Wandering Foward

I wasn’t a very big fan of New Zealand as my last couple posts probably made clear. Sure, it is a beautiful place but the ridiculous cost and distance make make it very hard to justify a visit when you can get the same beauty for so much less effort and cost elsewhere in the world. I also found New Zealand to be a bit of a backwater. I made the comment on Facebook that New Zealand was a very expensive third world country. People jumped all over me for that, though I still maintain it is true.

People think every place has its own unique charms and you just need to find them. If you don’t, then it is your fault. It is not possible for a place to be unappealing. So, as a traveler you are never supposed to not like a place you visit. While every place is unique, it is foolish to think every place is wonderful and charming. It is not reasonable to expect everyone to love a place just because you did. Besides, I don’t hate New Zealand (or even dislike it, really), I just don’t find it to be as special and spectacular as other people. Just because I am not overly enamored with it doesn’t mean you won’t be.

While New Zealand is certainly a modern country, it is has many elements that remind me of a third world country. People peed on the side of the road a lot, roads were old and small, internet was super slow and super expensive (not to mention almost non-existent in many places), and most places just felt really old and not in a good way. Of course, you can find a mixture of first world and third world everywhere (just visit the Midwest in the United States if you want to experience the third world smack in the middle of the first world). Nonetheless, the general feel of New Zealand was that of a country quite a bit behind the times.

There are a lot of reasons given for why New Zealand is this way and to be honest, I don’t really care. I was making a personal observation, not judging. People can be offended all they want. That really isn’t my problem. Perhaps one of the reasons people found my observation so harsh is that they have this expectation that developed countries like New Zealand are supposed to be “better” than third world countries. They often aren’t. The term “third world” and “developing” and “developed” are wildly inaccurate and don’t really capture reality. Most places are a mix of developed and developing. I certainly saw that in New Zealand.

With all of that said, here are some funny photos of New Zealand. Not all of these things are unique to New Zealand—I am sure Wisconsin celebrates the cow too—but they are still amusing. (I spared your photos of people peeing on the side of the road. You’re welcome.)

New Zealand is a beautiful place to visit, though it is essentially Montana with beaches. Considering the ridiculous prices for everything, I really can’t say it’s worth visiting. If you have been to the Pacific Northwest or Montana, then nothing in New Zealand will be much different except all of that natural beauty is crammed into a relatively small place. In a way I was slightly disappointed since I was expecting to really be wowed and that did not happen. In retrospect I would have much rather spent the money going somewhere else. With that said, I still enjoyed myself.

I started in Auckland, flew to Christchurch and then drove about 3000 kilometers (about 1900 miles) around the South Island.  Driving is a bit of a challenge only because New Zealanders are really aggressive drivers. They like to tailgate, they speed and will pass you even if you are going faster than the posted speed limit. I rented a camper van for about $180 for 10 days, though I never actually slept in it. It was too cold so we stayed in “cheap” hotels, which seem to always run about $82 for two people (even hostels run that price). Renting the camper van was about one-quarter the price of renting a car. Gas is expensive, but that was expected.

The cost of food and restaurants however, was not expected. Everything is absurdly over priced. Even items produced New Zealand run triple or more over what you would pay in the US. Imported stuff is even more expensive. Some Australians were telling me that they thought New Zealand was really expensive, and Australia is not exactly cheap (though, their prices are more reasonable). I never could get over the price of things, just because it make no sense. I suppose the only good thing was that tax and service charges are included in the prices.

The trip was supposed to be with friends that are living  and working in New Zealand, but they flaked out us at the last-minute. The trip was mostly my friend from Seattle and me. That turned out really well since we were able to do what we wanted and got to see far more of New Zealand that we otherwise would have. Since we arrived in New Zealand’s fall, we did encounter some rain but mostly the weather was quite nice if a bit cool at times.

The people are mostly nice, though occasionally they can be a bit unfriendly. I think this is part of their culture. They have no problem telling you how they are feeling. Whereas Americans don’t usually respond to “How are you?” with anything but “Good, thanks,” a New Zealander will respond with how they actually feel (that is a bit surprising for an American, let me tell you). 🙂

New Zealand is a beautiful country with super nice people. I can easily say that, though to be completely honest I am having trouble finding anything really unique to say about it. While New Zealand is beautiful, it is not the most beautiful place I have visited. The people are super nice, though not the nicest. I suppose the issue is that for the cost, New Zealand does not really seem worth it to me.

The general cost of everything in New Zealand is absolutely insane. A bottle of water runs about $4. So does a bottle of Coke. Breakfast will set you back about $30 for one person at a regular restaurant. Dinner is even worse. At the grocery store, everything is at least double what it would be in the United States. The reason given is that everything is imported so it is expensive. Only beef is not imported, New Zealand apples are not imported, and so on. There is no reason for everything to be so expensive yet it is.

Hostels and hotels are also ridiculous. A bare bones, cheap hostel runs at least $30 a night for a bed in a dormitory and shared bathroom. Want your own room and it will cost more than $80 a night. I was in a tiny room with a bed and nothing else for that price, the bathroom was even shared. The excuse for these high prices are the earthquakes that hit Christchurch a couple years ago making housing scarce. This might make sense in Christchurch, but doesn’t explain other areas.

Don’t even get me started on the internet. Internet here is super shitty and very expensive. Hotels and hostels do not include internet with the stay. They charge at least $4 for an hour, though often more, and the service is almost non-functional. Even at a really nice place I am staying at for my friend’s birthday, internet costs $15 for one hour. We are paying $369 a night for this place and they still charge for internet!

All of this would probably be tolerable if New Zealand were fantastic and unique. Except, New Zealand is not that fantastic or unique. Certainly it is beautiful and there are some interesting ecosystems, flora and fauna, but overall it isn’t really much different than what you could see in the Pacific Northwest of the United States (where I am from), Montana, Nevada, or Colorado. If you have never seen something similar, you might be awed. Though, when I take the cost of everything into consideration, I am not sure a visit to New Zealand is worth it. I have yet to go Milford Sound and a few other places, so I imagine there are some interesting and amazing things to see that are unique to New Zealand, though I still can’t imagine it will be worth the cost.

One of my friends who has been living here for quite some time told me New Zealand is stuck in the 1990s. New Zealand is environmentally conscious, though they still waste natural resources like water (Kiwis tell me they have so much water they don’t need to worry about it—sort of misses the point). My other friends that live here point out really odd things that Kiwis do. One thing I’ve noticed is that people pee along side the road a lot. New Zealand has the feel of a very expensive third world country to me.

Nonetheless, I am still enjoying myself. Like I said, New Zealand is beautiful and the people are very nice. I don’t think I will get over how expensive everything is, though. I basically am just looking at New Zealand as place I am glad I visited, but will unlikely visit again anytime soon.

Perhaps the most well known drink in Thailand is cha yen. Literally this means “tea cold” or iced tea. Cha yen is often referred to as “Thai tea” by foreigners. Whatever you call it, cha yen is absolutely delicious.

Cha yen is traditionally made from strongly brewed Ceylon tea and may include orange blossom water, star anise, crushed tamarind seeds, and other spices. Given the high price of Ceylon tea, cha yen might just be regular black tea and food coloring. If you see the vendor brewing the tea and mixing it by pouring it back and forth while holding it high, then it might be the real thing (or close to it).

Condensed milk and sugar are mixed with the tea before it is poured over ice and topped with evaporated milk. Thais love their tea sweet. I don’t. I ask for mine mai wan, not sweet (it will still be sweet, just not super sweet). Cha yen comes in cups or bags. I kid you not, it will simply come in a plastic bag that you poke a straw into and carry around with you. This is actually the preferred way to have your tea in Thailand. You can also get your tea hot, in which case it is cha ron. Cha ron is typical drank in the morning.

What most people may not realize is that there are several types of teas available, along with a variety of other flavors. Tapioca pearls are a common addition, as well. My favorite drink, and the one I get most often, is cha keaw. Cha keaw is green tea and it is always served over ice, never hot, so you don’t have to ask for it yen. Cha keaw is, as the name suggests, green tea mixed with condensed milk and sugar and topped with evaporated milk. I prefer mine not very sweet, and it tastes just like you would expect green tea to taste.

Another popular drink is nom yen. Nom yen is just “cold milk” that is flavored with strawberry—or so I am told. To be honest, it just tastes like sugary milk to me. I can barely drink it. Cocoa yen, as the name implies, is chocolate milk. You can order it chocolate yen if you want too. If you are a chocolate fan, this a tasty drink. I have seen it served with a heaping pile of cocoa powder on top.

In the evenings you will see young Thais drinking their favorite tea, milk, or other drink while snaking on various sweets. The most common sweets are bread with various toppings like blueberry jam, strawberry jam, chocolate, butter and sugar, condensed milk, sweet pork (yup), and numerous others. Warm sweet bread dipped in custard is also very common.

As I said, the Thai love their sugar. This is far more than I can handle, personally. I do like an occasional cha yen or cha keaw, but if I were to drink it as often as the Thai do I would be in a sugar coma most of the time. Nonetheless, you should not pass them up if you are visiting. They are available everywhere. Just ask for your without sugar if you prefer it less sweet like I do.

Songkran, the Thai water festival, just finished. Two years ago I celebrated Songkran in Bangkok where they celebrate for three days. This year I celebrated Songkran in Chiang Mai, where the festival is celebrated with exceptional zeal. The festival starts early and ends late—five days of throwing water!

Songkran is not specifically a Thai festival, though the Thai take it to a whole other level. The festival celebrates the lunar New Year. Originally based on the Buddhist calendar, the dates have changed over the years. The Thai now align their New Year with January 1st of the Christian calendar, though they still date the year from Buddha (the year is 2557 in Thailand). Today, Songkran is always from April 13 to 15, except every four years, when it is April 12 to 14 (to accommodate a leap year).

Thais visit a wat (temple) to pray and bring a handful of sand to replace that which they carried away on their feet during the year visiting the temple. Songkran was traditionally the time of year that the family Buddhist statue was cleaned. The water was scented with herbs and poured over the family Buddha statue. A small amount of the “blessed” water left over from cleaning was gently poured on the shoulder of elders and family members symbolizing washing away the bad and renewal.

This is still done today, though the festival eventually evolved into throwing water at each other everywhere, probably because it falls during the hottest time of year in Thailand. The temperature in Chiang Mai was at least 100° F (38°) every day, and even reached 104° F (40° C) one day. For a little extra fun, ice is added to the water.

In Chiang Mai, buckets of water are taken from the moat surrounding the old city and tossed at passing cars and people. Water guns of every variety are also used to spray people. It is considered very bad form to spray people in the face. Of course, this is exactly what foreigners do. Don’t do this!!! Aim for the shoulder or the body. Also be careful not to throw ice cubes or other objects at people.

Naturally people will accidentally hit someone in the face, but to deliberately aim for the face is frowned on by everyone. This should be obvious, but for many it is not. When someone asks you to stop, you need to stop. I had a situation where a non-Thai lady shot a high powered stream of water at my face and would not stop when I yelled for her to. I was actually going to eat and it was night, so I was dry and about to go into a restaurant. While I still expected to get a little wet, when you aim for the face and you keep it up after someone tells you stop it’s just plain rude. I was not happy, nor where the Thais around me.

If I am harping on this point it is simply that it demonstrates a lack of respect for the origins of the festival and plain common decency. The Thai find it disrespectful and it’s highly inappropriate to spray a person’s face on purpose. Certainly have fun, just be mindful.

Remember,  someone spraying you is a good thing. It is not about “getting them back” or being upset you got wet. They are showing you respect. Thais use a little chalk mixed with water and smear this on your cheeks. Most likely this comes from a similar practice that Buddhist monks perform. This is also a blessing. Do what the Thai do, thank the person and smile. They are showing you respect by doing this, do the same in return.

One of the most inconvenient and least helpful things about traveling is the “security” and regional issues you encounter. Credit cards block you from using your card (even if you warned them up front), accounts are blocks because of “suspicious activity,” and a host of other annoyances. Want to watch Netflix or listen to Songza? Sorry, your region is not supported.

What is so frustrating about this is that these issues have nothing to do with protecting you or your security at all. Credit cards are just trying to protect themselves. U.S. law makes you liable for only $50 in fraudulent charges. The credit card companies want you to think they are protecting you from bad guys, but really they are the ones that bear the brunt of any fraudulent activity (and they usually just stiff the merchants in the end). They use computer algorithms that determine when your activity is outside your normal behavior—typically a trip abroad qualifies for most people, or even using your card 50 miles away from home since most people just don’t travel that much—and will place a fraud hold when something “suspicious” happens. Calling in before hand puts a note into your account that you will be traveling, though the automated systems can’t read that so it does no good. Even large purchases (like when I purchased my Mac laptop) will trigger a hold.

There are better ways for credit card companies to provide real security, but it is usually expensive for them to do so and they often do not want to admit there is a problem in the first place. Consumers might become nervous if they knew just how insecure the entire credit card system in America was. Europe has implemented a “chip and pin” system is far more secure and avoids the need for the antiquated approach U.S. credit card companies use. Arriving in Bangkok at 2am and your card can’t be used? Good luck on finding phone where you can call your credit card companies to get the card working again.

Netflix, Songza, YouTube, Apple, and so on have regional limitations to using their systems and accessing materials on them. Big record labels and movie studios want to make sure they get the proper fees for the works they hold the copyright to. They don’t have fee arrangements in places like Thailand or Indonesia, so if you try to use the service you are blocked. Interestingly, this actually results in increased pirating of materials since people in these places are unable to access the materials legally. That also means that Americans and Europeans are paying a premium so these giant entertainment corporations can keep their profits high. Rather a perverse system.

If you try accessing your accounts while abroad it can be a nightmare. If Google doesn’t like your login location your account is blocked. PayPal is notorious and constantly thinks your account is about to be hacked. Apple freaks out and wants to make sure you are really American when you try to make a purchase. And yet, despite all that, they still try to localize the experience for you. I am often having to unblock my account using a webpage in Thai and I don’t read Thai.

To be fair, some of this also due to government regulations. Many developing nations (i.e., third world countries) censor and block a lot of web content. Thailand runs all web traffic through a censorship server and blocks anything to do with the monarchy, government, some porn, and random content the powers that be have decided Thais should not access. Everyone is familiar with China and its absurd 1984 approach to censorship. Even Europe has “privacy” rules in place that make accessing content difficult (France has some especially arcane rules).

Is all of this necessary? No, not really. Unless you think huge corporations should control how you access content and should get their exorbitant fees, that governments should control what content their citizens should be able to access and get their tax dollars, or that credit card companies should make you do their security work for them. I am fine with paying taxes and fees, but controlling information and helping companies too lazy to do their own work bothers me.

All of these companies know I am American. They have my credit card information, drawn on an American bank, and can access my information rather easily (it is creepy how much they know—recently I was asked by Capital One to verify a past address that I had three years ago before I was even a customer of theirs). My physical location should not matter–especially if I told them I was going to be traveling. Of course, most people just don’t travel much and certainly not very far from home. Nonetheless, I find all of these protections and limitation to be more of an annoyance than anything. They don’t help me or protect me. Perhaps they protect big corporations, but I doubt it, and maybe their help government control their people, though I am not convinced of that either. In the end, it is a false sense of security for corporations and governments, and a massive pain in the ass for the average person.

I wrapped up my trip to Sri Lanka with a visit to Galle, pronounced “gawl” in English. I chose to stay in Galle Fort, which in retrospect was a mistake. I am sure I would have enjoyed staying at nearby Unawatuna much more, despite it being overrun by tourists. I hadn’t even planned on visiting the South or the beaches of Sri Lanka, but my rigorous schedule that nearly killed me made it possible. I was so exhausted by everything I had done in such a short amount of time, that I needed the break the South offered.

Galle Fort is an old Dutch fortified fort built on top of an old Portuguese port. Yup, the Dutch and the Portuguese also thought Sri Lanka looked appealing and decided to colonize parts of it. Galle Fort is built upon a peninsula that juts out into the Indian Ocean. Galle Fort is quite nice, but definitely more upscale than I typical prefer. The tourists were older and the focus was on boutiques and art galleries. The Fort was rather quiet at night, though it was nice to go strolling through town to see the old Dutch architecture. The two main attractions are the Fort walls and the lighthouse. At sunset, everyone walks the Fort walls and the sunset is stunning against the old walls. If nothing else, Galle Fort is a beautiful and easy place to relax. The food is also excellent here. For breakfast is enjoyed perhaps the best coffee, fresh bread, and hoppers at Serendipity Cafe. Dinner was kottu at Hula-Hula near the Fort walls.

Nearby is Unawatuna, a little beach city near Galle Fort. I went for a day and really enjoyed it. Unawatuna is a beach paradise, and while there are a lot of tourists (and locals), it was still laid back and fun. It’s only 15 minutes away by bus at a cost of 20Rs (15¢). Tuk tuks will try to charge 300-500Rs ($2.50-4), but the bus is fun and the walk to the beach from the main road is full of interesting shops. Just walk out the main gate of Galle Fort to the bus station. Bus employees will ask you were you want to go and steer you to the correct bus. The ticket man on the bus will tell you were to get off and take your money for the ticket. Almost anyone along the road will also help you flag down a return bus to Galle Fort.

I found the wood carvings around Galle and Unawatuna to be really cool. The little wood boats that a man hand carved were all the rage with the local kids, but I was fascinated by the traditional masks called Vesmuhunu (“Devil Masks”). I ended up buying two of the masks from a lady who’s husband carves them buy hand, one for subduing enemies and bringing friendship and the other to bring peace, harmony and prosperity. Let’s see if they work!

I had never been to a tea plantation before or visited a tea factory. Tea is everywhere in Sri Lanka because, well, they are super famous for it. Ever since the British colonized Sri Lanka and re-named it Ceylon for who-knows-why, they have been growing tea. Coffee might have been the main product if it were not for James Taylor in the 1860s. The humidity, cool temperatures, and rainfall in the country’s central highlands around Nuwara Eliya provide a climate that particularly favors the production of high quality tea.

Tea is about 2% of Sri Lanka’s economy—about $700 million annually—and employs about a million people. Tea is picked by hand by very poor people. They work very fast, pinching the new growth off and throwing in the bag attached to their backs with amazingly speed.

Most plantations have tea factories. This allows them to process the tea immediately after harvesting, making for a better, higher quality tea. The tea is brought the factory where it is placed in troughs to dry for several hours. This process is known as withering and removes excess moisture in the tea leaves. Workers will rotate the tea leaves periodically to make sure they dry evenly.

Once withered, the tea leaves are rolled, twisted and parted, which serves as a catalyst for the enzymes in the leaves to react with the oxygen in the air, especially with the production of black tea. This can be done by hand, though machines are more often used. The leaves are rolled on circular brass or wooden battened tables and are placed in a rotating open cylinder from above. After the rolling is finished, the leaf particles are spread out on a table where they begin to ferment at room temperature. Temperature, humidity and the duration of fermentation determine the flavor of the tea and requires a great deal of attention to avoid the tea losing its taste. Fermentation turns the green colored tea into dark colors.

Once the fermentation is complete, the tea is then fired using artificial heat. This helps the tea retain its flavor after the fermentation process is complete. Stems are removed and used as fertilizer for the tea plants.

When the firing process is complete, the tea is ready to be sorted. Grading, according to size in Sri Lanka, then takes place as the tea particles are sorted into different shapes and sizes by sifting them through meshes. Finally, the teas are weighed and packed into tea chests or paper sacks and then given a close inspection. Tea that fails inspection is discarded, regardless of its quality (this is why Ceylon tea is so well known for its quality). The tea is then sent to auction in Colombo. The Sri Lanka Tea Board will check and sample each shipment after the completion of packing to ensure that only the finest teas are exported. Then the tea is exported around the world.