What things cost

Today’s my last day of R&R. I left Male Sunday night on the redeye and landed at 5 a.m., so I took today off for laundry and sleep. It’s back to work tomorrow.

Beware of monkeys

Had a really good time and I’m glad I structured it like I did, with Sri Lanka (Colombo, Kandy) first and Maafushi, Maldives last. It was kind of a quick decision based on the Istanbul-Colombo flight stopped in Male and the overnight was a nonstop back. I figured I’d get all the travel over with and chill on the beach for the rest of it and that worked out well.

I spent four days in Sri Lanka and then four in the Maldives. Not a long and extended R&R but I don’t think I could have handled one anyway. By the last day, I had island fever and was ready to get back to my own bed.

One thing I need to get used to is longer vacations. I’m really a short weekend recharger and the long stuff doesn’t sit well with me. This isn’t good news for down the road; the next gig gets me three three-week vacations and nothing else, so I need to get used to it. I’ve no idea how to do it, though.

Kandy was, by far, the Sri Lankan highlight, but that was completely because I screwed up the in-country transport and didn’t spend any time at all in Colombo.

This is why

Well, not true. I did spend time there, but not how I wanted to. I wound up in transport from around 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. the first day. And discovered there is just no consistency in pricing as far as transportation goes.

My biggest snafu was the airport to hotel on the way in. I figured I’d be in the hotel room by 5 p.m. or so. Well, I messed up.

The Colombo airport is about 35k outside Colombo, and the cheapest way to get to town is the 187 bus from the airport, which costs about a buck. That was a no-brainer and extremely easy. I made my way to the train station, and there’s where the price discrepancies come in.

People who look like me get the tourist rate. All the information I found said to take a metered taxi, and I tried, but the few I found marked “metered taxi” had drivers who flat-out refused to use it. Instead, I got quotes from 200 to 300 RP for a 5k ride. Considering the bus was 30 RP for 35k, it seemed unreasonable.

Elephant orphanage

Honestly, I don’t mind paying high prices. What bothers me is getting ripped off, so I asked the information guy at the train station how to get to my hotel. He said it was very easy and was a 10 RP train ride. I guess they use the trains like subways. I let him talk me out of just walking to the hotel, which would have been about an hour’s walk.

But here’s where I really screwed up: I asked for too much information. The guy was extremely helpful – really, everyone was helpful except the tuk-tuk drivers – and I asked him about train tickets the next day, too. As a result, I had too many numbers going through my head and, once on the train, I forgot how many stops he said before I got off.

And of course, I missed it. I realized I’d gone too far and was just going to get off at the next stop and walk back.  But it took FOREVER to get to the next stop. I figured it was probably 9-10k past where I needed to get off, and at this point, it was around 6 p.m. and daylight had faded.

So all of that for 10 RP, but then I had to get back. I found an honest tuk-tuk driver (the metered kind) and it was a legit 700 RP ride.

So you have the 10 RP train ticket compared to the 700 RP tuk-tuk ride. A 2-hour train ride the next day was 130 RP, which was, eventually, followed by an hour-long bus ride for 30 RP connected to the train site by a 400 RP tuk-tuk ride (5k) in between. The train ride back, in first class (accidental).

It makes no sense whatsoever. I understand that trains and buses can mass transport people and that cabs costs more but that’s really outrageous. And I’m sure it’s because tourists take taxis and locals go with the mass transport. Grr.

Frustrations with public transport aside, I had a great time. I spent two nights in Kandy on a hotel high up a hill. Gosh, I thought I’d walk forever trying to find that place. I liked it; the operators were nice and I’ve never stayed in a hotel with a sign warning me to lock windows to keep monkeys out.

I did the elephant orphanage and this amazing botanical garden. (A 500 RP tuk-tuk ride or a 20 RP bus ride – guess which I did?) The botanical garden was founded in 1761, and as a result there were many old and well-established trees, like a road lined with palm trees. It was about 150 acres and I wandered around it for three hours.

And I saw the monkeys there! They weren’t breaking into my hotel room; they were going through the trash cans all over the park. I gotta say, I’m a little scared of monkeys. They had packs of them, too, and I was wary of looking them in the eye. Fortunately, they tended to avoid people, so that made me feel better!

I took some pictures of them, but my phone is on its last legs and it shut off, so I didn’t get too many pictures of them or the gardens. That was sad because there were so many gorgeous flowers and unusual trees and the like. Oh, and a tree of bats. I also saw my first dead bat, completely by accident. That was nasty.

But overall, the garden was my favorite in Sri Lanka, even though the elephants were cool. I was just blown away by the garden. I mean, they had cinnamon trees. I’d never seen a cinnamon tree before.

In the Maldives, diving was my highlight. I’m still a novice but went down three times while there, plus snorkeled. Manta rays are big in the Maldives, as are sea turtles and I saw both. But that was after the snorkeling trip, which also doubled as a dolphin cruise. We were headed out to the snorkeling site and found ourselves in a pod of dolphins, so the captain pretty much took us in circles so we could see them better. I don’t have a good camera and did my best but it was just so cool to watch.

My chosen Maldive was Maafushi island, which is a ferry ride (public, 30 RP; private 375 RP) away from Male and the capital. Many islands and destination were a seaplane away, which, although I love seaplanes, I opted against for time purposes.

Walking around the island, at a slow stroll, didn’t take more than 15 minutes. The hotel guys met me at the ferry with a cart for my “luggage.” I had a backpack and tossed it on and then we walked no more than 30 yards to the hotel. I had to laugh at that.

I probably walked the length of the island three times a day, just looking at the sea in different light and at different angles. It was gorgeous, as was the beach. The sad, for the most part, was made up of tiny coral fragments and I’d sit and just sift through it to see what shapes I could find.

In a couple of cases, I found tiny, tiny complete conch shells, and, in others, found similarly sized hermit crabs.

And I decided that hermit crabs are admirable. I sat on a plot of coral for awhile and just watched the little guys. They’d get tossed up on the shore and I’d watch them compose themselves and start motoring again. Once in awhile, one would take a huge tumble down a dune (well, a bit of sand, but to a hermit crab smaller than my pinkie nail, it was a heckuva dune) and then get going again. 

Those little guys gave me a good visual of “roll with the punches.”

What constitutes an emergency

Last week, plus Labor Day, was a holiday, and I got to be the person on call as duty officer. This meant that I was on the hook to deal with any American citizens in Istanbul who were experiencing self-defined emergencies.

Wow, that constitutes an emergency for some! The most non-emergency call I got was a very nice woman, a naturalized citizen, whose mother or grandmother (I forget), was in the hospital for a non-life-threatening thing and was going to travel to the U.S. She was cleared to fly, but the airline required the family to purchase five seats for her so that she could lie down. Well, the family had reserved four seats but the airline lost the reservation.

The relative calls up and tells me, and then there’s a silence on the phone because I’m waiting on the emergency. Finally I realize none is forthcoming, and I ask, “So what did you think I could do for you?”

This is now my go-to question, because I’m honestly baffled at why people call me. Like seriously, what can I do? Your speakers are in customs, you missed your flight, whatever, and your thought is, “I better call the consulate!” It’d just odd.

Anyway, after several tries at explanation, I managed to get the concerned family member to understand that, while it was a sad thing the airline lost the reservation, there was nothing I could do, but stressed that, in all she had told me, at no point did she say the airline had told her there weren’t seats on the plane. Sure, you don’t have a reservation that they can find, but what you’re looking for is seats, right? She finally understood.

Others don’t get it. A person who had allegedly broken a Turkish law demanded that I tell her her rights as an American. I was like, well, in Turkey, you have none. You’re subject to Turkish law, like anyone else. I advised an attorney and offered a stock list of names and she lectured me on her opinion of Turkish lawyers, which was not positive.

My first one, though, was the most time-consuming. This guy who had been traveling in a city across the country realized that the bulk of his money had gone missing sometime during the day, and, with almost all of his remaining cash, he thought the smart move was to buy a bus ticket to Istanbul, a 12-hour ride away, so that Uncle Sam would send him forward on his journey. He even expected taxpayers to pay for the cab he’d taken to get to the consulate.

I’ve no idea how he came to the conclusion this was the thing to do; the smart thought would have been to stay put and call friends and family from where he was. He certainly didn’t think to verify that we’d be able to help. Which, BTW, we couldn’t, as we were closed and would not reopen for six more days.

He originally called at 10 a.m. or so, and on and off through the course of the day, I called his relatives on his behalf. His aunt refused to help him and hinted that this had happened before. She called his mom, and she called me. (He didn’t have her number.) She also didn’t want to assist, and when I told her there was nothing I could do, she called around and called me back, saying there was no one in the family who could/would help. I asked if she had any of his friends’ numbers (not only did he not have a credit card on him, he didn’t have a phone, either) and she assured me he had no friends, and basically implied he was my problem to work through. If I didn’t get him on his way, she said she’d call her congressman and he would contact the State Department. I told her I was the State Department, and we were closed.

Finally, around 4 p.m., I met him at the consulate – he’d been there six hours at that point – handed him the phone and told him to figure it out. And what do you know, he did. His mom came through for him and agreed to wire money, but of course, it was a holiday and no banks were open. The security guard who was there said the airport banks would be open and a light bulb went off in my head.

Airport! I could get him to the airport, and then he could get money and be on his way!  (Now that his mom agreed.) So I used my own bus pass (we were closed; we couldn’t process a loan) and 5 TL, and gave him explicit instructions on how to maneuver how to get to the airport. He thanked me and I never heard from him again, so hopefully he made it … somewhere.

But the crème of the crop was a scam victim. We get these a lot; the MO is a person develops a relationship with a patsy, then purports to be in some kind of situation that demands money. I’ve heard of cases where people have been bilked out of thousands upon thousands of dollars.

This caller swore to me it was a real relationship and assured me she’d met him in person, even though she later acknowledged she hadn’t seen him in almost a year and every time I pressed her for the last time she SPOKE to him, she started replying with, "we were texting ..."

The story was, Fiancé was in the hospital, and the doctor was demanding payment before treatment. Fiance had been in Istanbul since November, working as a consultant.

For those keeping track at home, that’s four red flags right there, and it only got better. I kept trying to explain to the caller that this was the total MO of scams but she kept insisting he was real, etc. I asked what hospital and she didn’t know. I said OK, you say the doctor is emailing you, what is the email address? Something@dr.com. Oh, yeah, that’s legit. Did the stick on that red flag poke your eye out yet? And on top of that, “DR” also texted her a photo of the guy in a bed, saying he had malaria and couldn’t speak. Scammers, who are all allegedly American citizens, NEVER opt to call the consulate themselves. Oh, and malaria is not common in Turkey.

I still think it’s a scam, because it’s just one to a T, but you want to check it out – after all, we do not want any American citizens really stranded, sick or whatever, with no recourse. So I tell her to get the name of the hospital and get me his passport number and I could try to check to see if he’s a patient there.

So then it got really fun. Fortunately for me, she didn’t just email me his passport number, she sent a scan of it. I replied immediately that, although I wasn’t an expert, I believed it to be fake – just look at the expiration date. (I was trying to be nice.) She replied – and at this point it’s all email – why, she’d never had a passport, weren’t they good for five years? I said well, no, they’re good for 10, but my point was, the abbreviation for January was “Jan,” not “Jen.” Freaking big letters, and she never looked.

Without being an expert, I saw about four other errors, too, and this was based on a jpeg the size of a postage stamp.

I emailed her that and saw she’d sent me a “boarding pass” and almost choked. I replied to her and asked if she’d put him on the flight herself, because she’d told me he left from Houston, but the Americans flight noted on the “boarding pass” went from Tucson to Chicago to London. I added that if he really wanted to fly from Houston, he’d fly from Hobby, not “West Houston Airport,” like the BP said. That, Google says, is a privately-owned airport and does not fly nonstop to Istanbul, but even if Fiance flew to Istanbul from the international Houston airport, it would connect through London on British Air, not American Airlines.

The lady sent me a short email in reply: “I hope you find and prosecute him.” I did not bother to explain that I am not a law enforcement official.

Splitting on a road trip

Hit the road last weekend to the land of "Game of Thrones" and, unbeknownst to me, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi."

VW UP! with four operating tires

For the non-movie buffs, that’d be Croatia, which was on my bucket list not for movies but just because. It’s a really amazing little country, and I wanted to drive. I flew into Zagreb, the capital to the north, and out of Dubrovnik, which is almost as far south as you can go before you hit Montenegro.

There are just so many places you can go to from Istanbul, and Croatia, with its rugged shorelines and rocky beaches, was on my list. Hitting the road, it reminded me of Ireland somewhat – all the cliffs and rocks.

My little car was similar, too. In Ireland, I had some purple little car that looked like a gumdrop. This time around, I got a VW UP! (not an editorial; it had an exclamation point), and it was also a gumdrop-like bright red. And, fortunately, had the steering wheel on the more-familiar left side of the car.

I’d told people all I wanted to do was drive some, and it was true. Pretty much, anything else was gravy. I knew there’d be gorgeous sites but didn’t really have much of a plan in Zagreb, Split (my first evening) or Dubrovnik, although I knew Dubrovnik had an old town or something.

And as it turned out, the gravy had a few lumps. My first place to stay didn’t have wifi, which was inconvenient but not the end of the world. To solve that, I wound up treating myself to a McFlurry at a McDonalds so that I could filch their internet. And my work-issued phone is on its last legs, so the phone died here and there anyway, so wife couldn’t save me.

The bigger gravy lump came the morning I was leaving Split. I decided on a morning swim and drove the gumdrop down the steep hill to the Adriatic Sea, parked and wandered to the rocky beach.

It was way colder than I expected, so I waded in as much as I could stand, collected a few rocks in lieu of shells and then headed back to the apartment/hotel. (In all, I saw a total of one chain hotel, and that was south of Dubrovnik on my way to the airport the last day. It’s mostly little hotels and homestay-like things. I stayed in Split in an apartment building up on a hill.)

When I went to throw my little backpack in the gumdrop, I realized I had a flat tire! AARGH! I tried to enlist the landlord guy to help me, but he was busy with someone else, so I figured what the heck and checked to see what kind of spare I had. Fortunately, I guess since the car’s small enough to only have donut tires to begin with, it had a full-size tire. I struggled with the darn lug nuts but again, by the grace of God, some litterbug had left a drained carton of oil and I managed to pour the dregs into the lid and then, dipping a flower into the lid, I spread it on the lugs and loosened the nuts. Macgyvered my way out of it. And, true to my luck with men, some random guy showed up too late to help with the actual repair but in time to tighten the lug nuts again.

No further problems with the tire, and debated on whether to fix it or not. In the end, I found a place and for maybe $7 got it plugged by the car wash guy, for whom it took maybe 138 seconds to do it. Impressive. Not exactly a souvenir I was looking for, but I DID want all that driving entailed, and I got it.

The hotel – a real one, though not a chain and not a big one – had advertised wifi and free parking, which was why I chose it, but both of those were hard to come by. My phone, coming and going off life support, couldn’t time holding a connection to when the wifi worked, but what was a bigger hurdle was the free parking.

I found the hotel just fine, but there was no parking lot, just about 16 spots across the street – street parking, not hotel parking. And, this being August in a destination with throngs of tourists, not a vacant spot. Drove up and down three or four times before double-parking in front of two little scooters with “for rent” signs on them. That didn’t make that business owner happy, but I assured him I’d be right back after checking in.

When I asked the hotel manager about parking, though, he paled and asked me if I had a car. Resisting any sarcastic replies based on an incoming migraine, I said yes and I was illegally parked downstairs. He came out with me, and, as sheer luck would have it, a spot opened up and he held it for me. The car didn’t go anywhere after that, and I totally hoofed it for three days.

The guy really was nice, too, so despite the hiccups I liked the hotel stay. It was right close to the beach, which faced west and had an amazing sunset. Either the water wasn’t as cold as it was in Split or I just sucked it up and went in – it was fantastic, and now I’ve dipped in the Adriatic Sea!

But the Old Town was the thing to do, and, without a car, I decided to walk. They had little directional on the ground, and the first one said 26 minutes. The second said 23, and then the third said 29! I have no idea what was up with that, and I am a fast walker but it took 40 minutes to get there. Still, it was a great walk with wonderful sea views.

Entering the old town was when I realized Star Wars was filmed there. Not that I recognized it, but because there were stores and signs that said “Star Wars was here.” And “Game of Thrones.” Holy cow, that was everywhere. Upon return, I discovered Wendy is a fan so I blew a shot to get her something super cool, but I had no idea at the time.

It was Sunday morning and I happened to be wandering at one of the churches right when mass was about to begin, so I stayed for the service, which was nice to do. It was in English, fortunately, and talked about Peter being the rock on which the church was founded, and I wondered, since Croatia is so rocky, if that was the regular Sunday service.

If I ever have a house with a nautical-themed room, Croatia is the place to furnish it. They had so much stuff! I loved it, but just didn’t see getting anything then and there. My favorite thing was these rocks that had two little stained glass triangles on top of them, forming a little sailboat. I’d seen them in Split and didn’t get one, and then they were double the price in Dubrovnik.

Croatia also has a ton of limestone – I passed several quarries on the way to the airport – and they had a lot of limestone crafty things. Coral is big, too, but that didn’t tempt me. In Split, I’d seen some crosses made out of the limestone and wanted one of those, but held off. Bad decision, as they were more than double the price there, but I really wanted one so I got it.

My little cross collection is getting pretty darn big. I don’t even know when I figured out it was a collection.  One became two, which became three and is now up to …. 21. (I just counted.) At some point, I need to get a wall or something. Right now, they’re just lying in the little Drexel hutch. I love them.

Since Istanbul is still on “movement restrictions” and I can’t go to museums, malls or movies, I tend to do this on vacation. In Dublin, I saw “Dunkirk,” and, continuing the tradition, I went to “Atomic Blonde” in Dubrovnik. I didn’t even have to seek it out. The movie theater was a 5-minute walk from the hotel.

Looking back, I really do see movies a lot when I travel. My Foreign Service “get to know you” fact is that I saw all four “Hunger Games” movies in different countries: Indonesia, the U.S., China and Hong Kong. I’ve also seen movies in Canada, Germany, Finland, Ireland, Croatia, Taiwan, Australia, Turkey, and maybe Malaysia or somewhere else. At this point, I don’t remember.

And, if things continue as they are, I’ll have to add somewhere else for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” It comes out Dec. 15, and, as if I needed another excuse to see it, now I’ve been to the galaxy far, far away.