TRAVELING AROUND THE WORLD: Our Tales of Delights and Disasters (7 page)

We went to a “hawker” market for lunch. These markets are clusters of vendors selling all types of local cuisines – mostly in the open air. I watched a tiny man grill my chicken satay over charcoal that he fanned with a banana leaf. Mike came away with freshly steamed prawn dumplings.
Awesome.
One of my favorites was a dessert of fresh mango served with sticky rice and coconut milk.
So yummy!
Like a flavorful rice pudding. And there’s the ubiquitous Singapore Sling which originated at the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel. We made the trek over to Raffles and discovered a charming, old hotel that reeked of old-world British culture with a top-note of Indian.
So civilized.
So civilized, in fact, that it felt cold and pretentious. We tried to have lunch at their outdoor café and never got service. The Long Bar was better with its dark wood interior, bamboo-leaf ceiling fans, and peanut shells on the floor. Mike watched as I nursed my Singapore Sling (they serve 800 per day on average) as we shared a tender beef kabob for lunch.

Singapore is a mecca for shopping, but that was the last thing we needed to do as our luggage was already brimming over. So we walked and walked through this beautiful city. Each morning, I ran around the waterfront or through lush, spotless parks. This is the perfect place for walking. Pedestrians – unlike in Bangkok – are treated with great care. No matter the circumstances, if a pedestrian is hit it is automatically the fault of the driver. Crosswalks are meticulously signed and large urban streets have underground tunnels for pedestrian access. You could eat off the floor inside these tunnels. All the bridges have large, flower-encrusted pedestrian walkways.

The weather was just as I like it – warm and humid. It was quiet in the heat of the afternoon but the riverfront came alive with activity at night. A large marina development was across from our hotel. It is connected across water by a free-standing pedestrian bridge that is wrapped in a spiral truss. The bridge springs to life at night with twinkling colored lights. All the bridges, in fact, are beautifully lit. We took an evening boat ride under a full moon, and enjoyed the lights of the towering skyscrapers and the ornamented bridges. The marina development was celebrating its grand opening, and we happened to be on the boat in front of it as they shot off fireworks. Very fun. Oh – and the boats are all electric so that cruising along the river is quiet and pollution free.
Impressive.

Since we weren’t shopping, what else do you do in a tropical paradise? You go to the botanical gardens. The park was huge and filled with walking trails around lakes and through a rain forest. The plant life was lush and exotic, like walking through a scene in
Avatar
. One section of the park contains a ginger garden. Ginger, as it turns out, blooms in the most delightful ways. Some are odd, spiky flowers and others look like variations on a bird-of-paradise. The unopened blooms are bright and festive, like candy waiting to be licked. The National Orchid Garden is the jewel of the park. Orchids bloomed at every turn – large, small or tiny; yellow, white, pink, purple, orange; solid-colored or speckled. There were masses of blooms tumbling off of rocks and tree branches. But as spectacular as the orchids were, I was captivated by the palm trees. Some of the palm fronds were close to five feet in diameter. They were spectacular! And there was a “cool house” with plants that typically grow in the mountains of the tropics. The most notable were the carnivorous plants like pitcher plants that entice bugs inside only to be absorbed as plant food.

There’s much that we didn’t see of Singapore. As we lifted off on yet another long plane flight, Mike and I watched the lights of this small country grow dim. Yet Singapore will remain a bright light in our memories.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

What a Difference a Day Makes

We’re two for two. First Cairo and now Christchurch. We feel like “disasters r us.” We landed in Christchurch, New Zealand after a long flight from Singapore to discover a charming, small city with a British ancestry. Christchurch looked jubilant with mounds of colorful flowers blooming their hearts out – roses, hydrangeas, geraniums, and an array of bedding plants. The city had the feel of a distinguished college campus – similar to Duke University – as people walked and biked past brownstone, Tudor-style buildings of high-pitched roofs, Gothic windows, and intricate spires. In the center of the city, the historic cathedral dominated Cathedral Square. We arrived during the annual flower show. The front of the cathedral was decorated with an archway of flowers, and there was a carpet of flowers down the middle of the nave inside. As we approached Cathedral Square, the carillons in the tall spire chimed their tune filling the air with ringing. The city loves its British roots. (According to our local tour guide, the British settlers arrived over 200 years ago in a “wee” boat.) The Avon River meandered slowly through the center city, its banks draped with green grass and graceful willow trees. The Bard pub held down one corner and The Oxford on the Avon restaurant occupied another. We spent a stunning, blue-sky day walking all over the city – through the historic, Tudor-style Arts Center directly across the street from our hotel, visiting the Canterbury Museum, and strolling along the river for coffee at the historic Antigua Boat Shed.

Our highlight was punting on the Avon. The Avon River is shallow and clear. Punting is accomplished by boarding canoe-like boats that are very shallow. A punter uses a long pole to push the boat along the river. We floated – or punted – under arched bridges with decorative scroll-work railings, under willow branches, and past old brown-stone buildings from the 1800s. Our punter kept up a running commentary which included discussion of the 7.1 earthquake that hit Christchurch last September. It caused substantial damage to many buildings in the city, but, he told us, another “big one” was predicted sometime soon.
Prophetic words.

The next morning, Mike and I left for the small coastal village of Akaroa to swim with the dolphins. As we sat in a tiny café having lunch before the boat ride, we felt quivering and heard low rumbling. It’s amazing how quickly thoughts flit through your head. Later Mike and I realized we thought the same things. Our first thought was – are we still on the Orient Express with all this rocking? Next thought: No, this is an earthquake. Next thought: It can’t be that bad or last long.
Wrong. Very wrong.
For us, the thirty to forty seconds of shaking were not enough time to act. Mike noticed the cars moving in the parking lot. I fixated on a rocking bookcase and wondered if it would hit Mike if it toppled over. About the time my brain engaged to say – “let’s move” – the shaking stopped and the power went out. Everyone inside looked at each other as if to say, “Was that what I think it was?” But all seemed to be okay, at least initially. A shopkeeper was the first to say that what we experienced was small, but Christchurch was hit by a significant quake.
Hummm.
Crowds of people clustered into groups outside. Some listened to a car radio, and others gathered around a battery-powered radio outside the visitor center. The grim picture began to emerge.

The quake was 6.3 – smaller than the September quake – but it was closer and, importantly, near the surface. Rumors emerged that significant damage had occurred to many buildings in downtown Christchurch, such as the Cathedral and office buildings. Roads were closed and people were being evacuated.

It’s the strangest feeling – all the thoughts that converge at once – some noble and some not. Unfortunately, we’re beginning to become experienced at travel during emergency conditions. We focused first on practicalities like buying water and snacks – a good lesson from Cairo – particularly since we heard reports of broken waterlines and water quality problems in Christchurch. Next, we wondered about transportation. Would we be able to return to Christchurch on the bus that afternoon or would all the roads be closed? And if we made it back to Christchurch, would our hotel still be standing? Visions of sleeping in the tour van or in the park (the emergency center) flashed through our minds. We slept in the Cairo airport, why not a van or a tent? Even as we were sorting out our predicament, Mike and I were increasingly conscious of the depth of destruction. Buildings in Christchurch had collapsed on top of tour buses, and people were trapped inside damaged buildings. Phones were down so that locals (like our bus driver) could not reach family members. In the face of such serious problems, it felt trivial to spend a moment worrying about our issues, but we needed to deal with our practicalities even while being sensitive to the troubles of others.

The atmosphere was grave and uncertainty hung over the huddled crowd. No one knew what to do or what to expect. We boarded our bus (our bus driver finally reached his wife to find that she and their home were safe) and started for Christchurch, not knowing how close we could get or even if the hotels would be there. We drove past beautiful coves and over hills dotted with black and white dairy cows and fluffy sheep. The calm beauty was not enough to divert troubled thoughts from crowding our minds. About six kilometers from Christchurch, we began to see damage.

Cracks appeared in the roadway, and muddy humps like large ant hills splayed out alongside the road. This was liquefaction. The normally stable fine-grained soils turned to quick sand when moist and shaken. The material oozed to the surface leaving empty space under sidewalks and roadways that then caved in. Water ran down streets from waterline breaks. Buildings already boarded up from the first earthquake were turned to piles of rumble. Brick walls tumbled into the street. Cars lined up at any open gas station to fill their tanks before the damaged Lyttleton port was closed. For the second time in two weeks, we saw a convoy of army vehicles rolling down city streets.

After much maneuvering, our driver got us close to downtown. We walked from there. Our hotel, the Classic Villa, was literally three blocks from Cathedral Square in the heart of the damaged area. Mike and I hoped that we could get close. The more we walked, the more the damage escalated. Huge cracks in the pavement were encircled by orange cones. The large willow trees were missing branches two feet in diameter. The previously quiet, clear river was swollen and muddy. It was unnerving. But it was nothing compared to what was coming. First was the sight of the Canterbury Museum. The façade had broken stones, and the statue in front was toppled off its base smashing the head. We turned the corner of our street to face the Arts Center directly across from our hotel. We ate dinner at a charming restaurant there on our first night. The façade was in shambles. Stones from the tall gabled roof shattered on the pavement below covering tables, chairs and umbrellas. Gabled ends were completely gone, exposing rooms with clothes hanging inside. Farther along, the side of an adjacent building collapsed. These were 1800-era buildings that added to the charm of Christchurch. The two of us walked past army vehicles as far as we could but then were stopped at the river where the day before we’d gone punting. From there, we could see the Cathedral. The gabled end with its rose window seemed fine until we realized that the tall spire was quite simply missing.
Gone.
Yesterday, its bells chimed over the crowd and today it was rubble. I can only imagine the horror of those who were in the square as it fell. Mike remembered that he took a video of the chiming bells less than forty-eight hours earlier. We replayed that video and listened with sadness while struggling to comprehend that these sounds and the happy buzz of people were now silent.

Feeling oddly empty and stunned, we returned to our hotel. Cracks ran alongside the exterior and we stepped over brick rubble from the collapsed chimney of the next door building. But –
joy!
– the hotel was open, people were inside, and our room was largely unharmed (tilted mirror, plaster dust from cracked walls, dislocated shower door). And we could stay there overnight. There would be no sleeping in the makeshift tents erected in the park.

And so began a most unusual evening. Others arrived and gathered in the large living room. Our proprietor, Peter, was there and was more concerned about caring for us than attending to his damaged, but still safe, house. Decorative items inside and outside the hotel were in pieces, bottles of alcohol were thrown onto the floor and smashed. Most of it had been cleaned up by the time we had arrived. There was no power so Peter was busily placing candles on the floor all around the dark house. The only other lights were from flashlights and camera flashes. No restaurants were open nor were there operable cooking facilities in the house. Everyone pitched in. We’d bought trail mix, Peter and his wife, Jan, put out cheese and crackers. Someone else made a salad with smoked mushrooms, and, thankfully, Peter provided wine. I was
very
happy for a glass – or two – of wine. Everyone had a story and everyone was uneasy. One couple was in the Arts Center as it began to come apart. I was glad we had been outside of Christchurch when the earthquake struck. We’d surely have been downtown like so many others.

We shared stories, ate what we had, drank wine, and Peter played the piano. It was almost enough to distract from the aftershocks. Peter and Jan waited for other guests to arrive and settled them in as much as possible. Before going to bed, he played one last tune on the piano and Jan sang while candles burned peacefully on the floor even as aftershocks shook the house. How hopeful to hear a cheery, “
Que sera, sera; whatever will be will be
,” fill the living room as the floor quivered and windows vibrated.