Hong Kong

I'm finally going to make an attempt at blogging the missing past six months of my life. It seems so long ago already, now that I'm settled back in to Hood River. I guess I should start with where I'm at before backtracking to Asia, though. I've moved in with a couple good friends in Hood River. We've got a big porch, a view of Mt. Adams, and a garage full of toys (so full, there's no room for cars; I love it!). I've been getting around on my bicycle, but I just got an old Honda motorcycle to click around town on. For the most part, I'm not working, but I did just pick up a small side project from my old engineering employer. I've signed up for another season in Antarctica, this time at Palmer Station on the South America side, from September to April. Same job, different station. I'll have a few weeks of training for that, mostly in Colorado, but until then, I'm relaxing and playing.

January 21, 2009

OK, so I left off in Bali. From there I had a couple days layover in Hong Kong on my way to Thailand. Hong Kong is big, busy and crowded. It is a city above the ground. Fifty story buildings are the norm, and they are built right up the hills that line the horizon in clumps of matching architecture. Hong Kong has 36 of the world's 100 tallest buildings. Below, boats buzz around Victoria Harbor as if it were a beehive.

I arrived after dark and booked a hotel up the hill towards Victoria Peak. From the ferry terminal I rode seventeen outdoor escalators, all above street level, to get up there. Skyscrapers were illuminated and little cafes were filled with noodle-slurping hoardes well into the night.


I was amazed at how these huge buildings could be built right up the side of a mountain. I spent the next day in a spaghetti maze of raised streets and walkways, wondering where the actual ground was below me. A tram ride up the hill provided a good view of the city and the Harbor.


For lunch I got the local fare: noodle soup. I ordered it with curried chicken. It came as a bowl of soup with noodles and chicken wings in it. And chopsticks. How the hell do you eat soup with chopsticks? A good trick is to watch the people around you eating and do your best to do what they do. You pull out the noodles with the chopsticks and drink the soup right from the bowl. Unfortunately, no one around me had the chicken wings, so I have no idea what I was supposed to do with them. I quickly gave up on the chopsticks and used my hands.

In the evening I caught a ferry from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon to watch the nightly light show on the downtown skyline. Many buildings have been adorned with colorful lights and lasers that flash in time with music. The show was actually pretty lame, but the skyline at night was worth seeing.

At dusk, before the show:


During the show:


Two days was definitely enough city for me, and after the bustle of Bali and the claustrophobia-inducing population of Hong Kong I was very ready for some relaxing time in a small Thai village...

Greetings from Ninh Binh

"I been to Detroit, L.A., New York, Mississipp-I-A, Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, East Texas and VIETNAM!!"

Since I've conquered this Scott H. Birom tune, I guess I need to start working on Johnny Cash's "I've Been Everywhere." Though, I'd say that's a bit more of an undertaking.

Sorry for the lack of blogging, I've just not been interested in staring at a computer screen. I hope to add posts and pictures for all the places I've been once I get back to the States. For now, I'll just say that I'm having fun and also homesick, seeing beautiful things and filthy places, meeting interesting people and people I can't understand...

Bali

It is the rainy season here in Bali. My first week was plagued with clouds and rain, not the beautiful beach scene I was hoping for:


Should you ever find yourself in Bali, and you're feeling brave, then go ahead and open your eyes during the taxi drive from the airport. If you're feeling braver still, rent a scooter and give it a go. If you're downright insane, rent a car and be prepared for the most harrowing experience of your life. Three lanes of traffic squeezed into two lanes of space, scooters buzzing all around you like a swarm of locusts, horns ablaze. To the left, cars parked haphazardly, taking up half a lane, facing any direction. To the right, cars passing into oncoming traffic, around blind corners. There are no rules, no signs, scooters pull out in front of you without even looking. Often, rather than cross traffic, they simply drive on the wrong side of the road; no shoulders, of course. Schoolchildren walking in the street. Dogs sleeping mid-lane. And monkeys! Driving here is a continual need to swerve, and if that isn't enough, they drive on the left, and my Suzuki was a stick shift, complete with choke. I'm happy to be alive.

I drove a loop around the island over several days. Away from the congested south is much less hectic, but still quite populated. My first, and favorite stop was in the artistic village of Ubud. A bustling market of carvings, paintings and knick-knacks lies at Ubud's heart:


But I naturally walked away from the madness and found a beautiful path up a grassy ridge, my first sight of the actual countryside:


As well as a long expanse of rice fields:


I continued driving up into the mountains and into the clouds. In addition to being the rainy season, this week has been even wetter than normal, so I spent a lot of time reading and waiting for a break in the clouds for a view. Lovina beach and the north coast were windy and stormy, but I did find a reef to snorkel in the calmer waters at Pemuteran. The fish were brilliantly tropical, and I wish the sun was out to illuminate them. Nearby was a temple whose sacred keepers run amok:


The monkeys were unafraid because the Balinese revere and feed them.

Around to the southeast, in Negara, I found a magnificent temple that screamed for the attention of tourists, yet not a soul was there. I had this huge temple to myself:


Don't tell anyone, but I didn't wear the traditional sarong; I'm sure no one noticed. With some time left to kill on my car rental, I took back roads up into the mountains and was rewarded with a picture of non-tourist Bali. In one small village I came across a ceremony of some sort and they were playing traditional gamelan music that was amazing. I used charades to ask if I could stay and listen:


A man dressed in what I can only describe as Balinese drag asked if I wanted to come in for a drink. I wish I had, but I have to admit that I was a bit scared off by his lack of hair and abundance of makeup. I found out later that this was probably a wedding and the drag queen would have been the groom. I was also quickly running out of daylight, and gas, and the mountain road was turning out to be longer and slower than I expected. As it was, I ended up in the dark and pouring rain at a tiny restaurant with my map out and an extremely friendly and helpful Balinese man checking my fuel gauge and coming up with, "Bedugal? Maybe..." But that is a longer story, so I'll just say that I didn't make it to Bedugal that night.

The remainder of my trip has been spent in Sanur with Jimmy's friend John and his family. The sun has finally come out and I'm having a blast with them. Today I got out on the water for a kiteboarding lesson and found that having learned to wakeboard and snowboard has greatly improved my position on the learning curve, even though I haven't done it in nearly two years. I even got a couple transitions without falling.

After that, lunch. This is some candy for my grandpa Grover:


This snapper was 800g and about six bucks; the most expensive thing on the menu!

Viva Bali!

I made it back to Hobart after a total of 1200km, give or take. In western Tasmania I cycled through rain, sleet, hail and snow. Not exactly what I had in mind for my "summer" vacation. At one point my shins were completely numb; brrr. The last few days got nice again, though. The sun came out and I actually had a tailwind. A really good one, too. It was finally a joy to be on a bike, watching people drive by only seeing the world through their windshields, traveling at such a pace that they miss many of the simple things that make cycle touring fantastic: an echidna (an Aussie porcupine) on the side of the road, a butterfly, a wildly patterned ladybug on the handlebars, a quick glimpse through the trees of a grassy meadow. At a bike's pace you can see these things. You see the bugs coming at you in enough time to flinch, if not dodge. Sometimes that flinch is just a quick sucking in of breath, and if you're lucky you'll also suck in the breath that was just sucked in by the bug...

Oh, and I found another poppy field:


I'll be in Bali in just a few short days, where my time will be spent perfecting a sun-burned, heat-stroked, sand-swept, drunken stupor!