Happy St. Patrick's Day - 03.18.2007

It's still St. Patty's Day in the States, so its still appropriate to wish you all a happy one.

I'm in Koh Tao in southern Thailand and I'm doing great if slightly burnt. First it was my forearms and wrists for some damned reason, then it was my face and neck, and after a day of kayaking around the island its my shins, thighs and the tops of my feet. Oh well. Bronzed Benn is just a thing of fantasy.

I got this free tourist map of Koh Tao back in Bangkok and I've been using it to explore the island. Two nights ago I found a spot marked on the map as "Sairee View" which sounded promising. All the bars, restaurants, and hotels are written in simple black font and the scenic spots and place names are written in bold-faced yellow. "Sairee View" was written in bold-faced yellow so I was picturing a look-out point kind of thing. I followed some street signs to "Sairee View" but got lost and confused. I walked up the side of one of the mountains here and three guys on the third floor of someone's house yelled down to me. I asked them if I could come up and ask them a question about Sairee View. Two Thai guys (one of whom owned the property), Talung and Cha, and a Japanese guy named Aki were drinking bottles of Asahi together. I pulled out my map and asked them where this spot was. They told me my map was bad and I was AT Sairee View, which is not a location but a guest house. Aki owns a bar right at that spot but its closed now as he's repairing some things. They invited me to sit down and the view from their balcony was incredible (like I said, they were in a 3-story building on the side of a mountain). I neglected to bring my camera but returned last night and got a few shots of the sunset. They were really nice and Aki sold me a beer when I asked him for something to drink. We watched the sun go down and the squid boats come out from the mainland. I talked with Aki, who's 45 and has been in Thailand for the past 4 years. He lived in Osaka and goes back and forth about 3 times a year but its pretty sporadic. He got divorced 4 years ago and decided to 'change his way of thinking.' He was then invited by one of the Thai guys to come live on the island with him. Aki said that leaving Japan was something he wanted to do and scouted other islands: Guam, Hawaii, and other islands in Thailand. He chose Koh Tao because it had a 'really strong power.' His Thai friend let him build a bar on his property and he's been there, more or less, since then. He's so tan now that he doesn't even look Japanese anymore. After the sunset I asked if it would be alright if I came back the next day (yesterday) for another beer and they enthusiastically said 'yes.' So I went back again yesterday just before sundown while Aki was working on his bar. He had jazz on in the background and was reading a book by an Indian Buddhist that he tried to explain to me. It was a lot of the same stuff that my dad has been interested in lately: meditation, Buddhist philosophy, and learning how to develop your own awareness. We chatted for a while and I asked, again, if it would be alright if I came back. He shook my hand and said I'd always be welcome. So tonight, after I finish snorkeling and whatever, I'll go back to watch the sunset again.

That's what I've been up to. Kayaking, swimming, blah blah blah. You can imagine what one does on a beach.

Also, I got bullied by a fucking dog. This isn't the first time on this trip that a dog (or pack of dogs) has scared me away from something. In northern Thailand I tried to visit a wat at dawn and two wild dogs chased me back onto my scooter and off the property while two monks just watched everything, and when I tried to visit an Akha village the local dogs AGAIN chased me away while the tribespeople just sat around and watched. The other day I was sitting in the sand and reading when a friendly dog came up and watched the ocean right by my side. I was about to start petting it when a much larger dog stood directly behind me and started this really guttural growling. I stood up and it was clear his beef was with the other dog. The smaller dog tried to ignore him but the bigger one got a lot more aggressive and eventually chased him away. I was still standing because this massive dog (wild, as all fucking dogs in Asia are wild) was still on edge, but then it plopped down in MY motherfucking seat. I stood there like an idiot while two German guys not too far away starting laughing. I said 'I guess I lost my seat' but they didn't understand. I sat down a few feet away, right next to a big sandcastle that someone had launched fireworks out of, but the dog wasn't happy just leaving me alone. It got up, walked right next to me, and then pissed all over the castle. I was close enough to the dog that the fact that it was pissing made me uncomfortable. Again, the German guys thought this was pretty funny so I got up again and went back to my old spot. I was able to laugh back at them though because the dog then walked towards them and one guy got so scared he jumped up and moved to let the dog pass through where he had just been sitting.

You have to just picture how fucking enormous and in-control this dog was. He owned that beach as far as me and two German guys were concerned.

I guess that's it.

Miss you all.

My advice: GROW A BEARD

I think my shaver got fried when I plugged it into a 220-volt outlet back in southern China. I like my beard and have received compliments on it (from you guys not anyone here), but its getting too long to be cool. It's just getting big and scruffy now and I can't help but get food in it. When I drink things now they get on my moustache and without even trying I can grab a big hunk of hair from either side of my mouth with my teeth and pull on it. Ummm... still waiting for my bus to show up so I can go south...

Ugh. Back in Bangkok. 03.14.2007.

I took an overnight bus to Bangkok from Chiang Mai yesterday and arrived at 5:30 this morning. Waking up after you had a really shitty night of sleep on a bus and then carrying your bags down dark alleys in Bangkok isn't fun. I felt sleepy, my vision was all blurry and I was a little sweaty from sleeping on the bus. I just wanted to lay down somewhere and finish sleeping. On top of that, every 20 feet there's a taxi-driver who bothers you with: 'Hello! Where you going?' Tonight I'll catch another bus south and then a boat for Koh Tao. This is Koh Tao:


My four day trip around the north was great. I mean, I spent 6 days in the Chiang Mai area, but I rented a scooter for the last 4-days and just roamed around on my own. I rented a slightly more powerful scooter the second time around and didn't bother to insure it. That came out to 150 baht per day for the scooter and that was discounted because I was renting it for a longer period of time. I was supposed to meet up with these two Americans I met in a Dunkin' Donuts, Jody and Mike, but we missed each other and I didn't really wait around for them.

I headed north on the 107 and got lunch in Mae Taeng. Most of the places that I ate at in the past 4 days looked exactly the same: a no-frills kitchen on wheels. The street vendors here must all get their gear from the same supplier (no matter how home-made it looks). Picture a counter-top, with one or two big metal pots set into it (the traditional street vendor fare is noodle soup so one of those pots will have soup bubbling). There's always a two-tiered glass case on top of that that holds all the ingredients they use, and you can check if everything looks fresh. If they serve rice dishes, you can expect a rice cooker and a wok to fry up whatever they put on top. I found that most places charge about 20 baht for whatever they're cooking and any more than that is gouging. The food is always delicious and sometimes gives you just a touch of diarrhea.

After Mae Taeng I stopped at a cave in Chiang Dao. Its really a series of caves that extends back into this mountain for kilometers and kilometers. There are fluorescent lights that brighten the path but after maybe 500 meters those end and if you want to continue you need to bring or rent an electric lamp and explore on your own. It was tempting but looked terrifying. Plus, if you fall and get hurt you'd better hope someone can hear you screaming, otherwise you're fucked.

I made it all the way to the town of Fang and spent the night at DJ's Guest House. The place was crawling with geckos (most places are) and I got some shots of them along the outside wall. I wanted to write some emails and update my blog but there were two internet cafes in Fang and they were both online gaming centers only. The Thai kids that were packed into them thought it was quite funny to see me come in by the way. Hillarious.

The next day I started out early (big mistake) for Tha Ton. From there a river runs to Chiang Rai and you can either hike along it or take a boat. Early morning that high in the mountains is FREEZING cold so I stopped and got coffee, waiting for the sun to climb a little higher in the sky. The boat option was out because it left once a day at 12:30pm and that was more than 4 hours away. So I decided to take my scooter along the river and stop at tribal villages along the way. Tribal villages are kind of the draw to that part of Thailand and there are quite a few of them. Some are right along the highway and *very* touristy. These women in traditional dress just sell cheap trinkets and bracelets and crap that have nothing to do with their culture and aren't even made in their villages (they will tell you differently---liars). I bought a bracelet from an Akha woman and later at the Hill Tribes Museum in Chiang Rai a woman told me that all the tribes in the area sell bracelets like this one and it doesn't have any cultural meaning. Lame. The other tribes in the area aren't visited very frequently and are high in the hills where its difficult to get to. These are the tribes I wanted to visit (Shit, I have 4 minutes left at this cafe). So I took my scooter off-road and went searching for tribal people. I found a few villages but was completely at a loss with how to interact with them. They couldn't speak English and I couldn't think of a reason to be in their communities. I wound up riding and trekking for hours, reaching a village, looking around in the main part of town (there wasn't anything) and then just moving on. Most of these tribes smoke copious amounts of opium so part of me wanted to find a cool tribe, fit in, and then be invited to smoke with them. That never happened. I just got a hold of the Americans I was supposed to travel with and they didn't have any luck either.

Oh, I'm out of time. More later

Miss you all

Renting a bike

I almost forgot. I thought I was pretty damned funny when I rented that scooter the other day. It was at a pretty big, legit-looking shop. I read in Starr's 'Southeast Asia on a Shoestring' book that in Vietnam when you rent bikes, sometimes they send one of their guys to follow you and steal the bike, so they can charge you full-price for a new one. I've been slightly nervous since I read that when I rent things so I go to legit-looking places only. I'll EAT in any hole in the wall I pass, but I only rent bikes and scooters from the best.

So I talked to this one woman about renting a bike and the price was right so I said:

'OK, I'll take it. By the way, I've never ridden one of these before, is it hard?'
'WHAT? You never ride before? No no no no no. No rent.'
'Oh... Well of COURSE I've rented them in America, just never in Thailand. In America I ride these things all the time.'
'Huh, what you say?'
'I said 'it ok,' I ride before so it ok.'
'Here you take bike up street and back.'
'Okey dokey.'

I hop on the bike and try not to look too inept. First off, I can't figure out how to start it. The key is in the ignition and its off. I try turning the key and I do this for a full minute before I have to ask her what to do. She tells me not to push in like when starting a car. I turn it. Nothing happens. She shows me two buttons to press at the same time and it starts to purr. 'OK, so THESE handles are the brakes, ha ha ha, but how do I give it gas?' She stares at me for a second and rolls her eyes. I grab the handle and rotate it forward but it doesn't give it any gas. 'Do I need to unlock it or something?' She makes a gesture meaning rotate it BACKWARDS. Ah. I rotate it towards me and I shoot off! I SLAM on the brakes and look like an idiot. She watched me get jerked around but I just laughed it off. I do a horrible start-stop-start-stop trip down the alley and back to her. She hasn't smiled in a long time. I open with:

'I think the scooter that I used to ride back home was a 110cc and this is a 125cc. Maybe that's the difference.'
'This 110cc.'
'Oh. Well, its been a while I guess. How much is insurance?'

Then she took my money because no matter how bad you are at anything or how dangerous it is for you, you can get it for the right price. Well, like anywhere I suppose. I figured it out but was a fairly cautious driver when I started. By the end of the day I was riding it full tilt everywhere I went and weaving in and out of other cars on the road. I raced a truck full of Thai people down the mountain and at red lights I would weave between cars to get to the front of the line. It's so easy and fun to ride one that I may get another one but this time for 3 or 4 days at a time. I met two kids who taught English in Taiwan at a Dunkin' Donuts this morning (by the way, they have Dunkin' Donuts here and I almost teared up when I saw it. The coffee sucks and the donuts are off but it satisfied a craving I've had since I read Murakami Haruki's 'Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' and he mentions that there is one in Tokyo) and they want to take a 600 km trip through the countryside, right up to the Myanmar border, to go exploring. They took my email address and said they'd get in touch with me if they decide to go. So, don't expect emails or blog postings for a little while if I leave.

It's hot here.

Sunburnt. AGAIN.

I'm still in Chiang Mai but here's some Google Earth coordiates to help you fire at me from space. I'm staying at Mr. Whisky's Guest House (18°47'0.63"N 98°59'23.53"E) inside of the walled city, and today I rented a 110cc scooter and rode it out to Doi Suthep & Doi Pui National Parks. I got a little burnt on my shoulders but that's par for the course I suppose. I'm using SPF 60 sunblock but I think constantly readjusting my backpack rubbed it off in certain places. That sucks. Not as bad as having a cage with two starving rats in it placed on your head, but pretty close. And I simply can't leave my backpack at home. Who knows when I'll need my copy of The Brothers Karamazov and two giant bags of tea? Essentials.

I rode up to the top of Doi Suthep (1676m) and visited a temple built there, the Wat Phra That Doi Suthep (18°48'18.50"N 98°55'17.72"E). According to the plaques and brochure that was handed to me, the location for the temple was chosen by an elephant. Or rather, the elephant was given something to carry, got as far as the top of the mountain, died, and this was viewed as a good sign. My Lonely Planet says that its 16km from Chiang Mai to Doi Suthep peak. 4km past the temple is some sort of palace but it was closed when I got there. After the palace it says its 'a couple of kilometers' to the point where I finally turned around and headed back. There were two paths and neither of them looked like they would accomodate my bike. One led down to a Hmong village (I had already seen Hmong people in Sa Pa, Viet Nam so I wasn't really interested) and the other was an overgrown hiking trail to the top of Doi Pui mountain. The sun was already going down so I decided to call it a day and head back. I also followed a lot of trails off the main road, hiking and biking where I could. I visited a few waterfalls and for the most part had a fantastic day. The scooter was 200 baht but I paid 50 baht to insure it as well. 60 baht for gas, so I spent say... 8 and a half bucks for the whole thing. Not too bad.

I even managed to ride an elephant up part of the mountain before it grew wings and took me to the moon. In the shadow of one of the craters we had some wine and things got out of hand. I demanded to be taken home. It asked me not to call its parents and I agreed on the condition that it give me all of its Magic Cards that use red mana. I'm going to the interstellar Magic: the Gathering championships and I need to strengthen my red deck. I spilled nacho cheese dip on my pants but dropped them off at the cleaners in MOROCCO on the way back.

I hope everyone back home is enjoying themselves as much as I am. I love and miss you all.

Didn't have enough time with that last one...

Yeah, thanks for the update Wu. I think we all put that one together.

That last post was called "I walk alone" but I ran out of time before I could explain why. It's been 3 or 4 days now since Starr, Raquel, and I split up and went our own ways. They were simply rushing too fast through all the places I wanted to go and I had to pull the brakes. So now I'm on my own. They took a bus south to hit the islands on the first full day we had in Bangkok. I stayed for three nights at the 7 Holder Guest House and then last night I took a bus here, to Chiang Mai, to go hiking, cycling, and do some other outdoorsy stuff. It's early here, around 10 I think, so after I finish uploading some photos I'm gonna go rent a bike and head to a national park nearby.

I thought I would save myself some cash so I took a public bus to the North Bus Station in Bangkok. All buses not chartered by the travel agencies in and around Khao San Road leave from there, and since that's the main tourist area of Bangkok I was sure to save some cash. An hour ride on a bus for 20 baht (50 cents or so) to the station got me a 403 baht ticket leaving the same day at 10pm. I was so proud of myself. When I got back to Khao San Road, briefly triumphant, I bought a Lonely Planet: Thailand for $8 and then asked about prices to Chiang Mai. 350... 300... uh-oh. The only positive side to it was that my bus was less than half-full so I was able to spread out and sleep lying down. I have no doubt that all the private bus companies sell out every ride. At least, they have every single time I've taken one of their buses so far.

So, I didn't save any money but the ride was probaby more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise. Which was the opposite of my intention, but it helps me sleep so let's go with that.

Oh yeah, LOOK AT HOW MOTHER FUCKING SKINNY I GOT! You see me in that grasshopper picture??? Fuck!

I walk alone

Check grasshopper off the list.

That makes a duck's head and brain, a beating cobra heart, a 1.5 inch grub larva, baked grasshopper and a few other things.

Miss you all.

Rant while I wait

I'm trying to upload some photos in our hotel's lobby but it's taking really long for some reason. We have a really great connection here but I think I fucked this terminal up by trying to do too much at once. It's 40 baht an hour and as that's about a buck, you can see why I'm rushing. HELLO!?

So to bring everyone up to speed. I was in Hoi An, a beach in central Viet Nam like two days ago or something. I stayed there for two nights and then caught a bus to Nha Trang. In Nha Trang I saw a few things but mostly stayed on the beach. I got a really weird looking burn on my back because I sat down on my beach chair and most of my sunblock came off on the towel.

I got to Sai Gon on the 27th and met Starr and Raquel at their hotel. I was originally going to stay there for a few days but I got lonely and wanted to tag along with them. We paid $12 to board a bus bound for Phnom Penh. I only had an hour to kill in Sai Gon after I got off my bus, so I grabbed some breakfast. Now, in Viet Nam and Cambodia you can find 8-year-olds selling bootleg copies of Lonely Planet guides, so I bought the Cambodian one for $3 while I had breakfast. The woman selling it to me looked like she was in rough shape and instead of trying to barter with me just begged me to give her more money. It was a pretty depressing thing to go with breakfast.

The three of us boarded the same bus and got to Phnom Penh by mid-afternoon. Starr and I, once again, were getting on each other's nerves trying to find a hotel and I felt bad that Raquel had to witness it on our first destination as a group. Starr led us to a luxury hostel, and we had the penthouse. More than I wanted to spend, given my budget, but in retrospect it was a pretty great place. If only I had stolen their Lonely Planet: Thailand. Regrets.

We walked around that day and wound up by the river for drinks at night. The next day we started out early and did all the sightseeing a person would want to do in Phnom Penh. Raquel wasn't feeling so hot and wound up going back to the hotel twice to take a break.

In Phnom Penh the tuk-tuk was our preferred means of travel. It's a motorcycle pulling a trailer and the trailer has a canopy with two benches. To get from our hotel to almost anywhere in the city was $2, so divide that by three. That night Starr reserved bus tickets to Siem Reap and I feel like I wasn't informed that that decision was made. In Phnom Penh and in Siem Reap I was told and not asked we were leaving.

It was only 6 hours or so to Siem Reap and we went there to see the temples of Angkor Wat. We got day passes ($20) and biked 10 km. out to the main temple to see the sunrise. Raquel and Starr left at noon to go back to the hotel and I stayed until just before sunset. That day Starr had her camera stolen out of our hotel room. While I was biking around, Raquel and Starr got home, dropped off their stuff (including Starr's camera), and then took a 20 minute dip in the pool. When they got back to our room, the camera was gone and the key could no longer be accounted for (whenever we left our room we left the key at the front desk). Starr screamed, cried, and tried to threaten the guy at the desk in order to get it back. I later found out that she told him 'If I close my eyes and my camera shows back up, I'll just walk away and I won't care at all.' She said he looked like he thought about it for a minute and then told her he had no idea what happened to it. When I finally got back home they told me to pack my shit up and we were leaving, sans paying the bill. Now this, naturally, struck me as a bad decision in a foreign country. I did not however voice this concern and instead just packed up my shit, seeing how upset Starr was. When we got to the lobby the clerk guy tried to stop us and Starr just, very petulantly, told him we were leaving and if he wanted his money he could take it out of the profit from selling her camera. He called the police and we just walked down the alley and around the corner to our next hotel, which the two of them booked earlier that day. We practically ran down the hall and hid in our next hotel room. Raquel and I were nervous and Starr explained to us how we were immune beacuse we were Americans and some other stuff that all made an enormous amount of sense. Raquel and I remained nervous.

The police showed up about 20 minutes later and I was in the room while Starr and Raquel talked to them. Starr paid them the $20 we owed them (with the bike rentals however we owed them a bit more) and they just went away. The next day we were on a bus for Bangkok and here we are.

I just walked up and down the strip and had a beer on the curb with two British girls. Starr and Raquel met these two Canadian guys earlier today on the bus, and I saw them all walking around together. That the three of us split up and explore on our own has become more regular. I'm debating whether to stay behind in Bangkok and let them go south together, or go with them to the islands. I'm leaning towards breaking our unit up and doing the next month on my own.

Siem Reap to Bangkok, 03.03.2007

I've just arrived in Bangkok and I think someone spit on me. We checked these three guesthouses in a row and the third one had a pretty extensive fire escape in the alley. The approach to the front desk is through this alley and when we were leaving I felt one solid glob of something wet hit my bandana. It didn't get skin but I was definitely spit upon. I am not happy about this.

We're in the backpacker's area of Bangkok right now and we've only just checked into our hotel. For the three of us to stay here, which is a great location, its gonna be 400 baht. That's for a single and a double. The baht has become stronger than when our Lonely Planets were published but you can still imagine its about 40 baht to the dollar. So that's 10 dollars for three of us. I haven't seen Starr and Raquel's room yet, but mine is only big enough for the full-sized bed and walking room on two sides of it.

The food outside looks incredible. Eating in the food stalls and out of street vendor's carts is encouraged (so says Lonely Planet) but I gave up worrying about that a long time ago. The main street outside (I already forgot the name) looks cool. Lots of restaurants, bars, and shops selling clothes, trinkets, and the like. Everyone in the area is very young and very foreign.

The bus ride was 12 hours long but it seemed short. I can't believe I entered Cambodia on the 27th and left by the 3rd. That was probably some sort of record.

its Skobac's birthday - everyone call him!

Happy Birthday in Asia, Skobac! I'm going to be on a bus all day long so I won't be able to call you at midnight, but I will make a phone call at some point on the 3rd, your time. Love you man.

NO TIME!

This internet cafe is closing at its almost 11pm here. I'm in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and tomorrow is my last day. I'm going to take a bus at noon with Starr and Raquel to Siem Reap. That's right near Angkor Wat, where we'll rent bikes and explore the area for a day. Admission is expensive (relatively), about $20 for a day. I love Cambodia and if I didn't love traveling with Starr and Raquel, then the decision to stay in Phnom Penh for a week would be an easy one. I skipped Ho Chi Minh City in order to catch up with them, and I don't regret it because they both said it sucked. Not 'sucked' exactly, but they agreed that I'm not missing anything.

Ummm... I'll post again soon. Hopefully. I had an American-style donut today (made with Costco ingredients) and while it was pricey by Cambodian standards (49 cents) it was FUCKING DELICIOUS. Oh man I'm gonna put so much weight on when I get back home. I miss everything. Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Dunkaroos. Berkshire Brewing Company's beer. Biggy Iggy Ice Cream Sandwiches. Reese's Pieces. I'll make a complete list and post it.

Oh yeah, Phnom Penh has virtually no western chains, so we haven't seen a McDonald's or a KFC or anything like that here. I read that Myanmar has no banks, so I guess I'm learning how to do with less and less as I go further and further into Asia.

Also, thank God I carry toilet paper with me in my backpack. That's all I'm gonna say.

Bearded bunny bringing beer, biking bodaciously

I haven't been able to post in the past few days because, for some reason, I have been unable to get into www.blogger.com from any of the terminals I've been at. Thank Shiva I was able to find this cafe and get in.

So, I WAS traveling around with Starr for about 4 weeks before we split up. She went on to Ho Chi Minh City to meet her friend Raquel and I took my time getting down the coast. She just sent me an email saying she's bored so the two of them are going to cross the border without me, and I can just catch up in a day. Thanks guys. Thanks a million.

So, I posted some pictures of me and this fuck Juan eating cobra. Here's the story, hacked out of an email I wrote to Daniela and my dad.

After Starr left for HCMC, I was so bored and lonely. I didn't think traveling alone would suck, but it was and it was only my first day away from her. I woke up early on the 22nd, Starr left, and I couldn't get back to sleep. So I had some tea and then saw the corpse of Ho Chi Minh. The tomb was freezing cold and it was crawling with guards. I still don't understand why, but one of them grabbed me by the arm right near his body, and pulled me slightly out of line, but only slightly. Then he let go. So I looked around and then confusedly just stepped back into line. I don't understand what that was all about. The guys in front of me got yelled at TWICE for talking. It's pretty strict in the tomb, a tomb by the way that Ho Chi Minh never wanted. His will was apparently very clear about being cremated. That sucks.

After I got attacked by a guard I walked through the museum dedicated to his life and his 'excellent morality.' It all seemed like interesting crap to see, but I was bored for just about all of it, so I wandered back to the lake near my hotel at 1pm. A few Vietnamese people tried to talk to me while I was sitting on a bench. Some old guy slapped both of his knees in front of me and gave me a thumbs up. Some woman wouldn't stop staring at me and when I waved at her, she blushed and covered her face in her hands. Then, some Vietnamese kid (he must have been 22 or so) started to chat with me. At that point I was wondering if the rest of my trip was going to be like this and I was thinking about abandoning it and just coming home. So this guy caught me at the moment I needed him the most. So he was like, 'what are you doing man?' and I started lying because every Vietnamese person asks me the same questions and I've found out my answers don't make a slight bit of difference in where the conversation goes. So I told him I was Canadian, and some other stuff, and that I was looking at the lake. 'Staring at the lake is fucking boring. Let's go drink Vietnamese tea.' I didn't really trust the guy but I figured fuck it, I'm whining that traveling alone is boring and lonely and then when someone wants to hang out and I have an opportunity to do something crazy, I turn it down??? Come on! So I went with him. He and a bunch of other taxi drivers were sitting in a park, drinking tea out of a cooler and smoking, so I had a cigarette with them and chatted about nothing important. Then he asked me if I had eaten anything weird. 'Nope.' 'How about cobra?' 'No cobra yet.' 'Well I have my bike here, i can show you a few cool things and then we can go by a cobra farm and try some.' I was unclear at that point if he was a tour guide and wanted money or something, so he said that he's studying English (his was quite good) and that the conversation was enough for him-to practice I mean. If at the end I wanted to kick him a few dollars for the use of his brother's bike, then that was cool too. Awesome! So we were off on an adventure and it was only my first day of being on my own! Hooray! I was making friends and soon I was gonna eat cobra!

He took me to some tiny rat-infested pond with a giant B5-2 standing tail-up in the middle of it. He was like, 'this is the plane John McCain was flying when we shot him down.' Awesome! Click. click. click. click. It was in my guidebook too but I wouldn't have been able to find it on my own. After some photos, he took me to a bridge that Gustav Eiffel designed when France still controlled the whole area. Click. click. click. The bridge was pretty stupid and ugly but it was on the way to the cobra farm. Now, I'm gonna tell this story and I want to end on a good note, so first I'll tell you all that this whole thing was a scam. When the bill came, it was for 2.55 million dong. More than $150. He said he had only been there one time before, with his English teacher from Boston (I was surprised but I couldnt ACT surprised because I had told him I was from Toronto) and they were in a big party so it didn't seem that expensive at the time, plus his teacher sprung for the meal so he didn't even see a bill (I don't believe any of it for a second. When we arrived it seemed like he knew everyone there and he knew exactly how to drive us there despite it being quite a ways outside of the city). So I got pissed, especially after he was like, 'all I have is 200,000 dong.' I only had 150,000 on me, so I was like, well I need to go to an ATM then. He drove me back to the main road and dropped me at a few different ATMs (the restaurant let us go and didn't even make him leave his cell phone or anything so they CLEARLY knew each other) and I kept acting like I was taking out money out but I just kept cancelling the transaction so I returned to him and said, 'bad news guy. my card doens't work.' 'Well, where have you been taking money out?' 'Near my hotel.' 'OK, let's go there then.' I figured this was genius because I was getting back to my hotel where I knew my way around (I hadn't a clue where we were) and then if things went really bad (they did) I could just give him whatever I thought was fair and walk away.

I knew I had to give him something but how much? The place we went to was nice. Don't picture like a shanty town with a cobra pit somewhere that you can pick your snake from and they serve it to you. I never saw any cages or anything and the building was a nice two-story restaurant with classy looking woodwork and fancy table settings. Also, before we left the restaurant I asked to see a menu and it said 100 grams of snake was $10, or 150,000 dong or so. So I figured about half would be ok. So I took out 1.2 million (70 bucks maybe) and gave him that. He wanted more, we argued, blah blah blah, I left. He kept trying to get me back on the bike so we could return to the restaurant together but that wasn't happening.

Now, I don't have a clue how much that cobra should have been, so I don't know if he was being honest and I fucked him over and left him with a giant bill he couldn't pay (only I really didn't since I paid my half anyway) but 70 bucks for what it was was OK I guess. I'm trying to only think about how cool eating it was and not about the scam part. I couldn't stop thinking about the money and realized I was letting it ruin what was a pretty awesome day.

OK, so the COBRA!!!!! We arrived at the farm, but like I said it wasn't really a farm. The owner, a woman, came out to greet us and was carrying a burlap sack full of what appeared to be a really thick coiled rope. She starts to open it up and I just jumped the fuck back. She pulls out this giant cobra, a few feet in length. She handles it for me so I can get a few pictures (click. click. click. click) and then shakes it to piss it off so its ear-flap things spread out. It looks FEROCIOUS. Especially being so close. I take another picture and she puts it back in it's bag. Her and her husband (or whoever) seem not to be afraid of it coiling up near their arms. They never let it just move around, they were constantly repositioning themselves and constantly moving it around as well, but even if it's head got up near their hand and brushed it, they seemed cool with it.

So Juan (the Vietnamese kid who is showing me around) starts to show me all the bottles of cobra liquor and crap. He handles a jar of cobra penises preserved in alcohol (for sexual prowess) and jars of alcohol with whole cobras inside, etc; We went upstairs and they began by serving us a bottle of cobra penis and ginseng in rice wine (they all kept saying rice wine but rice moonshine would be a more appropriate description... it tasted more like vodka or tequila than wine). Anyway, so we have a few glasses of penis and then they bring up our snake. It's a few feet long and they uncoil it, and holding it perfectly straight the owner takes out her knife and inserts it below the head and cuts it open length-wise, letting its heart fall out and dangle and beat in front of us. The blood is all collected into a jar with a funnel below the snake. The heart keeps beating and the snake's blood trickles down and all you can hear is my camera. After that, they add some alcohol to the blood and swish it around for us to drink.The penises and whatever else in the jars can be kept, but the blood always has to be consumed right after the snake is killed. So we both do a shot of cobra blood while the woman cuts out its heart and serves it to me on a platter. It keeps beating the whole time I drink with Juan. Then they take the snake back downstairs and prepare our meal, which consists of dishes with almost every part of the snake added. We had cobra spring rolls, sticky rice with its meat cooked in, soup with its entire spine coiled up in it, etc; They were tasty too. Cobra has a consistency like tough beef but the taste is closer to chicken, only not like chicken... I don't know how to describe the taste and I'm only saying that it tasted like chicken because that's what everyone says about strange meat flavors. It did taste more like chicken than pork, fish, or beef though. Like I said, it was tasty. So we ate all the dishes, had some more blood, some more cobra penis liquor, and then i ate the still-beating heart. That was obviously the high point of the meal and it was perfectly timed relative to the rest of the meal. I didn't eat it to begin with, even though it was the first part removed, but only after we had a few dishes did I eat it. How are you gonna top the eating of a still-beating heart? You can't. So it has to come mid-meal. Perfect. I put it into my shotglass, still beating, then poured some of it's own blood over it, and took the whole thing like a shot, without chewing.

After that she brought the bill and I've already said how it quickly turned into a fubar situation. Even if I had paid the whole $150 I would still be really glad that I went.

So now I'm in Nha Trang and I don't know what to do.

Another update before I leave Hanoi

The journey so far. We left Japan on the 26th of January and arrived in Tianjin harbor (Tanggu) on the 28th. We spent the next 4 days in Beijing, then took an overnight train to Xi'an. We left Xi'an on the 4th. We were in Shanghai for three full days and left for Nanjing on the 8th. After two disastrous days in Nanjing, we returned to Shanghai to catch a train south. We arrived in Nanning at 1am on the 13th and only stayed long enough to get our Vietnamese Visas. We crossed the border on the 14th and arrived in Ha Noi on the same day. We've been in the area since then, seeing Sa Pa up in the mountains and spending 3 days on Ha Long Bay.

Starr left this morning on her flight and I leave on a bus tonight at 7:15pm. I tried to book a ticket on a hard sleeper yesterday but they were sold out. My Lonely Planet says that train tickets are rarely actually sold out and if I went around to the different resellers I should be able to find what I want. I didn't want to waste another day searching for train tickets though, so I bought something called an open bus ticket. My starting point is Ha Noi and my destination is Ho Chi Minh City, but this ticket allows me to get off and reboard the bus at any point along its route. So possible stops for me are Hue, Danang, Hoi An, Mui Ne, and Nha Trang but I haven't really made up my mind yet. The bus ticket was $31, so this is also probably the cheapest way for me to head south. The buses themselves are new and they all have comfy seats and air conditioning, but I know this is going to be a rough ride. When I arrive in HCMC I will have traveled for about 30 hours or so on the bus, so I expect to not have slept much and be sore. I guess that's everything that I need to write about. Wish me luck.

Update 02.21.2007

I'm back in Hanoi and Starr is watching movies/taking a nap upstairs. We spent 3 days and 2 nights sailing around Ha Long Bay and 2 days with 3 nights hiking in Sa Pa since I last updated. We got into Hanoi today at 4am and Starr is leaving tomorrow morning on a flight to Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon. I'll take a bus in the same direction but I'm stopping in Hoi An and Mui Ne on the way, giving us a few days' break from each other.

The Ha Long trip was nice and I'm sure a lot of you have already flipped through a few of the photos I uploaded to Flickr. We originally booked tours to both Ha Long Bay and Sa Pa through the first hotel that we stayed at in Hanoi, the Funky Monkey (not to be confused with the Funky Monkey gay bar by the way), but the prices that we agreed to pay, $82 for Sa Pa and $74 for Ha Long Bay, turned out to be outrageous. We didn't pay a deposit on either of the trips, so we just made up a lame excuse about needing to get to Saigon (it turns out that our friend is flying in TOMORROW and not on the 23rd like we told you, sorry!) and tried to cancel the trip with them. The contract that we signed CLEARLY said in the event of a cancellation we would still need to pay 100% of the cost of the trip, but we acted like this was new information and argued the guy down to $10 a piece. Even with an additional $10 tacked onto the cost of the trip through our current hotel, the Golden Drum, it was much cheaper. We wound up spending (cancellation fee aside) $38 on Ha Long Bay and $70 on Sa Pa.

We were picked up at our hotel on the 16th by a tour bus. The trip to Ha Long City took about 4 hours and it probably took another hour to get on our boat. We were served lunch on the ship and met these two English-speaking Canadian women, Colleen and Jo. Colleen is an English teacher in a high school in Canada and takes every 6th year off to travel. They were both pretty cool I guess. There were 16 people on the boat including the four of us, 2 Korean girls, a Chinese married couple, 4 French nursing students, and 4 more Canadians that were only staying for one night so they left us on the second day.

The first day was spent sailing around Ha Long Bay and we landed on some small uninhabited island to explore its caves. There was a Japanese tour group inside so I chatted up some woman and she was FLOORED that I could speak Japanese as well as I can. She did not see that coming. It felt awesome.

We slept on the boat that night and it wasn't until Starr woke me up in the middle of the night in a panic that I realized there was a huge rat in the room with us somewhere, gnawing on something. For the next half an hour or so we both laid, wide awake, in our bed listening to footsteps, squeaking, and chewing. I dozed off but Starr woke me back up when she heard something jumping around. I would like to state that had Starr never pointed any of this out, I never would have noticed because it was Tet that night and the crew of the boat was getting drunk and running around, making a bunch of noise for most of the night. The next day we had breakfast on the boat, landed on Cat Ba Island (the only inhabited island in Ha Long Bay), hiked over the island's tallest mountain, checked into a hotel, went swimming (neither of us had our cameras), were served dinner, and basically went to bed. On the last day we took a motor boat ride through some more caves, had lunch back in Ha Long City and then took another 4 hour bus ride back to Hanoi.

The Sa Pa trip started on the same day that we returned from Ha Long Bay. We were again picked up at our hotel, but this time driven to the train station. We took an overnight sleeper train to Lao Cai station close to the border with China. We boarded the train at 10 and arrived at 6ish the next day. We took a nice bus ride through the mountains to Sa Pa, checked into our hotel, had breakfast, and then spent a few hours hiking. The next day was spent on a much longer hike and everything you need to know about that is in the pictures.

We stopped at a little trading post thing on the second day and our tour guide, Lan ang or Nan ang (I couldn't quite catch what she said), chopped the bark off of some sugar cane and served it to us. It's pretty good. Very watery and moist on the inside and tastes just how you would imagine, like sugar water. You chew the pulp up, drink whatever comes out of it, and then just spit the rest out somewhere. We saw the Black Hmong kids chewing it everywhere we went.

Our tour group for Sa Pa consisted of a geeky know-it-all former IT British guy, Peter, who said, among other things that annoyed me, 'Yeah you guys really fucked [the Native Americans] over,' and 'they live in reservations now? I guess that's just a nice word for concentration camp.' I'm not arguing with what he said, I just think a British guy should know better than to criticize our politics or foreign policy. And he should have said 'WE really fucked [the Native Americans] over' since I believe native peoples were getting fucked over long before we gave up their accents or citizenship. There were also these three lovely French people on our tour. Chantal, Philip, and Bris.

Oh yeah, and the last thing I'll write is that I almost got my ass kicked by about 20 Vietnamese taxi drivers. This one goofy guy, smiling ear-to-ear (which infuriated me for some reason), kept staring at Starr and me. This happens all the time, but this guy for some reason would NOT stop and it was something about him that made me hate him instantly. So, being the faux tough guy that I am, I started to stare back at him with daggers where my pupils should be. He didn't care and it even instigated him a bit. The only thing that ended our staring contest was when he went over to a few friends of his (there were about 20 other drivers all standing around with nothing to do), said SOMETHING, and then they all glanced over in turns and laughed together. So when that first guy again started to look me in the eyes I blew him a kiss and intensified my icy stare. His smile immediately dropped away and he looked shocked. Simply shocked. It wasn't an ambiguous gesture and he fully understood the 'fuck you' meaning behind it. He then turned to his buddies and they began milling around. I suddenly realized how badly I had fucked up. I didn't stop staring and gave off the same 'I'm so mother-fucking tough that I DARE you to start something' look, hoping that they wouldn't call my bluff. And they didn't either. They all began walking towards the path that led up to where we were sitting, but then they all went past it and around the corner. Damn. I don't know what I would have done if they all had come over to me and started something. But it doesn't matter. I look badass enough that I scared away 20 Vietnamese guys on their own turf. I had better come back to earth before I return to the US or I'm likely to get my face kicked in.

I love Ha Noi

We've arrived in Viet Nam! We caught our train from Nanning at 8am on the 14th and spent all of Valentine's Day traveling in trains, xe om, and pedicabs. The ride to Pingxiang (right near the border) took about 4 hours, but then we had to get out and walk to the actual border crossing. Everything went smoothly on the Chinese side, so we walked maybe another half a kilometer to the Vietnamese border to get ourselves through customs. It was fine but the guy who checked our passports almost didn't let me into the country. My passport is an old school one and instead of the picture being printed directly on the page, it was glued in and laminated over. Well, I've since my passport has been swimming in Costa Rica, through the washing machine, and sat on countless times, its beginning to look like crap. The seal on the front of the passport has completely been worn away so that you can't even tell which country issued it. The real problem however, is that the corner of the first page is a little ripped and it just happens that its torn right on the edge of my picture. I'll be honest, it DOES look like I cut open some guy's passport and slipped my photo in. So this Vietnamese guy had a problem with it and after rejecting all my other ID, quizzed me on who I am before finally letting in the country. This isn't really so funny, but the woman who was working with him, the English speaker on duty, kept asking me incomprehensible questions, angrily, after they discovered the tear.

'This your paaporta?'

'Yep'

'Why it get tear?'

'I don't know, its old. I took it into a river in Costa Rica which didn't help.'

'hmmm... trang ig norba doob idefficon?'

'...'

'skippy doo whippa bum!?!? idefficon!?'

'I'll be honest, I have absolutely no idea what you're asking me'

(the man and woman look at each other, annoyed)

'Trang noor doob idefficon!?'

'idefficon??? you're asking me 'idefficon???''

(she nods)

'Oh man...'

So we got into Vietnam, and it turns out there isn't shit on the Vietnamese side of the border. We found one sketchy guy who wanted to give us a lift to Hanoi, but we've discovered that the only people who seem really interested in helping us out are the ones who really want to fuck us. So we blew passed him, and since these people only talk to me and ignore Starr, I had to tell him 100 times to 'fuck off,' but politely. When there didn't seem to be any other options, we went back to the guy to negotiate a price to Lang Son (our Chinese Lonely Planet said that there were trains to Hanoi from there), instead of Hanoi which he wanted 5 or 600 yuan to get us to. He told us 100,000 dong but there was another cab driver close by, a legitimate one, who said 70,000, so he quickly came down to 60. We got in and he drove us, no fucking joke, to the side of the road in the middle of (what looked like) nowhere to some guy in a minibus going to Hanoi. He nods to the guy, and the other driver hops out, opens up our door and tries to load our shit into his minibus. Our driver in his broken English is like, 'he take you to hanoi, good price, ok.' We asked how much and he said 200,000 (although I don't know if he meant 200 total, or 200 for each of us), and while we weren't quite sure what the exchange rate was at the time (that's about 12 bucks by the way) we were pretty sure we were getting robbed. So I kept closing the door on the other driver and getting really fucking angry with the guy (our guide says you should never do this, even in this situation) . No, NO! We paid you to take us to LANG SON, not SCARY GUY. You understand what I say??? Take us to the TRAIN STATION!' He replied 'No Train! No train station!' which later became 'No trains, its new year, no trains!' which later turned into him angrily driving us off in some new direction with his buddy following close behind. He pulled into a town, Lang Son presumably, and then pulled into some parking lot where his buddy pulled in behind so we could start arguing all over again. I just started laughing at that point because this guy was such a fuck, and then when I tried to hand him 60,000 to be done with it, he refused it saying he said meant 60 EACH. I put the money on the ground and told him he could do whatever the fuck he wanted with it. Then Starr and I walked away and got a beer to calm down. She got directions to the train station (1 km away) from these nice ladies who didn't speak a word of English. We hoofed it to the station and caught a train at 1:50 towards Hanoi. By the way, the trains here are really slow and uncomfortable, but it was still an enjoyable 6 hour ride. We got into Hanoi at 7:30 and I love it. I love it so much I would totally live here (Shanghai and Osaka are also future options). The city is dominated by bicycles and small-engined motorcycles and you can hitch a ride on one for practically nothing. In fact, it was raining last night and the guy who runs our hotel came and picked us up on one. He paid another guy standing close by to take me and he took Starr. We just hopped on the back with our packs and then they flew off, true Vietnamese bad-asses. My guy didn't even bother to remove the lit cigarette from his lip while negotiating the ridiculous traffic in the rain. He had a mesh hat on with a camoflauge front and looked like the Vietnamese version of a bow-hunting redneck from Kentucky (sorry Kentucky). We checked in and got dinner in the old city, close to where we're staying. Dinner was delicious (Vietnamese food kicks ass) and cost us like $2. That's only because we ate at a mid-range place according to our Lonely Planet: Southeast Asia.

Anyway, other people want to use this computer so I'm signing off. We booked a 3-day and 2-night junk tour of Halong Bay over the Chinese New Year (Tet in Vietnam) so we have that to look forward to on... Sunday maybe?

Nanning - 'Your Portal to Vietnam!'

Its 3am on the 13th. Starr and I just knocked out a 32-hour train ride from Shanghai to Nanning. I kind of feel like we're sprinting out of China (which is a bad thing) to meet her friend in southern Vietnam by the 22nd or 23rd. I wanted to stop in Guilin and Yangshuo on the way down, but she's nervous about getting a visa in time so we abandoned that leg of the trip. On the positive side, its finally warm.

The train ride was ok but Starr is sick. Wicked sick. She sounds like crap right now to be perfectly honest, but we're both drinking 6 or 7 cups of green tea daily and she found some Robitussin (sp?) in Shanghai. She was playing with this little kid on the train, where she would draw a picture of something and he would name it in Chinese. It was cute but I don't think either of us retained anything he taught us. Plus, as we're about to leave China for Vietnam, it doesn't matter.

Our hotel in Nanning is fucking sweet. Its a 2-star hotel. Not that the hostels were bad (with the exception of the Beijing one, which had some pretty rancid bathrooms) but we're clearly coming up in the world. We have a computer and internet access in our room, a TV with an English station, a clean bathroom, western-style toilet, towels, and free little soaps and shampoo. The hostel in Beijing didn't even have toilet paper in the bathroom (actually pretty standard in China it seems). And how much would you pay for all this awesomeness? Only 98 yuan my friend, or less than 6 and a half bucks each. This place is about 4 hours from the Vietnamese border too, which means that after we get our visas, we're practically already there. In fact everything in this room is in English, Chinese, and Vietnamese.

Nanjing was a good place to stop but it still marked a low-point in the trip. I really really really really really really really wanted to see the museum about the Japanese occupation, but as its the 70th year anniversary or something like that, it was closed for renovations. I was so disappointed. In addition to that, the staff at the hostel was terrible. It was only one girl in particular, but the rest of them were friends with her, so they're all guilty by association. The one girl we would up liking couldn't speak English so she just smiled a lot and never charged us for the internet. She was pretty cool. We couldn't get any trains here from Nanjing so we were forced to backtrack to Shanghai to book tickets. That pissed up off too. We would up pounding beers in our hotel room on the last night instead of going out. It was necessary.

Also, when I left Japan my roommate David gave me Buddha's Little Finger by Pelevin. I recommend it. Currently reading The Brothers Karamazov which was a gift from D. Thanks again.

Some pictures --- still in Shanghai

Still in Shanghai and will be for another two days. Atually today we're headed to Suzhou (pron. soo-jow) to see the gardens built on silk money. I wouldn't normally be down to see gardens all day but at least one is supposed to consist of optical illusions and another one is listed in '1001 Things To See Before You Die.' The following day we'll see more of Shanghai before leaving that night on a train to Nanjing. I really want to see the museum on the Japanese war atrocities and a few other things of historial significance.

Until we looked into it yesterday, we were planning the next leg of our trip through Hong Kong. I know that it's part of China now so I imagined it would be easy to visit. Wrong. We both have single-entry visas and while you don't need a visa to see Hong Kong, you do need either a new one to re-enter China or a multiple-entry visa. So, since Hong Kong is expensive and is going to be a pain the in ass to see, we're skipping it. Instead we're going from Nanjing to Guilin to boat down the Li River. After we kill a day or two doing that, we're going to Nanning close to the Vietnamese border to get our next visas. We have to be in Hanoi by the 20th (ish) to pick up a friend of Starr's who is going to travel with us to Thailand. From Thailand, Starr and her will decide what to do next, but my mind is made up to continue on to Myanmar, India, Pakistan and the Middle East.

Yesterday we went to the Shanghai Museum for some art and history, before getting lunch at the Steak King. So fucking good and it cost us $3 each. After that we walked through the old city, which was very Beijing-hutongish, and we both bought some touristy crap. I got a map of Shanghai in 1936 and some old sepia-tone photographs of the city at the same time. Starr got this metallic turtle locket thing. We made our way through some other parts of the city, just walking around until we got coffee on the roof of a Starbucks in People's Square (the second picture is from the roof). We'll see the gardens today and try to take in an acrobatics performance tonight.

Again, I miss you all and I'll see you when I'm broke.

Shanghai - Feb 5, 2007 9:26pm

Starr and I took another overnight train, hard sleeper, this time from Xi'an to Shanghai. We arrived today at 10:30am and checked into our hotel near Caoyuan Lu. It was a fairly slow day, walking up and down the Bund and checking out the architeture in the foreign concessions.

We agreed that Shanghai looks like a poor man's Japan. We have been appreciating how clean most of the city is and, unlike Beijing, most people aren't constantly coughing up phlegm and spitting it into the street and all over the sidewalks. The sound that will always remind me of Beijing is 'Aaaaccccckkkkhhhhhhh!' Everyone was constantly doing it and I'm not even exaggerating.

I had a love affair in Japan with nikuman, which are little dumplings filled with seasoned meat. I always got them from convenience stores and they came in three varities: pizza, curry, and meat. They almost always ran about 100 or 105 yen and I thought they were one of the best bargains in Japan. Chinese ones kick the ever-loving shit out of the Japanese ones. Now, granted, I got the cheap convenience store variety in Japan, but the ones here are unbelieveable. I don't know the Chinese name for them, but picture some kind of meat, pork or beef usually, rolled up with lots of veggies and seasonings, and then steamed inside of a dough shell. Starr and I ate vegetarian ones tonight that were the tastiest thing we've eaten so far in China (not really though). They were 0.8 yuan, or 10 cents US, and they had tofu, mushrooms and a bunch of green veggies inside. The people who were cooking them wanted to know, like everyone in China, which country we came from but other than that it was perfect. The place itself was even down an alley and there was only a kitchen exposed to the street with three Chinese guys making them as fast as they could inside. I had one filled with meat and fat in Beijing that was almost as good. Actually, better, but it had the unfair advantage of being about 50% pure fat inside. I bit into it and the fat burst out of it all over my hand. It quickly congealed and for the next 30 minutes (until I could find a bathroom) my hand was covered in hardened white animal fat. It was tasty and only 13 cents too.

We've both become fed up with the 'WHERE YOU FROM!?' question that we've both started to give jackass answers. Samoa, Japan, China, Canada, and Kokomo came up. I can't remember if I've already mentioned it or not, but someone asked me that question in Beijing and I said really angrily, 'GREENFIELD!' They asked the follow up question, 'WHERE THAT?' so I said even louder and more irritated: 'Near TURNERS!'

Xi'an - Saturday, 02.03.2007

Today Starr and I were woken up early by this French-speaking Swiss girl who wanted to go on the Panda tour that our hostel offers. Starr had told me earlier that she wanted to do it, but the tour requires at least 4 people, so I thought I was safe. We told the desk if anyone else asked about it, send them up to our room, 411, and we'd hire a tour guide. I was shocked that this girl and her robotic boyfriend were up for it, but Starr was so excited that I couldn't say no. And what I did instead, was be a real asshole the whole day and refuse to talk to anyone. I think I made the right choice.

The zoo/panda rehabilitation center was kind of a dump. Granted, Starr was able to get her hand and face licked by a panda, but I felt sad for the animals like anyone who has ever visited a zoo has felt. The golden eagles were cool because one of them got confused and tried to fly through the chain-link fence, WHACK, before returning to his perch. After he landed, a vulture in the next cage over started laughing its ass off and then all the eagles got mad and started flapping their wings and cawing back at it. I imagine thats a scene thats been repeated often and I was glad that I was there for it.

After the zoo we got lunch at this Chinese restaurant, which in itself isn't worth mentioning, but after a huge lunch on an empty stomach I fell asleep in the car and snored so loudly that I woke myself up. Everyone else in the car was laughing at me but they all can eat my ass.

After that we walked around the city for a minute or two and then booked our tickets to Shanghai at the train station. We get to most places by taking the public bus, which is a reasonably priced 1 yuan (13 cents) to any point in the city. It takes about half an hour to get anywhere though as this city, one you probably have never heard of, had more than 2 million people in it even 1,000 years ago.

We got back to our hostel, rested for a minute, and then walked around the Muslim quarter nearby. I bought this awesome fung-fu shirt (don't picture a Bruce Lee t-shirt, but a black linen shirt with silk lining and those cool looking Chinese straps down the front with a tight collar), and we wandered down some of the darkest and scariest alleyways in China looking for the Grand Mosque. Didn't find it by the way.

Now, I'm trying once again to upload my pictures from China and as long as no one stops my Flickr thing they should go online tonight.

Miss you all.

Xi'an 02.02.2007 9:37pm

Starr and I took the 9:03pm train from Beijing to Xi'an last night. We sprung for the hard sleeper since the train took about 14 hours to get here. We shared our six-person sleeper with some British guy, a Chinese guy who spoke no English, a young girl who was dropped off by her aunt, and a really enthusiastic Chinese guy who exchanged email addresses with Starr and the British guy before he left.

We arrived at 8:30 this morning, checked into the hotel that we booked online, and made our way out to the Terra Cotta Soldiers-spending an OUTRAGEOUS 65 yuan (8 bucks maybe?) to get in to the excavation site. They were cool and everything but I'm simply annoyed at the dial-up connection that every Chinese hostel seems to have. I guess you all back home should just expect that you won't really see my photos until I get home or to some place that has broadband. I'm about to experiment and try to upload all my photos at once, hoping that no one fucks with my stuff.

Tomorrow we'll check out the Muslim quarter and the city walls (maybe) before heading off towards Chengdu for the pandas and giant Buddha. We'll hit Nanjing, Shanghai and Hong Kong (fucking re-entry permit) before going to Vietnam. Miss you all.

Beijing so far

Beijing is great. Its dirty, smelly, and full of people who try to gouge us on everything we buy. Starr and I have gotten use to using the yuan and seeing things priced in it, so when someone says 'give me 70 for this' we know they're on crack, because nothing here should cost that much (which is about $9). So far I bought long johns for $2 (everyone warned us that the Great Wall was going to be freezing), a Buddhist bracelet covered in Chinese characters for $1, a cool hat for just under $4, a stupid hat with ear flaps for $2, a ton of post cards, a charm for my backpack, and probably a few other things.

We left Kobe harbor on the 26th at noon and spent more than 2 days on the boat. The boat was fun and I met its Chinese nationalist captain. He speaks a bit of English and was always on hand for the meals. When he saw me, he, like all Chinese people we've spoken to, wanted to know where I was from. He then told me all American food was potatoes and hamburgers and how its no good. He then held up a Qingdao beer and asked me if I wanted one, adding 'its the best in the world.' I still hate him. The food on the boat was pretty bad but I stuck it to the Chinese crew by eating only the Japanese dishes available. They were also pretty bad.

Off the boat, we got to Beijing around 6:30 maybe. Getting a cab was fucking ridiculous. We said goodbye to our friend from Singapore, Christopher, and then made our way to the row of cabs in front of Beijing station. A bunch of guys were gathered near the front and approached us for a ride. We assumed they were with the long row of cabs directly behind them, but once we agreed to let one of them take us to our hotel, they tried to lead us way the fuck off into the distance. Starr said behind me, quietly enough so none of them could hear, 'theres no fucking way dude' and then just walked off in a different direction, trying to cross about 8 lanes of traffic in the process. I followed her. The guys all followed us. We told them something about getting food but they herded us back towards their cars. One of the guys was a legitimate taxi driver but he looked like he wasn't getting involved. Nice. We just left, quickly but casually, and could not for the fucking life of us figure out how to make a phone call. There weren't any pay phones nearby and when we found a government run phone center thing, the guy at the hotel couldn't speak a word of English and sounded really angry for some reason. We made our way back to the taxis after everything else we could think of didn't work and were, again, confronted by guys hanging out near the front of the line. I went past them to the taxi drivers but none of the real drivers were willing to take us and couldn't understand where we wanted to go. The sketchy guys all had cell phones and were dialing the number for us before we asked them to. We eventually went with a guy who had half of the teeth in his fucking head and an unmarked car a mile from the station. Brilliant. We agreed on 50 yuan, down from 180 with the first guys, but when he got us to our hotel that number became 60. He was cute about it though. I handed him 50 and he just kind of squinted, cocked his head to the side, and went 'mmmmmmmm...'

Finding the hotel was an adventure too. We are staying in one of Beijing's hutongs. These are really old alleys that are, while our guide highly recommends and are listed in '1001 Things to See Before you Die,' ghettoes. The thought flitted through my mind that we were going to get hacked up and sent back to the US as parts, but we were ACTUALLY where we were supposed to be. Imagine taking a drive down an alley that gets smaller and smaller and takes sharp turns that you're not even sure if the car can fit through, where the people are all looking at your car distrustfully and you see NO other foreigners, and the cab driver has to get out multiple times to ask for directions and no one even wants to talk to him. Our hotel is run by a creepy heroin addict that we call 'Lurch' and the bathroom smells like... there aren't even words.

We've become used to the hotel and now we even like it, but we were NOT happy when we showed up. I think it was culture shock to no small degree.

On our first full day we saw Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the hill behind the city where the last Ming emperor killed himself. We ate Peking Duck (so fucking good) at a really fancy-ass restaurant, treating our friend Christopher from the boat, and only spent $45. The second day we took an all-day tour of the city including stops at a jade factory, pearl factory, cloissonware factory, lunch, tea, the Great Wall, and the Ming Tombs. We only wanted to see the stupid wall, but all tours that are run by travel agencies include these tourist trap factory tours where you are required to spend like 20 minutes in the gift shop at the end. We went to not 1 but 2 fucking jade factories. Our guide gets paid by the government (all the factories were run by the government) so we couldn't skip them either. At the last factory we just gave up and tried to talk to the Chinese girls who worked there and they admitted they just wanted to practice their English.

Today we were going to go to the Summer Palace but gave up and shopped. Starr has bought quite a bit of stuff but I'm in this for the long haul so don't expect much to be sent home. Sorry guys. Lets see. I guess thats it for now. Tomorrow we'll do the Mao-soleum and the Summer Palace and we've already bought our overnight tickets to Xi'an. We leave at 9pm tomorrow night and I think I've spent $150 so far. Some big ticket items make up the bulk of that...

Beijing - Jan 31 6:30pm

Starr and I just paid for internet use at this cafe (20 RMB per hour) because we've already been to three places today with free internet and we were unable to upload our pictures at any of them. Our hotel has free internet but I think the firewall is preventing me from using Flickr's uploading program. I tried to disable it but I couldn't figure out what I was looking at since everything was in Chinese. Also, as I put all of my photos into the trashbin, I noticed someone else had taken quite a few shots of their own erection and forgot to empty the bin. Quite impressive but totally shaven which I simply can't tolerate. The second place is where we got breakfast and again I had problems with the stupid uploading software. I could have gone online and uploaded 6 photos at a time with their web-based thing, but since I have over 450 pictures, I copped out. The third place only had wireless ACCESS but we couldn't tell from the sign out front.

So here's attempt number 4 and if I fail again, I'm going to... try a fifth time. But I won't be happy about it.

Beijing - Jan 29, 2007 9:24am

I can only use this computer to check my email so don"t expect any photos yet. Starr and I arrived in Tianjin and made our way to Beijing yesterday. The boat ride was alright. I liked it but I think Starr got pretty fucking bored at points. What compounded it was that I prefered to read and be quiet and without someone to talk to she almost went nuts. She did make friends with this guy from Singapore named Christopher (that MIGHT be his name) and he was headed in the same direction that we were. This turned out to be the hand of God reaching down to help us out, because when we got off the boat he shared a cab with us, got us to the station, helped us buy our train tickets to Beijing, but couldn't get dinner with us because he had to be somewhere. We made plans to meet him by the Forbidden City tonight to get something to eat so that's what we're up to.

This hotel is run by the Adams Family (actually they're all really nice people, just a little off) but its alright. Last night we had a fucking adventure trying to get a cab from Beijing station. Of course we were bombarded by people asking us "where you going?" at the entrance to the station but when we went to get in line for a taxi some guy told us he would get us to our hotel for only 160 yuan, which, when I asked him to confirm that he just said 160 yuan, he paused and the number magically became 180 yuan. I was enchanted. When we started to walk away that number became 120 yuan in seconds but the guy we eventually got charged 60, and even that was probably gouging us.

The hotel is in a hutong of Beijing which is Chinese for the middle of fucking nowhere where you're completely fucked. Its only 15 minutes from the Forbidden City if we can find it.

I love you all. Expect more detail and pictures when I get to a computer that isn't this one.

7pm

We got into Osaka last night around 9. We got lost on the subway and wound up at the Universal Studios stop, but were able to check in by 10ish. Hotel Chuo has a curfew of midnight, but we were able to meet up with some friends nearby and get back in time. It turns out a friend of ours from back home lives one stop away from our hotel. Pure coincidence. Mike Perry is a guy that Starr knows pretty well, but I've never met him before. Good guy. He leaves on the 30th to do the exact same trip that Starr and I are doing, only he's going backwards and then taking the trans-Siberian railroad to Moscow. He was drinking with two of his buddies, one of whom graduated from Brandeis in 1999. Small world.

Today we fucked around online when we woke up (taking full advantage of the free coffee) and were able to cash some of my traveler's checks near the hotel. We went to the Osaka aquarium and saw its much advertised Whale Shark. After that we went for a spin on what used to be the tallest ferris wheel in the world (thank you very much London). I boozed while Starr almost choked to death on a chocolate-covered almond.

After that we came back to our hotel to upload all of our pictures and video and charge our cameras, both of which died. While here, I was able to check my gmail but I still haven't received a reply from the guy that handles FAQs for the Kobe-to-Tianjin ferry. I wanted to confirm my reservation and ask if meals were included with our ticket. I used to think they were, but looking at pictures online of the restaurant on board, I'm suddenly afraid I'm wrong. Anyway, we need to wake up tomorrow at 7ish and get our asses to Kobe, so we'll figure it out soon enough. While searching though I took a look at what the more expensive cabins look like on this boat. I had always just assumed we would get whatever the cheapest tickets were, but for only an additional 3,000 yen, we can switch from futons on the floor (top picture) to bunks (bottom picure). So I guess we'll ask tomorrow if we can upgrade our beds.

Osaka and a map

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Starr and Benn's World Tour 2007 - The Japan Leg finished

Osaka, Thursday 10:36am

Starr has signed up on Flickr, and her photos are here. Click on that link to see her shots, and as always, mine are here.

01.24.2007 2:18pm

I just uploaded all of the photos I've taken so far of my trip with Starr. So far, we've been:

January 16th to the 19th - Tokyo
January 20th - Nagoya
January 21st - Nara
January 22nd - Inuyama
January 23rd - Kyoto

and today is the 24th, but tonight and tomorrow afternoon we'll be in Osaka (Starr really wants to go to the aquarium) and on 26th at 11:00am we'll board our boat to China. We'll arrive on the 28th and then its on to Beijing for 3 or 4 days. Expect updates from China.

So far the trip has been fantastic. In Tokyo we went to the New York Bar in the Park Hyatt (where Lost in Translation was filmed), saw the Tsukiji fish market (the largest fish market in the world) and got sushi there right off the boat, saw the Todaiji (containing the largest Buddha in Japan), the deer, and some other temples in Nara, an original castle with a great view in Inuyama, temples in Kyoto, and we've been steady boozing in the meantime.

The deer in Nara were awesome, ((click here), mostly because they kept attacking Starr and I found it hillarious. Thank God they got their horns cut recently because they would have kicked her ass if they still had them. It was only because she had a handful of sembei and they were hungry, don't think its actually dangerous there. This was the first time I saw the deer bow too. Last time I wasn't sure if what I was looking at was the real thing, but if you put a handful of food out, they step into line and show some respect. Cute.

On our way to Kyoto we got separated which I also found pretty funny. We were on a slow train and switching to a fast one when Starr realized she left her camera on the last train. She paused for just a second, the doors closed, and I waved goodbye to her from inside the train. The look of absolute shock and horror in her face made it all worth it, but I just got off at the next station, Yasu, and waited for her slower train to show back up. I found her totally unconcerned, back in her seat with her camera.

We ran out of yen in Kyoto and were left with Starr's Bank of America card and my traveler's checks. We couldn't find anyone who would accept either one, so we had to figure out how we were going to eat dinner, maybe get some coffee, tickets back to Nagoya and booze for the ride on less than $10. It was pretty fun. We got some food off of the McDonald's dollar menu because it was all we could afford and walked across the whole city to Kyoto station so we could save enough money to get back on the train home. I was able to get my traveler's checks cashed in Kyoto station but it was pretty touch and go for a while there. It made me nervous but was fun just the same.

I hope to update this again before I get on a boat for China, but that might not happen. If not, expect the next post from Beijing. Love you all.

January 14th Going Away Party

This is the Disneyland skit from a comedy show Yuka and I like.

Pictures posted.

January 18th, 9:08am - Tokyo

This is how I'll start labeling these entries. I don't have a lot of time to write as I'm at the only computer terminal in this hotel (with heavily advertised free internet) and there's probably a few people who are just waiting for me to get off. Starr and I have already had a great first couple of days.

My vacation started after work ended on Sunday. The last day was great and I got some pictures with students that I'll post tonight. That night we had a going away party in my apartment (I'll also post those pictures tonight). The next day Yuka helped me to get a Citibank account and check postal rates for the two bags I'm sending home. The following day Yuka slept over and we said our good-byes, then I packed my backpack and left Nagoya. I hate that part of any trip. Packing and saying goodbye to a place as familiar as Kyowa has become sucks. It reminded me of packing for Japan and leaving college Senior year and leaving home for college. At least this time I didn't have a lot of crap to pack.

I met Starr an hour late at Narita airport (there were three stops on the train for Narita Airport and I didn't know where she was going to be) because the train leaving from Shinagawa station took an hour and a half to get there and to take the airport express was $30 I wasn't going to spend. We drank on the train as we headed back towards downtown. The first step was to book a hotel for the night so we went to one that I had gone to earlier with Yuka. Full. So we headed to another station and tried to ask some people, check Starr's guide book, and ask some cabbies where we might be able to go. This was our practice run for China and we weren't doing so well. I wound up calling Yuka and asking her to help us out. She found a hotel and booked it for us near Shinjuku. We checked in, went out for a little while, just drinking and walking around some of the busy parts of Tokyo and got home by 2am. Starr was up again around 6 and couldn't sleep. She said that she slept for the entire flight over but despite that she was a little fucked up from the jet lag.

Yesterday we again called Yuka and she found us this place in Ikebukuro. Cheaper than the first night (3,800 instead of 4,200) and this place included the internet and breakfast. We dropped our bags off at around 11am and did some sightseeing. We went on a tour of the imperial palace, saw the Yasukuni Shrine (see wikipedia and any news article on why people are currently burning Japanese flags in Korea and China), and then got a drink at the New York Bar in the Park Hyatt Hotel. That's where most of Lost in Translation was filmed and that bar is where Scarlett and Bill meet for the first time. It was a really nice place, live music, a great view of the city, and we wound up spending $75 for a beer and glass of champagne. The champagne wasn't something we wanted but apparently it was opposite day with that particular waiter. 'Would you like some champagne?' 'No.' 'OK, here you go.'

Today we'll do some more sightseeing but I'll post those pictures tonight.

I lost the mailing addresses for all of my Brandeis and high school friends. Could you all email me where you live? bennegan@gmail.com. Thanks.

I'm crushed

I'm 5 days away from payday, and in my excitment I walked around Nagoya today asking about the forex rates at the biggest banks. I'll have 1,000,000 yen on my last day of work (with another 100,000 being sent back to the US by Nova after I leave), and until today that meant $10,000 in my mind. Well, now reality has snuck in and I'm completely disappointed. 1,000,000 yen is about $8,300 if I convert it with any of the banks here, Mitsui-Sumitomo, UFJ, Citibank, or Mizuho. That sucks man. That sucks so god-damned hard that I want to smash something. I could have put $2,000 in my Citizen's account (for my college loans), which would have gotten me all the way to August or September of this year, and I would have had $8,000 to travel with. $8,000 would have given me almost $22 a day, for an entire year, to live on. That might be impossible in Japan or the US, but hostels in Cambodia are about $1.50 a night, so $22 would have been a heap of cash.

I don't know how long I'm going to travel for but those fucking loans are a black cloud hanging over my plans. God damn Brandeis and its fucking outrageous tuition. I would be so free if it wasn't for those loans. They'll pay themselves off over time but I want to be free NOW.

On another note, I'm headed to a non-English speaking dentist tomorrow with Yuka, so wish me and my teeth luck.

January 2nd and the present

We got up early on the 2nd and caught a train towards Yokohama. We reached Kamakura before 11am and dropped our bags in a 300 yen/day locker. We tried to figure out how long we could spend in the city and still make the last train back to Nagoya, but failed miserably. To solve such a tedious and complex problem as catching the last train was outside of my ability and her patience. The JR station attendant just gave us his time table to figure it out and as it was all in Japanese, Yuka was on her own. The time table was thicker than a phone book, so we agreed that 5pm was a safe and arbitrary number, so we went with that.

We saw the Hase-dera and Daibutsu before returning to the station to grab our bags. The Daibutsu was really cool to see and I took some of my favorite pictures from our trip in front of it. We payed an extra 20 yen and were also able to go inside of the Buddha.

The Hase-dera was also cool. There was an art museum attached to the temple and inside there were 33 hand-carved statues of the reincarnations of the Buddha. There is apparently some text that describes the many forms that Buddha took on, including different demons, a prime minister, women, children, and a half-serpent half-man creature. It made me want to find an English translation of the stories.

There is also a cave located underneath the temple and Yuka and I walked through it. There are statues inside that you can light candles to, asking for specific help in love, business, cooking or whatever, but what I remember clearly were the prayer cards outside of the cave. You can buy and hang wooden plaques near the cave entrance asking Buddha for his help and one in Spanish began: 'Los Goonies nunca dicen 'muerte'... it was unexpectedly awesome.

So then we came home, blah blah blah.

I finished work today at 9pm and that leaves only 4 more days with Nova. Two of those days are only 4-hour shifts and this Thursday I have a dental appointment. Getting my teeth checked was on my 'things that are absolutely necessary to do before leaving Japan' list and it feels good to be getting it done at last. I think I'm 2 or 3 years past where I should have had them checked and if any good will come from this appointment, its that I won't have to have an excruciatingly painful tooth removed by a fist-shaped rock, smashed into my jaw in Vietnam, two months hence.

Takoyaki Party

I've uploaded a video of our takoyaki party. Three Japanese friends, my roommate David, and Pat threw me a going away party on Sunday night, the 7th. Takoyaki is an Osaka dish, which, for lack of a better way to describe it, is octopus balls. In the video, Yukio (far right) freaks out when Ayami (far end of the table) tries to put kimuchi in his takoyaki. Kimuchi is just cabbage in this spicy tomato-based sauce. Yukio maintained that it tasted like ass but I liked it. We added a bunch of other stuff, including sliced up hot dogs for Pat, who hates octopus (which is what Yuko puts near his face), and then put this special sauce on top with mayo on the side to dip them in.

Also, as Yukio found out the hard way, not once but TWICE, takoyaki is extremely hot when it comes out of the pan.

January 1st, 2007

We checked out of the hotel at exactly 10 and again Yuka used her cell phone to find and book our next hotel. We agreed later that the next place was the best place we stayed at in Tokyo. It was a little hard to find (there are TWO FamilyMarts. This would have been helpful information) but it was cheap and had personality. It was run by a Korean woman near Ikebukuro station. Some older guy was watching tapes of Korean dramas, all the books were in Korean, and in addition to the sweet-ass free internet, there was all the Korean tea you could drink. Sidenote: Korean tea sucks. It tastes and smells more like soup broth than tea, but Yuka liked it. So it felt like we had walked too far and wound up in some Korean woman's living room. The fact that the Korean owner played some weird card game online through Yahoo! reinforced this.

Late breakfast at Denny's and that's not as lame as it sounds. Denny's in Japan is alright. Its a far cry from its American counterpart and the deserts are genius: take a big ass chocolate sundae with banana slices and other dope stuff mixed in, and precariously balance an entire slice of cake on top. Oishisoo. Soo da ne.

On Yuka's suggestion we headed for the Imperial Palace, because on New Year's Day the emperor comes out of hibernation and waves to the people. Imagine our disappointment when we found the entire palace had already closed for the day. I guess the emperor gets up pretty early to wave...

We sat down near the moat and tried to figure out what we still needed to see. I saw an advertisement along the border of our map for the Tokyo Met. Government Offices, located near Shinjuku, so I convinced Yuka that if we trekked all the way out there the view from the top would be worth it. So we went to Shinjuku and got swept up in the crowd again. We made it to the towers 4 minutes before they closed for the night and got some good shots of Tokyo as the sun was going down. While we were leaving the building, a Japanese couple in the plaza was training its dog to come when its name was called.

We made it to Ginza, which would be Newberry Street in Boston or maybe Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles, and walked up and down the nearly abandoned shopping district around 8pm. The only thing that seemed to be busy was the German-style beer hall near the station. We did some window-shopping and much more crucial beer-drinking. We headed back towards our hotel as we were starting to feel wiped out from all the walking we had done.

Updates again soon...

The Daibutsu at Kamakura. It gets up in the middle of the night and takes giant bronze shits in a river nearby. The smell is unbearable, but no one has the balls to say anything.

And by the way, feel free to post comments. I need them to build my time machine.

New Year's Eve 2006

We left our hotel in Shin Nihonbashi by 10am (exactly at checkout time) and Yuka was able to book our next hotel with her crazy-ass hi-tech cell phone. We found a place right near where we wanted to do the countdown, it only cost us $50 each, and it was on New Year's Motherfucking Eve. We were jazzed.

We again went to our hotel early to drop off our bags and then we went to Asakusa. It was probably my favorite part of Tokyo. There was a temple there, and a long approach filled with merchant's stalls. The stuff they were selling was more or less the same in each location, but there were some cool things to make the area more than just a tourist trap. We got a cup of sweetened sake to split and Yuka insisted on trying some fried green-tea rice cake. I bought a dope headband that looks like something out of the Karate Kid (its white with a red sun in the middle, and it says Kamikaze in bold, black kanji. I love it).

(side note: I wanted to stop at the Vietnamese embassy while we were in Tokyo to get my Visa, but as it was New Year's that was a pretty ridiculous expectation)

After Asakusa, we headed for Shibuya. Naturally, we grabbed beers for the long-ass subway ride across town. Shibuya is where that famous crossing is, the one used in Lost in Translation and tons of other advertisements for Tokyo. It was pretty crazy I guess. Just a bunch of people on their way somewhere else. There's this statue of a dog right near the crossing and a touching and probably bullshit story to go with it. Everyday (who knows how long ago) this man used to meet his dog at Shibuya and one day the guy died. The dog never figured it out and no one bothered to tell it, so it died waiting for him to return. Quite touching. You can see this monument to loyalty today, surrounded by tourists and homeless Japanese that masturbate publicly.

We walked off towards the next stop on the subway, Harajuku, and passed by a group of Japanese guys, dressed up like 1950's American greasers, dancing in a public park. It was probably one of the highlights of my trip. They looked cool man, and I'm not joking at all. There was a long line of tourists taking their picture and it made Yuka and I feel so lame to be a part of it. But we redeemed ourselves by actually getting our picture with them and (along with the picture of us with the Daibutsu at Kamakura) its my favorite shot from our trip.

We walked through Meiji-jingu on our way to Harajuku and found out that there was going to be a countdown there as well. Actually, my friend and coworker, Michelle from Florida, was there that night with friends of hers from back home. I'm going to head into Nagoya after I finish uploading my pictures and watch all of this year's ATHF with her, so I'll find out if it was fun or not.

After Harajuku we went to check into our hotel (we had only left our bags there earlier) and get some dinner before the countdown. We didn't manage to stop and eat so we got food from a convenience store and beer to wait in line with. When we got back to Zojoji there were less than 1,000 people there, so we were right on time. We ate standing and got our little slips of paper. At that time a friend of Yuka's, Mika, along with these two Nova teachers showed up. I knew one of them, a gay Irish guy, but it was the first time I met this girl. What a bitch. What an obnoxious, selfish, whiny, and control-freak of a bitch. Man. I'll elaborate later I suppose, but what a cunt. Seriously.

We ditched them to go watch some guys making traditional Japanese rice cakes. What made it traditional was that they were using giant wooden mallets to soften the rice dough. They kept picking big guys out of the crowd watching and making them participate, which was awesome. They picked this giant American guy next to me (I felt like the last kid picked at dodgeball) and he embarassed himself and our country so badly that I wanted to shun him. These Japanese guys who looked over 50 looked tough swinging those mallets and thanks to their perfect form, made these impressive sounding WHACKS in the dough. This American guy apparently couldn't figure out the physics of swinging a giant wooden stick and made these little weak PIFF noises that made everyone around him get quiet and check out why he was fucking up. They stopped him after a few swings and he thanked everyone around him like he was the star of the show or something. I could totally sense what everyone was thinking because I was thinking the same thing: that guy was a giant pussy.

Some Japanese guy saw me after that and we made brief eye contact. I stopped smiling when I saw him and tried to look off into the distance in order to become invisible. After seeing that foreign guy being quietly judged I didn't want to suffer a similar fate. He walked over to me and grabbed my arm, saying in English: 'Challenge! Challenge!' and I couldn't refuse. The crowd of like 50 people around me were checking me out to see if all foreign guys were such damned pussies, but I didn't let myself down. I KILLED that damn rice dough. I was trying like a motherfucker to put everything I had into swinging that mallet. Yuka got some pictures but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see them. The older Japanese guys in kimono smiled a little bit and nodded their heads approvingly.

We met up with that bitch and Yuka's friend Mika a little while later for the countdown. We waited in line a second time to get balloons and then thought long and hard about what to wish for. Long story short: my slip of paper containing my wish fell off of my balloon before it got airborn and I didn't find it until a few minutes after midnight. So God got my balloon but no wish. We counted down with this giant crowd and right at midnight the year on the Tokyo Tower changed and it was a lot of fun.

I don't have a lot of time left at this cafe so I'll update again later.

Miss you all.

Saturday, December 30th

Yuka and I left together from Okazaki (her hometown) on the 8:33 Local. She had bought a special ticket that allows for 5 days of unlimited travel on the regular trains (no Shinkansen) for about 11,000 yen ($110). We got to Tokyo around 2pm and went to our hotel to drop off our bags. First stop was Akihabara for the freaks. Everyone tells me that the reason you go to Akihabara is for the freaks and the maid cafes, so I was ready for some freaks of the 'I dress like my favorite anime character everyday and only answer to Doraemon' kind of freaks, not the 'I love technical gadgets and can't believe you don't have a Hydrogen-powered PS24-35a Beta 100 TB harddrive yet' kind of freaks. The latter variety are much less fun to watch and the only kind that we saw there.
We stopped in Ikebukuro next, which is again, just a giant, busy, crowded section of Tokyo where you can walk around and bump into people. It was much better than Akihabara but it didn't really stand out for any reason. At least Akihabara had the body odor and sexual frustation. We passed a British pub heavily advertising its fish and chip dinner special, and Yuka, ever the Anglophile, wanted to stop. It was pretty good. In the pub I saw this foreign guy sitting alone for the entire time we were there, nursing some drink and looking off into the distance. I was a well-oiled machine by then (we had been picking up beers and chuhi from convenience stores and walking around with them for hours) but didn't ask him what I couldn't figure out: what the fuck was he doing? He made me feel sorry for him but it looked like the most natural thing in the world for him to sit still and stare at the bar for over an hour and a half, saying nothing to no one. Maybe thats just what you look like when you travel alone.

We went back to the train station and got to Hamamatsu-cho to see the Tokyo Tower by 8ish. We hadn't decided where to go or what to do for New Year's but found out that there was a big event on that spot the following night. For the first 3,000 people, the temple nearby, Zojoji, would provide balloons and cards on which to print your wish for the new year. At midnight, those people would all release their balloons and then participate in a massive orgy fueled by violence and free heroin.

We got back to our hotel pretty early, maybe by 11.

東京

Went to Tokyo for New Years! Yuka and I arrived in Tokyo on the 30th, spent three days in the city, went to Kamakura on the 2nd, and got home by 10:15pm on the same day.