Some pictures of backpacking through Europe

Chocolote Museum in Bruges, Belgium

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Hamberg, Germany

Absinthe, 70% Alcohol, 10% Thujon

Prague, Czech Republic

Prague Castle in the Czech Republic

Me running out of money... where to sleep?

Adrienne getting ready to sleep in the train station!

Drinking + bowling = final score in the two digits range

Inside a church in Vienna, Austria

In front of the Louve at night

Moulin Rogue, how cliche...

New friends from Freiburg!

Hanging out in Freiburg, lucky me!

Sunbathing in Freiburg 101

Drinking in front of a police station in Munich

Travels so far...

Traveled so far:

Lohne, Germany
Hamberg, Germany
Bremin, Germany
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Bruges, Belgium
Paris, France
Lyon, France
Vienna, Austria
Prague, Czech Republic (currently in)

Updated:
After Prague, Czech Republic, we went on to backpack through:
Berlin, Germany
Munich, Germany
Freiburg, Germany
Frankfurt, Germany

We haven't gotten too many responses back from couchsurfing. I think it's maybe because of the following reasons:

1.) We don't give enough notice.
2.) I'm an unverified member of couchsurfing.
3.) I'm carrying a large bush knife hacking away at a coconut on my default picture.

Travels have been fun so far! I have a few funny stories that I'll write about when I get back.

Edited: I'm back!!! I'll update the stories here.

My report: A Chinese-American Volunteer's Perspective on Tonga

A Chinese-American Volunteer’s perspective of Tonga
Peace Corps Volunteer William Liu Group 71

Race:

The coined expression of ignorance, “Have you been on an island these last few years??” aptly applies to specific Tongans when it comes to their knowledge of different cultures. In no fault of their own, the Tongans who have never left their country have little grasp of different races because they were born and raised on an island. Their perception comes from rare encounters with tourists, though their main understanding comes from the perpetual stereotypes that movies and television portray.

The ignorance of different cultures and races leads to the logical fallacy of false association. The Tongans that are unaware of different cultures falsely associate a person’s country of origin with certain physical features and sometimes, even their actions.

Most of the Asians that Tongans meet in their country are either Chinese or Japanese, characterized by the physical characteristics of squinted eyes predominate in Asian societies. Thus, from the island perspective, if you have squinty eyes, you’re either Chinese or Japanese. Koreans, Cambodians, or any other Asian race is unheard of because their influence has not quite reached Tonga yet. Similarly, most of the Americans that Tongans meet have a lighter skin tone and are classified under the well-regarded ‘palangi’ category.

It is physical racial appearances that define the initial impressions of what people think about you in Tonga. Due to the overwhelming population of certain cities, you may never have a chance to give more than initial impressions. As an Asian volunteer, you have to keep that in mind everyday.

Culture:

Tonga has enjoyed foreign aid courtesy of many countries, mainly from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, and the United States of America. The foreign aid organizations have only supplemented Tonga’s traditional culture of ‘share everything’. Over the years however, Tongans have become slowly immersed with a contrary culture, the materialistic culture. An overwhelming number of remittances have left a few Tongans constantly yearning for more, to live in a dream life that’s realistically unattainable without a lot of work.

Coincidently, over the last 10 years an influx of Chinese has quickly established themselves from a nearly nonexistent population to a prominent business force. The Chinese community happened to be highly commerce-minded and through shrewd business ventures, became identified in Tonga as the place to shop due to their greater variety of stock and inexpensive prices.

Tongans were forced to watch as their country changed from being mainly Tongan operated to largely foreigner operated in a relatively short amount of time. Foreign businesses are not a new concept in Tonga, but it wasn’t quite as apparent until the Chinese arrived and started stores in mass. Now instead of foreigners only working at white collared jobs, the Chinese operated even at a grassroots level and started displacing local Tongan businesses.

Tongans started to realize that Tonga was no longer Tongan; foreign businesses permeated even daily life and they were constantly reminded of the fact whenever they would go to the local store to find that it was no longer owned by a relative, but instead by an unfamiliar face from an unfamiliar land. People became furious. They asked themselves how did this happen to their country?

Instead of slowly shifting away from the old culture, Tongans have been pushed to make a quick decision about the future state of affairs for their country. Some wish to retain the old Tongan lifestyle of sharing everything while others wish to adapt to the changing times and are eager to adopt more of the Western philosophies. There’s anger at the government for being unable to deal with the situation at large, that the Tonga of today is no longer the Tonga of old.

Change is coming and many of the upcoming events may be just as unforeseeable as Black Thursday, where over 80% of the capital was burnt down in an uncontainable riot. Black Thursday is more than just mere statistics or the devastation of a city. Black Thursday was the country’s primal cry for changes, a cry that has no set direction, just a hodgepodge of ideas, but nonetheless a cry that demands that action and reforms occur. As with all things, only time can tell.

Safety:

Complete security is only an illusion wherever you may be and racism is everywhere in this world. However, the current state of affairs in Tonga has called for a heightened awareness for one’s own security. During these times of change, anyone considering serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tonga should be made fully aware of these security issues to make a more informed decision and come better prepared.

The Chinese businesses are an easy target because of many factors. Not only do the Chinese make up a small 1% of the total population in Tonga, but their businesses are also dispersed all over Tonga. The Chinese are also noticeably smaller in physical stature than Tongans and do not understand English. Contrary to popular belief, the Chinese are not highly proficient in the Tongan language. The Chinese have had no formal training in the language so their vocabulary is mainly limited to identifying the items in a store. Beyond their store’s door, they feel helpless.

This leaves many Chinese in a foreign land, unable to put together a complete sentence in the local language, living as far as miles from the closest person who speaks the only language they know, and sitting behind metal bars as the only protection from would-be thieves. With no one to complain to when something happens and unable to even complain given the huge language barrier, this leaves Chinese businesses as easy prey to unscrupulous individuals ready to exploit an obvious vulnerability.

So if it’s dangerous, why do the Chinese still open up stores? Unlike Tongans (who inherit their land plots from birth), foreigners do not have any means of sustaining themselves off the land because of a law that states that foreigners cannot own land in Tonga. So far foreigners have bypassed that problem because they’re either part of an aid organization that pays its volunteers a living allowance or they’re tourists that come with money. With the highest export in Tonga being Tongans themselves, the idea of people moving to live in Tonga is unheard of. Foreigners living in Tonga are unable to sustain themselves off the land so they simply need money to survive, thus they create businesses.

To remain as safe as possible as an Asian volunteer, it is necessary to integrate yourself into the community. Let people know what a Peace Corps Volunteer is, that you come from America, and what your volunteer work consists of. You need people who can vouch for your character. Before that, you need to prove your character. Bars that might be acceptable for other volunteers might be more dangerous as a minority volunteer. If people get drunk at a bar, as usually is the case, you might be the first victim to be instigated. Above all, use common sense.

New Year

Argh!!! My sharp bush knife dropped, thankfully not severing any of my fingers or toes while on its twelve foot descent down towards the sandy beach. That would have been a bad start to a New Year. I pushed the thought away and focused on the task at hand. The coconuts were just another foot out of reach, but since my blade decided to follow gravity at the worst possible moment, I was unable to claim my green treasures.

Twelve feet doesn’t seem far, but when you’re hacking into the resistance of the trunk of a tree every foot with your knife, then hauling yourself up a few mere inches, only to repeat the process again until you reach the top, it becomes quickly tiring.

The last time I had tried to climb a coconut tree was in Uoleva where I miserably failed to ascend (almost as badly as my pronunciation of Uoleva). There, I had done what my body instinctively told me to do; I hugged the tree with dear life, with the thoughts that if I fell, no one could really help me (since the earliest medical care that could arrive would be more aptly measured in weeks than days)

The fear caused me to hug too closely and thus fail in the vertical expedition up that blasted tree. (When you hug too close to the tree, you use a lot of inner thigh muscle, one of many underdeveloped muscles in my body.) For that trip, we had to improvise and poke the coconuts out of the tree with a long stick. That tactic only proved moderately successful. I had to change my tree climbing style if I were to be truly successful at surviving island life.

Now, I learned of my past follies. I didn’t have any less regard for my life, but instead I developed a more refined technique of climbing coconut trees. In order to climb the tree, I had to extend my back further out. I changed my style so that it allowed the use of more muscles, some of which I had even been developing from going to the 'gym'. I climbed without the knife this time, remembering that I could simply twist the coconuts off their stems. The knife only caused me to expend more energy so I dropped the dead weight.

Before I knew it, I was at the top of the tree and four coconuts were sitting on the bottom. I took a quick glance over the small island and it gave me a spectacular view of the surrounding islands. There was the swift channel that a few friends and I had swam / kayaked out with our camping supplies.

These people were the type of people you wanted to go camping with. If camping were a sporting event, these would be your first draft picks. Along with their expert knowledge in wildlife, their sound common sense, and their uplifting attitudes, they also did all the planning and decided what supplies to bring. You can’t go wrong there!

The food was excellent; their camping food was better than the best of my home cooked meals. Their company was great; I just can’t imagine a better way to start off the New Year in Ha’apai. A fellow camper even caught and released a small shark, that’s got to be a good sign! (It's so hypocritical for humans to blame sharks for eating us when there's so many of us that eat them)

Words can’t really describe how unfortunate it is that the two fellow volunteers would be leaving soon though. Even if they didn’t arrange trips, or make the best meals in Tonga, their down to earth personalities suggested that they would still be first round picks in camping.

To say the least, it’ll be tough without them here. With all of the unfortunate events in Tonga over the past year, with the earthquake, the hurricane, and the death of their best friend/fellow Peace Corps volunteer, I hope that this New Year could fare much better for them.

I like to believe in Karma and with their unselfish acts of improving the current program for future volunteers, I think they have lots of good events coming their way. Here’s to change and lots of coconuts!

Trainees trying to leave the island

We were riding in the back of the Peace Corps vehicle heading towards town... again. The image of the airport and the normally pig filled airstrip was slowly fading into the backdrop as the driver stepped on the gas towards no real destination in particular. Like most drivers on the island, he was always in a hurry to get nowhere.

According to the schedule, all the Peace Corps trainees and staff were supposed to have left Ha’apai. As the country of Tonga normally does in situations like this, it laughed in the face of our schedules and plans, throwing them into the wind. This is island life, leave your schedule planners at home. Since we couldn't follow the 'schedule', we did what anyone would do, go to the only bar on the island.

There were two groups of trainees and staff that were to leave. The first group arrived at the airport early, eager to take the first plane out of Ha’apai. There was a farewell party at the airport so the volunteers may have just been eager to see their host family one last time or maybe they were eager to return to the mainland where they could eat a richer variety of food, who knows? The second group, not really caring exactly when they left, arrived a few hours later, only to discover that the first group was still waiting. As fate would have it, the second group’s plane arrived first and thus they were the first ones that left the island.

The second plane, which was the first group's plane, (are you confused yet?) was finally boarded and the twin engines came to life. Actually, it didn’t come to life as it instead out right died. Being in the boarding area, a Tongan friend and I gave each other looks that didn’t need words to express what was on our minds, “What the fuck sound was that? Did a pig jump into the engine? That isn’t normal at all!” Thankfully, no pigs jumped into the spinning motors, as that would prove to be quite a colorful image and quite the leap.

A few minutes later, the passengers came off the steps of the airplane, clearly disappointed with the events that transpired. If it were me however, I’d have had the opposite feeling and be quite ecstatic; thank God we weren’t even a foot in the air yet before the engine decided to die.

After a few hours of the mechanic trying to ‘diagnose’ the problem (over the phone), they decided that it was futile to fix the plane… over the phone. We joked around about how the guy on the other line was probably googling “how to fix maumau vakapuna” on a 56k connection in Fiji.

Some of the passengers that were on the plane came over to see if they could fix the problem, as if they had a background in Aerospace Engineering and were familiar with planes from the World War II era. I’m sure that the remotest experience anyone had with fixing an airplane engine was more likely some girl with a Bachelors of Arts in African American Women Gender Studies.

In any case, they’d give us a call if they fixed the plane before 6 p.m., about as likely as giant eagles landing in the middle of the airfield and saying in perfect English that they’ll give us a lift over to the next island group as long as we didn’t pull on their feathers too harshly.

A riot... *sigh*

Monday, November 20, 2006

At first glance, it might look like a Tsunami ravaged the country’s capital. Reports indicate that approximately 80% of the downtown area is destroyed, though it doesn’t require statistics for anyone living in Tongatapu to know that the destruction of their home is quite rampant. The old Nuku’alofa has risen in smoke and the remaining buildings struggle to uphold the faint image of their former selves.

The current images are harrowing and almost surreal; one moment you’re walking near white sanded beaches with a florid green landscape, then in another step you’re standing in what looks and feels like a war zone.

To add to the battlefield feel, there’s a joint military force from New Zealand and Australia surrounding the downtown area. Just the simple idea that there is a military in Tonga is a far stretch of the imagination. To give you a sense of how the country’s security force operates, police vehicles are mainly used to clear pigs off the dirt road and jails are nothing more than a two feet sheet of metal ‘gate’.

Currently forensic teams are digging through the damaged remains for hints as to what exactly happened. Despite the professional experience and expertise of the forensic teams, they’re limited to puzzling together the events that unfolded only during the past few days of the riot. What sparked the riot is still up to much speculation, whether it was the history of political dissatisfaction or if it was a pent up reaction to the thriving foreign businesses in Tonga.

There are usually many layers of reasoning and thought behind public displays of violence of this scale, many of which I can only guess. I cannot understand the way an entire culture thinks or come close to comprehending what a country has experienced just by being here for a few months or a few years. Nor will I pretend to understand this culture in its entirety.

What I do see is that government officials and foreign businesses are caught in the middle of this ravaged war zone. To give a little background, Tonga is a constitutional monarchy teetering on the brink of democracy. As with any struggle for power, violence is always quick to ensue. No one simply hands down the political power they wield unless they absolutely have to. This helps explain the tipping of vehicles wearing the license plates that begin with PM (Prime Minister – symbolizing a government automobile).

Now that makes me wonder, how did the idea of democracy get instilled into an island group in the South Pacific?

I think it’s in part due to the sweet tasting Coca-Cola’s. It’s the classic blue jeans. It’s the Hollywood movies starring absurdly paid actors. They’re all signs of the American society permeating into a developing country thousands of miles away. You’ll find these random bits and pieces of America everywhere you go. Even when escaping to the remotest outer islands in the South Pacific, you’ll find posters of the latest hit releases appearing on the windows of stores accessible only through boat and dirt trails. It seems like American democracy and capitalism has reached the furthest ends of this globe. Upon closer inspection, if you glance past the fancy marketing labels, it makes you wonder if people see it as tangible evidence supporting the prosperity of democracy and capitalism.

The push for democracy is loud, albeit there are more suitable manners than a full scale riot. But the riot wasn’t just about a change of government. Apparently the Tongan rioters didn’t want to emulate America in all aspects, especially the idea of capitalism. Foreign businesses were targeted as well, mainly the Chinese community.

Here, we have to go into more history that involves the Tongan government, much of which I cannot get into if I still want to keep my job as a volunteer. Let’s just say that the Chinese community established numerous stores and through shrewd business ventures, became identified in Tonga as the place to shop for their cheap prices and consequently, their even cheaper quality products.

The abhorrence of foreign business by a select few was apparent when foreign shopkeepers were dragged out of their stores and beat during the riot. The effects of that are now shown as hundreds of Chinese stand crowded about the embassy, desperately waiting for the next available international flight. Currently, all international flights are closed. Even in the outer islands, the Chinese stores were robbed, which is a much more dangerous situation here because some people live in their ‘stores’.

That led me to wonder about the grim reality of the situation. My jog yesterday was down an ideal road towards my old home stay. For miles, I had run into familiar and even unfamiliar people who greeted me with friendly smiles and waves. Now that the jog is over, I’m left wondering what happens if I (or someone I know) strays from the ideal situation and comes across the same blatant racism. Where will it lead us then?

It’s funny in a sad kind of way on how certain people react to a different skin tone or to some other minor racial feature such as squinty eyes. So far my encounters have been that if I help people out, people assume I’m Japanese. If I don’t help people out, I’m assumed to be Chinese. Every other Asian race is sadly nonexistent in many of the people’s minds here.

My computer center is doing quite well. Now what if it does too well? Do I fall under the same fate as the foreign businesses? If they find out that my computer center is the place to go for their technological needs, does that endanger me in any way? If there’s an angry anti-Chinese mob, will they care that we're operating at just enough to keep the place running or that I'm only here to help Tongan owned businesses? Will they care that I’m actually an American carrying a Peace Corps identification card or a California driver’s license?

I doubt any of it would make a difference and I doubt I can explain who I am to an angry mob if they so happened to look for me. Explaining to them probably wouldn’t do me much good anyways because they’d probably be heavily intoxicated. Even when sober, certain people here can’t differentiate between a Korean and Japanese; much less grasp the concept of what a Chinese-American is.

Whatever happens, I’m willing to take that kind of risk to help dispel a bit of the racism, as seems to be the general mindset of all the volunteers here. I just hope my friends are ok, especially the ones in the larger cities.

I feel safe in Ha’apai, where the community is just small enough for people to know who I am and what I do. For the other volunteers that were placed in the city, they’re the ones who will have to endure the majority of the racism. Nuku’alofa is just big enough so that the majority of the host country nationals don’t know who you are or what you’re doing there. It takes guts and courage to be a volunteer in Nuku’alofa at a time like now.


Monday, November 13, 2006

I just finished writing the rough draft script for my first episode! This’ll be fun!!!

Oh yeah, Ding!!! Level 22, err I mean I’m 22 years old now! Thanks everyone! <3 to all!

Sunday, November 12, 2006

The weather’s getting hotter so I’ve made more frequent visits to the beach. The snorkeling here is beautiful.

The Seat less Wonder + Refrigerator High + Ice Cream Medic

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Duct Tape. If you've ever watched Star Wars, you might make the far off connection that duct tape has a few similarities with the 'Force'; they both have a light side, a dark side, and they both hold the world together.

Ok, maybe duct tape can't hold the fabric of the space-time continuum together as well as the 'Force', but it was an essential tool in solving the "Seatless Wonder". The "Seatless Wonder" is another Peace Corps volunteer's bike that I had brought down to Ha'apai.

Like its name implies, it has no seat. There's only a dangerous metallic stump where the seat should be attached. Since we had no wrenches to remove the stump, it only served as a shining warning to any rider that it was quite capable of tearing a new @-hole to anyone who dared sit down.

We never bothered to solve the problem until now, mainly because of our innate laziness and now only out of necessity; another volunteer and I needed a means of transportation to Sandy Beach, the only 'palangi' beach nearby. We had two bikes, one fully operational and the other being the 'Seatless Wonder'. We were too cheap to pay for a taxi and too lazy to run so we had to fix
the 'Seatless Wonder' with the only other wonder we had at hand, the wonder of duct tape.

To form the new seat, I used leftover pieces of cardboard (from when I was making my Optimus Prime Halloween costume), the soft packaging that Nathan used to protect the CD's he sent over, a soft sandal that we found lying on the street, and the bubble wrap package (that a Tongatapu volunteer used to send me a can opener).

This was all combined and held together with enormous quantities of duct tape. I wish I could say that the project was a complete success. However, it was not. I realized this as soon as the bike went bumping into potholes after potholes. At that moment, I realized how I was going to die. It wouldn't be some random coconut that would fall on my head, or some tsunami that appears too quickly before I'd be able to follow the expert advice of my Safety and Security Officer to "climb a coconut tree."

No, my cause of death would be some form of internal bleeding. There were simply not enough cushions for the bumpy dirt roads of a developing country. My design was flawed in more ways than one though. The seat had been moved up a bit so as to be slightly awkward and very
uncomfortable.

It was as if I were riding a bicycle that was comically small, like one of the clowns performing their act with the traveling circus. The rider's knees are bent and arched slightly outwards. Each pedal works enough strange muscles that it finally makes you wonder if the bicycle is really causing more effort than simply walking.

We finally scrapped the plans to go to Sandy Beach because of our flawed engineering. Instead, we bought ice cream, got light-headed off the vapors of a now broken refrigerator, and made quesadillas.

Note: Do not clear the frozen ice in a refrigerator with a machete. We accidentally destroyed a pipe filled with coolant, which released a vapor that made us instantly light-headed.