Vote Blanc> Travels

What I failed to mention in earlier posts was I had a hidden agenda for traveling to Haiti. As readers of my blog may know, I am pretty dissatisfied with the US government and have suggested several “big ideas” on how to fix our country. I figured Haiti would be a good place to test out the popularity of my ideas and I began a last minute campaign to become the mayor of the town of Camp-Perrin.

Being the only white person for miles around and that most Haitians refer to foreigner’s, no matter what color they are, as “Blanc” (which of course translates to “white” in English) I decided to go with the slogan, “Vote Blanc.” Using my 5 big ideas (Renewable Energy revolution, Take the money out of politics, Independent judges fix the countries gerrymandered voting districts, universal healthcare, remain religion neutral) for the Democratic party, I carved out a somewhat nonsensical platform that seemed to go over everybody’s head. (Although being Voodoo neutral was a vote getter.) My campaigning was mostly door to door hand shaking, but I also had some local street toughs spray-paint “Vote Blanc” on every surface they could find.

Apparently my message resonated with the citizens of Camp-Perrin as I won with a 10% margin of victory. While I was proud of my win as a write-in candidate, the truth is I benefited heavily from ballots that had not been filled in, which were liberally interpreted to be votes for me. The following morning before my flight back to Port-Au-Prince, I gave a victory speech in a packed town square full of my jubilant supporters. I explained, through an interpreter that I would bring good times to Camp-Perrin. I asked that all able bodied men be assembled for a raid of Antigua. (All-inclusive package resorts= Good plunder. Also I figure an easy victory could be good for morale and help me get elected to a second term as a war mayor.) I would also enact a “no broken windows” NYC style police force, consisting of the one police officer in town, a man by the name of Dartigue, who would guard the one unbroken window in town 24-hours a day.

I then announced that I would be running my office from Washington D.C. using the interweb and I did not plan on coming back to Camp-Perrin for at least a few years. I would try to get electricity to the town, followed by phone lines, DSL and eventually a computer so that they could receive my orders and of course, read my blog. I can already hear the chants of 4 more years…

Fun with Democracy> Travels

December 3^rd, 2006

The next morning we were supposed to meet at 4:30 AM to drive out to Camp-Perrin, the location of 4 out of the 5 voting locations we were scheduled to observe. Hohengo was running late so I knocked on his hotel room door to make sure he was getting ready. I could clearly hear the voice of a woman in his room so that explains why he didn’t come downstairs until 5:00AM. Jerry decided that he would pair up with John and I would be paired up with Hohengo for the day. Hohengo and I, along with my invaluable driver Fabrice took the 45 minute drive over unpaved road to our first polling location, Mercant. Mercant was a school with roughly ten classrooms, all made of cinderblocks that allowed air to flow through during the hot tropical days. All ten classrooms had separate polling stations which were called BVs. If you want more information on the process let me know and I can send you a report that I wrote. Instead I will just give you a rundown and some of the highlights.

First off, we had pretty much no instruction on how to go about our jobs. All of the work I did was just my interpretation of what seemed right in relation to the questionnaire I was given to record my data. My teammate Hohengo was thoroughly confused by the process and ended up just copying down everything that I wrote like a kid who didn’t do their homework. When he wasn’t copying me, he was making some stupid and often highly entertaining mistakes. To begin with he did not understand what the word observation meant, (Nor did John and Jerry for that matter) and he would try to get the poll workers to seal the boxes, straighten out the people in line, etc. I explained to him that we were supposed observe and write down our findings so that future elections could be run better. My favorite part was when I explained to him that we should keep an eye on the voters and make sure that nobody is violating the secrecy of their vote. He immediately walked up behind a voter filling out a ballot and leaned over him to watch what he was doing. A member of the polling staff yelled at him and I just shook my head. For most of the day I worked with my driver and let Hohengo wander around hoping he would keep himself out of trouble.

One of the best ways to find voting irregularities was to listen for arguments. Now perhaps running over to groups of 20 or more angry people yelling at each other may not be a good idea in a country with more guns than butter, but I was armed with my volunteer police training from my beat on the Prague streets. Throughout the day Fabrice and I would listen in to various arguments, which were for the most part non-violent. That was until 3:45 PM, only 15 minutes before the polls were scheduled to close. A crowd of 30 people had assembled around the entrance of one the polling stations and they seemed particularly angry. Fabrice, Hohengo and I made our way through the crowd into the cinder block classroom and through Fabrice I started questioning people to find out what was going on. A man had been accused of attempting to vote twice. I don’t know if he was innocent or guilty, but I was bit worried he was going to get lynched as Haiti is well known for street justice. Outside a pretty big fist fight broke out that tuned into a small riot. It was quickly broken up by the security guards who sprayed the crowd with tear gas. People scattered in all directions with their shirt held over their mouths. Some of the gas came into the polling station but sadly I didn’t cry a tear. This was no “field of dreams” moment for me. In retrospect I wish I had made a stronger effort to enrich my tear gassing story by running outside and spinning around sound of music style in the gas.

Soon after, I went over to a polling station to witness the closing. Right away they committed a major error in the counting process that could have affected the integrity of the results, but as an observer all I could do was write it up in my notes. At about 5:30 the sun went down and from there on I was able to experience Democracy by candlelight, which is pretty romantic. The count finished at 10:23 PM, several hours longer than any other observer in Haiti had witnessed. While voter participation countrywide had been a paltry 10% my particular polling station had a turnout of about 70%. Poor Hohengo missed two dates because of the late closing, but had gotten the phone number of one of the polling station workers. My favorite part of the night was that throughout the count there were many people peering in through the breaks in the cinder blocks to observe the proceedings. It was amazing about how much these people cared about this local election. We got back to our hotel 18 and a half hours after we had left, but all in one piece. Later on that night I would be woken from a deep sleep to be informed that I had been elected mayor of Camp-Perrin.

The Erection Monitor> Travels

December 2nd, 2006

At 5 AM Hunter and I woke and he drove me to Port Au Prince's airport. There I caught a 7 AM flight aboard a 10 passenger puddle jumper to the city of Les Cayes, a relatively safe city in Southwestern Haiti. The flight followed the Northern coast of Grande Anse, that long stretch of land that juts into the Caribbean towards Jamaica. before crossing over a small mountain range and onto the Southern Coast of Haiti. I was met at the airport by my driver, Fabrice, who luckily spoke English and was a pretty smart dude. Without him I couldn't have done my job properly, but I'll get to that later.

I was driven to a hotel and met my fellow observers for Les Cayes, who had been flown down the day before. All three of them were Haitian Americans that had been living in the US at least 25 years each. In order to protect the innocent I will change their names to Jerry, John and Hohengo. Jerry was assigned to be the leader of our group. He had not been in Haiti for 27 years yet seemed to feel like he owned the place. He did all of this “I am a man of the people” kind of crap that irked me in a big way. John was an OK guy.. The gift of unintentional comedy to the group was Hohengo.

Hohengo was from this area and visited once every few years. He was pudgy, bald, had a goatee and lived in Chicago. He was a nice enough guy, although I was to learn he wasn't all that bright. What Hohengo lacked in brains he made up in virility, although fortunately I can only write this from anecdotal evidence. While Fabrice was driving us around town Hohengo would get Fabrice to stop the car when he saw an attractive woman. He would then wave her over to the car, chat her up and then hand her a stick of gum with his number written on it. Some women seem revolted, some seemed enticed and other seemed to like chewing gum. During his three nights in Les Cayes Hohengo would sleep with at least 5 different women. He was the erection monitor.

We were supposed to spend the day before the election scouting out polling locations, establishing a route and checking for mobile phone reception. Instead, my co-workers decided we would go to Hohengo's home village and hang out for the day. However, visiting Hohengo's village did give me an insight into why so many Haitians risk their lives to make it to the US. I know there are plenty of reasons, but what I was able to see first hand was how Hohengo interacted with the people from his hometown. Most of the people in his village were somehow related to Hohengo and I imagine a lot of them received money from him. Mind you Hohengo is not a rich man, I think he is a cab driver. But like many citizens of developing nations, Haitians depend on the remittances of the diaspora. He was not overtly lording over his hometown, but you could tell he expected to be treated like a returning prince. Again, Hohengo wasn't a bad guy, I just think he let his position in society get to his head. Heck, as a white traveler in developing countries I am sure I act similarly despite my best intentions.

We first visited his family tomb, which like many Haitian graves in the countryside is actually on their front yard instead of in a graveyard. He told me it contained the remains of many of his family members. We also visited his brother's home, one of the only solid modern concrete building in town. His brother had also been to the US, but had moved back to Haiti to raise his kids. We also met one of Hohengo's half brothers, who had never left Haiti. He lived in a small shack and ran a tiny store. He brought us coconuts which we drank and ate under trees from where they had come.

Later we ate lunch at one of Hohengo's cousins, a really nice women that had lived in the US for many years but returned to Haiti to take care of her mother who was suffering from severe Alzheimer's. She showed another side of the diaspora. She had grown up in a small primitive hut, but one of her sons was now going to Johns Hopkins medical school and another had a law degree from Harvard. You can only imagine how hard she had to work to provide her children with the opportunities to get into the world's top Universities.

Whether you want to give your family a chance for a better life, or be a pimp, you can see why people risk life and limb to become Americans. One of the greatest rewards of traveling in countries like Haiti for me is getting a better perspective of just how lucky I am. Wow, this turned out pretty sappy...

On that note, did you know you can hunt the elderly in Haiti? It's just like the movie “Hard target,” staring Jean-Claude Van Damme, only the targets are much softer and can be lured to their deaths with bowls of hot porridge. As lawless as Haiti is, this is only a luxury that foreigners can afford, so again, I feel pretty lucky. Lucky enough to try to get three stuffed octogenarians through customs.

Bad Idea Jeans> Travels

January 1^st 2006.

OK, I have been a lazy bastard. My apologies, but now I have something I feel like writing about. I have spent the past few days in Haiti, volunteering as an election monitor for Haiti's recent municipal elections. Last month my friend Claire sent me an email asking if I wanted to go to Haiti. I said sure, why not. Claire works for an NGO called Haiti Democracy Project that is trying to help consolidate and improve Haiti's unstable Democratic system. I thought it would be really interesting to see a third world election up close and try to a be a bit of help to a worthy cause.

So I applied to be a volunteer and was accepted, however HDP did not receive their grant money from US AID until 2:30 on November 29^th, a day before I flew to Santo Domingo (I flew into the DR because I figured I could combine the monitoring with a brief trip to the Dominican Republic). Claire had been in Port Au Prince, one of the world's more dangerous cities, for the past three weeks arranging the ground logistics for 50 observers without knowing whether or not they would actually get the grant money to make the project happen. Needless to say she was put in a shitty position, but ended up doing a great job. Meanwhile the director of HDP was in the US getting together the grant money. For some reason he didn't send the potential observers any instructions whatsoever on how an election monitor is to go about doing their job.

Anyway, the funding came through and I flew to Santo Domingo arriving in the afternoon. I had enough time to check out the old town, which contains the New World's first church, Western built military structure, Monastery, Hospital and oddly enough, fax machine. The next morning I boarded a bus to to Port-Au-Prince. I was asked several times why I was going to Haiti and people seemed to feel it wasn't the best place to be. If you don't follow these things, Haiti doesn't have the best reputation for safety and lawfulness. In fact the government recently passed a bill that anything goes once the sun goes down. Total amnesty. Just read what the US State department has to say. “Travel in Haiti is dangerous and not recommended” does not make for a great slogan for the Haitian tourism bureau. Port AU Prince, PAP, is considered by far the most dangerous part of Haiti and kidnappings, gun fights and jaywalking on a massive scale are a daily part of lives for Port-Au-Princians. That said, you are much less likely to have your pocket picked here than say, Paris.

When I crossed the border between the DR and Haiti it was like going from the developing world into the undeveloping world. Did you know that Haiti was the richest Colony in the world in the mid 19^th century. After a successful and terribly bloody slave rebellion between 1791-1804 the GDP has gone down pretty much every single year to the point that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere with a median income of 44 cents a day. This country isn't just backwards, it's shifted in reserve and has had the peddle to metal for the past 50 years. For instance, Haiti's national flower is the Florentica Nobalis Duvalierus, which is a purplish grey flower that only grows in piles of garbage. It's technically a mold.

I arrived in PAP as the sun was going down and my friend (and Claire's boyfriend) Hunter and a friend of theirs named Darrin were supposed to pick me up, but were stuck in terrible traffic so were late about 45 minutes. I spent the time standing next to the bus's security guard, who carried a big shotgun. When Hunter finally arrived I was surprised to see that he was driving the car, a large white Montero. The streets here were crazy and I would have been freaked out trying to drive, not to mention the security threat. I was also surprised to find out that I would be flying to Les Cayes, a city in the South West the next morning at 7AM. Anyway, we picked up Claire and took off for a guesthouse on the other side of town. Hunter and Claire seemed pretty comfortable just driving around past slums and had come to the conclusion that it was highly unlikely unless you had a fixed routine that you would be kidnapped. Why? Because the traffic is so bad it would be very hard to make a getaway.

One of the first thing I noticed is there were just a ton of people just hanging out on the “streets” in complete darkness. PAP only has city wide public electricity 2-4 hours a day so the streets are pitch dark with the only light coming from burning piles of garbage and car headlights. Speaking of garbage, the “streets” were covered in piles of it as Haiti has no public garbage collection. I write “streets” in quotes because they are more like a series of potholes and craters that run through Haiti where cars tend to drive.

Later that night we drove to the Hotel Montana, one of PAP's most expensive hotels and where most of the election observers were staying. (Claire, Hunter, Darrin and I stayed at a great Catholic Missionary guest house) There we were supposed to be briefed on what exactly being a election monitor entailed. For some reason the head of HDP, Claire's boss decided not to and all we were given were the questionnaires we would have to fill out to report our findings. Yeah, all of this work and money to get us out there and none of the observers knew what we were doing... yup.

#38> The 100 Most Underwhelming Tourist Attractions in the World

One of Brussels most famous tourist attractions is the Manneken Pis. It's a tiny statue of a little boy seeing a man about a dog, so to speak. It's a close call, but it is not quite as underwhelming as Copenhagen's Little Mermaid because of it's 17th century cheekiness. Also, it is a bit closer to the center of the city, so it's easy to get to, unlike the Mermaid which is a bit out of the way. You can see by the collectible postcard below that tourists in my photo are looking for something interesting to enjoy, turning away from the blight that is Manneken Pis. I suppose if you have a liking for urology or pedophilia this is well worth a visit... You sick bastard.

So Tired> Re-pated

I am back in New Jersey now, visiting my parents for a spell while I figure out where I am moving to next. This morning my landlady came to my apartment in Prague to inspect the apartment and give me back my deposit. A long story short, I got my deposit back, but only after some strong languaged threats and some physical intimidation. I hate Prague real estate so much. My flight was pretty uninventful. Lufthansa played two chick flicks for the in-flight movies, the devil wears Prada and some shit with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. That was painful. My mother picked me up at the airport and I noticed there was some smoke coming out from the front wheel of the car. Another long story short, we had to call AAA and my father is currently waiting (2 hours and counting) with the car one town over. I am off now to watch the Yankees first game of the playoff. Get angry boys!

Small Hands, Smell like Cabbage> Travels

Yesterday Kyra and I stumbled upon a little bush-league amusement park. Oh, the smell of cabbage was in the air. All of the employees here were authentic carnies and without exception drunk. We found an old school shooting game and I did pretty well. After hitting the bumper cars we went on one them tilt-a-whirl dealies and both got thoroughly nauseas. (In fact several people in line for the ride actually walked away after seeing us get off, we were that green.) It was then that we stumbled upon these strange and dated Beverly Hills 90210 characters painted on the outside of a haunted house. And yes we went in there too. A cut out wooden Shannon Doherghty would yell at us for looking at a cut out wooden Dylan with and I quote, "Man-stealin' eyes."
Scary shit.

Amazing Race> Stuff

Sorry about the long absence. I now have an interweb connection, but alas, I have been a bit lazy. Kyra and I have been enjoying our last week together, in Prague. She is off to London on Monday, I am off to the US on Tuesday and that's about all I will write on the subject.
Last night we watched the second episode of this seasons Amazing Race. It took them from Beijing to Mongolia and was shot in the places we first met. The travel logistics in Mongolia happened to by handled by Ger to Ger, the non-profit that took Kyra and I into the Mongolian countryside. Ger to Ger will also be putting together a Mongolia tour for this summer for my new tour company. As we watched I told Kyra that this would be a great promo to reference to on my website. That was until the girl riding the horse was clothlined by a tree and in slow motion fell off her horse. And cried. AND then some other chick feel off her horse and was dragged for 15 feet. And cried. AND then one of the ox got spooked and ran off, nearly running over a one legged contestant. And, yes, she cried too. Yeah, I guess we will have to leave this out of the brochure. The thing is, none of these were flukes. I nearly fell of my horse several times and the ox cart nearly ran over my leg a few times also. Anyway, very entertaining to watch other people go for a similar adventure. Also, watch the Amazing race. I don't ask much.

Salt In The Wounds> Expated

Surprise! One Man Luge is still being written from a wi-fi internet cafe. That's right, I still do not have internet at my apartment and it won't be installed until Monday at the earliest. This is after my landlord promised it would be ready the day I moved in, this past Friday. Then later they promised it would be up on Tuesday. Then I found out that they had in fact never ordered the internet. So I had to order the internet myself and the internet company told me it would be ready by Thursday, today. I called them today and they told me it won't be installed until Monday. All this so I can have internet for one week to do my job. I am so sick of this shit.

Brazilian Sugar Ethanol> Politics

Today's NY Times has an op-ed from Tom Friedman on Biofuels. Just read the first three paragraphs to further illustrate how backwardsass our energy policy is.

"I asked Dr. José Goldemberg, secretary for the environment for São Paulo State and a pioneer of Brazil’s ethanol industry, the obvious question: Is the fact that the U.S. has imposed a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff to prevent Americans from importing sugar ethanol from Brazil “just stupid or really stupid.”

Thanks to pressure from Midwest farmers and agribusinesses, who want to protect the U.S. corn ethanol industry from competition from Brazilian sugar ethanol, we have imposed a stiff tariff to keep it out. We do this even though Brazilian sugar ethanol provides eight times the energy of the fossil fuel used to make it, while American corn ethanol provides only 1.3 times the energy of the fossil fuel used to make it. We do this even though sugar ethanol reduces greenhouses gases more than corn ethanol. And we do this even though sugar cane ethanol can easily be grown in poor tropical countries in Africa or the Caribbean, and could actually help alleviate their poverty.

Yes, you read all this right. We tax imported sugar ethanol, which could finance our poor friends, but we don’t tax imported crude oil, which definitely finances our rich enemies. We’d rather power anti-Americans with our energy purchases than promote antipoverty."

Girfacts> Stuff

I was surfing around on the interweb and I stumbled upon these “Girfacts”. Good times!
-Larry
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Girfacts!- Fun facts about the animal that stand out in a crowd

Even though giraffes are often seen together in groups, they do not form the complex social groups of many plains species. Theirs are loose associations, constantly changing in make-up. A group of giraffes is called a “caboodle”

The giraffe has the same number of vertebrae (seven) in its neck that most other mammals have. They are just really big and elongated.

When giraffes were first brought to Rome in 46 B.C., they were thought to be a cross between a camel and a leopard. Although we've long since learned the giraffe is not a combination of these animals, the scientific name camelopardalis, which means "the fast-walking camel-leopard" stuck.

The word "giraffe" comes from the Arab word xirapha, which means "really tall animal".

Giraffes enjoy watching television

The giraffes life span is 20 to 25 years

The giraffe has the highest blood pressure of any animal in the world. One giraffe heart could pump the blood for 108 human babies!

The giraffe's heart weighs 24 pounds.
The giraffe has the largest soul of any animal.

An adult giraffe's tongue is 18 – 27 inches long

Males and females tend to eat from different parts of a tree to ensure that the sexes do not compete for food.

Newborn giraffe calves begin their lives by falling 6 feet to the ground. (Authors note: My life sadly began in a similar manner, but I survived and it only made me stronger)

Every step a giraffe takes is 15 feet long

A giraffe's kick can kill a lion and propel a football the length of three football fields!

The gestational period of a giraffe is 14 to 14.5 months. It is a popular misconception that male Giraffes can become pregnant. This is simply not true.

A giraffe can drink 12 gallons in one sitting. Milk makes them kind of gassy.

Giraffes rarely lay down; they even sleep and give birth standing up.

A giraffe usually sleeps for only 1 - 12 minutes at a time. When a giraffe goes into a deep sleep it curls its neck back and rests its head on its rump. Giraffes sleep no more than 5 to 30 minutes in a 24-hour period.
The Giraffe’s predators include Lions, Hyenas, Wild Dogs, Leopards and Bears. Fortunately bears are not native to Africa. (In 1993 tragedy struck when the ill conceived “Jirafas y Osos!” enclosure opened to the public at the Parc Zoològic de Barcelona in Spain.)

Giraffes are non-territorial and sociable. They live in loose, open herds.

Giraffes feature in African cave paintings and in ancient Egyptian art and designs.

The Giraffe is considered by the Chinese to be a “rich man’s horse”

A giraffe has 3 speeds: walking, galloping and sauntering.

Giraffes are fast and can reach speeds of up to 35 mph.

Although scientists agree that there is only one species of giraffe, there are many kinds of giraffes in the world : Kordofan Giraffe, Angolan Giraffe, southern Giraffe, Nigerian Giraffe, Mexican Tequila Giraffe, Reticulated Giraffe, Masai Giraffe and Rofts Giraffe.

Giraffes are one of two animals born with horns. The other is the Orangutan, which is born with prehensile horns that fall off within six weeks of birth.

Giraffes live in the African savannah, scrub, and open acacia woodlands south of the Sahara

Like human fingerprints, each giraffe's coat is unique.
The only animal in the world taller than the giraffe is the blue whale, standing upright on its flipper.

Evicted!> Angry Rant!

So I am now in a new flat in Prague. How did this happen? On Thursday Kyra and I had just gotten back from a nice walk and lunch in our neighborhood. We were in our wonderful apartment and I received a call on my mobile from the owner of the apartment. She told me in very broken English that three Finish girls, who had come by and seen the place the day before, wanted to rent the apartment for a year and then buy it. She told me that Kyra and I would have to move out the next day. Fuck.

Normally I would have had a contract with the landlady to protect me from this kind of shit. I had in fact signed a month long lease with full paper work, but that had expired a few days earlier, on the 9th of September and we had agreed verbally that I would stay until Oct 3rd, when I fly back to the states. I had even paid her full rent up until the 3rd. Without a contract I was shit out of luck and the real estate agent that had found me this apartment informed me that the three girls would move in at 4 on Friday and that she would try to help me find a new apartment for the two and a half weeks I have left in Prague.

I tried to fight it by making both the real estate agent and apartment owner feel terrible about throwing us out. It was incredibly unethical to do that when they could have easily told the Finnish girls that the place was rented for the next two and a half weeks and that they could find them another place until we moved out. This didn’t work and the next morning I went to see the only place the real estate agent could find on short notice that would rent to me for such a short time and that could be equipped with internet by Tuesday, when I start my next contract.

I considered just leaving all of my stuff at a friend’s flat and going on a short vacation with Kyra until the 2nd, but my Swedish client needed me to get to work as some my consulting is tied into a mailing that they have already sent out, making my work time sensitive. So we took the flat after a good deal of bargaining. They wanted 17,000 crowns for the two and a half weeks and I was able to get them down to 13,000 crowns, which was still a big rip off and still more expensive than the apartment I was being kicked out of. To top it off this apartment is run down, with less comforts of home (toaster, nice plates, cookery, towels, bed sheets, etc.), I can’t be guaranteed the internet will be up by Tuesday, the kitchen is hard to work in, the bed has a foam mattress which is f-ing up my back and it’s a much smaller apartment than the last one. Yeah, I am pretty pissed. Once again I have learned the importance of having a contract for everything.

So I am done renting Czech apartments. The one I had from Jan-May was a pain in the ass with internet, the gynecologist toilet and in the end they tried to rip me off on the deposit. This debacle has pushed me over the edge.

More Thoughts on Russia> Rant

I just read an interesting article in Foreign Affairs Magazine entitled “Russia Leaves the West” by Dmitri Trenin. It explained why Putin and Russia have been paying less heed to Western criticism lately and what the future portends. I knew the main reason was that the price of oil is very high and they have a lot of oil. The other reason, which seems pretty obvious, but I hadn’t really though about it, is that Russia doesn’t like the way the Western world treats it. Since the fall of the Soviet Union we have treated them like a developing country instead of the 1st world nation they think they are. Just one example is we let them into the G-7, but they haven’t been given full membership privileges. They feel like the West gives them shit no matter what they do. (Gee, can you think of another Superpower that gets shit no matter what it does?) So much like a pregnant teen on Jerry Springer they said fuck it, “We do what we want… Whatevah.” Anyway, I understand their perspective more now, but I still have some serious problems with Russia. I wrote this in my journal while traveling but forgot to add it to my blog:

“What really jerks my Tolstoy is why Russia is so backwards ass. All over the world places are backwardsass you may be saying. True. I can handle it when it is because people are inept, incompetent and lazy. The thing is in Russia things are this messed up because they want it like this. By "they" I mean the government, the mafia and sadly the people also. I think they like being miserable. One example is playing pool here. The balls are almost larger than the pockets. They need to be wedged in to go down. I played a one hour game of pool that was only finished through some miraculous shots and a tub of Vaseline. Fucking Russia.”

Streets of Shanhaiguan> Traveled

Bolshevik Rage> Anti-Belarussian Propaganda

In this article some guy goes off on Belarus. Maybe I was not allowed into Belarus as precaution to protect their elderly population. Fair enough I guess, but they could have let me on the train and kept me shackled to a seat, outside of striking distance from any sectagenarians, octogenarians and nonagenarians. Fuck you Belarus...you goddamned peasants!

Ancient Chinese Scaffolding> Doug Moldover, Guest Blogger

My friend Gus Jenkinberg, a construction worker I know back in Wisconsin, told me that while I was in China I couldn't miss Lao Long Tou, the first section of the Great Wall located in a small town called Shanhaiguan. When he was there in January for Christmas vacation he saw some triple gated Kingston style scaffolding, only it was made of bamboo! I just had to see this! So I drag the wife and kids out to Shanhaiguan (They wanted to stay in Beijing and go shopping.) and we enter what I think is the entrance gate to Lao Long Tou. It was only after a few minutes and several wasted admission tickets later that I realized this was not the LLT but instead some Great Wall Museum. Fuckers. Fortunately they had one room where they had a life size reproduction of the construction techniques that were used when building the wall. You can see by my picture that the scaffolding they use was a death trap. No wonder so many people died building the wall. I had to fight the impulse to reinforce the joints with duct tape. I wouldn't have had time anyway because Billy pissed all over the reproduction Emperor Qin Shi Huang. That's no way to treat China's first emperor. We finally found the LLT but the triple gated Kingston style scaffolding had been removed (see picture) as the restoration had been finished. What a disappointment. -Doug

#81> The 100 Most Underwhelming Tourist Attractions in the World

I visited the Terracotta Warriors over two months ago and I still can't quite shake the sense of disappointment they inspired in me. I went pretty far out of my way to see these guys only to find out that most of them have not been uncovered and the ones that have been are all under a huge airplane hanger. Where's your sense of showmanship Shaanxi Province? So they are over 2,200 years old and there are several thousand individually unique soldiers. It just wasn't all that impressive. Check them out and you will feel it too.

Searching for Adventure> Traveled

Norway
Norway
Bergen, Norway (With Bentine)
Nara, Japan
Itsukushima Shrine, Hiroshima, Japan
In front of Seoul Tower, Seoul, Korea (With Xavier)
Seoul, Korea
At the top of Tai Shan Mountain, Shandong Province, China
At the top of Emei Shan Mountain, Sichuan Province, China
Train to Xian, China (With Shirly)
Big Goose Pavilion, Xian, China
Simitai Section of Great Wall, China (With Jen)
Jinshanling Section of the Great Wall, China
Jiao Shan section of the Great Wall, Shanhaiguan
Temple of Heaven, Beijing
Beijing to Ulan Batur Train
Terelj National park, Mongolia (In Oxcart)
Terelj National Park, Mongolia
Irkutsk, Siberia, Russia
Olkhon Island, Siberia, Russia
Trans-Sib Railroad, Russia
St Basil's Cathedral, Moscow
Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic (With Kyra)