Auckland, New Zealand

What can you say about Auckland?

My mother instructed me, like all the other good mothers out there lectured their sons and daughters, that if I didn’t have anything good to say to hold my tongue. Well, I’ve never been a tongue-holder, sorry Mom.

Auckland is sorely lacking in charm and soul. If you’re headed to New Zealand, save yourself the trouble and head directly for the country. The countryside is pleasant and inviting, don’t waste your time in the city of sails.

We looked for a reason to like Auckland, really, searched high and low, but couldn’t find it. We even believed it was there and wished for it but alas, nothing. Not like Melbourne, or even Sydney. (But more on that later)

Landing in Auckland a little after 6 o’clock in the morning and taking a bus through the outskirts into the city, my nose pressed against the glass and my breath fogging up the window trying to take it all in, I read the names of store fronts and inspected cafes and to me it looked like a vibrant, original city.

How wrong I turned out to be…

We booked a room across from the sky city tower and casino where I once I peeked out the window and saw a body dropping to the earth — they sky-dive off of it for kicks, and charge tourists to do the same.

The hotel was the best part. An indoor hot tub on the 7th floor we made good use of the morning we landed, a bed the size of South Dakota, it was luxury we weren’t use to but weren’t afraid to wrap ourselves up in.

I’m just a drive-by visitor, only stayed three days and then booked it, so I’m not saying there is a complete and utter lack of soul within the limits of Auckland, I’m just saying you don’t stumble across it in the CBD, those are the drunk 18 year-olds we saw the night before on the corner cursing and yelling at their friends across the street. I remember a day when a city of drunk college kids sounded like heaven on earth, (Boston) am I that old?

I had a serious sushi-craving that night and the first spot we ducked in only had salmon. What? We’re surrounded by ocean, the city is built on an isthmus, the sign said sushi and sake bar, and they only had salmon? My inner elite was enraged.

Now don’t take the criticism as an indication that we didn’t enjoy ourselves. We scampered around town, through the university grounds, through the parks, studied the Maori artifacts in the museum, had a decent thai meal, watched the brave tourists launch themselves into the air on an elastic string with the view and a promise that all was safe, right on a busy street corner, amid the high rises.

Kiwi’s love their adventure activities. (more on that later)

So you see, we gave it a go with a smile on our face. We really wanted to love the place. Auckland. The city of sails.

There were things to be seen, exotic conversations to eavesdrop on, outfits to admire with something approaching morbid curiousity, and a big sprawling lawn to relax upon outside the museum.

But something was off. It felt a little hollow. There wasn’t a feeling that people loved to live here, just that they did to get by. The prices were out of control. 15 dollars for a sandwich. 30 for a new book. 40 for a 4-pack of lithium batteries. Cars were everywhere, beeping and kicking around exhaust. Auckland has 1/7th the population that London does but covers more ground. The vibe was a little stale.

Maybe that’s part of it…

Maybe because the rest of the country is so beatiful, lush and green and full of peace, that you have to really be in a bind not to live somewhere else, and pissed that you have to live in a place like Auckland instead.

The locals certainly withheld any of the welcoming attitude that Australians exhibit.

It wasn’t as much contempt the average clerk or waiter showed us, but rather restrained indifference. A gigantic boredom that seemed to be crushing their spirits, and I was somehow culpable.

The day ended with a disappointing meal of raw fish and rice prepared in an utilitarian fashion, so as not to offend with too much flavor. At least there was more than just salmon.

The next day we boarded a ferry and left Auckland behind, for one of its “subburbs”, Waiheke Island.

Waiheke enjoys a warmer climate due to its position in the Haurki Gulf and people have owned vacation homes there for awhile but now they’re starting to commute into the city. I can see why. The place is beautiful.

Beautiful coves shelter gentle, sandy beaches as vineyards string up the hillsides and colorful birds pick about in your front yard. The weather was fine, sunny and happy – as much as certain weather can be defined as happy.

After taking some pictures we found a place for lunch overlooking one of those spectacular beaches, where we ate the most succulent mussles, from the Coromendel Pennisula – a place we were headed shortly – cooked in a buttery cream sauce that made me giggle like a baby as I drank my beer and squinted the scene into memory.

The fact that people live here, take a ferry into Auckland for work, and come home to this everynight was really sickening. It made me want to work my ass off, make a heap of money, and join the good times. It made me want to escape here some day with nothing on the plate but eating good food and maybe a novel to write. I couldn’t help picking up the real estate section and set to day-dreaming a bit.

Only half a million American dollars can get you a little cottage on the beach, better than a condo in the valley, the kookaburros could laugh at you as the sun sets and the ideal climate blows kisses and sweets for you.

Waiheke Island is the place your dreams go for holiday.

It was sad to leave such a calm and soothing place that inspired us to lay on the sand and stare at the sea all day, but we did, we had to get back to Auckland and get ready for the road the next day.

A wannabe “b-boy” dressed in baggy clothes plastered with NBA logos bumped some terrible rap from a boom box in his backpack, G-Unit I believe it was, his parents telling him to turn it down as they boarded the ferry, but allowing us to endure the 15-minute prior wait, (thanks mom and dad) and that exemplified the feeling I got from Auckland. It’s a little dark spot on an otherwise beautiful island. It’s not dangerous or dirty, just lacking originality and spirit.

There’s a feeling that the city is trying but just doesn’t do “urban” well.

It’s New Zealand, it doesn’t need a cutting-edge “scene”. It didn’t need “real hip-hoppers”. It doesn’t need world class restaurants, or stylish fashion whores.

Back at the room, the sun bedded down behind distant hills, forcing to me to squint at it some more in a mad attempt to “catch a New Zealand sunset”. It’s weird, on the plane ride over I fantasized about falling in love with Auckland and moving here, and now honestly I wouldn’t feel amiss to never see the city again.

So you see, by this time we were ready to hit the road and see more of this charming and exquisite island.

We were also ready to say goodbye to Auckland.

Next up: the Coromendel Pennisula.

New Zealand and Australia: A Tale of Friendly Folk, Curious Flora Fauna, and Strange Bathrooms

Traveling outside the States for the first time, (not counting Canada and Mexico – and really, who counts them?) I went down under, to the hemisphere where the water spins counter-clockwise and they say bush fires as opposed to wildfires — I never realized we had the bush in Malibu but it seems we do — to the place where the topsoil has long been wash to the sea and the animals are adorable and deadly, Australia and New Zealand. The missus and me spent three weeks there recently and I’ve lived to tell the tale.

We did as every good tourist should. We wandered around souvenir shops, ate at waterfront restaurants, butchered the names of cities and streets – it’s Mel-bin and Bris-bin and Canns not Carnes, of course I’m speaking of what’s spelt Cairns, and in fact it seems as if they let Fauzzy the Bear name half their towns: Cooloola, Goodooga, Warrambool,Wagga Wagga. We got drunk in the middle of the day, drove down small roads, drove on the wrong side of the street, marvelled at the exotica in the supermarkets, and studied the differences in their bacon to ours.

It was a marvelous time.

I’ll break up the tale into sections. The first section is about Auckland, a city known for being New Zealand’s largest, and not much else… enjoy.

Auckland.

The Coromandel Peninsula #1.

The Coromandel Peninsula #2.

Rotorua.

AND NOW AUSTRALIA

Melbourne, Australia.

The Great Ocean Road #1 .

The Great Ocean Road #2.

Monks Are Slaughtered. 10,000 Big Macs Sold.

What does it take these days to make a tragedy?

I’ve been watching, along with the world, events unfold in Burma (fuck Myanmar!) and can’t believe that savagery like this continues in 2007.

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: “Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand.”

They slaughtered unarmed, non-violent Buddhist monks who simply stood up and marched.

The monks filled the streets in their holy robes and said, ‘We are tired of this. We want peace, an economic chance. We want dignity.’

The generals said no.

They loaded the monks into trucks and drove them into the jungle.

They dumped their bodies in streams.

The world let itself be shut out. Denied access. It narrowed its eyes and tsk-tsked, but that’s about it.

It’s an internal affair, China said, let them handle it.

Yes, I guess that’s true, America murmured their subservient agreement.

Then China winked, a curious gesture that implied gratitude, but also: ‘watch out, you’re not going to be on top for long. There’s a billion and a half of us who want nothing else but to work long hours for very little.’

Why do I get the sinking feeling that nobody cares about Burma? Myanmar? Whatever it is? That it’s just another news story about tragedy somewhere far away.

This decade has been overstuffed with death and fear, starting way back with Y2K to the monks of yesterday.

• September 11th, 2001 — almost 3,000 Americans died in terrorist attacks.
• February 27, 2002 – A series of riots leaves hundreds dead, after 59 Hindu pilgrims die aboard a train burned by a Muslim mob in Godhra, India.
• March 19th, 2003 — George Bush launches war with Iraq by subjecting Baghdad to what military planners called Shock and Awe.
• March 11th, 2004 — Al Queada attacks commuter trains in Spain. 191 people died.
• December 26th, 2004 — Indian Ocean Earthquake causes deadly tsunami. Over 200,000 souls perished.
• August 29th, 2005 — Hurricane Katrina destroys New Orleans. 3,000 Americans die in the storm.
• April 17th, 2007 — Jon Cho shot over 30 fellow classmates at Virginia Tech.

You get the point. How much charity does one little heart have?

Before technology put every starving baby on our TV screen, every knee-high kid wading through garbage for a meal, we were ignorantly indifferent. Now we’re simply indifferent. What’s it do to our psyche to process the terror and death and injustice and bury it?

Ignorance is bliss.

But what can one do? Give every dollar one has? Fly to Burma? Which I thought of doing, seriously. I pictured shaving my head and joining the cause. Who hasn’t dreamt of being Ghandi? But then I remembered I’m leaving for Australia in a couple of days and I need to get a haircut before then and finish this blog and buy some new jeans and on and on and there just isn’t enough time in the day for all that and saving the people of Burma from a ruthless military junta.

They have the Nobel Peace Prize winner under house arrest. A Yankee like me would become lion chum in no time.

You should only worry about the things you can change, so that being said I jumped in my car and drove to the hair salon.

Next door to it was a McDonald’s with a stream of idling vehicles curved like a bow in the drive-thru. I looked down the line at the faces of the drivers, not with my eyes but the eyes of a monk, and I realized that Samsara comes in all shapes and flavors. The cycle of life/death, suffering, need/want, fear… hate. There’s not a heck of a lot of difference between the cows sent through metal grates at the slaughterhouse and the monks lining up for the Myanmar government’s butchery.

I remember looking on with pride as I noted the McDonald’s signs gradually change through the 80’s and 90’s: Millions and Millions Served. 100 Million Served. 500. Now the sign says, Billions Served.

It’s a brutal cycle: person decides to get McDonald’s… waits in drive-thru, pollutes the air, wastes gas… eats unhealthy, fatty food. Person grows fat, lazy… eats more drive-thru. Car pollutes the air, person now drives it everywhere, burning up our precious gas, made from the dinosaurs. Down in the Amazon trees are felled to make room for more cows… more burgers… because person is now fat and lazy and returning to the drive-thru everyday, along with fatty’s fat kids… less trees, more idling cars, more global warming… more hardship, displacement, war.

Ectera, bloody ectera.

While the monks of Burma were being slaughtered and dumped in the jungle thousands of Big Macs were being purchased and consumed, the plastic wrappings that will never bio-degrade thrown into trash heaps across the globe. Scientist say in a gazillion years our era on Earth will be identified by a layer of plastic.

Shit, I don’t have the answer.

Less plastic. Don’t eat McDonald’s.

It’s a start.

But how can we help the people of Burma? War?

Sanctions? We already have sanctions.

Pressure China? Boycott the Olympics?

(They’ve been fucking with our Barbies and our toothpaste, and for an athlete trained behind the iron curtain Yao Ming is disappointingly soft on the inside; what more do we need?)

My fear is that it’s too late. Brutality was exhibited. The international community watched and sat on their hands as the Burmese military rulers corralled the monks and beat them, tortured them. To defeat the courage and overall righteousness of the monks the army had to literally take their bodies apart. The youth, those too young to have experienced the 1988 massacre, got caught up to date with how it goes down in Burma.

You don’t fuck with the generals.

– Talk about your axis of evil.

Burma: “hey George, what’s a brutal regime gotta do to get a little notice around here?!”

If they would do that to monks, what do they do to the other Burmese protesters?

Reports are it’s over. The heart has been taken from the movement.

Fear won again.

Fear and apathy.

Apathy on our part.

But what can you do? We’re numbed to it, to empathy.

Our empathy tank is empty.

Our tiny monkeybrains are not programmed to respond to the plight of such faraway groups, over and over, it’s not how an animal survives.

An animal survives by worrying about oneself.

But the monks!

The monks weren’t animals with monkeybrains like you and me, they were enlightened beings who realized their flesh is only temporary anyway and so were willing to give it to the butchers, believing falsely that the world would be moved to their cause and step in to halt the slaughter.

Twenty years ago, or so, the world watched one brave soul stand in front of a tank in Tienmen Square and condemned the Chinese. Yesterday, the Myanmar military junta killed hundreds of holy men and disposed of their bodies in the jungle for the animals to devour with the support aid of Chinese money and trade, and the world is silent, not wanting to spoil the Olympics coming up in Beijing with downer talk like civil rights and economic oppression.

What’s changed?

I get the feeling that it’s not that China has come so far, it’s that the world has sunk that low.

Let it be known that for this report I didn’t mention Africa, where a shitload of terrible stuff has gone down since the new millennium, shit that can’t be conceptualized by Westerners. Horrible atrocities that if fully expressed would shatter a person’s psyche and happy existence. No, they’re better off turning the channel to Rock of Love and watching suspensefully who the ex rock star chooses as his “girlfriend”.