With the spread of CoviD-19 we cannot travel as much now. That is why I am featuring mostly photos from my trips abroad. Before, we were scared of terrorism but that did not stop us from booking a flight to almost anywhere. My plan to take a cruise on the Nile was cancelled by the travel agency 3 times because of political turbulence.
There was another kind of turbulence on a tour of Vietnam: on 9/11we took a jet on Malaysian Airlines that had one plane crashing unexplainably earlier in the Indian Ocean.. But CoviD-19 is apparently a different beast. It is probably the main cause of a kind of collapse of not only the economy but also systems and values and belief systems, and whatever else. We cannot go almost anywhere now. We even avoid leaving the house. We are in a kind of self-imposed quarantine that may go on indefinitely or until somebody discovers a cure, either a vaccine or a drug, that would stop the virus cold in its seemingly inexorable track.
I have visited Hong Kong many times. I’ve visited friends and martial arts masters. When I was in Hong Kong sometime in the 1990’s, there was a threatened terrorist attack on the Pope’s visit to Manila.* I read about it in the NY Times later but when I was in HK I was totally oblivious to what was happening. I wanted to visit Chen Hui, a Chinese friend. Per advice of a tour guide, I applied for and was granted a visa to go to China to see her in Shekou, Shenzhen, where she was working as an “assistant manageress” in a 5-Star hotel. She and I met each in ChengDu, Sichuan in 1983 when I was there with 20 other martial artists training in Wu-Shu and she was working as a salesclerk in the Friendship Store on Great South Road where the biggest statue of Chairman Mao stands. We managed to keep an intermittent correspondence over the years — through her studies for a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in mass communications, her courtship and marriage, pregnancy and motherhood, her move to Shenzhen, the busy commercial port zone north of Hongkong, with her husband, an engineer.
It’s one of those friendships that last through shifting relationships and fortunes. It started when she gave me paintings of flowers, pandas and bamboos done by her father. I tried to pay for them but she refused saying that they were her gifts to a friend. On the eve of my departure for Shanghai, she called me up on the hotel phone. She said she wanted to see me to say goodbye. She arrived at the hotel gate in her bicycle with another woman. I invited them to attend the despedida party we were holding on the roof garden of the hotel but Security denied them entrance because they were Chinese. I argued and cajoled, argued and pleaded, but Security in China was terribly close-minded and refused my expostulations. Chen Hui and I decided to walk to the park and talk on the eve of my departure. I apologized for my inability to get her to the party and she apologized for her people’s narrow-mindedness.
* The terrorism report had repercussions in Asia: our United Airlines plane was held for a whole day at the HK airport until all passengers were questioned and investigated. We were sidetracked to Japan and given an allowance to visit Tokyo. It was Winter and I was wearing a batik shirt because I came from the Philippines and was going to Hawaii. I was marooned with 2 Chinese women who were on their way to the US. On our departure from Japan, I saw a full moon over snow-capped Mount Fuji as the plane ascended.
