Traveler's Blog

Last week in NIPPON

2007-08-15T21:24:00.003-06:00

Here is Dad and me, at the top of Fuji... A symbolic end of a great summer for me.

Wow, it only took me 5 months to get this blog capped off.

After my crazy summer, I was launched DIRECTLY into academic pandaemonium. No jet lag sympathy. Especially no sympathy for skipping the first week of class :)

I haven't had time to even edit my photos yet. Thought I would add this last post for some closure.

My dad came to visit me in Japan the last week I was there. He flew into Tokyo, I took the bullet train over from Kyushu and picked him up, and we didn't stop moving for a week. I gave my dad a two day exhaustive tour of Tokyo, we got our rail passes and went to climb Fuji, then went up to Hokkaido for some more mountain climbing. We stayed up in Sapporo and climbed the four mountain chain ending with Mount Asahi. We then headed back to Tokyo and took off. Crazy week.

Tokyo was a lot of fun. Insanely large city, but I know how to get around it fairly well from being there a couple summers ago. Took my dad to all the usual places.

Here is Steve Van Boxtel himself riding the Tokyo rails.

Our accommodations. Two adjacent rooms this size, around $35 US each. Crazy huh?

Yoyogi Park.

Eating lunch in the park. He's a real natural with Japanese food.

Spiritually cleansing myself ( you drink it too - natural well water and communal ladles) before entering a temple.

These girls were doing some sort of silly "I look like a cartoon character" photo shoot.

I made the cut for a shot.

We woke up, super super early, to go to the world's largest wholesale fish market: The Tsukiji Central Metropolitan Fish Market.
65,000 people move 2000 metric tons of 400 different kinds of seafood from 5am to 9am every morning.

Ever realize how large tunas are?

I love this picture.

Had to include this picture. My dad and I went to do laundry in some ghetto little alley (we didn't stay in the nicest area of Tokyo) that had a garage with a pay wash and dry machine in it. This guy walks i, takes all of his clothes off, and stood there for an hour while he laundered.

Mt. Fuji:

I climbed Fuji-san about 3 years ago and was really really excited to do it again. We made reservations to stay overnight at the eighth level so we could climb to the summit in the pitch dark at 3am to see the sunrise. It was incredible - even for the second time.

From a distance. 12,388 ft.

I think we climbed it in under five hours. Thanks to the musher, my 47 year old father whose in better shape than anyone on the mountain.

My buddy Corey came with us. And wore Chacos.

Rest stop.

A lot of people in JP thinks he looks like the guy who owns Virgin Mobile.

One of the five lakes in the background.

Looking back down at the torii.

I think this is the place we stayed at... can't remember. We decided to climb to the top since we made such good time. So, we summited, climbed back down to the 8th to sleep, then back up in the morning.

At the gate before the top.

Standing in front of the crater (Fuji was a volcano).

We did an additional 2 mile hike around the crater to the highest point (a radio tower) on the back side. Some nice dude with the same camera as us took this. Corey and I are sporting our Sohseikan High School uniform jackets we got for teaching at their school.

Back at the "hotel." Don't ever pass out in a stall on Mt. Fuji.

Look at the pillows. Those represent each person that will be sleeping there. Without exaggeration, each person, for the low price of 67 USD, gets a shoulder width of space in the attic of a musty shack. Sardines would have been more comfortable. If your shoulders are wider than the average Japanese man, you will find yourself forced to spoon with your neighbor. In my case, it was Mr. Suzuki, the cuddly Japanese senior whose body was snuggled up to mine for a delightful 5 hours. When I wanted to roll over, I had to ask the assistance of both Mr. Suzuki and my dad. Corey had a giant beam a foot above his face.. even better. So, if you ever scale Fuji, know what you are getting yourself into with the sleeping arrangements.

The trail of LED headlamps of people climbing up to see the sunrise.

Sun coming up.

Boom. Goraiko.

Dad and I at the summit. SO cold.

Shot of the lakes at sunrise.

Awesome guy with his dog... with cute little booties.

Here's how you come down a mountain in double time... Kind of dangerous, probably broke a few toes.

My dad and I wanted to do something super unique while in Japan. Several Japanese friends of mine told me that going to the northern island, Hokkaido, is not something they ever got to do. In fact, they said it was cheaper to go to Hawaii than the northern island. Well, we had our rail passes and a great deal of mountain climbing zeal, so we took the endless series of train rides up to Sapporo. Then we set out for a major physical feat. We went to the biggest national park in Japan, Daisetsuzan. We wanted to climb a few peaks... and ended up getting way ahead of ourselves. We ran out of money and couldn't afford to stay overnight in the park. The last bus for the train station left at 5 pm, and we started a 13 miles mountain climbing hike at eleven. Needless to say, we ended up jogging a lot of it. Hard to do at high altitudes with gear on. Anyway, anything is possible with a certified marathon coach and a son who would be too embarrassed to let his dad kick his ass.

About to embark.

At the top of the first of four.

Very strange climate in these mountains.

Such beautiful stuff up there.

Natural sulfur geysers. Can you call it a geyser if it's steam? I don't really know.

So we are in eyesight of the tram that goes down the last mountain to the bus stop. The last tram is at 4:45, bus leaves at 5:00. It was like 4:15 and we were a good mile away from the tram station. The terrain was awful, lava rocky, and very steep. Dad was wearing running shoes, I was wearing Teva sandals, which loved to trap little pebbles and make my feet bleed. We both rolled our ankles multiple times -- it was looking pretty bleak. But, considering the alternative (sleeping in the sulfur fields), we had to cruise as fast as we could.

After 6 hours of shear physical terrorism on our bodies, we made it to the tram station. We told the ranger there where we started and where we left from. He was convinced I misspoke. I showed him on a map what peak we started at and what time we left. He said we set a new record in the 20 some years he worked there. It was pretty rewarding.

We made it. It may have been fast paced, but we stopped to enjoy and snap pictures at every opportunity we had. It was one of the coolest things I did this summer.

I spent the majority of the 10 hour train ride sleeping. I actually had one more night in Japan after my dad left, and spent it in Chiba, close to the airport. There was a fairly significant earthquake that night that woke me out of a hard sleep as the hotel swayed back and forth. Pretty insane to experience that. I guess it was Japan's "get the hell out of here already!" message to me as I was leaving.

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So, that was my first blog. I enjoyed it. Thanks to everyone for your emails and interest. I was really shocked at how many people read my every ridiculous caption and smartass comment. If it weren't for all the emails and comments, I wouldn't have put nearly as much effort into. It truly helped in making a great summer.

I already have plans brewing for other trips aboard in the future. Stay tuned over the years!

Japan, Camp Days

2007-07-21T23:46:00.001-06:00

So far, we have had three camps; the first two were two different sessions of 100 students each. The third was 90 elementary students. Although this year I am the director and have no actual campers to teach, I still get to interact with a lot the kids and really had a great time with. I am always too busy to take pictures during camps, but I got these pics from Shinako-san, one of the Japanese translators I work with.

The whole squad. 16 American Counselors, 3 Japanese Counselors/Translators, 1 Japanese Director, 1 American Director. Actually, this is the website for the Guy Healy Blog, of me and my excellent colleague, Tsukaka-san. The camps get sent these pictures of their directors, so when I meet the students, they know my from this picture.... I'm so friendly it hurts...

http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/guyhealyjapanfukuoka/34008978.html

It was pretty funny, when the kids saw me the first time, they all yelled "Ben Ben!" and did the double peace thing that I am doing in the pic.　

One of our nightly meetings. I am absolutely burnt to a crisp in these pics.

See how well they listen when I talk? Making my job easy.

Bus meeting.　I am a big fan of using the "Let me see a show of hands of how many of you are .....?" Shinako is apparently a big fan of taking pictures of such events.

Contemplating a delicious o-nigiri (rice cake wrapped in seaweed) after a long bus meeting session.

Giving ACs candy at a nightly meeting.

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First two camps:

Students in Japan greet every morning with Rajio Tai-so (Radio Exercise), where an outdated song plays every morning with a guy counting in Japanese and everyone doing stretces/calinthestics. They all know they routine... we most certainly do not.

Me narrating a skit, Tsukasa (far left) translating it.

Dance train.

My grooves.

The sensei's grooves.

Exchanging our groove styles.

Eating with the students:

Logan tattooing a camper.

One of my favorite activities: decorating the chalkboard for graduation ceremony.

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The third camp was a lot of fun too - in a much different kind of way. Kaisei Elementary students speak great English, are absolutely tireless, and are always willing to participate in whatever activity we throw at them.

Welcoming the Kaisei students.

Orientation-type thing.

One activity we did with the students was hiking up Mt. Sefuri, a fairly large mountain in Fukuoka area. There was a huge shrine at the top.

Hiking up the mountain.

Summer and her crew.

They preferred the locomotion style hiking... all the way up the mountain.

One of the ACs wasn't feeling too well, so I took a crew up. Tons of fun, even though I had a bit of work to do along the way.

At the top:

View of Fukuoka.

Corey and NeeNa.

Corey and Shinako contemplating something serious at the shrine gate.

Trying to get through the gate.

And I'm only 5'10'' (okay, 5'9 and a half)

......

Another big thing we do with the little kids is called My Town USA... where we have a mock small town in the USA, and the kids go around with fake money and get fake tattoos, painted nails, hang out at the cafe, take dance lessons, etc.

Mike, the town doc.

Laura and Sean at the post office.

The town beauty parlor, run by Mani and NeeNa.

Atiqah and Kim at the travel agency.

I hand out the passports. Yes, I have already been informed that I look like a genie when I roll up my pants like this.

Logan and Lindsey at the tattoo parlor.

Corey's cafe.

Summer and Kyle at the Western Wisconsin bank.

The town dance studio, run by Cassie, Jenna, and Emily.

This kid was hilarious...Kento... spent all camp making me give him piggy back rides.

I struggle with the indoor slippers provided in Japanese gymnasiums. This is their biggest size and least masculine model.

...

We have four more camps... all should be very fun... since Shinako left our team :( I will have to take my own pictures. I will post more soon, hopefully.... although my days off for the rest of the time here in JP are numbered!

Japan, Off Days

2007-07-21T22:19:00.001-06:00

This is the beginning of the covered shopping district right down the street from the first ryokan I stayed in - a ryokan is a very Japanese style "hotel" - I stayed in a very small one run by these two sweet old ladies who spoke no English. It was very fun for me to be forced to remember all sorts of Japanese... especially the day I needed to let them know that I wouldn't be back for dinner and had to leave a note in Japanese saying I wouldn't be coming home. My written Japanese looks like a 3rd grader's.

Chinatown - a few blocks from my place.

The first night in Nagasaki, Guy and his wife took me out to this great place up in the mountains overlooking Nagasaki. Took this before dinner while it was still light out.

After dinner.

I really try to be as lenient as possible with misspellingｓ in Japan as I can, and God knows there are an endless supply of them, but this was just to matter-of-fact to pass up.

One thing a lot of Japanese elementary students do a lot is unicycling. At one of the camp facilities we go to, they have many unicycles for us to use. We are all quite terribly awkward and dangerous when we try, but the Japanese kids all had it down. I was walking down the street in the Naga　and I saw this girl going nuts on a uni. It was pretty fun to watch.

The Kamome Sonic SuperExpress train that I took so many times between Nagasaki and Fukuoka - a lovely two hour ride, which is kinda long for how close the Naga and Fukuoka are to eachother. So, the train just looks fast. Everything leaves from Fukuoka, which is actually a really big city (even has an Apple store!!) Either when I stay in Fukuoka or leave from the huge train station there to go to Osaka or Hiroshima, etc, I get to ride the Kamome Sonic SuperExpress.

One of my favorite things to do on the trains is eat o-bento, Japanese for lunch box, which is actually in a cardboard box, not a traditional lunch box that we would think of. I almost always get the sushi/sashimi (raw fish) ones, but this time I got selection of local food famous to that area. Here is me suspensefully opening the o-bento.

Lovely selection of picked vegetables, rices, various bits of fish and eel, etc.

You may need bit of background to understand why this is funny... So my name, Ben, is Japanese can mean many things. I write my name in Japanese as such (勉）which means study. Written like this (弁), it means the first part of o-bento, lunch box. Actually, the "o-" means "honorable," so o-bento is really "honorable lunch box," just "bento" is just lunchbox. Anyway, my Japanese coworkers sometimes refuse to call me anything else besides o-bento, Mr. Lunchbox, so this is me living up to my name. If you can't tell, tied to my head with the bento ribbon is the lunchbox labelwith the chopsticks hanging off the side, the moist towelette on the other side.

This was absolutely ridiculous - saw it in the Fukuoka train station. OBGyn clinic, with nipples on the two Os.

This is a really cool view on the river in Fukuoka, but I took the picture with a friends camera that is actually busted... it was dropped on the lens and bent it a little, making the lenses out of parallel and everything impossible to focus. So, just please use your imagination.

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My absolute favorite thing to do in JP is eat. The food is amazing, although amazingly expensive.

This is Hama-chan, the absolute best tempura cook in Japan. Now, I know I tend to make many hyperbolic statements like this, but I literally can't describe how good his tempura is. I debated taking my Dad all the way to Nagasaki (completely different island from Tokyo) for Hama-chan's tempura. In this picture, he is cooking something different.

Here it is, world famous. And half of my annoying thumbs up sign.

Oden, a Japanese stew sort of thing, also delicious, also made at Hama-chan's restaurant.

Also from the same place, this is raw whale and raw whale tongue - absolutely delicious. Pretty funny, in Japan, they used to eat whale all the time, especially in Nagasaki. It used to be very cheap, since whales are so huge and plentiful, and a major staple in the Japanese diet. Then the U.S. discovered this practice, became quite upset at the thought of killing Free Willy and asked/forced Japan to stop. Now there are very few permits for killing/eating whales and it has become quite expensive. Funny thing is, now there is a big problem off the coast of Japan with over-whale population and all the whales wiping out the fish down the food chain, messing everything else up. In very broken Japanese, I told the chef that if the U.S. could find a way to make oil and gasoline from whale blubber, maybe we will let them start catching them again.

Okonomiayki is one of the best foods in Japan. It is a sort of grilled cabbage pancake with any sort of meat you want in it - my favorite is tako to ika (octopus and squid). It is topped with a delicious sauce, seaweed flakes, green onions, and fish shavings. I eat this probably two times a week... sorry Bill, I know your jealous... (Bill Golden told me that he debated naming his first child - who is expected very soon - Okonomiyaki Golden).

Mochi - a delicious gooey treat made from sweet rice powder and any other flavorings they can add.

Another thing I love to eat here, although quite sparingly, is yaki-niku. Yaki sort of means "grilling" - like my okonomiYAKI from above, grilled, and NIKU means mean. So, yaki-niku is Japanese barbecue... very similar to Korean barbecue, with all the kimchee, vegetables, etc.

Super high-tech one, with push button controls built into the table.

Fire-pit in the center of the table.

A little sample of some of the deliciousness we ate.

Cooking the meat...

So the raw beef you see in the front left, topped with a raw egg, is a favorite of mine, which is scary. It is called ya-ke, and it is eaten as you see here. You can also see in one of these shots, a platter of absolutely raw cow liver and stomach, dipped in salted sesame oil. It really is good if you don't have food-texture issues...

Mix the raw egg in with the raw beef.

De-rish-us. My theory why I never get sick: the E. Coli from the uncooked beef and the salmonella from the uncooked egg compete for invading your body and end up killing each other in the process, leaving the host unaffected. Although, you will read later in this blog about chicken ya-ke, raw chicken meat and raw egg... in which case I have no such amazing microbiological theory.

Dessert. Interestingly, cakes and such were imported from the Dutch WAY WAY back when.... Nagasaki was actually an incredibly famous port city and has a TON of Dutch influence... Anyway, the Japanese desserts look very similar to those in the West, but are much less sweet, which I really enjoy. They use more bitter chocolate and more natural, unsweetened fruits. Very tasty.

>>I will post more soon about my trips to Osaka and Hiroshima.... I wanna get pictures up from camp days in Japan.

::::OSAKA TRIP::::
I bought a rail pass from Japan Rail that is available only for foreigners for about $250. I ended up using almost $800 worth of train tickets in one week, most of which was going all over north Kyushu to hot spring resorts (I'll post photos of those later), taking the bullet train over to Osaka (other part of Japan) and hanging out there for a few days. Awesome trip. If you ever go to Japan, please please PLEASE get a rail pass. Japanese people are SICKLY jealous of foreigners for being able to get such an immense deal.

The Shinkansen (like Wis-consin), or bullet train. Goes around 180 mph and is astronomically expensive if you dont have a rail pass.

This was my first stop in Osaka. This building was nuts... the angled things going to the top were two escalators in glass tubes. The vertical column is a glass elevator shaft that goes to the top... 39 floors. I can't find the pictures from the top right now, I think they are on a another card... I can add them later.

Osaka dome from the train window.

Train conductor.

The tunnel going to Namba from the train station. Namba is a very cool and young part of Osaka.

Some crazy Osakan architecture.

Approaching Namba.

Shopping district.

Crazy hotel downtown.

Seafood restaurant.

All sorts of restaurants with names like this.

More downtown shots.

Yaki-tori restaurant. After eating raw chicken meat with egg (chicken ya-ke), raw chicken gizzard, heart and liver, I decided to reflect back on all the ridiculous things I have eaten this summer. I am proud to say I have experienced nothing by gastrointestinal bliss so far this summer, nothing remotely out of the ordinary to ward me off of eating more raw animal parts. Here is the list I have compiled so far... and, mind you, I sought out almost all of these foods... They are by no means required or even always commonplace if you were to visit these countries... it was beyond optional for me, much effort was expended to find these delectable treats and I of course never turned anyone's offer.

Hong Kong:
-> A variety of dishes with cow stomach (tripe and bible tribe)
Thailand:
-> Semi-raw and incredibly spicy frog meat "laap"
-> Fried grasshoppers, locusts, and cicadas
-> Mostly uncooked, barely warm grubworm
-> Durian. Haha, if you know what durian is, you know why I put it on here
Cambodia:
-> Pickled raw pork sausage
Vietnam:
-> Dog meat
-> Chicken fetus - a day or two before hatching, these are boiled up and served with a little salt, feathers, cartilage and all
-> Every imaginable part of a pig, all in one soup: liver, stomach, intestine, hoof, ear, etc.
-> Fish head, eyeball, stomach, guts, etc. - all in one soup
-> Raw fish meat - not the normal sashimi stuff from sushi, etc. I am talking we got a big random ocean fish, killed it, and cut it up and ate the meat
Japan
-> Raw horse meat, raw horse liver and stomach, and raw cartilage from the horse's mane
-> Raw whale meat, raw whale tongue, and raw whale stomach
-> Of course, raw fish, squid, clam, and octopus with all the sushi and crap I eat here... I would guess 4-5 times a week when I am not at camp... sushi and all that is easy to buy and make from a grocery store
-> Ya-ke, both raw beef plus raw egg and raw chicken plus raw egg
-> Raw chicken stomach, gizzard, and liver
-> Fried chicken bones
-> Raw beef stomach, liver, and intestine

Yay! I am still alive and can't really think of anything else I could have a chance to eat.

Some RIDICULOUS hotel, with ridiculous spelling.

My hotel was right next to a pimp-my-ride type dealership that actually had really really nice cars.

If you know the anti-PC Apple computer commercials from TV, this should look familiar. This is the Japanese version... it was playing in the Apple store.

I love Apple Stores.

Another amazing example of how it is cool to put things in English, regardless if anyone understands the meaning. Is this supposed to be ACME Jeans? Either way, gross.

Had to get a picture of this girl.

Making tako-yaki. Again, the word "yaki"... remember it? Tako means octopus, so this is a lot like okonomiyaki, but in ball form, with octopus meat. I love this stuff... and, just like okonomiyaki... Osaka is famous for it. Delicious with ponzu, a Japanese lime sauce.

Break dancing in the train station.

Please just read this twice.

I can't help taking pictures of homeless people sleeping in the city... either in Madison or in Japan.

Really cool looking canal in the middle of downtown.

Another shot from the other side of the bridge.

A　little while later, a boat came by with paper lanterns and drums and stuff for some Buddhist festival-type thing.

The boat I was referring to.

:::::HIROSHIMA TRIP:::::
So I had to come back to Nagasaki for the night on Thursday, but my rail pass didn't expire until Saturday. Even though Hiroshima is considered fairly far from Nagasaki, I hopped on the bullet trim on a whim on Friday afternoon, arrived Friday night, and came back late Saturday night. It was most definitely worth it. To do so without the rail pass would have cost more than the price of the rail pass itself.

Because I have always wanted to (and because I was running out of yen), I decided to stay in a Japanese capsule hotel for $20. I was by far the only non-old, drunk business man there.

So a "capsule" is basically a glorified dog kennel with a cloth curtain and a set of sheets and pillow inside. They are stacked and lining huge hallways, and you find your capsule's nubmer and, in my case, climb the latter up and crawl in.

Here's me in my capsule. Nice little TV, with the option of watcing a movie for 100yen/5 minutes (a dollar/5 minutes).

Yet another sign that was just too amazing to pass by without a picture. You can get a vibe for what part of town my capsule hotel was in.

This was hilarious, when I walked by this crane, they were hoisting up desk chairs, tied together, to the 4th floor. By the time I got my camera out, they had moved on to file cabinets.

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So the next morning, I took the train down to Miyajima Port, the ferry port for this little island (Miyajima) off the coast of Hiroshima. There is a huge shrine on the island with a torii (the big Shinto shrines you see all over these pictures) that seems to be floating, especially during high tide.

Miyajima port.

Ferry ride.

The "floating torii" in the distance.

A good shot of it and the shrine behind it. The torii served as the entrance from the sea.

The town of Miyajima.

Looking back at Hiroshima.

There are "wild" deer all over the shrine that have grown quite fond of the little deer biscuits that they sell the tourists to feed them. Maybe because I am from Wisconsin, I wasn't really so thrilled to pet a deer as everyone else that was there.

It was actually pretty cool to rub his slightly fuzzy little antlers.

What do you call the head deer of the shrine? Deer Lord. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Funny to see deer begging at the deer food stand. Takes away from the whole natural mystique of walking among wild beasts when they are hanging around and begging for table scraps.

Walking through Miyajima to the shrine.

Miyajima is famous for these little sweet cakes. I didn't have any, so I can't attest to their splendor. Sorry.

Like the deer, it was a bit disappointing to think of a tiny little island, famous for a beautiful shrine on beach, and little cake delicacies, which I was imagining being made by sweet little old Japanese woman wearingg a kimono, huddled over an old traditional stove, stirring a large pot full of handmade batter, etc.... only to look through a reinforced, double plated bakery window to see the famous Miyajima cakes being made by Robobaker 3000 or whatever this crazy thing is. After that, I lost interest in sampling it.

Shrine entrance.

Pictures in the shrine. The shrine, the floating torii, etc. is on of the Nihon Sankei... the three most scenic things is Japan. The pictures are nice and all, but it apparently a lot more beautiful at night when the water is up very high (up to the orange wood) and the the shrine is reflected in the water, etc.

Looking out to Hiroshima.

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Obviously, being stationed in Nagasaki, I went to the Atomic Bomb Museum and Peace Park, which were both absolutely incredible. I left my camera at home, thinking I wouldn't want to take pictures of something like that, but found myself slightly regretting it later. The park in Nagasaki was absolutely beautiful and certainly touching, and as powerful as the museum was to see, I thought if I ever went back, I would take pictures of some stuff inside.

The only reason I wanted to go all the way to the city of Hiroshima was to see the atomic bomb memorials and museums there, hearing many things about it being even larger and more grimacing, etc. than Nagasaki's. I guess I just felt very compelled and almost obligated to go. I took pictures of things I thought were capture-able by photograph - but I can't begin to TELL you about how powerful some of the stuff was, let alone show pictures of it and expect it's significance to be properly portrayed.

I heard the museums in Nagasaki and Hiroshima were very similar - riddled with artifacts from the intense heat generated by the bomb - glass bottles and coins fused together, twisted iron girders, shatters of glass that were embedded into wood, even shadows and silhouettes of people and object thats were burned into wooden and concrete walls from the intense light flash created by the bomb. It's true, the two museums are very similar, and I often found myself saying.. "yep, seen this before... this looks familiar", etc. But I kept remember that this exact thing happened twice... in two different places, killing two huge groups of entirely separate people.

The thing that disturbed me so badly is that there are two legitimate museums to commemorate this type of thing. One atrocity, one bomb, one museum is horrible, but the fact that one bomb was dropped, killing 140,000 people, flattening a city, etc, wasn't enough... it happened all over again on the next island over killing 70,000 more?? It was sickening to keep having to remind myself that I wasn't in a different museum version of the same horrible event, that they were two entirely different decisions made three days apart from each other.

The end of the museum shows the number of nuclear weapons in possession by every country in the world as of 2006. There is a flame in Hiroshima that burns in the park that won't be snuffed out until all the nukes are disarmed. While we unfortunately will probably never see that happen, it really made me quite.... I guess... ashamed.

The Atomic Bomb Dome. This building was a very famous building built in 1918 by a Czech architect to serve as the Prefectural Promotion Center of Hiroshima. It was a very famous building before (and after) the bomb, and there was an enormous amount of controversy after the rebuilding of the city as to whether it should remain. Since Hiroshima's credo turned into one of peace and anti-nuclear war after 1945, people finally agreed that it should left up.

The reason this one building stayed up after the bombing, as opposed to everything else in the city, is that the bomb exploded about 600 meters directly above the dome, and all the heat and blast traveled downward, rather than hitting it at angle, which would have knocked it over.

It is hard to tell in the pictures, but the reason it was controversial whether to leave it up or not is that the building is very large, and since it is on a river, it is extremely visible all around the city. It is definitely not an artifact in a Peace Park, it is a massive gutted building that can be seen from many places in the city.

The children's statue in Peace Memorial Park.

Peace Memorial Park.

The flame that burns in the park - a bit hard to see, but it's still burning, I assure you.

The cenotaph for all the victims.

The dome at the end of the park.

The fountain.

The museum - it was actually divided into two parts - one was all about the physical artifacts of the bomb - the other was about the history leading up to it, the peace movements, the future, etc.

Watch that stopped when the bomb blasted. There was the story of the man who wore it and how they knew it was him by recognizing the watch his son gave him.

A picture of Hiroshima after the bomb,　the dome that survived and is still there today.

A wooden door that had fragments of glass shot embedded into it. This was located very very far away from the blast - all the glass near the hypocenter (area directly below the bomb) melted.

A model of the city before. The American bombers' exact target was the T-shaped Aioi bridge at the bottom... the bomb exploding 600 meters above the ground and blasting downward.

The after model.

One of the very very few pictures taken of the victims. There was a quote from this photographer about how his viewfinder was too clouded with tears to take another picture.

Another scaled model, with the orange ball representing the fireball that was formed approx. 1 sec later. I think the temp in the middle was estimated to reach 1,000,000 Celcius.

The nukes in the world left today. The world is turned on the side, and Russia and China is in front, the US is off to the side on the right. Japan is on the bottom cause they have no nukes and no plastic missiles on the globe to show.

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Well, that's all for now. I'll post more Japan pics later!! Back to work tomorrow morning!

Seoul-o Mission

2007-07-14T06:24:00.000-06:00

Went on a fantastic little side voyage to South Korea during a 5 day vacation I had in Nagasaki/Fukuoka. There is a relatively cheap ferry boat that goes between Japan and Korea - 3 hours to Busan (Korea) and an overnight voyage back to JP (Fukuoka).

Pictures of the ferry - it was incredibly massive.

This was hilarious... I was reading "The Japan Times" - Japan's English language newspaper - on the ferry. I was reading through all sorts of stuff about Japanese politics, the Asian economic situation, China this, Thailand that, etc. Anyway, got to the world section, and sandwiched between the Tokyo Stock Exchange and European　market report is this picture from Little Chute, Wis. about a 700 pound block of cheddar cheese. Little Chute is my dad's hometown. I couldn't believe it. If any of my family members that are reading this know Troy from the picture, I think it would be funny to send him this picture and tell him that hundreds of Korean and Japanese people read about his cheese carving on their journey from Busan to Fukuoka.

Shortly after I finished updating myself on the happenings in North Korea and Iran, the fluctuations of the US dollar vs. the Japanese Yen, and the latest in large-scale dairy sculpting, a Korean dude about my age introduced himself as Mye-T, and asked if I would drink a beer with him. He was with his family on the boat back from Japan and, from what I gathered, was a bit sick of them and wanted to hang out with someone his own age. He ended up telling me all kinds of things to do and see when I get to Seoul. See ma, even when I travel places alone, I always end of meeting nice people along the way! :)

The guest house I stayed in was located right next to downtown Seoul in this neighborhood. Very cheap - was a relief to escape the ridiculousness of Tokyo pricing.

Traditional Korean style guest house.

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Strolling around downtown Seoul:

While walking around, came across this Korean independence monument.

Pictures of the gates you pass through on the way in and out of the independence park.

Walked over to another part of Seoul to visit this really nice aquarium I had heard about.

Shot of Seoul from the other side of the river.

I didn't get far enough away to take a good picture of the building (63 building) that the aquarium was in, but this sign shows it pretty well (the massive gold one.)

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The welcoming sign in the beginning of the aquarium. I know, I don't quite get it either.

Pics from the aquarium:

Sea Lion play pen.

This tank was so incredibly massive... was a few hallways long.

Eel. I ate a lot of this later that day.

Close up - eels are quite disgusting creatures.

More eels.

This was cool - they had an electric eel tank with a voltage sensor in the water - so every time some little Korean kid came along and started banging on the glass, they eel would get mad and shoot off his electricity and the voltage sensor would go up. Pretty cool.

They had some pretty crazy-looking jellyfish.

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On the last day, I met up with Mye-T, who I met on the ferry. He was an electrical engineer at Korea's best electrical engineering university. Apparently everyone that graduates from it ends up with a nice job at Samsung or LG. He told me they were making semiconductor chips and had to wear all the crazy white suits you see on the Intel commercials and stuff. I stopped by his university with him... I tell you, you haven't lived until you have sat in for 10 minutes on a lecture about np junctions and light-emitting diode wave refractions - all in Korean of course.

The processor chip lab.

I asked these dudes to take me to a sweet Korean restaurant. We at jungeol, which is a soup boiled right at the table, with all the meat, veggies, kim chee varieties, etc., that you see here. These guys were hilariously strange.

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Train station in Seoul, about to leave for Busan, on the other side of the country. High speed train goes about 190 mph, so it only takes 3 hours to get from one coast to the other.

Seoul was enormous - about 24.5 million people. Busan was also fairly large - about the size of Chicago - I think 6.5 million.

Before my ferry left back from JP, I ran and got myself some Korea sushi. All this was about 10 bucks - Would probably be around 50 in Japan and 40 in the US. It was delicious.

Shots of Busan from the ferry. The ferry stays in the Busan harbor for a very long time before departure for Fukuoka since it is an overnight voyage. They want everyone to fall asleep before the ride gets wavy and people get sick. Anyway, I got pictures during the evening and night from the ship.

Well that's all for Korea. It was a great time - a good amount of time to see a lot of Seoul and some of Busan. I didn't bring my camera out nearly as much as I should of - but my favorite thing about Korea was the food, and it's hard to photograph deliciousness.

I'll post more Japan pics later - especially ones of us working at camp. There is always a professional photographer there, so I will get digital copies of their pics from camp as well.

Got my rail pass now and will be going on a 9 day trip to Hiroshima, Osaka, and Kyoto during our extended vacation. Should have amazing stuff from that!

Rockin' the Cat Ba

2007-07-02T06:21:00.000-06:00

This is the second of my two Vietnam posts. Check out the one after this for pics from the motorcycle trip, etc. I added a VIDEOS section on the right column of this blog with links to a few videos I shot and put on Google Video. Check em out!

Really sorry for the large file sizes (when you click on the pictures), but this computer I am using doesn`t have any photo editing software :(

So the day after the motorcycle adventure, we departed for Haiphong, Vietnam`s third largest city. It was pretty cool, even though we didn`t stay long. We departed immeadiately for Cat Ba (an island off the coast of Haiphong). We found a seasoned-veteran fisherman who agreed to take us out on his old fishing boat for three days. We heard he was a dirty old man who loved booze, so we stopped at restaurant and bought 24 extra large bottles of Beer Ha Noi for the captain. We ate all of our meals on the boat, slept on the boat, went to the bathroom off the side of the boat, and some crazy stuff in between. My camera battery died somewhere between the first and second days, so I didn`t get pics of everything I wanted to... but I was quite fine with it - I really was too relaxed to take many pictures anyway. I wish I would have it for the mussel harvesting, spelunking (we went hiking inside some massive uncharted caves), and a few of the beaches we went to. The beauty of being on a boat in a country with few rules is that you can stop at any beach or limestone cave you want without having to pay an entrance fee.

A picture from the insanely ghetto train we took there (Hanoi to Haiphong). It was pretty funny, there were some kids with binoculars for looking out the train windows, but they used them to watch Sean and I across the train the whole time. The people surrounding us were incredibly perplexed and had a good time laughing at me while I tried to translate ''where can we find a boat to go to Cat Ba?'' Things are much more fun when you don`t plan ahead and rely on a Lonely Planet phrasebook for your survival.

We took a ferry to Cat Ba. Amazing views on the way. The water was so amazingly blue-green.

The harbor we found our boat at.

This was our fishing boat! Binh, the 15 year old cook, is on the small boat coming to shore to pick us up.

Another shot of our boat.

Leaving the harbor. All the boats had the Vietnamese flag (red with a yellow star).

One day during low tide, we went out with the captain, old rusty Phillips screwdrivers in hands, and pried mussels off the bottom side of coral and rock. We got about 300-500 mussels and ate nothing but them for the whole day. Delicious for the first few times, but now I still get sick thinking about them. Here`s Sean with his Bia Ha Noi (Vietnam`s cheapest and most delicious brew) and a hand-picked mussel. My feet and hands were bleeding profusely after our harvest, since the small boat got stuck on the coral and I had to shove it free. I fell repeatedly and sliced my knees, thighs, feets, and fingers open on the razor-sharp coral rocks on the sea floor. To add mental salt to my wounds, Sean started telling me about a deadly strain of bacteia found in some ocean waters that gets in through such scratches and causes people a deadly and painful infection. Ass. I`m feeling fine so far... :\

Cruisin` along.

I love this shot.

Dirty Captain and our cook, navigating our amazingly old vessel.

Again, when the clouds and sun were right, I could take pictures to show how eerily green the water was.

We saw many families like this who lived in floating houses on the water and just lived as fisherman. We stopped at a village of houses like this to buy some supplies. They had a little floating schoolhouse and communist meeting place or village hall or whatever you want to call it. Our captain was constantly trying to recruit female guests to live on the boat with us (and him). I think he had some preconceived notions about why Americans come to SE Asia.... of which I saw many back in Bangkok, Phnom Penh, and Hanoi... dirty American men buying girls and reinforcing the stereotype.

This was interesting. If you want to do ANYTHING in `Nam, it ususally involved bribing some sort of government official. We stayed in a cove that was supposedly ``protected`` by the government. We were unsure what that meant, but in the morning, the government boat pulled up (they are pulling away here) and we saw our captain bribing them with some money. We were unsure of what exactly happened in the transaction.

However, the next night, our captain got accidently yet completely smashed off some rice whiskey he brought, and didn`t get us to a protected cove before dark. We were going to stay in some certain area, but the captain suddenly freaked out and, after much translation, we found out that he was scared of Vietnamese pirates in the area that apparently commandier ships at night, kill or kidnap the people on board, and completely steal everything on the ship. He was incredibly and seriously worried about this. So, we pushed on and sailed in the pitch dark (only a half moon) until we found a place that he thought was safe. It eneded up being an AMAZING night-cruise, but it was a little disconcerting, as you can imagine by the daytime pictures of how many rocks and islands jut up out of the water... not many of which are visible in the middle of the night. We survivied though, no shipwrecks or pirates.

...

This is how Binh cooked us dinner. There was a little cabinet in the back of the boat with a gas stove and a 50 gallon bucket of ``fresh water`` that was anything
but fresh. No worries, most everything we ate was somewhat boiled or pan fried. Please excuse Sean`s overexposed buttock in the foreground. Again, no photo-editing software.

Quite the feast for a few knives and pans, a bunsen burner, and a 15 year old Vietnamese boy.

One day, we got this huge white fish, took a beer bottle to it`s head, sliced it up and ate the raw meat (I am not confident it was a sushi-quality fish, but it was really good nonetheless), and boiled all the organs up in a pan (literally... every single organ), and ate it as soup for dinner. We ate some pretty wild food... evidently, so did the rats on our boat - I left these little biscuits I bought in town out in the birth... and there were teeth holes in the wrappers and all the biscuit was gone. I guess rats live everywhere....

...

So that`s all the pics I have from the boat trip. It would have been quite difficult to bring them on some of the beaches and caves the captain brought us to. He knew the area quite well, and he enabled us to do some pretty crazy hiking (to the top of this huge rocky hill/mountain on this island called Monkey Island, where we literally walked past dozens of wild, food-seeking Rhesus macaque monkeys). It was defintely the non-tourist and slightly dangerous adventure we requested.

That`s it for VN. I miss it already, very much. I flew back to Bangkok via Air Asia (SO CHEAP - only $60!!) and then caught a overnight flight from Bangkok to Fukuoka, Japan, where I worked for 7 days (4 day orientation then our first 3 day USA Camp). Now I am on my fourth day of vacation in Nagasaki, Japan, an incredibly beautiful and new (wiped out by the A-bomb in 1945) city with a ton of culture, especially Dutch and Chinese - what was preserved when the city was rebuilt. The next two vacations I get in Japan are extensive, and I plan to go to South Korea for one of them, and over to Osaka and Kyoto for the other... Maybe fly up to Hokkaido if I can find a cheap ticket. Regardless, I will be posting tons more pictures as the summer goes on!

Good Morning, Viet Nam!

2007-06-30T02:38:00.000-06:00

I was reserving this phrase very carefully.... waiting until an apropriate time to unleash it. That time has arrived.

This was, BY FAR, the MOST INSANE part of my trip. Mom and Grandma, you may want to skip the description and just go down to the pictures... :)

I can now scratch another item off my "Things to do before I die" list.

I learned how to ride a motorcycle. Scratch that. I learned how to ride, with excruciating precision, an antique, occassionaly non-functioning motorcycle in a city with the lowest driver to traffic-signal ratio in the world. During the rainy season. And rush hour. Possibly the most formidible driving conditions on earth. But, I survived, and I feel amazing. Sorry Julie L., we won't spread the word about surviving motorcycle riding in Vietnam - it was crazy, you were right, and I would have a hard time recommending that to many people.

I didn't take this, but it pretty much sums up what it's like.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=LazJY1K8vO8&mode=related&search=

Ironically, that video was taken about three blocks from my place. I can't describe how traffic works here. There are no defined lanes or speed limit. Everyone just maintains an organized yet chaotic flow toward their respective directions. The intersections are completely unregulated. You sorta just go and the people driving perpendicular to you either swerve around you or slow down to let you pass. The occassional 4-way traffic lights are just green and red signals, no turn lanes, no straight lanes. However, I didn't see any accidents, nor get in any. Once you figure out the system and stop wetting your bike, you just sorta flow with it.

So, back to the story. I met Sean here in Hanoi at 9pm, after my flight from Kuala Lampur. We had some issues with the hostel I booked, so we found a different one and took some amazing motorcycle taxi rides to the new place. This guest house has an amazing lady that works at the front desk who told us she could make happen any sort of trip we wanted. We told her we wanted to get away from the big cities, since we were both big-citied-out. That's actually why I chose North VN, even though the food is better in the south (I know I will receive some flak for that comment :) So, we told her we wanted to see some foot hill tribes and villages, especially the Hmong and ethnic Thai tribes in the north. There is a city, Sa Pa, near the Chinese border, but they run tourists up there to see the rice fields and terraced green tea farms and stuff - we wanted more immersion than that. Boy, did we get it.

She asked us if we could ride motorcycles. Although Sean has a lot of dirtbike experience, neither of us have motorcycle licenses, let alone international driving licenses. So, we said. "Yes! Of course we do!" She directed us to Flamingo Travel, a small hole in the wall down the street that rented two of Hanoi's ten 1970's Soviet Minsk motorcycles. Total beasts. Wait until you read my "Repairs" section.

We picked up our bikes - well, Sean picked up his bike, I told the guy I was scared of the traffic, so he rode mine back for me. I hopped on the back and paid attention to what he was doing. It looked pretty easy - I have always driven a manual car, so I just saw how he worked the clutch with the left hand, selected the gears with the left foot (when the gear selector didn't get jammed in neutral - more to come later). We waited until night, and I hopped on the bike and gave it a shot. It was really easy to learn the bike, once I got past the insane traffic and bike malfunctions. We rode around downtown Hanoi for a couple hours until I felt comfortable, then headed back for an early night in.

The next day we woke up at 4am, were out the door sometime after 5am. Rush hour traffic picks up at 6am, we wanted to get out of Hanoi alive. We headed dead west for the Vietnam-Lao border. Once were were 20km outside of Hanoi, the chaos began.

Since we asked for a very "non-traditional tourist route," our lady sent us to the most remote villages and towns possible. 90% of the people had never seen white people in their villages... let alone two fairly large dudes on old Russian tank-looking motorcycles. We stopped to buy rain ponchos, and could only find blazing lime green and hunter's orange, unlike everyone else in Hanoi, who wear much more discrete colors. This exponentially increased the staring factor. People looked at us like were aliens - it was unreal. People in rice fields stopped working, were shouting to each other and pointing at us. It was amazingly hilarious. Everytime we stopped, either for fuel, food, or a picture, people would migrate toward us and start yelling "hello!" Everyone knows hello (that's how they answer their phones here), but no other words. My pocket Eng-Viet translator was so worn by the end of this trip. A few times, we had a throng of people follow us on their mopeds, creating this ridiculous entourage of two goony looking (and sunburnt) white kids, followed by young Vietnamese kids yelling "HELLO!".

This was just the beginning of our 320 mile journey around the sticks of Northern Nam.

Right after we got out of Hanoi, which was an incredible accomplishment, we stopped to break. Hello ladies! Rice field girls!

Sean donning his sexy chartruese colored slicker.

::: THE ROAD TO MOC CHAU :::

We heard about this crazy little town 5000ft up in the mountains. We wanted to stay there for the night, but it was 200km away (about 120miles). Since we left at 5am, we were able to get there by night - did not want to ride the Minsks (Vietnamese pronounce it "Min") in the dark. Our first 120 miles were some of the craziest. One of the most crucial tools a driver in VN can have is a horn. I can't even begin to tell you how much they are used. At first it really riled me up... when people honk in the US it's usually to scold someone or give them a stern caution. Here it's more of a "Hey there, just coming up behind ya.... Gonna pass you gently on the left..." It took a while to get used to not freaking out or violently whipping my head around to see what the issue is. By the time I got used to the honks, I started using mine. That's when I found out my horn didn't work and we had our first motorcycle repair job. $0.80 later, we were back on the road.

We stopped a lot for pics. Here are some of the better ones I took. Taking pics in VN is impossible... It's either painfully bright and the colors are washed, or it just downpoured and there is a blanket of fog over everything. Especially up in the mountains, where most of our ride took place. The weather here is actually a lot like in Forrest Gump. It would be perfectly bright, start pouring, stop pouring, start raining from a different direction, start pouring harder, etc. It actually was rather nice... it only rained maybe 20% of the time, and we were usually so wind and sunburt that it felt amazingly nice. Ziploc bags were the best investment on this trip.

We rode through a lot of ethnic hill tribe areas. It was hard to ask them what they were, but we spoke to the people here and figured out there were M'uong people. A lot of the hill tribe people had reservations (we deduced from one girl that it might be for spiritual reasons) about us taking their pictures, so I don't have many of the traditional dress a lot of them wore, but we had a book and later looked up what they were. That's how we knew we passed through a Hmong village near Laos, they were wearing these amazing black shirts with really colorful red sleeves - the women had black with really decorative red long dresses and headdresses. We later saw pictures of Hmong villagers who were wearing the same thing.

Stopped through a fishing village. These boats had massive ropes and pulleys to lift the huge nets out of the water.

Fishing by hand.

*** FIRST REPAIR *** After only about 50km, I had suffered a left turn signal and horn casuality. Since the horn is one of the most important instruments on a motorcycle in VN, I had to get it fixed. One turn signal unit, one horn, and labor: 15,000 Vietnamese dong - about $0.90.

Passed a huge hydro plant.

See the statue of Ho Chi Minh on the top of that huge hill?

There he is. HCM.

Views from the HCM statue, a town called Hoa Binh below.

Continuing on.

...

Please don't look at this next picture if you are sensitive to other rural Vietnamese cultural culinary preferences. Or just like dogs. On the contrary, if you are overly interested, I have much more detialed close-up pictures of the process.

This is a dog being roasted along side the road. We kept smelling burning grass along the trip and seeing big piles of it cooking along the roads. Turns out it's how they singe the hair of the dogs before they clean them up and cook them.

This is before we knew what all the signs saying "Thit Cho" (pronounced Teet Joe) at every restaurant was. Thit bo is beef, thit lon is pork, thit ga is chicken, but we didn't know what thit cho was. I had it once on accident (they just brought out a bunch of meat,) thought it was charbroiled pork, and enjoyed it quite a bit. When we finally decided to pull over and check out the grass fire, we put thit and thit together - we had eaten Lassie. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, Sean detested it. Being a "When in Rome..." kind of guy, I was not afraid to order more Thit Cho in the future.

Pushing on, more shots from the road:

As if driving a motorcycle 200km the day after I learned how to use it wasn't dangerous enough, I had to take a picture of Sean while I was riding.

A little tiny roadside village of M'uong people. They didn't want their pictures taken, so I didn't get any of them. There were cows everywhere and they old sold corn. It was really fun trying to sit down and answer their questions about the ghosts that bombarded their village. It was cool listening to them speak in M'uong to each other... quite the change from listening to only Tieng Viet for the past 4 days.

Their village below.

Looking back at the village and roadside corn shops. Very hard to see, just a bamboo shack on the edge of the cliff, village in the background.

Timer mode on the camera... we wanted a picture to put in our respective offices someday.

A grim reminder of how careful you have to be when flying around a switchback. We got there right after, and being the good meddies that we are, made sure everyone was okay.

Where the truck would have ended up if not for that guard rail.

I have always wanted to take one of those corny silouhette shots with the mountain mist in the background.

::: THE ROAD TO PHU YEN :::

We were exhausted the next day and unable to go another 120 miles. We went only 80 or so, but stopped constantly. That night, we wanted to stay in a hill tribe village, but realized that Vietam law requires all foreigners to be registered with local police, which is why they take your passports at the hotels. So, we ran into some logistical issues there and found a tiny little hotel to sleep at, in a nice little town called Phu Yen.

Some shots along the way:

A typical little family restaurant we would stop at.

Beggars can`t be choosers when it comes to health codes here. Actually, I am writing this blog from Japan now (extremely safe and clean) so I can say this without having to knock on wood.... I didn`t get sick AT ALL in SE Asia from food, including pig stomach, intestines, liver, fish eyes and brain, chicken fetus, dog, insects, raw pork, beef, and fish. Woo Hoo! Still have an entire bottle of Cipro left.

Some villagers riding their water buffalos to work in the fields.

A little house we drove by that made us come in for tea. I took the picture because I liked the large fish they had hanging to rot in the sun.

::: SIDE TRIP TO TA LAI :::

We saw a dirt road off to the right and took it. No apparent reason - it just looked crazy and desolate. We ended up talking to the most insane man in the world. About 10km, the dirt road became the mud road, which became the swampy, nearly undrivable road, which just sorta turned into a large mud puddle and my bike shut off. We saw waterfalls in the distance and were gonna lock our hogs together (no ignitions, just a bike lock and good faith), and hike up to the waterfall. Then the B-squad Vietnamese army came and told us it was too hard to hike up there. We tried anyway, but they told us now. By that time, we had attracted quite a crowd, and this INSANE man grabbed us and started dragging us down to his house. Would not take no for an answer. He kept repeating some word and making a drinking motion. We had no choice and went back with him.

The road up to Ta Lai.

The congregation of villagers before the crazy guy came.

Action shot of the crazy guy trying to convince us to go back with him. And all the villagers watching eagerly.

We finally gave in.

More kids riding on a rural Vietnamese car.

Vietnamese car wash. Haha.

His ride.

This is what he wanted us to drink. It smelled like death, had some sort of maggot-covered shell in it, and obviously had made this guy crazy. I RARELY will turn down exotic food or drink (I have eaten some ridiculous things here already), but I refused to touch this stuff. He was SHOVING shot glasses of it up to our mouth, spilling it everywhere. I was chocking back vomit. It was so bad. I finally looked up some words in the translator, told him our incredibly strict religion fiercly prohibited alcohol. He paused, yelled VIETNAM!!! and shoved it back in our face. Then his son came home and we tried to pawn it off on him. The neighbors came to see the white people and none of them would touch the stuff. We finally clenched our fists and sat on our hands and he gave up and drank them hisself. He didn't try very hard with the other bottle in the picture, which was millions of little bugs soaking in some sort of booze.

The son brought a baby owl. Must be a pet. It was really hilarious... bobbing his head around and hooting.

His humble abode.

The whole family. Notice the bamboo floor?

He was repeatedly kissing my neck and face... reaked like booze. I actually busted a small hole in the makeshift floor when I hefted him in this picture.

Sean and I took pictures with this nutjob in front of his TV - his pride and joy and apparently the most suitable place for pictures in his house.

The daughters were weaving a new mat to put over the floor for eating on.

Maybe this is just the epidemiologist in me, but I couldn`t help it. Ducklings inhabiting the ground floor of a pig pen. You will notice in the picture that the pig is urinating over the ducklings courtyard. This is how things like bird flu start - mixing pig and fowl viruses by having cross-inhabitation of contaminated nesting sites.

A proud farmer and his rice fields.

More shots outside of Ta Lai.

The Song Da River. Shallow, muddy, and only selectively cross-able.

Sean loading his bike onto the ferry.

Looking back up the enbankment down to the ferry.

Beginning the crossing.

On the ferry boat. By the way, I got an INCREDIBLE fire-roasted skin-blistering (not quite) sunburn on my forearms the first day, which explains why I am wearing a longsleeve fleece in the jungle during summer.

The bamboo walkway from the dock to the the road. We literally had to push our bikes along a landbrige made of bamboo for 15 minutes in the scorching sun. It was nice.

Looking back to the river.

We then went on one of the most gorgeous passes of our ride. Some shots:

A local village market we stopped at. Nice teeth huh?

Bought some watermelon. Cute baby in a hammmock.

::: THE ROAD TO SONG THAO :::

Another long journey. It rained a ton, so I couldn`t take as many pics as I wanted to.

Woke up to the sound of a pig squealing incredibly loud at 5 in the morning. Wasn`t sure why... became really curious at 6am when I heard a goat bleating for 10 minutes straight at 6am... That`s why the guest house was so cheap... it was across the street from a butcher shop... where the animals arrive fresh.

This is the goat being shaved. The pig is on the table.. in many parts.

Our room. Sean is watching the goat carving.

....

This part of the trip was a bit hairy. We were in a major landslide area where not all the roads were navigatable, and, in two cases, weren`t ever there any more.

Where the road stoped being pavement.

Saw a cave on the side of the road. Went in, but it was pretty unimpressive.

Taking pictures of each other in case it was our last.

Why you should drive slowly on Vietnamese mountain highways. Absolutely no warning sign for this - in any language.

I was trying to convince Sean he could jump it.

We found an alternative route. This is looking back where I took the last two pictures.

All the land that the road used to be on was completely washed out down the mountain.

We started to see a ton of little waterfalls along the road like this.]

Long ditches ran with the road down the mountain, which is how the villages receive ``running water.``

***THIRD REPAIR*** (2nd wasn`t that interesting - just a clutch cable)
My bike stopped shifting. Clutch was gone, so I had to jump down one the shifter to get it into gear. My left shoe was covered in oil because the kick start level was loose and tranny oil was spilling everywhere. My right shoe and ankle were soaked in gasoline because the carburetor started poruing out gasoline. Alas, I had to stop at the closest bike repair shop and became very familiar　with the phrase ``xe may sua chua er dou`` - where can I repair my motorcycle?

The best asset a Vietnamese motorcycle repairman can have is creativity. Exhaust leak? Use a chunk of a Coke can!　A piece of my carburetor was shot and they didn`t have a replacmentm, so the guy grabbed some scrap metal and patched it up. It worked great for about 6 hours, then my bike started leaking again. Enough to get me to the next repair station.

Safety Myth #1 - You CAN use your bare toes to anchor down a piece of metal you want to solder together with a solder iron that is missing parts of it`s case and runs on a two prong with no GFI.

Safety Myth #2 -It is perfectly okay to smoke and grind metal while working on carburetors with gasoline splattered all over everything.

So my entire transmission was overhauled, carburetor taken apart and fixed, all put back together, totalling 3 hours of labor. Charged me 25,000 Vietnamese Dong, about $1.60.

...

We were wondering what these terraced hills were growing. We rode past a huge farm of the stuff and stopped to take pictures. The people in the farmhouse came up to us and grabbed our arms and dragged us out to the farm. Turns out it was green tea they were growing. They gave us a very detailed and thorough tour of the process (all in Tieng Viet, so I couldn't tell you what they said), including a cup of their pride and joy. I ended up buying a kilo of the stuff to bring home. Do you have any idea how HUGE a kilo of dried green tea is????

This machine rolled all the leaves up. You load the tea leaves in the hopper, it rotates around the top and the little metal grooves rolls the leaves up.

Leave the leaves out to dry in the sun for a while.

This fire powered tumbler is where you throw all the semi-dried leave rolls. It rotates around and in about 10-15 minutes you have about a kilogram of very dried (almost roasted) green tea leaves.

Pick out the undesired pieces and throw it into a sack. This is a kilo of green tea. How am I gonna get through Airport Security with this? A kilo, or lifetime supply, costed about $1.75. I could probably sell little tins of it in bougie Madison coffee shops for hundreds of dollars. "FairTrade, organic, hand-picked tea leaves from the foothills of Gia Phu, Vietnam."

Then the rain came. No more pictures.

:::THE ROAD BACK TO HANOI:::

Getting back was the scariest part. We picked a ``shortcut`` that was all mud and gravel roads, and it POURED rain all morning, making the roads absolute soup. The closer we got to Hanoi, the thicker the truck and bus traffic became, and we spent most of the time riding in first gear in a cloud of blue exhaust. Our bikes were literally turning off and breaking down, we were semi-lost most of the time, and very scared about Sunday Hanoi traffic... everybody`s day off.

The puddle my bike created after stopping for breakfast for 10-15 minutes.

We made it.... so hard to believe still. Look at how insanely filthy we were.

So sad... the bike rental dudes taking our hogs away. They were PISSED at how destroyed the bikes were... but couldn`t really blame us... they rented us to them like that.

...

As　if that weren`t adventure enough, we arranged a train, bus, ferry, and taxi trip to Cat Ba Island where we found a Vietnamese fisherman and his cook to take us on a 3 day boat trip around the island and Ha Long Bay.　Stay tuned for my next post!

Sorry it took SO LONG to post this. I went from the boat trip to Japan (via Thailand) and then had seven days of work in a camp somewhere in the mountains. No internet, but now I am back in Nagasaki and have a member card at the ridiculous internet cafe. Will post Japan pics soon too. Updated the progress map too.

CHECK THESE OUT!! Got a few videos off while 'cycling. First and third are really short, second one is a bit long (2 min). Click the links on the right column of the blog (under VIDEOS) or paste the links below.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1787808757768283788&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1752291885754019684&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3581113661175872742&pr=goog-sl

24 Hours in Malaysia

2007-06-17T05:35:00.001-06:00

Leaving Cambodia in style.....

The way in which I left Cambodia pretty much epitomized everything about this trip. Riding with my pack on a tuk-tuk, going the wrong way in the wrong lane.

The glorious Phnom Penh airport. As I told Verbs, sizewise, I'd put it somewhere between Austin Straubel and Brownsville, Texas (2 terminals.)

How we get on and off airplanes in Bodia.

....

I was going to be laid over in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, a city I have always wanted to see, for 6 hours. So, I decided to take the next day's flight and stay there for 30 hours. It was nice and very interesting from a cultural standpoint, but it wasn't huge and I was able to only sleep for a few hours and got to see the majority of the city. Met this really cool Dutch guy, Sven van Something, which was cool, so I could absorb both Malay and Dutch culture.

We went out at night to Reggae Bar pool hall and met some people who told us what to see the next day. We decided to take the metro to the last stop and catch a cab to the Batu Caves, a huge Hindu temple of sorts, located inside a cave. 270 some stairs to the entrace. Apparently 1 million people climb the stairs during some huge 3-day Hindu celebrations.

The gold statue outside the stairs.

At the top.

272 steep stairs. Sore gluts.

Looking back.

View of KL in the distance.

Since it was like 5:30 in the morning, there was some strange ceremony going on. This guy washed this spear-looking thing with all sorts of muds and powders, dousing it with water each time. It was very cool.

Looking out.

These crazy little rhesus monkeys ran all over the temple, fighting with each other and eating jasmine flowers left at the shrines.

Downtown KL. You can see the KL Tower (looks like a space needle).

The Petronas Towers; biggest twin towers in the world.

A bunch of froofy Prada, Gucci, etc. type shops in the Petronas towers, including this awesomely colored Lotus.

We went up inside the KL Tower. Really cool views of Kuala Lampur:

Awesome street food. Malaysia has a great blend of Indian and Chinese cultures, among others. The food reflects this in a great way.

That's all... Didn't have to tear me away. I wanted to see Mugatu or the Claymation dude though.... On to 'NAM!

You know you're in Cambodia when...

2007-06-09T10:32:00.000-06:00

-> The airplane drops you off in a glorified parking lot, with no real clue which building you should walk to for entering the country
-> You can find every part of a pig or cow, absolutely raw, hanging from hooks in sweaty little tents along the streets and alleys
-> You pass a town that is nationally known for its deep fried tarantulas
-> You see an entire family of five on a standard issue moped (no joke, two parents and three kids)
-> You take a taxi to THE city's ATM machine (again, no joke, Siem Reap, a town of almost a million people, got it's first ATM machine last year)
-> Of the 10% of vehicles that aren't mopeds, dirtbikes, or tuk tuks, 80% (factual number) of the automobiles are second-hand Toyota Camrys from Japan
-> You CELEBRATE if you find a bathroom that has any of the following: handsoap (found floor cleaner once and used that), toilet paper (they love the bidet here... damn French), or anything to wipe your hands on after you wash/get them wet. I once found one with both soap and toilet paper, but walked out with wet pant legs.

....

Greetings from Siem Reap, Cambodia... home of the world's slowest internet and the world's greatest ancient temple, Angkor Wat. So exhausted from seeing Angkor Wat today, I decided to post something instead of touring the scuzzy "downtown" area, which is overrun with inappropriate massage parlors and drunk Europeans. Although, I might have to cut the post short, since I just noticed the sign above me:

Computer INTERNT:
open 7.30
close 10.00
THANK

Hmmm... Anyway, Cambodia has been PENH-OMINAL so far... ocne you get past the whole "Did I seriously decide to come to Cambodia thing?" Oh yeah, the captial city, where I stayed the first night, is Phnom Penh, hence the wildy hilarious pun earlier.
Browsed Phnom Penh for the entire day, marveled at the lack of both street lights and safe pedrestrial walking areas, as well as the lack of accidents. It was actually quite surprising. Stayed in a 4 star hotel for $15/person in the "nicest" area of town - I have a picture from our balcony - you be the judge of that. Click on all the pictures to see larger versions.

From the balcony.

This guy impressed me.

Look how his belly is wedged against the dash.

Insane. Not to mention, you only need a driver's license to drive a car, nothing else.

More people I saw pass by while in the tuk tuk.

Cambodian meat market. There happens to be an abundance of meat markets of another caliber down the street, mostly Vietnamese and Burmese in origin.

Had to take a Ciprofloxacin after just looking at these rotten shanks.

Cambodian basket weaver.

Toilet Man? A new kind of superhero?

....

This is a darker part of my journey.. yet necessary. I obviously had done a lot of research about the Cambodia genocide, including anecdotes from Marika's family. This part of the trip was very very powerful for me, but it's one of the reasons I decided to come to Cambodia.

We went to one of the hundreds of Killing Fields in Cambodia. If you don't know, there was an incredibly massive genocide under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s in an attempt to cleanse the society of the rich, educated, and Western-influenced. Over a million people (about 20% of the country's population at the time) were evacuated from their homes to either extermination or internment camps outside the city, where they died of either brutal murder or starvation. Most murdered were bludgeoned to death to save bullets. I went to Cheung Loek Extermination Camp, about 20km outside of Phnom Penh. They have dug up some, but not all of the grave sites and found around 9000 bodies so far. There is still a large area of the camp that has not been unearthed and thousands more bodies are still in the ground.

Looks like a fairly normal stupa from afar.

Actually houses over 8900 skulls that were dug up so far. The skulls are stacked 4 or five stories high.

They are arranged by age and gender.

Most skulls such as these shows signs of skull trauma, which is how most were killed.

Fairly self-explanatory.

Places were graves were dug up. Click on these and read the signs.

Absolutly horrific. If the mountain of skulls or grave sites don't get to you, the children beating tree sure does.

Don't realy need captions.

This was the eeriest part of the Killing Fields. I walked to an ara of the place that was not really cleaned up. Saw clothing laying buried in the dirt, chunks of bones - even found two human teeth laying on the ground. This was the hardest to see... I guess there is a good and bad thing to having an unregulated "museum" such as this.

An overall chilling experience, but I am so glad I went. It's a shame more people don't know that these sorts of things went on.

.....

Next day, took a 6 hour bus ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap on Cambodia's finest national highway, #5, which was barely two lanes and shared by mopeds, farmers in pick up trucks (no semis here), and cattle. Pretty rough, but totally worth it. Arrived in Siem Reap and went straight to Angkor Thom, right outside of Angkor Wat. Angkor Thom is the old capital, the oldest surviving Khmer capital. The biggest attraction in Angkor Thom in the Bayon Temple. It was built in the 12th century. It has 54 towers, each representing a province of the Khmer Empire. Now they are back down to 22, thanks to the Thais and Vietnamese reclaiming their land. Ironically, the city that Angkors Wat and Thom are near is called Siem Reap, which is Khmer for "Thailand (then Siam) Defeated."

Gate to Angkor Thom.

Statues lining the drive up to the gate. One side is all gods and goddesses, the other is demons. These are the demons. The whiter heads are those that have been restored.

Looking out over the moat from the statues along the road.

This give you a better view of what Angkor Thom's Bayon Temple looks like from the outside. Not bad for pushing 900.

The first of the 5 millions Buddhas I saw.

Inside the Bayon temple.

Looking down the corridor.

An example of some of the detailed carvings in the walls.

Buddha is the light at the end of the tunnel.

Every corridor or hall you look down has a Buddha at the end. This one is wearing an orange sash.

Each tower had a carving (or two) of.... you guessed it!

A monk strolling the ruins.

Looking down into the chambers below.

The intricacy of these 900 year old carvings blew me away.

....

A few km away is the big guy. Angkor Wat was also built in the early 12th century, for King Suryavarman II. It is very interesting that Angkor Wat was initially built in dedication to Vishnu (Hindu God - it was actually designed to emulate the Hindu Gods' heavenly home, Mount Meru), but later became filled with Buddha statues and the like.

Angkor Wat means "Capital's Monestary," and it was such during the Khmer Empire, when their capital was Siem Reap. I took an insane amount of pictures... posting my favorites. I found it very difficult to photograph such a massive thing and fully capture how awe striking it is. I guess that's why it's one of the wonders of the ancient world.

This is a picture taken from the drawbridge, looking at the outer wall. You can see two of the five towers of the actual central building.

A picture looking out onto the moat. Broken lion statues adorned the drawbridge.

Looking through to the one of the legs of the outer wall from a pillared window.

Inside the outer courtyard, there are all sorts of little temple-ish buildings.

There she is, the actual main building. Angkor Wat has five towers, four towers in the shape of a square and a bigger one in the middle. This arrangement is apparently called a quincunx.

A view looking back at the outer courtyard.

I don't have a fixation on these types of shots... there are just a TON of narrow arched corridors like this.

Inside the second wall.

Carvings and depressions everywhere.

A Hindi mastectomy?

The main tower.

Left this picture fullsize (10Mpx) so you can see the detailed carvings of lions, serpents, etc.

Out of the main building again.

Very detailed.

An obscure heap of stones that stood outside the back entrance.

Looking farther back.

Wanted to escape the tourist crowd (mostly Japanese and Koreans) so I walked a bit off the beaten path. Came across some auxiliary temple... wasn't nearly in the same upkeep, but was still amazing.

Awesome old Buddha inside.

Also came across this random little village who apparently have never seen the white man before.

Seeing this "upscale" cemetery near one of the biggest religious icons in the world was a bit of a contrast to the genocidal burial fields I saw the day before.

One last view of the Wat.

...

There is a mountain-top temple nearby that I climbed up to the see the sunset. Incredibly worth it.

For $15, you could take a Pachy up the mountain (more like a large hill).

Traditional Khmer folk music on the hill.

At the top of the mountain. You can see yet another temple in the background. This is the one you watch the sunset from.

Looking down the lion-lined stairs of the temple.

Angkor Wat in the distance.

Maxed out the zoom on my cam.

The temple at dusk.

Sunset pics.

The sunset was incredibly beautiful until the police started screaming at me in Khmer to stop taking pictures because the compound was closing (Mur, I caught a lot of "dtou"s and "luen luen"s in there) - "go" and "hurry up" in Khmer.

...

I will certainly have more Cambodia pics from the Grand Palace and National Museum. Will post them whenever I get a spare hour or two. I was supposed to leave tomorrow for VIETNAM, but since Air Asia (most ghetto airline ever) has to lay me over in Malaysia, I decided to book separate tickets and spend a day and night in Kuala Lampur. Then I will go to Hanoi, Vietnam on Tuesday. I will post more Cambodian pics later... j'mureap liah for now!

A day in the life of a Khokmakok villlager... then Khao Yai

2007-06-04T06:13:00.001-06:00

Stayed in an EXTREMELY rural area in Northern Thailand as part of our research. We (they) each got paired up and sent to live in with a host family in a village with no amenities, no frills, no non-Thais. I say (they) because there was an odd number of students, so I volunteered to stay by myself. It was fun though, I got stuck with the town bachelor. All the Thai I learned was useless, since the villagers all speak Lao. It turned out okay though, I ended up remembering a lot of key Lao phrases from the Arlene days. It was really primitive, slept on the floor without AC in the sweltering jungle climate, ate some ridiculous food, and had a really good time.

My host dad, Loong Somchai.

The swanky little village restroom.

A fairly typical little shack in Khokmakok village. The big gray tank is a rain water cistern... they collect and store rain water in these big cisterns for drinking and bathing. Cholera... yummy.

Toe stubbing front porch.

Never too early to start putting small children on the back of bicycles.

These girls were so cute.

Little girl giving Kasey a "wai" (bow with the hands folded) to say thanks for the pens we brought them.

Thai cow. The kind with the long floppy ears.

A "gai joon" - fighting cock. See all the scars and wounds on the chest?

Part of our research in the village was human-animal interaction. We focused on cock fighting and arranged to see a daytime cock fight. Not quite as bloody and underground as the nighttime ones, but pretty grusome nontheless.

My favorite pic from the 100 I took during the cockfight.

How to spread bird flu: Get some fighting cocks, get them all covered in eachother's blood, jam a feather down its throat, twist to remove blood and mucus, remove, wipe off with your bare hands, repeat with next bird (same feather).

This girl was so hilarious. Her name is "Banana."

Selling live lizzards at the market. 50 baht (about $1.50) for a "bundle" of lizzards... great when minced with garlic and pepper over rice.

Holy Smoke! Went to the temple to partake a Buddhist ceremony. We lit incense and walked three times clockwise around the temple holding the incense and flowers in your hand prayer-style.

See the two goofy looking white dudes in a sea of Thai kids? We weren't exactly conspicuous in Khokmakok #11 village.

Returned to the temple at night for lots of really really excruciating sitting on concrete with legs and feet underneath (it's quite terrible to point your foot in Buddha's direction, so you either have to sit on your feet, or to the side. Then we lit some more incense, did three more trips around, and put all the incense and flowers in a big Buddhist sandbox at the temple gate.

Dr. Conway demonstrating the locust I am about to eat in the next picture.

Crunch. I liked to bite the head off first.

YUM. You alright, Mur and Jenny?

....

Went to more ruins. There are a lot of ruins in Thailand as you can see from this blog. Again, Khmer style from the Cambodian dynasty era. Those Cambodians sure built strong temples... all still in fairly solid condition. This place is called "Phimai" - it's up in the boonies of Northern Thailand.

....

After the village stay, we graduated from our short course at Mahidol University and had a fun little farewell karaoke party with traditional Thai dancers. As for the University of Wisconsin course, we had two days planned at the end to go to Khao Yai National Park... one of, if not the biggest national parks in Thailand. SO sweet. Had a fantastic time. Did a ton of hiking and excursioning, stayed in cool little bungalows, and met some very interesting people.

Receiving my certificate from the Dean of Public Health.

My favorite professor, Ajan Tassanee. See how happy she makes me??

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This is probably the best Thailand story so far. We were hiking on a trail of unknown destination when a squad of ATVs and HD cameras buzzed by us. We couldn't really tell if they were filming a movie or were just really enthusiastic Japanese tourists, but we heard them stopping ahead on the trail, filming some stuff, back on the ATV, etc. They took quite a while to film certain shots (were filming a guy and a girl only - we started to imagine it was a Thai TV show or something), so we kept catching up with them. I really had it in for the female costar, and was flirting with her incessantly everytime we caught up to thier entourage. Eventually, we made it to where they were filming (see bats belows). Originally unbeknownst to us, there is a cave network on the side of the mountain that hosts millions of bats, and every day at sundown, millions of bats stream out of the caves to do their nightly routine. It was absolutely incredible. We had NO idea this existed. After they filmed their segment, they came up to us (both costars speak incredibly fluent English) and asked us to get interview. Continuing my streak of appearing on Asian TV (when I went to Japan a few years back, I made the national news there too for an interview during a festival). So, Megan and I (shown in the picture below with the two hosts), have about a 5 minute interview on a random Thai variety show in a few weeks. They must have enjoyed our spasticity, because they also had us film a "Hello Thailand! You're watching Roi Hok Sip Paet CHUAMONG" clip that will air after commercial breaks. They then had us do another little commercial spot for something else, wasn't quite sure what it was exactly.

The bat stream.

Art, Me, Megan, and Sea during the interview.

Saw some gorgeous waterfalls at Khao Yai. Went swimming in this one. Nate was nice enought to take pictures of us with my camera.

Sean, me, and Dave, under the falls.

Water was deep and this rock was covered in good, so I used what Stryko taught me and "scaled the crag."

Another one of the seven waterfalls we hiked to.

Drinking in the experience.

Lots of nature stuff here. Here's Dave's pic of me trying to capture this lizzard's pic. Using Dave's miner's headlamp for real professional lighting.

Didn't get a great one... Little guy wouldn't hold still for a decent macro.

Strange creatures in Thailand.

....

Well there might be one more post from Thailand. I am back in Bangkok for three days now, most of the Americans have gone back home.
Sean, Dave, Ricky, and I ended up going back to the night market I mentioned earlier and talking with the cover band. We wanted to see more of Bangkok, so we hoped in their band van and went to the next club where they were playing. They put us up in the backstage/VIP section. It was pretty hilarious... it was very very Thai club... in a strange part of Bangkok that apparently doesn't ever see white people. We were being typically obnoxious Americans and I think the band was really glad they brought us for crowd-boosting purposes.

I don't know if I'll bring my camera around, but after I go to Cambodia (leaving June 8th), I will try to get a post up. Going to see Angor Wat, one of the seven wonders of the world. It is going to be insane. After Cambodia it's Vietnam, and I'm not quite sure about the internet connectivity. I'll have my cell though, so keep sending me texts and emails!!

Bangkok, Nakhon Ratchasima, and everything in between...

2007-05-28T09:35:00.001-06:00

Sorry, it took a while to get a decent amount of time with viable internet... but I am now in Mahidol University's computer lab and some of us just pooled our pics together since we weren't always carrying our digital snappers. So, thanks to David Nguyen, Liz Prange, Kasey Kajiwara, and Ricky Belgado. Again, click on all the pics to make full-size.

.....

The first set of pictures are general pics from Bangkok, or Krung Thep in Thai. People are nice, it's a weird hybrid of big smoggy city and a giant muggy street vendor market. We stayed right downtown, went out every night, and found ourselves in some very interesting spots.

This pic is a bit out of order, but I had to post it first since it is one of the most identifiable objects in Bangkok. A tuk-tuk is basically an old wagon cart bolted onto a modified three-wheel dirtbike. They are awful around corners, have no safety harnesses, and are driven wildly around Bangkok by 18 year olds who speak no English. But, everyone takes them, they are about $2 to go for a 15 minute ride, and we have never seen one get into an accident. They are meant for two people, but we managed to cram four dudes into one the other night, including two guys who weigh over 2 bills each.

Me and Kasey were in Bangkok before everyone else, so we took took a tuk-tuk out to go downtown and check out the night scene. Kinda scary.

The night market we discovered semi-close to our hotel. Place called Lumphini... this absolutely awesome 1.5 acre market (selling silk, shoes, suits, fake Rolexs, all other kids of trinkets and sundries). Had a huge beer garden in the middle with a stage and live music. This RIDICULOUS band called Faire Band, who were really really good at covering American hip-hop and pop music.. but didn't know the words. More pictures below.

..........

So our job title has been a bit obscure, but we have basically been taking tours of various health clinics, facilities, etc. and discovering the Thai health system. We work with Mahidol Univerisity, both within Bangkok and up in the boonies, where we are right now.

This was our welcome sign at Mahidol University. Pretty snazzy. We made the Burmese visitors jealous with our far superior welcome sign.

Not quite as nice, nor is it spelled correctly. That's what you get in the rural areas.

Here we toured a vet clinic. Dr. Yuill had me strap into the horse lift and towed me around the horse stable. Pretty funny how they get horses to come out of anesthesia after surgery: just basically release them into a padded room with a girdle around there neck and then use a crane to coax them into the stalls.

This is one of the doctors accompanying us on the trip, the one and only Dr. James Conway. We took a tour of the Bird Flu lab, Biosecurity Level 3. (Dwight Schrute: "Don't get excited, it's out of 20." Haha, just kidding, it's out of 4, which is only for ebola and a few others. So, yeah, Level 3 is a big deal.

I found this room where they do live telecasts. Trying my best to look like an enthusiastic diplomat. Notice I bought myself a polo shirt with the King's symbol on it to honor the King (see explanation belows). Too bad I am blonde, I ALMOST fit in with the Thai people that Monday.

TOTALLY bizarre. The Department of Public Health came up with these exercises to do while using the urinal. These are posted in public bathrooms everywhere.

Group at dinner.

.......................

Going out as a group in Lumphini Night Market. I actually became a sort of band groupie. Again, they were awesome singers, but couldn't remember all of the words. So, when they decided to do Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina," I was at the front of the stage singing along very loudly. The lead singer, named Beer (a real Thai name), who was a 37 year old woman with a mullet and camouflage stretch pants, gave me the mic and I serenaded the Bangkokers with the soothing lyrics of a fine piece of Reggaeton music. We hung out and drank with the band after, and I picked up one of their T-shirts. We went to this market a total of three times, same band every night. Total blast, the Thai people loved the drunk and obnoxious Americans.

This first pic is Ricky, myself, and Jenny standing with the giant 3 liter, ice-core cooled beer towers our group ordered.

I somehow convinced the tuk-tuk driver to "let me try." Don't know I managed to convince him, but he gave in. I fired it up and didn't realize I was holding the accelerator handle grip (like a motorcycle's) and I flew forward and stalled out before almost crashing into a taxi. At least I hold the record for first falang to drive a tuk-tuk.

Night shot of the street we stayed on. Notice the head/brake lights - opposite side of the road!

........

Daily life in Bangkok. Tried to capture the essentials... will add more as they come up. Note: everybody wears yellow polo shirts, especially on Mondays. Each day has a color in Thailand (sun:red, mon:yellow, tues:pink, wed:green, thurs:orange, fri:blue, sat:purple. Your color is what day you were born on... (PS, Mom, what day of the week was I born on? Everyone keeps asking me.) Since the King was born on a Monday, his color is yellow. So, in honor of the King, every Monday, no matter WHERE you work, everybody has a yellow polo or dress shirt (with the King's symbol embroidered) on (except us). But, since everyone has so many yellow shirts, on any day of the week, you will find at least 50% of the population wearing yellow shirts. They also all have Lance Armstrong LIVEstrong bracelet knock-offs that say "LONG LIVE THE KING" in both English and Thai script. They love the King and fear his son's succession to the throne.

People in Bangkok come up with the craziest ways to transport stuff on their mopeds. This wasn't half as bad as the "UPS guy" we saw who had packages strapped all over his body.

Shot of a tuk-tuk driver in traffic.

Durians. Smell like garbage, taste like candy.

Gotta love street vendors.

Dragonfruit.

More street vendor food.

I was playing with the Korean school girl features on my new Samsung camera. This is Jenny and Dave.

Sean standing in front of the coolest low rider in Bangkok. This thing was SO PIMPED OUT. We are working on getting a video that Dave took up on youtube. It will be worth checking out.

What would a trip to Thailand be without a Thai massage?? (A family-friendly massage, Dr. Conway came with us). We made a couple visits to this little place down the street. INCREDIBLE. About 9 bucks for an hour of pure pleasureful torture. The girls climbed on top of our backs, dug their knees and elbows into our tender skin and contorted us in all sorts of weird ways. Every joint I own, including where my ears attach to my skull, were cracked and popped. My masseuses, Dada, was always covered in sweat by the end of my torture. Like my farmer's tan?

The girl on this poster looked JUST like Jenny. We couldn't find a good guy look-a-like, so I stepped in.

Out in this HUGE club we went to. Separate rooms for hip-hop and electronic music. Met some really nice Thai girls there who unfortunately weren't in any of these pictures. These hip-hop guys were really good though.

Trying to do Bill Murray's Suntory Whiskey ad. "Make every time a Suntory time..."

This pic is from Jenny to her man-candy back in the US...

Yes, there ARE elephants on the street. Only one alleged sighting actually IN Bangkok, but we saw enough in the smaller cities.

........

SO many temples, shrines, monestaries, etc. I have so many pictures of so many temples... I am just going to post all of the ones I picked and put captions for the interesting ones. Thailand is a great blend of mostly Buddhist and some Hindu, and some temples and palaces have statues and shrines tied to both.

Grand Palace in Bangkok.

The three highest spires seen in the distance are three different temples. When the Thais built the Grand Palace, they brought in ethnic Ceylon (Sri Lankan), Khmer (Cambodian) and Thai people. Each ethnic group designed a temple in their own style. Hence, the closest spire (gold) is very Sri Lankan, the middle is Thai style, and the last is Khmer (looks a lot like Angor Wat).

We are NERDS.

Hindu statues to keep demons out of the temple.

The Japanese girls (Kasey and Jenny) at the palace.

One of the thousands of creatures painted on the walls with oil paint and gold flake. To keep them fresh, they have trained volunteers come in daily to touch up.

Lions at the door of the monestary.

Went to a temple, Wat Pho, that houses the largest reclining Buddha in the world. 46 meters long.

The Buddha's sandals were inlaid with thousands of designs made with mother of pearl. Super extravagant.

........

We saw a bunch of ruins of temples built by the Khmer (Cambodian) people back when they ruled the land.

Buddhist flag.

Ruins from the entrance. Gorgeous.

This was the leaning tower of Pisa in the realm of Khmer towers.

The menacing Thai army unit we saw.

Kasey and Dave posing outside the temple.

Doing yoga at the temple. Very zen huh?

Another reclining Buddha. This is apparently what Buddha looked like before he attained nirvana.

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Village Life:

Poor woman begging for money. A dollar goes a long way here.

Kids playing soccer with plastic Kmart ball and makeshift goals.

Thai cat - emaciated and covered in crusty goo.

Lady painting pig pottery.

Rooster pottery.

Really ornate dragon carving at the door of some small temple we passed by.

Cutest kids ever.

Dave took a picture of me with them. We took lot of pictures of them... they made us show them every single one. They were hilarious!

My attempt at an Andy Warhol shot., au Buddha.

..........

Took a tour of a Thai silk factory. Saw everything from raw silk (boiled with dye to make different colors) to the final products in their little shop.

Talk about repetitive work-related injury. These ladies did the same motions... all day.

This is the end product of the colorful spool shown above.

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Well, that's all for now. I have plently more Thailanding to do before I push off to my next desination. I will post more as soon as I can, but we are always doing something here. Will have to see next time I can get better-than-dialup speeds!

Hong Kong II

2007-05-22T03:18:00.000-06:00

Here are the pics I didn't get to put up:

Pics of the Skyrail going up. Was really windy and rainy... kinda scary dangling in a little plastic bubble hanging 100 ft above a valley.

Giant Buddha in the distance.

At the Buddha.

Pouring the water on the Buddha before entering.

After Lantau Island, headed to the other side of the island, a place called Stanley. Pretty rich and touristy - a lot of nice resorts and stuff. BEAUTIFUL views.

Out in Hong Kong before we headed to Lan Kwai Fong district.

Hong Kong (Holy Kow-loon)

2007-05-21T07:09:00.000-06:00

So Hong Kong was/is bomb. Had an absolute blast, but I crammed so much into the last few days, I think I have literally seen 90% of what is to see (besides Victoria Peak - it rained or drizzled the entire time I was there). Check out the map, I am just waiting for my flight and had a chance to add a lot of stuff there...

First day and a half:
Hung out at the world's ghetto-ist youth hostel - a place called Li's Guest House in Kowloon. Got in at 2am after an excruciatingly long series of flights and a bus ride from the airport. Airport is extreme. Called Chek Lap Kok... Chek it out. Ha.

A shot of the "Chungking Mansion" - where a lot of hostels are. The main lobby is filled with swindlers from all over the world trying to get you to buy suits and fake Rolexs. You want copy-watch? Cheap cheap.

A shot of my room the first night. They overbooked singles, so I got "upgraded" to a double room. Had my own bathroom though, that was nice. Second night I stayed in a 6ft by 5ft single, no exaggeration on the dimensions! It was so small I couldn't get a picture. I had to balance on the mattress with my feet hanging off so I didn't spill off... It had a TV in the room, but the volume knob was broken so I couldn't hear Dave Lettermen and couldn't understand the Cantonese subtitles. Bathroom was interesting, if you like taking a deuce, showering, and brushing your teeth at the same time.

Kowloon is on the mainland China side... pretty far removed from the touristy and wealthy Hong Kong Island side. Nevertheless, I met this dude Andi from Aussie (thanks Andi for a few of the pics), and we basically walked every single street in Kowloon. We esitmated we walked about 7 miles (or 11 km if you ask Andi).
Went to the HK Museum of Art and the HK Museum of History. Both excellent.

Another shot in Kowloon. Ate loads of street vendor food... No Hep A yet!

Baby pigeons roasting an open fire... spicy octopus nipping at your nose...

The HK Island side is super metropolitan. Looks AMAZING from the Kowloon side, looking across the harbor.

Every night at 8pm, they have this RIDIC laser light show. All the buildings are flashing to music beats with tons of lasers, etc. Really amazing. The lights and lasers aren't shown in these pics, but I think I took a small movie with my camera?

Shots of downtown HK Island.

***Internet shat out on me and can't upload any more pics. Although, took some REALLY nice ones from day 2/3. Will post those soon!***

First Stop: Grandma's House

2007-05-18T01:10:00.000-06:00

My trip starts out where every good one should - Durand, WI. Leaving here at 5:45 AM (3 hours from now)... I wonder if Hong Kong will be any different than this Pepin County booming metropolis? (Pop: 1983)

Darnit, Burma.

2007-04-13T19:44:00.000-06:00

Well that sucks. Apparently no foreign tourist visas to Burma (MyanMar) are being granted right now due to the whole "civil war" thing. Maybe next trip.... :(

At least Cambodia and Laos are cool with their "Yeah, no problem, just get a quick visa at the border, no need to plan ahead.." attitude - unlike Vietnam, with their "Please mail your passport to Washington D.C. and don't get mad at us for it costing a fortune and a few weeks of processing time" policy. Oh well, I just hope the Vietnamese consulate sends me my passport back in time to get it down to the Thai consulate in Chicago.

The last puzzle piece...

2007-03-27T04:47:00.000-06:00

The jury has returned with a verdict. I will be joining the Guy Healy Japan team as American Director for Summer 2007. Pure elation.

I would like to thank ahh... my family, Jesus (and Moses...), and Bill Golden... um, of course Guy Healy for making this possible... couldn't have done it without you guys...