Laos > Thailand.
Fewer tourists, the people don't try and scam you at every opportunity, less humidity. All of which makes it easier to appreciate the country.
On the way out of Vientiane the markets had baguettes of all sizes leaning up against the stalls alongside the typical south east Asian food and wares.
My first stop outside Vientiane was Vang Vieng. The little town sits across the muddy Mekong from sharp stegosaurus mountains. At night smoke hangs in the streets like fog from where they are burning (rice paddies? brush?) in the nearby countryside. Bung Bang Fai, a rocket festival, happens in May. Kids had strung up rubber bands as makeshift catapults to launch their burnt out bottle rockets across the road.
When I got into town at dusk I walked around with my backpacks--big one on my back, little one on my stomach like an expectant mother. Through a window I saw some dormitory beds. I walked into the house to inquire, and it turned out they had just opened that afternoon. They had to get up to greet me from where they were still putting together the sign to hang out front. I was the first guest and had the entire dorm room to myself.
Across the street was a Hosteling International hostel that was charging 10,000kip for their wifi password. If you sat on the porch of my hostel you could barely pick up the signal. The owner sent me across the street with 10,000kip. He was very clear that he wanted me to stay for a little while in their lobby so as not to look suspicious, and then come back and give him the password. I didn't feel very guilty because the signal was too weak to suffer much leeching from his hostel no matter how many people tried.
The bars and restaurants in Vang Vieng all had TVs. They would play The Simpsons, Family Guy, or Friends, and you would pick where you wanted to go based on what they were playing. The most popular thing to do in Vang Vieng is tubing. You take a tuk-tuk 10 minutes outside of town and float or swim down the river. Bars on either side throw out ropes, haul you in, and ply you with free shots of whiskey in hopes that after a few you'll pay for beer and cocktails. Giving people free shots is like giving them a loaded gun. The bars also sell magic mushroom milkshakes. It was a weird, weird place, and got very crazy.
I'm now in Luang Prabang. It is one of the most beautiful cities I've been in. Last night the night market showed off intricate silk, switchblades, lamps, whiskey with cobras in the bottle, silver ornaments, and even a Delta stewardess pin. Woodsmoke woke me up this morning. After an espresso grown by the hill tribes in the far north of the country I walked to see temples and the royal palace. At one of the temples a monk had squatted down discreetly behind the main wat with a laptop and quickly put it out of sight when he saw that I spotted him. The royal palace hosts the former king's royal car collection. If you go in expecting to see a Rolls Royce or Mercedes, you'll be surprised. It was a tiny fleet of three Lincoln Continentals, a speedboat, and a Toyota jeep. Not what I expected, although nothing is as stately as a Lincoln.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Escape!
The final night at the last hotel, albeit creepy and sweltering, passed without any parts of me being taken and wrapped in plastic. Phew. That morning I caught a boat to the mainland and caught a night bus to Bangkok. I paid for a shower at a hotel and booked another night bus to Vientiane, Laos. I arrived this morning. It is even hotter here, but less humid, which is (kind of?) preferable.
Somewhere along the line my hand decided to become infected. A week ago, as you may recall from an earlier post, I was scuba diving and scraped my hand on a rock and impaled it on a sea urchin. All in the same graceless motion. I blame the urchin spines, but the infection took a week or so to crop up. My middle and ring finger are swollen and it hurts to press on one side of each of the first knuckles. That strikes me as a weird characteristic of an infection and is troubling. I saw a doctor in Bangkok that spoke perfect English and said there were no spines (he insisted he would be able to feel them were they in there, regardless of the size) and prescribed me antibiotics.
My guess is that there are little bits of spine left in there and I irritated them. Rock climbing is very popular on Railay beach, and I did some bouldering while I was there that may have stirred them around. I was planning on doing one whole day of climbing on the limestone cliffs, but it was expensive, and I had sea urchin spines in my hand. So instead I opted for a half day of deep water soloing. This is rope-free cliff climbing over the ocean. You get in a boat and they take you to cliffs in a national park. You climb to your heart's content and simply fall into the deep water at the base of the cliff or get high enough that you want to jump off.
If it sounds fun, it's not. I have absolutely no problem with heights, but apparently I don't like jumping into water. Most everyone else seemed to enjoy it immensely. One girl didn't like it and claimed to get seasick after trying it a couple times. I tried it a couple times and admitted that I was a coward and didn't like it. There were also huge jellyfish floating around waiting for jumpers. Everyone got stung a couple times. A German guy also got stung by a wasp that was basking in the sun high on the cliff. Both thought they were high enough up to not have to worry about encountering the other. He fell off with a shriek and crashed (safely) into the water. It was all pretty satisfying to watch from the comfort boat.
Down below is a picture of our Thai guide jumping off from as high as anyone got. He was out of control good, and did it all in bare feet. We had lunch on a gorgeous secluded beach. There was a small cave complex on the beach and we all climbed around and did some bouldering. My friend was walking through the sand, stubbed his toe on a hidden rock and tore off his pinky toenail. The nail fell to the sand and within a minute was swarming with ants hungry for goodies. I took a picture, but decided not to post it.
Now to backtrack some. I left Koh Tao a little less than a week ago. One of my last nights in the budget bungalow I came back and found a rat/giant mouse rummaging around in my stuff. As soon as the light came on he dashed under the door. That might mean that the "gecko" poop I found next to me when I woke up that earlier morning had in fact been a mouse poop after all. The morning that I checked out I was looking under the mattress to make sure I hadn't misplaced anything, and I discovered a likely source of the stink that filled the bungalow. A lizard had somehow gotten under the mattress and gotten squished, possibly by me. However, there was an index shoved under a front foot that looked like maybe someone else had found him and tried to scrape it up, so I'm probably in the clear.
I left Koh Tao via night ferry. The crew were the rudest people I've ever met. They treated us like cattle. I checked in at the pier an hour early. After glancing at my ticket, he looked away and said "numbersfull. nosleep." I didn't understand. "NOSLEEPNUMBER!" Sleep number? Serta? I remained confused. Hew as getting pissed. The guy was wearing a black tank top sitting behind a desk he'd pushed out to the middle of the concrete pier in the dark with a paper covered in scribbles with the scribbles covered in pink highlighter, slamming his hand down and screaming "NO SLEEP NUMBER! NO NUMBER!" One of his lackeys, no doubt fearful for the safety of my person, took me by the shoulder and led me into the boat.
As it turned out, all the "beds" were just spaces on benches, and they all had numbers. They put me on a straw mat in a hot little room in the bow. For a few minutes I wondered if they wanted a bribe for a bed, but I decided that there are lot cooler things to try bribing people for and that I didn't want to steal someone's bed who thought they had one. 10 minutes later I met two kids from England and we moved to the...aft? Is that the word? We moved to the back. The engine noise back there was thunderous, but it was outside and much cooler. The engine drowned out the voices of the people around me that had brought beer and I managed to sleep pretty well.
At 5 a.m. we arrived at the pier. Everyone with a pickup truck claimed to be the company that sold you your ticket and beckoned you to climb on in. Taking a gamble with one of them, we piled into the back. He drove us two blocks and kicked us out in front of a cafe. There's a system in Asia that drivers use where they drive you to a restaurant and make you wait between 20 minutes and an hour. They get a commission for bringing you. We stopped at five separate crappy restaurants and changed buses/vans three times before we finally got on the freeway.
Despite of some pronunciation issues, I got off alone at Phang Nga bay. It is supposedly one of the most beautiful bays in the world. They used an island there for Scaramanga's house in "The Man with the Golden Gun." Now they call it James Bond Island. That was definitely very cool. Everyone told me that it was low season and there were no tourists, so I'd have to take a private tour. This seemed to be true, so I arranged a private boat. The bay has lots of islands with vertical cliffs that shoot out of the water and continue so high that you have to strain your neck to see the top. Around some caves I switched to a canoe and my guide paddled us into a cave so low you had to lie down in the boat. We emerged in a lagoon surrounded on all sides by 40 foot high rock, with jungle vines and tree roots reaching down towards the water from a circle of blue sky.
Back on the dock as I was waiting for my van I began to suspect that I had overpaid for the tour. There were no white tourists, true, but there were lots of Thai and Chinese tourists that were parts of groups, although they could have been from Phuket. An old Thai man on the dock started talking to me to practice his English. He asked me what I paid. I told him. "Did I overpay?" "If you are satisfied, then you did not overpay."
From there I caught the bus to Railay and spent my three nights in the jungle bungalow version of The Overlook Hotel. (That's from The Shining. Not sure how obscure that is.) Now I'm in Laos, where I plan on being for a week or so, and then to Cambodia. My hostel here has multitudes of signs saying "no prostitutes in the room," "no sex workers are allowed in the hotel," etc. The currency in Laos is the kip, which is supposedly inconvertible. But I just used an ATM, so I'm not sure how that works. It's about 8,000 kip to a US dollar. I got 1,000,000 kip, and they gave it to me all in 20,000 notes. It is a huge stack of bills that I can't fit in my wallet. Makes me feel like a baller, though.
Somewhere along the line my hand decided to become infected. A week ago, as you may recall from an earlier post, I was scuba diving and scraped my hand on a rock and impaled it on a sea urchin. All in the same graceless motion. I blame the urchin spines, but the infection took a week or so to crop up. My middle and ring finger are swollen and it hurts to press on one side of each of the first knuckles. That strikes me as a weird characteristic of an infection and is troubling. I saw a doctor in Bangkok that spoke perfect English and said there were no spines (he insisted he would be able to feel them were they in there, regardless of the size) and prescribed me antibiotics.
My guess is that there are little bits of spine left in there and I irritated them. Rock climbing is very popular on Railay beach, and I did some bouldering while I was there that may have stirred them around. I was planning on doing one whole day of climbing on the limestone cliffs, but it was expensive, and I had sea urchin spines in my hand. So instead I opted for a half day of deep water soloing. This is rope-free cliff climbing over the ocean. You get in a boat and they take you to cliffs in a national park. You climb to your heart's content and simply fall into the deep water at the base of the cliff or get high enough that you want to jump off.
If it sounds fun, it's not. I have absolutely no problem with heights, but apparently I don't like jumping into water. Most everyone else seemed to enjoy it immensely. One girl didn't like it and claimed to get seasick after trying it a couple times. I tried it a couple times and admitted that I was a coward and didn't like it. There were also huge jellyfish floating around waiting for jumpers. Everyone got stung a couple times. A German guy also got stung by a wasp that was basking in the sun high on the cliff. Both thought they were high enough up to not have to worry about encountering the other. He fell off with a shriek and crashed (safely) into the water. It was all pretty satisfying to watch from the comfort boat.
Down below is a picture of our Thai guide jumping off from as high as anyone got. He was out of control good, and did it all in bare feet. We had lunch on a gorgeous secluded beach. There was a small cave complex on the beach and we all climbed around and did some bouldering. My friend was walking through the sand, stubbed his toe on a hidden rock and tore off his pinky toenail. The nail fell to the sand and within a minute was swarming with ants hungry for goodies. I took a picture, but decided not to post it.
Now to backtrack some. I left Koh Tao a little less than a week ago. One of my last nights in the budget bungalow I came back and found a rat/giant mouse rummaging around in my stuff. As soon as the light came on he dashed under the door. That might mean that the "gecko" poop I found next to me when I woke up that earlier morning had in fact been a mouse poop after all. The morning that I checked out I was looking under the mattress to make sure I hadn't misplaced anything, and I discovered a likely source of the stink that filled the bungalow. A lizard had somehow gotten under the mattress and gotten squished, possibly by me. However, there was an index shoved under a front foot that looked like maybe someone else had found him and tried to scrape it up, so I'm probably in the clear.
I left Koh Tao via night ferry. The crew were the rudest people I've ever met. They treated us like cattle. I checked in at the pier an hour early. After glancing at my ticket, he looked away and said "numbersfull. nosleep." I didn't understand. "NOSLEEPNUMBER!" Sleep number? Serta? I remained confused. Hew as getting pissed. The guy was wearing a black tank top sitting behind a desk he'd pushed out to the middle of the concrete pier in the dark with a paper covered in scribbles with the scribbles covered in pink highlighter, slamming his hand down and screaming "NO SLEEP NUMBER! NO NUMBER!" One of his lackeys, no doubt fearful for the safety of my person, took me by the shoulder and led me into the boat.
As it turned out, all the "beds" were just spaces on benches, and they all had numbers. They put me on a straw mat in a hot little room in the bow. For a few minutes I wondered if they wanted a bribe for a bed, but I decided that there are lot cooler things to try bribing people for and that I didn't want to steal someone's bed who thought they had one. 10 minutes later I met two kids from England and we moved to the...aft? Is that the word? We moved to the back. The engine noise back there was thunderous, but it was outside and much cooler. The engine drowned out the voices of the people around me that had brought beer and I managed to sleep pretty well.
At 5 a.m. we arrived at the pier. Everyone with a pickup truck claimed to be the company that sold you your ticket and beckoned you to climb on in. Taking a gamble with one of them, we piled into the back. He drove us two blocks and kicked us out in front of a cafe. There's a system in Asia that drivers use where they drive you to a restaurant and make you wait between 20 minutes and an hour. They get a commission for bringing you. We stopped at five separate crappy restaurants and changed buses/vans three times before we finally got on the freeway.
Despite of some pronunciation issues, I got off alone at Phang Nga bay. It is supposedly one of the most beautiful bays in the world. They used an island there for Scaramanga's house in "The Man with the Golden Gun." Now they call it James Bond Island. That was definitely very cool. Everyone told me that it was low season and there were no tourists, so I'd have to take a private tour. This seemed to be true, so I arranged a private boat. The bay has lots of islands with vertical cliffs that shoot out of the water and continue so high that you have to strain your neck to see the top. Around some caves I switched to a canoe and my guide paddled us into a cave so low you had to lie down in the boat. We emerged in a lagoon surrounded on all sides by 40 foot high rock, with jungle vines and tree roots reaching down towards the water from a circle of blue sky.
Back on the dock as I was waiting for my van I began to suspect that I had overpaid for the tour. There were no white tourists, true, but there were lots of Thai and Chinese tourists that were parts of groups, although they could have been from Phuket. An old Thai man on the dock started talking to me to practice his English. He asked me what I paid. I told him. "Did I overpay?" "If you are satisfied, then you did not overpay."
From there I caught the bus to Railay and spent my three nights in the jungle bungalow version of The Overlook Hotel. (That's from The Shining. Not sure how obscure that is.) Now I'm in Laos, where I plan on being for a week or so, and then to Cambodia. My hostel here has multitudes of signs saying "no prostitutes in the room," "no sex workers are allowed in the hotel," etc. The currency in Laos is the kip, which is supposedly inconvertible. But I just used an ATM, so I'm not sure how that works. It's about 8,000 kip to a US dollar. I got 1,000,000 kip, and they gave it to me all in 20,000 notes. It is a huge stack of bills that I can't fit in my wallet. Makes me feel like a baller, though.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Scary
I am staying on Railay beach. It is dead deserted right now in low season. Bars are empty and the music is blaring, there are hammocks hanging slack--it is eerie. The bungalow I am staying in is at a place run by an English guy. The sign out front says 650 a night, but I am paying 250. I got there at night after a trek through the jungle. You can only get here by boat. The receptionist took 10 minutes to come out of his office, he said he was showering.
He is very creepy. Just the way he looks at you. I thought I was being overly judgmental, but other visitors tell me the same thing. The other day to find him I had to walk up the hill through the jungle on a little trail, past shells of buildings that had odd discarded saw blades, torn straw mats, and putrid piles of vomit in the corners. Nestled in the jungle are some concrete rooms with water pooling around them and a fabric net hanging across a broken down wall. The windows are dirty and taped over and obscured from the inside by dingy curtains. There are bathrooms with doors hanging off broken hinges, casting shadows over dirty tiles and opening into dark stalls that somehow admit none of the blaring jungle sun. I followed the water into a dim area between the buildings, rounded the corner and he was standing right there at a laundry machine waiting for me. It was creepy.
I had my passport and cards in the safe at reception to avoid another robbery incident, except he disappeared all day and I couldn't get my stuff out. He disappears during the day. There is a restaurant attached to the reception. It is never open, but he never takes the standing menus in from off the dirt road. There is also a minute mart, but you have to find him and get him to let you in. Today the power is out and I couldn't find him.
It is night now. Still no power. I walked down to the beach to use the internet, glad to leave the hotel behind me. It is very creepy there. It is in the jungle and there is power at other places before and after it. They are far enough away that we get none of the light. Two rows of bungalows in pitch black jungle and one very creepy owner that is unaccounted for and has keys to all of them. Most of the other cabins are empty, which adds to the eeriness.
I just took my headlamp and walked up to look for him at the creepy concrete structures in the jungle. He wasn't there, but my god was it scary up there. I wouldn't be surprised if he is an impostor that slit the real owner's throat and has him wrapped in saran wrap locked up behind one of those greasy curtains.
Creepy stuff happened on the walk. A jungle cat came and chased the local stray away from the bungalows, complete with terrible noises and cold glaring eyes darting and staring. There was a friendly kitten; the kitten has disappeared. Two other white cats with identical markings and identical mangled tails were sitting in identical fashion looking away from me on the trail. Simultaneously and silently they got up calmly and walked into the jungle in identical stride.
Back in my bungalow in the light of my headlamp I found my stuff from the safe with a note saying he'd been called away. More likely is that he lures people in with low prices and cuts the power before carrying out a monthly cull. Earning trophies to wrap in plastic and stash behind the curtains. With the power out there is no fan and it is unbearably hot in there, so everyone will have no choice but to leave their windows open, where he can slip in and stab them in the eyes with an icepick. My windows will be locked tight and I will be oozing sweat in restless sleep.
I am leaving tomorrow.
He is very creepy. Just the way he looks at you. I thought I was being overly judgmental, but other visitors tell me the same thing. The other day to find him I had to walk up the hill through the jungle on a little trail, past shells of buildings that had odd discarded saw blades, torn straw mats, and putrid piles of vomit in the corners. Nestled in the jungle are some concrete rooms with water pooling around them and a fabric net hanging across a broken down wall. The windows are dirty and taped over and obscured from the inside by dingy curtains. There are bathrooms with doors hanging off broken hinges, casting shadows over dirty tiles and opening into dark stalls that somehow admit none of the blaring jungle sun. I followed the water into a dim area between the buildings, rounded the corner and he was standing right there at a laundry machine waiting for me. It was creepy.
I had my passport and cards in the safe at reception to avoid another robbery incident, except he disappeared all day and I couldn't get my stuff out. He disappears during the day. There is a restaurant attached to the reception. It is never open, but he never takes the standing menus in from off the dirt road. There is also a minute mart, but you have to find him and get him to let you in. Today the power is out and I couldn't find him.
It is night now. Still no power. I walked down to the beach to use the internet, glad to leave the hotel behind me. It is very creepy there. It is in the jungle and there is power at other places before and after it. They are far enough away that we get none of the light. Two rows of bungalows in pitch black jungle and one very creepy owner that is unaccounted for and has keys to all of them. Most of the other cabins are empty, which adds to the eeriness.
I just took my headlamp and walked up to look for him at the creepy concrete structures in the jungle. He wasn't there, but my god was it scary up there. I wouldn't be surprised if he is an impostor that slit the real owner's throat and has him wrapped in saran wrap locked up behind one of those greasy curtains.
Creepy stuff happened on the walk. A jungle cat came and chased the local stray away from the bungalows, complete with terrible noises and cold glaring eyes darting and staring. There was a friendly kitten; the kitten has disappeared. Two other white cats with identical markings and identical mangled tails were sitting in identical fashion looking away from me on the trail. Simultaneously and silently they got up calmly and walked into the jungle in identical stride.
Back in my bungalow in the light of my headlamp I found my stuff from the safe with a note saying he'd been called away. More likely is that he lures people in with low prices and cuts the power before carrying out a monthly cull. Earning trophies to wrap in plastic and stash behind the curtains. With the power out there is no fan and it is unbearably hot in there, so everyone will have no choice but to leave their windows open, where he can slip in and stab them in the eyes with an icepick. My windows will be locked tight and I will be oozing sweat in restless sleep.
I am leaving tomorrow.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Koh Tao
For the past week I've been scuba diving on the island paradise that is Koh Tao. ALMOST paradise, I should say, as there are too many tourists and partyers for it to be a real paradise. Close, though. It is absolutely gorgeous here, situated off the east coast of Thailand.
A few days ago I took a freediving course. Freediving is kind of like scuba, except you do it only by holding your breath. You "breathe-up" on the surface, and then dive. In the beginner class we got at deep as 20 meters, all on one breath of air. At that depth the water pressure compresses your lungs to 1/3 the size of what they are on the surface. There are a few methods. One is with fins and to just dive down, equalizing your ears as you go. Another is to pull yourself down along the guide rope to a depth of 20m, feet first. Headfirst I had trouble equalizing my ears, and need to practice, so I was going feet first, pulling on the rope.
The breathe-up process on the surface takes four to five minutes. I was floating in the water with my mask on, looking at the end of the rope. Barely visible against the deep blue, I looked at the ring of weights suspended there and visualized my dive, listened to my breathing, slow and controlled, in the snorkel. When I completed the breathe-up, I removed the snorkel and took hold of the rope. You're supposed to remain calm and use as few superfluous actions as you can in order to conserve oxygen. That results in a sort of gliding motion as you pull yourself downwards. One hand needs to be kept on your nose so you can plug it to equalize your ears and release it to equalize your mask. You can feel your lungs compressing as you go deeper. At first it is a scary feeling, but as they get smaller the partial pressure of 02 increases and you actually get a bit of an oxygen rush and a sort of second wind. That kicked in for me between 7 and 10 meters. My first time at 20m I wanted to make sure I was legitimately at 20. In my mind, this meant putting my head at the level of the weights with my feet hanging below.
At 10m depth you are neutral buoyant. That means that if you go to a depth of 10m, you can just float there and won't move up or down. Shallower than 10m and you will eventually float to the surface. Deeper than 10m, and you sink in freefall towards the bottom. At 20 meters, with my lungs compressed and my brain saving oxygen for the rest of my body, I forgot this. I let go of the rope to grab hold of the weights. Already possessing downward momentum and 10m past the neutral buoyancy point, I shot towards the ocean floor like a stone. We weren't wearing fins, so any swimming I had to do would deplete my oxygen supply for the 20m ascent. As my fingers left the rope, through my mask the rope appeared to be zipping upwards towards the surface. Then the weights flew up past my eyes and all I could see was the blue of the ocean. My hand shot up and grabbed at them desperately. Fortunately, my fingers barely managed to grab them. I hung there for a second and let myself feel my body being pulled downwards. I thought about how close I was to either sinking or wasting my oxygen with 20m of water above me. It freaked me out. Slowly pulling myself up, I tried to keep my heartbeat slow as I glided back towards the surface. The safety diver met me at 10m. With the rope between us we glided upwards as he made sure I didn't experience a shallow water blackout and made sure I maintained eye contact in order to remain as aerodynamic as possible.
When you do break the surface from that depth (at least as a beginner) you experience an oxygen rush and it is a very clear-the-mind experience almost like a natural high. The last 10m are when you experience this the most and are actually the most dangerous. From 10m to the volume of your lungs doubles in size, meaning that the partial pressure of 02 is halved. That means a lot lower efficiency of absorbing oxygen for your body. It is the last 10 meters where you start to get really low on air and a little panicked.
The crazy thing is that if I opted for the advanced class they teach you dive as deep as 40m. Madness. I would certainly have liked to take it, but it was very expensive for three days. The first day of the advanced was static apnea. In other words, holding your breath in a pool. They guaranteed at least three minutes. The two people from my class that continued on each held their breath for about two minutes when we timed it the day before. After the class they each managed four minutes and forty seconds, underwater. Crazy.
Right now I am spending my time trying to decide whether or not I should leave the island. I have a little bungalow 20 seconds from the beach for 9.25US a night. I think it maybe should be a little less than that, because it is a huge jump up in quality for what I could have for 1.25 more a night at the place next door. There is no mirror in the bathroom, the door doesn't really close all the way (although it locks), the bathroom reeks from something that I can't find and is inhabited by shockingly big ants, I can see through the floorboards, and today I found a rodent turd on the bed when I woke up. However, it looked pretty dry so it could have been there and I missed it or fell from the ceiling or something. Tons of personality, though, and not too uncomfortable when the fan is on. [Edited: I just talked to my friend, who tells me that it is likely a gecko turd. He was lying in bed watching one on his ceiling when it pooped on him. Just like a rodent.]
The scuba here has been great. Coolest thing I've seen was a lionfish. Yesterday I hit a rock with my hand, scraped and cut it, and hit a sea urchin. At that depth the spectrum is so depleted that your blood looks green. They had told me that blood looks gray at depth, but this was definitely green. "What the devil is that," I thought to myself. Then I realized it was blood, and it looked like Spock's hand.
Urchin spines are designed so that they break really easily in order to remain in whatever predator tried to eat them. Or in my case, clumsily hit them. Some smaller points that broke off in my hand aren't bothering me at all, but a bigger one is stuck deep in my fingertip and is quite painful. Last night I spent some time digging at it with a needle, but didn't have any luck. The anti-septic the pharmacy gave me was iodine, though, which was exciting. I'd heard of iodine being used from Peanuts when Peppermint Patty got licked by Snoopy, but had never actually seen it used outside the hospital.
I want to see Krabi and mayyyybe Phuket and then I will feel more or less satiated in Thailand. My next big stop is Laos, where I am trying to see a rocket festival. Apparently they make homemade bamboo rockets and shoot them towards the sky. There are supposed to be lots of botched rockets resulting in explosions, as well as normal bottle rockets. The losing rockets get thrown into the mud by their frustrated creators. The question now is how to get started on the rest of my SE Asia itinerary. If I stayed four more days on Koh Tao, maybe with some snorkeling and hiking in the jungle, on the 6th I could go on a full day trip to Sail Rock. It is one of the best dive sites in the gulf, and whale sharks are often seen there. BUT, "often" by whale shark standards is still a pretty low percentage.
My Vietnam visa expires at the end of this month. I want to cross into China from Vietnam overland. As a result, I think I might just reapply for a Vietnamese visa in Cambodia and absorb the wasted cost of the visa that I got in the US. That will mean finish up Thailand, then Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and China. But do I stay for those dives, or do I get started? I just don't know. Aside from the heat, it is pretty amazing here. This is also about as un-touristy as I can probably hope for; it is low-season, plus many people are avoiding Thailand due to the political situation in Bangkok. So many decisions! The biggest thing is that I don't want to miss the rocket festival (Boun Bang Fai) in Laos. If anyone has any details on the dates of that, I would love hear them. I am having a hard time finding them. One guy on the couchsurfing site says it happens every Sunday of May, which is good news, but I'd like to have this corroborated.
Anyways. I just looked at some pictures of whale sharks online. That would really be something. Tough, tough decisions. Here is something that my friend Sam sent me. It is a link to a hike in China. It looks pretty exhilarating, but maybe too terrifying to actually attempt. The story is really good, but the pictures offer quicker gratification. Blogger's "embed link" function is unreliable, and doesn't seem to be working, so you have to copy paste, sorry!
http://www.ssqq.com/ARCHIVE/vinlin27d.htm
All for now.
A few days ago I took a freediving course. Freediving is kind of like scuba, except you do it only by holding your breath. You "breathe-up" on the surface, and then dive. In the beginner class we got at deep as 20 meters, all on one breath of air. At that depth the water pressure compresses your lungs to 1/3 the size of what they are on the surface. There are a few methods. One is with fins and to just dive down, equalizing your ears as you go. Another is to pull yourself down along the guide rope to a depth of 20m, feet first. Headfirst I had trouble equalizing my ears, and need to practice, so I was going feet first, pulling on the rope.
The breathe-up process on the surface takes four to five minutes. I was floating in the water with my mask on, looking at the end of the rope. Barely visible against the deep blue, I looked at the ring of weights suspended there and visualized my dive, listened to my breathing, slow and controlled, in the snorkel. When I completed the breathe-up, I removed the snorkel and took hold of the rope. You're supposed to remain calm and use as few superfluous actions as you can in order to conserve oxygen. That results in a sort of gliding motion as you pull yourself downwards. One hand needs to be kept on your nose so you can plug it to equalize your ears and release it to equalize your mask. You can feel your lungs compressing as you go deeper. At first it is a scary feeling, but as they get smaller the partial pressure of 02 increases and you actually get a bit of an oxygen rush and a sort of second wind. That kicked in for me between 7 and 10 meters. My first time at 20m I wanted to make sure I was legitimately at 20. In my mind, this meant putting my head at the level of the weights with my feet hanging below.
At 10m depth you are neutral buoyant. That means that if you go to a depth of 10m, you can just float there and won't move up or down. Shallower than 10m and you will eventually float to the surface. Deeper than 10m, and you sink in freefall towards the bottom. At 20 meters, with my lungs compressed and my brain saving oxygen for the rest of my body, I forgot this. I let go of the rope to grab hold of the weights. Already possessing downward momentum and 10m past the neutral buoyancy point, I shot towards the ocean floor like a stone. We weren't wearing fins, so any swimming I had to do would deplete my oxygen supply for the 20m ascent. As my fingers left the rope, through my mask the rope appeared to be zipping upwards towards the surface. Then the weights flew up past my eyes and all I could see was the blue of the ocean. My hand shot up and grabbed at them desperately. Fortunately, my fingers barely managed to grab them. I hung there for a second and let myself feel my body being pulled downwards. I thought about how close I was to either sinking or wasting my oxygen with 20m of water above me. It freaked me out. Slowly pulling myself up, I tried to keep my heartbeat slow as I glided back towards the surface. The safety diver met me at 10m. With the rope between us we glided upwards as he made sure I didn't experience a shallow water blackout and made sure I maintained eye contact in order to remain as aerodynamic as possible.
When you do break the surface from that depth (at least as a beginner) you experience an oxygen rush and it is a very clear-the-mind experience almost like a natural high. The last 10m are when you experience this the most and are actually the most dangerous. From 10m to the volume of your lungs doubles in size, meaning that the partial pressure of 02 is halved. That means a lot lower efficiency of absorbing oxygen for your body. It is the last 10 meters where you start to get really low on air and a little panicked.
The crazy thing is that if I opted for the advanced class they teach you dive as deep as 40m. Madness. I would certainly have liked to take it, but it was very expensive for three days. The first day of the advanced was static apnea. In other words, holding your breath in a pool. They guaranteed at least three minutes. The two people from my class that continued on each held their breath for about two minutes when we timed it the day before. After the class they each managed four minutes and forty seconds, underwater. Crazy.
Right now I am spending my time trying to decide whether or not I should leave the island. I have a little bungalow 20 seconds from the beach for 9.25US a night. I think it maybe should be a little less than that, because it is a huge jump up in quality for what I could have for 1.25 more a night at the place next door. There is no mirror in the bathroom, the door doesn't really close all the way (although it locks), the bathroom reeks from something that I can't find and is inhabited by shockingly big ants, I can see through the floorboards, and today I found a rodent turd on the bed when I woke up. However, it looked pretty dry so it could have been there and I missed it or fell from the ceiling or something. Tons of personality, though, and not too uncomfortable when the fan is on. [Edited: I just talked to my friend, who tells me that it is likely a gecko turd. He was lying in bed watching one on his ceiling when it pooped on him. Just like a rodent.]
The scuba here has been great. Coolest thing I've seen was a lionfish. Yesterday I hit a rock with my hand, scraped and cut it, and hit a sea urchin. At that depth the spectrum is so depleted that your blood looks green. They had told me that blood looks gray at depth, but this was definitely green. "What the devil is that," I thought to myself. Then I realized it was blood, and it looked like Spock's hand.
Urchin spines are designed so that they break really easily in order to remain in whatever predator tried to eat them. Or in my case, clumsily hit them. Some smaller points that broke off in my hand aren't bothering me at all, but a bigger one is stuck deep in my fingertip and is quite painful. Last night I spent some time digging at it with a needle, but didn't have any luck. The anti-septic the pharmacy gave me was iodine, though, which was exciting. I'd heard of iodine being used from Peanuts when Peppermint Patty got licked by Snoopy, but had never actually seen it used outside the hospital.
I want to see Krabi and mayyyybe Phuket and then I will feel more or less satiated in Thailand. My next big stop is Laos, where I am trying to see a rocket festival. Apparently they make homemade bamboo rockets and shoot them towards the sky. There are supposed to be lots of botched rockets resulting in explosions, as well as normal bottle rockets. The losing rockets get thrown into the mud by their frustrated creators. The question now is how to get started on the rest of my SE Asia itinerary. If I stayed four more days on Koh Tao, maybe with some snorkeling and hiking in the jungle, on the 6th I could go on a full day trip to Sail Rock. It is one of the best dive sites in the gulf, and whale sharks are often seen there. BUT, "often" by whale shark standards is still a pretty low percentage.
My Vietnam visa expires at the end of this month. I want to cross into China from Vietnam overland. As a result, I think I might just reapply for a Vietnamese visa in Cambodia and absorb the wasted cost of the visa that I got in the US. That will mean finish up Thailand, then Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and China. But do I stay for those dives, or do I get started? I just don't know. Aside from the heat, it is pretty amazing here. This is also about as un-touristy as I can probably hope for; it is low-season, plus many people are avoiding Thailand due to the political situation in Bangkok. So many decisions! The biggest thing is that I don't want to miss the rocket festival (Boun Bang Fai) in Laos. If anyone has any details on the dates of that, I would love hear them. I am having a hard time finding them. One guy on the couchsurfing site says it happens every Sunday of May, which is good news, but I'd like to have this corroborated.
Anyways. I just looked at some pictures of whale sharks online. That would really be something. Tough, tough decisions. Here is something that my friend Sam sent me. It is a link to a hike in China. It looks pretty exhilarating, but maybe too terrifying to actually attempt. The story is really good, but the pictures offer quicker gratification. Blogger's "embed link" function is unreliable, and doesn't seem to be working, so you have to copy paste, sorry!
http://www.ssqq.com/ARCHIVE/vinlin27d.htm
All for now.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Kiddie Pool Table
Tomorrow I head south to beaches and scuba diving. Today I pet tigers at the tiger temple, fed and held a baby leopard, saw the bridge over the river Kwai, went to a floating market, and spent a frustrating hour on the phone with the visa people.
Tonight I had lao khao, which is Thai whiskey. The guy selling it was in a back alley behind Khao San Road. He had five types: one "for strong man," for eye, for brain, for kidneys/back, and for the nether-regions. He poured it through a funnel. Good stuff, although I'm not convinced of its strength. I tried strong man, brain, and nether regions. The nether-regions shot was accompanied by an enactment of its powers by the other patrons.
Afterwords I went to a bar in the same alley. It had a kiddie pool table in front of it that was wobbly, run-down, and the felt had scotch tape patching it up. I played one game against Eric, who is visiting for 10 days, then one against another patron, then 12 against one of the bar employees. This guy was out of control good. The table was tiny, wobbly, and not level, but he was making shots that would be unreal on a flat full-sized table. I have to admit I never thought I would be hustled on a table that was three feet long. He was even using tricks that Grandpa Drumheller taught me, which seemed out of place on a table this size. For instance, he would chalk his cue and put the chalk down where I was sighting my shot. The bartender said that he had worked there eight months, was from Cambodia, didn't speak Thai, and only smiled when he was playing pool. He was doing a lot of smiling tonight, the sly devil. Out of the 12 games, I beat him three or four times. He was without question the better player, though.
On my way back to the hotel a motorcycle cop stopped me, went through my pockets, and was awkwardly thorough in searching me for drugs and contraband.
I haven't found the money pouch, which strengthens the case for theft. The visa people meanwhile are slackers and are blaming my bank and I won't get the replacement card for four or five days at best. I also called my insurance and discovered that they don't cover stolen cash. On the plus side, though, there is nothing that I would do differently if I had to do it over again. There comes a point where something is going to happen against you no matter what you do. Locking the door to your room and not carrying the cards for pickpockets is as good as I could do, and if people still steal stuff, they steal stuff. It happens.
Tomorrow I'm going to see the last temples I am looking for, try and fine snake blood cognac, and catch an overnight bus to Koh Tao, an island famous for scuba diving.
Tonight I had lao khao, which is Thai whiskey. The guy selling it was in a back alley behind Khao San Road. He had five types: one "for strong man," for eye, for brain, for kidneys/back, and for the nether-regions. He poured it through a funnel. Good stuff, although I'm not convinced of its strength. I tried strong man, brain, and nether regions. The nether-regions shot was accompanied by an enactment of its powers by the other patrons.
Afterwords I went to a bar in the same alley. It had a kiddie pool table in front of it that was wobbly, run-down, and the felt had scotch tape patching it up. I played one game against Eric, who is visiting for 10 days, then one against another patron, then 12 against one of the bar employees. This guy was out of control good. The table was tiny, wobbly, and not level, but he was making shots that would be unreal on a flat full-sized table. I have to admit I never thought I would be hustled on a table that was three feet long. He was even using tricks that Grandpa Drumheller taught me, which seemed out of place on a table this size. For instance, he would chalk his cue and put the chalk down where I was sighting my shot. The bartender said that he had worked there eight months, was from Cambodia, didn't speak Thai, and only smiled when he was playing pool. He was doing a lot of smiling tonight, the sly devil. Out of the 12 games, I beat him three or four times. He was without question the better player, though.
On my way back to the hotel a motorcycle cop stopped me, went through my pockets, and was awkwardly thorough in searching me for drugs and contraband.
I haven't found the money pouch, which strengthens the case for theft. The visa people meanwhile are slackers and are blaming my bank and I won't get the replacement card for four or five days at best. I also called my insurance and discovered that they don't cover stolen cash. On the plus side, though, there is nothing that I would do differently if I had to do it over again. There comes a point where something is going to happen against you no matter what you do. Locking the door to your room and not carrying the cards for pickpockets is as good as I could do, and if people still steal stuff, they steal stuff. It happens.
Tomorrow I'm going to see the last temples I am looking for, try and fine snake blood cognac, and catch an overnight bus to Koh Tao, an island famous for scuba diving.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
"An Exercise in Futility" OR "Annnnnd Sam Got Robbed"
I've been seeing temples, buying glasses, and doing cool things in Bangkok. Tomorrow I'm going to a tiger temple and then will be heading out of the city to a destination as of yet undecided.
Today I took a Thai cooking class. The things we made were downright delicious, including delicious Thai peanut sauce. Most surprising base ingredient in peanut sauce? Tomato! I never would have guessed.
I've been staying at a buy one night get one night free hotel. That already should have set off some red flags. If not the price alone, the ants in the bed and the lizard in the bathroom maybe should have tipped me off. But it had a private bathroom AND airconditioning. Easy decision. Nevertheless, this morning while I was cooking up issan, the staff was cooking up trouble.
It's very hard to admit when something hasn't been simply misplaced, but has in fact been stolen. Especially when it's out of a locked hotel room. After all, you can never really know! Sure, you can ASSUME it's been stolen, but how can you know you didn't just misplace it? You end up searching and rummaging and combing through all your stuff, and there's really no reason to stop other than when you burn yourself out.
So, this afternoon when I got back from the cooking class, I began a search for the pouch that has my US money and my credit/debit cards. At this point you should be able to guess how it turned out. Last night it was right where I left it, but today it wasn't under the bed, under the covers, between the mattresses, and didn't somehow leap five feet through the air onto the desk and slip itself under the TV. With no way to be sure it was stolen, there's no place you're not willing to look. In fact, I'm still not even positive it WAS stolen. It could be lurking in a pair of dirty underwear somewhere waiting to fall out and brighten my tomorrow. (Although I triple-checked all the dirty underwear, which did anything but brighten my today.)
I had another set of credit/debit cards in a separate place and they were ok, and I have taken all the necessary steps to get them replaced, and have begun padlocking the hotel door. I'm pretty sure it was the staff, as I've been very good about locking the doors, had splurged (if you can call these prices splurging) for a private room, and the staff seems sketchy. All told, though, I guess this has ended up being the most expensive room I've ever slept in.
Tomorrow I'll get to pet tigers, which will be cool enough to offset having to yet again deal with the lovely people at 1-800-visa-911. Visa-911 is another story all in itself. I had to move internet cafes three times before she could hear me on skype, and then I had to keep telling her that I didn't have a phone. Five times I told her that. Three times I had to tell her "NO, I am NOT in the US. How could I be in Thailand AND in the US?" When filling out the last case report: "and sir, if you could just PLEASE give me your phone number it would really make all this a lot easier." "Look. It's not like I'm holding out on you. I do not have a phone, and thus I do not have a phone number. If I did, I would give it to you, but I do not and therefore cannot."
Hopefully I will be back soon saying I found the cash and canceled the cards for no reason. And even more hopefully won't be back to say the thief came back and took more. The most befuddling part of all of this is that that is the only thing they took! (If in fact anyone took anything). Computer and passport, both equally accessible, remain accounted for. Good news, but makes you wonder. I will feel like a fool if I find it, but a very pleased fool, even though I've canceled my cards.
Today I took a Thai cooking class. The things we made were downright delicious, including delicious Thai peanut sauce. Most surprising base ingredient in peanut sauce? Tomato! I never would have guessed.
I've been staying at a buy one night get one night free hotel. That already should have set off some red flags. If not the price alone, the ants in the bed and the lizard in the bathroom maybe should have tipped me off. But it had a private bathroom AND airconditioning. Easy decision. Nevertheless, this morning while I was cooking up issan, the staff was cooking up trouble.
It's very hard to admit when something hasn't been simply misplaced, but has in fact been stolen. Especially when it's out of a locked hotel room. After all, you can never really know! Sure, you can ASSUME it's been stolen, but how can you know you didn't just misplace it? You end up searching and rummaging and combing through all your stuff, and there's really no reason to stop other than when you burn yourself out.
So, this afternoon when I got back from the cooking class, I began a search for the pouch that has my US money and my credit/debit cards. At this point you should be able to guess how it turned out. Last night it was right where I left it, but today it wasn't under the bed, under the covers, between the mattresses, and didn't somehow leap five feet through the air onto the desk and slip itself under the TV. With no way to be sure it was stolen, there's no place you're not willing to look. In fact, I'm still not even positive it WAS stolen. It could be lurking in a pair of dirty underwear somewhere waiting to fall out and brighten my tomorrow. (Although I triple-checked all the dirty underwear, which did anything but brighten my today.)
I had another set of credit/debit cards in a separate place and they were ok, and I have taken all the necessary steps to get them replaced, and have begun padlocking the hotel door. I'm pretty sure it was the staff, as I've been very good about locking the doors, had splurged (if you can call these prices splurging) for a private room, and the staff seems sketchy. All told, though, I guess this has ended up being the most expensive room I've ever slept in.
Tomorrow I'll get to pet tigers, which will be cool enough to offset having to yet again deal with the lovely people at 1-800-visa-911. Visa-911 is another story all in itself. I had to move internet cafes three times before she could hear me on skype, and then I had to keep telling her that I didn't have a phone. Five times I told her that. Three times I had to tell her "NO, I am NOT in the US. How could I be in Thailand AND in the US?" When filling out the last case report: "and sir, if you could just PLEASE give me your phone number it would really make all this a lot easier." "Look. It's not like I'm holding out on you. I do not have a phone, and thus I do not have a phone number. If I did, I would give it to you, but I do not and therefore cannot."
Hopefully I will be back soon saying I found the cash and canceled the cards for no reason. And even more hopefully won't be back to say the thief came back and took more. The most befuddling part of all of this is that that is the only thing they took! (If in fact anyone took anything). Computer and passport, both equally accessible, remain accounted for. Good news, but makes you wonder. I will feel like a fool if I find it, but a very pleased fool, even though I've canceled my cards.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Getting up to Date!
Every time I say I'm going to post a lot I never do. I'm a liar. I will try a new tack this time. Right now I am in Bangkok, sitting on my hostel patio alongside a river. There are little lizards on the ceiling by the light making chirping noises.
Japan stayed amazing. Kate came and visited me for about 6 days on her spring break. She will be the first one to tell you how glad she is that I convinced her to come to Japan. The usual sibling arguments went down, of course, but I was always right, so it wasn't too bad. We spent two days in Kyoto seeing temples and one day in Himeji, home of the biggest and most famous castle in Japan. (Picture below) The castle was closed for renovations, so we couldn't go inside. That was fine, however, as it was gorgeous with the cherry blossoms blooming all around. As we were walking up the steps to the castle a guy dressed like a ninja walked through the gate and down past us. Cool? Yes.
The shrines and temples in Kyoto were gorgeous as well. Cherry blossom season was a great time to be there. One of the highlights for me was a walk down the Philosopher's Path. It is a lovely little stroll alongside a canal with cherry trees and bridges and shrines. Another was seeing the hermitage of Mukai Kyorai, the most famous disciple of the haiku poet Basho. There was also a hilarious sign in a garden there, that I have pictured below.
In Tokyo we stayed with Kate's friends Matt and Yuko, who were kind enough to put us up. Matt knew a lot of good Japanese beer and good Japanese candy, and Yuko made delicious Japanese food. Kate and I saw various parts of the city. The coolest was the Tsukiji Fish Market. It is supposedly the biggest fish market in the world. There are little Japanese truckcarts people drive around at high speed and don't care if you're a tourist that isn't ready to get out of the way. I almost got hit at least once. Once you make it through that gauntlet and find the market, it is easy to believe it is the biggest in the world. It just keeps going and going. Weird little sea creatures galore.
The sushi around the market is supposed to be some of the best and freshest in the world. We had some that was indeed delicious. They even had whale, which I was excited to try. Unfortunately, I decided to try some sea urchin roe first. Everything else I had eaten in Japan I hadn't had any trouble with at all. That includes raw horse. But this stuff, boy. It tasted like the smell of seawater and concrete. Think the smell of the petting area at an aquarium, the wet and salty concrete, and you'll be right there. I was able to eat it, but I couldn't eat the second roll. Queasiness followed for about two hours. The thought of eating anything, including whale, was just too much. On the upside, though, the roe may have saved my conscience. A whale is a pretty smart thing to be eating.
To return to an earlier post for a second: the mystery machine with the ball bearings is actually a gambling game called pachinko. It is similar to slots, and is supposedly highly addictive. I seem to be immune. Before I left Japan I taught Matt and Yuko's two year old daughter Zu how to say it. "Puh-chin-ko!"
My plane left Japan at 830 am. I had an eight hour layover in Beijing. Their airport was humongous, and almost empty. Like huge, humongous. Ginormous. And there was no heat. Little motorized baggage carts were swarming the terminal, though. A big fleet of them. They also had a bathroom attendant in every bathroom. Two hours into the layover, I was sitting on the floor using my computer. A woman nearby was taking pictures of something. About a minute passed, and she kept taking pictures. More pictures. Eventually I looked up to see what was so interesting that it warranted so many pictures. It was a Chinese woman taking pictures of me. I kind of looked at her, puzzled, looked behind me to see if there was something interesting back there--nothing. She smiled and waved at me, I smiled, and went back to the computer. She spent another minute taking pictures. Changing angles, kneeling down. She must have taken thirty, easily.
The plane was a little late in departing, and we touched down around midnight. After about 20 minutes in a cab, the driver turned down a dead end side street and told me the hostel was "in there! in there!" "There" was a darkened tiny doorway leading to a darker tinier alleyway. People were standing on the street all around us looking at the cab. It was about 1 am. I was a wee bit tentative. "In there? In there??" "In there! In there!" He rolled down the window and asked one of the people milling around something in Thai. The guy replied and told me "in there! in there! walking." I don't know what a person is doing milling around at one in the morning on the street, but whatever it is, it's probably no good. The cabdriver opened my door. I grabbed my stuff and paid him, trying not to let the street people see how much I had in my wallet. A Thai guy stepped out of a different alleyway and said the name of my hostel and beckoned. I had called them from the airport to see if they were still open, so they knew I was coming, and I figured it would be better to follow someone who might be honest and helpful into the labyrinthine alley system than to try and navigate it on my own, so I followed him.
Immediately it seemed like a bad idea. The alley was between two high buildings and was at most two and a half feet wide, pallets and crates stacked or leaning along the walls, trash everywhere. It was dark, there were no lights. He was leading me in front and two guys were following us. Stepping over mangy stray dogs, I tried catch a glimpse of behind me without looking too worried. No luck. Left, right, stray dog, left, doorway, right, and there we were at the hostel. Phew. PHEW. So nerve-wracking.
The hostel is a little dirty and rundown, but has a cool vibe. It is also right along the river, and it itself is built over the water. (picture with view below) Today I slept late and then walked to Khao San Road, a famous backpacker place in Bangkok. It was really backpacker-y and tacky, full of tattoo parlors and people that looked like they were there for sex tourism. Graffiti on the walls said things like "if you're not living life on the edge, you're taking up too much room."
Street vendors were selling all kinds of things, and I tried phad Thai from a vendor and from a restaurant. As I ate, I watched a black ant that was trapped in the sugar bowl run frantically across the white crystals. Eventually he found the opening and marched out calmly, carrying sugar. Surprisingly, the phad Thai was good but not delicious. Very average. I'll be trying more.
One place along the road had kiddie pools full of little fish. You stick your feet in and they suck and bite at them, eating off the dead skin. A little courage was required to make the plunge. Visions of piranhas kept flashing in my brain. Not helping was the fact that someone had written in Spanish "we will never return to have our feet cleaned by the little fish." But plunge I did. It was a really weird sensation. After 20 minutes my feet were lusciously smooth and they had eaten off two scabs. (picture below) I was a little worried that the scab might lead to a drop of blood, and that that drop of blood might induce them to a feeding frenzy, the water roiling with crazed little fish.
Allllright. What else have I been neglecting to update... All the way back to Brasil, I think, when I got scuba certified. Besides me taking the course, there was a Brazilian family of nine, mostly uncles, and two teenagers. None of them spoke English, but they had Diego, the English speaking instructor, translate things for them. They motioned early on that at the one of them that would be my dive partner. Every once and a while they would run up and say something excitedly to Diego, and then motion at me. Invariably, it was something like "they say...be careful, with heem" and they would be gesturing frantically towards my partner. I would glance towards him and he would be batting his eyebrows at me, waving coyly. It was hilarious.
As we were doing the drills, one of the Brazilians swallowed too much water and looked a little green around the gills. Bobbing on the surface, I was using diving hand signals to ask if he was ok. His wetsuit had a hood that was srunching his forehead down over his eyes, and he just kind of stared at me. I backed away. Then he started to throw up, in the most hilarious vomiting sound I've ever heard. It was like a regular retching sound, but afterwards he would blow his lips together, high-pitched to low-pitched, "BBBBBBBBBB!!!" He did this several times. The next day one of his friends was asking people on the boat how they throw up. He got me to act out how I do it. Then he would spread his arms wide and say (in Portuguese) "the whooooole word throws up: 'bleh.' But you! 'Bleh...BBBBBBBBB!!!'" and imitate the sound. Also hilarious.
On one of the dives that day I saw a seasnake and pointed it out to my dive partner. When we got back to the boat a while later, he got out first. When I got aboard he was gesturing hurriedly to English-speaking Diego and pointing at me. Diego turned and said "he says...you showed heem, the snake." The Brazilians erupted in laughter.
They were a very funny group. On the last day we finished back in the classroom. The first day had been all classwork, and Diego explained to me that throughout the class the Brazilians had been making jokes that the manikin modeling a wetsuit was one of their boyfriends, little by little pushing it closer to him throughout the day. When I got there he was cradling the manikin's hand on his shoulder and had given it his car keys.
What are some more Brazil stories...hmm. Ah. Donald and I traveled together for a week or so while in Brazil. Favelas are the poor districts of Rio on public land where the people live in makeshift cities that don't exist in the eyes of the government. Drugs and violence are problems they are famous for. The movie City of God is a well-known documentary about them. It is also where Edward Norton is hiding in the beginning of The Hulk, and I think were Edward Cullen is hiding in New Moon, but I'm not positive. There are tours of them offered that are intended to show that although there are problems, they are really places where normal people lead normal lives. The tour started on little motorbike taxis that drove us at speeds too fast to be comfortable up winding cobbed roads to the top of the favela. Then we walked down through the interior walkways. The people there did seem to have good lives. Although there was some garbage, they had their own stores, electricity, running water, and a lot of big screen TVs. I'm glad I don't live there, but it really did seem like a far cry from the poverty you've been trained to expect.
Soon after the favela tour we left the city to try and see some other beaches. At one point we were catching a bus back to Rio early in the morning, and we had gone to bed late. Carnival was technically over, but the party didn't stop. I was tired of it long before, but I just couldn't escape. We had gone to bed late. At 3 am some god awful club music woke us up. It was so loud that I literally felt like I was breathing the beat. Donald and I were both up, but we figured it would stop. It didn't. I looked out the window to see where it was coming from, and it was three meatheads holding beer cans standing beside their car, which was a piece of junk and had all the doors and the back open. I didn't even know car stereos could get that loud. And the music was SO bad. If you sat me down in front of a computer and gave me ten minutes to make club music, it would sound something like this. After 40 minutes of the intolerable noise the owner of the posada went out and yelled at them and they turned it off. By this point, though, we were wide awake enough that the terrible music playing at the party around the bus stop down the street was enough to keep us up. Just why they were partying at a bus stop, I have no idea, but they were. Eventually I got back to sleep, but it wasn't until about 430.
Setting the alarm clock had been my job. I used my ipod, and I DID set it, but I set it for Seattle time. We woke up 15 minutes before our bus left, and we were about a 15 minute walk away. Donald wasn't thrilled. We got there just in time for our 945 bus. We tried to get on, but this bus was in fact the 845 bus and they wouldn't let us. Ours was there an hour later, at 1045. Normally this wouldn't have been such a big deal, but we only had a few hours to do two huge tourist things in Rio before we were going to catch another bus to the south of the country. Donald had been in Rio before and could have done these things, but he was waiting for me. He wasn't coming back to Rio, so this delay was a problem. Our bus got there an hour later, after much lambasting of Brazilian schedule-keeping abilities. When we arrived, not only were there any buses available to book to where we wanted to go, but we had three hours instead of four hours, and there was no way we would be able to see both sites.
We decided on the Christ Statue. A hawker outside was telling us it would be at least two hours for the train to the top, but that he would get us there right away in his van for only slightly more expensive. The train ride to the top is part of the experience, so this worried us. But he had been lying about the time, which would only take an hour, and we might be able to make it to both after all! We got in line. On the wall was a clock. Strange...this clock was an hour off from my watch. Confused, I mentioned this to Donald. His face contorted and froze. He looked at the clock, and then turned slowly back to me. If looks could kill, I would be dead.
By the grace of god, before Donald could do whatever terrible thing he was planning, a British girl standing nearby chose this moment to stick her head in and ask if we needed help. I explained about the watch, and she said "oh, it was daylight savings last night, didn't you know? It's actually 1:30, not 2:30." "WHAT?!" It was true. So the hawker wasn't a liar, the bus wasn't late, and Brazilians can keep a schedule. Three hours became four again, and we took a taxi to the other site in the two hour wait for the train, taxied back in the nick of time, got on the train, saw the Christo, and got to the bus station with time to spare. Pretty good. Pret-tay, pret-ty good.
From Rio we went to Iguazu Falls, which I may have mentioned in another post. I can't remember... The falls can be seen from the Brazilian side and the Argentinian side. The Brazilian side was sunny and lovely. The next day, on the Argentinian side, it was a downpour the whole day long. We took a boat tour on which they drove us up underneath one of the waterfalls so it was falling on us. Afterwards we paid 50 dollars for a DVD of the trip. We figured that that close to the falls it would be impossible for some of their majesty to not be captured on the film. Wrong. The cameraman completely ignored one of the natural wonders of the world, took no shots of one of its biggest waterfalls on the globe, but instead spent the entire time zooming in on our faces as we braced ourselves against the deluge.
Leaving the falls they give you fliers to the nearby dam, Itaipu, on the Brazil/Paraguay border. It is one of the biggest dams and the most efficient dam in the world, as well as one of the Society of Civil Engineers wonders of the modern world. The front of the fliers say simply "Itaipu. You'll be impressed." Inside, however, was one of my favorite bad English translations to date. "If on one hand, the Iguassu Falls are unforgettable, on the other you cannot forget to visit the largest generator of renewable and clean energy in the". That is it. It doesn't finish the sentence. The best part, though, is their use of the "on the one hand" expression. When I read it the first time I was functioning on very little sleep, and I couldn't stop laughing.
We took the tour, and I admit that I was indeed impressed. On the way there, capybara were running around. Everyone else on the tour was either an excited middle-aged man or had been brought by an excited middle-aged man. The tour guide explained that Itaipu means singing rocks, and that there were rocks that "sung" as the river moved over them. I asked where they were now, downriver, below the dam, or underwater, and he replied "they are behind the dam, deep under water. They're not singing no more."
Afterwards I went back to Rio and got ready to fly to Australia. The day before I left I went hang gliding over the city and the favelas. We drove to the top of a mountain and the instructor had me practice running with him. "You can't stop," he explained, or we wouldn't have enough lift and we would be in danger of crashing into the rocks below. It wasn't really so hard to run off the edge of the cliff at full speed. I had met the instructor 20 minutes before, but since he was the instructor, and he said it was ok to run off the cliff strapped into this thing, we ran off the edge of the cliff. The only scary parts were taking off and landing. Right after my feet left the ground we experienced free fall for about a second before the glider caught us. That was a very scary second. We cruised over the favelas and the rich neighborhoods of Rio, the slums juxtaposed to the huge houses each with their own swimming pool. Then we were over the expressway, and then over the ocean. We circled back to the beach, where we were to land. I watched another glider land, the pilots running along the sand and losing momentum. We came in at a sharp angle and there was no running, just a THUMP as we hit into the sand and stopped dead. Some whiplash was suffered.
From Rio I caught a flight to Australia. I'm lukewarm about Australia, so I don't have much to report. It would have been a lot more fun if it wasn't so grossly overpriced, or if the US dollar wasn't about 1:1 with Australian. It cost me eight dollars for a bagel and coffee, as much as four for a can of coke. A paperback that said US7.99 on the back would be going for $35. Add that to the fact that many people would talk down about the US while talking about how amazing and better Australia is, and it was tiring. Due to my own inept planning, I ended up having to stay for a month. If I had stayed for only two weeks, for instance, as I intended when I first worked Australia into my itinerary, I don't think those things would have bothered me.
I did meet a lot of very friendly people, though. One guy I met playing chess in a cafe in Sydney, and at the end of my stay he put me in touch with his friend named Njals who has a spare room. Njals was great and we got along really well. He let me stay there for four or five days in exchange for doing dishes and washing windows. He had a cat named Lurch that is 15 years old. Poor lurch had one white eye from when he got hit buy a car some years earlier, and was a very nice cat.
One evening Njals was out, and I was supposed to let a girl in who was considering renting the room I was preparing to vacate. She was very nice, and was asking various questions about the place, which I was doing my best to answer. We were standing in the living room, and Lurch was lying on an ottoman in between us. Suddenly, a vile smell filled the room. The air was so thick with it that I paused mid sentence. It wasn't me. That left Lurch and the girl. There was no way to think she couldn't smell it. I had reason to suspect Lurch, based on events from the evening before, but I wasn't sure. I was in a predicament. In the case that it had been her, she was probably holding out a faint glimmer of hope that I couldn't smell it. In the case that it had been the cat, she would be thinking that it was me. What I wanted to do was make a comment like "whoah, Lurch, you feeling ok buddy?" But then she would either be embarrassed or she would think I was blaming the cat, which is pretty low. So, I said nothing, and picked up mid-sentence where I had left off. She left 30 seconds later. Her leaving so suddenly, presumably in disgust, implicated the cat. But, she could have just had some pressing business to attend to. No way to know, I decided.
The mystery was solved 10 minutes later as I was doing dishes. Lurch bolted for his litterbox, which was situated under the kitchen table, and let loose. Such noises! I put Lurch out. Something had to be done. It was permeating the house and making me gag, and simply could NOT stay in the kitchen. As Njals was letting me stay there for free, I felt this duty fell on me. (No pun intended.) Cursing Lurch for embarrassing me in front of the prospective renter, I grabbed a handful of plastic bags, carefully carried the box outside, and took care of business, gagging and coughing all the while.
Two weeks before this incident, Alix again came to visit me. We rented a cabin four hours outside of Sydney. It was situated in sort of farm land just in from the beach. The beach was a ten minute walk through the fields and the woods. Kangaroos were frolicking outside the window. We even saw one with a joey in its pouch, which was pretty darn cute. We had rented a car, which we made use of by driving into town for groceries and movies and for driving to go on hikes. On one of the hikes we saw a monitor lizard that even was so good as to climb a tree while we were watching. On that hike we also ran into a Canadian family that was friendly but railed against the US legal system for a while, which was irritating to listen to.
The stars at the cabin were amazing. It was a little creepy to come home to at night, though, all dark and out in the middle of nowhere. After the cabin we flew to Cairns, which is a jumping off point for the reef. We did a day tour to the reef. The passage was really choppy, and a quarter of the people were sick. I did two dives and snorkeling, and Alix did snorkeling and a dive for non-certified divers. I saw several sharks, albeit small 3-5 footers, clownfish in anemones Nemo-style, touched a turtle, touched several giant clams, sea cucumbers, and touched a humongous wrasse.
Also in Cairns we ate crocodile, emu, kangaroo, and a famous fish I can't remember now. Then we went to the rainforest around Cape Tribulation in the norheast part of the country. Unsurprisingly, we got rained on. We also saw the biggest spider I've ever seen in my life. According to a local I talked to, it's as big as the bird-catching spiders they have there. With legs it was about as big as my face. Just chillaxing in a web on somebody's porch. So creepy. The danger of Australia was rearing its ugly head everywhere we went. On the beach you couldn't swim in the ocean due to jellyfish, and the rivers running into the ocean were just as dangerous due to crocodiles. And we were in cassowary country, so at any moment a man-sized bird might stroll out of the jungle and disembowel you.
Then we flew back to Sydney and did the typical Sydney things: ogled the giant bats in the park, took an operahouse tour, walked the harbour bridge. Then Alix left, I moved in with Njals, dealt with his flatulent cat, and got ready for Japan. My flight left at 8 am, and I was supposed to be there three hours early. I scheduled a cab to pick me up at Njals's at 430 am. For some reason I had a bad feeling about it, and called to confirm. It was a go. The next morning, I got up at 4, showered, went outside to wait. It was raining. 430 came and went. As did 445. Panicking, I walked up and down the street--nothing. I tried to call the cab company. My cell phone had only been good for 30 days and had expired at midnight, so I couldn't call them. I had left my key inside, so I couldn't let myself back in to use Njals's phone. For a second I contemplated waiting, but then I thought to myself "why would Australia pass up this chance to screw me?" and I started to run towards a main street through the rain, cursing everything unreliable and Australian. I was making all kinds of engraged mental insults, that Bolivian taxis were more reliable than Australian taxis, why was I surprised, etc.
Amazingly, a cab pulled up and dropped off some girls coming back from a party somewhere. I got in and we started towards the airport. "That worked out suspiciously well," I thought to myself. Relieved, I started making idle chit chat with the driver. He was telling me how he moved to Australia, what his brother does in Indonesia, talking about his family. "Are you working all night?" I asked. "Yes." "So what time do you get off?" "Well, tonight was daylight savings, so I don't get off till..." GAHHH! Again!
When I got to the airport a good three hours early, I checked in and found wifi. My phone vibrated. I could get incoming calls, I just couldn't place calls. It was a text from the cab company: "your cab is approaching." Pretty efficient after all. Perhaps my Bolivia comparison wasn't fair. Then I got three phone calls from an angry cab driver. Presumably angry. I was still a little angry myself and didn't want to have to explain the situation, so I didn't answer. Pretty cowardly of me, but oh well.
So twice daylight savings has screwed me. Anyways, I think I'm finally up to date! Woooo! I WON'T try and keep it that way. Wink wink.
Japan stayed amazing. Kate came and visited me for about 6 days on her spring break. She will be the first one to tell you how glad she is that I convinced her to come to Japan. The usual sibling arguments went down, of course, but I was always right, so it wasn't too bad. We spent two days in Kyoto seeing temples and one day in Himeji, home of the biggest and most famous castle in Japan. (Picture below) The castle was closed for renovations, so we couldn't go inside. That was fine, however, as it was gorgeous with the cherry blossoms blooming all around. As we were walking up the steps to the castle a guy dressed like a ninja walked through the gate and down past us. Cool? Yes.
The shrines and temples in Kyoto were gorgeous as well. Cherry blossom season was a great time to be there. One of the highlights for me was a walk down the Philosopher's Path. It is a lovely little stroll alongside a canal with cherry trees and bridges and shrines. Another was seeing the hermitage of Mukai Kyorai, the most famous disciple of the haiku poet Basho. There was also a hilarious sign in a garden there, that I have pictured below.
In Tokyo we stayed with Kate's friends Matt and Yuko, who were kind enough to put us up. Matt knew a lot of good Japanese beer and good Japanese candy, and Yuko made delicious Japanese food. Kate and I saw various parts of the city. The coolest was the Tsukiji Fish Market. It is supposedly the biggest fish market in the world. There are little Japanese truckcarts people drive around at high speed and don't care if you're a tourist that isn't ready to get out of the way. I almost got hit at least once. Once you make it through that gauntlet and find the market, it is easy to believe it is the biggest in the world. It just keeps going and going. Weird little sea creatures galore.
The sushi around the market is supposed to be some of the best and freshest in the world. We had some that was indeed delicious. They even had whale, which I was excited to try. Unfortunately, I decided to try some sea urchin roe first. Everything else I had eaten in Japan I hadn't had any trouble with at all. That includes raw horse. But this stuff, boy. It tasted like the smell of seawater and concrete. Think the smell of the petting area at an aquarium, the wet and salty concrete, and you'll be right there. I was able to eat it, but I couldn't eat the second roll. Queasiness followed for about two hours. The thought of eating anything, including whale, was just too much. On the upside, though, the roe may have saved my conscience. A whale is a pretty smart thing to be eating.
To return to an earlier post for a second: the mystery machine with the ball bearings is actually a gambling game called pachinko. It is similar to slots, and is supposedly highly addictive. I seem to be immune. Before I left Japan I taught Matt and Yuko's two year old daughter Zu how to say it. "Puh-chin-ko!"
My plane left Japan at 830 am. I had an eight hour layover in Beijing. Their airport was humongous, and almost empty. Like huge, humongous. Ginormous. And there was no heat. Little motorized baggage carts were swarming the terminal, though. A big fleet of them. They also had a bathroom attendant in every bathroom. Two hours into the layover, I was sitting on the floor using my computer. A woman nearby was taking pictures of something. About a minute passed, and she kept taking pictures. More pictures. Eventually I looked up to see what was so interesting that it warranted so many pictures. It was a Chinese woman taking pictures of me. I kind of looked at her, puzzled, looked behind me to see if there was something interesting back there--nothing. She smiled and waved at me, I smiled, and went back to the computer. She spent another minute taking pictures. Changing angles, kneeling down. She must have taken thirty, easily.
The plane was a little late in departing, and we touched down around midnight. After about 20 minutes in a cab, the driver turned down a dead end side street and told me the hostel was "in there! in there!" "There" was a darkened tiny doorway leading to a darker tinier alleyway. People were standing on the street all around us looking at the cab. It was about 1 am. I was a wee bit tentative. "In there? In there??" "In there! In there!" He rolled down the window and asked one of the people milling around something in Thai. The guy replied and told me "in there! in there! walking." I don't know what a person is doing milling around at one in the morning on the street, but whatever it is, it's probably no good. The cabdriver opened my door. I grabbed my stuff and paid him, trying not to let the street people see how much I had in my wallet. A Thai guy stepped out of a different alleyway and said the name of my hostel and beckoned. I had called them from the airport to see if they were still open, so they knew I was coming, and I figured it would be better to follow someone who might be honest and helpful into the labyrinthine alley system than to try and navigate it on my own, so I followed him.
Immediately it seemed like a bad idea. The alley was between two high buildings and was at most two and a half feet wide, pallets and crates stacked or leaning along the walls, trash everywhere. It was dark, there were no lights. He was leading me in front and two guys were following us. Stepping over mangy stray dogs, I tried catch a glimpse of behind me without looking too worried. No luck. Left, right, stray dog, left, doorway, right, and there we were at the hostel. Phew. PHEW. So nerve-wracking.
The hostel is a little dirty and rundown, but has a cool vibe. It is also right along the river, and it itself is built over the water. (picture with view below) Today I slept late and then walked to Khao San Road, a famous backpacker place in Bangkok. It was really backpacker-y and tacky, full of tattoo parlors and people that looked like they were there for sex tourism. Graffiti on the walls said things like "if you're not living life on the edge, you're taking up too much room."
Street vendors were selling all kinds of things, and I tried phad Thai from a vendor and from a restaurant. As I ate, I watched a black ant that was trapped in the sugar bowl run frantically across the white crystals. Eventually he found the opening and marched out calmly, carrying sugar. Surprisingly, the phad Thai was good but not delicious. Very average. I'll be trying more.
One place along the road had kiddie pools full of little fish. You stick your feet in and they suck and bite at them, eating off the dead skin. A little courage was required to make the plunge. Visions of piranhas kept flashing in my brain. Not helping was the fact that someone had written in Spanish "we will never return to have our feet cleaned by the little fish." But plunge I did. It was a really weird sensation. After 20 minutes my feet were lusciously smooth and they had eaten off two scabs. (picture below) I was a little worried that the scab might lead to a drop of blood, and that that drop of blood might induce them to a feeding frenzy, the water roiling with crazed little fish.
Allllright. What else have I been neglecting to update... All the way back to Brasil, I think, when I got scuba certified. Besides me taking the course, there was a Brazilian family of nine, mostly uncles, and two teenagers. None of them spoke English, but they had Diego, the English speaking instructor, translate things for them. They motioned early on that at the one of them that would be my dive partner. Every once and a while they would run up and say something excitedly to Diego, and then motion at me. Invariably, it was something like "they say...be careful, with heem" and they would be gesturing frantically towards my partner. I would glance towards him and he would be batting his eyebrows at me, waving coyly. It was hilarious.
As we were doing the drills, one of the Brazilians swallowed too much water and looked a little green around the gills. Bobbing on the surface, I was using diving hand signals to ask if he was ok. His wetsuit had a hood that was srunching his forehead down over his eyes, and he just kind of stared at me. I backed away. Then he started to throw up, in the most hilarious vomiting sound I've ever heard. It was like a regular retching sound, but afterwards he would blow his lips together, high-pitched to low-pitched, "BBBBBBBBBB!!!" He did this several times. The next day one of his friends was asking people on the boat how they throw up. He got me to act out how I do it. Then he would spread his arms wide and say (in Portuguese) "the whooooole word throws up: 'bleh.' But you! 'Bleh...BBBBBBBBB!!!'" and imitate the sound. Also hilarious.
On one of the dives that day I saw a seasnake and pointed it out to my dive partner. When we got back to the boat a while later, he got out first. When I got aboard he was gesturing hurriedly to English-speaking Diego and pointing at me. Diego turned and said "he says...you showed heem, the snake." The Brazilians erupted in laughter.
They were a very funny group. On the last day we finished back in the classroom. The first day had been all classwork, and Diego explained to me that throughout the class the Brazilians had been making jokes that the manikin modeling a wetsuit was one of their boyfriends, little by little pushing it closer to him throughout the day. When I got there he was cradling the manikin's hand on his shoulder and had given it his car keys.
What are some more Brazil stories...hmm. Ah. Donald and I traveled together for a week or so while in Brazil. Favelas are the poor districts of Rio on public land where the people live in makeshift cities that don't exist in the eyes of the government. Drugs and violence are problems they are famous for. The movie City of God is a well-known documentary about them. It is also where Edward Norton is hiding in the beginning of The Hulk, and I think were Edward Cullen is hiding in New Moon, but I'm not positive. There are tours of them offered that are intended to show that although there are problems, they are really places where normal people lead normal lives. The tour started on little motorbike taxis that drove us at speeds too fast to be comfortable up winding cobbed roads to the top of the favela. Then we walked down through the interior walkways. The people there did seem to have good lives. Although there was some garbage, they had their own stores, electricity, running water, and a lot of big screen TVs. I'm glad I don't live there, but it really did seem like a far cry from the poverty you've been trained to expect.
Soon after the favela tour we left the city to try and see some other beaches. At one point we were catching a bus back to Rio early in the morning, and we had gone to bed late. Carnival was technically over, but the party didn't stop. I was tired of it long before, but I just couldn't escape. We had gone to bed late. At 3 am some god awful club music woke us up. It was so loud that I literally felt like I was breathing the beat. Donald and I were both up, but we figured it would stop. It didn't. I looked out the window to see where it was coming from, and it was three meatheads holding beer cans standing beside their car, which was a piece of junk and had all the doors and the back open. I didn't even know car stereos could get that loud. And the music was SO bad. If you sat me down in front of a computer and gave me ten minutes to make club music, it would sound something like this. After 40 minutes of the intolerable noise the owner of the posada went out and yelled at them and they turned it off. By this point, though, we were wide awake enough that the terrible music playing at the party around the bus stop down the street was enough to keep us up. Just why they were partying at a bus stop, I have no idea, but they were. Eventually I got back to sleep, but it wasn't until about 430.
Setting the alarm clock had been my job. I used my ipod, and I DID set it, but I set it for Seattle time. We woke up 15 minutes before our bus left, and we were about a 15 minute walk away. Donald wasn't thrilled. We got there just in time for our 945 bus. We tried to get on, but this bus was in fact the 845 bus and they wouldn't let us. Ours was there an hour later, at 1045. Normally this wouldn't have been such a big deal, but we only had a few hours to do two huge tourist things in Rio before we were going to catch another bus to the south of the country. Donald had been in Rio before and could have done these things, but he was waiting for me. He wasn't coming back to Rio, so this delay was a problem. Our bus got there an hour later, after much lambasting of Brazilian schedule-keeping abilities. When we arrived, not only were there any buses available to book to where we wanted to go, but we had three hours instead of four hours, and there was no way we would be able to see both sites.
We decided on the Christ Statue. A hawker outside was telling us it would be at least two hours for the train to the top, but that he would get us there right away in his van for only slightly more expensive. The train ride to the top is part of the experience, so this worried us. But he had been lying about the time, which would only take an hour, and we might be able to make it to both after all! We got in line. On the wall was a clock. Strange...this clock was an hour off from my watch. Confused, I mentioned this to Donald. His face contorted and froze. He looked at the clock, and then turned slowly back to me. If looks could kill, I would be dead.
By the grace of god, before Donald could do whatever terrible thing he was planning, a British girl standing nearby chose this moment to stick her head in and ask if we needed help. I explained about the watch, and she said "oh, it was daylight savings last night, didn't you know? It's actually 1:30, not 2:30." "WHAT?!" It was true. So the hawker wasn't a liar, the bus wasn't late, and Brazilians can keep a schedule. Three hours became four again, and we took a taxi to the other site in the two hour wait for the train, taxied back in the nick of time, got on the train, saw the Christo, and got to the bus station with time to spare. Pretty good. Pret-tay, pret-ty good.
From Rio we went to Iguazu Falls, which I may have mentioned in another post. I can't remember... The falls can be seen from the Brazilian side and the Argentinian side. The Brazilian side was sunny and lovely. The next day, on the Argentinian side, it was a downpour the whole day long. We took a boat tour on which they drove us up underneath one of the waterfalls so it was falling on us. Afterwards we paid 50 dollars for a DVD of the trip. We figured that that close to the falls it would be impossible for some of their majesty to not be captured on the film. Wrong. The cameraman completely ignored one of the natural wonders of the world, took no shots of one of its biggest waterfalls on the globe, but instead spent the entire time zooming in on our faces as we braced ourselves against the deluge.
Leaving the falls they give you fliers to the nearby dam, Itaipu, on the Brazil/Paraguay border. It is one of the biggest dams and the most efficient dam in the world, as well as one of the Society of Civil Engineers wonders of the modern world. The front of the fliers say simply "Itaipu. You'll be impressed." Inside, however, was one of my favorite bad English translations to date. "If on one hand, the Iguassu Falls are unforgettable, on the other you cannot forget to visit the largest generator of renewable and clean energy in the". That is it. It doesn't finish the sentence. The best part, though, is their use of the "on the one hand" expression. When I read it the first time I was functioning on very little sleep, and I couldn't stop laughing.
We took the tour, and I admit that I was indeed impressed. On the way there, capybara were running around. Everyone else on the tour was either an excited middle-aged man or had been brought by an excited middle-aged man. The tour guide explained that Itaipu means singing rocks, and that there were rocks that "sung" as the river moved over them. I asked where they were now, downriver, below the dam, or underwater, and he replied "they are behind the dam, deep under water. They're not singing no more."
Afterwards I went back to Rio and got ready to fly to Australia. The day before I left I went hang gliding over the city and the favelas. We drove to the top of a mountain and the instructor had me practice running with him. "You can't stop," he explained, or we wouldn't have enough lift and we would be in danger of crashing into the rocks below. It wasn't really so hard to run off the edge of the cliff at full speed. I had met the instructor 20 minutes before, but since he was the instructor, and he said it was ok to run off the cliff strapped into this thing, we ran off the edge of the cliff. The only scary parts were taking off and landing. Right after my feet left the ground we experienced free fall for about a second before the glider caught us. That was a very scary second. We cruised over the favelas and the rich neighborhoods of Rio, the slums juxtaposed to the huge houses each with their own swimming pool. Then we were over the expressway, and then over the ocean. We circled back to the beach, where we were to land. I watched another glider land, the pilots running along the sand and losing momentum. We came in at a sharp angle and there was no running, just a THUMP as we hit into the sand and stopped dead. Some whiplash was suffered.
From Rio I caught a flight to Australia. I'm lukewarm about Australia, so I don't have much to report. It would have been a lot more fun if it wasn't so grossly overpriced, or if the US dollar wasn't about 1:1 with Australian. It cost me eight dollars for a bagel and coffee, as much as four for a can of coke. A paperback that said US7.99 on the back would be going for $35. Add that to the fact that many people would talk down about the US while talking about how amazing and better Australia is, and it was tiring. Due to my own inept planning, I ended up having to stay for a month. If I had stayed for only two weeks, for instance, as I intended when I first worked Australia into my itinerary, I don't think those things would have bothered me.
I did meet a lot of very friendly people, though. One guy I met playing chess in a cafe in Sydney, and at the end of my stay he put me in touch with his friend named Njals who has a spare room. Njals was great and we got along really well. He let me stay there for four or five days in exchange for doing dishes and washing windows. He had a cat named Lurch that is 15 years old. Poor lurch had one white eye from when he got hit buy a car some years earlier, and was a very nice cat.
One evening Njals was out, and I was supposed to let a girl in who was considering renting the room I was preparing to vacate. She was very nice, and was asking various questions about the place, which I was doing my best to answer. We were standing in the living room, and Lurch was lying on an ottoman in between us. Suddenly, a vile smell filled the room. The air was so thick with it that I paused mid sentence. It wasn't me. That left Lurch and the girl. There was no way to think she couldn't smell it. I had reason to suspect Lurch, based on events from the evening before, but I wasn't sure. I was in a predicament. In the case that it had been her, she was probably holding out a faint glimmer of hope that I couldn't smell it. In the case that it had been the cat, she would be thinking that it was me. What I wanted to do was make a comment like "whoah, Lurch, you feeling ok buddy?" But then she would either be embarrassed or she would think I was blaming the cat, which is pretty low. So, I said nothing, and picked up mid-sentence where I had left off. She left 30 seconds later. Her leaving so suddenly, presumably in disgust, implicated the cat. But, she could have just had some pressing business to attend to. No way to know, I decided.
The mystery was solved 10 minutes later as I was doing dishes. Lurch bolted for his litterbox, which was situated under the kitchen table, and let loose. Such noises! I put Lurch out. Something had to be done. It was permeating the house and making me gag, and simply could NOT stay in the kitchen. As Njals was letting me stay there for free, I felt this duty fell on me. (No pun intended.) Cursing Lurch for embarrassing me in front of the prospective renter, I grabbed a handful of plastic bags, carefully carried the box outside, and took care of business, gagging and coughing all the while.
Two weeks before this incident, Alix again came to visit me. We rented a cabin four hours outside of Sydney. It was situated in sort of farm land just in from the beach. The beach was a ten minute walk through the fields and the woods. Kangaroos were frolicking outside the window. We even saw one with a joey in its pouch, which was pretty darn cute. We had rented a car, which we made use of by driving into town for groceries and movies and for driving to go on hikes. On one of the hikes we saw a monitor lizard that even was so good as to climb a tree while we were watching. On that hike we also ran into a Canadian family that was friendly but railed against the US legal system for a while, which was irritating to listen to.
The stars at the cabin were amazing. It was a little creepy to come home to at night, though, all dark and out in the middle of nowhere. After the cabin we flew to Cairns, which is a jumping off point for the reef. We did a day tour to the reef. The passage was really choppy, and a quarter of the people were sick. I did two dives and snorkeling, and Alix did snorkeling and a dive for non-certified divers. I saw several sharks, albeit small 3-5 footers, clownfish in anemones Nemo-style, touched a turtle, touched several giant clams, sea cucumbers, and touched a humongous wrasse.
Also in Cairns we ate crocodile, emu, kangaroo, and a famous fish I can't remember now. Then we went to the rainforest around Cape Tribulation in the norheast part of the country. Unsurprisingly, we got rained on. We also saw the biggest spider I've ever seen in my life. According to a local I talked to, it's as big as the bird-catching spiders they have there. With legs it was about as big as my face. Just chillaxing in a web on somebody's porch. So creepy. The danger of Australia was rearing its ugly head everywhere we went. On the beach you couldn't swim in the ocean due to jellyfish, and the rivers running into the ocean were just as dangerous due to crocodiles. And we were in cassowary country, so at any moment a man-sized bird might stroll out of the jungle and disembowel you.
Then we flew back to Sydney and did the typical Sydney things: ogled the giant bats in the park, took an operahouse tour, walked the harbour bridge. Then Alix left, I moved in with Njals, dealt with his flatulent cat, and got ready for Japan. My flight left at 8 am, and I was supposed to be there three hours early. I scheduled a cab to pick me up at Njals's at 430 am. For some reason I had a bad feeling about it, and called to confirm. It was a go. The next morning, I got up at 4, showered, went outside to wait. It was raining. 430 came and went. As did 445. Panicking, I walked up and down the street--nothing. I tried to call the cab company. My cell phone had only been good for 30 days and had expired at midnight, so I couldn't call them. I had left my key inside, so I couldn't let myself back in to use Njals's phone. For a second I contemplated waiting, but then I thought to myself "why would Australia pass up this chance to screw me?" and I started to run towards a main street through the rain, cursing everything unreliable and Australian. I was making all kinds of engraged mental insults, that Bolivian taxis were more reliable than Australian taxis, why was I surprised, etc.
Amazingly, a cab pulled up and dropped off some girls coming back from a party somewhere. I got in and we started towards the airport. "That worked out suspiciously well," I thought to myself. Relieved, I started making idle chit chat with the driver. He was telling me how he moved to Australia, what his brother does in Indonesia, talking about his family. "Are you working all night?" I asked. "Yes." "So what time do you get off?" "Well, tonight was daylight savings, so I don't get off till..." GAHHH! Again!
When I got to the airport a good three hours early, I checked in and found wifi. My phone vibrated. I could get incoming calls, I just couldn't place calls. It was a text from the cab company: "your cab is approaching." Pretty efficient after all. Perhaps my Bolivia comparison wasn't fair. Then I got three phone calls from an angry cab driver. Presumably angry. I was still a little angry myself and didn't want to have to explain the situation, so I didn't answer. Pretty cowardly of me, but oh well.
So twice daylight savings has screwed me. Anyways, I think I'm finally up to date! Woooo! I WON'T try and keep it that way. Wink wink.
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