Trekking Along the Asian Paper Trail

Wish me luck today! It's my independent study presentation. Here I give you a sampling of one of my less controversial selections, out of the four stories I wrote this year. (The formatting gets a little screwy on blogger, but what can you do?) This is a non-fiction piece, called "Trekking Along the Asian Paper Trail."

“How much is this?” I asked in timid Mongolian.

Among the brightly bedazzled, ill-fitting clothing on offer in that small-town market, the sweater stood out as something of relative quality. I had seen many of the local men wearing it, and, since I had a particular fondness for the physique of local men, I decided impulsively to buy it for my boyfriend back home. As I stood in the market booth, stroking the soft navy blue and white sweater, the shopkeeper emerged holding a calculator. As he looked me up and down and then crossed his arms, I observed that he was beautiful, in a way only an intimidating Mongolian with big boots and a leather vest could be.

He grunted, typed something on his calculator and then handed it to me. 1200, it read. Ten dollars. 800, I retorted with my fingertips. He laughed of course, as if this price were preposterous, and the game continued until, predictably, we found the middle way at 950.

So far so good. Then came the moment I would regret for eight months to come: I pulled out my leather fanny pack (which, contrary to whatever mental image you have conjured up involving eighties aerobics instructors and tourists with khaki shorts, was about as sexy as fanny packs get). So I pulled it out, and inside was my second fanny pack. This one was not quite as sexy because it was supposed to be strapped to my belly, but since it made me look like a pregnant woman, I had stuffed it inside my sleek leather fanny pack. So I pulled out this smaller pack and began to count out tugrik, the local currency. Since some of my money was in the sexy pack and the rest was in the pregnant pack, I set down the pregnant pack to dig through the sexy pack. The process took about five minutes, but I finally managed to get the right amount of money into the now-impatient hand of the shopkeeper. Then I gathered up my dignity, said thank you in my best Mongolian, picked up the sweater and left the street stand with my fanny swaying delicately. It was a lot of things to think about at once—too many, in fact, for my ability. In the confusion, I had left my pregnant pack sitting on the clothes rack.

Contents of my money belt: one US passport, one driver’s license, one ATM/debit card, one medical insurance card, 40,000 tugrik, and one SPF lip balm. I had only left the United States two weeks before, and my trip, which would take me through six countries in the next eight months, had only just begun.

Embassy Hopping, September 2008

The long journey to passport liberation, which always put me one elusive entry visa behind my classmates, began with a trip to the photo booth of the State Department Store. A massive building leftover from Russia’s Communist regime, this was no ordinary shopping complex—it was reputed to be the largest store in the country. After wandering in awe and confusion for a good fifteen minutes, I finally found my way to the photo booth and took my place among the unwieldy mob of people already there.

One thing I learned that day: In this country, if you wait politely in line, you just lose. I waited nearly two hours. An older woman with dark lip liner and a strangely skeletal face that didn’t match her plump middle emerged just before it was my turn, shoved me aside, and arranged herself in front of the camera. She then proceeded to spend ten minutes reapplying her foundation, lip liner, re-styling her hair and picking her teeth clean with a piece of plastic. I stood there amazed at this public display of vanity, but no one else seemed to mind. The photographers were busy playing with a pretty blonde woman’s face on photoshop, making her lips swollen and red and then giggling like girls. By the time the woman was ready, she looked like she had just been made up at the morgue for her own funeral, but she seemed to take this photo so seriously that I couldn’t help but forgive her. While I waited, I tried to calculate how much of my life was wasted messing with my own reflection in front of a mirror. A half an hour a day, that’s 182.5 hours a year, plus another fifty for special occasions...I entertained myself with these thoughts as, post-photo, the woman spent another ten minutes making the amazingly patient computer guy erase her wrinkles, smooth her hairline, whiten the irises of her eyes and so on. When she finally got her prints, she left with a slight smile, almost pleased with herself.

When it was finally my turn, I stood in front of the camera and smiled what I thought was a genuine, toothy grin. The photographer, a teenage boy with gelled back hair and tight jeans, smacked his lips loudly and told me, “no smile.” I immediately scowled. He snapped the picture and then motioned for me to stand aside. Soon after, I realized that morgue woman was not so unusual—photoshopping people’s faces was actually part of the package. I watched in horror as they enlarged my face on the screen, blurred out my pimples and under-eye bags, deleted my hair flyaways, and then it got even stranger. They enlarged my forehead and made my brown hair into an almost bleached blonde before changing my hazel eyes to black. They then made my lips so dark they appeared to be painted on. When the two teenagers were finally satisfied, I looked like an angry Russian prostitute. Since the whole process had already taken the best part of my day, I didn’t bother to complain and left with an expression as angry as that of my photo.

After waiting an hour at the US embassy for the workers to finish lunch, I managed to turn in my application and pay the $100 fee. I remember thinking this was a lot of money, but at least it could be over and done with. I had only a week and a half left in Mongolia before going to China, and I would have to apply for a visa both to leave Mongolia and to get into China.

My new passport took a week to come, giving me five days to get two visas. I was quite nonplussed with the new passport design, which now included patriotic sayings and pictures splashed across the visa pages and an electronic chip in the back. I had always been suspicious of computer chips—was the government tracking people now? Would terrorists be able to detect the presence of an American with some sort of magnet device? Packing these worries away for later, I prepared for a journey to the Chinese embassy, arguably one of the most intimidating bureaucracies in the world.

The Chinese embassy was preparing for a two-week holiday, but I was just able to squeeze myself in for the final visa call. I was told to pay an expedited fee of $25 and pick it up the next day. They would only grant me a single-entry visa and, since we would be entering China twice, that meant I would have to apply and pay all over again. The next day my classmates left for a full weekend trek to a monastery, later returning with glowing reports of dancing around a bonfire and eating wood-oven pizza while I had stayed home fretting about the possibility of premature Alzheimer’s. Saturday was embassy day, and I would have to go it alone. Sure enough, early the next morning, I trudged solo to the Chinese embassy with nearly $200 in my not-so-trusty fanny pack.

I had read in a slightly outdated guidebook that there were over 10,000 children living in the sewer in Ulaanbaatar in the early 1990’s. It was a tragedy, to be sure, but most of the time it was hard to feel sorry for them. Nowadays, there were more options for homeless children, but most of the boys preferred the streets over the starched and heavily regulated orphanages. They ran wild, pick-pocketing foreigners, smoking cigarettes and making lewd gestures at me through café windows. Often times, when I had leftover food in my hand, one of them would run up and grab it before I could protest. I might have given it to them if they had asked, but as it stood, I was rarely generous anymore. So on that day in particular, with all the money in my pocket, I was mildly defensive when three ten-year-old mini-thugs formed a line in front of me, stomped their feet and demanded money. Smiling sweetly, I pushed through them. Knowing they were still too small to do anything about it, they were content to yell “hey baby, gimme gimme, shake me baby” at my back.

They must have known what was coming up ahead of me, or they wouldn’t have looked so smug at their own failure to intimidate me. Perhaps they had older brothers. I soon noticed seven or eight filthy-looking men crouched in the bushes by the park sidewalk. My heart almost stopped. One of them stepped in front of me and threw his hands up at me while baring a set of stained and crooked teeth. His friends quickly gathered behind him. I tried to break through their line, but I wasn’t dealing with children anymore, and they shoved me back somewhat violently. One of them moved in behind me; I was trapped.

With fumbling hands, I unzipped my fanny pack. Some amazing foresight had inspired me to put the larger bills in a separate pouch than the smaller ones, so I was able to give the man all the change I had and then show him the empty pouch. Satisfied, the first man moved out of my way.

But his friends were not as easily fooled. They cheered and wooped, and as the first man was gone, another took his place. I looked around helplessly, and suddenly noticed something crucial: one of the ragged people was a woman. She was about my age, with a face that might have been pretty if it wasn’t so creased and soiled. She had clearly been through a lot, and seemed to feel sorry for me. We made eye contact and she appeared to make a quick decision.

She pushed the man out of the way, blocking him with her chest like a basketball player, and then gestured for me to hurry. I wasn’t about the waste my chance. I scurried away, not looking back until I was a safe distance away. There she was, my savior woman, gesturing and yelling at the group of men as I slunk off. To my delight, I watched them back away from her like chastised children.

As I continued to follow the map towards the Chinese embassy, my relief at the thwarted mugging didn’t last long. As I overstepped landmarks and fumbled with street names, I passed two men wearing the same navy blue and white sweater I had bought for my boyfriend. Because of its obvious popularity, I had once thought it to be the essence of Mongolian manliness; post-purchase, I realized that, like many seemingly localized goods, this too was made in China. Since daily Buddhism classes had begun to convince me that everything was connected, I took this as a sign, making me all the more uneasy as I approached the embassy of the country whose very name, Zhongguo, suggested its position at the center of the world.

“You Americans make it so hard for Chinese people to visit,” muttered the embassy official as he studied my application. “But you want everything to be so easy for you.”

I couldn’t deny the truth in his statement. I did want things to be easy, and the Bush administration had made it extremely difficult for foreigners trying to enter the US lately, especially after 9/11. When my government upped the price for Chinese tourists, the Chinese embassy responded in like. Therefore, I was forced to pay twice as much as any other foreigner. A helpless pawn between these two ultra-powerful bureaucracies and their silent price wars, I had nothing to do but shrug, open my wallet and pay an exorbitant price. Government: 10 points. Civilians: 0.

The official handed me a stack of papers and then mumbled something like, “Sign here, here, here, date, here…” and then started messing with some other papers he was working with.

Confused, I tried to sign whatever paper looked like it needed signing and then handed it back to him.

“No, you have to sign this Pap-ER,” he retorted, enunciating the word paper as if I had just signed my hand instead. I quickly signed the one I had missed and then he waved me away without looking me in the eye. But even his misplaced resentment couldn’t shake the happiness I felt at having just averted two major catastrophes in a row. Assholes: 0. Nice People: 20.

On my way home, I intentionally went back through the park, even though I had other options. This time I took out 5000 tugrik ahead of time, and as I approached that same menacing group of potential muggers, the men stared at me in wide-eyed wonder. Why had I come back, they must have wondered. But the woman, crouched down on the sidewalk and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, looked triumphant. Somehow she seemed to know why I was coming back. I handed the bill to her as I walked by.

“Thanks sister,” I said, putting my hands together in a gesture of thanks.

She winked, and then gave me a big, beautiful, toothy grin.

“Ooooh,” said all the men in unison.

Chinese visa safely in hand, my next step would be to visit the Mongolian embassy to get the entry stamp I needed to exit Mongolia. It had been free on arrival. Before the embassy people would even talk to me about entry stamps, though, they asked to see my police report. So off to the police station I went.

I sat in the waiting office for nearly two hours watching a bad American movie about aliens, disguised as strippers, who were taking over the world one horny teenaged boy at a time. In fact, you’ll never guess how the pseudo-females implanted their eggs. My only company during the entire film was the secretary, who spoke no English but seemed fascinated by the screenplay. Every time one of the actresses flashed someone or hooked up with one of the main characters in an effort to propagate her race, he shook his head and looked at over at me. I had forgotten to bring a book; I would never make that mistake again on any future trip to an Asian bureaucracy.

When the policemen finally called me into their office, they began to question me about the circumstances of my lost passport. I told them I wasn’t sure if it was lost or stolen, just that it was “missing.” One of the officers seemed keen on the idea that I had lost it. According to the many flyers posted around town, the accepted statistic seemed to be that one in ten travelers would be pick-pocketed during their stay. My hostel even had a list of occurrences among its own guests: an Israeli’s backpack knifed and his leg cut in the process, shoes stolen from the lobby, a roommate making off with some $800 in cash, a camera stolen off the table right in front of a couple who was eating lunch. But like I said, this policeman seemed keen to counteract the stereotypes of his country and he was clearly pleased to see me admit that it was my own fault this time and not his country’s. I didn’t mind accommodating him. Then he gave me some advice: “Tell the person writing the report that it was stolen. This is much easier for you when you try to get visa.”

Easier would not mean easy. At the Mongolian embassy, I explained my case to a childlike woman with tiny hands, who listened patiently but insisted over and over again that there was no way I could get another entry stamp and that the only way to get out of Mongolia was to pay the $125 and wait five days for an exit visa. Knowing that persistence sometimes pays, I stood there repeating my questions while she repeated her answers for at least fifteen minutes. I thought maybe she had some tricks up her sleeve, so I decided to try to out-patience her. She didn’t even break a sweat.

“No, you have to pay. No other way,” she repeated, over and over and over again.

Finally I gave up and broke out my wallet. That brought the extra cost of my lost passport to $135+100+125+5 (police report)= $365 so far. For a student making $9 an hour, this wasn’t easy to swallow. But later, after a trip to the local bakery for some raspberry cheesecake, I would somehow manage. The childlike woman told me with pursed lips to pick up my passport that Friday at 3 PM.

That Friday, at 3 PM, I was not at the Mongolian embassy. I was actually eating the raspberry cheesecake I’d tested earlier in preparation for my friend’s birthday party. At 3 PM that day, the party was just getting started. My less delicious appointment at the embassy simply slipped my mind.

Of course, the embassy office was closed for the weekend and our plane was leaving early Monday morning. My program director threatened that if I couldn’t sort out my passport troubles in time, I would not only have to pay for my plane ticket change and a night’s accommodations, but I would have to pay for an angry group leader to stay behind with me. You can’t imagine how hard I was kicking myself as I was lying in bed that night.

I woke up saggy-eyed that morning and rushed off to the embassy first thing to see what could be done. It had taken me twenty minutes to walk there before, but this time I made it in ten. A group of three guards stood just inside the door, so I made faces of desperation at them through the window until they let me in.

“Closed,” one of them said.

“Please,” I replied, and then launched into a long and pitiful explanation that I knew he didn’t understand. A little confused, he finally shrugged and let me through to the office where I had applied for my exit visa to bother someone who spoke English. Unfortunately this person happened to be childlike woman I had already bothered endlessly a week ago. Now I was at her mercy.

“I need my passport,” I told her, my head hanging. “Sorry to bother you...again.”

“Closed,” she said with an emotionless face.

I put my hands together in prayer.

She sighed. “Why didn’t you come on Friday?”

It was a simple question with a simple answer. “I forgot.”

“You have to come back Monday. Your passport is locked up and I don’t have the key.”

“But I can’t,” I whined. “I’m leaving Sunday for China.”

“You’ll have to reschedule your flight,” she stated simply, and then went back to gluing photos on visa applications.

“B..but,” I sputtered. “I can’t.” I would have to try my persistence method again.

She showed me the drawer where my passport was locked and pretended to try to open it. “Locked,” she repeated.

“Who has the key?”

Her shoulders slumped. “Ok, I make one call.”

She called a few times, but no one answered.

“I’ll wait,” I said, and did. This time I’d brought a book.

She called a few times over the next hour, and then, her very human annoyance finally shining through the cracks, she stood over me with her hands on her hips. I looked up from my book.

“You are very difficult,” she said. “You come back in four hours.”

I spent the next few hours indulging in every thing I could think of to cheer me up. I ate raspberry cheesecake ice cream. I read a non-school book. I bought myself souvenirs, but mostly I just prayed to every deity I could think of, from Hindu to Buddhist, Jah to Mohammed. I even tried visualizing the moment I would receive my passport, imagining how the cover would feel in my hands. Was it real leather or pleather, I wondered. After three and a half hours of pacing, I arrived back at the embassy office.

“Come back in another three hours,” the woman told me, oblivious to how much the wait had stressed me out the first time. “The girl with the key have to come here on her free day,” she added, just to make me know how much stress I was causing her.

This time, when I returned, my passport was waiting for me, visa inside. It was just like I had visualized! It must be real leather, I thought, kissing my passport a little longer than was completely necessary. I slipped the childlike woman a big box of chocolates under the glass booth. She and her co-workers stared at me in shock. I wasn’t sure whether it was the chocolates or the dramatic kiss but I didn’t care.

“Good day, sunshine,” I sang, dancing out of the silent office and past the security guards to face the blizzard of snow falling outside.

Celebrities in Little Tibet, February 2009

The legend at Rato Dratsag, the Tibetan Buddhist monastery in southern India, goes like this: American actor and devout Buddhist Richard Gere stayed at the monastery for about a month with his wife, supermodel Cindy Crawford. Cindy had very little interest in Buddhism, the monks told me repeatedly, and she arrived on a whim, ignoring the fact that Indian law required visitors to apply for residency at least six months prior to visiting. She must have thought the petty rules of other countries’ laws didn’t apply to her because she was so beautiful and special. In fact, she was right.

The first monk to tell me this story described it in vivid terms. In his version, Cindy was draped in a flowing white dress and was out in the field picking flowers when a shadow fell over her. It was the dreaded Indian official, come to talk about fines and possible deportation. But that ever-resourceful Cindy just flipped her blonde head around and flashed him a smile so bright that he was struck dumb. He stood there with his mouth open for a whole minute, and when he finally regained the ability to speak, he let her off with a warning.

Despite the fact that Miss Crawford (who later divorced Gere) was undoubtedly in a better position to handle any fines that she may have incurred for her negligence, I was not so fortunate. Possibly the same official took one look at my angry Russian prostitute photo and was not impressed. Since I had registered to stay over eight months ago, and my passport number had changed since then, the official wanted to charge me 20,000 rupees, the equivalent of about US$400. The abbot of the monastery was able to talk him down to just 4,500 rupees, still a hefty fine by non-celebrity standards. I was livid.

Benjamin, an American who was also visiting at the time, gave me a phone number for some higher-ups and advised me to contact them. “These guys are so used to taking bribes,” he explained. “That’s why most of them became officials in the first place—easy money. Someone in Delhi tried to clean up their act and now they can’t take bribes anymore, so they’re always looking for anything wrong with your paperwork and then overcharging you for it.” Benjamin had a few stories of his own about Indian bureaucrats. “They’re used to westerners just pulling out their wallets to solve problems. It’s so frustrating. I earn my money same as anyone else, but they seem to think because I’m western that it flows out of the white house or something.”

I was ready to call the man in Delhi who had helped Benjamin get out of a similar pickle with the bureaucrats, but my program director forbid it. “The abbot was telling me the other day that he finally feels he has a good relationship with the Indian officials,” she argued. “If you get these officials in trouble with their boss, they’ll find a way to get back at the monastery. We can’t do that to monks. They’re the ones who will be living here after you’re gone.”

So, like a good westerner, I pulled out my wallet and paid, and then, like a good Buddhist, meditated on the roof about how money has no inherent existence.

* * *

My boyfriend never got the sweater I sent, nor did he get the box of gifts and letters I sent with it. I certainly wasn’t surprised, but he must have been, especially when he heard me laughing about it. It took two semesters of Buddhism classes to help me understand why this sweater came into my life, released its wrath, and then disappeared without a trace. While it did nothing good for my ever-leaking bank account, somewhere along the way, I actually stopped dreading these bureaucratic adventures and just starting relishing the ridiculousness of it all.

While my classmates had their visas processed in bulk for them as they glided from place to place, smooth as ice-skaters, I found myself bumping along on the backs of motorcycles, studying maps, learning to use the subway, waging patience wars and finding lots of uninterrupted reading time. Sometimes I even enjoyed the wild ride along the paper trail. And it may surprise you to learn it, but Americans are not well-known for either their patience or their humility. By the end of the trip, I was the absolute queen of faking these qualities to get better and faster service, ripping these stereotypes to shreds with persistent smiles and modest thank-you gifts. I became the self-declared master-navigator of Asian bureaucracy, and the all-American appreciator of small but important details. Almost nothing could complete with the pure pleasure I felt every time I gained another stamp of approval in my sweet-smelling leather passport; nothing but raspberry cheesecake.

...So that was the ending, a bit sappy, but it's true. I actually got over the fact that I lost hundreds of dollars and countless hours over this ordeal, and somehow I was able to forgive myself. (This is not part of the story). My group leader, however, still hasn't. The last two times I have talked to her (which isn't often these days), it went something like this:

EB: So, did you pack up your things?

Me: Yep.

EB: You didn't forget anything this time?

Me: Nope, I got everything.

EB: Are you sure?

Me: Yep.

EB: Even your passport?

Me: Yep.

EB: Did you double-check?

Me: (sidelong glare)

EB: Oh, those eyes! As if you never forgot anything before! (Huffs away)

Today:

EB is arguing about something with her husband, and the nurse mutters something to me about not finding their keys. I guess I must have smiled.

EB: Why are you smiling about?

Me: Can't find your keys?

EB: NO, I'm not like YOU, losing everything!

Me: Ouch.

EB: See, see! My keys are right here! (waves keys in the air)

As you can see, we have a very mature, respectful relationship.