Southeast Asia Part II

Before transitioning into a brief discussion of my return to Southeast Asia, I think a summer debriefing is in order.

Total travel stats for my Murrikan summer: 19 cities in 14 states/provinces in 2 countries, 10 flights, 9 train trips, one high-speed ferry, and one seaplane. Add to that many new friends, a nebulous number of craft IPAs, three weddings, and dozens of reunions with high school friends, college friends, SF friends, Thailand friends, and almost my entire extended family. In fact, all the quality time with people I care about has set a frighteningly high bar; traveling solo in the coming months is going to be a rude awakening when I won't have all those familiar faces around.

I'm not going to lie, the summer was pretty expensive, but incredibly fun and worthwhile. The weddings were the real anchor for my return from Asia and for my domestic itinerary, but it was really special to be able to see all my friends and family throughout the country. It may be a long time before I see some of those folks again, so I wanted to take advantage of my open schedule as much as possible.

In addition to weddings and reunions, another goal of the summer had been to do some bucket-listing of my own country. Some places (Washington, D.C., New York, Boston) I had been to before, but not as an adult, so exploring them almost felt like I was there for the first time. The more true exploration came during the Pacific Northwest leg of my trip, as I had been to only Portland before. The PNW has been on my bucket list for a long time and I feel very satisfied with my travels through there, especially considering that that area is numero uno on my list of possible places to live in North America.

As soon as my last obligation in the States (my college friend's wedding) was over, I was back on a plane to Southeast Asia, which begs the question: why am I going back? I guess the short answer is that I didn't quite feel like I was done exploring yet and I don't quite feel like reverting to the 9-to-5 office job life yet. Also, I'm only about six weeks away from "winter", which is a really great time weather-wise, so if I can dovetail great weather and a low cost of living for a few months, I'd be very happy with that.

In terms of traveling, my schedule is flexible, but I have a few things in mind:

• Hong Kong for a long weekend, mainly just as an entry point, but also to see a friend before he leaves for America
• Bangkok, since I mostly missed that last time around
• Phuket in late September and early October for the Vegetarian Festival and some beach time to catch up on reading (I'm currently working through Soccernomics, the third book in my economics literature streak)
• Chiang Mai in November for the lantern festivals
• Possibly Myanmar and/or Laos while I'm up north
• Possibly Jakarta in December for DWP
• Possibly traveling with (and being tour guide for) some friends that will visit in January

In terms of keeping myself busy and offsetting costs, I'll be researching housesitting, workstays, Internet software freelancing, various types of visas, contributing to an open source project, and looking for temporary or contract employment in one of the big cities. I really don't know at this point which direction I want to go; I need to do my homework and see if anything really catches my eye. There's no sense in trying to make any predictions now since my mind changes every week, if not every day, with respect to what my next move will be. Stay tuned, I guess.

As much as I was always bothered by certain aspects of software development (namely, spending 8-10 hours a day sitting in a chair and staring at a computer screen), I do miss it. I must truly be an engineer at heart, because I miss the process of building something worthwhile and I miss the satisfaction of seeing it finally work and serve a tangible purpose. I'm skeptical that I'll be able to satisfy these cravings with freelance work, which is why my current thinking is that I'll need to find a "normal" job where I can contribute to something meaningful and much bigger than me.

I've considered the English-teaching route, which is always available in every country here, pays decently well, and would secure me a visa. As tempting as all of that is, I've decided that it's just not for me. While I definitely enjoy helping friends or strangers with English here and there, I don't have a desire to teach it formally. Doing so wouldn't be fair to potential students and I'd be taking a job away from someone else who really wants it. I've come to the realization that software development (or IT, as I have to explain it to people in Asia) is the football in the Venn diagram of "What am I good at?" and "What could I do that would really make a difference?".

One other semi-concrete thought I've had lately is that it may be time soon to find a place to park it for a while. I've been on the road for fourteen months now and I can feel a subtle weariness nagging at me. Usually that weariness is most pronounced when I'm packing up everything into my bag, which has slowly become a more annoying task each time it happens. Clearly it's time to make some moves in the direction of a more stable home, if only for a few months, which would be a welcome relief from my current nomadic lifestyle. Sometimes I have to remind myself that a home and a community are normal human needs that I've been sacrificing for a while now.

My current timeline is that I'm giving myself the winter (so, until February-ish) to figure out next steps. Until then, let the adventures continue!

A Murrikan Summer: Midwest

This post is going to be a short and dull one since it seems like ancient history (now that I've already been back in Southeast Asia for over a week) and because it's probably not that interesting to most people.

I spent about a week at an Airbnb in suburban Minneapolis, followed by my cousin Kelsey's wedding weekend, then flew to Chicago for a few days to visit some friends, then flew to Asheville for another wedding (a good friend from college) before flying back to the bay area. The vast majority of my time in all these places was spent having reunions with family, college friends, San Francisco friends, and even Thailand friends. When I wasn't doing that, I was usually out exploring the city.

Minneapolis was a pleasant surprise. The weather was perfect while I was there and I found a lot of great food and craft beers, which I wasn't expecting. Granted, most of the food was American, but on more than one occasion, I settled into a bar, had a veggie burger with sweet potato fries and a craft IPA, and realized it was one of the best American meals I've had in a long time. Special shout out to Blue Door, which has been featured on the Food Network, and rightly so. I went there on a Friday afternoon and the place (which is not small) was packed with more people waiting outside. At 3:00!

Asheville was also pleasant, though I can't claim it was a surprise since I had heard many good things about it before going. It's a city with many dimensions to its personality: humble, artsy, musical, hippie, new age, organic, vegetarian, hoppy (as in, lots of beer), a bit bummy, and Southern. My impromptu craft beer tour of the country hit its crescendo in Asheville, which is apparently the new microbrewery capital of America, overtaking Portland. There's no way I could forget that fact, as I was reminded of it by locals many times during the weekend.

While in Asheville, I caught a show my first night there - Trombone Shorty at The Orange Peel, both of which are highly recommended - and also went on a Friday afternoon hike. The rain had been off and on the whole time I was in town, but I decided to head to DuPont State Forest regardless. It was a gorgeous hike with several waterfalls, not including the massive one I had to walk through at the very end: when I was about half an hour from my car, a massive thunderstorm rolled through, the sky opened up, and I was drenched within seconds. Given that I had my raincoat and a waterproof backpack, the little kid in me had a ton of fun hiking around in the heavy rain. Needless to say, the only photos I have from that day are pre-storm.


The two weddings were the usual weekends of fun and reunions, filled with good food and drink, lots of laughs, and the requisite getting a little bit softer now, getting a little bit louder now, and Cupid shuffling.

With the last of my stateside obligations finished, I flew back to the bay area for two days of errands, last-minute tasks, and goodbyes before taking off for the next adventure (more on that in the next post). With that, I leave you with a context-less smattering of photos from my last two weeks in Murrika.

A Canadian Summer: Victoria and Vancouver

Victoria

Upon arriving in Victoria, I went through the familiar checklist of entering a new country: immigration, customs, cash. Actually, customs was non-existent and the ferry landing was so small it didn't have an ATM or currency exchange, so once I got my passport stamped, I was turned loose into downtown Victoria. (Mental note: take the ferry to Victoria the next time I need to smuggle something to Canada.)

I've recently become addicted to having mobile data service for traveling (something I never had in Asia), so I walked to the local mall and bought a 30-day SIM card from Virgin Mobile. (It still amazes me that you can't do this easily in America.) I don't know what crazy technology they have up north, but my data service was lightning fast compared to what I get in the States. Whatever you're doing, keep it up Canada!

After getting some colorful plastic money from the ATM, I snagged a cab to my Airbnb, which was the bro-iest place I could have ever imagined staying (in a funny way). Imagine a two-guy house, not dirty but not quite clean either, littered with cans of Budweiser, guitars, power tools, action movie DVDs, and video games. It was comfortable though, a short bus ride from downtown, and the surrounding neighborhood was a nice look into non-tourist Victoria.

The next morning was beautiful, sunny, and cool, so I got up early and walked the multi-use path that leads directly to downtown. Throughout the day, I wandered through Chinatown, stopped by the British Columbia Parliament Buildings (Victoria is the capital of BC), walked to and around Abkhazi Garden, and ambled along the path that runs along the harbor.


In the late afternoon, I sat on the grass by the water and watched all the traffic on the water for a while, including lots of seaplanes using the harbor as runways.


On my way back downtown to get some dinner, I had quite the surprise as I was walking by the water. During the previous week, I had been reading about hitchBOT, a custom-built robot that had made international news by autonomously hitchhiking across the entire country (Halifax to Victoria). I knew he (haha, "he") would be at an arts space in Victoria the upcoming Thursday, but was under the impression he would be in Seattle for the next few days. Lo and behold, there he was, sitting by the side of the road, taking photos with people who (hopefully) recognized him from the news. I will fully admit that seeing him totally made my day.


After some food and tasty craft beer (western Canada, just like the west coast of the US, is known for delicious local beers), it was dark enough to take some shots of Victoria at night, so I walked around for a while and did my best without a tripod.


Wednesday was a bit more mellow: late start, lazy brunch, ambled around Beacon Hill park, and spent most of the afternoon at the Royal British Columbia Museum. I saw an IMAX documentary (about vikings!) for the first time in what must be over a decade and really liked the exhibits about Canadian - specifically, British Columbia - history. The museum is known for its many life-size dioramas, which are very well done. The romanticized recreation of old Victoria was also really fascinating and fun to walk around. The rest of the evening was filled with delicious food and some high-alcohol IPAs, which led to an early bedtime. This seems like as good a time as any to mention that the food in Victoria was excellent; in fact, Victoria has more restaurants per capita than any city in Canada and is second only to San Francisco in all of North America.

Early the next afternoon, I hopped on one of those seaplanes to fly to Vancouver. Normally the ferry would have been just fine, but I had never taken a seaplane before and this seemed like an appropriate place to do that. Also, the seaplane flight is only 30 minutes to go downtown-to-downtown, whereas the ferry would have been many hours since it departs from and arrives at inconvenient locations. The flight was noisy, but otherwise not too unusual, and the views were excellent. I suppose the one notable difference was the moment that I leaned into the aisle and looked through the front window of the cockpit as we were landing and saw nothing but water. My Vancouver friend laughed at me when I told her I took the seaplane because it has a reputation of being almost exclusively for commuters; evidently it's uncommon that tourists or locals will take it. Sure enough, I was the only person on my flight not dressed in business attire.

Vancouver

After checking in to my Airbnb, I wandered around Chinatown - the largest in Canada and the third largest in North America, after San Francisco and New York - for a bit, dipped into a few classic Chinatown-esque shops, and grabbed a couple pints at a British pub around the corner. I was intending to go to a Cambodian restaurant for dinner, but by the time I made it there, the place was completely packed and there were more people waiting on the sidewalk outside. Instead I made my way back to Commercial Drive (a.k.a. "the drive") - a popular strip of bars, restaurants, and shops that was conveniently located around the corner from my place - for some dinner and beer.

The next day I wandered downtown for a bit, stopping for brunch and to check out the Central Library, which has made a few appearances on the small screen and the silver screen. I can't say I'm surprised since the building is quite distinct looking.


Around noon, I took the bus to UBC for a free tour of their particle accelerator. I was meeting up with my friend Janice, who I had met in Portland a couple weeks prior at the Portland Underground tour; she was traveling south to San Francisco and I was traveling north to Vancouver, so we exchanged travel tips and promised to meet up in the city when I was around. Since she works at UBC, she had known about this tour for a while, but had never gotten around to going. Being a "student of life", I'm required to indulge in educational activities, so I was happy to go with her.

Even though the science was a little overwhelming, the tour was interesting both to learn of the uses of a particle accelerator and to walk around an incredibly industrial, science-y, almost fictional-looking setting. All the buildings we visited were filled with pipes, wires, control panels, computers, boxes, steel catwalks, lights, a lot of weird gadgets, and liquid nitrogen vapors. In the interest of disseminating knowledge and proving that the tour wasn't completely lost on me, I made a point of remembering three specific benefits of the facility:

1. Using proton therapy to irradiate ocular tumors
2. Testing space-bound electronics for durability by simulating cosmic radiation
3. Reproducing (on a much smaller scale) some of the reactions found in supernova

With that, I present some photos of important-looking... things. For science!


After the tour, I wandered campus for a bit with Janice until she had to take off, then I kept walking around until the late afternoon. I caught the bus back downtown to find Thai food, beer, and some clean clothes, while researching activities for the evening on my phone.

One of the listings for music was at a venue (Hotel at the Waldorf) I had passed on foot several times, so I decided to go there. A group of DJs behind Some Kind of Music Blog were having an album release party and, according to Google, this venue is known for electronic music (as well as being a "tiki bar"). The entire establishment is definitely not what you think of when you hear the word "Waldorf": only a few stories tall and containing three separate dance floors, including an outdoor area with a sandy fake beach. The evening was really fun and the music was legitimately good. In fact, the entire scene of sand, house music, beers, and dancing white people in tank tops reminded me of a very specific touristy Thai island.

Saturday ended up being a really fun friend date with Janice as she played tour guide for me. We spent the afternoon along the False Creek seawall, on Granville Island, and took the aquabus to Yaletown. We tried to find a place in the city with live jazz in the evening, but unfortunately most of the classic jazz places in Vancouver have closed. We settled on a tapas place that was supposed to have some live music, which I guess it did, but was very underwhelming. The evening turned out better than expected though since we were able to get a table on the patio right by the water; we had a really pleasant time with beautiful weather and views of the marina and the Burrard Bridge.


After starting Sunday with a fantastic poached-egg sandwich and coffee from a breakfast food cart - street food is big in Vancouver and there's even a really useful app that tracks the trucks - I spent the day wandering the city with my camera. In roughly chronological order, the day consisted of going to the mall (to buy more data for my cell phone plan), a Thai festival outside the Vancouver Art Museum, the museum itself, walking along parts of the False Creek seawall and Granville Island again, catching the end of a Niners game, Yelp-advised barhopping with lots of excellent local beers, watching a solid chunk of a CFL game, beers on the roof of my Airbnb at sunset, and finally dinner, drinks, and Cards Against Humanity on the drive with one of my Airbnb hosts and one of the other guests.


After starting Monday with an excellent brunch at Catch 122, I decided I would spend the day at both of the suspension bridges on the North Shore. First was the Capilano Suspension Bridge, which is an incredibly popular tourist attraction; so popular, it has its own free shuttle from the city. Not surprisingly, the place was a madhouse of families and kids, even on a random weekday. The bridge itself is really impressive, but unfortunately overshadowed by how crowded and artificial the whole place is. I spent most of my short time there waiting in lines. The only saving grace was that Janice had given me a free pass; if I had spent full price ($36) on a ticket, I would have been really pissed. The experience confirmed my cynical view that if I look around and see a lot of kids and/or elderly people, I'm doing something wrong with my traveling.


Lynn Valley and Lynn Canyon Park, where I spent the rest of the afternoon, were refreshingly the opposite: free admission, lots of actual nature, lots of trails and secluded areas in the woods, no strollers, no gift shops, and no folk bands. At Capilano, I saw old people with canes and other people carrying their terrified lap dogs. At Lynn Valley, I saw four fire trucks and an ambulance; evidently some shit went down with the kids who were cliff jumping. Now that's the kind of place I'd rather be!

Lynn Canyon Park is gorgeous: lots of forest, trails, tall trees, rushing water, and big boulders in Lynn Creek. I worked up quite the sweat scrambling over all the boulders in the creek, but stopped frequently to get some shots of the gorgeous scenery.


I caught a bus back to the city and after a much-needed shower, was grabbing a light dinner when my Airbnb host emailed me to see how things were going (she was out of town the entire time). It was during this email exchange that I suddenly realized I did not have one more day in town and I was actually checking out the next day. Uh, whoops. Evidently keeping an aggressive travel schedule all summer and being constantly worried about lodging and transportation took its toll; I had started to misremember my own plans. Luckily, my train to Seattle the next day wasn't until the evening, so I still had the whole day to do laundry and run some errands, but I was bummed that I didn't have time to rent a bike and ride around Stanley Park, which was going to be the next day's adventure. Oh well, next time.

Even with ample amounts of time on Tuesday, I still managed to almost miss my train because I had stupidly assumed I'd be able to get a taxi, even with a taxi app on my phone and the dispatch's phone number. (Uber is not in Vancouver yet.) Canada really impressed me in a lot of areas relative to the US, but unfortunately their taxi system is just as bad as ours. The app couldn't find a single free taxi and the dispatch didn't answer my call. Sound familiar? Instead of a comfortable ride to the train station, I had to scramble to make change at the corner store, find a useful bus route (thanks again Google Maps!), and walk for about 15 minutes in the late afternoon sun with all my stuff. I showed up to the station a sweaty mess and the train left about five minutes after I plopped in my seat. Ugh, fucking taxis. I would yell "Get off my lawn!" but it's actually the opposite sentiment I'm looking for: a younger person angry at the older establishment. How about: "Take a damn selfie!" Hmm, I'll have to work on that one.

The ride back to the States - my last train trip of the summer - was quiet and comfortable and surprisingly on-time given that there were several lengthy low-speed segments due to track maintenance. After I had gotten settled in my seat, I cracked open my current reading: Everything is Bullshit, a Priceonomics book that uses hard data and historical research to tear down some of the most popular facades of our society. Needless to say, it's right in my wheelhouse. And, surprise surprise, what's the next chapter about? The history of taxis and their medallions, the reasons why the industry is so terrible, and why companies like Uber are disrupting the shit out of it. How apropos.

That night in Seattle, I crashed at a simple studio Airbnb close to the train station, spent most of the next day editing photos on my laptop at a cafe, and then took off for the airport to catch my flight to Minneapolis. It wasn't part of my original travel plans to leave the Pacific Northwest this early, since I had a passing interest in going to some national parks and/or Glacier National, but I couldn't pass up the $100 plane ticket I had found. Plus I knew I'd need a lot of downtime to catch up on photos and blogging and I'd rather spend that time in Minneapolis, where I know quite a few people that I'd like to spend time with.

Overall, Canada gets two big thumbs up from me. I had been to Toronto and Montreal before in college, but I value this experience so much more because I feel like I got a much better feel of the country and its people. (Well, BC at least.) No doubt, there are a lot of similarities to America, especially compared to all the other countries I've visited. Being in another country but also being fluent in the local language was a luxury I'm not used to. And it's no surprise that some of the friendliest and most pleasant people I met all summer are Canadian. Funny, I'm reminded of a quote from The Kids in the Hall, a Canadian sketch comedy show I watched a lot as a kid. There's one bit where Dave Foley is trying to explain to someone where he comes from and he says:

"I'm a Canadian. It's like an American but without a gun."

That quote has got to be fifteen years old, but unfortunately, it's even more true today than it was back then. Sigh.

Of all the places I've been to this summer, Vancouver made the biggest impression on me, probably because I'm constantly thinking of where I could end up next; it's a very livable city that checks all the checkboxes. If I was forced right now to pick a place to settle down in, I think it would be Vancouver. But that future is still a ways off, as I've got a lot of plans between now and then.

Full photo albums:

• Victoria
• Vancouver
• UBC TRIUMF Particle Accelerator
• Lynn Canyon Park