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HELLO CHICAGO
I’ve been back for two weeks now. Very hard to believe. I’m not going to retroactively document my whole trip, but I may put up some more photos if I can get them sorted out!
In the meantime, here are some interesting statistics from the trip…
I was gone five months, or twenty-three weeks, or one hundred and sixty-one days.
I visited seven countries, staying in forty different cities/towns/villages.
I slept in seventy different hotels or guest houses, including on overnight planes, trains, buses and boats, on a bench in the airport and in a hammock in the jungle.
I spent around three hundred hours on intercity transportation (mostly buses). This means that twelve whole days of my trip were devoted to just sitting on a bus.
I was charged $217 in ATM and international service fees.
I forgot to keep track of 20 other statistics I thought would be interesting.
But anyways, I saw many wonderful places, ate a ton of delicious food, met a lot of great people and I’m looking forward to the next time I can take a trip like this.
It’s really good to be back home.
Michael
PS I’ve got a ton of stories, ask me whatever you like!
I came to the conclusion a little while ago that keeping up a blog is just not something I want to be concerning myself with right now. Would rather EXPERIENCE this trip instead of trying to somehow translate that experience into some web-format analog for all y’all’s benefit (no offense).
Besides, Brett is documenting the hell out of anything and everything, so if you are just dying to know what we’re up to, it’s still out there…
Anyways, I’m healthy and happy and everything is going well!
If ya miss me, want to know what I’m up to or just want to say HEY… email is best.
mwawzenek@gmail.com
Also, this trip is already almost half over so I’ll be back soon anywaysssss
HOLLA
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Michael
Photoset with 1 note
On October 16, Brett and I got in a truck caravan and drove to the flooded areas directly north of Bangkok. We delivered emergency food bags and medicine that we had packed the day before while volunteering at a Krungthai Bank branch location that we were able to get involved with through someone’s post on Couchsurfing. The pictures say it all, but I’ll just reinforce that it is BAD in some areas. We took a boat to get to one of the villages, and then the next dropoff we had to leave with villagers and their boats at the roadside because it would have taken two hours for us to get to their village by boat, and then two hours back and it was already getting late.
It took us quite a while to drive back to Bangkok because the roads we drove north on became flooded throughout the day, but we eventually made it back alright. Now we’re in Chiang Mai (in the north) after a fifteen hour bus ride that should have taken ten, but was extended due to flooded roads. All the water that we saw in central Thailand is currently headed towards Bangkok. When we left, it was just hitting the suburbs, and the Chao Praya River was extremely high, and flooding the nearby streets and markets. We made it out of Bangkok just in time and are safe and dry in the north, but I feel bad for what has happened and what still has yet to happen to people in Bangkok. I hope that we are able to help more in the near future.
All photos taken by Bundit Samootranon
Photo-taking exhaustion.
At a certain point, I stopped remembering to take photos. Will try to post more soon, also maybe some videos!
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Hong Kong
HONG KONG. What to say…
We left Chicago Tuesday afternoon on October the 4th and after a 15 hour flight (plus a 1 hour delay [and a couple terrible plane meals {and the least comfortable and claustrophobic seat I’ve ever been in}]) we arrived at the Hong Kong airport without a plan.
I mean, literally without a plan. Our procrastination in researching where to stay and what to do on our trip held through all the way until landing in Asia. We realized we didn’t know the currency exchange rate, where to go to find cheap accommodation, how to get there via public transit, or really much of anything about Hong Kong. Also, we didn’t have internet access or a power outlet converter for our laptops. Seems like a pretty dire situation but we kept our cool, found free wifi, used what was left of Brett’s laptop battery to search where a hostel could be found. I used a financial sum in the newspaper that was stated in both USD and HKD to figure out the exchange rate ($1 US = $7.5 HK) and we figured out a train route into the city. Went to the ATM, got on the train and off we go!
The train was fast and efficient, and in no time at all we were lugging our backpacks around the brightly lit, neon-sign overpopulated commercial district of Kowloon. Walking down the main drag of Nathan Road we were approached by a Sri Lankan man asking if we needed a place to stay. Fearful of scams and dying in back alleys Brett and I turned him away and trudged onward, confident we could find something else.
Well. We didn’t. There were fancy looking hotels everywhere, but we could not find any of the budget hostels that had been listed as being in this area. With the night getting later and our shoulders getting sorer we ran into the same guy and agreed to take a look at a room in ‘Angel Guest House’. He then leads us across the street and through a maze of shops, stalls and restaurants on the ground floor of a big building that we would have been hard-pressed to navigate ourselves. We get to an elevator and he tells us to go to the fourth floor with his brother (who doesn’t speak English and turns out to be a bit of a kooky, but nice fellow). The door opens on floor four to a foul stench and we are led into a cramped guest house with a narrow hallway and many rooms big enough for just a bed. We get to a double room and he says $300 a night. (HKD so about $40 a night) Hmmm. The room doesn’t smell. It looks very clean, and newly remodeled. There is air conditioning, a fan, a tv, wifi and our own shower/bathroom. We decided to stay for just one night to recover from jetlag and the exhaustion of just getting to this point.
Wellll long story short we stayed there every night in Hong Kong. Maybe out of laziness, but mostly out of the convenience and centrality of the location. We later learned the building we were in was called Chungking Mansions, which is basically a miniature global city in and of itself, where people come from Africa and India to buy cheap Chinese cell phones (and fake iphones), SIM cards, etc to bring back to their countries in their luggage. Apparently about 10,000 people sleep here each night (in both apartments and any of the 80 different guest houses in the building[!]) and foreigners from 120 different countries pass through each day. The ultimate melting pot. This diverse crowd of somewhat seedy people includes drug addicts/dealers and prostitutes, (as well as other backpackers) but in our week there we never had a problem and always felt safe (apart from the time I almost got strangled [but that’s a different story {ignore this part mom!}])
Actually I guess it’s the same story. I was recording some video downstairs in the market area one night, and this Nigerian prostitute saw me with my camera (when I wasn’t even recording anything) and said, “What you doing? Why you photo me?” and I said no photo, no photo, but she came up and grabbed my camera and told me to show her what I had photographed. I said no photo you no photo you, and she grabbed the camera strap (which was around my neck) so that it was tighter around my neck, and so that I couldn’t run away and said, “why you photo me? its not right” and I started to panic a bit, but by this time the security guy was already right next to us and people started to crowd around to see what was going on. I never felt like she was going to injure me, but that she may break my camera or something and things were obviously very tense. The security told her to let go, but she wouldn’t. It was all very awkward because he was Chinese and she was Nigerian and they were speaking to each other and me in very broken English and hand gestures. Basically I ended up going through each of my photos on my camera (including the touristy ones from the past couple of days) to show her that I didn’t “photo” her. and she got huffy and walked away and then the security escorted me to my room. This was our second to last night there so it was fine and I didn’t have any other encounters with her or anyone else. I never feared for my life or my safety, really just my camera’s. I can’t believe that it happened, and it seems very strange now, but yes. hmm, yeah. Well we’re not there anymore and not likely to encounter a situation like it again, so don’t worry Mom!
Chungking Mansions is in Tsim Sha Tsui, an extremely convenient location to be staying in, so we were able to walk to the ferry to go to Hong Kong island, and we were right next to an MTR station where we could take the train anywhere in the city. It was perfect. The trains usually cost us anywhere from fifty cents to a dollar fifty depending on how far we took it. The one to the airport costs a lot more ($10-$12) but otherwise all buses and trains were very cheap. and EFFICIENT! Cars are about 1.5 times as wide as an el car, and there are very few seats. The cars are also all connected so that if you look down the length of an empty train you can actually see the front from the back. We also never had to wait longer than five minutes for a train and transfers and connections were speedy. Basically a dream system, and although there are a ton of people, it was never too crowded.
Hong Kong is just a very easy place to be. Most signs are in English as well as Cantonese and although some locals don’t speak much English, it is pretty easy to get by. Streets are clearly marked and there are signs everywhere pointing you towards the nearest landmarks or attractions. It’s also very safe. Chungking Mansions aside, Hong Kong as a whole felt almost unbelievably safe. No one ever tried to scam us there, or pick our pockets, or even hassle us a bit. A lot of people standing outside Chungking Mansions repeatedly asked us if we wanted fake rolexes or cheap tailored suits but that’s about it. The sights we saw never felt too touristy either. We ran into other Americans and other travelers, but because of the large expat population, we didn’t exactly stand out, or draw stares all that much.
Everything is also very clean there, and efficient to the maximum. It feels like a Western city. If anything, my complaint would be that it feels too western. There are McDonald’s everywhere. (which I hate, of course) But also Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Subway, 7 Eleven… even TGI Fridays and Outback Steakhouse. It’s basically a larger version of Chicago with better transportation and a bit of a language barrier (and I live in Pilsen, haha).
Aside from all the fast food, it is also kind of a vegetarian’s nightmare. There is meat in EVERYTHING. You cannot assume that just because something is called a spinach dumpling means that it does not also include shrimp and pork. Also, most things that are called vegetarian are egg and milk based. Just not all that great, really. I still had some good meals there though. It’s definitely necessary to seek out vegan or vegetarian restaurants.
There was only one major snafu during my time in Hong Kong. I got my debit card stuck in a Bank of China ATM… This happened to me in Costa Rica as well, so I was fairly confident that it would work out alright and I could get my card back. I went to the bank the next day and spoke with someone about it and they told me they couldn’t get my card out because of ‘security reasons’, and that I would have to contact my own bank about it, not theirs. I had to raise a bit of a fuss and explain how much I needed it and that it was their bank’s fault my card was stuck, not my own. I had to repeatedly ask to speak to a supervisor and push and push, and finally he said to come back later that day and they would call someone to open the ATM. When I walked back in it was sort of a big deal and five employees were all standing around, they copied my passport, had me sign things kept telling me that this was a special circumstance blah blah blah and finally gave me my card. Then they handed me a customer satisfaction card and asked me to write something nice on it… ok… well they did give me my card back sooo sure. But that was weird. And took an odd amount of pushiness to accomplish what should have been a lot simpler. WHEW! That could have wrecked my trip quite a bit.
Of all the things we did in Hong Kong, Victoria Peak stands out the most in my mind. We took a tram up a mountain on Hong Kong island and there is a lookout deck up there from which you can see all of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and even mainland China in the distance. It was cloudy when we were up there, so we didn’t have far visibility, but we still had a great view of Hong Kong and Kowloon. They just have a very impressive skyline. Space is so limited in Hong Kong that high rises are a necessity. In the more crowded areas I don’t remember seeing buildings shorter than ten stories. And there are a LOT of crowded areas. It makes for a beautiful view though. I never got sick of looking at it. They have a light show every night where all of the skyscrapers shoot lasers in the sky and light up in time to music. It’s lame… BUT you still have to go see it.
We did a lot of other things. There’s so much to remember that I just can’t recall it all. We saw a temple and garden at Chi Lin Nunnery, walked around the Chinese University of Hong Kong, endlessly walked the various street markets where you can buy almost anything, but mostly Angry Birds T-shirts and iphone cases. We rode the longest escalator in the world, snuck into a fancy hotel to look out from the 39th floor, and met up with a girl named Phoebe and some other travelers for a home cooked traditional Chinese dinner. Brett tried snake soup and chicken feet, I said no thank you, and all together we had a really good time.
It was interesting, it was fun, and most importantly it was a great starting point for our trip! Five more months to go…
LUV YA
Michael
P.S. I recorded some really great footage that has yet to be edited, but that I am nonetheless ridiculously excited about. !!! “HONG KONG, Portraits”
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