Seasons Greetings---Chinese Style......

Due to the Chinese government blocking all blogs, Tweets and Twitters, I was unable to access my blog site during the two-week trip but am posting one continuous journal of what was a pretty successful job and fairly interesting trip. This post is a summary “after the trip.” Usually I post as the trip progresses, so it reads in reverse but this entry will be front to back.

I made it to China in fairly good shape—long trip but did a personal first in that I’ve now flown over the North Pole. The plane left Chicago headed north and didn’t change course until it reached Beijing. I didn’t even know they did commercial flights on that route but I can say I’ve done it. Of course, it was at 37,000 feet and at night, but I did it.

Fuzhou is about three hour’s flight time from Beijing and is right on the east coast. The weather when I arrived was in the mid-70s very sunny. It would get colder, but never below the 50s and was often overcast which, combined with the terrible pollution over here, made for often gloomy days.

I met my translator and a company official at the airport and they drove me to the hotel. I had slept well on the plane from Chicago to Beijing and surprisingly had little effects of jet lag on this trip. The translator is a young guy who teaches at a local language institute and speaks English well and translates really well. He offered to meet me on Sunday and see a little of the city and I agreed.

We took a taxi over to the The Mazu Temple—which in Chinese translates to "Meizhou Ancestral Temple of Queen of Heaven Temple".

It was actually a beautiful park and the temple was a seven-story building that was filled with over 500 statues of historical importance to the history of this area. Within the walled-compound were several smaller temples for worshiping and I was a little surprised at the number of Chinese who are Buddhists and worshiping that day.

I noticed this at Xian several years ago—there seems to be a general tolerance by the government for most religions so long as the people use them for personal worship—not political activity.

After spending time at the temple we walked around the “White Pagoda”—a beautiful slender building with several stories. Within the compound were various lakes and waterfalls and the largest lake had a very large statue of Buddha. Monks were walking around everywhere and conducting rituals using incense and it was almost like I was back in Thailand—this really is not a China we see on TV.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that here—compared to Beijing—the architecture is distinctly more “Chinese.” In Beijing, except for the Forbidden City and Sun Temple, everything was chrome and glass. That is definitely true in Fuzhou also but they haven’t torn down everything to replace it with modern structures. Here, you still see the old-style buildings with bamboo walls and tiled roofs that are turned up on the corners. Red is definitely the main color here. There is red everywhere along with gold tinting. You also see a lot of orange but red is the predominant color everywhere you look.

We had lunch at a local shop—a typical “noodle shop” and then took a bus over to the Old City—officially called “Three Lanes and Seven Alleys.”

It was kind of interesting but very commercial. They had taken a section of the city and tried to recreate it as it would have looked in the 1800s only now the shops are upscale boutiques. And yes, there was a damned Starbucks coffee shop there.

As you wander through the streets and alleys, though, there are life-sized statues everywhere

and it does give you some idea of what the “old China” must have been like. One of the things I particularly liked was a museum built in the house of one of China’s heroes—Lin Zexu.

He was the person who stood up to the British and other foreigners to stop the opium trade in China. For decades, opium had been used to control the Chinese governments and people and he took a stand against it and succeeded.

Throughout the day I only saw maybe three other “Westerners.” There is really no tourist industry developed here and nobody seems to speak English. Today, the emphasis is on industry—petroleum and heavy construction—but historically this has been a shipbuilding area. It is very old—the temple today dated back to the 900s A.D. and Marco Polo is thought to have traveled through here. Fuzhou is located in a valley with mountains literally surrounding the city. They are not towering mountains like the Rockies but still very beautiful and green.

Also surprising to me was the fact that Christmas is a major holiday over here. Decorations are everywhere—including Santa Claus—and the hotel has been adding more and more lights and decorations every day I’ve been here. It seems to just be a holiday event with no religious connotations—you know, kind of like we celebrate it in the States. But the lighting displays are amazing and beautiful.

The commercial area around the hotel is very upscale which, in any language, means expensive. I am really amazed at the number of “tea shops” here. They all sell teas from specific farms in the mountains and this area is evidently one of the better known parts of China for quality tea. Every shop has a “tea table” where you sit down and the hostess makes various small cups of tea for you to sample. There is no obligation to buy but the purpose is to push their particular teas. We have been eating lunch during class days at a nearby hotel and they have one of these tea tables in the lobby and we tried some of the local teas.

The park adjacent my hotel is very large, well maintained and beautifully landscaped.

It is also full of people at all hours. Personal safety here seems to not even be an issue. People seem very comfortable and unafraid and I have felt no concerns despite the fact I am almost always the tallest person in the crowd and draw a lot of looks. Nobody has been antagonistic however. The window from my hotel room overlooks the park and every morning before sunrise I can see people practicing Tai Chi and I mean hundreds of people doing it. There will be large groups and smaller clusters of people doing it in unison throughout the park. When I’ve gone down there in the mornings to walk, I also see individuals throughout the park in a crouching stance doing the routines. Two of the more unusual were two really elderly women practicing in unison with swords. Not really martial in nature, but it just seemed unusual. Sometimes they do it with fans and that can be really pretty when they do it in unison.

In the evening you can hear music from different areas inside the park and there will be groups of people dancing—the choreographed dancing to the traditional Chinese music.

My first class was a group of three truck drivers from different regions around Fuzhou and they were a good group. The main problem Monday, however, was that whoever prepared the materials for this trip used Japanese PowerPoint disks instead of Chinese. After scrambling around I found a 2007 Chinese disk but it didn’t match up exactly with the new Chinese manuals—and my updating their materials was the main reason I’m here. So, after Skyping and emailing frantically, I arranged for new disks to be shipped immediately. I guess that’s part of the reason my company uses me for troubleshooting jobs.

The materials issue, however, pretty much shot the entire morning so I was a half-day behind before I got started. Then, on the second day, our car broke down in heavy Chinese traffic and we ended up trying to push it to the curb with taxis, motorcycles, cars and trucks whizzing by just inches from us honking.

Damned American-made Buick..... That issue pretty much shot the afternoon of the second day. After that, though, it got better except that I was constantly playing make-up.

For lunch every day we went to a hotel restaurant near the office building for lunch. This is truly “local” Chinese food and nothing like what I’ve eaten at home or even in Beijing.

The table has a large rotating platform and the food is set on it in large bowls and the waitress just keeps adding and taking away the food so there is a constant stream of different plates being rotated around the table. So far I’ve at least tried everything and have eaten quite a bit of other foods I don’t really know what they were. I’ve gone sparingly on the hog intestines soup and did try the donkey meat. The donkey meat was cut into thin strips and I can’t really tell you what it tasted like because most of the foods are heavily seasoned with Chinese spices and glazes. The thought didn’t really “turn my stomach” since I’ve tried camel and zebra in Kenya. The best I can describe it is that it tasted kind of like beef.

Except for when I’m in Africa, I rarely watch TV on these trips. When I was in Croatia last spring I never turned on the TV in my room—I prefer to get out and walk around whenever I can. I didn’t turn on the TV here until Friday night and was surprised to see the CNN coverage of the Nobel Prize award to the Chinese dissident. China has the dissident in jail and has put his wife under house arrest to prevent her from going to Norway and accepting the prize but you can sit over here and watch the ceremony on CNN while all blogs, Tweets and Twitter accounts are blocked. Go figure.

The class wrapped up Saturday and with Sunday off, I planned to walk over to a huge city park with some temples but the weather turned really ugly. Not so cold, but rainy and overcast to the point I could hardly see the park downstairs from my room window. By afternoon it was still overcast but the rain had stopped so I walked over—about a 30 minute walk—and it was worth the efort.

It is actually a huge lake and is the focal point of the city with regards to landmarks. Inside the lake is a large island and several footbridges go onto the island. On the island is a museum, a temple, several botanical gardens and carnival rides including a monorail.

I spent about three hours wandering around and thoroughly enjoyed it but wasn’t feeling really well so I headed back to the hotel and started getting ready for next week’s class.

Overnight, I started getting sick—light touch of food poisoning—and started antibiotics but spent the night restless with night sweats. By morning I felt much better but was really fatigued.

I had met my three new students last Saturday at the final dinner and when we started Monday morning all went much smoother. The Chinese PowerPoint disks had arrived and the vehicle seemed to be working ok.

The hotel has constantly been adding lights and Christmas decorations every day for the last week and is now decked out beautifully. The lobby is ringed with Poinsettias and in the hallways they are playing Christmas music—the good stuff like the old Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra Christmas classics. Even the restaurants are fully decorated with gingerbread houses and tinsel. It’s really neat and I was thinking to myself that I haven’t enjoyed the Christmas season this way in years—totally relaxed and pleasant. I finally figured it out: there is no commercialization; no Christmas sales; no season specials; nothing for sale relating to the holiday. It really is more pleasant.

Strange I should have to go half-way around the world to experience a commercial-free Christmas. Last year I spent Advent and the holiday season in Cameroon—a predominantly Muslim country—and they did the same thing including a huge company Christmas party. This year I’m spending Advent in a country with an atheist government and heavy Buddhist population celebrating the season again.

On Tuesday we drove out to the east part of Fuzhou near the huge shipbuilding complex on the East China Sea. The area is, as you’d expect, heavily industrial but there is also a really beautiful park literally carved into the side of the mountain that features an old pagoda on the mountainside that was really interesting.

The pagoda I’d seen downtown the week before was old—dating to around 900 AD—but this was far older, even by China’s standards. The city itself may be as old as 2,000 years and promotes the fact that Marco Polo passed through here—probably at this site where the shipyards have been historically located. This particular pagoda was reportedly built by the wealthy wife of an ancient Chinese sea captain so she could watch out over the bay and ocean to see his returning ship. The park is full of life-sized sculptures (something I’ve seen in several locations here) and one is a sculpture of her sitting at the base of the pagoda, called the Luoxing Tower.

Banyan trees are common here and I understand they are really seeds that get lodged into cracks and crevices of a host tree then grown out and hang down like airborne roots. They are sacred in virtually all Asian religions and can grow large enough that one tree can cover 2/3 of an acre. There was a big one at the park—not that big—but what was unusual was that it was growing sideways out of the side of the mountain.

This hillside was also the scene of a battle in the 1880s in which the Chinese army fought the French navy—one of the rare occasions when France actually won a battle and destroyed nearly a quarter of the Chinese navy here. There are more sculptures here commemorating that battle from the Chinese point of view and, is often the case in China, these sculptures are actually larger than real life. What was really unusual here was that the park combined stone sculptures with the actual cannons used in the battle creating a really unique and effective exhibit. Sometimes it really amazes me when I realize I get paid to do this.

On Wednesday it started raining almost continuously and the temperature dropped into the 40s. The second week of training so far has continued to progress much more smoothly but Thursday was even colder and wet. On Friday it was still cold but the rain had stopped so we drove south of the city to the company terminal and did some exercises using one of their trucks.

The mountains surrounding the city are really beautiful although they don’t anywhere compare with the height of U.S. mountain chains. The terminal was directly in the center of the huge industrial section—including shipbuilding, petrochemical and heavy construction—and as always the case the area was pretty grimy. What was neat, however, was that right through the middle of it all there was a beautiful four-lane boulevard with a landscaped median and palm trees on both sides. Each side of the road had a walking/bicycle path and small parks were located about every quarter mile. Stone statuary is everywhere. Behind all of this were oil terminals, construction equipment, and cranes but the highway itself was an oasis of beauty in the middle of it all.

They have built tunnels everywhere since the mountains literally ring everything except the seaside. The tunnels are of different sizes—some for large trucks, some for autos and even really small ones for motorcycles and bicycles.

Friday night I was invited to a dinner with the company officials at the International Trade Center and it was really nice. This province of China is especially known for its teas and both of my classes have given me beautiful tea collections and the company also gave me one. I may be coming back to the States with two or three kilos of tea!!!

Saturday was the final training day and I flew out late that evening, caught a taxi to the Beijing airport Hilton where I rested a few hours and then made my connections to Chicago and Houston. My flights all made with no delays and I arrived to snow and freezing temperatures in Chicago but managed to get upgraded to first class for the flight to Houston. All in all, not a bad trip home.

I did five international jobs this past year: Rwanda/Kenya; Croatia; Indonesia; Canada and China. To all those who followed me and emailed occasionally I sincerely appreciate it.

And to all, a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

I'm Flying to China in Early December.....

.....for two weeks of training with the Fujian Shi-Hua Transport Company in the port industrial city of Fuzhou--almost directly across the East China Sea from Taipei, Taiwan. According to the information I've found, the climate is almost exactly the same as in Houston--hot, muggy summers and warm, temperate winters--which means I should be missing the frigid, terrible winters in much of China during December.

It will be a two-week job so I'll be back a week before Christmas. Fuzhou doesn't seem to have much tourist-oriented attraction but there are several mountains surrounding the city and some old monuments and a mountaintop Buddhist temple. I only have a couple of layover days so I'll be seeing as much as I can.

Fuzhou is also a very old city--over two thousand years--and historically been a major shipbuilding port for China. I leave on December 3 and will be back in Friendswood on December 19.

On Our Next-to-Last Night We Took Our Interpreters Out to Dinner…..And Then It's Pekanbaru to Jakarta to Hong Kong to Los Angeles to Houston.....

…..and again it was the Kayu Manus and again, it was Country and Western Night. The interpreters have been a great help for the past four weeks. They were hired from a private company and were, for the most part, very capable and helpful assistants for the training.

Today we got all three programs together for a group photograph. It’s been a pretty good four weeks and I’m not at all anxious to leave here. I’ve had better jobs but I’ve also had a lot, lot worse and Indonesia has been a good one.

Yesterday the Australian and I walked nearly two hours after work—down past the Grand Mosque and along some busy streets eventually to the Siak River. The river runs through Pekanbaru but isn’t really any commercial waterway. It is badly polluted and has some maritime shipping. People still fish in it and I imagine that fish ends up in the street vendor’s carts.

The people here are so friendly—always ready with a smile. I caught these three imps filching sugar packets in the sports lounge one afternoon. They really don’t look all that guilty.

Speaking of imps, we were warned about the alpha monkeys here on the compound and I did see a few the past four weeks but never up close. This photo was shot by the Australian on the golf course. Didn't get to see a Sumatra tiger though--elephants and monkeys but no tigers.

I may or not post again before I leave. Tomorrow is the last day and we fly out Friday morning.

Wednesday Was “Country and Western Night” at the Kayu Manis Restaurant……

…..and these guys gave it their best shot all evening. And they really weren’t all that bad. They were performing in the center of the restaurant which has open sides all around and most people were eating outside but could still hear the music. We were the only people sitting inside with the band and, as they inevitably do, the lead singer was asking where we were from, what we were doing in Pekanbaru and the usual light banter for restaurant bands. When I told the lead singer (not in the picture) that I was from Texas he got all excited. It appears he and I have a common interest in Texas music and he started singing Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Jerry Jeff Walker and when he asked for a request, I automatically suggested Willie Nelson and he broke into “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” I’m literally half-way around the world from Austin and this guy knows all the Texas musicians. Thursday night was “Latin Passion Night” but, unfortunately, we had to miss that one.

Saturday morning I did my daily walk early before it got too hot then went to one of the local malls with the other American trainer. I’m not really a “mall person” but I did get a head and shoulder massage which was ok but not nearly as good as in Thailand. Spent about an hour just walking around looking in the stores. I wear X-Large in most shirts and there’s not a lot of selection for that over here—lots of small and medium sizes.

It surprised me that a lot of people were wearing orange today—to support the Netherlands in their World Cup championship game with Spain. I was wondering about that and it kind of surprised me what with Indonesia being a former Dutch colony (Dutch West Indies) and the colonial/indigenous relationship was not very good in the old days. You really don’t see a lot of Dutch influence over here (as you do British legacy in Kenya) but they seem to be generally rooting for the Netherlands tomorrow night. This is a soccer-crazy country over here—I can’t believe how many people are really into the World Cup. Almost all the clothing stores have soccer themes and restaurants are offering World Cup specials. Personally, I don’t care for either the Dutch or Spanish but, just to get into the spirit, I bought a Netherlands T-shirt.

Sometimes a Picture Really Is Worth a Thousand Words......

Some Interesting Things About the Aryaduta Hotel Here in Pekanbaru…..

…..the hotel lists itself as a 4-star and it is with regards to restaurant, lobby, and facilities. The rooms are plain but clean and secure—but probably not 4-star. I’ve been really happy here and believe me; I’ve stayed in far, far worse hotels on these trips. The kitchen is good but we’ve pretty much ordered everything on the menu at least once and we still have two weeks left.

I have found it curious that the hotel elevator doesn’t have a fourth floor and finally asked someone on the elevator one day about it. He appeared to be Japanese and told me Asians are very superstitious about numbers and in Chinese, Korean and Japanese cultures the number “4” is synonymous with “death” therefore most elevators throughout Asia don’t list a fourth floor. He also told me that the number 4 is avoided in telephone numbers and license plates on cars. Japan, for example, has no telephone prefixes starting with “4” and many people will refuse a cell phone number that contains it at all. In some countries, if you are issued a license plate containing a “4” you are allowed to return and exchange it. In Vietnam, where cars are issued a plate that remains on the vehicle even after it’s sold or traded, some Vietnamese will refuse to take possession of a new car because of the plate—others have traded vehicles just to get another set of numbers on the plates.

What makes this even more complicated is that Asian buildings use the “British” method of labeling floors. In the US, the ground floor is the just that, and the next floor up is the first floor. But in Britain, the ground floor is listed as the first floor and then they count up. So here at the Aryaduta Hotel, I am staying three floors above the ground but, under the British system, I am on the fourth floor but the elevator lists it as the fifth floor since there is technically no “number 4” in the hotel. Since I have time on my hands, I went to the front desk and asked them exactly what floor I’m staying on and, without batting an eye, they told me that officially I am on floor five and “there are no problems.”

Other numbers have other connotations—the number “8” is generally considered lucky in Asia. Personally I find this interesting but not all that odd—I’ve stayed in American hotels that didn’t have a 13^th floor.

My room (#511 and no problem) has about a 12 foot ceiling and in one corner of the ceiling someone pasted an Arabic-looking decal. I later found out every room has one of them and they are actually arrows pointing the direction to Mecca. Since the vast majority of visitors to the hotel are Muslim, they can know which way to face when they pray in their rooms.

The restaurant and sports lounge sell beer and wine but there is no “bar” such as you would find at a lounge in the US. I haven’t seen advertisements for whiskey, rum or any other “hard” liquors anywhere over here. At the Argentina/Germany soccer game the other night the lounge was packed to standing room only and I really wasn’t aware of people drinking beer. That’s something you definitely wouldn’t see at the Richmond Arms in Houston.

They have a beautiful lagoon-type swimming pool here and the kids especially love it. There is also a walking/running path that winds around the tennis courts and through some trees and foliage. I’d guess it’s probably about a quarter-mile and I’ve been pretty good about using it for at least 45 minutes every day—even in the rain which happens at least a little bit every day. I really enjoy the freedom here.

Because of the climate, much of the dining is outdoor and since we’ve been here they’ve been constructing an overhead canopy over one area. The lack of safety standards here just astounds me and yesterday I shot a picture of a guy welding a steel beam wearing open-toe sandals and wearing dark sunglasses. No OSHA standards here…… The buildings here have an unusual emblem at the top of the roofs—nearly all the more traditional buildings have them. You see something similar in Thailand where the emblem has a Buddhist religious meaning but I’m told that here they have no special meaning—it’s just an old, old architectural style. Some of the newer emblems are made of plastic and others have lightening rods embedded in them. They’re usually painted yellow and often are perched over red trim. Yellow and red seem to be favorite colors over here. Just a few things I found interesting in the hotel here…..

Celebrated Independence Day with a July 3rd BBQ and a Game on TV…..On Sunday We Found a Quaint Little Restaurant on the Side of a Hill.....

…..Saturday nights are BBQ night here at the hotel and Saturday fell on July 3^rd so, what the heck, I celebrated a day early. BBQ over here means basically “grilled” but they do a pretty good job. You pick out the food you want grilled—everything from seafood to ribs—and the chef cooks it on the grill and brings it to you. They have about six different BBQ sauces—one that tastes like ours and five that are pepper-based and head-jerking spicy. The secret is to figure out which one is regular—kind of like Russian roulette. Not exactly Texas BBQ, but not bad either.

The game on TV was the Germany/Argentina World Cup match and the sports lounge was packed—standing room only. I think the Aussie and I were the only Westerners there and the crowd seemed about 50/50 for both sides. It was really a loud, raucous bunch with no trouble and a really good time.

We finished the first full week of work Friday and I had a pretty good group—as you can see in the photo, they weren’t averse to laughing it up for the camera. I have a really good interpreter (the one standing in the back) and he can literally translate into Indonesian as I speak which is a rare talent. I’m half-way through this job and it hasn’t been bad.

On one of my first blog posts after we got here, I questioned the distance to this restaurant with the directions of +/- one kilometer.

Well, it became a standing joke between the Australian and me: if we could actually find the place, we'd eat dinner there no matter how good or bad the food. Then, for some reason, the sign just disappeared one day.

We made a couple of walks down the road but didn't know how far to go and couldn't find it. He made it a personal project to track this place down and did Google searches, checked over Google maps, and on Saturday we set out to see if this place actually exists. It does, but +/- one kilometer is a long ways to walk. Using his Google maps we hiked probably close to an hour, made a couple of turns we weren't sure of, and darned if we didn't find it. It is the neatest little restaurant--built on the side of a hill in several sections in what I would call cabanas, or little rooms separated by hallways and stairs. It is really interesting and neat. The company that owns it also has a large resort in Bali so the place had that ambiance. We were hot and sweaty so we just looked around, checked out the menu and made reservations for Sunday evening. They also had a small art gallery with crafts and paintings and I bought some souvenirs--something I hadn't been able to find since we've been here.

Sunday--July 4th--we took a taxi back and ate supper. Really a nice place and good food. So, in the end, I celebrated the 4th of July with a New Zealand tenderloin steak.....

Sunday Morning I Took a Two-Hour Walk around Town in the Area Around the Hotel…..

…..and enjoyed myself except that my clothing was literally saturated when I got back. This is humidity that makes Houston look like Arizona.

Kind of strange, but I didn’t see any other Westerners the whole time. The Australian trainer and I basically walked the main streets in a large square route and saw nobody else who looked American or Australian. Everybody was friendly, however. I’ve found that the Indonesians will look directly at you (in Africa they often won’t on the streets) but will say nothing. If you smile or say hello, however, they break into a big smile and respond. In that sense I think Indonesians are more outgoing than in many other developing countries.

We walked down to the Grand Mosque which is a huge complex and a magnificently beautiful blue and white building. The largest mosque in Indonesia is in Jakarta and I think it may be the largest in the world. This one, however, is considered to the most beautiful in the country. We didn’t try to go inside—I had a good introduction to mosques while I was in Egypt—but walked around the perimeter.

Indonesia is the most-populated country in Southeast Asia with over 230 million people and nearly 90% of them are Muslim (which means no pork chops on the hotel menu) but there seems to be a high degree of religious tolerance here—there is a large Christian church directly across one of the streets from the Grand Mosque. There are some extremist problems to the south and near the coasts of Thailand and Philippines but here in Pekanbaru it seems to be an outgoing, friendly form of religious belief. We do break each day for prayers at the Chevron compound and Friday has an extended prayer break at mid-day but it doesn’t cause any disruptions—everything is planned around it.

I have only seen two burkas (the full face-covering head cloth) here but the hajibs (head scarves with open faces) are very common—in fact they are basically the standard. I find it amusing that the young girls over here will wear the conservative hajibs with skinny jeans. There doesn’t seem to be any negative extreme connotation to them—there was a rock music program here at the hotel over the weekend and most of the people were teen-aged girls wearing the hajibs and having a good time laughing and clapping. It was strange, however, to see a woman in a body suit and head scarf in the swimming pool.

The mosques here are of a design I’ve never seen anywhere else. When I was in Cairo they told me there are four main architectural styles for mosques but these are really different—I would call them “onion dome” kind of like the architecture of the Kremlin in Russia. There are minaret towers on some of them (like the Grand Mosque), but most here are of the dome design. Because of the weather, they are mostly open-air and it seems there is a small mosque on nearly every corner of the city. The calls to prayer over the loud speakers seem to occur on the quarter-hour and last about fifteen minutes—I can hear one right now from my hotel room.

Not far from the hotel is a large, Chinese-style building that is a hospital—at least I think it looks Chinese.

We came across a traffic circle (they call them round-a-bouts and they are very common over here) that had an old 1950s early jet plane displayed. If you look at the photo carefully, however, you will also see two palm trees. Only they aren’t really palm trees—they’re cell phone towers disguised as trees. The coconuts are actually electronic gear. I can’t imagine the range being too great on them but it’s not the first time I’ve seen these—they are quite common in Africa as well.

The Sumatra regional library is a massive, modernistic building—the photo only shows half of it. Literacy seems to be very high over here and children are selling newspapers at every street corner and there seems to be a wide selection of papers. The building with a hole in the top over a dome is a government building. Indonesia is not a wealthy nation but you find buildings like the library and government buildings in various places so the government does provide basic services pretty well it seems.

Like I wrote earlier, the walk was only about two hours but it was an energy-sapping exercise…..

Did a Four-Hour Drive Outside Pekanbaru on Saturday.....

.....and visited an elephant conservation area.

By our standards it wasn't much of a preserve, but in Indonesia it is at least an attempt by someone to save these animals. Unfortunately we arrived in the heat of afternoon and the adults were off in the trees but we did get to see up close three young--two females and a bull--all around two years or younger.

The preserve itself is very basic but provides what the elephants need--a small river running through it, foliage to eat, and protection from poachers. Asian elephants are much smaller than the African species and these three were very tame and gentle. I think they were a little disappointed we didn't bring anything for them to eat because they got bored pretty quickly and took off but I got to hand feed one some grass.

The preserve itself is a pretty sad place--located right in the middle of an oilfield and really isolated from the main road but like I said, at least they're trying.

Another sad problem here is that in this area 65% of the forest has been cut down and replanted with palm trees in the past 25 years and palm oil is a major export in Indonesia. The problem is that elephants don't eat palm fruit and are quickly losing their habitat. It is really devastating the elephant population on Sumatra. The famed Sumatra tiger is also quickly disappearing.

On the way back, we came across a motorcycle doing probably 40-45 mph. The driver had a passenger behind him holding onto a wheelbarrow. If it had slipped out of his hands, the car behind them would never have been able to avoid it. Whatever it takes to get the job done, I guess......