My Protanoptic Life

Thursday morning I woke up above the Pacific Ocean somewhere off the coast of Japan. I knew this because right after I saw the clouds and ocean below I looked at the helpful map showing where we were on the planet. I was given breakfast and the loudspeaker announced that we were one hour out from Tokyo.

After eating I dozed some more, opening my eyes once in a while to see what was outside my window. Blue ocean with tiny white caps under hazy clouds. Nothing but a cloud. Picturesque rice paddies that were unharvested and nobody and no boats in sight. Soon we were on the ground and I was sleepily waiting in the security checkpoint line to get back into the international terminal. I looked around at all the unfamiliar people and heard them speaking in accents, some that I didn’t recognize. I heard a japanese girl speaking in deliberate, clear english. I thought about the world and how small my world had been while I was growing up, and my world was larger than many. I still couldn’t help wondering if I’d done life a little wrong. I only traveled internationally once when I was young, and I didn’t travel much on my own volition, and usually not to new places but back to old places. I didn’t learn a second language. As an english speaker it is difficult to chose which language to master as your second, but that’s really not an excuse because two are better than one. The line was long and I had plenty of time to think about these things. Getting through security was easy and they didn’t seem to care that I had a bunch of liquids that I didn’t remove for their inspection. So much of security is theater.

I found a little office area with wired ethernet and went to work trying to find a way to get free internet. These guys had done their due diligence though and I couldn’t find any way around paying. This was a problem because last time when I tried to pay I still couldn’t get online because Boingo’s billing mechanism was broken. On top of that, the Boingo software for Mac is terrible, like so many OEM apps for Mac. They really shouldn’t bother with those kinds of things and should spend that money on something more productive.

I wandered around the airport, plodding along tiredly. It was familiar, I had spent enough time here last time that I knew where I was and where to go to get whatever. My flight wasn’t listed on the display yet though since it was too many hours away, so I just wandered aimlessly. I exchanged some money and went to an electronics shop with some stuff that isn’t available in the USA, which is just a novelty to me but still entertaining. When my flight did appear on the monitor I was 2 gates down from where I needed to be, which would’ve been really convenient if it weren’t boarding in 8 hours. I got some tea, found a power outlet and managed to successfully pay for internet access. This allowed me to kill many hours of my layover while catching up on blogging and chatting with some US folks who were up.

After sitting for too many hours I walked around the airport some more. I noticed the stark differences between Japan and Vietnam. Before landing in Tokyo I looked down at the rice paddies and it was immediately evident that we were not in Vietnam, even though there were rice paddies for as far as you could see. Japan was so clean, so quiet, so organized.

As I was walking around looking for gifts for friends a man offered me samples of sake, which I gladly tasted. It was delicious and I thought about buying a bottle, but the fact that you can’t even take duty free liquids over 100ml through Japan made me wary of what other ridiculous liquid restrictions I would encounter.

After what seemed like an eternity my plane began boarding and I watched everybody line up and get on, then when the line was nearly nothing I boarded and took my seat. I sat next to an older Japanese woman with a dignified demeanor. She began writing a note and when I glanced over my eyes picked up the word “unforgivable”. I was curious, and although I didn’t read the whole note, I did also see that she mentioned her choice of airlines by their reputation vs simply price. She folded the note up, put it in an envelope and gave it to one of the flight attendants. From then on the flight attendants would stop by from time to time and talk and talk and talk, saying “hai” over and over as this woman spoke with calm certainty. I wondered what the note actually said…

After watching some of Cirque Du Soleil’s Dralion, which has an awesome juggling scene, I switched to The Soloist and proceeded to be thoroughly unimpressed. Afterwards I managed to finally get some more sleep…

Thursday I woke up to the ongoing sounds of a boy crying. Not wailing, but genuinely crying. I realized it had been going on for quite a while and wondered why his, who was seated in the next section up, didn’t come back and help him. The first thing I saw was the darkness map of the world with our plane positioned over the pacific right on the border between light and dark. The boy’s dad eventually came back and took the boy off to the bathroom. I closed the window shades on the two windows next to me and went back to sleep. I couldn’t stay asleep though. It was an uncomfortable drifting in and out of sleep. Eventually we were landing in San Francisco and as I carried my bag off into SFO I finally woke up.

About 5 immigration people asked me if I had all my bags as they checked my passport. It seemed like they couldn’t believe that person could have such little luggage. That may have been the thing that set me apart from the rest and made them select me to a full luggage search. The guy going through my luggage also couldn’t believe that I only had one bag. He, like the passport control officer, found it hard to believe that I didn’t have a physical mailing address. The passport control officer scratched off “San Francisco” and wrote in my parents address in Colorado Springs. The man searching my bag asked me “Why did you write down Colordo Springs if you live in San Francisco?” to which I replied that I did not write down c/s. It seems so simple, move out of apartment, quit job, live out of a backpack, yet so many people don’t understand until they stop to think about it.

Sara was supposed to pick me up but I wondered if she’d even be there after my flight was late and my time was wasted while the LEO did a half search of my tightly and intricately packed backpack. She was though and it was great to have a friend there to whisk me away in a sleek automobile. We headed down 101 to Mountainview to meet up with some of the SugarCRM crew. Pretty much the whole local IT team plus Kyung showed up and we filled a nook in the restaurant with loud friendly conversation. Sara had to go and I was bummed that we didn’t have long enough time to catch up with each other.

After lunch I caught a ride back to Sugar where Lila had brought my car. I sat and talked a while about my travels and the way that poor countries and technology fit together, then headed up to Lila’s house to pick up some stuff I’d left there. When I got there I took a shower, which was great because I had been out for over 36 hours without a shower. I also tried to take a nap but couldn’t sleep, so I decided to head on up to SF.

As soon as I started driving I got sleepy. Luckily I’d driven this route a few hundred times so I could drive it comfortably while sleepy. It was lame though, I didn’t want to drive that route. I had quit my job partly because of that drive. Between that drive and the SugarCRM HQ I felt like my old life had been severed and I was having to pick it back up to get to something underneath it. I just wanted to let it go and move on, those times were gone.

The first place I went in SF was to my mailbox which hadn’t been checked in two months. All of the mail fit into the box, so it wasn’t too bad. The post office is right downtown SF, near embarcadero, and it was nice to submerge myself back into the heart of SF, like jumping straight into a pool to help you get used to the water quicker. The weather was kinda bad, breezy with a little rain, but it was familiar and that was great. The air was cool and clean, so different from anything I’d experienced in the previous two months. I also heard seagulls for the first time in two months.

Then as I was driving to the Sunset I witnessed the first crime I’d seen in two months. I thought about how I hadn’t felt threatened in any way in Asia at all. The worst thing I’d encountered were animals and the fear of getting ripped off by agreeing to an inflated price, but I hadn’t been scared fo being mugged or anything while I was there. I was sad that it took less than an hour for me to witness a crime in SF. I love this city and honestly I don’t see that much crime here, so that was a bit of a slap.

Right as I was getting to Golden Gate Park I remembered the microclimates of San Francisco, and even though it was somewhat warm downtown it sure as hell wasn’t warm by the ocean. I turned around and drove all the way back downtown and went to my storage unit to get my jacket and picked up some other gear while I was there, including some camera gear I hadn’t played with in a long time.

The ocean was vibrant and the horizon had a crisp line as I drove to Java Beach to get coffee and internet. I didn’t stay long because Rob told me to meet him at Noriega Pizza, so I headed down there. We talked a little bit and it was good to see a great friend, but I had a hard time saying a lot of stuff about my trip because I still need time to process it. Maybe… maybe this is as good as it’ll get and I should just blab about it without thinking too hard. At any rate we had good convo and then headed to Sea Biscuit to meet up with Rob Taylor so they could record a podcast for (d)NOT.

I don’t know if it’s just the fact that I can understand the language, but I think that San Francisco has more doers than other countries I’ve visited. Aside from Rob and Rob recording their gig in a coffee shop with friendly and familiar folks walking in and out catching up with the latest goings on, I’ve seen a lot of other people around already that look like they’re up to something fun. There is a cool energy in San Francisco that I really really like. Some of it is the natural energy of the city, and on top of that there is the sentimental aspect, the familiar places with so many good memories tied to them. I was really really happy to be back.

We dropped Rob Taylor off at home and headed back to Rob’s place and geeked out with laptops, linux, Star Trek and a sip of whiskey.

Wednesday I woke up to hurricane winds and our hotel shaking. I moved the love seat in off the patio expecting to have torrential rains hitting soon, then I went back to sleep. When I woke up 3 hours later everything was calm. I guess that’s just how night weather is in Malaysia.

Sometimes when I dream it is like a movie with actors and character development, a climax and an ending. Some times the credits roll. This night I had a dream in that style about a big heist, but not a bank heist. It was something about ripping off a big corporation. I remember less of the plot from this dream than probably any other dream I’ve had like this, but I do remember the ending where about 4 of us survived an ambush. The whole dream was narrated by Morgan Freeman.

Tien and I were awake in time for breakfast this morning so we went downstairs and had a surprisingly good meal. We went back upstairs and relaxed for a bit and tried to figure out if we should leave, and then after a big pillow fight we decided to pack up. We checked out and caught a Mercedes Benz taxi back to the bus station. We got on the bus to Seremban, the city where we had to transfer to a train that would take us back to Kuala Lumpur. We turned on some music and zoned out and nearly missed the station. Luckily I happened to see the walkway we’d taken a few days earlier and recognized it in time to get off at the exactly right stop.

While we were waiting at the train station I saw a scale and decided to weigh myself and my backpack. I weighed 97 kg with a bunch of stuff in my pockets, and my backpack was 16 kg. I have to say I’m pretty happy with my backpack, especially since it holds 35 lbs of gear comfortably.

We boarded our train and headed off. I was staring out the window watching forests of palm trees pass by when I was struck with a craving for Mexican food. Then I thought about Puerto Alegre and how lovely their guacamole is with a margarita. There was no chance to have anything like that here though, so I let the thought go…

We checked back into the Mandarin Pacific in KL and had a rest, then headed out to find the Petronas Twin Towers. On our way down to the Pasar Seni station I smelled cloves in the air and realized that it wasn’t the first time I had smelled them in Malaysia. I guess people here love cloves, and I can’t blame them.

Four stops down the line we got off at a subway stop called KLCC and walked up a few flights of stairs. Walking up the steps from a subway into a new city is always an exciting thing and I recalled my first time walking up to Stockton and Market in San Francisco. I wasn’t sure what to expect here in KL, but what I did see when we walked out was a huge ƒ building. I wasn’t sure what it was but I began photographing it, and as we strafed it I realized that it was in fact one of the two Petronas Towers.

The Petronas Towers were enormous and awesome. I’d never seen such at glorious building before. They were shiny and clean and all of the spaces surrounding them were huge. Huge entryways, huge fountain, huge driveways. Tien and I spent a long while photographing them from near and far, and then went inside to take more photos. Inside on the bottom levels is a four or five story mall. Outside in the back is a large patio with an impressive fountain and an island. We took many many photos and some videos. TIen had never been inside of a shopping mall before and had never seen skyscrapers aside from those in Saigon, which aren’t really skyscrapers so much as tall buildings.

After we got tired from awe at the towers we were hungry, and since mall food tends to suck I resisted the urge to let Tien try Pizza Hut for the first time and we walked a block away and found a better, cheaper restaurant than what would’ve been available at the KLCC mall. I was beginning to feel a little ill in my digestive system, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying two beers and a delicious plate of spaghetti with chicken. Tien got some sort of delicious chicken and rice dish and honey lemonade. We sat and enjoyed our food as it got dark, then returned to the Petronas towers to take some photos of it at night. They are much more impressive at night because of the way they are lit up. Aside from the unique Menara Kuala Lumpur Tower, the rest of the skyline wasn’t even remarkable when compared to these towers.

We were really tired by this point so we got on the train and managed to stay awake. Between the train station and the hotel I began thinking about an old friend I used to work with named Ron Abitbol. Sometimes we had to travel for work to the same places, but we did t work together all that long. Ron lived out of his car about half of the time, and sometimes he’d live in his boat or in an actual dwelling of some sort. He was a unique character, his own man. Some people thought he was weird, and I guess he was. He did his own thing pretty much all the time. Before I had met him he had gone to Mexico for a long time and worked on a boat. He ended up marrying a Mexican girl and bringing her back to America. He would wander all over. I felt like I might be a Ron.

That night I slept unusually poor. The sickness had set in and kept me up frequently. Even so, we ended up sleeping in late and missing breakfast on Thursday morning.

We decided to go to the Batu Caves, a place I’d wanted to see since I saw taka’s photos of it. As we were getting ready a screw fell loose on my glasses like it had back at Angkor wat. We wandered around looking for a micro screwdriver and found an optics shop where a girl tightened the loose screw for me.

A block later we found a small temple and were invited inside. We went in and as I was taking photos I noticed that the battery on my camera was nearly dead. We went back to the hotel and ended up staying there and not going to the caves at all because I felt so ill. Tien went to find some medicine and food. I had told her to get some dried fruit. She returned with medicine, tea and junkfood which she said was the closest thing she could find to fried food. She did have some multigrain crackers though and that was nice.

We napped the afternoon away and when I woke up I was antsy and feeling a little better, but rather than the batu caves we went to Menara KL looking for a geocache.

Two train stops up we began what was a decent walk to the top of a hill. As we got near the cache location a group of monkeys came running up. We took photos of them and watched them play and preen. When a menara security guard finally left we found the cache and dropped off a travel bug I’d found in SF. This was Tiens first geocache.

Since we were at menara we decided to go up into the tower. It was nearly sunset and the views were gorgeous. It really helped me see the space of the city, which was larger than the maps had led me to think.

There were many Islamic families in the tower and many of the women were dressed head to toe in black with just eyes and hands showing. One of them was having her photo taken, which I thought was funny since you couldn’t see almost any of her. It was like taking a portrait of somebody wearing a gorilla suit, it could be anybody. I thought about that custom and the more I thought about it I became slightly offended at it. I couldn’t put my reason into words but I was definitely offended and that was strange since I don’t usually get offended by people’s lifestyles.

We went back down the 1 minute elevator ride, me feeling slightly ill on the way, and at the bottom was a vendor playing with a really neat crazy remote controlled car. I ended up buying it for tiens nieces.

We took a shuttle down the hill to the street. The radio was playing a local Malaysian radio station with pop hits in English. One thing I like about Malaysia is that almost everybody speaks English. On top of that, many of the Malay words are misspellings of english words. For example, restoran, motorsikal, ekspress, monorel, and bas.

I had a hard time staying awake on the train home because I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in a day and was extremely dehydrated due to my ongoing gastrointestinal problems. There was a sign on the train that said “Three seats are reserved for senior citizens, disabled and pregnant ladies. Aren’t we courteous?”

Back at the hotel I noticed the the battery in my LX3 was dead so I plugged it in with a funky 3 prong plug. Back in Vietnam I’d looked at that plug and had nearly thrown it away since my American plugs had been working great everywhere. In malaysia though all power plugs were these and I’d used that cable to charge my Nikon and my laptop.

I was starving by this point so we went for food. I very irritably dragged Tien Through the market and settled on chicken fried rice with sprite, which was very satisfying. We then went to look for some gifts for her family at the market but couldn’t find anything that really stood out and decided to get some perfume once we were back in Saigon since we probably couldn’t bring it on the plane. We headed back to the hotel and packed for our early departure the next day. I always take a long time to pack so I gave Tien On the Road and had her read aloud to me while I packed.

We got to sleep later than I had hoped and 6am came too soon. We hit the train to sentral and arrived at nearly 7, which was a bit later than planned. Even at that time Starbucks was not open and we weren’t going to eat McDonalds so we just got on the KLIA Ekspres and went to the airport with the intention of getting breakfast there. We ended up arriving much later than I had planned and I was a little worried that the lines through passport control would be as long as last time we were here, but the whole process of getting into the international terminal was actually very easy. This ease was the last bit of joy I experienced in Malaysia.

There were pretty much no breakfast places in the airport. I say this from the perspective beyond passport control. After making one of my innumerable uncomfortable bathroom breaks that were the ongoing result of my illness, we went to a cafe and got coffees and a vanilla muffin, which would’ve made a great breakfast if we had time to eat it. Instead we went down the travellators, that’s what they call the moving walkways, and got to our gate. At the gate there were unsurprisingly no places to sit, and surprisingly another xray security checkpoint. I put our coffee, the muffin, my phone, LX3, ipod and the remote controlled car into a tray and passed it through the metal detectors. On the other side I received my electronic devices soaking wet with coffee that had spilled as it went through the machine along with the spoken notice, although it was not written anywhere, that I was not allowed to bring drinks into the gate waiting area. I had run my coffee through the machine and spilled it all over my new camera, phone and iPod for nothing.

I drank some of my drinks and left the rest there, picked up my soggy electronic devices and my muffin and proceeded to the waiting area for our gate, complete with plenty of chairs and absolutely nothing else. This was a place meant for people to wait, yet they could not bring liquids in, and there were no restaurants or even a drinking fountain. I sat there dehydrated from my illness and ate my muffin with no liquid to wash it down.

I then boarded a plane and sat there for over 30 minutes with really irritating music that sounded like french music mixed with banghra being played backwards and a screaming brat in the next seat over. Neither Tien or I could understand a single word spoken by the man who offered us a meal on the plane and we ended up getting a meal that was to me entirely inedible. At least I got a few tablespoons of Sprite.

Malaysian Airlines had bragged about being one of the few five star airlines in the world, but judging from their airport and their air service, I honestly wouldn’t choose them if I am ever given a choice again, and I’ll avoid KLIA or at least plan ahead if I have to go there.

I managed to find some calm by listening to Chicane very loudly and closing my eyes, but as we landed that terrible music came back on and that brat started screaming louder and I felt a little like I was on an airplane straight to hell. We were in Saigon though, so at least that was good.

We landed. I exchanged my ringgits and some Lao money that I still had into dong, slew a few taxi touts and found a good driver to take us to the familiar District 1, Pham Ngu Lao, and the Ruby Star.

My layover between Vientiane and Saigon was Phnom Penh. I thought this would be great because I could call Tien using my Cambodian SIM card and let her know that my flight was an hour late, but she didn’t pick up. We were on the ground for about 15 minutes, then I boarded the same airplane in the same seat and we flew away.

Along with arrival and departure cards for passport control, the spread of H1N1 has prompted governments to require incoming visitors to fill out questionnaires about the state of their health. Previously the questions had been something like “Have you had dizziness, cough, diarrhea, fever, nausea within the last 10 days? What countries have you visited in the last 10 days?”

The Ho Chi Minh airport has had the most outbreaks of H1N1 that I’ve heard of yet which explains their additional diligence. “Have you come in contact with anybody who has had fever, cough, diarrhea, nausea within the last 15 days.” I couldn’t even remember everywhere I’d slept in the last 15 days.

I managed to find the slowest line at passport control. This is something I have a real knack for. I also had done this in Thailand when I was trying to catch a flight that was already boarding and in Laos with the whole pen incident.

As I was walking outside I felt distinctly different from the last few times I was in Saigon and I thought about how much I’d done in the past few weeks that had given me a new confidence in international travel.

As I walked outside Tien was waiting for me in a black blouse and a white skirt, looking beautiful and beaming with joy. I never quite know how I’m supposed to express my feelings within cultural affection allowances, but I managed to find something that was acceptable to show my joy at having her back. She grabbed her sister Mai, who I was not expecting to see, and we went off to find a taxi.

This was where my travel experience came in handy. I cut through the timidness that Tien has, kicked the first taxi driver to the curb and found a ride to the hydrofoil station at a quarter the cost. This is what you learn from getting ripped off at the Saigon airport. “Fool me once, shame on … shame on you. If you fool me… We can’t get fooled again.”

We got to the hydrofoil station and I was quickly reminded how utterly chaotic Saigon traffic is. Smoggy, loud, and chaotic. What sense is there in calmly walking across a six lane river of continuously flowing traffic?

We bought our hydrofoil tickets for the Vina Express to Vũng Tàu, but it wasn’t leaving for over two hours, so we found a place to sit and wait while drinking coffee and eating some noodles. Then it began to rain. Then it began to pour. Then we realized that we would miss the glorious sunset we’d hoped to see from the hydrofoil just as we were to arrive in Vũng Tàu.

The hydrofoil was awesome and pretty freakin quick. It skimmed over the water and made big splashes up onto the window. It was also very agile in the water, so agile that sometimes we thought it’d tip over, but it skimmed by tug boats and ferries and barges and oil rigs down the Saigon River and off into the pacific ocean. A girl came by and told us that because of the weather there were oceanic problems at the port so we’d have to go to a different port and take a bus into town. This frustrated us beyond the mere absence of a sunset, but that’s how travel goes in these places. There was also the standard TV display of random entertainment and most of what we saw was some weird kung fu movie with four people who would wring out a shirt and drink water from it, then use it as a weapon.

Right at dusk we pulled up near a dock in an industrial area a little ways up a calm river just south of Vũng Tàu. It was still gently raining as they made us climb over 3 ships with no planks between them while carrying our bags to get to the actual dock. Tien was still wearing her nice clothes but we managed to cross with few issues. She admitted that she’d dressed poorly for traveling because she wanted to look nice for my return and this was fine by me.

Some of us managed to pile into a bus and fill it completely up while others remained outside in the rain haggling with taxi drivers. Soon it was completely dark, the rain had returned to a pour and we were stuck on a one lane dirt road behind a car that had no driver. I was reminded of those idiots in SF who double park on the train tracks and lock their car then disappear inside of a building. One time I sat on a train for 30 minutes while they towed the car. This time it only lasted 5 minutes though, which was nice because traveling can really wear you out and I’d been traveling all day and had already been off schedule twice.

We arrived at the bus drop off and stood under an awning at the local KFC while people tried to figure out where they were going to stay, then tried to find taxis to take them there. It’s interesting having people who speak the language with you because they can actually get useful information, but this information is rarely passed on to you. I kept flipping back and forth between “let me handle this” mode and “you handle this” mode. In the end Mai found us a place next door to the house of a girl who was trying to find a taxi, so the four of us got in the taxi and headed off. It appeared to be nowhere near the beach by the time we got there on the back streets, but in fact ended up being only two blocks from the beach. We dropped our stuff in the room, took a little rest and went off to find dinner.

After dinner we walked down to the beach. It was great to finally be there… aside from the fact that the waves on the shore were lined with trash, it was beautiful. With Tien on my back we waded about 50 feet out into the warm water and stood there watching the lightning storm that was going on way out in the Eastern Pacific. It felt great to be back at the ocean. I had been by the ocean for the previous year and a half while living in San Francisco, but in the previous two months I was away from it and it was great to have it back. Even more, it was great to be in warm water as opposed to the cold SF Pacific, and it was great to have my girl with me to experience the lightning show, which was reminiscent. It was, I guess, a mix between old good memories and new joys.

The following day we got breakfast and then headed out to a large Christian monument on top of a hill just south of the strip where we were staying. This was the first real Christian anything I’d seen on my trip. There wasn’t a word of english or french on any of the plaques so I have no idea what it was about, but there were angels and moses and cupids and at the top of the walkway up the hill, a huge statue of Jesus with his arms outstretched.

By the top of the hill I was drenched in sweat. I sat with Tien and talked about some of the hardships we faced in getting married and bringing her back to the USA. There are a few big hurdles to pass this month and I wanted to make sure she was still with me on all of our plans. She was, so we were happy. Her sister arrived with a bag of fruit after we’d been there a while, so the three of us sat and ate lychee and rambutan. We stayed at the top for a while, then headed back down the hill and off to the hotel.

Our plan was to clean up and go swimming, but the climb up the hill and the heat of the day had wiped us out, so we ended up falling asleep for an hour or two. This was fine though, we needed it, and afterwards we headed down to the beach. We found three chairs to rent and Mai stayed to watch our things while Tien and I ran off to go play in the water. As it turns out, swimming is not one of the things that is taught in Vietnamese school. Later I had a good conversation with Tien about the differences between an average first world education and an average third world education. The fact that Vietnam is about halfway covered with water yet they don’t teach swimming blew my mind. Tien said that 15 students had died the previous year from drowning while riding a boat to school in heavy rains.

This lack of swimming education made Tien terribly frightened by the waves and it took me a while to chase her through the water and coax her out past the breakers to where the water was more calm. Unfortunately she couldn’t always touch the ground out there. She had seen a photo I took in Ha Long Bay of a boy floating on his back and wondered how he could do that, so I taught her how and in typical Tien style, she learned very quickly. In 15 minutes she was floating on her own as large waves that were on their way to breaking passed her by. We ended the swim lesson, took a few minutes to enjoy the water and the fact that we were finally traveling together, then headed back to the shore to let Mai have her turn in the water.

There were women walking around with eggs and fish and baskets containing metal cans with fire that was boiling water where they would cook you fresh seafood. Many women were walking around with baskets of fresh fruit, and some guy was riding his bicycle by with a huge speaker system on it that made me think of the pillow fight in SF this year. A few people rode down the beach on their scooters. A group of kids next to us had collected a few dozen shells with crabs inside of them and as we were leaving one of the crabs tried to walk its way off the table. A man nearby picked it up before it got off the table and showed it to the group of friends he was sitting with.

Mai, Tien and I headed back to the hotel. The path to the beach is a typical Vietnamese path, which means it is free to ride scooters on and do whatever else you feel like doing on. Some kids were parked on their scooter talking on the phone. One woman was cooking up some weird fish that looked like a flat octopus.

The next day was Monday, but still Sunday in the USA which means I still had time to post my weekly photo set, The (d)SPOT. Because there was an elevator shaft between our room and the AP, I had to sit in the hall next to the elevator to do my work. I caught up with some co-workers and did other assorted online stuff as I was posting my photos. Just as I was finishing up and saying goodbye to some folks, the power went out. At first I thought the AC had just gone off, but then my internet connection was interrupted. I finally verified that it was indeed the power being out by checking the elevator, which was nonfunctional. I thought about how awful it would be to be trapped in an elevator in a small hotel in a third world country and was thankful that I was not.

As I was planning, and thankfully the hackers were keeping up, I was able to jailbreak my iPhone and install network unlocking software on it which would enable me to use it as a phone outside of AT&T’s network. I downloaded the tools to do this and did so while I was also diagnosing and reconfiguring the shoddy wifi signals at my hotel. I was able to successfully unlock my phone while doing nearly all I could do with the wifi network in order to make access at least a little more than non existent to the 4th floor. There was still one huge core change I wanted to make but didn’t want to risk taking down the upper floor networks due to inaccessible 802.11 APs which were acting as chained repeaters rather than point-to-multipoint bridges, which would’ve been more efficient.

In the end I had chat and e-mail worthy and nearly web surf worthy wireless access in my room, and a jailbroken and unlocked iPhone 3g. With that completed, I headed out to get dinner and to find a SIM card to test out the network unlock. I was already to select from a list of about 10 carriers, but my AT&T card wasn’t working on any of them so they were no more use than information on what was available.

I got dinner at a chain restaurant I’ve seen around here called NYDC which serves east coast American food and offers free wifi to its patrons. I had pizza and my first glass of wine in nearly a month as I played with Cydia, which was somewhere between the glory of my first jailbreak experience and the horror of my second. Some of the things I wanted weren’t immediately available, like iPhysics and Trism.

After dinner I walked around looking for SIM cards and ended up at the Siem Reap night market, which was just like the day market but more cozy and warm and quiet, but with still the same “hello sir, can i help you sir, you buy a t-shirt sir” people. I was offered about 50 tuk tuk rides that I didn’t need, motorbike rides which was maybe a first for Cambodia but was frequent in Vietnam, weed and cocaine among countless trinkets and novelties. I was really just out to see it though, just to verify that there wasn’t anything worth seeing beyond the experience of having visited the night markets in Cambodia. Many people were having fun bartering and buying, but progressive minimalists like myself had no business in a place like that. With that in mind I went to a market, bought a bottle of Singha and an international SIM card and headed home.

I stayed up late chatting with Tien and friends who were waking up on the other side of the planet. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to open the tray that held my AT&T SIM card, so I wasn’t able to try it out. That was OK though, in time I’d figure it out. It was more of an educational experience anyway, I didn’t really need it.

In the morning I woke and chatted, listened to music, which had surprisingly been missing in my entire Siem Reap experience, showered and headed out for the much needed coffee and breakfast. I found a restaurant I wished I’d have found a few days earlier. It was a little hole in the wall stall across the street from the more ritzy western restaurants, and they had bread, eggs and white coffee for $2. I was delighted. I also managed to find a cool trick to get the SIM tray on an iPhone open without using a paperclip. Just shove a round toothpick into the hole snugly, then pull the tray out. There is enough grip to open the tray, and so I was able to swap my SIM and being trying out this Asian mobile scene.

I couldn’t figure it out. I forgot which provider was mine, and the girl at the restaurant didn’t know the logo.

I was getting tired of Siem Reap and wanted to leave, so I wandered a block and found a travel agency to check out what options I had for leaving. It turned out I could leave to Bangkok in 3 hours for $145. I went back to my hotel, grabbed my passport and three $50′s, checked the SIM card provider info I’d gotten, headed back to the travel agency to buy my ticket and on the way saw a man at a fruit stand showing a tiny ~.22 caliber pistol to a local boy of about 13. What followed was a hurried series of events which involved me paying for my ticket and handing over my passport, hiring a tuk tuk driver to take me back to the hotel and wait, packing my bags as fast as I could because it was exactly check out time and I had to be at the airport in 30 minutes, checking out, going back to the travel agency to pick up my ticket and passport and then heading straight to the airport. To top it off, my tuk tuk driver barely spoke english and drove a slow tuk tuk which was passed by more than one on the way to the airport.

I was happy though. The rush was a little bit of excitement in my very lazy Cambodian experience, and I was finally leaving Siem Reap. It was a western town with lounges and western restaurants and expensive drinks and meals. I was tired of not being able to look people in the eye, trying to avoid contact with people for fear of being hounded instead of smiling and greeting and talking with people.

On the way out of town I saw a kid with a Che Guevara t-shirt on, which was more interesting in Cambodia since he was a communist who murdered hundreds of innocent people senselessly, just like the Khmer Rouge.

On the way out of down town I set my iPhones cellular network to the one correlating to the SIM card I had and it soon began working. I had a phone for the first time since leaving SF almost 4 weeks ago.

We passed many large hotels, bigger hotels than any downtown, five star resort style hotels. I felt like I was driving through Aspen until I saw a guy on a scooter with about 20 dead chickens hanging by their legs. I then saw a Nikon D200 advertisement and wondered if it had really been there for years.

We arrived just after noon which gave me slightly less than the suggestion of checking in two hours before departure. That was ok though because checking in at the airport, passing through security and passing through Cambodian passport control was easy. There were few people there, it was a tiny airport with only 4 gates and only one was in service. There were 3 flights scheduled within the hour. Prices were astronomical, $3 for a small bottle of water, $3.50 for a can of soda. I bought a bottle of Japanese “wine” and found out it was 20% alcoholic soju after I poured a glass. I didn’t bother finishing the bottle since it tasted like vodka and I had no intention of getting wasted. Plus there were ants crawling on the marble bar.

I decided to use my international minutes while I still had the chance and called My, my friend in Bangkok, and told her I was pretty much on my way there. It was short notice, way shorter than I’d planned on giving her, but it was notice all the same and if she couldn’t pick me up I was planning on finding my own way. Luckily she had nothing going on and said she’d see me soon.

I walked around a bit and looked at the airport. It was a nice building with decent tropical landscaping outside. It felt like the kind of airport you’d see in a tropical resort, and then I remembered that’s pretty much what it was. A sign in the bathroom instructing men not to wash in the urinals reminded me that I was still in a 3rd world country.

I walked around the shops in the airport and as happy that I could actually look people in the eyes without the fear of them aggressively hawking their goods. It was nice. I was tired of having to pass through a crowd as if I saw nobody, it felt alienating and I was the alienator. I took some photos of the airport and as I passed the bar the bartenders teased me about being drunk, but I wasn’t since I hadn’t finished even half of the bottle. It was funny and we laughed about it. I played around with the networks and stuff on my phone, trying to figure out the details of this SIM swapping thing that is so different from the US. At one point two Japanese girls came running by, quickly passed through the gate and ran for an airplane that was out on the tarmac.

I boarded the plane and the flight attendant gave the usual speech about disabling communications devices and I thought about that annoying sound that the iPhone puts into some speaker systems. There was no safety demo and we were quickly in the air. I was sitting underneath the wing with a prop engine outside my window. We had a meal and I ate my first muffin since leaving SF where muffins were a pretty usual breakfast with coffee. I had coffee with my meal and it was the worst coffee I’ve had in years. It reminded me of the hot black tar we’d drink at Actiontec.

As we flew I looked out at the beautiful clouds and remembered my flight from Hanoi. I looked down at the earth and thought about all of the beautiful places that were hidden in those green polygons. I saw the reflection of the sun passing from rice paddy to rice paddy and then the earth disappeared behind a turbulent cloud.

On our descent I noticed that the land surrounding Bangkok was back to the familiar Vietnamese landscape of rice paddies for miles. The next thing I noticed was that people were driving on the left side of the road. I only had time to listen to two orbital songs before I had been told to take my headphones off for landing, the entire flight was less than an hour and at 2:50 I was in Thailand. The new airport in Bangkok is eye catching and modern. Entering the country was very easy and no visa was required.

After passing through passport control I went and found a new SIM card with a phone number that people could call me on. In Thailand, inbound minutes are free. With Skype, you can have an inbound number in any country that they support, and any state in America. I have a California Skype number. I also have an unlimited world calling plan. Those three things together allow people to call my Skype number in California and ring my cell phone in Thailand without incurring any additional fees for international calling. My SIM card also provided data access, which is actually a little irritating since any network activity on my phone will drain my phone balance, and I can’t disable only data. I had a working phone though and I was again thankful that the iPhone cracking team got the 3.0 unlock out just in time for my arrival in Thailand.

I called My on the phone and told her that I was several hours earlier than I had expected and she said she’d be at the airport in 15 minutes. In the time between I walked around and took in the crowd. There were many beautiful girls, many fashionable people, many people who looked like transvestites, and many girls who looked manly kinda scary and made me wonder about this sex change capital of the world.

My was there in the 15 minutes she said and her father whisked us away in a luxury Toyota sedan. I hadn’t been in a car that wasn’t a Saigon taxi in a long time. The highway system was very modern, the airport surroundings were very modern, the landscape was clean. This was very 1st world and it was odd. There wasn’t a single scooter around, which made sense since we were going over 120km/h. When we got off the highway though things started to look more familiar. I saw some bicycles and scooters and cement apartment buildings that weren’t painted and it felt like the SE Asia I know.

My’s family’s place was more modern though, more like what I’d expect to find in Korea given the Korean movies I’ve seen. It was a three story building with air conditioning, several laptops set around on desks, wifi, and a Wii. There was a book called “Engineering Mechanics Dynamics 11th Edition” that was full of complex mathematical algorithms with diagrams applying the principles to real world things like cranes and roller coasters. There was a piece of paper inside with a hand sketched on it and delicate decorations around the word “sleep” and I could tell what My’s classes for her automotive design major were probably like.

We played on her hacked Wii for a bit, did a round of golf and a round of bowling and played Wario something else that was really crazy, then she, her father Max and her sister Mint went to dinner. I hadn’t had a Thai meal in about a month. I quit eating Asian food a week before leaving San Francisco in order to get my fill of American foods so that I wouldn’t crave them, but I love Thai food and had been anticipating eating here. It was delicious. I got a desert and it was also delicious. It was heavenly. I can’t wait to eat again.

We talked about school and America mostly. Mint is My’s younger sister and she will be going to the USA in a few years for a foreign exchange program. This is the same program that introduced My to Alaska and my aunt Wendy, which is how I met her. My said that she travels 2 hours one way to get to school, which I think is ridiculous.

After dinner we walked around a little sidewalk market and then went home to do what any wired, high tech group of people does; we geeked out. They have a room that they keep air conditioned where most everything happens. There’s a TV, refrigerator, a few computers, cups, a sound system, a few couches, a few guitars, a bunch of desk toys, etc.. Basically a really playfully packed office living room kitchen. The cool room reminded me of my grandmother’s sitting room in Texas where she would sit and cross-stitch while watching the discovery channel or the movie channel.

My friend George helped me test out the inbound calling setup that I had rigged with Skype and it worked great. We talked for about 30 minutes about life and what we’ve both been up to and it was good to catch up with an old friend one-on-one, essentially off the grid. It was also great to have at least the inbound function of my phone working again. It is also good to be in Thailand. I wasn’t really sure what to expect since I’d heard so much about it and it has so many different reputations. I’m still not entirely sure what to expect, or even what I’ll do tomorrow since My is going to be busy all day, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out. There are certainly more options here than in Siem Reap.

At 5:30 yesterday three long shadows headed for the bus to Saigon. Thu, Tien’s sister, saw Tien and I off. One week after arriving in Binh Hoa we were headed back to Saigon, back to the airport.

One earbud and one earplug each, Tien and I lost ourselves in music as our bus flowed through mixed currents of scooters and buses through city streets and country fields, stopping a few times to exchange passengers with the outside world. At one stop I saw a slender american looking girl appearing somewhat lost, standing next to a bus and chatting with a metropolitan looking Vietnamese girl. I didn’t get a chance to talk to her, though I would’ve liked to see what she was doing out in An Giang.

I saw a man on a bicycle with a trailer that said “hamburger” and was carrying two panes of window glass.

When we arrived at a ferry building some vendors poked into the bus selling sweet corn on the cob and tortillas and for a moment I forgot what continent I was on. As the ferry approached the far side of the river the bus driver turned on a light and yelled something back to Tien. “We need to pay more because you are a foreigner.” I didn’t care much to argue about it, and later when I gave the driver 50,000 more he took it and went to eat.

We went on listening to music and driving through the night. On my left, Tien fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, and the stranger on my right did the same. I couldn’t sleep though, these seats were made for short people so I got no head rest. My neck was hurting and my head kept falling back. We drove a long way, sometimes down dirt roads with one lane bridges. There were countless bridges, including the beautiful My Thuân bridge.

Eventually we made it to Saigon and found a taxi to take us back to the house we stayed at on my first night in Vietnam. Two familiar faces unlocked the iron gate and let us in. By this time it was 11pm and we had to wake up at 3:30am. This didn’t stop Tien and I from staying up late saying goodbyes and sharing the last of the time we’d have together for a long time.

The morning came too early and as soon as I was done showering a taxi was waiting outside to take us to the airport. The streets of Saigon were very empty at 4am, so it was a quiet, dark ride. I kept thinking of Late Night Alumni’s Sunrise Comes Too Soon.

When we arrived at the airport we found our contact at the travel agency. He gave me a bright orange bag and a bright orange hat which I had no idea what to do with. I managed to stick them in my luggage though, I thought they might come in useful. Despite wishing me well a few times, Tien stayed with me until I was right at the security checkpoint, which is fantastically easier to manage than american airports. I gave her a 500,000 bill, said a final goodbye and stepped through security.

She had been my translator and guide from the time I had stepped out of the secure area, and here I was back inside it, once again without her, headed to Hanoi. I thought about this while I was sitting at the terminal, thinking about how she was probably crying in the taxi on the way back to the bus station.

I slept on the flight, somehow, and before I knew it I had landed in Hanoi and was out walking around in the terminal, wondering where the hell to go. I didn’t see anybody with a sign that looked familiar, or any of the folks from the tour that had been on the flight. I decided to put on my orange hat, and no sooner had I done so than a man was welcoming me and telling me to sit and wait for the rest of the group to arrive.

So I did. I sat and waited. I ate a Snickers bar and drank a Sprite. I read some of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I wrote most of this.

Waiting for airplanes is always the same, they just can’t arrive soon enough, but then you know you’ll just be stuck on it for a long time anyway, so what difference does it make? It’s a waiting game… So you wander around, look at cute girls and wonder what music they’re listening to, hack on the wifi network, check your phone a million times, and blog about how waiting for airplanes is always the same.

(posted from my phone, which is why it’s so short. I’ll pay for wifi when I get to Tokyo.)

I am currently sitting in the check-in area of SFO’s international area, waiting. I’m a little underwhelmed by having to wait in this boring section of the airport, but Lisa may come visit me before I pass through security so I have to wait out here.

I managed to pack all of my things into a small frame backpack (the Osprey Atmos 35) and despite it being slightly larger than regulation for carry-on baggage, the cute Japanese girl at ANA said I could carry it on.

Last night I slept well, deep, with little or no stressful worry. When my body began waking up it was only 5:30am or so. It’s weird, but ever since I moved out of my apartment and essentially became homeless, I have become a morning person. I’ve been living in my car for a month now and I’m still getting used to my body wanting to wake up early. This morning I just fought it and tried to sleep more, but ended up just tossing and turning and feeling achy until 7. I finally woke up, let droog off the leash so he could run around, took some photos, said goodbye to Will and Maks and then got in my car with Lila driving.

We stopped for gas and coffee down in Saratoga. When the barista asked me how I was doing I said “Great! I quit my job and I’m flying to Asia!” It feels good to excitedly state exactly what I’m doing in life, even when it’s mundane, but when it’s something big it carries a little extra weight and helps me realize the whole situation.