Travel Movies
I've been having a bit too much fun with iMovie since I got back. I took the video I took on my trip and put in some background music and made some cheesy movies. The music is mostly from stuff I was listening to on the trip. Hopefully they're not completely unbearable.
Wandering around Tokyo (soundtrack from the "Fabriclive:33 - Spank Rock")
One of the things that was interesting about Tokyo is how everyone waits at the crosswalks. Really huge masses of people all crowd into a sort of waiting area outside Shibuya station. Then when the light changes the place empties for a second or two before the wave of people from the other side arrives. There's also some video of some chanting people with some sort of shrine or something that they're carrying. I don't really have any answers for that. Scaring away evil spirits maybe?
Also I was the only one that I saw that hugged the guys at the end holding the free hugs signs. I felt bad cause I must have been the sweatiest guy around. Either they were a little shocked that somebody actually hugged them or I smelled worse than I thought, not really sure which.
Diving in Koh Tao (Soundtrack from "The Outsider - DJ Shadow")
I rented a digital camera and case from Black Tip for one of my dives off Ko Tao. The camera case fogged up as soon as I got in the water so I couldn't really aim all that well. It was also a lot more colorful in real life.
Koh Samui Zip Line, (Soundtrack from "Fabriclive:30 - Stanton Warriors")
I also have all my photos posted to Flickr now.
Out in Tokyo
Some odd things about Tokyo.
During the week everybody wears a white button-up long-sleeve shirt and black pants. It was kind of the uniform I guess. No slightly textured white shirts or black pants with slight gray lines in them or any variation at all. Stark plain white long-sleeve shirts, black pants, black dress shoes. School girls wore black skirts instead of pants. But pretty much everyone else was wearing the exact same thing. I was walking around in shorts and a t-shirt and sweating profusely from the heat and humidity. No one else seemed to be sweating besides me even though many of them had several layers on. It was kind of embarrassing how much I was sweating. Not sure how they managed to not sweat. I was also the only person I saw besides one teenager that was wearing shorts above the knee. I saw a few wearing some high-waters or cool-otts, but no shorts. I didn't worry about it because being one of about 5 white guys that I saw, I'm sure I stuck out anyway. I think I saw about 3 black people the whole time I was in Tokyo too. Not the most ethnically diverse people. On the weekend though I did see more shorts come out. On Saturday I saw men my age wearing shorts above the knee so I felt a bit more comfortable.
The gay scene in Tokyo is interesting. Tokyo supposedly has the highest concentration of gay bars anywhere. That's mostly because they are all located in what is about 2 city blocks, with a bunch of little pedestrian streets in the middle of the blocks. The buildings are all 7-10 stories tall and there's bars all the way up. So I guess there's like 200 bars easily, which is quite possibly more gay bars than San Francisco has. But, next to none of them are big enough for a dance floor and most are a bar and a sofa or two. Since most of the bars are so small they're also fairly intimate, like a guy serving drinks in his living room, and probably not someplace you're going to go by yourself if you don't speak any Japanese. It was also surprisingly incognito during the day. I walked through the neighborhood by day and wasn't really sure I was in the right place. Nothing particularly gay jumped out at me, no pride flags on the street lights. But when I went back at night a transformation had taken place. There were tons of guys on the streets with a smattering of drag queens. All of the stores that seems somewhat closed before had turned into gay porn shops, bars, strip clubs and "host bars" where you can pay some hotty to hang out with you I guess.
I ended up at Arty Farty both nights, which is their equivalent of San Francisco's Badlands, uber-cheesy gay diva music on repeat and the highest concentration of foreigners I saw while in Tokyo. I could speak to most people in English again. The people that I talked to that lived in Tokyo all said the same thing, it gets old quickly cause there's really only one place to go, Arty Farty, and it's pretty much the same thing every night. The chances of meeting someone new were pretty slim and rest almost solely with the few foreigners. Same music, same people with a smattering of visitors that won't be there tomorrow. I met this guy named "E", which was short for something I couldn't pronounce. He spoke perfect English and liked to meet all the foreigners to break up the monotony. He took me to a few other bars. It was nice to get a broader perspective and chat with the other foreigners he had collected.
The trains in Tokyo all stop at about midnight and then start up again at about 5am, so all the bars stay open until at least 5am. I didn't manage to get to bed before 5am either night I was out in Tokyo, even though my hotel was just down the street. It's easy to loose track of time and it was a few hours behind Bangkok so my schedule was later anyway. I kinda need the bars to close earlier, the same thing happens to me when I go to Chicago, I end up way too drunk and watching the sun come up. The second night we ended up at a Karaoke bar at like 4am. Aside from being smaller it was pretty much the same thing as it is in the US. The song selection is always the cheesiest songs by any given artist, none of the songs was I much interested in hearing, much less singing.
Most of my time I spent just wandering around looking at everything. I found a nice shopping area that had stuff I would actually buy. The prices were fairly comparable to San Francisco, but most of it I can get stuff I like better in San Francisco for just a bit cheaper. I went to a few used clothing stores that were pretty much the same thing exactly as in San Francisco, but all the clothes I liked actually came from the states. A few of the tags where from JC Penny's and Sears. I found a t-shirt I liked but it was like 2 sizes too small. Some pants that were kinda cool but they were $100, 50% off. I wasn't sure if the 50% had already been taken off or if it was really $50, and trying to get an answer to that question seemed like more trouble than I wanted to deal with at the time.
Soba noodles from 7/11 and chicken sandwiches from Mc Donald's became a staple because they were the few things I could get reliably without speaking Japanese. Once I accidentally got what I'm assuming was a shrimp-burger from Mc Donald's because the picture looked like the chicken sandwich. It was ok even though I don't eat shrimp. If you didn't look at it, it tasted the same as the chicken or the fish sandwich anyway. They all taste the same at Mc Donald's. I do wish the 7/11's here had soba noodles though.
I'm really glad I went to Tokyo. It wasn't as expensive as I was worried it might be and it was really interesting because it's so different than any other place I've been. Lot's of really interesting modern architecture too. I think I would try to stop over there again on my next trip to Asia. I might try to learn the Katakana alphabet though before I went back again. And learn the numbers and what I would need to buy food in a restaurant. I already know a lot of the names for food since I eat it here in San Francisco fairly often. Just need to complete it with whole transaction-handling bits.
I made a movie of the video I took while wandering around Tokyo. You may need to upgrade your Quicktime to see it.
Back in San Francisco
I'm back in San Francisco. Good to be home. Getting unpacked and stuff. Will write more later.
First Day in Tokyo
So today was my first real day in Tokyo. The typhoon past over last night with little ado and today it was just hot and humid. I spent the morning wandering around Shinjuku looking at stuff and casually looking for a new hotel. I saw one that said "business hotel" in English on the sign outside so I figured it was worth a shot to see if they spoke English. They didn't, not really even one word, but I did manage to get a single room for two nights at about $60/night. Not so bad, about twice what the hostel costs but I have my own room and my own bathroom and no curfew and it's in a more lively neighborhood. I hope I can find my way back. I posted some pictures and comments to Flickr.
It really is true that hardly anyone speaks English here. The English t-shirts people wear here are .. hilarious/embarassing/frightening. I went t-shirt shopping a bit near Ueno station. It was a big bust because they all had really stupid stuff written on them in English. And it's a good thing nobody speaks English here otherwise the t-shirst people wear would probably offend a lot of people. I can't remember exactly, but there was one that says something about a good pickup line being "you can fuck my nasty hole till it's raw" or something like that. Damn. That's pretty hard core. You'd probably get told to cover that t-shirt up in America. There was this 80 year old man with his wife wearing a t-shirt that said "FAG" in enourmous pink letters and another Japanese schoolgirl with a t-shirt that said "asian girl including happy ending." Amazing. I hope for their sake they don't wear those t-shirts to America. And it reinforces my aversion to buying t-shirst in America with foreign language writing on it that I can't read.
Food has been slighly difficult only because I can't read/speak Japanese. But thank god for vending machines. They are EVERYWHERE here. Literally everywhere. Even the most remote place I've been has at least 10 on every block. Some of the food places in Shinjuku have vending machines where you order your food, then you sit down and a waitor brings it to you. Which would be great for me except the only one I've found so far didn't have pictures, just japanese characters. 
I need a vending machine with pictures. I'll have to study my Japanese to see if I can manage to order some vegetarian soba. I know what I order in San Francisco, sansai soba, but I haven't seen anything that looked like it on any of the pictures. I ended up at McDonalds. 
I think I realized after I ordered that the girl behind the counter was kinda dissapointed that I didn't use more English with her. I did a lot of pointing. I did have had some good soba from 7/11 though. Yes, 7/11 is universal as far as I can tell. I think they have one on the moon already. The specifics of what they sell changes, but the reason you go there doesn't.
My new "business" hotel doesn't seem to have wifi and since they don't speak any English I don't have high hopes for making it work there. Supposedly there's lots of internet cafes around but I'm not really sure how they work yet. The guys at the hostel were saying you can sleep in them for ~500 yen. Interesting. Anyway, off to do some more exploring.
Bye Bye Bangkok
I made it to Tokyo and found a hostel for ~$30/night. I lost my directions to the hostel on the way to the hostel but the girl at the info center at the train station spoke perfect English and she printed out a map that showed me exactly how to walk there and what trains to take. And they have reliable wifi. Yea! My iPhone works in my room again.
Think I'll go explore Tokyo for a bit though. Think I want to find a real hotel cause this hostel has a midnight curfew.
Shit. Someone who speaks Japanese at the hostel said the news is saying a typhoon is headed this way. That explains the rain then I guess.
I wrote the following in the airport and on the plane from Bangkok to Tokyo. I'm very glad not to be in Bangkok anymore. I think the stomach bug I had made me a little less tolerant and a little more cranky than normal too.
I think the thing I will remember most about Bangkok is the smell. The mixture of human shit and urine from the multifunctional sewers/rivers/fishing grounds, body odor from the oppressive heat and humidity, and Thai food from the metastasization of street food vendors is enough to put me off Thai food for a very long time. The stench changes as you walk around too, sometimes the smell of Thai food becoming stronger than the shit, sometimes the decomposing human waste overpowering everything. Usually it's mix of the two. How anyone could maintain an appetite amongst all that is beyond me. Bee-infested mystery meat being cooked on the back of a motorcycle-based kitchen cart surrounded by the smell of sewer and American friends of mine telling me it's good, I should try some. I went to Burger King and had a chicken sandwinch. Yes, it's genetically engineered chicken fried in trans-fats with iceberg lettuce but at least I don't have to watch for bees and I get to eat it away from the stench, exhaust and heat for a moment. And I don't have to wonder if anything in it came out of that sewer. (Friends said they saw people with fishing lines down the sewer drains, and surprisingly I did see quite a few fish in the tar black water-like liquid).
I did get bit of stomach bug on the way to Bangkok which probably made it worse. I think I got it from some watermelon I had at a rest stop. Someone said they saw them washing it in tap water. Luckily it only lasted a day or so. I feel much better now.
Bangkok is gross in just about every way I can think of. The polution is crazy. If Al Gore is right and we have a limited opportunity to save ourselves from environmental cataclysm, I really just don't see any way that we will not destroy ourselves. Look at the US, we're supposed to be educated and affluent and I see no way that we will pull our head out if our asses in time. But in places like Bangkok there's no hope at all. When their children start growing 3 heads they'll just try to emigrate to someplace cleaner, hoping they can rape their own enviroment as much as we did ours before they have to pay the piper. My throat still hurts from the "tuk tuk" (an open-air taxi) ride tour the shopping area. Thousands of two-stroke motors with open cabs racing each other to the next stop light. Thank god for California emission controls. And thank god for building codes and city planning and government regulation and modern sewer systems. I will never complain about San Francisco's out-dated sewer again. Yes, it smells at the low points and is wasteful and inefficient and needs replacing (they're working on it), but San Francisco smells like laundry detergent compaired to Bangkok.
Admittedly I wasn't able to find or do anything particularly gay during my short stay in Bangkok (Koah San road is straight-couple hell and my stomach combine with the heat and stench kept me inside more than I anticipated), but the concept of gay in Thailand seems to be limited to effeminate guys that wear makeup or "lady-boy" prostitutes that probably fancy women. Even when we were in Koh Samui, the gay bars seemed more like a place to pick out your prostitute rather than someplace gay people would actually socialize with each other. It seemed quite difficult to get a drink without having some "companion"-type sit next to you and start to rub your leg and attempt meaningless chit-chat in broken English. I had to pretend to be coupled with a friend just to get some peace, even that didn't work so well.
And, as I was told, you can have custom clothing made in Thailand really cheap. It's amazing that so many people can make a living hawking $50 tailor-made suits to tourists. It's actually similar to my neighborhood a bit in that I have a hard time walking half a block without some street-urchin hassling me, except instead of people asking for change and then the backup, a cigarette, they say "suit for you, I give you good price" or "you like Thai food, I give you good price, cheap for you". True, I stayed on Koah San road in Bangkok which is like backpacker central and the rest of Bangkok is not quite so saturated, maybe I was asking for it. Still there must be 10,000 "custom" tailor shops in Bangkok all churning out replicas of the same suit. That was the weird thing about it too, all of these shops had the same suit on the same mannequin on display in the window, and neither the suit nor the mannequin was even slightly attractive. The mannequin had a sort of clown mixed with 1960's horror movie face on, a big clown smile that looked like it's face was made of silly putty and lipstick. All the tailors had different designer brands painted on their windows, Armani, Ralph Lauren etc., but the suit was always the same identical cut. I mean I could probably use a suit someday, I wouldn't be opposed to checking that off the list for $50. But the suit was ugly, and none of the "tailors" seemed to be aware of it. You'd think if you took up suit tailoring as your livelihood, maybe you'd be interested enough to take the time to learn a bit about suits and what makes an attractive one. They all seemed much more adept at hawking the suits than tailoring them.
I also learned during my bus ride to Bangkok that the British are just as capable as the US of producing the loud, annoying, drunken, spring-break, poorly-travelled, English-rules-the-world type of travelers, the kind you wish had never been issued a passport. The ferry from Koh Tao had a large group of English lads having a contest to see who could shove more chips/crisps into their mouth at once without coughing them all over the other passengers. Does any country lack these? I guess I didn't see any Thai behaving that way. I haven't come across any such Japanese yet. Maybe in Tokyo.
Off to Tokyo
Tonight is my last night in Bangkok. Off to Tokyo tomorrow. My Internet is about to be used up. More later.
I’m a certified diver now
I've spent the past several days diving off Ko Tao. I posted some pictures to Flickr. I got certified and even did some deep water and underwater navigation training, so now I can dive anywhere in the world up to 40m. I've done 7 dives now. Going to do two more tommorrow morning and possibly a night dive tommorrow night. The visibility is 20-40m and it's pretty amazing. My instructor took some pictures of us the other day, will post them when I get back. Going to rent a camera for tommorow's dive. We found a fisherman's trap on our last dive an opened up the net, saving about 50 batfish from becoming someone's lunch.
Two people from the wedding ended up joining me in Ko Tao. Did my diving certificate with Rob's friend Matt and Keith came with me from Ko Samui. Both of them have taken off now to continue their adventures elsewhere. Met some nice boys from Finland the other night.
Ko Tao is really beautiful and a lot less developed that Ko Samui. No touts tring to lure you to whatever they're selling or "massage" girls trying to charge you for happy ending. The Thai people here are friendly and fun loving, always joking around. It's one on those places that you can't quite believe you're actually here.
I got to see the flouresceing algea that lives in the water here. When you move through the water at night you can see all these sparks, looks kinda like fireflies.
I'm not sure when I'm leaving Ko Tao. I'm kinda hooked and can't think of anything I'd rather be doing. There's no Internet on my side of this island so I have to take a taxi into the tiny town on the other side in order to email, etc. It's actually a 4wd taxi cause the road is primitive at best. English us the lingua-franca here, although there's more Germans than anything. Everyone speaks to the Thais in English though. Convienient.
I've been reading my Bangkok book a bit more so maybe I'll head back there after Ko Tao, or maybe Ko Pan gnang. I definitely want to come back to Thailand sometime and do some diving on the west side. It's rainy season there now.
Off to Tokyo in a week. Guess I better start reading my Tokyo book soon.