Trip recap - japan to manila

Yooooo japan is awesome...well, this airport is. Things are pretty cheap here, people are extremely polite. My sister and others have told me about the politeness from the people of japan, but experiencing it first hand is pretty amazing. There were tiny jungle gyms and park structures there for kids in the "kid zone". And oh my snacks galore. This is definitely marked on my radar. If this is only the airport, I can only imagine what weird amazing shit they have outside.

I board the plane to Manila. I'm writing this post after going to Manila a few times now so I'll try and express what I was anticipating. At the time, I had no conception of what the Philippines was like. All I knew was what my dad has told me about it, and that there were darker Asians living there. Father told me that it was a dangerous place, that it was very "messy", meaning the country ws politically corrupt and the streets were feeling the repercussions. Of course, like always, I acted like I didn't listen, but actually heeded his words while ignoring his underlying anxiety. I got into the city at 9:30pm which wasn't particularly late, but still late enough to heighten my awareness. I head straight to the metered taxis after I land. The line ws pretty long, and I was way overdressed. Definitely not ny weather. I show the taxi driver my hostel address, and he goes. He tells me I should have gone over the skyway first it avoid paying the fee. In case he was a scam artist, I start talking to him about his family to loosen him up. He talks about his kids, Christmas plans (huge in the Philippines) what he cooks, adobo, and things to check out in the city. Talking to him may have backfired on me. My intentions were to humanize myself so he dosenT see me as a moneybags opportunity to exploit. But it ended up humanizing him so I felt like I needed to give him a tip. Gahhhhh. Well, he got me to where I needed to be, in addition to passing by many prostitutes and the driver explaining they may be ladyboys. There were not many street signs and the building numbers were scarce, so when we hit the correct street, he had me look for the place with him. Finally arrived, the cab fare was around 350 pesos. I went into my hostel "where 2 next" thinking it would be a lot cleaner than it was. There was a smelly leather couch, the beds were ok, the bathroom in the dorms were oh man, wtf. It w only for a night so I didn't care. I decided to check up on the district online and decide where I should head outside. After a few reviews on Malate, I noped out of going out. I could only see so many posts on "be careful" , "prostitutes everywhere ", "you are in a red light district", "tourist beware" before I'm like "I think I'm in a bad part of town". I was jet lagged out of my mind so I stayed up, reading up on the distrust, emailing, finally checking my itinerary, doing a bunch if last minute shit. I was mostly avoiding having to sleep in that bed, but eventually my tiredness unclenched my balls and I took a 2 hour nap.

I woke at 6 and decided to explore the place. Shit, I'm bad at blogging the are getting needlessly long. I'll truncate and pull more important shit. On the morning streets of malate, there were stray dogs, stray children, stray trash, stray steaming piles of shit. I usually like to get lost and find my way back, but this was not the place to get lost. My lack of preparation led me to get lost anyway. I immediately got looks. But I eventually found a recognizable street and got back to the hostel right when breakfast was served. I spoke with some people there. One was some German mechanic dude who left his job and has been traveling for a few months. Is going to dive, scuba a nd snorkel around the Philippine islands. Was a cool anyways guy, I'm not sure if that's my lifestyle yet. Another dude was an Australian medical student doing his internship in a nearby hospital. He mentioned something interesting about Americans, that he doesn't see much of them backpacking, and mostly Europeans. I'm not sure why this is. Alec had mentioned a shocking number, that only around 1/3 of Americans have passports.

I decided to meet up with some of the people in the trip early. I decided I wanted to walk the entire way to see them. I decided to bring my bags with me = recipe for "hi I'm obviously a tourist that has no free hands. Come ask if I need help and overcharge me" I should make a video of 10 hours walking around Manila, looking like a tourist and seeing how many times I get approached. I had no idea it would take me an hour to walk there. Saw many children come up to me to beg for money. I kept swatting them away. It just started to rain as I got to my destination, but I had no wifi to tell the people I was meeting up with that I was there. I went t a nearby 7eleven to check if they had wifi. Nope. On a whim, I asked the guy next door to give me his wifi password and luckily huge was a kindhearted dude. Finally met up with some people from the trip, and finally let my guard down. 

Trip recap - flight to japan layover

Well fuck, my posts got erased.  I guess I'll start from the beginning. Things will be s little less clear, and less accurate due to memory blur, but I'll try and be as clear as possible.

So I had forgotten to get money for my trip and just remembered at the airport. But wtf, why isn't there a bofa at JFK??? The ATMs there kept rejecting my requests to take out money and the clock was ticking for me to board the plane. I had forgotten that calling the banks takes fucking forever by they had finally cleared my account to take out that amount of money in addition to using it in other countries.  My fingernails are not cut and typing on an iPad is virtually incredibly fucking annoying as balls. It's like running on the ground, only to realize you are ice skating, but you don't know how to fucking ice skate.  As I'm reflecting on what I want out of this trip, I realize very clearly (yet again) that I need to get out of the city.  I am extremely excited to be surprised by this trip, which is precisely why I chose to do this.  I am going to 3 different countries with 20 people that I don't know. I hope to put my best foot forward, taking advantage of completely new cultures by not being afraid to explore and being open to new people. I mean, the worst I can do is be myself and that ain't so bad.

As I'm riding the plane, the polite lady keeps going to the bathroom. She dosenT know that I'm watching the live action kenshin movie which is obviously more important than her bowels bursting.  Planes and large busses and trains are magical vehicles. They transport you to wildly different places, and they also transport to memory drop zones. Up in the air, I immediately release my blivet of NYC responsibility. I know when I fly back, shit will fly in my face, but I know I can wipe it off.  Right now, all I'm worried about is how this lady is going to jump over me if I fall asleep. Will she accidentally pee on me midair?

Beginning enroute-NYC jfk

Sup guys, it's been over a year. The last trip as different.
Last trip was with my dad, to see and explore his world with him. It was less about my own engagement and more about seeing my dad in an environment he is most comfortable in, an environment that nurtured him to be who he is now. I found out many historical alignments concerning immigration, and my own family history became a little more befuddling. 

黄山

hello, guys, future me.  I'm currently sitting at the hotel lobby/bar. whiskey on the rocks is 32 rmb, which is around 5 greenbacks.  on my second one, and my excuse (TRUTH) is that i have a sore throat and need bacterial cleansing.  They did not have (did not know) a hot toddy.  tried my google best, but to no avail.

Today was pretty good.  Huang shan is absolutely breathtaking.  1700km elevation at our lowest after the tram.  Crouching tiger hidden dragon was shot there. Oh, a joke that a fellow tour mate made. Crouching in Chinese sounds like “hungry” and hidden sounds like “bed”. So the analogy is that the tiger is hungry for a bedding with the dragon.  Hahahahahaha, I’m done.  During the ride up, there was a mixture of bamboo and non-bamboo trees (the “regular” ones with brown trunks, branches and green leaves). Made a pitstop to buy these hiking sticks, but both my dad and I were too stubborn to admit that we might need its assistance.  That place was filled with what I thought were floating dandelions, but were all just really chubby pale flies. There were a lot of them.  Tour guide was chill as fuck.  There were old people on the trip (as I’ve said repeatedly), but he don’t give a fuck. They just gotta keep up.  As the tram went up, it felt like I was passing different pieces of Chinese landscape paintings.  Its really incredible that as artists use nature as a reference for their artwork, we (those who do not have the capacity to frequent beautiful places) use artworks to make sense of the beauty in nature.  And they do a marvelous job to abstractly represent how expansive and far reaching these mountains actually seem.  There wasn’t that feeling of how small I was in relationship to something so sublime, but it was more a respect for how the sublime could offer me this experience. To see something larger than a metropolitan area, to experience an environment not solely designed for humans, and that reminded me of it is most ideal to live synergistically.  That the world isn’t designed for humans.  But then I look at the rocks I am standing on that have been blasted into steps, how inaccessible this view is to an untouched mountain.

Tong Li is kinda awesome

I didn't really expect to enjoy my visit here after i found out that it wasn't Su Zhou I was staying at, but actually a province north of it.  I had done some research for Suzhou and intended to visit museums, tea houses, and the many gardens it is known for.  For the first day and a half, I was more struck, rather than enamored, that I was elsewhere. It didn't matter the country, city, state, province, just somewhere else.  After that shock, which in that process, alleviated stress back home,  forgot self conjured problems, and remembered that i came here to explore, my mind settled a bit (which may have been due to the beautifully preserved architecture dating back to the Song Dynasty) and realized, this place is going to be the best part of the trip.  (i'm saying this now as I left and am in my second destination, Shanghai) Tongli is replete with preserved culture, a small town dynamic, friendly people, and it makes you want to wake up early in the morning to catch a show in the outdoor theatre, or stay outside at night to join the large conga line of middle aged women dancing.  I know me, and you might know me...I don't wake up early...I don't dance...Of course there is a bit of tourism, heck, I had a conversation with that bar owner as to why there isn't more tourism.  But it isn't a culture that has overtaken tradition.  People there are still unabashed, they fish by the canals with bare hands, teaching their children their techniques, young artists take advantage of Tongli's beauty and sit for hours without obstructing the narrow pathways, the gondoliers engage in friendly banter with store owners, fellow tour guides, patrons, anyone that the pass by as they row. Maybe its just the rose petaled glasses i'm wearing from simple being in a different environment, but I treasured my time here.

Side note: Went back with my dad to that bar with the dude that basically payed to hire me, and we all sat down for drinks.  Dad tried to get me to talk to two girls next to us.  I told him I didn't know how to speak the language. He thought i was talking about women not chinese...But hell, i tried to do both. Father ended up talking about commies, old days, his kids being what they are, america, shit, that man has no organization.

Revenge farts

now at father's friend's hotel called the Garden Hotel. Currently in Tong Li, the "Venice of the East".  Total travel time was around  25 hours from the time I left home.  Who knew sitting on your ass all day would be so exhausting.  The entire plane ride, i kept smelling something rancid.  In my claustrophobic state, I concluded that my dad next to me was farting on me.  I'm also a bit passive aggressive, so instead of confronting him, the best course of action was fart retaliation.  I expelled whenever he shifted his seating position towards me to alternate comfort zones. It was great, but then i realized it was actually his breath.  so the entire ride, while he was trying to talk to me, i turned away in disgust. He definitely thinks i don't want to talk or something, i mean....he's right, but for the wrong reason.

Also, dad's friends are so fucking loud. i'm kinda wishing there was someone who speaks english here. heck, even engrish would suffice.


slight update-
went to a nearby bar to do some coding learning, but the owner dude started asking me questions.  it was kinda cool at first, i was able to put what little chinese i knew to the test, and it was fun figuring out what he was saying.  they guy had some american pop culture idols up on posters on his wall (bob dylan, beatles, rolling stones, michael jackson - "king of po") and a makeshift basketball and football jersey.  then we talked about censorship in china, hate on deng xiao ping, ai wei wei, chinese institutionalized brainwashing, and had to google translate most of the conversation.  I got a bit wary when google translate typed out things like "i have no freedom" or "police are all part of an underground gang".  Then he asked if I wanted to work at his bar for a month, free room and board, and I would teach him english while he teaches me chinese...If only it had been an attractive chinese girl, I wouldn't mind playing the naiive little american boy, mehehehe. 

Preparation

Hey guys, to whomever reads this. This is, I suppose, a travel blog, but its less for you and more for me to chronicle things.  I haven't traveled that often, but of the times I have, they were amazing experiences...but then I forget.  I'll never forget the spirit tree in Trinidad, or the hippie caves in Matala, but the feeling of experience erodes with time.  It takes a bit of digging to remember the feeling of strong camaraderie in Trinidad, and the interesting family dynamic in Greece.  I'm hoping to revisit this in later years, and drink to what a little shit I once was (still am/will be).

This trip I am about to take, will embark on October 6th, 2013.  It will be the first time I travel to China in 17 years....fuck, I'm getting old...

Shanghai--->Beijing--->Guangzhou---->Hong Kong

Will return on November 18.  I suppose this is a trip to expose me to my roots, understand were I came from, finding my identity, yadda, yadda, hooray motherland, blah blah...but I'll be joining tour groups for the majority of the trip (Shanghai and Beijing) so i'll be taking everything in with a grain of salt.  I plan to/ need to go again once my Chinese has improved drastically and have a more defined area of exploration (location or academic).

^
That shit was weeks ago. In about 10 hours from now, i'll be boarding a flight to China.  I'm not that exhausted, not that prepared, and i don't really know what to expect, just as i like it.  I probably packed far less clothing than i should, and far more electronics than necessary.  The parents played the role of costco santa and are stuffing tons of wholesale, party sized...toiletries, craisans, and vitamins to dole out as gifts.

here is a pic of a pile of Scotch Brite sponges that we are giving away.....

But there is a bit of a backstory to this tradition of stuffing large amounts of seemingly menial objects and giving them out as presents. My father was telling me, yet again, as I criticized the 2 mega tubes of cling wrap that we are going to bring overseas, that his family had no money when he was growing up.  His parents were away a lot, so my dad and his sisters had to fend for each other.  When his parents did return, they would bring back bags of rice, vegetables, large amounts of other necessities.  To prep for these large hunter-gatherer journeys, they would inlay their clothing with burlap sacks because they would not be able to purchase bags at where they would get their commodities. It is interesting to see how a simple survival tradition has progressed into something so bizarre.  So why do we need 5 large bottles of glucosimine and 3 kirkland bottles of calcium? The fuck if I know.  being costco mules isn't going to be very fun, haha, but hey, its tradition...maybe....This is making me realize that the quality of life that we have, what i think is menial, might be a luxury.  I don't think this means much, nor do i want it to. this can give the delusion of feeling superior, luxury is an easy and gilded  focal point. This brings me to what I am hoping to attain on this trip.  I want to get a better understanding of where my parents come from.  I'll save the bar scene, the night life for another month, another year, with other people, but this is an opportunity to see my father's stories of his village come to life, to see where his friends are and what could have been him had he stayed in Toisan.

on that note, parents are packing everything in now, hahahaha, they are optimizing the fuck out of that luggage space. gotta help