“Have you ever been to a disco?”

Until this past Monday I haven’t asked this question to anybody since I started high-school probably. In Romania nobody asks for your ID, so when I entered high-school I and my friends also started exploring the fascinating world of clubs and bars, as we thought at that time, and nobody was cooler than us. I am not saying that was good or bad, that’s just how it was then.

This week in the English textbook I came across a text that was mentioning the word “disco”, therefore I asked my students to describe their disco experience. When they heard the question they all got confused so I repeated, but still nothing. From the expressions on their faces I realized that I had to rephrase my question “have you ever been to a disco?”. That’s when I got a staggering unanimous response “Nooooooo!”. I was as confused as they were, seconds before so I had to double check “You have never been to a disco?!”. The same strong answer hit the room “Noooooooooo!”. It was a “no” from which I understood that there was something wrong with the disco and their smiles told me that <>. “Oh…Aaa…But why?” I asked almost shy and puzzled. “Discos are only for bad people” a quick answer struck me. “Ohhh! I see…And what do these bad people do?”. Silence. “So?…”. “Aaa..bad things..” someone finally dared saying. “ I go to discos, does that make me a bad person?”. “AAAAAAA?! You have been to a disco?!” a shocked choir asked me. “Yes, of course I have been, many times”. “In China???!!”. “Yes, just here in Pds”. Silence in the class, while everybody was trying to understand why their nice teacher (as they say) could have done such a foolish thing. “But you didn’t know” the verdict came. I couldn’t help but smile. “What’s the difference in between the discos in China and your country?” someone asked further on. “I said none really”. The crisis deepened not only that I’ve been in China at a disco but also in UK and Romania even if the discos are similar, so I knew, the earlier verdict didn’t work, I was risking to be found guilty this time. For a second I really thought my image was in balance, I was in peril of losing their respect. In reply I asked “But what’s the difference in between KTVs and discos?. You all go to KTV and you love it. You sing, dance, chat with your friends in a KTV, the same you do in a disco”. “But in a KTV we get a separate room so we don’t mix with other people”. “So what’s wrong meeting someone new and if you don’t want to speak to other people you don’t have to, you stick with your friends”. “Yes, but you have to understand we are Chinese and we are traditionalists”. Fair-play.

Eventually the conversation went back to the bad things that people do in discos, not many were able to exemplify but eventually “All people dance and drink and take drugs there” someone said. “You dance in the KTV and you have all been there and you love it. I don’t do drugs and I have been to a disco, so not everybody takes drugs. As for drinking, I can see every night men and women alike, married and with kids, stumbling on the boardwalk after too many baijo glasses”. Silence again. For the first time in this year my classes went completely quiet and I realized that they don’t take any form of criticism well. They can see tipsy people as I can see them, and it’s ok if they say it, but it’s not the same if I say it.

My curiosity was deepening now and I was trying to understand what lies behind all this ideology and hy they aren’t even curious to check these places out – “How can you know that there are bad people doing bad things in discos if you have never been in one?”. The enigma was solved – a strong home and school education imposed strict and clear rules, that killed any curiosity of this kids not to mention that most of them didn’t even dream of breaking them. “My parents told me that these things happen there and that it’s not a place for teenagers. Our teachers especially in high school told us that we are not allowed in discos”. My students’ age varies from 18 to 22, but sometimes their way of reasoning is stupefying infantile.

I found 4 students out of 300 that have dared to step foot in a disco and initially they didn’t want to “confess”. They were too embarrassed in front of their colleagues for doing such a “shameful” thing. Few liked it, few said it was too noisy for them, but none said there were bad things going on. Only in the eyes of few students I saw the desire to try something new and at least check out a disco and then express opinions. But some said that they lack the money, others find the disco “a thing from another world, far away from my life”, and it’s far as 10 minutes by taxi and 2 pounds in total.

Just if you were wondering, bars go in the same category with discos and they are as bad and harmful and forbidden. Most of my girls have never tasted alcohol and they giggle all the time when I mention it and I receive the same “Noooooo!” – of course they have never tried it, how can I even imagine such a thing or “haha” I’m such a funny person asking such ridiculous things.

I am not trying to raise awareness of the local bars and discos or of some beer brands, but I am still trying to understand what makes them be so attached and obedient to the rules. Some of them are very modern they know things about the “outside world”, they have the latest technology gadgets, branded clothes, they are far away from their hometowns and families with a limited liberty but still with the possibility to get out of the campus and do whatever they want. I was a very nice, quiet, obedient child myself my mum always proudly says, but I still broke the rules and I liked to test things by myself and then when I saw it went bad/good I could say “Yes my parents were right or wrong”. It’s not always a good thing, but I thought most of us have this is a native instinct, the instinct of trying and seeing by yourself and not taking everything for granted even if it comes from parents, who want the best for you. I didn’t have to live 20 years to realize that my parents can be wrong at times or that they are exaggerating at times. As for teachers – ha- I find it completely ridiculous.

Malaysia – an intriguing place

I am sure it was a sign that we should prolong our holiday in Thailand when at the Phuket airport the scanning machine broke just in front of us, or better said in front of me because Rob had already passed through, but our luggage and myself not yet . We had to queue to the other machine, being the last ones waiting in a loooong line. After the queue advanced and we were half way through – guess what- the first machine started working again (Murphy’s laws always apply!). Eventually we got in and queued for AirAsia –where we’ve seen the slowest and most indifferent airline employee -despite the fact that we already had the boarding pass printed at a nearby ticket machine. He kind of ruined the image of efficient and lovely Thai people that we experienced during our staying there. Once we got the tickets and we passed the physical security check, which was another slow motion process, we found out that our plane was delayed so I was very happy to rush in a store and rediscover my old pleasure – eating Doritos! A big bag of tangy cheese Doritos satisfied my desires for the day (a jar of salsa sauce would have made it perfect though).

We debarked in Kuala Lumpur in the afternoon on a tiny airport, to our surprise, with funny long buildings that reminded me of stables. Only days later we found out that this is the small airport and not the main international one, that Rob described, later on, as being fantastic. At the border control for the first time I’ve seen electronic devices for Malaysians citizens that don’t need to face the boarder officer requiring a passport but a machine that scans their papers and figures.

KL airport must be the furthest airport from its city – it took us around 2h to get to city centre. But from the first moments you can tell that you are in a different unique Asian place just by looking at the vegetation – forests of short palm trees all around. The city centre that we’ve seen in the first night was slightly disappointing compared with the stories that we’ve heard from friends who have visited the Malaysian capital before. Nothing impressive – a clean, quiet city, with few lights and few imposing buildings here and there, where not even the Petronas towers shining in the night didn’t seem to be as tall as we expected. The society seems somehow segregated in between the three ethnicities – Malays, Chinese, Indians plus the Britsh expats on top of it. Men seem to have daring looks and in the same time they are overprotective with their wives, while women tend to look at you in a disapproving manner if you hug for too long someone of the opposite sex or if you have a skirt below the knee. However, I was very excited because I knew I’ll meet my friend Nanie, a local Malaysian, that I hadn’t seen since we graduated in September 2009.

Next day, the daylight uncovered loads of expensive shopping malls. The very top brands flourished at the ground floors of all malls – wealth is blossoming in the central parts of KL. Trendy haircuts for fashionable Chinese men, luxurious handbags and shoes especially for the veil or burka covered ladies, IPADs for the “wanna be, look at me” Asian middle age men, impeccable suits for the businessmen and quality watches for everybody. Looking in retrospective, I think I found KL more flashy than Singapore, a view dominated rather by Western suits or by casual common clothing. Sometimes wealthy Asians seem to have a better taste in fashion than Westerners do. Personally, the thing I really loved in all this malls were Auntie Anne’s Pretzels with cinnamon and cheese

Actually, we ended up in one of the malls not because we were eager to shop but because it’s below the twin Petronas towers. The Petronas towers or the KLCC, as most of the locals refer to them, were completed in 1998 when they became the tallest buildings in the world, reaching a height of almost 380m, respectively 450m if you measure the antenna. Today, KLCC rank 5th in a top of the highest buildings in the world, being taken by Burj Khalifa (Dubai, 828m), Taipei 101 (509m), Shanghai World Financial Centre (492m) and International Commerce Centre (Hong Kong, 484m). As a side note, another way of measuring China’s economic growth is looking on this rank of world’s tallest skyscrapers and you’ll notice than out of the current 20th tallest buildings, 10 are built on Chinese territory. Going back to KLCC, we wanted to go all the way up to the 88th , floor but after queuing for a while we were told that there were no tickets left (at 11 am!) for the day and that we should have booked 3-4 days in advance. Therefore we had to be content and thankful with 2 tickets to the sky bridge, floor 42, for the last slot of the day 4.30 pm. Lucky us, after all! The skybridge offers a nice view over the city from a height of 170m. My first thought was that bungee jumping must be amazing from there. But no, unfortunately, they don’t do extreme sports there. The bridge was after all built to prevent the twin towers breaking during high strong winds; and I assume it would be slightly weird for the employees working in the two towers to see people hanging up-side-down on their windows. Oh yes, if you were wondering what is inside the towers – one is allocated to Petronas (the Malaysian oil company) and the other one to different companies varying from Microsoft to Reuters.

______
Oil
And this reminds me of my astonishment when I saw the oil price per liter – 2.5 Ringgit, in other words 0.5 GBP! I’d drive from Thailand to Singapore daily at that price…if I had a UK wage! The oil price should be reported to the population’s income. That being said, while in UK the minimum wage is 5.90 GBP per hour, respectively $7.25 in US, in Malaysia you can still get only 3.5 Rinngit (0.7 GBP) for one hour of work. That mean that US and UK have a buying power 2-3 times higher than Malaysia.

For 7-8 years, in the first part of the 90s decade, the fuel price in Malaysia remained stagnant. One of the reasons is that the country continues to be one of the few net oil exporters, even if the gap in between production and consumption is narrowing in the last years. Most of the oil and gas projects are run by Petronas, the national company that brought almost 50% revenues to its government in 2009. The turbulences from Egypt and Libya triggered an increase of 14% in the crude oil price in only one week, therefore the forecast seems to be positive for the Ringgit that is expected to strengthen. With a flow of foreign investment from the Muslim brothers from the Middle East, the future of Malaysia might be brighter tomorrow.
________

Not only the fuel is cheap, but also the food! And you can enjoy such a great variety – from Malaysian to Indian, Chinese, Thai and others. My favorite breakfast was an Indian omelette with deep fried bananas and sweet milk. As you can imagine I had enough of Chinese food, so I was not keen on it, nor on the spicy Thai curries anymore, so I mostly went for Malaysian food. Nanie took me to this great buffet of a famous national chef, with loads of great flavored dishes that she specifically asked me to remember. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be a good ambassador for Malaysia since I can’t recall many of the dishes that I tried, except “ABC” dessert, which funny enough, was not even by far the best from their local cuisine; however I can guarantee that they have a toothsome cuisine from appetizers to desserts!

Part of the Malaysian promo would be the aviary park, that happened to be the biggest in the world – very nice indeed with few rare and unusual species and with “too domesticated” birds from which you had to watch your head and steps if you didn’t want to bump into one. A fantastic experience was the trip in the Cameron Highlands, 4 hours north from KL, a tea plantation heaven. I absolutely loved it. Hills covered in the green tea bushes, where the only color breaking the monochrome was white; white-yellowish spots could be observed here and there from the hay hats of the tea harvesters. It was so quite and natural and beautiful. The 2 hour ride up and down the Cameron Highlands was one of the worst of my life, I got extremely car sick from the sharp curves, so sharp that the coach needed 2 lanes in order to be able to make the maneuver, but it was all worth it after all!

During my staying in Malaysia we had part of baking temperatures and extreme humidity; few heavy showers with unusually big drops would get you completely soaked in few minutes. I had this obsession about the Dengue Mosquito since I heard some terrible stories that I prefer not to share, so I kind of felt relieved when I headed towards Singapore, even if the risk still remained high. The thought that a stripped dangerous mosquito can fly around me anytime kept on being on the back of my mind and I just couldn’t let it go. Nanie was so cute, trying to calm me down while being in her flat, saying “Don’t worry, mosquitos can’t fly up to 13th floor”. That relaxed me enough to allow me to sleep if it wasn’t for the heat:) And how do we go out next day?:D Now, I know for sure that I wouldn’t feel comfortable living there or in any other area that is exposed to similar natural “catastrophes” – hurricanes, floods and others. However, with all the risks, I’d always go back to visit!

A place where I would return anytime – Thailand

Thailand is exactly as you imagine! It won’t fail you, it just can’t! Every time, everywhere I looked I couldn’t stop imagining that the view could be framed in a postcard. Click click click – postcards all around. It’s romantic, it’s relaxing, it’s simple and beautiful. Sun, beach, sea, fauna, tasty food and lovely locals are its secret ingridients, enough for me to create the ideal “holiday dish”.

We stayed on the west side of Phuket, in Surin Beach, on the shore of Andaman Sea. It’s a tiny resort, quiet in the morning, busier in the evenings, with few small stores and several restaurants, but nothing is exceeding – there are no more than it would be needed or demanded, the music is not louder than it should be, the streets are not more crowded than they should be.

I like to believe that someone there in the local government created a good policy, and that it’s not just a coincidence, that there are no hotels built on the shore and that the beach is not separated into parcels that belong to the hotels. Instead the beach is absolutely clean, free and opened to everybody who wants to rent a deck chair under a hay umbrella, or just lay his towel down. With incredible grinded sand, the beach is quite wide and its ends are margined by a rocky lush shore that creates a mini gulf. Despite the high temperatures being above 30 degrees, in their so called cold season, the sand never gets too hot because, with the precision of a clock, after lunch time there’s a quick natural refreshing shower – refreshing mainly the sand and sea, but not so much the air, which remains almost unbreathable.

You start walking on a pale yellowish sand, the closer you get to the sea its color changes into saffron and you keep on walking and splashing drops of the unsalted powder blue sea, that continues with a teal blue until it meets the sky and you forget that you crossed the horizon. Luckily sometimes you can spot a yacht, a speed boat or just a long tail boat, that seem intentionally stationed there just to remind you that you are still among the living.

In parallel with the beach a cement alley runs all along, occupied with restaurants, bars and little shops. You can sip a coconut juice through a straw thrown in it, or get a green Thai curry, make a tailored suit “Armani”, “Prada”, or “Boss” for $100 or just buy flip flops, fridge magnets and rubber rings. Behind the alley, on the city-side, in a parking place there’s a small market where if none of the above options satisfy your lunch appetite you can go for a local fried fish, barbecued chicken or corn. All the way in the back you can see the main road, mostly populated with scooters on its two lanes that run along the west coast of Phuket province. Street ramifications start there and there’s where the hotels can be found as well. You can still get a beautiful view of the sea, but you can’t spoil the beach with concrete buildings and pools.

Therefore, the traffic noise or the hotels’ fuss are inexistent, so nothing can interrupt your dreams from melting under the hot sun. Not even the ambulant sellers, who won’t shout loud advertisements of their merchandise as some might expect, they won’t disturb you in anyway unless they catch your eye. One second of eye contact will make them head towards your chaise-longue. If your look was just curious and accidental, they won’t bother you more than few seconds. They are not aggressive and insistent as some of the Chinese, Turkish or Greek merchants are. Oh and of course there’s always the option of getting a Thai massage under a thatch roof, just there on the beach. It’s cheap, but probably not so nice rubbing sand with oil on your skin, scrubbing rather than massaging. There are plenty of tempting offers all around the city, preferably after you took a cooling shower.

From the list of usual things that I like doing every time I visit a new place is going to a local market, not so much for buying food, but for getting the feeling of the place. They are the most alive, the most natural and local places within a city. Phuket was not an exception – I grabbed my camera and I left myself carried away by the bustle of the market. I found lots of weird seafood, fruit and vegetable that I have never seen before and I had no clue what they are, how you eat it or if you eat it. Ice cream sold in real coconut cups got my attention, as well as some fat worms and bugs nicely arranged on a plate next to some green leafs like you’d be ready to enjoy a dish with meat and side order.

From the list of the less usual things that I discovered that I love is snorkeling. Snorkeling was absolutely fantastic! I have never realized how beautiful the “underworld” can be. The sea is so clear that you can see the tiny fish and fish stars hiding on its bottom up to 9-10 meters deep water, so there’s no need for scuba diving really. Just around the corner from the mini gulf described above there is hiding a fisherman hub. A poor empty shelved restaurant with a primitive but very useful toilet when you need it, seems to be the shelter of the fisherman who are hanging around their “parked” long tail boats. We jumped in one of the boats that took us 20-30 minutes away from the shore, in the middle of the sea, where a courageous rock put its head out of the water and allowed few palm trees to grow freely and curious tourists to explore its surroundings. I struggled a bit breathing through the tube and getting used with the mask that somehow let water in to drawn my nose and eyes, but eventually I made it and I was there in the race of chasing the most colorful fish. They were all around you, surrounding you, racing you, they were not scared, they were not running, they were just swimming along with you and letting you admire their beauty like they were aware of it. I don’t know how time passed there, and if it wasn’t for my skin wrinkling I could have stayed there all day.

Firecrackers’ war

If I didn’t get the chance or the misfortune to witness a war by now, I think I came across one. In the last days spent in my house, I have the feeling that an unstated war started and Pingdingshan is the first target under assault. Not hundreds, but thousands of blaring, deafening firecrackers make me shudder every minute. But then I realize – who would want to conquer Pingdingshan?

Hong Kong has it all!

I love mornings in all cities! Usually, rather because the fresh air still holds the pins and needles of the morning and the rays are too weak to ooze away the sleepy dew drops; or rather because it’s agitated, noisy from the cart wheels and smelly from the dry fish, as Hong Kong is.

In between corporate glass giants you can find squeezed shops that are selling all sorts of weird dry plants and creatures from an early morning hour. The narrow streets that run up the hill as serpentines, are filled with people pushing carts in flip-flops and waist up naked. Among them locals and tourists muffled in winter coats rush their boots towards the nearest subway station.

Buddhist temples, tiny high British built trams, steep streets with handcrafted local artistry figurines, designer jewelry, fisherman and models, all seem to have found an equilibrium in this unparalleled scenery. Open-air Spanish bodegas next to French bistros and British pubs attract mainly pale skins who are climbing high bar chairs and occupy the tiny round tables with pints of beer and laptops; while the “mom and pop” Chinese restaurants seem to be very popular especially among the locals. They are all crammed in between Victoria’s Peak and the harbor, sharing the same sidewalk, soaking in the same city light.

Short incursion in South Asia

“Zulu” is definitely not on the list of my top favorite movies and therefore I have never intended to go on a trip visiting only the British colonies, but somehow I ended up exploring few of them: Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. Thailand might be the only country from SE Asia that escaped untouched by the European colonial hands, but it didn’t escape from my curious eyes.

“Oh, my Lady Gaga!”

It is hard to explain how popular Lady Gaga is in China! Nobody knows much about her, but they all find her sexy and strange and they declare themselves big fans. In modern bars and clubs you can often hear entire albums being played. In order to fully understand the Lady Gaga phenomenon I will just mention a short story. I was listening to the homework (some dialogue lines) of one of my students when suddenly I hear “Oh my Lady Gaga!”. I thought I didn’t understood well, so I asked her to repeat.  She goes again “Oh, my Lady Gaga!”.  Amused, I still couldn’t believe my ears. A bit confused because of my face expression the student started to explain me who Lady Gaga is.  Then,  she continued <<In China we don’t say “Oh Gees” or “Oh my God!” anymore, we say “Oh, my Lady Gaga!”>>.