Going to Penang

Part I:  Breakfast in Chinatown

With a long bus ride to Penang ahead, and the first decent night’s sleep in a long time behind me, I left the soft covers of my hostel bed to buy “bus snacks” at the 7-11.  After noticing that I was near the part of Chinatown where I last bought the steamed dumplings that I call “soft pillows of heaven”, I decided that breakfast was in order.  But upon rounding the corner, I found that the dumpling stand wasn’t open at this hour of the morning.  Cue Momentary Frowny face.

If you know me, then you know that I hate doubling back.  Whenever I hike or walk or run or bike, I find that turning back the way you came feels like undoing all the work that you just did.  So I chose to circle around in a way that was new to me but sort of lead in the right direction. 

Next thing I know, I am in the market.  The real market; passing tables that hold the entire half of a pig.  Walking cautiously to avoid hooves and mystery puddles of liquid on the ground, I began to make my way around still in search of breakfast.  My thoughts breakdown into two thought patterns in moments like this:  First,  I am the only white person here.  Second, oh that icky smell…and something about the movie “Contagion” thanks to Kai and our Peru experience.

I find myself turning out of that market and being called over to some plastic tables by an older Chinese woman who wants me to eat some traditional porridge for breakfast.  It seems harmless enough so she prepares the “8 hidden treasures” rice porridge.  I find when it comes to me that it is not entirely unlike the mush that Neo eats in the real world on the Matrix.  Inside my snotty looking substance in the bowl is found 8 different things.  Chicken, Pork, Red-bean, “Crispy Pork Inners”, Century Egg, Green Onion, and Lord knows what the other two were.  Century Egg concerned me the most (I have had enough animal intestine at this point that I don’t care when something is labeled “inners”).  What concerns me the most is that I am pretty sure that it is just a fancy name for a rotten egg.  I don’t truly think the thing is 100 years old, but I think that eggs shouldn’t be that color…and surely not that flavor.  After two bites of egg, I decided to push it to the side and just around it.  The porridge, as texturally unpleasing as it was, warmed my belly.

Part II: The Angry Driver

All Packed and Ready for Another Bus

Then I was off to the hostel to pack and catch the bus.  Let me tell you a little about this bus.  I am actually typing on it right now.  I was sitting behind a “young hoodlum” as my nana would say.  Sunglasses on, hat to the side, no observation of the world around him…you know the type, they live around the world.  The bus was late, and once we got on it, it continued to be late as we sat waiting for our driver to sort out all the things that seemed to be upsetting him.  At the moment that I was drifting off, it was something about tickets.

I was almost to sleep land and the seat in front of me smacks my knees.  This kid just reclined as far as he could to make himself at home.  I re-adjust and think that that is that.  Drifting slowly as the bus begins to move and to my surprise, the seat he is in can go further back.  Ouch, and no!  He has now pinned the neck of my Uke to the arm rest.  I wiggle it out and toss it into the overhead storage.  I don’t think pleasant thoughts of the young man, because really, it’s a five hour ride, you don’t need to be horizontal.

Slowly drifting again…and I awake to shouting.  The driver has been informed that the young man in front of me is eating.  And since he doesn’t seem to want to put it away, the driver continuing his rant pulls the bus over and storms down the aisle.  The boy quickly hides the goods and promises not to touch them. (At least that is my take on the situation…it was all in Malay and Chinese).  The driver paces the aisle a couple more times lecturing the bus and occasionally throwing in the English, “No Eating, No Drinking.”  I think about the chocolate filled doughnut I bought on impulse at the station and how it sits in my purse begging me to eat it.

Two hours of fitful sleep with my restricted leg room and my negative thoughts and we pull up to a rest stop.  The driver yells, “Four Minutes” and that is all.  So I run off to the bathroom, use it, and then run out so that I can have time with my doughnut.  I want to enjoy every chocolatey bite.  Two bites in and I see them unloading the bus. O.o

I walk over and the chocolate starts to go everywhere.  Apparently they are switching buses and just decided not to tell us.  As I try to down the pastry just to ride myself of the mess (meanwhile kicking myself because this is not how I wanted such a lovely doughnut to go) a teammate hops off the bus with my bag.  BUT ALAS, the Uke is still above the seat thanks to the hoodlum.  She runs on again since my mess of a melty chocolate nightmare is in no state to get it.  She’s a gem.

Upon loading the second bus they found that they couldn’t Tetris the under-bus storage like before and now two of our 60-80 liter packs are riding in seats.  The driver asked before we pulled out, “This bus is going directly to Penang.  Any bad words? OKAY!”  Whatever that means…But now I have leg room (and lap room!) so I am pleased.  And I got to type this blog up since the elderly man I am currently sitting behind has no need to crush the Americans so that he can feel like he is in a bus bed.  So yay!

Another African Bus

I woke to the sound of people packing far too early in the morning.  But alas, we had to be ready and out the door at 5am.  Loaded into minibuses and shipped to the border, the sun began to rise.  We had our exit visas for Zambia and had to cross by foot over the Zambezi River to Zimbabwe.  From the bridge, we could catch glimpses of Victoria Falls…but I will be kicking myself for weeks for not taking a photo.  It was gorgeous but at the moment all I could think was “this is a long 2k to the border” and “this bag is heavy”.  Perhaps someone thought to snap one…but alas.

We got another full page Visa to enter Zimbabwe which gets me nervously close to a full passport.  I might have to add pages soon.   If I don’t count the one page I will need for my Cambodian full pager entry visa, then I have two blank ones left.  So….yeah.

Anyway, on to van with a trailer for our packs, where we are informed that the route we were going to take up to Harare, the capital, is a washed out dirt road so we have to go the long way.  For the sake of ease, I am in Van 2.  Van 1 in front pulls over with an axil on the trailer messing up.  They tie it up and search for a welder.  Many stops…no welder, no electricity, no help.  Then we see the other side of Van 1’s axil bite it and smoke starts to billow with a horrid burning tire smell.  Tied it up better this time since we used the jack.

Finally we stop for a couple hours to get the whole axil welded back on.  By this time it is 2:30pm.  We and you have to remember the hour we left that morning.  However we only traveled perhaps 200k or like 120miles.  We continued onward, getting stopped every twenty or thirty minutes to pay off the corrupt cops at the road blocks.  Then cue Van 2’s engine trouble.  The noise started a while ago…but we tried to ignore it.  Then the smell followed, and the fact that we kept losing gas.  So another couple hour stop happened to fix that.

We drove through the night, with a poor food-poisoned Squadmate having to run off into the bush every so often.  And of course the road blocks with the corrupt cops.  Misunderstandings with our drivers added to the time lost and we found ourselves here in Harare at 7:30am.

An 8 hour bus ride…taking over 24hrs…with only 3 cans of juice and 4 chip bags to get me through.  But God did it.

Our new contact so nicely offered to let us have this first day off since we traveled all night, and we will discuss later with him what we will be doing all month.  He mentioned something about a church plant here in the city, but we will see.  Happy to be here though.

The Discomfort of Traveling to Zambia

I slept on the porch of our hostel since my mosquito net (which I am repeatedly reminded by rain is not a tent) flooded and held a nice amount of mud.  Lights on, people talking, I fell into an intermittent sleep at about 1:30am. Then awoke at 5:00am to pack.

No worries, I tell myself.  I can sleep on the bus to Zambia.  But that was before I realized that God wasn't done with growing me through discomfort yet.  After getting on the bus and going through multiple police check points that won't allow sleep since they must ALL see your passport, we got to the border.  This was a trial of its own since Malawians kept cutting us in the visa line with the excuse "you are so many".  Yes we were many but because of them cutting us it took 45 mins for our team  to get process after arriving at the window (that is not counting time spent in line...just time that we were being "helped").

After the border crossing I finally thought I would sleep on the bus.  I had a good aisle seat to spread out a little and I took a Dramamine to help with the sickness and lull me to sleep.  BANG!  Beside me a stood is slammed down beside me in the aisle and a man placed upon it. I now am squished between too people...and stool man of course is uncomfortably fidgeting the whole time.  His cheap, rough, suit rubbing my arm raw.  And his body forcing mine to lean away in a position that later cause such pain on the left side of my spine that I was brought to tears.  THIS WAS A LONG BUS RIDE!

We stopped at the side of the road so men could get off to pee.  As stool man was off, I slid his stool back just enough that he wouldn't have to touch me so much.  It was easy to do since everyone was tripping over it to get off the bus anyway.  When he got back on, he moved his stool back into alignment with my seat.  SO MAD.

Then our bus found itself debating whether to roll through a closed off road that was under construction or to take the detour through the mud.  For fear of being stuck they chose the closed road.  To make this happen they had to move the road block, which happened to be giant boulders on the street. This took many men and much time.  They would always try to avoid more work by just picking one large boulder to move and hoping we would fit through...when in reality it would have been better to move two smaller boulders a little to the left and right and slip in...but they do what they think is best.  We scratched by the rocks and proceeded.  This occurred 3 more times before our bus driver said "screw it" and drove down a bank to the little dirt detour road that we spent the last hour trying to avoid.

We also had a five minute stop at some shacks they called a rest stop.  There was a fee toilet and I figured it was getting time to go.  But I didn't have Zambian Kwatcha to pay the fee.  They lectured me about that, a lot, saying that it was dumb to travel without the money.  But I had no intention of paying for a toilet even if I had money, so I started around to the back of the building to pee there.  The lecturer yells to me that there is a fine for peeing outside.  To which I respond, "I cannot pee inside, I cannot pee outside.  Am I supposed to pee on myself?"  I left off the part I want to say, "Is there a fine or fee for that?"

Because this isn't my first time threatening to pee myself in public, and I am shameless about it, they let me in to the toilet without paying a fee.  But with all the lost time, the bus was done waiting and was honking to pull out of the lot.  Not feeling a good first impression of Zambia.

Night began to fall, and as impressed as I was by the mix of African Music Videos and Backstreet Boys, Brandy, and Usher, my gaze went outside to the sunset.  They full day of miserable travel weight heavy, especially on my left side where stool man was still leaning. (Seriously...there are 69 other people on this bus...couldn't he at least take turns sitting next to people.)  But with this sunset, I promised myself, that I wouldn't let this be a repeat of Malawi.  That I would let the end of this day be the begin of a new, better one.  And that I was going to be okay.

So, here's to a new country and a better season.

The Day I Was An Illegal Immigrant

Soooo....You know those times when you are sitting at a bus station in Peru close to the border, and you just got off of a 21 hour bus ride.  And your brain doesn't seem to function right?

Well that is the state our minds were in when we agreed to pay the equivalent of $2 a person to these random bus station guys to take us to the next town across the border into Ecuador in mini-vans.  We thought that everything was kosher up until they blew through customs and immigration on some back road to drop us off at another shady bus station in Ecuador.  Upon their departure, and our subsequent confusion, we realized that our bus buddies didn't have passports...so that's why they took the back road.  We however had no intention of staying in-country illegally, and thus began the search for the border...

I didn't really search.  I sat on my pack eating the last Oreos I had from civilization (you know the chocolate ones with chocolate inside.)  Our fearless leaders found us a bus that would take us to customs...a legit one this time.  And we hopped on with all our gear.  Well only half could fit on so the other half...me included, accidentally commandeered a regular city transport to the border.  The bus driver made us apologize and thank the patrons on board for the route change.

Once to the border we legally "exited" Peru on paper, and legally entered Ecuador.  But for an hour and a half, I was an illegal immigrant, with my Oreos and an apple I smuggled in on my journey.

Once that was all sorted we took a supposed-to-be 12 hour bus ride to Quito, the capital.  But, the crazies who were driving got us there in 10 hours.  I recall taking turns so fast that people and luggage fell, and I recall almost going into a ditch on the wrong side of the road.  However, I am safely in Quito.

So far, I accompanied some of our guys to breakfast, to a large lookout over the city, and to two markets, a park, and the cheapest burgers I had in forever (here's to not getting sick off of street food!)  Our debrief starts tomorrow bright and early so I believe I will take it easy for now.