This is all happens pretty much right next to Hong Kong

              Ok so I guess the first thing you need to know about this is I am on the tail end of a thirty day challenge.  I am trying to get in 30 minutes of cardio five times a week for thirty days, and I am just about done, easier than I thought it would be actually.  I found out last week that the British Council would have Saturday and Sunday off as my building would be closed those days.  Those being my busiest days and my regular weekend being Thursday Friday old God happenstance went and gave me the old adventure allowance nudge.  Four days drinking beer and looking at the inside of my apartment?  No.  Four days of crazy awesome solo hiking time?  Yeah sure ok.

                I had just a few days to hastily throw this thing together, I borrowed a tent from Ingrid at work, she told me the coolest hiking was section two of the MacLehose trail in Kowloon.  I got me a hiking guide and made some plans then next thing you know I was off like a shot Thursday morningish.  I got up that morning at 7 am, went and had breakfast at the veggie place, then went back to bed till about 9:30.  I was on the ferry leaving Lamma at 10, and found another teacher I work with name a Paul to brag to about the whole thing.  I was all ‘Guess where I’m going’ and he had to teach, his weekend is Monday Tuesday. 

                The only ferry from Lamma goes to Central in Hong Kong, from there I hiked to the subway and rode it all the way to Northern Kowloon. 

Here is what happened on the subway.

I had to take the red line across, or under the bay.  Then, I got off and connected to the green line to get to North Eastern Kowloon.  I had a massive hiking backpack with a tent tied to the bottom.  I sat down and pulled out the hiking book to see what to do next.  A lady across from me got up and sat next to me.

She smiled and asked me what I was doing.  I love talking to people on my journeys so I explained where I was going, that I was camping, and I showed her in the map. 

Then she goes “take me with you”

“uh, say what?”

“Please, please, I want to go with you.”

She had pleading in her eyes.  I was completely speechless and a bit freaked out.  I pointed out that she was wearing sandals with wooden elevated soles.  She was wearing a business outfit with a dress.  She smiled and said that it didn’t matter.

“I don’t care.  I just want to go with you.  I want to go where you go.”

I didn’t know what to do here, this had literally never happened.  At my stop I was trying to tell her that I didn’t even know her. 

“I am Ada, you will know me if I come with you.”  I told her that I would be gone for three days, she said she had nowhere to be.  She kept pleading with me.  She followed me off the train to the turnstyle.  I guess at first it seemed sort of cool, like maybe this was a new adventure that came out of nowhere.  Pretty soon I decided no, this bitch is crazy.  I noticed that she was not blinking, ever.  She kept pleading with me.  I told her again no, she wanted to know why and I said I didn’t know her.

“I am Ada, you will get to know me if I come with you.”

I told her that she didn’t even know me.  She said yes she did, she said “You asked me if I was ok and you were so nice to me.”  In our entire ten minute relationship this had not happened.  Then I noticed that she was getting upset.  She demanded to know why I wouldn’t let her come.

“Because I don’t know if you won’t wait till we are in the woods and kill me.”  She didn’t laugh, I wasn’t all the way kidding. 

She gave me her number and demanded that I call her.  I told her I would, she then said something else that I didn’t hear because I was running like hell in the other direction.  I suppose a younger and dumber me would have agreed to her coming being that I had no spine and I would have found myself stuck for three days in the woods with Ada.  I sort of wonder now if she just rides the subway looking for guys to go camping with.  Good luck Ada.  You might do better to just go get a tent, but then I get the impression that she was already camping without the tent if you know what I mean.

                So I took the right bus to the right stop, then changed to another bus and went to the right stop and got a taxi to take me to the start up point of section two.  Ingrid has done most of this thing and swore to me that section two was the best, man she wasn’t kidding.

                The taxi took me through section one, which (also as Ingrid had told me) looked boring.  It was a long street that went next to a very beautiful reservoir.  It would have been a great spot for roller blading or a bike ride, but not really backpack hike camping.  Finally we got to the end of the road and found a lonely pavilion with a dirt path leading upwards behind it.  I paid the taxi which promptly left me alone looking up at a mountain, just me, my backpack and a cool breeze. 

                I started with Iron Maiden, the sound track from flight 666 which is all live stuff.  I knew I had a long walk ahead and I needed to gear myself up.  I walked up the hill and along a ravine and found myself looking down on a lush green valley with the whitest sand beach you ever seen.  Amazing blue water splashing up on the white sand, no human anywhere.  Imagine, it took me less than an hour to get here from down town Hong Kong.  Go ahead, you tell me of the largest cities in the world which of them has more preserved perfect nature just closer than Hong Kong.  It is absolutely mind blowing, my country would have ruined all of this with hotels and highways long ago, but the Hong Kongers (and maybe the British too) said no, we can have the busiest port in the world here, but lets leave this shit over here alone, it’s so pretty.

                It’s been a few years since I thought about it, but I was once again forced to change my list of the prettiest places I have ever been.  Here it goes, in no particular order:

Caroline’s lake house in North Georgia

The campus of SIT in Vermont

Fez in Morocco

The great wall

Ijen volcano in Java

Toba in Sumatra

This place (section 2 of MacLehose trail)

Angkor Watt

Yang Shou in South China

The Moreland Starlight drive-in

And there is my list. 

After the first beach the trail started going up really fast and steep.  I was having a lot of trouble, each step seemed impossible.  I had a timer, and gave myself 8 minutes walking and 2 minutes rest and stuck with that all the way up the mountain, I guess it took a little over an hour to climb the whole thing.  I figured out half way up that the bag was way too heavy, not to mention I am way too heavy.  It was taking major effort to left and put on, sweat was pouring from my face in drops and my heart was exploding.  But slowly and surely I made it to the top, which was a pavilion and amazing views on all sides of mountains and blue blue ocean.  I hung out there for a while taking it all in.  And then just to show the mountain what for I did fifteen push-ups, which is a new thing I think I want to start doing when I get to tops of difficult mountains, just to show the damn mountain who is boss.  I am boss of mountains.  ME!

                The hike down took me to a peak where I could see three new perfect sand beaches with waves lapping up separated by small mountains.  I could see the entire expanse of coastline that I would be walking for the next few days, it was a truly amazing view.  An hour later I was at down the mountain at the first beach.  There was a very small village there, and I had diner at a local café next to a surf shop run by Aussies.  I asked the Aussies if they if they thought nobody would care if I slept on the beach, they told me it was cool.  They lent me very thin ground mats to sleep on too, which was way cool.  The old man at the café had absolutely zero level English, which in an odd way I have missed living in Hong Kong where so many people are perfectly fluent speakers.  I enjoy communication that is a challenge, and was able to use a little Cantonese that I have picked up.  Not much mind you, but enough to get what I needed.  A nice bowl of noodles and a large beer later I was pitching my tent on the beach.  And even though it had been years since I slept in a tent I fell right asleep like a baby.

                The next day I thought would be easier, I gave all my food making gear to the old man.  The small pot I bought was way too heavy, and the packs of ramen noodles with piled together was also a lot of weight.  I was now foodless and foolishly off into the hills just me and my backpack. 

                I hiked from early in the morning starting at about 7.  I had planned on meeting my friends Luke and his wife Namu at the next beach over, they wanted to surf and I wa ted to learn.  I got word that Namu wasn’t feeling well and they were out, so instead of hanging around that beach I just hiked.  I went up slow gradual hills that day, which were much easier especially after shedding all the extra cooking stuff.  The bag was now light and the walk was wonderful.  Butterflies  darted across the path all day of all colors imaginable, eagles flew through the valley and really pretty birds sang to me the whole way.  My guide book spoke of a youth hostel, which I found and went to check out.  I finally got there and it sat up a hill over-looking a lush empty bay with mountains shooting straight up on all sides.  A guy was in the walk way and demanded to know what I wanted.  It turns out that if you don’t prebook someplace he can’t let me stay, and I can’t just walk in.  So turned away and rejected I had to figure out something else.  He also didn’t have any sort of kitchen, he was completely closed.  My lunch wound up being rice cakes and carrots, which was not what I was hoping for but perfect fuel to burn.             

                The guide book said that sections 3 and 4 were rated as a 3 in difficulty, which is the maximum.  Section 2 is a 2 meaning in between too easy and death march.  I had thought of using the hostel as a place to drop my bags and then go do the hard parts without carrying the tent and the gear, but no dice.  For a while I tried to get myself psyched about what I knew perfectly well would be a hellishly long day for me.  The   book managed to work into every paragraph words like ‘strenuous’, ‘steep’, ‘elevation’, ‘incline’, ‘rock stairs’ and ‘concrete stairs’.  Sounds like at the top there is a hell of a view and I would feel so cool having done it, but I also felt pretty cool doing the easy or at least midway easy parts too.  At the end of section 2 instead of heading on I hopped a bus to town to get some real grub.  There I had the brain flash that I could take a bus to most any part of the 100 km MacLehose trail.  Instead of killing myself or instead of ending it all a day too soon I opted to take a bus to another bus to another taxi and try out section 5, which started at a campsite.  So that is what I did, the taxi dropped me off in a very empty and very well maintained campsite at the start of section 5 which was also rated 2 in difficulty.  It was like a camp site suburb of perfectly flat patches of mowed grass next to bathroom facilities, all numbered, all neat.  I wandered around and found the office, which was closed.  Then I found the grounds keeper who seemed surprised to see me.  He told me that I needed to phone ahead to schedule a reservation, just like the youth hostel.  It was now 5 in the evening, I had been hiking all day with little food and no shower, and I was being turned away.  I tried not to show my frustration, but I really hate suffering at the hands of a beurocrat.  One thing my travels have shown me though, I never really know the full story.  Either he is just saying no as he was trained, even though he has at least thirty perfect spots or maybe he could lose his job or something, I don’t know.  I do know that by turning me away he was forcing me to go find some spot in the national forest to set up my own camp, which seems to me to be throwing out the baby with the bath water on his part.  But move on I did.

                The sun was sinking.  I got to the bottom of that hill and found a sign that said read ‘Tate’s Pass’ which is where the book told me I should go.  I followed the sign and it took me straight down a concrete road, down down down.  Better than up, I figured.  Soon I realized that hadn’t seen any trail markings in a while and I didn’t feel like it was the right way.  But I had been going straight down for 20 minutes and the way back up would have been an endless hell I had no energy to even think about.  I found a house and started to the drive way to ask for help but three dogs crossed my path.  The first one barked, the second one growled, and the third one said ‘keep it moving, buddy.’  So I kept heading down.  At the bottom of the hill was a dirt lot surrounded by jungle.  I was lost, hungry and the sun was sinking. 

                A mini van pulled up, it was as out of place as an army tank would have been.  I waved them down, they wanted to know where I was going.  I guess the guy who lived in the house with the dogs called these guys to investigate.  They told me that all the way on top of that road up near the sign I was supposed to do a u turn that I had missed.  I smiled my best dumb shit smile and asked if I could get a ride up the mountain.  They said no, well the one guy who spoke English in the back seat said no.  He said it was not their van, they were working so they could not give me a ride.  So I nodded, again rejected, and sorrowfully started up that hill.  Fifteen minutes later I was sitting on the side of the road.  I didn’t want to go up, didn’t know where I would sleep and was getting hungry.  I heard a car coming so I stood up to try to thumb a hitch.  It was the same van of guys waving for me to get in!  Hurray, people are cool after all!  They gave me a ride up, the one who spoke English wanted to know why I travel alone, and I had no answer. 

                So I found the trail, it was amazing again but I was in too much of a hurry to enjoy things.  The very first flat place I saw the nasty shirt came off, and I started with the tent.  It was at the bottom of a hill, which is the last place you want to camp if it rains.  It was literally touching the trail, but I was beaten.  An old Englishman passed by, I greeted him with a smile while throwing my tent together.  It was now long shadow twilight.  The Englishman had the sort of accent you would associate with people who played cricket.  He didn’t like my campsite.

“Why don’t you go to the top, there will be a shelter there and possibly other chaps camping as well.”

Apparently the hill at which I found myself at the bottom of had nice spots on the top, so I thanked him as he left and I again started packing up my stuff for what I promised myself would be the last climb of a long day.

                At the top I found the ruins of a Japanese WWII fortress.  Concrete platforms overgrown with ivy and vines with stair going to over grown jungle.  I found the Englishman there, he had staked out a place and suggested I do the same.  I found a spot near the trail where dirt had grown over the concrete giving me a nice padding. 

                After setting up my tent I made a very controlled, very safe, very small camp fire and roasted hotdogs that I had picked up earlier that day in town.  I ate them in rolled up white bread with rice I had picked up to go at a place in the same town.  Then I tried to fall asleep but couldn’t.  Hikers kept going past my tent and shining their flashlights on me all night waking me up.  One group that was particularly loud shined a light on my tent and said

“anybody home?”

And as loud and angry as I could muster I went “YES, WHY?”  and they left me be.  It was a long night that made my back hurt and everything smelled like campfire.

                The third day I set out early without eating.  I hiked down the hill and was on a street overlooking the back of Kowloon and across the water to Hong Kong.  It was the first I had seen buildings in all this time, and the first reminder that the whole time I was literally next to one of the biggest cities in the world.  It was early Saturday morning and the whole way was littered with older Chinese couples doing their Saturday morning exercise walk.  They all smiled and greeted me jou san, or good morning. 

                I ate a bowl of noodles with egg at a café that had pictures of every famous Hong Kong actor you can think of sitting with the owner of the place.  This Kowloon overlook has been used in tons of movies and the crew always eats at this noodle house.

                The rest of the day I walked next to the same Kowloon overlook.  It was beautiful but after a while it felt like a Hanna Barbera cartoon where Tom and Jerry run past the same back ground on loop over and over.  The hills were all short and steep and regular, but none took more than 15 minutes.  By the end of the day I was getting sick of them.  I was happy to be still hiking, but this section was not as nice as the last two days.

                My feet really started hurting at the ankles and my calves just didn’t want to anymore.  Each step hurt, and after climbing all day I started going down steps all day which was hurting worse.  The middle of the trail was woodsy and rolling and fun.  There were lots of Japanese caves and pillboxes.  The views of Kowloon were glorious, but I was getting sore and tired.  Soon I got low on water, and by about noon I was ready for a lunch that I knew wasn’t coming.  I started getting slower and slower.

                I was in the last stretch and just felt over it.  I was walking and heard rustling in the trees above where monkeys were dancing from limb to limb.  I had been seeing monkeys a lot that day.  They were the nasty near people kind, so I tried to keep my distance.  Wild monkeys don’t want to be anywhere near people, but here the tourists feed them so the monkeys will follow them around like domesticated dogs.  As I was passing under the tree I felt a very warm, I will say hot liquid hitting my elbow.  In the instant that I felt it I saw a puddle forming under my arm.  A jump and spin around later and I saw the dirty little monkey bastard on the tree above me pissing and grinning at me.  I was too tired to shake a fist, I just kept walking.

                Finally I got to the end and caught a cab back to Central where I got a boat home to Lamma island.  I got off the boat and sat at a café still stinking of three days camping and monkey piss and ordered a pizza to go and a beer.  I noticed people were giving me the look, you know the one, the you smell like monkey piss look.  Well maybe you don’t, I sure as hell do.

                The pizza went faster than a pez would, the clothes were off, the shower was amazing, then I slept for 16 hours. 

And today I haven’t done much.  The feet are starting to feel better though.

Stormy weather

Blog

                Life sure is nice these days.  Things are just fine.  The day to day has been keeping me fairly busy which is why it has been a little while since I wrote to you guys, sorry.  I live in Hong Kong now, and in the first week I found myself with a new job, a new city, a new language, homeless and looking for a new pad, and a new empty page pregnant with adventures to come. 

               

                The first week of work seems like a hundred years ago now, maybe it was I lose track.  A whole group of us started at the same time.  First day nervous awkward conversation grew into a real comradery  in that first two weeks.  We were all put up in a hotel on the British Council’s dime.  It was a pretty nice place too.  It was in Wan Chai, which is a great sleazy seedy red light and western pub district.  At night the streets are lined with ex pats bouncing from bar to bar, Monks asking for donations in their saffron robes, and hookers calling to everyone that walks by from dark door-ways.  As I came to know the other newbies we started exploring the area by night, it seems like every single imaginable sort of food is packed into Wan Chai and all of them become jumping night spots.  I found a great restaurant there called the American house of Peking food.  There isn’t a single American thing in that place, but anything on the menu is the best Chinese food you can imagine.  The waiters are all old men in white button down short sleeve shirts and black ties.  I think they and the place have been there since the 60s.  And on the cheap there are little duck kitchens all over the place where you get a pile of duck and noodles for dead cheap. 

                An interesting thing in Hong Kong, they sit people at seats as they come in.  So if you are one person they put you sitting at a table with strangers.  I take the opportunity to have a nice meal with new people who are treated to the gift of my wonderful company, I am so good.  I had a great time with an Indian man over gyros.  He was out there hawking phones on the street and was able to get his family to come out from India.  We talked for a long time and when the meal was over I was sorry it had to end.  A lot of times though you get sat with people chatting away in a language you don’t know.  That’s why you study the local tongue, always.  Even if you suck at languages like me I find if you make an effort and are ok with people laughing at you everyone really seems to appreciate it.

                I quickly found that I was in the company of some really great folks with the rest of the new folks.  It almost feels like cheating, usually when you are in a new place you feel alone and eager to make friends and feel overwhelmed sorting things out by yourself.  Here we all became great friends on the first day and have a sort of gang.  We have taken over one corner in the teacher’s room and I really get the impression somehow that we have brought a new energy into the place.  Everyone has been super cool about including us in things and everyone has proven themselves to be super cool in general, it’s a good place.

                The British Council in Hong Kong is a seven story high rise that is all school.  The entire top two floors are just for staff, and we are 120 teachers strong.  Of those 120 three are Americans, and one of the other two has had to go home for personal reasons.  I see the other one every once in a while. I don't feel out of place, but sometimes it is a bit strange to be the only one.

                That’s the other thing, all weekend I do kids classes, and I do a lot.  Most of the kids classes are so wonderful, I am so funny, the kids are laughing and running around and having a great time.  I have two classes full of kids that are not as much fun.  One is full of zombie children forced to go to school on Saturdays, a great injustice of the universe.  Another is just all bonkers boys who just will not let me think, god bless them they make me want to jump out the window.  But that’s my job and I love it.  The rest of my week is a bit lighter and mainly teens and adults.  The students here are really cool and I have already learned so much about Hong Kong culture just by talking with them. 

One night Me and Rain (my wonderful Filipino Macao cocktail waitress) found an amazing Indonesian Filipino and Malaysian joint called Cinta J’s.  She took one look at the menu and freaked out, we ordered so much Filipino stuff, including a massive bowl of beef soup that is called something like Bulibula I think.  Whatever it was called it was good stuff, and a bulibula by any other name.

                So there was a stage in the corner and on the stage was a woman wearing a 1980s workout liatard with leggings and a sweat band.  She had a very out flaming gay dude on the keys who in an effortless falsetto was hitting notes octaves above where could go.   They did mostly Celine Dian stuff and Lionelle Richie and Top gun sound track kind of vibe. 

                After a while an older lady came to the stage, the regulars at Cinta J’s seemed to know her based on their applause.  She took the mic and instead of singing she went into a long and stern lecture about how what happened there last night could not happen again and such behavior would not be tolerated and those people should be ashamed.  It was not clear if the people she was talking about were even in the room or what they had done, but this lady was not cool with whatever it was.  Then once she had said her peace she left the stage and the band went into ‘I don’t know much, but I know I love you’ as performed by Aaron Nevile and Linda Ronstadt and nailed it.

                A few weeks later I convinced the other guys that they had to come and check this place out, it was a Monday.  That night there was a full band; guitar, drums, bass, trumpet and one dude had a key-tar.  They were great, the lead singer was a short bald middle aged guy who was clearly drunk off his tree.  The people in the audience didn’t seem to mind and started coming up and singing on the mics karaoke style.  An old Chinese man got up and did an amazing version of I couldn’t dance with another by the Beatles, an old woman and did duets with the drunk band leader.

                After a while the band leader took things done a notch.  Very mournfully, he started explaining “I used to sing here on Saturday night, Friday night sometimes.  Sunday night sometimes.  Those were such good crowds.  Then the boss he said I have to sing on a Monday, and I think that it won’t be so good, I think the crowd won’t be as good.”

So here we were expecting the turn around, here we were all expecting him to tell us how wrong he was and how great we were as a crowd. 

“And so I said ok, I will sing on Mondays.  And the crowd is so bad.  You are not a good crowd.  I hate it.  I wish I was singing on Saturday again.”

And everyone cheered, and they went into another song.  As I left for the ferry he was singing you are so beautiful to me and he was really selling it.  Now everyone in the gang says they want to go back and see that guy on a Monday to try to cheer him up.

I got a place out on Lamma island which is 20 minutes away from Hong Kong island by ferry.  It takes me about an hour to get to work, but I feel it’s well worth living on a beautiful island.  There are two beaches, both amazing if you can ignore their proximity to the massive power plant that looms over the scene.  I have hiked to the other side, which is a lovely walk through the island jungle.  I went on a side trail and was deep in the forest.  When the trees cleared I could see across the small piece of ocean to the back side of Hong Kong island with all it’s sky scrapers.  At night the crickets chirp here, there are 18 different kinds of snakes and I have already had to deal with foot long centipedes.  Apparently I had the good kind because it was black, the red ones are deadly poisonous. 

                Twice a day I go sit in the back of the ferry and let the sea toss me around.  The back is open and outside, so beautiful.  Sometimes in the mornings I use the time to practice my Cantonese, sometimes I let my mind wander.  Sometimes after a long day I let myself drift into a nice sleep, rocked like a baby in the arms of the sea and when I wake up I am in paradise again, I am home. 

                Three weeks ago there was a typhoon, and the news was selling papers by calling it, get ready because I want you to think about this one, the worst storm in the history of this year.  Not the worst storm this year, mind you, not dramatic enough.  It was a Sunday and I was teaching teenagers.  I had already told them, if this thing hits I am gonna get the hell outta here.  Gonna get the hell outta here is the sort of English they need to learn I guess so that’s what I told them.  School is not canceled until they call T8 which means it is a level 8 storm.   A student told me he had gone on his phone and saw that they were just about to call it.  Ten minutes later the senior teachers came into my room and told me to go, they try to evacuate the island people first.  We all scrambled running out the door for a cab to the ferry.  On the way the cab driver told us no more ferrys tonight, which meant that we would be stuck in a hotel room until the storm blows over.  When we got to the ferry we found out that there was one more boat and we were so happy.

                I might never forget the ride home that night.  It was bright day when we started and dark as pitch 20 minutes later.  When we got into the open sea the entire boat started to do the watoosie.  It came and went and came again.  White knuckles where hanging on, the brain going places I didn’t want it to, I opened my third can of beer.

                We came into the dock and they tried to tie us in, but it was like trying to lasso a steer.  The boat lands next to a long pier lengthwise, a rope is tied at the bow and the stern.  Once they tied it down that night was when it got really bad.  It reminded me of an animal fighting captivity, the boat started to rock faster and faster.  A lady I work with who has lived on Lamma for 25 years started to make a dash for the stairs but was caught hanging on with both hands to the railing when the boat started to lurch.  It got worse and worse, we must have been riding that thing for 10 minutes.  A man who worked on the dock came into the control room near where we were sitting and, although I have no idea, based on my interpretation of body gestures and listening to the sounds figured he was begging the driver to take the whole tub back to Hong Kong Island, this wasn’t even close to safe.  And again, without understanding a word I could tell the driver screamed something to the tune of NO DICE back at the guy and went back to the wheel. 

          The boat was basically rocking on it's axis violently.  When the boat rocked one way the window on the second floor of the ferry was getting closer and closer to looking higher and higher.  We were not gonna flip, not really even close, but the angle was progressing in that direction, and the other way it was getting closer and closer to Underwater. And the motion started to make me sick, and I wondered how I was gonna get home.  The boat let up for a minute and I ran for the stair way down but it started again.  I just plopped my ass down on the stair and hung on to the railing.  I could see the gang plank that we was to take us to safety raising into the air and slamming on the ground.  Finally the rocking started to slow and someone hollered to go for it, so in a mad pack of panic I ran with the rest.  When I hit solid ground I tuned and saw the ones that were still on the boat, many friends.  They were standing trying to keep balance as the boat started lurching again.  I stood by the plank with the dock workers, when people ran off I grabbed them and moved them along, making sure they didn’t fall. 

                Finally the last of us were off, I saw a couple coming to get on trying to get to Hong Kong island.  One man who worked for the ferry company stood in the door way with a face that knew he had another ride across the T8 with the ferry coming.  The two people got on and off the boat went.

                The wind was blasting the island, siding was loose on buildings and smacking, the rain had better pressure than my shower.  I ran up and down the main drag of the town looking for tape to tape xs on my windows, I saw my neighbors doing the same and thought they may be onto something.  But the stores were all closing, even though the bars were full of yahoos and yo yos that were gonna ride this thing out.  Me I went home and crawled into bed.  My bedroom is small and has no windows. I could hear the howling wind outside, and I poured myself a nice glass of red and settled into a book.  At midnight I got up and went out on my terrace, the water in the ocean was furious, the trees were quaking.  It was powerful and in the truest sense of the word awesome.  The next day I missed my morning class but taught at night. Typhoons come and go in Hong Kong.

                What else, what else. 

                Luke is a dude from New Zealand.  He and his Thai wife Namu and I have been exploring.  We try to find places to wander around and we go whenever we can.  On Thursdays we have been going to museums lately.  We did the space museum, which was cool but a bit aimed at little kids, and the history museum.  I had been to the Hong Kong history museum the first time I came here, and it is worth a visit I would say.  Two weeks in a row we went to the Science museum, each time on a Thursday, each time realizing when we get there that it is closed on Thursdays. 

                A Scottish dude and I went to the Bruce Lee museum, well that is to say we wandered around aimlessly and had adventures on our way to the Bruce Lee Museum.  We were trying to speak what little Cantonese we know to people, and usually the people would look at us like were we’re crazy and just answer in perfect English.  The Bruce Lee museum is inspiring, it has hand drawn and hand written notes Mr. Lee made on the subject of jet kung do.  I was a few feet away from the yellow jumpsuit worn in game of death.

                Today we have the day off work for the Chinese day of the dead festival where they commune with their ancestors.  I have invited people around for a barbeque at my place, they will be showing up in a couple of hours.  I got a ton of beef and lamb, the fish here is a bit on the pricey side.  I got me a new grill that I gotta put together, and everyone gets all bothered if I call it a grill.  It’s a barbeque in England.  Now I know how Georganna’s husband Andy felt when I gave him a hard time for asking if something was on offer at a store.  Happens to me all the time, all the time. 

                But I got the place nice and clean, no it wasn’t too hard I keep things pretty tidy here.  It is drizzling a little, I hope it don’t rain, but otherwise I got no worries.

So things are good here.  Life is nice here and things are fine.

One night and one day in Japan

Guess what, I am in Tokyo.
I got this beer from a vending machine.  I am in the top floor of the Ace inn in downtown Tokyo at 2 am on the nose.  I had a bit of bother coming in, as I expected, the hour plus subway ride from Haneda airport wouldn't happen, I got in just around 11:30 just as the last trains had already stopped, they told me. I made the instant decision that it was well worth blowing a hundred bucks on a taxi to get to my hostel when the other option was staying in the airport overnight and not making it to town.  I will not remember that whatever happens tomorrow costed a hundred bucks to get to in ten years, but I promise that barring severe head trauma I will remember whatever I wind up doing with my one day in Tokyo. The expensive taxi ride started after some explanation, and a few drawings that helped the taxi driver know where to take me.  He jammed the gas and we flew from the airport with g force speed.  Dark Tokyo sleeping neighborhoods shot past my window and in my head I saw visions of all the films I have seen from Japan live action and otherwise.  Here I was in country 11, which isn't so many countries for some people I know but a lot to show for my five years doing it.  I sank into the back seat and took it in.  I popped the mp3 player to Bruce Springsteen's born to run album and the ride got me through a good half of the songs.  If you know the born to run album (and if you don't that is your homework) than you understand that those songs build and build to crescendos and take their time getting there, we found my hostel at about mid way through that album.
So at this very moment
  I am sitting on the top floor of the hostel, it is a real back packery place, the first I have been to in a while.    These are places that have common rooms with guide books handy and maps on the walls.  The staff is fluent in English and super helpful and the walls are often bright neon colors.  This one in particular has 25 dorm beds in one room but it's cheap and after the flight I had I will be fine with whatever.  As I write this, no lie, a kid in his early 20's continues to learn the opening cords to the Nirvana song 'come as you are' on an acoustic guitar.  He has been doing so for about an hour, and I think for new guitarists the song must be the new 'Smoke on the water'.  I am enjoying the living hell out of my second Asahi beer that I bought with coins from a vending machine.  I sort of need to go to the john, but I can't because there is some kid passed out dead drunk in the toilet stall.  It's not an emergency, I'll just go downstairs in a minute I recon.   A big screen tv has Japanese women's volley ball, and has for a while though nobody is looking.  I am sitting in the corner writing because all other table surfaces in this room are literally covered with empty beer cans, empty paper bowls of instant noodles, fruit, the odd vodka bottle here or there, and I kid you not a derelict mac book pro that someone has just left completely unguarded for anyone who wants it to swipe, not that anyone will.

The flight from Seattle to Japan was painful as usual.  18 hours with only one or two ways to position your legs stiffens the muscles until the legs are numb.  I usually prefer the window to have something to lean against, but it means waking up whoever is next to you whenever you want to get up.  In this case it was a very small Japanese woman who had decided to sit sideways on her seat with part of her butt on my leg.  I was actually ok with this arrangement and we slept that way for most of the flight.  It is truly an odd experience to that close and actually being in physical contact with a perfect stranger while sleeping.  There is an intimacy that occurs from sleeping with someone, and here I really mean sleeping, which can extend to strangers.  At one point there was massive turbulence and the woman next to me was sweating, literally sweating and tense with worry.  I told her it was ok, it was normal, all smiling.  And I don't know if she understood the words but seemed ok after that.  And we slept most of the long night day that is international plane travel inches apart or against each other and when we landed we went our separate ways.

the rest of this was written a couple of days later.  I walked for seven hours in downtown Tokyo before returning to the hostel to fetch my bags and start on my way to the airport.  And I still didn't see the whole thing.

Here is what I did:

I told you about getting into Tokyo.  I wrote that first paragraph and drank a few vending machine beers until about 2.  The beds were little wooden coffin holes in the wall which one climbed in the small end side off like tombs in a mausoleum.  The bottom was lined with a thin stuffed mat and it had a curtain and little reading light.  I slept until 6 on the dot when I woke myself and got my shit together and my bags stowed, ready for action on four hours sleep after an 18 hour plane ride.  If this was to be my only day in Tokyo I wouldn't spend it laying in my coffin, I would go out and live sleep or no.

I hopped on the train heading to a Temple that the guy at the desk had told me about.  At about 6:30 or 7 I emerged from the station into a quiet alley way cluttered with still closed hole in the wall local food stalls.  Around the corner I found the temple park, a massive area that went for ages from the looks of things.  Before going in I dived into the only open restaurant I could find for a fast breakfast.  I sat down and pointed at a box on a menu, which I like to call Asian meal roulette.  It turned out to be a massive, massive bowl with a sesame soup broth with noodles and different meats.  It was served with a large portion of fried rice with vegetables and shrimp and a place of pot stickers.  This would have been a crazy large diner, and I wasn't that hungry but I quickly realized how good it was and dug in.  Plenty of energy for the day I had planned.

The temple was a peaceful expanse of pagoda buildings with the alters and Buddha statues.  There was a giant pot of incense wafting fragrant clouds into the easy breeze.  In one corner there was a water trough with little wooden scoops for people to wash hands, face and mouth.  over here there was a waterfall which emptied into a small stream with cat sized bright blue coy fish, over there gardens surrounded ancient tombs.  I sat on a wall for a while and watched the old men stroll happily in one's and two's, some stopping to pray, some just taking in the place the way I was.

The tallest tower in the world is in Tokyo, and I could see it from where I was sitting.  Nothing was open yet so I figured I might as well head in that direction.  I walked for about thirty minutes, for a time along a river and through small house neighborhoods separated by dark alley ways.  I saw a guy with a khaki fisherman's hat and long lens camera heading in what I perceived to be the direction of the tower, so keeping a careful distance I followed.  I was about a block behind him, but I am still pretty sure he was aware of but not annoyed by his shadow.  Well, if he was annoyed he certainly didn't show it.  Finally, I was in the plaza area to go to the top of the world's tallest tower.  I went in the lobby to check it out and it was a bit pricey to go to the top and the line to do so was endless.  If this was to be my one day in Tokyo I wasn't about to spend thirty minutes to an hour waiting in line, I was going to go out there and live.  Plus I am seriously terrified of heights and it looked scary.

Soon I found a tourist information shopfront.  Tokyo is amazing, it seems to have volunteers standing on every street corner giving directions, and I saw at least three of these tourist information shopfronts.  I don't think I have ever seen a city that paid more consideration to visitors.  The woman in the tourist office fixed me up with a map and a booklet of tourist spots and lent me a pen so I could plot my next move.  I settled on one area that I could reach by subway that had a number of temples and museums.  I had a subway map, by the way, and was pretty much doing fine with it.  On first glance the rail system is chaos, but each station is numbered and each line is color coded and it wound up being pretty easy.

So I got to the next area at around 10 or 10:30.  I had to sit down and drink something, I was exhausted.  I found a groovy juice bar and went into the john to do my thing.  The toilet had a box with buttons that I started playing with and found out about the butt sprayer.  This was funny for a second until I realized that I couldn't find the off switch and everything I pressed made the toilet blast my back side in new and novel ways, the more I pressed the more furious the water became.  Finally I figured it out and everything was fine and my butt was clean, man.  Be careful with those Tokyo butt spray commodes, they are no jive.

The park was cool from the tree covering, traffic and city noise gave way to singing birds and crickets which made it not feel like the center of one of the world's largest cities.  In the park I found a Temple on top of a hill.  There was an area on the outside the temple with folding chairs set up.  I took a seat, and the Monks inside sat with their backs to us facing the Buddha while chanting softly.  It was so peaceful, I closed my eyes and meditated for a spell.  I am getting better at meditating, it really is a matter of practice.  When I first tried it several months ago when Eddy took me to a Zen center my mind was cluttered with thoughts about frantically emptying my mind, but now I find it easier to just clear things away without too much effort.  I focused on the chanting as well as my breathing and I guess I did that for around ten or fifteen minutes, just long enough to feel 'ahhhh'.  The Monks started flipping out texts which were constructed in the manner of a hand fan that spreads.  Each time they spread the folds of the text they did so in a fast fanning motion one after the other to represent a wave, each of them chanted louder when they were fanning out the texts.

Another temple sat in the middle of a lake which had five foot tall lily pads so thick you couldn't see water.  They were roughly the same height and looked like an alien landscape, like you could just get in and walk on a lily pad surface.  In the temple a Monk was playing a massive Taiko drum and anyone who knows me will understand that I listened to that guy drum for a long time.  I then walked around the lily pad lake.  I saw a duck that was quacking and I sat for a while to see what he was quacking about but soon lost interest and kept walking.

I wandered and wandered and wandered.  It was getting hot and my feet hurt, so I went into the National museum next which was air conditioned.  The national museum consists of three buildings, I went first into the ancient Japanese art building on a whim and wound up staying for several hours.  Of the many rooms with beautiful painting and pottery and artifacts I was most impressed by the katana swards.  They looked brand new, I mean brand new reflecting light in bright silver, some were from the 13th century.  I thought for a moment about what these swards had done and seen.  I wondered how many people they had killed and if they were used by just men or villeins.  A sward can pass through a lot of hands in 600 years.

I ducked into the Asian art building but just didn't have the energy.  I was losing my feet and the lack of sleep was starting to nag at me.  I found a little out of the way kitchen and ordered a fish cooked in soy sauce dish on rice with a few Asahi beers.  One teen looking girl behind the bar was training two others on how to pour beer without making too much head.  They didn't seem to be getting it, one poured a beer that was almost three fourths foam.

Back to the hostel, I grabbed my massive suit case on wheels and my hiking back pack.  Some people need a moving van to move to a new place, I need an extra checked bag.  I had to drag those things through three subway lines spanning an hour to get to the station that had the express train to the airport.  Oh, I didn't tell you that Tokyo has two airports, well I landed at one and took off from another.  So by now the four hours of sleep and two beers and dead feet were not helped by the hiking back pack or suitcase dragging.  I asked someone at the last station about the train and got on when it came in.  This train was different, I couldn't find any of the stops on my map, and we kept waiting for five to ten minutes at each stop.  It was taking forever and it really didn't feel right.  Finally I asked someone about the airport, he told me I was on the wrong train.  Not exactly the wrong train, I was on the local commuter which ended at the airport, but from what I gathered it would take ages.  He showed me where to go and even waited for the express train to get there until his train left.  I can't even explain how nice the people in Tokyo were to me that day, I have never been in such a large city with so many people so into helping a foreigner.  What great people walk the streets of Tokyo.

The right train was still quite a ways form my station, and when we came in I had the choice of terminal one or terminal two.  Not knowing where Delta was I took the wrong one and had to wait around for a while for the next train to come along to get me straight.  Now I was antsy, it was getting closer and closer to my flight.  I showed my boarding pass to the people at check in and was spirited past an endless line of people, they got me sorted really fast, such nice people.
At the gate I sat and waited as people started to line up to board.  They always call it by zones and I was zone three, no need to stand around waiting so I sat and watched.  The people were mostly Chinese at this point, and even though they called out for only zone one over and over people stood in one line regardless, the flight attendants shrugged and it took close to an hour to board and I sat until the rest had gone in rather than wait in the line.  And I sat and watched and it felt pretty good to be off my feet.


Update
I had my first day of work and am really happy.  The people are wonderful and the school is massive but all about the teaching and not the backpacking.  I am so far the only American and people have started asking me if I have some sort of British citizenship and seem surprised that British council would hire and American. They are in no way upset, mind you, they are wonderful and cool as hell so far, but they seem to want to know how and why I am working for the British government.  I tell them British Council seemed more concerned with my resume than my passport.
I am going to an island today to look for a cheap place to stay.  I will go to a small village and try to get something small and inland away from the ferry terminal to save money.  I like the idea of taking a ferry to work across the open sea each day, and the island seems to have a lot of forest for hiking and camping maybe.
A guy on Craigslist HK was offering an apartment for $400, which is crazy low even if you are talking USD. An apartment for that much in Central Hong Kong island is basically like a $400 dollar apartment in Manhattan, very fishy.  I emailed to ask why it was so low and found out I needed to give $350 just to see the place, which immediately tells me I am dealing with a grifter.  I reported this asshole to Craigslist.  But the search continues.
Wish me luck, I love you guys.
w

How the wind blows

Remember me?
Well it has been a while since I have done this, and I feel a bit rusty, so hang on and I will try to fart another of these damn things out, maybe even as misspelled and rambly as the ding dang thing used to be.

So what the hell happened?

I taught in China, which is where I started the first one at willsanderschinaadventure.com.  Look it up, it's a real hoot.  So then I got back to America was all useless for a spell, the sub prime dudes messed up the works that year so I couldn't find a job, my room mate figured I wasn't looking and was getting sick of covering the rent and everyone was mad at me.  I was looking but the jobs weren't there and further it was my fault that I got myself into this fix and she had every right to be upset, upset being a slight underselling of her take on things.  And everyone was mad at me, the funny thing about not doing anything right is you get the feeling you can't do anything right.  I wound up working at a doggie day care run by super angry lesbian cop who loved dogs because she could yell at them sternly as if they had been guilty of speeding.  The woman had recently bought the place and I had never seen her pet one of the four dogs that were bringing what little money the place was generating in.  She towered over them frowning, her hair looking like a butch military version of Rip Taylor's toupee.  She used to yell 'STOOOOLLLP' with the L sound at the end the way some people say the word 'cop'.  We had one dog who was so stupid he ate rocks, for real we couldn't let him out because he ate rocks which would kill him.  When he was inside he ran full speed at the wall over and over again and we had to stop him from doing that too, poor thing.  Darwin would have had no answer for what we have done to our house pets, and here was one who had clearly been lavished with chew toys and love, yet deep down understood his uselessness having been cheated out of survival of the fittest and therefore yurned for a quick death which never came.  I thought of offering him a little doggie noose, but he was so darn cute, plus he was bound to figure it out for himself sooner or later.
That place promised me four shifts a week which became three which pretty quickly turned into don't call us we'll call you.  For months both myself and the lesbian cop pretended I was still her loyal employee even though I hadn't worked a shift in all that time.  I would call in the morning, be told there was no work but don't make plans for Thursday.  Thursday might just be the day the business turns itself around.  Finally she got her assistant to call me and call it what it was, which was fine.  I worked as a waiter and got shit canned after two weeks.  That place was run by my best friends, still they fired me and I don't blame them in the slightest.  I had no idea what I was doing and less of an idea that I was doing it badly.
The stress was getting worse by the day, hopelessness set in like dry rot, and people started avoiding me all together.  I house sat for a friend and somehow managed to lose a set of keys which included the only key he had to one of  his cars.  I tried to fix a clog in his sink and wound up messing up his entire pluming.  I made plans with people and then immediately forgot that I had done so, and when they became angry that I didn't show up I still didn't remember.  I was cracking up, I was losing it, I was further gone than I ever have been before.  The isolation in China had fried my personal skills.  The massive shock of returning to my own country had been so much more difficult than going to Asia had been in the first place.  I started losing track of time and days.  My brain was going, I felt unable to handle the smallest tasks, the walls were closing in, some people who loved me stuck by me, some had had enough.  Of those who turned their backs here we are five years later only a very important precious few have come back.
And at night, every night, I dreamed that I was floating in a purple night over jungles and landscapes that were cut into rice paddies.  I would swoop down into valleys of rice paddies and sing.  I remember landing in a dream in a field where I was surrounded by people singing in a hushed chorus.  The song went like this
And the wind blew, how the wind blew, and the wind blew, how the wind blew
over and over again.  It was the wind I had been riding through the sky, and the dream logic told me that it was the wind that had carried me away from my country in the first place, the wind that had carried me across China, through the loneliness of being the only white face in a sea of Chinese.  It was the wind that picked me up after I had been attacked and beaten at a train station for reasons I never learned.  It was the wind that had carried me and the back pack my grandma gave me through Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia (endlessindonesia) and back to China again.  It was something I trusted, it was the me that I was learning to trust, even though I never had before, it was the pride I had in what I had done and the fear of doing anything else ever again.  Each night the dream sang this song to me, each night reminding me that I was in the wrong country.  I knew, more each day, that it was time to return to Asia, and so the wind blew, how the wind blew.
 I wound up back in Indonesia.  I taught in Surabaya for three amazing years.  It was a great time and hard to leave.  I saw beaches and tan women who smiled at me.  ME!  I rode a motorcycle for a week to Bali and gunned it through mountains filled with monkeys.  I lived life like a man with a week left.  Brits, Aussies, and Canadians  and I thundered through tall boy beers.  I played drums after work and planned trips to places 90% of the humans alive will never ever understand the beauty of.  Sorry folks, I try to be humble but I went to some amazing fucking spots.  And the people there were the greatest.
The whole time I thought about the next step would be.  I could have married someone and set up camp there forever and been quite happy.  I would have never had any money, but what else is new.  I tried to get a job as a senior teacher, but didn't get it.  I not only didn't get it, but I found out that I didn't get it the first week of my third contract.  I think had I known I wouldn't be getting the promotion I wouldn't have gone for year three, but year three was nice.  Not as nice as year two but still pretty amazing.  The whole time I started thinking about Hong Kong.  I had gone there twice before, and I was still sort of in love with it.  Something about the old meeting the new, the Asian street food along with the modern flash.  It was a place that had lived in my imagination since I was a little kid and me and my buddy Adam found out about Jackie Chan on a TV show called the incredibly strange film show.  That show changed my life by they way.  I remember they had one on John Waters and one on Fred Olen Ray.  I had loved the kung fu flicks but especially the brutal action films that came out of there in the late 80's and early 90's.  It is China without all the difficulty of being in China.  I tried to find a job there, but kept running into the same old 'MA' requirement to teach there.
So I got to thinking about grad school.

I had a year in Vermont at SIT and have almost completely finished my MA in TESOL, which means I could get better jobs.It was an amazing year, tons of study, great folks up in Vermont, snow and syrup.  I love and understand language but still have difficulty learning them.  I crammed as much information in to my brain as I could and drank lots of great local beers.  I went to Morocco for two months, and I wrote blogs about that on the Indonesia site.  I understand teaching, I understand langauge, and I am ready to go do it.
I am heading out to Hong Kong Friday.  Cool huh?  I will be working with the British Council, which has very high standards, so I am nervous.
Friends, I don't know how many years I plan to ramble, it has already been five.  But I hope people know that I am growing, even though you never see me I feel like a different person than the one who left.  I hope you understand that I can't stay in one place, not now that I have tasted the road.  I hope you will remember me.  I hope you will read this blog I have just started.  Here we go again, blog believers.
W