Dragon Mart - The only trip we'll ever make to China

Today we took a walk through Nicholas' nightmare - a 1.3km long "mall" devoted to Made in China crap.  Now a lot of people would describe anything made in China as crap, but this is of a special grade.  Nothing we saw today would have been fit for use in North America.  The mall itself wouldn't have been fit for use in North America.  They had obviously splurged on the polished marble floors, but ran out of money before putting a roof on the building, leaving large sections covered with dusty canvas tenting.  The shops were virtually indistinguishable from each other, leaving only boxy black letters on yellow plastic to tell you that East Huge Dragon Garment Accessories Co. LTD was selling family saunas, and that Guangdong Green Century Health Trade Management Co., LTD was the place to purchase leopard print unitards (yes, we can hook you up if you've been unable to find one of these at your local shopping center).    

We had a good time wandering around looking at woPads (maybe manufactured by Orange?), Crony DVD players, Defalt power tools, Okia cellphones, and wondering if the bottled water and Fanta pop we were drinking was also counterfeit (Eviann is spelled with two NN's right?). So if you ever wondered what a mall would be like if it was entirely devoted to those junk kiosks choking the halls of North American malls ask us - we know.

P.S. - we didn't take any pictures, Nicholas wants no evidence that he was ever there.  He won't even go in a Wal-Mart and this was much, much worse.  I did however find a picture of a family sauna, as available at Dragon Mart.

So I went to Jakarta and all I got was this lousy picture...

Actually, I didn't even take the picture.  April had the camera back in Canada.  I'm not sure why I didn't just use my phone, but I stole the picture and there it is.  Jakarta was an interesting place, but the traffic was unbearable.  Just for fun, try to work out who's in which lane.  Traffic in the city is like a free for all. Imagine cars squeezed together as closely as laws against property damage might allow, and fill in every conceivable gap (and some of the inconceivable gaps) with motorcycles and mopeds.  My last meeting ended about four hours before my flight back to Dubai.  The two (as in 2) km trip from the downtown core to the freeway took an agonizing 63 minutes.  Once on the freeway our speed averaged out at perhaps 5kph, with brief and exhilarating bursts of speeds that may have allowed us to keep pace with a group of mediocre runners.  

The Other Iraq

So, I had to run up to Iraq for a visit to Cougar’s offices in Kurdistan.  This happened a while ago, but we wanted to make sure that I was safely home, and that most of you had seen me before we posted this.  Or maybe we are just incredibly efficient procrastinators.  Normally when you hear Iraq, you think of people being blown up by explosives strapped to donkeys.  Not to make light of it, but there have been some pretty creative entries to the Improvised Explosive Devise category.  

In any case, from Canada, the whole of Iraq seems incredibly dangerous.  Kurdistan is evidence that the closer you get to a conflict, the smaller it seems.  Kurdistan made National Geographic’s list of ten best vacation spots for 2011.  Apparently there’s some very good bird watching in the region.  The countryside is beautiful, the infrastructure is good, and Erbil is possibly the longest constantly inhabited place on earth.  In northern Iraq things seemed reasonably safe, but the locals would tell you to stay away from Mosul, or Baghdad, or any of the really dangerous parts of Iraq.  

The funny thing is that Mosul and Baghdad are enormous cities that still function.  People go to work, kids go to school, and grocery stores sell food.  I’m sure that getting into those cities locals would tell you that there are parts of the city to avoid, but that there are areas that are relatively safe.  Proximity really changes your perspective.  

Don't turn right!  If you can't read it, the right hand turn takes you to Mosul, and Basra, and Baghdad.  Scary Iraq.  

In the shadow of the citadel.  We had some very good lamb on this street.  I was more or less certain I'd get sick.  The proprietor picked the skewers of raw meat out of a hot window and roasted it on open coals.  Turned out to be delicious, and very inexpensive.  

An uninterrupted view of the citadel.  Built on a mound in the center of the city the citadel has been constantly inhabited by humans for the last five thousand years.  

Another view of the citadel, currently being restored.  Normally fifty families would live in various dwellings that make up the walled city, but they moved them all out for the massive reconstruction effort (except for one lucky family who gets to put up with the construction noise, to preserve the mound's perpetually inhabited status).