Run the equator

Troubleshooting the charging system

2010-11-15T22:14:00.000-08:00

On a Thursday evening the dash indicator lights started flickering while I was braking. The next day, as I was driving home, the radio started going in and out, and the blinkers were having a hard time clicking, the dash lights faded; the car became plagued by a host of electrical issues in a short time. I had just pulled off the highway in a residential street and the car died suddenly; no sputtering, no jerking, the engine just shut off.

I came back two hours later and – surprise! – I was able to start the car and drive (without headlights, to conserve the battery charge) the few remaining blocks to my house where it died again, just as I pulled into the garage.

Considering that the car had shut off while driving, when the alternator should supply all power, and that it started later again on battery alone, I was pretty certain this was an alternator problem not a battery problem.

The question was how to I tell whether this was caused a broken alternator or a broken voltage regulator. The two components work together: the alternator produces the current that powers the car and recharges the battery when the engine runs, while the voltage regulator controls the field current that activates the electromagnets located on the rotor inside the alternator. If the alternator fails there is no current to power the car’s electric components and recharge the battery. If the voltage regulator breaks, it may fail to limit the current generated by the alternator and melt the battery or it won’t apply current to the rotor’s electromagnets, which in turn won’t generate current when the rotor spins (the beauty of 10th grade physics…) Many things can go wrong with this system. Here’s a link to a more detailed technical description: http://www.familycar.com/Classroom/charging.htm

Tests that indicate which component has failed exist but you’d have to start with a fully charged battery, and mine was dead (it measured 11.3V, which is as good as dead). The flickering of the dash lights usually indicates that the brushes of the voltage regulator, which supply the current that magnetizes the alternator rotor on contact with the rotor’s slip rings, have worn out and make intermittent contact. Replacing the voltage regulator is an easy job on the Bosch alternators used in E30 cars; the VR is mounted on the back of the alternator with two screws. The regulator can be replaced without removing the alternator. The battery must be disconnected first.

I decided to replace the voltage regulator and assumed the alternator was still good; it was unlikely that both would fail at the same time. Besides, the VR is much easier to replace that the alternator and cheaper too: only $20 at PelicanPart.com, whereas a rebuilt alternator can cost up to $200.

It turned out my assumption was correct; the voltage regulator brushes had worn down. The brushes were 3 and 4 mm in length, respectively; the shorter of them was covered with black soot. The VR should be replaced when the brushes are down to 5mm length.

Here’s a photo of the new and old parts, side by side.

My alternator may not be feeling very well either. I checked the voltage at the battery while the engine was revved up to 1500 RPM and it didn’t exceed 13.6V; it should go up to 14.5V. This is probably a sign that one of the alternator’s internal circuits is broken or burned; the whole thing is getting close to the end of its useful life. Here’s a new project to think of soon.

Front Subframe and Oil Pan Gasket

2010-09-25T10:28:00.000-07:00

The oil pan has been leaking for a long time, leaving clusters of dark spots on my garage floor. Sooner or later I had to replace the oil pan gasket, so I bought a new one. That was a year ago. In the meanwhile I read about the procedure on books, web sites and forums. The more I read, the more I realized this was going to be a tough job. The oil pan on the M20 engine is difficult to remove without doing a lot of additional work like removing the subframe or raising the engine. Because of limited clearance you may need to drop the oil pump in the pan before being able to remove the pan; then you would have to mount it back on with the pan around it. Not an encouraging prospect. Finally the opportunity presented itself to take on a bold goal: I had decided to replace the front subframe as well because one of the tabs that the stabilizer bar attaches to was broken, causing a very annoying rattle when the stabilizer bar banged against the subframe.

I didn’t have to buy a new subframe for this, but at that moment I felt that instead of looking for someone who could weld a new custom tab to it, I would rather buy a new one. I found a new subframe on eBay, sold by a family dealership that was trying to get rid of some stock parts for past models and negotiated it to $350. By comparison Bavarian Auto sells one for $541.95. A waste of money anyway, you will say. Yes, disposable income leads to unjustified expenses.

The decision was easier now: I had a justification to remove the subframe so I didn’t have to remove the oil pan the hard way. In the process I would not only fix the leak, but also stop the stabilizer bar rattle. To remove the subframe I had to support the engine from above, so I bought an engine support bar from Harbor Freight for $50. I decided to replace the oil pump as well. I haven’t heard reports of oil pumps breaking, but this was an opportunity to make sure everything in the oil pan was new. I certainly wasn’t going to enjoy repeating this procedure if the pump ever needed replacement.

Click here for the full set of pictures. Click on thumbnails for a bigger version, with notes that indicate the location of various components.

Preparation (Day 1, Wednesday)

As usual, start with raising the front and removing the front wheels.

Remove the 17mm bolts that secure the control arm “lollipop” bracket to the body.

Remove the 13mm bolts and release the brackets that hold the stabilizer bar to the subframe (the bar will now be resting on the control arms). I only had one of those left, on the passenger’s side. The one on the driver’s side was missing.

Install engine support bar above engine; hook it to support loop bracket.

Remove the oil protective plate for better visibility under the engine and access to the oil pan. The plate is held by some metal screws and plastic fasteners.

Remove oil drain plug and drain oil overnight. Remove oil filter. In fact I should have drained the oil before raising the car, because some oil collected at the rear end of the pan and came out pouring on the floor when I removed the pan later.

Remove the front subframe (Day 2, Thursday)

Detach the steering rack from subframe by removing the two 15mm bolts. You will need replacement self-locking nuts. Move the steering rack out of the way.

Remove the 17mm nuts that hold the motor mounts to subframe. Lift the engine just enough to make sure it’s securely attached to the support bar.

To prevent accidents, support the subframe with a jack before detaching it. Then remove the 4 17mm retaining bolts and lower the jack. You may need to hit the subframe with a hammer or mallet if it’s stuck to the chassis.

When I removed the subframe, the driver’s side motor mount fell, which it wasn’t supposed to happen. I realized that the rubber part had separated from the upper metal plate, which meant that the engine was just resting on the mount, susceptible to vibrations and shifts in position. This would not be enough to get the engine to fall off the mount, but enough to cause unpleasant vibrations and clunking. Unfortunately I had not planned to replace the mounts so I had to order them and wait over the weekend.

Support control arms after dropping the subframe, so the strut mounts and tie rods won’t have to bear all the weight.

Remove the 22mm nuts that hold the control arm ball joints to the subframe. This is difficult to do with the subframe in place because the space is very limited. Removing the nut was much easier after the subframe was dropped. Take the subframe out of the way – I had to hit the ball joint bolts with a hammer to get them unstuck; be careful not to damage the threads.

Remove the oil pan (Day 3, Friday)

Disconnect oil level sensor connector (at the base of the alternator), remove dip stick. Remove the ground wire attached to the oil pan (I should have done this when I removed the sensor but I missed it; it was much harder to remove from the detached pan)

Remove 4 hex-head bolts (13mm) and the 5 Torx bolts (one E14, the others E12) that secure the bellhousing plate cover; remove the cover. Bentley says there are 4 Torx bolts; in reality there are 5 on mine, the leftmost bolt was very hard to remove. Make a note of the positions of the various bolts – they have different lengths.

Remove the 25 10mm retaining bolts that hold the oil pan to the engine block. There should be enough clearance now, with the subframe removed, to move the oil pan out of the way before dropping the pump. Oil will flow!

Remove the three mounting bolts and drop the oil pump - more oil will flow.

Scrape off the rest of the gasket and clean mating surfaces.

Install oil pan (Day 4, Saturday)

Install new oil pump, torque bolts to spec. (all torque values taken from the Bentley)

Install new gasket (I had a cork gasket), and place oil pan in position. This was a delicate operation. Once the pan fits you have to keep it in place with one hand while screwing in a few of the bolts with the other hand and make sure the whole thing does not shift. I used “Gasgacinch”, a sealant which I bought from O’reilly, on both mating surfaces. I had to shift the pan slightly once as some of the bolts wouldn’t fit, but fortunately it didn’t seem to drag the gasket too much around. There’s only one place where the gasket comes out about 1 mm.

Install all bolts in a star pattern, torque to 8 ft.lb. I think I may have applied more torque than necessary.

Install the bell-housing cover (no torque specified)

Re-attach ground wire and connect oil sensor connector.

Install oil drain plug and washer. Install new oil filter, put dipstick in Fill engine with oil.

Install subframe (Day 5, Tuesday)

I had to wait a couple of days for the new motor mounts to arrive.

Fit control arm center ball-joint bolts through the corresponding socket holes in the subframe; torque new self-locking nuts to spec. Keep control arms supported on wood blocks. I had to raise the subframe and prop it against the body, and then I pressed the ball joint from below with a jack because the ball joint on the right side was spinning around its axis when I tried to tighten the nut.

To be able to unlock the nut that secures the mount at the top to the engine support bracket I had to remove the brackets altogether. There was no easy way to get to that nut and wield a wrench in the limited space, especially on the passenger’s side where the charcoal canister hangs ½ inch above the nut. this could be avoided by removing the heat shield on the passenger's side and the charcoal canister on the driver's side.

Remove the nuts and drop the mounts, or whatever's left of them - in my case the driver’s side mount was broken; the top plate had detached from the rubber part. Re-attach motor mounts brackets to the engine block.

Attach the new mounts to the engine brackets, and tighten the top nut loosely. Raise subframe using a jack until it fits in position, the bolt guides match the bolt holes in the body, and the motor mounts and hood catch brackets fit the subframe's notches. I thought I needed a helper to wiggle the engine back and forth to fit the mounts, but this ended up being delicate incremental work: crank the jack one step, shove the subframe a bit, turn mounts to get them closer to the notches, push engine a tad to the left, repeat. Make sure you push the steering rack back in its location as you raise the subframe.

Bolt subframe on the body. No torque specified in the Bentley. Lower the engine completely; Remove engine support bar.

Tighten the motor mounts nuts, top and down. The top ones are difficult. I tightened them by hand as far as I could, then I used a 17mm short wrench to get them tight. No chance to tighten them to spec.

Attach steering rack to subframe, use new self-locking nuts.

Attach stabilizer bar to subframe. It wasn’t easy to attach the new bracket that had been missing before. I had to detach the link that connected it to the control arm first.

Bolt lollipops back on to chassis.
Wheels. Done.

The net effect: no leak so far, no oil drops on the garage floor.

Before replacing the broken motor mount I used to feel a strong vibration propagated through the steering column to the steering wheel at around 55-60mph. Changing the broken mount made this vibration go away.

Time

As you can see from the outline of this article I took my time. I was on vacation; I would wake up late, work for a few hours, then I'd take a break for the rest of the day. If I hadn't had to wait for the motor mounts to arrive the whole procedure would have taken less time. I believe you should be able to do this in one weekend, if you have all the parts and tools ready and you wake up early. It's hard work though; my back and hands would hurt after a few hours of constantly getting under the car and out again, and ratcheting with my hands in the air while lying down.

Cost

Not including various shipping charges

Subframe: $350
Motor mounts: 2x$52 = $104
Oil pan gasket: $8
Oil pump: $143.25
Various self-locking nuts: $10, maybe
Gasket sealant: $5
Engine support bar: $50
Small tools that I didn't already own: $15

The story of a rattle

2010-03-12T21:36:00.000-08:00

A few months ago my ’88 eta started making these rattling sounds when going over bumps. It seemed to come from somewhere in the rear drivetrain. Not all bumps would cause it, and not all the time. It was more likely to happen on certain stretches of road, or at particular turns on my daily commute. Sometimes I’d go over the nastiest cracks in the road and nothing would happen. The clunk didn’t become worse with time, but it was always there.

I started to investigate; a few times I jacked up the rear, got under the car and checked every moving part. Nothing dangled, no parts had any play when shaken; nothing would make that sound. I looked at the calipers, the brake hoses, the brake pads (rattling brake pads are not unheard of) but nothing budged. I adjusted the park brake shoes (I had to do it anyway since the hand brake had become weak) but that didn’t help either. I checked the springs and shocks and the shock mounts; they were ok. I stripped the interior bare, looking for some dangling parts. I started questioning my prior repair jobs… maybe I hadn’t put the sub-frame back properly when I changed the sub-frame bushings? Everything seemed fine.

Last weekend I decided to finally abandon the assumption that the rattle was coming from the rear. Sounds can be misleading, they echo through the chassis; what I would perceive as coming from the rear could as well be caused by something dangling in the front.

I looked at the front calipers, the tie rods, the control arms… nothing moved here either, sideways or vertically, more than expected. Then, as I looked at the sway bar it all became suddenly clear.

A few months ago, when I worked on the front suspension, I noticed that the small pierced tab at the end of the sub-frame, which anchors the bracket that holds the sway bar, was broken and missing on the left side. The support bracket was gone too. The thick rubber piece was still around the bar, resting against the sub-frame. It looked nasty, but nothing that needed to be addressed immediately. That same rubber piece had shifted and the sway bar was resting against the bare metal of the cross-member. That’s what caused the rattle. Normally, the sway bar and the sub-frame would touch, but when driving over certain bumpy stretches or on grooved pavement, the wheel would move up and down, pulling the sway bar which is attached to the spindle with a link. Sometimes this movement would make the bar hit against the sub-frame. Rattle on!

I pushed the rubber piece back in its place, between the sub-frame and the sway bar, and I haven’t heard the rattle since. That’s a temporary solution; it’s about time to spend money and time for an actual repair job. Since I have to remove the sub-frame, I may as well do some other jobs there… like changing that leaky oil pan gasket.

At least I won’t be obsessing over this one anymore.

Bonus chatter: a new subframe costs about $500.

Replacement of the BMW E30 rear subframe bushings

2009-12-17T09:32:00.000-08:00

The rear axle carrier – also called cross-member or sub-frame – is attached to the chassis with a pair of sturdy bushings made of metal and rubber. Over time the rubber in these bushings weakens. Some bushings break, others merely sag. The overall effect is that the whole rear of the car feels a bit loose, as if it were moving sideways on its own when you turn. Shifting may result in a loud “clunk” when the clutch is pressed; momentum pushes the chassis forward while the final drive is suddenly decoupled; since the bushings are weak the subframe will jolt and bang against the chassis.

My car showed three different symptoms of mechanical failure in the drive train:

A loud clunk when I shifted while accelerating, especially from first to second gear, louder when moving uphill – presumably caused by front-to-back play in the bushings. Let’s call this “the big clunk”. This one felt like the car was coming apart.
A sudden bang when driving over certain small bumps or cracks in the road – probably caused by up-down bushing play that makes the subframe hit the supporting plate or the chassis
A weak dangling sound when pressing the clutch, as if something were swinging side to side and banging against metal. Not sure what this sound is caused by. I can hear it even if the “big clunk” doesn’t occur. Let’s call this the “little clunk”.

Click on each picture to see a larger version and access the image notes. Click here for the whole set (contains some additional photos not included in this article).

Sagging subframe

A good indication of the condition of the bushings is the gap between the cross-member and the support plate. If the bushing bottom touches the support plate, the bushing is worn out. The rubber that holds the bushing’s central hollow rod anchored to the outer sleeve weakens, making the subframe sag.

Preparation

Normally I raise the rear and place the jack stands under the crossmember. Since you will be lowering the crossmember, the jack stands have to go somewhere else - the jacking point is right in front of the subframe support plate. The standard jack stands fit there, but the body rests on them in a rather precarious position. Maybe this support point is meant to work with a special BMW stand or a lift, neither of which can be found in my tiny garage.

The exhaust pipe is merely an inch or so under the subframe. Release the support brackets that hold the muffler and lower the exhaust to make place for the subframe. I am not sure this step helped at all.

To create more space below the subframe, unhook the differential from its support bracket and lower the final drive (which is attached to the subframe with bolts). You should support it with a jack or blocks of wood. I forgot to support it for some time but luckily no damage occurred.

I thought that by lowering the trailing arm I would gain some additional space for the subframe, so I unscrewed and removed the shock absorber bolt. In retrospect this turned out to be unnecessary. I did not do the same on the right side and the subframe dropped just fine. Support the trailing arm if you chose to go through with this step.

Give a good tug with a large wrench or breaker bar to the 22mm nut on the subframe bolt to loosen it. I had to use my large torque wrench for this; the nut wouldn’t budge with the regular ratcheting wrench. Support the subframe with a floor jack. Remove the 6mm Allen bolts that hold the support plate to the chassis. They come out easy, together with the reinforcement piece.

Remove the subframe nut and the support plate.

Worn out bushing

The rubber insides of the bushing look quite worn. Start banging on the bolt with a mallet or a hammer until it slides up the shaft. This part wasn't easy; it took a lot of hitting, sweating and cursing. There wasn't much space between the bottom of the car and the garage floor so I couldn't take a wide swing at it. It finally budged a tiny bit, then a little more until finally I was able to push it out with a screwdriver and the tap of a mallet. Some write-ups tell you to cover the top of the bolt inside the car with a towel so it doesn't fly against the ceiling when you hit it. This bolt never flew anywhere - it moved bit by bit with every blow.

Subframe lowered

Release the jack and lower the subframe. It didn't go down too far; I had to push and pull and fight for every inch.

There wasn’t enough space to squeeze the bushing tool between the subframe and the chassis, so I decided to unhook the stabilizer bar from the trailing arm to gain some additional room. In retrospect, just like with the shock, I am not convinced this step was necessary.

The tool

Subframe bushing tool parts

I bought the subframe bushing tool on eBay for $150. It seems to be part of a multi-model bushing tool kit code-named BMW2336, made by a manufacturing company called Sir Tools and sold by resellers like Zdmak and Technictool, for about $300. This kit is no longer for sale; it has been superseded by tool set BMW3026. The tool I bought is limited to the parts that are needed for the E30.

Since the parts did not come with instructions I emailed both Sir Tools and Zdmak asking for a courtesy copy (it was quite obvious how it worked, but nonetheless). Sir Tools answered a week later and actually sent me a copy by email.

Instruction sheet

These are the tool directions as found on the internet. The removal steps are accurate but the installation instructions go against common sense. In order for the tool to push the bushing in the subframe when the bolt is tightened, the top piece (#R) must sit on top of the collar (#J) which sits on top of the subframe. The instructions say something else. They must have been written by someone who has never seen the underside of a car.

I could have tried to build a similar tool myself, but I just felt like spending the money this time (unexpected bonus at work helped too). Building a tool requires some pipe fittings and caps, a few nuts, a long threaded bolt and a bit of drilling. The sizes of pipe fittings must be carefully chosen to ensure they match the subframe cavity. You can find examples of home-made tools here and here.

Removal

Place sleeve (B) over bottom plate (A) and ring (C) on top. Slide bolt through plate. Grease the threads well.

Tool in place for removal
View from the top

The ring pushes against the bottom of the subframe “cup” that holds the bushing. The bolt is threaded through the bushing and screwed onto the cap, which sits on top of the bushing. The vertical notches in the “cap” must line up with the dimples in the subframe, otherwise the cap won't slide down when the bolt is tightened.

The ring is designed so that the metal collar at the bottom of the bushing can slide through it in the sleeve, while its two opposing protrusions push against the subframe.

The tool must be perfectly centered - if it's not, it may slip on one side and the ring bites through the subframe exterior coating - which is what happened to me. I re-centered the tool and it stayed in position this time.

The actual removal of the bushing only took a couple of minutes.

The inner metal cylinder of the old bushing is higher up in the sleeve than the new Lemforder bushing. This is because the rubber around it has weakened. This is probably the original 21-year-old bushing.

Installation

Tool set up for installation
View from the top

Set up the tool for installation. The top cap piece sits on the collar which rests on the subframe. The top of the bushing will pass through the collar and go into the cap. The slits at the bottom of the cap engage the tracks that jut out of the collar, so the cap doesn't move when the bolt is tightened. The threaded bolt must go through the chassis hole where the knurled bolt was; otherwise the bushing can't rise in the subframe cup.

Installation

The rubber is lubed with a very thin solution of water and dish soap. It evaporates almost instantaneously. The vertical groove in the bushing must be aligned with the dimples in the sleeve of the subframe.

Remove the tool. Raise the subframe. Don't forget to put the washer back on top of the bushing before raising the subframe.

Done!

To make the knurled bolt drop all the way down and lodge itself in the chassis I had to push and pull on the subframe to align the bushing with the hole in the chassis, I raised the sagging differential a bit, and then hammered away on the bolt head from inside the car. The hammering was needed because the last inch or so would not go down freely and when the nut was tightened the bolt would just turn on its axis. I couldn't find out if the nut was supposed to be a single-use self-locking nut, so I used some red Loctite and 120 foot-pound of torque. I found the number somewhere on the BFC forum; it may not be accurate, but the Bentley does not say anything about the subframe, so there...

Notice the healthy gap between the support plate and the bushing. It will become smaller when the car is back on the ground.

Installing the right-side bushing

Now do the same thing on the passenger’s side. The subframe dropped much easier and lower than on the driver’s side without removing the shock absorber bolt. Actually, everything went easier on the passenger’s side: I didn’t have that much trouble removing the bolt (it moved after a few hits with the hammer) or putting it back in.

Cost

Tool: $150+shipping.
Parts: $45.50 for Lemfoerder bushings on Pelicanparts.com

Time & effort

Around 8 hours – I started at 9:30 AM; the car had its wheels back on the ground shortly before 6PM. This includes jacking up, a short trip to the auto parts store and lunch. Most of the time was spent ratcheting, banging on stuck bolts and in procedures that weren’t strictly necessary. The actual removal and installation of the bushings was a matter of minutes. I can’t imagine how long this procedure would have taken without the special tool. It’s one of the most complex procedures I have completed, albeit less complex than the front suspension upgrade. It was very demanding physically: that evening my hands and forearms were so sore and swollen I could barely turn a door knob. Lifting the glass of beer to my mouth was painful. I hurt until the following Tuesday.

Effects

I drove for a few days on steep Seattle streets full of potholes before posting this. I can confidently say that clunk #1, “the big clunk,” is gone. Going over bumps and cracks feels more solid now as well – I don’t get the impression anymore that the rear of the car would fall apart, but this may be just wishful thinking – I have sport suspension, the ride is a bit rough anyway. Clunk #3 is still there, though. Now with the subframe bushings out of the way I can only ascribe it to the differential dangling in the center support bearing. Or something. The quality of ride has definitely improved, but not dramatically.

Conclusion

Do it. If you get “the big clunk” changing the bushings will result in a clear improvement to your shifting. If you decide to do it the barbaric way – removing the subframe entirely, cutting through the bushing with a saw, burning the rubber, taking the cross-member to a mechanical shop to have the bushings pressed in, doing whatever you need to do - it could take much longer, depending on your experience and whether you're working alone or with a helper. Things have been done that way many times and you will find a few write-ups online to guide you. To each his own.

When your fuel pump goes...

2009-09-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

I knew it had to happen to me sooner or later, and it did: as I left the grocery store heading home, my 21-year-old BMW did not start. A nice lady asked me if I needed help to jump the car, and I had to decline her offer; it wasn’t the battery, it had to be something else. Good thing the store was only a few blocks away from home. I had the car towed the next day, pushed it into my garage and started debugging.

There’s a straightforward step-by-step procedure you can follow to find the cause of a non-start. After eliminating the obvious suspects – a dead battery and the absence of spark – the most obvious component that needs to be tested is the fuel pump. In later E30 models (starting with production month 9/87) there is only a single fuel pump, located in the fuel tank, accessible through a hatch under the passenger’s side rear seat. It’s easy to check if the pump is working: remove the rear seat, remove the pump cover, crank up the car (or have a helper turn the key instead) and listen. The pump should make… well, pumping sounds, just as you imagine a fuel pump would sound. If you can’t hear anything it could mean that:

Either the pump is broken and you need a new one, or
You have no voltage at the pump – because either the wires are interrupted (pray that they aren’t because fixing wiring in a car is a terrible job) or your fuel pump relay is bad

To check for voltage remove the power connector from the pump, stick the probes of a voltmeter in the connector and crank the car – if the relay works the probe should show battery voltage, about 12V. Operating the ignition while holding the probe in the connector and reading the voltmeter display can be a pretty cumbersome task - another set of hands greatly helps. If you’re working alone you can simplify your life if you bypass the relay: remove it from its socket and link the connector’s pins 30 and 87 together with a wire (preferably a fuse holder with a 15amp fuse); this will bypass the ignition and supply constant battery power to the fuel pump (that’s also a good way to make sure the wiring is fine).

If there’s voltage at the fuel pump but the pump is silent it’s time for a new pump. There are a few models for sale that can fit the E30. The OEM pump for the ’88 E30 is a VDO. The good thing about it is that it comes with the complete assembly: fuel pump, mounting frame, filter and O-ring; you just swap the old one out and re-connect the hose. The average price online for this OEM part is about $200. The cheapest I could find it for was $176.35 at autohausaz.com. Unexpectedly, my usual supplier bavauto.com sells the VDO pump for an ungodly $362.95.

The TRE 340 in a box

The alternative is a pump from an aftermarket supplier like TRE or Walbro. The TRE 340 had good reviews (if you can ever take seriously anything you read on internet forums) and it’s for sale on eBay. The noticeable price difference ($78.98, shipping included) tipped the balance in its favor. However, generic aftermarket pumps come with a catch – they require some wiring work, and they may need modifications to the fuel pump assembly to fit.

This is the whole procedure, step by step. Click on each picture to see a larger version and access the image notes. Click here for the whole set.

The Bentley recommends disconnecting the battery (as it does for almost every procedure); I didn’t. Anyway, be careful when you work around fuel lines. Don’t smoke.

Remove the rear seat and then unscrew the four bolts that hold the black oval access cover on the passenger’s side. There’s a similar round cover on the driver’s side – that’s just a fuel gauge sending unit; leave it alone.

Remove the electrical connectors: the connector with 2 pins is the power supply. The other is the fuel gauge sender connector.

Loosen the hose clamp and remove the hose. Either end will do. The one on the fuel-line side was easier to remove. Fuel may be discharged – in my case there wasn’t any fuel in the line since the pump was broken.

Remove the four 8mm mounting screws on top of the fuel gauge sending unit.

Pull the sending unit out of the tank. Wait until all the liquid drips back in the tank. There is a lot of gas in the can, and it all drips out through a tiny hole at the bottom.

Rotate the fuel pump assembly counter-clockwise to loosen it.

Remove fuel pump assembly out of the tank. Make a note of the position of the assembly when it comes out. You will have to put it in the same way.

Look at the assembly and notice the alignment of the fuel filter relative to the frame. You will need to install the new filter in the same position.

Remove the filter by pulling on it, and then remove the pump from the frame. The connector wires are soldered to the assembly. You will have to melt the solder or cut the wires.

There’s an obvious size difference between the old pump and the new. Fit the sleeves that came in the package around the new pump - it will increase its diameter and make it fit snugly in the frame. The sleeves are optional.

The short feeding tube at the bottom of the TRE pump and the similar tube on the OEM pump have different diameters and are positioned differently. To make the new pump fit we have to tinker a bit with the assembly frame.

Carefully carve in the bottom support of the frame until the feeding tube of the new pump can fit through. Be mindful not to damage the frame too much. Either way, it’s not going to look pretty, but who cares – it goes in the tank!

Solder the connector wires that came in the package to the terminal pins on the frame. I wasn’t very good at that job. I hadn’t soldered anything since shop class in school. So far I’ve used butt connectors for all the electrical work on this car.

Use the short fuel hose (came with the package) to connect the pump’s outlet and the metal tube which is part of the assembly.

Pressing gently against the pump’s bottom tube install the filter maintaining the same orientation that the original filter had. I also strapped the pump to the frame with a zip-tie although it wasn’t strictly necessary; the pump was snug enough in place.

Insert the whole assembly with the new O-ring back in the tank. I couldn’t find an O-ring of the same size in any automotive shop and the local BMW dealer didn’t have one in stock so I decided to re-use the old O-ring. Let posterity judge me…

Reconnect and install the other pieces in the order they were disassembled.

Work time: about three hours.

After I completed the procedure, the car started immediately, as expected. I have not noticed any unpleasant noise when the pump is in operation. Now I can only hope that this new pump will last as long as the original one did...

Rear brake pads and rotors

2009-07-05T23:10:00.000-07:00

Fresh from Germany

The rear brake pads and rotors on my BMW were still the ones that came with the car when I bought it in 2005. They were worn out to the point the sensor was touching the rotor and although they may have had some life left in them I decided to replace them now rather than wait longer. The rotors were likely worn out beyond the minimal thickness suitable for re-surfacing (it turned to be true when I measured them) so I bought pads, wear sensor, rotors and rotor mounting internal-hex screws. It’s a simple procedure. This write-up is loosely based on the procedure described in the Bentley manual. Click on pictures to see notes indicating the location of various components.

Jack up the car and remove the wheels. Release the hand brake.

On the right wheel, disconnect the brake pad wearing sensor and release the connecting wire from the clip that secures it to the guide bolt cap.

Remove the plastic caps that cover the caliper guide bolts.

The next step was to remove the guide bolts themselves, and here’s where I noticed that I lacked the tool for it. The guide bolts have an internal hex head and my largest Allen key was still too small to fit in the opening. So here I am taking another trip back to Schuck’s in my wife’s car. This sort of emergency trip seems to happen every time I attempt a new maintenance procedure… I bought a full set of metric hex keys.

Remove the caliper guide bolts.

Remove the anti-rattle spring by pressing on it and pulling, and pull the caliper out with the brake pads. It should come out without effort.

Continue with the removal of the rotors. Start by unscrewing the brake pad carrier bolts.

Do not let the brake pad carrier assembly hang on the brake line. I suspended them with zip ties to the frame. S-hooks would do as well.

Remove the mounting screw from the front of the rotor and pull the rotor from the hub. If the rotor is stuck to the hub use a soft mallet to free it.

That’s when I noticed that the left-side shock absorber had a build-up of grease at the bottom. There is no motor oil in that area and the only place this could have come from was the shock itself. I traced the leak to the top part of the shock. To get to the source I pulled down the plastic boot that covers the piston (it was a bitch to put it back on the top cupped waster) and there it was: a puddle of clear oil on the cylinder cap. I’m pretty sure the shock is not supposed to leak. I must call BavAuto…

Install the rotors on the hubs. I used new mounting screws; the old ones were rusty. Clean the rotors with brake cleaner before installing the new pads.

Compress the piston back into the caliper to provide space for the new, thicker brake pads. I used a C-clamp. If the brake fluid reservoir is full to the brim, pushing in the piston may make the brake fluid leak through the screw cap of the reservoir.

Install the pads in the calipers and put the whole thing back on. Don’t forget the new pad wear sensor on the right wheel.

Cost breakdown

All parts purchased from Pelican Parts.

ATE brake pad set - $37.25
Brake pad wear sensor - $4.75
Balo rear brake disks (rotors) - 2 x 33.75 = $67.50
Brake Disc and Drum holddown bolt, 11mm Head - 2 x $2.00 = $4.00
About 5 hours of work, including two trips to Schuck's

Headlights and douchebags

2009-02-23T23:32:00.000-08:00

In need of an eye-patch

One morning last summer I left the house and set off for work, only to discover that the left-side low-beam headlight of my beloved BMW had been smashed to bits during the night. At first I thought that some parallel-parking-challenged idiot with a high-set bumper has backed up accidentally straight into my headlight and left the scene. But there was no other damage to the front, which would have been consistent with such an incident. Upon taking a closer look it became apparent that the shards that were spread over the bumper and on the ground in front of the car weren’t only those of my lens – indeed they were mixed with pieces of a shattered bottle of beer. It all became clear in an instant: public drunkenness, vandalism under the cover of the night, let’s do something dangerous and feel invincible and then, well, uh... run. I could see the bottle label clinging to a pattern of broken glass – “Miller High Life – The Champagne of Beers”. The anger and cursing stopped for a moment as I thought out loud: what kind of douchebag drinks “The Champagne of Beers” anyway?

Only the exterior lens had been destroyed, the interior one was still intact, so I left it alone for the moment. For better or worse it worked, even if the light wasn’t diffused properly. But who likes to drive a car with gouged eye forever? It took me a few months and a couple of more important projects until I finally got to this one.

A new low-beam ellipsoid lens assembly runs for about $140, which I wasn’t willing to pay. A used headlight, complete with casing and both low- and high-beam lenses, goes for $150 on some web sites. With enough patience I found a guy who runs a junk yard on eBay, who was selling one full used headlight for $90. I offered him $75 and he accepted. I could have probably done better with more patience but the price was good enough.

Here’s how I replaced the broken headlight. The Flickr photo set is arranged in chronological order. Click on pictures to see photo annotations indicating the location of various components.

Pop the hood open and remove the three retaining clips that hold the top part of the front grille.

Remove the two retaining screws on the bottom side of the grille, left and right.

Remove the grille and then the three large screws that hold the headlight casing in place.

Release the electrical connectors from the low- and high-beam light bulbs. Remove the headlight casing.

At this point I noticed that the adjustment screws were located in different positions on the two casings. All photos of headlight assemblies that I was able to find online looked like my old one. The one that I had just purchased had the vertical adjustment screws in locations where the old casing had fixed, non-adjustable retaining screws. By all means of logic, the old casing seemed to have all its limbs in the right places and the new one was an aberration. How did the screws switch positions? Bad German assembly-line robot? Incompetent American mechanic? We’ll never know...

One-eyed monster

Being a stickler for correctness I decided to remove the lens assemblies from the new casing and install them on the old one. It seemed a better solution than the alternative of removing the new lenses, moving and adjusting the screws and re-installing the lenses. Besides, one the screws of the old casing seemed in better shape than the “new” ones, which were rusty and bent. I also decided to replace my old high-beam, which was chipped at the bottom.

To remove the lens assembly from the casing the Bentley manual says: “Using a hot air blower, heat the lens-assembly retaining clips, then pull out the light assembly.” Having already tried that when I replaced the light bulb last summer I know by now that this statement is total bull. The heat from the blower is supposed to loosen the plastic clip that fits tightly on the tip of the retaining screw, which is shaped like a bulb. I tried that with a hair dryer and besides burning my fingers I wasn’t able to make any difference – maybe if I had had 100 additional Watts I would have fared better. In the end I had to apply massive (but gentle!) force, pulling the lens away from the casing. It’s not a trivial task when there isn’t enough room to stick both hands in the opening and pry the parts apart, and you can only use the tips of your fingers – all the while worrying about breaking the lens assembly tabs, which are just plastic after all.

A lot of cursing and name-calling certainly helped.

Installing the new lens assemblies on the old casing was much easier than removing had been. A couple of the retaining clips had broken in the process, but between the old and the new lenses I had enough replacements.

I sure hope I don’t have to do this again any time soon. Stay away from my car. And if you drink that Champagne of Beers piss, stay away from me as well. All those who drink Miller High Life are douchebags. There are no exceptions.

Confessions of a weekend mechanic

2009-02-01T17:56:00.000-08:00

I work a lot on my 1988 325 BMW; I do maintenence and replacement, I get dirty and bruised and I curse a lot. The car is like a piece of software in constant need of debugging. Why? you may be asking, why not buy something newer, more reliable? The answer is a simple one - because I love this car. It's a hobby that I didn't ask for, it just came over me. It wasn't a conscious decision, it just happened that I came to believe that the E30s - the 3-series BMWs built between 1983 and 1991 (more or less) - are the most beautiful cars ever designed. So I got myself one in 2005 for 1400 bucks and I put much more into it since. Sure, I love other cars too... but they don't matter, honey.

Despite the many things that need constant attention, my Bimmer has never let me down. The only days I can't drive it are when I screw up some replacement procedure and I have to keep the car on jackstands for longer than I had hoped while I wait for a part that I had accidentally broken.

There are many web sites with do-it-yourself articles for the E30 cars; I always try to learn as much as possible from others' accounts before starting work on a new area. But I found out that no web site or book ever covers all the little traps you can fall into when you attempt a complex replacement procedure. Therefore I decided to write my own car maintenance stories, focusing on the procedures that I found unexpectedly hard, the tools that didn't fit in narrow corners and the unexpected discoveries that happen when you venture in uncharted territory. Enjoy the reading! Comments are welcome.

	Rear axle: Bilstein Sport shock absorbers, shock mounts, and H&R OE Sport springs
	Front axle: Bilstein Sport shocks, H&R OE Sport springs, shock mounts, control arms, and control arm bushings
	Replacement of a broken low-beam ellipsoid light assembly
	Rear wheel brake pads and rotors
	Fuel pump replacement
	Replacement of E30 rear subframe bushings
	Replacement of front subframe, oil pan gasket and motor mounts

Unfortunately it's only recently that I decided to take pictures with every repair procedure. In the world of car maintenance repair articles are worthles without pics, at least to amateurs like me. Sadly, much of my past work has remained undocumented. These are some of the procedures I'm proud to have successfully completed:

Valve adjustment
Steering pump leak repair (with silicone gel)
Fuel filter and fuel hose replacement
Various coolant leak repairs
Fix surging RPS at Idle caused by the throttle adjustment screw
Broken passenger's door actuator replacement
Turn signal switch diagnose and replacement
New driver's door lock cyliner, damaged by thieves who broke into the apartment's garage and stole the my gym bag along with a couple of cars
Door trim painting
Spark plug replacement
K&N air filter installation and cleaning
Oil change... duh!
New brake pads and rotors
OEM premium radio installation, dash repair
Replacement of various sensors
Other interior, exterior and engine-bay fixes, too many to enumerate

I have a 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee as well, the first car I ever owned (Yes, I got my driving license and first car at the age of 27, a late bloomer if you will). My wife drives it now. It doesn't get my whole love and I am not dabbling with the engine, the suspension or anything else beyond the "easy", but I'm still trying to keep it in decent shape.

Right-side front door latch replacement

Jeep Grand Cherokee door latch replacement

2009-02-01T17:07:00.000-08:00

Should I change the name of this blog to carrats? No travel is "happening" anymore and since I cannot bring myself to blog about irrelevant details of my life or Saturday's night party, I'm filling it with maybe-less-irrelevant details about my one and only hobby left.

The Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo model year 2000 has been my daily driver since shortly after I arrived in Seattle in 2000, until I discovered stick-shift driving and the E30 3-series BMW a couple of years ago. Then, there was no looking back and the truck became my wife’s car. It’s still the vehicle I rely on when it snows, when we need to purchase anything larger than a bag of groceries, and when I have to take more than one passenger – since the 3-series was designed with the idea in mind that the people sitting in the rear did not have legs.

The passenger's side front door latch of the Jeep had been broken for years, making a shrill buzzing sound when engaged. The door could only be opened from the inside. Since I don't drive it anymore I neglected this car for a while, until my wife pointed that if I invest so much time in the old, sickly BMW I could at least fix her door.

The new latch was $78.43 (how do they come up with these numbers?...) plus $11.80 shipping on eBay. He deserved his positive rating. The guy (airparkcjd) had more than 4000 sales and 100% positive reviews.

The Flickr set is arranged in chronological order. Click on the photos to see notes describing the location of various components referred in this article.

Pry out the cap that covers the screw hole on the mirror flag bezel. (I have no idea why that piece of plastic is called "mirror flag bezel". It sounds a bit pompous and redundant.

Remove the panel-holding screw with a Philips screwdriver.

Remove the sheet metal screw located in the door cupped handle. On a side note, this screw was fine, but on the rear door, the screw had rusted and when I tried the same procedure it wouldn't budge. I soaked it with PB Blaster penetrating catalyst but I still couldn't loosen it. I applied force with various screwdriver bits until I destroyed the head and I had to drill it out.

Remove the Torx screw behind the door handle.

Pull the edges of the door panel until the plastic retaining clips pop open. It's a good idea to have replacement clips, some may break when the panel is removed.

Unhook the mirror electrical connector.

Release the two main door latch rods from the inner handle mechanism. The plastic clips on the handle must be pushed hard to release the latch rods. Your fingertips will hurt.

Remove the main electrical connector from the door panel. Before you remove it, make sure the window is all the way up.

A quick look at the underbelly of the beast…

Pull out the moisture dam and expose the latch rods. The dam is held in place by a slimy, sticky substance. It will re-attach with a bit of pressure.

Disconnect the inner latch rod from the external door handle mechanism. While it wasn’t that hard to get in there with the fingers and pry open the retaining clip, it was a total pain to take a picture of it because my lens can't focus under 2 feet. The clip is the little yellow spot at the top. It's the same kind of clip like all the others.

Unscrew the three Torx bolts that hold the latch to the door. At that point I realized I didn't have the right size Torx bit for those screws so I used a hex head and it worked nonetheless. Off to O'Reilly's to add one more set of screwdriver bits to my arsenal!

Remove the latch assembly and disconnect the electrical connector.

They look like evil metal bugs from outer space. The new latch (on the right) didn't come with the protective cover that the old one had, so I decided to reuse it.

Remove the single retaining screw that holds the cover to the latch, pry out the plastic cover and install it on the new latch.

Ready for installation! Installation is the reverse of removal. Don’t forget to attach all connectors and latch rod ends before pressing the panel back into the door clips.

Front axle suspension overhaul

2009-01-20T23:01:00.000-08:00

In the second installment of the E30 suspension upgrade story I continued with the front axle. Besides the Bilstein Sport shock absorbers and the H&R OE Sport springs whose counterparts I had already installed in the rear, I also decided to replace the control arms and the control arm rubber bushings. Only that being lazy and not wanting to deal with removing the tightly fit old bushing and squeezing in the new one (stories go that this is pretty tough) I decided to buy new “lollipops” with the bushings already installed. On bavauto.com a new bushing costs $12.95 while the whole bracket goes for $49.95. A waste of money, I know, but what the hell - it was Christmas. The next time I surely won’t be spending so lavishly; I’ll probably just upgrade to urethane or M3 bushings which are more expensive anyway. I also replaced all the self-locking nuts during this procedure, as the manual recommends.

Click on pictures to see the exact location of the parts and components referred in this article. Click here to see the full set of pictures.

Sensor wires

Start by loosening the wheel lug bolts, then jack up the front of the car and put it on jack stands. In the course of those few days of work I noticed that my floor jack has started to slip – it slowly loses pressure and gives way. That’s not a good sign; I need to replace it although it’s only a couple of years old – how long are those things supposed to last anyway? Besides, it’s still too low at maximum extension (13”); this is more noticeable in the front – with the car elevated there’s still barely any place to move around under it... Remove the front wheels. Disconnect the ABS sensor wire from the hook on the strut housing and unscrew the ABS sensor from the spindle (5mm hex wrench). On the left side, disconnect the brake lining sensor.

Brake caliper bolts

Remove the brake caliper mounting bolts and slide the caliper off the rotor. Attach the caliper to the car body to avoid damaging the flexible brake hose. Do not let the caliper hang on the hose. I used zip-ties for this job – there’s an adequately placed hook in the wheel cavity.

Caliper attached with zip-ties

Disconnect sway bar connecting link

Broken subframe tab!

Disconnect the stabilizer bar from the connecting link (the piece that’s attached to the control arm at the other end). At this moment I realized that the subframe tab that the sway bar supporting bracket was attached to was broken – my sway bar was kept in place by the two connecting links and by the right-side bracket – the subframe tab on the passenger’s side was still intact. I searched a little on the forums and it turned out that this is a common problem and the only solution, barring the replacement of the subframe, is welding. That sounds like a job for Boris, the Russian body mechanic that fixed my Jeep a few years back when I parked like an idiot and hit a garage pole.

Shock tower

Before disconnecting the lower ball-joints, give a tug to the nut on the top of the shock absorber rod, just enough to loosen it. This trick, courtesy of http://zoso.no-ip.org, will make the removal of the nut easier when the time comes (otherwise the rod would turn on its axis). Do not remove the top nut at this time – as long as the spring is not compressed and pressure is still exerted on the shock mount, this would be very dangerous. I sprinkled the gland nut with PB Blaster penetrating catalyst, just in case the threads had seized, and let it soak overnight.

Tie rod and control arm ball joints removed

Remove the tie-rod ball joint and the control arm ball joint from the strut housing. This was no walk in the park; the ball joint rods were stuck in their holes and I had to use pickle forks and a lot of force to release them. Maybe some PB blaster would have helped but I got so riled-up that I solved the problem by using a lot of muscle and I even hit the rods with a hammer until the darn things came out. I was gentle with the tie rod, which I was going to reuse, but I went berserk on the control arm joint. Despite all precautions I tore a cut in the tie rod protective rubber boot with the pickle fork. I see a tie-rod job in the future, just so that the suspension overhaul becomes complete...

Compress the spring

After disconnecting the three self-locking nuts from the shock tower I removed the strut, laid it on the floor and proceeded to compress the spring. By now, after using that compressor on eight springs (rear and front, 4 old, 4 new) I hate the thing passionately. It takes too much work, sweat and time to compress and release those coils. It bends and jams and I have to hit it sometimes with a mallet to re-adjust the clamping brackets. Luckily I don’t intend to do this again anytime soon. When the spring was compressed I removed the top rod nut, which was already loosened. I had to clamp the rod through the coils with a small pipe wrench while I unscrewed the nut. The original rubber shock absorber stop came out completely destroyed.

Removing the gland nut

Removing the gland nut that holds the shock in the strut housing was a different story... To do this by yourself you need enough leverage; you have to hold the strut in place while you clamp a pipe wrench around the gland nut and twist it. I didn’t have vise grips or any other locking mechanism and my left arm just wasn’t strong enough. Superpowers would have been welcome; by that time I was already beat tired. I remembered that someone on bimmerforums.com had suggested in an older thread that the strut be put back in the wheel during this procedure. That’s what I did, and I loosely attached it with two lug bolts. I stood on the wheel holding the strut housing under my foot while I clamped a large pipe wrench around the gland nut and turned – the nut came loose at the first tug. I lifted the bottom of the strut up a bit and hoisted it on some blocks of wood to let the oil drain out, and moved on to the control arms.

Disconnect the control arm from the frame

Disconnect the control arm rubber bushing bracket (aka "lollipop") from the frame. That’s no big deal; they’re held by two easily accessible bolts. The outer ball joint was already free, so that left the inner ball joint nut as the last point of attachment.

Sway bar removed

Control arm
inner ball joint nut

The inner ball joint nut was a major pain to remove. It’s not easily accessible and barely visible from under the car, so you have to feel your way around it. My socket didn’t fit in that place because there is a metal block behind the nut, too close to it to let the socket fit. Which left a the job to a regular wrench, but..., surprise-surprise, that’s a 22mm nut and I had no wrench that size (only the useless socket). During the subsequent late-evening trip to Schuck’s I found out that 22mm was not a standard size included in any of the metric wrench sets that were on the stands for sale. Luckily they sell one individually for a few bucks. Not a ratcheting wrench, a simple one, mind you. It took forever to unscrew that nut; loosening it cost me a good bruise on my hand when it finally popped. The passenger’s side is even more evil – the exhaust is in the way, and so is a small heat shield meant to protect the control arm rubber bushing from the heat of the exhaust. There is no place to wield a wrench in there, thus I ended up removing the stabilizer bar bracket and the heat shield to get a couple of inches of clearance so I could move the wrench. The nut finally gave up and surrendered. The disassembly phase was over.

Tighten the Bilstein gland nut

I began the installation phase by locking in the shocks inside the strut housings. Before you screw in the gland nut, don’t forget to place the white plastic ring that comes with the Bilsteins on the housing. This ring will hold the blue rubber boot that protects the piston rod from dust. To screw in the new gland nut I asked a friend to sit on the wheel and hold the strut in place under his foot while I operated the big pipe wrench. It dented the rim of the gland nut a bit but it doesn’t really matter. Legend has it that Bilstein sells a collar tool that fits on the gland nut, which you can attach a ratchet to. The tool doesn’t come with the shocks and you can’t order it from Bavarian Autosport. Someone posted the Bilstein part number 420017 for this thing, but I couldn’t find any reference to it on their web site catalog. So I used the wrench and it did just fine. I didn’t use any Loctite for this, I hope they hold well.

The tools of the trade

For the re-assembly of the strut I compressed the new H&R spring, and then I installed the new shock mount, reusing the rubber ring, the top spring retainer, and the washers, finally proceeding to tighten the top nut, with the compressor still attached. The tightening should be easy – you can put a 19mm wrench around the nut while you hold the hex-shaped top of the rod with an 8mm wrench. However due to a historic design accident, not limited to German engineering, the top rod nut goes inside the central cavity of the shock mount where it can't be easily reached. After some thinking and asking around I had to invent my own tool: a small 8mm socket, ¼” drive goes inside a large, deep 19mm socket, ½” drive. A 3”-long, ¼” drive extension is attached to the 8mm socket at one end, while the other end goes through the ½” opening of the larger socket and connects to a ratchet.

The magic strut tool in action

Holding the ratchet with one hand, clamp a pipe wrench around the 19mm socket and tighten. It’s still not perfect because of the need to use the pipe wrench, but there was no other practical alternative. I would have preferred a ¾” spark plug socket – the opening is exactly 19mm and fits the nut, while the top is hex-shaped and would fit a regular wrench. Unfortunately the top opening of those sockets is not large enough to allow for the ¼”-drive extension to pass through. Anyway, the resulting combination did the job perfectly. Some people have ridiculed it on the forums, proposing an impact wrench instead. That may have worked just as well but for three significant disadvantages: 1) Bilstein recommends against using impact wrenches with the top nut (big warning on the shock installation papers) 2) I would have had to mount the shock on the car with the spring compressor attached and remove the damn’ thing after the fact. There was not guarantee that the spring compressors were in the right position to make sure they would fit in the wheel cavity and would not be in the way instead. 3) Good impact wrenches cost big bucks and aren’t essential equipment for an amateur weekend mechanic.

Install the strut

I put the strut back in the car, supporting it with the jack; the assembly is quite heavy and doesn’t make it easier for you if you’re trying to hold it in position with one hand while attaching the three top nuts inside the engine bay with the other. You’ll need either a helper or the jack. Since asking the wife was out of the question... I attached the tie rod once the shock mounts were secured.

New lollipop

Next it was the turn of the new control arms. To squeeze the lollipop on the end of the arm I lubed the rubber hole (lubed, rubber, hole... get it?) with some dishwasher detergent (which would evaporate in a short time leaving the joint tight) and pushed. With some force the arm end slid through. At this point the Bentley tells you to attach the control arms back as soon as possible and lower the car on the floor so that the control arms can settle inside the new bushings. I took them at face value and the rest of the procedure was a sort of race against time (oh my god, omg, what would happen if I take too long???).

The control arm is in

The first thing was to tighten the inner ball joint nut, which was predictably a pain in the butt, as the removal had been. Then I screwed in the two bolts that hold the lollipops to the frame, and finally the outer ball joint nuts. As I was done with both arms I realized that the sway bar was still lying on the floor and it looked like it wouldn’t be the easiest thing to place it above the control arms. I tried unsuccessfully for a few minutes, but it was like trying to figure out a solution to Rubik’s cube – you’d figure out one side, but the other would come undone – then I gave up and detached one of the control arm bushing brackets. Sway bar in, lollipop tightened, brackets attached, calipers on, wheels on, go! I torqued all nuts to spec except for the two on the subframe. Those gave me enough grief just trying to fit them to their places – there was no way a torque wrench could have fit in there.

Timeline:

Friday night – get a head start – jacked up car, removed wheels, detached sensors, removed brake calipers
Saturday – removed struts, compressed springs, removed old shocks and springs, removed control arms and sway bar, installed new shocks in strut housings, went drinking
Due to the last item on Saturday’s list, I woke up on Sunday with a hangover and no will to get dirty and do physical work, so I dragged it and made plans for the next day
Monday I took the bus to work. That evening I bought parts for the makeshift strut tool, installed the shock mounts, and removed the spring compressors
Tuesday evening – installed the struts, attached the tie rods
Wednesday evening – control arms, done

I certainly learned a few things – I didn’t really have to change the control arms; the old ones looked good enough. But what the hell! ... In retrospect I bit more than an amateur like me could chew in one weekend. I’d recommend doing this in stages – one weekend the shocks and springs, the next the control arms, then the tie rods. Drinking on Saturday night may delay results. Even a professional mechanic, doing this on his own time, having to deal with wife and kids and grocery shopping, might find this job too much for one straight shot.

Worn-out rubber bushing

The handling is much better now – adding to the improvements caused by the new rear suspension, there are a few noticeable changes. In curves the car always felt like it was going to keep moving ahead and the only thing that brought it to the course I was setting was the fact that it was still somehow attached to the wheels. Curves are now much more stable, the handling is reassuring. There was also a noticeable front vibration propagated through the steering column at about 55-60mph, which I ascribed to the worn-out control arm bushings. That vibration is now gone. Other than that I’m left with a car that’s slightly lowered, (a bit less than 1 inch), a lot of bruises and I still feel like I’ve been working out lifting dumbbells for three days straight.

Replacing shock absorbers and coil springs on the rear axle

2009-01-07T02:57:00.000-08:00

This is not a travel post, it's a car post.

In my crusade to fix, upgrade and polish the old piece of junk (1988 BMW 325) I finally decided to tackle the rear axle suspension, which had felt horribly loose for a while. Moreover I kept hearing squeaking and screeching noises coming from the left side of the back of the car while driving. Since my car is primarily a daily driver and will never see the track in its remaining days on earth I chose to upgrade the suspension with Bilstein Sport shock absorbers and H&R OE Sport springs. This combination is supposed to lower the car but not too much - about one inch - and the ride won’t become too harsh as it would be the case with stiffer lowering springs.

Parts and tools:

Bilstein Sport shocks (rear)
H&R OE Sport springs (rear)
Shock mounts for the convertible model (sturdier design)
Self-locking nuts for the shock mounts
Shock mount gasket
Reinforcement plates – didn’t fit
Bunch of metric wrenches and sockets
Floor jack and jack stands
Blocks of wood tp put between the jack and body
Working light

Click on images for better-resolution photos.

The rear wheel
before the procedure

Shocks, mounts, gaskets and reinforcement plates are from Bavarian Autosport. The springs came from a guy who runs a high-volume automotive store on eBay. He had the best price, including the shipping charges, but in retrospect he was a deceitful jerk since he had advertised his product as “in stock” but instead had to order it from H&R. Because of this delay the package arrived in Seattle right as the snow storm was settling in, and then got stuck in the local UPS service center for 12 days before it was finally delivered. But I digress.

Right side shock mount

Left side shock mount, damaged

Start by raising the back of the car and put it on jack stands, of course. Remove the wheels.

Partially remove the trim in the trunk to expose the shock mounts. Bending the trim is not an easy affair; it’s relatively rigid and hard to peel off and snap out of the grooves where it’s tucked in. That’s when I noticed that the right side shock mount had to be broken – there was a 2-3 millimeter gap between the upper cupped washer and the rubber piece. What do you know!

Remove shock mounting screw

Support the trailing arm

Disconnect the shock from its lower mount on the trailing arm. Not supported by the shock, the trailing arm will drop a couple of inches. Be sure to support it before removing the shock mounting screw; the Bentley indicates that the sudden jerk of the trailing arm may damage the CV joints. I forgot to support the left trailing arm when I disconnected the shock absorber and it dropped quite sharply. Fortunately it doesn’t seem to have broken anything, the car rolls fine now; the Bentley understandably errs on the side of caution. Of course, I can never be sure unless I inspect the joints. After disconnecting the shock I supported the trailing arm with the jack for most of the time, to avoid unnecessary pressure on the joints.

The old Sachs shock

Loosen the two self-locking nuts that hold the shock mount to the frame. Supporting the shock from below, remove the mounting nuts and then the shock. In my case, if there had been a gasket between the shock and the car frame it has long ago turned into dust.

Broken left side shock mount

The right shock absorber looked worn out yet not too damaged, but the left one was downright broken. There is a metal tube which sits in the middle of the hard rubber at the center of the mount, that the shock absorber’s piston rod slides through. That tube was completely disconnected from the surrounding rubber. No wonder I had been hearing those noises coming from the rear left side of the car while driving! And no wonder that each time I went over a sudden bump in the road (like when the asphalt/concrete plates aren’t properly aligned, and the end of the current one is a bit lower than the beginning of the next) the whole back of the car felt like it was going to fall off.

Lowered exhaust, supported with zip ties

Next, the spring had to be removed. This needed a little more work.

The Bentley says to disconnect and lower the rear part of the exhaust system from the brackets that support it, to allow for more room when the trailing arm is lowered. I did just that, but in retrospect I think this step didn’t help much. I supported the exhaust by hanging it with zip-ties from the upper brackets.

Final drive mounting nut and bracket

Disconnecting the final drive

Final drive lowered

Again, to make more room for the lowered trailing arm so that the spring can come out, I disconnected the final drive from its mount and pulled it down. It didn’t go too low and I didn’t want to force it. This didn’t seem to create any significant room for the trailing arm which was already lowered to the maximum anyway.

Disconnect the stabilizer bar link

Disconnect the stabilizer bar connecting link from the trailing arm. This seemed to lower the trailing arm a little bit more, but again, there was no significant help (the stabilizer bar is called “sway bar” by some).

The old stock spring
ready to be removed

At this point the Bentley leads you to believe that the spring can be simply removed by hand, but I realized that any attempt in that direction was hoplessly futile since I didn’t have the necessary superhuman powers to compress the spring by my bare hands. With the trailing arm lowered to the max the spring was still compressed and the ends of the spring were snug against the rubber mounts. Moreover the top and bottom spring supports have conical protrusions that fit inside the spring and secure it in position. There’s no way that spring was coming out on persuasion alone.

Spring with compressor on

I squeezed in my spring compressor, but this was no simple task. There isn’t enough space to easily wield a wrench in there. While one of the spring compressor rods can be attached on the outside of the spring inside the wheel cavity, thus offering better access, the other one has to go on the opposite side, and gets wedged between the axle and the exhaust (on the left side) making the task of tightening the compressor bolts extremely painful. It took quite a while and a lot of sweat.

New H&R Spring compressed

New and old springs side by side

After removing the old spring, I tried to put the new spring in without compression, thinking that maybe its shorter size would allow for it – but that initiative was doomed from the start as well, due to lack of superpowers. I compressed the H&R spring and installed it, after which - of course - I had to uncompress it in place, which takes an equally frustrating amount of time. Make no mistake: operating a spring compressor on mounted springs is hard work.

Done!

After the spring was finally in its cradle I installed the shock (reverse of removal). The two cupped washers on the old shock mount should be reused but everyone says the self-locking nuts should be used only once. I’m not sure why and didn’t bother investigating yet, so I got new nuts.

I had also ordered the reinforcement plates that were recommended by other people and by Bavauto. These metal plates are supposed to go inside the trunk between the body metal and the shock mount nuts, but they didn’t fit on my model. On one side of the body plate hole for the shock mount, the body plate has some sort of reinforcement bar which is about a quarter of an inch high. The shock reinforcement plate is too wide and goes over that bar; as a result, it doesn’t sit flat on the body and the lock nuts can’t be tightened against it. Useless!

Wheel after "surgery"

The right side went easier due to the absence of the exhaust and the experience that I had already gathered by working on the left side. Finally, the car was ready to have its wheels back on and go out for a drive. However, as I was tightening the left-side shock mount to spec using a torque wrench, one of the threaded bolts broke in half and popped out with the nut on it. So close to victory, so close to showing off, so close to dinner! Damn it! Despair! Frustration! I didn’t want to keep the car lying useless on jack stands until I got a new mount so I installed the old right-side mount instead, which seemed to be still usable. On Monday I called Bavauto and they offered to send me a replacement shock mount at no cost. Great customer service! I hope it doesn’t get caught in the next snow storm...

After working on the rear suspension all Saturday I was planning to tackle the front the next day. But when I woke up I was in so much pain after the previous day-long workout that I had to schedule the front axle adventure for the next weekend.

Working Time - about 8 hours, with breaks. With more experience and better organization (the right tools always at hand, more space in the garage, etc) this could take significantly shorther, even for an amateur.

Difficulty - technically not too challenging, but it involves a lot of physical work.

Third world prices in America

2008-12-24T23:56:00.018-08:00

No-nonsense prices!
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all those veggies

When I was traveling through South America, seeing the ridiculously low prices of fruits and vegetables I ranted on this site about our own grocery stores back home and the exorbitant prices they charge us for the same stuff. The only possible explanation for this rip-off is that it’s not a rip-off at all: we are subjected to a first-world standard-of-living tax that generously flows into an altruistic aid program that subsidizes the mom-and-pop grocers of the third world. Right?

It turns out that it doesn't have to be this way; the first-world sucker tax is optional. Upon our return, Angela has been struck by a sudden, lasting attack of anal-retentiveness and decided that grocery shopping needs to be done by a meticulous plan which will result in significant savings. Thus, for the last few months we have been shopping at the “Asian” grocery markets in the International District. I mean “Asian” in the blatant “most people who work there look vaguely Chinese” way. In those nondescript stores along and behind Jackson Street you can find not only the familiar fruits and vegetables sold by the ubiquitous Fred Meyer, Safeway or QFC, but also others that may require an advanced course in exotic foods before you can figure out what to do with them. The quality is nothing to balk at but the prices are the best part – everything is much cheaper than at the mainstream chain grocery stores. You spend 10 bucks and go out with three full bags. I took some pictures of their convincing price tags – and these are winter prices; in summer, the numbers are half.

Cheap stuff for tightwads

Unless these guys get all their produce straight from China like Walmart or grow them in their basement closets under halogen light bulbs year-round they would have to buy from the same producers like the big stores. They charge lower prices and obviously manage to stay in business and survive the tough competition. This begs the question, why don’t the major stores sell at comparable prices? The answer is, beyond any economic theory bullshit, because they can. For a variety of reasons, the average white American doesn't shop in Chinatown. If you live in the suburbs you have no choice or you just don’t know better – the Asian groceries are confined to a 5-block stretch along Jackson Street, a small and not too interesting neighborhood south of downtown. However the backbone of the American nation, the soccer moms and baseball dads of Seattle, don’t shop in the I.D. because the place is obviously unclean, unhygienic, unsafe and full of foreigners with dreadful accents, who might as well be terrorists. That leaves the minorities, a handful of liberal hippies and the expert-level white people who – like me – have embraced ethnic diversity. Of course, only as long as it comes to cheap food.

Google makes the world grow stupid

2008-12-07T22:42:00.010-08:00

It's imaginary, just like your intelligence

It’s no surprise that a blog called “Run the Equator” gets the majority of its hits from people searching the web for something or other related to the Equator. I run a counter on this site which enables me to see how many people have reached it and where the clicks come from, within the limits of geographic IP address mapping. Don’t worry, the counter doesn’t tell me your name, phone number or email address, but it’s very good at measuring stupidity, and there’s no better dumbness-gauge than the words people use in web searches. Words? No, it’s entire phrases and personal questions that people ask Google these days.

The undeniable fact that Google has indexed and catalogued the entire world of online information has led certain of us to believe that the sum of human knowledge is at their fingertips and no effort is needed to retrieve it. Once upon a time it used to be that you needed to read the manual first in order to be able use a tool. If you wanted to get a book on a certain topic from the library, you had to know how to use the index cards or explain your concerns to the librarian, and later on, when you had the book in your hands you actually had to spend some time reading it to get to the information you were looking for. All this sounds pretty darn complicated, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, in the age of instant gratification all these time-wasting efforts have been made obsolete by web search. Who needs a brain when you’ve got Google?

You can get most of what you’re looking for to come willingly to your web browser, depending on your level of skill in manipulating search keywords, but no amount of search and indexing will redeem some of the lost souls who land accidentally on my blog. For their lack of common sense they deserve house arrest without access to the internet and an interdiction to procreate.

Most people get to my blog looking for something simple and objective, which can be expressed in simple queries: visas, information about a certain country or place I happen to have visited and blogged about, hostels, vaccines for the tropical world, travel information. These boring internet surfers seem to have read the manual and don’t expect the web to be able to cure AIDS and slice bread.

A few clueless dweebs, exhibiting a fair degree of anonymous honesty admit that they don’t know where or what this equator-thing is. Fair enough – in this day and age, operating a computer doesn’t require any level of formal education, like going to school. These guys seem to be struggling in a desperate quest for trivial knowledge. Unless they are 8 year-olds, they have already lost the battle and will soon land a job flipping burgers for the rest of their lives if they don’t already do so.

The frosting on the cake are those who have thrown all gray-matter from the skulls into the trash can and would rather be plugged into the Matrix than exercise their atrophied brains, the part of the population whose cortexes have been leveled with a clothes iron by the digital age. These guys ask Google the kind of questions you would ask of an oracle. One who has all the answers to all the riddles in the Universe, or at least to everything involving the Equator. Let’s take a look at the existential problems these monkeys are struggling with. Some questions require algorithmic answers, which reveals a certain complexity of the problem they are trying to tackle, but the mere fact that they ask the search question in raw, human form reveals their total lack of common sense with regard to technology and its limits. Some of them are merely stupid, others completely nonsensical, more appropriate to the prior category, many are just brilliant. The grammar belongs to them.

do you have to pass the equator to get to Turkey
what towns are on the equator
countries which run through the equator
what's the distance of istanbul from the equator
India is as much a country as the Equator
continents that doesn't run through the equator
frostbite near the equator
map of india with equator on it
equator shit time lapse
honduras location due to the equator
map of thailand equator
where does the equator run
visa to equator
what rivers run away from the equator
ten countries along the equator that you fly along
I travel around the world but always in a corner i can cross the equator but only only make one trip
a list of all country the equator run through
turkey spain or egypt what is closer to the equator
lands lieng on the equator
the capital of the country that crosses the equator
india south of the equator
why is the Equator famous

Those queries come from the activity logs of the last month only. Too bad I didn’t save the rest. I wanted to make a top-ten out of it but I can’t decide which one deserves the Darwin Award...

For all of you internet-indoctrinated morons, get an atlas! Google maps would do just fine.

So you want to know what my favorite place is?

2008-08-09T21:02:00.015-07:00

"What was your favorite place?"

How's that for an answer?

I get this question all the time and it irritates me like a knitting needle stuck in my ear. Sometimes I think you ask it just to annoy me – but you’d have to be too devious for that, so I’ll go with the more reasonable assumption: that you’re opening your mouth only to ask the most predictable question because you don’t have anything to say, really. It’s a stupid question. I’ve been to 26 countries during my year-long trip; there wasn’t a lot that they had in common except that I had to eat, shit and sleep wherever I went, and the other tourists annoyed me equally everywhere… but I hardly think that’s a solid basis for a top-ten rating.

I don’t ask you if you like steak more than ice cream. Or whether Scarlett Johansson is hotter than Angelina Jolie. Or whether you prefer beer or coffee. Those, along with the one you keep asking me are stupid questions and do not deserve to be answered. Whatever the answer may be it doesn’t communicate any relevant information and is not going to advance the conversation in any way. It’s just meaningless chatting for the sake of it.

There’s a gazillion of reasonable questions you could ask, that may lead to a funny and interesting conversation. Let me help you a bit:

Where did you have the toughest communication experience?
Where did you spend the most money?
Where did you have the craziest binge-drinking night?
Where was the best diving?
Where did you smoke the most dope?
Did you get laid anywhere?
Did you have to go to the hospital anywhere?
Did you ever get scammed by a con artist and fell for it?
Did you get robbed anywhere?
Did you get into a bar fight anywhere?
Did you steal from anyone?
Did you run naked out in the street anywhere?
Where did you have the worst diarrhea?
Where did you make the best friends?
Where did you have the worst hotel room?
What was your weirdest experience?
Were you ever afraid for your life?

But no, you all prefer to ask me the same inane question, one that doesn’t even have a relevant answer to boot. Look, I liked all the countries I visited and I hated some of them at the same time – sometimes for the same reasons. You could figure this out on your own if you paused to think for a second before opening your mouth, but since you’re so narrow and you lack any spark of imagination you keep asking me what my favorite place was as if I were 16 and I had to have a favorite movie, a favorite band or a best friend.

I think before I speak!

I should throw the nearest wireless mouse at you when I hear that question, but I’m medicated well enough so I usually restrain myself. Instead, if I suspect that the person I’m talking to has a bit of a brain left and would be able to see the error of their ways with a bit of help or if I believe that the question was just a momentary lapse into stupidity on the part of an otherwise clever individual (don’t we all?) I’ll say that the countries I liked fall into two distinct categories: those that you fall in love with at first sight, as soon as you get off the plane - like South Africa or Greece or Spain - and those that have to grow on you, like India, Laos and Bolivia. Aside of this coarse classification each country strikes you by one or more dominant attributes that make it unique: it can be the picture-perfect beauty of nature, the ethereal strangeness of the landscape, the good time you had with people you met, the rotting garbage lying in the open, the permanent harassment you were subjected to, the beautiful wild animals, the breathtaking diving on the coral reef, the raging night-life, the hot topless girls on the beach, the soaring snow-capped mountains or the delicious exotic food. You may prefer one or the other in certain situations but no single one tops the rest; I’d have to just pick one out of my ass. Not that you would care. You want clichés? Here’s one for you: stop asking me to compare apples with pears!

Even if I had a favorite country… how would it advance your knowledge of the world if I told you anyway? Stop asking me dumb questions just to be nice. If you don’t have anything to say, just shut up. Man, I hate people.

You want a list? I got one! You order it, stop asking me.

I loved Mexico for the soaring Mayan pyramids lost in the jungle and its cheap tacos. And because it was the first destination on our trip
Going to Belize because going there was a childhood dream come true
I loved Guatemala for Antigua’s beautiful ruined convents and Tikal’s army of howler monkeys who scared me to death at 4 in the morning
I loved Honduras because the bunch of guitar-playing hippie divers I met on Roatan reminded me of another time in my life
I loved Ecuador because that’s where my Spanish unlocked its brakes. And because I met Michael and Mor in the Galapagos
I loved Peru for the crushing dignity of its Inca fortresses and for giving me enough diarrhea to fill a bath tub
I loved Bolivia because it’s the underdog of South America and the Altiplano made me feel like I was on the moon
Argentina filled my belly with the greatest steak on the planet and gave me wireless internet in every coffee shop
South Africa had the bluest skies I’ve ever seen
In Namibia I floundered to the on top of a giant red sand dune at sunrise and saw lions having sex
In Botswana I followed fresh animal tracks through the savanna and saw a herd of elephants coming out of the fog
Zambia made me famous for fifteen minutes and helped me earn $1000 in royalties
In Malawi I kept looking for the other shore of the lake while I sipped cold beer
Tanzania showed me a place that redeemed all ugliness in the world
Kenya… well, I didn’t really visit Kenya but it still had the coolest song in the world
Egypt crushed me under millennia of history and showed me that sometimes locals just want to talk to tourists without demanding money
In Greece I realized that I could drink tap water again but I turned into a wino instead
Italy lead me back to Rome, and for a day I was an all-powerful pasta-eating emperor. Maybe Caligula.
Spain had scores of delicious tapas and smoky crowded bars and Gaudi and pretty girls everywhere and Robert and Eva
Romania is still where I return when I want to remember the smell of hay and fresh snow and roasted pig-ears
I almost had my fingers amputated by frostbite for taking my hands out of my mittens to take pictures in front of the Hungarian parliament
In Turkey I shed a tear for the defunct Constantinople and then gorged myself with pide and baklava in Istanbul
India overwhelmed me with unusual sensations, crushed me with its mass of humanity and got me some peace of mind, if only just for a short time...
Thailand explained to me what the song “One Night in Bangkok” was all about
I loved Cambodia because you cannot believe that a place like Angkor Wat really exists until you see it
In Laos I wanted to become a bearded, balding, homeless dope-head just to forget that I had to return home and look for a job...

An open-ended list of things that pissed me off around the world (and still do)

2008-07-18T02:01:00.020-07:00

I was going to call this one “Ten things that pissed me off around the world” but once I began to think about all the times I was annoyed, pissed off or wished I had a shotgun to blast someone out of their idiotic useless existence during the course of this trip I couldn’t stop counting and soon I used all the fingers of my two hands and took my socks off so I can start counting using my toes. Hence the current title.

1. White people waiting for a table in front of a restaurant in Cuzco.
Why the hell would you want to stay in line for lunch with twenty other idiots wearing The North Face jackets at a place that has burgers, roast-beef sandwiches and steak fries at 3400 meters altitude in Peru? Because you’re too much of a coward to try to experience any of the local food in a city that has a million restaurants and because it looks very much like any joint you would find in your pathetic town back home, so it makes you feel safe. If you miss your own corner deli and their stinky pastrami so much, stay home.
2. Public service employees begging for a handout like they deserve it.
This asshole day-guard walks up to me in the museum of Coptic Christian history in Cairo and asks me “You Christian?” “Yes” (I’m not but in Egypt you’re either Muslim or Christian, there’s no such thing as an atheist) “Me too, see?” (Shows me a cross. Grins. As if now we’re buddies) “I have 10 children. Give me money.” He’s following me through the building so I give him a 1-pound note to shake him off. He looks at me like I did him wrong “Only 1 pound? More! 10 children!” and stretches his hand again. Piss off. I took the pound note back and left him there. Asshole. If you really have 10 children and can’t care for them you should have gotten a vasectomy.
3. Listening to the same idiotic questions from other tourists you meet.
Where did you come from? Where are you going next? Did you like X? Are you visiting Z? Shut up. It’s all the same. I didn’t talk to you, so stop talking to me because it’s obvious you don’t have anything interesting to say. Do something useful and leave me alone.
4. Dishonest hotel managers.
So this place is a shithole and you still want me to pay in advance for four nights? And you told me 40 Euros on the phone and now it’s 50? How the hell did you get into Lonely Planet anyway? Their editors must be on crack.
5. Inane “must see” places that are just boring pieces of junk.
If the top attraction in the city is the public library that exhibits some gorgeous murals from a celebrated local artist, just spare yourself the effort and time and don’t go there. Lonely Planet is on crack.
6. Imbeciles who show up early for everything.
On our 40-day African safari our guide would announce every evening the schedule for the next day: “tomorrow morning, the wake up call is at 6:30, breakfast at 7, we leave at 7:45″. Each morning, as I woke up at 6:30, the other white people had already packed their tents. By 7, they were done with breakfast and were idling around casting passive-aggressive looks of disapproval at me. Bite me! I’m not going to bend to peer-pressure, I need my beauty sleep.
7. Yes, we have hot water. Yes we leave at 10am.
Everyone lies. You’re just a big fat wallet on legs. Get used with it or bring a shotgun.
8. Rickshaw drivers in Asia.
When you take a ride to town coming from the station with your backpack the driver always knows a great hotel, just around the corner – usually a shithole that gives them commission for every clueless guy they drop at their door. Those assholes all have an incurable ear disease – they can’t hear the word “no”. Maybe a jackhammer would help.
9. White people trying too hard to embrace local traditions.
During the water festival in Chiang Mai everyone gets wet and everyone throws water about and nobody gets mad. But when you see a group made exclusively of tourists armed with buckets and water pistols, dousing every open-back taxi truck that passes - a day after the festival has officially ended - showing them the finger is not only ok, it becomes mandatory.
10. Paying 2 Euros for plain coffee.
Seriously. Europeans are crazy. They should all grow a pair and boycott Starbucks but I’m afraid it’s too late, they’re hooked.
11. Local travel agencies that charge a heavy markup for stuff that you can get for less around the corner.
And the morons who do not do their homework and keep paying, perpetuating the scams.
12. Fat balding Anglo sex-tourists trying to make dinner conversation with Thai prostitutes who don’t give a shit.
You know who you are. And I stared and snickered at every single one of you just to make you feel even more self-conscious, defeated and worthless than you are.
13. Paying too much for poor service because you have no choice
Getting on the island… cheap. Getting off the island… not so cheap. What are you going to do? Ask to speak with the manager?
14. Douchebags who rave about how awesome and spiritual India is.
All you little shits who act elated, telling everyone who’s within earshot that “India is, like, soooo awesome, so spiritual, I wish I never had to leave, this is the best place ever, man! You don’t understand!” like you are the first person in the universe to ever get laid - go live in the slums on a less than a dollar a day like 90% of India’s population, without bottled water, internet and your stupid iPod, go sell paan or drive a rickshaw for a living and then come and proclaim your epiphany to the world. You are an idiot and nobody cares about your pseudo-intellectual bullshit and your condescending “enlightened” attitude.
15. Retarded teenagers checking their Facebook “walls”.
You absolutely have to stay in touch or else your friends will stop loving you. And make sure you use all caps and poor grammar, it makes you look smart. “I’M IN THAILND LOL AND ITS SO KEWL WE HAD DA BEST PARTY YOUR NOT GOING TO BELIEV WHN U C THE PICTRES!!!!1” Seriously… better free that bandwidth for someone who has more important things to do, like uploading an angry blog that nobody reads!
16. Horrible European tippers.
I don’t tip more than the norm (whose norm? mine!) because I think that some professions are already making lots of undeserved money. Take bartenders, for example: one dollar a drink? Are you kidding me!? But even I wanted to take a shotgun at the Euro-dipshits who dropped only 10 dollars in the tipping pot for the army of porters who, for four days in a row, had set up our tents, cooked our meals and transported all the heavy equipment on their backs running barefoot at lightning speed while we were trudging and sweating our way on the Inca trail for the sake of our crusty pathetic egos. Israelis, Aussies and Kiwis included at a discount.
17. Losers who visit the Coliseum and have no idea where they are.
Who is this guy Octavian Augustus? Look, that statue is naked! (chuckle) Who built all these ruins? Was it the Romans? What's the capital of Rome? Not that anyone cares, but these people make us look like a nation of uncultured idiots and help perpetuate the stereotype that all Americans are stupid and they only know how to make war on other countries. Amen!
18. Jackasses on group tours, who show too much skin in public in Muslim countries.
Nobody, anywhere, needs to see your lard bulging under your belly-shirt. If you happen to be hot you’ll get more attention than you want for that deep cleavage and the short skirt. Maybe some of those pious, innocent men will get into accidents turning their heads because of you. The traffic will be jammed for hours and I’ll be stuck in a cab without air conditioning, listening to bad music, until they dig the bodies out and remove the rubble. All because you showed cleavage. You monster!
19. Everyone else.
Stay home. I hate people.

Almost Famous

2008-05-22T14:58:00.017-07:00

Down the drain

A few months after we left Africa, a blogger from Spain who maintains a popular site where he collects bits of information about interesting and strange places and events wrote an article about the adrenaline-junkies messing around in Devil’s Pool, the natural swimming pool at the edge of Victoria Falls, which we had visited in September. He assembled a few photos and videos off the internet and linked them to the original sources. Within days, my flickr picture set on Victoria Falls was getting thousands of views. I tracked the clicks back to the referring site, to find out to whom I owed this unexpected surge in interest – for once the view count of my travel pictures of exotic places was surpassing that of my older photos of drunk girls kissing in dark and noisy clubs.

Rich and famous... and beautiful!

By April, the story was making the rounds on the internet and a few news agencies caught wind of it. Devil’s Pool hasn’t been discovered yesterday; in fact tourists have been going there for a quick adrenaline-loaded swim for decades. But it looks like every generation needs to be reminded of the same things over and over. There’s just too much information floating around for us to be aware of; knowledge that isn’t in your face daily (and even that) is forgotten fast – how else would you explain the avalanche of movie remakes these days? Hollywood began by reissuing and updating movies from the forties, which were understandably unknown to most of the population currently living on Earth, but with each revamping project they are getting closer and closer the movies of our times – money-making entertainment machine has married attention-deficit disorder and their children are the placebo soothing pills of our anxieties. Soon they’ll be remaking next year’s movies today… but I digress…

A British online news agency contacted me on flickr and asked for permission to use my pictures – in exchange for publishing credit and compensation. I gladly agreed – who doesn’t want to be famous on the internet? – and they wrote a short article that appeared in the online versions of a few British newspapers. The reporter asked me for some quotes about my experience, which he wanted to use in the article. Among others, here’s what I said; this quote was reproduced without much journalistic adjustment:

“Being in Devil's pool is a serious adrenaline rush for the first few minutes. If you jump (you can also get in gently) it adds up to the excitement. The thought that you may get sucked away from the relatively calm waters of the pool and down the foamy hell into the pit makes you giddy with apprehension - although you have to stray far out quite a bit for that to happen. It's great fun - some people enjoy it quietly, swimming, looking, thinking, while others keep screaming to no end.”

I also told the reporter that we chose to go swimming in Devil’s Pool instead of trying bungee jumping because there would be plenty of opportunities for bungee in other places, but swimming at the edge of a 360-feet waterfall is not something you can do anywhere and anytime. That was quoted as “[…] said it was better than bungee jumping”. Well, damn you reporters! I have never jumped anyway, so I wouldn’t know.

Within days I also gave publishing rights to BBC Brazil and to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Before I could say “waterfall” my quote and pictures were syndicated in online newspapers and magazines around the world, translated from English into Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, hell knows what else, and even Romanian. They also made it into a printed version of the US entertainment magazine “In Touch” – which I am considering suing for millions owed to me in royalties. Wouldn’t you?

OMG! A child! Save him!
This guy had his share of online bashing

The readers’ comments online were mixed – half of the people adhered to the “this is soooo cool, I want to do it too” opinion, the other half supported the “these people are idiots, they should put themselves out of the gene pool” position. An even more divisive discussion went on about the people who had their children in Devil’s Pool with them: one group (consisting, of course, of people who have never been to Victoria Falls) kept screaming bloody murder “I can’t believe these idiots can be so reckless to take their children in the pool with them and expose them to such danger,” to which the second group would reply: “get a life, these children are obviously not in danger; if it were up to you, the social services would rule everybody’s lives and children would go to the playground swathed in bubble wrap.”

So, uhm… I’m famous! Do you want to hang out with me?

Note: not all photos featured in the articles listed below are mine. While all those news items quote my words and mention my name, the photos come from various sources. In some case, other Victoria Falls pictures have even been mistakenly attributed to me.
Some of the links below may become dead over time. The internet moves fast…

Article Links:

Austria

ORF

Croatia

24sata

Poland

Onet.pl

Life after the road

2008-05-04T13:57:00.012-07:00

  “Sir, are you finding everything ok?” the sales associate with a fake smile interrupts my moment of day-dreaming.
  “Yes, of course,” I say and I walk away, but I am irritated, and I don’t know if I’m annoyed more by the fact that she talked to me when I was obviously not trying to make eye contact or by her choice of words - the most aggravating conversation opener used by salespeople in the northwest.
“Do you want to apply for our store Visa credit card today?” I am told later at the cashier’s desk, again, with a huge, unjustified smile.
  “No.”
  “Do you know you can save ten percent of your purchase price today if you apply for the credit card?”
  “Yes, and I still don’t want it.” Please stop offering me things I don’t need. Just ring me up and take my money.
  “Do you want to donate one penny for the Special Olympics?” the grocery store checkout clerk asks me.
  “No.” I look her straight in the eyes but my laser gaze misfires. I don’t care for the Olympics, special or not, and I only donated money once, long ago, during the Microsoft giving campaign, to a cancer research institute. I am a bad person and I do not want to save the world. I swipe the credit card; the cashier gives me the bag with groceries and before she hands me the receipt she takes a brief look at it, then turns back to me and says, sporting the same punch-me-in-the-face smile: “Thank you, mister Sturgeon.”

I give her the look of death again, but I don’t say anything. I’m back home and it’s generally considered impolite to tell people what you think, i.e. I really, really don’t want you to act like you know me and say my name when you thank me for shopping at Safeway; I do not need you to try to make me feel like I am at the neighborhood mom-and-pop store and you’re my best friend. And certainly I don’t want you to butcher my name mispronouncing it, which is more likely to happen than not.

Now that I can compare I realize that the salespeople at home are just as annoying as those from the Cairo bazaar, albeit a bit less aggressive; they just have a different style. I don’t know what is more pitiful or irritating – the impertinence and obstinacy of street-vendors and taxi drivers in third-world countries, asking you, the presumably-rich foreign backpacker, for prices five times higher than what they expect to get in the end, or the excessively obsequious and unnecessarily friendly attitude of American sales associates working for commission or simply being forced to apply what their management considers good customer service.

Urban bliss

Later that evening we have dinner at a local restaurant in Queen Anne. The over-the-top friendly waiter talks too much, and pushes the specials of the day at machine-gun-fire speed, his smile so wide and bright I could almost believe he loves being there with us more than anything else in the world. At the end of the meal I take the bill and add the tip, 15% before tax, plus a few pennies to round up. It’s been a year since I last had to figure out a waiter’s tip, write it down on a bill and do some post-dinner math. In most places we had just followed local customs – leave some coins to show that you don’t care much about the petty change in most small eateries; tip nothing in Europe or risk getting the “pathetic American sucker” look; add up to 10% in more upscale restaurants anywhere else.

New home

A trip cannot last forever; sooner or later, moving from place to place every few days becomes too exhausting and starts undermining the desire to travel; slowly, the need for some sort of stability, for a home, settles in. And now, a year after packing up and cramming all our belonging into a 12x10 storage room, we ended up back in the same town that we used to call home before this adventure started. There are quite a few things about Seattle that I did not miss during our year away. The semi-permanent rainy season is one of them. Having to pay 8 dollars for a plate of Thai food that used to cost me one dollar merely a few days before is another. The price of gas, the housing market, car and health insurance, being stuck in traffic on the way to work listening to an uninspired morning show on the radio…

I can’t let those things and thoughts take more importance than they are due. There are plenty of reasons why it’s fine to be back at home. During the past week I saw a few of my old friends: some have longer hair, some have lost a bit more of theirs. Some have lost or gained weight, others have more wrinkles around their eyes. But they are still the same people and I’m glad to see them again.

Hi sweetie!

I missed the way our beautiful little city shines on a sunny day, the clean, quiet tree-lined streets in the residential neighborhoods, and the views of downtown from the freeway. I missed drinking microbrew ales on tap at a local tavern, the Capitol Hill coffee shops and my favorite Thursday night hangout. I missed working out at the gym and having a proper bathroom. I needed to be around my horses, play my guitar, and maybe most of all, I missed my weathered, beat-up 1988 3-series BMW, which still needs new suspension, a few sensors and a replacement left-side door lock since thieves broke into our apartment’s garage more than a year ago. Maybe if I get a job I will be able to afford all that.

Strange as it sounds, after a year of keeping my brain in hibernation I miss having a job – just the exciting parts of it, the challenges, the rewards and the fun, not the stress and the occasional nights and weekends spent trying to meet a deadline.

Life is normal again. Or is it?

Return address

2008-05-01T16:56:00.002-07:00

We're back in Seattle. Life goes on, even after you've been traveling for one year. Updates soon... this blog does not end here.

No one stays dry in Chiang Mai

2008-04-20T01:23:00.017-07:00

Splaaaaash!
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Songkran photos

No one, really. Unless you lock yourself in your hotel room and order food delivery you will get wet sooner or later. During the three days of Songkran, the Thai new year festival, most of Thailand's population is locked in an extraordinary water-dousing fight match, which involves everyone who sets foot in the street, from children (the first to start, days ahead of the official festivities), to older people, to hapless - or willing - tourists. The only people who do not become targets for the buckets of water thrown at random all over town are the few brave street-food vendors who defy the flood hoping to make a penny - even wet people grow hungry sooner or later. In the general exhilaration, no one pours water on them on purpose, but bucket handles slip occasionally and aims are missed...

Caught in the act

The situation is especially intense in Chaing Mai, the second-largest city in Thailand, a town become famous precisely because of the madness that takes place on its streets each year between the 13th and 15th of April. The old part town is shaped like a perfect square with sides roughly one-kilometer long, and used to be surrounded by defensive walls and a wet moat. There aren't many bricks left standing from the old wall, but the moat is alive and doing very well these days. While the water-craze takes over the whole town, the streets that run along the four sides of the square are the epicenter of action and fun - that area sees more water per square inch in a day than the country sees in a week of monsoon rains. Pickup trucks jammed with wet people cruise along slowly, loaded with barrels full of water. Every now and then the merry passengers fetch a pail and throw it at the passersby. At the same time, in the snail-paced traffic, they are easy targets for the walking crowd. Once in a while everyone stops to refill their weapons of choice: buckets, pails or water-guns - from the moat, of course. The water is warm and brown, so you better keep your mouth closed when a pailful lands on your head. It may not be an easy resolution to keep, if you are stunned out of your senses by a sudden splash of icy water!

Hanging out at the moat
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Chiang Mai photos

I bought a big squirting water gun for the outrageous price of 200 Baht (which I managed to wrangle down from the original 300) - if you get caught in the middle of a war without a weapon, you pay dearly for the privilege of taking part in the hostilities. Half an hour later it broke and refused to squirt; after trying unsuccessfully to fix it for a few minutes I abandoned technology in favor of tradition and bought a small pail - it was easier to refill and inflicted greater damage - especially when I was able to sneak around the people who guarded their barrels of ice-water, steal a scoop and pour it on them. There's only one rule to the game - nobody gets upset.

Hungry!
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all cooking school photos

The other highlight of our stay in Chiang Mai was the day-long cooking class on Thai food, which we took during the festival. After an entertaining visit to market, where we got acquainted with the various vegetables and spices, the following delicious dishes where cooked and subsequently devoured by each of us, seven farang eager to unlock the secrets of those exotic recipes:

Stir-fried chicken with cashew nuts
Deep-fried fish cakes
Spicy Tom-yum soup with prawns
Chicken green curry over rice
Fish souffle in banana leaves
Pumpkin custard pie
Pad Thai noodles with pork and prawns
Fried spring rolls

On our way back to the hotel we got drenched, but we managed to save our self-cooked dinner, thanks to the magic superpower of multiple layers of plastic bags.

Posted in a hurry from Bangkok, our last stop on this trip. Home is almost in sight!

The longest boat ride

2008-04-17T01:15:00.011-07:00

Burning land
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Mekong trip photos

The major attractions of the Laos tourist track are strung like beads on a rope along Route 13, which spans the whole length of the north-south axis of this country shaped somewhat like a deformed cooking pan or a spiked battle axe. Once you’ve seen the south and followed the Mekong northwards through the “panhandle” to Vientiane, once you’re done with tubing and partying in Vang Vieng and got your share of temple photos in Luang Prabang, you have a choice: you can either continue the arduous land journey north, to the remote highlands in the Phongsali province, or you can return to Thailand - which is what most tourists do. It wouldn’t be much fun to backtrack your steps all the way to Vientiane in order to cross the border; no traveler likes seeing the same roads again on their way home. Fortunately, there’s a better alternative: the Mekong.

A cozy spot

From Luang Prabang to Huay Xai on the Thai border, the river journey takes two days by slow-boat. These are long, low-floating, single-deck covered boats capable of transporting a few dozen passengers. Called slow-boats for the obvious reason that there are also fast boats on the same route, most tourist prefer them to the faster alternative for reasons related to comfort and safety - the fast boats are minuscule, ultra-light contraptions that can only seat a few cramped passengers and move at break-neck speed; they have been known to flip over occasionally, with deadly consequences. The level of comfort on the slow boat varies with the number of people and the quality of the seats. Most boats have a few rows of reclining seats that look like they have just been ripped out of a minibus – in fact they are just that: minibus seats whose metal railings have been mounted on pieces of wood so they won’t damage the lacquered wooden floor planks. In addition to those, the boats hold a number of movable small wooden benches who look - and are - very uncomfortable; in the long run, the coziest spot for resting may end up being the floor. There is a bathroom on board and drinks are can be purchased. You can walk around, stretch your legs or lie down if you chose, and with the right company, be that people you like or a good book, you can spend the time pleasantly. And time you have, if nothing else; each day, for 10 hours, the boat munches its way against the current through the never-ending jungle-covered hills, through swats of land fallen victim to the yearly slash-and-burn agricultural ritual, through mountains of layered sediment brought downstream by past floods and millions of monsoon seasons.

Sunset on the river

There is a travel agency in every house on the main street in Luang Prabang; all of them sell tickets for the slow boat - at a charge. They seem to be doing a good business of it - few tourists bother going down to the slow-boat landing to check the prices at the ticket office. The fare to Pak Beng - a riverside village where you must spend the first night, half-way between Luang Prabang and the Thai border - is 110,000 kip for foreigners (about $12.50), but the more brazen agencies will slap an extra 30,000 kip ($3.50) on your back – one of those rackets is right near the ticket booth! In Pak Beng the ticket for the second leg of the trip costs 115,000 for foreigners, but if you fall for the tricks of the few Luang Prabang agencies who sell the ticket all the way to the border, you’ll pay a lot more. As usual, it’s worth checking prices in advance - buy the ticket at the pier or negotiate with the travel agencies. Sadly, the complacent attitude of many tourists, “oh, it’s only three more dollars, never mind,” works against everybody’s interest giving a blank check to businesses’ greed. It only helps drive prices higher for both locals and tourists.

  “How many hours to Pak Beng?” I ask the lady behind the desk at the travel agency.
  “6 or 7. Boat leaves at 8:30 in the morning.”
  “On the second day, are we going to arrive at the border before it closes?” I wanted to know if we had to spend two more nights in Laos or just one.
  “Yes.” I realize I just asked a question leading to the answer that I wanted to hear, so I rephrase:
  “What time do we arrive at the border on the second day?”
  “At three o’clock,” she assures me. The border closes at 6PM, so we may make it to the Thai side the same day. Three different agencies give me similar answers.

Slash and burn

But we didn’t make it in time. The first day of traveling, we took 9 hours to Pak Beng. The second day we spent 10 hours afloat and we arrived in Huay Xai after dark. What is this worldwide tendency of travel agents to lie to their customers about arrival times? They know how long the trip really takes, don’t they?! We would have taken the boat anyway, even if they had told us the truth... Spending a last night in Laos wasn’t bad at all. I enjoyed the last few Beerlao (one of my favorite lagers on this trip) with Craig, Rae and Jordan, some Aussies we had met on the boat, and spent our last kip which were going to become useless once we arrived in Thailand – you can pay for almost everything in Thai baht on the Lao side of the border but you cannot use kip anywhere else.

And so the next day we crossed the river into Thailand and took a minibus to Chiang Mai. We had reached the last destination of our year-long journey.

Posted from Hat Sai Khao beach, Ko Chang island, Thailand.

Luang Prabang, a Kingdom afar

2008-04-13T22:18:00.013-07:00

Luang Prabang is ready for business!
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Luang Prabang photos

Laos is a communist state, and therefore the official propaganda is still reviling all the social evils that the Pathet Lao party has triumphed upon with its seizure of power in 1975: capitalism, imperialism, and monarchy. But the voices of the official party line are more likely to be muffled these days; the tune is a different one, in sync with the political realities of China and other nominally-communist states that have abandoned the economic doctrine of collectivization: “get rich if you can, but do not dare defy the party”. And the Lao are very busy trying to make money; every day of the week is business as usual in Luang Prabang for night market sellers, for tuk-tuk drivers, for tourism agencies, restaurants and guesthouses.

Dark clouds over the Royal Palace wat

Even the tough stance on monarchy - a staple of propaganda literature of all communist regimes - has softened in recent times: there are amulets for sale at the market with carvings and pictures of the late kings of Laos, and the neatly preserved Royal Palace Museum in Luang Prabang is the main tourist attraction in town. It’s a rather austere royal residence, more of a large country mansion than a sumptuous palace. As a museum, it provides a good insight in the simple lives of the royal family of a poor, mountainous kingdom, squeezed between more powerful neighbors. In the room reserved for diplomatic gifts to Laos from other states, there’s a noteworthy token of appreciation sent by US President Nixon (hence still addressed to the Royal government, since Nixon’s presidency ended before the communists took power): a scale model of the Apollo 11 lunar module and some tiny bits of lunar rock cast in a glass bubble supported by a plaque which bears a miniature flag of the Kingdom of Laos and an inscription in English saying that the flag has been flown to the moon and back. A strange and cynical gift to the people of Laos, considering that at the time the United States was busy bombing their country to bits.

Reclining Buddha on Phu Si hill

“Stay another day!” – the words of this unofficial tourist mantra of Luang Prabang lure you from street banners, advertising windows and tourist brochures all over town. We stayed four days, defying the crushing heat, surviving a sudden storm that nearly flooded our room, patrolling the courtyards of many slumbering temples and drinking a lot of Beerlao (the one and only locally-produced beer, and quite a good one) with extra ice, to prevent it from growing warm too soon in the hellish outside temperatures. We slept at the Oudomphone Guest House, whose owner, an older, very effusive Lao lady, calls herself mama, feeds you bananas whether you want them or not, and stays awake late at night to make sure every one of her guests returns to the nest. On a whiteboard in the ground-floor corridor she makes annotations about the rooms of the house - the current prices, which rooms are empty, and a check sign for the tenants who have returned at night. I wonder what she would do if one doesn’t show up until the next morning… She also gave us a thick comforter to cover ourselves with at night, although there was no need for such radical care…

Inside Wat Xieng Thong

Every morning we started the day with breakfast at the Scandinavian Bakery (who knew the Swedes had a reputation for things cooked in the oven?), which serves great pastries, delicious sandwiches and all-you-can-drink fresh brewed coffee. Every evening Angela finished the day with a few hours of hunting for bargains at the Night Market on the main street; luckily she had Rahel to keep her company among the mountains of cuteness set for display on the pavement, and I was able to spend this time online, keeping up with the blog and uploading photos. The nights weren’t much to talk about; we’d celebrate our trip with a few more bottles of Beerlao or glasses of wine - there’s a swanky, well-stacked wine bar on the main street in Luang Prabang - but the whole town shuts down around 11PM and the only place to hang out was mama’s terrace at the guesthouse.

Wet and happy!

Between morning coffee and evening-time Beerlao, the days in Luang Prabang can be packed with activities. There are only so many temples that one can visit before they all start looking “same same”; the Phu Si hill, located smack in the middle of town offers great views, but after climbing the few hundred steps to the top, baking slowly under the unforgiving sun, anyone would be beset by doubts that the photo opportunities were not worth the effort and sweat. For the rest of the time, short of spending money in the scores of good-looking cafes and restaurants meant for the tourist dollar it’s better to head outside of town for a river trip, to visit caves or to swim at the waterfalls. On our third day, we took a half-day trip to Tat Kuang Si, a scenic waterfall a half-hour drive away from town. We were supposed to get wet swimming in the natural pools at the base of the falls, but we ended up getting dunked and drenched on our way back by the kids who ambushed every car, truck and motorcycle and doused them with buckets of water. They were getting a bit of advance practice for the water festivities of the Lao New Year, and it seemed that the season for splashing farang was already open. They had no mercy.

Published from Chaing Mai, Thailand.

Vang Vieng

2008-04-10T09:48:00.008-07:00

The road to the river
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Vang Vieng pics

If you take Lonely Planet seriously you would think that Vang Vieng has graduated into the Major League of non-stop party scenes, right there with Bangkok's Khao San road, The Strip and Ibiza. The reality however, is not nearly as frightening as that. Sure, Vang Vieng has already become a fixture on the Laos backpacking circuit, a mandatory stop on the South-East Asia tourist trek, and for good reasons. Tubing (while drinking, optionally) down the Nam Song river is drawing a steady stream of enthusiastic, boisterous water-splashers; the more adventurous fill their day with adrenaline-loaded activities like caving, kayaking and rock-climbing; the scenery is breathtaking, the jagged karst mountains jutting out of the rice fields, dominating the landscape for miles.

Still peaceful

On the more decadent side, in what has become a trademark of the Vang Vieng experience, many restaurants play endless reruns of Friends on their street-side open patios, drunk falang in their bathing suits waddle their way in the middle of the street to the next bar, and the famous happy-shakes are more popular than ever. But the charm of the place has not yet been spoiled by unrestrained partying. In fact, I found the town rather quiet; there were few tourists around and no loud music was blaring from speakers at the bars. The vibe was peaceful... still. Perhaps the fact that all of Laos more-or-less shuts down at 11pm plays a role in that.

We didn't stay here too long, only enough to have a drink at a riverside restaurant admiring the magnificent sunset over the mountains and to do a bit of tubing the next day. Angela and our travel-friend Rahel did the tubing, I did the drinking...

Posted from Chiang Mai, Thailand.

The most relaxed capital in the world

2008-04-07T04:42:00.008-07:00

The Great Stupa
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Vientiane pics

There's not a lot you can do as a tourist in Vientiane. Sure, you can take pictures of the the photogenic Great Gilded Stupa, you can visit a few peaceful Buddhist wats, or you can stroll along the corridors of the National Museum through exhibits about the revolutionary history of Laos. But most of all, you will end up appreciating the restaurants that this town has to offer. The locals seem to be very proud of their flimsy French colonial heritage; bakeries, cafes, croissants and wicker chairs are pleasant fixtures of the city center streets. Many appealing, tastefully decorated dining establishments boast international cuisine on their menus - there is even a Mexican Taqueria on the river front - and most offer a very good, tasty deal for your money.

Tech-savvy monk

Surprisingly, the first few hotels we looked at as we got off the night bus from Pakse, were all booked solid. After wandering around in circles a few times, increasingly frustrated, looking at the "full" signs set up on top of many reception counters, we found a decent room at the Orchid Guesthouse, with bathroom, TV and air conditioning for $16. It was a little expensive, considering that Laos was supposed to be still one of the cheapest tourist destinations, but it seems that the Lonely Planet effect is being felt around here as well. As soon as something is listed in one of their famous, popular guidebooks the prices increase, sometimes up to double. You cannot negotiate much for room rates in Laos, even less so in remote rural areas like the Bolaven Plateau; more than once we arrived at guesthouses that were practically empty, yet they wouldn’t budge when I tried to haggle. Prices increase naturally over time, and the dollar is at a historic low nowadays, but these sudden radical adjustments of the most recent published rates seem only motivated by the greed of local businesses and the willingness of the tourists to pay without questioning. In the words of a bitter forum member on the Thorntree message board: "I travel with a f#@%*! Lonely Planet guide only so I know to avoid all the places listed in there!"

No incoming traffic?

One day is all you need in Vientiane if you don't have any special business to attend to. I did - I had to apply for another tourist visa to enter Thailand again; unfortunately Romania is not on the list of the countries whose citizens are exempt of visas or can receive them on arrival. The process was as easy as ever: you stay in line to apply, you wait in a stifling room for your name to be called so you can pay the 1000 baht fee (about $30) and you pick up your passport the next day. And since Vientiane is a small town, I didn't even need to pay for a taxi to take us to the consulate and back - we rented bicycles and explored the town on wheels; the flat land and the absence of heavy traffic makes biking a very appealing alternative to tuk-tuks.

After two days we continued on our way north - the next stop was Vang Vieng, the backpacker's mecca in the mountains of northern Laos.

Published from Luang Prabang

Rural adventures in southern Laos

2008-04-05T05:05:00.017-07:00

Tubing on the Mekong at dusk
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Don Det pics

As soon as I got off the boat in Don Det I knew it was the place I’ve been hoping for. I had seen too many crowded cities, busy paved roads, hassling tuk-tuk drivers and growling tour buses. Without even knowing it I had been longing for a hammock under the shade of trees by the riverside. I had been dreaming of a peaceful village with no cars and few people, a haven of silence with dirt paths and bamboo bungalows where the morning crow of the roosters and the music of the roaring waterfalls would be the only disturbing noises. Then our long-tail boat landed on a muddy river bank in Don Det. I was in backpacker heaven.

Our bungalows - Vixay guesthouse

At the southern tip of Laos, the Mekong River spreads into a maze of arms and canals, snaking its way through and around the swarm of islands that dot its waters. Don Det, the most famous outpost in the Four Thousand Islands, is where the crowd of international modern-day hippies goes for a swim, a beer, and countless hours of just watching the waters flow. The islands still live in a time of their own; the local families tend to their riverside guesthouses and patio-restaurants when they are not busy cultivating rice. Electricity is a daily four-hour festival, between 6 and 10 PM. There are no cars, only a few scooters. Nobody runs; everybody seems to be taking a stroll. If you’re looking for the deepest meaning of the words “slow” and “relaxed,” Don Det is the place for you. The French have tried, with little success, to build some infrastructure – a short railroad, a bridge and a few concrete dams – in order to circumvent the furious waterfalls that make the navigation toward the lower Mekong impossible. After their departure, everything fell into ruins.

Beach life in Don Det

The tourists, mainly young backpackers and aged hippies, haven’t destroyed the place yet since it’s been “discovered”, about 10 years ago; they’re mostly busy socializing at the small beach on the northern tip of the island, biking their way around, swimming in the natural pools at the Tat Somphamit waterfalls and getting high on the widely available, cheap ganja. The lack of permanent electrical power contributes in part to keeping the islands isolated and underdeveloped; everyone who loves them would like them to stay so. For as underdeveloped as they are, the islands don’t lack the basic commodities needed by 21st-century backpackers – beer, kept in coolers under blocks of ice, is usually cold enough despite the lack of refrigerators; internet, albeit expensive, is available (running on batteries outside of the electricity window) and in every hamlet lives at least one guy who can fix a flat tire – a skill sorely needed by many falang who rent bikes to explore Don Det and Don Khon (its sister island to the south). During our own biking adventure, Angela’s wheels punctured and deflated three times, the same day. Bad luck or bad karma?

Angela and Rahel sipping a Lao-Lao shake

Many people stay on the islands longer than they planned, but “slow” and “relaxed” can become “boring” after a while. We left after three days and took a sawngthaew (a sort of pick-up truck turned bus) to Pakse, the closest bigger town on the Mekong and a former French colonial provincial capital. After peace and quiet we were now missing the creature comforts of modern life: TV, better food and air conditioning. It was time for a bigger adventure: a motorbike tour of the Bolaven plateau. Lonely Planet recommends the plateau, its jungle-covered mountains, the spectacular waterfalls, and the dirt roads winding through sleepy villages as one of the main attractions of southern Laos; we took their word for it and followed the circuit they suggested.

Tad Fan Waterfalls
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Bolaven plateau
photos

We left Pakse with our 100cc 4-speed Honda on a rainy morning. As we woke up with the dark skies and warm rain we hesitated for a while; should we just skip the whole plateau-thing and head straight to Vientiane? But we didn’t give up; we left the big backpacks at the Lankham hotel and hopped on the bike with the day bag, a change of clothes, the camera and the computer (which we did not need, but couldn't leave behind). Within minutes my shirt was drenched and we had to stop at the market to buy plastic rain coats. As we arrived frozen and wet at the Tad Fan resort, where we wanted to have lunch at the restaurant overlooking the waterfalls, we were already having second thoughts. What if it was going to rain like that for the next few days? Fortunately it didn’t; the weather got better in the afternoon and by the time we arrived in the Tad Lo village, where we were going to spend the night, the skies had cleared and our clothes had dried.

Kids playing Thai footbal in Tad Lo village

Tad Lo village is a perfect spot to while away a day or two in perfect harmony with nature. There are a few guesthouses with decent restaurants on the banks of the river, a short distance from the waterfalls, and only a handful of quiet backpackers. Unlike in Don Det, where all foreign tourists behave like one big family, there’s none of that overbearing socializing in Tad Lo; you’d almost want to talk in a whisper to your mate at the restaurant so you won’t disturb the divine peace that surrounds the village…

Foreigners come to the villages and towns of the plateau but not in large numbers, and the locals are always forthcoming and eager to practice the few words of English they know. In Attapeu they changed the TV channel to CNN when we sat down in a restaurant; they were happy and surprised when we told them we wanted the Lao traditional noodle-soup for breakfast instead of the omelets and baguettes they expected every falang to eat in the morning.

Bike warrior

Driving a bike up and down on the potholed dirt roads of the plateau is no easy affair. Storms broke out a couple of times; we had to stop and take cover under an abandoned house with some Lao boys who were kindling a scrap-wood fire. Another time, as the rain started to pour, a woman invited us in her house; her kids were staring at us the whole time, not sure whether they should laugh or be horrified. And when we thought things were just going great we got into an accident – I tried to avoid two consecutive potholes and the back wheel went skidding out of control. Before we knew it, we were reeling in the dirt, trying to figure out what happened, and the whole village was running toward us to help. Luckily we got away with a few superficial skin wounds, and the bike was fine. We were able continue our drive but we were hurting badly and decided to push all the way back to Pakse to treat our wounds – there was not much in the way of hygiene and medical help in Paksong, a small town in the heart of the plateau, where we had hoped to clean up and spend the night.

Road food

Our travel medical kit was more than enough, but out of sheer curiosity and a sense that a professional would do a better job, I decided to go to the local hospital. Surprisingly, it was all very clean and the nurses who treated us did a great job – but then again, they didn’t have to do much; they only cleaned the wounds, rubbed in some iodine and applied sterile plasters. Before long, we were entertaining the whole hospital staff with stories from the trip and bits of information about America. Treatment was free but we had to buy some cheap medical supplies, painkillers and antibiotics. Later that night, we celebrated the return to civilization and our narrow escape from an accident that could have turned much worse, with copious amounts of western food, beer and wine. The next day, we slept.

falang (or farang): generic word used in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos to describe foreigners of European ancestry. A bit like "gringo" in Central and South America.
Posted from Luang Prabang, Laos.

The Indochina route

2008-04-01T04:35:00.008-07:00

Sunset at the Royal Palace
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Phnom Penh
pictures

Getting to Cambodia from Bangkok on land is sort of a painful adventure, from what I’ve heard. Guide books and weathered backpackers advise against taking the minibus service to Siem Reap, the gateway to Angkor, offered by many Bangkok hotels and guesthouses. Apparently, the “direct” minibus deal is a major scam. The journey takes the whole day and the weary backpackers are dropped late at night at a commission-paying hotel, when they are too tired to set off and look for another guesthouse. A better alternative is to take public transportation to the Thailand-Cambodia border and arrange your transfer to Siem Reap once you crossed - there is no lack of options on the Cambodian side. Even then, the journey would not be much faster, since the road leading from the border to Siem Reap is in very poor shape. Conspiracy theory pundits maintain that the road is kept purposely in this state of disrepair, in order to bolster business for the only airline that links the two places, Bangkok Airways. Allegedly, Cambodian government officials receive solid kickbacks in exchange for keeping their eyes closed and allowing the status quo to continue. But that’s just a story… I’m sure that the money we paid to Bangkok Airways to fly us to Cambodia, about $200 per person for a 35-minute flight, will be used for a noble cause…

After exhausting ourselves scampering through the ruins of Angkor, the obvious next step was to travel to Phnom Penh, the capital of the country, the central hub where all roads lead to anyway. Luxury buses (luxury meaning that they have AC and a toilet) between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh take about 5 hours and cost $8. The road is paved and the ride uneventful.

The ravages of neglect

Phnom Penh, the largest town in Cambodia, still has the air of a sleepy colonial river outpost, boasting a nice French quarter with many renovated, charming buildings. Between 1975 and 1979, during the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, the city was almost completely abandoned; the population was evacuated and sent to remote villages and reeducation camps. Its residents were labeled enemies of the people, unfit and unworthy to live in the new agrarian republic of Kampuchea; many were eventually killed. The infrastructure gradually collapsed; the plumbing system, unused for too long, decayed and broke down. Rebuilding efforts started soon after the demise of the communist regime, with the gradual return of the population. Today the town looks pretty good, considering what it’s gone through in the past. Business is booming; tourists, foreign NGO workers, and even Cambodians fill the fancy restaurants and cafes along the river; renovation projects and construction work are underway in many parts of town. Yet as charming as Phnom Penh is, it’s nothing to fall in love with. After a few uneventful days, which we spent mostly eating and watching TV in our $15 air-conditioned room at the “OK Guesthouse” - a favorite backpacker’s hangout - we moved on… but not before a last-day extravaganza, spending $50 for Spanish tapas and a bottle of red wine at one of the finest restaurants in town.

Stung Treng... center

Since there wasn’t much else to see in Cambodia, we continued creeping our way toward Laos. There aren’t any luxury liners on that route; we had to take a mosquito-infested local bus that stopped in every village. It wasn’t very cheap (at least for us foreigners) - $12 and about 9 hours will bring you not quite to the border, but to Stung Treng, the closest town, where bus services end. Locals don’t cross the border often, and when they do, they are more likely to be seen on motorbikes loaded with bags and crates in a precarious balancing act. Various Phnom Penh guesthouses that provide bus tickets to backpackers sell transportation all the way to the Laos border, without volunteering the information that you have to spend the night in Stung Treng. But you have no choice, the border closes early. In Stung Treng, another $13 will get you a ticket involving two river crossings and two road transfers, all the way to Four Thousand Islands - the backpacker’s haven on the Mekong River in the south of Laos. Surprisingly, the suspicious-looking guy who sold us this deal accepted the Phnom Penh-to-Lao-border ticket that one of the foreign travelers had; he only paid $8.

The shipping of backpackers into Laos is like a family affair around here; guesthouses, bus companies, ferry operators, border guards - everybody seems to get a piece of the pie. Things works on the “Cambodian hour,” which is not unlike the Mexican hour; you must double the time they give you, and add one hour here or there to account for the unavoidable delays. We were told we would leave at 7:30AM, but ended up on the bus around 10. No one would tell us - five increasingly annoyed falang backpackers - what was going on, or when we would finally leave. Straight answers are not the norm here; admitting failure would mean losing face. Magically, when you demand explanations or try to negotiate for a better price, nobody speaks English anymore. But maybe there was a problem on that day and maybe they did usually leave at 7:30… in any case we made it to the border, where a larger group of tourists going the other way was waiting for the bus to take them into Cambodia.

Crossing the border was a breeze... a money-smelling breeze. At the border post on the Cambodia side, a simple wooden shack on the side of the road, the surly guard stamped our passports with the exit visas. “One dollar each” he said, in a flat, matter of fact voice. I know it’s never wise to argue with border officials in third-world countries, but I couldn’t help asking “Why?” “Overtime work,” the answer came. “It’s Sunday.” We smiled and paid. Later Angela told me she was burning to say “No problem, we come back tomorrow,” just to see how they take it. I suspect stamping passports would be considered overtime work not only on weekends, but also during breakfast, lunch and siesta and in general, whenever tourists happen to arrive.

A van was waiting for us on the other side of the barrier, confirming that we hadn’t been scammed after all. A few hundred meters farther, at the Laos border post, we showed our visas, which we had obtained in advance through an agency in Bangkok, and filled our entry cards. “Two dollars each,” the guard said, holding my passport in his hand. “Why?” “Overtime work. It’s Sunday.” I paid without saying a word, but at the same time I was thinking that somebody should tell those suckers on the Cambodia side that they have to adjust the overtime fee, because their smarter Lao colleagues are making double the money for the same work…

Posted from Vientiane, Laos.

Of ruins, tuk-tuks and Lonely Planet books

2008-03-26T07:52:00.016-07:00

An unforgettable first impression
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Angkor pictures

Cambodia - the cradle of the powerful Khmer empire in the old days - is a land that has gone through tormented recent times. It slumbered under a brief colonial French rule whose legacy can still be visible today; it achieved independence and survived the Indochina wars almost unscathed; it got its share of civil war between a corrupt western-backed government and ruthless, single-minded communist guerillas and wound up subjected to a horrifying social experiment performed by the genocidal Khmer Rouge. Yet the Cambodians still smile as they go through their days. Lately, after a period of turmoil following the return to monarchy and democracy (for lack of another word to describe the local medley of bickering political parties, military coups, and foreign influence) and the demise of the last Khmer Rouge guerillas, Cambodia’s wounds began to heal slowly. And what could spell “normalcy” better than a steady influx of western tourists and sustained hotel development? In fact, hotel building seems to be at an all-time high those days in Siem Reap, the provincial town used as a base to visit Angkor Wat - possibly the most famous ruin in Asia.

An afternoon in Siem Reap

Siem Reap still has a frontier-town air about it, with its charming old French quarter (now housing cafes, restaurants, bars and internet access points), with its cheap street-side food stalls and its lazy green river flowing peacefully to join the Mekong. The outskirts, however, have already begun to look like a fake resort town. The streets that radiate from the center toward the airport and the Angkor archaeological area are lined with vast luxury compounds boasting exquisite cuisine, flashy discos and relaxing piano-lounges. Their facades are bathed in mood-lighting at night; the lawns are perfectly manicured and the uniformed staff bows to open the doors when you arrive. Many of those new hotels weren’t even finished when we visited, but there is collective hope that the future will see interest in Angkor grow worldwide, which will materialize into a steady influx of package tours to fill the many new, expensive rooms. Understandably, the backpackers still prefer the cheaper guesthouses in town, within walking distance to Molly Malone's Irish Pub.

Mr. Meth, my driver for the day,
watches as his tire is being fixed

There are many ways to get to the Angkor ruins. You can take an organized tour – if you like to spend your day herded from site to site in an air-conditioned minibus, with a bunch of other clueless tourists, listening to a guide who will probably give you less historical information than your Lonely Planet book; you can rent a bike and pedal your lungs out in the searing heat that descends over the Cambodian plain by 9AM; or you can hire a tuk-tuk driver for the day and visit the sites of your choice at your own pace. Cambodian tuk-tuks are similar to rickshaws, but unlike those, they are built by attaching a two-wheeler passenger cart, seating up to four, to a regular motorbike. In my opinion, the extra comfort of a car is not worth the price increase over a tuk-tuk.

Reflection of Angkor Wat

A day-pass for the ruins will set you back $20 (or $40 for the 3-day pass) and you’ll count another $10 or $12 for the driver per day, sunrise to sundown. The three-day pass is the best option. You can’t see everything in one day; the heat will likely send you back to town early, in search of a cool corner and a chilled beer. Angkor Wat and The Bayon may be the most famous and well-preserved of the ancient Khmer temples and they will take a good chunk of your time, but in fact there are enough interesting ruins at Angkor to fill three days of slow-paced exploration, allowing for plenty of down-time to while away the unbearable afternoons. Climbing the worn-out stone stairs, following dirt paths through holy courtyards abandoned to the ruinous vegetation, jumping over giant crumbled masonry blocks brought back memories of our visits to the Mayan cities in Yucatan, almost a year ago. It was the same feeling, the same guilty pleasure of being a dumbfounded spectator to the silent show of broken, wasted glory from a bygone age.

Practically stoned

Cambodia doesn’t bother much with the money exchange business; as weak as the dollar is now, it is still the de-facto currency here. Unlike Ecuador - another dollar-based economy - Cambodians have their own money, the riel, but it seems to be mostly used for giving change under a dollar. Almost all prices are quoted in US$: hotel rooms, restaurants, tickets, groceries, museums. If you happen to have riel you can use those interchangeably, at a fixed rate of 4000 to the dollar. ATMs dispense dollars and traveler’s checks are redeemed in the same currency. Tourists are happy to see their buck going a long way – one dollar will get you a plate of fried rice or noodles on the street and most purchases are negotiable. Children try to sell you water and “cold-ish” drinks as soon as you get out of your tuk-tuk and are about to set off eagerly for the ruins, and after you come out, tired and worn out, heading back to your driver. And if you really don’t need another bottle of water beside the two that you’re already carrying in your backpack, you surely need some books, don’t you?

Old Buddha, new head

Maybe you want a guide for Angkor Wat, with nice aerial pictures and in-depth historical explanations? No thank you… Maybe you need a Lonely Planet guide for Cambodia, Vietnam or Laos for only 2 dollars? No, thanks… wait! Only two dollars for the most recent Lonely Planet edition!? How is that possible? You take the book in your hand and slowly flip through a few pages. Yes, it’s indeed the last edition and it definitely looks brand new, not a used copy abandoned by a tourist. But there’s something wrong about it, something you can’t identify immediately. It just doesn’t feel like a Lonely Planet book, it doesn’t fit and bend in your hand the same way. And then you suddenly realize – it’s a knockoff copy! Yes, even the photos are printed on glossy paper, but they are less shiny and the colors are rather dull and sometimes off the mark. The photocopied black-and-white text looks just a bit flawed, the maps show grainy bits of grey where the original pattern was too delicate. Some pages are a bit faded, where the toner had started to run out; they are not aligned properly so you can’t see the black markers that delimit the chapters when you look at the book sideways… still, for only two dollars… I have serious objections to buying illegally-copied intellectual property, but if I were traveling in Cambodia, desperately needing a guide book for my next destination I might chop off some of that moral integrity by way of reasoning that my purchase helps the local community...

The real thing

But we had already bought our genuine Laos LP guide in India, so there was no need to commit a moral crime… Later we realized that it’s not just Lonely Planet guide books that come fresh from the Cambodian printing presses; all the action, mystery and romance bestsellers that tourists usually read on vacation (including the dreadful Davinci Code) were lying on book stands wrapped in plastic, neatly photocopied from the original editions and bound into seemingly-genuine soft covers. On closer inspection they may look just a bit too cheap, but they would do the job just like the originals. Happy reading in Cambodia!

Posted from Pakse, Laos - we may not have much internet access for the next few days!

Everything goes in Bangkok

2008-03-18T06:51:00.018-07:00

At 3AM I wake up suddenly: somebody is screaming in the street. Paaw-paw-paw-paw-paaaaw-paw! Ah, it’s Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes, I realize… clearly, no army is going to stop these guys in their tenuous, stumbling journey back to their hotel… or to the next bar. I go back to bed. At 4AM the roosters in the temple yard across the street start crowing, louder and longer with each cry, as if they were locked in a deadly contest for supremacy. There is no earplug in this world thick enough to dampen the sound of roosters crowing. And who would have thought… roosters, in the touristic heart of Bangkok?

Bangkok
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Bangkok pictures

Nonetheless, I forced myself back to bed; drunk tourists aren’t much of a nuisance at 4AM in Bangkok, when even the German poofta-poofta-poofta techno music has stopped on Khao San Road. And the roosters… well, I had to remind myself of that little quote by Saint Francis of Assisi: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…” or at least to ignore them while I try to sleep. And sleeping well wasn’t that difficult: for once, we had decided against our preference for fan-only rooms and went for the more expensive air-conditioning option. It was worth all the 450 baht (about $15) we paid for it; in Bangkok’s crushing hothouse nights air-con is a very desirable commodity and a good investment for your peace of mind. Air-conditioned or not, decent budget hotels aren’t hard to find in the tourist district of Bangkok. Except for the guesthouses featured in Lonely Planet, which - good or bad - are usually booked solid, most hotels will have rooms available, no matter at what hour of the day or night you happen to land in Bangkok. But trust me, the 150 baht tiny single-person fan-only rooms at the Sawasdee hotel should have been used as cremation chambers instead…

Peaceful Bangkok

Bangkok is a city that you can easily fall in love with; it shows many different faces and has something for everyone: it’s brash and quiet, ultra-modern and historical, crazy and subdued, cheap and expensive; it’s a melting pot of Asian cultures and western influence, of tradition and modernism; it’s stylish, huge, and clean and it makes you want to eat all the time. For a slice of craziness it’s enough if you wander at night on Khao San Street, where the party never stops. For peace and quiet, visit one of the many wats (Buddhist temple complexes) spread around the city, preferably not one of the famous ones. And for style there’s always Siam Square and the never-ending row of malls on Rama I Boulevard. They are nothing like our pitiful suburban, single-level shopping avenues. Bangkok malls are cathedrals of glamour; they raise six, seven stories above the ground, without counting the multiplex cinemas on top.

Stressful Bangkok

The more sophisticated establishments showcase Ferraris and Maseratis across from Prada and Gucci; the more popular and affordable choices are beehives of frantic cruising between stalls of cheap jewelry, knock-off designer wear, electronic gadgets and the food courts. Picture Pacific Place in Seattle… times 10. And then multiply that with small variations on both sides of the street for a mile or so! This shopping Mecca comes of course with a huge traffic problem; in the streets around Siam Square cars and buses seem to be stuck in the same spots for hours; the only relief comes from the Sky Train – an elevated transportation system that runs above the boulevard – but Thais, like Americans, seem to prefer their personal vehicles even at $4 a gallon…

Temple protector

Displays of piety are common in Thailand; many people visit Buddhist shrines, lay offerings, pray and burn incense sticks. But for the westerner, the most striking act of devotion is that to the king. His serene face can be seen everywhere in Thailand: on billboards, on bank notes, on giant posters hung above the escalators in the malls, in the bus driver’s cabins, on flower-like monumental sculptures along the median strip of boulevards. The king is the first in everything: he is the foremost scholar, the best engineer, the first photographer (often shown with a camera hanging around his neck), the most hard-working agricultural worker, the wisest teacher, the most courageous army commander, the father of the country – all the symbolic attributes every communist totalitarian leader has tried to appropriate - have been granted to the king of Thailand by the own free will of the people, without violence or fear.

Royal pride
The Grand Palace guard

His persona is above all criticism; in a country like Thailand where governments are a-dime-a-dozen, politicians are corrupt and despised, and military coups are just another way of making politics the king is a unifying, deeply symbolic figure who gives strength and meaning to the life of the ordinary Thai people. We too stood up a few times and paid our silent homage to His Majesty, King Rama IX, before the movies started at the cinema (as a side note, we saw Rambo 4 – oh heavens, what were we thinking!, There Will Be Blood – weird but at least not boring, and 10,000BC – how much longer will Hollywood believe that special effects can make up for poor storylines, bad acting and worn-out clichés?)

Amulets are serious business here

Bangkok will also make you fat if you enjoy it to the fullest; luckily we only spent a few days here... How can you even resist eating all day long in this paradise of street food stands, restaurants that cover all forms of Asian cuisine, cheap beer (isn’t that food as well?) and food-courts with an infinite number of choices? Shortly after finishing lunch in the “Food Avenue” at the 6th floor of the MBK shopping center we walked to the first floor and had some Chinese dim sum… Later we grabbed a few skewers of unidentified meat from a street grill. A short stop at Starbucks for coffee and a cake… beef-noodle soup as a late afternoon snack, pizza and pasta with wine for dinner. After a few beers at an open-air bar, we finish with a late-night gigantic bowl of chicken and noodles for one dollar from a street-side wok. And tomorrow we’ll do it all over again.

Posted from Siem Reap, Cambodia.

The dream islands

2008-03-12T03:49:00.012-07:00

Angela, Jess and David in Ao Nang
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Railay pictures

The first night we stayed in Railay - a lush, rocky peninsula south of Krabi, with beautiful, isolated golden beaches - we partied hard in an open-air bar with Jess and David, two South Africans who happened to dine at the table near to ours earlier that evening. I yelled in their ears for a few hours, trying to make myself heard above the deafening music, until I lost my voice and could talk no more. That was the only time we had some late-night fun, because for the remaining days we spent in Thailand’s southern islands I kept nursing that sore throat and Angela had to fight a stomach bug she had most likely acquired while we were still in India. As a result, we had to drop our plan to go diving in Thailand (equalizing ear pressure is problematic when one has a cold) and we were lucky to be able to go on a snorkeling trip on our last day in Ao Nang, when we both felt finally healthy enough for an outing of the kind. Yes… Ko Phi Phi Leh Island (where The Beach was filmed, that dream-vacation adventure flick with Leo Di Caprio that made many a backpacker fantasize about never returning home) is as beautiful as they say, however I have no pictures of it. For once I chose to enjoy the water and the sun without worrying about the perfect camera angle and the direction of the light. We enjoyed the elements a little too much because we both got a bit burned despite then 45-SPF waterproof sun-block we used.

Long-tail boats in Ao Nang

The southern coast of Thailand seems to have become a favorite vacation destination for the Northern Europeans, mainly Swedes. You know that the powerful hordes of Euro-loaded Vikings have claimed the place as their own when the signs on shop doors are often written in a strange language that is obviously neither Thai nor English, when the restaurants advertise Swedish-Thai cuisine, and when the grocery stores sell you fresh tabloids from Stockholm. The Thai sellers of juicy and salacious news have smartened out and entered the digital age like the rest of us: the sheets on the display racks are not actual newspapers - which would have to be shipped from Sweden and would invariably be at least one-day stale by the time they got to the shelves - but stapled printouts of pdf files downloaded from the mighty internet. Whether the Thai merchants actually have a license for duplicating and selling those newspapers is doubtful; there is just too much pirated music for sale here to leave place for an honest, subscription-paying reseller. Every music CD you can imagine can be bought for 100 baht (that’s about $3) on the main tourist drag in Ao Nang, complete with color-printed album cover. Can you even imagine what Bangkok is like?

Thrilled about street food

Thai food, anyone? I would carefully avoid staying in a place like the Railay peninsula again – there is no in and out except by long-tail boat and you are stuck with a range of expensive restaurants that aren’t even living up to their prices and bring you insipid food to the table… and that in a country which lives to eat! After we moved to Ao Nang – a real town for a change – things got as bit better. I wouldn’t lose faith in the culinary delights of this country yet, but Thailand is certainly not India; hunger and the mere sight of a restaurant menu don’t make me drool with anticipation.

Yum! (from fotofeewa)

Still smoking? – There’s nothing like the cigarette packs for sale in Thailand to convince you to quit! Last I’ve checked cigarettes sold at home and in most of Central and South America still didn’t have any visual deterrent against smoking besides the mild warning of the surgeon general in minute print; Canadian and European packs had the big bold front prints with “smoking kills” and other horror stories that wouldn’t even send children scurrying away in fear… Well, Thai cigarette pack front panels have full-color pictures of cancerous lungs and lips, tracheal bypass tubes, and for the milder version, an man wearing wife-beaters (obviously a bad adult!) blowing the smoke in the face of a baby he holds in his arms… This explicit display of death may not instill the expected fear of smoking in too many potential consumers but it makes holding a pack of cigs in your hand somehow gross and certainly un-cool. Will this ever happen in the US? Maybe if one of those two lefties wins the next elections, who knows…

Published from Bangkok.

Welcome to Thailand

2008-03-09T08:56:00.006-07:00

We have been in Thailand since February 28, visiting the beautiful islands that dot the Andaman Sea coast in the Krabi province, but I had too many things left to say about India to bring myself to write something about our new hosts. Quite frankly, spending time in this tropical paradise is rather boring after having been in India, not to mention expensive. But at least Thailand has two things we have been missing for a while: cleanliness and Starbucks.

Leaving Wonderland

2008-03-07T04:55:00.015-08:00

Incredible India

After six rather exhausting weeks we left India on an early morning flight from Kolkata to Bangkok. As the purgatory of contradictory emotions faded behind the silver wing of the plane in the misty morning air I sat buckled in my cramped middle seat thinking that I should be able to say that I learned something from my Indian experience, preferably something deep, something about beauty, kindness or spirituality. Instead, all I could come up with was that I had become more skilled at bargaining for the last twenty rupees, that I learned how to dismiss the touts, hawkers, peddlers and beggars more gracefully, that I no longer got frustrated when people didn’t give me a straight answer and that I could live without toilet paper. A few months before in Egypt, the constant harassment that I had been subjected to had all but drained my reserves of social empathy, but India’s renewed assaults on my patience had in fact increased my tolerance to unwanted human contact and strengthened my ability to deal with ambiguity. In a country where nobody says “no” when they should, and every question is answered with a perplexing side-to-side wobble of the head that could mean anything, frustration and anger won’t get you too far...

Attack of the Alien rickshaws

Every interaction is a bit of a struggle. Going to the place of your choice is a feat of endurance and patience when you have to depend on taxi or rickshaw drivers to take you there; they will try to divert you to the hotels where they get commission for your business (if you’re leaving the railway station or airport) and will ask you many times to reconsider your destination, ignoring each “no” that you blurt from the back seat, increasingly annoyed by their tenacity. Otherwise, if you’re just taking a ride through town you will be bombarded with offers to be taken to a great shop “only for looking”; if you’re hiring the driver for a city-tour the shopping trap may be disguised as “a quick visit to the cultural museum.” “No” is always the best policy; you may feel stupid for having to answer the same question again and again, but you can’t help admire their perseverance and optimism – the available rickshaws sitting idle far outnumber the tourists in search for a ride and the lucky winner of your business will understandably try a couple of tricks to add a few rupees to his evening meal.

Turistas, go home!

I don’t usually require a high level of comfort when I travel; I do well in noisy backpacker places, I’m ok sharing bathrooms, I’m fine enough if the sheets are clean and the toilet flushes, and I don't think hot water at the shower is necessary in a tropical climate. But in India, low-maintenance as I am, I had to lower my standards even more. Cheap rooms in budget hotels are rather gloomy; the crudely painted walls are stained with the flattened innards of dead mosquitoes, hard beds and lumpy, thin pillows are the norm, the weak pipes may catch you off guard with unexpected leaks and water jets when you turn on the wobbly and often slimy faucets; the drain may often be a simple plastic tube spilling its guts over your feet. You’ll pray that the floor is well surfaced and all the water flows toward the drain, but that’s not always the case and your bathroom will end up with a permanent puddle in one corner. There aren’t any bath tubs, shower cages or curtains; taking a shower means flooding the whole bathroom; you’ll wash the floors, the walls and the toilet as well, and if you don’t pay attention you’ll soak the toilet paper – but only if you brought some with you; generally it’s not provided since Indians do not use it.

India welcomes you... noisily

Hotel rooms have switches outside by the doors, which control the power to the plugs and light bulbs inside. Since the doors all have padlocks the hotel staff knows when you are not in your room and always turns the power off if you happened to leave it on. Forget about charging your camera batteries while you are out for dinner. Power cuts, accidental or planned, are frequent, making air-con rooms a less-desirable investment. Beer will be warm and hell only knows what happens with the frozen chicken during the blackout hours (just another reason to become vegetarian!) but internet will generally work – that’s what batteries are for, right?

Indian scaffolding. Advanced technology.

I could continue to add details to the list of little strange things, uncomfortable situations and puzzling attitudes India assaulted us with, from the complicated telephone network made from a patchwork of incompatible operators to the strange but efficient train class and reservation system, from the unlicensed restaurants selling Kingfisher beer camouflaged in tea-pots and white cups, calling it “special tea” to the menu cards featuring fifty-four different types of masala dosa, from the irritating, dumb stares to the almost complete lack of display of public affection between Indian couples… but I’m afraid I would never finish and my blog will be forever stuck trying to cover India.

Shadows and gods

Beauty is everywhere, they say, you just have to know how look for it. And in India beauty is very well hidden behind rubble, trash and smog, a little less so in the countryside; it requires serious training and self-discipline to uncover. Nevertheless, a lot of travelers seem to be successful and find here whatever they were looking for; they leave elated and promise to return, undeterred by all the cow shit, the public pissing and shitting, the diarrhea, the hassle and the filthy toilets. For every tourist who finds his or her blissful karma in India there must be at least two or three who leave in tears, angry, sick and disappointed, and vow never to return before they show the finger to the airport departure hall one last time. I do not belong to either of those extreme categories; I had my share of disgust and anger but I was lucky enough to find peace and beauty when I least expected it; I cursed and rolled my eyes in frustration but I also smiled and went with the flow. I surrendered to India’s ebb and tide of sensations; I merely poked a finger at the magic mirror that opens into Wonderland. I will be back someday, armed with nothing but patience and an open mind.

Posted from Ao Nang, Krabi Province, Thailand.

The rest of India

2008-03-04T01:16:00.017-08:00

After Mumbai we moved fast through our remaining Indian destinations: a tour of the Hindu and Buddhist caves at Ellora and Ajanta near Aurangabad, a quick visit to the magnificent Taj Mahal in Agra, and a brief stopover between two night trains in Varanasi, the sacred city of the Hindus.

The Sacred Caves

The Kailasa temple at Ellora
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Holy Caves pictures

When I first saw the incredible caves carved in the mountainside on Elephanta Island, my first thought was “What the hell were they thinking?” But touching as it was, that visit didn’t prepare me for the sight of the incredible Kailasa temple, the crown jewel of the Ellora archaeological site near Aurangabad – a magnificent Hindu shrine cut out of the mountain rock, complete with gate, courtyard, standing sculptures and side-galleries; a true awe-inspiring sight worthy of being counted among the architectural wonders of the world.

Buddha

It’s the same all over the world: holy men and earthly rulers seem to have succumbed to the sin of pride time and time again, and have outdone themselves over the years building the houses of their gods in the most formidable and difficult ways imaginable in their times. The ones paying for this unrestrained holy ambition ended up being the thousands of workers who broke their backs digging and carrying the rubble.

While in Aurangabad, we had also planned to visit the equally-famous Buddhist caves of Ajanta, but in good tradition we woke up late and lost the little steam that we had left in our engines as soon as we walked out of our hotel in the excruciating afternoon heat…

Agra

Sunset over the Yamuna river
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Agra pictures

Taj Mahal entrance - Indian national: 10 rupees, foreigner: 1 million rupees… It’s not quite as high a number in reality, but the admission prices at national parks, museums and historic monuments are blown out of proportion for foreigners, and the Taj Mahal tops it all. Foreigners are charged more because they can afford to pay, and they do, but being told in the face “now’s the time when we take your money” is an experience I cannot ignore blissfully in a land where I am constantly asked to pay outrageous prices for every kind of goods and service. I’d be happier if I knew that the money went towards conservation and maintenance but I have a slight suspicion that given the precarious and derelict state of many historical landmarks, the dough will rather end up fattening some politicians and their wives…

Palace inside the Agra Fort

It’s quite the irony that many of the masterpieces of Islamic architecture left by the Mughal Empire are located in the most god-forsaken, ugly, foul-smelling, nondescript city in the whole subcontinent. Agra is not only a place that’s impossible to enjoy on a visit - which may be an excusable deficiency, compensated by its abundance of famous monuments - it also has bad and uninspired food, and that is an unforgivable sin.

The "Baby Taj" - perfect symmetry

Don’t believe what the books say about the Taj Mahal changing colors at dusk and dawn with the setting or rising sun; it’s just a legend, deceiving many early risers and hopeful photographers - the famous marble monument to undying love is gray-whitish from morning till evening. The story of changing colors could be true only if Agra weren’t as polluted as it was when we visited - the sky was opaque and milky with smog all day; the thick, hazy air reduced visibility to no more than a mile ahead; the light was dull and discouraging for the many amateur photographers storming the gates at 6AM. Besides, my camera battery died shortly after sunrise. And then the spare decided to do the same…

Conclusion: do not stay overnight in Agra; you can visit the Taj Mahal, the fort and the other monuments during a day-trip from nearby Delhi.

Varanasi

Shedding bad Karma
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Varanasi pictures

There’s probably no other city in India that symbolizes Hindu spirituality at its fullest as much as Varanasi, the ancient holy site on the banks of the Ganges. Along the river ghats devotees bathe with fervor to free themselves of sins and bad karma, dipping in the murky sacred water, undeterred by the sewers which pour the filth of the city in the river, the ubiquitous cow shit, the floating garbage and the general poor sanitary conditions. Spirituality and religious devotion can obviously live apart from and unhindered by the modern western concerns about health, noxious bacteria and the microbiological purity of water.

The burning ghats

Varanasi is also the temporary home to a large community of westerners, most of them sporting long dreadlocks and wearing clothes flaunting the “Om” sign in a variety of sizes and colors, meant to set them apart from the mass of regular tourists who are just “passing through”. They are the spiritual junkies in search for the ultimate redemption of the soul, and India is the supermarket where enlightenment and inner peace can be acquired and paid for in the currency of your choice: cash if you prefer the easy, chemical way, or hours of void-seeking meditation, passionate prayer to your favorite god, or selfless submission to a guru’s ashram rules. On the train from Agra to Varanasi we met an Australian guy who has been living in Varanasi with his wife and young son for the last two years. He was nice, helpful, with a wide congenial smile and talked casually; the only time I detected a slight tinge of smugness in his attitude was when he said, “You know, we’re big into this spiritual thing…” Like he belonged to the club of the selected few…

Life along the river ghats

The average conversations between westerners, which we could occasionally overhear in restaurants located in the labyrinth of narrow alleys behind the Ghats, were more along the lines of “duuuude, I cannot even begin telling you how fantastic India is… it’s so aaaawesome! I can’t describe how spiritual I feel here, I don’t ever want to leave!” Uhm, yea, ok… can I have a puff of that spirituality please?

Posted from Railay, Thailand - and I still have things left to say about India...

Mumbai

2008-02-29T20:39:00.023-08:00

An afternoon at Chowpatty beach
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Mumbai pictures

  “Charras, mister? Some Hash?” a man shouts at me from the sidewalk. He’s busy relieving himself between two cars parked at the curb, but his head is turned to me. Obviously the bodily function he is attending to is not enough to prevent him from noticing western tourists crossing the neighborhood.
  “No thanks,” I reply and I keep walking in the middle of the street; the sidewalk is too crowded. It’s getting dark and the street is busy with pestering hawkers, people cooking in their mobile kitchens, dirty kids dressed in tattered clothes, gawking tourists and Indian men sitting idle, grabbing their crotches.
  “You look like you need some!” the pusher tries one more time, and goes back to his not-quite-so-private duty seeing that I ignore him.

The Taj Mahal hotel
No, this is not where we stayed

I can’t leave my room at the Volga II hotel, right next door to Leopold’s Cafe, without being propositioned for hashish multiple times by the shady characters that hang around this major tourist spot in the heart of the Colaba district. Leopold’s is so popular with tourists that it draws crowds at the front doors, hopeful travelers clutching their Lonely Planet India bibles, waiting for a table to become free. The food is mediocre but the bar on the upper floor is nice. In “Shantaram”, the last novel I finished before arriving in Bombay, key parts of the action take place in this establishment, and many spirited, intelligent conversations unfold here during a round of drinks. My imagination has built up a different place; in it, Leopold’s was a large hall reached from the street by a short flight of stairs; there were dim lights hanging from low ceilings, a long brass bar counter in the back, massive wooden furniture and wall decorations and enough space for people to cruise between the tables without brushing against each other.

Leopold's Cafe

The real thing had none of that: Leopold’s bland-looking dining room is located at street-level; it’s rather small and well-lit, it has no bar counter, the ceilings are tall, the furniture is standard and the tables are so close to each other you can hardly move your chair without bumping into the back-rest of the person sitting behind you. Through a door in the back a flight of stairs leads to the upper-level air-conditioned bar, a narrow L-shaped room whose matted-glass windows overlook the dining hall. It’s not too exciting a place, and I certainly wouldn’t make the stuff of legend out of it. But it may have looked different in the 80’s when the story in “Shantaram” is happening. And we all know that the eighties were awesome.

Cricket players on the Oval Maidan

Of all Indian towns that I had already visited (and those that I would be visiting in the following weeks) Mumbai is the only one I liked. It is a place where you can even enjoy a walk through town; the filth is kept under control, the green areas are groomed and the sidewalks do not border on open sewers. Old tree-lined streets hide aging, moldy colonial mansions and boutique hotels; neighborhoods of high-rises and shopping malls stretch for miles in areas free of squatters and beggars; majestic, ornate Raj-era buildings like the Court of Justice, the CST railway station and the Prince of Wales museum define the centre and attract camera clicks; neat air-conditioned coffee-shops offer true divine espresso, wireless internet access and remind a bit of Starbucks; the maidans (centrally-located open, grassy areas where people play cricket or just hang out) are taken care of and occasionally re-planted with fresh grass.

The Kashmiri Hotel
It must have seen better times

There’s a certain kind of third-world cleanliness to Mumbai that makes tourists feel urban for the first (and only) time in India, an air of prosperity that is well-reflected in hotel and real-estate prices. According to a newspaper article, rental prices for similar apartments are as high in Mumbai as in New York, taking a toll on the finances of many expats working for multinational companies or Indians returning from overseas who hope to match the comfort of their previous homes. I had to dig deeper in my finances too – our shabby room with shared bathroom in the Colaba district was 700 Rupees – a hole in the wall that would cost no more than 200 in any other town in India. Compared to Goa, the same beer comes at double the price in Mumbai; good coffee is more expensive than at home, but who can live without it anyway? At least the taxi drivers use the meter – if you insist.

Beggars on the Haji Ali causeway

Yet Bombay, if you look outside of the tourist areas, the old neighborhoods built by British or the flashy suburbs of the nouveau riche, has the same poverty like the rest of India and nowhere is it better seen than in the flood of beggars that line the causeway leading to the Haji Ali mosque – an icon of Bombay, located on a tiny piece of land that becomes an island at high tide. One side of the narrow concrete path is crammed with a motley assortment of humanity with missing body parts: maimed children looking sheepish, raising scrawny open hands in a plea for coins or pulling weakly at your clothes, as if to remind you of your feelings of western social guilt, groups of half-naked men exhibiting varied deformities, chanting a repetitive mantra to attract attention, old disfigured women covered in ragged dirty saris looking haggard, too exhausted to beg or move, decrepit elderly men collapsed on the pavement in the torrid sun, sleeping, or maybe dead – no one cares; if they’re still there at high-tide when the others have gone away, the sea will take care of their remains.

Haji Ali Dargah

The other side of the five-hundred-yard-long causeway is the domain of the trinket sellers; here unthinkable loads of crap can be yours for a few rupees: key rings dangling small pink images of Ganesh the elephant god, plain brass or woven bangles, water pistols, decorated sea shells, combs, buttons and toothbrushes, electric toy-cars and crying Virgin Mary icons. The tiffin boys bring lunches to the peddlers (they must be making some money after all) winding their way through the crowd, balancing trays of five, six plates of rice and curry; yet I didn’t see any wealth resulting from the improbable sales being redistributed across the lane to the beggars who seemed to wait in vain for charity from visitors and pilgrims. But on our way back from the mosque we stumbled upon the most unexpected of sights - a man dressed in white pants and shirt walked the whole length of the causeway bowing in front of every beggar, putting a coin in their hands or dropping it in their tin cans. For a long time I followed this good Muslim giving his share of zakat to the poor of Mumbai until I lost sight of him. Once again it occurred to me that India is a land of unequalled contradictions, of cruel indifference and heartfelt compassion, the best and worst of everything.

The road to redemption

Close to the Haji Ali causeway a few children were playing cricket on a concrete strip surrounded by fields of plastic garbage left behind by the low tide. From giant billboards advertising pale skin cream and glittering gold jewels, gorgeous young women were sending their frozen seductive smiles at the swarming, indifferent crowd. Distant skyscrapers shrouded in smog were flickering with Indian pride while a goat was rummaging unabashed through the mountains of refuse at my feet, in search for food. I looked back one last time toward the white, gleaming mosque and I made a place for this unforgettable city in my heart.

Posted from Railay, Thailand - gotta catch up fast!

I still have sand in my shoes

2008-02-25T22:36:00.003-08:00

Beach cabins in Agonda
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Goa pictures

Tell me one thing: when you go for a vacation in a resort or village by the seaside do you feel that you are missing something if you stay in a place that is located more than two steps away from the beach? Do you feel deprived of an essential experience if you can’t see green waves breaking into white froth or calm ripples caressing the golden sand from the window of your room? Well, apparently a lot of people feel like that. How else can I explain the mile-long spread of straw-huts tucked between the sandy strip and the first palm trees that mark the outline of Palolem beach in Goa?

Patnem beach

The reality is less idyllic – with few exceptions these huts are not really directly facing the beach but behind one of the many seafront restaurants; they usually come in pairs: no beach bar without its allotment of huts in the back. This way the tourists are caught in a double trap: as soon as they get out of bed they start spending money for breakfast. Before bedtime, one more drink… We looked at the huts as well; I hate to have sand in my bedroom but I was willing to try this sort of accommodation for the sake of being able to say “I stayed on the beach in Goa.” Sadly all the huts we saw had one thing in common – they looked cheap and unwelcoming; they were absolute trash. The buildings were on three-foot-tall stilts; they were all made of thin plywood or wood-fiber netting; most had no real windows just blinds. Each step taken inside was making the whole scaffolding shake; some floors even had weak spots that gave way under your foot, disasters waiting to happen. The interior varied in size but the same simple square layout was repeated ad infinitum – a bed covered by a mosquito net, a ceiling fan and sometimes a night stand. The more fortunate had a second, smaller room in the back that served as bathroom; the plumbing looked fragile, and in more than one case it consisted of an open tube that drained on the sand below the hut.

Palolem main street

I can’t imagine how those monstrosities could incite anyone to stay inside one second more than they had to. Some of them were not without a certain charm though – there were wicker chairs outside by the doors, a hammock here and there, colorful canvas awnings hanging above the porches. The prices were shameless – anywhere from 300 Rs (about $8) to 1000 Rs ($26) per night. With some bargaining you could get a hut with a shared “bathroom” (located in a different shack) for 250 Rs. I didn’t really see any significant differences between the higher and lower end of the price spectrum – the rooms looked all similar, they only varied in size. There was only one such hut-village that had the privilege of being called “upscale” – the sturdy, good-looking cabins were made of wood and brick and had real windows; there were grass lawns in front of them and the sandy alleys were paved with stone slates. They were charging 3500 Rs a night and were booked solid, so we couldn’t even see one on the inside. I still can’t see the fascination of going to a hippie beach camp in India only to pay the equivalent of $100 a night…

Cabo de Rama
Remains of the portuguese fort

Since there was nothing acceptable between the two extremes, our fleeting dream of staying on the beach evaporated during the half-hour I spent looking at over a dozen “hotels”. We walked back to the main street and got a room on the upper floor of a two-storey building hidden between the palm trees. For 400 Rs we had a quiet, large room with cable TV, a bathroom with tiled floor and walls (a rarity in India where crude concrete masonry is the norm) and - almost unheard of - hot water at the shower! The beach huts were forgotten on the spot. And I don’t like roasting in the sun anyway...

Posted from Varanasi, home to a large community of dread-locked westerners in search for the ultimate spirituality.

An Indian itinerary

2008-02-22T23:14:00.000-08:00

Street celebrations in Kochi
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for other South India pictures

If you look at my recent posts you may get the impression that we are having a horrible time in India. Indeed, many first-time travelers to the subcontinent are so disgusted with their experience they vow never to return. It’s not hard to understand why: in the streets, age-old garbage is piled up in every corner and you run the risk of stepping in open sewers; the budget hotel rooms are, with few exceptions, dingy, unwelcoming and claustrophobic; the traffic is mad; the bathrooms are filthy and toilet paper is a luxury. On top of all that, there are a billion Indians surrounding you: at any time, a few hundreds of millions of them seem to be busy clearing their throats noisily and spitting passionately. From the moment you enter the country you are accompanied by that distinctive half-retch, half-gurgle crescendo followed shortly by the unmistakable suction and release of projectile launch. People are, in general, not very friendly, and even less helpful; anywhere outside restaurants you are asked to pay prices ten times higher than what locals pay; the staring at and harassment of foreigners (mister, madam, what country, give me money, give me a pen, etc…) is constant and the display of poverty is crushing and heartbreaking.

Spiritual enlightenment?

Yet, once you master the arts of looking without seeing and bargaining without losing your cool, once you realize the necessity to adjust your pampered, western-minded habits in order to survive your vacation without going crazy, once you finally surrender to India you will see your surroundings and yourself in a completely different light. I can’t say that you will attain spiritual enlightenment and return home a better and purified being, but you will, at least, have a good time. India is not one of those countries that win you over from the moment you get off the plane. You don’t fall in love with it at first sight. No, India has to grow on you; it gets to you slowly, unseen. Once you move past the foul moment when you want to get out of the country by the first available plane, you are in danger of starting to like it. Then you will soon realize that no matter how you plan your trip, you still have too little time to experience all that India can offer.

Mysore palace - a true jewel

We have worked our way north from the southern tip of India through Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Goa all the way to Mumbai. With the exception of Goa, where we got lazy under the palm trees for a full eight days, eating real Italian pizzas and drinking cheap beer, we stayed no more than three or four days in one place. Most times we wished we had left earlier; occasionally we regretted not staying longer. Cities like Trivandrum, Cochin and Chennai weren’t much to look at; they are certainly interesting and unusual but could hardly be called nice, let alone beautiful. Beach towns like Varkala in Kerala, Palolem in Goa and Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu were pretty, low-key and relatively stress-free, but they’re not really representative of India – aren’t all tropical beach villages more or less alike? The highlands of the Western Ghats in Kerala were a good place to run away from the mad crowds and the smothering heat of the coastal plain but the nights were freezing and we weren’t prepared for the cold anymore, nor wishing it. On top of that, the promised wildlife experience doesn’t stand up to your expectations once you’ve been in Africa. Mysore, the famous one-time capital of the prosperous kingdom with the same name, had a pleasant highland climate, hot and dry during the day and cool at night; it boasts the beautiful palace of the bygone maharajas but little else to hold us for more than a couple of days.

Hangin' out

We haven’t made many friends – you can’t really, when you move that fast – but we have met Mark and Sarah from Zurich on a local bus to Kumily and we’ve run into them again in Ernakulam, Mysore and finally in Goa, sometimes by chance, sometimes by plan. They, like us, are travelling around the world for a year but their trip is only at the beginning. Beside a few dinners, lunches and visits to museums, their company has materialized into a memorable night of drinking in Ernakulam, when Mark and I visited the raunchiest dimly-lit bars in town, where only men go for a drink, and ended up having beers on the beach surrounded by a handful of boys who kept asking us in a respectful tone (“sir”) to give them money so they can bring us more beer, drugs or women. We didn’t give, they didn’t bring…

Stone chariot
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for the Hampi set

The one destination I wished we had allowed ourselves more time to enjoy was Hampi. This hamlet in the hills of Northern Karnataka is home of the most awe-inspiring landscape of ruins I have ever seen: the glorious ancient imperial capital of Vijayanagara. Acres of rocky land sprinkled with piles of giant boulders lie in front of the intrepid explored, brave enough to defy the terrifying afternoon sun. At every turn of the dusty winding path, behind each sun-burned hillside hides a revered Hindu temple, mysterious, cold and cavernous, or the four shabby stone walls of the ghost of a crumbling workshop. Some are barely worth a close look – structures the size of a small house, rough stone slabs put together hastily and held in place by the indifference of time; others beckon you like irresistible temptations – they are vast, artistically elaborate, well preserved temple complexes, looming large ahead of your camera lens, imposing, beautiful.

Follow the light

You cannot help but marvel at the perfection and complexity of the stone work. You walk around along the high walls in the square courtyards, you carefully tread into the dark innermost chambers - the now-empty shrines where the sacred statues of Vishnu and other deities of the Hindu pantheon used to be guarded and worshipped, you walk up and down the stairs polished by millennia of stomping feet, and when all has been photographed from all angles you can still revel in the music of the singing pillars – the tall stalks of stone which adorn the columns that support the temple ceiling and produce musical notes when knocked.

Picture of me please!!!

And when you decide to take a break from so much stone beauty, you will likely end up having to deal with a riotous mob of Indian school children on a field trip who want to have their picture taken with the conspicuous and obviously expensive SLR camera hanging around your neck. They call you “sir” and “madam” and above all, want to know which country you are from. It doesn’t matter what your answer is, they will giggle and run and shove one another in front of you and ask you again and again… Later, when you are tired of wandering through the hills like an overexcited archaeology student you can sit down and spend some time watching the boulders. It’s peaceful.

Published from Agra, in the shadow of the Taj Mahal

Contact info

2008-02-21T20:24:00.004-08:00

Email: fritz_in_seattle AT yahoo DOT com
IM: stugren AT hotmail DOT com

Don't add me to your IM contacts if you don't know me already; I will reject any such requests.

Devoured by corporate greed

2008-02-14T00:14:00.000-08:00

Does anybody remember Traveler's Cheques? You know, these pieces of paper that resemble money and can be redeemed for cash almost anywhere (at least anywhere where tourists go?) A while ago, when ATMs weren't the norm around the world, traveler's cheques were the preferred currency of people who visited foreign lands. And why? Because unlike cash the cheques, if stolen or lost, can be replaced, allegedly with no hassle, within 24 hours after the loss is reported to the issuer. And I said "allegedly" for good reasons...

Before leaving in April 2007 we bought $1500 in American Express cheques from my bank. We have only cashed a couple of hundreds in Honduras; the rest have been stored in various purses, bags and moneybelts for most of our trip. We saw that we still had them in December and early January. Then, as we got to Turkey we noticed that cheques worth $600 had disappeared. The trouble was... we didn't exactly remember where the cheques were when they were lost. They may have been in the checked-in bag that went missing in Bucharest on the way to Turkey and from which our backgammon and chess games were taken, or they may have disappeared earlier, stolen or simply lost...

Owing to the vagaries of our fast-paced trip we didn't report the loss until we got to India. I spent hours on the phone with the customer service, and the calls were not free - although AmEx boasts a toll-free number in India, phones in this country don't work like any westerner would expect: toll-free numbers cannot be called from most phones or are not actually free (but I should leave the story of the Indian phone systems for later...) I faxed them what they wanted, including copies of our passports, visas and cheque purchase slips, and in the end I landed as a file with a claim-number on the desk of a certain Eva in the Sydney international claims office. I had to tell her the whole story again and on top of that I had to avoid the little traps she was planting in the conversation like "you said you work for IBM?" - "No I never said that, I used to work for Microsoft". I said the same things over and over again a few times although the truth was clear and simple: we didn't exactly know when the cheques were lost, and in which of our bag they were. We had some ideas, but we did not know for sure...

The claim got denied almost immediately because my story was deemed "inconsistent". When I demanded an explanation from Eva, she kept beating the same old horse of the "inconsistent story", and stopped short of accusing me of fraud (although she was implying it). She told me she cannot talk about the details of this claim with me and hung up. My only way of appealing the decision is in writing.

Upon hearing all this I made a little more research in the matter of how American Express deals with claims of lost traveler's cheques. Shockingly, it appears that many claims are denied - people who forget their wallets in taxis, people who have stuff stolen from their hotel rooms, people robbed at gun-point, people who provide police reports, all categories of cases get denied for two all-covering reasons: inconsistent stories and negligence. The lucky ones who finally get their money seem to do so only after an initial denial. The amex buying agreement says that you have to treat your cheques as cash. What that means is not clear, but it gives them a way to get out of their obligation to provide a refund in case of loss - they can always allege that you have not been careful with your belongings, therefore they do not need to pay.

The bottom line is this - I don't have the cheques amymore, they have not been cahsed - or claimed by a money changer - and American Express has my money. Is this me or it seems like I have been defrauded by Big Business, with my own complicity?

The public wave of discontent with American Express' business practicess has even its own Web site, AmexSux.com. There are just too many horror stories on their message boards to mention...

After this mishap, I have to add American Express to my own personal black list of evil American corporations who treat their customers like dirt, right there with Verizon, Citibank, Comcast and a handful of insurance companies. I will close all my accounts, forget all my passwords, keep all my cash in 100 dollar-bills sewn into my clothes and move to a coconut-tree-covered tropical island... But not before I flood American Express with letters of intent to sue and I get my money back!

Posted from Palolem beach, Goa - India

More random tourist bits about India

2008-02-10T05:07:00.003-08:00

Here comes another installment of bullet points containing my condensed thoughts about India. Warning: some of these opinions may seem sweeping, unfair generalizations, but as it often happens when you’re a tourist and you see only the superficial side of things, the truth doesn’t matter as much as the way you perceive it.

A monumental pile of trash

India is the dirtiest place I’ve ever seen (for a while I thought it was Egypt). It’s difficult for anybody coming from the Western world to understand why mere meters away from the spotlessly clean temple or palace where you are requested to take off your shoes in order to enter, lies a mountain of garbage in open air. It’s the curse of all developing countries where social conscience is not yet mature, that people consider their home limited to the four walls of their houses (which, no doubt, they keep clean) and look at the street and the outdoors as a sort of no-man’s land where all sorts of refuse can be dumped with impunity. We’ve always thrown the trash in the alley behind the house. Why should we change our ways now?

Kanyakumari beach

Indian cities are unlike those I’ve seen in other parts of the world. In my opinion, they can’t even be called cities: they’re reminiscent of some sort of chaotic, crumbling beehives; they appear like gigantic villages built hastily of a patchwork of construction materials, without a plan and without points of reference. There is no city center in the traditional sense, no visible street signs, few direction indicators and almost no traffic signs. If there is any street numbering system it is - by and large - not used. In fact, most hotels and restaurants listed in our travel guides are identified only by the street they are located on. Taxi drivers are supposed to just “know” where your destination is, and they often do in small towns, but in larger cities you have to help once they get to the street you gave them. How does mail ever get delivered here?

Pepsi or Coca-Cola?

Communication – so far our experience on this trip has been that people who deal often with tourists – taxi drivers, hotel attendants and restaurant waiters – are the ones most likely to speak and understand English, whereas people working in government-related jobs – train station, post office, museums – would often just shrug or shower you with a long answer in their language, although their own common sense must tell them that you can’t understand. In India the situation is somehow the opposite, and unfortunately, the bunch that seems the least accustomed to English are the waiters. I haven’t been in any high-class restaurant, but on the average waiters here are quite unhelpful. Questions about the menu are mostly met with blank stares, and special orders are a recipe for disaster (Angela’s request for a separate side-serving of milk for her coffee has often produced unexpected, sometimes hilarious results). There's nothing wrong with not speaking English - although, at least in theory, it's supposed to be one of the official languages of India - but nobody will tell you that they didn’t understand what you said; they will just assume. More than once we have asked “do you have Pepsi or Coca-Cola?” only to be told “Yes, one Pepsi, and one Coca-Cola?”

Too many rickshaws!

One category of service providers is particularly loathed by tourists – the rickshaw drivers. The ubiquitous little, open and noisy three-wheelers can fit the two of us and our backpacks; throughout India we have preferred them to the more expensive taxis. However the drivers are an awful lot; they always ask an outrageous price for the fare, and more often than not, when you land in their territory loaded with your backpack, not knowing where to go, they see you at their mercy and refuse to negotiate. On our arrival at the Canacona train station in Goa, there were five of us tourists who got off the train. We would have taken three rickshaws to Palolem beach, but none of the drivers was willing to slash their over-inflated price by more than 10 rupees. We decided to boycott them en masse, and walked the 2 kilometers that separated the station from the village. The drivers, rather than cutting the price, drove past us back to town in their empty vehicles.
Indians seem to be unusually fond of their government – being associated with the government in some way appears to give a measure of stability, confidence and trustworthiness to any enterprise. The hotel’s number of stars is awarded by the government; this bank is an enterprise of the government of India; that bus station is certified by the government; here’s the government tourist office; we’re visiting the government incense factory.... Hell! even the packs of stray dogs living on the beach must be sanctioned by the government. I made that last one up, of course. On the average Indians, like any other people, must think that politics is dirty and all politicians are corrupt, but the truth is that the government, as an abstract nationally-representative entity, has a very conspicuous presence in public life.
More communication please? – It’s commonplace truth that you don’t really know a country until you know its people. But that’s not always easy. Indians of all ages are quick to ask tourists where they are from, but their opening lines rarely lead to any meaningful conversation and you will inevitably end up trying to avoid any contact. The touts will speak to you in order to lure you into their sales talk, but many people on the street, especially younger men, would address you with the same exhausting, irritating question: “What country?” To avoid future unwanted attention (guaranteed to happen if I tell them I am from America), I follow the advice of a friend of mine who spent some time in India on her own trip around the world, and I say that I am from Guatemala. They have never heard of Guatemala and they don’t know what to do with the answer (Romania would have done just as well, but Guatemala sounds more forbidding). They turn their heads around and move on without even saying good-bye. I used this answer a lot since I came to India, and you know what? Not one of those “friendly” locals has ever asked me where Guatemala is.

Posted from Palolem beach, Goa - India

Teletext

2008-02-09T05:29:00.000-08:00

We are now in Palolem, a beach village in Goa, on the coast of the Arabian Sea. It's not an isolated end-of-the-world hippie hangout, but it's small enough to make an acceptable choice for those who hate the streaming crowds of western tourists that have invaded the northern beaches by busloads, and large enough to provide a decent variety of restaurants, bars and reliable internet cafes. More details on the way!

India - sensory overload

2008-01-31T03:22:00.002-08:00

It’s been already two weeks since we arrived in India. Moving at a steady pace, without staying more than three nights in one spot, we have seen almost all the places worth seeing in the south of Kerala and made forays into Tamil Nadu. It’s too much time and too many events to put into separate stories on the blog, so I will compress it all, dispense with the superfluous adjectives and go for elementary, condensed bullet points.

Save the cows
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Trivandrum pictures
Culture shock, anyone? – India is different, strange and vaguely unsettling. Even after crossing three continents and becoming a battle-hardened world traveler, I still have room for the overloaded sensory experience that is India. There are so many little facets, quirks, nuts and bolts that come together to create its peculiar identity that it’s hard to even come up with a start to describe it. Is it the incredible number of people who swarm the streets, moving fast, guided by mysterious mundane purposes? Is it the chaos and jumble of the cities, the mountains of garbage that clog every back alley, or the odd absence of sidewalks? The multitude of language and scripts, none of them familiar? Or maybe the abundance of fragrances and foods, of which only a few are known to the western traveler from the scoped-down Indian restaurants from back home? And the list goes on...
Protector of gods
Post office – we seem to always have to send parcels home, no matter where we go. On the first day of our arrival in Trivandrum, we ran to the post office right after checking in into our hotel. We had to get rid of a mountain of winter clothes which had become useless – there would be no cold weather for the rest of this trip. The post office clerk was very forthcoming when we explained that we wanted to send a package to America, but became puzzled when I asked where I could get a box. “No boxes accepted,” he said, “you have to wrap everything in cloth”. I had a vision of myself buying a couple of square meters of cotton fabric and sewing it painstakingly into an amorphous bundle, but there was no need for that – the clerk took us to a tailor nearby who pressed and folded the whole medley of clothes, shoes and accessories and hemmed a bag of just about the right size for it, then stitched it shut and sealed it with wax, exactly as the post office wanted it. We overpaid for this service, but what the hell! – Nothing beats getting rid of 20 pounds from your backpack.
Sunset in Varkala
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Varkala/Backwaters photos
Go south, they say – a few of our Indian friends and coworkers told us to go to the south of India rather than the north; that the south is more relaxed and more beautiful. We followed their advice started with the south, but I haven’t been much impressed so far. The tropical scenery is less impressive than the one in Central and South America, the heat is about the same, the beaches are average, and the wildlife-watching opportunities are pitiful – the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary is an overpriced racket; it shelters nothing but a clan of opportunistic, tourist-harassing monkeys. You may see a few elephants and deer in the woods along Lake Periyar, but spotting a tiger is as likely as winning the lottery. The renowned Kerala Backwaters, a network of shallow lagoons and brackish lakes that extend inland along the Arabian Sea coast, are good, relaxing places for a boat cruise, but they are not something to praise in awe. There’s little history to be seen here with the notable exception of the Padmanabhapuram palace, which houses one of the finest examples of Indian woodwork.
Do not feed the animals!
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Periyar pictures
Why visit India? – I don’t understand the urge of some western travelers to come to India in search of spiritual fulfillment. A more profound or more troubled spirit than I am may be able to find a meaningful justification to this bewildering quest; barring this inscrutable aspect, I can easily find a few reasons to put the subcontinent (or a tiny part of it) on your next vacation’s map. Most important for any budget-conscious vacationer, India is dirt-cheap, if you don’t count the cost of the plane ticket to get you there (and even in that area, things are changing nowadays, as budget airlines open routes to cities in India). It’s no wonder that Indian tourist destinations are full of kids who just finished school and want to lazy out and travel for a few more months before getting a real, grinding, 9-to-5 job, and retired hippies drifting around on a three-pennies-a-day budget. Hotel, food and transportation costs are the three ferocious beasts gnawing at your wallet when you travel, but in India they are all tame puppies. A little money goes a long way here… What’s not cheap are sightseeing activities – the Indian government has established a two-tiered entrance fee system with separate prices for Indians and foreigners, for every museum or national park. Prices for foreigners are on the average ten times higher than those the locals pay, but that does not deter anybody – it comes down to only a few extra bucks. And another good reason to visit India, maybe the most compelling, would be the food...
Everybody can do it!
Feeding frenzy – No doubt about it, everyone will agree that India has the best and most varied vegetarian food on earth. Masala dosa, vegetable biryani, Aloo gobi, palak paneer, mutter paneer masala, samosas, pakoras… I have to resist the urge to enumerate them all, but I would run out of space before I can exhaust the incredible variety of non-meat foods found in Indian eateries, from the tiny, three-table, suspicious-looking, crumbling street shack to the luxury, air-conditioned restaurants that cater mostly to tourists, the rich and the visiting Indian émigrés. Now I think I understand why most of my Indian acquaintances from back home are vegetarians, aside from the religious reasons which prohibit beef to people of Hindu faith – you can be a vegetarian here forever without getting bored. I haven’t ordered meat in two weeks, but I still dip my fork sometimes into Angela’s chicken tikka masala – old habits die hard...

Damn! He took the key!

That should be enough for a first installment. I have at least ten other subjects that beg for a place in the list but they will have to wait. There’s too much to say about this country and too little time...

To be continued...

Posted from Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu, India

India Times

2008-01-27T10:25:00.000-08:00

We have been in India for more than a week now, but the schedule has been quite intense and I haven't had the time for stories and pictures yet. Unfortunately my writing cannot keep the pace with our itinerary, and the blog has slipped at least a week behind the events.

In short, we are in Ernakulam (aka Kochin) in the Indian state of Kerala. So far we have passed through Trivandrum, Kanyakumari, Varkala, Kollam, Allepy, Kottayam, and Kumily, and we took boats, buses and trains to get between these towns. Tomorrow we'll take an overnight train to Chennai. Very busy!

City of Empires

2008-01-25T04:45:00.000-08:00

The Galata Tower
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for all Istanbul pictures

In Rome, Madrid, Barcelona, Bucharest and Budapest we tried to walk the streets and discover the city attractions but we always suffered early defeats caused by the unfavorable temperatures of the European winter. There is only so much time you can spend in an under-budgeted, under-heated archaeology museum before you start dreaming of a cozy, warm room and a bed covered with lots of blankets. But despite the fact that we knew it wouldn’t be much fun to visit another big city in January we still went to Istanbul. Part of the reason to visit was that the cheapest flight to India that we found was leaving from Istanbul and the connection from Romania to Turkey came at a reasonable price as well. And once you made it to one of the great cities of the world because you had to, it would be a waste not to spend more time there to enjoy it.

Inside Aya Sofia

Istanbul is the edge of the continent, where Europe meets Asia, a city where the coils of history unfurl in every street and back alley, like charging armies scampering through the scattered stones of long-gone magnificent royal palaces. Istanbul’s fate is unique among the histories of the great cities of the world: once the radiant capital of a glorious Christian empire, which slowly declined to comprise just the city itself, Constantinople fell to its attackers after one final battle of historic proportions, only to become the center of a new world power, a Muslim city that in time surpassed the leftover glory of its Byzantine heritage and reinvented itself. I’ve always considered the fall of Constantinople in 1453 as one of the most harrowing moments in history, sad for the simple yet unsettling fact that its conquest completely erased something that existed and replaced it with something new almost overnight. The newly beginning city rested on the pillars of its inheritance; it adopted some of its forms (best seen in the shape of its mosques, which all look like its older Greek-orthodox churches) but it was apparent that nothing would be the same again...

A stack of pretty boxes
at a stand in the Bazaar

At a glance, Istanbul is a gigantic city rolling on roof-covered hills over the horizon, but its main attractions (the places a travel guide book would recommend you to visit) are all within the old city and across the Golden Horn in Pera (the modern Kadikoy) and Galata. Most of those sites are accessible by a simple yet clever network of tram, metro and underground funiculars (in fact we didn’t have to take the taxi once during the 6 days we spent in town). The best places to stay are the Sultanahmet area at the south-eastern edge of the old town, and Taksim Square in Galatasaray. If you stay in Sultanahmet you’re within walking distance of the historic attractions (Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi palace, the Byzantine mosaic museum, the underground Basilica cistern and the incredible Grand Bazaar).

Shopping on Istiklal Caddesi

In Taksim square you are close to the glitzy, modern avenues lined up with designer boutiques and coffee shops (including Starbucks, yes!), and to good but more pricey restaurants. We stayed at the Istanbul Hostel in Sultanahmet and had an easy time getting to the historic sites, but we couldn’t resist taking a couple of trips across the water to walk on Istiklal Caddesi for a mini shopping-spree, sprinkled with stops at Starbucks to buy good but overpriced coffee. Speaking of prices, Turkey may still be cheaper compared to Western Europe but not by much. At 1.15 lira to a dollar the prices seemed vaguely familiar and not at all comforting to the wallet. Museum entrance fees are usually around 10 Lira, coffee is 4 or 5 (coffee!), a cheap dinner for two costs around 20 Lira and an expensive one may beat a hundred. Just like home, don’t you think?

In the Spice Bazaar

You can get döner kebab at the bazaar for just 1 Lira, but who wants to survive on kebabs only, in a city renowned for its luscious foods? Moreover, with the cold and all, your best bet is to find a good and reasonably-priced restaurant near the hotel and stick with it in case you’re too lazy to take a trip across town through the chilly night. And that’s exactly what we did, and ended up eating soup, pide (Turkish pizza) and kebab at this place called Karadeniz (translated: The Black Sea) almost every day, either for lunch or dinner, until the owner called me his friend (presumably because I was the one he was giving the bill too). And I should not forget the divine baklava and sahlep sold at the nearby pastry shop...

Eating food on the street will challenge you with a little detail: there is no trash bin in this city, I swear, no place to throw an empty Starbucks cup. And still, it looks clean. Somewhere, the mayor must be proud.

And so for us, Istanbul was the end of one part of our trip, the last of our wanderings in Europe, and the beginning of a new path: Asia.

Posted from Kumaly - Kerala, India.

A traveler's worst nightmare

2008-01-18T09:35:00.000-08:00

We had taken more than 20 flights on this trip before leaving Romania for Istanbul. We almost got used to things being always smooth: you get out of the airplane, you go through the immigration booth, you pick up your bags, then you get out and look for transportation... And yet, as we arrived in Istanbul, for the first time, things were different: Angela's backpack didn't come rolling on the carousel. What do we do now?

Of course, we went to the lost baggage office; all they could tell us was that they would send a missing luggage report to the airline and call us later at the hotel. Not much to placate a desperate backpacker who saw all her underwear missing... They weren't very helpful telling us what they will do to get the bag, but they were prompt to announce the one thing they wont: they will not deliver the bag to our hotel because Tarom, the Romanian airline which flew us from Cluj to Istanbul via Bucharest does not authorise home delivery (presumably because they do not want to pay the airport carrier for the service). There wasn't much else we could do, so we went to our hotel.

The next day the airport - of course - didn't call, so we did. Then things got confusing. First they said they found the bag. Later, as we called again, they realized that they had found a different bag. They told us to come to the airport and contact Tarom. We went to the airport, not necessarily to contact Tarom but rather to talk face to face to the girls from the lost luggage office, because nothing seemed to work over the phone. There was no permanent Tarom office at the Ataturk international airport - they only show up at check-in time. We somehow managed to get back inside the baggage claim area under escort, after I left my passport hostage to the security desk and pleaded with the girl at the office which by now, after so many phone calls, knew me by name. The bag was finally found in Bucharest. Luckily an international electronic lost baggage system exists, which is accessible via computer like the Sabre reservation network, to all airports. It really helps to know the brand of your bag in case the tag has been lost, which was exactly what had happened to ours.

Finding the bag was a little victory. Having it delivered to Istanbul was a different story. Of course, nobody knew or bothered telling us when this bag would make it to Turkey. Their attitude drove Angela crazy. Americans are used to answers like "I don't know, but I'm going to make a few phone calls and find out right now", but in most of the rest of the world you get just "We made a request in the system, we'll call you when we know more" (which of course they don't, so you have to keep calling and pestering them to achieve anything). We met a Dutch guy who was at the airport to get his luggage, two days after his arrival in Istanbul. He was wearing flip-flops and sweatpants, obviously his choice of clothing for a more comfortable plane ride. At least Angela had her boots to cope with the chilling weather.

Another day later, when I was already considering lending half of my underwear to Angela, the backpack finally arrived, and as a final consolation prize, it was even delivered to our hotel. Unfortunately, as we had feared, some things were missing: our magnetic travel-size games of chess and backgammon were nowhere to be found. We can't really know who stole them along this chain of weaknesses, but I will take pleasure in blaming it on Tarom, the Romanian airlines. I didn't expect anything else from them.

Budapest

2008-01-12T13:43:00.000-08:00

Yes, it was that cold!
Click photo to see slideshow
or here for the Budapest set

If we thought Romania was being hit by extreme winter temperatures, once we got to Hungary we realized that it could get much worse. It was so cold you wish you wore underpants. You wouldn’t want to let your dog out of the house for a leak. But since we were already there – after the uneventful 6 hour bus ride from Cluj – we tried to make the best out of it. Sure, the plan had been to walk the beautiful imperial streets of downtown Pest, to hike up to the Buda castle, to visit a museum or two and to try some of the famous goulash. But…

I got sick the day we arrived and wasn’t able to eat or do anything else on that evening (except maybe, to argue with Angela about what to do when the owner of the guest house did not answer the door bell as we arrived – he did, a little later). As for the rest of the days, although I felt better, they weren’t much more charged with activity. The hotel room was too cold, despite the heating working full-time, so we spent a lot of time under the blankets that were provided abundantly. We woke up late every day (who would be eager to go outside when even the walk across the room and into the bathroom seems like an arctic adventure?) and on our only day of real city walking we spent most of the time shopping on Vaci Utca without buying anything, which for once I didn’t mind, since the stores were, at least, well heated.

Lunch at the "Menza"

All this reluctance to going out materialized into a bit of financial woe… our hotel was near the Oktogon, on the majestic Terez Korut boulevard, right around the corner from the famous Ferenc Liszt Ter (Franz Liszt square) where all the posh restaurants are located. We did not have the nerve to go look for the few cheap eateries left in Budapest, so we ended up eating in the square every night. Although the Hungarian Forint is floating at a ridiculous rate to the dollar, something like 1 to 170, once you do the math there’s nothing left to laugh about – almost every meal we had seemed more expensive than it would have been at home. Prices for mixed drinks were astronomic. It actually made you think that the US is a cheap place… and to think that this was once a communist country…

Parliament corner

As it has sadly become the norm in recent weeks, I did not take almost any pictures in Budapest, except on the last day, when after taking Angela to the airport (she was going home for a few days) I spent an hour in town alone and reluctantly pulled the camera out of the bag, only to have my fingers frozen on the shutter a quarter of an hour later. As for the museums, they had the same fate as the other beautiful things in town: we ignored them all, except for the Terror Haza, The House of Terror (Museum of the Horrors of Fascism and Communism) which was interesting but would look a little baffling to people who didn’t already know the context. And of course, it could use some explanations in English - not many of the visitors seemed to understand Hungarian…

After Romania and Budapest, Angela and I hit a rough patch and we almost stopped the trip. The stress of these months of travel had built up slowly, unnoticed, and blew up in my face. We worked things out and we’re on the road again. Strange as it may sound, it feels good to be in a hotel room again…

Published from Istanbul.

Next?

2008-01-09T14:54:00.000-08:00

We're leaving for Istanbul tomorrow, January 10, and we'll stay there until the 17th when we leave for India. There will finally be warm weather! Maybe even too much of it...
I'm still trying to catch up with stories from Romania and Hungary.

Posted from Cluj, Romania.

The good, the bad and the useless

2008-01-07T04:57:00.001-08:00

It’s list-time today! For people like us who have their whole life packed up in plastic bags, there always comes a time of reckoning… Was it worth taking those fancy shoes? Did I really need that huge bottle of lotion? How about the electronic gizmo to chase mosquitoes away...? So here they are:

Most useful things we took with us on this trip:

Fujitsu Lifebook
Laptop Computer - not much larger than a DVD case, the Fujitsu Lifebook 1510 is clearly at the top of my beloved possessions. Its compact size makes for easy storage in any day bag and in most safe boxes in hotel rooms. This blog is written on it – I sort and delete pictures and I write the text in advance; thus I am done with most of the heavy-lifting before I need to go to an Internet café where I ask for an Ethernet connection or wireless access, so I can upload all the content. Most I-cafes charge for service (ah, where is Argentina, the land of free wireless…), and in Africa and Europe, unlike in South America, Internet is very pricey (unless you are lucky enough to find a hostel that has “free” wireless access), so these preparations save me quite a bit of dough. Another advantage of having the computer is being able to do online banking and e-commerce without worrying about keyboard loggers and other malware.
Digital Rebel
Canon Digital Rebel XT SLR Camera – I’m far from being an expert in photography, but I cringe when I see how sometimes the flashes of compact digital cameras go off around me in bright day. At least, having this complicated beast has forced me to learn how to use it properly. Who knew there were words like 'aperture', 'depth of field', 'shutter speed' and 'focal length' that I would, one day, understand?
Soft case
Camera protective case – The camera and accessories came with a protective case from the seller (a swindler in New Jersey who overcharged me for batteries), but the thing fell apart to pieces within two weeks. Made in China of course. After getting weary of carrying my camera in plastic bags and my accessories in a clothes bag, I bought a padded square case for the accessories and a triangular padded case for the camera. They are also made in China but they lasted…
H&M trunks
H&M men's underwear – it is no surprise to anyone who knows the special relationship a man enjoys with his underwear, that when you, after years of wearing the wrong cuts and brands, finally find underwear that fits well, you want to have as many pairs as you can carry. I have 10 pairs with me. And with this I have also answered the age-old question "boxers or briefs?"... Well, neither!
Steripen
Steripen UV water purifier – We bought this device from Michael and Mor as they finished their trip in Buenos Aires and did not need it any further. Although, surprisingly, water in Southern Africa is safe to drink in many places (unlike in South America where not even the locals drink the tap water, here even most tourists drink it) we purify it with this tool and don’t have to always worry about having enough bottled water until the next trip to the grocery store.
Travel towel
REI travel towels – thin, efficient, drying fast and completely synthetic, these towels are the perfect companion for the shower. The traditional cotton bathroom towels don’t belong in a traveler’s backpack – they are large, fluffy and will rot fast if they stay wet for too long. In contrast, these towels may not be as absorbent as cotton, but they weigh nothing, take only a fraction of a regular towel’s space, and can be packed wet, which is often the case when you’re on a trip. You have to wash them sometimes though, you know?
Prescription sunglasses – Not having to put on contact lenses (see below) to be able to use sunglasses – priceless!
Leatherman all purpose tool – a must-have backpacking tool (Swiss army knives are pretty toys compared to these manly utensils), but - sadly - it was stolen from my backpack somewhere in Guatemala. I hope the thief accidentally cuts one of his fingers with it! I had to make-do with a cheap replacement bought in Bolivia, whose corkscrew is now broken, because of too much use…
Silicone earplugs – you think I could sleep with the fan or A/C going full power in those sweltering rooms in Mexico? Or in our hotel room in Cairo, located on the main shopping street where taxi drivers, suffering from compulsive honking, drive up and down all night? You bet I can! There’s nothing like the comfort of silence given by ears stuffed with silicone...
Ultra-light battery-powered alarm clock – Being able to hit the snooze button a gazillion times when we have a plane to catch in two hours, just like we did when we had to go to work… is there anything better?!
iPod Nano G3 – sure, there are many other, cheaper digital music players out there, but there’s nothing quite like the real thing. We did not carry this one from home; we bought it in Spain instead. I don’t use it, but Angela has been longing for a music box for a very long time and she finally got the iPod as a Christmas present. She is very happy with it, especially now that I have taught her (against my common sense) how to use eMule…

Least useful things we took with us:

Walkie-talkies – these are great in some situations (as when you want to get a hold of your kids on the ski slopes) but what good do they do for husband and wife on a trip around the world? I can’t picture any use for them besides: “honey, I’m on the beach and I forgot the sun screen, can you bring it to me after you’re done reading the newspaper (which means now)?” So, after carrying them idly in my backpack for a couple of months we sent them home from Ecuador.
Rain coat – I love my Columbia sportswear sheer raincoat and windbreaker, and it has served me well in Seattle over the years, but although we have had our share of rain in South America and Africa, I didn't seem to be missing it and used my Marmot jacket instead, although it had no hood. It was just dead space in the backpack. I sent it home from South Africa. This is just one example to show that we had packed too many clothes. Some of you can now tell me “I told you so!”
Power transformer – my travel adapter kit came with a power transformer for electrical appliances which understand only the 110 volt standard of the United States (while most of the world runs on 220). However all my electrical tools - the laptop AC adapter, the camera battery charger and the regular battery charger for AA and AAA batteries – work with both voltages and only need plug adapters. The transformer is a small box, but weighs almost one pound. It had to go. I donated it to our hostel in Cape Town.
Contact lenses – I took them with me and I still have them, but I have only worn them twice. I’ll keep them, since they do not take much space, just in case I want to shed the intellectual look for once.
98% DEET (Diethyl-m-toluamide) spray and insect-repellent to drench your clothes in – some smartass at REI convinced us that you cannot go into the infested swamps of Central America and Africa without those two inventions of modern chemistry. But it turned out that the mosquitoes in the places we travelled to were just another bearable nuisance, and lower-concentration (up to 20%) deet-based repellent worked well against them.
Lots of $1 bills – some idiot on the Lonely Planet ThornTree forum suggested taking many $1 notes to give as tips in Africa and South America, where they supposedly are much appreciated. Totally useless advice! We tipped people in local currency everywhere, I didn't have to bribe anyone, and I never give anything to the beggars. And in any case a one dollar bill is not worth much nowadays, not even in the third world. But it’s money anyway, so not to be thrown away.

Things we wish we had taken with us:

Compact digital Sony camera – I didn't have any inhibitions to walk around in South America dangling my gigantic Canon SLR around my neck, but in Africa things are different. South Africa is notoriously unsafe. The rest of Southern Africa is not that bad but a big camera still attracts great attention. Besides, I have to keep either around my neck or in a backpack. Sometimes I wish I could just pull out the small camera out of my pocket, take a fast shot unnoticed by anyone, and put it back out of sight. When we left Seattle, we didn't take the small Sony with us because we had so much stuff in our bags that we have to abandon anything that seemed redundant, and we had a camera already.
Underwater camera case – unfortunately we’ll have to look at pictures in National Geographic to remember those beautiful coral reefs from the Red Sea. The case would have worked with the Sony compact digital camera which we didn't take with us either...
More books – of course you can’t take as many books with you as you would read in one year but wouldn't it be nice not to have to rely on the dismal selection of romance and action thrillers at hostel book exchanges or not to have to spend large sums in the English-sections of bookstores in non English-speaking countries?

Anything else?

Home? What home?

2008-01-03T11:22:00.000-08:00

Cluj-Napoca
Click on photo to see slideshow
or here for the Cluj-Napoca set

I was born in Cluj-Napoca and have grown up and gone to school and college there. I got beaten up and I fell in love for the first time in this town. I got my heart broken many times over and broke other hearts in turn. Most of my lifetime friends lived at one time or another in those drab apartment neighborhoods. When I kissed a girl for the first time, we were both so embarrassed to be seen kissing, that we hid in an elevator and took rides up and down for a few minutes. I used to smoke cheap cigarettes in the high-school's second-floor boys' bathroom, afraid that I would get caught by the vigilante professors. I had the first girlfriend-pregnancy scare sometime when I lived here. I certainly got drunk for the first time at a party in my hometown – although I can’t remember when. I broke my front teeth on a concrete sidewalk while playing football in my neighborhood. I took long walks through the park with girls to whom I did not dare confess that I liked them. I listened to loud heavy-metal music annoying my parents and the neighbors. As a kid, I beat up an old man who was trying to beat me up for playing in front of the apartment building during the afternoon "mandatory" quiet time. I walked the streets, I rode a bike, I sat on a bench and looked at the pigeons in the main square, day-dreaming.

Communist architecture

I have many memories, fond memories that tie me to Cluj. Yet now, each time when I visit my old town, once every few years, it looks smaller and more alien to me than before. There’s not much left to keep me here. Sure, I have a mother who still lives in the same big, old apartment, the smells of the streets are still familiar, and I still smile when I see the tiny hill in the neighboring church yard where we used to sled each winter when the snows came. But these are only places, and most of them have changed by now. The sad concrete boxes erected in communist times to house the workers who were supposed to build the golden future of the socialist republic are now covered with capitalist ad banners and all the ground-floor apartments have turned into little shops. Huge department stores have opened everywhere. Fancy bars and clubs have mushroomed all over downtown. The money is different. The people have changed. Or maybe I have changed...

Babes-Bolyai University

When I think of what I miss about my country it’s always places, smells and colors; an image of a grassy hillside dotted with hay stacks under a late summer azure sky, a memory of hiking on a muddy footpath through the woods on a rainy day. It’s never the people. Most of my friends from those times are somewhere else in the world; the few ones who still live in town make it easier for me to survive my stay. The eleven years I spent in other countries have taken their toll. Even the language distinction has begun to fade away. I no longer feel more comfortable speaking Romanian than when I use English. I no longer consider Romanian a privileged language among those I speak. I hardly even read in my mother tongue anymore and I never write, nothing besides short emails. I can't even talk about fixing cars and riding horses - the two hobbies I love most - in Romanian, for lack of appropriate vocabulary. It's just another language now, albeit one that I won't forget even if I lack the practice.

A trolley on the boulevard

I have never approved of the nostalgia of those immigrants who can’t wait to return “home” every vacation, at Christmas, Easter and in summer as well, and who make sure to tell to everybody who listens that if it weren't for the better money, they wouldn't live “there,” among the cold foreigners, for one single day. From where I stand now I couldn't imagine returning to this place for good, although living conditions have improved a lot, the money is good in Romania now, and I still have the name of the country written on my passport. My link to the spiritual depths of this land and people has been severely weakened. My home is elsewhere now. Without my intention I have become more American than apple pie (if you don't count the accent), and I can’t picture living anywhere else... except on the road.

By the way...

2007-12-25T12:07:00.000-08:00

To all of you, regular or accidental readers of my blog, have a Merry Christmas! Or Happy Holidays, if you would prefer me to be politically correct. Anyway, drink a lot, be happy and don't drive!

F&A

4 days in Bucharest

2007-12-25T05:16:00.000-08:00

I have no pictures of mine from Bucharest.
This one is from Wikimedia commons

My aunt was nice and allowed us to stay with her in Bucharest for a few days. We had planned to see the city (or at least that I would show the city - which I have seen many times before - to Angela), take some pictures, and perhaps see a museum or two. But things didn't go as we intended. Laziness and constant bad weather slowed our engines; instead of taking to the streets, we locked ourselves up in my aunt's apartment, read old National Geographics and watched TV (which in Romania, with the exception of cartoons, is mostly in original language, so Angela didn't have a problem understanding).

Despite our general lack of interest for street hiking and the huge distance (my aunt lives all the way at the edge of town) we managed to get downtown twice. Once we spent most of our time looking for a toilet - luckily McDonald's is well represented in Romania - the other time, one evening, together with my aunt, we tried to get into a restaurant for dinner and kept running from place to place across downtown, since all our choices were booked for company Christmas parties. Either way, there wasn't much to enjoy in downtown Bucharest during those drab winter days. The streets and sidewalks were covered in a thin layer of liquid mud - the eternal curse of all Romanian towns during the rainy season - there were works on all the main streets and unmarked man-made pot-holes adorned many corners. In summer, the same streets are swept with dust by the hot wind of the southern plains, but at least the trees are green and the skies are blue; you can walk and feel good and stop in a beer-garden and then walk some more. But not in this wailing December weather; no, the warmth and shelter of the apartment were much more appealing than the cold boulevards...

Posted from Cluj-Napoca.

Taxi, taxi!

2007-12-22T23:59:00.000-08:00

How do you know if you're getting ripped off by the taxi drivers waiting on the curbside in front of the airport? There's no easy answer, but it pays to check a few things ahead if you want to keep your money in your wallet. Depending on country, local laws, and the strength of the cab-driver unions, you may or may not be in danger of getting suckered into paying a little fortune for the ride downtown. Sometimes you don't have a choice - the airports are usually far out of town, and if no other transportation alternatives are available (it's too late at night or you have too many bags to drag yourself to the bus) you are stuck with whatever price the taxi drivers ask, and you have very little room for negotiation. Egypt is one example: there the taxi drivers working at the airports are like a crime syndicate (and the others are just petty thieves). You think you can just walk over to the next one and negotiate a better price?

I knew there were going to be taxi sharks at the Baneasa airport in Bucharest. Romanian cities have always had two kinds of cabs: the radio-dispatched cars affiliated to companies, practicing decent, uniform prices, and the "independents" who prey on unsuspecting out-of-towners and foreigners, and who would often charge ten times as much as the others. The trouble is, there's no easy way to distinguish between them. I didn't know what to expect: I hadn't visited Romania in over three years, money and prices had changed, and I had never taken a taxi from the airport, preferring the bus or having friends waiting for me. But we were going to land at 2AM; there was no night bus, and I had no friends left in this town anymore. Before the flight, a quick online check on Lonely Planet's ThornTree travel forum clarified things a bit - at least all taxis had to have the prices per kilometer posted in clear view on the passenger's door.

With that information in mind I stepped out of the Bucharest-Baneasa airport at 2AM, in a pouring, cold December rain. An army of yellow taxis with black checkered stripes was waiting at the curb, but none of the people who had just gotten off the same plane was rushing to them. Most were calling others on their cell phones, waiting for friends to pick them up. "Taxi mister, taxi?" I kept hearing as I cruised the sidewalk avoiding the puddles, trying to read the prices printed on the passenger doors of the cars. A few times, when the touts became insistent, I told them to sod off in Romanian. They were all independents, charging around 8 RON per kilometer (1 USD is about 2.4 RON), and some even had the audacity to try to convince me that it was a good price. If I believed them, for the 20km ride to my aunt's neighborhood at the other end of town, I would end up paying 60 to 70 dollars.

Patience paid off - Bucharest-Baneasa is one of those lucky few airports located in town and not out in the fields; thus new cabs arrived often, even at that early hour of the morning. Before long, I was able to stop a company cab as it pulled in front of the arrivals gate. 1.79 RON/km said the door sticker. Don't let this one get away! During the ride I talked with the driver about the "independents" and their shameless prices. The company-affiliated drivers often have clashes with the sharks about rates and territory control but in the end it's a free country and everybody is allowed to scam whomever they want. As long as the prices are in clear view (even if they are in minute print), it's OK to take the money away from the poor suckers who come to visit our beautiful country...

Not from us though, you won't. We've been to too many places. I may be wearing glasses, but I can still tell the crooks from the honest!

Written in Cluj-Napoca.

Barcelona

2007-12-17T13:02:00.000-08:00

“It’s 370 Euros for the seven nights, pay ahead,” the guy at the front desk said. Making a quick calculation, I frowned: “We don’t have so much money with us now, but in any case, when we talked on the phone you told me it was 50 Euros per night, so this doesn’t add up.”
“No, I told you 60 Euros.”
“You already charged my credit card for one night, 50 Euros as we agreed.”
“No that was just the deposit; the rate is 60 per night, due on arrival for the whole stay.”
“Now… you may have said something about the payment being due on arrival, I think I remember, but it was definitely 50, not 60 Euros per night.”
“Ok, ok, 50, I don’t care, I don’t want to argue. You can pay the whole sum tomorrow morning.”

Craziness in the Barri Gotic
Click on pic to see slideshow
or here for the Barcelona set

This conversation was taking place at 1AM on our arrival night in Barcelona, at the hotel Rembrandt, first in Spanish, and then in English - the guy nursing the reception desk at that late hour was an Indian and all three of us naturally drifted to the one language we could best use for arguing. He was clearly trying to scam us (later on I found the notes that I took when I booked the room on the phone, and I had indeed written down 50 Euros for the room with bathroom, and 40 for the one without) but we didn’t agree on what to do: Angela became angry and wanted to leave immediately; I advocated sleeping there for the night and leaving the next morning - it was already late, and finding another suitable hotel at that hour wouldn’t have been easy. To minimize the damage, I made sure the guy agreed he wouldn’t ask for more money besides the 50 Euros he had already charged us, and I made clear we won’t pay before the next day, if we decided to stay. I had my way, but not without getting an earful from Angela, how “this isn’t right and we should have left immediately!” I appreciate people with principles, but only when it doesn’t imply dragging a 50-pound backpack about the streets in the middle of the night… The moral of the story: don’t go to Hostal Rembrandt in Barcelona, even if it’s featured in Lonely Planet. It’s a dump, and you can find better budget hotels at a cheaper price. Besides, you’ll avoid an argument with your wife, if things go sour…

Flying rats in Placa Catalunya

All ended up fine the next day as I found the Hotel Principal (two stars), which, for being more pricey (80 Euros), offered all the comforts longed for by backpackers who had been sleeping for too long in cheap hostels: a large, tall room, a view to the street, a gigantic bed, TV (although all channels except for EuroNews were in Spanish), hard-wood floors, silent air conditioning that actually responded to the temperature controls, and a bathroom with futuristic showers that required a PhD to operate. It even had “original artist paintings” (touted as such in the hotel brochure) on the walls – maybe that’s why the extra Euros… the starving artists who had sold their hearts to the necessary evil of corporate design had to make a buck too. No breakfast was included, but internet access, including wireless, was. I didn’t balk when I heard the price; I got it as soon as I saw the room.

Fun with Eva and Robert
at a basque eatery

For us, after so many cities visited, Barcelona was just another big town, albeit one that you can fall in love with in the long run. It isn’t a flashy poser like Rome but a city that slowly grows on you because of its very distinct personality. Food… well, food just kept getting better. You can’t be wrong if you had three shots at the culinary art of a country (Madrid, Seville and Barcelona) and things have steadily gone from better to best. Spanish cuisine is now definitely the sweetest of my love-affairs with food.

Casa Battló

What do you do if you’re a tourist in Barcelona? You climb up the escalators to Montjuic and snap some uninspired panoramic photos of the city below; then you sit and relax watching the kids at play in the beautiful terraced gardens that take you back into town; you walk the never-ending blocks with “shaved” corners in the Eixample and get lost in the all-identical streets; you visit the Picasso museum and stare in amazement at the many cubist studies of Velasquez’s Las Meninas; you stroll up and down the Ramblas and enjoy the crazy crowd of passersby, gawkers and living statues; you cannot miss a visit to the Sagrada Familia temple, and if you still have energy and taste for architecture you go and see the Gaudi houses – Casa Battló and La Pedrera - at least from the outside, if you’re not willing to spend the money to get in. And these are just some highlights…

I just can't look normal in pictures!

In Barcelona I met Robert again, my Dutch friend that I knew from my Nuremberg days in 1999/2000, when we both worked for Lucent Technologies, and with whom I somehow kept in touch all those years. He brought along the lovely, wry, sharp-tongued Eva, his Spanish long-distance girlfriend. We went out every night, taking the city by storm, one restaurant at a time and got home mostly drunk, defeated by the abundance of exquisite tapas and good wines. To them I owe the fact that I finally saw the “Bodies” exhibition. If they hadn’t insisted that they wanted to go and that Eva could get cheap tickets using some “points” from previous purchases, I wouldn’t have bothered dishing out the 17 Euros for the regular entrance. This exhibition had been on display for months at the convention center, two blocks down the street from our apartment in Seattle, and I didn’t bother visiting – not because of the price (in any case it was lower than in Europe) but because of lack of interest. I had to admit it was in fact very interesting and instructive, although by the time I got to the second room I had developed an uneasy feeling that didn’t leave me for the rest of the time I spent inside: I became aware of my heart pumping blood, my bowels working and my nerves trying to transmit vital impulses… If you are still smoking, the Bodies exhibition will make you want to quit… at least until you get out and light one up…

Published from Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Break

2007-12-15T07:23:00.000-08:00

Recently I had neither enough time nor many opportunities to update the blog. Stories from Barcelona and Romania (may be) coming soon.

Nothing to do in Seville

2007-12-05T04:47:00.000-08:00

When in Seville, do what the locals do
Click on pic to see slideshow
or here for the Seville set

As we boarded the train at the Atocha station in Madrid, we had lots of plans for the four or five days we were going to spend in Andalucía. But when we arrived in Seville everything fizzled out little by little and we ended up spending the next three days eating well and shopping. First, the plan to travel to Granada petered out; taking the train or bus there and then getting from Granada to Barcelona was going to cost too much. So when we found a cheap plane ticket from Seville straight to Barcelona we decided to forgo the Alhambra. In Seville itself, we weren’t very proficient with the monuments – we walked the beautiful narrow streets of the old town but didn’t enter one single tourist attraction. The magnificent Seville cathedral was charging 7.50 Euros entrance fee, and I decided that the Catholic Church would not have my money anymore. If I can’t get into a church for free, I won’t get in at all (although I was going to break this oath later at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona).

The fnac megastore

We compensated our lack of cultural interest by spending a lot of time at fnac (the French cultural and consumer-electronics megastore) and El Corte Ingles, buying the iPod Nano G3, and downloading a lot of music. And no doubt, we redeemed ourselves by sampling the elaborate culinary offerings of the many tapas bars spread all over town. “Es arte, no es cocina,” the waitress at Los Coloniales told us as she brought a delicious plate of sandwiches with foie gras and cold roasted pork cuts, topped with fried quail eggs. I licked my fingers knowing I have reached a new apex of culinary delight. And things were going to get even better…

Flamenco drama!

In defense of “traditional” cultural activities, on one of the evenings we went to see a free flamenco show in a bar. The singer and the guitar player put up a good, passionate performance, but it was not amplified, and a lot of the people in the back of the bar kept on talking. The background noise bothered the singer (who had to keep reminding the audience not to speak and not to smoke) and annoyed the people who were actually there for the music. Of course, if the show hadn’t been for free, this wouldn’t have happened.

Paul and some girls

The Oasis Backpacker Hostel, our lodgment in Seville, is a nice renovated building with a great location, but, as it happens with most places which have “backpackers” in their name, it is very loud. The hotel is built around a small inner courtyard which has been covered with a glass roof, and now holds the reception, a few couches and the computers with free internet access. As such, this makeshift “lodge” is a very popular place, and it’s no surprise that the rooms at the higher floors get a share of the conversations that happen downstairs. The hostel seemed to be full with nothing but young American students, most of them girls; the word “like” kept popping up in their conversations - which were mainly about drinking or bad boyfriends - with an unprecedented frequency. But among all those aliens we meet Paul, an American traveling alone around the world not for one, but for two years (of which he has completed half). We spent some time with him exchanging travel ideas and blog tips (is there even one person traveling for a long time nowadays, who doesn’t keep a blog?). He has lots of stories and good pictures at http://pauls-paradigm2.blogspot.com.

At the end of the three days, we left Seville largely unexplored and headed for Barcelona hoping for good weather, more good food, and eager to meet my friend Robert whom I hadn’t seen in something like 5 years…

Written in Barcelona

Living la vida loca!

2007-11-29T15:57:00.000-08:00

Forget falafel, forget tzatziki, forget pizza and pasta – in Spain we have reached culinary Nirvana. Tapas-hopping is a wonderful Spanish tradition that turns dinner (or lunch) into a bar-crawl. You eat a few olives here, some grilled prawns there, a portion of stuffed champignons here and some chorizo or roasted pig-ear in yet another place, all sprinkled with lots of your favorite wine or beer. Of course, these make just a very modest list; in reality, the variety of foods served at any tapas bar is enough to keep newcomers busy experimenting with strange or unfamiliar foods for weeks.

Palacio Real
Click on pic to see slideshow
or here for the Madrid set

As in many European countries, you can still smoke in bars and restaurants in Spain, and cigarettes are available from numerous automated dispensers. The locals take ample advantage of this benefit and you’ll be hard-pressed to find even a restaurant that has a non-smoking section. But things are changing – a few popular places, mostly chain-style restaurants, have started to display very conspicuous non-smoking signs, and people seem not to mind the restriction and still flood these establishments. Where smoking is allowed (and that is almost everywhere), explicit signs say “Esta permitido fumar,” but the same signs also mention that smoking can be harmful and cause heart and lung disease. In my opinion it is just a question of time before Spanish smokers will be forced to take their cigarettes outside, like they are now in Italy.

Starbucks!

Madrid doesn’t have the intense and overwhelming beauty of Rome, but its charm is nevertheless undeniable, primarily because of the crazy, outgoing, fun way of life that Spaniards have adopted. The downtown streets are full of people every evening, bars (including those that serve food) stay open very late - they close just in time for the nightclubs (some still called “discos”) to open, and no Spaniard seems to be ever having dinner at home, despite the high prices (yes, we had a round of drinks in a bar where every alcoholic beverage on sale, except for the beer, was 14 Euros - have you ever tried a screwdriver for $20?). This propensity for social life and long-lasting parties comes as no surprise after the 36 years of hard repression by the Franco regime, when the country was in a permanent curfew. Indeed, as a bitter joke, bars and restaurants have kept on their walls the menacing warning signs of the dictatorship era: “Prohibido cantar y bailar” (singing and dancing prohibited) say those engraved plaques, screwed in the tiles above the heads of the cheering crowd. Never again, the jolly Madrileños seem to reply.

Plaza Mayor

Despite this atmosphere of freedom and relaxation, Spain is well aware that it has been caught in the middle of a sinister war, the war on terror. I’m not sure whether this has happened before or in the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings, but Spain, like the US, has sacrificed some convenient freedoms for the greater (some may dispute the adjective) benefit of increased security. Larger railway stations, which in Europe have always been places where you can run to the platforms and hop on the train at the last minute, have become more like airports – the platforms are now fenced out from the waiting halls by sturdy, tall cast-iron railings, and access to the train happens through a scanner gate where, akin to the security checks at airports, all bags are x-rayed.

A sunny day at the Prado

In other, more personal news, after all those museums full of statues and ancient mosaics and the archaeological sites we saw in Rome, switching our focus to “painting appreciation” has been a welcome change. Madrid has two of the most famous art museums in the world – the Prado, home to most of Goya’s and Velasquez’s works, where lines for tickets are permanently winding around the building during opening hours, and the Reyna Sofia, which boasts a fantastic collection of modern art, including the gripping Guernica (along with many other works by Picasso), a few rooms of Dali, and – in my uneducated opinion – too much of the over-appreciated Miro.

The city’s ferial atmosphere has cast its spell on us enough to convince even me to do some shopping. I bought a winter coat; my Marmot jacket can only help when winter temperatures are still bearable (like in Argentina or Greece), and besides, after 7 months of traveling it has accumulated dirt and food spots to the point that I have become ashamed to go into town wearing it. I was sad when we left Madrid; 5 days in this city had not been enough; we could have easily enjoyed a few more. But we were heading south for Seville and I could not resist the call of warmer weather…

Posted from Barcelona.

Run the equator

Troubleshooting the charging system

Front Subframe and Oil Pan Gasket

Preparation (Day 1, Wednesday)

Remove the front subframe (Day 2, Thursday)

Remove the oil pan (Day 3, Friday)

Install oil pan (Day 4, Saturday)

Install subframe (Day 5, Tuesday)

Time

Cost

The story of a rattle

Replacement of the BMW E30 rear subframe bushings

Preparation

The tool

Removal

Installation

Cost

Time & effort

Effects

Conclusion

When your fuel pump goes...

Rear brake pads and rotors

Headlights and douchebags

Confessions of a weekend mechanic

Jeep Grand Cherokee door latch replacement

Front axle suspension overhaul

Replacing shock absorbers and coil springs on the rear axle

Third world prices in America

Google makes the world grow stupid

So you want to know what my favorite place is?

An open-ended list of things that pissed me off around the world (and still do)

1. White people waiting for a table in front of a restaurant in Cuzco.

2. Public service employees begging for a handout like they deserve it.

3. Listening to the same idiotic questions from other tourists you meet.

4. Dishonest hotel managers.

5. Inane “must see” places that are just boring pieces of junk.

6. Imbeciles who show up early for everything.

7. Yes, we have hot water. Yes we leave at 10am.

8. Rickshaw drivers in Asia.

9. White people trying too hard to embrace local traditions.

10. Paying 2 Euros for plain coffee.

11. Local travel agencies that charge a heavy markup for stuff that you can get for less around the corner.

12. Fat balding Anglo sex-tourists trying to make dinner conversation with Thai prostitutes who don’t give a shit.

13. Paying too much for poor service because you have no choice

14. Douchebags who rave about how awesome and spiritual India is.

15. Retarded teenagers checking their Facebook “walls”.

16. Horrible European tippers.

17. Losers who visit the Coliseum and have no idea where they are.

18. Jackasses on group tours, who show too much skin in public in Muslim countries.

19. Everyone else.

Almost Famous

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No one stays dry in Chiang Mai

The longest boat ride

Luang Prabang, a Kingdom afar

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The most relaxed capital in the world

Rural adventures in southern Laos

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Of ruins, tuk-tuks and Lonely Planet books

Everything goes in Bangkok

The dream islands

Welcome to Thailand

Leaving Wonderland

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I still have sand in my shoes

An Indian itinerary