Nova, Geos and JET

I've already started reapplying for jobs in Japan. I haven't made up my mind to return yet, but I want to at least know what my options are.

I wrote the following email to NOVA's Boston office on July 24th:

Dear Boston Recruiting Staff,

My name is Benjamin Egan and I taught in Japan with Nova for a year. I applied through the Boston office in July of 2005 and was accepted for the February start date, 2006. I finished my contract in late January of 2007 and traveled around Asia afterwards. Now that I've completed my traveling, I am interested in returning to Japan. I was wondering if an additional contract is something I could pursue with Nova and if so, when would be the next available start date? I appreciated the opportunity to teach in Japan and look forward to a good working relationship with Nova in the future.

Thank you very much,

Benjamin Egan

They sent me this reply:

Benjamin,

If you would like to be considered for re-employment, please submit the online application. Once we receive this we will forward it to our personnel office in Japan for approval. Their decision will be based on your past employment record. Thank you.

Regards,

The Recruiting Team
Nova Group Boston
535 Boylston St, Ste 204
Boston, MA 02116
617-437-7977 or 800-551-6682

So I did. I filled out their stupid online application like they've never heard of me and I'm waiting to hear back from someone. If the only way for me to return to Japan is through NOVA, that's fine. I'm not crazy about working for them again, but I could quit as soon as I land (after getting my Visa and cheap flight naturally) and find another job. I don't think it would be hard with a year's experience under my belt.

I filled out Geos' online application on the 26th. Geos, as far as I can tell, is a NOVA clone.

Big disappointment in the past few days came from JET. This is a government program that puts native speakers in classrooms to teach alongside certified Japanese instructors. It's the preferred way to teach in Japan (for reasons I'll address in a moment) and it looks like it might not be an option for me. If I return to Japan, I want to do it relatively quickly and not next spring like the JET program requires for American applicants. They only do one hiring period per year and applications are filled out in September, interviews are conducted in February, and new teachers are informed in April. I'm not willing to wait that long. I emailed someone at the Japanese consulate in Boston and they said that its possible to apply to the JET program while living in Japan, but interviews are only conducted on US soil. Which means it'll cost me $800 to fly to Los Angeles just for the interview if I leave before next spring. I emailed the Boston consulate yesterday and asked if it was possible to do the interview anywhere closer, and the prompt reply I got suggested flying to Guam. I took a quick look online today and found flights from Osaka to Guam for about $560 next February. At least there are options.

JET is far superior to NOVA for a number of reasons. According to this website, JET instructors get paid 3,600,000 yen a year. Working for NOVA I made about 2,760,000 yen a year. That's roughly a 30% pay increase from NOVA to JET. According to my friend Bruce, you don't have to pay for health insurance at JET, but I definitely had to through NOVA. Lastly and most importantly, JET employees work about 200 days each year, whereas NOVA employees work about 250. That includes all vacation time, national holidays, etc;

The only thing going for NOVA is that if I get rehired, I can leave for Japan by October. I'd have to wait at least until April through JET.

多分,日本に帰る

I'm considering returning to Japan.

I've been home for two months now and while I love being back, I should probably be thinking about the future. Right now I work with my dad a few days each week (lawn mowing and maintenance on his buildings mostly) but I wouldn't call it a job exactly. It's probably more accurate to think of myself as unemployed. I've been trying to come up with things I could do with my life, but very few of them appeal to me. Here's what I've come up with:

Moving back to Boston. Daniela is there. I have friends there. The city is great, especially in the spring and fall. Boston is large enough where its possible to find any job that you could want. The problem is that I don't know what kind of a job I want. I could always return to Investors Bank & Trust where I worked right before I left for Japan. It would be easy enough to get my old job back and the money wouldn't be terrible. However, I know that I wouldn't be able to do that for more than a year or so. Mutual Fund Accounting isn't a career choice, trust me. Plus, with a year of experience doing that kind of work, it would make more sense to go to one of IBT's competitors (Evergreen, State Street, Fidelity, etc;) and make more money. However, I think I've decided that no matter what I do it's not going to be about the money. It just seems like such a lame thing to spend so much of your time pursuing. Like Slug said "I'd rather live in a tent than bust my ass to pay the rent." Fund accounting is out. Unless I can think of a job that I would want in Boston, going somewhere new is probably better than somewhere I've been.

I could try to get a job at an architectural firm. I think it's something I would like to do. It's also the kind of job that you find in any big city, which means I wouldn't have to move to Duluth or anything. The only problem is that its a plan for the long-run and I may not be there yet. I don't want to sign a lease in some city, get comfortable, and then decide I want to try something temporary a little bit longer. Like teaching English in a foreign country.

Option three: returning to Japan. I go back and forth whether I want to return or not. A few days ago it seemed brilliant and last night, while talking to Daniela, it seemed lame. What is it that I would gain out of going back? I could improve my Japanese. That's huge. This is also why I would want to return to Japan over going somewhere new. I mean, I don't want to start all over again with French or German. There are still plenty of things to see, especially if I went somewhere new like Osaka or Kyoto. When I think about the things that I like to do the most, reading and learning are at the top of my list. Speaking fluent Japanese is a goal that I've set for myself, and I would improve a lot faster living in Japan than watching anime and reading textbooks here.

I don't know what I want to do with my life, but I think I've already ruled out a few things. That feels like progress I guess.

Another update?

Its June 7th and I'm about to go meet Tracy Creek for dinner at the Pint, but I wanted to let everyone who might check this know what's going on. So I got back to the US about 2 weeks ago and I've been slowly putting weight back on. When I arrived I was down to 145 lbs. (I hadn't weighed that much since Sophomore year of high school) and now I'm back up to 152 thanks to my dad's cooking. I was 195 or so when I graduated from college, so I lost quite a bit of weight in those 16 months.

I'm in the process of uploading all of the pictures that Luke and I took, but its taking me longer than expected. First of all my dad's computer won't read my camera's memory card so my most recent photos are trapped on my camera. I have all of Luke's photos on my computer and I'm getting those online now.

It's not that weird being home. Everyone asks me how it feels to be back but I made a smooth transition and didn't go through any counter-culture shock. Everyone that I worked with in Japan who had made trips back to the States told me that I wouldn't be able to handle the shock of being back home. It would be massive. Complete bullshit.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this blog now. Abandon it? Keeping a blog of what I do with my days now would be a complete waste of time. I work with my dad, eat lunch, and read until I go to bed. I ride my bike a bit too. There you go. That's it. Reread that sentence once a week for the rest of the summer and you'll know where I am and what I'm up to.

I guess I'll very infrequently update it until I decide what to do with my life. I'm open to suggestions but I'm leaning towards returning to Japan. I know I sounded bitter in quite a few of those posts, but I loved it there. It just took getting use to, and all I know right now is that I want to keep studying Japanese. Ok. That's all.

--STRANDED!--

Someone get a hold of Kevin Skobac (I just emailed him) and tell him not to meet me at the airport in New York!

I was with Luke in Delhi until about midnight on the 20th and then I found a shuttle to the airport for only 50 rupees. Once I had found the correct place to catch the bus, and asked some guy to confirm that I had the correct spot, he asked for my sunglasses as a gift for all his help. Are you serious? He was. I got to the international airport around 1am and found out the flight to Moscow had been delayed about 3 and a half hours. Because of this, I was going to miss my connecting flight to New York and so they told me that I would have to stay in Delhi for 24 hours and try again tomorrow. The flight however has changed, because someone at Aeroflot told me I would need to return for 2am to get to Moscow. So I would love to give Kevin new information but I don't have it yet.

Free hotel room!

This hotel is frickin' sweet. I bitched and moaned at the airport (to try to get a seat upgrade or free booze on the flight) but I was really just excited to get a bed to jump on and free food. I know at least Daniela (HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!) will know what I'm referring to, but this hotel has an Eggspectation restaurant. We went to one in Quebec or Montreal and it had what was probably the best breakfast I've ever eaten. Well this hotel has one and its where all my meals are comped. Awesome. So awesome. I've just been reading and eating and drinking free tea and coffee. I don't want to hike all the way back into Delhi proper so I'm gonna take a nap or something to kill some more time.

The point is that I WON'T be arriving in New York at 4pm on the 21st, and that sucks. See you all when I see you.

Kisses.

************IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT*****************

I will arrive at JFK Airport in New York at 4:00pm on May 21st, this Monday. That is all. See you guys soon.

Varanasi India and old pictures

This internet cafe's connection speed isn't too shabby so I'm able (inch Allah) to post a few old pictures along with my ramblings. The picture to the right was from early on in our hike, before I filled my camera up and Luke took over all picture-taking responsibilities. The second one was from a few days later, at about 1,600 meters, when we found ourselves surrounded by wild Cannabis. I'm the Ganja Caesar in case you can't tell what I was going for. I stayed dressed up until some young and impressionable kids approached us on the path.

I burned all of my photos onto a CD and I know now there's no way I'll get these uploaded before I return home. Enjoy the visuals while they last.


We're in the ancient and holy city of Varanasi, located along the Ganges. The city extends away from the river and the surrounding ghats (any area that you can approach the river from), where bodies are cremated around the clock, and from where people do their morning puja rituals. We went down to the river this morning and watched the Hindu cremations while a guy explained to us what we were seeing. He was unasked for and demanded money at the end (for the local hospices, naturally) but we both happily donated because he was so informative. I'd say this is one of my favorite stops on this trip so far, because of the purity and importance of what we're seeing. There may be tourists watching the burnings (of which we're clearly a part) and a whole group of people making a living off of us, but the ceremonies themselves aren't tainted by tourism and it's interesting to know that these rituals have been performed, every single day, all day long, for (if the guide is to be believed) at least 2,600 years. It calls Varanasi 'one of the world's oldest living cities' and it does feel like an accurate description.

Anything trite I have to say isn't going to help you visualize what its like to be here and take an observer's part in what's going on. It's something I'm glad I got to see and think about.

On another note the fruit is incredible. If I come home and can't find mangoes like this I'm going to be really pissed off.

Kathmandu's psuedo-hippies

This blog post has nothing to do with the fake hippy community that lives in Kathmandur or its even more laughable counterpart in Pokhara. I'm just letting you know it exists. Also, are Luke and I the only foreigners here who aren't trying to GET INTO Nepal? We saw two big white tourists walk by us a few days ago (we could easily picture them as football players in high school or college or something) and they're both sporting shorts, t-shirts, North Face backpacks, and local kopi hats. Picture a little cap that looks almost like some kind of tall French beret, pushed in at the top. Only old Nepali guys seem to wear them and these two jokers who looked ironic in them.

I got my new Indian Visa (I will have spent a grand total of a week in India, and it will have required me to get 2 separate visas and spend about $150 on them) on Friday so Luke and I are ready to leave Nepal, maybe forever. The local beer sucks (Nepal Ice, Gorkha, Everest beer and everything I'm forgetting), the beaten rice that identifies Newari food is dry and lame, the hippies here are annoying, and the poverty is pretty intense, but Nepal is fucking awesome. Other than that beaten rice stuff, Newari food is some of the best I've eaten on this trip through Asia (I've been trying to identify my top 5 meals in Asia and what Luke and I had last night makes the list). The hiking was spectacular and the people here (especially those trying to sell you something) are so friendly. I highly recommend Nepal to anyone thinking about traveling. Not so much Viet Nam. In fact, fuck Viet Nam.

I didn't really have a point in posting today, I just felt like since I have cheap internet access I should write something before I disappear again for a long time.

Oh yeah, and there is this local fruit called Lapsy. It's only available in Nepal and Luke has been experimenting with it. You can buy these little packages of dried Lapsy almost anywhere and what neither of us understand is that there are probably 20 varities of it, and none of them taste or look alike. Not even a little bit. Luke first tried it because it looked like black licorice and we would have described the flavor as: slightly spicy not-quite-fruit, with a peppery aftertaste. I tried it and then spent 20 minutes trying to get the taste out of my mouth. Luke, ever the adventurer, got some more last night and it couldn't have looked any less like our first attempt. Two packages: one looked like dried papaya and one like dried pineapple. The papaya-looking one was again, peppery for some reason and as Luke said: 'it tastes like a fruit that they're trying desperately to make sweet, but isn't.' Then we had success. The pineapple-looking package was awesome. We checked the back of the package and 'Lapsy fruit' was the second or third ingredient in this package of Lapsy fruit. First and foremost was sugar. Artificial flavorings was maybe fourth. It tasted just like pineapple. I think the local Lapsy growers have been trying to find a way to make this palatable and they've finally hit upon it: make it pineapple instead and then add equal parts sugar. Brilliant.

A sobering experience

No, Luke and I aren't dead. We were hiking the Annapurna Circuit in the western mountains of Nepal and now we're in Kathmandu on "Freak Street." We started our hike on the 20th (I think) and wrapped it up on the 5th of May, making it a full 16-days. We did about 8 hours a day (broken up by lunch) and we were understandably pretty fucking exhausted by the time we got back to Pokhara. The hike was awesome and the pictures that Luke and I took look fantastic. The internet speed here in Kathmandu isn't so great so you'll all probably have to wait until we get home to see them on Flickr. Our hygiene left a little to be desired as we took four or five showers between the two of us, and I only remember washing my hair three times in those 16 days. Once with a bar of soap.

Kathmandu is great and we're staying right off of Durbar Square, where a lot of temples, pagodas, and the old royal palace are located. We've seen a few sights but more or less just lounged around. Because of my Indian Visa fuck-up we will be forced to stay here for at least a week (while I get a new one) but that's ok by us as the city has enough to do and we don't want to move around too much after the hike.

This morning we went to the Kathmandu Central Jail and visited a foreigner being held on drug charges. A 25-year old Romanian guy. Our guidebook suggested it as a sobering experience but as something that can really benefit the prisoners, as they're supported by their friends and families and they usually need things that we can grab for them. We got patted down, had to check our things, and then selected from a list of the foreigners being held a Romanian guy (most of the inmates are from Nigeria and it looks like almost all of them are being held on drug charges), and our logic was that maybe he will speak a little bit of English. We took a seat across from the building with the holding cells, and the guards went and found our guy. He came outside, the only white face in sight, and took a seat on one side of a low partition. Luke and I took a seat on a bench across from him, next to everyone else visiting someone, and there were no screens or bars separating us from him. He shook our hands and we asked him a few questions right off the bat, "how long have you been here?" "what was the charge?" "how much longer do you have?" "how many other Europeans are inside?" "do you need anything?" It was a pretty quick visit and he told us that he was busted on drug charges (no details offered) and he had only been in Nepal for 2 weeks before he was arrested, at 22-years old. He was given a 16-year sentence without the possibilty of parole (if Nepal has parole at all). He didn't want anything from us but did give Luke a hand-written note so that we could email it to a friend or family member for him. It was in English so we were able to glace over it and he's hoping for an extradition.

I'm not sure what we learned from the experience because I think we would have assumed a lot of what he said was true anyway. Yes, conditions in a Nepali prison suck (he stays in a huge room with lots of other prisoners, but didn't give many other details). Getting busted for drugs in a foreign country is a major fuck-up. Stuff like that.

We, a little happier with our own meager problems and concerns, found a place that teaches Yoga and plan on going there for a 4:15pm session tonight. It feels strange to not be exercising after our hike and I think this is a way to keep up our momentum.

I'm going to look into plane tickets home after I post this entry, but Daniela's search came up with $900 tickets at their cheapest. Damn. Anyone wanna buy me an early birthday present?

"Daily, daily" --- from New Delhi, Indo

Some things that have happened:

Luke and I just got tea and pokoras (breakfast) from street vendors. A cool Indian guy nearby who spoke spotty English in a thick accent that made it very difficult to understand him invited us to share his bench, and we chatted with him for awhile about nothing important, his necklace, where to get great sweets, and some other stuff. He then asked us if we smoke ganja and told us to wait a second, he would go get his great stuff and come back with it. We were hesitant because while there doesn't actually seem to be rules or laws here, it is illegal and Indian prison can't be fun. Prison anywhere can't be fun. He didn't want any money or anything, saying: "No, no, no, its friendship. You are my big brothers. No, only brothers. No big, no small. We all brothers. I smoke the ganja to see God. When smoke, go 100 kilometers away. You wait, wait." So we kept eating our food and waited to see what would happen. He told ust that he smokes daily right where we were, on a bench off of Main Bazaar, a busy touristy area of New Delhi. It's basically a big marketplace. He came back and said one of his friends must have stolen it from him and that if we really wanted it we would have to go 20 km. away with him to get it. We weren't interested. He really tried to get us to follow him but since we have to check out today and we both wanted to use the internet, we told him we couldn't. Luke gave him a quarter as a souvenir (he had a necklace on made out of coins, and he showed us his Canadian dollar coin, which seemed to be the centerpiece, but told us he had no idea how much it was worth) and he asked me for my phone number so that after I got back to America, I could figure out what pills he needed to help him grow his hair back (he was bald on top and said he always wears his hat to hide it) and then he could call me and get the name of the medicine. I gave him my cell phone number in Japan even though I think he was in earnest, and Luke and I wrote our names down for him so he could remember us.

Right when we arrived we wandered around the city for a little bit and the poverty we saw (and continue to see) was quite extreme. On the side of a major highway we saw a homeless guy laying on his back, totally splayed out and one of his testicles had popped out through a hole in his shorts. He appeared to be asleep. There are lots of people begging, and last night on a tuk-tuk ride back from where Ghandi and Nehru's ashes are kept, I saw a man asleep at a bus stop, stark naked, and he had pissed himself. Luke met a young kid on his first night here and they were walking and talking together when they passed a big crowd of people. The kid looked at everyone standing around, quietly, and said "it must be a death." It turned out to be a crazy woman arguing with someone, but the fact that it COULD have been a death helps you to understand what its like here. While I've been warned about the poverty here, I've already had exposure to it, as I saw a woman squat down and piss under a tree in Kuala Lumpur, right on a busy road where traffic was backed up in both directions and most of the tourists stay in hotels and hostels.

It goes without saying that the food is indredible. A lot of it is fried which I'm not crazy about, but everything is great. We bought two cucumbers, spiced and with lemon juice on top, which were refreshing since its so damned hot here. We've been to this one restaurant, The Gem, just around the corner, twice for dinner and it has been incredible both times. Masala Chicken, Masala Thosai, some tofu dish, naan, pokoras and samosas, plenty of beer and whiskey, and other stuff that I couldn't name. I think it would be impossible to convey how great the food is to you. You'd have to come here and try it yourself.

We've already bought our train tickets to the border with Nepal and we leave tonight. Its a 12 hour train ride and we should arrive by 8am tomorrow, the 16th. We've been here for 2 full days already and chose to stay that long just because we couldn't find an available train any earlier. I feel as though we've seen as much of the city as we need to and when we return it will only be to fly home (if I come back with Luke on the 21st which I still haven't decided yet).

I guess that's about it. Oh yeah, and my Indian Airways Express flight, the one that should have taken off at 6:50am from Singapore and landed in Chennai at 1:30pm, left at 9:50am and landed at 8pm. Fantastic. The three days right before I met Luke, saw me sleeping on an overnight bus, in a chair in the Singapore airport, and then in a chair at the Chennai airport. I was so happy to have a bed in Delhi that words can't describe it.

My international friends

I've met a few cool people. Canadians are not among them.

I met these two Canadian girls, Sherry and her older sister while taking a bus to Taman Negara. They were aggressively patriotic which struck me as very un-Canadian. While we were chatting I mentioned that Starr and I had said once or twice that we were Canadians while traveling and they both turned red. The older sister said something under her breath and then Sherry (who turned out to be the much bigger bitch) said that they HATE it when Americans do that. She then began to interrogate me as to why we would lie like that and why we feel it necessary to say 'Canadian' and not, say, 'Australian.' I couldn't believe she was asking me such a stupid question. We were afraid that other people might react in a negative way to us, being Americans, and we chose Canada because our accents are indistinguishable. Sherry's older sister then said, in not so many words, that Americans aren't fit to call themselves Canadians and we wreck their good name. I told her that in retrospect I wished I hadn't done it, because no one we met preferred Candians to Americans and it was completely unnecessary. Then I told her that I would call myself a Canadian from now on and I would only ask and say the DUMBEST shit I could think of to everyone I meet. I laughed with daggers in my eyes and they didn't find it funny.

I met this cool Malaysian guy named Shad, Sijitan in China, a Danish chick in Malaysia, and some Japanese and German guys. I kept seeing them again and again where I traveled so we became close. Sort of. The best people I've met so far though are these two British chicks. Len and Nikki. The very first time I met Nikki she was across the room and then announced: "I'm sorry you guys. I just farted and it is seriously RANK." That was the first thing I heard her say. She said that before she even introduced herself. It was a nice change since most people try to pull this traveling pissing-contest that isn't fun to be a part of. "Oh where have you been? Oh yeah, we just came from there, and I also went to blah, blah, blah, blah..." She was also at the Indian embassy in KL and stood up for me the second she caught wind of what was happening. She started arguing with the woman behind the counter and lying about crap before I asked her to or anything. She was awesome and I know she was headed for India so maybe we'll meet up again.

Leeches!

So I got attacked by leeches! I caught and tore off three of them but judging by the giant bloody mark at the end of the day, I missed a big one.

You totally don't notice them. No joke. I was hiking in Taman Negara and something just a little bit itchy above my right ankle was annoying me. I pulled back my sock to see two leeches (just little baby ones) hanging out there, just sucking my blood like its just a thang. I tried to brush them off but they weren't having it. I had to scratch at them like they were a bug bite.

I was really excited when I found out that I might see leeches to be honest. I wanted to get some photos of myself covered in them, but when I saw how small and innocuous they were, I lost interest.

Taman Negara was great and I saw lots of cool shit. Including a tribe of natives out hunting.

Changi Airport, Singapore

OK. I'm using the free internet access (thank you Samsung) provided here at the airport to update my blog and to try to find a flight from Chennai to Delhi. It looks like I'm not going to be able to book a flight until I get to the airport in Chennai because you can't use any website that I've seen to book a flight in less than 24 hours. That sucks. And it will probably be expensive at the last minute. Maybe a train is the way to go?

My Indian visa is fucked up. Actually, everything about the Indian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur is fucked up. I tried to start the process on the 3rd (what was to be my last day in Kuala Lumpur) but arrived one passport-sized photo short and 20 minutes prior to closing time (it turns out closing time is noon). The only place to get my picture taken was a 10-minute cab ride away, so I gave up. The next day I got there with my forms in order and the right number of photos (it's 3 by the way, unlike every other visa I've gotten so far) so everything went a little smoother. I received a receipt for the 40 MYR processing fee I paid and on this receipt it said that I could return at 4:30pm but failed to say which day or to do what. I asked the guy behind the counter and he said next Tuesday I could return and I assumed that meant to pick up my visa. I DID NOT give him my passport. This is important.

After that I took off on a jaunt through the countryside. I visited the tea plantations of Cameron Highlands and saw the oldest rainforest in the world (including its tapir, crocodiles, monitor lizards, enormous spiders, and leeches) at Taman Negara. I returned on Tuesday at 4:30pm to pick up my visa. The woman behind the counter took one look at me and said "and how are we supposed to give you your visa when you have your passport in your hand?" An excellent question. One that had escaped me. I told her I had no idea and I had assumed that the visa would be placed in my passport when I arrived today. She said that I had to give her my passport and then return the following day at 4:30 to pick it up. This was annoying because I had already paid $150 for my 6:50am flight from Singapore. "Why on earth did you not take my passport the first time I was here?" We fell into arguing and I learned that they have a weird protocol where they can't hold any foreigners' passport for more than 24 hours so to get a visa is a 3-step process. None of this was explained to me on the first day I was there, despite their insistence on the opposite.

I lost my temper but got them to promise to rush it the following day so I could catch my flight (it leaves in an hour and 20 minutes by the way). I got the visa at noon and paid an additional 228 ringgit, pocketed my passport, and hurried to the bus station. It was in the cab on the way there that I realized it was fucked up. They marked down 'single entry' instead of 'mulitple entries' which is what I need. I'm meeting Luke in Delhi and we're leaving India to see Nepal first. Then we'll return to India and he'll fly home mid-May. Without a multiple-entry visa I'll need to reapply all over again in Kathmandu and then pay again as well. This all sounds very annoying and I'd like to avoid it. When I land in India in 4 and a half hours I'll try to get some help in straightening it out. I'm hopeful.

Oh yeah, and I'll try to buy a plane ticket while I'm there. Has anyone that reads this blog ever done that? Who just shows up at an airport looking for a flight?

Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

This is funny/not funny. A middle-aged Australian guy moved into my dorm room in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. He bumped into me this morning while I was getting ready to go out and told me I have a 'foot odor problem.' This is actually true. I stopped wearing socks with my shoes back in Thailand and now my shoes reek. He told me it was so bad that he couldn't sleep last night and asked me to wash my feet before I go to bed from now on. I wanted to correct him and say its the shoes, not my feet, but why quibble. I thought it was funny in a not funny kind of way.

It's been a busy day. I went to get my Indian Visa yesterday and failed completely. The High Commission of India is only open from 9:30am to noon and I arrived at 11:30. This was insult to injury since I got hosed down by the cab driver who took me there. 25 to get there, 10 to get back. You do the math.

So I got up early this morning, had Idiappum (sp?) with Vegetarian Korma, and made my way over to the embassy. Even at 9:48 it was competely crowded and no one was bothering to wait in line. You have to get a token and then wait for your number to be called but there were so many people there that thought the rules didn't apply to them. I was there for an hour and a half and all I did was hand in my already completed forms. I paid a 40 ringgit (between 11 and 12 bucks) processing fee as well. I can pay the rest when I go back to pickup my visa. I checked out of my hotel (it was on a whim but I do need to hustle around the country if I want to see everything. I meet Luke in 9 days) and went over to the bus station to see where I could go. Cameron Highlands seemed like a good choice. I'm high in the mountains in an area that once served as a British retreat (I think). There are lots of tea plantations and strawberry fields and there is extensive hiking in the area. I got in after 6pm and haven't yet had a chance to do anything. I had a few beers (by the way, since this is a Muslim country and drinking is frowned upon, there are ridiculous taxes on alcohol. In Kuala Lumpur I was paying more per beer than I was for my hotel room per night) and met some girls who are in town because of semester-at-sea. Actually this whole town right now is overrun with American college kids. There's only one bar in this tiny town in the mountains so I'll head over there after I'm done on this computer to drink and chat.

I guess that's it. I'm gonna book my flight from Singapore to Chennai, India and then write a few emails.

Miss you all.

Wait a minute

No, I got a GREAT exchange rate here. I just assumed when I saw the number on Google that I got something worse than that, but 9.35 or whatever is crap compared to the 9.8 I got yesterday or the 9.9 I got today. How does that work?

I arrived safely. It's pouring here.

I got in a little bit after 4am. Just like in Bangkok, the bus pulled over to the shoulder of the highway and let us all out. It turns out that unlike in Bangkok, there actually was a bus station near by.

A few taxi drivers asked me if I needed a ride anywhere (they just hang out waiting for buses to show up and then swarm down on the tourists getting off) and I was happy that they were much less aggressive than in Thailand, Vietnam, or Cambodia. An Indian guy came up to me and asked me if I needed a hotel room. He was trying to sell me hard on it, and he wouldn't stop talking even though I was clearly ignoring him. 'Blah blah blah, Pudu Hostel, blah blah blah.' HEY! That's the hostel I'M LOOKING FOR! I suddenly became interested and he was able to walk me over to the right place. He wanted me to sleep on the couches in the lobby as the house was currently full. There would be guests checking out by noon and then I could move into a room. I had slept for a few hours on the bus so I was good to go. I grabbed my backpack and walked around the city before the sun was even up.

I had no ringgit and nobody wanted my baht, so I was effectively broke. I had bought snacks and soymilk in Hat Yai so I was fine with sitting on the curb and reading my guide book. Kuala Lumpur seems cool. Everything here is very green and the highways are great. Manicured medians with palm trees and flowers, no visible trash on the side of the road, and the highways themselves are brand new and 3 lanes wide. Everything looks and feels modern. Some of the architecture in the city is cool. There are these old colonial buildings (Malaysia was colonized by the Portugese, Dutch, and more recently by the British) that are falling apart so that underneath the paint and stucco you can see exposed brick. Some buildings have been abandoned and they look really cool set against the palm trees and jungle. Kuala Lumpur is also the only major city in the world with protected rainforest downtown.

Oh! If you've ever seen a bad Hollywood movie thats supposed to take place in a jungle somewhere, then you know that they always use this one bird call to create the 'jungle' atmosphere. It would be impossible to imitate or explain in words, but its like a KrrraaaaaAAAAHHHH! KrrraaaaAAAAAAH!!!! where it starts quieter and gets louder at the end. Ugh. That was terrible. Anyway, those birds are here in Kuala Lumpur and this morning sounded like something out of Predator.

If you tried to plot the course that I've taken with movies, then my journey across Asia would be: Lost in Translation, Apocalypse Now, The Killing Fields, Tomb Raider (part of it filmed at Angkor Wat), Brokedown Palace, The Beach (filmed on Koh Phi Phi), and now... I don't know. Something with jungle. I also couldn't think of any movies for China. I'll put some more thought into it.

There are plenty of 7-11s, KFCs and McDonald's here, but there's also great Halal Indian, Malay, and Chinese food stalls. I haven't had anything to eat yet but that's because its only noon and I just got money changed. I bought 9.8 MYR for 100 baht and I think I got hosed. I just checked Google for a quote and it lists the rate as 9.36. I'm not sure if I'm gonna be able to find a fair rate here though.


I walked to the most famous mosque in the city and got there just in time for morning prayers. No vistiors were allowed inside but someone was singing through loud speakers so I sat outside and just listened for a while. I went to Independence Square and to the Petronas Towers too. On my walk back to my hostel from the towers it started to rain and it hasn't stopped since. That was maybe 2 and a half hours ago.

I want to go get a bite to eat but my little backpack isn't waterproof and I have too many things in there that can't get wet. I hope it stops soon but I don't have high hopes.

I met these Danish travelers (two guys and a girl that I met earlier on Koh Phi Phi in Thailand) and we made plans to go out and get drinks or something. I was talking to the girl on the bus and she said I shouldn't spend more than 2 and a half days in Singapore. It sucks.

Miss you all. This computer won't read the pics from my camera so I'll find another cafe and try again later.

Thailand for Malaysia --- 03.31.2007

It's 5pm on the 31st of March and I'm booked on the 7pm bus to Kuala Lampur. I'll get there by a very convenient 4am and stay just as long as it takes me to see the Petronas Towers and get my Visa for India. I don't know where I'm going in Malaysia yet since everything I've ever learned about that country I've learned in the past 2 days.

Anyone who knows me knows I love maps, so here's one to help you all visualize where I am and where I'm going:



I crossed the border into Thailand on Yuka and Kevin's birthday, March 3, and since I'm leaving today, that makes it 29 days. SLIGHTLY better than the 5 days we spent in Cambodia.

I spent 4 days in Bangkok right after I arrived (Starr and Raquel only stayed overnight and that's when we all split up) and then I took an overnight bus north to Chiang Mai. I rented a scooter for 4 days and did a loop through the mountains trying to find hill tribes and opium. I was in Chiang Mai for a full week and managed to find a Dunkin' Donuts.

After that I took a bus south to Koh Tao (on the Gulf of Thailand side), stopping for another full day in Bangkok, unavoidably. I spent like 9 days in Koh Tao and then returned to Bangkok (obviously way out of my way) to get my Myanmar Visa. I failed and then refused to wait until the embassy reopened on Monday morning. I took off for the other side of the peninsula, Koh Phi Phi, for 5 days.

After Koh Phi Phi I caught a bus to Krabi and stayed overnight. Now I'm only an hour from the border and in the fourth largest city in Thailand, Hat Yai.

Interesting side note. Hat Yai was the location of a series of bombings this past September. Touristy locations were targetted and I talked to an Australian women today who was here for it. A 'farang' (Thai word for a European or European descendent) was killed but most of the tourists here are Malaysian. The people responsible were likely the Muslim separatists here, as the southernmost three provinces in Thailand are predominately Muslim and feel slighted by the rest of Buddhist Thailand. Why they would have tried to kill Muslim Malaysian tourists though is beyond me.

There ya go. I'll post again from Kuala Lampur. I was able today to track down an unused outlet, so I was able to charge my camera too. Hooray!

Singapore to New Delhi...

Through some last-minute deal website, I found a flight on Air India for $280.

That's the best I've got so far because I don't how legit that $133 price is for Bangkok to Delhi.

I wonder how Luke is getting from Delhi to Kathmandu...

Singapore to Bangkok on the 12th

$39.50 on Tiger Airways!!!

Bangkok to New Delhi on April 14th

$133. That's great, but how much is it to get from Singapore to Bangkok. That may be a little too far to bus it...

Singapore to New Delhi on April 13th

$403. I KNOW I can find cheaper flights than that.