As for me, I still feel as if I have not settled into my life yet. While it is cool to be among so many internationals, I don't feel much of a sense of community. Unlike in Singapore, there are enough international students that people don't just go up and talk with other foreigners on campus. Also, since everyone is there to learn Chinese, I also get the feeling that some people are trying to avoid hanging out with people in an English-speaking environment. This, coupled with a lack of a formal international student social schedual, makes it hard for me to meet people outside of class or my floor. As a result, I have been hanging out with my cool South African roommate mostly and otherwise just being by myself.

The other side of the problem is that I don't feel like I am looking to make friends right now. Although I am very grateful to have a cool roommate and one classmate with whom I get along (the Italian with the great handwriting), I still don't feel like making the effort to go out and be deliberately social. Maybe it is because I feel like I am not new in this city. I somehow manage to confuse familiarity with the city with a sense that I am at home here with an established social network which I don't have. I think another part is that I am emotionally tired after the draining events of the last two weeks. Of course, a big part of it is that I miss you. There is a big gap in my life where you belong and I have not fully come to terms with that.

Yesterday I hung out with Alex and Catlyn. I met them at HouHai where we bought some beer and sat by the edge of the lake to watch the boats go by. It was much better than spending 10 times the price on beer inside the bars because the afternoon was nice and clear for once. Beijing has cooled down a lot since July. The nights are cold and even the daytime wind can be chilly. It feels very strange to me in a city where I have only ever experienced summer.

Alex and Catlyn are settling into their lives as English teachers. They have managed to find lots of work and should each be making around 10000 per month. Despite this, they are still living a very frugal lifestyle, eating only at small local restaruants and avoiding taxis most of the time. They are actually quite enjoying life here with the food, the prices, and the interesting new things around every corner.

Unfortunately, thier enthusiasm for China seems to be quite superficial, just like mine was last year. They are still unable to communicate at all with locals, they have not made any friends, let alone local friends, and they still get a kick out of going to dirty public bathrooms. Further, while they have vague plans to learn some Chinese, I get the feeling from talking to them that they are not very serious about it. They are also discovering that many of the English teachers here are the dregs of the English-speaking world and not worth hanging out with. I just hope that they will be able to start learning enough of the language and making enough friends before the novelty of dirty toilets starts to wear off.

Back to me, I don't really know what my motivation is anymore. It was easy enough last year in Vancouver with you when learning was a joy rather than a chore. Now, I feel that because I don't really like this place, learning a skill that is almost only useful here is either a waste of time or it is condemning me to spend even more time here while I try to recoup my investment. Right now, I know I must go on, but I am starting to lose sight of what I am working for.

In relation to this, I have been thinking about working again while I am in school. On the one hand, I do not particularly like working and my 1100 stipend is probably enough to cover my living expenses here. On the other hand, I might have become accustomed to a lifestyle that requires me to work in order to afford say buying the Economist every week for 55 kuai. So far I have just put off the decision in the hopes that the answer will make its self obvious to me soon enough.

Accidentally saved as draft, finally posted.

I know I haven't written in a while so I will just put up some copies of emails that I sent to my girlfriend and then give a real post later after I get the internet set up in my room.

So, I started classes today. The class was a little bit harder than I thought and the teacher went pretty fast, but I think that if I study it will be ok. The only problem is that I am probably going to have to study for two hours every day...

When I arrived in the class, because I was wearing cufflinks I immideately made a friend: an Italian guy who shares the same taste. He is a pretty intense guy, reminds me a lot of my friend Iacopo. Anyway, he speaks Chinese really well and his handwriting is absolutely beautiful.

My class is much more international than I had expected. There are two Italians (including the one described above), an American, a Cuban, five Indonesian Chinese, and some Koreans and Japanese, there is also a Bangladeshi Chinese guy who didn't show up today but is in the class.

Last night I moved all of my things into residence. It is not the hilton, or 阳光一百, but it will do.

I think about you a lot. Today, I looked at some of our pictures. I put the picture of you carrying me on your back when we are in KL as my desktop background, I think it is very cute.

The best thing that happened today is that we got the internet. So far it is just on my roommate's computer, but once we figure out how to work out the networking we will be able to have skype chats.
As for Noah, he finally called today. He is in Japan and liking it, but he doesn't really have any sort of plan at all. As he described it, he has $7000 and a passport. Really though, he is either going to take a language class in Japan or in China, but he missed his chance to do the fall semester at BCLU. Too bad for me I guess, but I will manage.

This post was accidentaly saved as a draft while I was in Thailand.


I am in Thailand now, but there is much to fill in so I will start with Penang.

After we left Singapore, we caught an overnight bus from Larkin terminal in JB to Penang. It was the usual fare, a nice super VIP bus with too much air con. Unfortunately for us, the bus terminal in Penang has moved in the past year from its former spot in the middle of the old city to its new spot in the suburbs. After realising that it was not realistic to find a city bus, we caught a cab into Chinatown. There, after some searching, we found nice clean hotel with a nice, (exclisively) Hokkien-speaking manager. We slept most of the rest of the day away. When we finally got up, we walked around the old section of the city and explored the pleasant streets full of Chinese/colonial style shop houses.

We spent the next few days doing much the same thing. Lots of walking, lots of eating great Straits-Chinese food, and lots of chances to practice my Chinese with the locals. Soon, we grew bored with the city and we caught some cheap Air Asia flights up to Bangkok.

Through a booking error, Rae and I caught different flights to Bangkok. As a result, on my flight I sat next to a middle aged Brittish English teacher who has been living in Thailiand for about a year. We had a good time exchangeing stories about the good and bad sides of living in Asia and the troubles with teaching English to ESL students. When we landed, we went our seperate ways- him with his Thai girlfriend and me to the backpaker districs around Kao San road.

The next morning I woke up early to go meet Rae at the airport. To my surprise, the traffic getting out there was passable and I arrived with some time to spare so I picked up a copy of the Economist and kept myself busy. When Rae arrived some time later, we took an airport bus in to the centre of town and began to walk around, asking the prices of hotels.

My original plan was, as this was our anniversary, to stay in the tallest building in Bangkok, a 60+ floor hotel near the centre of town. However, when we went in to look around, we decided that it was not nice enough to justify us spending twice our daily budget on one night. From there we got into a taxi and asked him if he could help us find a nice hotel. Of course he was only too happy to oblige. He took us on a round about route to some crummy and ridiculously overpriced hotel out towards the airport. When we told him that it would not do, he proceded to take us to three more equally overpriced hotels in the area. We soon realised that our taxi driver was taking us for a ride in more ways that one. In every hotel we went into, he would get out of the taxi first and say a few sentences to the hotel workers in Thai. These workers would then be the ones who would quote us the absurd prices. Realising that we could not expect to find good value this way, we told him to go on his way and we started looking at hotels in the area on our own. While significantly cheaper and similar or better quality than the ones he had shown us, these hotels were still too expensive and too far from the city's centre so we decided to take another cab back in. Eventually, we found ourselves a hotel that was quite nice and at a reasonable price.

The next day was our one year anniversary commemorating the first day that we were boyfriend and girlfriend (a rather subjective classification, and one that she chose by herself). We marked the occasion by spending most of the day in the hotel relaxing and having a great dinner, also at the hotel, while watching some traditional Thai dancing.

The rest of the time in Thailand was spent between walking through the markets, visiting the palace, and hanging out around Kao San road where we stayed the last night. One very intersting thing which we found was that around our hotel was a huge market area that catered to wholesale clothing, footware and accessories buyers from Africa, India and the Middle East. There were stores full of traditional African clothing, of hip hop clothing, of saris, etc... and the lanes were filled with people from more countries than I could recognise. I was surprised that so much business could go on on such a small scale with small time traders and small time producers but yet be so international in scope. I also could not help but wonder how long this business would last with the fast expansion that we saw of China's textile sector, especially around Hangzhou and Shaoxing.

Now, Rae and I have come to the beach as a nice relaxing and beautiful way to end our six or so weeks of traveling. We have found ourselves a bungalow on the beach in Koh Samui from which we can look out on the different shades of blue in the South China Sea. The only problem with this place is money. Everyone here wants much more of it than they do in Bangkok or anywhere else we have been on this trip. Rather than explain all of the reasons why I don't like Thaliand as much as I used to, I will just write one story.

Last night we went to an internet cafe. Our internet bill was 58 Baht. I paid with a B1000 note. The girl working there gave me B442 as change. Unfortunately for me, I neglected to count my change and just walked out of the store. It was only later when I went to buy some fruit that I notices that the B500 note which I had assumed was in my wallet was not there. We quickly realised that there was something wrong so we went back to the internet cafe which was closed by then. Luckily, we saw the girl who worked there on the street about 100m down the street from the store. When she noticed us, she turned so that her back was to us. We thought it was her but we were not sure so we walked on by. Then, we looked back again to check. Her back was again turned to us. So we walked by again, this time looking at her. This whole time she was very careful not to look at us. When we finally confronted her about this short changing, she was all smiles and apologies and quickly gave us the B500 note that had "somehow" ended up in her purse. The people here are not honest. They are not fair. I like this place less than I did the first time.

Marc