Aries 32 - Thistledown
Finally, an update. I shouldn't keep labeling these emails "sailing trip".... I know some of you have been nagging me for another story. For those of you who don't care so much, the super-short version is that I didn't do much besides hang out for the few months I was in the Philippines, or just being lazy... sleeping late, going to town to check email and eat, and going to sleep again.. occasionally going into Cebu to straighten out my visa and things like that. Now I'm in China, trying to get setup to study Chinese. The URL for my web site has moved to http://brianvaughan.net, and new pictures from the Philippines are posted at http://brianvaughan.net/sailing/aries32/batch16/ My new Phone number in China is: +86 135 2002 9848 (maybe you need 001 first from a US land-line). I can receive SMS text messages etc. Hopefully I'll have an address here soon :-P.
I should have written sooner because there have been lots of things I wanted to say as time went by, and now I can't really think what they were... Though I'm sure this email will drag on too long as it is. I'll warn you now that if you continue reading, my email is totally disorganized :-P. Maybe some day I'll go through all these and clean them up.
Last I wrote, I was anchored off of Talisay, a southern part of Cebu city on the island of Cebu. I anchored there for a few weeks and had a good time for the most part. It was an annoying place to have the boat because it was a long row to shore, and then kids would play with my dingy and eventually lost one of my oars... so I had to take to locking up my dingy, and it was a real hassle to drag the dingy to somewhere I could lock it up properly. I couldn't stay there indefinitely anyways since I was looking for somewhere to leave my boat safely long-term. I had fun in that area though.
I don't have my logbook with me (being in China), so dates might be vague, but after Talisay I moved the boat north along the coast, creeping up the east coast of Mactan island. Mactan is a little island off Cebu that's connected to Cebu by a bridge). It's actually sort of a special economic zone, and is much more developed, with outsourcing agencies and resorts and western food. I was trying to get to Danao, a city north of Cebu city, where I planned to leave my boat long-term. Sailing north was slow-going, sailing against the very light winds. One day, near the northern end of Mactan looking for an anchorage, I searched around for shallow enough water and when my depth sounder read 30' I ran forward to drop the anchor... but it was just a little shelf of shallowness and my anchor fell in over 100' of water. The anchor got pretty stuck on the side of this big shelf, and even with 125' of Chain the rope part of the rode was chaffing on rocks and coral. I couldn't retrieve the anchor, so I put out two more anchors and found a diver to straighten me out. The rope did chafe through before I managed to recover the anchor... It was nice though that a huge dive boat came over twice with about 5 guys, 2 went down diving while 3 hauled on the anchor rode to retrieve my anchor, and it only cost about $20 USD. I gave them some extra money in my excitement to get back my anchor.
I ended up buying some used scuba gear from a dive shop there, and ended up using it to get one of the secondary anchors I'd put out (it got fouled too in the coral). It's nice to have the gear but I'm not sure if it was the wisest decision. It was maybe $300 USD, which is pretty good, but I haven't used it since I was in Mactan. Even if I did go diving in the Philippines I might not want to cart all the gear with me while traveling to whatever island I wanted to go dive on... it'll be nice if I get a tank though and dive from my boat in secluded anchorage somewhere later.
I arrived in Danao, just north of Cebu city, on May 5th. Zeke (the owner of the boatyard) came out in a little motor-boat and helped bring me into his little boat-yard there. The area where the boats are is called "dry dock," and I lived there on my boat right up until August 7th. I feel like I've wasted a lot of time. I did very little that was productive. I had the boatyard make a new fiberglass hatch for my cock-pit, and we took out the engine and fuel tanks. They made me some oars, and did some fiberglassing on the dingy. I'm not really sure what to do with the engine now, if I should sell it or try to get a new transmission or what. Other than that I just hung out, used the internet, tried to meet people, ...etc. A lot of internet time and a lot of txt messaging. There isn't much to say about that time, besides just to talk about the Philippines I suppose...
The Philippines is an interesting place. It's extremely poor. In the "dry dock" area there are many many people who work in a factory for making dried mangoes. They peel mangoes sometimes 12 hours a day, often 7 days a week for 3,000 pesos (about $60 USD) per month. They live with their parents, and give most of the money they earn to their parents. They work on 6 month contracts, and at the end of the contract they go back to being unemployed. Mangoes are closely related to poison oak, and the allergic reaction these kids have means that their skin becomes blistered with strange rashes, and sometimes a fingernail will become deformed or fall off.
I remember an internet cafe I frequented when I was staying in Talisay. The owner, his wife, and kids all slept in a pile in the back, in a narrow little space behind some computers. The place was open 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and someone would wake up every time there was a customer. What a life. ... and this is someone who is lucky enough to own his own business. At the internet cafe in Danao, two girls worked there. They had a little room with a sign on it labeled "office," and you could see through the door the one bed that they shared. The place was also open 24 hours per day, and the two girls took turns working or... sleeping/eating/etc. Their boss got mad at them if he visited and caught them playing video games.
Typical "help wanted ads" for "burger flipper" type jobs in the area read "Must be 18-25, female, single, more than 5'2", high school diploma."
I eat with the mango peelers in the corenderia. I usually got "mongels" .. beans, with rice, for 10 pesos. About 20 US cents. It's not very good food. I met a European guy who said he can't eat rice at all anymore, because he gets sick every time. ...He said he's pretty sure it's the pesticides. He's married to a Filipina in mindinao, and has kids there too. I met him on a plane. He's pretty much restricted to only eating mcdonalds type food. I used to feel like it was pretty lame to go to places like this and eat mcdonalds, but I'm also tired of being sick. I lost a lot of weight in the Philippines, and lost a lot of weight last time I was in China. Eventually you need to eat something that wont make you sick. In the Philippines I went to these little burger places called "burger machine" very regularly, just getting an egg+cheese sandwich that cost less than 50 US cents. They were OK but I ate them almost every day, and could only make myself eat a couple of them. So far in China I've been trying to force myself to spend the money and eat some western food. Sometimes I think it ends up being more expensive than living in America though. I can get a big bowl of noodles and a liter of beer for less than a dollar, or I can get a low-quality sandwich that won't even fill me up for about $6-7 USD.
There are lots of brothels in the Philippines. They call them "bikini bars." They can't have strip clubs, ... strip clubs are illegal, so the girls just dance in bikinis. When I first arrived I'd ask people where there was a bar, just looking for a place to have a beer and meet some people. "Bar" in the Philippines means "bikinibar" means "brothel," so I got some strange looks. They're interesting to see anyways though. I went out with some older guys I met to "run the traps" as they said one night. Technically, the girls (and the "bar") make their money by convincing you to buy a girl a drink. If you buy yourself a drink it costs 50 pesos, but if you buy a girl a drink it costs 100-200 pesos, and then you have some pretty girl in a bikini hanging on you and talking to you for an hour. Some of them are nice and sometimes interesting to talk to. They are officially called " G.R.O.'s" which stands for "Guest Relations Officer." Some are also desperate and disgusting though, and just keep asking for another drink, or trying to convince you to take her home. Though prostitution is technically illegal, you can pay the bar for "the money they would have lost in sold drinks" (bar-fine) and take the girl home. The girls are registered with the government and STD tested every week (at least that's what I've been told)... but prostitution is technically illegal. Funny how that works. By the end of the night we were all sitting at a table in some disgusting cock-roach infested urine-smelling "bikini bar" where the girls weren't even pretty (but apparently you could take any of them home for about $6 USD), drinking beers un-aware that the sun had come up. An old guy across the table was getting a hand-job under the table along with his beer, saying "I doubt she'll finish, I'm 70! but she's making a good effort!" The other guy was saying to me "why don't you talk to that girl? She likes you." ... but I really didn't want to look at the ugly (in my opinion) girl that was trying to get cuddly with me. It was an interesting experience.
Some of the older guys say "at my age, they all look good." Some of the guys marry girls they meet in the bars. One actually said that he views the bar more as a "dating service" than as a brothel. I talked to an Australian guy who calculated the cost of his divorce on a "per lay" rate that he figured cost him more than going to the brothel. You meet all these different people and don't know what to think.
One guy I met in the yacht club once said "why buy the cow when the milk is free?" ... When this guy said "cow" though he meant marriage, not the brothel, and by "milk" I'm not quite sure if he was referring to his various girlfriends, or in fact the brothel that he'd have been paying for all the same.
Some of these girls have some pretty sad stories... I met a girl in Manila who was working in a bar. She told me about her boyfriend back home that she was madly in love with, and her family, and her little brother who's in elementary school. She told her family and boyfriend that she got a good factory job in Manila, but really she's selling herself to foreigners so she can send money home, most of her motivation being so that her little brother can afford the fee to go to elementary school. She lives upstairs from the brothel, and can never have a day off unless she goes somewhere with someone who's paid her "bar fine." She pointed at the girls who were dancing around, who were seemingly having fun trying unsuccessfully to do back-bends (they weren't exactly good dancers). She said "you think any of them like this? We're all just trying to survive."
I once asked a guy I knew in the Philippines, "aren't you worried about diseases?" He said "diseases?? I've been whoring myself silly for 20 years and never got anything that wasn't curable!" His Filipina wife said to him "you mean 10 years, you've been married the last 10." He just laughs, pats her on the shoulder, and says "right honey."
Many of the girls do weird things that... I had to be careful about in some ways. I'd meet some girl and I invite her to lunch, ...and she brings all her friends and still expects me to pay for the meal. It's still a small amount of money that I wasn't so worried about, and I don't make any fuss about it, but why keep seeing such a girl? I don't get anything out of it. If I meet some girl I think I might like, and I get lunch with her, I expect to at least get to talk to her. If she brings her friends she just talks to them in Visayan and is too shy to talk to me in English. A girl might see me in this manner twice, and then one of her friends might start asking things like what my "plans" are with her friend (am I going to propose to her). Sometimes there isn't much alternative to her bringing her friends, because the girl doesn't want to be seen alone with a guy she isn't married to, but still, I can't deal with that. It's also a huge waste of time because they usually come hours late... I wasted so much time on such distractions when I should have tried to do something productive. I usually think it's "just lunch, it'll only take an hour." Why wouldn't I? but every time I'd so much as get lunch with a girl, it would take a whole day and I might never even meet the girl (since half the time they wouldn't show up).
Many girls are saving their virginity until marriage, and seem to be trying to sell that to strange old men on the internet on sites like "filipinaheart.com." I see them in the internet cafe. Most girls I meet here ask "do you have a chatmate?" or some similar question that assumes I've come to marry some girl I met online. They're selling themselves in the form of (and at the expensive price of) a marriage... but ... convincing themselves that they like these guys. Maybe they do, but... I'm not sure that they're really honest with themselves, or are even developed enough to understand their own emotions. One 19 year old girl I talked to was all upset because her internet boyfriend, some 50-something divorced Muslim guy eager to have a virgin bride, was angry and had basically dumped her because she told him that she'd previously been "engaged" to some Australian guy from the same site (and that she had "consummated" that engagement when he had visited her..).
One girl told me that I could "own" her for five pigs and two cows. I'm sure she meant marry, but the word she used was "own." She was very upset that I'd turned her down, though she was pretty drunk too. One of her relatives started joking that piglets aren't so expensive.
I feel like the Australian guys in the Philippines kind of got a bad reputation,... I mean, maybe Australia is just closer, but I've heard a lot of stories involving Australian men. I've met a number of very young women who were somehow "engaged" or in a relationship with some Australian guy, being lied to so that they'd give up their virginity (which can be pretty highly valued in these cultures for the girls that are trying to save it), or often getting pregnant... and then the guy just takes off. One poor girl with probably a mango-peeling budget that looked very pregnant was telling me about the Australian father, ... who just went back to his wife and kids in Australia. He had told her that he was single... and now he says that *he* is too poor to give her any money to help with the kid. Obviously I haven't heard his side of the story, but... I think the 50 year old Australian father can give *something* to the 18 year old Filipina mother raising his kid on $60 USD / month (assuming she manages to have a job at all)... someone to whom $10 is a lot of money. I guess she learned to speak english pretty well though through her relationship with him. People who speak English well can work in call centers for much much more money. I don't know how much well-spoken Filipinas get, but someone told me that I could have got 60,000 pesos a month (about $1,200 USD)... and I guess both are responsible for her getting pregnant.. I mean, I've also heard plenty of stories of women trying to get pregnant, lying about birth-control etc, as an excuse to try to get money out of some of the foreigners. I guess that happens in the US too.
A lot of really young girls try to chase after really old guys. I met a 23 year old girl in Mandaue who told me *I* was too young for *her*. She wants to find an American in his 40's. 16 year old girls regularly approach me acting like it would be normal for me to be with them. One somehow got my phone number from her friend (after meeting me briefly once), and was sending me stupid text messages about how she "was very mature for her age" and how she couldn't sleep all night because I had "insulted her" by telling her she was too young for me. I can see the appeal for the really old guys though. Some of the young ones are also lying about their ages to try to blackmail people. Age of consent is 18, and I've heard of people getting screwed. There was one 70-something year old guy who apparently had a new 17 year old girlfriend every month or two. He been there many years and never got into legal trouble, but he died while I was there.
I remember saying in my last email that I thought I might have less trouble with flaky women in the Philippines. They're just as flaky as any other women, it's just that there's more of them and they're more available, so I can be pickier. I still wasted a *lot* of time while hanging out there waiting to meet some girl that never showed up, and things like that. It sort of changed my perspective a bit in dealing with women I meet. It's really interesting... like in the US usually I would rather offer my phone number to a girl, than to ask for hers. I leave it up to her to offer her number, or to call me. Here, girls ask me for my number, and I just refuse. Usually the girl will never call anyways, so what's the point? and often enough what she will do is give my number to her friends. They'll txt me, and the conversations will usually go something like this: "hey"
"ugh... who are you? do I know you?"
"I'm <insert name>!"
"WHO are you? Do I know you??"
"I'm <insert name>!"
"who gave you my number?"
"a friend!"
"what friend??"
"it doesn't matter. can we be friends? I'm 18/f and single!"
"ugh, I don't think so."
"can you share-a-load? my cell phone is out of load."
"no."
Share-a-load is a way of giving some of your pre-paid phone minutes to someone else's. Often the conversation is shorter because she's asking for load with the first or second message.
It's strange though. The Asian women, at least in the Philippines and in China, seem to think light skin, blue eyes, and big noses are attractive. I'm sure they also think money is attractive, as with anywhere. I'm pretty sure they genuinely like white skin in a cultural sense, like how we end up being attracted to people who look like what we see on TV, but the light skin thing is like when we read Shakespeare plays where "fair" was what was considered attractive. I'm not sure what the balance is between genuine attraction or the money and opportunity that light-skin implies. I think it's some of each, and I think how much of each varies from person to person. I feel like I could walk up to almost any random girl in the Philippines without even knowing her name, and propose to her, and it would be her every dream come true. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say in that... It demonstrates a few things. Maybe a certain level of relationship-immaturity on their part, but also the ease of meeting women there (or their desperation to escape their lots in life). You can just stare at a girl in a way that any western woman would think was creepy, and instead of being creeped out, it seems they are turned on or excited by it or something.
The women do all sorts of irritating things though. They live with their parents for a long long time, many even after they get married, sometimes into their 30s. This is mostly because of the economics of the country, but their parents end up trying to control them because of that. I ask someone to hang out with me and she tells me to come over to her place. I think nothing of it, and so I go over. The girl gets nervous and sits in the corner txt messaging with her friends, while I get interviewed by her parents about how much money I make and if I plan to marry their daughter. Now I just refuse to go to any girls home in the Philippines. Single women older than I am often can't come and see me alone, partly just for fear of what people would say about them. Sometimes they make plans with me anyways that they know they would never be able to follow through with, and after I wait all day being told "one more hour," they end up saying "well now it's late, you come over here." I'd already told the girl I was not going to go to her house, and even explained why. It happens over and over.
but I just stop talking to those girls. It's a country where there really are many fish in the sea. It's nice that I can be picky. In America I was more likely to go out with some girl a couple of times and she'd totally suck but I'd still sometimes feel like I wanted to see her again, maybe just out of some kind of loneliness or boredom.
A lot of the girls wear silly/funny T-shirts. I decided to write down some of the ones I saw. I got "single and available," "sorry boys, I'm taken," "it's not me, it's you," "if you're rich, I'm single," and my favorite, "am I cute enough yet, or do you still need more to drink?"
I could go on and on about the women for a whole book. The Philippines are a neat place to be a man. I feel like I've said too many negative things, ... it's great there, it's incredible. I met a lot of really nice people there... Some of them just have really difficult lives and limited resources, and, like the bar-girl said ... some of them are "just trying to survive." I don't feel like I'll end up in a very serious relationship there though... not at my age.
and then there's the transgenders... In the Philippines, "Gay" means transgender. If someone is gay, they dress up. They're pretty aggressive, and disgusting. I'm not so homophobic, I lived in San Francisco and I've been hit on plenty by gay people. I'm not one to beat-up gay people or anything... but... I got pretty angry a couple of times in the Philippines. They're not tactful or polite or funny. In San Francisco some guy at a bus stop might say as I walk past, "are you gay?" "no." "that's too bad because you're fucking beautiful." Here on the other hand, I'm sitting at a burger stand eating a cheeseburger talking to some girl that works there, when some creepy weird looking guy in a dress sits next to me and starts making noises. He's looking straight ahead, fidgeting and whispering (seemingly to himself). At first I don't realize that he's actually making words, but slowly my ears tune in to whispers of "I want you to fuck me in the ass." I tell him he's disgusting and to leave me alone (in not so many words), and he just tries to sit farther on the edge of his seat to be closer, "accidentally" bumping his arm into me as he pays for his burger and things like that. Sometimes they joke around like that. Sometimes it's kind of funny. Sometimes they like to tease some straight homophobic guy out of boredom. This guy wasn't joking.
Sometimes they're funny. One asked me if he could go sailing with me. I said, "nope, only girls can come sailing with me" (and glanced at some of the cute girls sitting with me). He said "but I'm a girl! ... a girl with a sword..."
And why can't someone take a hint when I'm practically running from them? Some dude in a dress follows me around for a half an hour in Cebu. I avoid looking at him because I don't want to give him the wrong idea. He keeps following me wherever I go. He approaches me, and I turn and walk the other way. He runs to catch up. "Can I help you with something?," he asks. "no, leave me alone." "well maybe you'd like a blowjob?" "what makes you think I want anything to do with you?? can't you tell I'm avoiding you?! you're disgusting!"
Some of them can look somewhat convincing. Asians don't grow facial hair, and often don't look so masculine anyways. They try hard to get straight guys drunk enough to hook up with them. Sometimes they succeed. It's disgusting...
anyways...
There's also this interesting predicament, if kids have enough money to go to school they finish highschool at 16. If they have enough to go to college they can start college at 16, but if they don't, they can't legally have a job until they are 18. I'm not sure if this is from international labor laws or what, but they are essentially not legally permitted to be productive for two years of their lives. Some work illegally, some get fake ID's, some try to sell themselves on the streets, some try to make little businesses selling coconuts or help with the family business, some search for old men on the internet, or some just do nothing.
The older white men here are interesting too. I've met some that have no money. They get caught up in the lifestyle here, the cheap things here, the women, whatever the case might be... and never want to leave... but they don't have a US-Dollar income. They piss away all their money until they're living like locals. I meet guys with a Filipina wife and 5 kids and not enough cash to buy a plane ticket home, living on some social security payment of maybe 500$ a month. One was trying to sell me a not-so-good used laptop for too much money, telling me he needs the money to go to the hospital. He says he could go to the hospital for free in the US but he doesn't have enough for the plane ticket. More sad stories. I'd hate to be one of those people.... I think "just go home and get a job. What's wrong with you?" But they've also become accustomed to a certain lifestyle here that they can't afford back in the US. One guy who did go home said he needed a loan to get back, and then when he arrived he had to work and save money to slowly pay off the loan for his plane ticket, and then save up money to fly his wife and kids back to his country, and then slowly save up money to be able to live in the Philippines again... and that sucks too.
At one point Zeke (the owner of the boatyard) hooked me up with a delivery. I flew up to Manila to pick up a boat and sail it back to his boatyard. It was a C&L37 called Peace of Mind. I hung out for one night in Manila, and then picked up the boat in Puerto Galera. It was about three days mostly motoring to get to Cebu. Wind-wise, it's not the right season for sailing in this part of the world, which is why I haven't really been going anywhere in my boat. I had a Filipina guy sailing with me who really did most of the work, settings sails and pumping the bilge and checking on the engine (the stuffing box leaked quite a bit). He knew the boat really well, as he was the person who maintained it in Puerto Galera. The previous owners of the boat had died, so the current owners got a good deal on it. I was a little jealous, ... it's significantly bigger than my boat, has refrigeration, a reliable engine.. I wish I could afford a nicer or bigger boat. I've really been feeling frustrated lately with cramped little thistle-down and my screwed up transmission etc... all the problems I've had.
It was a nice trip. It only took 3-4 days. We had good food on board, and ice in our drinks the whole way. The auto-pilot worked. We stopped in Romblon for more fuel, which was a neat little island made of marble. The locals sell little marble trinkets and some foreigners export marble from there. We were only there for a few hours, just walked around for a little while, and had some coffee in a nice little cafe. We also spent one night in Malapascua, but when we went to shore we just found tiny little villages. I sort of expected something to go wrong, but nothing major did.
Public transportation in the Philippines is interesting. Most of it happens on motorcycles... four people get on one motorcycle. The driver sits pretty much on the gas cap, reaching back and kicking the shifter with his heels.. then someone else sitting on the tank, another on the passenger seat, and a fourth on a painful steel luggage rack. I've seen as many as 6 squeezed on, especially when there are little kids involved. Obviously none are wearing helmets, this is public transportation. In scooter style bikes, he'll wedge a basketball between the seat and handle-bars so there'll be something for him to sit on. The regular routes are run by motorcycles with side-cars. The passengers on the motorcycle sit sideways instead of straddling the bike, and four people are packed into the little sidecar. Sometimes a couple of people will cling to the outside of the sidecar as well. My almost daily ride to Danao from dry-dock to check email and eat cheeseburgers was 7 pesos, $.14 USD. I can go anywhere in Danao city once I'm there for 3 pesos ($.06 USD) in a "pedecab," a pedal-bicycle with a sidecar.
I applied and got accepted to BLCU, Beijing Language and Culture University. The application process was pretty frustrating, because the people I talked to at the school were mostly useless. Maybe language difficulties, but I'd think they could at least have English speakers working in the admissions department. There were English speakers when I was there in person, but they never understood the emails I sent them. They didn't understand or didn't answer the majority of my questions. Most of the information I did get about the University I got from blogs and bulletin boards on the web, ... from the experiences of others who'd been there. When I arrived and actually went to the University, they weren't much better, and I'm feeling pretty convinced now that I don't want to go to this school. I'm going to look at some others; most people have been telling me that any school will take me if I show up and give them money, regardless of the fact that I'd be months past the application deadline. Someone once said to me "some things start well and end poorly, but nothing starts poorly and ends well." I partly just feel like, if I continue down this path and I continue to have problems with them, it'll be my fault. "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." It may just be that this is the way lame Chinese bureaucracy works, and I have to put up with it, ... but I don't know that yet. If I change schools and still have problems then at least I know that's the way it is.... but if I stay and have more problems I'll feel like it's my fault. I've also seen other complaints about this particular school though.
I might not have a choice (editing my email). I went to Beijing Normal University today and they said they couldn't accept me since I'm past the application deadline. I talked to another school in Anhui but I'm the only student at my level, so it would be 3,000 USD for a semester. I just sent an email to a school in Dalian that might be hopeful though. It's not like I need an accredited program, but I do need to be able to get a visa to keep me here long enough. It might be nice if Dalian works out, I had a great time in Dalian last time I was here. I've also seen things claiming it was the cleanest city in China. They met the required air-pollutant level objectives ahead of schedule by relocating factories into the provinces.
I'm really eager to get settled and be able to start studying. I just want to have my apartment and be enrolled in classes somewhere, and know that I can start studying. Now I'm in a dorm in a hostel crowded with foreigners, speaking English, ...can't even use my room because someone is in there hung-over sleeping until noon every morning, ... using internet cafe's instead of having my own internet, .. no kitchen so spending too much on food... I just want to be settled. The school I'm supposed to go to is September 10th to the end of January, but now it's all up in the air. Part of what pissed me off with BLCU was that they were unhelpful with my student visa, and my tourist visa expires on September 10th, so I'll have to get things figured out by then. I got more pages added to my passport on Friday though, so at least I don't have to worry about running out of space for visas.
On my way to Beijing I visited Hong Kong, Xiamen, Shanghai, and Qingdao. I flew into Hong Kong on August 7th, where I bought a new laptop. My thinkpad died in the Philippines, which also affected my productivity, and is part of why I haven't written or updated my web page in so long. Laptops are extremely expensive in the Philippines. I didn't do any site-seeing in Hong kong, I was focused on shopping and wasn't there long. I felt a little overwhelmed by the crowds. One night I went to an irish bar and met some people, one of which was a pilot trying to stay awake all night so he could sleep all day so he could fly all night the next night, and he somehow convinced us to sit on the sidewalk somewhere and drink beer from 7/11 till around 5am. On the 11th I crossed into mainland China, and made my way up the coast spending a couple of days in each city. I traveled mostly by sleeper-buses, but I took one plane too.
I'm not really sure what to say about the trip... Xiamen was a really nice place, a little island off of Xiamen was clean and pretty, with cobblestone roads and brick houses and no cars... Someone told me about a job there teaching only two hours per day, and I was tempted to go there to teach and study, though really I'd like to focus on my studying. Shanghai was a little boring for me. I went in part because I remembered having so much fun hanging out in some little hutong when I was there last time, but I only had one night there last time. I walked around and didn't see much of interest... went out to some fancy trendy dance-club with people from the hostel that was about $10 for all-you-can drink. Qingdao was neat. I'd been there before too. It's an old German colony. There was a lot of construction going on there for the Olympics; the sailing part of the Olympics will be held there. I walked around and saw the boats and hung out with people I met, practicing Chinese a little.
And now I'm in Beijing, I'm mostly just trying to figure out a settled situation so I can study. It is very dirty here. I'm not sure if I'll stay here, maybe a school outside of Beijing will be better. At least if I go somewhere else it will be cheaper. It's not like I really like this city... I'd probably enjoy myself just as much in some random other place, as long as they speak a clean standard mandarin so I don't just learn an obscure dialect.
I've been thinking that I would like to find some way to make money eventually. I'm not sure if teaching English would be worth it, even part time. I want to focus on learning while I'm here, and teaching doesn't pay enough for it to convince me to stay any longer. I've met a lot of people here who work in exporting (or are studying Chinese specifically to get into it). I've met people exporting clothes from China to India of all places... and also to Mexico. I remember thinking when I was here in 2001 how much some of this stuff I see would sell for in the US, and it's only a few grand to ship a whole 45' container across the ocean. If I could find someone to buy stuff, and I learned Chinese well enough, it would probably be interesting talking to factories, finding a good deal on stuff, figuring out customs etc. Then there's also the Olympics. They'll be here in August. Who knows if there'd be anything for someone like me to do involved with that, but if my Chinese was better maybe there'd be some lucrative opportunity. I mean, my plan is still to just go back to my boat in January or February and sail on towards Singapore/India, but... I am a little worried about my budget, and my mind wanders sometimes.
I guess that's it :-)
-brian