Pics posted.

Thats it.

Capsule Hotel Fun

I had to. I just had to. Where else in the world can you sleep in your own plastic tube? My "room" number was 8-16. Floor eight is reserved for women, marked by a sign that reads "keep out, man". Which man is not allowed remains unknown. I forgot to count the number of units were piled bee-comb like into the hall, but I'm sure the owners of the Capsule Hotel Riverside (you can actually see the river) are cleaning up nicely at 300 yen (about $30) a head. I'm estimating you can cram about 160 people into the building, which is super, well, skinny, as you might imagine. It makes sense that in such a packed city that hotels should take up as small amount of land as possible. Luggage is stored in lockers, since there's pretty much just enough room for a reclined person. Laying down, (crouching is almost out of the question), I can touch the ceiling and all the walls with my feet and arms at once, cause I'm tall and all, as some of you may have observed. It looks like the inside of a spaceship, with lots of buttons and practically no seams or blemishes in the gleaming white plastic. Inside, there is a mirror, a television mounted into the ceiling, a small shelf where the light switch, TV and radio controls and an alarm are molded into. The door is a roll-up curtain, and I'm lucky the others didn't snore, but I'm sure it would have been ok since I'm still on "orchard time", 6 am to a truly pathetic 8:30 pm.
I spent the night trying to swing my internal clock to a 20-something backpacker acceptable timetable, so I took on a manga kissa. Manga is Japanime comic books, and kissa is short for kissaten, which is Japanese for cafe. Its basically a floor half filled with cubicles, half with bookshelves holding manga, DVDs and video games. You rent a cubicle for a disgusting 400 yen for 30 minutes, which contains a comfy recliner and a spiffy computer. They're open for 24 hours, and there's a special price if you stay for 8 hours, which is ideal if you miss the last train home after a night out in Roppongi and need a place to crash that's cheaper than a taxi home, or if you're nerd. I checked my email and watched Dark Knight and took advantage of the free drinks, dispensed by an absurd number of vending machines.

Panda Food

After saying goodbye to the rosy cherry blossoms, I began to notice the bamboo forests. From afar, they sit lightly against the distant mountains, like snow on a tree, as if a gentle breeze would easily deroot them and send them floating. They tiny paintbrush-tip leaves don"t flutter, but ripple in lovely waves. Sun shines dully through their hollow trunk, green glowing bars of forests topped with feathery pompoms. They never cease growing, so they bend and creak, only audible in profusely planted yet empty forests. The small stilted temples tucked amongst the panda food wouldn't seem appropriate anywhere else. The narrow pointed laves cover the ground, concealing new sprouts like elegant emerald swipes from a calligraphy paintbrush.

Bowing and Apologizing in Japan

Am I still in Asia? Have I stepped into the Bizarroworld of Asia? Cause I seem to remember a continent where they serve dog as food and children are encouraged by their parents to pee on the sidewalks, like, well, dogs. I guess that I have officially left the continent now. I met up with my mom and Judy, in Tokyo, and promptly bought a Japanese grammar book and dictionary to trudge up distant memories of the three years of Japanese I took in college. Luckily, the majority of Japanese conversations consist of niceties, including whole strings of apologies and thank yous, with almost giddy, contagious bowing. Also, the Japanese actually speak English, which is a relief after struggling through six weeks in China.

The cities are impeccably clean, and the people are more terrified of getting sick than those pill-popping Americans, you know the ones. I had a nasty cough when I arrived into Narita airport a few weeks ago, and it didn`t take me long to notice that people were avoiding me like the plague, and the unlucky few that were stuck sitting next to me on the shuttle bus into town shuddered every time I took a raspy breath and cowered in fear, handkerchiefs clutched to faces, each time I cleared my throat. I refused, refused, however to buy a face mask the doctors, and apparently, the Japanese wear.

Everything here costs your first born male, to boot. We tried to go to the movies. 18 dollars a head. We tried to go to the park. 10 dollars. We did decide, however, to splurge on a Kobe beef dinner. The cows are rumored to get nightly massages and fed beer, which would explain the butter-soft texture. The restaurant, overlooking a stream running with soft cherry blossom petals, offered Kobe beef and Kobe beef exclusively, paired with really good red wine. The beef is grilled simply with garlic and olive oil, is served in small pieces with chopsticks, and you can cut the meat easily with your teeth. It was superb.

The cherry blossoms came, and I suspect, have gone, judging by the rain currently falling outside. They bloom for about two weeks, and we hit the best time here in Kyoto. We found every pretty stroll located around the city, the lanes crawling with tourists cooing over the baby ducks and the light breezes that pull the blossoms off of the trees, showering down into hair and eyelashes. Its all pretty spectacular, especially considering the fleetingness of it all.

More pics on Flickr.com

Got into Japan, am now travelling with Mom and Judy. We got into Kyoto last night, where we will be staying for about three weeks. Weve got a computer now, so write me and let me know whats happening on your sides of the world, wherever side you find yourself on. Kisses to all.

So Long China, catch ya on the flip side.

Considering I see curious similarities between China and India, I'm adopting old habits from five months ago.

Behold, the new golden age of Bizarre Observations in China.
All children have holes in the crotch of their pants, which their parents either cut out, or purchase4 designed in this manner. The parents take the baby, arms tucked under knees and supporting their upper backs, and have their children piss wherever they find themselves. Usually this takes place in the road or on the sidewalk, but today I saw a grandma encourage the child to piss on the floor of a packed local bus, and another young woman encourage her daughter to piss on the floor of the ladies room, while there were dozens of available toilets.
OK, so I wont go into the toilet situation too much, speaking of which, except to say that at some of the less desirable pit-stops, the facilities are in dire condition. There are no stalls, simply a large open-aired trough angled slightly towards a constantly blocked drain that you straddle along side everyone else. I'm under the impression that looking others in the ye is extremely taboo in such conditions, as I imagine is eh the case in men's urinal. I can unfortunately say that Chinese toilets are among the most revolting that I've yet to see, bypassing Turkish toilets by the busload, and just passing Indian.
In accordance to what I've heard other say about Chinese food (except Mark, who loves the stuff), Julie and I have been extremely disappointed. After many bizarre meals (last night, Meat Jam and English Farm was on the menu), Ive accepted the daily fare of noodle soup from the Muslim shops. There is always a small man in a paper hat out front swinging pasta like taffy (for those of you living in the Santa Cruz area), then lacing fingers in the dough and pulling out four or five times to arms-length like they're separating wool. Each strand is two meters long, so you are constantly slurping, trying to avoid flinging spicy sauce in your eye, or Julies eye, or wallowing a strand that still has a meter left to go.
When you meet someone for the first time in China, the standard procedure question, instead of "how are you?", is "have you eaten rice yet?" I love this.
As Ive noted on my facebook page, the piece de resistance, however is the rocket it. My German friend Tobias told me that once he was having a beer with his Chinese friend, who marvelled about how many rockets they must use in a country as foggy and rainy as Germany He explained that during the Olympics and especially dismal weather, Chinese officials shoot a rocket into the sky to clear the clouds or some such ridiculousness. Are you hearing me correctly people? The Chinese are controlling the FRIGGING WEATHER! Consider yourselves forewarned

Last night I dined with 15 Chinese men

Ok, well Julie and three German guys we met were there too, but it was hard to notice their existence over the drunk army of kind but extremely loud men. We were walking back from the beach arouhd midnight in Sanya on the Chinese island of Hainan, when I was called over to have a nice little ganpai (cheers). This is pretty normal, I get this whenever I am out late, being a whitey and all. I decided to endulge in the famous, or rather infamous, Chinese hospitality. When you eat in China, you eat out of a small bowl half full of white rice, and you pull pieces of meat or vegetables out of the big bowls on the table, family style. Hands jut out over the many plates full of tofu, braised bok choy and grilled chicken, agile chopsticks plucking morsels of food. Since we were guests, we paid for nothing, plus our small tea cups full of beer were never empty and our bowls brimming with food. We had nothing to offer them, but nice photo ops for their families back on the mainland, no doubt (Hainan is a vacation spot for Chinese tourists, since its the most southern point in China).The men plopped pieces of food in my bowl to show me that I was welcome at the table, and whenever someoen at the table said 'ganpai', everyone at the table had to stand up, shout something and drain your glass. Keep in mind that this was AFTER we polished off our own beers at the beach. Suddenly, the men all stood up and indicated by their manner of walking that they were drunk, and split. The five of us were left at a table with fifteen half drunk beers and whole un touched plates, the bill taken care of. Gotta love China.

Photos, PHOTOS GALORE!!

So, little miss Swiss Julie and I are happily tramping around Hainan, that big ass island in the south of China. We couldn't swing the cold anymore (people, I was wearing two pairs of socks, long johns, jeans, one tank top, two long sleeved shirts, a sweater, a jacket, a beanie, a scarf and a pair of gloves the other day. Boo.), so we escaped to the most southern point in China. It reminds me of SE Asia, and this makes me very happy. I've put up some pics of the end of Laos and the beginning of China onto my flickr.com account. I wish you could see it here. Its awesome. Nuff said. Check yas lates.

Wlecom to China

People in China don't really have a tendency to speak English. On top of that, they launch into I'm sure very eloquent dialogues to me. When I indicate with rudimentary hand signals that I don't understand, they write it down, which is, in some way, less helpful. Its been four days now and I'm beginning to fear I may never meet another English speaker again. Ever. China's a huge friggin country, so the typical tourist trail is all but non-existent. I suppose it doesn't help that i gravitate to backwater villages. In China, however, backwater villages are of a different caliber than those found in SE Asia. There, animals outnumber humans. In China, the population of a "small city" is in the tens of thousands, and yet I am still be woken occasionally by an odd rooster, strangely enough. You can take the Asian out of the village, I guess. I had spent almost four months in SE Asia, and like the shock I received arriving from Nepal, China is taking a bit of getting used to. It's imperative, for example, to learn words that I could get away with in English in other countries, like toilet or bus. I simply receive lost faces here, which means I've been picking up some Mandarin with astounding difficulty. I've abandoned my methods I used successfully to attain comprehension in other countries. Left hand, palm up, I say "English, toilet." Right hand, palm up, I say "Chinese...?" This isn't working here. I think Ill tack this up to the fact that being a world power, like Americans, the Chinese aren't obligated to learn another language, even English. The Chinglish sings I see are a constant source o endless amusement. "Civilized behavior of tourists is another bright scenery rational shopping." Started out alright, didn't it? And the staring, wow. After just five days here, I believe that a stare off between and Indian and a Chinese would be a close tie. The difference here is that if you smile at a Chinese, they beam. The ways they use to get a good look is hilariously transparent. I figured sitting and people-watching a bit away from the main drag in Dali, Yunnan, I would get a respite from the soul-burning stares. Au contraire. Sitting suggests immobility, which forces those intent to gawk to adopt new innovation strategies. One guy tied his shoe for almost five minutes. A couple took turns standing in front of the dilapidated ship i was resting against for a nice little photo-op with the huge white chick.
The travellers whose conversations i have eavesdropped have all lived in China for some time. Most of them speak an admiral amount of Mandarin, which is saying worlds compared to the tourists in SE Asia and South Asia, who usually can't count to three. They intimidate me slightly. China is something to conquer compared to 2 week vacation land on the beaches in Thailand or the ashram (slash pot) junkies in India.
Morning exercises I saw this morning on early arrival in Kunming was, frankly, hilarious. There was public tai chi classes, which I expected from China. Think women in high heels and purse along side old men with wispy beards doing " the Pensive Dragon" or whatever. I saw lots of individuals holding their own private sessions in abandoned parking lots with short red flags. Shop owners patting their thighs, butt and back of the head. Badminton at seven am in the dark is also quite popular. My favorite was the old woman in full track suit gear walking backwards. All sport store ads feature a straight faced ping pong player in mid swing and Tao Ming, China's beloved gift to the NBA. In larger cities, like in Kunming, each corner is manned by a supplement to the crossing signals. A grumpy man or woman sporting berating speeding bicycles and shaking an angry red flag at cars who run red lights. Wlecom to China indeed.

Senor Elephante es gris y grande, pero no soy grande, so guapo y fuerte

When they're happy, i.e. they see a banana-sporting falang, they sway back and forth with surprising grace and wag their floppy ears like a content dog. Our guide brought two garbage bags full of bananas, extra ripe for Dodo the baby, so our first interaction with the elephants was a veritable rush of four multi-ton bristle-haired giants. My sister Megan and I took a full day out to become semi-honorary mahouts, or skilled elephant trainers. While most tourists sit atop a small wooden chair strapped to the elephants back, we straddled Mae Mai and Boon Sri's necks, legs trucked behind their ears. Although elephants can't feel gentle touches on account of their two centimeter thick skin, I found myself patting Mae Mai's head and ears as we trudged along slowly through the countryside outside of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. We waded in the shallow river water and tried to stay relatively dry and uncrushed while the elephants dunked underwater, rolling, again, like dogs, trunks posed in the air like periscopes.

Announcement board

Issue number one- pictures are posted at flickr.com
Issue number two- my lovely friend Yann pointed out a child in Southern Laos the other day who was wearing a shirt that said "My other ride has tits" and "Inner beauty is overrated"- ON ONE TSHIRT. He seemed eerily nonplussed about the whole thing. He may have been, repeat, may have been eight years old.
Issue number three- I purchased an armband in Louang Prabang, Laos today, so now I am one of those people. I feel very comfortable with this lifestyle change, thanks.

Blinding Flash of Reality

I was riding my bike on the west coast of Don Det, one of many islands in Southern Laos' Si Phan Don (Four Thousand Islands). I stopped my bike to admire my view over the dried rice fields. Old dried coconut husks lie in the square indentations left by the fields. The gulden light cast by the setting sun behind the trees threw jagged slashed of shadow over the hulking grey masses of buffalo. I was soon interrupted by a young boy, who seeing me stopped on my bike, wandered over and asked me for a pen. Ive realized that after several months, the things I take from travels are not always pleasant. I tend to spare people back home about the ugly sides of seeing the world' the public masturbation, sexual gropings, beggars with massively deformed arms and legs, the child prostitution. But I shouldn't try to hide these inconveniences. I want people to believe that travelling is not a utopia. The countries Ive seen are cheap, a euphemism we use to describe poor, and my presence as a white American travelling the world for a year as a luxury is not to be overshadowed by the poverty. Yes, I could give the boy my pen, though naivety has no place in this setting. Then pen to me is small, but our hopes for them to become an instrument of knowledge and learning is frankly, pathetic. The boy will sell the pen and, with the memory of the philanthropic falang fresh in his mind, will return to the streets, perhaps at his parents demands. What these people need is not a piece of candy or a few coins. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. A traveller should recognize the remarkable gift of travelling, but should try to avoid becoming jaded to the ways of our ever-growing world. I have met every kind of traveller; the dewy-eyed bleeding heart that never negotiates prices and hands nutritionless sweets to starving children; the stubborn bargain-hunter that will not walk away without saving those extra thirty cents; The party seeker that turns a blind eye to the culture they have come to "see"; The non-conformist that ironically wouldn't dare being caught in a "tourist" town.This is not to say that I have not indulged in any of these qualities, but its the power of balance that I have come to seek and respect. See that kid trying to sell bracelets at eleven thirty at night? He should be in bed resting for school tomorrow. I once read that a beggar in Pakistan makes more money every year than a college graduate. I also heard that the hydropower damns set up in rural Nepal meant to aid struggling minorities a provides electricity, which means staying up late watching television, which means snot waking up at dawn to tend the crops, which means cutting down trees to heat a house when they should be warm in bed, which means deforestation and depletion of nature by the erosion caused by the damn. Tread lightly in other countries- our prescience is more of ten that not detrimental to those who we have come to see which we at times, unknowingly equate with a Sunday trip to the zoo. The elephant dressed up and can can ow be fed a banana by you for just a few pennies actually requires pounds and pounds of food to survive. This is a not a particularly pleasant entry,but you and I need to know the realities of the world.

Muay Thai, Muay Thai, Muay Thai, Muay Thai......

Thai boxing is advertised in the most eye and ear catching was known to man, which makes it most possibly the most obnoxious fashion as well. Trucks with skinny Thai boxers inside a ring constructed on the roof tool around the streets in Phuket, belching the same short message continuously until you scream it out loud when you're woken abruptly from a horrible nightmare, which may indeed have involved Thai boxing. Not that I am particularly inclined to enjoy violence whether some may dub it a "sport" or not, but when our dive instructor Neil informed us that another instructor Tom was fighting on Tuesdays match, I was game to support the guy and get a little culture. The audience was almost evenly split between Thais and farang (foreigners) groups jovially interspersed, but the overall feeling was friendly bloodlust, if such a thing exists. The boxers enter with flowers draped around their necks and a stiff rope around their heads, bowing at each post of the ring, paying homage to any number of causes, their opponent, ancestors, the king ( side note- I was recently told that the king of Thailand is the most supported King alive today. He has a 99.5% approval rating.) Thai boxing style is, from my untrained eye, similar to the western style, except it involves kicking and "other crazy shit", quote from my friend Jesper. I was wincing and scrunching up my face up until Tom climbed into the ring, then I was an uncool parent trying out their child's video game, bobbing and punching at the air while offering general curses and cheers. In the end, Tom was robbed.

Jacqueline Cousteau

Trying to maneuver in zero gravity is trickier than I imagined, no matter the nudging of the currents of the ocean. After a few painful hours of videos created by the same filmmakers who provided the world with sex-ed and drivers training movies, we were trusted to bob about in the two meter deep pool at our dive resort on the island of Koh Tao, where more people are SSI and PADI certified than anywhere else in the world.. We don out heavy turtle shells and wobble into the deep end. The most unnerving moment for me is the moment your face drops below the surface. Although you've got your Darth Vadar device in place, the simple concept of breathing down there seems silly, wrong eve. So I prepare myself for the thirty minutes with a feeble deep breath and wet the crown of my head. In the water, the breathing kicks up again, but I have to relearn how to do something that I never really had to learn in the first place. First I try to inhale and exhale through my nose, which causes the mask to suck up against my face then pooch out, allowing water to seep in. Once that is down pat, its on to the difficult task of trying to maintain neutral buoyancy. The goal is the be able to sit yogi like, legs crossed, underwater, rising and falling a few inches from the sand in sync with your calm breath. Yeah, well, calm is the key word here, isn't it? My ragged breath during our first dive in the ocean (with all those fish and coral and currents and stuff) causes me to yo-yo around the reef, my wonderful instructor Neil gazing up at me helplessly, urging me to breath smoothly. A rudimentary grasp on buoyancy gives way to glee that I am weightless, and I proceed with the common "its my first time underwater" acrobatics, one armed handstands, aerial spins and the like. With increased movement comes rapid breathing, which, at one slightly terrifying moment, causes my regulator( the mouth piece that is attached to my oxygen mask) to dislodge ever so slightly from my lips. In a mater of seconds, I forget how to clear my mouth of the sea water that has leaked in, and panicking from a lack of air, I open my mouth even further. At this moment, we are 18 meters or 30 feet underwater, so going up is not a particularly inviting option, considering the possibility of decompression sickness, like the bends. I manage to swim downwards to the instructors assistant, whose fin I tug on urgently. We stare at each other until Neil pushes over and reminds me of the basics. The regulator clears my mouth of water, I begin to breathe again (very quickly, but breathing nonetheless) and Neil takes my hand for a short swim around the purple corals, the lull of the fishy movements dropping my heart rate. Still alive and kickin' folks, alive and kickin'.

Ahh, memories.

This is going to be painful folks, but I feel a re-cap of the past six months (I celebrated my anneversay last monday) is necessary, like the painful finale fo season one, soon to be folllowed by seadson two. I'm giving you the best of, like a tacky peoples magazine or a cop-out Simpsons episode. besides, maybe I won't have to answer so many "what was your favorite..." questions when I get back in, gasp, 180 days. Truth be told however, I am gonna bore the shit out of all of you with story after boring story about my tales. Never you mind.

Ode to Six Months.

My favorite destinations- Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania. Nagarkot, Nepal. Hoi An Vietnam.
My worst trips- 1st night on a bus from Udaipur to Jaisalmer, India, before I became accustomed to constant honking and lurching bus turns. Throwing up on the boat ride from Zanzibar to mainland Tanzania.
Favorite locals- Justin Leslie, South Africa. Vikram Singh, India. Bikash Gurung, Nepal.
Best food- Eating spicy mutton with chappati, overlooking the lake just outside of Udaipur, India, from the second story of a half built house. Street food in any country. Christmas dinner with the sister, hot pot in a swanky restaurant on Railay beach.
Being overwhelmed with culture- Angkor Wat, Cambodia. Taj Mahal, India. Apartheid Museum, South Africa.
Being overwhelmed with nature- the Kraal, South Africa. Mt Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Desert outside of Pakistan, India. Halong Bay, Vietnam.
Best sunsets- 1st night in the Maasai Mara National Park, Kenya. Riding in the bed of a truck from Ko Chang to Trat, Thailand. Setting over the fort in Bundi, India.
Favorite dishes- Malai Kofta, India, Buff Momo, Nepal, Papaya salad, Thailand. Fish Amok, Cambodia. Cao Lau, Vietnam.
Worst meal- Pho outside of Siem Reap, Cambodia. "Pizza" in Varanasi, India. (Never'll do that again- foreign food.)
Best hotel- Jasailmer, India. Dalat, Vietnam.
What am I missing?

Christmas with the bood

Welcomed my sister Megan into my travels for the holiday season, which is said to be a heart-wrenching time for travellers. It was a surreal Christmas, complete with a thai massage, a mai tai, and a short, exceedingly thin thai santa. Railay beach, per recommendation by some friends I've met along the way, is a rock climbers heaven. While our long boat is still quite a ways from shore, you can see the limestone face peppered with climbers. When you're climbing, you're face is practically buried in the side of the cliff, but when you reach the top ring and turn to face your accomplishments, you understand why Railay beach rates among the best rock climbing location in the world. I am far from the first to climb this rock. There is practically a line forming below each climb, and every good foothold and grasping hold is caked with the white powder which keeps ones hands dry in the humid climate. Placing legs impossible distances apart, I twister my way up and bang, I'm in love with rock climbing.