Expatiperro

One thing that you can't help but notice after reading the tourist information guides at the main Beijing sites is the Chinese overuse of superlatives. Everything in the city that we visited was described using some combination of "the biggest", "most magnificent", "most awe-inspiring", etc. A relatively simple temple was hailed as the most important construction of its kind in world history, and the audio tour of the Forbidden City was filled with so many statistics supporting its grandeur that it left your head spinning. Now I fully recognize that China has accomplished many amazing things and firsts in its long history (invention of the compass, toilet paper, and printing press, among others), but it's hard not being to dismiss the constant emphasis on their greatness (superlativity?) after hearing it for the 79th time.

However, if there is one place in China deserving of a superlative, it's the Great Wall. A ribbon of stone that snakes across ridge lines, climbs impossibly steep slopes, and stretches from horizon to horizon, the Wall defies description. No amount of reading or pictures could have prepared me for just how big and impressive it was; it wasn't until we took a tram up to the Wall and walked on it for 6 miles that I could fully get a sense of its scale and appreciate its monumentality. Admittedly, I was expecting to be underwhelmed; instead, I was blown away.


Words don't do the Wall justice at all, and pictures only marginally capture its size, but in the absence of a teleportation device, the shots below are the best I can do. Enjoy.

After the calm and quiet of Laos, it's no understatement to say that China has been an incredible shock. The sensory overload hit right as I got off the bus taking me from the Tianjin airport to that city's train station- cars and people were everywhere, and the smog almost completely blocked out the early morning light. The high speed train took me the 80 miles to Beijing in under 30 minutes (ticket price, $10), and soon enough I was eating breakfast with Kyle, my travel buddy for the next 3 months, and his friend Stacey.

No amount of preparation could have prepared me for what I encountered exploring Beijing my first day there. The city is ENORMOUS, in both population (15 million and counting) and scale. A city block is about half a mile long, and skyscrapers and cranes fill the horizon. Cars choke the streets, bikes and electric scooters weaving around the traffic jams.

The best way that I've come up with to describe the city is a living, breathing dichotomy. Old neighborhoods called hutongs, with their narrow lanes, quiet streets, and bucolic pace of life, seem to be worlds away from the hypermodern city that surrounds them. (Says Kyle as we bike through a hutong: "Can you believe that we're in a country that's at all developed?"). Men in business suits walk through parks where old women in traditional dress gather to sing karaoke and practice their ballroom dance skills. A bicycle crammed with 5 people stops at an intersection next to a Mercedes, both vehicles unaware of, or simply not acknowledging, the contrast between them. A McDonalds sits a quarter of a mile from Mao's mausoleum. Past and present, old and new, developed and underdeveloped; all of these opposite lie right next to each other in Beijing, and no one seems to bat an eyelid.



Our four days in Beijing took us to all the major attractions. The Forbidden City is beyond massive, with buildings and palaces that seemingly never end. The Temple of Heaven sprawls just as much, encompassing pagoda after pagoda. A bike tour of the hutongs allowed us to see what life in the city was like before the push for development and modernization. Unfortunately, a bout of illness kept me from going to the Summer Palace, and Mao's Mausoleum was closed our four days there for "special reasons" (meaning that my pursuit of the Dead/Embalmed Communist Leaders Triple Crown- visiting and viewing the bodies of Lenin, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh- has been at least temporarily set back). But apart from those two setbacks, everything we wanted to see, we saw.

All in all, Beijing is an experience, something that, like most things in China, has to be seen to the truly appreciated.

Languorous... is the most accurate word to describe Vientiane. Time just seems to slide by, with no destination in mind, just enjoying its slow journey down the Mekong towards whatever place it might happen to end up at. Life is unhurried- the near lack of stoplights in this, the capital of Laos and its most populous city, attests to that- and the general feel of this place is that of a backwater provincial town. It's what I imagine a Mississippi river town would have been like 200 years ago, before the arrival of any railroad or settlers, the pace of life dictated by the calm flow of the waters which are its lifeblood.

There is a peaceful lack of people here, especially compared to Bangkok. The incessant din of traffic and people is absent here, replaced by birds chirping (including one in the rafters directly above my bed), the only bright lights flickering fluorescent bulbs illuminating Beer Lao advertisements.. Other than that, there's not much here.

I passed my one full day doing everything the city had to offer. Check- the Lao Revolutionary Museum and its collection of anti-imperialist photos and artifacts (which included fanciful paintings of evil French and American soldiers throwing Laotian children down wells, as well as standard exhibits on how Communist life is better than the alternatives). Check- Wat Sisaket and its rows upon rows of Buddha statues. Check-Haw Pha Kaew, and its stash of even more Buddhas (or at least the ones that the Thais left behind after their numerous invasions). Check- the market and the potentially GI-cramp causing noodle lunch I had there. Those sites in the bag and three more hours of daylight to kill, I even had time to use the city-wide Wi-Fi (two bucks for 4 hours, and one of the surprising finds in this seemingly-backwater place).


During my time in Laos, I was lucky enough to meet up with a good number of other travelers passing through Vang Vieng and Vientiane on a well-worn backpacker's path from Thailand through to Vietnam. Among them was a British couple my age who were on a 15-month Asian trek; a Dutch girl traveling on her own for 3 months; two Germans who had driven from Munich to Mongolia, ridden third-class trains across China, and were stretching their money as far as possible in Laos. We spent our night together eating fresh fish on the banks of the Mekong, then end up at a hostel bar, drinking Beer Lao and listening to the Germans tell stories from their epic drive. If I wasn't psyched for the driving part of my own trip before, I certainly am now.

My solo part of the trip ended the next day with a cab ride to the airport, a flight to Kuala Lumpur, and then a red-eye to Beijing, where I met up with Kyle and his friend. Lessons learned- that it still is possible to travel Southeast Asia on $5 a day; that whatever you do on your trip, there will always be someone with a more impressive and adventurous story than yours; and that backpacking solo can be just as fulfilling as going with a buddy.

1. Decide on your destination, then choose what type of bus you want to take. Minibuses are faster, but your driver will likely be blind and/or insane. Safer to choose the "VIP" bus. (Note: the "VIP" bus in most case is neither a bus, nor for VIPs. This is Laos, after all.)

2. Go to the nearest travel agency to buy your ticket. Realize 5 minutes later that you overpaid.

3. Kill time for an hour before your bus leaves by drinking a liter of beer and watching your 18th episode of "Friends" in the last 48 hours. Seriously, Rachel, just marry Ross already!

4. Catch a tuk-tuk to the bus station. Get dropped off in the middle of nowhere and watch helplessly as the only bus there drives off empty. Commiserate with other backpackers about the frustrations of Southeast Asian bus travel.

5. Get pushed by tiny Laotian woman into another tuk-tuk. Hear her say something about going to a different bus station, but the engine drowns her out before you fully understand her. Continue griping about Laotian bus travel with the two Irish girls next to you.

6. Arrive at the other bus station, which is completely empty save for a handful of other similarly confused and abandoned backpackers. Sit down, open book, and pretend you don't see the buses full of backpackers passing by on the highway. Continue doing this for the next hour.

7. Watch as a brightly colored bus pulls into the station. Get on said bus. Start to relax.

8. Stop relaxing when bus pulls onto the highway and takes hairpin turns at 40 miles per hour. Pretend the queasiness in your stomach is from carsickness and not your suspicious-looking smoothie you had with lunch.

9. Ignore the drunken Irishman walking down the aisle behind you, singing a particularly ear-splitting, atonal version of Michael Bublé.

10. Arrive in Vientiane. Get off bus, grab your bag, and unsuccessfully bargain for cheap van ride into town. Try to convince yourself that although you paid 2000 kip more than you wanted, in the long run, 25¢ isn't anything to lose sleep over.

11. Get off tuk-tuk, walk to hotel, pay extra for A/C because you're so tired, and go to sleep. It's been a long day. You've earned it.

After successfully catching my train from Bangkok on Saturday night (second time's a charm), I'm now in Laos, in a small town the countryside called Vang Vieng. The journey here was a bit of an adventure. The final stop of the train was in the Thai border town of Nong Khai, on the other side of the Mekong river from Laos. We took a tuk-tuk from the station to the Thai border crossing, waited in line with Laotian workers and Thai traders for 30 minutes, and then hopped on a bus across the river to the Lao side. Another 30 minutes waiting in the heat and humidity, and then I was on a minibus for the 3 hour ride to Vang Vieng, sharing space with 5 very pissed off Brits who had just discovered that they had paid twice as much for their seats as I had.

Laos is fascinating. It feels as though it's stuck in some indeterminate time in the past, where clocks move a little slower, life is a little more relaxed, and Western tourists are still a novelty, if not yet a scourge. On the minibus ride from the border to Vang Vieng, looking outside the window was like looking through a history book from a French expedition at the turn of the century. Families bathing in roadside rivers; women in traditional cone-shaped hats working in rice paddies; cows lazily crossing the road, unbothered by the pick-ups that are swerving to avoid them. We drove on the country's main highway, a one and a half lane, partially paved road. Cars are few and far between; more common are pickups-turned-taxis with dozens of people crammed into the back, and occasionally we pass a cart being towned by what looks like, but logic won't let me belive is, a push-powered lawnmower.

After the drive up, Vang Vieng feels like a Western oasis, an MTV Spring Break dropped into the middle of a rice paddy. The town caters solely to the grungy backpacker set looking for a deal; it seems like every Laotian here runs either an internet cafe, travel agency, or hostel, sometimes all three. The bars and restuarants all have Western style menus, which you can order from as you watch "Friends" and wait out a torrential rainstorm. (I made it through most of the first season doing just that Sunday night.) With so many comforts, you have to force yourself to look up and appreciate the natural scenery- jagged limestone mountains surround the town, their impossibly steep slopes hiding huge caves within.

Yesterday, my only full day here, I went on a caving/kayaking expedition. We spent the morning swimming and tubing through a deep cave under a mountain just outside of town, and after lunch we kayaked down the river back to town. Before finished the day though, we stopped at one of the many riverside bars, where we drank Beer Lao with fellow backpackers from all over the Western world, had mud-wrestling competitions, danced to the latest American music, and lept from 30 foot high rope swings into the river below. If it weren't for the rice paddies around us, I might have mistaken it for Cancun.

In a couple hours, I'll be catching a bus back down south to the capital, Vientiane, where prices are more expensive (think of a $10/night hotel room compared to a $3) and life is slightly busier. From what I hear, though, it's a great place. Looking forward to checking it out.

In a see-saw 90 minute match, Bangkok's traffic defeated Matt Thier, maintaining its streak of ruining time-sensitive plans.

The result was especially bad news for Thier, as it caused him to miss his train to Vientiane, Laos, which rendered a $30 ticket useless. He was philosophical afterward, saying that there was really nothing he could have done to have avoided the result. But still, "it was hard to sit there and not imagine every second as pennies going down the drain," he admitted.

The match originally tilted in Thier's favor. Leaving his cousin's home with an hour to spare on what is normally a 30 minute trip, he encountered little traffic on the initial protion of the route, whch allowed him to enter the city easily and in almost record time. But 3 kilometers before the train station and just as his spirits were rising, the red headlights appreared on the horizon in front of him.

"I had a bad feeling when I saw the red, but I still had hope that we would make it there in time," Thier recalled. "I mean, we did have 40 mintues to spare- no traffic jam could be that bad, right? But obviously, I was overly optimistic."

Through a translator, Bangkok's traffic said that he struggled to find his game early, missing easy diversions and failing to direct traffic in an efficiently jam-causing manner. But luckily for him, he got back on track just minutes before it would have been too late.

"I don't play to lose. I'm a winner. I have my undefeated streak to defend, and I'm not going to let a little farang (foreigner) knock me off my pedastol," Bangkok's traffic brashly decalred.

"Plus, it's Friday. I'm always worse on Fridays," he added.

For Thier, the loss was bad enough. But adding insult to injury, on the way running into the train station, he slipped and fell into a puddle, soaking his shoes and the left side of his body. The final blow to Thier's ego came when the drive back to his cousin's took 20 minutes, or less than a quarter of the duration of the outbound trip.

"It goes to show that nothing's guaranteed when you're travelling," Thier moralized. "You plan and plan, and then just when things seem to be going well, someone throws in a wrench. In this case, considering the opponent, I guess I should have seen it coming."

"But whatever. At least I don't have to be on a rickety old train tonight."

Busy last day in Bangkok. Spent the morning at Dusit Park, a complex of Royal buildings, popping my head into a couple of museums on Thai art and Royal history. It's really a bit ridiculous just how much the Thais revere their monarchs- any mention of the king and queen is combined with adjectives like "generous", "noble", "kind and munificent", and "gracious and benelovent". Note to readers- my biography better include comparable descriptions of my life.

The best stop at the complex was a museum soley dedicated to the king's photographs. Turns out the guy has a thing for photgraphy, though if you let this mueseum describe it, he single-handedly revolutionized the art and lead Thailand to the vanguard of the medium. Looking at the photographs, I'm not sure I'd give him that much credit- there's a series of shots of literally puddles, and while I'm no art expert, it's hard to see too much artistic value in those. (The captions were also great- one credited his photographs for saving hundreds of lives in the aftermath of a flood 25 years ago, without saying exactly how that happened.) That being said, the pictures weren't bad, and it's pretty cool to have a monarch how was hobbies other than his consorts and waging wars.

Passed the rest of the day checking out what I was missing by not being a backpacker here on Khao San Road, had an amazing lunch at a hole-in-the-wall local place (only foreigner there, score!), and picked up some Buddha souvenirs for future gift-giving (lay your claims now). Wish I had more time to write and post photos, but traffic and a tight schedule tonight have conspired to leave me with nearly none.

In a couple hours, I'll be on a night train to Laos. Not sure what to expect, though something tells me that Southeast Asian trains lack certain frills that one might find on European ones. Here's hope that beds aren't among those. All I know for sure is that in 12 hours, I'll be walking across the Mekong River into Laos- seems that the train doesn't actually go into Laos, but instead stops just short of it- and getting a chance to experience what Thailand would have been like 50 years ago. Slow paced, quiet, and ridiculously cheap.

Looking forward to the chill-out. Catch you all from the other side of the river.

Three days into the trip, and fatigue has been a constant companion. I'm not sure how much that is due to the lingering effects of jetlag, but it's a given that most of it is due to just being in Bangkok- a bustling, hyperkinetic, and energy-taxing city if there ever was one. Traffic jams are a constant, walking down the street is a full-contact sport, and there are people and activity everywhere- no where else does the phrase "teeming masses" apply more than here.

Because of all this, I'm especially grateful for my lodging situation with my cousin Seth on the outskirts of the city. The housing development we're in looks more Florida than Thailand- there's a man-made lake, luxury cars parked in most driveways, and its SO quiet, which is wonderful after spending the day being auditorily assaulted by motorcycle engines and car horns. I have my own big room, private Western style bathroom (no squat toilets! toilet paper!), and the use of Seth's maid and personal driver. I'm fully aware that I'm being spoiled rotten- passing fellow Western tourists today in the city, I kinda felt bad for them and their hostel lodgings- but I like to think that this is karma for whatever future shady hostels/campsites I'll be in during the next few months. But for now, I'm thoroughly enjoying the amazing meals, getting my laundry done, and having my own ride into Bangkok whenever I feel like going sightseeing.

As for the sightseeing- I'm still trying to figure this place out, but the best description I can come up with is that Bangkok is a dense modern city built on top of a modest old one. The 'on top' part is especially apt, as traces of "Old Bangkok" are few and far between. I couldn't help but laugh when Seth's driver, as we were driving into the city yesterday, pointed out a pretty old wraught-iron building and made special note that it was old. How old? I asked. "Oh, fifty, sixty years!" was his sincere response. Lest I think that this was an isolated case, today he pointed out two more old buildings both built around the same time as the previous one, and he gave special mention to a hundred-year old train station as being especially historic. I guess that in a city where change is a constant, "oldness" is a relative concept.

However, not everything is shiny and new in Bangkok, and I've spent my time here visiting some of the relatively more ancient sites. First on Wednesday's agenda was the Royal Palace and the Phra Kaew Temple, both in the same complex, and built around the time of the city's founding in the mid 18th century. The site was basically a fantasyland of Thai architecture- spires shooting up to the sky, gold gables and roof decorations, everything a little too oversized, which the pictures below show well.

What the pictures don't capture is just how seriously people here take the monarchy, which is kinda impossible to overstate. The King and Queen's pictures are all over Bangkok, on buildings, on billboards in the medians, on money, and it's illegal to insult or show disrespect towards the royal family. Knowing the history of Thailand though, it's hard to blame the Thais- the Kingdom of Siam (Thailand's name until the 1930s) was the only country in the area to resist European colonization and maintain its monarchy. If I were Thai, I'd be proud of that heritage, too.

Finally in Bangkok, after what seemed like an eternity (but in reality only a slightly shorter 20 hours) on the plane and in the Taipei airport. I flew on China Airlines, which I should not have done for a number for reasons, but especially because even the woman that sold me by ticket said it was a terrible carrier. Narrow seats, not much leg room, food that even a prisoner would turn down, and an in-flight movie that was either an infomercial about Austria or a documentary about Classical music. I was too doped up on sleeping pills to tell, though the drugs probably made the film more entertaining.

While that movie was great, even better was the informational video they played right before we landed in Thailand, titled "Fascinating Bangkok: Culture and Diversity". Using the cutting edge 1980 effects of synthesizer music and neon graphics, the film presented Bangkok in all its glory, and told us what to expect- which, judging from what was shown on screen, would be a chorus line of smiling monks, smiling old women on boats, and smiling youth in school uniforms playing in parks.

Sadly, I was greeted by none of those people when I got off the plane (these videos are obviously made to manipulate your hopes), but the actual greeters might have been better. At the airport to meet me was my cousin Seth and his driver, Tueng. Seth has lived in Bangkok for the past 15 years working as an architect, and he's been gracious enough to host me at his house in a gorgeous and spacious housing development just outside of the city. It's great having a home base while I'm settling into my travels, and especially great because I haven't seen Seth in years, and it's been fun to catch up. That he has a person who cooks for him, and who just might have prepared me a fantastic Thai dinner, also doesn't hurt things. :-)

So here I am, trying not to succumb to sleep at 8:30pm, and trying to process the change of scenery that's occurred around me in the past 24 hours. Quick first impressions of Bangkok:

• It's hot. Like, a thick, stifling, muggy heat, one that fogs up your glasses when you step outside and makes you feeel like you're moving through molasses.
• A disconcertingly large number of Thais are wearing thos anti-SARS face masks (though sadly I have yet to see one with a Hello Kitty design. Sorry Grant.). Whether this is to protect themselves from the pollution here, or a potential H1N1 pandemic is up in the air. Whether these masks are an effective prophylactic against either, I'll leave that for you to say.
• Bangkok is big, and it sprawls. Lots of traffic, too.

I would write more, but the last two bulletpoints were done with my eyes closed, which might mean that my body is sending me a message; Talk soon!

Well, it seems that my last year-long adventure abroad wasn't enough to satisfy my wanderlust. I'm setting off tomorrow on a four month trip through Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, crossing off about half of the items on my list of "Places I Need to See Before I Die" and covering nearly 20,000 miles of land. In lieu of writing out the ridiculously long list of where we're going (you'll get a complete rundown of our destinations as they unfold), here's something a little easier on the eyes:


I'm starting off in Bangkok on the 1st, making my way solo around Southeast Asia for 10 days before meeting up with my travel buddy, Kyle, in Beijing. Then it's onto the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which we'll take across the steppes of Mongolia, the forests of Siberia, and the Urals to Moscow and St. Petersburg. We'll cross over into Finland, hop on a ferry to Estonia, and buy (yes, BUY) a car. With said car, we'll meander across Eastern Europe for 6 weeks, catch a plane from Greece to Cairo, lead Beduins in an uprising against the Turks (oops, got carried away, sorry), and finally end up in Dubai befre heading back to London.

Kyle's introduction should also say that he is the mastermind behind this expedition- if it weren't for his invitation, extended only 5 weeks ago, for me to join him, I'd probably be spending the fall trolling Craigslist (for jobs!), sitting on my butt, and feeling listless and unfulfilled. As it happens, I'll probably be spending my winter doing just that, but if there's any reason to put off that fate, this trip would be it.

My expectations for this trip are none. All I know for sure is that whatever happens, I'll have amazing stories to tell, great photos and videos to share, and memories to last me more than this lifetime. Keep checking in- I'll be posting pictures regularly, and I'll also be making short videos of each of the different places we visit, for more of a intimate view of the sights and the joys (and surely the frustrations) of traveling.

Bags are packed, tickets are in hand, and the plane is warming up its engines. It's go time. Enjoy the stories.

-Matt