American Airline's New Marketing Strategy: Diagnosing me with a disease.

Today I received a concerned email from American Airlines. Apparently, they are worried that I have a disease, the terrible Wanderlust.

       The only cure? 1 million frequent flier miles, which only 4 will receive.  What do I have to do to be in the running for the cure?  Only buy a roundtrip, transatlantic flight, of course.  Who would fall for this?

The Email:

      

Dear Meghan __________,

Are you experiencing symptoms of The Wanderlust? Do you feel: [ ] Trapped in your own home or office? [ ] Like you haven't taken a vacation in years? [ ] Consumed by thoughts of exotic lands? [ ] All of the above?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you have the Wanderlust. In celebration of our newly enhanced relationship, American Airlines and British Airways have found the cure. Together we will turn four travelers into Miles Millionaires*.

To become eligible to enter The Miles Millionaire Contest, register, then book a qualifying round-trip transatlantic flight on American Airlines, British Airways or Iberia now through June 17, 2011, and complete your travel on or before June 30, 2011. Once you complete your travel, you'll receive an email** with details on the contest entry process. You just have to creatively answer this question: "If you were cured of the Wanderlust with 1 Million Miles, where would you go and what would you do there?"

         As I read this, I became increasingly irritated at how much American Airlines underestimated my intelligence.  Part of me wondered if American Airlines takes note of the people who routinely buy their transnational flights less than 2 weeks beforehand, and if we alone were targeted in this absurd marketing ploy.  Just because I'm spontaneous/indecisive does not mean that I lack the critical thinkings skills that allow me to see this, the potentially worst deal of all time (If you spend $1200+ on a transatlantic flight, we'll give you a statistically insignificant chance at winning 1,000,000 frequent flier miles...on American Airlines, rendering your miles useless as AA hates redeeming FF miles more than they hate edible food), for what it is. 

       These terrible deals, the business equivalent of "I'll trade you 5 shiny pennies for 1 old quarter" have become a reoccuring theme of American Airlines emails to their FF customers.  Thank you, AA, once again you have made me feel valued. 

        

         

        

5 normal things that can kill you in China.

         When people find out that I live in China, there usually is a series of questions they ask me, but one of the first questions is often, "Is it safe there?"
          This time last year, I would have said with full confidence that China is the safest place I've ever lived.  Now I would still say the same, as the other places I've lived are Washington, DC (murder capital of the country) and Moscow (murder capital of the world), but without the confidence.
        In the past year, I've been 1) robbed, 2) dragged out of my cab and almost down a set of stairs by a group of rabid drunk Chinese people and 3) got into a screaming showdown with the "leader of the taxi cab drivers of Dalian".
        That being said, that isn't the norm for foreigners in China. I just happen to be exceptionally unlucky, to the point where I don't even think Switzerland would be safe for me.  That being said, I wouldn't even put crime into my top 5 dangers in China because criminal activity is so scarce.  What would I put in my top 5 list?  5 things that every person in China encounters on a normal day basis.  


1) Death by Taxi cab drivers who live in a Grand Theft Auto World.
      Every single driver in China seems to think that he is Mad Max, and drives as such. 

At heart, every Chinese taxi driver is this man.

 However, even the Chinese people I met in Beijing noted how terrible the drivers are in Dalian, apparently Dalian is notorious for the death racers that are responsible for dozens of peoples' lives on a given day.  Worst of all, taxi drivers take it as a personal insult if one wants to wear a seat belt, indignantly informing the passenger that they are a good driver, then unbuckling the offending seatbelt.
 Just one example of a normal taxi drive.  
         While cheerfully asking if you like Chinese food and informing you that they like Obama/Kobe Bryant/some other American sports star I don't know, they are playing a chicken/bumper car hybrid game with their car: going into the wrong lane, driving full speed in reverse for over a mile (it was maybe the most impressive thing I've ever seen) and driving through active construction sites,  just of the top of my head.


2) Death by Mystery Meat Street Food
      "Fried tofu! How delicious!" It's not even meat, so it has to be okay right?
            Wrong. In street food, people often mix tofu with cardboard.  Can you imagine what they mix their meat with? As one might have heard, the Chinese culinary scope and width far exceeds ours in terms of what they will eat.  Which means that they will pretty much eat anything and everything, except for ice water. That means that a stick of chuar (a kabob) could be mutton, or it be the intestines of a rat.  There is a reason why Hepatitis B. is a huge problem here, and it pretty much starts and ends at mystery street food.  

Grasshoppers. 

             The worst part is that street food is curiously delicious, and most of the time, the street food is safe to eat, which lures people into a false sense of security about the food.  I've gotten around this problem by eating only seafood and vegetable chuar, which is delicious and easily recognizable.  


3) Death by being a Pedestrian 

     Being a pedestrian in China is a little like being in world where you are a bowling pin, and every car is a bowling ball that wants you dead. If you are lucky enough to make it to the safety of a sidewalk, one still must contend with the rickshaws.  As they are neither a car nor a pedestrian, they abide the laws of no man, and as such, are the lone source of anarchy in a country where everything is controlled by the government.

4) Death by Construction sites/random manholes
     When people say that China is a developing country, it isn't just economically.  It is literally developing, everywhere, in every city.  What happens when lots of buildings need to be torn down/built up in a short amount of time and there are no safety regulations?
       The question is, what doesn't happen.  Steel beams hanging above a sidewalk like an blade of destruction, sudden drops into the dark netherworld of Chinese sewage, skeletal buildings with frames held together by twine, and burning infernos of melded iron steps away from the sidewalk, these are not  occasional occurrences.  It's just a walk to the grocery store.

They'll get around to building the rest of this sometime

                      
5) Death by Fireworks
             The Chinese people are a moderate people, but when they celebrate, do they ever.  Going out for a few beers? Only if by a few, you mean "their body weight," and by beer you mean baijiu.  This is the country that only told their employees not to drink at lunchtime after heavy drinking competitions put one man in a coma and the other in a coffin in one week.  So throwing confetti? Eh, only if it is confetti of FIRE.
          As I've mentioned before, Spring Festival is the time of year when Chinese citizens throw fireworks (and caution) into the wind, with a reckless devil-may-care attitude of where the fire might land.  After all, what is the worst that can happen with millions of unmonitored pyromaniacs setting off fireworks in heavily populated cities?

Oops!

            Just to get an idea, this building is in the center of Beijing, and took up an entire block of downtown real estate.  It is now unusable, as no one can figure out what to do with the charred remains of the brand-new hotel that was build for the 2008 Olympics.

my street, full of fun and confetti

my street, under attack/"celebrating spring festival"

           For two weeks, China is under siege by people armed with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of fireworks.  And not just sparklers, but 4th of July-style fireworks as well.  They also have a cutesy type of firework that shoots balls of fire out of a tube, I discovered as I walked behind a group of little boys, all busy shooting the fireballs at the windows of the apartment buildings they saw.  
         Every year, dozens of people die, hundreds are hurt and several buildings burn to the ground, as tends to happen when dealing with combustible fire. 

Forget you, Eat Love Pray, I'm taking my vacation back :Thailand Pt. 2

        Since  my freshman year of college, I have been surrounded by people who are more liberal than me.  I am either viewed as a moderate or a soulless big-business vampire who bleeds third world children dry in the name of greed, depending on how dramatic the person is feeling.  
         All the same, I will admit that the free-spirited bohemian gypsy hipster wearing long skirts, hand painted beads and drinking iced thai tea while explaining that we're all connected by an energy is not me.  While I understand why people have their views, I do tend to err on the pragmatic side, and I've never felt the need to "find myself." 
       I've spent my life reading.  Beautifully disturbing Russian novels, stoic yet sweeping British romances, books on 1001 ways to use baking powder, it doesn't matter.   Anything and everything I will read.  The only exception to that rule is books that try to tell you how to live your life and enlighten you.
         I first heard about Eat Love Pray when a junior in college, and refused to read it for four years, due to the fact that it seemed to me to incorporate everything I was wary of.                                                          However, in China, beggars can't be choosers when it comes to English books, and desperation for a decent book wore me down.  
      This is important to understand in regards to what comes next.  I decided to go to a meditation retreat in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  I blame it completely on Eat Love Pray. In case you have no idea what this book is about, it's about a depressed woman who travels and finds herself and is happy again.    
        So I trekked back to Bangkok, bought my ticket, then went to the most rickety train station one could imagine.  It was literally just a platform of rotting boards on either side of the train tracks.  I was quite worried, imagining the type of train that would pull up.  I didn't care if it was clean or dirty, stuffed with people or empty, I just prayed that it would have a working air conditioner, because the Thai heat was draining me of both my energy and, I feared,  my logical reasoning skills.  That morning I had bought an enormous bag of strange, heavy fruit that I had no idea how to eat.  I had just bought it because it look interesting and the street woman told me to, and so, for the next few hours, I lugged around my tiny backpack and the huge bag of uneatable fruit. 
         Luckily,  a train that appeared to be a smooth pewter bullet emerged on the horizon, two hours after it's initial estimated arrival time.  I had kept busy by watching some Thai women torture their clothes by plunging the clothes into water, twisting and whipping the clothes against a small shed, then beating the clothes with boards in the most violent washing I've ever witnessed. 
         Not only was the train air conditioned, it was frigid.  The icy, stainless steel speed train contrasted so much with the heavy humidity, festive colors and comfortable dirtiness of Thailand that it seemed like it belonged to a different time, a different world.
          Shivering, I emerged from my refrigerated cocoon into Chiang Mai the next morning, ready for meditation to be the garbage disposal to all of my convoluted thoughts.  I imagined myself, thoughtless, still and serene, while Buddhist monks nodded their head approvingly at my imitation of a statue.  I imagined what life would be like when I thought less and slower, when my words would be measured and wise, not the steam of consciousness chipmunk-speak that they usually are.  I would return to the US, and everyone would be so impressed by my changes.  They would say things like, "Meghan, you speak so slowly now!", "Meghan, you are so chilled out, it's like you're from California!" and "Look at you, reading the news and not getting sad." 
        So I went to the monastery, put my things down and still had two hours to meander before the retreat stated.   So I went to find Thai iced tea, my obsession in Thailand.  As I explored the little Chiang Mai streets, I started to feel uneasy about the meditation retreat, but I tried to push it out of my mind.   I went into a tiny tea-house on a side street of Chiang Mai.  Moments later, two foreign women walked into the tea house as well.  One looked very whimsical, 60s hippie-ish, she had black and white streaked short hair, big star earrings and was wearing a billowy shift dress.  She was a real, life-long hippie! She had to be, looking as she did and living in Thailand.
          So I started up a conversation with her, I told her about the retreat, expecting that she would have something to add.  And did she ever.  She lived on an ashram in India for 10 years, in serious meditation. 
           "Oh wow, really? I'm actually just about to go to a meditation retreat.  Any suggestions or tips?" I asked.  
           "Yes.  Don't do it." She answered solemnly. "Meditation lets in everything, and not all spirits are good.  Many are evil.  I ended up joining a cult and was haunted by evil spirits until I was saved. I'm now a missionary in Thailand for the Catholic Church." 
         I blinked. That was not at all what I was expecting. 
        What are the odds? That in the 1 hour before my retreat, I would run into an ex-cult member/current Christian missionary who would warn me against meditation? 

         I had to return to the monastery to pick up my things, but I was having serious second thoughts.  

         "Oh no!" I scanned the room full of hipster hippie backpackers with their fedoras, lonely planets and supercilious conversations about finding truth. I saw a Che Guevara T-shirt and I started to panic, as I imagined my next few days, a captive audience to listening to Bob Marley and diatribes about the US government. On the far side of the room, the monks were moving a gong into the room.

         Then I looked at myself, after all, I was there too.  Days of endless heat had broken down my resolve and I was wearing a peasant skirt, and I was backpacking through Thailand, trying to be as frugal as possible.  Was I really any different? 

          And that's when I had it, my moment of epiphany.  They aren't me and I'm not them.  I don't want to meditate.  I don't want to clear my mind and get rid of my thoughts.  I realized that

      1) Just because I'm backpacking doesn't mean I need to have the backpack lifestyle. I'm not a hippie, and I don't want to be.

      2) I don't like gongs, and I don't want to listen to them 

      3) If I wanted to not be in my head anymore, meditation was perhaps the worst idea I've                had so far. 

      5) I don't need to find myself, because I never lost myself.  

which could all be summed up to: 

     6) forget you, Eat Love Pray, I'm taking my vacation back.      

       So I picked up my things and walked out, away from the meditation, the gongs and maybe spiritual enlightenment.  

     
 I didn't know what I wanted, but i knew that I didn't want to go on elephants, i didn't want to go to temples, I didn't want to take the backpacking vow of poverty, priding myself that I spent $2 a night on a room full of cockroaches instead of $6 on a clean room.  

           Let me be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with cheap hostels, backpacking, or even Che Guevara (as long as people actually know what he did and what he stood for, instead of some abstract idea that they just link to him), it just isn't for me.  I can do it, but it isn't my idea of a vacation.

       I wanted to do what I wanted to do.  So I went to my hostel a day early and signed up for a cooking class.
       That was the beginning of the wonderful last two weeks of my vacation.  I spent one week in Chiang Mai, that is where I discovered the kindle, which changed my world.  An electronic book that could hold hundreds of books! I rediscovered my love of reading, and realized that it was always through reading that I gained perspective.  I spent the rest of the vacation wandering around Chiang Mai, talking to people, eating random things and going to nearby lakes and villages.  

          The last week I spent in Koh Phangan doing nothing, and I loved every minute of it. Koh Phangan is known for the infamous full moon parties, but besides the actual full moon party, I stayed on my sleepy side of the island in a cozy bungalow.
              I spent my days making friends with the other guests, reading everything I could, snorkeling, swimming, hiking and drinking copious amounts of coconut shakes.  Boring? Maybe to some people, but for me it was perfect.

Isn't she cute? She was so excited when I asked if I could take a picture of her.

At the marketplace, picking out veggies.

 Main lesson of Thailand: Kindles trump Meditation

How driving a motorbike off a cliff was the best thing that didn't happen to me: Thailand, Part 1.

The last photo of my ill-fated motorbike ride

As I watched my white motorbike fling itself in a suicidal dive out of my hands, across the broken paved road and soar into a tree, all I could feel was exasperation.

The island of Koh Chang from the ferry

"Fine! Fine! You win!!" You. WIN!" Happy?" I was not sure to whom or what I was conceding to.  God? Asia? My common sense? As Thai people ran out of their houses made out of boards and insulated by newspaper across the rotted log that I had just gingerly tiptoed across, that led from their beach to the main road, I crossed the road to inspect the poor bike.  For the first time,  I saw that the only barrier between the road and a several hundred foot freefall was that gnarled tree.  The lone foreigner, a britishman, came up to me.
          "You let go of the bike." he said.  "That's good, most people never do." Picturing myself and my bike soaring off the cliff in a final blaze of glory, I realized just how close of a call I had just had.
         I had a flashback to when I was in 2nd grade:  standing in my kitchen, anxiously recounting the boxes of girl scout cookies I had sold, realizing I was under quota, and my mother's response to my woeful lamenting. "So what are you going to do? Jump off a cliff? Figure it out." 
         Here I was, seventeen years later, anxiously counting and recounting, standing on the side of a cliff.  
         What was I doing? Why was I here? How did I get here? How did I almost drive off a cliff, alone on a remote island in Thailand? 
         It was a reality check.  This was far from the first dangerous situation I'd encountered in the past eighteen months, but it was the first time that it had been my fault.  I had been reckless, I had told the person I was riding with to go on without me, I had wanted to stay behind and take pictures.  Sure, nothing bad had happened, but I was lucky.  What was I thinking?
        The issue was, I hadn't been.
         According to all the expats I've talked to, as well as a graduate students whose actual study is the effect of living abroad on people,  after living in China for about a year, expats experience what is scientifically known as the "China funk." It's symptoms are different for everyone, for me, it manifested itself in homesickness.  
           The difficult part of living abroad isn't the culture shock, the language barrier or traveling.  The emotionally draining part is the unsettling knowledge that everyone who knows and loves them is 3,000 miles away, and that they have to build a life without any of that support, and that everyone else's lives are moving on without them.  
         So in the throes of the "China funk", I decided to escape from the crowds of people and disconcerting street food.  
            I was going to backpack my way through Thailand, hostels and all. I was inspired by a friend known for her chill, laid back demeanor,  love of traveling and penchant for staying in hostels that looked like someone had just been murdered there.  If she could travel cheaply and light, so could I.  Carrying only a small backpack filled mostly with sunscreen and the book Eat Love Pray (more on that later), I boarded the plane to thailand. 
           Baby powder beaches, vivid blues, grey matte skies (it was the rainy season in Thailand) , bizarre yet tasty street food,  hospitable Thai people, it was as if I had stepped into a computer beach screensaver.

This is an actual picture I took myself.  Go to your computer's screen savers...look familiar?

              Perfect, right? The only problem was myself. I snorkeled, accidentally deep fried myself, meandered on beaches, saw insane amounts of temples, tried to find elephants and consumed every type of food I saw; yet I was still plagued by the same thoughts, namely, that I was 24 and still didn't know my exact life plan. 
            Standing over the mangled body of my poor motorbike, I realized that throwing myself off a cliff, metaphorically or physically, wasn't for me.  I had passively brooded over my potential life plans for months.  It was time for me to be proactive.  
           A few hours later, after a kindly Englishman and Thai man took me back to my beach bungalow and I had negotiated and paid the motorbike rental price for the damages (about $90, which I was later told was far too expensive, but I did wreck their bike, so I didn't negotiate too much), I started to read Eat Love Pray. 
            And thus started my attempt to be proactive by being exceptionally passive.  I,  the anti-hippie, anti-vegan republican, decided to go to a meditation retreat on a quest to find myself.  
          


    

Inner-Mongolia pictures

Manzhouli at twilight

A huge, festive umbrella in the middle of nowhere

Here a few photos from Inner-Mongolia:

traditional chinese palace in front of a new high rise in Hailaier

                                            

"We kill the sheep and eat the sheep" - recollections from Inner-Mongolia

When one thinks of Inner-Mongolia, it is not unlike thinking of Siberia, as being a distant, mysterious barren wasteland.  Even though I am only 10 hours away from Siberia, and 24 hours away from Inner-Mongolia by train, both of these places seem so far removed from my reality that when it was suggested that I go to inner-mongolia, my first reaction was to say that i didn't have enough time to travel there, as I only had 8 days.

Upon reflection, a train schedule and a map, I realized that it was absolutely a possibility, and tempted by the luxurious accomadations of sleeping in a yurt, eating yak meat and maybe herding some sheep, I decided to go.

Accompanied by my likewise - adventurous friend, Caroline- we decided to venture to Manzhouli, a town that sits on the border of China, Russia and Mongolia.  At first, we had planned to just get on a train and go, but unfortunately, our Chinese tutor, Emily, found us a travel agent to book the trip for us.  Neither one of us had very strong objections to it, so we agreed to it.  

But before that, we had the 24-hour long train to inner-Mongolia before us- everyone warned us against it- but we loved every moment, it was just us, our books, two bags of groceries and one huge bag of an entire day's worth of meals from McDonalds for two people. Intermittently, another girl in our travel group, a deaf Chinese girl, would come to check in on us.  This was always a long ordeal, as we would have to write our conversations to her- in Chinese characters- which, we thought speaking in Chinese was hard? writing a chinese conversation= much worse.

Getting off the train in Manzhouli, we faced a two-pronged problem which we had not foreseen- 1) we were traveling with two deaf Chinese people- so we couldn't communicate with them except by writing solely in characters- so our conversations were limited, to say the least- though Caroline valiantly and successfully struggled through a conversation about American colleges. 2) in terms of shopping and restaurants, everyone spoke Russian.

Basically, our Chinese was useless to us (except in relation to our tour guide/hotel employees that we later argued with).  and my Russian? rusty to say the least- I could read-but I found that I had forgotten most of my food vocabulary.  and thats how I became an enigma to the good people of Manzhouli.  I look Russian, speak a little Russian- but within a few seconds have to switch back to Chinese- in all fairness, it's been 3 years since I was in Russia- so I confused Chinese and Russians alike, as they tried to figure out how a Russian girl could not speak Russian.

Now, inner- mongolia is beautiful- full of cows, goats, greens and blues- all of things i've been starved to see since I've been in China.  Stepping into Manzhouli was like stepping into technicolor- and a little like stepping into Russia.  Full of vivid yellow, gold and red hues, the city had all the curves, steeples and austere authority of traditional Russian architecture- it contrasted sharply with the slate gray, modern rigidity of the buildings and dull blue of Dalian's sea.  I do love Dalian, but Manzhouli was a whole other world.  we had fun- we went shopping- ate and just walked around the city, which is charming and european- more so than Dalian or even Haerbin.  

Now, the first day, we went on a horse-ride, then to see various, awful, Chinese-style tourist traps.  Finally, at the last tourist trap, I was frustrated and asked the woman what we were going to do the next day- at which time, she informed me that we were going to "kill the sheep, and eat the sheep." To enforce my understanding, she repeatedly and forcefully mimed guillotining the sheep. This didn't sound like fun to me.  It seemed to me that since we had joined this tour group, they were always miming the death of some animal- at lunch they had happily demonstrated how to break the backs of the dead fish laying before us (that was our lunch). Caroline agreed with me, and so we made a pact to to go rogue on our trip the next day- to disappear and do something that did not involve sheep having to die. 

The next morning, we woke up to an ordeal.  The people in our travel group wouldn't let us go. We told them we weren't coming with them that day- didn't ask for our money back or anything- but b/c it was a matter of losing face, they all tried to force us to go, but we wouldn't capitulate- we didn't want to kill sheep.  It was a 1.5 hour argument in Chinese that ended up with us storming off after they tried to take our passports.  

The rest of our trip was relaxing, uneventful and wonderful.  

Lesson of the Story: 

Chinese tour trips: are the absolute worst and should be avoided unless you want to practice your chinese by arguing

Inner-Mongolia= wonderfulness

Chinese New Year Fireworks for Breakfast

Bang! Bang! Bangbangbangbangbang! This morning I was awoken from my peaceful slumber by what sounded like a military artillery outside of my apartment complex.  Confused, I ran to my window to see only a wall of thick smoke- and the sound of gunshots filled the air.  In my sleepy disorientation, there was only one explanation:

"North Korea is attacking us!" I exclaimed. It then took me a moment or so to figure out why that statement sounded so ridiculous...

.... it was Chinese New Year, a fact that I slipped my mind for the first few moments of being awake.  Oh, Chinese New Year- the month-long festival in which fire crackers are set off on seemingly every corner of every street of every city in China. From early in the morning until very late at night, one is in a constant state of wariness, never knowing if the fireworks will be set off before, behind or under them

     That, along with my double-strength jet lag ( the product of being home for 10 days- not enough time to adjust to US time, and then returning to China and having to readjust to Chinese time)- has made certain that I have not slept a full night since the beginning of February.