aubservations

more cheating . . . broome - coral bay

2009-04-09T00:23:00.005-04:00

and then there were three . . . haley, jens, and i cram into a hyundai (pronounced hi-und-eye in oz) getz

"80 mile beach" . . . why they call it 80 mile when they use kilometers in australia is beyond me

mars

more mars

fishing (unsuccessfully) in port hedland

this is what happens when you don't plan ahead

grilling some snags on the barbie in exmouth

one of about 300 roos we saw driving around exmouthf
strapping on my bcd for a dive with manta rays

humpback whales

swimming with tiger sharks . . . not nearly as tough as it sounds

this is cheating, I know . . .

2009-03-31T21:14:00.008-04:00

OK, so realistically, I'm never going to catch up on the blog at my current pace. Plus, I'd like to start writing about aspects of my year abroad other than the outback trip. So . . . I think it's best to catch up, at least through the end of my outback trip, through pictures and captions. It's cheating, I know; but pictures should do the job for now. Enjoy!
Bell Gorge. I can't tell you how many times I tried to climb up that waterfall. I was dying to jump off the ledge behind me to the left. Despite a valiant effort - no success.

Block party at Windjana Gorge.

Find me a better sunset, I dare you.

Goodbye, Gibb River Road. I'm second from left, I think.

1709 KMS from where we began . . .

1502 HMS from where we're headed . . .

the most luxurious "hostel" ever.

4WD's apparently aren't cool enough for Bart-Man.

At long last . . . the Ocean. Cable Beach, Broome.

the gibb (2/?)

2009-02-16T19:43:00.010-05:00

G'day all. Law school is now in full swing, so I was thinking: what better way to cope with spending countless hours in the library than to reflect on better days? And with that I began writing this post . . .

"Bush camping" has its benefits and drawbacks. Most obviously, the best part about camping in the middle of nowhere is the isolation. No noise restrictions (more on this in a later posting), no kids running through the campgrounds at 7:00a.m., no prohibitions on campfires (or at least noone to enforce the restrictions), and so on. Add to that the fact that the trees, the road, and most importantly, the stars, feel like yours and yours alone (yes, I know I'm cheesy - but you would be too!).

On the other hand, there is one major downside to bush camping: the unavailability of running water. Sure, we had plenty of drinking water, but we couldn't justify cleaning our dishes with our reserves. Usually this isn't a big deal, but when you've had chili for dinner the night before, it's just kind of nasty to put all of the dirty bowls back into the truck.

And then there's lack of "facilities." In truth, I don't usully mind "going native", but on this fine morning--July 4th I might add--it was especially hard to find some cover. Gumtrees aren't normally wide enough to hide my country-fed frame, and, unfortunately, there weren't any boab trees in sight. There was, however, one lonely bush about 50 metres from our camp. Bingo!

I don't even know why I'm mentioning this, but yeah, I guess it's pretty funny. So there I am, hiding for cover, you know . . . and all of the sudden a large kangaroo jumps out from the other side of the bush. It wasn't trying to attack me or anything, but I suppose he was just as startled as I that he wasn't the only one hiding behind the bush . . . the only difference being that he wasn't caught with his pants down! Anyway . . . it certainly made for an exciting start to my morning.

Our aim for the day was to detour from the gibb way up to Mitchell Falls via Kalumburu road, another unsealed road that runs perpendicular to the gibb through the Mitchell Plateau up to the ocean. This leg of our trip was by far the most remote, and it showed. After turning off the main road toward the falls, we drove for about an hour and a half down a dizzying, windy, single-lane, dirt track that zig-zagged through pandanus palms, paperbark trees, and gumtrees . . . definitely the most diverse landscape we'd seen since starting out. Though beautiful, we were happy to have arrived at our camp by mid-afternoon.

Knowing that we only had about 3-4 hours of sunlight left, we rushed off for our hike to the falls, which was marked as a 3 hour return. I suppose they overestimate the walking projections to be one the safe side; we made it to the falls in about 45 minutes.

You would think we'd be bored of waterfalls by then, but that definitely wasn't the case--each was different in a unique and spectacular way. Mitchell Falls is probably the most picturesque, as it has three layers and cuts deep into a massive gorge. Plus, since this was the most tropical of the areas we'd visited, there was just a lot more water. We had to be careful to avoid some of the faster moving currents.

For the next two hours or so, we swam in the river and watched the sunset over a scerene kimberley landscape. The contrast between the colors of the rocks, the water, and the sky really made for some spectacular photos. Of course we did some goofing off too . . .

While most of the group was starving by sundown, Christof and I--in usual fashion--decided to take a detour. We'd heard that there were several aboriginal cave paintings just a few hundred metres off the trial and decided to do some exploring. It took some time, but we ultimately found them. Honestly they weren't that impressive.

For dinner we celebrated the 4th of July with hamburgers, hotdogs, smores (made out of some funky stawberry marshmallows - the only kind we could find), and well . . . a lot of beer. All in all a great and relaxing day (aside from learning that one of our two fridges was broken, and having to choose between keeping our food or beer cold . . . i'll let you guess how we resoved that one!).

The 5th was a pretty simple day. We drove back down Kulumburu road, enjoyed Aussie burgers (all the usual ingredients plus beet root, egg, and pineapple) at a road stop named Drysdale Station, and camped out at a stop further along the gibb named Mt. Elizabeth. The only thing notable about the day was the number of the cows in the road; they really made for some close calls. For dinner we made pasta, which we enjoyed over a few rounds of Texas Hold Em'.

the gibb (part 1/?)

2009-01-27T22:22:00.023-05:00

Well . . . as you know, I've been back home for about three weeks now (5 now that i'm actually posting this). In fact, it's snowing outside as a write this (well, it was when I started this post). What I wouldn't give to return to Australia for the remainder of Sydney's summer! But anyway, seeing as how that's not going to happen, I suppose I better catch up on my blog before school picks up. There's so much more to tell about my year in Australia . . . I could write for the next month straight and not do it justice.

That said, the events that took place in this and my next entry were the highlight of my entire year abroad. At last, after months of planning, recruiting a cohesive and easy going group of travel buddies, and two close calls with the vehicles . . . we were about to make our way to the famous Gibb River Road--a 700K unsealed former cattle road, which stretches across the tropical/outback kimberley region to the west coast fishing town of Derby, WA.

First, however, we needed to clean the standard petrol out of our gas tank. Thankfully we were joined the following morning in Kununurra by Mark Crumblin, the nephew of my Rotary host counsellor, Warwick Crumblin, who just so happens to be a Ranger in Kunnunurra. After pointing us to a trusty mechanic, Mark led our group on a quick morning tour of the surrounding area. The highlights of our excursion were the Ivanhoe Crossing - - a partially submerged bridge across croc infested waters, and a swim in the Ord River (which yes . . . you guessed it . . . was also croc infested - - but hey, if Ranger Crum says we're good - - we're good!). After our swim we picked up the second truck from the mechanic, who charged us only $80 for his labor (or "labour", as it is spelled in oz).

Leaving Kununurra around noon, we arrived at the Gibb River Road around 2:00 p.m. At the road's entrance, a sign is posted noting what sections of the road are too submerged to drive across. Having planned our trip dead smack in the middle of "dry season", all sections were labeled as "open." To be sure, that didn't mean that the road wasn't submerged in places, but only that, properly equipped, one could make it across the road (see vid below)

It's always amazing to me how quickly landscapes can change in Australia. Only hours before in Kunnunurra, we stood at the base of a large dam, which was designed to support the region's crops. Now on the Gibb, the trees lining the road were becoming less and less frequent. However, as we made our way across the range, a new type of tree, the Boab (or Boabob as they are called in some other countries), was beginning to spring up everywhere.

If ever there was a tree that looked as if it was straight out a fairytale it would be the Boab tree. Found only in Australia, Madagascar, and mainland Africa, Boab trees can store up to 30,000 gallons of water in order to survive the harsh conditions typical of their natural habitats. As a result, their trunks and limbs often swell to the point where it literally looks as if the tree has swallowed a cow. At the top of this posting is one of the larger boabs we saw on our trip. Below is one that, well, just looked like it needed a hug . . .

Well before dark we arrived at El Questro Gorge Resort and Campground. As the name suggests, EQ is pretty posh as far as the Gibb is concerned. Being less than an hour from the road's start, EQ gives visitors a taste of the kimberleys without having to endure hours upon hours of unsealed roads and river crossings. Guests can choose to stay in "luxury tents" (e.g. bunks and sheets provided) or to pitch a tent in a designated camp area. You can guess where we slept. (On a side note, much of the film Australia was filmed at the EQ Ranch. Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman spent several weeks there).

Since we'd already paid $15 pass to have access to the entire EQ ranch, we thought we'd try to make the most of it by doing a quick hike before dinner. The hike through the actual El Questro Gorge (one of many on the ranch) was labeled as intermediate with a 1.5-2 hour return. What a hike! Despite it's arid surroundings, the interior of EQG was lined with lush palm trees, which provided a remarkable contrast against the cliffs, now bright orange from the sunset. Better yet, halfway through the gorge was a swimming hole, which was probably 7 or 8 feet deep - just enough to provide a safe depth when jumping from the rocks lining the hole.

Feeling extra adventurous, Christof and I decided to continue on to the end of the gorge in the dark. The rest of the group, meanwhile, would take the other truck and head back to camp and begin preparing dinner. Armed with only a headlamp, Christof and I followed the stream up through the gorge, which was so narrow in parts that we had to swim through 4-5 feet of water to continue on. I have to admit, it was pretty scary swimming (fully clothed, shoes and all) through pitch black waterholes miles from nowhere in a region known for it's reptiles. But all's well that ends well, and by 830pm or so we made it to the end of EQG. I'd love to say that our hike concluded with a stunning view of the outback, but it didn't. We were lead into a V in the gorge where a 20-30 ft waterfall fed into the stream. We couldn't actually see the waterfall due to the darkness of the surrounding walls, but we could hear it splashing what seemed only a few metres in front of us.

Tired, hungry, and ok, a bit scared, Christof and I picked up the pace on the way back out the gorge and made it back to camp around 9:15. We'd hoped that the group would be excited about our accomplishment and have a bbq feast waiting for us upon our arrival. To the contrary, the group looked as though they'd been starving for weeks and had decided in my absence that I would be the one to be sacrificed for the survival of the team. As it turns out, I'd secured my tent with a combination lock (a combination which I forgot to share with anyone else in the group), and as a consequence, I locked away many of the cooking utensils and food. Let's just say that they weren't too impressed by our daring night hike and that I'd be cooking my own darn steak once everyone else had already eaten.

The following day, after enjoying what would be our last warm shower for a few days, we set off to do two more hikes in EQG before moving on down the gibb. Our first hike took us through Amalia Gorge, which featured several verryyyyyyyyy cold swimming holes (which only I and Clayton 2 were willing to brave). Admittedly, I can never turn down the opportunity to jump off something into the water.

After lunch under a canopy of cockatoos, we hiked Emma Gorge, and again benefited from the late afternoon lighting of the gorge (see reflection photo at the end of the post). Emma Gorge, too, concluded with a massive waterfall.

Well behind schedule, we all agreed that we'd "bush camp" that evening. At around 10:00 p.m. we pulled off at a clearing and set up camp. I prepared dinner --trying to earn back the affection of my fellow travelers following my slip up the night before. Nothing special, just chili and quesadillas . . . perfect food for what proved to be an exceptionally cold night in the outback.

there's water in the outback?

2009-01-03T07:47:00.000-05:00

Yep, and plenty of it . . . at least in the tropical parts of the Northern Territory. Today's post covers the next leg of our trip, Kakadu to Kununurra, during which we swam in waterfalls, went kayaking down Katharine Gorge, drove through a river in our 4WDs, and took a dip in a croc-infested lake.

As would be the case for the next four weeks, I woke from my first night on the road around 7:00 a.m. to a chorus of yapping birds (and bats). It was really something. At any given moment you could look up in a tree and see 15-20 cockatoos or parrots. In what would become my morning ritual, I poured myself a bowl of nutrigrain cereal, made a cup of instant coffee, and repacked all my stuff for the long day ahead. All together it took us about an hour and a half to get on the road again, usually between 10 and 11 a.m. -- not bad for a bunch of nomad backpackers!

Kakadu national park is extremely diverse. In many areas it's much of a marshland like the Florida Everglades; in others it has red canyons and waterfalls--all of which we saw in a single day. The highlight of our first day on the road was Jim Jim falls, a towering waterfall at the end of a wet 45 minute off-road drive and a rocky 30 minute hike. Getting there was half the fun! Once at the falls we were able to cool off by jumping into the river. Thankfully, JJ falls had a "croc trap" downstream (as if that's supposed to reassure us).

After the falls, we drove back through the off-road track to a small base camp where we pitched tents beneath a canopy of gumtrees. For dinner we chowed down on spaghetti, topped off with an endless supply of VB. Andy entertained us for the evening by blasting 80s music on his ipod speakers.

As if JJ Falls weren't impressive enough, the nearby Twin Falls were even better, if for no reason other than the fact that we had the waterfall all to ourselves for most of the afternoon (most people were probably deterred from climbing to the top of the falls because the hike to TF was marked as medium grade and two hours each way.) Walking quickly, we made it to the top of the falls in a little over an hour. Once at the top, we relaxed in a rocky swimming pool leading into the waterfall and enjoyed PBJ sandwiches for lunch. On the way back, Christof and I went for a detour to do some light rock climbing on the way down.

After returning from the falls we left Kakadu and set off for Katherine, a small outback with a large Aboriginal population. Our three/four hour trip featured a great drive through gumtree-lined dirt roads and a stunning outback sunset (FYI - generally, when driving through the outback it doesn't look as red as you might imagine. There are actually many shrubs that grow throughout the outback, which, when viewed from the ground, give the landscape a brownish color. Only when you view the land from a slight elevation or from the air does it look bright, bright red as you've seen in pictures.)

Once in Katherine we had three priorities: 1) find a place to camp for the night, 2) eat, and 3) find a place to watch the Eurocup soccer championship (Germany v. Spain). In short time we'd found a caravan park (which had as many kangaroos as guests as it did campers), cooked up plenty of steaks and beans (incidentally, most beaches and public parks in Australia have free gas grills for public use), and found a backpackers in town where the game would be shown. Thankfully, the backpackers didn't have a 24 hour reception desk, enabling us to sneak in to watch the game at 4:30a.m.. Too bad only one goal was scored throughout: Spain 1. Germany 0. I've been trying my best to appreciate soccer, but pre-dawn games where only a point is scored don't help the cause!

The reason tourists visit Katherine is to tour the iconic Katherine Gorge, which features thirteen gorges and several waterfalls throughout Nitmiluk National Park. We decided to tour the river via canoe rather than by boat and were rewarded with great views of the rocky gorge and several refreshing swimming holes. A few signs warned of crocs in the river, but freshwater crocs, 'freshies', unlike 'salties', are generally harmless unless provoked.

Our time in Katherine was not all fun and games, however, as we also had to cope with some rather serious car troubles which, if not addressed quickly, would have thrown the rest of our trip off schedule. Prior to our canoe trip Andy noticed a major problem with the steering in one of the trucks and concluded that it wouldn't be safe to drive to 500k's to our next destination, Kununnurra. His concerns were confirmed the following morning when a mechanic informed us that the casing holding the bearings between the axle and the wheel was cracked and that, had we drove further we would have risked the wheel falling off while driving! Given the seriousness of the problem, our rental company agreed to meet us halfway between Katherine and Darwin with another truck. Since this would take most of the day, our group split up took care of personal stuff, mainly email. I spent the afternoon didgeridoo shopping, of all things.

A "didge" is a traditional ceremonial instrument used throughout Norther Australia's aboriginal communities. It's basic sound is a drone, but experienced players can also mimic the sounds of dozens of outback animals. They're a really popular gift among tourists, especially when hand painted by a local. After much shopping around I bought a yellow didge with red and white traditional paintings throughout (Red, Yellow and Black, the colors of the Australian outback, the sun, and the skin color of Aboriginals, are the colors of the Aboriginal flag and are the most authentic throughout community art). I've been trying to learn how to play it ever since, but I struggle with circular breathing. I've worked up a pretty good drone sound though!

After picking up the replacement car around 3:00p.m. we all met to head to our next destination around 6:00. But not before one more close call . . . Christof, in all his brilliance, mistakenly filled one of our diesel tanks with regular petrol. Luckily we noticed the mistake before starting the car and were able to switch to the sub tank, but given the size of the tanks in our trucks, it was a costly and timely (we had to drain the tank properly the following morning) mistake. Needless to say, Christof was the brunt of many jokes throughout the rest of the trip.

We finally got on the road around 8 p.m. and arrived in Kununurra after midnight. All of the camper van sites were either full or closed, so we parked in a residential park in town for the night. Kununurra would be our last stop before heading off on the rugged Gibb River Road.

will post soon, i promise

2008-12-13T06:24:00.002-05:00

hi all. thanks for loyally checking the blog despite the infrequency of my postings. i've been extremely busy over the past month. traveled the great ocean road with friends, went diving on the great barrier reef with a friend from home, successfully completed my exams, and now am in new zealand. i've started several drafts for future posts but just haven't had time. please check back soon! cheers,

off the beaten track . . .

2008-10-03T05:01:00.013-04:00

G'day everyone! I'm grateful to those of you who still check the blog, despite the infrequency of my postings. The counter shows that I've had something like 1,600 hits since May. Thanks for refreshing the page every 20 minutes, Mom. I do feel special. Really.

So . . . it's about time I post about my experience in the Australian outback. Like the Cuban Invasion postings, this one will have to come in installments. This posting will get us through to our first night out under the stars . . . many more to come!

I suppose I should start with how the trip came about. During the second week of classes, after a course that ended at 9p.m., I joined a few classmates for a beer at a nearby pub. There I met met a German guy named Jens, who was there with another guy I'd met once before, Daniel. At some point in the conversation he asked, "Hey, what are you doing over the winter break (June - July)." I replied, "I'd like to see some of the outback, since it will be warm." "Cool. Let's plan something", he said. "Alright, cool." And that was that. I was headed for the outback, and Jens has been one of my "best mates" since (Daniel too, but he didn't end up joining us for the trip).

Over the next few weeks Jens and I set out to organize "the trip." I was in charge of figuring out where we'd go, the dates, and anything else I could fit into an excel chart; he was in charge of finding vehicles. We both worked hard to recruit fun people for our adventure.

Before long, we'd put together an itinerary, "hired" (rented) two awesome 4wd trucks (with built in fridges and tents on the roof), and recruited five others to join us: Haley (North Carolina), Clayton #2 (Texas), Bart (Netherlands), Andy (Switzerland), Christof (Germany). The trip comprised of two parts: a) an outback trip, from Darwin to Broome via Kakadu Nat'l Park, Katherine, and the Gibb River Road, and b) a coastal / mining town trip from Broome to Coral Bay along Australia's western coast. Only Jens, Haley, and I would be doing the second part.

I arrived in Darwin on June 26. Darwin is warm and tropical year round and has only two seasons, wet and dry. June is part of the dry season, so we enjoyed nice weather--a welcome change from the chilly rain in Sydney. Christof was on the same flight, so we took a cab into town, dropped our stuff off at "Chilli's Backpackers" and met the rest of the group at a pub. In the Northern Territory, unlike New South Wales, smoking is permitted indoors. What a difference it makes once you have become accustomed to both--there's nothing worse than going home smelling like an ash tray.

We had four tasks to accomplish on the 27th. First, we set out to pick up our trucks. I can't begin to tell you how great our two 4wd land cruisers were. Each was equipped with cookware, a gas grill, a fridge (connected to a spare battery), sleeping bags/mats, and two tents (one on the roof). And boy where they fun to drive. Have a look at this video of some of our off-roading just to get a sense (to classical music, of all things) . . .

Once we picked up our trucks we set out to buy enough groceries to last the group for five days. What a disaster. I won't go so far as to say that some in our group were posh, but I couldn't believe how different everyone's eating preferences were. It was also then that I learned some of the wildly different eating habits of Americans and Europeans. For example (admittedly, I'm generalizing here), Europeans eat far less cereal for breakfast and much more bread. They also don't eat PBJ, but prefer PB and Nutella, or even PB and a slice of turkey. Also, whereas we usually have a light lunch and a big dinner, they often prefer a big lunch and a light dinner. Interesting, yes, but it makes shopping extremely difficult. Just to give you an idea: Andy wanted to purchase 14 cartons of dehydrated milk. Clayton #2 only wanted whole milk. Jens doesn't drink boxed milk at all and would have bought 10 loaves of bread if he had the choice. Haley wanted muesli. And all I could think about was how we were going to fit everything into two fridges along with all the beer (hey, if I'm stranded in the outback I'm sure going to have a cold VB to pass the time!).

Our third task was to buy hats. For no apparent reason, we all agreed prior to the trip that we each needed to buy a distinctive hat for the trek. The day before, while I was still in Sydney (I had a later flight due to a Rotary presentation), everyone purchased straw cowboy hats from a store appropriately named, "The Hat Store." While everyone was fighting over groceries I went to pick one out for myself and came back with this . . .

Admittedly, I've never been known for my keen sense of fashion . . . but I loved this hat! It was comfortable, looked good on me (or so I believed), and was only thirty dollars. Plus, it was different from everyone elses, which was what I liked the most about it.

Apparently the rest of the group didn't think so, however, and I got so much slack for the hat that I went back to the hat shop and said, "hey, I'm really sorry, but I'm going to need to return the hat for one of your straw one's . . . otherwise I'll never hear the end of it." The store attendant laughed and agreed, but after trying on a few hats I was more convinced that this was the hat for me . . . and so began to weeks of endless pestering and "grandpa" jokes.

Our fourth and final objective for the 28th was to hit the road. After spending the afternoon at the supermarket we finally got rolling around 4 p.m. and headed east toward Kakadu National Park. We enjoyed a beautiful sunset en route and finally set up camp about an hour into the park. Exhausted, we settled for the least labor intensive dinner option: chili cooked directly in the can over a gas grill. As we would for many nights to come, we spent the rest of the night staring off into the stars. This was the first time I'd really taken a good luck at the Southern Cross, which can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere, and which is featured prominently on the Australian Flag (you can't see it in this picture).

More to come folks. The next posting will cover the rest of Kakadu, Katerine, car troubles, and world famous Kununurra.

mid-year aubservations . . .

2008-08-22T03:05:00.012-04:00

Well, we're a bit past the half way point, but I thought it was about time I write a post about all things Australia. With your indulgence i think i'll just ramble . . .

Uni. Sometimes I have to remind myself, but the main reason i'm here is to earn an LLM. Last semester started off strange, as two of three of my classes were taught as intensive courses--eight hours a day over four days. My first class was not until April 1 and my last class was during the third week of May. Great! . . . you might say. More time to get to know the city. This is true. But intensive classes can be rough, given that the reading load is the same as for a normal course, and also considering that you'll have to do ton of research on your own in order to put together a research paper. I personally think this structure is horrible. No matter how interesting the subject matter, our brains can only take so much learning in a single day. I was dying to get out of there by 2pm each day.

All in all, though, I enjoyed my courses. I never thought I'd take a course in Refugee Law, for example. But it really is an interesting subject. My armed conflict class, though poorly organized, was interesting too. For my research paper I wrote about the rights and responsibilities of private military contractors in Iraq. Sounds dense, yes . . . but I found the legal aspects of warfare (e.g. the Geneva conventions) pretty interesting. I must say, however, that there was quite a bit of America-bashing among my classmates. There's been quite a lot of that, but I guess that was to be expected. The only thing that really bothers me is when American students chime in on the bashing, not just because they agree but because they want to disassociate themselves from the criticism. Many of our policies deserve criticism, sure, but I've about had it with "yeah, that's why I'm over here . . . because the U.S. xyz." How about reminding Aussies of some of the many wonderful things we do around the world, rather than simply reciting arguments from Noam Chomsky? Anyway.

My grades were fine, better than expected considering the time I gave myself to write the papers/exams. But I've been pleased with my experience at UNSW so far. If I treated this like I treated law school back home, I wouldn't be able to enjoy many of the other things Sydney and Australia have to offer. Speaking of those things . . .

Multi-cultural food, especially asian. On my way to school each day I pass Malaysian, Indonesian, Nepalese, Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese, and at least 12 Chinese restaurants. Sure, we have Asian food in the states, but it's not the same. There's sooooo much of it here, and not only is it excellent but it's healthy (usually, except my twice-weekly Chinese dumplings). I eat Chinese at least twice a week, Indian at least once, Turkish once, and the rest at least every other week.

Soccer. Although I'm not much of a soccer fan, I must say that I really enjoyed watching the EEFA European Football Championship with my European crew. Although most of the games were held at 5:00am Australia time (we usually went straight through rather than waking up at 4:30 . . . which explains the picture at right), because everyone either loves or hates the German soccer team (e.g. German v. the rest of the world), Germany's success made for an exciting tournament. In the end the Germans lost to Spain, which was perfect--i had a reason to watch all of the games and to rag on my German friends.

Sydney nightlife. Like Miami, going out in Sydney can be an ordeal. you've got to dress your best, arrive early and with more women than men, and spend $10 per drink. But from my perspective, there is at least one significant difference: Aussies can't dance like Latin-Americans! and whereas in Miami you have to be able to dance, in Australia you only have to be funny . . . and it helps if you can make fun of yourself . . . something I'm especially good at - - not because I'm particularly funny, but because i have more material to work with than most.

I'd say that I've been going out a lot more than I did back home, but then that really wouldn't be saying much. I never went out at home. Maybe one day I'll open an Aussie pub in Coconut Grove. No fosters (no one really drinks that here). Only coopers, tooheys, calrsberg, bees knees (saying something is the "bees knees" is the Australian version of "that's the best thing since sliced bread"), VB, and XXXX. Good dancers will kindly be asked to leave. And just for nostalgia, we'll sell Aussie burgers (add pineapple, beet root, and Canadian bacon), fish and chips, and fleuro v-neck t-shirts, and we'll play Sneaky Sound System every 30-40 minutes.

Cold. Why did I never receive the memo noting how cold it gets in Australia?! This is just plain wrong. So wrong.

My trip home. Returning to the US for a week was strange, but good. En route I spent a night in Japan, which allowed me to see a little bit of Osaka and Kyoto. Kyoto was stunning Wish I could say the same for Osaka! It wasn't bad, but Kyoto was just that good. Japanese people are so pleasant, too. I'll definitely be going back for a longer period of time, but who knows when. Anyway, after leaving Sydney on Tuesday morning I arrived in Washington, D.C. late Thursday night (around 230am), exhausted. The following morning I woke up around 630, met with Morffi for breakfast at Union Station, and took the train to Baltimore for Maryland Law's graduation - - which was strange because it was supposed to be my graduation too! But I'm not complaining. After the graduation I had lunch with Ana's family at capital grill (so nice to have American beef again!) and went out in federal hill in the evening. Over the weekend I caught up with some friends, spent time with my mother and sister, and, of course, had some Mexican food at rosa mexicana. Oh how i miss Mexican food!!! Spent a few more days enjoying Baltimore before heading home on Wednesday . . . dead smack in the middle of finals. Ok, back to Australia.

Birthday (5/31). Nothing huge. I invited everyone to a spanish tapas bar in kings cross called El Barrio. The group bought be a really nice UNSW jumper (which I'm wearing as I write this). We ate tapas, drank sangria, and danced salsa (really, i'm quite good here - - back home i'd hide in a corner somewhere). Afterwards the night continued in "the cross." As often happens, the evening concluded with a Turkish kebab at 4am.

Winter outback trip. I'll do a separate posting for this one. My blog was starting to read like a travel log.

The olympics. Let's just say that Australia takes its sports very, very seriously. Right now the Green & Gold (I still have no idea why they don't use the colors in their flag) are fourth in the medal count, even though they have a population of slightly over 20 million people. I've been cheering for them whenever they aren't playing the U.S. (you didn't think I'd sell out like this guy did you?). Watching the Americans has been interesting, though. Of course I was exhilarated by Michael Phelps' success. I've watched just about every "redeem team" game also. But, from an outsider's perspective, many of our athletes look really arrogant (e.g. Walter Dix with his ultra dark sunglasses for a night race).

Random. I never remember all the interesting quirks when I'm writing my blog, but here are some that immediately come to mind. Aussies eat with their forks pointing down (would be upside down to us). They do this for everything except peas and mashed potatoes, apparently. Rotary clubs open by toasting "to the queen!" I'm still not sure if toilets flush the other direction. There's just a huge gush of water from all directions. They have a half-flush option. As noted above, all Aussie burgers come with beet root. Grilled chicken sandwiches are also called burgers - chicken burgers. Fries are "chips." Chips are "crisps." Don't forget about wedges, too - KFC style fries. Your "savings account" is actually your checking account. I still don't know what they use their checking account for. "How you going" = "How are you." You should reply with "good." Not "good, and you?" The word "reckon" is widely used, even in newspapers - - as is the word "heaps." Heaps good! "Mate" is not a gender-specific term.

That's all I can think of for now. Will post more soon!

Cuban Invastion, Part 3 . . . finally

2008-07-30T08:55:00.009-04:00

it's been a while, i know. but honestly, these things take a while, and i think we can all agree that it's more important for me to get out there and enjoy myself rather than sit here and detail everything i've been up to. that said, an update is well overdue . . . and so is the final installment of my cuban invasion postings, which describe events that took place in march (part 2 can be found here). so let's get that out of the way first . . .

our second day on magnetic island was, without a doubt, the day patsy has been waiting for since january 28, 1982: the day we pet koalas. at 9:00 am we had reservations at the bungalow bay yha for "bungalow champagne bush tucker brunch with the koalas." bungalow bay really is an extraordinary place. part of the facility serves as a top-end backpackers, while the rest of the facility is a wildlife sanctuary, featuring koalas, crocs, and a number of other traditional aussie animals. it didn't disappoint. our brunch included "guava champagne" (admittedly, i'm not a huge fan of either guava or champagne, but gosh do they taste good together!), french toast (made from a special bread with a hole in it to fry the egg directly into the bread . . . strange), sausage, local honey, and fresh fruit. while we ate, the staff/cooks/zoologists/croc hunters brought by a number of animals including a small python, an iguana, and several exotic birds.

after brunch, everyone willing to pay $14 for 20 seconds of koala cuddling lined up for their hugs. apparently, queensland is the only state in australia where you can actually hug the lazy, drugged-out, cute little critters . . . and even then, each koala is limited by law to a maximum of two hours of cuddling per week. thus, they’re on a strict rotation and can only be held in very short increments. really now, who writes these laws?

anyway, feeling more macho than usual that morning i decided to use my $14 to hold a croc instead of a koala. dumb idea. my family’s old cats used to kill lizards bigger than this croc. not to mention the fact that it had a rubber band over its mouth (so much for being macho) and that it peed on the handler as she was handing it over to me.

i’m sure everyone enjoyed holding the koalas (Lord knows patsy did), but the real fun was watching everyone’s expressions as they tried to smile for pictures with two inch claws digging into their chests. here’s one of my favorites . . .

at my prodding, after our breakfast the group decided to do a kayak eco-tour. the company charged $45 for “two hours” of kayaking, which, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t have been too bad. Unfortunately, however, included within those two hours was about 30 minutes of ridiculous, unnecessary and boring “training”, 10 minutes distributing oversized wetsuits and socks to protect us against exposure to stingers, 10 minutes pulling our kayaks from the trailer to the beach, 15 minutes draining our kayaks and returning them to the trailer, and about 10 minutes washing our oversized wetsuits and socks. thus, we spent about 45 minutes in the water , which could not be thoroughly enjoyed due to the unbelievably obnoxious voice of our high-pitched english tour guide. the view was definitely pretty (when we were able to enjoy it), but this would certainly be my last activity suggestion for a while.

that afternoon, we caught the ferry back to townsville and hit the road toward airlie beach, stopping in a small town named bowen for late night pizza. we checked into our apartment-style hotel rooms around 10/11pm.

bright and early the following morning we set off on our much anticipated sailing trip to/around the beautiful whitsunday islands. our tour company was small and friendly and our captain was part mexican. he had a yankees sticker in the window.

shortly after we set sail, ana, noticing that the sky ahead had rapidly changed colors, asked a member of the crew if it was going to rain. “nah, that’s just mist”, she said, “no worries.” No worries my . . . . It poured. Alright, well maybe it didn’t pour, but any rain when you’re sailing through some of the most beautiful islands in the world totally stinks. but hey, nothing we could do, and it certainly didn’t stop us from having a nice time. we did at least get some periods of sun.

our first stop was at a fringe reef (a reef you can walk to from the beach) off hook island, where rico and i were the first to jump ship, as we were diving while the rest of the group snorkeled. the dive was nice, although the visibility was extremely poor. we saw a number of coral species as well as some rather large fish. patsy, tere and lilly, meanwhile, were given an introduction to scuba lesson on the beach. they each had the opportunity to do a short guided dive. afterwards we enjoyed a nice lunch on the boat and a walk along a remote island beach.

at night we enjoyed a nice dinner in airlie beach, a few beers at a local pub, and hit the sack – exhausted from yet another adventure-filled day.

the following morning, friday, we drove down to mackay where we caught an early flight to sydney. once back in town, we cleaned up, unloaded our things, and headed off to the sydney cricket and football ground where we enjoyed our first ever rugby game, featuring the sydney roosters versus the brisbane broncos.

hmmm. what to say about rugby. well let’s start with the basics. there are two types of rugby in oz: rugby league and rugby union. both are to be distinguished from aussie rules football, which is played on an oval-shaped field and which involves significantly more kicking. just like different sports back home, different crowds watch league and union. i suppose many of the differences are akin to the differences between cubs and white sox fans or yankees and mets fans. blue collar v. white collar, etc. anyway, there are millions of tiny rules distinguishig the two, but i certainly couldn’t tell them to you. we were able to figure out the basics of the game and follow, but sydney was losing so we stopped caring after a while.

i know what you’re wondering: what’s tougher? rugby, afl, or american football (called gridiron here). of course aussies will tell you that their sports are tougher. and of course i’ll tell you that our sports are tougher. well . . . simply put, i’m right and they are wrong :). yes, american footballers wear a ton of pads. yes, there are some verrrry hard hits - - skin to skin, skull to skull hits—in rugby and afl. and yes, afl and rugby players, like nfl players, do often hit to inflict pain, not just to stop the play. but here’s the catch: 1) rugby and afl are muuuuuuuuuuuuch slower than american football due to constant tackling and an inability to spread out the field; thus the impact of two colliding meatheads is not as great in rugby as in the NFL, 2) nfl players are bigger. much bigger. yeah yeah, you can line up some of the biggest aussie players (e.g. willie mason, 6ft 5in 115 kilos) against the average tight end (or perhaps more accurately the average punter), but they just don’t measure up to linemen (e.g. jake long, 6 ft 7in, 145 kilos), linebackers, or even some of our larger quarterbacks. 3) american football players are just plain meaner.

anyway, back to the visit. after the game we walked into the suburb of surry hills to look for something to eat. unfortunately, it being good friday, and our being in australia – which strangely shuts down entirely on good friday - - we had difficulty finding a restaurant. luckily we stumbled upon a vietnamese place (which thankfully didn’t serve this) , which was quite good.

saturday morning we walked down oxford street, visited the paddington market where all the girls purchased gifts for friends back home, and slowly said our goodbye's as the group headed off to the airport in two waves. all in all, it was a wonderful, fast-paced, once-in-a-lifetime trip, which provided for lots of laughs, approximately 200,000 photos, a broken camera, some bruises, heavily regulated cuddling, and some interesting eating, which included roo steak, vegemite, green ants, green ant tea, sausage rolls, meat pies, anzac biscuits, shari solomon "biscuits", and koala burgers (just kidding). good times, everyone. wish you could have stayed longer!

Outback pics are up . . .

2008-07-24T19:33:00.001-04:00

Click on the link to my picasa album, right. Will post soon.

off to the outback . . .

2008-06-26T01:56:00.003-04:00

sooooooo, as you can tell, i wasn't able to catch up on old posts. i ended up working on my term papers until monday and things have been extremely busy since. you've got to do what you've got to do, right?

anyway, today i leave for Darwin (and for sunny weather!!!). six friends I will leave tomorrow for a 3 1/2 week outback & west coast camping trip. we'll visit kakadu national park, katherine gorge, drive the gibb river road, and swim with whale sharks in exmouth. i'll post pictures as regularly as i can. our itinerary is below.

my apologies to all of you studying for the bar!

26Darwin
27Darwin - Kakadu
28Kakadu
29Kakadu
30Katherine - Kununurra
1Kunnurra - Gibb River Road
2GRR
3GRR
4GRR
5GRR
6GRR
7GRR - Derby
8Derby - Broome
9Broome
10Broome - Eighty Mile Beach
11Eighty Mile Beach - Port Headland
12Port Headland - Karijini Nat'l Park
13Karinjini
14Karinjini - Exmouth
15Exmouth
16Exmouth
17Exmouth
18Exmouth - Karratha
19Karratha - ?
20?
21? - Broome
22Broome
23Broome - Sydney

the journey of hope

2008-06-26T01:42:00.002-04:00

Hi all. In my Rotary presentation I briefly discuss the Journey of Hope, a cross-country charity bicycle ride I participated in several years back. Below is a short video about our team and trip . . .

2002 - South Team, baby!

the gang . . .

2008-06-08T02:11:00.003-04:00

Once again I thought I'd put up a quick post just to get back into the routine of blogging regularly. Below is a picture of most of my normal group of friends, most of whom are from Germany (except Maggie (Sweden) and Andreas (Switzerland)). Most everyone here is a postgraduate law student at UNSW as well.

From left to right . . .

Anna Hermes, Andreas Marti, me, Agneta Binninger, Magdalena Åhlberg, Flitze's roommate (whose name has slipped my mind), Felicitas "Flitze" Bachem (fellow Rotary Scholar), Jens Pille, Daniel Gies, Patrick Pradellok.

Rotary Presentation

2008-06-05T08:11:00.003-04:00

as you can tell, I've done a really good job focusing on my essays over the last few days. but hey, at least i'm updating the blog! sort of.

i just learned how to upload power point presentations to a file sharing site, so i thought you all might be interested to see the presentation i've been giving to rotary clubs here. follow the link and enjoy!

Rotary Presentation - Upload a doc

* * *

here's a little background on the slides . . .

slide 2 is a joke about being a lawyer and an american

slides 5,6,7 demonstrate how my family background draws from three of garreau's american cultures (dixie, islands, new england). ps dad - I would have included a picture of you, but well, you don't smile in pictures. just kidding. i only have one of you in digital format (from that chinese restaurant) and i think you'd rather i not share it with the world. plus, let's be honest here, the pictures of the texas family (lane in particular) and of feliz are tooooo good.

slide 9 is where i talk about the coral gables rotary club, and note that the mayor of coral gables, Don Slesnick III is a Rotarian (I don't usually mention the other interesting fact, which is that, like me, he is a proud member of Pi Kappa Phi).

the second half of the presentation, beginning with slide eleven, describes the three factors that led me to seek a rotary scholarship (the decision to make a permanent commitment to service, the realization that my skills are best utilized through advocacy, the interest i've developed in advocating issues regarding social justice).

slide 29 - R.O.I. = return on investment. this is where i seek to assure Rotarians that their investment in my education is well spent. it's a hard sell, but i do my best!

Service Above Self

2008-06-03T02:08:00.004-04:00

Greetings all. I'm bogged down in papers now (two down, two to go), but I thought I'd put up a quick post about Rotary. As many of you know, as an Ambassadorial Scholar I'm asked to give 10 presentations to local Rotary Clubs. I'm scheduled to give five of these presentations in June alone!

Last night I spoke to the Rotary Club of Marrickville and today I spoke to the Sydney Rotary Club. It really is a unique aspect of this scholarship that we have the opportunity to meet with so many community leaders in our host country.

Rotary's motto is "service above self", and it is becoming increasingly clear why. All that is discussed at these meetings--aside from some well intentioned jokes--is how members can contribute to their communities, whether by attending a charity dinner or through volunteering directly in a third world country. Today's meeting was dominated almost entirely by presentations of scholarships and charitable grants.

Here are a few photos from my presentation to the Sydney club. The gentleman to my right is the the president of the club, Garry, who is headed to the US next week for a Harvard Reunion. I told him Harvard is no FIU or University of Maryland, but that it had a fine reputation nonetheless!

buckling down . . .

2008-05-12T04:09:00.002-04:00

Life as a student is truly a joy 10 months a year; this I cannot deny. But during the month each semester leading up to finals and/or essay deadlines, life gets really really boring. Since this period has now begun, I thought I should advise that I'll be MIA through June 16th. Quickly, I'll share the highlights of the last few weeks:

- Along with several classmates and two other rotary scholars, I'll be camping the Australian outback from June 26 - July 23. Our trip starts in Darwin, ventures through Kakadu Nat'l Park and on down the Katherine Gorge, and then to Derby via the famous Gibb River Road. From Derby we're going to Broome and then on down to Exmouth, where we hope to swim with whale sharks at Ningaloo Reef. Not too bad, huh? Let's hope I can survive this thing!

- My flatmate, Tara, has decided that she's going to stay in London for a while following her sister's wedding. Since she's leaving, I took over the lease and have been searching for a new flattie. Pretty nice to be on this end of things! My new flatmate is another Sydney-sider, Tessa. Will tell you more about her, as well as Tara, in a later post.

- Last week I attended an Australia v. NZ rugby game. The Kangaroos whooped up on the Blacks. By far the most entertaining part of the evening was a streaker who made it the full length of the field before slipping and being hesitantly tackled by three or four very frustrated police officers.

- Classes have been very very busy. Here's something interesting I've been learning about: some predict that, by 2050, there will be over 250 million "Environmental Refugees"--persons forced to migrate to other countries, or to other locations within their country, due to climate change. For an exceptional documentary on the issue, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYbI51wmRmk (part 1) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cukuOLC9C50&feature=related (part 2). My other classes are pretty interesting too, but my guess is that all of you non-lawyer people out there (e.g. normal people) would find it pretty boring.

- I've lost 30 pounds since leaving home. Asia should be credited for the jump start, but Oz has been good to me on that front. It doesn't hurt, too, 1) that I don't have a car here, and 2) that my Rotary host counsellor is generously allowing me to visit his gym several times a week as a guest. And by the way, his gym is located at the Sydney Cricket and Sports Ground, where most of the cricket and rugby players work out! How cool is that? But yeah, it feels pretty good to be back to my pre-law school self.

- I'm visiting the US for a week on Wednesday for Ana's law school graduation. Though I've tried to avoid getting home sick, which I won't allow to happen, I'm pretty excited to visit for a few days. I'll also spend 24 hours in Osaka, Japan en route.

That's it for now. After all my assignments are complete I hope to finish my Cuban Invasion installment, as well as put together a post about quirky things I've noticed about Oz. I'll probably rant about the election, too, since by then (please dear God) there will be a Democratic nominee. As they say, "Catch ya layta, mate."

a day worth remembering . . .

2008-04-26T10:47:00.005-04:00

Had enough of the soap box? Well, then this one is for you. Today's post is about Anzac Day, a national day of remembrance in Australia.

Anzac Day--the equivalent of Memorial Day in the US--is held annually in Australia and New Zealand to honor the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. Veterans of Australia's other conflicts and current soldiers are honored as well.

The signature Anzac Day ritual is a dawn service, held shortly before dawn in communities across the country. This year's dawn service began at 4:00am. And yes, though a "night owl" tried and true, this was not a ceremony I was going to miss. Today's story, therefore, begins at the delightful time of 3:15am--a time I've experienced a few times before, but only as the end to my day, not the beginning.

I suppose getting up so early wouldn't have been so bad if, say, I'd gone to sleep shortly after lunch on Thursday. But those of you who know me best, especially those of you from law school, know that I'm never in bed before midnight. I tried though, I swear to it. I turned off my lights at 10:00pm and started listening to an audio book recording of The Kite Runner, which I thought would put me to sleep. Not a good idea. The Kite Runner is an excellent book, at least so far, and I couldn't bring myself to turn off the ipod until 12:15am.

Needless to say, I felt horrible when my alarm went off at 3:15. And I certainly didn't feel any better once on my bike at 3:40. I don't know why I didn't just take a taxi, but I guess a part of me (a really sick part of me) was looking forward to riding down empty city streets in the middle of the night. But I'm glad that I did . . .

The dawn ceremony was to be held in the CBD, which is about three miles from my apartment. To get there, I take a right out of my apartment, up a hill, and then down a main street named Oxford St. Oxford street looks very much like Wisconsin Ave. in Georgetown. Two-story high end retail stores, over-priced coffee shops, and (as they love to say here) "heaps" of pubs. As you near the CBD, you pass through a suburb named Darlinghurst, where party goers can dance through the night and grab pizza at 3am.

As it happened, the time of the dawn service coincided with the time that most of Sydney's 20-30 year olds were leaving the bars to head home. My first impression of Anzac day, therefore, was the hundreds of intoxicated youngsters fighting for the attention of passing taxis. It was really quite a spectacle. Many people stood right in the middle of the street, while others crowded the sidewalk making passage by bike impossible. It took all the focus I could muster at that time in the morning just to not hit people while cycling about 20-25 mph through the dark.

Only five minutes later, however, I would experience an entirely different aspect of Sydney's culture. It's funny how two totally different worlds were coexisting only a few minutes apart.

I arrived at St. Martin's place at 3:55am and locked up my bike on a light post right in the middle of the festivities (less likely to be stolen there). Kate had recommended that I find some stairs or something to stand on in order to get a view, so I headed down the side of the square and found a nice place perched out over the crowd. From there, I could look out over the crowd of several thousand people. Unfortunately, however, I couldn't get a good glimpse of the ceremony.

The service began with the arrival of the ceremony's honored guests, among them Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Call me a nerd if you wish, but I couldn't believe I was in the same place as the PM. Perhaps because, back home, it is such a rare opportunity to see the President of the United States, or perhaps because of the complete lack of a security presence surrounding Rudd's arrival, but I felt incredibly honored to be there, stuck in the rain with a head of state. It felt entirely different from an event attended by President Bush (I've been to two . . . gulp . . .a Bush-Cheney campaign rally in Miami in 2004 and the Texas-Wyoming Inaugural Ball in 2005). At both Bush functions I was searched, walked through a metal detector, and entered the building knowing there were snipers on every rooftop within range. Here, by contrast, I'd rode my bike up to the event, locked it to a pole about 25 meters from where Rudd would enter, and went on my merry way. Could you imagine anything like that at a Bush event? I would have been attacked, questioned and detained by a large group of burly men with black sunglasses and earpieces.

There were other differences too. Kevin Rudd didn't speak once. Can you imagine, Bush attending an event and not so much as saying, "God Bless 'Merica"? I kept waiting for Rudd to speak, but instead was nearly put to sleep by the President of the New South Wales Court of Appeals, speaking on behalf of Her Excellency, the Governor of New South Wales. Sorry to criticize here, but . . . c'mon! . . . . you've got your super-star status PM here and a judge is speaking ? ? ? . . . . on behalf of someone who couldn't make it? Wow. I'm a long way from home.

In all seriousness, though, Justice Mason did have a few interesting things to say, among them this dedication which preceded the laying of wreaths. It does a good job of explaining the purpose of the dawn service:

At this hour upon the 25th day of April in 1915, ANZAC became one of the immortal names in history. We who are gathered here think of those who went out to the battlefields of all wars, but did not return. We feel them still near us in spirit. We wish to be worth of their great sacrifice. Let us therefore once more dedicate ourselves to the ideas for which they died. As the dawn is even now about to pierce the night so let their memory inspire us to work for the coming of new light into the darn places of the world.

Also part of the event was a 2 minute moment of silence and the singing of the New Zealand and Australian National Anthems. In case you're curious, here is Australia's:

Australians all let us rejoice

For we are young and free

We've golden soil and wealth for toil,

Our home is girt by sea.

Our land abounds in nature's gift

Of Beauty rich and rare,

In history's page let every state

Advance Australia fair

In joyful strains then let us sing

Advance Australia fair.

Pretty neat, right? I thought so. But does anyone know what "girt" means? And I must say it does seem to be missing something. Without crossing the line here, perhaps I could recommend a final, say, secret verse:

Australians all let us rejoice,

Though we have stingers, crocs and tropical flurries,

Only we, mate, have no worries!

Yes, I'm a nerd. I know.

After the ceremony I grabbed cup of coffee with some friends from Rotaract and headed over to Hyde Park where the Rotary Club of Sydney was hosting a BBQ fundraiser. From 6-7:30 or so we set up the grills, drinks, tents, condiments, etc., and by 8:00 I was chowing down on a steak and onion "sanga" (australian slang for sandwich). My shift ended at 9:00, just in time for the parade.

The Anzac parade was about what I'd expected: marching bands playing Waltzing Matilda over and over, horseback troops, families, etc. The only thing that was different than parades I've attended in the past were the bagpipes. What a marvelous sound they make.

By 9:30am I was in a bar at St. George Hotel in the CBD. No, I'm not an alcoholic, but hey, going to the bars in the morning is apparrently tradition, so . . . when in Rome . . .

I'm not going to go into great detail regarding my next . . . umm . . . 13 hours of celebration, but a few things are worthy of mention.

First, I found it really neat how many Aussie military personel were out in uniform. Apparrently, different bars are popular among different divisions of the military. From 930 - 1 or so I was surrounded by members of the Australian Army, from 1-4 or so I was surrounded by members of the Royal Australian Airforce, and from then on by the Royal Australian Navy. It was just really enjoyable to be around so many people in uniform. We Americans, obviously, have a certain nostaligia for the military.

Another neat tradition I should mention: per Anzac tradition, decendants of veterans wear the medals and other insignia of their parents and grandparents who served. Some people were wearing blazers with what was quite clearly three generations of medals.

And lastly, no posting about Anzac day would be complete without mention of Two Up, a popular form of gambling played in bars that is legal only on Anzac Day. Here's how it is played (not officially, but in practice): those interested in playing make a circle approximately 16 ft. in diameter. One person, "the spinner", stands inside the ring with a small wooden paddle-looking-thing with holes for two twenty-cent coins.

The spinner is responsible for tossing all goins and cooridating all bets. The goal is to guess whether, once tossed, both coins will land heads or tails up. If they don't match, the spinner tosses the coins until it is both heads or tails. If you want to bet heads, you tap your head with whatever money you want to bet. The spinner then comes by, takes your money, and yells "10 on heads . . .10 on heads." He then hands your money to whoever takes you up on your bet, and that person holds the money until the coins are tossed. If a coin touches anything or anyone before settling heads up or down, they will be tossed again. Simple stuff. It needs to be. Noone is in any condition to do real thinking on the afternoon of Anzac day.

I'm not a gambler myself, but of course, when in rome . . . . I set a limit of $20 and ended up breaking even. Wish I could say the same for my mate Jeremy, who despite his confidence in the picture, ended up $75 in the hole. How that could happen in a game with 50/50 odds is beyond me, but hey, that's why they call it gambling.

So all in all, my first Anzac day featured a nice mixture of sadness, silence, music, and joy - - and was a day I'll certainly remember for many years to come.

Some Preliminary Thoughts on the US Presidential Election

2008-04-19T10:03:00.003-04:00

***Today’s post is a continuation of an article I submitted for inclusion in the Sydney Rotary Club’s weekly newsletter(available at http://www.updatetime.com.au/update/Rotary_Matters_Apr_22_2008_-_Volume_88_Issue_38/Australian_Service_Club/Rotary_International/Sydney_Rotary_District_9750/529.aspx?Email+=clayton.solomon@gmail.com&fid=163&TimeSent+=128532205565695270). I apologize once again for politicizing my blog, but at least this time it is by request. Please feel free to utilize the comments section, as I’d love to hear your thoughts. Be nice.***

As you may or may not know, as an Ambassadorial Scholar I am asked to give a minimum of 10 presentations to local Rotary clubs. Through these presentations, I am expected to say a few words about my home country, my professional background, and what I hope to accomplish through my studies as a scholar. Moreover, to the extent that I can accomplish this through unique and/or humorous photographs of family or home, I am encouraged to do so. These presentations are intended to further Rotary’s objective of promoting international understanding.

To be honest, though, I’ve found this format somewhat challenging. Let’s face it: I’m an American and a soon-to-be lawyer—not the two most popular groups at present; and it’s not as though Australians need a refresher course on American culture. I’ve watched enough local television to be certain of that (for the record, the guests on Jerry Springer are not representative of all Americans). I have a few pictures of Miami, too, but it’s not like you all haven’t seen beautiful beaches before.

With your indulgence, then, I’d like to take this opportunity to share my thoughts with you on a subject that, much to my surprise, seems to be of significant interest to many Australians: the US presidential election. Plus, with any luck, I think you’ll find that my comments on the election shed some light on my views (though admittedly contradictory), my background, and my country.

Let’s go ahead and get the difficult part out of the way first: I voted for George W. Bush not only once, but twice (albeit grudgingly so in 2004). My reasons for doing so are too complicated to detail here, but suffice it to say that I found his original mantra of “compassionate conservatism” very appealing—though I think we all can agree that he has exhibited considerably more of his conservatism than his compassion. That too is another discussion.

To be sure, I don’t regret my vote, nor do I feel mislead or betrayed, as do many Americans. I just feel a great sense of disappointment. America is and always will be a land of promise; a promise we haven’t lived up to in recent years, even within our own borders. Hurricane Katrina, for example, affected me in ways that words cannot describe. Therefore, like most Americans, what I’m most looking for in a candidate this election is change; a change in management style, a change in attitude toward bi-partisanship, a change in diplomatic strategy, and a change in priorities . . . for starters.

Change is inevitable in 2008. Of the candidates that remain are an African American, a woman, and a Republican with a well-earned reputation for standing up against his party (popularly known as the “old guy” among Aussies). Yet demographics and ideology are not all that make these candidates a break from the past: Obama promises to withdraw all American troops from Iraq within 16 months, Clinton offers “universal” health care, and McCain, a former POW, has called for the closing of Guantanamo Bay and flatly describes water boarding as torture in violation of the Geneva Convention. Whether as President they’ll deliver on these promises is a whole other matter, but hey, we Americans could use a little optimism now and then.

If Australians could vote, I could tell you right now that Barack Obama would be the next US President--hands down. But you had your fun last year, and now it’s our turn. Plus, technically, Obama hasn’t yet won the Democratic nomination—though I believe he inevitably will (neither Obama or Clinton will receive enough “pledged delegates” during the Democratic primaries to secure the nomination; thus a group of approximately 800 “superdelegates” will decide the Democratic nominee. My view is that Democrats want to win this election wa-a-a-ay too much to hand the nomination to Clinton, who now trails in both pledged delegates and the popular vote).

In a typical election, party affiliation significantly influences how Americans vote. Unlike in Australia, most Americans are registered members of a political party, though they remain free to vote for the candidate of their choosing. Yet this election will likely feature more cross-over voting than ever before. Recent polls indicate that if Obama wins the Democratic nomination, 28% of Clinton’s current supporters will vote for McCain. Likewise, if Clinton wins, 19% of Obama’s supporters will switch sides. Polls also indicate that many Republicans will also vote for the Democratic nominee. But then, polls had John Kerry winning comfortably in 2004.

So what should we make of all this? For me, as noted above, the choice is between two candidates: McCain and Obama (even were Clinton to somehow earn the nomination, she would not have my support for a variety of reasons all of which you’ve heard before). As between the two, however, I must say that I would be proud to call either my Commander-in-Chief. Although McCain and Obama each offer vastly different platforms, especially concerning the war in Iraq, each brings a host of positive qualities to the table—qualities lacking in the current administration.

Let’s begin with the positives and negatives of each, starting with McCain (age before beauty, of course).

The first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of McCain is that he is a war hero. Not only was he taken hostage during the Vietnam War, but he refused to be released in advance of other hostages by virtue of being the son of a Four-Star Admiral in the US Navy (his grandfather, too, was a Four-Star Admiral in the US Navy). And while this doesn’t alone qualify him to lead the country, it certainly puts him in stark contrast with our last two presidents. Plus, his twenty-one years of experience in the United States Senate, especially as a member of the Armed Services Committee, has provided him with an unrivaled understanding of issues affecting national security.

Perhaps the most important quality about McCain, however, is his willingness to reach out to members of the Democratic Party to work toward bi-partisan solutions. Most notably, along with Democratic Senator Russell Feingold, McCain was the driving force behind the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002—an act intended to reduce the influence of money in American politics. His reputation in this regard earned him the endorsement of Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, former Vice President Al Gore’s running mate in 2000.

These are but a few of his more appealing qualities.

On the downside, however, McCain is, well, rather old to be running for President. At 71, McCain would be the oldest person ever elected to a first term in the White House (Reagan was 73 when elected as an incumbent). Yet this isn’t quite as fatal to his campaign as it might be in here in Australia. Whereas many Australians view older politicians as “out of touch”, many Americans view age as a sign of “experience.” Concerns about McCain’s age primarily regard his health. That said . . . his mother is 95 and shows no sign of slowing down any time soon.

Then there’s McCain and Iraq. Although he voiced early opposition as to how the Bush administration was conducting the war, he was also one of the most vocal proponents of the administration’s proposal to increase the number of troops on the ground. He has also been quoted as saying that he does not oppose an American presence Iraq for “another 100 years” (“presence” is to be distinguished from “war”, which necessarily involves risk to the safety and lives of US and Iraqi troops). To his credit, however, he remained consistent on the issue even in 2007, even when it looked as though doing so would be fatal to his campaign (at the time, approximately 62% of Americans viewed the war in Iraq as a “mistake.” This number is marginally higher today.).

Lastly, there’s the little known fact that McCain was born in Panama, and arguably is ineligible to run for and hold the office of President. Actually, he was born on a US Naval Base in the then American-controlled Panama Canal Zone, which was regarded as US territory—but regardless, it’s a neat fact.

On to Barack Obama. It’s even fun to write the name Barack Obama. It just sounds powerful. No wonder he’s such a media darling.

Obama, too, can boast an impressive personal story—although one very different than McCain’s. Born to a white American mother and a Kenyan father, Obama was born and raised in Hawaii. He and his mother would later spend several years living in Indonesia.

After attending Columbia University, Obama moved to Chicago, Illinois to work as a community organizer for an organization seeking to improve conditions in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Thereafter, he would attend Harvard Law School, where he was elected as the first ever black president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon his graduation he returned to Chicago to work as a civil rights lawyer and law professor.

But unlike McCain, Obama’s résumé isn’t what propelled him to the national spotlight. Obama is a gifted orator and has a unique ability to inspire and motivate people, especially those who, like me, belong to what is being termed the “millennium generation.” Our generation of Americans has yet to witness a leader in the style of Kennedy, Dr. King, or Reagan—a leader who knows how to tap into our emotions and convey an idealistic but believable message about our potential as a society. Maybe you think these comparisons are absurd, but feel for me here. Our President, God bless him, can’t pronounce the word “nuclear.”

Yet these same characteristics are also the source of Obama’s most stinging criticisms. His opponnents claim that he’s all talk and no substance, and that he lives in an imaginary world where he thinks he—and only he—can simply inspire into passage his most ambitious legislative proposals. No, they argue, running a campaign is far different than running the country—a task that he is wholly unprepared for.

Of course there are other criticisms of Obama, too. Some argue that he’s an elitist (based upon his now famous remark about some Pennsylvania voters being “bitter” and “clinging” to their guns and religion) or that he’s “unpatriotic” because he doesn’t wear an American flag lapel pin. I personally put these last comments in the same category as I would his wife Michelle’s remark that he sometimes has “stinky feet”: rubbish.

So there you have it. I’m torn between a candidate with a priceless reputation as a hero and a maverick and another whom I can only describe through emotional gobbledy goop. I agree with McCain on far more issues than I do Obama (e.g. “finishing the job” in Iraq, international trade, wasteful government spending), but I can’t help but think Obama is Mr. Right Now, and that he’s what America needs at this juncture in our history. And I also can’t deny that my present perspective is skewed, having been abroad since January and listening over and over to people’s frustrations (putting it nicely) with the US. All three courses I’m taking at Uni revolve around issues relating to human rights; I’m sure you can imagine how many times the US comes up in my lectures.

All said, however, I think it best to vote with my mind, rather than my heart—and for now at least, my mind says John McCain. But I wouldn’t be entirely honest with you if I didn’t say that, deep down, the twenty-five year old idealist inside of me is quietly cheering for Obama.

One thing is for sure, though: November is going to be a very exciting time, and I’m extremely privileged to be able to watch the elections among people who, despite being thousands of miles from Washington, care as much about the outcome this election as I do.

* * *

Clayton Solomon is a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar from Miami, Florida, representing Rotary District 6990. As an Ambassadorial Scholar, Clayton will earn an LLM in International Law from the University of New South Wales. He is also presently pursuing a law degree from the University of Maryland, where he co-founded the Maryland Law Katrina Relief Project—a non-profit volunteer organization committed social justice issues surrounding and arising out of Hurricane Katrina. He also holds a BA in Political Science from Florida International University.

tea anyone?

2008-04-14T21:43:00.003-04:00

Just thought you all might enjoy this email from one of my Profs.

Dear All Just a reminder that the first class for this course starts this Saturday at 9am, in Room 276 of the Law Building. If you haven't already, the Course Reader, with all the reading materials, is available at the Uni Bookshop. As this is a course over only 4 days, full attendance is required - at most, half a day can be missed without breaching the 80% rule.

Please also note that, it being a Saturday, pretty much nothing on campus will be open, so plan according food-wise. We'll take regular breaks for morning and afternoon tea, as well as lunch; but the morning and afternoon breaks wont provide much time to go afield to find anything. I'll bring morning tea on Saturday and really bad coffee will be available in the Staff Common Room.

See you all on Saturday Emily Crawford

A tea break?!?! I love this place!

three more . . .

2008-04-09T21:24:00.006-04:00

how could I forget my Australia vids?

Cape Le Grande national park, WA. Tell me this doesn't have the makings of a Corona commercial . . .

And for those of you who wanted to know what the train ride across the Nullarbor looked like, imagine two days of this . . .

Ok, to be fair, about a third of the ride looked like this instead . . .

look what I learned how to do . . .

2008-04-09T01:22:00.010-04:00

upload videos to my blog! yes, i know. i'm light years behind my peers with all this user-generated business. but, hey, it's never too late to start!

rather than edit my my old posts, which, let's be honest, you're too lazy to go back and look through anyway (I would be too, so its nothing personal), I decided to post the "best-of" here all in one post along with a brief description . . .

death by moto . . . and this wasn't even rush hour in HCMC

the mekong delta's up and coming . . .

muay thai in chiang mai . . .

chinese new year ritual in melaka . . .

my pitiful golf swing (plus mighty generous commentary from patrick, my texan cousin who now lives in adelaide) . . .

green ants . . . they're what's for dinner (part 2 of . . . forget it, who knows)

2008-04-06T21:37:00.001-04:00

***note: as I wrote this post I realized that there is no way I'm going to be able to get through the rest of our trip in a single post. in lieu of leaving out some important details, i'm again going to have to break up our trip into another installment. Below is part two of three.***

. . . this second (and much delayed) installment of last week's post, "cuban invasion", details our group's adventures through northeastern Australia's supposed "sunshine state", Queensland.

First and foremost, let me just say this: sunshine state, my foot!!! Coming from Florida I should have known that the slogan in fact means "hot muggy tropics." How easily we forget. It rained every day during our whirlwind tour through Queensland; but then, it takes a lot more than drizzle to stop a Cuban invasion! So where were we . . .

Monday began wayyy to early--5 somethingorother, to be exact. But we had ambitious plans for the day, and catching a 7:10 flight to Cairns in order to arrive by 9:15 (1 hour time change) was critical. We'd arranged a trip through northern Queensland's rain forest--the second oldest in the world--beginning at at 10:00am through a company named Billy Tea Safari.

Once at the Cairns airport our group split up in order to stay on schedule. Rico rented the van (just so we'd have a place to put our luggage while on the safari), Ana grabbed some breakfast (a sausage roll and a meat pie--both with "sauce", aka ketchup), John went outside to flag down our tour guide, the ladies grabbed the luggage, and I ran around in circles trying to look as useful John and Rico. By 10am we were on schedule in the Billy Tea bus--a 15 passenger monster-trolley-sort-of-thing, all to ourselves. As our driver/guide extraordinaire Mark would say--it was "sweet as."

Our first stop on the Billy-T was the Daintree River, where we set off for a relaxing river cruise led by a former national park ranger named Glenn. Just imagine for a second what you think an Australian nature guide would be wearing, how we would talk, and his demeanor in general. There you have it. No description necessary - that's Glenn.

Glenn was especially good at pointing out hidden wildlife. Though the Daintree was awfully muddy due to the fact that it was the rainy season, we did spot a few crocs and snakes in their natural habitat. That was enough for us, though. After hearing all of Glenn's stories about people in the area finding 12ft constrictors in their tub, we were quite fine with waiting until our "lunch w/ the roos" for our next close encounter with Australian wildlife--especially since the roos' who would be joining us were both elderly and blind (e.g. wouldn't be having us for lunch).

Once back on land, we loaded back on the Billy-Tea and crossed the river by cable ferry (Incidentally, doing so reminded me of crossing the Mekong by cable ferry en route to Phnom Penh. Only this time, however, we had 8 people in a 12 person bus, and then we had 12 people in an 8 person bus. Gotta' love Asia!). After about another hour or so through the rain forest, Mark led us on an hour long hike through a well-kept trail. Though there were few animals, the most interesting part about this leg of the trip was the array of plants, trees, and vines seemingly hanging from nowhere. My personal favorite was this one:

It was also during our hike that we learned about "green ants" (I'm sure this is their scientific name), who aside from looking cool also taste good! Imagine our surprise when Mark plucked one off a tree, pinched it lightly between is thumb and forefinger, and said, "just lick it's bum . . . takes like a lime." And indeed they did, and you can ask anyone in our group (except maybe Ana), as we'd all licked a bum by the end of the day! As it turns out, Aboriginals have been making a limey tea from the critters for ages.

Our hike ended at 2:00pm and boy were we hungry. Good thing, too, since Mark was quick to fire up the barbie. We soon chowed down on steak, potato salad, avocado, and mixed greens. To drink we enjoyed Queensland's favorite local brew, X X X X (four X).

After lunch we walked over to a rehabilitation center of sorts for roos' and wallabies. Much to the enjoyment of our group, we were allowed to feed and take photos with the animals. Ana, not surprisingly, also invited one to dance . . . In the album linked at right you can find the top 10 or so pictures from this leg of our trip. These pics were selected from about 200 that patsy managed to shoot in a matter of minutes.

Though our tour could very well have been complete following lunch, we had still an exciting second half further north in the daintree (http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Cape+Tribulation&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&ll=15.623037,144.382324&spn=9.829175,14.80957&z=6&iwloc=addr). After about an hour or so we reached Emmagen creek, where we stopped for a nice fresh water swim. The area of the creek we visited is one of the few safe swimming holes in the area. At least that's what Mark told us--we later saw a sign prohibiting swimming in the area due to crocs. But hey, we all made it out alive and had a wonderful time in the process

To conclude our day trip we drove down to cape tribulation, the source of the daintree's slogan, "where the rain forest meets the reef." It was the perfect time to be there, as the sun was just beginning to duck behind the treeline and we were the only ones there. Too bad the stingers are out in full force this time of year, or we would have gone for another swim.

As our long day came to a close most of the group passed out in the billy-t. We arrived back in cairns around 9pm, grabbed a few boxes of pizza, and hit the sack.

The best part about tuesday as that we woke up and hit the road having absolutely no idea where we were headed. Originally we'd considered driving away from the coast in search of a glimpse of australia's famed red outback, but as reality set in we realized that there was no way we'd have enough time in the day to drive far enough inland to escape queensland's lush green forests. Instead we decided to head south along the coast, intending for airlie beach (estimated about 9 hours away), but open to the possibility of sleeping in townsville.

While most of our day was spent on the road, we detoured on several occasions through several national parks--mainly searching for the violent and elusive cassowary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary). Honestly, I feel as though australia is in fact on huggge national park, but that's a different matter. Our first stop was Edmund Kennedy national park. All that I recall from the place is looking at Rico's GPS and seeing nothing but green, and sharing a public toilet with the largest spider I've ever encountered in my life. How'd you like to run from this fella with your pants down . . .

I can't recall the name of the second national park we visited, but it certainly more memorable than the first. To get through the park we had to cross several areas of road that were totally submerged in water. That's always fun. And we also had the opportunity for a quick bushwalk and a nice wade through a boulder-filled river. As we quickly learned, we weren't the only ones enjoying the nature. John and I accidentally came across a young couple, who like us, were quite surprised to learn that they were not alone in the river.

Since it was clear by the time we'd left the second park that we weren't going to make it to airlie, I decided to start looking for hotels in my trusty lonely planet guide. That's when I stumbled across this paragraph, which I read out loud to our group:

Magnetic Island, or simply "Maggie", is shrouded by smooth grey boulders dipping into the sea. Half the island is national park and a haven for rock wallabies, bats and brushtail possums. Bird life bursts out of the bush, and it's the largest natural koala sanctuary in Queensland (some say Australia), so spotting fuzzy grey bums in the foliage is a mandatory pursuit. A good network of trails makes for some spectacular bushwalking and the surrounding waters are also part of the precious Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

And just like that we hurried to Townsville's port, left behind our car, and jumped on a 30 minute ferry to Magnetic Island. After that description, wouldn't you?

Though the decision to lodge in maggie was an easy one, I think some background is appropriate. Sorry Patsy, but I have to.

For days Patsy had been asking about Koalas. In sydney we saw bats, in the blue mountains we saw beautiful parrots, we'd fed kangaroos and wallabies, shared intimate moments with green ants, seen crocs, snakes and iguanas, and yet, by only day five, patsy was ready to declare australia a barren wasteland if she didn't see a cute furry little cuddly koala. We had to find this woman a koala. We'd have driven to perth if that's what it would have taken. And yet all we had to do was jump on a ferry to a tropical paradise we didn't even know existed only 10 minutes before. Gosh it pays to not have a plan sometimes.

Unbelievably we made it to magnetic island before the rain caught up with us. From the ferry we jumped on a bus (one bus circles the island every hour) to Horseshoe Bay on the north side of the island where we checked into our apartment/hotel.

For dinner, we walked across the street to a quaint little mexican restaurant named "noodies." Who would've thought we'd be eating mexican food on this remote island that couldn't be farther from north america. Boy did it hit the spot. After yet another tiring day we relaxed with margaritas, nachos, enchiladas, and . . .

. . . oh yeah, possums. Possums were rampant on magnetic island, especially at noodies. Admittedly, however, they looked far cleaner and gentler than the possums we have back home. They're even, get this, a protected species in queensland.

After dinner we enjoyed a case of VB on the beach and were yet again in bed by midnight. Australia is an exhausting place, let me tell you.

***check back in the next few days or so for what I hope will be the final installment of this post***

part 1.75 of 2

2008-04-04T07:23:00.004-04:00

pics are up from the "cuban invasion" (link at right). the album includes 500 of the 1,100 photos taken between the eight of us (that's more than i took in asia, btw). seriously, it took me four days just to delete the duplicates and then choose between the remaining photos. enjoy.

yes, i write slow (part 1.5) . . .

2008-04-03T09:12:00.004-04:00

I've been working on part 2, I promise, but it's taking me forever. I'm sure few of you are surprised.

In the meantime, make the jump to view a video put together by patsy, which highlights our travels (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ6lsb3n8dE&feature=email). It's "sweet as."

***Update: The link is now working. Thanks for letting me know of the problem.***

Cuban invasion (part 1 of 2) . . .

2008-03-25T08:34:00.016-04:00

Yes, I know - it's been a while. But at least this time I have a good excuse: Australia has been invaded by Cuban-Americans. No seriously, last week I had the pleasure of welcoming seven friends from Miami to the land downunda, and I'm just now catching my breath. Indeed, we had such a wonderful time that I'm going to have to break this post into two parts--otherwise I may just never finish.

First let me introduce my guests individually, since doing so will no doubt cause them much embarrassment. From left to right:

John: Law student, U. Chicago (slightly less prestigious than Maryland Law). Married to Annie. Purportedly afraid of heights but will scale a mountain in 10 second flat to spy on unsuspecting travelers. *** Update: John's post in the comments section is duly noted and incorporated herein, including his subtle correction of my mispelling of the word "traveler." Indeed, they should have gotten a room.***

Annie: Special Ed. Teacher, Chicago. Slated to win rookie of the year at her previous institution, but by all accounts was robbed based upon a glitch in the system.

Ana: Soon to be prosecutor-criminals beware. Especially fond of Australian possums (I must say, they are much more tolerable than our own possums). Has extraordinarily good taste in men.

Me: Case in point.

Tere: Banker (who would have thought, a Manrara--a banker?) The sister of Ana--as if you can't tell from the photo. Very popular with elderly Roos' (see XXXX (part 2 of 2)).

Lilly: Business owner. Sister of Rico. Decided to join the trip--I kid you not--10 days before, if that. Suffers from arachnophobia. But no worries, mate -- there are nooooooo spiders in Australia.

Patsy: Marketing/events extraordinaire. Married to Rico. Came to Australia for the sole purpose of cuddling (e.g. strangling) a Koala.

Rico: Business owner. Loves kayaking, anchovies, close encounters with death and very large digital cameras.

* * *

First let me say what a joy it was to have visitors. I of course miss my family and friends, so it was unbelievably nice to see familiar faces and to catch up on everything happening back home-even if it has been only a few months. But I also cherished the opportunity to share what little I know about Sydney and this magnificent country with friends. It's a shame more Americans don't visit Oz.

Our adventure officially began on Saturday the 15th, after the second half of our group arrived early in the morning. After showing everyone my apartment and a quick "brekky', we took off for the famous Bondi Beach. We couldn't have asked for better weather. The sun was shining, clouds were few and far between, and a slight breeze helped tame the heat. From Bondi, we headed off down the Bondi - Coogee walking path, which connects several of Sydney's southern beaches. Were it not for the fact that we took about 1 photo for every meter walked, we might have actually made it to Coogee. Instead, however, we stopped for lunch at nearby Tamarama (popularly known as "Glamourama") Beach, and walked back to Bondi to do the tourist shop circuit.

Saturday evening we headed down to Circular Quay (pronounced "key") to have drinks at Opera Bar--a lively outdoor cocktail bar/restaurant on the harbor at the base of the opera house. Though pricey, the bar is wonderful. To the west, you see towering skyscrapers in the CBD and the famous harbor bridge. To the north is the iconic opera house, which in my opinion takes on an entirely new life at night. Add a nice South Australia shiraz or a Coopers Pale Ale to the mix and you've got the perfect introduction to Sydney. From the opera bar we grabbed some dinner (wayyyyyyy overpriced) in the Quay and most of the group called it an early night. Gotta' love jet lag. The Manraras and I, however, would have a few drinks in a trendy area of town known as "the rocks" before retiring around midnight

On Sunday we got off to an early start and made our way to the Blue Mountains, which are about 2 hours west of Sydney. Though nice, I suppose the blue mountains are like much of what you'd see in the Appalachian foothills--dense forest, picturesque views across the valleys, trails, etc. They even experience some mild snow here in the winter. So strange to think of snow in Australia, isn't it? I've got to see it to believe it.

Our adventure in the mountains began with a glass-bottomed cable car that ferried us across a deep gorge overlooking a rock formation known as the "three sisters", at right. From the other side, we hiked for about an hour and a half or so until, one way or another, we found our way back to where we started. We then took a short ride down the mountain on "the world's steepest railway" and returned by lift.

Sunday evening we dined at the Sydney Tower Restaurant--a rotating restaurant atop sydney's highest building. Though the buffet-style menu left much to be desired, we were paying for the view - - and a stunning one it was. Again we hit the sack early, in anticipation of a 7:10am flight to Cairns (pronounced "cans").

That's all for today folks, as our journey to Queensland--the supposed "Sunshine State"--merits a post of its own. Check back in a few days for X X X X (part 2 of 2).

Uni . . .

2008-03-13T01:45:00.002-04:00

Seeing as how it's been a bit since I last posted, I thought I'd write a quick post about my "uni" experience thus far. Well, there really hasn't been much of an experience yet, and that's kind of the point.

Consistent with the purpose of my rotary scholarship, I've enrolled in only courses focused on international law, particularly those emphasizing in human rights. Per UNSW policy, I'm allowed only to enroll in 24 credits per semester (48 required for the degree). Strangely, however, each course is 8 credits, which means that I'm only enrolled in 3 classes for the semester: Contemporary Issues in International Law (basic beginners course), Refugee Law (what is a refugee, what our our obligations w/ respect to refugees, under what circumstances should developed countries grant political asylum to refugees, etc.), and Law of Armed Conflict (what are the laws of war, particularly as such laws relate to the rights of POW's and ordinary civilians, are they binding, how have such laws changed in light of the war on terror - and should they?). All in all it's a pretty interesting set of courses, but I just feel like three courses is a pretty light load. Who knows - if I'm slammed in April, trust me you'll hear about it!

Also strange, all three of my courses are mini-terms, which means that they are taught intensively over several full day lectures, for only a few weeks. And due to my selection of courses, I don't have a single course until April 1st! Nuts!

I know what you're thinking - - that's great! You can just relax and go to the beach for another month. I suppose this is true, but for those of you who know me best, you know that I have a relax-deficiency, and must find something to occupy my time. For now, it's fitness and learning guitar (signing up for lessons in a few weeks!). Also, I was really looking forward to meeting other students, especially aussies, and making friends in my classes. That's now going to have to wait for another 3 weeks or so, and I'm just going to have to work harder at making friends in alternative settings. It'll come together, though - I'm sure of it.

Speaking of friends, my friend Kate who I met in Nha Trang, Vietnam, has been great about helping me settle in. She and her b/f James have taken me out to drinks and dinner a few times, and Kate has invited me to her parents place for a weekend in April in Wollongong. Kate works for the New South Wales Tourism Minister, and James is an engineer.

My roommate Tara has been cool, too. She and her friend Abby (is there an E?) thoroughly ripped me about my dress the other night, explaining, among other things, that we Americans wear our clothes too baggy. Abby has this interesting theory that baggy jeans came into style as a sort of protective mechanism, whereby young boys would explain that they received their jeans from their big brother, and look how darn big my big brother is. Ha! Not so sure how true it is, but a neat theory nonetheless. Anyway, I have bought some new clothes, partly to fit in a little better here, and partly to fit in my own clothes - -I've lost quite a bit of weight since this adventure started. Asian food will do that to you.

That's all for now. I'll post more impressions as they come to me. I have eight visitors coming in from Miami tomorrow, so I've got to do some preparing!

Australia pics are up . . .

2008-03-04T23:39:00.001-05:00

settling in . . .

2008-02-27T04:56:00.006-05:00

At last - G'day from Sydney, my home for the next 10 months! I'll be posting less frequently as I ease into back into a normal routine, and probably won't stick to the journal format, but rest assured that I will continue to do stupid things worthy of mention here for your humor. Now where were we?

The train ride to Adelaide was every bit as interesting as I expected it to be. Yes, it was uncomfortable at times (appx. 48 hours), yes there were some seedy people in the seat-only "red kangaroo" car, yes, the scenery was the same for thousands of miles - but that's all part of the experience, isn't it? Day one on the train was lovely. I was seated next to a fellow backpacker, Gemma - yes, that's another Gemma from England, how funny - who was really a joy to talk to. She studied history in college and is looking for a museum job at present. Aside from talking, she and I stared out the window for hours on end into the "bush." Most of the territory we covered on this day had a little bit of greenery, some hills, and a bit of wildlife - mostly emus. For dinner I had a pretty hard stuffed potato and a good ol' VB. I wasn't feeling particularly social that night, so I sat in my chair and read until we our 11pm stop at Kalgoorlie.

Kalgoorlie was an especially nice stop. First, it was nice to stretch and get off in such a remote and interesting town. Even better, though, my cousin Petrah arranged for her brother, Tro, and his friend Jake, who both live in Kal', to meet me at the train station and take me for a beer during the 2 hour layover. It was extremely nice of them to do, since it was pretty late, and since Tro is a family man and had to get up at a crazy early time. Tro and Jake first took me for a beer and pizza and then drove me around town to show me the Super Pit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Pit_gold_mine) and other local attractions. If you happen to read this, thanks for the good times guys. I enjoyed meeting you both. As discussed, you're welcome in Miami any time - - I'll likely have an empty apartment monday through saturday from 8 am through 9pm!

The beer at the bar, incidentally, was Toohey Extra Dry - a personal favorite of my pal Van Hilderbrand. I'm bringin ya' a 6er, mate!

Once back on the train I did my best to get some sleep. I probably got 4 hours at best.

The following day on the train was much like the first, only more desolate. Most of the day was dedicated to crossing the Nullarbor Plain - - arguably the epitome of the australian outback (check it out from space at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Australia.A2002231.0145.250m_NASA_Nullarbor.jpg). Though the scenery didn't change much throughout the day, as you might expect, it was still a mystifying experience. So vast, empty, quiet and peaceful. So freakin' hot! Who in the world went out in the middle of this thing to build this railway?! Interesting fact: the section of the rail line crossing the nullarbor is the longest stretch of straight track in the world. We had only one stop this day, in the desolate town of Cook, WA (pop. 4).

Almost 48 hours after leaving Perth I arrived in Adelaide, South Australia. I was greeted my by cousin by marriage, Petrah - - the first familiar face I’d seen in about 50 days or so! Gosh was it nice to recognize someone! Petrah first took me to breakfast and then back to her and Patrick's apartment in Glenelg, a very nice suburb (or is it a separate city?) of Adelaide. That evening Petrah and I went to pick up Patrick from work (flinders hospital) and then enjoyed gourmet pizza and beer for dinner.

The following day I woke to the smell of biscuits (scones here). Patrick, as texan as they come, had prepared some extra buttery biscuits for breakfast, which were topped off with some local Australian honey. It's crazy how certain foods and smells can take you thousands of miles away; for an instant, I was back in the state's eating myself into a coma like only Americans do, and loving every minute of it. After breakfast I went with P&P and their 18 month old baby girl, Eden (right), to P&P's new house a few miles outside of town.

That evening P&P took me to the Adelaide "Fringe Festival." Festivals are huge in Australia. Basically, they're just week long (varying) events that engage the whole city with live entertainment, musical performances, food, events, etc. We attended a really interesting carnival-type function, featuring free performances ranging from fire-breathing shows to worlds shortest man-type booths. We of course, attended the strangest presentation of them all, named "farm house freaks" or something like that. Basically, the presentation was a collection of two headed and other deformed animals, including cows, chickens, falcons, mice, etc. Pretty gross, to tell the truth, but a neat experience nonetheless.

The following day I pretty much just lounged around, only going out to purchase a cell phone and to visit the famous Hagues chocolate shop. Good gosh was the chocolate good. That evening we went to dinner at a restaurant named tapp in, which features an indoor driving range--how cool is that? I stink at golf, but I must say that few things are more gratifying than the ping sound of a nice straight smack with a driver!

Ony the 26th I left for Sydney, and as usual, I ran into trouble on may way. Unbeknownst to me, Jetstar cancelled my flight more than two weeks ago and had put me on a 6:00 am flight (by the way, I only recently learned that aussies call jet star "deathstar"). To make matters worse, the woman at customer service told me that, since jetstar emailed me twice about the cancellation (which they may have, but AOL marks all mass email as spam so I never received it), they were not going to refund the ticket price or provide me with a voucher. Moroever, the next flight to Sydney was on the 27th. Frustrated, and just plain angry, I purchased a $250 ticket from Quantas leaving at 11:00 and went on with my business. I arrived in Sydney around 1:00 pm and was greeted by my Rotary host counsellor, Warwick Crumblin. Warwick (pronounced Warick) took me to lunch, gave me three boxes of clothes that Ana shipped to Australia for me, and dropped me off at Budget car rental, where I picked up a shiny gold Toyota Camry for the apartment search. He’s a very pleasant man who practices law here in Australia, but would much rather be a full time fisherman. Can’t say that I blame him, given his gorgeous surroundings.

The past few days have been extremely tiring, but also very enjoyable. Most of my time has been spent searching for an apartment. Aside from being quite picky about apartments, I want to live in a shared place with an australian about the same age as me. This way, I believe, I'll experience more of the country and gain a better understanding of aussie culture. My search was primarily conducted through a website, www.flatmatefinders.com, which is essentially online dating for roommate (flatmate here) searches. Give a description of yourself. Do you smoke or use drugs? What time do you usually get home? What are you looking for in a roommate? Do you have pets? Do you enjoy long walks on the beach?

All together, I looked at probably 10 apartments or so. Of those, I liked about 6 of the apartments, and of those 6 liked about 4 of the people in them. And of those four, some just didn’t like me, I suppose. It was really a frustrating experience to be honest. Here I am in a new county, I want to make the most of my experience, so I'm being very picky about neighborhoods, roommates, etc., and at the same time I have 10 minutes to prove to these people that I'm also quite clean, easy going, fun, and can pay my rent on time. Add this to the fact that Australian humor is quite different than ours (very dry, and not very PC), and that humor was probably the single most important quality for aussies looking for a flatmate.

Adding to the frustration of apartment searching, I'd about had it with staying in hostels. Don't get me wrong, I love hostels, and the one I was staying at in particular (wake up!) was very good. But I'm a routine kind of guy. I like my stuff. And every once in a while, I just need some me-time. And who wouldn't want a clean warm shower anyway?

All the work paid off, however, when I got a text message from Tara inviting me to rent the additional room in her apartment. Tara is about as laid back as they come, enjoys fitness and meditation, and knows how to have a good time. She's an ideal roommate for my short time here. The place is pretty darn nice too. It's in a great neighborhood, has a nice view, and is only about 1 1/2 miles from school - perfect since I'll be biking everywhere this year. See the view from my living room at left; a close zoom to middle right will show a building wiht UNSW across the top - that's my "uni."

A pinpoint of my location is available at: (http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=121+cook+street+centennial+park,+NSW&sll=-25.335448,135.745076&sspn=18.411856,29.619141&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.895186,151.228824&spn=0.002071,0.003616&t=h&z=18&iwloc=addr).

In addition to apartment searching, I’ve also been preparing to begin my studies. I attended UNSW’s international student orientation on Tuesday, which was a very interesting experience. I guess I just find it hard to conceive of myself as “international” anything. It was fun, though. We listened to a few presentations about “living and learning in Australia” and “dealing with cultural change.” It was quite funny, truthfully, but I’m sure it was helpful to those who are more “international” than myself.

I also had the opportunity to tour the law school during my visit. The law school just completed construction of a new building. Have a look for yourself . . .

So yeah, I've just about settled in here and will soon have time to pay closer attention to and reflect upon my surroundings. I'll share these "aubservations" with you as they come to me, and I look forward to hearing from all of you as well.

Hello moto . . .

2008-02-26T02:18:00.005-05:00

Hey folks - I purchased a phone yesterday and finally got it up and running today (thank you, Petrah!). I know it isnt (apostrophes arent working on this comp) cheap, but feel free to call if you ever get the urge (but remember that were 15 hours ahead here!). Texts work, too. + 61 450 168 050.

Death by 'roo . . .

2008-02-19T08:45:00.009-05:00

Greetings from Adelaide, South Australia, where I'm staying for a few days with my cousin Patrick and his lovely wife and daughter, Petrah and Eden. I apologize for getting a bit behind on the postings, but I haven't had enough time on the net to put one together in quite a while. As you read further, I'm sure you'll understand why. This blog will only cover through the 20th, and I’ll catch up completely in a day or two. Still it’s going to be a long one . . .

Let's see. I think we're back to the 13th. From the airport I caught a morning express bus to a hostel in Northbridge. Joining me was a very nice girl from Germany named Nina, who also was looking for a place to stay. I recommended she take a look at the place I found online (Britannia on William St.), which she did, and was lucky enough to find a room once someone checked out.

After a long nap to catch up on sleep I took a stroll through Perth's central business district (CBD) and did much of nothing for the rest of the afternoon. In the evening, I grabbed a nice dinner, stopped in a pub for a bit, got sick of standing in the pub by myself, and headed back for some shuteye - or so I thought. Unfortunately, the floor fan in my hostel only reaches the bottom bunks. I, of course, was on the top. Add this to a very very hot summer day and perth and it was a looonnnnnnng (and sweaty) night.

On the 14 I celebrated Valentines in style - - on the beach, in red from head to toe. Now, I wasn't red when I arrived at the beach, but let me tell you, I was as red as a candygram by early afternoon. Having missed the opportunity to get a tan in Thailand (discussed at length in "Can't think of a title . . . any suggestions), I was anxious - too anxious - to log some beach time in Australia. Unfortunately, I missed a memo entitled "Warning: UV rays 100,000 times stronger in Australia than any other place on earth" that was supposedly distributed by customs upon arrival. Add this lack of critical information to my unconventional approach to tanning (sit in the sun for an hour without block, and then add sunblock) and what you get is . . . pain. Immense pain.

Exhausted from several hours in the sun, I grabbed a quick dinner and hit the sack fairly early (or at least tried to). Another long night at the lovely Brittiana on William St.

As you might imagine, I woke up on the 15th in extreme pain. Since most of Perth's more exciting activities all involve the beach, I needed a change of plans. Instead of surfing lessons, I elected to walk through the city again and spend some time at Kings Park, which provides an amazing view of the city. I spent about 3-4 hours there, reading A Million Little Pieces and listening to Magpie's and other sorts of stunning birds that we don't have at home. Altogether a very pleasant afternoon. Nothing exciting to report from the evening, except that I recruited Nina and her b/f to join me on a trip through SW Australia by rental car. I'd been planning to do this for weeks, and to have company would make the adventure all the better (and cheaper, of course)

On the 16th, I woke up early and headed down to Budget to pick up my teal Hyundai Accent. Surprisingly, renting a car was fairly easy. I was concerned about driving on the left side of the road, however, and elected to purchase the optional insurance. Interesting fact: in Australia, rental car insurance does not cover driving by night. See, 'roos come out at night, and pose a significant risk to drivers. They're all over the place once your outside of the city, and like deer, they just stop and stare at speeding vehicles as they approach. But "no worries", I thought to myself. How bad could it actually be?

By 10am, we were off on our journey and driving through the outback. Driving out here is a peaceful experience. Two lane roads lined by red dirt. No passing cars. Just you, bushes, rabbits, huge lizards, and the 'roos. I could drive here for hours (good thing, because there are long gaps between cities).
By 3:00 we arrived at our first destination, Hyde--a small town in the middle of nowhere, which visitors stop by en route to a natural wonder known as "wave rock." There being no restaurants in Hyde, we picked up some sandwich stuff at a grocery store. It was also here that we realized we had a slow-leak flat. No problem, though; the rental was equipped with a good spare. We just needed to be careful from there on out.
Wave Rock was pretty cool, especially the surrounding terrain. A short climb up a nearby hill provided for an excellent view of the outback.

Although behind schedule, we decided to deviate from our original plan of not driving at night and headed off to the city of Esperance, which was another 5 hours away. As before, the drive was beautiful, but the 'roos do indeed come out at night (and as discussed, we were no longer insured at this time); and of course, being me, I hit one!

Have no fear, though, animal lovers. I hit the breaks as hard as possible and was almost at a full stop upon contact. Also, since this was a grey 'roo, rather than a huuuuuuge red 'roo, neither he nor the Hyundai were seriously damaged. He hopped away seemingly unharmed, and we had only a minor dent, which I was later able to knock out with little trouble (God bless cheap, dent resistant exteriors!). After a long day through desolate country, we made it to the Esperance YHA (youth hostel association - a very traditional dorm style dorm) by 8:55 - five minutes before closing. We grabbed a nice dinner and enjoyed some time on the sand before heading to bed.

The 17th was one of the best days yet of my trip. To start it off, we slept late, grabbed a quick "brekky" at a local bakery, and enjoyed coffee on the docks. Joining us for coffee was a big fat sea lion enjoying scraps tossed from the pier by local fisherman.

Around noon we drove about 30 km to Cape Le Grand, a tranquil national park along the coast. Despite the fact that my sunburn was killing me, I threw on a t-shirt, grabbed a towel, and spread out on the whitest beach I’ve ever seen. Though the water was cold, Bjorn’s (note: the o, properly pronounced “ou” should have two dots over it, but I can’t figure out how to do that here on blogspot) fearlessness in diving right in prompted me to go for it as well. All together, we spent about two hours on the beach, body surfing and goofing off on the isolated beach. Afterwards we climbed up a nice cliff for a spectacular view of the park; as you can see, we weren’t the only one’s enjoying the scenery . . .

Behind schedule again, we had to drive like mad-men to make it to our next destination, Albany, before sundown. By 7:00, however, we realized that there was no way we were going to make it by dark and decided to stop for dinner in the tiny town of Ravensthorpe. The only place open was a large pub, which conveniently was having a aussie-style BBQ out back. What a meal. Steak (though no comparison to the beef back home), sausages and veggies - - for $15 AU. Mmmmm.
By the time dinner was over, it was pitch black outside and the ‘roos were out in full force. Now, to be clear, it’s not like there were herds of them just standing in the road, and in fact, we probably only saw about 10 of them en route to Albany, but trust me: they were out there, and by the time you see them it’s probably too late.

Bjorn, bless him, was totally freaked out. For nearly 5 hours he stared intensely at the shoulder yelling “kangaroo, emu, rabbit” (hilarious in a German accent!) at every spotting. He insisted that I drive only 80 km an hour (about 48 mph) and found little comfort in my (terrible) singing of old school country songs. “Rollin’ down the backwoods, Tennessee byway, one arm on the wheel . . .” Nonetheless, we arrived at the Albany YHA in one piece at 1:00 am.
The 18th was another nice day. We started our day with a visit to Torndirrup National Park, which features the “Natural Bridge” (at right) and “the Gap.” Australia is just full of natural wonders. From there we drove through the towns of Denmark and Warpole and stopped off at a place known as “Valley of the Giants”, where we walked across a tree-top canopy suspended up to 120 feet off the ground. From there, we drove to Augusta and checked in at a pristine hostel named “Baywatch Manor” (no lifeguards or Hasselhoff, unfortunately).

The 19th began with a visit to Cape Leeuwin, Australia’s most south-westerly point and where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet. A sign by the water read “can you spot where the oceans meet?” I stared out toward the ocean for about 20 minutes before concluding that no, I can’t spot where they meet, and I doubt anyone can, really. Joke’s on me I guess.

From Augusta we drove north to Margaret River, home to several of Australia’s most popular vineyards and wineries. We toured a placed named Leewin Estate, sipped some Chiraz (only a glass, Mom – relax!) and were back on the road. We also stopped at a local chocolate factory and purchased some darn good macadamia nut / chocolate clusters. We arrived at our final destination, Bunbury, by 7:00pm. At night, we grabbed some Thai food and a few beers and spent the evening discussing various toasts given in our home countries.
We left Bunbury very early on the 20th, since the car was due back in Perth by 10:00 am and my train to Adelaide was scheduled to depart at 11:55. I’ll post about that experience in a few days.

In short, I had an amazing time driving the “Great Southern” with Nina and Bjorn. I love driving, especially on lonely roads such as those that stretch across the outback. The scenery is everything you’ve imagined it to be, and then some. This is the Australia I’ve been daydreaming about for a year and a half. It didn’t disappoint. Plus, traveling with company was such a nice change.

Nina and Bjorn: I had a blast. Thanks for putting up with my night driving, singing, restlessness and country music. Thanks also for doing the logistics. Can you believe we had no problem with Budget!? Whew!

claytonisdownunda . . .

2008-02-12T20:00:00.000-05:00

. . . but there wasn't exactly a welcome mat. Greetings from the notoriously laid-back city of Perth, Australia--Miami's polar opposite, literally. After a few uneventful days in Singapore I'm finally in Oz, ready to begin what is certain to be a very exciting ten months.

My arrival in Australia has been interesting to say the least, but first let me say a few quick things about Singapore. I arrived in Singapore on the 10th by bus from Melaka. Normally, the bus takes about 4-5 hours, but I unfortunately (and naturally) chose by far the slowest line at customs and was stuck at the border for an hour and a half. In fact, I was so behind the rest of our group that our bus decided to leave without me. To be honest, though, I prefer getting left behind to boarding a bus of 49 hot and impatient people who have been waiting on me for over an hour. Plus, the bus company offered to let me jump on a bus arriving an hour later, so it really wasn't a big deal. After a good walk from the bus drop off, I arrived at my hostel around 5:00pm.

Most of the backpacker joints in Singapore, including my own, are located in an area known as little india, which as you might expect, is lined with indian restaraunts, small convenience stores, smells of curry, and lots of chatter. I personally have always found folks from India to be quite pleasant, and their food to be quite good (and inexpensive), so this was an especially nice treat for me. That evening I grabbed dinner with a friend who I met on the bus, had my first true australian beer at a pub down the street from my hotsel (Victora Bitter, aka VB, aka Green Cans), enjoyed good conversation with some people where i was staying, and hit the sack at a reasonable hour.

I'd love to say that I made the most of the 11th, my only full day in Singapore, but I didn't. To be honest, while Singapore is a lovely place, it just wasn't really what I was looking for. On one hand, it was too developed and clean to feel like a natural extension of my SE Asia Trip. On the other, while it was nicely developed, its novelty was overshadowed by the fact that I'd be in Australia in less than 24 hours. I'd see "western" civilization soon enough, and just wasn't looking for that quite yet. So, instead, I did what most people do when they visit Singapore: I shopped.

I'm pretty low on money right now, so I guess I window shopped more than anything else. I did, however, buy a pair of Haviana sandals to replace the pair I broke in Krabi. A friend I met in Nha Trang tells me that everyone in Australia wears Haviana's, and that my old leather "thongs" were undeniably american; when in rome . . . . I also bought a few t-shirts to replace two that I brought with me and ruined one way or another.

Oh, how could I forget? I did do something very exciting on the 11th after all. I shaved! In fact, it was my first (and certainly not last) time ever shaving in a barber shop. Gosh it is nice to have a professional shave. Close cut, not a single spot missed, stinging after-shave . . . what a difference from my usual three minute mach three drill. It almost made growing the beard worth it. OK, maybe it wasn't that good, but it was certainly nice.

On the night of the 11th (surprise surprise) I ate Indian food at a nice place off Orchard Road (home to no less than 10 shopping centers). I ordered something called Murtabak, which looked darn good in a picture. As it turns out, the dish is something like a pancake/crepe/omelete thing, which also includes shredded chicken and onion. It was OK, but the fresh squeezed orange juce that I ordered on the side was exxxxxxxxxxxxxxcellent.

On the 12 I had a lazy morning and headed to the airport around 1:00pm via metro. Singapore's public transit system is extremely clean and efficient. Actually, everything in singapore is very clean and efficient. By the way, it is illegal in Singapor to smoke cigarettes except in a few designated areas. Likewise, you're subject to a hefty fine for j-walking or spitting out chewing gum on the floor. And most notoriously, drug traffickers are subject to the death penalty. Crazy.

My five-hour flight to Perth was bumpy, but otherwise easy and enjoyable. I wish I could say the same about Australian customs. While the man at the stamp counter had very few questions, soon after walking past the counter another man hurried over to me and started firing questions. Where are you coming from? What countries did you visit in SE Asia? In what order? How long in Perth? Where are you staying? Why here before Sydney? Do you have an address in Sydney? How about Perth? So you mean to tell me that you have no idea where you're going to stay tonight? "No sir, I have no idea where I'm giong to stay tonight." (we'll get to this in a moment, you just wait).

After the grilling, I walked over to baggage claim to pick out my luggage. Before I could take 15 steps, however, a woman stopped me and asked me to put my bag on the floor to be sniffed by a dog. Now seriously, is all this really necessary? I've been through several X-Rays, two customs desks, a line of questioning, its 10:30pm, I'm tired, and "I have no idea where I'm going to stay tonight." Oh well. Nothing to hide here, so sniff away.

After retrieving my bag, I decided to take the unusual step of calling a few places before heading into town and looking for a room directly. After all, it was pretty late, and it is high season in Perth. But there was no way I could have anticipated how busy this place actually is. One by one, I called EVERY SINGLE hotel and hostel in my lonely planet, even the extremely expensive ones, and got the same reply, "sorry mate, all booked up through friday."
In a panic, I walked over to the hotel information board and started calling every chain hotel listed. "Sorry, mate." "Sorry, mate." "Sorry, mate." Multiply that times about, ehhh, 10 or so. Probably 30 hotels in total.

Decision time. Do I stay here in the airport and wait until morning? Do I take a cab to town and go door to door? Do I take a cab to the beach and crash on the sand? Each option had plusses and minuses. The first option, although tempting, didn't quite seem necessary at this point. Perhaps only the places listed in lonely planet and on the ad board are booked. After all, they're likely to be the most touristed. The second option would be expensive, very expensive, but gosh a bed sounded nice. The third option was last resort. I learned my lesson in Krabi. I chose option two.

Elvis, my cab driver, was extremely nice. One by one he drove me to all of the major (and many not so major) hotels, which he thought were more likely to have rooms. We went to the CBD (central business district), Northbridge (backpacker area), Scarborough (nice beach), south perth. Same answer: "sorry mate." But as the night went on, their answers changed. "Ha! Sorry mate. Good luck."

Decision time, again. Taxi is already $90 AUD (about $85 US - yes, the USD has tanked). Do I just crash on the beach, or pay another 50 or so to go back to the airport. Sand or terminal chair? Ocean or loudspeaker? Hmm. No, I'm not doing this sleep on the beach thing again. Not yet at least. Thailand is still too recent to have my memory clouded with romantic ideas about sleeping on the beach. No way. The international terminal it is.

At 2 am, $145 AUD later, I found myself right where I started. Tired, in the airport, with no place to stay. Thankfully, I found a machine w/ internet services and secured lodging for the 13th and 14th (something I should have done for tonight! Argh.) And with that, I pulled my hoodie over my head, spread out on the lougne chairs, and slowly went to sleep.

To my surprise, my 4 hour sleep, nap, whatever, wasn't too bad. It was sure better than the hammock. I was tired, but not dead tired, and most importantly: there were no mosquitos.

At 8:45 I caught a shuttle to Northridge and am presently waiting (3 hours) until check in at noon. Guess what I'll be doing today? It doesn't matter, though. I'm here, down under, on the opposite side of the planet. Today marks the first of many wonderful days to come in Australia.

malaysia pics are up . . .

2008-02-11T00:57:00.000-05:00

Melaka makes me smile . . .

2008-02-09T04:53:00.000-05:00

I'm not quite sure what it is about this city, whether it is the extraordinarily nice people, the river setting, the dutch architecture, the multiculturalism, the art, or the fact that they've been celebrating chinese new year for three days now, but something about this city just puts a big ol' goofy grin on my face. A big hairy grin, in fact. But I'll go on about that later.

Melaka (formerly Malacca), which sits on the southwestern edge of penninsular malaysia, has a long and interesting history. The short of it is this. Strategically sought after for use of it's port, Melaka was first colonized by the Portuguese in the 1five00's (sorry, the five button isn't working here - ha!)--during which time Melaka was temoporarily home to St. Francis Xavier. In the 1600s, the Dutch took control of the city and region, and was ultimately ceded to the British in the 1800s. When Malaysia attained independence in 19five7, so too did Melaka. The result: a stunning coastal city with beautiful architecture and a well-planned infrastructure. But that's not just why people are happy in Melaka. I'm telling you, it's something in the water. It has to be the water.
So let's backtrack. I left K.L. on the 7th at 6:30 or so by bus. The bus station was insane. Noone waits in line (or que, as I now know the rest of the world calls it), vendors pack the halls, locals rummage through the garbage for aluminum cans (often drinking whatever is left in the bottom), and young chinese women bump into you while sending back-to-back text messages. Oh, and something else I noticed. Young men are very touchy with one another here. I originally thougt to myself, wow, the malays must be very welcoming of homosexuality. Surprising given the predominance of muslims. But no, they're just touchy. Young men walk with their arms around one another, holding each other's hands, sitting on each other's laps, etc. -- like you might expect from a group of giddy teeny-bopper american girls. That's it, though. Just part of the culture, I guess. It's not everywhere, of course, but it is certainly noticeable.

I arrived in Melaka around 8:30 or so to find that, unlike back home, the Chinese celebrate their new year holiday on the holiday itself, not the night before, and for several days. This is great of course, but it made finding housing especially difficult. I visited four guesthouses, all of which were booked, before a random guy on a bicycle offered to help me find a place. I pulled out my lonely planet, pointed to a place, and he'd sprint ahead and ask if they had any rooms. Most didn't. Finally he recommended a place named Ringo's Lounge, on the edge of Chinatown. Ringo's had one room left due to a cancellation for 30 rgt (~$10). To my surprise, my new friend wanted nothing in return for his generous assistance but to know where I was from. "Miami" I told him. "Ahh, CSI Miami" he laughed, and then rode off (sidenote: I've learned to tell people that I'm from Miami, rather than from the US. People don't necessarily react negatively when I say the US, but I guess they just think to themselves, oh, another American. But people have some fascination with Miami that is really hard to grasp. I suppose we can all thank Will Smith for this.)

At Ringo's I was greeted by Raymond, a 40 something year old man who is one of the most pleasant people I've met during my travels. He asked me to take off my shoes at the door, showed me where I can make coffee and tea, where to wash my cups and my clothes, the two bathrooms (for about 30 people), and the "suntan deck" (an old roof with a couple of chairs and a laundry line. ha!).

After the tour I decided to go grab something to eat. Problem. It's chinese new year and i'm in chinatown. Nothing was open. After walking for about a half an hour I found a placed named discovery cafe, where the staff offered to give me a bag of peanuts if I had a few beers there. And that was that. Peanuts and beer for dinner. Now if only there was a baseball game.

On the 8th I woke up to the unfortunately realization that directly across from my room was an exceptionally large mosque. Prayer and song blared through loudspeakers, dizzying my senses. Where the heck am I? Istanbul? Morracco? What in the world? It was quite startling, but a neat experience regardless (except the 6/7am part of it, i'm not quite sure what time it was actually . . . but it was early darnit).

Around 11 I decided to walk around the city. I took a really pleasant river tour with an english speaking guide, visited the history museum, literature museum, cultural, etc. etc., and a few really neat cathedrals remaining from the colonial period. On my way home, a guy named Musi who was sitting on a concrete bench next to the river asked me where I was from and sparked up a conversation. Musi is muslim, is a native malaysian, spent a year in england on a scholarship while young (five2 now), and owns a barber shop and tourism company. We spent a good two hours talking about politics and religious issues, both in the US and in Malaysia. Truly a lovely conversation.

That night, I attended a group dinner organized by Raymond from the guesthouse. He does that every night apparrently. How cool? This night we went to a local Malaysian restaraunt where each table had a pot of peanut / garlic sauce boiling in the middle. The restaraunt owners placed a huge tray of uncooked kebabs at our table, featuring shrimp, fish, chicken, sausage, broccoli, some other strange veggi, tofu and mushrooms. Each small kebab cost .five0 rgt (appx 18 cents) and we were welcome to cook them at our leisure. The food was OK, to be honest, but cheap, and made for a fun fondue-like experience. Afterwards our group took a stroll down the main strip in china town. Oh, I must mention. For chinese new year, all of the streets and homes in chinatown are adorned with hundreds of small red lanterns. Very very nice. Will post some pics soon.

Today, the 9th, has been a lazy day. I spent about 3 hours taking a bus to and from the bus station, Melaka Sentral, to get a ticket to Singapore tomorrow. I've been really worried about getting back to Singapore for my flight on the 12th because everyone is going back and forth for chinese new year. My fears were justified. Each bus company consistently told me that they were booked until next Friday - - except one! One company, however, finally put me on standby for a 8am bus tomorrow, but told me that it is almost guaranteed that I'll get a spot. Otherwise, I'll just have to take a VERY expensive taxi. It's a 3 hour ride. It will work out though, it's Melllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllaaka.

One final random bit to conclude today's post. I'm not quite sure what got into me, but something about travel and the people I've met convinced me that, for the first time in my life, I ought to try and grow a full beard. Now, I'm not really a beard kind of guy. Nothing against those who have them, but I look enough like a neandrathal without the additional fur. Plus, they itch - badly! Why does anyone do this? Really? Some friends of mine, Jon and Matt J. told me that it wouldn't itch after a week or so. Well fellas, we're about two weeks in, and if this was just one big joke on me, it's not funny . . . at all. I'm going to stick it out until the day before I leave to Australia, but that's it. I'm going to retire this thing for eternity. And Jon and Jeweler, you guys are in for it when I get home. Yes, yes, I'll post pics soon, but all rights therein belong to the owner, and such pictures may not be reproduced, printed, stored, or distributed without the express written permission of yours truly.

Last PS: I do know how to use spell check, but every time I've tried to do so over the last 2-3 weeks or so I get an error message. Maybe it's a language conflict problem. But yeah, I'm well aware that word processing devices have totally ruined my ability to self-edit, especially in a hurry.

I'll put up my last post from SE Asia from singapore in a few days.

mall rat . . .

2008-02-07T02:17:00.000-05:00

OK, so I hate to dissapoint after the last post, but the last few days in K.L. have been pretty uneventful. In fact, I've spent a great majority of my time here, well, . . . in a mall. I'll explain.

Though feeling a lot better than I felt in Krabi, I've still been feeling pretty queasy and weak, and have had lingering stomach problems. As such, I decided to skip my visit to the Taman Negara (Malaysia's largest national park / rainforest) and use modern K.L. to recouperate from a few intense weeks. The petronas mall, part of the brilliant petronas towers complex (featured prominently in the movie Entrapment), is fully air-conditioned, has unusually nice bathrooms (FYI, many of the "toilets" in SE are just a porceline hole in the ground with a bucket of water on the side to rinse off your mess. Toilet paper is a very rare privilege [thus i carry some in my bag] and must usually be disposed of in a small basket in the stall), and has a medical facility and a movie theatre. My hostel, by contrast, is dark, steamy, and has a few stalls that are shared by over 50 guests. Oh, and as is always the case in SE Asia (budget locations), the toilet stalls also dub as showers, so the floor is always wet. So here's basically what I've done.

On the 4th I arrived in K.L. around 3 (time change . . . another hour ahead of US, 13 hours now), went through an easy customs routine at the airport, caught a shuttle into town, and then a taxi to Chinatown. Chinatown is just like you'd imagine. Full of people, food stalls, fake designer clothes and accessories, loud music, etc. Persons of Chinese heritage make up a significant population in K.L, which is predominantly muslim, but also features are very large Indian community. I booked a fan room at the red dragon hostel for 30 ringgit (about $9 - $10 US). Afterwards, I grabbed a sweet and sour chicken dish at a foodstall and called it a night.

On the 5th I had lunch at an Indian restaurant and then walked to the Golden Triangle business district to see the famous Petronas Towers. The twin petronas towers are the second tallest buildings in the world behind the Tapei 101, but strangely, appear to me to be much shorter than the Sears Tower and Empire State Building. I suppose it is just difficult to gauge without dozens of other neighboring buildings from which to compare its height. Nevertheless, these buildings are stunning. Blending a mix of western and arabic styles, and featuring sleek steel and lightly tinted glass, they are a testament to how far this country has come in its short 50 year history. Behind the towers is a pristine park with a wade pool, running track, and sculptures. I spent most of my afternoon in the park hanging my feet in the water and lying in the grass admiring the towers.

With the rest of my afternoon, I decided to see a movie in the mall. I know it's not exactly the adventurous thing to do, but sitting in a theatre watching a western movie just sounded like a perfect ending to my lazy day. I saw the movie Eastern Promises, which was interesting, but nothing to go on about. After the movie I walked back to Chinatown, grabbed a quick grilled squid in ginger, and capped my day with a 30 minute chinese foot massage. Massages are very popular and cheap in SE asia, but I've been hesitant to get one until now. In Cambodia and Vietnam I was concerned about the ever popular "wandering hands" massage. In Thailand, the traditional massage involves cracking all of your joints (thanks but no thanks). So I settled for a Chinese foot massage in Malaysia, which was desperately needed after the beating my feet took while shoeless in Krabi.

On the 6th I set out to see all of Malaysia's historical and government sites, but found myself needing to sit down for a rest every 20 minutes or so of walking. I'd felt OK on the 5th, but this day was rough, and I finally decided that it was time to see a doctor. After about two hours of walking around the main sites, I took a cab back to the petronas mall medical center. What an experience. First let me say that the office was spotless. This was especially reassuring, as I've been extremely hesitant about seeking medical attention in SE Asia. I walked in, filled out a quick form, and they handed me a number. A number, I thought? So strange. So there I was sitting in the lobby, feeling as if I was waiting at the Safeway deli counter for the butcher to call my number. "1/2 pound of muenster, please!" But the whole process was very efficient. After 20 minutes an electronic ticker told me to go to office 5 (of 18!). The malaysian dr. was very nice, spoke excellent english, and was quick to calm my nerves. Since my symptoms were not continuous, she explained, it was highly unlikely that I'd contracted any of the more serious illnesses that can be found in the region. She explained that I probably contracted a small stomach virus that is just lingering around and should be gone in a week or so. Ahh, sweet relief. I'm not normally very worried about these things, but I've also never been sick several times in one month.

Anyway, since I was already in the mall, I said what the heck and decided to see another movie: national treasure 2. It was fun, but pretty goofy like the first edition.

Already feeling like a wimp for spending two days in the mall, I resigned to the fact that I'd just have to start reexperiencing asia in my next city, Melaka. And with that I grabbed California Pizza Kitchen for dinner! (note: NOWHERE else in asia have they had so many western restaraunts, movies, etc. Malaysia just really is decades ahead of its neighbors. And oh, by the way, strangest thing: they are obsessed with KFC here. There's almost as many KFC's as starbucks. Crazy!).

Today, the 7th, is Chinese New Year. Most of the business in the area are closed, but the streets are packed with workers from chinese-run factories. Seriously, it is a madhouse out there. People from everywhere are swarming the street: india, burma, indonesia, pakistan, laos, you name it. Traffick is almost at a stand still.

Well, that's it for K.L. At 6:00 I have a bus to Melaka, which I hope will prompt me to get back into the travel mindset. Will post pics of K.L. soon, so check back. The towers pics are especially good.

Cambodia and Thailand pics are up . . .

2008-02-04T09:32:00.001-05:00

click the link on the sidebar.

Can't come up with an appropriate title . . . any suggestions?

2008-02-04T05:48:00.000-05:00

Greetings from Kuala Lumpur! I'm not sure where to begin, really. Let's just try this chronologically and hope that I can keep you entertained long enough to make it to the end. Stick with me, though, as it has been a crazy week.

OK, so I think we're back to January 28th. Rarely will a day turn sour before 10am, but this was one of those days. Before leaving my guesthouse, I double checked my itenerary to confirm that, in fact, my flight left at 10:40 from the airport. What I did not know at the time, however, is that I'd checked the itenerary for my Bangkok to Krabi flight, rather than my Bangkok to Chiang Mai flight, and that there were, in fact, TWO airports in Bangkok. At 8:30, then, I negotiate a taxi down to 350 baht (roughly $10 US) for a ride to the airport. "Which airport", he asks. "[Shoot], there are two airports? Whichever one flies Asia Air." My ticket, of course, didn't specify which airport. And better yet, my driver--though nodding confidently that he knew which one to take me to--took me to the wrong one, and sped off as soon as I got out. My guess is that he took me to the closest one and said "good luck, sucker." Anyway, I had to take another cab $500 baht to Bangkok's larger international airport, where I arrived at 9:50 - ten minutes before my scheduled departure time. Thankfully, my flight was delayed by an hour and I had plenty of time to make it to the gate. Whew.

It was raining when I arrived Chiang Mai, but the mountains surrounding the airport made for a pleasant welcome to Thailand's second largest city. The old city, where my guesthouse was located, is surrounded by a wall (though broken up in several locations) and moat. The SK guesthouse, which I chose upon the reccomendation of my trusty lonely planet, was also charming. Oh, and it had hot water too! Niiiiiiiice.

In the evening, I went to CM's famous "Night Bazaar", which is basically 3 or 4 streets of tightly packed sidewalk stalls, selling everything from fisherman's pants to illegally downloaded MP3's. I did some brief shopping, which I won't describe here or else I'll ruin Mom's surprise, and grabbed a quick glass-noodle salad for dinner.

After the night bazaar, I caught a T2 to a distant part of town for a local Muay Thai fight (400 bht). The first fight (of 9) featured two boys, no older than 17 or so, kicking and kneeing the living daylights out of each other. The fight ended in the second round when one of the fighters gave the other a jumping knee to the mid-section, which surely broke a few ribs. The refs declared a knock out on the spot. The following fights, although equally brutal, were more evenly matched. They also featured older and older men as the evening went on. Muay Thai is certainly an interesting sport to watch in person. A small "band" ( I guess you could call it that) plays some anxiety-inducing music in the background, to which the fighters dance and pray to before the match begins, and to which they nod and bounce to during the fight. It was really quite interesting how spiritual the whole thing seemed.

On the 29th, I decided to sign up for a full day mountain bike excursion down a mountain outside of the city (5700 ft). At the suggestion of the guide, I signed up for the intermediate group, which would bike down the "dual track" route (one that could, presumably, be used by cars--though definitely not the case). After an hour long car ride to the top, a brief safety lesson, and suiting up in enough gear to play football, off we went down the winding, steep, rocky and uncharted trail in the himilayan foothills.

It didn't take long for me to realize that I'm not quite yet "intermediate" caliber. To be fair, neither was anyone else in the group. Being over confident, however, I felt no need to ride the breaks the whole way down like the rest of my group. This would have been OK had I understood the concept of weight transfer on mountain bikes. See, on road bikes, you just plop your bum onto a tiny seat, put all of your weight on your abs, lower back, etc., and enjoy the ride. Not in mountain biking, though. In mountain biking, when going down hill, you're supposed to lean back behind your seat, hanging on to the handle bars for dear life. This way you don't flip over the front of the handle bars when you hit a rock or root. I guess I'm just not used to BOULDERS being in the way of my otherwise calm ride. Needless to say, I lost my balance after the first stretch of rough terrain, and rather than going over the front, I jumped off to the side only to find that after the bushes to the side was about 15 feet of downhill which I rolled down as if jumping into a bunker. Thankfully, I stood up withouta scratch (until walking through thorns to get back on the trial) and was able to have a healthy laugh at myself.

I learned a lot from the fall, but having walked away unscathed, was still a little cocky. I did fine for the next three hours or so until our guide offered to let us try a quick bit of a "single track" route (one small trail, only for bikes, full of obstacles--intended for advanced riders). The other riders in my group (obviously much smarter than me) decided to walk their bikes down this rouhgly 200 ft stretch. I, however, sucked it up and went racing down. All was fine and dandy until a series of about 5 roots (about 6-8 inches off the ground) lined the track back to back. Frightened, I violated the #2 rule of mountain biking (behind weight shifting) and hit my brakes as I approached the last and largest root. I flew forward over my handle bars, rolled down the hill for a few feet, and just layed there with the wind knocked out of me. No laughing this time, though--this was a worthy fall. It reminded me of being hit head on on a kick off return in little league football. Dizzying. Anyway, I left with only minor "strawberries" on my knee and upper thigh. All is well that ends well--in the end, it was some of the most fun I've had on my trip thus far.

I'd planned on doing another hiking trek on the 30th, but after my mountain biking adventure, I thought it best to do something more laid back. After looking through 20 or so touristy pamplets I settled on a random, but exciting option: a thai cooking class! Yes, I know, it doesn't seem like the most manly of options, but hey, what is more manly than eating seven consecutive dishes? That's what I told myself at least.

Any insecurity I had about attending a cooking class doubled once I realized that I was the only one attending the class that day. Yes, yes, individualized attention, but seriously now, it is just plain wierd to have a staff of four women all watching you cook. No, it is not a gender stereotype - - I'm just not an particularly good cook, and would rather not be the funny but helpless American guy burning everything on the menu. Regardless, I went through with it and successfully prepared my favorite thai dishes in the following order: Pad Thai (chicken), Fresh Spring Rolls, Tom Ka Kai soup (coconut milk w/ chicken), Glass Noodle Salad, Panang Curry Paste, Panang Curry Chicken, and something else with cashews. Mmmmmm good, but seriously filling. I completed my day with a very long nap, leaving my guesthouse only to send a package of goodies home to Mom. Now let's just see if it ever makes it!

On the 30th I signed up for a day long trek in northern thailand. I was initially reluctant to go trekking, since many of the activities would be the same as my trek in Kanchanaburi. I realized, however, that it had been several days since having meaningful conversation with anyone, and thought I'd have better luck meeting people in an organized activity. In general, I've found it more difficult to meet people in Thailand, simply because the profile of the Thai tourist is slightly less rugged and independent than in Vietnam or Cambodia, where people are less likely to be in groups or couples.

For the most part, I'm glad I signed up for another trek. The landscape in northwest thailand is much different than Kanchanaburi, and the trip included a much more testing hike through the mountains (btw, I've determined that hiking through rocky terrain is something that I truly, truly enjoy. I've done such hikes, albeit on a much smaller scale, with my grandmother in NY almost every thanksgiving for many years--but I'm now certain that this is an activity that pulls me together like nothing else). Our group of 6 hiked for about an hour and a half through some pretty amazing jungle-ish landscape, visited a local hill tribe (photos not allowed, and thus not in the album), rode elephants, and did about an hour of white water rafting (pretty mild because dry season). All was going well until it raining heavily during the elephant ride. And no rain is going to deter an elephant from staying his course. The rain continued through the rafting, but to be honest, I thought it was pretty darn fun at the time. At night on the 31st, I joined three others from my group for dinner at a local place down the street from the guesthouse. I chowed down on a very nice squid and shrimp curry, topped off, of course, with a tall Tiger beer.

On the 1st I began to pay dearly for trekking recklessly through the rain. By noon, in the Bangkok airport en route to Krabi, I again caught a fever, providing for an especially rough flight to Thailands southwestern coast. I checked into the first guesthouse I found, (something) fern mansion guesthouse, for 350 bht a night (private bathroom). I slept until 9 or so, went to the night market for a quick soup, and hit the sack for the evening around 10pm.

Feeling much better on the 2nd, I got up early and caught a longtail boat (100bht) to Railay beach, about 30 minutes down the coast (thank you, Jami, for the suggestion!). On the boat, I met a very nice traveler from London, Gemma Bonnett. Gemma was headed to a smaller beach just past Railay named Ton Sai, and rather than spend yet another day eating and sitting around by myself, I tagged along. Like Railay, Ton Sai is famous among rock climbers, and is widely regarded as one of the best places for the sport in the world.

To get to Ton Sai, Gemma and I walked along a partially submerged and rocky bend that wrapped along a cliff and led to Ton Sai. Gemma, who packed five pairs of shoes, was carrying a pretty heavy load, so I offered to switch bags with her for the short but challenging trek. Once on Ton Sai, Gemma went to look for a bungalo while I headed for the beach. While unpacking my bag, however, I realized that I was missing my wallet and went into a panic, assuming that it dropped from my bag while Gemma was crossing the rocks. For the next hour and a half, I crossed back and forth between Ton Sai and Railay several times looking for it, all the while planning how I would get by with no cash or credit cards. Frankly, I think I needed something like that to teach me a lesson about separating cash between your wallet and bag. The only downside aside from wasting time was that I broke my flip flops in the process. But hey, who needs shoes at a place where there is nothing to do but lay on the beach!Thankfully, Gemma soon found me and told me that she had put my wallet in her bag, instead of mine. What a relief! We spent the next few hours lying out on the beach and doing some snorkelling.

My original plan was to leave Ton Sai by 5:00 in order to catch a boat back to Krabi before dark. But since I spent until 2:30 getting over there and looking for my wallet, I decided to push for a 5:30 or 6:00 boat. In a turn of events that would only happen to me, however, it started POURING down rain at around 5:30, causing the longtails to put their trips on hold for about an hour. Further complicating things, the rain caused most of the beach goers to return to their bungaloes instead of venturing to other islands, leaving me as the only person in need of a ride. Unfortunately, longtail boats don't leave until they have at leat 6 people (or one person willing or impatient enough to pay 6x the normal rate). Frustrated, I decided to cross back over to Railay where I hoped there would be more travelers and thus more boats.

My bad luck continued. By 630, the tide had risen making my original route between Railay and Ton Sai impassable. Naturally, the climbing destination had an overland route, which involved hiking over a small portion of the cliff separating the two beaches. Ok, so maybe this portion of the rock is more appropriately described as a jagged hill, or something like that, but it was still very tough--especially in total darkness, when muddy, and without shoes. It was a painful 20 minutes, but extremely rewarding. I really felt like I'd accomplished something once I reached the other side--that is, until I realized that I'd missed the last longtail boat out of Railay. Panic time.

Realizing that returning to Ton Sai was my only option, I bought an over priced pair of flip flops at a tourist shop and headed back up the cliff/jagged hill/whatever. The return route was much slippier, especially with my cheapie sandals, and I slipped twice will ascending to the top. No injuries, but my formerly white bathing drunks are now permanently a nasty, spotted clay red. Plus, my newly purchased sandals tore apart shortly before making it to the top, again leaving me barefoot on the rough terrain (ok, so I know this sounds like i'm exaggerating to make myself out to be some kind of rugged outdoorsman, but seriously, this was about the most reckless and adventurous thing I've ever done).

I made it back to Ton Sai around 9 and hobbled my way up the Bungalo camp where Gemma was staying. I sat at the bar for a while, ordered a fried rice w/ pineapple and a tall Singha, and cooled off for a bit. When Gemma returned, she offered to let me crash on the hammock outside her / her new found roomate's bungalo. As tired, smelly, dirty, and in as much pain as I was, I would have slept anywhere under a roof. Plus, sleeping in a hammock sounded pretty appropriate given that we were only about 100 yards off the beach.

Never again. Forget sentences, here's what comes to mind: mosquitos (cunning enough to slip into my mosquito net), cold, immobility, mutant crickets, light rain, birds, leaving the mosquito net to use the bathroom (the closest tree) in the middle of the night, a towell for a blanket (and we all know that the normal towell covers, ehh, 45 % of my teeny weeny frame), and thais up and working at 7:00am.. Let's just say that I got about 1 hour of sleep that night, and, not surprisingly, my fever returned with a vengence after a one day hiatus. So began February 3, the halfway mark of my backpacking adventures.

After a quick breakfast consisting of a bananna pankake, OJ, and a cup of coffee (I'm really starting to hate nes cafe), I hit the beach for some sun and a nap. The sun was blaring by 11, which at first was extremely nice after a long chilly night. As I began to roast, however, and as I began to feel the effects of little sleep, I couldn't wait to head back to Krabi for a much needed rest. Thus at 1, I caught a long tail boat to the over-touristed beach of Ao Nan, consciously allowed myself to be ripped off by a jerk taxi driver, and was in bed by 2:30.

My fever was the worst it has been yet on the third, but I'll spare you all of the unncessary details. Needless to say, aside from a brief 30 minute break to check my email and post my "sick again" note, I was out until the morning of the 4th, today.

I woke up today at 7:00 am, and let me tell you, nothing cures the common cold like the SUPER BOWL, BABY!!!!!!!!! With as much precision as I could come up with the night before, I'd calculated that the game would start at 7:30 in the morning. I headed down stairs to the lobby, asked for the remote, said a little prayer in hope that someone up above dislikes the Billichek as much as the rest of America does (sorry Wade and Professor Stack, its true), and there it was: the most American of American sports at its pinnacle, featuring a game of historical proportions. Gosh it was nice to recconnect. But unfortunately my calcuations were off by an hour, and the Giants were loosing 7-3 in the 2nd quarter.

Feeling unusually patriotic, I ordered the "American Breakfast", which included two fried eggs, a piece of toast, some bacon, coffee and OJ. Compared to everything else on the menu, they might as well call it the fatty platter. Did you know that Asians frequently eat rice w/ fish for breakfast? Nasssssssty. And I didn't know that the English regularly eat beans for breakfast. Normally I'd find that strange, but geeze, after smelling what the Thais were eating this morning, sounds about like heaven to me!

Anyway, back to the greatestsuperbowlgameever. It was pretty wierd to watch the super bowl with no commercials and no americans. I mean, in any normal year, the commercials are the best part. Instead, I watched soccer and cricket advertisements and listened to some announcer explain how the yellow line signaling a first down is just for the viewers, and isn't an official marker. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Well, you all know how the game ended. I'm not sure whether it was quieter in Krabi or in Boston, but at least one person was going nuts in Krabi. What a game!

After the game, I quickly packed up, stuffed all my wet, smelly clothes into the waterproof part of my bag, headed to the airport, and jumped on a plane to Malaysia. I've spent most of my day writing this stinkin' blog, so there's not much to add about K.L. except that the internet speed is pretty darn good, allowing me to update pictures from Cambodia and Thailand. Enjoy!

sick again . . .

2008-02-03T10:06:00.000-05:00

hey folks. sorry it has been so long since a post. a lot of exciting things have happened. unfortunatly, i've got a fever again and just don't have it in me to write a solid post. will update in a few days from malaysia!

Thank you, Florida!!!

2008-01-30T03:06:00.002-05:00

First let me apologize in advance for politicizing my blog - - especially to the many of you reading this who strongly disagree with me. But I've been following the election closely from abroad, and just can't help myself. Plus, noone here will listen to me on this subject.

Thank you Florida for selecting John McCain as the recipient of Florida's GOP delegates. I find myself defending American policies on a daily basis here in SE Asia--many of which I do not agree with whatsoever--and I can now confidently explain what on earth is going on in the mind of US Republicans (or at least very moderate ones like myself). We are not a party comprised solely of the religious right, those who oppose environmental change, and anti-immigrants. Nor do we all support torture in the name of the nebulous concept of "national security." No, we are also comprised of many truly "compassionate conservatives" (if the term continues to have vitality) , who actually do give a darn about people, and whom first and foremost believe in personal responsibility and the truism that government can't solve all of life's problems. Moreover, as I believe Florida indicates, we are also comprised of many very conservative individuals for whom character is a critical prerequisite in a candidate, and whom do not vote based solely upon a political litmus test. Now this is not to say anything negative whatsoever about dems, or to imply that they don't share many of the same values; this is only to say that those who put an R next to their name come in many shapes and sizes, notwithstanding popular belief.

Now, those of you whom have known me for a while know that I've long been a McCain fan. Having visited asia and the prison where he was held for five years, however, I feel more strongly about his candidacy than ever. I personally want a president who understands what it means to lead by example, and for one, I highly respect McCain's position (though unpopular with the base) on torture--and trust me, this man knows the subject, both from what he personally experienced and from what he witnessed while in Vietnam. Indeed, many vietnamese lost their heads (literally) to the french in the very same prison. And while I don't agree with him on a host of other issues, I'm nevertheless persuaded by the fact that I believe he's willing to make compromises where he believes the end result is just. And I think this man knows what is just.

Again, I'm sorry for using this blog as a soap box, and will try my best not to in the future. But for a long time now I've been questioning whether there was a place for folks like me in the GOP. Even more so here in Asia, which has a strange tendency to re-shape your world view. I'm not saying that I'm entirely convinced that the party is heading a different direction, but over here in a world of craziness, I'm happy with any and all positive changes I see occurring back home.

Ok, that's it. I hope you at least got a laugh out of my rambling.

Swimming with dolphins is for sissies . . .

2008-01-29T07:39:00.000-05:00

. . . when you can swim with elephants! Greetings from Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I arrived this afternoon following a few days in Bangkok and a smaller town named Kanchanaburi.

Bangkok was a nice city, but to be honest, I'm just not feeling the big city thing right now. I've found that it is much easier for solo travelers to meet people in smaller or mid sized towns.

One thing I can say, however, is that Bangkok has revived my faith in 4 dollar budget housing. I spent the 24th, 25th and 27th in decent place that was right next to the popular Khaosan road--famous among backpackers. Likewise, I was pleased to learn that there are working traffic lights (which people follow too!) in Asia.

On the 25th I spent my day seeing the major sights of Bangkok. I visited the Royal Palace, which was just spectacular. Every color imaginable was represented on the highly adorned tile exterior of the buildings. Also in the palace I visited the famous emerald buddha.

After the palace I visited two more temples, Wat Phra Kaew, featuring a giant sleeping buddha, and Wat Arun. Following a pretty poor map of the city, I got pretty lost walking between these locations. At one point, I was lost in a small neighborhood with tiny streets barely wide enough for a bicycle. After about 3 dead ends someone helped me find a major (meaning big enough for a moto) street. That said, I think that was the most fun I had in Bangkok, as it allowed me to see up close and personal how many Thais live, without all of the touristy hoopla.

In the evening I grabbed a nice Green Curry Chicken, which was about as expected, but much spicier. I also sat for a beer in a bar on Kao San featuring a thai guitarist playing popular covers. It was pretty funny to hear a thai guy singing "bye bye miss american pie, I drove my chevy to the levy . . . " He was pretty darn good, though, I must say.

On the 25th I left at 7am on a "trekking" adventure tour in Kanchanaburi, which is about 1/2 way between Bangkok and the Myanmar border. Trekking isn't as rugged as it sounds, though. Most trekking tours in Thailand involve a hike for a mile or two, river rafting, elephant riding, food, etc. etc. Basically it is just a big outdoors tour with plenty of tourist traps.

In Kanchanaburi, our first stop was a cemetery to honor the WW2 soldiers (mainly european) who died constructing the "death railway"--a line constructed by Japanese held POW's to connect Bangkok with Rangoon. The POW's were forced to work up to 18 hour days in order to construct the line, causing serious exhaustion and even death to many. From the cemetery, we went to the most famous leg of the railway--where it crosses the River Kwai (which is the inspiration for the well-known movie, Bridge Over the River Kwai). Knowing little about the history of the railway, or for that matter, this aspect of the war, I found these visits quite boring and drawn out. I was grateful to move on to our lodging, a "floating hotel" which sits atop a raft on the fast moving river. Once there, we had a quick chicken and rice dish and moved on to further activities.

Our first stop after lunch was to a waterfall, which was so touristy I couldn't find it enjoyable. Nature is only fun if, well, it feels natural. After a quick swim we went back to our lodging for dinner, drinks (mainly Singha, a popular local beer) and karaoke. Don't ask me why, but asians just loooooove karaoke. And while I'm not normally a fan, I love watching our tour staff let loose at the end of a long, hard day of dealing with picky westerners (tourists are much more picky in Thailand, by the way - - it just attracts a different type of person than Cambodia and Vietnam).

On the 26th I woke up for a much anticipated "swim with the elephants." I'm not sure if most people do as much swimming as I did, but I just couldn't stay on the darn thing. During most elephant rides, they put you on top of the elephant on a nice seat. Here, however, we rode behind a guide on the elephant's back. Sitting on the neck, where the guide was, is pretty easy. But sitting on the back, on top of a tall protruding spine, is both painful and difficult. Not to mention these things were trained to dip under the water to soak unsuspecting tourists. All in all, it was a neat experience, but not one I'm anxious to relive.

After the swim we went floating down the river on a bamboo raft and a land-based elephant trek. I'd about had enough of the one activity to another by the afternoon as was (surprisingly) excited to go to Bangkok.

I arrived back in Bangkok around 7:00pm, checked email, grabbed a pizza--yes, a pizza--and hit the sack early in preparation for a flight to Chiang Mai in the morning.

Photo album . . .

2008-01-27T08:15:00.000-05:00

Hey folks. First let me say how appreciative I am of the comments. I'm delighted (and surprised) that so many of you are reading this blog. It really makes it easy to keep everyone up to date w/out a million emails.

I've started uploading all of my photos on picasa. I'll do more captions when I have time, but it's a slow process.

The album is available at: http://picasaweb.google.com/clayton.solomon

I've also posted a link on the sidebar.

Cheers!

the many faces of Cambodia

2008-01-23T04:33:00.000-05:00

Greetings from Bangkok. It's been a busy few days. I decided to head off to Thailand instead of going to Battambang, Cambodia. Logistically, it just worked out better.

Ok, so backtrack to Phnom Penh. Friends did turn out to be a wonderful restaurant. Although slightly expensive, all proceeds from the meals help fund an organization serving street children. In fact, all of the waiters at Friends are former street children themselves, who, through the organization, are learning hospitality skills that will ultimately land them gainful employment. What a great idea!

In fact, looking back now at Cambodia, the sheer number of children on the street was staggering. Children, no more than 10 years old, were constantly begging or trying to sell post cards or travel books. It was extremely tempting not to give some change to each of them, but a) I would be broke in two days if I did so, and b) the money usually goes to their parents or guardians anyway. I eventually learned to carry around a bag of candy and hand each kid a piece. That usually did the trick.

The following day I toured an area popularly known as the "killing fields," where tens of thousands of Cambodians were brutally murdered and placed in mass graves under the Pol Pot regime. Most of those killed were "intellectuals"--or those whom PP's regime felt posed a threat to his vision of governance. Over 1,000,000 would be killed nation-wide.

On to happier thoughts. After touring the fields I hopped on a bus to Siem Riep. The bus ride was roughly 7 hours and generally enjoyable. On the bus I met an aussie named Darien, who agreed to share a T2 w/ me into town. We ended up rooming together also, since doing so brought the lodging down to $4.50 pp per night. We stayed at a nice and lively placed appropriately named "popular guesthouse."

On the 22nd, Darien and I took a t2 to the famous temples of Angkor. There are over 1,000 awe-inspiring temples in the region, the most famous of which is Angkor Wat, which is the largest religious structure in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat). I'll spare you the details of their fascinating history, but to learn more see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor. I visited 8 temples: Ankgor Wat, Bayon, Baphuon, Ta Keo, Ta Prohm, Bonteay Kdei, Sras and Srang. Featured in the pictures is Bayon.After a long day of climbing temples, I headed to "bar street" for several tall glasses of Ankgor beer, Cambodia's national brew.

On the 23rd, after waking to the sounds of a Cambodian wedding starting at 7:00am, I joined Darien and a few other travelers to the land mine museum, which thoroughly details Cambodia's problems w/ left over land mines. I spent the rest of the day doing small tasks that needed to be done (e.g. haircut, posting pics here, laundry, etc.). At night I went to a really cool restaurant named the dead fish tower, which featured live Cambodian music and dance.

On the 24th I caught a $10 bus to Bangkok. The first 5 hours of the ride was miserable, as the road between Siem Reap and Poipet--the most popular Thai/Cambodian border crossing--is absolutely horrendous. I kid you not, I felt like I was sitting on top of a cement buster the entire time. The lonely planet guide i'm using explains the reason for the road conditions as follows: rumor has it that an unnamed airline (flying between Bangkok and Siem Reap) paid an unnamed political party to put to Bangkok-SR road at the bottom of its list of roads to be repaved.

Border crossing was easy, since travelers from the US do not need a Thai visa. I simply walked to the Vietnam departure gate, had my passport stamped, walked across a neutral zone (featuring casinos and duty free shops), had my passport stamped at the Thai entry gate, and walked across. Another bus was waiting on the other side to take us into Bangkok.

The roads in Thailand--in fact everything in Thailand--are much more developed. I was able to get a nice nap en route, which would take another 5 hours. I arrived in Bangkok around 630 pm. I haven't done much here because the bus ride wore me out. Will update more from Thailand soon, as well as most more pictures from Ankgor.

Good morning Vietnam . . . good evening Cambodia!

2008-01-20T05:30:00.000-05:00

Greetings from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Apparently I'm not the only American in town, as Mia Farrow is also in Phnom Penh with a far more humanitarian agenda (see http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/01/20/cambodia.farrow.ap/index.html). Today she planned to stage a genocide vigil outside the Tuol Sleng prison, where over 17,000 people met a gruesome death between 1975-78. The event was prevented by Cambodian police, however, who charged that the event's purpose was purely political. My visit to the prison will have to wait until tomorrow, I suppose.

My trip to Cambodia was long and uneventful. I left to the airport on the morning of the 19th at roughly 6:45 am. The flight to HCMC was smooth and quick. From there, I took a bus to Cambodia (6 1/2 hours). Crossing the border was easier than I'd expected. We all got off the bus at the border town of Moc Bai, had our passports stamped to indicate our departure from Vietnam, jumped back on the bus, rode for about 200 yards, jumped back off on the Cambodian side, and jumped back on once our names were called.

I arrived in PP at 7:30. Not surprisingly, we were all attacked by moto and "tuk tuk" drivers once we stepped off the bus. Bored by now of motos, I took a Tuk Tuk- a small carriage-looking thing pulled by a moto (I suspect that I'll be using these frequently in Cambodia and Thailand, thus I'll give them a shorthand: t2). The t2 cost me 50 cents to my hotel, which was not far away. While unloading my bags, the t2 driver insisted that I give him a time to pick me up in the morning. The cheap price to the hotel, he explained, came with the expectation that I hire him the next day. "'oh, I have no idea what time I'll be leaving tomorrow. Can you give me your phone number so I can call you", I replied (knowing of course there was none). He got the point and after a few minutes let me off the hook.

I chose the Narin Guesthouse because rooms run $4 per night. Apparently, I'm the only idiot backpacker that's been paying $8-$14 per night. "There are so many better cheap options", fellow travelers would explain. Well, I'm content with getting ripped off hereto forward after my experience at Narin. The floors were about 5 months from falling through, the rooms were dark and musky, the sheets had hair on them, so did my breakfast, no hot water, the shared toilets didn't flush, no toilet paper, mosquitos, and--most importantly, from my perspective--the server at the restaurant doubles as a moto driver and kept trying to sell me on a ride over my breakfast. After b-fast, I packed all my things, checked out, and hiked on down to a nicer place on the Mekong (15 per night).

Ok, so maybe I'm a snob, but hear me out. I can rough it. I can take dirty places. I can take cold showers. Did it for 64 days in 2002. But darnit, don't get in the way of my morning coffee. Hotels, hostels, guesthouses, whatever, are supposed to be a break from the insanity that bustles outside. The morning sales pitch did me in, and I'll pay a few bucks extra if it guarantees peace and quiet (with the exception of welcome noise and interruption, of course).

Allright. Enough rambling. My new place is fine. Nothing spectacular. Today I did a ~3 mile walk of the city recommended by the lonely planet guide. The tour started at Wat Phnom, a temple atop a small hill (the only hill) in town. More interesting than the temple, though, were the monkeys fooling around in the grass surrounding the building (wild) and an elephant circling the block (led by a man w/ a big stick giving elephant rides).

From there I went to a few local markets, passing by the US embassy on the way. Then I went to the Independence (from France) Monument amd the Royal Palace. Only the Royal Palace was worth noting here. The palace is comprised over 20 or so buildings / padogas. The architecture is just fascinating, and like nothing I saw in Vietnam. The colors were fantastic too--mainly white, gold, red. Within the palace is the Silver Padoga, the flooring of which is made entirely of silver. Only pictures of these buildings will do justice, so I'll just let them speak for themselves.

Tonight I'll eat at "Friends" restaurant. All proceeds from the food go to charity and I've heard the food is marvelous. Will update in a few days from Siem Reap. PP is OK, but I'm outta here tomorrow--too many temples in Ankgor, too little time.

PS- Mike & Ros - I passed a Cambodian wedding on the way to PP and saw all of the traditional outfits and thought of you.

ha long bay

2008-01-18T03:40:00.000-05:00

Today's post is dedicated to my new friend ("mate"), Neil Hambly, who I met at Hanoi Backpackers--an aussie owned hostel in the old quarter of Hanoi. Everthing you'd expect from a part-irish londoner, Neil is funny, sarcastic, and looooooooooves a good time over cold beer. He is to blame for several loud and enjoyable nights while in Hanoi, and has been a good friend to me as I try to recover from a fever.

On the morning of the 16th a group of about 15 of us met to make the 4 hour trek to Ha Long Bay. Ha Long Bay is famous for thousands of stunning limestone cliffs, mountains and caves, which are accessible only by boat. The UNESCO World Heritage cite didn't dissapoint. On the afternoon of our tour a calm mist blanketed the cliffs, making for an almost surreal image of the bay. The attached images really don't do justice.

Once docked, we toured several enourmous caves discovered by the french early in the 20th C and then jumped into kayaks. Kayaking was a ton of fun, but was rushed (only about 45 mins). I was joined by Nicki, an engineer from Dallas to left her job at Lockheed to travel for a while. Quitting jobs and using travel as a transition to a new careers seems a popular trend for backpackers.

The only downside to Ha Long Bay was the weather (high 50s low 60s). The cold caught me by suprise and by dinner I was feeling slightly sick. I was in bed by 9:00.

Though in bed, I wouldn't catch any Z's until much later in the evening due to noise on the boat. Right above my cabin, Neil was leading the group with some Karaoke, and to the side of my cabin, our vietnamese boat staff had kicked off their own party in an smaller transport vessel tied up to the side. I fell asleep on board around 1:30 am.

Aside from the scenery, fellow backpackers on the tour made the trip a lot of fun. Represented in our group were aussies, the irish, french, dutch, argentenians, canadians, the welch and americans.

The ride back to Hanoi on the morning of the 17th was uneventful. I was already feeling terrible and wanted nothing more than to hit the sack. Of course, I didn't hit the sack and instead headed to dinner w/ friends from the trip. Following dinner, we went to an irsh bar named finnegans, where I introduced our irish friends to "irish car bombs" (1 shot comrpised of 50% jameson whisky, 50% baileys dropped into a 1/2 pint guiness). I couldn't believe they hadn't heard of them, but they were certainly a hit.

There's not too much to write about today. I had grand plans for walking the city, but instead found myself in bed lying around for most of the day trying to get some rest and calm my fever. I did have some laundry done, which was deparately needed. For dinner, I had a burger at the hostel (and boyyyyyy was it nice to have a burger) with Audrey (France) and Erik (Holland) from the Ha Long cruise.

Tomorrow I catch a 9am flight to Ho Chi Minh City. From there I'll take a 7 hour bus ride to Phnom Penh Cambodia!

Unda the weather . . .

2008-01-18T00:30:00.000-05:00

Hey folks. Hanoi turned out to be pretty cold, which I was not expecting. I've got a fever while on the boat cruise. Staying in bed today and will post an update and reflections on Vietnam either later tonight or tomorrow.

king cobra . . . it's what's for dinner

2008-01-15T06:18:00.000-05:00

OK, so I'd planned on blogging only every few days (for my sake and yours . . but mostly yours), but I just have to give a quick note about today before leaving to Ha Long Bay tomorrow.

My day began at 715 as most of my 11 roomates for the evening were still sleeping. I had a quick breakfast included in the cost of the room ($8 US) and headed off for the Ho Chi Min Mausoleum--which was extremely strange. To enter the Mausoleum all guests must hand over their cameras and bags and enter the building in pairs of two. You're not allowed to talk, nor are you allowed to put your hands in your pockets. Even stranger, however,the only thing in this huge building is the preserved body of Ho Chi Minh himself, staring back at you through the glass. It was pretty creepy if you ask me, but I did come away with one interesting fact: the mausoleum closes every october when HMC's body is shipped to Russia for touch-ups.

After the M (i'm sick of spelling it wrong and having to correct myself) I was duped into riding another moto. My driver, Taun, first invited me to sit down on the curb and join him for tea. After about 15 minutes of really good conversation he made his sell and, of course, I'm too much of a sucker to say no after a nice chat and tea. Tuan first took me to the "B-52 Lake" where a US B-52 was shot down during the war and now pokes out just above the water. It was interesting, but I'm getting pretty tired of old war relics. From the lake Tuan took me to "Cobra Village", which he claims is the only place in Vietnam where it is allowed to raise and kill cobras for medicinal purposes. Apparrently, the concoction (made by placing a cobra in a bottle of rice wine and leaving it underground for seven - ten years) relieves back pain. Once there, we pulled into a building (where I was the ONLY tourist) where a woman inside opened up a sack and pulled out a pair of 4 foot long king cobras. She tugged on it a little bit and let me get a picture (from a few feet- thank goodness). Tuan then asked me, "have you ever eaten cobra? It is a vietnamese traditional dish." Now, do I look like I've ever eaten Cobra? What the heck, I thought to myself, and agreed. For 150,000 dong (a TOTAL rip off, from which Tuan certainly took a cut) I had my first plate of barbecued king cobra. Pretty rubbery, but otherwise not bad.

Tuan later dropped me off at Hoa Lo Prison, where McCain and a number of other pilots were held for many years during the war. The prison was built by the French to imprison the Vietnamese many years earlier. Now a museum, the prison today focuses primarily on the treatment of Vietnamese people by the French. A single wing is dedicated to the imprisonment of US pilots.
After the prison I saw a water puppet show, which was quite interesting but also pretty silly. But I suppose it is something you have to see while here.

Well, that's all for now. I'm off to the beautiful Halong Bay tomorrow. Hopefully (but doubtfully) it is warmer than Hanoi. Good luck to all of you who started you FINAL SEMESTER of law school yesterday. Can't wait to see you at your graduation.

Nha . . . ahhhh Trang

2008-01-14T11:28:00.000-05:00

Ok, so yes, there are sane cities in Vietnam. I write today from Hanoi, following a few wonderful days on the coastal town of Nha Trang. My flight to NT left HCMC on Saturday at 7:00am, which required that I leave for the airport at 5:00am. I knew immediately upon my arrival, however, that my decision to take the first flight from HCMC was a good one. Unlike HCMC, where the air is thick and comprised of too many smells to describe, the air in NT is fresh and smells . . . well, I still don't know how to describe the smell, but it was darn good. Yankee Candle would probably describe it as a blend of their mountain mist, sage and ocean breeze scents . . . if that makes any sense.

By 9:30 I was checked into my hotel, the Phu Qui (pronounced poo-wee). The hotel has a really nice rooftop deck which overlooks the mountains to the west and the beach / islands to the east. The largest island has a huge and ugly hollywood-styled block-letter name on the mountainside, reading "Vinpearl." Vinpearl is a huge resort and popular honeymoon destination. I personally, actually like to see Vietnamese people while in Vietnam, so I was pleased where I was. Another top hotel in Nha Trang, incidentally, is the Ana Mandara.

After a short while of R&R I did something realllllllllly stupid: I took a moto to tour the city. I guy named Hao was very persistent, but not in the annoying kind of way many of the moto drivers are (who quickly offer you "boom boom" if you're not interested in a ride). As it turned out, I really enjoyed the ride and saw all of the city's main sites for 60,000 VND (about $4). Hao waited outside as I visited the Po Nagar Cham Towers (four amazing Buddhist temples dating back almost 1,000 years) and the Long Son Pagoda (a Buddhist monastery featuring an ENORMOUS lying Buddha). The only downside to the trip was a number of women acting as monastery volunteers who, after giving you a hurried tour of the facility, tried to force you to pay 150,000 dong for 10 post cards. Thankfully, I didn't buy their scam, but it took a good 10 minutes of my life just to get them off my back.

For dinner that night, I felt daring and ordered a dish described in english as a Vietnamese Mixed Seafood Clay Pot. The waitress kind of smiled at me when I ordered it, which worried me a bit, but it turned out fine. The pot included cabbage, broccoli, squid, tuna, prawns (needing to be peeled) and some other sort of fish I didn't recognize. I crashed shortly after at 10:00pm.

On Sunday, I signed up for a boat tour with a company named "Mama Linh's." They picked me up at the hotel and drove me along with a group of about 14 others to a dock where we jumped on a large blue wooden boat. After about 30 minutes on the boat we arrived at our first island of the day, Mun Island. Mun means "black" in Vietnamese, but the island didn't look very black to me. Once there, we all jumped off the roof of the boat and had the opportunity to snorkel a small reef along the coast of the island. I was pretty excited about this until I saw about 15 jellyfish which sent me into a panic and back on the boat. The rest of our group, primarily aussies, laughed at me and stayed in. Maybe I too will have no fear of jellies after a year downunda, but I'm not quite there yet . . . and may never will be. That said, I later found out that this type of jelly fish does not sting. Oh well.

Our next island was Mut (single) island, which was home to a number of fisherman. At Mut we had a large lunch on the boat and were treated to a "floating bar" included in the trip. For our floating bar, our guide sat in a life preserver with a cooler full of strong wine and poured small glasses to the group as we swam up. We were also in life preservers since the water was about 15 feet where we were and there was quite a current.

The third island was Tam Island, which was a normal touristy thing where we could pay 300,000 dong to parasail. Parasailing isn't quite life threatening enough for me, so I decided to pass.

Our fourth island, Mieu Island, featured a pretty shabby acquarium. On the way back to Nha Trang, all the members of our boat crew joined together as a band to play us some songs and encourage us to do country-specific karaoke. After the one guy from London on the boat ducked the call for any Brits, I was forced into singing Yellow Submarine to the group. Pretty embarrassing, but all in good fun.

On Sunday night, the folks from the boat tour all met up at a bar named Guava for drinks. Afterward we went to a really fun place named the Sailing Club. For those of you in Miami, the Sailing Club is very much like Nikki Beach, but without the meat heads, plastic surgery, and all the other things I usually abhore. Omar, if you're reading this, know that I couldn't help but think of you while there. Most of the people were pretty poor dancers (I of course was not an exception), and I just couldn't help think how much you'd enjoy the place (showing off your Dominican moves, and all).

All together the night was a blast, especially the people I met. Two Australian women from my tour, Kate and Michelle, have kindly offered to help me look for apartments when I arrive in Sydney. That certainly takes a load off, and its nice to know I already have to friends in town.

Lastly, today was pretty uneventful. I lounged in the morning, checked out of the hotel and left for Hanoi. But I did ride a moto again. While the shuttle to the airport would have only been 30,000 dong, I really took up a liking for Hau on Saturday and decided to ask him for a lift to the airport. It probably wasn't the brightest idea to ride on a 2 person moto (Vietnamese persons that is - - whome are all about 1/2 the size of me) plus my hiking bag, but I couldn't help but ride w/ him again. On the 45 minute ride to the airport he described to me how his father used to live in Hanoi until the 60s, when his family moved south because they did not believe in the policies of the north. His father became part of the southern military forces and worked closely with Americans.

I arrived to chilly Hanoi (around 55-60 F) at 8pm. The evening thus far has been uneventful. Tomorrow I look forward to visiting the prison where McCain was held as a POW, along with a number of other exciting places. Looks like McCain is having better days as we speak! Woohoo!

death by moto . . .

2008-01-11T10:23:00.000-05:00

Wow, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) is nuts! I arrived on Wednesday at 10:45 pm, walked out the door to the airport, and was immediately bombarded by--I kid you not--hundreds of motorcycle and taxi drivers anxious to give me a ride to my hotel. They were anxious, you see, because they customarily charge Westerners (who fail to negotiate with them) as much as 5 times the going rate. Even then, things were relatively cheap. After over 24 hours on flights from Washington to LA to Hong Kong to HCM, I had very little spirit to argue with the energetic drivers. I paid $10 US for a 25-30 minute ride. Cheap by our standards, but high by theirs. $10 US is roughly 150,000 Vietnamese Dong.

So . . . I was dropped off from my taxi at a quiet dark street in District 1 (the backpacker district) of HCMC. The first person I encountered offered me some "boom boom." Hmmm. I'll leave that one to you. Well, I quickly arrived at my hostel, but unfortunately the retractable gate had been pulled down making entrance impossible. After a brief moment of panic, I tried to pull the darn thing up myself. This alerted the desk attendant, John, who was insanely nice. I immediately checked into my room which was stocked with AC and over 100 cable channels. I crashed about 10 minutes.

On Thursday, I woke up at 8:00 and was offered breakfast, which included a fried egg, a roll of french bread, jam, coffee, and banannas. The Korean folks who sat next to me put the banannas in the bread! Putting my egg in there was as creative as I was going to get.

At 815 I departed for the Cu Chi tunnells, in the province of Cu Chi. These tunnells were used by VC and villagers attemting to hide from US forces in Saigon. The region was significant for the VC, since it was a stronghold near US/S. Vietnam contolled Saigon. While the tunnells were interesting (unbelievable narrow), the whole tour had a strong anti-american sentiment to it. They played a video in which they introduced people whom received military awards for killing American soldiers. They also showed us several models of booby traps used for psychological warfare. Frankly, it angered me that they were profiting from this horrendous display, but I couldn't get angry at the locals themselves, who were poor and struggling to benefit from Vietnam's recent surge in tourism.

Ok, so I'm writing way too much. Here's the skinny on the rest. That afternoon I visited the reunification palace. Blah. Then the "war museum", which was comprised of thousands of gruesome photos depicting American's as akin to nazi germany. I sucked it up, took it in, and moved on.

That night, I met up w/ some friend I met during the Cu Chi tour. We stopped for a drink on a docked boat--something you'd see in Bayside of the Inner Harbor. As we were trying to leave after our first round, the book departed and set sail on the Saigon river. It was pretty funny, actually. The tour featured a show where two V women did firebreathing routines and karaoke. It was cheesy, but nice.

I woke up today for a boat tour of the Mekong Delta. I packed in with about 13 others into a van suited for 8 or so. The 3 hour ride actually wasn't that bad, since I enjoyed the sights along the way. Once there, we got on a boat, which first took us to coconut island. There, we helped make coconut candy and, of course, were pressed hard to purchase some. At a price of 15,000 VND ($1), I gave in. Then we went to another island where they raise all sorts of fruits and were given quite the sampling. From there we went to another island, where we piled in groups of 4 onto ATV like vehicles. As the youngest, I sat on the back and prayed to be spared at least one more day. Once at our meeting point, we were again encouraged to purchase all sorts of handicrafts. They also gave a musical routine, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The delta communities were all very pleasant. Oh, I forgot to mention, one man encouraged me to hold his python, which I did. All was well and good until it made its way up my shorts. When I can, I'll post the picture. The expression in my face is priceless, as you might imagine. The whole day cost me $8, including lunch.

Ok, so i'm about done, I promise. I just have to mention the driving. There are very few stoplights. 9M people in this city, 5M motobikes - - none of which pay any attention to lanes. To cross the street you must walk blindly, and slowly, and people somehow manage to move around you. Seriously, it feels as though you're going to die each time you cross. But if you brave it, it just works itself out . . . amazingly.

I've changed plans and will be going to Nha Trang tomorrow, instead of Da Lat. After HCMC, I could really use some time on the ocean. I'll post again from Hanoi in the next few days. As I get used to this blogging business, I'll try and post shorter messages.

Hope all is well.

i have no keys . . .

2008-01-08T00:20:00.000-05:00

Well, today's the day. My flight leaves at 8:30am from Dulles in DC and I'll arrive in Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday at 10:00pm. I paid a little extra to have a cushy stay for the first two nights as I adjust to the time change (http://www.hostelworld.com/hosteldetails.php/BichDuyenHotel-HoChiMinh-19572). That said, I'm paying $30 per night - - and that's only because I had to pay for two beds, one of which I will not use since I'm traveling alone. My only worry is getting there. I'm not quite prepared to ride on the back of a scooter powered by a lawnmower engine. I think it is going to take a few days to get used to the idea, but I'm sure it will happen soon enough.

I'm taking with me one nice hiking backpack which includes 2 pairs of shorts, one pair of jeans, 3 T's, 1 polo, 2 long sleeve, 1 bathing suit, 7 pairs of boxers, 4 pairs of socks, 1 pair of shoes and one pair of flip flops (or shall we say "chanks", for the miami folks). Its a light load, but should get me through until I arrive in Sydney late Feb.

Oh, and how could I forget the meds. I've been taking medicine for typhoid fever, malaria and a few other things I can't pronounce. They've been making me dizzy, but I suppose that's better than the alternative.

Anyway, it was nice to see many of you before I left. Sorry I didn't get out more, but the break was pretty hectic while trying to prepare for everything and finish a paper that I'e been working on . . . well, for almost a year now. I'll finish it one of these days, I hope.

My next post will be from Vietnam and i'll do my best to include pictures.

ps - to all my friends in NOLA or Biloxi right now - - have fun, I wish I was with you! Laissez les bons temps rouler!

the itinerary . . .

2007-12-17T01:10:00.001-05:00

Finals are interesting and all, but planning travel is so much more fun. Here's the plan, which will surely change, say, 12 times between now and then . . .

Depart: Tuesday, January 8; W - 9 Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam); H - 10 HCMC - Mekong Delta--HCMC; F - 11 HCMC-Da Lat; SA - 12 Da Lat; SU - 13 Da Lat–HCMC; M - 14 Ho Chi Minh City–Hanoi; T - 15 Hanoi–Ha Long Bay; W - 16 Ha Long Bay; H - 17 Ha Long Bay–Hanoi; F -18 Hanoi–Ho Chi Minh City; SA -19 Ho Chi Minh City–Phnom Penh (Cambodia); SU -20 Phnom Penh; M - 21 Phnom Penh–Siem Reap; T - 22 Siem Reap; W - 23 Siem Reap–Battambang; H - 24 Battambang–? (Thailand) F - 25 ? –Bangkok; SA - 26 Bangkok; SU - 27 Bangkok; M - 28 Bangkok–Chiang Mai; T - 29 C.M.; W - 30 C.M. - (day trip); H - 31 C.M. -Bangkok; F - 1 Bangkok-Krabi ; SA - 2 Krabi; SU - 3 Krabi; M - 4 Krabi - Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia); T - 5 K.L; W - 6 K.L - Taman Negara; H - 7 Taman Negara; F - 8 Taman Negara - K.L.; SA - 9 K.L. - Melaka; SU - 10 Melaka; M - 11 Melaka–(Singapore); T - 12 Singapore–Perth (Australia); W - 13 Perth; H - 14 Perth - Pinnacles; F - 15 Pinnacles - Perth; SA - 16 Perth - Margaret River Region; SU - 17 M.R.; M - 18 M.R.; T - 19 M.R.-Perth; W - 20 Perth - Kalgoorlie; H - 21 (train); F - 22 (train) - Adelaide; SA - 23 Adelaide; SU - 24 Adelaide; Monday, February 25 - Adelaide - Sydney!

two months and counting . . .

2007-11-12T21:52:00.000-05:00

So let's get this thing started. Today was the first day that I realized how soon I'll be leaving to begin my year in Australia. I leave on January 8th. Finals are less than a month away, which means that the next 30 days or so are going to fly by. Once exams are over (oh how sweet it will be) I plan to spend a few days moving all of my things out of my house in Baltimore before heading back to spend the holiday break between Miami and my family's place in Kilgore, TX (http://www.kilgorechamber.com/). I hope to see as many of you as possible during this time.

For those of you who do not know already, my classes at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) do not begin until March 3. This gives me quite a bit of time for travel en route to Oz. In a decision based largely upon the availability of frequent flyer miles, I chose to spend this time in South East Asia, backpacking through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. From Singapore I plan to fly to Perth, Australia, which I hear is the farthest city on earth from Miami. From there I plan to take the India-Pacific railway (http://www.railaustralia.com.au/indianPacific.php) to Adelaide (where I'll visit my cousin Patrick R.) and ultimately Sydney. It is going to be a very exiting few months. I wish you all could tag along.

Well, its time I get back to the books. Hope everythings is well with all of you.

Greetings!

2007-11-12T21:30:00.000-05:00

Greetings folks, and welcome to my page--aubservations. I've created this blog to stay in touch with friends, family and Rotarians during my year as an Ambassadorial Scholar in Sydney, Australia. Throughout the year I'll be posting updates, pictures, stories, random thoughts and anything else that I think you might find interesting. Thanks for reading!