the day in the life of a backpacker

---

Well, it has been an interesting 24 hours (as most of them are). First, I found out that I have lost my last 5 travelblog stories due to a systems crash (but this is my fault for not backing them up). Good news is I think most of the photos are still there (except for the ones i was going to send with this blog), just the text is gone. hey it is getting better, i think i may be able to find the text since I write by blogs in Gmail, and gmail doesn't delete anything unless I tell it to do so.

Back to the last 24 hours. A statement that comes up often is, man your life is easy, traveling all the time .... well it is traveling as a backbacker, not like a vacationer going to Acapulco for a week with no expenses spared. A case in point. I arrived in Tokyo with the my irst three nights booked in a dorm room at the Oak hotel (by the way i give this place a 10 for service and a 9 plus for everything else). Well, I quickly found out that Tokyo (Japan for that matter) is a very popular spot in August so I quickly made plans and tried to book hostels. Well, almost everything was full where I wanted to go so I had to book quickly! For my fourth night I booked a place called JGH Tokyo on hostelworld. let me say this, the place is a dump with a capital D. I can't even believe that it is listed in hostelworld.com. After checking out of my four bed drom with A/C, bathroom in suite, down comforters, free internet kitchen... for $18 a night I take a long train ride to JGH. When I arrived I was thinking what the ##$#%$#$%$ (insert whatever word you like). The place was a dump, it was about 90 plus degrees outside and the air conditioner was turned off. The owner said he would turn it on a 7pm but i could rent a fan. He took me inside the house and climbing over bodies he showed me a very small room with a mat on the ground and said i could have that room but i had to pay more. Now keep in mind the price at JGH was more than i was paying a the oak hotel. The wall in the room did not go all the way up and there was no door so anyone could easily go into the sauna, i mean room, and walk off with my camera gear.

Needless to say i went to the nearest internet cafe to try to see if there was anything available on hostelworld or any of the other backpackers sites. nope, nada, zeero, zilch. I went on expedia, hotels.com ... and there were rooms in the $100 plus range. So, there was no place to stay so plan B, i heard that you could stay in an internet cafe where they had small rooms, a shower and DVDs ... and charged by the half hour. I think it would have cost around $20 for 8 hours. I took the train back to the Oak hotel and they were kind enough to let me leave my bags there without a reservation. They also made a copy of a map and a copy of a flyer for an internet cafe where i could crash. I left to go to a giant camera store to look at a lightweight tripod. I realized that i only had a few yen left and went to several ATMs to try to withdraw money. none of them worked. No worries, I could pay with my debit card. i still had some dollars but it would have been impossible to exchange them. I go back to the Oak hotel and the receptionist asked me if Ihad found anything place to stay yet and I said no. i told her about the ATM ordeal and she told me that only ATM cards issued in Japan by Japanese banks work at the ATMS in the banks. She showed me a map and told me that at 7-11 they had an ATM that would work, and it did. I went back to the Oak Hotel at 10pm to see if there were any cancellations. Luckily there was a cancellation for a private room so I did not need to spend the night in an internet cafe.




i am not writing this to complain, but just to let you know the life of a backpacker is not always sitting around the pool sipping margaritas. Often times you spend the whole day just trying to do basic tasks. So unlike kiefer sutherland who can save the world in 24 hours (in the show 24) often times all a backpacker can accomplish is sending out a blog.

Today, after i go to the 99 yen store to get some sushi for breakfast I am going to try to take the train to a small city in the countryside and get some photos. wish me luck.

cheers,

Dave

ps, please don't foreget to check out the updated www.fotosbydavid.com and let me know what you think!

---

Comments

[Christine]

Not a backpacker city
I hear you. Freedom doesn't cover all the sh** that a backpacker has to go thru, esp. in cities. Tokyo, Hong Kong, even NYC are not cities for cheapa** like us. When you are used to a few bucks for a decent room in developing countries, $20 is way too much for crappy rooms and crappy altitude. And you don't even get the rooster call at 3am! One word: countryside!