Domo Arigato: Not only for thanking robots

Well I’ve been in Japan for a few days now and although I’ve managed to get my bearings, the place still ceases to amaze me. It hasn’t been long but I could already fill pages about my observations and feelings towards this place so I’ll try to start somewhere logical and break it up over the course of multiple posts.

I’ve been quite fascinated with the culture and country for awhile now. Follow video game or tech news for long enough and you get enough glimpses into what goes on here to spark curiosity. So now I’m here trying to figure it all out but more so than anywhere else, I get 10 new questions for every 1 answered. The culture here is a tough nut to crack as a casual observer but all one can do is just try.

The language barrier is the single biggest roadblock to my understanding of Japan. It is actually a very easy language to speak. I’ve already picked up a lot of Japanese and with just a couple weeks, a phrasebook and some determination, I could get conversational. On the other hand, Japanese is one of the hardest languages in the world to read. And there in lies the problem. There is so little English here that really exploring the culture becomes very difficult.

Food is the prime example. Japanese cuisine is some of the best and most varied in the world. There are so many styles of food and dishes that do not exist in other places and from what I’ve had so far, they are awesome! But, there are hardly any menus in English and I searched for days trying to find an okonomiyaki place without luck. I probably passed 10’s of them and I eventually learned there was one NEXT DOOR to my hostel the whole time but since the words are all in Japanese, there was no way for me to know. In Southeast Asia, trying new things was unavoidable but here you really have to try because otherwise you’ll just go eat at Mc Donalds or somewhere else familiar.

Ok, ok, enough of the bitching… In all honesty, determination is rewarded with new experiences and discovering an awesome and cheap soba noodle shop down a back alley is a real treat. Japan is awesome! The food is delicious, people immensely helpful, sights intriguing and bullet trains fast as all hell. I’m really enjoying myself here and could easily spend months if I wasn’t just hemorrhaging money.

Like I said before, there is so much to write about this place so I’ll try to get more posts up soon. Also, pictures and descriptions are getting added to my flickr account all the time and don’t forget that viewing them by set is better than just scrolling through the photostream. I’ve only got a 2 week rail pass here and any day wasted means I’m losing big money but I’ll try to catch up on the writing soon. Additionally, this being the land of technology, I've decided to jump mediums a bit and start taking more video. I finally got a video editing program up and running on my tiny little computer so there should be more of this hitting the net as well.

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave any comments you may have (there’s no sign up required).

I'll finally be able to wear cotton again!

Well I leave Bangkok and Southeast Asia for good tomorrow and I thought I would have more to say on the subject for some reason I'm just drawing a blank. I've left plenty of locales probably never to return again and to my surprise leaving an entire region feels no different. I'm heading to a place every bit as strange as anywhere I've been so far and I'm actually quite excited for this one. You see, I'm flying to Japan tomorrow. It's the land of robots, talking toilets, video games and wacky game shows... all things that I would say I'm pretty interested in. Leaving a region where you cant drink the water or flush the toilet paper too go to a country where not only do the toilets lift their lids for you but they greet you as well will definitely leave an impression. So, expect some random musings in the future but for now in lieu of some sort of SE Asia recap or wrap up, here's Darren's short list of Vietnamese road hazards:

1. School children walking to school on the highway
2. Giant trucks that use the whole road on blind corners
3. Motorbikes carrying 50+ Jackfruits (they are spikey and are about the same weight and size as a bowling ball)
4. Motorbikes carrying an entire family of 5 (and their groceries)
5. Motorbikes carrying livestock
6. Motorbikes carrying other motorbikes
7. Traffic lights (because obeying them can get you killed)
8. Wheel swallowing pot holes
9. Daily thunder storms
10. etc...

So far as I can tell, none of those were out of the ordinary either... Just another day on the roads of Vietnam.

I've got all of my pictures from Vietnam uploaded to the flickr account and organized by city. You can click the collection entitled "Vietnam" to see all the sets I've made and then just go from there. Well I'll end up writing more once I get to Japan but for now, it's so long Southeast Asia, hello temperate climate (thank god!).

"We keep on"

It wasn't my first choice of activities for the next four days but after plenty of goading, I was finally convinced. I'd been traveling with two Irishmen named Pat and Paul for the last couple weeks and their visas were running out soon. Paul, in particular, needed to be out of the country within a week and we were still a ways from Saigon. The opportunity came up to spend the next four days riding motorbikes from Dalat to Saigon and this kind of adventure seemed to be the perfect way to spend their last days in Vietnam.

Huddled around a table in Dalat, Pat, Paul and I discussed the terms of the trip with Mr. Phuc. Mr. Phuc was part of a group named the Easy Riders... a rag tag group of motorbike guides who organized around 15 years ago under a common banner. They came highly recommended from pretty much everyone and though their prices were steep, their standard of service reflected this, allegedly. Sitting around that table discussing things, we had no idea that we were going to see first hand what differentiates the Easy Riders from everyone else.

Terms agreed on, contracts signed and bikes delivered, we left Dalat at 8:30AM on day 1. Mr Phuc in front then Pat, Paul and myself heading up the rear, we tore our way through the hills outside of that scenic mountain town taking in some incredible views and sights along the way. The trip started out great and before lunch it was clear that the next few days had a lot in store.

Lunch was spent eating “Vietnam food at Vietnam prices” as Mr. Phuc liked to say and he continued to tell us that the next section of road would test our riding skills. It seemed like hyperbole and just another way of saying that it was steep and curvy (more so than before anyways) but we kept that in mind. We left the roadside eatery in the same order as earlier and after heading down the road a bit, I saw Pat and his bike cut clear across his lane to the outside of the curve we were on.

I had a perfect view of the whole thing from the back. Cornering through a tight left turn, Pat suddenly shot to the outside and straight into a concrete pillar. There weren't guardrails out there but there were evenly spaced waist high pillars made of concrete on the tighter corners. After colliding with one of these, both bike and rider did a front flip (they separated in mid-air) and landed down the steep embankment. Paul and I stopped suddenly and I motioned for him to head down the road and catch up wth Mr. Phuc (I never really learned his first name). I pulled up and assessed the damage.

There were pieces of the bike's fairing strewn about the road and Pat was lying face up in a bush with his bike about 10 feet away. Rushing over to pull him out, I asked if he was ok and to my surprise he said that he was. Still skeptical, I reached out to give him a hand but he stood up just fine and walked up the hill to the road. Shaking the dirt off, he assessed the damage and concluded that, much to our collective amazement, there was none. The bike on the other hand did not make out so well.

It took all 4 of us to pull that bike out and when we finally got it upright, it was clear that it took the brunt of the damage. The fairing was in pieces, the handlebars bent, break pedal bent and front break lines hung free. It wouldn't start and it obviously needed some work. Mr. Phuc coasted the bike to a mechanic followed by me to bring him back on my bike. The mechanic couldn't get the bike running and the two of us road back to the rest of the group to assess our options.

When we got there, I got a better explanation of what happened. Pat had looped the shoulder straps of his day pack over the handlebars. Turning sharply to the left, sent the pack to the outside and weighted down the handlebars causing him to careen to the right. Regardless, we were faced with one less bike and a decision to make. Pat decided not to scrap the trip and that he would ride on the back of Mr. Phuc's bike for the rest of it. We were going to make it to Saigon by two wheels as long as we were all still in one piece.

What a day so far it had been and it was just the beginning of this adventure. After redistributing all the gear, it appeared that we were ready to get moving again after sitting at that roadside for a couple hours.


Mr. Phuc turned to the 3 of us and, like he concluded every stop along the whole trip, said “we keep on.”
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I've uploaded plenty of pictures from the whole trip on my Flickr account and if anyone is interested, I'll make another post about the rest of it. I'm writing this from Mui Ne and I fly out of Vietnam in just 3 days. Oh and after all that, the total cost for the repair that Pat had to pay was $50.

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

Well the 3 month anniversary of my leaving was just yesterday and I think this is an appropriate time for some sort of retrospective. Three months may seem like a long time but really, it seems like I stepped off that airplane in Bangkok yesterday. I've been through all sorts of crazy experiences, things that I could have never imagined before leaving, especially not from behind a desk in DC. Many of the roads have been long and the destinations not always worth it but I've been really surprised how far a healthy sense of adventure can bring a person. Three months... wow, has it really been that long?

I stepped off that plane in February with an ounce of excitement and a pound of trepidation. Landing in a foreign place at 2am without any idea of where to stay and just a vague idea of a part of town was a real trial by fire. But, fear quickly turned to anticipation and like I've said before, the uncertainty of it all is a real catalyst for excitement.

So what all have I really done in the last 3 months? Here're a few things:

• Rode a motorbike out 70km to some crazy cave north of Chiang Mai, only to return to the city in the middle of rush hour.


• Rock climbed out on cliffs above the Andaman Sea until I got tired and then just jumped in the ocean near Railey Beach, Thailand.


• Had an absolute blast bartending in Siem Reap, Cambdia. Things can be just as much fun on that side of the bar for sure.


• Made a split second decision to accept an invitation to spend the night with a Cambodian I met on a bus. I bathed in the Mekong, ate cow stomach and drank with her entire family.


• Rode in a minivan into northeastern Cambodia that was completely full. There wasn't even room for my day pack behind the back seat but a man we picked up on the side of the road was able to fit 4 live chickens back there. They made so much noise as we rode down that bumpy dusty road.


• Lounged in a hammock at my bungalow on Don Dhet in southern Laos where there is only electricity between the hours of 6-10PM. There was no doubt that all the chickens running around were the same that ended up in your dinner.


• Rode 50ft rope swings in Laos where the closest hospital was at least 3 days away.


• Played a game of beach soccer with a bunch of Vietnamese kids that needed an extra player in Nha Trang.

It's crazy to think about how much has really happened in the last 3 months but at the same time I feel like I just left. Some of the longest days of my life have been on miserably hot and long bus rides but at the same time one can wonder where the day went while drinking a beer in an inner tube on the Nam Song river. The days are usually long but the months are short it seems.

I may have been gone for awhile but it still takes some pretty unique situations to bring everything into perspective and remind me of how special all of this really is. I took an overnight bus yesterday which was supposed to have air con but like most times it did not (or the driver just didn't feel like turning it on). As I sat there at 11 at night drenched in sweat and listening to my ipod while trying to nod off to sleep, a song came on randomly that I used to hear a lot while working late nights in DC. Music can really bring you back to situations that you may associate with songs and this particular one just reminds me immensely of sitting at my desk at 8pm doing telecom research. Haha, sitting on that bus on the way to Nha Trang, it seemed really hard to imagine a situation that was farther removed from all that song represented. And nothing makes me happier than knowing that I just as easily could have been sitting at a desk but instead I was on my way to one of the best beaches in Vietnam.

Well this is getting long and if you cant already tell, I could talk about this for hours. My trip is officially one quarter over and so much has happened, I could go home happy tomorrow. But I'm not, and there is plenty of open road ahead of me. I'm spending a few days here in Nha Trang before hitting the rest of the sights on the way to Saigon where I'll catch a flight to Bangkok and then another one on to Tokyo.

Lastly, you may have noticed that I added a small advertisement on the right side of this page. If the ad seems helpful, go ahead and click it... It may just help me travel for a little longer!