Ice, Ice, Baby (12/24/2005)

Hi Everyone.

Eight p.m. and the sun still hangs, seemingly immobile, above the Tasman Sea, not wanting to leave lush New Zealand for another go-around at blank Australia. We still have enough sunlight to get in 6 or so innings of baseball, if the Kiwis did that type of thing. I'm sitting here in shorts and a t-shirt, occasionally re-touching the much-needed sunscreen. And yes, it's Christmas Eve.

We are spending tonight and tomorrow in Franz Josef, a town at the base of the gigantic glacier of the same name. "One-horse" might be a bit generous for this place -- it makes Middlebury, Vermont, look like Manhattan. Nonetheless, its proximity to two massive ice rivers, their descendant kettle lakes, and even the shore make it a tourist haven (ok, trap) that has left us with some holiday comraderie and stuff to do while the natives celebrate with their families. The throngs of foreigners make it sort of like Christmas at the UN. With mountains.

Before me are palm trees and behind me are snow-capped peaks. To get an idea of the backdrop, pop in the lighting of the beacons scene in "The Return of the King," which was shot atop the range hovering over this town. Sadly, the view from here isn't as magnificent (they were shot from a helicopter), but the peaks are the same. The film speaks for itself, though, in justifying the place's strikingness.

NZ's ecological and geological diversity enthralls me. Three days ago, we were tramping through Abel Tasman National Park, looking down at white-sand beaches and a tranquil - hell, pacific - ocean. A few Miles from there, we passed through wine country and a few of NZ's award-winning whites (eh...). Shortly after that, we cut through some lucious, and yes, misty mountains before landing on the whitecaps of the Tasman. Then, from seemingly nowhere arose the most bizarre shoreline we've ever seen -- the "pancake rocks" (Google that), whose layers, caves, and crevices make the incoming ocean dance every time it hits them. Today, we crossed rivers and lakes that were periwinkle blue, royal blue, and battleship gray. And no, none of the above is hyperbole.

If our luck holds, the next few days will take us through glaciers, plains, fiords, and mountains. All this tucked in one corner of a (comparatively) small island. Ah, New Zealand.

All right, folks. Merry Christmas to all. And because I can say it down here, happy Boxing Day as well.

Matt

All's Well that Ends in Wellington (12/18/2005)

Hi Folks:

The South Pacific shimmered as we descended beside it, meandering between the sea and the Tararua Range, the hills (OK, low mountains) that taper off slightly enough to allow a city to punctuate them. Wellington, our location until Thursday, is the world's southernmost capital city, and damn it if it isn't one of the quaintest and coziest too.

The last few days have been filled with a lot of driving and exploring -- to and from the subtropical Bay of Islands up north, to Rotorua and its thermal pools and (true and fabricated) Maori culture, through Tongariro National Park and the shooting locals for Emyn Muil and Mordor, via Palmerston North and the NZ Rugby Museum, all culminating in Windy Wellington. Whew. All the driving took place amid luscious green meadows (think Ireland) and small towns (think Vermont) -- the latter of which the locals deem "townships". (Note to self: don't talk about them at an All Blacks-Springboks game.)

On the way, we have run the gamit on Kiwidom - participated in (I mean that literally), a Maori "hangi;" dipped into natural thermal pools; seen geysers blow off their steam, schmoozed with quirky natives, emigres, and tourists; and visited sites of natural (volcanoes), political (Parliament), and cultural ("Lord of the Rings") importance. You wear them well, NZ.

If Boston is a city on a hill, DC a city with a Hill, Auckland a city of hills, then Wellington is a city surrounded by hills - a green belt hugging the town and keep its coziness from sprawling -- one can traverse the whole thing in about 20 minutes. The pedestrian zone that bisects the centre is a nice touch, remiscent of a mid-sized European ville. Whereas my last email likened Auckland to NZ's amulet, Wellingtonians might refer to it as a choke chain -- though such nomenclature might exaggerate a bit, the capital's only visible fault thus far divides tectonic plates. Not too shabby.

One last thing: if "King Kong" opened to fanfare in LA, then Wellington saw said fanfare and raised it to "1812 Overture" proportions. Ads are atop every lamppost, proudly spouting "King Kong: 14 December 2005. Wellington." So tonight, it's off to the Embassy Theater - where Kong made his Australasian premeire five days ago - to see him on the largest screen in the Southern Hemisphere.

Take that, Montevideo.

Auckland: A's (12/14/2005)

Hi All.

My uneducated inklings tell me that Auckland is the world's only major city to watch the sun rise and set over the same ocean. Sitting between two harbors like an amulet on New Zealand's neck, the archapelago's largest city is a hint of London, a dash of San Francisco, dabbled with tiny touches of Hamburg sans St. Pauli.

Its title, "The World's Largest Polynesian City," is misleading - perhaps concocted by desperate marketers (though I doubt it). By world standards it is neither large (only 1 million people), nor particularly Polynesian (major whitey mojo). The main drag is very similar to Washington Street in Boston, and the suburbs crawl out in rows where the bays let them. Then again, the Polynesians are far from the urban folk, and a million-plus city on any of their islands undoubtedly incites wowery. And as home to a quarter of NZ's population, it's hard to ignore or deny.

Undeniable, though, are its volcanic origins, as grassy peaks and craters jut throughout the town's complexion (picture a city with a major bout of green acne.) While wondering if -- or when -- a fault line will ever devour the city whole, one can't help but applaud the Kiwis' use of the Mantle vomit. Curbstones, walkways, and breakwaters are all black basalta, desendant from the magma that birthed the landscape. The volcanoes, though, bequeathed the Kiwis massive hills, and bequeathed Chuck and me massive thighs.

Perhaps Auckland's best title, though, is plastered at you when you cross through customs: "The Gateway to New Zealand." (This, incidentally, easily beats Indonesia's "Death to Drug Traffickers" welcome.) In this sense, the town served its purpose admirably, affording us a chance to sleep for the first time in 3 days, dabble in a bit of Kiwi English, and develop legs that could roundhouse kick the entire ANZAC army clear across Belgium.

But tomorrow, the trek begins.

Matt

Khan you dig it? (10/5/2005)

Hi Everyone.

Genghis Khan wouldn’t wax poetic about Ulaanbaatar. The last (business) stop on this trip has brought us to the Mongolian capital – a city nestled in the middle of the subsiberian plain, a steppe both into deep history and an uncertain future.

Contrary to belief or biology, Genghis lives. The Mongols idolize him, and like a Byzantine icon, his image watched over several of the offices we visited. As one of history’s few figures who could walk into a bar and indisputably proclaim himself THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD, he built the largest land empire ever, brought the Black Plague to Europe, and even overtook history’s greatest restraining order to the south. Recently, scientists ran genetic tests on men from Beijing to the Caspian – 16 million of whom revealed a Y-chromosome linking them to a common 13th century ancestor. THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD was clearly a seduction artist in his spare time.

The city itself … eh. Its location is virtually accidental – the 17th settlement of a nomadic population that just happened to be here when the communists smacked them around and told them to stay put. As a result, little is particularly historical. Soviet highrises surround downtown, a grid of wide lanes, 4x4s, and packed trolleybuses. From my hotel window I have a view of the rooftops, punctuated by factories that spew less than pleasant inhabitants of the periodic table into an azure sky. The omnipresent haze is particularly disturbing, given the otherwise stunning vistas onto the hills.

Mongolia is a nation of nomads, and any foray here wouldn’t be complete without a countryside jaunt – thus the aforementioned 4x4s aren’t for convenience or compensation. Of Mongolia’s claimed 49,250 kilometers of highway, 1724 of them are paved – the rest is rolling grassland, trampled by shepherds, horsemen, and herders and dotted by gers (“gerrrrrrrrthy”) – felt-covered tents that Mongolian nomads carry, pitch, and live in wherever they feel fit. Communism, capitalism, feudalism … time decelerates here more pronouncedly than anywhere I’ve seen.

Sandwiched between a fading and emerging superpower, Mongolia finds itself at a unique crossroads. Aligning with neither, the country has to crawl back from socialism without much outside help. While capitalists have flooded Moscow, St. Petersburg, Prague, and Warsaw, and Vilnius, Mongolia still remains without a McDonald’s or western hotel 15 years after demarxification. There are relatively few English billboards, but the UN did make sure to put one on the main square, reading “Sex with children is a punishable crime.” Thank God they cleared that up.

One more stop, one more blog. Be well.
Matt

Cup o' Java! (9/29/2005)

Hi Everyone:

Spiking above and below the equator like a heart monitor, Indonesia possesses more superlatives than you'd expect. Its 17,000 islands make up the world's largest archipelago, and its 241 million-strong population makes it the world's largest Muslim country. Some anthropologists maintain that half the planet's languages are confined to Papua, its Eastern fronteir. When the volcano Krakatau blew its top in 1883, 125 foot tsunamis pelted Java and Sumatra, and wave effects were said to have been felt in the English Channel: In fact, its eruption was so violent that the police chief of Rodriguez island reported "heavy guns from eastward" (Rodriguez is off Madagascar). For centuries, the West lusted after the "Spice Islands" -- their stock of cloves and nutmeg tickling tastebuds from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam.

Jakarta is the central nervous system of the former Dutch East Indies, a city of 10 million perched in the northwest of the island of Java. The city assaults the senses -- while not aesthetcially pleasing a la the grand European capitals or as overflowingly pulsating as old Manila, riding its streets is befuddling and captivating. The sheer volume of cars is mind-boggling, and the fact that none have striations along their sides even more so. With seemingly no traffic laws and the lane markers mere suggestions, one would conclude that Jakartan traffic would be gridlocked amid a cacophany of honking horns and the Indonesian equivalent of middle fingers.

But it works. Traffic is as dense as any US megalopolis, but it flows. In my four days of trekking around the city, from office to office on and off the Jakartan K Street, we have sat in traffic for several hours -- but the traffic is always moving. Drivers consistently weave in and out, ignoring the lanes and honoring the de facto right of way of the millions of motorbikes that cut in and out. But it works. And I'm at a loss to explain it.

The most apt description of Jakarta will fall easiest on the ears of the Sim City generation -- if you've ever played it (and have had the second best city of all time, next to my Paris), you can picture Jakarta. There is no true downtown -- skyscrapers and residential shanties practically interspliced, wide boulevards parallel to one-lane roads. My hotel, on the southern edge of downtown, sits behind a grassy knoll, across the street from a mega-mall, behind which is a street of pushcarts and shacks. Small shops and kiosks dot the most major and minor streets, each merchant setting up shop where he or she pleases -- the malls are plentiful and affluent, but there is hardly a 5th Avenue or Champs Elysees. (They even sell coats. The country is on the Equator -- who the hell buys a coat?) There is no true Embassy row, since all are spread out over town, each planting its flag wherever it can find land. Next door to our hotel there is a large building housing the embassies of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and ... Peru.

Jakarta, and even Java for that matter, hardly epitomize Indonesia. With about half of its population crammed onto an island the size of Great Britain, the land is literally bursting -- of course, though, this means that the rest of the islands are filled with wide open rice fields, untouched jungles, white-sand beaches, and cultures you only read about in obscure PhD theses. Lest you try to exploit it, though, the Indonesian Customs authority puts you in place with the first sign you see when you enter customs: "Welcome to Jakarta. Death Penalty for Drug Traffickers." Nice to meet you too.

Off to Mongolia tomorrow, where Saturday's forecast is for snow.

Ciao,
Matt

Enveloped by Manila (9/23/2005)

Hi Everyone:

If Kevin Smith needed an embodiment of the "Catholicism Wow!" campaign, he needn't look further than the Philippines. The place is positively bonkers with religion -- indeed, until the UN granted East Timor its sovereignty, the Philippines wore the badge of Asia's only Catholic country, and it hasn't relinquished the torch despite a new compatriot. Signs for Jesus, the saints, and the Virgin of Guadalupe are everywhere -- today on the side of the street I literally saw two huge paintings of Jesus, Mary, followed almost immediately by an advertisement for Desperate Housewives.

Another peculiarity -- and potential PR nightmare -- is Manila's "Campaign for true beauty," a billboard movement that displays people who are attractive but don't conform to Hollywood's traditional, emaciated beauty standards. A noble cause, yes, but the billboards keep active track of the "yes" or "no" votes that people send in as to whether the billboard's subject is attractive -- thus the subject can see when an overwhelming majority vote "no."

I'm in Manila until tomorrow, showing an agricultural advisor around town and introducing himself to Chemonics projects and their beneficiaries. I've learned far more than I thought I would about agriculture and microlending, despite the fact that he repeats a substantial portion of his schtick at every meeting. Today we took a trek to a town about 2 hours south of the city to visit a rural bank -- after an introduction with the president, we ventured out to a group of women who told us of their successes drawing on microloans to start businesses. They spoke excitedly about how the loans helped them expand their mini-enterprises, enabling them to put their kids through school -- ah yes, development. After the session, the group of middle-aged women asked the advisor questions like "What ideas do you plan to bring back to Afghanistan?" -- I fielded important technical inquiries such as "How old are you?" and "Are you married?"

Manila is a sprawling city, parts of which are remnant of LA, others of Havana. The old Spanish quarter, "Intramuros," was mostly obliterated during the war, but its remnants truly inspire a glass of sangria. The LA-ness is that everything is far from everything else, the only way to get from place to place is to sit on one of the choked highways or back streets.

Those comparisons aside, though, Manila is distinctly Asian -- the streets contain so much action that people are constantly spilling out into them, and you can basically take your pick of what kiosk, shop, or restaurant you'd like to venture into and spill out from. Add to that, each street is dotted with jeepneys, wildly painted ex-US army trucks that are now the Filipinos' most popular mode of public transport. In addition to serving a purpose, the ominpresent jeepneys breathe distinct color onto a dirty, packed street -- perhaps more than anything else, they personify a city beating with a vibrant heart and energy which is impossible to quantify, let alone contain.

That's all, folks. Hope you're well.

Matt

Back from the USSR (11/20/2004)

Another travelogue from yours truly.

Flying east over the Caspian, British travel essayist Colin Thubron wrote something vaguely resembling: "If the world is disorganized and chaotic, it's only fitting that its center, its heart, would be a disorganized chaos." Amen, brutha.

Central Asia is a mix of mixes -- jigsaw boundaries arbitrarily drawn by Party leaders, national languages either ruthlessly enforced or methodically ignored, governments that have moved on from the Soviet system in name only (under the "democracy is spreading like a sunrise" list), and roads that make Russia's highways look and feel like smooth (Christie, Julie, and Tiff: I know you're recoiling right now.)

A disclaimer. Despite my colleague Mike's wishes, I wasn't exactly trekking through the backcountry and staying with horse farmers in yurts. I was in Almaty, Kazakhstan and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to oversee two conferences for work, so my knowledge of both cities consists of car trips (mostly at night), group excursions to restaurants, or small breaks when I wandered a few blocks outside our five-star Western hotels and took a glimpse of each city. That said, here are a few observations.

- Flying to a 'Stan makes you re-evaluate life several times over. I'm not talking about the whole "rich nation/poor nation" dilemma. Oh no, sitting on planes and lounges for 24 hours makes you seriously re-evaluate life. If you can survive this, you might just be ready for central Asia.

- Which brings me, of course, to Kazakh customs. Oh doctor. Just when you think "I'm on government business, what can go wrong," you get stopped by border guards wondering why you're carrying 150 burned CDs (with conference materials - but try explaning this) into their country. They said I couldn't bring in more than 10, I said fine, take them, to which they said "No, we're going to make you pay a customs tariff - how much money do you have on you?". At this point, I am worried. I'm carrying over $6K in cash for various conference expenses and make a mental note that it's interesting that customs tariffs are determined by how much cash you're carrying. Luckily, it was all resolved when my chauffeur came in and explained that I'm neither a UN spy nor a CD smuggler (that'd be funny: "yes, I flew 24 hours to sell ripped CDs for $1 each on your black market. Muhahahahaha.") All told, I arrived at the hotel with materials and finances intact. Whew.

- Almaty and Bishkek have two of the most picturesque locations in the world. Both are located at the base of the Tien Shan Mountains (or maybe the Altau mountains. I haven't quite figured it out, since maps tend to claim them as both), mighty alpine peaks which literally hover straight over the cities. That said, leave it to the Soviets to take what could be their Aspen and Vail and turn them into industrial wastelands -- in Almaty, the haze is so thick, that the mountains are either barely or not at all visible by noon. In Bishkek, it's not as bad - maybe because the city is smaller, or maybe because I hit it on a better day.

- That said, once you leave the cities, the view becomes absoultely stunning. The best way to describe it is the Rohan landscape in "Lord of the Rings" - brownish, grassy plains in front of snowy mountains. Barring the occasional smokestack spewing sulfurous venom into the air, the two locations literally look exactly the same. Fitting, then, that the Kazahs (Cossacks) are Asia's horse lords.

- Admittedly, I'd been dreading the drive from Almaty to Bishkek for months - 250 KM on Soviet highways. Save me. Then again, many of these 250 KM were "na remontye" (under repair), so we were forced into some serious offroading. If shocks and suspensions could sue, they'd have quite a market. What's worse, the roads in Kyrgyzstan are in even tougher shape, as dirt roads even make up parts of the highways.

- The conferences themselves went well. They were set up to bring commercial arbitrators from various sectors (supreme courts, private law offices, public sector, academia) to discuss the embetterment of commercial arbitration within their respective countries. Now these people are PASSIONATE about arbitration, very much in the same way Wisconsin is to the Packers. We went out to dinner (mmm...horse meat) the first night, and nearly all of the toasts were "Za arbitrazh!" ("Here's to arbitration!"). It's really a moving experience to see so many people PASSIONATE about arbitration. Because if you're not PASSIONATE about arbitration, frankly, there's nothing to be PASSIONATE about.

- This week's sign of the apocalypse: My cell phone works in Kyrgyzstan.

Where flying over was painfully long, flying back was equally as weird. In about 14 hours, I had crossed the Aral, the Caspian, the Black Sea, and the English Channel twice. I had US Dollars, Euro, Kazakh Tenge, and Kyrgyz Som in my wallet, and my first purchase was in Pound Sterling. Moreover, I am now fully convinced that turbulence in the air reflects the current state of geopolitics. Our flight from Bishkek to Baku was relatively calm - Turkmenistan, Soviet as it remains, admittedly doesn't get in anyone's face. After stopping in Baku and heading eastward over the Caucasus, the ride was continuously bumpy until the Black Sea. It only got bumpy again over the Balkans. Coincidence? Finally, we arrived at Heathrow, and I was kind of disappointed not to see love all around.

All said, I really can't compare the two countries and experiences first because I haven't seen enough of either, but also because it's easy to sit in an ivory tower (read: Regent or Hyatt) that doesn't belong in a city because it's too bloody glitzy. That said, I liked Kyrgyzstan a little better, first because it is less commercial and more Soviet (not having oil or, well, infrastructure, will do that to you), but also because it seems less westernized and a bit more genuine. It's a third-world country that (except in the Hyatt) doesn't pretend to be otherwise. Bishkek's outskirts are your stereotypical shanty villages: tin roofs atop butting dwellings, dirt roads with the occasional pedestrian, all surrounded by vast plains and impassible mountains. Throw it back 500 years, it's an ideal video game setting.

And now I sit in snow-laden Passau, Germany, where all this began and where everything and nothing has changed. My host parents are divorced and my host sisters have all grown up (this is mega- weird, mind you). But Passau's serenity will never change - and perhaps that's what keeps drawing me back here.One last anecdote: I'm sitting in an Italian restaurant in Bishkek with my group the night before we all diasporate. I'm not really saying anything when a Kyrgyz woman, a judge, turns to me and says "Vy govoritye po-russki?" ("You speak Russian?") "Nemnoshka" (a bit), I reply. She then says "Oh, well I speak English -- where are you from?" We get to talking and she mentions having done an LLM program at Harvard, blah blah. Then she says, "I was asked recently if I liked some Boston sports team -- do you know anything about that?" And then it dawned on me: 10 timezones away, beneath the mighty Tien Shan, in one of the world's poorest and most corrupt countries, the Red Sox are still champions.