Spring 2018 Teaching in China

I am beginning to post about my current stay teaching in Shanghai. Find it at Motzkin in China:   http://motzkinchina.blogspot.hk/
 https://motzkinchina.blogspot.com

La florida archeological site/museo

Pre-Incan tomb

Quito archaeology, art, altitude

This morning we went to a small archaeological site in the La Florida Barrio of Quito. These pre-incan tombs were discovered whole excavating for building. 

Then we crossed town by bus and climbed the big hill to the Guayasamin foundation  and Capilla des Hombre. Guayasamin is considered Ecuador's most illustrious artist.  His house,  studio,  artworks,  and Chapel of man are a museum now.  His dark work deals with the suffering,  anger and hope of mankind. 

At the end of the day we took the Teleferico gondola to the top of the hill on the west side of town. Quito is at 8000 feet. We were on top of the world looking down. 

Peguche

We are in Peguche,  a weaving town outside of Otavalo, a main market town in the Andes Northern Highlands. We are right near Las Cascadas Peguche, a waterfall that is the local center of carnival,  today. The people are indigenous Incan. We bused to Cotacachi,  a town known for its leather and went to Cuicochi,  a sunken crater lake with islands formed from later eruptions. It rains as much as not,  sometimes heavy. Wait it out in the covered market food stalls,  or the Pie Shop back in otavalo. Yesterday Passion fruit meringue,  today morro (blackberry), cafes con leches.  A full rainbow reward over the market. 
Tonight Quito. 

Letter from Phu Quoc

February 1, 2012 -- They say Phu Quoc is the next big tropical vacation spot, (they always say that) though it seems quite well discovered to me, I guess there is always more ruin that tourists can inflict upon a beautiful paradise.

I cannot easily post pics from my phone and rarely find time to write  and frankly, it is hard to think about posting pics from the phnom penh S21 prison museum and writing about the unfathomable atrocity and evil in our own lifetimes. PolPot and the Khmer rouge took phnom penh only one month after my March 1975 trip to China.  I am reading " When Broken Glass Floats", a moving memoir by a survivor.

I am forwarding r's account of a difficult travel day and lost luggage. (In defense of my "fit", without it they would have left us without a plan) We are in Vietnam now for the remaining three weeks of our travels. After phu quoc island we will continue our adventure toward saigon and beyond as we send our way toward hanoi.The seafood here is abundant and fresh. At the night market you can choose from an array of fish, snails, conch, prawns and things we cannot name-- last night we had scallops grilled on the shell with garlic, spring onion and peanuts, so yummy-- grilled to perfection. 

Two young new Zealander sisters, jess and maeve, who taught at Savongs school with us are here as well. They started to call us mum and dad after chamrong, our tuk tuk driver did. We saw them last night, bought them new Zealand ice cream cones and will have dinner together tonight.  

We planned an all day snorkel trip today, but it may rain, so they cancelled though others booked with a boat that seemed to be going. Rich is happy to have a down day after the snafu with his backpack.

In the course of writing this, the sun has come out and the clouds are vanishing. Looks like a hot beach, read, swim, walk day.

Marble Mountain

This cave was a Viet Cong hospital. China Beach, where the US Military went for R&R is right next to these mountains.

beach bums in Vietnam

We woke up to raining cats and...in the dry season! Looks like rainy and cool all week. Just as we are leaving for the beach. Oh well even beach bums have to deal with weather. I will try to add to my blog as we travel today...7 hours bus and ferry...to phu quoc island, vietnam. It is going to be a long day. I am not sure the ferry will run in this weather.

Well, the ferry ran...and we spent give lovely days here after a luggage snafu...here is Richard's tale:

Yesterday was a very long day!

We woke up to torrential rain in Phnom Penh (it is the dry season after all). We were supposed to be picked up at 7 am by a van to take us across the border from Cambodia to the ferry in Ha Tien, Vietnam and to Phu Quoc island. The van arrived around an hour late, proceeded to drop people around town and pick up others. People and suitcases got rearranged several times and finally, loaded to over full, 13 passengers went off to the border several hours late. Crossing the border from Cambodia to Vietnam went fairly smoothly and the border functionary extracted only an extra dollar from each person crossing. Of course we arrived late for the noon ferry but on time for the 1:30. However, they rewrote our ferry tickets for the 4pm ferry and anyone wanting to take the 1:30 ferry had to pay an extra 12 dollars.

They unloaded us and our luggage at the ferry dock except my back pack was not there. It seems that in juggling the passengers and baggage in Phnom Penh they took my pack out and left it on the sidewalk. It contained all my clothing. Fortunately, my valuable were all in my small pack that I never left sight of. I was calmly angry and Judy had a fit. I think she scared them. Any way, we couldn't even make the 1:30 ferry at this point because I had to deal with my missing luggage.

The driver made a call to his office and told us that my pack was there in Phnom Penh. They were ready for their return trip and told me to come back to the ferry dock on the mainland and get it the next day, that I was totally unwilling to do.

Judy had an international cell phone from China that we had been using but each country requires a different SIM car so we had no phone service in Vietnam. I wanted to get everyone's phone numbers and contact information so I ask the Cambodian driver to help me get a SIM card. He said he didn't know the town and couldn't speak Vietnamese. I had him take me back to the ferry office where there was a Vietnamese woman who spoke a little English and she volunteered to take me on her motorbike to get a SIM card. I made her come in the Van and show us because I didn't want to let the driver off the hook. We went into an electronics store but they wouldn't take dollars. The woman paid for the SIM card we went back to the ferry office and she changed my dollars.

We exchanged phone numbers, I told the driver that I was not coming back to the mainland for my pack and that he had to get it to me. He volunteered that there was a Ms. Truc who he would give it to who worked on the boat and that I could pick it up at the ferry dock on the island a half hour away from our hotel. At this point I didn't believe that I would ever see my pack again. The 4pm ferry arrived an hour late and we got on. It turned out that Ms. Truc was extraordinarily helpful and said that her father would take the back pack from the ferry to our hotel and I could pay him $5 for the service to which I agreed. We finally got to the hotel (on the beach) at around 8pm a trip that was supposed to take around 5 hours.

This morning we walked into town and bought me a bathing suit. The water is warm and the temperature is hot. We had complementary massages at the hotel that were very nice while waiting for my pack and clothing which arrived at around 3:30 this afternoon and all is well. Tomorrow we will go on an all day snorkeling trip. We will spend a few more day here before heading up to Saigon, then up the coast to Hanoi. Traveling takes its toll and we need to rest a little bit. This island seems like the place to chill out. It appears to be the next up and coming resort.