A generous client treated me to a suite at the Fasano Las Piedras in Uruguay. I loved almost everything about this uber-posh resort in the hills above Punta del Este. The modernist bungalows, paired with a converted hacienda main building, were a revelation, and I savoured the impressive ensemble from the moment of arrival. I padded barefoot around my flagstone-floored room like it was my fourth home and rode the golf cart to the lodge like I was Hemingway on safari.

But it weirded me out that the help acted like I could have them killed if they displeased me. I found awkward their stiffness and their practiced posturing of pedestalizing my every whim. (Call it false modesty, but I don’t feel a request for a little more pepper on my gnocchi requires a ceremony rivalling the changing of the guard.)

So, to my next waiter or bell hop: please, just act like you’re a nice, confident person, my equal in every basic way, who happens, at this moment in time and under these circumstances, to be paid to look after me. We’ll get along just fine, and if you make me feel like a million bucks, I’ll endeavour — as Michael J. Fox’s concierge character put it in “For Love or Money” — to leave a tip so big it feels like passing a kidney stone.

Deal?

[Click to enlarge above panoramic photo -- my first effort with the wow-inducing and oddly named Dermandar app for iPhone]

I’m loving Mongolia. Yesterday I stood in a stockroom containing US$2 million worth of de-haired cashmere, combed, carded, teased and fluffy. It was taupe, and cream, and bursting the drawstring tops of stagecoach-ready sacks piled ceiling-high. I’d like to think it was destined to be knit into sweaters for gods and demigods. But I know it’ll end up, ill-fitting and pilled, on the backs of dolts like you and me who haven’t got even 10% of the requisite appreciation for this exceptional fibre, and who (to boot) are morally unworthy to possess such a precious, rare and laboriously-had commodity.

Okay, maybe I’m taking my job too seriously. But they’re paying me to make a big deal out of cashmere. That’s my reason for being here. So I’m practicing.

San Salvador, Bahamas, a sandy coral cay that would meet the specs for Desert Island Discs, was the first land Chris Columbus sighted in the New World, on October 12, 1492. “I believe Japan is only a short distance to the west,” he wrote in his logbook. (Really.)

Some 189,000 days later, I awoke at San Salvador myself, 200 yards off the beach in the anchored 55-foot sloop Far Niente, which belongs to my best friend from university, Chris Robbins. It was the Fourth of July, and for two reasons, I greeted the day with a feeling of disorientation not unlike Columbus’s.

Firstly, it was a strange place to be on American Independence Day. The Bahamas are Commonwealth islands first settled by loyalists who fled the American colonies at the time of the 1776 revolution. Secondly — and far more significantly — at 36 years old, this was the first time I’d celebrated the annual Yankee victory party as anything other than a full-fledged, red-blooded American.

Though I am a California dude by birth, six months ago I voluntarily became a British subject (I still hold US citizenship, too, as dual nationality is allowed by both countries). I’ve lived in England almost eight years, going from work permit to work permit, so taking UK citizenship was practical. It also felt natural; it was something I wanted. (That I got it done in time to vote Tory in May’s general election was a bonus.) But still it felt weird to be a Brit on this hallowed American holiday.

At midday on the Fourth of July, in a rubber dinghy floating above San Sal’s barrier reef, I set aside my national identity issues and cinched up my scuba gear. Chris was taking me on a wall dive. We sank our wet-suited selves — gurgle, glub, glub — 30 feet till we were standing atop the dead coral in our fins. Then we swam a few strokes seaward and the bottom dropped out: we were suspended, like cartoon characters who’d run off a cliff, over an unfathomable expanse. Although I’m a certified diver, I’m definitely not a regular denizen of the deep, and by the time we got to 70 feet under I began to feel drunk and dizzy — the symptoms of nitrogen narcosis — and I made slowly for the surface, holding eye contact with a barracuda during part of the ascent.

Back on board Chris’ Far Niente, we hoisted the Stars the Stripes and set a course for Rum Cay, making the 25 nautical-mile crossing in four hours. And here, dear reader, please grant me a conventional British whinge with an American tinge. Because the major thing a West Coast native leaves behind when he’s transplanted to Blighty isn’t great Mexican food or the right to turn right on red. It’s cultural references. About Rum Cay (pop. 60, maybe 90 if you include visitors), I could just tell you “Man, it’s straight out of a Jimmy Buffet song!” Buffett is a Gulf Coastal balladeer who sings about boats, beaches and bars and reportedly earns $100 million a year; according to Rolling Stone he’s the 7th richest rock musician in the world. In America he’s a legend, but in Britain, he’s nobody from nowhere.

Being unable to make reference to Buffett in a British context is, I admit, irksome, even alienating, but since I had never heard of Beckham until 2003, I’ll forgive you — just go to YouTube next time you’re feeling gloomy and listen to “[Wastin’ Away in] Margaritaville” or “The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful.” Then you’ll catch my drift.

For Independence Day revels, the colourful cast of Rum Cay locals set ablaze a dried coconut “burning man” on the beach that night and launched a thundering sortie of  fireworks over the assembled crowd of yachties and fishermen. And as the bombs burst in the air, for the first time all day, I felt damn truly, and damn proudly, American.

Right then, my old buddy Chris (I still cannot bring myself to say “mate”; it just sounds bizarre coming out of my mouth) asked me whose side I’d take if, hypothetically, Britain and America went to war. I replied that it might depend on the reason for the war, and whatever personal principles or possessions of mine were at stake. My response astonished me. A lifetime habit of reflexive Americanness, cultivated from grammar school (“I pledge allegiance to the flag…” we’d recite every morning, just as you’ve seen it in films), had apparently lapsed.

Introspectively, I realised: I now have two national loyalties and there is more than enough room in my heart to feel profound attachment and gratitude to both great nations. Like the treble and bass of the tape deck on the Ford Tempo I got when I turned 16 in Los Angeles, or the CD player of the Nissan Figaro I drive in London, there’s no conflict: these two national timbres sound good together.

Anyhow, I thought to myself as the firework smoke dispersed into the balmy Bahamian night, with a bit of luck, that shared God (the one so often mentioned in my two countries’ patriotic songs) won’t ever be forced to choose between blessing America and saving the Queen — and neither will I.

There *is* something about old spa towns. Maybe it’s just the exaggerated power of suggestion induced by knowing that generations and legions of people have been drawn from far and wide to a particular place to have a particular experience.

Druskininkai is in southeastern Lithuania, near the borders with Poland and Belarus, and people get here in cars and buses from all three countries.

In Soviet times, there was a full-service aqua health park in Druskininkai. I’m standing in front of the mosaic mural at the entrance to it in the nearby photograph. Now the park is dilapidated but I like walking its grounds. I imagine buying it and bringing it back to life — which would be a very health-spa thing to do, really.

I picture Druskininkai in its mid-20th century prime, filled with workers on holiday “trying to cram lost years into five or six days,” in Jimmy Buffett terms — a Commie ROAD TO WELLVILLE, as it were, animated by a Soviet pseudoscience every bit as hopeful and hopeless as Kellogg’s Michegonian variety.

I get it, though. Whatever side of the Iron Curtain you’re on, we all want to live forever.

Warsaw, Poland — I’m just capping off a 5-day solo ramble (more accelerated than an amble, you see) to Ukraine and Poland. I travelled with only a daypack and an iPhone 4, and it was the freest I’ve felt on the road in years. This is in spite of a tight schedule and a lot of ground to cover. Here are my lessons, plus a few key app recommendations.

But first, a paragraph of background. My ancestors on my mother’s side are from somewhere near Lviv, in present-day Ukraine. I’ve been curious about the place for years, especially since visiting Kyiv last December to speak at a conference where the director of tourism for Lviv presented some beautiful slides of his city. I decided to use Lviv as destination one of a mini-Eastern European odyssey.

I started the trip in Vilnius, Lithuania, where I’m based for the summer. I booked the trip largely through Kayak.co.uk, a site which in conjunction with its app, continues to impress me and become a go-to service for flight reservations, and Booking.com, which also has a superb app for finding and booking hotels.

Vilnius is still a backwater, bless it, as is Lviv, so getting from A to B took two hops, and this is where travelling with only a daypack as carry-on came into its own. I had a 30-minute connection time in Riga (simple, as Air Baltic dominates this airport) and a 60-minute connection in Kyiv in which I had to clear customs and change terminals. A cakewalk, in the end.

(Aside: Ukrainian International Airlines has one of the most terrific web services I’ve used, including a button I clicked which put me straight through, at 10 o’clock at night, to an English-speaking agent; I called beforehand to get a better sense of the terminal change I was faced with. The UIA site does have an irritating animated stewardess Toast overlay pop-up thing, but at least she’s hot.)

You must understand that one reason I travel is to break with routine, so I value interesting hotels over conventionally nice ones. A comfortable bed, a window that opens and Wi-Fi are the primary amenities I need; most everything else is optional — though hot water is nice.

The Hotel George smack dab in the heart of Lviv, had hot water and local character in spades. I liked the place. Its highlight were the young women staffing the front desk. They were charming and helpful and, interestingly, worked 24-hour shifts, from 9am to 9am, which means service doesn’t flag due to handovers. The women liked this work pattern, too. Aligned to a natural cycle, they were more attuned to the flows of things, and then they had whole days off after each shift, so they could plan their own lives better. It will be nice when labour laws of advanced countries allow for this, which I’m guessing they don’t now.

After Lviv came a 10-hour train ride to Krakow, Poland, with a 7am departrue. I had a lower berth and the compartment to myself, and had stocked up on noshes like nuts and raisins and smoked sausage (and two litres of water) the night before. The only discomfort I had, in fact, was mental, as nobody spoke English and I was afraid I’d miss Krakow and end up somewhere else. Then I remembered I’d installed the free Europe Offline map, and so I used that to check the train journey’s progress. When the GPS showed we were drawing near Krakow, I packed up my stuff.

Krakow, once the imperial capital of Poland, impressed me with its grandeur — I did not expect the Wawel fortress, for instance — and comparisons with Prague strike me as very, very fair, including the throngs of tourists and the touts who love them. The rynok square at dusk was almost too vast and vibrant.

By the time I got to the Jewish quarter, it was dark and I my iPhone battery was dead. Feeling young, and not caring whether I slept that night, I checked into Nathan’s Villas, the first hostel I happened upon. Sitting in the lobby with the phone plugged in and typing on my Bluetooth keyboard (which tethers to the phone, I discovered only a day before the trip — now THIS changes everything) proved to be a talking point, and within 15 minutes, I’d made  three instafriends. The night, hot, then rainy, then fresh, was underway. Backpacker banter ensured. Good times, as the young people say.

In the morning there was a stoic, silent, tanned Japanese man about 50 years old in the breakfast room. Decked out in brightly coloured North Face-type garb, he prepared toast and jam like it was a tea ceremony, and then stared straight ahead as he ate while sipping from an insulated camping mug. He should have looked out of place but he didn’t, and noticing this cheered me greatly, and I thought to myself, fine, maybe I can keep doing this a few more years, too, at least now and then.

This trip reminded me how damned exciting the “people you meet” aspect of travel can be, and it made me sad to think how many years of it I’d foregone for one reason or another. If I could do my twenties over again, there’s no doubt I’d have more stamps in my passports and even more stories for my [posthumously published!] memoirs.

Bidding adieu this morning to my fellow travellers at Nathan’s, I flew LOT to Warsaw. There was no printer at Nathan’s so when I’d checked in online I opted for the “send boarding pass to mobile device” option. The QR-code on the iPhone screen couldn’t be read by the red laser scanner at the gate, as happens about half the time in my experience, so the one lady read the details off to the other lady and I got through just fine. The flight was swift but buzzy from the turboprop; the vibrations actually were strong enough to make The Killers’ Brandon Flowers’ voice stutter on my headphones. (BTW, has anyone else noticed that flight attendants are letting you listen to music during takeoff and landing nowadays, and going easy on the admonishments to switch your phone off before takeoff? I’m loving this apparent trend.)

Well…I’m going out now. Nighttime Warsaw. Dinner. And what else? Which brings me to my last and most important app recommendation for travellers: City Maps 2Go.

City Maps 2Go costs a buck or two and once you’ve installed it lets you download offline maps of a goodly number of the world’s cities. (A screen grab of the Lviv map, with my dropped pins, might be nearby if I’ve uploaded it correctly; I’m experimenting with WordPress mobile, since if I wait to write posts they usually never get written.)

Users of the built-in Google maps for mobile might at first be disappointed with City Maps 2Go, but stick with it. The “headlights” on the blue ball show you which direction you are facing (why doesn’t Google do this, or have I failed to toggle that feature?). Getting the lay of the land on the flight in (and what joy and advantage there is in preparing yourself for a place by engaging with the map before you visit), you can find points of interest already in the database or drop your own pins — as many as you’d wish, unlike the built-in map app — and label them; for instance, I put pins in for certain sights mentioned by the outstanding InYourPocket.com guides to Lviv and Krakow, the free PDF versions of which I’d downloaded to Drop Box and leafed through using PDF Expert.

The fact that you cannot query for directions or a route from point to point struck me at first as a bug and only later as a feature. In fact, this is brilliant, because it forces you to wander while at the same time making the wandering more efficient and thus more pleasurable. With City Maps 2Go, the only thing you know for sure is where you are, and even if you have a mind about where you’re going, you will need to make your own way there. Thus the emphasis shifts to the journey, to the exploration, which you can pursue as directly or circuitously as you wish. Since you’ve dropped your pins in advance to pre-map your territory, you’re still being purposeful. And yet you can’t get lost. You can only lose yourself.

That’s what I call travelling.

The Tube as it really is. "Wow," right?

The London Tube “Map” (which is really a diagram, because of its gross geographic inaccuracies) is beloved. Even the normally hyper-rational Edward Tufte seems to approve of it.

But I’ve always hated the damned thing, and seethed with resentment at the distorted view of London that’s been forced on me (and others) by its ubiquity. I understand that it’s elegant–using only horizontal, vertical and 45-degree lines–but it so obscures the true street-level layout of Europe’s largest city (as well as the transit time between lines at certain stations) that, according to one NYU researcher, the famous map (read: loathsome diagram) can cause 30% of all travellers to take a longer route than necessary.

Having lived in London for eight years, how many hundreds of times have I been one of these travellers? How many hours have I lost thanks to this lovely piece of iconic design (read: overhyped purveyor of misinformation)?

Fresh off the boat to London, I lived in Earl’s Court, on the Piccadilly Line. The Piccadilly Line opened in 1906, so I was able to use the 1924 edition of the London Underground map, which I printed in colour and carried with me. However, too much of the rail system was built after 1924 to make this eccentricity of mine sustainable. Reluctantly, I went back to the ubiquitous diagram.

Now, someone named Mark Noad has created an accurate Tube map. The Economist has written about it. I hope it catches on. I have downloaded the PDF to my phone and I’ll see if using it, instead of Mr. Beck’s fatally flawed legend, improves my public transport experience of London whenever I deign to take the Tube (like most Londoners, I prefer travelling by bus or foot).

Dispatch from Mangshi, China; Tue 4/2/02 9:16 AM; from the Heat Treatment ’02 series.

Dear Friends,

I never thought I’d say “Ahh, freedom,” upon crossing into Red China, but that’s exactly what I breathed to myself yesterday as we left Burma-slash-Myanmar after a whirlwind week in that repressed, impoverished, tarnished jewel of a country.

Burma, wrote Kipling, is unlike any place you’ve ever seen before.

Boy, and how.

In Rangoon, we dined at the home of a dentist turned antique dealer (more money in old ivory than new, I suppose). Pickled squid and spring rolls stuffed with glass noodles were my favorite dishes that night. We sat in cane-bottom chairs on the veranda drinking local beer, and were attended to by the two household servants. We felt like members of the British raj a century ago, except that rather than flout the native customs as they did, we embraced them, particularly with respect to dress.

Literally, dress, for that evening, and for the better part of the week, we wore the longyi wrap-around “skirts” favored by 97% of Burmese men and 99% of Burmese women. It felt awkward at first, I admit, but the longyi is purpose-built for the brutally hot climate and exceedingly comfortable. Also, I soon realized that we looked about as out of place wearing a skirt in Burma as one does wearing a Brooks Brothers suit in lower Manhattan. In other words, not a bit. Besides, the Burmese people seemed really to appreciate the overture, and so I felt much less like every other Western tourist traipsing through the Orient with a camera ’round his neck.

At Nyuang U jetty in Bagan, on the sandy south bank of the Irrawaddy River with the afternoon sun low in the sky, we watched men carry bags of cargo, one by one, down the gangplanks of moored ships. They tossed the sacks onto the beds of waiting ox carts who then pulled them sluggishly up the berm to drop off the load and return for more. Meanwhile, children bathed, fishermen fished, and women carried water in buckets balanced on their heads. Were it not for the sound of the diesel engines of the two ships, there would have been no way to tell we weren’t in the 19th century. No earthly way. Most of Burma is like that. It is quaint, and also sad.

In Old Bagan, we chewed betel nuts and took in the sunset while perched atop a 900-year old temple — one of hundreds of such temples located within a few square miles. (You haven’t lived, I tell you, until you’ve spit deep-red betel juice over the side of an ancient monument as the sun goes down over the dusty plains of Burma.)

Bagan is virtually unknown internationally (except to archeologists and such), but I predict it will become a top tourist attraction once Burma (which now calls itself Myanmar) opens up. If foreigners were allowed to own property in Burma, I’d buy a hotel in Bagan.

In Mandalay, we drank tea with Par Par Lay, a comedian who spent more than six years in jail for telling a joke that the government didn’t like. He was released a few months ago, and performs nightly (and indeed, discreetly) at his house, along with his brother, his cousin, and their wives. As a troupe they are known as the Moustache Brothers and are renowned in Burma. They told us that they are under regular surveillance by the secret police and live in constant fear of retribution to themselves and their family. Yet courageously, they go about their activities as if they lived in a free country.

From Mandalay, we wound our way up the infamous Burma Road, built at great human cost by Allied soldiers and Chinese and other local coolies during WWII, and rebuilt by drug lords in the last few years (all the swifter to carry opium by, you see).

Halfway through this leg, we relaxed in the British hill station of Pyin U Lwin at the Candacraig Hotel, built in 1907 as a lodging for the bachelor employees of the Bombay Burmah Teak Company. The seven-room inn is constructed more or less entirely of teak, and is, without a doubt, the most elegant hotel I have ever stayed in for $30 a night. The elegance and archaism of the place was enhanced by the fact that we arrived (I kid you not!) by horsedrawn carriage.

Our passage on the Burma Road was impeded only slightly by the five checkpoints we had to clear along the way. Going into it, we were greatly worried (having been warned by people who might know) that our cameras and film and notebooks might be confiscated at any of these checkpoints, and with them the many stories we will later tell in great detail, not all of them flattering to the Myanmar government.

But we emerged with all of our possessions unsullied and crossed the border from Muse, Burma to Ruili, PRC, yesterday evening, losing 1.5 hours on the time difference (why Burma is half a timezone off I’ll have to research; it certainly is novel, not to mention inconvenient). For some reason our car wasn’t permitted to cross, so we parked about a block away from the border and crossed on foot, bags in hand. Interesting sensation, to walk into another country.

Well, my dispatches should resume now. The Internet is illegal in Burma — even the American consulate, we learned when we reported our itinerary, is without access. Of course the twice- or thrice-nightly nationwide power outtages aren’t very good for computing anyway (we never went anywhere at night without flashlights), but at least you can buy Windows 2000 professional edition for 700 kyats (less than a U.S. dollar) in many stores. (I might have to devote a later dispatch or two to more of Burma and our adventures there; there’s just so much to tell).

We’ll be in China, working our way back to Kunming, until Friday, April 5, when we fly to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. There may not be email access there either, but other than that, I should be able to stay in touch through the end of April.

All the best,

Jeremy

Sat 3/23/02 12:28 PM

It was 90 degrees in the shade today.

Fortunately, we spent most of our time in the air conditioned sixth car of  the weekly government excursion train to the River Kwai Bridge.

The highlight of today’s 15-hour, $5 roundtrip rail adventure obviously was the bridge, which we were able first to walk across (whilst whistling the appropriate melody, of course), and then to cross while aboard the train. Beyond the bridge was another section of track, the section known as the Death Railway because of the incredible number of lives its construction claimed.

In the afternoon, we stopped at a town the name of which I didn’t catch. Here we drank milk straight from coconuts bought from street vendors and wandered the dusty backroads among a zillion stray dogs. Here also a strange thing happened:  as we browsed in a Video CD store, laughing at the amazing array of karaoke discs available in this desolate Thai town, we espied a monk in an orange robe coming toward the store. After making a purchase (no vow of silence, I guess, for this guy), he crossed the street and hopped into the backseat of, of all things, a waiting BMW sedan. Perhaps there’s something I don’t know about the monastic lifestyle.

Of course Thailand is full of things you don’t see every day. Such as kickboxing, Thai style, which we viewed at the Rajadamnern Stadium on Wednesday night. Thai boxers use very lightweight gloves. But they don’t seem to punch as much as they kick. They also spend a lot of time in a clinch kneeing each other in the gut. All this they do to music that sounds to my untrained ear like something Bin Laden might play in his cave (as distinguished from some other traditional Thai music we’ve heard which is very nice.). Interestingly, they also have ring girls who hold up the round numbers, but they are extremely conservatively dressed; supposedly the Thais are much more conservative than Bangkok’s reputation would have us believe.

The best fight we saw ended halfway through the first round. Red held Blue in a kind of headlock while he kneed him repeatedly in the stomach, lifting Blue’s feet off the mat — just like one sees in kid’s cartoons! — with each powerful upward thrust. After about four such thrusts, Blue collapsed in a heap and had to be removed from the ring on a stretch-frame litter, specially designed to roll right under the lowest rope. This was done in typical Thai fashion, which is to say with stunning alacrity. They didn’t even wait for Ferdi Pacheco the fight doctor to come down and make sure the guy was all right before carting him off.

Speaking of off, Chris and I are off to Burma dark and early tomorrow morning. We plan to spend about two days in Rangoon before traveling north to Mandalay then into China. I do not know what to expect from Burma email-wise, but I’ll write again as soon as I can.

Best regards,

Jeremy

Dispatch #2 from Kunming, China

Tue 3/19/02 8:46 AM

In this Chinese city of 3.3 million, there are few outward signs of communism.

On the contrary, Kunming is a grimy, bustling semi-metropolis teeming with commerce. It has more in common with what I expected to find, and did find, in Hong Kong than with what I expected from Red China.

There is a bank on every corner, and there are people buying and selling things literally everywhere. Even the walls of the pedestrian walkways that cross below busy intersections are lined with clothing dealers. There and in the many bazaars, if you show even the slightest interest in something, the proprietor often will punch the price into a pocket calculator and hold it up it to you. If you frown, he (or more typically, she) will hand over the calculator to let you lodge a counter offer. It’s a simple enough mechanism through which I’ve managed to make a number of transactions, all without need of exchanging a single word.

This is good, too, because hardly anyone here speaks English, and we’ve met only one or two folks whose skills approach partial fluency. We can’t read any of the signs, either. But somehow we’re getting on, and getting around, just fine. We have a map of the city that’s labeled in Chinese and English. When we get in a taxi we point with a pencil to the spot on the map (with the Chinese label) where we want to go. When we want to go home, we show the driver the card from our hotel which is printed in Chinese on one side.

There’s even a Wal-Mart in Kunming — three low-ceilinged storeys of merchandise priced so inexpensively as to make an American Wal-Mart feel like a Rodeo Drive boutique. Pop CDs for $1.25, bicyles for $14, and live eels — yes, live eels, and also some variety of aquatic turtle — for $1 per kilogram. I didn’t catch the prices on the dried fish (that aisle didn’t smell too good, so I didn’t tarry), though I noticed in the aisle-of-hanging-dried-sides-of-livestock (located next to the tupperware and thermos aisle) that for $4 you could buy what appeared to be the better half of a medium-size pig.

Which reminds me, unfortunately, I haven’t eaten yet and must now sign off and go do so. Actually, even if the ingredients don’t look so hot, Yunnanese food itself is quite good. The specialty of the province is a dish called across-the-bridge noodles. There’s an interesting story behind the name that makes the name make sense, but personally I think they should be called across-you-shirt noodles because that’s where the greasy things end up when I try to pick them up with chopsticks.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Jeremy

Sun 3/17/02 6:25 AM

Dear Friends,

We’re now in Kunming, capital of the Yunann province of the People’s Republic of China. We’ll be here only long enough to arrange permission and transportation for the Burma road, then we’ll head out. In the meantime, we’re enjoying spending $12 USD per night for a hotel room and $1.25 USD for all-you-can-eat buffets.

Yesterday we were in Macau was a colony of Portugal from some 400 years ago up until 1999 when they basically dumped it into Chinese hands. It’s now a Special Administrative Region of the PRC, as is Hong Kong, only its ties to the mainland government are stronger than those of HK. It’s ties to HK, however, are quite strong and of a more or less carnal variety.

Macau is to Hong Kong something like Atlantic City is to New York City and Philadelphia. Since about 90% of Macau’s deal is hookers and casinos, and seeing as we arrived on the 9am ferry and departed at 3 in the afternoon, Chris and I missed entirely what most visitors come to Macau entirely for. (The one taxi driver we had in Hong Kong who spoke any English explained to us that one can get, so to speak, more bang for his buck in Macau: “Thousand dollars in Hong Kong,” he said, “no happy. Thousand dollars in Macau — happy! happy! happy! Haw haw haw!” [a grand HK is about $150 USD]).

To the casual tourist’s eye, Macau consists of a lot of overcrowded, substandard high rises and a lot of overcrowded diesel buses filled with Chinese tourists (who are every bit as avid with their picture taking as the stereotypical Japanese tourists, let me tell you). Meanwhile, I had come to Macau expecting some kind of Sino-Latin feel. But other than bilingual signage in Portuguese and a number of mediocre “Spanish colonial” style edifices, I didn’t find what I was looking for.

There were a few highlights. The view across the harbor to the Chinese mainland from the Sao Paulo ruins was, as they say, breathtaking, even while shrouded in mist (the weather’s not been great so far this trip) which imparted a bit of ominous mystery.

On the advice of a German whom we met on the ferry, we ate lunch at the Clube Militar de Macau (special, higher non-member price: 130 palacas [20 bucks]). To my knowledge, Portugal is justly unknown for its cuisine, though the meal we had at the Club was quite tasty and perhaps the best Portuguese food I’ve chanced to eat. I especially liked the pickled broadbeans, which are like super-sized limas with a prominent black streak down the trailing edge.

The most interesting thing we found in Macau was a performance of a Chinese opera, which we stumbled upon on a market side street. It seemed an unlikely spot for such an event, but we rounded the corner and there it was, on an elevated, permanent stage, with a further elevated orchestra pit and bona fide PA system (because, I guess, the gongs and cymbals need to be louder than they already are). P.J. O’Rourke once described Chinese music as sounding like a truck full of windchimes colliding with a stack of oil drums during a bird call contest. The opera had a tinge of that but was altogether listenable, if inscrutable. There was but one other foreigner in the crowd, and we stood beside a pile of stinking durian fruit and watched the show for about ten minutes, thrilled by our first real Chinese cultural experience.

Now we’re in the PRC, but other than noticing that the newly minted currency features Mao (I mean, would the Germans, if they still had their own notes, put Hitler on them?), I’m reserving even first impressions.

Regards to all,

Jeremy