The Long Road Home and Away Again

A Long Hiatus

So I last wrote over three months ago in China. Since then I have covered a long distance and am about to cover a good bit more. From Southern China my brother and I headed down to North Vietnam. We ventured into the highlands and saw the very colorful markets. We were very disappointed though, because coming from China where everyone is somewhat polite to you and then to being hassled by all these tribal women and girls that speak decent English and won’t leave you alone until you buy something from them is just plain annoying. At this point in China the beggars really don't speak English and in the bigger cities that have tourists you get the hawkers trying to sell you maps, flags and other random junk that you don’t want but they don't hassle you if you ignore them. For the most part things are pretty easy for the traveller in China. Sometimes things are a bit comical such as the time we were on a 24 hour train ride in the hard seats with all the peasants and the conductor began an impromptu infomercial for some nylon socks that he could pull a sewing pin from top to bottom without ripping. Needless to say Taylor bought a set of three pair. But back to ‘Nam….

The market in Bac Ha was very colorful but there were tons of tourists there strolling around buying nicely embroidered things. The main problem was the mud because it had rained all morning and it wasn’t very pleasant, nor photogenic. From Bac Ha we went down south a bit to Sapa where the fog just wouldn’t relent. A cold front had moved in and we decided to just take a few days of doing nothing but laying around, watching tv, and reading some books we had just traded for. The hotel was really quite nice, especially for the price of 5 bucks a night. We did walk around a bit and get hassled by the young ladies and eventually I gave in and bought what they called a blanket but what I would term as something to hang on the wall. The fog lent for some pretty spooky shots on the old photoaparat but other than the old church and a chopped up barbecued dog I didn’t get too many good shots which was quite a bummer.

Hanoi was simply incredible, but I still haven’t decided if I liked it or not. Nowhere have I been have I seen so many motorbikes. As they blazed by it was as if a swarm of fish was swimming through the old zigzag of roads and intersections. Once Taylor almost got hit by some young guy who skidded up to Taylor’s feet and it left him a bit shaken but a bit wiser when crossing the streets of Hanoi. I was extra cautious each time I crossed the street and after drinking 10 cent beers at the traveller’s five points I had to be extra-extra special because of the darkness and the alcohol. We stayed at the Hanoi Backpacker’s and paid a bit more than the usual dive accommodation because we figured we only had two weeks before leaving for home and we didn’t want anything stolen out of some dumpy hotel room. The hostel and its staff were very nice and accommodating. One of the girls that worked there made homemade peanut butter and banana jelly to die for. Thinking back on it now makes my mouth salivate. We ended up buying 3 or 4 kilos each of the special Vietnamese coffees. The Vietnamese invented having a weasel eat coffee beans and crap them out, unfortunately you can only buy beans that have the same process as the weasel’s digestion simulated chemically. We bought a lot of that stuff, believe you me.

We saw the Hanoi Hilton ate at some good restaurants, watched a lot of movies, and went to the huge market but in the end we decided we were tired and needed to go home for Christmas so we sold our train tickets to Hoi An for a huge discount and bought 2 Air Asia tickets to Bangkok for pretty cheap.

I love Bangkok, its one of my favorite spots, probably because I found such a nice place to stay, Suk11. I found it in 2002 when traveling to Asia for the first time and have relished the memories of my over-extended stay ever since. Three floors of the hostel are done in a traditional Thai style and make you feel like you are walking through back alleys from 100 years ago when everything was made of teak. We stayed a few nights in Bangkok while trying to sort out some tickets home and went to the incredible weekend market. Then we headed down to Koh Chang on the Cambodian border to lay on the beach. I had been there in 2002 as well and it was pretty quiet and laidback, just what I wanted after 6 months of traveling. We got down the island to some bamboo shacks run by a German lady. It was really laidback and the food and shakes were delicious. We ran into a guy, Robert from Sweden, who I had met in Ulan Bator, Mongolia and he talked us into renting motorbikes for a few days. We had a good time the next four or five days we were there just laying around doing as little as possible. The only problem was that the sun didn’t really show its face too much but the weather was warm and we were happy. I was a bit shocked in the transformation in the port city on the south of the island as it has become a full-blown tourist attraction and not without warrant. It had been the highlight of my dining experience four years before and now was marked up a bit more than I had expected, but we still had a very nice and romantic dinner on the porch over the bay as we watched the sun go down. Unfortunately I was with my brother instead of some beautiful lady but nonetheless it was a nice last evening before heading back to the confusion that is Bangkok.

After a freezing cold ferry ride back to the mainland we took a rather long van ride back to the big Kok. I hate how these stupid package deals turn a three hour trip into a six hour trip stopping every 30 minutes to let people get off and go buy some crap just so the driver can get a kickback. I finally just asked the driver if he would just cut out the crap and drive us straight to Bangkok and everyone in the van agreed. When we finally arrived one of the Swedish guys who was to fly out the next night realized that his bag had been left on the dock at the port and he didn’t know what to do. That is my worst nightmare. I have had my bag stolen in Italy and it is no longer a nightmare but a reality, I am just thankful I didn’t get my throat slit when it happened. Every time I get on a bus I make doubly sure that my bag is on the bus, normally once it is on no one will touch it but that depends on where you are in the world.

So we arrive at Ko San Road and do a little shopping before heading over to Sukhumvit to Suk11. The next day we head to the market since some of the vendors had said to come on Friday but it turned out that only 5 percent of the stalls were open so we went up to the bus station and headed to Ayutthaya. We hadn’t done any of our homework and had no idea what to expect except for a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It turned out to be spread out allover the modern city interspersed with the new and each part of the old requiring a separate admissions payment. We paid for one, took some photos, walked around and then decided that it was too hot and that we should go back to Bangkok to the MBK market to get a blizzard from Dairy Queen. Now this is when you know that you have really gotten tired of being on the road when you pass up the beautiful, ancient ruins of a kingdom long past to go eat a coffee oreo blizzard. So the next day we went to the weekend market and shopped for hours, buying all of our Christmas presents in one fell swoop. I seriously think that the weekend market in Bangkok is one of the best in the entire world. It is cheap and you can find almost anything your heart desires, especially if your heart desires lots of wooden things, random t-shirts, turquoise, handbags, or sandals.

The next few days were spent getting the traditional Thai massages, watching movies, in malls or for me sightseeing. I had been in Bangkok for a total of probably a month and had never seen one of its most famous sites the Jim Thompson house. I cruised over to the now museum and took their mandatory tour. Now that is the kind of house I want to live in when I finally settle down and get a job. Basically the American turned Thai bought three old Thai teakwood shacks and combined them on stilts to form a badass open air house right on a nice canal. Afterwards I took a cool speedboat taxiboat ride up the canal to within walking distance to the Grand Palace. Unfortunately after stopping to take pictures at tons of stores with Buddhas wrapped in saran wrap I got to the palace just at closing time having to leave it for the next time I visit the magical city of Bangkok.

I bought lots of Thai cooking supplies and a few cookbooks before we departed via China Airlines to Taipei to Seattle to Atlanta where my friend Miles picked us up at the airport. The next morning we drove down to Macon and gave my parents a really good surprise. We hadn’t seen each other in two and a half years and they were expecting me for another month. I was happy neither of them had a heart attack when they saw us. Then I went over to my brother’s and sister’s and surprised them and their kids. It was the 21st of December and turned out to be a great Christmas present for all of us to home together. The next month I spent sorting through all of my photos, organizing my music collection, and doing some reading for my upcoming interview. The interview went well though I didn’t get what I was hoping for I did get a good bit, which will help to cut my future graduate school debt.

After the interview I went back home and began to plan my trip to Colorado. I contacted some friends and bought my ticket to Denver on Airtran from Atlanta. My parents drove me up to meet my friend from the horse trip in Kyrgyzstan, McKay at one of my favorite fast food places, the Varsity. We ate some chili dogs and said good-bye, then headed down to see the new Georgia Aquarium. I had first heard about the aquarium while watching CCTV 9 in a small village in southern Yunnan province of China and had wanted to go visit it after hearing so much from friends in Georgia. It was a huge edifice full of water and sea animals and it certainly didn’t disappoint. The main drawback were the number of people that were there visiting the day we went. My favorite part was watching the white Beluga whales floating gracefully up and down while trying to entertain the onlookers.

After the aquarium we went over to McKay’s house where I met his parent’s and some of their friends from New Orleans. We ate a nice dinner and had a lively discussion before we excused ourselves to drive out to Social Circle to their farm. The next morning we fed their bison and walked all through the woods. We saw a nice beaver dam and looked for Native American artifacts but didn’t find a thing. Then we went and rode one of their beautiful and highly trained Cleveland Bay horses. This horse was so much different from the horses in Kyrgyzstan or Mongolia that I don’t even know where to begin. First of all it was a lot taller, especially than the Mongolian horses which would look like a mule compared to the Cleveland Bays. Second the horse was trained by voice commands meaning that you just say trot and it trots and so on. It could sense I had no idea what I was doing riding such an esteemed horse and it really didn’t want to grant any of my commands. Eventually I did get it to go fast but it was definitely holding back a good bit of its substantial power. Before leaving we looked at the caretaker’s husband’s collection of Land Rovers. He had 3 Defender 110’s under a shed taken apart and basically rusting on their frames. To see a dream car of mine for so long in such bad shape is such a pity in my eyes but to see three in the same place is akin to a nightmare. We then headed up to Atlanta and went over to a small get together at my childhood friend Miles’ house. He and his wife were kind enough to invite us to come over and eat their food and drink their beer. I didn’t watch any of the game but just marveled at the clarity of his 44 inch flat screen High Definition TV. We went back to McKay’s and spent the night and the next morning he took me to the metro station from where I took one of the worst metros in the world(MARTA) to the airport.

I flew out to Denver and waited too long for a bus to take me to Boulder where I was met by a friend I had made in Kazakhstan, Roxy. We drove around for a while waiting for her husband to get off work but he never showed up so we went up to their place in Nederland. Shortly after arriving we got a call and had to go all the way back to Boulder to pick up Josh, Roxy’s husband and another friend of mine from Kazakhstan. The next day Josh and I went over to Copper Mountain and we snowboarded on some fairly fresh powder. I was so sore after 4 years of not boarding but I picked it back up right where I had left off, amazing what your body can remember. The next few days I sat around their apartment, went to the library, walked their dog, snowboarded, and watched movies while they were either working, in school, or both. Four nights were spent with Josh and Roxy and then Roxy, her friend, and I went to Golden to tour the Coors Brewery. After getting pretty lightheaded on the free samples at the end of the tour I tried to get in touch with my longtime friend Wallace who lives in Dillon. It turned out that he was up skiing and his phone didn’t work up in the mountains and he didn’t get my message until Roxy was just about to drop me off at this diner for me to fend for myself. I felt bad because they had to get back to Nederland which is about 1.5 hours away and it was already getting late. Finally Wallace called and told us where he lived. Roxy dropped me off and met Wallace who gave their dogs some dog treats that he had just for the occasion.

So to cut a long story a bit short I have been at my friend Wallace’s for almost two weeks now. I have been snowboarding at both Copper Mountain and Arapahoe Basin since being here and have greatly improved my snowboarding skills. I tried to learn how to ride switch but after numerous falls I decided that what I had learned was enough and that it wasn’t worth it. Learning to ride switch means to ride the other way down the hill and is basically like learning how to ride all over again. It is a lot more difficult than you would imagine, even if you have known how to snowboard for a long time (maybe that is what makes it difficult learning how to change something you are accustomed to already). Maybe the second night or third night at Wallace’s I borrowed his car and went up to Vail to visit some old friends from college. Four of them were staying at Russell’s place for the weekend: Root, Longmire, Crick and Mike Twin. It was really great to see all those guys after a really long time absence on my part. I tried to catch up with each of them in the four hours allotted before I had to head back so Wallace could use his car the next morning to drive to work. It was strange driving on snow, especially after not driving for many years and to add to it unbeknownst to me the headlights were very dim because they were covered in all sorts of disgusting snow particles. I made it home safely and have been spending the last few weeks off and on the slopes, always taking things as easy as possible.

My next move is back to Nederland for a few nights before heading to Vegas by way of Southwest and then to San Francisco on American West. Then I have a flight on the 7th of March to Hong Kong again on China Airlines. I really like the service the beautiful stewardesses give to you on China Air, plus it is the cheapest way across the Pacific. I intend of heading to mainland China to learn some Mandarin for a few months before returning sometime in mid-May to enjoy the beach and lake before beginning graduate school for my IMBA and a huge debt to pay off. I have found a great website called www.chinesepod.com that provides lots of great mp3s for learning Chinese and best of all they are free and new ones come out all the time. I am hoping that a little preparation combined with some of what I learned last year in China plus the two months of being there studying I will come away with some decent conversation skills and hopefully some writing and reading skills as well, depending on how hard I apply myself. Now to my studies, this has already run too long for anyone to actually read all the way through.

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