The last couple of days have been pretty intense with lots of the siteseeing. Seoul has a few palaces that they have rebuilt in the last couple of decades. There wasn't much left of historic nature after the Japanese and North Koreans finished with the city. This reminds me of the palaces in Hue, Vietnam, which were destroyed during the Vietnam War (the Vietnamese are also rebuilding those). I have seen enough palaces, though, for one trip, as they all start to look the same after awhile. It would be interesting to see how Seoul compares to the other mega cities from a land mass persepctive. This city just is huge. Thank god they have such a good subway system. Talking about subway, I'm not sure who came up with decorating scheme for the stations, but ... read more

Never in my years of travelling have I gone from such despair to such joy, as I did at the Vancouver airport on Wednesday. I was waiting to board my flight to Seoul, when it looked like there wasn't going to be anymore than about 40-50 passengers. I thought... a whole aisle to myself... :-) Then to my horror, a group of about 150 Korean school children (aged 8-10) arrived like a swarm of bees... The thought of being surrounded by all of these school kids for 11 hours sent me emotionally off a cliff. As I stopped to show the stewardess my boarding pass and id, she said she was going to switch my seat... At first, I thought she was going to just rearrange me amongst the kids, but as I was walking to ... read more

I knew I was in for problems on Tuesday after pulling out of my hotel parking lot at 5:45 and realized I had lost a screw in my cycling shoe cleat. This was going to give me problems getting in and out of my pedals, which wasn't a huge issue, but it would sure be nicer clipped in than not. I also got a sneaking suspicion that this was going to be one of those days -- and it was. The next problem was that the road detoriated once I left the Panamerican Highway for Tegucigalpa. This is a big deal because without a shoulder there isn´t a lot of room on these highways for all buses/trucks and little old me. I then left my map behind at one of my stops. Once again not a ... read more

I arrived in San Miguel yesterday. This is the third largest city in El Salvador and the eastern hub for the country. Its distinguishing feature is the active volcano it has towering over it, which last erupted in 1976. At only 50km and most it downhill, this was by far the easiest ride so far, but one of the most dangerous, as I didn´t have a good shoulder for the last 20km into San Miguel, so I had to tough it out on the two lane highway with all the buses and trucks. Some of them seemed to come so close... Not much new here other than a big fiesta they were having tonight. It was a 40th anniversary for something, but I couldn´t figure out for what. Anyways, it was quite the festive mood with ... read more

I finally had a short ride up to San Salvador; however, I still had to work for it as the first 20 km were straight uphill. San Salvador sits in a valley like almost every Central American capital. They also seem to have a token volcano near be -- San Salvador was no different. The distinction between the good part and the bad part (or should I say the colourful part) of town here is very distinct. At some point (probably in the 60´s or 70´s), the city decided to move the commercial part of the city west and leave the existing downtown to die. Few buildings have had much if anything done to them in the past three of four decades. The buildings actually remind me of old Havana -- yes, that bad. While the ... read more