You are a very brave, brave man

I know its been awhile since I've been back, and I have yet to finish the South African narrative, so here is the dramatic conclusion (cue dramatic music).

So, my cousin and I fly home from Zambia. Our plane ticket, in Zambia, is written by hand and the boarding itinerary was on a spreadsheet. After receiving said boarding passes, my cousin and I look at each other and almost simultaneously think, if there is ever a next time in Zambia, we're going to get one way tickets and forge the return trip. Yeah... we're those people.

We're back in Jo'burg, and thankfully we're staying in this nice hippie neighborhood with Che Guevara posters everywhere. It was the safest part of town, Melville, or so people say. It's also a gay district and yes, I ended up in a gay bar playing house music.

My cousin has been in Jo'burg before, so her and I have very different itineraries. We all catch a mini-taxi and it drops us off somewhere where none of us know. We find a tourist office and my cousin and her friend go to the Museum Africa while I ask for directions to Constitution Hill. I'm a dork and think that other countries supreme courts and history of the constitution is awesome. ask her if I could walk there from the tourist office, since, on the map, which I later found out was not to scale, seemed pretty close. She looks at me, laughs, and says "No, no, you can't walk there. Take a taxi. I mean I can walk there, but not you". I translated that as your an Asian with a camera, walking there would be ill advised. After consulting, not with her, but my cousin, I decided to walk, with my camera out, because I'm too stupid to bring a backpack.

On said not scaled map, it looks, in relative terms, to be about 2 kilometers away. Little did I know it was more near 8 than 2, and Jo'burg's roads aren't exactly labelled well. The one reason I have my camera out throughout all of this is because I noticed some really nice street art and tags along the way, much like this: fs

So, while I'm walking, I had one guy come up to me and just say "Mister, you are a brave man, walking around Jo'burg with a camera like that". Confirming yet again, Zao is an idiot.

Aside from that, to keep it short, since someone accused me of writing epics. Go to the Apartheid Museum, not just because you have a political leaning, but because it remembers one of the greatest tragedies of this world. It is also extremely uplifting at the end so its not all sad. And if that's not enough, there is always the amusement park RIGHT NEXT TO IT SHARING A PARKING LOT. The irony of South Africa.

Anywho, I leave you with this quote from Madiba:

"To be free is not only to cast off one's chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."

Cape Town

So I flew from JFK->Dubai (12 hours +3 hour layover)->Jo'burg(8hours +2 hour layover)-> I finally land in Cape Town(2 hours) after literally 27 hours of flying and being in airports. I found a really nice hostel on Long Street, the main party/bar area, Cat and Moose, which for R100(~$15) a night it was awesome. HIGHLY recommended.

The first night, Saturday night, was a bust, I went to sleep at around 10 after eating at some weird Indian place. Long Street was hoping, but I just got out of a 27hr marathon trip. It looked fun!

So in the morning, I try to figure out what I want to do. This was the initial plan for Day 1:

1. Wake up and walk to Victoria Waterfront and get breakfast, and book trip to Cape Point/Cape of Good Hope
2. Go to Robben Island
3. Come back, walk to bus station pick up ticket for 19hr bus trip back to Jo'burg
4. Climb Table Mountain
5. Ride cable car back down
6. Party
7. Sleep

If everything worked out just as I planned, it wouldn't be, to quote my friend Nancy, "typical Zao-like shannigans". This is what ended up happening:

1. Woke up, booked trip, and got decent food at Victoria Waterfront
2. Robben Island tickets were sold out until Wednesday (I'd be in Zambia by then). FUCK!
3. Played drums with guy in his store for 15 minutes.
4. Walked to bus station to pick up ticket, but told by ticket people I needed to go to the Computicket (online retailer) office to pick it up.
5. Walk 2 miles to nearest Computicket kiosk, to be told that my reference number "did not exist" and I needed to go back to the bus station
6. Walk back to bus station, and get told that I didn't have a ticket.
7. Buy ANOTHER bus ticket
8. Climb to cable car station at Table Mountain, only to find it to be closed.
9. Climb halfway up and gave up due to the lack of light.
10. Walk back to hostel, chit chat with Austrians and Brits all night, because all the bars are closed on Sunday..yay Christianity.
11. Find out trip to Cape Point got cancelled, because I was the only one, in Cape Town, that was going.

Yeah, didn't really happen as planned. But it was a great time dealing with South African customer service. The one thing I learned about this experience is: YOUR REFERENCE NUMBER FOR ANY PURCHASE IS GOD!!! Fuck other forms of identification or the purchasing credit card. It is the reference number that counts. No number, no service.

So since day 2 got shot to shit, I decided to hike Table Mountain, successfully this time, with the 2 Brits I met. I also found CDO South Africa, and they had classes at night, so I thought about paying them a visit.

So the climb with the two girls was tough, but not impossible. Both of them beat me to the top, which was quite embarrassing. I ended up staying up there for sunset, but that didn't happen, since sunset was after the last cable car going down. It was still pretty though, check it out:

After climbing up, talking the cable car down, and an extremely expensive cab ride back to the hostel, I was thinking that I wouldn't go to capoeira. The mountain was a mile high and I walked a fuck load the last 2 days. But my love for capoeira (masochism) got the best of me and ventured to CDO South Africa with C. mestre Espirinnho. I've now played capoeira on 3 continents and 4 countries. Love the roda, and good people there. I wish them all the best of luck! Good folks. They did have an awesome studio, check it out:

I'm walking back from the capoeira place, at about 1030pm, and this guy come up to me. I've seen him the night before and he wanted to sell me some coke and liked my shoes. I first gave him no mind, until he says "I like your shoes, can I see what size they are?"

I tell him my size and he start measuring his foot against mine and trying to reach for me shoe. And walking me to where ever he wanted. I'm thinking "Is this guy trying to steal my shoes? With me having them on?" He keeps grabbing at my leg, almost doubled over, looking at my shoes. I finally had enough of him and told him to fuck off, which worked.

So the next morning I get up at 9, chit chat and say goodbye to the people I met, and head off to the bus station for a 19hr bus ride to Jo'burg. Yay.....

We are all inherently racist

Race was a big talking point through out my trip. This isn't surprising, since South Africa is the Rainbow Nation that only recently escaped Apartheid and gave rule to a black majority. But one thing is true: No matter how much minorities complain about inequalities, racism, and discrimination in the US, we, Americans, BY FAR have the best race relations than any other country I've been to.

Here's a contrast:

If you where to go to Atlanta, most people and tour guides will tell you to go to Dr. King's memorial, because he was a great man that gave his life for what's right and because of that, is and should be respected, not because he's black, but because he made great contributions to the human race as a whole.

While I was in Cape Town, I wanted to go to Robben Island, the prison where Nelson Mandela was locked up for 27 years. I asked the hostel tour guy, who was Afrikaner, how to get there and his response was "Why would you want to go there? There's nothing to see, unless you have some sort of political leaning or something".

Really Mr. Tour guy??? If i have a political leaning? What about seeing the place where one of the greatest people the human race has ever seen, develop his ideas of forgiveness and non-violence? I would think that this would be the first place you would tell people to see to understand South Africa, where it has been, and where it is going.

Judging my South African standards, the race relationship has been great since 1994. And from an objective standard, it has vastly improved. There's no more segregation, no more apartheid, and no one is discriminated because of race. There also hasn't been massive racial violence post 1994, considering the oppressed majority accounts for 80% of the population. The peace I would absolutely accredit Nelson Mandela and his leadership. With that said, racial divides still exist. Average white income is still 2x greater than average black income. Inter-racial relationships are still very rare.

I was at a wine tour/festival in Jo'burg my last day in South Africa. I noticed 1. Every winery had a white person behind the stall 2. A lot of attractive white women. As for the first point, it is not that big of a surprise, since wine making is a traditional western/European tradition which requires tons of capital, which blacks in SA rarely have. The second point, the attractive women, was surprising. My cousin, who has worked in South Africa for the past 3 months, said "Don't bother, your not Afrikaner, they won't take a second look at you". That struck me as weird, since in the US, I wouldn't think that a women would think "He's a great guy, but he's also Asian. I don't know about that..." But upon further observation, I noticed there weren't any inter-racial couples. This lead to a whole discussion of how accepted inter-racial, especially between a black and white person, are. In the US, we would not think twice about an inter-racial relationship, but in other places, it's still a big deal.

I, in my life as well as this trip to Africa, have passed judgment on a person or a group of people due to race. Sometimes it's a joke, but other times it may not be as innocuous. It is not enough to say I don't see race, or some hippie ass answer like "I'm a part of the human race". What race or ethnicity we are defines who and what we are. I try hard to fight Chinese stereotypes, I think everyone can get that, but I'm still very Chinese in many aspects. Unless we directly face racism and deal with it, we will never make any further process.

Is stereotyping right? Probably not. Is it convenient? Absolutely. But we must be conscious of the fact that we are passing judgment not because of understanding, but because of racial stereotyping. Instead of giving ridiculously naive statements like "I don't see race" or "We are all apart of the human race", we need to deal with the issue head on and realize that we are all inherently racist. All races are not the same, we bring our different racial experiences to the table and that diversity is what makes us, as a human race, great.

The take away message here is that we will pass judgment based upon race, but we must try to prevent those judgments turn into action or policy. It is dangerous and difficult to ignore race, nor should we. Understanding is always the first step.

I will try to be more cognizant on the decisions I make and be mindful of what is based on racial stereotypes. I will try to not allow the racial judgments that I pass turn into actions, either positive or negative. The first step toward improving ourselves in understanding. From there, I can work on the rest.

South Africa (Part I: Getting there)

I just returned from a 10 day rapid fire tour of South Africa, little bit of Zambia, and a very little bit of Zimbabwe. I also had a quick run through Dubai, which, first time around, had a 2 hour layover and second time a more substantial 8 hour layover. I've also never been to an airport at 12AM and have THAT many people in it...Jesus, it was like Manhattan rush hour crammed all into a small space.

The take away message of Dubai is I hate plutocracies. Granted, I spent all of 10 hours in the T3 DXB airport (which is also the largest building in the world, judging by usable square feet), I felt I learned a lot of about this small, yet SUPER WEALTHY state.

First, everyone who works there isn't remotely Emirati (a person from Dubai). Shit, 85% weren't even Arab. Most are Indian, Pakistani, Asian, or Bangladeshi. Emirati people don't really work, they're rich. They also only make up 10% of the total population. Funny enough, Arabs are the minority in this Arab nation. It is truly an immigrant country. Because of this immigration, a tour book that I read while at the airport claims "Emirati only make up 10% of the population...this leads to a surprising open-mindedness and guarded self-segregation". I read "guarded self-segregation" as Emiratis are rich, the rest not so much, and let's keep us separate, because, truthfully which Emirati wants to be seen with a poor person, unless they're cleaning their house or driving them or something. Dubai is also a country cited by many human rights groups as having deplorable tenement housing for its working class immigrants. Don't believe me? Check out this article on the riots that broke out while constructing the Burj Khalifa. Fuck those immigrants that want to be paid US$60 more, so that they get US$231 a month!

On the other side of the spectrum is the spectacular wealth of the nation. Consider this, in a country that has just over 1 million people, it possess:

• The world's tallest building
• The world's largest building
• One of the world's most luxurious hotels
• One of the world's largest malls
• Indoor skiing

Now, the US also has these things and I guess if a nation is rich enough, I can't really fault them for wanting the best of everything. But sometimes the socialist in me feels that maybe it would be better spent on universal health care, education, social programs, or paying immigrants more than $200 a month.

If your rich (which I am far from that), Dubai is your playground. Just at the airport you can get:

• A $50,000 cover for your Blackberry. Made of titanium, platinum, diamonds, and other fun stuff
• A Swiss 999.99g 24K gold bar. Yes, a solid gold bar like you see in cartoons and movies making fun of rich people.
• A $9000 bottle of Vintage 1985 Lafite-Rothchild
• A $1500 bottle of 30 yr Macallen
• Caviar and tons of it
• Any electronic invention you can think of (laptops, computers, anything Apple)
• Every single designer label that sounds Italian or French
• Jewelry
• You can also win a Bentley just for exchanging money.
• Pinkberry (I was surprised that they went international, but a quick look at their website, I see that the whole UAE is a huge fan of them)

The only thing you can't find there, and it's ironic, is Arab stuff. Anything that local, or Arab, or cultural, is hard to find. There's only 1 store selling Arab stuff (trinkets, tourist friendly things, keffiyeh aka hipster scarf, etc.) And everything there isn't made anywhere in the Middle East. It's all from either China or Malaysia. The Chinese produce the cheap shit, while the Malaysians produce anything that is Muslim or Qu'ranic in nature.

Surprisingly, it is not all about spending and living the rich life. Since tithing is a pillar of Islam, there are donation bins everywhere that support the Dubai foundation, which does great work in the Muslim world. It builds schools and hospitals, provides healthcare, and alleviates poverty around the world. I just wish they gave more and also helped people in there own countries more.

One of the most beautiful and calming things is also morning prayers, especially during Ramadan. The call to prayer is played over all loudspeakers. No planes board. No gate agents blaring over the PA system. No carts driving down the hallways. Just a call to prayer and then silence for 15 minutes. It is truly a sight to see and just taken in the peace for a little bit.

I would never visit Dubai out of my own fruition, but since I was laid over, I try to take in as much from the airport as possible. I wouldn't go back there. But there is capoeira there with Grupo Nacao.

Next stop: Cape Town