November 13, 2024
I left Bangkok on Friday November 1st. Destination, Paris where I spent the night and part of Saturday before taking another flight to Zurich and then Johannesburg and Maputo. The beginning of a ~5 weeks trip that also includes Rabat, Quito, Cartagena, Panama (sailing BEHEMOTH), and San Diego. From there back to Bangkok, flying west, to close the loop.
Thursday I came back to Paris to visit my daughter Sofia. And yesterday I flew to Rabat where I m now writing at the bar in Hotel Villa Mandarine. My fellow drinker — although we never exchange a word for the lack of a common language — is also sitting here. He comes every day (except on weekends), at the same time (~18:00), sits at the same spot, and always orders the same (scotch). I must have written about him in a previous post. Moroccan, in his late 30s, big, bald, and I assume relatively wealthy to afford the daily tabs in a place where a G&T costs USD 10.
The couple of weeks in BKK before my departure were not the best. I had surgery on Monday October 14th. Nothing serious, but still was put under and had to endure three days at the hospital followed by daily checks up’s. On Sunday the 20th, Natalia flew to China and I drove to Hua Hin with Woland. I spent the week and weekend there working on the report I presented in Mozambique and drove back to BKK on Wednesday (that would be the 30th) to see Natalia who was arriving that night. I travelled the next day and she one day later to Latvia to visit her mother.
The trip to Mozambique was pleasant even if it wasn’t the best time to go. If you have been following, a few weeks ago there were elections and, according to the opposition leader who lost, they were rigged. Not uncommon in places where the incumbent president, usually a man, has been on the job for more than two decades. Similar to what happened in Venezuela earlier this year, there were large mobilizations, mostly peaceful, and mainly around Maputo. I was not staying in the capital though, but in Punta do Ouro, by the Indian Ocean, a couple of hours drive North-East. We congregated there with a few government officials — not elected officials — and colleagues from the International Labor Organization (not my employer, I don’t have one). It is a beautiful place, in a setting I hand’t experienced before, with mountains slopping down to sand dunes that eventually collapse into an immensely long, deserted, beach that reaches the confines of South Africa. The ocean is aggressive there, rumbling with dramatic colors and expressions that shift with the wind and the time of the day. Impossible to run on that beach, the sand is too soft, but I went for daily walks.
In Punta do Ouro we were shielded from the revolution — the word used by the opposition leader –, but even when I came back to the capital to take my flight to Johannesburg the road to the airport was tightly guarded. Sadly, like in Venezuela, in a few weeks time everything will be forgotten and the current president will stay on the job.
The other event that took place while in Punta was the re-election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States of America, this time with a very comfortable majority. Mozambicans had more consequential issues to worry about. With the other colleagues though, we had endless discussions over drinks and dinner. And a lot of commentary has been written by the pundits about one of the most improbable political come backs. I will just say here that the conclusion cannot be that “there is a problem with the American people.” I believe in the theory of the irrational voter in America and elsewhere; Brian Caplan has written a very insightful book about it. People might have voted against the status-quo without considering the possibility that the change could be far worse. Still, it shows how disillusioned and disaffected some of them are with the intellectual elites running the government. A time for reckoning.
In any case, this post is becoming very long. To go back to the trip, Paris was beautiful as always. Sofia and I went for a long run by the Seine on Friday and walks around the city every day. Unfortunately, next Wednesday she is moving back to DC where her mother got a new job. She might come and live with us in Thailand for a while, maybe in January or perhaps before, for Christmas. She will miss Paris.
I just moved to a table in the hotel’s restaurant. Have ordered a glass of Moroccan red (Amal), a mixture of briwats, and a lamb méchoui. I’m quite tired and will go to bed early with this new book I m reading, “The Plot” by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Highly recommended.
Sailing to the Pacific 