The view from my hotel room isn't a lot to talk about but in today's Beijing, it's pretty typical......

This is pretty much Beijing in the year 2006--construction literally everywhere--especially upward. This pit is the foundation for what will be an 88-story hotel/office building being prepared for the 2008 Olympics. That is the big topic over here and China is anticipating massive growth after the games.

Unfortunately much of this construction and progress is being fueled by coal-generated power thus the terrible pollution. My Gulf Coast sinus' cleared up in cold, clear Australia but this morning were acting up again so I guess I'll go back on Clarinex tonight.

A couple of notes on yesterday's trip to Tiananmen Square: It is listed as the world's largest outdoor square and I believe it. Again, the pollution blocks the image but the building is the Great Hall of the People. This is where Chairman Mao would review the October 1 Revolution parades that would march in front of the building 100 soldiers across and and as deep as you could see and they would parade for as long as six straight hours. Thousands and thousands and thousands of Red Army Guards--my Fordor's guide book says as many as 600,000 soldiers in one parade. What better way to let the people know you can crush them.

And in June 1989 this square was the scene of massive civil unrest and protests that culmunated in the killing of hundreds of students and bystanders. You've probably seen the footage--the tanks rolling in the streets and demonstrators lying down in front of them. CNN coverage was literally jerked from the air when the army moved in and disconnected their power generators--setting into play a series of events that have resulted, in part, in this blog and others being banned from the Internet in China.

Today things are a lot quieter and the biggest activity in the Square now is kite-flying. Literally hundreds of kites fill the space above the square.

On another side of the Square, Chairman Mao's mausoleum is located where his body can be viewed. It is only open in the mornings and I will probably try to visit--call it morbid curiosity or whatever.....

Something I found curious was the fact that street hustlers sell everything from paper kites to postcards but some of the most bizarre items were "Chairman Mao watches" with his photo on the face of the watch. I'm tempted to buy one just to say it came from Tiananmen Square but it seems very strange to me that a Communist icon would be promoted in such a blatant capitalist venture. But China, from what I've seen, is just that type of strange mixtures.

My first day at work here went very well--I have four students who seem to be very good and three of which speak very good English so the fourth will have the benefit of several translators. When we went driving on-road today I did get a good dose of Beijing traffic which has been characterized as the worst in the world. It isn't--but it's plenty bad. Still, it was a good day.

Until later.....

From what I've seen so far, Beijing is pretty amazing.......

I had a meeting with my contact--and translator--this morning and she speaks excellent English. The Chevron training facility here is state of the art--better than a lot of places where I've trained in the States. I mentioned that in a lot of ways it reminded me of the Texaco Heritage Tower in Houston--that really tall skyscraper--and she commented "You know I had the same impression." Turns out she was training there last summer and only got out three days before Hurricane Rita blew in. The world really is getting smaller fast.

Beijing is undergoing massive construction everywhere and the pollution is really bad. The picture above is the entrance to the Forbidden City and you can hardly see the giant picture of Chairman Mao in the center front.

This afternoon I found out the city center is further away that the map indicated so I simply found the nearest subway entrance, went down and paid my equivalnet of 30 cents and got on the train with the masses. Made it to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City about thirty mintues before the Forbidden City closed so I walked around looking at the parks and spent some time in the square itself.

One side note regarding this blog.....evidently the Chinese government is monitoring the Internet and censoring it so most blog sites are blocked. Ironically I can still post but I can't view it, or anybody else's, so if there are misspelled words or bad punctuation from here on out it's because I can't prufreed.

The Square itself is, as you'd imagine, massive. It's flanked on the four sides by the Forbidden City, the National Museum, the Great Hall of the People (government building) and Chairman Mao's mausoleum which I didn't get to view on Sunday but would kind of like to check out next weekend. It was hot here today and very humid--pretty much like Texas.

Well, it's been a long day and I'm tired. Gonna shower, go downstairs and eat--probably Chinese--and post again later. China looks very promising.....

I checked out of the hotel this morning and went to the restaurant for a coffee while I was waiting for the taxi and shot one last picture from the veranda. I think you can see why I was more than a little sad to leave this place.

The trip to Bangkok took about two hours and I made my connections and flights to Hong Kong and then arrived in Beijing around 9:00 pm. Can't tell you much about the city from my arrival except that it's big--very big--with some 15,000,000 people living here. The man who picked me up will be in the class here--I'm not sure if he's a student or the interpreter but he speaks perfect English so either way the class should go much smoother than in Thailand. The hotel here is part of the China World Trade Center complex and is four-star which means basically it's really nice.
The hotel is located about six blocks--easy walking distance--from Tiananmen Square, Chairman Mao's mausoleum, and the entranced to the Forbidden City so I have a lot close by. Tomorrow is Sunday and I have a morning meeting with the Chevron people but if I'm free in the afternoon I'll start prowling around and shooting pictures. It's been a long day, I'm tired, and I'm headed for the shower and bed.

Hopefully a lot more tomorrow......

Yeah, I know.....but I just gotta post it.....

The beachwalk along the Gulf of Siam is about three miles long and I try to walk one to two hours every evening and one particular stretch is called the "Walking Mile" and in it, you can find just about anything. The streets are full of vendors, bars, sex shows, Thai boxing matches, and you can imagine the array of people you find there.

Pattaya was a major rest and recreation spot for the U.S. Army and Navy during the Vietnam War and after the war ended and the military pulled out the town fell into hard times. To survive, they retooled the sex industry and for many years they were the tourist center for gay cruises and tours and, as the economy improved, the area expanded even further into wierdness. Today, the "Walking Mile" features streetwalkers, hookers, homosexuals, and even she-males. It's safe though, cause the Thais being the polite people they are, nobody bothers anybody else but it is a visual zoo to walk through. I came across the Lewenski Bar and couldn't help but take a picture. I'm sure you'll never find Hilary hanging around there.

Art plays a big role in daily life in Thailand. Even the busses are moving canvasses. This is also the 60th anniversary of the king's reign here--he's the longest reigning monarch in the world--and his and the queen's pictures are posted everywhere as he is almost universally admired by the Thais.

Tomorrow night (Friday) is my last night in Thailand and I really hate to leave but I'm also anxious to see what China will be like. I may or may not post tomorrow and if not, it will be early next week when I post from Beijing.

And if not, here's another delightfully tacky bar sign from Pattaya......

At least tomorrow you can go to work and tell people you know somebody who has "been there but ain't done that......"

Thailand has to be one of the neatest places on earth......

Today is Wednesday and the class here is half finished and things are getting smoother by the day. I have three really good students who speak almost no English but are really working hard and are a real pleasure to train with. Frankly the interpreter assigned to us wasn't all that useful and yesterday and today we just trained without him. The students speak Thai; I speak Texan English; and we all do a lot of drawing pictures and hand gestures and we're getting along just fine.

The Thai people are so friendly and gracious. the company caters in lunch every day and the students make a big ceremony of preparing the food and serving me first. Frankly I don't know what I'm eating much of the time but it sure tastes good. I learned a long time ago that you can be overly cautious to the point you don't enjoy yourself or, at some point you just jump in and experience the culture. I've jumped in and today I ate something fried--it tasted good--but it still had the skeleton inside it. I guess it's a culinary "don't ask...don't tell."

The countryside here is very rural but the roads are good and the scenery breathtaking. We drive through low-lying mountains covered with greenery and ever so often we pop over a hill and get a glimpse of the Gulf of Siam. The photo at the top of this post is of a coconut grove and the smaller green bushes, I'm told, are tapioca plants. You see the occasional farmer walking down the road with the Coolie hat and two large bundles balanced on a long pole. You go from modern to ancient so quickly here.

Until the next post......

What a peaceful sunset.....

The first day went reasonably well in Thailand but language is going to be a problem. The students are nice and are trying hard but using a translator just slows the whole process down to a crawl. I'm working for a company called Bangkok Industrial Gas and they're located out in the countryside so I'm seeing some of Thailand vastly different from Bangkok.

As you can see from the photo the facilities are very modern and up-to-date. Despite the first-day problems I'm going to enjoy this job. I'm already loving Thai food and, from the above photo, the scenery is breathtaking.

More as the week develops......

Check out the view from my room in Pattaya, Thailand.....

I left Melbourne early Saturday morning with frost on the ground and made a nine-hour flight over Indonesia and the Philippines to Hong Kong. Hong Kong from the air is really impressive--literally a city of skyscrapers built on a narrow beach at the base of mountains. I made the transfer and then a two-hour flight to Bangkok over Vietnam (I viewed Hanoi from above) and out over the Gulf of Tonkin. The water there is so blue and the sea so peaceful it's hard to believe that 40 years the incident that escalated the Vietnam War occured here.

I was met at the Bangkok airport by one of my students who does't speak any English and he made a two-hour drive down to Pattaya through the mountains to the beach. During the Vietnam War Pattaya was a major rest and recreation center for American soldiers and is today a major beach resort for American and European (and Australian) tourists. My hotel is a five-star and is really nice.

I was in Thailand last year and this is probably my favorite country in the world to visit. At Melbourne (wearing a jacket and long-sleeved shirt) I asked the ticket agent what it was like in Thiland this week and she told me "very hot, extremely muggy, and the food is way too spicy." I told her ".....sounds like Texas, book me!!!"

I am having some Internet problems and will have to change rooms this afternoon to get access in my room. Some guy this morning played around with my settings so I could post this but it makes me very nervous when people go into my computer settings so if there's not another post soon I'm having computer problems.

Keep your fingers crossed......

Finished Melbourne on a bright sunny note.....

The job here in Australia is finished and I'm almost half way through this trip. This has been a very good group--we had a lot of fun and saw quite a bit of this part of Australia. I lose my Internet account sometime today so this will probably be my last post until I get to Thailand Saturday night.

Until then.......

Notice anything unusual here???...


That's right.....the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car. So is the turn indicator, the windshield wiper, the gearshift and the seatbelt. As far as that goes...the streets are all on the wrong side of the road since they drive on the left side.
Today I had to drive a trainer across Melbourne to the airport and then drive back by myself in rush hour traffic. This is a photo of our training van so it was a vehicle I was used to but it was still an experience out there on their version of an Interstate during heavy traffic.
I've almost finished the second week of training and will be heading for SE Asia this weekend. The sun came out in full force today and it was a beautiful day to be out on the roads.

A funny thing happened on the way to work today......

The apartments where four of us are staying are located on the waterfront at the entrance to a long wooden pier named Gem Pier which has various boats tied to it including an old World War II Royal Australian Navy minesweeper named the HMAS Castlemaine. This morning as we met to drive into work and as we were waiting on the final student an old man walked by and started talking to us. Turns out he was a crewmember on the minesweeper during the war and now works as a volunteer giving tours to school children and veteran's groups. As we talked he asked if we wanted to have a private tour and we jumped at the chance. He took us throughout the old ship and really gave us a good tour. He was 85 years old and climbed up and down the ladders faster than we could. We ended up arriving at work almost an hour late but it was a neat and unexpected start to the day.

Williamstown is home of one of the largest shipbuilding companies in Australia and Asia and continues to build warships today. The old minesweeper was built here in 1943. The picture at right is the Old Salt and three of our class students. Today the sun finally came out and things are drying up and maybe even warming up a little but it is still cold and windy. In the afternoon we drove into Melbourne city and it is in many ways a lot like Houston with tall skyscrapers built of mirrored glass windows.

The first day went fairly well.....

We drove around--mostly along the coast today---and are off to a good start. The class consists of three Australians and two New Zealanders so everybody speaks English this time around. The weather is still wet and cold but late this afternoon the sun did break out so maybe we'll have better weather tomorrow.

As we were driving today we came across this strange tower along the seawall. It's over a hundred years old and it was called a "time tower" that dates back to the era of the wooden sailing ships that docked here at Melbourne. If you look closely at the top of the tower there is a ball--actually its a metal ball and in the old days the timekeeper would hoist the ballup to the top of the spindle and everyday at 1:00 he would drop the ball down the shaft onto a metal plate making a loud ring that could be heard throughout the harbour. The captains on the sailing ships would set their sailing schedules and track the tide levels based upon this loud ring every day. The tower itself was built by convict labor brought in from England and the colonies.

As you might imagine this area was extremely important to the British back then and Fort Gellibrand was established here to protect the coast from foreign invasions as well as to provide some level of security against piracy on the high seas. To the left is one of the 1867 coastal cannons that was used to protect Melbourne Harbour. Today Fort Gellibrand is a training center for Australian commando units and is still an active military installation--the oldest in Australia.

Hoping for sunshine tomorrow and a little warmer weather.....

Melbourne is wet and cold but the harbour view is something else.....

I made the short flight from Canberra to Melbourne Saturday morning, rented a van at the airport and drove (left side) across town to historic Williamstown where I have a small apartment on the Melbourne Harbour. The above picture was taken from my room patio. The weather here is cold and wet and overcast but the scenery more than makes up for it. On Saturday I walked several miles along the prominade and took a short bus tour around the town.

Williamstown was established in the early 1800s and for many years was the major point of entry for immigrants--much like Galveston or Indianola in Texas. This is where many of the convicts sent from England arrived and many of the old buildings seen above were built by convict labor. This is also the location where most of the miners arrived in Australia for the Gold Rush of the later 1800s so it was a pretty wild place for decades. Today it is an upscale historical community full of restaurants and shops.

Despite the fact it's mid-winter, the landscape is green. In the above picture you can see the outline of the city of Melbourne in the background--this is as close to sunshine as I've had the two days I've been here.

I start work tomorrow so the vacation time is over for now.....

It's been a good week.....
Tomorrow will be the final day of the Canberra job and it's been a good start to the trip. Today we drove up above the city to an observation post and here's a group photo of the class. We've had a lot of fun, learned a little, and seen a lot. This afternoon we drove out on the western side of the city into the countryside into an area known for an abundance of wild kangaroos and yes, we did see some out in a field but they were too far away to photograph. In many parts of this area they are so abundant they are considered nuisance animals and very dangerous on the highways especially at night--much like deer in some parts of Texas. Actually I did see one close up but it had been run over by a car. They obstruct traffic, destroy crops and generally are a pain.

The photo at left pretty much says it all. Canberra is the national capitol of Australia yet has a population of less than 300,000. It only became the capitol in 1927 so is really less than a century old and you can see in the photo it is beautifully planned, very modern, and very clean. Despite the cold weather this is the type of days we've had all week--clear, sunny and baby-blue skies. The mountains literally ring the city and will have snow caps from time to time during the winter.
More later.....

On the job finally:

Things are off to a good start so far. I have a class of five students: two from Australia, one from Fiji, one from Bunei and one from Japan. Unfortunately three of them speak very little English and translators weren't provided so the training is a challenge. They're a good group, though, and we're having a little fun as we do the training. Canberra is a city literally built around a lake and almost anywhere you drive you have beautiful views of water. The scene to the left is typical. The weather here is freezing at night but into the 60's during the day and so far we have had beautiful sunny afternoons. Some of the stores here are actually promoting "Christmas in July" sales.

This afternoon we took a break at a lakeside park and visited a pioneer cabin which I found to be surprisingly similar to the pioneer Texas homesteads I've seen in South Texas. I've been told my job in Melbourne next week will be even more scenic than here but I've been very impressed with Canberra. The city itself is less than 100 years old and is laid out in large circles and the thing that stands out most with me is the cleanliness. There is no trash, grafitti, or slum areas. The traffic is very light and drivers (and everybody in general) are especially friendly and courteous. It is a very liveable city.....

Arrived in Canberra and, due to the International Date Line, made it here on July 8. It's mid-winter here--freezing at night and in the 60's during the day but I arrived around noon and the sun was out and I walked about two miles to the Australian War Memorial and spent several hours there. Walked back to the mid city and they were observing the "annual running of the bulls in Pomplona, Spain" by having an "annual running of the sheep in Canberra." On the same order as the Spanish event, here they run sheep through the midtown, only since sheep are docile and don't actually charge anything, the Australians dress up and actually chase the sheep blowing plastic horns. The sheep then run along the pedestrian mall and through the sidewalk cafes while the onlookers cheer them on. Probably not something Hemmingway would have written about but nevertheless an unusual custom. I suspect alcohol was involved.....

2006 Asia Trip

From July 6 through August 14 this year I will be traveling and working in Asia for my company, Smith System. I will be working with the U.S. State Department in Canberra and various companies in Melbourne; Thai Air Products in Thailand; and Chevron in Beijing, China.

This will be a five-week trip and I plan to spend some layover time in Beijing and a few days in Hong Kong on the way home in August. During my trip I will be carrying my laptop and my digital camera and hope to maintain a fairly regular blog, including pictures, of my experiences. Tentatively, my schedule is as follows:

July 10-14 Canberra, Australia
July 17-21 Melbourne, Australia
July 24-28 Pattaya, Thailand
July 31-August 10 Beijing, China
August 10-13 Hong Kong

If you're interested please check in on my journals from time to time and feel free to post comments. As usual, when I'm overseas I appreciate emails and you may contact me through my email address: gwbrown@gwbrown.com.

This journey begins in Canberra, Australia............