Darren is here!! ;)

He flew in this morning, and we're just toodling around on the internet now waiting out the afternoon rain. It's so nice to have him here. And sort of surreal in a way, too. We're going to spend a couple of days here in Bangkok, then we're going to head down to Ko Phi Phi for some R&R in a nice little bungalow somewhere. Wheee!!

Alright, quick recap of my China impressions: basically it's a country with a huge identity crisis because the Chinese seem to constantly measure themselves by what others think. So the current trend is to be Western. Most of the country looks like it was built in the last 10 years or so, though you can still catch glimpses of some of the old communist blocks if you're paying attention. But they still don't seem to know quite what to do with all the new, fancy, shiny stuff. I met a very nice guy on the Yangtze boat trip who speaks great english and is a fellow biologist. He wrote me a long, frustrated email today about his fellow countrymen and their hiddeous manners, which really are bad. The hacking and spitting everywhere, the foul toilets, tossing litter into the river next to a perfectly good trash can, smoking 2 packs of 25 mg cigarettes per day, etc etc. If you ever get a chance to come to China, pay attention when you fly over the country. It really is the thick brown smog of somewhere like LA, only spread out over the ENTIRE country. I got a cold the other day that turned into an upper respiratory infection, and it's gone since being in the "clean" air of bangkok.

BUT all of that may be set to change really soon. China is going through some major growing pains in the process of revamping its international image. In the wake of the 2008 Olympics, 5 million households are receiving free "etiquiette" manuals teaching things like how to que up in a line, not to spit on people (accidentally or on purpose), and how long an appropriate handshake should last. It sounds funny, and at first I thought "but that's just how china is, and if people go there, they should expect to see the Chinese for who they are". They're dear sweet people, in general, who are really friendly and helpful, curious, and eager to learn as much as they can from all of us. But after 10 days in China, I'm thinking it's not such a bad idea after all :)

One last funny thing - there really is no concept of a lineup in China. So I was waiting with a gal named Claire to board my air asia flight from Xiamen to Bangkok. When it's time to board, a hundre chinese folk rush to the gate and stand three wide, chest to back for a good 10 minutes before they even opened the gate to let people through. Air Asia is one of these budget airlines that doesn't give seat assignements, so I thought they were all rushing to get good window or aisle seats, or get family together. So Claire and I line up last with the few Thai people who were also not about to join in the Chinese mosh pit. We get on the plane, and it looks full - the few empty seats were being saved for people who hadn't made it to the gate yet. Then I looked up to the back of the plane - the last HALF of the plane was EMPTY. So Claire and I each ended up with a row of three seats to ourselves with no one in front or in back of us, so we could stretch out as much as we wanted. Im sort of surprised the plane didn't nose dive from being so front heavy.

More later on our big Thai adventures!