About Belize and Internet Access

I was in Belize for nine days. This trip was the field trip component of a CERMES course called Natural Resources Management and I was there in a support capacity. While in Belize I got to see the southern part of the country – the Monkey River area – when we did a water quality and sediment sampling project. I saw the hill area – the Maya Mountains and San Ignacio – where we traveled to two hydroelectric power plants and saw Xunantanich. I saw the agricultural practices of Mennonite farmers in the Orange Walk District in the north near the Mexico border. And I spent a brief yet joyous afternoon snorkeling at Hol Chan Marine Reserve (scroll down to Shark Ray Alley - Zone D). With one exception, I had miserable access to the internet. You see, I am a self-proclaimed techie, so this did not set well with me. Some may say that when going to Belize, one should turn off the tech anyway. No. I was working and so were the students and professors. One of the reasons I was present on this trip was for technical support for student blogging. The students were to blog each evening after their day in the field and then use those posts as "field notes" for when they write up their final reports. Well, all plans for blogging each night flew right out the window. It was very discouraging, at least for me, and I found it remarkable that there was this lack of reliable network access. What is this world coming to?

Then at the Miami airport, where I paid a whopping $4.95 for a mere 30 minutes of time on wireless, and on the plane coming home, I read that the U.S. is only 12th in the world with broadband access. Only 69 percent of U.S. households have high-speed access to the net. That seems way too low. But I imagine that Belize would be in single digits for household access, and this is not even broadband as the internet is served up through a telephone line and a modem. That is the way I have access in my apartment in Barbados. While I think that the U.S. and our citizenry should be number one in broadband access and there are plans to make that occur, it is clearly important for the developing world to have greater access to the information found on the web. Those without this information will be left in the dust. And internet cafes are not access.

That one exception I mentioned above, we had web access at the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre in Belmopan, where all of us – students, professors and staff – hopped on wireless and caught up on email and such. Did the students also catch up on their blogging at that time? Sadly but not surprisingly, no.

The map of Belize was grabbed from here.

Skype and Build-a-Bearville: Bridging the Miles Between Friends

We’ve been here in Barbados for twelve days but my daughter has been missing her friends a lot. Fortunately, we have Skype and Build-a-Bearville accounts to shorten the distance.

Today, I overheard this conversation while she was on the phone (aka Skype) with her good pal. My daughter’s Build-a-Bear avatar is named MaggieMay123 and her friend’s is AJ2Hip456.

MaggieMay123: Hold on, I’m going to do the Dance Sequence number 1 .

AJ2Hip456: Wait, why don’t you do the Trumpet? Okay, and I’ll dance. Start after three. 1 – 2 – 3.

And then AJ2Hip456 started dancing at the same time as MaggieMay123 played her trumpet. They both giggled.

The thing that was so nice about this interaction and the rest of their hour spent in Bearville scooting around to the Skate Park and the Coffee Shop (where they both got ‘jobs’) and Friendship Forest Park is that this is the same way these two play when they are right next to each other. It was as though there was no distance whatsoever.

My son has had his own web 2.0 interactions with another long-time friend. They Skype and talk longer on the phone than these two boys ever spoke before. They’ve played games via Skype.

When we return to Poughkeepsie, the continuity of friendship kept with these children will make it so the kids will not miss a beat.

In 2003, we lived in Trinidad for six months. We had a dial-up internet connection. There was no Skype back then. There was no Gmail. There was no Build-a-Bear or Club Penguin or Second Life. It’s like it was the dark ages and it was only six years ago. What will the fruits of the internets be in another six years?

Thoughts on the Trip

Latitude 41°41'24.00"N, Longitude 73°53'54.88"W

Back on East Coast US time and not too jet-lagged.

My blog was cut off while I was in Tibet, China. I used a Wikipedia link to the Dalai Lama; that’s when the trouble began. I couldn’t get to some of my Flickr photos that referred to the Potala Palace. Same thing happened with YouTube. My video of the Jokhang Temple was viewed over 400 times and I never linked it out. I hit the sensitive word filter and couldn’t get around it until I reached the Narita airport and a six-hour layover.

If you’ve read this blog, you know it’s totally benign. I have been on a pleasurable vacation, enjoying the scenery and stories about places I’ve never been. I may never get back to these fine places again. I thought I’d try my hand at a digital diary and share some of the locations I’ve seen. I know that there are plenty of people out there who would love to go and experience Tibet and other parts of China, as I have been lucky enough to do. I also know that the web is a resource for providing that information to anyone who cares to google. There aren’t many of us who got to get into Tibet on a tourist Visa after the March ’08 events.

I do not have an opinion about the Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism or Tibet. A two week visit to China does not an expert make. I was in Tibet for all of five days. I am not a scholar on the subjects. I can tell you what I saw. In Lhasa I saw a lot of new housing, clean streets, very few extremely poor people, and a lot of hustle and bustle as buses and taxis whirled by. I saw a wonderful vocational school for blind children. I met children who were learning English in rural Tibet. It looked like progress. As a westerner, that newness resonated with me. However, I’ve heard, too, and what seems rather clear is that all that newness comes with a cost. New businesses and housing are paid for by someone, an apparent outsider. One new friend I made on this trip said that if someone gave you 2 million dollars to improve your house, but then told you how to live, what to say, how to decorate, that new money wouldn’t feel so great.

I heard another story about monks. A man told me that his brother wanted to be a monk but the brother’s application wasn’t approved by the central government. A sure way of reducing the number of monks is to curtail the stream of young men who enter the monastery. In the past, a family would give one son to the monastery in part to guarantee a safe, protected life for that child. The number of Tibetan monks has steadily declined in recent years.

While we were in Lhasa there was a strong military presence. They would drive around in riot gear in the backs of trucks. Was it just a month away from the Olympics? Yes. Was it just a few months after the March uprising? Yes. However, again, it’s not a site a westerner is used to seeing.

I read the English-language China Daily while in China, and saw that the door remains open for talks with the Dalai Lama and Beijing. Beijing would like the Dalai Lama to come back as the Tibetan spiritual leader, nothing more.

I think there are people that live in China who are on top of the story who have mixed feelings about Tibet. Some see progress and enormous success or potential for success while others see the usurpation of Tibetan culture. Ten different people, ten different opinions.

It’s a complicated story. Read what you can. Talk to others who might have an informed opinion and, if you can, go to Tibet and see for yourself.

I know one thing. I am forever grateful for having the privilege of visiting Lhasa and Shigatse. The Tibetan landscape, sky and people are all so beautiful. I felt welcome there and would gladly go again.

Leaving Early from Beijng

I stayed up all night to get myself onto US time. I watched The Producers. No comment.

I took a cab to Terminal 3 to get on a Japan Airlines early flight. This whole Tibet/Chengdu/Beijing trip was such a great adventure.

Once I get back on US turf, I’ll talk about the shutdown of the blog. While I was killing six hours in the Narita Japan airport, I was able to get back to it and restore it.


We were in Beijing in 1996. Since then, the city has gone threw a transformation. It is really a beautiful, inviting city. It's pretty easy to get a around, thanks to all the cab drivers. There must have been a million trees planted and the buildings seem to be all fresh and new-looking. The highways are completed. It really is a city ready for its close-up with the Olympics. I hope Beijing and China get many more tourists during and after the 8/8/08 games.

Long, Scenic Drive to Shigatse, Tibet

We piled into the bus at about 8:30am for the long drive to Shigatse, Tibet. The drive is about 300km and we are taking the scenic route. Young Tour Guide told us that about 60 percent of Tibetans are farmers, 20 percent are living in urban centers, and 20 percent are nomads. Tibetans don’t usually eat fish. They are too small and can feed only one person. Tibetans prefer larger animals, like yak and goats, because they can feed more people. Also with water burials, the fish might eat the dead bodies, which is unappealing to anyone, including Tibetans.

Geology Professor gave an overview of the mountain building events (i.e., India colliding into the Eurasian continent) that caused the high elevation and varied rock terrain that we will be driving through and that we’ve been seeing already. On the drive we saw loads of evidence for rapid uplift. These mountains are moving up so fast you can practically watch it in action.

Political Science Professor gave a talk about water resources and water being the new oil.

I took video at a couple of places along the drive, when we would stop. Take a look.

Latitude 29°11'39.86"N, Longitude 90°37'2.15"E

Latitude 28.899048, Longitude 90.163417 (highest point on trip while standing 4,960.2 meters (16,270 feet))

One thing that was not video-taped was when we stopped to eat lunch. We were right next to a lake, a holy lake. We had an uninteresting box lunch prepared by the hotel. As soon as we sat down, an old woman and a young boy showed up. They lived in the nearby village. We all gathered some food from our boxes and gave it to them. They hung around the whole time while we ate and some of us took our time and wandered down to the lake side. A sheep herder wandered by with his flock. Some of the group held a baby sheep. Still the old woman and boy hung out. Then this other boy rode up on his bike. He was from the same village. “Hello.” “How are you doing?” He clearly wanted to test out his English. So I asked him how old has was, but he didn’t know what I meant, even when I pantomimed. Some Chinese speakers in the group came up and asked him his grade, “Sixth.” How old are you? “13.” When did he start learning English? “3rd grade.” He goes to school 30km away and must live there. All of this was in Chinese. We asked what he wanted to do when he grew up. “Do something useful for the world.” Priceless. It’s mind boggling to think about the fact we are in this remote area of Tibet and a poor boy from a sheep herding / farming village is learning Chinese, Tibetan, and English, as well as, Math and Social Studies and has bigger dreams.

Latitude 28°55'28.05"N, Longitude 89°35'42.82"E

We stopped at the Kumbum Monastery (Baiju Temple), which was a very active monastery in that there were many monks around doing different jobs. It was also a walled monastery, which is something we haven’t seen. And there were lots of dogs lying in the shade. At the Kumbum Monastery we were allowed to take pictures inside. So far we have not been able to take pictures inside monasteries or temples. So I took video of the monks chanting. Take a look, it’s at the end. Well, I also got some GPS readings and while I was sitting in the shade making sure the software worked, one monk walked up to me and looked over my shoulder as I was fiddling with the tablet. There wasn’t anything interesting to look at, though, because all I’m doing is collecting waypoints and then at night bring them into Google Earth to figure out where we’ve been. I can’t explain that to him. In the meantime, another monk came up to find out what was going on. So I showed them the video of my day and they really liked it up until the part about them. The video got to the monks chanting and they indicated that they see that every day. So then I showed the monks the first video I made for this trip, the one of me leaving Poughkeepsie on Metro North, and they liked that. Though I didn’t video this interaction, they told us how long they have been in the monastery (since age ten) and how old they are (one was 22 and the other 26), and that whatever they learn, they learn on their own, they don’t have a school. This was one of the best experiences I’ve had yet.

Latitude 29°15'48.74"N, Longitude 88°52'58.61"E

We got to Shigatse and checked into the Shigatse Hotel. This hotel’s lobby is beautiful, very Tibetan and colorful. The desk people and the restaurant people spoke pretty good English. The room was okay, but no in-room internet access; I’ve gotten used to unlimited access to the internet. I’ll write about this hotel for TripAdvisor.

We’ve Skyped the kids every day. I should do a whole blog entry on the wonders Skype (2.1 cents a minute!) and for that matter the marvels of the Web 2.0 world. Although this blog should be indicative of what one can do with the web these days. But you haven’t gotten to know that not only have a blogged, and uploaded photos to Panoramio and Flickr and video to YouTube, but I’ve Skyped with the kids.

It was a five star day.

Here are my placemarks for today in Google Earth.

Added the Loki Toolbar to Internet Explorer

I added the Loki toolbar for the trip to China. If you like mapping your every little move, Loki is pretty cool. If you sit at a desk all day, Loki is probably boring.

I will also bring along a tablet PC with a GPS receiver so we'll see how accurate Loki / the GPS are to one another.

Here is where I am today: 41.685476; -73.897733