Haircuts, and the Ninja Fortress of Daegu.

On Saturday, Mac and I spent the morning playing video games (mainly I spent it playing World of Goo, and he spent it watching me play world of Goo, laughing at me, and playing Kongai, an online strategy card game. Warning: World of Goo is ludicrously addictive, and I don't recommend it to anyone who has anything pressing to accomplish). Mac also gave me a ridiculous treat, with a truely remarkable name. Crunky Nude Balls. Lotte (who else?) makes them. They are a sort of ball of chocolate and the filling things they put in Crunch bars back in the states. We later figured out that Crunky is a type of candy bar almost identical to a crunch bar, and the nude balls are a special form of that candy. Still, what a name. Good though. Ate the whole container in a couple of hours.

After we had our fill of video games, we ran some errands then went to get haircuts.

I am going from here to Indonesia, and short, easy to maintain hair will be really nice. Plus, it'll keep me a lot cooler. When we took our seats, Mac barked out his order, which was either for a haircut or a gay gigolo, I'm not sure. Something about High and tight with skin on the sides and a number one guard, I didn't catch it all. The Korean girl standing at my chair looked at me.

I pointed at Mac. "Can you repeat that?" Mac looked concerned. He repeated the order, as a question.

"Yeah, that."

The face of my Korean girl darkened. "Skin?" she said, touching the side of my head.

"Yeah." I said.

She was obviously very recalcitrant to cut my hair. "You Army?" she said.

"No ma'am. But I want my hair short."

"ok. But, I start with a three."

Her face remained mildly troubled as she cut the top, then the sides with no guard at all. "That good?" she asked, hopeful that it was short enough.

"No, use the number two guard on top please."

Her face fell again. "Ok." When she was done there was a pile of hair around my chair and I felt (and looked) like a new man. Save for the beard, I also looked like a fresh Army recruit. My hairdresser looked like she might cry a little.

I smiled at her, and rubbed my stubbly scalp. "That's good. Thank you!" She managed a smile and I tipped her a little extra to make sure she knew I wasn't going to miss my hair.

For those of you dying to know the damage: here's how it looks now.

Now, about that the Ninja fortress.

They say that Ninjas are silent, and can vanish without a trace. I suspect Korea had Ninjas of this type. They built at least one Fortress, then wiped out all evidence of it save the tourism map.

After our hair cuts, We hopped on the post bus to Camp Walker, in Daegu. There we hoped to explore the local environment and see what was to be seen in the Daegu area. I'd heard it wasn't much of a tourist spot, but every city has its bright lights, and we figured we'd find something.

We didn't, but the not finding was so epic as to be worth the attempt anyway.

Leaving Camp Walker, we made our way to a bus that we figured out (after some blank staring at the bus signs) would take us to Daegu station, where we figured we could likely find some tourist information and maybe a map.

We climbed aboard, paid a dollar, and rode the bus across town to the Daegu Station + Lotte Department store. As it turns out, Daegu station is actually INSIDE the store, sortof, they're sharing the same building. We wandered in the store for a time. Department stores here are more segmented by brand than American ones, so much so that you almost feel as if you're inside a mall, where each brand is its own little shop, when in fact you are in one giant store, that is just heavily segmented.

In the basement sub-level two (where else?), we found a grocery store, and bought some snack foods, then we wandered back outside and found a small tourist information booth with a girl that spoke some English. We didn't really know what we wanted to see, so she recommended a sort of botanical gardens. We thanked her, took a tourist information map, and sat down to study it before we made up our minds. We decided, instead, on a Fortress, called BongDeokToSong fortress on our map, that had a little icon that implied that maybe there was an ancient castle there.

In retrospect, maybe we should have done a bit more research, but whatever, the adventure was fun. We rode the subway until we were as close as we could get on the trains, and then walked out onto the street and hailed a cab.

We climbed in, showed him our map, and stammered out the fortresses name as best we could. The cab driver look at us and bobbed his head, repeating the word, slowly. "Beyondokson?"

We parroted at each other for a few minutes, trying to get the pronunciation just right, and he shrugged and drove until he saw a couple of high school kids. He shouted to them, rolled down a window, and gestured to us. We showed them the map, They carefully pronounced the words on the map, made a face, and after some discussion said "sorry" and shrugged.

The cab driver drove on, and repeated this process with a security guard he found on the next block. Again, no success. He called a friend on his phone, learned nothing from them, and continued driving. Then he found a police station, and asked there. We wrote out the Han Gul characters, and gave him both the Han Gul transliteration from the map, and the map itself. He was in the station for a long time.

"Maybe it's a prison?" Mac suggested.

I giggled.

When the cabbie came out of the station, things were no better. Next, having escalated from high school student to security guard to police, he took us to the next logical authority--he took us to the ARMY. Specifically to another entrance to CAMP WALKER, the base where we'd started an hour and a half ago.

They were also no help. When you've escalated up to asking the Army, and they don't know the answer, who do you ask next?

We drove a little further.

"Maybe it is a prison." I admitted. "But you'd think then the police would have known where it was. . ."

We agreed that regardless, if we didn't find this place, we were going to have to look it up later.

The cab driver, apparently bereft of options, at this point offered to take us somewhere, we think to eat, but then he took us to an art gallery and tea house, so maybe not. On the way, we passed right by the same damn gate we'd left when we arrived at Camp walker, now about two hours ago. When we reached the tea house, he hovered after we got out of the car and paid the fare, anxious to help out if there was anywhere else he could take us. I looked at Mac.

"He's not going to leave, is he?"

"Doesn't look like it. I think he wants to know where else we want to go."

I was tired of the taxi, and I didn't want to keep moving, because I didn't know where we wanted to go yet.

I looked at Mac, looked at the driver. I went inside, ordered tea, and sat down.

The tea was good, strong yellow tea, with Ice, in tall glasses. It had a severe flavor that reminded me of unsweet tea in the deep south, but with a more Asian, tea-like, finish, if that makes any sense.

Our driver finally abandoned us. We resolved to look up the mysterious BongDeokToSong fortress when we returned home, and after grabbing dinner at a restaurant bar decorated entirely in American pop iconography, that served Korean food and spoke no English (and a charming place it was, too) we caught a bus back to Camp Walker and from there a base-bus home.

We tried to look up the fortress (go ahead, try yourselves if you like) using both the English spelling and the Han Gul. In the Han Gul it returns a couple of results, one of which is just a picture of a post, another is a phone and e-mail directory.

Apparently, nobody knows what the hell this place is.

Me? I blame the ninjas.

Tomorrow, Silly Dice Maze, Go!

Busan, Beomeosa Temple, and Good old American Softball.

The next morning I leave the hostel around 9, planning to meet Mac at the station around 10. I'd given myself about half an hour to make the trip and half an hour to find a global ATM and pull down some Won, as I only had about twenty thousand to my name right now (which is about 25 bucks).

I'm staying very near the transportation heart of Busan, near Soemyong station, which is also where the Lotte Department store is located. In fact, the Lotte figured into the directions to my hostel. I had been worried I'd have trouble using a store as part of the directions, as it might not be easy to find.

I couldn't have been more wrong. The Lotte department store in Busan (like the ones in Daegu, spread through Seoul, and elsewhere), is maybe 8 to 10 stories high, and approximately the footprint of a large grocery store.

To give you an idea of what exactly the Lotte corporation is, imagine this: Wal-mart buys Marriott, the hotel chain. Then, emboldened by it's success, it buys Burger King, Hostess snack foods corporation, three Six Flags locations and the entire chain of Carmike Cinemas.

That's Lotte. They operate theatres, fast food joints, hotels, department stores and amusement parks, they seem to run the country, and I'm halfway surprised the train system isn't also a product of theirs.

So when I get up the next morning I head back past the Lotte department store and Hotel and Casino (yes, really), and into a Busan bank with a global ATM. Where my debit card refuses to work. (SH!T).

As you may recall, I had severe cash flow problems in Europe, namely that my debit card was functionally useless throughout France, parts of Greece, and almost all of England. So when my card transaction didn't complete here in Korea, with my cash reserve entirely wiped out by Hong Kong, I was very, very concerned.

I hiked up the street to the next bank, which didn't have a global ATM but directed me around the corner to another branch of the same Bank (Sinha? I think) which, as it turned out, didn't have a global ATM either. They directed me back past the other two banks to the Lotte Hotel, which had a global ATM in the lobby. Thankfully, this one (operated by the KB bank goup, who are apparently a large Korean bank), worked just fine.

I withdrew as much money as I dared, worried that I wouldn't get another shot at it, and off I went to Busan station plaza to meet Mac, a few minutes late, but no worries. For some reason my phone refuses to function here in Korea, I get a polite message in both Korean and English saying calls have been disabled, and that's all (thanks Verizon!), so I couldn't call him in advance to warn him I was running late. I found him with relative ease though, and we looked at a tourist map in the station and got directions to a beautiful Buddhist temple named Beomeosa. Before leaving the station, we stopped by a little snack shop and bought some food, and I bought some Pocari Sweat. I'd heard about Pocari sweat before, but never tasted it.

Imagine you've been sweating a lot, and lost a lot of vital nutrients and salt through a long run, or athletic session. Now take your normal gatorade, make it clear, and add about 5 ounces of that sweat you lost right back into it. That's what Pocari tastes like. I suppose it's an acquired taste.

We took the subway to the stop nearest the temple, then hired a cab for the last mile. The fare was around $3, which wasn't bad at all, and Mac exchanged cell numbers with the taxi driver (a common practice here) so that we could call him back when we were done.

The Beomeosa temple complex was beautiful. Beomeosa means "temple of the Nirvana Fish" and thhe temple grounds include fish and other sealife worked into much of the decorations. We hiked out into the surrounding forest to discover tiny gardens nestled in among the rocks near the fresh stream that flowed down the mountain near the temple. The temple wasn't very crowded and the monks were welcoming and tranquil, waving a hand to indicate if pictures were or weren't allowed and generally just being as serene as hell.
The pictures convey the overall feel of the place--A sortof fairytale set back in the hills. I can't explain the tiny rock stacks. Apparently it is a tradition, because in particular places on the temple grounds we saw lots of them. Maybe it's some sort of physical meditation similar to "dig a hole, fill it up"? I don't know.

You'll notice the swastika symbol (an eastern mystic symbol for good luck) scattered throughout these pictures. That's because it's still everywhere in Bhuddist temples, it's never lost its traditional association, and I expect that most of them don't even know, or forget between bouts of history or old movies, about the evil, reversed twin--the Nazi emblem. In fact, on all the tourist maps Buddhist sites are marked with the good luck icon.

Mac had a softball game that night at Camp Carroll, so we headed back to the subway around 1pm, and caught a subway train for Busan station. When we boarded the train it was half empty, and we grabbed a couple of seats near the door so I could show Mac pictures of Hong Kong. He got a call from Mallory while we were on the train, and we spoke to her briefly. As we were nearing downtown, a gentleman of about 80 who had been sitting near us approached me, as he was about to debark. He was wearing an immaculate light brown suit, and his face was all straight lines and dignity. Mac was finishing up his phone conversation. This man had been riding in the same train as us almost since the start, a good ten or fifteen minutes.

"Do you speak English?"
"Yes sir."
"Do you speak Korean?"
"No, not yet."
"Ah. This chair. . ." He paused, digging for the words. ". . .is Sixty five."

It took me a minute to grasp his meaning, and then my eyes widened. "Oh! I'm sorry!"

He waved his hand as if he were discarding something, and debarked as I thanked him for telling us.

As we pulled away towards our next stop Mac looked askance of me as he closed the phone. "What was that about?"

"We're in the seats reserved for the elderly and infirm."

"OH!" We both jumped up, as quickly as possible, and stood for the last two stops, sheepish looks on our faces. Oh well, at least the fellow told us. I finally saw a set of small pictograms that explained the seat's purposes, but they had been obscured by other riders when we entered the train initially, and we hadn't looked closely--a mistake I won't make again.

We grabbed a very interesting lunch at a Lotteria (kindof like a Korean Burger King). I had a shrimp burger with whole shrimp fried into a patty, and Mac had a 'bulgogi rice burger'. it wasn't really bulgogi,just ground beef, and with bacon, but the bun was fried rice, fried into two flat discs. It disintegrated halfway through, but Mac says that despite the challenge of eating it, it was pretty tasty.

He hopped on a train back to the small town where his camp is located, and I grabbed the Subway back to my hostel. There I grabbed my bags, left my key and a note for June saying I was leaving early, and headed back to the train station. I arrived just in time to catch the 1610 train towards Seoul.

The slow train (Mugunghwa) I was on, afforded me ample time to take pictures and watch the scenery of Korea slide by. Unlike Hong Kong's sharp, wrinkled hills, which force most of the transportation to conform to the dictates of their shape, Korea is a country made almost entirely of foothills. At some points it feels like the north Georgia mountains, or some of the smoother parts of Kentucky. The flat spaces are all farms, gardens and rice paddies, the rest of the country is constant hills, just on the edge of being mountains. It has a more worn down, settled look than Hong Kong or Lantau island, but it is still rolling, hilly terrain. It's no wonder people claim that the Koreans developed Tae Kwon Do because they had strong legs--these people spend most of their walking time going either up or down hill.

As a result of how challenging the climbs can be, there's a really powerful taxi industry here, and the taxis will actuall hail you, if you appear to be walking any distance, they'll prowl up behind you and tap the horn, hoping to pick up a fare.

When I reached the small town station, I took a cab to the camp entrance and showed my two forms of ID. I'd brought my DOD civilian ID with me, knowing that it would come in handy when I was in Korea, and maybe other places, and it did. They waved me on and told me that I'd be expected to register with DBIDS, the electronic access pass system, on Monday. I nodded and hiked across the social and life parts of the base, past library, bank, and post office, to the Softball field, where I sat down and watched the rest of Mac's game. His Delta Dragons won, beating out Bravo Squadron 5-3 in the 7th inning.

Afterward, we went out to "Country Restaurant", commonly referred to as "country kitchen" by the local soldiers. It's a Korean restaurant directly across from the soldier's main gate, and it serves Americanized Korean food. It's got a really fantastic mural inside, too.

I had really excellent sweet and sour chicken, and afterward we wandered around town a bit and then headed back to Mac's quarters and crashed. He grabbed the community guest matress from the day room and we threw some sheets on it, and I slept like a baby.

Tomorrow. Daegu, and the hopeless taxi driver.

For extra Korean Airport Fun, Check Box.

In the morning, I slept as late as I could, played on the internet, and packed everything up for Korea. Around 11 I checked out, grabbed some lunch, and then hopped in the MTR for the long ride out to the airport. The people at the Dragonair office were very helpful, and I remembered to put labels on my check bag this time,

After an uneventful but pleasant flight to Korea, I debarked at Busan airport. After expecting a really wild entry into Hong Kong, and having it be completely normal, the approach procedure into Busan was truly wild: a 180 degree turn at maybe 200 feet above gruound level at the end of the runway. Ah well.

I had a bit of fun in the Busan airport though. Due to the swine influenza scare currently sweeping Asia (which they take much more seriously and differently than we do in the states) there is a quarantine procedure for each country. In Korea, this procedure is a form you fill out on the aircraft and give to a health quarantine officer before going to talk to the immigrations control officer.

So I filled out the form (where have you been? where are you staying? etc.) and it included a space at the bottom with a field saying "have you experienced any of the following symptoms in the past 7 days?"

The symptoms were Fever, Severe cough, (Rhynosomething?) (Or Nasal Congestion), and something else.

Well, in the past 7 days I've had (and fought off) a defcon 4 sinus infection. So I figured, sure, I've had one of these. They wouldn't put the boxes there to be checked unless they expected somebody to check them, right? They probably just use it to help figure out which people they need to be more cautious with.

Wrong.

So I go up to the quarantine guy, and he takes my form and glances over it. I assume he's reading it, since, y'know, he's holding it and looking at it. He takes my temperature using a skin sensor on the side of my neck. After a moment, and a reassuring chirp from the little thermometer, he nods, hands me a flier on the symptoms of influenza, and waves me through.

So I walk on to the immigration desk and hand her my passport and visit request form.

She nods and looks through my passport, carefully stamping it with visit information.

She's handing me back my passport when the fellow from the health desk comes running across the little open space between the two lines of control desks, waving his hands in the air quasi-hysterically. "Wait wait wait sir!"

I look up at him. "Yes?"

"Ah, sir. You checked box?"

As if maybe I had not meant to check it? I don't know. I raise my eyebrows. "Yes."

"Ahh." There is some hand wringing, and with very concerned body language he implores me back to the quarantine control desk. "You come back to desk!"

"Ok." I say with a bemused grin. I've got hours to reach my hostel, no plans for the evening. I had checked the box, after all.

So back we went to the quarantine desk area. He grabbed an associate and they conferred hurriedly in Korean. I put my hands in my pockets.

He came back to me. "You checked the box?"

"Yes. I was just in Hong Kong, and the air there is so polluted, it made my nose sick." I said, trying to simplify sinus infection as much as possible for the benefits of the obvious language barrier, and wanting to avoid using any word that sounded like "flu" "swine" or "plague o' death".

"Ok." It didn't look ok at all. His eyes were still large with concern. "I take your temperature again!"

"Sure." I said.

He stuck a slightly more accurate thermometer in my left ear this time, and the chirp came back just as reassuring as last time.

I decided it would not be wise to try to explain that my temperature runs about 1 Fahrenheit degree below normal, goodness only knows what they would have done then.

He looked at the thermometer. Looked at me. I looked at him, and blinked.

"I take your temperature once more!" He said, as if it was entirely possible that in the 5 seconds we'd been staring at each other, my temperature had risen one degree per second and I was now a walking patient zero for Influenza for the entire nation of Korea.

This time, he uses my right ear. Same chirp.

He looks at me. I look at him.

Suddenly, a thought occurs to him. You can tell it's ground-breaking stuff by his expression. "You feel o.k. now?" he asks.

I shudder to think what would have happened if I'd lied and said no. Instead I simply nodded and shrugged. "Sure. I feel fine now."

"Oh." He pauses, presses another brochure on the symptoms of influenza into my hands, on top of the identical one he gave me three minutes ago. "Ok. You can go."

I say thank you, and head back to the visit counter. The girl reprocesses my visit request with a smile, and I'm off to the Zen Hostel Busan.

Zen Hostel Busan is essentially the large, beautiful decorated and spotlessly clean apartment of one June Park. He's not there when I arrive, but he's left me a key and a note, and the other current guests (two Brits and three Americans) let me in and make me feel at home.

When June does arrive, he turns out to be a ponytailed Busan native and all-around laid-back guy. We chat briefly and then a movie is started on the 40+ inch television in the common room. June goes off to do his thing. The movie is pirated direct from the internet, and played off of June's little 'guest computer' using VLC. There is some confusion about subtitles, since the VLC interface is all Korean, and the guys manage to figure it out with June's help. At first, he gives us Korean subtitles with a slight grin, and there is a awkward pause that I found quite funny as the guys try to figure out how to ask for English ones.

The movie is a Korean comedy, slow and methodical, made up of awkward social interactions surrounding a fellow who takes to binge drinking after breaking up with his girlfriend. It's not really funny, per se, for about 95% of the time it's running, but the couple of major punch lines that the movie builds--very slowly--towards, are hysterical, and it's interesting to see what one culture counts as funny and another culture counts as lame.

When it is over, a couple of the guys start another Korean film, a sortof modern art house thriller called Old Boy. It's actually really good, but I have to be up early so I crash halfway through. I'm going to look it up when I get back to the states though. I want to know how it ends.

Tomorrow, I'm meeting Mac at Busan station, downtown, and we're going to a temple.

Science and History and Art, Oh my!

Today was Wednesday.

On Wednesday, the major Hong Kong museums general exhibits are all free. This isn't a big deal, as a ticket which will get you into all the museums is only about HK $30 anyway, but why not save the money, right?

Moment of self-exposure: I love museums. I love big ones that sprawl on and on through warehouses the size of Costco, I love tiny ones dedicated to obscure stuff like Scorpion farming in the great Midwest that are all packed into a single Airstream trailer on the side of Route 66. I can wander through an Art museum for hours, leave it, go to a history museum across the street and be just as enchanted for twice as long. I very nearly squealed like a schoolgirl when I discovered a functioning cutaway display of the rotary phone switching system in the science museum.

But first, I promised you a picture of breakfast. There it is. I found Pears at Wellcome yesterday day before, as well as some more interesting things. I wanted Juice, and they had Orange Juice. . . with Aloe Vera Chunks. I'm not talking pulp here, these things are crispy, tasty cubes, roughly the size of a human tooth. In addition to that, a pear, and a couple of tasty bits of chocolate, I'd also found two other items. One was a Swiss Miss Roll with Sweet Red Bean Curd filling--how could I resist? And the other was the adorable, Owlish red package you see there, which claimed to be "Caramel Corn" and yet sported a picture of something that looked like cheesepuffs, and a cartoon rendering of a knockoff of Mr. Peanut.

The juice was excellent, if a bit chunkier, strictly speaking, than Juice has any right to be. I drank about half of it and saved the rest for tomorrow. The Sweet Bean Swiss Miss roll was everything one would expect from a hostess snack if they started making them exclusively in Beijing.

And the Caramel Corn? What do you say about whatever it was? It was DELICIOUS. Neither Corn, nor--save for about one handful of loose peanuts in the bottom of the bag that reminded me of the unpopped kernels in a microwave popcorn bag--especially peanuty, it was instead all of the best things about crackerjacks, delivered using a vehicle not unlike a crispier version of a packing peanut* Imagine a Cheeto with no dusty, finger-befouling residue, and the flavour of that wonderful caramel candy popcorn you get in those three-sectioned Christmas tins that are always left with just Cheese and Regular popcorn and a forlorn and empty triangle where the caramel corn used to be. It was absolutely genius. I'll be trying to bring back a case of them when I return from Hong Kong, probably.

Ok, done raving about breakfast.

*(yes, I've eaten packing peanuts. I was actually at work at the time, So technically you PAID me to eat Packing peanuts. Lots of them are made out of cornstarch now. Yes, they were, in theory(and fact), edible and non-toxic. So there).

Off to the Museums. First, the Hong Kong Museum of art, where approximately 4,000 excruciatingly polite Chinese women in matching suits direct me to the Chinese exhibits (which I can view) while politely steering me away from the Louis Vitton exhibition exhibits, which take up fully half of the museum (the entire outside is currently wrapped in imagery in homage to Louis' work. Unfortunately for my knowledge of handbags and Louis, I'm on a limited schedule, and his exhibits cost money, so I skipped them (Sorry Lyns, you'll just have to go yourself).

The Xubaizhai Calligraphy and Paintings collection exhibit is so beautiful it hurts. I spent perhaps two hours in just two rooms, reading the biography of almost every artist, and having my mind slowly rendered down to component parts by landscapes of exquisite beauty. Seeing so many of such a limited type of work in the same room finally gives you a chance to identify where there are stylistic variations in the work, and they stop looking like some sort of template and start feeling like art. In particular, Wei Ke's Narcissus might be the most confident piece of painting I've ever seen and Tang Dai's Autumn Mountains nearly made me cry.

Afterwards, I went to a Chinese Antiquities exhibit, which was entirely ceramics and pottery. I believe I can now correctly identify a ming vase (hurray?), which is kinda cool, but I was more enchanted with the obscure stuff. First, that thing over there? it's a urinal. More accurately, I suspect it's their alternative to a bedpan. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I think I'd be rather nervous about peeing in some. . .thing's mouth in the middle of the night. I can't tell if this would just be superstitious fear that the thing would come alive, be angry with me, and bite me, or the more practical and pragmatic worry that some night I'd get it's identity confused with that ouf the household cat or small dog. Whatever.

But what really floored me there were the carved ceramics. The piece in this picture is about as tall as a pint glass or water tumbler. The detail work is, to me, unfathomable. I cannot imagine a human being with the dexterity to do any of the work visit on that surface. To give you a sense of scale, that little house is about the surface area of the nail on my pinky finger.

After I'd wandered through the antiquities section, I went upstairs and viewed their contemporary art exhibit, about the new "Literati" movement that has swept across China and HK in the past 10 or 20 years. It's mostly modern art after some fashion or another, and with the exception of an enchanting few, I was not as enthralled. I thought the exhibits explanation and writeup on display rather amusing though. Paraphrased, it basically said "This movement is recent. It tends to polarize people. We're not claiming that any of the work we collected here is actually /good/, per se, just that it is representative and we wanted to capture it now. The actual merit of the movement and this art form will be measured by whether any of the appeal stands the test of time."

When I left the Art museum, I headed off to lunch. I went back to the Overseas dragon, since I knew there was a bakery nearby, and I wanted a second crack at those tiger balm gardens.

Lunch was wonderful, Pork and Leek fried spring rolls, Soybean Milk, and Meat Ball (dumpling, really) soup.

Afterwards, I bought a couple of items from a small bakery next door. Hong kong has fewer bakerys than Europe, but they're still pretty delectable. They sell about 70% savory thhings, like hotdogs baked into croissants, or tiny pizzas you can eat one handed. The other 30$ is a few cookies that are very mildly sweetened, and then these really amazing little single-serving custard pies. The custard pies are amazing, only two or three bites to one, but they're just lovely, with a very strong eggy flavour and a sweetness to the filling countered nicely by the crunchiness and slight salt of the crust.

I located Tai Hang road as soon as my lunch was over, and spent the next 45 minutes climbing it, again, this time without a four kilometer detour beforehand. I still couldn't find those damn gardens. I finally gave up at the top of the hill, and on the way back, in the bus, spotted what I believe to be the mansion associated with the gardens, obscured by road construction. I'd walked right past it, and stopped my original search less than 50 meters from the front door.

I've decided, I /will/ see that ridiculous garden before I go back to the states. My last day in Hong Kong, that's where I'm going. It will happen.

After my second defeat at the hands of that damnable hill, I caught the MTR back to Kowloon, and this time struck out for the Hong Kong Museums of History and Science, which are across a plaza from each other, just northeast of the Tsim Sha Tsui station. The Hong Kong history museum is made up primarily of The Hong Kong Story Exhibit, an 8 part exhibit covering everything from the local flora and fauna to the occupation of the Japanese during WWII. It's a sprawling leviathan of information and edification, and I could have spent an hour in each segment and been a happy man for my trouble. But I didn't have 8 hours, I had two, so I soaked up as much as they could before they chased us all out. Whenever I'm next in Asia, if I have any time in Hong Kong, I'll definetly go there again.

When the history museum had closed at 6, I went across the street to the Science museum (open till 9). There I discovered Betsy, the DC-3 that started the Cathay Pacific Airline empire that today spans almost all of the Southeast Asian sky. I also found a really remarkable water dropplet demonstration of frequency shifting, and how the human eye can be tricked into seeing things moving 'backwards' or forward at the wrong speed with the appropriate strobe. In this case, the exhibit also gave me a really remarkable chance to photograph waterdroplets in a way not normally available without specialized equipment.

Upstairs in the telecommunciations area, I found a lot of fun stuff, like a quiz on telegraphs and morse code that required you to encode your answers as morse "T" and "F" characters. The best for me though, was a complete rotary phone switching system, (phones on both end, switch in the center) where the entire switch had been sheared open so it still functioned. This allowed you to see the tumblers in the mechanism rotate and shift heights to create the different sequences required, all in real time as the rotary mechanism on the phone actually spun back into place with its distinctive clicks. Yes, I'm a huge nerd, but it was really COOL.

I finally wandered out of the Science museum a little after 7, in time to walk down to the waterfront avenue of the stars and watch the Symphony of Lights show. I tried to take a few pictures, but they don't really convey the effect, plus you kindof need the music. If anyone's interested, I'd suggest youtube but it doesn't really do the event justice, so I suggest you just come to Hong Kong and see it for yourself. It's quite pretty, aside from the incredibly campy music. The music was apparently sampled entirely from the electronic-symphony-of-manufactured-excitement, the same people who must have been responsible for all those "buy popcorn and silence your pagers" music pieces for every moviehouse in America over the last 20 years.

When the music was over, I wandered back to my hotel, stopping for a little sushi on the way (Tamago, Crab Stick, and Cucumber rolls), and crashed. Tomorrow, I'm headed for Korea.

Blood and Chocolate, and Salsa!

The next day, I decided it was mandatory that I take it easy for a day. The sinus infection was finally breaking up, but due to all the extra walking and the excursion to find the Tiger Balm Gardens, my feet and legs were exhausted and my body had decided it was a good idea to spend some time not hiking around.

So what do you do in Kowloon that involves not walking anywhere in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday?

You go to the movies!

Normally, going to see a film is the last thing I would do while I'm traveling, as I can always watch movies at home. However, when I traveled to Europe in 2005, Adrienne and I went to see Sahara, and had a blast, and it was actually a really relaxing way to spend some time. And besides, I had an excuse, the movie was Blood.

Some of you might watch a little Anime (Hi Bill!), if so, you'll probably remember Blood, a 50 minute Anime piece from late 2000 with next to no story and absolutely gorgeous, over-the-top art. It featured a young vampire in Japanese Sailor garb bifurcating a race of psychotic, human-eating demons, who could shape shift and heal any wound within moments. Thus the flimsy justification for the premise, and the epic title: you have to inflict a wound so grevious that a significant amount of their blood leaves their body all in one go in order to kill them.

Yeah, the Japanese, as a race, are fucked up. But we actively maintain Fear Factor, Waterboarding, and the Atom Bomb, so I think we're about even.

Plus Blood isn't going to be available in America for months, and will probably never go to wide release, even if it is mostly in English.

So I went to the movies. A couple of things to know about movies in Hong Kong: 1) ticket prices aren't based on the time of day, they are based on the day of the week. No I don't know why. 2) The theatre in question might be hidden in the 10th floor of a vertical mall, behind a set of elevators that go to ladie's lingerie and a store named "Snoopy" featuring giant wall-sized prints of old Charles Schulz cartoons and clothing sporting the dynamic duo of bird and dog. 3) The theatres here use assigned seating, meaning you get to see an electronic floor map of available seats embedded in the counter when you walk up, and you just tell the clerk the coordinates of the seat you want ("I3!") as if you were playing battleship using your own butt as ammunition.

Aside from that, it's pretty much like home.

The show was similar to the original Anime, only A) it was twice as long, B) The Vampire girl (Saya) was killing her own kind, since she was half human half demon herself. C) There was a random general's daughter added as the token friend character to give Saya some humanity, D) A 'master vampire' was added in who turned out to be Saya's mother, and E) the whole last quarter (and final battle) of the film takes place in a complicated dream sequence set in a hallucination of ancient Japan.

So yeah, it was pretty much the same. The art still rocked out and watching a Japanese schoolgirl in a sailor outfit put an Afro-sporting 70s-era disco-lounge-outfit-wearing demon through a concrete wall using a giant sledgehammer will probably never get old.

After my air conditioned carnage was over, I went to the Wellcome. Wellcome is the Hong Kong equivalent of Tesco, a sortof grocery store that gets embedded in other things. In more spacious parts of town it might have its own corner shop, but downtown it tends to be on a second floor, hidden belowground, or entered only through a secret entrance in the dressing room of a men's clothing store. They seem to expand or contract to fill the space provided, and for some reason there are never any good signs. I think they just assume that the people that really need them already know where they are. I'd been keeping an eye out for a grocery of some kind in my area since I arrived. The Chinese don't really seem to use Grocery stores the same way we do, so they aren't as common, and I had been unable to find one over the previous three days, finally stumbling across one the night before when I'd taken a wrong turn at Nathan Road.

So I went to Wellcome, and bought some local stuff for breakfast. I'll post a picture when I make tomorrow's entry. I'll warn you ahead of time that if you don't like pulp in your Orange juice, you might want to avoid reading that one. I did purchase some Ghana black Gold, which is Chocolate directly from heaven. Hands down, this is some of the best dark chocolate I've ever had. Strong without being bitter, with a light finish and just enough sweetness to make you swoon on the cocoa flavour. This stuff is amazing. I'll try to bring some back when I come home.

So after sampling a little of my new chocolate addiction, I'm glad it'll be hard to find, or I might start buying it constantly and eating it like I used to eat Altoids.

Done with my shopping, I headed back to the hostel, grabbed a shower, changed clothes into something stylish, and headed to Club Sugar, on the Hong Kong Island side. I found out that there is Salsa dancing somewhere in Hong Kong almost every night, and as I used to dance a little Mambo (and they're somewhat similar) it sounded like fun. Besides, the cover included two free drinks and a Salsa lesson.

On the way there I stopped by a small corner stall that fried things on sticks and stold them to people. I honestly don't know what all they cooked, except that at least one of the items smelled kindof like poo. There was no line, just a sortof huddle of customers and two cooks, plus a woman by a change drawer. People gave that woman money, and then she gave them little tickets with dollar amounts on them, and then they gave those dollar amounts to the cooks, who handed them bags they filled with sticks of stuff directly from the open grill. I identified Sausages and balls of meat, at least, as well as some things that might have been vegetables. There was one type of stick with a weird looking sortof thin pastry cube, the inside of which appeared to be something green and vegetably. It looked interesting.

I finally shouldered my way up to the woman at the change drawer. "How much is that one?" I said, pointing to the stick. She held up the $8 ticket. "Eight!" "Ok. I'll have one of those." I dug out $8 in HK coin and handed it to her (The smallest Hong Kong bill is $10). She handed me an $8 ticket and pointed to the woman cooking--two feet from her--standing next to me at the grill and yelled something. That woman took one of the sticks from the grill, dropped it in a bag, and handed it to me, in exchange for the ticket, which then went immediately in a little basket in between the two women. Why I couldn't have just paid them directly and saved them the paper ticket, I'll never figure out. Maybe it helps them keep track of inventory? I dunno.

I showed up at Sugar around 8 (when the lesson was to start) and the place was empty as the grave. They finally started (with about twenty people there) around 8:45, and I figured out halfway through the--very intermediate and above--lesson that the teacher had been teaching this whole crowd for weeks, and the "beginner and improving" lesson that was advertised on the flyer was complete horsepucky.

Complicating matters, around 8:30, when I had thought the whole experience might be a complete bust, I'd downed a whole rum and Coke (apparently Coke is only a polite suggestion in the HK version of that recipe, by the way) in about two minutes, so the incredibly tight spins of Salsa and I were not getting along so well.

Thankfully, I had some Mambo to fall back on, and once I gave up and slipped out of my boots (that goodness black socks look so much like dance shoes in club lighting) I did a lot better, I just cut out the hook turns, cheated on the timing, and laughed whenever my rock step instinct from too much Swing dancing kicked in on the exit from a turn (which was almost every time).

Still, I met some neat people, including a very cool Asian kid visiting from Sidney, and a sweet Chinese girl named "Rainbow" who had matching skulls on her Tshirt and the back pockets of her jeans. Plus the dancing was actually pretty fun once I got my feet back under me.

Exhausted and amused, I retired around 11pm, headed back to the hostel, and collapsed. My restful day had at least involved less walking, but maybe high speed latin dancing wasn't the most laconic way to wrap it up.

Tomorrow: Breakfast of Champions (and madmen), Museums Galore, and the Hong Kong LightShow Spectacular!

Lantau - The Buddha On Sale.

On Monday I went to Lantau island. My old guidebook doesn't mention it at all, but apparently in the past fifteen years since the great seated Buddha was built there, Hong Kong has made a real effort to turn Lantau into a tourist attraction of sorts. It's smart, I suppose, -- it is near the airport, Disneyland Hong Kong is on the island already, there's not a lot of space that can be turned into business land or residential buildings anyway, etc. Plus, it's beautiful.

Still, the result of the attempt to make Lantau a tourist hot spot is a little garish.

I took the MTR down to Tung Chung, the final station, and took the bus from there to Ngong Ping, the small town near the great Buddha sculpture. He's quite impressive, towering in the distance. His trappings, however, detract from the effect as you draw closer.

While on the bus, I kept having a strange feeling of Deja Vu, and I finally figured out that Lantau is the sort of iconic south-Pacific island that the game Far Cry is directly modeled on, I'd never been to Lantau before, and yet I felt as if I'd crawled all over the place (and shot quite a few mercenaries there, I might add). The vague sensation that I needed an assault rifle, a pair of binoculars, and a backpack full of ammunition might have also detracted from my feelings of wonder, I'm not sure.

Anyway, when the bus reached Ngong Ping I found out it was closed. I'd managed to catch the 8:30 bus, and since the Tram to Ngong Ping (the route 98% of the tourists take) didn't start running till 10, nothing really opened up (including the Buddha statue) until 10AM. Since the bus trip deposited me there around 9:15, I took some time to wander through the shuttered village. It's a kitschy, artificial thing. Think "Mulan reaches Capitalist Enlightenment and opens a competitor to Disneyworld." They have a replica of the Bodhi tree there. I'm 99% certain it's entirely plastic. You can see it in the foreground of this picture.

After wandering through the little space, I thought the best summary I could manage was this photograph. There isn't much more I can say, and I think it conveys the overall feeling of Ngong Ping quite well. In the dark part of my mind I think of Jesus and the moneylenders and I imagine the Buddha astride a table, striking shopkeepers with a chain whip and shouting criticism in an ancient Indian dialect. It's quite an image.

However, Lantau has its own quiet and majestic beauty that seems to shine the brighter, not because of Ngong Ping, but in spite of it. I wandered past the Buddha and out into the hills, stumbling across three tiny (and obviously older) shrines that have fallen into disrepair. The ruins were much more serene than the chaos of town. When I was done there, I wandered down past the old Tea house (closed that day) and the ruins of outbuildings to the start of Wisdom Path. It's a small loop that takes you near the base on Lantau peak. In fact, Lantau peak itself is only a few kilometers away, and if I had more time and had felt better, I would have climbed it. Still recovering from the sinus infection and previous days failure to find those friggin' gardens (not that I'm bitter) I decided against it. I did walk the Heart Sutra though, a sort of monument to the simplicity of being, a calligraphic work inscribed onto twenty foot half-trees, planted in an infinity symbol at the top of a hill. Beautiful stuff, and rich with meaning for the people of Hong Kong.

After that, I walked back and found out they had finally opened the Buddha. I went to the top and took the requisite picture. I also took one with me IN the shot.

Yes, I'm wearing a mask. Yes, it probably looks freakish to you, but let me tell you, these people are serious about not spreading whatever they have, and there isn't enough space here to skirt around sick people, so if you're sick and in public, you wear one. I had picked up a few the night before, and when I started sneezing and sniffling, midmorning, I slipped one on. It might be a practice I bring home with me, we'll see.

After I was done with the Buddha, I headed back to the bus terminus and caught a bus to Tai O, the fishing village on the end of Lantau. It's hella photogenic, so I took a few shots, but for some reason they all came out looking like an amateur photographer's day trip to a quaint little Chinese fishing village--go figure--so I scrapped most of 'em. Lots of quaint little boats and houses on stilts though. There's also a Shaolin training ground there, founded in the early 2000s as a chance to bring Wushu to Hong Kong. Seems like a pretty neat place. I found out they do one day training classes (and walking tours of Tai O as a package deal) on Saturdays, which unfortunately I missed. Maybe next time. It sounds like it would have been good fun.

I caught a bus to Mui Wo, intending to take the ferry, and discovered that my decision to risk the day with very little money had left me about 5 HKD short on the ferry ride back to Central. I had been banking on the buffer built into Octopus Cards, but either it doesn't work on Lantau island, or the policy has been changed, because it failed me. So I wandered around until I found an HSBC branch, kicked myself for not bringing all the cash I needed to change, since there was a HKD $100 charge on the service for non-bank-members, and bought my freedom. By the time I'd finished that transaction, I'd missed the 4PM Ferry and had to wait an hour, so I settled in, read some of the novel I'd brought along, and waited.

I took the ferry back to Central, and caught the MTR from there back to Mong Kok. By then it was 6 pm, and I was not feeling up for any more walking. I headed back to my room, dropped off my stuff, and lay down around 7 to catch a nap. My plan was to go back out that night and catch a movie (Blood - The Last Vampire), but I slept right through my alarm and only woke up at 9PM when a new person arrived in our room. So I rolled over, went back to sleep, and slept until almost 5 the next morning.

Up next: Blood and Chocolate, and Salsa!

Too Much Walking

Update: I've discovered a workaround of sorts. For now, it looks like most of the pictures I want to upload are going to be ok. I'll just occasionally have to skip over the ones that Picasa inexplicably refuses to accept.

So yesterday after eating breakfast and taking my vitamin C, I kicked around the room until late morning and then headed out to the Mong Kok MTR station. From there I rode the train down to Tin Hua, My plan was to grab lunch, find the Tiger Balm Gardens then ride the Tram up to the peak of the Island. It was hazy as all get out yesterday, but I didn't really have any other ideas and I wanted something that would hopefully clear my head.

I wanted to go to Tin Hua temple first, so I walked across the street from the MTR station and found a small restaurant just around the corner from the Temple. I didn't recognize the place, but the food looked good and it was packed, so I took a number (no seats when I arrived) and since there was only one of me, and the Chinese will gladly seat you with others at the same table, I was called in about 30 seconds to come inside and sit down.

(NOTE:this is where the picture would be. :P) It wound up being a great thing that I was seated with others, since the adorable 70 year old couple at my table adopted me while I picked things off the menu. As it turned out, this place didn't have an English menu (hurray!) and the woman sitting to my left asked with a twinkle in her eye if I could understand it. I said "a little" (there were numbered photographs on the table that corresponded to the miniature menu they brought me, which had checkboxes by each selection and worked like a sushi menu) and she asked if I had been to Taiwan before. I thought it was a strange question until they explained that this restaurant specialized in Taiwanese style food. The name of the place "Overseas Dragon" made a lot more sense all of a sudden. I explained that I just thought the food looked good, and they told me a little about their family in the states (they have a son in San Jose and another in Chicago).

Their English was impeccable, of course, and they were quick to tell me what to try on the menu (Him: "oh, get the meatball soup! Not the fish ball." Her:"it's not so good as the meatball." Him:"And this drink, it's a Taiwanese speciality!" Her:"Try it too!") The drink was Tea with milk and bean curd balls, something I've had before, and love, so I was quick to add it to my order. They also gave me advice about going to see the peak--specifically that there was a special Sunday-only bus that would take me straight to the top and let me watch the sites as I wound my way up there, and then I could take the tram back down.

The food was excellent, and my new friends wished me well when they left, halfway through my meal.

When I was done, I went to Tin Hua temple, just around the corner, and then struck out in what I thought was the correct direction for Tiger Balm Gardens. I was a bit off.

Much like central Georgia, few roads on Hong Kong Island continue going the way they start out going. Unlike central Georgia, HKI has an excuse: it's a series of giant hills The land here looks like what happens to your blanket when you get too hot in the night and push all your covers to the foot of your bed with your feet.

Five and a half kilometers of Hong Kong Island hills later, feeling thoroughly sick and exhausted, I finally gave up and found my way back to where I'd started out. Serves me right for following a map that just had an arrow pointing off the edge of it towards the Gardens. Of course, when I got back to the hostel and looked up the location, it was just around the corner from where I abandoned my search. I did take a couple of pretty pictures of the city though. That's one of them over there.

After that, I was physically drained from being sick and from all the hiking, so I bought some huge grapes (fresh fruit makes me feel better when I'm exhausted, dehydrated, annd generally bleh) and went back to the bus stop and caught the recommended bus. It was a beautiful, hair-raising bus-ride. Some of you probably recall the crazy mountain driving in Greece, complete with insane, near-head-on-collisions with other vans on the country roads. This was just like that, only with sharper turns, and double decker buses. I took a picture to try to convey how close these guys drove to one another. It doesn't really do it justice though.

The peak, though hazy, was beautiful, and there happened to be a small arts and crafts show going on at the top of the hill that afternoon, and some of the stuff was quite neat, though obviously more aimed at tourists. Still, there were a few pieces I would have purchased, and might still, if I happen to be back there on a day that any of those vendors are around.

By the time I was done though, with the minimal amount of walking I could handle, I decided to just take the bus home and call it a day. I wound up taking the 15, since I knew it would take me to central, and my elderly couple had recommended I take the Star Ferry across the harbour to get a good view on my way home. I did this, winding up with a rather long walk from the Tsim Sha Tsui side to the actual station, but the views were pretty, and I found my way back alright.

I finally got back to my hostel around 7, bought some food at the corner 7-11* for breakfast and went straight to bed.

*7-11 : Hong Kong :: Starbucks : New York. There is at least one on every block.

Books and Breakdancing.

I rolled out of bed early this morning, around 6:30, due to the oppressive heat in our rooms. The AC had been cut out the night before, either on accident when someone cut out the lights (Hong Kong window units are wired into the wall, and controlled by a switch, generally next to the light switch). and so it was boiling hot by dawn. Since I was new and didn't know how to turn it back on at the time, I left it be, went out to the common room (which was hotter, if that was possible) and booted up baby-internet. I checked on a few things, did some research, updated Ever-on with the travel from the previous day, and before I knew it, 10AM had rolled around. Cataloguing the previous days grueling travel had taken longer than I expected. That is the view out the window of our tiny hostel room. Not the best view in Hong Kong, but pretty indicative of downtown Kowloon's grungy skyscrapers.

I met my other roommates, an Irishman named Howard and a fellow from Leeds on his way to Taiwan to teach English. We chatted a bit and Howard encouraged me to meet him up to watch the Laser show that night in Victoria harbour.

They headed off to start their days, and I headed off to change some cash and buy an Octopus Card. If you're going to be in Hong Kong for more than a couple of days, they really are the only way to get around. A cross between a railpass, a simple debit card, and a top-up smart card, they allow you to pay for bus, light rail and MTR (Hong Kong/Kowloon Subway with one convenient card. I changed a little cash, confirmed that pin based transactions were blocked by my bank (due to fraud risk) at a local Citibank, and bought my Octopus card at the local MTR station, just a block from Sincere house.

I picked out a restaurant at random on the criteria that

1) locals were eating there.
and
2) it wasn't very pretentious.

I've been advised by friends to just outright ignore any restaurant with an English menu, but that advice is almost impossible to follow here. Hong Kong is such a melting pot that everyone uses English as a sort of linguistic skeleton key. It gives all of the different cultures that roil through the streets every day a method to communicate effectively. So I picked out a place based on the photographs and the view of the kitchen from outside (Hong Kong restaurants use tiny, 1000 degree kitchens by the entryway so you can confirm that the food is prepared properly, and you walk past them to get inside the restaurant. It's kindof like an American restaurant turned inside out, or viewed through one of those 'cutaway' books we'd use as kids to study the space shuttle, or an ocean liner. When I reached my table a menu in both cantonese and english waiting for me.

I chose some chicken friend rice, as I was starving, and it sounded great, along with a 'Lemon Coke'.

The Chicken Fried Rice was excellent, and the extra fried egg I ordered (a habit I picked up from my coworker, Quang) really made it perfect. The lemon coke turned out to be a glass of ice with a whole sliced lemon in it and a can of Pepsi, which turned out to be delicious.

The whole meal cost me HK$65--approximately $9. Not bad, but I knew I could do better.

After my errands and lunch were completed, I decided to familiarize myself with the train system. MTR stations are huge, sprawling affairs. Where the New York or Paris subways might have two access points on either side of a street, a typical MTR station might have five or six, spread over two or three city blocks. Just getting your bearings within the station can be a challenge, and the maps are printed with 'up' in the direction you're facing, so two maps of the same station, just around the corner from each other, will have different orientations. It's disconcerting at first, but I think I could get used to it. I experimentally rode a couple of trains and wound up across the water in Causeway Bay. There I discovered that I am apparently drawn to Libraries when I wander at liberty in a major city.

A few of you might recall me telling you about an epic trek through London during my visit there, which resulted in a 7 mile unintentional foot tour of the city and my arrival at the British Library and King's Cross Station. I remember the British library as dark, and quiet, and remarkably somber. On this trip, I wandered a few blocks away from Causeway Bay station and vaguely towards Victoria park. I wound up seeing and following signs for the Kong Kong Central Library, which turns out to be a beautiful piece of architecture and a remarkably functional library. The inside is full of light, and an eclectic mixture of young people (most in the secondary school teen years) and older people (into their fifties or sixties) studying or reading newspapers and periodicals, respectively. I've always loved libraries, so I wandered the stacks for a while, trailing my fingers down lines of English texts and cantonese novels, enjoying the feel and flavour of a library both distinctly British in inspiration, and distinctly Chinese in execution.

When I'd explored all the floors I could, I meandered back to the station and took the train back to Mong Kok, my home base, and headed for the hostel. My day had started early and I was pretty worn out by the time I arrived. I set an alarm, and took a nap, which wound up running right through my alarm and until just after 7PM, when roommate number three (Mike from Vancouver) arrived, enthusiastically. Everything Mike did was enthusiastic, he spoke with volume and excitement, and he told me his plans for tomorrow are to experience the Macau tower Bungee Jump, $180 US for $233 meters of sheer, stomach churning terror. It's half an hour from here. I'm tempted, but I think I'll save it for a later trip.

I tried to contact Howard, which is how I found out that my phone doesn't actually make calls in Hong Kong, it just connects to the local network, updates the time, and then does nothing, so I couldn't contact him (damn!) so instead I did a little research and afterward Mike and I went out at grabbed dinner (Shrimp Wonton Soup and Black Tea with Milk--total tab? $32 Hk, or about $4.25 US). Afterward, we wandered Argyle st. and the local shopping district for a time, and then he headed back to crash and I took the MTR down to Tsim Sha Tsui.

Tsim Sha Tsui is the area at the tip of Kownloon, and forms the waterfront that faces Hong Kong Island. There I watched a couple of local music groups perform--competing for the attention a scattered crowd, and wandered the avenue of the stars for a while, taking a few pictures of the brilliantly illuminated neon city across the water. When I cut back towards the MTR station, I ran across a few kids, breakdancing on a platform overlooking the bay. It seemed a good summary of my day's experience with Hong Kong--the flickering reflection of the neon in the water behind a handful of promising Asian youngsters doing a hyper-advanced version of the robot. I tried to catch a little video there too, and I figured out how to upload it this morning. It's ugly, but it gives you the idea.

Last night I didn't sleep well, and I work up this morning with a heavy sinus infection, courtesy of the pollution outside and the dry air from the AC in our tiny room. So I loaded up on Vitamin C (and a couple Ibuprofen) this morning. Now, I'm going to grab some lunch, head across the bay to the island, catch the MTR out into the country as far as possible, and see about getting some fresh air.

Twenty Nine Hours of Racing the Sun.

Last night, I had dinner with Beth around midnight, having taken about 8 hours longer than I had originally planned to pack. The food was excellent, if solemn--the unmistakable quality of 'last meal' was detectable within the menu. She made me marinated duck and steamed green beans: delectable but serious. She even bought Orangina. I think she might have been trying to entice me to sleep in.

This morning, we awoke and left for the airport before dawn. The sun had yet to show its face from the east. We reached the airport around 7. My morning flight to San Francisco departed at 8:25. My father had mentioned that he thought All Nippon Airways (who are being kind enough to shuttle me all the way to and from Hong Kong for less than $1000) was a delta sky team partner. That meant I might be able to avoid dealing with my checked bags in SF. I was worried that with only about 90 minutes scheduled, on the ground in the bay city I wouldn't have time to pick up my bag, check in, check the bag, and clear security. It was a good thing I worried.

I entered the airport to more traffic than I normally see in Hartsfield. I generally fly in the afternoon or evening, and I suppose that's nonstandard--most people travel in the morning, apparently. The airport was packed, and you could feel the palpable tension bleeding from thousands who didn't schedule quite enough time and were worried they'd miss their flight. With the exception of one unfortunate Sunday afternoon, I've never seen that many people trying to fly out all at once. Delta's new layout, while probably good for traffic, has the unfortunate mental effect of making you face at least half of everyone else in the airport across the open space of the ticketing counter, instead of having them at your back, giving you an impression that the whole of Atlanta is having a mass exodus and you've just stepped into the middle of it.

I sought out a Delta employee who was answering questions and routing people about. I found one with the most epic moustache I've yet seen, I asked him my question: If ANA was a Delta partner, could Delta check through my bags direct to Hong Kong?

He said yes, but only if they were a partner and I'd have to ask. He waved me away, to a line where they could check on the possibility and check me in at the same time. I turned and saw the first class check in line where he was pointing. I turned back, momentarily confused "So I should go. . ." "Yes, talk to first class check in, they'll be able to help you" he turned away to three people with more pressing--though likely less complex--questions.

The brisk employee running interference on economy class passengers asked me if I was first class as I entered the line, and I shook my head and pointed back to the Walrus. "He sent me over here to ask a complicated baggage question." I've learned that the key for slipping through lots of these situations is to imply that if the person tries to deter you from your task, they'll get caught up in trying to help you and whatever you're trying to do is com. Sure enough, she waved me into the line without further discussion.

Beth had gone to park so she could grab some breakfast and caffeine with me before I had to clear security, and she found me and offered to get herself coffee and me juice while I waited. After a long wait caused by one customer with some particularly hair-raising problem, I got my turn at the counter. I phrased my question to the polite young lady with some trepidation--I'd now waited long enough that if she denied me and sent me back to the kiosk system I'd risk missing my flight.

She looked up the airline code quickly and confirmed that they were a partner, and said she could check my bags in without a problem. Delta was definitely my hero for the morning.

I tightened up all the straps and tossed my Dakine pack on the scale. And there I made my first mistake. I let her take the bag without any identifying tag on it at all. Thankfully, that would be brought to my attention in San Francisco in a few short hours.

Beth and I took seats near the entrance to security, giving me time to finish off my juice and her to borrow my camera and take this picture. It will be the last picture of me taken on American soil until August, so I thought you all might like to know what I looked like when I left. I noticed that the checked bag receipt sticker on my boarding pass had a set of numbers that seemed to correspond to my flight numbers, but the middle number (for the SFO -> Tokyo leg) was not correct. I decided to burn that bridge when I came to it.

Afterward, Beth and I said goodbye and I headed for security--I had about 45 minutes, and even with my use of the first class/military entrance, I'd be running a tight schedule. Security was no trouble, but was slow, and I reached my gate just as they were signalling the final and immediate boarding call for my flight to San Francisco. Good news for photographers who still use film: Atlanta now publicly offers hand-search for used film rolls, so you don't have to worry about the x-ray frying your film anymore.

The aircraft experienced a delay (a gyro suffered a mechanical failure) before we ever pulled out, and we were almost half an hour late getting underway. mix in a mild slowdown coming into SFO due to heavy air traffic, and by the time we had finally disbarked, I had less than an hour to make my next flight. Normally plenty of time, but of course this wasn't a connection--officially I wasn't checked in for my ANA flights yet.

I hoped I would be able to check-in at the gate for my ANA, without having to repass through security, but the SFO domestic and international gates are physically distinct, making that impossible. Instead, I had to haul ass through 3/4s of a mile of airport to international ticketing, check in (a very helpful ANA ticket lady with a completely unpronounceable name shooed me away as soon as she had my details with a temporary boarding pass, saying I was "going to be late soon" and that she'd assign my seat while I was in security).

Apparently I looked suspect in the security lines in San Francisco--the gate officer asked me what I had in my empty cargo pockets and signed me up for a pat down search, and my day bag was externally tested for bomb residue (a new one for me). Still, they were professional and quick and only delayed my trip through security by maybe five minutes in total, so I smiled and said thank you and then strode through the international terminal like a man on a mission. I managed to reach my gate just as first class boarding was starting, and they gave me a set of boarding passes with real seat assignments--unfortunately a middle seat for the long haul to Tokyo, but I was just happy I hadn't missed my flight.

As I was boarding a few minutes later, they summoned me back over to the check in desk "ah, Mr. Gonet? You are checking a bag?" "Yes. I checked it through from Atlanta." "ah, yes. See they checked. . . your bag was listed for wrong flight. Do you have name on bag?" with a sinking feeling I realized that no--there wasn't a scrap of identifying information on the exterior of my bag at all, save the check-in sticker. They grasped at words for a moment and I realized they were asking for a set of identifying characteristics--worse case scenario was they might accidentally pull someone else's unmarked bag thinking it was mine and it would wind up in Hong Kong when it shouldn't. I described it as clearly as I could--a black Dakine brand backpack with a padlock on the left shoulder strap--and they said that as soon as their luggage room had confirmed it was the right bag, they would send it along to our aircraft. Potential Crisis averted.

I climbed aboard, and found myself seated between a member of the USMC and a Japanese man of indeterminate age.

The young Marine and I spoke at length about travel, education, and the possibility of he and his wife homeschooling his young children. With the exception of a few words (of nearly perfect English) as we waiting for the health inspectors to let us leave the aircraft, my Japanese companion said nothing for ten hours.

I thought the technology on Delta flights was improving, but we have a long way to go to catch up to the Japanese. The in-flight entertainment system that ANA was running was top notch. Obviously a couple of years old now, judging by wear and screen quality. However, it not only featured multiple languages, access to real time flight information and maps (an erstwhile cartographer's eternal joy!) it also allowed you to select from a dozen movies, starting, pausing, and rewinding them at your leisure--all for free. It also featured a controller that came out of the armrest and could be turned sideways to form a rudimentary game controller, with D-pad and for action buttons, and simple puzzle and action games were available through the same menus, also for free. So I wound up playing an hour's worth of Worm (a game apparently universal in its appeal and simplicity) and watching Valkyrie and Inkheart. Eat that, domestic delta flights where movies and any games but trivia are pay-to-play.

And also, the food!

About two hours after we took off, our first meal service happened. We had our choice of Seafood or Curry. I chose the curry, and it was really wonderful: a fried pork cutlet in a tasty curry sauce over rice, with a side of chilled rice noodles and a small sortof salad with grilled chicken, veggies, and the blandest mozzeralla cheese balls I've ever tasted. I had an Asahi with it, to boot. I've paid for worse in restaurants. Afterward they brought us ice cream.

About 5 hours (and two feature films for me) later (still about two hours before we landed) we had our second service--penne pasta with a thick sauce with a bit of beef and chunks of fresh tomato, a small chilled tuna (maybe?) salad and fresh fruit: honeydew and pineapple with Milano cookies for dessert. I had the good sense to attempt a photo this time, though it came out a bit blurry.

For the entirety of the 10 hour flight, of course, it remained midday. Only three clock hours passed while we flew from SF International to Tokyo Narita, since we were headed west. As we traveled, you began to get the feeling that actual travel was impossible, that perhaps the aircraft was stopped, hovering, the light of the noon sun beating down upon us as we stayed motionless above the clouds. I can't figure out how to describe it better than that, except that it was as if the sun were racing us, and had no intention of letting us actually get anywhere.

After a surreal but not unbearable flight, we landed in Tokyo, and I had a three hour layover there. I'm thankful it is overcast. It's the tiniest bit too warm inside, and I wish there were an observation deck somewhere where I could get some fresh air, but I know that's impossible.

I changed a little money to buy a set of nail clippers, and availed myself of a day shower. I'd forgotten they would be available, and it was by far the best $6 I spent yesterday. A wonderful pristine shower was just what I was craving as I was currently pushing the 24-hours-since-getting-dressed mark. I also had a few minutes to walk through the giant mall that is the international concourse in Tokyo. While there, I ran across the Origami Museum and Gift Shop, which was a really remarkable little place. That photo you see there? Everything in that image is folded paper.

I boarded a second ANA flight, 911 to Hong Kong, around 6PM. I slept almost the entire six hours, waking only for a dinner of Pork Filligree, Safron Rice, noodles and custard.

I touched down in HK around 11pm, and by the time I got through immigration, baggage claim, and customs it was almost midnight. A bus ride into the city later (HKIA is built on a landfill of sorts--the island on which it's located is 25% land reclamation) and I was in downtown Kowloon, on Argyle Street. I wandered around the tiny, stereotypical streets for about 45 minutes, trying to get my bearings and find the entrance to my hostel.

This part of town reminded me of Athens, Greece--everyone was still awake at midnight, young people making phone calls and smoking cigarettes, buying things at corner shops. The more businesslike half of the storefronts (banks and grocers and such) were closed, but beauty supplies stores, Jeans retailers, and mobile phone stores still bustled with activity like it was midday.

In a place like this, very little street level space is allocated for budget hotels and hostels. Instead, they are tiny doorway entrances crushed between mobile-phone stores, salons, and sweetshops. After investigating entrances to three other hotel collectives, I finally found the entrance to "Sincere house incorporated" on Fan Yuen street. The house is a collection of apartments, day hotels (hourly rate--popular for (ahem) meetings of all kinds, and businessmen on short schedules) and hostels. A U shaped building, my hostel takes up about 1/3rd of the apartments on the 14th floor.

Thankfully, I found the elevator. It was at the end of a tiny apartment entrance where the mailboxes where covered with taped up signs for each hotel, since dozens of hotels shared the space. Also at the end of the tiny hallway was a tiny wrinkled Hong Kong native, his bare feet propped up on a box, behind a small table. He raised his eyebrows at me. "Ah Shan hostel?" I said. He nodded and pointed around the corner to the elevators. I pressed the up button, then realized that they were clearly marked "Odd Numbered Floors" and "Even Numbered Floors" so I hastily pressed the other button and ignored the first elevator sheepishly.

When I reached the 14th floor, the hostel's entrance was clearly marked, clearly locked, and clearly dark. Of course, it was after 1AM, so I wasn't really suprised, even though the website had claimed "24 hour reception". A half hour of knocking, ringing the bell, waiting a few minutes, and repeating (and eventually thunking the bottom of the door louldly with my combat boot a couple of times) finally brought a bleary eyed man in his mid-fifties to the door. He stared at me like I was from the moon. "I have a reservation?" I said.

A few moments and a fistful of cash later, I was led to a small room with one man already asleep inside. Long travel days typically leave me tired and wired--it takes a few minutes for me to fall asleep. Last night, however, even with the temperature being entirelly too warm, the humidity entirely too high, and having no chance to shower and change in my hurry to cut off the lights and let the other traveler get back to sleep, I had very little trouble sleeping.

Now it's about 7:30 local time. I'm awake, I feel rested, and I'm going to grab a shower, wander around in the streets for a bit, then come back and do some research on my new locale. I got very little reading on the subject of Hong Kong done before I left Georgia--it's been a very busy week.

Going to Asia.

Hi there. It's Patrick.

I'm headed to Asia. Tomorrow.

I'll be back the first week of August. My itinerary includes Hong Kong, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, The Philippines, Singapore and Australia.

I am taking various writing related tools with me, as well as a couple of cameras and a few good books. I hope to collect some insights (or at least an epic story or two) to tell along the way. I'll be posting here periodically. Since free WIFI is now available at some hostels, and I'll have a tiny laptop with me during this trip, I hope to write at least as consistently as Adrienne and I did during Europe.

Answers to a few frequently asked questions:

Yes, all my international airline tickets have been purchased. Domestic tickets will be purchased on the ground. Some of my hostel reservations have already been made, others won't be made until I arrive.

No, I'm not afraid of going to South Korea or Indonesia or anywhere else. Even if I were, I'd go. A life ruled by fear is not a life worth living.

Yes, I'm going to try to meet up with a few friends while I'm there. I've got friends in the Pacific Rim islands, South Korea, and Perth Australia. With luck I'll meet up with them all.

No, I'm not going to die of malaria--I'm not going anywhere with a recommended regimen higher than "try real hard not to get bitten by the little blighters." (4).

Yes, I will be taking pictures. I hope to post them as I go.

No, I won't be taking video. At least, I don't think I will. My phone (coming along as my 'snapshot' camera), doesn't really do video very well, and I won't be able to upload it from the road anyway.

Yes, I said I was taking a tiny computer with me. It's one of these.

No, I won't eat everything I come across--but I'll probably come close.

Yes, I'm going to come back. Alive.

Well, that's it for now. I'll try to start the more story-type posts tomorrow, when I get to the Atlanta airport.

Cheers.

- Patrick

It's that time again

Tomorrow morning I fly to DC.

Monday to London.

Wednesday to Venice.

I can't wait.

[Now to pack... did I mention I have to be at the airport at 7a?]

Florence, Italy

Today marks the 3 year anniversary to my time in Firenze (or more commonly known in English: Florence), Italy.

In 28 days I will be back in Firenze.

I'm getting excited.

There's something about an open road that calls to me.

Makes me believe in clean slates and becoming whoever I wish to be.

Of leaving the old baggage behind and starting over with just the clothes on your back.

Of a sense of freedom, adventure, beauty, and newness.

Sitting in South Georgia

The morning has come and I've called in a full day's sick leave (by virtue of the fact that it hurts when I put weight on my right leg now).

My roommates are trying on suits and I am listening to Dar Williams and musing about how nice it is to be on the road, at least for a moment, again.

The gypsy in me turns over fitfully in his sleep. The slumber will hold for a year or more yet, but I can already foresee that when he awakes, I will have little choice but to pull up stakes and move on.

And where then will I go?

The Gypsy.

I was speaking with a girl about a month ago, and I described my lifestyle as I have lived it over the past 6 months or so.

She said "That sounds like a Gypsy to me."

---

Gyp·sy
n. pl. Gyp·sies

    1. A member of a people that arrived in Europe in migrations from northern India around the 14th century, now also living in North America and Australia. Many Gypsy groups have preserved elements of their traditional culture, including an itinerant existence and the Romany language.
    2. See Romany.
    3. gypsy One inclined to a nomadic, unconventional way of life.
    4. A person who moves from place to place as required for employment, especially:
      1. A part-time or temporary member of a college faculty.
      2. A member of the chorus line in a theater production.

---

The list of the places I have been in the past 5 months is starting to reveal to me just how restless I have become. I've lost count of the number of states and miles I've traveled. Weekend excursions to see friends that add 1,000 miles to the odometer. Pilgrimages to old universities. Hikes through foreign woods. Trips to help family move. Even a quest or two to prove my friendship and loyalty. A voyage into someone elses traditions.

I am starting to realize that my itinerant status is becoming its own paradigm. I travel so much that moving has turned into standing still. A change now would require that I settle into a place for a time.

"Not all who wander are lost."

I am not lost. I am not seeking for a safe harbour or a quiet bay. But I do find myself desiring roots again. Considering a place that I can claim as my own.

Should I begin to search for that place? Am I ready yet? I feel that my travels have left something unfinished, but I cannot put my finger on it yet.

Quote about travel

Last night a good friend of mine made an observation about motorcycles, thusly:

"In a car, you travel through the country. On a motorcycle, you travel in the country." - Dylan. G.

I like it.