on the move

RTW by the numbers

2008-06-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

number of countries visited: 16
continents: 6
flights taken: 21
pictures taken (and kept): 1978
days traveled: 157
hostels and hotels stayed in: 52
books read: 21
cheapest internet I found: 30 baht (about $1) per hour, Bangkok; or 1 Euro for unlimited time - stay on long enough and it's essentially free! - Dublin
most expensive internet I found: 2 NOK per minute (about $24 an hour), Berge, Norway (I didn't use theirs...)
games of ipod solitaire played: 187
movies seen: 8
new scars acquired: 6

hello scandinavia!

2008-06-27T07:21:00.000-07:00

All my photos are now updated. Two weeks in Denmark, Sweden and Norway yielded a whole lotta picture-taking, too. Because: so pretty!

Even though I am now home, if you are at all into this sort of thing, I do recommend taking a look, because Scandinavia is gorgeous

both out at the fjords

and in cute towns like Bergen

and in places like Copenhagen.

Actually, I am not going to lie. I am uploading and organizing all of my pictures on my computer right now, and oh my god. I saw so much pretty stuff. It's really extraordinary to see it all laid out like that. I love the way my little thumbnails of pictures take on a whole rainbow of colors, depending on where I was.

homefront

2008-06-25T20:52:00.000-07:00

Sorry the post yesterday was not my most forthcoming. At the time of writing, I was nearly delirious with tired. People on my dorm in London for some reason started getting up for the day at 4:30 am -whatever there is to do at 4:30 am. So I got about 4 hours or so of sleep, and then maybe 2 more hours of plane sleep, and by last night I was up for almost 24 hours and feeling every second of it.

But now I'm home! It's awesome. Last night when I went to bed, it was like one of those scenes in a rags-to-riches movie where I flail around on the luxurious bed. It was spectacular, all those pillows, all that space, the snuggly down comforter and the fact that there was no one else in the room. So very swank.

I have had two Diet Cokes, a burrito, a visit to Target and some quality TV time. I have already blessedly washed everything I own and put my backpack outside to be aired out, but oh my god, will unpacking will take me like years. I have no idea what to do with any of the stuff I brought home at all.

I am still not adjusted to the time difference, but tomorrow after getting a valid driver's license and getting my computer fixed, I am going to get all the updates going on here, and get my photos updated too. So even though trip is over, there is more to come!

home.

2008-06-24T22:32:00.000-07:00

is where i am.

traveling the world: a global perspective

2008-06-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

Unsurprisingly, I can't sleep.

I even had some wine from the hostel bar to try to help me out, but it's not working so far. So I'll blog instead. But it's not a big deal - in a few hours, I will be on a plane, and I will have hours and hours and hours to sleep then. Which I think will help prospective jet lag? I am not really sure. But it will help pass the time.

I can absolutely not wrap my mind around the fact that I am going home. Whenever I try to think about it, I go pretty much blank, like I can't comprehend it or take it in. It feels just like I am going to the next new place, the next city, the next continent. I don't know if it will hit me, or how. In actuality, though, I am never really able to fully comprehend what I've done, this trip that I've undertaken. It never dawns on me, the enormity of it; it is constantly broken down into smaller bits, getting to the next hostel, seeing the next sight, taking in the next city. I only get glimpses of the fact of what I am doing, where I have been, and what I have done - generally it comes when I talk to someone else about it, and remember that I am not the norm. I wonder if I will have a collision, a recognition of both the trip and the homecoming all at the same time, and end up curled in a fetal position trying to process it all?

Even though I am really, really excited to be going home, and looking forward to so much both about being at home and about being done with traveling, I have a decent amount of trepidation, too. As I got closer and closer to coming home, I has also been away for longer and longer, and over the last couple of months, I have begun to feel increasingly disconnected from my life at home. I keep in contact with people, of course, but I think it has been an cumulative effect of being so far away and so erratically in touch. I know the big, monumental things that are happening in peoples' lives, but at this point, I feel like I know nothing about their day-to-day minutiae, and it makes me feel increasingly disconnected. I can't help but wonder what it will be like to come back, if it will be like I never left before very long, or if I will have to re-meet everything that I knew?

There is also the political aspect of it. It's an interesting paradox, but the fact is, traveling the world often means that you don't actually have to live in the world. I keep up with life and the world as best as I can from headlines grabbed in Internet cafes and actual headlines, when I can read them, but that really gives me that major bits and pieces. Now, though, I am back to being an American, back in a position where I feel I can and should do things about causes and issues I care about, back to a world where I am a participant and not a tourist. Coming home means re-engaging, and at a time when it feels like the world and America are at a pit of a precipice, and that is a bit of a daunting prospect on its own.

I am a worrier at heart, so I know that going home will mostly be about getting to hug my mom, and cook real food again, and sleep in a bed bigger than a twin wherein there will be no one else in the room, coming in at 4am or out at 6am (generally not the same people, but still), and watch television, and actually live a life rather than a temporary, transient existence. But the night before, I will worry that coming home will involve more than all the things I've missed while I've been away.

london daze

2008-06-22T12:41:00.000-07:00

In the interest of full disclosure and honesty, I will now say that the bus rides in Norway are not the oh my god most expensive things ever. At 8 dollars US, they are the same price as a tube ride in London.

Yikes. So much for exemplary public transit in the rest of the world. I mean, I love the tube, but I will take a 2 dollar subway ride, thanks.

So, yay, London. It's lovely here. Once again, I get to spend the time someplace where I am familiar and feel relatively comfortable and like I know where I am and where I am going. Once again, I don't have much of an agenda - but since London is less atmospheric than Paris, now my agenda is mostly to shop; today was every bookstore I could find (why does Britain do even Borders better?) and tomorrow is Oxford Street.

But I can't shake the knowledge that I am going home in 2 days. It's surreal to me. I have been both loving where I am and loving what I am doing and missing home at the same time for so long that I don't know if I know how to not be like that anymore. As unreal as my whole trip has felt, the end of it feels almost the most significant and unbelievable part.

There is lots more to say, about going back to the States and about being at home, but I don't have the words. It is certainly bittersweet, and it is inexplicably sudden. I have known exactly how long I have for about the last month, and yet the thought of Mexican food and my own bed and a hug from my mother actually being as close as they are feels oddly abrupt.

I hope I'm ready for it.

bienvenue a paris

2008-06-20T12:50:00.001-07:00

Huh. Interesting.

I read all the comments on here, and love them. It's interesting that the last post was the first one where I got something from someone who I don't know - or don't know that I know - and the person is being snarky. What's the point, random reader?

For the record, I do not, unfortunately, love every second of every place I visit. Sometimes I get to places that I don't like that much or go see things that don't meet up to the hype. It happens, fortunately not very often, but that's how it goes. Good with the bad, but I am not going to lie and profess amazement and wonder at every little thing I see.

Anyhow, I am in Paris, and I DO have wonder and love for this place. It's unintentional, but really lucky that I gave into the self-indulgent urge to come to Paris on my way home. In this entire trip, I haven't been to anywhere that I had ever been to before, so spending three days in Paris is like a halfway house. I have been before and gone to all of the museums and sights and know my way about relatively well, plus I (sort of, ish) speak the language, so a lot of the usual tasks and pressures and patterns from traveling don't apply. Besides wandering too and fro, there really isn't anything I need to get to in order to have a wonderful time in Paris. So in a way, I don't feel like I am really traveling anymore. But at the same time, I definitely am not home, with all that entails. I haven't talked about it much - though I will coming up, I am certain - but being home will give rise to a whole different set of observations, complications, joys and issues. So I get to ease into that some here.

As I was riding the train from Orly into town, I glimpsed a pretty, ornate white building, and I had a flash of wonder. That building was beautiful, but it could have been in Bangkok or Buenos Aires, or certainly Scandinavia. I wondered how Paris would hold up, coming from so many new and pretty places. Would it be as impressive?

Well, fortunately, Paris knows how to tart herself up. This city works it, with the lighting on the bridges and the buildings just so, with the antiquey signage and the atmospheric quais along the Seine. It knows good marketing, and this is still one of the most charming and lovely cities I have ever been to. It doen't hurt that my hostel is about a half a cobblestone street from the river and the Ile St Louis, and that the weather is nice and I have "wander" as first and last on my agenda, but still. I know it's such a cliche, but I do adore Paris.

I haven't been in years, and in some ways the city has changed a lot. I notice the effects of the huge influx of immigrants, and there is the inflation and increased international attitudes that I am sure have a lot to do with the EU. But on the other hand, I have gone looking for places I went to when I lived here for a summer, and my insticts just kicked in. I know when to turn, I recognize buildings, and nearly everything is just where I left it. I had dinner last night at a Tibetan place that I remembered vividly, and still liked it, and went shopping today at my favorite papeterie for new pens. I sat by the Seine and watched boats go by and drank excellent supermarket wine last night, and found the best creperie this block for nutella banana crepes. It's nice that some things don't change, and wait for me instead.

I notice how much English is everywhere, from a solid 75% of the people I pass - it is Paris in June after all - but I also don't remember there being so much English from the shopkeepers and restaurant staff. In some ways it's handy - after years disuse, my French speaking abilities are really, really bad. I can read everything perfectly, I can understand nearly everything, but speaking... not so good. I try, and they switch to English. I need to practice. But this is also new, and I wonder if it will put an end to the "rude Parisian" myth.

I go to London tomorrow, and it will be interesting to see. I have even less on the agenda for there, and have been more recently, so we will see where it falls on the travel scale this time.

Tour de Fjord

2008-06-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

Well, I did what I set out to do, and have officially toured the fjords of three different continents. (Ok, so no, I didnæt set out to do it exactly, but I realized early on that I would be doing it, and the name "Tour de Fjord" as a subheading for my trip was too good to pass up. Hee. Fjord is a fun word.)

The short version is that I love fjord landscapes - I think it is probably the prettiest scenery I've ever seen. It's so dramatic that it's gorgeous in sleeting rain (thank you, Milford Sound!) or on a pretty, pretty day like I had yesterday.

I went on what is apparently the most popular day trip in the country, called "Norway in a Nutshell" (cute), so it was me, tons of senior citizens, Germans and Japanese tour groups. In some respects, as day trips go, this was just the right kind - it's mostly packaging up existing trains and buses to see things and get you back to where you want to be. There's no guide, they just give you a ticket and a timetable and send you off, so that was right up my alley.

The train part I'd done before, getting to Bergen in the first place. Then we switched to a bus to go down the mountain to the water - down the steepest road in Norway, apparently, at an 18-20% grade the whole time. I kept thinking how fun that would be to go (down) on my bike, but considering I am lousy at cornering, the constant switchbacks would have gotten me into trouble. Anyway, there were pretty valley views, waterfalls right by the road, really pretty.

Then was the two-hour fjord tour on a boat. It was the kind of day that brings out postcard photographers to convince people this is the way fjords always look - blue sky, white fluffy clouds, smooth clear water that reflects like glass. We cruised by wee waterside "villages," most with only a handful of structures and no road access. I can't even imagine it - I mean, it's pretty, but can you imagine the winters? And there's something tragic about living THAT remotely, and having your tranquility broken twice a day by tourists swinging by to take pictures.

Speaking of, man did I take pictures. I need to go through them, because it was all so pretty that I am sure I took like 7 of everything because I couldn't believe it. But I just couldn't get enough of the overlapping mountains plunging into the glassy water of the mountaintop snowpacks that gave way to lovely waterfalls.

Unfortunately, that was pretty much the highlight of the day. The boat left us off in Flåm, which is touted as a picturesque fjordside village, but which is, in fact, a really remote truckstop with overpriced tourist cafes and overpriced, mediocre souvenir shops. I thought the Flåm railway would make up for it - it's called Flåmsbana, come on! It's supposed to be this incredible feat of engineering, climbing huge mountains with relatively little distance, and I 'm sure it IS impressive, but it never felt like we were climbing. It felt like we were on the Roaring Camp Thunder Mountain Railway. And we even had to stop right next to an (admittedly impressive) waterfall to watch a random costume musical number by two women who I THINK were supposed to be some old Norwegian folk legend or Ren Faire participants or something. And the scenery was better on the Bergen line to boot.

So, you know, if planning a trip to Norway's fjordland, now you know.

Today I am spending in Bergen itself, until my night train (oh, yes, I'm leavin' on a midnight train to Oslo). Unfortunately, I don't like Bergen. I didn't like it on sight, but I tried to reserve judgement. Turns out I was totally right. It's a drop-dead stunning town, maybe one of the prettiest I've been in, but it combines all the worst stuff from big cities and tiny towns. It's weirdly sprawling and big and hard to navigate, so the expensive and slow bus system is actually a necessity to getting placed, and the people are brusque and impersonal and probably tired of tourists. But at the same time, everything shuts down early, and even when it is all open, it's so small that once you're done ogling the scenery, there isn't much to do but go visit hugely expensive one-room museums or go souvenir shopping. It's also strange, but I find the short 3 hours of nighttime more disorienting here than I did in Oslo, even, for some reason.

It's pleasant enough, I guess, so I am spending the day wandering, but inside I am stamping my foot and saying "I wanna go to Paris!"

Demain.

diet coke: scandinavia

2008-06-17T09:52:00.000-07:00

i only tried one for the region - hey, these countries are practically the same, right? - for three reasons:

#1, it is friggin' expensive. i found one all cheap and was excited to only have to pay 3.50US for the privilege. it's what i get for being a completionist.

#2, it's "coca cola light." ergo,

#3, it sucked. or i guess, in the correct language, it søcked (or really, for pronunciation, it såcked. hee).

last new city

2008-06-14T14:13:00.000-07:00

I won't spout politics, I swear.

I took the train today - all day today, really, which is surprisingly exhausting - from Oslo to Bergen. I was really excited about it, too, because the Bergen railway is supposed to be one of the prettiest train trips in the world.

Yeah, it lived up to it. You would think that like, after hour 4 or so, the scenery would get tired of being so relentlessly jaw-dropping and like, be dull or something, but no. It just got lovelier. Coming out of Oslo was pretty much town, and then we moved into the verdant pastures and charming painted wooden homes amongst green trees that is Scandinavian pastoral suburbia. As we kept going, though, it just stayed incredible. There were big mountains and valleys, fields of heather, lovely lakes with glassy water, rushing streams, the occasional surprise waterfall, charming little villages and wee seaside cottages.

Getting further along, we hit Finse, the highest part of the trip, and it looked...chilly.

I will remind you this is mid-June.Granted, not many people do, but can you imagine living like that? So cold!

Anyway, the scenery got a lot more fjordy as we got closer to Bergen, and the town itself, while bigger-feeling than I expected (it's only 200 thousand about, but it's also the second-largest city in Norway...) still has quaint houses perched on hillsides and what I expect are phenomenal views. I'll go exploring tomorrow.

I realized, though, that this is the last new city I am going to. The only places on my itinerary I have left - London, Paris, back to Oslo - are all places I've been to. In six months, I haven't been to anyplace I had been before, and that's done now. Weird.

socialism fiesta

2008-06-13T07:12:00.001-07:00

It is a really fascinating, different experience to come to Oslo both with someone, and with someone who is moving here. It makes you see a lot more in depth of the place you are visiting, even if it means going to fewer museums and tourist sites. (I can't say I'm sorry about the latter, though, considering how friggin' many muesums and tourist sites I've been to in the last six months. It's a number bested only by the number of tombs/churches/temples/religious monuments I've been to.)

Last night, while walking from the park where we had spent the evening eavesdropping on the outdoor Foo Fighters concert (so we couldn't see it, but could hear it just fine. And the Foos are very Big In Europe, apparently, so we were not the only squatters) to the night bus, we had a fascinating discussion with Terje, our Oslo host, about the economic structure in Norway. Yep, it's 7US for a soda, it's about 12US per gallon of gas (and you can't even say that it pays for public transport, because while it DOES pay for public transport, the bus still costs 8US one way) cigarettes are more than 15US, a bottle of spirits about 80, etc. And yet, apparently there is viertually no poverty here. There are, of course, problems - it may seem sometimes like a utopia, but it isn't really. Heroin addiction and prostitution are social problems in Oslo, and as it is the queer capital of Scandinavia, there is also a correlation to a rise in homophobic violence (though they also just passed, by an easy margin, a new law that makes gay couples equal to straight couples when it comes to adoption, so that's one more step forward for them).

But on the other hand, the way Terje describes it, there is very little true poverty here that doesn't have some aspect of choice to it, and there is always an escape route in place, even if people don't take it. Addiction is a major deal, of course, but there are government-funded programs to help people who want it, to get them jobs and places to live. There is negative unemployment in Norway, so there is a vested interest in its citizens working. In essence, people in Norway can be born into unfortunate circumstances - addicted parents, uneducated parents, parents who for whatever reason do not take advantage of services made available to them and do not give the children access to things like the free schooling for all. So there is a possibility of some small percentage of the society who is unaware or uneducated about their opportunities. Barring that, however, if you are in a terrible position, a lot of it is a result of your own choices and actions - people aren't stuck with a shitty lot in life.

People seek out the advantages, too - in addition to the refugees that regularly move to Norway from (predominantly) the Middle East and Africa, there is apparently like a begging toursim culture, of people bussing in from (mostly) Eastern Europe on a tourist visa and using their time to beg in Norway, and living on that money the rest of the year. The minumum wage here works out to about 19US for any kind of job. Immigrants, uneducated, and under-the-table workers (generally those operating on some sort of social disadvantage) might be stuck making as low as 16US an hour. It costs a lot, but they pay you what you need to live. Isn't that a revolutionary lifestyle?

There's so much more than that, too - people complain about the price of beer here, obviously, and things like that, but there is a very mature and responsible outlook on it as well. Yes, I have to pay so much for a gallon of gas, but that money is also paying for me, for my education, my health care, my entire infrastructure that is entirely in my interest. They also recognize that, yes, a bus trip is 8US, but that money is going to mroe than paying to take me 10 kilometers outside of Oslo center, it's åpaying for a system of buses that run with virtually no one in them up north, but which provides those few people who live in far north Norway a means to travel around a far more harsh landscape for longer distances at the same rate. There is an understanding here that is what we need more of in the world, that it is not enough to serve just yourself, but that there is a larger sense of communal good. Sometimes it means paying higher taxes for someone else's healthcare if they get ill and you do not, but that is better than having crap private healthcare that is hard to get. The greater good is the good for all, not just one. It's so inspiring to hear twenty-somethings with that progressive, insightful a worldview. You become a little more socialist each day in Norway.

It's not all sociopolitical revelations, though. Yesterday in addition to the concert, we went to the film museum, to the National Gallery (where I saw The Scream, and other fantastic Munch paintings, and some Norweigan painters I had never heard of and liked, and van Gogh's self portrait), and today we went to the old vortress right on the harbor overlooking the city. Oslo is lovely, tiny, and lively - a great combination for a tourist. The weather has finally turned bad/normal, and today is cold and rainy, but it's still a great place to visit. Tomorrow I am heading west to Bergen to spend my last Scandinavian days on the fjords. Which I am certain the Norweigan government also takes care of in some advanced, progressive way.

o, o, oslo

2008-06-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

Well, strike one for Norway. I mean, seriously. We got on the train this morning and were chugging along across some truly stunning scenery - I don't think we went more than 5 minutes without passing some lovely body of water, and the rest was verdant and green. But then about 90 minutes from Oslo, we stopped to do some hooking or unhooking of cars (Alix is doing her best to learn Norweigan, but is still on page 13 of "Teach yourself Norweigan," so we can only understand so much from the announcements). Anyway, the 5 minute wait stretched out, and then stretched out, and then it turned out that there was some problem with the track that they had to fix, and more waiting, and then we all got off the train to be taken to Oslo by bus, and then waited, and then got BACK on the train because the track was fixed, and then had to switch trains for the last 5 minutes of the journey. It was hilarous, but alsto unnerving - things like that happen in Norway? I mean, it's not very efficient. It was as devastating as finding out that glass does break in Sweden. Not very ideal, if you ask me.

But then Oslo is lovely. Itæs super tiny, in both population and size, but it seems more populated because it is denser than Stockholm. It also has such a young population, and feels very edgy, that Alix and I are loving it. We wandered basically the whole city and found wonderful Indian for dinner, and then proceeded to give up on finding affordable - today I spent 7US on a Sprite and 10US on a bottle of cider, among other things. We just gave up and had fun with it.

But then in the cheapest bar in town (8US for a pint! Practically free!) we happened to sit next to two typically fantastically nice Norweigans, and got offers of jobs and housing for Alix, an offer of a place to stay if we needed it, a hook up for a spin class tomorrow (really not kidding) and some interesting discussions on American soldiers in Kosovo and the economic basis for the Euro. Norweigans are amazing.

So despite the disillusionment of a train being LATE, Oslo rocks hard core. If I could afford it, I almost wish I were here longer. I'd only have to sell my kidney on the black market. Do they have a black market in Oslo?

taste of stockholm

2008-06-10T00:44:00.001-07:00

Stockholm is really gorgeous, y'all. It's hard to go wrong when the city is built on several different islands that make up its cute little neighborhoods, the architecture is all affluent old-European, and the weather is still enough to make a Californian go, "oooo, pretty day." But still: gorgeous city.

Getting here from Copenhagen, I couldn't take a direct train because it was the last night of a four day weekend, so apparently all of the Swedes were going home and took the train places. So I had to go a bit longer way, and then I awesomely missed my train in Götenborg for Stockholm - by like SECONDS! I was there at 13:12, but they had closed the doors, and I had to watch them pull away! The Swedes may be a little TOO efficient, if you ask me. The next train was full, too, but I managed to talk and beg my way on, so I got to Stockholm only 20 minutes later than planned. It's the first time I've been anything but 10 minutes early for a train, and oooo did I pay.

In Stockholm, I've been hanging out with Alix, who I met at my hostel in Bangkok. She is here to scope out Oslo before moving there in a couple of months, so we are traveling together for a bit. She got to Stockholm a couple of days before me and is trying to learn the language, too, so she is officially in charge of the map for a couple of days. So nice not to be!

On Sunday night, we wandered the neighborhoods - old town Gamla Stan, trendy Södermalm, all the areas to get to each one. It was still a holiday, and a Sunday, so the streets seemed pretty quiet, but it made for a picturesque visit to the Parliament houses, the Royal Palace (which is not as pretty as the Parliament), the museums, the opera house - everything is housed in pretty, pretty buildings, as we saw when we went up the big city elevator at dusk (so, about 10pm) to look out over the water.

Yesterday we went to Djurgården, which is totally one of the prettiest islands, to go to an open air museum called Skansen. It's supposed to be 'Sweden in Miniature,' but really it's Colonial Williamsburg for Scandinavia. Hilariously, right as you walk in, there is a mini diorama of Skansen, and we half expected to look at it really closely and see another, littler diorama there of an even smaller Sweden. It's a rabbit hole of minis, this place. But there is also a lot of olde tymey Swedish stuff, which was pretty cool, and the best zoo ever. The animals were weirdly happy in all of ther huge habitats, and when you would come over to see them, most would come running over to meet you. The elk, the otter, the sheep came a-running over to the fences to get come attention. Swedish animals, clearly, love to be loved.

Last night, we bought picnic stuffs at the supermarket and went to Skeppesholmen (another posh, museum-y island), found a grassy spot, and watched the long, slow sunset from a hill overlooking the water while we talked about travel adventures and all the places we still have to go.

Same as in Copenhagen, the English fluency here is astounding, and so convenient, but the city also feels quite different. I first noticed that there were nowhere near as many bikes, but then I began to notice the lack of people. Stockholm is pretty spread out, and has about half the population of Copenhagen, so it always feels quiet, like there just aren't people about for some reason. It's an interesting feeling, to be in a major metropolis that also feels like a ghosttown. It will be interesting to feel what Oslo is like - it's 50% smaller again, population-wise, but I think the urban area is smaller as well, with a more defined city center, so it may feel more city-like again. Find out tomorrow.

On a more dull, administrative note, sorry about the lack of photos up to verify the pretty. Internet in Scandinavia is not cheap, but hostels have had free internet, which is a huge boon. But they are not equipped to handle uploads, and there are always people waiting, so pictures are going to have to wait. Honestly, at this point, I will probably just upload when I get home and I have beautiful internet, all the time I want, on my own perfect computer. It seems like a long time, but I get home in two weeks, so the pics aren't too far behind.

weinerbrød, and something's rotten (but NOT the weinerbrød)

2008-06-07T11:33:00.000-07:00

I have to begin with a word about the loveliness of the weinerbrød. It's what the rest of the world calls a Danish, but here they are weinerbrød, which is way too fun to say. They are so much better than at home. The pastry stuff is flaky and crumbly, more like a croissant, but still buttery and not very sweet. I found one today that is like pecan pie, but in Danish form. So insanely good. I've had one sort of one a day, and I will get one in the morning before I get on the train. Mmmmm, weinerbrød...

Today I went train hopping. First I went north, to Helsingør to see Kronborg Slot. It's the castle that served as the setting for Hamlet, and it is so cool- perched right on the water, overlooking Sweden. It's a gorgous castle, with all kinds of cool tunnels and casements running underneath. I also found it really interesting - yesterday at the Nationalmuseet, there was a lot on the expected close relationship between Denmark and Norway and Sweden, but today I noticed that most of the fine arts in the castle were courtesy of the Dutch and the Belgian. Also, I guess as some sort of art outreach thing? I don't know, but there was all kinds of contemporary art installations throughout. It was sort of strange to have these mega-modern paintings in the royal portrait gallery, and some of the video installations were downright distracting.

In the afternoon, I went south and straight on to Sweden to visit Malmo. It's just on the other side of the bridge from Denmark, right on the water. It's a pretty charming town, but it didn't need more than an afternoon. Even though there were people about, it somehow seemed quieter, and after wandering around for a few hours, I didn't feel like there was much there that Copenhagen didn't have. Also, it does seem like Sweden - or Malmo at least - has way more American fast food going for it. In addition to the McDonald's and Burger King, there were KFCs and Subways. They may have them in Copenhagen too, but they are way less obvious. The beach was really nice, though!

I don't know when this turned into straight travel commentary of what I've done, but I feel very under pressure to get in, blog, get out with the free internet at the hostel. I will try to be more interesting later, I promise.

wonderful copenhagen

2008-06-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

Is there some sort of recent baby boom in Denmark? The sheer number of cyclists is really rivaled only by the number of little under-twos riding around in their little buggies. Seriously, so many wheels to dodge as a pedestrian.

Copenhagen is juuuuust slightly big to be a true walking city, so even though I slept long and well last night, I am beat again after a whole day of walking around. But far more coherent, and loving the friendly, easygoing feel to this city.

Of course, I realize I am getting a skewed view by the fact that I am getting the most perfect weather ever to be had in Perfectville, but still, Copenhagen is a fascinating mix of old architecture and brand-gleaming-modern, the population is very lively, and there are the picturesque canals everywhere that I am obsessed with, as you can tell from my pictures.

I went to the botanic gardens today,and then did my one-two of culture with the National Gallery and the National Museum (or Nationalmuseet. Hee! I love Danish.) The latter was really cool - everything from Viking displays (of course) to artifacts collected by kings over decades of world exploration (Greenland Eskimo celebration wear, a replica of a Korean house, Polynesian ceremonial robes...) to a Danish history in artifacts from 1660-2000. Really fascinating afternoon.

I also went to the little island off the city center, Christianhavn, and saw the "freetown" of Christiania, a hippie alternative-living enclave that's been living alternatively since the 70s. Walked down, I kid you not, Pusherstreet (subtle with their interests, huh?) where I Just Said No (actually, I wasn't offered at all. Apparently there's been crackdowns since a more conservative government came in.) and into the free living commune. Reminded myself that I am not a free living commune type, and was glad I was just visiting.

I learned some other things too, like the Danes are as gaga over H&M as I am, which makes it seem that much more authentic, and that this is the first country I've been to that really does not make peanut butter. Also, apparently, hot dogs on the street and schwerma are the national street foods, confusingly.

One more day in Denmark, and that's it. So sad!

onward and northward

2008-06-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

I am so tired right now, I could happily keel over and not budge. For the record, it is 7:22pm local time.

In my defense, this is how my last several hours went: After spending the day wandering Galway, I went to see an evening movie (Indy 4; ugh), got out about 10, came back to the hostel, packed my souvenirs and things into my backpack, went to the bus station to catch the midnight bus to the Dublin airport, and slept on the bus for about 3 hours in transit. Sigh.

At the airport, I waited around a bit, called my mom very briefly, waited some more, checked in for my flight, went to my gate and curled up on two adjacent chairs for another hour of sleep. Sigh.

We boarded the plane, and I presume the flight went well, but I slept through both hours of it. Sigh.

But then I was jazzed, because I was exhausted and unshowered, but I am in Copenhagen. For several years, I have been inexplicably but unwaveringly entranced with going to Scandinavia, and I am finally here.

After doing a bunch of dull logistical stuff - customs, reserving train travel for the rest of my time here, finding the hostel, getting settled, getting changed, eating a Danish, all the important things - I hit the town. I basically did a big ol' walking tour of the city, getting to some of the highlights; the rest will have to wait until tomorrow.

Copenhagen is gorgous. It helped that the weather was perfect and that today is a holiday, so all the locals were out enjoying the day. The city has awesome architecture everywhere, both old and new, and makes the most of its green space and waterfront wherever it can. The Danes are supremely gorgeous people, too, unsurprisingly, with phenominal fashion sense. It's as or more expensive as I was braced for, and pretty quick you just have to give up fighting and pay the $4 for a soda and put it up to the experience.

Everyone travels on bikes; I have never seen so many, and I am jealous. People are really friendly, and it seems to be a much younger population than I was expecting somehow. Lots of young families with babies about - and charmingly, all of the babies were in old-fashioned lay-down buggies. Adorable! There are cobblestone streets, and there is evidently an obsession with ice cream, and all the shops make the waffle cones fresh, so the smell wafts out to get me.

I am so exhausted, though, that I can't be much more coherent than that. Tomorrow is more wandering, and ultimately, hopefully more sense.

diet coke: ireland

2008-06-04T10:44:00.000-07:00

i can't believe i forgot to post this before now!

ok, so the tragic has happened, that i honestly don't know if i remember what the real diet coke tastes like anymore, if i remember the nuances of that liquid joy, to be able to describe why, precisely, this isn't it. but it's not, quite.

well, first, good on ireland for ousting the 'coca cola light' crap, because if greece taught us anything, it's that light =/= diet.

as far as i can tell, though, the diet coke of ireland - all of which i have had from a fountain, by the way - is like a less carbonated, less flavorful, less potent version of the real thing. not watered down, mind you, just like real american diet coke had been like, turned into a shade version of itself.

but it's been months and months, and the thing is, this diet coke is eminently drinkable. it's not the real thing (like the 'burrito' i had in galway was really just mexicanISH) but at this point, i take what i can get.

farewell ireland

2008-06-04T08:15:00.000-07:00

Today was my last day in Galway, and I've spent it mostly wandering about. I went on a lovely coastal walk from Galway to the resort suburb of Salthill on the wonderful bike/walking promenade they have right on the sea, and while it would have been an even prettier walk if it had been, say, sunny like it has been most of the week, I can't begrudge the super-Irish rainy cloudy weather I did have. It was still lovely.

I don't quite know why I like Ireland so much; it's not just difficult to put into words, but it's hard for me to even tell. Part of what I like are the same things I liked so much about New Zealand - friendly people, lovely countryside, ease of travel, charming scenery, lots to see and do, but a really easygoing feel as well. Cute little towns, liveable cities, a climate that I weirdly really like, a great accent to boot. But somehow it's more than that.

Maybe it's just that Ireland takes what I already liked - the quaint Britishness that appeals to me on a very basic level (I've long since had this weird fascination with living in London, which I credit mostly to reading too much British chick lit. So really, it's not that I want to live in London, I want to live in British chick lit. Sort of how I loved living in New York, but I REALLY wanted to live in 1940s film noir New York. I would have made a stupendous dame.) - and combines it with an approachability and an ease that I have grown to appreciate. Recent years and my travels have given me a newfound like of coutnryside and population sparsity, so Ireland is a good combination of the urban and the twee widdle village worlds. So far, Cork is probably the favorite city that I've seen in Ireland, and I would go back there in a heartbeat. But really, what I would love to do is come back some day when I have a valid driver's license and go explore the parts of the country (read: most of it) that you can't get to via public transit or bus tours.

There is something about the Irish, though, that I just don't fit in with. Primarily, it is that I don't drink beer. I would like to think that this is not a problem, but let's be honest: all the shops and everything closes at 5 or 6. People eat dinner at 6. It stays light in the summer until like 10. What is there to do in between? Judging by the storefronts, there's lots of pubs, smoking, and bookmaking. The Irish like their vice, clearly, but it's not MY vice. It's a mix of the old Catholic values and the listless urban ones, and somehow I fit in with neither.

Even so, as far as it goes, there is little better than biking along the Irish countryside. Can't beat that.

irish countryside

2008-06-02T16:35:00.000-07:00

Well, my plan worked.

Even though the Celtic ruins here are the most impressive thing to see and do on the island, I didn't do them when I got here. Instead, I waited a day, and took off early this morning. My theory was to get there before the first ferry arrived from the mainland, and before the subsequent tour buses and fleets of rental bikes could make it to the road. It worked great.

First, can I just say that I am really lucky Inishmor is so small? I mean, clearly there are not exactly gridworks of roads here, right, for the 800 inhabitants? There are essentially two roads, both unnamed: the main road and the coast road. You can tell if you veer from one of those because it is no longer paved. Fair enough. I found the coast road easy enough, but was unable to find the main road yesterday. I got directions, but still couldn't find it heading out of town, but there was the sea right there, so how could I complain? On the way back yesterday, though, I did find a different road, much more suburban, so I could safely say I had found the two roads on the island.

Yeah, no. They were the same road. But the fog had come in yesterday afternoon to such an extent that I couldn't see the sea right there, so the entire place suddenly looks very different. I am very directionally challenged. Also, it turns out that those two roads were both the main road; only today did I successfully hang a right and find the coast road.

And this cool, foggy, overcast morning was a lovely one to be tooling down the coast road in the Irish countryside. I passed the seal colony and rock walls and old stone ruins and loved it all. And when I got to Dun Aengus, I was literally the only one there. It is perched at the top of some cliffs, these Celtic stone semicircle that drop off on one end to these sheer, sheer rock walls to the water below. It's oddly quiet up there, and the wind sort of stops once you are inside, and being all alone meant that it became sort of otherworldly quiet and solitary. It was a magnificent morning.

days of beauty

2008-06-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

On the one hand, now that my time is my own again and internet is cheap and supah-fast, one would think that I would be more diligent about updating my blog. One would THINK. But a lot of places I am staying just give free internet, but only for a short while, so I have fallen a bit behind. Whoops!

Anyway, on Friday morning, I hopped on a bus and headed from Cork to Galway, all the way on the west coast. Its a small town, even smaller than Cork, but just as adorable and cute and loveable, so of course I am charmed and just as happy as I have been the whole time in Ireland. All Irish cities (perhaps by law? I am not sure) are on a river -Dublin is on the Liffey, Cork on the Lee and Galway is no exception, on the Corrib, and do not ask me how to pronounce that. But it's also on the Atlantic, and has this fantastic park with a bike and running path along a marshy coastline that may be permanently overcast and grey, to preserve the awesome, broody moorish quality to the place.

Yesterday, though, I left Galway and did a day tour to Connemara. Despite my awesome tour experience, I am still not a huge fan of day tours in general, with the herding off the bus and the chatty tour guides and the spoonfed scenery, but seeing the countryside was also totally worth it. Connemara is totally rural, a glacier landscape of peat bogs and lakes (or 'loughs' here, adorably) and teeny little villages where people still peak Irish. I loved it. It was like seeing the Ireland out of Brigadoon, only with blissfully 100% less singing. We also saw the most beautiful nunnery/castle/boarding school on the planet, Kylemore Abbey, that was completely breathtaking. I didn't go in, because I am honestly feeling a little impressive-religious-sited out, but wandering the grounds was enough.

And that brings us to today, with more pretty. I think the only thing better than a clear, beautiful, sunny, blue-sky day in Ireland is one coming on the middle day of a three-day weekend. Tomorrow is a Bank Holiday Monday (no actual holiday that I can see, bank are just closed? I don't know. It's a three-day weekend.) and today was spectacular weather - welcome June! So I, along with many Galway-ians took a bus along the coast (which, I stand corrected, today was so blue and white it could pass for tropical, and not broody at all) to the ferry terminal, and then took a ferry across to Inishmor, the largest of the Aran Islands. A lot of people come for day trips, but I am here for a couple of days, so I hope the weather holds.

In case, though, I rented a bike for both days, and I decided to take in the island. It's gorgous here, but in a different way even than Connemara - I don't even know if I can describe it, really. There are so few who live here, and the islands are pretty removed, so it just feels isolated, even when I am not on my own on a wonky bike on a non-road. The landscape is pretty barren in parts,covered with some short grass but that's about it. And the hillsides in one direction fall in sheer cliffs to the ocean. Add to that the fact that the countryside is divided by low rock walls into an uneven grid shape every where I look, even though nothing is actually in most of the pens. It feels a little eerie and otherworldy, and I haven't even seen the ancient Celtic ruins yet - that's for tomorrow.

On the north end of the island - the remote part; I actually almost feel like that's the part where the folks in the 'town' look at at and say, wow, that's really out there - there's this little road that goes up and up, wit fields on either side. Even though it was warm and sunny today, there was a mist coming in from the north that was actually pretty chilly, and it was blowing in to block off the view pretty quickly - it was actually really cool.

Of course, this was also naturally where my wonky bike opted to drop its chain for the third time, and get horribly wedged between the frame, so I spent about 20 minutes trying to free it, and only got mot of it, until a couple stopped and he spent another 10 and finally got it free. Of course it happens on the remote partof the remote island. But at least it wasn't dark.

Anyhow, tomorrow I am going to go some more around the island, see some ruins, and soak in old Cletic culture. I may end up with an Aran sweater to boot. We'll see.

bit of the irish!

2008-05-29T11:02:00.000-07:00

I will amend my earlier post, only to add that I seem to love Ireland in general, not just Dublin.

After my one full day in the big city, I trotted over to the bus station to head south. Though I generally love train travel, i decided to take the buses here, one because trains don't do part of the route I am taking, and also because te Irish rail network is generally preceded in all conversation by the phrase "questionably reliable." So bus won, and for the better - turned out the rail networks are all on strike, so there are extra buses running the routes. Hah.

The bus ride was unremarkable, and after we got out of the icky city traffic, it was picturesque countryside and charming wee villages. The countryside looks a lot like New Zealand - complete with sheep - but with fewer mountains, and if possible, even greener. Or rather, just as green, but even less that is not green. Plus, it's older, so we could be driving along and pass random medieval ruins.

I arrived in Cork and proceeded to be really dramatic - I did LAUNDRY. It may not sound exciting to you, but everything I owned was covered in a think layer of the Middle East, so it was worth every extortion-level penny I paid for it (the only laundry here is for more of an industrial crowd, so their rated don't start low enough to make my one load a practical purchase. But it was fast, and also worth it). I also went out for a pint (not of beer, once was enough) and some traditional Irish music with some girls in my dorm, and if anything will make you love Ireland more, it's a local pub. We have dive bars in the States, which I love, but it's really not the same at all, is it?

Yesterday was wander-Cork day. It's a walkable town, and I went all over - the local cathedrals, the butter museum, the hills overlooking town, up and down the little side streets. But it's not a very big place, so that pretty much covered it. It's a charming city, on two sides of a river (actually three, but most of the stuff is in the middle and on one bank), and I had to stop myself from taking too many pictures. Also, even though it's Ireland and it never really gets bright, it also doesn't get dark until like 10:30. Not quite Patagonia unnerving, but certainly a change.

Today, I got a bit out of town, and went to the Blarney Castle. It was hyper-touristy, sure, but the castle grounds are also stunningly pretty. I did kiss the Blarney Stone, too, so if you find this and future posts to be unusually eloquent, well, you will at least know why. But just wandering the lush green lands were enough to make me feel so peaceful; even when it started to drizzle (of course) it wasn't enough to push me inside.
Tomorrow I am off to Galway, which I am really looking forward to. Most people say it's the best city in Ireland, so my hopes are up.

I still haven't found a good sweater or hoodie to buy Despite current weather to the complete contrary, most stores are selling bikinis and gauzy skirts, and there are actually surprisingly few tourist shops, but even fewer with anything good. There were a bunch today, of course, in Blarney, but nothing I actually want to wear, or want to spend tourist-level kinds of money on, so I will just count on finding something later. Or, you know, getting an aran sweater on the Aran Islands. For now I can just keep wearing the same two longsleeved shirts I own...

And for those keeping score, I am STILL not caught up on my pictures from Egypt, despite many hours' worth of online effort. I finished Jordan, and am keeping Ireland up-to-date ( I now deeply know the perils of falling behind...) but have like 150 more to label in Egypt. Sigh. Tomorrow, maybe.

a whole new world

2008-05-27T01:48:00.000-07:00

I. Love. Dublin.

It;s like London, but smaller and cuter and easier to navigate. Everyone here is so young, too, with basically the entire population looking like they are in their 20s and 30s.

I just walked around yesterday, touring the city and going to St Stephen's Green, the Photography Archive, Trinity College, the shopping streets, the Liffey, all of it. It was so pleasant to walk about, even if I was wearing my long-sleeved shirt, my fleece and was still cold when the wind blew.

I also went out with a girl I had met in Bangkok, and I tired,I really did, but I just can't drink Guinness. Euch.

Today it's rainy, but I am spending the day on the bus anyhow, heading southwest to Cork. I am really excited to see more of Ireland, because so far, so good.

gear shift

2008-05-26T00:37:00.001-07:00

I am all out of the Middle East. It was a brutally long day of travel yesterday, but everything went smoothly, so I have gone from Jordan to just about as opposite I can get. Today, I take on Dublin!

It was surprisingly difficult to leave the tour. I was lucky and ended up with a really cohesive group who genuinely got along and enjoyed spending time together, which was lovely, so as with any goodbye it was hard to say goodbye and all go our separate ways. But even more than that, I was pretty hard-hit by how much I was going to miss the fact of my tour mates. It was such a welcome relief to have people to travel with for three weeks. For the first part, to have someone so competent to take care of all of our details and travel concerns for us so we didn't even have to think about it. When things went wrong, an 8 hour ferry wait or an abysmal accommodation in Petra, we were in it together and would joke about it and get through, rather than me having to take it all on my shoulders alone.

I've had to remind myself the last couple of days that not only CAN I do this solo travel thing (remember, self? That's how you've been doing it almost this WHOLE TIME), but also that I would even want to. Today, though, after a good night's sleep under a comfy duvet, with a nice hot shower and a rainy, overcast Dublin through the window, I am much more excited about exploring. Besides, I am on the way downward end of my trip, so I need to make the most of it - love it or hate it, it won't last long.

Anyway, to wrap up Jordan: Meh.

I mean, Jordan was good - Petra was incredible, and of course I loved floating in the Dead Sea and getting covered by mud.

But overall, Jordan was just kind of all right. The food was the same sort as Egypt, but not as good; everything was easier and more Western, in terms of the bargaining and the baksheesh (tipping) and the like, but it was also less interesting and more sterilized. I just felt like I was there because the things I wanted to see were in Jordan, as opposed to any desire at all to see Jordan itself.

All right, enough rehash. I am in a place with lightening-quick internet, so I hope to have the rest of my pictures up later on, and get them labeled and ready to view. After that, my mind is 100% on pretty green Ireland!

dr. jekyll and mr.jordanian tour guide

2008-05-22T06:11:00.000-07:00

So, I've been lucky, and had a really wonderful tour that I love.

I've now also been super unlucky and miserable and had a crap tour. Interestingly, they are the same tour.

I thought the ferry crossing was a blip, and that things would be smooth and easy, but it turns out that the Jordan leg of my trip is going to be radically different. In Egypt, the tour was fortunate enough to have a wonderful guide who was both a good guy and incredibly knowledgeable. He was a great guide, and we loved it. In Jordan...not so much.

Our tour guide here is pretty sleazy, clearly making his living by kickbacks, commissions and freebies courtesy of his tours; making seedy comments to the pretty blonde on the tour, and giving all of his information with a healthy dose of condescension. We had a problem when we arrived in Petra and went to a hotel different from the one listed on our itinerary - given to us two weeks ago - and significantly worse quality. We ended up kicking up a fuss and moving ourselves to another hotel - the one on the itinerary - and fighting with the local travel agency about getting reimbursed.

On the one hand, it's a nightmare. Whereas my Egypt tour made me thrilled with the company and excited about all the places in the world I could go with them that I was not comfortable traveling to on my own, if Jordan were my first leg, I would be in misery and trapped in every organized tour horror story you hear.

However, this is not a poor me bitch session. the thing is, after two weeks of traveling together and some genuine affinity, my tour has become 12 good friends, so we are all in this together. we are a pretty close group and we are all traveling together, so it's not so bad. We roll our eyes at the guide, or take turns fighing the battles we need to fight, and it works out really well. tit's a huge advantage to traveling in a group, honestly - even when things are bad they are not bad for you alone.

But enough with the bad - Jordan is also pretty incredible. I came to this country for Petra, and to Petra I have officially been:

Jordan may just be the country that cannot be captured by a camera, though. Petra is completely stunning, but there is no picture that can really get across the mind-bogling level of pretty at teh Siq, this amazing one-and-a-half kilometer long cavern that you walk through to get to Petra, with towering walls orf amazing rock, no can they get the magnitude and the colors in all of the carved out buildings of the city itself. It is honestly a wonder of ancient architecture and beauty, and nothing I took, or anyone else took, possibly did it justice.

But even before then, we went to Wadi Rum, in the desert to the south, and spent a day four-wheeling around and then a night in the Bedouin camp, and I took picture after picture, but nothing got the craggy, jagged, gorgeous rocks and the sweeping deserts really well. This is apparently a country that cannot be got really well on my wee camera.

random egypt

2008-05-22T05:50:00.000-07:00

The short version is that I liked Egypt a lot more than I thought that I would. I was really excited and intrigued to go there, but before arriving, I was more intellectually interested in the place - the history is so long and so vivid, the culture so foreign and so fascinating, and the images of pyramids and heiroglyphics so iconic that I was looking forward to the education of the place. I got all of that, to be sure, and I feel much smarter than I did before I came. But I also liked Egypt - it was fun, the people were wonderful and different and fascinating, the food was fantastic, the weather quite lovely. That was unexpected.

As much as I was interested in going to Egyt, though, there was no way I was going to try it on my own. Every day I was there, I became even more convinced of how right a decision that was. I could probably have done Egypt on my own, but I don't know that I could have enjyed it. Egypt is very, very hard.

The most obvious is that it is hard to be a woman in Egypt. Not just a Western woman, though that is certainly harder, but being female. When I got to the airport, on the airport bus to the parking lot, I was the only woman. On the street, there were occasionally a pair of women traveling together, but they kept to themselves and tend to hurry along. I honestly never felt so conspicuous as a female as I did simply existing in Egypt. And to exacerbate the problem, the social and religious practices of Egypt itself make the men rather aggressive and unpleasant in a lot of ways - but only sometimes. Others are terribly friendly, with no ulterior motive at all. It makes it a challenge to do anything, because you get peppered with greetings just walking down the street, and you never know - is this person asking where I am from or saying "Welcome to Egypt" to be friendly, or are they doing it to elicit a smile that they can take as an invitation? This is not an exaggeration, really. It is a minefield. The attention, very unwanted and very constant, really got to me before too long, and even though I dressed conservatively, I still felt that I was on display. The fact that I quickly began to see the advantage of the traditional Muslim female dress I think says too much about the way men ae socialized in Egypt.

But it's not just a gender thing; the whole place takes negotiation. You have to constantly be on guard in Egypt, because the heavy tourist culture makes for an active culture of ripping off Westerners. My tour members quickly discovered that when you asked the price of something, if it took them more than a second to answer, they were basically inflating the price, often my 100-200%; if the price was immediate, it was probably close to accurate. This is not just for the outdoor markets aimed at tourists; this is at mini markets, drink stands, everywhere. You have to constantly be on guard, clarify that they mean EGYPTIAN pounds when they give a price (they like to "mean" English pounds to give a higher price to start the bargaining), and ask for a breakdown of prices when you buy a few things, because often the math got creative. You price things at various stores, and you learn that everything, EVERYTHING, is a negotiable price. You have to play it as a game, because otherwise you start to fee like everyone is out to rip you off. But Egypt is just random, and there is no good reason for two oranges to cost only 1 pound less than 2 oranges, two bananas and two plums, except that the people who bought the latter didn't balk at the price, so the vendor wanted to see how far he could go.

Egypt is random and unpredictable, but it was good. I don't know if I ever will go back - the Red Sea coast is incredible, and I would like to see the Western Desert and Alexandria, but it is difficult and there are so many other places to see. But I like that I get to associate Egypt with a sense of uncertainty and gambling that makes it entertaining.

more middle east

2008-05-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

Egypt is officially no more for me.

Since we left Cairo, we have done the following (assume all is said with some disbelief that this is my life and this is all for real, because that's how it felt):

We got on a private bus on Friday to drive down to the Sinai Peninsula. A lot of the tourist routes in southern Egypt (Aswan-Luxor, Aswan-Abu Simbel, etc) have required convoys buses need to travel in for "safety reasons," but Sinai does not have this; they do, however, have mad check points all over and lots of scary military with scary huge guns. Sinai is pretty much a rocky, sandy moonscape that is pretty in a forbidding way. We also drove in the tunnel under the Suez - unreal!

It took several hours, but we got to St. Katherine's "City" (it is a few stores and hotels...) midday, and got toeat and rest before we climbed Mt. Sinai. No joke. The climb was long, but not terribly hard until we got to the last set of steep, rocky, uneven steps - I counted 763 of them. But the view from up top was just astronomical, and we watched the sun set from Mount Sinai before climbing down. Incredible.

The next day we went back to St Katherine's Monastary to tour around, and saw the burning bush and the Eastern Orthodox chapel, which was gorgeous, and navigated our way through some serious throngs of tourists. I am not really one for religious monuments as my top impressive tour sights, but something about St. Katherine's was really moving. Honestly, I think that it is because, in Egypt, there is this ancient monastary worked by a group of Greek and Russian monks, and the place is cared for and run by a particular Beduin tribe, a tribe that is 100% Muslim. There is even a mosque at the monastary for the Beduins to pray in. I just find it so compelling that the different religions and histories are all able to work with this respect for one another that is larger than any differences.

After Sinai, we went on the road again to Nuweiba, a little cluster of small resorts on the Red Sea. Can you say spectacular? I spent the last two and a half days staying in a thatched hut about 10 meters from the water, lounging in and by the water, and eating calamari. It was the perfect holiday in my holidays, and I got a bit of my tan back from Thailand. I was surprised a bit, but honestly the Red Sea is up there with my best beach spots ever, and apparently the Scuba was fantastic.

Of course, the relaxation was all to lull us to a sense of security, I can clearly see now. We have local leaders for each leg, so our Egypt guide left us at the port at 2 for our ferry, where we proceeded to wait in a seedy, dirty, gross port with no signs or announcements in English and air conditioning for only a little while. And we waited. We thought the ferry was at 2:30. Then we find it is at 4. Then it may come later. Then it is here, and we will load in an hour. No, another hour. We are shuttled from one door to another. We wait. At 7:30 they put us on buses to go to the boat. At 8 we are still queued up to get on the boat. Then they try to tell us that the boat is full, but we will not be dissuaded. Then they pull everyone from the back of the line and let them on and leave my group and about 25 other international tourists fighting to be allowed onto the boat, which we eventually are, but without seats. The ferry leaves at 8:45. We finally browbeat them into letting us onto some of the empty business class seats after sitting in the aisled for the first half hour. We get to Aquaba, Jordan about 10, but wait and wait and wait on the boat. They collect our passports, and we are unnerved by this fact. The disorganized, ramshackle, tedious immigration process takes about another hour. We have an Intrepid person waiting to get us to the hotel, which is wonderful. We finally make it, and I fall into bed and sleep like the dead at about 1 am.

It was a long, terrible day, and really tiring - I just about regretted being up to watch the sun rise over Saudi Arabia that morning.

But we are in Aqaba, which is so much more clean and polished and modern than Egypt - it reminds me a lot of Singapore, really. And we are officially in Jordan. The internet is slow-ish, and there are no USB ports to upload photos, but its here. Though tonight, we are going to a Beduin camp, so you know, probably no WiFi.

And we are offically done with Egypt. I have a lot, lot, lot to say on Egypt, but this has already gone on long enough, so I will add it soon.

diet coke: egypt

2008-05-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

I give it a hearty "meh."

Much better than Greece (meaning it's drinkable), but much less appealing than Thailand. It looks cool, though.

But the most depressing thing is that I am beginning to wonder if I am forgetting what the real thing tastes like. That can't happen, can it? I can't be getting confused my my steady drinking of Fanta and an ever-increasing amount of water, can I? I will remember the joy of Diet Coke once more, when I experince the magic once again? Please say so!

Back to Cairo

2008-05-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, foreign keyboards are hard enough, but signing into Blogger on an Arabic computer is damn confusing. The user name is on the right, the password is on the left. It's backwards, and I can't read anything at all.

Anyway, minor quibble, but here I am. I am just popping online briefly on our free day back in Cairo. We took an overnight train yesterday from Luxor and got in this morning, and then I took it pretty easy, going back to Khan al Khalili market to do some shopping (because I hear it's pretty rubbish in Jordan, so it is now or...Dublin) and also to Coptic Cairo, to get a feel for a completely different kind of Egypt. This is the Greek Orthodox area, and it has tiny winding streets and no cars, so it felt like a whole other world, even though it was only a few stops on the metro from our hotel in downtown Cairo. Surreal.

In Luxor yesterday, I discovered that donkey riding is way, way easier and more pleasant than camel riding - either because you feel like there is less distance to fall, or because they surprisingly smelled less, or because I had a mellow, lazy donkey who was keen to stop just...whenever, so I never felt out of control. Except when I wanted him - I named him Paco, for lack of knowing his real name - to andale up the hill. he preferred to whine and complain about how LONG and STEEP the hill was. Sounds like me on a bike ride.

Anyway, I've been all over - hot air ballooning over the Valley of the Kings, to see several tombs there, to the Colossus of Memnon and Karnak Temples, and on a felucca sailing up the Nile for an entire day and night in the most relaxing, no-agenda day I've had in ages. Plus, it was sailing up the NILE, stopping now and again when we got hot, to go swimming. In the Nile.

Life is getting surreal, but I love it. To add to that, tomorrow we drive south again, and then climb Mount Sinai.

The next couple of days we get to lounge by the Red Sea, and maybe do a spot of snorkeling.

It's so strange to get to do all of this, but I love it.

Down the nile

2008-05-11T06:38:00.000-07:00

'Sup, yo.

Sorry that I am not updating as much. It is not, as you may think, because I cannot find Internet or because it is prohibitively expensive, as neither are the case. I've been in major cities so far, and the most expensive I've found is the one I am currently on, which comes in at a whopping $2 an hour. So this is not the problem.

Time is the problem. Tours are tiring! We do so much and go so many places, and I suddenly have people to talk with that when it's the end of the day I am too darn tired to muster up the energy to post a blog. I will be better, but it's looking like, nah, pictures are going to wait a while longer. They take too long.

So anyway, the tour so far is great. It's a small group, with 4 other Americans, one Canadian and 6 Aussies, and a good range of ages. The guise is Egyptian, too, which if you are ever coming here, insist on it - that alone (besides that he is very good) is invaluable.

On the first day we went to a Mosque, to the Khan al Khalili market in Islamic Cairo, and out to dinner where I had fanTAStic ground spiced lamb. Since then, we have also:

--visited the Pyramids of Giza (taking the metro and public bus to get there, which I loved)
--gone through the Egyptian Museum (which was wonderful, if rather completely overwhelming and chock-a-block with too much stuff, though the Tutankhamun room was jaw-dropping)
--ridden an overnight sleeper train down the Nile, which I loved. I adore train travel, sleeper cars are so North by Northwest, and it was such a cool way to tool down the country
--ridden feluccas on the Nile, visited Nubian villages, and, of course, the following:

I did quite well, thank you. even though I now can safely say that camel travel is both inefficient AND uncomfortable.

Today we got up ungodly early in order to leave the hotel at 3:30 am. Yeah. We are in Aswan, but we were getting a caravan of tour vans out of town to go a few hundred kilometers south to visit Abu Simbel. Everything I've listed above was, of course, astonishing and amazing; this was so far the highlight. This temple is just magnificent, and I could have spent hours staring at the carvings on the walls. Loved it.

After, we drove back (with a driver who stayed awake nearly the whole time!) and went to the Philae temple, which is an Egyptian temple and Roman church both (Egyptoman? Romyptian?) in the middle of the Nile. Lovely way to end the day.

Except it was about 2:30. So now we've had luch, and tonight our guide has arranged a dinner at some friend's houses - the cooking should be fabulous. I will say, though, that I am looking forward to tomorrow. We get on a felucca and spend the entire day and night just floating up the Nile and reading, drinking, eating, swimming, and relaxing. Oh, so fun!

I am so glad, though, that I am on a tour. I would not be able to do what I am doing on my own, and I don't think I would have as much fun. As it is, it is already starting to get hard to deal with the scams and rip offs that are so common everywhere we go. I understand that money is so important, but on the other hand, I don't appreciate being made to haggle to use a toilet when I know what it costs, just because I am a tourist. But hopefully it is residual crankiness from being up at 3 am...

Onto the next

2008-05-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

Made it safe and sound to Cairo. It's such an overwhelming city, right from the start. The sprawl is huge, and from the air so many of the buildings are crowded together and the same color and not really defined, so they almost look like rubble fallen together. We did fly over the pyramids, though, so that was incredible.

I am back in heat, but it is so far WAY more bearable than Asia. I am itching to meet up with my tour tomorrow, and until then dont have a lot on the agenda. But I have officially reached a new country and a new continent. Woo!

Greek Week

2008-05-06T23:50:00.000-07:00

It's interesting how much Athens can change in a week. Compared to when I was here with my parents, on this visit the city was far, far more crowded. I expected there to be more Greeks in twon, since it was no longer the long Easter holiday, but there were also exponentially more tourists and backpackers around the city as well. There were suddenly venders lined up in front of marble pillars that were not there before and the metro was packed and busy. May 1 must mark the start of the big tourist season or something, or at least other people pay attention and start their vacations AFTER Easter? Imagine that! I still really enjoyed the city, but if people I've talked to had only visited during high season, i can easily see why they would find it a crowded, dirty city.

Of course, my circumstances changed as well - before, I was not only on a high from getting to see my parents, but I was also in a happu hotel existence, bopping about the islands at a good clip and enjoying the company. On my return, I was back to hostel living. The one I stayed at a supremely nice location, but also had a barely-tolerable bathrooms (some of the worst I've encountered thus far actually - I hope it's not an indication of the hostels in Europe...).

I also noticed the travelers here - like with everywhere I've been, the majority seem to all come from a similar background, and in Greece, in May, a huge percentage of them are American or Canadian college students either finishing their study abroad by traveling about or getting a jump on their summer backpaking through Europe.

Even though the age groups are similar, for some reason, this group strikes me as decidedly more Baccanalian than the young Brits traveling everywhere in Australia. Maybe because the Brits were in one place longer, and were working, and were living and traveling both, but somehow they were not as ...frat party about thier travels. Sitting in the hostel's garden, listening to groups trade stories about where they had been and where they were going, so much seemed like a waste - a giant drinking binge across a continent. I hope that, too, is not an indication of the hostels across Europe...

(Though it did encourage me , since I will be in my last month in Western Europe during high season, to make the unprecedented move to book hostels for that whole time - good thing, too, since I already ran into places being booked out).

But despite some of the difference not being for the better, and despite it being a 3-day stay rahter than a day-and-a-half one, I had a good time back in Athens. I went to the Archaeological Museum, whioch we missed the first time on account of Good Friday but which was absolutely worth a visit, and I sat in the National Gardens, so unruly compared to the tidy, manicured botanical gardens of Australia and New Zealand.

I also went to Delphi today, to see the oracle and a bit of northern-ish Greece. It involved a long day of travel and lots of clmibing about the ruins, but it was well worth it - the rocks and cliffs and stones were just gorgeous, and there was almost palpable history there. Of course, to get to Delphi (three hours out of Athens) one must get up before 6am. And at that time, one thinks one is tucking ones camera in their bag, when in fact they are leaving it in their backpack at the hostel. Sigh.

on the road again

2008-05-04T04:15:00.000-07:00

All alone again, now in Athens. My parents left today, and I am not going to lie and say it wasn't hard, but they are off to Italy, and in a couple of days I am going to Egypt.

The good news is that even though I am back to traveling alone, back to hostels, back to it all, I have sort of re-discovered my reason for doing this. I am once again looking forward to the places I get to go, and once again feel capable of getting to them. So really, the time with my parents, the time in Greece, it all had the rejuvenating effect I hoped for. And thank goodness!

I am glad my attitude returned, though, because the day my parents left, things did not go so well. I had worked out what I wanted to do for the four days between coming back from Santorini and going to Cairo, and I made reservations at a hostel on a nearby island called Aegina, and then at a hostel in Athens for two nights each. No problem.

So yesterday I sadly leave mom and dad, and get on the Athens metro and ride it to the ferry terminal. Then I get a ferry to Aegina. Then i wait an hour to get bus to the other side of the island. Then I get there and discover in 8 minutes that the hostel is shut up tight - presumably still for the season? I don't know. It's overgrown and padlocked.

Awesome.

So I basically get to retrace everything - wait another hour for the bus, catch another ferry, do another metro ride, and go to the only hostel I know in Athens, where I do not have a reservation, at 7:30 on a Saturday night. Good lord.

But, fortunately, they did have a bed, and I was so exhausted from a futile day of LOTS of travel that I fell into it. I have one more day in Athens now, so we will see how I fill it.

It seems my travel karma markedly improves when I have others in my family there to help it along.

something old, something older, something oldest

2008-05-03T03:27:00.000-07:00

Ah, Santorini. Really stunning place - the island is on the cusp of a volcano, with the towns clinging to the sides of sheer cliffs in white, stair-steppy glory.

Santorini at times feels a bit superficial, or like its water - shallow, but pretty! - but there were some really cool, amazing things to the island as well. On Naxos, we went to the Mitroplous museum and saw the remains of a city from 1300 BC and I marveled that it was the oldest thing I'd ever seen (apart from nature, of course). Today, though, we went to two museums. At the first, there was a new record, as most of the artefacts - gorgeous, well-preserved vases and pots, still painted and lovely and mostly recovered from the town of Ancient Thera - dated to 1700 BC. Everything was stunning. But THEN we went to the Museum of Prehistoric Thera, where they keep the really old stuff. It's findings from Akrotiri, an ancient...well, urban hub, really, that has only been 3-5% excavated. The new oldest thing I've ever seen is this:

dated from a Cycladic period from 2800-2300 BC. Jaw-dropping. Aren't they incredible?

In New Zealand, I marveled at how new everything was. As an American, I can go to England and see schools still in use from back before anyone over there even FOUND our continent, so in New Zealand, where America was old hat during their entire Anglo history, everything seems so young. But, of course, the Maoris were there long, long before - as with the aboriginal sin Australia, the Native Americans, and so on. There were people there and living hundreds of years ago. But in Greece, it's in terms of millenniums - there were people there, building cities, wearing jewelry, making purchases, taking baths, cooking and eating and celebrating not too differently from how we do now several MILLENNIUMS ago. It boggles the mind.

But that is not the bulk of Santorini - really, the bulk is all about the pretty. I get the feeling that the Santorini Chamber of Commerce or whoever saw tourism starting in Greece like 30 years ago and decided to capitalize by turning the island into Quintessential Greece (tm). The terraced, perched villages are stunning, but all the buildings seem to be hotels and restaurants and shops - everything for tourists; the locals (of which there aren't many, year-round) are sensible and live on the flat parts, where it's not 40 zillion stairs and a donkey ride to get a bottle of water from the market.

It's worked, though. If you go to the Greek Isles, from the States anyway, then Santorini is the place you go. Often to Mykonos as well, and maybe another, but Santorini without a doubt. If you go ona cruise in Greece, you go to Santorini. It really is "typical Greece all the way" I wonder if that's Quintessential Greece (tm)'s motto?

I can't even imagine what this place is like during the high season, too. We were in Fira today - the capital, where we stayed - when there was a cruise ship, I think from Spain, was in port, and toe town felt overrun. That was one ship. Yesterday, there were nine cruise ships docked for the day. NINE. It made me so happy that was the day we rented a car (this time an even more stripped-down mini vehicle in bright yellow we dubbed Little Buttercup) and fled to the other parts of the island. We got to see lots of beaches - one in red! - and lots of quiet towns not yet thumpin' for the season. We ran into two Japanese tour groups when we went to Oia at the north of the island to watch the sunset, but mostly we zigged when the hordes zagged. In high season, I don't think there is that option - our waiter tonight was telling us that, in August, the adorable cobblestone walkways are so packed, people can only shuffle along, not walk at full speed. Even with things sometimes being not open or the weather being occasionally cold, I will take Greece outside the high season, thank you. After all, it's still pretty.

All around the islands we go

2008-04-29T12:10:00.000-07:00

In keeping with tradition, Greek weather only remained crappy through the evening of Easter, presumably mourning Jesus. On the day after Easter, we got bright blue skies and gorgeous sunshine. Go Greece!

We rented a car yesterday to take us all around Paros - which, if driving slow, takes a couple of hoursto completely circumnavigate. It was only minorly hairy at times, thanks in part to the weeeeee little car we had (which was like 4 sized UP, and the "smallest" they had that day (!) but which was also an awesomely ugly bright green and therefore nicknamed Kia the Grouch); partially due to the mostly-paved, mostly-marked nature of the Paros roads, and partially due to the fact that my dad is not as familiar driving stick shift anymore. I, sadly, cannot drive, as I am a poor unlicensed driver, as it expired on my birthday. Sigh.

But there were no casualties! And we got to see such a pretty island - we found beaches that were tiny and cold, but with gorgeous clear blue water and littered with spectacular marble pebbles; we went to the third-largest town on the island, a non-tourist spot that we were told was what Greece was like 50 years ago; we got lost several times in the windy cobblestone streets of Parikia, the port town (but found ourselves in time for an awesome lunch at a local souvlakeria). I really like paros, and I can easily see why it is such a popular spot for people from all over Euope to come and rent an apartment or a bungalow and just get lost for a month or two every summer.

The today, we went to a whole other island. The original plan was to see Mykonos, but ferry schedules being what they are this week (they are notoriously changeable in Greece, apparently) a day trip was impossible. Instead, we went to Naxos, the island next door. It's mostly agricultural, but the main town is pretty big. They have their own ruins there - an unfinished temple to Apollo that greets you as you come up on the ferry, how is that for spectacular? - as well as a really well-preserved old town, complete with Venetian castle. But the most amazing thing was in the oldest part, the Mitropolis, where the excavated ruins of the town are underground, really, and date back, no joke, to the 13th century BC. That is OLD, when it makes the Acropolis look like nouveau construction.

We walked about some and tried for Mexican food - it's been too long! - but it was sadly closed. It was hardly a bustling day, but it did make me realize that I like Greek islands a lot in general, but I do like Paros more than Naxos. Tomorrow, we head to Santorini, and we will see how it stacks up. I am already guessing gorgeous.

diet coke: greece

2008-04-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

My mother and I split a Grecian Coke Light yesterday. I think my parents' conversation sums it up the best:

Dad: So, Coca Cola Light didn't cut it, eh?
Mom: Coca Cola Crap is more like it.

Easter, again, some more

2008-04-27T07:50:00.000-07:00

It's my very special second Easter this year - in Greece for Eastern Orthodox celebrations means I get the whole Good Friday/Easter Sunday rigamarole again, and things are just as shut down - and rainy, sadly - as they were in Sydney back during Famous Original Easter.

It's funny, the things that I hear about countrie before I get to them, and how they compare. Bngkok was so exactly as advertised that I felt like I had been there before I'd even set foot in the city. Athens, though...it was touted as a grotty, smoggy, dirty city, very much see-the-Acropolis-and-get-out on the itinerary. It was, though, nothing like I expected, in a good way. I kept being struck by how quiet the city was; it was no more dirty than any other major metropolis, and quite a bit cleaner, really, than a lot I've been to. I don't know if it's that we were there at the first blush of the tourist season, or if it was because it was the start of Easter weekend, when many of the Greeks flee the city, or if most of the information was from people who had visited a while ago, and changes from converting to the Euro and upgrading the city to accommodate the Olympics changed everything that significantly. Whatever the reason, I really liked Athens, and found it navigable and interesting, and much more appealing than I had been expecting.

Yesterday, though, it was time to go and we ferried out of Athens and to the Cycladian island of Paros. It is every bit as picturesque as postcards would have you believe. We are here really early for the tourist season (a lot of things like restaurants, bars, and hotels close in the winter and only reopen in mid-April or early May) and it's easy to see why. Athens had perfect weather - a light breeze, sunny and fine. Perfect jeans-and-tee weather, with a light fleece for the evening, which might be a little warm for scrambling around ruins at midday and a bit cool after a late dinner at a taverna, but overall pretty ideal.

Here, though, it's a bit of a storm - quite chilly, rather windy, overcast. It's still picturesque, but not exactly beach weather. It made me glad we booked the high-speed ferry; it took 3 1/2 hours from Athens, and got pretty rough in the middle. I got seasick for the first time ever (happy birthday!) but it passed and I was fine when we arrived.

If it's ever possible, I do recommend spending a birthday on a Grecian island - this place is stunning, an just wandering about everywhere you look are the whitewashed buildings and blue shutters and red geraniums. I love it. There is also an unexpected bonus, being here for Easter - apparently the tradition is to go to Easter services late on Saturday night, and then have a huge feast afterwards. So for a birthday dinner, I ate a spectacular 5 course meal at about 1am, complete with the grilled Greek cheese and roasted lamb and dried figs. Fantastic.

Being on a quiet island out of season on a rainy Easter has one other good side effect, too - I really feel like I can see that I've become a lot more adaptable to things since I left originally. Obviously, having everything shut (though apparently things open at like 6pm on Easter Sunday, and that's when everyone sets of firecrackers and goes to the bar? Weird Greek traditions.) is not ideal for anyone, but I don't know - it just doesn't bother me much. I've learned quickly that the best laid plans of a traveler often bear no resemblance to how the day turns out - as often for better as for the worse, though. So a day is rainy, you get bored, you get a different day the next. It is what it is - that's the way life is, honestly. It's nice to let things roll off your back more often than not.

Happy Greek Easter, everyone. He is risen for the very last time this year, I think.

Greece is the word

2008-04-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

First off, you guys are great. Thanks for all the nice things, and the votes of confidence, and for reminding me that I am not the only one for whom travel is an awesome walk in the park where every single moment is magical. Sometimes, the moments suck, and sometimes that's ok.

I am in Athens, and already things look up. Being with my parents is such a load off - I suddenly don't have to decide every thing for myself, I get to have others suggest dinner or an itinerary, and when I see something as spectacular as the Acropolis, I have people there to share it with.

It's also reinvigorated other things as well, being in Greee - my skin is already so grateful not to be trapped in smoggy humidity, my poor melted "solid" shampoo is about back to solid, and I remember why I like traveling again. Things are better.

I really like Athens, probably more than I thought I would. The Plaka neighborhood, with its tiny streets crammed with tavernas and a view of the Acropolis, is my favorite. We don't get to see the National Archaeological Museum, as it's closed for Good Friday, but hopefully I will see it on my way back through Athens. Instead, we've scrambled over tons of ruins, enjoyed the perfect weather, fallen in love with Greek yogurt, and eaten wonderful lamb and chicken and enjoyed it all. And it's only day two!Tomorrow we are off to the islands. I can't wait.

the naked truth

2008-04-22T04:04:00.000-07:00

the truth is, i am tired. right now, today, yesterday, i am tired of traveling. if you honestly gave me the choice to keep going as planned, or to go home with no harm or foul...i would take the latter. i would leave. right now i am just at the end of my rope.

i am at the halfway point - way past it, technically, if you count from when i left for south america, and just at it from when i left again for new zealand - and i think i am just worn out from traveling in general. it is draining, to always have to be making decisions, figuring out where to go, always on the move, always away from anyone who knows you.

some of it, to be sure, is bangkok, and thailand in general. it's a hot, disorienting country, one that i didn't intend to be in this long - that kind of thing wears on a person.

part of it is just the added difficulty of being abroad for so long. anything that goes wrong is a huge hassle - calling a credit card company, for instance, is nearly impossible from another country. and things go wrong, all the time, things that are an annoying 5 minute fix at home and a full day of stress on the road.

so there it is. i am burned out and lonely. but the bright side: i leave bangkok tomorrow. i fly to somewhere significantly cooler, significantly more picturesque. i get to move on and keep going, and remind myself that, no, i don't want to leave. i want to be right here doing this exact thing.

and best of all, i get to see my parents. i get to have a hug - it's been six weeks - and i get to let someone else choose where we go to dinner, and i get to have people i love around me.

i just hope nothing goes wrong, because if my parents are with me, who is at home to fix everything? hi, susan!

no, it will be fine. this mood will pass, i will love greece, i will get to see pyramids and fjords and rolling green hills yet, and i will be a better person for it, and so grateful. but the truth is, every day of travel is not a vacation.

this is not a food blog

2008-04-22T02:55:00.000-07:00

Without a doubt, as I knew it would be, the best part about Asia has been the food. I could eat like this forever. I have already gone on at length about the awesomeness of the street food in Singapore, and I am not honestly sure if Thai food tops it, per se, but it is just as enjoyable.

I certainly have my favorites - Thai iced tea, green curry, mango and sticky rice (and I am here during mango season to boot - it is astounding how good they are), but more than that, the food here is just such fun.

I mean, not all of it looks tasty, and I can certainly do without the more aromatic things, like the dried fish stands with their barrels of little...fish...crisps things that reek to kingdom come. And Thai street food is, a lot of it, still the domain of the locals, so there frequently is no English translation, photos, or handy instruction manual on the carts. I am certain I have missed some of the best foods here because I don't know what the completed meal is like when I walk by the ingredients, so don't know to get it. I know some things, though, so I get to enjoy little gyoza or spring rolls, the always popular meat on a stick (I don't know what the ladies have done to this chicken, but it is SO TASTY), sugar-popped corn (for when I went to see a movie!) and all manner of little sweets or sandwiches. I did learn one valuable lesson, though - never buy a curry from a street vendor or a night market stall. Those things are not meant for westerners - I could take two bites before my mouth was on fire. In a restaurant, you can always get the tourist-level spicy, and that's plenty when you are pansy like me.

The Thais know how to do fruit - cut up fresh fruit on the street, the freshest fruit blended with ice to make a shake that will finally, for a second, let you feel cool(er), the mango on the rice...the fruit here is like the antithesis of Argentina, where produce fears to treat. Vegetables are not easy, but the fruit.... Nothing has equalled Ko Phi Phi in that, though, when there was a Thai pancake and fruit shake stand every 20 feet. I would have been way more full of banana or mango or coconut or pineapple shake if that were the case.

There is, of course, ubiquitous American fast food here as everywhere - McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Subway (though not nearly as many as in NZ or Australia), Pizza Hut, Starbucks, etc. But then there are a lot more, ones that I didn't know aggressively exported, like Swenson's, Dairy Queen, Dunkin' Donuts, Sizzler - some of those places I can't even get at home. Western food is everywhere, and what's sad, thouogh not surprising, is that it is easily 2-3 times more expensive than Thai food, and yet they are all jammed. The model has been aggressively copied, too, and there are all kinds of local chains that look just like the Sizzler, serving Thai or Chinese food like a peking duck Red robin - these places are more expensive, too. I don't know why I find it sad, but I do. The menus are not, unsurprisingly, the same - McDonald's especially seems to have a lot more pork on the menu from what I saw, and I did check - no Diet Coke on fountain. But the best part - the dessert pies (fried, like in the days of our own transfat-filled yore) come in three flavors: pineapple, taro, and corn. Awesome.

Nothing has been more embraced and incorporated to Thai life, though, than the 7-11. They are everywhere - which really isn't an exaggeration. There is one across the street from this internet cafe; there is also one next door. Every couple of blocks in Bangkok, there is a 7-11. I am not knocking it, at all - air conditioned havens of splendor, these are. And the 7-11s sell lots of water (essential so you don't die of dehydration walking from one to the one on the next block) and other minor essentials. But they also sell awesome stuff - Thai iced tea from the little machines that is as tasty as any restaurant in Thai town, and apple mentos, and quick snack foods. They have a lot of hot food, too - chicken burgers that I tried out of curiosity, and a baby clam burger (like, the patty is made out of baby clams...smooshed together) that I wouldn't try if you paid for the doctor bills after, and toasted sandwiches - this month's featured flavor is ham and corn chowder. They have regular slurpees, as well as slushies made from aloe jelly and sugar cane, and candy called "Toe Dust" that looks like either Pop Rocks or Lik-em-aid. I did try try the sushi Lay's, too - they taste like seaweed. So, I mean, if you are into that....

The food, except anything western in style, is affordable and flavorful and wonderful, and I will be so sad to leave it behind. Naturally, this has made me terribly hungry, but on the little soi (side street) where my hostel is located is the neighborhood night market, so I get to go to town for my last dinner in Bangkok. Yay!

thai kind of day

2008-04-21T03:50:00.000-07:00

So today, I went uber-traditional, uber-touristy, and uber-Thai for the day - why not, I only have a couple left. I took a morning Thai cookery class, and had a Thai massage.

Unexpectedly, considering I generally love to cook and am not so keen on massaged, I was a much bigger fan of the latter than the former. Who would have guessed?

The cooking class was great, don't get me wrong. It's just that a couple of years back, I took a Thai cooking class with my father and sister that was awesome, and I didn't feel like this one blew me away any more than that. Any excuse to eat, though. I do wonder if my opinion would have been different if we did a different dessert - namely, mango and sticky rice. I want to know how they get that rice so sticky! Instead we did bananas poached in coconut milk. Tasty, absolutely. But the how to is...kind of right there in the name, you know?

The massage was better. Not just for the hour of aircon splendor in the middle of the day, but beause it was a lot more stretching and working of kinks than a massage I am used to - I felt more like I was being stretched out by a trainer at a gym than getting a massage, and I mean that in a good way.

Other day highlights (it was a full one!): My last wat, Wat Arun, a Khymer-style temple that you can climb up. It was late in the day, thank God, but the hard part was the steepness of the steps - I had to pull myself up by the hands, honestly. I didn't die, though!

Because I've been in Bangkok so long, I am checking off anything from any guidebook highlights section that sounds remotely interesting. One of them is fascinated by upscale hotels, so a friend and I went to check one out today. This place was so stuck up its own bum that it won't admit backpackers to come in, and has a stricter dress code than the grand Palace, one of the most sacred sites in Bangkok. I wouldn't stay in that hotel for anything, honestly - those places, like flan, are really only good if you are fancy on the inside, and I am not. I took a picture, crossed if off my checklist, and went on my merry way.

(On a side note, there is a side of Bangkok that is like that - forget the income of 98% of the country, we are rich and we will flaunt it; it's called Siam Square, it tires to be as European or American as possible, and it is distressingly juxtaposed with the entire rest of the country. There is more to it than that, sure, but this country has nearly as much in the way of five star luxury resorts as it has in poverty, and that's just bizarre. I got way off track here. All of that wasn't today, it was just where my mind went).

I am still ready to leave, but at least I will have seen more when I do.

diet coke: thailand

2008-04-19T21:15:00.001-07:00

inexplicably, this:
is absolutely the closes i have ever come abroad to american-tasting diet coke. it's not perfect, and it's really only available in a can (what can you do?) but i mean, really. it's so diet coke-like!

makes it more fun to spend more than a week in bangkok, let me tell you.

one more night in bangkok...

2008-04-19T00:59:00.000-07:00

I have now, officially, been in Bangkok a week. It's too long, especially since I am pretty much done with shopping, and I've been to the Grand Palace, and there isn't a lot more I really feel like I need to do. And yet, I have four more days here. Who knew that one of the dangers of world travel was not traveling fast enough?

Fortunately, the other day I moved out of the hotel and moved into a hostel across town. While I am very, very sad to have given up the 24 hour aircon (how I miss you, air conditioner!) and the cable television, there are some good things. One is that I am on the complete other side of town, and given the traffic and majorly flawed transport system in this city, it feels almost like I am in an entirely different city. Almost. The other is that, being back in a hostel means I once again have people to talk to, and people to go to the market with, and things to do besides enjoy the aircon and the television. All good things.

Yesterday I wallowed in Westernity, but I am unashamed. Sometimes the day calls for going to all of the uber-hopped-up malls in the city center and looking at what the Thai consumers yearn for, and also bask in their air conditioning. It's still exploring the city, dangit.

And I also went to Jim Thompson's house. I wasn't initially interested, but the guidebooks talked me into it, and I am glad they did. He was an American who moved to Thailand after WWII and ended up starting the Thai silk trade with the west. His house is gorgeous and the tour was really interesting.

I have no idea what all I am going to do in my last few days in Asia, but I am sure I will find a way to eat through them at least.

things we lose along the way

2008-04-16T04:54:00.000-07:00

This is, chronologically, getting to be old news, but it took a few days before I really felt up to rehashing and writing it all down.

On my way to Bangkok - actually, on the bus ride from Phuket to catch the train in Surat Thani, I was robbed. It is unfortunately a well-known scam, apparently, where whilst I rode on the bus above, the bus workers climb in with the luggage, go through your backpack, and steal anything of value.

Objectively speaking, I didn't lose that much, and certainly I didn't lose more than I could afford to - in reality, I lost what I had placed in my backpack as back up, in case I lost my real valuable items that I carry with me always. So while I lost some emergency funds, it does not derail my finances. Nevertheless, these guys were thorough - they went through every pocket of every pant, every pouch, pawed through my underwear, unrolled my little stash of Ziplocs, and essentially left nothing unturned. They missed nothing.

I was devastated when I discovered the treachery, and since then have pretty much done the stages of grief - though maybe am still a bit hung up on the anger part. But all in all, it's an important and unfortunate lesson.

In the scheme of things, I am traveling a long time and though a lot of countries, and in the end I don't think this will rate more than an unfortunate blip, but it does have consequences. For one, it's caused me to give up my planned trip to Cambodia and Angkor Wat to see the temples. Getting to Cambodia from Bangkok involves either quite expensive flights or a protracted series of bus/tuk tuk/cab haggling and riding, long travel, and taxi drivers and border agents who are all, apparently, famous for ripping people off. Frankly, I am not up for it right now, and while I can be quite certain that nothing of value remains in my backpack any longer, the thought of putting it back on another bus for someone else to make SURE there's nothing valuable in it makes me a bit ill. So I am not going. It makes me sad, and back to the angry again, but it's what I have the wherewithal to handle right now.

I am trying not to let it, too, color my opinion of Thailand, but it is hard. It is a poor country, one overrun by tourists and travelers, and people adapt in many ways - many more speak English than I might otherwise expect, there is much more of an structure in place to sell tours, food, souvenirs, clothes, and services to travelers. And unfortunately, there are many, many, MANY people in Bangkok who have adapted by becoming scam artists. Every time I step from my hotel, I am pursued by tuk tuk drivers, even though I am clearly not looking for one. I have stopped answering the oft-asked question of "Where are you going?" because I am invariably told that it is closed (it never is, they just want to take you shopping somewhere they get a commission). Yesterday at Wat Pho, no fewer than four people told me it was closed for a ceremony for the next few hours, when in fact the entrance was just around the corner. No one told me that; I just went to find it. I have lost count of how many times my unsolicited directions have pointed me in a way different - and presumably wrong - from the way I was told to go by maps, guidebooks, the hotel.

I am trying to ignore the scams and the ripping off, and not let it shade what I think of the place, but between getting robbed and getting it in tiny forms, it is hard. I have one more week in Bangkok, and I am determined to enjoy it. But while travel is amazing and illuminating and interesting, not all of its lessons are ones I really wanted to learn.

got wat

2008-04-15T02:25:00.000-07:00

I figure I've been in Bangkok for three days, so it's time to go and see what is arguably it's most famous site, so today I went to the Grand Palace. It's no longer a royal residence, but you wouldn't know it by the bejeweled and bedazzled buildings.

I think going to the Palace and making offerings may be a New Year tradition, because there seemed to be a LOT of Thais mixed in with the tourists. Like a lot. Like three times as many. It made it busy as hell, but at least it didn't feel like a tourist attraction, but like a living and breathing sacred place.

Inside the Palace is a huge temple, along with dozens of other buildings. Pictures don't do it justice, because they can't really capture that these multicolored buildings and roofs are all covred with mirrors and shining jewels, so they literally sparkle in the sunlight. It's an amazing site, like we just don't have in the west, really.

The next stop after the Grand Palace is the Wat Pho across the street, where one finds the reclining buddha. And he is huge, but just chillin', really. Kickin' it. Again, the place was packed, and many where Thais making their offerings - burning incense, pouring water over the Buddha images, making money donations into pots. I think I liked Wat Pho better of the two - something about the Grand Palace was magnificent, but to stoic for me. Inside Wat Pho were vendors and hawkers, lots of walkways that went nowhere or to some other little temple, a massage school, all kinds of little treasures.
I took a water taxi back, and it's the fastest way to travel around here - traffic is insane in Bangkok. And ironically, it's the driest way, too; no one gets you with water when you are on the boat. Once you are off, though, fair game.

GET WET

2008-04-13T22:59:00.000-07:00

If you ever get a chance to visit Thailand during the New year, it is a trip - but do think about whether you want to get anything done whatsoever before you decide to go.

The Songkran festival is apparently like 4 or 5 days long - I guess it started Saturday, and I think tomorrow is the last day, so that would be four days this year, at any rate. It's the New Year. It's chief characteristics seem to be closed government offices, chalk drawing on faces, and water. Lots and lots and LOTS of water. It is essentially a national waterfight, and if the major center for the celebration is in Chaing Mai, I can't even imagine what it must be like up there, because Bangkok is more than a little damp.

I heard about the water festival from the people in Phuket, and they described it as something that kids do all day, and drunken tourists embrace in the evening, and so I knew that I would get wet and the like. I pictured people with squirtguns shooting one another, maybe some water balloons? I didn't really know.

Oh, no. Maybe kids/backpackers is how they roll in Pattong, but here in Bangkok, everyone is throwing water. Little old ladies have super soakers in their hands, with the full reservoirs strapped to thier backs. There are some food stalls out, but nearly every other street vendor in the city has put away their normal wars, and for now the only things being bought or sold on Khao San Road are water and things to use to hurl that water at others. And there is no such thing as an innocent bystander, as everyone is fair game - walking though the market, you can (and will) get a bucket of ice water poured down your back. Currently, after a brief walk around town, I look as if I went swimming while fully clothed. I had to wring out before I could sit at the computer.

There are dunk stations - kids with huge water barrels to fill their bowls and buckets and guns, and they pelt everyone who walks by. There are masses of guys in the back of open pickups who all have squirt guns, and they spray you from within traffic. People spray cars, they get you as you are going in doors, they pour water on you as you walk away. It's all good natured, but there is no way to be safe. Well, unless you are the uniformed police. They seemed pretty dry.

There is also this chalk stuff, which I don't get. They look like Hershey's kisses, and some people draw on their faces, and others mix it with the water and smear it on people as they pass by. Some seem to throw it, this chalk water, but that is apparently generally reserved for serious mutual waterfighters and for cars - no one has thrown the chalk water on me, but I have gotten smeared with it more than once.

What's hilarious to me is that no one can explain why. It's tradition, but there is apparently no reason for the water or the chalk that anyone knows. Just that it's hot here in April, and I gotta say - before too long, you begin to appreciate the ice water, and feel like the people spraying warm water are just being stingy. Today was the first time I've gone for an hour's walk in Thailand and not been hot, too. So while a high-powered soaker at close range can hurt your neck, and while I still don't like the smearing with the chalk (call me a prudish Westerner if you will, but there is something unnerving about strange men walking up to you on the street and touching your face. I can do water fine, but hands off, eh?) overall, it's a pretty fun festival.

leavin' on a midnight train to bangkok

2008-04-12T20:48:00.000-07:00

After two more relaxing and lazy days in Phuket, I headed off to Bangkok - it wasn't precisely a midnight train, but it was a night train, so I was ON the train to Bangkok AT midnight; that counts, right?

There were some snags, some large and some small, with getting here, but overall the train was a pretty cool experience. It was sort of a challenge to get a berth because right now is Thai New Year, so all of the locals are traveling to visit family - and everyone getting on and off this train had bags and bags and boxes galore. One mother and kid was hauling around a full-sized bike. There was some traveling going on, that's for sure.

The train left early-ish, about 5, but that was ok - if it was going to get in to Bangkok at 5am, I needed to go to sleep early or be useless today. So they come around and convert the chairs into relatively comfortable upper and lower bunks. This is me all snug in my upper bunk:

It stayed light, and it could be noisy from time to time, and I didn't feel entirely relaxed, so I didn't sleep the best ever, but it was not the fault of the berth at all.

So here I am in Bangkok, and a little groggy, but still looking to get out in the town - first stop is the weekend market. Now I just have to find it. That is the challenge here, isn't it?

By the way, I am staying, for the first time since Aerolineas put me up in Buenos Aires, in a hotel by myself, because my sister is awesome and that's what she gave me for Christmas. And having my own room, television, aircon, and bathroom? Priceless.

diet coke: imaginary

2008-04-09T23:27:00.001-07:00

I am not even kidding, I had a dream last night that Thai Diet Coke tasted right. I woke up and almost wanted to cry. I had a Thai iced tea instead.

Phi Phi Praise

2008-04-09T23:12:00.000-07:00

I know I hardly painted the rosiest of pictures, but really, Ko Phi Phi grew on me. Yesterday was my last day there, and Michelle and I took a sunset snorkel cruise out to the sister island, Ko Phi Phi Leh (technically, we were on Ko Phi Phi Don, the inhabited resort island).

Ko Phi Phi Leh I believe has a contract that specifies the name must be followed by "where they filmed The Beach," because that's how every sign, tour, and sentence uttered refers to it. Phi Phi Leh is part of a natural reserve, and it technically has no inhabitants, save park rangers, but man does it get a lot of boats and tourists there for the day. Maya Bay, which was the actual The Beach, is in fact stunning, if a bit shallow-watered, but maybe it's the heaps of people that make it maybe not the bestest place I have ever ever seen. The snorkeling is also crap, with deep and murky water. There were some pretty fish, but not many. Great Barrier Reef it is not - though one of the boat workers opted to feed the fish when i was swimming in them, putting me in a feeding frenzy of striped angelfish. Man, that feels weird!

So Ko Phi Phi definitely grew, but I think three days was enough. Today I am back in Phuket for 2 nights, awaiting my overnight train to Bangkok - which was a feat to get, by the way. Everything is booked for the New Year here, and at first they were telling me that I couldn't get to Bangkok until the 20th. With some fancy footwork and some convenient cancellations, I got a berth on the sleeper, though, so all is well.

I am now going to digress a bit onto the food on Ko Phi Phi. I am sure it will be the same in other parts of Thailand, but I have to rave a moment for the pancake and shake stands that are everywhere on this little island. The Thai pancakes are essentially crepes, made slightly differently and fried in butter - not too shabby. They have sweet and savory, they are all less than $2, and when it is stiflingly hot, a light and tasty meal, or a Nutella breakfast, is so handy.

Did I mention it was hot? Because it is. Thailand is hot. So what goes better with a pancake, or a walk, or being alive enough to breathe, than a fresh fruit shake. They make them everywhere, and I've had a mango, a lemon, a coconut, a pineapple and a banana, and I love them. They are all made with incredibly fresh fruit, the ice is like manna from heaven, and why aren't there fresh shake stands everywhere on earth?

On an unrelated note - I have taken gobs of pictures, but the computers here are not great at uploading, so it's on the agenda for Bangkok. Wait patiently!

Back 2 Skewl

2008-04-08T06:53:00.000-07:00

Current location: Ko Phi Phi, Thailand
aka, Tropical Frat Party

Ko Phi Phi is gorgeous, y'all. Really, in its natural state, it has got to be paradise on earth. The water is surreal in how blue-green, the sand is perfectly white, the rocks are sheer and beautiful. The internet is also not super cheap, so I am not uploading pictures yet, but it is just like a postcard, honestly.

I didn't know what to expect, also, because the tour books all are printed before the 2004 tsunami which went right across the island and killed masses of people here, or they were printed right after, which means there were like 2 bars that were planning to reopen, and much accommodation was still shut. Well, things have progressed a lot, and the accommodations are back up, and believe me - the bars are booming. Even more than the east coast of Australia, this feels like a tourist mass. The island is small, but everything on it is a hotel, a restaurant, a tour shop, a bar, or a souvenir shop. That is essentially Ko Phi Phi. I will be here for 3 days, and I think that will be enough.

(I am really glad I got to come, though. The accommodations here are all rather inexpensive guesthouses, but they really have very few dorm-style ones. so on my own it would be a pretty pricey bed, and I likely would ahve stayed one night at most. Since I met Michelle in Phuket, though, we've been traveling together and splitting our own, bare-bones bungalow is quite cheap, so it's a lovely way to travel).

Anyway, so this place is packet to the gills with young travelers, and they love their drink late at night. The drink of choice would honestly rival Las Vegas for crass excess: you buy a bucket. This is not figurative. You buy a little plastic sand bucket on the street, and it is filled with a can of Red Bull, a can of Sprite, and a flask of Smirnoff or whiskey, and a few straws. Mix, and proceed to forget the evening.

A BUCKET.

The bars serve them, too - generally they compete for business with 2-for-1 bucket deals, amazingly - but why bother with those prices when you can pick one up at a stand on the street and wander through the tiny cobblestone streets with your bucket in hand?

I really feel like I am on spring break in Cabo, or wherever the Girls Gone While hotspot is now. It's so...classy.

ooo, burn

2008-04-06T03:27:00.000-07:00

Today, I spent much of the day on the beach in Phuket.

How often do I get to say that? I mean, really. Phuket is lovely - the parts with the water are simply drop-dead gorgeous, in fact. It's also stiflingly, oppressively hot. It's a toss up which one of those is what I mostly think about Phuket, and it shifts moment to moment. Really, pretty, but really hot. Why didn't someone tell me I was going to Thailand in its hottest month? It's Thailand; I can barely handle the coolest one.

Oh well. I'm managing. There was a girl on my flight from Singapore, who then showed up on my airport bus, and when we got off, we realized we were going to the same place. We've been on the same schedule ever since, and had dinner last night - the only place we could find in Phuket Town that was serving food at that time was a swanky air-con hotel restaurant, so we coughed up the $5 for dinner. Today, we took one of the buses to the beach. We meant to go to Kata, but couldn't figure out where to get off, so we ended up at Karon instead. I've never been to Kata, but Karon is gorgeous; exactly what a Thai beach was supposed to be, with this clear and shimmery blue-green water that you an just walk out in until it's shoulder high. The beach is lined with deck chairs with umbrellas that you rent for the day; shade is worth any price to me on the beach, but it was still really cheap to do.

Still got burned, though. I blame it on a combination of factors. I was under the umbrella the whole time, which lured me to a false sense of security; my sunblock (stupid Australia) is merely "30+" which is clearly inadequate; and it's also quite thick, so I didn't spread it around well. This last is very obvious, because my burn is this fabulously blotchy mess all over. I have a burn patch on my ankle, and one on the side of my knee. I think I had my watch on when I put on sunblock and then took it off, so my white watch patch burned. The sun was on my right, so the outside of one thigh has pink, as does under my arm on that side. All of it is jaggedly ringed with white where I did manage to apply enough block. I look STUNNING, and it's only after 4 hours on the beach. I've got days to go yet - I will be a patchy lobster by the time I am done at this rate. I need some SPF 50.

i just came for the food

2008-04-04T01:48:00.001-07:00

I love, love, love street food. I have no idea why, but in any country, it's just about one of my favorite things to eat. So essentially, Singapore is like paradise. This city is certainly not near the cheapest one in Asia, but the food, which is everywhere and delicious, is dirt cheap. It's supposed to be similar in Thailand, and I can't wait, but street fooding in Singapore is like a religious experience.

Like everything else, it's all multinational. I'll have gyoza and naan for lunch, generally picked up from stalls down the road from one another, and total costing about $3 Sing. Heaven! There are Muslim eating houses, tea shops, dumpling huts, and lots of places that essentially serving plates o' stuff - I generally don't know what it is, but I like it. Lots of the food comes from food courts, with all of these various stalls and communal tables, to let you cobble together the ideal meal.

There are weird things, too, that people eat. I'm not even talking about things that I just find unappetizing, like a giant fish head served on...anything, really. The 7-11s all have these machines that sit next to the slurpee ones that dispense mushroom soup or mashed potatoes and gravy. Um, ew.

But mostly the food is extraordinary. I had Ginger onion chicken for dinner the other night and it was utterly spectacular. Then yesterday, I had one of my favorite things yet. It was dessert, passionfruit with crushed ice, coconut milk, and tapioca beads. SpecTACular. One of the best things I've had in my mouth. I wish I could go back four times for more...

Last night, the hostel had it's signature evening, a food walk of the neighborhood that was like a Singapore 101 course combined with lots and lots of eating. It was one of the best experiences I've had. I learned about the makeup, culture and history of the country, and ate noodles and curd and meat that had been turned into wonderful things. It was probably one of the best organized events, and the guy who did it - who owns the hostel - clearly loves what he is doing.

The best thing we ate (and at $1 Sing per person, the most expensive) was this thing that I don't know what it was or what it was made of, which makes me sad. It was a little...cup of something, the cup made from a fried wonton, filled with stuff, with a shrimp and chili on top. Little sweet, little spicy, all spectacular. I will have to find these again.

Legend has it (and by legend, I mean Brian and Wommie. Hi guys!) that Thailand is just as kickass on the street food. I may melt whilst doing so, but I will belt into a pile of happy, street-cooked noodles.

the people you meet in hostels

2008-04-04T01:34:00.000-07:00

In general, I don't have a problem meeting people on the road. Most of it is in hostels; I have found that the all-female dorms are, for some reason, way more social than the mixed ones, so I generally pick those when available.

The conversations all begin the same way: Where are you from, where are you coming from, where are you going to, how long, etc. Specifics then come from there, depending on answers. Names are generally exchanged about one hour to one day into the conversation. It makes it way less lonely, just to have people to talk with, plus it's cool that I've played the Australian version of Monopoly with three Scottish girls, met a British vulcanologist studying an island in the South pacific, and a Chilean veterinarian who left Chile because they only have two species of snake there, and he wanted to study more. But in general, I only rarely meet people who I wish I could be better friends with, irrespective of how we met. Generally, it's like the first week of college - you are friends because of circumstance, but that's about it.

This hostel is by far the most social place I have ever, ever stayed. Seriously, if you are ever passing through Singapore, I do recommend the Betel Box hostel - it's well worth it. Since the minute I arrived in the dorm room Monday night, I would not have had to spend one minute alone if I didn't want.

And the people here are, for some reason, generally more interesting than the ones at other places. I mean, there are the 19 year old Brits and Germans en route to Australia to do the East Coast, so they are the same travelers I just left, but they are new, so that's charming. But there's also the three Irish guys who are on their way home after a year in the US, Mexico, Cuba, South America, New Zealand and Australia.

There is the Australian guy who lives in China, but is currently here bringing his dog from China back to Australia. The dog has to be in quarantine for five months, so he is getting an apartment here in Singapore for the duration. He generally lives in rural China, but also sometimes in Melbourne.

There are the two Tasmanians who are one week into a one- to two-year trip through Asia.

There is another Aussie, this one from Brisbane, who is spending a month in Southeast Asia before going to Europe fro two years to live and work and see every country.

There is the American who has not lived in America for years, as she's been working for an organization based out of Perth for six years, doing midwifery, antenatal and birthing classes for three month stints in places like India, Nepal, Cairo and Japan.

There is the American and the Welsh girl who are here for a week while the school they teach in Japan is on holiday.

There are the two girls from Kuala Lumpur who are here for a weekend.

There is the Nigerian girl who has not been home before 6am once, so excited is she to be in a country where it is safe for a female to do absolutely anything on her own.

There is also the writer of the new Lonely Planet book on Singapore, starting his research.

I'm telling you, the people I've met in this hostel have completely rocked.

mix up

2008-04-03T06:05:00.000-07:00

Singapore is, apparently, the intro to Asia country. Everyone here is either on their way into or out of Asia for some travel, so it's a really interesting mix. But the country itself is this mish mash of Asia and its British colonial roots.

Everything here is in English. Often, things are in several languages - depending on what it is, it can be in a couple of Chinese dialects, Malay, Hindi, Indonesian, or something else I don't recognize. But everything is at least in English, from advertisements to signage. I imagine this makes it appealing for people who want to do Asia, but don't want it to be impossibly difficult. But what's fascinating is that, even though it's all in English, it doesn't mean that the people who live here and who are from here actually speak English. English is just the common language between all of the people who have come here that it's the default, but many of the people who have grown up with the English ads, signs, television, music, etc, still only have a basic, minor grasp of conversing in it. Still, it's better than it will be in the rest of Asia, I know.

It's still preposterously hot, and I know I will never be able to drink enough water, but I also still love the way the mashup of cultures shows up everywhere. Today for lunch, I ate a samosa, some banana naan (which, why don't I eat this every day? It's banana and cheese baked in NAAN. Wonderful!), and gyoza on a stick. All of it bought on the street, all of it divine, and all of it combined costing about $4.50 Sing (so, figure $3 US). I went to Little India again, I went to the river, and I also nearly suffocated in the heat.

So far, so good, though. I feel better about Thailand, I feel great about my three weeks here, I have officially been to a whole new continent.

sling

2008-04-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

Everyone said that a couple of days was plenty for Singapore, and uniformly - people in Australia, even people working at the hostel here - are mildly surprised that I am here for FOUR FULL DAYS, like it is epic. But after day one in Singapore, really, there is plenty to do.

Or maybe it will just take me a long time to do anything, because it is ridiculously hot and humid and I am in constant danger of melting onto the sidewalk.

Singapore is hugely international, that's the first thing I notice. All of the signs are in four languages (but the first is fortunately English, so I can even find my way about). Today, I wandered Little India, Chinatown, scouted a major vestige of Colonial Britain, and ate dinner at an Egyptian place. I feel like I've done a mini-RTW in one day.

Part of the reason it was so full was that this hostel, more than any other I've been to, makes it easy to meet people. I am not sure why, but just sitting at breakfast this morning, I met three girls, and spent the day with two of them, and since one is leaving in two days, she wanted to see as much as possible. Then tonight, I went to dinner with the third. I've made more headway making friends here than I have just about the entire trip. Weird, but nice.

Anyway, even though it's relatively small, it takes a while to get around. It's not expensive, but it's not cheap. The street food is everywhere, and really impressive. I don't know if it will be possible to drink enough water in the next month. And even though it's only midnight, and I got lots of sleep last night, I can barely keep my eyes open.

Those are my day one Singapore thoughts.

what people watch

2008-03-31T17:25:00.000-07:00

I know I am going to regret this in, like, a week, when I am in some Phuket hostel, desperate for some random Americanness. But for now, I am kind of over TV.

Not all together, never that. I still miss my TiVo with unnatural fervor. More that I am over foreign hostel television. Aside from some random, serendipitous moments, like when I sit down with dinner the other night right as someone starts Little Miss Sunshine, or the season 9 Friends marathon that happened on Good Friday, most of what people watch in the rest of the world? Is crap.

I'm not even talking in the abstract, with the worldwide popularity of shows like Baywatch and CSI:Miami. I'm talking about what people with the remote - people from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands - choose to land on when flipping through Foxtel or Sky satellite cable. I'll even give a free pass to those who are forced to make a selection when the hostel does not have cable; then you have maybe five options, so you are very limited by whatever is the least offensive. I've been in that boat, and it's forced me into the position of choosing MTV programming. I'm not proud, and I hope it is never used to evaluate my viewing.

(Though, on a side note - the hostel in Mission Beach had Foxtel, but it would never come in due to weather, so we just had free-to-view. The week was saved, though, because one of the other backpackers was just coming from Thailand, where he'd bought an entire CD case worth of bootleg DVDs, so there were many a rainy afternoon that people spent watching Superbad, Blades of Glory, City of God, American Gangster, etc. I can't wait for Thailand...)

No, there is no convenient excuse here. There is no defense when I've witnessed person after person, in assorted cities, with various national backgrounds, SELECT to watch King of Queens. I've watched more of that show (read: any) on this trip than I ever had before. It's not better as you grow familiar with it.

I've watched, or seen other watching and walked away from - lots of everybody Loves Raymond, Yes, Dear, Las Vegas, and The Drew Carey Show. Lots.

And the movies! I've avoided watching Crocodile Dundee 1 AND 2 (while in Australia - the irony), The Time Machine, Picture Perfect, and some Mary Kate & Ashley-as-teenagers reality show movie I didn't even know existed (ah -this one). Every one of those, by the way, was selected. Often from a much better array.

That's the thing - we Americans export our crap as well as the good stuff, so maybe we're partly to blame. Maybe we've done our part to erode foreign tastes by sending over Tru Calling and Help Me Help You in with the Heroes and Pushing Daisies. But I mean, WE had those same suck shows, and WE fought back by not watching them until they got canceled. It's natural selection. What happens to nature when people SELECT the suck?

In Chile, in front of a CSI: Miami, a New Yorker who was on his third year of travel around the world, told me his theory behind the appeal of the show: The rest of the world likes blunt instruments, and David Caruso is a blunt instrument of acting. He is popular precisely because it is his job to state the obvious, and punctuate it by emphatically removing his sunglasses. The same would be true of the Hoff, Jerry Lewis, and all other inexplicably popular figures the world over.

All this TV is really more interesting to talk about than it is to watch, but that doesn't stop people, Lord knows I never look askance at someone for watching too much television, but there are people at each of the hostels I've been to who put me to shame even on my laziest of weekends. The two girls with the penchant for Olsen made-for-tv fare were in the TV room every single time I swung by, for the entire time I was in the Blue Mountains (which is also odd, as my four-day stay there was generally considered quite a long one). And the girl who watched the ENTIRE Friends marathon in Sydney has stuck in for everything that is on - marathons of Will & Grace and Malcolm in the Middle, every episode of Raymond, cricket matches, late-90s cinema; if it flashes color and light from the flatscreen, she will watch, evidently, as she was literally watching television every time I walked in or out all of last weekend. I come back to the hostel on Friday, and sure enough - there in front of an episode of the Simpsons. It makes me wonder - does she have an actual bed there? And do they not have television in England?

What people choose when they have the power of the remote is not necessarily what they most want to watch, because there is some silent peer pressure involved - you don't want to choose something that is going to make everyone else scoff or bolt from the room, or know you are a closet Olsen twin aficionado, so you pick what you like, but what you think others will as well. At least, that's how I justify it. However, while I rarely take remote control power, if I ever were the one choosing, I would NOT flip past The Daily Show when it's on. I don't care that it's really only appealing to Americans (and usually, I am one of the only ones). It breaks my heart when people pass it for Drew Carey, and I don't care if anyone else would like it. If I got to pick, I would watch it, and that's that.

G'Day

2008-03-30T17:07:00.000-07:00

OK, #1, I just now noticed that my location on this blog is listed as New Zealand. Still. How did no one point this out to me before now? I cannt keep track of the little things, clearly. I need some help here, people.

#2, I really could not sleep last night, and not because of my headache that's been plaguing me, or even the normal issues with sleeping in an 8-bed dorm. It's because I knew that the next time I went to bed, it would be in Singapore. SINGAPORE.

#3, It's sad to be leaving Australia, and Sydney in particular. I am pretty sure that the ease and package-perfect everything of here and New Zealand has made me soft, but hopefully I can handle the ultimate foreignness of Asia. But I really like Sydney, something about it really appeals to me. I'm comfortable here, and when traveling for a long time, that feeling is a big deal.

I'll be back here someday, I am sure, since it's too big a country and there's really no way to explore it properly with just one go. But for now, I can't be thinking about where I will be someday, as I am too preoccupied with where I will be later today. Singapore, y'all.

the effects of travel upon the body

2008-03-30T01:39:00.000-07:00

I am more tan now than I have been in I don't even know how long. Even last year, when biking outdoors for insane hours, I got patches of very tan - fingertips, calf & shin area, whatever was uncovered - but overall stayed my natural shade of pale. This is far more uniform, considering I am bron(er) most everyplace. Except for the racerback tank line on my back and the flip flop lines on my feet. Sigh. I expect it all to get worse, too. Not only am I entering Southeast Asia, and also (hopefully) some beach time, but all of my current tanning has been through a scrupulous application of SPF 50 spectra 3 uber-sunblock. I am about out. In Australia, all they have to replace with with is factor 30+. At least I have a base not to burn, though, right?

My back hurts. Most of the time. Thin hostel beds + no pillows are not good for a stomach sleeper like me, and I think not having anything to prop my leg on is slowly throwing my back out of alignment. Add carrying my pack, standing and walking for hours a day, and no yoga or stretching for a couple of months now, and my lower back complains a lot more than normal, and my neck cracks astoundingly loudly. As if I need another reason to feel ancient around all of the 19 year old British backpackers...

Evidently, I get hives in foreign countries. It happened twice in Argentina, and then again just last week. It's really awesome, to suddenly be covered in welts. And they itch, and they look like I have the plague on my arms. But I have Benadryl, and after a couple of nights (in which I sleep VERY soundly) dosing with that, they go away. But I guess I am allergic to...traveling? I don't even know.

My hair is so long. And I am not willing to shell out $90 for a haircut, or trust my hair to a Chinatown barber (considering the warnings I've gotten), it's just going to get a lot longer.

In general, any part of my body that requires a mirror to see does not get seen. This is weird, I know, but think about it. Hostel bathrooms are generally shower stalls, toilet stalls, and sinks, where the mirrors are. I get changed in the rooms or after my shower - no mirrors. Today, to check for bites on my back, involved strategy and planning to be in front of a mirror without a shirt on, as it does not happen organically. It's not unusual for me to get random bruises on my body, but now they can come and go without me ever noticing. I have a spectacular scratch on my back that I got three days ago, but only saw for the first time today. I don't even see my face as often as I am used to - a lot of the bathroom mirrors are small or oddly placed, so if you don't look on purpose, you don't see your reflection. I just see myself more at home - driving, at the bank teller, whenever I go to any restroom, around the house. I don't here. Which makes it way easier to not care that I have shaggy hair, hives, and have been rotating the same half dozen shirts for two months.

Beaches

2008-03-30T01:04:00.000-07:00

On Friday, when I got back to Sydney, I had a couple of must-dos before leaving the city for good. One was to go to manly - I had wanted to go last weekend, but the weather was crap. It was nice enough now, though, so I went for the evening.

The last thing I had to do today was the Bondi-Coogee walk, in a different direction from Manly, but on the coast as well. It's not fair to compare them, I now see. Manly is this really nice, quiet, fairly posh suburb. It would be a fantastic place to live and commute to work via the ferry, full of adorable shops and great looking restaurants, not to mention the beach and the coast.

Bondi is the flashy, hotspot beach, and I was assuming it was all glitz, because it's where everyone goes to party, but the beach itself has strong currents, so it's not actually that safe to swim (there is a popular reality show here called Bondi Rescue, about the lifeguards). But go to the beach on a day like today, where it is warm and clear, and the beach is fantastic, with soft white sand and cool, brilliant blue water. The walk down to Coogee (a more southern beach I actually liked better, and has better currants) was spectacular. If I were here longer, or more of a beach nut, I would be there every weekend.

Seriously, look at this coastline:

Besides that, all of the swimming beaches have pools that go right up to the ocean. Great for pictures, but can you imagine swimming your laps THERE?

caves & cliffs

2008-03-28T01:24:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I liked the Blue Mountains. It was nice to be there for a few days - a lot of people go for a day apparently, and while it it would still be fun and worth it, I liked having the time. The day I got there, when it was cloudy and starting to rain, the Sisters were gorgeous, but if that was my only day there, I would have been annoyed at the clouds. As it was, though, I am glad I got to see the mountains in both kinds of weather.

I'm rambling, aren't I? And it's just the beginning of the entry. So, as you saw, I also went abseiling whilst in the mountains - or rappelling, for those in the States. I had not done anything xxxtreme this whole trip, despite ample opportunity, mostly because nothing appealed to me enough to spend the money. I don't really WANT to bungy jump. But rappelling always looked so cool on Amazing Race, and the girls at my hostel in Sydney raved, so I went for it. So cool. I would do it again in a heartbeat, and highly recommend it.

But backing off a cliff? Not easy.

The next day I went on a day trip out to the Jenolan Caves. My parents went last year and really recommended them, and I am glad I made the schlep out there. The caves are massive - there are 9 separate ones open for tours - and they have been a tourist spot since like, the 1860s. These hige, limestone underground caverns. Can you imagine "touring" them in a skirt and high-necked blouse via candle and rope? That's hard core.

Pictures unfortunately don't work well in the caves, so you may just have to take my word for how big and how cool they are. This might help:

but also imagine that, at the biggest spot, there is an area called the cathedral that houses 90 person opera and symphony concerts, because it has vaulting ceilings and perfect acoustics.

The drive down there is pretty harrowing - it's like 70km from Katoomba, and much of it is along this narrow one-lane, windy road that drops off to nothing on one side. It was a gorgeous drive, but man. It really gave me mad respect for my dad, though - he drove it last year, fresh into their rental car, and didn't kill anyone. I was a little worried, and I was in a bus, with a driver who does this daily, and is used to driving on the left. Wickid driving skillz, dad.

and what did YOU do today?

2008-03-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

i will spare you all of the terrible punny headlines i came up with for this entry

2008-03-25T01:04:00.000-07:00

I am in the Blue Mountains - out of the city and into rustic hikingland once again.

Katoomba is so pretty, y'all. I had a friend who had been all over Australia tell me this was one of her favorite spots, and I can see why. I took the train here yesterday - it only takes about 2 hours, and they leave just about every hour, so it's an easy getaway. It's also apparently a popular spot for Sydneysiders for the Easter holiday, as from the train window I watched the gridlock traffic to get back into town go just about the whole way out.

it was also a lovely day in Sydney, and the further out we got, the more the clouds came in. Sigh. I got the the town, walked to the hostel, and immediately booked it out again- I wanted to see the Three Sisters before they were completely covered by clouds, just in case the weather took a turn for a few days. I got there right as the clouds started coming in, and these rocks? Are gorgeous.

As I was walking back, past all of these twee gingerbread cottages and charming, rustic ye olde shoppes, I thought the town could just not get any cuter. And then I saw a little black bunny munching on a dandelion in an empty field. I mean, really.

Today I went for a hike to see the valley from the other side. It was a little cloudy, but mostly white fluffy ones, with a fair amount of sun. As I walked out of town and got closer to where the land drops off into the mountains and the valley, there was nothing but clouds - they had come to fill in all the spaces, and I literally caught my breath when I saw it. I've seen so many lovely things, and yet I can still find everything shockingly beautiful.

As I hiked, the clouds slowly receded and left the mountains blue and lovely. I walked for a couple of hours and took picture after picture, and then got to get up close to the Sisters before climbing a looooooong way (900 steps!) down to the valley and then back up. I was a tuckered camper when it was done, but totally worth it.

I bopped around town today - it's full of bakeries, upscale outdoorsy clothing stores, and an inexplicable number of used book stores. There are also tours to do, so that's how I plan to fill more time in the next couple of days, but for now I'm enjoying being in just a quiet, kicked-back, stunning town.

It doesn't hurt that this is one of the nicest hostels I've been in. I basically get to sleep in a sunroom. It's swank.

oh, jesus: the return (hee)

2008-03-23T01:14:00.000-07:00

Because it's easter. Get it?

OK, weirdly, and I so do not understand this - way more is open and going today than it was on Friday. bars, stores, restaurants are all open. I mean, some are closed, but it seems mostly normally Sunday closure, as opposed to Easter Sunday closure. Isn't that weird? I thought Easter Sunday was a bigger deal than Good Friday; when I was at parochial school, we only still had a half day on Good Friday.

Anyway, so yesterday was still sort of crummy out, but not nearly as cold, but I went to The Rocks, out by the Harbour, which is the oldest part of Sydney. It's got quaint old buildings and a weekend market that caters to rich tourists, but still has nice stuff. I went to Chinatown for dinner, too, which was awesome. I can't wait for Asia and all the food I shall eat there.

Today was gorgeous, though - perfect and warm and sunny. I got up and went straight for Circular Quay to catch a ferry - I knew with this kind of weather on an Easter Sunday, the zoo was gonna be packed. I was right, but I managed to miss most of it.

I don't go to a lot of zoos in life, and I think that's why I still like them. Taronga Zoo is also pretty exceptional - its a quick ferry ride across the Harbour, set right next to the water. The elephants have a waterfront view of the city from their area; how is that for prime real estate? They also have everything at this zoo, and people are allowed to get fairly close, so I actually saw things in most areas, not just some lump in the distance that is presumably a monkey.

I learned many things today:
Platypus are weird looking, and hysterical, and swim like they REALLY have SOME PLACE to BE.
Koala absolutely know how cute they are and like to be as photogenic as possible. Hams.

Echidnas are hysterical, and waddle when they walk, and I love them.
Red pandas are so adorable that this one looked almost fake. He was also so playful and perfect-looking, I am shocked that Disney has not made one the star of his very own heartwarming movie yet.

I got to see kangaroos and wallabys; a sleeping wombat and a waking up and drowsy Tasmanian devil; possums and otters and meerkats and gorillas and seals and giraffes; lions, tigers, snow leopards, elephants, zebras, ostriches...there were seriously lots of animals.

And the weird thing is, because it is a "natural" zoo, most of the animals were separated by some water or some space, and that's it. For some of them, though, it wasn't even that - the red kangaroos were just there, and we walked on a path through them. There was nothing to stop, say, a roo rampage, but I suppose that's not very common. There were also iguana and lizard and birds and spiders and all sorts of fauna wandering about the zoo, not as a part of an exhibit - perhaps there with the family for Easter?

There were also all these thingsI had never heard of - like the binturong, which is a relative of the mongoose. There was this whole family of them, and they looked like completely hairy possums almost. They were putting on a show - the parents climbing up high and eating, and the kids trying to get up there. One was not a good climber, and would sort of cry out for help when he couldn't get the next branch, and the other got up to the parents and then fell, catching himself with the tail and trying to pull himself up on the weakest branch around. It was awesome.

Since I got there early, I managed to get through most of the zoo before it got too late and too crowded, but right about 1 or 1:30, I noticed the shift. The kids (and it was ALL families there today) started crying more, the parents were doing more scolding and yelling, there was more general crabbiness. Fortunately, I had covered most everything by about 2, so when I started feeling like throwing a temper tantrum myself from being to TIRED and to HOT and WAH, I thought it best to go home.

I'm glad the weather turned - the zoo would have been good without it, but it made for an extra nice day. I hope it sticks, too - that gives me great hope for the weather in the Blue Mountains this week.

diet coke: australia

2008-03-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

It's the cruelest cut of all, really. Both here and in New Zealand, on first sip, the Diet Coke tastes EXACTLY the same. Especially if I get it from a fountain somewhere. I take a drink, and it is like HOME.

And then the aftertaste sets in. And it's this weird, cumulative aftertaste. One drink, it's not there. Two, you start to taste it. And each successive sip, it starts to build and grow, like a gently mounting tide of suck all over your mouth.

I miss Diet Coke, y'all.

oh, jesus

2008-03-20T21:42:00.000-07:00

I've known for a while that I was going to have to strategize for a couple of days here - today is Good Friday, and I am in a happily Catholic country. Which means everything is closed. The same will be on Sunday, and to a much lesser extent, tomorrow and Monday as well.

I opted to be in Sydney, thinking that it is a much more international, tourist-oriented town, so there would at least be MORE available to me. So far, that plan has worked out really well - most museums and tourist attractions are open, and my hostel is even having a Good Friday BBQ on the roof deck. I have enough in Sydney that I want to do that two days not needing cute shops or tiny restaurants to be open should not be a big deal.

What I didn't count on needing was to have enough to do in Sydney on a Good Friday WHEN IT'S RAINING. I meant to go to the zoo today - the outdoor zoo, a ferry ride away. But it is chilly and rainy. It's been nice for WEEKS here, and now it gets the rain? When I get here? Why am I suddenly courting all terrible weather everywhere I go?

Anyway, I adapted, and went to the Powerhouse museum this morning - it's really cool, in an old power station near Darling Harbour, and exhibiting things that seem to be lumped together mostly under the heading of "interesting stuff." They had displays on industrial design, general stores from 1880 to 1930, computers, Princess Diana and steam power. Random, but a really entertaining way to spend a morning.

This afternoon, I was going to go to the aquarium, but I dawdled too long. It's Good Friday, which doesn't just mean that things are closed for Jesus, it also means that everyone has a four-day weekend. Plus, Darling Harbour has an Easter Hoopla festival for kids (no idea what it is; it just involves hoola hoops somehow), so the line to get in was around the block, and there were signs that there were similar crowds at all exhibits.

So, I have to readjust. I think the weather is supposed to improve somewhat, enough for a zoo excursion, and I can go to the aquarium nearer to opening time to avoid the family time. I just hope that the weather gets better this week - I want to see some of Sydney's famous beaches, and I am going out to the Blue Mountains for some hiking and outdoorsy time.

I will say, though, that it's mostly just overcast, not torrential and problematic. It's certainly fine to be outside, it's just a bad combo, to have a rainy holiday weekend day.

my kind of town

2008-03-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

If at all possible, everyone should first see the Sydney Opera House on their first night in town, right before dusk. And then sit and watch it as the sun goes down. It's too perfect for words.

There is no explanation for it, but without seeing hardly any of the city, something about Sydney really resonates for me. I don't even feel like I need to see all of this place to know that I love it. On some weird level, it's just very comfortable and familiar and good here. So I've been to the Opera House, and to view it from a couple of places; I went shopping a bit on Pitt Street, and bought a belt (finally - I was in desperate need, after a tragic jeans-stretching incident that happened in Mission Beach), and I browsed briefly though the ghetto shopping spectacular that is Paddy's Markets. I have so much that I still want to do, but so far it's only served to strengthen my immediate love of Sydney.

Isn't it weird how places can be like that? My mom said I was a New Yorker before I even moved there, and I remember on my first day on my own in Manhattan, I got asked for directions (and gave them successfully). It was home from day one; two and a half years in LA and it never felt like home. Sydney, apparently, has been encoded on my DNA at some point.

sydney safe and sound

2008-03-18T23:55:00.000-07:00

It's weird to be in Australia for weeks, and only now get to Sydney.

I got here safe and easily, leaving behind humid Queensland for very autumny Sydney weather.The first thing I did was check into my hostel, and then wash some things in the sink. The joy of being in one place for a few nights.

Next thing I did was go to the grocery. That's just how I roll.

Following that, I found the cheap Internat cafe. I'm a wild child.

So this is all I've done of Sydney, and yet, somehow I already really, really like it here.

I am, however, now going to some actual neat neighborhood to do some legitimate Australian wandering about.

fishies!

2008-03-18T07:18:00.000-07:00

I got to go on a reeeeeeeeef toooooour!

And it was positively spectacular. Seriously, I can only imagine what it must be like to snorkel and dive the Great Barrier Reef when the water is clear and calm (because it was not), since today it was without a doubt the finest and most impressive snorkeling I've ever done. What a great day!

I had to leave really, really early, to be picked up at 7:30, but they took me and a small bus of others from the hostel straight to the boat. In the harbor, the clouds looked really forbidding and not at all promising, but we were going an hour 45 out to the reef, so things could change. Besides, at the tour agency, she booked me on this one specifically because they are a good bet when the weather is iffy. And the weather was largely better once we got out there - a bit of clouds and some rain every now and again, but nothing major and nothing to hide the fish. But the wind was brutal, and it made the trip out really rough.

Everyone asked if I get seasick, and I never have before. But I am a little prone towards some motion sickness at times. Nothing major (except for last year, when I was reacting to some medicine that made me feel somewhat queasy all the time, and like I was in motion constantly. I had to replace my rolling desk chair with a flat one, because I couldn't handle the movement. But I'm not taking the medication anymore), but I still get an occasional nausea.

Today, I was not having the rocking. I didn't get sick, but it was a long trip out of looking at the horizon. Even when we got to the reef site, the boat was tossing a lot back and forth. I was better after lunch, actually, because it got something in my stomach. Plus, about then I also took some ginger pills, so either the wheat rolls or the ginger worked magic, and I was fine the rest of the day.

But the snorkeling! The tours offer intro or certified dives, but I prefer to snorkel, so I stuck to the surface. It's jellyfish season, so I also got to wear a stinger suit (sexay!) and I was cold on the first dive, so on the second I also had a wetsuit on. I was smokin'. But we get to snorkel right off the boat, and the coral is so close that it could not have been better to dive, really. I can't imagine seeing more than I did. there were bright, flourescent fish everywhere. I saw a sea turtle! It was huge and awesome, and we watched him bob up for air. There was some sort of mini squid, some that looked like a long, skinny tube, a giant sea cucumber, MASSIVE giant clams, these big ugly fish with protuberant eyes and a vry lazy attitude, and a Nemo fish (without the wonky fin, though). There were also these fish, maybe 2-3 inches long, with blue and black stripes that act as cleaners for the other fish, eating the barnacles off their gills. They do a little dance to attract the other fish for their services, so I watched that for a while - and then watched them swim INTO THE GILLS of the bigger fish. It was so cool.

Without an underwater camera of being next to me, there isn't really a good way to describe how awesome the day was, but you'll just have to trust me. If not the best day I've had, pretty close to it.

Hilariously, though, I've spent it feeling hungover. And I am so not. Last night was St. Patrick's Day, but because I had to be up early and because I am not 18, I planned an early night. I went out, but was back by midnight and went to bed. I was fine this morning, but a combination of the movement of the boat and the fact that I absolutely did not drink enough water today has left me dehydrated and a bit nauseated - aka, hungover. I didn't even get to drink!

I am better now on the dehydration, but it's been 4 hours, and I still feel like I am in motion. I wish my keyboard would stop swaying side to side....

up with cairns

2008-03-18T03:08:00.000-07:00

I decided yesterday pretty quickly that I like Cairns. And it's not just because it stopped raining.

Cairns is way up north in Queensland, and on the heavily-trafficked East Coast Australia pathway where backpackers run up and down constantly, it is a very common beginning or ending point of the trip - everyone here is generally starting or finishing a trip up the coast. Which means backpackers here are really happy in general. I don't know how to explain it - very few backpackers choose Cairns to stay and settle for a long time (unlike many I've met who spend generally spend between 2 and 6 months in either Sydney or Melbourne), so most are here to just be travellers. It makes for a festive city.

It's a tourist town, to be sure, but there isn't the commensurate spike in prices that there can be. Cairns actually has a lot of reasonably priced dining options - at their fast food Chinese places (I love this) the fod is all self serve, and you pay by the plate; whatever you can pile on the small plate, which is easily 2 meals for me, is $7.99. I wish Panda Express did that. It's also a town that is basically branded by Billabong and Quicksilver, and there is a lot of reasonably priced shopping here - I haven't bought much, but if I were in the market for a bikini, board shorts, or dijiridoo, this would be where I would get 'em.

Last night was also St. Patrick's Day, and it was a great place to be for that. Plus, my hostel is like a resort - this is the pool AT THE HOSTEL:
So call me biased, but I really like Cairns.

the logistics of travel

2008-03-15T21:11:00.000-07:00

I got an email from my friend Graig (because he is wonderful and awesome and knows how much I love to get emails from my friends while I am away and feeling lonely) (hint), and I decided to answer him here rather than in an email. Mostly, it's because I forget, when I am writing, to include the minutiae of my life. And not only is it hard to paint a clear picture without it, but it's also the kinds of questions my mom asks me about, so I might as well tell everyone.

So first off, one of the most compelling things about my day to day life is that, when traveling, I become rather preoccupied with my day to day life while traveling. I think I may have mentioned, but the thing with travel stress is that it does come in big sizes - Oh, sure, your flight will leave Buenos Aires, but we have no idea when, or why it won't go now, but you can TRUST US that it will leave. Someday; Your bags will arrive in New Zealand at some point after you do, but we will find you when it happens...

But in general (I sincerely hope), those big stresses are kind of rare. The minor ones, though, are sort of constant. Living on the road, out of a pack, in hostels, is a constant world of negotiation. I am traveling with 8 shirts; those range from a tank top to a wool longsleeve, so I rarely have 8 shirts in actual circulation, depending on weather. I constantly have to consider when I will be able to wash out a shirt and allow it time to dry, if I wear this or that shirt, what that leaves me for tomorrow or the next day, etc. There is strategy and planning involved in when I eat, sleep, shower, and do any of those things I do at home without much thought to broad strokes plans. That's the single most draining thing about traveling, I think - is that I can't do much without thinking.

But anyway, Graig writes:
"i've been wondering: what sort of nightlife have you been encountering? what do you do with your evenings? and where do you eat (i'm obsessed with restaurants when traveling abroad)? how you seen any indigenous cinema? oh, and you seem to be shopping a lot: are you accumulating much as you go? and carrying it everywhere?"

I will start with the easiest one: I have seen movies in Argentina, New Zealand and Australia; there is not a lot in the way of indigenous cinema, though - all have been mainstream Hollywood movies. There were I believe two Argentine movies out in Buenos Aires, but I didn't see them because they were obviously not subtitled. There were no options here or in NZ for non-American fare. The movie experiences themselves were interesting, though - in BA, it was older men (maybe 60) and well dressed that acted as ushers and ticket takers. Also, I've decided I hate assigned seating. I like to sit close-ish and middle, but I keep going to movies with barely any other people, and I still get assigned to the back row or whatever. It's an unnecessary pain. And it also means that Aussies and Kiwis show up at movies about 2 minutes after it starts, en masse. No one is there when previews & ads start at the showtime, and by the movie start people have finally started filling in.

Ok, nightlife. This one varies wildly, depending on a lot of factors. In Latin America, dinner is so late that it was the evening activity. Brian and I tried (with only dubious success) to go to bars a few times,and I went out with some people at the hostel for a drink one night. There were also a lot of evenings spent with some wine at the hostel, enjoying the view/roofdeck/bar (depending on the hostel). In New Zealand, I was with my sister, and we had television. We also got up early, so that colored things. My evenings there were actually quite similar to my evenings at home.

Australia is more complicated. I am in the absolute heart of the traditional backpacker and round the world circuit right now. Essentially, it seems like ever Brit ever does a trip that is Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand/Fiji/States/home. So I am in the midst of that. But also bear in mind that I am a solid 6-10 years older than the rest of the hostel crowd here, in general (the travellers included many of a much older (read: my age) crowd in South America, so that was a difference as well). I am not big on the drinking games and picking up foreign boys (word choice deliberate) like many of my younger hostelgoers are, so that changes my plans a bit. I do go out with people I meet in the hostel, generally to backpacker bars (because that is what we know), and then I head home. I do also keep an earlier schedule - in every hostel, there tends to be some people (or the entire hostel, at one in Melbourne) who becomes completely nocturnal, drinking all night and sleeping/watching tv all day. I like to see where I am traveling, so I am an early bird at these places, usually bed by 12 or 1, up by 8.

Eating! I hate cooking in hostels. i Love to cook, but with sketchy, bare-bones kitchens, no supplementary ingredients or spices, crowds, and dubious cleanliness, I hate it. And I am on my own. So I basically never do it. I love street food, so where available, I go to town on that - I can't wait for Southeast Asia. In other places, I do my own version of it, like going to Breadtop in Melbourne, for instance, and eating BBQ pork buns for dinner. This kind of eating I supplement with fruit and veggies from the supermarket, and lots of water. Gotta stay hydrated! I do go out to eat, or get takeout, on my own, but not as much as with others. It's not as much fun. But I do try to get some "representative" cuisine - I really want some seafood in Cairns, for instance. Besides, here in Mission Beach, there are virtually no restaurants, and none that are affordable (average entree is $20. Youch.), so I have been eating sandwiches, fruit, and cereal for three days. I am going to DINE OUT tomorrow.

And shopping. I am actually not doing that much buying. I did buy a lot when my sister was here, and I sent it all home with her - she left with one more large, heavy bag than she came with, and a significant portion of that was mine. Since she's gone, I bought one more tank top, because I will be in warm weather for a while. Other than that, all of my purchases have been on transport, accommodation, internet, food, and things like postcards - nothing I carry with me. I don't buy anything of any substantial size without a consideration of how I am getting it home, and I avoid anything that I will have to carry for any length of time. If I decide to shop in Australia, I will probably mail some home before I leave. In Southeast Asia, I will either mail things home or wait until I meet my parents in Greece. But I don't buy when I shop, mostly, unless it's small, light and packable.

I think that's most of the logistics - there are many, I am not going to lie. The simple considerations at home can be a big deal here - I need a haircut, for instance. I am going to get it before I leave Sydney, to avoid language issues in Asia, but I am very worried about finding a place that won't muck up my very short hair, and also won't charge me $80 for the trim. But I am much more in the groove than I was before, so it makes it easier.

If there are logistic questions that I didn't answer, let me know. I love getting email...

slow news day

2008-03-15T19:59:00.001-07:00

It may not be its best weather, but far north Queensland can still be pretty gorgeous.

I went for another walk this morning, and got caught in a cloudburst. It was so bad that I couldn't even see Dunk Island, which is barely off the coast, because it was all swathed in clouds. It rained hard, but not for long. The funny thing was, I was walking into it, so my front got drenched, and the back of my shirt and skirt stayed dry. I was a sight coming back to the hostel.

Not much else to report.

things to do in wongaling when it rains

2008-03-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

Not a lot, it turns out. The problem is actually not the rain, apparently, but the wind. It means that reef excursions aren't going out much at all. It also means that roads to and from Mission Beach keep getting flooded, making it impossible for buses to get here. It's so rural!

But it's not all bad. I came here for some unwinding time in the midst of go go go travel, and I am getting that in spades. It's not cold, so it's easy to spend the day laying on a couch by the pool and reading. Not a bad life.

I went for a long walk on the beach this morning - why doesn't every day of mine start with an hour walk on the beach? The water was warm, and because it was overcast and windy, I had the entire place to myself. I can see it being the most spectacular of beaches in perfect weather, but today it was perfect for wandering along, getting my feet in the ocean, watching clams stick their little feet out and burrow down. I walked way down, and way back, and I only saw my own footprints, too - it's not often you get that kind of remoteness on the hot backpacker circuit of Australia. Usually there are about 12 Brits around every corner.

This afternoon, I am going to see if reef tours are going for tomorrow; I'm also going to see about a walk in the rainforest, since it's not raining and should be a good day for it. I've also made plans to leave a day early and head up to Cairns for an extra day. I figure, if it's raining, the 'city' such as it is will have more to do, and it's possible there may be some reef tours from there. So there is hope, but worst case...I'm relaxed, and enjoying my book.

But I gotta say, I feel like someone does not want me to sit on the beach on this trip.

on the...beach...ish

2008-03-12T23:55:00.000-07:00

I really just intended to hop online super quick, check some email, let my mom know I had arrived safe. But there were lots to read and respond to, so my time clicked over to where I should finish out the hour, as I've now paid for it, so here I am online. Oops.

It's ok, though. There's nothing else to do. Considering HOW HARD IT'S RAINING. I successfully moved today from Melbourne all the way north through Cairns before settling in this adorable beachside hostel in a town called Mission Beach, and it promptly started to pour. Not that I am bitter. The weather reports are not good, also, but I am hoping they are wrong, or that I am going to be here long enough that I can get a couple of good days, enough to take a boat out to the reef and do some snorkeling, and spend a day or so on the beach. As it is, I can sit poolside, under the awning, but...not the same. It can't keep up at this rate, though, that it has been for the last hour and a half - it's raining harder than in south New Zealand at this rate. Insanity!

Send me good, clear, fine weather days, y'all. Or I may be a bit heartbroken.

on melbourne

2008-03-11T22:46:00.000-07:00

I have inexplicably mixed feelings about Melbourne. I thought I would love, love, love this city, and while I like it...it's not as I anticipated.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell if it's Australia, or if it's Melbourne; that will have to wait until I have spent some time in Sydney. But it's also possible that coming straight from New Zealand, which I absolutely and utterly adored, colors things. It's also possible that I just don't do as well in a city that is still very hot, and that is getting progressively more crowded with the approach of Grand Prix - today it is stifling with people, and it makes me glad I am leaving.

Melbourne is pretty awesome - the aforementioned bakeries and public art, the really accessible and charming tram system of public transport. The shopping is world class, and the restaurant selection and quality reminds me of San Francisco.

Normally, when I am in one of these awesome places in the world, I love to fantasize about living there. Sometimes it's a vacation home, like in Costa Rica or Ashland. Sometimes I feel like I could live there, like with Edinburgh or, most recently Christchurch. Mostly it's idle fantasy, but I do it almost everywhere, and I don't find myself constructing a fantasy around Melbourne.

I wonder if it doesn't feel different enough for me, and that is why? Thanks to my sister, who got it down pat really quickly and passed it along to me, I have the tram system pretty well in hand - I never have to ask the drivers for route info, like I see lots of Melburnians, even, doing. I went today to University of Melbourne. It was just starting term, and the signs were all so familiar - a big poster sale in the quad, this week only; join this government or that union; first meeting of this club is on Tuesday. The campus is really nice, with lots of food options and libraries and grassy spaces, but I felt like I was at San Jose State - the two have the same urban/campus feel.

I can't really articulate how it relates, but somehow this sort of shows haw familiarity with the city, and it's familiarness to me already, makes me LIKE the city, but not love it. I wonder, too, how it will influence Sydney - I have had a couple of people tell me recently that Sydney is "just a city," that you can't really tell if you are in Australia or any number of cosmopolitan cities around the world. I can't tell if that will make me like it more or less, but we will see.

First, though, I go north. Tomorrow I head to the reef for a few days. It's weird to think that I need a vacation, but deciding what to do each day, from museum visits down to when to eat, sleep, shower, sit, everything, is pretty exhausting. I am going to try to turn my mind off a bit, and just read, snorkel, laze in a hammock, and hopefully enjoy a blended beverage. I will also, finally, get some beach time in. Can't wait!

great ocean road

2008-03-11T22:27:00.000-07:00

If you are ever in Melbourne, I highly encourage leaving the city briefly and touring down the Great Ocean Road. There are loads of day trips, some 2- and 3- day jobs, and you can drive it yourself pretty easily. But it is completely worth it; this goes double if you are also not from the Californian or Oregonian coast.

It was just a day tour, and a small group, so we didn't have a lot of time to dawdle, but it did remind me why I like traveling independently more than with a tour sometimes. We passed through all of these tiny seaside towns with charming names - Anglesea, Torquey, Apollo Bay - that were all delightful and lovely, but also that warranted only a bathroom stop before we had to get moving again. The time it takes to wrangle even a small group tour of 20 or so is still longer than it takes to manage a trip in a rental car, so I definitely feel like I got less of a view of these towns than the ones Susan and I drove through in New Zealand - even the ones we spent less time in there.

Tours do have their benefit, though. It was glorious, for instance, for one day not to have to plan for myself how I was getting anywhere, when to eat, where to eat, when to go, when to stay. The banal logistics of everyday living become much more of a consideration while traveling, and being a part of a bus takes me out of that. Also, tours help me get to do certain things, like go to Egypt and Jordan as a lone white female, and feel relatively secure.

Anyway, back to the road: Gorgeous. The coastline is rugged and lovely, and very reminiscent of coastlines in California (especially the Santa Barbara/central coast areas) or Oregon (except warm and sunny). The water is blue and the wind kicks up a lot of waves, which makes for great surfing, dangerous swimming, and lots of sandy beaches.

The trip includes other attractions down that way as well - we saw some koala napping in a eucalyptus, and a temperate rain forest, and the Otway hills. We saw the "Shipwreck Coast" (apparently, people coming to Australia during their gold rush had to face a southern landing, which was made difficult by the extreme winds and rocky shores).

And because the cliffs are made of limestone, being worn away by the water, there are all these "structures" to see - the Lon Bridge, which used to be a long bridge with two semicircular arches below them, until the nearer one collapsed one day, stranding two tourists out there (you used to be able to just walk out from the parking lot).

The absolute highlight was absolutely the Twelve Apostles. Even though there are only...seven now, I believe? One just collapsed last year, but there have not been twelve in a long time, if ever. These huge limestone towers just climbing up out of impossibly blue water. It's worth all the tourists, the winds, the herding onto and off of buses, all of it, to see them. They look so perfect and beautiful on postcards, and they looked just like that in person, too - one of the beauties of nature, really.

BreadTop

2008-03-09T18:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's the little things.

I had to move hostels this morning, so I was up and about a little early. Since it is a public holiday (Labour Day), I was one of the few, really. My new hostel is in a great location, near this hip street that gets progressively more upscale as it gets further north. My sister and I wandered it on Friday, but today it wasn't raining - in fact it's supposed to hit nearly 100, and it was not far from that at 10 am.

Anyway, so the street is just barely waking up, and this woman - older, a little frail - is walking this huge shaggy white dog that is too big for her, but generally well-behaved. But he gets excited and takes off away from her, weaving through pedestrians, and dodges into a nearby storefront.

He went into a pet store, and sat there staring at the mini lop bunnies, until his owner came and took him along. I love that the dog was smart enough to know where he could go to gaze longingly at some prey.

I also love that the shop had a big bin of hugely fuzzy baby kittens that were just about the prototype for kitten cuteness. They couldn't have been more than 8 weeks, all messy fuzzy long fur, and hugely playful - pouncing on one another, on the toys, on invisible lint. They were going to town, and I wanted to take them all and make room in my pack.

I also watched the Moomba Parade today, the last day of the festival. I don't know what the theme is - the festival is technically a "water fest," but that seems a loose theme at best, and the parade was more of a multicultural group and organization celebration than anything. But it had jellyfish and a Chinese dragon and belly dancers and kids in bands and dance troupes, so it was still nice to see - something very much for the locals, not for tourists.

It's strange what the highlights are. I watched So You Think You Can Dance Australia last night, and found it oddly comforting - it made me excited for the American one that will be playing when I get home. The dancers were good (unlike the kiwi Dancing With The Stars, which is nowhere near as impressive as in the States), and it was just something random to enjoy.

I went to a moonlight screening of Juno in the botanical gardens with my Melbourne friend Julia, and on Sunday we braved the extreme heat to have brunch in trendy Fitzroy before going to some of the Moomba Festival to see the dragon boat races and then to the Australian Center of Moving Image for the video game exhibit. I learned a lot - I am really terrible at Dance Dance Revolution (they have video games from Pong through Wii out to play with) for instance, and i can get NEARLY my whole back with the sunblock when I wear my racerback tank, but there is one little strip I miss, apparently, that will burn like bacon in the heat and sun.

The little things, though, are the ones that I am liking best about Australia. That may change tomorrow, when I go on a day tour down the Great Ocean Road, which is supposed to be spectacular, but for now my favorite parts of Melbourne are the little ones.

Like BreadTop. Why don't we have Chinese bakeries like this at home? They have everything from sweet to savory, it is all excellent and fresh, and it means that me, a single poor traveler, gets to live on sesame bean curd balls and almond custard pastries and pork buns instead of pb&j.

So BreadTop, to you I say thank you for being in Melbourne. Next to the Target.

Lonliness of the long-distance traveler

2008-03-07T17:49:00.000-08:00

I sent my sister and her many, heavy bags off this morning. She is playing pack mule for my whole family in getting things from here to there. She is also on herway back to the States, so I am once again flying solo. It's hard, to go from traveling mostly with fun people I know and love to be back facing all my time alone. I am also in front of the long stretch - 6 weeks in Australia and Asia on my own before I meet the parents in Greece. It's the longest I have in the whole trip, and it's just at day one.

So I am sad - having Susan leave was really hard, and today may be a little rough. But fortunately, I am meeting up with my friend here in Melbourne a bunch this weekend - yay! - and there is enough I want to do that my time here is already pretty full. I just have to think about what I want to do today, and tomorrow, and not worry about the weeks ahead, or the number of them.

It's a bit of a hard, lonely day. But it will get better.

Festival of festivals

2008-03-06T23:36:00.000-08:00

I somehow managed to be in Melbourne when everything is happening. Surprisingly, the city does not seem packed, and there is a lot going on.Everywhere I look, it seems like there is another advertisement for some other festival - Food & Wine, Fashion Week, Moomba Water Fest, Grand Prix, rugby, cricket - all of them are this week. It's insane. Welcome to summer's end in a sports city.

I like Melbourne, though my first impression of Australia is that it is an awful lot like the US. They even have their own versions of Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? and The Biggest Loser, sadly. I love that there is public art everywhere - statues, sculptures; there would be fountains, too, were it not for the years-long drought. The public transportation is incredible, and I love that it mostly uses trams that go everywhere. A lot of this city is very practical and logical. Also, they love bakeries. There are bakeries everywhere - French, Chinese, "Continental Cake Shops," whatever. They love a bakery. And therefore I love them.

For Susan's last day in town, we went first to Chapel Street in South Yarra for some upscale window shopping and for Susan's last flat white (her new favorite coffee - like a latte, but no foam). It was cold and rainy, but the weather cleared and so for lunch we went to St Kilda to walk on the beach and eat some FANTASTIC gourmet burgers. I had a lamb burger that was so seasoned and tasty, I don't even know what to do.

We went back to the CBD,even though it is not our favorite, to see the largest opal ever mined (yep, huge. HUGE.) and then we sat by the Yarra and enjoyed the evening. We went up in the tower to see the whole city, and waited for sunset. The same weather report that gave it a 10 % chance of rain (which apparently meant it would rain for 10 % of the day...) also said sunset was at 7:00. It was not. SO we waited a while, and got loopy, and finally saw the lights come on in the city. After, we made a quick trip to the carnival at the Moomba fest before heading back to pack.

We're packing in a lot to the city to see lots of it before it's time to move on. This is labor day weekend, so there is going to be a lot to see and do. But it's also supposed to be 100 degrees. Wish me luck!

Melbourne, day 2

2008-03-06T04:22:00.000-08:00

I have been in Australia for two full days now. Contrary to my habits, I have barely been on internet, so you will have to forgive the absence and trust that it's only because I have been out and about. It is not, as my mom feared, because my sister and I were lying in the Tasman Sea somewhere, or were being sold into white slavery (We didn't call soon enough, so she got worried and emailed the hotel to see if we checked in. We called this afternoon, so she's pretty sure we're alive.).

Melbourne is lovely, and so different from New Zealand. It's got this weird hybrid of foreign and American chain stores that makes it both fascinating and embarrassing - I mean, no wonder people don't love Americans, when we export terrible MTV reality and stores like EB Games and The Athlete's Foot?

For only two days, we've packed in a lot. We've had some nearly uncomfortably warm weather, and today, we briefly had some rain. We are CURSED, but I refuse to thing negatively and unpack the rain jacket. We toured the Royal Botanic Gardens, and found them lovely but not as good as the ones in Christchurch - whether that is a design flaw or a result of Melbourne's years-long draught is up in the air, though. We went to Queen Victoria Market and bought souvenirs and produce - this place has everything, from butchers to hammocks. And it's the butchers, not the tourist stands, that have barkers hawking their wares. Awesome. We went to Chinatown, walked along the river, and poked through the grocery store.

But the highlights are as follows:

Yesterday, Susan and I had dinner with a friend I had never met. I know her only via the Internet, but fortunately, she is just as lovely in person as she is online. She took us to tapas and gelato (what is not to love?) and got us oriented in the city on the first night here. Thanks, Julia!

Also yesterday, I went to Target. It was a trip, to see another place that is both the same and completely different as in the States, but it was wonderful. I didn't want to leave. We poked around the whole place, and just like home, I came away with an armful of stuff. And most importantly, I came away with new jeans! I went in a dozen stores in NZ and never found a pair that was anything more than doable and anything less than $50. I went into one Target and got a legitimately adorable pair of jeans for $30. God bless the Target; God bless them every one.

And the undeniable highlight: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the musical. My mom went in Sydney last year, and loved it - she made me promise to go when I am up there in a couple of weeks. But there is a touring show here now, so it turns out Susan could go too, and we are so glad she did. This show is fantastic, y'all. The costumes are the same, and spectacular in person (plus new ones!), the songs are fun (and they found a great way to play with the leads lip synching their numbers), and they put in a lot of Australia jokes that make it really worth it to see the show here. There were koala and kangaroo costumes, Kylie jokes, and the daiquiris in the lobby were served in light up martini glasses. It was hands-down another trip highlight. See if it you are ever able, really.

Melbourne is really busy, with about 4 festivals going on this weekend (which is also labor day) and the Grand Prix starting next week, so I think I will have a good time taking advantage of it. Australia is expensive, though, but I am sure I will manage once the sticker shock wears off. I am not going to lie, starting out on a trip like this when the dollar is plummeting on a near-daily rate may not have been the best plan.

the kiwis

2008-03-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

The First Not-At-All-Annual Kiwi Awards for Excellence in Travel

Best City: Christchurch

Best Scenery: Milford Road & Milford Sound

Best Scenery, urban: Queenstown

Best Accomodation: Hotel So

Best Dining Experience: Street food lunch from the vendors at the Christchurch Arts Centre market

Susan's vote: Fergburger, Queenstown. "A truly outstanding chicken sandwich, and just a fun place."

Best Shopping: Christchurch Arts Centre, on the weekend during the market

Best Beer: Speight's Gold Medal Ale ** (category by Susan entirely)

Best Dessert: Hazelnut & caramel tart, Strawberry Fare, Christchurch

honorable mention: Sticky date pudding, Strawberry

Fare, Christchurch

Best Dessert, packaged: Cadbury Coconut Rough (whoever throught to roast the coconut before putting it into the milk chocolate should be KNIGHTED)

Susan's vote: Caramel Tim Tams

Best Tourist Trap Attraction: Queenstown's Gondola and luge up top

honorable mention: Cadbury Factory Tour, Dunedin

Best Roadside Attraction: Moeraki boulders, Moeraki

honorable mention: The Chasm, Milford Road

Best Drive-by Town We Didn't Stop In: Oamaru, an adorable beach town that reminded us of Santa Cruz, along the Highway 1 on this side of the Pacific Ocean

Best Translation of Kiwi to American: Babyfoot Table (What they call a foosball table. Get it? Cause it's small soccer?)

honorable mention: Holeys (What they call Crocs, those horrible shoes. Hee!)

Item I would most like to transport home with me: Wine Tastes from Queenstown, where you can sample the wines at your leisure. I would be a regular, and bring ALL my friends.

Susan's vote: The alley of street food vendors from Christchurch Arts Centre, or a full array of Speight's readily available on tap.

roundup

2008-03-04T02:23:00.000-08:00

Just a quick roundup as it is late and I still have to pack - and the shuttle comes, no joke, at 4:00 tomorrow morning.

On Sunday, we left Te Anau (which was pouring rain) and headed to Dunedin (which was pouring rain, and cold). I drove the whole way, and did fine - except for a couple of instances where Susan had to remind me I was too far left, it was not a problem. A bit more stressful than driving otherwise, but not a near-death experience.

Dunedin is different from any other place we visited in New Zealand - it is the second largest city on the south island, but it is just not tourist-driven, so it is a city where people live, work and go to school, not book you on a fabulous wildlife cruise.

It was also a Sunday, so everything was pretty well closed. We did manage to squeeze in to a brewery tour at Speight's brewery, followed by a fantastic dinner at the ale house - I had my last dinner of New Zealand lamb, though you really wouldn't know one was missing from all we passed along the way... We also it up a movie, and had a pretty good evening for a closed, rainy Sunday night town.

Monday, we did the other Dunedin attraction, the tour of the Cadbury plant. Chocolate smell and free candy bars? Yes, please. The tour was actually wonderful, and wound through the factory during production and wrapping, which was nifty.

After a trip 'round the town center (called The Octagon, though dissapointingly, two of us entered AND left), we were essentialy done with town - it may have been weather blues, but part of it was also that, by this point, we had also gotten a bit attaached to the idea of getting an extra day in Christchurch, so we wanted to take advantage of that.

So it was up the coast we went, taking Highway 1 up the Pacific Coast. weird, no? We stopped along the way for the most incredible thing. Along a very small stretch of beach, stuck in the sand are these incredible, perfect spheres of rock. The ocean wears away the concrete and limestone that makes them up at different rates, so they are also coming apart in interesting ways, but these boulders, about 6 feet in diameter, are just marvels of nature and mystery. Totally worth the stop.

Back in Christchurch, the city feels a but more crowded than last week, and some of the overcast drabness and occasional spitting rain followed us north, but it was also a little bit like coming home.

Today, we had a full day of shopping, eating and just catching up, without any rush. We found the firefighter's memorial, made out of salvaged scrap from the World Trade Center, which we missed the first time around and which was really wonderful, actually. For dinner, we skipped the mains and went for the expensive, to die for, fantastic desserts at this place. Seriously, if you ever are in that half of the world, go to this place. Their online menu has the desserts in TWO PARTS, for goodness sake. An excellent way to cap off a really excellent trip to New Zealand.

And tomorrow, Melbourne.

like the weather

2008-03-01T00:55:00.001-08:00

It's been rain, rain, raining in the southland today. Our glowworms got rained out again (poor flooded larvae!) and we had wet all the way to and from Milford.

Milford Sound, though, gets 200 days of rain a year, and 8m of rainfall on average, so seeing it like it was today was pretty representative of what it actually looks like. It was rainy, sure, but still gorgeous:
The other thing - there has been rain pretty much nonstop, and they said about 44cm in the last 10 days (134mm in the last 24 hours!) so everything is saturated. Around here, that means that the mountains are literally awash in waterfalls. The road from Te Anau to Milford is about 120 km and takes 2 hours. We left early this morning, to catch our cruise in the Sound and to miss the parade of buses on the road and the masses of tourists on the water. But the road itself is full of attractions. On the way there, we didn't stop, but we still got to enjoy the scary tunnel that is in the most avalanche-prone area (average of one a day in winter), took 20 years to build because of the rock slides and water that flowed through) and until about a year ago, had no lights whatsoever inside. Yeah, that was fun; but when we emerged, it was to these sheer cliffs with just waterfalls as far as the eye can see:
The Sound is stunning - totally worth a trip, even if its raining so hard it goes sideways. We saw fur seals lazing about, sailed all the way to the Tasman Sea, and marveled at the sheer cliffs of insanity. On the way back, we stopped to see The Chasm, which is a full, rough, rushing river (and in this weather, where the tiny creeks have become raging rivers, this one was still the most impressive) that has carved its way into rocks something fierce. It was worth getting absolutely soaked as the rain picked up while we watched.

I love New Zealand, but am totally ready to leave Te Anau. We are heading for the coast, for Dunedin, tomorrow, and I hope it is drier. I also hope they have reasonably-priced clothing - I ripped my jeans in Queenstown, and am finding that everyone who wears jeans in New Zealand must be a zillionaire, because I can't find a replacement pair for under $70.

Oh, and I didn't drive today, but I definitely will tomorrow. I will take photos to prove it.

into te anau

2008-02-29T00:40:00.000-08:00

Driving a left-side car is not quite as difficult as it could be - it's more unnerving than anything, and a bit comical to watch us flounder, like an Amazing Race team trying to get out of a parking lot. Turning isn't even the most difficult, really - often, we could just follow the car ahead or, no joke, keep an eye on the sticky Hertz affixed to the car in front of the speedometer to "keep left." It's hard to keep track of the boundaries - we hit a curb pretty hard when pulling up to it, and as the passenger, it's my job to tell Susan when she's too far over left and nearing the shoulder or a parked car. No incidents yet, though we did spring for the extra insurance. If we paid for it, might as well use it.

And having a car, in addition to the novelty and flexibility, has already proven its worth in freedom. Tonight, our scheduled tour to see the glowworm caves here in Te Anau was cancelled on account of flooding (we've rescheduled for tomorrow, after our Milford Sound day - pray for more climate weather). Unfortunately, Te Anau is no Queenstown, or even Franz Joseph. There is essentially one street, with good restaurants but few shops (why no wool, Te Anau?) and no nighttime activities whatsoever - after we did one pass, we were done with town, really. But it was still light out, so we hopped in the car and headed for Manapouri, 20 km away.

When booking trips, we (OK, I) kept having crises of tourism - Milford Sound is what everyone comes to see; the pictures and postcards are spectacular, and the many dozen daily tour buses can't be wrong. But on the other hand is Doubtful Sound - similarly beautiful, but far more remote, less visited, harder to get to - image no sound, no other people, just majesty. Of course, it's also three times more expensive to go there than Milford. I finally decided Milford was going t be more than enough and that I needed to quit pining.

Well, Manapouri is where the first leg of the Doubtful trips leave from, so we got a little taste of it. The lake is crystal clear and cold, and on a chilly, almost-rainy night, it feels impossibly remote. The silence as we stood on the rocky beach was extraordinary - the occasional lap of the water, or droplets from the earlier rains falling from the trees behind us, but no insects, birds, man or machine. Just silence and calm. It was the best sunset possible, and we never saw the sun.

Tomorrow is when I try to drive. As I leave on that scary note, also bear in mind that I am doing so in an area where cows can finagle their way through the fence and go trotting by - and in - the road like a wayward stray. This happened on the way to Manapouri, and Susan had to do a bit of unexpected herding with the Ford Focus. So I have to: stay left, not too far left, and watch for cows. And sheep! Yeah, this could go poorly.

Queenstown Rocks (sung to the tune of "Cleveland Rocks")

2008-02-28T14:17:00.000-08:00

This may be the prettiest place I've been; if it isn't, it is certainly in the top few, because Queenstown is stunning.
It reminds me of Patagonia, given the glacier landscaping, but in a good way - Queenstown, too, has this pretty blue hue that often overtakes it, and the lake it is perched on (Lake Wakatipu, one of the top 10 most fun words to say) is both massive, looks more like a fjord than a lake, and is also pretty and blue and opaque.

I don't know what bribe we paid the weather gods, but yesterday when we woke up, ti was cloudy and overcast (unsurprising for fjordland...) so we wandered about town a bit - went to some shops, lost my sunglasses, found my sunglasses, signed up for obligatory tour options, and so forth. By then, the clouds were clearing, so we went up the gondola. It's not as long as the gondola in Christchurch, but it's much steeper and faster, and the views from the top of Bob's Peak are supremely awesome.

And no, I am not calling it Bob's Peak because I don't remember the name, as I am given to do. It is really called that. One more reason to like this place.

When we came back, we had lunch, and by then the clouds were thicker and darker and the lake had gotten choppy and the wind picked up - somehow we managed to go up the gondola in the only 2 hour window of gorgeous weather.

Even though our hotel was a little pricer than we may have liked, it is right on the lake with some incredible views from the roomplus they had laundry, so Susan and I have all clean clothes (it's amazing how travel turns laundry day into Christmas morning - all this clean underwear! It's a fiesta!). We walked across the harbor to the gardens after dinner, to look back at all the lights.

We will only be spending about two days here all told, but for all that it is stunning and lovable, that's enough. The vastly skewed tourist-to-local population here gets a little hard to take before too long. There is such a backpacker population that the shops and restaurants seem to be all operated by visiting Aussies, Americans, Irish, British, and other travelers who decided to stop for a while. I am starting to wonder if anyone here is actually Kiwi. So we are good to go - plus it's raining today.

Now, we head south. If you don't hear from me in a while, send help; today we rent a car, so we may be trapped on the right side of the road somewhere, trying to get left.

diet coke: new zealand

2008-02-27T23:52:00.000-08:00

It's taken me several tries to get a fair assessment on this one.

Try #1 was actually a rum & diet coke, at a place where all the shots are double shots. So it tasted...like rum. But it didn't make the rum taste bad, so my hopes were high.

Try #2 was from a can, and it...was good. I mean, canned Diet Coke, but not coca light or some such abomination. Slight aftertaste, slight tinnyness, but good.

try #3 was not good. Fountain diet coke has an aftertaste that will curl your toes. Seriously scary. It tastes fine, but then it...well, it tastes going down the way no good beverage should. Let's just say that.

So, the verdict is that I can drink canned (and perhaps bottled? We will try that soon) diet coke here just fine, in a pinch. It's no 7/11, but it's freedom from the Sprite prison I was in while in Argentina.

On to Queenstown

2008-02-27T01:21:00.000-08:00

I am pretty glad that I am off bus travel for a while. I know I am a pansy, but I don't really like car trips anyway, and buses are even less comfortable, plus they stop when THEY want, not when you want. So we were on a bus for hours today and it was long and I was so glad to be finally off of it, but fortunately the trip from Franz down to Queenstown is gorgeous. It goes by Fox Glacier, through the Mt Aspiring National Park, by Lake Wanaka, and past about a zillion sheep. You will have tot ake my word for how pretty it was, though, because I couldn't get many good shots from the coach window. But the low-lying fluffy clouds on the huge mountains were quite stunning.

And now we are in Queenstown, home of the most adrenaline-packed, outdoor-loving, extreme-loving population on the planet. This place is so hardcore, they even have a giant X carved into the side of a mountain (I don't actually know if that's why it is there, but there is, in fact, a giant X in the side of the mountain overlooking town). It is a little overwhelming, how aggressive this town is in pushing the availability of jetboating, skydiving, parasailing, quad biking, bungy jumping, mountain biking, and various other creative ways they have of dropping you from great heights or forcing you to achieve great speed. I feel vaguely guilty for being in the adrenaline capital of the country and...not really caring about the adrenaline sports. But I have no desire to book some bungy-boating package deal. Which is ALSO too bad, because oddly, everything in Queenstown is also a booking agent. There are information stations and tour bookings at just about every restaurant, store, and counter in town. You essentially cannot take a pee without simultaneously being able to schedule a trip to Milford Sound.

But besides all of the in-your-face guest services, Queenstown is GORGEOUS. It is a living, breathing, postcard, this charming little town on the shores of a huge glacier lake. We could not for the life of us find any affordable accomodations (even though now, in town, there seem to be tons), so we ended up in a hotel about a 15 minute walk from town. The good news, though, is that our hotel is on the lake with million dollar views, and it has everything under the sun. Totally worth it. We got here late enough (stupid bus) that the pictures will have to wait until tomorrow, but they will be there, never fear.

Oh! I almost forgot the wine experience to end all. It's no wine-by-bike tour in Marlborough, but Queenstown has a wine store where you put money or open a tab on a rechargeable card, and can taste virtually anything in the store. After dinner tonight, Susan and I went and plowed our way through the store. This place is incredible, and we unsurprisingly found sauvignon blancs, rose, pinots and rieslings to die for, all bought by the taste. I would go to that store all the time if I lived here. So it's a good thing that I don't, or I would probably end up accidentally signed up to bungy or something.

franz

2008-02-25T19:48:00.000-08:00

OK, yes, so I am sitting at an internet cafe, blogging about Franz Joseph and the like, and I decided to make it into multiple posts. I fear people will get bored if I have things in one big post, or that I won't be able to fully remember everything if I put it all into one? I don't know. My days need to all be separate posts, apparently.

But we are still in Franz, until tomorrow when we take a long bus ride south to Queenstown, where you can to everything stupid and adrenaline-y ever. But for now, we were not feeling adrenaline-y, or rich, so we did not do any of the heli-skydive-trekking-packages that are everywhere in this town. Instead, Susan and I decided to get to the glacier on our own steam, so we walked all the way there from town. It made for a tiring morning, but how often can you say that you woke up, talked out the door, and walked over to a glacier? Cause we did.
Franz is dirtier than the glaciers in Patagonia, and the body of water it ends in is much, much smaller, so the terminal face is not nearly as much of a sheer drop as the others were. The river it ends in is deceptive, though, apparently - it's small, but it is very unpredictable, so lately one of the paths that gets closest to it is closed because of falling ice and flooding, and there is another path that has been reclaimed by the river on the other side. Apparently, the river will just change course and take over things without warning.

We said pish posh, though, and crossed the little stream to get to the path anyway, and got pretty close to the face. I have seen a couple now, but glaciers are no less breathtaking at this point; they really are extraordinary. And we were never menaced by the river, but it was awesome to walk right up under the waterfalls pouring from the mountains, see that the big boulders in the river were, in fact, blocks of ice off the glacier, and see all the places where the river has gone at one point or another. We even went for another easy stroll at the end, because it was supposed to lead to some good views. It did:

The hikes were easy enough, they just meant for about 7 miles of walking before lunch, so we are beat. We are going to wander about town a little bit, and that my be it. Besides, it's time to repack (again) in time for tomorrow's departure. I like Franz, and it is certainly the most similar to my time in Patagonia, with both scenery and remoteness, but far easier. Not just the English, but the high-speed internet, the fully staffed i-site information centers, the easy, well-marked hikes.

(I even got to watch a bit of the Oscars last night. Really? Was No Country that good? I didn't even want to see it. Normally, I throw Oscar parties and organize betting pools, but being out of the country for the nominations, campaigning and now the awards, and I am terminally out of it; of the big 6 categories, I have seen...There Will Be Blood.)

So we are remote, but not too. And I still love New Zealand.

Tranz Awesome

2008-02-25T18:53:00.000-08:00

OK, first of all, since I am back on a non-temperamental, email-only Mac, I want to justify my last post: what is not to love about New Zealand?

They don't call Christchurch the most British city outside of England for nothing.

But I am not in Christchurch any longer - yesterday, Susan and I took a train west. Trains are not really used in New Zealand for transportation - there are a total of three trains, all by the same company, all used pretty much for tourist transport. But it is totally worth it - and for our itinerary, the most efficient, and certainly prettiest, way to get where we wanted to go. We left from Christchurch and went straight over the mountains to Greymouth on the West Coast. The Tranz Alpine route goes through the Southern Alps and the coal mining towns and over to the West, where there is more rain and fewer people. It was lovely when we left, but started getting cold and rain at the summit. Cold, sure, rain, sure, but still stunning.

And it seems Susan's good travel karma, and my apparently horrible travel karma got into a cage match, and hers won the battle: Our train was nearly an hour late getting in, which proved a problem for the bus we were supposed to catch. But apparently, the train is often late, so the buses wait. We had about 4 minutes grace period, but it was all we needed. After a quick stop in a tiny town, we made it south to the town of Franz Joseph (size: two streets, one glacier) in time for some bitter, brutal rain to come in. Plus, it was COLD. (Speaking of, I love how it is about 30 degrees colder here than it was in PATAGONIA. Weird weather, yo.)

Franz is backpacker central, and there are probably more helicopters and camper vans here than actual Kiwis, but it's also pretty awesome. It is the only place I have ever, ever been that I can take an easy hike in the rainforest and then come out on the main road, turn left, and see the glacier. It's surreal.

Kiwi luvvin'

2008-02-23T12:16:00.001-08:00

Y'all, I love New Zealand.

I love that we are staying at a pod hotel in the middle of town that has 7 different "mood" tv stations (not to be confused with the "wake" stations - those you can set to come on with some gently increasing light to wake you up gradually), one of which is a crackling fire. I love that this place is so tourist oriented, but in this country that means lots of tour packages and help, rather than in-your-face commercialism. In fact, I love that the souvenirs you can buy everywhere are things like merino wool, handcrafted jewelry and artisan crafts; I have seen maybe one cheap tee-shirt shop.

The weather is divine, if unpredictable. It's fall, so it makes sense. Yesterday morning, we went to the weekend craft market at the Arts Center. This is how cute this city is: The University of Canterbury outgrew its amazing gothic campus right west of town center, so when they relocated, Christchurch kept the entire thing exactly as it is and turned it into a free center for visual and performing arts, and now there is an art house movie theatre, a theatre venue, artists in residence, stores, cafes, events...it's really cool, and the weekend market is wonderful. Plus, a whole alley of cheap street food. And I love street food.

And even though it was chilly and overcast in the morning, it cleared right up so that in the afternoon, we could be uber-touristy and take the gondola up the mountain. We took the bus to the suburbs and went up a little ski lift/gondola thing to the top of the 450m peak. The views up there were outstanding - Christchurch, the harbors and beaches of neighboring towns, these tiny little hamlets all along the coast. The wind was inSANE, so we have a lot of pictures of walking against the wind and me in the "I'm flying, Jack!" pose, but it was no joke - you literally had to brace yourself to not be knocked over by the gusts.

It got chilly again last night, and there was a brief cloudburst, but this morning it seems to have passed, and it's back to being mild and lovely. I love the New Zealand food - we've had all ranges, and all of it uniformly excellent. I love that the people here are so polite they don't even litter, so the town is very clean and liveable. I love that they also seem to love straws, so every time you buy a soda even at a conveninece store, they hand you a bendy straw; awesome!

This place is insanely awesome, y'all.

in which things look up for our hero...

2008-02-22T00:08:00.000-08:00

The number one reason why things were better today was that, by the time I had gotten up, showered, packed my pathetic belongings into a shopping bag, and checked my email, my sister had already landed in Christchurch. I just had to go to our hotel to meet her.

The next reason is that our hotel? Is awesome. It is this weird, new, hip, tiny place that is...so weird. It is designed to save on space and save on money, so it's like IKEA threw up in here. They clearly spent money on design, and it's brand new, so everything is spectacularly spiffy. And our room is about 12 feet by 7 feet. Total. Bathroom included, no closet. But it's all been designed with that in mind - the bed is built in, and runs along the back of the room; it's lofted a bit to have storage under the room; the flat panel tv, reading lights, and elaborate sound/alarm/mood music system are all mounted to the wall; the bathroom is shaped like a 1/4 circle, separated by frosted glass, and organized so everything serves multiple purposes. It's like being in a ship's cabin, and it's a trip, but it's also super comfy beds, free brand-new Macs for web surfing, a posh gym and sauna for use, et cetera. I would rather a trippy, small, ultra-designer room for the same price as a private room in a hostel, thanks. I love it. Stay here, seriously.

Another rocking reason for today is the food - my sister and I have really similar tastes, so we go the order-and-split route, and today has included for my chewing pleasure: a Moroccan lamb salad, a chicken sandwich with cranberry relish, flatbread, an Indian chicken satay pizza, and an Asian chicken salad that was not at all like it sounds, but really wonderful. Oh, and also, a lovely fruity reisling from the region. I like New Zealand food a lot, already.

And finally, late this afternoon, my bags arrived. That's the other reason today rocked. I am now in jeans, with a cleansed and moisturized face, and no longer carrying everything I own like a crazy bag lady. I feel so much better - when you've only got a backpack for all you own, you WANT TO KEEP the BACKPACK.

On an administrative note, these computers are free, but they are just for web surfing - so no pictures for right now, though I am taking them, and I will update the posts soon. And also, I think this Mac is running Safari or an old Firefox, and I can't change it, so I think the blog formatting will be wonky. Sorry about both, but I love the free Macs, so I won't turn it down.

what have you got to lose?

2008-02-21T23:44:00.000-08:00

First, I lost February 20. I left on Tuesday afternoon for my flight, and landed on early morning on Thursday. And Wednesday was my sister's birthday to boot; that's totally an excuse not to have to get her anything, right?

I got to Auckland ridiculously early yesterday, just after 6:00 am, after some barely sufficient sleep on the plane. But I had just over 12 hours until my flight down to Christchurch, so the plan was to enjoy Auckland for a day. Unfortunately, by bags just did not want to leave home, and they - along with those of about 40 others - didn't get on the plane. I was told that they were being rerouted, and would be here...eventually. So I still had 12 hours in town, but now I had them without a toothbrush or a pair of non-yoga pants.

If you're ever in the same boat, it's really easy to get into town from the airport, and then back again. There is a hop on/hop off airport shuttle that goes all around the city center and requires no reservations, so I tooled into town and went for pretty much the only sight in town that was open at 8:15 in the morning, the Auckland Sky Tower (New Zealand has adhered to the international law that every city have a really tall thing for tourists to go up and look around; the Sky Tower is very, very tall). Normally, I am not the first one to go up the towers because I find them expensive and interchangeable after a while. From up top, all cities are just rooftops, right? But since I had one day, it was a great way to get my bearings and to "see" all of Auckland. Plus, it was still barely 9:00, so it was really quiet, and lovely to look around on a clear day. Auckland is a booming port, and seems to be an immensely liveable city. And because they are ridiculously addicted to adrenaline activities here, I also had the option to either walk around the outer walkway of the tower (!) or jump off it (!!). I did neither. It does not seem a good thing to try when one has nothing to change into. Should one, hypothetically, soil oneself at hurling own 90 stories. I had a hard enough time with the disconcerting glass floors in the observation deck. I am not scared of heights, but we were REALLY HIGH.

Auckland was gearing up for the Chinese New Year festival with all sorts of Chinese lanterns all over town. Albert Park had these massive displays of really elaborate lanterns and...papier-mache sheep (?) that were lovely and cool. I wandered through Auckland University an over to the Domain (big, gorgeous park). In there is the Auckland Museum, and it's Maori exhibits. New Zealand is a fascinatingly young country. There were no mammals here save bats until man brought them over; their idea of historical objects date back to 1860. I am from California and that seems...really new to me. But the Maori artifacts were really, really cool. I can already tell I am going to go to town on the souvenirs here.

I walked up Queen Street, the main drag (also decorated with Chinese lanterns) and to the Quay and the waterfront (and marveled at the QEII in dock for the day). It was not a lot of time, but I think I got a feel for Auckland. Very clean, very accessible, very lovely city.

When I got back to the airport, no dice on the bags. I have to say, I have had three major legs on my trip thus far, and have had major problems with every single one of them. I hope this is not a trend. By the time I made it south to Christchurch, I was exhausted, cranky, smelly and at the end of my rope. I had only the overnight emergency pack with its odd assortment of toiletries (toothpaste, toothbrush and shampoo were all very appreciated; soap or face wash or moisturizer would not have gone awry) and my carry-on to my name. I showered (which was lovely) and put back on the clothes (less lovely) and slept hard.

I like New Zealand already; I lost a lot getting here, though.

diet coke: home

2008-02-18T20:14:00.000-08:00

i think i'll miss you most of all...

(ps - expect the blog to be back to its regularly scheduled gallivanting very soon; i leave for new zealand tomorrow).

notes from the homefront

2008-02-14T16:59:00.000-08:00

It really is impossible to overstate how nice it is to once again have soft, two-ply toilet paper that you can flush. So much better than thin, scratchy stuff that abuses areas only meant to be treated nicely.

I also have a ticket to New Zealand, so early next week, I will once again be writing from interesting places.

Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in

2008-02-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

One thing I know about travel, especially international travel, especially international travel to places that do not have the ultra-polished infrastructure in place for the tourist set, is that it teaches flexibility. I knew this would be something it would teach me, anyway, because it really is not innate for me to just go with the flow and take what happens.

So, yeah. I am writing this entry from home. As in, California. As in, the US.

It's a really long story, and it involves two and a half or so days of the longest, most miserable, most impotent-feeling, most depressing days ever.

But no, the trip is not off. It's just now my round-the-world trip includes a mini stop in California. I go to New Zealand next week.

OK, so for the full version: When I first arrived in Argentina, during that rough start that involved my late flight into Buenos Aires, I went back to ask the flight attendants about my flight on Aerolineas Argentina, one of them got a big,, wide-eyed look and said, "But Aerolineas is on strike. There were riots yesterday." Well, it turned out that it was a strike that only lasted a couple of days, and it only affected international flights anyway. I didn't worry about it too much, especially since they were able to help me get to Ushuaia only one day late.

Turns out I had reason to worry. I have since learned that Aerolineas is a fairly dodgy airline. I was pretty ready to get out of Buenos Aires, and really eager to get to New Zealand, from at least Friday on. Saturday went pretty quickly, and on Sunday I checked out of my hostel and spent the day wandering about the city - my flight was originally scheduled to leave just before midnight, but was pushed back before I reconfirmed, so was now leaving at 1am. When I came back to the hostel to pick up my bags before taking a bus to the airport, the guys at the desk told me that Aerolineas called that morning, and my flight was pushed back another 8 hours, and was now supposed to leave at 9am.

I was not happy, and a little skittish about the 2 delays before the flight was even supposed to depart, so I decided to go to the airport anyway and try to suss out what was going on in person. The trip to Ezezia airport was miserable - it took an hour for the bus to come, and then it took ages to get that far out of town, but I made it. And apparently, sometime in the 3 hours I took to get to the airport, my flight was cancelled.

There was a long line to speak to an agent about the flight, and when I did, there was not much information. While one woman ahead of me was told that a strike was back on, the ticket agent I spoke to denied it, said the flight would definitely leave tomorrow, they just didn't have a time yet. For now, they were giving us taxi vouchers, hotel vouchers, and covering our food costs. They would contact the hotel tomorrow with a departure time, and bring us back in time to check in.

Really worried, irritated, and feeling pretty trapped in Argentina, but nothing to do at 1am, I went ahead to the hotel, and chose to have faith that everything was as they told me. By the time I got to the hotel, the airline had even already called with a departure time of noon - they would pick us up at 9am.

It was late enough, and between my nerves and calling home, I barely got any sleep (though it was in a hotel room, where I got to watch Fight Club and fall asleep in front of House). The next morning, I woke up and showered, repacked, and went for breakfast. But when I stopped by the front desk, apparently Aerolineas had already called, and the flight was once again cancelled. No departure time was on the table. But have a good breakfast!

I called Aerolineas myself, and the official answer I got as to what was going on? We don't know. We don't know why the flight is cancelled - though they did claim there was no strike, that other flights were taking off just fine, OURS just wasn't for the forseeable future. And he was also very confused why it was not enough that they were putting me in a hotel - it occurred to no one that the hotel was on the WRONG CONTINENT, and perhaps I made reservations to fly to Auckland because that was where I wanted to be. No one, at the airline, the hotels, anywhere seemed to grasp this.

I called my travel agency next. At this point, I needed to get out of Buenos Aires, however I could. I had done some brief research before, when I was worried about the rumored strike, and sure enough, there were two options - fly LAN through Santiago, or fly any number of airlines. Through the US.

The front desk called with even better news - we had to check out of the hotel, as we were being moved to a different one. Awesome. I got a voucher for lunch at a mediocre buffet, where I met the others from my plane who were housed at the same hotel, and we chatted there and then back to the hotel, sharing what we knew and what we were trying to do.

There were two Swedish backpackers, who were actually ok with having to stay in Argentina, though they didn't like having to stay close to the hotel and on standby all the time. They were told that the plane was in Auckland and broken, so it needed to be fixed and flown here, and that is why we were cancelled.

There was a woman from Sydney who needed to get home for business reasons, and she was the one told that the pilot strike was the reason we were not flying.

There was a guy from Melbourne who had been living in London for six years, and who did a bit of travel in SA before going home. I think he was the one who was told that the pilot was sick and that was why we couldn't go.

There was a guy from Wellington who was in Argentina hiking for a couple of weeks, and who was supposed to be back for work. He wasn't told anything.

And there was another couple, I think she was from Britain and him from Spain. He was the one who spoke to our shuttle bus driver to the other hotel and learned #1. that the airline needs to give 12 hours notification to the hotel, so the absolute soonest we would leave is 1:30 that night, if we got word as soon as we reached the new hotel; #2. that the reason was a mini-strike. Apparently, Aerolineas is not in the habit of paying their pilots on time, so thy keep striking, then the airlines freak out and vow to negotiate, and then the negotiations are bad or they don't really negotiate, so they refuse to fly again, but they are not a full-fledged union walk-out, so they keep it under wraps and there is no news on it; and #3. that we were going to a rather sketchy area, better not to be out after dark.

Aaaaaawesome. We also exchanged many lovely tales about Aerolineas - their domestic flights being 5 hours delayed for a 90 minute flight; the Melbourne guy had been on four flights on the airline, every one of which was delayed from between 6 hours and now more than a day; the British girl said their flight from Madrid was supposed to be 12 hours - how it was listed, what they were told. But then it stopped in Rio for two hours, which they apparently knew they were going to do but opted not to tell anyone. Then they proceeded to circle the Buenos Aires airport for 2 hours because they hadn't paid for a gate. She also knew of a planeload of Auckland folks last week who were kept waiting in Buenos Aires for 5 days for their flight.

All of this strengthened my resolve to get out of there however I could. Back on the phone with the travel agent, I got to work on getting a refund from Aerolineas (which I will evidently get, thank god, without penalty) and got to looking at flights to New Zealand. The cheapest option? Fly to San Francisco, then fly to Auckland. No joke.

So that is what I am doing. For a couple of reasons, I decided not to try to do all the flying back to back. One is that spending time at home will help me recoup the money it cost me to get a new ticket; one is that the shitty days I spent trying to get out of Buenos Aires wore me down; one is that I was already watching my days in New Zealand shrink down to where I know I will not have enough time to do what I want to do, so I knnow already that I will have to go back.

So I am essentially skipping the North Island only. I am not thrilled about it, naturally, but it has its upsides. I have already had a diet coke (FANTASTIC) and Mexican food and played with the beagles. I will go to New Zealand in the next few days, and pick up my itinerary where it was supposed to be, just without going to Auckland and Rotorua.

I know this was ridiculously long, but I left out a lot, if you can believe it - trauma with the refund, the new ticket, getting to the airport a second time, and then some. It's been brutal.

But take from this a couple of things: If you ever fly in South America, avoid Aerolineas Argentina at all costs; from everything I have heard, this is absolutely indicative of their business practices. I flew LAN from Buenos Aires to Miami today (yesterday? I don't even know), and they are lovely. Fly them instead.

Once I know when I go to New Zealand, I will let y'all know so you know when you want to start reading again.

As for Aerolineas, last I heard they had scheduled the flight again. It is currently 5:30 in California; I got here just before noon. If they actually did fly when they claimed this time, then the group I was with was just picked up an hour ago to go to the airport, and the flight will leave in two hours. If they actually fly when they say they will this time, it will have been just over 2 days late. I personally would not place any money on them actually flying when they claim they will, but for the sake of the other 7 people at that scary hotel, I hope they do.

The only other funny thing, that I cannot possibly explain: As I was traveling, I was dreaming a lot more than normal, unsurprisingly. The weird thing is that I had a similar dream, with different details, three separate times. In that dream, for different reasons, I came home briefly, and always specifically between Argentina and New Zealand. Weird, no?

Favorite days

2008-02-10T12:21:00.000-08:00

All of my favorite days in life are an odd assortment - often, what I did in them is not what makes them the best days ever, it's more a combination of mood and circumstance. It's no different whilst traveling.

So, on my last day on the continent, my favorite days from month one of my trip, in order:

1. Glacier day, El Calafate
This was hands down the best thing I've done, and I have no doubt that when the entire trip is over, it will still stand up as one of the highlights. Even standing in front of the glacier was an awe-inspiring spectacle of nature unlike anything I've seen. Walking on it was just unbelievable. Even doing the package tour had its advantages - for instance, Brian and I got to spend a lot of the glacier walk joyfully mocking the group of Frenchies with us. I mean, can you blame us - there were two families, and the fathers were both like wayward children. When one lost his hat he was wearing to the wind, he decided to GO BACK FOR IT. On his own. On the glacier. It was such fun to be incredulous at. So it really was a combination of location, activity, and mood, but it was a spectacular day.

2. Tierra del Fuego national park, Ushuaia, Argentina
It was my third full day of the trip, but the first one where I really felt like I had it together. I went for an 8k hike in the park, which was stunning; I managed to get myself to and from the park without incident, which made me feel good; when I got back, it was Saturday night in downtown Ushuaia, and the town was clogged with locals enjoying a summer evening and cruising the main drag; and I had my first (of many) steak sandwich, which was divine (as they all have been). It was a good day, but most importantly, it was the first day that I both felt like I really could do this, and that it was something I wanted to do.

3. Palermo Viejo, Buenos Aires, Argentina
This one is interesting, in that it's really a half day. The morning was good, don't get me wrong. But it was also hot and humid as hell, which left me cranky and tired when we got back to the hostel in the afternoon, and I called home, which always makes me a little sad after. So, a hot, tired, cranky, sad me is not a recipe for success - even worse when you add hungry to the mix, which I was, and getting more so. But we took a rather long bus ride ot the other side of the city to go to Palermo Viejo, and somehow, it all just fit. The weather had turned cooler and mild, the sushi hit the spot unlike anything I've had in a while, we split a bottle of excellent syrah, walking around after was both pleasant and delighfully screwball, as we were repeatedly thwarted in any attempts to find an open and existing gay bar. Not what I wouild have expected for a best day, but there it was nevertheless.

Overall, Argentina and neighboring countries has been incredible. And I am ready for the next stop. Talk to you all in New Zealand.

diet coke: argentina

2008-02-10T03:24:00.000-08:00

no better.

send your well wishes for improvements in countries to come!

my mom claims that diet coke in australia or new zealand basically tastes the same. but then, she drinks diet pepsi; how sane can her tastebuds be?

What I know about Argentina

2008-02-09T17:15:00.000-08:00

Argentinians - or porteños at least, I didn't encounter the same thing in Patagonia - hate small change. If something costs 4,50 and you hand them a 5 peso note, you get a glare and "Do you have the 50 centavos?" And when I don't - because if I did, I would have given it to them - there is a huffing sigh and a "fiiiiiine" while they are forced to hand over the coin. Look, I didn't price it at 4,50. Change it if you don't want to deal with the change, idiot. But it is the complete opposite of the US, where if something costs $16 and you hand them a 20 and a 1, they try to give you back the 1, until you make them keep it and finally the cash register explains that it means you get a five back. Here, they can do rapid fire calculations in their head, to ask if you have 2,35 to give them so they can give you less change. What I don't get is where porteños GET any change if stores won't GIVE them change.

There is a very weird trend in this country towards teeshirts, in English, that don't say anything. They are subtly different from the novelty tee in the US, mainly because these shirts...are not novel. They just kind of...say. The shirts are generally one solid color, with huge letters in another solid color that says like "Comfortable Shoes" or "Put the Milk in the Fridge." They aren't quite nonsense, but they don't say anything either - we referred to them by the title of the first such shirt we saw: Gabba Gabba Hey. If I had found an actual Gabba Gabba Hey tee shirt for sale anywhere, I would have bought it. But despite their bounty on people around us, I never once saw one for sale. Maybe stores can't keep them on the shelves?

They love their drinks. I don't even mean alcohol, not exclusively. Brian and I could never seem to line up our meal times with the natives, but that didn't stop the cafes from being crowded - it's just that no one was eating. They just had tables full of glasses, bottles, cans, everything. Coffee, water, soda, beer, some mix of the above is like a CULTURE here. They go out to drink - and again, I mean regular assortments of beverages - in droves here. And judging by supermarkets, the powdered drink craze is a big deal as well. I love that Crystal Light has been shortened to just Clight. Hee.

That Fergie song, the ballad one? Is a NATIONAL OBSESSION. I've heard it at least twice a day.

Evita was not a craze made up by Andrew Lloyd Weber. I know he has led us astray before, making us falsely believe that the opera did have a phantom or, as a friend was fond of saying, that Jesus was a perfect tenor, but man. These people love their Evita. Shrines, books, posters, museums, jewelry - all Evita happy.

Surprisingly, given that 50% of the country smokes, (and apparently that number does include doctors, who also do not even advise thier patients not to smoke) Buenos Aires passed a law against smoking indoors. It includes bars, too. Very progressive for a Latin American country - hell, progressive for the US, let's be honest. Also surprising, given the national diet of cheese, beef and ice cream - diet drinks and food items are huge here. There is just as much packaging promising "light" and "no trans fats" as in the US. And yet, sadly, there is no national interest in fresh foods, really. I have had a total of one decent salad since I've been here, and the fruit is paltry and scarce. There is no reason why there isn't more, taht I can see - they grow persnickety wine just fine, we get South American produce in our winter up north, most of everything ouside Montevideo in Uruguay is agriculture - but no fruit. No veggies. I never thought I would say this, but I am gagging for an entire day of just fresh veggies.

And whole wheat! The white bread in this region? Has got to stop. That's all they eat for breakfast, in various forms (usually smeared with dulce de leche, which I will not argue with. Yum). It's really true that pallettes change - I used to eat wheat bread because I "should," but man. I would kill for a nutty loaf and some whole grains right about now.

Yo solo

2008-02-08T15:27:00.000-08:00

Brian left me tonight, back to the other New York, the one in wintertime. It was so lovely to have him here. I hadn't really connected how difficult solo travel would be for me. In general, I am a rather contendly solo person. I like living alone, some of my favorite Friday nights are ones I get to spend by myself. Not only have I never been a person who has trouble going to a movie or eating in a restaurant alone, I don't even really GET the trouble with it.

When I set out, and even now on the road, I get a lot of incredulous raised eyebrows at the fact that I am doing this travel "alone?!" when for me, there was never another way to do it. I am not married or in a relationship, I don't have any friends who wanted to chuck life completely for a chunk of a year - so when I decided to travel, it was a given that it would be alone. And I didn't think anything of it.

The problem is the personal space. I have no problem spending down time in front of a tv or a movie - that is what I love. But I don't get to spend my downtime like that, living hostel to hostel, so in essence, I don't get downtime. I spend a lot if time doing amazing things, but I spend a lot of it sort of killing time, too, until the stores or museums open or the bus leaves.

Traveling with someone else made the time go by faster, and it made it more pleasant along the way. I had someone to crack jokes with and eat with and to suggest things that he wanted to do, and it was overall more fun that way.

Plus, it helped that it was one of my best friends, the most ridiculously easygoing person ever, and someone I don't get to see that often since he lives on the other side of the country. Also, the Spanish skillz. So I was very sad to see him go.

I am back to killing time - I leave Buenos Aires in 2 days, and I don't have a lot on the agenda until then. Some laundry, a movie, what have you.

Safe travels, Bri. Thanks for coming down to visit. And I hope it is not too disorienting to wake up in Uruguay, spend the day in Buenos Aires, go to sleep, and wake up in Chicago. In order to go to New York.

I miss you.

Like the Weather

2008-02-07T23:45:00.000-08:00

From the start of my trip, I have had abnormally good weather - the warmth in Patagonia might have been a bit much for my own personal preferences, but it was also the nicest consistent weather most people had seen in years, so I have decided not to bitch and moan.

So of course it would come to pass that the day we decide to go and do something strictly outdoorsy, the weather doesn't cooperate. We were going to go to a beach today, either in town or take the bus to Punta del Este (it's the Hamptons to BA's New York), but instead it was humid, chilly, overcast, and windy as all get out. It was hardly a no good very bad day, but it was also not exactly beach bunny weather.

So, no beach. It did give me the chance to explore Montevideo more fully, which I am glad about. Yesterday it was too hot and humid to do more than a perfunctory look around in the afternoon, and in the evening, everything was closed (and it wasn't much cooler, let's be honest). It's a pretty charming little town, though fairly mellow. They are on an earlier schedule than Argentina - shops were closing at 5 or 6 instead of 8 or 9, and apparently they don't do dinner at 10pm, considering Brian and I were literally the only ones at the restaurant last night when we left at 10:30. There are also language differences - even though I don't speak Spanish, I could pick up that they call soda something different (refresca instead of gaseosa), and there were more words on menus and signs that even Brian didn't recognize - we suspect that it's the heavy Brazilian Portuguese influence that gives it a certain different flair.

Also, these people are OBSESSED with their mate. (Mate, pronounced mah-tay, is a tea that everyone here drinks. There are these traditional mate cups, that look almost like hollowed out coconut shells, and that gets filled to the brim with this strong, bitter tea leaves. Hot water from a thermos is added, and then it is drunk through a silver spoon-straw. Not kidding on that one.) Anyhow, in Argentina and Chile, sure, people drank mate. Here, there is basically NO ONE without a mate cup in one hand and a thermos tucked under their arm. This of course raises questions: Brian wonders if everyone has mild burns on their underarm from the thermos tuck; I wonder if the thermos is a traditional child-to-adult rite of passage gift; I also wonder if the pain of having to carry the cup, straw, tea and thermos is actually worth it - cant you put the tea in the thermos and drink from there, save a few steps? But regardless, it's how they roll over there.

I got to poke around more craft marts, and see a few more of the sights. Also, the wind was fierce enough to do some spectacular things to the water in (normally calm) river.

While I am pretty much feeling like the two and a half days here was enough, I am still glad we came - it was good to get out of BA for a couple of days, and the poached pear dessert alone was worth the trip.

diet coke: uruguay

2008-02-07T22:25:00.000-08:00

Because I am not only fair and unbaised, but also deeply scientifically minded (...I think I can hear my dad's snort of derision from here), I wanted to do a real, valid, side-by-side comparison. As the comments previously mentioned, the real best of the best for diet coke is housed in the big fast food chains (McDonald's and Burger King) and at 7-11. These are places where the syrup-to-water ratio is favoriable and the best mix. I'm not saying I won't gladly go other places, but if I have one of these options before me and all other things are equal, that's where I would head.

So, to compare truly equally, my Uruguayan option was from the local McDonald's. See, apples to apples. Like to like. Awesome to pure evil, as it turns out.

It's no better from their fountain than from a Chilean 20-ouncer.

I had Brian, a die-hard Pepsi fan, try some, to see if my analysis was correct. Coke and Pepsi are much sweeter, in a different way, than diet, and this Coca Light was way way sweeter (in a sweetener way) than regular. I am assuming this is to accomodate the sweet tooth of the locals?

I don't know. Whatever it is, the medium of delivery was SO not the issue.

i'm ok, uruguay

2008-02-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

I first clearly need to apologize for the title, but it was the first thing that came to mind this morning when it was painfully early (still dark!) and we were en route to the ferry stop.

We are now in Montevideo, Uruguay for a couple of days. Don't let the maps, guidebooks, or the fact that it is the capital and by far the biggest place in Uruguay - this place is tiny. I am personally falling victim to the heat, as today it was about 94 with 80% humidity, and now, at 10:37, I am literally dripping sweat as I type. Sexy! But it's a charming city, far more Latin American and European than BsAs. The Rio de la Plata here is also an unremarkable green, as opposed to Buenos Aires Brown, which is a step up.

Today we mostly just wandered about - the hardest thing was getting cash. Cambios are EVERYWHERE, but the only ATMs (I found 3 total) had a line of at least 20 people. But it was all made better by dinner - fantastic steak, great asparagus that had the added bonus of a parmesan sauce that went divine on the aforementioned steak, and a dessert that was out of this world - pears poached in tannat wine with cinnamon ice cream. A dinner like that does a lot to improve a mindset, despite the raging heat.

I think we are going to find a beach tomorrow. It's time to bust out the swimsuit. Plus, we were planning on tryng to go to a winery, but as a Calafornia girl, I can tell you that these places are really only barely equipped for visitors, so lying on the sand and people-watching it is.