Days in San Juan

Spending just over 48 hours in San Juan surely isn't enough time to get to know a city, but there is a sort of emptiness that I have seen among the streets here. There are telephone poles in the streets still, abandoned buildings, blown out/boarded up windows and all of this within the first few blocks of the touristy areas in the capital city. I'm sure some sustained damage from the hurricane and therefore ceased to exist, but I wonder how much ceased to exist as a knock on effect. My driver from the airport told me he used to work for the Marriott as a concierge, but they cut back on staff as tourism drastically fell and so he started driving as a new career. How much had the city tightened it's belt? I'll forever wonder what it might have looked like a year or two before I arrived.

Tomorrow as I head inland, I don't know what to expect. There must be damage, or why would I be going? Yet, I am told that the campsite we are based at has a cross fit gym attached to it that is used and open everyday and if we want to attend we have to buy a membership. Here too in San Juan, there are bars packed with people and bumping with music just one block from what appears to be an abandoned medical center. It seems a strange paradox and I am curious to find out what the answer is.

Other parts of the city, Old San Juan, seem to be just as they might have been yesterday, last year, or even ten years ago. Many of the old buildings seem well intact. On the way into town my taxi driver joked that the fort of El Morro was the first place to re-open after hurricane Maria as the Spanish knew how to build it sturdy. Of course, I had to visit these forts to see just how sturdy they are and I can agree, they are solid as a rock (heyo!). I went to El Morro and San Cristobol forts and trying to be adventurous, I entered San Cristobol first, trying to speak Spanish. Success! I bought my ticket, asking how much, asking where to go, I even asked where the bathroom was! Feeling clever, I had a walk about and then went to El Morro. Arriving there, I paid to enter and, in English, was told I could visit both forts with the receipt as they were both national parks. Bloody hell. I paid twice! But, being too embarrassed and without the former receipt, I swallowed the 7 dollar loss. Not so clever after all.

EL MORRO

Carnival Cruise is attacking, quick, man the guns!

Uh, yeah, never mind. 

Shell chunk in the wall, thanks America!

Long story short, the Spanish were the colonizers of the Caribbean, South and Central America for most of the age of exploration. There were other powers around vying for the geography up for conquering, France and England, but also Denmark and Portugal to name a couple. So, to make the story short, over hundreds of years and many attacks on the port city, the forts expanded higher and thicker. Then, in 1898, the Americans won the Spanish-American war and Puerto Rico had a new conqueror. Since 1899 it has remained under American control. (pictured below, a chunk of American shell stuck in the fort wall from 1898!) That whole thing, by the by, caught me even a couple times. I said, "In America... err.. I mean... on the mainland".


SAN CRISTOBAL

SAN JUAN BATISTA

Old San Juan was a trip. The old streets were pretty cool. It seems a lot of cruise ships come in to the port for a day and I can see how the old streets would be a great gateway for something like that. The old part of the city is very compact. You could walk just about every foot of the streets in a day. I went to the old cemetery and the San Juan Batista cathedral where Juan Ponce De Leon was buried (yes, that Ponce!). It was pretty cool.

I wish I could have spent another day or two at least in San Juan, not least to go take the Bacardi Rum factory tour, ha, but there seems to a lot I missed beyond the beaches and old city. Puerto Rico, San Juan, may be a place worth revisiting in the future.

Coming Home

A few months ago I had a moment of conscious about posting on FB and other social media. The dark side of using these platforms was being discussed and I briefly considered deleting my FB page, but just briefly. The thing about social media, despite all its downsides, is that it does what it says on the tin. It connects us. Each time I travel I try to connect with friends past and present. Of course as time goes on this gets harder in some ways. As I’ve moved about, the people I meet become more varied and, as their lives progress they have become more dispersed, but I try to see everyone I can. So naturally coming home in the summer I reach out to the friends I know will be there to spend time with them. Who knows, will they be in our hometown as the same time as I will? Will our paths cross? Would I have been able to help arrange these meeting if it weren’t for social media? Probably not and for this alone the value is immense.

I contacted an old friend I’d seen a few times in the States. Then another. Then another. Then another and the next thing I knew I was looking forward to seeing my oldest friends. As David and I sat in the park, since we arrived first, we glanced around anxiously waiting to see who would come next and guessing as each car pulled up, is that them? It was a bit hard to tell, but as we all came together that feeling faded away. Of course, we are older, and some of us have gained weight, lost a little hair, and earned a few wrinkles (ok, mostly me on three counts), but the people I loved and who were close to me during my most formative years, in the most important respects, were the same or maybe even better than I remembered. They were kind, wise, smart, and funny, with talent and wit that is hard to find. It is amazing to me sometimes that I was so lucky to have these friends with me along the way. So we met in one of the places we held dearest during out teenage years, Sunset Park (Not surprisingly, great place for sunsets). Before smartphones and texting became a thing, we would often meet here, driving to the parking lot to see who showed up, exchange what we knew about what was going on and a host of others things whose details are perhaps better left unsaid. 

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood (Seneca, not me) and, well, these people understand me, at times more than I’d like. We’ve done all the things good friends will have, from run ins with the police to seeing each other in various states of nakedness to talks late into the night and tears shed on shoulders. It was a special moment to catch up, connect, and understand each other a little more deeply. I hope, and know, that its not a one off, but even if it takes another 10 years to come together I'm sure our understanding of each other will be the same. 

Macau, Again

Years ago, before I was married (a long, long time ago) I went to Macau with my then girlfriend, Aya, and by buddies John and Richard. We were mainly in HK and spent just a day going around Macau, but here we were back again for a bit more time. Again, we didn't stay in Macau, but Zhuhai across the border. Aya was with me again, but this time it was Reed and Nicole who were with us. We spent some time wandering around the casinos and playing a little roulette. When we sat down to play together we each put in about 10usd to play. Interestingly, a fella sat down next to me and start feeding 100dollar (actually1000hk dollar) bills into the machine. He must have been burning through about 1000 HKdollars every 5 minutes. His wife was standing nearby, not looking too amused. Casinos are a big part of Macau's tourism and everywhere we went that was the main advertisement. Something interesting about the island is that there was and still is a Portuguese presence. While most of the people have gone, there is a requirement for signs to be in Portuguese and for there to be a Portuguese speaker at all major businesses.
Gambling and walking around the casinos was enough for us that day, so we decided to head back for the day, but Reed and I would return the following day to climb to the lighthouse and see St. Paul's ruins. The lighthouse was pretty neat as it is a high point on the island and you can see quite far in every direction. It was a bit humid on the day that we were there, so we couldn't see too far, but still fun. Inside the lighthouse grounds there is a chapel and a stone in the floor with the date of construction. The Chapel of Our Lady of Guia was constructed in 1622. Now, the chapel is somewhat sealed and there are dehumidifiers running to keep the interior frescoes in good condition. 

We headed back to Beijing after just a few days in Macau, but maybe next time we will stay in the city itself and explore a bit more. 

Crossing the Border

Macau side, entrance

"arrival" hall

Gate way to Zhuhai

Zhuhai side

Portal to Zhuhai side

Waiting in the foreigners line

Multiple times when we were in Zhuhai/Macau we crossed the border. Each side was packed with people. In fact, the first time we crossed, from Macau to Zhuhai, was at around 6pm and so people were making their way home from work. There was such a stream of people that we got confused and turned around, but eventually made it across. The process is not a difficult one. We averaged about an hour for the whole ordeal, less if we were using or EChannel passes on the China side.

Many of the people crossing were carrying goods for China/Macau. It seemed like a lot of produce was going from China to Macau and electronics on the way back. As our friend would tell us, Chinese people can only cross once ever two weeks, but it seems like people from Macau can do it at any time.

For me, this wasn't the first time I have crossed a border on foot, but certainly the biggest crossing point. Years ago in Thailand I walked across the border to Cambodia. I've flown across many borders, driven across a few as well. I've even gone by ship on the way to Morocco. By bike, not yet, but maybe someday. 

Beijing City Planning Museum

This past weekend Aya and I went to the Beijing City Planning Museum. We had actually intended to go to Tiananmen Square first to see Mao, but as usual as soon as we arrived the crowds turned us off from that idea. Lucky for us we were two of only about 30 people in the whole museum, I guess it isn't too popular. 

I was looking forward to coming here for a few reasons. First, I had visited the city and my friend Davis 15(!) years ago and so it would be neat to see some of the changes. The museum did in fact have a section detailing the growth of the city and even from the year 2000 to the present it is pretty clear the city has gotten much larger. When I was visiting him I remember a lot of construction and destruction as the city was preparing for the 2008 olympics. 

The second reason is that I have read a few books on Chinese history and at various points they talk about the city of Beijing. Last year, in fact, I read 400 pages on just the history of the city and found it very interesting to see how it was viewed and expanded through the ages as well as efforts to maintain and restore parts of the old city. 

The third and maybe most silly reason is that I went to the City Planning Museum of Shanghai a few years ago and thought the model they had of the city was pretty cool, so I wanted to check out the Beijing one and see if I could find my apartment on the map. Unfortunately the map stops about 2km south of where I live. 

The museum consisted of 4 floors. Mostly this was devoted to pictures of the city and the people involved in its development, most displays had some english, so that was helpful. The main interest to me was the 3d miniature map. It was pretty neat and I can imagine it took a long time to build it. 

As I walked around the map and saw in various places around the museum I couldn't help but reflect on some of the things I would consider mistakes in planning. Just to name a few, the destruction of the old city wall was probably a mistake. When Mao had won the war and declared Beijing the capital city, the wall came down under his guidance to make room for industry, but he could have picked any city to put industry in or kept it outside the city proper. He torn down the walls against good advice and that makes me a little sad as I am sure they were a site to see. The other thing that really struck me is that I don't see a lot of forward planning in the design of Beijing over the past 50 years or so. It seems haphazard to me. This might be illustrated by the problems that Beijing has with pollution. In planning the city in the 21st century Beijing's city planners met with planners in LA about air pollution and how to plan the city to minimize it. They ignored the examples set by LA in reducing their pollution and the impact is obvious today as the government back tracks on planning measures to make the city more livable. 

Beijing is my home and most of the time I enjoy living here, but looking at that big map of the city I just kept thinking about what if? What if you could go back in time 100 years ago and plan all over? What changes would you make? 

Japan, VR, and Henn Na Hotel

After spending time in the relative warmth of SE Asia, we went to Japan to visit Aya's parents and spend some time in Aizu. It is always nice going back, like going home for many reasons. This time around the house was quite noisy as brother in-law plus family were staying there as well. Most of the day revolved around two energetic kids.
We did also have a new year's day meal with uncle and aunt. Mostly we just enjoyed chilling, eating, and for me, running in snowy Aizu. I spent a good deal of time with Sheri sleeping and getting in some good scratches. I also played a game where I had no idea what I was doing and I think that the rules where changing as Sota made them up. The last day we were there it snowed really hard as Aya's parents drove us to  Fukushima to catch the Shinkansen.

Arriving in Tokyo we had an unusual hotel experience. I had heard about these hotels that were run by robots and, knowing my excitement, Aya booked us at one that had just opened. The rooms themselves were pretty normal business hotel types except that they had a closet sort of thing that was supposed to clean clothing if you hung it inside. It was odd, but we tried it and our clothes did in fact seem to be a bit cleaner. The attraction at the hotel were the animated robots that checked us in and out. It was cool, but not exactly what I was expecting. I don't know quite what I thought would happen, but I guess I thought the robots would be more interactive. What happened was that we approached two dinosaur robots, yes dinosaurs, and then we interacted with a touch screen while the robots moved and spoke to us responding to what we chose on the touch screen. Other than the check in and out interaction the hotel was pretty normal, but still it was kind of fun to go.

We had an afternoon flight back to Beijing, so we decided to try a VR gaming place that Aya had read about. It was really cool. Basically it was two floors of games, all VR, ranging from normal nintendo games like Mario Kart and fishing games to haunted house type games. We tried two games, Mario Kart and Horror Hospital. Mario Kart was pretty neat and since the seat/kart we sat in also moved it added to the overall feeling. After playing the game and taking off the gear we felt kind of weird. Since the games were a bit expensive we decided on just one more and went for the horror one since there were warnings not to do it if you were especially sensitive. Standing in line waiting to play there were many screams coming from the people playing, so I was expecting some really scary stuff. It was scary. Basically you both sit (in the VR world in a wheelchair) and then use a joystick to guide yourself around a hospital trying to find the other player and get out. As you do so people come out at you, but the scariest bit was when blades or things got close or cut you. Based on the VR head gear it really did seem like the blades were plunging into you, an uneasy feeling. I'm sure if we get a chance to we will try more games again some day. 

After enjoying Japan, we chilled at the airport lounge at Haneda, watching the planes come and go and waiting for our turn to return to Beijing.