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Mrs. Roboto

We’ve been in Tokyo since Friday night, and it’s definitely a very fast, cool, sleek and clean city.

Cleanliness and orderliness is definitely the name of the game here. And politeness. Everyone is so nice and kind, even more so than China (if that’s even possible).

Yesterday, as Rusel and I stood staring at the metro map trying to figure out how to get to Harajuku with extremely lost looks on our faces, a teenager came up to us with her mother and sister and asked us if we needed help. Everyone got involved and they told us how to get there, the specific train line, and pointed us in the right direction. They even stood there and watched us to make sure that we were going in the right direction, with concerned but amused looks on their faces. It was really nice.

We made it to Harajuku and the crazy fashion scene found there. I wanted to linger and look at everything, Rusel wanted to go to a museum in the area, so we split up. I had been feeling really sick all morning but for some reason, once Rusel left, it all really hit me. I was fatigued, and my nose was running all over the place. We read in the guidebook that the Japanese people don’t approve of nose blowing in public, it is considered disgusting. However, I had no choice as my nose was running as fast as a bullet train. I tried to conceal my nose blowing and wiping as much as possible but it was definitely a challenge.

Finally, I had to sit down on a bench in a small shopping area, blow my nose, and try to pass the time until Rusel and I were to meet up. I know, I know. I must’ve been REALLY sick to pass up prime shopping in one of the world’s top fashion and shopping areas. I was just beat.

Everyone is so nice here and everything is so clean, I almost felt like just finding a nice part of the sidewalk in a back alley on which to lie down in. Crime is so low here that I honestly think I would’ve been fine. Apparently, if you forget something somewhere, you can come back hours later and it will still be here. Everything is so civilized here I can understand how that would happen.

In the end, Rusel and I met up in our appointed spot – a back alley that actually looked like a street on the map when we picked it out but was actually difficult and confusing to find (of course). We had dinner at a delicious organic restaurant in Harajuku. It had the most amazing toilet. On the side of the toilet was a little “control panel” and you could pick various modes – all of which turned the toilet into a mini-bidet hitting various parts of your nether-regions. I had to try them all out – for research purposes, of course!

Although we had big plans for the night, they were all scratched because I finally was forced to realize that I was actually really sick and I had to just put everything on hold – traveling in an amazing country and one of the world’s coolest cities be damned. It absolutely killed me but I stayed in bed all day today and I’m hoping that when I wake up tomorrow morning I will have finally kicked this thing.

A few interesting things about Japanese culture that we have discovered so far:

-Cleanliness is in the details. At our minshuku, we were given a pair of slippers to wear inside and “outside” shoes are always left by the front door. There is also, interestingly, a pair of universal slippers in the bathroom (in our case, we are sharing a toilet which is in the hallway) that you slip into once you enter the toilet and then leave in there once you leave. It all makes sense, I guess. Why bring in outside dirt, and why track bathroom germs all over the house? Of course, all of the slippers – the usual ones by the front door and the pair in the toilet – are too small for Rusel.
-I am starting to keep a running tab of the number of countries where Rusel is so tall that he hits his head in the doorways. So far, Rusel received a concussion in Moscow because he was running to get me a towel (I’m not kidding, he actually got a concussion), he had to duck everywhere else in Russia, he hit his head upon entry to the Ger in Mongolia, and he whacked his head today as he was running out of our room to go to the front desk to receive a call from Adam. Stay tuned for updates on this from Thailand (surely) and (possibly) Australia.
-We also have a shared Japanese bath, but this isn’t because we’re staying in a “budget” type of place, apparently even the nice hotels have shared baths. Like the Russian banya, it’s a process and the most important step is that you shower before you get in the huge bathtub. Rightly so, the Japanese people don’t understand why you get into a bath dirty and then sit and clean yourself in the dirty water. As a professional bather (right below expert sleeper on my resume), I appreciate this attention to bathing and am figuring out how to install a Japanese bath in my future home.
-The metro system is slightly confusing in Tokyo because it is a combination of light rail and underground subway systems. They are, however, spotless. In our worldwide tour, Rusel and I are taking notes on how to improve what we now realize is the hideousness of the New York subway system. I’m sure that the transit workers union is anxiously awaiting our return and can’t wait to meet with us.
-How everything remains so clean is a mystery as it is difficult to find public trashcans. We met this American guy in Beijing who lived in Japan for a year and he told us that when he asked his Japanese friends why this is so, they replied, “Because we don’t create trash.”
-Everyone is extremely stylish here and people dress and appear more “Western” than any other Asian country I’ve visited.
-Everything is crazy expensive here, probably just about on par with Moscow and Russian prices. We have been thinking about extending our tickets past next Sunday, when we are scheduled to fly out to Thailand, but aren’t sure if we can afford it. I need to do a post on “traveling on the dollar,” but until then, let’s just say that right now, it’s the pits. Everything is expensive before you even factor in the totally weak currency, which is just like pouring sake on the wound. Cue violins: I was so sick and we are so closely watching our money, I didn’t even buy a single thing (besides nasal decongestants) in Harajuku. Oh, the horror!

Calling in Sick….

Eeeek! When you’re sick in your everyday life, you give your boss a jingle jangle (using your convincing 'I'm so sick I could die' voice to get extra sympathy points), get back into bed and pull the covers over your feverish head. But what do you do when you’re sick and you’re traveling? It is quite the conundrum.

Rusel and I have been outrunning sickness for two continents now, but it finally found us. We’ve both been coming down with various illnesses and ailments and today it really just hit us -- Rusel especially. We went to a crazy and amazing acrobatics show tonight and afterwards, on the subway home, poor Rusel was burning up and was feeling just terrible.

But what do you do? You can't really call in sick when you're not really working, can you? We don't want to let one day go by in bed when our time is so limited....yet, if we continue to push ourselves it just seems to be taking longer to get over our bugs.

Up until now, we went pretty much all-out whenever we got off the trains and then collapsed into one huge, exhausted heap once we boarded the next train. But even when we were on the trains, as Rusel noted tonight, we were still under low-level stress of one sort or another. Even if we were just sitting on the train watching the world go by, we were still always dealing with: snoring old men, dirty toilets, anxiety about missing our stop, anxiety about finding our hotel when we got to our appointed city, hunger pains from lack of food without meat, etc. etc (and usually a combination of the abovementioned). Don’t get me wrong, it was a hell of a good time, but we were never truly relaxing. I think that it just really took a toll on our bodies.

So what we really need is a day off, but we’re leaving tomorrow for Japan. Rusel leaves on a really early flight and I leave in the early afternoon. So we just have to deal with our current sniffles and sore throats.

Wish us luck! Our next update will come from Japan and, hopefully, healthier bodies.

Mefloquine Dreams

I woke up in the middle of the night again last night, freaking out about having to go to the hospital. I was with my Mom and we were being forced down a long set of stairs into the ward where people were sent to die. It was horrible because I knew that in the room at the end of the stairs, my Dad was waiting and I had to say goodbye to him again.

Welcome to the last two and a half months of my sleeps.

One of the drugs that I am taking, an anti-malarial called mefloquine (which is also called larium) gives me terrible dreams every night. I just don’t know what to do anymore. Obviously, my days here are great but at nighttime it’s a completely different story. There’s a very unsettling contrast between the two.

Every morning, I awake with a sense that something horrible and irreversible has happened. I have to sit for a minute and think about it, and then slowly I realize that it was just another one of my mefloquine nightmares.

Generally, I’m not prone to having bad dreams – just the odd bad sleep before a big test, quitting a job, or after a particularly bad day. In the end, there was usually something I could link them to and nightmares didn’t happen that often anyway. At first I attributed my consistently bad nightmares to the changes involved with leaving my friends, my job, my apartment and Rusel behind in New York City and moving someplace new. But after I had settled into life in Banda Aceh and I was really enjoying myself I realized that it was something else.

They start out really bad, on Monday nights after I take my weekly dose. They get consistently less frightening as the week goes on but then they start up again once again as soon as the next Monday rolls around. As a self-confessed and well-respected professional sleeper, this is definitely ruining my game.

I guess I could quit taking the mefloquine? Now that I am out of Banda Aceh, I think that I am pretty safe. I think that I was the only ex-pat taking anti-malarials in Aceh anyway. They’re expensive (mine were about $300 for a three-month supply), the side-affects are bad at times, and it’s just a hassle. I almost quit taking the pills then but decided against it when Kate got dengue fever and I realized that these tropical diseases aren’t messing around.

But now I’m in a tourist’s haven, Bali, and the book says that malaria is rare here. I asked the guy who runs the hotel I’m staying at, when he delivered my breakfast this morning (delicious crepes and coffee!) about malaria and he said that it’s not an issue here. The bible, the Lonely Planet, says the same.

I’m torn. I guess I have until next Monday to decide. Mom, I already know what you think…..but I feel like I could really use some nice dreams, for a change. Something with unicorns, endless episodes of Gilmore Girls, bottomless cartons of Ben & Jerry’s chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream that miraculously don’t make you fat, and Stephen Colbert feeding it to me (sorry, Rusel!).

I've Got the Travelin' Bug

Hello, loyal readers, I am back! Unfortunately, it is the fate of all travelers at one point or another, to become sick. Germ-infested, non-circulating air in planes; strange foods; even stranger viruses and bacteria floating around the universe – these are just a few of the culprits on the road to ill. I think that it was something I ate on Saturday because I started feeling sick Saturday afternoon.

Thank you so much to my loyal pinch-hitter, Rusel, who filled in for me yesterday. I made an attempt to leave the house and go to the internet café to blog, because we didn’t have wireless at home – but my roommates at the IRC women’s guesthouse were having none of it! It was really sweet, they took good care of me all weekend and in the end, it was probably best that I stayed in and recovered. Rusel did an amazing job and I especially like the picture of the tree, which did give me a moment of zen today.

A few posts ago, when I said that I was feeling great -- it was true, but kind of not true. I feel good on the whole, but pretty much every day I experience nausea, which I have broken down into six different categories:

-Car Nausea. This is due to extra-windy roads, steep drop-offs and insane drivers who careen at very fast speeds and then wait until the very last minute to avoid head-on collisions. The road here has one lane and vehicles going in both directions must share it, which makes for interesting trips. I usually scream about once per ride, on average. I get nauseous about every long trip. Short trips, I’m usually spared.
-Fish-Head Nausea. This is caused by having fish-heads placed in front of me, by me catching a whiff of fish heads sitting on the table in front of me or even a table over, or a fish-head somehow popping up in my meal. You’d be surprised how easily those things can sneak into an otherwise lovely meal.
-Anti-Malarial Nausea. This is caused by the medication I take every Sunday night. Usually on Monday morning, I feel like puking.
-Over-Heating Nausea. Again, pretty much a daily occurrence. It’s hot here!
-Dirty Bathroom Nausea. Pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Sometimes bathrooms here…..are just to a different standard!
-A-Bunch-of-Men-Smoking-in-a-Small-Room Nausea. This happens at almost all restaurants, coffee shops, or any other public spaces. Men here like to smoke. And often.

Now, reading this over you might think that I’m a little bit of a prima donna -- I don’t want to create that impression at all! In fact, I have been complimented on MANY occasions on my traveling ability. “Hearty traveler, one of the best people I’ve ever traveled with!” -direct quote from Meyung. “My favorite traveling partner!” -direct quote from Rusel. Roger even went so far as to sign us up for “Amazing Race” – maybe next year, Rog! Look at all of those glowing endorsements. I still absolutely love to travel and I love being here. You just have to take the bad with the good and the good definitely outweighs the bad.

So I’m feeling better and am back in Calang. I spent a lot of time in the car today but also did some really great interviews so at least I have something good to show for it. One of the schools was really sweet – they gathered all of the teachers together and we had a picture on the front steps. At that same school, I interviewed two teachers who have both been teaching for 18 years and they graduated from college together. They were really cool. I also have uploaded a picture or two from the grand mosque in Meulaboh -- it looks like something out of a Disney movie.

I’m back to Banda Aceh tomorrow – stay tuned for a new “traveling back to Banda Aceh” story. What will happen next?

We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Program

Hello this is Rusel, I am filling in today with an important update: Lex is unfortunately unable to offer her daily blogging entertainment due to being sick. I just spoke with her and she is making a very speedy recovery - so no need to worry. She just has some type of stomach virus that is making life a little unpleasant.

Then on top of this she is being held captive by two women caretakers who will not let her leave her room as she is currently in the field with no Internet access at the residence and must go to an Internet café to blog. She tried to explain to the caretakers that it is crucial that she go blog, however they did not understand the urgency. She went further and told them of people all across the world that read her daily comments and life observations, but alas, they forced her back to her room.

There she has built a mosquito net fort and is longingly looking out the window. Being sick is no fun, but being sick while traveling while homesick is less fun. But fear not blog readers, the worst is over and she is feeling better today. She will be back to her regularly scheduled blogging responsibilities tomorrow.

In the meantime I have posted a moment of zen so everyone can reflect on life:

Kate....Back From The Brink

Today is Kate’s first day back in the office after her courageous bout with dengue fever.

Welcome back, Kate! I have posted a picture of her hard at work, back at her desk this morning.

Kate Update

After five days of a high fever, Kate's temperature has gone down to normal today and she is feeling better. She has been going to the UN doctor every day to get blood work and the results are good. She now has a bit of a rash but I guess that's all part of the process.

Paige sent me some information today about how dengue fever is "raging" across Southeast Asia. Don't worry......just in case my battle with the mosquitoes hasn't been well documented enough for you; I am doing everything in my power to outfox them.

A topic of conversation here, every day, is definitely "How are you feeling?" One evening I asked someone in Calang if they wanted to go to dinner with me and they replied, quite frankly and matter-of-factly: "Sorry, I can't. I have diarrhea." It seems as if things that you normally wouldn’t discuss in polite company are frequent topics of discussion here, but I think that is definitely one of the outcomes from living and working closely to other people – you get to know them very well in a short amount of time and all pretenses that you would normally have don’t really exist.

I’m feeling great right now and my body seems to be adjusting well. I think that the larium I am taking as an anti-malarial is giving me some whacky dreams, but I prefer whacky dreams to getting malaria so I will keep taking them – although the rate of malaria really isn’t that high here. The thing to watch out for, apparently, is dengue and the vaccine is still being developed.

One of the biggest accomplishments of the relief agencies that came to Banda Aceh right after the tsunami was that they prevented any huge epidemics from happening due to lack of hygiene, clean drinking water, etc. After the immediate response, I think that the efforts of many NGO’s need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis but that is one thing that was a definite success.

I Defeat the Mosquitoes, Kate Does Not

So, the big news today is that Kate has dengue fever…bad news for Kate. You get dengue fever from mosquitoes that bite during the day. Malarial mosquitoes are the ones that come out at dusk. The incubation period is about 2-7 days and there’s no vaccination against it. Once you get it, there’s really no treatment for it, either. You just have to wait it out. She’s had a fever since Friday and her fever is now 103 degrees. Both Ivana and I are kind of worried about her and feel like maybe she should go to the doctor, but she’s taking something to help with the fever and wants to wait it out a while longer. She’s already been to the doctor twice to be tested and both times, the results came back positive.

It’s not life threatening, so like I said, she just has to suffer through it. Usually it takes about 10 days to start feeling better. I’ll update you and let you know how she’s doing.

So I’m really happy to be back to Banda, people, my nice big bed and no mosquitoes! I had a hard time sleeping last night, and just as I was drifting off to sleep I heard a noise, and to my (overactive) imagination it sounded as if someone was rattling the doorknob to the cabin. I worked up the courage and went out to the living area and looked out the window. Nothing. I ran back into the bedroom, shut and locked the door, and got back under the safety of the mosquito net.

But once again, a few moments later, I heard the same rattling noise. I thought of calling Glenn, or just screaming really loud, if someone were to burst into my room. It sounded as if the noise was coming from right outside my bedroom window. I was really starting to freak out, and the fact that I had just spent the entire weekend reading a psychological thriller didn’t help either.

I crept up to the curtains and peeped out behind them. For a minute, I couldn’t even believe what I was seeing – a huge, wild boar as big as a small bear! I am NOT exaggerating! It was HUMONGOUS and it was chomping away at a coconut (hence the noise). I was in such shock I didn’t know what to do, I just stood there and stared. It was so horribly ugly but fascinating at the same time. Suddenly I thought – get the camera and take a picture for the blog! But as soon as I had run to get my camera and run back, he was already leaving my area and onto another area in the compound and there was no way I was chasing after him.

I was talking about it with Martin today after I got back and he said that these boars grow huge and wild because nobody is hunting them, because Muslims can’t eat pork. I remembered the time Roger and I were in Hawaii on The Big Island and we were driving around and almost ran over a huge, wild boar. We were pretty shaken up about it and when we got back to the lodge of the campgrounds we were staying at we told them about it, and they excitedly asked us exactly where we had seen it, so that they could go shoot it and roast it up! Well, that definitely wouldn’t happen here! They serve bacon at this “blang” place called Caswells but the waitresses could even get in trouble by the Sharia police for serving it to the customers (so why do they have it on the menu? Who knows).

So after that encounter, I had a hard time falling back to sleep. I finally drifted off and woke up just in time to go over to the Oxfam shuttle to come back to Banda (Oxfam, IRC and Merlin, all NGO’s, have shuttles on different days and share passengers.)

I guess I had it coming to me, because today’s ride back to Banda was terrible. I thought at first that it wouldn’t be so bad, because there were only 3 passengers and all of the seats faced forward (it was more of a jeep-type land cruiser) and also had air conditioning – quite a luxury. But, as we were just leaving town, maybe 15 minutes out, I saw the lady in the front seat lean over and start heaving into a plastic bag. She puked for a good 10 minutes and filled that plastic bag up, which she promptly threw out the window (more on the littering problem here later).

Not five minutes later, we pulled over to a stand along the side of the road that sold the big, dried-out fish that I posted pictures of a few weeks back. The same woman who had been puking jumped out and bought a huge, dried fish, and so did the other woman in the car. They put it in the back and away we went – along with an overwhelming fish stench.

Now I felt like I was going to be sick! Things didn’t improve much when they pulled the car over once again to load up on Durian. Durian is this fruit that they have here, and the saying is that it “tastes like heaven, and smells like hell.” The latter part is totally true, the stench is terrible. One of my Indonesian friends said, with pride, that durian was part of “Fear Factor” once and the contestants had to eat it – that’s how bad it is. When you are driving down the road, you can smell the durian stand as you approach and drive away, and many hotels and restaurants have signs on them stating that you can’t bring durian in – it’s that bad! Hard to believe that a fruit could throw off such an overwhelming smell, but trust me it can. I have posted a picture here of the dreaded durian!

So why these two women felt as if they could buy two HUGE bags and put those in the back also is beyond me! Again, I tried to roll with it but spent the next six hours fighting the nausea I probably would’ve felt without the puking incident, the dried fish and the durian! To top things off, the driver was completely mad and I think that he had some sort of death wish. I’m not exaggerating when I say that there were several times I could’ve sworn we were on a different road than the one I have traveled three times already now because we were being tossed around like kernels of popcorn in a hot kettle.

I was soooo overjoyed to see the Banda office again, and say hello to Martin, Friska, Yanti and Ivana. I had my interview tonight with Yanti over a personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut! (Her request). It was funny because I never eat Pizza Hut at home, but tonight it felt oddly comforting and delicious.

I’ll post more this week on how my project is progressing, as a bunch of people have been asking about it. But as for right now, I am off to bed – I’m exhausted!

Heathrow....Nothing Fun to Say About Heathrow....

So anyway, I am now on the world's longest journey to Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

My first leg is down, from NYC - London. I took the red eye last night. And by red eye yes I mean an overnight plane, and also red eye because I have a raging cold/fever/cough. When my mover came he kept asking me for kleenex...he had a terrible cold....I knew right away that my fate was sealed. Luckily I fought it until yesterday, when it came on with a vengeance.

So I decided to try to get a room for the day in London, because I was feeling so sick and had a 12 hour layover. The cheapest room I could find was some place called The Thistle for $200 --- and that didn't sound like a good option! I suddenly had images in my mind of thorns sticking into me from the mattress or something (perhaps a fever hallucination but still an unsettling thought). So, as I started to break down in tears/exhaustion, the woman at the hotel booking counter told me that for only $70 I could get a day pass to the Mariott, where I could have access to all of their facilities (shower, sauna, lounge). I decided this was the best option so here I am for another few hours before I board my flight to Singapore.

Then it's another long layover to some place called Medan/Polania (I'm guessing that this is in Indonesia) and then it's a quick flight to Banda Aceh, where someone from the IRC is picking me up.

Hopefully this cold will go away soon! Fingers crossed.