Near the little-pizza shop previously mentioned there’s a Thai massage place.  Small.  Clean.  Looks nice.  I decided to give it a try today and popped in around 2:00 in the afternoon.  Sal did not accompany me.  She is not keen on being felt up at the best of times and Thai strangers are not the best of times for her.  Strangely, I find the whole idea kind of appealing.  Different strokes for different folks, eh?

Anyway, I was walking in as one of the ladies was walking out.  “You want massage?”

“Thinking about it. You open?”

“We open.  I booked. I call other.  She come quick, quick.  Five minutes?  OK?”

“Sure.  That’s fine.  You want I should come back another time?”

“No problem.  She come quick, quick.  Please come with me.”

I’m still a bit of a sexist pig even at 70 and some of the Thai women are so beautiful I have to ‘check ’em out’ even if I forget why.  I didn’t have my glasses with me but this one seemed a bit off but still dressed beautifully.  And she moved with that Geisha girl shuffle that I have tried to get Sally to adopt (no luck).  I liked watching her walk ahead of me.

Still, there was something off.  Her behind seemed a bit less than I expected.  A bit narrower, to be precise.  And her shoulders were just a smidge wide.  Still, her hair was lovely and, when she turned to hand me my massage outfit, I noticed how perfectly she was made up.  Eyes.  Teeth.  Smile.  Lips were large and juicily red.  Hands waving in the air.  Quite appealing……until….I saw that my hostess was missing the ‘ess’.  Her hands were big.  She was a he.  She was a lady-boy.

Still, he/she was pleasant enough and his English good enough so far.  I was not overly deterred by his larger hands and now noticeable five-o’clock shadow.  But, really, shouldn’t a Thai ladyboy be able to avoid a five o’clock shadow?  Especially at mid-afternoon? What kind of hairy Asian is this guy?

Anyway, I was directed to a small cubicle and handed a pink silk t-shirt that was skin tight on me.  And then I tried putting on the very generous-sized half-pants that came with two ties sewn at the front.  The idea was that I wrap the ties around the pants and roll the top over so as to form a belt.

But mine wouldn’t work.

I was standing in the cubicle puzzling out my pants when my ‘guy’ came back to check on me.  I was standing there with the two ties held out in front and wondering how they were supposed to wrap all the way around me and back to the front.

“No.  Backwards.  You backwards.”

I thought about turning around but he was quicker than me.  He reached over, grabbed the waistband and pulled my pants down.  To be fair, that has happened to me more than once but it was the first time by a lady-boy (the other was by a female pant-seller in a Chinese street market in Stanley wanting me to try on a pair of her personal favourite gweilo outdoor hiking pants.  Yes. She helped me get them on, too.  I bought them.  Had to.  By then we were getting kinda close).

So, naked from the waist down and dressed only in a silk t-shirt that was way too tight, I stepped daintily out of the fall-away, Thai massage trousers.  L-boy scooped them up, turned them around and held them open for my re-entry.  I complied.  He then wrapped his arms around me with his face buried in my stomach and secured the ties in front.  I was deemed ready and escorted out to await my ‘real’ massage-person.

I was gonna miss my l-boy.  I just knew it.   

Anyway, Juanita came.  Promptly.  My massage person was literally less than five minutes away.  I lay down and she drew the curtains.  Next to me was the properly scheduled farang that had booked lady-boy for 2:00 pm.  We were just a few feet apart separated only by a curtain.  Juanita started with my feet and, after awhile, I became putty in her strong hands.  She was pretty good.  I was getting a bit of a workout but it was all good.  Except…

….next curtain-door all hell was breaking loose.  The farang was groaning and ‘oofing’ and ohhhing’ and it sounded just a bit too close to torture for me to feel good about it.  I tend to be a bit stoic at such times and keep my groans to myself (if I can) but, to be fair, Juanita was barely 85 pounds.  And she was not in the least sadistic.

Lady-boy?  I dunno but I am guessing he/she had some issues to work out.  Jus sayin’.

Juanita was under five feet tall and she climbed over and around me like a monkey.  That was kinda fun (‘where will she end up next?‘).  If there was any pain, it was of short duration and most of the time it was just really relaxing.

But the bloody farang cried out horribly a few times. Yikes!

At one point, Juanita wanted me to turn over.  But I didn’t understand what she was saying.  Ladyboy shouted over, “Turn over.  Juanita wants you front!”

Then the farang gave more details.  “Turn over mate.  You are halfway done.  Now she does the front.  These women are small but they sure are strong, don’t you think?”

I was wondering if I should tell him that his particular therapist had an edge in the strength department?  But I kept it to myself.

At 3:00 pm I was done.  I paid and was ready to leave when I decided to ask to see Juanita’s hands.  They were the size of an 8 year old’s.  We kinda shook hands and hers were soft. Way softer than mine.  This little woman worked me over pretty good with what felt like hands-of-steel and looked like she could have done five more clients and yet, when not working, she and her hands were soft.  It was a pretty impressive trick.

Juanita and I have another date for Friday.  We’ll see how that goes.

As I said in a previous blog, we are living at a less-than-resort level but more than the local, native level.  And that’s OK.  I think the middle level is a bit steep but it is the standard to which old, spoiled, white folks feel most comfortable and so $30-$40.00 dinners were fine.  Two nights ago, I picked up two small, delicious, thin-crust pizzas for $20.00 and they were fantastic!  Brought ’em home on the back of the scooter.  All very good.  More than we needed.  Didn’t finish them.

And, as previously mentioned, we shopped at the local superstore so we can now take care of most of our meals in our ‘villa’ even including some dinners if we want to but, to be fair, spoiled as we are, we still like dinner out.  Dinner ‘out’ was going to be the norm.

And so……..last night we went looking for a renown, local, fusion restaurant buried deep within the maze of alley-ways known as ‘sois’.  It was supposed to be a half-hour drive. Despite Sal drawing a map (after we tried, unsuccessfully to download Google Maps on our borrowed phone), we got hopelessly lost and, as it was getting dark, stumbled instead on a local, night market. ‘What the hell . . . let’s stop and at least look’.

I parked amongst a jumble of scooters at the side of the market after wending through a moving swarm of them to get there.  It was like bumper cars without the bumping and the cars.  Actually, it was more like swimming against a school of large groupers.

Anyway, we walked into the approximately 100-stall, block-sized tarp-covered market that was teeming with vendors and locals.  It was local commerce, it was getting close to dinner time and it was in full swing.

The front stalls were pretty much dedicated to cooked food.  People were stopping to pick up a hunk o’ chicken, a small basket of deep-fried squid or fish, various ‘balls’ and skewers of stuff that were either ready-to-cook or were cooked.  Sometimes it was hard to tell.  A few stalls into the heart of it were the fruits and vegetables and some additional cooked curries and stews.  Of course, there was a stall of tools and another of electronics and even a few clothing racks.  It was colourful and some of the food even looked pretty good.  The smells were great.

We took photos but it was too dark under the tarps for them to turn out — this photo is not ours but it’s what ours SHOULD look like.

“Hey, guys!  You know what you’re doing?”

I saw a white, elderly couple and there was a 50/50 chance they could speak English.  The attractive, smiling South African woman was keen to tell us that they did, indeed, know what they were doing and they did it often.  They recommended the fish, with the spicy red chicken a close second, if one liked hot and spicy.  We exchanged a few pleasantries and went about our business eventually settling on chicken, fish, squid and blob-of-goo-in-a-plastic bag that the locals lined up for. No idea what it was.

When we got home, Sal made some rice, we nuked the food to heat it up and, with a glass of wine (boxed French from the Super) we settled down for dinner.  We ate just more than half what we had.  The ‘goo’ was hot, spicy and delicious.  Kind of a bean or asparagus salad with slices of something in a liquid-of-sorts.  “How much did we pay for the food?”  I added it up.  It was either 80 or 100 bhat.  Tb100 is $4.00.

“Sal, we just ‘ate local’ and it was delicious.  Plus we couldn’t finish it.  We did good.  I am guessing we ate $3.00 worth.  Call it $4.00 but we also picked up another pineapple.  Whatever.  THAT was cheap.  And tasty.  NOW we are in the local economy.  NOW we are immersed in the ‘real’ community.  NOW we are ‘feeling’ like we are learning the local ropes.  I was jostling with old, fat grandmas for my turn to get the bag of goo.  And they jostled back.  Smiling, of course.  And the lady selling charged me the same as the lady in front of me.  This was not ‘Farang’ pricing.  We were even being pitched by the stall owners to try their fare.  The tarp was so low, it rubbed the top of my head in places.  And we had the occasional ex-pat to give us a hand.  It was great fun.”

“Yeah.  Plus we got home alive again.  Hard to beat such a great time.”

We arrived our destination somewhere between Cha am and Hua hin late this afternoon.  Long, hot journey by hire-cab from Bangkok.

It’s a nice place, tho.  Lovely, actually.  Gated community predominantly occupied by Norwegians.  Kinda weird. The unit itself is a stand-alone ‘villa’ that is about 1500 sft, two bedrooms and two bathrooms.  All mod cons.  Very clean.  Quite new.  The real appeal is the quiet neighbourhood.  This little enclave of about 50 units (more than half seem empty) is set back from the second-main road and a few kms from the village centre.  Nice grounds.  Well maintained.  Bananas on the trees.  Strong sense of ‘privacy’ pervades probably because the residents are gay with Thai partners or not-gay with Thai partners.

Eric, the owner’s rep, greeted us.  He’s French (ex-military).  Go figure.  But he got us ‘oriented’.  ‘”Parlez moi lentement, s’il vous plait, perseque je suis Anglais”.  He and his Thai wife (Mod) arranged a scooter for us.  We are feeling better and having wheels will make me feel more manly.  Even scooter wheels.  It’s a man-thing.  No apologies for that.

The Thai-European partnership-thing is a common phenomenon here and in most other ‘tourist’ areas.  Eric left his French wife a few years ago for this one in Thailand.  Says he is happier.  Thai women are beautiful and presumably as pleasant at home as they are in public but I am not so sure love has much to do with it.  These relationships seem to have an element of ‘strategic mutual convenience’ to them. 

Could be me…..projecting….I dunno….the guidebooks say so, too.

Our community is gated. We have ‘guards’.  Eric says it is all unnecessary.  No one steals much unless something is brand new.  “Don ranta new hammit (helmet), zey will take it!  Gez zee old hammit.  No one likes zee old hammits!”     

So, I can see us now.  Two old geezers in old hammits tooling around Hua Hin having a great time.  C’mon…?  Picture that in your mind and try NOT to smile.  I’m smiling and I’m the old geezer!

Sal’s hammit turned out to be brand new and pink!  She thinks it suits her perfectly.   

Part two of first night:  got scooter (Honda 125).  Went out.  Like old geezers, we left at 5:00 pm NOT thinking about nightfall.  Got lost.  Drove around. Scared poor Sal half to death simply zooming and taking turns in a swarm of scooters going willy-nilly in every which way.  We got all the way to Nilly and decided to turn back.  We had gone looking for the local grocery store and just missed a few turns.  But, on the way back, we found it.

MAKRO is huge.  Bigger than the typical Superstore.  Massive section dedicated to live and frozen fish.  Nothing like shopping for live catfish swimming sluggishly on display.  Almost as large a fresh meat-lying-in-heaps-on-tables section, too.  Interesting.  Kind of a cross between a Costco (large portions), a Superstore (smidge unkempt) and a warehouse (dark sections in the back with larger quantities of various goods on pallets and wrapped in plastic).

Bought enough for breakfast and what we could carry and then we blasted back into the dark night NOT quite remembering where, in fact, we now lived.  But…what the hell….off we went….found another Norwegian gated community with a similar name….and then went further North to that twin’s community and got home safe and sound.

“So, Sal?  How are you doin’?  Scared?”

“Terrified.”

“Well, we got beer and cornflakes, coffee and a pineapple.  Ya wanna rustle up some pineapple for dinner?”

“Rather get back on the scooter and try and find a restaurant.”

Jumped back on the scooter and headed to the highway junction.  There on the corner was an open-air restaurant with a lot of old white people in it (Norwegians) and so we stopped there.  Dinner was cheap and good.  When it was time to go, it was easier to drive the wrong way back down the divided road than go a few miles to the u-turn to reverse direction.  Sal climbed on the back and closed her eyes tight as we wended our way back against the flow.  It was only a few hundred meters.  We made it.  Sal didn’t say a word the whole time (didn’t breathe or scream either).

Sal’s adjusting quicker than usual (probably the snappy new hammit). This is gonna work out just fine.

Epilogue: all the local ex-pats fall into one of two camps: “For God’s sake, don’t ride a scooter in Hua Hin.  Certain death.”  Or: “Yo! Dude.  Been driving here for seven years.  No problem.  Just be very careful and DO NOT DRIVE AT NIGHT!” 

Of course, we drove at night.  Had to.  But they do have a point.  We are going to limit the nocturnal missions.

Headed out today to ‘stock up’ and hit the super-Makro with a vengeance.  Bought $200 worth of stuff.  Should last our stay. Think: six brown paper grocery bags full plus bottled water.  Called a cab. Sal rode in the taxi and I followed on the scooter.  The guy had a lead foot.  I was hitting 100Kms on the highway and weaving around traffic (well, I weaved around a few cars and bikes but it felt like traffic).  Scooter and pulse maxed right out.   Clearly the taxi is the way to go.  Next time (if there is a need) we’ll send Sal in the cab and I’ll take the side alleys and meet up later rather than try to keep up on the Thaiway from Hell.

Is it good?  Yeah.  It’s good.  Kinda Asian-cum-Mexican standards….chickens and dogs everywhere, shanties and fancy hotels side by each, modern highways that lead to ditch filled dirt side roads…the whole, basic, standard third-world-thing but maybe a notch or two up.  Food’s good. People are nice.  No sense of danger except when two-up on a dinko scooter going hell-bent and surrounded by a gazillion others doing the same.  No guns.  No thugs.  No heavy police presence.  All very laid back.  Not expensive but NOT cheap either.  I just booked a round at the local golf and country club, for instance, $100.00.  Dinner out for the two of us is usually around $30.00. Some things in the store are way more expensive (wine) and others are way, way cheaper (meat, chicken, rice, veggies).  Ex-pats know the angles (or their partners do) and we are ‘living’ at a higher cost than they do but at a lesser cost than the resort dwellers.  My guess is that a savvy couple with good accommodation and a scooter could do very well on $2000 a month here.  Jus’ sayin’….  

Busy, chaotic, crowded, poor, dirty.  And hot.  NOT inviting, really.  Mind you, one’s curiosity is somewhat tempered by the enveloping, persistent and oppresive heat.  Literally.  Add to that the ravaging remnants of the flu-from-hell and the increased cost of everything and Bangkok has pretty much lost whatever semblance of appeal it ever had for us.

To be fair, it never held much.  Been there….

Gridlock in Bangkok

Discouraging?  Not in the least.  Travel is all about the good and the bad and it is often the bad that makes for more interest.  Mind you, you have to work a bit to find the silver linings at times.  “Geez, Sal, ya ever lamented your lot in life?  Ever felt sorry for yourself, felt hard-done-by, had the blues?” 

“Not really.  Sometimes when you are grouchy.”

“So, not often, then?”

We both laughed.

But the point was made.  It is pretty hard maintaining bruised feelings about one’s life when looking at what it must be like to be even middle-class in Bangkok.  This is a hard life. “If you let me take you to a tailor’s shop for five minutes, he gives me a chit for five liters of petrol.  I will reduce your cab-fare sir.  It is still worth it to me?”

“James, I don’t mind killing five or so minutes to help you out but I will be dishonest.  I am not buying a bespoke suit or silk pajamas.  Jus’ not gonna.”

“No problem, sir.  The tailor is from my village.  I get petrol whether you buy or not.  Makes us all happy.”

The only vehicles moving are the motorcycles and scooters

Five liters is the same price as five liters in Canada.  James lives on 30% of what we live on and we live at the low end of the Canadian cost of living standard.  Roughly $6.00-$7.00 of gasoline is what he gets for manipulating tourists into a tailor’s shop.  It makes his day profitable.

We were there for ten minutes.  I was tempted to buy a silk shirt…..

“If you buy the shirt, sir, I get five more liters.  If you go back, let me take you, please.”

“No problem, James.  If we go back, we go back with you.”

“Thank you sir.”

To my mind, that is a hard way to make less than $15.00.

And James is working all the angles.  He has to.  Two kids.  Wife working the street BBQ every day…after he has gone to the market to do the BBQ shopping for her. Then he drives cab for as long as he can stay awake.

Us? We rested in the afternoon and wondered where to have dinner. Our privileged status is not always so evident.  It is in Bangkok.

Unlike Sunshine Sal, I sometimes do get dark moods. I am not always a happy bunny, ya know?  Especially when I look at the Trump types…… more so when I then walk a few blocks in the poor-people’s shoes…..I can get into crazy-dark.  The privileged, eh?  Who the hell do they think they are  What dickheads!

But, honest-to-God, if I could fix their elitist views,  I would simply put that idiot-in-office in taxi Jame’s shoes for just one week.  Put those stinkin’ privileged feet in the shoes of even a well-off man (by Thai standards) and see how that plays out.  The president of the United States could not cut it.  Potus can’t do squat most places and he sure as hell couldn’t scratch a living in a place like this.  Trump couldn’t do what James does for even a week.  Even if he survived the week, he would not have made his rent and car payments.  The guy can’t cut it.  In every working man’s place on the planet, he would be fired.

Relevant to anything?  I don’t know.  Probably not…….but think about this….Sal and I got into the back of a cab and entrusted James to navigate the maelstrom that is Bangkok traffic.  I relaxed a minute into that mad-scramble, pell-mell, weaving-at-speed-through-the-cloying-night drive.  The guy was good.

But then, what is even more frightening, when I thought about it, we have our lives and our children’s lives in the soft, small incompetent hands of a monumental spoiled brat with early onset dementia and sufficient visions of self-importance to make King Canute blush (he was the king who commanded the sea NOT to rise).  We are entrusting our collective future to a pompous idiot, tool of the Russians.  We are relying on a guy who can barely wipe his own butt, can’t cook, can’t build, can’t read, reason, speak clearly or even think rationally. He can’t seem to even tell the truth. 

I swear: Trump couldn’t drive cab in Bangkok for a week or three miles – whichever comes first – without total disaster. And his wife would beat him on weekends. 

Bangkok and James made me think about that.  It’s a perspective-thing…..

….not really.  It was pretty good.  Saw friends.  Visited.  But the flu-from-hell had me by the throat and other organs for the first six days and Sal succumbed halfway through that.  We are only here 8 days.  So, you can see that HK was not much of an adventure this time.  There is, thankfully, a pharmacy in the building and so, with that and the restaurant, we didn’t travel far for a few days.  In fact, as I wrote this, I tallied up our ‘area walked’ and it was less than a square mile.  Kinda silly, really.

Speaking of silly…I asked Sal to include some photos on this post.  “Pictures of us sick?”

No.  Just some pics.  People seem to like ’em no matter what they are and we have some so why not just add some random photos?

“OK.  But that’s weird.”

So, interspersed with the random thoughts expressed in this entry are random photos.  The purpose?  To illustrate that we were NOT well during this time.  Couldn’t even get the photos right!

An unidentified flying object had pierced the outer pane of the aircraft window next to us

This is not the kind of thing to write about but, well, it is what happened and this is a travelogue….so…..?

New Year’s Eve celebrations seen from our hotel window the night we arrived

Some knowledge was gleaned.  The incredible energy that is the Chinese economy, the basic support-for-government expressed by even the democracy-oriented, the pace of modernity, the incredible cost of living, the incredibly restricted lifestyle……..

David and M. pose (ironically) in front of a giant mixmaster

Restricted lifestyle, however, is much more a function of geography and culture than much else.  These people live in a small, expensive, busy world but they can leave, they can travel and they can ‘have a life’ if they so choose (some have, and live in the States or Canada for that very reason).  But most stay.  Most stay living at home in one of the busiest, densest cities on earth mostly because of family and because there is a place for them here.  A comfortable-to-them place.

One of many stationery shops

Politically: the Chinese government is seen as an autocratic, omnipotent, despotic and authoritarian entity but, ‘so what, they do a good job!‘  The general take on that is that there is NO HEAVY HAND shown on a daily basis, the police state is virtually invisible, the economic system works and works well and it is very INCLUSIVE.  They have a few marginalized people, somewhere, but they are not very visible and HK, itself, is awash in wealth.  “So, what’s not to like?”

Dinner with (ex) students

The hospitality we receive is over-the-top.  We can’t even think to reciprocate at this level.  If I turn on my charm (very rarely experienced by anyone) to the highest setting and jump through hoops to be nice until my teeth hurt, I can’t be as nice and considerate as are these people to Sally and me.  They set the bar too high for being gracious, considerate and generous and it would be beyond me even if I had the inclination.  And I don’t.  I am a dog by comparison.  A pig-dog.  Or, as the Chinese might say, a barbarian.

A temporary canteen for street hawkers

It is not that I do not feel the same or even more affection for them as they do for us.  It is just that gweilo ways are so much less effusive by nature.  I think I am being a great host by giving people space, offering free access and use to anything I have and making sure they are well fed, safe and comfortable while near me. The more of ‘me’ I add (after a point), the less they actually get.  So, I limit ‘me’ to the length of time that I think they can tolerate.  When in doubt, shorten the exposure.

It’s all about gold in Hong Kong

For many of my friends (Doug, in particular), 15-minute bursts are about the limit.

Support for the Chinese Banyan trees on Nathan Road

The Chinese see hosting a guest differently.  Firstly, everyone always meets to eat and eat well.  And a lot.  And frequently. With attendant photographs.  Plus gifts are given til we are laden with tea, paper products trimmed with gold, pots, cups, and all manner of small-boxed items.

They must have run out of the good names for lingerie shops

Random stone lion

But the biggest gift they lavish on us is time.  These folks work ten to twelve hour days.  They commute, on average, one hour twice a day.  Some have started families.  They live with parents and extended families.  They do not have hobbies, activities or much in the way of entertainment except cell phones.  And yet they find time to visit us for three or so hours whenever our schedule is open!  They wouldn’t miss it!  Tea with an old guy who they can only half understand and who currently has the flu took five hours out of Dong’s day yesterday and he would have stayed longer if I had allowed it.

I wouldn’t visit with Cindy Crawford for that long.  Even if she could cook and brought wine!

Bottom line: Like most people I have met in life, throughout the world, we seem to have much in common, value the same things and are good to each other.  But cultures make that kind of common-ness show up differently and theirs is so much more generous of spirit and consideration than ours (or the one I am used to, anyway).  Theirs is an evolved, highly respectful culture that, once made a part of, is a wonderful and warm and welcoming experience.  Very kind.  Very nice.

…we are done.

The Chinese are not only taking over they have already done so………(I know, I know, ‘what does that mean’?)  I don’t actually KNOW what that means but the pace of progress in China is staggering. It is with numbers I have a hard time embracing. It is breathtaking.  For instance, there are more electric buses in Shenzen (an industrial town just east of Hong Kong) than there are buses in all of the bigger cities in the United States.  One city here has more electric buses than the larger cities in the  US have buses!

Greater Chongqing (a relatively unknown city in China if that is possible) has a population equal to California and Canada.  They had 31 million people in 2015 and are growing at a faster rate than is our own country.

Everything is modern.  Everything is connected.  Even the peasant stores in the country take the Chinese version of PayPal.

But, get this: my friend’s family owns a hotel.  It is a modest hotel by any standards but a good one.  Rated #74 in the city.  It sits on a site maybe 100 feet by 80, maybe a bit more.  Ten or so floors.  160 rooms.  The family is going to sell it.  They expect to get as much as $6Billion HK (Can$1Billion).  Maybe more.  A record sale was just transacted nearby: a 121 square foot apartment sold for $HK 1.9M (Can$330,000).  One hundred and twenty-one sft is considered a small bedroom or a parking space in Canada and it is being sold for 1/3 of a million Canadian dollars!

That is not the half of it.  That is just what I see and I have not seen much.  I was felled by the Cathay Pacific chicken, pig-dog flu and have been MIA for the past three days. But Hong Kong is crazy-busy and, according to my sources, it is no longer the ‘hub’ of the Chinese business world.  Beijing and Shanghai have usurped that title with cities like Shenzen and Chongquing doing most of the heavy lifting.

“How does that make us done?” 

They are making tons of money.  And they are buying us.  No invasion.  No military.  No force.  Just money.  You want a million dollars for a piece of crap on the eastside of Vancouver?  No problem!

“You worried about that, Dave?”

Not really.  Ascending empires take over. It’s what empires do.  China is ascending.  It is an empire.  It will take over.  At least ‘buying’ their way in results in less bloodshed.  Our culture will be assimilated in to the culture of the empire just as our culture was by the Americans.  Our economy will be China-driven.  Our thinking will gradually become more ‘Chinese’.  It seems inevitable but, to be fair, it will not happen in my lifetime.  But, make no mistake.  You are currently living in a ‘not-modern’ culture, not partcipiating in a ‘powerful, healthy’ economy and your Canadian future will soon be very different.

“Aren’t you being a bit dramatic?” 

Maybe.  But when you know what money can do and you can see how much money is so intensely at work here*, the message is pretty clear.  If they ever bring that ‘money system’ to our shores (and they are) then things will change considerably.  You can see a glimpse of that in the real estate market of Vancouver and, quite honestly, that is not how it will show up eventually.  What we are seeing now is simply some Chinese money ‘going to sleep’ (as they say) in Canada.  They can buy something safe like real estate and not care if they got a good deal, not care if they get a return, not care if the money accomplishes anything.  It is just there.  It has been ‘put to sleep’.  When they come with even more money some day and ‘wake it all up’, our lives will never be the same.

*https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/07/xi-jinping-eradicate-rural-poverty-china

M & E are good friends.  We met them through our ‘main guy’ here in HK but they and their family have been very supportive of us and even my kids when we are in HK and they have also been to visit us on the island.  It’s pretty much a stand-alone friendship, albeit infrequent as they live in HK and we do not.  Still, we have a lot in common and get together whenever we can.  And we did last night.  It was great.

When we first met, they had two kids under 12.  Today, those kids are 22 and 20.  One boy, one girl….one young man, one young woman.  They both attend university in California and have done so for a few years. M has a degree and K is two years into hers.  They were there with us at dinner (Mongolian hot pot -style) last night.  To some extent we reminisced but, of course, just as much time was spent in catching up and learning how their lives have gone. In many, many ways it was ordinary socializing, friendly couples having dinner.  All good.

Also fascinating.

It’s fascinating because we get to ‘live’ a few hours in their world and it is both familiar and alien at the same time.  They live in a very nice 700 sft condo in a good neighbourhood overlooking the harbour and have a spectacular view of the city.  Living with them is a full-time live-in servant who does the shopping, cooking and cleaning, etc.  He’s an engineer and travels to China a lot.  She’s the executive assistant to my main friend, D.  There were 7 of us in the home that evening.

They picked us up from the tube station (MTR) in their 15-year-old Toyota van that to my eye, looked brand new.  In effect, it was.  Only 70,000 kms.  Driven only on weekends and not every weekend at that.  Washed every day.  It sits in a parkade with dozens of high-end Porsches and Land Rovers all pristine and rarely moving.  All cars are washed every day by the car attendants.  It is a display of wealth barely noticed by anyone except the car washer.

When you leave the parkade you walk to the next building by way of a lovely outdoor garden concourse and enter the lobby with the attendant doorman and enter the elevator.  All very nice.  When you get to their floor, the lobby is small but it hosts only two front doors.  There are only two condos to a floor.  Add the two suites together and a little something for the mini lobby and each floor of the highrise is under 2000 square feet.  We were not at the top of the building but we were on the 27th floor.  Can you imagine the profile of the tower..?  It was tall and very thin.  If you had any doubts about the building you were in, you could look across the street to similar buildings and they were, as they say, impossibly thin as well.

Our friends spent a lot of time living in Ottawa and are thoroughly westernized.  But living in HK is also a strong influence so they are also very HK-ish and can surf back and forth in both cultures.  Their kids, however, are more western influenced and even have western humour. They are almost ‘Californian‘.  It is a lot of fun talking with them.

But one of the greater pleasures is the exchange of information.  We tell them our western lives, and they reciprocate.  We talk some politics and they tell us theirs.  Yes, of course, mutual disgust and distrust of Trump (that’s a given)….but, for the most part, it is just a different perspective on a lot of things.  China, for instance……

My engineer friend is very impressed with China’s progress in all things environmental.  He is still reluctant to eat Chinese grown produce and such but is pleased that every day sees improvements in that regard, too.  Basically Western and HK, E is very pro-China.  And, he even suspects that some of the recent foment in Hong Kong (their Occupy/Democracy protests) served the US and may have been CIA supported.  Interesting. 

One thing is for sure…..he and his son, being in engineering and AI (artificial intelligence), they see the AI future as HUGE.  He is predicting rapid development in AI and such (smart homes and self-driving cars and lots of robotics).  The view from Hong Kong is a healthy and growing BIG CHINESE BROTHER.  He even thinks the Chinese manufacturing sector has yet to really take off!!

When I wrote my first blog on HK a few days ago, I was going on memory and opined that it was a Matrix, a hive of a city and, like most things I write, full of hyperbole and colourful speech.  Turns out it was an understatement.  It is even MORE built up and even faster paced than it was.  HK is an astonishing going-concern but, by my friend’s perspective, still being ‘left behind’ by Shanghai, Beijing and some of the other top cities in China. Hong Kong is my ‘standard’ by which I judge all busy cities and it has slipped in the standings according to E.  Unbelievable!

Bottom line: when I first went traveling in the sixties and seventies, Canada and the US were the ‘first world’.  Then, after a few decades, we pretended that some others had ‘caught up’ with us (Europe and Japan).  But it no longer feels that way.  It feels as if we are trailing and trailing badly.  And, please understand, I am NOT saying that our life is bad nor that I want any part of this new one emerging but it does seem as if the egg has hatched and major Phoenix is rising.  We are no longer number one.  And it is a different species emerging………jus’ sayin’….

On the other hand, it was only a dinner with two friends.  Maybe I am just easily influenced…..?

It’s our anniversary today.   We’ve been together for 47 years but the official paperwork was done sometime later on the 30^th of December of some yesteryear.  So, we use that date for observation purposes.

After the knot was tied at our now-legendary masquerade wedding, we left for our ‘honeymoon’ in China with a couple of weeks in Hong Kong and stops in Japan and Hawaii.  It was an adventure.  A good time was had by all.

In fact, our son was conceived on that trip in January in Guangzhou, China, no less!

I’m telling you all this because it’s kinda like déjà vu all over again.  We’re off today to re-visit Hong Kong.  Re-re-visit actually.  Then to Thailand.  Maybe a stop in China.  Like most travelers, we ‘booked’ some things in advance but, like most backpackers, we left some weeks for ‘winging it’.  February is ‘wing-it’ month.  We have no idea where or what we will be doing most of February.  Our philosophy: have scooter, will travel. 

This may be the last time such a cavalier attitude is expressed.  I confess that the travel bug has waned for me somewhat.  I still like being somewhere else (in winter) but I hate the getting there and, to be honest, I don’t like it as much as I once did.  Still good.  NOT great. I kinda like a bit more comfort than the hostel, ya know?

Been-there-done-that is not really the issue, however.  Most places I have been before are not recognizable twenty years later anyway and so, in fact, I have NOT been there even if I had been there.  Things change.  Weird.

Hong Kong is one of the best examples of that.  In the early 80’s Hong Kong was the proverbial ancient culture in the run-down, crowded, Chinese atmosphere of street stalls and rickety streetcars sharing tight lanes and pathways with rickshaws and bicycles.  The last time we were there (ten years ago) Ferraris and Porsches had displaced the rickshaws, the floating city of Aberdeen was virtually no more and every building had multiple siblings looming three times higher.  The streets were still crazy-crowded but there was no visible poverty, no beggars, no sitting-on-the-sidewalk markets.  People traveled quickly and efficiently.  It was clean.  It was busy.  Hong Kong was more ‘electric’ than New York.  It was impressive.

In a scary kind of way…………..

Hong Kong was more like a hive than a city, a massive, efficient system where everyone had a place and a place to be.  To ‘be’ in Hong Kong is to work.  And eat.  That’s it.  Mostly.  Of course, people are people everywhere and fun, interests and entertainment are plentiful but the ratio of work, shopping and eating is double what BC’ers is.  Ten times what Sal’s and mine is.  Hong Kongers don’t have much free time as a rule.  They don’t have much in the way of nature, either.

My point?  Things change.  Hong Kong has changed.  I have changed.  Even Sal has changed.  But, it seems to me that Sal and I have gotten slower, more in-the-present and much more nature oriented.  HK’ers have gone the other way; they are busier, more urban, focused, harder working.  They keep up.  We are much the same, old, kinda OTG.  Hong Kong is changing all the time.  It is uber urban, uber modern.  It is the grid exemplified.  I wonder if Hong Kong is the future for mankind or will nature, space, ecology and our OTG lifestyle make a comeback…?

We live in interesting times.

Getting in the winter’s firewood……It’s hardly a chore.  Not really.  Sal enjoys fetching and rounding up logs and my part in the wood-gathering process is, if not as much fun, still pretty simple.  Sal rounds them up.  I buck ’em up.  Sal hitches ’em up and then I haul ’em up with the winch.  No biggy….. (of course, the winch packs up, the engines won’t start, the logs sometimes get away, it might be stormy or even snowing and the ground is as steep as base camp at Everest……and then there’s the bleeding….).

Mind you, that is just half the story.  After the logs sit for a few months, we buck ’em up smaller and split ’em and stack ’em but phase two is done in the Spring.  The weather is warmer.  There’s dragging and carrying and clunky old machinery involved like winches and such but, basically, it is no big deal.

After sitting on our respective butts for the last few weeks as our gimpy knees and the weather dictated our activities, we were somewhat less than nimble getting into the chore this year.    And that means less than enthusiastic, too. OK, I admit it, we were a smidge reluctant.  I suspect that this recent limitation is a portent of things to come and so we are starting to talk again of WOOFers.  If not this year, probably next.  If not then, then soon.  No doubt at all…we’ll be needing a bit of help from now on….or within the next few years, anyway.  My goal: no help (except Sal) until I am 75 (even then, I hope to limit it to just firewood wood-getting).

Will we then need a lot of help?  I don’t think so.  We have a system.  We have tools.  We even have the necessary skills and ‘ways’ of doing things, too. It will not be a problem.  But it will all become more of a challenge as the years go by. In some areas, anyway. That’s the way aging works.

OTG Christmas bows

In the meantime, it is still fun to get out and start the chore, ‘get ‘er done’ and then sit back and admire your work over a glass of wine at the end of the day.  I confess that I always have an end of the day, Sal sometimes misses it.  She’s busier than me.  My last chore, as a rule, is pouring the wine.  Sometimes I cook.  Often I do the dishes.  But, mentally and spiritually, I am done by dinner.  Sal’s second shift often kicks in after dinner.  She is always up to something.  A woman’s work, eh?

Mind you, it’s mostly just quilting but quilting has to get done, it seems.  Sal’s day?  Log wrangling-at-sea, setting chokes, hauling logs (wine and dinner) and then quilting up a storm.

Today is a bit different.  Today is Book Club.  Our local off-the-grid book club.  No log hauling today.  We start that up again tomorrow.  Today the women come, the noise level goes off the charts, wine flows and the food spills over.  I am usually banished to somewhere miserable but today, we (book club) are discussing Sally and my last book…  CHOOSING Off the Grid.  I am the guest author.  If I am smart (that is not something we can count on), I will say a few polite words, compliment my wife and then shut the hell up.  They will (knowing them) direct a question or two to me (to be polite).  I’ll answer the first two and then I’ll defer other questions to Sal.  Everyone will be happy with that.  They like Sal more than me (who doesn’t?).  And I’ll beat a well-received retreat.

The reality is that CHOOSING is NOT a great book but it’s OK.  It’s OK for most urban readers.  The problem is that the book is written for everyone EXCEPT these women.  These women already KNOW the inside and out of living off the grid.  Most of them could have written the book and made it much better.  They really will NOT have many real questions that they do not already have the answers for.  It will be a mercifully short ‘book-reading’ especially since I do not intend to read a single word.

If I am stupid, I will still be talking after fifteen minutes.  Pray for me. 

Side note: the common hostess/house-warming gift is literal out here.  K&D sent their annual yuletide kindling bundle.  I have an armload of split cedar sitting at my feet!  

Almost too perfect to burn

In our first book, OUR LIFE OFF THE GRID, I didn’t wander too far into the spiritual, zen, supernatural aspect of living this way.  I concentrated more on the mistakes I made and, if there was any magic in the telling, it was simply that I was still alive and able to write about it when we finished.  I did tend to slag urban life (and continue to do so) but I and my readers make allowances for that, I think, much as they make allowances for the proselytizing of vegans, AA members and reformed smokers.  We’ve been burnt so we preach.  They think we are kind of like ‘zealots’ in some way.  Born again.  A smidge pathetic.

I understand completely.

I did mention it all (the magic) once. First book. Last chapter. “It’s impossible to ignore the present when you are in the woods. Now is big out here.  It embraces you.  Living even partly feral requires an intimate and immediate awareness of your environment.  The present moment is often so enchanting, so totally occupying, you are ravished by it.  It is a momentous love affair with life.” 

I got a bit carried away…

…..but, as it turned out, I was onto something.  It seems the Scandinavians, more accurately, the Norse (the idea comes from older times), not only knew that there was something magic about being in the woods, they gave it a name.  Friluftsliv means, literally, free air life.

But, in the broader context, the meaning is more about feeling alive and part of something natural and magic. It’s about belonging to the natural world.  It adds an element of profound awe and appreciation to the mix.  Frilftsliv means feeling connected to the earth, to nature and feeling all that at a deep and personal level.  They also believe that such deep feelings open the mind and the soul to even greater depths of knowledge. It’s about being. They think we need this.  They think we need this all the time.  In that sense, they are like Thoreau – or, more accurately, he like them.

But the Scandinavians don’t just talk and write about it, it seems they also do.  And they do in a big way.  Thus we hear of these guys mushing dogs in the dead of winter, having campfires and such in remote places.  Basically, the Scandinavians get out there.  A lot.  Getting out to the forest – as part of your everyday life – is a large part of their lifestyle.

So, what am I saying?  I dunno…..I felt that magic.  I still feel that magic.  Living out here has a quality, an aspect, a je ne sais quoi that I tried to describe in the book passage above.  The reality is, it is one of those things you really have to experience for yourself to fully understand and, more to the point, I do not think it comes right away.  Camping for two weeks out of the ol’ Winnebago won’t do it.

I do not know WHAT it takes, actually.  But, in my experience, it took me a year to ‘get it’.  ‘Course, I was pretty busy during that time and so maybe it took me longer.  I find myself telling would-be OTG’ers that it takes living out here for ‘at least six months’ but I am just guessing.  I do not know.

My friend and distant neighbour, RW, read that last chapter and exclaimed, “You get it!”  He’s been here for over thirty years and spent most of his life mountaineering.  He definitely gets it.

So, why write about it?  Friluftsliv is something I had never heard of until today.  Never even heard of the concept as it is so clearly described in Norse literature.  I read Thoreau but, until I felt it for myself, it was just words.

And, worse, we in the modern world have lost the right words.  We talk of ‘Supernatural BC’, ‘Mother Nature’, the magic of the forest and so on but we can’t really convey a non-word idea that way.  This is one that is 95% experiential.  I wish I could describe it adequately for you.  I know I cannot.

So, I will leave this blog entry at this: some cultures know it (Friluftsliv) and have incorporated it into their lifestyle and society.  I do not think we, in the modern western world, have.  Some others may have done so and have managed to even write about it but those lessons are in a foreign language at the very least.  I do not read about this in my English readings so far.  Thoreau, only touches on it.  And those other-culture stories, too, may fall short without the actual experience to accompany it.  But it is something.  It is a very real something.  It is a very real, very necessary and very healing something that we lose or miss at our personal and collective peril.

So go hug a tree or save a whale or something, why don’t you…?  Take as long as you can.  The life and culture you save…….