10 things to do in the Hong Kong international transfer terminal

Not my photo.

What to do when you're trapped in an airport for twelve hours? It depends on the airport. Major ones obviously have shops and cafes and even game arcades where you can whittle away your time. But what if you're a lone traveler stuck in the transfer terminal of, say, Hong Kong International Airport while you wait for someone else to show up? 

No cafes, no bookstores, no arcades, and just a single forlorn noodle shop. 

Four power outlets and eight hundred people in line to use them. 

Free wi-fi that keeps resetting itself (and whatever webpage you were visiting). 

The city's too far away to reach quickly or cheaply, and besides—you don't want to head through customs and immigration and wait at the airport entrance for fear of losing your beloved partner in the crowd. 

So you sit around in the lounge for eleven hours, tapping your feet and losing your mind. 

Here are some tips to help close that day-long gap in your sanity: 

1. Leave the airport. No-brainer, this one. I was waiting for Miss H to show up on a late afternoon flight, but you aren't! Get out! Go to Hong Kong! You'll miss all the fun stuff below, but you'll save a lot of time. 

2. Take a walk. Explore! Throw that bag over your shoulder ('cause there aren't any lockers or anything) and walk the whole hundred yards from one end of the terminal to the other. If you get really bored, ride the escalators up and down for two hours. Or take in some sights at the shops...both of them. Don't just sit around; you'll give yourself bedsores. 

3. Get a snack. There's only one noodle joint, but so what? The noodles come in a salty broth and have forlorn little bits of soggy hot dog in them, and that never gets old! No convenience stores either, so that makes your choice real simple!

4. Read a book. I hope to God you brought one! Or five!

5. Surf the Web. You might have to wait around for three or four hours until someone vacates a seat near one of the four power outlet stations. Just don't forget to be polite and kick the old Chinese grandma's luggage off the seat, because goodness knows there aren't people waiting to sit down, Granny! 

6. Update your journal. Lots of exciting things happening in this terminal! Even more exciting than the time you got a dull, rusty spike driven through your head with a mallet!

7. People watch. All sorts of people come through Hong Kong, heading to and coming from every part of the planet: Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, an American in a business suit, Chinese, Chinese, more Chinese, two or three Arabs, Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, a couple of Japanese coeds, Chinese, Chinese, and Chinese. You can also marvel at the aircrews (foreigners and Chinese!) stuffing their faces at that one single noodle shop with the soggy hot dogs. 

8. Meditate. You probably won't feel stressed or antsy at this point, but in case you have accumulated a smidgen of white-hot, misanthropic rage in your belly, curl up on that nice, clean carpet and oohhhmmm it all away! Just don't get run over by anyone's luggage or kicked by any Asiatic who has no sense of personal space. 

9. Shell out for extras. Some of the nicer airports in the developed world have VIP lounges where you can eat a meal, go online, watch a movie, get a haircut, or take a shower or a nap, and Hong Kong International is no exception. It might cost a little extra but it's infinitely more comfortable than crashing on a lounge bench. And by "little extra" I mean about a hundred U.S. dollars an hour. Pocket change, right?

10. Look on the bright side. I mean, eleven hours of your life isn't much, right? That's only as long as it would have taken you to eat three meals, read seven chapters of your book, spend a lovely day together with your significant other, put in a full day's work on your laptop, or basically do anything else remotely useful. No time at all! And when the eleven hours is up, you'll meet the love of your life and the two of you will have a ball in Hong Kong! 

...after you wait in line to get through security, pay one hundred Hong Kong dollars, and spend 40 minutes on the Airport Express to the city, that is.

Hong Kong International Airport, baby! It's all you can stand!

why I hate Singapore

Apart from the stinking heat and humidity, the enforced sterility of the streets, the craven pandering to foreign investors and tourists, the banal plague of trendy Western department stores and fast-food chains, the parsimonious pedagoguery of the government, and the ridiculous expense...

...there were three things about Singapore I truly despised. 

First, this was the name of one of the Chinese restaurants near the check-in counters at Changi Airport:

Second, Changi Airport itself. The first thing that struck me about the place (apart from the above sign) was the lack of a security checkpoint. I obtained my boarding passes, got an exit stamp in my passport, and boom: there I was in the concourse. I turned left and walked to my gate. It was about ten o'clock in the evening and there wasn't much activity in the duty-free shops or coffeehouses. Most folks were curled up in the darkened departure lounges, several of which had fully-reclining seats. Snores, grumbles, and muted conversation permeated the recirculated air, making me feel like I was creeping through a dormitory after lights-out. 

Then I noticed that there were glass walls enclosing each gate, which could only be accessed through thick double doors (also of glass), behind each of which was a miniature security checkpoint. 

Ah, I remember thinking. Now that is nifty. Instead of waiting in an endless queue with everyone else in the damn airport, you'll only be waiting in line with the people aboard your particular flight. 

Then I sat down and tried to access the Internet. 

Now, I know what you're going to say. What a spoiled, privileged little white brat, hung up on his First World problems. No Internet, boo-hoo-hoo. Man up and read a book or something, chickenshit. 

And you'd be justified in saying that. But I'll declare, here and now, that the cussed Internet provided a vital link between me and (a) my lonely fiancée and (b) my terrified parents. Okay, maybe not terrified. But definitely leery of some the places I'd be passing through. I'd agreed, like any good son, to keep in close contact with my folks during my 27-day jaunt through Southeast Asia, e-mailing them whenever I arrived at or departed a new bailiwick. Even Paul Theroux phones home on occasion. Sue me. 

I couldn't access the Internet at Changi Airport. 

Why? 

Because the password could only be found on placards hung upon the wall of the departure gate. On the other side of those locked glass doors. Which wouldn't open until 12:50 a.m., an hour before our departure time. You could have the codes texted to your phone, but I didn't have a phone. 

This was tyranny, plain and simple. In any American or Korean airport you could breeze through security two or three hours beforehand and then laze around the concourse, surfing the Web, drinking coffee, eating unhealthy snacks, and splattering your smelly body, your grubby coat, your crumpled hat, and your electronic gadgetry over an entire row of benches. 

Apparently they frown on that sort of thing in Singapore. 

My American sensibilities were offended on the deepest of levels. Up to that point I had patiently put up with the pettifogging Singaporeans and their absurd laws: the bans against spitting and chewing gum and graffiti and the ridiculous fines for littering and not flushing public toilets. But this was simply too much. The prejudice leveled against some saphead tourist who showed up to Changi Airport with an iPad and no cell phone three hours early for his flight, who just wanted to contact his loved ones and let them know that he wasn't sitting in some whorehouse in Johor Bahru, shooting heroin and contracting all sorts of blood-borne diseases, was outrageous.

When the security agents finally did open up those thick glass doors and started letting us through security, the final nail was driven into Singapore's coffin. I had a grooming kit in my backpack. It wasn't expensive or irreplaceable by any means, but it had been a treasured gift from my parents—a tacit acknowledgement that I was a man, and was capable of looking after myself on my own. In it was a pair of beard-trimming scissors. I had successfully passed through security at Gimpo Airport with those very same scissors. There was no reason whatsoever for the svelte, fruity-voiced Indian lady in the blue button-down shirt and black tie and slacks to pull me out of line. But she did. She ordered me to empty my bag. She confiscated several bottles of suntan lotion which were too large. That was fine by me; I'd plumb forgot they were in there. But then she ordered me to open the grooming kit. I unzipped the small black leather case an opened it like a book, holding it out for her to see. I was writhing with impatience. The entire contents of my pack were scattered across the cold, hard, unfeeling stainless steel of the exam table, and my fellow passengers were scooting impatiently past me to get into the lounge proper. I felt naked, like someone had pantsed me in public. I was anxious to sit down, jack in, and contact home. I was half-crazed with outrage. 

"You cannot take these aboard the plane," said the security agent, her sultry eyes sunk deeply into their sockets, caked with mascara and purple eye shadow beneath plucked eyebrows, snatching the beard-trimming scissors and waggling them under my nose. 

It was then, ladies and gentlemen, that the Vaunter did something he has never, ever done in his entire life. He questioned authority. 

"Why not?" I demanded. "They're mine. They belong to me. I brought them through other airports' security lines just fine." 

"Well, I'm sorry," she said, sounding as sincere as anyone else who has to say "sorry" eighty billion times a day in their line of work. "But I cannot allow you to bring these aboard." 

"Why?" I demanded. I again brought up the other airports which had so freely and eagerly allowed me to pass, beard-trimming scissors in hand. I battled her for five minutes over those beard-trimming scissors. She kept repeating the same dull old lines. No can do. Can't be allowed. Couldn't possibly. She at least had the decency not to claim that the tiny half-inch scissor blades could be used as weapons, perhaps in a desperate bid to take over the plane and crash it into the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Finally, understanding that I was making no headway, and would probably have to take a different flight if I kept this malarkey up, I relented. 

"Well, all right then," I said, grudgingly, sounding exactly like my dad did when I was a kid and I did something idiotic in his presence that he was powerless to halt or avert. 

I began to give the Indian lady my address, so she could mail the scissors to me. She looked confused for a moment, and then she interrupted. 

"No, no, no," she said. "No mail. Confiscation." 

I stood there for a moment, blinking, not comprehending. From way deep down in my brain, there was the sound like a twig snapping in the woods on a dark, frozen, snowy night.

"What?" I asked. "You're confiscating them?"

"Yes," she said, moving away to deposit my things in a bin, but (wisely) not turning her back to me. 

"But they're my scissors."

"We cannot mail them to you. They are being confiscated."

"What's going to happen to them?" 

"I don't know." 

Both of us knew perfectly well. Incineration, probably. Garbage. Waste. Somehow I didn't see Singapore as being the kind of place that would have an Unclaimed Baggage Center. 

"Those are my property, miss," I huffed. I was riding high. The anger endorphins were pulsing through my brain and veins, lifting me higher than the plane I was about to board. I'd never, ever challenged a security agent at an airport, or an authority figure of any kind, really. It was intoxicating. I felt powerful. I felt manly. I felt assertive. And I felt truculent. The more adamant and insurmountable the wall of red tape and bureaucratic posturing erected before me was, the harder I wanted to push against it, headbutt it, knock it down, crumbling and tumbling. 

"Why?" I demanded, my voice calm and clear and cool like a freshwater spring, but with a welter of venomous alkali beneath it. "Why can't you mail them back to me? Why are you confiscating my property?" 

She raised her arms, spread her hands out wide in a full-body shrug. 

"It's Singapore!" she declared, with a faint smile, a pathetic attempt at mollification—or perhaps admission of guilt. It was the sheepish grin of a thief caught red-handed, a shy junior member of a gang of thugs being cross-examined in the dock. 

And in that moment, I saw the futility of my enterprise. The wall was too high and too thick. For the briefest instant I was able to step outside of myself, outside Changi Airport, outside Singapore, and see it as I had from the highest reaches of the Flyer the previous evening—the whole cockamamie place with its dumbass laws and its indentured populace. Poor buggers, I mused. I looked at the Indian woman, her arms outstretched and her shoulders hunched, looking like some stupid scarecrow inexpertly nailed up. 

I said, "Fine." I slapped my lobotomized grooming kit shut and zipped it up. I crammed the disemboweled guts of my pack back inside and lugged the thing off the heavy steel table. I didn't give the security agent another glance. In the time it had taken for us to have our little chinwag, practically every other passenger had gone through, and every seat in the lounge was now taken. I plonked myself on the floor, took out the iPad, checked in with everyone at home, and in twenty minutes it was boarding time. I sat and sulked during the entire four-hour flight to Hong Kong. 

And that, ladies and gents, is why I hate Singapore.

Seoul to Shanghai

Well, it's Saturday and I'm sitting here in my boxer shorts, hungry and bleary-eyed. My journals are sitting in a heap near my elbow and haven't been updated since we got back from Hong Kong. I have to go get cat litter at some point today and start packing up the guest room for reasons I shall make apparent at the proper time. 

Time to start telling you about my massive 3.5-week trip through Southeast Asia, I guess.

Travel Truth #1: When it comes to cheap flights on cheap airlines, you get what you pay for.

China's answer to Singapore's Scoot and Ireland's Ryanair is China Eastern. I don't know if they intended it to be that way, but it is. For a pittance they'll fly your ass all over the eastern Orient. I booked them for a flight from Seoul to Hanoi, Vietnam, on the 12th of July. To get the best deal, though, I had to accept an eleven-hour overnight layover in Shanghai, a four-hour layover in Kunming, and a mere 40-minute layover in Nanning before the final hop to Vietnam. 

Not the most desirable itinerary, right? There was a silver lining, though. Shanghai has this thing called 72-hour visa-free transit, wherein the Chinese government—in a rare moment of magnanimity—decided to allow foreigners from 51 countries enter the cities of Beijing, Chongqing, Chengdu, Shanghai, or Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) for 72 hours without a visa during long layovers. What's more, I happened to have a friend in Shanghai, a hip-hop-loving New Zealander named Larry whom I knew through a mutual friend in Busan. Why not go see him and drink a few beers? Shanghai was on CNN's list of Asia's best pours, after all. And you know how I love me some craft brew.

There was a five-hour delay in my flight from Gimpo, which meant Miss H and I sat around the tiny terminal snacking on fast food and staring into each other's (crusty, bloodshot) eyes. But at eleven o'clock I finally made it off the ground. What with the time difference I landed in Shanghai at midnight (one o'clock p.m. Seoul time). I managed to get messages to Larry so he wasn't sitting around the arrival gate at Shanghai's Hongqiao Airport for four hours. He met me in due course and we grabbed a cab to the Huangpu District (Fuxing Middle Road) to have a sip at Boxing Cat Brewery.

Wikipedia's free image of the Huangpu District. That's the People's Park in the middle. 

Photo courtesy of Pilsgrimage, which did a rather lovely write-up about this place. 

Hailed as the best craft brew in China, Boxing Cat is ideally located. Huangpu used to be where all the foreign concessions were in Shanghai, and there are still a lot of foreigners living there, Shanghai being an economic powerhouse and all. Amusingly, all the brews were named in pugilistic terms: Right Hook Helles (4.5% ABV), Contender Extra Pale Ale (4.9% ABV), Suckerpunch Pale Ale (5.5% ABV), TKO India Pale Ale (6.3% ABV), etc. All heavy on the hops but hey, that's the trend. I like the maltier and wheatier beers better, but I appreciate me some hops now and then. 

Larry and I sipped a couple of tall cold ones and got caught up with each other. He'd been a teacher in Busan alongside Adam (the English mate I was going to see in Ho Chi Minh City) but he'd since moved to Shanghai, where the living was easier and the pickings were better. We shied away from politics and whatnot and focused mostly on how we'd been doing in the two or three years since we'd seen each other. The beer was good and the music was quiet, but it was already 1:00 a.m. We'd barely ordered the second round before the waitress informed us of last call. 

Now, I was already pouring sweat by the time we got to Boxing Cat. I thought Seoul got hot and humid in summer, but I'd clearly forgotten my roots: the five years I spent in the jungles of East Tennessee and the visits we made to my paternal grandparents' house near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Shanghai was even worse, a greenhouse even at midnight. After Boxing Cat slammed the door on our backs, we decided to hike through the quiet, steamy streets to find a new watering hole, and there's me with a 30-pound pack on my back in umpteen billion percent humidity and 85-degree heat. 

Wikipedia's photo of the Luwan neighborhood of Huangpu (the old French concession), the area Larry and I were traipsing through...only a lot darker and steamier. You could see the dang humidity. It filled the throat, clogged the nostrils and formed a sticky slime on the skin.

Not a breath of a breeze disturbed the filmy fog as we trudged through the damp streets to the Shanghai Brewery on Hongmei Road. This place was bigger and much better air-conditioned, resembling a proper beer hall. The brews didn't have the same depth of flavor as Boxing Cat's did, but man, the price was better. Here Larry and I talked and joked and chafed until four o'clock in the morning. The time difference really comes in handy: there was a football (soccer) game on the big projector at the front of the room. Never too late (or too early) for sports over here in the Orient. 

Larry, unbeknownst to me, had work in the morning (!), so he said adieu and good night at this juncture. He got me a cab back to Hongqiao—Terminal 1, as it happened. The international terminal. I needed Terminal 2, the domestic one, as I'd be hopping through two more Chinese airports before finally making Vietnam.

Well, I didn't know the layout of Hongqiao Airport, did I? I assumed the cabbie had dropped me off in the right spot. It was only five o'clock in the morning and check-ins for flights didn't even start up for another few hours. I spent most of the wee hours of the morning of July 13th wandering around the terminal trying to find a spot to nap. The competition was fierce. 

After a while I found an empty corner and got an hour's sleep. I woke up at six—just 80 minutes before my flight to Kunming left. It was then that the ominous warning Larry had given last night rang home: 

The cabbie might take you to Terminal 1. 

I needed Terminal 2! Que lástima! 

I scrambled to get on the inter-terminal bus, which, I was warned, would take 20 minutes. Indeed, I was shocked by how far apart the terminals were. To my foggy, hung-over brain, it was as though we'd completely left the airport and driven to a new one. You may well imagine me with my damp, sweaty clothes and unwashed hair, peering out at the muggy grey light of an overcast Shanghai morning, drumming my fingers and tapping my sandaled feet with impatience. 

I dashed off the bus and into the much larger and newer Terminal 2 and my heart sank. The lines were out the door. I shoved my way through to the automated check-in machines and tried to clock in, but the damn thing wouldn't let me. I kept getting an error message. It was already 6:45 and my flight left at 7:20. Desperate, I made my way to the service counter—and the incoherent crowd of people grouped around it—to revise my ticket. I figured it was all up with my original flight, so I planned to claim that I'd missed it and ask to be put on a later flight. I had a four-hour layover in Kunming, so as long as the Chinese were efficacious I could still be there and make my flight to Nanning in good time. 

IF the Chinese were efficacious, that is.

Efficacy, however, is not something for which the Chinese are renowned. The throng at Hongqiao was atrocious. White-shirted, black-tied clerks scrambled behind the help desk, peered over each other's shoulders at computers, ran to get supervisors, held up their hands to appease the madding crowd. The crowd in question had no rhyme or reason to it. There were no clear lines, just a muddled press of ill-tempered human bodies. The crush got so bad that one tiny Chinese man with short-cropped hair and a red-striped shirt climbed on top of his heaped luggage cart, cupped his hands to his mouth, and began to shout: 

"ARE WE FORMING A HORIZONTAL LINE HERE, PEOPLE, OR A VERTICAL ONE?!"

He repeated this about seventeen times. I know this because I happened to have a lovely middle-aged Chinese-American woman behind me with bobbed black-dyed hair and a bit too much purple eye shadow who translated for me. Her flight had been canceled and she needed a new one. She'd lived in Los Angeles for decades and was a well-established realtor. She chattered a few rapid words to the fish-faced clerk when the two of us finally battled our way to the counter, back-to-back like a master-and-pupil duo in a kung fu movie. Everything was peachy-keen after that. The harried, wall-eyed fellow behind the counter slashed a pen across a slip of paper, handed it to me, and told me to go check in at the China Eastern counter. I wished my matron good luck, and then went and waited in line a further 45 minutes—during which my original flight boarded and took off without me, or so I believed—got checked in, went through security, and was on a plane to Kunming before I knew it. 

(I later discovered that I needn't have panicked about getting to Terminal 2 on time. My original flight from Shanghai to Kunming had been canceled. Expedia sent an e-mail to my inbox, but as I hadn't been able to check it since Gimpo, I missed the memo. I would have had to do the exact same malarkey—wait in that crazy, amorphous line and check in at the front counter—that I did anyway, only I could have done it in far less of a hurry. C'est la vie, as they say in Huangpu.)

Hokkaido itinerary

I'm starting this post at 12:50 a.m. on what is technically a Saturday morning. My flight to Tokyo leaves early on Sunday afternoon. Before that, though, I need to fill you in on my itinerary. So here 'tis:

Sunday, February 2

•    depart Incheon Airport at 1:20 p.m.
• arrive Narita Airport at 3:30 p.m.
• take the Skyliner to Ueno Station, then ride down the Ginza Line to Kanda
• leave the station and head a few meters south to Capsule Value Kanda
• eat some dinner and read that Tokyo chapter in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Monday, February 3

•    at 7:00 a.m., head to Tokyo Station and activate my Japan Rail Pass
• hop the JR Tohoku Shinkansen for Shin-Aomori (3.5 hours)
• transfer to the JR Hakucho limited express to Hakodate (2 hours)
• transfer to the JR Hokuto limited express to Sapporo (3.5 hours) 
• don't forget to read all the relevant chapters of Ghost Train as you do this
•   walk a block west and six blocks north from Sapporo Station 
• find the Sapporo Clark Hotel (check in 3 PM, check out 10 AM)

Tuesday, February 4

•    wake up, get breakfast
• head to Sapporo Station and catch the express to Asahikawa
• take bus 41, 42 or 47 from the station to Asahikawa Zoo (40 minutes, 400 yen) 
• come back and get some Asahikawa ramen near the station
• catch the train back to Sapporo

Wednesday, February 5

•    wake up, get breakfast
• take in the Sapporo Snow Festival in Odori Park
• go up the Sapporo TV Tower and take some pics
• walk south a block to Sapporo Tram (Nishi 8 Chome Station)
• ride nine stops to Ropeway Iriguchi Station and then west to the Sanroku cable car station
• take the cable car up to Mt. Moiwa
• come back down and go back to Ropeway Iriguchi Station; ride 13 stops to Susukino
• get some eats and drinks; take in the Snow Festival some more
• walk back to Odori Park and get some shots of the Sapporo TV Tower at night
• hit the sack

Thursday, February 6

•    check out of the Sapporo Clark Hotel at five o'clock or so
• head to Sapporo Station and catch the 6:00 AM limited express
• do the whole trip again in reverse, except ask for Hakata at Shin-Aomori
• arrive in Hakata at 12:00 AM...

Friday, February 7

•    find something to do with yourself for a few hours...perhaps an izakaya
• catch Bus 11, 19 or 50 to Hakata Ferry Terminal
• check in at the Camellia Line desk at 11:00 AM
• ferry departs at 12:30 PM; arrives in Busan at 6:00 PM

And there you have it. I'll arrive in Busan, tired and hungry perhaps, but ready for Adam's going-away party. Then it'll be the KTX back up to Seoul on Sunday, February 9. Then it'll be barely two weeks until the staff meeting at Sejong University, and then the new semester begins in March.

Wow.

What a jolly life I've got. 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 17: talk to three strangers

Why?

Why do it?

Why talk to that schmuck a few feet down the bar?

Six very good reasons. You expand your network. You meet new friends...and potential mates. You increase your social skills. You learn new things. And most importantly, you boost your confidence. If it's one thing all the manly men I know have, it's confidence. Confidence is one of my core values, but even if it wasn't, any one of those aforementioned things would be a fine reason to reach out to someone you don't know. As long as you're honest, genuine, and act interested, you can gain a wealth of information (and perhaps a good friend in the bargain). 

So I done it. I spoke to three strangers tonight during a date with Heather in Itaewon — the same date, actually, that I planned on Day 9.

The first person was the owner and proprietor of one of the foreign food markets. He and I had a short discussion about two things: Cheesy Ragù sauce and unflavored Ruffles. I asked if he had them in stock, and he explained that the Ragù is difficult to come by in Korea, that the Ruffles usually come in once every two weeks, and it's up in the air what flavors he'll get. At least, I think that's what he was implying. He's from Pakistan and he's a very busy man, so he speaks quickly and is sometimes difficult to understand. After bestowing these bits of comestible information upon me, he wandered away to hector a couple of his employees who weren't facing the stock assiduously enough.

The other two were a pair of foreigners on the Line 6 train heading east to Bonghwasan. I had spotted them earlier, smoking and standing outside the Paraguayan restaurant where Miss H and I had dinner. On the subway I overheard them speaking in accented English about the express line heading to Incheon Airport, so I up and asked them where they were catching it. Hongdae? Digital Complex?

Digital Complex, it turned out.

One of the men was a long-haired West African with dreadlocks and the other was a dark-complected and rather handsome southern Asian. He could have been Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi for all I knew. They were indeed taking a flight out the next morning. The Asian fellow got off at Yaksu Station only a few seconds into the conversation, but Miss H and I engaged the African man for a few moments longer, until our inevitable departure at Cheonggu. He looked to be about our age. We never got his name. He was flying home to Sierra Leone to see his family, he said. It would be a 30-hour flight. He hadn't seen his family in three years, and was very much looking forward to being home and surrounded by familiar faces. I couldn't say I blamed him. I've been feeling the need — no, the compulsion — for something similar for a long while now. We wished him well on his journey, then leaped off the train and switched to Line 5 for the last leg home to Gwangnaru. If we'd stayed on the train a little longer — which I kinda wish we had — we'd probably have learned his name, and maybe even become friends with him.

Oh well. Ships that pass in the night, as they say. Let's not forget the salient fact, here.

I talked to a West African today.

Who have you talked to lately? 

the Sumida River cruise

I just wanted you schmucks to know that, in true Postman style, I completed every single goddamn item on my Day-One-of-Tokyo to-do list...and then some. Let's start from the beginning.

I arrived in Tokyo in the late afternoon of July 30. I was delayed about 15 minutes getting off that big Boeing 777, 'cause there was some other plane at the gate having maintenance issues. Or talking to its mother and having an existential crisis and not wanting to fly again until it knew who it really was, an MD80 or a CRJ-700. One of the two. So. I got through immigration and customs without any trouble (but for the fact that the immigration guy stole my customs form and I had to fill out a second one). Then it was out into the steamy Tokyo air.

...yeah, right. Not really. It was down into the bowels of the steamy Narita train station. Narita, as it happens, is about as far from central Tokyo (48 miles) as Incheon Airport is from Seoul (43 miles). As such, you need to take a special train to get to and from there, and you have three or four choices. I thought 30 American dollars for the red-colored JR Narita Express was a bit much. So I took the blue Skyliner to Ueno (northeast Tokyo) for just over two thousand yen, or $20. I lugged everything down to the platform, loaded up, and enjoyed a cushy, air-conditioned, 39-minute ride through Chiba Prefecture and into town. But then I had to switch to the Tokyo Metro at Ueno, and ride seven or so stops to Kyobashi Station. This was the worst part of the trip. I was still in the pants and coat I had worn upon leaving Los Angeles, and everything was stuck fast to me by the time I lugged my 50-pound suitcase up the tiny station stairwell to street level. Man, it was hot and muggy. I began to have serious concerns about the remainder of the trip. I don't do humidity. Thankfully my capsule hotel was right around the corner.

Wait, what? You never heard of a capsule hotel?

Didn't think so. Here's what it looks like:

I'll explain the bottle of whisky later. Be patient.

Capsule hotels come in many shapes and sizes. Some of them are like mortuaries, with people climbing in headfirst and sleeping with their feet toward the hallway in tiny caskets arranged like honeycomb. Not me. My hotel, the First Inn Kyobashi (¥3000 per night), was sort of like enclosed bunk beds. It was very convenient. There were lockers for guests' luggage, a shared Japanese-style bathroom on the first floor, shower stalls and sinks in the basement, restrooms on every floor, and just to prevent anything weird from happening at nights, the floors were segregated by sex. The evens were female floors and the odds were male. In each capsule was a lamp, a radio, a coin-op television, an alarm clock, blankets, a pillow, and a pair of pajamas. Towels and washcloths were also provided for free. After I turned out the lights, I spent a very peaceful six hours clutching the handle of my unsecured suitcase and wondering if I was going to have to shank a sneak-thief in the middle of the night.

The only downside to a capsule hotel, to my mind, is that you can hear everything your fellow sleepers are doing. I heard people rolling over. Thankfully there were no snorers around (except for me). I must have driven my capsule-mates crazy at 6:30 a.m. when I woke up, banged open my locker, unzipped and repacked my suitcases, stumbled downstairs for a shower, and dragged everything out of there. (Sorry guys.)

I stowed my excess baggage in the coin lockers at Kyobashi Station and used the free Wi-Fi. Japanese stations are convenient, but more run-down and dingy than Seoul's. After I'd checked in with everybody important, I set off for my first goal: the Sumida River cruise. I rode the Ginza (orange) line all the way up to Asakusa, on the northeastern edge of the city center. A short walk around the corner brought me to the waterbus station.

What's a waterbus?

If you took a double-decker bus and flattened it out so it looked more like a flounder than a vehicle and gave it a hull and screws and a rudder, then you'd wind up with something that wasn't completely like a waterbus, but which people who saw these monstrosities gadding up and down the river would find disturbingly familiar. There's a reason behind these halibut-shaped contraptions, too: the twelve bridges on the lower Sumida River are close to the water. Like, really close. Some of 'em are as low as 15 feet. Nothing a canoe or a rowboat couldn't handle, but a waterbus? I felt like ducking as we went under.

Here's some of the pics I took while out on the cruise:

 

I apologize for the poor image composition, but I'm a budding photographer, not a greenhouse full of chrysanthemums (the national flower of Japan). Most of these images (and most of the ones I took in Japan, actually) were just me fooling around with different angles, settings, and lens adjustments. I haven't even opened the manual for my new Canon Rebel T3i yet...

Now, you'll notice that in the last two pictures, a whole lot of greenery starts to come into the picture. That's the HAMARIKYU ONSHI-TEIEN, the former Imperial falconry ground, now a public park and garden abutting Tokyo Bay, where the waterbus dumped me off. But that's a story for another day. As in, tomorrow.

Stay tuned... 

off to Japan!

You know, a measly month doesn't seem like adequate recompense for 18 long months overseas. I mean, Korea ain't the gulag. Far from it. (It's the lime, turkey, bourbon and Mexican food gulag, but that's it.) But I forgot how easy and comfortable it is to live in one's own country, and how much I missed my folks. Now I'm staring down another 18 months in the LTBMF gulag before I can get back to it all.

That being said...I accomplished a lot this month.

Reunion with my extended family at a lake resort in Iowa? Check.

Eating the hell out of my favorite foods, including fleisch salad sandwiches (my favorite food in the whole Universe)? Check.

Reminding my mum and dad what I look like? Check.

Visiting my old haunts, like Victoria Gardens and Barnes & Noble and Total Wine & More (where I picked up a nice bottle of Hendrick's gin, lovely stuff)? Check.

Driving a convertible under a gorgeous California sunset while wearing a Hawaiian shirt and listening to Led Zeppelin on the radio? Check.

Shooting every gun I own? Check. (Dad and I are going trapshooting tomorrow, so we'll get the shotgun knocked off the list. Leave no gun unfired, that's my motto.)

Flying? Well, no. I'm out of currency. But I did stop by the dinky little Apple Valley Airport and see how everybody was doing. Not much has changed. The same old planes are parked out on the flight line, the same grey heads are chatting in the flight school, and so forth. Somebody's 18-year-old son is a flight instructor now. Jeez.

The only things I haven't done, in fact, would be eating at my favorite burger joint (that's also happening tomorrow) and finding my novel notes. I located my Bowie knife, my binoculars and my violin, but I'll be danged if I can find my piles of notes. I must have hid them so well that even I can't find 'em. Oh well. The outlines and prewriting are easy to forsake—as Stephen King would say, they probably aren't worth a tin shit anyway—but there were some lyrical snippets of dialogue in there, plus a few meritorious vignettes. I guess I'll just have to wing it until I come back to the States for good and unpack all those boxes.

Well, this is it. We're down to the wire. I leave on Monday. I'll lose a day traveling west (go jump in a lake, Phileas Fogg) and arrive in Tokyo on the 30th. I'll kick around town on the 31st—the Sumida River cruise, the Imperial Gardens—until Miss H and Miss J get in from Seoul in the afternoon. Then it's DISNEYLAND on the first of August. After H & J go home on the 2nd, I'll journey down through central and southern Japan in the shinkansen (bullet train), taking in Mount Fuji and Lake Biwa. I'll tour Kyoto for two days, petting monkeys and drooling over gold-plated buildings, then hop the train again for Kumamoto on the isle of Kyushu, spending the next 48 hours meditating in Reigando Cave and finding out who's buried in Miyamoto Musashi's tomb. Then it's to Fukuoka and the high-speed ferry to Busan, South Korea.

One of the other cool things about Kumamoto is that it's where Eiichiro Oda lives. He's the guy who writes and illustrates One Piece, my favorite manga/anime. It rather heavily influenced my magnum opus...

After that? For the month of August (school doesn't start up again until September), I was planning on finishing Novel #3, e-publishing Novel #2, and polishing Novel #1. Not to mention learning functional Korean. I really ought to be able to have a decent conversation by now instead of fumbling along like some chuckle-headed tourist.

There's also a humor site I'm writing regularly for now: Rabble Rouse the World. Check it out if you have the time. Ribald jests and laugh-tastic memes abound upon that literary pirate ship. Come aboard, mateys. Arrrrrrr.

I also intend to spend some of August finding all those charming Korean nooks and crannies that I haven't explored yet: Gangwon-do, for example, where the mountains and lakes and rocky beaches are. I just acquired a Canon EOS Rebel T3i, and after a bit of fiddling I'm sure I'll be a master photographer with it. So there ought to be gorgeous pictures of Japan, Korea, and environs pouring into this here blog come mid-August.

Stay tuned. You're in the front-row seat. You can't leave just when it's getting good!

the champion of León

                                                                                                                                                             from thecouponguide.net

And so, W-Week has drawn to a close, and the to-do list has been completed with assiduous diligence.

On Wednesday I got up at 4:00 a.m. to ride with Miss H's father (Mr. B) while he delivered a 28-ton load of lime to a construction crew at Camarillo Airport. That was a fun trip. There were a few things about riding in a big rig that I didn't expect: namely, the noise, the cramped quarters, and the constant leaping and shaking. That huge diesel engine is LOUD. The cab is not as spacious as it may seem. And all the kinetic energy from the two tanks we were hauling was transmitted directly into the rear axle of the rig itself, which shook us in our seats like marbles in a jar. The ride was only 2½ hours down and the 2½ back, but I nonetheless felt sorely abused by the end of it, as though every tendon and muscle in my body had been pummeled by a grizzly bear. It was intriguing, however, to see how a semi handles, and to get a look at the logistics of the trucking industry: the logbook Mr. B keeps of his travels (mileage and hours); the ear-splitting air pump used to blast the lime from the steel tanks and into the dispenser truck at the construction site; the complications which stopping for food and bathroom breaks represent; and all the other aspects of the biz. I left feeling like I'd been hit by a train, but enlightened no end.

Thursday was a largely unremarkable day, because Miss H wasn't in it. I had to leave her at home while I finished packing (completely finished, mind you) and went shopping. Shopping for what, you ask? Presents. Gifts. Cards. As it happens, my father's birthday is February 12, my girlfriend's is February 13, and February 14 is Valentine's Day. I was a shopping fool: chocolate, a new leather wallet for Dad, lotions and fragrances and candles from Bath & Body Works, and a necklace from Icing.

Friday was a designated fun day. Miss H and I had set aside that day by prior agreement to celebrate her birthday and Valentine's Day. I gave her her presents, she gave me mine, we hugged, we kissed, we laughed, and we may have misted up a little, perhaps. Then we hung around the house and relaxed. I hadn't noticed, but this moving-back-to-Korea thing has exacted a heavy toll on me. I've been under a lot of stress and last-minute panic. I hadn't quite realized just how heavy the weight was on my chest until I packed my last sock, zipped up the duffel bag, looked around the room and heaved a deep sigh. I felt like collapsing on the floor and not moving for a week.

Then the unexpected happened. An old friend came in from out of town. I'll refer to him by his initials, B.E. He happens to be a Canadian friend of my other Canadian friend, Jeff. I met him in Seoul during Seolnar a few years ago. He lives in San Francisco and he came all the way down to see me off. What a pal. He, another buddy Chris and I went to a dive bar in eastern Apple Valley and whooped it up until 2 a.m.

After getting my head screwed back on Saturday morning, Miss H and I went to the local arcade for some one-on-one time, the last we would probably have before I left. But lo and behold! B.E. and Chris showed up out of nowhere. We bumped into them as soon as we walked through the doors. We all bought some tokens and set about throwing balls into holes worth 4,000 points and shooting rampaging tyrannosaurs and punching crocodiles on the snout. It was a blast. Then Miss H and I picked up some Pizza Rolls and headed back to set up for the grand cocktail party send-off. A fun time was had by all. We drank, we caroused, we joked, we played Would You Rather? and Taboo, and just generally invested capital in the bank of camaraderie. The party broke up at three, and Miss H and I fell onto the bed and were asleep in milliseconds.

And today was a red-letter day! For we packed up the truck, drove to Buena Park, and feasted at a wonderful venue called Medieval Times. For those who may be unaware, Medieval Times is a feudal Europe-themed eatery where you gorge on tomato bisque, roast chicken, prime rib and garlic bread off pewter bowls and plates (with your hands; no forks or knives) while, below you in a dirt-floored arena, knights in shining armor joust and duel for your entertainment. It's an immersing experience. Strobes flash. Heroic trumpets sound. Standards whirl through the air. Sparks fly from clashing blades. We were seated in the green section, which meant that we cheered for the Green Knight, a champion of León. Sadly, he was defeated in his second bout by the Red Knight (who was later slain by the tournament champion, the Red-and-Yellow Knight). The entire show lasted about two hours, with exhibitions of falconry, martial skill, and fine horsemanship. Andalusian horses with gossamer manes pranced and cavorted in dressage. The food was delicious, the entertainment rousing, the company marvelous and the evening well-spent.

And now here I sit in a hotel suite somewhere in the vicinity of LAX, preparing to make a late-night run to Taco Bell (for my last taste of godawful Anglo-Mexican fast food before I leave for Korea). My flight leaves at 11:50 a.m. The countdown is almost over.

Further bulletins will, from here on, originate in the Far East.

Wish me luck...

W-Week

I'm hoping my arrival in Korea won't look exactly like this.

It's W-Week, and as we count down to D-Day, H-Hour—the moment I leave for Korea, in other words—I'm beginning to think I tried to pack too much into it.

What day is it today, Tuesday?

Yeah, okay, here goes:

On Monday Miss H and I just sorta hung out. Oh, and we packed my bags. Two of them. Duffel bags crammed with shirts, pants, shorts, belts, socks, underwear, shoes, and coats. Whatever empty space remains shall be filled by decks of cards, harmonicas, shoeshine cans, grooming kits, and whatnot. They weigh 43 and 35 pounds, respectively. Maybe there's something to what Miss H says when she tells me I have more clothes than she does.

Today was jam-packed. Miss H and I went in and hung out with a friend of hers, Steve, at his apartment. (We found all sorts of interesting ways to kill Lara Croft.) Then we grabbed some fast food: Tom's Burgers, which happen to be massive, succulent, and fantastically tasty. [Insert naughty metaphor here.] We drove to Hesperia Lake Park and ate lunch under the skeletonized trees, listening to the babbling brook and the entitled honks of strident geese vying for pieces of bread from the other park-goers. Then we fed the ducks some crusts and read a chapter of our books (I'm reading Skeletons on the Zahara, and Miss H is digesting Don Quixote).

After a quick stop at the post office, we went to a used bookstore in Victorville and turned in some old volumes my parents didn't want anymore. In exchange for these, I nabbed some serious military nonfiction: The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan, Charlie Company: What Vietnam Did To Us by Peter Goldman and Terry Fuller, and Abandon Ship!: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis by Richard F. Newcomb. (Believe or not, these aren't just for fun: they're valuable research material for future novels.)

Then we went to the mall to try to find a bigger duffel bag. No joy.

Tomorrow I'm riding with Miss H's father as he delivers a load of lime to the airport in Camarillo. This'll be my first time riding in a big rig. I've always wanted to. I have a thing for heavy machinery. I occasionally cheat on airplanes with tanks, ships, bulldozers and excavators.

Thursday I'm running around like a madman trying to make all the arrangements for my dad's birthday (February 12), Miss H's birthday (February 13), and Valentine's Day (you-know-when). All of those dates, as you'll notice, fall after my departure on February 6, so I'd better have my act together.

Friday Miss H is coming over and helping me do the final packing, and we'll finish that blasted thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle we've been beating our heads against for ages.

Saturday is a big day: all my friends are coming over for one last cocktail party. Cheers.

On Sunday (assuming I'm not totally useless) Miss H, the folks and I will be driving down to Medieval Times for dinner (another thing I've never done), and staying in a hotel in Los Angeles (ditto, actually). This way we won't have to leave my house at the crack of dawn and drive two hours to get to the airport on Monday morning.

And on Monday morning, I leave.

I'll try to blog at least once more before I do.

Wish me luck.

airborne again

Back in November, when it looked as though we'd be here until January or February (oh, wait, hold on; we'll still be here until February), I struck a deal with my parents. If they floated me a loan of $4,500 I could get my commercial pilot's license before I left for Korea. Miraculously, they agreed. Either they're bigger pigeons than I thought or they love me very, very much.

In order to stretch the dough as far as I could, I decided to train in a cheaper airplane. I'm more familiar with the Cessna 172, but they cost something like $110 per hour to rent these days. For my purposes, I went down to M______ Aviation and picked the cheapest airplane they had: a little red Cessna 152. Two seats. One hundred and ten horses. Tricycle landing gear. Basic instrument package, no GPS or anything. Looks like this:

If that seems mighty small to you, it is. Standing on my tiptoes, I can practically see over the wings. It's rather tricky trying to cram Miss H and myself into that little cockpit. Headroom is plentiful, but the seats aren't adjustable: my legs are stuffed up under the control panel. The 152 is comfortable once you actually get in and get situated, though. Ventilation is more than adequate, too. However, putting two full-size adults into an airplane with a 110-horsepower engine presents some special problems. We had to ensure that we weren't taking off with a full load of fuel, or else the little bird wouldn't ever get off the ground. (Don't worry; we made sure we had plenty for the flights we had in mind.)

But before I could get started, I had to get checked out. I'd never flown a 152 before and, though I technically wasn't required to get checked out in it (the FAA says that private pilots can fly any single-engine fixed-wing under 12,000 pounds without a checkout), M_____ required that I at least have a familiarization flight with an instructor before I took it out on my own. I understood. They had to cover their behinds. And a checkout flight wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience; I'd just have to buy some instructor's time and submit to a few maneuvers under his or her watchful eye.

That's what I thought at first, anyway.

You can imagine my chagrin, my horror, and my utter revulsion when I walked into the main office of M_____ Aviation (which smelled strongly of secondhand smoke) and saw him sitting there.

It was Bob.

Bob the Poacher.

Bob the Loony.

Bob the Motormouth.

He of the Shadowy, Mysterious, Shady Past.

He was the kind of pilot whom all the other pilots said was off his blinkin' rocker. He didn't know what he was talking about. He had a lot of half-baked, erroneous ideas about flying that were dangerous to teach impressionable students. He wasn't fit to fly a paper airplane. The rumors said that he'd been fired from every flying job he'd ever held. Rumors notwithstanding, it was an undeniable fact that he was a poacher. He'd migrated up from some airport down the hill and ingratiated himself with M_____ Aviation's management, allowing him to lay in wait at the door and pounce on any students who walked in. With flattery, high-flown promises, bravado, and a great many tall tales, Bob enticed these unsuspecting neophytes away from their current instructors and under his own wing. This insidious and highly disreputable practice is frowned upon in most flight schools, but not M_____ Aviation. The Dutch matron mysteriously refrained from pitching Bob out the door. Instead, she hired him on as an instructor, even when all her other instructors tacitly resigned in protest.

You may imagine my remorse when I learned that Bob was the one who'd be checking me out in the 152.

Good God, no.

Somebody help me!

Oh yeah, before I go any further, I should explain to you what a checkout is, and why I needed one. Let's say you're a pilot. So far you've flown only one or two types of planes (just like yours truly). I trained in a Cessna 172, and have quite a bit of time in a Mooney M20E. I'd never flown a Cessna 152 before. So, when a pilot is going to fly a new plane for the first time, another pilot (who is familiar with the airplane in question) "checks him out" in the new airplane. The experienced pilot flies with the newbie and gets him oriented. Generally, checkout flights are very short: you do some maneuvers, maybe a few practice landings and touch-and-goes.

Not with Bob. Bob sat me down and did ground school with me first.

Keep in mind, now, that Miss H was sitting in the car, reading a book, and patiently waiting for me to take her flying. Bob was unaware of this. Even if he had been, he might not have cared. He was on a roll. His ego would not permit him to take me flying before he'd demonstrated to me that he knew all there was to know about flying. To some degree, I appreciated the fact that I was getting a refresher: I was a bit rusty, after all. Going over a few things beforehand really helped me get my mind back in the game. But Bob pulled out all the stops. Though the Cessna 152 is not equipped for instrument flying, somehow or other we wound up talking about instrument approaches and landings. This was totally irrelevant to what we were about to do. But Bob was an unstoppable avalanche, and it was only my gentle pushing that finally got him to shut up. We adjourned to the plane to do a preflight check.

Ten minutes later we were in the air. Unfortunately, Bob's tendency to chit-chat, gab and proselytize continued even after we got airborne. I expected to do a few maneuvers and some practice landings. Nope. We did spins.

Just so you know, a spin is very similar to a stall—except for one thing. Instead of both wings stalling simultaneously, one wing stalls before the other. Rather than merely dropping out of the sky in an orderly fashion, the airplane begins to spin violently as it falls earthward. Spins are extremely dangerous and cause numerous fatalities every year. However, they are simple to avoid and (if you know what you're doing) not too difficult to recover from.

Eventually I would have to practice spins as part of my commercial training...but I was in no mood to learn today, especially not from Bob. I'd never flown with him before. All of the awful stories I'd heard about him came flooding back into my mind. I protested volubly, but he insisted. So we spun. Granted, they were only half-turns and not complete revolutions, but they were enough to make my stomach jump, my eyes roll and my hands convulsively clutch at things.

Bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard, I kept thinking. Let's just get this over with.

One more spin. In distracted fury and sickening fear, I fixed my eyes on a sticker on the control panel.

THIS AIRCRAFT MUST BE
OPERATED IN THE NORMAL CATEGORY.
ALL AEROBATIC MANEUVERS,
INCLUDING SPINS, PROHIBITED.

it said.

Awesome.

Finally, the ordeal ended. We landed. Bob got out. Miss H got in. She'd been waiting on the ground for nearly two hours. We burned some holes in the sky for an hour. Then we flew back and landed.

That was the last I ever saw of Bob, fortunately. He signed my logbook and I left. I paid him $30 the next day (there was a sort of vile satisfaction in making him wait for it) and that was it.

I've made two flights in the 152 since then: one with a buddy to Lancaster for a bite of lunch, and a long cross-country with Miss H to Twentynine Palms and back. The Cessna 152 is a fun plane. It's a bit slow, but it's stable, forgiving, and fun to fly. I haven't yet made a landing that I've been completely happy with, but for all intents and purposes, I can fly the dang thing.

No thanks to Bob.

Sheesh...