No more aimless wandering... Everest is on the horizon

Arriving in China with 2 months ahead of me, I was left without a clue of what to actually do here. My original plans were to slowly make my way into Tibet and then overland into Nepal via the Everest Base Camp but China closed Tibet to travelers after the Olympic torch relay protests citing safety concerns. I had to change my plans a bit and then I decided to go deep into Sichuan, which borders Tibet, to get as far into the Himalayas as possible but then that massive earthquake happened reducing much of the province to rubble. As I arrived in China, a country with limitless travel potential, I, paradoxically, could not come up with any good ideas of places to go or things to see.

No big deal though, I was in China, and just trying to get a feel for the place is a full time job. If I had arrived here from Vietnam then I wouldn’t have been surprised by much but I got here from Japan where I had become accustomed to clean streets, efficient public transportation, and, well, order. I don’t think those adjectives apply here in any real sense of the words. But, China is a deeply interesting place full of history and culture. That said, it will test my patience.

I think train travel is a good subject to use for comparison. In Japan, the trains run fast, on time and the stations are neat, orderly and logically designed. One can arrive at the station and be in their seat within 5 minutes. In China however, just buying a ticket can be a harrowing ordeal. Today for example, the ticketing office in the station had over 40 ticket windows all having a 30-45 minute wait. It is never clear which window you have to use even though tickets for the same day must be bought at different windows than the ones for 3 days in advance. Of course, I can only really figure out which window is the right one after arbitrarily picking a line and then waiting for 45 minutes before being told that, actually window 3 would have been the right choice. Once I arrive at the window, I have to hand the attendant a piece of paper with the train, time, date and seat preference written in Chinese and hope to god there is availability because if there’s not, I’d have no way of understanding what my other options are. Seems pretty daunting but it could all be avoided if I wanted to pay the hostel a $5 commission to get the ticket for me… sometimes I wonder if it is even worth it but then I realize all that trouble bought me dinner and then some!

All comparisons aside, I’ll focus on a few of my initial impressions. China’s economic growth has been dubbed “miraculous” countless times and the effects of this are impossible to miss. There are over 30 skyscrapers where none existed at all just 10 years ago (Pudong in Shanghai). You will see a really nice BMW pull into a high rise apartment complex next door to a market where one could buy anything from pirated DVDs to live chickens. And the most prominent feature of any Chinese skyline these days seems to be bamboo scaffolding and construction cranes. All of this progress continues completely unchecked resulting in really dirty cities.

In case anyone is wondering, Beijing really is as polluted as everyone says and Shanghai isn’t too far behind. The smog is surprisingly thick making any clear picture of a distant object impossible. And what’s most depressing is how much the sun is obscured by all this. I’ve spent most the last two weeks in Beijing and Shanghai and didn’t have a single sunny day the entire time. Shanghai was rainy but Beijing is, well, just like that. I’m very interested to see the world’s reaction to all this during the Olympics. I’m currently 12 hours west of Beijing and though the sky was clear and sunny, there was still haze on the horizon.

On a completely different subject, the best news of the last couple weeks is that the Chinese Government has just recently reopened Tibet to travelers making my ultimate goal of seeing Everest a possibility. I’m currently hauling ass west to get as close as possible to figure out if the news is correct since it all gets censored by the Government and nothing is ever as it seems in these issues. Apparently bribing officials and costly transport is an ever present reality in Tibetan trave; but money is no object at this point and if I can get to Everest, I will. Should be interesting in any event.

That's about it for now. internet is slow, intermittent and sometimes censored here, especially as I get out in the boonies, so expect less blog posts but I’ll try to keep it up. As always, more detailed accounts of my exploits can be found in my Flickr sets.

So long Japan, Hello Communism (...Again)

I hop a boat for China tomorrow morning. Just one in a persistent string of departures and short goodbyes, leaving Japan is different because, for the first time so far, I'm not ready to move on.

In my previous blog posts, I've really focused on the negative parts of travel here and I think I figured out why. In a place with so few negative aspects, it's really easy to focus on the ones that are there. In all fairness, Japan is an amazing place to experience.

The people here are so nice... Just looking completely lost will usually be enough for someone to walk over and help. I arrived in Matsumoto way too late without reservations and while I just aimlessly walked around that city at night looking for a cheap place to stay, this man just walked over and asked if he could give me a hand. He helped me get my bearings and pointed me in the right direction. Even more surprising was when I was walking around Fushimi Inari and it began to rain. I didn't particularly mind at all so I just kept exploring. At some point, this woman bursts out of a house and frantically runs over to give me an umbrella. I did my best to describe to her that I didn't mind getting wet but she wouldn't take no for an answer. I thanked her in the only way I knew how (arrigato gozaimasu). It poured the rest of that day and I was extremely glad to have that umbrella.

The cities here are just awe inspiring. I've just lost myself for hours among rows of izakayas and brightly lit store fronts. The neon lights and noise from pachinko parlors fill many streets creating endless options for interesting walks. These cities definitely get more interesting by night and every late night stroll has been rewarding in some way. While I was in Hiroshima for example, I heard some music off in the distance and decided to hunt it down. I stumbled upon a group of friends jamming out under a bridge. They were really good so I just sat down and watched for an hour or so. That was a great night.


And I cant forget the food. There are so many varieties of food unique to Japan and they are mostly awesome. For the first week I was here, I looked forward to every meal and that feeling only subsided as I started cooking for myself to cut costs. One of my favorite specialties is called Okonomiyaki. You sit down at a table with a hot grittle set in the middle called a tepan. After greasing the surface, you put a mixture of meat, cabbage, egg and sometimes noodles in the middle and then flip it once it's crispy on one side. Finally, once it's done, you douse the whole thing in mayonnaise and a dark bbqish soy sauce and then eat. It's cheap and just uncontrollably delicious. This is just one of many amazing food items that I had never heard of but was glad I got the opportunity to try.

I still feel as though the culture is very hard to understand but my feelings have moved from desperation to intense curiosity. This is the first place that I can definitely say I need to come back too and it will have to be for a long time if want to figure things out. And I really do, the culture here is just so dense and rather than scaring me away, it just fosters a greater will to learn. I'll be leaving with more questions than answers so, I totally need to come back (hopefully with more money next time).

So this is my last night in Japan and I'm truly sad to leave. I have two days on a boat to rest (which I desperately need) before landing in Shanghai and beginning my exploration of the intimidating behemoth that China is. I started my night with a 38th floor view of vast cityscapes of Osaka and Kobe. After that, like so many nights before, I walked in what ever direction looked interesting among pachinko parlors, restaurants, izakayas and arcades bathed in neon light. And finally, it ended like many Japanese people end their night over a hot bowl of soba noodles in a humble roadside shop. A fitting climax, I would say, to an awesome couple weeks.

A message from my past self

I just got this email a couple days ago and figured I would share it with everyone. I totally forgot that I wrote this. There is this website that lets you write emails to yourself to be delivered at a future date of your choosing. One day at work I figured it would be fun to write a few... So here's the first one:

The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on Wednesday, October 24, 2007, and sent via FutureMe.org
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dear FutureMe,

As I'm writing this I'm really hoping that you are somewhere in the world that isnt the states and having a hell of a time.

You should be half way through your trip by now! Don't forget to stop and enjoy your sourroundings if things are frantic or conversley, dont forget that there is much more to see out there if you are taking it too slow! You have 6 months (maybe) left, make the most of them.

Your past self is writing this from his desk in DC... I just hope you (and by you, I mean me) recieve this email somewhere exotic or at the very least much more exciting than your desk at KHHTEF.

When you wrote this you were supposed to be finding Global NAPs Network's federal USF filings, if that doesnt put things in perspective... I dont know what will!

Anyways that is about all I have to say, why dont you make this email into a blogpost or something.

-Your Past Self
P.S. Sorry I went out and spent all that money at the bar last night... I'm sure it would have been nice to have now.

There's less douchery on the road less traveled

Been traveling around Japan now for 2 weeks and it has really been crazy. With such a short amount of time, I've had to move fast.. and move I did. I've spent 4 nights in Tokyo, 1 night in Matsumoto, 1 night in Nikko, 2 nights in Hiroshima, 5 nights in Kyoto and now I'm off to Osaka tomorrow before catching a boat to China on Tuesday. The Japan Rail Pass makes travel insanely easy and fast (a subject which I'll post a video about soon) and getting to your next destination is as easy as just showing up at the train station. So far there have been a few rough nights (one must plan ahead religiously here because spontaneous travel is rewarded with nothing more than homeless nights or expensive hotel rooms) and many long days but that is not what I want to talk about right now.

One of the first things I noticed when I got to Japan was the sheer lack of backpackers. This is an expensive destination so, of course, it does not attract the amount of budget travelers that SE Asia does but there are hardly any here at all. As a result, all of the "Backpacker's Hostels" are mostly filled with people who are on quick 2 week vacations and travel on a budget that is orders of magnitude larger than mine.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that whatever I'm doing is objectively better than that but it definitely changes the type of people that I run into on a daily basis. I like backpacker folk... This type of travel definitely attracts similar people and through my experience they are almost (and that is a big almost) all pretty cool. They're open minded at the very least. And what is most convenient is that everyone's primary goal is having the best time possible on the least amount of money.

Money really seems to be the most divisive factor. While I'm extolling the virtues of living frugally and going farther, someone is making fun of me for being too cheap to drop $15 on dinner. No big deal though, everyone travels differently and there really isn't a right way to experience a foreign country. Doesn't really bother me too much and I'm quite proud of my ability to live on next to nothing.

For instance: Though food is astonishingly expensive here, I've gotten my dinners down to $1.50 (from >$8) and lunches (the only meal I eat out anymore) are running below $5. Most hostels here have kitchens which are amazing for making cheap dinners. I boil some cheap soba noodles and combine that with a $1 boil-in-the-bag curry sauce and there ya go. It's not the best thing I've ever eaten but it is filling. It's stuff like this that really brings me back to my life in DC.

So, long story short, Japan is expensive and filled with people who love to spend money but with a little determination and no shame, one can really make it reasonable. And plus, it is a lot of fun being somewhat of an oddity in all these "backpacker's hostels."

I've uploaded tons of pictures to my flickr account so that is the best place to go too get a better idea of where I've been and what I've been doing. Plenty more good stuff on the way as well. It's getting late here and I haven't had a night earlier than 2am in weeks... I'm gonna get to China and just sleep more than anything else probably.