OK, so we got a little behind...
Here's why -
First off, for 13 of our days in
Mongolia we had no power; hence no laptop; hence no writing. This
put me a tad behind from the start. Then Susan wrote this really
cool “preview” for our Mongolia post, and the pressure was on.
No half-assing this one.
Mongolia was fabulous, but definitely
draining, so our 6 days in Laos went by in a flash of fresh-fruit
smoothies and afternoon naps, and very little journaling.
Then Bhutan... ahhh Bhutan. Really,
really wonderful but IN-tense. Early starts and long days with hikes
and dozens of culturally important sites. Each day guided by a very
knowledgeable guide who poured knowledge into our ears. I would
write some each night, but sleep came quickly.
After Bhutan we had a couple of nights
in Kuala Lumpur, and the shithole we stayed in the first night had a
decent wireless internet. So we decided to run Flickr uploader all
night on our Bhutan photos. Some of you have already figured out
where this is going... I'll give you a hint – I didn't back up the
camera memory card before I started this process. OK, so, sometiime
about day 2 of our photos something crashed and when we woke up in
the morning we had a “blank” disk. Susan was nearly physically
ill over this; some 500 photos of a trip-of-a-lifetime vanished.
Now, this isn't as much of a tragedy as
it may seem at first blush. As any computer geek knows there is
“blank” and then there is blank. The next day our first order of
business was getting out of the shithole, which we did, and then I
was heads down on fixing these photos.
Now I can't figure out how to get my
little computer to do this (I am not a Linux expert), so we borrowed
the computer of our new little “hotel” (really just a few rooms
above an Indian restaurant). And I downloaded (at extremely
painfully slow speed) software to fix our photos. The free trial
showed me that, yes indeed these are here, but of course actually
getting them off the disk would require a credit card number. No
problem, right? Wrong. Turns out that Malaysia is like THE place
for ATM and credit card fraud. Our e*Trade ATM cards wouldn't work
in Malaysia at all (more on this later), and like China, this is a
cash economy. So breakfast was a pastry at Starbucks, the only
people in 10 blocks that took Visa at ten o'clock in the morning.
When Visa then saw a charge at 11:00 in California... well that was
that.
When I then retried my purchase with
five different cards in two names... I think the software I
downloaded was some hobbyist who decided – 'hey I can maybe sell
this a few times and make a little money'. He probably wrote it for
himself when this happened to him. So when Visa sees all this... I
think I single handedly caused a lock out of the poor one-man
software shop as a “fraud risk”.
All this took an excrutiating amount of
time, to the tune of 8 hours. Eventually I had to give up and get
some sleep, because the next morning Susan and I had a flight to
Borneo.
The antics continued there, as I spent
hours and hours on the phone with Visa(Capital One) and Visa (United)
and Visa (eTrade) and eTrade and Visa (eTrade) again. We never did
get our ATM cards unlocked, with eTrade (who was very sympathetic and
trying very hard) blaming Visa (who didn't give a hoot) and Visa
telling me to call eTrade. Etrade was telling me that Visa has
locked out the entire country of Malaysia from ATM withdrawals and I
had to call their fraud department. Visa fraud is telling me .. well
basically telling me to go to hell. Don't expect sympathy when you
call collect from Malaysia.
Of course, it wasn't as easy as all
that – the hotel operator had to connect me to the international
operator, who had to stay on the line with me until eTrade actually
answered the phone to accept the charges. And the first few times
the connection dropped entirely, and there were a few of these banks
that only answer the phone during US business hours.
Anyway, even staying in the Hyatt, with
their “knowledgeable staff” it was a bitch to call the US. Once
the card situation was resolved I tried to use the business center
computer (the whole reason we were staying at the Hyatt) but I didn't
get the damn things fixed before our 3 days “rest and relax” ran
out and we were off to the Borneo Rainforest Lodge.
So, for reasons of sanity, I had to
take a little computer vacaton.
Now, we are on Bali (where we came
after Borneo) and I have had about 5 days of surfing. We are staying
in a super-luxe 2 bedroom villa, with a private garden our own pool a
HUGE open living room/dinning room/kitchen and giant outdoor bath.
Susan is the queen of finding sweet hotels at discount – we got a
last minute deal on a one-bedroom villa, but got a free upgrade to a
two-bedroom and the largest one in the place at that. Good business
decision on their part - we ended up booking a whole month here
except for three days when they are full and we will go explore the
inland parts of Bali.
So now – having surfed until my arms
fell off and my ribs are raw (literally in the latter case) my mental
state is such that I can again spend some time staring at an LCD.
I'm waiting for my “rash” to heal (To the non-surfer, when you
paddle around on a surfboard you rub your stomach against the rough
deck of the board. Do this enough and you rub yourself raw. If you
are stupid and overexcited by the overhead waves you don't notice
this happening until you paddle in and there is a three inch hole
where your ribcage meets you belly. If you are really stupid, and
really excited you still go surfing the next day and the next day
until basically you can't move anymore. Then, finally, you get some
cream from the pharmacy and have a couple of days on land so you
heal.) so I also have time and energy.
To make a long story short; sorry for
the delay, and I will now return to the chronological flow of things,
which takes us back to the magnificent steppe and an anachronistic
land of nomads wedged between the rising China and the resurgent
Russia...
