Cambodia (fake police, overstuffed pickups, prostitutes, abandoned french hill stations) - March 1st - March 11

Yeah yeah, the temples of Angkor were fancy schmancy. We decided one day was enough to see what we wanted to see, and while the sites were impressive, the scores of other tourists made it difficult to feel like Indiana Jones. There was also our dramatic DIY attempt at seeing the nearby floating villages met with a tuk tuk driver in collusion with a fake police officer, Freja’s conclusion that the villages didn’t constitute authentic culture, and a shady private boat operator with a penchant for spitting. All the trouble seemed a little silly when our trip to Battambang the next day took us the same route anyway. The scenic boat ride to Battambang was followed by an adventurous drive in a pickup over non-existent road with 17 other folks crammed in the flatbed. One evening was all we spent in Cambodia’s second largest city. We did eat at a rather nice café. By the morning sun of the following day, we were headed to Phnom Penh. During a pit stop, the bus took off and gave us a good scare. To our relief, it returned 10 minutes later with a full tank of gas. The first morning in Phnom Penh, I was awakened very early while it was still dark outside to the sounds of sweeping. It’s ironic considering how dirty the capital city still is notwithstanding 5am sweepings. I dreamt of Emily and woke up feeling dour. I hoped that a visit to the horror sites of S-21 and the Killing Fields would make my personal romantic anguish seem trivial in comparison to the greater suffering of man. After stepping out of the first room at S-21, a once elementary school transformed into the most infamous torture center during the Khmer Rouge, my mind was just beginning to refocus and process the gravity of historical events. And then, with one more step, I ran smack dab into Damien Kennedy, the oafish womanizing neighbor of mine from 3 years ago in Melbourne. My brain immediately shifted from thoughts of genocide to those of paltry gossip in the snap of a finger. Being reunited with an old friend can make attempts at somberness difficult, and we spent the rest of the day together. Kennedy is built like a teddy bear, talks funny even for an Australian, and is ripe for being picked on by eleven year old Cambodian kids selling bootleg books. While we were eating, they came up to him and started smacking his face, poking him in the side, and making mock attempts at spilling water on his head. I never could understand how he did so well with the ladies. Probably has something to do with a fearlessness of rejection.
Into the wee hours of the morning, there was no rejection to be had, but rather only to be administered on our end as we danced and frolicked and nothing more with prostitutes at Heart of Darkness, Phnom Penh’s infamous nighttime venue.

***

Phnom Penh is a city of grit and poverty and Lexus SUVs. Brendan B, one our hosts (along with the gracious Andrew), was/is a fast-talking rookie writer for the respectable weekly paper. He either qualifies or disclaims every statement or question escaping from his mouth. Behind his visage that bears a striking similarity to a more hipster Haley Joel Osment is a hamster wheel of a brain that is spinning much too fast. And while I blame Damien Kennedy for landing me in Heart of Darkness that first night, Brendan Brady is to blame for putting me there the second night with yet another prostitute for a dance partner. And despite the pestering of a stranger telling me it would be the biggest mistake of my life to not take her home for a meager sum of $20, I sadly declined, opting instead to skip out on the AIDS epidemic.
During the days in the city, we walked around and frequented super yuppie cafes for meals, looking as though they had just been transplanted from NYC – an odd juxtaposition amidst the surrounding squalor.
From Phnom Penh we headed south to the laid back riverside city of Kampot. We checked into our accommodation at this place called Bodhi Villa, a cesspool of stoned backpackers who seem to have gotten stuck and forgotten they’re in Cambodia, not Jamaica. There are signs everywhere instructing you to “chill out”, and just asking a question of how to get into a town is a good way to be met with ridicule and laughter that you could be so uptight. As Brendan put it, “There’s nothing that stresses me out more than when people are telling me to chill out.” Our room was a bare bones bungalow with partial curtains instead of an actual door. We rented a motorbike and zipped around town a bit before booking an ‘illegal’ tour up Bokor Mountain, though the tours are publicly advertised in front of every guesthouse. It’s illegal because the government officially closed the mountain a month ago after selling the impressive and historical real estate to a private Korean company to make way for a multi-billion dollar resort catering to rich Asian tourists. On the tour the next day, things were fine if you don’t count the fact that the truck broke down on the way up, we were left stranded for two hours at the top while they struggled to locate the truck, and at the end of the day when it was time to go home, the only road out was obstructed by yet another broken down vehicle. That said, the decaying buildings – constructed by the French back in the 1920’s before abandonment in the 1950’ – were an imaginative child’s dream come true to explore, plus the view up there of nearby Phu Quoc Island and the endless stretches of flat Cambodian landscape below weren’t too shabby. Once back in town, we discovered our motorbike was missing from where we’d parked it early that morning. Ben and I looked at each, started to cry, and threw up our arms in defeat. Cambodia had hit us where it hurt. You can be as rugged as you want, but when your rented motorcycle gets stolen, Huntington Woods doesn’t sound so bad anymore. We dragged ourselves into the nearby guesthouse for shots of their strongest rice wine only to learn that the guy who’d rented us the bike had actually stolen it from us after seeing it parked in plain view as the sun was going down. Good tactic for boosting customer relations. He returned the bike with a mild reprimand, though I still don’t understand what the hell we should’ve done if not parked it in front of the tour agency as advised; and if that wasn’t silly enough, we were further scolded by the desk guy working back at the Villa.
“Uhh, so I got a call from your motorbike rental guy last night and heard you were irresponsible with the bike” he said to us the next morning as we were checking out. Ben and I looked at each other, then back at the guy. In unison we responded, “Chill out.” On the bus back to Phnom Penh, we just barely got on as the decrepit vehicle was pulling out. It was inexplicably leaving 30 minutes early, so we didn’t have the chance to purchase tickets beforehand. The bus continued to pick up more and more passengers on route, and it only took 15 minutes before Ben and I had to relinquish our seats. For the next five hours we were relegated to these mini plastic stools – the kind used for putting three year olds in time-out – wedged in the aisles lacking enough space to properly situate my butt. For five hours, my knees performed torturous deep tissue massage on all the wrong parts of Ben’s back while the guy behind me was kind enough to return the favor.

The End of Chiang Mai – February 28th

‘And so we beat on’ as John Irving always says, this time through the night on an aged locomotive, the sprinter, to Bangkok. I’ve got all my luggage since I won’t be returning to Chiang Mai. Looks like I’m carting around stowaways they’re so bulky. Thankfully I’ve got Ben with me or I wouldn’t have managed. He’ll also help to cushion my sanity since there are no beds on the sprinter overnight express and the seats only partially recline and it’s so shaky that I can’t hold my pen steady and the window is slightly too far away for a comfortable sleeping position.
I’m not sad to be leaving, even though everyone who mattered during my year was there to send me off. We even had a final supper together at the nice restaurant by the river. But no, I’m not sad. I’ve already had to suffer through three goodbyes with Emily – one in Europe, one at home, and one in Thailand; and then there was the final goodbye when we took a break that turned permanent (I guess) when she soon after found bigger and better and balder things. So this goodbye is more like a footnote. I’m kind of numb now to anything non-Emily related. I guess I was never able to fully invest myself in Thailand, always one foot somewhere else. Now both feet are God knows where, though on Saturday they’ll be setting foot on Cambodian soil.

March 1st
They call it the Wild West of Southeast Asia, and it sure is dusty enough. We crossed over into Cambodia today after busing it from Bangkok to the border town of Aranya Prathet. It was supposed to be a first class ride, but somehow we kept adding standing room only passengers along the way, one of which sat directly behind my seat so that I couldn’t recline, and when I did finally manage to drift off for a moment, the wandering fingers of a small child tickled my face, startling me awake. It was in Aranya Prathet where we met the Icelandic couple, Toti and Freja. He’s a notable chef back in Reykjavik, she’s still a student. He’s loud enough to rival the American stereotype, she keeps him walking straight by doing all their expense conversions: first from Icelandic currency into Thai baht, and then into either Cambodian Reil or USD. Together, we ambled through no-man’s land into Poipet, past fake customs agents, eerie casinos, and begging children. It was in this peculiar landscape that I randomly ran into the student president of the residential college at which I lived during a semester abroad in Melbourne three years ago.
The road leading from Poipet to Siem Reap was unbelievable – no paving, half-assed construction resulting in detours circling around mounds of rubble and potholes the size of moon craters. It doesn’t make any sense how such a major route could be so catastrophically awful, unless you believe the rumor that Bangkok Airways pays off the Cambodia government to keep the road in such a state so that people will be more inclined to fly. For 3.5 hours we wondered how the driver could see anything amidst the clouds of dust and diminishing light from the setting sun, but he still hurtled ahead un-phased at full speed. And then, after 3.5 hours, just like that, the road turned perfectly paved and the previous repetition of barren landscape, dilapidated ramshackle homes and half-naked wandering children were all replaced with rococo hotels, beaming lights, posh restaurants, and still some half-naked wandering children. It was if we had just plunged through a wormhole into Cambodia’s version of Disneyland.

Luang Prabang: Nov. 30 - Dec. 3

Lane leaves around mid-November, some days later my bike breaks down during rush hour traffic along the northern end of the moat, conveniently enough in front of a bike shop which agrees to take it in, but when I return the next day, it’s been inexplicably transported to another shop on the opposite end of town. The diagnosis: something to do with a busted piston and my own personal failure to ever change the oil. Costs me $90, which is almost half of what I initially paid for the bike. At the end of November I jump on over to Luang Prabang for a little weekend excursion and reunion with Lane. On the single-engine nausea-inducing plane I have to endure some British guy citing facts he learned from Michael Moore movies. On the ground, the city possesses an understated quality – not exactly very bumping – someone described it to me as a Disneyland for French geriatrics (whatever that means). If you recall, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam were all once under the mighty colonial rule of France. There’s a beautiful waterfall not far outside of town with the kind of vine swing I’ve long fantasized about, be we decide the water’s too cool for swimming. Back in town, we climb up the centrally-located temples perched high above and possessing grand views of the city below, surrounding mountains, and muddy Mekong. At night, Luang Prabang’s equivalent to Chiang Mai’s Warm Up – the swankiest drinking hole to see and be seen – is a joint called the Hive Bar, one of the few places along with some other cafes sprinkled throughout the city that look as though they could’ve been taken right out of yuppie-town USA. At the Hive Bar, Lane and I entertain two Laotians with crushes on us the size of Texas while five British girls lap up the attention of tens of love-hungry European males, whom by tagging along with after closing lands us in a disco-esque bowling alley at 1am – the only place opened after midnight in this curfew-enforcing communist country. It’s time for Lane and I to say goodbye. We hug and I pray to Buddha almighty that he survive his travels and make it home in one piece. It will be many months before we are reunited again. (editors note: Lane did indeed make it home in one piece, although his glasses were to be broken by a monkey and his bathing suit torn off by a floating branch in Halong Bay).

The Comeback Has Been Thwarted - November 21st

Dear Sir/Madame,

First of all, thank you so much for all your emails/phone calls/dropped in both Bangkok and Chiang Mai's Casting Offices.
We are very sorry to announced the Close Down of "Pinkville" Production due to the ongoing labor action by the Writers Guild of American, Mr. Oliver Stone, whom is member of the WGA, can not work on the script revisions needed to get the film ready for production.
Anyway for all your info and applications, we will still keep in our system, just in case and for any other production that may arise in the very near future. Thank you again for your understanding.

Regards,
Casting Thailand

You look like Harry Potter, again - November 17th

The family came and went, leaving Lane in their wake. Tomorrow he leaves for a monastery in Ubon Ratchatani before traveling to Laos and Vietnam. It was a good 10 day run we had together – dancing, redecorating my room in a postmodern vein, and watching the television series “Heroes” – and he was by my side when I won the grand prize a week ago at Payap’s international night (the Christian university in Chiang Mai): a roundtrip airline ticket from Bangkok to Singapore on Cathay Pacific. He wasn’t by my side the other day though when somebody stole my crappy ass helmet sitting in the basket of my motorbike in front of the English department at school. It’s silly because there’s a bike lot not 5 meters away brimming with much fancier (not to mention safer) helmets begging to be stolen, but for some unknown reason, they decided to steal mine – the soup helmet with that tacky lightning bolt running down the backside.
Lane was at my side the night we walked past 7-11 a few days ago and witnessed for the first time Thais being violent. While heading back from the dance club, we were shocked to find a group of Thai guys brawling in the street with beer bottles and bats, clubbing one another while others stood aloof nursing various wounds. They even smashed the front windows of the 7-11. I heard later on that it took the police several hours before arriving on the scene. You won’t find the police anywhere in Chiang Mai except needlessly directing traffic during rush hour at intersections which already have lights.
Rewind back to Halloween, I myself had a minor brush with violence, but not with a Thai. Instead it was some random British guy in Chiang Mai to train Muay Thai. I was dressed up as a Thai university student for the occasion, standing at the restaurant adjacent from the gym and across from my friends’ apartment. I’m chatting with two friends when he approaches and I assume they all know each other.
"You look like Harry Potter” he says. “You hear that often?"
So I respond, "Only right before bar brawls break out" obviously joking.
“What do you know about bar brawls?” he asks. “Don’t talk to a crazy British guy with a glass in his hands about bar brawls.” He delivers this line while holding up the glass in his hand for added emphasis. The tone of the conversation seems completely harmless. I mean, I’m dressed up as a Thai schoolboy and the Muay Thai guys at our gym tend to have a sense of camaraderie. “You don’t wanna mess with this guy” one of my friends says, carrying on the seemingly amiable tone. “He’s got over 5 years of Muay Thai experience.”
“Oh yeah, well I’ve got 5 weeks experience” I rebuttal jokingly. “Take that.”
The next thing I know, the British guy open hand slaps me real hard across the face and breaks my glasses, then shoves me and starts smacking himself and calling me out to fight him right there. He was absolutely 100% fucking looney toons. So I did what any logical modern cowboy would do, I un-holstered my pistol and shot him three times in the chest. Or, I stood there completely in shock, looked at my friends and asked if he was for real, then was on my way before even waiting for the answer. The next day I went in to audition for Oliver Stone’s new movie being shot in Chiang Mai, Pinkville, about the My Lai massacre. Fingers crossed, for me, and also for Lane on his travels East.

A Little Tale About Tokyo - Oct. 18 - Oct. 23

After a few cups of coffee, I’m starting to really feel the excitement of being in Tokyo, or maybe it’s just a nostalgic sensation for when I used to accompany mom or dad to work as a young boy, being that I’m with Rino at her office right now. Her work deals with opening up Betsy Johnson stores in Japan. For all you ignoramuses out there, Betsy Johnson is a posh designer back in the States (and elsewhere now thanks to people like Rino).
Accompanying Rino to work seemed like a safer alternative to braving the city by myself, plus what do people do in big cities anyway other than check out museums (in the case of Tokyo, shrines) and go shopping – neither of which are particularly my cup of tea. I can feel overwhelmed in NYC, which is even smaller than Tokyo, and they also speak my language there. It’s particularly frustrating for me having once studied Japanese and now since forgotten 99.9% of it, because I feel like I should know more, which makes me all the more intimidated to even attempt mere utterances out of fear of deceiving innocent Japanese people into thinking I know anything at all, to which they’ll respond with protracted rapid-fire responses that will soar over my head like an F-22 high above the clouds; and then we’ll really be in a bind. I don’t understand how anyone ever picks up languages. How lucky and unlucky I am to have been born into a world where English won out as the dominant global language. In coming to work with Rino as opposed to exploring the city on my own, one could argue that this is in fact a more culturally representative and informative experience of ‘authentic’ Japanese life in frenetic and overwhelming Tokyo. It makes it manageable, I’m interacting with her Japanese coworkers, and I’ll even put myself to use helping move boxes around and whatnot. There’s definitely an underlying feeling of being babysat here, but most girls have some kind of maternal instinct need-to-take-care-of-somebody thing going on, so what the hell, right?
Man. That initial pique of the coffee high is starting to wane and I’m wondering if I should make a run for it. What the hell am I doing in Tokyo? After helping rearrange the office, I go out to lunch with Rino and her coworkers for Thai food, ironically enough. In the afternoon I leave the nest and head for the Meiji-jingu shrine – a nice traditional juxtaposition alongside the hustle and bustle of modern Harajuku with all of its hip shopping and envelope-pushing Japanese schoolgirls. The hours are passed snapping pictures, meandering, and swiveling my head like Linda Blair in the Exorcist to take in the multifarious sensory overload. At 7pm I meet back up with Rino, now joined by her international adviser, Aaron, from years yonder during a 4 year stint at Macalester College in Minneapolis. Aaron is in his early 40’s and making his annual rounds through Asia recruiting for Macalester. While maybe a little less horny than the average 23 year old, the guy still has an appetite for a good night out on the town, so the three of us – Rino, myself, & Aaron – make for a heroic trio. We go out for finger food and drinks, later to be joined by more Macalester alumni, plus an old friend of mine from my days in Australia, Kazuhiro Shimizu. Though only 26, a fresh marriage and 6 months of working for the premier consulting firm McKinsey have sprouted some gray hairs on good ole’ Hiro’s head. Capping off the night with some karaoke in a private room amongst friends proves a good elixir in taking wandering minds off aging and other existential hullabaloo.
It’s not until the next night, though, that I hit my stride in karaoke with a little known ditty by the name of “Jump Around”. On this particular Saturday, we don’t make it out of the apartment until 4:30 in the afternoon, just lounging around and such as the sun runs its course over the eastern sky. Linner (that lunch/dinner hybrid) is had at the train station noodle shop. Over my bowl of udon, I splatter soup everywhere – on shirt, on glasses, and even on Rino. It’s quite a struggle managing to simultaneously get both the noodles and broth into my mouth.
By the time we make it downtown, night has managed to squash every last lick of daylight. It was already getting dark when we first left the apartment, because in Japan, there’s no such thing as daylight savings time. Rino tells me “It’s because the farmers get no love here.” I still don’t know what that means.
We proceed to grab a mighty expensive drink somewhere with another Macalester alum, then it’s off to an Italian feast with even more Macalester alumni – they’re taking over the world, or at the very least Japan. Hiro makes it too, and after the dinner, we gallivant over to some hole in the wall bar for yet another alumni’s birthday party – an Indian guy raised in Japan, fluent in the language, attended school at Macalester, then came back here for a career in I-banking. For the sake of this story, we’ll call him Vorin. As it quickly becomes evident, on the cusp of 24, the kid has some serious issues with drunken belligerence and dealing with the opposite sex, let alone his own sex, as he makes death threats on my life to Aaron and company throughout the evening, enraged that I lie at one point about being Rino’s boyfriend to keep him from molesting her. Somewhere along the line, Hiro departs, but not before delivering an offer to recommend me at McKinsey if I ever want a job. While it’s fun to toy around with the idea, ultimately I don’t think a big bucks consulting gig requiring 70hr work weeks and Jared Robbins are very compatible. So we bounce around various places before winding back up with Vorin and his posse in a Karaoke room overflowing with drunken idiocy. It’s quite the surreal experience bearing my soul – during spot-on renditions of George Michael’s “Faith” and House of Pain’s “Jump Around” – to a bunch of twentysomethings I don’t know, all of whom were educated together at international school.
The party then transports to some small club owned by Nigerians and packed with hookers in another part of town where we get the VIP hookup because Vorin’s a regular there, throwing around his hard-earned I-banking bucks like rice on Vodka Redbulls and god knows what else. Maybe time in Tokyo ticks differently, or maybe I just never glanced at my watch, but by the time we make our exit, daylight has supplanted the night and it’s almost 8am. Weird experience.
“You look like Harry Potter” one of the Nigerians compliments me on the way out. Snippets of dialogue transpire, I ask him where he’s from, he gets defensive, then asks me where I’m from. “Detroit” I say. That seems to impress him.
On the subway back to Chiba, everyone on the car is out cold. It’s 8:45am by the time I finally crawl into my makeshift bed on the couch, in the crevices of which I swear vicious bed bugs lay and wait to exploit my sleeping vulnerability. Good morning.

Aaron & Rino modeling on the subway

Waking up to a setting sun can be equally as disorienting as falling asleep to a rising one. That night Rino and I went to the hot springs/bathhouse. When you walk in, there’s a sign at the entrance which reads something along the lines of “No Tattoos”.
“Is that to keep out the Yakuza?” I ask.
“Yeah.” she responds.
“What about the rest of the world with tattoos.”
“I guess they just have to find another bathhouse.” The decision to not get “BINZ” tattooed in block lettering across my back had proven to be a shrewd decision afterall.
The plan was to go into the co-ed baths, but it was too late by the time we finally hopped into Rino’s Prius (decked out with GPS and a rear-view camera for parking) and made it to our destination. My excitement quickly plummeted upon finding out that I would instead be sharing baths with a bunch of naked Japanese men. I thanked my lucky stars that Aaron had opted to stay behind. I’m tellin’ ya, if you’re a gay man in Japan, there’s no better place to go than the bathhouses.
Rino and I parted ways and agreed to meet back outside in thirty minutes. I walked into my side with bag in tote containing a hand towel (for god knows what because it doesn’t cover up anything and it’s sole purpose is merely to rest on top of your head while you sit in the water), a regular towel for post-bath drying off (not to be worn into the baths otherwise be cast off as a total pariah), and a traditional robe for lounging around in the main outside area if one desires a break for some tea, arcade games, or those picture booths that yield crazily designed photo strips which can’t possibly be geared for anyone but 10 year old girls and perverts (and then me, but only as a one time ‘cultural’ experience). Before you enter the actual hot springs, you’re supposed to wash off in a semi-open row of showers with dividers that only come up to waist-height (not that you still can’t see everyone doing their business). There’s a wooden stool to sit on and wash yourself, and while everyone else was crouched down on it, there was no way I was putting my bare ass on that thing – definitely not sanitary. So I opted to be the only one standing while everyone else washed themselves sitting down on those stools most likely designed for 8 year olds put in timeout. When it came time to rinse off my crotch with the shower head spitting out water at greater pressure than the fire hoses used to suppress protesters during the 60’s, I shifted my body in surprise at how bad it hurt and accidentally shot the man directly behind me. He looked at me, and I looked at him apologetically, and for a moment we were two naked guys just staring at each other.
It must’ve been “bring your toddler to hot springs” night, because while Rino had the women’s side to herself, there were at least ten father-son pairs on my side. I was overwhelmed by the number of baths to choose from and wound up selecting one of the few uninhabited spots off in a corner, for which I remained during my entire bathing experience. I watched as the other bathers hopped from one bath to the next, but thought nothing of it. It wasn’t until after we were leaving the premises did Rino finally give me the rundown.
“Why do I smell like chlorine?” I wondered aloud.
“Because one of the baths is chlorinated. It’s just like a hot tub.”
“Well that’s the only bath I sat in the entire time.”
She shot me a funny look. “You mean you didn’t go from bath to bath?”
“No, I didn’t realize there was any difference” I dumbly responded.
“All the baths have medicinal benefits except for that one. You’re supposed to go from bath to bath and experience the various effects of each.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“Didn’t you see everyone else going from bath to bath?”
“Yeah” I said, “but I just thought they had ADD.” I really did.

And that’s how I would like to end my tale about Tokyo. I don’t really feel like going into detail about accompanying Aaron to the international school college fair, nor my experience with Okonomiyaki, and not even my peculiar borrowing of Rino’s copy of “Kicking & Screaming” (the Noah Baumbach film from 1995) that could very easily be misconstrued for stealing. I’m done with Tokyo, at least for now.

I’ve forgotten more than you know: the end of home and the beginning of Tokyo - October 17

Planes would be the perfect setting for limbo. I’m on one again, this time headed for Tokyo. I went home for the semester break and spent most of it with Emily in East Lansing. Actually, most of the time I wasn’t with her because she was either studying or in class. It wasn’t very fortuitous that she had a midterm on my departure date, so I extended my ticket two more days so that we could spend a little bit of time together when she wouldn’t be so stressed. It wasn’t meant to be, though, as she had another test to prepare for, and as they usually tend to do in law school, the professors just piled on more work. Last night I decided to go to Red Robin (the casual dining restaurant best known for its gourmet burgers and bottomless steak fries) because I had a free burger coupon to use that my aunt got me for my birthday by signing up for their online burger club or something. Emily was busy stressing, which in turn was stressing me out considering it was my last night and all, so I grabbed my book and set off for Red Robin by myself around 9:15pm in pursuit of a burger, cherry coke, bottomless fries, and some good ole’ peppy Americana atmosphere. Sporting the same dirty sweatpants I’d worn to the gym several hours earlier, I hopped into the borrowed Lexus from dad and made off into the night with my trusty mapquest directions. The trip should’ve only taken 15 minutes, but the directions weren’t as trusty as I’d hoped, and when faced with either getting onto N. Creyts Rd. to make a right onto S. Creyts, or to just get off at S. Creyts, it gets a little hairy, and the next thing I knew I was lost. It was a challenge working up the motivation to go to Red Robin in the first place since it’s a lonely experience eating out by yourself, it wasn’t exactly around the block, and most of all, I’m lazy, which is ironically what prompted the decision in the first place since it seemed like an easier alternative to cooking for myself. The trip wasn’t 15 minutes at all, and as the clock clicked towards 10, Red Robin’s bedtime, I started to get nervous I wouldn’t make it and that all would be in vain. Somehow I wound up in the boonies, doubled back to civilization, but accidentally turned the wrong way onto a poorly labeled Saginaw Rd, and when unbeknownst to me I was a mere one block away, I called up the restaurant to check my coordinates. By this time it was 9:46pm, and to my devastation, a callow male voice on the other end of the line informed me they’d already broken down the kitchen since nobody had been in the restaurant for the previous half hour. It didn’t help matters that my gas needle was now resting on empty, gas for under 3 bucks a gallon is impossible to find in Lansing, and I was too cheap to eat anywhere else.
Back on the plane, I attempt to doze off, but my body and mind are periodically overcome with sensations of acute awareness that I could die at any moment. This plane is but a man-made creation and therefore fallible like man himself. My sense of smell becomes strikingly clear, there’s a tingling in the bridge; my ears get lighter and capture sounds ordinarily beyond the sensory, and my heart rises a few millimeters in my chest. What kind of life would mine turn out to be if it were to end now? How would I stack up? Clamoring through the clouds as close to heaven as I’m ever gonna get in this material body of mine, my thoughts at times transcend a capacity for words, hovering around abstract unfathomables like the infinite - too great for my humble brain – before plunging back down into the reality of the paltry; things like Red Robin, gas prices, and 8 more hours to go on this stinkin’ plane.
I’m sitting next to a married couple in their mid-70’s also from Michigan, but the western part of the state. Sure enough, they’re conservative, Catholic, and somehow I’ve got them convinced I’m a good Christian boy – maybe it was my innocent question about the saint who stands guard at the gates of heaven (I knew it was Nicholas, I just couldn’t remember at the time). The man pats my leg whenever I say something that amuses him so, or maybe it’s when he thinks of something funny to tell me. At 76, he still works part-time as a dentist and doesn’t look as old as a 76 year old would through my eyes just a few years ago. Funny how as my parents age – they’re only in their very early 60’s – it makes older people not seem so old anymore. The man’s wife refers to her profession as “executive homemaker”. At some point she says to me, “And I’ll tell you what I say to my grandsons, I say, ‘I’ve forgotten more than you know.’” Then her husband chimes in, “I don’t think that’s the case with this boy, he seems like a rather intelligent young man.” Maybe a bit of an overstatement, but he’s probably right in this instance.
At some point after the hours have already been melding together for quite some time, I start to crack. My grip on reality loosens to the point of severe discomfort. Unable to sleep, my mind starts obsessively swirling in thoughts of death and other such unappetizing topics: the fear of never truly being happy, the inevitability of aging, and how anything with an end can be viewed as short when stacked up against eternity. Still, why does the slow motion button for life always get pushed during the most undesirable moments while something like ejaculating lasts only for a few fleeting seconds.
The plane eventually touches down, but not before the cabin crew serves us a final meal of what seems like reheated sausage egg mcmuffins from McDonalds. I’m not sure why they’re serving breakfast at 4 in the afternoon, and my internal clock gets all the more confused after I deplane, make it through customs in a snap, and step out into the afternoon light which gives off an early morning feel by the way the sun is oddly hanging in the sky. It gets dark soon afterwards as I ride the airport limousine bus to the Shinjuku Hilton where I rendezvous with Rino and Alexis. Rino treats us to a nice dinner before we set off for her parents’ apartment (or more like 3 apartments joined together) in Chiba near Disneyland.

Dear Leah - October 16

Dear Leah,
I've made you wait two weeks for a response, and that's not right, but frankly, I just got scared. I remember you telling me how Dave wrote you such good emails (along with others), and while I'm not exactly your boy toy looking to get some play (or love for that matter) out of this, I still felt intimidated. And if the truth be told, I also got distracted, more so sucked into an abyss of inactivity and lounging around which after a while can get mistaken for some degree of busyness. By this time it does not matter, though, as you are undoubtedly trekking through the backward third world jungles of Cambodia or Laos where computers don't exist and the people have never seen modern marvels such as "Dude, Where's My Car". Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if you were in an internet cafe at Angkor Wat right now (if not inside the temple itself) talking to your sister in Israel on Skype. They just don't make the third world anymore like they used to (although Cambodia would probably be something more along the lines of the second world, but who's counting).
So I'll be back to the ole' stomping ground in just one short week. Today is my last day in the States before setting out for Tokyo tomorrow and I don't have the slightest clue what I'll do there. After I get done writing this email, I'm gonna make my way over to the book store and grab a Lonely Planet guide to Tokyo, but not to buy of course - we all know I'm too cheap for that - rather just for ideas.
As time wore on during my stay at home, it increasingly felt as if I'd never gone to Thailand at all. I didn't have any new stories to tell my family or friends because they all kept updated through emails and my blog, plus all my photos are posted on Snapfish. As for the rest of America, I reduced my experience to a mere cliche of "It's hot, cheap, and I don't just have to eat Thai food because there's every kind of restaurant there you can imagine." My eyes are no more clear, no details of home are any more salient, I've been creatively defunct, but I am 23 now with shorter hair and less of a sleep deficit because sleeping here goes a lot better than over there. I ate a lot of pizza and mexican food, saw my girlfriend for about 5 minutes a day due to the fact that's all her frenetic schedule could allow (ok ok, maybe a bit more than 5 minutes), though those five minutes were pretty damn nice, and I'm just about finished with this book called "Indecision" which I've got mixed feelings about. Somehow over these last few weeks I've forgotten most of the tiny amount of Thai that I knew, so I only remember 3 words now instead of 4; and no Leah, we're not tan.

The Brothers Robbins (at 3-way family birthday celebration)

Only two more days of Satit

the superhero unit

Getting Bullied Again Like a Helpless 8 Year Old in Grade School - September 3rd & 4th

9/3 - I'm supremely restless right now. I want to focus on writing, grading, or reading, but I can't for some mysterious reason (maybe because I looked at too much internet porn as a youth). You'd think that I'd have gotten out all the restlessness at Muay Thai this afternoon, but no. I forced myself to go work out there today and somehow wound up in the group of people that ran 5km because they were too big of dicks to tell me where to turn off for the 3km route. The worst part about the run was the boredom. Their pace wasn't that fast, but it just got so incredibly tedious. I don't like running at all. By the time I started shadow boxing, my body was completely drained. Everything at Lanna Gym is done at your own pace, so whenever you feel like being done with shadow boxing (which doesn’t take long for me since I feel silly at this point with my novice technique swinging at the air and losing my balance), you can move onto hitting the bag. With this being my third day, I’m starting to feel a bit more comfortable hitting the bag. After the bag, then it’s time to jump in the ring with one of the trainers to hit the pads. Each trainer offers something different, and as I learned the hard way on my second day, the craziest looking trainer doesn’t so much let you hit the pads as make an ass out of you by parrying out of the way every time you swing only to pay you back with a smack to the face or kick to the stomach. Supposedly this is to teach the individual how to get angry, feel like they’re a helpless 8 year old getting bullied again in grade school, and maybe teach them how to take a hit and build up some endurance in the process. I wore a nice red line across my forehead from the pad as a souvenir all weekend.
Ben and Mark had already eaten dinner without me tonight because I didn't get back until after 6. Oh yes, good ole' Mark. I saw that guy around 7pm yesterday evening and he was in his room for the night watching Six Feet Under in the buff. Mark has an obsessive personality, and since being turned onto the HBO series last week, has purchased every season (bootleg of course, but still pricey nonetheless) and finished all 63 episodes (clocking in at approximately 53 minutes each) in under 12 days. It's amazing that he wonders why he had a migraine this morning.
Anyway, he said he wasn’t going out again for the evening, but as it turns out, on his way to fill up his big water bottle at the H20 supply place down the street, he bumped into two male tourists asking him if he knew anything about Chiang Mai. Only in Mark's world would they turn out to be gay partners with a propensity for threesomes. I think the conversation went something along the lines of, "You know Chiang Mai? What, you’re gay? How about we go back to our guesthouse and consummate this wonderful newfound bond!" And the rest is history.
I was left to my lonely self eating at Smoothie Blues. I ordered a tuna melt with avocado along with a mango/passion fruit/banana/yogurt smoothie to wash it all down, though I needed some water as well since smoothies aren’t exactly ideal for washing shit down. I did a little bit of grading that should’ve been done weeks ago, but it’s just so damn interminable that I have to spread it out like vegemite (very, very thin). Back in my room I made some more progress in “Kafka On the Shore” while listening to music (albeit only certain music is satisfactory for focusing – in this case it was Mirah). I'm liking the book, especially since reading the scene in which the 15 year old protagonist gets jerked off by some twenty-something year old girl, in the middle of which she suggests something along the lines of how great it would be if they were brother and sister.
Lights out. My restlessness extends well into the night – another day gone in the march toward infinity.

***

9/4 - There’s no Satit tomorrow for some reason, so I decided to try and have an enjoyable Tuesday evening, first by ordering a vanilla Kit Kat banana milkshake at Smoothie Blues in addition to a ham and cheese sandwich with added avocado. I ate with Ben and Erica while Mark came along for the ride and settled for a smoothie as he had already eaten earlier in the night. Not only had he eaten, but he’d just got done making sweet passionate love to one of the guys from the threesome while the partner was out shopping only to return a bit later as the passion was waning. Needless to say, the partner wasn't exactly thrilled to find that he’d been left out of the fun. I tell ya, Mark's got enough drama in his life to fill a country's worth of soap operas (I hear Bulgaria is knocking down his door).
Later on, Erica and I hopped on my mobile deathtrap (aka the Honda Dream circa 1992), weaving in and out of traffic without lights and a broken speedometer on our way to the North Gate Jazz Bar in the old city where we met up with Leah and her "friend" from Yale visiting for about 10 days. I also told this guy Joe that I work with (and who gave me the motorbike) I’d stop by the jazz bar. He’s been at CMU for almost four years now and it’s obvious he’s spent more than a healthy amount of time in Chiang Mai for a young American boy of 25. He’s leaving at the end of this semester, because in his words, “It’s time to finally grow up.” Joe’s friend Zero (yes, that’s his real name) was the MC for the night at the bar, as he is every Tuesday. The first thing that Zero ever said to Ben went something like this:
"Whuddya mean you're not drinking?"
"I'm pretty exhausted" Ben replied.
"Are you kidding me? It's not like you're poring over the Torah here."
We weren't sure if we heard Zero correctly because it was such an unusual thing to say. For some background on Zero, he's supposedly a half-Jewish, half-Polish, self-loathing anti-semite (at least in the words of Joe). As for Ben, when people meet him for the first time, they often make the mistake of assuming he's Jewish. He very possibly could be the most Jewish-looking non-Jew in the history of the world, though to his credit, he has been to a seder (and maybe Rosh Hashana dinner).
Tuesday nights at the jazz bar are supposed to be open mic night, but tonight wasn't so much an open mic night as a freestyle jazz session courtesy of the club's fairly talented regular performers. The crowd was comprised of mostly Westerners plus some 3rd and 4th year English students from CMU, who as it turns out, all think I'm gay with Ben because we're always seen together on campus. "What a shame," they said. "You're too sexy." I wasn't gonna argue.
The night got all the more interesting when Leah’s boy, Dave, decided to sign up as the only actual open mic performance. He had even brought along his guitar from home, but opted instead for the electric one offered by the venue’s regular guitarist for whom it successfully belted out adroit renditions of Herbie Hancock and other jazz greats. After some wisecracks from Zero about Dave hailing from Maine, “Yes Ladies and Gentleman, there is a state located north of New York” – Dave was made to promise he didn’t like Phish and wasn’t liable to start “jamming”. It was clear from the start that Dave was in trouble, especially when some of the regular musicians tried to back him up on drums and piano, only to massacre any iota of rhythm. The crowd wasn’t very amused being they wanted to hear the cool and familiar sounds off the jazz band, and some people even went as far to laugh raucously. It was pretty awful, but at least he’ll never have to see any of these people again, not to mention Leah was totally won over by his bravery. I give the kid props, though, because he was a super good sport and didn't seem to have a mean bone in his body. As Zero concluded while sending Dave offstage, "Here's hoping the kid at least gets some action out of it." And that he did, ladies and gentleman. So alas, the story ends happily after all.

Here's hoping Jared's second book is a bit more mature - August 29

Dear Jared,

Looked at ZINE WORLD. [The] review [of your zine, Jared's First Book] was not too complimentary:

"This isn't really my cup of tea - there's no narrative, and I'm having a hard time seeing this as 'art'. Here's hoping Jared's second book is a bit more mature."

I sent a stink bomb to Andrew the reviewer.

Love Dad

Is This About a Girl? - August 27th

Got another letter from Lane today – Lane, that great constant in my life: you can always count on him for consistency knowing that he’s not going to have a whole lot of updates living in a Zen center baking bread everyday. Somehow, though, he’s a lay monk that happens to be girl crazy. It’s a crazy oxymoronic situation trying to live a celibate life when you’re as horny as him, but what is Lane if not a paradox? I’m actually going to see him and the rest of the family, in addition to Emily, in just a month’s time. Yeah, I decided to head home during the semester break.
“What the hell are you doing that for?” everyone always exclaims more than asking. It's a line I often hear in my life. “Are you crazy? Is this about a girl? Don’t do it man, you’re all the way over here so you might as well travel as much as you can.”
But then there’s level-headed Alexis who offered some allegorical tale involving a little girl who buys three games of pool before quickly deciding she doesn’t even like pool in the least. The girl can either keep playing pool even though she hates it, or recognize that the money is already gone and move onto something else. In retrospect, the moral of the story is a bit hazy (being that I don’t hate traveling by any means), but it has something to do with people getting caught up in these notions of having to do something because that’s what they think they’re supposed to do. In actuality, people should really do what they want to do, and while I want to travel, at this point I would rather see my girlfriend more (along with my grandpa, mustn't forget Auntie, BJ Tucker, Tucker Carlson, and so on and so forth). There are some things I gotta iron out and make sense of, and no it’s not just a $1500 booty call, though I wonder if my girlfriend would be flattered thinking of it in such terms…she’d probably think she’s worth more. Plus, I’m stopping off in Japan for five days on the way back, so I am getting some traveling in, not to mention that I plan on geographically tramping all over the region next midterm break and once second semester ends. The ticket price wasn’t bad at all, especially since I’m getting a lump sum of over $1000 at the end of this semester for having taught a “special” class at the university (which is just a “special” way of saying that the kids were absolutely atrocious). Kind of funny that I’ll be seeing my parents in the States and then a week later they’re coming to Thailand, but considering they booked some frenetically paced tour that doesn’t really include me at all, hopefully it won’t be overkill.
Working the job that I do and living in Chiang Mai could really be the absolute high-life if only I had the people I really cared about over here (though sometimes that seems to change like a fickle Shakespearean mob). Still, in spite of the policeman that blows his whistle while pretending to direct traffic when there’s no need for him to be there in the first place; in spite of the semi-prevalent sneaks-up-on-you-when-you’re-not-expecting-it gloom that comes with monsoon season and the everyday rains; in spite of the fact that most Thai grow out their pinkie nail – especially the guys – so as to be more efficient pickers (use your imagination); in spite of the fact that I can’t catch a good night of shuteye here to save my life; in spite of the student who puts infinitely more work into complaining about her grade than doing the actual assignments; in spite of the fact that I can’t tell if I’m going mad or going mad thinking about going mad – in spite of all these things, life ain’t exactly awful.

Me and My Motorbike - August 25th

When you want them, they don’t want you, and when they want you and you don’t want them, they honk at you like a two cent whore. Hopefully my days of riding the songtaews regularly are over now that I got a motorbike, but we’ll just have to wait and see how trusty the old machine – which has passed through more than its fair share of owners and renters – will hold up. I don’t want to have to crawl back to those red truck mobsters like an ex-lover on my knees (not that I know what that’s like). And now for 2 questions:
1. Why does every restaurant in Chiang Mai insist on playing Shakira and Savage Garden every day on repeat?
2. Why is there a creepy old Western man in my apartment building swimming laps with snorkel gear on?

Borneo: July 27 – August 7

So guess where I am? If you guessed Idaho, then you're incorrect. I'm in the city of Kota Kinabalu in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the greater island of Borneo, and guess what? It's not half as crazy as it sounds. Kota Kinabalu is a city of 270,000, and while the downtown doesn't exactly have skyscrapers – well, maybe a few – it does have a Starbucks, Esprit, plus at least a few Mercedes Benzes that I saw. The downtown is situated along the waterfront over which the sky is populated with crazily shaped clouds. Ben and I took a bus into the city from the airport, which took about 15-20 minutes. It didn't take long to walk to our hostel - a rather modern and clean environment with hot showers (not that I've taken advantage of them) and free internet. We're in a dorm room with six beds, though we only met one of our sleeping mates so far, a Dutch woman whom we walked around the city with this afternoon. We stopped by the office in town to check on the status of us being able to hike Mt. Kinabalu tomorrow and it's not looking promising. We have accommodation at the bottom of the mountain, but everything at the middle of the mountain is completely booked and has been for months in advance. I know what you're thinking: why don't we just hike the mountain in one day and cut out the middle man (being the mid-mountain accommodation), but the problem is that you must have accommodation booked on the middle of the mountain before you can get a climbing permit, which is necessary to hike the mountain. Regardless, Ben and I will try anything and everything to make it up that mountain tomorrow, keeping our fingers crossed that maybe somebody will cancel and open up room for us. It's sad because Mt. Kinabalu was the initial attraction that drew us here in the first place, so I'll be damned if I don't get to see that sunrise at 4,095 meters overlooking the edge of the world.
In our wanderings around the city, we passed through a massive food market serving all varieties of fruits, smelly fish, meat, and countless other inexplicable things. I'm struggling significantly with some of the food so far since everything has meat in it and it all looks like it was just slaughtered in the backroom before they serve it to you - bones and all.

Even though we're closer to the equator now, the weather is surprisingly bearable, maybe because we're near the water and it rained a bit to cool things off, though luckily it didn't rain on us.
Last night, Ben and I had to sleep in the Bangkok airport. It's amazing that such a modern and massive airport has such little options for sleeping and with chairs that couldn't be any less ergonomic, but luckily Ben and I were permitted to sleep on the only somewhat isolated comfy chairs supposedly being reserved for some special group that wouldn’t need them until the morning. It's not like it was a decent sleep by any means, though the alternatives would have been excruciating. I'm pretty beat right now and it's only 8:40pm here. It's probably a wise idea to try and rest up before heading off to Mt. Kinabalu tomorrow, even though our prospects of hiking it aren't looking so great, probably due to the ubiquity of 16 year old British school girls on organized trips here sporting hoodies that read, “Borneo 07”. Who would've ever thought?

We showed up at the mountain on Sunday morning, and spent the whole day unsure about whether we'd be able to hike the following morning. The odds weren’t looking so good, but there were several other people in the same boat lacking the necessary accommodation near the top in order to obtain a climbing permit. Monday morning rolled around, and after some back and forth wheelings-and-dealings, we were able to obtain a permit on the condition that we hike it all – up and down – in one day. After seeing all the other puds, older seemingly unfit women and their little children managing the climb, Ben and I figured “how hard could it be?" So with our own little Malay guide Nordan, we started up the mountain at a brisk pace - a pace that would soon prove to be quite unmanageable.
“How are we doing, Nordan?” we asked our wise guide.
“I think, maybe (pause) too fast.” He muttered back in his limited English.
After a few kilometers, we were fucked.
“How bout now Nordan, how are we doing? Are we gonna be able to make it all the way to the top?”
This time, the answer was tweaked. “I think, (pause) maybe not.”
The rest stop (where they have the accommodation and restaurant) was located 6km up the mountain, and that's the point where all the normal people complete their first day of hiking. At around 4km, every additional step for Ben and I was hellishly grueling. We were alternating between carrying my backpack, but it didn't matter - backpack or no backpack, my legs were barely moving. The hike to the top is very steep and consists of thousands and thousands of steps (which straddle the line between natural and humanly groomed) that made my previous hikes seem totally laughable, plus the air is quite thin up there at an altitude of well over 10,000 feet. Every time you round a corner, you pray that there will be a stretch of flat terrain. Needless to say, Ben and I made it to the rest stop and couldn't move anymore. There was absolutely no way we were going any further, up or down. Meanwhile, we made the hike to the rest stop in stellar time; a rate which placed us at the top of times relative to other hikers. Still, we were left with the dilemma of what to do at the rest stop being that all the accommodation was booked and we were entirely spent. As fate would have it, the one day hikers are no surprise to the mountain staff, and they knew perfectly well that our chances of making it to the top were about zilch. So for more than a few extra Malaysian Ringit, they allowed us to sleep in this contingency shit-hole shack for the night and required us to pay Nordan a few extra ringits as well. It's not like it was much of a night sleep, though, because everyone wakes up at 2am in order to hike the last 2.5km to the summit in order to see the sunrise. We slept (or more accurately lied awake) on dirty beds without sheets and pillows without pillowcases in sleeping bags which God only knows when they had last been washed. It didn't really matter much because I slept in all my clothes with my hood up. It's pretty crazy going from the heat of Thailand and Kota Kinabalu to the damp penetrating chilliness of Mt. Kinabalu.
During our seven hour comatose stint in the rest lodge, we managed to make friends with a British guy named Matt who'd been in the same failed one-day hiking situation as us, so he was in the shack with us as well as a German dude somehow paying a lot less for the accommodation, and this annoying British guy and girl who chattered away the whole night. At 2am the annoying British couple woke us up before our alarm time of 2:30, and at 3am we were off for the summit. You can't really pass people as easily during the final leg of the hike because it's super dark, slippery, and too narrow at some points; plus there a few stretches where it’s necessary to grab onto a rope tied into the side of the mountain and pull yourself along so that you don't tumble all the way down treacherous rock faces. Like I mentioned before, all sorts of people (e.g. obese computer programmers from Kuala Lumpur) who don't seem to have any business hiking the mountain clog up the route, and some individuals were even throwing up off to the side while the bulk progressed forward at a rate of -2 km per hour. Ben, Matt, Nordan and I pushed ahead, and 3 hours later of muddling through the dark over ominous mountainside, we reached the summit. Waiting for the sun to rise, it was insanely cold. Coming from Thailand isn't exactly great preparation for hiking Mt. Kinabalu, and so I shivered in my soaked knit gloves (purchased cheaply in Thailand), t-shirt, thermal, hoodie, and Addidas windbreaker jacket. Peering off into the heavens, the sun rose, but in obscurity to us as it was shrouded in clouds. We still bore witness to a numinous sky illuminating before our eyes as various surrounding peaks gradually highlighted in ethereal light as if E.T. himself were touching them individually. And then, during our initial descent, the clouds receded, the sky cleared, and all those questions of whether hiking Mt. Kinabalu was worth it were put to rest. It was a divinely august beauty.

So after the beautiful views and the 2.5km hike back down to the rest stop, it felt like we were done, and then we realized we still had another 6km to hike down. Many people had told us the hike down would be harder than the hike up, but I disagree. The hike down was infinitely easier, though incredibly taxing on my joints. The trauma of going down rugged trail has left my knees experiencing an arthritic sensation previously unknown. The last stretch of the descent was particularly boring and monotonous, as by that time I was ready to be done.
Now I'm back at a different hostel in Kota Kinabalu that some friends of ours from the mountain, Ron and Carmen, are staying at. We actually met them several days prior – which in Borneo backpacker time is an eternity – on the ride over from Kota Kinabalu to the mountain and they climbed the same time as us. Ron is a 31 year old Psychology lecturer originally from East Germany but now considers New Zealand home. He’s also a very unexpectedly sill man. Carmen is a 29 year old Singaporean girl (I consciously eschewed ‘woman’) who is a former student of Ron’s at Victoria University in Wellington and just recently graduated from there. They both came over here with other members from Victoria's psychology department to attend a symposium on...surprise, Psychology, being held in Kota Kinabalu. Carmen hiked at a slow pace up the mountain and miraculously made it to the top, while Ron was the only person to put Ben and myself completely to shame. He absolutely breezed up that geological wonder, making it all seem so effortless. He looked like a fit guy, but who knew climbing mountains back in New Zealand, doing salsa, running, and practicing Capoeira makes you into a regular mountain man. Ron actually tried to make it to the summit of the mountain on the first day with plans oof going up again the next morning, but had to turn back due to bad weather. Anyway, we might hang out with them for the next few days being that they're following a similar itinerary hitting up the beaches and then heading off to Brunei for a day.

***

Sadly, I'm not gonna make it to Brunei - it will forever be the one that got away. Ben wasn't as committed to the idea of going as much as I was, so I fault him for that, but regardless, I don't think it would have been feasible because of time constraints. In order to get there, you have to take a two hour ferry to an island and then another hour long ferry to a port 25km away from the capital city, so by the time we got there we would’ve had to turn around immediately and come back. It basically boiled down to traveling all that way and paying all that money just for a stamp on the ole’ passport and not being able to see anything at all. Not that there's an exorbitant amount to see in Brunei being that it's so small, but it would've been cool to check out the elaborate mosques and hotels and take a water taxi along the river to behold the stilt villages. Brunei is an interesting place because it's only been able to remain the autonomously strict Islamic monarchy that it is because of rich oil deposits, which propelled the micro-sized country into the upper echelon of the world’s richest. The country has an incredibly high standard of living, and every time the Sultan has a birthday, the entire population receives a gift. The sad part is that once the oil runs out in 30-40 years, they'll be royally fucked. Everyone knows how the Sultan of Brunei was once the richest man in the world, but not everybody is familiar with the infamous tale of how his younger brother - while appointed as the minister of finance - managed to blow 16 billion of the country's reserves on gambling debts, cars, hotels in Beverly Hills, not to mention gold-plated toilet-roll holders. So no Brunei for us, and I don't know if I'll ever be back here again, but it turns out that Royal Brunei Airlines flies all over the world, and if you fly with them, there's a good chance you'll have a layover in Brunei. Still, I feel incomplete, and now we have this extra day in Kota Kinabalu with nothing to do.
Yesterday we went to one of the islands off the coast with Ron and Carmen. It was an extraordinarily choppy boat ride with Ben nearly bouncing overboard up front, fearful that at any moment he would break his boney butt. The island we visited was called Mamutik; not exactly the kind of place you see pictured on postcards, plus the beach was pretty small and the snorkeling wasn't so great because of the overcast weather, though I did manage to get attacked by a whole school of fish (and get bumped by some floating rubbish that sent me into a panic because I thought it was a jellyfish). On Mamutik we also met up with the rest of Ron and Carmen's psych crew from New Zealand - of which none were actually from New Zealand, but rather places like Estonia, Germany, and the Philippines - and they weren't especially warm to us. Thus, it was mostly just Ben's hairy shoulder patches and I left to our own devices. We had planned on camping out on the beach that night, but the horror stories of torrential downpour and inadequate shelter convinced us otherwise, and so we returned back to Kota Kinabalu and had dinner at the market I described previously replete with all sorts of puzzling and alien food. I tried some chicken on a stick for starters, but immediately the bone inside the first piece made me cringe, so I tossed that aside and went for the veggies. I threw something on my plate reminiscent of tortellini, though after my first bite of that, I quickly realized that it was in fact not vegetarian at all, but instead a very unfamiliar type of meat; a type of meat that comes from the wattle of a chicken. At least the desserts were good. I also attempted shopping for some fake Nikes at a night market nearby, it's just that a 9.5 shoe size in this part of the world is considered gigantic and therefore in rare supply. I know buying Nike is the worst of the worst when it comes to being a responsible consumer, but what about fake Nikes?
We said our goodbyes to Ron and Carmen a little later, for today they are making their way over to Brunei (those wretched philistines), and Ben and I retired to our dorm room. The previous night we lucked out in getting a private room with twin beds made up like a little kid's bedroom, but last night we had no such luck and once again I was given a sheet only managing to cover 1/3 of my body. The air con was blasting so fiercely throughout the night that I awoke with icicles dangling from my patchy beard. Now we have no idea what to do with ourselves today. This morning we ate breakfast in the hostel with two kids from Malaysia, and guess what, I was the first Jew they'd ever met, so of course I had to field all sorts of questions about whether all Jews are smart and ridiculously good looking (I took some creative license with the latter), yada yada yada.
The plane to Mulu was quite small, with a capacity of approximately 25 people (give or take 25, I’m not so good at guesstimating). Everyone aboard was a tourist, mostly British, though we only filled up about 1/10 of the seats (the math is really starting to get complicated here). Looking out the window fro my seat, I saw mostly undeveloped blankets of green below interrupted only by the squiggly lines of brown rivers, making the earth look as though it were various puzzle pieces neatly fit together. How long could I survive if dropped into this middle of nowhere?
During our two days in Mulu, we explored the four major caves there. For some unknown geological reason to me, there are tons of caves in the region, but only a few are open to the public, one of which is Deer Cave, the most expansive cave in the whole wide world. While the caves were really cool, it was a weird part of the trip for me because I'm not exactly sure how to properly enjoy myself sightseeing caves. I found myself struggling to understand how exactly one seizes the enjoyment in cave viewing. It’s not like we were spelunking or doing any adventure caving (though that is an option if you’ve got the time and money). It didn't help that I found it incredibly challenging trying to capture the caves in photos because of their vastness and darkness, and capturing for me is often times what makes sightseeing enjoyable, maybe because it adds some meta dimension. Regardless, the caves were most impressive. Being there reminded me of that horror film, “The Descent,” in which a bunch of girls go caving in Appalachia and come face to face with subterranean monsters. It was all the more eerie when I wound up walking one-on-one with our guide who’s indigenously from the area and he told me about a great many weird things that go on in the caves. In a manner of total honesty he said, “I’ve been in this cave and others before when no tourists were here and nobody else was around, and you can here vivid voices and laughter coming from what sounds like a large group of people. It is believed that many people have died in these caves, but we’re not supposed to talk about that kind of stuff. Even the scientists who come here to do geological research and other studies have witnessed really bizarre things, but they keep it all very hush hush because it could seriously damage our tourism.” It sounded all the more spooky hearing it in that fantastic cave as we lagged behind all the others.
Mulu is totally in the middle of nowhere. There's no way to reach it by road, so you can either fly or take a boat. There's also no town in Mulu, just the national park and villages of the Penan tribe, which is an indigenous group of Malaysia that used to be known as the head hunters. It’s weird because the only people who go to Mulu are tourists, and so there’s a strange dichotomy that exists between them and the indigenous Penan. In all, it was a good time, and the second night Ben and I got plastered on locally produced rice wine. There wasn’t really a whole lot else to do there once darkness descended.

It would’ve only been $17.50USD per person for Ben and I to share a bed in the airport hotel, but $17.50USD could afford us five meals or more at Smoothie Blues in Thailand (the Western food joint five steps from our apartment), and probably ten meals if we got them anywhere else. We’re trying to be budget travelers, so we just slept in the airport itself on the floor. For some reason, most airports don’t provide anywhere to sleep, and Kuala Lumpur’s Air Asia terminal is no exception. They made their chairs as uncomfortable as possible, hard plastic ones lipping up at the edges so you can’t lay down on them unless you want an indented spine. By comparison, the floor was our best bet, even though I felt the eyes and stares of strange people burning into me all night. It was freezing as well, and on numerous occasions I was awakened by multifarious pieces of trash hitting me from the hands of people who’d either missed the nearby trashcan or just plain mistaken me for one. The airport sanitation worker also insisted on sweeping up by my head every thirty minutes like clockwork.
We’re going home. Two days ago we were relaxing during our glorified layover in Miri for a day, an oil town that’s recently tried to reinvent itself with a name change to “The Resort City”, which seems a tad oxymoronic (if not just moronic) because there’s nothing resort-ish about it. We didn’t do much there other than deal with our perpetually disgruntled and acerbic guesthouse owner, though rumor has it that she’s actually very nice and just can’t help her caustic demeanor. Yesterday was spent milling about the fair city of Kuala Lumpur with its Western skyscrapers and Islamic flare. My friend Stephanie from the glory days of International House at Melbourne Uni was kind enough to play host for the evening and I showed my gratitude by staining her shirt with some laksa lemak after bumbling with my chopsticks and dropping a giant piece of tofu that sent the curry splattering. She took us on an abridged car tour of some of KL’s highlights, like the Sydney Opera House knockoff and the campy technicolored ferris wheel known as “The Eye on Malaysia”. We’d already covered the Menara Kuala Lumpur and Petronas Towers earlier in the day, so don’t go gettin’ your panties in a bunch. It was amazing how well Steph, such a meek and innocuous lass, could maneuver so aggressively through the city’s crazy traffic, in a manual transmission no less, and she got us back just in the knick of time to catch our bus to the airport.
It’s 5:30am right now and the airport is bustling with people eating either McDonalds or standard Nasi Lemak as they bustle to and fro with little regard for anyone else or personal space. People probably bustle like this in every airport, it’s just that in other airports I haven’t had the luxury of living like a bum and awaking to such a terrible a case of irritation. At least I only have to take my malaria pills for another seven days while Ben has to suffer through thirty more.
Goodbye Borneo (and the tad that we glimpsed of Kuala Lumpur), you were a good lover. I’ll try and spread the good word.

Checklist for 10 days in Borneo - July 28th

Malaria pills – check
4 t-shirts – check
4 pairs of underwear – check (why it’s called a pair of underwear is beyond me)
4 pairs of socks – check
1 bathing suit – check
1 hoodie – check
1 pair of shorts – check
digital camcorder – check
digital camera – check
lots of plastic bags for rain – check
positive attitude - check
Ben – check
poncho – no check
umbrella – no check
accommodation at Mt. Kinabalu – no check
accommodation in Mulu – no check

Back in Chiang Mai – July 23, 2007

Back in Chiang Mai, things were pretty much the same. My job was still there and it was easy to jump back into routine, because in Chiang Mai, nothing ever really changes.
Today Ben and I rented motorbikes after we finished up with class and took off all over town trying to take care of bureaucratic visa shit. As soon as we pulled out of the rental place, Ben grabbed the accelerator too hard on his bike, sending him crashing into the curb and flying off like a disabled bird with tourettes. Surprisingly, he emerged relatively unscathed, but it put him on the skids a bit.
When I got back to the apartment, I found a letter from Lane waiting in my mailbox, which is ironic because he should be receiving my postcard around the same time. That means we both waited exactly the same amount of time before attempting legitimate correspondence since parting ways four months prior, though he had to wait for my aunt to send him pre-addressed and stamped envelopes before he sent his. He did say he tried to call me several times but had the wrong number. In the letter he talked about having sparked something romantic with a girl who came to stay at the Zen center for a week and whether anything will come of it, even though she had to go home and he's committed to a life of celibacy for another several months there before heading over to Thailand in October. Turns out he's already researched a respectable monastery to live in, Wat Pah Nanachat in Ubon Rachathani, several hours from Chiang Mai in a totally different province. So much for coming over to see me. He'll have to shave his head and his eyebrows as well. It's such a shame that he always has to be so extreme about things – either dreadlocks or baldness, celibacy or incorrigibility, John Denver or Catharsis.
In the afternoon Ben and I took off on our motorbikes once again, this time for some leisure riding up the mountain past Doi Suthep (the famous Temple overlooking the city) and off into the Hill Tribe villages about 20km away from where we live. It was a pretty ride, which got a little cold as we sped higher up with the wind slapping against our bare arms and legs. The Hmong tribe village was not exactly what one would expect from a tribal people as it was comprised of the same kinds of craft and purse and jewelry shops as you encounter all over Chiang Mai. They didn't live in huts or anything, but rather tin shacks with corrugated roofs decorated with satellite dishes. It was a town obviously struggling to maintain part of its traditional lifestyle in the face of modernity while apparently not having the best go of it. The people there spoke better English than most of my university students. Supposedly there are less touristed hill tribe villages further away.

Our afternoon exploits left us feeling like we got the most out of our motorbike rental. We ate dinner with Leah at this restaurant called the "Art Cafe", which turned out to be much more expensive than what was listed in the guidebook, and while my turkey burrito (with Thanksgiving style turkey) was pretty good, it definitely wasn't worth 165 baht, plus they didn't even give us free water which is a total sham when you're paying that much for a meal in Thailand (conversion: $5). On the ride back it was torrentially downpouring, even though we had already waited half an hour for the storm to lessen, but no such luck. I couldn’t see and was sure I might die since my glasses were completely spotted with rain drops and fogging up pretty bad. Guess it's back to the trusty ole' songtaews.

The European Interlude: July 11 - July 20

I should’ve known they wouldn’t let me leave Chiang Mai without a fight. As a little bird informed me after the fact, in Thailand, you should always get things in writing. People like to say one thing and then say something completely different shortly afterward. Such was the case with my boss, who when I went in to hand her my substitute schedule sheet, reacted as if I was completely insane.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“The schedule and list of people who will be subbing for me while I’m gone, just as you asked.”
She retained a look of confusion on her face. “What is this for? Where are you going?” My boss always talks in a very fast and abrasive manner, like a machine gun, whether she’s happy or not, so it can be difficult to read what she’s thinking.
“I’m going to a wedding in Austria. Remember, I came in here just under a month ago and we talked about this and you gave me the go-ahead.”
“I don’t remember any such thing.”
I couldn’t tell if she was pulling my leg.
“Are you serious?” I inquired. “I came in here a few weeks ago and told you I had a wedding in Austria and you said as long as I found the necessary subs that it was fine.”
There was a long pause in which she just stared at me dumbly.
She broke the silence. “You’re supposed to be representing Princeton, right? You knew you’d be working here this year, right? I don’t know. I don’t know. You know that other girl, T___? She just decided to take off for two weeks with barely any notice. That’s not appropriate at all.”
The supply of oxygen in the room felt like it was rapidly depleting.
“But I told you about this as soon as I arrived, which was a month in advance, and you told me it was fine.” I meekly protested.
“Well, when T___ gets back, she’s going to find that she doesn’t have a position for next semester. Do you plan on just taking off like this next semester?”
“No.”
“Well, I hope not. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“So is everything all right then?”
“Fine, fine” she said in a tone that would have left complete doubt in anyone’s mind that anything was remotely fine.

And so I left Chiang Mai unsure about my job security. I flew Turkish Airlines from Bangkok to Vienna with a stopover in Istanbul. My first impressions regarding the airline were particularly drab, as were my later ones, but at least I had a whole row to myself during the 10 hour stretch from Bangkok to Istanbul. There were no individual TV screens, it was impossible to see the community screen for my section, the food was peculiar (no Pork, are you kidding me?), but it was a-ok because I pretty much slept the whole way excluding the particularly turbulent stretch a few hours into the flight which sent the drink cart lurching and the flight attendant diving. She was in a perpetually bad mood for the remainder of the flight. Such a scour on such a pretty face, and as I discovered, it seems that in order to be a flight attendant on Turkish Air, you must be pretty and wear a constant scour. Another thing I can’t figure out is why they always play “The George Lopez Show” on international flights in far off places of the world, as if it’s some kind of universal television program. It wasn’t well received in America and it sure as hell isn’t received any better anywhere else. It’s awful.
I arrived in Vienna on the morning of the 12th where I met Daniel the Swede at the airport. My flight landed slightly before his, so when he emerged from luggage claim, I was there waiting for him with a silly little sign that I’d drafted up in the interim. It was a passionate reuniting that saw us fondle each others’ balls a bit and rub facial gruff together in hopes of creating fire, then it was time to explore Vienna a bit. We walked around the city on foot, breezing past all of the churches and various other minor architectural feats because Daniel and I are such jaded travelers, though I guess the Parliament building was nice enough. Maybe it’s because people don’t know how to walk properly in Vienna, but we were accidentally bumping into someone every five minutes, to which they would meet us with harsh words and pumping fists.
On the train to Graz, Daniel and I both fell asleep, awoke to picturesque Alp scenery, dozed off again, and finally awoke in Europe’s 2003 cultural capital. Rudi greeted us on the platform, and like Daniel, didn’t look any different; still the same old Austrian Kenny G doppelganger.
Q: What did Kenny G say when he walked into an elevator?
A: Man, this place rocks!

Rudi had set us up at a really nice bed and breakfast of sorts down the road from him and right next to the church where the marriage would take place. Our room looked like a quaint version of a sample room right out of an Ikea catalogue, though much of the furniture was actual Ikea. We dropped off our bags and headed over to Rudi’s for a meal “not very representative of Austria” consisting of wraps, pute (what we call Turkey), and various “add to your liking” vegetables and condiments. There was an attempt at guacamole, so I was a very happy camper. Also in attendance at the dinner were Rudi’s fiancée Bianca, a girl named Chelsea, and her psychic mother Lori. Chelsea was once a camper of Rudi’s when he was head counselor and choir master seven years prior at Austria’s very own “Sound of Music Camp.” How Bianca wasn’t disturbed by the Lolita-esque dynamic is beyond me. On the walk back to the B&B, Daniel and I found ourselves asking the question of how we even wound up here in the first place. How well did we even know Rudi after all?

The wedding was held at a fancily architected Catholic church.
“Do you think we’ll incinerate at the entrance for being Jews” Daniel asked me.
“Who knows?” I responded. “Maybe.”
God was on our side that day and we miraculously failed to spontaneously combust. The bride entered down the aisle of the church to Bach’s eerie Toccata and Fugue – the song that’s famously used in horror movies and Tales From the Crypt (if that gives you any idea of the kind of mood it sets). This was no ordinary wedding: it was a music laden modern day opera courtesy of Graz’s own acappella choir and various tattoo-ridden and uniquely hair styled musicians wearing some bizarre-ass attire. The bride’s grandpa, a small silver-haired old man, bawled throughout the entire service, even when it seemed like things couldn’t get any happier. At some point the priest made a joke (in both German and then English) about the irony of Australians in Austria – an issue that has long confounded the world in which neither the twine shall meet or else the world might spin off its axis – which was relevant being that several people from Australia were in attendance and that’s where we all first met. After the service there were drinks served outside and I learned that “gazuntite” is actually how they say “cheers” in various parts of Austria. They had no idea that we often use it in place of “bless you” back in that hodge-podge country known as the USA. The wedding reception was held at a castle in the countryside of Feldbach. I guess it was pretty typical as far as Austrian weddings go. The first dance is always the waltz – that’s the only thing you gotta know when it comes to European weddings. Know how to waltz or face the music, that’s all there is to it. Oh yeah, for all the Austrians out there, if you’ve never been to the States before, don’t make Newark, NJ your first and only stop, otherwise your experience could be a little disappointing. This guy Philip I met still had a sour taste in his mouth over his trip to a place where he swore “they don’t have grocery stores, all the men have gigantic muscles, it always rains, and everyone eats at the International House of Pancakes.”
I left early the following morning on a train back to Vienna before jumping on a plane to Rome. Emily and I had some last-minute email swapping that left a most ambiguous meeting point in Termini Station, but luckily, amidst the five million people scurrying around frantically like insects, she found me, even after wandering to and from the hostel and waiting by the train arriving from Milan, because somehow she crazily thought I was taking the train all the way from Vienna to Rome and that miraculously it would only take a few hours. Since the reunion happened so suddenly and only after much endured stress on both parties, I didn’t get to run toward her in slow motion, pick her up and swirl her around. It was even a bit strange seeing this person, this girlfriend of mine; a girl who in two months time now came off as a stranger. To me she looked skinnier in the face. To her, I looked skinnier in the muscles. To each other, two confused people trying to find reason behind the surface. It took a while before all those old feelings rushed back, just like at the beginning when I used to get so excited around her that I could lose my food at any moment. In actuality, I did lose my food several times in the beginning, and after the beginning, and all the way up until the present.
After some cleaning up (on her part, not mine) we went out for a bite to eat with some friends she and Patrice had made from the hostel: a chronically clammy-handed Brazilian and a guy who very well might’ve been the real life Bubble Boy from Nebraska. The next two days, we did all the touristy things one does in Rome, though I missed out on the Coliseum and Roman Forum, which they had already gotten out of the way before I arrived. I had arranged for Emily and I to have our own hostel each of the two nights we were there. The first night we had a really nice room somehow obtained on a fluke, so the next morning we had to move to the hostel’s other location – confusingly enough, the hostel had three locations, all located on opposite ends of the city. They weren’t even really like hostels, but more like rooms rented out in a private flat. Both nights it was ridiculously loud outside our window. Why the city of Rome chooses to empty its dumpsters at 3am is perplexing, and why it takes an hour to do so is an even greater mystery. Our bed at the second location was elevated in the middle, so every time Emily and I came close to embracing, like a modern take on the chastity belt, the peak would hurl us down our respective sides. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. The bed in the first hostel location wasn’t comfortable either, and the following few nights, our bed at the campsite in Sorrento was even worse. The bed in Sorrento was actually two beds squished together with vicious protruding springs on the attack against our vulnerable backs and sides and stomachs throughout the night. There was also the nuisance of being sandwiched between the noisy restaurant/drinking area and our cabin cluster’s community picnic area. All this talk of dolorous beds made me forget to mention that between Rome and Sorrento, we stopped off for some pizza in Napoli where it was born. The dough tasted like Naan and the men in Napoli tend to make gross amphibian-like faces with fluttering tongues at passing by females. I’d take a slice of NYC style over Napoli’s finest any day, but that’s not to say Napoli doesn’t make decent pizza, it’s just that I prefer Pizza Hut. Sorrento was beautiful, just like Ems, so it had that much going for it. During the days we took trips to Capri and Positano. On the boat to Capri, it was reassuring to learn that Europe has its share of white trash as well. It was also reassuring to see people with BMW’s camp out in Sorrento at the same place as Contiki tour constituents, and doubly reassuring to see that Australians – with merely a population of 30 million – are still taking over the world. As the Australian backpacker I sat and ate Kebobs with in Istanbul said, “Oh gosh. Do you think we’re worse than the Japanese?”
“Eh” I began, “At least you guys don’t always throw up the peace sign in photos.”
That’s about all I remember from Istanbul. I saw Turkey’s equivalent to the Sistene Chapel in the Aya Sofya and got a stamp in my passport. Five hours in that city were a total whirlwind.
That whole day was kind of a whirlwind. I left Emily at 4am in order to walk the 3km to the train station for a 5am train in order to be on a 6am train leaving out of Napoli that was crucial if I wanted to make the perfectly timed train out of Rome to the airport where my flight was set to depart at 10am. As rough as that was, it wasn’t as rough as saying goodbye to Emily, but I’ll spare you the sentimentality.

It's Olive from Little Miss Sunshine

Truly, we're from Positano; no tourists here.