The coverage of everybody’s favorite new Asian baseball team, the Republic of Indonesia, is ramping up. After winning Division 2 of the Asian Cup qualifying round in Bangkok last week RI is looking ahead to July 27-29 when it will face-off against Thailand, the Philippines and host Japan in lovely Narita, with the winner advancing to the semifinals in Sapporo where China, Taiwan and South Korea await. 

According to this article in the Jakarta Post, what RI lacks in talent it seems to make up in confidence:

The Indonesian team’s deputy captain and pitcher, Syaiful Noer, was upbeat about the prospects.
“We’ve got a chance of beating Thailand and the Philippines,” he said.

“Our team is currently more solid than theirs, and our technical abilities are slightly better.”

And naturally, behind every great Southeast Asian baseball team is a Japanese manager guiding them.

But manager and head coach Kazuto Nonaka warned there was still room for improvement among the team’s 18 players. “Not all of them are playing at the same level of skill,” he said.

“We need to organize another selection before setting off for training on June 20.”

I did a little poking around for some info on Nonaka. All I could find were some recent articles on the RI team, and this Friendster page for the Bali Red Sox, which is where Nonaka apparently cut his teeth in Indonesian baseball. I know your next question. Yes, the Bali Red Sox are “in a relationship.”

And I know your question after that — how many Major League Baseball players are from Indonesia?

Of course, it’s 6′6 Tom Mastny. Nicely played. The former Cleveland Indian Mastny now plays for the Yokohama BayStars and was born on Borneo. According to his wikipedia page Mastny’s parents are American, but are/were world travellers, explaining why he was born in Indonesia. However, he grew up in Indiana, a fact that, believe it or not, created a big mix that also gets a little ink on the wiki.  

Mastny’s birthplace was briefly the source of some confusion after the Philadelphia Daily News’s Paul Hagen reported incorrectly on August 11, 2006, “it was discovered that the [Cleveland Indians] media guide lists Indiana-born reliever Tom Mastny as being from Indonesia”. Hagen’s quote was part of a brief that was syndicated on several Internet news sites and subsequently was repeated by other writers and bloggers. That same weekend, it was reported that members of the Society for American Baseball Research had contacted Mastny’s father to confirm that, although the family hails from Indiana, the pitcher was indeed born on the Indonesian island of Borneo.
That the relatively unknown player’s biographical trivia would be subject to scrutiny is in part due to historical implications, as Mastny is the first Indonesian-born individual to reach the major leagues, as reported by Scouts, Inc. scribe Keith Law, in his July 9, 2006 column for ESPN Insider.

Wikipedia also mentions that while tigers were once common in RI, it’s numbers have dwindled in recent years. I can only assume that’s due mostly to the mass slaughter perpetrated by superiorly badassed lions living there.

Interesting BBC report on South Korea’s Yangyang International Airport, which is located in Yangyang County in Gangwon Province. Ostensibly the airport is supposed to serve the “major” cities of Sokcho and Gangneung, but, um, no one lives there (relative to other Korean cities), and those who do live there, don’t travel much, so the place is eerily empty.

Last year, according to the report, the 100+ staff at the airport served an average of 30 customers per day. Oddly, in this report you’ll see a security guard in the background — stands to reason they’d still have someone milling around a 400 million dollar investment, but, eeesh, what an odd job that would be. The reporter makes reference to another airport in the country that’s 80% completed, but has been postponed. I’m wondering where that is.

 The English Web site has been completely shut down, although the Korean version is still up.

Found on Kushibo’s blog, Monster Island.

Seriously folks, what the hell is going on over there? It’s been nearly a decade since I’d been to LAX, but what an utter sh*thole the place has turned into.

For better or for worse, I think living in Korea has made me more conscious of public perceptions and how they might affect the world at large. But what a disgrace. What a blight. I’m inclined to cut a small percentage of slack, because there were renovations going on all over the place, maybe if I go back in a year (I’ll avoid the place at all costs) it’ll have improved. Maybe they’ll have covered up the Costco-style floor in the international terminal, or cleaned the dirty counters. But if the administration of LAX is anything like the people that work there on the ground, it’ll become some kind of zombie lair cesspool. That’s right. Zombies. People who have completely checked out of life.

People are free to live their lives in any way they want, but it’d be hard to come by a group with less self-respect. Mostly what I saw were clusters of people in blue uniforms several sizes too small standing around talking, and when their sleeping pills or Vicodins finally wore off at 3 p.m., chuckling. Clearly, the last thing they wanted to be bothered with was a customer. But maybe they don’t view people flying through LAX as customers. Maybe they see themselves as free beings, not beholden to an airline company, and therefore not beholden to anyone else. Just independent free beings collecting checks. Free to say whatever pops into their head at any given moment.

I tried to imagine myself as a Korean coming to America for the first time. Flying from Incheon International Airport to LAX. It’s like flying from 2010 to 1950. I’m not exaggerating. It’s not even in the same realm of quality. The people working and running LAX cannot conceive of their airport even being in the same league as Incheon Airport. Or Busan’s Gimhae Airport for that matter. Sickening.

Immediately after walking outside the international terminal I was approached by a man carrying a clipboard, flashing a badge in front of my face. He asked me where I was going, and gave me directions to the United terminal, where I was to transfer to my plane to Phoenix. He was nice enough, but once he’d finished with the directions, he opened his clipboard and was asking for donations of $5, $20 or $50.

What is this man doing at the door of the international terminal at LAX? After I walked away, while the guy was in mid sentence, and started my 30 minute walk toward Terminal 8 (there’s no clear shuttle bus route), I was approached by three more of these people. What are they doing there? Does LAX not have the power to rid the front doors of con artists? Is this too much to ask? Again, if I’m a person arriving in America for the first time, all I want is to get back on the plane and go home.

What’s going on at LAX is unamerican. I hate to put it in that kind of context, but as an international airport representative of the country and it’s place in the world, LAX is a failure and needs to be changed. Anyone with the slightest tendency toward anti-Americanism should immediately be taken to LAX to witness proof-positive that the end is already at hand. That the scales of the world are about to be balanced. In the long-run it’ll save lives.

My idea: fire everyone associated with the airport and start from scratch. Hand it over to the Korean government and/or Korea Air. Hire people that want to work there, and make customers feel like the hundreds of dollars they’re spending on airline tickets is going somewhere.

It begins with Korea Air, as in the transportation company, which I end up flying at least a couple times a month and as many as 10 times in a month…luckily never before 1999. Korea Air had a terrible safety record during the 1980s and into the late 90s, but over the last decade has become nearly perfect and is now recognized as one of the very safest airlines in the worod. If you’ve explored this history in detail you might know about this transformation and how it happened. I had no idea.

Ostensibly this is about flight accidents. Not so much how or why they happen, but largely about something called the Power Distance Index, a concept defined by Dutch intellectual Geert Hofstede, which (according to the link) “measures the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.”

If you know anything about Korean or Asian culture you might be able to see how the above might create problems in the cockpit of an airplane. I don’t want to say much more, because I hope people will just find a comfortable place (or download it to a player) and take this all in. It’s a long section of the book — just over an hour. But if you have the patience, you’ll be rewarded with an unforgettable story. 

Note: Parts 1, 2 and 4 are each under five minutes. However Part 3 is one hour. This has to do with the files themselves. If you use the Yahoo! player I’ve embedded it will play them in order and you won’t care one way or another, but if you’re downloading them off here, you’ll want to keep that in mind. 

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

One of my favorite travel memories was a trip to Vietnam I took with my wife.  We went to the beach one day in a city called Phan Thiet, and for kicks we brought along a baseball and a couple of mitts.  We were tossing the ball around, and after a while a few locals became interested. Soon enough we had fun little practice game going, with a gang of nonplussed looking overweight Russian tourists looking on.   One local guy in his thirties really got into it, we drew home plate in the sand and he started throwing while a kid stood in the box and I called balls and strikes.

World Baseball Today recently ran a piece detailing Vietnam’s first ever baseball club, formed in Hanoi.  In three days, the team will play its first international scrimmage against a Japanese school team.  An American lawyer, Thomas Treutler, started the club and they have since secured enough equipment to practice.

Here, set to the music of Boston, is a six minute video of the kids.  The kids have a long way to go, but it’ll put a smile on your face.  The kid at 3:20 has a good short-stroke and he’s on my follow list, so back off.

S.H.E., Taiwan’s most popular singing group and purveyors of the the world’s most unlistenable music, arrived safely in the Taoyuan airport in Taiwan after being detained for hours in Beijing due to a bomb threat. The plane had already begun its runway approach when it was called back to the terminal for inspection.

The group’s luggage was inspected and bomb sniffing dogs brought in, apparently after anonymous reports of highly suspicious cuteness, fake smiles, and adorable, zany poses in photos were phoned in to local police. Fellow no-talent KTV idol and cutting-edge McDonalds poster boy Wang Lee-hom, a few other ‘artists’, and over 200 normal folks were also spared a potential cruel, fiery airline death after the threat was dealt with by police.

Chef’s commentary on the event in 5….4….3…2…1….

ESPN’s Enrique Rojas has an informative report on recent Cuban defectors Yadel Marti and Yasser Gomez. According to Rojas, the two

“left the island and are in an unknown location before attempting to reach the Dominican Republic to seek an MLB career”….Players’ relatives and friends in Cuba confirmed their departure, without disclosing details of the planned route.

The right-handed Marti shined at the 2006 WBC with 12 plus shutout innings, while Gomez is a speedy outfielder. Wishing good luck and safe passage to both of them.

The wine made and sold at the wine tunnel is not from grapes, but persimmons. The manager told me 90% of the persimmons grown in Korea are from Cheongdo and there are trees bearing the fruit all over the city. It’s actually quite tasty. I wouldn’t substitute it for red or white wine, but I’d rank it up there with bek se ju, maesil, bokbunja and other Korean alcohols made from flowers or fruits. Plus it’s good for man. As is my article.

Actually, if I lived in Korea and was looking to impress someone I’d try to get up there now. Very quaint and romantic little town with frosty permission trees all over the place. The alcohol/colonial-era architecture combo isn’t bad either. There are directions and info in the article.

Had the pleasure of attending the Guang Hai Cup (or “CARE” cup) in Taitung over the past weekend. It featured eight of Taiwan’s major high school programs, teams of primarily aboriginal kids from the East coast of Taiwan. Eastern Taiwan is a terrestrial paradise, a far departure from the smog, noise, pollution, and industry that typifies most of the Western coast of the island. It is also the birthplace of a large percentage of Taiwanese baseball players– mostly of aboriginal descent–that descend from groups like Amis and Bunun.

Those few scouts who made the long trek out to Taitung–its remote location makes it a bit of a hassle to get to–were rewarded with several days of intense baseball in paradise. This year’s cup featured some dominating pitching performances. I can’t say who it was but there are sites that cover that in more detail.

Sadly, the tournament saw its funding reduced from the government this year.

I always enjoy scouting, but Taitung is my favorite place to scout in Taiwan. It’s a very good chance to see the often marginalized aboriginal cultures in Taiwan as well as watching games. As scouts, its easy to get caught up in the banal gossip of dollar signs, who signed who, etc. But if you have your eyes open a bit you can understand the cultures and places you’re working in, gain a deeper understanding of the territory.

Got to do my first ever TV interview, which if my poor Chinese-speaking brain understood correctly, will air next spring in a documentary following two Taipei County high school players. Apparently the filmmaker, Li Tsu-Mei, has been following them since elementary school and charted their development all through high school.

In Nigeria

Among the programmes slated for early next year is meeting with the America Ambassador in Nigeria.

“That will be a good starting point for us because America is the home of baseball and the meeting with the Ambassador will open doors for us to reach other America companies in Nigeria”, explains Jani Mohammed who is also the proprietor of LUBCON Oil.

There’s something about the combination of Nigera, baseball and oil that doesn’t quite work for me. But like I said, this is a job for Jackson Broder if there ever was one.

(Courtesy Baseball Think Factory)

Currently sitting in Newark airport during a 6 hour delay awaiting return to Taiwan from the Perfect Game USA tournament in Jupiter, Florida, a 5-day overwhelming extravaganza featuring top high school prospects from the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Strictly for the hard core, the tournament featured games from 8:00 AM until 10:30 PM on over 10 different fields at any given time.

Given the shiny new non-disclosure clause in my contract, I’m not able to discuss what I saw (except a lot of middle aged dudes in golf carts), but for a fee, the website tells you everything you need to know. After paying 3.50 of my meal money for sodas, I’m not biting, but for those of you who absolutely need to know what 15-17 year old pitchers are throwing at, go ahead and spend your hard earned cash.

It’s been over a week since I’ve posted–props to Aaron for his usual amazing effort keeping the site going. A lot has gone down over the last week:

As mentioned in the post below, Lo Chia-Jen finally signed.

As the Phillies knock on the door of their first series since Schmidtty, am I the only one that thinks he looks more like Jerry Stiller every day?

The Tigers have signed former Phillies area scout Kevin Hooker as their Pacific Rim Coordinator. Congrats to Mr. Hooker.

Note to women of the world: The professions of scouting and baseball upper managment needs you. Badly. (Are you reading, Deanna?) After 5 days of Red Man, golf stories, beer guts, khaki slacks and polo shirts, the glaring gender imbalance in the world of baseball operations became all-too-clear.

OK, one tidbit from Jupiter: 11 PM post-Perfect Game dining of choice for exhausted Twinkies scouts in Jupiter: Outback? Hardly. The venerable South Florida fast-food stalwart Pollo Tropical. If you’re in Florida, run don’t walk.

That’s it, I’m putting my @#$%@$# foot down: I’m done with the CPBL. Done. I’m leaving you, girl. You can’t hurt me no more. By now, the latest mafia-driven gambling scandal that brought down the D-Media T Rex is old hat. This leaves 5 teams. Fixed matches, empty seats. For those of you who are either a. scouts looking to mine the league for its potential free agents if it collapses or b. have the misfortune of still caring about that league, here’s your source of info. Chen Chin-Feng’s stats are wicked. Go get him.

I guess I should include some disclosure here. I grew up in California, but I have two uncles that have lived in Las Vegas most of my life. So as a kid I went to Vegas often. Not to the point of where it was a second home — I doubt anyone can truly feel at home in Las Vegas, even if they’ve lived there their entire life.

The last time I was there I saw this little Chinatown. It’s not far from the fledgling, wanabe Koreatown. I think establishing these places in Las Vegas would be a real boon since there are so many tourists from Asia that go to Vegas. This is from a New York Times piece on the LVCT:

But ask any Chinese tourist and you’ll find that Las Vegas’s Chinatown is high on their checklist. Tour buses regularly motor a mile off the Strip to stop at Chinatown Plaza, an open-air mall founded in 1994 by James Chen, a developer who envisioned a Chinatown that was different from the one he first saw when he arrived in Los Angeles as an immigrant in 1971.

“Since the whole town of Las Vegas is man-made anyway, I thought, ‘Why not build a Chinatown to serve the needs of the growing Chinese population?’” Mr. Chen said.

After a few bumpy years, Chinatown has lately become a surprisingly popular destination for residents, who come to eat, shop for groceries and get the Chinese newspaper, which is published on the site. A welcome arch is planted at the entrance to the parking lot; turned-up eaves and tiled roofs adorn the mall’s skyline.

There’s even a mention of said Koreatown. We actually ate Korean food in Las Vegas at a samgyupsal restaurant. Not bad, but as most Korean food in the states, unreasonably expensive. About $60 for three people.

Indeed, a recent tour through the neighborhood saw evidence of more coming soon, in a large empty lot several miles west of the plaza. A prominent sign staking out the space read, “KOREATOWN!”

Over the weekend I wrote a  piece  for the  travel and culture magazine  Seoul about Busan.  One of the things I wanted to include was an Anchang Village, a fairly remote place in the mountains. If you’ve ever been to Busan you know it’s something like a city dropped into a mountain range by the sea. Anchang Village is technically downtown (near Seomyeon), but is hidden and at the end of a small bus line up in the hills.

The village itself looks somewhat dilapidated — like it was mostly constructed during the 70s and 80s and hasn’t changed much since. South Korea was a very different place in the 70s and 80s than it is today — so the  difference is great. There’s some farming up there, but parts of the city stretch up and into Anchang… so it’s not like you could own a cattle ranch.

But the surprise of Anchang, and the reason I originally went there with my wife, is because there are about 30 duck bulgogi restaurants there. I’ve only ever eaten at one (because it was the one my wife’s parents had gone to) but  it was amazing. In Korea if a successful business opens up it’s common for another selling the same service or dish to open up right next to it. Anchang would be a pretty extreme version of that, I guess.

I did a search on Anchang and came up with very little in English, let alone Korean. But what I did find is the piece pictured above, created by a 28-year-old Korean living in London — Choi So-young. What really caught my eye was the amount of money it sold for — $69,960.

But what also surprised me is the fact that her work is made of old jeans.  Apparently Choi often works with denim, and I even found a call for donations of used jeans for future pieces (via London Korea Links).

I dug deeper and found that another (above) of Choi’s pieces sold for $202,012 just last week at what was a record setting Asian art acution  put on by Christie’s, the art auction house. This piece is of Gwangan Bridge (transliterated by Choi as “Kwang-Ahn Bridge”) also in Busan.

I think Choi just became a very wealthy lady. I have mixed feelings about commercial fine art and I despise the industry, press  and public that promotes it, but as far as I can see Choi just sold at least 10 pieces totalling close to a million dollars. Good for her…I guess.

Strike up the band. Construction of Pyongyang’s Ryugyong Hotel has resumed.  

Famine? What famine? Who needs a famine when you’ve got the world’s greatest architect building the world’s greatest hotel that will surely contain the world’s greatest buffet.

Table for 2 million kind sir!

From Marmot’s Hole:

According to Yonhap News, multiple sources have confirmed that construction work has restarted on Pyongyang’s Ryugyong Hotel, quite possibly the world’s creepiest piece of architecture.

Recent visitors to Pyongyang have witnessed work ongoing at the site.

Construction on the 105-story hotel began in 1989 using French capital, but as North Korea’s economic situation took a turn for the worse, construction was halted in the early 90s.

The work will reportedly be funded by an Egyptian firm.

For those not so familiar with the Ryugyong, this from Wikipedia:

The Ryugyong The Ryugyong Hotel (Korean: 류경호텔)(or Ryu-Gyong Hotel or Yu-Kyung Hotel) is an unfinished concrete skyscraper. It is intended for use as a hotel in Sojang-dong, in the Potong-gang District of Pyongyang, North Korea. The hotel’s name comes from one of the historic names for Pyongyang: Ryugyong, or “capital of willows.” Its 105 stories rise to a height of 330 m (1,083 ft), and it contains 360,000 m ² (3.9 million square feet) of floor space, making it the most prominent feature of the city’s skyline and by far the largest structure in the country. Construction started in 1987 and ceased in 1992 due to financial difficulties.

Personally I always found this idea of disposing of the Ryugyong pretty funny.

I’ve disliked Richard Quest for a long time. In fact, he’s a big reason I stopped watching CNN International. It’s not so much what he says, but rather his incessant chatterbox positivism (no, not the Auguste Comte  variety) and rolly-polly, overly-emotive British accent. He’s like Robin Leach on crack. No wait…make that speed.

Quest has always been annoying, but within the last few years he became downright offensive when he started doing his faux-Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous CNN business traveller show, which was eventually (egotistically) renamed “Quest.” I never watched the show for longer than the time it took for me to become conscious he was snewling (yes, I just made up that word)  through a segment  about diamond-tipped fountain pens in South Africa, or a luxury skiing expedition in Nepal, walk over to the TV, and  turn it off.

Quest was busted in Central Park last night, ultimately, for breaking curfew. He happened to have, according to Reuters, “what looked like methamphetamines” in his pocket…whatever that means. Maybe he had  vitamins and  the policemen decided not to check. Maybe dealing with Quest for five minutes wore them out and they didn’t care what he had in his pocket.    

Quest later appeared before State Court Judge Anthony Ferrara (whose name I mention only because he obviously let  someone busted for drugs off the hook) who ruled  the case would be dismissed if Quest attends counseling. Lovely. I’m sure that happens all the time to people picked up for having methamphetamines in Central Park.

Since the NYPD let him off I doubt he’ll be booted from CNN International. But if by some accident I end up in a room  with a TV broadcasting his  bubbly ass, chattering a mile a minute as he drives a Lamborghini through the Gaza Strip —  I’ll know exactly what’s up.

Apparently he’s just finishing up school, and won’t begin a teaching job until the fall. As he puts it, “What would any normal person do if they had 2 and a half months off during summer? Tour every ballpark in the country (& Canada), of course.”

Here’s his itinerary:

May 30-HOU @ MIL
May 31-NYY @ MIN
Jun 02-LAA @ SEA
Jun 04-NYM @ SFG
Jun 06-LAA @ OAK
Jun 08-CHC @ LAD
Jun 09-TBR @ LAA
Jun 11-LAD @ SDP
Jun 13-KCR @ ARI
Jun 17-CLE @ COL
Jun 18-CLE @ COL
Jun 19-CLE @ COL
Jun 20-SFG @ KCR
Jun 24-STL @ DET
Jun 25-SFG @ CLE
Jun 26-CIN @ TOR
Jun 27-TBR @ PIT
Jun 30-WAS @ FLA
Jul 01-BOS @ TBR
Jul 02-PHI @ ATL
Jul 03-NYM @ STL
Jul 07-MIN @ BOS
Jul 08-TBR @ NYY
Jul 09-SFG @ NYM
Jul 10-STL @ PHI
Jul 11-HOU @ WAS
Jul 12-HOU @ WAS
Jul 13-HOU @ WAS
Jul 17-NYM @ BAL
Jul 20-NYM @ CIN
Jul 23-TEX @ CWS
Jul 24-FLA @ CHC
Jul 29-SEA @ TEX
Aug 01-NYM @ HOU

Thing is, when you come out and write something like this on your site, and people comment and link to it, you can’t blow it, or any of it, off. This is a great trip…on paper. Not sticking to the schedule, and of course doing full reports on your site, could be the death knell for said site.

I’m exaggerating a little, but hopefully he’ll do some reporting on this as he goes along.

You are lounging in a warm plunge pool in the garden of a private villa while listening to “The Goldberg Variations.” Your robe and slippers are on the floor where you dropped them, right near the giant, pillow-mounded platform bed. You are thinking about having a brie omelet for breakfast, then a spa foot massage or a ginseng facial. You know you won’t have to tell the bartender how to mix a dry martini when you order one before dinner.Are you at Vermont’s luxurious Twin Farms resort and spa or the Plaza Athénée in Paris? Not even close.

I’m in Sudan, aren’t I?

You are at the Banyan Tree in the mountains of southwestern China, at one of the sophisticated new luxury hotels springing up all over the country.

Oh. I guess I should have known from the Bach and brie. Well, I guess China’s not so bad. At least I can count on good service, thousands of years in the making.

In Beijing alone, several new high-end hotels – including a Four Seasons and Mandarin Oriental – are due to open by the start of the Olympics in August.

You used to be able to count the number of China’s five-star hotels on five fingers, so the emergence of world-class accommodations here is welcome news for travelers.

Travel writing is a fairly lame exercise. I’m sure Susan Spano of the Los Angeles Times loves going to expensive hotels and resorts for free, but it’s kind like a deal with the devil because you still have to write about it and try to both sound like a know-it-all-snob, but  not to sound too much like a snob because the majority of the people reading your paper do so at an eighth-grade level. So what do you do? You get lost in a world of your own where you start trying to turn stupid things like looking for hair-dryers and boring excursions to historical sites you researched on the plane ride over, into a cohesive narrative.  

You also  readily employ  lame devices like writing in the second person during your introduction.

China’s new luxe lodgings come with all the flourishes: state-of-the-art electronics, exceptional settings, international cuisine, dreamy spas and designer decor. Better still, the rates sometimes are appreciably lower than at such accommodations in the West.

But in other ways, Chinese hotels don’t always live up to their stars, partly because the government-sponsored rating system is based on facilities only, neglecting the quality of service.

Ah yes, those cheatin’ sneaky commies. How dare they fuck with my luxe stay, my gadgets and finger sandwiches — in the name of making  a buck?  

“There are many five-star hotels in China that would be lucky to achieve a four-star rating in other countries,” said Damien Little, a director for the hotel consulting group Horwath HTL in Beijing.

The chief stumbling block has been the dearth of well-trained personnel. “The number of quality staff is limited, owing to the poor level of hospitality schooling in China,” said Guy Rubin, Beijing-based managing partner of Imperial Tours, which specializes in luxury trips to China. “Graduates are surprisingly ignorant of the service levels expected of them.”

What the hell is wrong with these people that they don’t have a decent hospitality school in all of South China? And furthermore, even the little bastards that do manage to find a hospitality school and graduate from it STILL don’t know what my inner-colonialist craves. They don’t know the Goldberg Variations from fucking Whoopi Goldberg.

Last spring, wanting to find what luxury means in China, I stayed at some of the highly touted new hotels: the Banyan Tree in Lijiang, the Hotel of Modern Art near Guilin in southern China and the Commune by the Great Wall, about 50 miles north of Beijing.

I’ll tell you what luxury means —  luxe brie omelets in one of China’s poorest provinces, baby. Still, you’d think that’d make for good service wouldn’t you?

It wasn’t exactly a hardship posting, and there were wonderful surprises. But on other occasions, simply asking for a blow-dryer caused enough consternation to make me feel like a despotic empress.

And you were an empress. You were an empress from a faraway land. The kind of empress fit to be carried on the backs of six neutered, bald servants, taken to a state-of-the-art electronics store where you can buy a hair-dryer, take it back to your half eaten omelet and beat the poorly trained fuckface manager who never went to a proper hospitality school. Hit him! HIT HIM!

Banyan Tree Lijiang

There comes a point in almost every trip to China when travelers need a break from guides and tours, when they would give an army of terra-cotta warriors for a cup of freshly brewed coffee or when they don’t want to see another indecipherable restaurant menu or spend another night on a hard Chinese bed.

Sing it to me sister! Fuck those thousands of years old clay pigeons and give me some Starbucks. And while you’re at it get that gobbledygook scribble of a language out of my face and bring in a fresh cart of Panda Express. And when you’re done with that go pick up that little guy over there and beat my bed with his head until the mattress is nice and soft because I’ve had a hell of a day walking around this designer hotel.

That’s the time for the Banyan Tree Lijiang, which opened in 2006.

Banyan Tree is a small, Singapore-based hotel chain that specializes in flawless service, tasteful hedonism, eco-friendly operations and extraordinary scenery such as that around Lijiang, 120 miles from Yunnan’s capital Kunming in the far southwestern corner of China.

Visitors come here to see the mountains and enjoy the culture of the Naxi people, one of China’s most colorful ethnic minorities. Naxi arts and crafts are on display in the beautifully preserved old town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of glacier-fed canals, cobblestone streets, bridges and shop houses.

It’s a little known fact that Yunan Province, in addition to having the highest number of AIDS cases in China, is also the epicenter of tasteful hedonism.  Though there’s nothing tasteful about those little Nakhi, who only speak babble, also known as the Naxi language. You end up liking them because they’re small and cute. Like elves. Musical elves. They play this cute traditional music and run around singing and…well, being colorful.

Modern development is fast claiming the wide, mountain-rimmed valley, so it was wise of Banyan Tree to choose a site in the bucolic farm fields about five miles outside town.

Tis sad, tis sad. Soon enough the view from my window will be filled with Starbucks,  Sharper Images and European discotheques. Even from five miles away. I hope those little people find some place to go on being cute and colorful. Hmm…maybe someone should open a hospitality school.

Besides strolling and shopping for Naxi crafts in the nearby village of Shuhe, hotel guests go horseback riding in the foothills or trek in nearby Tiger Leaping Gorge. But, honestly, it’s hard to leave the compound once you pass through the peak-roofed portal.

Like the Forbidden City in Beijing, the hotel is symmetrically arranged around a series of ever-widening courtyards that yield to a shop, lounge, bar and the Banyan Tree’s two restaurants, one serving elegant Chinese cuisine, the other contemporary Asian fusion.

You know, it really is like the Forbidden City. Because the Forbidden City was built by slaves for an emperor to keep outsiders out and royalty in. And when the day is done, and I’m scrambling around like a blind servant  in search of a latte, and I’m tired of the off key caterwauling of the Naxis, believe me or you, I want to indulge in some tasteful hedonism — like getting my feet massaged by a properly trained whatchamacallit that can, you know, parle’ vous some anglais. I might even order me up a Big Eyed Tuna Pizza and a dry martini from that Asian fusion joint downstairs.

Beyond that, a network of canals feeds into a broad reflecting pool fringed by weeping willows. The branches were strung with red lanterns, a breathtaking sight when illuminated at night.

Most of the guests were tourists from the West, Hong Kong and Taiwan able to pay rates – starting around $500 a night – that are high by any standard. Besides the sophisticated, pitch-perfect staff, made up of workers from all over Asia, I saw few other people because each of the hotel’s 55 chambers is a supremely private, single-story villa surrounded by its own gray brick wall.

My simple but elegant quarters were decorated with contemporary Chinese fabrics, lamps and furniture. To the right, the bedroom opened onto a palatial bath and dressing area. To the left, was a small lounge with a settee.

But the room’s true glory was the stunning view from the sliding-glass window: Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, actually a series of peaks, stretching 20 miles from north to south and topping out at 18,360 feet. Cloud banks stream by its face so fast that watching the mountain is like looking out the window of a speeding train.

I passed a long afternoon that way. I needed nothing else, except that dry martini that arrived at sunset, perfectly shaken, not stirred.

I like the way Barbara is highlighting that the workers are from all over Asia. As opposed to what? A staff exclusively from just about the poorest place in Asia…Yunan province? So there are Japanese and Korean people  working there too? Might be, because they certainly weren’t visiting amongst all the people from Hong Kong and Taiwan who were mingling with those people from “The West.”

The tricky part is the price.

Americans who’d like to take a peek behind North Korea’s Iron Curtain, including the zone have a chance to do so this fall with two tours offered by Snow Lion Expeditions (www.snowlion.com), a Salt Lake City-based travel company. “We have a crack in the door for Americans to get in,” said Steve Pastorino, vice president of marketing for the company, who has found a way to procure visas for Americans through a partnership with Koryo, a British consortium of documentary filmmakers and tour guides who work regularly in North Korea. The 11-day tours visit both North and South Korea, using Beijing as a home base. Highlights of the itinerary include attending the Mass Games, a color-coded, athletic performance organized by the state, and visiting sites like Kumsusan Memorial Palace, the mausoleum of Kim Il-Sung. The trip starts at $5,895, including guides, lodging, meals and admission — but not flights.

Plus you have to live with the fact that you’re paying for the Tuna Fish Eye Pizza Kim Jong-il is eating off the backs of prostitutes flown in from the world over.