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!

to Phnom Penh by bus

Travel Truth #3: Happy accidents do happen. Especially at dinnertime. 

My Vietnam-Cambodia hop went off without a hitch. I awoke, dressed, went downstairs, and paid $20 for my laundry, a bottle of water and a ticket to Cambodia. Now that's my kind of trip, right there. The receptionist arranged for a shuttle ride to get me to the bus terminal and before I knew it I was in a tiny, rollicking minivan with half a dozen other would-be passengers, including a sweet old Thai gentleman whose name I shall never be able to pronounce, let alone spell. We boarded our bus at the station, handed over $25 apiece and our passports to be stamped with Cambodian visas, and took off for the border. 

We were on Cambodian soil by 11:20. We made three stops at the border: one to get our entry forms, one to get our visas, and the third for lunch—a spacious open-ended warehouse of a building with a corrugated tin roof and orange tile floors, so cool that a couple of lazy dogs were sprawled down and napping upon it, flies buzzing about their noses. I had chicken and green beans over rice, which I was somehow able to pay for with Vietnamese money (only $2 American). I sat with the nice Thai gentleman and his bent, wrinkled, sleepy friend, who didn't speak a word of English and was wearing a Saigon souvenir baseball cap with the price tag still on it. 

While we chatted, there came a noise like an oncoming freight train. A mild hiss became a rattle, and the rattle an earth-shaking roar. The monsoon rains were pounding down on the tin roof, each drop as big as a .50-caliber bullet, and you could hardly hear yourself think. The Thai gent and I finished our conversation at a yell and then boarded the bus to continue our journey. 

My impressions of Cambodia weren't that different from Vietnam—the two countries looked pretty similar. But the countryside here was dustier, flatter, trashier, poorer, and the people were decidedly more Indian-looking. I saw hump-backed, cud-chewing Brahman cattle, houses on stilts, wells with tin-roofed cupolas, ponds covered with lily pads and filled with garbage, and locals napping in hammocks—hammocks strung between stanchions, between stilts, between fence posts and walls, even between trees at the side of the road. Hammocks everywhere. 

About a half hour before we made Phnom Penh, the bus nosed its ponderous way onto a car ferry and we crossed the broad, rambunctious, muddy Mekong. 

We reached the city at about 3:30 in the afternoon. The outskirts of the town were dirty and dingy, with more of the hollow, crumbling buildings and skewed thoroughfares as Hanoi had possessed—but the Cambodian roads were mostly unpaved and the rotting buildings even dustier and more decrepit-looking. Even the highway from Saigon had been gravel for miles at a stretch. 

I jumped off the bus and nabbed the first tuk-tuk driver I could find. I forked over $5 for a ride across the north-central part of town to my hotel. Five bucks was a bit steep—I overheard other foreigners getting rides for $3—but I acquiesced, as it was the same price I'd have paid for a cab in HCMC. 

My room at the Amber House near Wat Langka wasn't ready for me when I arrived, so I was bowed into a gigantic room with two double beds across the hall. 

The funniest thing was that they had Korean comedy/variety shows on TV. With English subtitles. And as one of my coworkers from Sejong pointed out, they still weren't funny. 

I showered to get the sweat and travel grime off me, rested up for a couple of hours, and then walked to the Independence Monument and the king's memorial and snapped some shots of each. 

I had dinner at the Herb Cafe, a tourist trap of a restaurant and bar just a couple of doors down from my hotel, right across the T-intersection from Wat Langka. I hated myself for even setting foot in it. There was nobody else there but for a young, bespectacled, alarmingly skinny French hipster (perusing a tiny notebook and sipping a cocktail); a tubby, neck-bearded tourist in a black T-shirt and cargo shorts; and an elderly business traveler with a pressed blue cotton shirt and black slacks. I glanced over the menu and picked the first dish that looked good—Khmer amok—plus a whiskey sour. A full meal and an aperitif all for the low-low price of seven U.S. dollars. Zounds. I began to take a (brief) shine to Cambodia. 

I found out later that, quite by accident, I had ordered the country's national dish. Amok is a curry steam-cooked in banana leaves, with thick coconut cream and galangal being integral ingredients. Khmer amok with fish is one of Cambodia's core culinary traditions, though amok can be made with everything from chicken eggs to bamboo shoots to algae. All I can tell you is that the Khmer amok I had at the Herb Cafe near Wat Langka was spellbinding in its spicy savoriness, though (true to my code), I did not take any pictures of it. You'll just have to imagine it. Or better yet, make it yourself and try it. 

Because I had nothing to do when I'd finished my meal (but not my second whiskey sour), I struck up a conversation with the French hipster. As I'd suspected, the tiny notebook in his hands was a handmade Khmer primer. The fellow was trying to teach himself the alphabet while he sat and waited for his Buddhist friends to stop meditating in the nearby Wat Langka. His name was Erwin and he'd been working in financial administration at a local French school for the past eight months. We chatted for a few minutes until I drove him away with my questions, and he packed up and went in search of his friends. I stepped across the road into Samaky, another trendy open-air saloon with liquor bottles arranged on illuminated glass shelves along the back wall. I had a few glasses of Angkor Draft (75 cents each) and stared at the laughing clump of Cambodian ladies in the corner booth and the brooding old white dude with the natty, gnarled dreadlocks hanging down his sunburned, tank-topped back. Then I felt lonely and bored and went back to my deliciously cool room to plan tomorrow's escapades. 

Next up: the first and only full day in Phnom Penh. Prawn shooters are involved. 

first night in Hanoi

Picture, if you will, a pale blue sky crowded with wispy, windblown cumulonimbus clouds, through which the brassy sun glitters down upon the late-afternoon haze below. 

The landscape is flatter than a chessboard. Hemmed in by cracked concrete dikes, the muddy brown Red River and its little children wind their way through an endless series of neon-green rice paddies on their way to join the Thái Binh River and satisfy the Gulf of Tonkin's endless thirst. 

Amid this sea of green are odd sights: clumps of areca palm and banana trees, their broad leaves flapping in the breeze like drowsy birds' wings; French colonial manor houses, their yellow ochre walls and white columns clashing incongruously with the overflowing verdure of the surrounding countryside; and fat water buffalo—their legs, bellies, backs and snouts coated with a slimy veneer of mud, snot, and saliva—wallowing indolently in ponds or slogging through soggy fields.

Running like a seam through this idyllic scene is a broad, straight expanse of ancient asphalt.  Trucks, cars, buses, and an overwhelming plethora of scooters—some crammed with as many as five passengers, including unrestrained infants—zip to and fro along this highway. This, then, was the 34-kilometer stretch of the Bac Thăng Long - Noi Bai expressway between Noi Bai Airport and Hanoi's Old Quarter, which I traveled late in the afternoon on July 13th. 

I got off the plane and made it through immigration. As I'd predicted, I was immediately accosted by a taxi driver. He was a skinny man of unimpressive height and unassuming appearance, with manic eyes and an energetic demeanor, clad in a light blue short-sleeved work shirt, slacks, and sandals with black socks. He called himself Mr. Anh. He quoted me a price of $20 American for a cab ride to the Hanoi Asia Star Hotel in the Old Quarter. I demurred. I was determined not to be suckered during this trip, as I had on so many others. I sat and tried fruitlessly to get the Noi Bai Airport wifi to work on Miss H's iPad while Mr. Anh sat next to me and fidgeted. Eventually he agreed to drop the price to $18. I computed the exchange rate and figured that was about as good as I was going to get. The triumphant Anh and I left the terminal building and weaved our way through the throng of less courageous taxi drivers to Anh's hot-pink conveyance. We got in, and Mr. Anh swung the car onto an unpaved dirt road which led out of the airport and onto the expressway. 

Dirt roads? I wondered silently. 

Anh was a great one for conversation. At first I had difficulty discerning that I was indeed not in Korea. I was asked all the usual questions: where was I from, where I was going, how long would I be in Vietnam, and all that sort of thing. Wherever I roam I'm always delighted by how curious the Asian people are about foreigners, no matter what their governments say about us. I'm afraid I wasn't much of a conversationalist, though. I was too busy fretting that I'd paid too much for the ride, feeling sleepy after my horrendous transfer fiasco in China, and trying to soak up the amazing scenes outside the window.

After 40 minutes we rolled into the northern outskirts of Hanoi. The rice paddies gave way to crumbling, weather-stained concrete buildings—or the skeletons of buildings—into which people had crammed the meager implements of their lives: steel bowls, wicker baskets, rusty bicycles, plastic chairs and stools, laundry on lines, flowerbeds under windows. Heaps of gravel and piles of rubbish adorned the narrow, dark alleys and uneven gutters. Lean-ribbed stray dogs sniffed among them for sustenance. Shirtless, bony, olive-skinned men lounged in doorways and smoked, while their women washed or cooked or arranged goods in shop windows. Boys—their hair uniformly buzz-cut—ran around kicking beanbags or roughhousing. Wheezing, droning scooters ran hither and thither without rhyme or reason. What few four-wheeled vehicles there were looked swamped and half-drowned, like buffalo in a rain-swollen river. 

Anh—who by this time had learned to keep his mouth shut—turned off the freeway and directed his tiny pink cab into the madness of the Old Quarter. I'd thought some of the older Korean neighborhoods could be narrow and dark, but I hadn't seen anything like this place. The streets were just wide enough for a compact car. People walked in the gutters because the sidewalks were choked with heaps of garbage, shopkeepers' wares, and clumps of parked scooters. Shabby convenience stores, scooter garages, souvenir shops, cafés, and greasy spoons jockeyed for position in each tiny alley, all of which seemed to connect as though this neighborhood had been planned and built by a legion of sentient spiders. They'd trapped a lot of flies, that's for sure: I saw foreigners everywhere. Tall, svelte, blonde-haired European university students (and their dumpy, frumpy parents), tattooed American hipsters, suntanned Australian youths, oily backpackers, fresh-faced and hairless urban adventurers. It made me sick just to look at them. 

I actually only had 15 American dollars. I gave them to Mr. Anh and paid him the rest in Vietnamese dong. Making some later calculations in my room, I discovered that I'd given him approximately $5 US in dong, rounding out his asked-for price of $20 after all. Oh well. He was a nice guy and didn't take any detours. 

I kicked the door to the cab open, slung my ten-ton backpack over my shoulder, and entered the lobby of the Hanoi Asia Star. It amazes me how Asian entrepreneurs manage to cram their sundry shopfronts and boutiques and businesses onto a lot the average American would consider fit for a victory garden. The hotel had about ten or twelve rooms, each of which was about 344 square feet. Nothing too small, but when you consider that they'd stuck the whole place onto a lot that couldn't have been much more than 900 feet square, it becomes quite a feat. 

I got checked in and collapsed in my room. I'd had about a 90 minutes of sleep in the last 36 hours. Darkness was falling fast and I was hungry. To allay both these problems I changed clothes and, despite heat and humidity that resembled a giant warm-blooded amoeba trying to absorb and digest me Blob-style, I strode a few hundred meters west to the night market.

  

I was bitterly disappointed. Once again I felt like I was back in Korea. I saw nothing but cheap knock-offs of Western products, poorly-made souvenirs, gaudy baubles, hackneyed gift ideas, and fashion disasters. The food pickings were likewise pretty slim. Unlike Korea, however, the hawkers didn't just stand behind their stalls and call out to you: they hired underage boys to jump into your path and shove a laminated menu under your nose. This happened to me twice: prepubescent, crop-haired youths in jeans and tennis shoes leaped out of nowhere with English menus in their hands, flicking them with their fingers in precisely the same way that a fleshmonger on Las Vegas Boulevard would do with his smutty business cards. Free-market capitalism, even with reminders of the country's nominal political stance in the background:

 

After a bit of wandering I located a street-corner restaurant. I don't know how else to describe it. A wispy shrimp of a woman, her skin brown and covered with a shiny film of sweat and cooking grease, stood at an open-air kitchen, surrounded by billowing steam and the entrancing smell of charcoal. Short metal tables (only two feet off the ground) and the omnipresent blue plastic stools were arranged under an awning up against the wall of an adjoining building, and here were seated a bewildering array of locals and foreigners.  Teenage boys flitted among them, delivering giant bottles of Bia Ha Noi and plates of steaming food. The smells—and, I'll confess, the sight of other foreigners—drew me in. I found an empty stool next to an attractive and well-dressed young Vietnamese couple and sat there in the sweltering heat, my linen shirt stuck to my back and the blue bandanna on my forehead dripping sweat into my eyes. I ordered the pigeon-heart-and-gizzard pho and an oozing bottle of Bia Ha Noi. 

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I crave your attention. For here, after sweating my balls off all evening and stepping over heaps of garbage and refuse on the way...this was the point at which I started falling in love with Vietnam. 

I got an enormous plate of delicious pigeon-heart-and-gizzard pho with noodles, a mint salad, and a 450-ml bottle of Bia Ha Noi...for less than five dollars. Stuffing yourself with delicious food for next to nothing, ladies and gentlemen, is happiness. I didn't take any pictures...sorry. I set out on this journey with a set of ironclad rules which gradually got looser and looser as the miles went by. One of these rules was "absolutely NO food selfies." I'll tell you the others later. 

As I was waiting for dinner to arrive, the cute Vietnamese couple next to me started talking to me. The young lady introduced herself as Jenny. She was from Ho Chi Minh City, and her boyfriend was from some remote province in the south. They were both up in Hanoi on holiday, sampling the local cuisine. Jenny asked me the same questions Mr. Anh had: name, rank, posting. I, in turn, asked how they'd met and what jobs they did. The boyfriend didn't speak much English, so Jenny did all the talking. She worked in an office and made good money, and her boyfriend was trying to get a job in the city so he could move away from his crappy job in the sticks and they could save up enough to get married. They'd managed to scrape together enough for this trip, though. They were mostly here for the food, for (as I was to be reminded many times during this journey) the culinary differences between North and South Vietnam are many and variegated. 

The pivotal moment came when I asked Jenny what advice she might have for me, a wet-behind-the-ears tourist who'd never been to Vietnam  before. She gave me a mile-wide grin and said "Get out of Hanoi!"  

No problem, I thought. I have a train to catch at 11:00 p.m. tomorrow night.  

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 25: start a debt-reduction plan

Whoo-ee. Yesterday's playtime went very well indeed. I got my tax stuff done, though I had to wait around and sip a coffee frappé while the T.A. finished his lunch. He was quite thorough and efficient, having done tax forms for several other professors before me. It took him just 30 minutes to fill in and print my forms. I was out of there by half past one.

I hopped Line 7 to Line 9, and thence to Yeouido Island. I strolled down Uisadang Boulevard and through the long, echoing pedestrian tunnels under Yeouido Park. A young couple was learning to skateboard down there, their skin jaundiced from the glow of beat-up incandescent lights. Despite signs warning him not to, a scooter driver zipped by as I walked along, filling the air with exhaust fumes. Upon emerging back into the diffused daylight, I found myself across an intersection from the National Assembly. Standing near the guardhouse at the gates were four cold, bored-looking policemen in black-and-yellow uniforms. The grounds seemed dead and shriveled under the muted sky, the grass brown and the fountains bone-dry. The National Assembly building itself, however, was magnificent. Apparently it's the largest building of its kind in all of Asia. I made a mental note to book a tour there with Miss H at some point.

Then the real fun began. Hungered by my walk, I hurried back down the boulevard to a tiny little mandu shop I'd noticed earlier. I sat down at a narrow red table (with recessed steel trays for kimchi and pickled yellow radish) and ordered the ₩3,500 assortment. It was delicious, though the last two dumplings were so spicy that I had to gulp down some water. I retreated back into the subway and took the geumhaeng (express) train to the last stop, Sinnonhyeon (New Nonhyeon), just a block or three north of Gangnam Station. I entered the enormous brown Kyobo Building, delved into its basement bookstore, and purchased a copy of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka for ₩6,900. With the book between my knuckles I jogged across the road to the Urban Hive, which Miss H and I have nicknamed "the Swiss Cheese Building," and Take Urban, the coffee shop on its first floor. I sat down with a cup of Darjeeling and read Kafka's whole story, soup to nuts. It was fascinating, moving, grotesque, poignant, unexpected. I don't know why I didn't read it sooner.

I had intended to walk a few blocks north to the old Nonhyeon Station on Line 7 and catch a train for Gwangnaru and a little izakaya (Japanese-style pub) I knew near my apartment, but I got a call from Brant — you know, the fellow I brew beer with. A buddy of his, Marcus (born in Texas but attending college in Cairo, Egypt), was in town and the two were bumming around together. I'd challenged them to a game of billiards the previous evening. Brant told me to meet him and Marcus at Gangnam Station at eight o'clock. To while away the intervening hours I went to an old nemesis of mine, WaBar, a "western-style ice bar" and sipped their infamous saeng maekju (draft beer) for ₩4,000 a glass. To kill time I read Kafka's story "In the Penal Colony," which was even more disturbing and emotional than The Metamorphosis.

At 7:45 I wobbled down to Gangnam Station. Brant and Marcus showed up on time. We sipped Jack and Cokes for ₩6,000 apiece at a bar called Whiskey Weasel, jockeying for position amid a group of young foreign men and Korean girls having a language exchange. The three of us shot pool and eyed the sultry goings-on. Following my resounding victory, we adjourned to Woodstock, a nearby LP bar. We requested Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Who, Warren Zevon, Wolfmother, Led Zeppelin, George Thorogood, and many more. Bourbon, Scotch and at least four pitchers of beer were consumed. We went back to Whiskey Weasel and shot more pool, our aim now a great deal unsteadier. I vaguely remember getting into a cab at 2:30 in the morning and collapsing on my couch at three. Undoing the ramifications of this bender has been today's sole concern. 

Well, not my sole concern, truthfully. Today is Day 25.

I already have a debt-reduction plan. I fork over $114 every month to pay off my college loans, the total amount of which is now (thanks to years of hard work in South Korea) four figures and dropping fast. My first year at Sejong University was so remunerative that, a week ago, I paid off a whopping $1400 of my debt in one fell swoop just to expedite the process. For the sake of this challenge, I calculated that if I pay $500 a month into my loans, starting in February, I can be totally debt-free by this time next year.

...at least until I marry Miss H and take on all of her debt.

Whoopee. Welcome to married life, Postie.

Stump up for Day 26... 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 20: perform service

Two-thirds done!

Another caveat: you don't actually have go to out and perform the service on this day (unless, of course, the opportunity presents itself). But you should take time to at least schedule some volunteer work.

A soup kitchen in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II.

I selected Itaewon Global Village Center. They have several different volunteer activities that they do. You can pass out food to the elderly or infirm, or do the same for the poor little waifs at an orphanage, among other things. I'm curious about helping the poor while I'm here, as poverty is a taboo subject in Korea (thanks to Confucianism). The homeless and destitute are generally swept under the rug. But for the amputees panhandling in the subway station or the wild-haired bums scrounging through garbage, a foreigner might believe that there aren't any poor people in this country. And I've been wanting to volunteer at a Korean orphanage ever since I saw this.

So! I sent IGVC an application form today. I'll let you know when I get a reply from them. This is the moment when taking on a challenge like this really starts to pay off. I've always been lax with volunteering. I didn't do it enough, and I'm fairly certain it knocked me out of the running for several jobs. It left a black stain on my conscience, too. I haven't volunteered since the last balloon launch with NKP. (I'm actually in that video, by the way, at 14:10; the guy with aviator shades and the fedora, obviously.)

Be that as it may, it's high time I did something to help the South Koreans. This country's been good to me. I need to pay them back.

Stay loose for Day 21.

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 16: create a budget

This is something I've desperately needed to do. My finances have always been the weakest link in my life. I keep receipts, but they wind up in a big Ziploc bag (or worse, an untidy heap) in a drawer somewhere, unsifted and disorganized. I don't keep track of how much I spend per month, so what I have left over before and after payday always comes as a complete shock. As such, while living in Korea, I've probably been spent a bit too much money on things that don't matter: pipe tobacco, whiskey, sushi, and overpriced appetizers served up by rude Bulgarians. This is a hell of a way to run a railroad, particularly since I have some rather large expenditures in mind when I get home to the States: marriage, children, an instrument rating and a commercial pilot's license, among others. Jeez, you'd think I'd be better at this. My sign is Libra, after all.

So, to amend this reprehensible state of affairs, I set aside today to create a budget, as per the instructions on The Art of Manliness's website. I won't go into too much numerical detail. Telling you how much I make (or worse, how much I spend) each month would be indiscreet. I'll just say that I followed the directions to the letter: I determined my monthly income, totted up all my fixed expenses, and set a goal for the variable ones. I had to get Miss H's help with some things. Since her school is renting out this apartment for us, most of the utilities come out of her paycheck (except for Internet, which I pay for). We split the difference each month. We also try to limit Costco runs to once per month, 'cause everything there is so danged expensive. We've been eating out a bit too much, too. But anyway: Miss H worked up a lovely utilities spreadsheet for me, and using it I managed to come up with a number. It's what I should have left over after all expenses are said and done (barring incidentals and fun) and I'm going to try to stick as close to it as possible.

(I was tempted to use Mint, which is what the author of the AoM article recommended. But something tells me it won't work as well with Korean won as it will with American dollars. I think I'll wait until I get back to the States to get into web-based budgets and spreadsheets.)

Now the only hard part's going to be keeping track of my monthly expenditures — although, thanks to the bank books that are so popular here in Korea, my checkbook balances itself. I'll just have to remember to glance at it every month and make sure I've stayed in the black.

And now you must excuse me. I have to go see if I have enough wiggle room for a new iPod Nano. I want to grab one before I head off to Hokkaido. Please loiter around for Day 17. 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 12: create your bucket list

Seems easy, right? Especially since I've already done it. It's down there at the bottom right-hand side of this webpage, and has been for a couple of years now.

But wait a minute. That's not all. According to the directions, you're not just supposed to create the bucket list. You're supposed to pick one item on it and actually do something that gets the ball rolling on it.

I was intrigued by the idea that you should have different categories in your bucket list: travel, relationships, career, finances, education, health, etc. What I've got is basically just travel-oriented stuff. Some hobbies and geek-outs, too.

But most importantly, my old bucket list is waaaaaaaaaay out of date. I threw together in I knocked a few things off of it last year — grow a beard, eat a scorpion, start home brewing and buy a pipe, among others — but there are some items which don't really apply anymore. I've since learned that living in Japan isn't the best way to make money, so that's gone. And there are some things I really must add to the list, too, and other items which I must clarify or refine.

So! New-and-improved bucket list below. Check it out:

TRAVEL: 

 1. go on a long sailing voyage
 2. visit New York City
 3. travel by train across Australia 
 4. traverse Central Asia overland
 5. take the train from Beijing, China to St. Petersburg, Russia
 6. stargaze under a Class 1 sky on the Bortle scale 
 7. stay in a five-star hotel
 8. set foot in Antarctica
 9. view both the aurora borealis and the aurora australis
10. go to a jimjilbang (Korean bathhouse)
11. explore Gangwon Province
12. swim in the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan
13. see Pyongyang from the ground and the air
14. safari in Uganda
15. gaze upon the some of the world's most exotic mountain ranges 
16. eat bouillabaisse in Marseilles
17. trek through Patagonia (not all the way, just a picturesque chunk of it)

FINANCES:

 1. pay off my college loans (significantly less than $10,000 remaining)
 2. save enough money for car payments and stateside rent

CAREER:

 1. continue my flight training: tailwheel, high-performance, multi-engine, floatplane, and possibly instrument ratings, plus a commercial pilot's license
 2. conquer my fear of stalls and spins in airplanes
 3. get my first novel published this year
 4. e-publish my 2012 NaNoWriMo project
 5. sell at least ten or twelve more travel articles before I die (enough for an anthology)
 6. write a travelogue or two, in the style of Mark Twain or Paul Theroux
 7. become an established short science fiction writer
 8. find work as a talk radio host back in the U.S.A. 
 9. get a job that keeps me in Scotch, guns, and airplane fuel 
10. own a bar (gastropub) in my declining years, either in Alaska or Chile 

RELATIONSHIPS/FAMILY:

 1. marry the love of my life (Miss H)
 2. honeymoon somewhere tropical
 3. produce two or three children
 4. cultivate a thoroughly weird family with plenty of hobbies, athletic activities, goofy traditions, beloved rituals, and fun customs from overseas, like Burns suppers

MISCELLANY: 

 1. build a fire on a rainy day
 2. fly upside-down
 3. buy my very own seaplane
 4. take up black powder shooting
 5. acquire an impressive gun collection: I'd say a Stoeger coach gun, a Remington 870, a CZ P-07 Duty, a pair of Uberti-built Colt .36-caliber Navy revolvers, and a Springfield M1903 will do for starters
 6. finish learning Korean, brush up on Spanish, and dabble in Japanese, German and Swahili
 7. familiarize myself with physics
 8. ride an elephant
 9. compete on an episode of Jeopardy!
10. get in shape and stay in shape
11. try my hand at boxing

And there you have it! That's all I could think of. Believe it or not, the list you just read is the inside of my head: the dreams that have been bouncing off the inside of my skull since I was ten years old and younger. It's different from the "master to-do list" which you'll find at the top of the page; a lot of that stuff isn't imperative. I'm not sure I want to fly for money anymore. But you can thank Mark Twain, Lafcadio Hearn, Paul Theroux, Steve Irwin, Chris and Martin Kratt, Marty Stouffer, David Attenborough, Steven Spielberg, Frederick Townsend Ward, Wiley Post, Mort Mason, and every other TV host, film director, writer, adventurer, pilot, traveler or mercenary whose work I read or watched and admired for putting all these fancy ideas into my head.

We shall continue tomorrow with Day 13. I still haven't memorized that dang poem yet, but I figure as long as I do it before the month's out, nobody will be the wiser. Except you. 'Cause I just told you.

Postie out.

Beijing and back

We're back! And there's so much to do: clean the cat's litter box (and spray some air freshener), write e-mails to family members (I didn't have access to Facebook, Gmail or Blogger while in Beijing) and just generally dust the apartment off. We have a visit to Techno Mart in mind as well, and then Parmesan chicken salad for dinner. But there's still time for some bloggin'.

As promised, here's the first of many posts about our three-day sojourn in China:

Beijing's location within greater China. From Wikimedia Commons.

Aah, China. Nothing could have prepared me for it: neither the good nor the bad. It was my first time setting foot on mainland Asia—or at least a part of Asia that wasn't the tip of a peninsula cut off from the rest of the continent by the world's most heavily fortified land border. During the first 24 hours, I ate duck, scorpion and bullfrog. I rode a toboggan away from the Great Wall, a set foot in a communist country, and I discovered the glory of flying in business class.

That's right: our trip got off to a good start. Miss H and I got unexpectedly bumped up on our Air China flight across the Yellow Sea. Due to an overbooking or something, our tickets were upgraded to business class.

And you wanna know the poetical part? Miss H and I have never flown together before. Not commercially, anyway. I've taken her for rides in a Cessna 172, but this was our first flight on a big ol' jetliner. And we got bumped up to business class. On a flight to Beijing. Ain't that something?

I'd heard about business class from some of my more well-off students, and I'd caught tantalizing glimpses as I boarded commercial flights in the past. But I'd never actually stumped up for it. I don't think I can ever go back. We had all the fixin's: the latest newspapers, hot towels, free-flowing beverages, reclining seats, entertainment galore, and (best of all) plenty of legroom.

I passed the hour-and-40-minute flight like any sophisticated world traveler would: with his feet up and a good book in his hands. And a Star Wars T-shirt on.

After getting off the plane, Miss H, Miss J and I waltzed into the impressive international terminal of Peking International Airport.

We plowed through immigration (thanks to the visas we paid ₩215,000 apiece for), and found ourselves at a taxi stop. We were snapped up by a tallish man with close-cropped hair, a lined face and big rough hands, in a short-sleeved button-down shirt and slacks. He brought us to his minivan, a greasy, grimy thing (like most of the cars in Beijing) and gestured us into it. We impressed upon him that we were heading for the Novotel Xin Qiao, which we somehow managed to pronounce correctly. The rate card said 650 yuan ($108) for the trip, but our driver insisted on 700 ($116). We were neophytes at the haggling game and desperate to boot, so we said yes. The driver jumped in and off we went.

I kept my nose glued to the window for most of the ride. My brain was buzzing. For years I've compared and contrasted Japan, China, and South Korea, both mentally and in writing. Now was my chance. I could finally appraise Beijing as it stacked up against Seoul and Tokyo, and divine the character of capital-dwelling Chinese.

My first impressions weren't good. Beijing was as smoggy as I'd heard. The sunset was an apocalyptic crimson, and vanished rapidly into the grayish void which extended 15 degrees above the horizon. The buildings were blocky and featureless, monuments to Stalinism, and they didn't give the city a welcoming air. The few people I saw on the streets looked rushed, harried, and miserable.

Matters improved when we lugged our baggage out of the hazy, stale air and into the bright, cool lobby of the Novotel Xin Qiao. Our room was spacious and comfortable, with all the amenities. The hotel itself was laden with restaurants, a convenience store, a bar, a bakery, and a spa. Best yet, we were centrally located, only a few blocks from most of the stuff worth seeing.

With that in mind, we dumped off our stuff in our rooms, took a thirty-minute rest, and then headed out into the cool, moist darkness of northeast China for the first item on our to-do list: DONGHUAMEN NIGHT MARKET. Tune in tomorrow for that one. I eat scorpions.

save me from the tonsillitis!

I suppose I should really thank Miss H's students, because when they're not driving her up the wall with their spoiled behavior (we live right next to Walkerhill, a rich, hoity-toity and upscale neighborhood of eastern Seoul, so all her seven-year-olds are complete brats), they're infecting her with a litany of diseases. One of these was tonsillitis. Miss H herself got over it easily enough, with antibiotics prescribed by a local ENT specialist, but then she passed it on to me. I started coming down with the symptoms on Sunday, September 1...the day before the fall semester began at Sejong University.

Well, crap.

I figured I'd ride it out. It was just a fever and a sore throat, nothing to worry about. I stuck it out for nearly a week, refusing treatment even when I had to cancel classes because I couldn't speak. Despite feeling like death warmed over, I kept at it, believing a turnaround was right around the corner.

Matters came to a head on the night of Thursday, September 5. I took my temperature and discovered that I had a whopping 103.3° F (39.6° C) fever. That tore it. Miss H and I climbed into a cab and rode to the emergency room at Asan Medical Center across the river in Songpa-gu. A quick examination by the attending physician revealed that I had a heck of a case of bacterial tonsillitis, which had turned my tonsils all splotchy-white and driven my temperature through the roof. Three IV drips put me to rights: a fever reducer, saline solution to rehydrate me while I sweated it out, and a hefty dose of penicillin. I went to the pharmacy the next day to pick up some antibiotics, and then visited the ENT specialist (the same one that Miss H had seen). This articulate woman sprayed and swabbed some vile-tasting concoctions on the back of my throat, prescribed me some more drugs, and called it even.

I'm finally feeling back to normal now. I have my last appointment with the ENT specialist tomorrow (Friday), and I expect her to give me a clean bill of health. That's good, because in the middle of next week I'm jetting off for China and would hate for an infection to muck up the trip.

Anyway, this little episode impressed upon me two salient facts: (a) that Miss H needs to find a new job away from those bratty petri dishes, and (b) the Korean healthcare system is well-oiled, efficient and cheap. The visit to the ER cost me around $84, and the drugs and ENT visits were almost negligible. We sat around in the ER waiting room for quite a while, but that had more to do with my slow IV drip than any sort of patient backlog.

I sure wish the insurance situation in the U.S. was such that our hospitals could offer this kind of cheap care without a boatload of illegal immigrants creating a logjam and the creeping cancer of Obamacare driving the costs up, but hey...at the end of the day, I'm just glad I have my health.

the Kamo River and Pontocho

Having had a full first day in Kyoto, and having accomplished everything on my to-do list—

Okay, that's a bald-faced lie. I didn't accomplish everything on my Day-One-of-Kyoto itinerary. There was one thing I missed.

Do you know what kaiseki ryori is? No? How about kawayuka/kawadoko (down at the bottom of the page)? Not ringing any bells?

Someday I intend to write my memoirs, and then I'll have the pleasant privilege of explaining in great detail what all these things are, instead of lazily linking you elsewhere; but for the sake of brevity, I'll just provide links and you can peruse them at your leisure.

Since Kyoto seems to be famous for kaiseki ryori (tea ceremony food) and kawayuka (rickety-platform-over-running-water dining), I figured I had to try 'em both while I was in town. My hotel (the Karasuma Kyoto; that's my own review down there on the left of the webpage) was centrally located. I wasn't very far from anything, including Pontocho. Pontocho is a narrow alley running north-south from Shijo Street to Sanjo Street, one block west of the Kamo (Duck) River. Apparently they do kawayuka dining there a lot in summer, running a platform out over the river and letting the water cool people off as they eat. Plus there's a lot of kaiseki ryori restaurants there. Two birds with one stone. So I waited until the dusk was falling and strode out of my hotel.

...in the completely wrong direction.

Soon I realized my mistake and turned back east. After quite a bit of walking (the alleys were longer than I reckoned), I made it to the Kamo River. A quick right turn before the stone bridge put me onto Pontocho. It was, if I may speak plainly, one of the most charming little corners of the Earth that I've ever seen. I cursed myself for leaving my bulky Canon Rebel behind. This would have been one sweet opportunity for a picture. Running parallel to both the alley and the river a block away was Takase Canal, a narrow waterway utilized by merchants to bring their goods in off the Kamo and offload them. It wasn't used for much except urban decoration now, but it was still mighty pretty. If you can picture the low-hanging branches and green leaves of the cherry trees by the canal; the birds twittering and the cicadas buzzing; the waters gurgling; the sinking sun reflecting off the surface; well, then you might get close to what I paused and witnessed that night.

From Wikimedia Commons. Obviously this was taken in broad daylight in springtime, when the cherry trees were blooming. But hey, it gets the point across. Pretty, eh?

A lot of the restaurants along the canal had menus posted out front. Unfortunately, they also had prices. Turns out my little idea of eating kaiseki ryori would have required a $40-$60 bill. If I'd been with Miss H or a group of friends, that wouldn't have been a problem. But by myself? Nah. The evening was too romantic to dine alone. I resolved to bring Miss H back some other time and dine kawayuka style with her. Maybe in late summer. And we'll hang around until fall, when the leaves start to turn. I bet Kyoto's really pretty then.

Chagrined, I turned around and headed back to an izakaya I'd noticed earlier, just a few yards down from my hotel. I had some galbi and side dishes and beer, and retired for the evening.

I probably should have waited until autumn to see what I saw the next day, August 5: ARASHIYAMA AND TOGETSUKYO BRIDGE.

the International Manga Museum, Rokkaku-dō, and Nishiki Market

A few quick messages before we begin:

1. Yes, I'm a day late with this post. Sue me. It's humongous. And I spent last night down at the Gecko's Terrace Restaurant inaugurating myself into the Shooters Club with an Alabama Slammer, a kamikaze, a mudslide, a yak's milk, a turkey roaster, and a Dr. Pepper. I was a bit too busy to blog.
2. I've told you only a teency bit about the prices and cost of things in Japan: admission fees and whatnot. I have not, however, told you much about the ancillary costs. By that I mean bottles of water (¥105-200), which I bought about once every three hours to offset the gallons of sweat I was shedding in the Japanese climate; snacks (¥110-400), stuff like onigiri (rice balls) or gimbap (yes, they had that in Japan) or sandwiches (which actually didn't suck) purchased in convenience stores; meals (¥800-2500, depending on whether I bought it from a snack stand or a bona fide restaurant), and so on. Just know that in between all the Big Crazy Things I Do In Japan there's a lot of small stuff like munchies and agua.
3. I was in Itaewon (the foreigner's ward of the Yongsan borough in central Seoul—remember?) yesterday and I happened to find myself in a bookshop. I picked up something by Bill Bryson. Now, Bryson's reputation as a grammarian is well-known and well-deserved. However, I had no prior experience with his travel writing. Even a superficial glance at his book In a Sunburned Country revealed him to be a humorous and entertaining writer. Looking back over my Japan posts, I've had the feeling that something was slightly off; now I know what it is. The writing's boring as hell. I need to make my posts funnier. So that's what I'll try to do from here on out. 
4. We're in Kyoto now. It's August 4. I just got off the Shinkansen from Tokyo. It's about twelve o'clock in the afternoon.

Let's settle the bet right now: I'm a geek. I'm not going to apologize for it. Geek is the new sexy. That's why we have TV shows like The Big Bang Theory. It's the reason people who've attended Comic-Con more than once in their natural lifetime haven't been burned at the stake. It's why my mother finds William Shatner attractive when he's in a Star Trek uniform (or rather, the tattered shreds of a Star Trek uniform).

Thank goodness for this new liberalism in the way geek culture is viewed! Five years ago I would have sneaked out of my 14th-floor hotel room in Kyoto with a knotted bed sheet, crept down to the International Manga Museum in the dead of night, paged through a couple of issues of Barefoot Gen, and then hightailed it back to bed and never uttered a word about the affair to anyone. Now I can stand up and boldly tell you about it.

The word "manga" belies any pat definition. You could say it's Japanese comics and graphic novels, but it's more than that. It's a culture. Hardcore otaku (fanboys) wait in lines to buy the next issue of their favorite manga; animation studios make obscene amounts of money turning these comics into animated TV series ("anime" for short); the merchandising industry makes a crap-ton of yen making and selling figurines, posters, lunchboxes, trading cards and other paraphernalia featuring popular characters. In reality, the anime and manga craze is a super-cult of unapologetic geekdom and sanctified nerdiness which has spread across Japan and the entire globe. From its humble beginnings in Japanese newspapers in the early 20th century to the truly massive pop culture monster that it's become (just look at Akibahara, for Pete's sake), manga and anime have become mainstream in Japan, and are rapidly becoming so everywhere in the world. You'll find manga sections in every Barnes & Noble in America. Companies have sprung up in Canada, the U.S. and Europe concerned with nothing else but translating these comics, light novels and cartoon shows so North American and European otaku can get the same kicks as their Japanese counterparts.

You wouldn't think it to look at the International Manga Museum on Karasuma Street in Kyoto, though. It's actually quite humble.

The main building is to the right and in the background (behind the netting which surrounds the open field in front of the entrance).

The resemblance to an unassuming public library didn't stop at the door, though. Photography wasn't permitted inside, but I can tell you that the museum was full of long linoleum-tiled hallways, creaky wooden staircases, glacial elevators, dark-stained and nicked wood paneling, and shelves piled high with faded and dog-eared but still colorful manga books.

It was also full of people. Some were foreigners, like me, making a pilgrimage to what they assumed would be a Manga Mecca; but most visitors were Japanese, young and old alike, sitting on any available flat surface and perusing their favorite titles. There were some English information brochures, but all the placards and posters inside the museum proper were in Japanese. There was little for us foreigners to do but peruse the photographs and the newspaper headlines detailing the meteoric rise of manga to international consciousness, and gaze with thoughtful but uncomprehending eyes at classic issues. I wound up tiptoeing through the halls like a guilty ghost, feeling like I was intruding on a fan club's private session in a public library. I wound up paging through a few issues of Barefoot Gen and then sneaking out.

It was time to stop indulging my rampant inner geek and start actually exploring Kyoto. So, on my way back down the main drag, I took some random pics:

Apparently a few green trees and some mountains in the background is all it takes to make me start liking a city, especially after the urban jungle that was Tokyo. I found myself growing fond of Kyoto within the first half-hour of strolling through it. It just seemed calmer, quieter, less pretentious and...well, greener. I like green. Green is good. We desert rats try to find green everywhere we go. That's why I like Palm Springs so much. More golf courses than Scotland.

I stopped at a Family Mart convenience store for some water and snacks and couldn't help snapping this picture.

If I'm not mistaken, the foreign stuff's on the top shelf (obviously), and all the bottled (er, jarred) sakes are on the lower shelves. Quite a better booze selection than any Korean pyeonuijeom, yes sirree!

Outside the Family Mart, I noticed this sign:

Well, who'd a' thunk it? A Buddhist temple just a few meters away? Why not?

Unlike at Zōjō-ji, this time I managed to get a pic of all the golden shinies in the temple proper. Score!

The hand-washing well-basin-cistern-thingy. Nice dragon!

This was Rokkaku-dō, so named because of its hexagonal shape ("roku" is the Japanese word for "six," so I'm assuming that "rokkaku" is the word for "hexagon"). For such a tiny temple tucked away behind Kyoto's main drag, it actually has some startlingly profound claims to fame. It's part of a pilgrimage route, for one thing. No big deal, right? But then I found out that Rokkaku is believed to be the birthplace of ikebana.

Ikebana, you uncultured swine! The art of Japanese flower arrangement!

And in fact, there was an ikebana equipment shop across the road with all sorts of shears, knives, scythes, and other dastardly instruments in the window. I'd have taken a picture but I was afraid the owner would come out and shank me.

While at the temple, I had the chance to rectify my previous mistake at Zōjō-ji. If you'll recall, I didn't cleanse my hands before tossing in the coin and praying, which probably caused the Shinto deities to install some hideous disfiguring illness in my future. This time, at Rokkaku, I did everything right. I washed my hands, tossed in another hundred-yen coin, rang the bell (there was a bell at this one), prayed, and clapped. If anything went wrong, it's probably that I didn't ring the bell loudly enough. At least the gods would just find me merely inaudible this time around, instead of downright offensive.

A few blocks back down Karasuma and a left on Nishikikoji Street brought me to Nishiki Market. Like a lot of Korean and Japanese markets I'd been to, this one was an arcade, or shōtengai: a narrow street or alley covered by a roof (and the occasional glass skylight) and lined with shops and food stalls. I had heard Nishiki Market mentioned several times as one of the best free things to do in Kyoto, and as it was early afternoon and I was getting hungry, I felt the need for a snack. I meandered and weaved down the arcade's central aisle, taking note of the heavy foreigner presence and all the weird and wacky things for sale. I also tried to do some surreptitious on-the-fly photography, but the results were either blurry or zoomed-in too much. I have got to read up about apertures and f/stops.

Fish snacks!

If you know anything about the Vaunter, then you know I tried one of these (a medium-size one, for 350 yen). And it was delicious.

Eels for 650 yen?! Highway robbery!

I followed the market alley until it T-boned into a full-blown shopping mall with name-brand clothing stores (the last two pictures above), in which I have about as much interest as wood pulp. So I turned around and walked back out.

On the way, I noticed a liquor store and decided to go in. I wanted to find out if they had nigori-zake, or unfiltered sake (cloudy rice wine similar to Korean makgeolli). They did, but it was prohibitively expensive, upwards of ¥3000 per bottle. So I deferred and got a bottle of Japanese-brewed Kölsch beer for ¥456. German-style Japanese beer...fancy that?

I found a convenient place in an alley behind a large garbage can to drink it. Having thoroughly researched things like manga museums, raw horse restaurants and pachinko parlors, I had stupidly neglected to find out whether Japan objects to people drinking on the street or not. So I decided to hedge my bets and wedge myself behind a rubbish bin for a brew. It was refreshing and flavorful (the brew, not the rubbish bin).

And that was essentially that. I got back to the hotel room at about two in the afternoon. I checked my e-mails,sampled the two new whiskies I'd picked up at that loaded Family Mart earlier, and researched my next day's perambulations. The whisky helped with the research. Honest Injun, it did.

I figured I'd best get as much of this crap as I can before I go back home, right? You can't take it with you...literally.

Next up: ARASHIYAMA AND TOGETSUKYO BRIDGE. Don't miss it. This is where things get scenic.