The Other Side

Why I don’t have a Childhood

2011-12-23T01:51:00.001-08:00

I was having a conversation with a very insightful friend of mine about dreams and memories and she told me that the reason that most only children don’t recall many childhood memories is because they didn’t grow up alongside anybody and hence never get the chance to retell stories that reinforce those memories. So by that logic, the only/best way to keep and hold onto memories is to practice the art of retelling stories. This means that me blogging about my trips is really one of the best ways that I can remember my trips besides reminiscing over old photographs. This conversation served to accomplish two things simultaneously, lament for my lost childhood and motivate me more to continue travel blogging. New posts coming soon, stay tuned.

The Final Chapter of Asia: China Tour

2011-10-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

So I could go on and on about why I’m over a year behind in updating my blog and why it ended as abruptly as it began. Yes, I was really very busy with concentrating on my graduation project, I moved out of and back into my old place in a 6 month period (for reasons I will not get into), looking for work and planning a new epic trip (more on that later). But honestly, the short and simple answer was I got lazy. Sorry. So without further adieu, let’s get right back into the swing of things. (Bonus: I’ve had a year to reflect on some of these experiences and I think I have a better grasp on a lot of things that I have experienced than I did before. Hopefully that will come out in some of my blogging.)

In August of 2010, I decided to make China is a fitting last stop in my year of travel. Symbolically, it’s almost a perfect fit to the cliché of going back to my roots and my “motherland” after seeing a bit of what the rest of the world has to offer. But also it was a great opportunity to see both family and friends while going to the Shanghai World Expo (which only happens once every four years). So far I’ve been to two in a row, the first was in Aichi, Japan and now that I’ve gone to Shanghai. Looks like I have no choice but to just keep going now. The short 1 hour flight was surprisingly expensive during the busy season but thanks to my friend Peiming Kin (or just Kin as I knew him), a native Shanghainese, I was able to get the lowest possible price on tickets and circumvent an otherwise two day journey of bus and cruise boat to Shanghai. I left myself a 2 week gap after getting back from China to wrap things up in Japan and to say many fond and bittersweet farewells. The time just flew by and I realized that time always moves very fast at the end of any chapter in life. This was no exception.

I arrived in Shanghai in the afternoon and with very little idea of how to rendezvous with Alvin Chen (an old friend from the states) or my mom’s friend Amy who was supposed to pick me up from the airport. I wanted to keep the process as simple as possible but somehow ended up in the Shanghai airport with nobody to meet up with and no way to contact anyone. I ended up paying a Chinese cleaning lady 100 yen (not quite sure what she’ll buy in China with that) and used her cell phone to call Amy who was on the opposite end up the airport and we finally met up 30 minutes later. I had planned to meet Alvin at a specific carousel except we arrived in completely different terminals which my mom warned me about (yes, mom is always right). By the time I realized we had made a severe mistake I was already scrambling around Shanghai airport using my terrible broken Mandarin to try to find Alvin. And even though people cringed and probably thought I was a deaf-mute trying to speak Mandarin, they actually let me pass. Just when I was beginning to lose hope of ever finding Alvin, I caught him out of the corner of my eye. I finally contacted Frances Chen (also an old friend from the States) who was already in Shanghai staying with her uncle and told her we had arrived and were on our way to our hotel. I just didn’t know it would take an hour and a half to get there… on the new Shanghai subway system. She would later be very mad about that. Sorry Frances, I DIDN’T KNOW.

Pictured: Frances and Alvin enjoying authentic Chinese... KFC?

We arrived and soon made our way to meet Alvin’s two brothers, who had both recently moved to Shanghai. I’ve met one of his brothers before remembering him distinctly as the cooler older brother in high school. They now reassumed the same role as they showed us around town. I also noticed that Alvin and his brothers all share the same distinctively Chen-family walk as they walked down the street together, which is best described as a strut that all three seem to unconsciously share. Our first hotel that Alvin and I checked into was not very notable except that the room we stayed in required us to cross through a very public restaurant area in order to gain access to our rooms. So in the middle of people’s meals, we crossed through a formal Chinese restaurant with rolling suitcases and backpacks in hand because China’s building planning codes really just don’t give a damn. Alvin shared stories of what it was like to live in India for 2 month while he did water treatment research. He is a tougher man than I am adapting to conditions that I could never imagine adapting to. He also seemed unable to stop doing the Indian head bobble best described by this clip:

Xian Jian Baos: My Favorite Meal in China and How to Get a Seat

I have eaten the “best” Peking duck in Beijing (multiple times) and the “best” Xiao Long Bao in Shanghai and I honestly feel we do them better in America. I’m disappoint to say, but the original is not always the best because they are locked into their original formula. What made them good in the first place is also what dooms them to culinary stagnation because they can’t change their recipe even is a better version exists out there. Of course, they will always be classics and like Coca-cola and KFC most people would be perfectly happy with the original recipe, but for my money, I think innovation means improving on the original.

The thing about China is that the sheer amount of people makes doing everyday things seem damn near impossible and often doing everyday things require taking a whole new approach. Manners and etiquette goes out the window when you’re spending most of your time trying to avoid getting trampled by little old ladies who show amazing strength and aggression when getting off the subway. This dog eat dog mentality applies directly to finding a seat in a crowded restaurant. The following are directions on how to get a seat in China:

1) Find a table where people are sitting and eating their meal

2) Stand next to that table and stare at them while they eat

3) Wait until they are too uncomfortable with your staring and/or have finished their meal to leave

4) Take a seat!

Bonus step: Wait for next party to do the same to you.

This is not only the accepted practice in many places in Shanghai it is the recommended practice if you ever want to get a seat in a crowded establishment. Note: Don’t do this in fancy places. My undoubtedly favorite meal was a little crowded shop that Alvin and his brothers showed us that had freshly steamed xian jian baos which are essentially like very large dumplings filled with savory pork soup broth that sloshes around inside a thinly pan fried bread pocket enclosing a large meatball. The quality of these little miraculous dumplings was out of this world and you can watch the master chef churn out batch after batch out of 3-feet wide steamers. We used the method described above to get seats and had both the dumplings and a beef noodle soup, both perfectly complementing the other. Oh, and did I mention each giant cue ball sized dumpling cost 25 cents USD!?

Good food, good friends.

Side Story: The Shanghai Boob Slap

You might think that the fact that there are people everywhere in China would keep people in check and everyone would behave decently in public. Counter intuitively, this is not the case because since there is always somebody watching anyway, people just stop caring about who sees what they do. Case in point, in the middle of a busy Shanghai subway station while waiting for a train, a man and his partner stand somewhat impatiently waiting for the train. The man without warning or provocation just decides to slap the woman’s boobs around like Newton’s Cradle batting around from left to right because… he just feels like it, that’s why.

Newton's cradle... I'll let you come up with your own mental image.

Mike’s Masseuse Mishap

I learned that the quality of any business in China is not reliant of the quality of the lobby, the seating area or even the dining area, but in the bathrooms. I say this because too many times, I’ve been fooled by what seems like a 1^st world quality business only to be teleported back to the third world the minute I ask to use their restrooms. China’s need to impress people with an image skews their priorities and most of the money is spent on making the grandest initial impression but the overall quality is sacrificed once they realized they’ve run out of money when they get to building the restrooms.

The bathroom is right this way... maybe I don't really need to go that badly...

Owen, Mike and I decided to take advantage of the many foot massage places that line the streets. (We would later do this again because it was so cheap, why the hell not?) The business itself seemed pretty legitimate and spacious at first glance. But after turning the corner to the restroom, I found myself in a dark and dank hallway walking by a break room which seemed to be stuffed to capacity with idle masseuses waiting for their turn to make a few bucks. With laundry drying in the open air, dishes piled high, I realized China’s still far from the first world. Mike hilariously asked for a prettier masseuse as he was not satisfied with the one who was assigned to him. I was content with my girl who we both agreed was much prettier and he wanted me to translate for him “can I get a prettier girl” right to the “ugly girl’s” face. I simply said he wanted somebody else. He then got someone even uglier and eventually gave up disappointed that this didn’t turn out like a clip from rush hour.

Rush hour lied to us.

This is when I realized that China, culturally has a long way to go even if it’s well on its way to owning half of the world. To call what some people do in public uncouth would be an understatement. My mom warned me about stories she had heard of ladies in China who would wear dresses not for style but because it would allow them to squat in the middle of public areas and just relieve themselves wherever and whenever they pleased (at the world expo). I spent much of my time in line at the expo slightly paranoid and expecting at any moment to dodge a strangers pee. Luckily, my fears were not realized but I’m sure there is half a truth in this rumor. The correct and expected etiquette for crossing a busy street is to walk headfirst fearlessly into the blur of traffic knowing in good faith the cars will (at the last minute) avoid hitting you because idiots and foreigners wait for the streetlight. Doing the right thing in China is suddenly made the wrong thing simply because everybody else does it the wrong way. That is why I question if I could ever live in China for a long period of time because it will train you to be tough, but also rude and cutthroat. I’m not trying to make China sound like a barbaric wild west, but the truth is that it is still a very rapidly developing country. The industrialization and modernization of its technology and its people are not growing at equal rates and will take some time to even out throughout the general populace. I’m not sure it actually ever will.

Shopping in China

Chinese business lesson of the day: repeat after me, cliocoddle means you don't have to pay franchise fees.

Shopping in Shanghai is an adventure unlike any other. It requires cunning, strategy an undying curiosity to see what’s behind the curtain. Expect to be taken for a sucker unless you’re prepared to verbally spar every vender you encounter and come ready to put your best bargaining skills into practice. Chinese is a prerequisite at the door or the price will be 200% higher for everything that you buy. The original plan for Shanghai was to meet up with all my friends and explore the city and go to the world expo together. That plan was quickly revised to wander around the city aimlessly and shop three out of our four days. All the guys had one major goal, to buy a nice watch. But we were confused when we walked all around the indoor shopping stalls and found no watches on display. They had tons of other knockoffs in plain sight but aside from one guy who actually approached us on a street corner (seriously) we could not for the life of us find the watches. Actually, the ipads were pretty cool considering somebody had to come up with their own operating system in a device that was about the same size and shape as an ipad. It was slightly thicker and little inconsistencies between the thickness of the metal border were telltale signs it was a fake. That and the fact that touching it felt like holding a weak electric hotplate and the programs didn’t actually work. So how were we supposed to get to the secret land of name brand products? Well we were in a stall selling t-shirts and the vendor asks us if we want to buy a watch or a purse. We said sure and she leads up to the back wall of the stall and pulls aside a layer of t-shirts. Behind the t-shirts, she pushed a button and a secret door flings open. This really happened. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This was possibly the coolest thing I had ever seen. Ever since preschool my imaginary adventures would always include some sort of elaborate series of secret doors, probably an influence of watching too many Indiana Jones movies, but here for the first time ever, was the real deal. It was a strange sort of dream come to life for me. When I stepped inside, it was even cooler. The rundown store outside was just a cover for the huge secret collection of name brand purses, wallets, bags and watches. Inside were a Mr. and Mrs. Smith worthy set of display cases with pull out drawers and decent product lighting. We discovered that each of these stalls each had their own secret room. The fancier the room, the better the vendor was at doing business. This is also meant that he/she probably had better products since more people were buying from them and they could afford to build a better looking secret compartment. The really fancy ones had multiple sets of secret compartments. Each time you entered one room, the door would be closed behind us and another door would open to reveal even more products. This was a fascinating look into the underbelly of the Chinese retail market. Mike is the worst at bargaining… or maybe Alvin. I tried to keep Mike from showing his enthusiasm whenever he saw something he seriously wanted. He doesn’t understand the basic principles of being a tough customer, and that coupled with his complete lack of Chinese made him an easy target. Also, Alvin was surprisingly bad at haggling. Even though he can speak Mandarin decently sometimes we would lose him for a while and he would come back with like 3 polos for the price of… 10. Our secret weapons in our shopping arsenal were Frances and to some extent Owen (minus the Chinese). They had different styles but both were well practiced and were the most likely to get us the best possible deals. The art of haggling is exactly that, an art. Like a well choreographed dance, it is a dance between two partners, a give and take; a back and forth. I tried my skills a little bit and I think I would be able to get about 80% of the total discount that Owen or Frances could probably get. I was proud that I was able to do that much with my tenuous grasp of the Chinese language. In general, we all got what we wanted and maybe a little more.

Going... up?

The World Expo

Finally, we decided to take one day out to go and fight the crowds at the world expo. Frances had already gone a few days and in fact would go a few more days after we all left. She was obviously the most experienced and we gladly followed her lead to the best exhibitions. The day we chose to go was an overcast day, and after we entered the expo it really started pouring. We naively tried to get into line for the Japan Pavilion only to find the line was somewhere in the ballpark of a 6 hour wait! I have never stood in line for 6 hours for anything (with the exception of black Friday shopping and that usually includes a tent and bathroom breaks). How people stand shoulder to shoulder in a packed line for 6 hours with no bathroom breaks just to see one exhibit will forever elude me. After about a nanosecond of consideration we decided to spend our day wandering the grounds and finding shorter lines.

Frances did not like rain but she's learning to like it.

For the most part, the main complaint people have about the world expo are the crowds and the heat and I felt both were somewhat tolerable depending on what you wanted to accomplish. Every indoor pavilion was well air conditioned but the sheer size of the expo meant that there would undoubtedly be a lot of time spent walking in between outside in the humid Shanghai air. Perhaps the crowds would have bothered me more if I had actually decided to commit to a major pavilion line of 2 hours+ wait time. China’s need to always out-do everybody else pushed it to build the largest, most expensive and elaborate world expo’s ever in history. It succeeded in breaking the world record in attendance with 73 million visitors (beating out expo 70’s 60 million visitors), but 94% of the visitors were Chinese nationals who were strongly coaxed into going (and sometimes forced to do so). Leave it to China to break another record, by cheating.

This is how Chinese people tan.

The Food

Panda may have sweet and sour pork but not with spinach pyramid.

I am a Chinese American who has grown up in a fairly Chinese neighborhood eating Chinese food and being for the most part, pretty Chinese. So when I thought about going back to the motherland and enjoying the richness of authentic Chinese cuisine I was very excited with high expectations. These expectations were quickly dashed and replaced with a bewilderment of how it’s possible that many of the Chinese dishes I’ve had in America were better than the Chinese food actually being cooked by Chinese chefs in China. My conclusion is that as with many other things, Chinese culture as a whole has been set back many generations in terms of quality and richness because of the current government regime. This may take some explanation and even though I don’t usually like to get too political whenever avoidable, I feel this epiphany has happened slowly but I feel evermore strongly as I realize how pervasive this problem has become.

“So this is what Communism tastes like…”

Okay so this isn't food, but she was the dinner entertainment and I couldn't think of any other way to work her into this post. Look at how many hula hoops she's spinning!

I entered what seemed to be a fairly nice Chinese restaurant with my tour group. A strange sense of unease came over me as an excessive number of waiters and waitresses posted every few feet stood watch ready to serve an empty restaurant. The food came out in puddles of grease and oil. All the familiar ingredients and tastes were there, but this food was even worse than a panda express would dare pander off as authentic Chinese food. Downstairs in the gift shop (of the restaurant, yes, the restaurant had a gift shop) were even more employees who seemed to have very little to do but stand around waiting for a customer to come to them with a question. Then my tour guide explained that all many of the restaurants we were eating at are owned and operated by the communist party and it suddenly all made sense. Quality control was nearly nonexistent, the food was greasy, the service lackluster and there were way too many people working who did not care one bit about their job because it was meaninglessly assigned to them. This is why communism doesn’t work, that and everything else.

To it's credit, this actually tasted much better than it looks. Even if it really did not set the bar very high.

Note: I did have some really delicious Chinese food (from non-communist owned restaurants)

A Night Out on the Town

First things first, China takes karaoke way too seriously. As a guy who more than appreciates a good night of karaoke, I was still shocked to walk into a karaoke bar and feel like I had just wandered into a weird pseudo-outdoor palace. Still not sure what I mean? Take a look for yourself. China tends to take things just a little too far most of the time though.

Makes American karaoke bars look like a filthy crack house.

Clubbing on the other hand is also quite a different animal than clubbing in the states is but was in line with the style of clubbing that I’d gotten more accustomed to in my time spent in Asia. The girls don’t respond to forward advances and displays of aggression and confidence as they do in America. In fact, that’s a direct turn off and Mike’s gung-ho approach all night rendered us little results. Chalk it up to cultural differences.

You mad bro?

Part 2. Family reunion in Beijing.

I step off the plane in Beijing greeted by the heart-melting smile that I’ve taken for granted every day. My mom embraces me with a big hug that falls short to make up for nearly a year’s worth of hugs but is a start. I also see my god-grandmother who moved to Beijing a year earlier and who is just as excited to see me. She takes us back to her apartment which is surprisingly posh even by American standards. I’m comforted by the fact that I know she has a good and comfortable life in Beijing. She enjoys a beautiful view from her balcony window of her condominium flat and can take a walk in the parks provided just downstairs and across the street at anytime assuming she can stand the choking pollution that eternally blankets the city. The Beijing I am seeing now is a much newly improved Beijing because of the 2008 Olympics. The city apparently decided to finally clean up its streets piled high with trash and implement strict traffic limitations to reduce overall pollution. The city was still noticeably dirty and I shudder at the thought of what the city was like before the drastic changes were made.

Buildings drowning in Chinese pollution.

Along with my mother and god-grandmother, my two cousins, Angie and Amy, and uncle also came to meet up with us from Hong Kong. Together we toured the city led by my god-grandmother who acted as our tour guide. We ate excellently, toured enthusiastically and I enjoyed a rare feeling, a large family gathering. I took the opportunity to spend time with my cousins Angie and Amy who I had grown up with in America but have had relatively little contact with since they moved back to Hong Kong over 10 years ago.

Family photo.

I also contacted my friend Condy, I had made with an exchange student 2 years earlier in Cal Poly. She had come from Beijing and studied architecture at Cal Poly for a year. We became good friends in that time and I did my best to help her in her classes. I met with her in a reggae bar and enjoyed some live music together only to see an…

Asian Doppelganger

Right in front of us was a guy who spoke perfect Chinese but looked exactly like my good friend Alex Hernandez (who is Hispanic). Ironically, Alex was just in Beijing a year earlier studying abroad and I questioned whether he had just come back to join a reggae band and play in a small café along the river. I later found out the guy who looked Mexican but spoke Chinese was from the very western portion of China which borders the Middle East and people there have a very mixed look which can be very hard to identify for most people.

Pictured: Condy, Asian Alex Hernandez and Me

The remainder of the trip was a tour my mother had booked from the states. The Chinese style tour bus would shuffle us around like a brood of ducks from site to site. I was not particularly looking forward to this leg of the journey but was pleasantly surprised when 1) The tour guide spoke mostly in Cantonese and not in Mandarin (I’d spent a less enjoyable vacation in the Canadian Rockies on a bus of only Mandarin speakers) and 2) I enjoyed the company of nearly everyone on the tour. It was a small tour of about 10-12 people consisting of about 4 families from Canada, America and elsewhere.

I know he's not a major tourist site, but I just liked how SUPER Chinese this guy looks.

The tour itself was pretty decent led by a guy named coincidentally enough, Eric Leung. We finished obligatorily touring Beijing’s forbidden city and great wall of China and flew to Shanghai to swiftly explored two nearby famous towns, Suzhou and Hangzhou, each of which are understandable Chinese national treasures. The absolute best part of a trip (and I’m convinced, of any trip) are the good people that I had the opportunity and privilege of meeting. The reason I had so much fun on this trip was because each of the families on the trip had children of their own who were in or around my age group. Together after our long days on the bus, we would go and explore the city or hotels ourselves. Supplied with a surplus of energy from long hours of forced sitting, we would have pure and innocent enjoyment in just a little bit of freedom at night to see whatever we wanted to see. Sometimes, that would mean walking around the corner to see a few stores or streets of town, other times that meant going up as high as we could in our hotel to try to find a great view. We enjoyed a public bath and sauna which was included in one of our fancy hotels and sat together happily eating complimentary sesame ball dessert dumplings. And yet another time, I took a cab with my new friend, Bryton to the club/bar areas of Hangzhou and shared some of the cheapest/lowest alcohol content beer I’ve ever had. The toughest thing about the tour was the goodbyes at the end and in a span of 4 short days, I had made some great connections and great friends who I hope to see again in the future.

And fine, here are some obligatory photos of the Great Wall.

Me, trying to be cool.

And being seriously outdone by this g...

How Chinese Tours Scam You

So how a Chinese tour works is that they seem so cheap it’s too good to be true. It is true what they say though, there’s always a catch. In this case, the tour alternates taking you to a major sightseeing destination and then to a place where a group of salesmen try to sell you everything you don’t need. Such things include, pearl jewelry, down comforters, Chinese herbal remedies and tea leaves (all of which my mom bought hook line and sinker). I had failed horribly at my job of stopping her from buying nearly everything despite my best efforts.

Okay, so this photo is not taken in China, but I think it accurately represents my mom in shopping mode.

The last day was spent with my mom at the World Expo (again). I was sad that I had to leave her and that she would be forced to see the world expo on her own the next two days. But she really didn’t seem to mind and I’m happy that she had the opportunity to see and experience such a rare event.

My view of China is constantly changing. Most of the time, I can barely believe that stories that come out of the country. The news stories are often hilarious, ludicrous and downright shocking. But having seen for myself first hand just what kind of strange world China really is, I watch with high hopes that it will regain its lost, but hopefully not forgotten virtues. I want to speak proudly of my culture, heritage and tradition but am forced instead to read about the terrible types of stories and people who callously and selfishly hurt others to benefit themselves. I’d like not to immediately associate Chinese with people who spit on the streets and wear shirts above their exposed bellies to cool themselves off. Who wants to do business with Chinese businesses that have become notoriously immoral making fake baby formula that causes disease in sickness in order to make a few extra Yuan? I’m disgraced by every report of corruption and greed. Every single story makes me realize more and more how American I actually am and how I would never think of hurting my own people just to get rich. The priorities of the people in China are very obviously backwards. China has adopted the very worst parts of America and focused on the worst parts of capitalism. The society is too focused on making money and it seems morality has taken a backseat to getting ahead. The Chinese have turned their competitive nature into a tool and excuse to hurt others. I hope that one day, I can be proud of you, China and can be proud to call myself Chinese.

Japan Tour

2010-12-12T03:06:00.000-08:00

First off I believe an apology to my readers is long overdue. For those of you who have either faithfully or even sporadically followed my blog only to see it quickly and abruptly stop I’m sorry. Officially, this blog has two more posts coming at least (maybe a bonus trip will be added). Although I’m already home I wanted this blog to be a thorough documentation of my years travel abroad and since I’ve gotten home, I’ve succumbed to laziness as well as been overwhelmed with the onslaught of schoolwork. I have just completed my fall quarter back at my home university and will once again be reinvesting some time to this blog, at least until it is complete. So here goes as I see how many details I can remember. This is going to be a long one as I show you my trip through Japan…

First, some context. After school ended in Japan, I had roughly a week before leaving for my trip to China. Andrea at the same time wanted to plan a brief trip around Japan to see a list of major cities and sights around southern Honshu and asked if I wanted to join him. I worked it out perfectly so that I would be able to stay in Fukuoka long enough to get my Chinese visa which was 15,000 YEN!!! with no discounts for being of Chinese decent *sigh*. Also I got to work one more night at Cream and celebrate with Nick on his birthday which was an added bonus. The plan was I would travel by local train (because it’s the cheapest option to travel) with Andrea to Yamaguchi, Miyajima, Hiroshima, Okayama, Naoshima, Himeji, Kobe and Osaka. At Osaka we would branch off and he would head for Kyoto while I would head home. This was good for both of us because I had never been to any of these cities yet and at the same time I could show him how to use the “Juhachikippu” ticket and navigate the sometimes frustrating local JR (Japan Rail) train system. It worked out so that I would end up traveling for 6 days in Japan, return home to Fukuoka for only one day to rest and recoup before going to China for two weeks. So here goes…

Fail at Yamaguchi

Yamaguchi is a small and often overlooked city that we decided somewhat on a whim to go to. It was conveniently along the way to our first intended destination and we decided it was worth taking out about 2-3 hours to see Brittany’s recommendation, YCAM – Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media. Unfortunately after taking about 40 minutes off the main JR line to get to the station and walking for about another 30 minutes with our huge backpacks to YCAM we were met with some bad news. Apparently, there were no exhibits to see that day because they were setting up a new exhibit called, “Cloud Forest”. It was scheduled to open the very next day and there were still preparations still being set up for the grand opening. We were just too late to see anything and just in time to see… nothing. Despite our foiled plan we remained in high spirits as we made our way back on our original path. We don’t regret stopping in Yamaguchi because the city was quaint and we still had enough time to hit all our intended destinations. Plus we got to see this huge cat!

My Favorite Place in Japan

Our next point of interest was Miyajima (AKA Itsukushima), a place that is famous in Japan as having the only torii gate in the bay and is a UNESCO world heritage site. It is one of the major attractions listed in most guide books and travel websites and for good reason, I learned. We were happy because we saved money on the ferry since it was included in our train ticket. And at first I didn’t really get what all the fuss was a about. When we arrived and asked the information booth what to do, they said to wait for sundown because that’s when the tide would come in and the torii gate would be its most beautiful for viewing and taking pictures. At the moment, it was just muddy and the temple surrounding it looked like it was built on a dried up swamp. So we explored the little town and few surrounding temples and pagodas to kill time. The city itself was very likeable and like Nara filled with random friendly deer like this fellow…

There were plenty of sites to keep us clicking away and busily taking pictures until sundown. Here are just a few pictures of the temples and moments we encountered:

But the real beauty of Miyajima is definitely at sunset. Andrea and I grabbed ourselves a prime spot on the beach next to the water temple and basked in the unrivaled beauty. The best part about this site that was unlike other major sites in Japan was that it really wasn’t crowded at all. We shared the whole beach with maybe 2 other pairs of people and that was it. We took a ton of pictures of the gate at every angle, setting and perspective we could think of. Maybe this is unusual since we at our next destination…

Hiroshima

We arrived on the 65^th year anniversary of the day the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6^th, 1945. This was also the same reason that there was a huge influx of visitors who wanted to see the yearly memorial which looks something like this (even though we missed it, this is not my picture):

We got into the station at about 8 PM and scrambled to find a place to stay for the night. We had not been able to book any hostels since everything was full online. In fact most of this trip had little or no planning and we had to find lodging for many of the cities we went to without first booking something in advance. We found a nearby internet café by the station. This was going to be Andrea’s first time staying at an internet café and he was very excited by each of the perks and grew increasingly giddier as I moved down the list of things that was included in our admission. He particularly liked the unlimited soup and soft serve ice cream.

Ice Cream

One thing to note about traveling with Andrea who I will first say was a great travel companion, but Andrea is a guy who loves his ice cream. And when I say love, I mean he loves his ice cream. Every day of the trip we would stop at least 2 or 3 times at a convenient (conveni) store to get an ice cream bar/cone. We would have ice cream more often than we would have real food. This was fine since it’s 1) once of the cheapest things to eat in Japan especially out of convenis and 2) it was summer and hot as hell most of the time.

We explored Hiroshima which was exactly as heart wrenchingly sad as I had expected it to be and moved before the nightfall by train to our next city, Okayama and had…

Pictured: Heart Wrenching

The Worst Night Ever

We arrived in Okayama, a city we knew very little about after the information offices of the train station had closed. With nowhere to find any information we wandered around for an hour before we found an internet café that had room but was kind of pricey. Andrea was also travelling with a very limited budget which I completely understood and we agreed to continue to try to look for a more affordable café. Another hour of wandering around the confusing streets of Okayama later, we stumbled upon another internet café behind a group of similarly aged Japanese guys/travelers. The employee at the café informed us that there was one option left and it was a single room that had a couch and had to be shared by two people. After taking a little while to discuss it we gave in and just took the cubicle. What went wrong:

1) We had to sign up for the one shower in the café and after an hour of waiting, just decided to go to sleep.

2) The leather couch meant we would get hot and be forced to turn and change the surface area of our body that came in contact with the couch every hour or so or just succumb to extreme heat and melding into the couch itself.

3) We had not realized, but the internet café was located directly below, above or next to a club. A constant but disturbing beat was thumping through the walls until about 4 AM.

4) Just the most uncomfortable night I’ve spent anywhere in all my travels.

Me vs. Homeless Man

The next day we tried to put it behind us and moved on to our next port city and ferry to the island of Naoshima. Naoshima is a unique island because it has very little development on it except for a small population of residents and one single resort. An art collective organization took over the development of the island and had placed pieces of art in very specific locations throughout the island. All the pieces and buildings on the island are carefully designed and placed to be integrated perfectly into the surrounding natural landscape. It also came highly rated by everyone who visited it.

The island is small but filled with treasures like the Lee Ufan museum designed by Tadao Ando which was dramatic, stunning and really a place that can only be experienced. A lot of the architecture I didn’t even really understand, like an abstract painting, his lines and intentions are not obviously stated but definitely meant to elicit a specific emotion or feeling. The one thing I did get out of it was a small square skylight cut into a few feet thick concrete ceiling that would change the lighting on the art piece on the ground depending on the time of day.

Pictured: Architecture

Secret Garden

We got back to Okayama late and were disappointed since we were almost sure that Okayama garden (rated one of the three best gardens in all of Japan) was closed. But as we got closer we were pleasantly surprised as we entered and found there was actually a special summer festival where the whole garden was lit with lights. This served 3 purposes: it let us explore the beautifully illuminated garden while avoiding the heat and even see Okayama castle in the far background which was just one more castle to scratch off the list.

Contemporary Tradtion

Ramen! The best meal ever.

We had been so busy traveling and sightseeing that we had skipped right over dinner and at 9 o’clock we were really almost certain that all we’d find was lame conveni food. But just in our time of need, our prayers were answered as we came upon the most beautiful shop that could have been there, it was Ippudo, my favorite ramen shop in all of Japan. I got a bowl of ramen with 2 extra noodles, a side of discounted gyoza and to top off the perfect meal a free soft boiled egg because the employee screwed up the order. If any of you could have seen me then… well, it was not a pretty sight but you would have seen what I assume was pure happiness on my face.

My first time in a capsule hotel…

We had came across a cheap looking capsule hotel before we’d left for Naoshima in the morning and had decided to stay the night there. We were sure as hell not going to go back to the worst night ever internet café and were both excited to try the capsule hotel. So how was it? It was GREAT!! The worst night of sleep ever was completely made up with the best sleep of night ever in the capsule hotel. Andrea and I didn’t know exactly what to expect when we went to see our “rooms”. But when we found our boxes we were actually very happy with the space and surprised by the extra amenities. Amenities included:

1) Not-so-coffin-like box/room that had plenty of comfortable sitting up height with clean towel, bathrobe, sheets and pillow.

2) Personal speakers and built in television (with as-expected AV programming)

3) Blind for privacy

4) Access to in house public shower/onsen

All for about $25! Not too shabby. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Himeji Castle

This is Japan’s most intact original castle and is currently being preserved and restored to its original condition. This is good, but it also means the castle right now has many main sections closed off and the main structure has a really dorky looking metal brace on most of it supplementing the structure. This makes for terrible pictures and made taking good pictures of it particularly difficult. We made do, came to terms with it and moved on to Kobe to find…

The Giant Robot: Tetsujin

I was very disappointed when I heard that I had missed seeing the giant Gundam Robot in Yokohama by less than a year. But when I heard there was one more giant robot left and it was in Kobe, I knew I had to find it. While we got into the main Kobe station and tried to find our way to the giant robot, we asked everyone around the station and nobody seemed to know where the giant robot was located. This started to puzzle us. How could everyone just miss the gigantic robot? After exploring the area a little bit and seeing the major sights around Kobe station we found that the robot was actually two stations back. Though it was starting to drizzle we were determined to see the robot and I wasn’t about to be deterred by a little rain. We finally got off at the right station and found a sign pointing us in the right direction to… TETSUJIN!

Before nightfall we make our way to Osaka and find a special pass that covers a lot of major attractions in exactly the amount of time we have to spend in Osaka, how perfect! We check into our hotel near Dobutsuenmae station which means roughly, in front of the zoo station. This area used to be a bustling commercial center and the site for a major retail promenade but has since turned into a slum and definitely one of the most interesting neighborhoods in Japan. In my stay of one year in Japan I can honestly say that it was difficult to find any slums or neighborhood that looked or resembled or was equivalent to an American slum. How I asked could this society be so perfect that there was no poverty anywhere. I had seen homeless, but there seemed to be no middlemen between the middle class and the complete wino. Here in Osaka, I had finally found it. The streets were nitty, gritty, and full of interesting sights and sounds. The first night exploring I had seen homeless in the streets, shady looking characters (one of which had long shaggy stringy hair and went into the building we were staying in), naked men in rooms with doors flung wide open, bikes in the middle of entryways, vomit in the street and a random bra on the ground. All of these things you would be hard pressed to find in most other parts of Japan, but here I saw all these things in one night.

Just a small taste

Shadiest Hostel Ever

The room we had gotten was on the 4rth floor of a hostel that seemed promising at first. The staff was friendly and we went up to our floor to find our room. We emerged from the elevator to find ourselves walking down an eerie hallway lit by one glowing green exit light at the end of the hallway next to our room. The sign stood in the way of our door and prevented the door from fully opening. Inside the room smelled of an unidentifiable odor that was repugnant, lasting and like nothing I’ve ever smelled before. We really had no idea about the actual cleanliness of the room itself but we definitely questioned it. The other rooms down the hallway seemed to be permanently lived in and served as lower income housing. There were only squat toilets available in the bathroom and a trough for the sink. The public bath downstairs had too few stalls and was open from 8-10 for Men, 10-12 for Women and 12-1 for Men again. Every single time I went to take a shower however early or late, there was one man sitting on the far right stool showering the whole time. Even though everybody was patiently waiting in line and took only the amount of time necessary, this man stayed there in place showering the whole 2 hours every night. The reason nobody spoke to him was because he was most definitely yakuza and had a full dragon tattoo that spanned from the base of his neck down his back and sliding down his leg. I never made eye contact with him, got in, showered and got out without engaging him ever. Oh yeah and the last night we were there I took the elevator down and when I reached the ground floor the elevator jolted and dropped an additional 2 feet. When the doors opened a second later the ground level was two feet above where my feet were. I stepped up and the hostel clerk warned us not to use the elevator anymore. But it was cheap! =P

Thought I was kidding about the horror movie ambience? Think again.

Tennoji zoo, Shinsekai, Tsutenkaku (aka Hitachi Tower), the Natural History Museum, River Boat Tour, Fugu, Osaka TV building, Osaka Aquarium, Umeda Sky Building and Osaka History Museum

To my surprise, Andrea had never been to a zoo before, or if he had, he had forgotten what it was like because it was when he was very young. So when we went to the nearby zoo, he was very excited to see the animals on display even though in my opinion, the zoo was quite lacking. Next we tried kushikatsu which is an original Osaka food consisting mainly of skewered meat and organs deep fried and paired with raw cabbage that is popular amongst the locals and visitors alike. We ate it after going up to see a view from Tsutenkaku. It was good but much too expensive for the amount of actual food. The Natural History Museum is lame, don’t go. The river boat tour is lame too. But I do recommend the streets around the river are great to walk around. It is the iconic image of Osaka with both shores filled to the brink with brightly lit billboards. Osaka Aquarium has a very large tank with a whale shark, other than that, it is crowded and not that much fun. The Umeda Sky Building offers a great open air view of all of Osaka. Afterwards we rode a Ferris wheel since Andrea had once again been depleted as a child and had never been on one. One of the most educational and interesting museums is the Osaka History Museum that we decided to go to very last minute. I also tried the possibly deadly Fugu AKA blowfish in Osaka which is famous for Fugu. It is one of the few places in Japan that serves Fugu year-round despite it being out of season, it gets the fish from elsewhere when it is off-season. The taste and texture is very unique and unlike any other type of sushi I’ve had. I can’t very accurately describe it, but I did feel a faint numbing, dulling feeling on my tongue which is supposed to be the low level of paralyzing poison that is excreted from the fish itself. The texture is chewier than most other fish and the taste really isn’t good enough to risk your life too often. Worth at least trying once in your life though.

Food for Thought

On this trip I ate okinomiyaki which is a pancake type food from Hiroshima and takoyaki which is from Osaka and though it was good in both places, I would say that many parts of Japan may do an equally good if not better job of it. It’s not always better at the place where it’s from. After all these adventures, I said farewell to Andrea and wished him a good rest of his journey. The next morning we took trains in the opposite direction and I made my 13 hour trek home to Fukuoka. I spent 2 of those hours in a standing room only train doing pull ups every few minutes and getting a few strange looks from some train-goers. I arrived home, did laundry, got a night of comfortable rest, packed and left for China a day later.

Hanabi Matsuri – Firework Festivals

2010-09-14T02:53:00.001-07:00

I got a few more stories to wrap up for this year though...

In the states, there are few occasions to see huge displays of fireworks. Except for July 4^th, New Years Eve and every night at Disneyland, fireworks are kind of a rare sight. That’s not the case in Japan. In Japan, there aren’t specific days but rather a season of fireworks that last almost an entire month. These fireworks festivals or “Hanabi Matsuri” in Japanese are held all over Japan and are huge events with shows lasting upwards of 2 hours.

The crowds.

Having some fun with telescoping effects.

Flower Light.

Something about the hot summer days and the festive nature of summer vacation motivates thousands of Japanese to flock out to rural parts of the Japanese countryside to munch on small skewered snacks and dress up in traditional clothing like kimonos, yukatas and getas.

What is it like to watch a 2 hour fireworks display?

Never seen a firework show last more than 30 minutes? Well, neither have I until I saw a Hanabi Matsuri but now I’ve seen multiple shows last hours. Is a 2 hour long show better than a short and sweet show? No, not necessarily. In fact, the 2 hour long displays of fireworks are simply too long and actually start to get boring despite the thousands of dollars it takes to put on the show. The difference is that instead of having a nice tempo of slow and fast parts with certain portions of the show growing and shrinking in intensity of fireworks perhaps put to music or at least with some sort of rhythmic order, it is just one monotonous string of fireworks, one after another with no real crescendo to build excitement and no grand finale. Longer does not mean better.

See! Jonathan's so bored he's pretending to fall asleep. His gf's still conscious though at least.

Yoko-chan is still paying attention.

But this was pretty cool I must say.

Not bad...

Self Made Fireworks Display

What I actually enjoyed more was simply gathering a bunch of friends, spending a few bucks at 7-11, buying packs of Hello Kitty themed fireworks and setting them off along the riverbank. This is made all the more cool by an add on in the pack of fireworks that changes point sources of light into little shimmering hello kitties. Like a pair of 3D glasses, the lens somehow transforms a small light in the dark into a prismatic hello kitty. Sometimes the simple things in life are all you need. For one of Baptiste’s many goodbye events, we just set off our own fireworks and I think it was a better time than watching a huge elaborate firework display.

Cool huh? Don't ask me how I did this.

Yay Baptiste is *22

Star Power

Dressing Up

A guilty pleasure of mine is dressing up a bit for special occasions. I know that sounds a bit “unmanly” but personally I just like taking care of myself and it feels good to look a little different once in a while. And there’s no shame in looking good. But one of the highlights of the fireworks festivals was dressing up in full Japanese traditional clothing and feeling as if we’d finally made the full conversion to Japanese. If only for a little while, it felt good to wear a traditional yukata which is a light and thin summer kimono with getas, traditional wooden shoes that click and clack ostentatiously when you walk. The group (actually just the foreigners, not the Japanese haha) all wore our best outfits and had a good time attracting the attention of most Japanese on the train.

Nice! Group Photo

Awoken from the Dream

2010-09-09T10:37:00.001-07:00

In the last month I’ve been late to update because of a few reasons. The end of the academic school year in Japan kept me somewhat busy. Tack on a few side projects I had taken up and saying goodbye to some friends as they leave for hometowns and that kept me pretty well occupied. Almost immediately afterwards I left for my own Japan tour around Honshu Island for about a week. One day of rest and recovery back in Fukuoka and I took off for China. Two weeks later I returned to Fukuoka and spent the better part of my remaining week in Japan mostly organizing goodbye dinners/parties, working a few nights more at Cream and strengthening some connections I hope to keep for the rest of my life.

Noticing Differences

Now I’m home, which is a strange word to me now. What is home anyways? Why is Los Angeles, America my home more than any of the other places I’ve been this year? Because I was born here, because I was raised here? I admit I’m still struggling to adjust to American life. I pretty much can pick up everything that I left here as if I had just been gone a day. I sit with my friends in the same places they’ve always sat and seamlessly blend back into the surrounding as if nothing has changed, as if I haven’t changed. But I have. I know that I’ve changed. I see the world I lived in now with totally different eyes. I try to find occasions to walk because I miss being reliant on my own two feet to get me from point A to point B. I’m astounded by American portions and wonder how I was able to eat so much before. When I left Japan, it was over 90 degrees and humid. Today is 60 degrees and dry. My lips are chapped daily and I miss the moisture in the air.

Home…

Mostly, the most difficult thing is having nobody to relate to about my year. I can tell them stories, but I can never convey what it was like to live a life in Fukuoka. Nobody here will ever understand what I know now. I feel a bit alone in that no one will ever know or care about the little things that have made up my life. And it is nobody’s fault, it’s just something that I can’t possibly communicate and that they could never know without having done it themselves. In that regard, I feel a bit like a stranger in my own country. I had gotten used to understanding only about 10% of my surroundings at any given time. Suddenly, I understand every word that is said and written and around me with ease and it feels not normal. I’m happy to regale my friends with stories from abroad, but I will be telling these stories for the rest of my life. And right now I feel like the people who I’ve known most or all of my life don’t know who I am, not yet anyways…

The life I’ve lived for the last year was merely a dream and now real life looks gray.

Yamakasa Festival

2010-08-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

Hello and sorry to my faithful readers who have surely lost interest in my un-updated blog. My only excuse and consolation is that I’ll be updating quite a bit from here to catch up on things I’ve missed as well as to show the last couple trips I’ve done in the final stretch of this year’s nonstop adventure. So without further adieu I will tell you about…

Yamakasa Festival

Yamakasa is held once a year in parts of Tenjin and Hakata for a period of about a month. It commemorates a ceremony that farmers and residence used to do to encourage good weather and healthy harvests. It has now evolved to some sort of crazy and nearly impossibe to understand festival that is really one of the most interesting and entertaining things to watch in all of Fukuoka.

Staring in awe...

What happens is…

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of men, young boys and even some young girls dress up in a very specific outfit that is best described as a thin strip of fabric wrapped around the groin like a loin cloth and a traditional Japanese shirt with the emblem of either the festival or a family crest inscribed onto the back. Huge shrines are displayed all over the city months prior to the start of the festival and on the 15^th of July, all the participants (mostly men) let everything hang out and hoist the huge 40 foot tall shrines onto their shoulders, run around the city on a designated paths and race other men from other provinces and prefectures in Fukuoka for the pride and glory of being champions of Yamakasa that year. The floats are elaborately decorated and show figures and scenes that depict Japanese life in all different eras. On top of carrying the shrine, they also have 3 men on the float yelling “Oisa! Oisa! Oisa!” and constantly pouring water on the people around them to prevent overheating and it is a practice that is a remnant of the original ritual of blessing the people around the float. Rumor has it that the idea of the race started after two floats were made one year and one of them passed the other one. The logical evolution of stupid male pride results in what we know today as the largest gathering of men in giant diapers in Fukuoka.

Stretch it out...

The contestants take this very seriously and those who don't practice the handoffs of the floats enough run the risk of falling under the feet of their fellow runners.

Nothing that dramatic happened this year though thank God.

It’s a sight that sounds ridiculous when described and even more ridiculous to see. Despite starting exactly at 4:59 AM and it being pouring wet this year, I’m glad to have been able to witness this strange and unforgettable sight at least once in my life.

Catching Fireflies in the Rice Fields of Oita

2010-07-26T00:37:00.001-07:00

Sachie-chan was nice enough to invite all of us back to her parents’ home in Oita Prefecture. Oita is a part of Kyushu I have yet to visit before this trip and it was a very nice treat to spend a little time in the countryside part of Japan. Best of all she said that this was the perfect season for seeing fireflies!

Getting There

We had agreed to meet in downtown at 12 to catch a bus to Oita but we had all partied the whole night before and everybody was either exhausted, nursing a hangover or still drunk. Combine this with getting Axel, Baptiste, Jonathan and me together, out the door, to the train to Tenjin all before noon and you have one hell of a time. We make it to Tenjin station just in time to be greeted by a spritely young Japanese girl who walked straight up to Baptiste and started giving him directions for getting tickets. We were confused until we realized how much this girl looked like Sachie and realized it was her younger sister, Tomoe.

The Sagara Women

Sachie’s parents picked us up from the bus stop and we enjoyed a nice scenic drive through the huge open rice plains and endlessly tall pine and evergreen trees that reminded me of drives through Lake Tahoe. The most striking thing that we soon realized was how alike all of the Sagara women were. On the self built property of Sachie’s home, there were 3 generations of Sagara women living together. The grandmother is a small and frail woman hunched over from years of hard work in the fields. Sachie’s mother has exactly the same bright smile as Sachie and Tomoe. And last but not least, her father stands on the side stoic and mostly silent. He seems to be the strict and powerful leader of the family who only speaks when necessary.

Little House on the Prairie

The log-cabin style home was a pleasant surprise nestled in the Japanese countryside. Designed and built by Sachie’s father, this home was inspired by none other than the old 70’s American television show, The Little House on the Prairie. Ironically, mixing American log cabins and Japanese construction equals something that resembles a German house, says Jonathan. The house was small, quaint, simple and cozy with interlocking wood logs and rounded doorways. Inside there are classic American style bedrooms and also a multipurpose living room with tatami mats that can be opened up to create a larger space or closed to become a bedroom. Outside, we picked onions and potatoes out of the small garden beside the house. There’s no existence as pure as actually living off the land. I’d like a small garden of my own some day. I think it’s a rewarding and self fulfilling hobby.

See the Resemblance?

Home Grown Food Pwns Trader Joes

The Land of Oita

I’ve always been and will always be a city slicker. I simply enjoy modern conveniences, a bug-less environment and concrete too much to ever live in the countryside, but I must say visiting the countryside is really quite a nice. What Oita lacks in loud obnoxious pachinko parlors and congested city streets, it makes up for tenfold in sweeping green hills, pockets of green forests and picturesque postcard worthy moments.

Cloudy Day in Oita

Wall of Trees

Follow the Leader

Sachie Ventures Forth

Mushroom Farm

Worn Path

Tomoe Enters

Dew Drops

Moss Wall

Dog Takes Human for a Walk

View from Front Porch

And rest assured that If you somehow get sick of the constant idyllic landscapes you can always enjoy one of the many famous onsens (hot springs) or admire the occasional scrap metal sculpture of Godzilla.

Thought I was Kidding About Godzilla?

I Wasn't

Catching My First Firefly

There’s something iconic about the image of catching a firefly. For me, it conjures up images of a time far simpler than the modern quick paced lives we’re used to living. Where nature provides the only illumination at night and you can capture a piece of the magic in the palm of your hand. Anybody who knows me at all knows I’m not a particularly big fan of insects, but for fireflies I can make an exception. They maybe some of the most mesmerizing and fascinating bugs I’ve ever seen. They fly slowly with no real course, wildly changing directions and with no inherent goal. They are surprisingly easy to catch and I even had a few fly right into me as if they wanted to be caught. Jonathan started to collect them in his front shirt pocket and even gave them individual names. He insisted his new pets have their own identities. The fireflies would strobe on and off as if they had built in dimmer switches that were slowly being pushed up and down. Each one has their own internal beat, but when you put them together, they automatically sync to each others’ rhythm. That’s why off in the distance deep in the woods, there are just hundreds, maybe thousands of little green lights flashing on and off in unison. Nature is so amazingly organized.

The Best Picture I Could Manage - Not Even Close to Real Life Though

Japanese Hospitality

The Sagara family really took great care of us. Besides giving us a place to stay, they cooked us a delicious barbeque dinner, explained to us a bit of history and gave us a tour of their homes, walked us around the extensive grounds of their property and even taught us to make our own breakfast donuts. At night, Baptiste and I shared one of countless bro moments watching the stars and philosophizing about the universe before Sachie, Axel and Jonathan ambushed us with wet wads of paper. I ran right by them trying to catch them but was lost in the pure darkness. The only light coming from the single house on the hill, everything in the distance was black. No neighbors to be seen or heard of. I enjoyed every moment of the breathtaking scenery and was more impressed by the bamboo forest in their backyard than the one I visited in Arashiyama, Kyoto. It was an absolute pleasure to spend some time with such a kind and wholesome family and I can’t thank them enough for their gift. ありがとう　ございます！

Tomoe and Kone (Neko = Cat)

Rasta in Oita

Breakfast as One Big Happy Family

From Above

No Japanese Home is Complete Without a Small Totoro Collection

Fighting Express 2010

2010-07-25T00:29:00.001-07:00

An annual exhibition of mental and physical prowess, Fighting Express 2010 is a wrestling show put on by students of the Pro Wrestling Club every year at Kyushu University, Ohashi Campus. The students do a fantastic job of organizing the entire event, from building the stage out of plastic crates, to designing introduction movies and skits, making their own custom costumes and running the lighting and music. There is also a panel of “judges” who are mostly there for comedic relief and openly spout vulgarities and perverse remarks. This is not so strange except for the fact the panel of judges are made up of University professors who see and interact with students every day.

The skits (I am told) are filled with inside jokes that seem to be understood by the entire student body save the foreign students. But even being completely out of the loop, I still appreciate how professionally everything was done.

The Costumes

Sometimes, they were recognizable characters like Pikachu and Bomberman, and sometimes the costumes were completely indecipherable. For example, there was one guy with just a big floppy headdress, a sniper with a bad nose job, a giant guy in what appeared to be a diaper, a Mexican wrestler, two minion bombs of Bomberman and a large assortment of scantily clad wrestlers. The match would usually include a duo of wrestlers on each side and some sort of 2 versus 2 tap type of wrestling match would take place. The rules and official point of the match would get a little muddled since everything was obviously preplanned and staged anyway. But at least unlike American wrestling, this is so obvious they just admit to it.

Pikachu Twirls Big Floppy Head Guy

Bomberman and his Bomb Minions

Sniper with a Bad Nose Job

The Fighting

Even though the show mostly revolves around comedy, this does not detract from the actual athletic ability of the wrestlers. The fighting is ironically quite real at some points, with loud slaps ringing and resounding off the bare chests of the guys on stage. Also there were some very impressive acrobatics performed by some very large guys including jumps off ropes and posts, flips and twists, grabs and spins that would involve a guy standing straight up and lifting another guy upside down into the air. Like so…

OR...

The performers obviously take this show very seriously. They have to all be very aware of what they are doing in order to avoid injury to themselves or injuring others. Afterwards, I realized just how real some of the fighting was when I saw some friends who performed after the show; their whole bodies were red from real slaps, and bruised all over from real falls. Despite being black and blue, they were all in good spirits and thanked us all for coming. What good sports.

Hamachan Kicking Butt and Taking Names

I Want Sweet Pants like That

My Regret

If I had to do one thing different I would have liked to participate in this instead of just watching it. Baptiste and Ai-chan had mentioned doing it, but only briefly and we never seriously considered joining the club. But I think it would have been really nice to do a 2v2 gaijin battle. The whole time, I was imagining what crazy fake personas we would have each assimilated. Too bad we missed our chance.

My First Baseball Game in Japan

2010-07-13T23:46:00.000-07:00

Stadium Panorama

I’ve seen baseball games before. Why, I’m not sure. I think it’s one of the most boring sports in the world (second only to golf). Mostly it was because my Dad got free tickets and they were very good seats. Like dugout private box seats that came with free caps and all the hot dogs you could eat. I kind of watched the game in between putting the third cap on my head and eating my 7^th hot dog. But actually baseball in Japan is kind of fun (even without totally awesome tickets).

Go America!

In fact, the first game I watched in Japan, we actually got the very worst seats in the house. How bad you ask? Well, we didn’t have seats, we just stood in the very back of the stadium. With our back to the walls, we peered down the aisles of screaming crowds while dodging the waving banners and flags of the crazed self designated fan groups.

Previously Stated Flag Dodging

How We Ended Up in the Nosebleeds

We arrived about 15 minutes before the game started hoping there would still be some cheap tickets left (about $20 USD), but the only tickets that were left at the box office was nearly twice that price (around $40 USD) and none of us were willing to pay that much. So we decided what any reasonable sport event go-er does in such a situation, we bought scalped tickets. We were a group of 5 foreigners and 1 Japanese guy trying to haggle for six tickets. He gave us a price of 3000 Yen (about $30) for each ticket, but after Baptiste spoke up and shocked the scalper, he realized he understood everything that he had been saying in Japanese and immediately pushed the price down to 2500 Yen. Nice one Baptiste.

Our "Seats"

One Small Problem

We had bought tickets without thinking of asking what team they were for. We accidentally ended up on the opposing teams’ side amidst thousands of fanatic Osaka Tigers fans. Luckily none of us was sporting any sort of official Fukuoka Hawk’s gear. Osaka fans are notorious for being some of the craziest fans in Japan and I’m not sure how long we would have made it if we would have worn some Hawks jerseys. The ironic turn of events led us to not only to watching from the opposite side of the stadium but also eventually just cheering for the Tigers. We got caught up in the fury and enthusiasm of the Osaka fans. Eventually, we were high-fiving fellow Tiger fans, we let off celebratory balloons with the crowd and enjoyed the game from a different perspective. We even cheered when the Hawk’s lost.

Crazed Fan #1

Crazed Fan #2 (accompanied by giant stuffed tiger)

Crazed Fan #3 (head to toe tiger gear ensemble)

Crazed Fan #4 (and matching son)

Crazed Fan #5 (not so crazy actually)

The Seventh Inning (Phallic) Balloon Release

Sometimes the jokes about Japan are so obvious and easy, I wonder if they know how funny some of the things they do are for a foreigner. It’s just too easy sometimes. I mean do they see the jokes that can be made?

Let My Very Mature Friends Help Demonstrate

During the seventh inning of every game, there is a tradition where everyone blows these balloons that extend to about four or five feet long with a bulbous protrusion at the tip. Everybody in the stadium is holding at least one if not two of these balloons and all release them at the same time. The balloons have a special valve at the end which whistles when air is expelled out from the balloon. So the whole stadium is filled with huge whistling sperm-like giant condom looking balloons wildly swimming through the air around the beginning of the seventh inning. It’s an interesting sight to see.

Wooooooooo!

Wheeeeeee!

Bad Parenting

I’m not saying that I presume to know anything at all about being a parent. But there’s one thing that seems apparent to me, that some people should either be more responsible, or just not have kids at all. This harsh but fair opinion comes from watching the game near the back of the stadium where there are a legion of self appointed, but very official looking Osaka Tiger fans waving large banner and pounding rehearsed rhythms on large handheld drums. The drumming is so loud that I was standing above them, with the sound directed downward away from me and I still found it a little painfully loud. There was one guy however who was standing directing one row below one of the said loud drummers. With the opening of the drum facing downwards, the sound concentrated in a column of unrelenting booming constantly bombarding the eardrums of any unfortunately soul caught beneath it. And over this man’s shoulders was his toddler son who will now almost surely grow up near-deaf wondering why this happened to him. Bad Dad.

Bad

In general I enjoyed the baseball game. I might not go again, but it was fun taking some pictures, experiencing for ourselves the love that Japan has for baseball and all for a pretty cheap price. Baseball game – check.

The Rainy Season is Here

2010-06-26T02:11:00.001-07:00

This is the dismal forecast for the next week. Rain ruins picture taking and going out. I predict the next rainy month to be a few less adventures and a lot more hiding out indoors, unfortunately.

Korea

2010-06-23T02:14:00.001-07:00

Seoul

We assumed that Korea was going to be warm, sunny and comfortable. We also heard from numerous sources that we would buy lots of cheap clothing and trinkets so we’d be better off packing light. This resulted in most of us bringing about half the amount of t-shirts we actually required for the trip and seriously under packing. We arrived off a bus from Incheon International Airport freezing under a light but frigid layer of rain.

Korean Friends

The next day we started the day early and met with Kim right outside our hostel. Kim Jeakon used to be my hall advisor and lived just a few doors down from me until he moved back to Korea a couple of months ago. We became good friends and he promised to take us around if we ever got a chance to go to Seoul. So here we were and here he came. Kim is a man of his word. But aside from all that, it was just nice to see an old friend.

We took a hurried walking tour through major sightseeing portions of the city, while still making time to relax and have a cup of traditional Korean tea outside in the sun. Baptiste, Andrea and Jonathon attract a lot of attention in Korea. Occasionally, a group of 3 or 4 giggly teeny boppers will ask with a muffled excitement to take a group picture with them. They usually politely agree. I’m assumed to be their Korean guide.

In the late afternoon, we were lucky to meet up with another Korean friend I wasn’t sure we would have a chance to meet up with. I met Jungeun way back in November by chance in Kyoto. It was our last morning before checking out of our hostel. Jungeun was travelling in Kyoto with her friend Katsumi. They had met while travelling separately in Tibet. She was very kind on our first meeting and even though we only spoke for 10 minutes, we connected and she told us she would meet us if we ever came to Seoul. Well she kept her promise and I’m glad because we had a lot of fun together.

Interactive Street

We ran into one of the coolest interactive street designs in the middle of Seoul by accident. At first we weren’t sure what was really going on. All we saw were these large random shaped screens (like mismatched tetris blocks). But we soon realized it was actually a live feedback image of us and thus frolicking ensued. We ran around, watching our own images lag by a few seconds trying to dodge the camera. We then found that we could take group pictures and even decorate them afterwards like piri-kura (AKA Asian sticky pictures). The panel was a giant touch screen that allowed us to email the picture to ourselves and even let us change the colors of the lamp posts on the street. The whole street was fitted with the same type of lamp post that would change to any shade of color that we decided. This was a cool and fun way to make the environment interactive. Good job Seoul.

That's Love

Say Cheese

Street Controller

Seoul Tower’s Love Lockdown

I’ve seen my fair share of observation towers this year. Counting this one, I believe I’m on number 5 but there was one cool and quirky thing that makes Seoul Tower a little different. The entire fence that surrounds the tower is covered in locked padlocks and key locks with small attached notes of love and hope. Somehow a tradition started where couples coming up to the tower on dates would bring a lock with them, lock it on the fence and throw away the key symbolizing their commitment to each other and their hope that their love will be as eternal as the lock. Not sure how well that works out for them, but I just enjoy the feeble attempt of the tower to keep people from throwing their keys down the hill. Occasionally you can see a small sign prohibiting the locking of locks (although the signs themselves are usually obscured by locks).

Sunset in Seoul

Love in Action

Fail Sign

Rooftop Shenanigan

We had many choices for hostels in Seoul. But we decided to stay in a hostel Tibor had stayed at and apparently had a great roof access for night photos. The hostel was great, but we really mainly were interested in climbing on the roof. So after a full day of sightseeing, we decided to check out the rooftop. The access took a little exploring to get to and after getting outside we had to climb up a fire escape 40 ft. up to reach the very top. The view from the top was really fantastic and the city made for a great backdrop for some photo experimentation. It’s a good thing that all four of us (Jonathan, Andrea, Baptiste and I) are all camera geeks because everywhere we went we were taking a long time just getting the perfect shot.

Proof

We ended up staying an additional 2 hours up on the rooftop taking pictures. My fingers were numb from the cold when we came down.

Inner Struggle

Creepy Shot

King of the World

The View Down

The Way Up

Changdeokgung

First thing, I’d like to say that of all the countries I’ve visited this year, Korea is by far the hardest to distinguish the names of places. Many of the major cities, palaces and destinations we went to all sound incredibly similar to each other and trying to figure out plans was both ridiculous and hilariously confusing. Anyway, we went back to this palace ourselves but only allocated a measly one and a half hours to explore the entirely too expansive grounds. By the end of it, we realized how little time and how much more we had left to see. We ran through the last few portions of it and left reluctantly. But not without first doing a handstand in front of the palace guards. They weren’t too happy about that, but we at least got one picture!

BAM!

The Rest of the Palace was Beautiful Too

In Search for the Water Bridge

Somewhere, Andrea saw a picture of water spewing out the side of a bridge. Somehow Kim took this request seriously and tracked down Banpo Bridge for us. But when we arrived and got off the bus, the bus driver told us the bridge’s water show was not operating this month in lieu of the recent sinking of a South Korean submarine that resulted in the death of hundreds of South Korean sailors. The bridge and many other parts of Korea were respectfully and solemnly respecting the memories of the fallen soldiers. So sadly, no cool water show, but it would have looked something like this:

Not My Photo

Now we were in the middle of nowhere, by the Hangang River, the major river that cuts through the city and with no water show to see. We quickly revised our plan and decided to rent some bikes and ride along the river. Baptiste and I rented a double bike because 1) we’d never ridden one before and 2) why not? Well, we found it was very awkward, somewhat uncomfortable and looked very questionable after the first 10 seconds. But we rented the bike and stuck with it. I took shotgun first and Baptistes’s longer legs meant that he had to make a choice between slamming his knees into the handlebars or kneeing me in the butt every time he made a revolution. He chose the latter. We traded spots on the way back and that worked out much better. We got some fun shots under the freeway, in a field of yellow flowers at sunset and even some long exposure shots at night.

B&W Underpass

Beautiful Korea

Hangang Sunset

Photograph of the Photographer

Our Double Bike

Hangang River Sunset Panorama

Long Exposure on the Bridge

Shopping in Seoul

The type of clothes and fashion options in Seoul are more than impressive, they’re overwhelming. I’ve since shopped in major shopping cities like Tokyo, Taiwan, Bangkok and Hong Kong, but I have to say that Seoul may have the most varied styles of fashion and the most shopping options. There was a building we walked into that was essentially a small warehouse. Each floor was devoted to a certain category. The floor we entered on was an entire warehouse full of stalls selling underwear. This continues for maybe 8-10 floors.

The Secret Garden

So in one of Seoul’s palaces is a place called the secret garden. After buying a ticket and entering the palace, there’s a separate booth with an additional ticket to buy in order to get inside the inner sanctum.

The Secret but Very Wide Entrance Into the Secret Garden

The Mix-Up

I bought a ticket and entered the garden entrance. Not one minute later, the rest of the guys line up at the booth to buy their tickets to enter. The lady at the counter tells them that the last tour is full and they cannot permit any more visitors. They make a fuss about how I’m inside and we were one group. They said, nevertheless they still couldn’t enter. I came back out to see what the problem was and then asked, “fine can I return my ticket then?” and they said, no I’d already entered. Each tour group was a max number of 100 people. They couldn’t do 103.

Jonathan Pulls the Angry Card

We have two general theories. Being foreigners usually lets us get away with more than the average resident. Usually, playing the foreigner card alone is enough to get our way. But if that fails, Jonathan has one more card he uses in emergencies: the angry card. Jonathan is comparable to a giant (albeit intimidating looking) harmless teddy bear. But if you don’t know him, his gruff exterior, overflowing chest hair and deep voice will usually scare off most unsuspecting Asian employees. So he just pretended to get angry and started speaking in a louder volume, “What do you mean we can’t go in? What about my friend? He’s already inside? What is the meaning of this?!” and voila, they let everybody inside without even paying for the entrance fee. I guess the angry card does work.

Inside the Secret Garden

Not Sure Why It's A Secret, I Mean It's Nice But Yeah...

The Subway Split Up

Two girls riding the subway in Seoul get off the train at their supposed destination. They realize nearly at the same time that they’ve gotten off one station too early. They both run towards the train to get back on before it speeds off the platform. One gets on and the door shuts. She turns around to see her confused friend simply staring back and the train departs. Maybe this was just funny to see in person, but it’s a true story.

Baptiste and Andrea’s Appeal to Korean Girls

There were two people who obviously attracted the most attention out of the group throughout our trip in Korea. Baptiste seemed to get attention from the teeny boppers who on multiple occasions either A) asked to have a picture taken with him or B) just ran out to the side of the road and waved and giggled to each other as if he was a movie star. Andrea seemed to be the most successful and received the most attention in clubs.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Club Day

One day a month, there is a day called club day that involves 22 clubs in the Honigk University college area where one armband will get you in everywhere. We were lucky enough to land just on that day and come on the exact right weekend. We couldn’t have planned it any better. And better yet, it all just happened by coincidence. And this was made even more awesome because Kim was able to come out and party with us. We have only gone clubbing out with Kim in Fukuoka a few times but each time was a lot of fun and this time, he was the leader. After dinner, we crossed the street with the underpass and was shocked by the wave of people that filled every square inch of the passageway. Literally, there was a line backed up all the way down into the subway.

That's a Lot of People

The whole night was so busy, like nothing I’d ever seen before, even including Tokyo. We hit a whole variety of clubs all different sizes, types of music and people and had a great time. We met some people along the way and ended up collecting more Korean friends as the night went on. In general it was just a great time and a pretty unbeatable introduction to partying in Seoul.

Gyeongju

Korea is amazing for many reasons, one of which is its public transportation system. The country is small enough to go from end to end in just a few hours and the trains and busses are all just as advanced and comfortable as Japanese trains and busses if not more so. The best part is that things in Korea cost a fraction of the price of what it would cost to get the equivalent in Japan. The seats in the trains and busses almost fully recline and are incredibly comfortable. Our short KTX ride from Seoul to Gyeongju was easy, painless and great for napping.

Gyeongju is a very old and traditional city of Korea. Kim explained it as “Korea’s Kyoto” and it pretty much was just that, only on a much smaller scale. We walked through the city’s most famous sites including the mound graves of Korean past Korean leaders, another enormous field of yellow and purple flowers and a few scattered temples. We played in the chest high field of flowers avoiding the stings of bees and just enjoying nature.

Mound Tomb

Adorable Girl

Yellow Field Panorama

Random Pictures with Girls We Don't Know

Handstands and Standing Hands

Yangdong

The minute we stepped off the bus we realized we were in the middle of nowhere. In every direction, all we could see was a road slowly vanishing into the horizon. We laughed at our situation and circumstance. It was obviously more amusing than it was disturbing and we even took some pictures of all the nothingness to remember and document getting off in the middle of nowhere.

The Abandoned Station

We stopped while walking towards Yangdong alongside train tracks at what seemed to be a completely abandoned train station. Weeds were slowly reclaiming the station back to its rightful place. Green seeped through the cracks in the pavement and rust repainted the metal canopy. There was no train schedule posted and everything about the scene reminded me of every post Armageddon film or book I’d ever seen. We all were exhilarated with boyish excitement and decided to take a break at the station. We set up a mini tripod and took some stupid walking pictures and individual hand stand pictures on the tracks. We had assumed that the train was completely not running but no more than a minute after we had finished taking pictures and were packing up our cameras into our bags did a train passed by. Woops.

Yangdong Village

Sunset Silhouette

Sleeping in a Paper House and 100 Year Old Tea

The village of Yangdong is just a small blurb in the Korea Lonely Planet guidebook that we bought. It’s hard to imagine it being anything more than a quick glance to most tourists but we decided to spend a day and night there because Jungeun was also touring Korea at the time and this was one of the traditional stops she had on her itinerary that she recommended. The village is small, with one tourist center, one small hut of a convenience store but apparently at least two hostel/homes that supported the small trickle of adventurous backpackers that made the trip out from Gyeongju. In fact we saw at least 3 other foreigners in the village which was more than we had expected and more than we hoped there would be. One of whom we met the next morning while Baptiste and I wandered into a traditional Korean house. He was an American from New Jersey or Chicago (I can’t quite remember) who was married to a warm and friendly Korean woman. She had arranged for them to stay the night in one of the most historically significant homes in the whole village. We somehow found ourselves sitting down with the owner of the home and descendent of the original owner of the home for whom the house was built for 5 generations ago. He explained to us the history of his house, some of the architectural principles and even shared with us some delicious tea made from plants around the house fermented in jars that were hundreds of years old. It was cold, tangy and refreshing. I will never have tea like that again in my life. The house was called a 99-Kan house because it was the largest that a house could be back in ancient times while still abiding by the law that only the King was allowed to have a 100-Kan house (where a Kan is an ancient building area measurement unit that corresponds to the standard distance between two columns). Among some of the other interesting things I learned about traditional Korean homes, they burned the garbage in oven-like holes underneath the house to heat the house and keep it warm during the winter. This unfortunately kept Jonathan and Andrea up all night the night before because the floor was too hot and we were sleeping side by side in a small room clad completely in paper (like paper machete). I was too tired to notice and slept just fine.

Traditional Korean House

Busan or Pusan?

Busan, sometimes called Pusan in Japan is the second largest city in Fukuoka and a bustling metropolitan port city on the southeast coast of South Korea. That night we luckily were in Busan at the same time as Jungeun who was touring Korea but on a different schedule and taking a different route with her friend visiting from Japan. She took us to a local Busan restaurant that was a popular local hotspot. We had a delicious meal and thanks to Jungeun we can say that we’ve had at least one Busan specialty.

Busan Bridge

The Surprise (Near) Death Hike

The day started like any other. We decided on a place to see and set out to get there. We reached our first destination in good time, reached a bus station and asking everyone that we could which bus to take to no avail. Eventually we gave up and took a taxi to the temple on the water. I’ve seen many temples in the last 9 months of my travels, but none yet that was built on the edge of a cliff overlooking the expansive ocean.

Baptiste in Deep Contemplation

Contrast

The minute we arrived at the next temple we realized that there was a huge group of Korean school girls here for a fieldtrip. At first we thought it would be funny to watch Baptiste and Andrea get swallowed alive in a hungry horde of boy crazy school girls but then we realized they would ruin every good picture taking opportunity we would have and we quickly moved through the entrance of the temple in the hopes of staying one step ahead of them. We managed to do so but they were on our tails pretty closely at some points.

The Turning Point

After exploring two temples that were nearly empty we reached a luscious forest. The beautiful forest was filled with stones and paths that led up the mountain. We had no idea what was further up but decided to just take a look since we had time to explore anyway.

The is what a forest of death looks like, beautiful isn't it?

The Ensuing Adventure

The walk was steep, the terrain kept changing and we walked for 2 hours without a break. We were motivated by a group of Korean guys behind us. We were determined to beat them up the hill and tried to stay one step ahead of them. But we were surprised by how fit they were and by the end of it, we had barely arrived at the top of the northern gate before they did. One of them approached us and asked if I was the group’s Korean tour guide. I laughed and said no I’m a tourist like everyone else. They offered us some advice and told us that there was a great view at the top of the mountain to the west. We didn’t know how far it was, but we saw a small bridge faintly off in the distance and even though it seemed like an unrealistic goal to reach it, we decided to give it a try. Another 2 hours of hiking later, we reach the bridge. We spend some time enjoying the breathtaking view from above the world. We take some hand stand pictures of course and plenty of panorama photos. 2 hours later, we were down at the northern gate where we had started 4 hours before. It was now four o’clock and we had a decision to make: go back the way we came over crappy slippery rocks and a very not fun hike downhill or follow the wall (like China’s great wall, but this was Korea’s pretty great wall). We debated over the cartoon map with no scale what was better and Baptiste pushed hard to continue going along the wall. We agreed to try it his way and see if walking along the wall would lead to a more interesting and easier path down the mountain. Turns out this was one of the walls that Baptiste had seen somewhere either on the internet or in a guidebook somewhere and he almost had a fit when he realized we were walking along it. We had some good times taking pictures and felt pretty carefree until it came time to actually start worrying about getting off the mountain. The sun was setting under the high peaks of the mountains, none of us had jackets, it was beginning to get dark and we had not seen any paths leading down the mountain. Worse yet, we were seemingly the last ones left on the mountain and all we could see for miles in either direction was more undulating peaks and a long thin strip of stone wall running over the peaks.

SuperBaptiste

A Look Back at the Distance Traveled

Korea's (Pretty) Great Wall

Our Savior

We sat to rest because we were all exhausted and getting increasingly more stressed out about getting down to civilization. A Korean hiker came by and we flagged him down desperately. We worked a very weak translation with a handheld English-Korean dictionary we had and hand motions. We finally came to an understanding that we would follow him down to wherever he was going. We followed as closely behind this guy as we could but this unassuming 30 something year old little Korean guy moved surprisingly quickly down the mountain. All our feet were pounding and all we could do was follow him down the next two hours of hiking concentrating on every foot step and trying our best not to slip out of clumsiness or exhaustion. The hiking was some of the hardest hiking I’ve done all year and there were a lot of steep gravel covered parts, lots of loose rocks and trees to dodge. An hour into the hike down, we saw a strange sight that we still discuss today and are puzzled. There was a small clearing in the woods and some exercise machines set out. Now this is not so uncommon in Korea, there are some public gym equipment everywhere, but how on earth did someone get those machines up the mountain, through the thick foliage and why they placed it so far up the mountain is still a mystery to us. This is our Stonehenge or Giza. We had some hope when we saw the gym and thought we were near the bottom, but that was really only the halfway point and we walked about another hour until we reached civilization. We were relieved to reach pavement and thanked the kind hiker for saving our lives. We decided to reward ourselves by going to Asia (and possibly the world’s) largest spa. It was very large and incredibly affordable considering its ostentation. We all felt if not 100% better, at least enough where we didn’t want to all kill Baptiste for convincing us to go farther up the mountain. We wandered a bit more somehow rejuvenated enough to stay on our feet and found ourselves down a little dank alleyway. We found a motherly food stall vender wave us down and give us a table for some street food. It was an awesome and very necessary meal after our day’s ordeal. We had survived another day in Korea.

Tongyeong

The next day we took a bus from Busan to Tongyeong which is a small port city west of Busan on the coast of South Korea. It was from there we were hoping to go island hopping along some of Korea’s southern islands and see some new scenery. The town of Tongyeong is a bit strange though. In the town itself I saw the name of the city spelled three different ways, the city had a very strange layout and urban plan and the only hotels or hostels we could find were all love hotels. We had no choice but to get 2 rooms for 4 guys in the most non-shady love hotel we could find. Actually it was kind of awesome because it was relatively inexpensive (like $20 USD) and it came with a large bed, a big screen TV, a fridge and a computer in the room with internet. We spent a good portion of the night enjoying the annual championships of Starcraft which I had only heard about but had never seen before.

The town was strange for other reasons. Walking around, we saw very few people for such a large city. We walked all the way around the port and wandered into some ship yards. The whole time, there was something about the place that felt just off. I couldn’t really say what it was exactly that bothered me about the town but the fact I couldn’t pinpoint anything in particular made it even more bothersome. The city is filled with colorful neon lights that line the bridges, the fencing along the water and a lot of the roads. But all the colors were too different and the whole place seemed like a cheesy poor imitation of sort of festive Disney-like atmosphere. We had dinner and talked to some local college kids who were also a bit strange.

The next day it rained. We debated what would be our next plan since that really made island hopping a much less reasonable proposition. We asked around a local tourist center and found that there was still one island that we could reach by ferry and decided to just try it since we didn’t want to have just come all the way here for no reason. The rain had stopped leaving a dense white fog the enveloped everything around us. We bobbed around on the ocean waters taking in the surreal scene and feeling as if we’d entered a lost world and were entering deeper in the heart of darkness.

Off the Ferry

Maybe that’s being overly dramatic, but the environment definitely had that undertone. There was a temple on the island that was a tourist attraction and we decided to try to make our way to that. We saw a bus that stopped and determined that this bus only comes once in an hour. Without giving it too much thought, we just jumped on. About 40 minutes later of driving around a couple of islands, we asked the driver if/when we would arrive at the temple. He just looked at me, scoffed and waved me away. Later we changed busses when we passed another bus and the driver told us to get off his bus and get on another one. We were obviously confused and when the second bus dropped us off where our boat had docked we realized why the first bus driver laughed at us. We had just taken an hour bus ride away from our destination. Either way, it gave us a good opportunity to see the rest of the island. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking though. Creepy, cool and unbelievable.

See! Do you believe it actually looked like that in real life, well it did.

Lighting the Way

Jonathan's Photo - Bridge to the Abyss

Back to Square One

We headed back into Seoul and met Mary back at our original hostel. We moved back into our same dorm room and we were surprised to see a girl in our room. We hadn’t realized the 8 person dormitory was also a co-ed dorm. This wasn’t so much of a problem and we unpacked and kind of relaxed a little bit. The girl (Michelle) turned out to be from Seattle and a pretty nice girl. We invited her out to eat Korean BBQ with us and had fun getting to know each other. The man at the table behind us unexpectedly fell backwards onto Michelle and we realized he was completely inebriated beyond reason and balance. His friend who didn’t seem to care very much about his friend’s well being was also pretty drunk himself and both men kind of just shakily waved from left to right threatening to collapse on Michelle or just fall off their chairs altogether. We laughed and enjoyed taking some pictures of their drunkenness. Afterwards we went shopping on our own since the largest of the shopping malls in Seoul stay open until 5 AM and we had plenty of energy left. We didn’t get to buy as much stuff as we had liked and things were not as dirt cheap as some people had implied, but it was still decent compared to Japan.

The next day was a fully packed day of seeing all the things that we wanted to see but didn’t get a chance to see the first time we were in Seoul. We saw the world cup stadium, the War Memorial Museum and a series of museums done by three world renowned architects: Mario Botta, Jean Nouvel and Rem Koolhaas. We met up with our good friends Kim and Jungeun again at the Leeum Museum and spent some good times with them eating dinner, taking a tour of Kim’s university, drinking some coffee, and enjoying some live jazz music in a jazz bar. Sadly they had to leave and we were on our own after the jazz bar.

Good Times with Good Friends

Clubbing in Hongik University

Seoul is my favorite place in the world (so far) for clubbing. There I said it. I’ve clubbed in Tokyo, Fukuoka, LA, Vegas, and SE Asia, but by far my favorite place to club is Seoul. On our last weekend out, we four foreigners were invited into a club for free because it was free foreigners. I know that they were just trying to fill the place up but nowhere else do I know where four guys can get free admission to clubbing. That just NEVER happens. Next thing, I saw the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life that night. I had no camera, no pad and pencil and no way of transferring my memory to another medium to convey her beauty, but all of us agreed she was the most drop dead beautiful girl any of us had ever seen in our lives. She was working at the club selling cigarettes and she did very little all night. She just stood there with her slightly curled shiny black hair and perfectly proportioned face and body and sold cigarettes. She didn’t have to do anything else. She smiled once and I almost died.

Andrea’s Success

By far the guy who had the most success in Seoul was Andrea. I suppose it depends on how you define success, but he simply got a lot of attention in the clubs of Seoul. My favorite story of all the girls (he had a string of attractive girls the whole night) that he danced with was the first one. She was with a group of friends and I saw her looking towards our group. She apparently made her decision, whipped around and came right towards Andrea saying nothing, whispered something in his ear and grabbed him by his collar towards the bar. They talked for a while and we were just enjoying his success from the outside. Later on, he goes on to tell us she was the craziest girl he’d ever met.

The Crazy Girl

Why was this the craziest girl Andrea had ever met? Here are a few reasons for starters. 1) She talked like a sailor. She had a really dirty mouth, dropped the F bomb in every other sentence and flicked off the DJ and the crowd of people dancing for no reason. 2) She gave bro hugs. Bro hugs are the most acceptable form of hugging for bros that include a one handed high five clasp and a shoulder-to-shoulder bump with a pat on the back with the left hand. Girls do not give bro hugs. Not most girls anyways. 3) She likes drugs. She said specifically “I like drugs, not marijuana”, which only leaves hard drugs. Maybe she was already rolling when she attacked- I mean met Andrea. 4) She danced like a freak. It is impossible for me to convey the kind of movements that she was described to have done to Andrea, but I’ll describe it simply as: she licked her finger, drew a winding trail down Andrea’s body and grabbed his… package. 5) After all that, she just left. She went to the bathroom and came out and told him, okay, you can go back to your friends now.

Kim and Jungeun

I have to send a special thank you out to Kim and Jungeun who really made our trip to Korea extraordinary. Without them, we would have definitely not been able to see the things that we saw, eaten the things we ate and done all the things we got to do. Most of all, it was just a pleasure and a privilege to spend some time with such awesome people and I sincerely hope we will meet again in the future.

Kumamoto Castle

2010-05-28T22:23:00.001-07:00

After Abby left, I was left with one extra Ju-Hachi-Kippu (the special JR ticket that allows me to use any local train for a whole day). So I was looking to go somewhere new and kind of far so as to get the best use of my ticket. Since nobody else had one of these tickets, I decided to save Nagasaki for a little later (possibly with friends) and instead go to one of the last remaining fully constructed castles in Japan, Kumamoto Castle.

I was just catching the tail end of the cherry blossom season and was lucky enough to see some sakura mixed in with the castle. The castle itself was built in 1607 but was reconstructed in 1960 accurately replicating historical Japanese construction methods. The coolest part for me wasn’t the castle as a whole, but rather the fine details in the castle. Halfway through the museum, I decided to take a break and sit in a tatami room and watch a short video documentary about the reconstruction process. At first I was merely there to take a break, but then I got really into the video actually. It described the incredible lengths (whoever specializes in and was contracted to rebuild a freaking Japanese castle) went into faithfully doing things as they were done. This means every wooden joint construction used no nails, adhesive or screws. How is that possible you might ask? I’m not entirely sure even after watching the video and playing with the diagrammatic toy:

All I can figure is that they employed an infinite number of genius puzzle makers and master craftsman to somehow design every piece to perfectly fit into each other relying on wooden pegs and gravity to make sure this massive structure stands and doesn’t end up crushing those for whom it was built to protect.

Other really awesome notable parts of the castle include a highly ornate room that was hand crafted out of gold. Well, it wasn’t all gold, they just hand chiseled out gold casings and paintings out of huge sliding gold doors, but still impressive. I’m really glad I watched the video because I really think I might have easily passed this room had I not understood the incredible amount of time, energy and effort somebody took to build it.

So after standing there in awe for a while, I closed my jaw and moved on. I talked to a nice lady who was very eager to practice her English and was more than happy to recommend me a good place for a bowl of Kumamoto ramen.

I thanked her for her “osusume” and wandered the city a bit. One of the best lines from the Kumamoto city brochure guide is, “We believe the water in Kumamoto makes three things: good rice, good food and pretty girls. The first two are true, what do you think about the last?” Not bad.

A Better Question: Would you eat here?

On the Hunt for Sakura in Kyoto and Fukuoka

2010-05-23T02:53:00.000-07:00

So here’s the thing about finding the illusive cherry blossoms (AKA sakura) in Japan, they’re damn hard to find. Most people get an imagine sakura in Japan as huge luscious forests of pink and white canopies blanketing the landscape dispersed over the unending horizon. The truth is that sakura are only in full bloom a couple of weeks a year and it changes depending on the location, the temperature that year and any other fickle thing nature decides to throw in the mix. This means that planning the best time to see sakura in a great location is really a guessing game. Also, the added pressure of only having one year here, only having the chance to see this season once (unless I come back) and Abby coming with great expectations of seeing some beautiful sakura made my job all the more difficult. I found a blog by a guy who was going travelling throughout Japan documenting how the sakura were blossoming in that area. But even he could only speculate on when they would be in full bloom if they weren’t already and if they already were in full bloom where he was at, they might be out of their peak bloom by the time I got there. So what does it take to see some nice sakura in Japan? Luck.

Getting to Kyoto

When we got back from Hong Kong, Abby and I were already pretty tired. Hong Kong was jam packed full of activities and we really hadn’t had a moment just to stay around in one place and relax for a while. Unfortunately, I had planned that we would leave bright and early on the next day to catch a 6 AM train that would include about 7-8 hours of train riding. We decided to travel by local train with a special ticket that is only available during the vacation season and allows you to take any JR local train for a whole day for cheap. This was a very good deal but quite an ordeal (unplanned rhyme). I had some friends help us buy tickets and translate a schedule for us from Japanese to English. A special thank you shout out to Masa-san and Ai-chan for their help. This was no problem except that the schedule was an intimidating lineup of 11 train switches at intervals as short as one minute. This means that if we missed the one minute transfer, we could be stuck at a station for an hour and our whole schedule would be out of order. Nevertheless, I was determined to figure it out and we were packed and ready to go for the next morning. But of course, Murphy’s Law kicked in and my alarm clock failed to wake us (because it ran out of batteries). We awoke at 7 am, jumped out the door and realized our schedule was already off because we were supposed to be on the first 6:01 train and follow each successive train afterwards. So after some deliberation we decided to spend an extra day in Fukuoka and perhaps cut Kyoto one day short.

Mixed Blessing

The extra day that we gained in Fukuoka turned out to be quite a mixed blessing because we spent the day at one of Fukuoka’s biggest parks where sakura were in full blossom and if gave us a chance to recuperate a bit. And in fact many of the best sakura we saw were in Fukuoka.

Kyoto

We left the next day for Kyoto as planned. We set two alarm clocks this time. I spent the 8 hour train ride switching between taking one hour naps, mapping out all the best destinations in Kyoto and figuring out the most efficient routes. We were lucky that the hostel was a 15 minute walk from our first and possible most famous temple, Kinkakuji, aka The Golden Pavilion.

I had planned out a full 4 day itinerary but we had to try to fit it into 3 days. On top of that, we would later lose another day, so we just tried our best to see the most that we could. We proceeded through about half a dozen more temples that day and got on a bus going in the wrong direction. After backtracking we ended up deciding to spend our night view looking at Joji Castle which is the one and only castle in Kyoto and I felt it was time well spent.

An Awesome Live Koto Performance

Day two was kind of rainy with points of intermittent drizzle. I decided to take Abby to Arashiyama to see the monkeys and famous bamboo forest. The misty rain was both good and bad. It obviously made picture taking a much bigger hassle since we would share an umbrella and take turns taking pictures and holding the umbrella for the other person. But it also added a really cool and ominous atmosphere to some of the scenery.

At night we decided to go to Toji Temple which is the tallest pagoda in Japan (I think) and then went to Fushimi Inari Taisha but it was already dark by the time we arrived and it was quite spooky. I think Abby really didn’t like the torii gates so much because it looked as if anybody could be hiding behind and ready to jump out at every gate… and there are thousands of consecutive gates. Unfortunately, the place is quite a labyrinth and though we were determined to try to walk the whole trail, we actually got lost and somehow wandered into a residential area which I had no idea existed. It was strange walking up a mountain amongst one of the most famous temples in the world and then just ending up in small windy residential streets. After much work we reached the middle point, caught our breathes, took a nice picture and made our way home to our hostel. The rain and night really made the hike up not so fun. Abby was happy just to get to the view point. The next day was supposed to rain but we had decided to simply determine on the day of whether or not we wanted to head home early because temple viewing in the rain is really kind of a hassle. I woke up at 6 am somehow and saw that it was literally pouring. So we quickly packed all our things and decided to leave Kyoto a day early. On the way back we somehow coincidentally met up with Baptiste on the same train. We got to chat a bit and share stories about our respective trips. He was just on his way back to Fukuoka after a 3 week trip around Japan and we both had a lot to tell each other. We had spent literally every waking moment with each other together in Southeast Asia and then suddenly I hadn’t seen the guy for almost a month, so it was a warm and welcomed reunion. On our way back we made a short detour to a small town I still don’t know the name of (I forget). We were lucky enough to catch the wedding procession of a newly married Japanese couple. Snapped a few pictures and got back on a train an hour later.

Choice Shot of Kyoto: Chasing Birds

The next day was a slow and easy day, running any extra errands and at night we got the extra special treat of going to an Hanami, a traditional and popular Japanese tradition of holding a picnic out at a park or public space around blossoming Sakura. The sakura was noticeably less full than just a few days ago and we realized how fast and fleeting the cherry blossom season really was. The food and company was good but we all were almost frozen solid by the time we left the park.

The next day I saw Abby off to the airport. I don’t know if I can properly convey how much I appreciate Abby coming all the way out to see me and travel with me. It was really a meeting that I was not realistically expecting and I know how much (time, money, etc) she had to sacrifice for me in order to make this trip a reality. I hope she enjoyed this short and sweet excursion as much as I did. I wouldn’t have wanted to share the beauty of the sakura season with anybody else.

South Korea for Golden Week

2010-04-26T22:56:00.000-07:00

Hi readers,it's golden week here in Japan. Golden week is a national holiday where all schools and many employers give a week of holiday to their students and employees. This means that a lot of Japanese travel in or around Japan. I'm taking this opportunity to travel to South Korea for about 11 days with a few of the other exchange students. I'll be leaving for Seoul tomorrow (April 28th) and returning on May 8th. The flight is only an hour and it is amazingly close and a very good option for a short week and a half trip. Not really sure what I'm going to see/do/eat yet, but I've learned the awesomeness of uncertainty. So I'm just taking it easy for now and getting pumped to go. So I'll be taking a break from additional posts for about 2 weeks. I've got more to post including Sakura Viewing in Fukuoka, in Kyoto and Kumamoto Castle. So stay tuned... in a couple of weeks. See you guys later!

Hong Kong & Macau

2010-04-26T07:50:00.001-07:00

The Night View from Tsim Sha Tsui

It’s been 13 years (I think?) since I’ve last travelled to Hong Kong. The last time I came, I was only 14 years old. I fondly remember living in the child home of my mother in Hung Hom and really enjoying it. Even though it was small, cramped and dusty, just knowing I was living in the same home that my Mom grew up made it feel special to me somehow. As if I’d never felt before like I had so much history with a place before this, I felt connected to this small flat. This trip is completely different. I’m now 22, I am travelling here without my mother, on my own free will and I think I can safely say I’m a completely different person looking through different eyes at this familiar city. On top of all that, this was also Abby’s first time to Hong Kong, so it was really a trip back to our roots for the both of us.

In search for…

The trip’s plans were somewhat driven by a few specific things that Abby and I specifically had wanted to find. Number one priority was quickly given to what we’ve warmly dubbed the “canto blanket”. This blanket/towel is a childhood blanket that I and many other Cantonese (ABC’s) grew up with. Like many others, mine is now tattered, torn and still in my bed. The very first night in Hong Kong, we eagerly hit the Ladies Street Market expecting to see every other stall selling this blanket that we’d known so well and seen at so many Canto friends’ houses. But to our dismay, we were unable to find it anywhere. Even after some recommendations and searching all of Causeway Bay, we still had no luck finding the now increasingly elusive childhood blanket. Apparently, it’s something that is not very popular with local Honkies now, either because they’ve become antiquated or because it was just something that only ABC’s grew up knowing. We were sad at this dying trend because it was a part of both Abby and my childhood that we know and remember very fondly.

Cousin Angie

Angie and Amy are two of my closest cousins that I’ve spent the better part of my childhood growing up with. Those of you know me long enough will remember a period when I was living with them in Arcadia. I was just in elementary school then, but I grew up with them knowing them as nothing less than my older sisters. But when they returned to Hong Kong I’d lost contact with both of them almost completely. So perhaps, for 13 years, I have not seen Angie. I wondered from time to time where she was, what she was doing and I would hear vague details about how she was doing from distant family, but nothing concrete. The only no contact information I had for her was one questionable phone number my mom somehow found. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to see her or if the number would even work. The first time I called there was no answer. I knew that this was a possibility and tried not to be too disappointed. The next day I tried again and her familiar voice answered. We exchanged cordial greetings excitedly and set up a meeting later that night. I think we had dinner for 3 or 4 hours that night. Sorry to Abby who was falling asleep next to me as we caught each other up for the last 10 years. I would end up seeing her every single day of my trip and would share many fun and nostalgic meals sharing childhood memories and stories with her. Oh and yes, she also was the one to help us navigate the otherwise impossible Chinese department store to help us find our long sought after canto blankets. We bought three between the two of us.

Is there something behind Amy or is it just my imagination?

Impressions

Hong Kong’s streets are a smorgasbord of smells and sounds. People are out at every hour of the night, probably because the public transportation is so good. There are either trains or busses that can take you almost anywhere anytime of the day which is more than I can say for Tokyo or LA. I felt strangely comfortable in Hong Kong maybe because this is the first time in six months that I was in a place where I almost completely understood everything and everyone around me. I immediately switched to speaking Cantonese almost naturally and was eager to communicate with the locals. I haggled at the street markets and had no problems talking to people, the only snag I would run into was when I would be forced to ask for menus in English because I still can’t read Chinese. That was a dead giveaway that I was still a foreigner. Also people didn’t believe us when we told them that we were from LA and SF. They looked at us and asked if we grew up in Chinatown. We took that as a compliment. Also, the subways are very color-coordinated.

The Food

My god, the food! I always felt that the two main attractions of Hong Kong were the food and the shopping. This was definitely true on this trip. My love for Canto food combined with my huge lack of available Chinese food in Japan was a volatile combination this trip. I ate everything and anything in sight that looked good. On our first night out, Abby and I adventurously tried a street vender’s small dimsum-ish snacks then tried a dingy little alleyway wonton noodle stall filled with locals. Again, we got really lucky because we didn’t get sick at all from the food. I’m not sure if this is just my stomach getting stronger from Southeast Asia, but I remember getting pretty sick before when I used to come when I was younger. We ate practically everything that was on our to-eat-list including some that we added along the way. I had every recommended baked pork chop rice which has been a favorite of mine since I can remember. I had it 4 times in a period of a week. Abby got every dessert and dan-tat that we saw along the way. Everything was comparatively much cheaper than in Japan and even the States, so every time we saw anything we even felt remotely like eating, we ate it. Not the healthiest of trips. I gained 1 pound when I got back to Japan.

The Annual Hong Kong Flower Festival

While walking around randomly in Causeway Bay we came upon the yearly flower festival held in Hong Kong only once a year by pure coincidence. We had fun seeing all the exhibits and played our part with all the other hundreds and thousands of tourists eagerly snapping away pictures all basically trying our best to take pictures of the same thing while trying to get a shot with as little people in the way as possible. Once, I did a handstand picture and a very excited Cantonese lady standing next to Abby got very into it saying how cool it was. Eventually, she called over her man and asked him to take a picture of us jumping and then one where Abby is jumping and I’m doing a handstand. That was fun.

Sights

We tried our best to cover all the major sights in the short amount of time we had. I think we succeeded in general and though I know we skimmed over a lot, we were also very busy every day touring. The streets of Mong Kok are a busy rush of both locals and foreigners that I vaguely remember from my previous trips, but places like Ngong Ping 360 were new (very commercial) sights that felt like it could have been anywhere. The “culturally” styled Chinese village built around Ngong Ping’s Buddha feels more like Disneyland imitating Hong Kong than it does Hong Kong itself. Everything is brand new and Starbucks line the corners. But it is also the world’s largest sitting bronze Buddha statue, so it was worth seeing. At the right time you can catch a glimpse of the Buddha just slightly obscured by passing clouds. Also the ride up and down on the all glass floor gondola was a pretty good highlight.

One other very cool part about Hong Kong is the Nightly Night Light Show they host. Every single night, the city of Hong Kong is transformed to a veritable stage of lights and song. On either side of Tsim Sha Tsui and Hong Kong Island Bay, the tallest and most prominent buildings are coordinated to a single song that is played at key lookout points and aired on radio stations. Lights mounted on the rooftops of buildings on either side blink and shine reflecting off the water and it does make for quite an impressive show.

Cool right? Now imagine + music.

The highlight of all the sightseeing in Hong Kong for me was definitely the Peak. On Hong Kong Island, the Peak is accessible by a short tram ride that ships customers up an incredibly steep trail (it felt like the buildings were at 45 degrees at times) to the top where there is a large shopping and entertainment complex complete with an observation deck of course.

The Day View from the Peak

Choice Shot: Night View from the Peak

The Maid Café

I suppose this is worth mentioning simply because we laughed so much there. We decided to try a maid café which is nothing more than a restaurant where the waitresses specifically dress up in costumes of maids for the amusement of their patrons (who are usually otaku). I think Angie always was curious about this place, but never had a good enough excuse to go until now. And for Abby and me, we really didn’t care and decided to just check it out. When we couldn’t find the entrance to the restaurant, we called the number for the restaurant and was greeted by a soft voiced girl. When we told her that we couldn’t find the restaurant she said, “Just one moment, we’re on the second floor, I’ll come down and get you Master.” We were all kind of shocked that she called us Master. When we got to the restaurant, the waitress spoke to us with the daintiest, most delicate voice. But in the background we could hear her normal voice and it was quite normal. Angie dared me to be mean to her just for the sake of living up to the expectation of superiority that must be expected from the types of customers that must frequent the restaurant. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it even though I was pretty annoyed that they ran out of cheesecake and replaced it with not-so-great ice cream. The food was pretty bad, all of our food tasted of varying amounts of ketchup and the rice was poorly cooked. But at least we got a picture to commemorate our night with the maid because I ordered a dinner set (which was written on the menu as dinner for 1 master).

How many muffled laughs we had that night.

Macau

Have you ever wondered what Vegas would be like if it was completely designed by Asians? Well then, you’re in luck because just such a strange parallel universe exists in Macao. Occupied by Portugal for 300 years, the resulting amalgamation of western and eastern styles is a mix of cobblestone streets and traditional Catholic cathedrals with an increasingly modernizing city center that is beginning to rival Las Vegas in big name hotels and may have very well surpassed it already in sheer size. The casinos are designed in giant forms of blossoming flowers and huge domed LED lit building billboards.

The following 3 collages are of some of the shows and sights of Macau with the use of some telescoping effects. Learned from Angie. Many taken by Angie.

We went to Macau with my Uncle and Angie on a whim when they both decided to take a day off of work to take us out which was both very nice of them and unexpected. We were going to try to just tour Macau on our own, but I was so thankful that my Uncle took us because he had such a thorough understanding of going to and from Macau that it was just so much easier to see Macau with him guiding us. We arrived in the morning at the port terminal, he led the way talking to some venders of ferry tickets. These venders acted more like scalpers than official ticket venders because somehow, he was able to actually haggle for the tickets for less than what they were actually listed for. After we bought the tickets, we rushed inside and were stopped by a huge line for immigration. He pulled us around the long line of foreigners and we went straight for the line of Hong Kong citizens. Each Hong Kong citizens can bring in one non-Hong Kong citizen and so we zoomed by all the dozens of people waiting in line and got from the port onto the boat in a matter of 10 or 15 minutes (a feat that would have probably taken us an hour to do by ourselves). He then had it perfectly planned out and we toured the big hotels most worth seeing, the main historical district of remaining Portugal architecture, a view and then all the way to the remote side of the island where Angie treated us to a fantastic Portuguese dinner. The boat ride there was easy, but the hour back was rough because we hit rough waters and much of it felt like a bobbing roller coaster ride. I was kind of having fun with it, but Abby woke up to the feeling or falling and did not enjoy it at all. She curled up and clung onto my arm for dear life, but I felt bad because I couldn’t do anything to make her feel better. We just rode it out but the ride back seemed much longer than when we went.

Many of the b&w shots by Angie Mak.

Stanley Market

Slightly off the beaten track of the subway system, Angie took us to Stanley Market on the south side of Hong Kong Island. It was a nice bus ride around Repulse Bay and sightseeing parts of Hong Kong we otherwise would not know how to access. The shopping there was the most fun we had in Hong Kong because of the variety of things. Unlike Ladies Street Market or other night markets, the stores and stalls here didn’t just sell repeatedly the same things. We saw many of the same stuff in all the stores in other night markets, but things here were both cheap and unique.

Hong Kong will always have a special place in my heart. Being in Hong Kong is easy, like being in a second home. Getting around, talking to people and even haggling is not only easy, it’s fun. The best part of this trip I would have to say for me was reconnecting with my cousin Angie. Though we haven’t seen each other for such a long time, we can talk freely and reminisce fondly about old times. We’re both very different people now then we used to be before, but I feel like we’re both mature now and can relate on a higher level. It’s also very nice that we share many of the same interests like architecture and photography. I felt like I gained an older sister from this trip and I miss talking to her already.

But also I’d like to say thank you and sorry to Abby for having to sit through many boring dinners about my whole childhood. And also thank you for coming all the way out to see me and sharing this unforgettable trip with me.

Handstands

2010-04-17T06:31:00.001-07:00

So I remember before I left America I was discussing with my friends (Jill and Leslie) on trying to come up with a consistent look, motion or symbol that I would do on my photos in my travels. We came up mostly with lame/silly ideas including but not limited to the classic Asian peace symbols, flexing poses, stupid dance, etc and I just figured I’d come up with something when the time came. Well the time came and the symbol is and forever will be the handstand (until I can’t anymore).

Why it’s good

A handstand is always interesting because it’s never the same, sometimes you fall, sometimes you’re straight and sometimes you mess up. It makes the photo interesting without taking away from the scenery behind. Who wants to just look at a photo where I do the same consistent boring pose? And best yet, it always puts a smile on people’s faces who aren’t expecting you to do a handstand on a waterfall or at a temple (granted it might sometimes be taken as disrespectful). We are fast, discrete and now well trained handstand ninjas.

So Baptiste and I tried to take one a day in the most interesting place of the day on our Southeast Asia trip. Sometimes we would overestimate the day and nothing interesting happened after a certain site or situation. Sometimes we would simply forget. We tried hard to be proactive and not get lazy. But I believe we got a decent variety of pretty awesome handstand pictures in a lot of places. Good fun. Hope you enjoy them.

Choice Shot: Epic Water-Stand

Cambodia

2010-04-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

What to do with 2,349,000 Riel?

The official currency of Cambodia is the Riel. But a majority of the country switched to a more stable currency, the US Dollar, during their cultural revolutions because of skyrocketing inflation. Nowadays the US currency (at least in main tourist destinations) is still the choice currency. Unbeknownst to us, Riels are primarily used as change. This was a problem since we each changed 100 Euros worth of Riel at the airport as we got off the plane. It’s like we just changed $135 into coins. We realized our mistake the minute we stepped off the plane and every price was confusingly listed in USD. The goal for the next 3 days was to use up our useless and annoying Riels as quickly as possible.

The Dangers and Rewards of Going Out to Dinner

After finding a hostel, our very enthusiastic and pushy taxi driver found us a place in the middle of the city near the night markets. He recommended us the hostel because he assured us that’s where we would want to be, near many restaurants and shopping. He also gave us a long speech about how he would be our private tuk-tuk driver and guide for our tour of Siem Reap and Angkor Wats. We stepped out of our hostel and ventured towards the street market district to try to find some dinner. But the minute we turned the corner we noticed a very big difference between Cambodia and every country we’ve been in so far. The solicitors here were feverish and unyielding. We thought we’d seen the worse in Bangkok, but the people with flyers, the tuk-tuk drivers and the motorcycle riders here were on another level. As we walked by a row of restaurants, 3 consecutive people literally jumped out at us on the sidewalk to shove flyers in our faces and ask us to eat in their establishment. This caught Baptiste off guard and he actually freaked out a little and broke into a run. I followed him laughing a bit. After we escaped from the barrage of soliciting, we happened upon a quiet restaurant with a discrete exterior but with what seemed to be a performance happening inside the center of the restaurant. We decided to give it a try and it turned out to be one of the most interesting restaurants I’ve ever eaten at. We also decided that we hated the district that we were living in so much we found a nice and “expensive” hostel/hotel in a quieter district that same night and moved out the next morning.

Dead Fish

The strangely named Dead Fish restaurant that we stumbled into is a very uniquely designed restaurant. Pictures really don’t do this justice and I’m sure my description won’t either, but I at least want to describe it a little so I can begin to give you an idea of why it was so awesome. //Warning: here comes boring architecture rambling.// The restaurant is a giant warehouse-like building but inside is divided by dozens of multi-leveled platforms that are connected by zigzagging staircases and even conveyor belts to move food. The ingenious part of this building strategy is that it multiplies the square footage of a place and uses the vertical space while keeping everything open and feeling as large as possible. The best thing about this place was how dynamic the restaurant was. Every platform had its own space but was also part of the larger all encompassing space. You could see everywhere but reaching it was an obstacle course climbing up to go down and constantly changing levels to move sideways. Okay maybe I had more fun with this than the average arthritic, elderly or not yet fully grown child would, but I still think it makes for a very cool place to eat a meal or maybe have a nightclub. And in the center of the restaurant was a platform where there were performers doing traditional style Cambodian dance. However this place was empty and even all this awesomeness was not enough to overcome the dry, tough meat and slightly expensive prices to earn this place a steady flow of customers. And even though it had been open many years, it was obvious (from the inches of dust on some of the platforms that) only a very small portion of this huge restaurant is actually ever used. But after thorough deliberation, Baptiste and I decided it would be too difficult to bring this nearly flawless design to our own countries because the liability of people getting drunk or just clumsily falling off would probably cost more than any restaurant could afford to pay. So you’ll just have to go to Siem Reap to experience this place for yourself, sorry. //Architecture rant over.//

Personally, I felt that the streets of Cambodia are some of the most dangerous streets in all of the places we’d travelled in. It’s not really all that bad but in our short one week or so stay in Cambodia I saw with my own eyes a car hit a dog (it lived and ran away whimpering), two scooters collide and one woman seemed to be pretty seriously hurt and a tuk-tuk skimmed my arm. There seems to be very few rules and people often take shortcuts for just a small personal gain. Not to say people shouldn’t visit, these are risks you take everywhere.

Spoke Too Soon

We decided to stay at another fancier hostel/hotel in a quiet district that was the most expensive room we stayed in throughout our whole trip. The price was $30 a night for two people with two beds, which is still cheap by 1^st world country standards (but we were paying less than half at our other hostel). The room was very well decorated, the service and staff were friendly, helpful and smiled every time they saw us.

Nice looking room right?

We were happy to pay them a little more upfront so that they wouldn’t bother us with other solicitation like that of cheaper hostels. As we lay in our beds enjoying our awesome new room, I exclaimed to Baptiste, “This room is great! I love it.” Exactly 1 second later (really 1 second), I feel a drop of water on my forehead. I sit up thinking that Baptiste had thrown water in my face, but he was just laying there. Then another drop fell on my pillow and I look up to see the air conditioner leaking an increasingly rapid stream of water onto my pillow where my head was laying a second before. We had to laugh at the irony of the situation. They gave us a new room for the night and I got a bigger bed away from the air conditioner.

The Good and The Bad of Angkor

Angkor Wat is one of the man-made wonders of the world and the national symbol of Cambodia. The temples are said to amount to over one thousand (though some are just random piles of rubble) and is supposedly the world’s single largest religious site. Angkor Wat is undeniably one of the most impressive sites in the world, at least for me. As an architectural site, the detail, monolithic scale and unique Khmer design is one of the most awe-inspiring sights I have ever seen. It is a civil engineering and architectural marvel pretty much unsurpassed in sheer size and square footage. Every temple had a unique and different organization, construction and design.

Partial Water/Land Temple

Reclining Buddha Which Doubles as a Temple

My Favorite Temple EVER, Prasat Preah Khan

Water Temple

Living the Dream

I experienced many moments wandering through the temples that felt like I had been transported back to my favorite childhood fantasies. Imaginary places that only existed in movies like Laputa: Castle in the Sky by Hayao Miyazaki and crazy temple ruins in the Indiana Jones series suddenly were right in front of me. Trees sprouted out, around and through buildings. Vines sprawl across temples like spider webs reaching with its own direction and will. Roots wrap like tentacles around intricately carved pure stone blocks. Secret passages, endless hallways, a twisty turning labyrinth of ancient stonework, climbing down under doorways and up over collapsed ceilings, I venture ever further. Fearlessly traversing rooftops of huge temple halls, I went higher and farther into temples to try to get a glimpse of what typical tourists don’t get a chance to see. The smell and sound of the surrounding jungle completes the atmosphere making it everything my boyish adventurous spirit has always wanted to experience. I fell in love with Angkor.

The Face of Angkor

The Kids of Angkor

The Monk of Angkor

I had too many favorite pictures, sorry I know this is starting to drag on.

Some scenes straight out of my childhood fantasies

This is the last collage of Angkor, I promise.

Choice Shot: Into the Light

The Sound of Nature's Voice

The Most Embarrassing Video I've Ever Filmed

Why does Baptiste have such a funny accent when he says Beng Melea?

At the same time, the experience of the people of Siem Reap definitely brings you right back to reality fast. Solicitors wait at every entrance, every exit and are on every route to almost every temple. It’s as if every Cambodian in Siem Reap have been specifically trained and all work together to get every penny out of every foreigner who steps foot in their country. Every five steps you take, someone will ask you if you want a motorcycle or a tuk-tuk ride. You think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. The motorcycle riders will literally cut you off and jump the curb to get in your way to ask if you want a ride somewhere. They relentlessly try to sell you something, anything. Women and small children come running the minute you step out of your tuk-tuk or taxi and shove souvenir t shirts, useless key chains, bottles of water, straw hats and cheap reprinted books on Angkor Wats at you. It makes enjoying the magical moments in temples or even just getting from your tuk-tuk to the temple very difficult when a 7 year old Cambodian girl is asking you to buy something so that she can go to school. But as Baptiste reminded me, the more you give in and buy something, the more likely they won’t go to school and will proabably continue to sell things because it works. In either case, it really does ruin the atmosphere when the people so shamelessly extort its own national treasure for money.

This is what happens when you show any sign of weakness, they attack in unison.

*Baptiste’s encounters with a lady solicitor*

Quote of the day:

Solicitor: “Want to buy something? What do you want?

Baptiste: “Nothing, I don’t want anything.”

Solicitor: “Okay, $10.”

Baptiste: “$10 for… NOTHING?!”

Solicitor: “Yes.”

The Amazing Floating Village and The Worst Scam

We went to take a tour of a place they call the floating villages. Located on Tonle Sap Lake, hundreds, maybe thousands of people live on a literal water world because it is cheaper to buy a floating houseboat than it is to buy a piece of land and build a home on it. The village consists of about 200-300 floating barges and boats either tied to each other or anchored to the bottom of the lake and has nearly every amenity you can find on land including a floating school, pool hall (not sure how they account for waves), restaurant, visiting clinic, bar/club, basketball court, water treatment plant and store. Everybody travels everywhere by motor or hand powered boats. And depending on if the tide, the whole village can pick up their anchors and simply float to a deeper or shallower part of the lake. Our tour stopped at a general store and restaurant where our boat driver showed us around to see the crocodile farm, fish farm and other strange and crazy sights. He asked us whether or not we wanted to visit the floating school and we said, “Sure why not”? He then asked if we wanted to bring them some pencils and paper and we said, “Yeah! That’s a great idea, but where can we buy it?” Coincidentally, the floating store we were standing in had just that, pencils and paper workbooks. When we excitedly picked up a pack of 10 pencils and asked how much, we were shocked at the $5 price tag. Now that’s not a particularly unaffordable purchase, but in Cambodia, $5 goes a long way and we were certain it didn’t cost anything close to $5 to stock. When we asked about the notebooks, they told us they only sold them in packs of 20. Some scams are kind of hard to spot, but luckily for us they gave us such ridiculously inflated prices that gave themselves away, we were almost certain that the boat driver, the store and the school simply kept a steady rotation of pencils and paper around and split the profits. The worst part is that we were highly skeptical that any of it ever went back to the kids. So we opted out of buying it and our boat driver looked so disappointed when we told him we didn’t buy anything for the kids, he skipped the school tour without telling us.

If you think the little girl looks mad now, you should have seen her when the first sentence out of her mouth was "1 DOLLAR!" after she posed and I refused.

The Overnight Bus Ride from Hell

After 3 days in Siem Reap, we were pretty satisfied and were honestly in a state of temple overload. We had predicted that 3 days of the hottest, sweatiest longest days of nonstop temple sightseeing would be enough for us and we booked a night bus to Sihanoukville, a seaside city and resort town recommended both by foreigners and by native Cambodians alike as a great relaxing destination. Nearing the end of our one month journey, we had been in jungles, mountains, rivers and lakes and now we were definitely ready to hit the beach and decided to sacrifice a few days in the capitol of Cambodia, Phnom Phen to spend a few more days lounging on the beach. The bus we boarded had the worst designed seats and space of any bus I’d ever seen. I can admit that I’m not a particularly tall guy, and even I was feeling claustrophobic and cramped by the seats. There were much larger much taller foreigners who were also on the bus who soon found the situation unbearable. An argument broke out near the back of the bus where one guy reclined his seat into the legs of the guy behind him without any regard of the other guy’s legs. At one point, both were yelling at each other on the moving bus and the whole bus was staring and expecting an impending mutiny. Things later settled down but I found myself without a blanket in the blaring AC. I stuck my arms inside my t shirt and relied on my natural body heat to keep me warm until we arrived about 10 hours later. Oh, and the “movie on board” which was written on the flier as onboard entertainment was played off an 8” monitor at the front of the 40 ft. long bus. It took us about 15 minutes to realize they were playing “2012”.

Scuba

After we found the cheapest hostel we’ve ever stayed in ($3 a person), we hit the town to find lunch and see what the town had to offer. We took a look at two Scuba Diving Lesson shops and debated whether or not we wanted to invest $300 and the next 3 days taking official lessons and getting professionally licensed to scuba dive. We decided to do it in spite of the fact that we had to spend the next 5 hours immediately after watching a really boring, cheesy and stereotypically early 90’s instructional video on scuba diving. It just so turned out that a Japanese lady who was on the exact same overnight bus that we were on was also taking the same lesson. Reiko is from Nagoya, but is living in Siem Reap for a couple months and travelling alone in Sihanoukville. What amazes me about Reiko is that she’s doing all of this without really knowing how to speak very much English and still lives and travels alone in Cambodia. We would get to know each other well and become very good friends by the end of our stay in Sihanoukville. This was good for both of us though because Baptiste and I got to practice our Japanese a little and Reiko had someone to talk to. The pricy scuba lesson would include a boat ride to a remote island, an overnight stay at a bungalow, meals included and two days of professionally guided lessons. The island we went to was truly secluded, a 2 hour boat ride away, the only thing on the whole island was 6 small cottages, a shack for cooking and a legit Cambodian fishing village. There was barely anybody but a few of us foreigners on the island and it made for some absolutely spectacular picture taking.

We spent the next two days practicing breathing and emergency exercises and enjoyed two self determined dives at the end of each day. Reiko had a little bit of a hard time with descending at times and the real trick is reaching a perfectly balanced buoyancy so that you can float without swimming or kicking so that you can float over and above coral and other underwater life forms. Reiko had a little problem with this and would fall to the bottom of the sea floor from time to time. This was not good for two reasons, touching coral can damage the delicate reef and often they were lined with sea urchin which are basically giant spiky booby-trap like sea creatures. On multiple occasions I saw her put her hands down onto sea urchins and I tried my best to keep an eye on her to make sure she didn’t go around impaling herself. We made some good friends on the island as well with other scuba divers and snorkelers and enjoyed a very nice dinner on the island. The escape to Sihanoukville and the island was exactly the thing we needed to relax and recharge from Siem Reap. Oh yeah, and we both passed our official PADI scuba tests and are now both licensed and certified to scuba dive anywhere in the world!

Nothing Particularly Exciting Happens, Just Scuba-ing

The Bat

We spent one night in a bungalow on the secluded island. We were happy with our room in spite of the giant gaping holes, uneven planks of wood and didn’t think we’d have any problems since we were just staying one night. But when Baptiste and I were showered (and by showered, I mean rinsed because this island barely had electricity let alone running water) and ready for bed we entered our room and were horrified to find a huge swooshing bat (the size of a small cat, okay… a very small cat) fly over our heads and under our roof. We both looked at each other, and immediately bolted into our respective beds. We both quickly ripped down our mosquito nets as if our life depended on it (which it actually kind of did) and stuffed the edges under every inch of our mattress. After we’d both finished securing our nets we realized, somebody had to turn out the lights. After debating each other for about 10 minutes, I eventually went out to turn out the lights (cause I’m the braver one ^_<). But immediately after turning off the lights, we both wished I hadn’t because now we couldn’t see it coming, whatever it was. Then Baptiste realized he needed his cell phone so that he could set the alarm for the next morning. This time he had to go out into the dark and get his phone. After about 10 more minutes of mustering up his biggest ball of courage, he scrambled out and got his cell phone. We somehow later fell asleep.

Bat not included in this collage.

Clubbing with Quail-man

The night after we got back on the mainland, all the new friends we’d made on the island all had dinner as a group again. Afterwards, Baptiste, Reiko and I decided to try going to a happening bar coincidentally named Utopia. That night Baptiste was wearing his fisherman’s pants which we’ve deemed as silly pants because they honestly look a little silly. They are big, baggy, and there’s a string attached to the back of the paints that wrap around the front and act as a belt. I really liked these pants though because they are long enough to cover the skin and prevent mosquito bites but are thin enough to let air through and maintain constant ventilation. The only major downside with the pants that we found out that night was that it’s dangerous to wear them with white underwear in a place that uses black lights because the underwear will shine right through. Baptiste looked basically like Quail-man from Doug.

The next day was our final day to relax before heading back to Bangkok. We spent it drinking “happy” shakes on the beach and swimming with the locals. Reiko got a pedicure on the beach and people thought I was Khmer.

The Every Asian Man

What do I look like to you? I have the complexion of a white boy, the hair of a black boy, the eyes of an Asian boy, what am I? Apparently I can pass for Japanese in Japan (or outside of Japan), Thai in Thailand, Laotian in Laos and Khmer in Cambodia. I actually had two Khmer people tell me on the same day I look Khmer. And on more occasions than I care to remember, people simply spoke to me in their native dialect assuming I was one of them. Usually people don’t guess that I’m Chinese and almost never does anyone ever guess that I’m from America. At least I can blend in anywhere.

The worst part of my trip makes for the best story

The last night we spent in Cambodia (and actually the last night we spent in any hostel in Southeast Asia) we were happy and carefree. We had almost made it to the end of our journey without any real big problems, most of what we feared could happen to us were unrealized and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. But of course, good old life can’t let us leave without first serving us a big dose of irony before we leave:

1^st Incident:

Baptiste and I had just gotten back from a very (almost too) relaxing hookah bar where we all (including Reiko) passed out for about an hour. The bar was awesome and basically consisted of giant lounging couches. We were just sitting on the end of our bed in our $6 hostel room spacing out when out of nowhere a huge bang comes from our ceiling. We know we weren’t making it up because the metal ceiling panel actually caved in a little. But nothing fell down and nothing came through to eat us so after a few minutes of being kind of freaked out, we just went to brush our teeth.

2^nd Incident (immediately afterwards):

I was sitting outside on the bed brushing my teeth and Baptiste was inside in the bathroom brushing his teeth. Suddenly, he bounds out of the restroom screaming “MMMmmmmmm!!!” because his mouth was full of toothpaste and a toothbrush. I mumbled “what”, myself with a mouth full of toothpaste and toothbrush. I peered inside the restroom and saw the thing I wished the most to avoid in Southeast Asia, a GIANT spider by the sink. I jump back even farther and scream even louder and continuously only stopping to gasp for air, “MmmmmMMmmmMMm!!Mmm!!” Baptiste finds my fear and reaction hilarious and just stands there laughing at me. The whole time, I’m screaming “kill it, kill it, kill it!” He finally realizes what I’m saying, but he first picks up his camera. He peeks back inside the bathroom but the spider is no longer by the sink. Those of you who know me at all know that I’m not all too fond of spiders, and giant Southeast Asian spiders are right on the top of the list of things I hate. Now to top it off, it was nowhere in sight. Baptiste slowly sticks his head inside the doorway and notices something moving to his right in his peripheral vision. This time, it was his turn to jump back against a wall and scream for about 20 seconds straight and my turn to laugh at him. The whole time we’re both screaming and commuting with muffled nonsensical words because we still have our toothbrushes in our mouths, which make the situation all that much comical in hindsight. The spider crawls out of the doorway and onto the wall in front of Baptiste and right next to our bed. It moved closer to the corner and was mere inches from crawling under our bed. The whole time Baptiste is fiddling around with his camera trying to set the right setting to take a picture of this monstrous arachnid. I scream over and over, “it’s going to go under the bed” and he finally realizes what I’m saying about 5 seconds later. I toss him a sandal and he pulverizes it in one swift smack. I have never in my life seen a spider that large or that terrifying. I don’t care if it was some giant glorified garden spider that lives on flies and mosquitoes, it had to die, or I was not going to sleep that night. I still barely got any sleep, stupid spider.

See for yourself!

Getting Home

Let’s start with the bus we booked from Sihanoukville to Bangkok. On the ticket we bought for $12 each, there was one large bus listed that we assumed would take us the whole way. After saying bitter goodbye to Reiko we boarded a large bus which quickly reached a stop and we changed to another bus about 20 minutes later. We were on this bus for about another two hours till we got to a small border city where we changed again. I was glad to switch because the small air conditioner hole of air (like the ones you get on airplanes) was broken where I was sitting and I was gasping for air every 5 minutes. At one point I just stuck my neck out as long as I could near the broken and crappy tiny spittle of air and just closed my eyes and tried not to think about how hot it was. The third bus would take us to the boarder of Cambodia and Thailand where we then moved into a small minivan with about 8 other people. We would proceed to switch to SIX MORE MINIVANS before arriving in Bangkok! Each time we would pile out, meet at some random shady designated point and move our backpacks to a new van. Some drivers would only drive us for 15 minutes before switching us off again. It was like a terrible game of hot potato where we were the unwanted potato. I’m assuming all these switches was done to save money so that they don’t end up with a large bus or van in Bangkok without having anybody to transport back. This was convenient for the drivers, but very inconvenient for us and it was a pretty annoying trip. We bonded with the other passengers by complaining to each other and then later just laughing at how ridiculous this situation was. Never believe Cambodian bus companies, they are SHADY.

Arriving back in Bangkok made me realize how I could actually FEEL the change in me in only one month’s time. I had a newfound appreciation for simple things like paved roads, not fearing land mines all the time and sidewalks without trash. It was funny because we had been in the same city only one month before and it seemed so amazingly different to both of us. To hear music, to see food and venders, even the gas station outside reminded me of a remote gas station in America more than in southeast Asia. It was good to be back in Bangkok. With a newfound appreciation for Bangkok, Baptiste and I were ready to hit the town. The plan was that we would arrive around 10 PM, go find a trustworthy hostel to put down our backpacks, get dinner, and shop at the night market and on Khao San Road until about 2 AM and we’d make our way to the airport to catch our 5 AM flight. As a last minute precaution we decided to go into an internet café and print out our confirmation number so that we could check in. We were going to do it either way, but decided to take care of it when we first got back instead of waiting till later which would later turn out to be a decision that would save our butts. As we checked our flight at 11 PM, we were shocked to see that our flight was actually scheduled for 2 AM instead of 5 AM. So disappointedly, we had no time to buy souvenirs for friends and ourselves and quickly bought one last Chang beer and Pad Thais to go and ate it in the taxi on the way to the airport. We were both incredibly thankful that we didn’t miss our flight and saddened by the fact that we’d miscalculated and didn’t get to spend more time in Bangkok. It’s really too bad, but I consider it just another reason to go back.

There is nothing like the sights in Cambodia. It is still developing and I understand that’s why the people of Cambodia seemed so determined to make money. And despite all the money tourism must bring into the country, Cambodians still remain some of the poorest in the world (many can’t afford to get clean drinking water). I love the Angkor temples but Baptiste and I agreed that we would not want to go back unless it was with friends or family who wanted to go see Angkor Wats.

The whole trip is something that I will never forget. I’m sure it will be an experience that I will relive, retell and remember forever. I didn’t really know or think that I would be capable of such an adventure and even surprised myself at how much I was able to do. It’s nice to really push my personal limits because I discover things about myself I didn’t know before and the more I try to find my limits, the more I realize I have none.