Bogota, Colombia

Colombia is country number 54.

When I tell people I'm going to Colombia; I can see the look on their face. They are thinking of kidnapping, guerrillas, cocaine, and Pablo Escobar.

Kidnapping: This is just not happening anymore in any of Colombia's major cities. The murder rate in Bogota matches that of Pittsburgh, PA. Crime is no worse than any other city of eight million with a huge discrepancy between rich and poor.

Guerrillas: The jungles and the forest to the south and east of the country are still occupied by the FARC and ELN respectively, and if you wander off there, you may be captured and held for ransom or killed. The guerrillas have been greatly marginalized by the Uribe government, though not without horrific human rights violations. Many Colombians are outraged at the loss of innocent life caused by the heavy handed police state actions of Uribes war on the guerrillas. But, as evidenced by the majority support for Santos, Uribe's heir apperant, the majority of Colombians are happy to see an end to the kidnappings, the carjackings, the bombings and the terror, at whatever the collateral human cost.

Cocaine: Despite the billions of dollars wasted on the US's "War on Drugs"; Colombia continues to process and export 90% of the worlds cocaine. The vast majority of it is processed in jungle labs owned by the FARC or ELN. It is then shipped up either the Caribbean or Pacific coast of Central America via submarine or hidden in fishing boats, then overland through Mexico and into the US. Some of it gets shipped to West Africa into Senegal and Nigeria and then into Europe.

No one offered me any cocaine in Bogota. I didn't see any on the street. I thought nothing of it in fact, until about my third day in town. I met lots of travelers where I was staying, Hostal Sue. It was the usual group of early twenty-somethings from England, Australia, Ireland, and continental Europe who were taking a year or so to backpack around the world on a shoestring budget. I drank beers with these guys, had good conversation, and we'd make plans to go see the Salt Cathedral, or go to a soccer game the next day. But when the next day came, there'd be no sign of them. I wouldn't see them until the evening, when they'd tell me "Oh we were out till 8am, and I was wrecked, so I couldn't make it." And I'd think "8am?! You sat around at the tiny, boring hostel bar drinking till 8am? Why?" Around the third day I noticed the bloodshot eyes, the shaky hands, and it hit me. When a group of three Aussie guys all got up together to disappear into their room, a leaned over and asked one of the guy's Colombian girlfriend,

"Where are they going?"

"To their room."

"To do coke, right?"

"Yes."

"So they didn't invite you?"

"I'm from Cali. I've done enough coke to last a lifetime."

Later I asked a particularly amped Aussie guy about it, and he told me that he can get a gram of pure cocaine for $5 in Bogota. In Los Angeles, he'd have to pay $75 for a gram of weak stuff cut with god knows what. So I learned that even when it comes to drug purchases, the real backpackers always know where to find the best deal.

Pablo Escobar: Still dead. I never saw anything about the legendary drug kingpin in Bogota. He was from Medellin, so maybe there is a big Escobarland Disney-like memorial there.

Bogota has some fantastic grafitti. Someone has edited this to show the police as the constructors of violence.

A cobblestone street in the small historical area of La Candelaria. This is where I stayed.

"I'd rather vote for these madmen." The Presidential election was only a few days away when I arrived.

Some drunk Bogatenos I bumped into on the street.

"Yankees, get out of Colombia and the World."

Bogota is a very modern city, but I did see this guy leading his horse down the main street to pick up trash.

Bogota has very little tourist infrastructure. Though La Candelaria has several quality hostels, no one has opened a tour company there. There are many great day trips from Bogota that could be made, such as Zipaquira Salt Cathedral, Guatavita lake, but no one is offering services to reach them. There is only one good day tour to be found, and it is a must do; Bogota Bike Tours. I was the only person that signed up for the daily 10:30am tour on this particular day, and rain was threatening. Any other tour company would certainly have cancelled on me. Not Mike. I got a personal one-on-one tour of the city for 6 hours! Mike showed me parts of the city I never would have seen on my own. I especially enjoyed riding through the National University and viewing the revolutionary grafitti there, tasting exotic Colombian fruits in the market, seeing the cemetery, entering the bullfighting ring, the emerald marketplace. Throughout the tour Mike told me stories about each area, and gave me a deeper understanding of the reasons and motivations behind the many facets of Colombian society, including the guerrillas, the paramilitaries, the student groups, the poor, the rich, the federal government. All this for $12??!! This is a must-do tour when in Bogota.
Mike started off our tour in the Plaza Bolivar.

We spent some time at the National University. This place is so left wing it makes Berkeleylook fascist. The Bogota police are banned from even entering the school grounds. I think it's encouraging that a right wing government allows a state-funded university to be covered in anti-government marxist grafitti.

An apartment building that was blown up by the FARC.

I ate a lot of empanadas in Bogota. They are 50 cents each, and sold everywhere.

The Plaza de Toros. A classy stadium for a despicable sport.

Mike bought me some different fruits found only in Colombia. Good stuff.

We even investigated the Emerald Market, which consists of a bunch of guys standing around a major intersection with little folded pieces of paper holding what may or may not be emeralds. Colombia is the number one exporter of Emeralds.

I spent a morning at the Museo de Oro, or Gold Museum. Nice stuff.

View from the top of the Teleferico at 10,300ft.

My first day in Bogota was sensory overload. I live on a small, sparsely populated island, with no weather to speak of. Every day is quiet, warm, and sunny. On this Sunday morning in Bogota, buckets of rain splashed down on its eight million residents as crackling peals of thunder exploded, seemingly directly overhead. Cascades of water ran off every roof, and rolled in waves down the streets. The thunder was terrifying. It felt like a building would be vaporized at any moment. Every doorway was crowded with pedestrians hiding from the deluge. But on the particular Sunday, not everyone was dry. Thousands of green t-shirt clad citizens were joyously marching down the Carrera Septima in support of Presidential candidate Antanas Mockus. Chanting slogans, beating drums, and tooting horns, the largely student led group formed a mile long green snake ending in the spacious Plaza de Bolivar, the heart of Bogota. The supporters were dripping wet, yet obviously excited and motivated by the potential for their man in the next weekends election. (Mockus finished a distant second with 21% of the vote, necessitating a runoff election against the 46% of center-right candidate Santos three weeks later)

After watching from a dry empanda stand for a long while, the rain eased, and I followed the long green line down to the Plaza de Bolivar. Inside the Plaza, a stage was set up, bands were playing, fireworks being shot off, and motivational speakers were getting the crowd energized. I chose to pass through the massive police cordon of security and join them. I bought a green t-shirt. Bogota has a very white almost Anglo-looking population, so if I didn't open my mouth, I could almost fit in as a real Bogateno.

My second day I ran up into the unpopulated mountains on the edge of town up to about 10,000ft. I saw cows, burros, sheep, herding dogs, two farmers, and twelve heavily armed soldiers. Colombia has a massive police and military presence. By far the largest I've ever seen in any country. On this small road leading into the Andes, these soldiers were stopping and searching every single vehicle driving into Bogota. When a nation is torn apart by civil war and guerrilla terrorism, this is what it takes to retain control.

Qingdao, China

After a great four days in Beijing, we took a short flight to the seaside city of Qingdao. Most Americans will have never heard of Qingdao, but might recognize another spelling/pronunciation of Tsingtao. Qingdao was controlled by Germany for several years prior to WWI, and they brought beer to China, which is now exported all over the world as Tsingtao beer.

And beer is of course the reason we came to Qingdao. I also thought it would be cool to see a "beach town" in China. Well, the beach was rocky, the water full of seaweed, not exactly Maui.
And Qingdao is yet another massive city of three million, without much for a tourist to see. But it does have The International Beer Festival, an annual bash described as Chinese Oktoberfest. We had to see that.
The International Beer City consists of lots of neon lights (as does everything in China), and some big tents like you might see in Germany, and they do indeed serve real German imported beer.It wasn't cheap either. These mugs were $7 a piece. The huge Hofbrauhaus size liter mugs were a stunning $14 each!

There is also some interesting food choices at the IBF. Women walk through the tents with platters of fried bugs, assorted meats, and other unidentifiable objects. We chose Mongolian beef, cooked up by real Mongolians in traditional costume rocking out to Chinese pop. These guys were awesome, the highlight of the IBF. I ate here both nights. I felt slightly ill for the following week, but I hate to blame it on them.

I figured the "International" Beer Festival would attract tourist from all over the world. Nope. It was 99% Chinese. No worries though, after a few pints of Paulaner dark, we made friends. We could not communicate with these guys at all. But we spoke the international language of drinking beer while standing on tables and singing.



Whoever created the technology to allow a video camera to fit in a pocket size digital camera deserves a medal. Josh actually cut his hand quite badly on this fall. The floor is covered in broken glass, and he came up with a hand and arm covered in blood. (Note my unrestrained schadenfreude at his fall)

Karaoke is everywhere here, and the IBF was no exception. Every tent had pop singers singing songs everyone knew and sang along to.


This particular guy was a big draw. Crowd went nuts for him. Apparently the best way to show your appreciation is to run up on stage and offer the singer a beer, which he/she will then chug .
Josh and I were the only non-Chinese standing on the tables and rockin out with this guy, and right after he finished this song, the singer handed me a beer and challenged me to a chug-off. He won.

Time after time we heard the chant of EE AH SO SA! Finally we asked a bilingual guy what that meant. It meant One-Two-Three-Four!

We had a blast at the IBF. One night we met up with a group of ex-pats living in Hong Kong. They were American, Brits, and Aussies. Between us we had about eight guys in the group and need to get transport back into town from the IBF. Taxis were scarce. Finally one guy hailed a Chinese family of four in a minivan. We offered them about $20 to drive us into town, and after warily looking us over, they took a chance and let eight large inebriated foreigners in their van. Best ride ever. Beer cans flying everywhere, and cursing like only an Aussie can curse. We had to scream get them to pull over at one point so the Brit could puke. Their ten year old kids thought we were aliens. We tipped them and they must have been thrilled both for the money and to get us out of their van.

Great Wall Jinshanling to Simitai, China

Gotta love when they write your destination in English on the side of the bus. Just starting the hike. Seven miles, and none of it was flat! We went from Jinshanling to Simitai.

The Great Wall does not disappoint. I had a conception that the Chinese had renovated a few key pieces of the Wall, and that the rest was crumbling pile of rocks. Not so, even the unrenovated sections, last touched in the 1600's are in solid condition. The wall just goes on and on, far past where the horizon is lost in smog. Just a one mile section is an amazing feat of construction, and yet it goes on for nearly 3000 miles!

At every couple of towers we stopped and took in the view. Ladies from Inner Mongolia laden down with water, beer, postcards, and t-shirts shadowed us for the first three miles. We all bought from them. A dollar for an ice-cold water is a heckuva deal when you are three miles away from civilization on the Great Wall. These ladies hike all day for the 70 cent profit margin.

One pointed out that the wall was built to keep her (Inner Mongolians) out of Han China. And now they are making a living on the wall. Progress.

Only two miles to go.

At the end of the hike we had the option for $7 to take a zip-line across a lake, then ride a boat to our end point. A couple Tsingtaos gave me the courage to Zip Line for the first time. It actually wasn't scary at all.

A fall would have been quite fatal though.

Our bus ride back to Beijing was lengthened due to this poor guy. The water tank is wedged tight. The driver in the striped shirt is making a really embarrassing cell phone call for help.

Beijing, China

The Meridian Gate to the Forbidden City facing Tienanmen Square

Mao Zedong


Coming out of the subway, walking up the steps, emerging into bright daylight, and first seeing the iconic portrait of Mao hanging on the Gate to the Forbidden City is a thrill. You've seen it on TV a hundred times, and finally here you are. The center of the Chinese cosmos. Where emperors ruled for five hundred years, and where the People's Republic of China was born nearly sixty years ago.

Throngs of Chinese and a sprinkling of foreigners surround the gates taking photos of each other. Directly behind lies Tienanmen Square, the largest, and most infamous, public square in the world. I walked along the concrete blocks and thought about the thousand or so student protesters who were murdered by indiscriminate machine gunfire and squashed by tanks here twenty years ago. I thought of "Tank Man". The Chinese had to bus in troops from the outer provinces because local Beijing soldiers would not open fire on their friends and relatives.

June 5, 1989 "Tank Man" stops a line of tanks for several minutes before being arrested (and presumably executed)

I was a junior in high school when the incident occurred. At that time I knew all about war and murder and death, but I was shocked that a world power like China would kill its own citizens in full view of the global media. China still has thousands of public protests today, most about government corruption or environmental degradation. However, they will not tolerate any protests in Tienanmen Square ever again.

I have no allusions about China being a benign sleeping giant who just wants to make the cheap plastic crap that lines our shelves at Walmart. This is a country that fully expects to be THE world superpower. And why wouldn't they? China WAS the world's superpower in the 15th and 16th centuries. They had the largest naval fleet in history and a standing army of one million soldiers. Lucky for the rest of the world, it was an inward-focused China. A wall-building China. Had China sent its massive navy across the globe like the Spanish and Portuguese and British, our world would look very different today. 21st century China will not make the same mistake twice. This China is doing everything right. Lending money to the consumption oriented West so they can use it to buy Chinese products. Saving up the largest sovereign wealth fund in history. Locking in oil, and natural gas, and farm produce deals with third world countries. Stealing intellectual property and military technology rather than buying it. If you read the statistics of how fast China's economy is growing it is just staggering. With a workforce of 1.3 billion people, who actually WORK, it is only a matter of time before China surpasses America's economic might. Our best hope is to inundate them with McDonald's and PlayStation and Budweiser and NASCAR; and maybe they'll be overcome by obesity, ignorance, and apathy, before they crush the lazy westerners.

If you can't beat 'em join 'em. I bought a tiny Chinese flag for one yuan (14 cents) and asked people to take pictures of me in front of Mao's Mausoleum. The line was too long for me, I felt weird about waiting a couple hours to see a dead evil dictator. Seems both morbid and groupie-ish.
I do love good socialist-realist sculpture. Really. I think these "power to the common man" statues are awesome. They are getting harder and harder to find. Eastern Europe, China, Russia, I bet they have some great ones in North Korea. It makes me want to pick up a farm implement and follow along. I'm sure they are going somewhere cool, and the soldier in the lead clearly knows the way.
It started raining after I took this photo, and I rushed to the closest umbrella salesman along with about a hundred soggy Chinese. I thought "Oh boy am I going to get gouged, buying an umbrella, in the pouring rain, in the high rent district of Beijing." Nope. $2.20 got me a sweet red umbrella. China is really pretty cheap most of the time. Later in the day, I bought two pairs of prescription eyeglasses for $43 a piece. They would have cost $300 back home. An optometrist gave me an eye exam on the spot, and I picked up the finished glasses the next day. The younger brother of the optometrist was the only English speaker, so he acted as translator as I haggled the price, then I bought us beers while I waited for my eye exam. He said most Americans are rich and stupid and just pay the price listed on the frames. His brother was surprised I was bold enough to haggle 50% off the price. My glasses came out perfect, the best purchase of any of my trips.

Beijing has a massive presence of real live soldiers. I saw them marching all over near Tienanmen Square. Lots of police too. Most are real skinny young men. They try to look real intimidating, but they weren't armed and most had about a size 28 waist.

I took the subway over to the Temple of Heaven. It sits in a huge green park. Of all the horror stories I'd read about Beijing, none mentioned all the nice parks it has. This girl asked to take a picture with me. Foreigners are still an oddity in Beijing.

A fine example of a beautiful little greenbelt area running near the Forbidden City. Maybe all of these spots were built recently for the Olympics. Beijing's pollution is infamous. I've read it described as "apocalyptic". Indeed, on the day I arrived the pollution was so thick, visibility was limited to about two city blocks. It seemed like a fog, but it was all pollution. But even on this day I didn't smell it or feel it in my lungs or eyes. And then it got better and better. By the last day in Beijing it was clear blue sky. I guess it's the luck of the weather, but I found Beijing to be a very livable city.

Beijing has ample, clean, star-rated public toilets, a rarity in Asia. I once had the thrill of using a four star toilet. Never saw a five star. Maybe they are all in the Party offices.

Beijing is a great place to shop for knock-offs and fakes. I spent a couple hours at the Yashou Market near the Sanlitun area. It's a four story shopping mall filled with fake name brand goods. You better have a good idea of what things actually sell for before you go in, and be ready to bargain hard. For example, I bought a sweet knock off North Face shirt. It's all microfiber, with a collar and pockets, an indestructible travel shirt. In the USA, a real one would go for $60. So a fake in china, I figure $10 should be my goal. Her opening offer was 480 Yuan, or $70! I laughed and started to walk off. "Wait Wait! Her next offer was 360 Yuan, or $52. I keep walking. "Wait, Sir, special price for you. " She types 240 into her calculator. $35. I shake my head and type in 80. She types 200. I type 85. She describes the fine qualities of the material. I type 90. She types 180. I type 100. We tells me more about how incredible the shirt is and how much it would cost in the USA. I type 110. She types 160. I type 120, and announce that is my final offer. I start to walk away. She shouts 150. I keep walking, she grabs my arm and begs me to buy it for 140. I tell her I can keep looking, maybe I'll be back. She says 130. I start to turn the corner. She shouts "OK 120". I buy it. I was psyched to get the shirt, and I felt like I held my ground well, but in the end I paid about $17 for it and I know I could have got it for $12. One can only hope to get a "good price for foreigner". I'll never get the "Chinese price". Not even if I get a PhD in Mandarin.

After buying the shirt I found some sweet fake Salvatore Ferragamo shoes. Before we even got to the haggling stage, I wanted to see if they fit. I asked her for a size 42. She brings me a 41 and of course they are too small. I ask again for a 42. She brings me a 43. They're too big. I tell her I MUST have a 42, or I'm not buying. She goes off again to look and comes back with shoes. She tries to put them on my feet herself. I stop her so I can check the bottom and see if they are actually a 42. I turn them over and find a round gold sticker that reads 42. I think "No, she didn't just do what I think she did." I peel back the sticker, and sure enough, it's the same pair of 43's!!! I look at her with my mouth agape, and she just smiles and throws up her hands like "You got me."

I needed a rest after the high pressure haggle-shopping. I found a bar called VEIN that had Tsingtao in a bottle for 10 Yuan ($1.40) which is about as cheap as it gets here. They place looked brand new and was nice but completely empty. The twenty-something Chinese owner was playing Dixie Chicks and James Taylor on the sound system and singing along, while surfing pictures of vintage Ford Mustangs on his laptop. I stayed a while.

I think the above sign is Mandarin for "Alley of revolting cuisine on a stick"

The bugs on the far right were still wriggling. Blechhh.

Gruel! Its not just for orphans anymore!

The Forbidden City is massive. It would take several days to visit every room within its walls. Legend says there are 9,999 of them. I spent three hours there and still only hit half of the major buildings on the audio tour. I enjoyed it, but there are too many people inside. About 10,000 too many. I the central temples, you can't move and you have Chinese tour group guides shouting in your ear with their battery powered megaphones.

Blue sky breaking through in Beijing!


Okay, so once you get out of the North Gate of the Forbidden City, which is where most people exit, there is a huge man-made hill in a nice park. I hiked to the top for an excellent view of pancake-flat Beijing. They had a "Get your photo taken dressed up like an Emperor" booth going, and at 25 Yuan, I couldn't resist.

But as soon as I sat down my Empress plopped down next to me. I had to pay her 10 Yuan too.

You'd think a person whose only job is to sit and smile for the camera could smile. But no, I get the Dour Empress Sour Puss.

Me in front of my palace. Geez what was I thinking?



I finished my time in Beijing at the fantastic Houhai Lake. I walked here for a couple hours, grabbed a Frappucino and watched kids in pedal-boats and ducks on lily pads. Actual live wild animals in Beijing! They have security guards here at night, otherwise they'd surely be caught and eaten. This area has art shops, restaurants, lots of benches to sit on, pedi-cabs, and no car horns. I was impressed by Beijing, but after seeing this place, I would actually consider Beijing a livable city.