Aaron, I've been getting your comments and questions on all of my blogs, but I really have no idea how to contact you. (Thanks for leaving such thoughtful responses, by the way.) If you'd like, there is the option (at the bottom of this entry, near where you enter comments) to send me a personal message. That message will go straight to my email and I will be able to reply. Or, you can just email me at: nic.nakis@gmail.com Thanks! Yours, Nic [View Full Entry]

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"Fitting In" as a Traveller This is a really complicated issue, but I'll try to tackle it as best I can because it's been on my mind as long as I've been here. I would hypothesize that American people can never really know the way the rest of the world sees us until we venture out amongst the other peoples of the world, live and travel amongst them, and earn their trust and access to their thoughts. I've been doing quite a bit of this lately, and though I've felt their opinions towards us, and I've heard little snippets of it [View Full Entry]

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On my second to last day in Bangkok, I came across the occassion to spend 4 hours or so in an internet cafe avoiding someone. That afforded me the time to read pretty much all of the recent Travelblog.org entries from the city. Not one of those entries avoided making a joke, an introduction, or a title out of the song "One Night in Bangkok". I guess history is sometimes destined to repeat, as I am right this moment making both a title and an intro out of that very song. However, I will not burden you with lyrics or references [View Full Entry]

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I try to pride myself on my honesty, I try to live with integrity, and I try to tell the whole story--the truth and nothing but it and every gruesome detail--whenever I write. However, there are times when I fail at these things. There are things that I've seen and things that I've done that I truly want no one to know about (or only a few people). There are decisions that I've made of which I am not proud, and I fear that sharing some of these might really badly cloud the perceptions other people have of me. Those times [View Full Entry]

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I've been sitting on the side of the road here, washing down my pork fried rice with a nice chilled orange juice and watching the Thai people marvel at my skill with the chopsticks. I start looking at the people that walk by and analyzing them and seeing the way they move and the way they look at one another. And I start to think about how absolutely convicted I am in thinking that there are ways we percieve things beyond the realm of our major senses. We were taught growing up that humans have five senses, and only five. But, [View Full Entry]

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So, after spending two days in "lovely" Pattaya (definitely not the Greatest City on Earth, as I was told it would be), I decided it was time to bid ado to this fine noisy cesspool and see something a little more wholesome and real. Out on an Island I met up with my friend Scott from Kansas City early in the morning, but it wasn't until the afternoon that we actually headed out. We walked through the steamy-hot streets of Pattaya, past pushy Indian tailors and aggressive Lady-Boys, down to the thoroughly-appalling Pattaya beach. At the beach we were forced to [View Full Entry]

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Okay, so just like that I'm in Thailand. I got off the plane and joined together with a couple Americans who were headed to a city called Pattaya, which is a beachfront resort town... Thailand style. It's totally insane. Crowded streets without sidewalks, cars and bikes driving with no rational order, street signs and power lines and drying clothes hung all over the place above you, drunk Europeans wandering the streets, and thousands of go-go dancers and prostitutes and lady-boys (some of you may think that's awful, some may think it's cool... I think it's reality and it scares me). [View Full Entry]

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Ah, the Threshold: that stage of the journey, that chapter of the story so thoroughly explored by lovers of adventue as old as Aristotle and further elaborated on by Jung and Joseph Campbell, and those more contemporary. The Threshold is--of course--a literary device, a tool of storytellers, and an archetype. But, it is also a moment, a time and place. It is the time and place when an adventure truly begins. A switch is flipped in the life of the adventurer and the journey has begun. I'm not quite sure when I crossed my threshold. Was it when i bought my [View Full Entry]

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Being Myself I picked up a hitchiker Friday night on the way home from the bars. We didn't know each other--which is strange in this tight community--but I'd seen him at the Old Timers earlier in the night, and he was with some guys who I've known since I was a little kid. Bar hopping in Sedro. That was the night. My oldest friend, Matt Steinman, and I met up around 10 or so and wandered around the bars in town seeing what we'd see. At the Old Timers we saw a lot of great old friends and drank $1.25 cans [View Full Entry]

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Since my last entry was about saying goodbye to the State of Washington (sort of), I figure this entry should be about saying goodbye to the City of Seattle. It will consist of two parts: The First Part: In which I relate the events and happenings of the week, to the best of my ability. The Second Part: In which I attempt to explain and give some meaning to these events. The First Part Tuesday After returning from east of the mountains and writing about it in this journal, I spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of business paperwork [View Full Entry]

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