Little Yurt, Big City

Actually, around here in Mongolia, they're called "gers." While we're at it, they also call the guy on all their money, storefronts, and liquor bottles Chinggis Kahn, not Genghis. The standard food is mutton, potatoes, milk, and maybe some rice and shredded carrots or pickles if you're feeling exotic. According to a couple guidebooks, vegetables are considered either "too Chinese" or "just not healthy." The local firewater, aside from beer and vodka, is airag, fermented mare's milk.  One traveler I met claims everything, even the people, smell of the grass, horses, and the beautiful rolling hills of the countryside. Another says everything and everybody smells like "overcooked mutton." I don't have much of a sense of smell, so I can't comment on that one.

All it took was the train ride to the border, and a glimpse of a Mongolian horse running wild over the grasslands, to make me decide that if I spent all my time in Mongolia is the city of Ulaan Baatar, the capital, I'd have seriously messed up. But I hadn't reckoned on my host in town.

We were friends in high school. While I was down low, boxing people out as a forward for the basketball team, he was up top, as a guard and our ace three-point shooter. Half our basketball team was exchange students from Asia. He was the only Mongolian. He also went to college with me in Chicago, though we didn't see each other much. I looked him up again when I decided on going to Mongolia.

When he called and said he was "sending a car," I was impressed. But just in case he hadn't impressed me enough the personal driver rolling up in a BMW, he also got to show off his two-story penthouse apartment (his, he emphasized, not his parents'), his two Lexuses (Lexi?), and some of the expensive toys he asked his personal bodyguard to move from one to the other so he could show me around town before dropping me off at his dad's hotel. Not the one his dad is staying at, the one his dad owns. We stopped by his dad's department store and cashmere outlet on the way, passing one of the offices he now held after going into politics a couple years ago.

I couldn't help but smile though, as when were in his apartment with the best view in the city to the left of the biggest flat screen TV I'd ever seen, his cook served us lunch: chopped mutton and rice. Just like everybody else.

My time in UB was spent bouncing back and forth between the upper crust of Mongolian society, and then wandering into a ger (the one in the picture, above) and having a couple old guys teach me the proper way to rip mutton meat off a bone with my teeth. I was given a bowl of airag (once again, fermented horse milk), and watched an old man in a cowboy hat dip his ring finger in, and flick it in each of the four directions as a blessing before drinking. Very cool. I wasn't too keen on drinking the stuff though. Not drinking would have offended them, but drinking would have offended my digestive system. My digestive system eventually forgave me, but not until a couple hours later.

I did make it out to the countryside eventually, hopping a bus to Terelj alongside a Colombian-American lawyer-turned-CEO who liked to spend her time between a top law firm in NYC, Stanford business school, and work in Silicon Valley doing things like climbing mountains in Nepal. That was a learning experience. That and a pair of Welsh brothers I hung out with a few times who, among other things, when biking from UB to Terelj, managed to get caught up in a shaman ceremony in which they were "flogged with sticks" and had to give away the only thing they were carrying, a snickers bar, as a "sacrifice".

We stayed in gers in the valley, and spent the days hiking, relaxing, and riding horses. Horseback riding in Mongolia is like walking anywhere else. Kids start learning how around age three. The top jockeys in the national race each year are teenagers. So having a tiny little Russian saddle (the normal Mongolian ones are wooden) and stirrups that were way too short shouldn't have surprised me. But not figuring out how to make the animal go faster was a little frustrating. He wasn't used to my Western saddle commands, nor my friend's English saddle style. There was a funny "tchuo" noise that our guide made that seemed to work, but we couldn't replicate it at all. So it was a nice, slow walk on horseback over the hills of Mongolia for us.

And that was a little of Mongolia for me. It's a largely untouched country, much less tourism than just about anywhere I've been. There's a lot of pristine wilderness out there to be found in a huge expanse of land that houses only 2.5 million or so (more than 1 million of them in the capital city). Many of them are still nomads, still very hospitable, and still live their old way of life, not because they know people want to see that, or because they feel it needs to be preserved, but just because that's how their life works. That's become more and more rare in the world.

I've moved on again. I'm writing this from a Russian train that just finished passing the deepest lake in the world, and this is the first leg of my biggest railway journey. This is the longest railway in existence. This is the Trans-Siberian.

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Back in China

This is a great wall and only a great people with a great past could have a great wall and such a great people with such a great wall will surely have a great future.

--Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon

"So," I said to the Hungarian economist next to me, "We're sitting in a van, drinking beer, after we jut ziplined over a river from the top of the Great Wall of China. Life's good, huh?"

"As long as we survive." He replied.

He had a point. Our van's driver was swerving back and forth between the only two lanes available to him: the lane of oncoming traffic, and a construction site. Neither of the two cop cars we passed even slowed down. We spent about half an hour doing this without stopping. I'd seen scarier driving, but none quite this skilled.

I'd spent the day hiking up and down the stairs of the great wall with three Hungarians, a Frenchman, and a Finn. We covered only about 10km of the 6,400km length. So I can't speak for the whole thing. But I wasn't expecting it to be so... steep. When I pictured the Great Wall as a kid, I pictured a long, flat stone wall in the desert. What I didn't realize is that, near Beijing at least, the wall runs along to top of a mountain range, running up and down and side to side so sharply, that two members of the team had to drop out of the hike early on because of vertigo. We went from Jinshanling to Simitai sections, some of it in perfectly restored condition, other parts that had us scrambling down crumbling bricks thousands of years old. I made a couple friends out of vendors with my pidgin Chinese and having bought too many apples for snacks.

The highlight wasn't even something I'd planned on doing at first. When someone told me about a zipline from the wall to the ground, I pictured a cheesy twenty-foot cable over a stream to a car park. I did not picture a massive cable running over a river gorge with stunning views of the mountains and great wall spreading out on either side.

That was before the crazy driving. Well, the crazier driving. I dozed off during the ride over and woke up to see us barreling toward an 18 wheeler in the oncoming traffic lane. I didn't fall asleep again after that.

I went the extra distance to try to avoid the sections of the wall that everybody else goes to. I wasn't trying to be non-conformist, I just had seen what unruly mob that is Beijing tourism can be in the Forbidden City and the Heavenly Temple, and decided I didn't want to spend all day being pushed and shoved out of the way for photo ops. I command some respect because of my size, but I saw a father with a kid on his shoulders practically knock a Spanish woman to the ground without even looking at her, just in the course of walking from one spot to the next.

So after checking off the parts of the tourist checklist in town that I was most interested in, I started looking for slightly more out of the way places. I noticed something on my map that said "798 Art District" and a can of paintbrushes next to an intersection. So I hopped on a bus to check it out.

Turns out 798 is a new area that used to be factories. The factories have been gutted and turned into art galleries and studios. Walking between the newly cleaned smokestacks, you find enormous statues of all kinds. And inside some of the buildings, between the artists cafes and coffee shops, the paintings in particular are striking. Because of government censorship of media and the internet, I expected the local art scene to feel stifled. But it doesn't. I never saw anything in outright rebellion against the government, but a few things I saw about, for example, Vietnam and the war there, surprised me. I came back the next day just to see more. There's a big event happening this coming week which I'm going to want to check out with the time I have left.

That time is running short. I'm now on a deadline. I have less than one month to make it from Beijing, China, to Munich, Germany. That's most of Eurasia in less than one month. Yes I could fly, but that's expensive and you don't see much except clouds. So I've set my sights on the grandaddy of all train journeys: the Trans-Siberian Railway. This means a Russian visa. That means the Russian embassy in Beijing. This means three visits (four after tomorrow) to a heavily fortified piece of soviet architecture with heavy local police presence, a lot of bureaucracy, and, oddly enough, a pet pair of chickens and a turkey. Don't ask, I don't know either.

So I've been in town for a while. I spent last night being shown around Wangfujing district, a part of Beijing that was torn down because it was antiquated, then rebuilt to look like "old Beijing" Sort of. The massive malls and designer shops kinda threw the image a bit, but it didn't stop the street vendors from selling everything from starfish on a stick, to still-wriggling-scorpion-skewers. One bite of lamb's head soup was enough for both me, and my friend showing me around the place. As she put it, it tasted like rubber bands. As we looked around the shops, stalls, tourists, and the family having their photo taken in front of the neon-lit bookstore, she turned to me and said "This, I think, is the real China." She was born here, I trust her on the point.

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The Blur Whizzing by that was Korea

Note: I'm back in China. This means I'm back under the blogging restrictions I was on a few weeks back, and also means I can't access Facebook. Once again, comments on both this blog and Facebook will be emailed to me, but I won't be able to respond. That's why I haven't responded to anybody from the last post anywhere. I may find more temporary ways around this, but I wouldn't count on it. The only ones I found last time only partially worked.

In the temple just outside Tokyo, the Mexican in full kimono lowered his voice and switched to Spanish. "You know the only culture more closed than Japan?" he said. "Korea. Sure, the Japanese are squarish, yeah? They're squares. The Koreans have never known a circle."

I wanted to find out if it was true. And after my fast trip across South Korea, I'm still not sure. It seems like subtlety is not an issue in Korea. Japan has an art of communicating without saying anything. Koreans are direct, and say things directly. So in that sense, it's more open. But at the same time...

Let's put it this way. Confucius was from China. Korea imported Confucianism and practiced it and "purified" it so much that the Chinese started coming to study it there instead of the other way around. That might give you an idea of what kind of culture Korea has.

Everybody knows something about China. Everybody knows something about Japan. If you stick a microphone under a western kid's face and tell him to rattle off things that have something to do with Japan, he'll go from "ninja, samurai, sushi, sumo, anime..." and keep going from there. Same with China, starting with Kung Fu and working one from there. Korea isn't really like that. If you say Korea to the average young westerner, mostly they'll scratch their heads, mention something about a war they don't really remember, bad stuff about nuclear weapons, and a little puppet with glasses running around singing how he's "so ronery inside, arr arone." If they're good, they might mention kimchi, garlic, and an unhealthy obsession with the game Starcraft, but that's about it. Korea doesn't advertise its culture the way its neighbors do.

My view of Korea comes from a week across beaches, up across mist-strewn forested ridge lines, up to the DMZ, from the bottom docks of Busan to a helicopter pad in Seoul. And even after all that, I feel like most of what I know, I know secondhand. The work ethic. The social gender segregation among young people. The history of the country getting kicked where it hurts again and again throughout its known history.

A smattering of things I know firsthand: I know that the Korean rock scene is hard to find, but worth the finding. I went with a pack of English teachers and a geography/language-genius-turned-farmer to a rock festival on the beach. I know the skateboarding is abysmal after watching three skaters ollie down five stairs and eat concrete again and again and again-- only one guy landed on his board and the crowd went nuts. Then there's what Koreans do at the beach. They don't swim. They don't use swimsuits. They run, fully clothed into the water until is at about their waist level. Most of them then fall over. The English teachers said this was pretty standard across the nation (except the falling over part) and that despite being a peninsula surrounded by beautiful beaches, most Koreans they know can't swim, and none of them use bathing suits of any kind.

Actually, while I'm on the subject, let's talk English teachers. In most other countries I've been to, teaching English is for travelers who want to earn some money while abroad, and get a deeper understanding of where they are. You'll find a few almost anywhere. But in Korea, teaching English is for the money. And the country is full of English teachers everywhere. Almost all are White, American or Canadian, and in their early twenties. Racial discrimination in hiring is openly acknowledged here, and I've met Brits and South African teachers who have been asked by employers to disguise or change their accent to be more American (which, let me tell you, they just love to be told). The pay is good, and it usually comes with benefits like an apartment and a bonus at the end of the contract. I asked multiple teachers why they were in Korea. All but one of them told me the exact same thing: there aren't any jobs back home, and this pays.

The main problem, aside from the racial discrimination, is that this means a bunch of Americans and foreigners get shipped out to Korea and suddenly find that, well, they don't much like it. The cultural attitude of unswerving respect for those above you, and the attitude that harmony is considered more important than, say, the written terms of a contract, drive a lot of unprepared westerners kind of nuts. And that just turns their mood sour over everything. Let that be my warning for you all: there are lots of relatively well-paying jobs in South Korea for young (white) English speakers with a year or two to spare. But please, please, please, do not take a job like that until you do your homework on Korea and Korean culture and decide you actually want to spend that kind of time there.

Korea has a lot to offer. I don't have the expertise after spending only a week there (and a good chunk of that with expats) to tell you about it all. I'm just going to touch on one thing I found near the northern border.

The so-called Demilitarized Zone or DMZ, is hardly Demilitarized. North and South Korean troops patrol the area without cease, none crossing the military demarcation line of course, but still maintaining an active, fully armed presence. The last hostile shot was fired back in the 80s. But North Korea has dug multiple tunnels underneath the DMZ well into South Korean territory towards Seoul. The last one was found in the 90s, and they expect to find more.

Yet despite all this, there is one overwhelming theme everywhere I went in or around the DMZ: Unification. The word seems like it's everywhere: Unification Road, Unification Park, Unification Museum, Unification Bridge. South Korea is the only country I've ever been to that doesn't describe itself as a sovereign nation. It's half of a country, painfully divided over the last fifty or so years. Millions of family member have been separated, and in culture which is designed to honor the elders of your family, living and dead, in their proper place, this is a more painful division than it could be just about anywhere else in the world.

The image that will stay with me most was the background image for some writing in a nearby museum exhibit. It was a black and white picture, mostly of coiled razor wire, of the kind they use on the top of the DMZ fences. It's being held in one hand by an old man to his own forehead. He is crying.

I've seen some great beaches, hiked great hills with shrines overlooking beautiful views, seen modern metropolises to match almost anything in Japan or the West, and eaten some good, bad, and, yes, just plain ugly food, but when someone says Korea to me now, I'm going to first think of that old man.

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From the Sky of Nippon

I have a hard time keeping track of days unless I wake up in my own bed. Since I haven't done that in about ten and a half months, my sense of time is completely off-kilter. Then there's my sleep (ha) schedule. It feels like it wasn't that long ago since I last posted, but I've got three complete entries running around my head with a lot of extra material to make a fourth or fifth. Plus there's some great material for a tips post I've been getting help with. But since it's a post that will only help half of you, It'll have to wait just a bit longer. I'll try to splice down excerpts to make one complete post.

First, this view. This gorgeous sunrise view from several hundred meters above the clouds. It was enough to make crowds around me give three cheers of “Banzai!” when the sun was already up. I was too exhausted to join in. I'd been up all night climbing this stupid mountain, and without any canned oxygen. Blame my testosterone for that decision. Like just about everyone who climbs to this place, I started halfway up already. Unlike most of them, I was at the top in four hours, for no good reason.

There's a saying that a wise man climbs Mt Fuji, but a fool would do it twice. I'm no fool. I caught the very last bus from Tokyo so that I could start around 10pm, making the top in time for the 4:45am sunrise. I started from the fifth station with a jacket, hat, and a borrowed headlamp. By the sixth station, I'd taken them all off again. I was too warm, and the nearly full moon was plenty to see by, as long as I hadn't been blinded by any other tourist's flashlights along the way. The climb had all the visual appeal of climbing up a gravel construction site at a 45-degree angle for hours. At first it was easy, I was just walking up switchbacks past lines of hundreds of tourists staying resolutely in a snail-paced single file following a leader with two blinking red light sticks. There were supposed to be ten stations altogether, but they stretched into lines of huts selling water and instant soup and letting people stay the night sleeping on a packed floor for $80 a night. There seemed to be more station than trail at some points.

Then came the parts where I started using my hands. It wasn't until then that I turned around and realized that I was actually above the clouds. Then the altitude kicked in. I was back to walking without my hands, but after a while, I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I could hear my pulse throbbing at the base of my skull. Breaks weren't voluntary any more. I had my jacket and hat back on, plus my cheap fleece sweater from Argentina. I could the the lights from the ant-lines of tourists crawling up to meet us from below, and that kept me moving all the way to the top.

I was there two hours early. I'd been told about the vending machines, so I wasn't surprised to find them there. I want to know the story of how they got them up there, I bet it's good. I wrapped myself up with everything I had, even my rain poncho, and curled up to sleep on a wooden bench next to the thirty or so climbers that had reached the top ahead of me (one of whom, in true Japanese style, was busy playing his Nintendo DS). I don't know if I actually slept or not. I just know that I took out my earplugs and looked up at one point, and saw colors in the sky (plus several hundred more people all around looking at the trinket stands and vending machines).

The result, you can see glimpse of in the photo above, but if there are two things you can never do justice to in a photo with a point-and-shoot camera, they're sunsets and sunrises. Mt Fuji stands as the only mountain around for miles. Sunrise there is unforgettable. It's all in the clouds. The sun rising above the sea foam of clouds floating above the green forests, blue lakes and city lights far in the distance. If you cross to the west side of the caldera, you can see deep blue silhouettes of other peaks far away and below you sticking out from that sea of clouds. You can almost see the curvature of the earth from the horizon. Then again, maybe that was my vision after the altitude and lack of sleep.

It was the last adventure for my old backpack. The poor thing was falling apart slowly after ten months of heavy non-stop use. I finally had arranged to pick up a replacement from the company offices in Japan, but I brought the thing with half a load up to the top of Mt Fuji. I had to give it to the store in Nagoya before I could walk away with my new bag. It was a real wrench letting the old thing go. It had been with me through five continents, twenty something countries, up the top of mountains to the bottom of the earth. But after a stolen top compartment, a missing chest strap, one broken clip, a mysterious chemical burn hole in the front pocket, and finally a busted left shoulder strap, it was time to retire the poor thing. It felt like putting an old, beloved pet to sleep. My new bag is the same model (deeply discounted, thanks to some emails with the company), but slightly altered color scheme. I have to admit, having everything working again is pretty nice.

I was running out of time with my Japanese rail pass. My last day I wanted to get to Shimonoseki in time for a ferry to Korea. I was a little annoyed with myself for getting a late start. One thing you learn about travel is that when you have multiple connections, delays are magnified. For example, taking the wrong subway cost me five minutes. When I got to the station I learned those five minutes meant I'd missed a train to Shimonoseki, the next one leaving two hours later, indirectly. The two hour delay meant that I probably wouldn't get to the Ferry terminal in time to buy a ticket for the ferry, the next one leaving the next evening. So a five-minute delay actually resulted in a full day's delay.

So I was sitting on my shinkansen bullet train west towards Shimonoseki, drifting off to sleep, still catching up from my adventure up Japan's tallest mountain. At one point I woke up, and noticed we were going past some very pretty scenery. Bamboo forests and hills. They gave way to a village made entirely of rice paddies and traditional Japanese houses, like something out of a childrens' picture book. We went from there into a tunnel, and back into the hills. Then came a second traditional Japanese farming village. Then the third, after another tunnel. I got out my camera as we went into the second tunnel and got it ready to get some shots of what I expected to be the fourth village on the other side of the latest tunnel. That's when a tone sounded and an announcement came through the speakers for the next stop: "Tsugi ekewa Hiroshima. Hiroshima desu..."

I lowered my camera. There would be no ancient farming village on the other side of this tunnel. Anything made before 1945 would be gone.

We pulled into the Hiroshima station and I looked outside at the rain. Do I get off? I might still make it onto tonight's ship if I happened to get a fast local train connection to town and then begged. Even if I didn't, I wasn't sure I wanted to see this place in the rain. What would there be left to see?

I was pretty much convinced not to go. I thought of something my father told me a long time ago: that in life, he'd always regretted the things he hadn't done far more than the things he'd done. I picked up my new bag, squeezed past the people boarding, and stepped out of the train.

It was hot. The bad kind too, not scorching, just muggy enough to make you feel sticky. I wandered downstairs into the station and picked up a free tourist map, wandering vaguely towards something described as the "Peace Park." I read about an event or two planned on the back where families of the victims of the atomic bomb would gather at 6:00pm and launch paper lanterns with messages for peace down the river in honor of the 64th anniversary of the bomb. August 6th. I looked at my cell phone to check the time. Thursday, August 6th, 6:15pm.

I've seen demonstrations for peace before, but usually they're either political or filled only with the kind of guy who, when I asked for tips on traveling through Laos, turned his blond dreadlocked head to me and said "Love. Just... open yourself to Love... all around you." This was different. I saw families walking down the street with their kids, who were drawing on piece of paper, getting ready to send them out to the water. Pieces with Japanese flags, American flags, and simple words. They wrote their message, attached them to a floating bottom with a candle, and sent them down the river under the shadow the "atomic" dome- the skeletal beams of only structure to survive the nuclear explosion. I wondered if that was really what it took to bring people together with an answer, a quiet demonstration that they saw death and destruction a long time ago, they know an alternative, and they want to honor it.

I saw a group of people around my age holding signs that said "Free Hugs." I walked up to one of them and asked him why the signs were only in English, and not in Japanese. He told me in broken English that it was an international symbol that the Japanese people knew too.

My grandfather and great-uncle both served in the US military during WWII. We've always been proud of that. Still, my great-uncle has a few things to say about the Japanese that I don't care to repeat in public. Many of these guys probably had grandparents in the Japanese military. Who knows what some of them say about people like me and my family. All I know is their grandchildren were there to honor peace, and they wanted to give hugs, and their signs were written in my language.

I caught the ferry to Korea the next day. I don't mind the delay anymore.
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Japan is Japan is Japan.

I write this from the island of Oshima, of the pine islands of Matsushima. Legend has it this one one of the favorite places of the Japanese poet, Basho. Basho is most famous for his work with haiku, a Japanese form of poetry famous for how much it can pack into a few words. If I remember my high school writing class correctly, an entire haiku contains three lines: first with five syllables, second with seven, third with five. Maybe the first has seven too instead of five, I forget. What I remember from that class is that Basho managed to snag a place among my favorite poets by cramming one succulent, evocative image into three words: “Watermelon, mud fresh.” (Well, that and also I remember somebody else writing an English haiku that went something like “Haikus are nice. But sometimes they don't make sense. Refrigerator.”)

My point is that I'm sitting on a island that was loved by a man who was famous for being evocative yet brief with his words. I've never been much for channeling the dead, but I'm going to need all the help I can get from him to keep this short, because this last week in Japan has packed enough action for me to easily fill a half dozen full posts or more. If these last two paragraphs are any indication, I'm not off to a good start. Here goes anyway.

Before arriving in Japan, I had been fed more contradictory information about this culture than any I have heard about any place in the world. Since this is (depending on how you count things like Antarctica) the 26th country I've been to this trip, that's saying something. One day I would meet someone who would tell me that the literal translation of the word for thank you meant “what an unpleasant feeling,” (of being indebted to someone, I assume). A week later, someone would tell me that it actually meant “it is good to be alive.” A Frenchman told me over a drink that a Japanese person will never invite someone to their house no matter how close you are, and two days later a Canadian told me confidently that Japanese people will invite you to their house easily, sometimes right after meeting them, and that they will be extremely hospitable. But my favorite piece of advice came from a Kiwi who told me his impressions of the country, back in February:

“Japan is... Japan... is Japan.”
I looked at him oddly and said “Right. Truisms. I know Japan is Japan.
He returned the look. “Have you been to Japan yet?”
“No.”
“Then you don't really know that yet.”

He had me there. My real introduction was on board the ferry from Shanghai to Osaka when I met a Japanese-born Canadian about my age who was coming back to Japan for the first time since he was six years old. He gave me a rundown on general etiquette, downplaying any real cultural differences (“I mean, no, you shouldn't stick your chopsticks in the rice and leave them there, but come on, how often do you take a fork, stick it in a steak, and then just leave it there back home?”) But the real revelations came for both of us when we got to shore and he started translating some of the things said around us.

Like when we went into a post office and asked for an ATM that worked with international debit cards. “That lady just thanked me about seven times. All I did was ask for directions!”

Or there was the PA announcement we heard in a grocery store that went on for about a full minute. “...all he was saying was thanking the customers for coming in and taking time out of their busy schedules for coming into the store. That was it. That was the only reason they made an announcement over the loudspeakers.”

Then there was what started happening when we got off our first subway. Keep in mind that we'd both just been in Shanghai, where if you want to get anywhere in a subway station, you put your head down, your elbows up, and act like a bowling ball. It seems people there wouldn't even notice if you knocked them flat on their back, or if they knocked you on yours. In Osaka, we got off a subway, passing two businessmen on our right, stopped, looked at each other, and said in unison, “...they waited for us!” It's a new country.

Being courteous here in Japan is a big deal. If you translate some of the simple exchanges you have every day into English word for word, the look ridiculous just because of many times the words “pardon me,” “please,” “sorry,” and “thank you very much” show up in every single sentence. Unlike Mandarin Chinese, Japanese does have a word that translates directly into “no,” but you'd never guess it based on everyday conversation because it's almost never used. It's just not a nice thing to say.

A lot of people I've met have told me that the courtesy feels masked. They think that anybody who makes that big a show of gratitude can't possibly mean it-- that it's all a fake veneer covering a repressed, depressed, highly stressed out and pressurized society that will never allow anyone to actually get close to them as a outsider, or even show any real happiness or kindness to each other, let alone to a foreigner. I don't buy it. Frankly, I think that kind of view is much more a reaction of westerners feeling uncomfortable in the face of people who say thank you so much more often than they do themselves.

There is definitely a strict set of rules you must follow if you want to be polite. Pick up food dishes and bring them close to your mouth when you eat. Always finish your rice if possible. Slurp your food loudly, especially soup (no, it's not a myth, they really do consider it a sign of appreciation here). Don't step over people's outstretched legs. Give and receive things, especially personal items like business cards, with both hands. Deny and downplay all compliments. Those are just the basics, I haven't even touched on how many degrees to bow in different situations or what you're supposed to say when. The list of differences is so long that it can really intimidate people. I think that's where a lot of the talk of a cold, untouchable society comes from. But if you think about it, we come from a culture with something to say when you burp, something to say when someone else sneezes, something to say when you want to get up from a meal, rules about when you can start eating (after how many people have been served), an order about which gender or age yields seats, or opens doors, or carries things, and a lot more besides. Most of these specific rules don't exist in Japan. So I have a hard time calling anything about their system of etiquette rigid or byzantine. It's just different.

As for acceptance, even little gestures make me feel like Japanese people aren't just polite, they're actually quite nice and friendly. Things like when I bought a couple small cakes from a traditional sweet shop, and when I tried to thank the lady in Japanese, she gave me a huge smile and tossed in a pack of cinnamon mochi for free. Or when I bought a prepackaged tempura lunch from a convenience store and pointed to chopsticks instead of a fork, the clerk pumped her fist in the air and said “Gambate!” or “go for it”! I can tell that people are more shy here (there are jokes about how Japanese guys have turned “vegetarian,” because they're too shy to go “hunting” and actually ask a girl out), but I've been spontaneously invited into three people's homes now in about four days. I'm don't think I'm doing anything special to make this happen, it's just what the people here will do.

As long as we're talking about stereotypes, I will tell you about one that's true. First of all, I find this to be true across China as well as Japan, but Japanese people do work very very hard. Officially, most work 9-5 jobs. But from what they've told me the reality is they usually work at least 70 hours a week. They are paid overtime, but because of project deadlines and general culture, they don't have the option to go home at 5:30. They earn enough money this way to deal with the high cost of living, (a simple bowl of plain Udon noodles in Kyoto can cost more than eight times as much as a plate of Chow Mian fried noodles with pork, egg, and veggies in Shanghai). But it comes at the cost of sleep, time with family, and often health.

The work schedule combined with the fact that public transport shuts down after midnight has created some interesting business opportunities. First of all, a bed in a normal hostel dorm costs around US$35. The most I can recall paying for a hostel bed this entire trip comes to around half that. In fact, for much of this trip, I've often been paying one tenth of that or less. However, because so many people end up staying far from home because of work, other cheap places to spend the night are cropping up. The most famous is the “capsule hotel,” which is somewhere between a hostel dorm and a space pod out of the sci-fi channel. But also a whole line of 24 hour businesses have started offering “night packs,” basically the option to rent whatever space they have for the night. Karaoke bars are a popular option, having padded private rooms with lots of space as well as food and drinks. But the one I ended up trying was an internet cafe.

I'd only learned about this on the boat over, and when I found myself next to Kyoto station with my bags around midnight in the pouring rain, I snaked my way through the subway tunnels to get to a 24 hour 2nd story shop called the TopCafe. I bought a membership for 200 yen, chose a space that had a mat like a gym mat instead of a reclining chair for another extra 200yen, paid for a night pack and was told I had seven hours in a cubicle with as much of the free soda, coffee-machine drinks, and soft-serve ice cream I wanted. The short version of the story is: It wasn't comfortable, and I woke up the next morning to the sounds of someone puking their guts out from a bad hangover, but it was cheap nights sleep and of course free internet, games, and DVDs had I felt like using them during my precious seven hours of sleep time. The unlimited access to the soft-serve ice cream machine was a huge bonus, though the closest things I could find to actual food were both in the coffee machine: an “onion soup” that tasted exactly like instant ramen broth, and a thick yellow corn-flavored something that I guess must have been soup. And while seven hours was definitely not enough time, it did get me out bright and early to beat the crowds to Fushimi Inari,one of the most famous temples in the country.

That's the first I've mentioned of the sights, isn't it? That's a shame. Twice I tried to explore the city of Kyoto and was completely sidetracked into hiking the beautiful forested hills to the north and west instead. Dotted with shrines, natural springs, and waterfalls, and just ten minute walk from the heart of the city, the paths are some of the best I've seen in a very long time. Then there's the shrines and temples. Minimalist, but very atmospheric, especially the smaller ones tucked away in quiet corners of the hills.

Then there's the other end of the spectrum: Tokyo. I haven't spent much time in Tokyo yet, but I'm pretty sure I'll feel about it the exact same way one Tokyo native explained about how felt about Shinjuku, one the city's biggest train stations: it's a complete maze-- I'll find one way through it, forget, and find a new way through every time without visiting a single part twice. After Shanghai, the buildings seem short, but they go on for miles in every direction. The typical apartment's size (at least of the two I've seen) is about the size of hallway in an American house. I had room to lie down width-wise with maybe a foot to spare at the widest point. We checked out a fireworks display (a summer tradition in Japan) and found a field several times the size of a football field completely filled with people sitting there to watch. I've seen a lot of people in one spot before, but only once or twice have I seen numbers to compete with that. I believe the greater Tokyo area houses about 30 million people, and they've managed to pack them all in somehow.

Have I not mentioned the food yet? How is that possible? Yes, there are the standards: udon, miso, rice, and beef bowls. Then come the surprises: the curry for example. Or just how creamy and gelatinous real tofu can be. The weirdest though, was definitely nato. Nato is a mixture that looks like half baked beans and half Elmer's glue. It's fermented beans and bacteria that is typically served for breakfast over rice after being mixed with a raw egg and something like mustard. I could get used to the taste, but it would take a few servings. Takoyaki, on the other hand, I've adopted immediately. It's octopus fried in balls of dough with an excellent kind of barbecue sauce over the top.

And that's not even touching on the story of my walk through the roughest neighborhood in Japan, the climb up the best preserved Japanese castle, the night spent in the temple with a priest and his venerated Bose sound system, the afternoon ending in an Onsen communal bath with a bunch of Frenchmen, the men on the streets of tokyo with a bullhorn shouting for the reinstatement of an emperor and standing army, or the evening when I had to explain how to ask for change and tell someone you were looking for a geisha (though not to hire them) and a pay phone. To conclude in a nutshell with a random observations and facts, the Shinkansen bullet trains are amazingly fast and punctual. The toilets really do have half a dozen buttons on them, but they're fairly self explanatory based on placement and sometimes hilarious little cartoons next to them. And yes, the fresh sushi really is every bit as amazing as you've heard.

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Chinese Eclipse

We sat around a green felt table, a bit like a poker table, only it was square, and right then a spaceship-like plastic shape was sticking over the center about half a foot above the surface. I pushed a button and it smoothly sank back into place, flush with the table. As it did, four lines in the green felt about a foot long and an inch wide disappeared, and four rows of flush, shuffled ivory mah jong tiles rose magically to replace them.

It was about four in the morning. Half a dozen people were sleeping across the beds and floor of the hotel room, and I was pretty sure I could see twilight out of the window. I pushed another button to “roll” the magnetic dice in the plastic capsule and the four players around the table, one from Shanghai, one from Latvia, one from New Jersey, and I, started collecting our tiles and laying them out. It was my first game, and while I did win, it was thanks to the Colombian next to me who pointed out at least three key moves I would have otherwise missed.

The Venezuelan girl I had teamed up with as an adviser to learn the game's rules was snoring on a camping mat in front of the TV. The French-Chinese guy was watching the game keenly from the other side of the table, while my host from Italy was busy texting our friend from Australia trying to figure out whether or not he was still in the building or at the beach with the campers.

This is what happens when you're involved with couchsurfing and stay in the right city to view the biggest total solar eclipse in 500 years. People from all over the world had come for this by bus, boat, hitchhiking, or in my case, a rented 11-person van, to sneak up to four hotel rooms we had checked out closest to the best beach we could find from which to see the eclipse the next morning at 9:30. I have no realistic idea of how many people from across five continents we packed into those rooms that night, but it was a lot. I met people from Hamburg, Ningbo, and, against all odds, Seattle (though that one, after meeting me, privately admitted she was really from Spokane).

I don't know exactly why I stayed up the entire night. Lots of people went to sleep. There was just a core group of a half-dozen or so that stayed up with the fully-automatic mah jong table chatting and playing away past dawn, and finally waking everyone else up in time to meet at the lobby at 7:30.

As for the eclipse itself, we had what worked out to be just the right weather for it. It was just cloudy enough so that you could stare right at the sun with your bare eyes and watch what looked like a bite mark grow across the top until it looked more like a curved cartoon moon than the actual moon ever will.

Then it got dark. On the road I noticed that I could always tell when sunset was coming by when the birds started making noise and flying around. They started doing it then. I don't think I'd seen more than two or three birds my entire time in Shanghai up to that point, but more and more flew by us in low circles, going back to roost in a darkness that was falling just a little to fast to actually be dusk. For about five minutes, it stayed dark to cheers and flashes from hundreds of cameras. Then, it got light again, as if someone upstairs was slowly pushing the faders back on. More people cheered louder and some very confused birds flew around back to whatever they had been doing five minutes before.

That's right about when it started pouring down rain. We ran for cover, my friends and I separated from the group to pile into our van, and make our way back into Shanghai proper.

I'd changed a week's worth of plans involving three countries to see this, and it was worth it. Anyway, if I hadn't changed my mind and had hopped on the boat to Japan two weeks ago, I wouldn't have gotten to see ex-capital Nanjing, the silk road's end at the walled city of Xian, or the Shaolin Temple.

In case you live under a rock, the Shaolin Temple is probably the most famous Chinese Buddhist temple to the western world, and it's not because of Buddhism. It's because of what in China they now write as gongfu, or “hard work,” but what most of the rest of the world knows as kung fu martial arts.

I'm not a martial arts geek. I did Aikido for a year in middle school, but that's an art from Japan. I don't really know much about the history of kung fu or Shaolin in particular. It doesn't matter. Even if you don't know much about kung fu, the Shaolin temple is a little like antarctic penguins, the Sydney Opera House, or Machu Piccchu. You see it in person, and that's it. You lose it. It's just that famous and amazing. Everyone starts giggling, nobody can stop grinning like idiots, and all camera memory cards in a five-foot radius fill up within about 23 seconds. It's just that cool. And then you see the carvings. And then you see the dents in the floor from a main temple building where the monks practiced their stances. And then you see the monks themselves. And from there you start to geek out over every single detail from the traditional paintings (Shaolin paintings!), to the sleeping dog on the porch (Shaolin puppy!) to the not-so-traditional rusted basketball hoop out back (Shaolin basketball!... no, I didn't get to play basketball with the Shaolin monks, and I'm still kicking myself for not bringing a ball. If I'd only known...). I'm not saying the place itself was so amazing. It was almost as touristy as the Terra Cotta Warriors of Xian, and that's saying something. Little gold-plated Buddha statues perched on top of the pay phones, if that gives you an idea. But just the idea of the place, coupled with actually being there, was enough to make it worth the journey.

One of the best parts of the trip wasn't the temple itself, but the bus trip past the surrounding area. Not so much because of the countryside-- it's all wreathed in some of the worst haze of pollution I've ever seen-- but the schools. There are huge institutes filled with young boys in tracksuits lined up in rank and file, pulling off the coolest flying kicks you've ever seen in a concrete schoolyard. This is where the art is passed down. Rumor has it that Shaq is actually in there somewhere right now, training. About five years ago, I got Yao Ming's autograph in the US. I thought it would make a good story to get Shaq's in China, but I didn't see him around (wonder what he's been doing with that basketball hoop).

Several times along my journey, young guys would grab me and ask for photos, and then practice their English. Not only is this good for me in terms of getting to know people, but also they usually have some help for me. I've even been taken out for dinner. This happened the night I left Shaolin for Xian. Our conversation was slow. My new friend and benefactor would turn to me and ask something like “You.. uh... tree pick?” I would look at him quizzically, he would repeat the phrase. I would hand him a piece of paper and pen, and he would write something more like “Train Pick.” I would stare at that for a minute or two then look up and ask “train ticket?” and he would say yes and I would say yes, I still have my train ticket. Conversation went like that for most of the evening.

When we left the restaurant after more failed efforts on my part to pay for the meal, he pointed to all the people on the sidewalk in front of the train station, huddled in groups, some sleeping on sheets of cardboard. “This,” he said “is China. Many poor because there is too many people.”

It wasn't something I'd seen much of, but I did get glimpses of it. I came to China wondering whether I was going to find a developed country or a developing one. Turns out it's both. A contraband PBS Frontline documentary I saw recently called it “China A and China B.” China A is full of shopping malls, skyscrapers, and problems like traffic jams. China is full of subsistence farming, sweatshops, and problems like starvation.

My last night in Shanghai I went out to an expat bar (seemingly almost the only kind of nightlife in Shanghai) with two Spanish guys and a Dutch girl. I fell behind to chat with the girl on the way to grab a taxi, and she asked me where in China I'd been. I rattled off my list: Hong Kong, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shaolin, and Xian. She frowned and asked me why I was so focused on cities. She told me that the better place to focus on would be the countryside-- that's where the real China lies. I can argue that I've learned a lot about the country from the places I've seen so far, but I think she might have a point. My next goal in China then is to get out of town and try to hunt out her version of the “real China”, China B.

But that's going to have to wait. I mentioned a ferry to Japan that I passed up two weeks ago? I'm writing this entry from the main passenger deck. By the time this is posted, I will have arrived in Osaka. It's time to explore the land of the rising sun.

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China Forward

I sat on top of a forested hill overlooking the city of Hangzhou, a view of the beautiful West Lake peeking through the trees. I was flipping through my China guidebook, getting ideas for what I wanted to do for the next few days leading up to the total solar eclipse next week. I happened to be sitting next to a tall pagoda-- that's where the benches were. Two Chinese guys, maybe nineteen or twenty, came up the path and approached me to practice their English. We chatted for a little bit, and when there was a lull in the conversation, I looked around for inspiration. That's when I noticed something odd poking out from the trees of the forest.

“Is that a security camera?” I asked.

“No” Some quick conferring in Chinese “Yes. Yes, that is camera.”

It looked like one of those cameras next to traffic lights that take pictures of people's license plates after they run a red light.

“What's it there for?” I asked.

“Fair.”

“Uh, what?”

“Fair warning.”

“Oh.”

Well, I thought, that's kind of them... fair warning for what, exactly?

China sometimes feels like an exercise of the “which of these things does not belong in this picture.” I hadn't realized it until I sat down and thought for a bit, but it's been an eye-opening visit. Most of what you read is controlled by the government in some way, shape, or form. It doesn't feel nearly as controlling, patronizing or overbearing big-brother-is-watching as I expected it to be. But it is definitely there if you're looking. Just like in Singapore, this means that you learn just as much from what's missing as you do from what's there. All over Hangzhou is gorgeous Chinese architecture, mostly in the form of tourist sites at this point, crowded around by loud groups of Chinese and Japanese amateur photographers following someone with a bullhorn walking backwards waving a brightly-colored flag on a stick. If you read the signs next to the pagodas, stone tablets, gates, and other artifacts, you'll notice a common theme: built during the Song dynasty, destroyed in the late 60s, rebuilt in the 80s. Often the date of destruction is omitted. No explanation of this mass destruction of historical and cultural artifacts is offered.

The untold explanation surfaces when you look up what was happening during the ten years everything was ripped up: Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution. In 1966, Mao Zedong (or Tse Tung depending on when your history book was published) staged a coup against his own communist party calling for a overthrow of all the other communist party leaders. Things got violent fast, and across the country, an unimaginable amount of 3000+ year-old heritage was ripped apart. After Mao's death and the succession of Deng Xiaoping, people began to restore some of what was lost. Or tried to.

I'm writing this from the city of Nanjing, one of the few cities that has kept its Ming-era city walls. Or most of it. Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai all lost their ancient city walls (though I don't know the story behind the destruction of each). I went to see one of the gates. It's the biggest on the the city had. The wall continues on either side for about twenty yards and then it ends. There's more to the wall than that in other parts of the city, but seeing that little piece of what was once a mighty Ming dynasty historical testament drives home just how much this country has lost.

What it's lost, it's moving hard to make up for in new stuff. Shanghai looks like someone dropped an enormous alien magnet designed to attract all skyscrapers for a mile radius. The third-tallest building in the world rises next to one almost as tall with, with a large square opening near the top about about ten stories high. I don't know what the intended effect was, but it looks like a gigantic bottle-opener. From the top, you can count the helicopter pads on top of the dozens of other skyscrapers thronged around the Pudong side of the river.

Half the town is under construction, including the historical lake walk known as The Bund. The 2010 world's fair is coming, and Shanghai wants to be ready. The effect is a huge, dusty city that is one half concrete, one quarter steel and glass, and one quarter scaffolding and construction equipment. High rise apartment buildings sprout from the concrete like weeds from a parking strip (and if you've ever seen the parking strip in front of my house, you'll know how impressive this must seem).

The Shanghai Museum protects some of the oldest things I'd ever seen. Pottery and sculpture casually dated from the 13th century, BC. I read that it has pieces much older than that. It's a beautiful collection of art, artifacts, and archeology, free of charge for anyone who has the patience to stand in line behind the metal detectors. Don't bring a laptop, they're not allowed inside.

I could go on for a long time about all the images I've been seeing. The mall full of eyeglass stores, for example. I got to the top floor of a mall and walked for ten minutes without backtracking past nothing but store after store selling prescription glasses and frames. Just imagine what shopping for anything else is like. The stores are clean and modern, the city streets are lined with designer shops. The high-speed trains run over 230 km/h (that's just the ones I've ridden so far), and everything feels pretty modern. In the city center.

Then I took a train from Shanghai to Hangzhou east train station, and I was back in the third world. Dirt roads, trash everywhere, cardboard signs, hawkers and touts, rust, and corrugated tin buildings. Then I got on a bus with a TV in the front and rode back into the tree-lined avenues with KFC sandwiched between Cartier and Dolce & Gabana. I remember seeing mansions in the middle of slums in India. Outright opulence loudly sitting right next to outright squalor with nothing hidden from either side. But in China, it's whole sections of towns that have squirreled themselves away from each other, completely hidden. You'll be walking down a developing world alleyway with peeling paint, potholes, and the ubiquitous fat shirtless men on stools sitting and watching the street in every developing nation in the world. Then you'll turn a corner, walk past a construction site and all of the sudden you're dodging sports cars and taxicabs in a sparkling modern metropolis and have no idea what magical portal you just walked through or where the fruit carts with busted axles just went and who replaced them with bubble-tea stalls.

My favorite experience so far was removed from all this. I was sitting in the apartment of some couchsurfers after a mouthwatering $1.25 dinner of home-made noodles (as in we watched the chef whack the dough on the table and pull it into individual noodles by hand before tossing it out the window into the boiling oil they were cooked in), and our host pulled out a tea set. This is not your little sister's take-the-dolls-out-for-a-tea-party set. This was the classic Chinese wood and pottery tea ceremony set. It became an informal tea ceremony-- the second I'd ever had (the first being with my host in Malaysia, the Chinese tea master). Though Jenny, our host, made a big deal about how there was really no one right way of doing this, there were clearly more protocols than I usually followed with tea. Each tea was served in the correct order, the water was heated to the right temperature, it was steeped the right number of seconds, and served into the correct type of cup. The first round was always disposed of without drinking. It was half wine tasting, half spiritual ceremony, though there was nothing religious involved. Little snacks kept appearing out of nowhere, from wasabi-coated dried lotus seeds to spicy, tomato-flavored Cheetos.

Something interesting happened. As we all sat there, going through the rituals, and sipping our tea, the conversation became a lot deeper. Politics came up, as did educational styles between different cultures, and the effect they have on each society, and how they relate to each other. Something about the tea ceremony brought that all out. The first tea ceremony I'd been to had the exact same effect on the conversation-- I was sure that if the same group been out drinking beer, we'd have been talking about movies or cracking jokes about whoever else was in the restaurant or bar.

And yes, I've had those nights too. Last night I spent in a bar listening to a Filipino cover band play Juanes while sitting with a British illustrator, her twin sister the foreign language student, their brother the law student, an actor from LA, and a Texan mining supervisor who kept buying us all drinks. In China. As this is what I think of as the tame side of my travels.

If my rambling on about one thing after another in this entry is interesting, confusing, and random, then you're getting a good feel of how this country makes me feel so far.

While I'm on the subject of *random*, if any of you have any connections to an employee of a Russian consular office in Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, or Ulaanbaatar, do me a big favor and email me.

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Cows in Hong Kong?

No, the title of this post is not a jab at tourists visiting the Bubba Gumps restaurant at The Peak (the ones who get to enjoy this view to the left). It means literal, four legged, big-brown-eyed bovines, sitting in front of my bus going through the New Territories until the driver honks and makes them move.

Whenever I'm in a new place, I kind of like seeing little echos of the places I've just left. The flyers for Argentine tango lessons in New Zealand shop windows, or the Aussie bar in Laos blasting "I Come from a Land Down Under." So when I saw the cows sitting in the road, I immediately thought "hey, just like Vietnam." Then I stopped, narrowed my eyes and realized that while it was fairly normal to see cows wandering around a mountainside in rural Vietnam, it couldn't be that common in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong has been full of surprises like that. One of my hosts told me about a picture she took when she was out hiking on one of the nearby islands in Hong Kong. She sent it to friends of hers who replied "Where is that? I thought you were in Hong Kong!" The rolling forested hills, hiking trails, and beaches didn't add up to their image of the port metropolis.

It didn't to mine either. My first impression of Hong Kong came from sitting in the very front on top of a double-decker public bus from the airport on Lantau Island into Hong Kong Island. Everything looked vertical. It was an entire mass of skyscrapers and elevated highways surrounding hills in every direction for what looked like miles-- Gotham city come to life and filled with Chinese characters.

Then I arrived at my hosts' apartment. Scott and Brooke are the brother-in-law and sister of a semi-distant cousin's girlfriend. I think. It's funny, tell people you're going everywhere, and you will almost always have somebody say "Oooh! How about _____? I have a _____ there you should visit!" Months later, here I am. And man, am I grateful.

Keep in mind that, while I've been happy with my last couple months' style of accommodation, it generally followed the line of one bed (no sheets, sometimes a blanket) under a fan not far from a shared bathroom with an unheated shower head sticking out of the wall somewhere near the toilet, which usually comes without soap, often without toilet paper, and occasionally without a seat. A sink is usually considered an expendable extra. If I have my own bathroom, it's considered a splurge (let alone one with heated water). Don't even get me started on air-con. If I was too hot to sleep, I would take a shower, skip drying myself off, and go to sleep dripping under the fan going full blast.

So when my taxi pulled past the gate up two floors, and the doorman ushered me into the elevator where I went up to floor 25 of 35 to one of the two suites on the floor, I knew I was in for a change. I just didn't know how much of a change. The air conditioning, hot water (not only in the shower but in all the taps) with really good water pressure, my own soft bed and sheets would have been more than enough. The amazing view, Persian rugs and artwork everywhere from all over, polished wood floors, laundry machine, sound system, TV (including just about every channel I'd ever heard of), and wireless internet, were from another world. And that's just in the apartment itself-- 25 floors down sit the fitness center, swimming pool, and direct access to one of the nicest (flat) trails on Hong Kong Island around the mountain.

To top it off, Brooke and Scott have been fantastic hosts. Every other sentence seems to be followed by "oh but you should do what you want, we can arrange things just fine, and by the way do you need more food/drinks/information about cool stuff to do in town?" I brought a package of coconut candy from the Mekong Delta village I visited as a thank you gift. I think I should have brought a full-sized wooden crate of it instead, (though their dentist will probably be happier as things are).

They've pointed me towards some of the things in town worth seeing and the local tricks to get to know the place properly. For example, if Hanoi was a city for motorbikes, Hong Kong is a city to walk. But, unlike Hanoi, it doesn't make this obvious. Walking Hong Kong, especially in Hong Kong Island and southern Kowloon, it's all about finding the escalators to the elevated walkways. You can walk from one end of town to the other and hardly ever touch down on the sidewalk. And even if the city is full of hills, you hardly ever have to walk up or downhill either. You just need to find which buildings will let you walk in one side, take an elevator up fourteen floors, and walk out the other side. Or find the massive line of outdoor escalators going up Central and SoHo (biggest set in the world, I think).

Here's the other thing you might not realize. Yes, it's a massive throbbing metropolis of nearly seven million. But it's also full of natural parks, hiking trails, and beaches. It's half a system of islands after all, and the ferries to each one are quick and relatively cheap, especially if you can borrow an Octopus card (think London's Oyster Card, a Chicago Card, or the new Orca card in Seattle) just charge up at a 7-11, and you can swipe at any public transport line, many stores, and even the local ice cream truck.

The city is clean, well-run, and very safe. Early on, Scott and Brooke both warned me to watch out in crowds. I opened my mouth to tell them, yes I knew to watch for pickpockets and bag slashers, and they continued saying "you'll have to dodge umbrellas like crazy-- they can poke your eye out if you're not careful." It's a different world.

So that's why I'm spending my birthday out here. I just got back from salsa dancing for the first time in months, with a flyer for the next big salsa event tomorrow. For the day, after I pick up my Chinese visa (call it a birthday gift from the People's Republic) I've got hiking trails in mind if it's cool, and beach nearby to go to if it's hot. Then it's back for another tasty home-cooked meal, and then at night, I'm out dancing, and maybe swinging by the bar next door for some live jazz. I'm still a little sad being away from friends and family (this will be my first birthday spent somewhere other than Seattle), but with a lineup like that, I think it's going to be a pretty good day anyway.

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Up to Hanoi

Hanoi was meant to be seen from a motorbike. Just do yourself a favor and make sure you've got a driver who knows how traffic works in the city. It doesn't stop. Nobody ever stops. There is no waiting. There is only dodging, weaving, and lots and lots of honking. So I joined forces with an English teacher who's been living here about as long as I've been on the road. We rented a motorcycle and two helmets and hit the town.

I can't even imagine what "Hanoi" must mean to half the people reading this. One of the first stops I made was to check out the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, where his embalmed remains are honored by a constant assembly line of hundreds upon thousands of Vietnamese and tourists shuffling in line at a pace strictly enforced and regulated by guards who will give you a firm push in the back if they think you're moving too slowly. The line is a normal, talkative loud line outside. It quiets down as the pillared granite building comes into view. It is silent inside its walls.

I can only imagine how Ho Chi Minh is viewed back home. After reading the about the war as shown by an American journalist, I've gotten my hands on a copy of Novel Without a Name by Duong Thu Huong. It tells a little about the war from the other side. The really interesting part? It's been banned by the Vietnamese government. I haven't started it yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

But, as expats here a quick to remind me, just like in El Salvador, there's a lot more to this place than the war. It is a bit like coming to France in the 1990s and asking everyone about WWII. You will find some fascinating stories, but life has moved on since then. When I sit on the three-inch tall foot stools they use for chairs to eat street food, people don't assume I'm here for the war history. People come here to see things like the water puppetry, with dragons dancing mysteriously unsupported over the surface of water, spewing smoke. Or the bending notes of the Dan Bau, an instrument so mesmerizing that young single women used to be banned from listening to male players for fear of being seduced by the art. Or the beaches in the south, the karst-filled coastline and islands of the northern Gulf of Tonkin. Or the mountains of the northwest, bordering Laos and China.

We took the bike for a road trip across the dust and mud of the city outskirts to the life the vast majority of the Vietnamese population still knows: the countryside. Rice paddies stretching as far as geography allows past rivers and lakes. Past that we entered Ba Vi national forest and climbed our way past ruined buildings, forest, and a stubborn herd of cows to a top vantage point.

We sat there, next to our bike, eating fresh mangoes we'd brought for the trip, watching the view stretch for miles in every direction, from the sunny skies to east and the jagged lightning moving our way from the west. I don't know what I would have thought of being here at any other time. But right then, it was just what I was looking for.

And that was a taste of the end of my adventures in Southeast Asia. I write this entry at the beginning of my new leg. It's time for the Asian heavyweights. I'm sitting in Hong Kong. It's past 2:00am my time, and in the next few days a trip to China's Foreign Ministry Office will determine my fate for the next chapter.

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A Young American in Vietnam

On a bus from Cambodia to Vietnam, I was reading Dispatches by Michael Herr. It's the story of a reporter in Vietnam during the war. I ended up bouncing back and forth between the Vietnam countryside around me and the same place forty years ago, ripped apart by a war between the people here and the people from my home. I was headed to Ho Chi Minh City, which people there still call by it's old name: Saigon. I looked up from the tanks officers and soldiers picking up body parts of 1968 to the swarm of motorcycle drivers filling every street in 2009.

A few days later, I stood in a small boat in the Mekong Delta. The river had narrowed to about seven feet across, and shallow enough for my guide to shut off the motor. We got the boat moving by pushing and pulling on the pandanas trees arching over our heads (often low enough that I had to duck them). It's a beautiful place, but I would hate to fight there. Everything hot, and close, and hidden.

My guide giggled after almost everything he said. Including his account of how he went outside one day and lost his sister and brother to bomb dropped next to their house. He showed me the scar on his forehead from the shrapnel.

But he said something he clearly thought was very important. "The US and Vietnam now" he said looking me in the eye"are like this," he gripped his hands together forcefully. "War was a long time ago. Now we have no problems with America. You come to you Vietnam, you say you from America. You don't say you from Canada. No. It's okay, we, are, like, this." And he clasped his hands together again and giggled.

He was right. People here ask me where I'm from all the time. I tell them the truth. I have yet to receive a single unkind word as a response. Some of them get really excited sometimes. But there's a lot that has happened since the war here.

Here's a piece of advice for travelers. Try this little exercise at least once. Go to a safe small town where you look very different from the local population and just wander the streets. I did this in Ben Tre kind of by accident. I wasn't too impressed with the town at first, it looked and smelled mostly like crusty cement and seemed about as interesting. But the people were another story. I have rarely been anywhere this friendly. There was almost nobody who spoke english, and my Vietnamese was still limited to "hello," "thank you," and "beef soup." But everyone who saw me broke out into a huge smile. Most said hello. Many tried to ask me my name or where I was from, even if they didn't understand the responses. Little kids would follow me for a block down the street, or hide shyly behind their smiling mothers who would try to get them to wave.

I read an account in my guidebook from an American Vietnam war vet who came back here. He was asked if he would recommend the trip to other vets. He said "it satisfied all the needs of my personal history lessons-- and therapy sessions. People there look forward to a future that is far better than their past-- a past that for them, and now me, is old history. Yeah, go for it."

I figure that says it better than I could.

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We Can't Deal with it, You Know?

Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians. We can't even deal with that! You know, we think if somebody kills someone, that's murder, you go to prison. You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that's what they do. 20 people, you go to a hospital, they look through a small window at you forever. And over that, we can't deal with it, you know? Someone's killed 100,000 people. We're almost going, "Well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning. I can't even get down the gym! Your diary must look odd: “Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, lunch, death, death, death, afternoon tea, death, death, death, quick shower…" -Eddie Izzard, British stand-up comedian.

I read the sign where the “waiting” room stood at the Killing Field of Choeng Ek. Our guide told us that the soldiers originally all killed their victims on arrival, but that when the number of victims went above 300 per day, the soldiers “failed in attempt to kill them all within a day. That is why they were detained for execution the next day.”

Between 1975 and 1979, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge killed with torture, slavery, starvation, and mass execution. Anyone who seemed to have any intellect was a threat, and therefore killed. If you spoke a foreign language or wore glasses, you were a “parasite,” and systematically destroyed. Parents were separated from children. This was done in the name of creating an idyllic communist agrarian society to "surpass that of Mao or Lenin". Their motto was 'To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss'. They killed at fields scattered across the country that are now simply known as “the killing fields.” The most famous (though not the largest) of these is just outside the capital. This is where I found the “waiting room.”

I don't think I'll ever forget the signs in that field. They were usually simple English, only a few words, just like the various ones I'd seen at Angkor Sat that said “NO SITTING ON BALUSTRADE” or “LOOSE ROCKS, DANGER.” It was at that same level. But these ones didn't tell you to watch your head.

They were always in all capital letters, not to emphasize the point, that was just how the writers knew how to write them. “166 VICTIMS WITH OUT HEADS.” or “KILLING TREE AGAINST WHICH EXECUTIONERS BEAT CHILDREN.” No other explanation. There was only one sign that didn't use all capital letters. It was a small white one with blue writing that read “Please don't walk through the mass grave.”

I felt like I was going to vomit. I still do as I write this. Bits of bone were poking up through the ground. It you didn't look carefully, they just looked like white stone in the ground instead of teeth and femurs. Our tour guide's English wasn't terrible, but I only could catch snips and pieces. “450 bodies found in this mass grave. Still open.” “100 in this grave, mostly women and children. They take clothes off because they think clothes make torture less painful.” “Heads probably in the lake” “Killed their own parents.” “Dug their own graves- told that they were going to plant flowers. They lied.”

We were shown a tree from which a large speaker had been hung to play “communist music” as our guide called it. The victims, brought in blindfolded, couldn't hear the moans of those around them dying. All they heard was music. They died hearing communist hymns.

The educated were killed because they posed a threat. Their families were killed to prevent youngsters growing up and seeking revenge. The victims were tortured into providing the names of everyone they knew in order to find more educated or otherwise unfavored people to kill. Soldiers would tell mothers that their babies would be killed if they did not talk. They talked. Then the babies were killed anyway. So were the mothers.

They died beaten by bamboo, stabbed by swords, split open by axes. Children were hung from trees with sharpened stakes below their chin and throat, and then cut down. Some victims were killed by gun, but most by being struck by the gun itself rather than being shot, because the bullets were considered too valuable. Soldiers doing the killing were sometimes then killed by order from their superiors. Many were found with their uniforms, but without their heads.

Today, in the middle, the first thing you will see is a white stupa memorial, at the center of which is a glass case, several stories tall. It is almost entirely filled with 9,000 human skulls.

I don't believe in absolute evil. I don't think it really exists. But this is the most that belief has ever been challenged.

I spent a lot of my time just staring at the Cambodian people as I was driven back. Almost everyone looked like they were under 30. What are you supposed to do after your capital is abandoned for nearly four years and entire families are tortured and executed by brainwashed teenagers, many of them are then executed themselves for knowing too much?

I found an English-language newspaper based in Phnom Penh. Even though the Khmer Rouge fell to the Vietnamese thirty years ago, they're still making headlines. In page three were new revelations about the torture methods used in S-21, one of the most infamous prisons. The trials of the KR's known leaders is still happening today. They're only just now working out how many hours of questioning each side will be limited to. These are for crimes committed a decade before my birth.

My guidebook to Southeast Asia has a different research author for each country. When I first read the writing of the guy who did Cambodia, I thought he was really funny. (“Markets and disabled street sellers pawn cheap copies of most (book) titles, but we know you wouldn't dream of buying a photocopied Lonely Planet guide. Be warned, if this is a photocopy, it may self-destruct in five seconds”) But after a while, the random jokes and attempts at humor began to annoy me a bit. Now I think I understand them again. He knew that after seeing things like the Choeng Ek killing fields, you need stupid jokes like that. You can't make yourself feel better about witnessing what was left of a genocide that ended a little under 30 years ago. But every little attempt at cheering up helps.

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Random Thoughts of a Tourist in Angkor Wat

It's 4:30 am. Shut that alarm off before you wake up half the dorm. Now be quiet and come on, I've got something cool to show you..

Careful, you'll wake the staff sleeping on the floor... why did they tie their mosquito nets to the doorjamb? It's as if they don't want us to get out. Actually, now that I see the enormous padlock on the front gate... yeah we'll have to wake one up. Sorry, dude.

Cool, tuk-tuk driver is here, we're on the road. It's really peaceful out in town just a few people out for a run, a couple motorcycles on the road, a gigantic Duracell battery statue on the curb... seriously, why is that there? It's five feet tall. Who in Siam Reap's municipal government thought “Hmm, now what does our town really need? Garbage collection? Some public education funding... ooh! How about a big fake battery standing on the side of the street!”

Right, almost to Angkor Wat, the ticket booth is here... three-day pass, one-week pass... where's the one-day pass? We're paying a one day fee to the three day people? Okay, right, that works. My picture? Why do you want to take my-- okay. Right. Sure, I'll wait for it to print. Thank you! Boy my headshot looks fantastic on this ticket, especially taken at 4:45am in the dark without a flash. Onwards!

We're here. The biggest religious building in the world. If someone told me this was the biggest man-made moat too, I'd believe them. I've been crossing the stone walkway for at least five minutes... I'm through the front door and... more open air grounds. Are these counted as part of the building? Because if they are, that's cheating.

Check out those clouds. This is going to be a good sunrise. Everybody seems to be camped out inside the western entrance. Do they know something I don't? Well, considering half of them are trying to take photos of a main building several football fields away using camera flashes designed for fifteen feet, I'm guessing no. Onwards!

We're passing seven headed naga statues and pools on either side on a long stone walkway to the iconic three-domed Wat (temple). I think I was wrong, they're not counting the grounds. This thing is still big enough to be the biggest in the world. The colors are just coming out in the-- What? I'm sorry, what did you say? Corry? Coffee! Ah! No, thank you, no I don't need coffee or tea, thank you.

Almost to the entrance. I can hear bats. Smell em too. Whew, they stink. It may be dark, but I bet if I just keep going East.. as in inside... doesn't going indoors kind of defeat the purpose of getting up for a sunrise? Bah, who cares. Onwards!

Wow. It opens up into stone courtyards and stairways. Nobody else is here yet. Wow that light is amazing. Wow those stone carvings are good, I haven't seen them like that since India. Wow. Yeah, I'll be thinking that word a lot today. Wow. Now if I could just... nah, 'No entry' sign-- Hello. Fine, thanks. You? Are you sure? But it says 'no entry.' They take it away soon? Well if you're sure.

Oh man these upstairs stone carvings are amazing. Climb to the top? Eh... I don't think... pay? No. Already paid ticket. Nope. No, I'm not going past that sign, that one is permanently embedded with wood. No I'm not paying you ten dollars. Goodbye. I said no. Bye.

Out the east door. And that guy was wearing a uniform too. Or at least part of one. Hmph. But wow, is this the perfect spot to watch the sunrise or what? Second floor platform, facing east, sun rising over the jungle, reflecting all kinds of colors onto a scattered cloud cover and onto the ruins. And I'm going to run out of memory on my camera if I don't stop right now.

I don't usually like standing in one spot waiting, but it's good just taking this in. Just imagine standing on this platform, looking below onto crowds of hundreds in this courtyard. Addressing the public, 9th Century AD, Khmer Empire.

Later

Here's the main entrance again and oh my lord look at that horde of people coming at us right now. Cripes. Hey, somebody graffitied “thief” on the back of this pillar Not cool. Except, if I juxtapose it with a confused looking tourist on the other side of the shot... bingo. Heh. Now I'll just have to think of a good caption. Actually that's kinda mean. I'd hate to find that picture online of myself someday. Erase.

Mmm, just look at the lion and naga statues. One behind the other. If I set up the shot and just wait for this guy to move... and then the next guy to move. Why has he stopped? No, first guy, don't go back. Okay, sweet, now.... that was exactly the wrong time to stick your leg out. Trying again... waiting for third guy to move... bingo. Awesome-- What? No, I still don't need tea or coffee, thank you. No, I just told her I don't need tea or coffee, you haven't changed my mind. Neither have you. No, thank you, I just told them that. I'm outta here. That small temple in the grounds looks safe. I hope.

Mmm, these inner temples are peaceful. Not many images. Living chambers, possibly? Oh and that's an amazing shot with the light coming through the doorway, if I just wait for that couple in the distance. And that other couple. And this other dude. And there's another one coming. Come on dude, speedwalk! You can make it before they get here! Ten steps. Five Steps. Four. Three. Two-- no! No, don't stop for a picture! Argh, now the couple's in the shot too. And another. Come on... look cool, lower the camera, smile. You don't need to make people uncomfortable, especially at this time in the morning. Wait. A bit more. Just a bit more. And they're gone. Just in time for two more people to arrive. Screw it, there are people in Angkor Wat, there will be people in the pictures.

Can't be here forever. Le's go meet the tuk-tuk. Hello. No, thanks I don't need a book. No, I don't need a tuk-tuk, I've got a-- yes, I'm sure they're great guidebooks but I'm not- no thank you, I don't need a drink. Yes, I'm sure. I don't want a special price. No I don't need a discount. No, I'm not interested in bracelets, how about you trade with this dude selling books? Or that one on the tuk tuk? I'm guessing the twelve other kids here selling bracelets don't want yours. No. No. Really, thanks, but no.

Outta there! Driving on with the tuk tuk to the the next complex. This moat is just as big on the sides. Wow. And are those...? They are! Hello, monkeys! Man, haven't seen any in the wild since Thailand! I'd better watch my pockets, I still remember stories about the camera snatching monkeys in India and Bolivia.

And we're here, I'm stepping out of the-- no, thanks I don't need breakfast right now, you can hold onto your menu, thanks-- stepping out of the tuk-tuk. This part is pretty much empty. Sweet! Looks like someone has taken this place apart in chunks and put half of it back together. Looks like the “someone” is “JASA”? Japanese restoration group. Hunh. Very cool looking. No climbing of course.

Hang on, that's definitely a Shiva linga. I thought these guys were Vaisnavite. Huh. I guess crossover makes sense. Anyway the four-faced pillars could easily stand for Bhrama and hardly anyone cared much about him, why not a random linga for Shiva. It's not very big... why am I making observations about the size of intentionally phallic religious monuments again?

I wonder how they knew this was a library. Or if it really was one, they might just be calling it that in these signs. Amazing stuff though. I bet I could take a picture in any direction without looking and have it come out great. One, two, aaaand, bam! ...hey, not bad! I'm keeping that one. And this is just the beginning! Time to explore!

Later

Awesome stuff. Good restoration work, even if chunks are still piled everywhere. Maybe those were the ceiling once upon a time. Heading out now... maybe I will grab breakfast.

Thank you. Curry? Two dollars? Rice included? Fantastic. Thank you! Oh boy, and here come the little kids. Hi. No, I don't need a bracelet. Or a statue. What? It's Joel. What's yours? What country am I from? The United States. No, it's impressive if you know the capital but it won't make me buy. No, thank you. No ,thank you. No thank you. Nothankyou. No. No, thank you very much, but no. Yes, very pretty. I don't need a good price, I said no. Bye. Oh boy, here's number two. No thank you. The United States. Washington State. Very impressive, but no, I'm not going to buy if you name the capitals. No thank you. Bye. Hi. Yes they're very small. Yes it's an elephant. Yes, that's Ganesh. No, thank you. The United States. Washington state. No, I already know my country's capital, my state capital, who my president is and roughly what the population is. Thank you, no. That's very good. No. No, thank you. I see that. No, thank you. Actually it's pronounced Olympia, but that's still very good. No, thank you. Yes, I see they're very nice, I still don't want to buy. No, thank you. No, I don't know the capital of Madagascar. No, I will not buy one if you tell me what the capital is. Bye.

Mm! Food! Thank you! Mm. Good stuff. Two free bananas? Seriously? I mean, thanks, but...

Hey, you! No, I still don't want a bracelet. No. But are you hungry? You like bananas? Yeah, seriously. Here. You're welcome. Hi there! No, thank you, I don't want pineapple, I just ate. Are you allowed to eat those bananas? I said are you-- oh forget it. Do you want this one? Go for it! You're welcome.

Okay, next temple. I think this is the one my guidebook said actually was a jigsaw puzzle-- archaeologists dismantled it keeping careful records that the Khmer rouge then destroyed in the civil war. No I don't need a drink. No I don't need a coconut. I don't care if it's a good price. No. Anyway, the entrance opens to an elevated walkway sitting on top of pillars. Looks like the French helped with this-- yes, the reclining buddha is that way, I know, thank you. What country am I from? Nicaragua. Ni-car-ag-ua. Bye.

Are those funnel web spiders? I mean, they're spiders, those are webs, and they're awfully funnel-shaped. They're all over the place, now that I look. How did I not notice those before? Are they venomous? Not that I was planning on picking one up.

Thinking of dangers, I know Cambodia is full of land mines, almost as bad as Laos is with cluster bombs. I've been warned to stay on the beaten path at all times in general. I wonder if anyone has ever gotten hurt from a mine here since the war ended. This must have been a huge battleground, there must have been some weapons here somewhere, or did respect keep them out? This place is a national symbol after all. Just look at the flag-- blue and red with a white Angkor Wat in the middle.

Still, I'm exploring the forest where the royal palace once stood, and I think I'll stick to the beaten pathways. Very peaceful. Yes, very nice paintings. No thank you. Mmm. Hey, look some kids are bathing in the middle of a pool. I've seen more naked kids running around Southeast Asia than just about anywhere in the-- are they waving at me? They're making a sign. A sign of taking a picture. They're asking me if I want to take their picture. You're telling me a group of kids has set up shop, bathing naked and getting people to give them money for taking their picture? I'm pretty sure there are extradition treaties with that kind of business deal in mind. No, thanks, enjoy the bath!

Later

I can't believe just how extensive these temples are-- I'm covering a tiny fraction and I've already seen so many! This one though... they picked this one to film Tomb Raider on for a reason. This really feels like how you expect a ruin to feel. Surprisingly few ruins do. Trees growing out and on top of a crumbling maze of religious carvings and hallways, monkeys and geckos sounding off in the background. India was the partner to help restore this one. Maybe not the best job technically, but probably the best work I've seen to preserve the feeling of the place. Makes sense, if you want to preserve Hindu temples, call in the country that, its own language, calls itself Hindustan. Now I just have to find the exit. Where's that music coming from?

Mine victims. “We wish to live with dignity. We do not beg. We make music...” Good cause. Wish I had something smaller than a twenty. I think I heard these guys in town last night, maybe I'll drop them something later. We're almost to the exit, just around this line of trees.

Oh dear lord it's an army. No. No. No I don't. Nope, sorry. Already have one. No, don't need one. No, not thirsty. Can't carry more books. No. No. No no no. Where's my camera? This is going on video. No. Thank you, but no. No thank you. No. Please let go of the tuk-tuk. No. Now the driver's getting annoyed. Please don't get hurt. Thank you. Bye!

Later still

And back at my guest house! I don't want to know what time it is. I just need to get change. Driver doesn't have any. I'll ask at the guesthouse. I'll just hand over the twenty... it getting handed over to a little shirtless kid who's taken off running. Uhh-- yes, I can wait.

You know, this driver has been very good. I haggled the price down a bit much. I realize seven dollars is a lot more here than it is back home but still, it's not much. I know it's not customary around here, but he deserves a tip. He's been efficient, friendly, and above all he hasn't tried to sell me anything. I'll go see him for second.

Hey there! We're just waiting for my change. Yes. What? Do I want what? Boom boom? No, I do not want boom boom. No, I'm not married. Why not? Because it's illegal, and I don't like paying for that kind of thing. Yes. Okay. Here's comes my change. Thanks, kid. Here's your seven dollars. Thank you very much! Bye!

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