Blind Dog Further Down the Travel Trail

By Larry Kritcher

Larry Kritcher has always had an insatiable desire for travel, coupled with a love of the world’s cuisines. With a huge itch to explore strange and unusual destinations, he wouldn’t call himself a thrill seeker, but many of his experiences have taken him past the normal boundaries of work and play. In Blind Dog Further down the Travel Trail, Kritcher tells of his lifetime of travel and how he and his wife, Rita, have fulfilled most of his travel dreams.

A sequel to Blind Dog on the Travel Trail, this new chapter in the Kritcher travel saga grew from Rita’s daily journals, Larry’s flight-log pages, scribblings on cocktail napkins and the margins of guidebooks, photo album memories, and old road maps creased beyond recognition. The stories and photographs explore the couple’s visits to more than 130 countries.

Blind Dog Further down the Travel Trail is an ambitious narrative of travel booty, absurdities, happiness, tribulations, sorrows, and survival covering seven continents and all five oceans, traveling by land, air, and sea.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532067815

Larry Kritcher

Born to artistic, expatriot parents, Larry Kritcher came to his wandering nature by birthright. He is now a retired airline captain who lives with his wife, Rita, in Coconut Grove, Miami, Florida, that is when they are not traveling to any of more than 130 countries they have visited. He has written and published numerous articles about their journeys and will escort you on a global tour. This is his second book, and it too is packed with stories taken from his travel notes, flight log annotations, and Rita’s daily journals. There is also a cache of photography, which further enhances their voyages. Be prepared for a divergent six continent, five ocean, string of accounts that will thrill most travelers, whether you are the armchair type or actual travelers like us. You may find additional stories in my first book Blind Dog On The Travel Trail, which can be purchased through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Kindle version is available.

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BLIND DOG

FURTHER DOWN THE

Travel Trail

LARRY KRITCHER

AUTHOR OF BLIND DOG ON THE TRAVEL TRAIL

BLIND DOG FURTHER DOWN THE TRAVEL TRAIL

Copyright © 2019 Larry Kritcher.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-6780-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-6781-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019902585

iUniverse rev. date: 03/27/2019

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CONTENTS

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Road to Wherever.

Introduction

Chapter 1     Dragons, Red Lanterns, and Firecrackers

Chapter 2     Beirut Intrigue

Chapter 3     Under the Southern Cross

Chapter 4     A Trek for a Meal to Remember

Chapter 5     Incredible India

Chapter 6    Wild Irish Tales

Chapter 7     Awesome Africa

Chapter 8     Middle of the Americas

Chapter 9     Byzantium-Constantinople-Istanbul

Chapter 10   A Curiously Wild Triad

Chapter 11   China Adventures and Xi’an Warriors

Chapter 12   The Lands of the Walloons, Pays-Bas, and Flemish

Chapter 13   A Hobo Pilot’s Life

Chapter 14   Mysteries of Indochina

Chapter 15   Rhineland, (a.k.a.) Wine Land

Chapter 16   Nazca Mystique

Chapter 17   A Snarky Report on 360 Degrees of Earth by Ship and Plane

Chapter 18   I Think God May Have Been Italian

Chapter 19   In the Lap of Italian Luxury

Chapter 20   VIVA LA ESPAÑA

Chapter 21   Help, Panic 101

Epilogue

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INTRODUCTION

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Rita and Blind Dog welcome you.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard. My name is Larry Kritcher, and I will be your flight captain for this evening’s journey. I hardily recommend you keep your seat belts tightly fastened, as we will be soaring above high peaks and flying through low valleys with boulder-strewn ravines of true travel tales. Some bumpy air is anticipated. This book is about my lifetime of travel, wherein my curiosity sometimes has taken me past normal boundaries. Although I am not a thrill seeker, some of my stories, as you will see, have clearly strayed beyond a normal life of work and play. I have always had an insatiable desire for travel, coupled with a love of our world’s cuisines. Many photographs have been included with these stories, proving again a picture is worth a thousand words. So come fly with me, but please be safe and buckle up those seat belts. Thank you for listening, and enjoy our flight together.

————————————————————————————

I entertain myself looking through my guidebooks, maps, and travel logs. Research books and encyclopedias nurture my mind. I still wonder if there is a sun in hell, and where the ends of the earth meet. What color is the universe? How many tons do clouds weigh? Curiosity has gotten my wife, Rita, and me in many delightful situations—and some maybe bordering on the precarious.

You know, in hindsight, all these travels really do make the whiskey taste better at the end of the day. So, enjoy these numerous flights and have a toast with me.

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Where shall we go?

Sketch courtesy of Sheila Gilligan.

My life is predictably about travel. I have a huge itch to explore strange destinations—mostly unusual ones. This has become my opium. These chapters tell the story of how we validated so many of these travel dreams. We both have a hunger preparing for a journey. Gathering maps and reading guidebooks about upcoming destinations makes us both slaver with joy. I changed careers for these cravings. I threw in the towel in my last year of law school and turned to a career of piloting commercial airliners. I did finish that final year and graduate, but no amount of promises of a rewarding legal career could take away my desire to be in the sky—to fly away to distant worlds, learning about new cultures and, oh my good God, to command my own airship. But, best of all, Rita and I share this passion for travel, she as my trusty copilot—well, better stated, in reality, my captain.

We know that 80 percent of the intelligence we receive is from our sense of sight. This book offers true travel tales to readers who want to see faraway coastlines, mountain hideaways, and city sights. Whether you are an armchair traveler or another journeying soul like us, the rewards of reading about some of these destinations can easily jolt you further into this world of exploration, even prying you loose from that over-stuffed chair. Our destination map covers much of the world—more than 130 countries. You can share in our booty, absurdities, happiness, tribulations, and sorrows. Each chapter is an individual story—allowing you to jump around to any of the many destinations. And if you enjoy them, there are as many more to read in my preceding book, Blind Dog on the Travel Trail.

Many times I have nightmares of how I got to be this age. The disasters in our lives were plentiful—both of us surviving a life in the sky and at sea. We know we are very fortunate—lucky maybe is a better word. I’ve frequently pondered how many times we have skirted mortality and never knew of its imminence. It was probable that Rita and I looked death directly in the eye and never saw it coming—or for that matter, going. We certainly were smiled on by a good and kindly fate.

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Cheetahs spotting their prey—probably five miles away.

Photo by Fish Eagle Safari.

Fast—a word to contemplate, maybe explore. The cheetah, the fastest land animal, can run bursts at seventy-five miles per hour, roughly eight or nine times my speed. It can also see its prey five miles away. Then there are the fliers. The peregrine falcon that is measured at a speed of a deadly two hundred and forty miles per hour, aimed at impacting its prey. Fish are in the fast lane too. The sailfish clocked in at over seventy-five miles per hour zinging through the air.

There is hardly a comparative place for me in these worlds. However, I am totally engaged with the marvels of nature. It is all about my fascination of the sky, this earth, and the deep. Nature has taught us so much of what we know. The weaverbirds and the orioles taught humankind to tie knots and to plait fibers. The spider’s web taught geometry. Some of these works of nature are great manipulators that can set bait, regulate the ventilation of their habitat, and use trickery to avoid conflict. The bark of a silk floss tree guards its tender leaves from the sloth that likes to nibble the new growth at the tippy-top of its branches. It has razor-sharp thorns that act out its defense. The Amazon River has electric eels, and they taught humankind how to store electricity.

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Why are these carmine bee-eater birds so colorful?

Photo by Fish Eagle Safari.

I am equally engaged with humankind and am partial to the worldwide hidden, if not vanishing, tribes. Sadly, I have been to too many realms that have lost much of their culture, along with tradition, being trampled on by war—wars mostly over religion and territorial ideology. Population is roaring into the open spaces that the agrarian hunter-tribes once lived on. They are being pushed into their new plots of ghastly-overcrowded urban sprawls. (See my chapters Under the Southern Cross, regarding Mozambique, and Awesome Africa, regarding the Himba tribe.)

These chapters were reborn from Rita’s daily journals, my flight-log pages, notes taken on cocktail napkins and in margins of guidebooks, photo album memories, and old road maps, creased beyond recognition—yes, browned by sun and age. Rita and I were born as strays, seeking our travel paths, entrusting our lives to chance at times—the two of us being peripatetic, not limiting ourselves to a single destination. This begs the question of the fine line between courage and stupidity. Does it take courage to write about oneself, exposing privacy, or is it foolhardy to do so? After putting this to pen, and you being the reader, which side of that line am I on? One definition of stupidity is an accidental propensity for self-destruction.

I asked Rita to accompany me deep into numerous astral nights, flying my airships throughout the continents of our world. We have covered quite a bit of this earth, where I marveled at the idea that most things risky still require a license—piloting an aircraft, being a doctor, and marriage.

I am also aware that everybody has an incredible story to tell. Nonetheless, here are some more of mine. So let’s get going! For God’s sake, this is not like trying to read the Dead Sea Scrolls; these are interesting and fun. Kick back with Blind Dog and join me for a few more adventures, some being eventless fun that include punting a can down the byway of a distant land.

Note: Now, as you know, the title of this book is Blind Dog Further down the Travel Trail. An explanation is in order. There is a bit of humour noir caged in the title. I found myself piloting aircraft about this earth, knowing that I had to have twenty-twenty vision and that I certainly could not perform the job if blind. Early on in my aviation career, I had a small business for a variety of uses, mostly nautical, for which I was required to have a corporate name, so I chose (tongue-in-cheek) Blind Side Aviators. The nuance of mixing aviation and blindness together fostered a sense of wittiness that was known in olden days as gallows humor. Well, my dark-sided humor went further when I took on the name. Many friends and fellow aviators laughingly called me Blind Dog. Given that as my sobriquet, Rita and I took numerous overseas journeys; it was evident to my friends and colleagues that Blind Dog was traveling. Hence, Blind Dog Further down the Travel Trail seemed a perfect fit. This is the second book in a series of three.

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Twenty years from now you’ll be more disappointed by the

things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.

Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, & Discover!

—Mark Twain

CHAPTER 1

DRAGONS, RED LANTERNS, AND FIRECRACKERS

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Dragons represent good. Read on.

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Red lanterns frighten ghosts. Read on.

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Firecrackers scare ghosts. Read on.

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Wine served here. Thank God.

CHINA

FEBRUARY 2014

I had a recent phone conversation with my longtime buddy, Jimmy, who moved from Miami decades ago to seek his fortunes in Tampa, Florida. We converse regularly and discuss, among many other subjects, travel adventures—a passion for both of us. In years gone by, Jimmy and his wife, Terra, accompanied Rita and me to numerous distant shores. In one conversation, he told me about a website he had found, called LuxuryLink.com. They offer web deals on elite hotels and rental properties around the world. So, I set about to find a lovely hotel in a faraway land for Rita and me. Tucked away at the bottom of this website was a welcome page to an additional advertisement called Mystery Auction—yes, an auction. Exploring further, I learned that the site gave hints of properties for rent—the general locale, pictures of a skyline, and a starting bid price—but not the hotel name or its location. The first one I looked at caught my eye. It mentioned the location as Eastern Asia, accompanied by a picture of the skyline of a city. I knew at first glance that it was Shanghai, China—featuring the Pearl Tower in all its glory. We had been to Shanghai before and seen this massive structure on the riverfront. The only thing I didn’t know was the hotel’s name or its street location in the city. I examined LuxuryLink and noted that they had remarkably good to excellent listed properties, so I guessed this would be of similar quality and entered a bid of $301 for a three-night stay for any time in February 2014. (I suspected it was the slow season for them and was correct.) After several days, I entered my final bid of $450. A notice came to me that I had to bid $451 or better to win. So I entered a bid for $475. I again was notified that I had to bid $476 or better to assure victory. So I entered another bid for $501, which ultimately sealed our travel plans. We were headed to Shanghai, China. On the last two bids, I found out later, I had been bidding against myself. Oh, unmindful me, as usual, I neglected to read the fine print.

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The mistake only cost money and two jade bi.

This was the first time in all of our travel ventures that we allowed a hotel choice to dictate our destination, which was somewhat amusing to me—to go so far away, just for a hotel that I won by bidding against myself.

I leafed through my saved issues of many travel publications, including International Travel News, to find useful information for planning our trip. That publication plus my newly purchased guidebooks set us on our path for a visit to southern China.

As I began to add cement to our travel ideas, I contacted China Travel Services in San Francisco—a leading travel company for Asia. We had used this company on a prior trip to Beijing, the Great Wall, and Xi’An and were pleased with their operation. A helpful Vera became my travel guru, assisting me in the setup of our forthcoming extravaganza. We needed visas, so we sent our passports along with $340 to clear that hurdle. Eventually, she set up a fifteen-day program compatible with my research, featuring visits to Shanghai, Guilin, and Kunming. Total package for just the two of us, including internal airfare, was $4,006. (International air transportation and the three hotel nights were already on my tab.)

Shanghai, touted to be one of the most modern cities in the world, still had an undertone of its mysterious, rather ill disciplined past.

I heard it referred to as The Whore of the Orient. It has always been shrouded with a mysterious allure as her gates were entered. It was dubbed the Paris of the East, only adding to its perceived lustiness. I knew of its disobedience regarding the normal laws of civilized society, and was aware that the city, over 150 years ago, was a free-trade-zone within China, for France, Britain, Japan, and the United States. These countries held concessions within the city proper, flourishing in a society only enviable by the devil, herself. A concession was not subject to Chinese law and was sovereign. Each one had its autonomous mini-city center, making it unique and culturally different. A sign at the entrance to a park in the British sector stated No Dogs, No Chinese Allowed.

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Getting somewhere was harder.

ON OUR WAY

Rita and I initially flew from Miami to San Francisco, breaking up our journey and taking a hotel room until the following afternoon. By one thirty we boarded for our transpacific flight. Fortunately, we had seats in upper class for the next thirteen hours. The flight path is north and westward; thus we chased the sun up over Alaska, the Northern Ocean, and the Kamchatka Peninsula of eastern Russia, then and on into Shanghai. It is a flight in all daylight, and it was delightful peering down over those wild northern lands.

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The Kamchatka Peninsula of northeastern Russia.

SHANGHAI, FINALLY

When we landed, I noticed the airport lighting was a monochromatic gray to white—a blending of mist and smog. As we cleared the almost nonexistent Chinese customs area—What? Wait a minute. We were entering a communist bloc country, and no visible customs? Is there a hidden story we should be aware of? Is life so beleaguered here that they don’t care what or who comes into their starched country? We marched ahead into the arrival hall to Chinese freedom.

Standing there, waving his sign with Rita and Larry Kritcher written on it, our guide, Edwin, could not be missed. As we left the hall, the smog set in deeper. It was not lung-hurting smog but light rain mixed with non-smelling industrial smoke. Rita and I both remarked on how immaculately clean the terminal was. As we drove with Edwin and our driver, we could not help but notice the silence of the huge city. There were few street noises, although the highways were busy. There were no horns, and traffic moved in a normal big-city way with mixtures of modern buses, large trucks, and newish automobiles. It was unimaginably quiet. Edwin said that horns were unlawful, unless used to avoid an accident. (Hello, New York City, and America.) Also, many vehicles were powered by either natural gas or electricity. Shanghai prides itself on its modern edifices, and consequently almost every rooftop is lit up, showing the architectural contours of the structure. Edwin said the Bund’s (the main shopping center on the river embankment) electric light bill is $900,000 a night. Yikes.

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A photo out the moving car window riding into downtown Shanghai.

Edwin escorted us to the ultramodern Metropole Hotel, since our LuxuryLink hotel reservations were for the following nights. We rapidly fell from a hot shower into a deep snooze, from a long day of travel from the other side of the earth.

Nevertheless, a mighty impressive entrance to The Whore of the Orient. Hmmm.

Cheery Edwin had a gentle time planned for the first day of our Shanghai experience. We spent a splendid morning at the Yuyuan Gardens. A government official built this ultra garden during the Ming dynasty in the 1550s. It has a long, convoluted history but remains to this day a picture-perfect man-made park, with imported rock formations, teahouses, and a nine-turn zigzag bridge—making it famous in the world of zigzag bridges. The gardens are an example of how much big space can be compacted into a small area—a marvel of engineering to this day. As you wander through the gardens and across the bridges, past the shrines and art galleries, you realize that your GPS has not moved very much. Disguised arches, bends, and doors lead you to think you have covered miles of gardens, when in fact you have been traveling in a corkscrew and virtually pop out where you entered, hours later, never having seen the same dragon, temple, or lantern twice. It remains way up there on our list of Shanghai highlights. Thank you for that tour, Edwin. Unfortunately, Rita found a small painting for her Asian art collection. Alas, it was too difficult to transport home. It was a mere $123,000 and a bit too heavy for me to carry. (Ahem.)

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Yuyuan Garden Tea House with its nine-turn zigzag bridge.

Edwin was our local guide for the next four days, and he shepherded us to the sights of the city.

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Fighting crickets.

Our next ultra-fascinating visit was to the alley where fighting crickets were traded. The owners train their crickets to fight. Edwin related that they respond to hot and cold. Heat angers them, and prodding them with a hot poker makes them want to fight. Cold calms them down. But above all, the game is as serious as a soccer match, and much money changes hands during a fight.

We walked in the People’s Park, which at one time was a racetrack. On weekends, it turns into a marriage market. It began ten years ago when parents pinned written profiles on opened umbrellas about the availability of their daughters, bragging about their strength, beauty, heritage, and schooling. Occasionally, a young lad’s biography would surface among them. Edwin says the practice works well. A photograph is attached, but no girls or boys in their corporeal being are seen. The event was so crowded with participants that it was convoluted and difficult to navigate.

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Parents and professional husband finders at work in People’s Park,

looking for a loving mate.

As we walked the local backstreets, I was amazed to see parents with their little china doll-like children being carried in bamboo backpacks.

Our busy first day of our reintroduction to Shanghai was over. Edwin took us to the Mansion Hotel, where I had won our stay in the auction. It was located in the French Concession of the city. This was touted to be an above-market shopping area, boasting fine restaurants. We hadn’t come this far to shop during our limited days, so that part fell by the wayside. However, we did come to eat—eat new foods from a foreign land—crunchy, new whatevers. Across the street was the Grape Restaurant, which was highlighted in several guidebooks.

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Lobby of the Mansion Hotel.

The hotel itself was a pre-WWII structure, with antiques throughout the reception area dating back into those years and was showcased in the lobby. The furniture was clubby and overstuffed. An antique Victrola and old radios with turn-of-the-century antique cameras were displayed. There were old, patina-framed photographs from floor to ceiling, and the walls were high. It had a certain vintage charm about it but fell short of some of our expectations, especially when we discovered that the rooftop bar and restaurant, highly touted by LuxuryLink, was under construction and closed. Well, damn.

The front desk clerk was somewhat put off by anything beyond checking us in. Edwin had never been to the hotel before and requested to see our room. He mentioned, when out of earshot of the clerk, that the kind of people in this type of job were on the government dole and were probably related to some official, getting the job through nepotism. He said that they generally were not good employees, thinking they were way more important than their present station in life. They were kind of the, Oh, yawn, bore, give me what I deserve he said. Well, we had our first twinges of dissatisfaction. Hopefully, there would not be more. Edwin was pleased to see our room but outwardly annoyed by the caliber of the clerk. He said, Those type help destroy the very hotel that gives them work.

Since we were in the French Concession, we tried a French-Chinese restaurant for our first evening meal. It was satisfactory, but I don’t remember what I ate, but do remember that it was so damned expensive that I would munch Chinese takeout sitting on the curb before I’d go back to the place. Wow. The least expensive bottle of wine was 600 yuan—or $100. Perhaps they saw us coming and switched a local-priced menu with an ultra pricey tourist one. We had been warned that that could happen—warned in hindsight by Edwin and a guidebook or two.

As we moved into our second day, an intermittent rain began. I will concede that both Rita and I like gloomy, rainy days; therefore, our spirits were never dampened. Hello to a museum day.

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A sculpture from the Shanghai National Museum.

The Shanghai Museum has been around since 1952. In 1994, the government decided to make a new structure in the shape of a ship—what kind of ship, I couldn’t figure out. Its exterior appeared to have little nautical form. Nevertheless, it is four stories of China’s most glorious artistic past.

There are 120,000 exhibits, and Rita examined every one of them—I mean, extensively, sometimes lending me a bit of angst. She reads everything. She would have touched every single one of them if she could have. Tongue-in-cheek: I secretly admired her intense thirst for a third-century BC segment of parchment, decorated by wasp wing imprints in indigo, shaded by a filigree of matching purple with nuances of ochre mud dug from the banks of a dried-up river forty thousand years ago—by the way, no longer on a map, only a suggested path. She asked me if I noticed the clever pattern of the creator’s choice between mauve and amethyst mixed so well with the overall calming design of room 30061 of the museum. Oh my God, please allow me to continue with my extremely calm patience during these hours of total interest. Yes, it is a journey for both of us.

Included are galleries for bronze, ceramic, calligraphy, furniture, jade, sculptures, coins, and the various ethnic minorities living within China. The minorities are a whole different topic and are worthy of time to visit in their different corners within China.

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Carved Chinese Qijia jade bi.

National Shanghai Museum. I’d love to own one like this, and now we do. Good ones are available but pricey. Some are intricately carved and are used ceremonially by the people of nobility.

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Shanghai, late 1800s.

Photo from Mansion Hotel lobby, Shanghai.

The Chinese had used opium for medicinal purposes for centuries. For many years, the importing and exporting of this narcotic made fortunes for the Chinese traders, but NOW, enter stage left—the European colonialists, always figuring out how to dominate less prosperous lands, and rapidly making their moves. They wanted this moneymaker, to the point of starting two wars, the Opium Wars, to control their newfound treasure. In addition, when the Europeans came to Shanghai in the late 1700s, they brought tobacco with them. Then all hell broke loose. The Chinese and the Europeans combined the two, and opium smoking became a popular social habit that rapidly gave a good part of the Chinese shantytown areas an even lower derelict status. The city was filling to its limits with the influx of farmers from the rural areas coming to seek their fortunes. The Chinese became the workforce for ever-increasing industry. There was more of a need for manual labor. This, mixed with the swelling demand for opium, caused widespread slums. In crept the thugs—the knife-wielding gangs to control their turf. Along with them came the other seedy armadas of joy—gambling houses, opium dens, pawnshops, prostitutes, pimps, head shops, and dealers of mysteries in the night. Fortunes were made and lost with the roll of the dice. Yes, the seductive Whore of the Orient seemed an appropriate name for this unmanageable mass on the Huangpu River, which is a lower branch of the Yangtze (Yellow) River.

The Chinese government, seeing this debacle, decided to shut down the opium trade. It was so huge, and such vast fortunes were made by so many, that the British chose to go to war with the Chinese over it. Eventually, so did the French. From the 1830s through the 1860s, there were two Opium Wars. So much money was made that for over a hundred years, much of Hong Kong was under the control of the British because of agreements that the Chinese made to wind down this opium business. The Chinese government didn’t want to close out this trade; they merely wanted a larger share of it, in the form of an ever-increasing tax levied on its import and export. Most of the opium came from other Asian countries in addition to a main supply from India and Turkey—all passing through none other than Shanghai, the epitome of this netherworld. This city’s foundation was built on the trade of silk and tea but also from the spoils of this abundant drug. The wealthiest families in the world were involved with opium, from the Sassoon’s to the Astor’s—plus a myriad in between. It also lured the world’s finance houses. It all added up to make this city tantalizing, alluring, and tempting to visit.

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Opium den with added female comfort.

Photo taken in Shanghai Historic Museum.

Urban myths were conceived about the city. If you were involuntarily taken or conscripted into a workforce, you were Shanghaied. I recalled a bartender on the harbor front in Seattle telling me a story about the very barstool I was sitting on. He said, Years ago, in the wilds of northwestern America, a vast amount of young explorers and adventurous men were about. Your barstool sat on top of a trapdoor. When a young lad got convincingly drunk, a conniving bartender pulled a lever, and the door would open downward to an awaiting boat. Another partner in crime would tie the recalcitrant drunk as he flew through the open hatch, take him to an awaiting seagoing ship, and bam-o—he would find himself bound for Shanghai. He had been shanghaied and sold into slavery. He would be commanded to work on the ship as a crewmember, and in return, he was fed. To keep these prisoners in line, they confined them to the ship’s hold when not on duty, their shoes were taken away, and broken glass was scattered about the companionways, making it impossible to sneak out and escape. If there was blood, he was easy to track."

In my neighborhood, we would call this a rather rough night on the town.

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The human labor force in the 1800s.

Photo from Mansion Hotel lobby, Shanghai.

Shanghai turned into the same-old, same-old, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It became an extremely dangerous society, ripening for the likes of Marxism. Well, it happened. Social revolutions occurred from the 1920s through the 1980s, highlighted by the student protests in 1989 in Tiananmen Square. The poor people and their tragic living conditions turned around, opium was wiped out, and the whole city entered into the listless doldrums of communal living. Then, in the 1990s, the government found that there was an industrial appeal called cheap labor; they threw money at it. They modernized the society to unseen heights, transforming it into statures of excellence maybe better than anywhere else on earth. It became an ultramodern, clean, quiet, and crowded twenty-million-people city. More export containers are shipped from Shanghai than any other city on earth. Our guide said that for a few years, when everything was build-build-build, the roads changed so frequently that he needed a new road map every week.

We had a lunch on the Bund—the embankment forming the Huangpu River, which is a physical thorn in the side of all modern building projects. The land is fathoms of deep marsh, with the water mass wishing to displace the landmass—and that’s bad. Buildings shift and turn, then sink and try to regain composure as they float, which is nearly impossible for a cement structure. Nowadays, the massive buildings are constructed on large pontoon-like sleighs that have been engineered for better stability.

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Only one day of sun on a brisk February day on the Bund.

At any rate, the buildings may have a tough time staying put, but the eating habits of some of the patrons at the Bund restaurant that we attempted to dine in were in full motion. We witnessed what was nothing short of an utterly voracious feeding frenzy. A family group of three adults and a couple of teenagers outdid the worst eating habits I’d ever seen on the world stage of table manners, even with my own kids during their out-and-out nastiest food-smearing adolescent horror shows. These diners speared huge portions of dripping meats with chopsticks, dragging them across other victuals en route to disgusting, half-masticated foods in seemingly notable open mouths, while talking loudly and expelling unwanted items onto the table. One of them attempted a cell phone conversation at the loudest jangle I had ever heard, sputtering half-chewed foods onto the mouthpiece. It was so disgusting that I wanted to leave. I would not let Rita turn around to witness this beyond-horrific sight. It was sickening hearing their coughing, burping, choking, and rank guttural sounds. I casually mentioned this in an extremely polite way to Edwin, and he dismissed it, saying they were probably from the rural backcountry—where they copy the eating habits of their animals. Actually, I liked Edwin’s comment. He further mentioned that China’s ancient custom of spitting in public had been greatly reduced by gentle government pressure.

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Antique alley in Shanghai—a fun place to search for treasures.

I found my jade bi here.

That afternoon, we walked down an unforgettable antique alley, where stores and stalls were filled with quasi-antique items, some of which flowed onto the sidewalk. Wow, if you like garage sales, mixed with intriguing statuary, draped with unusual textiles and Asian paraphernalia, this is absolutely fascinating to see. I could have rooted around there for a week, being mesmerized by all the goodies—maybe even coming home with a brass doorknocker in the form of a dragon.

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Our genteel waitress explains menu items at the Grape Restaurant.

That evening, we ventured into the Grape Restaurant. The foods offered on the menu were a bit challenging for the palate, written in Chinese and English, with photos. I loved the descriptions so much so that I photographed a good portion of the menu. I never wanted to forget that I could have ordered gluttonous bullfrog; boiled slice bee; pan gas fry; confused ribs; celery yam fungus; spicy brain; chicken feet salad; crispy fried grasshoppers; fried stinky tofu; best duck casserole (featuring the duck’s head); and a dessert of durian, the smelliest fruit in all of Asia. Yes, I tried it—not as bad as anticipated, but I would not order it again. Rita ate plain rice and salad with white wine for almost every meal.

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Menu item: The best duck casserole. Notice duck’s head with noodle necklace.

Edwin said the cooks of China seldom use a recipe as we Westerners do; they cook by the smell and taste method.

We awakened to another drizzly morning and had a light breakfast in the improvised dining area in the hotel lobby. Rain or shine, Edwin had his never-ending smile with him. Today, we will visit more interesting sights of Shanghai, he announced. While walking toward our morning treat, I was impressed with the rapid blade exertion being performed by a street vendor making chili-garlic sauce.

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The aroma of chopped chili peppers and garlic

wafted through the streets.

We were fascinated with the Folk Historic Museum, wherein the history of Shanghai was marvelously depicted. I think we could have spent days there. It was easy to amble about, taking in the stages of their history—farm life, neighborhoods, the old fishing villages becoming waterfront docks; showing the tea, silk, and opium trade with ships coming and departing. This was intermingled with the houses of ill repute mixed into the opium dens, including the ways of winning and losing fortunes by tumbling the dice and other gaming addictions. It took us through the times when Shanghai had more cars than all of the rest of China. They had reconstructed a miniature of the downtown areas on the Bund with the large boulevards and roads heading west, like Nanking Road. Marvelous indeed.

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Nanking Road of yore—heading west.

Photo taken in the Folk Historic Museum, Shanghai.

Again, I reiterate, how clean, how quiet, and how organized everything appeared. The last time we had been in China, it was acceptable but not buffed up like this. We had heard from other respected travelers that China had moved far ahead into the twenty-first century in many areas. Still, there was the old, cold government moving stealthily behind the scenes, rigidly ordering everyday life to an exacting code. Freedoms as we Westerners know it are just not there, or if it was, it was being constantly guarded. Some seventy thousand cameras line the highways, byways, and alleyways of Shanghai, or so one undisclosed source told us—who wished to remain that way. If you illegally park your car, a police camera will take a picture of your license tag, and a ticket will be issued. Every entrance to all motorways have banks of cameras, recording your whereabouts. They are constantly flashing, day and night. If you failed to pay your parking ticket, you will pay it before you can exit the next motorway. There are no grace periods. I mentioned this to Edwin, and he said, We just pretend they are not looking at us. Besides, if you are doing nothing wrong, why worry? You’re safe. He further reminded us, There is virtually no crime in Shanghai, because we are always being watched.

Hmmm, is the tradeoff worth it?

Our last day in Shanghai took us on a car ride west of the city by fifty kilometers to an ancient water town, Zhenjoijoia. We could easily see the cameras at work as we entered the highway.

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Proudly hung in our home, a painting of Zhenjoijoia, a wuzhen town.

A labyrinth of intricate waterways connects most of eastern China, and the quaint villages along these canals, streams, and lakes are known as wuzhen. This particular village of Zhenjoijoia is known for its bridges. It was quaint and charming, having architecturally modern outskirts. It was raining, umbrellas required.

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A bridge of our Zhenjoijoia. Note umbrellas.

Now reminiscing over our visits on our last four days in Shanghai—my God, it is wonderful to report there was not one boring, uninteresting thing we did in our entire stay. That, my friends and fellow travelers, gets an A+.

GUILIN, A LAND OF CAVES AND KARSTS

Goodbye and thank you, Edwin. It was time to move onward to Guilin, the second phase of our trip. Guilin is a two-hour flight to the southwest of Shanghai and is the provincial capital of the province of Guāngxi. We were enticed there to visit the mountains and caves on the River Li. While boarding, I was standing in the aisle next to my seat, placing my jacket and backpack into the overhead bin, not obstructing anyone. The flight attendant, while passing me, just pushed me into my seat. Wow, was that unexpected. I don’t think I’d been pushed around like that before. That was a new form of efficiency in the airline industry for me.

I had a seat one removed from a young woman, who I think witnessed the flight attendant maneuver and offered me her breakfast biscuits—a consolation gift, perhaps. We talked a bit, and I could not help but notice her delicate beauty. She knew she was pretty good-looking and told me to take a picture of her for this story. Well, that’s not really true. I asked to take a picture of her to share with you.

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My delightful plane mate, Jin Xue.

Hello, Nick, our new guide. Guilin, once a huge communist stronghold, has bowed to the mighty tourist buck. Capitalism prevails. The city itself is concentrated around lakes and estuaries of the Li Jiang. (Li is the name of the river, and jiang means river.) This river flows from Guilin southward for fifty miles of scenic beauty to the town of Yangshou and then onward. It is considered a sight well worthy of a visit; in terms of tourist traffic, it is right up there with the Great Wall. Some thirteen million people come for the river scenery each year, according to our new knowledgeable guide. Poets, artisans, and painters have raved about the pinnacled mountains, the green ribbons of forests, the wispy branches of bamboo, and the fishermen plying the river with their fish-catching water birds—the cormorants.

Initially Nick took us to the Reed Flute Caves. We welcomed the caves, which kept us out of the persistent rain. Nick told us that he was a college graduate, attaining the highest score in his class of Reach Outbound Tour Leaders. We both congratulated him before he went impulsively into a fascinating spiel about the uniqueness of Chinese limestone found in this area and how a young boy collecting firewood discovered the caves. The soft limestone in that part of China allowed nature to carve out some fantastic underground marvels. The government has taken the notion that Tourists bring big bucks, and we have big caves. This immediately translates to big bucks to see big caves. Most tourists howl at the gouge; they even have a consumer hotline for complaints. Since we had helpful Vera back in the USA organize ours, we never felt the extortion; our tickets were prepaid. The caves were spectacular, with enormous caverns of stalactites and stalagmites. The government has seen fit to pave the walkways—very well, I might add. They have a propensity to backlight, spotlight, and rope-light everything—and in primary colors, not just white but red, yellow, and blue; into this mix entered an eerie green, causing patches of purple. It was a little Disneyesque perhaps. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the hour hike through the cool damp air. Then we wandered back into the rain—also cool but much damper.

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The colorful lighting of the Reed Flute Caves of Guilin. 1-28

We were situated at the Li Jiang Hotel, which was an older noble hotel that also was an absolute ghost hotel; the only people we saw were staff. Zero people in the restaurant. Zero people in the art galleries (which were absolutely high class). Zero people in the bar. We knew February was off-season but not this far off. This mysteriously near-empty hotel is considered the top choice by many travelers. We made our way to an alley behind the hotel and found none other than the Li Jiang restaurant. So we were staying abeam the Li Jiang at the Li Jiang Hotel and now eating at the Li Jiang restaurant. (Believe me—I’ll never forget the name.) It was a local eatery, and we felt more comfortable here than at our empty hotel dining room. Rita found a bottle of wine to try. We rapidly found out that local Chinese wines suffered by our standards. It was easy to find a bottle of red wine but nearly impossible to find one of the white varieties that Rita prefers. I indulged in a roasted duck dinner, while Rita messed around with touches of rice, cucumber salad, chicken soup, and rice puffs—whatever they are—airy poofs to me.

Our meal came to an end, and a big end indeed; they did not take Visa, MasterCard, or American Express for payment. Our meal was 300 yuan, and that is precisely fifty dollars by any street vendor, bank, or hotel exchange. Nope, they wanted their local currency, yuan. I was dispatched by our headwaiter to proceed a block away to a bank that had an ATM. A young waitress came along to guide me. A nice gesture, I initially thought, but maybe to keep an eye on me. But, really now, would I run away and leave Rita in the restaurant by herself—forever?

We quick-stepped through rain to the Construction Bank (CB) and entered the external kiosk where five machines beckoned my card. I chose the center one, for no other reason than I felt balance—two plus two and me in the middle. (Remember this balance, please.) I proceeded to enter my card. Press 2 for English; Please enter your security code. Upon entering that command, the machine ate my card, issuing me a slip in English that said I could use this receipt to get my card back during banking hours. That would be the following day. The poor waitress looked bewildered and totally lost as what to do. I threw my hands in the air in exasperation, and then we headed back to the restaurant with no money, no credit card, and a claim ticket for my card’s retrieval. My body was soggy, and my soul was soggier. By this time, the restaurant owner was present and knew my dilemma—stating in near perfect English, Of course we will take US cash. So, we paid the fifty dollars and returned to the hotel.

The next afternoon, following our boat ride on the Li Jiang, was an hour of a day I would not wish on anyone—not my worst enemy or even the Internal Revenue Service. As we returned to the bank, I was rapidly learning that Rita not finding a suitable white wine was only a slight ripple in the waters of our Asian frustration. With Nick being translator, Rita in the juggernaut position, and me armed with my claim receipt, we entered the foyer, proceeding directly to the centrally located lobby manager’s desk, which was located inside the bank that owned the ATM that ate my card.

We presented the claim check to the young woman who acted like a manager; her nametag said so. She just stared at the receipt like she had never seen one before—a deer in headlights. She looked like she had just received this promotion to manager, maybe minutes ago. She made a telephone call, chatting away and nervously laughing. Of course we knew nothing