouver and then do a U-turn, but I explained that away as the pilot’s search for a good parking spot.  He was also a little concerned when the plane appeared, on the map, to be parked in the ocean…fortunately I let him climb over me to look out the window and assure himself that we were on terra firma.

Vancouver provided its usual array of Canadian fashion statements, perhaps the most outstanding being a down vest over a bare tummy.  We just don’t take winter the way other folks do.  I managed to buy gifts for my hosts, but, as usual, it took some searching to find Canadiana not “made in China”.  A stuffed moose and some dreamcatchers were the best I could do.  I considered little bottles of maple syrup, but my experience with Asians has been that they don’t get the appeal…and the thought of it leaking in my suitcase was pretty unappealing as well.

On to the plane for a very long and uneventful trip.  The gentleman next to me appeared to be practicing Tai Chi in his seat, but he was careful not to knock me and he didn’t slurp his noodles so I was fine with that.  Air Canada provided us with three meals, two of them quite good, but all of them chicken.  The chicken sandwich didn’t make the grade, but by then I didn’t want any more chicken anyway.  This flight provides two dinners, followed by a lunch, so it is a bit confusing for one’s body.  My tummy was telling me that one of them should have been breakfast.

When I got to immigration the office stared at my visa.  Then she called a large man in a uniform with a lot of gold braid and he stared at my passport, then at me, then at my visa.  Of course, since I had essentially told a lie on my immigration documents I got nervous.  Then they laughed and let me through.  No explanation.  Alan’s parents were there to meet me, which was lovely since I had been up for 24 hours by then.  They don’t speak a word of English, and I speak two words of Chinese so conversation was limited.

They have an interesting system for customs.  If you have nothing to declare you go in a separate lane. You have your passport scanned automatically and then you walk along a narrow hallway with x-ray machines at the end.  The hallway has several customs officers walking in it and they select some people to have their luggage x-rayed.  I wasn’t one of them.  After the x-ray, some people rejoined us in the hallway, and some got to go elsewhere, with an officer.

We set off into the city on the airport expressway, which seems to have about 5 lanes going each way.  Appeared is the operative word, however, as the traffic is more like a swarm, with 7 or 8 cars more or less fitting themselves into the lanes.  It’s all very polite, with minimal honking and no apparent swearing.  The drivers seem to understand the method, and I just relaxed and watched the sun go down.

Alan had booked me into a Chinese hotel (as opposed to a tourist hotel) – it’s convenient and cheap.  When we arrived, it took some effort to get checked in as no-one spoke any English.  Alan’s mom has an app on her phone that allows her to speak or write Chinese and then it writes in English, so we managed to do what we needed to do.  The reception desk struggled because they couldn’t find the entry stamp in my passport…for some reason, the immigration officer had stamped a page in the middle, no where near either an empty page or the visa page.  Once we used the translation app I managed to find the stamp.

In to bed and fast asleep within minutes.

January 9 – Nairobi

At the Royal Apartments in Nairobi, you need 5 keys to manage: one for the security gate to enter the building, one for the security gate to enter the apartment, one for door to enter the apartment, one for the door to the apartment, and as I eventually figured out, one to lock the kitchen door.  This means that getting in and out of the apartment is a troublesome and sometimes time consuming activity.  All of the keys look more or less the same, they are big, brass and old-fashioned, and even the right key doesn’t actually work very well.  For this reason, I always start out early, to give myself time to lock and unlock.  This morning, tucked between the door and the security gate for the apartment, I found my dinner for the night before.  I wonder what time they thought I was going to eat?

At Aga Khan University, we met in the boardroom of the Provost’s Office – it’s a great room for a workshop: well equipped, comfortable and just the right size.  It is also beautifully furnished.  It was great to see everyone again, there were a couple of new faces, but I have been working with everyone else for several years.  After the greeting and catching up was over I opened my folder to get my notes and begin the workshop, and there was a row of red ants marching out of the pocket of my folder.  Not sure if they were the biting kind, I dumped them on the floor as discreetly as possible and stepped on them.  There are some red ants here that have a really nasty stinging bite, and I didn’t want to check if these were them.  I don’t think anyone noticed me stomping the carpet, and if they did, I hope they just put it down to a strange Canadian ritual.

One of my colleague-friends from Pakistan, gave me a beautiful shawl,  beautifully embroidered.  He had remembered that I really like bright colours, and had chosen one  with embroidery in several rich colours.  Even though many people think of Pakistan as a hot country (and it is…it can be over 40 in the summer), it also gets quite cold, and this shawl is made of finely woven wool.  It will be warm as well as making me smile when I think of good friends in faraway places.

January 8 – Nairobi

Up in the morning for church.  The service was a gathering of three congregations and I think there may have been a little competition going on.  The Sunday School children from St. Mary’s Kipasi (the Ndwara church) and St Peter’s (from nearby Thim) danced at various times during the service, and they danced their best.  Nothing can make me smile like a 6 year old dancing with a great deal of focus and energy.  The St Peter’s girls all had matching green skirts, but like little girls everywhere, their skirts didn’t really fit, so some had them tucked up under their armpits, and some had them slung around bony little hips.  None of this interfered with the dancing, and I am always humbled by the fact that a six year old can dance better than I can.

The pews in the church are made out of boards, and there was a visiting preacher.  His sermon may have been wonderful…it was certainly energetic…but it was in DhoLuo so I missed most of it, and it went on for an hour and 15 minutes, so my bottom went to sleep.  To make it worse, my sister Rose was sitting next to me, and she was wriggling too.  The kids in the row in front must not have been from Ndwara school because they kept turning around to look at me, and Rose kept turning their heads back to the front.

Eventually we were done, and home for lunch.  Then it was time to go.  All along the highway to Kisumu we kept passing people carrying water.  One man had two ten litre jugs carried on a pole across his shoulder.  Another had so many jugs attached to his bicycle that he couldn’t ride it…he just pushed it along in the dust beside the road.  Small children were carrying smaller jugs.  Motorcycles, donkeys, wheel barrows; everyone carrying water home from wherever they could find it, walking between dusty fields of dead corn.

When I checked in at the airport, there seemed to be a lot of policemen standing around.  While I was in the waiting room, a gentleman came in with a policeman carrying his bag, followed by two other policemen.  The bag carrier was senior, he had a better hat, and many stripes on his sleeve.  After a few minutes, one of the junior policemen went into the washroom and came out giving the all clear.  The important man then went in while the two junior policemen guarded the door, and the senior policeman held the bag.  When the important man came out, he began to work the room, shaking hands with many people but avoiding the foreigners.  I suspect an early onset of election fever; but I wonder whether the bathroom guards envisioned this role when they enrolled in police college?

Back to the same apartment as always, but strangely no food.  Usually they leave supper in the refrigerator.  Since it was already 10 pm, and I was too tired to go out, I ate my granola bars, drank some tea and fell into bed.

January 7 – Ndwara

I got up this morning and showered in the Ndwara way, with a bucket of hot water and a scoop.  I asked for less water since it is in short supply, and did my best to remember the techniques that I learned a long time ago living on a boat…how to get clean using the minimal amount of water.  Travelling to Ndwara always makes me thankful for my shower at home.  When I came out of the shower to get dressed, I was met with three sets of fascinated eyes as I dried off.  Apollo’s kids seemed fascinated by everything I did, including combing my hair.

I walked across the yard to Mama Doris’s for breakfast to be greeted by an elderly woman.  She didn’t speak English, but she had walked from home to arrive at 6 am to speak with me.  She was a widow with one son, who had married and had one son.  Her son and daughter-in-law were killed and now she was raising one grandson by whatever money she could make.  She showed me her hand and arm, which were badly mangled, while explaining how difficult it was to provide for the child.  He had just finished Standard 8 with good marks and was eligible to join Kipasi Secondary School,  but she couldn’t afford the fees.  Although I had said that we would not support any more students entering the school, I found myself saying that I would pay his fees for one year.  If he worked hard and was a “good boy” I would for the next year.  She committed to making sure he was clean and fed, and that he had enough time to do his school work.  Some students here suffer because their parents give them so many chores that they don’t have time to study.  She started to smile, and then it seemed she couldn’t stop.  Each time she would stop and try to thank me, she would just starting smiling again.

During the night the electricity went off, and the refrigerator dumped water all over the floor, and flooded my bag.  No harm done, just a lot of wrinkly paper.  There’s still a gap between having electricity, and having reliable electricity.

I met with the parents of the kids who had just finished their exams, and Joseph asked them to tell me what difference it had made to have their kids have the opportunity to go to secondary school.  Each parent told about opportunity, but the one that brought tears to my eyes was the father of one of the girls.  She had not done overly well in the exams but she had be a good student. He said that without the sponsorship to attend secondary school, she likely would have ended up pregnant – that going to school gave her the chance to choose her future.  He is committed to paying for her to get a certificate at a technical school, in design.  At the end of the meeting, the grandmother from this morning passed me a  basket, and there inside was the cutest chicken looking up at me with its little beady chicken eyes.  I decided not to name this one or get attached to it, and gave it to Mama Doris.

This evening it was time to learn a new skill – making chapattis.  They are a very common food here, and I really like them.  Jessica, Apollo’s wife makes really good ones, so she was the designated teacher, Mwalimu in KiSwahili, and his sister Rose and I were the students. On the surface it looks easy, but the reality is quite different.  Making and preparing the dough went fairly smoothly.  There is no recipe, so you just have to add things until it seems right.  It’s definitely one of those skills you have to learn through supervised doing.  The rolling out was the real challenge: I made a perfectly round one, but Jessica said it “was “too small, I made a bigger one, but unfortunately it was shaped like a map of Africa, and they are supposed to be round, then I made a bigger round one, but it was “too uneven”.  Not only that, but rolling all of this dough is actually exhausting, and by the time we were done I was covered with flour, which, because I was sweating, was rapidly coating my body with dough. The scene was funny enough that people kept sticking their heads into the kitchen to see what all the laughter was about, and I’m pretty sure there are pictures on some people’s phones.  Eventually, with a lot of help from Jessica and Rose, we produced about two dozen chapattis.  We had them for supper, and I have never enjoyed them as much.

Pretty exhausted by bedtime.

January 6 – Ndwara

It was a day of good news, which helped to offset the sadness brought about by the drought.  The dryness is awful:  corn that should be ready to harvest brown and falling down in the fields.  In some cases, farmers are just letting the cows eat it.  The trees are thin and lifeless with only a few leaves.  There is a new calf that is two days old; its life expectancy is about 50/50 – without enough water, the mother can’t give enough milk.  The pond is dry.  There is one well in the village that still has water and by the time it is unlocked in the morning there is a line up of people from all of the surrounding areas.  The bees have gone.  Everything is covered with a layer of red dust and the wind blows constantly.

The good news is that everyone is well.  The even better news that greeted me when I arrived was that in the national exams that the students wrote in November, three students did well enough to earn “direct entry” into university.  That means that the government pays 75% of the cost, and the student can borrow the other 25%.  The school came second in the region, almost unheard of for a new school. The student who ranked second, Collins, was one of the students we sponsored, and now he is off to study electrical engineering.

There were seven sponsored students and all but one did well enough to go on to post-secondary.  A new technical college has opened within walking distance of Ndwara, so they have a chance to continue their studies.  Families came and met with me and shared their plans to send their children to the college for a certificate or diploma.  Because they can live at home, the cost is about half of what we needed in the past for any technical training.  The girl who didn’t do well was sick at the time of the exams, and although she had good marks until that point, her exam marks were too low.

The other amazing news is that electricity has arrived! There is a rural electrification project – the timing suggests a pre-election strategy to me, since there is a national election in August, but the reason doesn’t matter.  Previously when we discussed electricity, the price was prohibitive…about $30,000 for a transformer, and then wiring to each house. Now the cost is 15,000 KSh (about $195) for each house to be connected.  It can be paid in installments of 400 KSh a month ($5).  The electricity is prepaid, and for about $6 each month a household can get enough for a single light in each room, and an outlet for charging phones and laptops.  The world has changed!  Mama Doris has a refrigerator which means she can eat cheese and other things that need refrigeration.  Everyone was happily enjoying an icy drink in the heat.

We visited the secondary school so that I could congratulate the teachers on the exam results, and I could greet each of the classes.  One of the unexpected consequences of the success in the exams is a large number of requests from the surrounding area from people who want to send their kids to Kipasi Secondary School because of its high academic standard.  The Headmaster told me that next year he anticipates enrolling two classes in Form 1 (Grade 9) and he has already started planning the fundraising for another classroom.  I met with all of the graduating sponsored students, and was impressed that each one had a plan for further education, including one heading for teacher training, one to become a surveyor, a nursing assistant and a certificate in art and design.

On the way home we stopped to visit Mama Doris’s sister in law, who lives in a small mud house with her daughter.  The image of a mud house is that it would be dirty…this one was spotless. The furniture was covered with freshly ironed white cloths…and her standard of housekeeping far surpasses mine. When I consider the labour involved…this house doesn’t have electricity or running water, I am overwhelmed.  Even the iron needs to be heated over an outside fire.

Tired and happy, time for bed.

January 5 – Ndwara

After a breakfast of excellent sausages, mediocre eggs, and nasty bread with  margarine, it was back to the airport for my flight to Kisumu, on the northern shore of Lake Victoria.  The domestic airport in Nairobi would not be out of place in a small town in northern Canada, it appears to lack any design features or consideration of comfort, but it does have a small cafe.  Since I made it to the airport on time for once – the traffic actually moved continuously – I had time for a Coke.  It was the only cold choice and the airport authorities only provide air conditioning for international travelers.

I fell into conversation with the couple at the next table when they asked me to watch their bags…he’s working in Kenya and she was here to visit; her first time in Africa.  Her first upset occurred when a largish bug approached her.  Compared to Canada bugs this one was very large, but my perceptions have been tempered by travel.  Not only did it approach, but it waved its antennae at her.  It may have just been admiring her, but she required her boyfriend to stomp on it, thoroughly, which he obligingly did.  Shortly, it was followed by its much larger sibling, which also approached, antennae waving, which resulted in her pulling her legs up onto the chair.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that a compared to other things she was likely to encounter a friendly waving bug wasn’t much, and b) it didn’t seem inclined to bite or attack.

She and her man were traveling to Malindi on the coast for a beach vacation before she flew home to Ireland.  There was an announcement that the plane to Malindi “couldn’t fly” and passengers would be rerouted through Mombasa.  There followed a typically un-Canadian scene…everyone swarmed the desk wanting to change their reservation, get details, or find out what was wrong with the plane.  After about an hour of swarming, during which I watched their bags, the couple returned, only to hear that the flight to Malindi had been uncancelled, and everyone who wanted to could go back to the desk and resume their old travel plans.  At this point the young woman lost her nerve and decided that they would just cancel all of the plans and stay in Nairobi until it was time for her to return to  Ireland.  She said that she didn’t trust the airline to get her back to Nairobi on time to catch her plane.  In the end I felt sorry for her…I don’t think she was having a good time at all.

In time my flight was called, and we wandered across the runway to the plane as is quite normal here.  It is incredibly hot and windy, and terribly dry.  As we waited to go up the stairs to the plane, we were held up by two gentlemen (using the term loosely) who were taking pictures of each other on the stairs to the plane.  It wouldn’t have been so bad except they both seemed to think they were Ansel Adams, and instead of just snapping a few pictures, they were posing while the photographer told them to turn this way and that.  Just when it seemed they were finished, they traded places and started over.  Meanwhile, the line of hot, windblown people waiting to get on the plane just got longer and longer.

Apollo met me at Kisumu and took me to the library where he works at Maseno University.  The University was created out of two old British colleges: a teacher training college and a college for government workers.  The teacher training college buildings are beautiful – long low red brick on a hillside with a large lawn in front, and then lower down the hill a number of brick bungalows where faculty lived. The British had a gift for finding wonderful locations and creating architecture that has stood the test of time, both by enduring and by continuing to be attractive.

The University has been building a new library for 10 years.  It is being financed by the government and being built under the direction of the government and from my perspective the library seems to have remarkably little to do with it.  There appear to be wild cats and various birds living in the unfinished building, and the university has started to use it to store furniture.  It’s an interesting concept when we complain about government construction not coming in on time or on budget.  We toured the building, which is a concrete construction 4 stories high with various rooms and unfinished stair cases, some of which are already crumbling.

While the University has electricity and internet access, it’s all a relative things.  The internet had been out for three days and the electricity has good days and bad days.  It brings to mind a discussion that I tried to have with my esteemed boss when he cancelled our book exchange program with the explanation that everyone should be using online resources now. Even many of the books on the shelves are in worse condition than the ones that we routinely weed from our collection.

Finally home to Ndwara to a wonderful reception.  Tonight I sleep in Apollo’s (unfinshed) house for the first time.  It has toilets!

Jan 3-4 Nairobi

Every once in a while, I seem to have one of “those” trips…nothing exactly went wrong, but it seemed like a series of small irritations.    At Edmonton airport, the first direction I got was to go to the Delta counter at the extreme east end of the airport; when I got there, the helpful Delta lady told me that KLM had a designated temporary check-in, at the extreme west end of the airport.  Since one of my never-achieved New Year’s resolutions is to incorporate more exercise into daily activities, I cheerfully hiked off to the extreme other end of the airport.

The line to check in to KLM was long and slow.  It appeared that many people were moving – or at least that was my assumption based on the variety and volume of luggage that was appearing. Several people had severely overweight luggage resulting in frantic repacking on the floor in front of the counter.  Since most of the repacking went into the carry-on luggage that was going on the same plane, I wasn’t sure how this was a benefit to anyone, but it did provide some interesting insights into how, and what, people pack.

After checking in the usual hurry up and wait for security,  and then off to the gate, only to be told that we would be departing late as the plane had not yet arrived.  It eventually did, and then had to be “groomed”, which always makes me imagine a crew with manicure scissors and a comb carefully tidying up the plane and trimming its nose hairs.

Eventually a clean and tidy plane was ready, it was “all aboard” and we were ready to go. The captain mentioned several times that our late take off was due to the late incoming plane, until I wanted to go and reassure her that we weren’t blaming her.  There was the usual confusion as people tried to stuff their overloaded carry-on bags into the bins, and we were off.

The staff were complaining that there were more than 60 special meal requests on board, and it was causing great confusion, particularly since some people had decided to trade seats.  I thought it was even more interesting that several people, once they saw the special meals, also asked for them.  I truly admired the cabin attendant’s ability to smile and patiently explain that you had to order them ahead of time…even when he had to explain it to the same family a second time after the second meal. A movie,   a nice nap, another meal, and we arrived in Amsterdam early.  There was no parking space available so we got to wait on the runway.

A quick run through Amsterdam airport (from one end to the other) to discover that the gate had been changed, so a quick run back to the gate next to the one I arrived at.  Amsterdam airport is about the same size as Edmonton so I felt like I had done my exercise.  Some confusion loading the plane, along with apologies that we were late because the “incoming plane was delayed”.  This time I had the first seat inside the door, with plenty of leg room.  Two English gents were sitting next to me; they were coming “out to Kenya” to do some missionary work.

Lunch was served – exactly the same lunch as they served between Edmonton and Amsterdam.  It wasn’t any better from having been prepared in Europe.  One of the gents next to me had special ordered “vegetarian” and then proceeded to complain that he didn’t get the cheese and chocolate pudding that we got because the airline couldn’t tell the difference between vegetarian and vegan.  Given the amount of wine he drank, while complaining about the lack of choice, I was surprised he could even tell what he was eating.

I was facing the fold down seats that the cabin staff used, and about halfway into the trip couple was seated there.  She complained non-stop about how cold the plane was, and how unhealthy it was to be that cold. I eventually closed my eyes and pretended to sleep so she stopped talking.  As soon as I opened my eyes, she started again.  The cabin attendant brought her a complaint form, but the instructions said to complete it in upper case letters, and she then started to complain that she “didn’t like capital letters”.  The man appeared to be stoic.  When the staff brought hot towels for us to wash our hands he pulled up his trousers and wrapped the towels around his legs, so perhaps he really was cold.  Eventually, the cabin attendants told them they had to return to their seats for the next meal service, and the man simply said NO.  After a great deal of conferring among, they were seated in business class for the rest of the flight.  I wasn’t sorry to hear them go. Lunch, or it might have been supper, unfortunately included a salad with mozzarella and tomato, causing Mr English Vegetarian to, yet again, give a speech about the difference between being a vegetarian and a vegan.

Because I was sitting next to the door, I was first off the plane, and first through immigration, a record for me of about 20 minutes.  Unfortunately the luggage was not as lucky, and it took almost an hour for it to arrive.  On the positive side, though, I was highly entertained by the behaviour of one particular man.  At first, he was directly across the luggage carousel from me.  A tall, thin, white man who could have done with the attentions of a comb and manicure scissors.  By pushing and elbowing, he managed to work his way around the carousel towards me, walking in front of everyone, until he was directly in front of the chute where the bags come out.  He then attempted to grab his bag when it came out, but because of the way it was on the carousel, he ended up running alongside the carousel holding on to his bag until he was almost back where he started. He got it off, handed it over to his much smaller female companion, and then made his way back in front of everyone to the chute.  When his next bag came down, he simply shouted to his companion, and made many cWomplicated arm gestures, which resulted in her simply grabbing the bag when it came by. The next bag that he identified and managed to wrestle off the carousel wasn’t his and he had to put it back.  He returned to the shouting and signalling method until all was done.

Because I was arriving late at night, I had arranged with my hotel for a driver to pick me up. Walking out into the hot and dark air, I was, as they say in Ghana, “met with his absence”.  A kind lady from the taxi office phoned him, and he told her he had no rides booked.  Then she phoned the hotel, who told her that they had cancelled my ride.  By this point, I was happy to book a taxi with her company; I must have looked tired, because she offered me a discount before I asked.

When I arrived at the hotel they explained that they had sent me an email with the driver’s name and phone number, and received an “out of office” message, so they cancelled the driver. Oh well.  The hotel was what I expected of a three star hotel in Kenya — clean enough, quiet enough, and cheap enough.  I always think that three star should be renamed “good enough”.

My last day in Korea.  We finally woke up about noon to an amazing sunny and warm fall day.  Clear blue sky behind coloured leaved.  Youngik came to meet me and we walked downtown and back just to enjoy the sun…but also to make sure that I could walk to Stu’s next time and avoid the demented taxi driver.  We stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts on our way, and just as you would expect on a day that started out so well, they had drip coffee, and it tasted like coffee!  And because you can’t go to Dunkin’ Donuts, and I had a donut with chocolate icing and cornflakes on top.  Cornflakes are very fashionable here right now and seem to be appearing in salads, among other things.

Went to my friend Mike’s for dinner, and we sat out on his balcony with our feet up and had steak and beer while the sun went down.  Another perfect day.

Staying with my friend Stu.  Today was a very uneventful day: returned the rented car, bought some presents, hung out with friends, edited Stu’s homework paper, ate too much.  Tim took me out for some special soup made of chicken and ginseng, reputedly a cure for hangovers, which he had but I didn’t. The soup is a little startling – each bowl has an entire bird in it (a very small chicken or a game hen of some kind).  The fowl is stuffed with rice and ginseng and then boiled whole.  When it arrives you have to dismantle it with chopsticks before you can eat it. Then, if you’re not exhausted by the entire thing, you can eat.  It’s delicious…

Later I tried to take a taxi back to Stu’s.  He had cleverly photographed an envelope with his address on it with my phone so I could show it to the taxi driver.  All taxis here have GPS so not being able to say the name correctly shouldn’t cause any problems, shouldn’t being the operative word here.  I find a taxi and show him the address and set off at a great rate. Then he says to me, “where, where?”, and I point to the address.  He says, more loudly, “you phone, I not know”.  I didn’t have Stu’s number, so I say (a little loudly), “no phone, GPS”.  This time he shouts, “NO GPS. YOU PHONE”, but I couldn’t…so I said, in my best Korean, “GPS please”.  By now he is looking over his shoulder at me as though I am an idiot, while driving full speed in heavy city traffic.  Finally, with a grunt and a sigh, he pulls over and takes out his phone and uses the GPS. I’m not sure why he didn’t use the one on the dashboard, it seemed to be working. Anyway, we drive up and down several alleys with him getting increasingly frustrated and shouting at me “here?”, “here?”… and then driving me right to Stu’s door and saying in a perfectly normal tone of voice, “here.”  And the whole trip only cost $5.

A very long evening with good friends – does life get any better?

Two more things to visit today and then our road trip will be over…

The Gochang dolmen site is fascinating.  There are about 440 dolmens in one valley but they are of three different styles.  There are several table style ones like Stonehenge, only shorter, some that are like slabs lying on the ground, and some that are propped up over a shallow dug out area lined with rocks. What I found most interesting about it was how much no-one knows about it.  There are assumptions that it was some kind of cemetery but only some of them had traces of bodies underneath.  Unlike most dolmen collections in other countries, there are three styles,  interspersed with each other, but no-one has discovered a pattern or a reason for that.  Why are there so many all in one place?  Like other dolmen sites no-one is sure how they got the rocks to the right place and got them standing up, or lifted on top of other stones.  None of this prevents some statues of people hauling them around with ropes.

For a complete contrast, we also visited the  Saemangeum dike, the longest in the world, with the certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records to prove it.  It’s 33.9 km long – so long in fact that the only place you can see the whole thing is from the air.  It has created something like 250 square miles of new land…it’s part of an effort to create more farmland.  There is also a plan to create Korea’s first completely green city.  It will be interesting to come back in 10 years or so and see what actually happened.  The area behind the dike is not completely drained yet, and they are counting on the rain to desalinize it.  In the meantime, lots of people are fishing there — there is no limit since the fish will disappear as the land dries out.

Finally, back to Gwangju to catch up with friends in Michael’s restaurant/bar, The Alleyway.  It was Rocky Horror Picture Show night, so I got to seem Michael’s former partner, now the owner, in a dress, wig and highheels.  Seeing a man in fishnet stockings for the first time is a never to be forgotten sight.