phaedrus
Felix San Roque Joined: July 4th 2006
Logged in: February 16th 2012
Logged in: February 16th 2012
till my next trip. Heeeee hawwww!
Travel Blog Posts
Suzhou Creek
Rock Bund You’ve never been to Shanghai unless you’ve been shanghaied by a couple of beauties at the pedestrian mall on East Nanjing Road. This is what I was told by lots of people I know who’ve been to Shanghai. Don’t get shanghaied on East Nanjing Road. I was skeptical. What could they do in broad daylight? Pick your pocket? Sell you fake Rolex watches? I had no idea and I was about to find out. I stayed at the Astor House Hotel on the Bund. A bund is a levee, I think, although I’m not entirely sure, but this is what I was told by my East Indian friend, that a bund is of Indio-Anglo origin from the Hindi word band which means an embankment or a dike, meaning a levee. In my neck of ... read more
Somewhere near Quanzhou
Red China There was one thing that I wanted to do before I did anything else while in Xiamen, and that was to buy a train ticket to Shanghai at the train station, then I could go ahead and continue on with my aimless wanderings around Xiamen. I accomplished that objective on my third day in Xiamen, China. I bought a train ticket that will take me from the Xiamen train station to the Shanghainan train station (Shanghai South train station) for ¥359 RMB. That's Renminbi for those of you out there who are unfamiliar with the Chinese currency. It means people's money I suppose because Renmin means people in Chinese and in China everything is supposedly owned or belongs to the people. That’s what communism is all about. It's the People's Republic of China afterall. ... read more
Koxinga
On my second day in China I woke up at three o'clock in the morning. This means it's noon back home on Sunday. This typically happens when traveling to the Far East from the Far West. A whole day is obliterated in your calendar although you do gain it back on your way home but you end waking up in the middle of the night because your mind and body can't adjust instantly to the fifteen hour time difference. So you suffer for a couple of days until you get adjusted. So I'm up and wide awake and full of exuberance here in Xiamen, China at three thirty in the morning with absolutely nothing to do. So I grab my little notebook and my blue ink Pilot G-2 pen and I write about the things that ... read more
Jiahe Lu
A day is skipped when traveling to the Far East from the Far West, like from California to China. A redeye flight from Frisco International. Final destination is Xiamen, a small coastal city in the Fujian Province in the southeastern part of China. I have never been there. I have never been to China, period. Writing the word period at the end of a sentence may seem a tad bit redundant and moronic, but it's emphatic, and empathic. Emphasis and empathy are important in the written arts, almost as important as digression. Belaboration is also important as well. I just made that word up, belaboration. It doesn't exist in any dictionary of the English language. Making up words, in other words wordplay and words to that effect, is essential in a civilized and sophisticated society such ... read more
The waves of Bali
The Taxi driver who drove me to Suvarnabhumi Airport is named Sukhumnipursriniram. I’m mot sure I spelled his name correctly. I haven’t the foggiest idea how to say it correctly either. It’s a long ass name, longer even than the Hawaiian Superman Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. Actually Bruddah Iz is not the Hawaiian Superman. He just wrote and sang a song called Maui, Da Hawaiian Supaman. But at least I know how to say Kamakawiwo’ole correctly, with the proper accent and all. A dubya ain’t always pronounced like no dubya in Hawaiian. Sometimes it’s pronounced like vee, as in Ka-ma-ka-vee-vo-o-lei. Bruddah Iz was one huge sonovagun. He must have weighed four hundred and fifty pounds before he died. His wife is or was a tiny little creature about one quarter of his size. And he had a soft ... read more
Phetchaburi Road
Saturday, April 12, 2009 I really have nothing specific to do here. The only reason I’m here is because I booked a flight online a few days ago when I was in Laos to Bali from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport. My flight is on Monday, April 14, 2009, two days away from now. I got here early for precautionary reasons, in case something went totally awry, so that I would have enough margin for a contingency plan and prevent my itinerary from totally going out of whack. I always hate it when things don’t go according to my plan. That’s why I have a backup plan and leave enough time in case I have to execute it. It’s incomprehensible to me how some people could be so happy go lucky and not get irritated when they ... read more
Young Apprentice
A large group of young monks in orange robes piled into the tiny Nong Khai train station in the afternoon accompanied by an older monk who was obviously an elder mentor of some sort as well as their guide or guardian. These young ones were tiny little creatures with shaven heads and wearing nothing but the bright orange sheets that they wrapped around their bodies with and their feet were either bare or are fitted with your run of the mill rubber slippers or sandals. They ranged from aged six to twelve. They wandered around the station like they’ve never seen one in their lives. They were doing this while the elder monk bought a ticket for himself or a bunch of tickets for this group of little squirts wandering around the train station, I think, ... read more
Thai-Lao Friendship Bus
Southeast Asia is full of hawkers, touts, and scam artists combing the streets where many tourists tend to congregate, and they are the most intense and aggressive in the border towns of Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma. The minute you get off the plane, train, bus or outside of your hotel touts of all types will undoubtedly approach you and quote you a price of a service you don’t even want or need. “Sir, tuk-tuk to bridge, 100,000 kip” was the first thing that came out of the tuk-tuk driver’s mouth who was parked across the street the minute I stepped out of the doors of my hotel. There are always at least three or four tuk-tuks parked near such establishments. At first I tried to ignore him because I was too pre-occupied with my ... read more
Don Chan
The flight from Hanoi to Vientiane takes only about one hour but the price of the plane ticket cost almost twice as much as the flight from Saigon to Hanoi. I have no idea why this is so other than it’s probably due to some tariff levied on international flights. I had wanted to take a bus from Hanoi to Vientiane, Laos via Dien Bein Phu but many travelers whom I met in Hanoi discouraged me from doing so. “No, no, no. Big mistake. Buy a plane ticket. You’ll thank me for it later” was what this big burly Americano told me at a bar in some narrow alley near the Old Quarter of Hanoi. I have no idea how I ended up at this bar. It was in a dark and sketchy part of the ... read more
John McCain
“Dominique!” An old French lady yelled to another near Gate 6 of the departing lounge at the domestic terminal of Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Saigon. “Dominique!” She yelled again. “Dominique!” She yelled a third and final time because that’s when “Dominique” finally noticed that her old friend was trying to catch her attention. Dominique’s friend had been whistling and beckoning, softly shouting her name for the last five minutes while Dominique was fumbling around the terminal, getting lost, and looking desperate with no hope of survival until her little old lady friend found her and got her attention, but not before all the whistling and hooting that the old French lady could muster. The look on Dominique’s face upon seeing her old friend was a familiar sight amongst foreigners in a foreign land; a ... read more
Maroon 
