back home

In a parking lot outside a big box retailer in a minor Midwestern city I looked around. I could see a few other big chain stores in the midst of strip mall storefronts. The smaller buildings of national chain restaurants stuck up like islands in the larger sea of parking.
I realized, looking at a retail store a few hundred yards from the store I just walked out of, I couldn't walk between the two if I wanted to. At least, not without braving the multiple lanes of traffic in both directions on the arteries cutting through this parking plain. This seems to be a quintessentially American scenario, if perhaps not uniquely American.
A more uniquely American experience came a couple days previously, when a trip to a Super Wal-Mart (the only grocer in town) was preceded by a stop at the gun shop.

last day

Blue Lagoon
Originally uploaded by slack13.

I found myself neck-deep in the local power plant's waste just before leaving Iceland for good.
And I paid to do that.
The penultimate stop on our World Tour was Iceland's Blue Lagoon. The lagoon is the outflow from the local Geothermal Power Plant. Since the waste products that make it to the lagoon are mineral-rich water and heat, someone had the bright idea to turn the spot into a resort and spa.
Apparently it's one of the most-visited spots in Iceland. Since it's between Iceland's international airport and Reykjavic all the bus companies include an optional stop here on the way to or from the airport. We decided to go ahead and take the option on our way out of the country.
So on the morning of Nov. 30 we woke up, hopped in the waiting bus, and headed to the Blue Lagoon.
We arrived around 10:30 a.m. The sun hadn't yet started to color the sky.
It wasn't a perfect day to take the waters. The air temperature when we arrived was something like 34 degrees Farenheit. A hard, icy wind was blowing. Resort attendants walked along the edge of the water in full artic parkas, gloves, boots and earmuffs.
The water itself was warm. The digital readout said it ranged from 95 degrees to 109 degrees by one of the steam vents. However, the bulk of the water wasn't quite warm enough to take away the chill from the air. Especially since you are required to shower before entering the water, so the wind had a better chance of freezing your ears solid. The sauna and steamroom provided momentary welcome respites from the cold, until their heat proved too much for comfort.
The weather gave the place an other-worldly feel. Steam rising off the milky-blue water obscured the other bathers and hid the resort buildings. It combined with the indistinct lighting and volcanic rocks piled along the boundaries of the lagoon for the overall surreal quality.
We spent about three hours at the Blue Lagoon before catching the bus to the airport and waiting for our flight (which ended up being delayed more than an hour by the first snow we'd seen).
As a resort, it was a disappointment. As spot to show off the unique character of Iceland's landscape and weather, it succeeded even despite the handicap of being an artifical landscape.

last day (II)

We sat on the tarmac for about an hour, our time in Iceland slightly extended for de-icing. The flakes were heavy, wet chunks pelting the ground in sheets, propelled by the wind.
On arrival in Baltimore, we were leery of customs. The form asked for all items purchased overseas - we needed extra space just to write the countries visited. Even if I'd wanted to answer completely, I didn't remember exactly what we'd picked up during the year.
No need to worry. Customs didn't even look at the list. They didn't even want to look in the bags, even when we admitted to having food in the bags. We didn't even get an entry stamp in the passport - just a stamp on our customs form and a wave on through.
When we did arrive, my sister was waiting. She had a different idea - she was worried we'd been extensively questioned and searched. The airport had never changed the status of our flight to "delayed." Instead, the board read "on time" for our arrival. We were amazed we cleared passport control, got our bags and cleared customs in a total of maybe 20 minutes. To her, the process apparently took two hours.

a few notes on the first day back

* Baltimore at night was noticeably brighter from the plane, even more so than London. This isn't to say Baltimore has more lights than London, just that it seemed the average output of each light was brighter. There was more bright white light, as opposed to the usual orange glow. I don't think this is a Baltimore problem. I think this is just the way American cities are. I don't know if it's a case of more lights, or brighter lights, or lights that aren't shielded. But it seemed brighter.

* There's too much space between everything on the streets. The roads are amazingly wide; in some places the sidewalk is amazingly as wide as the road; houses are set further away from the street; there are more parking lots. Even in between buildings, the spaces are just bigger.

* It was odd to get my first handful of American change. It seemed old-fashioned, for some reason.

* The night we got in, we landed at 7 p.m. Baltimore time, or 1 a.m. Europe time. We stayed up until nearly midnight (6 a.m. on my body clock). I didn't feel bad last night, but I woke up at 7 a.m. this morning. I'm sure I'm going to have the same problem tomorrow. This always seems to happen when I flew across a bunch of time zones west. When we flew from Beijing to London we were in the air for 10 hours, always in the sunlight (took off about 10 a.m., landed in the afternoon). We were up for more than 24 hours. I couldn't get a long night's sleep for a week afterward. I didn't feel bad most of the time. It was just at about 5 p.m. I'd totally crash, then when I did go to sleep I just couldn't stay that way long enough. I haven't had the crash in the evening this time around. We'll see how long it takes before I can go back to sleeping in. (That was one nice thing about Iceland: when there's no sun, it's easy to sleep).

* I'm going to want to put USA at the end of addresses for a long time yet.

back again

In the States. Flew into Baltimore last night, a little jet-lagged today, but not too bad (a six-hour flight just doesn't seem that long anymore). Haven't really had much time to reflect on the end of the trip - in a lot of ways, it won't seem like we're done traveling until we have a place to stop and settle (which means until we have jobs, somewhere).

Lots more later, I'm sure - I'll be posting all the stories from the last few months which didn't make it to the blog yet as I see fit. So keep checking...

land of (melting) ice

Last stop. We landed in Reykjavik, Iceland, Monday on an extended stopover between London and Baltimore.

My first thought on landing was the similarity between this and my home in Montana. I realized it's not particularly similar in the details, but in a few bold strokes it is: the lack of trees, the yellowed grasses sticking up through patchy snow, and mountains in the distance.
Mostly it's the lack of trees. Like home, you can see as far as the weather conditions and terrain will let you. It's a perspective most places we've been haven't had, and I'd forgotten how much of a difference it made.
Tomorrow, we get out of Reykjavik on a day's bus tour. Geysers, waterfalls, volcanoes are on the agenda. This will complete a geothermal trilogy for me; I've now visited the earth's main hotspots of Yellowstone, Rotorua, New Zealand, and now Iceland.

The weather isn't as bad as expected. It was right around freezing when we landed (and a cold wind made walking around unpleasant). Today it was up around 40, and even tonight it's warm enough most of the snow and ice is melting. Got my jeans drenched waiting to cross the street when a car hit a puddle, a few minutes after I'd fallen on the lumpy, wet ice covering the sidewalk.

What is just as expected is the daylight situation. When we landed at 4:30 in the afternoon, the sun had already set. That wasn't too unusual for winter locations. This morning, however, I managed to wake up before dawn. And I wasn't awake until 10 a.m. Really, it's perfect for me. Especially since I'm not at work through the four hours or so of daylight.

I didn't realize (until Kirsten read the in-flight magazine on the way here) Iceland has 300,000 people in the whole place, and about three-quarters of them live in Reykjavik. From what I've seen of the place, it looks like a larger version of any mountain town; lot's of cozy-looking buildings and lights on trees and in the street. Feels like I should be skiing while staying here.
The prices aren't as cozy. We're staying at the Salvation Army (not quite as dodgy as it sounds; it runs a basic guesthouse). For single beds with no blankets in shared rooms, we're paying right around $40, each, per night. At least there's a kitchen so we don't have to buy all our food out. I read today Big Macs cost the equivalent of US$7.50. I did, however, have a $4 hotdog which was excellent, as well as being the cheapest option in town.

out of london

London
Originally uploaded by Churcho.

Ryan has one of the coolest locations in London. To walk to the tube (subway) he walks along Tower Bridge, then past the Tower of London, two of my favorite things to look at in the city.

We had quite an ordeal before we saw them again this weekend. After spending Thursday night and most of Friday in Belfast, we were set to fly out to London. Unfortunately, EasyJet pushed our flight back from 9:35 to 11:35 p.m. By the time we actually lifted off, it was close to midnight. Even taking a shortcut to speed up the flight put us in at 1 a.m. Our bags came off at 1:20. The last train into the city from Gatwick Airport was at 1:35 a.m. We made it with a few minutes to spare. A half-hour trip, then found a night bus toward Ryan's. It didn't actually make it round until 3 a.m., then we had to cap the night with a short cab ride before arriving at our destination at 4 a.m. Ryan was very nice about it all, and Saturday we gorged ourselves on a Thanksgiving dinner put on by the LSE American students living in his hall.

Tower Bridge
Originally uploaded by dannywartnaby.

the end of the emerald

In a few hours I will be leaving Ireland. We left the Republic yesterday on a bus to Belfast. Tonight to London, then just one more stop before our final U.S. return: Monday we head to Iceland where we'll be in the dark most of the time.

Ireland has certainly lived up to its reputation for friendliness. We had a couple of contacts here when we arrived. From there our Irish network ballooned; everywhere we met people we were offered places to crash or at least had people to go and get a pint with. The Guinness really does taste better over here, music is easy to find, there are stone ruins everywhere you look. I'll have to get back here someday.

ireland is meant to be experienced indoors...

A long weekend in Galway probably led directly to the cold that hit me today. It doesn't help that Ireland, as expected, has been rainy every day and intermittently cold.
Our Irish friends took us to Galway to meet their friends, who happened to be reuniting a band for a Saturday gig. We got to the venue after their friends had finished, but in time to see the headline act, a band I'd been introduced to just weeks before. We had no idea that's who was playing, but it was an awesome show.
Then a post-show house party running until well into the next day (which I imagine weakened my immune system, allowing the current bug more or less to have its way with me). Loads of fun, and the weekend proved one of my hopes: as soon as you meet one of the Irish, you're their friend (at least if you're introduced by a mutual friend). The friends we came to Galway with left the city Sunday, but we crashed there for an extra day with the new Irish friends (and probably headed back this weekend).
Monday we hired a car (or rented, if you're in America). We've been cruising south along the West coast, taking out-of-the-way routes along windswept peninsulas. Castles, stone forts, grand views (when the clouds clear) - all of them all over the place. Monday night we ended up stopping in Ennis and discovered it was the final day of an Irish Music Fest, so we drank Guiness and listened to a traditional session.

Tonight, we're in Cork. Just arrived after dark, so will hopefully have a chance to rest and recuperate. Not sure where to next - we have the car until Monday.

and Ireland strikes back

After our experience getting through British immigration, we had another fun exchange in Ireland.

As far as I can tell, US visitors are generally given three-month tourist visas. Kirsten preceded me in line, and the official grilled her. Stamps from a year-long study abroad trip in 1997 somehow led him to believe she was a threat to stay and work in Ireland. How long are you staying? About two weeks. So she gets exactly two weeks (after he mistakenly writes two days to begin with). I go through: Are you with her? Yeah. Two weeks.
It wouldn't be a big deal, except we actually wanted 15 days. So we have to make travel plans to avoid becoming illegal overstayers in Ireland.

I'm so far behind on posting things my stories are going to be well out of date by the time they get up here - it'll probably be when I get back to the States and just want a place to put the stories.

We are now in Ireland - spent a day in Dublin and are heading west to meet our friends in Cavan (more New Zealand flatmates). This will conclude our New Zealand reunion - in the last few weeks we've seen Stephen and Reike in Germany, we just left Lang and Steph in Newcastle, and now we're off to see Paul and Kieran.

The tour has been good - it's been great to see everyone, although we haven't always had enough time to see them. We ran into a serious time crunch at the end of Germany. In Freiburg we spent a couple days with some family friends of my uncle, who showed us wonderful hospitality, took us on a day trip into France and walks in the Black Forest. We also found time to see Reike, our former flatmate, although since she was working and we only had a few days, our time was short.

We left Scotland this weekend for Newcastle and stayed with another set of flatmates, Steph and Lang. They managed to get a couple days off work and took us on tours of the countryside (and then on drinking tours of all Northern England's beers). Also had a day to wander around the city, including the old castle.

Not sure what we'll be doing the next few weeks. Two weeks in Ireland, then a weekend in London, a few days in Iceland and back to the States...

Scotland, again

This isn't exactly the peak tourist season here in Northern Britain. It's chilly and often wet, so it's understandable most tourists are giving the land of Haggis a miss in November. Three times now we've booked into a multi-bed shared dorm and been the only people in the room (a happy side effect of traveling at this time of year).
Despite the weather, driving around the Scottish countryside in November is an enjoyable experience. You still get a glimpse of a castle every few minutes, the leaves are still on the trees but have taken the time to change color, the hills are covered in plants dead for the winter, but showing a nicely blended mix of yellow grasses and red heather.
And if you're in Scotland, the skies are supposed to be grey, right?

The haggis is also quite nice. I've sampled the speciality deep-fried, as well as wrapped in bacon and stuffed in a chicken. Gotta say, I'm a fan. It's a dense mix of things that end up tasting like moist meat, even though it's not exactly meat.

On a map, it looks like we've made a comprehensive tour of the heart of Scotland. On the ground, we haven't been anywhere very long. We flew into Glasgow, then bused north to Aberdeen the next day to meet up with another New Zealand friend. A day there, then south to Edinburgh for a couple days. We hired a car Wednesday (after spending Halloween with the Edinburgh crowds) and headed east. The first travel day (or afternoon, really) was mostly spent wandering around Stirling Castle. On the second, we made it to Loch Ness. Today we drove further east, all the way to the Isle of Skye (with a side trip to the dentist for Kirsten, who managed to break a tooth in the midst of our fun). We headed back toward Edinburgh (got to return the car tomorrow) with the intention of stopping part way. Oddly, we hit a part of the country with apparently no afforable accommodation, so we just kept going all the way to Edinburgh.

Another day and a half here, then on to Newcastle (more New Zealand roommates to see). Middle of next week, Ireland (ditto). Then we start to look toward the States...

bonny scotland

When planning this world tour, we were worried about running into poor weather on most of our stops. So far, we've been amazingly lucky. We avoided the rain in Thailand, picked up some fine, clear days in China, had perfect weather in Germany for a hike around the Black Forrest, and even fared well in London.

Today in Scotland we had our first sub-zero (Celcius) night since leaving New Zealand. The sun is shining, the land is beautiful, but the air is cold. I think we have to accept winter is here, and we're not going to be traveling out of it. (It's too bad - New Zealand is nice this time of year).

So far we've toured around Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh. We rented a car yesterday and are now wandering up the Scottish east coast. Our lunch stop today on the banks of a Loch has free Internet, something I haven't often seen on the travels.

those wacky british...

Exchange with the immigration desk after arriving in Glasgow, Scotland from Germany:

Official: How long will you be staying?
Me: About 10 days.
Official: And what is your next destination?
Me: Ireland.
Official: Yeah. How long will you be staying in the UK, including the Republic of Ireland?


And I thought they'd settled the independence question years ago...

steven

This is Steven, our one-time flatmate in Wellington. This week we traveled to Magdeburg, Germany, to renew our friendship. In Magdeburg we sat up and talked while playing dice at his kitchen table, met his latest collection of wonderful flatmates, made a half-day side trip to Berlin, stayed up far too late generally, and definitely stayed up too late on Saturday, our final night. We accompanied Steven to his friend's birthday party. By the end of the night I was talking with someone who barely knew English (I, of course, know no German). He made statements in his language, I made statements in mine, and we had what I think was a rather lengthy and enjoyable discussion in which neither of us knew what the other was saying.

This German trip has been quite nice - it's always good to have someone to talk to when you are in an unfamiliar town, especially if that someone is also giving you a free place to sleep. We've been quite lucky, especially since two of our stops have been to visit people who we did not know two months ago and who we previously met only for a few days during our travels. Everyone has been very gracious (we're in Munich now, staying in the apartment of a guy we met in Thailand. We knew him for three days before we arrived, and here he handed us the key to his apartment so we could stay even though he isn't in Munich tonight). What goes unsaid, and mostly unthought about, is the fact we are unlikely to see these people again. I hope they take us up on our own offer to house them on any future trips to the States, but the odds are against it. Even an email correspondence might die out over the passage of time.
It's nice to think, however, people are willing to put us up even though this probably will be a momentary blip of acquaintance rather than a lasting friendship.

Hopefully we will be able to reciprocate for some of them. We will have a definite karma debt to repay.

the couch-surfing tour continues

To Giessen, Germany, a small university town just north of Frankfurt. We're staying with a couple we met while sailing in Australia. We met lots of people over the course of the past year from several different countries who offered us a place to stay, but no country's people have come through on those promises quite like the Germans. We have a couple of old flatmates here we planned on visiting, and then we're breaking up the trip here and in Munich, with some travelers met on the hill trek in Thailand.
We're also getting help in Scotland, and should have a lot in Ireland. Unfortunately for Ryan, the rest of our London connections never did materialize.

catchin' up

The first installment of posts that should have already been written over the past month or so:

beijing haircut

It's never in any of the guidebooks - where to get a decent, cheap haircut and how to deal with any language or cultural barriers to getting one.
Even in New Zealand, it took a while to find a good place to get my hair cut. In Beijing it wasn't hard to find one - there's one across the street from where we were staying - but it was a bit more difficult to deal with an utter lack of English.

I needed a haircut, so I chanced it. The initial bit was easy - I walked toward the shop and a girl outside said, 'Haircut?' I nod, she leads me inside and through the salon to the back where she proceeds to give me a shampoo and head massage for 25 minutes. It was actually two of what I assume were shampoo cycles, each followed by a massage of the head and neck, then another (conditioner?) cycle, followed by not only another round of massage but also an ear-cleaning. I have never had anyone else's fingers that far into my ears, which was a bit disconcerting. I wasn't sure if this was part of the normal routine, or if she just found my ears particularly offensive.
The whole affair was quite relaxing, other than the ear bit, and then I was led over to a standard hair-cutting chair, where the same girl briefly gave me a shoulder massage.
While sitting there, I was approached by a couple of other girls. The first tried, even though I don't speak Chinese and she didn't speak more than five words of English, to sell me a frequent-user discount card. The second came over, talked for a while, saw my blank look, stopped, then brought over a menu of services. I think she was trying to sell me the optional extras (I made out senior styler), but I couldn't read the menu any more than I understood what she was saying. Thankfully, on the door it read in English 'Haircut 38 yuan' and 38 was the first bit on the list.

The actual stylist had a few phrases of English, enough so we could make ourselves understood when he asked what I wanted and I pointed to my head and made motions for the length. The cut itself turned out well, although after I assumed he was finished he spent another 15 minutes trimming individual hairs he decided weren't sufficiently conforming to the overall effect.
I was slightly distracted as this was going on, since the original washing girl wandered over. I think she was satisfied I couldn't understand what she was saying, so was talking with the stylist about this crazy Westerner. She was certainly amused by my earring, and curious about my eyelashes. Curious enough about the last bit to get me to close my eyes so she could inspect them close up.

The whole thing took more than an hour and a quarter. I ended up with a clean head and a decent haircut.
It all cost me about $5.

filling up the passport...

Left London today to fly into Germany, where we'll be for the next week and a half.
It's my second time in Germany, although the first time around two years ago was mostly just a brief stop in the middle of a long train ride from Amsterdam to Prague. On that trip Germany seemed like a very foreign destination. Now, after six weeks in Asia and 14 months away from the States, Germany seems like a very easy place to travel. Sure, a lot of things aren't written in English (although quite a bit is). But at least you can figure out a bit of what is going on with German, or at least pretend you can, which is something you can't do with Chinese.

It's one aspect of a larger difference I'm noticing after a few months of solid traveling. On my first trips to Europe, and even when arriving in New Zealand, there was a serious feeling of displacement. Even London, on arrival after a long flight when you have`t been abroad, seems like a very foreign place. When I first got into London the jetlag and culture shock froze my brain; it took at least a day to even recognize the language people were speaking to me was English and I should be able to parse their meaning and perhaps even respond.
I haven't had quite as much of the displacement buzz when we've arrived at our last few destinations - probably not since Bangkok. Switching languages, surroundings and cultures is starting to seem like the ordinary manner of things, rather than a huge abrupt change requiring a serious mental effort to accommodate.
This is a good thing, I suppose, in that it means I've traveled around enough to deal with different environments much faster. But I do miss the feeling of arriving into a complete unknown. Not just the unknown of a place you haven't been, but the unknown of a mental shift and adjustment you haven't made anywhere before. Just landing in London that first time set off a buzz in my brain for a few days, and that's always fun.

One other downside to becoming used to traveling is being totally unprepared for jetlag. Before, jetlag was an excuse to explain the brain's inability to keep up with all the new input. When I arrived in London, since it didn't seem particularly daunting, I also expected my body to adjust as easily as my mind. My body had other ideas.
We left Beijing around 11 a.m. (which meant a 6:30 a.m. wakeup call). It was a 10-hour flight across seven time zones, so we landed around 2 p.m. It was a long period of daylight, and by the time we got to bed, our bodies were at about 4 a.m. although the clocks were at 9 p.m. I figured a sleep would put me right, but all week I felt a wave of fatigue hit in the late afternoon.

like, it's art or whatever

Our first full day in London was spent walking leisurely along the south bank of the Thames from Ryan's dorm toward the Tate Modern.
It was just an excuse to have some sort of destination (and it helped that the museum is free). But it ended up being the first day a new installation at the Tate was truly opened to the public: the museum has installed a number of large stainless-steel slides in its huge open turbine room area. The slides are from one to five stories high, and riding is free (although you have to stand in line to get a timed ticket).
Certainly more interactive than the usual art installation, and a slightly incongruous addition to the rooms of paintings, photos and sculptures. But they do have the aesthetic value of a sculpture - the sinewy path of the tubular slides and the visual twists they turn on each other is quite pleasing to the eye. And I'm not much of an art critic anyway. I do know the four-story slide gives you quick ride, a bit of an adrenaline boost and a pleasant rush of feeling. I also know more people were talking, and grinning, about the slides than any other art exhibit or installation I've ever been to.

It reminded me a bit of St. Louis' City Museum, one of the oddest and most-interesting places I've been. That building is crammed full of slides, crawling tunnels and other bits to explore made out of scrap metal and other pieces of what are usually referred to as junk. And it's also a ton of fun.

(Photo is from The Telegraph)

the nomad's life

Since leaving Dunedin in mid-July (our last working stop in New Zealand) we've rarely spent more than a couple nights in the same spot. We've been seeing the must-see sights, taking the tours, having cultural experiences, meeting fellow travelers.
We've also been running on overload, both in terms of taking it all in and in terms of always being on the go. It's a little tough to relax, even when you're not doing anything in particular, when you can never unpack and have no real place to base out of for more than a few hours.

China was the exception. My cousin graciously gave us the run of his apartment in Beijing for the duration of our stay, along with its satellite TV and library of books and DVDs. We took full advantage, spending far too much time just sitting in the apartment. We saw plenty of Beijing sights, did the obligatory Beijing shopping, but we also slept in and occasionally wasted time just hanging around a place we didn't have to immediately leave. It was a much-needed respite.

Now we're in London and back on the move. For most of the next six weeks, we're hoping to hop from one friend to another, staying on floors for a few days and moving on before (hopefully) wearing out our welcome. The floor-surfing era has begun here (and we're very grateful to Ryan, who has allowed us to take up pretty much all of the unoccupied space in his dorm room for the next few days). Next Monday, on to Germany to hopefully stay with four or five different people we've met during the past year's travels. Then Scotland, northern England, Ireland and back to London. It'll be good to see all these friends again, and it'll be nice not to have the daily financial drain of always paying for places to sleep. But I don't think we'll really have a chance to relax again until we return to the States in December (and even then we'll be traveling around crashing with people until we sort out how and where to settle).

london's calling my wallet

Last night we met up with some of Kirsten's friends and went out for dinner. My pasta dish was about 8 pounds, which seemed more than reasonable until I realized it was more than we'd paid for any meal combined (including drinks) since leaving Australia.

Sigh.

another photo post

Gate to the Forbidden City from Tianamen Square, Beijing

View of the Great Wall at Simitai

Marching into the distance

Skewers of street food, ready for cooking. The scorpions on the center sticks were still moving.

Tanks in Bangkok, a few days after the coup (the day we left).

Ronald gives a Thai greeting.

smog

It's the most constant feature of life in Beijing, at least since we've been here (and we have it on good authority it's always like this).
The air is usually a thick, grey soup. Yesterday it was thick enough you could barely make out buildings more than a block or two away. It's been the first thing we do each morning - look out the window to check whether we can see the building across the courtyard. If we can, it's a day worth being outside. If we can't, we go back to bed.

One of the few benefits to the smog are the sunsets. Sometimes the sun turns red around 3 o'clock, making the sunset about four hours long. This would be the place to be for a solar eclipse - by the afternoon, you can stare straight at the sun, no problem.

The official translations of signs here often leave something to be desired. Sometimes they add an entire new level of meaning, as well. With apologies to Stephen's Konglish files, here's a couple of Chinglish examples:

Fun signs seen on a trip to the Great Wall of China:

"Fire is heartless" (but the water, she will love you)

"Don't drive fatigue" (especially if it's hitchhiking)

China

After a month in SE Asia, we've moved north to China. In some ways, it's less foreign in Beijing than it was in Thailand, Laos or Cambodia. At least the areas we've been in Beijing are ultra-modern developed areas (I realize there are other parts of the city and certainly the country that are anything but).
However, as a tourist this is a harder area to function in, or at least there's more of a language barrier. Everywhere we went the past month people, at least the people who where involved in selling things, spoke English. English menus, english signs. There is far less English spoken or written here. And the various English translations are far harder to understand.

island life

Made it to Bangkok, and after waiting an extra day (the train we wanted was sold out) we made it south to the island of Ko Pha Ngan yesterday. This is time to rest and recover, so our days are empty. Last night partied on the beach with some fellow travelers - all the bars open to the beach and play music, so the atmosphere changes as you walk up and down.
There were quite a few people out (including fire dancers) but nothing like what it will be like in a couple weeks - this is the venue of the Full Moon Party each month, when about 10,000 drunken backpackers descend on the beach to drink and dance to DJs and everything else you do when a lot of people are in one spot to party.

coup time

Woke up this morning in Siem Reap, Cambodia ready to head to Bangkok on a bus after three days of temple-seeing, then hopefully hop on a train south to the beautiful Thai island beaches. However, news of the coup in Bangkok caused us to postpone the trip at least a day, to see what's going on over there. So far it doesn't seem like it will be much of a problem for traveling, but hopefully we'll have a better idea in the next day or so.

The unexpected day of rest gave me a chance to put up some photos and the blog entries below about our time in SE Asia.

Cambodia

From Luang Prabang we took buses south. The first day to the backpacker hot spot of Vang Vieng, then to the capital of Vientiene where we caught a flight to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat.
After Luang Prabang the two Laos stops were uneventful. Vang Vieng has beautiful mountains surrounding it, but the town is not pretty and filled with tourists (like us). Vientiene has very little to recommend it, other than the food offered at the night market along the river.

The temples of Angkor are overwhelming - we spent one full afternoon at Angkor Wat, then two days exploring the other temples in the area. There are a lot of temples in various state of ruin (some people estimate the Angkor area had a million people at the time Angkor Wat was built). All amazing, with the vast quantities of stone and intricate carvings. After a while, however, it's all just too much to take in.

One of my favorite moments came on the Bayon, a large monument north of Angkor Wat. I was looking at a carving of a dancer, one of probably thousands of carved dancers just in the one temple. The dancer's dress had a repeating pattern, a mark suggesting a flower with four petals. It looked like the carver had a chisel tipped with the pattern, and he made them all with the petals aligned straight up and down and across.
Except one flower, tilted just off the axis. The one slight deviation made the carver much more real to me. I wondered if he'd hurried up to get on to the next dancer, or if the slight tilt was his way of sneaking in something to mark that carving as his.



The streets of Siem Reap are full of beggars and tuk-tuk drivers even more insistent than those in Bangkok. None of the drivers or children trying to sell you books or postcards take no for an answer, they just follow you asking you the same thing for half a block or until they see a new target.
More surprising were the amount of vendors selling food, drink and souvenirs outside all the temples, and the children at the entrance of all of them, selling books or postcards. Few of them follow you into the temples themselves, but it can be jarring to leave the calm of a 1,000-year old temple and suddenly have 5-10 kids run up to you, all asking you to buy.

Luang Prabang

monk
Originally uploaded by slack13.

We didn't know how long we'd stay in Luang Prabang, but we ended up staying a few days more. The city is relaxed; the tourist area is the old town with French-style wooden buildings built during the colonial period.
The town is wedged in between two rivers. A hill rising in the center of town has a hill-top temple. At the bottom of the hill is the night market, where vendors sell cheap souvenirs and food. The food is grand, with several regional specialties (the main one is a sauce made up of chilis and dried buffalo skin).
The town has decided its main attraction to tourists are a few large waterfalls just outside Luang Prabang. As you walk, drivers constantly ask if you'd like to go to the falls in the local transport. This is accomplished with two words, so that you could be excused for thinking the name of the falls was "Tuk-tuk waterfall."

slow boat on the Mekong - Sept. 10-12

The Mekong River, even here in Northern Laos when it still has to wind south along the whole of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, is a wide, brown, smooth river. The river appears languid rather than powerful, the brown waters sitting flat under the hills. There's aren't any visible markers of movement until the water finds a rock poking through the surface, when the river throughs up sprays of white and you see how fast the water is rushing south.
We joined the Mekong's waters at the Thai-Laos border. A ferry - nothing more than a long canoe with an outboard motor - took us across to Laos. For US$31 we were issued a month-long Laos visa (Laos uses US dollars and Thai baht as much as its own Kip. Cambodia is even stranger. At 4000 rial to the dollar, Cambodians use US dollars as the primary currency and Rial notes as change (if you pay with two dollar bills for a $1.50 bill, you'll get 2000 Rial back).
After a night in the Laos border village of Huay Xia, we headed for the boat ramp. The two-day ride south to Luang Prabang cost 190,000 Kip ($19).
The boat was meant for cargo, but added 32 wooden benches barely wide enough for two people. At least 80 or 90 passengers are on board, sprawled on the floor among baggage and bags of rice. Those seated are in rows of the small wooden benches, not quite wide enough for two American tourists to share comfortable. The wooden plank making the seat is too narrow, the back too straight for any comfort even for one.
The first day, we stake out an area on the floor behind the seats, leaning against stacked bags. The second day, on a different boat, the only room is on the benches. The floor is far preferable. Benches leave your ass with a dull ache after the first hour. Regardless of how you shift, the ache will stay until you get off the boat six hours later.

up in the sky

When I woke up for the first time in Bangkok, I saw something I hadn't seen in at least a year: smog. The blue sky turned into a grey strip just above the cityscape.
There is no such thing as smog in New Zealand, and I didn't notice any in Australia. Driving past the Wellington airport with a friend one time, we watched a jet take off and noticed something we hadn't seen before in the States. The jet's exhaust left two distinct black tracks in the sky, long after it had gone. The air was clear enough to see blemishes that just blend in elsewhere.

The clear skies of New Zealand changed things even at night. More stars in the sky than I'll bet you'll find in any other developed country.
Even in the cities, the night sky offered as many dots as you'll see in most US rural areas. In NZ's rural areas, there might have been more than even my boyhood home in the middle of Montana.
But the most impressive night sky I've seen was from the deck of a sailboat in Australia's Whitsunday Islands during a new moon. The Southern Cross was nearly obscured by all the other points of light suddenly present in and among the cross.

Sept. 4 - in Bangkok

Bangkok is a frenetic place, but the chaos seems like it might just be the outer, visible layer on a city with a calm heart. Or maybe it's just full-go with a few pockets of calm in the shaded alleys.
The first impression for a tourist, at least a white backpacking tourist, is the number of people who eagerly ask you to redistribute a bit of your wealth into their pocket.
Generally they're asking for a swap: your money in exchange for transport. Every few feet on the street someone will offer you a ride in a tuk-tuk or taxi, or tell you the attraction you're walking to is closed and they have an even better destination to take you to (generally these "offers" are more indiscriminate shouting. And a tuk-tuk is a two-person cart hooked to the back of a motorcycle).
After a day, the people making these "offers" descend from the forefront of your awareness into the background noise. As your mind adjusts to Bangkok, the shouts reach annoyment status far less regularly.

Sept. 3

The day our trip shifted from Australia to SE Asia, with a 9-hour flight from Sydney to Bangkok:

Land in Bangkok near midnight. Exit customs, see the sign for our hotel's courtesy car on the railing separating the newly-departed passengers from everyone else in the airport's lower level.
We're looking for the sign because we made the decision to spend $90 (about the same as we'll spend on all our accommodation combined the next three weeks) for a Western-style airport hotel. The thought of landing in Bangkok at midnight and dealing with the chaos and transport options made overpaying for a night seem justified.
We waited with a group of other Westerners headed to the same hotel. The driver didn't show for a few minutes, then came to say the car was full and some of us would have to wait.
When it comes back, the courtesy car turns out to be a packed van and a pickup piled high with baggage. Ours are added to the load, we're ushered into the crowded vehicles and are off.

Every driver in Bangkok, whether transporting tourists or riding a motorcycle, drives the same: just a shade faster than conditions permit, trusting everyone else to do the same. The traffic flows around and through itself against all logic. On a two-lane road, there will be three lanes of traffic. On a three-lane road, there will be four lines of vehicles squeezing past each other.

The cars took us across the expressway, then off into a maze of alleys lined with tin shacks selling food or beer, lit primarily by strings of Christmas lights. Chickens walked among the small buildings, then suddenly the hotel rose out of the incongruous surroundings.
The hotel wasn't worth $90 if it was in the States, much less here where our next night's room cost about $7. The guy in line ahead of us, without a reservation, got a room for two-thirds the price. But it was easier than navigating Bangkok at night dealing with jet lag and culture shock.

Angkor Wat

It's a dodgy connection and a dodgy keyboard, so all the real updates will wait for later. Flew from Laos to Cambodia today (woke up at 4:30 a.m., flight left at 6:30 a.m., got in at 9:30 and had a half day to see the temple).
We have a three day pass to the temple complex, which is how long we'll stay here. This afternoon was spent walking and wandering Angkor Wat itself - the best thing about the place is it's completely open, you can go anywhere. The worst thing is the sheer number of tourists. The tourists aren't going to stop anytime soon, so I think the freedom will.

speeding up

We got off the slow boat and spent an equally slow few days in Luang Prebang, Laos (I realized I don't know exactly how many days it was. At this point, it's all blurring together a bit).
The town, at least the old (and tourist) center, has an easy-going feel. It has a heavy French influence from the colonial days, which gave it, at times, the familiar air of New Orleans' French Quarter. We used Luang Prabang as the base we haven't had for some time, giving us a chance to sleep in, wander aimlessly and revel in trying all the different cheap but good Laotian food. One afternoon a ride to the local waterfalls, a wander through the old palace-turned-museum. Another day walking to the hill-top temple and sampling the night market. Mostly just relaxing and enjoying having some travel companions - two Americans who also spent the past year in New Zealand.

Today, we came south by bus, traveling on narrow, winding roads along and over jungled mountains, with sheer rock cliffs jutting out of the greenery in the distance. Passed through many villages, just lines of wooden thatched huts lining the road. The road didn't even out until the final hour or so of the six-hour journey.
Vang Vieng, our stop for the night, can't be more different from Luang Prabang. It's a town that's grown up around a bus stop, with wide, dusty streets. Every other building seems to be under construction or renovation, as are the sidewalks (which often give way to an open drainage ditch). This town has no old influences, just the influence of the tourists. It's little more than a couple intersections of guesthouses and restaurants, most of which are screening old episodes of Friends for some reason.

over the river and through the woods, to Laos we go...

Spent the last two days on a long, slow boat plying the Mekong River from the Thai/Laos border south through Laos to Luang Prabang, which has a reputation as the prettiest city in Laos.

So far the main thing of note in this country is the currency: 10,000 Kip to 1 US dollar. If I traded in 100 dollars, I'd be a Laotian millianaire.

Even with the easy conversion, it's a bit tough, since all my money has already been exchanged for Thai Baht (37 to the dollar) and then to Kip. It's also a bit odd to see numbers on a menu like this: 8,000 for a beer; 15,000 for fried rice.

And after a few days in a country where a double room costs about $4.50 and food rarely breaks the $2 mark, I find myself thinking things like: I'm not about to go in that overpriced cafe - food is 60 cents more a dish!
At the night market today I heard an American couple balk at a purchase of a quite intricate carved wooden elephant. The too-high price: $6.

A few photos from Thailand:


Bangkok's Grand Palace Complex


Bangkok intersection

Ko San Road, the tourist center of Bangkok


Trekking in Northern Thailand

Dancing in a hill tribe village

Sunset in the village


the Chiang Mai market

north in Thailand

Left Bangkok after just two days to meet up with friends up north in Chiang Mai.

In Bangkok, we mostly just walked around (and sweated) in the heat to get a feel for some of the city, and checked out Buddhist temples (there's a lot of them - more than 300, the book says). Our second day was mainly spent in the Grand Palace complex, which also includes an ornate temple containing a Jade Buddha.

Took the night bus to Chiang Mai on Tuesday night hoping to catch our friends (Americans we met in New Zealand) before they left on a three-day hike Wednesday morning.
Chiang Mai is known for treks taking tourists to hill tribe villages - people well away from the Thai cities and some of the poorest people in the country. We ended up catching our friends and going on the trek with them. The hiking itself was quite nice - we carried backpacks with clothes and a few other niceties, while the food was prepared for us. The hike wasn't too demanding, although the first day was all uphill and the heat/humidity was well up there. Over the three days we walked through a number of villages. Generally they're loose collections of buildings made of bamboo with thatched roofs, with chickens, pigs, dogs and cats roaming around the dirt. The villagers subsist on agriculture - we saw mostly corn, some soybeans and other crops; the tour books say opium is also a major part of some tribes' incomes - and selling crafts to the tourists.

The second night we actually camped in a village. The local children sang and danced for us. Saw the local school as well.

The trip also through in a few extras - one afternoon the hike was eased by riding elephants for part of the route and today the final distance was covered by bamboo rafts.

Now we're in Chiang Mai for another day to finally see the city (and relax a bit). Sunday we'll head to Laos, then make our way toward Cambodia.

bangkok

typing this on a bar's free internet - so it'll be quick [shift key doesn't work, either]. flew in yesterday, walked around the city today. it's hot. after a year in new zealand, and a month in australia's winter without humidity, i'd just about forgotten what this was like. feels like i'm back in mississippi. actually, with the smog, heat and humidity it feels more like houston. not good. i'm enjoying the rest of the city so far - it's good to be somewhere a little bit crazy. the roads are hectic - crazy drivers, cross at your own risk crosswalks. tuk-tuk drivers are annoying. streets are also annoying - we wandered in a maze of alleys for nearly an hour before we found the guesthouse this evening. street vendors everywhere - lots of food on sticks. i'm always a fan of food on a stick.

In Sydney, again, after a three-day trip to Uluru/Ayer's Rock in the Red Center. We fly to Bangkok on Sunday, but our last three days won't be much for sightseeing. We're more just trying to recover after the past month and get some things sorted out - we're sending another package home (the tent and a few other things we don't figure we'll need from here).

big red

Ayer's Rock, or Uluru, is the iconic image of Australia's outback, and possibly of the country as a whole.
You see pictures of it in every shop, in every travel book. I don't know when I first saw a picture of the Rock, but I'm sure it was when I was a kid in some book. The point is, just about everyone knows what it looks like, even those people who haven't thought about traveling to this side of the world.
But the thing is, they're wrong.
I was a bit worried seeing the Rock would be like seeing Mt. Rushmore. You see all the pictures of Mt. Rushmore, and then you get there, and it looks exactly like the pictures. So much so that the actual Mt. Rushmore is less impressive than a picture of Mt. Rushmore - the real thing has nothing extra to offer.
Uluru is nothing like that.
For one thing, when you see the pictures, you don't notice or can't see the texture of the thing, the ancient weathering scars and pockmarks. You don't realize how many different views there are, depending where you look from. You don't see just how it looms over the flat red desert. You don't have a sense of just how much texture the rock has, or how the color changes throughout the day with the sun's movement. You don't get to see how it appears more than anything to be a painted backdrop as you drive toward it, until the moment where it suddenly becomes very much three-dimensional.
You don't get to feel the heat and dust of the dry desert air and the sun's unceasing glare as you walk around the base of the rock, or the silence.
You don't realize how each curve, each protrusion, each cut, each indentation has it's own character. You don't realize how when you're close up to the Rock, each spot, each nook seems to have its own special character, at once separated and a part of the whole.
You don't get lost in the unreal contrast and edge where the deep, deep red meets the endless deep blue of the sky; you don't see the sharp edge where rock and sky push against each other, or the soft touch of green the trees provide. You don't feel how the colors, the texture, the silence, the massiveness of it all seem to give the Rock an ageless feeling.
You don't see the difference in the rock itself, how parts of it are curved and raked smooth by eons of wind and sand, or how other parts are jagged or just missing where boulders have fallen off. You don't see the place where the red stone seems to drip onto a grey exposed patch like candle wax.
Most of all, you don't get the sense of Uluru having been here for much longer than you can imagine, of how insignificant and out-of-place the tourists walking up one of its ridges look, of how it seems to exude a quiet presence.

I can now confirm....

...Kookaburra does sit in the old gum tree.

red back

It's the name of one of Australia's deadly spiders, but what I'm talking about today is the state of my own trailing side. After a day of snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef (a full day - almost 5 hours in the water) and an under-application of sunscreen, I came out with a serious sunburn. It probably was inevitable, given the amount of time my bare back faced the sun, but it's been a while since I had a painful burn.

Looks like the pattern for now is a bunch of (mostly prewritten) posts at once when I get a connection (and time).

We are in Cairns today (got in yesterday on the overnight bus, and essentially spent the day catching up on sleep as well as walking around the city center for an hour or two). I did the snorkel trip - didn't think I'd had enough after just two short snorkel sessions on our sailing trip. The reef looks just like the nature documentaries make it out to be. Brightly colored fish, lots of crazy shapes of coral, all sorts of different things everywhere you look. Didn't see anything really big - no turtles, no sharks. Saw a lot of fish I'd seen in aquariums or pet shops, and some I'd never seen before (lots of different parrotfish). The colors of the coral itself weren't quite as bright as the TV shows might have led me to believe, but I hear part of the problem is the tourism itself tends to kill some of the coral.

It's been a week of water - two nights on a sailboat (saw whales, attended a beach party, did a little snorkeling, stayed up too late and woke with the sunrise) followed by the day of snorkeling. Now we're headed to the land of no water - we fly to Uluru/Ayer's Rock tomorrow morning.

timing

On this trip we're headed to some great places, but we're not heading there at a great time.
Australia is an exception. Any other time, I think northern Australia would likely be too hot. Right now, it's pretty good (although another 5-10 degrees would be welcome some days).
However, we're headed to SE Asia for Monsoon season, then northern China in October (could be cold), then the UK and Ireland in November (will be cold). We cap it all off with a short stint in Iceland on the way home in late November. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing we'll have about four hours of sun each day.

The worst part about cruising along in winter or fall for nearly a year isn't the weather. We're sitting in Australian winter now, and the weather's better than New Zealand's summer ever was.
No, the worst part is the daylight hours. Outside of maybe next month in SE Asia, I'm not going to see sunlight past 6:30 p.m. until the days lengthen back home next summer. We're on the wrong side of Daylight Savings for a year.
It makes it hard to squeeze in a long day's traveling, especially when you tend to sleep in slightly past dawn.

Daylight isn't the only thing we've missed perfect timing. The currency fluctuations haven't been in our favor, either. When we got to New Zealand the NZ dollar was at a several year high against the US dollar. At the time, of course, we were primarily spending our US savings. After a year of earning NZ dollars, the Kiwi has fallen from around 75 cents to the US$ to 61 cents.
It's kind of like buy high, sell low. At least our money should go farther once we get to Thailand.

it's big

After a year in New Zealand, you lose track of the scale of things elsewhere. Australia has pounded back into my brain a scope closer to my US experience.
There are real cities here, cities you can walk around in for 20 minutes and still be in the city. There are things a day's drive from each other, and there are roads wide and straight rather than twisting and narrow. There are also legal speed limits in excess of 100 kilometers an hour (I was giddy with joy the first time I saw a sign for 110 on a four-lane road outside of Melbourne. Finally, the chance to drive as people were meant to drive. Quickly.)

All that I'm enjoying. I'd forgotten how much I loved being in the middle of a large city, just feeling the bustle going on around me. Even in Auckland, the heart of the CBD was only about two blocks wide. In Wellington, I could walk from one end of the city to the other in about 30 minutes. Sydney is on a proper American scale - alone, it has more people than New Zealand.

There is a downside. New Zealand was a small enough market for some of the American consumerism to pass it over as not worth bothering with. Australia seems to have embraced American-style chains and consumerism. I feel a bit like I returned home, with all the American brands I'm seeing for the first time in a year.

In a lot of ways, Australia (especially the cities) may as well be the States. But the cities we've seen so far - Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane - all have a pleasant bit of character too many US cities lack. Mostly it's about water. Melbourne and Brisbane are built around rivers and Sydney has its harbor. The water softens the harshness of the city landscape.

marketing

I know the soundtrack here is slightly different. Not very different - the radio playlists are, I'm guessing, almost identical. However, there are a few songs I know are distinctly Kiwi and probably haven't been heard over there. Therefore, I'm assuming there are a few others I hear regularly and don't know are Kiwi, and don't realize no one else in the world is hearing as often as I am.
It's a self-evident fact, but it's not something I'd ever really thought about before. I've realized, however, Australians and New Zealanders think about it often.
The States is still the ultimate market. It's where the money is, and where the fame is. But at the same time, the Aussies and Kiwis have a bit of a fatalistic streak to them. Someone the other day was amazed I knew who AC/DC was. They didn't realize the band had ever had any sort of profile in the States. Of course, I imagine most Americans had no real idea AC/DC was Australian.
And sometimes the pessimism is warranted. Apparently, one of the biggest Australian rock bands of the late 80s/early 90s was some group called Cold Chisel. If I've ever heard one of their songs, I don't know it.

And another thing, while I'm on the subject of marketing. I haven't seen a Foster's over here at all. There is a lot of Australian beer, but Fosters isn't the common name.
(And one other point on beer: for some reason, the only major U.S. beers to be exported are Budweiser and Miller Genuine Draft. Who struck the deal putting those two together?)

missed opportunity

When we flew from New Zealand to Australia, first we flew from Christchurch to Auckland. I was looking forward to getting an aerial view of the country we had seen on the ground.

Unfortunately, the day was rainy and the entire country was covered in clouds. The day was horrible on the ground. It was a bit odd to rise above the clouds and see the sun shine and blue sky. Instead of the view of the NZ landscape, we got a blank canvas of white.

rapidly running out of time

Just got off a boat after three days of sailing. Just have a few minutes before catching an overnight bus north to Cairns. Spending two days there, then flying to Uluru/Ayers Rock on Monday. A few days in the outback, and then back to Sydney for our final days in Australia.

I'm loving this country. The weather helps - 75 every day and sunny in the middle of winter - along with the beaches and everything else. Not sure I want to be here in summer, though. Might be a bit hot.

better late than never

The posts I wrote last week but couldn't get off the laptop:


Aug. 20
Brisbane
A day of relaxation. It's an odd feature of traveling: you often need a break from the vacation. After two weeks traveling in Australia, combined with our travels the last month in New Zealand, it was time for a day off.
We ended up with a free place to stay for the first time in Australia. One of our former roommates from Wellington is from Brisbane, and we ended up staying here with his mom, who has served as a tour guide and host.
Today we took sight-seeing mostly off the agenda. Woke up and headed to a city park with barbecues for a brunch of lamb chops, eggs and grilled vegetables. Then a walk around the city botanic garden, mostly checking out local birds, and an afternoon of catching up on newspaper reading, TV watching, e-mail writing and blog postings.

Tomorrow, the travel gears up again. We catch a 7:45 a.m. bus north to Hervey Bay and Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island and apparently one of the scenic highlights of Australia's East Coast.

Aug. 19
A day to see Brisbane. Starting in the late morning, we hopped on a CityCat, a catamaran plying the Brisbane River for public transport needs. Far cheaper than the average river cruise, and it comes with benefits - for $3.60 each we get an all-day pass to the city's ferries, buses and trains. We get the most out of our money. After a walk around the arts center (stopping in the requisite museum) we ride the CityCat up the river to the end of the line and back. That takes up the afternoon, then we head out (with our host) to eat and people-watch on the sidewalk of the nightlife district. Evening concludes with a show - a string quartet performing rock covers and a few originals. The bio says "we're an independent rock band that just happens to be a string quartet." The originals lean more toward lounge blues, but the rock covers produce the appropriate chaos of noise.

Aug. 18
Leave Surfer's Paradise at noon and bus two hours to Brisbane (morning taken up with napping on the beach after dropping the bags at the bus station).
We've phoned ahead - we're staying with the mother of one of our friends from Wellington. First, we have to kill the afternoon in Brisbane. I walk around downtown and end up in a small museum. Kirsten's time is spent talking to travel agents. She's contemplating returning home, as her dad has some health issues. (In the end she decides on Saturday to scrap the idea, for now).
Our host, Jane, fills the evening playing tour guide. She drives us to all the city sights, including a night view of the Brisbane lights from a mountain lookout. Cities always look good from a high night vantage point, and no exception here.

Aug. 17
Bryon Bay to Surfer's Paradise
Surfer's Paradise isn't. There's a long, gold-sand beach, but it's certainly not a special beach in this country of special beaches. There's also not a particularly good surf.
What there is, is property developers. Glass and steel high-rise condo and apartment buildings, loads of retail shops and restaurants. LIke the worst parts of Florida. Even ran across a run-down amusement park in the middle of it all, the kind of gaudy attraction the Mississippi beaches were littered with. A few amusement-park rides, a free-fall swing, mini-golf, all on a concrete lot sprinkled with dirty astroturf and signs screaming out about the thrills you'll have.

Aug. 16
Bryon Bay
A horrible winter's day.
Well, an Australian winter's day, anyway. Must be about 75 degrees, sunny, with a bright blue sky and we're hanging out on the beach.
It was a bit of a late start today. Met up with some Irish friends we'd met in New Zealand, and one thing led to another until it became early in the morning. So today didn't happen until sometime after lunch. When it did, it was quite nice.
A couple hours on the beach soaking in the winter sun, which feels more like summer than New Zealand ever did.
After the beach, we continued on the theme of being slightly late. Headed out to a nearby town we'd read had a spot to view platypus. The town wasn't quite as nearby as we'd thought, and the Lonely Planet guidebook's one-sentence description of the site wasn't as helpful as we'd expected. Asking around at gas stations got us to the pond, but not until the last of the twilight had disappeared.
We looked down into the black water anyway, glimpsed a darker shape and heard a splash. So I heard a platypus. And you can't prove otherwise.
We got back in the car and figured we were halfway to Nimbin, so we might as well see the town.
Nimbin is a bit of an oddity. It's a tiny place, with barely a block's worth of shops, and it's well off the main road. Yet every backpacking tourist takes a day trip to the place. Its appeal is based entirely on its reputation as a town where marijuana laws are unenforced and hippies roam the streets. Hard to tell if the reputation is deserved, by the time we get there (7 p.m., but after nightfall) the streets are deserted. Apparently it's a tourist destination only because of the amount of tourists.

Aug. 15
The bus leaves Sydney at 7 a.m. and doesn't stop in Byron Bay until 8:30 p.m. We're on this bus because we're trying to meet some friends.
A long bus trip, like a long plane ride, places you in a bubble outside reality. Once you sit down your only responsibility, deciding on a destination, has already occurred. During the trip you can't do anything of consequence. You're disconnected from the world. I kind of like the feeling, as long as I've got a book to read or music to listen to or some sort of entertainment to keep me out of my own head and kill the time.

Aug. 14
Sydney - Bondi Beach and the coastline
We head out to the famous Bondi. It deserves the hype - the beach isn't huge, but is still a 15-20 minute walk from one end to the other in the sand. It definitely has the scenic bit down, with the bright sand and blue water curving into the fashionable houses and shops.
The part I can't get over, however, is the crowd. It's a Monday afternoon in what would be February in the rest of the world, and there are people everywhere. The sun is shining but a bit of the warmth is taken off by a breeze. There are some folks in jackets and long sleeves, but most in shorts and sandals or bikinis.
We walk for about two hours south along the coast, a route taking us from the beach along rocks and cliffs, then to another small beach, then the pattern repeats. We walk until the sun sets, then realize we don't know how to get back short of retracing our steps. There's not enough warmth or food for that option, but we end up stumbling on a bus line that works.

The evening is spent deciding whether to buy a bus pass or a train pass for the rest of the trip, since we want to leave Sydney tomorrow. This is a decision Kirsten feels should have been made earlier. It highlights a basic difference in our preferred modes of travel: I like a loose outline of destinations, with few actual details planned out in advance and just taking it as it goes. Kirsten would prefer having a slightly more detailed outline in advance. My approach generally wins out by default, which suits me fine but occasionally leads to frustration in my travel partner.

my jump

Here it is. The video from my death-defying bungy jump, if you want to see it.

missing a connection

I typed up entries for the last 10 days or so yesterday thinking I had a connection for the laptop, but in the end the connection didn't work. So the entries are locked away on a hard drive without a 'net connection.

They'll get up eventually, but for now:

We headed North from Sydney to Byron Bay, where we met up with some Irish friends we'd met in New Zealand. Hung out on the beach - winter weather here isn't bad. It's been 75 and sunny every day.

From Byron we've continued North - spent the weekend in Brisbane and today moved up the coast to Hervey Bay. Tomorrow we're booked for a day trip to see Fraser Island, apparently the world's largest sand island (complete with lakes and rainforest) and then further up the coast for a three-day sailing trip around the Great Barrier Reef.

From there we'll head further up to Cairns, then into the Outback to see Uluru (Ayer's Rock) before returning to Sydney and flying on to Bangkok.

sydney

We took the train from Melbourne to Sydney last night, after catching an Aussie Rules game in Melbourne. Sleeping in economy class seats on a train is not the optimal situation, so thankfully our hostel let us check in when we arrived at 7 a.m. and get in a nap (it's like two sleeps for the price of one!)
The rest of the day was spent wandering around seeing the obvious sights - the Opera House (it's not as white as the pictures would have you believe; there's actually a gold tinge to the coating), the harbor, parks, and the general city. Not enough time to form a real impression of the place, but the city is definitely pretty, especially on a sunny spring day with the harbor filled with sailboats.

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On Aussie Rules Football:

It's the simplest incomprehensible game I know. The rules are simple: kick the ball between two posts in the ground to score. Other than that, the only real rule is if you catch a kicked ball in the air, no one can touch you while you kick. However, the game itself is chaos and often absolutely impossible to follow for a first-timer.

The other experience of note was the stadium itself. Australians are some of the world's biggest gamblers. In the stadium concourse, along with the windows to buy undercooked hotdogs, meatpies and beer, was a sports book. You could walk about 200 feet from your seat and put a bet down on the game you were watching, or any other game you could think of.
What truly amazed me, however, was the sheer number of people sitting there watching and betting on horse races around Australia. There are sports betting facilities in nearly every pub in the country. You certainly don't need to buy a ticket to a football game to bet on horse racing. And yet, that's what people were doing.

melbourne

This is going to be a crazy whirlwind tour of Australia, with just a few days in any given stop. Impressions of the first stop, Melbourne, was of a really nice city. Especially at night, the downtown is beautiful, with the lights of the buildings reflecting off the river running through the center. It has a ton of public transport options, including a large tram network and free city center tourist trains and buses. It also has several different neighborhoods with different feels, good nightlife, a ton of museums and cultural options. A good city to visit.

It also feels more like the States than anything has since I left.
Perhaps it's just that I've forgotten exactly what an American city is like after a year in New Zealand, but Melbourne is big enough (about 3 million people) to compare with a fair-size US city, and it looks just like one as well.
No where in New Zealand felt like a big US city. A lot of NZ felt like the States - the same fast-food chains, the same type of stores - but a lot of it didn't. Everything was on the wrong scale - even the big cities just weren't really big. Sydney has more people than the whole of NZ. Perhaps that's why in Melbourne, and even Sydney, what I've seen of it, I feel more like I'm back in the States. It's the first time I've been in areas of similar scale.

koalas and whales and roos... oh my!

After a couple days checking out Melbourne (mostly walking around the city, as well as stopping by a museum or two and catching a film festival showing - it wasn't all hanging out in dive bars) we rented a car for a two-day trip west along the Great Ocean Road.

The draw of the road is the scenery - for most of its length, the road follows a heavily eroded cliff coastline. The water has eaten away into the cliffs, leaving all sorts of odd formations such as arches and rock stacks in the water a few hundred feet from the rest of the land.
All that was well and good and dramatic. But after a year in New Zealand, you get a bit spoiled with scenery. (About an hour outside Melbourne, Kirsten was reading a brochure on the route. She looked up, saying "This says the views are spectacular. I don't think it's that spectacular." It was at this point we realized just how spoiled NZ had left us).

What was of real interest was the wildlife. We saw kangaroo crossing signs from the beginning of the trip, although the animals themselves were nowhere to be seen as we started the trip. Instead, we scored a sighting of something we hadn't expected. We stopped at a lookout above a surf beach a little after noon, and saw something poking out of the water just off shore. At first I thought it was a bunch of kelp floating along, until it started moving. Pulling out the binoculars, we could see bits and pieces of a whale (whatever it decided to have above the water at any given time), one of the few things we hadn't seen in New Zealand.

A little further along the road was a koala sitting in a tree just off the roadside, looking mostly like a ball of grey fur. And just before nightfall, we passed a kangaroo sitting contendedly at the side of the road, completing a decent trio of sightings for our first day of traveling Australia.
Even got a repeat the next day, when we stopped at another lookout and caught two whales playing in the surf.

Watching a whale, especially from shore, is an odd experience. There were no dramatic leaps out of the water, and precious few flips of the tail. Mostly it was views of the back, which looks for all the world like a rock which happens to be somehow bobbing up and down in the water. Every now and again the black back would disappear, and a flipper would slip above the surface. The most recognizable part of a whale isn't a part at all - it's the spray of water it makes when it breathes. That's the only way I was able to conclusively tell what I was watching was a whale at all the first day.
It's an interesting experience, watching one of the world's largest creatures, but watching just a piece here and there, occasionally having it slip out of view completely.

another stamp in the passport

Landed in Melbourne tonight, making it into Australia with no troubles.

First impression of Melbourne is of a beautiful city - we're staying right downtown next to an urban river lined with skyscrapers, green strips of park and walkways. Each downtown building seems to enhance its presence with colored lights, and the blues and greens reflect off the river. Also we're staying in a hostel affiliated with one of the best dive bars I've seen since leaving New Orleans. (I hadn't realized until now, but New Zealand just didn't have many dive bars. It had rough, rural local pubs and seedy pubs in town. It didn't have any real urban dive bars of the kind New Orleans excels in.) Didn't actually have too much time to explore, since we got in after dark. The weather is already better than what we left, so hopefully we'll get a good day tomorrow to see what the city has to offer.

changing points

This is it - tomorrow we leave New Zealand after more than 11 months and fly to Australia (at least in a week or two I will once again see a beach in beach weather).

I haven't really had a chance to get nostalgic about the whole thing, since I'm still thinking more about the next four months of travel than I am about the past year of living in New Zealand. I suppose the nostalgia will be crippling when I return to the States around the first of December.

Below are a few more posts I wrote over the past couple weeks. Just cleaning out the New Zealand notebook. Hopefully I'll have the chance to post semi-regularly during our travels; I'll at least try to update once every week or two.

excess baggage

One of the things I didn't realize when we came here, and the main reason it's so hard to pack now, is the airlines treat you differently when you're American.
Actually, to be exact, they treat you differently when you're traveling to or from the US. When we came here, we were each allowed to check two bags. They could weigh a total of something like 75 kilograms, or a number almost as large.
Now that we're leaving, and we're not flying directly to the States, the numbers change. We're allowed to check one bag each. It can't weigh more than 20 kilograms.
We came over with one large backpack, one suitcase and some carry-on bags. Each. Now we have to sort all that stuff, along with everything we've acquired in the past year, into the one bag of 20 kilos for the next four months; what's worth paying a hefty fee to ship home; and what we're willing to get rid of.
It's a pain for us at this point in time. It's a perk I'm going to use happily in the future, I'm sure. But it also makes me curious as to how the discrepancy came about: I don't think we pay any more in airfares for the privilege of carrying more luggage. Is it just the airlines are more worried about upsetting Americans who can't carry every worldly possession than they are about upsetting any other nationality? Do we rate more highly on the airlines' service list since we spend more money? Is it a grand social experiment? Or are the airlines just giving into the reality that Americans have more crap, are more attached to it and put up more of a fuss if they can't have it? That's probably it - we get to carry more luggage so the airlines avoid having to deal with our tantrums.

money

New Zealand is small and technologically it's generally behind - its Internet connections are slower and more expensive than most developed countries, its power grid can barely keep up with demand, its electronic goods are more expensive.
However, its small size also allows it to implement national changes quickly if it wants. This week, the country not only phased out the 5-cent coin (they got rid of the penny some years ago), it's also changing the size of all it's other coins (right now, New Zealand has some of the biggest coins in the world. I came across some US change the other day, and was struck by how small and thin it seemed in comparison). For the last week, the new coins and old coins have both been used, a situation that will continue for three months, at which time the old coins won't be accepted anywhere. Almost no one seems to care or even notice, except the vending machine owners.

The banking system also has a few features I wish we had back home. For instance, you can transfer money between any bank accounts, regardless of which banks they are with, with just the account number you want to transfer money into and a few other small details.
This is very handy when you want to pay people or bills. It's instant, you don't have to pay the postage to mail a check, and it's free.
You can also use your ATM card to pay anywhere, with a PIN. I know we have the debit cards back home, but at least when I left, I was generally using a check card and still signing for most things. Here, every business has a key pad by the register so you can enter your PIN. It's literally everywhere, and apparently has been for many years, far more than debit cards have been widespread back home.

a tip

Two notes about restaurants in New Zealand:
1. You don't tip. I haven't tipped anyone in a year. I haven't missed it.
2. They never bring a bill to your table. Every restaurant I've been in has a register by the door. When you're ready to leave, you get up, go to the register, and they find your bill. This threw me a couple time. Also, if you're dividing the bill, sometimes it's nice to have it at the table. But they're always willing to do it at the register, ringing it up person by person.

posting

A few posts I wrote over the past couple of days below...

skiing the south

I've been on several ski areas in Colorado and Montana. Now I've been on three different areas here in New Zealand (hopefully four today) and there are some marked differences down here.
No. 1, the biggest difference: there are no trees. No trees anywhere on the mountain. As far as I can tell, this is a universal rule here.
Everywhere I've been in the States, trees serve as the dividing lines on the ski area. Trees are cleared to make runs, so if you want to know where a run goes, the trees tell you. Sure, there are areas that open up, or open bowls to ski, but on the main mountain, most runs have a tree-lined border.
Not here. For whatever reason, the mountains where the ski fields are located don't have trees. So the ski areas are just one open face. The named runs blend into each other, or are simply the valleys or drainage creases. Sometimes a run is bordered by rocks, but more often it's just a matter of skiing where you can. The small ridges, valleys and cliffs on any mountain side are the only things keeping New Zealand ski areas from just being one wide-open run. And in some cases, that's exactly what you get.

No. 2: the view. Part of this has to do with the first difference, but there's more to it. In the Rockies, the mountains are bunched up. The ski areas might be at higher altitudes than in New Zealand, but the mountains here often rise straight up off a sea-level plain. At a lot of the resorts back home, the base of the lifts is essentially right at the highway. There's the resort, condos, hotels, a whole complex at the base. Even if there isn't, the base of the mountain is the same as the bottom of the ski area.
In New Zealand, the ski areas are generally perched right at the top of mountains that just keep going down. The skiable area or the part that gets snow, is only the top third or quarter of the mountainside. This, along with the lack of trees, means you get panoramic views of a valley floor that's a lot further down than the ski field. At the two areas I've skied the past couple weeks, when you came to a ridge or just before a steep drop, it appeared as though you were at the top of a cliff that fell all the way to the distant valley. It was a bit disorienting, a bit exhilarating, and far more of a view than I've ever gotten on a ski field back home. There also aren't any areas that have turned into resorts the way they are back home. There's not really any place to put the condos and restaurants up on the side of the mountain, and the access roads are mostly just gravel switchback tracks all the way up.

On the down side, the areas here aren't nearly as large and generally don't have near the quality of snow as areas back in the States. Also, they're not particularly cheap. But it is skiing, and there's a quality to New Zealand skiing that's all its own.

falling

It's terrifying.
Standing over a 440-foot drop, in a metal pod suspended by cables. A stretchy cord attached to you by a harness you're not sure anyone really checked was on properly, and a couple of bulky pads around your legs, which are held on by velcro.
You're ferried to the suspended pod by a open-air gondola, with a metal grate floor so you can see all the way down. Then suited up inside the pod, which seems to have as much glass as metal and wood for flooring.
When your name is called, you make your way to the side of the pod without a wall. Your legs are shackled to the cord, so you can only inch forward in a waddle. This is unnatural, so you have to look down. You don't want to look down.
The crew tells you to put your toes over the edge. When you feel you're close enough to the edge, they still think you're a long way away. As you inch forward, you have to look down to control your feet. The ground is more than 400 feet away. It's enough to kick in several survival instincts, all of which don't want to be near that edge. No matter how calm you thought you were, your nerves are wracked seeing the drop.
When you finally get to the edge, you're not sure you're going to be able to jump. You look down; you know you won't be able to jump. You look straight ahead, at a point on the hill in front of you. You hear the man who led you out to the edge count down - "one, two, three." You don't think, you just look straight ahead and jump forward.

Well, they tell you to jump out and away. I didn't, even though I meant to. I bent my legs and leaned forward, preparing to straighten my legs and propel my body forward. What happened instead was I started to fall, looked down, and my body froze. It felt like I jumped, so I didn't know it at the time, but the company videos the whole thing. When I watched the video, I realized I actually fell in that same legs bent position, halfway through the jump.

I'd watched the promotional videos of people jumping before I jumped. I knew when you jumped, your body was parallel to the ground. You fell that way until you dropped far enough for the slack in the bungy to play out. Then the cord attached to your feet caught, and you fell the rest of the way head-first.

That's what I was waiting for when I fell, to swing over and start to fall head-first. It's odd that position would be more comforting, but at least then you know the equipment is working.
The brochures tell you there's eight seconds of free-fall, but it's actually eight seconds of falling until the bungy reaches its full stretch and starts to pull you back up. It's probably closer to two, maybe three seconds of free fall before the cord starts to catch you.
Those two or three seconds felt like 20 as I fell. If you've ever had a falling dream, the kind you wake up from just before you hit, you know exactly what it felt like to fall toward that river bed. I was making a noise, something between a groan and a yell, as I just seemed to fall. My brain tensed. I was falling.

Then, of course, the bungy caught. I swung down and went head-first. When you reach the bottom of the cord's stretch, they say you're about 10 meters off the river bed. I didn't notice. I did notice a bit of pressure, and one contact lens shifted slightly. On my way up, I was just glad I hadn't lost the lens. Then I reached the top of the bounce and went weightless, which was an odd, but expected, feeling. Then another drop I barely noticed. At the top of the second bounce, they had briefed us beforehand, we had to reach to our left knee, grab a strap there and yank it away from our body. This would release our legs from the cord, leaving us suspended by a chest harness as we were pulled back up to the pod. Otherwise, it would be a slow lift feet-first, which didn't seem a pleasant prospect.

Once I pulled the foot release, it was over although I was still dangling in mid-air a couple hundred feet above the ground. At that point, I was gripping the point where the cord attached to my harness and breathing the quick breaths of a post-adrenaline rush. When I was hauled back up and released, my legs were shaking so I could barely stand up. As I watched the next few jumpers through the glass in the floor, I had to kneel down to steady myself.



I have now jumped out of a plane at 12,000 feet and bungy jumped from a pod 440 feet high. The bungy jump was, by far, harder. It was more terrifying and it wasn't as exhilarating afterward.
When you skydive, at least for the first time, you're attached to an instructor. He does all the jumping; you don't really have any control of the process once you're in the plane. Even if it was up to you to do the jump, at that high up the ground is more of an abstract concept than a reality. Free fall at that height doesn't feel like falling; it's like something completely different, a singular sensation. It doesn't feel like you're falling to the ground as much as it feels like the wind is rushing up past you.
But to jump off anything a few hundred feet above the ground, your brain has a very good idea of just what the ground below you means. It's not abstract at all. If you have any fear of heights or of falling, it kicks in big-time.
When you sky dive, it doesn't really feel like the ground is getting close at all until the last few hundred feet. After leisurely checking out the scenery as you're suspended by a parachute, you have a second or two of the ground rushing up at you, then your down. There's adrenaline, but it's a calm rush. Afterward you're on a high, grinning uncontrollably and excited for the rest of the day.
The Nevis bungy also involved falling, but it was an entirely different experience. It was sheer terror. You have to walk out to the ledge, you have to jump. The whole time the ground is definitely rushing up at you, and you're rushing down to it. It's not a calm adrenaline rush, it's a sudden, harsh, drenching of your panic centers. I was in a group of about 20 jumpers. After each person jumped, there was some of the nervous laughter that comes after any intense experience. Most people had a hard time standing for a few moments, as their legs were shaking. But the euphoria accompanying the end of a skydive was nowhere in sight. Immediately after they jumped, people were hyper, anxious to talk about the experience. But on the bus ride back to town, a half hour or 45 minutes after the jump, people were silent, some sleeping, their energy drained.

This is not to say I regret doing the bungy jump. I'm very glad I had the experience. It was something I'd wanted to do since I got to New Zealand. This is the country that invented commercial bungy jumping. And if I was going to do it, I might as well do the biggest. I even have a desire to do it again.
All I'm saying is I can't imagine I'll ever forget the feeling of falling. In fact, when I went to sleep that night I woke up, twice, with falling dreams. They weren't necessarily nightmares. It wasn't that I thought I was going to hit the ground - I had a bungy cord attached.
It was simply, exactly, the feeling of falling.

on our way

Blogging will be harder and harder from here on out, not that I've been eating up New Zealand's network lines with the frequency of my posts anyway. But in less than a week our laptop will be headed home, and we'll be on the road with no telling how often we'll be stopping to log on.

I will get some updates up before we leave NZ on what we've been doing (cramming in tourist stuff - skiing, bungy, walking on glaciers) and perhaps even some reflections on finishing our year here (although that's the last thing on my mind - instead I'm thinking about our crazy four months of traveling ahead).

For now, I'll give a brief geographical update (I'm in an Internet cafe and paying by the minute)...

We've left Queenstown after 10 days or so. Queenstown may be a tourist destination, but it's still a wonderful place to be. You couldn't ask for a more scenic location, nestled against the shore of a lake underneath two rows of mountains. I love the town, and loved to spend time with some friends (and crash on their floor; much cheaper than a hostel) but it's easy to spend a lot of money in Queenstown. Still, a bit sorry to leave.
On Thursday we loaded our stuff in the car once again and headed up the West Coast of the South Island to the Glaciers. There's two easily accessible Glaciers within 20 miles of each other, coming off the top off the Southern Alps and falling toward the ocean. They don't quite make it all the way to the coast, but they do come from about 11,000 feet all the way to 300 or 500 feet above sea level, just a few miles from the ocean (one of the crazy things I still haven't gotten used to in this country is just how close the mountains and sea are. I read a story about someone who climbed Mt. Cook, NZ's tallest mountain at a bit more than 12,000 feet. He started at the ocean coast, and made it to the summit in five or six days).
You can walk on the glaciers, as long as you're willing to pay a company for a guided group tour (they supply the boots and crampons). We'd been to the glaciers before, just after the New Year, but hadn't gotten to do the hike so it was one of the things we wanted to get back to before we left. We got great weather, and the experience was definitely worth the trip.
Now we're outside Chirstchurch in Methven, hoping to get a few more days of skiing in. Today was supposed to be a ski (or snowboard, I might try that for a few days) but the wind was too bad. We'll try again tomorrow.

Then just about one week - Aug. 7 - until we fly to Australia.