Bangkok, day two: the Chao Phraya River cruise

I woke up on the morning of Friday, July 25, "had a good gap and a stretch" as Mark Twain would say, ate breakfast, and chatted with my cubicle neighbor, a lovely 20-year-old woman from Kent whom I shall call Emilia. I'd never met anybody from Kent before. Then I lazed around in bed until noon reading Dune, and when I got hungry I went out for some lunch. Whom should bump into but Emilia, returning from her sweaty morning forays into Bangkok? 

We went for lunch together at the same little Thai-Sri Lankan greasy spoon off Phetchaburi Road that I'd been eating at every day, and had us a good long chinwag. She was fascinating to talk to: she was about to start university in the fall (studying journalism, no less!), and had worked as a waitress in a pub. She knew all about pulling pints. We talked a fair bit about journalism's slow but steady transition from print to Internet and how that would affect our respective careers. ("Career" is a pretty loose term to use about the lazy, indolent stuff I've been doing since I graduated in 2007, and I said as much.) Even though I was nearly eight years her senior, I did my level best not to be patronizing or offer unwanted advice; I remembered how I'd felt as a twenty-year-old green buck and I used to hate it when people tried to counsel me. Just let me do my own thing, will you, you old codgers? 

Then I took the BTS Skytrain south and west to the Chao Phraya River (the Saphan Taksin stop on the Silom line), strode a few hundred meters to the Sathorn waterbus stop, bought a ticket for 40 baht, and boarded a boat heading upriver. 

Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn, on the western bank of the Chao Phraya.

It was a delightful ride. This is one of the best ways to get around in Bangkok, as a lot of the sights and activities are clustered along the eastern bank of the river. Here's a printable route map of the particular waterbus line that I used, and here's an itemized list of the stops. 

During the voyage I spoke to an elderly, rotund, balding Oregonian man who'd been stationed in Thailand in 1967 and was now visiting with his freckly, frizzy-haired granddaughter. He said he was most impressed with the high-rise hotels: Bangkok had become a "very modern city" since he'd seen it last. They hadn't a building over three or four stories in '67. He'd been stationed somewhere in the north of Thailand to monitor Communist air traffic in Laos, I believe, but he and his comrades would sneak south into Bangkok whenever they could and have a bit of fun. I can only imagine what a rough-and-tumble place the city was back then, before it was civilized, digitized, modernized, and gentrified. Saddens me I never saw it, and I told the Oregonian so. 

I got off at the No. 8 stop, Tha Tien. I weaved through the dockside throng, ignored all the souvenir sellers and noodle joints clinging perilously to stilts along the waterfront, and dove headfirst into Wat Pho,  the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. But I'll show you that in the next post. 

Bangkok, day one (part I)

Not my photo. Obviously.

Travel Truth #5: Take time to take time.

For what? Well, to relax. Or to get stuff done. Either one. Don't be rushing around trying to see everything all the time. You have to slow down and sacrifice some of your precious vacation to housekeeping. Or precious oblivion. Either one. 

The first half of my first full day in Bangkok was devoted to errands. Administrative stuff, such as: 

1. laundry
2. acquiring a tourist map, a pen, a small notebook (for taking notes while I'm walking around), floss, and sunblock
3. get a tuk-tuk to take me to Hua Lamphong Station to buy tickets for Malaysia
4. find a bookstore and pick up some reading material to replace The Catcher in the Rye, which I'd finished on the bus from Cambodia
5. eat Thai food, as much as I can hold
6. buy and send postcards, if possible

The second half would be devoted to...well, whatever the hell I wanted. I have a couple of things I like to do when I first get to a city, like:

• climb some high thing and get the lay o' the land
• take a stroll in the neighborhood immediately surrounding my lodgings and get a feel for it
• find out where the nearest bus, train, and cab stations are
• eat local food and people-watch

I'd picked up floss and sunblock and notepads and pens when I went to 7-11 last night for water, so that was already done. I dropped off my laundry at the front desk for 100 baht, picked up a tourist map, grabbed a tuk-tuk to Hua Lamphong, and bought a second-class sleeper ticket to Butterworth, Malaysia (only 1200 baht, or $40). 

I walked out of the station, ignoring the cries of the ravening tuk-tuk drivers who yelled that it was too hot and too far to walk anywhere, and crossed the canal. I'd intended to trek northwest to find Wat Traimit, the Temple of the Golden Buddha. I found it quickly, but unexpectedly found that I didn't feel like going inside. You have to pick and choose your wats carefully, you know. But here's where the day began to turn frustrating. 

Nobody in Thailand, or all of Southeast Asia for that matter, believed that (a) I knew where I was going, or (b) that I was capable of getting there under my own power. I stopped a street corner to ask a portly man in a dark blue security uniform about the way to the Temple of the Black Buddha, and he pointed me in the direction with no fuss. But after wandering around aimlessly down Charoen Krung Road for 30-45 minutes with no temple in sight, I began to get annoyed. I sat down on the steps of the Robinson Shopping Center and consulted my map. After a few moments, an elderly Thai gent stepped up to me and asked in perfect English "Where are you going?"

I told my balding, liver-spotted interlocutor that I was trying to reach the temples near the Chao Phraya River. 

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "You must hire a tuk-tuk. He'll take you around for the whole day for a very reasonable price. What did you want to see while you are here?"

I said, "I'd like to see the temples."

He told me that it was no good—today was a "Big Buddha Day" and all the temples would be jam-packed with celebrants and gawking foreigners. 

"You really must get out of the city," he admonished. 

"I don't know what's out th—"

"All of the most beautiful things are to be found there: the floating markets, the crocodile farm, the rose garden, and the ruins of the ancient capital."

"I don't think I—"

"You can hire a tuk-tuk to take you around the city for only 30 baht per hour!"

"I believe I'd rather—"

"You should also stop by the fashion district. You want to get new clothes, right? All the best tailors can  be found there."

"I don't need any—"

"Here, come this way. We'll hire a tuk-tuk to take you to a tour company where you can book a tour."

I tried to demur. I tried to protest. I tried to balk. All to no avail: the Thai gent took me by the elbow and steered me toward a waiting line of lime-green tuk-tuks at the curb, and fell to haggling in Thai with the driver, a young man with a shock of black hair and a paunchy stomach. Then, without knowing how, I was inside the vehicle and we were rocketing through traffic. A few minutes later I stood outside a blue-painted shopfront with five jaunty stone steps leading up to the threshold. In the dim interior I could make out other foreigners sitting at desks, and on the other side Thai clerks who were taking notes and making suggestions and gestures. 

Oh well, I thought. I don't really have anything planned for Day 3 anyway. 

I walked in. The kindly old lady behind the counter, her shoulder-length hair dyed ebony and her insectoid eyes magnified by thick spectacles, waited patiently while I pored over the catalog. I booked a tour to Kanchanaburi, the province northeast of Bangkok near the Burmese border: the River Kwai Bridge, the floating markets, and something called the "tiger temple." It looked promising and only cost 2,200 baht (around $70 at the time). The River Kwai Bridge was actually on my Thailand bucket list, but I hadn't figured it was so close to Bangkok. This was going to be exciting. 

Then the tuk-tuk driver took me to MBK, a fashionable men's clothing boutique in the tailor district. I didn't even set foot on the sidewalk. I'd been warned about this kind of thing. The doorman and the proprietor both came out of the glass doors to try to cajole me inside, but I stayed put. I looked my tuk-tuk driver square in the back of the head and said, "No way. I hate shopping. That was the old man's idea, not mine." I ignored every attempt by the driver and the shop owner to entice me from my entrenched position. Instead, I calmly and civilly requested to be taken to the nearest foodie neighborhood. That royally pissed off my driver. At the time, I wasn't sure why, but then I realized that tuk-tuk drivers usually get a commission from shop owners for delivering customers to their doors. I had just cheated my driver of his bonus, and now he was snorting and looking for any excuse to buck me off. Testily he drove me to the seediest, dirtiest, loneliest, most dubious-looking streetside eatery in all Bangkok: a few dingy tables with cigarette-scarred plastic tablecloths, meats fried into blackened oblivion, desiccated-looking vegetables, flies, heaps of refuse, scrawny women and sinister customers lurking in the shadows beneath rain-stained awnings. I was just glad to be out of the damn tuk-tuk, and the feeling was mutual. 

"After you eat, where you go?" the driver asked as I stepped out of his rig.
"Here," I said, pointing to my hostel on the map.
"Too far," he said.
Bullshit, I thought. I knew for a fact that we were in the Riverside district and it wasn't but a hop, skip, and a jump to Pretchaburi Road, my hostel's neighborhood.
"You get taxi," the driver continued. "I'm done with you."

That's fine, I was done with him too. I paid him the 100 baht he demanded was never gladder to see the back of anyone. Fuming, I walked a block and grabbed a (blue) tuk-tuk driven by someone who looked like the Southeast Asian version of Ernest P. Worrell. He was older than God and his rig in bad need of service. We coughed, wheezed, and lurched rheumatically through the streets back to Boxpackers, with me holding on for dear life and striving to hold back my temper and the contents of my stomach. The driver only gave me 40 baht change out of the 200 I'd given him, but I didn't care. I practically sprinted back up to my room and the air-conditioned sanctuary of my cubicle and my journals. My laundry was waiting for me, clean but stuffed unfolded into a plastic bag. 

It wasn't even noon yet. 

Southeast Asia travel prep

I've made great strides in preparing for my upcoming Southeast Asia tour. I had some free time on Friday, so I took the subway to Anguk Station and climbed a tall, sinister, sweaty hill to the Vietnamese embassy to apply for my visa. I was expecting a grand, colonial-style brick building with curtained windows, armed guards in crisp uniforms, and velvety carpet floors, but what I found was a series of squat little huts with peeling white paint and asthmatic air conditioning. The rusty gate hung half-open and the tiny apron of rough asphalt inside was empty. There wasn't a single Vietnamese person in sight. Behind the desk in Hut B4 was a young, surly, sniffy, trilingual Korean woman just back from lunch, who imperiously asked for my passport and jabbed an application form and a pen at me. I filled it out while the other supplicants, a sharp-dressed harabeoji with his two hyperactive grandchildren and a harassed salarywoman, hovered in the background. Ten minutes later, I had a pink slip in my hand commanding me to bring ₩95,000 to this very hut at 5:00 p.m. on Friday the 27th of June. Boom. Visa applied for. 

I took a cab to Itaewon and the international clinic there to get some immunizations. Dr. Kim, educated in the United States and almost wholly without an accent, gave it to me straight: according to the CDC, I didn't need malaria meds unless I'd be traveling to the uncharted interior of Vietnam or Cambodia. As long as I was sticking to the cities, I'd be fine. After a two-minute discussion, the good doctor directed me to his head nurse, who jabbed me with a 6-month flu shot, a three-year typhoid injection, and a first-time hepatitis A vaccine, which I was instructed to renew in half a year's time. The harridan scribbled three entries into a vaccination card, thrust it at me, took my payment of ₩143,000, and bowed me out of the waiting room. My arm was sore for the rest of the day. I attended a World Cup-themed dinner party in Hyehwa later that rainy evening and raising beer bottles to my lips became an unpleasant chore. 

I have also successfully reserved a four-berth soft sleeper on the SE3, the two-day train from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City departing at eleven o'clock on the evening of July 14th. Seat 61 recommended Vietnam Impressive as the best travel agency for booking train tickets, and not without reason. I was very impressed with their fast service and their clear, forthright run-down of timetables and payment information. I'd recommend them to anyone. Their notification request system seems a bit spotty, but less than 24 hours after I sent a follow-up e-mail, I had payment and reservation confirmation in my inbox. My view of Vietnam is going to look like this: 

Reckless Wonder

So...yeah. Flights are reserved, hotels are booked, train tickets will be waiting for me, and everything's go for launch on July 12.

This is gonna be great. 

Hokkaido diary: Tokyo to Sapporo

A quick aside before we begin: this is the Sententious Vaunter's 600th post. A big thank-you to all you lovely followers who've hung with me for even half that time.

2/3: 

• woke up at 4:30 a.m.; back hurts
• got some H2O
• packed up and left at 5:30
• walked a few blocks to Tokyo Station, mumbling to myself
• found out I can't exchange my voucher for a Rail Pass until 7:30
• went to McDonald's and ate a breakfast sandwich with coffee and watched the light creep into the sky
• allergies are giving me the business this morning—must be the capsule bedding
• Not content to sit in Mickey D's for 90 minutes, I stashed my stuff in a station locker. My rabbit fur hat, strapped to my backpack, was shedding all over it like a living animal
• I stuck my hands in my pockets and walked south to Ginza. The city came awake as I had—slowly, groggily, gray and uncertain. I tried to capture the freshness of the morning, but couldn't. A slimy haze, like last night's hangover, lay over all. I reveled in the cool and calmness, deliberately going against the grain by walking slow and looking happy—the opposite, as Theroux wrote, of most Tokyoites, hurried and worried. This is where I should stick some platitude about "the city was all mine in the predawn light" but that'd just be doggerel. I bought some sandwiches, mikan (tangerines) and water and fruit juices (plus my trusty traveler's fifth of Suntory whisky) at Lawson Station and got my JR Pass. Then I cracked my stuff out of my locker and threaded my way through the labyrinthine passages (flashing my pass at every guard at every turnstile) to the Tohoku platform 22 and the 8:20 Hayabusa to Shin-Aomori:
                 
                       8:20 - 11:19                Tokyo - Shin-Aomori
                        (179 min.)                   (Hayabusa Shinkansen)
                        15 min. transfer
  
                       11:34 - 1:44                Shin-Aomori - Hakodate
                        (130 min)                  (Super Hakucho)
                        29 min. transfer
  
                       2:13 - 6:14                  Hakodate - Sapporo
                       (241 min.)                   (Hokuto)
  

8:00 a.m. So, Steely Dan says you can't buy a thrill, eh? Try pulling out of Tokyo Station on a bullet train. Nothing else like it.

Hung my fur hat on a hook and used it for a pouch to hold things in (finally managed to put on some deodorant, too)

• Everyone else eating their breakfasts—bread or bento (boxed, compartmentalized meals)
• I ate one of my sandwiches (supposedly a BLT, bu really a BLEPT—bacon, lettuce, egg, pickle and tomato—and tried some perfectly awful vegetable fruit juice
• 8:35 a.m. Tokyo still had that slimy film on it that I'd noticed earlier
• 8:45 a.m. Brief stop at Omiya; sure is nice having 3 seats to myself.
• 9:45 a.m. Napped for an hour and woke up to Sendai
• 9:52 a.m. Stop at Sendai
• 10:08 a.m. Passed acres of farmland mysteriously steaming—at first I thought, panicked, of Fukushima and insidious, invisible radiation—then I saw the men burning brush and weeds, scouring the fields clean well ahead of planting season
• 10:15 a.m. Popped out of a tunnel and there was snow on the ground. Always happens like that on bullet trains. Rivers still running like iron bands across the white landscape
• 10:27 a.m. Sky beginning to clear
• Bluish mountains dusted with white rearing their heads in the distance; stopping soon at Morioka
• 11:00 a.m. Flatter now. No snow, just slush, tired-looking rail yards, clusters of houses and brown fields. Too many damn tunnels to see much. Read the Sapporo and Wakkanai chapters of Theroux's book.
• 11:06 a.m. Snowy again, from what I can see. Next stop is Shin-Aomori, the end of the line for the Shinkansen.
  
  Writers are snobs. We're just snobby about different stuff. Theroux is snobby about airplanes, manga, cellphones, computers, and people who walk and eat at the same time. I'm snobby about movies (at best a liberal brainwashing, at worst a cheap shell game, intended to bully, browbeat, shock, desensitize and amuse the populace into acquiescence) and music (hip-hop, created to make both the performer and the listeners think they're cool)
• 11:15 a.m. Will these tunnels never end? Sky's getting grayer. Shin-Aomori should be just minutes away.
• 11:30 a.m. Well, perfect. I suppose I should have expected this. Made a successful transfer to the Super-Hakucho 15 only to find the platform crowded with fatuous-looking foreigners—Americans in a tour group, all wearing name-brand coats and hefting fancy luggage and backpacks with names like "Arcteryx." Here for the snow festival, like me, and the ski slopes too, most of them. When did the outdoors become a penis-measuring contest? I suppose it has always been since the days of rich dentists and newspaper editors going on safari. At least brand names weren't so abundant and intrusive back then. God, there's nothing I hate worse than seeing knock-kneed, buck-toothed jackanapes with bulging eyes and protuberant Adam's apples taking pictures of an oncoming train with a smartphone. Ugh. I'm glad I'm only hear [sic] for the first day of the festival.
  
  Wow, speaking of snobby...
• 11:37 a.m. On the move, heading for Aomori proper. Lots of snow, heaped against buildings and on rooftops in spongy, sagging layers like week-old frosting on an angel food cake. 
• 11:52 a.m. For reasons which I would understand if I spoke Japanese, the train sat for an interminable age at Aomori, then started back the way it came—toward Shin-Aomori. Maybe we need to go back and switch tracks or something, or perhaps Aomori proper was just a branch stop. Ate another of my sandwiches. I have some tangerines, one apple juice and a full bottle of whiskey left. Morale is high. 
• 11:58 a.m. Yeah, we're on a different track now, passing white snow-clad fields with wisps of brown grass sticking up and crossing viscous gray-green streams. 
• I have an interesting map in front of me on the underside of my folding tray. It's a cross-section of the Seikan Tunnel under Tsugaru Strait, which this train will take to reach Hakodate on Hokkaido. According to the map, the tunnel curves at an obtuse angle beneath 140 m of water and 100 m of seabed, for a total length of 53.85 km, 23.3 of which is water (the rest seems impassibly mountainous). It will take us 24 minutes to traverse it. 
• We're just sitting again, this time in the middle of nowhere .I hope I don't miss my connection at Hakodate. I'm getting into Sapporo late enough tonight as it is. 
• 12:19 p.m. Rolling into Kanita, and BAM—there's the ocean off to the right—rolling, windblown, reflecting the gray sky. Snowy mountains across the water—my first glimpse of Hokkaido perhaps?
• 12:56 p.m. Nodding off and drowsing in my sleep. We've been in the tunnel for ages. The map shows some sort of station—Tappi, it's called—1/3 of the way along, just before water. We must have shot right by it. 
• 1:02 p.m. And we're out—still overcast but the snow is blinding after all that darkness. We must be on Hokkaido by now. Deep snow everywhere, piled high by doorways, just as Theroux described
• 1:09 p.m. Brief stop at Kikonai. Next stop, Hakodate. Much colder now. All the snow makes the plows and cottages look like cupcakes. Clumps of wet snow nest in the dead branches of skeletal trees like weird fruit.

2:05 p.m. Easiest transfer ever. The blocky, angular Hokuto 91 was directly across from us, engines rumbling. I bought some more snacks (plus beer) and now we're just waiting around 'til the darn thing leaves at 2:13 p.m. for the four-hour drive to Sapporo. I've got my Nook, my iPod and everything else I need for the journey. All the chuckleheads who got on at Aomori are in my car this time. Bummer. I don't have a window seat, but at least my seatmate (the first since leaving Tokyo) is a shy, retiring Japanese girl, maybe a university student. Okay, beer time. And snacks. I bought Yebisu Malt, some nuts in a small plastic bottle, more water and onigiri—a rice ball wrapped in seaweed and filled with salty tuna. The Koreans would surely think it Gimbap.

2:31 p.m. Somewhat distracted by my book, The Terror by Dan Simmons—getting good only 14 pages in—but must remember to look out the window. Real scenic out here, plains and woods and lofty mountains and the distant gray sea. Can't write too much, though. This contraption is the rockiest, shakiest, bounciest ride yet—worse than the Super Express with its wheezy, whistling brakes, worse than rattling, banging Amtrak. It's like being in a truck on a dirt road, and going through tunnels is even worse.

• 2:38 p.m. Brief stop at Onumakoen—foresty and drenched in thick snow, layered and crusty and flaky like pastry crust. 
• 2:57 p.m. Brief stop at Mori; sea and fog-strewn mountains to the right. This damned car is roasting hot—Why???
• 3:21 p.m. Brief stop at Yakumo
• 3:43 p.m. Brief stop at Oshamambe; young foreign couple got off here. The man had a Japanese sword stuck through the straps of his pack
• 3:47 p.m. Still following the sea around the arm of a great bay. Getting ridiculously snowy. Looks to be knee-deep in most places, and the mountaintops are simply caked with it. Sky and sea are leaden—a cheerless sight. How did the Ainu survive here?
• 4:11 p.m. Brief stop at Toya; Reading Simmons's book really makes you fearful of those cold northern wastes where ice and wind drive men mad and unknown terrors lurk.
• 4:24 p.m. Brief stop at Datemombetsu. Charming little station with a covered platform and a noodle shop.
• 4:44 p.m. Brief stop at Higashi-Muroran—rather big place compared to the others
• 4:53 p.m. Getting dark. Looks dang cold out there. Hard to believe I woke up in Tokyo this morning and it was 45 degrees. This ol' heap keeps wobbling and jerking back and forth and side-to-side. Wheels slipping on snow? Unsteady hand at the wheel? I don't know much about diesel trains but I'd swear this thing has a manual transmission. 
• 4:58 p.m. Brief stop at Noboribetsu. It's not just cold and wintery out there anymore—it's frozen. In the fading purple light I can see slush frozen into jagged ridges on the roads and icicles dangling from the eaves of the houses, which look hunched over against the cold. It's colder in the car, too—have they turned the heaters off, or is it just that nippy out?
• 5:40 p.m. Totally missed the last station. Coming up on Chitose now. I've read 160 pages of this book without pause. 
• 7:18 p.m. FINALLY in my hotel room (as you can likely tell from my neater script). We were delayed 30 minutes getting into Sapporo due to another train having mechanical problems ahead. After a lot of starts and stops, we finally squoze by and sneaked into town like a teenager who's stayed out too late. 

I KNEW those chucklehead foreigners were trouble—Americans and Australians both. I'm beginning to see why my mother and my fiancée both claim to hate people in general, and why Paul Theroux wrote that meeting another traveler is his (and every traveler's) greatest fear. What I should I see [sic] when I get off the train than this same stupid-looking bunch of people forming a gabby, impenetrable knot right at the top of the platform staircase. Fed up (and a bit travel-fatigued, I'll admit) I shoved right through them, gleefully relishing their bemused stares. Halfway to my hotel, however, I had a horrible thought. I remembered that, two months ago, I had by some miracle snagged the last vacant room at the Sapporo Clark. Upon rounding a corner and looking in through the lobby windows, my worst fears were confirmed: that same knot of gabby foreigners had beaten me to the punch. They were all standing in the lobby, yapping as they checked in. I kicked the two-foot-deep snowbank next to me and waited around for 15 minutes until they cleared out.

Now I'm in my room, cramped and lonely and with an iron-hard East Asian mattress. But THERE IS A BATHTUB. I'm going to go find something delicious and decadent to eat, come back, peel off my grimy clothes and stinking socks, and have the most gorgeous bath ever.

Next time, I won't come here when there's a festival on. 

Hokkaido diary: Tokyo Skytree and craft beer

As before, I'm trying the Paul Theroux approach to travel writing: no bloviating, no florid soliloquizing, no fluff. Just straight-up description. As Mary Chesnut wrote in her Civil War diary, "My subjective days are over."

I'm going to do something a little different this time around. Instead of just telling you blandly about my week-long trip to Hokkaido in the past tense, I'm going to include snippets from the journal I kept. Present tense is always more vibrant and visceral. 

So. Day 1.

Hokkaido diary
2/2 - 2/7

2/2:

• was almost late for my flight, but made it. Miss H saw me off. I sure do love that girl.
• nice sandwiches on board, though thin strips—Japanese style
• next time I'm taking the limited express to from Narita to Tokyo (¥1000, or $10) instead of the Skyliner to Ueno (¥2400, or $24)
• Looking at Chiba Prefecture for the first time in six months—still as gray in the sky, but browner in the grass. And not stinking hot and humid
• Checked into Capsule Value Inn Kanda. Met a very nice Finn named Manu (?)—talked about mandatory Swedish in Helsinki schools, idiosyncracies [sic] of the Japanese culture; his dad was a farmer, but he lusted for knowledge at a library 16 km away
• tried to go to Tokyo Skytree; cost ¥2000 to get in. I said "screw that noise, I've been up Tokyo Tower." Checked out the Minolta Planetarium, but cost ¥1000-¥1300 to get in. 
• went back to Kanda and ate maguroichibadon (sushi over rice) for ¥700
• found a craft micropub called Devil Craft nearby—tried microbrews with Mel, a foreign reporter for the Japan Times (and occasionally the Korea Herald)
• Sacked out in my capsule, reading Paul Theroux, hearing Finnish snores and Japanese farts

I'm getting to be an old pro at hopping back and forth between Japan. Getting to Incheon Airport was a breeze. I made it onto my flight with just five minutes to spare because I underestimated how much time it takes to get there and check in. The gate agent even scolded me, his face flat and impassive. But I made it, and that's the important thing. 

I did the same thing as I did last time: I cleared customs and immigration at Narita, exchanged my Korean won for Japanese yen, and then forked over ¥2400 of that precious wad ($23.42) to ride the blue Skyliner to Ueno Station in northeast Tokyo. Then it was a couple of stops down the Ginza subway line to Kanda Station, where, after a bit of poking through back alleys and some help from a good Samaritan (a shortish middle-aged Japanese fellow with his hair cropped close to his skull and a bellicose demeanor), I found my capsule hotel, the Capsule Value Inn:

I checked in and stashed my stuff in the lockers, retrieving only my camera. Then I went back downstairs. Passing the front counter, I bumped into Manu, a Finnish fellow with the look of a mean drill sergeant: buzz-cut hair, blade-like nose, his face all angles and hollows, hardly an ounce of fat on his body. His eyes were piercing gray-blue and his English was flawless. He'd never stayed in a capsule hotel before, and as he was leaving Tokyo the next day (like me) he thought he'd give one a shot. We chatted for half an hour on the hotel's front stoop before I headed off to see Tokyo Skytree. 

Part of my Tao of Travel (again, I'm ripping off terminology from Paul Theroux, but the man's traveled farther than most and he's got some good tips) is this: once I get to a city, at the soonest possible juncture, I find a high place and take a look down at the city from there. Get the lay of the land, so to speak. In August, on my way through western Japan, I did it with Tokyo Tower, Mt. Arashiyama in Kyoto, and Kumamoto Castle. I've done it several times in Seoul: Namsan Tower, the 63 Building, and Dobongsan. I've looked down on L.A. from the Mount Griffith Observatory, the Rim of the World Highway, and several others. I think it's nice to get a bit of an overview before you dive into something, you know? Like looking at a menu at a restaurant or reading the abstract of a scientific study.

But here's the thing: I'd already looked down at Tokyo in August. And I'd done it in the bright daytime, when the air was clear. A moist, slimy fog was stuck to Tokyo's back this night, and I doubted whether, even from the Skytree's Tembo observation deck a redoubtable 450 meters off the ground, I could have seen much of the city. Moreover, even though this was the tallest tower in the world and the tallest structure of any kind after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, I wasn't up for paying ¥2000 ($20) to get in. The lines were humongous, the night was chill and foggy, and I was content just to stumble around at the tower's base with my head craned back, looking at the clouds swirling around the tower's 634-meter spire.

Then I headed back to Kanda. I was in the mood to just sit and have a beer and reflect on the long, exciting journey ahead of me tomorrow. By some cosmic stroke of luck, there was a brewpub just around the corner from my capsule hotel. It was called Devil Craft, one of only two in Tokyo, run by a trio of American expatriates, crewed this night by two handsome and bantering Japanese fellows and filled with foreigners. I fell into conversation with one of them, an Englishman named Mel, who looked almost exactly like Richard Attenborough in The Great Escape and wrote for the Japan Times. I sipped the Miyama Blonde (by Shiga Kogen Beer), Rogue Brewery's Yellow Snow IPA, and Left Hand's Fade to Black, a rye ale. All were supremely delicious. Mel and I chatted away as we drank. He asked me about living in Korea, I asked him about working for a newspaper in Japan. The man had quite a long list of interesting things he believed: he'd interviewed Paul McCartney for 20 minutes and said he hated him; he disliked the Irish and thought the Potato Famine had been faked (just another example of Irish self-victimization); he felt the whole Dokdo/Takeshima possession dispute was bollocks; he avoided films and had no idea who Sir Ian McKellen was. He'd served as a parachutist in the RAF during the Iraq War and had broken both his legs, being sent to Australia to recover.  Japan was a stopover on the way back to Britain, but Mel had liked it so much he'd stayed. He'd married a local and gotten into newspapers, and would be interviewing Lionel Richie on that musician's Japan tour in a few weeks. Right now he was collecting man-on-the-street interviews about the upcoming Tokyo mayoral election and whether the Fukushima incident should factor into it. He wanted to interview me, but I demurred; I wasn't sure how much my job would be worth if Sejong University learned that one of its junior professors had shown up in the Japan Times yapping about Tokyo elections and nuclear meltdowns. No matter; Mel had plenty of bites. He'd already interviewed one of Devil Craft's waitresses and, shortly before I arrived, had become engaged with a foreign-born Japanese man and his Russian wife. Lots of fish in the sea. Mel and I parted as friends, though I did not share his views on the Irish.

Then, my head reeling, I wobbled back to the Capsule Value Inn and spent an hour reading the rest of the Tokyo Andagarundo chapter in Theroux's book. I set an alarm, turned out the light, and waited to see what fortunes the next day would bring me.

Get ready for Day 2: Tokyo to Sapporo. 

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.

territoriality: a discussion

It's high time I did some more sententious vaunting. This here's one of my rare opinion posts. Let's begin with a definition:

territoriality

ter·ri·to·ri·al·i·ty [ter-i-tawr-ee-al-i-tee, -tohr-]

noun

1. territorial quality, condition, or status.

2. the behavior of an animal in defining and defending its territory.

3. attachment to or protection of a territory or domain.

And let's follow that up with a basic truth: the concept of territoriality applies to human interaction as well. We build fences around our houses, put up NO TRESPASSING signs, and feel more at home in our native towns, counties, states, provinces, and (naturally) territories than anywhere else.

It's that specific aspect of territoriality I want to discuss, actually.

Traveling and living in foreign countries is a growing experience. It's a baptism by fire, a crash course in open-mindedness, cultural exposure, language barriers, communication disasters, culinary misadventures and homesickness. You feel it the moment you step off the plane. Everything's new, and it's scary. People are talking in tongues you can't understand. The signs are unreadable. Often the people themselves look completely alien to you, and it's a lead-pipe cinch that they'll think and act in different ways. This makes travelers apprehensive and twitchy and throws us all off our chumps. Eventually, with successive jaunts and expeditions, we get used to the otherness and can relax and enjoy our trips with relative ease.

But one fear never goes away.

In addition to the surface nervousness that traveling engenders within us, there is also something more primordial: a creeping, furtive sort of nervousness, an ever-present low-key fear. It's not just the unfamiliarity of our surroundings. It's the simple fact that we're off our home range. We're on someone else's turf, so to speak. We're in a foreign land, with different laws, mindsets, philosophies, mores, and etiquette. We're in someone else's backyard, and they know it like the back of their hand, and we don't. We, the interlopers, won't be torn limb from limb if discovered by the natives, as happens to wild animals who stray too far from their territory. But the inchoate threat of such still lingers in the reptilian parts of the human brain, and we feel that fear whenever a foreign shore heaves into sight on the  distant horizon.

Even after living in South Korea for something like three nonconsecutive years, I still get the willies on occasion. If I could speak the language better, I wouldn't have 'em so often. But even if I was a whiz at Hangul, that primordial fear would still be there. I'm in Asia, where the rules of the game are elementally different from what I know. The sun still rises and sets, and the tides go in and out, but those are the only similarities. The Koreans have their own ideas about commerce, social relations, gratitude, etiquette, politeness, interpersonal nuance, humor, entertainment, morality, fine dining, hard work and whatnot. Furthermore, the Korean civilization is thousands of years old, far outstripping my own country's paltry history. The enormity of those ages weighs upon my shoulders like a millstone at times.

I feel the opposite effect whenever I return home to the States. I exhale literally and metaphorically. Everything makes sense again, imperfect as it may be. The signs are legible. People's slang terms are comforting. That sense of oneness with my surroundings comes flooding back to me. I feel ready to turn and do battle with whatever extraterritorial threats hounded me home. Your turn, you bastards. You're on my block now.

And you know what? I think that's a good thing.

Culture shock, homesickness, and otherness are shoots which spring from the same seed: territoriality. The feelings of attachment or protectiveness we harbor for the land of our birth. It exerts a powerful, formative influence upon us, and rightly so. The stark reality of it is impossible to deny, deeply biological as it is. Americans have their territory, Koreans have theirs. I'm intruding, plain and simple. Never mind that the immigration office stamps my passport and lets me live and work here for a year at a time. I'm an alien freak. I have the children's stares to prove it.

Of course, there are other, darker shoots of that same territorial seed. Things like bigotry, prejudice, and racism are also tendrils of territoriality. But there are positive effects as well: patriotism and nationalism, for example.

Many will disagree with me on this. Some of you may be shaking your heads right now. In your minds, the argument is coalescing: "Some of the most horrendous atrocities have been committed in the names of patriotism and nationalism!"

They have, no doubt. But I still say that devotion to, fondness for and belief in one's country and culture are healthy things for an upstanding, free-minded individual to have. I think that notion of otherness isn't a stumbling block, but rather a step stool. It's a platform with a telescope, a hill to climb, steep and rocky perhaps but a great place to pause and peruse the sunlit uplands beyond.

I believe (especially as an American) that we're sort of shamed into forsaking our nationalities when we're out on the road. We're encouraged to forget who we are and where we came from, and be totally open-minded as we view other countries, cultures and customs. Viewing anything through the lens of the culture we were born into is frowned upon. Bigotry, it's called. Prejudice. Willful ignorance.

I disagree.

I think you have to judge the entire world from the perspective of your own tiny slice of it, because you'd have to be a robot to do otherwise. Only a mindless automaton is capable of ignoring its own heritage and upbringing and judge something with perfect objectivity. As G.K. Chesterton warned, "Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out." Stay judgmental. Be biased. Cultivate prejudice. You need a basis, a foundation upon which to judge what you see, and your background is well-suited to it. As long as you're a righteous human being (and I already know that you are), then you won't fall into the bottomless pits of prejudice or racism or ethnocentrism. You'll be fine. Rock on. You need that cultural context of yours to form sound opinions of what you see and hear abroad.

D'you see what I'm saying, here?

I'm starting to think I'm the last person on the planet who feels that way. The paradigm is shifting. The world shrinks, technology advances, airplanes and boats and cars and trains move faster and with less energy, and the information superhighway reaches ever deeper into our lives. As the lines between cultures and continents begin to blur, the zeitgeist has changed. In talks with many of my more liberal friends, they have expressed nothing but disdain for the concepts of patriotism and nationalism. They shake their heads and say things like, "Murrica! F*** yeah!" in satirical tones. Some of the more extreme among them have expressed outright approval for a sort of "world culture," in which national boundaries are swept aside, the myriad cultures of the globes are integrated and amalgamated, and a sort of homogeneous global culture ensues, freeing humanity forever from the damnable vices of bigotry and racism.

Phooey to that, I say.

I don't know about you, but the whole notion of a "world culture," gives me the heebie-jeebies. You should take pride in your homeland. You should have some prejudice in its favor. You should be leery of the way other people do things. You should believe your country's the best in the world simply because you were born in it, as George Bernard Shaw once so scathingly wrote.

"Why?" I hear you ask. "Aren't you being an arrogant, ethnocentric pig? Won't people hate you for thinking that way? Aren't you being close-minded? Shouldn't you travel with an open mind?"

To which my answers are: No, yes, no, and yes.

Being territorial—feeling uncomfortable in another country and safe and secure in your own, cleaving to an intrinsic, instinctive, subconscious kind of nationalism—isn't arrogance. It's only natural to believe that your country's the best. You did grow up in it, after all. But it's not just natural—it's evolutionary. This is your territory. It's your home, and it's a part of you, from the tip of your hairs to the marrow of your bones. You were fed on it, suckled by it,  knocked about by it in your youth. You've breathed it, swam in it, tasted it and slept in it your whole life. It knows you and you know it, and you have each other's backs. You should love it to death. Stepping out of your territory is frightening, strange and potentially life-threatening. That makes the challenge—and rewards—all the greater.

People will hate you for feeling that way. They'll call you a racist pig, a jingoistic idiot, an ignorant, short-sighted, narrow-minded fool. Don't listen to 'em. You know in your heart that you're not a racist. You know people are people, no matter where they're from. You know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and you don't attribute either of those things to a human individual just 'cause they're from a particular place. And as long as you know it, no one can touch you or make you feel like you're a bad person.

You're not being close-minded. You're open to new experiences. In fact, that is the whole point of traveling: to get out of your comfort zone. To leave your territory, those familiar shores and welcoming skyline, and venture into the unknown. There's the rub. Be territorial. Love your homeland, be wary or even leery of other people's, but don't let that stop you from going. Go there and find out how it really is. Then you can decide whether or not your preconceptions were accurate. What you're doing, if you're doing it right, is giving other people's cultures and societies the respect they deserve without fawning over them, worshiping them, or paying them lip service for political correctness's sake. By the Great Green Arkleseizure, folks, you're allowed to have an opinion. Just make sure it's founded on your own experience and a thorough knowledge of circumstance, not sweeping generalizations or assumptions. Just look at Paul Theroux. That's precisely how he writes his travel books. He's judgmental as hell. He'll lampoon anybody, be they an individual or a government, foreign or American. The point is to go and see, and then judge harshly...based on what you know is right.

That, my dears, is how you travel with an open mind. You have a context to work with: your culture. Hold that culture close to yourself, cherish it, be proud of it, but keep your heart and mind open. Let the ambient weirdness trickle in. You'll learn some startling things. Some of them will be as stupid or wrong or yucky as you always suspected. Many of them, however, won't be as bad as you thought—and more than a few will be the exact opposite. You'll see sights you never dreamed existed, taste the milk of human kindness, add more capital to the bank of experience than you ever thought possible. But don't forget where you started. Don't lord it over anybody, don't put anyone else down, but for Pete's sake, don't be afraid to flaunt it. You are who you are. Be proud. Don't skulk about. Tell people. Everyone's just as curious about you as you are about them, or ought to be. They're all nationalists at heart, too. They may dislike you just because of the color of your passport. But you can forgive them for that, 'cause deep down you're judging the hell out of their clothes, their dirty fingernails and their country's cockeyed ways, and you can laugh inside at the crazy two-way nature of the universe. 

But how would this priceless sensation, this ability to learn about others, to understand how things are done on the far side of the world, down in the dust or up in the snow, on top of the mountains and in the deepest valleys and over the silvery lakes—how would it be possible if we had one world culture? Where would your identity come from? What would you take pride in? How would you build that base, that context, from which to travel and peer into other people's lives? How could you judge their shortcomings—and their wonders? What use would travel be if everyone else thought and slept and breathed and loved the same way that you do? 

It wouldn't, and that's the truth. It wouldn't be any use at all.  

I don't want a world that's all the same. I don't want a world where I never feel ill at ease or out of place. I want a world full of mystery and weirdness and otherness to explore. And I want a patch of dirt that I can come back to and feel at home in, unconditionally—but with a host of foreign friends and experiences rattling around in my head, heart and soul. I think it's grand that we're all different from each other, and that we have a little fear and perhaps aversion to one another (and our respective nations). Just because we travel and learn about the world doesn't mean we should lose faith in who we are and where we came from, or our belief in our own greatness. I think that sort of national pride fosters healthy competition, self-confidence, cultural self-esteem, and most importantly, our curiosity about each other. It makes the sun brighter, the water clearer, the air fresher and our friendships warmer. 

But maybe that's just me.

Patriotic enough for ya?

...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand the O-Train is sold out

When you live in a city of nearly ten million people, it's easy to forget that you live in a city of nearly ten million people. You only see a few hundred of them on any given day: neighbors, convenience store owners, barflies, restaurant-goers, coffee-shoppers, bike riders, bus drivers, the old ladies in the elevator, the geezers playing baduk in the park, university students, up-and-coming executives, and the singers, comedians and newscasters on TV. A million is a statistic, as Josef Stalin might've once possibly thought about saying. It boggles the imagination. It's hard for human beings to picture a million of anything in their minds. Unless it's a giant pile of uncooked rice grains or something.

The practical upshot of this mental stumbling block is that I sometimes forget that I'm competing with ten million other warm bodies for a train ticket or a seat at the cinema. Often, I neglect to make reservations for things which I really should be making reservations for. In this case, it was the O-Train.

I finally got off my duff (or rather, sat down on it) and checked out Korail's English website yesterday. I had attempted to reserve tickets on the O-Train once before on this site, and failed, because I couldn't find the specific line I sought. After the abortive attempt to buy a ticket and board at Seoul Station last weekend, I finally realized why: the O-Train is not labeled as such on Korail's booking webpage. It's just another Saemaeul-class passenger train. The key bits of information to search for online are the departure time (7:45 a.m.) and the destination (Jecheon, Gangwon-do).

So I did a search for those on the Korail pages, and the results I got were disappointing. In a way, I should have seen it coming. I had read earlier that the O- and V-Trains were so popular that they had already started up a southern version, or S-Train, in September. (And apparently there are plans for a "G-Train on the west coast and a "B-Train" on the east coast, plus a DMZ-touring train which shall be labeled goodness-knows-what.)

The S-Train. Photo by Julie Jackson/The Korea Herald.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise when I logged on to Korail's webpage and discovered that the O-Train was sold out for the foreseeable future. The site wasn't specific on when the train would stop running for the winter, but for the month of November there were no seats available.

Bummer.

Oh well. I don't want this to sound like sour grapes, but it's supposed to rain again on Saturday anyway. Time to stay in and work on NaNoWriMo s'more, I guess.

Hongqiao Pearl Market

Wait, we're not done!

I mean Thursday, September 19 wasn't done. The sun had just about vanished in to the layers of perma-smog hovering 15 degrees above Beijing's western horizon. The sky, the streets, the buildings and our skins were all the same shade of diseased pink. Exhaust clogged our nostrils and weariness our veins. But there was one thing we had to do before we hopped the subway back to Chongwenmen Station and our hotel.

I am speaking, of course, of Hongqiao Pearl Market.

It's not just pearls, actually. The first floor's all souvenirs: kitschy stuff similar to Donghuamen Alley or Insadong-gil. The next few floors are all fake jewelry, mother-of-pearl and cubic zirconia. The real stuff's on the upper floors.

Unless you count this.

Miss H, Miss J and I didn't spare much thought for souvenirs as we stepped off the elevator on the 5th floor. We didn't spare much thought for pearls, either. But then we got to lookin' and, well, things just sort of happened.

The pearls—the real ones—were ridiculously cheap. I won't say much about what we got or what it cost, 'cause some of it's going to be early Christmas gifts. I will say, however, that Heather got all of her wedding jewelry—earrings, pendant, bracelet—for practically nil. The lady helping us (she went by the name "Mindy") ran a tight shop with a center island, shelves on both walls, and a small back room. At the workshop table, in plain sight, was a rather tight-lipped assistant, and (presumably) Mindy's little six-year-old daughter colored while listening to an audiobook in the center of the island. Charming scene, really.

We watched as the assistant threaded a pearl necklace and Mindy put together a bracelet for Miss J's big-wristed friend.

We had another one of those "sophisticated" moments. World travelers in the audience know what I'm talking about. They hit you when you're sitting on a beach in Thailand with a sweating zombie in your fist, or looking out over the green hills of Africa from your open-air bungalow and wondering what combination of taupe and khaki to wear on that day's safari. You feel cool and competent and contented and thoroughly pleased with yourself. You're a jet-setting, straight-shooting, street-smart globe-trotter and you know it. And it hits you, just smacks you in the face. That's the kind of moment I mean. The three of us shared one as we sat in the massive Hongqiao Pearl Market in Beijing and had some pieces done up for us. 

Mindy was very good to us. She cut us some sweet deals, attended to our every need, and made us as comfortable as possible. In all seriousness: if you're anywhere near Beijing and you feel the need for some freshwater pearls, look Mindy up. Fifth floor of the Hongqiao Pearl Market. Second shop on your left. Can't miss it.

There, now I've vaunted for the day. I feel better.

We made only one other stop on the way back to our hotel rooms: the convenience store on the first floor of the Novotel Xin Qiao, where we stocked up on snacks for THE GREAT WALL AT MUTIANYU the following morning. I think I blew something like ¥300 ($50) on this little lot. The stuff in the bag is bread (assorted buns and rolls) from the Sapporo Bakery next door to the hotel. And before you ask, yes, the whisky was absolutely necessary.

Stay tuned...