A walk downtown into Batad’s ancient Ifugao tradition tromps down a 10,000–block stone staircase mimicking the side of a vegetated Mayan pyramid. I strolled past clusters of thatched hay–roof homes called sitios, tidily separated by the stony retaining walls that also create trails. As if part of a serene performance, women weed the wall’s earthen gaps — a full time job; imagine miles of vertical garden weed invaders — while kids on other terraces bother pigs. In the misty distance, stooped rice planters, standing in two feet of mud and wearing wide–brimmed grass sunhats, color the scene. Aural spaces are the domain of roosters, three cascades, and the slush of workers tilling the mud, knee–deep in soupy, stilted earth.

The scope of chores widens. High on a terrace across the crystal clear river, water buffalos pull two manned ox–and–yoke tilling plows; all purpose 4×4’s that venture anywhere. It’s all rather timeless, apart from one of the teens piloting a harnessed buffalo plow who’s wearing a hooded, heavy metal sweatshirt declaring: Sin Basher. Along with the mullet, the sweatshirt conjures the Appalachian countryside sans the car on cinder blocks.

However, there seems a more ancient knowledge permeated in the mountain ridges themselves. This incarnation of Mother Nature and Mayan–like constructs, fully garlanded in tropical foliage, means lush green mountain ranges are transformed into adjoining pyramid faces that are conveniently rimmed with stairways, accessing agriculture, and trekking dreams. Roaming between villages in these boondocks means trudging the ridges and the rainforest it chain–links together. Some inclines would be rated triple–diamond by extreme skiers, yet they’ve been conveniently sculpted for thousands of years to maximize rice harvesting on land that’s anything but flat. Long ago, the stones used to reinforce retaining walls were carried up from river beds.

Walking the Ancient Balance Beam
The rule insisting to never hike alone is erudite, but I longed for solitude, so after consulting locals about trail routes I roved solo and rambled upstream to Cambulo, whose 1,300 residents still gaze in sunrise awe at a solar power panel that arrived a month before me. The footwork to get there provided a quick study in the constant, requisite balance–beam style walking on wet, mossy wall crests that frequently means being one slip away from a 100–foot tumble to paralysis or death.

Airlift insurance coverage notwithstanding, surviving such a slip, and then being luckily discovered, means locals carrying you on a handmade stretcher for at least a full day to find a road leading to a rudimentary hospital and flight to Manilla. You must focus on each one of your ten thousand steps per day on these slippery perimeters, or pay a huge price. It also became rapidly clear that, here in the midst of muggy, pyramid garden euphoria, one crow–mile translates into five, zig–zagging, up/down, where–the–fuck–am–I trail miles. Walking like a nervous surveyor on a limestone tightrope, you need to stay as focused as a personal injury lawyer eyeing a jackpot.

As darkness fell, I found Cambulo and checked into the Friend’s Inn, a.k.a. Lolita’s house. Over dinner — rice with string beans — we scuffed about with toddlers playing under my table and heard the adolescents playing hoop in the town square. Lolita explained that she gave birth to her nine children between the age of 21 and 47; her youngest is 3 years–old. Lolita looks to be about 30. Her mother, looking on and grinning, spoke only Ifugao. During WWII, Grandma’s husband was a local message runner for U.S. troops fighting the Japanese, thus the family’s yen to accommodate me was natural.

The only alien in town, I was woken at dawn by an unrelenting pounding sound as unswerving as a pile driver. Uncomfortable because I thought it was Lolita’s husband, Alberto, going for kid number ten, I tiptoed down the stairs to go for a walk, but rather discovered Alberto underneath his stilted house, thumping rice. This was the first of many encounters I had with people de–husking large stone bowls of rice stalks by pound–milling the grains using cone–tipped logs as smashers.

Hoop Shots and Detention
Six to twelve children per couple is the norm in this quarter, so are basketball courts with cement backboards and dueling, wilting rims due to monkey business. Most of the five villages I visited had courts and a ten year–old trickshooter always surfaced. We’d compare hook shots from every angle and distance, sometimes for an hour. Yet, meanwhile, several teens may have been playing Mario Brothers with ill–gotten chicken thievery booty. Modernity spelled trouble in the boondocks. A very recent drift into these far–flung communities were solar–powered DVDs — the first import to inspire a crime wave. For the first time in oral history, elementary school kids were getting caught stealing (chickens mostly) to finance insidious DVD addictions. Various town meetings addressing this nefarious dilemma revealed similar solutions. The punishment for busted kid–robbers was caring for the freeranging chickens, night and day.

And there they would be, sulking through the night, dreaming of their joysticks, their mullets silhouetted by a background that could pass for the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the end, these were the most notorious rapscallions in a rugged terrain thought to be worthy of a State Department warning. You can only imagine the DVD frenzy if these nonconformists had access to their West Virginian brethren’s fuel of choice — meth.

Continuously gaining elevation, a few days later I meet two barefoot, betel nut fiends on the trail. Semi–toothless and beaming, they adamantly refuted my side–trail detour suggestion like stern elementary teachers. I was lost, and when they tired of trying to redirect me, they attached me to commuting school kids, who happily led the way. I soon learned, compass needle swirling about in my skull, that the best way to stay on the right trail — I did have a destination — was tailing speedy school kids, moms carrying babies on their backs while on errands, dads transporting tools to an adjoining village, or any other commuters.

In hillside–hugging Pula, another village without electricity, I was enlightened by a two–room schoolhouse teacher, Meliza: In the 1600’s, a Spanish decree renamed all native Filipinos with Christian names. The invented Spanish surnames starting with letters in the beginning of the alphabet (particularly A–D) indicated existing familial affluence, while the leftover alphabetized surnames were tagged on families diminishing through the middle and lower classes. This colonial A–Z branding was lost on most of the population in the then impenetrable Cordillera.

“We don’t rely on purse–onality,” Meliza smiled.

Lessons in the Practical Haircut
With comparable resolve, Meliza insisted that Cordillera hairstyles haven’t suffered the whimsy of trend either because the archetypal mullet haircut was invented here. A traditional Ifugao men’s haircut, she explained, is executed by placing the customer’s forehead on a block of wood and draping their frontal bangs over its side. Then a buddy–cum–barber uses one machete hack to trim his bangs to mid–forehead length, leaving the rest of the hairdo flowing like a Woodstock devotee. Traditional Ifugao men are also tattooed aplenty, but with none of the styles currently fashionable in U.S. stripmall parlors.

From Pula, I hiked high up into another climatic zone, where conifers abruptly overtook jungle, and crested a watershed divide; the trail eventually lead into another province, and another way of life. After traversing a whitewater stream and summiting a narrow, half mile–high saddle of towering long–needle pines, I walked for miles up the natural Great Wall ascending toward Mount Amuyo, the country’s highest point. The saddle bisected dueling waterfalls, whispering in stereo from the distance.

Standing on the breezy saddle, as far away from New York City as I’ve been in a decade, I spotted a man ambling along the saddle, towards me, something steely glimmering on his hip. My State Department cynicism took a breather. I considered hiding but waited for our paths to cross. His dog had already smelled me. When he was 100 feet in front of me I distinguished the bulky machete dangling from a rope around his waist. Marching to a fallen log five feet in front of me, he stopped, looked at me and then at his dog. I waved hello. Seemingly startled, he took off his small, handmade backpack and laid it on the ground. He walked the remaining feet towards me and presented an inquisitive, nose–to–nose look into my eyes.

Tapping on my own chest and nodding yes, I murmured, “Me Bruce.”

I pointed calmly toward his chest and inquired, “You name?”

Pause. Tree leaves rustle.

“Hygee,” he asserted. He then playfully tapped on my chest to reconfirm my customized handle, “Boose.”

I’m wedged between thoughts. Either I’ve made a new friend or its time for a wild–Boose chase, on his turf. Alas, he opens his backpack, points to a rock near the log (our seats) and we exchanged snacks: L.A. Airport granola for camp–fired flat bread. As we sat there snacking, he spoke no English or Spanish, only smiled and repeatedly pointed toward the massive, looming, fogged–in mountain to call out, “Amuyo.”

I could also see that he rather enjoyed sporting the archetypal mullet haircut, and swung it about like a tool in a Wayne’s World video. Snacks traded and devoured, we stood up to part ways. But my apprehension returned when he pointed to my forehead and then tapped on the machete swinging from his hip. Seeing my confusion, he reached out and used his fingers to flick the sweaty bangs that were hanging in my eyes. He notioned toward his knife again. I remained bewildered. He hunched his shoulders, smiled, and continued down the trail. We shook hands and trekked off in opposite directions.

Though we never spoke beyond monikers, we’d bonded. I was still alive and there’s something poignantly random about only seeing one person all day long, doing the same thing as you, 15 hours from any road. He moseyed down the saddle and I descended into a canopied, leachy tropical rain forest where trail rises and falls toggled the soundtrack from bug quiet to waterfall roar. The narrow trail was often overgrown and offered several side options. Often, I lost the main trail and had to backtrack. My breath quickens. When you don’t know where you’re going, any path will take you there. Finally reemerging onto another piney saddle, I overlooked my turnaround point in my hike, the village of Barlig.

The next morning, before the long return trek to Batad, I purchased a basketball from a ramshackle general store in Barlig. It was deemed for Pula, a village strewn with deflated basketballs and a rumored spike in DVD addiction. I’d like to think my gift could stem the tide of the chicken–pinching kid crime wave. I did meet Hygee, again under the cover of jungle, both of us doubling back home. This time he immediately began tugging at my backpack with a sense of urgency. Fear and curiosity raced through me in equal parts. One minute later, after indecipherable articulations — speaking fluent Ifugao — I realize that, unbeknownst to me, he’s telling me my backpack zipper is open and its contents are a moment away from tumbling onto the ground. I zipped up my pack and he flashed me one of those hand–milled, smoked, organic rice smiles…decked out in primitive dignity with a grin that’s immune to want and has otherwise lost its way in cities.

Inside the soggy, slippery, leech–infested jungle, not far from the piney saddle, I’d nearly thrown my hands up in total remote mountain surrender, but Hygee’s secondary concern were the leech bites covering my legs, and the medicine man in him shown through. His leech–bite salve, topically–applied powdered lyme (betel nut chew construct amalgamated with ground snail shells) dried the bites and prevented jungle–rot infection. Others along the trail suggested bleeding leech–bite remedies including spit–sodden tobacco or pressing a lit match on the wounds.

The average human being sheds about 5 million hairs over a 75–year lifespan. We have the same number of follicles as our hairier simian relatives, but our hair is finer and shorter. In America, our hair dementia has been cosmetically brainwashed into a paranoid and toilsome slavery demanding a regimen of shaves, plucks, waxes, coloring and $100+ trims. Lacking cranium locks or presenting back fur is taboo; hair has become way too complicated. So, before descending from the apex of Ifugao highlands, I gave Hygee the nod and rested my head in prayer onto a fallen tree. Hygee elevated his glistening machete blade of steel over me and a thundering whack shattered the dawn air. I slowly raised my head from the clammy, supine tree and looked about the Cordillera anew — no follicles obscuring my view, proudly sporting an Ifugao mullet.

Hygee pointed his thumb to the sky, smiled like he’d just got a huge raise and said “Boose” twice, then strode off with a gait of unbending altruistic nobility.

Continuing to retrace my steps, I learned that the schoolteacher in Pula was Lolita’s daughter. Jungle telegraph news (walked–in gossip) preceded me. I presented a basketball to the entire town and gave a brief geography lesson using a similar sized globe. I think I spotted a couple of DVD addicts loitering around a hut with wires protruding from it. Only they smirked at my haircut.

I returned to my trek starting point, Batad, ten pounds lighter, unconcerned with electronic communiqués, speckled with leech wounds, and with a clearer outlook — literally. Perhaps I should advise the State Department to warn Americans to avoid traveling to this region with chickens, X–Boxes, or hair in their eyes. I stood tall above the terracing, unfettered after an officially unrecommended jaunt, clearly viewing my path from afar through the window of my mullet.

Mystical, magical, incomprehensible Tibet offers an overload on the senses: the gaspingly thin air; the overwhelming beauty of the world’s highest mountains; the haunting images of Buddhas, deities and demons; the intricate patterns of the colourful Tibetan art; the poignant devotion of the pilgrims circumambulating sacred images; the improbability of the ancient architectural wonders clinging to perilous hillsides; the tumultuous history of inaccessibility, mystery, struggles, determination and resilience. This is a country of extremes with one of the most adventurous, scenically stunning and physically demanding road trips in the world, as we followed the path from Tibet’s capital Lhasa, through gruelling conditions, past vast landscapes and glittering peaks, remote high altitude deserts, densely forested precipitous gorges and virtually unpopulated high altitude moor-land to the end of its borders and further towards the fabled city of Kathmandu. It was a journey of scenic and religious discovery!

No matter how one gets there, a trip to Tibet is a journey out of the ordinary. It gives fresh meaning to the old label: the trip of a lifetime (or perhaps several of them, if reincarnation proves to be true).
I’m not a religious person, or even very spiritual, but this place awakens childhood wonder and silences the ego. Put simply, this place puts me in my place.

Well, we spent one helluva roller coaster month in Tibet, up and down mountains and up ‘n down emotions. It was a very confusing mix of good and bad, pleasure and discomfort, beautiful and ugly. The biggest and most obvious contrast is the Chinese with the Tibetans — and corresponding architecture, food, spirituality (or lack thereof), etc.

The people. In all my travels, I have never, ever met people so willing and eager to laugh. Although there are, of course, exceptions and of course people who have little to laugh about, the vast majority of people we met–whether beggars or children, lamas or shopkeepers — were almost always on the verge of a smile, if not a grin. Laughter seems to come easily to these people and the influence such a “small” thing can have on your day and your experience is absolutely enormous.

Recognizing the value of massage in healing the body, a turn-of-the-century Thai ruler (at that time the country was known as Siam) established the Traditional Thai Massage School at Wat Po temple (sometimes referred to as Wat Pho) so that his subjects could afford to enjoy the blessings of a good massage. My one-hour massage cost just $5.

This massage experience is not private, so clients remain in their street clothes. It’s a good idea to come in loose, old clothing. Oil isn’t used, so unless you want to add an herbal enhancement, which has staining properties (but is also a great way to decorate up a t-shirt without going to the bother of tie-dying), your clothes will not be damaged. Loaner shorts and shirts are available if you ask. But not everyone worries about the end result. I saw a Japanese woman in a stylish pantsuit stretched out on one cot, her designer handbag doubling as a pillow.

Thai massage is based on the idea that invisible energy lines run throughout the body. When these lines get congested, energy imbalances are created in the body. So muscles need to be loosened and blockages disrupted to bring the body back into harmony. Movements, though sometimes harsh, are never abrupt.

My masseuse continues, looking me over and then pressing firmly on various pressure points. She manipulates muscles and pulls on my fingers until the knuckles pop, and then, using her own body for leverage, she stretches my upper thigh by pushing with her bare feet, followed by a hard pressing with the heels of her hands. A few times she walks on me. I endure. This is an assertive body-to-body massage, with my masseuse at times using her feet and elbows to execute the treatment.

Part-way through all this manipulation I fall into a Zen-like state and become aware of the sharp mewing of a cat, of birds chittering in the trees, of a gecko moving along the wall, of electric fans keeping things cool, and of the constant chattering among the workers and between them and their children–who are with them on the premises. I also take deeper notice of the fact that we are within a covered pavilion with a chain link fence serving as walls; it is reminiscent of a refugee encampment.

My massage ends with my masseuse looking me straight in the eyes. She plugs my ears with her fingers, causing noise to fade away, and then quickly pulls them out, causing a pop and the rapid return of reality. I’m still wondering what that was all about.

After my massage, I explored the old temple site, which is best known for its enormous Reclining Buddha, featuring mother-of-pearl feet and said to be half as long as a football field (I was able to get only a small portion of it into my camera’s viewfinder). I also viewed its exotic chedis, or spires, and inscriptions carved in marble in 1836 illustrating the principles of Thai massage. I heard too late from a Japanese-national friend, who was the person who first told me about this Thai temple massage, that the gift shop here sells a book on Thai massage written in English. I so wish I had purchased one.

More expensive massages are also available in Thailand, as are the more traditional styles of massage that we are used to in the West. But why opt for anything less than this bargain native miracle? It is the perfect antidote to pulling an over-packed suitcase, and to the general stress of travel.
More Information:
Cost: Temple admission, 20 baht. Massage: 1/2 hour, 100 baht; 1 hour 180 baht; 1-hour herbal massage, 260 baht. The exchange rate during my visit was 38 baht/US$1. The masseuse gets half of the fee.
• Tipping is not necessary, but I left the equivalent of $2. My masseuse looked surprised at the tip, bowed to thank me, and offered me a bottled water.
• You can also sign up for a 10-day, 30-hour course for 4,500 baht. The Thais take a 1-3 year course.
• Remember that this is a school and you are classroom material, so sometimes your masseuse or masseur will be using you as a guinea pig. And sheets are not changed after each client.
Hours: Open daily 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Reservations are taken, but you can also just show up and wait. There are two massage pavilions, with 22 cots in each.

Feel like you missed your window? Don’t worry. Getting off the beaten path is remarkably easy in Vietnam. Most visitors stick to the two poles of this narrow, 1,000-mile-long land: Hanoi in the north and Ho Chi Minh City in the south. National airlines offer dirt-cheap, two-hour flights between the two cities. But travel by train is still the more affordable option and allows for detours along the way. At least a quarter of all Vietnam tourists make Hoi An one of those stops.

One of the views along the hike at Bach Ma National Park [enlarge photo]

An 80,000-person port town on the Thu Bon river, Hoi An has seen its popularity surge since UNESCO — the cultural preservation arm of the U.N. — designated its Ancient Town a World Heritage site in 1999 for, among other things, its elegant 18th-century architecture. But Hoi An is still worth a visit, not only for its prolific seamstresses who can custom-make a silk dress in a matter of hours, but also for its proximity to two places under most travelers’ radars: My Son Sanctuary and Bach Ma National Park.

In a lush valley below Cat’s Tooth Mountain, My Son was once the royal burial and temple grounds for the Champa Kingdom, one of Vietnam’s earliest major civilizations, which existed between the 2nd and 15th centuries. The Vietcong used the site as a base during the war, and American bombs destroyed many of the more than 70 Hindu-inspired monuments, though President Nixon finally declared them off-limits, partly at the urging of a Cham art expert. Bomb craters still punctuate the monument grounds, and land mines lurk beneath the surrounding jungle. (Signs provide plenty of warning about where the area becomes potentially unsafe.) Reminiscent of a mini-Angkor Wat, My Son is best enjoyed when you can wander the crumbling brick altars and temples in solitude. So go at off times. Tour buses are there from around 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.; you can and should avoid the crowds by hiring a driver for an early-morning or late-afternoon trip (it’s open from 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.). The ride costs about $20, and your driver will wait for you. Two hours at the site should do it.

Also a UNESCO World Heritage site, My Son has seen a bump in tourism; a newly paved road, which cut the three-hour drive from Hoi An in half, is making it more accessible. Several international organizations, including Global Heritage Fund, have recently backed restoration projects, painstakingly reassembling the bombed-out monuments and planning for increased on-site security. But while those projects make My Son friendlier to visitors, the feeling now is still that of stumbling Indiana Jones-style onto an archaeological find.

Bach Ma National Park
Even more remote, Bach Ma National Park, 56 miles north of Hoi An, is Vietnam at its best — untamed jungles, leafy valleys, views of sparkling beaches. The two-hour drive from Hoi An over the Hai Van Pass is easily the country’s most beautiful. Then from Bach Ma’s entrance, a tight 10-mile paved road snakes almost to the top of the park’s 4,800-foot summit, with wild side trails (some requiring the use of overhanging vines to help you haul yourself over large logs) leading to waterfalls. You can hire a jeep to shuttle you up the park’s main road, but the four-to-five-hour hike allows you to take time with the views. The temperature drops about 40 degrees as you climb; pack a hat, a rain jacket (the park is Vietnam’s wettest spot), and lots of bottled water.

High-ranking French officials built stately vacation villas along the road in the 1930s. Although most are now in ruins, the park service renovated a few near the entrance and summit after Bach Ma was designated a national park in 1991. They’re now spare but comfortable inns, with wood floors, shutters, and verandas; an on-site caretaker serves basic Vietnamese meals. Beyond the update of these villas, not much else has changed at Bach Ma. For that, in part, you can thank conservationists, who have fought to preserve the park’s biodiversity — including tigers and over 1,400 plant species — and a remarkable serenity.

Despite its one-stop-shopping popularity with Mainland expats needing new clothes and a new visa, I truly had no idea what to expect in the former crown colony that supposedly makes even rich men feel poor. Rather terrified of exacting reverse culture shock, I saved English-speaking Hong Kong and its “One Country, Two Systems” self for the tail end of my journey across the 32 Chinese provinces.

And it is here that all my preconceptions and fears about Hong Kong were – true. To quote the under-appreciated American writer, Thomas A. Carter (me!), upon his brief sojourn in the legendary Chinese city, “I’ve never felt more poor than when I was in Hong Kong. I’ve never felt more ugly than when I was in Hong Kong.”

Cross the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border at Louhu and catch the immaculate KCR railway, immediately impressed that nobody is staring, shoving or spitting. Arrive in Kowloon’s southern peninsula and emerge from the underground into the land of lights – Tsim Sha Tsui. Blinded with excitement, I have to ask a resplendent group of Indian women draped in saris where the Mirador Mansion is. They point their gold-ringed fingers straight up – a towering, rust-stained concrete block, one of Hong Kong’s only affordable accommodations. I check in to a claustrophobic dorm room (three times the price of a Mainland dorm and three times smaller), then hit Nathan Road. Peering up into the neon lights, tripping in the crush of the crowds, I feel like a migrant worker back in Beijing.

Awoken at 6:00 a.m. by one of my bunkmates stumbling in after a long night. His name is Pat, a young American backpacker with long red hair, whose introduction is immediately followed by a long-winded narrative about his two-week romps in Hong Kong, including scoring with the mythical “Asian girls who LOOOVE foreign guys”. When I counter that I never had any such luck, the fast-talking but likeable Pat proffers some off-the-cuff advice (“Dude, lose the beard”) before launching into more useful information. “It’s Sunday, okay, and there’s gonna be, like, 120,000 Filipino nannies and maids on their only day off, looking for boyfriends!”

I’m a little dubious of Pat’s generalizations, but sure enough, his mobile rings continuously with calls from adoring cleaning ladies he met the Sunday before. An afternoon stroll around Statue Square reveals a literal blanket of thousands of picnicking South Asian women (Hong Kong’s largest migrant communities) whose collective chatter sounds like a large flock of seagulls. When I attempt to candidly photograph one attractive young Filipino, she shouts “Hey! I klick jor ass!” So much for getting a date.

Fieldtrip to Shek O Beach on Hong Kong Island’s south side, savoring the soft sand and splashing in the subtropical South China Sea. Supposedly, this place is packed out on the weekend, but that’s what weekdays are for, no? It’s one of those moments when I enjoy being unemployed. Chase my fun in the sun with a tram ride up Victoria Peak for a breathtaking evening vista of skyscrapers, that appear to be constructed entirely out of lights. Dafnit, an Israeli girl, clearly in awe of the Hong Kong skyline, remarks, “We have no tall buildings in Israel. Oh wait – we have one!”

Spend the day traversing Kowloon, the fashion billboards of TST turning into seedy massage parlor billboards as I descend northwest down the Nathan Road side streets, the sun lost behind precipices of neon signs stretching horizontally over the streets. The markets of Mong Kok are mobbed with uniformed students on lunch break – long-haired boys with untucked white shirts and loosened ties, made-up girls in little outfits out of a Japanese kogal/hentai fantasy: knee-high black stockings, short skirts and a Louis Vuitton bag to carry their pencils and books. They have tattoos, tongue piercings and smoke cigarettes. After commenting that they are the hippest students in China I’ve seen, one 15-year-old boy replies in perfect English, “Yes, so cool, but so young”.

I want to see how the other half lives. I spend the day in Central, Hong Kong Island’s microcosm of capitalism. Cross Victoria Harbor by the centuries-old Star Ferry through a morning miasma of pollution. I follow white-collared crowds of businessmen contending with cell phones, briefcases and lattés into their respective skyscrapers. Later I observe as many women shopping in designer department stores – these must be the wives.

I notice they clutch their purses as I walk by, then realize why, as I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflective facade of the Bank of China tower. My head cast down in self-consciousness, I almost get rolled over by a Rolls (driving on the wrong side of the road, damn Brits!), then almost again by a double-decker cable car. Everyone in Central must be against me.

My insecurities are firmed up that evening in Lan Kwai Fong, a gentrified neighborhood of upscale restaurants and bars on the Island’s northern escarpment. The steep streets are congested with young, well-to-do westpats toasting yet another successful day of money-making. I can’t believe there are so many white people in China who aren’t English teachers! They are smartly dressed and have well-groomed hair; I am wearing cutoff army pants, low-top fake Converse, an eight year old T-shirt that I bought used. I haven’t shaved or cut my locks in the eight months I’ve been on the road. I want to belong, but I don’t. It’s one of those moments when I regret being unemployed.

I give the Island another chance and take the night ferry across the harbor to the north end’s older and seedier nightspot, the infamous Wan Chai. Recall it is where Richard Mason penned his 1950’s tale of forbidden love, “The World Of Suzie Wong”, though a lot has changed since he wrote “take a minute’s stroll from the center and you won’t see a European”. The pick-up bars still line the road, yum-yum girls luring passersby into their neon-lit dens, but these are the illegitimate daughters of Suzie Wong, not of Chinese but Thai descent, wearing not elegant silk cheongsams, but cheap miniskirts raised to immodest heights. Unlike the kindly ladies of the Nam Kok Hotel, these modern-day working girls are vicious, mercenary, cold.

When a group of obviously disappointed white boys emerge from one venue exclaiming, “In Thailand they take off ALL their clothes”, the brown-skinned door girl in plastic go-go boots is quick to shout back, “Then go to Thailand!”
Further down Lockhart, I follow a couple of older Europeans primed with drink and flirting heavily with a lovely bouquet of girls looking for generous company. After making their arrangements, one of the men leans on me and confides, “Wy mife, I mean my wife, thinks I’m *HICCUP* at a conference.” The remaining girls give this poor writer a cursory glance, then quickly cross the street away from me.

I wake up feeling dejected and classless; the expatriates of Central don’t want me, nor do the waterfront girls of Wan Chai. Take a stroll around TST, passing by friendly knots of third-world hustlers hanging out in front of the Chungking Mansions, the immigrant ghetto of Kowloon that serves as temporary living quarters for Hong Kong’s financially insolvent émigrés. A street corner tout from Kashmir says to me “The Mansions is where anyone not wearing pastel shorts or a suit stay.” I realize this mad cauldron of multiculturalism is the only place I truly feel at home in Hong Kong. The Africans on the never-quiet front steps always high-five me, the Pakistanis think I’m Muslim (must be the beard), and the Indians bat their eyelashes at me. The Chungking Mansions are the international haunt for anyone who is no one. I am one of them. It is a peasant’s epiphany – in Hong Kong.