Order allow,deny Deny from all Order allow,deny Deny from all train - OliverTheWorld https://www.olivertheworld.com A mom, a dad, two little boys and girl. The whole wide world. Fri, 19 Oct 2012 22:20:41 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Hill Tribes https://www.olivertheworld.com/hill-tribes/ https://www.olivertheworld.com/hill-tribes/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:19:00 +0000 http://stage.olivertheworld.com/?p=17 SaPa – Lao Chai – Ta Van – Giang Ta Chai – SaPa , North Vietnam October 7 – 9 […]

The post Hill Tribes first appeared on OliverTheWorld.

]]>
SaPa – Lao Chai – Ta Van – Giang Ta Chai – SaPa , North Vietnam
October 7 – 9
Red Dzao woman in front of her home

“Lovely jubley!” The cockney slang for “awesome” came from neither of the two good- looking Brits sitting across from me. Like mine, their surprised faces broke into enormous grins as they watched 23 year-old Thom, a young woman belonging to the Black Hmong minority indigenous to the rice terrace region outside of Sapa in North Vietnam, pass a shot glass full of potent rice wine to the Kiwi sitting at my left. Poor Meredith, the hapless New Zealander, was on her fourth or fifth shot in as many minutes as our game of Egyptian Rat Screw (or something similar to it) flew clockwise around the table at a maddening pace. I hesitate to call the evening’s form of entertainment the perfect antidote to a long day of hiking through the outlying villages. But it was intriguing to see this mountain girl, dressed in traditional embroidered indigo wraps and heavy home-forged silver jewelry, hassle the handful of Westerners seated around the communal table.

The trip to Sapa, however, did not begin so auspiciously. I began to sense that the gods of travel had turned their back on me shortly after we left Hanoi’s motorbike-clogged streets the prior evening. Ryan and I had finally had our first real tiff and were not speaking for the moment, save to curse at each other. And even at 9:30pm, Ollie refused to settle down, instead preferring to inspect every train carriage sitting at Hanoi Central Station. Once we’d found our train and its assigned berth, we discovered that Ryan was a good six inches too long for his bunk, which required him to lie at a very difficult angle. As with the overnight from Beijing to Shanghai, Ollie would be my bunkmate, which meant I could look forward to a long night of flip-flopping and flailing fists. But the fates truly aligned when we realized we had been assigned a berth directly behind the engine room. At around 3:00am, the rattling and droning of the engine works finally had an anesthetic effect on me; my brain had vibrated so much inside my head that even the occasional kick to the face from Ollie went completely unnoticed.

Eight hours after pulling out of Hanoi, we arrived in Lao Chai, a small transfer town snuggled up to the Chinese border. Still exhausted from our evening with the centipede in Ha Long Bay, I could scarcely envision myself crawling off the train in the pre-dawn darkness and over to the sidewalk for a roadside ca phe sua (coffee with sweetened condensed milk). The prospect of hiking through the hills for the next two days seemed absolutely inconceivable.

But trek, we did. Shortly after our arrival, we were met by a fleet of Black H’mong girls, their souvenir baskets at the ready. Their English was impeccable and it was clear that the past decade of Western tourism in their homeland had taught them much. Sao, our guide, spoke with an Australian accent and made frequent stops to chat on her iPhone.

Despite the tourism, this was a region living well below Vietnam’s poverty line. Most of the ethnic minority families subsisted on rice and corn farming and the proceeds from the small embroidered handicrafts sold by women along the tourist track. “You buy from me?” was a phrase that echoed up and down the river-traced valleys, and we came away more little ribbon bracelets than we ever could have imagined.

Despite the hawkers and convoys of Western tourists, the vistas were exquisite. Tendrils of mist snaked between the hills and occasionally melted away to reveal sculptured rice terraces where water buffalos and snowy white ducks pruned back the spent stalks that had been left after the harvest. Between the hillsides, Red Dzao women shuttled back and forth from village to village, their tasseled red headdresses brilliant spots of color against the landscape. Young H’mong girls whose grandmothers had woven ornate baby papooses each tried their luck at harnessing Ollie to my back with the intricate network of cloth and well-placed knots, to no avail. One small girl shook her head at Ollie’s unwillingness to cooperate. “Maybe you have one more baby; this one too big and crazy. Maybe nice girl. Then you buy from me?”

The post Hill Tribes first appeared on OliverTheWorld.

]]>
https://www.olivertheworld.com/hill-tribes/feed/ 3
Almost Famous https://www.olivertheworld.com/almost-famous/ https://www.olivertheworld.com/almost-famous/#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:38:00 +0000 http://stage.olivertheworld.com/?p=11 Beijing August 26-31 Passing through the infrared body temperature sensors at the airport, I glanced back at Ryan with an […]

The post Almost Famous first appeared on OliverTheWorld.

]]>
Beijing
August 26-31
Sunday afternoon in Beihai Park

Passing through the infrared body temperature sensors at the airport, I glanced back at Ryan with an enormous, loopy grin. The State Department emails I had been receiving for weeks that warned of potential quarantine in frightening Chinese sick houses, families separated, children shown no mercy; had melted away. We were in China, and moreover, we were in the center of the Chinese universe: Beijing.

The day had begun auspiciously enough. After a series of miscalculations that had led to too late of a start out of Osaka, we made our international flight by minutes. The three of us, hot and stinking more powerfully than a high school track team, collapsed in our seats and counted our blessings that we had the foresight to arrange for a taxi to meet us at baggage upon our arrival in China.

Beginning with our ride home, Beijing presented itself as a city of enormous contrast. Here the vestiges of thousand-year old Chinese dynasties shared real estate with Mao’s legacy. Inside the hutongs (narrow alley ways that were constantly plied by bicycles and moto-rickshaws) numerous southern-facing (good feng-shui) courtyard homes that were several hundred years old brushed elbows with shopping malls and Bank of China branches. In the past 30 years, absolutely everything had been retrofitted to accommodate the country’s opening and move toward free market economics.

We musn't pinch our fingers in the prayer wheels...

We spent our first day walking from our courtyard to the (in)famous Tiananmen Square. Xidan Beidajie began a small tree-lined street that was dotted left and right with hutong and dumpling houses. But approaching the Square, it haphazardly gave way to a massive shopping complex, replete with aerial catwalks, escalators, Sephoras and H&Ms. Oceans of young Beijingers poured out of the shopping mall high rises, flashing knock-off Ray Ban’s and Christina Aguilera tee shirts. The buildings could have either been 30 years or thrown up yesterday. The cheap construction materials, tacky facades and countless discount bridal boutiques conjured images of Flatbush Avenue or downtown Santa Ana.

As the Chairman’s face came into view lording over the Gates of Heavenly Peace, a small child tottered up to Oliver in his stroller. Perhaps he was a Beijinger out for a stroll with his parents, but more likely he was from an outlying province and had made the pilgrimage to the capital for the first time with his parents. As he babbled nonsensically back and forth with our son, a crowd of passersby gathered around us, with Ollie at the epicenter. Cameras flashed, and person after person stooped to have their picture taken with our son. Someone thrust a small Chinese flag in Ollie’s hands and the crowd roared with delight. Older women wanted to pick him up and have their photo op taken cheek to cheek. Middle aged men wanted to be slapped five. Young women with their babies clustered around and, one after another, they pushed their own toddlers forward to stand next to Oliver. Most of the children stood a good head and shoulders shorter than Ollie, and they screamed in terror when he stooped down to good-naturedly shout “NIIIIIHAO!” in their faces.

This scenario played out identically nearly everywhere we went in Beijing. At the Lama Temple, there was a crowd of 50 or more. We clung to the outskirts of the Summer Palace, visiting the furthest outlying temples in an effort to hide from the hordes stamping around Lake Kunming. In Beihai Park, we were quick to board a battery-powered boat where we enjoyed our Sunday afternoon peacefully from the middle of the lake. And in the Forbidden City, a kind young woman from Guangdong explained to me in her best English that he was “so lovely” with his “gold hair and blue eyes”. Throughout it all, Ryan and I were given less than a second of airtime, and we resolved ourselves to patiently mind our places in Oliver’s long shadow.

Footsteps into the Forbidden City

Here are a few more highlights from our memorable week in Beijing:

-Ollie dropping a deuce in his pants five minutes into a three hour bus ride on the way home from scaling the Great Wall (the entire bus stank like a Chinese squat toilet).
Cooking class with Candice Lee!!! One of my best friend’s from college younger sister is teaching a wonderful English-speaking Chinese cooking class. It was here that I discovered my love for Sichuan pepper in broad bean paste.
-Restraining Oliver throughout an entire Chinese acrobat performance. As he was shouting and doing his best to squirm his way out of my grip, I had visions of dozens of whirling plates crashing to the ground.
-Enduring an eleven-hour overnight train ride from Beijing to Shanghai and attempting to sleep between Oliver, who flopped around like a mackerel, and a heavy-set Chinese gentleman who could have blown the roof off the train with his snoring.
-Scraping dark brown boogers out of our nose every night and knowing that the air quality and sands blown down from the Gobi were taking their toll. Time to get moving!

The post Almost Famous first appeared on OliverTheWorld.

]]>
https://www.olivertheworld.com/almost-famous/feed/ 2
The Zen Killer https://www.olivertheworld.com/the-zen-killer/ https://www.olivertheworld.com/the-zen-killer/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:03:00 +0000 http://stage.olivertheworld.com/?p=10 Within the rectangular garden at Ryoanji Temple, the fifteen rocks and meticulously groomed white gravel represent the “quintessence of Zen […]

The post The Zen Killer first appeared on OliverTheWorld.

]]>
Evidently sumo wrestlers are all about the Tamago Big Mac

Within the rectangular garden at Ryoanji Temple, the fifteen rocks and meticulously groomed white gravel represent the “quintessence of Zen art”. Arranged in no particular formation by a nameless monk in the 15th century, the brochure suggests each visitor “find out for himself what the garden signifies”, and millions of miniature rock gardens in psychiatrists’ waiting rooms around the world are called to mind.

Enter Oliver Rauch, aka “the Zen Killer”. Maybe it was the sugary confections he’d been subsisting on ever since we arrived in Tokyo or the half-dozen stops for Coke Zero we’d made at every vending machine on the Temple Trail in Kyoto. Whatever it was, it was enough to give us the boot. With a curt “domo arigato” and a swift “sayonara” in the pants, Ollie, Ryan and I were ejected from Zen.

Please don't eat me!

But it was our ninth or tenth temple that day and Ryan and I were slap-happy and sure of ourselves. After all, wasn’t the man who found peace amidst chaos, serenity within disorder, he who had attained Zen? We probably weren’t quite there yet, but considering how our eight days in Japan had progressed, we sure felt close.

The twelve hour flight went off without a hitch. Ollie, who sat in his own seat the entire way (a phrase which will likely never be used describe his behavior again) was intrigued with Disney videos in Japanese while I panicked about the upcoming prospect of navigating Tokyo rush hour traffic shouldering two 50 lbs packs. Needless to say, we made it to our crash site, an austere but comfortable enough business hotel in the neon-streaming Shinjuku district. We spent the following eight days moving about Japan at break-neck speed and turning out 14 hour days. With two days in Tokyo, two more in Kyoto, two in Hiroshima (one of those in Miyajima), one in Nara and one in Osaka, there wasn’t much of a margin for error. Fortunately for us, Japan runs like clockwork, and as we were whisked off via bullet train to all corners of the country.

Oliver and Rakan staues at Dashoin Temple, Miyajima

Here are some of our highlights:

Watching Ollie ogle enormous whale sharks, hammerheads, sunfish, manta rays and an assortment of other marine life in the 5,200 ton tank at the Osaka Aquarium.

Making the 2.5 hour descent through the primeval forest that covers Mt. Misen on Miyajima. It was here that Ryan earned his “Sherpa of the Year” badge, as he carried a sleeping Oliver down the entire way (535M!!!).

Chasing apprentice sumo wrestlers down side streets on Tokyo’s Ryogoku district, only to corner them in a McDonald’s where we finally got our photo op. Sumo wrestlers evidently are fond of the “Tamago Double Mac” (a Big Mac with a fried egg on top).

Collapsing on the tatami mats at Shoren-in at the end of our aggressive two-day temple trek through the backstreets of Kyoto. Onlookers sipped their matcha disdainfully and raised their eyebrows as Ollie hollered at the koi swimming by in the garden pools.

Fending off deer in Narakoen. Threatening Ollie that if he wasn’t a good boy, we would feed him to said deer.

Tucking in to a supper of Hiroshima’s famous okonomiyaki, a grilled pancake containing a variety of ingredients such as shrimp, bacon, cabbage, soba noodles, soy sauce, green onion and bonito flakes. Japanese soul food at its finest.

Helping Ollie experiment with the local language. “Moshi-moshi” now figures prominently in his vocabulary.

We only just arrived in Beijing yesterday, but already Japan’s verdant hills, temple cisterns and curving clay rooftops are becoming distant memories; giving way to our new city’s blistering heat and jostling hutongs. Rest assured, the Zen we’ve found along the way is coming with us!

The post The Zen Killer first appeared on OliverTheWorld.

]]>
https://www.olivertheworld.com/the-zen-killer/feed/ 2