Overseas

2006-09-20T03:22:00.000-07:00

HOLY SHIT.

Actually, last night I was at a street bar in Bangkok and had no idea any of this was happening. Some drunk guy named Martin came in and told me that there were tanks in the streets but I just sort of ignored him. I think that this really says it all:

The United States, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand condemned as undemocratic Thailand's first coup in 15 years but its 18th since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

18th?

Other than there being soldiers in the streets (and not that many of them) there is no evidence that Thailand is under martial law.

More to come...

Oh, details to come about Sonya. Man, did we have FIGHT last night. "I not young girl Josh! You like young girls!" POUT POUT POUT POUT

Oh, did I mention I was dating a Thai woman?

2006-09-16T00:38:00.000-07:00

God, I've been bad about this. Ok, NOT teaching now. Decided against it due to airline woes and money woes and etc...So, I've been in Bangkok now for about a week. I came back and hung out with my friend Justin who I knew in Nong Khai again and we went out and went to this bar where we bought an entire bottle of whiskey for us and all the girls that worked there. I woke up at my hotel the next morning with no idea how I got there and I called Justin and he said, "Um, well, I didn't wake up alone." but there was no more discussion on that and he headed back to Nong Khai. I've been here in Bangkok just sort of hanging out not doing too much. I mean, really not doing too much. Right now just in the midst of figuring out getting back home which will hopefully be around Sept 28th. So, what am I doing? Mostly just kind of wandering around Bangkok. I met a Thai woman named Sonja that I've been hanging out with who works doing some sort of thing at the Bangkok stock market that I don't really understand. She's very bizarre actually. I asked her what was the last book she read and she got all suspicious and asked why I wanted to know. Then she started talking about how she owns 425 pairs of shoes and her father knows police captains and so on but when I asked what he did for a living she said "It's a secret.". So, that's certainly interesting. I realized that being mysterious is really easy if you just say a bunch of things and then don't elaborate on it in any way.

2006-09-07T21:57:00.000-07:00

Awww. Thanks for the comments!

However, remember when I was in Nong Khai about a month ago and was offered a job and I turned it down? Well, I came back to Nong Khai because it's cheap and I have a few friends here and I was trying to figure out what the fuck to do with my life for the next few weeks, and lo and behold, I was here one day and someone said to me "Want to teach English for five weeks here? Pays 10,000 baht." so I guess that's what I'm going to do. So, it looks like I'll be coming back a little later than I thought but still in enough time for Halloween I hope. Due to all my tickets and so on coming home will be an adventure in sucking. Bangkok-Doha-Moscow-Zurich-train to Frankfurt-New York. This will happen all at once. No stopping. Fun! Lesson learned. Don't buy your tickets beforehand.

Message to Sterling: I'm finally reading Lord of the Rings and this time enjoying it.

2006-09-06T20:29:00.000-07:00

Due to some bullshit about "money" or something like that I'm coming home early. How early hasn't been decided but it's looking like October.

2006-09-01T22:08:00.000-07:00

Hey, I'm not dead. The gang members didn't kill me. In fact, they were nice guys. I finished up writing about them last week and hopefully it will get published but you never know I guess. Also, a lot of what you would have read here is in what I wrote. Regardless, it was great to be traveling with a purpose rather than just my own self direction which can be lacking at times. It's interesting since on the last day of the yoga course we had to do this thing where we pick out a word from a pot and that is the word/thing that we need to focus or meditate on. My word was "purpose" and despite the total hippie dippieness of the whole thing it was absolutely right. Now, purposeless once again, I'm finding myself thinking that maybe going to see "My Super Hero Ex-Girlfriend" here in Bangkok isn't such a bad idea.

I have a long thing I want to write about Phnom Penh and where I stayed and the people there complete with pictures but give me a few days to get that up. There's some interesting things going on there. I don't think I got a picture of my friend the motorbike driver, Day. Day was a good man. He would take me all over to eat and hang out at these different Cambodian restaurants and bars where I was definitely the only foreigner. Day spoke English pretty well as well as Thai and Chinese passably but couldn't get a job so he was a moto driver.

I went to Siem Reap and saw Angkor Wat but unfortunately the day I got there I got pretty sick so I did see Angkor Wat but I was feverish the whole time so the whole experience was kind of muted. Still, it was pretty fucking impressive. Yet, like many many things it doesn't take you three or four days to see the whole thing. You can really do it in one.

Oh yeah, and my camera (well, Harry and Amy's camera) got stolen. So, no more pictures other than the ones I haven't posted yet.

Lack of posting has been due to not all that much going on and just general "the blahs" but will pick up.

I'm in Bangkok now waiting to get my teeth looked at before I head off to Russia. I have to wait until Monday to see the specialist and then it will be four or five days after that before I can get the permanent crown. Bangkok as a city is ok but I've been here for a week before when I lost my bank card so I've kind of done the tourist route. So, now I'm looking around for some other things to do. Like I said, self direction not my strength sometimes.

2006-08-19T22:35:00.000-07:00

I headed down to Sihoukaville last week for a few days in the fun and sun. Unforutnately, it being the rainy season and all, the roads were very flooded and it took quite awhile to get down there and at one point I had to get my bag from the bottom of the bus because the water was so high it would have seeped in and soaked it. We finally made it and the guy I was sitting next to owned a guest house so I stayed with him at the "Same Same...but Different" guesthouse. Now, if you have ever been to SE Asia you will know that this is the most annoying thing you can name your business. That is because these shirts that say "Same Same" on the front and "But Different" are fucking EVERYWHERE. Of course, I'd like to have a shirt that says "Same Same" then on the back "Same" but I may be the only one. Anyway, I stayed there and it was right on the beach which would have been a lot better if it hadn't stormed for most of the time I was there. I didn't do much except one night I went walking around town, which was pretty dark by the way, and saw a karaoke place. A guy in there motioned me in and got me a beer and, I swear to god, he was the Cambodian Samuel L. Jackson. I mean, it was totally unreal. Anyway, I sang Unchained Melody which has a middle part I can never remember at all but thankfully everyone else in the place did. There was a nice Sihoukaville policeman in there who kept cheers-ing me and after I had drunk more beer than was probably wise he decided to give me a ride back to my guesthouse on his motorbike. He was drunk drunk drunk. Mind you, this is with no helmets or anything either. So we set off and he's going in the wrong direction and he speaks NO English. I yell and point in the opposite direction but to no avail. Finally, I just point to a hotel on the side of the road and he lets me off there. I get off, shake his hand, and he sets off to do more karaoke I guess. I decide that one more wasn't a bad idea. (Sidenote here: There is Angkor beer and there is Anchor beer. Anchor is pronounced An-chor with the "ch" like the "ch" in channel. Very weird especially since there is a picture of an anchor on the can. How this all came to be is a mystery. I mean, I understand that this is a confusing name thing but why would you name your beer with a homonym?) I meat two Australian guys there, and god knows how this came up,one of them brought up that he owned "The Golden Spike" that was used in the ceremony when they finished the transcontinental railroad. He had gotten it from someone in a casino for 1000 dollars. I was convinced last night that this artifact was, in fact, lost and that he had it was an enormous find for the historical community. So much so that I told him that he was a fool not to get straight down to the US embassy and tell them. My whole understanding of this piece of history is,unsurprisingly, totally wrong.

2006-08-14T21:23:00.000-07:00

Phnom Penh. Ok, I can't be sure that the five year olds I saw were sniffing glue or not. I shot an AK-47 and a .45 at the shooting range that the army runs and, as I expected, it was really fun. I had not expected the crazy "there is something in my hand that is exploding" feeling but I don't know what I did expect. Contrary to the guide book which said that shooting animals was a myth, within about 3 minutes of me being there the guy said "Shoot chicken?" but I declined.

I also went and checked out Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields. There really isn't anything I can add.

On a happier note: I met a really great guy named Antonio in line at the airport and then again by chance at a bar. We talked for awhile and then he said, "Hey do yo watch TV?" and I told him I did. And then he asked if I wateched "Project Runway"and I told him that I had. So then he says, "I'm Santino's brother". We talked about that for awhile and then I went with him and his friends to eat a "happy pizza" which caused me to be stoned out of my motherfucking mind way past getting up the next morning.

2006-08-09T01:13:00.000-07:00

Liveblogging the Udon Thani airport from an internet kiosk. For some reason they just turned off all the power to 1/2 the airport including the escalators and the check in counters. TV and Internet kiosk unaffected. Very odd.

2006-08-08T01:00:00.000-07:00

Two things I've discovered about myself this week: I enjoy guided meditation and also chanting.

Each of the Chakras has it's own mantra one of which is "Rom" and I couldn't stop thinking about

2006-08-05T21:06:00.001-07:00

The very first picture I took on my trip was a fat cat in Beijing.

2006-08-05T21:06:00.000-07:00

I've really been bad with the posting here. Ok, first things first: I got offered a job at the guesthouse here in Nong Khai. I decided not to take it for various reasons including the fact that I still have so much travelling to do, but it sure was nice to be asked. I think the job will probably go to Justin, the Irish guy, who is better suited for it since he's been on the road for fifteen months and had actually told me he was interested. It kind of sucked because right after I said no I had that feeling that you get where you think to yourself, "Shit, should I have said yes?", but ultimately I think it was the right decision. Of course, as usual, I felt bad saying no since obviously I want to please everyone and the owner Julian seemed disappointed and right after he asked the conversation was very, very, stilted which sort of made me feel weird. Of course, I often feel weird so it's probably not to be taken seriously.

Anyway, on to yoga: We had a guided meditation the other day where we spent about an hour doing this almost hypnotic breathe and move some and follow the voice thing. Then at one point we are supposed to leave our bodies and jump in the ocean and swim around in our mind. Well, I didn't go to an ocean. I went to a big white room that only had a black telephone and the cord was strangling me. So, that was kind of heavy.

Julian later told me that it reminded him of the scene in the Doors movie where Andy Warhol gives Jim Morrison a black phone as a present so he "can call God.".

Someone else told me that they had the telephone as well and it was ringing but he picked it up an hung it up again immediately.

2006-08-01T22:36:00.000-07:00

Do not play with landmines.

So, here's the reason that I haven't really been posting anything. I haven't really been doing anything. I was on my way from Laos back down to Bangkok and decided to spend one day at the bordertown of Nong Khai. Well, one day turned into twelve. The thing is I'm not the only person who's gotten stuck here. The first day I was here I met Aleta and Justin who'd both been here five days, and also Nick who had been there one day and was recovering from dengue fever. Aleta had a legit reason in that she had lost her passport but Justin was just hanging out and Justin was also getting over being sick. So, the first day I was here Aleta and Justin filled Nick and I in on all the freaks in Nong Khai and, yes indeed, they infest this place. Not the people staying in the guesthouse or the Thai locals but the ex-pats are pretty much off the hook. Pretty much every bar here is a bar with working girls and the dudes that hang out there...man. One guy, who was enormously fat and bald, seemed nice at first until another guy came in and they started having a long conversation about ladyboys and included that fat guy talking about how he'd gone down to the coast with two girls and two ladyboys and some speed and had a four day orgy. You get the idea.

Anyway, Aleta left the day after I'd been exposed to this but Justin and Nick stayed on and I kept thinking about leaving but just never did. It was the first time on the trip that I really looked forward to talking to the other travelers around. The owner of the guesthouse, Julian, is very smart and there are just interesting people always lurking around including one guy who is helping to decipher the honeybee genome. Anyway, after five days of pretty much sitting around and shooting the shit, Justin is still here (11 days), Nick is still here (got offered a job and now works at the guesthouse) and I have decided to take a seven day intensive yoga course. Today is day two and it's going alright I suppose. I sure don't have any balance.

So, that's the update.

And also going straight down memory lane.

I'll be heading to Phenom Penh on Aug 10th and I can't imagine that there won't be some insanity to report from there.

2006-07-30T01:51:00.000-07:00

The last night I was in Vientienne I got a little bored of watching the CNN and ESPN in my room although at first since I hadn't watched any TV in 55 days it was like gorging myself on candy. So, I looked at the Lonely Planet and they said that there was a bowling alley near my hotel so I walked down there to bowl a few frames. The LP is pretty snarky in the commentary saying that there is some "interesting local form" or something similar but when I got there I was easily the worst bowler in the place. When I first went to get shoes they told me I'd have to buy socks as well to go with the shoes but I told the woman that I didn't really want to have to but socks and so she pointed me over to another rack of shoes that were just the old ones that I guess they didn't care if your dirty socks got in.

2006-07-28T21:04:00.000-07:00

How much are the beers at MutMee guesthouse?

2006-07-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

This is the view from the Wat at Mt. Phousi in Luang Prahbang. Although my photography is below average at best I hope you can see that it is very beautiful there.

2006-07-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

Here is the reclining Buddha. I'm hoping to start putting some pictures up.

2006-07-26T04:25:00.000-07:00

So, I sent some postcards to from Lang Prabang and I put them in a mailbox. Today when I tried that in Vientienne a woman came out from the shop next to the mailbox and laughed. Then she took out a key, got my postcards, and told me to go across the street to a different mailbox. So, I don't know if the mailbox I used was valid or not.

2006-07-26T02:01:00.000-07:00

People in Laos seem to like to drink. And that's not the backpackers, that's the locals. I went to see the Plain of Jars the other day (it's dull. I took a picture that I want to title "Everyone at the Plain of Jars wondering what the fuck to do") and our guide went on this impromptu spiel about prostitution (for some reason you go to BBQ places if you want to find the ladies in Laos) and how much he enjoys rice whiskey which is called LaoLao. It's not actually produced commercially. It's all just made moonshine style in these villages, which in between our visits to the three sites of jars, he took us too. It's just this covering with some oil barrels. Some of them are filled with rice and some of them are filled with fermenting LaoLao. The guide cracked himself up with a story about how a chicken ate some of the alcoholic rice and staggered around for awhile. I made some joke about drunk animals always being funny but no one else really seemed to think so. So, then he asks if we want to sample some of the whiskey and so we say "Sure." and he brings out a shot glass and a plastic water bottle full of it. He starts pouring shots for everyone and everyone has two until he pours one and we all say "For you!" and he smiled and said he'd already had some in the hut but he drank it anyway. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that he'd been telling us about his hangover all morning. He also told us that the way he drinks LaoLao is to mix it with BeerLao, pepsi, and milk. This sounds horrible. I wanted to try it but no one else would so it didn't really happen. So, before we went to the third jars site we stopped at this roadside place for lunch and in the back everyone, the guide and our driver plus the people that worked at the restaurant, were all getting WASTED. Yelling and drinking and generally carrying on until the driver came back out, put on his pith helmet, and started up the van blaring Thai pop as loud as it would go. I was a little worried about his ability to drive but he seemed to handle it pretty well. He didn't wreck or anything.

So, that night I went out with these two American guys I met from SF that were really cool and seemed the closest to people like my friends that I've met on the trip. I was with them, Lukas who is Polish ("Oh, you are going to Russia. Hmm. Well, uh, have fun. It will be very difficult. Cold? Oh yes, it will be very cold.") and this guy Kevin who just walked up to the Plain of Jars out of nowhere and who I've now run into three times so far on my trip. Twice in China and now in Laos. Anyway, we all went down to this place next door to the NGO that clears away land mines in Laos called "Craters" and settled in for some BeerLaos, which are pretty good by the way. Things were a little stilted at first but then everyone got kind of drunk and it started to get more fun. Then this guy Oz showed up who I'd ridden the bus to Phonsavanh with and he said, "Let's get some LaoLao!" which we did at the store next door. It was in a seltzer bottle. He told me that when he bought it a police officer was there and Oz asked if he wanted a shot and the officer said "Sure!", took one, and then got on his motorcycle and drove off. Anyway, we drank quite a bit of LaoLao until the place closed and then we headed down the street to some place the American guys had been which was pretty much a Laos roadhouse. We came in and there was music blaring and about five tables of Laos teenagers. We started to dance and then after a bit the teenagers started dancing too including one guy who started breakdancing! It was pretty awesome. So yeah, that was my birthday. The ten hour bus trip the next day was a little brutal but even that wasn't so bad. They did hand out barf bags to everyone though since the trip was going to be up and down some serious winding roads. I didn't have a problem but I did see some guys throwing bags of puke out the window. Also, there is a guy on the busses with an AK-47 in case we come across bandits or something. I wanted to take his picture but was a little too intimidated to ask.

2006-07-23T04:17:00.000-07:00

I'm in Phonsavanh and the internet is fairly expensive so I'm going to keep this short. Didn't do too much in Luang Phabang but did see the old Royal Palace which has some great artwork including a murual done in the 1930 that shows a day in Laotian life. Apparently each part of the mural looks best if you see it during the part of the day it is depicting. The throne room was also pretty nice with all of these colored glass figures reprsenting Laotian folktales. They also kept the King and Queen's bedrooms exactly how they were when they left so that was pretty interesting.

Also climed up Mt. Phousi which has a temple on top and there were women there selling birds in cages since I guess it is a good thing if you set them free up there at the temple. Not sure how Buddha thinks about catching theam in the first place but that seemed deeper than my knowledge of Lao would allow me to go.

2006-07-20T23:37:00.000-07:00

One of my greatest regrets so far is that I didn't start my photo blog of Chinese people asleep at work. At least once a day you would see someone just dead ass asleep at a store or restaurant or something. One time I had to wake up a woman to ask about a train ticket and she was so pissed.

Anyway, I'm not dead. Merely been away from the internet again. I decided to go to Laos and so I took a minibus with some English girls, some Austrian girls, one Dutch couple, and what I think is a gay man and a lesbian traveling together who were from Finland. We stopped at a town where you pick up the boat for the two day trip down the Mekong to Luang Phabang. In the morning we went through Thai and Laos customs and so on and headed down to the boat. Oops! The boat is full! This turns out great actually since they put another boat into service and it was bigger and less crowded than the other boat. I had a seat to myself which was nice since if there was someone else there it would have been a fairly cramped. The trip was six hours and then a stop and then six hours again the next day. The trip itself was pretty great. The scenery was just amazing, and I'm not a scenery guy for the most part, but just being able to look up from my book and see these amazing hills and with all the different shades of greenery was great. Eventually we pulled into Pak Beng which is a city that has these boat tourists coming through every day. I had paid for a room beforehand in Thailand and I can only say it was pretty much a huge mistake. The place I stayed was the worst place I've ever stayed. Everything was totally uncomfortable, including the pillow which was unusable, and the bathroom was concrete with just a candle. Which was fine with me actually. It was like you were pissing in a medieval castle or something, but the bed was so bad that I hardly got any sleep and I'm pretty good at sleeping in most places. The next morning I went to brush my teeth and I heard the loudest retching from the other bathroom and then the owner of the guesthouse came out with a big smile on his face and said "Too much to drink last night!". I wasn't surprised since he reeked of alcohol when I met him on the dock.

The next day we were only in one boat and it was filled to the brim with people on the floor etc...A few people complained but finally the guy said "Only one boat." and I mean, what are you going to do?

So, we set off and we saw some villages, someone pointed out we had not seen any roads at all on the banks, we saw an elephant, and then we saw a dead body floating down the river. It floated so closely that you could see the beard on his face. Some guy behind me said "Oh, that's not real!" but unless someone had thrown a very lifelike mannequin in the water, it was.

Finally we showed up at Luang Phabanfg and I got a guesthouse that was very comfortable and there were two young boys playing Playstation when I got there so it is very homey.

So, here I am. Next stop: The Plain of Jars.

2006-07-16T23:20:00.000-07:00

I was two and a half days away from the internet so that's why there's been a real lack of posts lately. I went on a three day/two night trek to see some hill tribes in Thailand. The trip started off with eight of us but three of the people were only going for a two day/one night trip so halfway through we split up with them. It was me, a sixteen year old kid from Britain named Stephen, three Belgian girls, Charlotte, Tina, and Tina, and a couple, the man was Thai, and the woman was Thai too but she lived in Rome. The last person was a Chinese woman who was the Thai woman's friend and also lived in Rome so they spoke Italian to one another.

We had about a two hour ride out to where we started trekking and it took awhile to get there since the truck really didn't go very quickly up hills. Once we started off our guide showed off his many leaf tricks which included tearing one leaf apart and blowing bubbles with the sap and another trick where he took the leaf and hit it with his palm and it made a huge POP! noise. The first place we stopped wasn't exactly all that rural in the sense that there were powerlines and a telephone booth and it really sort of seemed like this is what it would be like if you went on a tour of poor, rural, West Virginia. We hiked along and saw a lot of insects, tons of huge spiders, and numerous furry caterpillars.

Finally we showed up at the village where we were going to spend the night and we stayed in a raised up house thing that had a solar panel attached to a battery so there was a light. It was kind of early and so we just kind of all sat there together waiting for the guide to cook dinner. At one point a guy on an elephant just strolled by in the background and that was kind of exciting but that was it. There wasn't really much to see otherwise. So, we sat around and ate and it got dark and we sat some more and I chatted away with the Belgians mostly. Then it was time for bed. (Jeez, this is a dull story.)

The next day we got to ride the elephants. First we fed them bananas and they came right over with their trunks and took them right out of your hands. One of them managed to fling mucus on one of the Tinas which was pretty amusing. So, then we got on the elephants on a little elephant chair. My partner in this was Steven who was wearing his anarchy doo rag today. He'd worn his Union Jack one yesterday. So, we set off and our elephant was the slow one. And the one with the flatulence. You couldn't really smell it but every so often the elephant would just make this really loud sound like "BWAAAAAP". The elephants didn't appear to be mistreated from what I saw, although I'm sure they don't do too much in front of tourists, other than once they shot one of them in the side with a slingshot and a couple of times they threw dung at the elephant. I'm not sure why. When we were riding the elephant it stopped once and uprooted a tree. Just reached down with the trunk and pulled it right out of the ground to munch on the leaves.

We got done with the elephants and then hiked on until we were supposed to get to these waterfalls where we could swim. Well, the waterfalls were a pretty big disappointment in the fact that they were really small and, according to my Belgian colleagues, smelled pretty bad. I couldn't smell anything but it was decided by everyone that my nose doesn't work very well. We didn't spend too much time swimming then and since we were where we were going to sleep we all sat down and sat some more. I learned that when I mispronounce the word "Qatar" it means "pussy" in Dutch. Towards the end of the evening our guide and the cook came out to the table and we played some card games including one called "Pig" that I had never heard of. There was a special "We're camping!" sort of rule where if you lost a hand then the person that won the hand could draw on your face with the soot from the frying pan. So, I lost three hands in a row since I didn't understand the rules and got my face totally covered in soot or grease or whatever it was despite my protestations that it wasn't really fair since I didn't understand the rules. We played for about an hour and a half until I was super tired and we all went to bed. In the middle of the night I woke up and smelled something burning but I didn't really pay attention to it and just fell back asleep. It turns out that in the middle of the night the cook had fallen asleep and a candle had fallen on his bedding and set it on fire. He went and woke up the guide and the two of them had to take it, still burning, and throw it in the river. You could see it there. A big charred mattress.

That morning we headed off to do bamboo rafting down a river. I was chosen to be the driver and I dutifully took up the bamboo pole and pushed us down the river while a Thai man in front guided us. There some very, very, light rapids on the river but at one point the guy in front lost his balance for a second and tipped the raft and I fell in the river. It wasn't deep at all so I just swam for the shore and then swam right back out to raft and got back on. We did a little bit more rafting, had lunch, I got some chili in my eye, and we came back to Chiang Mai.

Tomorrow...Laos.

2006-07-13T03:57:00.000-07:00

Let's just hope things calm down a little before I get over to Israel.

2006-07-12T18:39:00.000-07:00

Who I've met and what I've learned:

Who:In Chengdu I met Audrey who was a Montrealean who worked in television.

What I learned: Traveling by yourself as a woman can be hard. "I was travelling with this Japanese guy for two days and we shared a room one night in a hostel and in the middle of the night he turned to me and said "I've been thinking about our relationship..." and I had to interrupt and say and "What relationship? Just go back to sleep." and then the next day I had to tell him it was just a little too weird."

Who: Dave the owner of the hostel in Bangkok

What I learned: "There are three places you never open a whorehouse: near a police station, near a school, or near a hospital."

Who: Guy I met in a bar after I watched him grab some guys arm and the guy stormed off. I came over to ask what had happened.

What I Learned: He was a sniper with the SAS. He'd killed three people. He was a spy looking for Osama Bin Laden. Osama Bin Laden is in China.

Who: Wen was a 21 year old Chinese girl I met in Shanghai who wanted me to teach English for two weeks at a camp she was part of. She was also smitten with a French guy who was in our dorm. "He is very beautiful." Unfortunately, M'sieu met a Shanghainese girl one evening and Wen was not pleased and went into a lengthy diatribe against big city Chinese girls and Shanghai girls in particular.

What I learned: "There is a saying among Shanghainese girls that you want an American first, a British guy second, after that any kind of European, and after that a rich Chinese guy."

Who: Jim a guy from Las Vegas who runs his own adult web site and who has that weird "I've been smoking since I was 13 and now I'm 45" skin.

What I learned: Don't use an ATM in Cambodia. Have the money changing places swipe your card for you. Also, if you are going to ask other tourists for money then have a story that makes at least a little bit of sense. He apparently had lost his atm card in Cambodia and the bank was online and would only send him a new card to his house and not to the U.S. embassy in Thailand but there was plenty of money there etc...until it led up to him showing me the entrance to the skytrain and asking me for some money and "If you give me your bank account number I'll pay you back for sure.". I refused and two times after that I saw Jim on the street and he didn't acknowledge me. Oh yeah, he had a rat tail. It was never explained how it was that he was living in hotel in Bangkok or had any money at all and also why he didn't have any family or friends to help him out rather than having to strike up conversations with guys in a restaurant. I asked him why he didn't just transfer the money out via wire or open up a Netbank account or something. He didn't really have a good answer for me. Scammers 1 Josh 1

2006-07-11T07:41:00.000-07:00

So, I'm still in Bangkok. Why? Well, it turns out that even though my card was at the bank where it got sucked into that ATM I couldn't get it since I didn't have my passport. This was on Friday and I figured I'd just make it back to the bank on Monday. Unfortunately, both Monday and Tuesday are bank holidays in Thailand. Monday being the anniversary of the Buddha's first sermon and Tuesday being the beginning of Buddhist lent. Tomorrow I can finally get my ATM card and head up to Chiang Mai where I hope to do some jungle trekking.

What have I done in Bangkok? Not much really. I did see Superman Returns and The new Pirates of the Caribbean. This was an interesting experience since they have assigned seating in the theaters (which with the language barrier it was hard for me to understand) and it was hard to order normal popcorn. The first time I ordered popcorn it was "Golden Classic" which was the carmel corn. I threw it away. So, then I went to another stand and saw what looked like normal popcorn and got that but it turns out it was "Chic Cheezy". I ate that since I was really hungry. Before the movie starts they play the Thai national anthem and everyone stands while they also show this movie of the king of Thailand and lots of really fucking happy Thai people. At the very end they show this animation of a guy in the ocean who reaches up to a glowing woman in the sky. I didn't understand that part.

2006-07-08T00:33:00.000-07:00

I'm here Thailand. They drive on the left side of the road here. One thing that all the guesthouses I've stayed at have that is an interesting feature is that your room key activates the electricity in your room. So, without your room key in a little slot you cannot work the lights, fan, etc....

So, first day in Thailand...relaxing...sunny...I lost my atm card.... Yeah, I did. But, as a veteran of absentmindedness I knew exactly what to do when I found out this happened. I checked my bank statement, figured out I had been to Bangkok bank to withdraw money and figured that the ATM had just sucked my card in. And after a few hours searching for the bank and figuring out who to talk to that was exactly what had happened. So, really the worst that occured was that when I went to the bank to get the card it was so hot that I had sweat through my shirt and that was a little embarassing.

I checked out Wat Pho this morning which was pretty fucking awesome. I mean, it really blows you away in that way that really huge things you aren't expecting to see will. The feet are also really intricate mother of pearl designs and the whole temple itself has amazing drawings on the wall. In a total Josh Reynolds moment I'm walking around the temple and I see three Indian women with their shoes off and I think "Hmm, no shoes in the temple. That seems rather informal." and it wasn't until a woman in the temple pointed at my shoes rather unhappily that I realized that I was the one in the wrong and had totally walked right by the people in the front with the big shoe repository which seemed huge and totally non not noticeable ont the way out.

2006-07-05T00:20:00.000-07:00

Today is my last day in China. And so this is a wrap up of China posting. Just to get the odds and ends out before I head of to Thailand. I had the opportunity to take a two week English teaching job here but it didn't start until the tenth and I wasn't all that into three more weeks in China. Feeling the need to move on.

1. I was approached two times today with the teahouse scam by different groups of young and friendly Chinese people.

2. Did I write about the dental office I saw where there was huge glass window and you could actually look in and see someone getting dental work? Well, I thought that was weird until I saw the same thing with a vet's clinic. I saw a dog on an IV!

3. There is this weird unfinished looking European castle thing on the way to see the Great Wall. It looks like it was going to be an amusement park that was never finished. I can't find any information on it. As we were driving to the wall, the woman who drove me pointed at it and said "beautiful" which isn't really true unless you find the kind of things that show up in Weird NJ beautiful.

4. In Shanghai boxy glasses with a reddish tint to the frames are way in. It makes all the women look like they are receptionists at art galleries.

5. I might have mentioned this one before: short shorts are all the rage in China.

6. I had never seen a child take a shit on a newspaper outside of his or her parent's store before China.

Bangkok here I come.

2006-07-04T02:36:00.000-07:00

Well, it was bound to happen I suppose. I got scammed. The thing is I was even aware that this particular scam existed and was on guard and I STILL got scammed. They were that good. The scam is rundown pretty well here. Also here. And here: This describes it in more detail than I will. Anyway, I was aware that this sort of thing could happen but I was on the lookout for one, or maybe two girls. Not two girls and one guy. This is is exactly the combination that stopped me in front of the Shanghai Museum. They asked me all sortrs of questions about where I was from etc... and we talked for about ten minutes. Then they brought up the teahouse and I orginally wasn't going to go, not because warning bells were going off, but because I wasn't feeling social. But, I had been to a teahouse with a friend of a friend in Beijing and it had been really cool. So, I thought, "Fuck it" and went with them. They chatted with me the whole way asking how many girlfriends I had had in my life, and so on. We finally arrived at the teahouse and went and sat down. Ok, now they showed me a menu and I didn't read it very carefully I must admit. These kids were good. They really put me at ease. All I saw was Y 38 for tea. So, I thought, it's 38 Yuan for each kind of tea tried. There was also a small service charge for the tea making and all the tea service the host does (which is indeed considerable) and for tea snacks. So, we try some teas. We try six teas. I am never asked how many teas we are going to have until we have six. It's not really bothering me because six teas at Y38 split four ways isn't too bad. Anyway, they ask if I want to try two more and I say no. We do get some snacks. We are there about an hour and a half and then they say it is time for them to go and the tea mistress brings the bill. It's something to the tune of 1300 Yuan. This is totally out of control expensive. Around 160 dollars I think. So, I think to myself, "Well, this is certainly more than I would have paid for tea, but I had a fun time and them's the breaks." when the guy, Tommy, said "The girls pay for their tea (they had bought tea and there had been a hard sell by the teahouse to buy some earlier) and here in China we pay for girls half of the bill.". Well, I was kind of taken aback by this and just sort of stunned so I took out my 738 Yuan and paid. We then went to the bathroom and left. They walked me back to the Shanghai Musueum and left. I went in the museum and looked around but could totally not concentrate because all I could think of was "Holy Fuck. I just got scammed.". So, one of the women gave me her email address which I assume is fake but it's just kind of weird that she did that. I can only imagine that it is done in order to cement the "We are friends!" vibe.She also took a photo of all of us together which I'm assuming goes into a funny flickr account of "Clueless Whitey"'s.

So, I'm in Shanghai. It's so hot it's almost disturbing.

2006-07-01T19:22:00.000-07:00

2 for 1 martinis = trouble

2006-06-30T20:07:00.000-07:00

Some of you are probably wondering what it's like to go to the dentist in Beijing. I am not fully toothed again at least for a short while. I got a temporary crown that will work for a few months until I get a permanent one which I guess I'll do in Thailand as it's probably cheapest there. The temporary crown cost me about 110 dollars. Which led to start thinking that since I don't have dental insurance it might actually be cost effective to fly to China to get my dental work done. But anyway, I showed up, filled out one form, and then I was brought in and the dentist said "What's the problem?". The dental office itself was really nice and other than the fact that we had to get the receptionist in once or twice to translate it was a smooth dental ride the whole time. Interesting that I hadn't been to the dentist in ten years and now I've been twice in three months.

Still in Beijing. Two days from now I'll be in Shanghai.

FINALLY going to see the Great Wall today.

2006-06-28T01:56:00.000-07:00

Only spent one night in Guangzhou but I really made most of it. First of all, where I was staying on a small island is where the US Consulate is located, and also apparently, where a big center for Americans adopting Chinese is located. Everywhere I walked around there were stores selling baby clothes and strollers, and American (or white at least) couples walking their new adoptees in same strollers. I guess you have to spend a month in Guangzhou before you can take the child out.

So, then I went over the bridge into Guangzhou proper to have some dinner. I sat down with a beer at some street restuarant and looked at the menu. Of course I can't read Chinese so my main modus oprerandi is to just point at something and then eat whatever it is that they bring me. So, I did that this time and the woman looked at me, looked at her coworkers and then looked at me again. I went back to reading my book and about two minutes later she plops down a bowl of stew. Grub stew. With a few grubs in it but one that is about the size of my index finger. I am totally aghast. I gasp and everyone laughs and then the woman points and something else on the menu and I nod and she takes away the grub(s). So,a few minutes later she comes back with something (pork?) which I eat and the she brings some broth which I sip and then I'm moving my spoon in the broth and then I see a piece of...wait, it's the grub cut in half! Needless to say, I didn't eat it.

So, I went on back to the hostel and as I'm preparing for bed I swing my legs around on my top bunk, lose my balance, and fall, literally, on my face. I chip a tooth and bite right through my lip and bleed just about everywhere. I left the room to go find a mirror to see how bad it was and walked past the reception area where all the employees go totally apeshit. They take me back to my room and in the morning they all come in and ask if I'm ok which was nice. Anyway, other than a scarred and obvious fat lip and also having a chipped tooth I'm fine. Or so I thought. That morning I had to get on a train for a 23 hour train ride to Beijing. No problem. Except when I tried to eat my ramen noodles in that first hour I realized that my mouth and gums hurt and were so swollen I couldn't eat solid food! Awesome, right! So, for the rest of the trip I just laid in my bunk and put small pieces of roll in my mouth that would eventually become saturated with saliva and then I could swallow them.

So, now I'm back in Beijing and I'm off to find a dentist.

2006-06-26T02:14:00.000-07:00

Got up at five this morning and took a plane from Hainan over to Shenzhen with the full purpose of going to Hong Kong. Well, what I didn't realize is that you need a double entry visa if you want to go to Hong Kong and then come back into the mainland. I only have a single entry. I could have gotten a new visa but once I looked into the expense of getting the new visa and also the Hong Kong visa I realized it wasn't really worth it. It seems weird that you need a visa to go to Hong Kong since it's part of China now. Or is it? I'm confused about the whole thing.

So, I decided to come to Guangzhou for a day and then take a train back to Beijing where I need to finish up doing some things that I haven't done yet like the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, and eating Peking Duck.

On the bus from Shenzhen to Guangzhou this afternoon the bus attendant (there is a driver and a bus attendant on every bus) came by with a video recorder and taped everyone's face. I assume for security reasons. Very odd.

I met a guy named Chris at the last hostel I stayed at and he had been living in Beijing for the past year studying Chinese and we were talking about living in China and he was saying that it was ok if you were a foriegner but he wasn't so sure how great it was if you were a Chinese person. He said that he was at a club about three months ago and it was raided by the police who seperated all the foreigners from the Chinese and let all the forigeners go but with all the Chinese they told them they were doing a full drug test right then and whoever tested positive was going to prison.

2006-06-25T03:34:00.000-07:00

There are some things I really miss about the U.S.. Cheese is one of them. I don't know that I've had cheese since I've been here.

Bus stops that are reliably close to one another is one more thing that I miss. In Chengdu I missed my stop and the next stop was, no exaggeration, at least a half a mile down the road.

2006-06-23T21:59:00.000-07:00

Can I give a hearty "What the fuck?" to my cellphone? It turns on and I can see that people have called and texted me but I can't access anything else. Like, using the numbers or the menu or anything. So, if you called or texted I can't see it. So, email it over.

I am still sunburnt. So badly that it's hard to sleep and I can't really go outside during the day. Tonight there is a barbecue at the hostel and then tomorrow I'm off to Hong Kong via Guangzhou. Then it's back to Beijing to get on that Wall, see the summer palace, and of course, find out how Lianna's thesis on online Chinese poetry is coming along.

2006-06-23T00:12:00.000-07:00

In Hainan now. Took a flight from Kunming to the capital of Hainan, Haikou. Then from there I took a bus to the town of Sanya in the south. The three hour bus from Haikou to Sanya showed karaoke videos, including one that was a cartoon of pigs in love that they showed twice, and also some weird Chinese comedies. I showed up here in Sanya and pretty much went to my room and rested and read my latest hostel book swap pick up "Noble House" by James Clavell. I've read "Shogun" twice and really liked it but this one is really not that great. Not to mention Clavell's less that savory depiction of Chinese people. There's a lot of "Eeee! How I would like to slit that barbarian's secret sack and feed him the contents!" and "Ayeeyah Third Toilet Maid Fung! How I would like to pillow with her and feel her golden gully!".

I am sunburned really badly. I went swimming yesterday and even though I had sunscreen the sun here is intense. So, my shoulders are in a bad way and I'm staying out of the sun so I can recuperate.

Ran into the British girls here in Hainan so we and some other people went out for drinks and dinner last night and then a midnight swim. I can hardly hold my head up. I'm very hungover from that. So, hungover and sunburnt. Internet,anyone?

2006-06-20T03:44:00.000-07:00

I left Chengdu a few days ago and am now in Kunming. There isn't a whole lot going on in Kunming but due to weird Chinese transportation stuff it was cheaper for me to come here than it would have been for me to go directly to Hainan.

The last day I was in Chengdu the owner of the guesthouse took about ten of us out to Cantonese food at one of his favorite restaurants. He asked if we were interested in eating turtle which we weren't but brought up the conversation I know you've been a part of where someone says "It's really so arbitrary what we decide to eat and what we won't eat!" and everyone nods and says "Very true." and "Oh yes!" as if this is the smartest thing anyone's ever said. I mentioned that I was fine with being arbitrarily not ok with eating duck's brains out of the skull. Then for some reason the conversation went on to cannibalism and how one of the people at the table couldn't understand that if you were in that sort of lost in the Andes and had to eat your wife situation how anyone would hesitate. I don't get this. I mean, yeah, if I were starving to death then I would probably eat whomever but I don't think it would necessarily be all that easy to just cook up somebody up without at least a little feeling of "Oh, well, we were such good friends." and I could certainly understand how someone might not want to do it. Anyway, the meal was free which was nice and also really good although the pig's feet were way to gingery for my taste.

So, I flew to Kunming since it was either 18 hours/ 32 dollars for the train or 1 1/2 hour and 44 dollars for a plane. I'm off to watch the World Cup with two young women who just graduated from college that I met in this restaurant and who are pretty open about pretty much everything. So I heard a lot about one's parents's open marriage and how her ex-boyfriend is on dialysis after recovering from his coke addiction etc... Anyway, should be an interesting evening. They were off for malaria drugs and facials the last I saw of them.

2006-06-17T18:44:00.000-07:00

Still in Chengdu. I've been here about four days now just hanging out and doing a lot of getting lost in the city. Yesterday I tried to go to Wang's Tiny Museum for the second time and for the second time I was a complete failure at finding it. I even had a Chinese guy show me where the street was and I still had no luck. So, after that I decided to go to a place on the map the hostel gave me that said it had the best dumplings the hostel owner had ever had. Could I find it? Nope. I did however see a beggar with a small monkey on a string.

I've just done a fair amount of hanging out at the hostel and watching movies. I watched Charlies Angels, Jarhead, Kill Bill 1 and 2, and a bunch of world cup games. Tomorrow I'm off to Kunming I think. I'm actually not sure. I'm trying to eventually find my way to Hainan which is the Chinese Hawaii and then to Hong Kong and from there take a train back to Beijing. I missed the Wall and I feel like I should probably get that in since I'm in China and all.

I did see a woman getting dental work done in a dental office with a huge window so you can watch what's going on. That seemed a little weird.

2006-06-15T22:20:00.000-07:00

With many tears I separated from my new British friends and headed down to Chengdu. On the train it turns out that I was next to the only other white person on the train a woman named Rebecca from Rocklin NY. We had a nice long chat about her boyfriend in Chengdu and if they were going to stay together and so on. He'd been teaching in China for a year while she was in the states so she was concerned they'd gone off in two different directions. I offered my sage advice,"Yeah, relationships are hard." and let it go at that.

Showed up in Chengdu yesterday at 5 in the morning and was fairly burnt out so didn't do too much. I did take a walk downtown where I saw snake meat for the first time (it was in the shape of a snake. That's how I knew) and at the end of the market I turned right and saw some military guys in front of a gate. So, I looked up and it said "Military Area" so I thought, "oh, can't go that way." and took out my map upon which one of the military guys comes running out yelling and pointing very vigorously for me to get away. Which I did and and as I was I noticed that there were three more military guys running up behind him and toward me. So that was kind of unnerving. I walked away without incident however. I would hope that if I was mapping military installations I would be a little more discreet and go around the corner or something.

Let's talk Pandas. Holy shit are they cute. Yes, as good as advertised. I took a trip up to the panda center where who did I run into but Kate and Caroline! "Jack Bauer!" they yelled. We caught up a little but they were on a different tour so I lost track of them. I forgot to bring my camera into the panda sanctuary. However, I got promises of emailed photos of the ones that Kate and Caroline took so thank you to them. Anyway, big pandas or small, they are all adorable and really at times do look like humans in panda suits. Even the red pandas, who kind of get the short end of the stick in the panda world, were really cute. We watched a movie about how the pandas mate and the artificial insemination. They showed footage of a panda giving birth and the thing just squirted out and the panda looked fucking terrified. And about three seconds later a scientist runs in the cage and gets the baby to put in a controlled environment. One of the women I was on the tour with said "Oh, that's so sad that they take it away like that!" but then the next footage was of a new mother playing with the newborn like a cat with a mouse until the scientists, who were very obviously flipping out, came in to get it.

The best sign at the sanctuary said: "I am the national treasure and I hate noise".

2006-06-13T20:13:00.000-07:00

We (Caroline, Kate, and I) got in a bus wreck today. We were on our way to the Terracotta Warriors on a city bus when I heard this horrible grinding noise and then was thrown forward violently. When I looked up we had rear ended the bus in front of us at the bus stop. The glass had cracked on our bus's window and the glass had broken out completely in the bus in front of us. The impact also caused the bus in front of us to rear end the bus in front of it. I got off and took some pictures. I haven't done much with the camera yet but I have taken pictures of a REALLY fat cat and also of a bus wreck. I was going to take a picture of all the people in wheelchairs at the Terracotta Warriors but that seemed rude.

Anyway, we walked the rest of the way which allowed me to pick up some steamed buns for breakfast. We hopped on the bus for the hour long ride out to the Warriors. The Warriors are pretty fucking cool. Each one has a totally different face that was the face of the craftsman that made it. All of them had been destroyed at one time and they have reconstructed an enourmous number of them. Well worth seeing. They did have this thing where for a small fee you can have your face put on a Terracotta Warrior so then you have this photoshopped kind of thing with your face on the Warriors body. I opted out of this but Bill Clinton had not.

2006-06-12T02:28:00.000-07:00

I can read the comments by the way. They come to my inbox.

I left Beijing last night on a train to Xian but not before I went looking for an English language bookstore at the mall. I was not able to find one but I did see a live informercial for Bailey's Irish Cream with girls in Bailey's outfits and also saw a product called Isaddle with I'm sure Apple's lawyers are all over. This was marketed as some sort of fitness device and what it was is this seat that moved like a saddle. It looked a lot like a very sophisticated sex toy.

The trip to Xian was 13 hours and I shared a compartment with three other Chinese men. They showed me some rice wine one of them had bought (we didn't drink any of it) and told me to definitely order some in Xian as it is a specialty there. I kept saying the word for the wine and then acting drunk and they were loving it.

I slept for most of the trip and then showed up in Xian at about 7 in the morning. After getting lost trying to find the hostel I finally found it and went upstairs to the lounge where I made the acquiantance of two British women, Caroline and Katrina, who were very amused by my American slang. I told some story where I used the phrase, "Alright Dude, that's not cool." and this was hilarious to them.

2006-06-10T16:52:00.000-07:00

One thing I forgot to mention is that comments are now enabled. Actually, I might have mentioned it but I can't ready my own blog here since blogspot is banned in China. So, oddly, I can post on my own blog just not read it.

Off on the overnight train to Xi'an...

2006-06-09T22:52:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I headed down to the Temple of Heaven park for a look around. Like all things in China it costs. It was a fairly nice park although I have to say it's a little weird that they won't let you on the grass. There were plenty of old people around exercising and so on and one particular thing they were doing was dancing with plastic rackets that had balls on them. They were listening to this revcording that I guess told them the steps and they would all turn around and flip the rackets around in union. It was interesting since they were able to flip the rackets around without the balls actually coming off. That was pretty impressive.

That night I went to a show of acrobats that was pretty good. It was definitely not the A list and none of them looked over twenty. There was a contortionist and there was a woman who was able to spin two parasols with just her feet which is more impressive than it sounds. Also there was a boy in a suit with flames stitiched on it who was a juggler and at one point juggled six balls on the ground while walking up and down stairs. He also juggled eight balls but he fucked that up. It was kind of nice to see him fuck up since it was a reminder that this shit is totally hard to do. It's easy to forget when you watch people do this kind of thing seemingly effortlessly.

Last night was the first World Cup game and I headed over to the expat area to watch some of it. In one block I was asked about 9 times "Lady bar? Massage? Lady bar?". And then again when I walked back down the block. The bars were all very expensive, think NY prices, and so I just stayed for one and then went back to the bar the harmonica player owns to watch. For some reason all the Chinese were rooting for Germany. No idea why.

Man, is China inexpensive. For example, yesterday I had one beer and dinner and it cost ten yuan. This is 1.20. The bus costs 12 cents. Most sites are around 2.50 to get in.

Today I headed over to a lamasery to look at the all the Buddhist temple stuff and it was interesing to see all the people with HUGE bundles of incensce praying and bowing. There was a Guiness Book certification on one of the temples because one of the idols was 35 feet tall and cut out of a single tree. There was a sign urging everyone to "Treat relics well". I did.

2006-06-07T23:32:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a bar down the street from my hostel. I had a few beers and then the owner asked if he could buy me a beer and talk to me. Who am I to say no to that? So he sits down and we start talking and it turns out he had gone to the Berklee School of Music for guitar but had stopped because he wasn't as good as the rest of the students. "Guitar is a western instrument not an eastern instrument.". So, he picked up the harmonica instead. I'm not sure where the harmonica is from, but anyway, he was accomplished enough to have won an award in Taiwan for harmonica arrangement. He also told me more about the area of Beijing where I am staying and that a block and half away is where Chiang Kai-Shek lived. So that was pretty cool. I was about to leave but then pressed more free beer in my hands and told me I had to drink it. So I ended up talking with this other Taiwanese guy at the bar,

Him: You like to party?

Me: Yeah.

I was hoping that this was a prelude to him opening up a suitcase full of drugs or something, but no. All he said was, "Yeah! Who doesn't?!".

2006-06-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

Awkward moment number one of the trip:

I am talking to a woman who is in my dorm room at the hostel about a woman across the street wearing a t-shirt that says "I love BJ".

Josh: Don't you think that that is a little weird that she is wearing a shirt that says "I love BJ"?

Woman: What? I love Beijing?

Josh: Oh, I guess when I see that I think "I love blowjobs".

Woman: Huh.

2006-06-07T01:24:00.000-07:00

Today I had the confusion of "Is that a trash can or a post office box?"

There are so many Pomeranians in Beijing. Actually, there are quite a few toy dogs in general.

Traveller graffiti really makes you long for bar grafitti. Maybe it's just me but I'd much rather read "Why are you looking up here, the joke's in your hand" than "Life is not measured in how many breaths we take but by how many things take our breath away".

I am so sunburnt it is ridiculous. I got very last trying to find my hostel after going to the Forbidden City and Tianemen Sq. this morning. I had forgotten my ability to zip through museums and historic sights at the speed of light. I also went to the National Chinese Museum which was A: not all that clean, B: had exhibits which made no sense such as a big red car that wasn't even lit up, and C: had a big wax figure exhibit of famous Chinese people throughout history. That's it in a nutshell. Oh, also some pottery. I'm not that into pottery. The one super cool thing that they did have was this jade burial suit that was made of over 1300 pieces of jade that were stitched together with golden thread. THAT was amazing.

2006-06-06T06:47:00.000-07:00

Here I am in Beijing. Yes, 13 hours really is a long as motherfucking time to sit in a plane. Before I left I was reading this review of Air China and they discussed how they thought the planes seemed really old and I pretty much thought to myself "Well, as long it's not a propellor plane than it's really ok with me.". It's true though: the planes are pretty old. For example, two of the three screens in my cabin were not working which was ok since they showed "Fun with Dick and Jane" and some movie that looked like it took place in China and starred Donald Sutherland. They also played both of the movies TWICE. Air China is kind of a cut rate outfit.

Anyway, I got picked up at the airport and was taken to the hostel which is kind of in the backpacker ghetto part of Beijing. I had some sort of traditional Mongolian dish for dinner and the owners of the restaurant brought out their 15 year old daughter to practice English with me. I tried to learn some Chinese from her and I managed to do so a little bit but my pronounciation is so monstrous that I don't know how much help it will be. Anyway, as I was leaving the girl said "You'll come by again tomorrow?" and her mother said something which she translated as "My mother hopes you'll come by too." I left that one with a pretty firm maybe.

Also, it doesn't appear as though my phone doesn't really work in China. So, I now have a beef with Cingular and with Crunch gym which hasn't canceled my account yet. My work is never done.

2006-06-04T15:18:00.000-07:00

Holy shit. I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm having a little bit of the jitters right now. There is definitely some premature homesickness occuring. I know that that will be out of the way in a few weeks though when I'm used to being on the road.

Went to Karl and Alison's wedding on Saturday and had the best time. I also got really drunk. I think anytime you are doing karaoke in the nude you can pretty much call that a drunken escapade. Regardless of the fact that this will forever be remembered because it was actually at someone's wedding party, the night was great. Certainly one highlight was when Joey went in the house to get some wine before we went back to the hotel but couldn't find any so he just brings a pitcher of beer for us to drink in the car.

In the morning we watched this informercial which was mildly entertaining until J.J. brought up the fact that he's seen it three or four times already and so was saying things like "Oh! Oh! This guacomole they make looks really good!" and telling us what thing would be made next in the Magic Bullet. "Yep, a mousse!".

2006-05-31T07:11:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my new blog which hopefully I'll get around to updating a little (well, a lot) more than my other one. The reason I started this blog is because I wanted somewhere to talk about my trip without having to censor myself. The thing is, my mom reads my other blog and there are just some things she's better off not knowing.

Five days until I leave.