Xamen Ek

2008-08-28T00:41:00.000-07:00

India
Part 9 – Agra and the Taj Mahal

I’m going to pick up as if there hasn’t been a 3 month hiatus.

I’m not a complainer; optimism makes me happy. So I tell this next little bit of travel brilliance for sheer comedic value, which, at the time, was completely lost on us.

We bought our bus ticket the night before from Hari Om Travel in Jaipur (never, never, never, never, never, please never go there). Naturally we purchased deluxe tickets for a bus leaving at 6:30 AM.

At 7:30 the next morning the city bus to which we had been directed after showing around our tickets rumbled out of Jaipur with us on it. Our fellow friendly Indians joined us in forced laughter as we explained how we had paid double the price for our ordinary bus ticket to Agra. And, great Brahma’s bull! My unshuttable window from the previous bus had been reincarnated directly beside my assigned seat. Luckily we paid extra to have our bags on board and so with 3 shirts, 2 pants, coat, and knit hat bundled on me, we rumbled on to Agra. We merrily bumped along until a grapefruit-sized stone inexplicably flew through the rear window, shattering shards of glass over everyone. After a short stop to completely knock the glass out of the rear window, we again, somewhat less merrily, continued until reaching Agra to see the famed Taj Mahal.

So, was it worth it?

Take a peek (I mean look at the pictures, they're everywhere).

I’ve been a few places, but after stepping through the portals to see the Taj Mahal my breath caught in my throat. It is the most beautiful piece of architecture I have ever seen. And I say that without equivocation, remorse, shame, or desire that some girl will find me sensitive and end my life of crushing loneliness and interminable yearning.

Quick note for future Taj Mahalers: do not waste your time waiting at the front gate if the line is long. You could be waiting over an hour there to get in. Head to your right from the front gate along the garden wall until you reach the first narrow road you can turn left. Follow that and you will eventually take another left at the next narrow road which will be the side entrance to the Taj Mahal. No wait, same admittance. One tout offered to take us there for $20/person. We eventually talked some guy into getting us there for about $1.50 for the three of us.

The whole of the Taj Mahal looks like it’s carved of finely-chiseled white marble, much like I do with my shirt off. It looks like that because it is. Over 12000 tons of marble was used in the dome alone. The sheer size of the Taj Mahal is mind boggling. I never expected it to be so huge. The plinth the Taj Mahal stands on is 300 square meters alone. Walking inside the structure we viewed the tombs where Shah Jahan’s 3rd wife lies beneath the 44 meter high dome, buried some 350 years ago. There’s no artificial lighting so it’s dim and the caretakers will take small flashlights and press them against the rubies and emeralds embedded in flowering designs in the marble to show how the light reflects and illuminates the whole flower in the dark (just go and see it, you’ll understand what I mean). It seems our caretaker only wanted to do it for us though as he shooed away the Indians that came to see as well. Why? Well the outstretched hand at the end of the 2 minute lightshow explained why.

Besides the Taj Mahal itself there are two red buildings to either side, one is a mosque, and then a couple of gateways, each beautiful alone.

As dusk fell, the dome and minarets turned from the dazzling white of the afternoon to fiery gold, to luminescent sandstone, and then a glowing blue. We left in the same awestruck mood as we entered.

Truly fantastic.

This next installment will finally end the India trip. After which I will talk about Nepal, then Bahrain. Then hopefully my trip to Europe, look for that in about 2012.

2008-05-20T22:39:00.001-07:00

India

Part 8 – Jaipur

Moving from the train to the bus system in India is best likened to a man who, in his desperation to remove his leg caught in a meat grinder, catches the other one as well.

Fearing another train ride, we consulted with a Jaisalmer travel agent who informed us that he sold tickets for a deluxe bus: comfortable beds, restrooms, heat; a thoroughly enjoyable ride. All that was left for us to do was to refund our previously purchased, fully-refundable train tickets and purchase a bus ticket. In his spiel to sell us the ticket, he looked over our train ticket: “Oh, you’re going to have to take the bus anyway, they’re not going to accept this train ticket, it’s ripped!” The rip he referred to was a half inch tear in the upper corner of the ticket, in no way lessening the readability of the ticket. Naturally we laughed him to scorn and chalked it up to another trick of the amoral salesmen we had met. Brian wasn’t laughing, however, when he stepped up to the ticket counter to refund the tickets: “I can’t take that, it’s ripped.” Bear in mind that the paper stock used to print these train tickets is actually 1 ply toilet paper. After arguing for a few minutes, he was ordered to the corner of the room where paper and paste lay ready to reassemble the hopeless rip in the upper corner of the ticket. After doing so, Brian pushed his way back to the front of the line as he had been trained.

Ticket counter man: “You need to wait in line.”

Brian: “No, here’s the ticket, give me my money.”

Ticket counter man (looking over the ticket): “You didn’t do a good job pasting it, go back and do it again.”

Brian: “No, give me my money.”

Ticket counter man: “You’re holding up the line, go back and repaste the ticket.”
Brian: “No, I’m not moving, give me my money.”

Displaying the obdurate immovability of a 3000 year old Buddha statue, Brian finally disgusted the ticket counter man into relinquishing our funds, allowing us to purchase our bus tickets and experience the worst ride of our trip.

The bus was conveniently timed to leave Jaisalmer at 4PM and arrive in Jaipur at 5 AM. We had purchased sleeping bunks with doors that slid closed. The trip began innocuously enough, with us staring out our full length windows as the Jaisalmer desertscape raced away. We had purchased three bunks directly beside each other but the conductor moved me to the front of the bus to accommodate a family sitting together. We quickly discovered the lack of any toilet facilities on the bus, prompting me to immediately impose a moratorium on water drinking. After about an hour, the bus slowed to allow more people on. A few people attempted to get off and use the bathroom, in response “no time, no time!” by the driver and conductor. Pretty soon a tidy knot of passengers had gathered at the front demanding to be let off. We stopped in a little village “Three minutes!” the conductor demanded. After three minutes exactly, the bus began moving again, prompting people to pop out of nearby bushes, pulling and buttoning up pants.

What’s the hurry? You might ask. Turns out the time was needed for the frequent stops to cram more passengers into the already packed bus. Aisle space between seats is actually an excellent source of income for unscrupulous drivers and conductors. Thus it was that within a couple of hours of the 13 hour trip, the aisle was packed with people barely able to stand let alone squat or sit on the floor, spilling over into our narrow berths. Being that I was separated from my fellow travelers and the villagers crammed in beside me spoke precious little English, I took to reading my favorite magazine, The Economist. This lasted about an hour, until darkness fell, both inside and out. Though there were sufficient lights on board, they were inexplicably extinguished in favor of the dim reflection of the headlights from the front of the bus. The question then became: what to do with the remaining 11 hours of darkness spent alongside sweet smelling rural Indian farmers crammed into my berth? The apparent answer: freeze. Being that we were driving through the desert, the temperature dropped from 90 degrees to about 40 degrees within a couple of hours. We were promised heat on the bus right? That’s why all my warm clothes were securely stowed beneath the bottom of the bus right? Yes, the huddled masses yearning to receive cheap bus fare provided some body warm, but the five foot horizontal window that stretched to the side of my berth didn’t…quite…close. And so, the next 11 hours were spent crammed in the fetal position for warmth, teeth chattering and wind whistling around my T-shirt and shorts. All except for the twenty minute dinner stop at 11:30 PM where we desperately attempted to purchase blankets from long closed stores.

And so it was that at 5 in the morning, we arrived in Jaipur in a state of omnidirectional, arbitrary anger that I directed at the first unfortunate rip-off artist who happened to work at the hotel in which we stayed.

What to say about Jaipur itself, one leg of the famed Golden Triangle of India? After sleeping until 10, we ventured to the City Palace for some touring around:

I am very charming

And then on to Jantar Mantar: a wholly impressive array of 18^th century instruments of astronomical and astrological calculation. The three of us being engineers, we reveled in archaic, technical delight.

Here are Brian and I with an instrument designed to tell the fortune of fellow cancers (I’m the one with the crab pincer).

Hawa Mahal, where the women in puja watched parades.

And then on to another monkey temple. Here I am in a state of hominid humility.

Monkeys love romantic views

This proves it.

Next on this ever-slowing conveyer belt of blogging: Agra!

2008-04-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

India

Part 7 – Jaisalmer

As before, I would recommend viewing this blog on the blogger.com website, not on any RSS syndication (like Google Reader) so that the pictures all line up.

Ah the train again, here is Steve, delighting with his fellow passengers at the start of another long ride:

Within hours, the soft blue of Jodhpur had given way to the sandy gold of Jaisalmer.

Jaisalmer is the largest western city on the road to Pakistan; it’s out there. Despite its remoteness, tourists still flock to Jaisalmer for the magic of its dunes, camel tours, fortresses, havelis, and Italian food:

My standing recommendation however, is simply ask to be let off in Italy while on the way to India if you really would like some Italian food.

Jaisalmer is home to a fabulous series of Jain temples, awash in intricate carvings. Jains are notable in that they reject killing of any animals. To enter their temples you must remove all leather items. However, to keep this a family blog, I will refrain from all leather jokes. The most ardent devotees wear face masks and sweep the ground in front of them to avoid harming even microorganisms.

The priests within the temple network gladly tour you through their temples, explaining and showcasing the beautiful carvings, after which they ask for a tip, expressly against the instructions displayed on several placards throughout the temple. Some alternatively ask for a souvenir of an American dollar, preferably a 5 or 10 dollar bill.

Likely the most popular Jaisalmer attraction is the desert camel safari. These come in varying lengths, but most will have an overnight stay. The desert can be a sinister and unforgiving place, as anyone can learn from the movies. To be ready, we decked ourselves out in extreme desert gear.

We were ripped off in our purchase of this hardcore gear, but luckily we were able to recoup our losses by selling the clothes to incoming freshman at the local jihadi training camp.

Here’s me and my ride:

Here’s a video of me in the drivers seat

And here I am making a hand shadow of a camel while riding a camel.

Sunset in the desert is gorgeous, after which the temperature drops “like it’s hot”. Our guides gathered up some scrub wood, built a fire, and cooked a dinner of chapati, daal, rice, and curried vegetables, all seasoned with sand. Afterward, we lay around the campfire listening to the camelman’s songs, staring up at a moonless, star-spangled sky. After several cold hours under thick, camel-musk-scented blankets, we awoke, ate a sandy breakfast and cameled back to town. Recommended, do try it out.

We had the good fortune of being in Jaisalmer over New Years, so we attended a party thrown by our guesthouse. It’s difficult to accurately describe the amount of shock we experienced at this party. The party started out tame enough, but as midnight drew nearer, we noted that something was seriously wrong, and became increasingly more wrong. The assembled crowd started dancing, jumping up on stage and careening about, but without the help of any alcohol. Now I’d been to a few Mormon dance parties in my time, so that part didn’t terribly surprise me. But looking about at the wildly dancing crowd of about 300, it was clear to see that about 98% were men, young men our age and younger. Each was creating a dance out of the thin, cold, Jaisalmer air. One was hopping on one leg like an amputee, another looked like he was guiding a Boeing 777 onto a runway, still another looked like he was waving for a rescue ship after being marooned on an island. The beauty part was each was smiling like a synchronized swimming contestant and intent on convincing each of us that his dance was the coolest on the dance floor. We were constantly being grabbed, and spun around, our limbs gripped and marionetted into the latest extemporaneous dance craze.

Being the hit of the party was tiring, so we left and greeted 2008 from our balcony amid the whoops and fireworks from the rooftops below.

The next morning we set off for our next destination: Jaipur. Until then.

2008-02-28T14:57:00.001-08:00

India

Part 6: Village Tour around Jodhpur

The “village tour” is a popular tourist attraction in many places throughout the world. The idea being that the tour operator helps you escape from the modernity, rush, and grime of the city and takes you “off the beaten path” to small villages where the locals really live as they have for centuries. I had been on a few in various parts of the world previously and was a bit wary of them, but I thought I’d give this one a try.

On the way, we witnessed our only elephant spotting in India. The head and front were all painted but we only had time to grab our cameras and take a picture of the hindquarters as we passed.

Our first stop was the site of the Khejarli massacre where 278 years ago the local maharaja started cutting down trees for a new palace in a neighborhood of Bishnoi people. Bishnois are a separate religious sect characterized by their reverence for nature. To a westerner, the Bishnoi appear to be Hindu, though their religion is significant because of its origins as a dissenter to the Hindu faith. In any event, the Bishnoi decided to start the tree hugger movement by literally hugging trees and getting their head cut off by the Maharaja’s soldiers.

A nearby village housed a community of potters. We were able to squat beside them and be instructed on how to spin the wheel, form clay and set the pots out to dry. The village looks like a Civil War memorial battlefield with its drying pots resembling piles of cannonballs.

UNICEF works on a myriad of projects for children the world over. In this village, they’ve organized a small school.

It seems one of the items of instruction at this school is the knowledge that all foreigners possess pens in bountiful and free flowing quantities. Thus, we received a never ending stream of requests. I was also unaware that elementary photography was taught, alongside the alphabet and names of animals, at the UNICEF school. As proof, here are pictures taken by children after they grabbed our cameras.

And yes, those are my glasses on his face.
Another stop to a small house where an elderly lady was taking care of a cosmeticked baby (that means the baby had makeup on him for some reason).

Each village is composed of a single ethnic/religious group. The diversity of beliefs between groups was quite interesting. The potters village was Muslim, we then visited an Untouchables village, then a Bishnoi village.
Here we are in the Untouchable village.

I asked my friend Jaideep about the caste system while in Bombay. He laughed: “C’mon man, all that Untouchable stuff was gone after Gandhi; nobody cares about that anymore.” Most likely true in Bombay. Positively and completely untrue in the villages of Rajasthan. The lowest caste in Hindu tradition, the Untouchables, or Dalits, have definite restrictions. After visiting the Untouchables we went to the home of this slightly higher caste family for lunch.

When an Untouchable approaches the home, he is not permitted to pass beyond the gate, the homeowners may not touch him, and if the Untouchable eats with them, he must use a separate set of dishes which must then be washed with sand.
Interestingly enough, when we stopped for lunch, we were led to a room and asked to wait and eat our meal there, as our entrance to the kitchen area would make it ceremonially unclean. The status of a Westerner, as one outside the caste system, tends to vary depending with whom you’re speaking. Some say Westerners have no restrictions and are free to interact with any caste, some simply tolerate us, and some find us polluting.

In the Untouchable village, we witnessed some traditional weaving.

In a communal courtyard, villagers dry out cakes of lentils which is eaten as an accompaniment to meals.

Can an Untouchable rise out of their position and become a doctor, engineer, teacher, etc? Absolutely, but to do so they must almost certainly leave their village. In their community, they are constantly under the stigma of who they are and are not permitted to rise above. Moving to a larger city can shed that label, though their surname will betray them if anybody cares. However, it’s often a matter of getting there as Untouchables are almost certainly poor. What is most disheartening however is asking these typse of questions to rural Untouchables. Most simply convey a lack of desire to do anything of that nature, claiming that this is just who they are. It’s a thought repulsive to me as an American, where our culture encourages anybody from any background to rise to the fullness of their potential through ingenuity and hard work.

Over lunch, I spoke with the tour operator and owner, Deepak. I had to commend him for the best village tour I’ve ever taken. Most of these tours tend to whore out the culture of those you would like to see. Take for instance the Karen and Akha tribe tour near Chiang Mai, Thailand where women elongate their neck and limbs with iron coils. The cultural reasons that once prompted these people to follow this practice have now vanished. Now young girls’ lives are hijacked and the aspiration of their next 50 years becomes sitting with a forced smile inside a hut while westerners come and gawk at the sideshow, exclaiming what a “beautiful culture” these people have. This is an extreme example, but the oddity of the culture of some indigenous people has the effect of turning them into beggars as the rich Westerner comes trouncing through. They have little more to do than sit and wait for the next tour to show up as their original diligence and industry vanish.

Deepak ensures that, in exchange for allowing us to visit these people, he provides them with medical treatment and school supplies and does as little as possible otherwise to disrupt their lifestyle. I would highly recommend that if you’re going to Jodhpur, check out Bishnoivillagesafari.com and contact Deepak directly instead of booking through a hotel, which takes a commission. In case you’re wondering, I do not receive any compensation for my endorsement.

To round out our trip, we visited Roop Raj the durrymaker in his village of Salawas. Roop Raj resembles many of the other villagers we saw along our way but when he starts to speak you know he means business, literally. He has gone from being a local weaver to hobnobbing with international clientele and being splashed around on CNN, BBC, and newspapers throughout Asia and Europe. I like people to mistake my house for their local Pier 1 Imports showroom so naturally I picked up one of his fabulous durries. Here is Roop Raj smilingly modeling a durry crafted by his own hand in his village.

Lastly, we visited a traditional opium ceremony. Opium is illegal in India but the locals have special rights preserved for them to continue with their traditional practices much like peyote with American Indians or marijuana with Willie Nelson.

When I return, you’ll be treated to a tour through the fantasyland of Jaisalmer!

2008-02-16T23:50:00.001-08:00

India

Part 5: Jodhpur

I researched quite a bit about Rajasthan before leaving. The mass of aspiring travel writers whose blogs I sifted through abused words like: enchanting, mystical, magical, fairytale-like. If there are any places that merit those words, they are Jodhpur and Jaisalmer.

The history of India is replete with leaders attempting to unite the varied peoples and geographical areas: Akbar, Aurengzeb, the British Raj, Gandhi, etc. The Rajput clans of Rajasthan constantly battled against this assimilation, preferring instead to continuously attempt to wrest power and land from each other. Their palaces and fortresses are relics of this continual struggle: protecting them while ostentatiously declaring their preeminence and wealth. As a result, walking through these structures feels like a tour through an unfake version of Disneyland.

Wealthy merchants in those days kept ornate residences, called havelis. They vary in their opulence according to region and the status of the merchant, but most have carvings and paintings adorning their walls and courtyards. Families pass them down through generations and the homes have become a popular place for travelers to stay. Here is Steve at Singhvi’s Haveli in Jodhpur, a lovely little family run joint in the heart of Jodhpur.

Please join us in the fantastic view of the Jodhpur fortress from our dining balcony at Singhvi’s Haveli.

Jodhpur is known as the blue city. Blue is traditionally the color of the Brahmins, the priestly class in Hindu society. That’s not to say that everyone in Jodhpur is a Brahmin, but it is to say that Jodhpurians tend to spread the blues despite their class. Having most buildings light blue gives the feeling that you are in perpetual twilight, either dawn or dusk. This is accentuated when you actually take a walk at dawn or dusk, as we did.

Cows are holy in India. When I asked Jaideep why this is, he told me because they provide milk and it would be stupid to kill something that sustains you, so they became holy. Jaideep is an engineer and I thought his answer exceptionally pragmatic, but it turns out that he’s essentially correct. Cows are revered as motherly and nurturing as they provide milk. Their sanctity is well represented throughout Hindu holy books. Another idea is that Shiva, one of the Hindu trinity, has a vahana (his ride) that is Nandi, the bull. Whatever the reason, holy cows are everywhere in India. Readers of my Elephanta post will recall my lack of faith in holy animals. The sacred struggle is accentuated when these blessed bovines amass and loiter on the crowded streets and walkways of a town like Jodhpur like a gang of toughs.

Take this demon cow for instance.

On more than one occasion we beat a hasty retreat as a cow transformed a walkway into a bullfighting arena. Cow dung is used to thatch roofs and seal walls, to burn as fuel and mosquito repellent, and to remind foreigners that watching the walkway in front of them is likely more important than whatever oddity they’re gawking at. Additionally, cows are great entertainment. Here I am cheering on what I childishly refer to as a cow fight.

Anyway, back to Jodhpur, the fortress at Jodhpur is reserved as a museum.

While there I met with some of my relatives

(think about it….got it? If you’re still puzzling, it means you don’t personally know me, in which case I must commend you for having the excellent taste to read my blog. For your benefit, it would be helpful to know that I am asked on daily basis how I am related to Britney).

While in Jodhpur we also embarked upon an eye-opening village tour which is soon to be recounted. Check back again now.

2008-02-08T12:10:00.000-08:00

India

Part 4: Jaipur to Jodhpur

Bombay had been a blast but we couldn’t stay. The draw of ancient fortresses, vast deserts, nuclear-backed border tensions, and cities named after colors pulled us to Rajasthan: the westernmost state in India. First stop: Jodhpur, the blue city. Then to Jaisalmer, the golden city. On to Jaipur, the pink city, with no time unfortunately to stop in the white city of Udaipur.

We started by flying Deccan Air to Jaipur and then immediately caught a train to Jodhpur. Immediate is perhaps too strong of a word when referring to a train station in India. Indian Railways spans the country and is generally quite reliable when you can obtain a ticket. Being in India over December and January is not the time to easily obtain a ticket as Indians love to travel and can be found all over their fair country. A few years ago, the Rail Authority began holding back a block of tickets to be sold the day of travel. These tickets can be found at a special counter labeled “Foreign Tourists and Freedom Fighters”.

I never recognize myself as a foreigner, being that I seamlessly assimilate to any culture I enter. However, as an American, I am the living embodiment of freedom, and following the admonition of my buddy George to “take the fight to them”, I proudly approached the ticket line to lay claim to my ticket. We were told that all such tickets were unavailable, but that we might find a ticket at counter 16, just a vague gesture away. Following the indistinct direction, we searched, couldn’t find the counter, asked a conductor, were led to the foreigners counter, explained we’d already been there, left again, asked another conductor, were led wordlessly back to the foreigners counter, left again, asked another conductor, left him as he started walking back to the foreigners counter, and finally had a guard guide us across the station to counter 16, about half an hour later.

I assumed my place in line and waited. I found the line to be an excellent place to view the futility of a line. A steady stream of ticket buyers would walk immediately to the front and pass their forms to the ticket seller directly in front of the person at the front of the line, thus, in effect creating a separate line for the line cutters. Finally the guard, seeing my dilemma, pulled me to the front of the line, barked at the queued mass to let me through, and had me give my form as they glared balefully. After correcting the form twice after being told it was inadmissibly incorrect, I was instructed to stand in another line to pay my fee and then, incredibly, to come back and wait in the same line to have him put a stamp on it.

An hour an a half later we finally boarded the train to Jaisalmer. Ominously enough, this guy was staring at us as we left, as if to say “Your train trip has and will suck more”.

We sat down in a comfortable seat and found a secure place for our bags. “Not bad”, we said. Ten minutes later, we were escorted out of that car to the “bad” section. Seems that we had our seat number correct, but the wrong Indian word beside it. It seems we also didn’t know what class we bought. We found a family sitting in our seats with whom we made friends by not kicking them out. Here we are being friends.

These teenagers then proceeded for the next few hours to inform us which of us was cuter, funnier, nicer, and most serious. This last honor was won handily by Brian.

See? Dude just doesn’t smile.

Jodhpur however, was worth all the travail. A destination which is to be described in the next post.

2008-01-31T21:07:00.000-08:00

India

Part 3: Elephanta Island

A great little day trip from Bombay is found in Elephanta Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We hopped a ferry directly in front of the Gateway to India and an hour later we were on the long, sunbaked walkway from the dock to Elephanta Island.

A quarter mile staircase, leading past a couple dozen trinket booths, finally crested near the entrance to the Elephanta Caves. It appears that about 1000 years ago (between 9^th and 13^th centuries) the Silhara Kings wanted to build an appropriate home for Shiva (one of the Hindu trinity) and so hollowed out several caves and carved pillars and statues out of the bare rock. These are just some of the fantastic carvings that result:

This one, the Trimurti Sadasiva statue, is about 20 feet high, depicting three faces of Shiva.

As I’ve mentioned before, monkeys are holy because Hanuman the monkey god helped Rama (an incarnation of Vishnu, one of the Hindu trinity) rescue Sita in the Ramayana, a Hindu holy book. I have always been a bit perplexed by the contrast of blatant sexuality in Hindu theology with the extreme conservatism of Hindu practice. Many gods are popularly depicted in a sexual pose

and Shiva’s lingam, a clearly phallic symbol, is widely worshipped. Most Hindus, however, are very conservative in dress and sexual openness. There seems to be a clear distinction about what is sexually allowed for the gods versus the mortals. The monkeys on Elephanta clearly wish to remind us of their divine status:

In all places where monkeys are holy (generally in and around temples), these hallowed hominids tend to run rampant. Here is a picture of two monkeys.

The small one is looking to steal the banana from the big one which is clearly, childishly, withholding the banana he just freaking bought 2 minutes before.

What is not pictured is how, later, a rogue monkey literally climbed up me like a tree to get the banana I held aloft in my hand. The monkey became increasingly agitated after I bodily threw him off me. After landing a good five feet away, he immediately bared his teeth and began charges and feints. Being a big fan of bananas that I freaking bought for a reason, I decided to not let him have the banana. Thus began a kind of holy war between the sacred monkey and the guy who wouldn’t let this celestial primate thieve his meal. I don’t really know how offensive it is to physically fight an incarnation of divine deity but the onlookers didn’t seem so amused. In the end though, I kept my banana and the monkey ran off. I then promptly gave it to a beggar woman, I don’t need that bad karma following me…

Soon to come, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, the jewels of Rajasthan!

2008-01-29T15:12:00.000-08:00

India

Part two: Mumbai

One of the joys of severe jetlag, besides 6PM bedtimes, are 4AM awakenings. As a result, we saw much of Mumbai before and during sunrise. No constant horn bleeps, no incessant flow of beetle-black fiats,

and nobody trying to sell you 5 foot diameter balloons (yes, I have NO idea why I look like I need one).

Approximately 15 million live in Bombay (Mumbai). It’s set to overtake Tokyo as the world’s most populous city in 2020. Unfortunately, an early morning walk in Bombay illuminates the plight of many of the working class. Streets were lined with figures sleeping in a row beneath blankets; sometimes at stretches 40-50 long. At first I assumed they were all jobless but as we continued our walk we saw them arise, wash up, get dressed and head off to work. Contrary to what I’m used to in the US, it seems that many of India’s homeless are employed.

There are plenty of beggars but they aren’t the middle to older aged men you see in the US; most of them are children or mothers with children. They are characterized by a much more aggressive begging style, tending to follow you for several blocks while tugging at your hand, shirt, and heartstrings. I can’t say I enjoyed seeing that.

Above are some shots of the buildings in Bombay, many of them blatantly English.

The Victoria Terminus has the distinction of attempting to incorporate every major architectural style in the last 3000 years into one building.

At the end of our walk, we were stopped by a talent scout. “Yea right” we laughed and brushed by, but this fella was insistent (not that any of them aren’t). It looked like he was looking for a couple pale faces to be extras in his latest Bollywood film. Finally, a chance to be a real Bollywood film star; an opportunity I had been seeking ever since I began mocking Indian movies (it’s been a while). I think I’ll do it right now.

If anybody hasn’t seen a proper Bollywood movie, I would not urge you rush out and see one. Knowing one plotline is enough since they are 97% similar. A poor boy one day sees a rich girl, he thinks she’s perfect in every respect but she doesn’t know he exists. Suddenly, they’re both seductively dancing together, a gyrating force 500 dancers strong whirling behind them in brilliant colors, fountains of water bursting from every corner. “Oh wow, it looks like they hit it off really quickly”. Nope, as soon as the gyrations stop, he’s poor again and she still has never met him. About an hour later they’ll lean in for the kiss, at which point the fourth or fifth music video comes back on, more gyrating dancers, water, wet saris, etc. Two and a half mind-numbing hours later, after she falls in love with him, it turns out that he’s really a rich prince. They dance again. The end.

Despite my love for Bollywood films, we declined the invitation.

We viewed a Bollywood film in an old fashioned theater, Eros, in downtown Bombay. After about 15 minutes I looked around to see 70% of our party asleep. Nope, not joking. Not even a good dance number could wake them. Fortunately, the intermission let us exit without disturbing the packed house. At least the tickets were only $0.50.

2008-01-21T10:10:00.000-08:00

India
Part one: Bombay

I have several Indian friends; I mean I’m an engineer after all. They don’t seem so terribly different than me; we share many of the same tastes and enjoy the same activities. Hanging out with them is little different than being with my American or Canadian friends. Therefore, it’s hard to believe that they came from a place…like…India.

India is an assault on the senses. I have never visited a place that is such a bewildering juxtaposition of rich and poor, excess and extreme want. Wary acceptance between religions does not translate to acceptance within the religion, especially concerning the caste system; the beauty of their religions and culture are marred by the prejudices embedded in those practices.

I have never had such difficulty getting myself between destinations, nor of trusting those that I hire to get me there. However, despite everything India is one of the most thrilling destinations on earth, with some of the most throat-catching sights these two eyes have beheld, a people industrious and motivated, and a veritable Willy-Wonka-factory-like romp through culinary delights.

I was accompanied by my good friends Brian and Steve. Our adventure began before we even landed. We flew from Bahrain into Mumbai (Bombay) on Gulf Air. With us on the plane were a great number of devotees returning from the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Some large families, but mainly men with a wife on each side, most of whom were entirely covered. An interesting thing to note about our fellow travelers is that they seemed to harbor an impressive lack of respect for airline personnel. Gulf Air employs “Sky Nannies” who provide resources for mother and child and ensure that the entire family can sit together. This necessitates asking people to move. Brian and I quickly put away our books as we realized that the entertainment value provided from this endeavor was far more satisfying. After moving a husband and wife to a seat, the husband would generally stand up and walk to another empty seat that the Sky Nanny was trying to clear, the wife would then move to another seat nearby. When asked to move, the wife would not answer and simply gesture or look to her husband sitting nearby, the husband, when questioned, would ignore the Sky Nanny.

The best part of the show was when we landed. Immediately upon touchdown, large groups of people unbuckled, stood up, and began getting their bags. An announcement: “please stay in your seat with the seatbelt fastened” did absolutely nothing. The flight attendant then unbuckled, ran to the unpacking group to yell at them to take their seat. About 10 of the 12 would, with the other two kind of warily squatting over their seat. As soon as the flight attendant returned to his seat, 14 people would stand up and reach for their bags again. Another announcement, another run back to the group and the same result. Three times he got up to to yell in about 3 minutes. Finally, “SIT DOWN!!!” was screamed over the PA to which approximately half the group listened. I was very pleased that we were not charged extra for the show.

Here we are at the baggage carrousel. Brian and I received our bag, then 45 minutes later Steve received his. In the meantime, we watched large groups of pilgrims gathering jugs of holy water brought from Mecca.

We were met at the airport by our good friend Jaideep and his mother. For the next hour, we waded through Bombay morning traffic in an effort to get to our hotel. Countless thanks go out to jaideep, his mom, and Jaideep’s fiancée Shelu for assisting us in every respect while in Bombay.

Breakfast that morning was served up in the Radio Club that Jaideep haunts in Colaba. Thus began my love affair of Indian food in India. A sweet affair that ended bitterly 2 weeks later in Delhi with food poisoning induced vomit and diarrhea. But oh, while it lasted, mmmmm.

Our first real experience with India was, appropriately, at the Gateway to India where the British made their final exit from Bombay after Indian independence.

It’s under construction.

After a delightful lunch at Gaylord’s we enjoyed paan: an after meal digestive. Paan tastes like India smells. Seriously, take all the spice smells like cardamom and anise, mixed with the rosy scent of the temples, combined with wafts of coconut and incense, the sickening sweetness of all Indian candy, and a healthy dose of the cowpies that are on every road and path and you’ll get the taste of paan. Here is Steve enjoying paan.

It’s made with approximately 20 ingredients mixed together with the bare finger of some dude sitting on a street corner.

Mmmm

Crawford Market is a huge, exciting market that specializes in everything, but has an especially commendable section of flowers for use in the many hindu temples.

At least they’re honest

While there, we visited a temple to Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god. As I’ve said before, I love visiting temples and India is a temple-visitors dream. Jaideep and his mom were kind enough to show us the meaning of all the rituals and offerings. I’m constantly impressed by such devotion, and India’s devotees are among the most fervent I’ve seen. Throngs attend the more popular temples such at the Mahalakshmi temple where stern faced guards are employed with whistles and batons to ensure that attendees stay in the proper line, don’t linger too long at the front of the shrine, and make a timely exit to keep the incessant stream moving.

That evening, we attended the arati at the local temple in Colaba, which is when the gods in the temple are put to bed. It is a LOUD affair. The bell is rung continuously, horns are blown, and songs are chanted for about half an hour as the priest prepares the gods for bed. With 5 kids, it actually wasn’t too different than bedtime growing up in the Spears household. Afterward we were given a dot (bindi) on our forehead and a fragrant flower necklace. It was like arriving in Hawaii…with a dot on your forehead.

More to come, don’t worry!

2007-12-21T12:41:00.001-08:00

Costa Rica
Parte Dos: Monteverde & Arenal Volcano

If you’re just joining my Costa Rican adventure, you should check out the first part first: Costa Rica, Parte Uno: Arrival and Corcovado National Park.

With Corcovado in our rearview mirror, we set our sights for the beaches on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. We luckily had found a charming lady to wash most of our clothes the night before. Those were clean, but we still had 4 pairs of putrid boots and a few articles of unwashed clothing in the back of the RAV4. Therefore we enlisted the help of one Tommy Hilfiger.

Yes, this Tommy air freshener so overpoweringly covered up the stench of days of trekking that finally its tricolored scent, coupled with the winding roads, became so nauseating that we buried it in the glove box.

We first stopped in a little surfer town, Dominical, to grab some lunch. I feasted on a perfectly amiable piece of snapper. Here I am after my feast. Note, once again, women’s clothing courtesy of Marvelous Mexicana Airlines.

A couple hours later I felt a bit queasy. Thus began my epic, two day losing battle with diarrhea. There aren’t many pictures of Quepos, nor the fabled town of Jaco where we spent a full hour. We had to be sure to factor in enough time between my bathroom sprints to make it to the airport before Marvelous Mexicana closed for the night and I was out of a bag.

At long last, I was reunited with my bag. I stroked the handle and teased the zipper lovingly. Bag was shy and didn’t respond much. That’s okay, luggage love is tough love.

The Marvelous Mexicana rep was unapologetic at best. Maybe he would have shown more sympathy if he wasn’t busy texting on his cell phone the whole time he was finding my bag. He encouraged me to contact his manager for compensation which I did several times. She was, if possible, less helpful than my original Marvelous Mexicana friend. Finally, I followed up the situation via email back here in the US. After steadfast denials of wrongdoing and several emails from me, Marvelous Mexicana Airlines finally compensated me $100 for 5 days of delayed luggage and a total of 11 hours spent driving to get my bag. Clearly then, marvelous cannot be used too frequently to describe them.

That evening we spent the night in San Juan, just north of San Jose at a charming little hotel. Here we are being charmed during breakfast.

Lovely Interior as well.

You'll notice that it's sometimes difficult to arrange the text beside the pictures I want. Especially considering the fact that people view this blog on various monitor resolutions. Please bear with charity the large tracts of blank space or captions to pictures the aren't nearby. Thanks.

We continued on the next day to Zarcero with its fantastic gardens. Please view:

By early afternoon we reached our destination: La Fortuna, which sits at the base of the Arenal Volcano. Arenal Volcano is an active volcano which regularly gives an amazing show of smoke, lava, shooting rocks, and smoldering glows—when it’s not hiding behind clouds. Luckily it wasn’t when we were there. Here is our view from our cabina:

The other main draw of this area is the hot springs. Our intention was the hit up the grand daddy: Tabacon. Our 3 trusty guide books gave the price as $29 per person, an amount I could barely scrape together from my meager engineering salary. When we arrived, what to our wondering eyes should appear but a $52 per person fee to enter Tabacon. Incensed, we checked a few others and finally decided on the next best thing: Baldi Hot Springs. Certainly the most Disneyesque of the others we checked out, with a swim up bar and something like 12 pools of varying temperature, along with bountiful waterfalls, music, gardens and European nonagenarians.

I dipped my leg in one Baldi pool only to have my skin bubble and melt off in chunks. Gazing in sorrow as my flesh floated away, I overheard a German man dunking himself in the same pool while laughing to his friend, “Ze Americans cannot handle ze hot!!!”

Unable to see anything of the volcano other than the red outline I drew on the cloud wall in that picture above, we left La Fortuna and headed around picturesque Lake Arenal.

After a few hours of kidney rattling roads we arrived in Monteverde/Santa Elena. Monteverde was founded by World War I era Quakers who left the US as conscientious objectors and started a new life here in the mountains of Costa Rica. The Quakers introduced new methods of cattle grazing and conservationism that allowed more natural forest to remain unscathed. The forests here are commonly referred to as cloud forests because of the altitude and the, uh, clouds. Here I am, chilling above the cloudline.

Once I die, I would like someone to posthumously post this as my primary facebook photo. Then everyone would say: “Oh look, Brian’s in heaven!” That would be funny.

Monteverde means “green mountain”. It is. Check it out.

Immediately upon arrival in Monteverde we hit up the ziplines, or canopy tours as they are called here. We had researched the various canopy tour companies and made some preliminary decisions before we learned of the newest addition: Monteverde Extremo Canopy with longer lines, a rappel, and a tarzan swing. Well we went for it. Here’s Andrew the Canadian geared up for Extremo battle:

Extremo has something like 18 lines, one of which is 750m; yes, a half mile long zip line. It was pretty incredible. Here is a shot:

If you’re not affected by heights, the rappel was tame at best. We did, however, hear one elongated scream as a frightened girl was lowered to the ground. The tarzan swing was the most thrilling. Shuffle up to the edge of an 80 ft high platform, bend your knees, and get pushed off. You freefall for a bit before the harness roughly catches you and sends you swinging out into the treetops. It was interesting watching the 15 or so people in our group go over the edge. It typically sounds something like this: “wooohooooo---UGH, *grunt, gasp, slight strangled moan*, YEEEAAAA!! “

After swinging like a spider on silk strand a few times you’re caught by a couple of the workers with a rubber inner tube standing on a nearby platform.

Natasa had the incredible foresight to ask what happens if you’re not caught. She really didn’t need to ask because she was able to find out firsthand! After being uncaught by the inner tube, she swung and dangled a few more times until the workers threw her a rope with a carabiner attached to the end. Even as the rope was sailing through the air toward her I could tell that this technique would yield undesired consequences. After catching the rope some 6 feet below the carabiner, the remaining rope spun about her like a tetherball around a pole with the end result being that the carabiner whipped about and kissed her smack on the lip.

Here she is after that passionate encounter.

It saddens me to think that something this cool probably just couldn’t exist in the good ol’ USA. The risk of injury, trauma, or suppressed carabiner fetish development would prove far too much fodder for our beloved trial lawyers (John Edwards for President!). It doesn’t matter how many waivers and disclaimers you sign, stupid greedy people will still sue. And any company that wants to protect themselves will have to hire lawyers and pay court costs. That’s far too much overhead for any company that presents risk to their consumers, no matter how well it’s spelled out. Thank you, once again, trial lawyers for making it worse for everyone else except you.

The next day we headed to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. The warm, humid, incoming winds from the Caribbean side of Costa Rica blow up the green mountains here, condensing and cooling. The forests sport different types of ecosystems, complete with a whole new set of trees and animals. However, as I said before, the wildlife was nowhere near the level of Corcovado. A few coatis (Central American version of raccoons) and several birds and insects showed their face during the day.

Upon the recommendation of our Reserve guide, we headed to Sky Walk in Monteverde (run by Costa Rica Sky Adventures) to view the canopy. From the ground, there’s only so much you can see, but the Sky Walk bridges take you right into the canopy where most of the life exists. A steady, misty drizzle was falling half the time and so we were done up in our slickers.

We were desperately seeking the resplendent quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala. The fantastic plumage of the quetzal (especially the male) makes it akin to a large, flying emerald, especially in the mating season when it turns iridescent. Alas, however, our jewel spotting skills suck and we were left quetzal-less. However, we did take some pictures of our reaction to spotting a resplendent quetzal, if we ever were to see one. So please don’t read the preceding paragraph and simply share in our quetzal-spotting joy through these pictures at Sky Walk. Sorry, no pictures of the actual quetzal.

That evening we hit up a twilight hike in Bosque Nuboso Eterno de Los Ninos (Children’s Eternal Cloud Forest). Twilight is when all those nocturnals come out to play, being very hungry. One of the feistiest guys we saw was this two-toed sloth

We stood about five minutes underneath him, enough time to see him move his arm about a foot and reposition in the tree. Two-toed sloths are reportedly shier than their three-toed relatives and so this one never showed its face.

Having visited with the black tarantula in Corcavado, we now were pleased to see his cousin, the orange tarantula in Monteverde.

And tons of sleeping birds, puffed into fluffy balls to keep out the chill.

A living leaf

And frogs.

So we’re cheaters and fakers, the frogs were actually seen at the frog pond or Rainarium there in Monteverde/Santa Elena.

We finished out our Monteverde/Santa Elena experience Sunday morning with a hike up to the local waterfall. Waterfalls are ubiquitous here, they seriously flow like water. Here we are enjoying the flow.

After 10 marvelous days in the Venice of Central America, we hopped aboard Marvelous Mexicana and flew home. Impressions of Costa Rica? Well I had a lot of time to think of it, standing and waiting for my bag in Dallas.

Which.

Never.

Came.

Yes, amazingly, Marvelous Mexicana Airlines managed to lose my bag again before customs in Dallas. In fact, I was the only person forlornly staring at an empty baggage carrousel in Dallas. Thank you again, Marvelous Mexicana Airlines, for the astonishing precision with which you were able to lose the one bag capable of fomenting the most irrational rage to your most dissatisfied customer.

So, impressions of Costa Rica? There’s more to do there than we could have done in 2-3 months. We left so much out that it pains me to write it now. We never touched the Caribbean coast with its laid back vibe and amazing food. Tortuguero, on the northern Caribbean, from all accounts is amazing. Manuel Antonio, the Nicoya Peninsula, Guanacaste, Puerto Viejo: all places that I would have loved to visit if we had the time. Needless to say, I will be back.

The Costa Ricans have a saying: pura vida, or pure life. They use it as a greeting, a farewell, a statement of affirmation, and especially to describe something cool or outstanding. In a country where over a third of their land is preserved, enjoying the highest standard of living in Central America, needing no standing army, and welcoming about 2 million tourists every year, there’s a lot of occasion to use it.

Pura Vida.

Stay tuned for India, Nepal, and Bahrain, heading there tomorrow!

2007-12-10T13:01:00.000-08:00

Costa Rica

Parte uno: Arrival and Corcovado National Park

And now on to the main event. Costa Rica had been on my mind since my buddy Jordo’s weekend plans fell through one September morn and he caught a flight down to San Jose to pick up a spare condo. His tales of the brilliant town of Jaco, with its strip malls, condominium developments, bars of white Americans, and characteristics so much like any beach town in the US but so much further away, filled me with awe and wanderlust.

My good friend, Andrew the Canadian, famous from such blog posts as Labo(u)r Day in Toronto joined me once again, bringing with him his exquisite lady-attracting skills. Also in the crew was Paula the Canadienne and Natasa the Macedonian. However, for simplicity’s sake, only Andrew will maintain the descriptive descriptor: “the Canadian”.

We landed in San Jose and immediately left the airport. I was travelling light. I find it fairly easy to do so when the airline loses your bag. Mexicana, or Marvelous Mexicana as I prefer to refer to them, told me my bag would be in the next morning and to drive the hour back to the airport to fetch it the next day. After a restless sleep in the heart of San Jose, we acquired our vehicle the next morning: a hearty Toyota RAV4. After an hour ducking, weaving, dodging, and swearing at San Jose traffic we arrived back at the airport. Marvelous Mexicana told me that the bag had, unfortunately, not arrived on the 11AM flight and should be on the 11PM flight. Then helpfully recommended we spend one of our 9 days in Costa Rica waiting around for it. Full of appreciation for their expert advice, we tactfully declined and asked that the bag be shipped down to Puerto Jimenez, an 8-10 hour drive from San Jose on the southwest corner of Costa Rica. They agreed, and we were off.

Our scenic drive took us over the central mountain range in San Jose, where Andrew the Canadian found he could determine our altitude by checking the RAV4’s external thermometer. We dropped about 15°C in an hour on our steady climb to the top Costa Rica, then warmed up as we descended and followed the rivers out to the sea.

Stopping in San Isidro, we picked up some lunch and I picked up a new pair of underwear that I washed in the sink of the restaurant. Here I am showing off my new undies.

And here I am hanging those same undies up to dry in the hotel that night as they, remarkably, didn’t dry in the 95% humidity…and inside a car.

Costa Rica enjoys fantastic sunsets. Here’s one we experienced on our first day.

By around 7 that night we had reached the rough, potholed road leading around the north end of the Osa Peninsula. Andrew the Canadian was driving and we were swaying violently in our seats. Here’s a picture of the roads in the daylight hours.

Merrily swaying along, we soon heard a flapping sound and found that we had sprung a flat. “No problemo!” we exclaimed in Spanish (so as to be sure to be understood). After emptying out the hatchback, we were delighted to find the jack securely bolted to the RAV4 with no method of extracting it, and no tire iron even if we did remove it. Luckily, the ever gracious Costa Ricans were there to save us. An elderly taxi driver stopped and attempted to help us. He pulled two of his jacks out, which were slightly small, not to mention the ground was hopelessly soft and wet. After about half an hour of MacGyvering, we had yet to raise the RAV4 up to tire changing height. However, we didn’t need to worry any more about that, as we were pleasantly surprised to find that our back tire had also gone flat. Our Costa Rican friend was nice enough to give a ride into Puerto Jimenez where we called our guide for the next day’s trek and then spent half the night running with him out to the RAV4, changing one of the tires, bringing it back for repairs only to find all repair joints closed (at 1AM, imagine that), and finally giving up and going to sleep around 2AM. Early the next morning, after another couple of hours of repair attempts, we gave our keys to a friend of our guide and asked him to repair the wheel and drive it back into town. One might call it jungle valet.

So began the most exciting portion of our trip. We spent the next 8 hours hiking into the heart of Corcovado National Park, the most biologically intense place on earth according to National Geographic. Here are some hauntingly beautiful shots of us walking along the deserted beaches.

As you can see, the jungle grows right up to the beach and, in some places, the trail is impassable at high tide.

Corcovado is a huge park, spanning 425 square kilometers (yes fellow Americans, I don’t know what that means either, I just copied it out of Wikipedia). There are no roads to the central station, Sirena. One can either fly in, take a boat, or do it the true way: hike. Most of the trail from Leona station to Sirena is along the sandy beach but a considerable amount goes inland for a bit. Beautiful though the beach walk was, it quickly became our least favorite part. The shifting sand is a poor trail medium and one spends tremendous energy each step. Luckily, we had the opportunity to compare the difficulty of sand hiking with deep mud hiking on the final day. Turns out, both suck.

Here’s a rare shot of Natasa smiling while hiking.

Simply stunning shots of palm tree lined beaches.

I’m ecstatically marching in this one.

This is just nice.

Punk rock.

Being in Corcovado means seeing animals. It wasn’t until we went to some of the other Costa Rican parks and heard people asking if we’d seen any monkeys yet that we realized the panoply of wildlife that surrounded us in Corcovado. Monkeys? Oh yea. We saw tons of white faced, capuchin monkeys (like in the movie Outbreak),

several spider monkeys, howler monkeys, and quite a few spottings of the endangered squirrel monkey.

Here’s a cute little anteater fella.

The toucan has a big nose, here he is.

The beach, energy-sucking though it was, was crawling (yes literally) with countless hermit crab. I stood still several times and just watched the sand crawl. Here’s a little video.

Scarlet macaw anyone? Yup, got em.

Family picture:

Oh, we went in a cave too. Lots of bats.

Around 3PM we realized, due to our shifted schedule on account of the car, that we would not have the good fortune to eat lunch. Luckily Felix, our ever industrious guide, hacked open a coconut that was lying on the beach for us to munch on.

Have you ever wondered what the days before Survivor were like? I imagine they were something like this, but who wants to remember back to those dark days? Not I.

Oftentimes the raw sexual energy of a picture can say more than any preceding sentence ever could.

After about 7.5 hours of hiking I was sick of my boots, which were technically Andrew the Canadian’s boots, as mine were still safe, dry, clean and sweet smelling as the scented rose in Marvelous Mexicana’s baggage department. We all felt the same way, so we decided to get new ones. Here we are switching boots with each other for new ones.

In actuality we were fording a wide river. This same river fills with crocodiles and bull sharks when high tide rolls in. Naturally, we returned the next day at that time and chased crocodiles, here’s one.

As dusk rolled in, we strolled in to Sirena ranger station. Hot, dirty, smelling like poo, and hungry well beyond necessity. We had just missed dinner but the kitchen staff was obliging enough to whip us up some mad grub. Utter silence fell as we buried our face in our plates. Within an hour, we were passed out in our bunks.

Around 5 in the eerie morning twilight we heard the guttural wailing all around us of the howler monkeys. These guys can be heard for long distances throughout the treetops. One group's male will howl to the next, which then howls back, this is echoed in the distance again and again. Territorial, these chaps.

After breakfast (beans and rice again!) we sat down to get our morning briefing. Since we were going to be forging through deep jungle with insects, snakes, and all manner of stinging beasts, I wore my most appropriate apparel.

Some have questioned my fashion sense and called it faux pas, I prefer to consider it dépêche mode. In actuality, my clothes were in my bag in Marvelous Mexicana’s care. Andrew the Canadian, ever the frugal packer, had only 3 outfits that he planned on washing with camp soap. Luckily, the ladies on our trip had an impressively superfluous amount of clothing. Thus, what you see are some coveted shots of me in women’s clothes. The paparazzi are going to have a field day with this one.

We then set out on a few hikes around the ranger station.

Here's one of those hikes.

In the afternoon we were lucky enough to track down some Baird’s tapirs. I think they ran from my outfit more than anything else.

The end of the tapir trail:

We were also fortunate enough to not get killed by this chap.

Felix the guide explained that death comes about 10 minutes after a strike from this viper. Luckily there was some antivenom at the ranger station, about 20 minutes away.

Leaf cutter ants are amazing, they form lines everywhere, shuttling slices of green leaves to their mounds where the grow fungi on them which they feed off of. You can follow the trail in between the mound and the current leaf they are slicing up, bit by bit. Here’s a trail.

Getting around the jungle requires agility, leaps, bounds, scrambling up slopes, and sliding down mud bogs. It's always nice to have a firm handhold. Luckily, this tree was always intelligent enough to be found whenever I blindly reached for support...and that was often.

Thanks buddy, I still have the splinters.

That evening we went on a night hike, which is the best time to spot the nocturnal animals like frogs. We saw a few of note and then this hombre sitting on a tree. A black tarantula.

Unfortunately, 3 of our 4 lights went out and we had difficulty navigating the deep mud. Paula was also eaten by a nest of ants. Luckily, Andrew the Canadian lightened the mood by walking face first into a large branch. Ah, that helped.

The next morning we started our 30 km trek out of Corcovado. Natasa’s leg had locked up entirely the day before and so she was planning on trying to boat out. That proved to be impossible so she popped a few Tylenol and limped along for 11 hours.

The trail ascended steeply and dropped precipitously for the latter half of the morning, all in claylike mud which we were able to cling surprisingly well to, much like a former girlfriend of mine. Ah, clingy girlfriend jokes are such low hanging fruit, yet still so very delicious.

Our lunch stopping point was at Los Patos ranger station after 17 km. We look disgusting. I'm bandanging blisters.

We stopped for 20 minutes, enough time for Paula to break the soccer goal the rangers had set up to while away the hours of solitude. She’s clearly pleased with herself.

The last 13 km was composed of crossing the same river 34 times (no really, 34 times).

Here are some pictures showing Natasa in various stages of agony.

Eleven hours of hiking chafes various body parts. Luckily, Natasa had some cold cream that I liberally applied to my own creamy white inner thighs. Here’s a great shot of me doing that while simultaneously modeling Andrew the Canadian’s sweaty underwear.

Mmm, baby got back.

At long last, after 11 hours of hiking and breaks totaling 45 minutes, we finished and were taken back to Puerto Jimenez. I was so excited to get my bag and change out of women’s clothes, I was a chubby kid coming back from fat camp. Well this fat kid had to continue the fast. My bag still hadn’t arrived. I called Marvelous Mexicana and talked to the same rep I spoke to on Saturday night.

Me: “Where’s my bag?”

Marvelous Mexicana rep: “We have it right here for you sir, in San Jose.”

Me: “Why didn’t you ship it to me in Puerto Jimenez like I asked you to on Saturday night?”

Marvelous Mexicana rep: (after long awkward silence) “Umm, somebody told me that you said to not ship it down there…”

Me: “I haven’t spoken to anybody else but you.”

The Marvelous Mexicana rep offered to ship it down the next day, necessitating our cancellation of plans to leave Puerto Jimenez the next morning. I reminded him, in the politest of tones that I was currently wearing women’s clothes and dirty underwear that was too small for me and I couldn’t rely on them to deliver a bag in a timely manner given my experiences. And so it was that we drove 10 hours back up to San Jose the next day.

Before leaving sunny Puerto Jimenez, however, we went out one last time with Felix. It was nice to be in clean, albeit women’s clothes, again.

After some in our party had a few drinks, we decided it would be a great idea to fish for caimans in a nearby pond. Caimans are little crocodiles about 4 or 5 feet long. So we tied fish to a line and threw it to the caimans and pulled it back just before they snapped. What fun. Here we are jeopardizing our future usage of healthy limbs and bones.

I have to put a plug in for Felix and his guidesmanship. We had an incredible experience, saw tons of wildlife, and had a great time with him. He went above and beyond the job for which he was hired and pooled his resources to fix our vehicle and still ensure we experienced all we came to see. If you need a Corcovado guide look him up at Osa Travel Expeditions.

This ends the first portion of our trip. The next section will detail our beach excursions in Domincal and Jaco, hot springs bathing in Arenal, and adventuring in Monteverde.

Pura Vida.

2007-12-01T17:23:00.000-08:00

Ohio!!...?

Yes friends, Ohio!!...? But Brian, didn’t you just return from Costa Rica? Yes, yes, but this entry was almost finished before I left so, here it is.

Our hero’s services were required up in the Buckeye state and so I was off. I was accompanied by my good friend, Becky the vegetarian. Becky also doesn’t eat. During our wondrous two day jaunt through the verdant Ohio countryside, Becky consumed 4 ounces of digestible material. This is not that alarming considering it’s approximately 20% of her body weight. What was alarming was when she unceremoniously returned 3.75 of those ounces to Mother Earth (via the kitchen sink) after one and a half glasses of vodka tonic Saturday night. For those of you unfamiliar with one and a half glasses of vodka tonic, it’s what is fed to Russian infants in their bottles.

Our droll adventure started in Cleveland, home of the Indians, Browns, and the worst subway system in the world (more on that later). Cleveland was once a bustling community specializing in bright steel and burning rivers (pollution does that). However, try as trade tariffs may, most of the steel and automotive jobs in that area were lost overseas. As a result, a very nice city with much to offer is inhabited primarily by those who originally grew up here, seeing most of the young population leave. I spoke with a lawyer who owned a 3500 sq ft house on an acre of land 10 minutes from downtown Cleveland. He estimated it was worth about $250-300,000. That is approximately equal to two months rent in an LA studio apartment.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum was an absolute must. Here I am standing in the Eerie dusk in front of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after three hours inside.

I was rocked out.

After our time in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame we attempted to head to Shaker Square to enjoy some dinner. We spotted a stop for Cleveland’s subway, the RTA (Regional Transit Authority). “Ah! What a quick and painless way to reach our destination!” we emphatically exclaimed. Upon entering the station we found nobody at the ticket windows and the automatic ticket dispensers to be covered in the plastic, walking back to the entrance we inquired from the only uniformed worker to be found who was busy sweeping the floor. Initially it appeared that all the tendons on one side of her neck were severed. Upon closer inspection, however, she simply had formed a permanent cell phone sandwich between her ear and shoulder.

Us (mild as lambs): “Is this station open?”

Her (angrily removing cell phone sandwich from ear): “What? Yes!!”

Upon which she promptly replaced the cell phone sandwich and went back to sweeping. We walked through the turnstyles to the platform where a handful of people waited. “Ah, we must be in the right spot!”

So we waited, and waited, and waited. Finally our cell phone sandwich, severed-tendon sweeper arrived, busily sweeping and chatting when she was interrupted by a man.

Him (mild as a baby deer): “Excuse me, do you know when the train is arriving?”

Her (looking at him askew as if he were a rodent): “I saw it pass by a few minutes ago, it should be here in a few minutes.”

Evidently we were fortunate enough to have the singular honor of riding the only train on the line.

This story drags: the short version is that it took us an hour and 20 minutes to go 3 city blocks on the RTA in addition to being told to buy the wrong ticket and the wrong place to get off by the indifferent conductor. What could cause such a poorly run transit system to continue poorly running? I found my answer on the first train: An emblem of the Amalgamated Transit Union stuck to the driver’s booth. Ah, unions! Those bastions of apathy, pervasive sense of entitlement, and inverse proportionality between wages and productivity! Thank you for proving once again that the necessity of your existence ended 60+ years ago.

Please welcome the most ironic statement ever printed:

Evidently there’s even a union that gives awards to unions, though the sign probably was created over a period of 6 months by one new union member while nine others managed him while being paid at a rate 5 times the minimum wage with full benefits, after a strike. Enough, I’ve become embittered.

We also met up with Becky’s brother and sister in law in Toledo. Toledo is another nice city that makes me sad. Here they are standing on the shore of the Maumee River, which flows through Toledo to Lake Eerie in the north.

Toledo, like Cleveland, used to be a booming town of industry until the jobs went overseas and people left. As a result, the downtown skyline is populated with stately, early 20^th century buildings that stand completely abandoned, or with only a few floors of occupancy. Attempts by local government to attract new life and vitality to the city have fallen flat. The main industry, in fact, that northern Ohio now sports is medicine and hospitals, an industry that our young friends are being schooled in, with the plans to leave immediately upon graduation. We drove by a few of the nicer neighborhoods, viewing houses that had sat on the market for literally two years. Being a staunch capitalist doesn’t mean I can’t feel the depression of a city that has lost the battle with competitive advantage. Yes, the Asian markets that have taken the industry that once thrived here will, in the future, be in need of services from the United States and in the end most people will have more of everything. But that’s a long time coming, maybe not in the span of the lifetime of most of the occupants of Toledo.

A short hour’s drive north, however, found us in the piney town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Oh now, that’s a nice little joint. We first patronized a tasty little vegetarian place: Sheva.

I’m half hippie, so I enjoyed Sheva's organic, locally grown ingredients in a symphony of sustainable sustenance. Here we are, after the rondo.

Post consumption, we meandered about the streets and shops in Ann Arbor. Google even has a little shop here, though I don't know if there's room for the Google pool, gourmet chefs, or massage parlours that glamorize their other locations.

At first I was perfectly peeved at this picture as the speeding bus zipped right in front of the pillared arcade/alleyway.

But then I realized that this serendipitously captured the ambience of the Ann Arbor. A standing man, an old fashioned arcade eclipsed by a bus blurred in transit. What marvelous juxtaposition! What does it all mean? You decide (translation: I don’t know and I’m trying to end the topic before I stop sounding intelligent).

Here’s the picture without the layered meaning:

Our cheeks rosy with the glow of Ann Arbor’s evergreen air, we returned to Toledo, then to Cleveland, then to Austin. Next stop, Costa Rica!

2007-10-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

Labo(u)r Day in Toronto

The great, all-American holiday of Labor Day heralded the end of summer and so I, like Bill Clinton in wartime, headed up to Canada. I had heard the legend of Toronto from many of my Canadian friends so I had to see to believe. I met my good buddy, Andrew the Canadian, at the Toronto airport. Andrew the Canadian is a baller and now drives a BMW like all ballers. Riding in the BMW, I became a baller by association. My associated ballerness lasted the entire 45 minutes from the airport, where we parked the car and didn’t use it again until my Monday evening homeward journey. You see, the streets of Toronto are well laid out boasting excellent public transport, making them, like the Canadian Army, very easy to walk on.

As honorary Canadian baller I checked into the Sheraton downtown. Here are the luscious waterfulls of our hotel.

Then we took a walk along the famous Yonge Street, supposedly the longest street in the world as it turns in a highway stretching to the other side of Canada. We were tired after a few blocks so decided to cut the journey short, instead we turned into the lovely Bloor-Yorkville area of town. Here is Andrew the Canadian in Bloor-Yorkville.

Where we enjoyed an empty table together

Having eaten our fill, Andrew the Canadian found us some lovely ladies. Here I am, clearly delighted in Andrew the Canadian’s exquisite taste in Canadiennes.

That evening we decided to hit Little Italy for our entertainment. We sat on an outdoor patio enjoying the cool evening of the waning Canadian summer, then danced in the clubs until stumbling out around 2 in the chill morning. Andrew the Canadian had found another, doubtlessly equally lovely Canadienne, whom he escorted home. Meanwhile, I passed by the bossa nova club of my new friend, Steve Dempster. Watching the rhythmic dancing of the last club goers I was soon beckoned in by one of the managers with whom I quickly took up the dance. Then I was handed maracas, tambourines, drinks, and other various instruments as we kept up the beat. Steve and I discussed the glory of engineering (he was designing a hospital), listening to beautiful music, eating good food, and being excellent dancers in the near empty club. Around 4 I bade him a fond fairwell and cabbed it back to the tinkling waterfalls of our beloved Sheraton.

The Toronto Islands used to be part of the mainland until a huge storm blew through way back in 1858 and made the islands into islands. Today the islands act like Central Park for the Canadians. Here is Andrew the Canadian dutifully watching the downtown coastline, much like God.

We ferried over in the morning and enjoyed the beaches until Andrew the Canadian spotted the “clothing optional” beach on our handy map of the Toronto Islands. Within seconds we were strolling along this “clothing optional” beach. I guess it’s not politically correct to correctly label a “clothing optional” beach as “flaming gay clothing optional” beach. Needless to say I, found my feet to be extraordinarily worthy of attention for the remainder of our beachside stroll. Thankfully, there are no pictures of this event.

Then we saw the Canadian Air Force practicing.

After a relaxing/horrifying few hours we returned to the mainland to join Andrew the Canadian’s friends on a tour of the Steam Whistle Brewery, then up to a high rise condo. Here is downtown Toronto from the home of one of Andrew the Canadian’s friends.

Sunday brought us to the old ball park to watch the Toronto Blue Jays battle it out with the Seattle Mariners, and to meet up with another buddy, Evan the Canadian. This landmark event brought to an even five the number of pro sports events I’ve attended in my life. I simply don’t believe in supporting them. It’s a nice park and the game was relaxing. Here is the famed CN Tower looming over the park.

Later, Andrew the Canadian and I checked out the historic Second City comedy club, training ground for such famous funny Canadians as John Candy and Dan Aykroyd.

Labour Day found us visiting a Labour Day parade with such favorites as trade unions, the New Socialist Group, and Young Communists. Somehow, the American in me just couldn’t join in the red flag/gold star waving…

We rounded out our Toronto experience with a visit to the University of Toronto and their illustrious Department of Household Science which I am Vanna Whiting here:

Kind of hard to see the name above those lovely Ionic columns, but they're there. It would make a perfect study abroad opportunity for some lucky Brigham Young University coeds.

This concludes my Labour of Love in Toronto. Stay tuned for whatever former trip I feel like updating!

2007-07-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

Nor’wester

Seattle

I’m going to write about an incredible little trip I took to the Northwest. Being a Northeasterner myself, I always considered the Northwest as a more rustic, lumberjack version of the Northeast. It’s close enough to Canada to be entirely alarming. I consider Canada to be somewhat like an bigger brother to the US. We can always look up and see him above us, bigger, colder (temperature wise (in Celcius, eh)), a bit more laid back and good natured, fantastically less successful, and utterly unwilling to be anything other than the eternal nice guy.

This is about the nicest thing I can say about Canada and Canadians, as I dislike them all.

I arrived in Seattle on a cloudy Friday to meet my good buddy Minh, the Canadian. To be more specific, he’s a Canasian, that is, he’s a Canadian Asian. I have many Canasian friends, all are special.

There are so many Seattle things I’ve longed to do, like visit the famed Seattle space needle. Here it is:

I’m not too sure what the big deal is, though I hear there’s a wondrously overrated revolving restaurant up top. We decided to stick with some good diner grub.

Minh’s quite the photographer and his food shots rival those found in the best issues of Better Homes and Gardens and The Betty Crocker Cookbook.

For more shots of food, people, oddities, and cartoon boobs, check out his insightful blog.

Gotta give a huge shout out to Minh’s college buddies: Marc and Nicole who let us crash on their lovely floor after a rockin night in Seattle’s bars and clubs. Holla (that's the shout out)!

And there's Nicole to my left at the diner

Microsoft moguls don’t just enjoy C programming and days without bathing, they’re also fond of sponsoring overpriced rock museums. Not rock in the geological sense, though the museum resembles some igneous formation, but rock and roll. I believe it was something like $20 to enter, but free to play the drums in the kiddie area.

Here’s a classic Seattle afternoon spent in Pikes market while raining.

This is the quintessence of Seattle tourism, and being the quintessential tourist I had to see it. Here you can see fish flying through the air as the talented fish tossers fill customers’ orders by yelling loudly and throwing fish into waiting brown wrapping paper. This is, I believe, how one makes flying fish. Squeezing eggs out of the fish as they fly is what creates flying fish roe, a very popular ingredient in sushi. I think the flying aerates the eggs and gives them more flavor. I labeled the flying fish in the accompanying picture. You'll have to look closely, I'm an extremely poor labeler.

When we tired of flying fish (and roe raining on us), we moved on to rotating sculptures. Here’s a rotating, neon ampersand which I feel is an excellent name for an alternative rock band.

This reminds me of my African safari with Colin when we decided that Giraffe Skull would be the name of our band if we ever started a hardcore death/thrash/acid/suicide-promoting/punk/metal band. Here is an artist’s depiction of the Giraffe Skull handsign held aloft by millions of future hardcore groupies.

Artist: Brian

Medium: Microsoft Paint

The inspiration, needless to say, is an actual giraffe skull:

2007-06-26T15:18:00.000-07:00

Big Bend

Now I’ve wanted to go to Big Bend National Park since I moved to Texas a few years back. It’s found in the southwest of Texas, in the “Big Bend” of the Rio Grande. Big Bend is a desert, so I assembled a cadre of hearty desert-goers to attack the vast, dry, nomadic expanse. So after packing up our canteens, snake-bite kits, straw hats, burqas, and camels into our dune buggy we set out for west Texas.

When most people think of Texas, they imagine cowpoke, tumbleweeds, cacti, and single-toothed brothel employees. Actually this is west Texas. Fortunately, we brought our enlightened Austin culture with us.

You’ll note that the chess pieces had a standing mission to make a suicidal leap from the board due to the vibrations from the lonely Texas roads.

On the way we stopped at Sonora. Sonora is a lovely stop on the griddle-flat, dusty moonscape of our drive. We stopped for some local Mexican food and were alarmed to find that Sonora seems to be under a trade embargo specifically targeting green food coloring. Here you see them getting by coloring their guacamole dip with unsold cans of Ghostbusters® Ectoplasm from 1984. In all actuality, once the neon body paint had been removed from our palates, the ensuing “comida Mexicana” was a delight.

Our one weekend, two night outdoor camping trip was abruptly shortened to one night when DQ (that’s what I love about Texas*) made the call to stay in a motel due to “moist earth”. So instead of watching the big and bright stars of Texas, we watched Letterman.

The next morning we embarked on our river trip. Here are some fantastic shots of us in a Deliverance-like setting.

The cool thing about the Rio Grande is that it spans two nations, bringing them together in a river of understanding that could never be muddied by fences, legislation or mass deportation, ever.

The unmuddy waters of the Rio Grande:

Out of reverence, I sang “Ol’ Man River” repeatedly, much to the delight of my hearty companions who didn’t have the heart (or knowledge) to tell me that the song actually referred to the Mississippi, and that I wasn’t black.

The park website warned us not to approach immigrants crossing the border for our own safety. So we left this one alone.

Here we are in Mexico!

The river having been floated we shot over to the center of Big Bend: the Chisos Basin. Here we are setting up camp. I’m eating trail mix.

After setting camp we went for an evening hike to the Window. Here are beautiful shots along the way.

Here are shots from the Window, which we assume is about a 1000 foot sheer drop. A breathtaking view awaits the hiker as he nears the slick rock lined edge of the Window. I’ve gone back and edited this blog post to remove references to our 6^th hearty companion who, unfortunately, achieved a much better view out of the Window than safety dictates. The removal of references to him will hopefully console grieving relatives. This paragraph, however, will not.

Mystical, eh?

Camping allowed us to relax and bond. Here’s a picture of Mike spying on Brian during a gay magazine photo shoot. I think Mike's a pervert!

In the middle of the night I was awakened, not by Brian trying to spoon with me (he did that so slyly I never awoke), but by a fantastic display of thunder and lightning. There’s not much more of a cooler feeling in the world than sitting in a tent in the middle of a mile-wide basin hearing the thunder cracking and rolling across the moonless, star and thundercloud sprinkled sky, listening to the rain cadence down on your tent roof as a brilliant flash occasionally explodes the desertscape into midday brightness.

The next morning found us hiking up this guy.

A mere 4 miles of slight incline hiking

found us here:

Sitting on top of the world we enjoyed our last breaths of Big Bend sun, hot, dry air, and profuse ladybugs (they were there in droves for some reason, I could have started a very lucrative organic farm).

With Big Bend in our rearview mirror we successfully passed a border checkpoint in under 45 seconds. As we drove through it became apparent that these border guards didn’t have much to worry about. Look out illegal aliens, God's building our walls!

Well that's Big Bend. Pretty soon I will release a post on my fantastic Northwest trip that is only approximately 3 months late.

Cheers folks.

*This parenthetical reference will only make sense if you’ve heard Dairy Quinn advertisements in Texas, or if you just really love my friend, Dan Quinn.

2007-01-21T20:29:00.000-08:00

Korean Smattering

Following is a smattering of pictures and clever accompanying comments from Korea. Think of it as a photo montage, like the type they show after the Olympics, World Cup, and major natural disasters.

Korea is cold, and as we all know, trees get cold as well. These trees are bundled up for the winter. They will provide the cherry blossoms in the next Cherry Blossom Festival.

Here are a few pictures of palaces and royal shrines. After a while they all kind of run together, much like runners in the New York Marathon.

Korean food doesn't agree with everyone. Here I am comforting my little bro as he seeks comfort in a large palace urn.

Here's a picture capturing the pageantry of the changing of the guard.

Koreans drink water out of little envelopes! They’re so funny!

One of the cool places we went was Isadong, which is old town Korea. It was biting cold the first night so we dropped into a traditional Teahouse. It looked like a little hobbit hole.

On the street vendors sell little cakes filled with sweetened red beans.

They’re quite tasty and they quickly became the only thing my father would eat. He began to look for them in the strangest places.

Koreans like to put up signs. This street is well signed.

Koreans also like to exercise and you don’t see many fat Koreans. These pieces of exercise equipment are clearly the reason why:

Even though the weather was about 30 degrees F, a very common activity is to see tons of old men out playing Chinese chess or Go.
Here my brother is being taught Chinese chess by a man that does not speak English. They had to communicate through the international language, love.

Here is my new niece in law, Harang (yes, that’s an official relation). She likes to bow to you.

Here we are at a market.

This kimchi is called bachelor kimchi, not because the radishes look like penises, but because…oh wait, no that’s why.

I really didn’t make that one up.

Here we are in front of the great south gate of the wall that used to surround Seoul

Korean Ginseng is put into everything. It’s a natural aphrodisiac, like me.

We visited a couple Buddhist temples (you know how I love those). These lanterns seem to hang over the entrance to most complexes.

Here’s the whole clan headin home after a day spent walking ‘til the seouls of our feet ached.

Here we are being captured by a huge wicker dragon.

The etiquette bell is the greatest modern Korean invention. They are located in many ladies’ restrooms. It makes a sound like a flushing toilet. When a lady uses the toilet, it is considered improper to make…sounds. Thus the etiquette bell is pushed when sounds are being made. I’m thinking of making it portable and marketing it in the US, any venture capitalists reading this??

That’ll about do it for Korea. I wrote this as I was suspended somewhere over the Rocky Moutains on my way back to Austin. So it's time I hang up my keyboard 'til the next trip.

2007-01-11T19:07:00.000-08:00

The Holidays in Korea

There’s not really much to note about a Korean Christmas. Stores are still open and many people are still working. It’s treated more like our Halloween in the US. You’ll certainly see decorations up and hear carols in the air but families don’t gather and presents aren’t really exchanged. Traveling home for Koreans is much more done over lunar new year. My family celebrated in the normal way, by wearing an equal number of red and green shirts.

New Years however was a different story. Even though by this time most of us had gotten sick, we still partied it up in downtown Seoul. By about 10PM the air was thick with smoke from the countless bottle rockets being shot into the air. Hordes of policemen stood guard (and took pictures themselves) along the main avenue

There were several traditional Korean music troupes that danced through the streets. You can see one of them at the beginning of this video clip taken about an hour before midnight:

As midnight rolled nearer we packed into the masses surrounding the Boshingak Bell Pavilion. The bell was in daily use during the Choson dynasty(1392-1910) when it was rung at the opening and closing of the city gates. Now however, it is only rung every New Years but they ring it 33 lucky times. The rest of the fam went home and the bros stuck around for this great shot.

You can see the Bell Pavilion in the background.

At midnight the bell tolled and bottle rockets flew, ash rained down like grey snow and you couldn’t even open your eyes due to the smoke, ash, and holiday cheer. Check it out, you can open your eyes though:

2007-01-10T20:38:00.000-08:00

Winter Wedding, Korean style

Korean weddings are efficient. Getting married is not an everyday occurrence, but wedding halls in Korea will do all they can to make you feel that way. Here’s how it worked in the hall we went to. There is a certain time allocated for your wedding, our time I believe, was 1:50. The bride arrives a few hours before to get all done up on the big day. She then goes up to the sixth floor and sits in a very small room as her guests wander in and get a picture with her. Here’s me with my sister, Laura, in the small picture room.

As the guests arrive, they are greeted by the father of the bride and groom and they sign in and pay. Yes, pay. There are no wedding presents given (same with Chinese weddings as I found out in Singapore), rather you give a certain amount of money depending on how close you are to the person. This is a rare opportunity to assign a monetary value to your friendship, and could be the reason that so many people attend these weddings. $50 is considered the least you would give if you were simply a mere acquaintance. Good friends run in the hundreds, and best friends may require pawning a non-vital major organ like the heart or skin (yes it IS an organ, didn’t you take 4^th grade science?). When you sign in, your name is written next to the amount you gave, recording your friendship rating for all posterity. At this time you receive your meal ticket (after all, it’s the second reason you came besides forced tributes). Jeong apologized on behalf of all Koreans, being that the majority of people that come to your wedding will obtain their ticket and proceed directly to the floor above to get their dinner, then leave. But don’t worry, you know they really do care as long as they gave more than a paltry $50.

Everybody who desires to see the ceremony waits outside the actual wedding chapel as the previous ceremony is finishing. As they file out, you file in (hey the seats are still warm!). Take your seat quickly because before you know it “Here’s Comes the Bride” is pumping out of the speaker system and the procession has begun! Koreans don’t use bridesmaids or groomsmen so they were entirely without a clue as to what to do with these six extra people standing at the altar. The ceremony proceeds pretty similarly to its western counterpart except the fact that the Koreans gave a pleased gasp of surprise as they kissed at the end (a normally absent bit that Laura insisted upon (my family are real kissers)). The new couple then bows to both sets of parents, which have special seats of honor up front, the groom gets down on his knees and plants his forehead to the ground in front of them. Respek.

As the guests who actually came into the chapel now file off to the mess hall, the picture taking begins. Jeong and Laura changed into traditional Korean wedding get-ups (hanboks) and then went through the Korean portion of the wedding. They serve tea to both sets of parents, then each set of parents throws fruit at the bride as the groom pulls out her apron to catch the fruit.

You’ll have as many children as the fruit you catch. The Na’s (the new couple) caught 9. They now have no choice but to have 9 children, it’s tradition and it’s never wrong.

Finally we went to the mess hall once everybody had already eaten and left (no, I’m serious). It seems that you can really have any type of event you would like at these event halls, check out the banner.

Laura is wearing a traditional bride’s hambok, characterized by the rainbow sleeves. This is not to be confused with the rainbow affiliated with gays, since they actually can’t get married. This is a serious conflict, which accounts for the sparseness of gays in Korea. I drew that last conclusion myself.

An interesting sidenote (and much more serious than my gay comment above) is how uncommon it is to see a mixed couple in Korea. Koreans have a peninsular mindset. Being that a peninsula is an avenue to the mainland from offshore islands they have a long tradition of being in the path of marauding Chinese, Japanese, or Mongol armies as they attack each other. As a result, Koreans are fiercely protective of their people and their heritage, historically going to great pains to not intermingle with other races that travel through. Upwards of 90% of Koreans that live in the peninsula are just that: pure Koreans with a painstakingly detailed genealogy that chronicles their bloodline. Seeing foreigners is not really all that common in Korea, but it’s much less common to see someone who is a Korean mix and they are unfortunately more likely to be the result of some prejudice. My brother in law has noticed the stares and the occasional comment that accompanies his decision to go against the national paradigm. Clearly the benefits of marrying into the family offsets this downside. As I said, we’re good kissers.

2007-01-03T17:57:00.000-08:00

Seoul food and the DMZ

So my little sis was actually getting married to a real live Korean. Up until now I had only seen them on TV and I just thought it was some trick of computer animation. Nope, I was totally wrong! They've got a whole country! I arrived in Seoul on December 23. My entire family flew in for a bit of Seoul searching (these puns won't end so get ready). Immediately we set out to get some Seoul food.

Korea's food is incredible. For those of you who haven't had a chance to eat some Korean food here's how it works. You go to a restaurant and oftentimes sit on the floor around a low table which will usually have a grill or pot built right into it. Immediately, the waiters bring out your panchan (I'll misspell all Korean words, my apologies to the non-computer-generated Korean people out there). Panchan is composed of a ton of little bowls of food that is intended to be eaten before, during, and after the main meal. Usually these are varieties of kimchi. The cabbage kimchi that most Americans know is only one variety of kimchi. Really Koreans tend to kimchi anything: radish, pickles, lettuce, sprouts, etc. One time I thought I had a kimchi finger, but it turned out to be octopus. Generally, there are about 6 bowls of panchan at a given meal. Then the main course comes which is generally pork or beef based. Much of the time you'll grill or boil this at your table and then wrap the meat in fresh lettuce leaves. Sesame is especially good. Here is the clan eating some Seoul food (two of the folks are Laura's friends).

Here we are eating some stuff which name I can't remember. It was the only chicken we ate in the 11 days we were there. Plus, bonus, we have non gender specific aprons on. There's my Mom, Sister and betrothed.
Then here are the bros.

Koreans are serious about their Kimchi, honestly they rarely even smile when they talk about it (so serious are they). You could also say it's Gimchi because K's and G's are interchangeable and the sound is somewhere between the two, thus some of you actually drive a Gia. Here I am beside the latest craze, a Kimchi refrigerator. It's so huggable isn't it?

One of the coolest and most poignant activities we did in Seoul was to head up to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. This has to be done through the military, specifically the Joint Services Organization which is a mixture of US and South Korean military. We left Seoul at 7AM and drove up to a fort on the border of the DMZ. There they gave us all a briefing and also required that we sign our lives away in the event of any occurrence from "enemy" activity. The DMZ extends the entire width of the Korean peninsula and averages 4 km wide (that narrow red line in the middle of the peninsula). Normally nothing lies within the DMZ except at the spot where the tour went. There are two villages that are located within the DMZ on either side of the central Military Demarcation Line (MDL). We were specifically instructed not to take pictures of the South Korean village as we drove by it, I imagine for their protection.

The residents are guarded 24/7 by the JSA and have strict curfews and have heavily subsidized, tax-free incomes ($80k USD per year) along with other perks. On the North Korean side there is the "Propaganda village", so named because it has loudspeakers the size of a house pointed at South Korea that, until 2004, used to broadcast communist propaganda for up to 12 hours a day. There's also the huge flagpole you can see there that's over 500 ft tall flying a massive North Korean flag. Funny thing is, nobody actually lives in this village. Funny commies.

The weather was blisteringly cold, rivaling the sentiment that this picture illustrates. This is by far the closest point of contact with North Koreans.

About 5 buildings here straddle the MDL. The North Korean soldiers stand in profile against a raised concrete divider about half a foot tall between the two sides. You can see the South Korean JSA soldier (who looks like the T1000 from Terminator 2 (you know, when he was posing as a traffic cop?)) interminably staring across the border at the North Korean guards. The guard in the lower photo stands half blocked by the building so the North Koreans can't get a direct shot in the event of an attack. In the building to the left is where the talks occur between nations.

North Koreans and South Koreans alternately use this building for the tour (we had to wait while a North Korean tour finished before we could go in). The microphones on this table are directly on the MDL,

so crossing to the other side of the room lands you squarely within North Korea. Here's me in North Korea:

These guards are like ninjas so we were warned not to get too close. They stay dead still and stare straight ahead wearing these sunglasses even indoors. It must take a lot of heart to do what they do. I mean, I've got seoul, but I'm not a seouldier.

As I mentioned, there are supposedly tourist groups from North Korea that come to the same place, the "tourist group" however that waylayed our tour was just this group of North Korean guards. They were laughing and taking pictures of each other. Then they perched on top of their guard building and watched us like "The Birds". With all the show of the North Koreans I kind of wondered if perhaps they were just instructed to act happy and carefree in the face of all these westerners.

Despite my joking, the feeling produced in all this really is just sadness. My new brother in law, Jeong, spent some of his mandatory 2 year military term guarding the DMZ. He told me that after the death of Kim Il Sung (former premier of North Korea and father of Kim Jong Il) several years ago all the South Koreans were so excited because they thought that a reunification was finally going to occur. It seems that the true sentiment, at least from the South Korean side, is not one of hostility but a great sense of loss and a keen longing to become one again. At least, that's what Jeong explained has been taught to them since grade school. Later that evening we all watched a South Korean movie, "Joint Services Organization" that tells a fictionalized story of the friendship that developed between a group of South and North Korean border guards. Again these feelings were portrayed.

It's hard to reconcile the fact that 23 million North Koreans are kept from their brothers by the pride and stubborness of just a few men. Take for instance the little pot bellied-pig Kim Jong Il or "Dear Leader" as he likes himself to be called. His desire to live up to the profile of his father has caused him to adopt a "Military First" philosophy that is forced down the peoples' throats instead of the rice and nourishment for which they are starving. All the while he sits aboard his yacht or dabbles in failed movie making with kidnapped South Korean actresses. Unfortunately the people are taught that they are the envy of the world, and how should they know better with banned internet, cell phones, and a controlled media? They are taught to deify the Kims; we were told that there are approximately 25,000 statues of Kim Il Sung alone in North Korea. The little pot-bellied pig is going to have to commission a lot of statues and kidnap a few sculptors to be able to keep up with that. Looking at North Korea's horizon, I don't know if we can see any difference for a while...

So this blog entry will obviously end on a somber note. I'll have a few more entries dedicated to Korea, including the traditional Korean wedding and New Years in downtown Seoul!

2006-12-21T01:45:00.000-08:00

National Instruments in Singapore

This blog entry is specifically intended for those NIers who are hungry for a taste of what cool stuff is happening in NI Singapore. For non NIers, please see the bolded disclaimer in Daily Life in Singapore. Always remember: Do not read my work related blog entries and drive.

Probably the coolest project I’ve done so far involves becoming a Singapore TV celebrity. True. The Singapore government has decided that not enough budding young Singaporeans are finding the tech field “cool”. As a result, they’ve decided to sponsor a reality show. But nothing as boring as “Survivor”, “American Idol”, or “My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance”. Nope, it’s an IT reality show. Exactly: not boring. Basically, teams of students from different secondary schools (that’s a Singapore term that means “high school”) compete against each other in different tech related events. Each series of events is an episode and different teams can have their players eliminated or penalized. I actually was able to help design and implement one of the events. Cool eh?

The idea was to have Lego Mindstorms NXT Robots navigating an obstacle course at the nearby Singapore Polytechnic.

But the competitors weren’t there. They had to follow a set of clues that led them to a mall downtown. There they found some info that allowed them to log into the LabVIEW Web Server to control a computer located at Singapore Polytechnic. That PC in turn controlled the NXT Robot navigating the course through Bluetooth. The first team to get their NXT Robot through the obstacle course first won the event. Here are some cool shots of the teams receiving instructions at the mall from the hosts of the show. The hosts are standing there at the left of this picture.

The hosts are clearly “young” and “hip”.

Here are the teams seated at a coffee shop at the mall, configuring their laptops to control the NXT Robots.

The camera crew took some excellent footage of me answering some questions from some of the teams. The hosts even called me the “mentor”. I was very flattered. I think I blushed.

The episode will be airing sometime in February, after which I imagine I will be a highly sought after "mentor" for other "young" and "hip" Singaporean shows. It will be on Channel 5, which is the biggest English language channel in Singapore with several hundred thousand regular viewers. Stardom.

Another project I have been working on since I arrived has been with the Singapore military. Earlier today I returned from a visit to their facility where I was troubleshooting the system we developed with them. I went through all kinds of security and they finally led me to their lab which was abuzz with varied RF equipment. I stayed most of the day, running several tests with multiple configurations and taking some data for further investigation (that sounded pretty “engineering” right?). Couldn’t take any pictures of that though. They’d shoot you.

Besides that, I’ve worked on several other big support issues, including quite a bit of IMAQ stuff. I’ve also given and am currently preparing several training sessions for the AEs.

Well Merry Christmas to all! Tomorrow will find me en route to Korea for a Spears Family Korean Christmas! I’ll probably end up running into this guy:

hopefully with a car.

2006-12-13T03:17:00.000-08:00

Malaysia: Johor Bahru

I think this time I'll write about Malaysia and the fabulous fun I've had there. About a month after I arrived in Singapore I had a free day one weekend so I headed across the border to Johor Bahru, Malaysia, or as it is more popularly known locally: "JB".

This involves a ride on the Singaporean MRT (Mass Rail Transit, same thing as subway (not the sandwich chain) or metro (not the prefix to -sexual)). Then a switch to a bus that crosses the Straits of Johor. Here are those very Straits viewed from Malaysia:
As at any border crossing, you fill out an arrival card and go through immigration. Usually these arrival cards are available all over. Here in JB however, you get to stand in line while an octogenarian hands you an arrival card for a small fee. And, if you're a Westerner, you get to pay a dollar. Every weekend, a few hundred thousand people come through this crossing, thus making arrival card distribution an extremely lucrative retirement job (helpful tip for those of you close to retirement).

After only a few minutes in Malaysia I had a new friend who met me and took me to get some refreshments. He even paid! What a swell guy. As in most cases where you're befriended by a local within ten minutes of border crossing, this guy later tried to rip me off. He managed to get some money out of me after a lengthy confrontation. I've thought many times on this topic, in fact each time I get ripped off while traveling. My solution is to set aside a certain amount of money as "I'm gonna get scammed" money. The alternative is to isolate yourself and mistrust everyone you encounter, which defeats the whole purpose of travel: to broaden your perspective and appreciate new cultures and viewpoints. Most of this money seems to be lost in the first few days of arrival in a new place which can be disheartening, but that's also the time when you're most willing to explore and meet new people, so it's only proportional. Just some observations, on we go then.

Well before getting ripped off I went about and saw some of the sights of JB. Here is a graveyard that would be very painful to sit on:

And here is a very big mosque:

This is where the Sultan of Johor lives.
Malaysia has a bunch of Sultans, one for each state (almost, really 7 of the 9 states). Every few years they rotate who is Yang di-Pertuan Agong (king) of all of Malaysia from the pool of Sultans. Even if you're not Yang di-Pertuan Agong, being Sultan is a great job, you have some nice palaces, oh here's another one of his palaces.

You get your own army, and you and your family even get to kill the common people if you like. True that, the Sultan beat his golf caddy to death a few years ago for laughing at a bad shot, and his son killed a man in a night club. But that's ok, being Sultan and thus being enlightened or chosen by God or something like that, you're pretty much free of retribution from everybody that pays to support your modest lifestyle. Good thing we don't have anybody like that in the good old USA, right Kennedys?

I drifted a little out of the city to a little town or "kampong". The houses are built on stilts because the surrounding area is under water at high tide. At low tide it looks like this:

I didn't stick around for high tide because I saw this menacing guy coming down the streets

About this time is when I was ripped off. My wallet a little lighter I set out to find the only thing that would refresh me: Pepsi.

Yes, that is an official, laminated certificate you see from PepsiCo at the top of the display. But honestly, who in recent years has doubted the inevitable advent of Pepsi footwear? Were not the harbingers clear enough? First Gatorade controlled by Pepsi, then Fritos and Quaker Oats. Look at the signs people, shoes were only the next logical step.

Oh, if you could only know the sorrow in my heart when I realized that Malaysia, like Singapore, does not yet have the manufacturing facilities to produce shoes big enough for these two feet of mine. Maybe George's visit to the APEC summit in Vietnam will change all that (fingers crossed!). So the Pepsi shoes, which were to be the envy of all the kids at school, and finally launch me into the cool clique, were left with a longing backward glance. What couldn't I have accomplished with a pair of Pepsi shoes? The world will never know.

2006-11-16T03:54:00.000-08:00

Daily Life in Singapore

I've had several requests for more info on daily life in Singapore and less of my bad jokes. I'm bad at multitasking, so I'll handle the first request this time.

This much requested entry describes my average day in the city-state of Singapore, a.k.a.: “The Lion City”.

My 7AM alarm comes only about 30 minutes after dawn. Since we practically (and painfully) straddle the equator, sunrise is about the same time year round. By 7:45 I’m stylishly dressed in my Orchard Rd. fashions and striding through the condominium complex I live. Here is a view of the building I live in:

Then I walk by the pool:

Nice eh? Everyday it’s like I’m in a resort. So plush.

Then I sit down here for a bit because I’ve been walking for up to 3 minutes:

This is where I wait patiently for the 173 (it’s a rhyme to pass the time).
After about 45 minutes and a bus switch I arrive at the International Business Park.

They call it that because there are a lot of international businesses here. And the park part is because there are some monkey bars behind the fountain there in the distance (I haven’t actually checked, I just think there probably are, monkey bars don’t really “do it” for me).

After my long journey through the Bukit area of Singapore (it means hill, but there is no hill) I’m usually pretty hungry so I go and get some breakfast at the Yummy Yummy Cafeteria. I’ll usually get some noodles with some fishballs (yup) or some tofu skin wrapped sausages. Then I get some juice.

The smiling lady on the right gives me juice about 4 times a day (in return I pay her cash). She blends it up for me then hands it over and says “xie xie” (you pronounce it “shi shi” like “shin” or “shift” or…...or ”shin” again) which means “thanks”. She says “xie xie” a few times and I say “xie xie” a few times. One might say we are full of “xie xie”.

Can I tell you about the juice here? Oh my. As you can see, there are a plethora of fresh fruits that are ALWAYS in season in Singapore (equator straddling will do that to a country). So you can have mango, soursop, kiwi, guava, dragonfruit, avocado, starfruit, ciku, celery, carrot, jackfruit, pear, apple, orange, etc, etc. juices whenever you want. Some juices are better than others, think of drinking a stalk of celery, your tastebuds bleed.

After that I hop on the elevator (they call it a “lift”, imagine that! Sure it describes what it does, but elevator has so many more syllables) and head up to National Instruments.

Here are some of the AEs smiling at you.

At lunchtime we all head out to eat, either at the Yummy Yummy Cafeteria or in another building. It’s also yummy yummy, but they don’t shamelessly promote it. Lunch runs about $2-3 in glorious greenbacks so I stock up. That way I won’t have to eat for like a month after I come back to Austin. Even in the cafeteria the food is great. A staple is chicken rice. That's roasted or steamed chicken, rice, some sauce, cucumbers, and usually cilantro. Then there’s the soup stall, hotpot stall, “economy food” stall, snack stall, vegetarian stall, and “Muslim food” stall which is basically Malaysian food: spicy and sweet.

Disclaimer: This paragraph is for my fellow NIers and will contain several acronyms and terminology that has been known to induce narcilepsy in non-employees. If you are operating a motor vehicle while reading this blog, please pull over.

Working at National Instruments Singapore has been extremely challenging so far. I’ve spent quite a bit of time working on a POC for the Singaporean military. I’ve also learned and taught TestStand, done a LabVIEW Hands on session, assisted in building demos for tradeshows, created training for the AEs over here, abused some of my connections in getting demos sent over, argued with Todd about getting some equipment (you know I love you brother), and I am flying to Malaysia next week for LabVIEW Intermediate. The office is really tight knit, I sit right beside the FSEs and ISEs (yea they’re engineers here). Marketing and operations are just a shout out away. Phone routing isn’t usually a problem, you can always just stand up and talk to the person if you’re having problems. Work starts around 8:45 or 9 and goes until…well it’s kind of like a game of chicken, everybody seeing how much longer they can stay in the road than the other guy (ever seen Footloose? Yea, when they sing the “I Need a Hero” song and Kevin Bacon gets his shoelace stuck on the pedal and can’t jump? Yea, it’s like that). That photo above of the AEs was taken at about 9:30 PM. About 8 of the 11 AEs had their shoelaces stuck to the pedal too. In reality though, we’re all gearing up for NI Days that’s about to happen all over the region. Think NIWeek with the word "week" taken out and replaced with "days". The work is a lot of fun and everybody has a great attitude.
Afterwards we go and get some dinner. Here we are eating some cheese prata:

Mmm. It’s a thin Indian pastry stuffed with cheese that’s eaten with a souplike curry sauce. Nice. Following my stream of consciousness: I have hardly eaten any “Western” food since I’ve been over here. Last Sunday though I had a little hankering and went to an Italian place for some pizza and pasta. I almost ordered a calzone, as the menu tantalizingly described it as “a folded pizza, similar to a large currypuff”. For those of you who aren’t familiar with a currypuff, it’s like a small calzone.
A zoomed out view of the cheese prata place.

Well that about does it for this time.
Next time I may tell you about how easy it is to find a shoe that fits me in Singapore, being that I have a foot that’s as big as most Asian females (notice I didn’t say females’ feet, I said females).

Maybe I'll even talk about some of my "cultural excursions" like karaoke night.

Yea, look at me rock out.

Until next time, remember that all good travellators go to heaven (thankfully, there seem to be hypermarts there as well, whew, I was worried.)

2006-10-31T05:46:00.000-08:00

Bali and Surabaya, Indonesia

And so begins the history of my blog. This blog will be a blog of my travels. I’ve been a little reluctant to start a blog considering that once anything is added to the internet it essentially stays there forever, and being that I am clearly destined for a meaningful political career in the future and the stupid things I will say will only hurt the chances of a presidency or head of some women’s union or something else of commensurate merit, I’m doing it anyway.

A short and perfectly skippable history of the title and URL: One day I was in Belize and I saw this guy selling a stonecarving he had made of the Mayan god of travel. I tried to bargain him down to buy it but while doing so somebody else up and paid full price (idiot tourists). But I decided the carving was a cool enough thing that I thought I would name something meaningful after that Mayan god of travel in the future like a dog, a baby, or a blog. I have fulfilled my obligation. Oh, and the travellator is from this:

Which are the ingeniously titled moving walkways in Singapore.

I’m currently working in Singapore for National Instruments. I’ll go into Singapore later. But a week after I came to Singapore we had the Indian festival of Hari Raya. I don’t know what that means, but we were awarded two days off work. I realized I had a four days weekend four days before the weekend. So I booked a flight on Garuda Airways (an Indonesian airline) for a weekend of luxury in Indonesia. I really wanted to visit Bali because I’ve heard incredible things about it and President Bush told me that if we are afraid to go about our everyday lives then the terrorists have already won. He can’t possibly be wrong. Unfortunately, Bali is a favorite destination for many locals, especially other Indonesians and getting a flight there proved to be impossible through about 12 airlines. Fortunately, I booked an open jaw flight: arriving in Surabaya, Java and leaving from Denpasar, Bali 3 days later. That garnered numerous objections from my coworkers, even the Indonesian guy told me: “you’re going to Indonesia? Alone? You’re going from Surabaya to Denpasar?? How?? Alone??? They don’t speak English in Java, it’ll take a day to get there, transportation is bad…” I’m sure he kept going, but with eyes and jaw wide open I boarded the plane.

I arrived in Surabaya around noon to find that I didn’t have enough money to pay for the visa to enter the country. Normally I’m smart with these things but I needed to buy congee with century egg (a very interesting Chinese breakfast) while in the Singapore airport and now didn’t have enough money. The customs guy was generous enough to take my passport and send me to the street outside the airport to look for an ATM. Now I used to live in the Philippines and so I’m used to having random (and by random I mean everybody within earshot of the crowd of people yelling that a white guy was walking around) people staring at me, but it’s always flattering. I can only assume that they go home and sit around the dinner table, breathing excitedly “and you’ll never guess what we saw at the airport today”. I found an ATM machine, it didn’t work. I was somewhat worried that I wouldn’t be able to find one. But after walking for about 20 minutes, sure to not let on to anyone that I was looking for a way to extract a large amount of money, I found a working ATM, paid for my visa and promptly set about finding a domestic flight to get me to Denpasar in Bali. They were all booked. All of them. I tried twice. All 4 airlines were booked solid that day. I walked about, chagrined. A guy offered to drive me there for $100 (5 hour drive and 2 hour ferry). I thought about it, hard. I decided to try the airline another time. Ah, the charmed third time. This time they miraculously produced a ticket that left at 8PM. It must have fallen behind the desk before. Incidentally, when I finally boarded the flight it was about 2/3 full. I just don’t know, people. I just don’t know.

With my 5 free hours I decided to see the city. So I sat down at a little café where a few guys my age were sitting. Here they are:

We started talking, me in English and them in very poor English (I not so good too). Finally they got the gist that I wanted to see the city. One of them offered his bike and away we zoomed. Here are random pictures I took on the back of the bike. Indonesian people are really cool. They all smiled at me.

This lady is carrying a birdcage with a cover on it so as to not to frighten the birds who are notoriously afraid of dangerous driving (like driving a motorbike while carrying a birdcage).

This guy is hanging out of a bus. Look closely, he has an electric guitar in one hand and is waving at me with the other. Rock on brother.

Here's us

Because people in southeast Asia love to shop they assume everyone else does as well. So the first place we went was a huge plaza (mall) that had just opened and had everybody excited. Naturally the whole mall stared at me. Including a couple of teenage girls who stopped and said hi. Then came back and took a picture with me on their cellphone. Then came back and took me to a photo studio they had booked and took pictures which I can only describe as “engagement-like”. In gratitude I took this picture of them with me. I’m the tall one.

Then my new friend and I started touring around. He had an interesting sense of time. He told me it would take an hour to get from the airport to town. It took 20 minutes. The he told me it would take another hour to get from the mall to Chinatown. It took 25 minutes. My suspicions were confirmed when I asked him to take my picture and he asked me to wait ten minutes while he put the kickstand down on his motorbike. After 17 seconds we were back on the road.

Here is a picture of a Buddhist shrine:

Here is another Buddhist temple. I absolutely love eastern temples. Especially Chinese Buddhist. I could stay days in there. The incense, the smoke, the lights, the different altars, the people bobbing and kneeling, the carvings, the architecture. Love it, really do. So we went to a few temples, then back to the airport. You were good to me, Surabaya 2006, I’ll remember that.

That evening found me in Kuta, Bali, the center of backpackertown. After finding a place to stay, I walked around Kuta. All around were Aussie surfers in their shorts and t-shirts, Europeans in their man capris and loafers, hippies in their hemp and dreds, and local guys and girls out looking to score any of these. I walked by the monument to where the bombings happened back in 2002. Remarkably near to where the bombings happened in 2005. Both in the month of October, only a few days from the day I was there. Luckily, my buddy George's words kept echoing in my mind and I stayed safe. “Stay the course” “Take the fight to them” “Bring ‘em on” “We’ll smoke ‘em out”. That’s my boy. That night was a blur of music, lights, Aussies pouring Fosters on each other, and Paul Hoganesque voices yelling drunken epitaphs to Steve Erwin. The next morning I awoke and went to the beach, or maybe I woke up on the beach, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I was viewing some of the best surfing in the southern hemisphere. Waves crashing about me, I bought a bamboo mat and laid on the hot sand. My surfing was a little rusty since I had last longboarded in San Luis Obispo so I passed and headed to get some food. Eating at supposedly the best restaurant in Kuta cost me $12. And here it is:

mmm. I chatted with the waitstaff quite amicably for an hour or so and then hopped a taxi for Ubud in the center of the island.

Can I tell you how much I love Bali? And especially Ubud? Currently Bali is in a thai with Thailand for my favorite place on earth (this sentence has a joke in it, see if you can spot it). The people are extremely friendly and speak decent English, there are beautiful beaches, mountains, the food is quite good, it’s cheap for us Americanos and the Bali religion deserves a prize. I think it’s the coolest religion I’ve seen. They’ve got to be the ones that get saved, or at least get Honorable Mention. First off, they are Hindu, but not like Indians or Nepalese, they are Balinese Hindus. And that’s something special. As such they believe in a pantheon of gods but technically only worship one god for the Muslim government of Indonesian to recognize them. They build temples religiously (which kinda makes sense). Every family has their own temple which consists of a gate, a shrine, some statues to ward off evil gods and spirits, and assorted other stuff, generally all made of stone. It is their duty to dress up the deities, like these:

Then each village has three temples, one towards the center of the island where the highest deity can visit, one in the center of the village for everyday worship and one toward the ocean to appease the evil gods. Then there are temples for the cardinal directions of the island, and then a great Mother Temple complex for the whole island. My taxi driver stopped in the middle of road for me to take this picture of a temple. Cars were honking behind us, to encourage me to take the best picture I could.

As a result of the ubiquity of their temples they are always dressing up and going to make offerings, pretty much every day. The offerings are generally just little banana leaf baskets held together with bamboo splinters and containing rice or flowers. The offerings can be at the temples or really anywhere. Here’s a picture of one that I found outside my door in the morning.

Offerings to appease the evil gods, on the other hand, are usually rotten and are left about because evil gods like that kind of thing. It’s all extremely fascinating. To enter into their temples during certain times you have to dress in special clothing, even the tourists. But then sometimes you don’t, I'm not quite sure when the rules apply. Here’s an excellent shot of me pointing the camera at my lower half.

You’ll notice I’m wearing a green sarong and a yellow sash. Y’all will note that I normally prefer to wear a baby blue sarong with a beige sash but, when in Rome…

I could go on and on about how fervently they believe in the appeasement of these gods and their duties and the festivals and cremation ceremonies and their cleansings and rites of passage and caste system and housing arrangement but let’s first talk about monkeys.
Monkeys are sacred. As such, they have a holy park set aside for temples and monkeys. You pay to go in and see the monkey temple park, and you can also buy bananas to feed to the hl monkeys. This is me in a sort of holy communion with the sacred monkeys.

This sanctimonious old lady was trying to stare me down. She won, she always does.

Here’s one of the evil god temples in the monkey park.

Note that the witch widow goddess is about to eat a smiling baby. That may strike you as odd until you realize that they’re both made of stone and there’s really not much eating going to happen there at all anyway.

Here are more picture of the sacred monkey park.
If monkey sexuality offends you please do not look

Ubud is characterized as the artistic heart of Bali and, as such, there are incredible traditional dances that occur there every night. Being an incredible dancer myself I went. Unfortunately, my camera decided to start being very bad that night. This is the best of a series of extremely dark and depressing pictures that came from my camera that evening.
It shows the gamelan which is an all male a capella chorus of about 100 guys in black and white checkered sarongs with a red sash. They sit in a circle surrounding a rack of torches telling the story out of the Ramayana or Mahabharata (Hindu epic stories) while dancers in full costumes come to the middle and act out the epic. The dancing is similar to Thai dancing in that they make very angular body shapes like they have cramps in several major muscle groups simultaneously with their eyes open wide, eyeballs darting back and forth. It’s different than watching Britney Spears dance, at least the gamelan have a better voice.
They are really quite incredible, the show is about an hour and a half and their a capella is like a syncopated rhythm chak chak chak chakA chakA chakA chakA chakA chakA chakA chakA chakA chakA chakA chakA chak chak chak interwoven with solos, then slowly and morosely and then back to the rhythm (the A is the offbeat in chakA, feel it people, just feel it). Evidently when the dances are actually done in worship, the gamelan put people in a trance, who then run through the fire. That’s exactly what happened afterward. A guy kept walking through flaming coals as the gamelan chanted. Sorry, the camera didn’t want to have any part of that. But here’s a picture of me with one of the stars of the show. Evidently I was rather entranced myself.

I enjoyed the art and culture so much that I bought a nice painting. I will display it rolled up in the corner of my room with my rolled up paintings from Tanzania, Argentina, China, and my sculpture from Zanzibar.

Indonesians drive on the left side of the road which is inherently dangerous and should be avoided. But luckily I had a stylish helmet from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Here’s me on my hog.

Ubud also has a nice palace that has some Dutch colonial influence since they inhabited Indonesia a while back.

Ubud has a lot of beautiful rice paddies and most guesthouses will even advertise a “rice paddy view”. Here is a “rice paddy view”.

The final place I went on the way to the airport was Tanah Lot, a temple on a rock in the water which can only be reached at low tide.

Holy Snake! Yes I paid to see the holy snake which is what that guy to the left is charging for. I even touched its Imminence.

Just a sweet shot.

Here's a place in town with a bunch of people resting. Those are carved fish skeletons hanging from the roof. I don't know why.

And here's another temple. I told you, there are a lot.

Full of admiration for the Balinese people and their beautiful culture I boarded the plane and headed back to Singapore. Until next time.

That's me, I'm the Travellator