1. Get an appendectomy.

We were on the neighbor’s ranch watching the annual gallop of the gauchos towards town when it was decided that I should see a doctor. I’d felt queasy all day, but, when it began to hurt to breathe, I knew that it was more than the bottle of Malbec wine we’d had the night before.

During the 30 mile drive over dirt roads to the hospital, I had time to think. I’d entered that travel place where you go from being captain of your itinerary, to giving up all control. It’s this very possibility that keeps many would-be travelers at home. And it’s the place that travel writers secretly love to go.

The on-call doctor at the private clinic looked like he’d stepped off the set of General Hospital. He poked around and called the surgeon to come in, late Saturday night or no. As an interesting aside, each doctor from that point on, from the lab doctor, to Dr. Castro, the surgeon to Dr. Gonzales the emergency room doc, each was more Calvin Klein model-esque than the next. What are the odds? The only way to explain it is that in Argentina you get into medical school based on your looks.

The nurses have an entirely different set of requirements.

A handful of expatriates and a couple of Argentines, some of them strangers an hour earlier, had gathered in the examining room to help. Johnny from South Africa, who had survived 14 heart attacks at the age of 35, introduced himself and told he’d be there no matter what. There were Annette and John, Brits who traveled the world on motorbikes before ending up in San Rafael to try their hands at gentleman farming, and there were Angel and Rosie, he Argentine, she Mexican, along with their daughter Candy. They’d recently moved to San Rafael, Argentina from Las Vegas. Did you get that?

Fifteen-year old Candy was unflappable as my interpreter until the doctors started speaking very fast and she said, “Ah, they’re just talking about a bunch of medical stuff”. Great. Argentines speak Castillano. I speak a rusty version of Spanish. It was a Three Stooges comedy of mis-translation.

The surgeon checked me in for overnight observation.

I ponied up the extra $30 per day for the one patient room with a rattly air conditioner in the window. I couldn’t see how anyone could heal in 100 degree heat, most especially me. Through the partially open doors of rooms up and down the hall, I’d seen visitors standing over the beds of their loved ones fanning them with magazines. Patients are required to have a friend or a family member stay in their rooms to provide basic nursing…an ingenious solution to health care costs, but a tricky one when you are a stranger in town.

As it turns out, my new friends fought over which one of them would remain with me throughout the night.

Next morning the pain had mostly subsided, so I figured I’d soon be headed home and was embarrassed that I’d caused such a ruckus. The docs came in to make rounds, said a few words to each other in rapid Castillano, and suddenly I was being lifted onto a gurney and wheeled down a hall to surgery. I told Dr. Castro, that no offense, but I would like very much to be flown to Buenos Aires for the operation. He assured me that I’d never make it.

Keeping pace with the moving gurney, Annette scribbled down the telephone numbers of my two children and my best friend and said she’d call them in the States. I wondered what they’d think when they heard this woman with a thick Northern England brogue calling to say their mother/friend had gone into surgery in rural Argentina.

A nurse strapped me to a table, tied both my arms straight out at my sides, stuck IV needles into my arms and I lay there like Jesus Christ looking up into the operating light dangling from the ceiling.

My last thoughts as the gas mask came down? A Readers Digest article I’d read years before about a surgical patient who was effectively paralyzed by the anesthesia but remained awake throughout the operation, able to feel every excruciating slice and stitch, but unable to let anyone know.

I ran a quick inventory as the doctor leaned in. I could hear. My eyes still worked.  I started to say, “Now wait a minute,” but my mouth wouldn’t work. I began to wag my head violently back and forth looking at the masked surgeon with eyes that I hoped screamed,  No! I’m not asleep yet! Your anesthesia isn’t working!…

The upside down face of the anesthesiologist came into focus. “Ms. Sparks”?

”Fineeshed?” I couldn’t think of the Spanish word for ”Over?”
Ow. I’d been kicked in the gut hard. How much time had passed, I asked.  Thirteen minutes. Had it been my appendix? Yes. Had it burst? No.

”12 centimeters long!” the surgeon announced as if I’d given birth to something wondrous. Which in a way, I suppose I had. My appendix, an organ normally around 2 inches in length, had been found poking up into my chest cavity, a fully erect seven inches. Oddly, I felt proud.

The next morning, Dr. Novak, I mean Dr. Gonzales, stopped by my room, and after checking my stitches, said, ”You can put on your makeup now.” I chose to believe that he meant that my prognosis was good. Dr. Castro came by too, and announced that he’d made the scar small enough that I could still wear a bikini.

A few hours later, a nurse summoned my new friend Annette out into the hall. She returned carrying a a packet neatly bound in butcher paper. “What’s that?” I asked.

“Your appendix.”

We left it sitting there on my night stand until the next day when I summoned a nurse to take it away.

”La postal?” she asked. ”No, no. Don’t mail it, throw it away!” I said.

It may be a global world, but it is still a Babel world in lots of ways.

Two days later I was ”home” on the ranch surrounded by the warm people of San Rafael, Argentina feeling very grateful indeed.

Robin

P.S. – The cost of the surgery, hospital room, doctors and medication was  $1800. Less than two months health insurance premiums back home.

Brazil is a colossal country with more beaches than all of California and Florida put together, so where to begin? I started by emailing expatriates who lived in Brazil. And that is how I came to meet Jim and Debbie, and how I came to be not on a Brazilian beach, but in the mountains in Teresopolis, 3,000 feet above Rio.

Jim and Debbie spent years trekking in Brazil before purchasing a home last year in Teresopolis. For me, the opportunity to begin my exploration of Brazil under the tutelage of American Brazilophiles, was ideal. I accepted their invitation to visit.

I was fascinated when Jim months earlier had emailed me saying that he and his girlfriend Debbie had bought an estate which included five buildings, a spring-fed swimming pool, vegetable garden and enclosed tennis court for $30,000. Was he joking? This was something I had to see.

Turns out, if anything Jim was under-exaggerating. Thanks to a tip from local friends, they were able to purchase what looks like a Mediteranean compound for the price of a tool shed in the US.

The question everyone always asks me after one of these articles is “Hey, I wanna do that. How?”

This is how Jim and Debbie do it. Their monthly expenses run under $500 per month.

Meanwhile, back home in Crested Butte, Colorado, they lease Jim’s modest cabin. Debbie works as a neonatal nurse in Austin, Texas when they are in the states. The couple don¹t bother with pricey health insurance premiums. Jim figures if something unforeseen happens, they can always take out a second mortgage on their “over-appreciated” house in Austin, Texas. They have also made a personal decision to do without a car by using buses and they don’t own a telephone or a television.

So what is a typical day like for Jim and Debbie in Teresopolis? Jim putters around the estate; there’s always something to fix and he has a list of improvements that would last him several lifetimes to finish. The week I’m there, he’s building a wall with the help of local laborers and Debbie is sweating out a paper at the downtown internet café and emailing back and forth with her nursing instructors in the States.

Both enjoy their neighbors, reading, and hiking in the Serra dos Orgaos National Park. It’s a tough life, but Debbie and Jim have to do it.

We talk late into the night my first day in Teresopolis. Jim is a Libertarian who loves to argue. He’d found in me a cheerful debater. We discuss everything from insurance laws (a crock of shit, in Jim’s words), to heath care, to circumsicion, to politics. About politics, Jim says, “Goes like this. The Republicans want to put a camera in your bedroom and the Democrats a hand in your back pocket!” Debbie sits on the couch knitting, smiling knowingly. Before the week is over, I will have joined the ranks of those who no longer try to change Jim’s mind about anything.

There is one thing, however, that Jim and I agree on and that  is that Brazilian women are the most beautiful in the world.

They way they move alone, belies their belief that sexuality is a natural state, not something to be squelched.  Throughout Brazil, just to name one example, I saw pregnant women who bared their enlarged bellies unashamedly, managing even in string bikinis, to be sexy.

“Ah, la abundancia do Brasilia!” Jim exclaims. An abundant bunda (think J Lo)  is the part of a woman’s anatomy most admired in Brazil.

Every country has a way of “being”. My own fly-on-the-wall approach when I am in a foreign country, is to discern and adopt a culture¹s nuances in as short order as possible.

To stand out as a foreigner is to change people and events around me, which prevents me from doing what I came to do, which is to write about the heart of the place and its people. And so, although it’s true I’ll never really be Brazilian, I can have a darn good time trying.

Take, for instance, the way women walk in Brazil: From the waist up, they stand tall and straight, neck long, chin tucked in.

They place, one foot in front of the other, causing their hips to sway with exaggeration. I shadow local women at the mall and on the streets to learn the walk. Initially, it takes great effort not to charge forward, leading with my head. But after a few days I too am sashaying like a Brazilian without giving it a thought.

I buy rubber flip flops and a tight pair of low-rise, cropped jeans (that I wouldn’t be caught dead in in San Francisco). My dark hair and light eyes, an anomaly at home, are commonplace here, as is the aforementioned abundant bunda. I am on my way to Being Brazilian.

A man in a café speaks to me in Portugese, I reply in bad Portugese, “I don’t speak Portugese”. Francesa?, he asks.  “No”. “I am American” “Yes”. The Australian man (it turns out), says that he never would have guessed.  I’m going to have to learn to speak Portugese if I hope to blend in.

Portugese is one language I don’t mind unscrambling. -­ I love the sound of it – hard consenants are softened into sh’s and ch’s and odgys. And vowels are elongated.. And all of it is spoken with a melodic lilt as if everyone is singing the same tune. It is similar to Spanish – Differente is pronounced differenchay, dia, gia. Kathy, Kaughtchi, and so on. Add a splash of French to really mix it up ­ Bom, pronounced Bon (good) – and you have the lingua of Portuguese, a mixture of languages, like its residents who moved here over the years.

We are invited to lunch today at Kathy and JhaJha’s, neighbors who live across the cobblestone street from Jim and Debbie. At  the top of the hill, I stop to catch my breath and to admire their fairytale-like, hobbit-castle. They built it themselves over a dozen years, using old windows and doors collected from abandoned churches. JhaJha a musician, and Katchi a painter, have day jobs respectively as world history teacher and social worker. Ten year old son, Luan, is a photographer’s dream with blonde ringlets, light blue eyes, dark skin, and a love of the camera.

Christiana (Kathy’s sister) and her family live in the story-book house on the hill just below Kathy and JhaJha., and below Christiana is the house of Herman, the girls’ father. Herman was born in Brazil 80 years ago, shortly after his German parents immigrated here. He eventually married the indigenous Brazilian mother (now deceased) of the girls, which explains why Katchi looks like my Bolivian friend and Christiana, like a tall lanky German, with hints of Brazilian in her hazel-eyes and olive skin.. Each family member  from grandchild to grandfather looks entirely unrelated. Ironically, Brazil was the last of the South American countries to free the African slaves, while today it is the most racially mixed.

JhaJha has laid out a table for us topped with farofa (baked and grated casava from the Amazon), sliced linguisa, cauliflower, white rice, a stew of beans and beef, and a brilliant plate of shredded carrots and beets. There is also Skol beer, and JhaJha’s premium cache of cachaca (sugar cane alcohol that is to Brazilians as tequila is to Mexicans and as deadly).

Debbie rings to say she’ll be late. JhaJha announces that we will wait for her. “In that case, I say, I’ll go back across the street to write until she arrives.” I head for the door.

“Tranquila, Tranquila”, JhaJha says. “One should not rush through life. Far better that one contemplate life and philosophy with friends over tasty food and drink in the company of beautiful women.” Only what he really says, best as I can recall, sounds like this: “Nao bon pasar el tiempo corriente. Tenemos contemplar la vida con nossos amigos, con comidas e bedidas sabrosas, y mininas bellezas”.

Ok, so I stay. And make a mental note to slow down. Enjoy what is in front of me in this moment.

JhaJha pours a shot of cachaca  A squirrel scampers into the kitchen. Jaja calls out, “Mi amigo!” and bends down to display  a fresh chunk of coconut in his open palm. The squirrel approaches timidly, takes the treat and scampers back outside. Jaja says, “That one, he is my friend”. Then “Robin, Do you have a religion?” He points outside and says, “Mine is out there in the trees, in the animals of the forest.” He leads me then into a discussion of politics by asking what I think about the conflict between Bush and Saddam Hussein. JaJa says that Americans think they are free, but they are not. He says it will take South America hundreds of years to recover from covert US activity in their land during the seventies.. Kathy lightens things up saying, “But we love Americans. And the men don’t hate all American politicians. They love the story of “Prezedenche Cleentone and Mowneeka Lewinsche”. The men guffaw. I mention my continual surprise at the diversity of Brazilians’ physical traits. He says that after Holland invaded Brazil they held it for seventy years during which time they intermarried with the former black slaves and Indians. “Muito bonita!”. he says about the resultant blue-eyed, chocolate colored Brazilians that came from those marriages. He says about his blonde haired son, “Luan, is a mixture of German, Spanish, Portugese, Indian, and African. We are proud of our diverse make-up. But above all, I am Brazilian”.

At 10:30 PM, Debbie and I and a few of the neighborhood women take the bus to town for an outdoor rock concert. We work our way to the front of the stage where the Brazilian pop star is singing into a microphone, while below hundreds of teenagers, middleaged couples, singles, and some elderly folks sing every word to every song, waving their arms high in the air, while those who find space, dance. The teens don’t seem one bit annoyed that their parents and grandparents have come along for the evening.

One morning the rain stops.And so we pile into Katchi and JhaJha’s car to drive the ten minutes into the national park. Following their lead, Jim and I (Debbie is at the internet café) hop over rocks, under trees, stepping lightly over the spongy ground to the water’s edge where a cascade of water meets the creek. Then we are standing under the roaring fall, the sound of crashing water filling our ears. We paddle across the pleasantly cool stream to a massive granite slab. Kathy holds JaJa’s ankle, JaJa leans down to offer me a hand and pulls me up onto the rock where we lay on our backs gazing at the azure sky. Suddenly Kathy takes off the blue beaded ring I’ve been admiring and hands it to me, “Here Robin, I made it for you, my friend.” And then we crawl over to the shady side of the boulder, where it is slick with moss, and together we slide down on our backs into the rolling water below.

I’ve grown used to climbing into bed each night in my unheated cabin fully clothed, with the hood of my coat pulled up around my ears, and three wool blankets piled on top. It is summer in Brazil, but in Tere, the air is thin and offers little warmth once the sun has slid from sight. I’m growing restless for the heat of Brazil’s beaches.

Together, Jim, Debbie and I pore over maps and discuss my next destinations. Initially I was drawn to the people, celebrations, and animistic nature of northeast Brazil. But the reality is that no matter how massive Brazil looks on a map, it’s even bigger in person and I had only three weeks in which to see it. I’m looking for towns within two hours of a major city, with a sizeable expat population, a bohemian community, with aesthetically tasteful architecture. I decide to spend a week each in Buzios on the Golden Coast north of Rio, and Parati on the Green Coast located half way between Rio and Sao Paulo. And I cannot come all this way to Brazil without going to Rio.

Teresopolis is Jim and Debbie’s paradise. For me it has been the perfect launch pad for Brazil, where  until a week ago, I knew no one. Leaving There feels like leaving home – you know your parents are still there to run back to should things get scary. As for my first Brazilians, Kathy and JhaJha? They are artists in love with life, and they are incredibly generous.. I suppose when you live for the moment as they do, it doesn’t occur to you to hoard some for yourself. If Kathy and JaJa are a composite of what other Brazilians are like, I’m going to love this country.

Rio is my next stop. My friends back home expressed great concern before I left about me going alone to Rio de Janeiro, reputedly one of the world’s most dangerous cities. What they don’t know is, that in spite of the fact that I haven’t lost my Pollyanna belief that everyone has the same basic need for love and respect, I have developed some street smarts over the past five years. It’s called blending in. For instance, in Rio I will heed Jim’s advice about dressing as if I’m headed for a day at the beach and carrying no more than 50 Reais in my pocket.

I kiss everyone goodbye in the traditional Brazilian kiss on each cheek, climb on the bus for Rio dressed like a Brazilian and head off to the big bad city in the bus like a Brazilian. And once I get to Rio?, I will walk like a Brazilian.

It’s been a year since I temporarily set aside my search for a country to return to San Francisco. When I left Asia this time last year, I decided to stay put in my home in San Francisco for one year. I still had slight misgivings about my desire to live abroad. Was I running from something? If I put in consistent time in San Francisco would I find my purpose here? I would give the States one last chance. Several friends had hinted that the reason I felt disconnected from the U.S., was because I was always on the run.

Ok then, I would throw myself into my community full-time, nourish friendships, develop contacts in the writing world, tie off the distracting loose ends of my former marriage. And complete my two biggest goals: Finish my book and find a mate.

No go on both counts.

The publishing world is in a state of paralysis – work for writers has all but dried up. It is so expensive to live in San Francisco, that I when I am here, I must occasionally rent out my condo, which means I have to move out for one to two weeks at a time, making it impossible to really sink roots here. I have dated two American men this past year.  Neither shares my longing to live at least part of each year out of the United States. One thinks that much about our country stinks, but he believes that those who cut bait and run are selfish, that one should fight for change from the inside. Why would I want to live somewhere other than the best country on earth they both want to know? Why indeed? Because I am happiest living and working among people with an international view of the world.  I want to do what I can to bring various cultures together in peace, to foster acceptance of our differences, and to shed light on the fact that in all ways that matter, we are more alike than we are different.

Even my most liberal friends are isolated from the rest of the world. They hear only one side of the news – that of American owned radio and TV, and even they let it sneak out every now and then, that they believe that Americans are somehow better than the rest of the world; it’s the government, not us kind of thing. Granted the people I call friends do travel occasionally, but usually just for a 2-week  peek at “the others” from the confines of a tour group or a five-star hotel.

Like Ayla in Clan of the Cave Bear, I set out again in search of my tribe.

ONWARD

Over the past six years, my search has taken me to France, Italy, London, Spain, Katmandu, Bali, Thailand, Mexico, and Belize.

One month ago, I headed south of the U.S. border, way south, to the Southern Cone, to a place rich in mystery and intrigue – Argentina.

FIRST A FEW FACTS

• There are 3.5 million people in Buenos Aires, 12 million including the metropolitan area.
• Literacy is nearly 97 percent, one of the highest in the Americas.

A 19th century tidal wave of Italians, Basques, English, Irish, Welsh, Ukrainians, and other nationalities has made Buenos Aires a mosaic of immigrants

LAND OF IMMIGRANTS

Argentina has fascinated me as long as I can remember. It’s a proud (some say haughty, but I admire their verve in the face of their ups and downs) European country surrounded by earthy, fiery, less prosperous Latin American countries.

Like America, most of Argentina’s immigrants arrived on ships from Europe.  Adding to its mystery is its shadow:  a history of political and military coupes, the “disappeared”, and the recent economic meltdown in what was once the world’s fifth wealthiest country. With the precipitous drop of the peso in 2001, Argentina was suddenly the global investor’s dream. I might be too late for the big bargains, but Argentina was still a less expensive place to live than the U.S. and who knew? Perhaps in Argentina I’d find the home that had so far, eluded me.

TAKING OFF

Standing in the check-in line at the San Francisco Airport, I feel something distinctly different about the people around me – the way they hold their heads, their graceful movements , the mellifluous words coming from their lips which at first I don’t comprehend. Spanish with an Italian lilt.

Yes!!! The familiar flutter in my stomach is back in anticipation of setting out for the unknown.  I’m still alive.

The American Airlines 747 fills with Argentines returning home – and an American tour group headed for the Antarctic.

It will be a long flight, and like surgery, I’d rather wake up when it’s over. So in go the earplugs, on goes the eye mask, and between me and the airplane window, a pillow. I go to sleep imagining Argentina.

JANUARY 30, 2004

CHE LULU

The taxi driver delivers me to the guesthouse I chose on the internet the night before I left – Che Lulu -  painted bright red outside like a Scandinavian barn and inside delightfully shocking colors, urban hip with an eclectic blend of furniture.

Buenos Aires is a city made up of distinct barrios and I’ve chosen the Soho-like barrio of  Palermo for my brief stay – Three Argentine airline attendants who fly between Buenos Aires and New York put their savings together and renovated the building, opening Che Lulu less than one one year ago. What would I llike to drink? Here’s the computer – use it whenever you want. What can we do for you? What’s life like for you? And so on. I feel immediately at home as if I’ve entered a womb of like-minded, same-aged friends.

I toss my un-packed luggage on my bed and set out for a walk through the city to check  its pulse. I teeter over its cobbled streets, in the shade of its sycamore trees, peek inside boutiques with the latest fashions, stop in a cafe for an espresso and empanada, look at the latest in furniture fashion. The women I notice, look like Penelope Cruz, perhaps a bit softer.. With its crumbling buildings and potholed roads, one gets the feeling of a city once great, which has suffered massive neglect. But with the emergence of boutiques, cafes, bars, and museums, one gets the sense of a city busy being reborn.

Buenos Aires – she is an old, elegant woman with a Bohemian hat.

Mojo and Frederick are entertaining friends tonight. Introductions go around, lots of air kisses, music, laughter and hilarity fill the house – and outside the steady drum of rain.They proudly show their friends each room in their guesthouse and then they gather around the dining table clinking champagne glasses and delivering toasts, ” Buena suerte (good luck) in su trabajo (work), in su familia (family), y en su vida ( life.)

I fall into bed early, the hearty laughter and conversation of friends ringing through the house. As I drop off to sleep, I am thinking that no matter how bad things get, or how destitute one becomes, if one has friends and the time to spend with them, one is rich.

WHEN IT RAINS IN ARGENTINA

At 2 AM I am wide-awake though daylight is still hours away. The rain is hitting the roof hard. I slip on a robe and go into the house to use the computer. A groggy MaJo is working the night shift. We greet each other as I step down into the anteroom just off the front door where the computer is kept. Cold water submerges my feet. “You have a leak in here,” I tell her.

Moments later everyone is up, frantically rolling rugs, moving furniture, as the water begins to pour in through the front door. The street is a river and the house a tributary. I move my laptop and cameras up onto the bed, toss some towels and newspapers inside the door of my room, and return to the main house.

Two feet of water now fill the first floor. From where we sit in a second floor bedroom looking out a window, the street is a raging river, just inches below the window sill. The phone does not work.  The power is off. Nobody knows why this is happening. It continues to rain. Boated bags of trash float by and the two cars parked across the street., rise and float, bumping into each other. A dog howls. There is the distant wail of a woman. Majo, Frederick, and friends bail water. Periodically they collapse on the upper stairs, and hold each other making jokes, wiping away tears, laughing, smoking cigarettes, and watching the water pouring in.  Majo says, Oh Well, this is it. We are watching the end of our business.

I take photos. (Just like an American Frederick says smiling at me.) We are safe – there are still two floors and a roof above us – just very aware that I am far away from “home”, and of the precariousness of life, and the illusion of security.

The Brazilian women are speaking rapidly to Majo. They want to leave. Why? I ask Majo. They have a plane to catch in three hours, she tells me. They’re afraid they’ll miss it. She doesn’t want them to leave – She feels responsible for their safety. But in the end they wade out through waist deep water, their backpacks held high above their heads.

A rooster crows. The sky lightens imperceptibly. Rain falls softly now. The bobbing cars across the street, settle back onto their tires and when I can see their headlights again, I go to sleep in an upstairs room. I awake  ten hours later at 4PM in the afternoon. The water has subsided and the house is filled with women scrubbing, sweeping, and sponging down every inch. Majo and Frederick who have not yet slept , are separating wet paperwork in the office. “We didn’t suffer as much damage as we’d feared,”She says.” But we will move you to another guesthouse while we clean up.” Turns out the flood was due to the city’s failure to open the drains at the bottom of the street. They apologize profusely and offer me a hard candy. “Here, take one, it’s Argentinean Prozac.”

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2004

NEW DIGS

In the Malabia Guest House, my room is that of a princess with 14 foot ceilings, exquisite furniture, tall French doors which open onto a balcony which looks out through the leafy branches of a Sycamore tree over Malabia Street. The room at $50 ($40 iif paid in cash) per night including breakfast is more than I wanted to spend, but I’m not feeling picky at the moment. I have already lost a day,  and so I move in.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2004

AN AMERICAN IN ARGENTINA

Joe arrived in Argentina in 1985 to cover the human rights issues during the military trials. In addition to working for ABC, he issues reports for various agencies and does translation work for amnesty groups. I walk the ten blocks to the charming cottage where his girlfriend Julietta live. There is little curb appeal in Palermo – houses are set behind walls. One never knows until one enters. The house where Joe and Julietta live is a funky, comfortable cottage, part Indonesian thatched roof, part Berkeley cottage, part Soprano decor. Best of all, it has a backyard with a small pool and barbeque. Few houses in Palermo have “yards.”

They tell me that real estate, especially in Palermo, has already risen to bubble proportions again. They would love to purchase their home, but they have calculated that if they saved 3,000 pesos a month, they would have the money to buy it in two hundred years. Financing? Forget it.

About the safety of living in Argentina, Joe says that Buenos Aires is safer than any large U.S. city.  He says that the economy in the 1990’s was like that of Tokyo today. Palermo is gradually becoming gentrified as the Southern Cone’s answer to Soho. There are 350 restaurants in this area alone, he tells me. A fellow journalist walks in and they greet each other and talk a little business before his friend goes back to his table.

I ask the two about the melancholic nature of Argentineans, something I heard about in thes states but have not picked up on since I’ve been here. In fact, I’ve found Argentinians to be full of hope, open, and friendly. Most surprising to me, is that they are not bitter because I am an American, as is the reaction of many Europeans I meet.

In 1997 when Argentina’s collapse occurred, Joe tells me there were a record 181,000 Argentinean entries into the US who never returned.  “Since then, the US has tightened visa restrictions, and since 9/11, it is almost impossible to get in,”Julietta adds.

Bryant Gumble did a piece on Argentina a few years ago in which he stated that Buenos Aires  has the highest per capita psychoanalysts in practice anywhere in the world. Yes, Julietta and Joe agree, everyone they know is in therapy. “We are a melancholic, introspective people Julietta says. “Compared to Brazilians who live only for the moment and are very happy.” Wayne says he sometimes regrets not moving to Brazil.

ARGENTINA, LAND OF EMIGRANTS

During the two world wars, many Europeans took what they had and came to what was then the promised land to begin anew.  There was gold in the streets then. Anyone could succeed then and most did.

About 60-70% of Argentina’s population is Italian or Spanish and the rest are made up mostly of French, German, Jewish, and Swiss ancestry. Julietta’s great grandfather was German, her mother Spanish.

Joe, who was born and raised in New York, says that when his grandfather left Hungary to escape the Nazi’s, he had a choice of two ships, one headed for Argentina and the other to New York. On a flip of a coin, his grandfather boarded the ship for America. Joe says, “I could have just as easily been Argentinian instead of American.”

Is Argentina the flagship polyglot country? What the world will look like when and if borders blend?

As recently as the early 1990’s, Argentina was the fifth wealthiest country in the world. It was the grain and livestock capital of the world. Argentina remained neutral as long as she could and profitted by selling to both sides. She only joined the allies in 1995.

So what do they like most about Argentina I ask the couple? The education Joe says. He has a 10 year old son who attends private school, but beyond private school, especially in the university system, educational standards are incredibly high. Many presidents have come and gone over the past 2 decades, but those who went fastest where those who proposed cutting funds to education.

Julietta says her grandmother had only an elementary education. But her mother is a nuclear physicist. Her father too. Education is something everyone here expects and takes advantage of. I remember a woman I met in Belize who was from Argentina. It was she who first sparked my interest in Argentina when she told me all the women are highly educated and most have prestiguous jobs. Coming as I did at that time, from a small community which expected women to stay at home, education or no, Argentina sounded very inviting indeed.

Joe says quietly that what is happening to America scares him. He says that after 9/11 sentiments towards the U.S. were very favorable. Friends called to express their sorrow and to inquire about his family. He was recently sent on assignment to find out talk to Argentineans about their feelings towards the U.S. now. Joe says, “In the years since Bush took over with his “cowboy politics”, views have changed 100 degrees. I searched high and low for one favorable comment about US policy, but I could not find one person in favor of our position in regards to Iraq.”

Does he plan to ever move back to the U.S. I ask.  No. He says he gets bored after 2 weeks and cannot wait to get to Argentina. He is now an Argentinean at heart.

While we are walking through Palermo I ask the two what business a foreigner might succeed at in Argentina. Anything tourist-related they say. Hotels, tour operators…. We stop in front of an outdoor barbeque grill where there is a bar set up to serve drinks and food, some plastic tables and chairs – a man is turning a peice of beef on a stick over live charcoals..In the background are large steel tanks of water and folded plastic tents. “This is one of our favorite examples of Argentinian resourcefulness”, Julietta says. “During the day it is a car wash.. At night, and on Sundays, it is a restaurant.”

Monday, February 3, 2OO4

STILL IN KANSAS?

“Cecilia”, a realtor from Reynolds Properties, asks me on the phone what kind of food I like. “Everything”, I tell her. “Preferably, Argentinian.” She sends a driver to pick me up, I assume to take me to downtown Buenos Aires. But we drive out of the city through what increasingly appears to be a miniature version of North America. Burger King, McDonald’s, Ford, Blockbuster Video, and a restaurant called Dallas which the driver points to and says it’s almost as good as “Kansas” where we are going. “Un buen restaurante!” he says. Turns out Kansas is everyone’s favorite restaurant, at least those who live in the suburbs, which is everyone in Buenos Aires who has “made it”. We pull up in front of a restaurant which resembles a TGIF. We are in a suburb called Martinez. Cecilia meets me out front. She’s not the frumpy realtor I’d expected, but a vibrant, pretty blonde in tight pants and heels.

We make our way through the packed restaurant to a table where she introduces me to another realtor, also named Cecilia. We order dinner – me a steak. I am in Argentina after all, Kansas or no Kansas.  I have to say I have never tasted meat so delicious. There is something incredible about the flavor and texture. I do not recommend Argentina to a vegetarian.

They ask me what I am looking for and what they can do for me. I explain that I have two objectives. One to gather information on the current state of real estate prices in Argentina for expatriates. The other to look for a place for myself.

“Bargains aside,” I say, “Why should a foreigner buy real estate in Argentina?”

“Argentina has everything,” the Cecilias say. “You have a cosmopolitan city, with thousands of miles pampas, and miles and miles of farmland (and potential wine producing soil!) and the most beautiful mountain range in the world (Patagonia), and hundreds of miles of beautiful coastline. Not to mention, every climate from tropical to freezing year round and in-between.”

They hand me a comprehensive packet which includes information on everything from rentals ($800 a month for a 2 bedroom French apartment in the most trendy neighborhood in the center of the capital, to $3,000 a month for a McMansion with a pool in the suburbs.) to sales of apartments and homes in the city and all the way to Bariloche, a ski resort in Patagonia. (See resources at the end of this story to contact Reynolds Properties. I highly recommend these ladies! They go way beyond their job description as full service relocation experts have three offices, one downtown, one in the suburb of Olivo, and another in Lomas de San Isidro.

Cecilia #1 is light skinned and blonde with blue eyes – her father is Scottish, her mother French. Cecilia #2 is darker, her ancestry, Italian and Spanish. I notice that the people in the suburbs are lighter than those in the city.  In fact if I blinked, I could just as well be in Martinez, California, U.S.A as Martinez, Argentina. I tell Cecilia #1 this, and she smiles and says humbly, “Yes, we do have a lot to offer here.”

Both women haven’t been home since they left early this morning, and both are married and have children. “How do you do it?” I ask. “In Argentina we can afford nannies,” they tell me. Since they have to get to work early in the morning, we leave early (for Argentina) at 11:30 PM. We will meet in two days to look at apartments in the city.

As my driver takes me back through suburbia to the “Capital”, I am amazed at  huge freestanding homes, the gated communities, the brightly lit main street with store after store where one can buy everything one didn’t know they needed, past fast-food restaurants, and gaggles of wholesome looking teens standing around in parking lots.

If you long for America the way it used to be, where families have Sunday barbeques (asados) with their neighbors and friends out by the pool, a brightly lit downtown street, restaurants where you see all of your friends even on a Monday night, you can order until 2 in the morning, where sycamore trees form canopies over the streets, where it’s safe to be out at any hour, where you can afford a maid and a nanny and private school for your kids, and a driver too, where you can live in a large brick house with a pool in the backyard in a gated community, and where that 4,000 square foot house costs less than $500,000, where your grown children and parents either live under the same roof or in the same neighborhood,  where the sight of homeless people is something you only hear about, where a few minutes drive will have you back in on cosmopolitan boulevards lined with elegant French and Italianate buildings straight out of Europe – then get yourself on the next wagon train to Gaucho Country, specifically to the suburbs of Buenos Aires. It’s North America in the seventies, before moving back to the city became the trend.
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LIFE IN THE CITY

I’m not sure whose idea it was to paint lanes on Argentina’s roads, because they are systematically ignored. While I don’t agree that Argentinean drivers are some of the worst in the world, distinct lanes of traffic simply don’t exist. One drives where one finds or makes space.  Another interesting aside: In Buenos Aires the light turns yellow not only before it turns red, but also before it turns green.

That night, I open the fourteen foot tall French doors of my room at The Malabia House to my balcony and sit under the leaves of a sycamore tree. I am dressed in cotton pants, a sleeveless cotton blouse, and sandals. I’m not cold and I’m not hot and there are no bugs.  The moon is full, and even after midnight, the city is buzzing, cars and voices everywhere. The cafes overflowing with patrons.  A policeman stands at the corner in the shadows.

Wednesday Feb. 4

REAL ESTATE

If one desires to live in the city center, La Plaza San Martin is the best neighborhood I am told. The plaza is indeed beautiful.. Where Palermo is hip and bohemian, downtown Buenos Aires is old world elegance. It’s a cosmopolitan world, with ornate buildings, statues, parks, and the hustle and bustle of international businesswomen and men. It is odd to see so many blondes in a Latin country, such a variety of facial features, physical builds. One thing I see a lot of are nose jobs. Strong jaws and cheekbones and big eyes with petite noses that look oddly out of place. I’ve heard that nose jobs are as common here as having your teeth cleaned. From the looks of things perhaps it’s true.

We look at three properties beginning with one priced at $50,000 – an apartment approximately 300 square feet – ideally located, but a sad little box; and ending with a $200,000 apartment, which doesn’t resonate with my heart or my pocketbook.
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The middle-range apartment, however, just over 1100 square feet with an asking price of $130,000 wins me over. It is loaded with french architectural details, beautiful wood parquet floors, leaded glass windows, arched doorways, 2 bedrooms and a maids quarters, 3 baths. I love it. It would cost almost nearly a million dollars in San Francisco. Will the owners take $120,00?  She’s sure they will. It takes great restraint not to write a check right there on the spot. They have done their homework and tell me that after expenses, if the apartment is rented half the year, I will make 9% profit. It is hard for me to fathom how I will earn a profit on this apartment when the government levies a 21% tax on the monthly rent of only $800. And I have to remind myself that I already have a “city” apartment (in San Francisco). What I’m looking for really is beach property. There are no beaches in Buenos Aires. On the other hand, I can’t stop thinking about that lovely French apartment.

A CANADIAN INVESTMENT BANKER

As we dine on beef ribs on an expansive green lawn, overlooking the wide muddy Tigres in soft sunlight, “Dave”, 35 years old, tells has worked hard all his life to make money. “After the first 50 million and then the second, it gets to be pointless,” he says. A cancer diagnosis (fortunately benign) just two months ago jolted him into rearranging his life. Settling in one location and finding a partner are priorities now.  He began his search for home with a short list : South Africa, Argentina, and New Zealand. New Zealand got the boot because it was too far away. After only three week s in Argentina, he says his search is over. He is home.

Dave is from Toronto, Canada he tells me, although when I question him, it’s hard to figure out where he’s actually from, since he’s also lived in Sweden, France, the U.S., and the U.K.

Why Buenos Aires? I ask. He says because of the people, “They go out of their way to make foreigners feel comfortable.” He adds that Portenos don’t care so much about money and hard work, and he is ready for a break from that life. He does plan to continue working part-time via the internet, and so for him, the skilled labor force and excellent infrastructure here are strong pluses. Dave can be skiing or golfing in 45 minutes (if he flies) at his favorite resort in the Patagonias, the Arelauquen Golf & Country Club in Barioloche.” Argentina is a bargain right now. It’s Europe on a Latin budget,” he says.

Friday, Feb. 6

DREAMING OF PATAGONIA

Patrick is a contributing editor for Outside Magazine and author of the book Chasing Che, a book he wrote from research conducted during a motorcycle trip through South America. Patrick is headed home to New York tomorrow.  He has been in Patagonia looking at cabins – his dream home away from home.. Unfortunately, it is not the dream of his fiancée, whose work keeps her in New York. And his contacts too, are in New York. He can’t get over the fact that an apartment in Manhattan will consume all their savings at five times the cost of the cabin and land he dreams of owning in Patagonia.

“DIANA” AND THE TANGO

“Diana” meets me at the door of her luxury apartment at 9PM in shorts, a tee-shirt, and bare feet. While stirring a pot of macaroni and cheese for her two sons she tells me that after her divorce in the states, she applied for a job with the US Embassy, and received her first assignment in Argentina. “This has been an ideal, cush, first post”, she says. Here she and her sons, ages 13 and 16, can live a lifestyle they could only dream about in the States. The children are driven to and from private school each day, and their off-hours are filled with activities and excursions around South America. Anything she wants from groceries to cleaned laundry can be delivered to the apartment with just a phone call. A multi-story cinema is around the corner, so when she wants to see a movie, she buys a ticket for a reserved seat in advance. As for social life, there is something to do every night and weekend. “It’s a matter of turning down invitations”, she says.

We slip out leaving the boys immersed in video games to walk two blocks to a restaurant she passes everyday, but has not yet tried.  She already knows  what will be on the menu although she’s never dined here. Argentine food is always the same she says. Meat, salad, and desert. When she and her friends want something different, they go to an ethnic restaurant, of which there are hundreds in Buenos Aires.

Felix, who at one time lived in Manhattan, is the Argentine owner of Le Petit Bistrot, as well as chef, waiter, and piano player. After he has served our dinner of asado chincharron, grilled cheese with fresh oregano, bread, sausage, salad, and a bottle of wine (I was delighted to discover that Argentina has great wines), he sits down to play Beatles tunes on an electric piano. There are three tables in the charming restaurant. The bill including tip is 50 pesos, or less than $20.

I ask Diana how she explains to family and friends in the States moving her two sons so far away from home. “I don’t even bother,” she says. “My ex mother-in-law looks at my boys and says things like, ‘Now where is this Argentina place where you’re living?’ and ‘When are you boys going to start having a normal life? Nobody really gets it, so I don’t bother trying to explain anymore. The boys love it here.”

On the drive to Diana’s earlier that evening my taxi driver had told me about a milonga where he and his friends have been dancing the tango for 20 years. He invited me to come, and scribbled the name and address on a scrap of paper. “What do you think”? I ask Diana showing her the address after dinner. She wrinkles up her nose and says, ” I don’t know that neighborhood, and a recommendation from your taxi driver?”

“Yeah, I know, but there was something genuine about this old guy. I think we should go.”

We find ourselves at  La Grisela, an authentic milonga which is one of many local tango dance halls which never make it into the tourist guides. We stand waiting to be seated and are politely ignored. Maybe it has something to do with the fact we are single women, or maybe its our pants and flat shoes in this tight dress, stockings, and stiletto heel environment. Or maybe it’s the fact that we stand out like beacons as foreigners in a milonga which belongs to the residents of the barrio.  Finally the hostess leads us to the old maid’s table in the back of the hall behind a big post. We are seated with some very hopeful looking, heavily made up older women. Under a thick cloud of smoke, we watch as couples young and old, mostly old, slide across the ancient wood floors to the soundtrack of Scent of a Woman.

When all the other women at our table have been asked to dance and we are the  only ones left sitting, and when we begin to notice that several elderly gentlemen are looking longingly our way, we wimp out and stand up to leave. These Portenos have tango in their veins and I’m not about to make a fool of myself here. I mentally note that I must learn the tango before I return. It’s 1AM when we hail a taxi. Couples are still arriving. The streets throb with life.

2/7/04 4PM

BUENOS AIRES AND THE SITES

I am waiting for the late afternoon light so that I can photograph the city’s major sites. I will hire a driver for $4 an hour because it is unsafe for a small woman adorned with expensive cameras to walk about the city.  Among other things , I photograph  Avenidue Julio 9, Los Aguas Argentinas, the Plaza San Martin, the Obelisk, and La Recolleta, where the dead reside in  a nicer neighborhood than many of the city’s living residents. It is truly a beautiful city, but so much has been written about its “sites” that I won’t waste your time here.

STREET SMARTS

Since 2001 Argentines are poorer than ever, some desperately so.

An Argentine woman stopped me earlier today on the street to warn me to place the strap of my plain black bag across my body. She had just witnessed in broad daylight on Avenida Santa Fe, in front of a crowd of people, a man trying to wrest a gold bracelet from a woman’s arm. The bracelet was too small and her arm too pudgy for him to get it off and so she ended up with a bloody arm, her bracelet intact, when the man jumped on a waiting motorcycle and took off.

This having to worry about hiding valuables: do I want to live this way? Preferably not, especially since my job requires using expensive equipment in public. But what to do? It’s one of the perils of living in a large South or Central American city.

2/8/04

PALERMO

Tonight I join Diana and Kim from the Embassy at a new Armenian restaurant called Manto in my barrio of Palermo. We are the only ones dining. We wonder aloud why the restaurant is not a success, especially since the food is outstanding and the ambience VERY chic. Our waiter informs us that no other patrons are here because 8:30 PM is too early for dinner. Sure enough, when we leave at 11PM,  the restaurant is full. I love a city where I’m not always shutting down the restaurants.

On the drive home, we pass cafe after cafe overflowing into the street with people. My American friends gawk at this newly gentrified part of Buenos Aires they rarely since they live downtown near the Embassy.  Kim says Palermo reminds her of Greenwich or Soho. The Moon guidebook says Palermo is the home of artists and filmmakers.

Feb. 9, 2004

SUNDAY IN SAN TELMO

An old lady dressed in fishnet stockings, a vintage hat, platinum curls, ruby red lipstick and rouged cheeks is sitting on a tiny stool singing into a microphone, “Jambayla, Mio myo, Son of a gun,  gonna have some fun on the bayou”. She’s reading the words from a book in one hand and operating a small recorder in the other which plays the background music. I am mesmerized. Jambaylaya by the … San Telmo? The street with its assortment of entertainers, each weirder than the next, reminds me of Las Ramblas in Barcelona. A puppeteer gives life to a small soft baracho holding a wine bottle, who falls down and pulls himself up while telling his sad tale in slurred Spanish.. At regular intervals along Calle Dorego, statue-still people  who have been spray painted, black, silver,  or gold stand frozen on podiums, There are tango dancers from another era, – the women with the painted faces of madams, the men mustachioed in tuxes, graceful,  proud of their skill, heads held high, faces solemn,  with legs intertwined. An accordion player, and a guitarist accompany them. I look at all the stuff for sale in the flea market which looks like all the old stuff  in flea markets all over the world. I buy a bag of warm, candied peanuts and eat them while I negotiate the wavy cobblestones under my feet while watching the entertainment and peeking into the store windows of antique shops.

A GERMAN EXPATRIATE

It is time to pack. I leave  for Brazil tomorrow. But I’m hungry and it’s only 6PM, hours before the restaurants will serve dinner. And so  I walk to Godi Restaurant where I sit outside at a small table during the espresso hour. I order a pizza Napoliatana and a cafe con leche. This being Sunday, everyone is out, either soaking up sun in the park across the street or sitting outside at cafes. They say Argentine women are fashion conscious and it’s true. They wear the latest tight jeans and skirts slung low on their hips topped with tiny blouses.  The streets are full of boutiques with avant-garde fashions…places where you have to ring a bell before they let you in and where the clothes are likely to have been designed and handmade by the owner of the store.

A man, sits down at my table while I wait for my bill. The sun has just gone down and the tables on the sidewalk are full. “Carsten”  from Frankfurt Germany bought a house in Palermo today for $57,000. I ask him to describe it: A large salon, two bedrooms, two patios, lots of light, and a yard.  He and his girlfriend first visited Buenos Aires this past December. They loved it so much that he rode a bicycle through every street in Palermo, taking notes where he saw sale signs. They found their dream house that week and now  he has returned to pay for it. Will they move here full time? I ask. He hopes so. They are tango teachers in Germany who have found the source of their passion.

BUENOS AIRES BUENO OR MALO?

The Good: great nightlife, restaurants, sophisticated, educated people, nice, accepting, elegant people (no red-necks here), good prices, excellent healthcare, an international airport, fabulous architecture, artists and musicians, international community. No ocean nearby but a ferry trip to Uruguayan beaches or a short plane flight to Argentinean beaches. Close to skiing as well. Low cost of living, at least at the moment. Reasonable real estate prices which are likely to appreciate. Lenient laws regarding foreigners purchasing property. Community values, where family, friends, good food, art, and music rate higher than the art of massive consumption (with hints in the suburbs that that may change.)

The Bad:  – The flat terrain of Buenos Aires. I am most at home in a land of lushly vegetated mountain terrain which meets the ocean. I could probably deal with the short cool winters of Buenos Aires, but I’d prefer warm weather year round. It is also very FAR away from my children and parents and best friends, although no further than say Bali.

The pluses, especially the fact, that I immediately felt (and continue to feel) very much at home among Argentineans, could easily over-ride the negatives listed above. My comfort level among Argentineans will be a common theme on my month long sojourn.

In conclusion, I suspect I could live happily in Argentina if I could find work here.

Will I make Argentina my New World as recent generations of emigrants have done before me?

2/10/04

BRAZIL OR BUST

The second the wheels touch the runway at GIG Airport in Rio de Janeiro, the passengers stand to open overhead bins and begin pulling out their bags. No matter that the plane is still moving at high speed along the runway. The announcement “Please wait until the plane has come to a complete stop before you remove your seatbelt and leave your seat. ” never comes.

I am in a land where rules are, well just rules. Over the next three weeks, I will hear over and over again: “Tudo legal.” Pronounced (TOO-d a lee-GAHL.) It’s Brazilian for “Everything is OK.”

But more about Brazil next month. For now, ciou!

It’s been two years since you’ve had a physical exam. You need to have your vision checked and your teeth cleaned. But you are one of 44,000,000 U.S. citizens without health insurance.

Who ya gonna call?

Your local travel agency for an airplane ticket to Thailand – or a handful of other developing countries with top-rate medical care at rock-bottom prices.

Bangkok, Thailand

It was news to me when I heard about Bangkok’s world-class hospitals. Wasn’t Thailand a third world country? I was preparing to return home after living in Asia for eight months when I learned that my U.S. health care policy had expired.

No worries. The word among expats in southeast Asia was that in Bangkok, I could get state-of-the-art health care for as little as $10 per doctor visit.

I learned that over the past seven years, the number of private hospital beds in Bangkok had doubled to over 16,000. Twenty years ago the major Asian health care destinations were Singapore and Hong Kong. But in the past 20 years, Thailand has moved ahead with a vastly improved medical infrastructure. And the devaluation of the baht, which makes medical care a bargain for foreigners.

From over 24 hospitals, I chose Bumrungrad because of its focus on international patients. On a computer in Bali, I logged into the hospital’s website at www.bumrungrad.com. There I set up appointments with various specialists as well as a dentist. Two days later, I pulled up in a taxi in front of Southeast Asia’s Number 1 certified hospital, Bumrungrad, in Bangkok, Thailand.

In the circular drive fronting the 12-story hospital, the largest private hospital in all of Southeast Asia, uniformed doormen and a concierge loaded and unloaded passengers. A soft-spoken Thai woman dressed in a suit and high heels greeted me at the door and directed me to the International floor. As I was being swept up the wide escalator, I took in the 5-star hotel-like lobby with its teak columns, plush seating , computer kiosks, and a Starbucks Cafe. The second floor atrium was ringed with French, Japanese, and Indian restaurants -and a McDonald’s.

Starbucks coffee shop in the lobby of the Hospital.

The International lobby felt like a convention of the United Nations. Egyptians in white turbans filled the waiting room alongside Indians in saris, Muslims in kabalas, South Africans in colorful caftans, and Westerners in shorts and tennis shoes.

I saw two familiar faces – Peter, an American who lives in Bali and Kathryn who lives in Katmandu. I also met an family of four who told me they were from Florida but were living in India while Dad worked as an agriculture consultant for a National Government Organization. They were in Bangkok to get their visa’s renewed and so had added a trip to the hospital. The day before the children had seen a dentist, dad had had a physical exam, and Mom was seen by an OB-GYN and had an ultrasound. Their total bill was $125.

Out of 850,000 patients treated at Bumrungrad last year, 300,000 were foreigners from more than 100 countries – a number expected to increase 10% in 2004. Most physicians at Bumrungrad are either American or U.K.-trained and all speak some English. Translators are provided for over 22 languages. The average cost for an operation is 50-80% below the cost in Europe or the U.S. And at Bumrungrad there is no wait. As if all of this were not enough, add Thailand’s renowned hospitality and you have a prescription for a luxurious healing environment that won’t break the bank.

Connected to the hospital by a sky walk, BH Residence is a convenient housing option for recovering patients and their families . But in the hospital, private rooms have marble countertops, plush couches, cable-TV, internet connections, and refrigerators full of sodas and soy milk – with price tags as low as $80 per night. I was ready to move in. At what other hospital could I send a postcard home saying “Wish you were here?”

Chefs from the city’s finest restaurants prepare meals to order for patients and their guests. The Mandara Spa offers bedridden patients body work to help with healing . Mothers in labor are given a choice of delivery styles, complete with nurses who massage them throughout labor.

… The pediatric wing, dubbed “Kid’s Village” looks more like Disneyland’s Main Street than a scary hospital ward. The curved ceilings have been painted with clouds, and the hallways leading into pediatricians’ offices are a splash of bright contrasting colors. The Village is completely self-contained with its own Treatment Rooms, Children’s Pharmacy and Cashier for one-stop service. A host of kid-sized and parent friendly features include “The Kids Zone” a play area with jungle gym , a miniature movie theater, and child-scaled computer modules. The Center is home to almost 50 highly qualified pediatricians representing all pediatric specialties from general pediatrics to specialists in pediatric cardiology, pulmonary, nephrology (kidneys), allergy, endocrinology (growth & diabetes), genetics, neonatology, psychiatry, neurology, oncology (cancer), gastroenterology and rheumatology. There are 29 beds in the pediatrics inpatient wing, a pediatric intensive care and a complete newborn nursery including a Level III regional neonatology center treating premature and sick babies from throughout Thailand and the ASEAN region.

Bangkok is known world wide as THE place to go for sex reassignment surgery. It makes sense then, that if Thailand’s plastic surgeons can convincingly turn a man into a woman and vice versa, erasing a few wrinkles would be a cinch. So after my appointment with the dermatologist, I slipped into The Plastic Surgery Center across the hall to pick up some brochures for future reference. I noted that the most expensive procedure, a complete facelift including eyes, neck, brow, nose, lips (and what ever else is left) including pre and post doctor visits and hospital stay, is $3,500.

The Pediatric Center and the Plastic Surgery Center are just two of over 30 “Centers” in the hospital. There is also The Wellness Center that focuses on preventative health care. Low lights, meditative music, and rich wood walls give the clinic a serene ambience. In the Wellness Center vitamins and mineral compounds are prepared individually for patients depending on their needs.

American-born director of the International Center, Rubin Toral, told me that in 2002, a year when most hospitals world-wide had growth rates of just 3%, Bumrungrad’s revenue grew by 22%.

“Unlike the US ,” Toral said, “where doctors often have their own practices, all our services are offered under one roof – the family practitioner, the surgeon, a physical therapy center, the lab, the pharmacy… During the 1997 economic crisis, we invested in a state of the art computer software system which digitizes everything from patient registrations, clinical systems, operating room scheduling, billing, purchasing, inventory management, and gives doctors instantaneous access to medical records, including digital x-ray’s. Thailand’s labor costs are low, as is overhead, and there is virtually no litigation. The result is world class health care at rock bottom prices.”

Director of the International Center, Rubin Toral.

A Day In the Life Of A Patient At Bumrungrad Hospital

Upon my arrival on the International floor, I approached the desk, where they printed up a patient card with my name along with a list of my prearranged appointments (remember, I had set them up online two days earlier). There were no forms to fill out. A woman was assigned to be my guide for the day. I had signed up for Bumrungrad’s “comprehensive exam”. She took me first to the waiting room where I would see a general practitioner. Thai kick boxing was on the overhead TV. A nurse in a uniform and triangular cap rolled a cart my way and asked, “Would you like some fruit juice or water?

As the afternoon progressed, she guided me from appointment to appointment. Each doctor had on his or her desk a computer which he referred to and to which he added his own notes. My x-rays and ultrasound were there along with all doctors’ notes for each doctor to access with the click of a keyboard.

By the end of the afternoon, I’d seen eight specialists including a dentist, and had had every inch of my body from my toenails to my scalp scanned, poked, and tested. My final appointment was with the general practitioner I began the day with. He opened a 10 page bound medical report with my name on the front, just under a photo of the hospital, and we proceeded to go through the report line by line, word by word until he was satisfied that I understood everything from the significance of my blood count to my HDL levels to my liver function.

Next stop was the pharmacy. I handed the pharmacist my I.D. card, and he handed me my meds in a small chic shopping bag with the Bumrungrad logo on its front.

My last stop was the cashier.

“That will be $470,” she said.

With my personal medical report tucked under my arm, and my shopping bag of meds in the other, I took the escalator to Au Bon Pain for a croissant and a cappuccino and thought to myself that I’d never had so much fun in a hospital.

Note:

I have focused on Bumrungrad’s International services in this article because of the nature of this magazine. The hospital also offers outstanding outreach programs to locals including heart replacement valves for local children.

Bumrungrad Hospital, multilingual, interactive website www.bumrungrad.com.

Bangkok Hospitals:

www.traveller2000.com/bangkok/hospitals.htm

BRAZIL

I asked Jim Kirby, a part-time resident of Brazil and a writer for this magazine, to talk about health care in Brazil.

He said, “The health care value in Brazil can far surpass that available in the USA for everyone, especially for the local rich and those who have dollars.

Drugs cost a fraction of what they do in the U.S., especially considering you can buy them without a prescription. For a very small fee ($5), you can get a piece of glass taken out of your foot or an even drug injection right in the pharmacy. Eyeglasses cost probably 1/5th what they do in the U.S. A dentist will clean your teeth for $15, fill a tooth for $30. And the dentist does it herself, not a dental technician.

Along with the Argentines, Brazilians are the world leaders in cosmetic surgery, teaching physicians from around the world. A nose job in Sao Paulo will cost you about $900.

The big news lately is that the Brazilians lead the world in combating AIDS. They dishonor HIV-drug patents and produce and distribute generics themselves at very low cost.

There are several tiers of general care available, from free community clinics spread around the neighborhoods, to crowded, but cheap public hospitals, to world-class private hospitals. The three southern states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul maintain the highest standards.”

To read James P.Kirby’s story about Brazil in this magazine, go to:

http://www.escapeartist.com/OREQ5/Real_Estate_Brazil.html

For more information about health care in Brazil, type “hospitals in Brazil” or something similar into a search engine. There is loads about medical services in Brazil available online – unfortunately most of it is in Portuguese. If you find information in English, please let me know!

SOUTH AFRICA

In the March 28, 2002 issue of the BBC online, a headline reads “Britons Head for South African hospitals”. The article reports that hundreds of British patients are flying to Cape Town, South Africa to avoid National Health Service waiting lists in the UK. The treatment they are seeking ranges from major heart surgery and cancer operations, to cosmetic surgery and they have found that the low cost is worth skipping the wait.

In the September, 2003 issue of Elle Magazine, Nancy Hass reported on a travel tour company called “Surgeon & Safari”.  Trips to big game reserves are combined with a trip to the doctor – in this case a plastic surgeon in Johannesburg. Because the Rand has been greatly devalued since apartheid, a multi procedural cosmetic surgery/safari trip costs about the same as an eye lift on Park Avenue. Manhattan surgeon Alan Matarasso says that South African doctors are among the world’s best. The Elle article concludes, “The combination of large game preserves and affordable surgery has made South Africa the newest winner in the overseas cosmetic surgery sweepstakes, a game that for years has been played in places like Thailand, Mexico, and Brazil.”

CONCLUSION

“It used to be that someone from France or the United States would never leave their country for health care in another country,” Rubin Toral of Bangkok’s Bumrungrad Hospital said. “The ease of travel today allows people to access health care wherever they wish. ”

And I would add, if you are a foreigner living in a “medical vacation” country, all the better.

“And that’s pretty close to where I ended up,” the Vietnam Vet tells me as we drive through northeastern Thailand in his king cab Toyota pickup truck listening to Dolly Parton wailing “The Rockin’ Years”. Bob says he’d rather meet Dolly in person than any American president. Who was his favorite president? I ask. “Nixon,” Bob says. “He brought us home with what little honor we had left.”

Bob is one of over 200 “gentlemen of a certain age” who have settled in the shadow of a former U.S. Air Force Base in Udonthani, Thailand.

Bob and his best friend Bert, who is along for the ride, speak a language riddled with words like Charley’s, Lead-sleds, and F-14’s. Bert tells me his job in the war was loading bombs and Bob says his was detonating the ones that didn’t work.

“That must have been nerve-wracking work,” I say. “Let’s put it this way,” Bob says, “There are old explosives men and there are bold explosives men, but there are no old, bold explosives men.”

I am in Udonthani, Thailand to attend the wedding of Bob and Phun. I met the couple seven months earlier on Sukhumvit, Soi 3 in Bangkok at an open-air bar. Bob told me over a beer, “They shipped me home from the war when my girlfriend was seven months pregnant. I’ve been in Thailand searching for my kid – he’d be 35 this year. I haven’t found either of them yet, but I found Phun and we’re gettin’ married next Valentines Day.”

That was the beginning of a friendship between Bob, Phun, and me. And it was the moment I first saw Thailand in a new light - as a country where planeloads of broken hearted, misplaced men, come to find love and sometimes find a new home in the process.

Seven months later, Bob picks me up at the Udonthani airport, where I have arrived for the wedding. He talks me out of my hotel room and into staying with he and Phun.

“I pay $125 a month to rent this house and that’s too much,” Bob says about their comfortable 3-bedroom stucco home. The neighborhood is made up of similar looking houses with red tile roofs, in which similar gentlemen live with their Asian partners. Bob pours me a whisky and we sit at the dining room table under a photo of the king of Thailand. Bob comments, ” Today it was 32 below in Michigan and 90 above here. I’d rather take my clothes off any day than keep puttin’ em on. Yep, this is Thailand.”

Thirty-two years ago Bob tells me, there were only 15,000 people living in Udonthani.

Today 330,000 people live here -Laotians, Chinese, and Westerners in addition to Thais. “Martin” from England lives in a village 30 miles south of Undonthani. He says “Some of us have discovered that here a small pension supports a reasonable standard of living. We say  ‘It’s better to be old and poor in Udon than in the western world’. I can vouch for it,” he adds. ” I live in luxury in a great big house and garden; I would have to live frugally in England and put up with inclement weather.” He and his wife have built a bungalow for renting out to visitors to the area. (See email address at end of article)

I ask Bob what a typical day is like for him in Udonthani. ” I got nothing to do, and all day to do it in,” he jokes. “But if I get bored I build crutches for children.”

He’s talking about Project Crutch, a non-profit organization his VFW buddy, Forrest Williams organized in 1999. The men have built walkers and crutches out of PVC pipes for over 7,000 crippled children.

“We’re going to the crippled children’s home in Khan Kaen next week to deliver 30 more.” (See information at end of article about how to donate to this project.)

By 6AM the next morning, seven members of Phun’s family have arrived for the wedding after an all-night bus trip from Chiang Rai.

They squat in a circle on bamboo mats on Bob and Phun’s kitchen floor (the dining table and chairs go unused) eating sticky rice and lahp neua.

At 10:10 AM Bob pops open the first Chang of the day and offers me one. “No thanks,” I say. “I like to stay alert until at least noon.” He tells me that Chang means elephant in Thai, “and this beer kicks like an elephant too.”

A fighter jet screams overhead and we stop talking until we can hear each other again. “Is that normal?” I ask Bob who is looking up, “Yea, ain’t it nice?” He says. He tells me it’s an Alpha jet, sold to the Thai military by the Germans.

We walk down the street to Bert and Yen’s house.s

Bert met Yen when he was first based in Udonthani 30 years ago. They’ve been married ever since and have lived all over the world including the United States and Saudi Arabia. Their son lives in the United States with his wife and child. Yen
says she misses them but she’s too afraid to visit them in America this year. “Too much war there now,” she says.

In Yen’s western-style kitchen loaded with modern appliances, the women sit in a circle on the floor preparing food for the wedding reception. Bert says to his wife, “Honey, why don’t you use that slicer I bought you?” Yen just shakes her head and continues lopping off symmetric slices of tomato into a bowl with a carving knife. I join the women on the floor. Phun spoons some potato salad in a bowl for me to sample. They all sit back to watch my reaction. I say that it’s the best potato salad I’ve ever tasted and mean it. A local Chinese caterer will cater the other half of the menu Bob says. “Why no Thai food?” I ask him. “We’re having Chinese. Thai. Chinese. It’s all the same,” he says.

By 6PM that evening, the men are gathered outside in the soft heat of the evening, empty beer bottles are stacking up – Bob says they’re giving the Chang a test run before the reception tomorrow. The men laugh together and share old war stories and tales of ex-wives. Doug is a soft-spoken southerner from South Carolina, and there is Ken, a former FAA executive who looks like the doll of the same name, except for the shock of silver hair on his head, and Tom from Yorkshire, the one the guys tease because he speaks “weird English”, and Bartle, the tall, soft-spoken Swede who tells me he was single for 10 years after the death of his wife, and he figured no woman would want him; until he discovered Thailand, and fell for the first woman he met here.

Ken says, “I’m a true American. I love America, but damn it, I don’t want to live there my whole life.” After his second divorce in America he tells me, he moved first to Australia then to Thailand. “I like the weather and the people here and after I met a Thai woman, I called my three kids and said, ‘Guess what, I’m not coming home.’ They raised holy hell. ‘I have my life and you have your life’, I told them.” (He spends half the year in Thailand and half in the U.S.) “I made two women rich and I’m not about to do that again. American women just want a man for security.”

“Thai women don’t,” I ask?

“Well sure they do, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper here.”

I join the women who are sitting across the street on a raised bamboo platform gossiping animatedly in rapid-fire Thai. Acham (teacher) Nit, introduces the old woman sitting next to her as her mother. “Where does she live?” I ask. Acham Nit tells me in her halting, but excellent English, that in Thailand, when a parent is old, they live with their children. “My mother lives with me,” she said. The ladies ask me to find good American men for the two young single women there tonight. “My mother say you look like Thai people,” Acham Nit says to me. “Thai people smile a lot – You smile a lot.” I guess it’s true. I can’t seem to wipe this smile off my face.

The Wedding

The next morning by 8 AM, The caterers are setting up the tables, chairs, and bandstand for the post-wedding block party. Two elder women from the neighborhood and Yen are draping white strings on the branches of a traditional Thai wedding tree, called Bah-Si-Su-Kwa. It’s shaped like our Christmas tree, but intricately woven into shape with individually folded banana leaves and jasmine flowers.

At 9AM, the village women “kidnap” Bob and along with the village elder, escort him to the house where his bride waits. Before Bob is allowed to enter his own house, he has to pony up 300 baht and allow the village elder to pour holy water on his white athletic socks.

Phun waits in her peach colored traditional silk Thai dress. Her freshly made-up face is flawless and exotic, like an Asian doll. The village elder (who I will call ‘priest’ ) leads the bride and groom into the living room followed by the guests. Even Bo, the temple dog, slinks in for the ceremony. The priest places attached wreaths on the heads of the bride and groom, and the Buddhist marriage ceremony officially begins.

The priest chants, sprinkles holy water, leads the couple in prayer, and chants some more. He stands them facing the guests and he says something in Thai, which I’m guessing, from the whoops of the Thai guests, means “I now pronounce you man and wife.”

Western men with pretty Asian wives wait in line to bless Bob and Phun and to hand them envelopes containing money.  Each guest ties a string around the bride and groom’s wrists, giving a whole new meaning to “tying the knot.”
.
Bob’s best man, Thomas, the longest-term foreigner in Udonthani, says, “Bob, you have chosen a fine woman in Phun. I wish you the greatest luck in the world, I hope you have a long and enjoyable life and may all your checks arrive on time.”

Bob says, “Thanks Brother. I’m gonna need’em after this.”

Thomas says to Phun, “Phun may you have a long and happy life and never stop loving Bob.  And would you please quit spending all his money so he has some left over for beer?”

“That’s the best blessing I’ve had today,” Bob says.

Tom says, “When I remove these wreaths, do not let your separation begin…Uh, Bob, I think it’s stuck in your glasses.” “Yea, I’m hooked in there,” Bob says.

“Remember, you have to keep these strings on your arm for three days,” Thomas reminds him.”

“It’ll probably be 3 days before I sober up.” Bob replies.

There are nervous titters from the westerners in the bedroom where the priest has led the couple to lie down together while he prays over them. “This is gettin’ better and better,” Bob says. And then it is over.

“Let’s party!” says the groom.

It is 10:30 AM and over 200 guests are seated at tables eating and drinking out in the street under the tents set up along the block between Bob and Bert’s houses. The band is playing Suzie Q, You’re Cheatin’ Heart, Love Me Tender…Already the men are two-stepping and swinging their partners around the dance floor.

A side-table is piled with barbecued ribs and chicken and potato salad. The Chinese caterers are replenishing individual tables with fresh fish, duck, noodles, and rice as fast as empty plates appear. Bob, sitting across the table from me, scrutinizes a fish ball, turning it over in his fingers. He pops it in his mouth, and shrugs. “Guess it won’t kill me,” he says.

I eat my potato salad with chopsticks.

The band switches to traditional Thai tunes. For hours Thai women take turns singing hauntingly, beautiful melodies into the mike, while the others swirl slowly on the stage, arms reaching high in the air, fingers curled back. It’s part hula, part barong – it’s Thai.

Phun pulls out a chair for me at the table where the elder women of the village are seated. A woman with the soft skin of an overripe peach looks me in the eyes and takes my hand. She wraps a string around my left wrist, ties a knot, and chants softly in Thai. Translation unnecessary – she is blessing me, wishing me happiness and good luck. Each woman around the table repeats the ritual until I have a thick bracelet of strings knotted around my left wrist. It is their way of connecting me to each of them and to their community. I am touched and I am crying.

A wedding in Thailand is a mating dance for all those who’ve not yet found a partner. I ask 85 year old Jack, a friend of Bob’s who has come all the way from Michigan for the ceremony, “Are you looking for a lady here?” “Yes,” he nods. “Do you have your eye on someone in particular?” “Yes, that one over there,” He points to Joy, who is at this moment leaning into the truck sized cooler digging out a
beer, her bottom pointed in our direction. “She turns my crank,” he says. Joy noticing his attention directed at her (never mind the 40 year age gap) comes over to top his glass with beer.

“You trying to get me drunk?” he asks. “You can get me drunk and take advantage of me.” Joy drags him off to the dance floor and he spins her around. He returns to his chair a bit out of breath but grinning from ear to ear.

Hours of eating, drinking, singing, dancing, and merriment later, Bob and Phun stand together at the mike and Bob says to the wedding guests:

” Thank y’all for comin’. It looks like we have about seven countries represented here today. I guess that means that there’s peace on earth after all. “

Bert, backed by the band, launches into, “Take me home country road, to the place where I belong, West Virginia, Mountain Mama, Udonthani, take me home, country road.”

Epilogue

The next afternoon, Phun’s family is packed and ready to return on the all night bus to Chiang Rai. We gather on Bob’s porch talking as best we can with our three words in common. Phun’s brother, Sinua, is smiling at me. I note his golden brown skin, Mt. Everest cheekbones, wide-spaced almond eyes, two rows of beautiful white teeth. Phun’s younger sister suddenly vacates the seat next to him, and I am stuffed into it. Here we go. They are leaving in an hour, so I figure there’s no harm in playing along. Phun says (through Bob) that she wants me to be her sister in law.

Bob says, “Now wouldn’t that be sumthin’ Robin if you was to come here for our wedding and you end up finding yourself a Thai husband?” “Yea, that would be something,” I say. As Sinua boards the bus he turns back and smiles at me one last time. I blow him a kiss and turn to get into Bob’s pickup truck which will take he and Phun home to start a new life together in Udonthani, Thailand, and me to the train station, which will take me to the Bangkok Airport, which will take me via plane to San Francisco. Good thing too, or the last line of this story might be, “I’m living on the Back Forty in Thailand with my new rice farmer husband. Wish you were here.”

Notes:
*FOR ACCOMODATIONS IN A BUNGALOW IF YOU ARE VISITING THE ISSAN PART OF THAILAND, CONTACT MARTIN ALLINSON AT martinallison@hotmail.com
*FOR DETAILS ABOUT HOW TO DONATE TO PROJECT CRUTCH E-MAIL robertwilson@hotmail.com or
dnmarohl@hotmail.com

The first thing that struck me about the city of Bangkok, besides the fact that it was hot and steamy, was its exploding skyline. In Thailand, architecture is considered the highest form of art, and it shows. I was no longer in a troubled Nepal village, but a pulsating, vital metropolis of six million smiling people. I saw no machine guns, read no headlines that said, “Twelve Rebels ‘Shot Dead’”, and it looked and felt like everyone had a job. I hadn’t been in a city this upbeat since San Francisco at the height of the Dot.Com surge. But unlike San Francisco, Bangkok is affordable. Everything anyone could possibly want (and maybe you have to live in “outpost” for a while to appreciate this) can be purchased at a discount – from housing, to tailor made clothes, electronics, textiles, indigenous crafts, excellent medical care, some of the best food on the planet, and, oh yeah, sex.

Yes, I know. Thailand and Sex. It’s a tired cliché. But everywhere I looked there were white, pasty-faced men parading young, beautiful Asian women through the streets, eating in restaurants, dancing in bars, sneaking up hotel elevators – and all of it left me a bit depressed in the Land of Smiles. Where did I, a western woman fit in here? If I went on a date, should I charge?

The Atlanta Hotel, a budget hotel with style, where writers, film industry people, and other artists intersect, is where I stayed during my final two weeks in Bangkok. It has a sign posted in its lobby: “Bargirls, Catamites, & Prostitutes of Either Sex Are Not Allowed to Stay at the Atlanta.” Catamites? I put my friends on it and they reported back, “Catamite: a boy kept by a pedophile.”

Siam’s long-standing tradition of concubines and courtesans goes back at least to the 1400’s. Chinese immigrants began the first official brothels in the early 1900’s. Until very recently most men of wealth had “major” and “minor” wives. (And some say it is still common.) After prostitution was declared illegal in the 1950’s, the sex trade grew by another 15%. The Vietnam War began a tradition of R&R holidays for men around the world and created a new class of prostitutes who catered to foreigners.

At its best, Thailand’s sex trade allows girls to return to their families and villages with tidy nest eggs. At its worst, the girls are sold or indentured by their families, or kidnapped, and forced to work as slaves in appalling conditions. Thailand’s sex industry generates income double the annual government’s budget. Bangkok may be back on top, but the oldest business in the world is still Bangkok’s biggest business.
So why can’t I “wrap my head around it” in the words of a Bangkok female expat who has managed to do just that? Maybe it has something to do with an old fashioned notion of love and romance. Or maybe it’s the fact that I know that not all its participants are willing ones. Over the past six months, I’ve spoken at length with at least three people dedicated to stopping the sex traffic trade, and their stories about the underbelly of the sex trade are not pretty ones. There is no way, knowing what I do now, that I can look at hundreds of thousands of western men descending on an Asian country for a sex holiday, and say, ” Boys will be boys”.

But obviously there are locals and expatriates living in Bangkok who aren’t pimps, madams, or bar girls – people who lead relatively normal lives. And so I set out to meet some of them. Here are a few of their stories:

“I moved to Bangkok when my dog died and my red-headed wife left me.” Harold tells me. (No, these words were not lifted from a country song.) I am having a drink outside my most frequented Bangkok hangout, the Internet-Laundry Cafe on Sukhumvit, when the rather large Oklahoman native wanders in and sits on a stool next to me. Harold, who has lived in Bangkok for six years, tells me he married a Thai woman last year who grew up so poor she nursed until she was fifteen. Harold makes his living in Bangkok he says, putting on Shakespeare Festivals in the United States. Harold’s business card says he deals in forgiveness, spiritual guidance, loving advice, and hugs.

The sois and boulevards around Sukhumvit are lined with girly bars, department stores, massage parlors, expatriate high-rise apartments, street vendors, and city block-sized “girly” hotels in which I hear there are women displayed behind glass. One evening as I am walking back to my hotel I decide it’s time to see what lies behind the dark doors of the Tequila Bar. As I enter, the girls surround me. “Welcome! Come sit here. What would you like to drink? How about some peanuts?” And “Here’s a cool wet towel to wipe your brow.” (OK, I’m beginning to see the attraction.) Inside the bar two Englishmen are dancing with three or four girls each to Kenny Rogers singing “Oh Ruu-uuuu-by, don’t take your love to town”, and one fellow in a starched shirt named Brent, is drinking quietly at the bar.

Brent, a 33-year old expatriate from California tells me he’s lived and worked in Asia for eight years – Bangkok for the past two. He is a lawyer for a firm that helps expatriates purchase Thailand businesses and personal property. I say to Brent that Bangkok must be heaven for a man. He says, “It is for about the first month, but after that you realize it’s a all an act.” (It is? And I thought these girls liked me.) He says that a man wants the same thing a woman wants, to be loved. “Sure you can find someone to cook and clean for you, but you’ll never find a woman here you can really talk to.” Brent hopes to work in Asia for a few more years and then return to his hometown to fall in love and start a family.
On another evening I’m coming out of the Fujicolor Photo store on Soi 4 when I hear, “Hello there!” I look up to see a burly man with a beard and spectacles sitting with an Asian woman in one of the Soi’s many open-air bars. “Hi,” I say back. He says, “You American?” “Yes.” “How about that? I’m from Michigan.” He stands and shakes my hand. The Asian woman at his side stands as well and wais (bows with praying hands under chin). “I’m Tom and this is Phun. Come on in and we’ll buy you a beer.”

“So, how do you like Thailand?” I ask Tom. “Like it?” he says. “I love it. I’m taking Phun here home with me to Michigan. We’re gonna get married, sell my property, and come back to Thailand to live.” He gazes at the woman who doesn’t understand a word we are saying, yet is smiling at him broadly, lovingly.

“I spent seven years in the Orient during the Vietnam War,” Tom says, “but I had to leave when America pulled out. My girlfriend where I’d been stationed was seven months pregnant, but I lost track of her. I’ve been up in Northern Thailand searching for my kid. He’d be 35 this year. I haven’t found him yet, but I’m not giving up until I do.”

During the war, Tom says he worked in Thailand’s northern province in the rice paddies. “Doing what?” I ask. “Can’t really say,” he says. “The U.S. government still doesn’t admit the place even exists. Let’s just say I was in explosives.”

“Why do you want to move back here?” I ask.

“Because it’s like coming home to family after 30 years.” he says. “I started coming back last year because my psychiatrist said I should. We killed so many people in Laos and now the same Americans that protested the war are moving into the war zone. It ain’t right.” He is wiping his eyes. “We had to fight harder when we returned home than we ever had to fight in the war. Americans wonder why we come back here and end up with Asian women. The reason is that they wanted nothing to do with us. Here people respect what we did.”

“Your fiancée is lovely,” I say to Tom. “She is to me,” he says taking her hand. “She’s got a heart of gold and works her ass off doing laundry and anything she can to make a baht.”

When I walk back to my hotel, I feel as if I’ve been handed a big beautiful gift. In the midst of cultural exploitation and in the palpable wake of the Vietnam War, love and hope remain.

I responded to the ad above, and that is how I came to be here tonight at La Gritta, a swanky Italian restaurant, with twenty-five of Bangkok’s expatriate women. Most of the attractive women are between the ages 25 and 50 and they are from Europe, Australia, America, Canada, the Middle East, and Hong Kong. And as in social gatherings of women everywhere, the main topic of conversation is men.
“You can call your article ‘Sexless In the City’”, one woman says. They all concur that Bangkok is strictly BYOB (bring your own boyfriend) and indeed every woman here tells me she initially arrived in Bangkok with a spouse or a boyfriend or has one back home waiting. When I ask why they are here, I learn that most of the women came to Bangkok for temporary job postings.

“What is the best thing about living in Bangkok?” I ask them. They agree that it’s the food and the fact that you can live a far better lifestyle here than at home.

The women with families say that Bangkok is a great place to raise children for several reasons. Domestic help and excellent international schools top their list. One woman says, “My biggest fear is that someday I’ll look at my children with their mid-transatlantic American accents and wonder, ‘Who are they?’ Or that I’ll take them back to England and they’ll scoff at their grandparents because they don’t have maids.”

I ask the women how they feel about Bangkok’s in-your-face sex trade. One woman says, “It makes me sick, really sick. I had an argument two days ago with a guy in the street who was offering me little boys!” Another says, “I’m disgusted by Western people that help to promote this, and sad for the innocent kids and desperate people it affects.” One woman says, “I have learned to adopt a Thai approach, which is to ignore it. The sex industry is worldwide, and if I dwelled on it too much I couldn’t live here. So the less I know, the better.” She adds, “Not all working girls see prostitution as a means to an end. Some see it as a start, a way out of poverty. I’ve read that some very lucrative business women here got their beginnings in the trade.”

I ask them where they see western women fitting in in Bangkok. One says, “Expats tend to fall into two grossly over-generalized categories: expat families where one or both spouses earn a generous foreign salary, and “Sexpats” or men who live off their savings or work locally and whose primary pastime is sex with prostitutes.” She adds, “Of course there are men who fall into both categories. If you don’t fit into either category as a woman, it can be a bit of a challenge.”

One woman says that although she came here for her job, she has grown to love Bangkok. “This weekend I ate in the best restaurants, partied in some excellent clubs, took a new dress design to my tailor who will work from my sketches, ate durian, and cruised the klongs in a water taxi on Sunday with friends. We found a temple and offered up our wishes on wax tablets. Where else can you get all that?”

The worst thing about Bangkok? The traffic and pollution. No contest. However, nearly all the women say they would recommend Bangkok to other expatriates looking for a place to live, at least temporarily.

Temporarily – that’s the key word. Few of the women I speak to envision a lifetime in Bangkok. As for my shopping list of places to live, Bangkok goes under the column, “Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

It is my last evening in Bangkok and I am making my way through a shopping list of supplies for my next “outpost”: Contact lenses, prescription medications, film, batteries, and the blue ostrich leather cowboy boots I had custom made (a temporary lapse of sanity). I’ve been told that everything electronic or computer-related can be found in one place, at Pentip Plaza. So, having learned the hard way that taking a taxi in Bangkok means traveling at the speed of an inchworm in an air-conditioned capsule with thousands of others doing the same thing, I flag down a motorcycle taxi and climb on back.

We weave through the narrow spaces between gridlocked cars, taxis, and buses – spaces so narrow at times, that I have to squeeze my knees into the bike to keep from leaving them on the sides of city buses. The traffic opens up suddenly and we are speeding through Bangkok’s nighttime forest of brightly lit high-rises, past throngs of people gathered around food vendors, past bars and pubs with revelers spilling out of their doorways, and past mammoth-sized shopping pavilions swarming with the after-work crowd. We come to a stop in front of a sign that says Computer City. Which is exactly what I find inside – an indoor city dedicated entirely to computer and electronics stores.
Shopping accomplished, I step back out onto the street to hail a ride to my hotel. Among the vendors selling satay and tom yam soup, knock-off Calvin Klein jeans, and Rolex watches, is a display that catches my eye. Multicolored, liquid-filled jars and vials are stacked neatly one on top of the other with labels that are written in Thai. I pick one up and ask the vendor, “What is this?”

“Big. Last Looong time,” he says. I buy one. It’s the perfect souvenir.

I obey the rules when I wish

Why do farang females gather in a dimly lit basement of the Old Dutch Pub in Soi Cowboy, an area renowned for its girly bars? And what do the women – teachers, musicians, sales reps, humanitarian aid workers, students, television producers, and business owners from more than a dozen countries – have in common apart from the fact that they all live in Bangkok?

Every other Wednesday night between 7 and 9PM, the Bangkok Women’s Writing Group convenes at the Old Dutch Pub on Sukhumvit, Soi 23 to share what they have written and to reconnect socially as women who live in a testosterone-weighted city. The female scribes write poetry, children’s books, erotica, novels, memoirs, personal essays, and screenplays.

No previous experience is required to join apart from a passion for writing and a desire to share it with like-minded women.

Chloe, from Australia, says, “I moved to Bangkok from Japan 18 months ago. I looked around for a way to connect with creative women who liked to write, but found nothing. So I started my own group, and that was the beginning of the Bangkok Women’s Writing Group.” Since then over 70 women have signed up, although only five to 15 women attend each meeting.

Group member, Jessica says, “For anyone looking for mentoring, creative inspiration, and estrogen, this is it. There’s no pretense here. Each meeting is flavored like a different dish depending on who shows up.” She adds, “The best part is that this isn’t the typical expat women’s group where everyone sits around bitching and ranting. These are women you would seek out no matter where you live. They make a difference in their lives by doing something and by having a creative point of view… Kudos to Chloe for continuing to provide an outlet for the muse.”

Another member, Diane from Canada, says, “The Bangkok Women’s Writing Group is an amazing venue in which to share our writings – some of them emotional and personal – in a non-threatening, caring, respectful, and open environment. At first, I was a bit nervous to share what I write with strangers.

It’s like wearing my soul on my sleeve, but because the women make me feel warm and welcome, it’s a joy.I’ve learned an incredible amount from these women who come from so many countries and backgrounds. Before I joined, I didn’t have many female friends in Bangkok. Most of my colleagues are men, so finding these women was refreshing. My mind and my soul feel lighter and clearer each time we meet. ”

The meeting tonight commences with each woman introducing herself and telling the group how she ended up in Bangkok.

Cyndee from Manitoba, Canada goes first, “After I finished my teaching degree, I got off the farm (group laughter) and headed for Bangkok and beyond. I’m here tonight because I like to write.”

And so on, as we circle around the room and each woman tells her story.

Members bring copies of something they have written to share. Some read aloud and some come to listen.

Nova Scotia native, Lois, reads a poem about “home”

The author is a former medical student who one day realized that a doctor was not what she wanted to be and Canada not where she wanted to live. The following Sunday night, I bumped into Lois at O’Reilly’s Pub. Her Japanese boyfriend plays main fiddle in the Irish band at the popular Silom bar every Sunday night, while Lois leaps, arms crossed behind her back, legs ablur, feet rapidly kicking the floor and propelling her into the air. She learned the Irish jig on her native island and has found a home for it in Bangkok.

One of the women in the group crouches in the furthest, darkest recess of the couch. Chloe asks Ani if she has brought something to read. The young Englishwoman stammers, “Oh I don’t know. I brought a few pieces, but they are mostly rubbish.” The group begs, and she relents, but is too shy to read, so hands them off for someone else to read aloud.

Friday night at the Shock Club: If Ani had not approached me, I wouldn’t have recognized her. Because the demure librarian from the writing group had morphed into a sexy vixen, minus eyeglasses, plus cleavage. She tossed back her long raven hair as she laughed with friends and passed around a bottle of Jack Black.

Another member of the group, Cyndee, a Canadian with a soft, pale air, is a master of  locution-words leaving her mouth take on a life of their own.

One moment Cyndee is wistful dreamer, the next, a tiger with a roar. I was not surprised when I saw Cyndee at About Cafe the following evening. (Even in major cities like Bangkok, expats tend to gather in the same places.) At the poetry reading, video art,  music, movement, and words intertwined in a space cumbrous with creative energy and cigarette smoke. When the mike was opened to the audience, I said to Cyndee, “You must read.”

• “Well, I did bring something – it’s in my bag,” she replied.
• “Go ahead then.” I urged.

Cyndee gulped down a couple of glasses of sherry and approached the mike, her knees trembling, and the paper in her hand rattling. She delivered the first two lines of her poem in a purr. But as she painted a picture of desire unrequited, the words emerged from deep in her gut and spilled into every corner of the room. All periphery conversation stopped.

Cyndee finished softly, with prolonged pauses in all the right places. The crowd hooted and applauded. She stumbled over to where three of us from the Bangkok Women’s Writing Group waited like proud stage moms to give her a hug.

When the meeting is adjourned tonight, a few of us stick around to chat about our nomadic lifestyles, about men, and about where we as western women fit in in the macho metropolis of Bangkok.

Only when the restaurant staff begins to dim the lights and sweep up around us, do we, the writing women of Bangkok, disperse into the night.

(To join Bangkok Women’s Writing Group call Chloe at 023328252 #1006/1107. Or email her at funnygirl682000@yahoo.com.au Meetings take place every second Wednesday from 7-9PM at the Old Dutch Pub on Sukhumvit Soi 23, near BTS Asoke.)

Torn Between Two Lovers

San Francisco

The gray mist rises. San Francisco’s colors pop out again in the spotlight of a winter solstice sun. I slip into a crimson batik blouse and my white baggy pants from India to venture out of my Russian Hill cave for a bite to eat. Strolling across Washington Park, I watch the dog lovers chucking balls to their 4-legged friends, and the Chinese moving as if through honey doing their Tai Chi. Across the street at Moose’s Restaurant, a waiter is placing another folded napkin on a linen covered table in preparation for the lunch crowd. And towering over us all are the majestic twin spires of St. Peters St. Paul’s church, brilliant in the morning sun.

San Francisco looks much as it did when I left almost a year ago – -The Transamerica pyramid is still an exclamation point in a city that is always celebrating something, the jumble of Mediterranean style buildings cover North Beach and climb up Telegraph Hill, Coit Tower rises from its pubic nest of eucalyptus trees, the crinkled waters of the bay are dotted with white handkerchief sails, and a large ship, full to the brim with containers is gliding under the Bay Bridge.

What was I thinking? I love it here.

Bali

When I left Bali two months ago, I thought I ‘d found my home on the bucolic, spiritual, achingly beautiful island where for the price of one year’s mortgage in San Francisco, I could live in lovely home, on a fraction of what it took to sustain a lesser lifestyle in San Francisco. My plan was to return to the U.S. just long enough to check in with friends and family, pay my taxes, sell my condo and car, pack up my remaining things, and get myself back to Bali. I’d keep a toehold in San Francisco, but it would be in Bali where I would complete my book and teach creative writing workshops.

Two days after my return, a bomb blew a hole in Bali taking tourists with it, and most of the air out of my plans to live and work there. Had I been naive to think that I, an American, could make my home in the midst of the world’s largest Islamic nation?

Expatriate friends in Bali answered my emails with assurances that in spite of their shock and dismay, they weren’t leaving. They banded together with the Balinese to assist the injured and grieving, and when that task was complete, their focus remained united on bringing normality back to the island and making it safe for tourists to return. Like a pilot light, Bali stayed on in my heart. Maybe, I could go back.

Meanwhile paying the dues required to live in the U.S began to take over the moments of my life. Income tax deadlines, legal threats from an ex-spouse, calls and appointments with lawyers, car repairs, Department of Motor Vehicles appointments, dishwasher repairmen, sorting out bills, the search for affordable health insurance (which is impossible to get in the U.S. if you’re self-employed and have ever been sick), learning that I could not walk out of my apartment without spending more in one day than I spent in an entire week in Asia, and exploring ways to pay for my increased cost of living without selling my soul. Bali began to fade into an abstract dream that got dimmer as the days passed.

While I’d been gone, my friends in the United States, it seemed, had all become couples. My business colleagues were publishing books, teaching workshops, and becoming “known”, while I’d been reduced to a vague blip on their memory screens. In the tight- knit, quickly changing world of publishing, I’d become one of the disappeared.

It was clear I was going to have to log in some serious time in San Francisco if I hoped to build the career base in the U.S. that would make it possible for me to live in another country. – at least part of the year. Unless one is financially independent, the How to Earn a Living factor looms large in the Where to Live and How to Keep Living There. (Are most expatriates financially independent or pensioners?)

In addition, my status as a single woman was beginning to lose its allure. As much as I’d enjoyed the freedom of being on my own for the past six years, I longed to be part of a family again. My now non-single girlfriends pointed out that I was unlikely to find a mate as long as I continued my nomadic lifestyle. Would I really have to choose between security and adventure? If I kept bopping from one expat haven to another, would I be relegated to singlehood forever? Would finding an intelligent, fun, romantic, gorgeous, adventurous man, with his financial life in order (the list goes on, but I’ll stop there) require that I stay in one place long enough to build relationships? A friend of mine, who recently landed herself a Sugar Daddy, looked frightened when I told her I was thinking of cashing in everything that I owned to move to Bali. “What will happen when you run out of money?” she asked. “You might find yourself stuck there growing old and dying alone,” She’s right, I thought. But then I remembered that I was going to have to grow old and die anyway, and there were worse places than Bali in which to do it.

One day when I was cleaning a closet in my San Francisco apartment, the Balinese batiked drawstring bag that I’d carried everywhere on the island surfaced. I held the soft, incense perfumed cotton bag to my cheek, closed my eyes, and was back on the island again: Clanging gamelons, croaking frogs, yakking geckos, melodious birds, kites ornamenting the skies, Made knee deep in a rice paddy seeing me in my upstairs window and waving, “Hi honey! You hungry? I make Nasi Goreng!” men lounging in the open air platforms smoothing the feathers of their pet cocks, Balinese women sauntering gracefully under offerings atop their heads, taxi drivers calling out, “Transport?” followed by, “Are you married?” the smell of jasmine,frangipani, cloves, and incense, festive parades blocking traffic, ruffled umbrellas tilted over religious icons, temples poking up in the most unlikely places, jogging in the Hash House Harrier Runs through out-back Indonesia, the sun low in the sky reflecting off the water between the tiny rice sprigs, huts with rounded thatched roofs, men bathing together in streams, fresh off-the-boat grilled tuna every Thursday night at Nuri’s, stepping over tiny palm leaf offerings, wearing only sarongs, sleeveless cotton tops, flip-flops, and forgetting why I ever wore makeup, leaving the windows open and never being cold, weaving my motorcycle around ducks and school children and gridlocked cars, swimming around and around hypnotically in warm, clear pools, surrounded always by lush gardens with striking batiked leaves, gold fish ponds, the sound of running water everywhere, and the tranquility radiated by the locals and the foreigners on the island.

..
Bali and San Francisco.
I love them both.

But I can no longer afford to live in San Francisco year-round, and I can not afford to leave it for long periods, for it is in San Francisco where the work to support the life I want to live, is.

After a 3 month media sabbatical, I’ve been disconcerted by the cries of “War! War!” coming from every television network and by our president who spouts various renditions of “Retribution against the evildoers!” America, it seems has gone public with its self-assigned role of sergeant at arms at large. But most shocking to me is the unquestioning manner in which Americans are following in lockstep, uncomprehending of any view other than their own, and unconcerned as the rest of the world looks on in horror. I am less proud than ever to call myself an American. And less free to say so.
…

But about the time I begin to think, “That’s it, I am out of here,” I’d find myself adoring San Francisco all over again. One day, for instance, I was motoring my Alfa Romeo, up steep California Street, top down on a crisp, bright winter day, tuned into KFog, swerving around cable cars, limousines, and bicyclists with ease, and slowing down for a peace march. I pulled into Whole Foods Market where I browsed though miles of aisles of wine, gourmet cheeses, fresh sushi, daily baked bread, and organic fruits and vegetables. At the deli counter, I ordered a burrito, where a lengthy inquisition ensued. Rotisserie chicken, beef brisket, or vegetarian? Refried or black beans? White rice or cilantro? Monterey jack or cheddar? Guacamole, sour cream or both? Onions? Jalapenos? Spinach or lettuce? Mild or spicy salsa? Whole wheat or flour tortilla? After collecting the log-sized burrito (at $5.49, one of San Francisco’s few remaining bargains and ladled fresh made saffron yam bisque into a plastic pint container to take home. I then got into the checkout queue just in time to hear a tall female cashier announce to another employee, “You know that new girl Andrea? I tongued her when I kissed her goodbye at the company party.”

I live in San Francisco, which is not really America, but an island of individualism and noncomformity – traits once regarded as distinctly and positively American.

When I left last year, San Francisco was staggering under blows to its major industries, technology and tourism. But San Francisco, is a city of rushes and busts and she’ll rise again.

Bali too will bounce back. Tourists will be drawn back into her magical fold, as they realize that terrorism is random, and the likelihood that it will occur twice in the same place is slight. The Balinese will continue their lives of spiritual rituals and celebrations, not that they ever stopped.

So how does one decide where and when to be an expatriate? Does it take a calamity or a momentous shift (perhaps an earthquake in my case?) to shake loose and just go? Is it as simple as, “Just step out the back Jack, make a new plan Sam, no need to be coy Roy, just set yourself free…”?

Or one can take a multigrain tortilla, spread on some San Francisco, toss in a handful of Bali, and sprinkle on some Brazil, roll it up, and eat the whole enchilada?

In the three months since I arrived in Bali, the rice shoots have grown two feet. Made’s youngest child, Lode, has sprouted too – from an infant at her mother’s breast to a young girl chasing through the paddies after her five year old brother, Gedde.

“Roh-bean! ” Made is at my door at 8AM, a palm-woven tray balanced on her head piled high with food-laden plates. “New moon, celebration of Saraswati!” she says handing me a plate of saffron rice and shredded chicken. I give her a one-armed hug. “Bye Made. I love you!” I call out as she traipses off through the rice fields with 2-yr. old Lode close on her heels.

Maybe because they sense in me a lost soul, Made and her family have taken me in. “You go to temple with us tonight?” she asks. All week long, the men and women of Penestanan have been streaming in and out of the temple for the annual celebration, Odalan. Lode is wrapped in a tiny sarong and Gedde in the all white going-to-the-temple ensemble worn by adult males. Made’s plastic pink curler is gone; tonight she is no longer matronly chef of Made’s Warung, but Made, maiden princess. The rhythmic clanging of hammers hitting the bamboo shafts in the kul kul tower pull us in. Women in tight sarongs and lacey tops stride regally under three foot towers of offerings on their heads. Like the ladies back home bringing food to the church potluck, they are bringing food to the gods, which they will share with others. We kneel on bare earth before a shrine. Made places the offering of food and flowers she has brought on the ground and lights a stick of incense. We hold out open hands to receive holy water sprinkled from a flower petal by the old pumanku, a priest’s assistant, and tuck flower petals behind our ears – even two year old Lode knows the routine. “What should I pray for?” I ask Made. “Whatever you want. No problem!” she says. I follow my adoptive family to the outer temple where young girls are dancing the barong – their eyes darting to and fro, arms swaying sinuously at their sides, fingers twitching and curling. Later we walk home through Penestanan and up the dirt road to Mades Warung (“Best Food in Ubud”) and the house I am renting next door.

I am not the first foreigner who has found “home” on the island of Bali. Unofficially, there are 20,000 foreigners living and working here. They are mostly concentrated on the southern coast from Sanur to Seminyak and in the center of the island, in Ubud, where I live. The Ubud expatriates are for the most part artists, traders, and businessmen and women who offer services to tourists and/ or the expatriate community.

Here are the stories of a few of the expatriates of Bali:

Diane and Beth, proprietors of Taman Rahasia Hotel “The Secret Garden” Boutique Resort Spa & Restaurant

Diane, from Florida, stresses that she wasn’t trying to get away from something as much as coming To something when she made her move to Bali in 1994. Two years ago, daughter Beth joined her and together the two built the 8-room hotel Taman Rahasia.
Diane says, “Bali attracts a high percentage of creative types – artists, writers, and designers. Living here,” she says, ” has allowed me to express myself in ways that I never knew I could.”

I ask the women to talk about some of the challenges of living in Bali.

“I’ve heard plenty of stories about people who came here with their western thinking intact and were thoroughly disillusioned,” Diane says. “The different concept of time, what we call rubber time, is a big one.”

Beth adds, “It’s key to remember, that no matter how long you’re here, you’re always a guest in this country.”

“Are there any gaps in services which might be filled by someone interested in starting a business in Bali?” I ask.

Diane says, “We could use a good deli.” Beth adds, “Or a good bookshop. But you can successfully run an “old” business if you add a unique twist.”

I ask them about the high number of single western women who live in Bali, many with Balinese partners.

Beth says, “Women are attracted to Bali because they are safe here. You can be walking alone through the rice fields in pitch black with a man walking right behind you sharpening a long curved knife, and you know he’s just a man going home from work in the rice fields.”

“What is the biggest difference between life in the U.S. and life in Bali?”

Beth says, “We have so many attachments to things we think we have to have. Living here you realize how complicated we make our lives, and yet how simply and well you can live.”

Diane says, ” I just bought my first TV a few months ago, and that was just so that we could watch videos.”

“Would you recommend Bali to everyone?” I ask them.

Diane says, “You have to be a person who is not attached to things and people. Those who come here tend to be people who let life lead them rather than trying to control it. The Balinese don’t have a word for future – they don’t think about tomorrow the way we do. And the truth is, we don’t know. If change is hard for you and if you have big control issues, you don’t belong here.”

Martial, 42, from France, owner of the Highway Internet Cafe and PT Bali Kreasi Bisnis

Martial’s expertise, in addition to the computer business, is land and property acquisition and all things visa-related in Bali. He also has a software and printing business. Martial left France and a prospering real estate business because he says,”I worked like an animal to make 600,000 francs a year ($100,000 U.S) but the government took 425,000 of that in taxes!”

“I work with many foreigners who come here expecting to make a fortune. The problem is that while building costs are low, land is very expensive. With 250 million rupiah ($25,000U.S), you can build a very nice house with marble, fine wood, and a pool. But land costs are between 100 million to 200 million rupiah per era. ($10,000 to $20,000 U.S. It takes about two era to build a typical house.) And so foreigners come to this beautiful island and they hear, ‘Darling don’t you want to build a house on my land?’ So you build a house on the land of your boyfriend and after five months or two years, your boyfriend says, ‘It’s over.’ Who is the owner of the house then? The owner of the land.”

“Only an Indonesian can own land in Indonesia. On the other hand, the highest right that a foreigner can have here is a lease agreement – a contract which allows you to build on leased land for 25 years and can be renewed another 25 years. After that the land and whatever is on it belongs to the landowner. In my business we provide not only guidance, but loan and lease agreements to secure acquisitions.”

“There is one way a foreigner can purchase land and that is to create a PMA, or a foreign company. It costs some money and is a complicated process, but it can be done. However, you will still be a foreigner in Indonesia without the same rights as Indonesians.”

“Is now a good time to invest in Bali?” I ask Martial.

“I will say one thing; there is only one Bali in the world. And so if you buy a piece of Bali, it is likely that it will appreciate in value.”

“What about visas?” I ask him. “There are a number of different visas,” he says. “Some require you to leave the country every two months (like tourist visas) and there are those that allow you to stay longer (working visas). Regardless of which one you obtain, it will cost you $5 to $6 a day to live in Bali.

In our ‘How to Live in Bali’ package, we can help people with all of this. It took me a year of experience to learn what I can tell a client in 45 minutes.”

I ask about Indonesia’s reputation for corruption – the payoffs, the palm greasing. Martial says, “I prefer to call it commission. If you were a police officer making $50 U.S. a month and you had two children and a wife, you too would be looking to improve your income. I deal regularly with this as a business owner, and sometimes when they give us good service, we show our appreciation.”

“What about medical care?” I ask. “It’s good for regular intervention, but if you have an emergency, well, it’s not so great. You absolutely must have health insurance to transport you to Singapore in case of a serious illness or injury. If you want to live an adventurous, nice life, something very different, you take the risk.”

“What is the best thing about living in Bali?” I ask Martial.

“The absolute, breathtaking, gorgeous beauty of the girls. The women here are great. As business partners they are hard working, they are clear, and they are fast. Balinese women have the most beautiful breasts in the world because they grow up carrying everything on their heads. That means they have exquisite posture and the muscles here (he points to his pecs) are permanently working. I weigh more than 100 kilos. I’m not bad, but I am no more Casanova. When I see a girl in France and I say, “Hello Baby, you look very sexy,” she says to me, ‘Who do you think you are?’ Here when I say hi to a girl here, she looks at me and smiles. ‘Terima kasi.’ she says. Thank you very much. Unfortunately I was 36 years old before I knew about Asian girls, or I would have lived here a long time ago.”

“So moving to Bali was a good decision for you?”

“Every morning when I wake up and see my servants smiling and they bring me a French crepe with some strawberry and some rice and I listen to the birds, walk around with my cats, and smoke my first cigarette, I say ‘Oui! This is it!’”

Jim, 60, health practitioner and owner of Cendana Spa, from U.S.A.

Jim came to Bali from Monterey Country, California in 1995. He is a chiropractor and psychologist who offers healing to tourists in a sumptuous spa environment.

Jim’s story of getting to Bali began when the Loma Prieta earthquake flattened the office building where his practice was located. He lost everything, but with the help of U.S. government loans began to rebuild again. A major economic recession hit California in the early 90’s and he was forced to close his practice again. He and his wife of 36 years moved to Carmel, rented a small bungalow, and he opened up another chiropractic office. This time his plans were cut short by the death of his beloved wife. “Enough was enough”, Jim says. He flew to Singapore to be near his son. Son took dad to Bali for a healing holiday. Dad stayed in Bali. Dad began to heal, and now Dad, remarried recently, is back to healing others again.

“The name Ubud comes from Oebed which means ‘place of healing’”, Jim says. Bali is a healing place, and I needed it badly.”

“It was costing me $5,000 a month to live in Carmel. I am too old to start over again in the U.S and to make enough money to live the way I like to live. At Cendana Spa I offer counseling, tissue cleansing, colonics, chiropractic, nutritional supplements, massage, facials, pedicures and manicures, spa facilities, and neuro linguistictreatments in a beautiful transforming environment. I teach my patients how to change their lives.”

I ask Jim about the business climate in Bali.

“The Balinese have lived in a communal society for 10,000 years or so and they share what they earn. If someone new comes along and does well, there’s a lot of jealousy. They have a different ethic than I have and it’s hard for me to adjust to it sometimes. A contract has some validity, but still what can you do if they decide not to honor it? Take them to court and sue them? Indonesia has the most corrupt justice system in Asia. Whoever pays the most wins. It’s a risk you take and you accept the rules the way they are here, or you don’t come.”

“What type of expatriates do best it in Bali?”

“Those who are open to whatever experience comes to them and trust in the universe that whatever happens will be in their best benefit. I’m not afraid of losing anything because I’ve already lost it all. If you can give up control and expectations and fear, then you can make it in Bali.”

“What’s the worst thing about living in Bali?”

“I miss the cultural things like theatre groups.”

“The best?”

“How very comfortable it is here. When I start to get discouraged about the difficulty of doing business in Bali, I remember what it was really like in the U.S. – the constant threat of legal action for one thing.”

“I am grateful for the good experiences and the bad ones I’ve had in Bali. I was able to rebuild my life. I have remarried, I have a beautiful home and servants, and I am working again helping others to heal.”

Elliot, in his 60’s, Exporter, from U.S.

A number of expatriates can be found on Thursday nights at Nuri’s ( a cafe owned by expatriate Brian, from New York) for fresh tuna night. That is where I meet Elliot, a robust southern gentleman from South Carolina. I ask Elliot how he came to be in Bali. He says, “I got a divorce and there was a big ‘ole hurricane. I cashed out and gave away everything else. A friend living in Guam at that time told me there were no Rent-A-Wreck companies there so I bought 45 used automobiles and started a used car rental business. It did great. Then a typhoon came along and blew all the cars into the ocean. I used to come to Bali with my girlfriend. I started buying things and then a few extra things to sell. They’d be snatched up in a few hours. So I began exporting furniture out of Bali to Guam. When Guam was full of teak furniture, I struck up a deal with a furniture wholesaler in South Carolina and started shipping to him. That’s what I do today. I own nothing except for my business, and that’s the way I like it.”

Tony, in his 50’s, retired, from Australia

Tony, a Hemingwayesque father of 5 children, moved to Bali three years ago after a divorce. He has just bought 42 era on the side of a mountain. “Living there will give me the isolation I love,” he says. “It’s a stunningly beautiful piece of land, very spiritual. From the top you can see the volcano and the ocean.” He bought the land under a lease agreement with the owner for 110,000,000 rupiah ($11,000) and plans to build a house for under $30,000 U.S. He says, “People back home have no idea they can live in Paradise for so little.”

Theo Zantman, 50-years old, artist, from Holland

Theo came to Bali in 1970 after living in Tunisia for several years. “When I arrived in Bali, I felt at home immediately, as if I had come to visit my
grandmother.” he says.

Theo paints every day in his studio, which is located in the old art center, Penestanan. Theo’s art is in galleries all over the world including a permanent exhibition in Belgium where his son manages his business.

He says. “Bali has a spiritual energy that is found in few other places on the planet – it is in fact one of the chakra points of mother earth.”

Bali’s Shadow

A three-dimensional portrait contains shadow and light. The Balinese understand this concept well – the religious offerings which are such an integral part of their lives, are made to the bad gods as well as the good. Even paradise has its dark side.

Harassment by hawkers on the beaches of Bali -”Sarong? Madam want beautiful sarong?” “Bali Boy? Only $20!” – is relentless. Even in Ubud, you can’t walk through town without being assaulted by locals trying to sell you everything from”transport” to paintings. I am told that this is a relatively new phenomenon and only occurs in the tourist centers; that in the villages, people are still content to make a living off the land.

But it goes beyond pushy street vendors. Stealing and home robberies are commonplace in Bali, although, thankfully, physical violence is not. If you leave a personal item (like the sunglasses I “lost” at the medicine man’s house), it is highly doubtful anyone is going to say, “Excuse me maam, but you left your….” My explanation is that in a society where everything is shared, the lack of a boundary between yours and mine, means that everything is up for grabs.

Lack of privacy is another issue that I as a westerner find difficult here. Bali’s communal lifestyle means everything is shared including time and space. The nice thing about this is that my neighbors watch my back, but on the other hand, I cannot work at home uninterrupted. When I leave (usually to “hide out” at a cafe), everyone I pass on my way out of the neighborhood says, “Miss Robin, where you go?”

I mentioned corruption earlier in this story. in some ways it can be a good thing. It’s easier, for instance, to simply hand a policeman a few bucks if you are stopped than to go through the hassle of receiving a ticket and all that that entails. It’s also more convenient in many cases to pay someone off than to wade through the mountains of regulations required in most countries to get anything done. (Building permits for example) The negative side to this is that the Balinese see foreigners as bottomless sources of income and their efforts to profit from them are creative and persistent.

Clock is Ticking…

After three months, Bali is still best. I will return in January, during the rainy season to be sure. Next week I will go home to reconnect with loved ones and to tie into a slipknot, the loose ends which need to be secured before I make the move.

I have begun the process of exploring ways to earn my keep in Paradise. As a writer, thanks to the Internet, I can work anywhere on the planet where there is an electrical outlet and a telephone line. I will finish my book about expatriate havens. (Look for it this time next year!) And I will offer creative writing workshops in Bali.

I may have found my place in the sun, but I’ll continue to check out expatriate havens in South Africa, Cambodia, Brazil, and beyond – and I will share my findings with you.

Thanks to all of you for your emails of encouragement and for hanging with me on this journey of self and geographical exploration. It is you, the readers, who have fueled the adventure. And so, for now anyway, I will keep one toe in the U.S., and move the rest of me to Bali.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

A great source of practical information for expats in Indonesia

Entertaining reading about expat life in Bali

All of the following are located in Ubud, Bali:

Cendana Resort & Spa

Dr. Jim Taylor
62-81-239-27826

Made’s Warung
“Best Food In Ubud” (and a great place to find houses for rent in the rice paddies)
Br. Penestanan Kaja
62-361-977885

PT Bali Kreasi Bisnis
“We create, develop and maintain your business.” Highway Internet Cafe
highwaybali@hotmail.com
Tel. 62-361-972107
Fax 62-361-972106

Taman Rahasia
“The Secret Garden” Boutique Resort Spa & Restaurant
Email: info@balisecretgarden.com
phone: 62-361-979-395

Theo Zantman

Women in brilliant sarongs stand at the edge of a river bathing.

“Prepare your seatbacks and trays for landing.” I hear, and suddenly I am no longer standing inside a Gauguin painting, but seated in an Asiana plane, which is preparing to land in Bangkok. The dream, so vivid! Was it a promise of what was in store for me in Asia?

It didn’t take more than a couple of days in Bangkok to figure out that if a lush paradise had once existed here, it had long since been covered over by skyscrapers, highways, and malls.

My next Asian destination, Kathmandu, proved to be a paradise of a different kind. It was a medieval silver and jewel-toned village overrun by men with guns, and no, it no more resembled the soft, pastel paradise of my dream than Bangkok had.

Apparently, I was too late. And so I let it go.

I am peering out of a Garuda jetliner at an emerald island surrounded by a velvet sea as we prepare to land in Bali, Indonesia. My forehead pressed against the window, I am suddenly very tired of the life of a Global Orphan. I want to be home. “Please,” I pray. “Let this be it.”

I move into a house in the midst of the rice paddies above the old artist village.

I step off the plane and into the dream. It smells of incense, sandalwood, cloves, and jasmine.

In “Traveling not Leaving”, Andrea Bocconi writes, “The sense of smell bypasses rationality…the nose is animal, instinctive, ancient. An encounter with another culture is an intensely olfactory experience, even if we are not aware of it.”

I do not know why or how I know it, but I am home.

In the taxi, we wind along narrow country roads headed to the culture and art center of Bali called Ubud. We pass verdant sculptured rice paddies, distant volcanoes poking through clouds, soft in the mist, and women wrapped in sarongs sauntering gracefully along the side of the road with pyramids of fruit balanced on their heads,. Men wear the soft sarongs too, only in earth tones, and sport batik headbands over dark hair. Children run through the fields, their faces turned to the sky, watching kites soaring on currents high above. Lush foliage sways in the breeze and at the base of the mountains are rows of fringed palm trees.

I wake before sunrise the next morning to birdsong so loud, I’m sure I must be in a bird sanctuary. In the morning light, I look more closely at the interior of my $9 per night bungalow. Its every niche is crafted with aesthetic taste. The door is handcarved with ornate precision. The Indonesian four-poster bed is draped in a lacy mosquito net, the hand-woven batik textiles gracing the walls and draped across the bed are works of art, and the ceiling is peaked and thatched in bamboo.

I hear the breeze in the musical clanging of bamboo wind chimes and step outside. Red hibiscus blossoms have been placed in the corners of my door and windows, and on the plate of fresh papaya set outside my room.

I go for a short walk and discover more art imbued in everything from the sidewalks (inlaid with leafs and little pebble designs) to the sublime – strikingly beautiful temples, and simple but tasteful, open-air, multi-tiered homes with thatched roofs.

Miniscule wovenpalm containers of flowers, rice, money, and burning incense are set out on the ground and atop shrines everywhere I look. This is the source of Bali’s aroma; that and the profusion of frangipani, jasmine, and clove cigarettes.

Bali is one of thousands of islands that make up the Indonesian archipelago, and a small one at that – only 2,147 square miles. Located only 8 degrees from the equator, Bali’s climate averages a comfortable 80 degrees year round.

Even with its population of three million, one can still get lost on the island. There are hundreds of villages that have not changed in 50 years. Bali’s volcanic mountains, some of which reach over 10,000 feet, provide fertile volcanic soil and abundant rainfall resulting in a land where crops almost grow themselves. Because so little physical labor is required to sustain life, the Balinese have plenty of time left over to pursue art, music, and religion.

The Balinese believe that the island was a gift granted them in sacred trust and so they devote a great deal of time to offerings, processions, the making of art, and temple ceremonies.

They have their own unique blend of Hinduism, a complex fusion of India cosmology, tantric Buddhism, home-grown mythology, animism, and magical beliefs and practices. At least eleven thousand temples- grace the island.

When Islam swept through the islands during the 15th century, there was a mass exodus of aristocracy, priests, courtiers, artists, musicians, and craftsmen to Bali. The artistic renaissance that ensued, continues today. Virtually every Balinese practices one creative art or another, be it painting, wood carving, dancing, or music, – for art is considered an integral part of being alive.

There is a sense of harmony in Bali that is hard to miss. Each village is a closely unified organism in which the communal policy is harmony and co-operation – a system that works to the advantage of every body. The community decides the organization of villages, farming and even the creative arts.

The local government is responsible only for schools, hospitals, and roads. Two traditional committees whose roots go back centuries decide all other aspects of life. The first is the Subak, which organizes the complex irrigation system. The other is the Banjar, which arranges all village ceremonies.

His neighbors assist a man in every task he cannot perform alone without any expectation of reward, except perhaps the knowledge that when he needs help, his neighbors will be there for him. For this reason, there are few “bosses” and “laborers” amongst the Balinese.

I move into a house in the midst of the rice paddies above the old artist village of Bali called Penestanan. It is like moving into a zoo, so full of creatures that I must wear earplugs at night to sleep. The house is a large traditional Balinese home open to the outdoors complete with a lush garden and lotus pond stocked with fat goldfish. Like most homes in Bali, it comes with a “helper” or pembante. The cost of my magnificent home in paradise? One million five hundred rupiahs, which at this writing equals about $175 a month.

Saturday night I go to the Jazz Cafe to listen to the local band. I meet Anne from Switzerland and we become fast friends . She invites me to a healing ceremony for her brother who is dying of Hepatitis C. It is his 40th birthday, and although she doesn’t expect the ceremony to heal him, she hopes it will bring him comfort. The tall priest dressed in white looks at the photo of Anne’s brother and says that he sees that the man is sick in his liver. The medicine man sits on a high perch surrounded by powders and liquids, containers of holy water and lotus petals. He chants and sprinkles water over Dominique’s photo and affects. He then directs us to pray and sprinkles holy water over our heads.

After six weeks in Bali, I write a friend in Nepal, “This place is amazingly gorgeous. Still. I can say this even after losing my wallet yesterday with all the hassle that goes with that. I have no money and no ATM card and I’m still happy. That should tell you something. Bali is magic – black AND white. I went to an Indonesian healer who read from his medical books inscribed on palm leaves by his great grandfather with a bamboo point.

There’s really no way that words can do life here justice. It amazes me that the whole world has not moved to Bali. I’ve made lots of friends: artists, people in the export trade, and a new best friend from Switzerland…

I ride a motorcycle. Yeehaw! Hard to keep my eyes on the road with all the blindingly green rice fields, people up to their thighs in water wearing conical straw hats, women carrying huge loads balanced on their heads, ducks crossing the road, girls in school uniforms jumping out of the way when they see me coming…

You know that huge duffel bag I have that was packed full, the one with the wheels? Well, a young lady, maybe 23, hefted it onto her head, balanced it there (no hands), carried it up 93 steps to the rice fields, through the paddies to my house, where she gracefully set it down next to my bed. Humbling.

I’m getting back in touch with my spirit here…between the peaceful, lovely environment, a new love interest who challenges me constantly with soul-searching questions, with regular meditation, yoga, warm weather, surrounded always by art…. For the first time in I don’t know how long, I am resting, slowing down and looking inside, learning to savor life and remembering who I am and why I am here. All my senses are fed in this place and I sense that in the quiet, I will find my spirit once again. I feel love coming back into a space which recently has been filled with fear, insecurity, and loneliness. I am breathing more slowly and deeply, and living in the moment so that I can hear what I know but have forgotten.”

I write another friend about my first massage in Bali:

I go to a little spa run by locals for a 2-hour massage special. I am kneaded, pounded, cupped, stroked, and then scrubbed with a ground up mixture of local herbs and fruits (called lulur) and after that slathered with fresh yogurt and then put into a tub of warm water filled with flower petals. My shampoo and conditioner are brought to me in half a coconut shell. They also serve me ginger tea while I am soaking in the tub. When I leave, the setting sun is reflecting off the water in the rice paddies, a big colorful rooster struts by and a man is pushing his bike up the hill with a batik headband tied just so. I’m thinking, Oh my God; this is so beautiful I can’t believe it’s real. I turn back for a final glance, and yes, it is real – and prettier than any postcard I’ve ever seen.

But lest I make Bali sound like it’s 100 percent paradise, I should probably mention that instead of them piping in New Age music during my massage, I was treated to the sounds of a neighborhood cockfight just outside the window. Cockfights are a regular occurrence here – no shame in it – the locals see it as fun and games AND a handy little blood sacrifice to the Gods. All part of the dichotomy that I’m discovering is Bali, and besides what did I expect for $9?

Later that week, my neighbor Made drops by for a visit. She’s trying to talk me into leasing the plot in front of the house I’m renting. Amazing what you can own and live in for under $40,000. “But what about that cow out there?” I ask her.” She says to me, “You make building, cow gone. No problem.”

She stands up to leave and runs a hand through my hair. “Robin, maybe you marry nice Balinese boy. I have older brother,” she whispers. “He not married yet.” She jiggles her eyebrows a couple of times and giggles conspiratorially. “My brother very gentle,” she says. ” I tell him come meet you, and you make pretty, ok?”

It occurred to me yesterday that I haven’t worn “proper” clothes for over a month now. My toes haven’t seen the inside of shoes and my skin has been left largely bare to the sun and warm breezes. I love living in harmony with nature. Leaving the windows open. Wearing few clothes. – and never being cold. What will I wear when I return to San Francisco? Black? Closed toe shoes? A coat, Lord forbid?

Just now, a large bumblebee enters the open doors where I sit outside by my pond. OK, stay calm. This guy is the size of a hummingbird and as furry as a cat. He hovers over me and my computer, BZZZZZ. I am allergic to bees). I get up calmly (on the outside) and say to the bumblebee, “Excuse me, I think I’ll just go outside for a moment.” I set my laptop on the bottom step and move cautiously outside. A year ago, I would have shrieked, dropped the laptop on the tile floor and dove into the pond. Yes, I’m getting there. Me and nature in harmony.

Two nights ago, I walked home shortly after the sun dropped out of the sky (in the sudden way it does near the equator). I hadn’t brought a flashlight along, but I followed the sound of a clear high voice singing while she did dishes. I saw a flicker of light and a shadow next to my house. I focused my eyes and saw my neighbor placing 2 sticks of burning incense on the shrine between our homes. I entered my house happier, more peaceful than perhaps I have ever been. Each day in Bali outdoes the next. That night as I lay in bed I looked up at the peaked ceiling and a tiny green light flashed on and off. My guardian lightbug. All is well in Bali.

As I sat on my white tile terrace this morning and watched the gold, yellow and brown fish swim around in circles, and heard the reverberating clang of a vibraphone in the distance, the high clear ringing of the xylophone, felt the warm sun on my face, and while I felt myself falling in love, I knew that I was experiencing a moment of wonder. Bali is that. Wonder. Magic. Mystery. Beauty. A slow, swaying, circling dream. Maybe there was something to that Medicine Man yesterday afterall. He put his love magic on me and since then two hearts are moving towards each other, circling round, enjoying the mystery and the discovery of finding something so magical and unpeeling it, layer by layer. I am in a dream land and a dream state.

Bali is pretty. Bali is soft. Nepal is a silver toenail polish town – Bali is light pink. Bangkok is a man’s town – Bali is a woman’s island. One of Bali’s most revered gods is the goddess Dewi Danu, Goddess of the Lake and provider of irrigation water, the lifeblood of Bali. Even Bali’s elected president, Megawati, is a woman. I’ve asked men in Bali about the female spirit of the island and they concur. Without a doubt, Bali is female and they don’t seem to mind one bit. While all around, the world is yelling “Fight! Fight!”, Bali is going about its business of being beautiful, soft, and feminine. It is the yin to the Islamic yang of Indonesia. I think I’ll hide out here for awhile.

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Bali nourishes and offers up little resistance. It coddles and pampers the body, soul and spirit with salons (where you can be pampered and massaged beyond your wildest imagination for just a few dollars), holistic healers and alternative medicine of varied forms, yoga classes, and meditation centers and retreats.

It is easy to Be in Bali. In almost every way the island supports life and supports it abundantly. It costs so little to live here, and food grows with minimum effort. Ease. Even the language, Bahasa Indonesian, is considered one of the world’s easiest to learn. The Balinese are an easy people to be with, kind and carefree, with a spirit that is communal – no division where yours and mine are concerned. And no sense that foreigners are impinging on “their” island. They seem to say, the earth is abundant; there is plenty to go around. Come and share it with us.

Bali is graceful. You can see it in the way the people move. In the design of their gardens, their homes, their clothing.

Flow. In Bali, life flows in a lazy hypnotic cycle. Water, prana, chi, the life force of the island is on the move everywhere, at all times. And always there is a breeze caressing your skin, music gracing your ears, art pleasing your eyes, and life all around unfolding, flowing, naturally, with grace. It’s been said that the Balinese envision heaven as a place very much like Bali. Naturally.

I receive a none-too-welcome jolt “back to reality” from the tenant renting my apartment in San Francisco:

“Hey Robin-

Just so you know, your upstairs neighbors are putting a roof deck in. The construction workers are busy daily from 8:00AM ripping up the tar roof and laying a wood deck. On the down side, we get an 8AM wake-up call daily because the work is loud. On the up side, I expect the work will be done before you or your next tenants come in.

Hope things in Bali are still great.”

In one month, I will have to return to the United States. After 8 months away, I am more comfortable than ever living outside its borders. However, the Unreal World beckons…

This paradise called Bali. It is within me. Was all along. It just took being here to remember it. And going into the void (like Harry Potter) to find it. I’ll be back. Because Bali is no longer just a dream; Bali is home.

Epilogue
8/19/02

Even as I sit this morning writing this story, two months after arriving in Bali, the beauty, the peace, and the magic of this island blow me away. I hear children singing Ole, Ole Ole Ole from a nearby soccer field. A rooster crows. The cow in my front yard moos. The smell of nasi goreng wafts through my window from Mades Warung. My neighbor is playing his guitar on his porch and singing folk songs. The birds are in concert as usual, a cool breeze rattles the papers on my desk, palm trees do their usual dance, and white fluffy clouds hang in the sky, barely moving….And this is Monday! Does it get any better than this?

“Come now Robin,” I can hear you saying. “There must be something wrong with Bali.” And yes, there is a shadow side which I will address in next months’ story along with what it takes to move to Bali and to live here, the cost of real estate and what business opportunities if any there are. And I’ll introduce you to some fascinating people, the expatriates who live in Bali.