repatriating the body

Day 98: Gone to Goa

2009-12-10T21:07:00.001+09:00

I knew (and still mostly know) basically nothing about the geography of India. It was only in researching the Microsoft course that I realised Delhi and New Delhi are, in fact, the same place. Furthermore, it was only because of the training centre locations that I knew that Goa existed, and that it was nice and had beaches. Based on this knowledge, and a desire to leave Delhi, Goa became my destination.

Outside the travel agent's office in Delhi were the most flies I've ever seen in one place. I don't know why that particular street attracted them so much, it was no more filled with filth and stray dogs than any other. The train ticket gave a departure time and date, and an arrival time, but no arrival date. I asked the travel agent guy if it was, as it appeared, a 16-hour journey. He assured me it was. Twice. This seemed unlikely for 2,100km, and factoring in a bonus 24 hours brought it nicely in line with the 40 that Wikipedia claimed it would take. Wishful thinking won out over logic and rational thought, I bought the ticket. It was the equivalent of ten Euro. Naturally, the journey turned out to be 35 hours long.

The night trains I had taken in China and Vietnam had been pretty OK. Far better than buses, anyway. I could survive this. I had a middle bunk booked. On boarding it turned out that they're folded into the wall until whenever the appointed bedtime is, so the choice was to sit on a crooked seat next to an old lady for 12 hours - bear in mind my lifelong fear of old ladies - or try trade someone for a top bunk (which are always in bed form). The latter was pretty easy to do, since top bunks are undesirable due to being awkward to climb onto, but I was of a mind to see if sleeping for 30 hours straight was a thing I could do. (Result: no, it was not).

On Indian trains, or in my experience of spending 47 hours on them so far, it seems that everyone is pretty oblivious or indifferent to their surroundings. If someone wants to listen to the same music from a crappy mobile phone speaker or laptop for three hours, then by god everyone within a ten seat radius will do the same. If your group happens to be the only one to have suddenly awoken at 4am, then turn on the light and shout so you'll be heard when all of you are talking at once.

They kept us fed well though. There were always guys walking up and down the aisles with samosas (delicious!) or crisps (weird flavours!) or the guy who repeated, Pokemon-like, “coffee, coffee... coffee” as he lugged a tank of it around. When the meals were finished, I couldn't figure out where to put the rubbish. I waited, and when a group just down from me finished, I saw them gathering the remains watched for the procedure. They threw the whole pile out the window. The doors are always open on the train, and on the time I spent dangling out, willing time to pass more quickly, I noticed that pretty much the entire 2,000km track had a consistent pile of rubbish alongside it.

My destination in Goa was Madgaon, which also comes under about six different, similar names. This was just a stopping-over point (there's nothing to do there), and I had the the name of a hostel to crash in for the night. The motorbike-taxi guys who hang around every transportation point and street corner in Asia said it was 6km away, and quoted 50 rupees (75c). About 1km later, we pulled up in front of the building where the hostel apparently no longer exists. Some wandering and more motorbiking later, I found myself in the dingiest place I had stayed on this trip. It was 300 rupees (4.10 Euro, more or less) for the night, the bathroom had dirty water tracked all over the floor, the bed had no sheets and what could only be very charitably called a mattress, and curtains that the ceiling fan prevented from ever closing.

I left the next morning, realising I didn't actually know where I was going. A taxi guy wandered on up and offered to take me the 40km to Palolem for a tenner. He said there was a beach there. I was under the impression that there was a beach everywhere in Goa, and I couldn't remember if this was a place I actually wanted to go (why do I not write these things down?), but it was somewhere, so I went with it.

It turned out to be what I was looking for, and as he dropped me off next to the beach I was besieged by guys with cards offering huts to stay in. I picked one kind of arbitrarily and lugged my stuff a couple of minutes down the beach. The hut is 500 rupees a night (7.10 Euro. I wonder if quickly dividing by 70 in my head is getting any more accurate. I wonder how many currency conversions I can remember. 50 Thai Baht to the Euro, 100 Myanmar Kyat to the USD), and contains a bed with mosquito net, attached bathroom and a ceiling fan.

The weather is perfect. Sunny as hell but without the humidity. I walk daily past the cows into the sea. I read. I skip breakfast and have two meals for lunch and nothing else for the rest of the day. I sometimes poach wireless from “default” when it appears. I grow bored out of my mind. Everyone else is in groups or couples, and I don't want to be the guy who ambles up and says “hey, I'm hanging out with you guys now”. With hostels and tours and the like, there's a communal room, or common ground, or a pool table next to the bar. In Delhi last week I was awake all of half an hour before finding a bunch of people to go look at forts with. Too much time inside my own head. I wonder if I should have spent more time rambling on this instead of taking the lazy route and posting pictures. Maybe more time disconnected from people and the internet and I'd be knocking out 1,100 word entries like this every other day, but becoming more crazy. Time for a break. Delhi Friday, Agra and the Taj Mahal Saturday, Kathmandu by Monday morning. Two weeks from now, I'll be in Canada. I really need to buy some winter clothes before then.

I can hear the sea from my hut. It's pretty nice. As I write that sentence, I can hear a gang of stray dogs freaking out over something. There's something walking on my roof. Time to see about sleeping.

Day 87: A Tale of Two Training Centres

2009-11-29T21:40:00.000+09:00

Delhi looked like this:

It was an endless symphony of car horns and dust, and I had a low level of illness the entire time I was there. But I passed all my exams. Got offered the chance to leave, jumped at it.

Dehradun looks like this:

It's quiet, there are cows and stray dogs wandering about everywhere. And I passed all my exams. Except the last one, which is tomorrow.

And it's been two weeks, so it's beard update time. In this edition, I try to look as surly as possible.

Day 72: Last Days in Delhi

2009-11-14T23:52:00.003+09:00

I passed another exam on Friday, which was nice.
They gave me the option of spending my last two weeks in Dehradun, which is about 250km north of here in the Himalayan foothills. Since Delhi is noisy and dusty and overall a bit shit, I said sure. So that's where I'm headed tomorrow, and why I have to get up at 5.30am. There three weeks have flown by, as I'm sure the last two will.

Meanwhile, here's a beard update. This thing is getting a bit out of hand.

Also pictured, my collection of empty juice and water containers.

Day 60: It was a bit of both

2009-11-02T16:22:00.000+09:00

And I got 83%.
Fuck yeah.

Day 59: Adventures in the Nerd Trade

2009-11-01T21:34:00.003+09:00

I'm in Delhi and I have an exam tomorrow.

I've done one six-day week of classes* covering a huge amount of stuff every day. I signed up for the cheaper group option, but nobody else did so I get the one-on-one training at something of a discount. It's Monday to Saturday, 9-5, and I have to put in a couple of hours study in the evenings, which I've always found hard to do.

(*Apart from that one afternoon where something I ate caught up with me and I ended up on a table with an IV and a bunch of needles in my arm. And one in my hip, which was unpleasant)

So the exam tomorrow. I got practice test software from my trainer, and he said if I knew all the answers on there, I'd know about 95% of the test. Running the software, it came out with 264 questions. That seemed like a decent pool, so I sat myself down to a full day of just going through them over and over. On the first run through, though, I noticed that there were actually three sets of questions in three different programming languages. This left my actual pool of questions at 89. This seems very small. Why would I take 6 days intensive training when I could just memorise 89 answers? On the other hand, if the question pool was huge, why would the software only have 89 questions?

This leaves two outcomes:

1. It actually is culled from those 89 questions and I ace the hell out of it.
2. Those are just examples of what the questions could be, and I'm thoroughly boned. The level of detail in them means I'd have to know the entire course inside out. And I do not. Lending weight to this argument is the fact that this certification is aimed at people who've spent a few years working with the technology.

As a compromise, I'm going to spend a few more hours this evening trying to absorb as much of the books as I can, and then doing the practice tests again.

I'll find out the story tomorrow morning. As will anyone reading this.

Day 52: Bangkok beard update, part 2

2009-10-25T13:52:00.001+09:00

Two months until Christmas when I get rid of the thing.

Day 43: Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons

2009-10-16T23:36:00.002+09:00

I was concerned about Myanmar (which I guess I've settled into calling it) at first. Not for safety or anything, but that a week might be too long, I'd be bored and alone because how many people go to Myanmar? Turns out a decent amount. They blocked blogger there, and the internet in general was too slow for using a proxy to be anything but frustrating, so I'm updating the whole week now.

I was sitting next to an Italian guy named Marco on the plane from Bangkok, and he turned out to be going to exactly the same place I was, as was the Portuguese guy, Diogo, sitting in the row behind us. Going through customs, I saw my airport pickup guy, first time anyone's been at an airport with a sign with my name on it.

First day in Yangon, I walked a huge, four hour loop of the city. Not knowing what there was to be seen, I homed in on a giant, gold pointy thing that turned out to be the Shwedagon Pagoda. Inside was nuts, like a Buddhist theme park. It was just endless, endless Buddha statues houses in ornate gold buildings. There were people everywhere, monks, kids, people there to pray, people there to scam. The gold buildings against the blue sky looked pretty awesome.

Went out that night with the two guys from the plane, and an American we happened to run into.

Myanmar differs from a lot (i.e. all).of the other countries I've been to in that there are actually people who don't see foreigners as a walking cash machine. People would say hello without trying to sell something. Not that there weren't any, the two most common English words people seemed to know were “hello” and “money”, but it was nice to hang out with people. A bunch of guys on the side of the road invited Diogo and I to join their game. It's hard to describe, but it works basically the same way as pool, you have to use the bigger discs to knock the smaller ones into the corner holes.

The second night, Saturday, Ireland were playing Italy in a World Cup qualifying game, starting at 1.30am. We set out at 9pm with the intent of ending up somewhere we could watch it. Food was first, in some tiny place that had a TV in the corner showing King Kong (the new one) and occasionally flicking around to music videos and Futurama.

On the way to check out a place to watch the game, we ran into three guys playing football on the street. It was approaching midnight, and it was dark and everyone was barefoot, but they challenged us to a game and we said, sure, why not. An hour later, I had never sweated so much in my life, I couldn't walk and I lost my socks to mud, but we won, dammit. We searched for water and found some people hanging out on the street corner that sold us some. The lady there also directed us to a place that would show the game, and we actually ended up in a different one, but they had satellite TV and chairs (and that's about all) so we settled in.

1.20am, the power goes out. They tell us that's it, no game. We leave, and ten minutes later the lights in the street and buildings flicker back to life. We return. They're closing up a bit, there's kids putting chairs away and some old guy asleep on a table, but we park ourselves back in. Ten minutes later, the power goes out again. And came back again. And then, totally anticlimactically, they weren't showing the game anyway. Lame.

I left for Mandalay the next day. A 14 hour, overnight bus journey that actually wasn't that bad. Then I didn't do anything in Mandalay, and moved on to Bagan via another seven hours on a bus with no suspension flying over potholes, with obnoxiously loud pop music playing the entire time.

They charged $10 to get into Bagan. I'm uncomfortable just handing money over to the government, but it was that or walk back to Mandalay. They stung me with another $10 “airport tax” on leaving the country, which was a huge scam too.

Bagan was lovely though, I rented a bike and just went out into the fields of temples. I didn't see a single other tourist, and barely any people, the entire time. Mainly just people herding goats and cows. I went out onto a dirt track and ran into a family who spoke zero English, but showed me a temple building nearby that had a small, almost hidden staircase that led up onto the roof, giving me a great view of the entire area. Best temples yet, and I was in Angkor Wat last week. I guess I liked that they were just there, no people at the entrance, nobody selling books or water or pineapple, just these ancient temples with hidden stairways and giant Buddha statues. Check out my bag for a sense of scale in the picture below.

Flew back to Yangon from Bagan, no 20 hour buses, thanks. I went to the movies for the first time in months (what was the last one, Harry Potter in Japan?), to see Public Enemies. I don't know what I was expecting, but the cinema was big and modern, and showed the movie as is, in English with no subtitles and no cuts as far as I could tell. And then back to Bangkok from Yangon. India countdown sits at 9 days. I'm going to find a beach in Thailand somewhere to live by for four or five of them.

Day 35: Bangkok Beard Update

2009-10-08T23:23:00.002+09:00

Still going with this.

Day 32: Yarr, you call that an Angkor?

2009-10-05T22:38:00.003+09:00

Siem Reap was flooded when I got there. Not as bad as Toyohashi back in the day, but I got heartily moistened by this passing motorbike.

So, Cambodia has about a million giant, ancient temples, and here's some pictures of them and parts of them. The flood made it here too, so some of the entrances were planks of wood you just had to hope you didn't fall off.

That's some Angkor Wat right there.

Sorry about the title, Franklin.

Day 29: These currents pull us 'cross the border

2009-10-02T20:32:00.003+09:00

I got on a boat, three days up the river, into Cambodia. It was, y'know, alright. It seems mostly to be used for commerce and throwing rubbish into. Lots of rickety houses line the banks.

~~Flickr isn't letting me upload pictures, but rest assured, they're so amazing your mind will explode.~~

We had stopoffs along the way, they showed us local people making rice, paper, and rice paper. Things like that. I had two shots of some kind of liquor that came from a huge jar filled with dead snakes, scorpions and a dead chicken. It wasn't too bad. ~~Picture of that when I get them working.~~ Picture!

On the last night we stayed in this boat-hotel thing, I left my bag locked in the room while I went upstairs to eat, and some fuck stole $400 from it. I asked the tour guide to call the police, probably about seven or eight times. He just decided to be a total prick about it, and complain about the trouble I was causing him. It's 11 o'clock and he's tired, boo fucking hoo, or the police are asleep, or when he called nobody was there. Who answered the phone then, genius, I asked. Oh, there's one guy there. But he can't leave. In the morning, I tried again. He wouldn't call. Because the police would "kick you [ie me]" and/or only arrest the Chinese guy I was sharing a room with who wasn't on the boat when it happened, and completely ignore the staff who were shady as hell and had a spare key. The boat to Cambodia was leaving, there was nothing left I could do, so I called him a cunt a few times and resigned myself to the loss.

The previous day was cool though, I got drunk with a Canadian guy at lunch next to a giant statue of Ho Chi Minh.

Day 27: Prostitute Wednesday

2009-09-30T23:41:00.002+09:00

It's Wednesday right? You walk down the street, and if you glance into traffic for only a second, a motorbike will pull up beside you with two women on it: one older, disinterested, the Driver; the other young, usually pretty hot, but made-up to her back teeth, the Worker. I didn't actually hear what their sales pitch was, but it was probably something along the lines of "you! young foreign man! if you pay me money you may have sexual intercourse with me!". It lacks the subtlety of "massage!" This happened to me four times in 25 minutes today, and only today. The funniest was when I was waiting to cross the road and one happened to stop in traffic in front of me. The Worker opened her mouth to say something, but I just waved them on down the road, and traffic started moving at just that second so the bike moved off without her getting to say anything.

Day 26: Saigon. Shit. I'm still only in Saigon

2009-09-29T22:57:00.003+09:00

I've been waiting years to do that title. Nothing has even really happened in Saigon. It seems like a pretty nice, modern city. I went to the Reunification Palace, and the war museum (hello, deformed children photos). I went to a restaurant that served food from Singapore, like beef. Beef only comes from Singapore. I've been offered drugs and motorbikes a lot.

Anyway. One travels to discover oneself, and in amongst all the 21 hour train journeys where I explore the inner recesses of my mind, trying to discover what kind of person I am and whether I'm happy with that, I've wondered what would happen if I tried to grow a beard. Doing it in college seemed pointless, seeing as Conor and Enda were present. But it's been about two weeks since I shaved in Shanghai, and I'm wondering if I should leave it straight through to Christmas just to see what happens. It's kind of annoying to have, but when will I get this chance again?

So tomorrow I'm going to tour the Cu Chi tunnels, and Thursday I'm taking a two day boat up the Mekong into Cambodia. You could argue that I'm doing this because of Apocalypse Now, and you'd probably be right. Right now I'm going to see what Lars Von Trier has been up to, there's another post below this that I just published too, check it out.

Day 23: Hoi An, the anagram lover's Hanoi

2009-09-26T10:49:00.002+09:00

The Hoi An Old Town (or Ancienttown, as all the signs put it. Or, at least one sign put it) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a really nice place to go on a date. I didn't date anyone there, but if you're hanging around at a suburban shopping centre somewhere, and feel like asking out the girl next to you, take her to central Vietnam. This link from the UNESCO website gives next to no information about it. (Side note: the Ha Long Bay entry seems to imply you can have a dragon tour guide. This is not the case).

Anyway, here's a couple of pictures I took of the place.

I got totally insulted by a dog in a restaurant. Yeah, I'm eating in restaurants that have dogs wandering about. Restaurant is kind of a grandiose term for it anyway, it's more of a place that happens to have tables and food. Anyway. It was lying on the floor a few feet from me, and I was doing the get-a-dog's-attention stuff, clicking my fingers, whistling slighty, and so on. It drags itself to its feet with a look of tired resignation, walks five feet further away, and lies back down. I was hurt. Of course, when my food came, it was a different story.

In that same place, a couple of days later, (it was just outside the hostel), there was an Australian guy and an older Vietnamese guy sitting at a table, with a lot of alcohol sitting on it. The Vietnamese guy was on the phone for a bit, talking, and when he's done, he turns back to the Australian guy. "That guy who's been phoning you and calling you a dog," he says, "that's her boyfriend and they live together". Aussie guy looks very pissed off. "That's why she'd never let me come to her place. I came all the way to Vietnam for that bitch."

When I first got to the hostel, I was given my room key and walked upstairs. On opening the door, there was a naked Argentinian guy standing there. Oh, sorry, he said. Don't worry about it, I replied. That was the only time we spoke.

The beach in Hoi An was lovely. I spent over an hour in the sea jumping into waves. I didn't take any pictures, I had nobody to look after my camera while I was in the water. I had rented a bike, so I cycled the 25 minutes back wearing only swimming shorts, this beacon of pale drifting through the countryside, being gawked at by everyone.

At another dinner I met a Dutch guy who was telling me about when he went to Burma back when it was called Burma, and of escaping Europe for good.

The time came to leave, I bought a ticket for the bus to Saigon. They said it would arrive the the hostel at 1.30pm. After a long period of being jerked around, the bus departed from a separate travel agent at 7.30pm. And it was awful. Don't ever get a sleeper bus in Vietnam. The entire trip they either play a) American action movies dubbed by one angry Vietnamese lady or b) constant pop music. The first one sounds like this entertaining, ridiculous thing that would be perfect to pass the time, but you can only take so much of someone talking over Jason Statham before you try to lie down on your tiny bunk and suddenly you're bounced a foot in the air by a pothold and SOUND OF SMASHING GLASS AND YELLING VIETNAMESE LADY.

I don't want to end the entry with complaining, so in conclusion, Hoi An was lovely and I recommend it to anyone. Get a suit made, I would have if I had more time there. Eat ridiculously cheap food. People seem to take pictures of their meals when they go places, maybe I should do that.

Day 19: One short day in Ha Long Bay

2009-09-22T21:21:00.000+09:00

The hostel arranged trip out to Ha Long Bay, which is about 3 hours away from Hanoi. I chose the spend-one-night-on-the-boat option. There were 9 of us in the group, myself + 4 Germans, 2 Kiwis & 2 Brits. We got out on the water by noon and had some lunch, took a trip to a cave (see: bottom of this entry). The boat parked outside the cave and we kayaked over to the beach. It was beautiful, the water was the warmest I've been in outside of times people pee in the pool.

It looks a lot like Guilin, except bigger. I'm putting in a photo with a Vietnamese flag for emphasis.

In case you're sick of beautiful scenery, here's a rock that looks like a penis:

Day 18: Hanoi is all about the motorbikes

2009-09-21T23:58:00.000+09:00

Everywhere you go, there's the familiar shout of "Hello! Motorbike!". For as cheap as you can negotiate, a random guy on a bike will give you a lift to wherever. I walked to the train station to buy my ticket to Hoi An, and decided to give it a shot on the way back. I pointed at the hostel on the map and we agreed on a price, which was about 60c. It was supposed to be a pretty short ride. Unfortunately (I guess, I had time and wasn't bothered) the guy either couldn't read a map or didn't know his way around Hanoi, so I went in a big loop for about 20 minutes through the mental traffic.

Day 18: There are more white people than Vietnamese in Hanoi

2009-09-21T23:33:00.008+09:00

I'm serious. There's people with backpacks and maps and cameras everywhere. (I'm aware that I'm one of them).

When last I wrote, I was in Guilin. After the boat trip and a pause in Yangshuo, I spent the evening there drinking weak but absurdly cheap (600ml, 60c) beer and playing pool. The next afternoon, train to Nanning. Nanning seems only to exist as a place to pause before going to Vietnam. There are very few hostels, and the one I stayed in was full of information on how to get visas and buses to Hanoi. Which was handy, considering that's where I was going.

Met a couple from Kerry getting the same bus as I was, we started out early to catch it at 7.30am. It was hard to sleep on the bus as they had the TV and speaker system playing crappy Chinese pop music and ads for the entire thing, but we got to the Vietnam border before noon anyway. Chinese customs, Vietnamese customs, a new country, a new bus.

When we got to Hanoi, there was a really pushy guy on the bus trying to get us (me and the other two Irish, the bus' caucasians) to stay at some specific hotel. We told him we had booked places, he said, ok, we'll take a taxi together to "Oakwater" and go from there, it's closer. I pointed out that we hadn't said where we had booked places but he was undeterred. He kept this up when we were outside getting our bags and it got to the point where I had to say to him "we're not going with you, seriously go away". He went away.

I had a walk around Hanoi's Old Quarter and around Hoan Kiem Lake. It's pretty cool, though every single person is trying to sell you something. Mainly books and drugs. It's nice to look at though, it seems less of a generic big city like Seoul and Shanghai, or anywhere that gets enough people.

In my walking, I had a map from the hostel, which noted a massage place not too far away. Seeing as my back is something of a mess, I thought, hm, sounds good. I walked to where the arrow on the map was, and sure enough there was a massage place, but I didn't see the name written anywhere to indicate it was the massage place. It was on hospital grounds though, how bad could it be? Worst case scenario, I have to politely turn down a handjob. I went in.

They asked for money up front. 80,000 dong, which is a little over 3 Euro. I forked it over and was brought around the corner into a room. The massage girl put something down on the table, gave me a hanger, said something in Vietnamese and left. Shit, what do I do? On the table was a towel and a pair of shorts that had a waist maybe twice as big as mine. It's like a Zelda game, you have items and a goal, you just have to figure out what to do. Any kind of wrong move would be pretty embarrassing. There was a shower cubicle adjoining the room, so I figured, towel, hanger, I must have to shower. Nudity was a big step though, if that was a mistake, weirdness would surely ensue. I showered quickly, and came out wearing only the giant shorts, with the waist drawstring tied up tight. I sat on the table.

The girl came back in, said something, and went for the string of the shorts and started to untie them and pull them down. Oh shit. I start to lower them confusedly. My ass is exposed now. As soon as it gets to this level, she says something that clearly means "oh god, stop there". So I end up lying there, face down on a table that has a hole cut in the cloth for your face, but no hole in the actual table, so you can't breathe, fan blowing on my bare ass. She climbs on the table and sits on me. The massage begins. It's pretty bad. She's kind of just randomly rubbing my back and grabbing handfuls of flesh and letting it go. I'd gone semi-regularly to the massage place next to the gym back in Toyohashi, so I got used to what it's supposed to be like when someone knows where muscles are and what to do with them.

Nonetheless, it continues. There's a pause, when you know something different is about to happen, and holy fuck she's kneeling on me. She walks up my back on her knees, and then back down. That part was pretty nice, actually. Then the legs, which felt a lot like someone grabbing bits of my legs for several minutes.

Then I have to roll over and lie on my back. If anything untoward is going to happen, it's going to happen soon. The shorts have been pulled up at this stage, thankfully. The leg "massage" continues, but due to the giant nature of the shorts, I'm sure there was a lot of visibility. So I'm lying there trying to ignore it, mentally writing this blog entry, when she tries to move her hand over and hits me in the balls on the way. Fucking hell. The worst of it is over with this, and as I'm leaving, someone with rudimentary English comes in and says I'm supposed to tip because "massage very good". I'm like, yeah, how much, and she pulls out a 100,000 note and points at it. This is, if you recall, more than I paid in the first place. I gave a 50,000, which I suppose is only 2 euro and got the hell out of there.

Going to Ha Long Bay tomorrow, expect many pretty pictures when I get back on Wednesday.

Day 15: I'm in Guilin and I approve of it

2009-09-18T23:55:00.003+09:00

I took the Li River boat ride today and this is what it looked like. Two days before I came here, I had never heard of the place. Thanks, Weija.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3500/3930957477_93d03da177.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="guilin" />

We stopped for a swim in the middle of it, which was the best part. Nobody had swimming gear though, so it was just underwear. I spend the second half standing of the boat trip next to a large, tattooed Polish guy in damp briefs. Totally worth it.

Day 11: Above Sea

2009-09-14T23:54:00.001+09:00

Qingdao was pretty cool.

The hostel, called the Old Observatory, was in an old observatory, and one of the rooms for people to hang out in still had a giant telescope in it. As well as that, they had a huge outdoor deck, with tables and couches and a (kinda crappy) pool table. I was in an 8 bed dorm, which also contained one guy and five Chinese girls.

First afternoon, after spending longer than I should have getting around the government internet block, I took a walk around town with an English girl I had met on the boat from Korea. The area immediately outside the hostel was a pleasant stone staircase through the woods, which then emerged into a few hundred metres of destroyed houses. It was like a war zone. If and when I get to a decent-speed internet, I'll get some pictures up. Downtown we had gyoza, which was seriously good, and I felt obligated to try the local Tsingtao beer.

That evening, I heard Irish accents from outside on the deck, and found a group including three Irish and a bunch of other nationalities, all of whom were down from Shanghai. Myself and Anna, the girl from earlier, joined them for food. We got taxis down to near the brewery and ordered an inhuman amount of seafood, and more beer. And then out to a bar afterwards, there were flaming shots, with which I nearly managed to set a table on fire through sheer force of being a retard.

The next day I took it a lot easier. Walked through town again, went down to the seafront and down the pier. Hung out at the hostel with the Chinese girls from my room, eating pig skin (they said) and drinking (not very much) beer from a plastic bag.

I'm in Shanghai right now. Today consisted of a ten hour train.

I lost the seven of clubs. I think it's still in a book in Qingdao. However, a French guy I met in Seoul is going there this week, and may see me again in Thailand or somewhere. Don't give up hope.

Now: pictures.

The view from the roof of the hostel, Qingdao is a mixture of German-style buildings and generic skyscrapers. Before I got there, I somehow had the impression it was a pretty small place, but in hindsight it's got twice the population of Dublin.

The hostel's outdoor area, complete with dome.

It was apparently the first observatory in China.

I'm pretty sure there wasn't a war recently, but I can't be sure.

This is a picture of a street. Having been in Japan so long, it's kind of strange to see churches now.

You know it's a European style street because you can buy wine.

There were about two dozen couple taking wedding photos outside this thing. I thought it was for a catalogue or something.

The city from the pier.

The pier from, uh, a different part of the pier.

Day 7: Boat II, this time it's boatier

2009-09-10T19:53:00.009+09:00

This is kind of a placeholder post. Blogger is banned in China, and the software I'm using to get around that makes things way slower on top of an already slow connection. So no pictures. I'll fill it out if I get a better connection in Shanghai.

In short, I got a boat from Korea to China.

In long, I got pictures working.

Leaving Korea on the boat, people started throwing bits of food to the seagulls, who caught on pretty quickly and spent about 20 minutes dive bombing the boat. The best part was when the food would go slightly behind them and they'd try to stop dead in mid-air, and look completely ridiculous.

As soon as we got on the boat, every single person started gambling.

Nobody observed smoking etiquette. Sadly.

In other news, I booked a flight (rather, three flights) from Kathmandu to Toronto for Christmas and new year, and then I'm going to spend something like ten days in New York. Where, exactly, I don't know yet. I then fly from JFK to Moscow to finish out the trip. So no Mongolia, no Trans-Siberian. No regrets.

Day 6: When you're stuck in a nightclub and you can't get out of it

2009-09-09T11:51:00.000+09:00

Seoul was pretty fun. I did the tourist sights last time I was there two years ago, (temples! more temples!), so this time I just hung out. The hostel, in contrast to Busan, was swimming with people. I got talking to a German girl in my room who said that people were heading out to karaoke later. What better way to celebrate having left Japan?

Karaoke in Korea (Koreoke? You heard it here first) was dissimilar to Japan in that it wasn't nearly strongly enough associated with drinking like a loon. We did an hour an the machine told us we were finished. Oh well. We tried. It would have all been pretty uneventful if the staff hadn't stopped us on the way out and threatened to call the police.

Confusion.

They claimed that two people in our group had set off the fire extinguisher downstairs, and that we had to clean it up or they'd call in a SWAT team (possible exaggeration). Instead of just telling us who did it, they made us watch the security footage. It was the two French guys who had tagged along and nobody seems to have really talked to. They tried to talk their way out of it but were instead sent down to clean. The rest of us walked off.

The second night was messier. There was a group of 15, tequila, and a nightclub. I tried to leave at 2am, but wasn't in the kind of state where I could find the exit. I found the VIP section, and was told not to go in there. I found the women's bathroom, and was told not to go in there. But I still fared better than others. Seems like most people got lost on the 15 minute walk back. One guy got two taxis and still had to walk for ages.

The night after that was a quiet one.

Unrelated musical post

2009-09-07T20:12:00.001+09:00

I've started to appear on youtube.

Day 4: Seoul Train

2009-09-07T17:14:00.005+09:00

I swore I wouldn't do a Seoul pun. They're too easy, just sitting there waiting to be picked off. But here we are and we'll all just have to deal with it together. At the very least, it's true, I got the train from Busan to the ROK capital.

To rewind a little, the second night in Busan was better than the first. That guy I guessed was a middle-aged German hippy turned out to be a middle-aged French hippy who'd been travelling for two years non-stop. I asked him how he afforded it and he paused and said... uh, it's a secret. There was a Japanese guy too, as well as the owner, who brought out beers and Korean liquor and we sat around for a couple of hours. I think the owner guy might have been subtly hitting on the Japanese guy, but it could have just been drink-related.
The next day I was on the train to Seoul. It was pretty much the same as the Shinkansen in Japan. Seoul is much more promising, people wise, my hostel room is full of bags and mess and someone left a laptop just sitting there. Might turn out to be worth hanging out for a few days.
I'm so hungry. So very hungry.

Edit: I have now eaten and made karaoke plans with Germans.

Day 3: The perils of off-season

2009-09-06T16:24:00.004+09:00

So, here I am in Busan, South Korea, sitting alone on the floor of an empty dorm. Check out the mosquito nets.

Summer has, I guess, been officialy over for six days, so there's nobody around. There was a Canadian guy I was talking to briefly, and someone who turned up today and looks like a middle-aged German hippy. Considering the circumstances, he most likely is a middle-aged German hippy. So I've just been walking around town on my own. It's reminding me of how Tehran was, in that I'm weirdly isolated and the city smells pretty bad.

However, she shining ray of awesome is this:

Gwangalli Beach. It's been two years since I last swam in the sea, at Pacific Beach in San Diego, and it's good to be back. I heart the sea.

In other news, I've been thinking for a while what to do for new year. I'm going to head to Mongolia around January 7, and flying to there from pretty much anywhere I could be is going to be expensive. So Bangkok maybe, I thought. A Thai island of some kind (good ones, not the leper ones)? Some random town in India? Shit, I thought, I should just go to Toronto. Then I realised I should do exactly that. Six months is too long for this being-alone thing. See you later, Canadia*.

*Not a typo.

Day 2: It could have been a brilliant Korea

2009-09-05T13:04:00.002+09:00

Well, I made it. I paid for the privilege of cancelling my phone, got the subway, the wrong train, then the right train and got myself to Osaka International Ferry Terminal. The boat had musicians in the lobby, like it was a real proper cruise for people who take cruises.
I was in a room with two other guys (the trip was overnight), one of whom just sat on his bunk constantly playing the PSP, the other lay there half dressed watching Korean gameshows.
We sailed down the middle of Japan, under (I think) the bridge that joins Kyushu and Honshu.

And sailing through the remainder of the country at dusk was pretty nifty too.

Then bam, Korea.

You can totally tell that it's a different country, and not just any old picture of a random port. I'm going to go find the beach.

Like a monkey, ready to be shot into space

2009-08-29T20:29:00.003+09:00

A space monkey.

Five

2009-08-18T12:58:00.001+09:00

With apologies to John Rambo and Aung San Suu Kyi.

Burma Schedule

2009-08-11T13:30:00.002+09:00

The visa application requires me to tell them where I'll be and when I'll be there. I'm going with this:

October 9: Fly from Bangkok to Yangon.

October 10: Sightseeing in Yangon.

October 11: Bus from Yangon to Mandalay (15 hours approx.)
Spend the night in Mandalay.

October 12: Sightseeing in Mandalay

October 13: Train from Mandalay to Pwin U Lwin (approx 4hrs)
Sightseeing/stay in Pwin U Lwin

October 14: Train from Pwin I Lwin to Mandalay.
Stay in Mandalay.

October 15: Bus from Mandalay to Yangon.

October 16: Fly from Yangon to Bangkok

Four

2009-07-31T14:19:00.004+09:00

I can kinda see where Russia gets its reputation as being hard to get a visa out of. Their list of documents was pretty vague and sometimes contradicted itself, but once I went to the embassy they gave me two forms to fill out (application, proof of health insurance), and sent me on my way. A week later:

I've been on the phone to the Indian visa section four or five times since I last updated and that's solved too. I have to go to Tokyo again, unfortunately, on September 3. Having that as my issue date will mean my visa expires on December 2, giving me time to finish the training and then two days to get from Delhi to Kathmandu.

Next application: Burma, to post on Monday.

Brainwave

2009-07-26T12:59:00.001+09:00

If I stay in Japan for an extra week, I can get my Indian visa issued a week later. This will be long enough to do the course, and I can go to Nepal when it ends and apply for a tourist visa to get back in. Booya.

Indian Visa Frustration

2009-07-24T16:12:00.002+09:00

I've been waiting two days for the Indian Embassy to call me back with a "question" about my application. I got sick of it and called them, and eventually got put through. The question, it turns out, is "are you aware that the visa you're going to get is pretty useless and that we won't refund the 15,000 yen we charged you for it?"

Rewind! I can't get a tourist visa because I'm doing a training course in India. I need an "entry" visa, which does the same job of allowing you to set foot in the country, but costs three times as much. So I applied for this. On leaving the embassy, I asked how long the visa would be good for. Five months, the lady said. Five months, I asked again to be sure. Five months, she confirmed. Yeah, turns out it's good for three months, meaning the visa runs out a week before the training course ends, and six weeks before I had planned to leave India. And that's if I wait for the day of issue to be the day I leave Japan.

What can I do?

1. Accept the visa, since they're not giving my money back, and hope it can be extended in India. For more money. Quick investigation leads me to believe a 15 day extension can be given in "emergent circumstances".
2. Cancel the application, reapply as a tourist. Too obvious a scam.
3. Hopefully on getting the extension, fly to Bangkok after the training, apply for another visa, then fly back to India and continue as planned. That's about another 300 euro, and I'll have to spend a week (at least) in Thailand while it's being processed, if it can even be done at all.
4. Skip the month travel in India, just move on to Mongolia and catch the train to Russia? Whoops, my Russian visa is being processed for January.
5. Cancel this whole fucking fiasco and get a job in the Irish civil service.

Genghis Khan't

2009-07-14T10:47:00.003+09:00

I called the Mongolian embassy and had to explain my situation in Japanese, which probably made me sound like a child.

Good news/bad news result:

Bad news, I've bought a useless visa and there's nothing I can do about it, rendering my Tokyo run that little bit more pointless.

Good news, I can apply for the Mongolian visa in India, when it will be within three months before I go there, so it's off the present to-do list and I'm down to three.

Conclusion: Vietnam embassy is still best embassy.

Almost Three

2009-07-13T16:33:00.002+09:00

The Mongolian embassy was equally quick and courteous. They said they'd process my passport in a week, it took less than two days. All this would have been fantastic if I hadn't planned to enter the country in January 2010. Back to square one.

Two

2009-07-13T16:30:00.004+09:00

The visa section of the Vietnamese embassy was a weird place. There were six or seven people sitting around waiting in complete silence. The lady behind the counter took my application with barely a word (though not impolitely). I sat down and waited, not entirely sure for what. Half an hour later:

Vietnam embassy is best embassy.

One

2009-07-07T17:53:00.003+09:00

Updated with non-crappy picture!

China

2009-07-06T02:04:00.000+09:00

Qingdao to Beijing to Xi'an to Shanghai to Nanning to out of China.

Checklist Time

2009-07-06T00:59:00.001+09:00

Leaving Japan, August 28. Here's what I have to sort out before then.

VISAS:
China
Vietnam
India
Burma
Mongolia
Russia

China, I should have in the next day or two. Hopefully I won't have to go to Tokyo and back for every single one of the others because that would probably end up being the most expensive part of this whole thing. Burma, at least, told me they could do the whole thing by mail, in ten days. Russia won't be easy. India will. Vietnam & Mongolia are a mystery.

HOSTELS
Seoul
Hanoi (maybe, might just wing it)
Qingdao (my first stop in China)
Moscow
St. Petersburg

TRAVEL
Bangkok <-> Yangon flights. Oct 9-16, probably. This will be cheap and easy to do online, once I get the Burmese visa.

Somewhere -> Ulaanbaatar flight. Have to figure out the cheapest way to get here from, uh, somewhere. I'm open to trains too.

Trans-Mongolian Railway, Ulaanbaatar to Moscow. January 12 - 16. Booking this should be pretty easy once the visas are in place. Helps that I'm doing it way in advance.