First day of school

Today I taught my first class. Part of the reason I'm taking the TEFL class is that it gives me time in front of students in a more or less controlled environment. For most of my training sessions there will be an instructor in the room with me. For our first teaching practice we worked in pairs.

I was incredibly nervous going in. I didn't know how well I would remember the lesson. I didn't know how smart or well-behaved the students would be. I didn't know if I'd like it. I didn't know if I'd be good at it.

The verdict is in.

It was a blast.

It was so much fun. I felt comfortable and relaxed. We taught a group of 30 generally well-behaved sixth-graders for 90 minutes. Our observer said he struggled with his evaluation because he couldn't think of many areas where there was room for improvement.

I found out that my fellow students thought I already was a teacher, which has to be a good sign. One of them said she thought I seemed "teacher-y", which probably isn't a word, but it's a nice compliment all the same!

Tomorrow I teach a lesson by myself. I'm happy to report that I'm really looking forward to it.

The worst meal ever

After getting stranded at the airport by the owner of my hotel, and then waking up in a pool of my own sweat in my suffocatingly hot room, I trudged down the hill into the town of Labuan Bajo, on the island of Flores, Indonesia.

The entrance to the town is deceptively picturesque, like something out of a Hemingway story.


This road goes more or less straight but then makes a hard left. Everything I needed as a tourist was on the far end of town so from my room it took about 30 minutes to get to anything. I don't mind walking, but the walk was pretty unpleasant.

Once around the corner the town becomes a dirty, dull and lifeless. Red and white are the colors of the Indonesian flag, and the only real colors in this photo.

There are a few tourist restaurants, dive shops and travel agents, but mostly it's just a series of non-descript shops. The owner of my hotel and my friend in Labuan Bajo both used the crappy celphone reception as an excuse as to why they weren't easier to reach.

I tried to make calls that didn't go through, but I was able to talk to a travel agent a half-dozen times on the phone. That the locals insist it's impossible to make a celphone call there is hilarious considering that every fourth shop in town sells phones or SIM cards.

I've traveled for months in Southeast Asia, but on the mainland. The people on Flores are not ethnically related to the people in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. They are Muslim or Catholic, not Buddhist. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at how different it was.

The Southeast Asians I'd encountered until then were unfailingly friendly, even those who work in the sun for 16 hours a day and live in abject poverty. Here the people ignored me or simply stared at me as I walked by. I rarely got any response if I said hello in Indonesian or English.

I had recently been in Cambodia, where the people are incredibly industrious, and Vietnam, where the work ethic is positively maniacal. It was a shock, then, to see so many people sitting around doing nothing. I would have expected all the menfolk to be out on the water fishing, but there were large groups of teenage boys loitering in front of storefronts.

It reminded me of some of the rough neighborhoods in Baltimore. It also called to mind some of the bleak, dusty whistle stops on the chicken bus routes in Central America. There local buses go through one-road towns which aren't destinations, but rather places you pass through on the way to someplace else. Labuan Bajo has that "stop on the way" feel even though it is a major tourist destination. Very strange.

If I had to compare to anywhere it would be Livingston, Guatemala, which is one of the worst places I've ever visited. That's another tourist gateway populated by indolent youths. There was the same vague sense of menace in the air. In Livingston I wouldn't leave my hotel at night because I didn't feel safe.

I spent months in Southeast Asia and I never, literally never, felt scared. I was scared walking through the dark streets of Labuan Bajo at night. I'd pass groups of boys drinking beer who would yell at me in the local language. I don't know what they were saying but I would just laugh as if I was in on the joke and keep moving.

The young boys who don't simply stand around staring at tourists all day drive or ride shotgun on bemos. Labuan Bajo has one circular one-way road. Bemos are taxis that ride around the circle. They're mini-vans that have been modified in the most ridiculous ways.

I needed to get to the one ATM in town, which of course is at the furthest corner from my room. I hopped in a bemo, told them where I needed to go. I always ask locals what to pay for taxi rides so I knew it would be 5,000 rupiahs, or about 50 cents. I asked the guy how much it would cost. He said 5,000. No problem so far. As I got out I handed him a 50,000 note. He handed me a wad of change. I hopped out. As he pulled away I looked at the money. He gave me 5,000 in change. I paid nine times what I should have.

As a tourist I'm accustomed to paying more than locals. I know when I go to the market I will pay more than I probably should. But I'd never had anyone in Southeast Asia just blatantly rob me until then.

On that first afternoon, after visiting all the travel agents and airline offices and discovering that it was going to be difficult and expensive to get back, I decided I needed to decompress a little. I'd find a restaurant on the water, have some food and a beer and watch the sun go down.

The view was great.

The waitress was a young girl, very sweet. I ordered one dish. She came back and said "So sorry. Finish." I picked again. She came back again. "So sorry. Finish." And again. It was about 5 p.m., I was sitting at a restaurant on the water in sight of dozens of fishing boats, and yet they were out of seafood! I went down the menu line by line until we came to a dish they actually had.

Tuna in Indonesian sauce with chips (fries). Sure. I love tuna.

It was perhaps the worst meal I've ever had, and I promise I am not exaggerating to make a point. I don't know what Indonesian sauce is supposed to be. I think it was inspired somehow by the nation's islands and beaches because it was the color and consistency of wet sand. But when I tasted it -- actually, it tasted like wet sand, too.

Knowing that people would think I was being unfairly harsh, I took a picture. Consider yourself warned. It's not pretty.


I tried to pick the fish out of the wet sand. See the bones on the top left? It's not even tuna! The one thing they said they had they didn't. I was famished when I walked in but I could not gag this down. I have eaten bugs, bird's nests and congealed pig blood, but I could not eat this fish.

Two nights later, having not learned my lesson, I ordered a tuna dish at another restaurant. It was supposed to be a tuna filet and vegetables on a sizzling skillet. What it was was a few chunks of fish, probably not tuna, swimming in oil with a couple slices of onion and jalapeno.

I traveled for nearly one year in 15 countries on four continents. I did not limit my eating at all. I tried anything I wanted. I didn't get sick once until I got to Labuan Bajo. It took three weeks for my system to recover from the oily fish chunks. I a cache of antibiotics I had carried for over a year and never needed is now gone.

If you go to Labuan Bajo, don't eat the fish!

Indonesia lessons: How not to build a hotel

I try to avoid writing negative posts. I don't want to write and I don't think anyone wants to read an angry screed unless there is something funny or instructive about the situation.

I've been letting the dust settle from my Indonesia trip. It was so awful I couldn't write about it with any sort of detachment. But I think enough time has passed that I can find the humor in it. I'll start with my hotel room in Labuan Bajo.

I flew there to visit a travel buddy I met who is living and working there. She said she would reserve a room for me in a hotel owned by one of her colleagues, supposedly the best place on the island to view the sunset. Schweet.

I called Stevan from Bali to make sure the reservation was in order. He said he knew I was coming but didn't know what days. Uh oh. That was the first sign this trip wasn't going to go as planned. I had a few questions for him about how to make various arrangements on the island but he said we could talk about that when he picked me up at the airport.

He didn't pick me up at the airport.

I waited around with approximately 5,000 taxi drivers hanging over me. I tried to call him a couple times but he didn't answer. Finally I took a taxi to the hotel. The driver stopped at the entrance to a restaurant on the hill above town.

I thought, Great, I have to wait while he runs an errand or talks to someone or drinks a beer. The truth was worse. We were at the hotel. I've traveled enough to be able to recognize a hotel when I see one but I couldn't tell.

The driver indicated I should walk down a dirt path to a house on the hill. I thought I was staying in a hotel, not a guest house, but no matter. On my way to the house I walked past the "hotel" and didn't even know it. I asked for Stevan. There were two women there who didn't speak English. One of them ran off down the hill.

At this point, under normal circumstances, I would have gone back to the taxi and asked him to take me into town to another hotel. But since I couldn't do that since I was staying with a friend of a friend. It would have been incredibly rude.

A few minutes later a man came up the hill. He was friendly and spoke English. I think his name was Pepin. He walked me to my room.

There may be a hotel there at some point in the future but for now it's just a duplex with other duplexes under construction. The rooms are so horribly misconceived it's hard to imagine the place staying open long enough for construction to finish. This is it as seen from the dirt path.


Note the wooden furniture on the deck. Note the wooden furniture on the deck with no cushions.

I have always said that when I'm traveling alone in budget mode that all I need in a hotel is a bed and a shower. For once I got what I want! The room had a big bed, a tiny end table with a lamp that didn't work, a shower ... and that's it.


I took this picture standing in the doorway. The end table is just off camera in the top right corner. The shower is on the other side of the wall on the left. At least I had a big new bed to toss and turn in.

There are two lights mounted in the ceiling close to and parallel with the front windows. They use compact fluorescent bulbs, which is good. They use decorative bulbs, which is bad. The light barely made a dent in the dark. I read just about every night before bed. This was like reading by candlelight, except the candles were in the ceiling. Similarly, there's a light on the wall outside, but it's too weak to do anything except attract mosquitoes.

The view was as good as advertised. This is what I saw sitting on my bed.


The front wall of the room was all windows. Windows that don't open. In fact, the only way to get air in the room was by opening the front door. Oh, and through the bathroom ceiling.


For reasons I can't fathom the roof of the shower is open. (The giant Flintstones shower knob was a nice touch, though.) There are trees above the opening so the floor of the bathroom was littered with leaves. Even though the place is brand spanking new the shower drain is already clogged with leaves, so there was always nearly an inch of standing water. Before I took a shower I'd have to bail the water off the floor and into the toilet.


There was no hot water but part of the water supply line was in direct sunlight, so the water temperature would swing from cool to scalding hot and then back again without warning. Fun stuff.

I suppose it makes some sense to have an open-ceilinged shower, since the air needs to be vented somehow. It's not like anyone can look down into where I shower, right?

Wrong.


The purple tower is the shower vent. The footpath goes within two feet of it!

At the end of the footpath is the restaurant. Pepin told me there was a live band at the restaurant every Saturday night. He said this as though it were a good thing. Needless to say I didn't sleep Saturday night until after the band quit around 3 a.m. But in all fairness, I wouldn't have slept anyway.

The day I arrived I flopped on the bed to rest and wait for Stevan to call. I knew he would call soon to apologize for ditching me at the airport. He would, right? Of course he would.

He didn't.

He showed up about eight hours later, leading to this exchange.

A: "I was late to the airport."
B: "I know."

(awkward silence)

This is part where traditionally the person playing part A would say "Gosh, I am so, so sorry about that." That page was apparently missing in Stevan's script.

He said he'd heard I'd taken a taxi. He asked how much it cost. I said 50,000 rupiah (about five dollars). This is the part in the script where his character would say "That was my mistake so I'll just subtract it from the bill." Instead he said, "That's too much. You shouldn't pay more than 20,000."

Thanks for the timely information.

After I arrived and before this bizarre conversation took place I fell asleep and discovered the biggest problem with the unusual ventilation system. I awoke a few hours later drenched in sweat. The sun pounds through those floor-to-ceiling windows all day long. Because there's nowhere for the air to go the room gets so hot it's suffocating. At night the island gets pleasantly cool, but my room was still like the inside of the hot dog machine at 7-11. I didn't sleep a wink the entire weekend.

Labuan Bajo is a small town. Everyone knows Stevan. When I told people where I was staying they would always say, as if on cue, "Best place on the island to view the sunset." After two sleepless nights in the sweatbox, and after all the other frustrations I endured on the island (to be detailed in another post), I got a wee bit tired of hearing about how lucky I was.

After all, I was in a fishing village on an island. You can watch the sunset from virtually anywhere. I took this shot from a restaurant quite far away from my room, where I had perhaps the worst meal ever.


That's a pretty good view. I got to the point where I was ready to crack the next time said, "Wow, great sunsets up at Stevan's place."

I don't @#$%ing care about the @#$%ing sunset! I can @#$%ing watch the @#$%ing sunset from @#$%ing anywhere! What I @#$%ing want is some @#$%ing sleep!"

The third night I was so deliriously tired that I covered myself in bug spray and tried to sleep with the door open. But it was too little, too late, and I couldn't relax anyway knowing that I had basically just issued an invitation for someone to rob me. I think sleeping (or trying to sleep) in what was basically a giant microwave oven fried my brain and gave me all sorts of weird dreams.

I imagined how the news might report my death.

An American tourist was found dead in his hotel room today, having apparently cooked to death overnight in his bed. The doctor described his condition as "medium-well". Local residents said it was especially sad that he died last night, because he missed a really nice sunset today.

I wish I could have enjoyed the sunsets more.


I couldn't, though, because I was so miserable.

Even though Labuan Bajo is a major gateway for tourism in the area it is still just a small fishing town. At night there aren't many lights, so it gets quite dark. It's a great place for stargazing. At night all the fishing boats are on the water. Their lights on the water make it look as though the stars come all the way down from the sky and into the sea.

Hot for teaching

I finished my first week of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). So far, so good. I was, well, terrified isn't too strong a word to use how I felt the day before class started.

It could have been disastrous, 14 students from ages 18 to 56 from all over the world crammed into a tiny classroom in tropical heat. Luckily the air conditioning does a decent job and the students are all good people who take the class seriously.

The instructors are good for the most part. Andy is a British expat who has been teaching for years and loves it. With him you have to think before asking him a question because there's a good chance he will go off on a tangent for 20 minutes. Which is good. It's encouraging to see his enthusiasm.

Diem (pronounce yee-UHM, but as one syllable) speaks English with a pronounced Vietnamese accent but her grammar is absolutely perfect. She's a quite capable teacher.

Sa taught one lesson in "direct teaching". One of the primary philosophies behind the teaching methods we are learning is that only the target language is spoken in the classroom. If you have a class full of people who speak no English whatsoever you have to be able to teach them without using any Vietnamese.

To demonstrate the basic methods Sa taught us phrases in Thai without speaking any English (or Vietnamese). This was a particularly unnerving session, although it was encouraging to see that it can be done.

We've had two lessons in Vietnamese langauge, which I was looking forward to. Unfortunately these almost did more harm than good. The instructor, Mr. Vu, was atrocious. All you really need to know about Vu is that when students would make a mistake he would laugh.

I've spent several weeks in Vietnam and have tried to learn basic phrases and pronunciation rules. A few other students had also tried to learn some of the language on their own. We ended up coaching the other students. You know the teacher is bad when students are asking ME to help with their pronunciation!

The next day Andy asked us what we thought about Vu's methods. I was happy to learn everyone in the class was disappointed. Andy explained that Vu works for UNESCO, which happens to be the organization that the school rents the room from. So they're stuck with him. In the end, though, it was a good lesson in how not to teach a class.

Here are my classmates working on a project. You can see drawings we did for previous lessons taped to the walls.

I'm standing in the doorway to the classroom. The desks on the left are against the wall, which gives an idea of how cozy the room is. Behind me is the office.

These are the two camera shy course administrators, Nhi (left) and Nghiem (or Nina, on the right). We walk through the office to get to the classroom, which perhaps explains why the office is bigger!

This is the exercise we are working on.

This week we will observe one of our instructors teaching a lesson in a classroom. Later we will work in pairs to teach our first lesson in front of actual students. Yikes. My partner is Thu, the only Vietnamese student in my class. Yesss... She is confident in front of the class and has firm opinions on how to teach. I am more than willing to let her drive on my first trip in front of a class!

Bali

I recently spent a week in the world's fifth-most populous country, which is ....

Indonesia.

If you knew that you're a heck of a lot smarter than me. I'm a bit disappointed in myself. It's the sort of otherwise useless information usually found on the tip of my brain. There are over 200 million people in Indonesia, a nation comprised of nearly 18,000 islands, with as many as 500 languages and dialects spoken.

I've talked to travelers who have been there and loved it. They said because it's so geographically, ethnically and linguistically diverse it takes time and patience. Seeing the country properly requires lots of time on buses on bad roads and boats with erratic schedules.

I didn't have time, but I did have a great opportunity to visit a friend there on the island of Flores. More on that in a separate post. To get to Flores I had to fly through Bali, one of the most famous beach destinations in the world.

A travel buddy I met on the way from Cambodia to Vietnam months ago was in Bali. It turned out his last night there was my first. There are beaches all over the island, catering to every type of tourist. If you want peace and quiet, or to stay in a ritzy resort, Bali has a spot for you. Nick was staying in Kuta, the beach with a reputation of being a sleazy backpacker hangout. This, of course, I needed to see for myself, so I squeezed in a couple days there.

Indonesia is primarily Muslim. Bali is the only Hindu island. As such, and as a popular destination for western tourists, it has been the target of several terrorist attacks in the past few years.

There were offerings left everywhere, even on the beach.


These little flower arrangements were everywhere, but aside from that Kuta seemed about as Hindu as Salt Lake City. This shot was taken at a local storefront showing a common souvenir.

Yep, it's that kind of place.

I didn't meet Nick and his sister until nearly midnight. We had a bite to eat and a beer but soon the restaurant closed. At that time of night the only place to hang out are the clubs. They took me to one. As we walked in Nick laughed and said over the thumping music, "Look familiar?"

It was very much like a club called Apocalypse Now that we had gone to in Saigon. In fact, it was very much like a tourist nightclub in any Southeast Asian city. We talked and drank frou-frou drinks from fishbowls and watched the freak show. There were working girls, of course, and even more shirtless guys than usual. I was a knucklehead college kid once upon a time but I can't ever remember saying, "Let's go clubbing. Wait a minute while I take off my shirt." Do I sound like a grumpy old man? Okay, I'll shut up.

Nick and Courtney went straight from the club to the airport, from which they flew to Kuala Lumpur. I slept a few hours and hit the beach.

The beach itself was awesome. Long, wide and relatively free of people asking me for money. It was outrageously expensive to rent a sunbed, though. In Vietnam I could rent a sunbed for just over a buck for the day. I seem to remember it being about the same in Thailand. In Cambodia they haven't caught on yet and don't charge for sunbeds. At Kuta beach I had to pay TEN dollars, just for the bed. Crazy.

But it was worth it to hang out with Maya, who looked ravishing even after waking up from a nap on the beach.



I find surfers, by and large, to be a pretty insufferable lot. I should clarify: I have a problem with people who think they're surfers. They tend to be arrogant and dismissive of other tourists because "we" ruin "their" beach paradises. In Kuta there were motorbikes everywhere with side racks meant to hold surfboards. But no surfboards...

There were plenty of people in the water with surfboards. Most of them couldn't even stand up, let alone surf. And no wonder. Look at this raging surf!

I was talking to one of the guys who fleeced me for a sunbed. I asked him when the surfing was good. He said this was pretty normal. I couldn't believe it. It makes Ocean City look like Hawaii. He said people don't go to Kuta to surf, they go there to learn to surf. Other Bali beaches have better surfing. I don't know if it's true but it would explain a lot.

Hence my problem with "surfers". Real surfers don't hang out in places like Kuta. They go to where the waves are. The people who surf in Kuta are more concerned about impressing other tourists than actually surfing.

End of rant.

Kuta is framed by Poppies Lane 1 and Poppies Lane 2, two narrow lanes that run more or less parallel to each other and perpendicular to the beach. Both lanes are packed with budget hotels, restaurants, travel agents, etc. Nick suggested a hotel there which was one of the best deals I've come across. From the outside Masa Inn doesn't look like much.



But inside it's huge. It looks like Melrose Place. This is one of the two pools, with my room just on the other side. Pretty sweet for $22 per night.



Navigating the lanes is, well, terrifying. There's no sidewalk. The lanes are about as wide as duck tape. Motorcycles zip by in both directions because, amazingly, the lanes are open to two-way traffic even though in places they're too narrow for one-way traffic.

Back in blog

I've been traveling for the past few weeks in places where internet service is slow or non-existent. Today I took the bus from Phnom Penh to Saigon. Monday I start a four-week class that will certify me to teach English. Then I need to find a job.

The upshot of this is that I'll be stationary for awhile. I hope to get caught up on the blog this week. I have some good stories and pix from Cambodia. I have some pix from the week or so I spent in Indonesia, although the trip itself was a complete disaster.

So if anyone is still actually reading this, hang in there. Updates are on the way!

Schoolbus in the sky

I took a two-hour flight from Saigon to Hanoi on Jetstar, a budget airline that serves Southeast Asia. The seats are covered in vinyl and seemed to have been designed for hobbits. You get what you pay for.

But this time I got so much more.

I generally don't write posts about the process of getting from point A from point B because stories about traveling by train or bus or plane all tend to run together. This, however, was something else entirely.

As I was waiting in line for my boarding pass a group of at least people got in line behind me. And beside me. And in front of me. I've discovered the idea of waiting in an orderly queue is a western phenomenon which hasn't yet caught on in other parts of the world. (Russians are the worst queue jumpers I've seen.)

I don't mean to cast aspersions on Vietnamese people, or the poor, or country folk, or anyone. It's just that this particular group of people was rather ... coarse. I don't think any of them had ever been on a plane before.

We started boarding 40 minutes late with no explanation -- am I still in America? -- and that's when the fun started. We took a bus from the gate to the plane, where stairs led to the front and rear doors of the plane. Boarding passes indicate which door to use.

What happened next was not queue jumping. It was a riot. The entire group rushed the flight attendants at the stairs. I was one of the few passengers who had my boarding pass handy and one of fewer passengers who was at the right entrance. There was a constant push and pull of people leaving the mob at one set of stairs and forcing their way into the mob at the other.

Passengers were moving up and down the aisles and switching seats as the bewildered flight attendants attempted to maintain control. I was in an aisle seat and ended up sitting next to three different men before the plane even started moving.

(Fun fact: Movie theaters in Vietnam have assigned seats!)

My (final) neighbor in the middle seat spent most of the trip shouting to his acquaintances throughout the plane, often while standing on his seat. He stopped occasionally to hock impressively revolting loogies into his barf bag. I noticed he wasn't wearing shoes, which wasn't so strange, since I often remove my shoes when flying. Keep that little detail in mind, though.

Jetstar charges for beverages and snacks. Flight attendants started serving from carts at each of the plane. Passengers rushed the carts, shouting and waving their arms like traders on the New York Stock Exchange.

This went on for approximately 87 hours. Or so it seemed. It was only two hours but it was a looooonnnngggg two hours. I spent much of the trip with a various assortment of asses in my face and lap as the passengers crowded the aisle trying to get to the snack cart. It called to mind scenes of refugee camps, when crowds storm UN vehicles delivering food.

Finally, we landed. The touchdown was soft enough but you would have thought we'd crashed into the side of a mountain from the shrieking. After we landed the pilot gave the obligatory "Please stay in your seats until ... " spiel but it was too late. Virtually everyone on the plane had already gotten out of their seats.

My expectorating neighbor and the woman next to him literally crawled over my lap to get into the aisle. Which was already full of people. I slid over to the window seat and didn't get up until the plane was almost empty.

As I was leaving baggage claim I saw my buddy from the middle seat ... still with no shoes. He did the entire trip barefoot.

I've been in three airports in Vietnam. They are all strict about checking baggage claim stickers on the boarding pass against those on your luggage. You can't leave the airport without showing a boarding pass. This was not common knowledge...

I gathered most of my fellow passengers had lost them or thrown them away. From the back of the mob I waved my boarding pass at the woman checking the baggage claim tags. She waved me forward through the chaos. Free at last!

I've had my share of funny-crazy travel stories. I rode a chicken bus in Nicaragua with a bicycle in the aisle next to me, trying (unsuccessfully) to dodge the handlebars for two hours. I got off the bus looking women had been touching me with ten-foot poles. On a local bus in Nepal a man boarded the bus and, seeing no empty seats, sat in my lap. (At which point I graciously offered my seat and stood.) And so on.

But I have never seen or even heard of anything like this. It was like flying on the set of the Jerry Springer Show. Again, I must stress that I do not feel these people were typically Vietnamese, typically poor, typically anything. If I had seen this in a movie I would have thought it a tasteless and ignorant caricature of non-Western culture.

It was so over-the-top crazy that even at the time it was hilarious. Besides, uneventful flights make for boring blog posts.