Wanderlust Chronicles

Koh Samui by Motorcycle

2010-10-26T00:31:00.000-07:00

The Gulf of Thailand in October is not exactly mild. It's the tail end of the monsoon season, and the heat is absolutely brutal. Our arrival on Koh Samui was no exception. The blistering sun made walking anywhere absolutely unbearable, and after hours of riding a cramped ferry we were ready to find a place and stick with it.

After being vastly overcharged for a taxi ride across the island (oh yeah, Koh Samui is a beautiful tropical island, if you didn't pick up on that yet) we ended up at a section of beach on the eastern end. Quickly we located a row of rustic bungalows set down in a tranqil garden and backed up to a beach. At 1000 Baht they were a bargain - roughly thirty-five dollars for an exception location. We ended up booking four nights total, with the intention to explore every square inch of the island.

We managed to do a pretty good job of it. Pictures will tell the rest of this story; we rented a motorcycle for a few days and toured the island on it. Here's a few of the fun shots we got...

Return to the Kingdom of Thailand

2010-10-21T23:36:00.000-07:00

Somehow I always knew I'd come back.

A year and a half ago my flight leapt off the Bangkok runway bound for Hanoi, Vietnam... one stop away from the Philippines, and my departure from mainland Asia imminent, I was filled with a sense of relief. Circumstances had not been kind to me; I'd spent the last several weeks stranded in the northern mountainous region Thailand (read about my survival story here.) Though I loved Thailand and its people, an eventual return was the last thing on my mind.

Then later that summer I ended up in Nicaragua, met the love of my life (an avid traveler and adventurer herself) and - fast forward to five days ago - got married. The honeymoon destination was Thailand.

After a restless trans-Pacific flight and a brief layover in Japan, we touched down in Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport. From the moment we stepped off the airplane, I was amazed at the extent to which I felt perfectly normal. Unlike last year's torrent of culture-shock, nothing felt foreign to me. Not the cryptic Thai script covering signs and storefronts, the dense traffic, the never-ending hawking of pirated DVDs, fake Gucci goods, wristwatches and sex... not the mixed aroma of rice and noodles and tuk-tuk exhaust and fried pork and leaky sewer lines and gasoline and incense and fresh fish and foul canals, not the gilded pagodas and gaudy monuments on display at every turn. I could just as easily have been enjoying a lackadaisical weekend in Greensboro; walking the crowded streets of Bangkok felt just as routine.

The biggest difference to me has been the Thai language. Interestingly, signs are more frustrating to me now that I have a grasp of the script; I'm able to read the writing out loud, with some time, but I generally remain clueless as to what it actually means. Regardless, my study of the Thai language over the past several months has proved invaluable. Much the same as a handful of Spanish words was invaluable trekking across Mexico and Guatemala, a few key words here do wonders. On our second day in the city they got us out of two different common tourist scams.

The first happened on our way to Bangkok's Grand Palace. Jordan and I were walking towards it from our hotel on Khaosan Road when we came across an elevated statue adorned with flowers, shrines, and incense sticks. I stopped to snap a few pictures and was thusly distracted when a woman, probably in her mid-forties, approached. She began casually talking to us, mentioning offhandedly that the statue wasn't religious, but rather a symbol of good luck.

"Chohk dee," I said right away, and her eyes widened. I had just said "good luck" in Thai, a phrase few farang know. Her surprise was clear. Looking strangely wary, she then launched into a speech about how recent heavy rains had covered the train tracks leading out of the city, and that places like Surat Thani and Chiang Mai were inaccessible. "You're stuck in Bangkok for two weeks," she declared, and at the same time another person approached, a similarly-aged man this time. "You want to see Bangkok?" he piped in, opportunistically.

At this point the scam was obvious: they'd offer us a great tour of Bangkok with hotel arrangements, all for a hefty fee, since we couldn't get out of Bangkok. I'd been subjected to similar ones in the past; Jordan and I simply walked away. The woman made no attempt to stop us or call after us - it was pretty clear by this point that we had previous experience in the country. Crisis averted.

I can't say I fared so well on the second scam (there were three in one day, a somewhat dubious personal record.) On a tree-shaded sidewalk I noticed a flock of pigeons feeding from an elderly woman's hand. Cluelessly I forged ahead for the photo-op, envisioning a great shot of the birds bursting into flight. I was surprised when the woman subsequently shoved a bag of corn into my hand, ripped it open, and motioned for me to throw it in the air. She loosened the tie off a second bag and threw the corn up into the air, smacking my hand to get me to do the same. Then, just as quickly (this had all taken only moments to transpire) she jabbed me in the chest with a gnarled finger and demanded 150 Baht as payment for the corn. She was loud and demanding; nonplussed, I handed her 140 and hurried off. I felt foolish. She had done a masterful job of parting me from my money. I couldn't help but admire her tenacity and resourcefulness, if not the state of her moral character.

About an hour later, after touring one of large wats (temples) we headed towards Hua Lampong railway station with the intention of purchasing our tickets to Koh Samui. The sun was beating down pretty hard and we'd yet to ride on one of the three-wheeled motorized taxis that plied the city streets, so we figured it was a good time to start. We argued our driver down from 150 Baht to 100 and climbed on board.

Very quickly it was apparent we weren't headed in the right direction. I'd spent days wandering the streets of Bangkok the previous year and was familar with the location of most major landmarks. When the Democracy Monument popped into view through a sidestreet to our left, I knew we were headed in the opposite direction. Something was fishy. Sure enough, our driver pulled over next to a small shop. He turned off the tuk-tuk and motioned us to go inside. "Ten minute," he grinned.

"Mai," I said firmly. No.

"Ten minute," he repeated. "Shop." He tugged at his shirt for emphasis.

I'd heard of these scams before. The driver would be paid a gas stipend for getting unwitting tourists to shop at his friends' stores. It clearly was not legit. "Mai, mai!" I repeated, shaking my head. "Hua Lampong. Kun gam-lang pai Hua Lampong!"

His eyes widened in the manner of the Bangkok Tour Lady. His shock was replaced by a sheepish grin, and then annoyance when he dropped us off. (My careful "korp kun krahp" was ignored, wai and all.)

Happily we escaped Bangkok with all our money (except for that one hundred and forty baht the pigeon lady scheisted from me, of course) and after a long bus ride we crossed over the Gulf of Thailand onto the island of Koh Samui. We're still here, resting in bungalows overlooking a placid beach. The contrast is deafening: we've gone from the urban roar of the city to absolute serenity in half a day.

We'll probably be here a while.

A Closer Look: Tikal

2010-07-16T11:45:00.000-07:00

Describing Tikal in a paragraph or two is like trying to get across the Belize border without getting ripped off by the moneychangers; it's just not going to happen. My brief description of the archeological site in a previous entry hardly did it justice; my intent here is to provide a more complete view of the ruins, based on my experience.

Tikal is a three-hour drive from the Belize border or from the beautiful island city of Flores (five or six if you're riding a local bus) located in the steamy jungles and wetlands of northern Guatemala. We were fortunate to charter a brand new SUV to get us there, passing by Lake Peten Itza on the way... we rolled into Tikal National Park around 10:00am.

We declined to pay for a map in the park, instead photographing the large direction map at the trailhead and referring back to it on the camera at a later time, and drawing a quick reference map on a blank page of my journal. Armed with these critical bits of guidance, we marched into the jungle. The first thing was came across was a Ceiba tree, an enormous specimen worshiped by the ancient Mayans as a connector of the planes of the underworld. The massive trunk absolutely dwarfed us, an appropriate introduction for what was to be a day full of awe.

As noted previously, we discovered a vine hanging next to a plunging gorge in the jungle while on our way to the pyramids; naturally we were waylaid and spent the next half an hour testing the strength of their hold and gingerly climbing up, daring to inch a little higher each time. When it was apparent that the trees above weren't going to give it away and let us plunge to our certain injury, we got more daring and donkey-konged it high enough to afford an excellent (if precarious) view of our surroundings.

Done with the vines, we meandered into a clearing in the jungle, where we spotted our first few ruins. They were outliers of the main center, the Grand Plaza, where we were headed. We were fascinated by the ancient structures; Tikal had existed for at least two thousand years before our time, and the ruins likely dated back to at least 700AD. We were treading on ancient history.

The southern end of the Grand Plaza opened up before us as we approached it; a massive pyramid very nearly blotted out the sun above us as it towered above the surrounding jungle. Wandered into the Plaza itself, bookended on the north and south by enormous temples and bordered on the east and west by a large number of stone religious structures, altars, carvings, etc. The northern pyramid had a wooden staircase affixed to the side where tourists could climb up and view the scene; we did so, struck by the immensity of the area.

Directly north of the Grand Plaza was Temple IV, the facade of which was under construction; scaffolding on the east side served as a reminder that we were indeed still in the 21st Century. The sounds of the jungle suggested quite the opposite: spider monkeys screamed from the treetops, parrots called to one another, fluttering in sudden flashes of color from branch to branch. On top of Temple IV we heard the belching, guttural roars of enormous jaguars, warning intruders on their marked territories.

Naturally we plunged into the jungle after a once-in-a-lifetime photo-op... no such luck, only sudden, horrifying silence and the hair-raising grumble of a very angry, very large predator a handful of yards away. Pictures didn't seem quite so important, and we backed out of the jungle, now quite content to explore Temple V and photograph things that wouldn't eat us.

Temple V was the largest of them all; surrounded on all sides by dense jungle, it was nearly impossible to get a full picture of. An altar, complete with blood grooves, was inlaid into the earth in front of the temple's face, a chilling reminder of the human sacrifices of generations past.

Joel and I found a smaller pyramid located on the eastern end of the park that was devoid of human activity; it was just us. Not quite mollified by our experience with the jaguars, we took our adrenaline out on the top of the structure. I edged along the three-inch outer rim of the top of the pyramid, clinging to the stone ledge above it, a deadly plunge to the jungle below the difference between a firm footing and a faulty one. Joel clambered to the top of the crumbling peak, posing arms-spread for an epic shot. We took turns leaping across an ancient doorway... poised on one ledge, we'd take one step and a carefully-calculated leap across the abyss, aware the price for missing would be at best a broken leg, or a face smashed into the opposite wall.

Thankfully our calculations were solid. We left the temple satisfied, and spent our last hour in the ruins exploring the throne room and palace structure. Indiana Jones type stuff. "I wonder where this water's coming from?" Joel asked, casually, when we were inside. The walls were dark and moist... he pushed his hand up against it and pulled it away just as quickly, suddenly disgusted.

"Bat guano," I laughed. On more than one occasion we'd approach a dark, heavily-shadowed room and duck as a swarm of bats fluttered out at us from inside.

Darkness had begun to fall, and we had to get back to our driver, who'd take us as far as Flores that evening. We purchased small wooden pipes and machetes at one of the small markets in the park, which was located next to a crocodile pond, and then met up with Hector. We'd spend the rest of the evening riding in the back of his truck, standing facing into the blasting wind, adrenaline flowing again, as the truck roared through the backroads of northern Guatemala. It seemed like something the ancient Mayans would've done if they'd had trucks.

A Journey's Completion

2010-07-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

Ever seen a monsoon? I promise you you haven't, not until you've been in the middle of a driving Mexican rain. Rain is not the right word. Even flood doesn't cut it. Think a vertical river, coming straight out of the sky, and you've kind of got the idea.

We got caught in the middle of it, a tropical depression that brewed along the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula for a few days. Joel, Jordan, and I spent twenty-seven consecutive hours in buses riding up through Guatemala into Belize, into the Mexican border town of Chetumal, and finally into Tulum, Mexico. The rain started there - just a bit at first, enough to be annoying, then departing for a few hours at a time.

Rather convenient timing, really, as it allowed us to photograph the Caribbean Sea, emerald waters and white sands, and explore the coastal ruins north of the city. Hardly as impressive as Tikal, but stark and striking nevertheless: austere stone formations speckled the coastline, perched on a rocky cliff overlooking the sea. Enormous iguanas, not a bit scared of human activity, bathed in the sun as tourists from all over the world wandered throughout the park. The crowds were a bit large and made good shots difficult to find; still, we managed.

We departed early in the afternoon, arriving in an incredibly humid Playa del Carmen, 30 miles or so south of Cancun. The skies were bruised and grumbling, enormous black columns in the sky... rain, and lots of it, was imminent. We managed to get in a game of volleyball on the beach with a couple of travelers from Chile before the skies opened up... we retired to our extremely cheap and sketchy hostel on Avenue 10 Norte, anticipating a few sweet hours of sleep before I rode with Jordan to the airport at 5:00am (she'd be leaving two days before Joel and I.)

At 5:00am Jordan and I walked through six inches of water in the hostel's reception room, letting in another three or so when we opened the front door, and slogged through the shin-deep rapids that was now Avenue 10 Norte. Ten minutes later and drenched to the bone, we arrived at the bus station... the fact that an opportunistic taxi driver hadn't hailed us from the curb was a testament to the severity of the storm. No amount of pesos was worth the risk.

Mercifully the rain eased up by the time we arrived at Aeropuerto Cancun, and after dropping Jordan off at the terminal I was able to make my way into the Cancun bus station. I inquired there about my beloved travel guitar, which I'd mistakenly left on the bus from Tulum... no luck. RIP dear friend.

Joel and I spent the last two days in Playa del Carmen, watching the FIFA tournament and taking pictures. The rain let up on our last day so we were able to get in a bit of beach time... we flew back to the Estados Unitas on Thursday morning hundreds of Pesos, Quetzales and Belizian Dollars poorer.

But since when has true worth ever been measured in dollars?

The Proposal

2010-07-15T12:46:00.000-07:00

After much delay, I've got a copy of the video-taped proposal. The opening sequence was supposed to be a panorama of the old cathedral and the volcano backdrop with me narrating the story (our secret arrival, and our imminent mission) before we made the mad dash around the second level of the courtyard... but for some reason the camera didn't begin recording until about 20 seconds later. It picks up here, as we're running around the upper level of the courtyard.

To watch the video, simply click on the picture below!

An Engagement Story

2010-07-03T14:22:00.000-07:00

Blinking the sleep from our eyes, Joel and I climbed aboard our TranAir flight bound for Baltimore. We´d have a layover there for about two hours before flying into Cancun. We were traveling lightly - we each had a small backpack filled with essentials, and a satchel that we´d carry on with us. I brought my Essex acoustic guitar, acquired in Australia, so we´d always have some music.

The mission: get to Antigua, Guatemala, within five days to surprise my girlfriend, Jordan. She was in the mountains outside of Guatemala City working with an orphanage, and had no clue her brother and I were coming. The stakes were high - I´d brought a diamond ring with me, and plans for one epic proposal.

We landed in Cancun, Mexico around 1pm. Once we´d cleared customs, we carried our gear outside - it as hot and humid, as expected - and hailed a shuttle bus to a nearby hostel. Our gear stashed on the upper floor of the Maya Hostel, we set out to explore the city. There was little that stood out - we were a few miles from Cancun´s famed beaches, and with a strict deadline (we had to be in Guatemala City by Thursday night) we couldn´t afford to stray far. We spent the rest of the day watching Mexico lose to Argentina in the World Cup (a fear unappreciated by the local population) and tasting some of the local cuisine. Dinner was at an Argentinian restaurant, a mixture of chicken and vegetables with a couple of beers and cigars... tremendously satisfying.

The next morning dawned hot and humid - a perfect day to be trapped in a cramped metal bus/oven. Stopping every ten minutes or so to pick up and let off passengers, the bus to Chetumal - a Mexican border town - crept along the eastern shore of the Yucatan Peninsula. Brief stops in Playa del Carmen and Tulum were hardly enough to stave off hunger and cramped limbs... we arrived in Chetumal half-starved.

Resisting the urge to spend the night, we located a ticket station and bought passage to Belize City. We spent an hour or so jamming with the guitar in the bus station before departure... it was a nice break.

Upon showing up in Belize City, we were informed that if we walked into town we´d probably get stabbed... it´s pretty rough. A helpful local pointed out a bus to San Ignacio, near the Guatemalan border, that was about to leave. We hopped on board and took off. San Ignacio was much better... the climate was cool, as we were surrounded by mountains, and only a few people were roaming the streets. Absolutely starved, we wolfed down plates of chicken and potatos, washed down with a couple of locally-brewed Belize beers. Our hostel was fairly cheap, and right down the road from the bus station. We crashed that night, knowing we had to be up at 6am to catch the 7am bus to the Guatemalan border.

The next day we hit the road on a dilapidated bus. Its muffler clearly shot, it labored noisily up the western Belize hills, grinding to a halt an hour later in Benque, a tiny border town. A cheap taxi took us to the customs office. Joel and I exchanged our Belize currency there (we´re pretty sure we got cheated out of a good 50 Quetzales) and got our passports stamped at the border.

Our next decision was how to get to Tikal. Flores was the next town on the way to Guatemala City, but the ancient Mayan pyramids jutting out of the jungle floor appealed to us too much to pass up. We had the option of taking another ancient bus, but we had a schedule to stick to. We decided to spring for a private cab for $50 each; it was absolutely worth it. Our cab was actually a brand new Toyota pickup truck... our driver took us through gorgeous winding roads in northeastern Guatemala, stopping at an enormous lake for us to take pictures. We swung north to Tikal after that.

Luckily I have pictures, because any number of thousands of words couldn´t possibly convey the splendor of the scene. After a ten minute walk into the jungle and a detour to swing on a few conveniently-located vines, we meandered into the Grand Plaza.

It was enormous.

Towering temples blocked the skies from our views in some places. Crumbling ruins surrounded us in every direction... it was truly a jaw-dropping scene. We spent hours climbing the larger ones, taking hundreds of pictures, and never quite getting tired of them. We were standing atop Temple IV, gazing out over the jungle landscape below, shirts wrapped around our head for protection from the heat, when a series of roars echoed from the jungle. We assumed, at first, that tourist jeeps were simply downshifting through the narrow roads... a few minutes later we realized they were really, really big cats.

Naturally curious, we scrambled down the side of the temple, taking time to photograph a monkey on the way, and once on ground hurried to the edge of the jungle where the roars were the loudest. "Que es?" we asked a local.

"Jaguar," he replied, pointing to a cub perched in a tree.

Whoa.

Being two testosterone-filled explorers, and therefore stupid, we naturally plunged into the jungle in search of a cool picture. Creeping along a winding path, cameras in one hand and large rocks in the other, we approached the sounds, until suddenly they stopped. The silence was eery... we stood, motionless, peering through the jungle... nothing. Even the monkeys had stopped their incessant chatter.

Then we heard it: a deep, low, warning growl, no more than ten feet in front of the dense jungle in front of us. My hair rose on the back of my neck as we realized simultaneously that whatever was in there was pissed off, and it was HUGE.

Very slowly we backed away, adrenaline surging, senses heightened, ready at the first rustle of leaves to slam the rocks forward in self-defense. The rustle never came, and we backed onto the original path, where locals gawked at the stupido americanos.

The roars stopped after that. Neither of us got a picture, but we were happy to escape with our lives.

We finished the afternoon off by climbing on top of a pyramid set apart from the rest and daring each other to take flying leaps from one ledge to the next, a leg-breaking drop the price of miscalculation. Neither of us slipped (which is why I´m writing this in an internet cafe and not a Guatemalan hospital.) We left the ruins around 5 hours after arriving, purchased some souveniers (epic machetes, of course) and left with Felix, our driver.

On the way to Flores, we sat in the bed of the truck with a couple of the park´s employees. We spoke just enough Spanish and they just enough English to carry a conversation... we ended the day standing in the bed of the truck, facing forward, as the scenery flashed by at 70 kilometers per hour. We rolled into Flores, a beautiful town set on an island in the middle of a lake, drank margaritas, and jumped on a night bus for Guatemala City.

We arrived the next morning, Wednesday at 7am, immediately took a bus to Antigua, where Jordan would be on Friday morning. Conveniently we were dropped off in front of a cheap hostel where we could check it early. We happily paid 40 Quetzales (about five bucks) each and crashed for the next six hours.

We weren´t prepared for the splendor of the town. It stood next to a tremendous volcano, several more in the distance behind it. Most of the architecture was Spanish Baroque style, and a number of stunning ruins - collapsed cathedrals from an earthquake in the 1600´s - lay scattered around the town. Joel and I spent the rest of the day photographing as many of them as possible. Because of their status as relics (Antigua is a UNESCO World Heritage Site) they´re all gated and locked... but we noticed an unlocked gate and went inside. We didn´t regret it. The beauty was astounding - four hundred year old Baroque ruins, with a volcano as the backdrop. It also happened to be right next to the town´s famous arch, and a staircase wound up to it. We bolted for it, and a minute later we were standing atop it, taking panoramic pictures of the city and volcano.

When we came back the next day the gate was locked, and has been since. We definitely lucked out.

Wednesday and Thursday flew by - both were filled with exploration - and we knocked the jitters out at a chill bar on Thursday night. Friday morning we rose early. We knew Jordan would be showing up around 11:00 am (I´d been emailing her team leader during the entirety of the trip.) Joel and I had found the perfect spot - a restored cathedral with a beautiful fountain in the center of the courtyard. We set up on the upper story, overlooking the fountain, and kept a sharp eye out for the next two hours.

Predictably, I was nervous, anticipating all the things that could go wrong. To calm myself down I opened my journal and starting sketching the scene... the old spires against the volcano. I lost myself in my art and was in the middle of penning an arch when voices rang through the lower corridor.

Joel and I dove down behind a bush and he started videotaping the scene. We dashed in a wide circle around the opening, making sure we were unseen, and sneaked down the stairs into the courtyard´s outer hall.

Pausing for a deep breath and adjusting my cap, I plunged out into the courtyard. Jordan turned and saw me just as I leapt up onto the fountain. She gaped. "What are you doing here?" she asked in shock.

I had a huge speech prepared, but in that instant it flew out the window. "Proposing," I said, and dropped to a knee. "Will you marry me?"

Luckily she said yes.

We´ll be traveling back up to Mexico over the couple of days, (as are pictures... all we have so far of the actual engagement are videos) so more blog entries are coming. It´ll be hard to top this one.

Fort Macon, North Carolina, USA

2010-06-16T18:47:00.001-07:00

Photographs taken during a trip to Fort Macon, near Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, in March 2010.

Panorama of Atlantic Beach

Atlantic Beach pier at night

End of the pier

Cannon in Fort Macon

Panorama of Fort Macon

Southeastern corner of Fort Macon

Southern wall of Fort Macon

Cannon, Old Glory in the background

Southwestern entrance to Fort Macon

Nicaragua

2009-10-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

In August 2009 I traveled to Managua, Nicaragua with Central Community Church, based in Greensboro, NC, to assist in the construction of a school. It was an eight-day excursion, involving cement, collapsed chapel roofs, snakebites, 25000 palm fronds, and swimming in volcanoes.

We flew into Managua via Atlanta, and after glimpsing the western tip of forbidden Cuba, arrived shortly after sunset. Our contact was Henry Vargas, a Venezuela-born missionary; he met our group at Sandino International Airport with news that the chapel we were to stay in had collapsed twenty minutes before our arrival.

We stayed Henry's house instead - he was in the process of building it, so it was a bit like the lawn-and-garden section of Home Depot: lots of open air, lots of potted plants, and stacks of masonry. It would be our home for a week... my personal space was the cement floor just under the edge of the roof.

Day One was pretty easy - we visited a local Nicaraguan pentecostal church, and then headed to a volcanic lake for the day. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon. We finished off the day shopping in Managua's Old City... Cuban cigars, local whiskeys, and some Nicaraguan wall art filled our packs.

A lake in the center of a dormant volcano

Architecture in downtown Managua

At 6:00 am Monday morning we set out for the worksite. We were divided into two basic workgroups: the first was construction, assigned to adding the second story of the new school building. The second was essentially a cleanup detail in charge of cleaning up the collapsed chapel. Some 15,000 palm fronds composed the bulk of the roof - they were thatched over a rickety two-by-four frame - and had to be removed to a storage location a few hundred yards through the jungle. I spent the first five hours on construction duty before being transferred to clean-up... apparently they needed an extra hand and there was one too many clambering across the walls.

We quickly determined that the most effective way to get the job done was to have several people removing the fronds from the frame and tossing them in enormous piles while several more of us loaded them onto a ramshackle cart and hauled them to the storage hut. The trail wound down a steep hill, across a stream (there was a footbridge, thankfully) and into a picturesque clearing. We rotated the pulling duties, switching during every load.

We toiled under the merciless tropical sun for four straight days, and by Thursday we were done. On Friday the groups combined to knock out the final level of the school building... we flew home Saturday morning.

Left to right, from top: Carrying palm fronds via two-wheeled cart to storage hut, a hibiscus flower in the jungle, Enrique, the son of a local Nicaraguan farmer, and a horse feeding on the school grounds.

Post Script

2009-07-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

Two months ago I returned to the United States of America. While on layovers in Taipei, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, I painstakingly compiled a list of statistics, digging into my journal and poring through maps and online geographical databases. The result was a makeshift odometer reading, split up into several parts.

Miles Traveled

-airplane: 28,707

-bus: 1,522

-train: 940

-car: 587

-foot: 407

-bicycle: 165

-taxi: 52

-songatew: 49

-river ferry: 12

-tuk-tuk: 8

-raft: 5

-motortaxi: 3

-motorcycle: 2

-elephant: 1

Total Miles Traveled: 32,458

Four months. Thirty-two thousand, four hundred and fifty-eight miles. Desert, jungle, mountains, ocean. Villages, cities, towns, slums. Los Angeles, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Bangkok, Manila. Philosophical discussions, jungle treks, snake farms, gearless cliff climbs, starvation and survival. Food poisoning. A kid with a machine gun in one of the worst countries on the planet. The most perfectly-formed conical volcano in the world. Bushwalking through the wilderness. Poisonous freakin snakes. Poisonous freakin lizards. Hitchhiking, dehydration, cycling monstrous hills under a 113 degree sun. Speaking German to Germans, speaking German to Austrians, learning some Thai, photographing ancient archeological ruins, sketching coastal highlands, sliding down waterfalls, composing guitar pieces by the sea. Missing home, reflecting on life, fording a river in a 4x4 with a burnt-out clutch, dodging motorcycles on sidewalks, eating street cuisine, collecting foreign currency, entertaining hostels with renditions of Cat Stevens and The Eagles, playing chess under the setting sun, midnight beach strolls, missed flights, changed plans, rafting down rivers on sinking bamboo flats, heinekens and pool, abandoned rail tunnels, kangaroos, Pacific typhoons, abject poverty, letters home, worries, fears, awe and wonder, existential musings, the clarity of ten thousand stars in the night.

How do you sum up something so vast in scale?

Before I left, my battle cry was that "if you don't take chances, you won't have any stories to tell." I wanted to take a chance. And I did.

I can tell you stories, so I guess I succeeded.

The Philippines, Part Two: Legazpi

2009-05-11T23:09:00.000-07:00

There is a reason I flew back to Manila from Legazpi City: I took a bus to get there. It was not a an experience to be had more than once.

On the last day of April I checked out of the hotel and headed for the bus station. I had a couple of places in mind... Cabanatuan, Lingayen Gulf, Legazpi... the latter of the three had caught my eye when I read that the most perfectly-formed conical volcano in the world sat several miles north of the small harbor town. The first bus portal I came upon had a big sign that read "Legazpi City." Volcanotime it would be. I paid a 350-Pisos fare, surprised at the low price, and clambered onto the bus.

The driver explained that it'd be about a seven-hour ride into town, southeast along the snaking end of the island of Luzon. Seven hours... no biggie. I relaxed contentedly in the wide seat that I had to myself, updated my travel journal, even pulled out my guitar and whipped up a few casual tunes. It was a nice day outside, the window next to me was wide open, and I was pretty excited to be headed for the largest active volcano in the entirety of the Philippine Islands.

Then came the extra people. An hour into the ride the bus was packed full. I was jammed into a little corner, my legs wedged into the seat in front of me... the bus was obviously not built for tall people. Then came the rain, forcing me to shut my window, which was the only thing keeping fresh air in the bus.

I would later learn that a violent tropical storm had blasted straight through the region during the trip south, killed several people, upending buses, stranding ferries, and, thus, clogging the roads completely. I was unaware of this during the time, and as the trip stretched from seven hours to eight and ten and twelve, the bus jammed to sudden stops, lurched sickeningly into potholes, out of them, and into another one just as quickly. It became nauseating very quickly... I'm not entirely sure how I managed to keep the contents of my stomach down, but I did it.

At around three in the morning a rooster started crowing. On the bus. Somebody had brought a freakin chicken on board. It wouldn't shut up, either. If I'd been a few seats closer I'd have opened the first international Chick-fil-A branch. No such luck; instead I turned my greenish face to the window and concentrated on not heaving.

Thirteen hours into the trip, the driver called out the Legazpi City stop, mercifully ending my punishment. It was after five in the morning. I found a hotel closeby, walked in drenched from the rain, paid for a room and crashed for the next five hours.

Legazpi City was extremely small by most standards. The main section of town was clustered around the innermost portion of the bay, and the national highway ran west, away from it, into the western end of town, much smaller, and back up towards Manila. To the north of the two sections of town was the Legazpi airport, and, perhaps three miles beyond it, the base of the Mayon Volcano. The sight of it startled me when I first noticed it. It was massive, rising up, as volcanos do, imposingly behind everything else. The tip was shrouded in clouds (and smoke) the entire time I was there, which was slightly frustrating, but the enormity of the thing was still awe-inspiring.

Several days into my stay, which would turn out to be nine days total, I headed out for the volcano. I wasn't aware of a way to actually get ON to the thing (and I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to) so I settled for the popular obersvation point north of the airport. I walked for miles, passing village after village... I found the people in Legazpi to be much more friendly than the ones in Manila. I was gawked at everywhere I went, but the stares were quickly followed by huge smiles and calls of "Hey Joe!" (The name, I presume, is a relic of the World War Two days when American troops fought the Japanese in the region and were known, synonymously, as "Joes." The kids all demanded high-fives when I walked by, usually following it up with "wassup man!" Western slang, it seemed, was not without influence in southeast Asia.

After climbing an absurdly-steep switchback trail up a protruding bluff several miles south of the volcano, I downed a bottle of water to rehydrate and then took some pictures. Some of them turned out pretty well, and the panorama feature of my camera delighted me once again. I was bummed that the clouds never seemed to disappear from the tip of the volcano to allow me a full shot, but there was nothing I could do about that.

On the way back down I discovered a tunnel in the bluff, converted by the Japanese into an ammunition dump during the Second World War. It'd been turned into a makeshift museum. The history nerd in me came alive and I took the short tour. Most of it had been bombed to Hades before U.S. forces landed in Legazpi and took over, but two tunnels still existed, and exploring them was fascinating. The styrofoam Japanese soldiers were a bit much, but there were several preserved relics, including a typewriter, some ammunition cans, and cartridges (probably still live.)

The rest of the week passed rather quickly. I did my share of walking around, exploring the area, but my financial situation didn't allow me to do much more. Instead I found a bookstore and re-immersed myself in the world of Jack London, awed by it as much as I had been as an eight-year-old kid. Some things never changed.

The week passed quickly, I got sick, and then, mostly unsick, then boarded a plane for Manila, and here I am now, even less sick, and ready to come home. Today is my one hundredth day of traveling, which is an astonishing number... the time has absolutely flown by (and, paradoxically, it also feels like I left a full century ago.)

Tomorrow I will get on a plane, fly to Taipei, then to Los Angeles, then to Philadelphia, then to Raleigh, and then, finally, Greensboro. And home.

See ya there.

The Philippines, Part One: Manila

2009-05-08T05:57:00.000-07:00

Manila is listed by many travel guidebooks as among the top three of the "Dirtiest Cities in the World." An ignominious reputation, to be sure, but it didn't dispell any of my excitement as my flight dipped over the Luzon shoreline. Absurdly bookish during my childhood and adolescence, I'd pored over countless books about the conflicts of the Second World War and the significance of the Philippine Islands as a stronghold in the Japanese-held Pacific realm. Never once, in my unquenchable intake of the stories then, or during my education as a history major at UNC-Greensboro years later did I imagine I'd ever actually be there. To most travelers, Manila was the third-dirtiest city in the world. To me it was a storied land. My plane was landing in Oz.

Aesthetics is a funny subject, often difficult to articulate... oftentimes it's beyond specific description, only identifiable when it's fully realized. Walking along Manila Bay was one such moment. Through the eyes of reality, it was an atrocious walk. Descriptions of conditions were not exaggerated; the way was lined with the poorest of sights, families living on the rocky, trash-strewn shores, children splashing naked in putrid waters we at home wouldn't deign worthy of spitting in. And yet it was, to me, enormously significant, for while Manila Bay proper was never the subject of any noteworthy significance, it was always there, mentioned offhandedly with other very significant events. And so Manila Bay became offhandedly associated with Corregidor and MacArthur and Bataan and the events surrounding the Japanese siege in 1941-42 and the subsequent promised return of the Allied forces in 1944-45.

Thus to me, my mile-long walk was as aesthetically pleasing as anything possibly could be. The nerd within was well pleased.

Aside from those moments, my experience in Manila was rather mundane. And truthfully, I planned it that way. As I mentioned in my last column of the semester in the Carolinian, I often try to capture the essence of a city - as much as can be captured in a short ammount of time - by skipping out on the touristy stuff and observing everyday life. And for a week that's exactly what I did. I stayed in a run-down, flea-infested traveler's inn on Roxas Avenue, roaming the filthy streets for miles everyday.

Photography, I found to my surprise, was nearly impossible. What I was observing was everyday life; while foreign to me, and thus worthy of photographing, I felt strangely odd in doing so. Pictures should have subjects, noteworthy subjects, and somehow capturing the images before me seemed petty and foolish, like driving down Wendover Avenue in Greensboro to take a picture of the inside of Walmart. For the most part, Manila is committed to the memory of my mind where, I feel, it remains more properly remembered. A photograph can capture an image, but that is all. It cannot capture sound and smell - it cannot capture being, or essence. And Roxas Avenue had an essence all its own.

Much like human trafficking statistics or news of Darfur genocides, it is particularly hard to make a true connection with reality at home and that reality abroad. It may well be impossible... there's simply a disconnect between what's familiar and what's ground into cliche and familiar newspaper stories. Sure, goes the thought, I feel bad about because that's a really big number, a lot of poverty/death/pain, but since it doesn't directly affect me and I've never seen it firsthand, I can't connect with it. I don't think it is possible to understand it without actually experiencing it firsthand. Thus, my understanding of things was about to change.

Roxas Avenue, running north-south from the Paranaque district of southern Manila, up along Manila Bay and into the Ermita business district and beyond, was to be my first experience with true poverty. Of course I'd seen beggars and shacks and poor living conditions in Thailand and Vietnam and especially southern Burma, but nothing compared to this. The street was lined with the most destitute of society. Filthy children splashed murky puddles, their parents nearby, equally as dirty and threadbare, plying their trade - usually selling various objects from stalls. Along the crumbling sidewalks permanent homes were constructed of whatever objects could be found. A rancid canal ran for miles along the street, clogged with trash and human excrement, an absolutely vile fluid that served as a life source for the Roxas inhabitants. Children actually swam in it, adults fished from it, pulling small flopping creatures that somehow lived in it. The smell was so bad I could barely stand to walk along it.

It was a unique experience, I daresay, and may well take me some time to fully digest and particularize. I passed a week on Roxas, spending my days reading James Clavell's Shogun (a fantastic novel, by the way) and walking the streets inbetween meals at various restaraunts. My memory of Manila will not be of shopping at malls and visiting spas and staying in nice hotels. I will remember the real Manila. There's a pretty big difference.

Now, a week later, I'm four hundred miles away in Legazpi City, several miles from the most perfectly formed conical volcano in the world. Getting here was an adventure.

But that's another story.

Final Carolinian Column

2009-05-02T04:16:00.000-07:00

My last column for the UNC Greensboro newspaper, The Carolinian, will run on Tuesday. Normally I just convert one of my regular blog posts with a little bit of editing and run it, but for the last article I wanted a little bit of a different feel. Here it is:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's been quite an adventure.

With two weeks to go before my return to good ol' Greensboro - I'm amazed by how much I miss it - I'm exploring the Philippine Islands... wandering the streets of Manila, trekking southern Luzon volcano regions, relaxing on black-sand beaches. It's only two weeks, but I'll make the most of them.

This'll be the last issue of The Carolinian you'll read until August; exam-time is in its death throes (or putting you through yours) and the freedom of summer awaits... three beautiful, beautiful months. Thinking about doing some traveling? If you're headed abroad, I'd like to advise you of several priceless things I've learned during my overseas adventures, things I wish I'd been told.

1) Don't Lose Your Credit Card. Especially if you're travelling by yourself. Trust me, you don't know how reliant you are on it. To safeguard against theft, make sure you use lockboxes provided at hotels, guard your pockets against pickpockets if you're headed to areas where that's a problem, and make sure you get your credit card back after you use the ATM. This is not something you want to experiment with. (To safeguard, you may wish to open a separate bank account and get a debit card for emergencies, storing it in a separate place... it'll keep you from starvation and rooflessness while you get a new card sent to you. Or you could:

2) Bring A Guitar. Besides being a lifesaver if you lose your card and you're broke (if you didn't read about it, I got stranded in northern Thailand and played on street corners to earn enough money to survive) music is a priceless commodity during travels. I've pulled mine out in airport terminals, inside a bus, on a train, on the beach, next to the pool (this is not recommended if people are jumping in) and in hotel rooms. Boredom is never a factor if you've got a guitar... and its ability to bring groups together is priceless. Perfect strangers of different nationalities who might otherwise never be friends suddenly hear Wonderwall playing and start singing along, chatting, and then everyone's best friends. It's like a magical force. And for an awesome travel momento, buy a sharpie, and when you meet people, have 'em sign their name or a brief message on it. It's something you'll treasure forever.

3) Forget About Hotels. Unless you're into the ritzy spa-and-massage type of getaway, or into spending way too much money (given you're college students, you'll probably not fall into those categories) hostels are the way to go. Known as youth hostels or backpacker's hotels, they're basically dorm rooms fitting bunk beds, anywhere from four in smaller to sixteen in the larger ones, for prices far less than standard hotels. You surrendur privacy, but the social aspects are beyond price. Get a hostel for the night, mix in a touch of friendliness, and you've got instant conversations and new friends.

4) Don't Just See The Sights. See some of them, but not all of them. If you have time on your hands, spend a week on a nondescript section of town, walk the streets, and see daily life as it exists outside of all the touristy locations. You'll get a much clearer view of everyday life in the place you're visiting... walking down the slum-lined canals of Roxas Avenue in Manila is a much different experience than staying in the shopping district and lounging on the beach. Tourist attractions can be fun, but they seldom leave you with the proper feel for where you're staying.

5) Go With The Flow. I can't count how many times I've learned and re-learned this lesson. If you're restricted to certain dates of travel - that is, you've got your return ticket already purchased - you're naturally going to be limited in your ability to wander at your heart's whim. But don't make my mistake: before departure, I spent hours planning every detail of my trip. Google Earth, Google maps, Lonely Planet, Frommer's guides... I filled out calendars with itineraries, browsed travel forums, and determined exactly where I would be, when I would go, and what I'd do there.

Virtually none of it happened. And with a bit of hindsight I see just how much better off I am for it... the entire trip has been packed with surprises and whimiscal ventures, irreplacable in my memory. Be spontaneous. Be smart and make sure you've got a backup plan - but be spontaneous. You won't regret it in the end.

So there you have it... five things I wish I'd known before my own departure. If you're headed out, be safe, be smart, be free... and have fun. I know I did.

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Having the opportunity to write the column was an absolute joy, and it lent more of a sense of purpose to my journey.

...but, that said (or typed, as the case may be) the journey is not yet over. I'm still in the Philippines, in a tiny town called Legazpi. I'm two miles from the most perfect conical volcano in the world... and it's far from dormant. I have ten days left, and I'll make the most of them. I still have stories to tell.

Things Not to Do In Manila

2009-04-29T00:59:00.000-07:00

1) Anything illegal

...actually that about covers it. This comes, thankfully, not from personal experience, but from the fact that I have eyes. You don't have to get hit by a bus to know that it's gonna hurt.

The first thing I noticed upon my arrival in the Philippines was the ammount of security guards everywhere. I dismissed it at first, because I was in the international airport, where heavy security is to be expected. But it wasn't just in the airport. Every single street corner, I realized, had an armed guard, anywhere you went, revolver dangling jauntily from his waist. Gas station guards weilded pump shotguns. Bank guards, AR15 semiautomatic machine guns.

Filipino police don't mess around. Neither will I.

One Hundred and Twenty Hours

2009-04-26T03:39:00.000-07:00

More chaos reigned in five days than it has in any given five years of my life (though USMC Officer Candidate School several years back is a pretty competitive runner-up.) In one hundred and twenty hours, I've been to five countries, been on five flights, missed a flight, been broke, been hungry, and lost my luggage. In other words, it's been an adventure.

April 21 - Tuesday.

Tuesday was my last full day in Thailand, and, being about fifty miles from the border of Myanmar (Burma), I decided to venture in. I admit to feeling slightly on edge as I entered customs... Burma has a reputation, and for good reason. It's home to the world's largest child army, and the grisly scenes of Rambo IV are far from exaggeration. Burma is legitimately one of the worst places on earth.

I entered anyway. The Thai town of Mai Sai ended at a muddy creek which served as the countries' border, and continued on the other side, where it was known as Tha Chalek. The moment I stepped onto Burmese soil, I was assaulted by dozens of dirty, half-clad children chattering away in their local language (none of which I understood) and demonstrating their hunger by miming eating. I'd been told most of the kids in these sorts of crowds were owned by adults looking to make some money off of soft-hearted foreigners, but I couldn't resist, and distributed a handful of Baht.

Those kinds of conditions really make you think... how many screaming brats with Gameboys have it so much better, but still complain, back home? I saw a kid, no older than thirteen, sitting on a brick wall with a machine gun resting on his dangling legs. When I was thirteen, I was playing Donkey Kong. Seeing how the other half lives is sobering.

April 22 - Wednesday.

Off to Vietnam. I left on a flight from Chiang Rai to Bangkok noting that, strangely enough, I'd miss the place. I'd slept on a bench there, starved for three days, lived off my guitar, survived through a week of aqua-mayhem during the Songkran festival, and gotten a nasty stomach bug... not exactly a collection of Kodak moments. But I had overcome stacked odds and made it out alive, and for that alone I will remember it with a bit of fondness.

I landed in Bangkok, strategically wearing a neatral-colored shirt... the political tension in the region was far from over. In Chiang Mai I'd accidentally wandered into the middle of a political demonstration wearing a red shirt - the color of choice for the party trying to oust Thailand's current prime minister. My white collared shirt drew no interest, and I boarded my flight for Hanoi with no trouble at all.

Once landing in Vietnam, I got another strange feeling, similar to the one I'd gotten in Burma. Hanoi was plenty safe, having turned into a major tourism hub in the forty years since the end of America's involvment in the Vietnam Conflict. But to me it was a forbidden territory - all my knowledge of the region had previously come directly through the lense of the war. I'd studied texts, read books, watched films - I even completed my undergraduate thesis on the subject - and Hanoi was the home of the bad guys. No U.S. forces had made it that far north, and never would, unless they returned as noncombatants after 1973.

Walking through Hanoi's Old City district was particularly odd... gazing over it from my seventh-story hotel window yielded a view that was probably only slightly different from forty years ago. Even stranger was the fact that every guy over sixty walking around had almost certainly served during the war. It was oddly surreal. I was sad to have to leave the next day; the geek in my drooled at museums, historical sights, an old MiG fighter mounted on a display along the road. I knew I'd have to return one day.

April 23 - Thursday.

Familiarity is rare when traveling alone, but Malaysia afforded me a small bit of it... I'd been in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport almost exactly a month previously on my way from Australia to Thailand. I wandered the terminal, knowing where everything was, ate at the same Burger King, and relaxed. My flight to Manila didn't leave until the next morning, and I didn't have the money to head into town to stay the night (a special thanks to Visa here for not sending my credit card to me after I requested it, and a special thanks for my sister wiring me money to Manila so I'd be able to eat.) I crashed on an airport seat for the night, eagerly anticipating arriving in the Philippines.

April 24 - Friday.

Disaster greeted me with a big slobbery kiss. My flight had originated in Hanoi - Kuala Lumpur was just a connector - and nobody there told me there'd be a problem with my flight. They were so sure of this that they routed my bag to Manila, so I could pick it up there instead of having to find it in Malaysia and load it again. Such was not the case.

"Where's your ticket out of Philippines?" asked the check-in lady. My heart sank like a stone. Not again... I'd encountered the same problem heading into Thailand, but I didn't expect any problems. I explained that Hanoi had informed me everything was ok. Everything was not.

"You'll miss your flight. Sorry."

She didn't sound very sorry.

A four hundred dollar ticket was down the drain. If luck was a person I'd have broken both his arms. How freakin hard IS it to just have a normal trip? Desparate, I signed onto the internet at a kiosk in the terminal and started researching ticket prices. My original plan had been to make stops in Okinawa and Japan before heading home; the loss of my ticket effectively ended the duration of my trip at the Philippines. I'd have to head home.

Thanks to my sister's efforts in helping, I secured passage to Manila for the next day, as well as a ticket from Manila to Los Angeles. I'll return home on May 14.

April 25 - Saturday.

After hours of flight delays, I finally landed in Manila where, stupidly, there were no Western Union services. I had just enough Malasian Ringitt to exchange into enough Philippino Pisos for a ride to a guesthouse, where they allowed me to pay my bill when I picked up the money.

I have since picked up the money, paid my bill, and now I'm planning my last seventeen days abroad. If they're anything like the first eighty-four, I'm in for an adventure.

Awesome Things Which I Have Yet To Mention Until Now

2009-04-21T03:07:00.000-07:00

While there has been no small amount of adversity over my last two weeks of travel, the entirety of my Thailand experience hasn't been so bad. Far from it. Here's a few things which I've not yet written about that've happened during my stay in Southeast Asia:

1) The snake farm in Bangkok. Seemingly antithetical in name (it was called The Red Cross Snake Farm... haha) the complex housed scores of snakes, most of them poisonous. Given my long-standing affinity for snakes, not going was not an option. The two hundred Baht entry fee was worth every ...er, Baht, and featured a duo of fearless (brainless?) snake handlers doing their best to piss off a myriad of cobras and kraits. Quite a spectacle.

Afterwards I wandered the various terrarium exhibits, which housed the rest of the snakes... again, most of them poisonous. If I'd seen something like this as a seven-year-old, I would've peed my pants in excitement.

2) Thai boxing in Chiang Mai. It was absolutely epic... ten fights total, and nine of them were won by knockout. The one that wasn't was an eight-round slugfust, a classic matchup - the big, arrogant heavyweight guy versus the smaller, faster underdog. They beat the crap out of each other, and finally the judges called it for the smaller guy, his opponent stalking off angrily. It was highly entertaining, and left me with a sudden desire to get back into the tournament circuit when I get back home. Maybe I will.

3) A Chiang Mai rendezvous. About a month before I left for my journey, my good buddy Tim left for a year-long missions trip that'll span several continents. It turned out his team was leaving Cambodia and headed for Chiang Mai around the beginning of April - it worked perfectly with my schedule. It was very surreal... a day spent with conversations we'd have back home, but in a completely different context. The last hour before parting ways was spent over a pool table with Heinekens and Thai cigars... it stands as one of my favorite days of the trip thus far, and a memory that'll stick with me for a long time. (We also discussed the status of our pre-journey throwing-of-the-gauntlet... I'll write about it later. Suffice it to say, I am losing.)

4) Celebration of the Thai New Year, or Songkran Festival. It's little more than a waterfest... for an entire week, people drive around in pickup trucks with buckets of water drenching everyone in sight. No truck? No problem - run around the streets with a watergun, use the hose from a storefront... you name it, it happened, for an entire week. Nobody was exempt - children, foreigners, police officers, motorcyclists...

me...

I had a difficult time staying dry that entire week, but it was all in good fun, and in a way I'm glad I got stuck in Chiang Rai... if I hadn't I'd have been in Laos and would've missed it. Funny how that sort of thing works out.

That's all for now... tomorrow I'm headed for Vietnam, then Malaysia, then the Philippine Islands where I'll probably be for two weeks. After that... well... you'll know when I do.

A Zillion Years in Chiang Rai

2009-04-13T22:44:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like a little unexpected adversity to spice up a trip.

By now, I'd have expected to be somewhere in Cambodia, having traveled throughout Laos over the past couple days; I'd be on my way to Vietnam afterwards without a care. Pretty straightforward.

Then fate coughed, or tripped, or flatulated, or something equally negatively-toned, undermining my carefully-laid plans; arrival in a small town in northern Thailand was followed by a sudden realization that my VISA credit card was missing. Houston, we have a problem.

Houston had plenty of resources to fix their problems. Me, I had about sixty Baht (a little under two U.S. dollars) in my wallet, and absolutely no clue what to do. I'd met an Aussie guy on the way over, and he graciously let me use his phone, with which I informed VISA of the situation. They promised to send an emergency replacement card, which, I was told, would arrive Monday. It was Thursday night when I made the call; I'd have to spend three days surviving on 60 Baht if I was gonna pull it off. With little choice, I agreed.

The next several days were nothing short of miserable, with events transpiring to confound my every move. My last real meal had been a breakfast on Thursday morning, before leaving Chiang Mai; I wandered through Chiang Rai without a map or a clue, trying to figure out what I was going to do. The money would disappear quickly, I knew, and I'd have to plan wisely. My first thought was a wire transfer through a Western Union bank. With this in mind, I headed for the bank. There, I was informed of the process, but by the time I'd gotten on the internet and gotten the ball rolling, the bank had closed. The hours on the door were listed as 8:30 am to 4 pm. I decided to find a place to sleep and come back first thing in the morning.

After the internet cost and purchasing a slice of banana bread to sustain me for the day, I found shelter under a small pavilion on the outskirts of town, stretched out on the wooden bench, and went to sleep. It was surprisingly comfortable.

I showed up at the Bank the next morning, only to find it closed - the bank hours, I realized, were Monday through Friday. I was wandering in the scorching heat trying to figure out what to do, when a much graver thought occurred to me: Monday was the first day of the Thai New Year. The Songkran Festival, an annual tradition, would last three full days, during which everything would be closed - most notably, banks and post office systems. My heart sank at the realization. Hunger was tearing at my stomach; I reflected on the fact that I'd planned on being in Chiang Rai for one night, and I'd probably end up staying for at least a week.

I sat down on a bench outside a small bookstore and pulled out a small packet of EasyMac, left over from grocery shopping in Australia. I soaked the noodles in a canteen, poured cheese on top, and ate them cold, with the foil package as a bowl and the empty cheese container as a spoon. It was cold and disgusting, but to my empty stomach it was a steak dinner. I walked away feeling greatly refreshed.

By Saturday night I was in a hopeless spot. My last Baht had gone towards more internet, to follow up on the money wiring situation, and to a bottle of water (I was severely dehydrated.) I observed weekend-market stalls being assembled along the road; crowds were starting to show up. And at that moment, sitting on the steps of Bangkok Bank of Chiang Rai, I had one of the better ideas of my life.

I tuned up my guitar, which had been sitting idly next to me, regarded as an annoying piece of luggage to haul through the heat on an empty stomach, and situated myself on an empty portion of curb. I flipped my hat upside down and started playing and singing. (Those who know me know I can't sing at all, which goes to show just how desperate I really was.) Either I'm a much better singer than I thought I was, or God was answering my many prayers (I suspect that latter) because within a half an hour of playing, I had collected over 400 Baht in my hat. I was absolutely stunned. I packed everything up and ten minutes later, I'd located a cheap guesthouse for only 90 Baht a night. And the owner graciously offered to let me just run up a tab there - meals included - and pay it off when I had the money. No more sleeping in the street, which was a huge relief.

Moreover, the hotel was across the street from a Christian church, so I was able to attend Easter services. That was awesome. I didn't understand a word of the message, as it was in Thai, but the pastor seated me next to a guy who spoke enough English to make himself understood, and I was, through him, given enough information to follow what was going on. (In a strange twist of fate, it came out in conversation that his daughter attends UNC Chapel Hill. When he told me, I said "Tarheels National Champions" and he nodded vigorously, smiling broadly and giving me a thumbs-up.)

So the last five days have been massively stressful, and I'm still not out of the woods. I have to procure a visa to Vietnam, which costs about one hundred U.S. dollars, and takes several days to process. Moreover, I've got to schedule a flight to Hanoi, the city from which my plane to the Philippines departs - another one hundred dollars. I don't know if my credit card is actually going to arrive ( I had to send it to a post office, for lack of permanent address) and I'll need enough cash from getting wire transfers to last me the next two weeks, until I can get a more permanent place in Manila. Just thinking about it is giving me a headache.

But there's good news! I decided to give a shot at more guitar-playing, and set up last night in Chiang Rai's night bazaar. I used the same method, overturning my hat, tuning up, and belting out as many tunes as I knew. Cat Stevens, Green Day, Coldplay, Switchfoot, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Weezer, The Eagles, Smashmouth... you name it. I also played some catchy chord combinations and made up words to sing along, knowing nobody would know the difference:

Won't you goooooooooooooooo
With meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
If you don't you'll never know
Why there's a pineapple tree

Other such nonsense came out, but it turned out to be a good idea. It saved my from repeating myself ad nauseum and kept a steady flow of cash. At one point a missionary visiting from Miami to work in an orphanage showed up and talked to me for a while, which was immensely encouraging. He prayed over me as well, an effort which was not without significant effect; when I returned to my room three hours later, fingers worn to the bone, I counted my earnings.

Just short of 2000 Baht.

I was completely stunned; I hadn't expected a haul anywhere near that large. And though the next several days are rather tentative in terms of timing, I plan to milk the street performances for all they're worth, hopefully earning enough to pay for my visa to Vietnam by tomorrow.

More info coming, as it comes to me.

Left to right: Chiang Rai Night Bazaar where I played my guitar sets; the hotel room I stayed in for two weeks.

All I Want for Christmas is my One Front Tooth

2009-04-08T05:29:00.000-07:00

The first part of this story has absolutely nothing to do with the title, but sit tight. I'll get there.

I arrived in Chiang Mai sometime last week (I've almost completely lost track of what day of the week it is at any given time; it usually takes me a minute of thinking about it to recall. Such is the nature of my journey... idyllic, zephyrous, free of the constraints of time. The only date I need to know is April 23, which is when I have to leave SouthEast Asia.) A vast difference from the noise and bustle of Bangkok, Chiang Mai - about six hundred miles to the north, near the Burma/Laos border - is a large city by Thai standards, but clean, peaceful, friendly, and fun.

I'd met a guy in Bangkok who recommended Spicy Thai Backpackers, a hostel on the west end of town. With no idea where else to go, I took his advice, and after the overnight trainride up, took a tuk-tuk across town. It was only 250 Baht a night (U.S. $7.50) so I signed up.

The greatest thing about backpacking as a method of travel is its relaxed, lackidaisical atmosphere. Take a German, a Swede, an American, a couple Australians and a Canadian who might never otherwise talk to each other, stuff them in a hostel dorm room and suddenly everyone's best mates. My experience has been no exception. I had barely settled into my bunk when a girl from Baltimore and a guy from New Zealand showed up within minutes of each other. Introductions past, the three of us headed for a burger joint on the corner (Western food becomes a craving after a while) and by the time we returned, we'd decided to sign up for a jungle trek together. Completely random, and - as it turned out - completely awesome.

We left on Sunday (at least I think it was a Sunday) and met up with a few of our fellow trekkers, two girls from Malaysia. We rode in the back of a truck about an hour into the mountains, stopped at a small village smack in the middle of nowhere... it was like something out of Rambo (minus the explosions and Stallone sneaking through the rice patties with a hunting knife.) The only evidence of modernity was blue plastic pipes assisting in the irrigation; everything else indicated technology and traditions a thousand years old. Every building was bamboo with thatched roofs, a dirt road winding through the middle and up a slight incline; idle chatter mixed with the spordic barking of dogs. Walking around felt almost sacreligious, as though we were treading through someplace we weren't meant to be.

The villagers were friendly, and had booths out with locally-produced items for sale, a reminder that trekkers frequented the place. I bought some Thai cigars, and after an hour or so of exploration we headed back for the truck.

Our next stop was a small marketplace, where we bought water for the upcoming hike and met the rest of our trekking group. It was a jovial crew, as diverse in nationalities as ours: two girls from France, one from Scotland, a guy from Mexico and a Spaniard. Like us, most of them had just met a day or two previously.

Next was elephant riding. After a massive Thai lunch (I've discovered, with some surprise, that I'm an enormous fan of Thai food [I don't like Chinese or Japanese food]) we clambered atop the beasts and plodded down a trail. While it was a disappointingly mundane experience (imagine sitting on a smelly rock at .0003 MPH) the aesthetic value of it outweighed any problems. Most of my friends were snoring through lectures or imagining quitting their jobs. I was riding an elephant through steamy Asian jungles.

The rest of the day's itinerary was hiking through the jungle. It reminded me of humping Da Nang hill in Quantico during USMC OCS... in other words, absolutely horrendous. We came to a waterfall that cascaded down a thirty-foot rock face; it'd worn a groove into the rock, which happened to make a perfect natural slide. Pouring sweat, we dropped the bags, lined up at the top of the incline and shot down into the pool below. It was one of the more fun things I've ever experienced, and it cooled me down. We left for our destination with high spirits.

Spirits were high, but the mountain was higher, and the heat took its toll. The group split up into several differently-paced sections, bound for the mountain village. Hours later we reached the summit, drenched in sweat, calves screaming, completely exhausted. Our hotel was a very spare bamboo hut perched on the edge of a steep drop, the balcony facing a massive valley. Beds were straw mats on the floor with the obligatory mosquito nets hanging above. They weren't comfortable at all, but once again I reflected on the fact that I didn't have an 8 o' clock class in the morning or a clock-in time at work. Instead I was going rafting.

Thailand is currently in dry season, so the water levels were significantly lower... we were warned that the rafting wouldn't be quite as spectacular as in June or July, in the middle of monsoon season. After the long hike down the mountain punctuated only by a stop at another waterfall, the river was welcoming, high or low. We headed downstream in the rafts, hitting a couple of rapids but were never in danger of overturning, which is the fun part. Miles downstream we switched to flat bamboo rafts, which sat about a foot underwater... propulsion was by bamboo (are you noticing a trend here) pole. At one point we passed a group of elephants on the shore, drifting no more then several yards away. Two seconds after we were downstream they decided the river was a commode, and proceeded accordingly. Suddenly we were going a lot faster. The trip ended shortly thereafter; we clambered ashore and showered off, ate a lunch and headed back for Chiang Mai.

In May of 1998 I was playing street hockey in suburban Cincinatti and caught the back end of a slapshot right in the face. Blood was spilt, and half my tooth was gone. The dentist made a crown and glued it in place. That crown lasted almost exactly ten years.

Sometime on the ride back I noticed my left front tooth was slightly loose.

Three hours later I wondered why there was a piece of bone in my steak... it wasn't a bone. Suddenly I looked like a Neanderthal and had no way of NOT looking like one. And I was 12,000 miles from home. Big, big problem. Fix-o-dent held it in place for about six hours at a time, thankfully, but the biggest problem would be getting it permanently in place. I didn't feel like removing it to eat three times daily.

I found a dentist on the east side of Chiang Mai, and after about two hours of walking, found myself in a sparsely decorated waiting room. I rediscovered the impromptu nature of Thai business: I filled out a brief medical history form, walked into the room and sat on the chair, and the dentist asked what I needed done. The price was negotiated for 1000 Baht to glue it back in place permanently - less than thirty U.S. dollars. Without insurance.

Very quickly I wondered if I was getting exactly what I was paying for. After stabbing my gums with an pick to clear the base of the crown, the dentist placed a towel over my head. Clearly blindfolding me, I thought, so I couldn't see the Thai Tooth Machete when she pulled it out. Several near molar decapitations later, the area was clean and the tooth in place. I walked out no more than twenty minutes after having checked in as a first-time patient... rather efficient compared to U.S. standards.

So it's not December 25, but I'll raft the Mekong River into Laos tomorrow with my One Front Tooth. Merry Christmas, me.

2009-04-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

Bangkok was a shock. My arrival, as previously noted, absolutely blew me away; the second day there was spent getting acclimated to the culture, and by day three I was fully enjoying myself. The night markets were absolutely addictive, lined with literally thousands of vendors, and the streets clogged with all manner of traffic. Motorcycles were everywhere, accounting for fully half the vehicles on the street. As lights turned red, they'd swarm to the front of the pack, illegally jockeying for position and - as previously noted - hopping onto the sidewalks if all else failed.

Traffic in Bangkok (and Thailand in general) is absolutely wild, and a little bit intimidating... but it's also been the source of some of my favorite experiences thus far. Small tri-wheeled vehicles called tuk-tuks roam the streets constantly, pouncing on any walking Westerner: "Hey you want tuk-tuk? Where you go? I take you, very cheap!" I was wary of them at first; I'd heard stories of ignorant foreigners paying inflated fares, or accepting "free" rides to "tourist sites" which turned out to either be brothels or vastly overpriced souvenier shops, from which the driver recieved a petrol commission to bring customers. I wanted to avoid such rackets, so I walked. A lot.

Eventually, though, I gave in; they were a part of the culture and I had to indulge. I made sure the price - the average in Bangkok was 100 Baht, or about three U.S. dollars - was decent, the destination clear, and hopped aboard. It was awesome, and I've traveled on countless tuk-tuks since then. (My only bad experience was on the way to the train station... I got taken for a ride in precisely the wrong direction, recognized it, and insisted the driver take me to Hua Lamphong. He looked disappointed, but I had a hard time feeling sorry for him).

Every price in Thailand is negotiable... particularly fares. So when I approached a motorcycle driver in hopes of acquiring a ride across the Chao Phraya River to several of the nearby temples, I figured I'd try to barter down the price. "How much?" I asked.

"Ummm... t'irty!" was the reply.

"Fifteen," I countered.

Mistake.

He got visibly upset. "You pay T'IRTY!" he demanded, "or no ride."

I had exactly 29 Baht in my pocket and offered it, feeling somewhat miserly... it really wasn't that much to pay. But the driver snorted, pocketed it and told me to get on behind him. His compadres, standing around, said something to him and laughed. I think it was something to the effect of "Make sure he doesn't get there alive." The driver tried his best.

Before I could ask for a helmet, he floored it and I nearly flew off the back of the seat. We approached the bridge, which was stuck in a traffic jam... rows of cars snaked up and down the road. I figured we'd just slow down and wait behind the idling traffic like normal, sane human beings want to do. Clearly, I'd forgotten I was in Bangkok. It was like Short Round trying to drive Indiana Jones through downtown Shanghai in Temple of Doom.

He didn't have blocks strapped to his shoes to reach the gas, but the effect was about the same. Short Round cranked down on the throttle, blasting inbetween the rows of idling cars. I reflected on the fact that my hat, turned forward, might blow off due to our speed. Then I reflected on the fact that I was probably going to die, and forgot about the cap. I squeezed my knees in and considered taking Short Round's helmet and putting it on. I decided if we went down, he was coming with me, and his back was gonna be my helmet.

After dodging Toyotas, sideview mirrors, and tiny schoolchildren, we zipped to a sidewalk. Hat - check. Limbs - check. Somehow I'd survived it, and Short Round buzzed off 29 Baht richer. Now I'm in Chiang Mai, five hundred miles away, where motorcycles are the equivalent of five dollars a day to rent. It's gonna be a fun week. In fact, if you come to Thailand in the next week I'll give you a ride.

For 30 Baht, of course.

Motorcycles, an Elephant, and "Joe."

2009-03-27T03:55:00.000-07:00

Goodbye Australia, hello Thailand.

March 24 was my last day in the Land Down Under; I spent it traveling to the airport, unexpectedly booking a flight to Manila for next month, playing songs in the terminal, and reminiscing about my two months in the country. Flipping through my journal revealed more experiences, people, and places than I'd really realized had accrued: Getting stuck in the middle of the Wolgan River in a Suzuki with a burnt-out clutch, poisonous spiders, Surf n' Sun Backpackers and that famous punch, the Kiama highlands, biking through excruciating heat, the lighthouse at Fingal Head and the stolen groceries in Melbourne. Meeting Sarah, Alexandra, Kevin, Thomas, Ben, Martin, Chris, another Chris, Kurt, Alec, Alexander, Greg, Kita, Louise, Jamie, Kirsty, and that guy who looked like a cross between Slash and Hurley from LOST, re-meeting Bec and Nathan. Getting my groceries stolen in Melbourne, cooking noodles in the sink in Nowra, the pub crawl in Brisbane on St. Patty's Day, nearly falling to my death on a cliff, and wishing the U.S. had cities with cool names like Wollongong... truly unforgettable.

When I got off the plane in Bangkok, all of that disappeared completely from my mind. I couldn't have been more shellshocked if I'd landed on Mars. Bangkok was a parallel universe, different in every possible way.

It was already dark; the only place I knew of was Khao San Road, from reading Garland's The Beach during my stay in Katoomba. So I grabbed a bus there for 150 Baht (about six U.S. dollars) and sat for a very long ride through a city far more massive than I'd imagined. I got off smack in the middle of Khao San's famous street markets; blocks and blocks of merchants lined the sidewalks and roads, a veritable maze of food stalls, fresh fruit, musicians, and various drivers impatiently squeezing through the mass of humanity. Helloooooo, culture shock.

Too tired to shop around for cheap prices, I got the first hotel room I could find, for 1000 Baht a night... rather posh by Bangkok standards (by comparison, a halfway decent dorm in a backpacker's hostel runs around 250 Baht, a quarter of the price.) I crashed for ten hours straight, my first real sleep since Sunday night.

For the past two days, I've been walking, walking, and walking some more. I'm just now getting used to the atmosphere of the place. The streets are ever crowded, no matter where you go; I moved from Khao San to Silom Street, several miles south; the difference was hardly visible. Tuk-tuk drivers constantly pull up in their three-wheeled passenger carts, offering rides (then offering about three more times if you refuse.) Woefully underpaid Thai police do little to stem the rampant illegal driving moves; masses of motorcycles whiz between the lanes of cars, jostling to be at the front of the pack. Out of space on the road? Not a problem; the drivers have no qualms about roaring up onto the sidewalks to get through the traffic. No less than four times I've looked up to see some crazed Thai blasting straight at me. Thus far I have managed to avoid them.

Last night I wandered into Patpong, which, it turns out, is Bangkok's infamous red-light district, known for its pimps soliciting trafficked sex slaves. The streets were lined with dozens and dozens of brothels masquerading as "massage parlors." Out of nowhere a Thai pimp materialized next to me. "Hey where you from?" he asked, his tone friendly."

"America," I replied, looking straight ahead, sounding disinterested. I'd found that walking quickly and ignoring patronizing salesmen - whether they were peddling "massages" or ripoffs of Armani and Diesel products - usually gave them the hint.

This guy was clearly an exception. "My name Joe," he said, grabbing my hand and pumping it up and down. Resisting the urge to inform him that his name was obviously not Joe, I continued on. "I know goo' bar down the roa' you can go to," he said, somewhat conspiratorially. "You get nice massage there, very cheap."

"I'm just out for a walk, thanks," I answered, getting annoyed. Why wasn't this guy getting the hint?

"Massage very goo' for you, very cheap."

"No thanks."

"Very cheap!"

What was this guy's problem? I did a U-turn and headed back the other way, hoping he'd take the hint. Instead he hurried up beside me and, looking more conspiratorial than ever, made one last attempt. "Boomboom, you get lot boomboom, very cheap," he implored, apparently assuming naivete on my behalf. "I take you get boomboom, ok?"

I assured him I was not looking for boomboom and was simply out to take a walk, and turned away, continuing the rapid place. A few seconds later I dared a look behind me; "Joe" was gone, pursuing a new prospective client with the same zeal.

I wandered back to my hostel, browsing the stalls, and looked up just in time to see a gray mass right in front of me. It looked like an elephant's butt. I did a double-take; it was an elephant's butt. Not knowing if elephants kicked, I gave it a wide berth, observing it from the front instead. It was a baby Indian elephant, probably heavily drugged. At least it didn't try to run me over, or solicit me for boomboom, which was more than I could say for its Thai counterparts.

Thus ended Day One in Southeast Asia. Twenty-eight more to go... it's gonna be interesting.

Zephyricity

2009-03-24T22:37:00.000-07:00

My new favorite pasttime is coming up with ways to make the word "zephyr" an adjective. Besides being the the subject of an awesome Chili Peppers song, it's managed to become the perfect description of the spirit of this trip... it's poetic, unique in usage, and I am, very ironically and oxymoronically, a slave to my own whims.

And once again, zephyrology has reared its ideological head. Last night I was in the Brisbane International Airport, waiting a good twelve hours for a flight to Kuala Lumpur, in transit to Thailand, that'd been delayed. I passed the time with my guitar, which got me plenty of weird looks... and jealous ones. Suddenly everyone wished they had thought of bringing a guitar into the terminal with them... now they were stuck with Entertainment Weekly and a screaming kid. Have fun with that. I smugly enjoyed my tunes.

FINALLY the check-in opened for my flight, where I was promptly dealt a nasty surprise... the lady at the counter told me that in order to enter Thailand, you must have a ticket out of Thailand before arriving. I had no ticket out of Thailand, and intentions didn't count. I had five hours to figure out what I was gonna do, or I'd miss my flight. Talk about a kick in the face.

Cursing my luck, I managed to find an internet kiosk. I had made NO plans for this, and now I was forced to actually select a date and place when I'd done no research whatsoever. I had a couple of destination options that would've worked well; zephyresque tendancies prevailed, and I shrugged and typed in Manila. Hanoi, Vietnam to Manila, Philippine Islands. To purchase ticket, click here.

Click.

And just like that, on 23 April 2009 I'll fly to Manila. On a zephyr, of course.

New Destination(s)

2009-03-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

As has been the trend for this entire undertaking, plans are changing... this time, quite vastly.

The original post-Australia plan was to depart from northern Queensland to Port Moresby, New Guinea, and then fly from there to Honiara, Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands. My long-standing interest in the history of the region made it pretty high up on the to-do list; thus I was pumped to be able to explore it.

Then I found ticket prices.

It turns out that because it's such a small place, and because relatively few people travel there, flights in are extremely expensive; they hop from place to place picking up as many passengers as possible before landing. Obviously, this ups the prices; the cheapest thing I could find was a roundabout voyage jumping from city to city in Australia, over to New Zealand, all the way up to Fiji, and finally to Honiara. The price: $1200 USD.

For obvious reasons, this nixed my plans for the region; New Guinea was a little cheaper, but add in a flight out of the place and the cost was still much more than I was willing to pay. (Traveling around the world on less than seven thousand dollars doesn't lend itself to much flexibility, I've found out.) I'd been weighing several other options, so I looked for alternatives. I found them.

It's official: I'm going to Thailand. Yesterday I bought a ticket from Brisbane to Bangkok (with a bonus stop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.) I'll leave on March 24, a week from today's date.

There's several awesome things about it that led to my decision:

1) Southeast Asia is extremely inexpensive. I've talked to a number of people that've traveled there and it's legendary for being cheap... the exchange rate is huge, and I've heard of rooms being rented for less than a dollar a night. With my funds starting to drain rather rapidly, this is appealing. Very appealing.

2) There's a bunch of different countries in close proximity to one another. Besides Thailand, there's Burma to the west, and then Laos and Cambodia to the northeast and southeast respectively, and Vietnam on the other side of them. To say nothing of the compelling recent histories of the regions, that's gonna be a crapload of cool stamps in my passport.

3) A good buddy of mine is gonna be in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He's on a missions trip during the month of April, and it'll be a chance to spend some time, swap stories, and discuss our bet. (Before our respective departues, we threw down a gauntlet: whichever of us slays the greatest beast in our travels gets treated to a steak dinner with beer and celebratory cigars by the loser. His boot-crushed tarantula is winning; so far I've mashed an ant. Southeast Asia is a good place to work on that.

So the end result is that the last week of March and all of April will be spent in somewhere I never planned on going. What else is new?

Infinity at Dusk

2009-03-07T04:19:00.000-08:00

Pure white sand, blue-green ocean, utter solitude, and a guitar. It’s hard to find an experience more aesthetically pleasing. Relaxed in the evening sun, I faced the sea and picked through some Creed, and a little bit of Boston, noting how sore my fingers were from lack of practice. I’d bought the acoustic for about a hundred dollars in Byron Bay. Anyone who knows me knows I can’t walk by a guitar in someone’s house without picking it up and playing it… a full month without one had been absolute torture. So it was a good buy. And traveling by myself could get a bit lonesome; it’d be nice to have the company of a few self-produced tunes.

I dropped the low E-string down to a D and starting rolling through some Switchfoot; melodious acoustic rifts, mellow and soothing. “Stars lookin’ at our planet, watching entropy and pain…” I sang in unison with the rhythm of my pick. “And maybe start to wonder how the chaos of our lives could pass as sane.”

I love Switchfoot. I love how their songs ebb and flow, how John Foreman’s almost lackadaisical voice floats through sublime guitar pieces; sleepy, wandering musings. “I’ve been thinking ‘bout the meaning of resistance, of a hope beyond my own…” How they wax philosophical, explore the deeper, often existential, questions of life and death and other mysteries. I felt I could connect with these sorts of questions, particularly given the scope of my undertaking. While I occasionally met people in various places and had a bit of company, the vast majority of my journey has been – and likely will continue to be – in solitude.

It’s astonishing how embedded noise is in our lives. There’s always noise. We talk, the television blares, the phone rings, and the iPod fills the spaces inbetween. We’re accustomed to this audible blend, so much so that silence is as deafening as it is sudden. Faced with it, we can barely stand it. It’s maddening. Faced with days and days of it myself, I began to really articulate why. And after much deliberation, I realized that distractions, such as we surround ourselves with day to day, are mechanisms which we construct to keep from having to think.

Perhaps we are afraid to think. It is clearly evident in our lives how precariously our happiness is balanced; a fickle thing, it can be easily toppled by a trifling, and increased by the same. To reflect on ourselves and to consider our condition – our miniscule place in the midst of a vast sea of infinities – is nothing short of horrifying. Blaise Pascal said it perfectly in Pensées: “…let man consider what he is in comparison with all existence.; let him regard himself as lost in this remote corner of nature; and from the little cell in which he finds himself lodged, [the] universe, let him estimate at their true value the earth, kingdoms, cities, and himself. What is a man in the Infinite?”

Who wants to ponder this? No one… American Idol is on, and there’s too much to do after that. And solitude is just so damn boring. After all, ignoring gravity means it doesn’t exist, right? That’s why we can spread our arms and fly, right?

But we can’t fly.

We crash and burn.

Maybe it’s time we started reflecting on this. I strummed a few more bars, finishing the song: “Suddenly the infinite and penitent begin to look like home…” A harmonious closure followed and I noted the strong hue of dusk. The sea was a strange sort of topaz, ever darkening. As I trudged up the shore through the sand I noticed the first few stars glimmering in the oncoming night. Two tiny stars, visible in front of many more, many more than I could ever count. I gazed at infinite; there’s a lot of it.

Itches, Scratches, and One Helacious Mountain Climb

2009-02-28T17:27:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Newnes, Australia, where everything you see will bite you.

Population: 3

I'm gonna start a petition to change the Newnes greeting sign to the above text. While there are conceivably one or two species of bug that didn't bite me during my week-long stay in the mountains, the rest of it's accurate. The abandoned mining town's population rose by 33% when I arrived late Monday afternoon. For a week, a quarter of the population was named Phil.

Welcome to the world of the WWOOF program (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) where you never know where you'll end up. Thomas, a smallish man of German descent, was my new boss... the goal of my week-long tenure being to assist in constructing a brick water tank. His property was 40 acres in the middle of the gorgeous Wolgan Valley canyons; its primary feature a century-old hotel/saloon in the process of being refurbished with the ultimate goal of becoming a tourist haven. Solar powered with a water purification system and sewage treatment plant, the property was entirely self sufficient. Apparently the water supply from the mountains was slighty acidic, and the best remedy was to create a filtering tank, constructed of brick and mortar, and consisting of a chamber filled with crushed marble, a base substance which would - in theory - neutralize the ph level of the water and reduce its acidity.

My initial job was to get sand from a nearby creek to mix in with the cement for the tank's base. The job was daunting for several reasons. I'd have to drive an old four-wheel-drive Suzuki across a river with an empty trailer attached to the back, turn around on the other side of the river, load it up with sand, and then drive back across. The steering column was on the right and I hadn't driven a manual transmission in years. I was filled with a sense of foreboding. Here goes nothing.

Thomas had forgotten that the Suzuki's clutch was mostly burnt out. Halfway across the river I got stuck. 4WD high, 4WD low, 2WD... nothing would work. Finally I threw it in reverse and rambled back up on the shore. Determined to make it work, I floored it and roared across the ford, blasting water in every direction, slowing down but grinding up onto the opposite shore. I was exultant, but only for a moment; the stupid thing wouldn't climb the hill so I could turn around. I got halfway up and started drifting backwards... it turns out the brakes were gone too, so jamming the pedal to the floor only partially slowed it.

Somehow I managed to get it turned around and facing the direction I'd come from. Shovel after shovel of sand filled the trailer; exhausted, I clambered back into the Suzuki, threw it into gear, and floored it. When it grumbled to a halt halfway across again, and the acrid odor of burnt clutch filled the cabin, I knew something was wrong. This time it wasn't going anywhere. Cursing my luck I, jumped into the river, and proceeded to shovel the entire load of sand back into the waters from whence it came.

Even lightened, the rig barely made it back to shore. There I reloaded it with a smallish portion of sand and gunned it up the embankment. By this time Thomas showed up, wondering what was taking so long, and then remembered the clutch's terrible condition. "We'll just use the Ute," he said, referring to his utility vehicle. "Drive that up to the site and dump it and we'll retire the thing for the day."

The site was halfway up a mountain.

Bouncing and crashing up a horrendously-formed dirt track, I drove about three quarters of the way there, made a left up a hairpin curve, and... you guessed it... the thing died. The verdict: out of gas! I yanked the emergency brake as far back as it would physically reach, wedged heavy rocks under the tires, and refilled the thing. Even fueled up it would go no further, thanks to the clutch problem; we ended up just tossing the sand onto the ute and coasting the Suzuki back downhill, where it stayed for the rest of the week. Good bloody riddance.

I stayed in the beautifully-constructed holiday cabins on the property, welt-scratching my nightly ritual. My lower arms and legs were mottled with bug bites, mostly from spiders. Some spider with a sick sense of humor bit a smiley-face pattern into the top of my left foot. I wished I could meet that spider and smile back at him. And then stomp him into the freaking floor.

All week we worked, mixing mortar and laying bricks, mowing grass, constructing plumbing fittings, etc. Most days we finished by around 2 pm, and I was able to go on walks. I must've trekked a good 50 km over that week; my legs were exhausted every night, but it was well worth it. One climb ascended a mountain on railroad tracks that'd been abandoned since the early 1930's... when it reached the treeline that separated foliage on the right from sheer cliffs on the left, it was like being dropped into the Jurassic era. The trail wound through a narrow canyon, humid and cool in contrast to the dry heat of the day, with bizarre palms and exotic shoots of flowers rising from the spindly creek on the rock floor. The trail halted in front of an enormous abandoned railroad tunnel, a foreboding presence of yawning blackness.

In I went.

My dying flashlight was a pittance against the enveloping blackness - the tunnel curved, which led to absolute darkness, absence of all light. Luckily I didn't need any... the walls were dotted with hundreds of thousands of tiny glowworms. I switched off my light and stood in awe as irridescent blue blotches surrounded me. It was like stargazing... almost an unearthly experience. A half-kilometer later the tunnel dumped back out into the open, and I found myself disappointed.

The walk back to Newnes was another good 10 kilometers; seven or so into it the trail disappeared. I wandered for a half an hour trying to find it, couldn't pick it up, and decided to blaze my own trail back. I knew the river was to the west, so I trudged through the bush, following the setting sun until I could hear the Wolgan River in the distance. Alternately walking and listening, I navigated my way to the riverbed, crossing on an enormous tree that'd fallen and connected the two shores. I simply followed the river into Newnes, arriving a little over an hour later.

As if that wasn't enough of an adventure, two days later I hiked up Mystery Mountain. It was aptly-named, because finding the trail was an absolute mystery. Following the previous hike's logic I decided to make my own way up the moutainside. This time it didn't turn out so well.

The terrain was heavily sloped, rocky, and slippery. Footing was precarious and by the time I reached the cliff base that led to the top, there was no trail and no way up. I considered just leaving, but decided instead to follow the cliff base and find a way up.

I clambered across little ridges in the ground, snagging onto a nearby eucalyptis tree everytime my footing failed. At times I walked mere feet from two or three hundred foot drops down sheer rock walls, found no way around the edge, and had to climb near-vertical stretches of wind-worn rock face. It was one of the scariest things I've ever done, gingerly picking my way along footholds and crevices, no safety gear, nothing. Just my wits and prayers. Heart beating out of my chest, twice I slipped and hurtled momentarily towards the edge, latching onto tree trunks or rock outcroppings and stopping myself.

In retrospect, it was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done... certainly the most dangerous, the scariest, and arguably the most fun. Eventually I found the original trail and struggled up a tiny fissure in the cliff, another hundred feet to the top. The view was absolutely magnificent; I let out an involuntary yell as I finally stepped onto the summit. A devil-may-care climb was rewarded with sweeping panoramic views of Wollemi wilderness: plunging canyons surrounded by wind-eroded cliffs in every direction. Absolute solitude; just me, my Creator, and ten billion itchy bugbites. I downed the rest of my water, took a few pictures, and half-slid down the mountain on the way back. You don't realize how steep a mountain is until you descend it... balance is much more difficult to keep.

Thus ended my Newnes adventures. I departed Saturday morning satisfied both in the completed water tank and the week's mountaineering. I'm now in a hostel in Katoomba (still in the mountains, but with a five-digit population this time) planning out my next move.

Whatever it is, Newnes will be hard to top.

Call me Farmer Phil.

2009-02-21T03:15:00.000-08:00

Actually, never ever ever call me Farmer Phil if you want to retain my friendship. I only used that term because it's late and I don't have the cognitive power to conjure up a different title. Just throwin' that out there.

As of Monday, 23 February 2009, I will technically be a farmer. Here's how it happened.

After selling my bike (and my original plans with it) I left Ulladulla with my new 'wherever the wind blows' philosophy in full gear. I had no clue where I was going to go next... up to Queensland? South, to Adelaide? At the last second I randomly decided Melbourne, one of the destinations of my original cycling layout. If fires were a problem, the bus would be faster than my on a bike.

The bus left Ulladulla at 8:30 pm... twelve bumpy, sleepless, atrociously-uncomfortable hours later I was in Melbourne, Australia. I wandered the city for a few hours; the number of people on the streets was directly proportional to how high in the sky the sun was... at 7:30 a.m. it was a ghosttown. By 10:00 the streets were clogged.

I checked into a hostel for two days and explored the city. There was nothing overly spectacular... just another big city, really. I liked Sydney better. I went grocery shopping that evening, only to have most of my stock stolen the next day. Uncool. The loss of my food kind of got me down; I'd have left Melbourne bummed about the overall experience had it not been for meeting a group of Israeli girls who randomly invited me to join in a card game. It was a lot of fun... I learned an Israeli army card game, and a ton of Hebrew, some of which I actually remember. It turns out my name is one little dot away from meaning "elephant" ...a somewhat dubious honor, I think.

Bored with the big city, I decided to return to Sydney and head north, to see the Queensland coast. Everyone I'd talked to said it was the best place to go, so... why not? I hitchhiked through a tunnel and out of the city, then took a train, and finally another uncomfortable bus ride to get to Wollongong. I stayed there for a a night, meeting up with Sarah and Alex, two Austrian girls I'd met a week before in Ulladulla... officially the coolest people I've met on the trip so far. They gave me a ride into Manly, Australia... just outside the North Sydney city limits. I stayed at a hostel there for a day, enjoying the beach and planning my next move.

I'd heard from a few people about Willing Workers On Organic Farms (WWOOF), a program designed to let foreigners without work visas exchange free room and board for five hours a day worth of work. Sarah gave me some more information about it; you had to purchase a membership, it seemed, to join. My money running low pretty quickly, I decided to go for it. Free food and accomodation would make living pretty inexpensive.

I rode the ferry into Sydney the next morning. An hour later I was sitting in Backpacker's World Travel, and office for ...well... helping backpackers travel the world. Sixty bucks poorer, I had the WWOOFing manual in my hands. Time to get down to business. Miraculously, I found a hostel for twenty bucks a night in the middle of downtown Sydney... with free internet, no less. I checked in, got my stuff situated, and started emailing contacts.

Two hours later I got a response. A guy rennovating a hotel for tourism purposes in the Blue Mountains, 100 km west of Sydney, agreed to sign me on as hired help for landscaping, general construction, and ...yea, farming. I was stoked beyond all belief to get a response so soon (twenty or so more would pour in over the next two days.) Then the guy sent me a website link to the views from the place I'm staying in.

I nearly wet myself. I'm not going to post any pictures from the site; I'll take some myself and upload them. The place is spectacular by digital image; I'm sure in person it'll be even more so. Since then I've spent time enjoying the city; including walking a mile from the hostel to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge at night, where I took a picture of the Opera House. Absolutely amazing view.

Tomorrow I have off, and Monday I'll catch a ride to Newnes, Australia. What awaits me there? Who knows. But remember. Don't ever, ever, ever call me Farmer Phil.

The end.

Carolinian Coverage: Column Two

2009-02-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

Here's the newest article, special column exclusive to The Carolinian, available for reading a good seven or eight hours before anyone else will read it. This is crucial, as my column is clearly the only important news out there, right? (Much of the content is new to followers of the blog, but offers a different take of the hard data already recorded.)

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17 February 2009

Urgency, urgency. A mere three days after departing from Sydney by bicycle, I was stressed and worried; my ambitious scheduling was staring me in my sweaty sunburnt face, and self-imposed deadlines grabbing me by the throat. Bushfires were burning out of control in the region I'd planned to cycle through. Before leaving the states I had thoroughly planned every leg of my voyage with excruciating detail, mapping my projected mileage goals for the day, precise routes, and rest stops, with Google Earth, geographical maps and Lonely Planet as my guides. I made sure there was no room for error; and it never quite occurred to me that exorbitantly-detailed, rigidly-structured itineraries were the exact opposite of wandering, which was what my journey was all about. I was blind to the absurdity of my antithetical methodology - and I would've stayed that way, but for solitude and the sea.

One cannot properly speak of, or comprehend, the word power until witnessing the mighty Pacific dash against a sea wall. The explosion of foam, the salty surf hurled into the air; tossing, plunging, roaring... never ceasing. The sun precisely positioned in the sky so that the surf's eruption creates for the briefest moment an iridescent rainbow; disappearing just as quickly with the vertical plunge of the water's return. What beauty, what glory to behold! Perhaps a glimpse of infinite, comprehendable at last - if only microcosmically - on a craggy outcropping on the other side of the world.

I'd been in Wollongong only a day and already I was going to miss it. The lazy afternoons, the salty breeze, the friendly laughter with the evening sun... time stands still here, I wrote in my journal. Gives a man a chance to breathe, to think; to collect his thoughts, to perhaps jot down a sonnet, or read a book, or simply relax in the shade. No hurries, no worries... just a man in the shadow of nature.

The seagulls... they know nothing of deadlines. What cares have they? "That's why seagulls don't rule the world," one might reply. "NASA didn't get to the moon by napping on a rock by the sea." Aye, perhaps, but what of the heart and the soul? In the end, what good is ambition as a means to its own end? Give me beauty and a pen and I'll find my way to the moon.

Why do we find this so hard to embrace in our everyday lives?

Days later, I have found new life in my journey... I am no longer hurried, no longer a details-man. I have slowed down. I have skipped rocks in a harbor in Ulladulla, sketched the view of the Pacific coast from the rolling Kiama highlands, ukulele-jammed with a German on holiday; read French philosophy in Melbourne and searched for conch shells in a rocky alcove. I sold my bicycle, and with it my plans. I'll take it as it comes, one day at a time. Rivers Cuomo said it best:

Don't bother to pack your bags

Or your map

We won't need them where we're goin'

We're goin' where the wind is blowin'

Not knowin' where we're gonna stay

I think he's onto something there. So who knows what I'll do next... maybe learn to surf in Wollongong, or hitchhike to Adelaide. Maybe I'll skydive over Brisbane or kayak in Cairns. "Wherever the wind blows" is my refreshed journey philosophy... and I'm feeling a breeze.

Situational Calibration

2009-02-10T20:13:00.002-08:00

There's only so much you can actually plan out on a trip like this, I've found, and have it turn into reality. Much pops up unexpected, events occur, obstacles arise... the works. Such is my position, and I'm reanalyzing the trip in this light. Several things in particular have risen as issues in the current path of my trek.

First and foremost is the Victorian Bushfires. I'm about 100 kilos from reaching the New South Wales and Victoria border, and the danger isn't any less. New fires are kicking up every day out of seemingly nowhere, the death toll in the region has eclipsed 200, and the entire area is under Insanely Red Alert (at least it should be.) I don't fear my own mortal demise, but I'd prefer not to become Philtoast, outback style.

Secondly is my innate longing to explore, which is very much hindered by my bike. As much fun as it is riding down the coast, I'm bound to my wheels... I can't explore anything, hike through the bush, walk the beach. I have a bike lock but there's too much stuff packed on the bike to just leave sitting anywhere... I feel like I'm getting a fantastic view of Australian pavement, but that's about it. Everything I see is from a distance, or right next to the road.

Given these, I'm considering ditching the bike (not literally... I'll send it back home) and backpacking Australia instead of biking it. While not quite as exhilerating as my original intent, nor as distance-conscious, it would give me an enormous ammount of freedom to explore, and to relax and see the sights... it would also prove much cheaper in the long run. When cycling I can't just stop somewhere and cook lunch... due to the bushfires, ALL fires are illegal. I don't have the means to carry food with me as I'm already completely loaded down as it is... the end result is a lot of eating out, which is insanely expensive, and too many hotel stays because camping without fire = one hungry phil.

My biggest regret initially when planning the trip was the inability to really explore the Queensland coast, and the Great Barrier Reef. So the new plan will be to backpack up the coast instead... my route to the Stuart Highway - and the main part of my original trip plan - is blocked by the fires. In addition, locals have warned me that the heat is so bad this summer that many of the small towns along the desert road have closed down until the fall. This throws a wrench in the original plan as well, since my existence in the desert was contingent on these places being open. That portion of the journey I may have to save for another day.

Sooooooo we'll see what happens. I'm a bit disappointed that the original plan appears to have an undermined base, but I'm equally excited to be able to explore a region I'd been wanting to see. Hinchinbrook Island is off the Queensland coast as well, so I'll definately be able to make it there... one of my prime concerns was my projected inability to do so because of time and cost.

My plans for the next few days are, thus, at the mercy of my own whims. As will be the rest of my time in Australia. And come to think of it, it'll be a whole lot more fun that way.

you don't know 'awesome' until you've been to kiama.

2009-02-09T22:02:00.000-08:00

A few updates:

Sunday: I chilled in Wollongong for the entire day, relaxing, map-checking, and preparing for the next day's journey... 113 Fahrenheit that day, definately not riding conditions. I also set foot in the Pacific Ocean for the first time in my life, and then sat on a craggy seawall, watched the booming surf, and reflected on life. More on that later.

Monday: I left pretty early in the morning; my goal was to reach Nowra by nightfall. The sky was mercifully cloudy, sparing me of the agonizing heat. The first third of the ride was fairly enjoyable, as the route hugged the coast and was flat for the most part. Easy riding. Then the middle third ripped out my lungs as I plowed up massive inclines; the Kiama Highlands proceeded to make it worth the pain. The views were absolutely spectacular. The terrain leveled out after that and I rolled through some more flat areas, including through seven miles of swampy bush.

Somewhere along the line my brakes decided to not work... the front ones are completely shot, and I have to use the rear ones now. As I contemplated this, every cloud on the east coast of Australia emptied itself on my head... I rolled into Nowra drenched, sore and completely exhausted. There was no place to camp, and it was almost dark, so I rode around town for the next half hour looking for a cheap place to stay. I managed to find a reasonable rate.

Once in the hotel I realized just how starving I was... but I didn't want to actually spend money on food. Expenses were mounting like crazy, far more than I'd expected. I had a bag of noodles and a can of chunky beef soup, but there was nothing to cook them with... so I proceeded to turn the bathroom into a makeshift kitchen. I poured water from the showerhead into the coffeemaker and boiled it; I poured the boiled water into four separate mugs of noodles. The can of soup I opened and sat in the sink, plugging the bottom, and poured the boiling water around the can. Ten or so loads of boiled water later, the sink was full and the soup was getting hot. I changed out the noodle water when it got cold.

The noodles were slightly undercooked, and the soup wasn't as filling as I'd hoped, but I saved some money and had a lot of fun doing it.

Tuesday: Rain. I'd planned to leave around 6 am so I could shoot for Bateman's Bay by the end of the day, but it didn't stop raining until 10 am. It was pretty frustrating... luckily it slowed down soon after I got on the road. Around 2 pm the bolt holding my rear rack popped out and the rack jammed against my wheel. Miraculously I found the bolt, and then spent a good half hour trying to get the bloody thing back in place, parked on the side of the road in a cloud of flies and rainshowers. A good day all in all, but easily the most difficult day thus far. Hills exploded up and plunged down, not leveling out until a city block from the backpacker's hostel where I booked a night.

Camping is proving to be a bit difficult... finding a spot where it's legal isn't overly hard, but trying to time it with the end of a day's journey is. Backpacker's hostels are relatively cheap and a lot of fun, so I've mostly been staying in those. Expenses are soaring... everything in Australia is a lot more expensive (a number one meal at mcdonalds comes out to about $9.00 USD) and I may have to readjust my planning of the trip due to it. It's something I'll have to simply play by ear.

I'd write more but it's beachtime for Phil.

The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

2009-02-07T16:29:00.000-08:00

"G'day mate," said Adversity, searing my body with 110 degree heat and stripping me of every drop of hydration in my body.

This journey might be a bit more difficult to pull off than I originally thought.

One thing after another has obstructed me. The back of my helmet smacks up against the rack of my backpack - which, conveniently, is non-adjustable - and there's no way at all to get around it. I can't lean my head back... when going up hills I have to lean my entire body back, or cock my head to the side and look out the corner of my eye. Then my bike decided to have technical difficulties... downshifting below second gear would cause the chain to pop off the rear wheel and jam inbetween the gears and the shifting mechanism, a problem which I've still not solved.

Then came the hills. Gigantic, rolling monsters... half-mile inclines snaking through the mountain ranges as the terrain exploded from sea level to 500 feet above it in five miles. Absolutely grueling... yesterday, my second day on the road, I was trying to time the ride so I'd reach Wollongong by noon to avoid the heat. Ten kilometers out I completely ran out of energy... I could barely even push my bike up the hills by that point. I'd sucked all four canteens of water bone dry... dehydration was kicking in and I had the sunburn to beat all sunburns.

I swallowed my pride, stuck out my thumb, and caught a ride into town... if I'd been able to make it another hundred yards, the rest of the way was one long downhill slope to the Pacific coast. I checked into a local hostel, booking two nights at $20 a night... Sunday (today) was forecasted to reach a blistering 113 degrees. No way I'm riding in that.

So the end result is, I'm absolutely baking, and sore, and tired... but having the time of my life. I may have to plan the trip a bit differently due to the heat... it'll probably take me significantly longer to reach Melbourne than I'd originally though. I'll play it by ear. I picked the hottest summer in 70 years to come make this trip... you may refer to me as 'Master of Timing.' Thank you very much.

Pictures coming... as soon as I figure out how to get 'em loaded onto a regular PC. My PDA isn't being very helpful. Cheers mates

They say "cheers mate" a lot...

2009-02-04T23:30:00.000-08:00

After a year of planning, poring over maps and blogs and prices and logistical calculations, I'm in Australia.

The year it took me to get here didn't feel anywhere near as long as the two days it took me to fly from Raleigh, NC to Sydney, Australia. It was rediculous. After hauling my awkwardly-packaged bike into the airport in North Carolina (and paying a $50 oversized-package fee) I was off... my last view of Greensboro was from 15000 feet, a twinkling blur in the hazy purple twilight. For a moment I waxed sentimental, realized I was leaving behind everyone I know and love. Then I remembered they had to get up and go to work in a few hours, and I was on my way to summer beaches, and then everything was alright. (Sorry guys.)

I stopped in Denver during a layover, and caught my first glimpse of the Rockey Mountains in a decade... I hadn't seen the front range since I lived there years and years ago. Once I landed in Los Angeles (lovely from the air, but officially the most overrated city ever) I found my bicycle's makeshift box ripped wide open in several spots... there's no way it would ever make it to Australia in that condition. I spent the next hour piecing together strips of cardboard from the baggage service office, and taping them on with a full roll of packing tape acquired from the same location. I finished it up well enough, but I was still worried about how well the thing would hold up. Luckily some awesome guy named Marcus walked up with a roll of packing plastic and offered to help... five minutes later the thing was completely cocooned. Bears couldn't tear the thing apart, it was so well wrapped.

My next flight was to Fiji, but I had ten hours to kill before departure. Because baggage checkin times weren't until about two hours before the flight, I had to sit with my bike in the middle of a crowed airport until then. Audio security tapes in constant loop announced that any packages left by themselves would be promptly removed by security. So I babysat the thing for the next eight hours, alternative reading Pascal's Pensees and sleeping on the floor. Concrete is NOT comfortable.

Finally I was able to check my bike, and my bag (which had my camera in it, which meant it wouldn't be available once I arrived in Fiji... the bags were automatically transferred to the next flight. I realized this too late.) I slept a couple of hours on the way to Fiji, and landed there just as the sun was coming up. Sore from the long flight, I staggered off the plane, miffed that I didn't have my camera... the scenery was beautiful, a row of tropical mountains exploding from the grassy plains surrounding the airfield.

Four Fijians were waiting in the terminal with guitars and mandolins, singing and playing to greet travelers. It was pretty awesme, but all the lyrics sounded like variations of the word "Bula" ("hello" in Fijian.) "Bula bula buuuuuuula bulaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa buuula bulabulabulabulabulabulaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa bula..."

Pretty much just like that. It was still cool.

FINALLY i arrived in Sydney. It was surreal, getting off the plane and going through customs... my head in a whirlwind, I tried to contemplate that I was here at last. The very first thing I did was purchase a prepaid cellphone in case I needed to contact somebody. I hadn't thought of it until I saw the booth... definately a good move. Right next to it was a hostel directory; I called around to find the best prices, and ended up at a place for $28 a night with free breakfast. Not a bad price for a room in the middle of the largest city in Australia.

I booked two nights; the first one all I did was sleep, from 7 pm until the next morning. I was bloody exhausted. (They say 'bloody' a lot here too.) I woke up this morning and killed about five bowls of rice krispies and a half a loaf of bread, and then spent the rest of the day wandering the city. I had to have walked a good ten miles total, seeing everything from the famed Sydney Opera House to the botanical gardens to Chinatown to the King's Warf. It was complete awesomeness. And only in Sydney do you find an open-air McDonald's with pigeons chilling on the stools inside. I'd love to know what the health code standards are for that place... reflecting on how gross that is, I ate there.

So I'm alive and very well. I begin the biking portion of the trip tomorrow morning... I'll take the bike package to a nearby park and pull it out, assemble it, and navigate my way out of the city. I haven't quite found a way to upload pictures yet, so I don't yet have any to display... doing so might be a bit more difficult than I'd imagined. We'll see how it goes.

More updates soon! Keep checking back.

Leaving.

2009-01-14T17:31:00.000-08:00

It takes something powerful, something vast, something beyond the ordinary scope of day-to-day life to inspire a man to simply leave. To pick up his life and willingly abandon success and security. The desire for something greater must fully intoxicate a man's soul to extracate him from the concrete web of ties, of keyboards, and the numbing security of the nine-to-five.

About a year ago, shortly after I decided to seriously pursue the idea of my journey and make it happen, I wrote in my journal:

17 March 2008

This morning I woke up to enormous doubt. My mind screamed at my heart.

What stupidity! My life is just fine... I go to bed each night with full knowledge of what'll happen the next day. I have nothing to fear. I have two large windows that let the sun roast me under the covers in the morning. And I have opportunities. I could probably become a manager by summer. Finish with school, work my job for a few years. maybe get married sometime down the road.

My heart listened to my head, nodded politely, and then rolled its eyes. Same old speech. The rat race. The American Dream. Red, white, blue, and green - live your life to get money, have things, be someone - and then die.

And that terrifies my heart. It is more than an invitation to surrendur. It is a death sentence.

There is something epic about the prospect of dropping all and just leaving. It calls to the heart, whispers in the quiet moments, startling the unguarded soul. Its call is alluring... it is wild, and dangerous. It's what our hearts are longing for, unfulfilled in the dull humdrum of daily life. And it's so close. But there is a price to be paid for such fulfillment: for to leave is to leave behind, and to lose that which we have already attained is perhaps the greatest of fears. There comes a choice to be made.

For myself, I have chosen.

The Official Itinerary

2008-12-24T14:55:00.000-08:00

Following is a detailed overview of my upcoming journey; each country's entry follow by a map or picture for clarification and visual context (unless it's a country everybody's already familiar with.)

To begin, I will:

...depart from Raleigh/Durham International Airport on 2 February 2008, and arrive in Sydney, Australia on 4 February 2008. Layovers will be in Denver, Los Angeles, and a full day in Fiji... which is actually one of the most exciting parts of the trip, and it was entirely unplanned. I've always wanted to go to Fiji, and it just happens to be a stop along the way. You can't get much better than that.

Australia

The fun begins once I reach Sydney. My bicycle will have been sent as luggage… almost entirely disassembled and packed tightly into a box. (My backpack will be my carry-on.) Once I get off the plane I’ll have to find the thing, drag it out of the airport (it’s probably gonna be heavy) and reassemble it so I can get started. Pitching my tent in the middle of Australia’s largest city probably won’t quite work, so I’ll likely stay in a cheap hotel the first night, get my bearings, and fully prepare for the hotel-less days ahead. February 5 is the last date of which I am certain; that’s the day I’ll begin the cycling portion of my journey. The entirety of timing thereafter is rather ambiguous; when I get there, I get there.

I’ll roll out of Sydney, headed for Melbourne (I’d like to hop over to Tasmania, but I’m not sure if it’s all that practical.) Once I reach the west side of Melbourne I’ll finally be done with the city and headed into open farming country, the ocean a mile to the south of my route. Two hundred miles later I’ll reach Adelaide, then ride for Port Augusta, at which point I’ll bid civilization a farewell. From there it’s thousands of miles across a barren desert outback, via the Stuart Highway. I’ll ride North, traveling in the late evenings and at night by light of the moon to stay cool (February is the equivalent of August in the states, and the summer heat is blistering.) Up through Alice Springs and beyond, to Tennant Creek, finally swinging eastward and finishing the ride by arriving near Cairns, on the northwestern coast of the continent.

Nearby is Hinchinbrook Island, the biggest island in the Great Barrier Reef. Entirely uninhabited, it looks like something out of LOST; towering mountains, lonely beaches, dense jungle, tumbling waterfalls, and roughly-hewn trails. And crocodiles. Giant freakin crocs. In other words it’s a haven of complete awesomeness. I’ll take a boat over with as much rations as I can manage to carry on my back and subsist there for as long as I can manage, spending my time exploring the island, mapping it, climbing the mountains, taking pictures… enjoying the solitude and the immensity of the beauty.

New Guinea

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time just staring at maps. The world atlas was my best friend. (I was a very strange child.) For some reason I decided New Guinea was the most awesome place in the world and I became obsessed with it. While I’m no longer obsessed with it, it still looks wicked cool, and Port Moresby is very close to Australia. It’s also of great historical interest in the context of the early stages of the Second World War, so as a history geek I’m pretty psyched to be visiting.

Solomon Islands

Speaking of significance in historical warfare, Guadalcanal is smack in the middle of the Solomon Islands, and the capital – Honeraiu – is my next destination. If I take a plane, I’ll be landing on the very airfield that thousands of U.S. Marines defended against midnight Japanese onslaughts in 1943. A mile’s walk south into the jungle will place me directly in the middle of a graveyard of rusted out tanks, shell casing, and aircraft long-ago shot out of the sky. I plan to take as many of these walks as possible.

The Solomon Islands is an archipelago, stretched SE-NW in two nearly parallel lines, islands on either line. Naval conflict in the region in the 1940’s was largely focused on the center of this waterway, known popularly as “The Slot.” Numerous naval battles occurred up and down this stretch during the assault on the Solomon Islands; the same waterway is traversed daily to this day. I will follow suit, traveling northwest up the Slot from Guadalcanal; my next destination is Bougainville, particularly its tiny capital city of Buin. Here again, my long-time obsession with the conflict is apparent; history buffs will recognize this as the site where Japan’s top military strategist, Admiral Isokru Yamamoto, was shot down and killed by an intercepting squadron of Allied fighters. My intentions are to visit the site of the crash; certainly an obscurity in the larger context of historic events, but no less intriguing for it.

New Britain

Rabaul is both the site of one of the largest Pacific bases of the Imperial Japanese Navy during WWI and one of the top snorkeling locations in the world. I don’t know too much about historical military installments in the region, but I’m gonna find them. I don’t know how to snorkel but I’m gonna learn.

The Philippines

The Philippines are a pretty good jump from the Solomons, so it’ll probably require and actual flight (much of the transit between south pacific islands can be easily managed through boating.) My destination is the largest island in the chain, Luzon. I’ll land in Manila, the capital… here again my interest is fueled primarily by historical interest in the region. I intend to track the route of the infamous Bataan Death March from 1941-1942, eventually trekking northward to Cabanatuan and the site of the now-famous clandestine prison camp breakout near the end of the war, in winter 1945.

Okinawa

Here again lies historical interest (can you spot the trend here?) And while anyone knowledgeable at all about the second world war would recognize Okinawa as the site of the infamous 1945 battle the marked the last Japanese stronghold to fall, I am interested in it for other reasons. While martial arts have existed for thousands of years, it was in the Ryukyu Islands that karate as we know it today was cultivated; under Japanese control, Okinawan farmers were stripped of all weapons and were forced to find other methods of defense, implementing both empty-handed techniques and simply farming tools instead of bladed weapons.Many martial arts systems of today can trace their roots directly back to original development by long-deceased practitioners in Shuri and Naha, two of Okinawa’s largest cities. As a martial artist in my twelfth year of training, this is of particular interest to me, and the though of practicing kata on a rocky, desolate beach in the Ryukyus is immensely appealing.

Japan

From this point my traveling speed will greatly accelerate; by this point in my journey funds will be significantly reduced, and the areas through which I’ll travel will be significantly more expensive; thus, there will be less leisurely-paced meandering as prevalent earlier on.Japan is a perfect example. I’ll drop in just long enough to check it out, say I’ve been there, and leave. My main ability to save costs rests upon providing my own lodging, and a tent in Tokyo would be weird if it were even possible at all. I also plan to buy a sword and ship it home while I’m in Japan, because who wants a sword made in Taiwan and ordered from a catalogue? This will make me a legitimate samurai.

China

China is another quickie. Tokyo to Beijing, just long enough to check out the Great Wall of China. One thing I plan to do is hack up a loogie and let ‘er rip. Men may understand this better than our better-looking counterparts. What guy wouldn’t wanna spit standing on something famous? (Watch out, Parisians, if I visit the Eiffel Tower.)

Mongolia

The best thing about Mongolia is its city names. Every single city is named either Genghis or Khan or Genghis Khan, or Ulaanbaatar (which is infinitely less cool.) There’s also camels and a ton of sand. All this will be witnessed by my eyes from a passenger train taken across the country. I actually have no idea what’s cool to do in Mongolia so if anybody knows, I’m open to suggestions. Finding a Genghis Khan statue to send home as a souvenir shouldn’t prove too difficult.

Russia

Very little of Russia will be seen outside of a train. I’ll be starting at the Mongolian border and riding partially through Siberia, headed westward, across the plains and eventually into Moscow, through Moscow, and out the other side. My Russian is terrible, so I’ll have to try to get by with English and German… Я не говорю русского.

Here again it depends on my available funding at the time. I’d like to take Russia and Europe as slowly as possible to take in the sights and really enjoy it, but if funds demand hurried travel, I’ll just have to zip through and save the rest for later.

Belarus

I know nothing about this country other than that I’m traveling through it.

Poland

I’m using Visa as my payment and cash withdrawal method for my travels, because it’s so widely accepted… every single city I’m traveling through accepts it at an ATM. Poland is the exception. Hopefully Belarus is famous for good food, because I’m going to buy a little stock of it to eat on the train to Germany.

Germany

Ahhh, my homeland. …well not quite. But with a name like Blattenberger there’s clearly some tie to the Deutsches Republik, no? My genealogy is actually traceable back to the 16th Century and the first recorded existence of the Plattenbergers. (When Johann Plattenberger moved to the Buffalo, NY area in the 18th century, his named was Americanized – or at least the attempt was made. B or P, it’s still as German as you can get.)

Family history aside, I’m really looking forward to this portion of the trip, and I’ll spend as much time in Germany as possible. I speak the language (or try to) so it’ll be fun to converse with the local population. The beer culture? I could care less. I hate beer. Bier ist sehr schlecht. If I want to drink, I’ll hit up some vodka while I’m in Russia.

France

My main interest in France is the Normandy region, particularly the beaches where the D-Day invasion took place. I’ve always wanted to visit. If my funds permit, I’ll swing by Paris first and drop a spitwad from atop the Eiffel Tower. Because I am epic.

United Kingdom

When I began looking at ticket prices, I searched for prices from LeHavre airport in France to the United States for the return trip. I couldn’t find anything below $1300. Then on a whim I searched for the same destination, but with London as the departure point.

$300.

Bit of a difference, no? I’d originally planned to leave straight from France, but it’d be cheaper to just cross the English Channel (Normandy borders it anyway) to London, visit for a day or so, and schedule a flight home from there. A thousand bucks cheaper and more to see? No complaints here.

Home

Expect me when you see me.

One-way.

2008-12-22T20:31:00.000-08:00

There's no going back.

I just bought my ticket to Australia, so it's officially official. I leave the Raleigh-Durham Airport at 0615 on Monday, 02 February 2009 and arrive at Los Angeles International shortly after noon the same day, following a brief stopover in Denver. At 2230 PST I'll depart LAX for Sydney, Australia... in a stroke of absolute awesomeness, my flight makes a lengthy layover in Fiji. (Who hasn't always wanted to visit Fiji?) Finally on 4 February I'll arrive in Australia.

February 2 is going to be helacious. The superbowl is the evening before, and if the Carolina Panthers make it I'm going to be up watching it, then sleeping for an hour (if I can even manage that, with all the excitement) and then driving to Raleigh to make my flight. My sleep cycle is going to be completely jacked. I'll have ten hours to kill in LAX so I'll probably try to sleep. Try to.

One way. There's something incredibly scary, yet absolutely exhilarating about that. Eleven months of careful planning and preparation have begun to culminate: dream has become stark, irreversable reality. Pedal, meet metal. Metal, meet road.

What are the odds?

2008-12-21T13:14:00.000-08:00

Can one man, in one voyage,

Bicycle 4000 miles across the deserts of Australia with a tent as his home
Inhabit a tropical island in the Great Barrier Reef and survive
Traipse through the Solomon Islands in search of uncovered historical artifacts
Hack 80 miles through the jungles of Luzon
Practice kata on the shores of Okinawa
Wander downtown Tokyo
Walk on the Great Wall of China
Cross the vast desert plains of Mongolia
Utilize the Trans-Siberian railway to navigate the entirety of mainland Russia
Journey through Poland, Germany, France
Make a final stop in London, England,
...and come home in one piece?

Furthermore, can he do it all with less than $7000.00?

Keep reading this blog and you'll find out.