Yet another badly updated blog

Hey all, I am in Busan, Korea now. Haven't blogged in a while since my brother got pretty sick in China and we were in a hospital for over a week. I really don't recommend a Chinese hospital to my worst enemies.

I will be back in Seattle in September and will have to update you on my thousands of stories in person since I can't type them all here.

Looking forward to seeing everyone!

craziness

I haven't posted in a while for good reason. My brother and I went to Chengdu then off to Chongqing in China. When in Chongqing Adam was hospitalized for appendicitis and was stuck there for a week. I would never ever recommend a Chinese hospital. A week there was hell for both of us, especially since no one speaks a word of English. Luckily we had a doctor from South America, from another clinic, come in to check up on him and tell us what the hell was going on.

Due to this unfortunate circumstances we were forced to miss Shanghai and shortened our time in Hong Kong to one day. Hong Kong was cool but I was is a great hurry to leave China behind me.

We are now in Israel visiting family until the end of the month and then we set off to London, where we will visit Ireland withs the folks. Then we fly off to the last leg of the trip in Japan and Korea.

Sorry, not much to talk about since it's a bit hard to recall. Oh yea, we saw pandas in Chengdu and sold a bunch of giddy Chinese guys US Dollars. They were like little school girls :P

Please, Welcome

So food in China is extremely hit or miss. I have had the best and worst meals of my life here. The big shit here is skewers. Everywhere you go they are grilling all sorts of internal organs and meats on skewers. We went to a place last night, here in Xi'an, and the guy pan fried them chinese style instead of grilling. When I say chinese style I mean there is more grease than humanly possible. Just about everything you get in this country is greasy as hell! So I can't stop thinking of the scene in Rush Hour where Chris Tucker orders from the Chinese food cart. "Man, I don't want any of this greasy ass shit. I want some good food!" It is extremely true.

I have also love how Chinese people take pictures. They stand in front of the camera in a perfect line with there arms to their sides and they stare at the camera with no smile. VERY communistic, Mao would be proud.

So I am in Xi'an now, which is the old capitol of the Qing Dynasty. You might know Xi'an from the Teracotta Warriors, they are about an hour outside of the city. We went to them today and, as many fellow travelers have said, they are very overrated. Most of it is just piles of sand and the signs on the wall remind you that they are still excavating, neato! They don't mind charging 90 yuan for it either, which is about 13 bucks. Very expensive for this part of the world. Actually, in whole, the Chinese love to rip you off at the touristy sites. Luckily I got in on the student price, yay for Chinese people's lack of reading english cards. The main highlight of today was buying my very own little Teracotta Warrior. Hopefully the little fella can make it home with all his extremities intact.

thailand/china

Nihao,

So as usual I haven't updated much but finding an available comp in china ain't easy. So last I left you I was on Kho Phi Phi. We went from there to Kho Samui, not very interesting. Then we went to the infamous Kho Phangan, home of the Full Moon Party. Unfortunatly our timing was off but we still made it to the Half Moon Party, which is supposed to be just as good. We spent the day chilling with a couple cool swedish girls and an english girl. We all went to the half moon party that night with crazy black light paintings all over ourselves and it was crazy. Lots of bucket of joys everywhere, which is a bucket filled with coke, red bull (the 100 times stronger thai original version) and really cheap thai rum that tastes like shit. That combination gets you very drunk very fast. The party was amazing for the hour it went on. At around 12:30 the music stopped and one of our friends said she saw 2 soldiers up at the DJ booth with AK47s to the DJs head. We were then forcefully asked to leave and that's the end of that.

Next stop was Kho Tao, where I got my PADI SCUBA certification :D :D. Highlight of that island was the awesome diving, jumping in a boat trying to chase down a whale shark with no luck, and hoping on a motorbike with a crazy dutch driver, hanging on for dear life. He must have put the thai bikers to shame, which is not a small feat.

Next stop was the super massive Bangkok. Highlights include a plethora of girl boys, fake watches, faker shirts and nice suits. My brother and I both ordered suits from a place that is very famous, the guy made suits for all sorts of famous Americans, including John Kerry. It looks super pimp. We also went up to Chang Mai and my brother went on a trek in the jungle. Unfortunatly I hurt my foot prior so I instead took a thai cooking class and made some bomb curry and pad thai. So if anyone wants some good thai food back home, Chez Dan might be the place to be ;)

We are now in China, which is VERY interesting. Chinese food has its ups and downs, mostly downs though. Although I have come to love the dumplings here. Top highlight of Beijing was definatly the Great Wall and Summer Palace. The forbidden city was not very good since every single hall looks the same, a giant room with a single chair in the center where the king would wait for guests, change his clothes, wait upon being transported to his throne, or think. Seriously, he had a seperate building for all of those things. We also went to a night market that made you wonder if you can ever eat again. The worst part was this thing called stinky tofu, and stinky is a very mild description. My gag reflex was tested constantly. They also sold scorpion, silk worm, dog and seahorse. The dog was definatly that last thing I would ever eat, although I heard the scorpion was pretty good.

Oh yes, the biggest highlight about China is that the people can't get enough of westerners. Everywhere I go they stop me and want to take pictures of me. Then you get the people that are too embarassed to ask so they try to slyly take your picture without you realizing but it's pretty damn obvious. I have started to ask to take a picture with my camera every time they ask me to take a picture. Best instance was an old man that wanted a picture. Then him and his wife. Then him, his wife and his kids. Then him, his wife, his kids and the tour guide. Before you knew it there were 30+ asians in the pictures, crazy.

We are now in Qingdao, which is famous for the brewery of Tsingtao beer, which is where we went today. Very good beer and apparently they make a stout that you can't seem to find even in China but it was freaking good. After the brewery we went to a hot pot restaurant for the worst meal of our lives. A dutch guy we came with decided to get something the resembled a seafood/penis. We are still wondering what it was but damn that was disgusting. A good ol' ice cream had to wash it all down.

Until next time, hopefully not so long this time.

The Far East

So my real travel has begun. Australia was cool but it felt too similar to back home. First started out with a night in Singapore. The first thing I see when I get to Singapore is not a welcome sign but a sign in giant red letters saying "Death To Drug Trafficers." Singapore has some hardcore rules, they will fine you if you don't flush the toilet! The big highlight was where the hostel was, Little India. Food was amazing and I'd swear I was in India. Streets were crowded, smell of curry in the air and the occasional dance break out in the street. Well maybe not that but it was on the tv everywhere.

Next day we flew to Phuket, Thailand. Phuket is extremely touristy and there is an abundence of old white guys with young thai girls, pretty disgusting. There are alot of girlboys eveywhere, so it's fun playing guess the girl that has the penis! Since passover hit the day we came to Thailand we can't eat any noodles for 8 days so it's been hardcore curry all the time. The curry's are great here, although the food here is similar to american thai but very different too. For instance most curries have very little sauce on them, whereas in the us its almost a soup. They are also hella spicy when you ask for thai spicy and my stomach has been on and off the whole time. So far no big food poisoning story but as I hear everyone will get one.

From Phuket we went to Koh Phi Phi which is the big/famous island everyone knows pictures of. The movie the Beach was also shot on one of the Phi Phi islands. The main beach was very overated, Long Beach. Although we took a long boat out to the other islands for snorkling and beach bumming and they were much nicer. It was also nice to have the wind in your face from the boat since I can't even begin to explain the massive amount of heat here. The second you step out of the shower you sweat and you spend every night in a pool of sweat.

The major excitement now is the demonstrations in Bangkok and it's surrounding areas. US government has asked us not to go to Bangkok due to military clashes with the protestors. It looks like it is cooling down a bit now so hopefully we can go since northern thailand looks like a lot of fun and i'm starting to get bored of beaches and buckets of joy. Bucket of joy is a bucket with vodka/rum, red bull and coke. One bucket gets you wasted and you can't sleep for the night.

Down Unda'

So like usual I have been really bad on updating my blog. I am now in the town of 1770 which is located on the north eastern part of Australia. It is named for the year Cpt. Cook came to Australia. The town itself is very small but there is great surf and sun.
So to fill you all in. I started off 2 weeks ago in Melbourne to visit my good buddy Gleb. We stayed with his folks and had a blast, they were amazing to us and showed us Melbourne, which is a truly awesome city. It struck me as being very European with a hint of San Francisco in there.

We then headed off to Sydney. Sydney is very LA. All the backpackers told me this before but I didn't believe till I got there. It is a cool city though with loads to do. The opera house is much more amazing when you first see it than you expect. We saw a show there as well, an extremely shitty play called the Alchemist. I wouldn't recommend this torture to my worst enemy. Other days we checked out Manly beach and Bondi Beach, which is considered one of the best in the world. It was very cool but I don't see how it's considered one of the best. Major highlight of Sydney was that I got to drive a car :D :D. We went to a party with my brothers friend who he met in Toulouse and the driver was too drunk to drive home. Good ol' responsible me was not and I got the privlege of driving on the left side of the street at night, yay!

We then took a bus to Byron Bay, considered one of the best surf spots in the world. I finally learned to surf there! Everyone kept telling me, "dude if you are from LA how the hell did you not surf already, ....mate" It was friggin awesome and I am addicted to surfing again. I stood up my second time and rode the wave for a while. I thought I was big shit and a natural. Of course the next 6 waves I caught I fell almost instantly and barely stood up, in fact one was such a fast fall I had to bury my face in shame. I did however stand up 3 more time, so go me! I highly recommend Byron Bay to anyone coming down unda. PS we are taking the OzExperience hop-on hop-off tour bus and that is also recommended.

Next destination was Brisbane. Only a few sentences needed for this one. Boring city, shitty dirty hostels. Ok that was 2 sentences but this is the third so bam!

The next part was very exciting, we went to the Australian Zoo. This is the zoo that Steve Irwin started. Everywhere in the zoo there is stuff about him and you really learn to love that guy and realize how much he did for animals. This also had to be the best zoo I have ever been to. The big highlights were the kangaroos, koalas and the tigers. My brother and I met a Dutch guy on the bus and we toured the zoo together. We spent 2 hours just feeding the kangaroos. Best part was the little ones that had the talent to eat the entire feed and leave every single corn kernel there. A joey hopping out of his mother's sack was also sweet as. (sweet as is the kiwi saying that can't get over). Tiger show was super awesome. They had men in the tiger pen playing with them and throwing milk jugs at the window as they jumped for them hitting the water.

We also got to scratch a koala's butt. Lastly feeding an elephant and trying to not let go of the fruit is not the best idea, but highly entertaining.

From the zoo we went to Noosa which had nothing but a few rounds of Ring of Fire, aka King's Cup. From there we went to Rainbow Beach which was the launching platform to the world famous Fraser Island. I have typed too much and I think it's time to hit the bbq up with our newly found british buds. Catch you all later!

New Zealand in a nutshell

Hey all, haven't really posted in a while due to being extremely busy. In the past 2 weeks I spent a week in New Zealand taking a hop-on hop-off bus around the north island, it's very cool. I then flew to Melbourne, AUS where I am now.

Top highlights of NZ were going to a rugby match, auckland blues v south africa sharks. we sat next to an extremely wicked guy from Johannesburg who pretty much made the game. I told him I heard Johannesburg is pretty darn sketch and he just said yep and looked up. I was kinda weirded out because I thought he was ignoring us now but after a few moments I realized he was showing us his GIANT scar on his neck from a knife wound he sustained in S. Africa. At that moment the Sharks scored a try and he got up hecking all the Blues fans by singing "it ain't nothing but a real thing baby." Now that's a celebration!

Kiwis have the weirdest flavor chips in the world as well. A sample of the flavors: Chicken, Lamb & Mint, Mince pie and Cheese. We tried the lamb and mint and it was pretty much that, yuck!

Also trecked to Rotorua where they have geothermal parks where the ground is literally bubbling everywhere and steam is coming out, looks pretty much like hell. Our extremely colorful bus driver then told us a story of an old bus driver telling his passengers that the mud in these baths have healing powers and that they should put it on their faces. They then proceeded to do so. Apparently the mud doesn't burn right away, but a few seconds later the people were running in circles splashing loads of water on their faces to clear the mud. Funny and cruel at the same time.

In Rotorua we also went to a Hangi, which is a Maori dinner and cultural show. The highlight was the Haka, which is the war dance they do. It is insanely cool and the All Blacks (NZ rugby team) do it as well before each test match. The food itself was just meh but all you can eat, so as the poor backpackers we are, we ate alot. Here is a video of the tribal ritual of determining if guests are enemies or friends:



Speaking of food, the following nights consisted of eating 2 kilos of ground beef for a lunch and 2 dinners, quite manly if i do say so myself.

We then trecked around Taupo and Mt Manganui, very cool areas but unfortunatly we had a flight to catch in Auckland so we didn't get to explore as much as we'd liked. Must come back to New Zealand in the future. Ah yes, one of our newly aquired buddies jumped off the auckland bridge to bungy, the rest of us weren't so brave, but next time I shall.

Now I'm in Melbourne about to take off for Sydney on Wednesday. Probably will then take the same sorta bus I took in NZ up to Cairns, the biggest area to go diving out to the great barrier reef. I'll try to update along the way.

I shall leave you with a joke our driver made. How do you circumcise a hillbilly?

... Kick his sister in the jaw.

badabing, badaboom, i'm out.

cross country travels and time is ticking down

::Pittsburgh, PA USA::

Howdy folks,
I felt that introduction was justified due to the last week of driving from Seattle to Pittsburgh through, what could have been, the whitest areas I have ever seen. I did however secure a bangin' chicken fried steak and, more importantly, an insanely good butter roll.

The key highlights of my cross country road trip are as follows:
1. Spokane looks like Texas, and not the cool parts of Texas :o
2. Apparently Gonzaga is in fact in Washington (for all you non-WA peeps out there)
3. Mt Rushmore is very impressive in person. I do recommend just parking on the side of the road and walking up there instead of paying $10 to park. Before you laugh at me, it really isn't that obvious.
4. Crazy Horse memorial will probably never get done. This is more about the fact they charge you $15 friggin dollars, per person!, to see it 1/3 done. It is pretty cool though, so you should go to park and tell them you don't want to pay. A pissed off, old white man, will tell you to turn around at the bottom of the hill, after the gate. Proceed as directed and take all the nice pictures you want before turning around. Voila!
5. There is absolutely NOTHING in South Dakota between Rapid City and Sioux Falls. Literally nothing, we couldn't even find a McDonalds.
6. Gas station bathroom tuna salad sandwiches really do have worms in them. (Futurama reference, as well as the sad truth)
7. Chicago kicks ass. We spent a full day there with absolutely terrible luck. The bad luck was mostly about the fact that it was sunny and beautiful the night we drove in, and storming rain the day we were there. It was so cloudy that the street lights came on at 2pm and you couldn't see a building 30 feet in front of you.
8. Pizzeria Uno is much better at the original in Chicago, but Burt's is a better pizza joint overall.
9. Hot Dougs hot sucks.
10. I am in fact very allergic to cats. Although this is obvious to Deb and Danielle, spending 2 nights at a house full of cats was not the smartest idea. Although it was hella good on my wallet ;)
11. Chicago art museum is awesome, but after 20 minutes it looks like every other art museum in the world. This is something you learn while traveling through northern Italia, where that's pretty much all there is to do there.

So I have much more I want to say but I think that should suffice. I have 2 days left here in Pittsburgh before I board a plane to LA. One day there and I'm off to New Zealand. I am looking forward to meeting Frodo and Gandalf.

In the beginning...

::Seattle, WA USA::

Welcome kind Sirs and Madames,

This blog is all concerning, and all devoting to my soon to be travels. I was granted 6 months off from Boeing and I am ready to take off. The main concern is to figure out my life. As most people are, I too am very confused. But that is ok. I have the antidote, it is called traveling! C'est vrai!

So here we go, the engine is roaring, even though I have a few weeks before going. First off a road trip back east, where the folks and I can meet at least. In Pittsburgh, my brotherly travel companion, who is also referred to as Adam. We will then say our goodbyes and fly out to where the sun shines. A one day layover in LA, enough time to say hi to the friends out in the gray. We then fly to New Zealand, then off to Australia. Down unda' will be fun, well I'd just have to tell ya.

Then it becomes extremely tentative from there, I thought, with you guys, I'd just be fair. Thailand, China, Korea and then Japan. I think my travels through Asia will make me quite the fan. Then last we stop in Israel for an extended stay. I now have the answers! Well, I hope I shall say...

I am adding an excerpt from a book that, I think, summarizes my next 6 months down to every link.

"Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look’em over with care. About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.” With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down a not-so-good street.

And you may not find any you’ll want to go down. In that case, of course, you’ll head straight out of town. It’s opener there in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.

....

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)

Kid, you’ll move mountains!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!"

- dr. seuss